10496	----	Distributed Proofreaders RED MASQUERADE Being the Story of THE LONE WOLF'S DAUGHTER BY LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE 1921 [Illustration: "_Prince Victor gave a gesture of pain and reluctance. 'Must I tell you?_'"] TO J. PARKER READ, JR., ESQ. THE CINEMA THAT WAS HIS APOLOGY This tale quite brazenly derives from the author's invention for motion pictures which Mr. J. Parker Read, Jr., produced in the autumn of 1919 under the title of "The Lone Wolf's Daughter." It is only fair to state, however, that the author has in this version taken as many high-handed liberties with the version used by the photoplay director as the latter took with the original. The chance to get even for once was too tempting.... Messrs. Doubleday, Page & Company in the first instance, and then Mr. Arthur T. Vance, editor of _The Pictorial Review_, in which the story was published as a serial, were equally guilty of the encouragement which results in its appearance in its present guise. L.J.V. Westport--31 December, 1920. Books by Louis Joseph Vance CYNTHIA-OF-THE-MINUTE JOAN THURSDAY NOBODY NO MAN'S LAND POOL OF FLAME PRIVATE WAR SHEEP'S CLOTHING THE BANDBOX THE BLACK BAG THE BRASS BOWL THE BRONZE BELL THE DARK MIRROR THE DAY OF DAYS THE DESTROYING ANGEL THE FORTUNE HUNTER THE ROMANCE OF TERENCE O'ROURKE TREY O' HEARTS _Stories About "The Lone Wolf"_ THE LONE WOLF THE FALSE FACES RED MASQUERADE ALIAS THE LONE WOLF CONTENTS BOOK ONE: A CHAPTER FROM THE YOUTH OF MONSIEUR MICHAEL LANYARD I PLEBEIAN AND PRINCE II THE PRINCESS SOFIA III MONSIEUR QUIXOTE IV THE FOOL AND HIS MONEY V IMPOSTOR VI THÉRÈSE VII FAMILY REUNION VIII GREEK VS. GREEK IX PAID IN FULL BOOK TWO: THE LONE WOLF'S DAUGHTER I THE GIRL SOFIA II MASKS AND FACES III THE AGONY COLUMN IV MUTINY V HOUSE OF THE WOLF VI THE MUMMER VII THE FANTASTICS VIII COUNCIL OF THE GODLESS IX MRS. WARING X VICTOR ET AL XI HEARTBREAK XII SUSPECT XIII THE TURNIP XIV CONFERENCE OF THE DAMNED XV INTUITION XVI THE CRYSTAL XVII THE RAISED CHEQUE XVIII ORDEAL XIX UNMASKING XX THE DEVIL TO PAY XXI VENTRE À TERRE XXII THE SEVEN BRASS HINGES BOOK I A CHAPTER FROM THE YOUTH OF MONSIEUR MICHAEL LANYARD RED MASQUERADE I PLEBEIAN AND PRINCE The gentleman was not in the least bored who might have been and was seen on that wintry afternoon in Nineteen hundred, lounging with one shoulder to a wall of the dingy salesroom and idly thumbing a catalogue of effects about to be put up at auction; but his insouciance was so unaffected that the inevitable innocent bystander might have been pardoned for perceiving in him a pitiable victim of the utterest ennui. In point of fact, he was privately relishing life with enviable gusto. In those days he could and did: being alive was the most satisfying pastime he could imagine, or cared to, who was a thundering success in his own conceit and in fact as well; since all the world for whose regard he cared a twopenny-bit admired, respected, and esteemed him in his public status, and admired, respected, and feared him in his private capacity, and paid him heavy tribute to boot. More than that, he was young, still very young indeed, barely beyond the threshold of his chosen career. To his eagerly exploring eye the future unrolled itself in the likeness of an endless scroll illuminated with adventures all piquant, picturesque, and profitable. With the happy assurance of lucky young impudence he figured the world to himself as his oyster; and if his method of helping himself to the succulent contents of its stubborn shell might have been thought questionable (as unquestionably it was) he was no more conscious of a conscience to give him qualms than he was of pangs of indigestion. Whereas his digestive powers were superb.... This way of killing an empty afternoon, too, was much to his taste. The man adored auctions. To his mind a most delectable flavour of discreet scandal inhered in such collections of shabby properties from anonymous homes. Nothing so piqued his imagination as some well-worn piece of furniture--say an ancient escritoire with ink stains on its green baize writing-bed (dried life-blood of love letters long since dead!) and all its pigeon-holes and little drawers empty of everything but dust and the seductive smell of secrets; or a dressing-table whose bewildered mirror, to-day reflecting surroundings cold and strange, had once been quick and warm to the beauty of eyes brilliant with delight or blurred with tears; or perchance a bed.... And even aside from such stimuli to a lively and ingenious fancy, there was always the chance that one might pick up some priceless treasure at an auction sale, some rare work of art dim with desuetude and the disrespect of ignorance: jewellery of quaintest old-time artistry; a misprized bit of bronze; a book, it might be an overlooked copy of a first edition inscribed by some immortal author to a forgotten love; or even--if one were in rare luck--a picture, its pristine brilliance faded, the signature of the artist illegible beneath the grime of years, evidence of its origin perceptible only to the discerning eye--to such an eye, for instance, as Michael Lanyard boasted. For paintings were his passion. Already, indeed, at this early age, he was by way of being something of a celebrity, in England and on the Continent, as a collector of the nicest discrimination. And then he found unfailing human interest in the attendance attracted by auction sales; in the dealers, gentlemen generally of pronounced idiosyncrasies; in the auctioneers themselves, robust fellows, wielding a sort of rugged wit singular to their calling, masters of deep guile, endowed with intuitions which enabled them at a glance or from the mere intonation of a voice to discriminate between the serious-minded and those frivolous souls who bid without meaning to buy, but as a rule for nothing more than the curious satisfaction of being able to brag that they had been outbid. But it was in the ranks of the general public that one found most amusement; seldom did a sale pass off undistinguished by at least one incident uniquely revealing or provocative. And for such moments Lanyard was always on the qui vive, but quietly, who knew that nothing so quickly stifles spontaneity as self-consciousness. So, if he studied his company closely, he was studious to do it covertly; as now, when he seemed altogether engrossed in the catalogue, whereas his gaze was freely roving. Thus far to-day a mere handful of people other than dealers had drifted in to wait for the sale to begin--something for which the weather was largely to blame, for the day was dismal with a clammy drizzle settling from a low and leaden sky--and with a solitary exception these few were commonplace folk. This one Lanyard had marked down midway across the room, in the foremost row of chairs beneath the salesman's pulpit: by his attire a person of fashion (though his taste might have been thought a trace florid) who carried himself with an air difficult of definition but distinctive enough in its way. Whoever he was and what his quality, he was unmistakably somebody of consequence in his own reckoning, and sufficiently well-to-do to dress the part he chose to play in life. Certainly he had a conscientious tailor and a busy valet, both saturate with British tradition. Yet the man they served was no Englishman. Aside from his clothing, everything about him had an exotic tang, though what precisely his racial antecedents might have been was rather a riddle; a habit so thoroughly European went oddly with the hints of Asiatic strain which one thought to detect in his lineaments. Nevertheless, it were difficult otherwise to account for the faintly indicated slant of those little black eyes, the blurred modelling of the nose, the high cheekbones, and the thin thatch of coarse black hair which was plastered down with abundant brilliantine above that mask of pallid features. The grayish pallor of the man, indeed, was startling, so that Lanyard for some time sought an adjective to suit it, and was content only when he hit on the word _evil_. Indeed, evil seemed the inevitable and only word; none other could possibly so well fit that strange personality. His interest thus fixed, he awaited confidently what could hardly fail to come, a moment of self-betrayal. That fell more quickly than he had hoped. Of a sudden the decent quiet of King Street, thus far accentuated rather than disturbed by the routine grind of hansoms and four-wheelers, was enlivened by spirited hoofs whose clatter stilled abruptly in front of the auction room. Turning a speciously languid eye toward the weeping window, Lanyard had a partial view of a handsomely appointed private equipage, a pair of spanking bays, a liveried coachman on the box. The carriage door slammed with a hollow clap; a footman furled an umbrella and climbed to his place beside the driver. As the vehicle drew away, one caught a glimpse of a crest upon the panel. Two women entered the auction room. II THE PRINCESS SOFIA These ladies were young, neither much older than Lanyard, both were very much alive, openly betraying an infatuation with existence very like his own, and both were lovely enough to excuse the exquisite insolence of their young vitality. As is frequently the case in such associations, since a pretty woman seldom courts comparison with another of her own colouring, one was dark, the other fair. With the first, Lanyard was, like all London, on terms of visual acquaintance. The reigning beauty of the hour, her portrait was enjoying a vogue of its own in the public prints. Furthermore, Lady Diantha Mainwaring was moderately the talk of the town, in those prim, remotely ante-bellum days--thanks to high spirits and a whimsical tendency to flout the late Victorian proprieties; something which, however, had yet to lead her into any prank perilous to her good repute. The other, a girl whose hair of golden bronze was well set off by Russian sables, Lanyard did not know at all; but he knew at sight that she was far too charming a creature to be neglected if ever opportunity offered to be presented to her. And though the first article of his creed proscribed women of such disastrous attractions as deadly dangerous to his kind, he chose without hesitation to forget all that, and at once began to cudgel his wits for a way to scrape acquaintance with the companion of Lady Diantha. Their arrival created an interesting bustle, a buzz of comment, a craning of necks--flattery accepted by the young women with ostensible unconcern, a cliché of their caste. As they had entered in a humour keyed to the highest pitch of gaiety consistent with good breeding, so with more half-stifled laughter they settled into chairs well apart from all others but, as it happened, in a direct line between Lanyard and the man whose repellent cast of countenance had first taken his interest. Thus it was that Lanyard, after eyeing the young women unobserved as long as he liked, lifted his glance to discover upon that face a look that amazed him. It wasn't too much to say (he thought) that the man was transfigured by malevolence, so that he blazed with it, so that hatred fairly flowed, an invisible yet manifest current of poisoned fire, between him and the girl with the hair of burnished bronze. All the evil in him seemed to be concentrated in that glare. And yet its object remained unconscious of it or, if at all sensitive, dissembled superbly. The man was apparently no more present to her perceptions than any other person there, except her companion. Presently, becoming sensible of Lanyard's intrigued regard, the man looked up, caught him in a stare and, mortally affronted, rewarded him with a look of virulent enmity. Not to be outdone, Lanyard gave a fleeting smile, a bare curving of lips together with an almost imperceptible narrowing of amused eyes--goading the other to the last stage of exasperation--then calmly ignored the fellow, returning indifferent attention to the progress of the sale. Since nothing was being offered at the moment to draw a bid from him, he maintained a semblance of interest solely to cover his thoughts, meanwhile lending a civil ear to the garrulous tongue of a dealer of his acquaintance who, having edged nearer to indulge a failing for gossip, found a ready auditor. For when Lanyard began to heed the sense of the other's words, their subject was the companion of Lady Diantha Mainwaring. "... Princess Sofia Vassilyevski, you know, the Russian beauty." Lanyard lifted his eyebrows the fraction of an inch, meaning to say he didn't know but at the same time didn't object to enlightenment. "But you must have heard of her! For weeks all London has been talking about her jewels, her escapades, her unhappy marriage." "Married?" Lanyard made a sympathetic mouth. "And so young! Quel dommage!" "But separated from her husband." "Ah!" Lanyard brightened up. "And who, may one ask, is the husband?" "Why, he's here, too--over there in the front row--chap with the waxed moustache and putty-coloured face, staring at her now." "Oh, that animal! And what right has he got to look like that?" The buzz of the scandalmonger grew more confidential: "They say he's never forgiven her for leaving him--though the Lord knows she had every reason, if half they tell is true. They say he's mad about her still, gives her no rest, follows her everywhere, is all the time begging her to return to him--" "But who the deuce is the beast?" Lanyard interrupted, impatiently. "You know, I don't like his face." "Prince Victor," the whisper pursued with relish--"by-blow, they say, of a Russian grand duke and a Manchu princess--half Russian, half Chinese, all devil!" Without looking, Lanyard felt that Prince Victor's stare had again shifted from the women, and that the mongrel son of the alleged grand duke was aware he had become a subject of comment. So the eminent collector of works of art elected to dismiss the subject with a negligent lift of one shoulder. "Ah, well! Daresay he can't help his ugly make-up. All the same, he's spoiling my afternoon. Be a good fellow, do, and put him out." The Briton chuckled a deprecating chuckle; meaning to say, he hoped Lanyard was spoofing; but since one couldn't be sure, one's only wise course was to play safe. "Really, Monsieur Lanyard! I'm afraid one couldn't quite do _that_, you know!" III MONSIEUR QUIXOTE The sale dragged monotonously. The paintings offered were mostly of mediocre value. The gathering was apathetic. Lanyard bid in two or three sketches, more out of idleness than because he wanted them, and succeeded admirably in seeming ignorant of the existence of the Princess Sofia and the husband whose surface of a blackguard was so harmonious with his reputation. In time, however, a change was presaged by an abrupt muting of that murmured conversation between the beautiful Russian and the almost equally beautiful Englishwoman. An inquisitive look discovered the princess sitting slightly forward and intently watching the auctioneer. The pose of an animated, delightful child, hanging breathlessly upon the progress of some fascinating game: one's gaze lingered approvingly upon a bewitching profile with half-parted lips, saw that excitement was faintly colouring the cheeks beneath shadowy and enigmatic eyes, remarked the sweet spirit that poised that lovely head. And then one looked farther, and saw the prince, like the princess, absorbed in the business at the auction block, his slack elegance of the raffish aristocrat forgotten, all his being tense with purpose, strung taut--as taut at least as that soft body, only half-masculine in mould and enervated by loose living, could ever be. One thought of a rather elderly and unfit snake, stirred by the sting of some long-buried passion out of the lassitude of years of slothful self-indulgence, poising to strike.... At the elbow of the auctioneer an attendant was placing on exhibition a landscape that was either an excellent example of the work of Corot or an imitation no less excellent. At that distance Lanyard felt inclined to dub it genuine, though he knew well that Europe was sown thick with spurious Corots, and would never have risked his judgment without closer inspection. He was accordingly perplexed when, after a brief exhortation by the auctioneer, discreetly noncommittal as to the antecedents of the canvas--"attributed to Corot"--Prince Victor, who had been straining forward like a hound in leash, half rose in his eagerness to offer: "One thousand guineas!" The entire company stirred as one and sat up sharply. Even the auctioneer was momentarily stricken dumb. And for the first time the Princess Sofia acknowledged the presence of her husband, and got from him that look of white hatred with a sneer of triumph thrown in for good measure. Though she affected indifference, Lanyard saw her slender body transiently shaken by a shudder, it might have been of dread. But she was quick to pull herself together, and the auctioneer had scarcely found his tongue--"One thousand guineas for this magnificent canvas attributed to Corot"--when her clear and youthful voice cut in: "Two thousand guineas!" This the prince capped with a monosyllable: "Three!" Stupefaction settled upon the audience. The auctioneer hesitated, blinked astonished eyes, framed unspoken phrases with halting lips. Prince Victor, again gave his wife the full value of his vindictive snarl. She would not see, but it was plain that she was cruelly dismayed, that it cost her an effort to rise to the topping bid: "Thirty-five hundred guineas!" "Four thousand!" "Four thousand I am offered ..." The auctioneer faltered, a spasm of honesty shook him, he proceeded: "It is only fair, ladies and gentlemen, that I should state that this canvas is not put up as an authentic Corot. It very possibly is such, in fact"--the seizure was passing swiftly--"it bears every evidence of having come from the brush of the master. But we cannot guarantee it. There is, however, a gentleman present who is amply qualified to pass upon the merits of this work. With his permission"--his eye sought Lanyard's--"I venture to request the opinion of Monsieur Michael Lanyard, the noted connoisseur!" Lanyard detached a deprecating smile from the pages of his catalogue, but his contemplated response was cut short by Prince Victor. "I am not aware," that one said, icily, "that the authenticity of this painting is a material question. Nor have I any need of the opinion of this gentleman, whatever his qualifications. I have bid four thousand guineas, and insist that the sale proceed. If there are no further bids, the canvas is mine." The auctioneer shrugged, and offered Lanyard an apologetic bow. "I am sorry--" he began. "Four thousand guineas!" snapped the prince. Resigned, the auctioneer resumed: "Four thousand guineas offered. Are there any more bids? Going--" "Forty-five hundred!" Beyond reasonable doubt the princess had spurred herself mercilessly to find sufficient courage to make this latest bid. Lanyard saw her in a rigour of despair, hoping against hope. Only too surely something in the picture, some association--heaven knew what!--was more precious to her, almost, than life, though she had gone already to the limit of her means and perhaps a bit beyond. If this bid failed, she was lost. Her anxiety was pitiful. "Five thousand!" In the princess something snapped: she recoiled upon herself, sat crushed, head drooping, white-gloved hands working in her lap. One detected an appealing quiver on her lips, and noted, or imagined, a suspicious brightness beneath the long dark lashes that swiftly screened her eyes. Her young bosom moved convulsively. She was beaten, near to tears. "Five thousand guineas ... going ... going ..." The face of the prince was a mocking devil-mask in gray and black. Lanyard found himself loathing it. Impossible to stand idle and see the creature get the better of an unhappy girl ... "Five thousand one hundred guineas!" With his wits in a blur of amaze, Lanyard knew the echo of his own voice. IV THE FOOL AND HIS MONEY One reflected rather bitterly on the many and obvious oversights of a putatively all-wise Providence, in especial on its failure so to fashion the body of man as to enable him on occasion to discipline his own flesh in the most ignominious manner imaginable. Lanyard could have kicked himself; that is to say, he wanted to, and thought it rather a pity he couldn't, and publicly, at that. For the freak he had just indulged was rank quixotism, something which had as much place in the code of a man of his calling as milk of human kindness in the management of a pawnshop. On second thought, he wasn't so sure. It might have been that quixotism had inspired his infatuate gesture, but it might quite as conceivably have been everyday vanity or plain cussedness: a noble impulse to serve a pretty lady in distress, a spontaneous device to engage her interest, or a low desire to plague a personality as antipathetic to his own as that of a rattlesnake. In point of simple fact (he decided), his impelling motive had been a mixture of all three. In all three respects, furthermore, it proved notably successful; in the two last named without delay. The Princess Sofia at once took note of Lanyard, with wonder, some misgivings, and a hint of admiration. For he was not only a personable person in those days, with a suggestion of devil-may-care in his air that measurably lifted the curse of his superficial foppishness, but he was putting a spoke in Prince Victor's wheel. And whosoever did that, by chance, out of sheer voluptuousness, or with malice prepense, won immediate title to Sofia's favourable regard. If she couldn't thwart Victor herself, she would be much obliged to anybody who could and did; and she was nothing loath to betray her bias by looking kindly upon her self-appointed champion. A whispered communication from Lady Diantha did nothing to abate her overt approbation. As for Victor, his face of leaden gray took on a tinge of green; he quaked with rage, and the glare he loosed on Lanyard made that young man wonder if he were mistaken in believing that the eyes of the prince shone in that dusky room with something nearly akin to the phosphorescence to be seen in the eyes of an animal at night. The notion was amusing: Lanyard paid it the tribute of a quiet smile, in direct acknowledgment of which Prince Victor snarled: "Six thousand guineas!" "And a hundred," Lanyard added. Brief pause prefaced a bid designed to squelch him completely: "Ten thousand!" In a fatigued voice he uttered: "One hundred more." "Fifteen--!" This time Lanyard contented himself with nodding to the auctioneer; and the lips of the latter had barely parted to parrot the bid when Victor sprang to his feet, his features working, his limbs shaking so that the legs of the chair beside him, whose back he seized, chattered on the floor, while the high-pitched voice broke into a screech: "Twenty!" And Lanyard said: "And one." "Twenty thousand one hundred guineas!" chanted the auctioneer. "Are there any more bids? You, sir--?" He aimed a respectful bow at Prince Victor, who snubbed him with a sign of fury. "Going--going--gone! Sold to Monsieur Lanyard for twenty thousand and one hundred guineas!" And Lanyard had the satisfaction of seeing Prince Victor, after a vain effort to master his emotion, snatch up his topper, clap it on his head, and make for the door with footsteps whose stuttering haste was in poor accord with the dignity of his exalted station. But it was debatable whether this satisfaction plus the possession of a questionable Corot was worth its cost. And Lanyard wasn't in the humour, now that the heat of contest began to abate, to look to Princess Sofia for promise of further reward. Even if he could have been guilty of such impertinence, indeed, he must have forborne for very shame. After all (he told himself) he hadn't figured very creditably, permitting petty prejudice to sway him as it had. He felt singularly sure he had played the gratuitous ass in this affair, and he didn't in the least desire to see the reflection of a like conviction in the eyes of a pretty young woman with a flair for the ridiculous. He dissembled his diminished self-esteem, however, most successfully, as he proceeded to the desk of the auctioneer's clerk, filled in a cheque for the amount of his purchase, and gave instructions for its delivery. Whether by intention or inadvertence, he was followed from the auction room by the Princess Sofia and Lady Diantha Mainwaring; and just outside the entrance he found Prince Victor waiting with all the air of a gentleman impatient for a cab to happen along and pick him up out of the drizzle. But in view of the fact that he made no overtures to a passing hansom, which swerved in to the curb in response to a signal of Lanyard's cane, this last concluded that the prince was up to his reputedly favourite game of waylaying his rebel wife. If such were the case, Lanyard had no wish to witness a public wrangle between the two. So he stepped briskly up on the carriage-block, and only hesitated when he saw that the prince, utterly ignoring the presence of the princess and Lady Diantha, was edging forward and cocking an alert ear to catch the address which Lanyard was on the point of giving the cabby. Hugely diverted, the adventurer looked round with a quirk of his brows, and amiably commented: "Monsieur's interest is so flattering! If he really must know, I'm going home now, to my rooms in Halfmoon Street. Au revoir, monsieur le prince!" He beamed benignly upon that convulsed countenance, and saw crestfallen Prince Victor slink away, to the music of smothered laughter from the ladies in the doorway--toward which Lanyard was careful not to look. Then, in high feather with himself, he chirped to the driver and hopped into the hansom. V IMPOSTOR As Lanyard's cab swung away, the carriage wheeled in to take up the Princess Sofia and Lady Diantha Mainwaring. Observing this, Lanyard poked his stick through the little trap in the roof of the hansom and suggested that the driver pull up, climb down, adjust some imaginary fault with the harness and, when the carriage had passed, follow it with discretion. Enchanted by sight of a half-sovereign in the palm of his fare, the cabby executed this manoeuvre to admiration; with the upshot that Lanyard got home half an hour later than he would have had he proceeded to his rooms direct, but with information of value to recompense him. It wasn't his habit to lose time in those days of his youth. And lest his character be misconstrued (which would be deplorable) it may as well be stated now that he had not laid down upward of twenty thousand good golden guineas for a colourable Corot without having a tolerably clear notion of how he meant to reimburse himself if it should turn out that he had paid too dear for his whistle. The hint imparted by his garrulous acquaintance of the auction room--to the effect that the Princess Sofia was famous, among other things, for the magnificence of her personal jewellery--had found a good home where it wasn't in danger of suffering for want of doting interest. And now one knew where their owner lived, and in what state ... Alighting at his own door, the adventurer surprised Prince Victor, morosely ambling by, in his vast fatuity no doubt imagining that his passage through Halfmoon Street would go unremarked in the dusk of that early winter evening. He wasn't at all pleased to find himself mistaken; and though Lanyard did his best with his blandest smile to make amends for having discomfited the prince by getting home later than he had promised to, his good-natured effort was repaid only by a spiteful scowl. So he laughed aloud, and went indoors rejoicing. An hour or so later the painting was delivered by a porter from the auction room. But Lanyard was in his bath at the time and postponed examining his doubtful prize till he had dressed for dinner. For, though it was his whim to dine in his rooms alone, and though he had no fixed plans for the evening, Lanyard was too thoroughly cosmopolitan not to do in Cockaigne as the Cockneys do. Besides, in this uncertain life one never knows what the next hour will bring forth; whereas if one is in evening dress after six o'clock, one is armoured against every emergency. At seven he sat down to the morbid sort of a meal one gets in London lodgings: a calm soup; a segment of vague fish smothered painlessly in a pale pink blanket of sauce; a cut from the joint, rare and lukewarm; potatoes boiled dead; sad sea-kale; nonconformist pudding; conservative biscuit, and radical cheese. With the aid and abetment of a bottle of excellent Montrachet, however, one contrived to worry through. Meanwhile, Lanyard inspected his recent purchase, which occupied a place of honour, propped up on the arms of the chair on his right. It was seldom that Lanyard entertained a guest of such equivocal character. Wagging a reproving head--"My friend," he harangued the canvas, "you are lucky to have been sold. Sorry I can't say as much for myself." It was really too bad it wasn't a bit better. It wasn't often that one encountered so genuine a counterfeit. The hand of an artist had painted it, but never the hand of Corot. Everything Corot was accustomed to put into his painting was there, except himself. The abode had been prepared in all respects as the master would have had it, but his spirit had not entered into it, it remained without life. Still, Lanyard concluded, surveying his prize through the illusioning fumes of his cigar, while the waiter cleared away, it wasn't so bad after all, it wouldn't be in the end a total loss. He could afford to cart the thing back to Paris with him and give it room in his private gallery; and some day, doubtless, some rich American would pay a handsome price for it on the strength of its having found place in the collection of Michael Lanyard, even though it lacked the cachet of his guarantee. But what the devil had made it so precious to the soi-disant Prince Victor and his charming wife? But for a single circumstance Lanyard would have been tempted to believe he had been craftily rooked by an accomplished chevalier d'industrie and his female confederate; but too much and too real passion had been betrayed in the auction room to countenance that suspicion. No: he hadn't been rigged; at least, not by design. Something more than its intrinsic value had rendered the canvas priceless in the esteem of those two, something had been at stake more than mere possession of what they might have believed to be a real Corot. But what? Perplexed, Lanyard took the picture in his hands--it was not too unwieldy, even in its frame--and examined it with nose so close to the painted surface that he seemed to be smelling it. Then he turned it over and scowled at its reverse. And shook a baffled head. But when he tapped the face of the picture smartly with a finger-nail, he gave a slight start, passed a hand over it with the palm pressed flat, and suddenly assumed the humanly intelligent expression of a hunting-dog that has hit on a warm scent. Strong fingers and a fruit knife quickly extracted the painting from its frame and loosened the canvas from its stretcher, proving that the latter held in fact two canvases instead of one. Between these had been secreted several sheets of notepaper of two kinds, stamped with two crests, all black with closely penned handwriting. Lanyard gathered them into a sheaf and scanned them cursorily, even with distaste. True enough, it might be argued that he had bought and paid for the right to pry into the secrets they betrayed; but it was not a right he enjoyed exercising. A fairly thoroughgoing state of sophistication, together with some innate instincts of delicacy, worked to render him to a degree immune to such gratification as others might derive from being made privy to an exotic affair of the heart. Revelation of human weakness was no special treat to him. And if his eyebrows mounted as he read, if the corners of his mouth drew down, if once and again he uttered an "_Oh! oh!_" of shocked expostulation, he was (like most of us, incurably an actor in private as well as in public life) merely running through business which convention has designated as appropriate to such circumstances. At bottom he was being stimulated to thought more than to derision. Putting the letters aside, he bowed his head upon a hand and reflected sagely that love was the very deuce. He wondered if he could or ever would love or be loved so madly. He rather hoped not ... Here, if you please, was the scion of a reigning royal family risking as pretty a scandal as one could well imagine--and all for love! Given a few more days of life, and he would have jeopardized his right of succession and set half-a-dozen European chancelleries by the ears--and all for love! But for his untimely end, that poor, pretty creature would have joined her life to his, consummating at one stroke her freedom from the intolerable conditions of existence with Victor and a diplomatic convulsion which might only too easily have precipitated all Europe into a great war--and all for lawless love! So once more in history Death had served well the interests of public morality. After a year these letters alone survived ... How they had survived, what hands had collected and secreted them, and for what purpose, intrigued the imagination no end. Lanyard inclined to credit Princess Sofia with the indiscretion of saving these souvenirs of a grande passion that had almost made history. There was the sentimental motive to account for such action, and another: the satisfaction of knowing she had concrete proof of her intention to treat Victor as he had treated her. Then somehow the painting must have passed out of her possession; and in all likelihood she had made frantic and awkward efforts to regain it which had aroused the suspicions of Victor; with the sequel of that afternoon.... Lanyard's speculations were interrupted by the peremptory telephone. Without premonition he picked up the combination receiver and transmitter. But his memory was still so haunted by echoes of that delightful voice which he had heard in the auction room, he couldn't entertain any doubt that he heard it now. "Are you there?" it said "Will you be good enough to put me through to Monsieur Lanyard?" The inspiration to mischief was instantaneous: Lanyard replied promptly in accents as much unlike his own as he could manage: "Sorry, ma'am; Mister Lanyard dined hout to-night. Would there be any message, ma'am?" "Oh, how annoying!" "Sorry, ma'am." "Do you know when he will be home?" "If this is the lidy 'e was expectin' to call this evenin'--" "Yes?" the dulcet voice said, encouragingly. "--Mister Lanyard sed as 'ow 'e might be quite lite, but 'e'd 'urry all 'e could, ma'am, and would the lidy please wite." "Thank you _so_ much." "'Nk-you, ma'am." Smiling, Lanyard replaced the receiver and rang for the waiter. When that one answered, the adventurer was hatted and coated and opening his door. "I'm called out," he said--"can't quite say when I'll be back. But I'm expecting a lady to call. Will you tell the doorman to show her into my rooms, please, and ask her to wait." VI THÉRÈSE Posed in a blaze of lights, the Princess Sofia contemplated captiously the charming image reflected in her cheval-glass. One little wrinkle, not precisely of dissatisfaction, rather of enquiry, nestled between her delicately arched brows. A look of misgiving clouded her wide eyes of a wondering child. The bow of an exquisitely modelled mouth, whose single fault lay in its being perhaps a trace too wide, described a shadowy pout. She was beautiful: yes. Nobody could question that. La beauté du diable, no doubt, to Anglo-Saxon eyes, with that skin of incomparable texture and whiteness relieved by a heavily coiled crown of living bronze, the crimson insolence of that matchless mouth, those luminous and changeable eyes so like the sea, whose green melted into blue with the swiftness of thought, whose blue at times as swiftly shaded into stormy purple-black: but however bizarre and barbaric, beauty none the less, and under the most meticulous examination indisputable. But was she as radiant as she had been? On this her birthday she was twenty-five. Appalling age! Five years hence she would be thirty, in ten more--forty! And woman's beauty fades so swiftly: everybody said so. Was the shadow of to-morrow already dimming her loveliness? How could it be otherwise? She had lived so long and so fully, she had begun to live so young. Six years of marriage to Victor--that alone should have been enough, one would think, to metamorphose the fairest face into a blasted battlefield of passions. She had a little shiver of voluptuous horror, remembering what she had endured and escaped. The sweet, true lines of her flawlessly made body were transiently undulant within a sheath of shimmering sequins: a daring gown, by British standards of that day, but permissible because she was Russian; foreigners, you know, are so frightfully weird even when they're quite all right. And yet she was growing old, she was twenty-five! Though she didn't feel in the least like one on the threshold of middle age. Indeed, she had never felt younger, more thrillingly instinct with the power and the will to live extravagantly in one endless riot of youth unquenchable.... Reaction, of course: the swing of the pendulum to its farthest extreme. It was now two years since she had been forced to separate from Victor, finding herself unable longer to countenance and suffer his many-sided beastliness; and a year since the hand of Death had penned an inexorable finis to the too-brief chapter of her one great romance. For there had never been love in her life with Victor. She had been too young at first to appreciate what love and marriage meant, she had been led to the altar and sacrificed upon it as an animal is led in sacrificial rites--without premonition or understanding, only wondering (perhaps) to find itself so groomed and garlanded, so flattered and adored. She had hardly known Victor before she was given to him in marriage by Imperial ukase ... to get rid of her, probably, for some inscrutable reason related to the mysterious circumstances of her parentage. And now after six years of hell with her husband and one of mourning in solitude for her love that was lost, she was coming back to life again ... at last! She lifted up arms that might have been a dream of Phidias chiselled in Parian marble, and stretched them luxuriously. She was superbly alive, indeed--and henceforth she meant to live. Only she must be careful to retain her looks ... If Youth must surely go, Beauty must linger and reign long in its stead. A maid, a comely creature, trim and smart in black and white, with that vividly coloured prettiness which is too often the omen of premature decline into the fat and florid thirties, fetched a wrap and settled it upon Sofia's shoulders. Long and dark, it disguised her figure as completely as it covered her toilette. She nodded her satisfaction, and accepted the veil which she had desired to complete her disguise, a thing of Spanish lace, black and ample, like a mantilla. But before donning it she delayed one minute more before the mirror. "Thérèse! Am I still beautiful?" "Madame la princesse is always beautiful." "As beautiful as I used to be?" "But madame la princesse grows more lovely every day." "Beautiful enough to-night, to keep out of jail, do you think?" To the mirth in the voice of her mistress the maid responded with a smile demure and discreet. "Oh, madame!" was all she said; but the manner of her saying it was rarely eloquent. Sofia laughed lightly, and affectionately pinched the cheek of the maid. "And you, my little one," she said in liquid French--"you yourself are too ravishingly pretty to keep out of trouble. Do you know that?" Her little one looked more than ever demure as she enquired after the hidden meaning of madame la princesse. "Because you will marry too soon, Thérèse--too soon some worthless man will persuade you to dedicate all those charms to him alone." "Oh, madame!" "Is it not so?" "Who knows, madame?" said Thérèse, as who should say: "What must be, must." "Then there is a man! I suspected as much." "But, madame la princesse, is there not always a man?" "Then beware!" "Madame la princesse need not fear for me," Thérèse replied. "Me, my head is not so easily turned. There is always some man, naturally--there are so many men!--but when I marry, rest assured, it will be for something more." With the compressed lips of self-approbation she deftly assisted her mistress to swathe her head in the mantilla-like veil. "Something more than a man?" Sofia enquired through its folds. "What then?" "Independence, madame la princesse." "What an idea! Marriage and independence: how do you reconcile that paradox?" "Madame la princesse means love, I think, when she speaks of marriage. But love--that is all over and done with when one marries. One is then ready to settle down; one has put by one's dot, and marries a worthy, industrious man with a little fortune of his own. With such a husband one collaborates in the maintenance of the ménage and the management of a small business, something substantial if small. And so one ends one's days in comfortable companionship. That, madame la princesse, is the marriage for Thérèse! It may not sound romantic, madame, but it has this rare virtue--it lasts!" VII FAMILY REUNION The London night was normal: that is to say, wet. Darkness had transformed the streets into vast sheets of black satin shot with golden strands and studded with lamp-posts like sturdy stems for ethereal blooms of golden haze. Within their areas of glow the air teemed with atoms of liquid gold. The ring of hoofs on wet pavements was at once disturbing and inspiriting. Alone in her hired hansom the Princess Sofia sat with the window raised, drinking deep of the soft damp air, finding it as heady as strange wine. Under cover of the veil her eyes were brilliant with awareness of her audacity, her lips were parted with the promise of a smile. She loved it all, she adored this mood of London: its nights of rain were sheer enchantment, arabesque, nights of secrecy and stealth, mystery, and romance under the rose. On nights such as this lovers prospered, adventures were to the venturesome, brave rewards to the bold. For herself she was unafraid, she foretasted entire success. How should it be otherwise? Consider how famously chance had prospered her designs, playing into her hands the information that this Monsieur Lanyard was not at home, might not return till very late, and was expecting a call from somebody whom he desired to await his return in his rooms! With such an open occasion, how could one fail? Sofia asked only three minutes alone with the painting.... And if by any mishap she were caught, still she would not be dismayed. The letters were hers, were they not? They had been stolen from her, he had no right title to them who had purchased only the picture which had served as their hiding-place. By all means, let him keep that stupid canvas; he could hardly refuse to let her have her letters, not if she pleaded her prettiest. And even if he should prove obtuse, ungenerous.... Her smile was definite and confident. She was beautiful--and Monsieur Lanyard was aware of that. Had she not, that afternoon, in the auction room, without his knowledge detected admiration in his eyes, a look warm with something more than admiration only? He was impressionable, then. And it would be no distasteful task to play upon his susceptibilities. He was not only personally attractive ("magnetic" was the catch-word of the period), but if half that Lady Diantha had hinted concerning him were true, to make a conquest of Michael Lanyard would be a feather in the cap of any woman, to attempt it a temptation all but irresistible to one--like Sofia--in whose veins ran the ichor of progenitors to whom the scent of danger had been as breath of life itself. It was hardly conceivable; even now Sofia must smile at her friend's amiable endeavours to identify this mysterious monsieur with a celebrated and preposterous criminal. It might be true that, as Lady Diantha had declared, wherever Michael Lanyard showed himself in open pursuit of his avowed avocation as a collector of rare works of art--in London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, or where-not--there in due sequence the Lone Wolf would consummate one of his fantastic coups. And it was indisputable that Lanyard was at present living in London, where for some time past the Lone Wolf had been perniciously busy; or else his bad name had been taken in vain by a baffled and exasperated Scotland Yard. Again: Diantha had insisted that the Lone Wolf was by every evidence completely woman-proof; and there might be something in her contention that such an elusive yet spectacularly successful thief could hardly have won the high place he held in the annals of criminology and in the esteem of the sensation-loving public, if he were one who maintained normal relations with his kind. Sooner or later (so ran Diantha's borrowed reasoning) the criminal who has close friends, a wife, a mistress, children, family ties of any sort, or even body-servants, must willy-nilly repose confidence in one of these, and then inevitably will be betrayed. Depend upon envy, jealousy, spite, or plain venal disloyalty, if accident or inadvertence fail, to lay the law-breaker by the heels. Therefore (Diantha argued) the Lone Wolf must be a confirmed solitary and misogynist--very much like this Monsieur Lanyard, according to reports which declared the latter to be a man who kept to himself, had many acquaintances and not one intimate, and was positively insulated against wiles of woman. But--granting all this--it was none the less true that the utmost diligence, spurred by the pique, ill-will, and ambition of the police of all Europe, had failed as yet to forge any link between the supercriminal of the age and the distinguished connoisseur of art. Other than Lady Diantha and the gossips whose arguments she was retailing, never a soul (so far as Sofia knew) had ventured to breathe a breath of suspicion upon the good repute of Monsieur Lanyard. In short, Diantha's conjectures had been entirely second-hand, and not even meant to be taken seriously. And yet the suggestion had fastened firm hold upon the imagination of the Princess Sofia. If it were true ... what an adventure! There was unaccustomed light of daring in the eyes of the princess, unwonted colour tinted her cheeks. The hansom stopped, discharged the fairest fare it had ever carried, and rattled off, leaving Sofia just a trifle daunted and dubious, the animation of her anticipations something dashed by the uncompromising respectability, the self-conscious worthiness of Halfmoon Street. Enfolded in the very heart of Mayfair, its brief length bounded on the north by Curzon Street (its name alone sufficient voucher for its character), on the south by Piccadilly (hereabouts somewhat oppressive with its hedge of stately clubs, membership in any one of which is equivalent to two years' unchallenged credit) Halfmoon Street is largely given over to furnished lodgings. But it doesn't advertise the fact, its landlords are apt to be retired butlers to the nobility and gentry, its lodgers English gentlemen who have brought home livers from India, or assorted disabilities from all known quarters of the globe, and who desire nothing better than to lead steady-paced lives within walking distance of their favourite clubs. So Halfmoon Street remains quietly estimable, a desirable address, and knows it, and doggedly means to hold fast to that repute. A strange environment (Sofia thought) for an adventurer like the Lone Wolf. But then--of course!--Diantha's innuendoes had been based on flimsiest hearsay. The chances were that Michael Lanyard was an utterly uninteresting person of blameless life. So thinking, the Princess Sofia was sensible of a pang of regret, and tried to be prepared against bitter disappointment as she rang the bell. Either she would fail to obtain admittance (perhaps the lady whom he was really expecting had forestalled her) or else Lanyard would fail to come home in time to catch her! Quite probably it would turn out to be a dull and depressing evening, after all.... The servant who admitted her in manner and appearance lent colour to these forebodings. A creature hopelessly commonplace, resigned, and unemotional, to her enquiry for Monsieur Lanyard he returned the discounted response: Mister Lanyard was hout, 'e might not be 'ome till quite lite, but 'ad left word that if a lidy called she was to be awsked to wite. The princess indicating her desire to wite, the man turned to the nearest door (Lanyard's rooms were on the street level), opened it with a pass-key, stepped inside to make a light, and when Sofia entered silently bowed himself out. Now when the latch clicked behind him, the Princess Sofia forgot that the simplicity of her success thus far was almost discouraging. Her heart began to beat more quickly, and a little tremor shook the hands that lifted and threw back her veil. After all, she was committing an act of lawless trespass, she was on the errand of a thief; if caught the penalty might prove most painful and humiliating. Of a sudden she lost appetite entirely for a piquant encounter with the prepossessing tenant of these rooms. Now she desired nothing so dearly as to consummate her business and escape with all possible expedition. A swift and searching survey of the living-room descried nothing that seemed apt to hinder or detain her. A large room, unusually wide and deep, it had two windows overlooking the street, with a curtained doorway at the back that led (one surmised) to a bedchamber. It was furnished in such excellent taste that one suspected Monsieur Lanyard must have brought in his own belongings on taking possession. The handsome rug, the well-chosen draperies, the several excellent pictures and bronzes, were little in character with the furnished lodgings of the London average, even with those of the better sort. She had no time, however, to squander on appreciation of artistic atmosphere, however pleasing, and needed to waste none searching for the object of her desires. It faced her, distant not six paces from the door--that shameless little "Corot"!--resting on the arms of a straight-backed chair. A low laugh of delight on her lips, she went swiftly to the chair and laid hold of the picture by its frame. In that act she checked, startled, transfixed, the laugh freezing into a gasp of alarm. Brass rings slithered on a pole supporting the portières at the back of the room. These parted. Through them a man emerged. Her grasp on the picture relaxed. It struck a corner against the chair and clattered on the floor--the canvas on its stretcher simultaneously flying out of the frame. "Victor!" "Sweet of you to remember me!" He advanced slowly with that noiseless, cat-like tread of his which she had always hated, perceiving in it a true index to his character: the prowl of a beast of prey, furtive, cowardly, cruel. It was so: Victor was as feline and as vicious as a jungle-cat. Watching him with this thought in mind, one could almost credit old tales of beasts bewitched and walking in human guise. Near by he paused, alertly poised, prepared to spring. The slotted black eyes glimmered malignantly. His lips drew back in mockery from his teeth. His hands were hidden in the pockets of his dinner-coat; but she could guess how they were held, like claws, in that concealment, claws itching for her throat. She dared not stir lest she feel them there, digging deep into her soft white flesh. Witless, in the extremity of her terror, she stammered: "What do you want?" A nod indicated the picture that lay between them, at their feet. "My errand," the man said in a silken tone that gloved grimmest menace, "is much the same as yours--quite naturally--but more fortunate; for I shall get not only what I came for, but something more." "What--?" "The opportunity to plead with you, face to face. I think you will hardly refuse to listen to me now." "How--how did you get in?" "Oh, secretly! By the window, if you must know; but quite unseen. You see, _I_ had no invitation." "I never thought you had--" "Nor did I think you had--till now." Puzzled, she faltered: "I don't understand--" "Surely you don't wish me to believe my pretty Sofia has turned thief?" That stung her pride. She drew upon an unsuspected store of spirit, confronting him bravely. "What is it to me, what you choose to think?" "I refuse to think that of you. My reason will not let me believe it." She saw that he was shaking with rage; so she shrugged and drawled: "Oh, your _reason_--!" "It tells me you for one did not come here to-night uninvited." He was rapidly losing grip on his temper. "Oh, it's plain enough! I was a fool not to understand, there in the auction room, when my face was slapped with proof of your liaison with this Lanyard!" She said in mild expostulation: "But you are quite mad." "Perhaps--but not so as to be blind to the truth. You had him there this afternoon to bid that picture in for you if your own means failed. Why else should the man, who knows pictures as I know you, pay twenty thousand guineas for a footling copy of a Corot that wouldn't deceive a--a Royal Academician! Yes: he bid it in for you--the sorry fool!--bought with his own money the evidence of your infatuation for his predecessor in your affections--and expects you here to-night to receive it from him and--pay him _his_ price! Ah, don't try to deny it!" He growled like a very animal, beside himself. "Why else should you be admitted to these rooms without question in his absence?" Without visible resentment, the Princess Sofia nodded thoughtfully into those distorted features. "Yes," she commented: "quite, quite mad." As if she had offered without warning to strike him, Victor recoiled and for an instant stood gibbering. And she took advantage of this moment in one lithe bound to put the table between them. The manoeuvre sobered him. He did not move, but in two breaths forced himself to cease to tremble, and subdued every symptom of his passion. Only his face remained sinister. "Graceful creature!" he observed, sardonic. "Such agility! But what good will that do you, do you think? Eh? Tell me that!" It was her turn to shiver, and inwardly she did, who was never quite able to combat the fear which Victor could inspire in her by such demonstrations of the power of his will. The self-control which he had always at his command was something that passed her understanding; it seemed inhuman, it terrified her. Nevertheless, so exigent was this strait, she continued to confront him with a face of unflinching defiance. In a voice whose steadiness surprised her she declared: "The letters are mine. You shan't have them." "Undeceive yourself: I'll have them though you never leave this room alive." More to give herself time to think than in any hope of moving him, she began to plead: "Let me have them, Victor--let me go." Smiling darkly, he shook his head. "The letters mean nothing to you. What good--?" He interrupted impatiently: "I shall publish them." "Impossible--!" "But I shall." Aghast, she protested: "You can't mean that!" "Why not? The world shall know your true reason for leaving me--that you were the mistress of another man--and who that man was!" Staring, she uttered in a low voice: "Never!" "Or," he amended, deliberately, "you may keep them, burn them, do what you will with them--on fair terms--_my_ terms." She said nothing, but her dilate eyes held fixedly to his. He moved a pace or two nearer, his voice dropped to a lower key, the light she had learned to loathe flickered in the depths of his eyes. "Come back to me, Sofia! I can't live without you ..." Her lips moved to deny him, but made no sound. Now it was revealed to her, the way. "Come back to me, Sofia!" His hand crept along the edge of the table and lifted, quivering, to capture hers. She steeled herself to endure its touch, against sickening repulsion she fought to achieve a smile that would carry a suggestion of at least forgetfulness. "And if I do--?" she murmured. He gave a violent start, blood suffused his face darkly, his arms leapt out to enfold her. She stepped back, evading him with a movement of coquetry that served, as it was intended, to inflame him the more. "Wait!" she insisted. "Answer me first: If I return to you--then what?" "Everything shall be as you wish--everything forgotten--I will think of nothing but how to make you happy--" "And I may have my letters?" He nodded, swallowing hard, as if the concession well-nigh choked him. Under his gloating gaze her flesh crawled. Only by supreme effort did she succeed in resisting a mad impulse to risk a rush for door or windows, and whipped her will into maintaining what seemed to be frank response. "Very well," she said; "I agree." Again he offered to touch her, again she moved slightly, eluding him. "No," she stipulated with an arch glance--"not yet! First prove you mean to make good your word." "How?" "Let me go--with my letters--and call on me to-morrow." His look clouded. "Can I trust you?" He was putting the question to himself more than to her. "Dare I?" He added in a tone colourless and flat: "I've half a mind to take you at your word. Only--forgive my doubts--appearances are against you--you seem almost too keen for the bargain. How can I know--?" "What proof do you want?" "Something definite.... You pledge yourself to me?" A movement of her head assented. "You will give yourself back to me?" He came nearer, but she contrived to repeat the sign of assent. "Wholly, without reserve?" An invincible disgust shook her as the full sense of his insistence struck home. Still she whipped herself to play out the scene--and win! "As you say, Victor, as you will...." He moved still nearer. She became conscious of his nearness as if a palpable aura of vileness emanated from his person. "Then give me proof--here and now." "How?" He laughed a throaty, evil laugh. "Need you ask? Not much, my Sofia ... only a little ... something on account..." Suddenly she could no more: memories unspeakable rose like disturbed dregs to the surface of her consciousness. Involuntarily, not knowing what she did, she flung out an arm and struck down his hands. "You--leper!" The epithet was like a knout cutting through the decayed fibre of the man and raising a livid welt on his diseased soul. Galled beyond endurance, his countenance convulsed with fury, he struck wickedly; and the vicious blow of his open palm across her mouth brought flecks of blood to the lips as her teeth cut into the tender flesh. It did far more, it shattered at one stroke the brittle casing of self-command with which centuries of civilization had sought to veneer the Slav. In a trice a woman whose existence neither of them had suspected was revealed, a fury incarnate flew at the dismayed prince, clawing, tearing, raining blows upon his face and bosom. Overcome by surprise, blinded, dazed, staggered, he gave ground, stumbled, caught at a chair to steady himself. As abruptly as it had begun, the assault ceased. Panting and frantic, the girl fell back, paused, renewed her grasp upon herself, gazed momentarily in contempt on that dashed and quaking figure, then swiftly swooped down to retrieve the picture, and madly pelted toward the door. In an instant, Victor was after her. His clutching fingers barely missed her shoulder but caught a flying end of the veil that swathed her throat and head. With finger-tips touching the door-knob Sofia was checked and twitched back so violently that she was all but thrown off her feet. She tried desperately to regain her balance, but the pressure round her throat, tightening, bade fair to suffocate her; and reeling, while her hands tore ineffectually at the folds of the veil, she was drawn back and back, and tripped, falling half on, half off the table. Already her vision was darkening, her lungs were labouring painfully, her head throbbed with the revolt of strangulated arteries as if sledge hammers were seeking to smash through her skull. Through closing shadows she saw that savage mask which hovered over her, moping and mowing, as Victor twisted and drew ever more tight the murderous bindings round her throat. A groping hand encountered something on the table, a lump of metal, cold and heavy. She seized and dashed it brutally into that hateful face, saw his head jerk back and heard him grunt with pain, and struck again, blindly, with all her might. Instantly the pressure upon her throat was eased. She heard a groan, a fall ... VIII GREEK VS. GREEK She found herself standing, partly resting upon the table. Great, tearing sobs racked her slight young body--but at least she was breathing, there was no more constriction of her windpipe; Her head still ached, however, her neck felt stiff and sore, and she remained somewhat giddy and confused. She eyed rather wildly her hands. One held torn and ragged folds of the veil ripped from her throat, the other the weapon with which she had cheated death: a bronze paperweight, probably a miniature copy of a Barye, an elephant trumpeting. The up-flung trunk was darkly stained and sticky.... With a shudder she dropped the bronze, and looked down. Victor lay at her feet, supine, grotesquely asprawl. His face was bruised and livid; the cheek laid open by the bronze was smeared with scarlet, accentuating the leaden colour of his skin. His mouth was ajar; his eyes, half closed, hideously revealed slender slits of white. More blood discoloured his right temple, welling from under the matted, coarse black hair. He was terribly motionless. If he breathed, Sofia could detect no sign of it. In panic she knelt beside the body, threw back Victor's dinner-coat, and laid an ear above his heart. At first, in her mad anxiety, she could hear nothing. But presently a beating registered, slow and harsh but steady-paced. With a sob of relief she sat back on her heels, and after a little while got unsteadily to her feet. The house door closed with a dull bang, and from the entrance hallway came a sound of voices. She stood petrified in dread till the voices fell and she heard stairs creak under an ascending tread. Thus reminded that Lanyard's return might occur at any moment, she made all haste to patch up the disarray of veil and coiffure. Fortunately her costume, protected by the cloak of heavy and sturdy stuff, was quite undamaged. Not till on the point of leaving did she remember the painting. It lay unharmed where it had fallen when Victor seized her veil. She was calm enough now to consider herself fortunate in finding it so poorly secured in its frame; without the latter it would be far easier to smuggle the canvas away under her cloak. In the final glance she bent upon Victor's beaten and insensible body there was no pity, no regret, no trace of compunction. What he had suffered he had ten times--no, a hundred, a thousand--earned. Long before she left him Sofia had lost count of the blows she had taken at his hands, the insults worse than blows, the lesser indignities innumerable. But in those abolished days she had never once struck back, she had been faint of heart, cowed and terrified, and had lacked what two years of separation had given her, that spiritual independence which never before had been able to realize itself, lift up its head, and grow strong in the assurance of its own integrity. Two years ago she would not have dared to lift a hand to Victor, no matter how sore the provocation. To-night--if she had one regret it was that she had struck so feebly: not that she desired his death, but that she knew it was now her life or his. She knew the man too well to flatter herself that he would rest before he had compassed such revenge as the baseness of his degenerate soul would deem adequate. Half the world were not too much to put between them if she were now to sleep of nights in comfortable consciousness of security from his quenchless hatred. Callously enough she switched off the lights and left him lying there, in darkness but for the ash-dimmed glimmer of a dying fire. In the entrance hallway she hesitated, coldly composed and alert. But seemingly the noise of their struggle had not carried beyond the door. There was no one about. With neither haste nor faltering, without the least misadventure, she let herself quietly out into the empty, silent, rain-swept street, and scurried toward the lights of Piccadilly. Before long a cruising four-wheeler overhauled her. In its obscure and stuffy refuge she sat hugging her precious canvas and pondering her plight. It was borne in upon her that she would do well to leave London, yes, and England, too, before Victor recovered sufficiently to scheme and put a watch upon her movements. She had need henceforth to be swift and wary and shrewd.... A singular elation began to colour her temper, a quickening sense of emancipation. Necessity at a stroke had set her free. Because she must fly and hide to save her life, society had no more hold upon her, she need no longer fight to keep up appearances in spite of her status as a woman living apart from her husband, little better than a divorcée--an estate anathema to the English of those days. She experienced, through the play of her imagination upon this new and startling conception of life, an intoxicating prelibation of freedom such as she had never dreamed to savour. That waywardness which was a legitimate inheritance from generations of wilful forebears, impatient of all those restraints which a fixed environment imposes upon the individual, an impatience which had always been hers though it slumbered in unsuspected latency, asserted itself of a sudden, possessed her wholly, and warmed, her being like forbidden wine. In this humour she was set down at her door. None saw her enter. In a moment of vaguely prophetic foresight she had bidden Thérèse not to wait up for her and to tell the other servants there was no necessity for their doing so. She might be detained, Heaven alone knew how late she might be; but she had her latch-key and was quite competent to undress and put herself to bed. And Thérèse had taken her at her word. She was glad of that. In event that anything should leak out and be printed by the newspapers concerning the theft of Monsieur Lanyard's famous "Corot" by a strange, closely veiled woman, it was just as well that none of the servants was about to see her come in with the canvas clumsily hidden under her cloak. So she exercised much circumspection in shutting and bolting the door, mounted the stairs without making any unnecessary stir, and at the door of her boudoir waited, listening, for several moments, in the course of which she heard, or fancied she heard, a slight noise on the far side of the door which made her suspect Thérèse might after all still be up and about. The sound was not repeated, but to make sure Sofia slipped out of her cloak and wrapped it round the canvas before she went in; which last she did sharply, with head up and eyes flashing ominously beneath scowling brows--prepared to give Thérèse a rare taste of temper if she found she had been disobeyed. But though the maid had left the lights on, she was nowhere to be seen. Nor did she answer from the bedchamber when the princess called her. With a sigh of relief that ran into the chuckle of a child absorbed in mischief, Sofia threw the cloak across a chaise-longue, and bore her prize in triumph to the escritoire. It was her intention to rip the canvas off with a knife, to get at the letters; and a long, thin-bladed Spanish dagger that now did service as a paper-knife was actually in her hand when she noticed how slightly the painting was tacked to its stretcher, and for the first time was visited by premonition. Dropping the knife, she caught a loose edge of the canvas and with one swift tug stripped it clear of the unpainted fabric beneath. The cry that disappointment wrung from her was bitter with protest and chagrin. Fortune had failed her, then, the jade had tricked her heartlessly. With success within her grasp, it had trickled like quicksilver through her fingers. Victor had been beforehand with her, had purloined the letters and restored the canvas to its frame. She might have suspected as much if she had only had the wit to draw a natural inference from the way the painting had parted company with its frame when she dropped it. So the letters for which she had risked and suffered so much must be back there, in Lanyard's lodgings, in Victor's possession--lost irretrievably, since she would never find the courage to go back for them, even if she dared assume that Victor had not yet recovered and escaped or that Lanyard had not yet come home. If only she had thought to rifle Victor's pockets ... "Too late," she uttered in despair. "Ah, madame, never say that!" She swung round but, shocked as she was to the verge of stupefaction, made no outcry. The intruder stood within arm's-length, collected, amiable, debonair, nothing threatening in his attitude, merely an easy and at the same time quite respectful suggestion of interest. "Monsieur Lanyard!" His bow was humorous without mockery: "Madame la princesse does me much honour." She was silent another instant, in a wide stare comprehending the incredible, the utterly impossible fact of his presence there. The one conceivable explanation voiced itself without her volition: "The Lone Wolf!" "Oh, come now!" he remonstrated, indulgently--"that's downright flattery." She moved aside, lifting a hand toward the bell-cord. "Wait!" Involuntarily she deferred, her arm dropped. Then, appreciating that she had yielded where he had no right to command, she mutinied. "Why?" she demanded, resentfully. "Why ring?" he countered, smiling. "To call my servants--to have them call in the police." "But surely madame la princesse must appreciate the police might be at a loss to know which housebreaker to arrest." He cocked an eye of mocking significance toward the purloined "Corot," and in sharp revulsion of feeling Sofia had need to bite her lip to keep from laughing. She hesitated. He was right and reasonable enough, this impudent and imperturbable young elegant. Yet she could not afford to concede so much to him. She was quick to accept his gage. "Who knows," she enquired, obliquely, "why Monsieur the Lone Wolf brought with him this counterfeit Corot when he broke in to steal--" "The counterfeit jewels of a titled adventuress!" An interruption brusque enough to silence her; or else it was its innuendo that struck the princess dumb with indignation. Lanyard's laugh offered amends for the rudeness, as if he said: "Sorry--but you asked for it, you know." He stepped aside, caught up a handful of her jewels that had been left, a tempting heap, openly exposed on her dressing-table (as much her own carelessness as anybody's, Sofia admitted) and tossed them lightly upon the face of the fraudulent canvas. "Birds of a feather," was his comment, whimsical; "coals to Newcastle!" "My jewels!" The princess gathered them up tenderly and faced him, blazing with resentment. He returned a twisted smile, an apologetic shrug. "Madame la princesse didn't know? I'm so sorry." "How dare you say they're paste?" "I'm sorry," he repeated; "but somebody seems to have taken advantage of madame's confidence. Excellent imitations, I grant you, but articles de Paris none the less." "It isn't true!" she stormed, near to tears. "But really, you must believe me. A knowledge of jewels is one of my hobbies: I _know!_" She looked down in consternation at the exquisite trinkets he had condemned so bluntly. Then in a fit of temper she flung them from her with all her might, threw herself upon the chaise-longue, and wept passionately into its cushions. Then the young man proved himself tolerably instructed in the ways of womankind. He said nothing more, made no offer to comfort her by those futile and empty pats on the shoulder which are instinctive with man on such occasions, but simply sat him down and waited. In time the tempest passed, Sofia sat up and dabbled her eyes with a web of lace and linen. Then she looked round with a tentative smile that was wholly captivating. She was one of those rare women who can afford to cry. "It's so humiliating!" she protested with racial ingenuousness--one of her most compelling charms. "But it's ridiculous, too. I was so sure no one would ever know." "No one but an expert ever would, madame." "You see"--apparently she had forgotten that Lanyard was anything but a lifelong friend--"I needed money so badly, I had them reproduced and sold the originals." "Madame la princesse--if she will permit--commands my profound sympathy." "But," she remembered, drying her eyes, "you called me an adventuress, too!" "But," he contended, gravely, "you had already called me the Lone Wolf." "But what do you expect, monsieur, when I find you in my rooms--?" "But what does madame la princesse expect when I find she had been to mine--and brought something valuable away with her, too!" "I had a reason--" "So had I." "What was it?" "Perhaps it was to see madame la princesse alone--secretly--without exciting the jealousy, which I understand is supernormal, of monsieur le prince." "But why should you wish to see me alone?" she demanded, with widening eyes. "Perhaps to beg madame's permission to offer her what may possibly prove some slight consolation." She weighed his words in dark distrust. What was this consolation? What his game? His attitude remained consistently too deferential and punctilious for one to suspect that by consolation he meant love-making. "But how did you get in?" "By the front door, madame. I find it ajar--one assumes, through oversight on the part of one of the servants--it opens to a touch, I walk in--et voila!" His levity was infectious. In spite of herself, she smiled in sympathy. "And what, pray, is this wonderful consolation you would offer me?" He produced from a pocket a packet of papers. "I think madame la princesse is interested in these," he said. "If she will be so amiable as to accept them from me, with my compliments and one little word of advice...." "Ah, monsieur!" Look and tone thanked him more than words could ever. "You are too kind! And your advice--?" "They tell too much, madame, those letters. And I see you have a fire in the grate ..." "Monsieur has reason...." She rose, went to the fireplace and, half kneeling, thrust the letters one by one into the incandescent bed of coals. A ceremony of sentiment at any other time, but not now: her thoughts were far from the man with whose memory these letters were linked, they were in fact not wholly articulate. Just what was passing through her mind she herself would have found it hard to define; she was mainly conscious of a flooding emotion of gratitude to Lanyard; but there was something more, a feeling not unakin to tenderness.... The reaction of her vital young body from a desperate physical conflict, the rapid play of her passions from anger and despair through triumph and delight to gratification and content, from the bitterest sense of frustration and peril to one of security; the uprush of those strange instincts which had lain dormant till roused by the knowledge that she was free at length from the maddening stupidity of social life, together with her recent, implicit self-dedication to a life in all things its converse: these influences were working upon her so strongly as to render her mood more dangerous than she guessed. Disturbed in her formless reverie, an aimless groping through a bewildering maze of emotions but vaguely apprehended, she started up, faced round and saw Lanyard, topcoat over arm and hat in hand, about to open the door. "Monsieur!" He looked back, coolly quizzical. "Madame?" "What are you doing?" "Taking my unobtrusive departure, madame la princesse, by the way I came." "But--wait--come back!" He shrugged agreeably, released the door-knob, and stood before her, or rather over her--for he was the taller by a good five inches--looking down, quietly at her service. "I haven't thanked you." "For what, madame? For treating myself to an amusing adventure?" "It has cost you dear!" "The fortunes of war ..." Her hands rose unconsciously, with an uncertain movement. Her face was soft with an elusive bloom of unwonted feeling. Her eyes held a puzzled look, as if she did not quite understand what was moving her so deeply. "You are a strange man, monsieur...." "And what shall one say of madame la princesse?" She could but laugh; and laughter rings the death-knell of constraint. But Lanyard remembered uneasily that somebody--Solomon or some other who must have led an interesting life--had remarked that the lips of a strange woman are smoother than oil. "None the less, monsieur, I am deeply in your debt." His smile of impersonal courtesy failed. He was becoming more sensitive than he liked to her charm and the warm sentiment she was giving out to him. This strange access in her of haunting loveliness, the gentle shadows that lay beneath her wide--yet languorous eyes, the almost imperceptible tremor of her sweetly fashioned lips, all troubled him profoundly. He exerted himself to break the spell upon his senses which this woman, wittingly or not, was weaving. But the effort was at best half-hearted. "I am well repaid," he said a bit stiffly, "by the knowledge that the honour of madame la princesse is safe." Sofia laughed breathlessly. Somehow her hands had found the way to his. Her glance wavered and fell. "But is it?" she asked in a tone so intimate that it was barely audible. And she laughed once more. "I am not so sure ... as long as monsieur is here." Lanyard's mouth twitched, slow colour mounted in his face, the light in his eyes was lambent. He found himself looking deep into other eyes that were like pools of violet shadow troubled by a deep surge and resurge of feeling for which there was no name. Aware that they revealed more than he ought to know, he sought to escape them by bending his lips to Sofia's hands. Sighing softly, she resigned them to his kisses. IX PAID IN FULL It was late when Lanyard got home, but not too late: when he entered his living-room enough life lingered in the embers in the grate to betray to him a feline shape on all-fours creeping toward his bedchamber door. As he switched up the lights it bounded to its feet and dived through the portières with such celerity that he saw little more of it than coat-tails level on the wind. Dropping hat and canvas, Lanyard gave chase and overhauled the marauder as he was clambering out through the open window, where a firm hand on his collar checked his preparations to drop half a dozen feet to the flagged court. Victor swore fretfully and lashed out a random fist, which struck Lanyard's cheek a glancing blow that carried just enough sting to kindle resentment. So the virtuous householder was rather more than unceremonious about yanking the princely housebreaker inside and lending him a foot to accelerate his return to the living-room; where Victor brought up, on all-fours again, in almost precisely the spot from which he had risen. He bounced up, however, with a surprising amount of animation and ambition, and flew back to the offensive with flailing fists. In this his judgment was grievously in fault. Lanyard sidestepped, nipped a wrist, twitched it smartly up between the man's shoulder-blades (with a wrench that won a grunt of agony), caught the other arm from behind by the hollow of its elbow, and held his victim helpless--though ill-advised enough to continue to hiss and spit and squirm and kick. A heel that struck Lanyard's shin earned Victor a shaking so thoroughgoing that he felt the teeth rattle in his jaws. When it was suspended, he was breathless but thoughtful, and offered no objection to being searched. Lanyard relieved him of a revolver and a dirk, then with a push sent Victor reeling to the table, where he stood panting, quivering, and glaring murder, while his captor put the dagger away and examined the firearm. "Wicked thing," he commented--"loaded, too. Really, monsieur le prince should be more careful. One of these fine days, if you don't stop playing with such weapons, one of these will go off right in your hand--and the next high-light in your history will be when the judge says: 'And may the Lord have mercy on your soul!'" Victor confided his sentiments to a handkerchief with which he was mopping his face. Lanyard sat down and wagged a reproving head. "Didn't catch," he said; "perhaps it's just as well, though; sounded like bad words. Hope I'm mistaken, of course: princes ought to set impressionable plebeians a better pattern." He cocked a critical eye. "You're a sight, if you don't mind my saying so--look as if the sky had caved in on you. May one ask what happened? Did it stub its toe and fall?" Victor suspended operations with the handkerchief to bend upon his tormentor a louring, distrustful stare. His head was still heavy, hot, and painful, his mental processes thick with lees of coma; but now he began to appreciate, what naturally seemed apparent, that Lanyard must be unacquainted with the cause of his injuries. A searching look round the room confirmed him in this error. The canvas lay where Lanyard had dropped it on entering, not in the spot where Victor remembered seeing it last, but where conceivably an unheeded kick might have sent it in the course of his struggle with Sofia. She must have forgotten it, then, when she fled from what she probably thought was murder, and what might well have been. He was much too sore and shaken to be subtle; and the general trend of his conjectures was perfectly legible to Lanyard, who without delay set himself to conjure away any lingering suspicion of his guilelessness. "Not squiffy, are you, by any chance?" he enquired with the kindliest interest. "You look as if you'd wound up a spree by picking a fight with a bobby. Your cheek's cut and all (shall we say, in deference to the well-known prejudices of the dear B.P.?) ensanguined. Sit down and pull yourself together before you try to explain to what I owe this honour--and so forth." He got up, clapped a hand on Prince Victor's shoulder, and steered him into an easy chair. "Anything more I can do to put you at your ease? Would a brandy and soda help, do you think?" The suggestion was acceptable: Victor signified as much with an ungracious mumble. Lanyard fetched glasses, a decanter, a siphon-bottle, and supplied his guest with a liberal hand before helping himself. Victor took the drink without a word of thanks and gulped it down noisily. Lanyard drank sparingly, then crossed the room to a bell-push. Seeing his finger on it Prince Victor started from his chair, but Lanyard hospitably waved him back. "Don't go yet," he pleaded. "You've only just dropped in, we haven't had half a chance to chat. Besides, you mustn't forget I've got your pistol and your dirk and the upper hand and a sustaining sense of moral superiority and no end of other advantages over you." "Why," the prince demanded, nervously--"why did you ring?" "To call a cab for you, of course. I don't imagine you want to walk home--do you?--in your present state of shocking disrepair. Of course, if you'd rather ... But do sit down: compose yourself." "Let me be," the other snapped as Lanyard offered good-naturedly to thrust him back into the chair. "I am--quite composed." "That's good! Excellent! Hand steady enough to write me a cheque, do you think?" "What the devil!" "Oh, come now! Don't go off your bat so easily. I'm only going to do you a service--" "Damn your impudence! I want no services of you!" "Oh, yes you do!" Lanyard insisted, unabashed--"or you will when you learn what a kind heart I've got. Now do be nice and stop protesting! You see, you've touched my heart. I'd no idea you were so passionate about that painting. If I had for one instant imagined you cared enough about it to burglarize my rooms ... But now that I do understand, my dear fellow, I wouldn't deny you for worlds; I make you a free present of it, at the price I paid--twenty thousand and one hundred guineas--exacting no bonus or commission whatever. You'll find blank cheques in the upper right-hand drawer of my desk there; fill in one to my order, and the Corot's yours." For a moment longer the prince stared, hate and perplexity in equal measure tincturing his regard. Then slowly the look of doubt gave way to the ghost of a crafty smile. What a blazing fool the fellow was (he thought) to accept a cheque on which payment could be stopped before banking hours in the morning--! Such fatuity seemed incredible. Yet there it was, egregious, indisputable. Why not profit by it, turn it to his own advantage? To secure what he had sought, the letters concealed between the canvases, and turn them against Sofia, and to play this Lanyard for a fool, all at one stroke--the opportunity was too rich to be slighted. He dissembled his exultation--or plumed himself on doing so. "Very well," he mumbled, sulkily. "I'll draw the cheque." "That's the right spirit!" Lanyard declared, and escorted him to the desk. A knock sounded. Lanyard called: "Come in!" A sleepy manservant, half-dressed and warm from his bed, entered. "You rang, sir?" "Yes, Harris." Lanyard tossed him a sovereign. "Sorry to rout you out so late, but I need a cab. Whistle up a growler, will you?" "'Nk-you, sir." The man retired cheerfully, rewarded for many a night of broken slumber. Prince Victor got up from the desk and proffered Lanyard the cheque. "I fancy," he said with a leer, "you'll find that all right." Lanyard scrutinized the cheque minutely, nodded his satisfaction. "Thanks ever so ... No, not a word!" He forbade inflexibly a wholly imaginary interposition on the part of Prince Victor. "You don't know how to thank me--do you? Then why try? I know I'm too good, but I really can't help it, it's my nature--and there you are! So what's the good of bickering about it?... Now where did you leave your coat and hat? On my bed, as you came in?" He smiled charmingly and darted through the portières, returning with the articles in question. "Do let me help you." The prince struggled into the coat and grunted an acknowledgment of the service. Lanyard pressed the hat into his hand, picked up the canvas, replaced it in its frame, and tucked both under the princely arm. Another knock: Harris returned. "The four-wheeler is w'iting, sir." "Thanks, Harris. Half a moment: I want a word with you. You see this gentleman?" Lanyard caught Victor's look of angry resentment and interrupted himself. "Don't forget yourself, monsieur le prince. Remember ..." He patted significantly the pocket which held the revolver, and turned back to Harris. "This gentleman," he said, consulting the signature to the cheque, "is Prince Victor Vassilyevski. Please remember him. You may have to bear witness against him in court." "What insolence is this?" Victor demanded, hotly. "Calm yourself, monsieur le prince." Lanyard repeated the warning gesture. "He is a nobleman of Russia, or says he is, and--strangely enough, Harris!--a burglar. I caught him burglarizing my rooms when I came home just now. You may judge from his appearance what difficulty I had in subduing him." "'E do seem fair used up, sir," Harris admitted, eyeing Victor indignantly. "Would you wish me to call a bobby and give 'im in charge?" "Thanks, no. Prince Victor and I have compromised. He doesn't relish going to jail, and I've no particular desire to send him there. But he does want what he broke in to steal--that painting you see under his arm--and I've agreed to sell it to him. Here's the cheque he has just given me. Providing payment is not stopped on it, Harris, you will hear no more of this incident. But if by any chance the cheque should come back from his bank--I may ask you to testify to what you have seen and heard here to-night." "It is a lie!" Prince Victor shrilled. "You brought me in with you, assaulted me, blackmailed that cheque out of me! Nobody saw us--" "Sorry," Lanyard cut in; "but it so happens, that the gentleman who has the rooms immediately above came in when I did, and can testify that I was alone. That's all, monsieur le prince. Your carriage waits." Harris opened the door. Choking with rage, the prince shuffled out, Lanyard politely escorting him to the curb. There, with a foot lifted to enter the four-wheeler, Prince Victor turned, shaking an impassioned hand in Lanyard's face. "You'll pay me for this!" he spluttered. "I'll square accounts with you, Lanyard, if I have to follow you to the gates of hell!" "Better not," Lanyard warned him fairly, "if you do, I'll push you in ... Bon soir, monsieur le prince!" BOOK II THE LONE WOLF'S DAUGHTER I THE GIRL SOFIA She sat all day long--from noon, that is, till late at night--on a high stool behind the tall, pulpit-like desk of the caisse; flanked on one hand by the swing door of green baize which communicated with the kitchen, on the other by a hideous black walnut buffet on which fruits of the season were displayed, more or less temptingly, to the taste of Mama Thérèse. But for these articles of furniture, the buffet, the desk, and the door to the kitchen quarters, uninterrupted rows of tables, square, with composition-marble tops, lined three walls of the room. The fourth was mainly plate-glass window, one on either side of the main entrance. Back of the tables were wall-seats upholstered in red plush, dusty and threadbare; and, above, a frieze of mirrors. The floor of the restaurant was a patternless mosaic of small hexagonal tiles, bare in warm weather, in the winter covered by a thick but well-worn Brussels carpet of peculiarly repulsive design. The windows wore half-curtains of net which, after nightfall, were reinforced by ruffled draperies of rep silk. Through the net curtains, by day, the name of the restaurant was shadowed in reverse by plain white-enamel letters glued to the glass: CAFÉ DES EXILES The girl stared so constantly at these letters, during the off hours of the day, that she sometimes wondered if they were not indelibly stamped upon her brain, like this: [Reverse: CAFÉ DES EXILES] She gazed in the direction of the windows as a matter of habit, because Mama Thérèse objected to her reading at the desk (all the same, sometimes she did it on the sly) because the glimpses she caught, above the half-curtains, of heads of passersby gave her idle imagination something to play with, but mostly because it was difficult otherwise to seem unconscious of the stares that converged toward her from every table occupied by a masculine patron, whether regular or casual--unless the patron happened to be accompanied by a lady, in which unhappy event he had to content himself with furtive, sidelong glances, not always furtive enough by half. The feminine patrons stared, too, but from quite another angle of view. Sofia knew why. If she hadn't, the mirror across the room would have enlightened even a woman without vanity; which paradox this thoroughly human young person was not. She was, indeed, healthily vain; and when she wasn't focussing dream-dark eyes upon the windows, or verifying additions and making change, she was as likely as not to be stealing consultations with the mirror opposite, making sure she hadn't, in the last few minutes, gone off in her looks. Not that her comeliness bade fair ever to prove the cause of any real excitement. Mama Thérèse made a first-rate dragon: she was very much on the job of discouraging enterprising young men, and this without respect for union hours or overtime. And when she wasn't functioning as the ubiquitous wet-blanket, Papa Dupont understudied for her, and did it most efficiently, too. If anything he was more vigilant and enthusiastic when it came to administering the snub sufficient than even Mama Thérèse; in Sofia's sight, indeed, he betrayed some personal feeling in the business; he seemed to consider alien admiration of his charge an encroachment upon his private prerogatives, to be resented accordingly. Sofia understood. At eighteen--thanks to the comprehensive visual education in the business of life which she could hardly have failed to assimilate from a coign of vantage overlooking every table of a Soho restaurant--there were precious few things she didn't understand. But her insight into Papa Dupont's mind in respect of herself was wholly devoid of sympathy. She was just a little bit afraid of him, and she despised him without measure. And this contempt was founded on something more than his weakness for taking numerous and surreptitious nips (surreptitious, at least, until they became numerous) while presiding over the zinc in the pantry between the restaurant proper and the kitchen; and on something more than his reluctance to let Mama Thérèse make an honest man of him, although these two had squabbled openly for so many years that most of the house staff believed them to be married hard and fast enough. For the matter of that, Sofia herself might have been the dupe of this popular delusion--which Mama Thérèse did her best to encourage by never referring to Dupont save as "mon mari"--had they been less imprudent in recriminations which had passed between them in private when Sofia was of an age so tender that she was presumed to be safely immature of mind. Whereas she had always been precocious, if rather a self-contained child. Almost from infancy she had been conversant with many things which she knew it wouldn't do to talk about. Such sympathy as Sofia wasted on the couple was all for Mama Thérèse. What with keeping an eye on Papa Dupont that prevented his drinking himself to death seven times per calendar week, and an eye on Sofia that was fondly credited with being largely responsible for her failure to run away with each and every presentable man who ogled her, and browbeating the waiters and frustrating their attempts to cheat the house out of its fair dues, and supervising the marketing and the cuisine: believe it or not, Mama Thérèse led a tolerably busy life and deserved whatever gratification she got out of it, to say nothing of highest commendation for industry, fidelity, and frugality. But that did nothing to prevent Sofia from not liking her. Her inability to play up to the relationship in which she stood to Mama Thérèse in the manner prescribed by sentimentalists worried Sofia more than a little. She was as hungry to give affection as to receive it; and surely she ought to be fond of Mama Thérèse, who (Sofia was forever being reminded) had in the goodness of her great heart adopted her as the orphaned offspring of a cousin far-removed, and had brought her up at her own expense, expecting no return (excepting humility, gratitude, unquestioning affection, and uncomplaining acceptance of a life of incessant toil at tasks uncongenial when not downright unsavoury, without spending money or hours of untrammelled liberty in which to spend it). Surely such nobility ought to be requited with nothing less than love! Nevertheless, the plain, and to Sofia disquieting, truth was: it wasn't. She was fond of Mama Thérèse after a fashion. No one was ever more ready to acknowledge the woman's good qualities. But her faults, which included avarice, bad temper, gluttony, native cruelty of inclination, and simple inability to give a damn for anybody but herself, forbade satisfaction of Sofia's yearnings to give her affections freely through bestowing them upon the abundant and florid person of Mama Thérèse. Still, she made no murmur. There was more than a trace of fatalism in the composition of her spirit. As she conceived it, in this life either things were or they were not; and as a rule they uncompromisingly were not: one couldn't have everything. She was not happy, it would be stretching the truth to say she was content, but she was resigned, she was patient, she waited not altogether without confidence.... All the same, sometimes, as she sat, day in day out, on her high stool, looking down on familiar aspects of life's fermentation as it manifests in public restaurants, or peering out of the windows to catch tantalizing glimpses of its freer, ampler, and--alas!--more recondite phases--sometimes Sofia wondered whether there were not grimly cynic innuendo in those three words which the mystery of choice had affixed to the window-panes and graven so deep into her soul. CAFÉ DES EXILES For surely she was in exile there, an exile from all the fun and frolic and, fury of life, marooned in weary isolation, on a high stool, in a frowsty table d'hôte, in the living heart of London. II MASKS AND FACES Quite naturally she became acquainted with Faces.... She grew adept at a game which consisted mostly in keeping close watch upon those who for this reason or that engaged her attention, without giving them the slightest reason to suspect she was doing anything of the sort. One could not always be staring in abstraction at nothing in particular as it passed to and fro on the sidewalk in front of the Café des Exiles; one could not often or for long at a time succeed in reading a book held open in one's lap, below the level of the cashier's desk, Mama Thérèse was too brisk for that; one had to do something with one's mind; and it was sometimes diverting to watch and speculate about people who looked interesting. There were so many Faces, they came and went so constantly, like bubbles in a tideway, that to Sofia most of them seemed indistinguishable one from another, mere blurs of flesh colour studded with staring eyes and slitted by apertures which automatically and alternately gaped to receive gobbets of food and goblets of drink and closed to gulp them down. A man needed to be remarkable for something in his looks, not necessarily pulchritude, or for uncommon individuality, for Sofia to favour him with more than one of her seemingly casual glances or to remember him if he visited the café a second time. But those there were who stood out from the rank and file, for whom she watched, whom she missed if they failed to put in appearance at their accustomed hours, about whom her idle but able imagination wove wonderful fantasies, enduing them with histories and environments as far removed from fact as the drab dreams of the realists are from the picturesque commonplaces of everyday. And there were others who came once and never again, but whom she never forgot. But for some of these last, indeed, she would never have remembered some of the former. The brown-eyed youngster with the sentimental expression and the funny little moustache, for example, lurked in the ruck a long time before the one and only visit of a bird of passage dignified him in the sight of the girl on the high stool. On the occasion of his first appearance (but that was long ago, Sofia couldn't remember how long) the slender young man with the soulful eyes and the insignificant moustache had commended himself to her somewhat derisive attention by seeming uncommonly exquisite for that atmosphere. The Café des Exiles was little haunted by the world of fashion; its diner á prix fixe (2/6), although excellent, surprisingly well done for the money, did not much seduce the clientèle of the Carlton and the Ritz. Now and again its remoteness, promising freedom from embarrassing encounters save through unlikely mischance, would bring it the custom of a clandestine couple from the West End, who would for a time make it an almost daily rendezvous, meeting nervously, sitting if possible in the most shadowy corner, the farthest from the door, and holding hands when they mistakenly assumed that nobody was looking--until the affair languished or some contretemps frightened them away. Aside from such visitations, however, the great world coldly passed the café by; although it couldn't complain for lack of patronage, and in fact prospered exceedingly if without ostentation on the half-crowns of loyal Soho and more fickle suburbia. The Sohobohemian on its native heath and the City clerk on the loose, however, were not prone to such vestments as young Mr. Karslake affected. It wasn't that he overdressed; even the ribald would have hesitated to libel him with the name of a "nut"--which is Cockney for what the United States knows as a "fancy (or swell) dresser"; it was simply that he was always irreproachably turned out, whatever the form of dress he thought appropriate to the time of day; and that his wardrobe was so complete and varied that he seldom appeared twice in the same suit of clothes--except, of course, after nightfall; though his visits to the Café des Exiles for dinner or afterward were so infrequent that each attained (after Sofia began to notice him at all) the importance of an occasion. Luncheon was his time, and those empty hours at the end of the afternoon which London fills in with tea and Soho with drinks. He seemed to have a very wide and catholic acquaintance among people of all ranks and stations in life; one could hardly call them friendships, for he lunched or sipped an aperti not often with the same person twice in a blue moon. And whether his companion were a curate or some ragged wastrel of the quarter; painted young person from the chorus of the newest revue or proper matron from Bayswater; keen adventurer from Fleet Street or solid merchant from the City, his attitude was much the same: easy, impersonal, unaffected, courteous, detached. He was as apt as not (going on his facial expression) to be mooning about Sofia when his guest was gesticulating wildly and uttering three hundred words a minute. When he spoke it was modestly, in a voice of agreeable cadences but pitched so low that Sofia never but twice heard anything he said; and his manner was not characterized by brisk decision. All the same, one noticed that he had, as a rule, the last word, that what he said left his hearer either satisfied or pensive. He was unmistakably silly about Sofia; though that didn't impress her, too many of the regulars were just as hard hit, one more or less didn't count. But he never stared to the point of rudeness, and it always seemed to make him hugely uncomfortable if she appeared in the least aware of his adoration; and Mama Thérèse and Papa Dupont never even noticed him, so circumspect was he. Still, Sofia saw, and sometimes wondered, just as she wondered now and then about most of the possible men who seemed disposed to be sentimental about her. For there were times when she felt she could do with a little more first-hand experience and a little less second-hand knowledge. Love (she supposed) must be a very agreeable frame of mind to be in, it was so generally vogue.... What first led her to think that Mr. Karslake might be an interesting person to know, entirely aside from his admiration, happened on an afternoon in June, a warm day for England, when a temperature of some 81 degrees was responsible for "heat-wave" broadsides issued by the evening papers. At about tea time, Mr. Karslake, faultlessly arrayed, ambled in, selected a table diagonally across the room from the caisse, exchanged pleasantries with the waiter who served him a picon, and used a copy of The Evening Standard & St. James's Gazette as a cover for his wistful admiration of Sofia. Presently he was joined by a gentleman twice his age, if not older, whose conservative smartness was such that one wondered if he hadn't strayed out of bounds through inadvertence. One would have thought his place was in the clubs of Piccadilly if not (at that particular hour) at a tea table on the river terrace of the Houses of Parliament. On the other hand, there wasn't a trace of self-importance in his habit, it achieved distinction solely through the unpretending dignity of a decent self-esteem. Sofia tried to fix what it was that made her think him the handsomest man she had ever seen. She failed. He wasn't at all handsome in the smug fashion associated with the popular interpretation of that term; his features were engagingly irregular of conformation, but the impression they conveyed was of a singular strength together with as rare a fineness of spirit. A mobile and expressive face, stamped with a history of strange ordeals; but this must not be interpreted as meaning that it was haggard or prematurely aged; on the contrary, it had youthful colour and was but lightly scored with wrinkles, its sole confession of advancing years was in the gray at either temple. The eyes, perhaps, told more than anything else of trials endured and memories that would never rest. Once they had looked into hers (but that came later) Sofia was sure she would never forget those eyes. And as she saw them then, she never did forget them. But the next time she saw them she did not know them at all. The newcomer hailed Mr. Karslake by his name (which was the first time Sofia had heard it), sat down on the wall-seat beside him and, when the waiter came, desired an absinthe. He had used two languages already, English to Karslake, French to the waiter; Sofia understood both and spoke them to perfection. So it was rather exasperating when, his absinthe having been served and the customary platitudes passed on the weather and their respective states of health, the conversation was continued in a tongue with which Sofia was not only unacquainted but which sounded like none she had ever heard spoken. This seemed the more annoying because there were few people in the restaurant to drown with chatter the sound of those two voices and because, in spite of their guarded tones, their table was one so situated that some freak of acoustics carried every syllable uttered at it, even though whispered, to the quick ears at the cashier's desk. A circumstance which had treated Sofia to many a moment of covert entertainment and not a few that threatened to shatter what slender illusions had survived eighteen years of Mama Thérèse. But nobody else (with the possible exception of the last) was acquainted with this secret of the restaurant, and Sofia was careful never to mention it. Now it so happened that Mr. Karslake had never before sat at that particular table. The language spoken at it to-day intrigued Sofia extravagantly. It was rich in labials, gutturals, and odd sibilances. She was positive it was not a European tongue, though she thought it might possibly be Russian, because it sounded rather like Russian print looks; it might just as well have been Arabic or Choctaw, for all Sofia could say to the contrary. But his fluent ease in it impressed her with the notion that young Mr. Karslake might not, after all, be as negligible a person as he looked and as she indifferently had assumed. She determined to study him more attentively. It was rather a long confabulation, too, and one that both men seemed to take very seriously--though its upshot was apparently quite acceptable to both--and terminated abruptly with Mr. Karslake announcing, in English, with every evidence of satisfaction: "Good! Then that's settled." To this the older man dissented tolerantly. "Pardon: nothing is settled; it is proposed, merely." "Well," said Karslake with a little laugh that to Sofia sounded empty, "at all events it ought to be amusing." The other lifted one eyebrow and smiled remotely. "You think so?" "To be ordering you about, sir? I should say so!" But his companion wasn't listening or chose purposely to ignore that accent of respect. "You are right, my friend," he said, abstractedly: "it will be amusing. But what in life is not? I fancy that is why most of us go on, because we find the play entertaining in spite of ourselves. And even when we think of Death ... there's the possibility that on the other side of the curtain, where the unseen audience sits, whose hisses and applause we never hear ... over there it may be more entertaining still!" Karslake was inquisitively watching his face. "You would say that," he commented, deference and admiration in his voice. "By all accounts you've had a most amusing life." "I have found it so." The other nodded with glimmering eyes. "Not always at the time, of course. But when I look back, especially at my beginnings, at the times that seemed hardest and most intolerable ..." He was thoughtful for a moment, glancing interestedly round the room. "It takes one back." "What does?" "This café, my friend." "To your beginnings, you mean?" "Yes. It is very like the café at Troyon's, at this hour especially, when there are so few English about." "Troyon's?" "A restaurant in Paris. Famous in its day. Several years ago--before the war--it burned down one night, cremating many memories. While it stood I hated it, now I miss it; Paris without it is no more the Paris that I knew." "Why did you hate it, sir?" "Because I suffered there." He indicated a weedy young Alsatian across the room, a depressed and pimply creature in a waiter's jacket and apron, who was shambling from table to table and collecting used glasses and saucers. "You see that omnibus yonder? What he is to-day, that was I in mine--omnibus, scullion, valet-de-chambre, butt and scapegoat-in-general to the establishment, scavenger of food that no one else would eat.... I suffered there, at Troyon's." "You, sir?" Karslake exclaimed in astonishment. "Whoever would have thought that you ... How did you escape?" "It occurred to me, one day, I was less than half alive and never would be better while I stayed on in that servitude. So I walked out--into life." "I wish you'd tell me, sir," Karslake ventured, eagerly. "Some day, perhaps, when I get back. But now"--he looked at his watch--"I've got just time enough to taxi to my hotel, pack, and catch the boat train." "Don't wait for me," Karslake suggested, signalling the waiter. "Perhaps it would be as well if I didn't." They shook hands, and the older man got up, secured his hat and stick, and started out toward the door, moving leisurely, still looking about him with the narrowed eyes and smile of reminiscence. Of a sudden that look was abolished utterly. He had caught sight of Sofia. Her interest had been so excited by the singular confidences she had overheard that the girl had quite forgotten herself and her professional pose of blank neutrality. She was bending forward a little, forearms resting on the desk, frankly staring. The man's stride checked, his smile faded, his eyes grew wide and cloudy with bewilderment. For a moment Sofia thought him on the point of bowing, as one might on unexpectedly encountering an acquaintance after many years: there was that hint of impulse hindered by uncertainty. And in that moment the girl was conscious of a singular sensation of breathlessness, as if something impended whose issue might change all the courses of her life. A feeling quite insane and unaccountable, to be sure; and nothing came of it whatever. With a readiness so instant that the break in his walk must have been imperceptible to anybody but Sofia, the man recollected himself, composed his face, and proceeded to the door. Confounded with inexplicable disappointment, Sofia sat unstirring. In the open doorway the man turned and looked back, not at her, but at Karslake, as if of half a mind to return and say something more to the younger man. But he didn't. He never came back. III THE AGONY COLUMN Sofia dated from that afternoon the first stirrings of a discontent which grew in her throughout the summer till everything related to her lot seemed abominable in her sight. Even without this subjective inquietude it would have been an unpleasant summer. All the world was at sixes and sevens, the social unrest stirred up by the war showed no signs of subsiding, but indeed, quite the contrary, there was trouble in the very air--ominous portents of a storm whose dull, grim growling down the horizon could be heard only too clearly by those who did not wilfully close their ears, grin fatuous complacence, and bleat like brainless sheep: "All's well!" High-spirited youth and witless wealth a-lust for strange new pleasures turned from the long strain of conflict to indulgence in endless orgies of extravagance like nothing ever witnessed by a world long since surfeited with contemplation of weird excesses: daily that wild dance of death attained wilder stages of saturnalia, the bands blaring ever louder to drown the mutter of savage elemental forces working underneath the crust. And ever and anon a lull would fall and the world would shudder to the iteration of a word that spelled calamity to all things fair and sweet and lovable in life, the word _Bolshevism_.... In the Café des Exiles there was endless discord and strife. For several reasons trade was not what it had been, even for the slack season of summer it was poor. The cost of everything had gone up, waiters were insubordinate and unreasonable in their demands, Mama Thérèse had been constrained to increase the fixed price of the dinner, old customers took umbrage at this and their patronage elsewhere. Mama Thérèse cultivated a temper that grew day by day more vile, Papa Dupont displayed new artfulness in the matter of sneaking his daily toll of drink and showed it; the two squabbled incessantly. One of the chefs, surmising the irregularity of their relations and foreseeing an imminent break, sought to turn it to his own profit by making amorous overtures to Mama Thérèse, who for reasons of her own, probably hoping to make Papa Dupont jealous, encouraged the idiot. And, as if this were not sickening enough, Papa Dupont, far from resenting this menace to the pseudo-peace of the ménage, ignored if he did not welcome it, and daily displayed new tenderness for Sofia. He kept near her as constantly as he could, he would even interrupt a wrangle with Mama Thérèse to favour the girl with a languishing glance or a term of endearment; he was forever caressing her disgustingly with his eyes. The swing door between the café and the pantry had warped on its hinges and would not stay quite shut. Normally it stuck in a position which permitted whoever was at the zinc an uninterrupted view of the desk of la dame du comptoir. Instead of having it fixed, Papa Dupont put off that duty from day to day and developed a fond attachment for the place at the zinc. For hours on end Sofia, on her high stool, would be conscious of his gloating regard, his glances that lingered on the sweet lines of her throat, the roundness of her pretty arms. She dared make no sign to show that she knew and resented, to do so would be merely to draw upon herself the spite of Mama Thérèse. But she simmered with indignation, and contemplated futile plans--especially in the long, empty hours of the afternoon, between luncheon and the hour of the apertifs--countless vain plans for abolishing these intolerable conditions. She thought a great deal of the strange man who had talked with young Mr. Karslake, and wondered about him. Somehow she seemed unable to forget him; never before had any one she didn't know made such a lasting impression upon her imagination. Sometimes she wasted time trying to explain to herself why the man had seemed, for that brief instant, to think he knew her, only to dismiss such speculations eventually with the assurance that she probably resembled in moderate degree somebody whom he had once known. But mostly she was preoccupied with pondering the strangeness of it, that he who seemed so brilliant and brave a figure of the great world should, according to his own confession, have risen from beginnings as lowly as her own. All that he had suffered in the days of his youth, in that place in Paris which he called Troyon's, Sofia had suffered here and in large part continued to suffer without prospect of alleviation or hope of escape. And remembering what he had said, that his own trials had come to an end only when he awakened to the fact that he was, as he had put it, "less than half alive" there at Troyon's, and had simply "walked out into life," she was persuaded that the cure for her own discomfort and discontent would never be found in any other way. But she lacked courage to adventure it. To say "walk out and make an end of it" was all very well; but assuming that she ever should muster up spirit enough to do it--what then? Which way should she turn, once she had passed out through the doors? What could she do? She had neither means nor friends, and she was much too thoroughly conversant with the common way of the world with a woman alone to imagine that, by taking her life in her own hands, she would accomplish much more than exchange the irk of the frying pan for the fury of the fire. All the same, she knew that she must one day do it and chance the consequences. Things couldn't go on as they were. And even granting that the outcome of any effort at self-assertion must be unhappy, she grew impatient. Meanwhile, she did nothing, she sat quietly on her perch, looked with stony composure over the heads of the multitude, indifferent alike to admiration and the uncharitable esteem of her own sex, and waited with a burning heart. Mr. Karslake ran true to form. He drifted in and out casually, always idle and dégagé and elegant, he continued his irregular conferences with ill-assorted companions, he worshipped discreetly and evidently without the faintest hope, he seemed more than ever a trifling and immaterial creature. Chance did not again lead him to the table where he had sat with the man whom Sofia could not forget, and only the memory of that conversation held any place for Karslake in the consideration of the girl. Even at that she didn't consider him seriously, she looked for him and missed him when he didn't appear solely because of a secret hope that some day that other one would come back to meet him in the café. Why she held fast to that hope Sofia could not have said. Toward the middle of summer Mr. Karslake absented himself for several weeks, and when he showed up again his visits were fewer and more widely spaced. On an afternoon late in August, a hot and weary day, he sauntered in with his habitual air of having in particular nothing to do and all the time there was to do it in, and found a man waiting for him. This was a person whom Sofia had quite overlooked after one glance had classified and pigeon-holed him. A single glance had been enough. They do some things better in England; a man cast for any particular rôle in life, for example, is apt to conform himself, mentally, physically, and even as to his outer habiliments, so nicely to the mould that he is forever unmistakably what he is even to the most casual observer. So this man was a butler, he had been born and bred a butler, he lived by buttling, a butler he would die; not a pompous, turkeycock butler, such as the American stage will offer you when it takes up English fashionable life in a serious way, but a mild-mannered, decent body, with plain side-whiskers, chopped short on a line with the lobes of his ears, otherwise clean-shaven, his hair pathetically dyed, a colourless cast of countenance, eyes meek and mild. He was soberly dressed in black coat and waistcoat, the latter showing a white triangle of hard-polished shirt and a black bow tie, with indefinite gray trousers and square-toed boots by no means new. His middle was crossed by a thick silver watch-chain, and curious, old-fashioned buttons of agate set in square frames of gold fastened his round stiff cuffs of yesterday. He carried a well-brushed bowler as unfashionable as unseasonable. When Mr. Karslake entered, the polished pattern of a young gentleman of means, slenderly well set-up in an exquisitely tailored brown lounge suit, wearing a boater and carrying a slender malacca stick in one chamois-gloved hand, the butler stood up at his table, quietly acknowledged his greeting--"Ah, Nogam! you here already?"--and waited for the younger man to be seated before resuming his own chair: a stoop-shouldered symbol of self-respecting respectability, not too intelligent, subdued by definite and unresentful acceptance of "his place." Their table was the one immediately beyond the buffet; and the café was very quiet, with only three other patrons, two of whom were playing chess while the third was reading an old issue of the Echo de Paris. So Sofia could, if she had cared to eavesdrop, have overheard everything that passed between Mr. Karslake and the man Nogam. But she didn't; their first few speeches failed to excite her curiosity in the least. She heard Mr. Karslake, who was becomingly affable to one of inferior station, express the perfunctory hope that he hadn't kept Nogam waiting long, and Nogam reply to the simple effect of "Oh, not at all, sir." To this he added that he 'oped there had been no 'itch, he was most heager to be installed in his new situation, and would do his best to give satisfaction. Karslake replied airily that he was sure Nogam would do famously, and Nogam said "Thank you, sir." Then Karslake announced they must bustle along, because they were expected by some person unnamed, but just the same he meant to have a drink before he budged a foot. And he called a waiter and requested a whiskey and soda for himself and some beer for Nogam.... And Sofia turned her attention to other things. The murmur of their talk meant nothing to her after that, and she forgot them entirely till they got up to leave, and then wasted only a moment in wondering why Mr. Karslake, if he were, as he seemed to be, engaging a butler for some friend or employer, should have arranged to meet the man in a café of Soho. But it didn't matter, and she dismissed the incident from her mind. What did matter was that she was to-day more than ever galled by the deadly circumstances of her existence. If they were to continue to obtain, she felt, life would grow simply unendurable, and she would to do something reckless to get a little relief from the tedium and the ugliness of it all. She was fed up with everything, the shrewishness of Mama Thérèse, the drunkenness of Papa Dupont, the hideous dullness of the café, the smell of food, the fumes of tobacco, the reek of wines. She was fed up with the leers of Papa Dupont, the scowls of Mama Thérèse, the grimaces of waiters, the stares of customers, the very sight of herself in the mirror across the room. She was fed up with being fed up, she wanted to do something lunatic, she wanted to kick and scream and drum on the floor with her heels. And all the while, beyond the threshold, life in the street was flowing by, a restless stream, and the voice of it was a siren call to her hungry heart, whispering of freedom, laughing low of love, roaring robustly of brave adventures. And she sat there with folded hands, mutinous yet impotent, afraid, a useless thing with sullen eyes ... wasted ... As was her custom, between six and seven, before the busy hours of the evening, she had her dinner fetched to a table near by. Somebody had left a copy of a morning paper on the wall-seat. Sofia glanced through it without much interest. None the less, when she had finished, she took the sheet back to the caisse with her and intermittently, as occasion offered, read snatches of it quite openly, so bored that she didn't care if Mama Thérèse did catch her at this forbidden practice; a good row would be almost welcome ... anything to break the monotony.... When she had digested without edification every item of news, she devoured the advertisements of the shops, then turned to the Agony Column, which she had saved up for a savoury. She read the appeal of the widow of the English army officer who wanted some kind-hearted and soft-headed person to finance her in setting up an establishment for "paying guests." She read the card of the young gentleman of good family but impoverished means who admitted that he had every grace and talent heart could desire and who, in frantic effort to escape going to work for his living, threw himself bodily upon the generosity of an unknown, and as yet non-existent, benefactor, hinting darkly at suicide if nothing came of this last attempt to get himself luxuriously maintained in indolence. She read the advertisements of money-lenders who yearned to advance fabulous sums to the nobility and gentry on their simple notes of hand. She read the thinly disguised professional cards of lonely ladies whose unhappy lot could be mitigated only by congenial male companionship. She read the ingenuous matrimonial bids. She read the announcement of the lady of (deleted) title who was willing, for a substantial consideration, to introduce gentlefolk of means and their daughters to the most exclusive social circles. She read the naïve solicitation of the alleged ex-officer of the B.E.F., who had won through the war with every known decoration except the Double Cross of the Order of St. Gall and with nothing of his anatomy left whole except his cheek, begging some great-hearted soul to buy him a barrel organ to play in the streets. And then her eye was arrested by the appearance of her own name in the text of a brief advertisement, which she read naturally, with heightened interest: IF MICHAEL LANYARD will communicate privately he will hear news of Sofia his daughter. Address Secretan & Sypher, Solicitors, Lincoln's Inn Fields, W.C. 3 IV MUTINY Sofia had never heard the name of Michael Lanyard. Neither did the firm style of Messrs. Secretan & Sypher, Solicitors, mean anything to her. Notwithstanding, she wasted more time than she knew trying to picture to herself a man who looked like Michael Lanyard sounded, and wishing (no matter what his looks might be) that she were his long-lost daughter Sofia, and that he would see the advertisement, and communicate privately as requested, and hear news of her, and come speeding in a Rolls-Royce to the Café des Exiles, and walk in and humble Papa Dupont with a look of hauteur and confound Mama Thérèse with a peremptory word, and take Sofia by the hand and lead her out and induct her into such an environment as suited her rightful station: said environment necessarily comprising a town house if not on Park Lane at least nearly adjacent to it, and a country house sitting, in the mellowed beauty of its Seventeenth Century architecture, amid lordly acres of velvet lawn and private park. She hoped the country house would be within sight of the sea, and that the family garage would run to a comfortable little town-car for her personal use when she went shopping in Bond Street, or to pay calls or leave cards, or to concerts and matinees.... At about this stage her châteaux en Espagne began to rock upon their foundations; a seismic phenomenon due to the appearance of Mama Thérèse and Papa Dupont, coming from zinc and kitchen for their dinner, which meal they habitually consumed in the café when the evening rush was over, the tables undressed, and the establishment had settled down to drowse away the dull hours till closing time. Thus reminded that it was nine o'clock or thereabouts of a stuffy evening in a stodgy world where nothing ever happened that hadn't wearily happened the day before and the day before that and so back to the beginning of Time, and wasn't scheduled tediously to continue happening to-morrow and the day after and so on to the end of Eternity, Sofia sighed and shook herself and put away the vanity of dreams. But her beauty, as she sat brooding, was as sultry as the night. In the rear of the room Mama Thérèse and Papa Dupont wrangled sourly over their food; not with impassioned rancour but in the natural order of things--as others might discuss the book of the moment or the play of the year or scandal or Charlie Chaplin or the thundering fiasco of Versailles--these two discussed each other's failings with utmost candour and freedom of expression: handling their subjects without gloves; never hesitating to touch upon topics not commonly mentioned in civil intercourse or to use the apt, unprintable word; never dreaming of politely terming a damned old hoe a spade; tossing the ball of recrimination to and fro with masterly ease. Their preoccupation with this pastime was so thoroughgoing that Mama Thérèse even failed to notice the passage of the postman on his last round of the day. Ordinarily, for reasons best known to herself and which Sofia had never thought to question, Mama Thérèse preferred personally to receive all letters and contrived to be on hand at the postman's customary hours of call. But to-night she only realized that he had come and gone when, happening to glance toward the caisse, she saw Sofia shuffling the half-dozen envelopes which had been left with her. Immediately Mama Thérèse pushed back the table and got up, wiping chin and moustache with her napkin as she rolled toward the desk. But she was too late. Already Sofia had sorted out and was staring in blank wonder at an envelope addressed to Mama Thérèse and bearing in its upper left-hand corner the imprint of its origin: _Secretan & Sypher Solicitors Lincoln's Inn Fields London, W.C. 3._ As yet she was simply startled by the coincidence, her brain had not had time to absorb its full significance--that Mama Thérèse should receive a communication from these distinctively named solicitors on the evening of the very day on which they advertised concerning a young woman named Sofia!--when the letter was snatched out of her hand, a torrent of objurgation was loosed upon her devoted head, and she looked into the black scowl of the Frenchwoman. "Sneak! Spying little cat! How dare you pry into my letters?" "But, Mama Thérèse--!" "Be still, you! Has one asked you to speak? Give me those others"--Mama Thérèse with a vast show of violence appropriated them from Sofia's unresisting grasp--"and after this keep your nose of a mouchard out of what doesn't concern you!" "But, Mama Thérèse!--" "Hold your tongue. I wish to hear nothing from you, I hear too much--yes, and see too much, too! Oh, don't flatter yourself I am like that fat dolt of a Dupont, to be taken in by a pair of round eyes and innocent ways. I know your sort, I know _you_, mam'selle, too well! Me, I am nobody's fool, least of all yours, young woman. What goes on under my nose, I see; and if you imagine otherwise you are a bigger simpleton that you take me for." She snapped her fingers viciously in Sofia's crimsoned face, uttered a contemptuous "_Zut_!" and waddled off, shaking her head and growling to herself. Sofia felt stunned. The offensive had been launched so swiftly, she was conscious of having done so little to invite it, she had been taken unprepared, thrown into confusion, her feeble objections silenced and overwhelmed by that deluge of abuse, publicly disgraced.... Her face was burning, and tears started in her eyes; but she winked them back, she would not let them fall. Conscious of the grins of the handful of patrons, and the leers of the waiters, she steeled herself to suppress every betrayal of the mortification in which her soul was writhing, she made no sign but stared on stonily at the blackness of the night that peered in at the open doors. Then indignation came to her rescue, the flaming colour ebbed from her face and left it unnaturally white, the mists before her eyes dissipated and their look grew fixed and hard, even her lips took on a grim, unyielding set. Beneath the desk her hands clenched into small fists. But she did not move. The sensation stirred up by the outbreak of Mama Thérèse subsided, the domino players resumed their game, the old gentleman reading Le Rire turned a page and read on with a knowing smile, lovers returned to their low-voiced love-making, waiters yawned behind their hands, all was as it had been save that, at their table (Sofia could see by the mirror, without looking directly) Mama Thérèse and Papa Dupont seemed to have declared an armistice and were gobbling down the rest of their meal in silence and indecorous haste. Presently they got up and sought their living quarters. To do this they had to pass the caisse and through the green baize door. Mama Thérèse marched ahead with forbidding frown and quivering chins, with the militant carriage of misprized and affronted rectitude. To her, it was obvious, Sofia for the time being did not exist. At her heels Papa Dupont shambled uneasily, hanging the head of deep thoughtfulness, avoiding Sofia's gaze. It was his part to pretend that all was well and always would be; only he lacked the effrontery, just then, for his usual smirk. When they had disappeared Sofia began to think. There was something more in this affair than mere coincidence, there was mystery, a sinister question. Her countenance grew as dark as the complexion of her reverie. Athwart the field of her abstracted vision drifted the figure of young Mr. Karslake. She was barely conscious of it. He seated himself with plain premeditation directly opposite the caisse, staring openly. But Sofia did not heed him at all. An odd smile shadowed his lips, an expression half eager, half apprehensive; there was a hint of puzzlement in his scrutiny. It was rather as if he had unexpectedly found some new reason for thinking the girl an exceptionally interesting personality. But she continued all unaware. Shortly after being served with a drink which he ordered but made no offer to taste, he moved as if minded to rise and cross to Sofia, sat up and edged forward on the wall-seat with a singular air of timidity and embarrassment. But whatever his intention, he reconsidered and sat back, glancing round the room to see if anybody were watching him. He could not see that anybody was. Not even Sofia. Relieved, he settled back, found a handsome gold case in the waistcoat of his dinner jacket, extracted a cigarette, nipped it between his lips--and forgot to light it. Of a sudden Sofia had arrived at a decision; and with every expression of it in her manner she slipped down from the high stool and left the caisse to take care of itself. Turning to the swing door she barged through with a high head and fire of determination illuminating her face. She had had enough of riddles. Behind the zinc an elderly and trusted waiter was nodding. The kitchen was cold and dark for the night. Papa Dupont, then, would be upstairs, closeted with the genius of the establishment. From the pantry a narrow staircase led up to the apartment above the restaurant. Sofia mounted rapidly, with a firm tread that was nevertheless practically noiseless, thanks to the paper-thin soles of well-worn slippers. She could hear voices bickering above. At the top there was a short, dark corridor, with three doors. Two of these were closed on sleeping-rooms; the third door, to a sort of combination office and living-room, stood open, letting out a stream of light. Sofia approached on tiptoe, though the altercation going on within had reached a stage so acute that it was doubtful whether either of the disputants would have heard had she stumped like a navvy. The point of dissension was not at first apparent, because Mama Thérèse was speaking, and what she said had exclusively to do with her estimate of Dupont's character, the mettle of his spirit, the stuff of his mentality, the authenticity of his pedigree (with especial reference to the virtue of his maternal ancestry) and the circumstances of his upbringing; which estimate in sum was low but by no means so low as the terms in which Mama Thérèse was inspired to couch it. Papa Dupont did not seem to be greatly interested. He had heard all this before, many a time, with insignificant phraseological variations. Sofia, pausing unseen and unsuspected in the darkness just outside the doorway, could see him slouching deep in his chair, to one side of the table, his soft fat hands deep in the pockets of his trousers, his chin sunken on his chest, something dogged in the louring frown which he was bending upon nothing, something of genuine indifference in his passive attitude toward the blowsy virago who was leaning across the table the better to spit vituperation at him. And he waited with singular patience until she had to stop for want of breath. Then he shrugged and said heavily: "Still, I don't see what else you propose to do, my old one." Apparently his old one was as poor in expedient as he. "It is for nothing," she said, acidly, "that one looks to you!" "I have said my say. If you have anything better to suggest...." He made a rhetorical pause for reply, but Mama Thérèse was well blown and sulky for the moment. "I am not old, not so old as you, and I have reason to believe the girl is not indifferent to my person." "Drooling old pig," Mama Thérèse observed with reason: "if you dream she would trouble to look twice at you--!" "That remains to be seen. And I, for one, fail to see how else we are to hold her. All this money that has been coming in, paid on the dot every quarter--that means there is more, much more to come to her. Are you ready to give it up?" "Never!" Mama Thérèse thumped the table vehemently. "It is mine by rights, I have earned it. Look at the way I have slaved for her, the tender care I have lavished upon her, ever since she was a little one in my arms." "By all means," Papa Dupont agreed, "look at it, but don't talk about it to her. She might not understand you. Also, do not depend upon her to endorse any claim you might set up based upon such assertions." "She is an ungrateful baggage!" "Possibly; but she is human, she has a memory--" "Are you going to be sentimental about her again?" Mama Thérèse demanded. "Pitiful old goat!" "But I am not in the least sentimental," Papa Dupont disclaimed. "It is rather I who am practical, you who are sentimental. I ask you: Is there any way we can hold on to that money unless I marry Sofia? You do not answer. Why? Because there _is_ no other way. Then I am practical. But you will not admit that. And why? Because we have lived together for a number of years through force of habit, because once, very long ago, we were lovers, you and I--so long ago that you have forgotten you ever had a softer name for me than pig or goat. Who is the sentimentalist now--eh?" "Shut your face!" Mama Thérèse growled. "You annoy me. I have a presentiment I shall one day murder you." "You would have done that long ago," Papa Dupont pointed out, "if you had had the courage. Enough! I am silent. But when you are tired trying to think out another way, reflect on my solution. Meantime, let me have another look at that accursed letter." Mama Thérèse did not respond, she offered no objection when Dupont took up the sheet of paper that lay between them, but ground the heels of her hands into her fat cheeks and sat glowering vindictively while he read aloud, slowly, with the labour of one to whom reading is unaccustomed dissipation: DEAR MADAM: Herewith we beg to enclose our cheque to your order in the sum of two hundred and fifty pounds, being the quarterly payment in advance due you from the estate of our deceased client, the Princess Sofia Vassilyevski, for your care of her daughter. We further beg to advise that, pursuant to the provisions of her will, we begin to-day, on the eighteenth birthday of the young Princess Sofia, a search for her father with the object of apprising him of his daughter's existence. Therefore we would request you to make arrangements to have the young Princess Sofia brought to England forthwith from the convent in France where we understand she is finishing her education. We take leave, however, to advise that, pending the outcome of our enquiries, the question of her father's existence be not discussed with the young princess. In event of his death being established or of failure to find him within six months, the Princess Sofia is to enter without more delay or formality into possession of her mother's estate. Papa Dupont put down the letter. "It is plain enough," he expounded: "if this father is found, we can whistle for our money; whereas if I were married to Sofia, as her husband I would control--" He broke off sharply, and added in consternation: "One million thunders!" Sofia stood between them. And yet she wasn't the Sofia they knew, but another person altogether, a transfigured and exalted Sofia, aflame with righteous wrath and contemptuous with the pride of birth which had leaped into full being a moment since. A princess, born the daughter of a princess, now she knew and looked it. All thought of fear or deference was gone, she had nothing left but scorn for these two despicable creatures, the fat harpy and her crapulent consort who had battened so long upon her misery, who had held her in bondage to the most menial tasks of their wretched restaurant while they filched and hoarded the money paid them for giving her the care and the advantages that were her due. And something of this new-found dignity, to which her title was so unquestionable, which set her upon a level from which she could not but look down on these two paltry frauds, so abashed the Frenchwoman that the phrases of invective and vilification which gushed instinctively from the foul springs of her temper stuck in her throat, she couldn't utter them, and she well-nigh choked with impotent fury and fear as the girl spoke. "You swindlers!" Sofia said, deliberately. "You poor cheats! To pocket a thousand pounds a year of my mother's money--and make me slave for you in your wretched café! And for eighteen years! For eighteen years you have been robbing me of every right I had in the world, robbing me of everything I've needed and longed and prayed for, everything you were paid to give me--while I drudged for you and endured your ill-temper and your abuse and the contamination of association with you!... Give me that letter." She possessed herself of it unopposed. But now Mama Thérèse found her tongue. "What--what do you mean?" she gasped, livid with fright. Was not a fortune slipping through her avaricious fingers? "What are you going to do?" "Do?" Sofia cried. "I don't know, more than this: I'm not going to stay another hour under this roof, I'm going to leave to-night--now-- immediately! That's what I'm going to do!" "Where are you going?" The question halted Sofia in the doorway. "To find my father--wherever he is!" She left the two staring at each other, dumbfounded and aghast. At the far end of the passage she flung open her bedchamber door, entered, turned up the light, and snatched her cloak and hat from pegs beneath the curtained shelf that held her scanty wardrobe. Adjusting these before the mirror she could hear Thérèse bawling at Dupont to follow and stop her. Sofia had little fear he would find heart to attempt that, none the less she hurried. Once her hat was adjusted there was nothing to detain her; the best she had she stood in; no sentimental associations invested that room, the tomb of her defrauded childhood, the prison of her maltreated youth, to make her linger there, but only hateful ones to speed her going. She turned and fled. Stumbling on the stairs, she heard Thérèse still screaming imprecations and commands at Dupont, then the clumping of the man's feet as, yielding at length, he started in pursuit. Through the green baize door she burst into the café like a young tornado. Every head turned her way with gaping mouths and protruding eyes of astonishment as she stopped at the caisse and brazenly, in the face of them all, plundered the till. This was a matter of necessity. Sofia had not one shilling of her own. But those two had robbed her, what she took was not so much as a thousandth part of the money of which they had despoiled her. Moreover, she dared not go out penniless to face London. Snatching a handful of loose coin, she made for the door. But the delay had been fatal. Dupont was now at her heels, and displaying extraordinary agility in a man of his years of dissipation and sedentary habits. And Thérèse was not far behind. Seeing coins trickling through the fingers of the fugitive and falling to ring and spin upon the floor, the Frenchwoman raised an anguished shriek of "_Thief! Stop thief!_"--and such part of the audience as had remained in its seats rose up as one man. In the same instant Dupont's fingers clamped down on Sofia's shoulder. She screamed, and he chuckled and dragged her back. Then his arm was struck up by a deft hand, the girl slipped from his hold and darted out through the doors. Roaring with rage (now that his blood was up, his heart in the chase) Dupont turned upon the meddler. This was young Mr. Karslake. Dupont did not know him except by sight, but that slender, boyish figure and the semi-apologetic smile on Karslake's lips did not inspire respect. Blindly and with all his might Dupont swung his right to the other's head, only to find it wasn't there. The weight of the unexpended blow carried Dupont off his feet. He fell in a heap, and Mama Thérèse, charging wildly after Sofia, tripped on his body and deposited fourteen stone of solid flesh squarely in the small of Dupont's back with a force that drove the breath out of him in one agonized blast. Karslake laughed aloud: it was all as good as a cinema. Then he followed Sofia. It was a dark and silent street by night, little used, a mere link between two main thoroughfares. Sofia, running for dear life, was still far from the nearest corner. Karslake doubled nimbly across the street to the only vehicle in sight, an impressive Rolls-Royce town-car. Jumping on the running-board he pointed out the fleeing shadow to the chauffeur. "Lay alongside that young woman before she makes the corner, Albert!" Without delay the car began to move. Meanwhile, the Café des Exiles was erupting antic shapes, waiters, customers, Dupont, Thérèse. The quiet hour was made hideous by their yells. "_Stop thief!" "À la voleuse!" "L'arrêtez!" "À la voleuse!" "Stop thief!_" An entirely superfluous bobby weathered the corner, discovered Sofia in flight across the street, came about, and shaped a diagonal course to cut across her bows. She saw him coming and stopped short with a gasp of dismay. Simultaneously the Rolls-Royce slid smoothly in between them and Karslake hopped down. Sofia uttered a small cry, more of surprise than fright, and hung back, trying to free the arm by which he was trying to guide her to the open door. "It's our only chance," he warned her, coolly. "We're between two fires. Better not delay!" She yielded and tumbled in. Karslake followed and slammed the door. The car shot away and rounded into the cross street before the bobby could collect himself enough to look at its license plate. He made after it, but when he had reached the corner it had turned another and was lost. At the second turning Karslake looked round from the window with a reassuring laugh, and settled back beside Sofia. "So that ends that!" She stared wide-eyed through the shadows. She knew him now, she was not in the least afraid, but she was confused beyond measure. "Why--why--" she faltered--"what--who are you and where are you taking me?" "Oh, I beg your pardon!" said the young man, contritely. "I forgot. One ought to introduce one's self before rescuing ladies in distress--but there really wasn't time, you know. If you'll overlook the informality, my name's Karslake, Roger Karslake, Princess Sofia, and I'm taking you to your father." V HOUSE OF THE WOLF This startling announcement Sofia received without comment and with a composure quite as surprising. The life which had made her what she was, a young woman singularly unillusioned, well-poised, and well-informed, had brought out in her nature a strong vein of scepticism. She was not easily to be impressed. The more remarkable the circumstance in question, the less inclined was she to exclaim about it, the stronger was her propensity to look shrewdly into the matter and find out for herself just what it was that made it seem so odd. She didn't repose much faith in those striking synchronizations which apparently unrelated influences sometimes effect with related events, and which we are accustomed to term coincidences. She distrusted their specious seeming of spontaneity, she suspected a deep design behind them all. For example: Up to the moment of her flight from the Café des Exiles there had been, as Sofia saw it, nothing extraordinary or inexplicable in the chapter of happenings which had made her acquainted, as abruptly as tardily, with certain facts concerning her parentage. You might, if you felt like it, call it a strange coincidence that she should have read the advertisement of Messrs. Secretan & Sypher just before their letter was delivered and Mama Thérèse by her intemperate conduct warmed Sofia's simmering suspicions to the boiling point. But then Sofia read the Agony Column every time it came into her hands: she would have been more surprised had she missed noticing her given name in print, and downright ashamed of herself if she had failed to associate the letter with the advertisement. If you asked her, she called it Fate, the foreordained workings of occult forces charged with dominion over human affairs. Sooner or later she must somehow have learned the truth about her right place in the world; and to her way of thinking it was no more astonishing that she should have learned it through accident supplemented by the acute inferences of a sharply stimulated imagination, rather than through being waited upon by a delegation of legal gentlemen commissioned with the duty of enlightening her. And the colossal set-piece of the evening having been duly exploded, no sequel whatever could expect anything better than relegation to the cheerless limbo of anticlimax. Thus when young Mr. Karslake explained his uninvited if timely intervention by stating that he was conducting her to the parent of whose existence she had so recently been informed, he succeeded--not to put too fine a point upon it--only in making it all seem a bit thick. So for the time being Sofia contented herself with silent study of his face as fitfully revealed by the passing lights of Shaftesbury Avenue. A nice face (she thought) open and naïve, perhaps a trace too much so; but, viewed at close quarters, by no means so child-like as she had thought it, and by no means wanting in evidences of quiet strength if one forgave the funny little moustache which (now one came to, observe it seriously) was precisely what lent that possibly deceptive look of innocence and inconsequence, positively weakening the character of what might otherwise have been a countenance to foster confidence. As for Mr. Karslake, he endured this candid scrutiny with a faintly apprehensive smile, but volunteered nothing more; so that, when the silence in time acquired an accent of constraint, it was Sofia who had to break it, not Mr. Karslake. "I'm wondering about you," she explained quite gravely. "One fancied as much, Princess Sofia." She liked his way of saying that; the title seemed to fall naturally from his lips, without a trace of irony. None the less, it wouldn't do to be too readily influenced in his favour. "Do you really know my father?" "Rather!" said Mr. Karslake. "You see, I'm his secretary." "How long--" "Upward of eighteen months now." "And how long have you known I was his daughter?" Mr. Karslake, consulting a wrist-watch, permitted himself a quiet smile. "Thirty-eight minutes," he announced--"say, thirty-nine." "But how did you find out--?" "Your father called me up--can't say from where--said he'd just learned you were acting as cashier at the Café des Exiles, and would I be good enough to take you firmly by the hand and lead you home." "And how did he learn--?" "That he didn't say. 'Fraid you'll have to ask him, Princess Sofia." Genuinely diverted by the cross-examination, he awaited with unruffled good humour the next question to be put by this amazingly collected and direct young person. But Sofia hesitated. She didn't want to be rude, and Karslake seemed to be telling a tolerably straight story; still, she couldn't altogether believe in him as yet. She couldn't help it if his visit to the restaurant had been a shade too opportune, his account of himself too confoundedly pat. No: she wasn't in the least afraid. Even if she were being kidnapped, she wasn't afraid. She was so young, so absurdly confident in her ability to take care of herself. On the other hand, intuition kept admonishing her that in real life things simply didn't happen like this, so smoothly, so fortunately; somehow, somewhere, in this curious affair, something must be wrong. "Please: what is my father's name?" "Prince Victor Vassilyevski." "You're sure it isn't Michael Lanyard?" Now Mr. Karslake was genuinely startled and showed it. Sofia remarked that he eyed her uneasily. "My sainted aunt! Where did you get hold of that name?" "Isn't it my father's?" "Ye-es," the young man admitted, reluctantly; at least with something strongly resembling reluctance. "But he doesn't use it any more." "Why not?" Mr. Karslake was silent, thoughtful. Sofia felt that she had scored and with determination pressed her point. "Do you mind telling me why he doesn't use that name, if it's his?" "See here, Princess Sofia"--Karslake slewed round to face her squarely with his most earnest and persuasive manner--"I am merely Prince Victor's secretary, I'm not supposed to know all his secrets, and those I do know I'm supposed not to talk about. I'd much rather you put that question to Prince Victor yourself." "I shall," Sofia announced with decision. "When am I to see him? To-night?" "Of course. That is, I presume you will. I mean to say, Prince Victor wasn't at home when I left, but if I know him he's sure to be when we arrive. And I'm taking you there as directly as a motor can travel in this blessed town." Sofia looked out of the window. The car, having turned down Regent Street from Piccadilly Circus, was now traversing sedate Pall Mall; and in another moment it swung into the passage between St. James's Palace and Marlborough House Chapel; and then they were in The Mall, with the Victoria Memorial ahead, glowing against the dingy backing of Buckingham Palace. Now, since all Sofia's reading had inculcated the belief that the enterprising kidnapper always made off with his victim by way of dark bystreets and unsavoury neighbourhoods, she felt somewhat reassured. "Have we very far to go?" "We're almost there now--Queen Anne's Gate." A good enough address. Though that proved nothing. There was still plenty of time, anything might happen.... Sofia shrugged, and settled back to await developments. But there was nothing to warrant misgivings in the aspect of the dwelling before which the car presently drew up. If it wasn't the palace Sofia had unconsciously been looking forward to, it owned a solid, dull-faced dignity that suited well the town-house of a person of quality, it measured up quite acceptably to Sofia's notion of what was becoming to the condition of a prince in exile--who naturally would live quietly, in view of the recent revolution in Russia. Without augmented fears, then, though still on the alert for anything that might seem questionable, and more agitated with excitement than she let him suspect, Sofia permitted Mr. Karslake to conduct her to the door. He had barely touched the bell-button when this door opened, revealing a vista of spacious entrance-hall. To one side stood a manservant to whom Sofia paid no attention till the sound of his name on Karslake's tongue struck an echo from her memory. "Thanks, Nogam. Prince Victor home yet?" "Not yet, sir." "Tell him, please, when he comes in, we're waiting in the study." "'Nk-you, sir." The servant was the man whom Karslake had met in the Café des Exiles only a few hours before. Catching Sofia's quick, questioning glance, Nogam paused at respectful attention. And, even then, she was struck again with his fidelity to the rôle in the social system for which Life had cast him. In the café, that afternoon, he had cut a mildly incongruous figure, unpretending but alien to that atmosphere; here, in the plain evening-dress livery of his station, he blended perfectly into the picture. Karslake gave his hat and stick to the man, then opened one wing of a great double doorway, and with a bow invited Sofia to precede him. She faltered, hazily conceiving that threshold in the guise of an inglorious Rubicon. But she had already gone too far into this adventure to draw back now without forfeiting her self-respect. With a deceptively firm step she entered a room to wonder at. Sombre shadows masked much of its magnificent proportions, but what Sofia could see suggested less the study of a man of everyday interests than the private museum of an Orientalist whose wealth knew no limits. The air was warm and close, aromatic with the ghosts of ten thousand perished perfumes. The quiet, when Karslake had closed the door, was oppressive, as if some dark enchantment here had power to tame and silence the growl of London that was never elsewhere in all the city for an instant still. On a great table of black teakwood inlaid with mother of pearl burned a solitary lamp, a curious affair in filigree of brass, furnishing what illumination there was. Its closely shaded rays made vaguely visible walls dark with books, tier upon tier climbing to the ceiling; chairs of odd shape, screens of glowing lacquer; tables and stands supporting caskets of burning cinnabar, of ivory, of gold, of kaleidoscopic cloisonné; trays heaped high with unset jewels; cabinets crowded with rare objects of Eastern art; squat shapes of neglected gods brandishing weird weapons; grotesque devil masks ferociously a-grin; chests of strange woods strangely fashioned, strangely carved, and decorated with inlays of precious metals, banded with huge straps of black iron, from which gushed in rainbow profusion silks and brocades stiff with barbaric embroideries in gold- and silver-thread and precious stones. Confused by the impact upon her perceptions of so much that was unexpected and bizarre, the girl looked round with an uncertain smile, and found Karslake watching her with a manner of peculiar gravity and concern. "Prince Victor is an extraordinary man," Karslake replied to her unspoken comment; "probably the most learned Orientalist alive. Sometimes I think the East has never had a secret he doesn't know." He paused and drew nearer, with added earnestness in his regard. "Princess Sofia," said he, diffidently, "if I may say something without meaning to seem disrespectful--" Perplexed, she encouraged him with one word: "Please." "I'm afraid," Karslake ventured, "you will have many strange experiences in this new life. Some of them, I fancy, you won't immediately understand, some things may seem wrong to you, you may find yourself confronted with conditions hard to accept ..." He rested as if in doubt, and she fancied that he was listening intently, almost apprehensively, for some signal of warning. But on her part Sofia heard no sound. Impressed and puzzled, she uttered a prompting "Yes?" "I only want to say"--he employed a tone so low that she could barely hear him--"if you don't mind--whatever happens--I'd be awf'ly glad if you'd think of me as one who sincerely wants to be your friend." "Why," she said in wonder--"thank you. I shall be glad--" She checked in astonishment: a man was approaching from the general direction of the door by which they had entered. The effect was uncanny, as if the figure had materialized before her very eyes, out of clear air, as if one of those many shadows had taken on shape and substance while she looked. The man himself was nothing unusual in general aspect, of no remarkable stature, neither tall nor small, neither robust nor slender. His evening clothes were without fault, but as much might be said of ten thousand men who might be seen any night in the public rendezvous of leisured London. His carriage had special distinction only in that he moved with a sort of feline grace. Still, something elusive made him unlike any other man Sofia had ever met, something arresting and not altogether prepossessing. As he drew nearer and his features became more clearly defined by the light, she was sensible of gazing into a face of unique cast. Of an odd grayish pallor accentuated by hair so black that it might have been painted on his skull with india-ink, the skin seemed to be as soft and smooth as a child's, beardless and wholly without lustre. The mouth was sensuous yet firm, with hard, full lips. Leaden pouches hung beneath heavy-lidded eyes set at a noticeable angle. The eyes themselves were as black as night and as lightless; the rays of the lamp struck no gleam from them; in spite of this they were compelling, masterful, and disconcerting. Karslake at once fell back, with a bow so low it was little less than an obeisance. "Prince Victor!" The man nodded acknowledgment of this greeting without detaching attention from the girl. His voice, slightly tremulous with emotion, uttered her name: "Sofia?" She collected herself with an effort. "I am Sofia," she replied almost mechanically. "And I, your father ..." Prince Victor lifted hands of singular delicacy, slender and tapering, whose long fingers were dressed with many curious rings. A reluctance she could not understand hindered Sofia from going gladly into those arms. She had to make herself yield. They tightened hungrily about her. She closed her eyes and experienced a slight, invincible shudder. "My child!" The lips that touched her forehead astonished her with their warmth. Instinctively she had expected them to be cool, as frigid as the effect of that strange mask of which they formed a part. Then, held at arm's-length, she submitted to an inspection whose sum was enunciated with a strange smile of gratification: "You are beautiful." In embarrassment she murmured: "I am glad you think so--father." "As beautiful as your mother--in her time the most beautiful creature in the world--her image, a flawless reproduction, even to her colouring, the shade of the hair, the eyes--so like the sea!" "I am glad," the girl repeated, nervously. "And until to-night I did not know you lived!" She mustered up courage enough to ask: "How--?" The heavy lids drooped lower over the illegible eyes. "My attention was called to a newspaper advertisement signed by a firm of solicitors. I got in touch with them--a matter of some difficulty, since it was after business hours--and found out where to look for you. Then, prevented from acting as quickly as I wished, myself, I sent Karslake here to bring you to me." "But, according to their letter, the solicitors thought I was in France, in a convent!" "When they advertised for me--yes. But by the time I enquired they were better informed." "But the advertisement was addressed to Michael Lanyard!" The thin lips formed a faint smile. "That was once my name. I no longer use it." Against a feeling that she was adopting an attitude both undutiful and unbecoming, Sofia persisted. "Why?" Prince Victor Vassilyevski gave a gesture of pain and reluctance. "Must I tell you? Why not? You must know some day, as well now as later, perhaps. Twenty years ago the name of Michael Lanyard was famous throughout Europe--or shall I say infamous?--the name of the greatest thief of modern times, otherwise known as 'The Lone Wolf'." Involuntarily, Sofia stepped back, as if some shape of horror had been suddenly thrust before her face. "The Lone Wolf!" she echoed in a voice of dismay. "A thief! You!" The man who called himself her father replied with a series of slow, affirmative nods. "That startles you?" he said in an indulgent voice. "Naturally. But you will soon grow accustomed to the thought, you will condone that chapter in my history, remembering I am no longer that man, no longer a thief, that for many years now my record has been without reproach. You will remember that there is more joy in Heaven over the one sinner who repents ... You will forgive the father, if only for your mother's sake." "For my mother's sake--?" "What the Lone Wolf was in his day, your mother was in hers--the most brilliant adventuress Europe ever knew." "Oh!" cried the girl in semi-hysterical protest. "Oh, no, no! Impossible!" "I assure you, it is quite true. Some day I may tell you her history--and mine. For the present, you will do well to think no more about what I have confessed. Repining can never mend the past. It is to-day and to-morrow you must think of: that you are restored to me, and that I have not only the means but a great hunger to make you happy, to gratify your slightest whim." "I want nothing!" Sofia insisted, wildly. "You want sleep," Prince Victor corrected, fondly--"you want it badly. You are nervous, overstrung, in no condition to understand the great good fortune that has befallen you. But to-morrow you will see things in a rosier light." Apparently he had manipulated some signal unremarked by Sofia. The door opened, framing the figure of the man Nogam. Without looking round, but with an inscrutable smile, Prince Victor took the girl in his arms again and held her close. "You rang, sir?" "Oh, are you there, Nogam? Is the apartment ready for the Princess Sofia?" "Quite ready, sir." "Be good enough to conduct her to it." Again Prince Victor kissed Sofia's forehead, then let her go. "Good-night, my child." Moving slowly toward the door, drooping, Sofia made inarticulate response. She felt suddenly stupefied with fatigue. To think meant an effort that mocked her flagging powers. A vast lassitude was weighing upon her, body and spirit were faint in the enervation of an inexorable disconsolation. VI THE MUMMER Alone with his secretary, Prince Victor Vassilyevski dropped indifferently the guise of manner with which he had clothed himself for the benefit of the woman whom he claimed as his own child. That semblance of shy affection coloured by regrets for the past and modified by the native nobility of a prince in exile--so becoming in a parent to whose bosom a daughter whom he had never seen was suddenly restored--being of no more service for the present, was incontinently discarded. In its stead Victor favoured Karslake with a slow smile of understanding that broadened into an insuppressible grin of successful malice, a grimace of crude exultation through which peered out the impish savage mutinously imprisoned within a flimsy husk of modern manner. Suspecting this self-betrayal, he erased the grin swiftly, but not so swiftly that Karslake failed to note it. And the young man, smiling amiably and respectfully in return, was sensible of a thrill: yet another glimpse had been given him into the mystery that slept behind that countenance normally so impenetrable. But he was studious to show nothing of his own emotion. It was his part to be merely a mirror, to reflect rather than to feel, to be an instrument infinitely supple and unfailing, never an independent intelligence. Not otherwise could he count on holding his place in Victor's favour. "You were quicker than I hoped." "I had no trouble, sir," Karslake returned, cheerfully. "Things rather played into my hands." Victor dropped into a chair beside the table and lifted the lid of a small golden casket. Helping himself to one of its store of cigarettes, he made Karslake free of the remainder with a gracious hand. The secretary demurred, producing his pocket case. "If you don't mind, sir ..." Victor moved a supercilious eyebrow. "Woodbines again?" "Sorry, sir; I know they're pretty awful and all that, but they were all I could get in France, and I contracted a taste for them I can't seem to cure. I remember, while I lay in a hospital, hardly a whole bone in my body, thanks to the Boche and his flying circus--it was that lot sent me crashing, you know--the nurses used to tempt me with the finest Turkish; but somehow I couldn't go them; I'd beg for Woodbines." Prince Victor dismissed the subject curtly. "I am waiting to hear about Sofia." "Not much to tell, sir. There seemed to be a storm of sorts brewing when I got there. The young woman was at her desk with a face like a thundercloud. While I was trying to make up my mind what would be my best approach, she jumped down, flew upstairs and, I gathered, kicked up a holy row. You see, she'd seen that advertisement of Secretan & Sypher's, and smelt a rat." "What did she say?" "Nothing definite, sir: seemed to understand she was the daughter of Princess Sofia Vassilyevski, only she objected to her father being anybody but Michael Lanyard." "Go on." "After a bit she stampeded downstairs again, with the old girl and that swine of a Dupont at her heels. I blocked him and gave Sofia a chance to get outside. The whole establishment boiled out into the street after us, yelling like fun, but I got the girl into the car ... and here we are." But Prince Victor seemed to have lost interest. The glow ebbing from his face, his lips tightening, the thick lids drooping low over his eyes, he sat in apparent abstraction, aping the impassivity of the graven idols that graced his study. "I don't mind owning, sir," the younger man resumed, nervously, "she had me sparring for wind when she put it to me point-blank her father's name was Michael Lanyard." Without moving Victor enquired in a dull voice: "What did you tell her?" "That it was a name you had once used, sir, but.... Well, what you told her, all except the Lone Wolf business. Don't mind telling you I was in a rare funk till you capped my story so neatly." He laughed and ventured with a hesitation quite boyish: "I say, Prince Victor--if it's not an impertinent question--was there any truth in that? I mean about your having been the Lone Wolf twenty years ago." "Not a syllable," said Victor, dryly. "Then your name never was Michael Lanyard?" "Never, but ..." During a long pause the secretary fidgeted inwardly but had the wisdom to refrain from showing further inquisitiveness. He could see that strong passions were working in Victor: a hand, extended upon the table, unclosed and closed with a peculiar clutching action; the muscles contracted round mouth and eyes, moulding the face into a cast of disquieting malevolence. The voice, when at length it resumed, was bitter. "But Michael Lanyard was my enemy ... and is to-day.... He became a lover of Sofia's mother, he had a hand in overturning plans I had made, he humiliated, mocked me.... And to-day he is interfering again.... But ..." Victor sank back in his chair. Suddenly that unholy grin of his flashed and faded. "But now his impertinence fails, his insolence over-reaches itself. Now I have the whip-hand and ... I shall use it!" Vindictiveness that could find relief only in action mastered the man. "Be good enough to take this dictation." Karslake turned to the table and opened a portfolio of illuminated Spanish leather. "Ready, sir," he said, with pencil poised. _"To Michael Lanyard, Intelligence Division, the War Office, Whitehall. Sir: Your daughter Sofia is now with me. Permit me to suggest that, in consideration of this situation, you cease to meddle with my affairs. Your own intelligence must tell you nothing could be more fatal than an attempt to communicate with her._" "Sign on the typewriter with the initial _V_." "Yes, sir." "Type it on plain paper, use a plain envelope, be sure that neither has a watermark, and get it off to-night without fail. Take a taxi to St. Pancras station and post it there. If you make haste you can get it in a pillar-box before the last collection." "I shan't lose a minute, sir." Karslake straightened up, folding the paper, and made for the door. "One moment, Karslake.... This man, Nogam: where did you pick him up?" "He used to buttle for my father, sir, but got into trouble--some domestic unpleasantness, I believe--needed money, and raised a cheque. The old boy let him off easy; but I've got the cheque, and Nogam knows it. The fellow's perfectly trained and absolutely dependable, knows his place and his duties and not another blessed thing. I'll send him in if you like." Prince Victor uttered with dry accent: "Why?" "Thought you might care to have a talk with him, sir." "I have." "Oh!" Mr. Karslake exclaimed--"I didn't know." "Quite so," commented Prince Victor. "I shan't need you again to-night, Karslake." "Good-night, sir." When the secretary had gone, Victor sat motionless, so still that his breathing scarcely stirred his body, with a face absolutely imperturbable, steadfastly gazing into that darkness which shrouded the workings of his mind. On the doorstep a shrill whistle sounded: Nogam calling Karslake's taxi. Victor heard the vehicle roll in and stand panting at the curb, then the slam of its door, the diminishing rumble of its departure. The house door closed, and after a little the study door opened, and Nogam halted on the threshold. Unstirring Victor enquired: "What is it, Nogam?" "I wished to enquire would there be anything more to-night, sir." "Nothing." "'Nk you, sir." "But Nogam: in this house, regardless of the custom which may have obtained in other establishments where you have served, you will always knock before entering a room, and never enter until you obtain permission." "But if I'm sure the room is empty, sir, and get no answer--?" "Then you may enter any room but this. Never this, unless I am here--or Mr. Karslake is--and you get leave." "'Nk you, sir." "Good-night." As the door closed Victor extended a thin, effeminate hand to a casket of ivory, searched with sensitive finger-tips its exquisite tracery until a cunningly hidden spring responded and the lid, splitting in two, sank down into its walls. In the pocket thus revealed were many pills, apparently hand-moulded, of a grayish-brown substance, putty-soft. Slowly Victor selected three, placed one after another upon his tongue, and swallowed them. He shut the casket and sat waiting. Slowly the keenness of his countenance became blurred, as if the hand of an unseen sculptor were rubbing down its features, doing away the veneer with which Europe had overlaid the primitive Asiatic, which now showed on the surface, in every detail of coarsely modelled nose, oblique eyes of animal cunning, pendulous lips cruel and sensual. By degrees a faint trace of colour began to flush Victor's cheeks, a smile modified the set of his mouth, the heavy-lidded eyes lost their lustreless opacity and glimmered with uncanny light. He breathed deeply, evenly, with an evident relish. The action of the opium was visibly renewing his powers. His expression, softening, became terrible with brute tenderness and longing. Gazing into shadows in which he saw that which he wished ardently to see, he stretched forth his arms, and his lips moved, shaping a name: "Sofia!" As those syllables, freighted with that undying passion which consumed the man, sounded upon the stillness, Victor turned sharply, with a gesture of irritation, looking aside, listening. Instantaneously the Asiatic disappeared, thrust back into its habitual latency within the prison of European: Prince Victor was as he had been, as always to the world, cool, composed, and crafty, master, never creature, of his emotions. A faint buzzing was audible, broken by muffled clicks. Rising, Victor approached a table in a corner and with a key from his pocket ring unlocked a heavy casket of bronze. As he raised its cover a small electric bulb illuminated the interior, focussing on the paper-covered face of a mechanical writing device, upon which a pencil with a broad flat lead operated by a metal arm was tracing characters resembling the hieroglyphics of the Chinese. When the clicking ceased and the pencil was at rest, Victor caught an end of the paper and pulled it forward until a blank surface again occupied the writing-bed. Upon this with another pencil he inscribed a reply, then closed and relocked the casket. Back at the table with the lamp, the message just received became crisp black ash on a brazen tray. From a locked chest Victor produced an inverness and a soft hat of black felt. Wearing these he moved quietly out of the lamp's radius of light, and made himself one with the shadows that crowded one another round the walls. He did not leave by the hall door; but of a sudden the room was untenanted. VII THE FANTASTICS Downstream from The Pool, a little way below Shadwell, an uncouth row of dilapidated dwellings in those days stood--or, better, squatted, like a mute company of draggletail crones--atop a river-wall whose ancient blocks, all ropy with the slime of centuries, peered dimly out through groups of crazy spiles at the restless pageant of Thames-life. Viewed by day, say from the deck of a river steamer, the spectacle they offered was, according to bias of mood and disposition, unlovely and drear or colourful and romantic: Whistler might have etched these houses, Dickens have staged therein a lowly tragedy, Thomas Burke have made of one a frame for some vignette unforgettable of Limehouse life. Builded of stone or brick or both as to their landward faces, without exception they presented to the river false backs of wooden framework which overhung the water. Ordinarily, their windows were tight-shut, the panes opaque with accumulated grime--many were broken and boarded. Their look was dismal, their squalor desperate. Below, by day, heavy wherries swung moored to the ooze-clad spiles or, when the tide was out, sprawled upon stinking mud-flats with a gesture of pathetic helplessness peculiar to stranded watercraft. Seldom was one observed in use: to all seeming they existed for purposes of atmosphere alone. More seldom still did any dwelling betray evidence of inhabitation beyond faint wisps of smoke, like ghosts of famine, drifting from the chimneypots, or--perhaps--some unabashed exhibit of red flannel hung out to dry with wrist or ankle-bands nipped between a window-sash and sill. By night, however, a stir of furtive life was to be surmised from cryptic lights that flared and faded behind the crusted window-glass or fell through opened floor-traps to the thick black element that swirled about the spiles, and from guarded calls as well, inarticulate cries of hate and love and pain, rumours of close and crude carousal. And ever and again the belated riverfarer would encounter one of the wherries, its long oars swung by brawny arms and backs, stealing secretly across the inky waters on some errand no less dark. On land the buildings lined a cobbled street, from dawn to dark a thoroughfare for thundering lorries and, twice daily, in murk of early morning and gloom of early night, scoured by a nondescript rabble employed in the vast dockyards whose man-made forests of masts and cordage, funnels and cranes, on either hand lifted angular black silhouettes against the misty silver of the sky. Black and white and yellow and brown, men of every race and skin, they came and went, their brief hours loud with babel of strange tongues and a scuffling of countless feet like the sound of surf; and their goings left the street strangely hushed, a way of sinister reticences, its winding length ill-lighted by infrequent corner-lamps, its mephitic glooms enlivened by windows of public houses all saffron with specious promise of purchasable good-fellowship. One of these, the Red Moon, faced the row of waterfront houses, standing at the intersection of a street which struck inland to the pulsing heart of Limehouse. A retired bully of the prize-ring ruled with a high hand over its several bars and many patrons, yellow men and white girls, deck-hands and dock-workers, pugilistic and criminal celebrities of the quarter, and their sycophants. Its revels rendered the nights cacophonous, its portals sucked in streams of sweethearts and more impersonal lovers of life and laughter, and spewed out sots close-locked in embraces of maudlin affection or brutal combat. Bobbies kept an eye on the Red Moon, a respectful one: interference with the time-hallowed customs and prerogatives of its clientèle was something to be adventured with extreme discretion. Out of the hinterland of Limehouse, a tall man came to the Red Moon that night, walking with long, loose-jointed strides, holding his head high and looking over the heads of all he passed with a fixed, far gaze. He had a hatchet-face, sallow, with lantern jaws, a petulant mouth, hot eyes that showed too much white above their pupils. A lank black mane greased his collar. His garments, shoddy but whole, were stained and bleached in spots, apparently the work of acids, and so wrinkled and shapeless as to suggest that their owner slept without undressing as a matter of habit. The pockets of his coat bulged noticeably. Shouldering heedlessly into the saloon-bar, he found it deserted except for a chinless potman: the liveliest evening trade was always plied in the cheaper bars adjacent. One glance sufficed to identify him: with a surly nod the potman ducked behind a partition to call the proprietor. Drinks were in order when this last appeared; and a brief conference in undertones ended when, having made careful reconnaissance, the publican nodded shortly to the patron, a jerk of his thumb designating a small door let into the wall to one side of the bar proper. Through this the tall man passed to find himself upon a dark stairway, at the foot of which another door admitted to an underground chamber where an apparently exclusive social gathering was in session of Saturnalia. In one corner a long-suffering piano was taking cruel punishment at the hands of a flashily dressed, sharp-faced man of horsey type. Flanking him, two young women of the world, with that insouciance which appertains--in Limehouse--to sweet sixteen, were chanting shrilly to his accompaniment: both more than comfortably drunk. In the middle of the room assorted lawbreakers gathered round a table were playing fan-tan at the top of their lungs. At smaller tables men and women sat consuming poisons of which they were obviously in no crying need; while in bunks builded against one wall devotees of the pipe reclined in various stages of beatitude. The air was hot, and foul with cigarette smoke, sickening fumes of sizzling opium, effluvia of beer and spirits, sour reek of sweating flesh. Incurious glances greeted the newcomer: none paid him more heed than an indifferent nod. On his part, brief but comprehensive survey having deepened the stamp of scorn upon his features, he ignored them all and, proceeding directly to a bunk of the lowermost tier, aroused its occupant with a smart tap on the shoulder. The ostensible drug-addict looked up dreamily, then opened his eyes wide, with surprising docility rolled out and, uttering no word, lurched to the fan-tan table. The tall man took his place, lay down, and drew together the unclean curtains of sleazy stuff provided to afford privacy to shrinking souls. This done, he turned on his side and knuckled in peculiar rhythm the back of the bunk, a solid panel which slipped smoothly to one side, permitting the man to tumble out into still another room, a cheerless place, with floor of stone and the smell of a vault. When the panel had slipped back into place, closing out the bunk, the man stood in night absolute. But after a minute a slender beam of golden light struck suddenly athwart the darkness and found his face. This he endured impassively, only lifting a hand to describe an obscure sign. Immediately the light was shut off, a door opened in the wall opposite, dull light from behind disclosed the silhouette of a man in Chinese robes, his head inclined in a bow of courteous dignity. In good English but with musical Eastern inflection a voice gave greeting: "Good evening, Thirteen. You are awaited--and welcome!" "Good evening, Shaik Tsin," the European replied in heavy un-English accents. "Number One is here, yes?" "Not yet. But we have just received a telautographic message saying he is on his way." Nodding impatiently, Thirteen passed through the door, which the Chinaman quickly closed and barred. The chamber to which one gained admittance by ways so devious and fantastic was large--exactly how large it was difficult to guess, since all its walls were screened by black silk panels upon which golden dragons writhed and crawled. A thick carpet of black covered every inch of visible floor space, a black silk canopy hid the ceiling, and all the room was in deep shadow save the space immediately beneath a great lamp of opalescent glass, likewise draped in black. Here stood an octagonal table of black teakwood, on seven sides of which seven chairs were placed. When Thirteen had taken his seat all these were occupied. On the eighth side an eighth chair stood empty on a low dais, the heavy carving of its high back, its massive arms and legs, picked out with gold. The six who had anticipated Thirteen at this bizarre rendezvous hailed him as a familiar, according to their several idiosyncrasies, brusquely, indifferently, or with some semblance of cordiality. They made a motley crew. Two were Englishman in appearance, though the figure of languid elegance in evening dress that might have graced the lounge of a West End club had a voice soft with Celtic brogue. The other owned a gross body clothed in loud checks and, with his mean blue eyes, his mottled complexion, and cunning leer, would not have seemed out of place in a betting-ring. Aside from these there were a moon-faced Bengali babu, a dark Italian with flashing eyes and teeth, and a stout person of bovine Teutonic cast--the type that is sage, shrewd, easy-going when unopposed, but capable under provocation of exhibiting the most conscienceless brutality. From this last Thirteen got his warmest welcome. "You are late, mine friend." "In good time, however," Thirteen responded with a nod toward the vacant chair. "More than that, the summons was handed me only twenty minutes ago." "How was that?" the babu asked. "It was sent at six o'clock." "I was at work in the laboratory and had left orders I was not to be disturbed. But for one thing"--the petulance of Thirteen's habitual expression was lightened by a flash of self-gratulation, and his voice shook a little with excitement--"I might not have received the summons before morning." "And that one thing?" "Success, comrades! At last--after months of experimentation--I have been successful!" "'Ow?" dryly demanded the man in the checked suit. "I have discovered a great secret--discovered, perfected, adapted it to common means at our command. Comrades, I tell you, to-night we hold all England in the hollow of our hands!" With an incoherent exclamation and eyes afire the Russian sat forward. Unconsciously the others imitated his action. Only the man in evening dress made a show of remaining unimpressed. "It's fine, fat words you're after using," he commented. "'All England in the hollow of our hands!' If they mean anything at all, comrade, they mean--" "Everything!" Thirteen cut in with arrogant assertiveness; "all we've been waiting for, hoping for, praying for--the end of the ruling classes, extinction of the accursed aristocrats, subjugation of the thrice-damned bourgeois, the triumph of the proletariat, all at a single stroke, swift, subtle, and sure! Freedom for Ireland, freedom for India, freedom for England, the speedy spreading of that red dawn which lights the Russian skies to-day, till all the wide world basks in its warm radiance and acclaims us, comrades, its redeemers!" "Lieber Gott!" the German breathed. "Colossal!" "'Ear, 'ear!" the Englishman applauded, perfunctory and skeptical. "Bli'me if you didn't mike me forget where I was--'ad me thinking I was in 'Yde Park, you did, listening to a bloody horator on a box." "You may laugh," Thirteen replied with a sour glance; "but when you have heard, you will not laugh. I am not boasting--I am telling you." "Not a great deal," the Irishman suggested. "Your mouth is full of sounds and fury, but till you tell us more you'll have told us nothing." The face of Thirteen grew darker still, and for a moment he seemed to meditate an angry retort; but he thought better of it, contenting himself with an impatient movement and a mutter: "All in good time; Number One is not here yet." "W'y wyste time w'itin' for 'im?" demanded the Englishman. "'E's no good, 'e's done." Thirteen's eyes narrowed. "How so?" "'E's done, Number One is--finished, counted out, napoo! 'E's 'ad 'is d'y, and a pretty mess 'e's mide of it--and it's 'igh time, I say, for 'im to step down and let a better man tike 'old." Growls in chorus endorsed this declaration of mutiny; but suddenly were stilled by a voice, sonorous and calm, from outside the circle: "You think so, Seven? Well--who knows?--perhaps you are right." VIII COUNCIL OF THE GODLESS Someone exclaimed in an accent of alarm: "Number One!" With a concerted turning of startled heads, a hasty thrusting back of chairs, the gathering rose in involuntary deference. That is, five rose as one; and, after a moment during which his spirit of insubordination faltered and failed, the Englishman got awkwardly to his feet and stood abashed and sullen. The one to remain seated was the Irishman so well turned out by Conduit Street; who made no move more than slightly to elevate supercilious brows and slouch a little lower in his chair, glancing from face to face of the circle, then back to the cold countenance presented by the author of the abrupt interruption. This last stood quietly beside the eighth chair, a hand on its carved arm, one foot on the edge of the dais. A long robe of black silk enveloped him; on its bosom a Chinese unicorn was embroidered. His girdle clasp was of Imperial jade set with rubies. The girdle itself was yellow. A great ruby button, nearly an inch in diameter, set in a mounting of worked gold, crowned a hat like an inverted round bowl. His black silk shoes were heavy with golden embroidery, and had white soles an inch thick. Authority lent inches to his stature, so that he seemed to dominate his company physically as well as spiritually. A pace or two in the rear Shaik Tsin, with impassive face and arms folded in voluminous sleeves, waited as might a bodyguard. A sardonic glimmer in eyes half visible under heavy lids alone betrayed relish of the situation, the homage commanded and the sensation created by this inopportune and unheralded arrival: deliberately Number One mounted the dais and posed himself in the throne-like chair. Then, as his look read face after face, he smiled with twitching and disdainful nostrils. "Gentlemen of the Council," he said, slowly, "I bow to you all. Pray be seated." In confounded silence the six resumed their seats, while the seventh--who had not moved--lighted a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and through a veil of smoke continued to regard Number One with insolent eyes. "I fear my arrival was ill-timed, gentlemen. Seven had the floor, and I confess to finding what I happened to overhear extremely interesting. If he will be good enough to continue ..." The Irishman gave a light, derisive laugh. Shifting uneasily in his chair, the man in the checked suit flushed darkly, then stiffened his spine, hardened his eyes, set his jaw, and faced Number One defiantly. "You 'eard ... I 'olds by w'at I said." "I am to understand, then, you think it time for me to abdicate and let another lead you in my stead?" The Englishman assented with an inarticulate monosyllable and a surly nod. "And may one ask why?" "Blue's plice in Pekin Street was r'ided this afternoon," Seven announced truculently. "But per'aps you didn't know--" "Not until some time before the news reached you," One replied, pleasantly. "And what of it?" "Three fycers in a week, Gov'ner--anybody'll tell you that's comin' it a bit thick." "Granted. What then?" "That's only part of it. Tike last week: Eighteen pinched, the queer plant in 'Igh Street pulled by the coppers--" "I know, I know. To your point!" Seven hesitated under that steely stare. "I leave it to you, Gov'ner," he continued to stammer at length. "S'y you was me and I was Number One--w'at would you think?" "Why, quite naturally, that some superior intelligence has latterly been collaborating with Scotland Yard." "Aren't you a bit behindhand in arriving at that conclusion?" the Irishman suggested with an ill-dissembled sneer. "No, Eleven," Number One replied, mildly, "since I arrived at it some time since." "But took no measures--" "You are in a position to state that as a fact?" Eleven shrugged lightly. "Need I be? Does not our situation speak for itself?" "Since you cannot be as thoroughly acquainted as I am with the situation, and since it seems I am required to account for my leadership or surrender it to you, Eleven ... I believe you have selected yourself to replace me as Number One, have you not?--that is to say, in the improbable event of my abdication." "Improbable?" repeated the Irishman. "I wouldn't call it that." "You are right," Number One assented, gravely: "unthinkable is the word. But you haven't answered my question." "Oh, as for that, if the Council should see fit to appoint me Number One, I'd naturally do my best." "And most noble of you, I'm sure. But rather than bring down any such disaster upon this organization, I will say now that measures have already been taken, and I am to-night in a position to promise you that the new spirit in Scotland Yard will no longer be a factor in our calculations." "That wants proving," Eleven contended. A spasm of anger shook the figure in the throne-like chair, but only for an instant; immediately the iron will of the man imposed rigid self-control; almost without pause he proceeded in level and civil accents: "I think I can satisfy you and--this once--I consent to do so. But first, a question: Have you yourself formed any theory as to the identity of this hostile intelligence which has so hindered us of late?" "I'd be a raw fool if I hadn't," the Irishman retorted. "We know the Lone Wolf has been hand-in-glove with the authorities ever since the British Secret Service used him during the war." "You think, then, it is Lanyard--?" "It's a wise saying: 'Set a thief to catch a thief.' I believe there's no man in England but Lanyard who has the wit and vision and audacity to fight us on our ground and win." "I agree entirely. Therefore, I have this day tied the hands of the Lone Wolf; he will not again dare to contend against us." Eleven sat up with a startled gesture. "Are you meaning you've got the girl?" Number One indulged a remote and chilly smile. "Then you, too, noticed the advertisement? Accept my compliments, Eleven. Decidedly you might prove a dangerous rival--were I in a temper to countenance competition.... But it is true: I have the girl Sofia--the Lone Wolf's daughter." "Where?" The smile faded; the man on the dais looked down loftily. "It is enough for you to know I have proved far-sighted and unfailing in my fidelity to our common cause." "So _you_ say ..." Though the Irishman winced and fell silent under the cold glare of the other's eyes, the voice that answered him was level and passionless. "I am not here to have my word challenged--or my authority. If any one of you imagines I am even thinking of surrendering the latter, under any conceivable circumstances, he is mad. And if any one of you doubts my power to enforce my will, I promise him ample proof of it before the night is ended.... Let us now proceed to business, the question held over from our last meeting. If Comrade Four will consult his minutes"--a nod singled out the babu, who, beaming with importance, produced a note-book--"they will show we adjourned to consider overtures made by the Smolny Institute of Petrograd, seeking our coöperation toward accelerating the social revolution in England." "Thatt," the Bengali affirmed, "is true bill of factt." "If the temper in which you received those proposals is fair criterion," Number One resumed, "there can be little doubt as to our decision. Speaking for myself, I think it would be suicidal to reject the overtures of the Soviet Government in Russia. Let me state why." He bowed his forehead upon a hand and continued with thoughtful gaze downcast: "England is ripe for revolution. The social discontent resulting from the war has reached an acute stage. Only a spark is needed. It remains for us to decide whether to permit Russia to bring about the explosion or--bring it about ourselves. The soviet movement is irresistible, it will sweep England eventually as it has swept Russia, as it is now sweeping Germany, Hungary, Austria, Italy, as it must soon sweep France and Spain. Our power in England is great; even so, we could hope to do no more than delay the soviet movement were we to set ourselves against it--we could never hope to stop it. It would seem, then, self-preservation to set ourselves at the head of it, seize with our own hands--in the name of the British Soviet--the symbols of power now held by an antiquated and doddering Government. So shall we become to England what the Smolny Institute is to Russia. Otherwise, in the end, we must be crushed." "If we adopt the indicated course, there will be an end forever to this hole-and-corner business which so hampers us, we will be able to work in the open, the police will become our tools rather than weapons in the hands of our enemies; our power will be without limits, Soviet Russia itself must bow to our dictation." He paused and lifted his head, looking round the circle of intent faces. "If I am wrong or too sanguine, I am ready to be corrected." He heard only a murmur of admiration, never a note of dissent; and a smile of gratification, yet half satiric, curved his thin lips. "I take it, then, the Council endorses my decision to proceed with the negotiations instituted by Soviet Russia; to accept its proposals and pledge our cooperation in every way?" This time there was no mistaking the accuracy with which he had gauged the minds of his associates. "One thing remains to be decided: a plan of action, something which will demand all that we have of imagination, ingenuity, common sense, and far prevision. We can afford to waste not a single ounce of strength: the blow, when we strike, must be sudden, sharp, merciless--irresistible. But if Thirteen is not over-confident of the discovery which he says he has to-day perfected, the means to deal just such a blow is ready to our hands.... Thirteen?" A nod and gracious smile invited that one to speak. He rose, trembling a little with excitement, bowed to Number One and, delving into capacious pockets, produced a number of small tin canisters together with three sealed bottles of brown glass. Surveying these, as he arranged them on the teakwood table before him, he smiled a little to himself: the stars, it seemed to him, were warring in their courses in his behalf; this was to prove his hour of hours. He began to speak in a quivering voice which soon grew more steady. "It is true, Excellency--it is true, comrades--I have perfected a discovery which I offer as a free gift to the cause, and by means of which, intelligently employed, we can, if we will, make all London a graveyard. Put the resources of this organization at my command, give me a week to make the essential preparations, select a time of national crisis when the Houses of Parliament are sitting and the Cabinet meets in Downing Street with the King attending or in Buckingham Palace ..." He paused and held the pause with a keen feeling for dramatic effect, his eyes seeking in turn the faces of his fellow conspirators, an insuppressible grin of malicious exultation twisting his scornful and mutinous mouth. "Let this be done," he concluded, "and by means of these few tins and bottles which you see before you, in one brief hour the ruling classes will have perished almost to a man, there will be no more government of a tyrannical bourgeoisie to grind down the proletariat, a bloodless revolution will have made England the cradle of the new liberty!" "Bloodless?" the man on the dais repeated; and even he was seen perceptibly to shudder at the prospect unfolded to the vision of his mind. "Yes--but more terrible than the massacre of the Huguenots, more savage than the French Revolution!" "But I believe," the inventor commented, "your Excellency said we required the means to deal a 'blow sudden, sharp, merciless--irresistible'." "Surely now," the Irishman suggested, mockingly--where a wiser man would have held his tongue--"you'll not be sticking at a small matter like wholesale murder if it's to make us masters of England?" "Of England?" the German echoed. "Herr Gott! Of the world!" "And you, Excellency, our master," the inventor added, shrewdly. A sign at once impatient and imperative demanded silence, and for a few minutes it obtained unbroken, while the gathering, keyed to high tension, studied closely the face of their leader and found it altogether illegible. On his part he seemed forgetful of the existence of anybody but himself, forgetful almost of himself as well: sitting low in his great chair, his body as stirless as it were bound by some spell of black magic, his far gaze probing unfathomable remotenesses of thought. Slowly he recalled himself to his surroundings; with a suggestion of weariness he sat up and reviewed the little company that hung so breathlessly upon the issue of his judgment. The shadow of that satiric smile returned. "If the thing be feasible," he promised, "it shall be done. It remains for Thirteen to be more explicit." With an extravagant flourish the inventor whipped from his breastpocket a folded paper, and spread it out face uppermost on the table. "A map of London," he announced, "based on the latest Ordnance Survey and coloured to show the districts supplied by the mains of each individual gas depot. Thus you will observe"--what his long, bony finger indicated--"the district supplied by the mains of the Westminster gas works, comprising Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament, the War Office, and the Admiralty, Downing Street, the homes of hundreds of the aristocracy. All these we can at will turn into the deadliest of death traps." A tense voice interrupted with the demand: "How?" "Quite easily, comrade: with the ramifications of our power throughout London, all under the control of his Excellency"--the inventor bowed to Number One--"it should be an easy matter to place a few trustworthy men with the Westminster gas works." "It can readily be done," Number One affirmed. "And then--?" "While this is being done means must be found to smuggle other men, in the guise of servants, into the various buildings selected, or to corrupt those already so employed therein. At the designated hour--" The words dried upon his lips as somewhere a hidden bell stabbed the quiet with short, sharp thrills of sound, a code that spelled a message of terrifying significance. The inventor started violently, but no more so than every man about the table. Even Number One, shocked out of his lounging pose, grasped the arms of his throne with convulsive hands. Quietly and without a hint of hurry, the Chinese, Shaik Tsin, moved back into the shadows and, unnoticed, disappeared behind a screen. For a moment, when the bell had ceased, nobody spoke; but pallid face consulted face and eyes grown wide with dread sought eyes that winced in terror. Then the Bengali leaped from his chair, jabbering with bloodless lips. "Police! Raid! We are betrayed!" He made an uncertain turn, as if thinking to seek safety in flight but doubting which way to choose; and the movement struck panic into the minds and hearts of his fellows. In a twinkling all were on their feet. But before one could move a step the lamp in the ceiling winked out, the room was left in darkness unrelieved, and the accents of Number One were heard, coldly imperative. "Gentlemen! be good enough to resume your places--let no one move before there is light again. We are in no immediate danger: Shaik Tsin will show you out by a secret way long before the police can hope to find and break into this chamber. In the meantime--" The infuriated voice of the Englishman interrupted: "And 'oo're you to give us orders?--you 'oo talked so big about 'avin' tied the 'ands of the Lone Wolf and Scotland Yard! You blarsted blow'ard! Bli'me if I don't believe it's you 'oo--" "Quietly, Seven! Have you forgotten you have a bad heart?--that excitement may mean your sudden death?" The rage of the Englishman ran out in a gasp and a whisper. "In the meantime," Number One resumed as if there had been no break, "I promised that, before the night was out, you should have proof of my ability to enforce my will." A groan of agony answered him, followed by an oath of witless fear. From a distance the voice, now thin but still sonorous, added: "Thirteen will hold himself ready to wait on me when I send for him to-morrow. Gentlemen of the Council, I bow to you all." Again silence held for a long minute during which no man stirred or spoke. Then overhead the lamp burned bright again, discovering six frightened men upon their feet and one who, still seated, did not stir, and never would again. His head fallen forward, chin resting on his chest, mouth ajar, inert arms dangling over the arms of the chair, heavy legs lax, the Englishman sat quite dead, dead without a sign to show how death had come to him. Number One had disappeared. There was a remote rumour of cries and shouts, the muffled sound of axes crashing into woodwork.... IX MRS. WARING Late in the forenoon a pencil of golden light found a chink in jealously drawn draperies, and groped the rich dusk of the bedchamber till it came to rest, as if happy that its search had found so lovely a reward, upon the face of a young girl who lay sleeping in a bed whose exquisite adornment must have flattered even the exalted person of a princess. With a swift but silent movement another girl, who had been sitting patiently on a low stool near by, rose and put herself in the way of the sunbeam. But too late: already long lashes were a-flutter upon the delicately modelled cheeks of the sleeper. A gentle sigh brushed parting lips; the sweet body stirred luxuriously; unclouded by any shadow of misgiving, the blue eyes of the Princess Sofia looked out upon the first day of her new world. Then they grew wide with wonder, comprehending the sleek, pretty face of a Chinese girl of about her own age who, with eyes downcast, demure mouth and folded hands, submissively awaited recognition. "Who are you?" Sofia demanded in a breath. A bob of courtesy, wholly charming, prefaced a reply pattered in English of quaintest accent: "You' handmaiden--Chou Nu is my name." "My handmaiden!" "Les, Plincess Sofia." "But I don't understand. How--when--?" "Las' night Numbe' One he send for me, but when I come you go-sleep." "Number One?" Surprise coloured faintly the explanation: "Plince Victo', honol'ble fathe' of Plincess Sofia. You like get up now, take bath, have blekfuss?" The smile was irresistibly ingratiating: Sofia could not but return it. Delighted, Chou Nu ran to the windows, threw wide their draperies, and darted into the bathroom. Autumnal sunlight kindled to burning beauty the golden-bronze tresses coiled upon the pillows where Sofia lay unstirring, like a princess enchanted--as indeed she was. Surely nothing less potent than magic had wrought this metamorphosis in the fabric of her life! And whether the magic were white or black--what matter? Its work was good. No more the Café des Exiles, no more the deadly tedium of daily service at the desk of the caisse, no more the shrewish tongue of Mama Thérèse, the odious oglings of Papa Dupont, the ceaseless cark of discontent.... Incredible! As one who moves in a dream, Sofia rose presently and bathed, then, robed in a ravishing negligée of rare brocade, breakfasted on melon, tea, and toast from a service of eggshell china. In a long mirror she saw and watched but did not know herself. Like Goody Twoshoes of nursery fame she could have cried: Lawkamercy! this is never I! The presence of Chou Nu served merely to stress the sense of unreality: for, obviously, only the heroine of a true fairy tale could have broken from a chrysalis stage of sordid Soho to the brilliant butterfly existence of a Russian princess domiciled in the most aristocratic quarter of London and attended by a Chinese maid! And Chou Nu proved a delight. Once satisfied she need fear neither ill-temper nor arrogance from her new mistress, she indulged an even and constant flow of artless high spirits, her amusing, clipped English affording Sofia considerable entertainment together with not a little food for thought. Thus one learned that the main body of the service staff was Chinese under a major domo named Shaik Tsin--Chou Nu's "second-uncle"--who enjoyed Prince Victor's completest confidence and was, second to the latter only, the real head of the establishment, its presiding genius. The front of the house alone was dressed with a handful of English servants nominally under the man Nogam, but actually, like him, answerable in the last instance to Shaik Tsin. Why this should be Chou Nu couldn't say. Sofia supposed it was because Prince Victor thought his Occidental guests would feel more at ease with English servants; or perhaps he himself preferred them, when it came to the question of personal attendance. No success rewarded efforts to extract from Chou Nu her reason for referring to Victor as "Number One." She stated simply that all Chinamans in London called him that; and being pressed further added, with as near an approach to impatience as her gentle nature could muster, that it was obviously because Plince Victo' _was_ Numbe' One: ev'-body knew _that_. A knock at the door interrupted Sofia's questioning. Answering, Chou brought back word that the honourable father of Princess Sofia submitted his august felicitations and solicited the immediate favour of her serene attendance in his study. Hasty search failed to locate the garments discarded on going to bed and, in the indifference of depression and fatigue, left in a tumble on the floor. All had vanished while Sofia slept; Chou Nu professed blank ignorance of their fate; and apparently nothing had been provided in their stead but Chinese robes, of sumptuous vestments well suited to one of high estate. With these, then, and with Chou Nu's guidance as to choice and ceremonious arrangement, Sofia was obliged to make shift; and anything but unbecoming she found them--or truly it was a shape of dream that looked out from her mirror. Yet it was with reluctant feet that she left her room, descended the broad staircase to the entrance hall, and addressed herself to the study door. It had been so beautiful, that waking dream the sequel to her night of dreamless sleep, too beautiful to be foregone without regret. For Sofia had not forgotten, she could never forget, she had merely been successful temporarily in banishing from mind that bitter disillusionment which had poisoned what should have been her time of greatest joy. To be told, by the father of whose dear existence one had only learned within the hour, that one was the child of a notorious thief and an adventuress ... It needed more than common fortitude to face renewed reminder of that shame. Oddly enough, it seemed to help a bit, somehow to lend her courage and assurance, to pass the man Nogam in the hall and acknowledge his bow and smile. Sofia wondered vaguely what it was that made his smile seem so kind; it was entirely respectful, there was nothing more in it that she could fix on; and yet ... She was able to offer Victor a composed, almost a happy countenance, and to return cheerful assurances to punctilious enquiries after her well-being and her comfort overnight. To the real affection in which he held her, the warmth of his embrace, and the lingering pressure of his lips gave convincing testimony; and in time, no doubt, as she grew to know him better, her response would become more spontaneous and true. Indeed, she insisted, it must; she would school herself, if need be, to remember that this strange man was the author of her being, the natural object of her affections--deserving all her love if only because of that nobility which had enabled him to renounce those evil ways of years long dead. But to-day--and this, of course, she couldn't understand--a slight but invincible shiver, perceptible to herself alone, attended her submission to paternal caresses; and the eyes were too dispassionate with which she saw Prince Victor. Still, they found little to which fair exception might be taken. If Life had thus far been callously frank with Sofia as to its broader aspects, the niceties of its technique remained measurably a mystery, she was insufficiently instructed to perceive that Victor's morning coat (for example) had been cut a shade too cleverly, or that the ensemble of his raiment was a trace ornate; and where a mind more mondain would have marked ponderable constraint in his manner, she saw only dignity and reserve. But for all that she recognized intuitively a lack of something in the man, the sum of this second impression of him was formless disappointment, she felt somehow cheated, disheartened, chilled. That she was able at all to dissemble this sense of dashed expectations was thanks in the main to a third party, a stranger whose presence she overlooked on entering, when Prince Victor met her near the door, while the other remained aside, half hidden in the recess of a window. Directly, however, that Victor half turned away, saying "I have found a friend for you, my dear," Sofia, following his glance, discovered a woman whose every detail of dress and deportment was unmistakably of the fashionable world and whose face carried souvenirs of loveliness as unmistakable. Smiling and offering her hands, she approached, while Victor's voice of heavy modulations uttered formally: "Sybil, permit me to present my daughter. Sofia, Mrs. Waring has graciously offered to sponsor your introduction to Society, to guide and instruct you and be in every way your mentor." "My dear!" the woman exclaimed, holding Sofia's hands and kissing her cheek. And then, looking aside to Victor, "But how very like!" she added with the air of tender reminiscence. "Oh!" Sofia cried, "you knew my mother?" "Indeed--and loved her." Sofia never dreamed to question the woman's sincerity; and her charm of manner was irresistible. "You must try to like me a little for her sake--" "As if one could help liking you for your own, Mrs. Waring!" "Prettily said, my dear. You have inherited more from your mother than your good looks alone. Is it not so, mon prince?" "Much more." Victor's enigmatic smile gave place to a look of regret and uneasiness. "Let us hope, however, not too much. Heredity," he mused in sombre mood, "is a force of such fatality in our lives...." He gave a gesture of solicitude and continued with characteristic deliberation, and that preciseness of diction which he seemed never able to forget, even though deeply moved. "More than ever, now that Sofia is restored to me, I could wish the past other than what it was, that she might start life with a handicap less cruel of inherited tendencies. But when I reflect that both her parents--" "Please!" Sofia begged, piteous. "Oh, please!" "I am sorry, my dear." Victor closed tender hands over those which the girl had lifted in appeal. "It is for your own good only I give myself this pain of warning you against your worst enemy, I mean yourself, the self that is so strange a compound of hereditary weaknesses.... Please remember always that, no matter what may happen, however far you may be led into transgression of the social codes, I shall never reproach you, on the contrary, you may count implicitly on my sympathetic understanding. Never forget, I, too, have known, have suffered and fought myself--and in the end won at a cost I am not yet finished paying, nor will be, I fear, this side my grave." He sighed from his heart, and bowing a stricken head, seemed to lose himself in disconsolate reverie--but not so far as to suffer the interruption which Sofia made to offer and which he stayed with an eloquent hand. "You do not understand? But naturally. Let me explain. No: there is no reason why Sybil--Mrs. Waring--should not hear. She is a dear friend of long years, she understands." With a quiet murmur--"Oh, quite!"--Mrs. Waring ran an affectionate arm round Sofia's shoulders and gently held the girl to her. "When I determined to forsake the bad old ways," Victor pursued--"this you must know, my dear--I had friends--of a sort--who resented my defection, set themselves against my will and, when they found they could not swerve me from my purpose, became my enemies. That was long ago, but to this day some of them persist in their enmity--I have to be constantly on my guard." "You mean there is danger?" Sofia asked in quick anxiety. "Your life--?" "Always," Victor assented, gravely. With a shrug he added: "It is nothing; for myself, I am used to it, I do not greatly care. But for you--that is another matter altogether. I have a great fear for you, my child. That, indeed, is why I never tried to find you till yesterday--believing, as I mistakenly did, you were in good hands, well cared for, happy--lest my enemies seek to strike at me through you. But when I saw that unfortunate advertisement I dared delay not another hour about bringing you within the compass of my protection. Even now, untiring as my care for you shall ever be, I know my enemies will be as tireless in endeavours to rob me of you. You will be followed, hounded, importuned, lied to, threatened--all without rest. If they cannot take you from me bodily, they will seek to poison your mind against me. Therefore, rather than keep you practically a prisoner in your home, I feel obliged to require a promise of you." Deeply stirred by the melancholy gravity that informed his pose, the girl protested earnestly: "Anything--I will promise anything, rather than be an anxiety to one who is so kind." "Kind? To my own daughter?" Victor smiled sadly. "But I love you, little Sofia. Nor is it much that I must ask of you: merely that you never go out alone, but only in the company of Mrs. Waring or Mr. Karslake or, preferably, both." "Oh, I promise that--" "But there is more: If by any accident you should ever find yourself left alone in public, do not let strangers speak to you, refuse to listen to them." "I promise." "And finally: If anybody should ever seek to turn you against me, come to me instantly and tell me about it." "But naturally I would do that, father." "Good. I rely upon your discretion and loyalty. At another time I will explain matters in more detail. For the present--enough of an unpleasant subject. You have a busy day before you. At my request Mrs. Waring has arranged to have various tradespeople wait upon you this morning to take your orders for the beginnings of a wardrobe. If you can find something ready-made to wear you will want, no doubt, to spend the afternoon shopping. A car will be at your disposal, and I give you carte blanche. I wish you never to know an unsatisfied need or desire. Still, I am selfish enough to reserve for myself the happiness of selecting your jewels." "Oh!" Sofia cried, breathlessly. Victor was holding his arms open; and how should she deny him? "You are too good to me," she murmured. "How can I ever show my gratitude?" Holding her close, Victor smiled a singular smile. "Some day I may tell you. But to-day--no more. I am much preoccupied with affairs; but Mrs. Waring will take care of you till evening, when I promise myself the pleasure of dining with you both." At the sound of a knock he put Sofia gently from him, and said in a strong voice: "Enter." The door opened, Nogam announced: "Mr. Sturm." Hard on the echo of his name a man swung into the room with an air at once nervous and aggressive--a tall man shabbily dressed, holding his head high--and at sight of Sofia and Mrs. Waring, where he had doubtless thought to find Prince Victor alone, stopped short, betraying disconcertion in the way he instinctively assumed the stand of a soldier at attention, bringing his heels together with an undeniable click, straightening his shoulders, stiffening both arms to rigidity at his sides. And for a bare thought his eyes rolled almost wildly in their deep sockets. Then he bowed twice, from the hips, with mechanical precision, profoundly to Victor, with deep respect to the women. Victor smothered an exclamation of annoyance. Unbidden, a word shaped in Sofia's consciousness, a French monosyllable into which the war had packed every shade and gradation of hatred and contempt, the epithet _Boche_. Immediately erasing every sign of irritation, Victor greeted the man with casual suavity. "Oh, there you are, eh, Sturm?" Then, as Sofia and Mrs. Waring turned to go, he added quickly: "A moment, please. Since Mr. Sturm to-day becomes a member of the household, acting as my assistant in some research work which I am undertaking, I may as well present him now. Mrs. Waring, permit me: Mr. Sturm. And the Princess Sofia Vassilyevski, my daughter ..." Mumbling their names after Victor, the man Sturm executed two more bows. At the same time he seemed to remind himself that his soldierly carriage was perhaps injudicious, and forthwith abandoned it for a studied slouch which, in Sofia's sight, was little less than insolent. And unmistakably there was something nearly resembling insolence in the eyes that boldly sought hers: a look equivocal at best and, intentionally or no, wholly offensive in essence; as if the fellow were asserting their partnership in some secret understanding; or as if he knew something by no means to Sofia's credit.... Her acknowledgment of his salute was accordingly cool, and she was glad when a nod from Prince Victor gave her leave to go. X VICTOR ET AL Those first few weeks of emancipation from the ennui of existence at the Café des Exiles were so replete with wonders that Sofia lived largely in a beatific state of breathless excitement, devoting the best part of her days to thoughtless flying from delight to new delight, and going nightly to her bed so healthily tired that she slept like a top and never once awakened to memories of disturbing dreams. Perhaps her pleasure burned the brighter for its dark, ambiguous background--those many questions which Prince Victor persisted in leaving unanswered. Sofia knew bad times of perplexity and depression, when the price of translation from drudge to princess seemed a sore price to pay. And yet, required to state the cost to her in terms explicit, she must have hesitated lest she appear ungrateful in complaining, who hardly needed to express a wish to have it granted, who indeed knew many a wish realized in fact before she was fully aware of its inception in her private thoughts. All those lovely material things of life which her famished girlhood had ached for so hopelessly now were hers in abundant measure, and all the less tangible things, too, so requisite to the happiness of women in a worldly world--or nearly all. Frocks she had, with furs and furbelows no end; flowers and flattery and frivolities; freedom within limitations as yet not irksome; jewels that would have graced an imperial diadem--everything but the single essential without which everything is hollow nothing and life itself only the dreaming of a dream. The one lack known to the Sofia of those days was the lack of Love. She had gone so long longing to love, questing blindly and vainly for some human being to whom her affection would mean something vital and dear--it seemed cruel that her longing must be still denied. As it had been with Mama Thérèse, it was now with the romantic father so newly self-declared. She wanted desperately and tried her best to love Victor as his daughter should; and that he cared for her profoundly she knew and never questioned; yet when she searched her secret heart Sofia discovered no feeling for the man other than a singular form of fear. His look, his tone, his manner, his presence altogether, inspired a nameless sort of shrinking, inarticulate apprehensions, and mistrust which the girl found at once utterly unaccountable and dismally disappointing; so that, with every wish and will to do otherwise, she found herself involuntarily making excuse of trivial interests to keep out of Victor's way and, when there was no escaping, sitting silent and ill at ease in his society, or seizing on some slender pretext, it didn't matter what, to inveigle into their company a third somebody, it didn't matter whom--Mrs. Waring, Karslake, even the unspeakable Sturm. Nevertheless, there were times, far too many of them, too, when of a sudden Victor would forsake his occult preoccupations and, unceremoniously upsetting whatever arrangements Sofia might have made with Mrs. Waring or Karslake, would find other pleasures of his own invention for her to share with him alone: long motor jaunts through the English countryside, apparently his favourite recreation; a box all to themselves at a theatre, where Victor would sit watching the girl with a fascination only rivalled by her fascination with the traffic of the boards; curiously constrained little dinners à deux in fashionable restaurants; morning rides in Rotten Row, where it oddly appeared that Victor knew everybody, whereas not one in five hundred seemed to know him--or to care to know him. Sofia, indeed, was often puzzled to account for what to her appeared to be an almost pathetic eagerness on the part of Victor, in strange accord with his lofty pretensions, to claim acquaintanceship with and win the recognition even of persons of the utmost inconsequence. And she remarked, too, that his temper was apt to be raw in sequel to their excursions into the haunts of the well-known. But it was for other reasons altogether that she came to dread them most. For one thing, Victor's conversation was ordinarily rather dull; at best, the reverse of exhilarating. And in spite of her unquestioning acceptance of him as her father, he remained to Sofia actually a new acquaintance; in effect, a strange man. And from strangers, more than from relatives with whose minds one is presumably on terms of close intimacy, one is warranted in expecting something in the way of mutual stimulation through the opening of new perspectives of experience, thought, and feeling. Whereas--with Sofia, at least--Victor seemed unable to talk on more than two subjects, one or the other of which was constantly uppermost in his thoughts. He never wearied of warning Sofia against the dangers of those moral infirmities which he asserted were hers by legitimate inheritance; and which, if Victor were right in his contentions, she could hardly hope to overcome without a desperate struggle. She would have to be forever on guard, he insisted, lest the temptation of some moment, not to be foreseen, prove too strong for her latent weakness of character, and commit her, through some unpremeditated act of defiance to the law--most probably an act of theft--to the life of a social outcast. To do her justice, the girl was consciously not much impressed by this alleged peril. She had never been aware of any failing such as Victor would have endowed her with; so far as she could remember she had never been tempted to commit more venial sins than inhered in lying to Mama Thérèse now and then in order to escape unmerited disciplining at the heavy hands of that industrious virago; and as for thieving, the very thought of anything of that sort was detestable to Sofia. But unconsciously, no doubt, the everlasting iteration of Victor's admonitions had its purposed effect upon that sensitive and impressionable spirit. Then, too, by degrees, but all too soon, it became manifest that the memory of his passionate attachment for her mother possessed Victor to the point of monomania. It was only with an effort that he could force himself to talk to Sofia on other subjects. He thought of nothing else while with her; if she read his eyes aright, often glimpses of weird light flickering in their opaque depths, like heat lightning of a murky summer's night, fairly frightened her, and she knew a shuddering perception of the possibility that Victor was at times in danger of confusing the daughter with the mother. "Never was there such resemblance," he once uttered, in a stare. "You are more like her than she herself!" Sofia was pardonably puzzled, and looked it. "I mean, you re-create my vision of the woman I loved and lost--the woman I saw in her, not the woman she was." "Lost?" the girl murmured. The gray countenance took on an added shade of sombre passion. "She never understood me, she treated me badly. Once, in a fit of pique, she ran away. I did everything--everything, I tell you!--to win her back, but--" He choked on bitter recollections--and Sofia was painfully reminded of the Chinese devil-masks in Victor's study. But the likeness faded even as she saw it, under her gaze the twisted features were ironed back into their accustomed cast of austerity. "Before I could persuade her, you were born.... Then she died." Sensible though she was of the ellipsis, and afraid it would never be filled in if she interrupted, Sofia could not help uttering a sound of regret and pity for the lot of the mother she had never seen, whose untimely death had ended a life accounted unendurable as Victor's wife, for reasons unknown but none the less, to the daughter, vaguely and lamentably understandable. For Sofia by now had passed the stage of pretending to herself that she was not happier away from her father. Victor mistook the nature of the feeling that swayed the girl--took to himself the sympathy excited by his revelations. "But do not grieve on my account. Is not that which was lost restored again to me? In you my old love lives once more ... little Sofia!" He caught and pressed a hand that rested on the cloth between them. (They happened that night to be dining at the Ritz.) And Sofia re-experienced that inevitable, hateful flinching with which she was growing too familiar. She dropped her head that her eyes might not betray her. "People will see ..." "What if they do? Those who know us will hardly see any wrong in my squeezing the hand of my own daughter; and the others--not that they matter--will only think me the luckiest dog alive--as I am!" Chuckle and smirk both were indescribably odious, reminding Sofia of the creature Sturm; _he_ had a laugh like that for her, on the rare occasion when chance propinquity encouraged the Boche to begin one of his uncouth essays in flirtation. Sturm's attitude, in truth, perplexed Sofia to exasperation; that is to say, as much as it offended her. For Victor the man seemed to entertain an exaggerated yet deeply rooted respect, approaching actual awe, which he tried his best to carry off with a swagger; for to hold anybody in any degree of deference was, one judged, somehow deplorable, even shameful, in the code of Sturm; but in Victor's presence the fellow's bravado would quickly wilt into hopeless servility, he would cringe and crawl like a dog currying the favour of a harsh master. Nevertheless, Victor's daughter seemed to be no more than fair game, in Sturm's understanding, and a source of supercilious amusement but thinly veiled or not at all. Alone with the girl, Sturm put on the airs of a Prussianized pasha condescending to a new odalisque. Sofia held the animal in a deadly loathing which, betrayed in word or look or gesture, animated in him only a spirit of derision. In the absence of Victor, Sturm's eyes were ever ironic, his bows and leers mocking, his speeches flavoured with clumsy sarcasm; from which it resulted that the girl never quite forgot the impression which he had managed to convey in those few moments of their first encounter, that Sturm knew something she ought to know but didn't, and was meanly jeering at her in his sleeve. What virtues Victor Vassilyevski perceived in the man passed comprehension. But so did most of Victor's whims and ways. What riddle more obscure than that portentous business which permeated the atmosphere of the establishment with the taint of stealth and terror?--the famous "research work" that kept Victor closeted with Sturm in his study daily for hours at a time, often in confabulation with others of like ilk, men of furtive and unprepossessing cast who came and went by appointment at all hours, but as a rule late at night! Into these conferences, Sofia observed, Karslake was never summoned. She wondered why. He was, as she saw him, so unquestionably the better man, everything that Sturm was not, open of countenance, fair of temper and tongue, well-bred and well-mannered, light of heart and high spirited, and at the same time dependable, with metal of sincerity and earnestness like tempered steel in his character--or Sofia misread him woefully. She had been quick to see the man behind the misleading little moustache. And already she was beginning to count that amusement tame which Karslake did not share. Mrs. Waring was undeniably a dear. Sofia could hardly be grateful enough to the happy chance which had cast that lady for the rôle of her chaperone; lacking her guidance the girl must have been innocently guilty of many a gaucherie in ways new and strange to untried, faltering feet. And it was to her alone that Sofia owed the slow but constant widening of her social horizon. For Sybil Waring, it seemed, quite literally "knew everybody"; and Sofia soon learned to count it an off day when Sybil failed to present her protégée to the notice of somebody of position and influence. Most of these persons were women with sounding names and the solid backing of much money conspicuously in evidence--matrons of the younger and more giddy generation which was just then so busily engaged in providing material for the most hectic chapters of London's post-war social history. But Sofia was scarcely qualified to be critical or to guess that they were climbers equally with herself, and that if their footing had been of older establishment the name of Vassilyevski would have rung sinister echoes in their memories, deafening them to the rich allure inherent in the title of princess. So she was fain to accept them all at their own valuation, and thought most of them entirely charming. And though she had hardly had time as yet to progress beyond the introductory stages of chance meetings and informal little teas in public, she began clearly to descry enchanting vistas of better days to come, when the Princess Sofia Vassilyevski would have not only teas but dinners and dances given in her honour, and would be asked to spend gay week-ends in the country houses of the people with whom she contracted the stronger friendships. But for the immediate present, and especially in the paramount business of having a good time, Karslake was fairly a necessity. He thought of everything and forgot nothing, was ever fertile of fresh expedient if the pastime of a moment began to pall, and was capable of sustained fits of irresponsible gaiety which enchanted Sofia, so well did they chime with her own eagerness for sheer fun. Decidedly she would have been lost without Sybil Waring; but without Karslake she would have been forlorn. XI HEARTBREAK Not yet prepared to admit it even to herself, in her heart Sofia knew she prized the companionship of Karslake for something more than the mere amusement it afforded her: there was a deeper feeling she would not name. For all that, her times of solitude knew dreams quick and warm with the thought of Karslake, his words and ways, the gracious little attentions he had accustomed her to expect of him and which his manner subtly invested with a personal flavour inexpressibly delightful, indispensably sweet. Nor did she ever quite forget how long he had worshipped with unostentatious devotion at her lowly shrine of the caisse in the Café des Exiles, and how shabbily she had rewarded his admiration--never once, in those many months, with so much as a smile--and how unresentful had been his acceptance of her half-feigned, half-real indifference to his existence. But whenever her reflections took that back-turning she would recall the man who had talked to Karslake in the café, that day so long ago, of his own humble past as a 'bus-boy in Troyon's in Paris, and who on leaving had given Sofia herself that odd look of half-recognition tempered by bewilderment. She tried once to draw Karslake about this acquaintance of his, but Karslake's memory proved unusually sluggish. "No-o," he drawled after a tolerably long pause for thought--"can't say I place the chap you mean, can't seem somehow to think back that far, you know. One meets such a lot of people, first and last, they talk such a lot of tosh--" "But it couldn't have been only tosh you were talking," the girl persisted, "because--_I_ remember--you were so keen about keeping what you said secret, you spoke the strangest language together most of the time. I could hear every word"--she had already explained about the freak acoustics of the Café des Exiles--"and not one meant anything to me." "Stupid of me, but I simply can't think what it could have been." "I can--now." Karslake looked askance at Sofia. "Since I've heard so much Chinese spoken by the servants--now I come to think of it"--Sofia's eyes grew bright with triumph--"I'm sure it must have been Chinese you were speaking to the man I mean." "Impossible," Karslake pronounced calmly. "But you do know Chinese, don't you?" "Not a syllable." Sofia opened her lips to protest, but delayed to study Karslake's face intently. He didn't try to escape her scrutiny, he even seemed to court it; but there was a curious, quizzical look in his eyes, those half-smiling lips had a whimsical droop. "Mr. Karslake!" Sofia announced, severely, "you're fibbing." "Nice thing to say to me." "You do speak Chinese--confess." "My dear Princess Sofia," Karslake protested: "if I had known one word of Chinese I could never have landed my job with your father." "Why not?" "He expressly stipulated that I should be ignorant of that language." "What a silly condition to make!" "Still, I daresay Prince Victor had his reasons." "I can't imagine what ..." "Possibly preferred a secretary who couldn't understand everything he said to the servants. I've never pretended to know all Prince Victor's secrets, you know." After a little pause Sofia asked gently: "Did you really need the job so badly, Mr. Karslake?" "To get it meant more to me than I can tell you--almost as much as to hold on to it does to-day." Sofia turned her eyes away at this, and for the rest of the ride--they were homeward bound from a matinée, having dropped Sybil Waring at her flat in Mayfair--kept her thoughts to herself. Only the most perfunctory civilities passed between them, in fact, until they had been ushered into the study by Nogam, who advised them that Prince Victor had ordered tea to be served there and had promised to be home in good time for it. The tea service was already set out on a little table beside the fireplace in that room of secrets, whose normal atmosphere of brooding gloom was now the darker for the deepening dusk. Only the tea itself remained to be served, a special rite never performed in that household by hands more profane than those of the major-domo, Shaik Tsin himself. And this last could be counted upon not to put in appearance until Nogam took him word that Victor was waiting. So, having laid aside her furs and satisfied herself, by a seemingly aimless but in fact exacting survey, that the abominable Sturm was not skulking anywhere in the shadows, Sofia established herself on a lounge that faced the fireplace, while Karslake stood before the fire, looking down with an expectant smile of which she was but half aware. "Aren't you going to forgive me?" he asked, quietly, after a time. Sofia withdrew a pensive gaze from the ruddy bed of coals. "For what?" "You were kind enough to call it merely fibbing." "I'm still thinking about that." In fact, she had been thinking of nothing else. There was so much to be considered. Imprimis, that Karslake had been guilty of practising a deception upon her father. Deceit in itself was one form of treachery. And how often had Victor stressed to her the dangers of his position, surrounded by nameless but implacable enemies who would stick at no infamy to compass his ruin! But if she told him that Karslake understood Chinese she would lose her friend forever--no question about that. Victor would not hesitate an instant--indeed, Sofia felt sure he was only waiting for some such pretext to get rid of his secretary. She was anything but unobserving, this child of Soho, whose wits had been sharpened in the sophisticated atmosphere of a French restaurant; and more than once she had seen Victor's face duplicate the expression Papa Dupont's had so often assumed on his discovering that some patron of the café was taking too personal an interest in the pretty young dame du comptoir. A look of insensate jealousy ... To risk forfeiting the comradeship that had grown to be so dear? Or to be constructively derelict in her duty as a daughter? A difficult choice to make; but Sofia made it honestly. In point of fact, she assured herself, coldly, there was no choice, there was only one thing she could do under the circumstances. And she hardened her heart and eyes as she rose to face Karslake on more equal terms. But when she saw him waiting patiently, with that friendly smile of his she knew so well, she hesitated long enough to permit his anticipating her with a quiet question: "Well, Princess Sofia?" And then, amazingly, her tongue betrayed her, the phrases she had framed so carefully vanished utterly from out her mind; and she heard herself saying in rather tremulous accents: "It's all right. I shan't tell." "About my understanding Chinese?" "Yes--about that." "Then you do care--?" She was panicky with knowledge that somehow her emotions had managed to slip their moorings and get beyond her handling. It didn't help or mend matters much to hear her own voice stammering: "Yes, of course, I--I don't want you to--to have to go away--" Oh, the vanity of trying to hoodwink him who knew so well what she was now for the first time realizing! "Because you like me a little, Princess Sofia?" "Why--yes--of course I do--" "Because you know I love you, dear." And then she found herself clinging to Karslake; and his lips were warm upon her hands ... So suddenly and at long last it came to Sofia, that Love for which all her days had been one long weariness of waiting, Love that brimmed with raptures what had been only aching emptiness and made the desert places to blossom as the rose. And the joy of it proved overmastering, sweeping her off her feet and dazing her, leaving her breathless and thoughtless but for the all-obscuring thought--at length she loved, and the one whom she loved loved her! And for a space she existed in an iridescent dream of happiness, without sense of relation to a material world, forgetful of the flight of time, lost to everything but her lover's arms and voice and lips. It might have been five minutes, it might have been sixty, before she became aware that Karslake was gently disengaging her hands. "Dearest, dearest!" she heard him say. "We must be sensible. That was the front door, I'm afraid." The meaning in his insistence presently began to penetrate, if vaguely, and she suffered him to go from her a pace or two. But, still a little blind with the beauty of the revelation that had been granted unto her, nothing that met her gaze seemed to be in true focus except her lover's face: even the countenance of Victor swam into her ken as if blurred by veils of mist, its dour, forbidding look had no significance to her intelligence. Victor himself, for that matter, was a figure without real consequence other than as a symbol of the old order, the tedious old ways of the world from which she had magically escaped. A ring of sarcastic apology provided the only clue she got to the import of Victor's words. Sobered a trifle, her mental processes somewhat less incoherent, still she knew she would hardly regain her poise until she was alone. And breathing an excuse, she left the room with such dignity as she could muster. In the hall, with the closed door behind her, she paused to collect herself. Then she missed furs and gloves and handbag and, remembering that she had left them in the study, for some obscure reason imagined she must have them before proceeding to her room. Much more mistress of herself by now, it never occurred to Sofia that there could be any reason why she should hesitate about returning or feel embarrassed before Victor. True, he had surprised them, Sofia was not at all sure he hadn't actually seen her in Karslake's arms. But what of that? Love like hers was nothing to be ashamed of; and that Victor could reasonably object to her giving her heart to one of his secretaries was something far from her thought just then. She put a hand to the knob, turned it, and swung the door open--all on impulse--then faltered, transfixed by the tableau before the fireplace. The door was silent on its hinges, and Karslake's back was to her. Victor, on the other hand, facing both Karslake and the door, unquestionably saw Sofia, but pretended not to, and had his say out with Karslake in a manner bitterly cynical. "... sadly in error if you flatter yourself I pay you a wage to make love to Sofia behind my back." "Sorry, sir." Karslake's tone was level, respectful but firm. "Your instructions were, I believe, to win her confidence. Well--I have always found love the one sure key to a woman's confidence. Of course, if I had understood you cared one way or the other--" Sofia heard no more: unconsciously she had closed the door, at one and the same time shutting from her sight Victor's exultant sneer and from her hearing the words with which the man whom she loved had damned himself irretrievably and dashed her spirit from radiant pinnacles of ecstasy into the profoundest black abyss of shame and despair. Primitive instinct bade the stricken girl seek her room and hide her suffering there; but the shock had stunned her to the point of physical weakness. Already a hand was pressed above her heart, that ached cruelly; and as she moved to cross to the foot of the staircase her knees gave under her. She clutched the newel-post for support, waiting to find strength for the ascent. From the shadowed back part of the hall the man Nogam moved hastily into view, his features twisted in a grimace of concern as he recognized the bleak misery of Sofia's face. His voice sounded strangely thin and remote. "Is there anything the matter, miss?--anything I can do?" She contrived to shake her head slightly and utter an inarticulate sound of negation, then began slowly to mount the stairs. Below, Nogam stood watching, in a pose of indecision, as if tempted to follow and offer the support of an arm lest she fall, restrained only by fear of a rebuff. But Sofia's leaden limbs carried her safely to the upper landing, then on to the blessed shelter of her room, where she collapsed upon a chaise-longue and there lay in a stirless huddle, dry of eye but deaf to the plaintive entreaties of Chou Nu and numb to all sensation but the anguish of her humiliated heart. XII SUSPECT Toward mid-evening the man Victor Vassilyevski and his creature Sturm sat where the lamp of hand-wrought brass made the top of the teakwood table an oasis of light amid a waste of shadows, their heads together over a vast glut of books and papers--maps printed and sketched, curious diagrams, works of reference, documents all dark with columns of figures and cabalistic writings intelligible only to initiated eyes. They had the study all to themselves. Nevertheless, when they spoke it was in the discreet pitch of those who deal in fatal secrets. At a distance of two paces only a lip-reader could have caught the substance of their communications, and even such a one must have failed unless equally at home in German and in English. Aside from these occasional and circumspect voices, and the busy rustle of a steel pen in the hand of Sturm, the quiet of the room had a tolerably constant background of sound in a subdued whisper punctuated by muffled clicks, emanating from the bronze casket that housed the telautographic apparatus. From time to time, as this noise temporarily suspended, Victor would get up, read what the mechanical stylus had inscribed, tear off the paper, and return to his chair. Some of the messages thus received he made known to Sturm, who invariably acknowledged this courtesy with effusive gratitude, sometimes adding a few words of contented comment. Other messages Victor chose to keep to himself, silently setting fire to them and adding their brittle ashes to those of their predecessors on the brazen tray provided for the purpose. At such times Sturm would bend lower over his work. But Victor was well able to guess what resentment glimmered in the eyes so studiously averted; and his cold, sardonic smile more than once commented, unknown to Sturm, upon the accuracy with which he read the mean workings of his "secretary's" mind. The buzz of a muted bell presently interrupted the even tenor of their industry, causing Sturm to start sharply, drop his pen, and slue round in his chair, turning to Victor a livid face in which his dark eyes of a fanatic were live embers of excitement. Without a sign to show he shared or even was aware of Sturm's emotion, Victor deliberately fished from beneath the table a telephone instrument, unhooked the receiver, and pronounced a conventional phrase of greeting. To this he added a short "Yes," and after listening quietly for some seconds, "Very good--in twenty minutes, then." Wasting no more time on the author of the call, he hung up, returned the telephone to its place of concealment, and helped himself to a cigarette before deigning to acknowledge Sturm's persistent stare. Then, elevating his eyebrows in mild impatience, he made the laconic announcement: "Eleven." Sturm's mouth twitched nervously, his eyes burned with a keener fire. "Coming here? To-night?" "Yes." "Then"--a gaunt hand described a gesture of agitation--"the hour strikes!" Victor looked bored. "Who knows?" he replied, as who should say: "Does it matter?" "But--Gott in Himmel--!" "Sturm," Victor interposed, critically, "if you Bolsheviki were a trifle more consistent, one might repose greater faith in your sincerity. But when one hears you deny the Deity in one breath and call on him by name in the next--!" "A mere mode of speech," Sturm muttered. "If you must invoke a spiritual patron, why not Satan? Or don't you believe in the Powers of Darkness, either?" "I believe in you." "As temporal viceroy of Lucifer? Many thanks! But you were about to say--?" "Nothing. That is--I was envying your poise, Excellency. You take things so coolly." "Why not?" "With Eleven coming here to tell us when we are to strike?" "Why not?" Victor repeated. "We are prepared to strike at any hour. What matters whether to-night or a week from to-night--since we cannot fail?" "If that were only certain!" "It rests with you." "That's just it," Sturm doubted moodily. "Suppose _I_ fail?" "Why, then--I suppose--you will die." "I know. And so will all of us, Excellency." "Oh, no. Undeceive yourself, my friend. I shall survive. You will surely die, and perhaps many others with you; but I would not be Number One if I had turned my hand to this scheme without discounting failure first of all. My way of escape is sure." "I believe you," Sturm grumbled. With a languid hand Victor found and pressed a button embedded in the table near the edge. "You have reason. Whatever my shortcomings, my good Sturm, they do not include hypocrisy; I do not pretend, like your noble Bolsheviki, I am in this business for the sake of humanity or anything but my own selfish ends--power, plunder"--a slight wait prefaced one final word, spoken in a key of sombre passion--"revenge." "Revenge?" Sturm echoed, staring. "I have more than one score to pay out before I can cry even with life ... one above all!" Studying intently that darkened face, and misled by its look of abstraction, Sturm was guilty of the indiscretion of his malicious smile. "The Lone Wolf?" Victor turned weary eyes his way, and under their black and lustreless regard the smile merged swiftly into a grin of nervous apology. "You are shrewd," Victor observed, thoughtfully. "Be careful: it is a dangerous gift." The man Nogam gently opened the door and approached the table, stopping just outside the area of illumination shed by the shaded lamp. But since Victor continued to smoke absently, paying no attention, Nogam resigned himself to wait with entire patience: the perfect pattern of a servant tempered by long servitude to the erratic winds of employers' whims; efficient, assiduous, mute unless required to speak, long-suffering. Victor addressed him suddenly, in a sharp voice that drew from Sturm a glitter of eager spite. "Nogam!" "Yes, sir?" "Where is the Princess Sofia?" "In 'er apartment, sir." "And Mr. Karslake?" "In 'is." "Then be good enough to send Shaik Tsin to me." "Yes, sir." "And, Nogam!"--the servant checked in the act of turning--"I shan't need you again to-night." "'Nk you, sir." When Nogam had left the room, Sturm, remarking the slight frown that knitted Victor's brows, ventured an impertinence couched in a form of respectful enquiry: "Excellency, perhaps you trust that fellow too much, hein?" "You think so?" "He is too perfect, if you ask me--never makes a false move." "Either he is what he seems, in which event a false move would be against nature; or he is not, and knows one slip would mean his death." "Still, I maintain you trust him too much." "With what?" "The freedom of your house, the opportunity to spy, to get to know who comes to see you and when, to listen at doors." "You have caught him listening at doors?" "Not yet. But in time--" "I think not. I don't think he has to." "You mean," Sturm stammered, perturbed, "you think he knows--suspects?" "I think he is one thing or the other: merely Nogam, or one of the greatest of living actors. In either case he is flawless--thus far. But if not merely Nogam, he will have a subtler means of eavesdropping than by listening at doors." "The dictograph?" "Make your mind easy about that. This room is searched regularly by Shaik Tsin. So is Nogam's. It is certain there is neither a dictograph installed here nor any means at Nogam's disposal for connecting with a dictograph installation. Indeed, so closely is Nogam watched, and by more cunning eyes than mine--sometimes I begin to be afraid he is simply what he seems." "Then you do suspect him!" "My good Sturm, I suspect everybody." Sturm pondered this before pressing his point again. "Karslake found the fellow for you," he suggested at length. "True." "And Karslake--" "Has been guilty of nothing more treacherous than falling in love with Sofia." "Your daughter, Excellency!" "The young woman seems content to call herself that.... Can't say I blame Karslake." "But do you forgive him?" "Ah, that is another matter. Mine is not a forgiving nature, Sturm--not even toward excessive shrewdness." Victor took up a docket of papers, and Sturm, mumbling an apology, gave himself up to jealous brooding till he forgot the broad hint he had received. "If I can satisfy you that Nogam is untrustworthy--" he began, meaning to continue: _Karslake will stand his proved accomplice_. But Victor would not let him finish. "Nothing could please me more," he interrupted. "Do so, by all means--if you can--and earn my everlasting gratitude." Sturm questioned him with puzzled eyes. "I ask no greater service of any man," Victor elucidated with a smile that made Sturm shiver, "than proof that Nogam is what I suspect him of being." A hand extended upon the table unclosed and closed slowly, with fingers tensed, like a murderous claw. "I want no greater favour of Heaven or Hell--!" He broke off abruptly. Having entered noiselessly in his padded shoes, Shaik Tsin now stood before Victor, offering a low obeisance. "You took your time," Victor grumbled. And Shaik Tsin smiled serenely. "I want you to tend the door to-night," Victor pursued. "Eleven is expected at any moment. You need not announce him, simply show him in." "Hearing is obedience." "Wait"--as the Chinaman began to bow himself out--"Karslake is still in his room, I suppose?" "Yes, master." "And Nogam?" "Has just gone to his." "When did you last search their quarters?" "During dinner." "And of course found nothing?" Shaik Tsin bowed. "Make sure neither leaves his room to-night. Set a watch outside each door." "I have done so." Victor gave a sign of dismissal. XIII THE TURNIP In a spacious chamber beneath the eaves, hideously papered and furnished with cheerless, massive relics of the early Victorian era, the man Nogam pursued methodical preparations for bed. Spying eyes, had there been any--and for all Nogam knew, there were--would have seen him follow step by step a programme from whose order he had departed by scarcely as much as a single gesture on any night since his first installation in the house near Queen Anne's Gate. Loosening the waistcoat of his evening livery, he freed the heavy silver watchchain from its buttonhole, drew from its pocket an old-fashioned silver watch of that obese style which first earned the portable timepiece its nickname of "turnip," and opening its back inserted a key attached to the other end of the chain. Its winding was a laborious process, prodigiously noisy. Once finished, Nogam shut the back with a loud click, and reverently deposited the watch on the marble slab of the black walnut bureau. Then he hung coat and waistcoat over the back of a chair which stood between the foot of his bed and the door. Sheer chance may have decreed selection of this chair for the purpose on Nogam's first night in the room; whether or no, it was not in character that, having established this precedent, Nogam should depart from it. And in any event, the coat-draped chair effectually eclipsed a possible keyhole view of the room. Notwithstanding, Nogam pursued his bedtime rites with precisely the same deliberation and absence of perceptible self-consciousness as before. One never knew: there might be other peepholes in the walls. His trousers, neatly folded, he laid out on the seat of the chair. Then he pulled off square-toed boots with elastic inserts in their uppers, put on a pair of worn slippers, carried the boots to the door and set them outside, closed the door, and turned the key in its lock. If aware that, by so doing, he made his privacy just as secure as if he had fastened the door with a bent hair-pin, he gave evidence of no uneasiness in the knowledge. A clear conscience is the best of nerve tonics. Throughout, his features preserved their mild, subdued, dull habit with which the household was familiar. Nogam off duty was in no way different from the unthinking creature of habit who performed belowstairs the prescribed functions of his office. Having donned a nightshirt of coarse cotton, he knelt for several minutes in a devout attitude by the side of his bed, then rising opened the window, took the turnip from the bureau, and snuggled it beneath his pillow, inserted his bare shanks between the sheets, and opened at a marked place a Bible bound in black cloth. On the table by his shoulder a battered electric standard with a frayed cord and a dingy shade remained alight long enough to permit Nogam to spell out a short chapter. Then he put the Bible aside, yawned wearily, and switched out the lamp. Profound darkness now possessed the room, immaterially modified by the light-struck sky beyond the windows. And in this grateful obscurity Nogam permitted himself the luxury of ceasing to be Nogam. A light suddenly flashed upon his face would have discovered a keen and alert intelligence transfiguring the apathetic mask of every day. Also, it would have rendered Nogam's probable duration of life an interesting speculation. Under cover of the darkness, furthermore, he did a number of things which Nogam, qua Nogam, would never have dreamed of doing. His first act was to withdraw from under his pillow the turnip, his next to re-open the back of its silver case and then the inner lid--something which a deft thumbnail accomplished without a sound. From the roomy interior of the case--whose bulky ancient works had been replaced by a wafer-thin modern movement, leaving much useful space back of the dial--sensitive fingers extracted a metal disk about the size and thickness of a silver dollar. One face of this disk was generously perforated, the other, solid, boasted a short blunt post round which several feet of extremely fine wire had been coiled. Unwinding the wire and bending the free end into the form of a rude hook, the man attached this last to the cord of his bedside lamp at a point, located by sense of touch, where a minute section of electric light wire had been left naked by defective insulation. Direct connection now being established with a microphone secreted in the base of the brass lamp on the study table, three floors below, and the perforated side of the microphone detector serving as an earpiece, one could hear every word uttered by the conspirators. The man in bed contributed a broad smile to the kind darkness--sheer luxury to facial muscles cramped and constrained to the cast of Nogam for eighteen hours a day. He was now at last to reap the reward of three months of preparation and three weeks of ingenious, but necessarily spasmodic, and at all times desperately dangerous, tampering with the house wiring system. He lay very still for a long time, listening ... XIV CONFERENCE OF THE DAMNED An Irish voice was making the hush of the study musical with mellow cadences. "This week-end sure, your Excellency--within the next three nights--the little Welshman will be after summoning the Cabinet to sit in secret in Downing Street, with His Most Gracious Majesty attending in person; the emergency extraordinary being thoughtfully provided by this shindig me amiable but spirited fellow-countrymen are kicking up across the Channel--God bless the work!" The speaker laughed lightly, flashing white teeth at Prince Victor across the width of the paper-strewn table. "In more Parliamentary language, by the Irish Question. But we'll hear no more of that, I'm thinking, once we've proclaimed the Soviet Government of England." Victor bowed in grave assent. "You have my word as to that," he said; and after a moment of thoughtful consideration: "You speak, no doubt, from the facts?" "I do that. It's straight I've come from the House of Commons to bring you the news without an hour's delay. There's more than one advantage in being an Irish Member these days." "On the other hand, Eleven"--Victor stressed the numeral as if to remind the Irishman that even a Member of Parliament for Ireland held no higher standing in his esteem than any other underling in his association of anonymous conspirators--"even so, it appears you are uncertain as to the night." "I'm after telling you it'll be to-morrow night or more likely Saturday--Sunday at the latest." A mildly impatient accent alone betrayed resentment of the snub. "I'll know in good time, long before the hour appointed; and that ought to do, providing you on your part are prepared." "An hour's notice will be ample," Victor agreed. "We have been ready for days, needing only the knowledge you bring us--or will, when you have it definitely." The Irishman chuckled. "It's hard to believe. Not that I'd dream of doubting your statement, sir--but yourself won't be denying you must have worked fast to organize England for revolution in less than three weeks." "I have been busy," Victor admitted. "But the work was not so difficult ... Seeds of revolution are easily sown in land thoroughly tilled by forces of discontent. And what land has been better tilled? To vary the figure: England is all seething beneath a thin crust of custom and established habit whose integrity a conservative and reactionary government has ever since the war been struggling desperately to preserve. The blow we shall strike within three days will shatter that crust in a hundred places." "And let Hell loose!" the Irishman added with a nervous laugh. In a dry voice Victor commented: "Precisely." "Omelettes," Sturm interjected, assertively, "are not made without breaking eggs." "And all rivers, no doubt, flow to the sea? What a lot you know, Herr Sturm! Is it the Portfolio of the Minister of Education you've picked out for your very own, after the explosion comes off--if it's a fair question?" "You Irish are all mad," the German complained, sourly--"mad about laughing. Even me you will laugh at, while you trust your very life to me, while you trust to my genius to make Soviet England possible and Ireland free." "Faith! you're away off there, me friend. If it was you and your genius I had to trust, it's meself would turn violent reactionary and advise Ireland to be a good dog and come to England's heel and lick England's hand and live off England's leavings. I'll trust nobody in this black business but himself--Number One." "You have changed your tune since that night at the Red Moon," Sturm reminded him, angrily. "I had me lesson then and there," Eleven agreed, cheerfully. "And I don't mind telling you, the next time I'm taken with a fancy to call me soul me own, I'll be after asking himself first for a license." Victor put a period to the passage with a dispassionate "By your leave, gentlemen--that will do." To the Irishman he added: "You understand the danger, I believe, of remaining within the condemned area--that is to say, except in the open air?" "Can't say I do, altogether." "It is simple: no person in any house supplied by the mains of the Westminster gas works will be safe for hours after the formula of Thirteen has begun its work. My advice to you is to keep out of the district entirely." "Faith, and I'll do that! But how about yourself in this house?" "I shall spend the week-end outside of London," Victor replied, "not too far away, of course, and"--the shadow of his satiric smile was briefly visible--"prepared at any moment to answer the call of my stricken country.... The few who remain here will be provided with the essentials for their protection. Furthermore, a general warning will be sent out to all who can be trusted." "And the others--?" "With them it must be as Fate wills." "Women and children, potential sympathizers and supporters of all classes?" the Irishman persisted in incredulous horror--"all?" "All," Victor affirmed, coldly. "We who deal in the elemental passions that make revolutions, that is to say, in Life and Death, cannot afford qualms and scruples. What are a few lives more or less in London? These British breed like rabbits." "I see," said Eleven, indistinctly. He stared a moment and swallowed hard, then glanced hastily at his watch. "I'll be after bidding you good-night," he said, "and pleasant dreams. For meself, I'm a fool if I go to bed this night sober enough to dream at all, at all!" Victor rang for Shaik Tsin to show him out. "One question more, if you won't take it amiss," Eleven suggested, lingering. And Victor inclined a gracious head. "Have you thought of failure?" "I have thought of everything." "Well, and if we do fail--?" "How, for example?" "How do I know what hellish accident may kick our plans into a cocked hat? Anything might happen. There's your friend, the Lone Wolf, for instance ..." "Have you not forgotten him yet?" Victor enquired in simulated surprise. "Have you neglected to remark that since the blunderer failed to find the Council Chamber that night, when his raid at the Red Moon netted him only a handful of coolie gamblers and drug-addicts, he has left us to our own devices?" "That's what makes me wonder what the divvle's up to. His sort are never so dangerous as when apparently discouraged." "Be reassured. I promised you three weeks ago his interference would not continue beyond that night. It has not. Lanyard knows I have his daughter, that any blow aimed at me must first strike her." "Doubtless yourself knows best...." With the Irishman gone, Prince Victor turned to Sturm. "You will want a good night's sleep," he suggested with pointed solicitude. "Who knows but that to-morrow will bring your night of nights, my friend?" He lapsed immediately into remote abstraction, sitting with chin bent to the tips of his joined fingers, his eyes downcast, motionless. Disgruntled, but afraid to show it, the German cleared away the litter of papers, assorting them into huge portfolios, and took himself off. Shaik Tsin replaced him, moving noiselessly about the room, restoring the reference books to the shelves and stowing the portfolios away in a massive safe hidden behind a lacquered screen. This done, he stationed himself before his master, awaiting his attention, a shape of affable placidity, intelligent, at ease; his attitude not entirely lacking a suggestion of familiarity. Without changing his pose by so much as the lifting of an eyelash, Victor spoke in Chinese: "To-morrow afternoon, late, I shall motor down into the country with the girl Sofia. I shall be gone three days--perhaps. I will leave a telephone number with you, to be used only in emergency. As soon as I have left, you will dismiss all the English servants, with a quarter's wage in advance in lieu of notice. Karslake will provide the money." "He does not accompany you?" "No." "And the man Nogam?" Victor appeared to hesitate. "What do you think?" he enquired at length. "What I have always thought." "That he is a spy?" "Yes." "But with no tangible support for your suspicions?" "None." "You have not failed to watch him closely?" "As a cat watches a mouse." "But--nothing?" "Nothing." "Yet I agree with you entirely, Shaik Tsin. I smell treachery." "And I." "Nogam shall go with me as my bodyservant. Thus I shall be able to keep an eye on him. Let Chou Nu be prepared to accompany us as maid to the girl Sofia. In my absence you will be guided by such further instructions as I may leave with you. These failing, consider the man Sturm, my personal representative. In the contingency you know of, Sturm will warn you in time to clear the house." "Of everybody?" "Of all servants except those whom you may need to guard the man Karslake. These and yourself will be provided with means of self-protection by Sturm." "And Karslake?" "I have not yet made up my mind." "Hearing is obedience." Victor relapsed into another reverie which lasted so long that even the patience of Shaik Tsin bade fair to fail. In the end the silence was broken by two words: "The crystal." From a cabinet at the end of the room Shaik Tsin brought a crystal ball supported on the backs of three golden dragons standing tail to tail, superbly wrought examples of Chinese goldsmithing. This he placed carefully on the black teakwood surface at Victor's elbow. "And now, inform the girl Sofia I wish to see her." "And if she again sends her excuses?" "Say, in that event, I shall be obliged to come to her room." XV INTUITION She had not thought, of course, of going down to dinner; she had, instead, sent Victor word simply that she begged to be excused from joining him for that meal. Then, unable longer to endure Chou Nu's efforts to comfort or distract her, Sofia had stepped out of her street frock and into a négligée and, dismissing the maid, returned to the chaise-longue upon which, in vain hope of being able to cry out the wretchedness of her heart, she had thrown herself on first gaining the sanctuary of her room. For hours, she did not guess how many, she scarcely stirred. Neither was the blessed boon of tears granted unto her. Alone with her immense and immitigable misery, she lay in darkness tempered only by the dim skyshine that filtered through the window draperies; hating life, that had no mercy; hating the duplicity that had led Karslake into making untrue love to her, but inexplicably not hating Karslake himself, or the enshrined image that wore his name; hating herself for her facile readiness to give love where all but the guise of love was lacking, and for knowing this deep hurt where she should have felt only scorn and anger; but hating, most of all, or rather for the first time discovering how well she hated, him to whom unerring intuition told her she owed this brimming measure of heartbreak and humiliation, the man who called himself her father. For if Karslake had done her a cruel wrong in winning her avowal of the love that had been growing in her heart these many weeks, while he was merely amusing himself or serving a secret purpose--whose was the initial blame for that? Who had egged Karslake on, as he had asserted, "to win her confidence," leaving to him the choice of means to that end? And--_why_? The formulation of this question marked the turning point in Sofia's descent toward the nadir of shame and anguish; from the moment its significance was clearly apprehended (but it took her long to reach this stage) the complexion of her thoughts took on another colour, and the smart of chagrin was soothed even as the irritation excited by critical examination of Victor's conduct grew more acute. Why should the self-styled author of her being have thought it necessary, or even wise or kind, to commission a paid employee to win his daughter's confidence? What had rendered the conquest of her confidence so needful in his sight? What had made him think Sofia would prove loath to resign it to him, or more likely to give it to another? Why had Victor hesitated to bid for her confidence with his own tongue, on his own merits? One would think that, if he were her father-- If! _Was_ he? Sofia sat up sharply, her young body as taut as her temper. Pulses and breathing quickened, intent eyes probed the shadows as if she thought to wrest from them a clue to the mystery of her status in the household of Victor Vassilyevski. What proof had she that he was her father? None but his word.... Well, and Karslake's.... None that would stand the test of skepticism, none that either sentiment or reason could offer and support. Certainly she resembled Prince Victor in no respect that she could think of, not in person, not in mould of character, not in ways of thought. From the very first she had been perplexed, and indeed saddened, by her failure, her sheer inability, to react emotionally to their alleged relationship. And surely there must exist between parent and child some sort of spiritual bond or affinity, something to draw them together--even if neither had never known the other. Whereas she on her part had never been conscious of any sense of sympathy with Victor, but only of timidity and reluctance which had latterly manifested in unquestionable aversion. And then there was his attitude toward her, raising a question so repugnant to her understanding that never before to-night had Sofia admitted its existence and given it the freedom of her thoughts. She had seen men, in the Café des Exiles, toast their mistresses with such looks as Victor Vassilyevski reserved for the girl whom he claimed as his child. What, then, if he were not her father? What if he had only pretended to paternal rights in furtherance of some deep scheme of his?--perhaps thinking to use her as a pawn in that dark plot which he was forever brewing in his study (with canaille like Sturm for collaborators!) that mysterious "research work" that flavoured the atmosphere of the house with a miasmatic reek of intrigue, stealth, and fear--perhaps (more simply and terribly) designing in his own time and way to avenge himself upon the daughter for the admitted slights he had suffered at the hands of the mother, that poor dead woman whose fame he never ceased to blacken while still her memory was potent to kindle fires in those eyes otherwise so opaque, impenetrable, and lightless! Now Sofia found herself unable to sit still; only through action of some sort could she hope to win any measure of ease for brain and nerves. A thought was shaping, claiming precedence over all others, the thought of flight; bred of the feeling that, as long as she remained in ignorance of the exact truth concerning their relationship, it was impossible for her to remain longer under Victor's roof, eating his bread and salt, schooling herself to suffer his endearments whose good faith she could not help challenging, who inspired in her only antipathy, fear, and distrust. It seemed clear beyond dispute that she must leave his protection, this very night, before he could guess her mind and move to check her. Sofia swung her feet down to the floor. One of her silken mules had fallen off. Semi-consciously she groped for it with stockinged toes. As the inanimate will, the mule eluded recapture with impish ease. But beneath her foot something rustled and crackled lightly. She bent over and picked it up: a square white envelope, sealed. Switching on a lamp near by, she examined her find. It carried no address. How it could have got there she could not imagine ... unless Chou Nu had dropped it by inadvertence, which seemed as far-fetched as to suppose she had left it there by design; for that would mean Chou Nu had been bribed to convey a surreptitious note to her mistress; and Sofia knew that the Chinese girl was at once too loyal to her "second-uncle," and too much in awe of "Number One," to be corruptible. None the less, there the envelope was; and nobody but Chou Nu had entered the room since Sofia had come straight from the study to it, late in the afternoon. It was just possible, however--Sofia's eyes measured the distance--that a deft hand and a strong wrist might have slipped the envelope under the door and sent it skimming across the floor to the foot of the chaise-longue. But nobody would have dared do that without a powerful motive for wishing to communicate secretly with Sofia. She tore the flap and withdrew a single sheet of notepaper penned in a hand she knew too well. Her heart leapt.... I implore you, of your charity, do not condemn me without a hearing because of anything you may have overheard me say. After you left us in the study I saw his eyes watching the door while we talked, and knew from his look that something to please him had happened behind my back. And in the temper he was in only one thing could possibly have pleased him. I said what I said to him, dear, because I had to--or lose the right, dearer to me than life, to be near you, to serve and protect you. I lied to him because I loved you. But I have never lied to you about my love--and only once, through necessity, about anything else. Perhaps you can guess what that lie was, somehow I rather think you do; at least, I am sure, you are beginning to wonder if I told the truth--or knew it, then. If this sound cryptic, I can only beg you to be patient and charitable until I find opportunity to clear away this one lie which stands between us--and which is, by comparison, almost immaterial, since all that matters is the one great truth in my life, that I love you beyond all telling. R.K. If questions trouble your mind, I beg you do not let him know it. Your only safety now lies in his continuing to believe that you are unsuspicious. Above all, do your best to seem to fall in with his wishes, however strange or unreasonable they may seem. It will be only a few days more before I can claim you for my own, and laugh at his pretensions. A curious love-letter; yet it was Sofia's first. If it made her thoughtful, it made her illogically happy as well. If it put the issue to her squarely, of loyalty to Prince Victor or loyalty to Karslake, she was unaware that she had any choice of courses. When Shaik Tsin thumped the panels of her door, she crushed the note into the bosom of her négligée before answering. When one is of an age to love, it is never the parent who gets the benefit of a doubt. XVI THE CRYSTAL Like some shy, sad shade summoned up by the malign genius of a haunted chamber, a slender shape of pallor in softly flowing draperies slipped through the silent door and, advancing a few reluctant steps into the soundless gloom, paused and in apprehensive diffidence awaited the welcome that was for a time withheld. For minutes Victor gave no sign or stir; and in all the room nothing moved but ghostly whorls of smoke writhing slowly upward from a pungent censer of beaten gold. The great lamp of brass was dark, and there was no other light than a solitary bulb, whose hooded rays were concentrated upon the crystal ball, so that the latter shone with a dead-white glare, somehow baleful, like an elfin moon deeply lost in a sea of sombre enchantment. Bending forward in his chair, an elbow planted on the table, his forehead resting upon the tips of long, white fingers, Victor's gaze was steadfast to the crystal. Refracted light sculptured with curious shadows that saturnine face intent to immobility. Too young, too inexperienced and sensitive to be insusceptible to the spell of the theatrical, the girl was conscious of a steady ebb of her new-found store of fortitude, skepticism, and defiance, together with an equally steady inflow of timidity and uneasiness. That sinister figure at the table, absorbed in study of the inscrutable sphere--what did he see there, to hold his faculties in such deep eclipse? Adept in black arts of the Orient as he was said to be, what wizardry was he brewing with the aid of that traditional tool of the necromancer? What spectacle of divination was in those pellucid depths unfolding to his rapt vision? And what had this consultation of the occult to do with the man's mind concerning herself? Sofia was shaken by a tremor of dread.... And as if her emotion were somehow communicated, arousing him to knowledge of her presence, Victor started, sat back, and with a sigh passed a hand across his eyes. When the hand fell, his face wore its habitual look for Sofia, modified by a slightly apologetic and weary smile. "My child!" he exclaimed in accents of contrite surprise, "have I kept you waiting long?" "Only a few minutes. It doesn't matter." But her voice seemed sadly small and thin in comparison with Victor's rotund and measured intonations. "Forgive me." Victor rose, nodding to indicate the shining crystal. "I have been consulting my familiar," he said with a light laugh. "You have heard of crystal-gazing? A fascinating art that languishes in undeserved neglect. The ancients were more wise, they knew there was more in Heaven and Earth.... You are incredulous? But I assure you, I myself, though far from proficient, have caught strange glimpses of unborn events in the heart of that transparent enigma." He took her hands and cuddled them in his own. She quivered irrepressibly to his touch. "But you are trembling!" he protested, solicitous, looking down into her face--"you are wan and sad, my dear. Tell me you are not ill." "It is nothing," Sofia replied--again in that faint, stifled voice. She added in determined effort to subdue her trembling and turn their talk to essentials: "You sent for me--I am here." "I am so sorry. If I had guessed ..." Enlightenment seemed to dawn all at once. "But surely it isn't because of that stupid business with Karslake? Surely you didn't take him seriously?" "How should I--?" "It is too absurd. The poor fool misconstrued my instructions to make himself agreeable--I am so taken up with the gravest matters at present, I didn't want you to feel lonely or neglected--and, it appears, felt it incumbent upon him to flirt with you as a matter of duty. I am out of temper with him, but not unreasonable; I shan't dispense with his services altogether, without more provocation, but will find other work to keep him busy and out of your way. You need fear no more annoyance from that quarter." "I was not annoyed," Sofia found heart to contend. "I--like him." "Nonsense!" Victor's laugh was rich with derision. "Don't ask me to believe you were actually touched by the fellow's play-acting. You--my daughter--wasting emotion on a mere commoner! The thing is too ridiculous. Oblige me by thinking no more about it. I have better things in store for you." "Better than--love?" the girl questioned with grave eyes. "When the time comes for that, you shall find a worthier parti than poor Karslake, well-meaning though he may be. Moreover, you heard--forgive me for reminding you--there was not an ounce of sincerity in all his philandering for you to hold in sentimental recollection. So--forget Karslake, please. It is a duty you owe your own pride and my dignity; it is, furthermore, my wish." She bowed her head, that he might not see the reflection in her face of the glow that warmed her bosom, where Karslake's letter nestled. But Victor took the nod for the word of submission, and patted her shoulder with an indulgent hand, guiding her to a chair close by his. "Sit down, my dear. I want to explain why I asked you to come to me at this late hour--never dreaming my message would find you so overwrought.... You quite see how needless it was to permit yourself to be upset by such a trifling matter, don't you?" "Oh, quite," Sofia murmured, with gaze fixed on the interlacing fingers in her lap. "That is sensible." Offering her shoulder one last accolade of approbation, Victor moved toward his own chair. "And now that you are here, we may as well have our little talk out," he continued, but broke off to stipulate: "If, that is, you are sure you feel up to it?" "Yes," Sofia assented, but without moving. "I am not so sure. Perhaps a glass of wine might do you good." "Oh, no!" the girl protested--"I don't need it, really." But Victor wouldn't listen; and disappearing into shadowed distances, returned presently with a brimming goblet. "Drink this, dear. It will make you feel quite fit again." Obediently, Sofia raised the goblet to her lips. "You have never tasted a wine like that," Victor insisted, smiling down at her. It was true enough, what he claimed; though it had something of character of a sound old Madeira, this wine had more, a surpassing richness, a fruitiness in no way cloying, a peculiarly aromatic taste and fragrance, elusive and provoking, with a hint of bitterness never to be analyzed by the most experienced palate. "What is it?" Sofia asked after her first sip. "You like it, eh? An old wine of China, unknown to Western Europe." Victor gave it a musical name in what Sofia took to be Chinese. "Outside my cellars, I'll wager there's not another bottle of it this side of Constantinople. Drink it all. It will do you good." He seated himself. "And now my reason for wishing to talk with you to-night.... A note came by the last delivery from Lady Randolph West. You met her, I understand, through Sybil Waring, a few days ago. She was apparently much taken with you." "She is very kind." Victor had found a sheet of notepaper and, bending to the light, was searching its scrawled lines with narrowed eyes. "'Too lovely,' she calls you--and quite justly, my dear. Yes; here it is: 'Too lovely for words.' And she wants me to bring my 'charming daughter' down to Frampton Court for this week-end." Sofia said nothing, but put her half-empty glass aside. The wine had done her good, she thought. She felt better, stronger, mentally more alert, and at the same time curiously soothed. Victor refolded the note and tapped the table with it, holding Sofia with speculative eyes. "It should be amusing," he said, thoughtfully, "a new experience for you. Elaine--I mean Lady Randolph West, of course--is a charming hostess, and never fails to fill Frampton Court with delightful people." "I'm sure I should love it." "I am sure you would. And yet ... I may have been a little premature, since I have already written accepting the invitation." He indicated an addressed envelope face up on the table. "But on second thoughts, it seemed perhaps wiser to consult you first." "But if it is your wish, I must go," Sofia replied, mindful of Karslake's injunction not to oppose Victor. "What have I to say--?" "Everything about whether we accept or do not--or if not everything, at least the final word. I must abide by your decision." "But I shall be only too glad--" "Think a moment. It might be wiser not to go. You alone can say." "I don't quite understand ..." Victor sighed. "It is a painful subject," he said, slowly--"one I hesitate to reopen. But we can never profit by closing our minds to facts; I mean, to the reality of the danger which is always with us, since it is within us." "What danger?" Sofia enquired, sullenly, knowing the answer too well before it was spoken. "The danger of sudden temptation to indulge the lawless appetites with which heredity has endued us--me from the nameless forebears whom I never knew, you directly from parents both of whom boasted criminal records." "I don't believe it!" Sofia declared, passionately--"I can't believe it, I won't! Even if you are--" She was going on to say "if you are my father," but caught herself in time. Had not Karslake warned her in his note: "_Your only safety now lies in his continuing to believe that you are unsuspicious._" She continued in a tempest of expostulation whose fury covered her break: "Even if you were once a thief and my mother--my mother!--everything vile, as you persist in trying to make me believe--God knows why!--it is possible I may still have failed to inherit your criminal tendencies; and not only possible, but true, if I know myself at all. For I have never felt the temptation to steal that you insist I must have inherited from you--nor any other inclination toward things as mean, contemptible, and dishonourable as they are dishonest!" With only his slow, forbearing smile by way of comment, Victor heard her out, but when she paused to reassort her thoughts, lifted a temporizing hand. "Not yet, perhaps," he said, gently. "There is always the first time with every rebel against man-made laws. But, where the predisposition so indubitably exists, it is inevitable, soon or late it must come to you, my dear--the time when the will is too weak, temptation too strong. Against it we must be forever on our guard." "I am not afraid," Sofia contended. "Naturally; you will not be before the hour of ordeal which shall prove your strength or your weakness, your confidence in yourself, or my loving fears for you." Sofia gave a gesture of weariness and confusion. What did it matter? If he would have it so, let him: it couldn't affect the issue in any way, what he believed, or for his own purposes pretended to believe. Had not Karslake promised ... She tried to recall precisely what it was that Karslake had promised, but found her memory of a sudden singularly sluggish. In fact, her mind seemed to have lost its marvellous clarity of those first moments after tasting the wine of China. Small wonder, when one remembered the emotional strain she had experienced since early evening! "Still," she argued, stubbornly, "I don't see what all this has to do with Lady Randolph West's invitation." "Only that to accept means to expose you to the greatest temptation one can well imagine." Sofia stared blankly. Her wits were working even more slowly and heavily than before. And the glare in her eyes from the luminous sphere of crystal was irritating. Almost without thinking, she lifted her glass again; when she put it down it was empty. "The jewels of Lady Randolph West," Victor went on to explain without her prompting, "are considered the most wonderful in England; always excepting, of course, the Crown jewels." "What is that to me?" Resentment sounded in her tone. She was thinking more readily once more, thanks to that second magical draught, but was nevertheless conscious of a general failing of powers drained by her great fatigue. She wished devoutly that Victor would have done and let her go.... "Elaine is very careless, leaves her jewels scattered about, hardly troubles to put them away securely at night. If you should be tempted to appropriate anything, she might not discover her loss for days; and then, again, she might. And if you were caught--consider what shame and disgrace!" "I think I see," the girl said, slowly, after some difficult thinking. "You don't want me to go." "To the contrary, I do--but I want more than anything else in the world that my daughter should be sure of herself and fall into no irreparable error." "But I am sure of myself--I have told you that." "Then let us fret no more about it, but accept, and go prepared to enjoy ourselves. I will send the letter." Victor rang, and Shaik Tsin presented himself so quickly that Sofia wondered dully where he could have been waiting. In the room with them, perhaps? It wasn't impossible. The Chinaman's thick soles of felt enabled him to move about without making the least noise. "Have this posted immediately." Shaik Tsin bowed deeply, and backed away with the letter. Unless she turned to watch him, Sofia could not say whether he left the room or not. She offered to rise. "If that is all ..." "Not quite. There are certain details to be arranged; and I may not see you again before we leave to-morrow afternoon. We will motor down to Frampton Court--it's not far, little more than an hour by train--starting about half after four, if you can be ready." "Oh, yes." "Sybil Waring will tell you what to take, and Chou Nu will see to your packing. Both, by the way, will accompany us. Sybil's maid will follow by train. For myself, I am taking Nogam--having found that English servants do not take kindly to my Chinese valet." "Yes ..." Sofia uttered, listlessly, wondering why this information should be considered of interest to her. "And one thing more: I am forgiven? You are not cross with me?" "Why should I be?" "Because of what happened this afternoon--when I scolded Karslake for making love to you." "Oh," said Sofia with a good show of indifference--she was so tired--"that!" "Believe me, little Sofia"--Victor put out a hand to hers, and held her eyes with a compelling gaze--"boy-and-girl romance is all very well, but there is a greater destiny reserved for you than marriage to a hired secretary, however amiable, personable, and well-meaning. You must prepare yourself to move in a world beyond and above the common hearthstone of bourgeois domesticity." The girl shook a bewildered head. "It is a riddle?" she asked, wearily. "A riddle?" Victor echoed. "Why, one may safely term it that. Is not the Future always a riddle? Nature knows the Future as the Past, but Nature holds it secret, lest man go mad with too much knowledge. Only to the few, the favoured, does she grant rare glimpses through media which she has provided for the use of the initiate--such as this crystal here, in which I was studying your future, when you came in, the high future I plan for you." "And--you won't tell me?" "I may not. It is forbidden. Nature deals unkindly with those who violate her confidence. But--who knows?" He checked himself as if struck by a new turn of thought, and studied the girl's face intently. "Who knows?" he repeated, as if to himself. "What--?" "It is quite within the bounds of possibility," Victor mused, "that you should have inherited some of the psychic power which was born in me. Perhaps--who knows?--to you as well Nature will be supple and disclose her secrets.... If you care to seek her favour?" "But--how?" "By consulting the crystal." Sofia's eyes sought that coldly burning stone. Her head was so heavy, she hesitated, oppressed by misgivings without shape that she could name, phases of formless timidity having rise in some source which she was too tired to search out. But she lingered and continued to stare at the crystal. "Why not?" Victor's accents were gently persuasive. "At worst, you can only fail. And if you do not fail, it will make me happy to think that you have been given a little insight into my dreams for you." "Yes," Sofia assented in a whisper--"why not?" Victor drew her forward by the hand. "Look," he said "look deep! Divest your mind as nearly as you can of all thought--let the crystal give up its message to a mind devoid of prejudice, its receptiveness unimpaired. Think of nothing, if you can manage it--simply look and see." Automatically to a degree the girl obeyed, already in a phase of crepuscular hypnosis, her surface senses dulled by the potent "wine of China." And watching her closely, Victor permitted himself a smile of satisfaction as he noted the rapidity with which she yielded to the hypnogenic spell of the translucent quartz; how her breathing quickened, then took on a measured tempo like that of a sleeper; how a faint flush warmed the unnatural pallor of her cheeks, how her dilate eyes grew fixed in an unwinking stare, and slightly glassed.... Under her regard the goblin sphere took on with bewildering rapidity changing guises. Its rotundity was first lost, it assumed the semblance of a featureless disk of pallid light, which swiftly widened till it obscured all else, then seemed to advance upon and envelope her bodily, so that she became spiritually a part of it, an atom of identity engulfed in a limpid world of glareless light, light that had had no rays and issued from no source but was circumambient and universal. Then in its remote heart a weird glow of rose began to burn and grow, pulsing through all the colours of the spectrum and beyond. Toward this she felt herself being drawn swiftly, attracted by an irresistible magnetism, riding the wings of a great wind, whose voice boomed without ceasing, like a heavy surf thunderously reiterating one syllable, "_Sleep!_" ... And in this flight through illimitable space toward a goal unattainable, consciousness grew faint and flickered out like a candle in the wind. Behind her chair the placid yellow face of Shaik Tsin appeared, as if materialized bodily out of the shadows. With folded arms he waited, dispassionately observant. Presently Prince Victor nodded to him over the head of the girl. Immediately the Chinaman moved round her chair and, employing both hands, in one instant switched off the hooded bulb and reilluminated the lamp of brass. As the light died out in the crystal Sofia sighed heavily, and relaxed. Leaden eyelids closed down over her staring eyes, she sank back into the chair, simultaneously into plumbless depths.... Victor made a sound of gratification. Shaik Tsin enquired briefly: "It is accomplished, then?" Victor nodded. "She yielded more quickly than I had hoped--worn out emotionally, of course." "She sleeps--" "In hypnosis, in absolute suspense of every faculty and function save those concerned solely with the maintenance of existence--in a state, that is, comparable only to the pre-natal life of a child." "It is most interesting," Shaik Tsin admitted. "But what is the use? That is what interests me." "Wait and see." Bending close to the girl, Victor called in a strong voice of command: "Sofia! Sofia! It is I, Prince Victor, your father. Waken and attend!" A slight spasm shook the slender body, the lips parted, respiration became hurried and broken, the long lashes fluttered on the cheeks. "Do you hear me? I, Victor, command you: Waken and attend!" Another struggle, more brief and sharp, ended with the opening of the eyes, which sought and remained steadfast to Victor's, yet without intelligence or animation. "Do you hear me, Sofia?" A voice like a sigh rustled on the parted lips, whose stir was imperceptible: "I hear you...." "Then heed what I say. My will is your law. You know that?" Faintly the voice breathed: "Yes." "Tell me what it is you know." "Your will is my law." "You will not resist my will, you cannot. Tell me that." "I will not resist your will, I cannot." "Good. I, Prince Victor Vassilyevski, am your father. You believe that. Do you understand? Tell me what you believe." "I believe that you, Prince Victor Vassilyevski, are my father." "You will not forget these things?" "I shall not forget." "In all things." "I will obey you in all things." "Without question or faltering." "Without question or faltering." "You recall what arrangements we made this afternoon for to-morrow?" "I remember." "Listen carefully. Memorize my wishes with respect to our visit to Frampton Court, remembering that I communicate my will, which you must obey." The girl remained silent, waiting. Victor took a moment to marshall his thoughts, then proceeded: "After arriving at Frampton Court, you will make occasion quietly to find out how your room is situated in relation to the boudoir of Lady Randolph West. You will do this without knowing why you do it. You understand?" "Yes." "At night, on going to bed, you will go promptly to sleep. After an hour you will wake up, put on a dressing gown and slippers, and proceed to Lady Randolph West's boudoir, taking care not to be observed. Is that clear?" "Yes." "Once in the boudoir, you will proceed to the safe where Lady Randolph West keeps her jewels. It will not be locked, she is careless in such matters. Having found the safe, you will open it, take whatever jewels you find therein, and return to your room. All this you will perform with utmost circumspection, taking all pains not to make any noise. In your room you will hide the jewels in your dressing-case. Then you will go back to bed and to sleep. Have you committed all this to memory?" The sleeping girl answered in the affirmative. Then, to the injunction, "Tell me what you are to do to-morrow night?" she repeated in a toneless voice every item of the programme outlined for her, while Victor nodded in undisguised delight, and Shaik Tsin grinned blandly over her head. "On waking up to-morrow morning, you will remember nothing of my instructions, but you will carry them precisely as memorized in your subconciousness, and you will carry them out without thought of opposition to my will, understanding that you are without will of your own in this matter. Finally, on waking up on the morning following your abstraction of the jewels, you will remember nothing of the affair until reminded of it by me, and then only this much: That in obedience to irresistible impulse, you stole the jewels. Is that clear? Repeat ..." Without a mistake the woman in hypnosis iterated the commands imposed upon her. The impish grin of the latent savage broke through the habitual austerity of Victor's countenance. "There is no more," he said, "but this: Sleep now, and do not waken before noon to-morrow--_sleep!_" With a quavering sigh, the girl reclosed her eyes and instantly relapsed into the sleep of trance which was insensibly in the course of the night to merge into natural slumber. Victor ironed out his grimace, and signed to Shaik Tsin. "Bear her back to her room. Instruct Chou Nu to put her to bed and not to wake her up before noon." "Hearing is obedience." The Chinaman bent over, gathered the inert body into his arms, and without perceptible effort stood erect. But in the act of turning away he paused and, continuing to hold the girl as easily as if she weighed no more than a child, interrogated the man he served. "You believe she will do all you have ordered?" "I know she will." "Without error?" "Barring accidents, without flaw from beginning to end." "And in event of accidents--discovery--?" "So much the better." "That would please you, to have her caught?" "Excellently." Shaik Tsin nodded in grave yet humorous comprehension. "Now I begin to understand. If she is caught, that gives you a power over her?" "Precisely." "And if she is not, when the robbery becomes known, your power over her will be still more strong?" "And over yet another stronger still." "The Lone Wolf?" Victor inclined his head. "To what lengths will he not go to cover up his daughter's shame, if it threatens to become public that she is a thief? I do nothing without purpose, Shaik Tsin." "That is to say, you have to-night taken out insurance against punishment if this other business fails." "If it fail, others may suffer, but if necessary the Lone Wolf himself will arrange my escape from England." "To serve so wise a man is an honour my unworthiness can never hope to merit." "As to that, Shaik Tsin," Victor said without a smile, "our minds are one. Go now. Good-night." XVII THE RAISED CHEQUE While the Princess Sofia, Sybil Waring, and Prince Victor motored down from London in the lilac dusk of that dim September day, and the maid Chou Nu accompanied them, riding in front beside a newly engaged Chinese chauffeur, the man Nogam made the journey to Frampton Court by train, and alone. Alone, at least, in the finer shading of that adjective; aside from the usual assortment of self-contained fellow-travellers in the third-class carriage, he had no company other than his thoughts; a gray and meagre crew, if that pathetic face of middle-age furnished trustworthy reflection of his mind.... So absolute was the submergence of that ardent adventurer who, overnight, had lain awake for hours, a dictograph receiver glued to his ear, eavesdropping upon the traffic of those malevolent intelligences assembled in Prince Victor's study, and alternately chuckling and cursing beneath his breath, aflame with indignation and chilled by inklings of atrocities unspeakable abrew! If he surmised that he travelled alone in appearance only, it was with no evident concern or astonishment. If his mind was uneasy, oppressed by a nightmarish burden of half-knowledge, guesses, and premonition, it was not apparent to the general observer. His most eloquent gesture was when, from time to time, he tamped an ancient wooden pipe with a fingertip that wasn't as calloused as he could have wished, philosophically sucked in strangling fumes of rankest shag and, ignoring his company in the carriage as became a British-made manservant, returned jaded, gentle eyes to those darkling vistas of autumnal landscape that were forever radiating away from the window like spokes of a gigantic wheel. Alighting in the first dark of evening at the station for Frampton Court, he suffered himself to be herded, with a half-score more, into the omnibus provided for other bodyservants to arriving guests. Even to these compeers he found little to say: a loud lot, imbued with the rowdy spirit of the new day; whereas Nogam was hopelessly of the old school--in the new word, he dated--though his form was admittedly unimpeachable. And if because of this he was made fun of more or less openly, to an extent that added shades of resignation to his countenance, secretly he commanded considerable respect. Neither was Victor, with all the ill-will in the world, able to find fault with Nogam's services in his new office. The most finished of self-effacing valets, he knew just what to do and did it without being told; and when he spoke it was only because he had been spoken to or commissioned to convey a message. Victor watched him from every angle, overt and covert, but had his trouble for his pains; Nogam, observed in a mirror, when Victor's back was turned, went about his business with no more betrayal of personal feeling or independent mentality than when waiting upon his master face to face. Victor could have kicked him for sheer resentment of his pattern virtues. When all was said and done, it _was_ damned irritating. . . . In the servants' hall he religiously kept his ears open and his mouth shut. And, listening, he learned. For some things said in his hearing were distinctly not pretty, and made one wonder if Prince Victor's deep-rooted confidence in an England mortally cankered with social discontent were not grounded in a surprising familiarity with backstairs morale. Other observations, again, were merely ribald, some were humorous, while all were enlightening. Not a few of the company had seen domestic service in great houses before the war; they knew what was what and--more to the point--what wasn't. One gathered that this pretentious country home fell within the latter classification. Here, it was stated, anybody could buy his way into favour: the more bounding the bounder the brighter his chances of success at Frampton Court. War, the ironic, had caused this noble property to pass into the keeping of a distant and degenerate branch of an old and honoured house; and its present lord and lady, having failed to win the social welcome they had counted on too confidently, were doing their silly, shabby best to squander a princely fortune and dedicate a great name to lasting disrepute by fraternizing with a motley riffraff of profiteering nouveaux riches. Other than bad manners and worse morals, the one genuine thing in the whole establishment was, it seemed, the historic collection of family jewels. This information explained away much of Nogam's perplexity on one score. After dinner, when the house party began to settle into its stride, he made occasion, aping the other servants, to peep in at a door of the great ballroom, where an impromptu dance had been organized; and was rewarded by sight of the Princess Sofia circling the floor in the arms of a boldly good-looking young man whose taste was as poor in flirtation as in self-adornment. To Nogam the young girl looked wan and wistful--as if she were missing somebody. And he wondered if Mr. Karslake knew what a lucky young devil he was. He wondered still more about the present whereabouts and welfare of Mr. Karslake. Prince Victor must have contrived some devious errand to get the young man out and away early that day; for by the time Nogam had looked for him in the morning, Karslake was nowhere to be found; neither had he returned when the party left for Frampton Court--a circumstance which Nogam regretted most bitterly. Watched as he was, it hadn't been possible, that is to say it would have been fatally ill-advised, to have left any sort of message or to have attempted communication through secret channels; and all the while, hours heavy with, it might be, the destiny of England were wasting swiftly into history. Perhaps it was nervousness bred of this anxiety that, in the end, made Nogam's hand slip. Or perhaps the impatient nature of the man who lay so closely secret within the husk of Nogam decided him upon a desperate gamble. In either event, this befell: About the middle of the evening Prince Victor happened to look up from an interesting tête-à-tête in the brilliant drawing-room with his handsome and liberal-minded hostess opportunely to espy Nogam staring at him from the remote recesses of the entrance hall. It was the merest of glimpses; for Victor's casual glance had barely identified the servant when Nogam started guiltily and in a twinkling disappeared; but a glimpse was enough for eyes and a mind alike quick with distrust, enough to assure Victor that Nogam's face had worn an indescribably furtive and hangdog expression, most unlike its ordinary look of amiable stupidity, and widely incongruous with the veniality of his fault. What the deuce, then, was the fellow up to, that he should glower and dodge like a sleuth in a play? Promptly Victor became deaf, blind, and numb to the fascinations so generously paraded by Lady Randolph West; and presently excusing himself, left her and sought his rooms. As he went up the stairs, he saw the door to his bedchamber cautiously opened far enough to permit one eye to spy out and discover his approach. Immediately then the door swung wide, and Nogam ambled into view with an envelope on a salver and an air of childlike innocence, an assumption of ease so transparent, indeed, that only the vision of a child could have been cheated by it. "Just coming to look for you, sir," he announced, glibly. "Telegram, sir--just harrived." "Thanks," said Victor, shortly, taking the envelope and marching on into his rooms. His manner toward his servants was always abrupt. No need to be alarmed by this manifestation of it. Blinking mildly, Nogam trotted at his heels. Seating himself at an escritoire, Victor opened the envelope with a display of languid interest. Curiosity about the contents of a telegram is ordinarily acute. Victor, on the contrary, sat for a long moment staring thoughtfully at nothing and absently turning the envelope over and over in his hands; while Nogam with specious nonchalance found something unimportant to do in another quarter of the room. The envelope was damp and warm to the touch. True: nightfall had brought with it a thick drizzle, and Frampton Court was more than a mile from the post-office. On the other hand, the night was as cold as charity; and an envelope recently steamed open might be expected to hold the heat for a few minutes. Victor thumbed the flap. It lifted readily, without tearing, its gum was wet and more abundant than usual--in fact, it felt confoundedly like library paste, a pot of which, in an ornamental holder, was among the fittings of the escritoire. On the desk pad of blotting paper, too, Victor detected marks of fresh paste defining the contour of the flap. With a countenance whose inscrutability alone was a threat, Victor took out and conned the telegraph form. "CONSULTATION SET FOR MIDNIGHT TO-NIGHT TAKING YOUR ADVICE SHALL NOT ATTEND BUT LEAVE FOR BRIGHTON ELEVEN P.M." A message ostensibly so open and aboveboard that it hadn't been thought worth while to hide its wording under the cloak of a code. There was no signature--unless one were clever or wise enough to transpose the two final letters and take them in relation to the word immediately preceding. "Eleven, M.P.", however, could mean nothing to anybody but Victor--except a body clever enough to hide a dictograph detector in a turnip. So Victor saw no reason to believe that Nogam, although undoubtedly guilty of the sin of prying, had been able to read the meaning below the surface of this communication. Nevertheless, undue inquisitiveness on the part of a servant in the pay of Victor Vassilyevski could have but one reward. "Nogam!" "Sir?" "Fetch me an A-B-C." "Very good, sir." With Nogam out of the way, Victor enclosed the telegram in a new envelope and addressed it simply to _"Mr. Sturm--by hand."_ Then he took a sheet of the stamped notepaper of Frampton Court, tore it roughly, at the fold, and on the unstamped half inscribed several characters in Chinese, using a pencil with a fat, soft lead for this purpose. This message sealed into a second envelope without superscription, he lighted a cigarette and sat smiling with anticipative relish through its smoke, a smile swiftly abolished as the door re-opened; though Nogam found him in what seemed to be a mood of rare sweet temper. Taking the railway guide, Victor ruffled its pages, and after brief study of the proper table remarked: "Afraid I must ask you to run up to town for me to-night, Nogam. If you don't mind ..." "Only too glad to oblige, sir." "I find I have left important papers behind. Give this to Shaik Tsin"--he handed over the blank envelope--"and he will find them for you. You can catch the ten-fifteen up, and return by the twelve-three from Charing Cross." "Very good, sir." "Oh--and see that Mr. Sturm gets this, too, will you? If he isn't in, give it to Shaik Tsin to hand to him. Say it's urgent." "Quite so, sir." "That is all. But don't fail to catch the twelve-three back. I must have the papers to-night." "I shan't fail you, sir--D.V." "Deo volente? You are a religious man, Nogam?" "I 'umbly 'ope so, sir, and do my best to be, accordin' to my lights." "Glad to hear it. Now cut along, or you'll miss the up train." Long after Nogam had left the memory of their talk continued to afford Victor an infinite amount of private entertainment. "A religious man!" he would jeer to himself. "Then--may your God help you, Nogam!" Some thought of the same sort may well have troubled Nogam's mind as he sat in an otherwise untenanted third-class compartment blinking owlishly over the example of Victor's command of the intricacies of Chinese writing. He was happily free of surveillance for the first time in his waking hours of many days. The Chinese chauffeur had driven him to the station, and had furthermore lingered to see that Nogam did not fail to board it. And Nogam felt reasonably safe in assuming that he would not approach the house near Queen Anne's Gate without seeing (for the mere trouble of looking) a second and an entirely gratuitous shadow attach itself to him with the intention of sticking as tenaciously as that which God had given him. But the next hour was all his own. His study of the Chinese phonograms at length resulted in the transformation of his careworn face by a slowly dawning smile, the gleeful smile of a mischief-loving child. And when he had worked for a while on the message, touching up the skillfully drawn characters with a pencil the mate to that which Victor had used, he sat back and laughed aloud over the result of his labours, with some appreciation of the glow that warms the cockles of the artist's heart when his deft pen has raised a cheque from tens to thousands, and he reviews a good job well done. The torn envelope which had held the message to Shaik Tsin lay at his feet. Nogam had not bothered to worry it open so carefully that it might be resealed without inviting comment; though that need not have been a difficult matter, thanks to the dampness of the night air. Of the envelope addressed to Sturm, however, he was more considerate; to violate its integrity and seal it up again was an undertaking that required the nicest handling. Nor was it accomplished much before the train drew into Charing Cross. Outside the station taxis were few and drivers arrogant; and all the 'buses were packed to the guards with law-abiding Londoners homeward bound from theatres and halls. So Nogam dived into the Underground, to come to the surface again at St. James's Park station, whence he trotted all the way to Queen Anne's Gate, arriving at his destination in a phase of semi-prostration which a person of advancing years and doddering habits might have anticipated. Such fidelity in characterization deserved good reward, and had in it a rare stroke of fortune; for as he drew up to it, the door opened, and Sturm came out, saw Nogam, and stopped short. "Thank 'Eaven, sir, I got 'ere in time," the butler panted. "If I'd missed you, Prince Victor wouldn't 'ave been in 'arf a wax. 'E told me I must find you to-night if I 'ad to turn all Lunnon inside out." Pressing the message into Sturm's hand, he rested wearily against the casing of the door, his body shaken by laboured breathing, and--while Sturm, with an exclamation of excitement, ripped open the envelope--surveyed the dark and rain-wet street out of the corners of his eyes. Across the way a slinking shadow left the sidewalk and blended indistinguishably with the crowded shadows of an areaway. In a voice more than commonly rich with accent, Sturm demanded sharply: "What is this? I do not understand!" He shook in Nogam's face the half-sheet of notepaper on which the Chinese phonograms were drawn. "Sorry, sir, but I 'aven't any hidea. Prince Victor didn't tell me anything except there would be no answer, and I was to 'urry right back to Frampton Court." Nogam peered myopically at the paper. "It might be 'Ebrew, sir," he hazarded, helpfully--"by the looks of it, I mean. I suppose some private message, 'e thought you'd understand." "Hebrew, you fool! Damn your impudence! Do you take me for a Jew?" "Beg pardon, sir--no 'arm meant." "No," Sturm declared, "it's Chinese." "Then likely Prince Victor meant you to ask Shaik Tsin to translate it for you, sir." "Probably," Sturm muttered. "I'll see." "Yes, sir. Good-night, sir." Without acknowledging this civility, Sturm turned back into the house and slammed the door. Nogam lingered another moment, then shuffled wearily down the steps and toward the nearest corner. Across the street the voluntary shadow detached itself from cover in the areaway, and skulked after him. He paid no heed. But when the shadow rounded the corner, it saw only a dark and empty street, and pulled up with a grunt of doubt. Simultaneously something not unlike a thunderbolt for force and fury was launched, from the dark shelter of a doorway near by, at its devoted head. And as if by magic the shadow took on form and substance to receive the onslaught. A fist, that carried twelve stone of bone and sinew jubilant with realization of the hour for action so long deferred, found shrewdly the heel of a jawbone, just beneath the ear. Its victim dropped without a cry, but the impact of the blow was loud in the nocturnal stillness of that bystreet, and was echoed in magnified volume by the crack of a skull in collision with a convenient lamppost. Followed a swift patter of fugitive feet. Tempered by veils of mist, the lamplight fell upon a face upturned from a murmurous gutter, a yellow face, wide and flat, with lips grinning back from locked teeth and eyes frozen in a staring question to which no living man has ever known the answer. The pattering footsteps grew faint in distance and died away, the street was still once more, as still as Death.... In the study of Prince Victor Vassilyevski the man Sturm put an impatient question: "Well? What you make of it--hein?" Shaik Tsin looked up from a paper which he had been silently examining by the light of the brazen lamp. "Number One says," he reported, smiling sweetly, while his yellow forefinger moved from symbol to symbol of the picturesque writing: _'"The blow falls to-night. Proceed at once to the gas works and do that which you know is to be done.'"_ "At last!" The voice of the Prussian was full and vibrant with exultancy. He threw back his head with a loud laugh, and his arm described a wild, dramatic gesture. "At last--der Tag! To-night the Fatherland shall be avenged!" Shaik Tsin beamed with friendliest sympathy Sturm turned to go, took three hurried steps toward the door, and felt himself jerked back by a silken cord which, descending from nowhere, looped his lean neck between chin and Adam's apple. His cry of protest was the last articulate sound he uttered. And the last sounds he heard, as he lay with face hideously congested and empurpled, eyeballs starting from their deep sockets, and swollen tongue protruding, were words spoken by Shaik Tsin as that one knelt over him, one hand holding fast the ends of the bowstring that had cut off forever the blessed breath of life, the other flourishing a half-sheet of notepaper. "Fool! Look, fool, and read what vengeance visits a fool who is fool enough to play the spy!" He brandished the papers before those glazing eyeballs. In an eldritch cackle he translated: _"'He who bears this message is a Prussian dog, police trained, a spy. Let his death be a dog's, cruel and swift.--Number One.'"_ XVIII ORDEAL Reviewing the day, as she undressed and prepared for bed, Sofia told herself she had never yet lived through one so wearing, and thought the history of its irksome hours all too legible in the lack-lustre face that looked back from the mirror when Chou Nu uncoifed her hair and brushed its burnished tresses. Though she had slept late, in fact till noon and something after, her sleep had been queerly haunted and unhappy, she could not remember how or why, and she had awakened already ennuyé, with a mind incoherently oppressed, without relish for the promise of the day--in a mood altogether as drear as the daylight that waited upon her unclosing eyes. Main strength of will had not availed to dispel these vapours, neither did their melancholy yield to the distraction provided by first acquaintance with ways of a world unique alike in Sofia's esteem and her experience. She who had theretofore known only in day-dreams the life of light frivolity and fashion which found feverish and trumpery reflection at Frampton Court, was neither equipped nor disposed to be hypercritical in the first hours of her début there; and at any other time, in any other temper, she knew, she must have been swept off her feet by its exciting appeal to her innate love of luxury and sensation. But the sad truth was, it all seemed to her unillusioned vision an elaborate sham built up of tinsel, paste, and paint; and the warmth of her welcome at the hands, indeed in the very arms, of Lady Randolph West, and the success her youth and beauty scored for her--commanding in all envy, admiration, cupidity, or jealousy, according to age, sex, and temporal state of servitude--did nothing to mitigate the harshness of those first impressions. If anything her depression grew more perversely morbid the more she was catered to, courted, flattered, and cajoled. Something had happened, she could never guess what, perhaps some mysterious reaction effected through the chemistry of last night's slumber, to turn her vivid zest in life to ashes in her mouth, so that nothing seemed to matter any more. Thoughts of Karslake as her lover, recollection of her first deep joy in his avowal and her subsequent passion of shame and regret, re-perusal of his note, that last night had seemed so sweet a thing, precious beyond compare--found her indifferent to-day, and left her so. Try as she would, she failed to recapture any sense of the reality of those first raptures. And yet, somehow, she didn't doubt he loved her or that, buried deep beneath this inexplicable apathy, love for Karslake burned on in her heart; but she knew no sort of comfort in such confidence, their love seemed as remote and immaterial an issue as the menu for day after to-morrow's dinner. Nothing mattered! She was able even to meet Prince Victor without her customary shiver of aversion; and when she recalled the persistence and enthusiasm with which she had reasoned herself into believing, last night, that he might be another than her father, she came as near to mirth as she was to come that day; but it was mirth bitter with self-derision. Of course he was her father, she had been a ninny ever to dream contrariwise, or that it mattered. Nor had she met with more success in efforts to find a cause for this drab humour; unless, indeed, it were simply the farthest swing of the pendulum from yesterday's emotional crises, a long swing out of sunlit spaces swept by the brave winds of young romance into a gloomy zone of brooding torpor, whose calm was false, surcharged with unseizable disquiet, its atmosphere electrical with formless apprehensions, its sad twilight shot with lurid gleams no sooner glimpsed than gone. In this state Sofia's sensibilities were less benumbed than bound in a palsy of suspense not wholly destitute of dread; beneath the lethargic shallows of consciousness lay soundless deeps troubled by sinister premonitions.... Now, retracing stage by stage the record of the day, Sofia became aware that its most poignant moment for her was actually the present, with its keen wonder that she had contrived to survive such exquisite tedium. She perceived that she had moved throughout like an automaton swayed by a will outside its own; functioning rather than living; performing appointed business, executing prescribed gestures, uttering foreordained observations, and making dictated responses, all without suggestion of spontaneity, and all without meaning other than as means to bridge an empty space of waiting. Waiting for what? Sofia could not guess.... She went to bed presently, hoping only to find surcease of boredom; and her head no sooner touched the pillow than oblivion closed down upon her faculties like a dense, dark cloud. Discreet and well-instructed, Chou Nu turned the night-light down to a glimmer, placed on and under a chair adjacent to the bed a robe of cashmere that wouldn't rustle, and slippers of fine felt with soles of soft leather, in which footfalls must be inaudible--and glided gently from the room. For sixty minutes its deep hush was unbroken; the even respiration of the girl made no sound, she rested without tossing, without moving a finger. Then, sleep having held her for precisely one hour by the clock, Sofia opened her eyes, drew in a deep breath, and at once sat up on the side of the bed. The memory of that hour was not to leave the girl while life was in her; nor was the question it raised ever to be answered in a fashion satisfactory to her intelligence. When later she heard it stated with authority, by men reputed to be versed in psychic knowledge, that a subject in hypnosis cannot be willed to act contrary to the instincts of his or her better nature, she held her peace, but wondered. Was Victor right, then, and the crime he had willed her to commit in final analysis not repugnant to her instincts? Or was it some secret faculty of the soul, telepathy or of its kin, that roused and sent her to keep her rendezvous with destiny? A riddle never to be read: Sofia only knew that, finding herself awake, she got up, donned négligée and slippers, and set her feet upon the way appointed without its occurring to her that the way was strange, without stopping to question why or whether. If independent volition, sensible or subliminal, were absent, it could hardly have been apparent. Sofia herself was not aware of its suspense or supersession. She knew quite well what she was doing, her every action was direct and decided, the goal alone remained obscure. She only knew that somewhere, somehow, something was going wrong without her, and her presence was required to set it right. Letting herself out into the corridor, she drew the door to behind her, but left it unlatched; with what object, she did not know. But the lateness of the hour, the stillness of the sleeping household, made it seem quite in order that she should pause to look cautiously this way and that and make sure that nobody else was astir to spy upon her or challenge the purpose of this as yet aimless nocturnal flitting. There was nobody that she could see. Down the corridor, then, never asking why that way, like a ghost in haste she sped, but as she drew near to a certain door found her pace faltering. Sofia knew that door; through it Lady Randolph West herself had introduced the girl to her boudoir, not two hours since, when chance, or Fate, or the smooth working out of malicious mortal machinations had moved the two women simultaneously to seek their quarters for the night. And in the boudoir Sofia had spent the quarter of an hour before going on to her own room and bed, civilly attending to vapid chatter and admiring as in duty bound the admirable jewels of the family. Now she saw the door a few inches ajar with, beyond it, a dim glow. The circumstance seemed singular, because--now that she remembered--when Sofia had expressed perfunctory curiosity concerning what precautions were taken to safeguard the jewels, Lady Randolph West had airily informed her that she considered insurance to their appraised value plus a stout lock on the boudoir door better than any strong-box as yet devised by the ingenuity of man. "There's the safe they're kept in, of course," the lady had declared--"but, my dear, a cardboard box will do as well when any burglar who knows his business makes up his mind to get at my trinkets. I never even trouble to lock the thing. I'd rather lose the jewels--and collect the insurance money--than be frightened out of my wits by hearing it blown open. No, thanks ever so: any cracksman skillful enough to pick the lock on the door may bag his loot and go in peace for all of me!" Impulse, at least she called it that, moved Sofia to approach and cautiously open the door still wider. Upon the antique writing-desk that housed the safe burned a single lamp of low candle-power. A door that led to the adjoining bedchamber was tightly shut. Sofia's mistrustful eyes reconnoitred every corner of the room, and reckoned it empty. Again obedient to undisputed impulse, she stepped inside and shut the door. The spring-latch of the American lock found its socket with a soft click. Thereafter, silence, no sound in the boudoir, none from the room beyond. But to Sofia the hurried beating of her heart reverberated on the stillness like the rolling of a drum. Without clear appreciation of how she had got there, she found herself standing over the writing-desk, and discovered what the indifferent light had till now kept hidden, that a false panel in the front of the desk had been thrust back, exposing the face of the safe, and that this last was not even closed. At the same time she grew conscious that her hands were shaking violently, that her every limb, her whole body indeed, was agitated by desperate trembling. And dully asked herself why this should be ... But didn't hesitate. Her actions now more than ever resembled those of an unthinking puppet, although she knew quite well what she was doing; and her gestures might have been the fruit of long lessoning at the hands of some master of stage melodrama, so true were they to theatrical convention. With furtive, frightened glances toward both doors, Sofia dropped to her knees before the safe.... When she stood up again her hands were filled with jewellery, her two hands held a treasure of incalculable price in precious stones. She paused for a little, staring at them with dilate eyes dark in a pale, rapt face. Her lips were parted, but only her quickened breathing whispered past them. She was trembling more painfully than ever. But she seemed unable to think of anything but the jewels, her gaze was held in fascination by their coruscant loveliness as revealed by the light of the little lamp. Hers for the taking! Then, without warning, a tremendous convulsion laid hold on her body and soul, and she was racked and shaken by it, and at its crisis her outstretched hands opened and showered the top of the desk with jewels, then flew to her head and clutched her throbbing temples. She cried out in a low voice of suffering: _"No!"_ And of a sudden she was reeling back from the desk, toward the corridor door, repeating over and over on an ascending scale: _"No! no! no! no! no!"_ Her quaking legs blundered against a chair, her knees gave, she tottered to fall; strong arms caught her, held her safe, a voice she knew yet didn't know in its guarded key muttered in her ear: "Thank God!" She made no struggle, but her eyes of pain and terror sought the speaker's face, and saw that he was the man Nogam. In extremity of amazement she spoke his name. He shook his head. "No longer Nogam," he said in the same low accents, and smiled--"but your father, Michael Lanyard!" XIX UNMASKING One more instant the girl rested passive in uncomprehending astonishment; then abruptly she exerted herself to break free from the supporting embrace, but found the effort wasted for lack of opposition, so that her own violence sent her reeling away half a dozen paces, to bring up against the desk; while Lanyard, making no move more than to drop his rejected arms, remained where she had left him, and requited her indignant stare with a broken smile of understanding, a smile at once tender, tolerant, and sympathetic, with a little quirk of rueful humour for good measure. "My father!" Sofia repeated in a gasp of disdain--"_you!_" He gave a slight shrug. "Such, it appears, is your sad fortune." "A servant!" "And not the proud prince you were promised? Rather a come down, one must admit." Lanyard laughed low, and moved nearer. "I'm sorry, I mean I might be (for myself, too) if Nogam were less a fraud than that pretentious mountebank, Prince Victor--or for the matter of that, if you were as poor of spirit as you would seem on your own valuation, if you were not at heart your mother's daughter, and mine, my child by a woman whom I loved well, and who long ago loved me!" He paused deliberately to let her grasp the full sense of his words, then pursued: "It may help you get your bearings to know that I am truly the Michael Lanyard to whom Messieurs Secretan & Sypher addressed their advertisement--you remember--as this should prove." He offered a slip of paper, and after another moment of dumb staring, the girl took it and read aloud the message which Victor had dictated following Sofia's flight to him from the Café des Exiles. _"'To Michael Lanyard, Intelligence Division, the War Office, Whitehall--'"_ "That is to say," Lanyard interpreted, "of the British Secret Service." "You!" He bowed in light irony. "One regrets one is at present unable to offer better social standing. To-morrow, it may be ... But who knows?" Sofia shook her head impatiently, and in a murmur of deepening amazement resumed her reading of the note: _"'Your daughter Sofia is now with me.. Your own intelligence must tell you nothing could be more fatal than an attempt to communicate with her'"_ To the interrogation eloquent in her eyes Lanyard replied: "Dictated by Victor to Karslake, who passed it on to me, the night he brought you to the house from the Café des Exiles." "You knew--you, who claim to be my father--yet permitted him--?" "You were in the house before I knew I had a daughter; Karslake had no chance to consult me before fetching you. Furthermore, if he had hesitated to carry out Victor's orders just then, not only would he have nullified all our preparations to secure evidence enough to convict the man, or at least run him out of England--" "Prince Victor? What was he doing, that you should--?" "Dabbling in all manner of infamy, from financing a thieves' fence to organizing an association of common criminals to bring it business; from maintaining a corps of agitators to foment social discontent to fostering this last, most imbecile scheme of all, which comes to naught to-night, an attempt to overthrow the British Empire and set up in its stead a Soviet England, with Victor Vassilyevski in the dual rôle of Trotsky and Lenine!" The girl made a sign of bewilderment and incredulity. "What are you telling me? Are you mad?" "No--but Victor is, mad with lust for power, insane with illusions of personal aggrandizement. You don't believe? Listen to me, then, appreciate to what demoniac lengths he was prepared to go to flatter his insane ambitions:" "Sturm has invented a new poison gas, odourless, colourless, the most deadly known, and easily manufactured in vast quantities by adding simple ingredients to ordinary illuminating gas. Fanatic Bolshevist that he was, Sturm offered his formula to Victor, to be used to clear the way for social revolution; and Victor jumped at the offer--has spent vast sums preparing to employ it. His money paid for the recent strike at the Westminster works of the Gas Light and Coke Company, by means of which Victor was able to smuggle a round number of his creatures into its service. His money has corrupted servants employed in Downing Street, the Houses of Parliament, in the homes of the nobility, even in Buckingham Palace itself, men ready at a given signal secretly to turn on gas jets in remote corners and flood the buildings with the very breath of Death itself. And that signal was to have been given to-night. Well, it will not be." "But could any scheme be more grotesquely diabolical? Do you ask more proof of the man's madness? Do you require more excuse for my permitting you to be deceived by Victor for a few weeks, rather than wreck our plans to frustrate his, when all the while Karslake and I were near you, watching over you, learning to love you--he in his fashion, I as your father--and both ready at all times to die in your protection, if it had ever come to that?" Lanyard had drawn so near that only a few inches separated them, and had his voice in such control that at three paces' distance a vague and inarticulate murmur at most might have been heard; but in Sofia's hearing his accents rang with passionate sincerity, persuading her against the reason which would have rejected his indictment of Victor as too fantastic, too imaginative, and too hopelessly overdrawn to be given credence. She believed him, knowing in her heart that he believed his statements to the last word; and knowing more, that he was surely what he represented himself to be, her father. Inscrutable the processes of human hearts: even as from the very first Sofia had instinctively yet unconsciously recognized the intrinsic falsity of Victor's pretensions, so now she perceived the integral honesty that informed Lanyard's every word and nuance of expression, and accepted him without further inquisition. To his insistent "Have I made you understand?" she returned a wan wraith of a smile, pitiful with entreaty, while one of her hands found the way to his. "I think so," she replied in halting apology--"at least, I believe you. But be a little patient with me. It is all so new and strange, what you tell me, it's hard at first to grasp, there's so much I must accept on faith alone, so much I don't understand ..." "I know." Lanyard pressed her hand gently. "But try to have faith; I promise you it shall be fairly rewarded. Only a little longer now, an hour or two at most, and Karslake will be here to prove the truth of all I have asserted. You will believe him, at least." "Of course," the girl said, simply. "I love him. You knew that?" "I guessed, and I am glad, glad for both of you." "But he is safe?" Sofia demanded in sudden access of alarm so strong that her voice rose above the pitch of discretion. "Quietly. Yes, he is safe enough." "You know that for a fact? How do you know--?" "I've seen him to-night, talked with him--not two hours since." "You have been in London?" she questioned--"to-night?" "Rather! Victor sent me." Lanyard laughed lightly. "You didn't know, of course, but--well, I gave him reason to suspect me, so he sent me up to be assassinated by Shaik Tsin. As it turned out, however, Herr Sturm most obligingly understudied for me.... Before coming back, I looked Karslake up. He'd been busy, playing a lone hand, ever since Victor trumped up an errand to keep him out of your way all day. No need to go into tedious details; I found Karslake had matters well in hand: the gas works surrounded by a cordon of troops, the house under close watch, and--best of all--a sworn confession from an Irish Member of Parliament whom Victor had managed to buy with a promise to free Ireland once Soviet England was an accomplished fact. So I left Karslake to wind up loose ends in London, and posted back with my heart in my mouth for fear I'd be too late." "Too late?" Sofia queried with arching brows. "Need I remind you where we are?" A sweep of Lanyard's hand indicated the boudoir; and Sofia started sharply in perplexity and alarm. "Where we are!" she echoed in a frightened whisper. Of a sudden memory returned of what had passed in that room before Lanyard had revealed himself to her, and knowledge of her peril so narrowly escaped drove home like a knife to her heart. "What am I doing here?" she breathed in horror. "What have I done?" "Nothing more dreadful than prove yourself as true as you are fine, by revolting in the end against the most powerful force known to man, the force of suggestion implanted in hypnotism. You couldn't know that it was hypnotic not natural sleep you passed into last night, when Victor tricked you with that damned crystal, or that, while you slept, he willed you to do here to-night what, when it came to the final test, your nature would not let you do." "But he so often told me I had the instincts of a thief--!" "So often--_I_ know--that you were, against your will and reason, by dint of the very iteration of it, coming to accept that lie as a truth whose power there was no contesting. That is why, that you might prove yourself by your own acts, I had to let you undergo your ordeal here to-night, only standing by to make sure no ill came of it. Otherwise you might have carried to your grave the fear instilled into your soul by that blackguard. But now you know he lied, and will never doubt again--or reproach your father for the dark record of his younger years." He checked, lifting hands of desolate appeal, then let them fall. "Dear, if you knew you would not judge me harshly. If only you could know what I have fought up from, a foundling without a name abandoned in a third-rate Parisian hotel, reared a scullion, butt and scapegoat, with associates only of the lowest, scullions, beggars, pickpockets, Apaches, and worse--!" "As if that mattered!" The girl turned a softly suffused face with shining eyes to Lanyard's. Now at last she knew him, now the romance of her dreams of yesterday came true: through the mean masquerade of Nogam the man emerged, identifying himself in her sight unmistakably with that splendid stranger whom she had never quite forgotten since that old-time afternoon when he had met Karslake in the Café des Exiles and talked so intimately of his antecedents, hinting at a history of youthful years strangely analogous with her own. Involuntarily her arms lifted and settled upon his shoulders. "I am so proud to think--" A shrill scream drowned out her words, a woman's voice ranging swiftly the staccato gamut of terror and cracking discordantly on its most piercing note. Then with a bang that shook the flooring and must have been heard in the farthest corners of the house, the bedchamber door was slammed behind their backs. But beyond it the screaming went on in volume imperceptibly muffled by its barrier, one ear-splitting caterwaul following another with such continuity that the wonder was where Lady Randolph West found breath to keep up that atrocious row, and whether any dozen women of average lung-power could have rivalled it. In one sharp movement Lanyard and Sofia disengaged and fell apart, their eyes consulting, hers in dismay, his in mixed exasperation and remorse. "I ought to be shot," he declared, bitterly--"who knew better!--to have delayed here, exposing you to this danger--!" "It couldn't be helped," Sofia insisted; "you had to make me understand. Besides, if I hurry back--" In quick strides Lanyard crossed to the corridor door, unlatched and opened it an inch, peered out, and gave the sum of what he saw in a gesture of finality, then leaving the door ajar turned swiftly back to the girl. "Too late," he said: "they're swarming out into the hall like bees. In another minute ..." Of a sudden he closed with Sofia, roughly clasping her body to him. "Struggle with me!" he pleaded--"get me by the throat, throw me back across the desk--" "What do you mean? Let me go!" In answer to her efforts to wrench away, Lanyard only tightened his hold and swung her toward the desk. "Do as I bid you! It's the only way out. Let them think you heard a noise, got up to investigate, found me here, rifling the safe--" "No," she insisted--"no! Why should I save myself at your expense?--betray you--my father--!" "Then give me the obedience of a daughter ... or let Victor succeed in branding you a thief, the daughter of a thief!" He stilled the protest she would have uttered by placing fingers over her lips. "Listen!" In the corridor an angry rumour of voices, alarmed calls and cries, with thumps and scuffles of hasty feet, in the bedchamber the shrieks persisting without the least hint of failing: as a damned soul might bawl upon its bed of coals ... "Sofia, I implore you!" Still she hesitated. "But you--?" "Never fear for me, remember that I am of the Secret Service: two minutes after I see the inside of the nearest police station, I shall be free--and happy in the assurance that your name is without stain. Then Karslake will come for you, bring you to me ... Now!" Lanyard caught the girl's two wrists together and, throwing himself bodily backward across the desk, carried her hands to his throat. With a simultaneous crash the door was flung back to the wall. Led by Victor Vassilyevski a dozen men, guests and servants, in various stages of dishabille, streamed into the room. XX THE DEVIL TO PAY When it was all over, when the gravelled drive no longer crunched to wheels that bore away the man Nogam to answer for his misdeeds, when the household had quieted down and the most indefatigable sensation-monger had wearied of singing the praises of the Princess Sofia and, tossing off a final whiskey-and-soda, had paddled sleepily back to bed, lights burned on brightly in two parts only of Frampton Court, in the bedchambers tenanted respectively by Prince Victor Vassilyevski and his reputed daughter. Alone, Prince Victor sat at the desk where he had, four hours earlier, inscribed those characters which should have hurried Nogam into a premature grave. That they had failed of their mission was something that fretted Victor Vassilyevski, his mind and nerves, to a pitch of exacerbation all but unendurable. What had become of that sentence to death? And what of that other, the telegram which, forwarded by Nogam's hand to Sturm, should long since have set in motion the organized machinery of murder and demolition? Had Nogam, as he had meekly insisted on being questioned subsequent to his subjugation, truly delivered the two messages as directed and, miraculously escaping his fate decreed, returned to Frampton Court by the twelve-three, likewise in strict conformance with instructions? This statement Nogam had neglected to amplify, and Victor had been chary of too close questioning, lest it elicit too much in the hearing of others. Once overpowered, Nogam had been philosophic about his bad luck; but the eyes in his face of a stoic had held a gleam that Victor didn't altogether like, a light that seemed suspiciously malicious, a suggestion of spirited humour deplorable to say the least in a self-confessed sneak-thief caught in the very act, deplorable and disturbing; in Victor's sight a look constructively indicative of more knowledge than Nogam had any right to possess. Take it any way you pleased, something to think about ... Still more disquieting Victor thought the circumstance that nobody else had seemed to notice that anomalous light in Nogam's eyes; which of course might mean merely that Victor had worked himself into such a state of nerves that he was seeing things, but equally well that the look was one reserved for Victor alone, intentionally or not holding for him a message, if he had but had the wit to read it, of peculiarly personal import. It might have implied, for example, that Victor's half-hearted and paltering distrust of Nogam had all along been only too well warranted. In which case, the fat was already in the fire with a vengeance, and Victor's probable duration of life was dependent wholly upon the speed with which he could quit Frampton Court and hurl his motor-car through the night to the lower reaches of the Thames. Envisagement of the worst at its blackest being part of the holy duty of self-preservation, Victor sat fully dressed, with every other provision made for flight at the first flash of warning, only waiting to make sure, and with what impatience was apparent in the working of paste-coloured features, the wincing and shifting of slotted eyes, the incessant shutting and unclosing of tensed fingers. All rested with the telephone that stood mockingly mute at the man's elbow, callous alike to his anxiety and the rancorous regard in which he held it. His call for the house near Queen Anne's Gate had now been in for more than forty minutes; in that interval he had no less than three times pleaded its urgency to the trunk-line operator. And still the muffled bell beneath the desk was dumb. And the worst of it was, fatal though the delay might prove, he dared not stir a hand to save himself until he _knew_.... In the taut torment of those long-drawn minutes a sound of circumspect scratching was enough to bring Victor to his feet in one startled bound. He stood for a moment, a-twitch, but intent upon the corridor door, then composed himself with indifferent success, approached and opened the door. The girl Chou Nu slipped in, offered a timid courtesy, and awaited his leave to speak. "Well? What is it?" "Excellency: the Princess Sofia refuses to let me stay in the room with her." "Why? Don't you know?" "I think she means to run away. She would not go back to her bed, but walked up and down, till I ventured to urge her to take rest, when she turned on me in a rage and bade me be gone. Then I came to you." Victor took thought and finished with a dour nod. "You have done well. Return, keep watch, let me know if she leaves--" "The door is locked, Excellency: she will not let me in." "Spy through the keyhole, then; or hide in one of the empty rooms across the corridor, and watch--" A muted mutter from the direction of the desk dried speech on Victor's lips. He started hastily toward the source of the sound, midway wheeled, and dismissed the maid with a brusque hand and monosyllable--"Go!"--then fairly pounced upon the telephone. But all he heard, in the course of the ensuing five minutes, was the voice of the trunk-line operator advising him, to begin with, that she was ready to put him through to Westminster, then maddeningly punctuating the buzz and whine of the empty wire with her call of a talking doll--"Are you theah?... Are you theah?... Are you theah?" At length, however, the connection was established; and Victor, hearing the falsetto of Chou Nu's second-uncle cheerily respond to the operator's query, unceremoniously broke in: "Shaik Tsin? It is I, Number One. And the devil's own time I've had getting through. Why didn't you answer more promptly? What's the matter? Has anything gone wrong?" "All is well, Excellency, as well as you could wish, knowing what you know." Profound relief found voice in a sigh from Victor's heart. "You got my messages, then? Nogam delivered them?" "So I understand. I myself did not see him, Excellency. The man Sturm--" On that name the voice died away in what Victor fancied was a gasp that might have been of either fright or pain. "Hello!" he prompted. "Are you there, Shaik Tsin? I say! Are you there? Why don't you answer?" He paused: no sound for seconds that dragged like so many minutes, then of a sudden a deadened noise like the slam of a door heard afar--or a pistol shot at some distance from the telephone in the study. Further and frantic importuning of the cold and unresponsive wire presently was silenced by a new voice, little like that of Shaik Tsin. "Hello? Who's there? I say: that you, Prince Victor?" Involuntarily Victor cried: "Karslake!" "What gorgeous luck! I've been wanting a word with you all evening." "What has happened? Why did Shaik Tsin--?" "Oh, most unfortunate about him--frightfully sorry, but it really couldn't be helped, if he hadn't fought back we wouldn't have had to shoot him. You see, the old devil murdered Sturm to-night, for some reason I daresay you understand better than I: we found a paper on the beggar, written in Chinese, apparently an order for his assassination signed by you. Half a mo': I'll read it to you ..." But if Karslake translated Victor's message, as edited by the hand of Nogam, it was to a wire as deaf as it was dumb. XXI VENTRE À TERRE With exceeding care to avoid noise, Sofia unlocked the door and for the second time since midnight let herself stealthily out into the darkened corridor; but now with the difference that she did what she did in full command of all her wits and faculties, with no subjective war of wills to hinder and confuse her, and with a definite object clearly visioned--a goal no less distant than the railway station. Lanyard had promised that Karslake should come for her within an hour or two and take her away with him, back to London and the arms of the father whom, although so recently revealed and accepted, she had already begun to love; if indeed it were not true that she had in filial sense fallen in love with Lanyard at first sight, through intuition, that afternoon in the Café des Exiles so long, so very long ago! Well: she might as well await Karslake at the station. It would be simpler, she would be more at ease there, would breathe more freely once she turned her back on Frampton Court and all its hateful associations. Where Victor was, she could not rest. If she had feared the man before, now she hated him; but hatred had added to her fear instead of replacing it, she remained afraid, desperately afraid, so that even the thought of continuing under the same roof with him was enough to make her prefer to tramp unknown roads alone in the mirk of that storm-swept night. Though she went in trembling, she felt sure nobody spied upon her going; and in this confidence crept to the great staircase, down to the entrance hall, and on to the front doors; and a good omen it seemed to find these not locked, but simply on the latch. And if the night into which she peered was dark and loud with wind and rain, its countenance seemed kindlier, more friendly far than that of the world she was putting behind her. Without misgivings Sofia stepped out. It was like stepping over the edge of the universe into the eternal night that bides beyond the stars. Neither did waiting seem to habituate her vision to the lack of light. Still, the feel of gravel underfoot ought to guide her down the drive to the great gateway; and once outside the park, clear of its overshadowing trees, one would surely find mitigation of darkness sufficient to show the public road. She took one tentative step out of the recessed doorway and into Victor's arms. That they were Victor's she knew instantly, as much by the crawling of her flesh as by the choking terror that stifled the scream in her throat and froze body and limbs with its paralyzing touch. And then his ironic accents: "So good of you to spare me the trouble of coming for you!" Before she could reply or even think, other hands than his were busy with her. A folded cloth was whipped over the lower half of her face, sealing her lips, and knotted at the nape of her neck. Stout arms clipped her knees and swung her off her feet, leaving her body helpless in Victor's tight embrace. And despite her tardy recovery and efforts to struggle, she was carried swiftly away, a dozen paces or so, then tumbled bodily in upon the floor of a motor-car. The door closed as she tried to pick herself up, the smooth purring of the motor became a leonine roar while she was still on her knees, gears clashed, and the car leaped with a jerk that drove her headlong against the cushions of the seat. Then the dome light was switched on, and she saw Victor with a bleak face sitting over her, an automatic pistol naked in his hand. "Get up!" he said, grimly, "and if there's any thought of fight left in you, think better of it, remember your mother paid with her life the price of defying me, and yours means even less to me. Up with you and sit quietly beside me--do you hear?" He lent her a hand that wrenched her arm brutally and wrung a cry which Victor mocked as Sofia fell upon the seat and cringed back into the corner. For perhaps thirty seconds, while the car raced away down the drive, he continued to hold her in the venom of her sneer; then his gaze veered sharply, and leaning over he switched off the light. With the body of the car again the dwelling-place of darkness, objects beyond its rain-gemmed glass--the heads of the Chinese maid and chauffeur, the twin piers of the nearing gateway--attained dense relief against the blue-white glare of two broad headlight beams, that of the limousine boring through the gateway to intersect at right angles that of another car approaching on the highroad but as yet hidden by the wall of the park. In one breath and the same the lights of the second car swerved in toward the gateway, and consternation seized hold of Sofia's intelligence and wiped it clear of all coherence. Already the strange lamps were staring blankly in between the piers--and the momentum of Victor's car was too great to be arrested within the distance. The girl cried out, but didn't know it, and crouched low; the horn added a squawk of frenzy to a wild clamour of yells; all prefatory to a scrunching, rending crash as, in the very mouth of the gateway, a front fender of the incoming car ripped through the rear fender above which Sofia was sitting. Thrown heavily against Victor, then instantly back to her place, she felt the car, with brakes set fast, turn broadside to the road, skid crabwise, and lurch sickeningly into the ditch on the farther side. For an interminable time, while the ponderous fabric rocked and toppled, threatening very instant to crash upon its side, the rear wheels spun madly and the chain-bound tires tore in vain at greasy road metal. Without clear comprehension of what was happening, Sofia heard shouts from the other car, now at a standstill, and an oddly syncopated popping. The window in the door on Victor's side rang like a cracked bell, shivered, and fell inward, clashing. With a growl of rage, Victor bent forward and levelled an arm through the opening. From his hand truncated tongues of orange flame, half a dozen of them, stabbed the gloom to an accompaniment of as many short and savage barks. Then the chains at last bit through to a purchase, the car scrambled to the crown of the road and lunged precipitately away; and the lights of the other dropped astern in the space of a rest between heartbeats. Sitting back, Victor turned on the dome light again, and extracting an empty magazine clip from the butt of his automatic pistol, replaced it with another, loaded. From this occupation he looked up with lips curling in contempt of Sofia's terror. "Your friends," he observed, "were a thought behindhand, eh? When you come to know me better, my dear, you'll find they invariably are--with me." Aftermath of fright made her tongue inarticulate; and Victor's sneer took on a colour of mean amusement. "Something on your mind?" She twisted her hands together till the laced fingers hurt. "Wha-what are you go-going to do with me?" "Make good use of you, dear child," he laughed: "be sure of that!" "What do you mean?" "What do you think?" "I don't know ..." "Really not? But there I think you do injustice to your admirable intelligence." The jeering laugh sounded as he put out the light again, in darkness the derisive voice pursued: "If you must know in so many words--well, I mean to keep you by me till the final curtain falls. As long as it lasts, yours will be an interesting life--I give my word." "And you call yourself my father!" "Oh, no! No, indeed: that's all over and done with, the farce is played out; and while I'm aware my rôle in it wasn't heroic, I shan't play the purblind fool in the afterpiece--pure drama--upon which the curtain is now rising. Neither need you. Oh, I'll be frank with you, if you wish, lay all my cards on the table." A deliberate pause ended in a chuckle. "I have at present precisely two uses for my precious little Sofia: She will serve excellently as insurance against further persecution on the part of her accomplished and energetic father--with whom I shall deal in my good leisure--and ... But need one be crudely explicit?" Sofia answered nothing to that, for a long time she said nothing, but sat pondering.... And Victor was speedily provided with another interest which engrossed him to the exclusion of further efforts to bait a victim defenseless against his insolence. When for the third time after that narrow scrape at the gates the man roused up to peer back through the rear window of the limousine, Sofia heard a harshly sibilant intake of breath between shut teeth, and surmised the discovery that the car which had so narrowly missed blocking their escape had picked up the trail, and was now in hot chase. Even youth, however, could distill but slender hope from this. The pace was too terrific at which Victor's car was thundering through the night-bound countryside, it seemed idle to dream that another could overhaul it, even though driven with as much skill and maniacal recklessness. And Sofia returned to thoughts to which Victor's innuendo had given definite shape and colour, if with an effect far from that of his intention. Threatened, the spirit of the girl responded much as sane young flesh will to a cold plunge. She had forgotten to tremble, and though still tense-strung in every fibre was able to sit still, look steadily into the face of peril, and calculate her chances of cheating it. Presently, in a tone so even it won begrudged admiration, she asked: "Where are you taking me?" "Do you really care?" "Enough to ask." "But why should I tell you?" "No reason. I presume it doesn't really matter, I'll know soon enough." "Then I don't mind enlightening you. We're bound for the Continent by way of Limehouse. A launch is waiting for us in Limehouse Reach, a yacht off Gravesend. Oh, I have forgotten nothing! By daybreak we'll be at sea." "We?" "You and I." "You deceive yourself, Prince Victor. I shan't accompany you." "How amusing! And is it a secret, how you propose to stand against my will?" Sofia was silent for a little; then, "I can kill myself," she said, quietly. "To be sure you can! And when I tire of you, perhaps I'll humour your morbid inclinations--if they still exist." "You are a fool," Sofia returned, bluntly, "if you think I shall go aboard that yacht alive." "Brava!" Victor laughed, and clapped his hands. "Brava! brava!" He sat up for another look out of the rear window, sucked at his breath even more sharply than before, and snatching up the speaking-tube pronounced urgent words in Chinese. The head of the chauffeur, in stark silhouette against the leading glow, bent toward the tube, and nodded rapidly. And to the deep-throated roar of an unmuffled exhaust, the heavy car leaped, like a spirited animal stung by whip and spur, and settled into a stride to which what had gone before was as a preliminary canter to the heartbreaking drive down to the home-stretch. Lights began to dot the roadside. Widely spaced at first, unbroken ranks were soon streaking past the tear-blind windows. Outskirts of London were being traversed; but neither driving sheets of rain against which human vision failed, nor the chance of encountering belated traffic, worked any slackening of the pace. Only when a corner had to be negotiated did the car slow down, and then never to the point of sanity; and the turn once rounded, its flight would again become headlong, lunatic, suicidal. The stringed lamps wove a wavering luminous ribbon without end; a breeze laden with the wet fragrance of London drove great gusts of rain in stringing showers through the broken window. Turns and twists grew more frequent, apparently favouring the pursuit. Victor now knelt constantly on the back seat, his face in the fitful play of light and shadow uncannily resembling that of a hunted jungle cat. On the polished steel of his pistol sinister gleams winked and faded. From his snarling lips foul oaths fell, a steady stream, black blasphemies spewed up from the darkest dives of the Orient--most of them happily couched in the tongues of their origin and so unintelligible to his one auditor. As it was, she heard and understood enough, too much. Nevertheless, the man was not too completely absorbed in watching the shifting fortunes of the race to be unmindful of the girl. And when once she sat up to ease cramped limbs, he misread her intention and, catching her viciously by an arm, threw her back into her corner and advised her not to play the giddy little fool. After that Sofia was at pains to stir as seldom as possible, and bided her time quietly enough, but never for an instant relaxed her watchfulness or lost heart. The shouldering houses that hedged their course discovered a profile, ragged, black against a sky whose purple dimness held the first dull presage of dawn. In the wild rush of a marauding tomcat the car crossed a broad public square and sped up the graded approach to a bridge. The smell of the Thames was unmistakable, the far-flung lamps of the Embankment were pearls aglow upon violet velvet. Leaving the bridge, the limousine took a turn on two wheels, and immediately something happened, seemingly some attempt to stop it was made. Vociferous voices hailed it, only to induce an augmented bellow of the exhaust with an instantaneous acceleration of impetus. Then something was struck and tossed aside as a bull might toss a dog--a dark shape whirling and flopping hideously; and an agonized screaming made the girl cower, sick with horror, and cover her ears with her hands. Before she was able to forget those qualms many more minutes of frantic driving had flung to the rear many a mile of silent streets. Of a sudden she heard an inhuman cry and, looking up, saw Victor dash the butt of his pistol through the glass, then reversing the weapon pour through the opening a fusillade whose effect was presumably gratifying, for he laughed to himself when the pistol was empty, laughed briefly but with vicious glee. That laugh levelled the last barrier of doubt and fear and nerved Sofia finally to test the forlorn hope she had been nursing ever since Victor had let her see a little way into his mind as to her fate. Until he could reload, only the tradition of the sexes lent him theoretical superiority; whereas he was in fact a man well on the thither side of middle-age, his virility sapped by long indulgence of unbridled appetites; while Sofia was a woman in the fullest flush of her first mature powers. Gathering herself together, she inched forward and made ready to spring, bear him down, overpower him--by some or any means put him hors de combat long enough for her to fling a door open and herself out into the street.... With squealing brakes the car shaved an acute corner and slid on locked wheels to a dead halt so unexpected that it was Sofia who plunged floundering to the floor, while Victor only by a minor miracle escaped catapulting through the front windows. The next instant, as Sofia struggled to her knees, the door behind her was wrenched open from without and, at a sign from Victor, rough hands laid hold of the girl and dragged her out bodily. In a passion of despair, she lost her senses for a time and like a madwoman fought, shrieking, biting, kicking, clawing, scratching.... With returning lucidity she found herself, panting and dishevelled, arms pinned to her sides, struggling on for all that, being hustled by some half a dozen men across a narrow sidewalk of uneven flagstones. Simultaneously the shutter of perceptions snapped, photographing permanently upon the super-sensitized film of conscious memory the glimpsed vista of a grim, mean street whose repellent uglinesses grinned through the boding twilight like lineaments of some monstrous mask of evil. Then she tripped on a low stone step, stumbled, and was half-carried, half-thrown into a narrow and malodorous hallway. Between her and the sweet liberty of the rain-washed air a door crashed like the crack of doom. XXII THE SEVEN BRASS HINGES Into a space perhaps four feet in width from wall to wall and seven deep from the front door to the foot of a cramped flight of crazy wooden stairs, some ten people were crowded, Sofia and the maid Chou Nu in a knot of excited men. In the saffron glow of an ill-trimmed paraffin lamp smoking in a wall bracket, desperate faces, yellow and brown and white, consulted one another with rolling eyeballs and strange tongues clamorous. Sofia heard the broken rustling of heavy respirations; she saw uncouth gesticulations carve the shadows; her nostrils were revolted by effluvia of unclean bodies, garments saturate with opium smoke and curious cookery, breaths sour with alcohol. Two were busy at the door, under the direction of Prince Victor, setting stout bars into iron sockets. When they had finished, Victor elbowed them out of his way and thrust back the slide of a narrow horizontal peephole, through which he reconnoitred. The tall, thin body stiffened as he looked, and without turning he flung an open hand behind him and snapped a demand in Chinese. Somebody slipped a revolver into his palm. Levelling it he sent a volley crashing through the peephole. Yells responded, and in the hush that fell upon the final shot a noise of fugitive feet scraping and stumbling on cobbles. A bullet struck the door a sounding thump and all but penetrated, raising a bump on the inner face of its thick oaken panels; and Victor shut the slide and turned back. Subservient silence saluted him. He spoke in Chinese, issuing (Sofia gathered) instructions for the defense of the house. One by one the men designated dropped out of the group about her. Three shuffled off into a room adjoining the hallway. Two others ran briskly up the stairs. A sixth Victor directed to stand by the barred door. His chauffeur and another Chinaman he told off for his personal attendance. The maid Chou Nu was left to shift for herself, and while Sofia could see her she did not shift a finger from her pose of terror, flattened to the wall. When Sofia came back that way, the girl had vanished, however. Nor was she seen again alive. Her arms held fast, Sofia was partly led and partly dragged down the hall, Victor herding the group on past the staircase and into a bare room at the back of the house, where a solitary lamp burning on a deal table discovered for all other furnishing broken chairs, coils of tarred rope, a rack of ponderous oars and boat-hooks, a display of shapeless oilskins and sou'westers on pegs. The windows were boarded up from sills to lintels, the air was close and dank with the stale flavour of foul tidal waters. Here Victor took charge of Sofia, the chauffeur holding the lamp to light the other Chinaman at his labours with a trap-door in the floor, a slab of woodwork so massive that, when its iron bolts had been drawn, it needed every whit of the man's strength to lift and throw it back upon its hinges; and its crashing fall made all the timbers quake and groan. Through the square opening thus discovered Sofia saw a ladder of several slimy steps washed by black, oily waters that sucked and swirled sluggishly round spiles green with weed and ooze. Down these steps the Chinaman crept gingerly, but halfway paused with a cry, then cringed back to the head of the ladder, yellow face blanched, slant eyes piteous with fear, as he exhibited an end of stout mooring line whose other end was made fast to a ring bolt in one of the joists. With a smothered oath Victor snatched the rope's end from the trembling hand and examined it closely. Even Sofia could see that it had been cleanly severed by a knife. Victor's countenance was ablaze as he dropped the rope. Before the tempest of his wrath the Chinaman bent like a reed, with faint, protesting bleats and feebly weaving hands. But in full tide the tirade faltered, Victor seemed to forget his anger or else to remind himself it was puerile in contrast with the mortal issues that now confronted him. He turned to Sofia eyes of cold fire in a wintry countenance. "So," he pronounced, slowly, "it appears you are to have your way, after all, and more speedily than either of us reckoned. You are to die, and so am I, this day--you in my arms. Well, it is time, I daresay, when I permit myself to be duped and overreached by police spies like your persevering father and lover. Yes; I am ready to pay the price of my fatuity--but not until they had paid me for their victory--and dearly. Come!" He motioned to the Chinese to reclose and fasten the trap-door, and grasping Sofia's wrist with cruel fingers hurried her back through the hallway. Repeated breaks of pistol-fire guided them to the front room, a racket echoed in diminished volume from the street. In an atmosphere already thick with acrid fumes of smokeless powder two men held the windows, firing through loopholes in iron-bound blinds of oak. At their feet a third squatted, reloading for them as occasion required. As Sofia and Victor entered one man dropped his weapon and, grunting, fell back from his window to nurse a shattered hand. Releasing the girl without another word, Victor caught up the pistol and took the vacant post. Instantly, on peering out, he fired once, then again. Evidently missing both shots, he settled to await a better target, eyes intent to the loophole. In the course of the next few minutes he changed position but once, when, after firing several more shots, he tossed the empty weapon to the man on the floor and received a loaded one in exchange. Seeing him thus employed, altogether forgetful, Sofia began to back toward the hall, step by cautious step, keeping her attention fixed to Victor throughout. But he seemed to be completely preoccupied with his markmanship, and paid her no heed. Nevertheless, when she at length found courage to swing and dart away through the door, Victor flung three curt words to the fellow at his feet, who grunted, rose, and glided from the room in close chase. The guard at the front door was not so busy as Sofia had hoped to find him, not too interested in the progress of siege operations outside to note her approach and look round from his peephole with a menacing grin of welcome; and his unmistakable readiness, as pistol in hand he took a single step toward her, drove the girl back to the foot of the stairs. Then the other came swiftly after her, and Sofia swung in panic and stumbled up the steps. There were others up above, two to her certain knowledge, possibly many more of Victor's creatures; but if only she could find some sort of refuge in the uppermost fastnesses of the rookery, perhaps ... Like a shape of smoke wind-driven, she sped up the first flight, then the second, only pausing at the head of the third and last flight to throw hunted glances right, left, and behind her. Overhead a skylight with dingy panes diffused a dull blue glimmer which discovered a yawning door at her elbow, a pocket of black mystery beyond, and on the uppermost steps of the staircase her patient yellow shadow, his upturned eyes inscrutable but potentially revolting with their very concealment of the intent behind them. Impossible that a worse thing could await her beyond that dark threshold.... She crossed it in one stride, swung the door to, and set her shoulders against it. Outside she heard the shuffling footfalls pause. The knob rattled. But instead of the inward thrust against which she stood braced, there came the least of outward pulls, as if to make sure that the latch had caught; and after a brief pause a key grated in the lock, was withdrawn, and the slippered feet withdrew in turn. When her lungs ceased to labour painfully, she took her courage in both hands and began to explore, groping blindly through darkness, encountering nothing till she blundered into a table which held a glass lamp for paraffin oil, like those in use below. Fumbling over the top of the table, she found matches, struck one, and set its fire to the wick. The flame waxed and grew steady in a crusted chimney, revealing a room with a slant ceiling and two dormer windows, boarded; in one corner a cot-bed with tumbled blankets, near this a low wooden stand, with a pipe, spirit lamp, and other paraphernalia of an opium smoker--no chairs, not another stick of furniture of any kind. Removing the lamp, the girl set it on the floor, and pushed the table over against the door. By not so long as half a minute would its reinforcement delay Victor when he made up his mind to get in. But in such emergencies the human kind is not impatient of the most futile expedients. There was nothing more she could do. She stood still, listening. The rattle of pistol fire three floors below continued in fits and starts, but the sound of it was oddly unreal, resembling more stammering explosions of a string of firecrackers than snaps of the whiplash of Death. She tried one of the windows without encouragement, but at the other found a board with a loose end, which she pried aside, till through begrimed glass she could see a ghastly, weeping sky of daybreak and, by craning her neck, peer down into the dark gully of the street. At first she thought it empty; but presently her straining vision made out two huddled shapes upon the farther sidewalk, close under the walls of a public house whose sign she could just barely decipher: the Red Moon. Then, about to draw back from the window, she saw five men, oddly foreshortened figures from that lofty coign of view, leave the Red Moon by one of its bar entrances, bearing between them a heavy beam of wood, and with this improvised battering-ram aimed at the door to the besieged house, charge awkwardly across the cobbles. The house spat fire from door and windows, a withering blast. In the middle of the street the beam was abandoned, three of its fool-hardy bearers took to their heels, each shaping an individual course, while one lay still upon the wet black stones, and another, apparently wounded in the legs, sought pitifully to drag himself by his arms, inch by inch, out of the zone of fire. But presently his efforts grew feeble, then he, too, lay stirless, prone in the sluicing rain. The girl shrank back from the window, hiding her eyes as if to blot out that picture. The light, that is to say the absence of it in true sense, the angle of view, and the distance, all had conspired to prevent her from making sure that neither her father nor Karslake were of those four whose broken bodies cluttered the street. But the fear and uncertainty were maddening.... She wheeled suddenly toward the door: the ancient stairs were creaking beneath a measured tread. She made an offer to add her weight to that of the table, but checked and fell back immediately, seeing the folly of sacrificing her strength, the wisdom of saving it to serve her when finally.... The creaking ceased, the wards of the lock grated, the knob turned, the door was thrust open--the table offering little hindrance if any. From the threshold Victor eyed the girl with a twitching grin. "The time is at hand," he announced with a parody of punctilio. "We have beaten them off in the street, but they have found the tunnel from the cellar of the Red Moon, and are attacking from the river besides. So, my dear, it ends for us...." In silence, shoulders to the wall farthest from the door, Sofia watched him unwinking. The lamp at her feet painted the tensely poised young body and bloodless face with quaint, stagey shadows. Victor's glance ranged the cheerless room. "I think you understand me," he said. She might have been a waxwork dummy out of Madame Tussaud's. A white blaze of madness transfigured Victor's countenance. He took one step toward Sofia. In movements so precisely coordinated that they seemed one and instantaneous, the girl stooped, caught up the lamp, and threw it with all her might. Victor ducked his head. The lamp sailed on, described a descending curve through the open doorway into the well of the staircase, struck, and exploded. In the clutches of the maniac, Sofia was aware of the lurid glare, momentarily gaining strength, that filled the rectangle of the doorway. In through this last, while iron hands tightened on her throat and consciousness grew dark with closing shadows, a man's shape passed, then another.... The grip on her throat grew lax, the hands left it free. She reeled, but somebody caught her up and bore her swiftly from the room, leaving two who fought together like beasts on the floor, locked in each other's arms, rolling and squirming, rearing and flopping.... The scorch of flames stung her cheek, but she forgot that when their broken light made visible the features of Karslake above the arms wherein she lay cradled. Turning aside from the staircase, Karslake bore her to the ladder leading to the skylight, whose broken glass crunched beneath his heels at every step. In the open air he pulled up for a moment's rest, but continued to hold Sofia in his arms. The wind raved about them, buffeted them, tore their breath away, rain pelted them like birdshot; but they clung to each other and were unaware of reason for complaint. Presently, however, Karslake remembered, and anxiously endeavoured to disengage from these tenacious arms. "Let me go, dearest," he muttered. "I must go back--I left your father to take care of Victor, and--" As if evoked by his very solicitude Lanyard emerged from the skylight hatch, waved a hand in gay salute, then turned to stare down into the flaming pit from which he had climbed. After a little he fell back a pace. Then slowly, with the laboured movements of exhaustion, Victor worked head and shoulders through the opening and dragged himself out upon the roof. On all fours he held in doubt, his head moving from side to side like the head of a stricken beast, seeking his enemy with dazzled eyes. Then he made Lanyard out and, pulling himself together for the supreme effort, launched at his throat with the pounce of a great cat. Lanyard met him halfway, caught him in the middle of his bound, wound wiry arms round the man and held him helpless. His voice rang clear above the crackle of flames: "Victor! have you forgotten how you threatened one night, twenty years ago, to follow me to the very gates of Hell, and what I promised you--that, if you did, I'd push you inside? Or did you think I would forget?" He cast the man from him, backward, down into the hungry maw of that inferno.... 
30853	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 30853-h.htm or 30853-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30853/30853-h/30853-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30853/30853-h.zip) MRS. RAFFLES Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman Narrated by Bunny Edited by JOHN KENDRICK BANGS Illustrated by Albert Levering [Illustration: "'IT'S FINE, BUNNY,' SHE CRIED"] New York and London Harper & Brothers Publishers 1905 Copyright, 1905, by Harper & Brothers. All rights reserved. Published October, 1905. Contents CHAPTER PAGE I. THE ADVENTURE OF THE _HERALD_ PERSONAL 1 II. THE ADVENTURE OF THE NEWPORT VILLA 14 III. THE ADVENTURE OF MRS. GASTER'S MAID 28 IV. THE PEARL ROPE OF MRS. GUSHINGTON-ANDREWS 42 V. THE ADVENTURE OF THE STEEL BONDS 56 VI. THE ADVENTURE OF THE FRESH-AIR FUND 69 VII. THE ADVENTURE OF MRS. ROCKERBILT'S TIARA 84 VIII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE CARNEGIE LIBRARY 99 IX. THE ADVENTURE OF THE HOLD-UP 115 X. THE ADVENTURE OF MRS. SHADD'S MUSICALE 132 XI. THE ADVENTURE OF MRS. INNITT'S COOK 150 XII. THE LAST ADVENTURE 165 Illustrations "'IT'S FINE, BUNNY,' SHE CRIED" _Frontispiece_ "THIS I WOULD SELL TO THE SUFFERING POOR" _Facing p._ 4 "THE WHOLE CONTENTS AND THE PLATTER AS WELL FELL AT MY FEET" 13 "HER SLIGHT LITTLE FIGURE CONVULSED WITH GRIEF" 40 "AND THEN THERE CAME A RIPPING SOUND" 52 "I, OF COURSE, DID NOT TELL HENRIETTA OF EIGHT BEAUTIES I HAD KEPT OUT" 54 "'AFTER WHICH HE WILL COME TO NEWPORT'" 62 "MR. BOLIVAR WAS DULY IMPRESSED WITH THE EXTENT OF HENRIETTE'S FORTUNE" 66 ONE OF THE BENEFICIARIES AT PALM BEACH 82 "IT WAS NOT ALWAYS EASY TO GET THE RIGHT LIGHT" 90 "ALL WAS AS HENRIETTE HAD FORETOLD" 94 "'IF YOU WANTED A LAKE, MR. HIGGINBOTHAM, I--'" 110 "AS KEEN AND HIGH-HANDED A PERFORMANCE AS I EVER WITNESSED" 124 "ON HER WAY TO EARLY CHURCH I WAYLAID NORAH" 162 "HENRIETTE WAS TESTING THE FIFTY-THOUSAND-DOLLAR PIANO" 172 "MY MISERY IS DEEP BUT I AM BUOYED UP BY ONE GREAT HOPE" 178 Mrs. Raffles I THE ADVENTURE OF THE _HERALD_ PERSONAL That I was in a hard case is best attested by the fact that when I had paid for my Sunday _Herald_ there was left in my purse just one tuppence-ha'penny stamp and two copper cents, one dated 1873, the other 1894. The mere incident that at this hour eighteen months later I can recall the dates of these coins should be proof, if any were needed, of the importance of the coppers in my eyes, and therefore of the relative scarcity of funds in my possession. Raffles was dead--killed as you may remember at the battle of Spion Kop--and I, his companion, who had never known want while his deft fingers were able to carry out the plans of that insinuating and marvellous mind of his, was now, in the vernacular of the American, up against it. I had come to the United States, not because I had any liking for that country or its people, who, to tell the truth, are too sharp for an ordinary burglar like myself, but because with the war at an end I had to go somewhere, and English soil was not safely to be trod by one who was required for professional reasons to evade the eagle eye of Scotland Yard until the Statute of Limitations began to have some bearing upon his case. That last affair of Raffles and mine, wherein we had successfully got away with the diamond stomacher of the duchess of Herringdale, was still a live matter in British detective circles, and the very audacity of the crime had definitely fastened the responsibility for it upon our shoulders. Hence it was America for me, where one could be as English as one pleased without being subject to the laws of his Majesty, King Edward VII., of Great Britain and Ireland and sundry other possessions upon which the sun rarely if ever sets. For two years I had led a precarious existence, not finding in the land of silk and money quite as many of those opportunities to add to the sum of my prosperity as the American War Correspondent I had met in the Transvaal led me to expect. Indeed, after six months of successful lecturing on the subject of the Boers before various lyceums in the country, I was reduced to a state of penury which actually drove me to thievery of the pettiest and most vulgar sort. There was little in the way of mean theft that I did not commit. During the coal famine, for instance, every day passing the coal-yards to and fro, I would appropriate a single piece of the precious anthracite until I had come into possession of a scuttleful, and this I would sell to the suffering poor at prices varying from three shillings to two dollars and a half--a precarious living indeed. The only respite I received for six months was in the rape of the hansom-cab, which I successfully carried through one bitter cold night in January. I hired the vehicle at Madison Square and drove to a small tavern on the Boston Post Road, where the icy cold of the day gave me an excuse for getting my cabby drunk in the guise of kindness. Him safely disposed of in a drunken stupor, I drove his jaded steed back to town, earned fifteen dollars with him before daybreak, and then, leaving the cab in the Central Park, sold the horse for eighteen dollars to a snow-removal contractor over on the East Side. It was humiliating to me, a gentleman born, and a partner of so illustrious a person as the late A. J. Raffles, to have to stoop to such miserable doings to keep body and soul together, but I was forced to confess that, whatever Raffles had left to me in the way of example, I was not his equal either in the conception of crime or in the nerve to carry a great enterprise through. My biggest coups had a way of failing at their very beginning--which was about the only blessing I enjoyed, since none of them progressed far enough to imperil my freedom, and, lacking confederates, I was of course unable to carry through the profitable series of abductions in the world of High Finance that I had contemplated. Hence my misfortunes, and now on this beautiful Sunday morning, penniless but for the coppers and the postage-stamp, with no breakfast in sight, and, fortunately enough, not even an appetite, I turned to my morning paper for my solace. [Illustration: "THIS I WOULD SELL TO THE SUFFERING POOR"] Running my eye up and down the personal column, which has for years been my favorite reading of Sunday mornings, I found the usual assortment of matrimonial enterprises recorded: pathetic appeals from P. D. to meet Q. on the corner of Twenty-third Street at three; imploring requests from J. A. K. to return at once to "His Only Mother," who promises to ask no questions; and finally--could I believe my eyes now riveted upon the word?--my own sobriquet, printed as boldly and as plainly as though I were some patent cure for all known human ailments. It seemed incredible, but there it was beyond all peradventure: "WANTED.--A Butler. BUNNY preferred. Apply to Mrs. A. J. Van Raffles, Bolivar Lodge, Newport, R.I." To whom could that refer if not to myself, and what could it mean? Who was this Mrs. A. J. Van Raffles?--a name so like that of my dead friend that it seemed almost identical. My curiosity was roused to concert pitch. If this strange advertiser should be-- But no, she would not send for me after that stormy interview in which she cast me over to take the hand of Raffles: the brilliant, fascinating Raffles, who would have won his Isabella from Ferdinand, Chloe from her Corydon, Pierrette from Pierrot--ay, even Heloise from Abelard. I never could find it in my heart to blame Henriette for losing her heart to him, even though she had already promised it to me, for I myself could not resist the fascination of the man at whose side I faithfully worked even after he had stolen from me this dearest treasure of my heart. And yet who else could it be if not the lovely Henriette? Surely the combination of Raffles, with or without the Van, and Bunny was not so usual as to permit of so remarkable a coincidence. "I will go to Newport at once," I cried, rising and pacing the floor excitedly, for I had many times, in cursing my loneliness, dreamed of Henriette, and had oftener and oftener of late found myself wondering what had become of her, and then the helplessness of my position burst upon me with full force. How should I, the penniless wanderer in New York, get to Bolivar Lodge at Newport? It takes money in this sordid country to get about, even as it does in Britain--in sorry truth, things in detail differ little whether one lives under a king or a president; poverty is quite as hard to bear, and free passes on the railroad are just as scarce. "Curses on these plutocrats!" I muttered, as I thought of the railway directors rolling in wealth, running trains filled with empty seats to and from the spot that might contain my fortune, and I unable to avail myself of them for the lack of a paltry dollar or two. But suddenly the thought flashed over me--telegraph collect. If it is she, she will respond at once. And so it was that an hour later the following message was ticked over the wires: "Personal to-day's _Herald_ received. Telegraph railway fare and I will go to you instantly. (Signed), BUNNY." For three mortal hours I paced the streets feverishly awaiting the reply, and at two-thirty it came, disconcerting enough in all conscience: "If you are not a bogus Bunny you will know how to raise the cash. If you are a bogus Bunny I don't want you." It was simple, direct, and convincing, and my heart fluttered like the drum-beat's morning call to action the moment I read it. "By Jove!" I cried. "The woman is right, of course. It must be Henriette, and I'll go to her if I have to rob a nickel-in-the-slot machine." It was as of old. Faint-hearted I always was until some one gave me a bit of encouragement. A word of praise or cheer from Raffles in the old days and I was ready to batter down Gibraltar, a bit of discouragement and a rag was armor-plate beside me. "'If you are not a bogus Bunny you will know,'" I read, spreading the message out before me. "That is to say, _she_ believes that if I am really myself I can surmount the insurmountable. Gad! I'll do it." And I set off hot-foot up Fifth Avenue, hoping to discover, or by cogitation in the balmy air of the spring-time afternoon, to conceive of some plan to relieve my necessities. But, somehow or other, it wouldn't come. There were no pockets about to be picked in the ordinary way. I hadn't the fare for a ride on the surface or elevated cars, where I might have found an opportunity to relieve some traveller of his purse, and as for snatching such a thing from some shopper, it was Sunday and the women who would have been an easy prey on a bargain-day carried neither purse nor side-bag with them. I was in despair, and then the pealing bells of St. Jondy's, the spiritual home of the multi-millionaires of New York, rang out the call to afternoon service. It was like an invitation--the way was clear. My plan was laid in an instant, and it worked beyond my most hopeful anticipations. Entering the church, I was ushered to a pew about halfway up the centre aisle--despite my poverty, I had managed to keep myself always well-groomed, and no one would have guessed, to look at my faultless frock-coat and neatly creased trousers, at my finely gloved hand and polished top-hat, that my pockets held scarcely a brass farthing. The service proceeded. A good sermon on the Vanity of Riches found lodgment in my ears, and then the supreme moment came. The collection-plate was passed, and, gripping my two pennies in my hand, I made as if to place them in the salver, but with studied awkwardness I knocked the alms-platter from the hands of the gentleman who passed it. The whole contents and the platter as well fell at my feet, and from my lips in reverent whispers poured forth no end of most abject apologies. Of course I assisted in recovering the fallen bills and coins, and in less time than it takes to tell it the vestryman was proceeding on his way up the aisle, gathering in the contributions from other generously disposed persons as he went, as unconsciously as though the _contretemps_ had never occurred, and happily unaware that out of the moneys cast to the floor by my awkward act two yellow-backed fifty-dollar bills, five half-dollars, and a dime remained behind under the hassock at my feet, whither I had managed to push them with my toe while offering my apologies. [Illustration: "THE WHOLE CONTENTS AND THE PLATTER AS WELL FELL AT MY FEET"] An hour later, having dined heartily at Delsherrico's, I was comfortably napping in a Pullman car on my way to the Social Capital of the United States. II THE ADVENTURE OF THE NEWPORT VILLA There is little need for me to describe in detail the story of my railway journey from New York to Newport. It was uneventful and unproductive save as to the latter end of it, when, on the arrival of the train at Wickford, observing that the prosperous-looking gentleman bound for Boston who occupied the seat next mine in the Pullman car was sleeping soundly, I exchanged my well-worn covert coat for his richly made, sable-lined surtout, and made off as well with his suit-case on the chance of its holding something that might later serve some one of my many purposes. I mention this in passing only because the suit-case, containing as it did all the essential features of a gentleman's evening attire, even to three superb pearl studs in the bosom of an immaculately white shirt, all of them, marvellously enough, as perfectly fitting as though they had been made for me, with a hundred unregistered first-mortgage bonds of the United States Steel Company--of which securities there will be more anon--enabled me later to appear before Mrs. Van Raffles in a guise so prosperous as to win an immediate renewal of her favor. "We shall be almost as great a combination as the original Bunny," she cried, enthusiastically, when I told her of this coup. "With my brains and your blind luck nothing can stop us." My own feelings as I drove up to Bolivar Lodge were mixed. I still loved Henriette madly, but the contrast between her present luxury and my recent misery grated harshly upon me. I could not rid myself of the notion that Raffles had told her of the secret hiding-place of the diamond stomacher of the duchess of Herringdale, and that she had appropriated to her own use all the proceeds of its sale, leaving me, who had risked my liberty to obtain it, without a penny's worth of dividend for my pains. It did not seem quite a level thing to do, and I must confess that I greeted the lady in a reproachful spirit. It was, indeed, she, and more radiantly beautiful than ever--a trifle thinner perhaps, and her eyes more coldly piercing than seductively winning as of yore, but still Henriette whom I had once so madly loved and who had jilted me for a better man. "Dear old Bunny!" she murmured, holding out both hands in welcome. "Just to think that after all these years and in a strange land and under such circumstances we should meet again!" "It is strange," said I, my eye roving about the drawing-room, which from the point of view of its appointments and decoration was about the richest thing I had ever seen either by light of day or in the mysterious glimpses one gets with a dark lantern of the houses of the moneyed classes. "It seems more than strange," I added, significantly, "to see you surrounded by such luxury. A so-called lodge built of the finest grade of Italian marble; gardens fit for the palace of a king; a retinue of servants such as one scarcely finds on the ducal estates of the proudest families of England and a mansion that is furnished with treasures of art, any one of which is worth a queen's ransom." "I do not wonder you are surprised," she replied, looking about the room with a smile of satisfaction that did little to soothe my growing wrath. "It certainly leaves room for explanation," I retorted, coldly. "Of course, if Raffles told you where the Herringdale jewels were hid and you have disposed of them, some of all this could be accounted for; but what of me? Did it ever occur to you that I was entitled to some part of the swag?" "Oh, you poor, suspicious old Bunny," she rippled. "Haven't I sent for you to give you some share of this--although truly you don't deserve it, for _this_ is all mine. I haven't any more notion what became of the Herringdale jewels than the duchess of Herringdale herself." "What?" I cried. "Then these surroundings--" "Are self-furnishing," she said, with a merry little laugh, "and all through a plan of my own, Bunny. This house, as you may not be aware, is the late residence of Mr. and Mrs. Constant Scrappe--" "Who are suing each other for divorce," I put in, for I knew of the Constant Scrappes in social life, as who did not, since a good third of the society items of the day concerned themselves with the matrimonial difficulties of this notable couple. "Precisely," said Henriette. "Now Mrs. Scrappe is in South Dakota establishing a residence, and Colonel Scrappe is at Monte Carlo circulating his money with the aid of a wheel and a small ball. Bolivar Lodge, with its fine collection of old furniture, its splendid jades, its marvellous Oriental potteries, paintings, and innumerable small silver articles, is left here at Newport and for rent. What more natural, dear, than that I, needing a residence whose occupancy would in itself be an assurance of my social position, should snap it up with an eagerness which in this Newport atmosphere amounted nearly to a betrayal of plebeian origin?" "But it must cost a fortune!" I cried, gazing about me at the splendors of the room, which even to a cursory inspection revealed themselves as of priceless value. "That cloisonné jar over by the fireplace is worth two hundred pounds alone." "That is just the reason why I wanted this particular house, Bunny. It is also why I need your assistance in maintaining it," Mrs. Raffles returned. "Woman is ever a mystery," I responded, with a harsh laugh. "Why in Heaven's name you think I can help you to pay your rent--" "It is only twenty-five hundred dollars a month, Bunny," she said. My answer was a roar of derisive laughter. "Hear her!" I cried, addressing the empty air. "Only twenty-five hundred dollars a month! Why, my dear Henriette, if it were twenty-five hundred clam-shells a century I couldn't help you pay a day's rental, I am that strapped. Until this afternoon I hadn't seen thirty cents all at once for nigh on to six months. I have been so poor that I've had to take my morning coffee at midnight from the coffee-wagons of the New York, Boston, and Chicago sporting papers. In eight months I have not tasted a table-d'hôte dinner that an expert would value at fifteen cents net, and yet you ask me to help you pay twenty-five hundred dollars a month rent for a Newport palace! You must be mad." "You are the same loquacious old Bunny that you used to be," said Mrs. Raffles, sharply, yet with a touch of affection in her voice. "You can't keep your trap shut for a second, can you? Do you know, Bunny, what dear old A. J. said to me just before he went to South Africa? It was that if you were as devoted to business as you were to words you'd be a wonder. His exact remark was that we would both have to look out for you for fear you would queer the whole business. Raffles estimated that your habit of writing-up full accounts of his various burglaries for the London magazines had made the risks one hundred per cent. bigger and the available swag a thousand per cent. harder to get hold of. 'Harry,' said he the night before he sailed, 'if I die over in the Transvaal and you decide to continue the business, get along as long as you can without a press-agent. If you go on the stage, surround yourself with 'em, but in the burglary trade they are a nuisance.'" My answer was a sulky shrug of the shoulders. "You haven't given me a chance to explain how you are to help me. I don't ask you for money, Bunny. Four dollars' worth of obedience is all I want," she continued. "The portable property in this mansion is worth about half a million dollars, my lad, and I want you to be--well, my official porter. I took immediate possession of this house, and my first month's rent was paid with the proceeds of a sale of three old bedsteads I found on the top floor, six pieces of Sèvres china from the southeast bedroom on the floor above this, and a Satsuma vase which I discovered in a hall-closet on the third floor." A light began to dawn on me. "Before coming here I eked out a miserable existence in New York as buyer for an antique dealer on Fourth Avenue," she explained. "He thinks I am still working for him, travelling about the country in search of bargains in high-boys, mahogany desks, antique tables, wardrobes, bedsteads--in short, valuable junk generally. Now do you see?" "As Mrs. Raffles--or Van Raffles, as you have it now?" I demanded. "Oh, Bunny, Bunny, Bunny! What a stupid you are! Never! As Miss Pratt-Robinson," she replied. "From this I earn fifteen dollars a week. The sources of the material I send him--well--do you see now, Bunny?" "It is growing clearer," said I. "You contemplate paying the rent of this house with its contents, is that it?" "What beautiful intelligence you have, Bunny!" she laughed, airily. "You know a hawk from a hand-saw. Nobody can pass a motor-car off on you for a horse, can they, Bunny dear? Not while you have that eagle eye of yours wide open. Yes, sir. That is the scheme. _I am going to pay the rental of this mansion with its contents._ Half a million dollars' worth of contents means how long at twenty-five hundred dollars a month? Eh?" "Gad! Henriette," I cried. "You are worthy of Raffles, I swear it. You can be easy about your rent for sixteen years." "That is about the size of it, as these Newport people have it," said Mrs. Raffles, beaming upon me. "I'm still in the dark as to where I come in," said I. "Promise to obey my directions implicitly," said Henriette "and you will receive your share of the booty." "Henriette--" I cried, passionately, seizing her hand. "No--Bunny--not now," she remonstrated, gently. "This is no time for sentiment. Just promise to obey, the love and honor business may come later." "I will," said I. "Well, then," she resumed, her color mounting high, and speaking rapidly, "you are to return at once to New York, taking with you three trunks which I have already packed, containing one of the most beautiful collections of jade ornaments that has ever been gathered together. You will rent a furnished apartment in some aristocratic quarter. Spread these articles throughout your rooms as though you were a connoisseur, and on Thursday next when Mr. Harold Van Gilt calls upon you to see your collection you will sell it to him for not less than eight thousand dollars." "Aha!" said I. "I see the scheme." "This you will immediately remit to me here," she continued, excitedly. "Mr. Van Gilt will pay cash." I laughed. "Why eight thousand?" I demanded. "Are you living beyond your--ah--income?" "No," she answered, "but next month's rent is due Tuesday, and I owe my servants and tradesmen twenty-five hundred dollars more." "Even then there will be three thousand dollars over," I put in. "True, Bunny, true. But I shall need it all, dear. I am invited to the P. J. D. Gasters on Sunday afternoon to play bridge," Henriette explained. "We must prepare for emergencies." I returned to New York on the boat that night, and by Wednesday was safely ensconced in very beautifully furnished bachelor quarters near Gramercy Square, where on Thursday Mr. Harold Van Gilt called to see my collection of jades which I was selling because of a contemplated five-year journey into the East. On Friday Mr. Van Gilt took possession of the collection, and that night a check for eight thousand dollars went to Mrs. Van Raffles at Newport. Incidentally, I passed two thousand dollars to my own credit. As I figured it out, if Van Gilt was willing to pay ten thousand dollars for the stuff, and Henriette was willing to take eight thousand dollars for it, nobody was the loser by my pocketing two thousand dollars--unless, perhaps, it was Mr. and Mrs. Constant Scrappe who owned the goods. But that was none of my affair. I played straight with the others, and that was all there was to it as far as I was concerned. III THE ADVENTURE OF MRS. GASTER'S MAID Two days after my bargain with Mr. Harold Van Gilt, in which he acquired possession of the Scrappe jades and Mrs. Van Raffles and I shared the proceeds of the ten thousand dollars check, I was installed at Bolivar Lodge as head-butler and steward, my salary to consist of what I could make out of it on the side, plus ten per cent. of the winnings of my mistress. It was not long before I discovered that the job was a lucrative one. From various tradesmen of the town I received presents of no little value in the form sometimes of diamond scarf-pins, gold link sleeve-buttons, cases of fine wines for my own use, and in one or two instances checks of substantial value. There was also what was called a steward's rebate on the monthly bills, which in circles where lavish entertainment is the order of the day amounted to a tidy little income in itself. My only embarrassment lay in the contact into which I was necessarily brought with other butlers, with whom I was perforce required to associate. This went very much against the grain at first, for, although I am scarcely more than a thief after all, I am an artistic one, and still retain the prejudice against inferior associations which an English gentleman whatever the vicissitudes of his career can never quite rid himself of. I had to join their club--an exclusive organization of butlers and "gentlemen's gentlemen"--otherwise valets--and in order to quiet all suspicion of my real status in the Van Raffles household I was compelled to act the part in a fashion which revolted me. Otherwise the position was pleasant, and, as I have intimated, more than lucrative. It did not take me many days to discover that Henriette was a worthy successor to her late husband. Few opportunities for personal profit escaped her eye, and I was able to observe as time went on and I noted the accumulation of spoons, forks, nutcrackers, and gimcracks generally that she brought home with her after her calls upon or dinners with ladies of fashion that she had that quality of true genius which never overlooks the smallest details. The first big coup after my arrival, as the result of her genius, was in the affair of Mrs. Gaster's maid. Henriette had been to a bridge afternoon at Mrs. Gaster's and upon her return manifested an extraordinary degree of excitement. Her color was high, and when she spoke her voice was tremulous. Her disturbed condition was so evident that my heart sank into my boots, for in our business nerve is a _sine qua non_ of success, and it looked to me as if Henriette was losing hers. She has probably lost at cards to-day, I thought, and it has affected her usual calmness. I must do something to warn her against this momentary weakness. With this idea in mind, when the opportunity presented itself later I spoke. "You lost at bridge to-day, Henriette," I said. "Yes," she replied. "Twenty-five hundred dollars in two hours. How did you guess?" "By your manner," said I. "You are as nervous as a young girl at a commencement celebration. This won't do, Henriette. Nerves will prove your ruin, and if you can't stand your losses at bridge, what will you do in the face of the greater crisis which in our profession is likely to confront us in the shape of an unexpected visit of police at any moment?" Her answer was a ringing laugh. "You absurd old rabbit," she murmured. "As if I cared about my losses at bridge! Why, my dear Bunny, I lost that money on purpose. You don't suppose that I am going to risk my popularity with these Newport ladies by winning, do you? Not I, my boy. I plan too far ahead for that. For the good of our cause it is my task to lose steadily and with good grace. This establishes my credit, proves my amiability, and confirms my popularity." "But you are very much excited by something, Henriette," said I. "You cannot deny that." "I don't--but it is the prospect of future gain, not the reality of present losses, that has taken me off my poise," she said. "Whom do you suppose I saw at Mrs. Gaster's to-day?" "No detectives, I hope," I replied, paling at the thought. "No, sir," she laughed. "Mrs. Gaster's maid. We must get her, Bunny." "Oh, tush!" I ejaculated. "All this powwow over another woman's maid!" "You don't understand," said Henriette. "It wasn't the maid so much as the woman that startled me, Bunny. You can't guess who she was." "How should I?" I demanded. "She was Fiametta de Belleville, one of the most expert hands in our business. Poor old Raffles used to say that she diminished his income a good ten thousand pounds a year by getting in her fine work ahead of his," explained Henriette. "He pointed her out to me in Piccadilly once and I have never forgotten her face." "I hope she did not recognize you," I observed. "No, indeed--she never saw me before, so how could she? But I knew her the minute she took my cloak," said Henriette. "She's dyed her hair, but her eyes were the same as ever, and that peculiar twist of the lip that Raffles had spoken of as constituting one of her fascinations remained unchanged. Moreover, just to prove myself right, I left my lace handkerchief and a five hundred dollar bill in the cloak pocket. When I got the cloak back both were gone. Oh, she's Fiametta de Belleville all right, and we must get her." "What for--to rob you?" "No," returned Henrietta, "rather that we--but there, there, Bunny, I'll manage this little thing myself. It's a trifle too subtle for a man's intellect--especially when that man is you." "What do you suppose she is doing here?" I asked. "You silly boy," laughed Henriette. "Doing? Why, Mrs. Gaster, of course. She is after the Gaster jewels." "Humph!" I said, gloomily. "That cuts us out, doesn't it?" "Does it?" asked Henriette, enigmatically. It was about ten weeks later that the newspapers of the whole country were ringing with the startling news of the mysterious disappearance of Mrs. Gaster's jewels. The lady had been robbed of three hundred and sixty-eight thousand dollars worth of gems, and there was apparently no clew even to the thief. Henriette and I, of course, knew that Fiametta de Belleville had accomplished her mission, but apparently no one else knew it. True, she had been accused, and had been subjected to a most rigid examination by the Newport police and the New York Central Office, but no proof of any kind establishing her guilt could be adduced, and after a week of suspicion she was to all intents and purposes relieved of all odium. "She'll skip now," said I. "Not she," said Henriette. "To disappear now would be a confession of guilt. If Fiametta de Belleville is the woman I take her for she'll stay right here as if nothing had happened, but of course not at Mrs. Gaster's." "Where then?" I asked. "With Mrs. A. J. Van Raffles," replied Henriette. "The fact is," she added, "I have already engaged her. She has acted her part well, and has seemed so prostrated by the unjust suspicion of the world that even Mrs. Gaster is disturbed over her condition. She has asked her to remain, but Fiametta has refused. 'I couldn't, madam,' she said when Mrs. Gaster asked her to stay. 'You have accused me of a fearful crime--a crime of which I am innocent--and--I'd rather work in a factory, or become a shop-girl in a department store, than stay longer in a house where such painful things have happened.' Result, next Tuesday Fiametta de Belleville comes to me as _my_ maid." "Well, Henriette," said I, "I presume you know your own business, but why you lay yourself open to being robbed yourself and to having the profits of your own business diminished I can't see. Please remember that I warned you against this foolish act." "All right, Bunny, I'll remember," smiled Mrs. Van Raffles, and there the matter was dropped for the moment. The following Tuesday Fiametta de Belleville was installed in the Van Raffles household as the maid of Mrs. A. J. Van Raffles. To her eagle eye it was another promising field for profit, for Henriette had spared neither pains nor money to impress Fiametta with the idea that next to Mrs. Gaster she was about as lavish and financially capable a householder as could be found in the Social Capital of the United States. As for me, I was the picture of gloom. The woman's presence in our household could not be but a source of danger to our peace of mind as well as to our profits, and for the life of me I could not see why Henriette should want her there. But I was not long in finding out. A week after Fiametta's arrival Mrs. Raffles rang hurriedly for me. "Yes, madam," I said, responding immediately to her call. "Bunny," she said, her hand trembling a little, "the hour for action has arrived. I have just sent Fiametta on an errand to Providence. She will be gone three hours." "Yes!" said I. "What of it?" "I want you during her absence to go with me to her room--" The situation began to dawn on me. "Yes!" I cried, breathlessly. "And search her trunks?" "No, Bunny, no--the eaves," whispered Henriette. "I gave her that room in the wing because it has so many odd cubby-holes where she could conceal things. I am inclined to think--well, the moment she leaves the city let me know. Follow her to the station, and don't return till you know she is safely out of town and on her way to Providence. Then _our_ turn will come." Oh, that woman! If I had not adored her before I--but enough. This is no place for sentiment. The story is the thing, and I must tell it briefly. I followed out Henriette's instructions to the letter, and an hour later returned with the information that Fiametta was, indeed, safely on her way. "Good," said Mrs. Raffles. "And now, Bunny, for the Gaster jewels." Mounting the stairs rapidly, taking care, of course, that there were none of the other servants about to spy upon us, we came to the maid's room. Everything in it betokened a high mind and a good character. There were religious pictures upon the bureau, prayer-books, and some volumes of essays of a spiritual nature were scattered about--nothing was there to indicate that the occupant was anything but a simple, sweet child of innocence except-- Well, Henriette was right--except the Gaster jewels. Even as my mistress had suspected, they were cached under the eaves, snuggled close against the huge dormer-window looking out upon the gardens; laid by for a convenient moment to get them out of Newport, and then--back to England for Fiametta. And what a gorgeous collection they were! Dog-collars of diamonds, yards of pearl rope, necklaces of rubies of the most lustrous color and of the size of pigeons' eggs, rings, brooches, tiaras--everything in the way of jewelled ornament the soul of woman could desire--all packed closely away in a tin box that I now remembered Fiametta had brought with her in her hand the day of her arrival. And now all these things were ours--Henriette's and mine--without our having had to stir out-of-doors to get them. An hour later they were in the safety-deposit vault of Mrs. A. J. Van Raffles in the sturdy cellars of the Tiverton Trust Company, as secure against intrusion as though they were locked in the heart of Gibraltar itself. [Illustration: "HER SLIGHT LITTLE FIGURE CONVULSED WITH GRIEF"] And Fiametta? Well--a week later she left Newport suddenly, her eyes red with weeping and her slight little figure convulsed with grief. Her favorite aunt had just died, she said, and she was going back to England to bury her. IV THE PEARL ROPE OF MRS. GUSHINGTON-ANDREWS "Bunny," said Henrietta one morning, shortly after we had come into possession of the Gaster jewels, "how is your nerve? Are you ready for a coup requiring a lot of it?" "Well," I replied, pluming myself a bit, "I don't wish to boast, Henriette, but I think it is pretty good. I managed to raise twenty-seven hundred dollars on my own account by the use of it last night." "Indeed?" said Henriette, with a slight frown. "How, Bunny? You know you are likely to complicate matters for all of us if you work on the side. What, pray, did you do last night?" And then I unfolded to her the incidents of the night before when, by assuming at a moment's notice the position of valet to young Robertson de Pelt, the frisky young favorite of the inner set, I had relieved that high-flying young bachelor of fifteen hundred dollars in cash and some twelve hundred dollars worth of jewels as well. "I was spending the evening at the Gentlemen's Gentlemen's Club," I explained, "when word came over the telephone to Digby, Mr. de Pelt's valet, that Mr. de Pelt was at the Rockerbilts' and in no condition to go home alone. It happened that it was I who took the message, and observing that Digby was engaged in a game of billiards, and likely to remain so for some time to come, I decided to go after the gentleman myself without saying anything to Digby about it. Muffling myself up so that no one could recognize me, I hired a cab and drove out to the Rockerbilt mansion, sent in word that Mr. de Pelt's man was waiting for him, and in ten minutes had the young gentleman in my possession. I took him to his apartment, dismissed the cab, and, letting ourselves into his room with his own latch-key, put him to bed. His clothes I took, as a well-ordered valet should, from his bed-chamber into an adjoining room, where, after removing the contents of his pockets, I hung them neatly over a chair and departed, taking with me, of course, everything of value the young gentleman had about him, even down to the two brilliant rubies he wore in his garter buckles. This consisted of two handfuls of crumpled twenty-dollar bills from his trousers, three rolls of one-hundred-dollar bills from his waistcoat, and sundry other lots of currency, both paper and specie, that I found stowed away in his overcoat and dinner-coat pockets. There were also ten twenty-dollar gold pieces in a little silver chain-bag he carried on his wrist. As I say, there was about fifteen hundred dollars of this loose change, and I reckon up the value of his studs, garter rubies, and finger-rings at about twelve hundred dollars more, or a twenty-seven hundred dollars pull in all. Eh?" "Mercy, Bunny, that was a terribly risky thing. Suppose he had recognized you?" cried Henriette. "Oh, he did--or at least he thought he did," I replied, smiling broadly at the recollection. "On the way home in the cab he wept on my shoulder and said I was the best friend he ever had, and told me he loved me like a brother. There wasn't anything he wouldn't do for me, and if ever I wanted an automobile or a grand-piano all I had to do was to ask him for it. He was very genial." "Well, Bunny," said Henriette, "you are very clever at times, but do be careful. I am delighted to have you show your nerve now and then, but please don't take any serious chances. If Mr. de Pelt ever recognizes you--and he dines here next Wednesday--you'll get us both into awful trouble." Again I laughed. "He won't," said I, with a conviction born of experience. "His geniality was of the kind that leaves the mind a blank the following morning. I don't believe Mr. de Pelt remembers now that he was at the Rockerbilts' last night, and even if he does, _you_ know that I was in this house at eleven o'clock." "I, Bunny? Why, I haven't seen you since dinner," she demurred. "Nevertheless, Henriette, you know that I was in the house at eleven o'clock last night--or, rather, you _will_ know it if you are ever questioned on the subject, which you won't be," said I. "So, now that I have shown you in just what shape my nerve is, what is the demand you are going to put upon it?" "You will have to bring to the enterprise all that ability which used to characterize your efforts as an amateur actor, Bunny," she replied. "Summon all your sang-froid to your aid; act with deliberation, courtesy, and, above all, without the slightest manifestation of nervousness, and we should win, not a petty little twenty-seven hundred dollars, but as many thousands. You know Mrs. Gushington-Andrews?" "Yes," said I. "She is the lady who asked me for the olives at your last dinner." "Precisely," observed Henriette. "You possibly observed also that wherever she goes she wears about sixty-nine yards of pearl rope upon her person." "Rope?" I laughed. "I shouldn't call that rope. Cable, yes--frankly, when she came into the dining-room the other night I thought it was a feather-boa she had on." "All pearls, Bunny, of the finest water," said Henriette, enthusiastically. "There isn't one of the thousands that isn't worth anywhere from five hundred to twenty-five hundred." "And I am to land a yard or two of the stuff for you in some mysterious way?" I demanded. "How is it to be--by kidnapping the lady, the snatch and run game, or how?" "Sarcasm does not suit your complexion, Bunny," retorted Henriette. "Your best method is to follow implicitly the directions of wiser brains. You are a first-class tool, but as a principal--well--well, never mind. You do what I tell you and some of those pearls will be ours. Mrs. Gushington-Andrews, as you may have noticed, is one of those exceedingly effusive ladies who go into ecstasies over everything and everybody. She is what Raffles used to call a palaverer. Where most people nod she describes a complete circle with her head. When a cold, formal handshake is necessary she perpetrates an embrace, and that is where we come in. At my next Tuesday tea she will be present. She will wear her pearls--she'll be strung with them from head to foot. A rope-walk won't be in it with her, and every single little jewel will be worth a small fortune. You, Bunny, will be in the room to announce her when she arrives. She will rush to my arms, throw her own about my neck, the ornaments of my corsage will catch the rope at two or more points, sever the thread in several places, pearls will rain down upon the floor by dozens, and then--" "I'm to snatch 'em and dive through the window, eh?" I interrupted. "No, Bunny--you will behave like a gentleman, that is all," she responded, haughtily; "or rather like a butler with the instincts of a gentleman. At my cry of dismay over the accident--" "Better call it the incident," I put in. "Hush! At my cry of dismay over the accident," Henriette repeated, "you will spring forward, go down upon your knees, and gather up the jewels by the handful. You will pour them back into Mrs. Gushington-Andrews's hands and retire. Now, do you see?" "H'm--yes," said I. "But how do you get the pearls if I pour them back into her hands? Am I to slide some of them under the rugs, or flick them with my thumb-nail under the piano--or what?" "Nothing of the sort, Bunny; just do as I tell you--only bring your gloves to me just before the guests arrive, that is all," said Henriette. "Instinct will carry you through the rest of it." And then the conspiracy stopped for the moment. The following Tuesday at five the second of Mrs. Van Raffles's Tuesday afternoons began. Fortune favored us in that it was a beautiful day and the number of guests was large. Henriette was charming in her new gown specially imported from Paris--a gown of Oriental design with row upon row of brilliantly shining, crescent-shaped ornaments firmly affixed to the front of it and every one of them as sharp as a steel knife. I could see at a glance that even if so little as one of these fastened its talons upon the pearl rope of Mrs. Gushington-Andrews nothing under heaven could save it from laceration. What a marvellous mind there lay behind those exquisite, childlike eyes of the wonderful Henriette! "Remember, Bunny--calm deliberation--your gloves now," were her last words to me. "Count on me, Henriette; but I still don't see--" I began. "Hush! Just watch me," she replied. Whereupon this wonderful creature, taking my white gloves, deliberately smeared their palms and inner sides of the fingers with a milk-hued paste of her own making, composed of talcum powder and liquid honey. Nothing more innocent-appearing yet more villainously sticky have I ever before encountered. "There!" she said--and at last I understood. An hour later our victim arrived and scarce an inch of her but shone like a snow-clad hill with the pearls she wore. I stood at the portière and announced Mrs. Gushington-Andrews in my most blasé but butlerian tones. The lady fairly rushed by me, and in a moment her arms were about Henriette's neck. "You dear, sweet thing!" cried Mrs. Gushington-Andrews. "And you look so exquisitely charming to-day--" [Illustration: "AND THEN THERE CAME A RIPPING SOUND"] And then there came a ripping sound. The two women started to draw away from each other; five of the crescents catching in the rope, in the impulsive jerking back of Mrs. Gushington-Andrews in order that she might gaze into Henrietta's eyes, cut through the marvellous cords of the exquisite jewels. There was a cry of dismay both from Henriette and her guest, and the rug beneath their feet was simply white with riches. In a moment I was upon my knees scooping them up by the handful. "Oh, dear, how very unfortunate!" cried Henriette. "Here, dear," she added, holding out a pair of teacups. "Let James pour them into this," and James, otherwise myself, did so to the extent of five teacups full of them and then he discreetly retired. * * * * * "Well, Bunny," said Henriette, breathlessly, two hours later when her last guest had gone. "Tell me quickly--what was the result?" "These, madam," said I, handing her a small plush bag into which I had poured the "salvage" taken from my sticky palms. "A good afternoon's work," I added. And, egad, it was: seventeen pearls of a value of twelve hundred dollars each, fifteen worth scarcely less than nine hundred dollars apiece, and some twenty-seven or eight smaller ones that we held to be worth in the neighborhood of five hundred dollars each. "Splendid!" cried Henrietta "Roughly speaking, Bunny, we've pulled in between forty and fifty thousand dollars to-day." [Illustration: "I, OF COURSE, DID NOT TELL HENRIETTE OF EIGHT BEAUTIES I HAD KEPT OUT"] "About that," said I, with an inward chuckle, for I, of course, did not tell Henriette of eight beauties I had kept out of the returns for myself. "But what are we going to do when Mrs. Gushington-Andrews finds out that they are gone?" "I shall provide for that," said this wonderful woman. "I shall throw her off the scent by sending you over to her at once with sixteen of these assorted. I hate to give them up, but I think it advisable to pay that much as a sort of insurance against suspicion. Even then we'll be thirty-five thousand dollars to the good. And, by-the-way, Bunny, I want to congratulate you on one thing." "Ah! What's that--my sang-froid, my nerve?" I asked, airily. "No, the size of your hands," said Henriette. "The superficial area of those palms of yours has been worth ten thousand dollars to us to-day." V THE ADVENTURE OF THE STEEL BONDS "Excuse me, Henriette," said I one morning, after I had been in Mrs. Van Raffles's employ for about three months and had begun to calculate as to my share of the profits. "What are you doing with all this money we are gradually accumulating? There must be pretty near a million in hand by this time--eh?" "One million two hundred and eighty-seven thousand five hundred and twenty-eight dollars and thirty-six cents," replied Henriette instantly. "It's a tidy little sum." "Almost enough to retire on," I suggested. "Now, Bunny, stop that!" retorted Henriette. "Either stop it or else retire yourself. I am not what they call a quitter in this country, and I do not propose at the very height of my career to give up a business which I have struggled for years to establish." "That is all very well, Henriette," said I. "But the pitcher that goes to the bat too often strikes out at last." (I had become a baseball fiend during my sojourn in the States.) "A million dollars is a pot of money, and it's my advice to you to get away with it as soon as you can." "Excuse me, Bunny, but when did I ever employ you to give advice?" demanded Henriette. "It is quite evident that you don't understand me. Do you suppose for an instant that I am robbing these people here in Newport merely for the vulgar purpose of acquiring money? If you do you have a woful misconception of the purposes which actuate an artist." "You certainly are an artist, Henriette," I answered, desirous of placating her. "Then you should know better than to intimate that I am in this business for the sordid dollars and cents there are to be got out of it," pouted my mistress. "Mr. Vauxhall Bean doesn't chase the aniseseed bag because he loves to shed the aniseseed or hungers for bags as an article of food. He does it for the excitement of the hunt; because he loves to feel the movement of the hunter that he sits so well between his knees; because he is enamoured of the baying of the hounds, the winding of the horn, and welcomes the element of personal danger that enters into the sport when he and his charger have to take an unusual fence or an extra broad watercourse. So with me. In separating these people here from their money and their jewels, it is not the money and the jewels that I care for so much as the delicious risks I incur in getting them. What the high fence is to the hunter, the barriers separating me from Mrs. Gaster's jewel-case are to me; what the watchful farmer armed with a shot-gun for the protection of his crops is to the master of the hounds, the police are to me. The game of circumventing the latter and surmounting the former are the joy of my life, and while my eyes flash and sparkle with appetite every time I see a necklace or a tiara or a roll of hundred-dollar bills in the course of my social duties, it is not avarice that makes them glitter, but the call to action which they sound." I felt like saying that if that were the case I should esteem it a privilege to be made permanent custodian of the balance in hand, but it was quite evident from Henriette's manner that she was in no mood for badinage, so I held my peace. "To prove to you that I am not out for the money, Bunny, I'll give you a check this morning for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to pay you for those steel bonds you picked up on the train when you came up here from New York. That's two-and-a-half times what they are worth," said Henriette. "Is it a bargain?" "Certainly, ma'am," I replied, delighted with the proposition. "But what are you going to do with the bonds?" "Borrow a million and a half on 'em," said Henriette. "What!" I cried. "A million and a half on a hundred thousand security?" "Certainly," replied Henriette, "only it will require a little manipulation. For the past six months I have been depositing the moneys I have received in seventeen national banks in Ohio, each account being opened in a different name. The balances in each bank have averaged about three hundred thousand dollars, thanks to a circular system of checks in an endless chain that I have devised. Naturally the size of these accounts has hugely interested the bank officials, and they all regard me as a most desirable customer, and I think I can manage matters so that two or three of them, anyhow, will lend me all the money I want on those bonds and this certificate of trust which I shall ask you to sign." "Me?" I laughed. "Surely you are joking. What value will my signature have?" "It will be good as gold after you have deposited that check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in your New York bank," said Henriette. "I shall go to the president of the Ohoolihan National Bank at Oshkosh, Ohio, where I have at present three hundred and sixty-eight thousand three hundred and forty-three dollars and eighteen cents on deposit and tell him that the Hon. John Warrington Bunny, of New York, is my trustee for an estate of thirteen million dollars in funds set apart for me by a famous relative of mine who is not proud of the connection. He will communicate with you and ask you if this is true. You will respond by sending him a certified copy of the trust certificate, and refer him as to your own responsibility to the New York bank where our two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is on deposit. I will then swap checks with you for three hundred thousand dollars, mine to you going into your New York account and yours to me as trustee going into my account with the Ohoolihan National. The New York bank will naturally speak well of your balance, and the Ohoolihan people, finding the three-hundred-thousand-dollar check good, will never think of questioning your credit. This arranged, we will start in to wash those steel bonds up to the limit." "That's a very simple little plan of yours, Henriette," said I, "and the first part of it will work easily I have no doubt; but how the deuce are you going to wash those bonds up to fifteen times their value?" "Easiest thing in the world, Bunny," laughed Henriette. "There will be two million dollars of the bonds before I get through." "Heavens--no counterfeiting, I hope?" I cried. "Nothing so vulgar," said Henriette. "Just a little management--that's all. And, by-the-way, Bunny, when you get a chance, please hire twenty safe-deposit boxes for me in as many different trust companies here and in New York--and don't have 'em too near together. That's all for the present." Three weeks later, having followed out Henriette's instructions to the letter, I received at my New York office a communication from the president of the Ohoolihan National Bank, of Oshkosh, Ohio, inquiring as to the Van Raffles trust fund. I replied with a certified copy of the original which Henriette had already placed in the president's hands. I incidentally referred the inquirer as to my own standing to the Delancy Trust Company, of New York. The three-hundred-thousand-dollar checks were exchanged by Henriette and myself--hers, by-the-way, was on the Seventy-Sixth National Bank, of Brookline, Massachusetts, and was signed by a fictitious male name, which shows how carefully she had covered her tracks. Both went through without question, and then the steel bonds came into play. Henriette applied for a loan of one million five hundred thousand dollars, offering the trust certificate for security. The president of the Ohoolihan National wished to see some of her other securities, if she had any, to which Henriette cordially replied that if he would come to New York she would gladly show them to him, and intimated that if the loan went through she wouldn't mind paying the bank a bonus of one hundred thousand dollars for the accommodation. The response was immediate. Mr. Bolivar would come on at once, and he did. [Illustration: "'AFTER WHICH HE WILL COME TO NEWPORT'"] "Now, Bunny," said Mrs. Van Raffles on the morning of his arrival, "all you have to do is to put the one hundred bonds first in the vault of the Amalgamated Trust Company, of West Virginia, on Wall Street. Mr. Bolivar and I will go there and I will show them to him. We will then depart. Immediately after our departure you will get the bonds and take them to the vaults of the Trans-Missouri and Continental Trust Company, of New Jersey, on Broadway. You will go on foot, we in a hansom, so that you will get there first. I will take Mr. Bolivar in and show him the bonds again. Then you will take them to the vaults of the Riverside Coal Trust Company, of Pennsylvania, on Broad Street, where five minutes later I will show them for the third time to Mr. Bolivar--and so on. We will repeat this operation eighteen times in New York so that our visitor will fancy he has seen one million eight hundred thousand dollars' worth of bonds in all, after which he will come to Newport, where I will show them to him twice more--making a two-million-dollar show-down. See?" I toppled back into a chair in sheer amazement. "By Jingo! but you are a wonder," I cried. "If it only works." * * * * * [Illustration: "MR. BOLIVAR WAS DULY IMPRESSED WITH THE EXTENT OF HENRIETTE'S FORTUNE'"] It worked. Mr. Bolivar was duly impressed with the extent of Henriette's fortune in tangible assets, not to mention her evident standing in the community of her residence. He was charmingly entertained and never for an instant guessed when at dinner where Henriette had no less personages than the Rockerbilts, Mrs. Gaster, Mrs. Gushington-Andrews, Tommy Dare, and various other social lights to meet him, that the butler who passed him his soup and helped him liberally to wine was the Hon. John Warrington Bunny, trustee. "Well," said Henriette, as she gazed delightedly at the president's certified check for one million four hundred thousand dollars--the amount of the loan less the bonus--"that was the best sport yet. Even aside from the size of the check, Bunny, it was great chasing the old man to cover. What do you think he said to me when he left, the poor, dear old innocent?" "Give it up--what?" "He said that I ought to be very careful in my dealings with men, who might impose upon my simplicity," laughed Henriette. "Simplicity?" I roared. "What ever gave him the idea that you were simple?" "Oh--I don't know," said Henriette, demurely. "I guess it was because I told him I kept those bonds in twenty safe-deposit vaults instead of in one, to protect myself in case of loss by fire--I didn't want to have too many eggs in one basket." "H'm!" said I. "What did he say to that?" Henriette laughed long and loud at the recollection of the aged bank president's reply. "He squeezed my hand and answered, 'What a child it is, indeed!'" said Henriette. VI THE ADVENTURE OF THE FRESH-AIR FUND It was a bright, sunny morning in the early summer when Henriette, gazing out of the dining-room windows across the lawns adjoining the Rockerbilt place, caught sight of a number of ragamuffins at play there. "Who are those little tatterdemalions, Bunny?" she asked, with a suggestion of a frown upon her brow. "They have been playing on the lawns since seven o'clock this morning, and I've lost quite two hours' sleep because of their chatter." "They are children from Mrs. Rockerbilt's Fresh-Air Society," I explained, for I, too, had been annoyed by the loud pranks of the youngsters and had made inquiries as to their identity. "Every summer, Digby, Mr. de Pelt's valet, tells me, Mrs. Rockerbilt gives a tea for the benefit of the Fresh-Air Fund, and she always has a dozen of the children from town for a week beforehand so as to get them in shape for the function." "Get them in shape for the function, Bunny?" asked Henriette. "Yes; one of the features of the tea is the presence of the youngsters, and they have to be pretty well rehearsed before Mrs. Rockerbilt dares let them loose among her guests," said I, for Digby had explained the scheme in detail to me. "You see, their ideas of fun are rather primitive, and if they were suddenly introduced into polite society without any previous training the results might prove unpleasant." "Ah!" said Henriette, gazing abstractedly out of the window in the manner of one suddenly seized with an idea. "Yes," I went on. "You see, the street gamin loves nothing better in the way of diversion than throwing things at somebody, particularly if that somebody is what is known to his vernacular as a Willie-boy. As between eating an over-ripe peach and throwing it at the pot-hat of a Willie-boy, the ragamuffin would deny even the cravings of his stomach for that tender morsel. It is his delight, too, to heave tin cans, wash-boilers, flat-irons, pies--anything he can lay his hands on--at the automobilly-boys, if I may use the term, of all of which, before he is turned loose in the highest social circles of the land, it is desirable that he shall be cured." "I see," said Henriette. "And so Mrs. Rockerbilt has them here on a ten days' probation during which time they acquire that degree of savoir-faire and veneer of etiquette which alone makes it possible for her to exhibit them at her tea." "Precisely," said I. "She lets them sleep in the big box-stalls of her stable where the extra coach-horses were kept before the motor-car craze came in. They receive four square meals a day, are rubbed down and curry-combed before each meal, and are bathed night and morning in violet water until the fateful occasion, after which they are returned to New York cleaner if not wiser children." "It is a great charity," said Henrietta dreamily. "Does Mrs. Rockerbilt make any charge for admission to these teas--you say they are for the benefit of the Fresh-Air Fund?" "Oh no, indeed," said I. "It is purely a private charity. The youngsters get their ten days in the country, learn good manners, and Newport society has a pleasant afternoon--all at Mrs. Rockerbilt's expense." "H'm!" said Henriette, pensively. "H'm! I think there is a better method. Ah-- I want you to run down to New York for a few days shortly, Bunny. I have a letter I wish you to mail." Nothing more was said on the subject until the following Tuesday, when I was despatched to New York with instructions to organize myself into a Winter Fresh-Air Society, to have letter-heads printed, with the names of some of the most prominent ladies in society as patronesses--Henriette had secured permission from Mrs. Gaster, Mrs. Sloyd-Jinks, Mrs. Rockerbilt, Mrs. Gushington-Andrews, Mrs. R. U. Innitt, the duchess of Snarleyow, Mrs. Willie K. Van Pelt, and numerous others to use their names in connection with the new enterprise--and to write her a letter asking if she would not interest herself and her friends in the needs of the new society. "It is quite as important," the letter ran, "that there should be a fund to take the little sufferers of our dreadful winters away from the sleet and snow-burdened streets of the freezing city as it is to give them their summer outing. This society is in great need of twenty-five thousand dollars properly to prosecute its work during the coming winter, and we appeal to you for aid." Henriette's personal response to this request was a check for ten thousand dollars, which as secretary and treasurer of the fund I acknowledged, and then, of course, returned to her, whereupon her campaign began in earnest. Her own enthusiasm for the project, backed up by her most generous contribution, proved contagious, and inside of two weeks, not counting Henriette's check, we were in possession of over seventeen thousand dollars, one lady going so far as to give us all her bridge winnings for a week. "And now for the grand coup, Bunny," said Mrs. Van Raffles, when I had returned with the spoil. "Great Scot!" I cried. "Haven't you got enough?" "No, Bunny. Not a quarter enough," she replied. "These winter resorts are very expensive places, and while seventeen thousand dollars would do very nicely for running a farm in summer, we shall need quite a hundred thousand to send our beneficiaries to Palm Beach in proper style." "Phe-e-w!" I whistled, in amazement. "Palm Beach, eh?" "Yes," said Henriette. "Palm Beach. I have always wanted to go there." "And the one hundred thousand dollars--how do you propose to get that?" I demanded. "I shall give a lawn-fête and bazaar for the benefit of the fund. It will differ from Mrs. Rockerbilt's tea in that I shall charge ten dollars admission, ten dollars to get out, and we shall sell things besides. I have already spoken to Mrs. Gaster about it and she is delighted with the idea. She has promised to stock the flower table with the cream of her conservatories. Mrs. Rockerbilt has volunteered to take charge of the refreshments. The duchess of Snarleyow is dressing a doll that is to be named by Senator Defew and raffled at five dollars a guess. Mrs. Gushington-Andrews is to take entire control of the fancy knick-knack table, where we shall sell gold match-boxes, solid silver automobile head-lights, cigar-cutters, cocktail-shakers, and other necessities of life among the select. I don't see how the thing can fail, do you?" "Not so far," said I. "Each of the twelve lady patronesses has promised to be responsible for the sale of a hundred tickets of admission at ten dollars apiece--that makes twelve thousand dollars in admissions. It will cost each person ten dollars more to get out, which, if only half of the tickets are used, will be six thousand dollars--or eighteen thousand dollars in entrance and exit fees alone." "Henriette!" I cried, enthusiastically, "Madam Humbert was an amateur alongside of you." Mrs. Van Raffles smiled. "Thank you, Bunny," said she. "If I'd only been a man--" "Gad!" I ejaculated. "Wall Street would have been an infant in your hands." Well, the fateful day came. Henriette, to do her justice, had herself spared no pains or expense to make the thing a success. I doubt if the gardens of the Constant-Scrappes ever looked so beautiful. There were flowers everywhere, and hanging from tree to tree from one end of their twenty acres to the other were long and graceful garlands of multicolored electric lights that when night came down upon the fête made the scene appear like a veritable glimpse of fairyland. Everybody that is anybody was there, with a multitude of others who may always be counted upon to pay well to see their names in print or to get a view of society at close range. Of course there was music of an entrancing sort, the numbers being especially designed to touch the flintiest of hearts, and Henriette was everywhere. No one, great or small, in that vast gathering but received one of her gracious smiles, and it is no exaggeration to say that half of the flowers purchased at rates that would make a Fifth Avenue tailor hang his head in shame, were bought by the gallant gentlemen of Newport for presentation to the hostess of the day. These were immediately placed on sale again so that on the flower account the receipts were perceptibly swelled. A more festal occasion has never been known even in this festal environment. The richest of the land vied with one another in making the affair a vast financial success. The ever gallant Tommy Dare left the scene twenty times for the mere privilege of paying his way in and out that many times over at ten dollars each way. The doll which Senator Defew had named was also the cause of much merriment, since when all was over and some thirteen thousand five hundred dollars had been taken in for guesses, it was found that the senator had forgotten the name he had given it. When the laughter over this incident had subsided, Henriette suggested that it be put up at auction, which plan was immediately followed out, with the result that the handiwork of the duchess of Snarleyow was knocked down for eight thousand six hundred and seventy-five dollars to a Cincinnati brewer who had been trying for eight years to get his name into the Social Register. * * * * * "Thank goodness, that's over," said Henriette when the last guest had gone and the lights were out. "It has been a very delightful affair, but towards the end it began to get on my nerves. I am really appalled, Bunny, at the amount of money we have taken in." "Did you get the full one hundred thousand dollars?" I asked. "Full hundred thousand?" she cried, hysterically. "Listen to this." And she read the following memorandum of the day's receipts: Flower Table $36,000.00 Doll 22,175.00 Admissions 19,260.00 Exits 17,500.00 Candy Table 12,350.00 Supper Table 43,060.00 Knick-Knacks 17,380.00 Book Table 123.30 Coat Checks 3,340.00 ----------- Total $171,188.30 "Great Heavens, what a haul!" I cried. "But how much did you spend yourself?" "Oh--about twenty thousand dollars, Bunny--I really felt I could afford it. We'll net not less than one hundred and fifty thousand." I was suddenly seized with a chill. "The thing scares me, Henriette," I murmured. "Suppose these people ask you next winter for a report?" "Oh," laughed Henriette, "I shall immediately turn the money over to the fund. You can send me a receipt and that will let us out. Later on you can return the money to me." "Even then--" I began. "Tush, Bunny," said she. "There isn't going to be any even then. Six months from now these people will have forgotten all about it. It's a little way they have. Their memory for faces and the money they spend is shorter than the purse of a bankrupt. Have no fear." And, as usual, Henriette was right, for the next February when the beneficiaries of the Winter Fresh-Air Fund spent a month at Palm Beach, enjoying the best that favored spot afforded in the way of entertainment and diversion, not a word of criticism was advanced by anybody, although the party consisted solely of Mrs. Van Raffles, her maid, and Bunny, her butler. In fact, the contrary was the truth. The people we met while there, many of whom had contributed most largely to the fund, welcomed us with open arms, little suspecting how intimately connected they were with our sources of supply. Mrs. Gaster, it is true, did ask Henriette how the Winter Fresh-Air Fund was doing and was told the truth--that it was doing very well. "The beneficiaries did very well here," said Henriette. "I have seen nothing of them," observed Mrs. Gaster. "Well--no," said Henriette. "The managers thought it was better to send them here before the season was at its height. The moral influences of Palm Beach at the top of the season are--well--a trifle strong for the young--don't you think?" she explained. The tin-type I hand you will give you some idea of how much one of the beneficiaries enjoyed himself. There is nothing finer in the world than surf bathing in winter. VII THE ADVENTURE OF MRS. ROCKERBILT'S TIARA Henriette had been unwontedly reserved for a whole week, a fact which was beginning to get sadly on my nerves when she broke an almost Sphinxlike silence with the extraordinary remark: "Bunny, I am sorry, but I don't see any other way out of it. You must get married." To say that I was shocked by the observation is putting it mildly. As you must by this time have realized yourself, there was only one woman in the world that I could possibly bring myself to think fondly of, and that woman was none other than Henriette herself. I could not believe, however, that this was at all the notion she had in mind, and what little poise I had was completely shattered by the suggestion. I drew myself up with dignity, however, in a moment and answered her. "Very well, dear," I said. "Whenever you are ready I am. You must have banked enough by this time to be able to support me in the style to which I am accustomed." "That is not what I meant, Bunny," she retorted, coldly, frowning at me. "Well, it's what _I_ mean," said I. "You are the only woman I ever loved--" "But, Bunny dear, that can come later," said she, with a charming little blush. "What I meant, my dear boy, was not a permanent affair but one of these Newport marriages. Not necessarily for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith," she explained. "I don't understand," said I, affecting denseness, for I understood only too well. "Stupid!" cried Henriette. "I need a confidential maid, Bunny, to help us in our business, and I don't want to take a third party in at random. If you had a wife I could trust her. You could stay married as long as we needed her, and then, following the Newport plan, you could get rid of her and marry me later--that is--er--provided I was willing to marry you at all, and I am not so sure that I shall not be some day, when I am old and toothless." "I fail to see the necessity for a maid of that kind," said I. "That's because you are a man, Bunny," said Henriette. "There are splendid opportunities for acquiring the gems these Newport ladies wear by one who may be stationed in the dressing-room. There is Mrs. Rockerbilt's tiara, for instance. It is at present the finest thing of its kind in existence and of priceless value. When she isn't wearing it it is kept in the vaults of the Tiverton Trust Company, and how on earth we are to get it without the assistance of a maid we can trust I don't see--except in the vulgar, commonplace way of sandbagging the lady and brutally stealing it, and Newport society hasn't quite got to the point where you can do a thing like that to a woman without causing talk, unless you are married to her." "Well, I'll tell you one thing, Henriette," I returned, with more positiveness than I commonly show, "I will not marry a lady's maid, and that's all there is about it. You forget that I am a gentleman." "It's only a temporary arrangement, Bunny," she pleaded. "It's done all the time in the smart set." "Well, the morals of the smart set are not my morals," I retorted. "My father was a clergyman, Henriette, and I'm something of a churchman myself, and I won't stoop to such baseness. Besides, what's to prevent my wife from blabbing when we try to ship her?" "H'm!" mused Henriette. "I hadn't thought of that--it would be dangerous, wouldn't it?" "Very," said I. "The only safe way out of it would be to kill the young woman, and my religious scruples are strongly against anything of the sort. You must remember, Henriette, that there are one or two of the commandments that I hold in too high esteem to break them." "Then what shall we do, Bunny?" demanded Mrs. Van Raffles. "_I must have that tiara._" "Well, there's the old amateur theatrical method," said I. "Have a little play here, reproduce Mrs. Rockerbilt's tiara in paste for one of the characters to wear, substitute the spurious for the real, and there you are." "That is a good idea," said Henriette; "only I hate amateur theatricals. I'll think it over." A few days later my mistress summoned me again. "Bunny, you used to make fairly good sketches, didn't you?" she asked. "Pretty good," said I. "Chiefly architectural drawings, however--details of façades and ornamental designs." "Just the thing!" cried Henriette. "To-night Mrs. Rockerbilt gives a moonlight reception on her lawns. They adjoin ours. She will wear her tiara, and I want you when she is in the gardens to hide behind some convenient bit of shrubbery and make an exact detail sketch of the tiara. Understand?" "I do," said I. "Don't you miss a ruby or a diamond or the teeniest bit of filigree, Bunny. Get the whole thing to a carat," she commanded. "And then?" I asked, excitedly. "Bring it to me; I'll attend to the rest," said she. [Illustration: "IT WAS NOT ALWAYS EASY TO GET THE RIGHT LIGHT"] You may be sure that when night came I went at the work in hand with alacrity. It was not always easy to get the right light on the lady's tiara, but in several different quarters of the garden I got her sufficiently well, though unconsciously, posed to accomplish my purpose. Once I nearly yielded to the temptation to reach my hand through the shrubbery and snatch the superb ornament from Mrs. Rockerbilt's head, for she was quite close enough to make this possible, but the vulgarity of such an operation was so very evident that I put it aside almost as soon as thought of. And I have always remembered dear old Raffles's remark, "Take everything in sight, Bunny," he used to say; "but, damn it, do it like a gentleman, not a professional." The sketch made, I took it to my room and colored it, so that that night, when Henriette returned, I had ready for her a perfect pictorial representation of the much-coveted bauble. "It is simply perfect, Bunny," she cried, delightedly, as she looked at it. "You have even got the sparkle of that incomparable ruby in the front." Next morning we went to New York, and Henriette, taking my design to a theatrical property-man we knew on Union Square, left an order for its exact reproduction in gilt and paste. "I am going to a little fancy-dress dance, Mr. Sikes," she explained, "as Queen Catharine of Russia, and this tiara is a copy of the very famous lost negligée crown of that unhappy queen. Do you think you can let me have it by Tuesday next?" "Easily, madam," said Sikes. "It is a beautiful thing and it will give me real pleasure to reproduce it. I'll guarantee it will be so like the original that the queen herself couldn't tell 'em apart. It will cost you forty-eight dollars. "Agreed," said Henriette. And Sikes was true to his word. The following Tuesday afternoon brought to my New York apartment--for of course Mrs. Raffles did not give Sikes her right name--an absolutely faultless copy of Mrs. Rockerbilt's chiefest glory. It was so like that none but an expert in gems could have told the copy from the original, and when I bore the package back to Newport and displayed its contents to my mistress she flew into an ecstasy of delight. "We'll have the original in a week if you keep your nerve, Bunny," she cried. "Theatricals?" said I. "No, indeed," said Henriette. "If Mrs. Rockerbilt knew this copy was in existence she'd never wear the other in public again as long as she lived without bringing a dozen detectives along with her. No, indeed--a dinner. I want you to connect the electric lights of the dining-room with the push-button at my foot, so that at any moment I can throw the dining-room into darkness. Mrs. Rockerbilt will sit at my left--Tommy Dare to the right. She will wear her famous coiffure surmounted by the tiara. At the moment you are passing the poisson I will throw the room into darkness, and you--" "I positively decline, Henriette, to substitute one tiara for another in the dark. Why, darn it all, she'd scream the minute I tried it," I protested. "Of course she would," said she, impatiently. "And that is why I don't propose any such idiotic performance. You will merely stumble in the dark and manage your elbow so awkwardly that Mrs. Rockerbilt's coiffure will be entirely disarranged by it. She will scream, of course, and I will instantly restore the light, after which _I_ will attend to the substitution. Now don't fail me and the tiara will be ours." [Illustration: "ALL WAS AS HENRIETTE HAD FORETOLD"] I stand ready with affidavits to prove that that dinner was the most exciting affair of my life. At one time it seemed to me that I could not possibly perform my share of the conspiracy without detection, but a glance at Henriette, sitting calmly and coolly, and beautiful too, by gad, at the head of the table, chatting as affably with the duke of Snarleyow and Tommy Dare as though there was nothing in the wind, nerved me to action. The moment came, and instantly as I leaned over Mrs. Rockerbilt's side with the fish platter in my hand out went the light; crash went my elbow into the lady's stunning coiffure; her little, well-modulated scream of surprise rent the air, and, flash, back came the lights again. All was as Henriette had foretold, Mrs. Rockerbilt's lovely blond locks were frightfully demoralized, and the famous tiara with it had slid aslant athwart her cheek. "Dear me!" cried Henriette, rising hurriedly and full of warm sympathy. "How very awkward!" "Oh, don't speak of it," laughed Mrs. Rockerbilt, amiably. "It is nothing, dear Mrs. Van Raffles. These electric lights are so very uncertain these days, and I am sure James is not at all to blame for hitting me as he has done; it's the most natural thing in the world, only--may I please run up-stairs and fix my hair again?" "You most certainly shall," said Henriette. "And I will go with you, my dear Emily. I am so mortified that if you will let me do penance in that way I will myself restore order out of this lovely chaos." The little speech was received with the usual hilarious appreciation which follows anything out of the usual course of events in high social circles. Tommy Dare gave three cheers for Mrs. Van Raffles, and Mrs. Gramercy Van Pelt, clad in a gorgeous red costume, stood up on a chair and toasted me in a bumper of champagne. Meanwhile Henriette and Mrs. Rockerbilt had gone above. * * * * * "Isn't it a beauty, Bunny," said Henriette the next morning, as she held up the tiara to my admiring gaze, a flashing, coruscating bit of the jeweler's art that, I verily believe, would have tempted the soul of honor itself into rascally ways. "Magnificent!" I asserted. "But--which is this, the forty-eight-dollar one or the original?" "The original," said Henriette, caressing the bauble. "You see, when we got to my room last night and I had Mrs. Rockerbilt sitting before the mirror, and despite her protestations was fixing her dishevelled locks with my own fair hands, I arranged to have the lights go out again just as the tiara was laid on the dressing-table. The copy was in the table drawer, and while my right hand was apparently engaged in manipulating the refractory light, and my voice was laughingly calling down maledictions upon the electric lighting company for its wretched service, my left hand was occupied with the busiest effort of its career in substituting the spurious tiara for the other." "And Mrs. Rockerbilt never even suspected?" "No," said Henriette. "In fact, she placed the bogus affair in her hair herself. As far as her knowledge goes, I never even touched the original." "Well, you're a wonder, Henriette," said I, with a sigh. "Still, if Mrs. Rockerbilt should ever discover--" "She won't, Bunny," said Henriette. "She'll never have occasion to test the genuineness of her tiara. These Newport people have other sources of income than the vulgar pawnshops." But, alas! later on Henriette made a discovery herself that for the time being turned her eyes red with weeping. The Rockerbilt tiara itself was as bogus as our own copy. There wasn't a real stone in the whole outfit, and the worst part of it was that under the circumstances Henriette could not tell anybody over the teacups that Mrs. Rockerbilt was, in vulgar parlance, "putting up a shine" on high society. VIII THE ADVENTURE OF THE CARNEGIE LIBRARY "Merciful Midas, Bunny," said Henriette one morning as I was removing the breakfast-tray from her apartment. "Did you see the extent of Mr. Carnegie's benefactions in the published list this morning?" "I have not received my paper yet," said I. "Moreover, I doubt if it will contain any reference to such matters when it does come. You know I read only the London _Times_, Mrs. Van Raffles. I haven't been able to go the American newspapers." "More fool you, then, Bunny," laughed my mistress. "Any man who wants to pursue crime as a polite diversion and does not read the American newspapers fails to avail himself of one of the most potent instruments for the attainment of the highest artistic results. You cannot pick up a newspaper in any part of the land without discovering somewhere in its columns some reference to a new variety of house-breaking, some new and highly artistic method of writing another man's autograph so that when appended to a check and presented at his bank it will bear the closest scrutiny to which the paying-teller will subject it, some truly Napoleonic method of entirely novel design for the sudden parting of the rich from their possessions. Any university which attempted to add a School of Peculation to its curriculum and ignored the daily papers as a positive source of inspiration to the highest artistry in the profession would fail as ignobly as though it should forget to teach the fundamental principles of high finance." "I was not aware of their proficiency in that direction," said I. "You never will get on, Bunny," sighed Henriette, "because you are not quick to seize opportunities that lie directly under your nose. How do you suppose I first learned of all this graft at Newport? Why, by reading the newspaper accounts of their jewels in the Sunday and daily newspapers. How do I know that if I want to sand-bag Mr. Rockerbilt and rifle his pockets all I have to do is to station myself outside the Crackerbaker Club any dark opera night after twelve and catch him on his way home with his fortune sticking out all over him? Because the newspapers tell me that he is a regular habitué of the Crackerbaker and plays bridge there every night after the opera. How do I know just how to walk from my hall bedroom in my little East Side tenement up Fifth Avenue into Mrs. Gaster's dining-room, where she has a million in plate on her buffet, with my eyes shut, without fear of stumbling over a step or a chair or even a footstool? Because the newspapers have so repeatedly printed diagrams of the interior of the lady's residence that its halls, passages, doorways, exits, twists, turns, and culs-de-sac are indelibly engraved upon my mind. How did I acquire my wonderful knowledge of the exact number of pearls, rubies, diamonds, opals, tiaras, bracelets, necklaces, stomachers, and other gorgeous jewels now in the possession of the smart set? Only by an assiduous devotion to the contents of the daily newspapers in their reports of the doings of the socially elect. I have a scrap-book, Bunny, that has been two years in the making, and there hasn't been a novel burglary reported in all that time that is not recorded in my book, not a gem that has appeared at the opera, the theatre, the Charity Ball, the Horse Show, or a monkey dinner that has not been duly noted in this vademecum of mine, fully described and in a sense located. If it wasn't for that knowledge I could not hope for success any more than you could if you went hunting mountain-lions in the Desert of Sahara, or tried to lure speckled-trout from the depths of an empty goldfish globe." "I see," said I, meekly. "I have missed a great opportunity. I will subscribe to the _Tribune_ and _Evening Post_ right away." I have never understood why Henriette greeted this observation with a peal of silvery laughter that fairly made the welkin ring. All I know is that it so irritated me that I left the room to keep from making a retort that might seriously have disturbed our friendship. Later in the day, Mrs. Van Raffles rang for me and I attended upon her orders. "Bunny," said she, "I've made up my mind to it--I must have a Carnegie library, that is all there is about it, and you must help. The iron-master has already spent thirty-nine million dollars on that sort of thing, and I don't see why if other people can get 'em we can't." "Possibly because we are not a city, town, or hamlet," I suggested, for I had been looking over the daily papers since my morning's talk with the lady, and had observed just who had been the beneficiaries of Mr. Carnegie's benefactions. "He don't give 'em to individuals, but to communities." "Of course not," she responded, quickly. "But what is to prevent our becoming a municipality?" My answer was an amazed silence, for frankly I could not for the life of me guess how we were to do any such thing. "It's the easiest thing in the world," she continued. "All you have to do is to buy an abandoned farm on Long Island with a bleak sea-front, divide it up into corner lots, advertise the lots for sale on the instalment plan, elect your mayor, and Raffleshurst-by-the-Sea, swept by ocean breezes, fifteen cents from the Battery, is a living, breathing reality." "By the jumping Disraeli, Henriette, but you are a marvel!" I cried, with enthusiasm. "But," I added, my ardor cooling a little, "won't it cost money?" "About fifteen hundred dollars," said Henriette. "I can win that at bridge in an hour." "Well," said I, "you know you can command my services, Henriette. What shall I do?" "Organize the city," she replied. "Here is fifty dollars. That will do for a starter. Go down to Long Island, buy the farm, put up a few signs calling on people to own their own homes; advertise the place in big capital letters in the Sunday papers as likely to be the port of the future, consider yourself duly elected mayor, stop in at some photograph shop in New York on your way back and get a few dozen pictures of street scenes in Binghamton, Oberlin, Kalamazoo, and other well-populated cities, and then come back here for further instructions. Meanwhile I will work out the other details of the scheme." According to my habit I followed Henriette's instructions to the letter. A farm of five hundred acres was secured within a week, the bleakest, coldest spot ever swept by ocean breezes anywhere. It cost six hundred dollars in cash, with immediate possession. Three days later, with the use of a ruler, I had mapped out about twelve thousand corner lots on the thing, and, thanks to my knack at draughtsmanship, had all ready for anybody's inspection as fine a ground-plan of Raffleshurst-by-the-Sea as ever was got up by a land-booming company in this or any other country. I then secured the photographs desired by my mistress, advertised Raffleshurst in three Sunday newspapers to the tune of a half-page each, and returned to Newport. I flattered myself that the thing was well done, for on reading the advertisement nothing would do but that Henriette should visit the place in person. The ads were so phrased, she said, as to be irresistible. "It's fine, Bunny," she cried, with an enthusiastic laugh as she gazed out over the broad acres of Raffleshurst and noted how well I had fulfilled her orders. "Under proper direction you are a most able workman. Nothing could be better. Nothing--absolutely nothing. And now for Mr. Carnegie." I still did not see how the thing was coming out, but such was my confidence in my leader that I had no misgivings. "Here is a letter from Mrs. Gaster introducing the Hon. Henry Higginbotham, mayor of Raffleshurst, to Mr. Carnegie," said Henriette. "You will call at once on the iron-master. Present this letter, keeping in mind of course that you are yourself the Hon. Henry Higginbotham. Show him these photographs of the City Hall at Binghamton, of the public park at Oberlin, the high school at Oswego, the battery walk at Charleston and other public improvements of various other cities, when he asks you what sort of a place Raffleshurst is; then frankly and fearlessly put in your application for a one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar library. One picture--this beautiful photograph of the music-hall at the St. Louis Exhibition--you must seem to overlook always, only contrive matters so that he will inquire what it is. You must then modestly remark that it is nothing but a little two-hundred-thousand-dollar art gallery you have yourself presented to the town. See?" "H'm--yes, I see," said I. "But it is pretty risky business, Henriette. Suppose Mrs. Gaster asks for further information about Mayor Higginbotham? I think it was unwise of you to connect her with the enterprise." "Don't bother about that, Bunny. _I_ wrote that letter of introduction--I haven't studied penmanship for nothing, you know. Mrs. Gaster will never know. So just put on your boldest front, remember your name, and don't forget to be modest about your own two-hundred-thousand-dollar art gallery. That will inspire him, I think." It took me a week to get at the iron-master; but finally, thanks to Mrs. Gaster's letter of introduction, I succeeded. Mr. Carnegie was as always in a most amiable frame of mind, and received me cordially, even when he discovered my real business with him. [Illustration: "'IF YOU WANTED A LAKE, MR. HIGGINBOTHAM, I--'"] "I hadn't intended to give any more libraries this year," he said, as he glanced over the pictures. "I am giving away lakes now," he added. "If you wanted a lake, Mr. Higginbotham, I--" "We have such a large water-front already, Mr. Carnegie," said I, "and most of our residents are young married couples with children not over three and five. I am afraid they would regard a lake as a source of danger." "That's a pretty playground," he suggested, glancing at the Oberlin Park. "Somehow or other, it reminds me of something." I thought it quite likely, but, of course, I didn't say so. I may be a fool but I have some tact. "It's at the far corner of the park that we propose to put the library if you are good enough to let us have it," was all I ventured. "H'm!" he mused. "Well, do you know, I like to help people who help themselves--that's my system." I assured him that we of Raffleshurst were accustomed to helping ourselves to everything we could lay our hands on, a jest which even though it was only too true seemed to strike him pleasantly. "What is that handsome structure you always pass over?" he asked, as I contrived to push the music-hall photograph aside for the fifth time. I laughed deprecatingly. "Oh, that," I said, modestly--"that's only a little two-hundred-thousand-dollar music-hall and art gallery I have built for the town myself." Oh, that wonderful Henriette! How did she know that generosity even among the overgenerous was infectious? "Indeed!" said Mr. Carnegie, his face lighting up with real pleasure. "Well, Mr. Higginbotham, I guess-- I guess I'll do it. I can't be outdone in generosity by you, sir, and--er-- I guess you can count on the library. Do you think one hundred and fifty thousand dollars will be enough?" "Well, of course--" I began. "Why not make my contribution equal to yours and call it an even two hundred thousand dollars?" he interrupted. "You overwhelm me," said I. "Of course, if you wish to--" "And the Raffleshurst common council will appropriate five per cent. of that amount annually for its maintenance?" he inquired. "Such a resolution has already been passed," said I, taking a paper from my pocket. "Here is the ordinance, duly signed by myself as mayor and by the secretary of the council." Again that extraordinary woman, to provide me with so necessary a document! The millionaire rose with alacrity and with his own hand drew me the required check. "Mr. Mayor," said he, "I like the quick, business-like way in which you do things. Pray present my compliments to the citizens of Raffleshurst-by-the-Sea, and tell them I am only too glad to help them. If you ever want a lake, sir, don't fail to call upon me." With which gracious words the millionaire bowed me out. * * * * * "_Two_ hundred thousand dollars, Bunny?" cried Henriette when I handed her the check. "Yep," said I. "Well, that _is_ a good day's sport!" she said, gazing at the slip. "Twice as much as I expected." "Yes," said I. "But see here, Henrietta, suppose Mr. Carnegie should go down to Raffleshurst to see the new building and find out what a bunco game we have played on him?" "He's not likely to do that for two reasons, Bunny," she replied. "In the first place he suffers acutely from lumbago in winter and can't travel, and in the second place he'd have to find Raffleshurst-by-the-Sea before he could make the discovery that somebody'd put up a game on him. I think by the time he is ready to start we can arrange matters to have Raffleshurst taken off the map." "Well, I think this is the cleverest trick you've turned yet, Henriette," said I. "Nonsense, Bunny, nonsense," she replied. "Any idiot can get a Carnegie library these days. That's why I put _you_ on the job, dear," she added, affectionately. IX THE ADVENTURE OF THE HOLD-UP Now that it is all over, I do not know whether she was really worn-out or by the expert use of powder gave to her cheeks the pallid look which bore out Mrs. Van Raffles's statement to me that she needed a rest. At any rate, one morning in mid-August, when the Newport season was in full feather, Henriette, looking very pale and wan, tearfully confessed to me that business had got on her nerves and that she was going away to a rest-cure on the Hudson for ten days. "I just can't stand it for another minute, Bunny," she faltered, real tears coursing down her cheeks. "I haven't slept a wink of natural sleep for five days, and yet when night comes it is all I can do to keep my eyes open. At the Rockerbilt ball last night I dozed off four times while talking with the Duchess of Snarleyow, and when the Chinese Ambassador asked me to sit out the gavotte with him I'm told I actually snored in his face. A woman who can't keep awake all night and sleep properly by day is not fit for Newport society, and I've simply got to go away and get my nerve back again." "You are very wise," I replied, "and I wholly approve of your course. There is no use of trying to do too much and you have begun to show the strain to which you have been subjecting yourself. Your failure last Friday night to land Mrs. Gollet's ruby dog-collar when her French poodle sat in your lap all through the Gaster musicale is evidence to me that your mind is not as alert as usual. By all means, go away and rest up. I'll take care of things around here." "Thank you, dear," said she, with a grateful smile. "You need a change too, Bunny. What would you say if I sent all the servants away too, so that you could have a week of absolute tranquillity? It must be awful for a man of your refined sensibilities to have to associate so constantly with the housemaids, the under-butlers and the footmen." "Nothing would please me better," I returned with alacrity; for, to tell the truth, society below stairs was rapidly becoming caviar to my taste. The housemaids were all right, and the under-butlers, being properly subject to my control, I could wither when they grew too familiar, but the footmen were intolerable guyers. On more than one occasion their quick Irish wit had put me to my trumps to maintain my dignity, and I had noticed of late that their alleged fun at my expense had made even the parlormaid giggle in a most irritating fashion. Henriette's suggestion promised at least a week's immunity from this sort of thing, and as far as remaining alone in the beautiful Bolivar Lodge was concerned, to a man of my literary and artistic tastes nothing could be more desirable. "I can put in a week of solitude here very comfortably," said I. "The Constant-Scrappes have a very excellent library and a line of reading in Abstract Morals in full calf that I should very much like to get at." "So be it then," said Henriette, with a sigh of relief. "I will take my departure next Saturday after the Innitt's clam-bake on Honk Island. The servants can go Saturday afternoon after the house has been put in order. You can order a fresh supply of champagne and cigars for yourself, and as for your meals--" "Don't you bother about that," said I, with a laugh. "I lived for months on the chafing-dish before I found you again. And I rather think the change from game birds and pâté de foie gras to simple eggs and bread and butter will do me good." And so the matter was arranged. The servants were notified that, owing to Mrs. Van Raffles's illness, they might take a vacation on full pay for ten days, and Henriette herself prepared society for her departure by fainting twice at the Innit's clam-bake on Honk Island. No less a person than Mrs. Gaster herself brought her home at four o'clock in the morning and her last words were an exhortation to her "_dear_ Mrs. Van Raffles" to be careful of herself "for all our sakes." Saturday morning Henriette departed. Saturday afternoon the servants followed suit, and I was alone in my glory--and oh, how I revelled in it! The beauties of Bolivar Lodge had never so revealed themselves to me as then; the house as dark as the tomb without, thanks to the closing of the shutters and the drawing to of all the heavy portières before the windows, but a blaze of light within from cellar to roof. I spent whole hours gloating over the treasures of that Monte-Cristan treasure-house, and all day Sunday and Monday I spent poring over the books in the library, a marvellous collection, though for the most part wholly uncut. Everything moved along serenely until Wednesday afternoon, when I thought I heard a noise in the cellar, but investigation revealed the presence of no one but a stray cat which miaowed up the cellar steps to me in response to my call of "Who's there." True, I did not go down to see if any one were there, not caring to involve myself in a personal encounter with a chance tramp who might have wandered in, in search of food. The sudden materialization of the cat satisfactorily explained the noises, and I returned to the library to resume my reading of _The Origin of the Decalogue_ where I had left off at the moment of the interruption. That evening I cooked myself a welsh-rabbit and at eight o'clock, arrayed in my pajamas, I returned to the library with a book, a bottle of champagne and a box of Vencedoras, prepared for a quiet evening of absolute luxury. I read in the waning light of the dying midsummer day for a little while, and then, as darkness came on, I turned to the switch-board to light the electric lamp. _The lamp would not light._ I pressed and pressed every button in the room, but with no better results; and then, going through the house I tried every other button I could find, but everywhere conditions were the same. Apparently there was something the matter with the electrical service, a fact which I cursed, but not deeply, for it was a beautiful moonlight night and while of course I was disappointed in my reading, I realized that after all nothing could be pleasanter than to sit in the moonlight and smoke and quaff bumpers of champagne until the crack of doom. This I immediately proceeded to do, and kept at it pretty steadily until I should say about eleven o'clock, when I heard unmistakable signs of a large automobile coming up the drive. It chugged as far as the front-door and then stood panting like an impatient steam-engine, while the chauffeur, a person of medium height, well muffled in his automobile coat, his features concealed behind his goggles, and his mouth covered by his collar, rapped loudly on the front-door, once, then a second time. "Who the devil can this be at this hour of the night, I wonder," I muttered, as I responded to the summons. If I sought the name I was not to be gratified, for the moment I opened the door I found two pistols levelled upon me, and two very determined eyes peering at me from behind the goggles. "Not a word, or I shoot," said the intruder in a gruff voice, evidently assumed, before I could get a word from my already somewhat champagne-twisted tongue. "Lead me to the dining-room." Well, there I was. Defenceless, taken by surprise, unarmed, not too wide awake, comfortably filled with champagne and in no particularly fighting mood. What could I do but yield? To call for help would have brought at least two bullets crashing into my brain, even if any one could have heard my cries. To assault a scoundrel so well-armed would have been the height of folly, and to tell the truth so imbued was I with the politer spirit of the gentle art of house-breaking that this sudden confrontation with the ruder, rough-house methods of the highwayman left me entirely unable to cope with the situation. "Certainly," said I, turning and ushering him down the hall to the great dining-room where the marvellous plate of the Constant-Scrappes shone effulgently upon the sideboard--or at least such of it as there was no room for in the massive safe. "Get me some rope," commanded the intruder. Still under the range of those dreadful pistols, I obeyed. "Sit down in that chair, and, by the leaping Gladstone, if you move an inch I'll blow your face off feature by feature," growled the intruder. "Who's moving?" I retorted, angrily. "Well, see that whoever else is you are not," he retorted, winding the rope three times around my waist and fastening me securely to the back of the chair. "Now hold out your hands." I obeyed, and he bound them as tightly as though they were fastened together with rods of iron. A moment later my feet and knees were similarly bound and I was as fast in the toils as Gulliver, when the Liliputians fell upon him in his sleep and bound him to the earth. [Illustration: "AS KEEN AND HIGH-HANDED A PERFORMANCE AS I EVER WITNESSED"] And then I was a mute witness to as keen and high-handed a performance as I ever witnessed. One by one every item of the Constant-Scrappe's silver service, valued at ninety thousand dollars, was removed from the sideboard and taken along the hall and placed in the tonneau of the automobile. Next the safe in which lay not only the famous gold service used only at the very swellest functions, said to have cost one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars for the gold alone, to say nothing of the exquisite workmanship, but--it made me gnash my teeth in impotent rage to see it--Henriette's own jewel-box containing a hundred thousand dollars worth of her own gems and some thirty thousand dollars in cash, was rifled of its contents and disposed of similarly to the silver in the gaping maw of that damned automobile tonneau. "Now," said the intruder, loosening my feet and releasing me from the chair, "take me to my lady's boudoir. There is room in the car for a few more objects of virtu." I obeyed on the instant and a few moments later the scene of below-stairs was repeated, with me powerless to resist. Pictures, bric-à-brac, and other things to the tune of twenty thousand dollars more were removed, as calmly and as coolly as though there were no law against that sort of thing in the world. "There!" cried the highwayman, as he returned after the last item of his loot had been stowed away in the vehicle. "That'll make an interesting tale for Friday morning's papers. It's the biggest haul I've made in forty-eight years. Good-night, sir. When I am safely out of town I'll telegraph the police to come and rescue you from your present awkward position. And let me tell you, if you give them the slightest hint of my personal appearance, by the hopping Harcourt, I'll come back and kill you. See?" And with that he made off, closing the door behind him, and a moment later I heard his infernal automobile chugging down the drive at full speed. Twelve hours later, in response to a long-distance telephone message from New York, the police came bounding around to the house, and found me tied up and unconscious. The highwayman had at least been true to his word, and, as he had prophesied, the morning papers on Friday were full of the story of the most daring robbery of the century. Accurate stories in detail under huge scare-type headlines appeared in all the papers, narrating the losses of the Constant-Scrappes, as well as the rape of the jewels and money of Mrs. Van Raffles. The whole country rang with it, and the afternoon train brought not only detectives by the score, but the representative of the Constant-Scrappes and Henriette herself. She was highly hysterical over the loss not only of her own property but that of her landlord as well, but nobody blamed me. The testimony of the police as to my condition when found fully substantiated my story and was accepted as ample evidence that I had no criminal connection with the robbery. This was a great relief to me, but it was greater when Henriette stroked my hand and called me "poor old Bunny," for I must say I was worried as to what she would think of me for having proven so poor a guardian of her property. Since then months have passed and not a vestige of the stolen property has been recovered. The Constant-Scrappes bore their loss with equanimity, as became them, since no one could have foreseen such a misfortune as overtook them; and as for Mrs. Van Raffles, she never mentioned the matter again to me, save once, and that set me to thinking. "He was a clever rascal you say, Bunny?" she asked one morning. "Yes," said I. "One of the best in the business, I fancy." "A big fellow?" She grinned with a queer smile. "Oh, about your height," said I. "Well, by the hopping Harcourt," she retorted, quizzically, "if you give them the slightest hint of _my_ personal appearance, I'll come back and kill you. See?" _The man's very words!_ And then she laughed. "What?" I cried. "It was--you!" "Was it?" she returned, airily. "Why the devil you should go to all that trouble, when you had the stuff right here is what puzzles me," said I. "Oh, it wasn't any trouble," she replied. "Just sport--you looked so funny sitting up there in your pajamas; and, besides, a material fact such as that hold-up is apt to be more convincing to the police, to say nothing of the Constant-Scrappes, than any mere story we could invent." "Well, you'd better be careful, Henriette," I said with a shiver. "The detectives are clever--" "True, Bunny," she answered, gravely. "But you see the highwayman was a man and--well, I'm a woman, dear. I can prove an alibi. By-the-way, you left the cellar-door unlocked that Wednesday. I found it open when I sneaked in to cut off the electric lights. You mustn't be so careless, dear, or we may have to divvy up our spoil with others." Marvellous woman, that Henriette! X THE ADVENTURE OF MRS. SHADD'S MUSICALE Henriette was visibly angry the other morning when I took to her the early mail and she discovered that Mrs. Van Varick Shadd had got ahead of her in the matter of Jockobinski, the monkey virtuoso. Society had been very much interested in the reported arrival in America of this wonderfully talented simian who could play the violin as well as Ysaye, and who as a performer on the piano was vastly the superior of Paderewski, because, taken in his infancy and specially trained for the purpose, he could play with his feet and tail as well as with his hands. It had been reported by Tommy Dare, the leading Newport authority on monkeys, that he had heard him play Brahm's "Variations on Paganini" with his paws on a piano, "Hiawatha" on a xylophone with his feet, and "Home, Sweet Home" with his tail on a harp simultaneously, in Paris a year ago, and that alongside of Jockobinski all other musical prodigies of the age became mere strummers. "He's a whole orchestra in himself," said Tommy enthusiastically, "and is the only living creature that I know of who can tackle a whole symphony without the aid of a hired man." Of course society was on the _qui vive_ for a genius of so riotous an order as this, and all the wealthy families of Newport vied with one another for the privilege of being first to welcome him to our shores, not because he was a freak, mind you, but "for art's sweet sake." Mrs. Gushington-Andrews offered twenty-five hundred dollars for him as a week-end guest, and Mrs. Gaster immediately went her bid a hundred per cent. better. Henriette, in order to outdo every one else, promptly put in a bid of ten thousand dollars for a single evening, and had supposed the bargain closed when along came Mrs. Shadd's cards announcing that she would be pleased to have Mrs. Van Raffles at Onyx House on Friday evening, August 27th, to meet Herr Jockobinski, the eminent virtuoso. "It's very annoying," said Henriette, as she opened and read the invitation. "I had quite set my heart on having Jockobinski here. Not that I care particularly about the music end of it, but because there is nothing that gives a woman so assured a social position as being the hostess of an animal of his particular kind. You remember, Bunny, how completely Mrs. Shadd wrested the leadership from Mrs. Gaster two seasons ago with her orang outang dinner, don't you?" I confessed to having read something about such an incident in high society. "Well," said Henriette, "_this_ would have thrown that little episode wholly in the shade. Of course Mrs. Shadd is doing this to retain her grip, but it irritates me more than I can say to have her get it just the same. Heaven knows I was willing to pay for it if I had to abscond with a national bank to get the money." "It isn't too late, is it?" I queried. "Not too late?" echoed Henriette. "Not too late with Mrs. Shadd's cards out and the whole thing published in the papers?" "It's never too late for a woman of your resources to do anything she has a mind to do," said I. "It seems to me that a person who could swipe a Carnegie library the way you did should have little difficulty in lifting a musicale. Of course I don't know how you could do it, but with _your_ mind--well, I should be surprised and disappointed if you couldn't devise some plan to accomplish your desires." Henriette was silent for a moment, and then her face lit up with one of her most charming smiles. "Bunny, do you know that at times, in spite of your supreme stupidity, you are a source of positive inspiration to me?" she said, looking at me, fondly, I ventured to think. "I am glad if it is so," said I. "Sometimes, dear Henriette, you will find the most beautiful flowers growing out of the blackest mud. Perhaps hid in the dull residuum of my poor but honest gray matter lies the seed of real genius that will sprout the loveliest blossoms of achievement." "Well, anyhow, dear, you have started me thinking, and maybe we'll have Jockobinski at Bolivar Lodge yet," she murmured. "I want to have him first, of course, or not at all. To be second in doing a thing of that kind is worse than never doing it at all." Days went by and not another word was spoken on the subject of Jockobinski and the musicale, and I began to feel that at last Henriette had reached the end of her ingenuity--though for my own part I could not blame her if she failed to find some plausible way out of her disappointment. Wednesday night came, and, consumed by curiosity to learn just how the matter stood, I attempted to sound Henriette on the subject. "I should like Friday evening off, Mrs. Van Raffles," said I. "If you are going to Mrs. Shadd's musicale you will have no use for me." "Shut up, Bunny," she returned, abruptly. "I shall need you Friday night more than ever before. Just take this note over to Mrs. Shadd this evening and leave it--mind you, don't wait for an answer but just leave it, that's all." She arose from the table and handed me a daintily scented missive addressed to Mrs. Shadd, and I faithfully executed her errand. Bunderby, the Shadd's butler, endeavored to persuade me to wait for an answer, but assuring him that I wasn't aware that an answer was expected I returned to Bolivar Lodge. An hour later Bunderby appeared at the back door and handed me a note addressed to my mistress, which I immediately delivered. "Is Bunderby waiting?" asked Henriette as she read the note. "Yes," I answered. "Tell him to hand this to Mrs. Shadd the very first thing upon her return to-morrow evening," she said, hastily scribbling off a note and putting it in an envelope, which by chance she left unsealed, so that on my way back below-stairs I was able to read it. What it said was that she would be only too happy to oblige Mrs. Shadd, and was very sorry indeed to hear that her son had been injured in an automobile accident while running into Boston from Bar Harbor. It closed with the line, "you must know, my dear Pauline, that there isn't anything I wouldn't do for you, come weal or come woe." This I handed to Bunderby and he made off. On my return Henriette was dressed for travel. "I must take the first train for New York," she said, excitedly. "You will have the music-room prepared at once, Bunny. Mrs. Shadd's musicale will be given here. I am going myself to make all the necessary arrangements at the New York end. All you have to do is to get things ready and rely on your ignorance for everything else. See?" I could only reflect that if a successful issue were dependent upon my ignorance I had a plentiful supply of it to fall back on. Henriette made off at once for Providence by motor-car, and got the midnight train out of Boston for the city where, from what I learned afterwards, she must have put in a strenuous day on Thursday. At any rate, a great sensation was sprung on Newport on Friday morning. Every member of the smart set in the ten-o'clock mail received a little engraved card stating that owing to sudden illness in the Shadd family the Shadd musicale for that evening would be held at Bolivar Lodge instead of in the Onyx House ballroom. Friday afternoon Jockobinski's private and particular piano arrived at the Lodge and was set up promptly in the music-room, and later when the caterers arrived with the supper for the four hundred odd guests bidden to the feast all was in readiness for them. Everything was running smoothly, and, although Henriette had not yet arrived, I felt easy and secure of mind until nearing five-thirty o'clock when Mrs. Shadd herself drove up to the front-door. Her color was unusually high, and had she been any but a lady of the _grande monde_ I should have said that she was flustered. She demanded rather than asked to see my mistress, with a hauteur born of the arctic snow. "Mrs. Van Raffles went to New York Wednesday evening," said I, "and has not yet returned. I am expecting her every minute, madame. She must be here for the musicale. Won't you wait?" "Indeed I will," said she, abruptly. "The musicale, indeed! Humph!" And she plumped herself down in one of the drawing-room chairs so hard that it was as much as I could do to keep from showing some very unbutlerian concern for the safety of the furniture. I must say I did not envy Henriette the meeting that was in prospect, for it was quite evident that Mrs. Shadd was mad all through. In spite of my stupidity I rather thought I could divine the cause too. She was not kept long in waiting, for ten minutes later the automobile, with Henriette in it, came thundering up the drive. I tried as I let her in to give her a hint of what awaited her, but Mrs. Shadd forestalled me, only however to be forestalled herself. "Oh, my dear Pauline!" Henriette cried, as she espied her waiting visitor. "It is _so_ good of you to come over. I'm pretty well fagged out with all the arrangements for the night and I _do_ hope your son is better." "My son is not ill, Mrs. Van Raffles," said Mrs. Shadd, coldly. "I have come to ask you what--" "Not ill?" cried Henriette, interrupting her. "Not ill, Pauline? Why,"--breathlessly--"that's the most extraordinary thing I ever heard of. Why am _I_ giving the musicale to-night then, instead of you?" "That is precisely what I have come to find out," said Mrs. Shadd. "Why--well, of all queer things," said Henriette, flopping down in a chair. "Surely, you got my note saying that I would let Jockobinski play here to-night instead of--" "I did receive a very peculiar note from you saying that you would gladly do as I wished," said Mrs. Shadd, beginning herself to look less angry and more puzzled. "In reply to your note of Wednesday evening," said Henriette. "Certainly you wrote to me Wednesday evening? It was delivered by your own man, Blunderby I think his name is? About half-past seven o'clock it was--Wednesday." "Yes, Bunderby did carry a note to you from me on Wednesday," said Mrs. Shadd. "But--" "And in it you said that you were called to Boston by an accident to your son Willie in his automobile: that you might not be able to get back in time for to-night's affair and wouldn't I take it over," protested Mrs. Van Raffles, vehemently. "I?" said Mrs. Shadd, showing more surprise than was compatible with her high social position. "And attend to all the details--your very words, my dear Pauline," said Henriette, with an admirably timed break in her voice. "And I did, and _I told you I would_. I immediately put on my travelling gown, motored to Providence, had an all-night ride to New York on a very uncomfortable sleeper, went at once to Herr Jockobinski's agent and arranged the change, notified Sherry to send the supper to my house instead of yours, drove to Tiffany's and had the cards rushed through and mailed to everybody on your list--you know you kindly gave me your list when I first came to Newport--and attended to the whole thing, and now I come back to find it all a--er--a mistake! Why, Pauline, it's positively awful! What _can_ we do?" Henriette was a perfect picture of despair. "I don't suppose we can do anything now," said Mrs. Shadd, ruefully. "It's too late. The cards have gone to everybody. You have all the supper--not a sandwich has come to my house--and I presume all of Mr. Jockobinski's instruments as well have come here." Henriette turned to me. "All, madame," said I, briefly. "Well," said Mrs. Shadd, tapping the floor nervously with her toe. "I don't understand it. _I never_ wrote that note." "Oh, but Mrs. Shadd--I have it here," said Henriette, opening her purse and extracting the paper. "You can read it for yourself. What else could I do after that?" Innocence on a monument could have appeared no freer of guile than Henriette at that moment. She handed the note to Mrs. Shadd, who perused it with growing amazement. "Isn't that your handwriting--and your crest and your paper?" asked Henriette, appealingly. "It certainly looks like it," said Mrs. Shadd. "If I didn't know I _hadn't_ written it I would have sworn I had. Where could it have come from?" "I supposed it came from Onyx House," said Henriette simply, glancing at the envelope. "Well--it's a very mysterious affair," said Mrs. Shadd, rising, "and I--oh, well, my dear woman, I--I can't blame you--indeed, after all you have done I ought to be--and really am--very much obliged to you. Only--" "Whom did you have at dinner Wednesday night, dear?" asked Henriette. "Only the Duke and Duchess of Snarleyow and--mercy! I wonder if he could have done it!" "Who?" asked Henriette. "_Tommy Dare!_" ejaculated Mrs. Shadd, her eyes beginning to twinkle. "Do you suppose this is one of Tommy Dare's jokes?" "H'm!" mused Henriette, and then she laughed. "It wouldn't be unlike him, would it?" "Not a bit, the naughty boy!" cried Mrs. Shadd. "That's it, Mrs. Van Raffles, as certainly as we stand here. Suppose, just to worry him, we never let on that anything out of the ordinary has happened, eh?" "Splendid!" said Henriette, with enthusiasm. "Let's act as if all turned out just as we expected, and, best of all, _never even mention it to him, or to Bunderby his confederate, neither of us, eh_?" "Never!" said Mrs. Shadd, rising and kissing Henriette good-bye. "That's the best way out of it. If we did we'd be the laughing-stock of all Newport. But some day in the distant future Tommy Dare would better look out for Pauline Shadd, Mrs. Van Raffles." And so it was agreed, and Henriette successfully landed Mrs. Shadd's musicale. Incidentally, Jockobinski was very affable and the function went off well. Everybody was there and no one would for a moment have thought that there was anything strange in the transfer of the scene from Onyx House to Bolivar Lodge. "Who wrote that letter, Henriette?" I asked late in the evening when the last guest had gone. "Who do you suppose, Bunny, my boy?" she asked with a grin. "Bunderby?" "No," said I. "You've guessed right," said Henriette. As a postscript let me say that until he reads this I don't believe Tommy Dare ever guessed what a successful joke he perpetrated upon Mrs. Shadd and the fair Henriette. Even then I doubt if he realizes what a good one it was on--everybody. XI THE ADVENTURE OF MRS. INNITT'S COOK "It is curious, Bunny," said Henriette the other morning after an unusually late breakfast, "to observe by what qualities certain of these Newport families have arrived, as the saying is. The Gasters of course belong at the top by patent right. Having invented American society, or at least the machine that at present controls it, they are entitled to all the royalties it brings in. The Rockerbilts got there all of a sudden by the sheer lavishness of their entertainment and their ability to give bonds to keep it up. The Van Varick Shadds flowed in through their unquestioned affiliation with the ever-popular Delaware Shadds and the Roe-Shadds of the Hudson, two of the oldest and most respected families of the United States, reinforced by the Napoleonic qualities of the present Mrs. Shadd in the doing of unexpected things. The Gullets, thanks to the fact that Mrs. Gullet is the acknowledged mother-in-law of three British dukes, two Italian counts, and a French marquis, are safely anchored in the social haven where they would be, and the rumor that Mrs. Gushington-Andrews has written a book that is a trifle risque fixes her firmly in the social constellation--but the Innitts with only eighty thousand dollars per annum, the Dedbroke-Hickses with nothing a year, the Oliver-Sloshingtons with an income of judgments, the study of their arrival is mighty interesting." "It doesn't interest me much," quoth I. "Indeed, this American smart set don't appeal to me either for its smartness or its setness." "Bunny!" cried Henriette, with a silvery ripple of laughter. "Do be careful. An epigram from you? My dear boy, you'll be down with brain-fever if you don't watch out." "Humph!" said I, with a shrug of my shoulders. "Neither you nor my dear old friend Raffles ever gave me credit for any brains. I have a few, however, which I use when occasion demands," I drawled. "Well, don't waste them here, Bunny," laughed Henriette. "Save 'em for some place where they'll be appreciated. Maybe in your old age you'll be back in dear old London contributing to _Punch_ if you are careful of your wits. But how do you suppose the Oliver-Sloshingtons ever got in here?" "He holds the divorce record I believe," said I. "He's been married to four social leaders already, hasn't he?" "Yes--" "Well, he got into the swim with each marriage--so he's got a four-ply grip," said I. "And the Dedbroke-Hickses?" asked Henriette. "How do you account for them?" "Most attractive diners and weekenders," said I. "They got all the laughs at your dinner to the Archbishop of Decanterbury, and their man Smathers tells me they're the swellest things going at week-end parties because of his ingenuity at cotillion leading and her undeniable charms as a flirt. By Jove! she's that easy with men that even I tremble with anxiety whenever she comes into the house." "But how do they live?--they haven't a cent to their names," said Henriette. "Simplicity itself," said I. "He is dressed by his tailors and she by her dressmaker; and as for food, they take home a suit-case full of it from every house-party they attend. They're so gracious to the servants that they don't have to think of tips; and as for Smathers, and Mrs. Dedbroke-Hicks's maid, they're paid reporters on the staff of _The Town Tattler_ and are willing to serve for nothing for the opportunities for items the connection gives them." "Well--I don't envy them in the least," said Henriette. "Poor things--to be always taking and never giving must be an awful strain, though to be sure their little trolley party out to Tiverton and back was delightful--" "Exactly; and with car-fare and sandwiches, and the champagne supplied free by the importers, for the advertisement, it cost them exactly twelve dollars and was set down as the jolliest affair of the season," said I. "I call that genius of a pretty high order. I wouldn't pity them if I were you. They're happy." "Mrs. Innitt, though--I envy her," said Henriette; "that is, in a way. She has no conversation at all, but her little dinners are the swellest things of the season. Never more than ten people at a time and everything cooked to a turn." "That's just it," said I. "I hear enough at the club to know just what cinches Mrs. Innitt's position. It's her cook, that's what does it. If she lost her cook she'd be Mrs. Outofit. There never were such pancakes, such purées, such made dishes as that woman gets up. She turns hash into a confection and liver and bacon into a delicacy. Corned-beef in her hands is a discovery and her sauces are such that a bit of roast rhinoceros hide tastes like the tenderest of squab when served by her. No wonder Mrs. Innitt holds her own. A woman with a cook like Norah Sullivan could rule an empire." A moment later I was sorry I had spoken, for my words electrified her. "_I must have her!_" cried Henriette. "What, Mrs. Innitt?" I asked. "No--her cook," said Henriette. I stood aghast. Full of sympathy as I had always been with the projects of Mrs. Van Raffles, and never in the least objecting on moral grounds to any of her schemes of acquisition, I could not but think that this time she proposed to go too far. To rob a millionaire of his bonds, a national bank of its surplus, a philanthropist of a library, or a Metropolitan Boxholder of a diamond stomacher, all that seemed reasonable to me and proper according to my way of looking at it, but to rob a neighbor of her cook--if there is any worse social crime than that I don't know what it is. "You'd better think twice on that proposition, Henriette," I advised with a gloomy shake of the head. "It is not only a mean crime, but a dangerous one to boot. Success would in itself bring ruin. Mrs. Innitt would never forgive you, and society at large--" "Society at large would dine with me instead of with Mrs. Innitt, that's all," said Henriette. "I mean to have her before the season's over." "Well, I draw the line at stealing a cook," said I, coldly. "I've robbed churches and I've made way with fresh-air funds, and I've helped you in many another legitimate scheme, but in this, Mrs. Van Raffles, you'll have to go it alone." "Oh, don't you be afraid, Bunny," she answered. "I'm not going to use your charms as a bait to lure this culinary Phyllis into the Arcadia in which you with your Strephonlike form disport yourself." "You oughtn't to do it at all," said I, gruffly. "It's worse than murder, for it is prohibited twice in the decalogue, while murder is only mentioned once." "What!" cried Henrietta "What, pray, does the decalogue say about cooks, I'd like to know?" "First, thou shalt not steal. You propose to steal this woman. Second, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's maid-servant. How many times does that make?" I asked. "Dear me, Bunny," said Henriette, "but you _are_ a little tuppenny Puritan, aren't you? Anybody'd know you were the son of a clergyman! Well, let me tell you, I sha'n't steal the woman, and I sha'n't covet her. I'm just going to get her, that's all." It was two weeks later that Norah Sullivan left the employ of Mrs. Innitt and was installed in our kitchen; and, strange to relate, she came as a matter of charity on Henriette's part--having been discharged by Mrs. Innitt. The Friday before Norah's arrival Henriette requested me to get her a rusty nail, a piece of gravel from the drive, two hair-pins, and a steel nut from the automobile. "What on earth--" I began, but she shut me off with an imperious gesture. "Do as I tell you," she commanded. "You are not in on this venture." And then apparently she relented. "But I'm willing to tell you just one thing, Bunny"--here her eyes began to twinkle joyously--"I'm going to Mrs. Innitt's to dinner to-morrow night--so look out for Norah by Monday." I turned sulkily away. "You know how I feel on that subject," said I. "This business of going into another person's house as a guest and inducing their servants to leave is an infraction of the laws of hospitality. How would you like it if Mrs. Gaster stole me away from you?" Henriette's answer was a puzzling smile. "You are free to better your condition, Bunny," she said. "But I am not going to rob Mrs. Innitt, as I told you once before. She will discharge Norah and I will take her, that's all; so do be a good boy and bring me the nail and gravel and the hair-pins and the automobile nut." I secured the desired articles for my mistress, and the next evening she went to Mrs. Innitt's little dinner to Miss Gullet and her fiancé, Lord Dullpate, eldest son of the Duke of Lackshingles, who had come over to America to avoid the scrutiny of the Bankruptcy Court, taking the absurd objects with her. Upon her return at 2 A.M. she was radiant and triumphant. "I won out, Bunny--I won out!" she cried. "How?" I inquired. "Mrs. Innitt has discharged Norah, though I begged her not to," she fairly sang. "On what grounds?" "Several," said Henriette, unfastening her glove. "To begin with, there was a rusty nail in my clam cocktail, and it nearly choked me to death. I tried hard to keep Mrs. Innitt from seeing what had happened, but she is watchful if not brainy, and all my efforts went for naught. She was much mortified of course and apologized profusely. All went well until the fish, when one of the two hair-pins turned up in the pompano to the supreme disgust of my hostess, who was now beginning to look worried. Hair-pin number two made its début in my timbale. This was too much for the watchful Mrs. Innitt, self-poised though she always is, and despite my remonstrances she excused herself from the table for a moment, and I judge from the flushed appearance of her cheeks when she returned five minutes later that somebody had had the riot act read to her somewhere. "'I don't understand it at all, Mrs. Van Raffles,' she said with a sheepish smile. 'Cook's perfectly sober. If anything of the kind ever happens again she shall go.'" "Even as Mrs. Innitt spoke I conveyed a luscious morsel of filet mignon with mushrooms to my mouth and nearly broke my tooth on a piece of gravel that went with it, and Norah was doomed, for although we all laughed heartily, the thing had come to be such a joke, it was plain from the expression of Mrs. Innitt's countenance that she was very, very angry. "'Forgive her this time for my sake, Mrs. Innitt,' I pleaded. 'After all it is the little surprises that give zest to life.'" "And you didn't have to use the automobile nut?" I asked, deeply impressed with the woman's ingenuity. "Oh yes," said Henriette. "As dinner progressed I thought it wise to use it to keep Mrs. Innitt from weakening; so when the salad was passed I managed, without anybody's observing it, to drop the automobile nut into the bowl. The Duke of Snarleyow got it and the climax was capped. Mrs. Innitt burst into a flood of tears and--well, to-morrow, Bunny, Norah leaves. You will take her this ten-dollar bill from me, and tell her that I am sorry she got into so much trouble on my account. Say that if I can be of any assistance to her all she has to do is to call here and I will do what I can to get her another place." [Illustration: "ON HER WAY TO BARLY CHURCH I WAYLAID NORAH"] With this Henriette retired and the next morning on her way to early church I waylaid Norah. Her eyes were red with weeping, but a more indignant woman never lived. Her discharge was unrighteous; Mrs. Innitt was no lady; the butler was in a conspiracy to ruin her--and all that; indeed, her mood was most receptive to the furtherance of Henriette's plans. The ten-dollar bill was soothing, and indicated that my mistress was a "foine woman" and "surely Norah would come 'round in the evening to ask her aid." "It's ruined I am unless somebody'll be good to me and give me a riference, which Mrs. Innitt, bad cess to her, won't do, at all, at all," she wailed, and then I left her. She called that night, and two days later was installed in the Van Raffles's kitchen. A new treasure was added to the stores of our loot, but somehow or other I have never been happy over the successful issue of the enterprise. I can't quite make up my mind that it was a lady-like thing for Henriette to do even in Newport. XII THE LAST ADVENTURE I am bathed in tears. I have tried to write of my sensations, to tell the story of the Last Adventure of Mrs. Van Raffles, in lucid terms, but though my pen runs fast over the paper the ink makes no record of the facts. My woe is so great and so deep that my tears, falling into the ink-pot, turn it into a fluid so thin it will not mark the paper, and when I try the pencil the words are scarce put down before they're blotted out. And yet with all this woe I find myself a multi-millionaire--possessed of sums so far beyond my wildest dreams of fortune that my eye can scarce take in the breadth of all the figures. My dollars coined into silver, placed on top of one another, would form a bullion tower that would reach higher into the air than fifteen superimposed domes of St. Peter's placed on top of seventeen spires of Trinity on the summit of Mont Blanc. In five-pound notes laid side by side they'd suffice to paper every scrap of bedroom wall in all the Astor houses in the world, and invested in Amalgamated Copper they would turn the system green with envy--and yet I am not happy. My well-beloved Henriette's last adventure has turned my fortune into bitterest gall, and plain unvarnished wormwood forms the finish of my interior, for she is gone! I, amid the splendor of my new-found possessions, able to keep not one but a hundred motor-cars, and to pay the chauffeur's fines, to endow chairs in universities, to build libraries in every hamlet in the land from Podunk to Richard Mansfield, to eat three meals a day and lodge at the St. Regicide, and to evade my taxes without exciting suspicion, am desolate and forlorn, for, I repeat, Henriette has gone! The very nature of her last adventure by a successful issue has blown out the light of my life. _She has stolen Constant-Scrappe!_ If I could be light of heart in this tragic hour I would call this story the Adventure of the Lifted Fiancé, but that would be so out of key with my emotions that I cannot bring myself to do it. I must content myself with a narration of the simple facts of the lengths to which my beloved's ambition led her, without frivolity and with a heavy heart. Of course you know what all Newport has known for months, that the Constant-Scrappes were seeking divorce, not that they loved one another less, but that both parties to the South Dakota suit loved some one else more. Colonel Scrappe had long been the most ardent admirer of Mrs. Gushington-Andrews, and Mrs. Constant-Scrappe's devotion to young Harry de Lakwitz had been at least for two seasons evident to any observer with half an eye. Gushington-Andrews had considerately taken himself out of the way by eloping to South Africa with Tottie Dimpleton of the Frivolity Burlesquers, and Harry de Lakwitz's only recorded marriage had been annulled by the courts because at the time of his wedding to the forty-year-old housemaid of the Belleville Boarding-School for Boys at Skidgeway, Rhode Island, he was only fifteen years of age. Consequently, they both were eligible, and provided the Constant-Scrappes could be so operated on by the laws of South Dakota as to free them from one another, there were no valid reasons why the yearnings of these ardent souls should not all be gratified. Indeed, both engagements had been announced tentatively, and only the signing of the decree releasing the Constant-Scrappes from their obligations to one another now stood in the way of two nuptial ceremonies which would make four hearts beat as one. Mrs. Gushington-Andrews's trousseau was ready, and that of the future Mrs. de Lakwitz had been ordered; both ladies had received their engagement rings when that inscrutable Henriette marked Constant-Scrappe for her own. Colonel Scrappe had returned from Monte Carlo, having broken the bank twice, and Henriette had met him at a little dinner given in his honor by Mrs. Gushington-Andrews. He turned out to be a most charming man, and it didn't require a much more keen perception than my own to take in the fact that he had made a great impression upon Henriette, though she never mentioned it to me until the final blow came. I merely noticed a growing preoccupation in her manner and in her attitude towards me, which changed perceptibly. "I think, Bunny," she said to me one morning as I brought her marmalade and toast, "that considering our relations to each other you should not call me Henrietta. After all, you know, you are here primarily as my butler, and there are some proprieties that should be observed even in this Newport atmosphere." "But," I protested, "am I no more than that? I am your partner, am I not?" "You are my business partner--not my social, Bunny," she said. "We must not mix society and business. In this house I am mistress of the situation; you are the butler--that is the precise condition, and I think it well that hereafter you should recognize the real truth and avoid over-familiarity by addressing me as Mrs. Van Raffles. If we should ever open an office for our Burglary Company in New York or elsewhere you may call me anything you please there. Here, however, you must be governed by the etiquette of your environment. Let it be _Mrs._ Van Raffles hereafter." "And is it to be Mr. Bunny?" I inquired, sarcastically. Her response was a cold glance of the eye and a majestic sweep from the room. [Illustration: "HENRIETTE WAS TESTING THE FIFTY-THOUSAND-DOLLAR PIANO"] That evening Colonel Scrappe called, ostensibly to look over the house and as landlord to see if there was anything he could do to make it more comfortable, and I, blind fool that I was for the moment, believed that that was his real errand, and ventured to remind Henriette of the leak in the roof, at which they both, I thought, exchanged amused glances, and _he_ gravely mounted the stairs to the top of the house to look at it. On our return, Henriette dismissed me and told me that she would not require my services again during the evening. Even then my suspicions were not aroused, although there was a dull, disturbed feeling about my heart whose precise causes I could not define. I went to the club and put in a miserable evening, returning home about midnight to discover that Colonel Scrappe was still there. He was apparently giving the house and its contents a thorough inspection, for when I arrived, Henriette was testing the fifty-thousand-dollar piano in the drawing-room for him with a brilliant rendering of "O Promise Me." What decision they reached as to its tone and quality I never knew, for in spite of my hints on the subject, Henriette never spoke of the matter to me. I suppose I should have begun to guess what was happening under my very nose then, but thank Heaven I am not of a suspicious nature, and although I didn't like the looks of things, the inevitable meaning of their strange behavior never even dawned upon my mind. Even when two nights later Colonel Scrappe escorted Henriette home at midnight from a lecture on the Inscrutability of Sartor Resartus at Mrs. Gushington-Andrews's it did not strike me as unusual, although, instead of going home immediately, as most escorts do under the circumstances, he remained about two hours testing that infernal piano again, and with the same old tune. Then the automobile rides began, and pretty nearly every morning, long before polite society was awake, Colonel Scrappe and Henriette took long runs together through the country in her Mercedes machine, for what purpose I snever knew, for whatever interest the colonel might have had in our welfare as a landlord I could not for the life of me guess how it could be extended to our automobiles. One thing I did notice, however, was a growing coldness between Henriette and Mrs. Gushington-Andrews. The latter came to a card-party at Bolivar Lodge one afternoon about two weeks after Colonel Scrappe's return, and her greeting to her hostess instead of having the old-time effusiveness was frigid to a degree. In fact, when they clasped hands I doubt if more than the tips of their fingers touched. Moreover, Mrs. Gushington-Andrews, hitherto considered one of the best fists at bridge or hearts in the 400, actually won the booby prize, which I saw her throw into the street when she departed. It was evident something had happened to disturb her equanimity. My eyes were finally opened by a remark made at the club by Digby, Reggie de Pelt's valet, who asked me how I liked my new boss, and whose explanation of the question led to a complete revelation of the true facts in the case. Everybody knew, he said, that from the moment she had met him Mrs. Van Raffles had set her cap for Colonel Scrappe, and that meeting her for the first time he had fallen head over heels in love with her even in the presence of his fiancée. Of course I hotly denied Digby's insinuations, and we got so warm over the discussion that when I returned home that night I had two badly discolored eyes, and Digby--well, Digby didn't go home at all. Both of us were suspended from the Gentleman's Gentleman's Club for four weeks for ungentleman's ungentlemanly behavior in consequence. Black as my eyes were, however, I was on hand at the breakfast-table the following morning, and of course Henriette observed my injuries. "Why, Bunny!" she cried. "What is the meaning of this? Have you been fighting?" "Oh no, Mrs. Van Raffles," I returned, sarcastically, "I've just strained my eyes reading the divorce news from South Dakota." She gave a sudden start. "What do you mean?" she demanded, her face flushing hotly. "You know well enough what I mean," I retorted, angrily. "Your goings on with Colonel Scrappe are the talk of the town, and I got these eyes in a little discussion of your matrimonial intentions. That's all." "Leave the room instantly!" she cried, rising and haughtily pointing to the door. "You are insufferable." But the color in her cheeks showed that I had hit home far harder than she was willing to admit. There was nothing for me to do but to obey meekly, but my blood was up, and instead of moping in my room I started out to see if I could find Constant-Scrappe. My love for Henriette was too deep to permit of my sitting quietly by and seeing another walk away with the one truly coveted prize of my life, and I was ready on sight to take the colonel by the collar--he was only a governor's-staff colonel anyhow, and, consequently no great shakes as a fighter--and throw him into the harbor, but my quest was a vain one. He was to be found in none of his familiar haunts, and I returned to Bolivar Lodge. And then came the shock. As I approached the house I saw the colonel assisting Henriette into the motor-car, and in response to the chauffeur's "Where to, sir," I heard Scrappe reply in an excited undertone: "To New York--and damn the speed laws." In a moment they had rushed by me like the flash of a lightning express, and Henriette was gone! You must know the rest. The papers the next day were full of the elopement in high life. They told how the Scrappe divorce had been granted at five o'clock in the afternoon the day before, how Colonel Scrappe and Mrs. Van Raffles had sped to New York in the automobile and been quietly married at the Little Church Around the Corner, and were now sailing down the bay on the _Hydrostatic_, bound for foreign climes. They likewise intimated that a very attractive lady of more than usual effusiveness of manner, whose nuptials were expected soon to be published for the second time, had gone to a sanitarium in Philadelphia to be treated for a sudden and overwhelming attack of nervous hysteria. It was all too true, that tale. Henriette's final coup had been successful, and she had at one stroke stolen her landlord, her landlady's husband, and her neighbor's fiancé. To console me she left this note, written on board of the steamer and mailed by the pilot. ON BOARD THE HYDROSTATIC. OFF SANDY HOOK, _September 10, 1904_. DEAR BUNNY,--I couldn't help it. The minute I saw him I felt that I must have him. It's the most successful haul yet and is the last adventure I shall ever have. He's worth forty million dollars. I'm sorry for you, dear, but it's all in the line of business. To console you I have left in your name all that we have won together in our partnership at Newport--fourteen millions five hundred and sixty-three thousand nine hundred and seventy-seven dollars in cash, and about three million dollars in jewels, which you must negotiate carefully. Good-bye, dear Bunny, I shall never forget you, and I wish you all the happiness in the world. With the funds now in your possession why not retire--go home to England and renew your studies for the ministry? The Church is a noble profession. Sincerely yours, HENRIETTE VAN RAFFLES-SCRAPPE. I have gathered together these meagre possessions--rich in bullion value, but meagre in happiness, considering all that might have been, and to-morrow I sail for London. There, following Henriette's advice, I shall enter the study of the ministry, and when I am ordained shall buy a living somewhere and settle down to the serene existence of the preacher, the pastor of a flock of human sheep. [Illustration: "MY MISERY IS DEEP BUT I AM BUOYED UP BY ONE GREAT HOPE"] My misery is deep but I am buoyed up by one great hope in every thought. These Newport marriages are so seldom for life that I yet have hope that some day Henriette will be restored to me without its necessarily involving any serious accident to her husband the colonel. 
34369	----	PENNY NICHOLS MYSTERY STORIES Penny Nichols Finds a Clue (1936) Penny Nichols and the Mystery of the Lost Key (1936) Penny Nichols and the Black Imp (1936) Penny Nichols and the Knob Hill Mystery (1939) _by_ "Joan Clark" (Mildred A. Wirt, 1905-2002) Penny Nichols and the Mystery of the Lost Key _By_ Joan Clark * The Goldsmith Publishing Company CHICAGO COPYRIGHT 1936, BY THE GOLDSMITH PUBLISHING COMPANY MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA _CONTENTS_ CHAPTER PAGE I. A Valuable Letter 11 II. A Mysterious Key 25 III. An Arrogant Guest 38 IV. A Face at the Window 51 V. The Lost Key 67 VI. Midnight Visitors 76 VII. "Ghost" Music 93 VIII. The Ivory Collection 102 IX. A Scrap of Paper 115 X. The Wall Safe 131 XI. A Night Adventure 140 XII. A Suspicious Act 150 XIII. The Secret Stairs 164 XIV. A Diamond Ring 175 XV. Penny's Evidence 186 XVI. Mrs. Leeds' Strategy 199 XVII. The Man in the Boat 209 XVIII. A Daring Theft 220 XIX. The Tables Turn 225 XX. A Break for Freedom 239 CHAPTER I A Valuable Letter "Hurry, Susan! We have only ten minutes before the store closes!" Penelope Nichols, the slender girl in blue, urged her companion into the revolving doors at the entrance of the Bresham Department Store. A vigorous push sent the barriers spinning at such a rate that other shoppers turned to stare at the two girls. "You nearly took off my heels that time, Penny," Susan Altman protested with a laugh as they emerged into the crowded store. "Sorry, but we've no time to waste if I get that pair of white earrings. The clerks are starting to put things away already." Threading their way through the outgoing stream of shoppers, the girls went directly to the jewelry counter. Penny peered anxiously into one of the glass cases to see if the coveted ivory ornaments were still on display. They had not been sold. "Do you think they'll look all right with my red party frock?" she asked her chum as they stood impatiently waiting for a clerk. In matters of dress she valued Susan's opinion more highly than her own. "Stunning. With your coloring you can wear anything. Now if you had a skin like mine and a snub nose--" Penny did not hear the remainder of her chum's oft-repeated complaint for she was trying vainly to attract the attention of a clerk. The only available girl at the counter was occupied in showing a tray of fine rings to a tall man in gray tweeds. "We'll never be waited on," Penny murmured in annoyance. "You can tell it's going to take until closing time before he makes up his mind which ring he wants." Susan turned to survey the customer. He was expensively dressed and upon a casual inspection appeared to be a gentleman of considerable means. Although the clerk offered several diamond rings for his approval none of them satisfied him. "Haven't you anything better than this?" he questioned. "Show me that large diamond, please." He tapped the glass case lightly with his cane. The clerk obligingly placed the ring before him. The man examined the diamond closely, comparing it with another ring previously shown him. For the first time he appeared aware of Penny and Susan. "Wait on these young ladies while I make up my mind which ring I prefer," he urged the clerk. "I am in no hurry and I can see that they are." The clerk hesitated. The rings in which the customer was interested were valuable ones. It was a rule of the store to keep them always in the locked case. Yet it would take her only a minute to wait upon the girls, and obviously the man was a gentleman. She turned to serve Penny. "I'll take that pair of earrings," Penny announced, indicating the ivory pieces. "They're three dollars, aren't they?" "Yes, that is correct. I'll have them wrapped for you." Penny offered the girl a five dollar bill in payment. She could not restrain a little sigh as she saw it deposited in the store's cash drawer. Perhaps she had been foolish to buy the earrings. It meant that she must do without a great many little things in order to keep within her allowance. Penny sighed again. At times it was trying to have a father who believed in maintaining his daughter strictly upon a budget plan. Her eyes roved aimlessly toward the man at the ring counter. She saw him cast a quick glance about. Then he walked rapidly away, making for the nearest exit. Penny's keen blue eyes riveted upon the ring tray. The large diamond was missing. She had not seen the customer actually take it--his movements had been too deft for that--yet she knew for a certainty that while the clerk's back had been turned he had secreted it somewhere upon his person. Penny did not hesitate. She darted after him. "Stop!" she cried. And then to the surprised shoppers who turned at the sound of her voice: "Don't let that thief get away!" The man wheeled sharply, his face convulsed in anger. With his cane he struck viciously at a stout woman who clutched him by the coat. A store detective blocked the main exit. Recognizing that he could not hope to escape that way, the thief turned and bolted up a moving escalator which was carrying a capacity load of passengers to the second floor. Penny, the detective, and a few of the more energetic customers took up the pursuit. In a desperate attempt to escape, the thief elbowed women roughly aside as he darted up the stairway. Upon the uncertain footing of the moving treads, several stumbled and fell. In an instant hysterical women were screaming and clutching at one another for support. A slender girl in a shabby business suit was rudely jostled. Penny, half way up the moving stairway, tried to save her from a hard fall. She was not quick enough. Down the girl went, and as she fell, the contents of her pocketbook spilled out upon the moving stairway. The thief took advantage of the resulting confusion to melt into the throng of shoppers at the top of the escalator. While store detectives carried on the pursuit, Penny tried to help the terrified women to alight from the stairway. "Are you hurt?" she asked the girl who had fallen, trying to assist her to her feet. "Never mind me! Save my pocketbook!" the other cried, frantically beginning to gather up the scattered objects. The other passengers upon the stairway were more of a hindrance than a help. Yet by working fast Penny managed to accumulate nearly all of the lost articles before the brief ride approached its end. "My letter!" At the other girl's shrill cry, Penny saw a white envelope riding serenely on the uppermost step. With a bound she covered the distance which separated her from it, pouncing upon the letter an instant before the moving belt disappeared into the flooring. Clutching it triumphantly in her hand, she turned to assist the girl who had lost it. "Why, you're limping," she observed. "Here, lean on me." "It's nothing," the girl maintained staunchly. "I twisted my ankle when I fell." Penny helped her to a nearby chair. Despite the girl's brave words, her lips quivered when she spoke and her attractive face had taken on an ashen hue. Yet, strangely, her interest centered not in her injury but in the letter which she had nearly lost. "Thank you for saving it," she told Penny gratefully. "I don't know what I should have done if I'd lost that letter. It means everything to me." Penny stared at the envelope a trifle curiously but she was too well bred to ask personal questions. Before she could make any response store officials hurried up to take charge of the situation. The girl's name was Rosanna Winters, Penny learned, by listening. She lived at a rooming house on Sixty-fifth Street, not a great distance from Penny's own home. Rosanna firmly turned down the suggestion of store officials that she be sent to a nearby hospital for first-aid treatment. "It isn't necessary. I merely twisted my ankle. I'll soon be able to walk on it." "Let me take you home," Penny offered. "My roadster is parked just outside the store. We live close to each other." The girl hesitated, then smiled as she said: "That's very kind of you, I'm sure. You don't really mind?" "Of course not. Here, let me help you downstairs." "Not by way of the escalator," Rosanna said hastily. "Hereafter I'll ride on the elevator. It's safer." Although the store's gong had announced the closing hour some minutes previously, shoppers were slow to leave the building. As the girls returned to the street floor they were embarrassed to find themselves the target for many curious stares. Penny readily was recognized as the girl who had observed the theft of the ring. "What became of that man who knocked me down?" Rosanna questioned. "I suppose he escaped." "I'm afraid so," Penny admitted, looking about for Susan. "The last I saw of him he was running toward the kitchenware department with the store detective after him." Sighting Susan near the outside door, Penny steered her new friend in that direction. Quickly she introduced the girls, mentioning Rosanna's unfortunate accident. "I saw it all," Susan declared. "Penny, you certainly did stir up things when you set the store detective on that thief." "And the worst of it was that he escaped," Penny acknowledged. "Of course, he may be caught here in the building but I doubt it." In the excitement, she had completely forgotten her package at the jewelry counter. The girls would have left the store without it had not the clerk come running after them with the purchase. "Thank you so much for calling out the alarm," she told Penny gratefully. "If the thief isn't caught I may lose my job." "Oh, I hope not." "So do I, but I shouldn't have broken a store rule. I was completely taken in by the man's appearance." "I don't wonder at that," Penny said. "He certainly looked anything but a crook. Was the ring a valuable one?" "It was priced to sell at eight hundred dollars. I don't see how I could have been so stupid." Penny felt sorry for the salesgirl, particularly so when the floorwalker came up and began to question her sharply. "It really wasn't the clerk's fault," Penny insisted. "I feel certain that man was a professional jewel thief." "Did you notice his appearance?" the floorwalker asked. "Yes, he was dressed in a gray tweed suit. I'd say he was approximately six feet in height, dark hair and eyes. His face was long and angular." The store official noted down the description and took Penny's address in case she might be needed later on to identify the crook if he were captured. "We're watching all the lower floor exits," the floorwalker informed, "but the chances are the man got away by means of one of the fire escapes." The store rapidly was clearing of shoppers. Penny and her companions lingered a few minutes longer and then they too were politely requested to leave. "I'd like to know if the store detective caught that man," Penny declared as they paused for an instant on the street. "I suppose now we'll have to find out by reading our newspapers." Rosanna Winters turned as if to leave the girls. "Thank you again for saving my pocketbook," she said to Penny. "My ankle is much better now so I'll just take a streetcar home." Penny caught her by the elbow. "You'll do no such thing. Why, I can see that it hurts you every step you take. It isn't more than a block or two out of my way to drive you home." Despite Rosanna's protests, she urged the girl into the roadster which was parked at the curbing. Penny was very proud of her car. Although it was not a new model it ran very well and she spent most of her spare time keeping it washed and polished. Since the Altman residence was close by, Penny dropped her chum off before taking Rosanna home. During the ride to Sixty-fifth Street, the Winters girl spoke scarcely a word. Several times Penny cast a curious glance in her direction. Rosanna was the quiet type, she decided. A striking brunette with a thoughtful, almost sad face. "I live at the next house," the girl said as they turned a corner. "The one on the right." It was a modest but not unattractive boarding house. The porch was clean and the yard more orderly than the majority in the neighborhood. "I'm only staying here a few days until I can find another place," Rosanna mentioned, feeling that some explanation was due her companion. "You are a stranger in Belton City?" Penny guessed. "Yes, I came here looking for work. But now that won't be necessary." Rosanna hesitated, and then, because Penny had seemed so very friendly, decided to offer additional information. "I am an orphan, Miss Nichols. Until this week I had begun to think that fortune had turned against me." "And now you've had a piece of good luck?" "Yes," Rosanna's face glowed as she opened her purse and took out the letter which Penny had picked up from the escalator. "If you hadn't saved this for me, I should have lost everything." "Then I'm glad I snatched it up in time," Penny smiled. She could not imagine the contents of the mysterious letter. It was all she could do to keep from asking questions. "I'd like to have you read it if you care to," Rosanna said a trifle timidly. "I'm anxious to learn the opinion of another person." "Why, I'll be glad to look at it if you wish," Penny returned, a little surprised at the request. "And as far as advice is concerned, I love to offer it." She accepted the envelope which Rosanna proffered. As she took out the folded letter a key dropped out into her lap. "What's this?" Penny demanded. Rosanna laughed nervously. "If what the letter says is true, it seems to be the key to my inheritance! But read the letter for yourself." CHAPTER II A Mysterious Key Unfolding the paper, Penny noticed that the message had been written under the letterhead: "J.C. Elfhedge, attorney, Brookport." The communication stated briefly that Rosanna Winters was the sole heiress of the late Jacob Winters, her uncle, and that she had inherited his mountainside estate at Raven Ridge. A key to the property was enclosed. She was urged to inspect the estate at her earliest convenience. "Well, what do you think of it?" Rosanna questioned as Penny studied the letter in silence. "Why, it's fine," Penny returned after a slight hesitation. "Did you know Jacob Winters well?" "I didn't know him at all. In fact I never even met him." "Oh! Then the inheritance must have come as a surprise." "It did. Even now I can't help thinking there must be some mistake. Did you ever hear of Raven Ridge?" "Yes, indeed," Penny told her. "It is a lovely spot near Snow Mountain." "I must go there as soon as I can," Rosanna said. "Will the car fare be very much do you think?" "Probably not more than ten dollars." "That's a large sum for me," Rosanna smiled ruefully. "Of course, now that I've actually inherited Uncle Jacob's estate, I suppose I shouldn't worry about money." "Well, I shouldn't spend lavishly until I was certain there would be no slip-up about getting the property," Penny advised bluntly. "Perhaps I shouldn't say it, but there's a certain tone to this letter that I don't like." "What do you mean?" Rosanna questioned. Penny found it difficult to explain. "Brookport is only a few miles from here and yet I've never heard of a lawyer by the name of Elfhedge. It seems a trifle strange too that he should enclose a key to the property." "It struck me that way too at first," Rosanna admitted unwillingly. "Of course, I do have an uncle named Jacob Winters--my mother often spoke of him. He was always considered queer." "It may be all right. No doubt you have inherited a fortune. Only I think I'd be a trifle cautious until I was certain it wasn't a hoax." "But what can I do except to obey the letter and visit the property?" Penny glanced again at the letterhead. "Why not visit this lawyer and have a talk with him? Brookport isn't far from here and it might save you a trip to Raven Ridge." "Can I reach Brookport by train or bus?" "I'm afraid not," Penny said. "It's off the main line of travel. You haven't a car of your own or one you could borrow?" "No." "I'll take you to Brookport if you like," Penny offered generously. "We might go tomorrow." "Oh, I shouldn't like to trouble you, Miss Nichols. I can probably rent a car." "There's no need of it for I would enjoy the ride. Besides, I am curious to learn if there is an attorney by the name of Elfhedge living in Brookport. Suppose I call here for you around ten o'clock tomorrow morning." "All right," Rosanna smiled. "It's good of you to offer. Perhaps I can repay you someday." The girls parted, Penny driving directly to her own home. Entering the house by the back door she found Mrs. Gallup, the housekeeper, cooking dinner. The kitchen was permeated with the delightful aroma of frying chicken. "Is Dad home yet?" Penny inquired, pausing to sniff the air. "He's in the study," the housekeeper informed. Penny found Christopher Nichols occupied at his desk. Sometimes it was difficult for her to realize that she was the daughter of a detective who had gained state-wide recognition for his ability in solving baffling cases. Mr. Nichols had served an apprenticeship on the police force, had risen from the ranks, and later had started his own private detective agency. Yet, despite his success, he was quiet and unaffected. Mr. Nichols had no real hobbies and only two absorbing interests in life--his work and his daughter. Penny had been left motherless at an early age. Because there had been only a slight feminine influence in her life her outlook upon the world was somewhat different from that of the average high school girl. She thought clearly and frankly spoke her mind. Yet if she enjoyed an unusual amount of freedom for one so young, she never abused the trust which her father placed in her. Penny loved adventure. Recently, somewhat to her father's chagrin, she had involved herself with a daring gang of automobile thieves. The story of her exciting encounter with underworld characters has been recounted in the first volume of the series, entitled, "Penny Nichols Finds A Clue." "Now what?" Mr. Nichols demanded gruffly as his daughter perched herself on the corner of his desk. "Has that car of yours broken down again?" Penny laughed as she shook her head. "No, believe it or not, I still have a few dollars of my allowance left. I'm after information this time." "What sort of information?" "Preferably accurate," Penny smiled. "Tell me, did you ever hear of a lawyer by the name of Elfhedge with an office at Brookport?" "No, I never did," Mr. Nichols returned instantly. "There is an attorney in the Stover building by the name of Hedgel. Perhaps you're mixed up." "I have the name right," Penny insisted. She then related the contents of Rosanna Winters' letter. "It sounds like someone's idea of a practical joke," Mr. Nichols declared. "I'd advise the girl not to spend any money until she's done a little investigating." "That's what I did tell her." "I'll look this man Elfhedge up in a day or two if you like," Mr. Nichols promised. "It sounds like a fictitious name to me but of course the letter may be _bona fide_." Mrs. Gallup interrupted the discussion to announce that dinner was ready. Immediately after the meal had been served, Mr. Nichols left for his office and Penny saw him no more that evening. He left the house before she was up the next morning so she had no opportunity to explain that she was driving Rosanna Winters to Brookport that day. At ten o'clock she rang the doorbell of the rooming house on Sixty-fifth Street. Rosanna already was waiting. "I thought you might have changed your mind about wishing to make the trip," she declared, following Penny to the car. "No, I'm more curious than ever to talk with your lawyer. It will be wonderful, Rosanna, if the estate turns out to be a valuable one." Rosanna smiled a trifle ruefully. "Yes, I will have plenty of use for the money. I can't believe yet that Uncle Jacob left everything to me." Penny refrained from saying anything which might disturb Rosanna. Actually, she had not the slightest reason for doubting that the girl had come into an inheritance, save that the letter from Mr. Elfhedge did not have a genuine tone. It occurred to her that a scheme might be under way to induce the orphan to part with her own savings. During the ride to Brookport, Rosanna mentioned a few of the hard experiences she had undergone in the past year. First her mother had died, then an aunt with whom she made her home, likewise had been taken from her. She found work of a sort in a grocery store, but long hours and trying conditions had worn her down. She had taken sick. Hospital bills claimed the greater part of the money which her mother had left her. She could not secure her old job back, nor could she find a new one. In desperation she had decided to come to Belton City, hoping that she might secure a position there. "You can imagine that I was pretty well discouraged when the letter arrived from Mr. Elfhedge," Rosanna ended. "You don't know what a fright you gave me by suggesting that it might be a hoax." "I'm sorry if I caused you worry. I had no reason for thinking that someone wrote the letter for a joke." "Uncle Jacob was noted for doing queer things," Rosanna informed. "I never met him but Mother often mentioned his name. He was quite a traveler, I believe, and collecting was his hobby." "What did he collect?" "Oh, things from the Orient and antiques from all over the world." "Then if you've come into his property, you may have inherited some real treasures," Penny commented. "It would be fun to visit that house at Raven Ridge." "Yes, but I dread going there alone. Penny, I wish you could go with me." "I wish I could too, but I guess I'll have to stay at Belton City this summer." It was only a little after eleven o'clock when the girls reached Brookport. The town was less than a hundred thousand population and Penny had no trouble in finding the main business section. After cruising about for some minutes, they located the street where Mr. Elfhedge had his office. The number which they sought brought them to an imposing seven-story brick building. Penny parked the roadster and they went inside, searching the directory for Mr. Elfhedge's name. It was not listed. "That's odd," Rosanna remarked with a troubled frown. "His office must be here somewhere in the building." Penny went over to make inquiry of the elevator boy. "There's no one in this building by that name," he insisted. Thinking that the boy might be misinformed, Penny and Rosanna sought the building superintendent. To satisfy them, the man looked carefully through his list of tenants. No one by the name of Elfhedge occupied an office in the building. "There is an attorney in Room 309 but his name is Rogers," the superintendent told the girls. "You might talk with him. He may know this man Elfhedge." They went up to Room 309 and after a brief wait were ushered into the lawyer's private office. Rosanna was too shy to state the purpose of her visit, so Penny explained why they had come. The lawyer had never heard of a colleague by the name of Elfhedge. "He's never been in this building and I doubt that he's even located in the city," they were told. "You must have made a mistake in the address." The girls had made no mistake, that they knew. The address was plainly written on the outside of the envelope which Rosanna had in her purse. She showed it to the lawyer. "Yes, that seems to be this building," he admitted. "It looks as if someone used a fake address." They left the office completely discouraged. Penny felt sorry for her companion. Rosanna had counted so heavily upon the inheritance. Now it appeared that someone had played a cruel joke upon her. "You were right," Rosanna acknowledged as they walked slowly back to the car. "You were suspicious of that letter from the first." "It struck me as peculiar that it was written in longhand instead of on a typewriter," Penny explained. "I suppose it is nothing but a joke," Rosanna acknowledged, "and yet why should a key be enclosed in the letter?" "It's beyond me, Rosanna. Even if the trip is wasted, you might feel better about it if you went to Raven Ridge and investigated." "I'd go in an instant if I had the money to spare." "I'll loan it to you." Rosanna shook her head. "No, I can't take it although it's kind of you to offer." "I wish I could help you, Rosanna." "You've helped me a great deal already. Perhaps a little later on I'll find some way of getting to Raven Ridge." Penny tried to urge the loan, but Rosanna, who was unusually proud, would not hear of it. The girls parted at the latter's boarding house on Sixty-fifth Street. "I'll see you within a day or two," Penny promised as she drove away. "Perhaps by that time Father will learn something about Mr. Elfhedge." She did not really believe that Mr. Nichols could find anything to report. Doubtless, the name had been a fictitious one. Yet who had played the joke upon Rosanna and for what purpose? "There's more to the affair than what appears on the surface," she reflected. "If only I had the chance, I'd do a little investigating." Penny smiled at the thought, little dreaming that such an opportunity was to present itself very shortly. CHAPTER III An Arrogant Guest That evening at the dinner table Penny told her father about the unsuccessful trip to Brookport. "It looks like someone played a practical joke on your friend," he commented. "But who could be so mean, Dad? Rosanna has had such a desperately hard time to get along. Now if she wastes money going to Raven Ridge on a fruitless visit, it won't seem fair." "Well, it's likely to amount to just that," Mr. Nichols returned. "I tried to locate that attorney, Elfhedge today." "Any luck?" "No, I doubt if such a person exists." "So do I," Penny agreed. "By the way, what became of the newspaper today? I wanted to read up about the department store theft." "To see if your name was mentioned?" her father teased. "No, I was just curious to learn if the thief was captured." "I can set your mind at rest on that point," Mr. Nichols informed. "He wasn't. If you're interested in the details, you'll find the paper on the front porch." Penny helped Mrs. Gallup clear the table of dishes, then went outside to get the paper. The story appeared on the front page. It was a slightly distorted version of what had happened and Penny was just as well pleased that her name was not mentioned. According to the account, the thief had escaped by means of a rear fire escape. The ring, valued at approximately nine hundred dollars, was fully covered by insurance. While Penny was reading the story, Mr. Nichols came out and sat on the porch steps. "How would you like to take a little trip?" he asked casually. Penny dropped the newspaper. "With you?" she questioned eagerly. "Yes, I've been working hard lately and I feel like taking a rest over the week end." "Where will we go?" "I thought of Mt. Ashland. It will be cool in the mountains and at this time of year the hotels will not be too crowded." "Why, Mt. Ashland isn't very far from Snow Mountain, is it?" Penny demanded with interest. "I'm going to look it up on the map." She ran into the house for the big red atlas. A moment later she returned, her eyes dancing with excitement. "Mt. Ashland isn't more than a two hours' drive from Snow Mountain," she told her father. "And just what difference does it make?" "Why, Raven Ridge is located on Snow Mountain, you know." "Oh! So that's what you have in your mind!" Penny perched herself on her father's knee, smiling her most beguiling smile. "Never mind, you little tease," he said hastily. "I give in." "You don't even know what I want," she laughed. "Yes, I do. You want to take this new friend of yours along with us." "I think it would be nice, don't you?" Penny beamed. "Then while you're having a good rest at Mt. Ashland we could drive on to Raven Ridge. Rosanna could investigate her property there, if she has any, and it wouldn't cost her much of anything to make the trip." "You seem to have it well planned," the detective marveled. "Well, what's wrong with the idea?" "Nothing. We'll take her along if she wants to go. She may help keep you out of mischief." "When do we start?" Penny demanded gaily. "Tomorrow afternoon as soon as I can get away from the office." "Then I'll dash over to see Rosanna now and ask if she can go with us," Penny announced. Without giving her father an opportunity to change his mind, she hurried to the garage for her roadster. At the rooming house on Sixty-fifth Street, the landlady, a stout woman with a tired, lined face, admitted her. "Miss Winters has the attic room," she informed. "Five flights up." At the top of the last flight Penny paused to catch her breath before rapping on Rosanna's door. The orphan was a trifle startled at seeing her. "Do come in," she said cordially. The room was oppressive and warm, although the tiny windows were open wide. A bed, a chest of drawers, two chairs and a cracked mirror composed the entire furniture. "I don't expect to stay here long," Rosanna said apologetically. "I thought it would do until I found work." "Why, of course," Penny agreed instantly. "Did you have any luck today?" Rosanna shook her head and sank wearily down upon the bed. "No, everywhere I went it was the same old story. I'm beginning to think I'll never find employment." "Perhaps you'll not need it if you come into an inheritance," Penny smiled. "Rosanna, I've found a way for you to get to Raven Ridge." The orphan's face brightened but for a full minute after Penny had explained the plan, she sat silent. "Don't you want to go?" Penny asked, perplexed. "Yes, of course I do. It isn't that. You've been so good and kind to me. I'll never be able to repay you for your trouble and expense." "Nonsense! The trip will be more fun if you go along, Rosanna. Besides, I have an overwhelming curiosity to see Raven Ridge and your uncle's estate. Please say you'll go." "All right, I will," Rosanna gave in. "Good. Father and I will stop for you tomorrow. I must get back home now and start packing." Penny clattered down the creaking, narrow stairway and disappeared into the night. Although the trip was only a short one, and at the longest would occupy less than a week's time, Penny spent many hours planning her wardrobe. She packed an evening gown, several afternoon frocks, and sports clothes. Then, reflecting that Rosanna would not be so well fixed, she hung the garments back in the closet, substituting her plainest dresses. "There, that will be much better," she decided. "A wise traveler goes light anyway." At three o'clock the following afternoon, Penny and her father stopped at Rosanna's rooming house to pick up the orphan. She was waiting on the porch, and as Penny had thought, confined her luggage to one overnight bag. At first the road to Mt. Ashland wound through fertile valleys and low hills. Gradually, they climbed. The curves became more frequent. Tall pines bordered the roadside. Six o'clock found the party well into the mountains, although still some miles from their destination. Noticing a pleasant little inn at the top of a ridge, they stopped for dinner which was served on the veranda overlooking a beautiful valley. "I wonder if Raven Ridge will be as pretty as this?" Rosanna mused. "It's even more beautiful," Mr. Nichols told her. "The scenery is very impressive." Before they arose from the table it was growing dusk for they had lingered to watch the sunset. "It's just as well that I wired ahead for hotel reservations," Mr. Nichols remarked as they hurried to the parked car. "Getting in after dark it wouldn't be so pleasant to find all the rooms taken." At exactly nine o'clock the twinkling lights of the Mt. Ashland Hotel were sighted, and a few minutes later the automobile drew up in front of the large white rambling building. An attendant took the car and they all went inside. "I doubt if you'll get rooms here tonight, sir," a bellboy told the detective as he carried the luggage to the main desk. "There's been a big rush of guests this week-end." Mr. Nichols was not disturbed. At the desk he merely gave the clerk his name, claiming the two rooms which he had reserved by wire. "We saved two very fine rooms for you," the clerk returned politely. "Both overlook the valley." While Mr. Nichols signed the register, Penny and Rosanna sat down nearby. Their attention was drawn to the main entrance. A large touring car had pulled up to the door. A pompous looking woman of middle age and a younger woman, evidently her daughter, had alighted. Both were elegantly if somewhat conspicuously dressed. Several suitcases, hat boxes and miscellaneous packages were unloaded. The older woman carried a fat lapdog in her arms. "They seem to have brought everything but the bird cage," Penny said in an undertone. The two women walked up to the desk. "I am Mrs. Everett Leeds," the one with the dog announced a trifle too loudly. "I have a reservation." "Just a minute please," the clerk requested. It seemed to Penny that he looked disturbed as he thumbed through his cards. "There is no occasion for delay," Mrs. Leeds declared blandly. "My daughter and I always engage the same room--305." "Why, that was the number of one of the rooms assigned to my party," Mr. Nichols observed. "There's been some mix-up," the clerk said in distress. He turned again to the two women. "Your reservation isn't on file, Mrs. Leeds. When did you send the wire?" "I reserved the room by letter," the woman informed him coldly. "It was never received here I am sure." "No doubt the letter was lost." "You are certain it was sent?" "Of course I am," Mrs. Leeds declared icily. "My daughter mailed it. Didn't you, Alicia, my dear?" A queer expression passed over the girl's face. It struck Penny that she probably had forgotten to post the letter. However, Alicia staunchly maintained that she had. "It's most provoking that you have misplaced the reservation," Mrs. Leeds said irritably to the clerk. "But of course we can have the room?" "I am afraid that is impossible, Mrs. Leeds. The room you wanted was reserved for two young ladies." With a nod of his head the clerk indicated Penny and Rosanna. Mrs. Leeds and her daughter turned to stare somewhat haughtily. "What other room can you give us then?" the woman demanded angrily. The clerk cast Mr. Nichols a despairing glance. He knew he was in for trouble. "Practically everything is taken, Mrs. Leeds. In fact the only available room is on the top floor." "And you expect us to take that?" Mrs. Leeds cried, her voice rising until everyone in the lobby could hear. "I never heard of such outrageous treatment. Call the manager!" Penny had risen to her feet. She moved quickly forward. "There's no need to do that," she said pleasantly. "If Rosanna doesn't mind, I am perfectly willing to exchange rooms with Mrs. Leeds." "Why, of course," Rosanna agreed. "It doesn't matter to me where I sleep." Satisfied at having her own way, Mrs. Leeds quieted down. She even thanked the girls graciously for the sacrifice they had made. The clerk gave out the keys. "Why did you do that?" Mr. Nichols asked gruffly as he and the girls followed a bellboy to the elevator. "Your room up by the roof will be hot as blazes." "I know, but I didn't see any sense in making such a fuss over a room, Dad. Besides, it's only for one night." "I'd insist that you girls take my room if it had a double bed." Penny shook her head. "No, you came here for a rest. Rosanna and I really won't mind." The three entered the elevator and a minute later Mrs. Leeds and her daughter likewise stepped into the lift. "I hope you girls will not find it uncomfortable on the top floor," Mrs. Leeds remarked, trying to make pleasant conversation. "It isn't very warm tonight," Penny returned politely. "Besides, it will only be for one night. We're going on to Raven Ridge in the morning." The elevator was whizzing them upward. "Did you say Raven Ridge?" Mrs. Leeds questioned sharply. "Yes." A queer expression had come into Mrs. Leeds sharp, blue eyes. She seemed on the verge of speaking, then apparently changed her mind. The elevator stopped at the third floor. Without a word, the woman urged her daughter out the door, following her down the hall. CHAPTER IV A Face at the Window The little room on the top floor of the hotel was as hot and unpleasant as Mr. Nichols had predicted. Even with all the windows open wide the air still seemed close. "Rosanna, I shouldn't have forced you into this," Penny said apologetically. "I've slept in far worse places than this," Rosanna laughed. "We have a comfortable bed and a private bath. I didn't fare half so well at Mrs. Bridges." "You're a good sport anyway, Rosanna. That's more than could be said for Mrs. Leeds or her daughter." "I wonder how old the girl is? She looked about our age." "I'd guess she was two or three years older," Penny returned. "She had so much paint on it was hard to tell." Both girls were tired from the long day's drive. Rosanna immediately began to undress. Penny sat on the edge of the bed, thoughtfully staring into space. "Did it strike you as queer the way Mrs. Leeds acted when I mentioned we were going to Raven Ridge tomorrow?" she questioned her companion. Rosanna kicked off her slippers before replying. "Well, come to think of it, she did look a little startled. She put on such a scene downstairs that I didn't pay much attention." "We'll probably never see her again." With a shrug of her slim shoulders Penny arose and began to unpack her overnight bag. According to the plan which they had worked out with Mr. Nichols, the girls expected to leave for Raven Ridge the next morning directly after breakfast. It was their intention to motor to the mountain resort, inspect the Winters' property and see if they could learn anything concerning Rosanna's uncle. They intended to return either the next night or the one following. Few guests were abroad when the detective joined the girls at breakfast. It was only a little after seven o'clock. "Sleep well?" he inquired, looking over the menu. "Not very," Penny admitted truthfully. She might have added more had not Mrs. Leeds and her daughter entered the dining room at that moment. The two bowed slightly and selected a table in the opposite corner of the room. "Social climbers," Mr. Nichols said in an undertone. "I can tell their type a mile away." Breakfast finished, the girls prepared to leave for Raven Ridge. Their bags were already packed and downstairs. "Now drive cautiously over the mountain roads," the detective warned as he accompanied the girls to the waiting car. "If you can't get back by evening send me a wire." As Penny took her place at the steering wheel she observed that Mrs. Leeds' automobile had been brought to the hotel entrance by an attendant. Apparently, she too was making an early morning departure. "You're not listening to a word I am saying!" Mr. Nichols said severely. "Yes, I am." Penny's attention came back to the conversation. "I'll drive carefully and deliver your precious car back to you without a scratch." "I wasn't exactly worried about the car." "Well, there's no need to be uneasy about Rosanna or me. We'll have no trouble." With a laugh of careless confidence, Penny started the car and drove slowly away. It was not the first time she had driven over mountainous roads. She handled the wheel exceptionally well and used due caution on all of the sharp curves. The brakes were good but she dared not apply them too steadily on the steep inclines. "We'll have to rush if we get back to Mt. Ashland this evening," Penny announced, slowing down to read a signpost. "I declare, a mountain mile seems to be three times the length of an ordinary mile." They had gone only a short distance farther when a tire went down. Penny knew it instantly by the feel of the steering wheel. She pulled off at the side of the road. "Now we are in it," she said in deep disgust. "At least ten miles from a garage. I can change wheels on my own car, but I doubt if I can on Dad's automobile." The girls waited for a few minutes hoping that someone would come along to help. When no one did, Penny dragged out the tools, and after considerable trouble succeeded in jacking up the rear axle. "I see a car coming," Rosanna reported hopefully. "Let's flag it," Penny suggested. "I could do with a little masculine help." In response to her signal of distress, the approaching automobile slowed down. The driver was a man and there were no passengers. "He's stopping," Penny said in relief. There was a screech of brakes as the automobile came almost to a standstill. Then surprisingly, it speeded up again. But not before Penny had caught a fleeting glimpse of the driver's face. "Well, of all things!" Rosanna exclaimed indignantly. "I call that a mean trick." "I believe he was afraid to stop," Penny announced excitedly. "I think I recognized him. It was the same man who stole the ring from Bresham's Department Store!" "Are you sure?" Rosanna demanded incredulously. "I couldn't be absolutely certain, of course. He was traveling too fast for me to catch more than a passing glimpse of his face. But if he didn't recognize us, why did he slow down and then speed up?" "He did act suspiciously. But what can we do about it?" "Nothing, I'm afraid. We may as well devote our energies to this wheel." Rosanna was more than eager to help but she had never even seen a tire changed and had no idea how to go about it. After a little annoying experimentation, Penny got the wheel in place and tightened the lugs. "There, it's done," she said in relief, "but my dress is a mess. I'm afraid we'll have to stop at the first garage and have the old wheel fixed, for I don't carry another spare." A signpost at the next bend in the road advised them that Simpson's Garage was located only six miles away. They made it in a few minutes. There was no town, only a post office, one general store, and the garage which obviously was a remodeled blacksmith shop. "I'm glad it's nothing more than a tire which needs repairing," Penny commented as the garageman came to learn what they wanted. He promised that the tire would be ready in half an hour. Glancing at her wrist watch, Penny saw that it was already past lunch time. She inquired if there was a cafe nearby. "Not in Hamilton, there ain't," the garageman told her. "Ma Stevens, across the street in the big white house, serves meals to tourists now and then." Rather than spend an unpleasant half hour in the garage, the girls walked over to the rambling white house. They were reassured to see that the yard was well kept and that everything appeared orderly and clean. "Let's take a chance on the food," Penny decided. "I'm hungry enough to eat a fried board!" Mrs. Stevens, a motherly looking woman in a blue checked gingham dress, opened the door. She looked slightly troubled at their request for food. "It's later than I usually serve," she explained. Then noticing their disappointed faces, she added hastily: "But if you're not too particular, I can find you something." The "something" consisted of a generous platter of mountain trout, fresh from the stream and fried to a golden brown, French fried potatoes, a salad, and cherry pie. "Dear me, after such a meal, we may not be able to get to Raven Ridge," Penny remarked, finishing her second piece of pie. "I never ate so much in my life." "Did you say you were going to Raven Ridge?" Mrs. Stevens inquired. "Yes, we're waiting now to have a tire patched." "You're the second party through here today that's heading for Raven Ridge," Mrs. Stevens informed. "A man stopped for lunch about an hour ago. Only he thought it wasn't cooked well enough for him." "He must have been particular," Penny commented. "What did he look like?" "He was tall and dark and he had a sharp way of watching one." "I wonder if it could have been that man who passed us on the road?" Penny mused. "Was he driving a gray coupé?" "Yes, I believe he was." Penny was convinced that the man Mrs. Stevens described was the same person who had declined to help her on the road. She wondered what business took him to Raven Ridge. Could she have been mistaken in believing him to be the thief who had stolen the diamond ring? Paying for the luncheon, the girls went back to the garage. The tire was ready for them. Soon they were on their way again. They had driven for perhaps an hour when Penny observed that the road seemed to be leading them out of the mountains. She began to wonder if they had taken a wrong turn. She stopped at the next filling station to inquire. To her dismay, she was told that she had traveled nearly twenty miles out of her way. "I thought this didn't seem like the right road," Penny declared ruefully to her companion. "Now we'll be lucky to get to Raven Ridge by dinner time, to say nothing of returning to Mt. Ashland tonight." "I've put you to a great deal of trouble," Rosanna said regretfully. "Not at all. This trip to Raven Ridge is an adventure, and I like it. It will be more fun to stay over night anyway." An occasional road marker reassured the girls that at last they were on the right highway. The mountain curves were sharp, and Penny did not make as good time as she had anticipated. She became a little alarmed to see that storm clouds were rapidly gathering. "It looks as if we may have rain," Rosanna commented. "A great deal of it, I'd judge. Those clouds are black as ink." In less than half an hour the storm struck them in full force. A great gust of wind dashed huge drops of water against the windshield, there was a vivid flash of lightning, then the rain came down in steady sheets. Even with the wiper going Penny could see only a few feet ahead of the windshield. She pulled up under a huge oak tree at the side of the road. The girls waited a quarter of an hour and still the rain fell in torrents. At length, however, it slackened slightly, and not wishing to lose any more time, Penny cautiously drove on. "It can't last much longer," Rosanna said optimistically. Despite her hopeful words, the rain showed no sign of stopping. Penny reconciled herself to a slow pace for the remainder of the journey. She was beginning to grow tired. Her back and arms ached and it was a strain to keep such close watch of the road. With the sun hidden from view, night came on early. Nervous at the thought of driving over unfamiliar mountain roads after dark, the girls did not stop for dinner. Nine o'clock, in a pouring rain, found them drawn up at a filling station to inquire how much farther it was to Raven Ridge. "Why, you're practically there now," the attendant informed. "What place are you looking for?" "The Jacob Winters' estate," Penny replied. "Then keep on this road for about two miles more. When you come to the top of the ridge, take the gravel road to the left. It will lead you to the house. There's no one there though, unless maybe a caretaker." "Oh," Penny murmured, "then perhaps you can direct us to a place where we can spend the night." "The nearest is at the town of Andover, five miles beyond the Winters' place." The girls thanked the man for his assistance, and once more followed the winding road up the mountainside. "Shall we go on to Andover or stop at the Winters' house?" Penny asked her companion. "I don't know what to do," Rosanna faltered. "We're both so tired." "The place surely must have a caretaker, Rosanna. Let's take a chance and stop." At the top of the ridge they watched for the gravel road and were elated to find it. The entrance was barred by a white gate. Rosanna stepped out in the rain to open it. "This may have been a foolish thing to do," Penny admitted as they drove between tall rows of whispering pines. "We could have gone on to Andover only I dreaded driving down the mountainside with slippery roads." Rosanna huddled closer to her friend. The road was dark and the rustling of the wind in the pine needles made her uneasy. Soon they came within view of the house. It was built of native stone, half hidden by the luxuriant growth of shrubbery and trees which surrounded it. No lights gleamed in the windows. "There's no one here," Rosanna declared. "Let's knock anyway. The caretaker may be at the rear somewhere." They parked the car as close to the front door as possible and made a dash for the porch. Penny knocked several times on the massive door but there was no response. "We might try your key, Rosanna," she proposed. "If it fits I'll begin to think there's something to that mysterious letter you received." Rosanna groped in her pocketbook for the key. Impatient for action, Penny turned the handle of the door. To her astonishment the latch clicked. "Why, the door is already unlocked, Rosanna!" "But of course we won't dare go in." "Why not?" "Well, it doesn't seem right. The people may not be at home." "Someone must be around or the door wouldn't be unlocked. Besides, you have a key, Rosanna. And according to the letter, this is your inheritance." Penny swung wide the door. She peered inside but could see nothing. Her hand groped for the electric switch. She found the button by the door and pressed it. Instantly everything was flooded with light. The girls found themselves in a long, narrow living room. The ceiling was beamed, the furniture was rustic, and a great fireplace occupied one end of the wall. Penny crossed over to the hearth. There was no fire but logs were in readiness to make one. "I don't feel right about coming in here," Rosanna said nervously. "Nonsense, if it's your property you're not trespassing," Penny insisted. "Besides, it looks to me as if you were expected, for everything seems in readiness for guests. I'm going to build a fire and see if I can't thaw out my chilled bones." Reluctantly, Rosanna went to help her. Soon they had a roaring fire in the hearth. As they grew more comfortable they took more interest in their surroundings. The room was plainly but expensively furnished. Curious objects from many lands occupied the tables and bric-a-brac shelves. "Your uncle must have lived an interesting life," Penny commented, picking up a tiny ivory box from a nearby stand. "Yes, Mother often told me----" Rosanna's voice broke in the midst of the sentence. Turning, Penny saw that her friend's eyes were fastened upon the window. All color had drained from Rosanna's face. Her eyes were dilated with fear. "What is it?" Penny demanded. Rosanna clutched her hand. "I saw someone just then," she whispered. "A man's face at the window!" CHAPTER V The Lost Key Penny turned quickly toward the window. She saw nothing save the rain trickling down the panes. "You must have imagined it, Rosanna." "No, I didn't. I know I saw a face." Rosanna huddled close to Penny. She was afraid. "I'll go and look out," Penny proposed daringly. Before Rosanna could stop her she moved to the door and flung it open. A man in oilskins confronted her. His face was half hidden by the felt hat which he wore low over his eyes. "What do you want?" Penny asked nervously. Without answering, the man stepped into the room. Under the electric light he did not look as terrifying as he had at first glance. Penny saw when he swept off his dripping hat that he was an elderly man although spry for his years. She felt slightly reassured. "I came to find out what you mean by entering Mr. Winters' house when he's away?" the man demanded curtly. "Don't stand there staring like a blind owl! Answer." Rosanna had completely lost her power of speech, so Penny tried to explain the situation. She told how they had been caught by the storm and mentioned Rosanna's key and letter which gave her right to investigate the property. "So you're old Jacob Winters' niece?" the man questioned gruffly, peering intently at Rosanna. "At least that's what you say." "Of course he's my uncle, although I never saw him," Rosanna defended. "I can prove it by my letter." "Probably wrote it yourself," the man snapped. "But let's see it anyway." "Just a minute," Penny interposed, feeling that it was time the newcomer answered a few questions of his own. "Are you the caretaker of this house?" "Yes, and no. I'm a neighbor of Mr. Winters and he asked me to keep an eye on his house while he was away. I saw the light in the windows and came to see what was wrong." "My uncle is dead," Rosanna said quietly. "I have inherited the estate." "Jacob Winters dead!" the man exploded. "Why, I had a card from him last week. Mailed from some place down in Africa. Let me see that letter you claim to have." Rosanna opened her pocketbook and searched for it. A troubled look came over her face. She was certain she had placed both the letter and the key in the inside compartment. Now she could find neither. "So you haven't got it?" the man said suspiciously. "I must have it somewhere. I can't imagine how I misplaced it. You remember the letter don't you, Penny?" "Of course. You had it in your pocketbook the last time I saw it. We're telling you the absolute truth Mr.----" "Caleb Eckert," he supplied. "If you didn't have a key how did you get into the house?" "Why, the door was open--that is, it was unlocked," Penny explained. Caleb Eckert peered at her sharply as if trying to make up his mind if she were speaking the truth. Rosanna, who by this time had emptied her purse out upon the table, was growing more upset every minute. "Oh, let's leave this house, Penny," she burst out. "I've lost the letter and the key and so we've no right to be here at all. I didn't mean to trespass. I wish we'd never have come at all. That letter has caused me so much grief." Rosanna looked as if she might cry at any moment. Caleb Eckert softened. "Now, I wouldn't want you to go out into this storm. As far as I'm concerned you may stay here for the night." "We don't care to intrude," Rosanna said stiffly. "It isn't safe to go down the mountain in this rain," the man declared, adopting a more friendly tone. "Now don't be offended by the way I acted. My bark is worse than my bite." "We can't blame you for being suspicious," Penny admitted. "It may be that someone played a joke on Rosanna in sending her the letter and key. We were afraid of that from the first." Caleb Eckert's eyes roved to the crackling fire, then to the splattered windows. "Tell you what," he proposed gruffly. "You girls stay here for the night. In the morning we'll see if we can't straighten things out." "But if Mr. Winters is alive we have no right to use this house," Rosanna protested weakly. "You're his niece, aren't you?" Caleb demanded. "Jacob Winters wouldn't turn anyone out in a storm, much less one of his own kin folks. Have you had supper?" The girls admitted that they had not had any food since lunch time. Caleb led them to the kitchen, showing them where canned goods were stored. "If you're handy with a can opener there's no need to starve," he declared. The girls thanked him for his trouble. Rosanna timidly ventured a few questions concerning her uncle. "Did you never see him?" Caleb asked. "No, once I wrote him a letter but he never answered. I've heard Uncle Jacob was very eccentric." "Some might call him that. He liked to live alone and mind his own business which is more than most folks do. He traveled a lot too. I guess he must have visited every country in the world." He added slyly: "If Jacob _is_ dead, you'll come into possession of some valuable things." "I hope that nothing has happened to him," Rosanna said sincerely. "I don't really care for riches. All I want is a home." "Jacob Winters never liked girls." "I know," Rosanna sighed. "I guess that's why he never answered my letter." "You counted a lot on the inheritance, didn't you?" Caleb questioned shrewdly. Rosanna flushed but did not deny the accusation. "I thought that it might make my future more secure," she acknowledged. "Since Mother died I've battered around from one rooming house to another. But even if I don't come into the inheritance, I'll be glad that my uncle is still alive." "I don't know that he is," Caleb Eckert said hastily. "He was alive when he sent that postcard from Africa. Since then we've had no word from him here at Raven Ridge." While the girls prepared food for themselves, Caleb sat by the kitchen stove watching. He showed them how to start a fire in the range but would not partake of supper when it was cooked. "Had mine four hours ago. I'll show you where you can sleep and be getting on home." "Do you live near here?" Penny asked curiously. "Not far. If the rain would let up you could see my cabin through the dining room window. It's perched on the edge of the cliff, overlooking Lake Chippewa." Rosanna remarked that the scenery around Raven Ridge must be beautiful. "'Tis," Caleb agreed enthusiastically. "You'll have to walk down to the lake in the morning. There are some mighty pretty trails to follow too." "If we have time before we go, we'll surely explore," Penny promised. Caleb conducted them upstairs, opening the door of one of the bedrooms. It was stuffy and dusty but otherwise ready for occupancy. Penny turned back the coverlet of the bed and found that it was equipped with clean sheets and blankets. The furniture was massive and all hand carved. "I guess you can make out here for one night," Caleb said. "We'll be very comfortable," Penny assured him. Returning to the lower floor, Caleb lighted his lantern and prepared to leave. With his hand on the door knob he turned to face the girls again. "Oh, yes, there was something I forgot to mention. If you hear queer noises in the night don't be upset." "Queer noises?" Penny echoed. Caleb nodded soberly. "Folks around here claim the house is haunted but I never took stock in such stories myself. I just thought I'd warn you." And before the girls could recover from their astonishment, he firmly closed the door, disappearing into the rain. CHAPTER VI Midnight Visitors "I wish," Rosanna commented emphatically, "that I had never brought you to this queer old house." Penny laughed as she went over to the fireplace and dropped on another stick of wood. She stood watching the sparks fly up the chimney. "I think Caleb Eckert was only trying to be funny when he warned us of ghosts," she declared. "At any rate, I'm too tired and sleepy to care much whether the place is haunted or not." "It's a good night to sleep," Rosanna admitted, going to the window. "I believe the storm is getting worse." Rain pounded steadily upon the roof and the wind was rising. It whistled weirdly around the corners of the house. The tall maple trees which shaded the front porch bent and twisted and snapped. For a time the girls sat before the fire. Presently Penny suggested that they retire. "I don't believe I can sleep a wink tonight," Rosanna protested. "Even though Caleb Eckert said it was all right for us to stay here, I don't feel entirely easy about it." "I don't see why not," Penny protested as they mounted the creaking stairs to their bedroom. "According to the letter, you've inherited the house. And you have a key." "I had a key you mean. I can't understand how or where I lost it." In thinking back over the activities of the day, Rosanna could not recall taking either the key or the letter from her purse. However, several times for one purpose or another she had opened her pocketbook, and it was quite likely that the articles had fallen out unobserved. She thought possibly she might find them on the floor of Penny's car. She intended to search in the morning. The upstairs room was damp and chilly. The girls hurriedly prepared to retire. Penny put up the window, snapped out the light and made a great running leap which landed her in bed. "Listen to the wind howl," she murmured, snuggling drowsily into her pillow. "Just the night for ghosts to be abroad." "Don't!" Rosanna shivered, gripping her friend's hand. "I can almost imagine that someone is coming up the stairway now! I'm afraid of this lonely old house." "I won't let any mean old ghost get you," Penny chuckled teasingly. "I love stormy nights." Rosanna lay awake long after her companion had fallen asleep. She listened restlessly to the crash of the tree branches against the roof, the creaking of old timbers and boards. But the steady beat of rain on the windowpanes had a soothing effect upon tense nerves. Presently she dozed. Suddenly she found herself wide awake. She sat upright in bed, straining to hear. She was convinced that some unusual sound had aroused her. Then she heard it again. A peculiar pounding noise downstairs. She clutched Penny by the arm. "What is it?" the latter muttered drowsily. "Wake up! I think someone is trying to break into the house!" As the words penetrated Penny's consciousness, she became instantly alert. She too sat up, listening. Someone was pounding on the front door. "What shall we do?" Rosanna whispered in terror. Penny sprang from bed and snapped on the light. "I'm going to dress and go down. It may be Caleb Eckert." "Or a ghost," Rosanna chattered. "If you're going down, so am I." With the appearance of a light in the bedroom, the clanging on the door increased in violence. Penny, who was dressing as rapidly as she could, began to grow irritated. "Are they trying to break down the door?" she grumbled. "I should think whoever it is would know we're hurrying." Without delaying to lace up her shoes, she ran down the stairs, Rosanna close at her elbow. Before snapping on the living room lights the girls peered out the window. Slightly reassured by the appearance of the midnight visitors, they cautiously unbolted the front door. Mrs. Everett Leeds and her daughter Alicia, swept into the room. Both were bedraggled and obviously out of sorts. Mrs. Leeds shook the rain from her cape, flung her wet hat into the nearest chair, and then coldly surveyed the two girls. "What are you doing here, may I ask?" she inquired. "We _were_ sleeping," Penny smiled. "I mean, what are you doing in this house?" "It seems to belong to Rosanna," Penny said evenly. "She inherited it from her uncle, Jacob Winters." Mrs. Leeds' expression was difficult to interpret. For an instant she looked stunned. But she quickly recovered her poise. "Nonsense!" she said shortly. "This house belongs to me. Jacob Winters was my cousin. He died recently, leaving me everything. I have a letter and key to prove it. Naturally I couldn't use my key to get into the house for you had it bolted from the inside." Mrs. Leeds looked accusingly at the girls as she offered the letter to Penny. A casual glance assured the girls that it was identical with the one Rosanna had received and lost. "It's too late to go into this tonight," Penny protested. "Let's discuss it in the morning." "Very well," Mrs. Leeds agreed coldly. "Where are we to sleep?" Penny informed her that there were several empty bedrooms upstairs. She led the way to the upper floor. Opening the door of one of the rooms, she was surprised to see that it was not as well furnished as the bedroom which she and Rosanna shared. Mrs. Leeds uttered an exclamation of disgust. "Surely you don't expect me to sleep here, Miss Nichols. The room is dirty. Positively filthy." "Look at that long cobweb hanging from the ceiling!" Alicia added indignantly. "I'd have hysterics if I slept here." "Perhaps the adjoining room is better," Penny commented. An inspection revealed that if anything it was even more neglected. "I'm afraid you'll just have to make the best of it for tonight," Penny declared, "unless you care to drive on to the next town." "We'll stay," Mrs. Leeds decided instantly. "I'd prefer to sit up all night, rather than brave those horrible mountain roads again." "We slipped into a ditch coming here," Alicia informed. "That's what made us so late. We've had a terrible time." In a closet at the end of the hall, Penny and Rosanna found blankets and linen. As they made up the beds, neither Mrs. Leeds nor her daughter offered to assist. It was after one o'clock when the girls went back to their own room. "Mrs. Leeds means to make trouble about the inheritance," Penny remarked in an undertone as they snapped out the light once more. "I wonder if by any chance she could have picked up your letter and key?" "Oh, I doubt it," Rosanna returned. "I remember when we were at Mt. Ashland she dropped the hint that she was going to Raven Ridge. At least, she acted strangely when we mentioned the place." "Yes, she did. I had forgotten for the moment. Oh well, in the morning we'll learn exactly what she intends to do." Penny rolled over and soon was sleeping soundly. Toward morning she awoke to hear a clock somewhere in the house chiming four. At first she thought nothing of it, then it occurred to her that no one had wound any of the timepieces the previous evening. While she was musing over such an odd happening her keen ears detected the sound of soft footsteps in the long hall outside. "It's probably Mrs. Leeds or her daughter," she reasoned. The sounds persisted. At length Penny quietly arose and tiptoed to the door. She looked out into the dark hall. No one was within sight. Mrs. Leeds' door was closed. Penny went back to bed, taking care not to awaken Rosanna. Scarcely had she pulled the blankets up than the soft pad of footsteps could be heard again. "I hope it isn't that ghost Caleb warned us about," she thought uneasily. "Oh, bother! I know there aren't any ghosts!" Penny closed her eyes and tried to sleep but found it quite impossible. Even after the noise in the hall ceased she caught herself listening for the footsteps. At a quarter to seven she dressed and stole downstairs to see what she could find for breakfast. At eight o'clock when Rosanna came into the kitchen, Penny had coffee, cereal and crisp bacon ready. "The larder seems very well supplied," she informed cheerfully. "Someone left milk on our doorstep too. I imagine it must have been Caleb." "I'm hungry enough to eat anything," Rosanna declared. "Shall I call Mrs. Leeds and Alicia?" "Yes, do, although I don't know how they'll take to my cooking." Rosanna went upstairs to rap on Mrs. Leeds' door. She returned a minute later, reporting that neither of the guests would be down for breakfast. "They were quite put out at being disturbed so early," she told Penny ruefully. "We'll let them get their own breakfasts then. Come on, we'll have ours anyway." Penny had learned to cook very well under the tutelage of Mrs. Gallup. She had done remarkably well with the meager supplies at her disposal and Rosanna declared that the breakfast was excellent. The girls had finished the dishes and were stacking them away when Alicia came down the stairs. "Mother and I will take our breakfast now," she informed. Rosanna started toward the kitchen, but Penny neatly blocked the way. "Sorry," she said cheerfully, "but we've just finished ours. You'll find supplies in the kitchen." Alicia started to reply but without waiting to hear what she might have to say, Penny and Rosanna went out the back door. "While she cools off we may as well look over the grounds," Penny laughed. "If Mrs. Leeds and Alicia expect to get along with me, they'll have to learn that this household is going to operate on a cafeteria basis." From the rear door a sandstone path led down a steep incline to the brow of a high cliff. A river wound its way directly below, emptying into a crystal blue lake. Deep in the pine woods, some distance from the path, a cabin could be seen. The girls decided that it must belong to Caleb Eckert. While they were admiring the rugged scenery, someone came up behind them. They wheeled about to face Caleb himself. "Well, well, you both look bright and gay this morning," he greeted heartily. "Sleep well?" "Quite well," Rosanna told him shyly. "That is, we did until the visitors arrived." "Visitors?" Rosanna explained about Mrs. Leeds and her daughter while Penny added omitted details. For some reason they both were beginning to feel that Caleb was their ally. "All this talk about letters and keys and inheritances certainly has me puzzled," he proclaimed, shaking his head. "It's hard to believe that Jacob Winters is dead. I think I'll walk back to the house with you and have a little talk with Mrs. Leeds." "Did you leave milk at our doorstep this morning?" Penny questioned as they returned together. Caleb admitted that he had placed it there. "You've been very kind," Rosanna said gratefully. "I want to thank you before we leave." "You're not aiming to leave today?" Caleb asked quickly. "Well, yes, I imagine we will. I don't feel right about staying here." Caleb lowered his voice. "Take my advice, Miss Winters, and don't leave while that other woman and her daughter are here. From what you've told me, I think they mean to grab the property." "But what can I do?" Rosanna asked helplessly. "I've lost my letter and the key. I haven't any proof that the property was left to me." "Maybe this Leeds woman hasn't any proof that it was left to her either," Caleb said sagely. "Anyway, we'll find out what she has to say." At first, Mrs. Leeds, accosted in the living room of the old house, had little comment to make. She was out of sorts from lack of sleep the previous night, and the breakfast which she and Alicia had endeavored to cook had not been a success. Nor was she impressed with Caleb who wore high boots, an old pair of dirty trousers and a crumpled felt hat. "I don't see why I should discuss my business affairs with you," she said aloofly. "I have inherited this property from my cousin and I mean to remain here in possession of it indefinitely if necessary." "May I see the letter which you say you received?" Caleb inquired. Mrs. Leeds hesitated, then reluctantly handed it over. Caleb studied it briefly and returned it. "You will require more than this as evidence of Mr. Winters' death," he said quietly. "For all I know, you may have forged this letter." "Preposterous!" Mrs. Leeds snapped. "I refuse to discuss the matter with you further. I shall send for my attorney and he will straighten out everything." "Not without the will, he can't," Caleb returned grimly. "And there's no telling what became of it." "The will?" Mrs. Leeds caught him up. "Are you sure there was a will?" "Mr. Winters told me once that he had made one and hidden it somewhere in the house." "Then of course it can be found." "Mr. Winters wouldn't want anyone prying around in his private papers," Caleb insisted. "Until I have definite word that he is dead, I can't let anyone hunt for it." "I shouldn't call searching for the will exactly prying!" Mrs. Leeds retorted indignantly. "What right have you to say what is to be done here? Are you the caretaker?" "Well, not exactly, but Mr. Winters asked me to look after things until he got back." "That will must be found." Caleb's face tightened. "Mrs. Leeds," he said severely, "I repeat, things in this house must not be disturbed." Mrs. Leeds drew herself up proudly. "Unquestionably, the will leaves everything to me." "That may be," Caleb acknowledged, "but this girl here has a claim too." He indicated Rosanna. Mrs. Leeds froze her with a glance. Her eyes snapped like brands of fire as she listened to Rosanna's account of the letter and key. But a look of relief, which was not lost upon either of the girls, came over her face as she learned that they had been misplaced. "The story sounds ridiculous to me," Mrs. Leeds declared coldly. "If you can't produce the letter or the key, what proof have you that you actually are Jacob Winters' niece?" "I could get evidence within a few days," Rosanna declared. "The letter and key may show up too." "I think perhaps you dropped them in the car," Penny interrupted. "Let's look now." Leaving Mrs. Leeds and Caleb embroiled in another argument, they went outside where the automobile had been parked near the house. A careful search of the flooring and pockets of the car did not reveal the missing letter or key. Rosanna was completely discouraged. "Do you think Mrs. Leeds could have picked it up?" she asked gloomily. "I don't see how," Penny returned thoughtfully. "But there's one thing certain. She intends to make trouble. You surely don't intend to go away from here while she and her daughter are camped in the house?" "What else can we do?" "Send a wire to Dad that we're staying on a day or two," Penny answered instantly. "But won't that inconvenience both of you?" "No, I suspect Dad will be grateful for the rest and as for myself, I'd enjoy seeing this thing through." It required little urging to convince Rosanna of the wisdom of remaining on the scene. She had taken an immediate dislike to Mrs. Leeds and her daughter, and agreed with Penny that they were determined to claim more than a rightful share of the inheritance. Once the girls arrived at a decision they lost no time in driving to the nearest town where Penny dispatched a message to her father. Noticing an inviting looking restaurant, they ate lunch before motoring back to the Winters' mansion. It was nearly two o'clock when they reached the Ridge again. An unfamiliar car stood on the driveway. Penny was certain it did not belong to Mrs. Leeds for her mud-splattered sedan was parked some distance away. "It looks like more visitors," she commented as they crossed the veranda together. At the doorway both girls involuntarily paused. Mrs. Leeds was engaged in conversation with a stranger. For an instant Penny and Rosanna stood and stared. It was the same man who had refused them help on the road. CHAPTER VII "Ghost" Music As Penny and Rosanna entered the living room, the stranger turned to face them. For a long moment Penny was convinced that he was the shoplifter who had stolen the diamond ring from the Belton City department store. His build was the same and the general lines of his face were similar. Then the man spoke and she was not certain at all. The tone of his voice was entirely different as was his abrupt manner of speaking. A trifle nervously, or so it seemed to Penny, Caleb Eckert introduced the stranger. "Max Laponi," he said. "He represents himself as a nephew of Jacob Winters." "Not only do I represent myself as such, but I have proof that I am Uncle Jacob's nephew," the stranger retorted. "You'll find my credentials in order. I've come to take over the estate." The girls were not greatly surprised when he took from his pocket a letter similar to the one which Mrs. Leeds had produced. They were more impressed with the other papers which he offered for Caleb's inspection--a birth certificate, a letter of identification from a well known Chicago banker and various legal documents. "It looks to me as if someone has played a joke on all you folks," Caleb said slowly. "We don't know that Mr. Winters is even dead." "Oh, yes, we do," Max Laponi insisted, producing another letter. "This came from my attorney this morning. It definitely states that Mr. Winters--Uncle Jacob--was buried at sea." Caleb sank down in a chair. He scarcely read the letter although his face had turned an ashen hue. "I can't believe it even now," he murmured. "There must be some mistake." "There's no mistake," Max cut in sharply. "It's clear enough that I am the heir too. By the way, didn't the old man have a valuable collection of ivories?" Caleb stiffened visibly. "Ivories?" he asked blankly. "Sure, some pieces he collected years ago on his tours. Read about it in the paper." "Oh, so you read about it?" Caleb echoed significantly. "Uncle Jacob told me about the collection too. He always intended me to have it." "Then you should know where to find it," Caleb retorted bluntly. "I'm sure I don't." With that he turned and walked to the door. There he paused to fling over his shoulder: "I wash my hands of the whole matter. You folks will have to fight it out among you." Mrs. Leeds had managed to hold her tongue very well, but the moment that the door closed behind Caleb, she began an angry attack upon Rosanna and the newcomer, accusing both of being impostors. Unwilling to listen to such an unreasonable tirade, Penny and Rosanna fled out of doors. "Such a mad house!" Penny exclaimed, taking a deep breath. "I have to keep pinching myself to believe it's real!" "I never saw such a hopeless muddle," Rosanna added. "Everyone is so eager for the property no one gives the slightest thought to the tragedy which befell poor Mr. Winters." "Perhaps he isn't dead," Penny suggested. Rosanna stared. "What makes you think that? Didn't Mr. Laponi have proof of it?" "He seemed to have proof of everything," Penny admitted with a rueful laugh. "That's what makes me suspicious. There's something strange about this entire affair." "I agree with you there." "I'm convinced of one thing, Rosanna. Either Mrs. Leeds or this man Laponi is an impostor. At first I thought Laponi was the same person who stole the ring. Now I can't be sure." Rosanna did not believe that the two were identical although she admitted there was a close resemblance. However, she was quite willing to agree that the man seemed like an impostor despite his credentials. "He may have picked up that letter and key you lost," Penny went on, thinking aloud. "And there was something rather sinister in the way he mentioned the collection of ivories." "I noticed that. Caleb seemed disturbed." "It wouldn't surprise me if he knows where Mr. Winters kept the collection," Penny continued. "At any rate, he's wise to pretend ignorance. With such a mad lot of people in the house, anything might happen." Noticing a nearby path which led to a spring house, the girls followed it, drinking of the cool mountain water. They sat down on a bench which afforded a view of the tall chalk-like cliffs. After a time they felt soothed and tranquil again. They presently walked back to the house. Max Laponi was nowhere to be seen although Alicia told them that he was busy moving his things into one of the upstairs bedrooms. "Mother's worried since he came," the girl confided, growing more friendly. "They had a dreadful quarrel. Now she's hunting for the will." "But Caleb Eckert warned her not to do that," Penny protested. "That old meddler has nothing to do with this place," Alicia declared with a toss of her head. "I hope he minds his own business and stays away." The girls found Mrs. Leeds in the library. She was going through the drawers of the desk in systematic fashion, tossing papers carelessly on the floor. One drawer was locked. She shook it viciously. "Like as not Jacob Winters' will is locked up in there," she said irritably. "I'm half a notion to break into it." "Oh, you mustn't do that," Rosanna cried indignantly, before she could check herself. "And why shouldn't I?" Mrs. Leeds demanded tartly. "Jacob Winters is dead isn't he? And his will must be found. I suppose you're afraid to have the document come to light for fear you'll be cut off completely." Rosanna's cheeks flushed. "I never thought of such a thing, Mrs. Leeds. I think it's disgraceful the way everyone is acting about the property!" Before Mrs. Leeds could reply, she ran from the room. Penny loyally followed, joining Rosanna in the bedroom which they shared. She found the orphan in tears. "Forget it," Penny advised kindly. "Mrs. Leeds is so intent on getting the money that she doesn't realize what she says." "I'm sorry I ever came here. I want no part in this disgraceful grab for Uncle Jacob's money." "I know how you feel," Penny agreed, "but let's stay a day or two. I'm curious to learn just what is going on here." In truth, she was completely baffled. It was difficult for her to make up her mind whether or not the entire arrangement was a hoax. Somehow she had distrusted Laponi's credentials. She distrusted him too. "I don't believe he could be a nephew of Jacob Winters," she thought. "I wish there was some way to trace down his past." It was clear to Penny that Rosanna would never defend her claim to the inheritance. Unless she personally took a hand in the affair, Mrs. Leeds and Max Laponi would ignore the orphan completely. "I'll let them make the first move," she decided shrewdly. "For the time being I'll play a waiting game." For the greater part of the afternoon, Penny and Rosanna remained in their own room. Toward nightfall they walked about the grounds and later motored to a nearby inn for dinner. At nine o'clock when they returned to the big empty house, the downstairs was dark. They judged that Mrs. Leeds and Max Laponi had already gone to their rooms. "We may as well turn in too," Penny suggested. "The mountain air makes one drowsy." Both girls were soon sound asleep. However, sometime later Penny was awakened by the sound of footsteps in the hall. She thought little of it, and rolling over, tried to go to sleep again. Suddenly she heard soft music from above. She sat up in bed, listening. A strain of a famous opera resounded through the room, rising in volume, then falling away. Penny knew that she was not imagining it. She nudged her companion who quickly awakened. "Do you hear the same thing I do?" Rosanna clutched the sheets more tightly about her. "Ghost music," she whispered in awe. "It sounds like pipe organ music coming from a long distance away," Penny whispered. "I'm going to find out!" Before Rosanna could prevent it, she stole from bed and swiftly tiptoed to the door. CHAPTER VIII The Ivory Collection Penny quietly opened the bedroom door, peering out into the long dark hall. She could hear the music distinctly. It seemed to be coming from almost directly overhead. By this time, Rosanna, overcoming her fear, crept beside her friend. They huddled together, listening. "It's an organ. I'm sure of it," Penny whispered. "But where can it be hidden?" "I'm afraid of this place," Rosanna chattered. "Let's lock the bedroom door and leave in the morning." Penny made no response. For that matter she did not even hear for she was intent upon trying to localize the sound of the music. Never inclined to be superstitious, she had no thought that the old house was haunted. She felt certain that the ghost-like music was man made. "This house must have a third floor or an attic," she declared softly. "Let's see if we can find our way up." "Never!" "Then I'm going alone." Penny started off down the hall. Rosanna hesitated, and then, unable to watch her friend walk into danger alone, hurriedly followed. Halfway down the hall she reached for the electric switch but Penny caught her hand before she could turn on the light. "Don't! It would give warning that we're coming." Groping about in the dark the girls went past Mrs. Leeds' bedroom and the one occupied by the stranger. Penny noted that the doors of both were tightly closed. At the end of the hall she found still another door. Gently she turned the handle and opened it. A steep flight of stairs led upward. "Oh, please, let's not go up," Rosanna pleaded, trembling. "You stay here," Penny said in a whisper. "If anything goes wrong, let out a cry for help." The mysterious music had ceased for the moment. Penny waited until it began again, and then, following the sound, crept noiselessly up the stairs leaving Rosanna on guard below. At the top of the last step Penny paused to listen again. Actually, she was not as courageous as she had pretended. She could hear her own heart pounding. It was so dark on the third floor that at first she could distinguish nothing. The music had increased in volume and Penny was more sure than ever that it came from a hidden pipe organ. As her eyes focused better she found herself standing upon a small landing from which branched two closed doors. After a slight hesitation she tiptoed to the nearest one and opened it a tiny crack. Although no sound had betrayed her, the music from within ended with a discordant crash. Startled, Penny allowed the door to swing wide. She started forward, and suddenly tripped. Until that moment her nerve had held steady. But as she stumbled and fell she uttered a shrill cry of terror. Rosanna, fearing the worst, came running up the stairs. "Penny! Penny! Are you hurt?" Reassured by her friend's voice, Penny scrambled to her feet and met Rosanna at the door. "I'm all right," she said shakily. "But I've done enough investigating for one night!" "What frightened you so?" "I'll tell you later." They lost no time in returning to the lower floor. Down the hall, Mrs. Leeds' door had opened. A light flashed on. "What is going on here?" Mrs. Leeds demanded, emerging into the hallway. "Such a house I never saw! First it's music--then a scream! It's enough to send one into hysterics." Penny and Rosanna could not refrain from smiling, for Mrs. Leeds looked ridiculous in her curlers which were sticking out from her head at all angles. Before they could answer, Alicia joined her mother. "I should think you could go to your room and let folks sleep!" she said irritably. "You've been running up and down the hall all night." "You're wrong there," Penny returned. "This is the first time Rosanna or I have stirred from our room. We got up to investigate the mysterious music." "Then you heard it too?" Mrs. Leeds breathed in awe. "I thought perhaps I had imagined that part of it." "No, you heard music all right," Penny told her grimly. "It isn't--you don't think the house is haunted?" Alicia stammered nervously. "That old man--what's his name--was trying to tell us about someone having died in a room on the upper floor!" "Well, the music seemed to come from the third floor," Penny informed, relishing the effect which her words produced. "As for the scream, I can account for that. I tripped and fell. Now I think we may as well all go back to bed. There's been so much commotion that I rather judge our 'ghost' has been frightened away for the time being." "I can't sleep a wink after all this has happened," Mrs. Leeds declared. "I shall sit up until morning." "As you wish," Penny said indifferently. "I'm going to bed." As she walked down the hall to her own room she glanced rather sharply at the door of Max Laponi's room. It was still tightly closed. "Our friend appears to be a sound sleeper," she remarked to Rosanna. In the privacy of their bedroom, Rosanna demanded to know exactly what had happened. "Well, I didn't see much," Penny admitted. "But I did learn one interesting thing. There's a pipe organ installed in this house. I might have discovered who was playing it too only I tripped over a rope which had been strung up in front of the door." "Placed there deliberately, you think?" "Of course. It startled me so that I let out that wild yell. I don't care to do any more investigating tonight, but in the morning I mean to have a good look at that room upstairs." "You have more nerve than I," Rosanna declared admiringly. Penny carefully locked the outside door before turning out the light. It was twenty minutes after twelve by her wrist watch. "I shouldn't call it nerve exactly," she replied thoughtfully, climbing into bed. "The truth is, I'm a little afraid, Rosanna." "Then why do you go up there again?" "Oh, I don't mean that. It isn't the music that has me frightened." "But what else is there to be afraid of?" Rosanna persisted. "It's just a feeling, I guess," Penny admitted. "I can't explain--only it seems to me that some sinister plot is brewing in this old house." "I have the same sensation," Rosanna confessed. "Let's leave in the morning." Penny laughed softly and settled herself more comfortably in the pillows. "Never!" she retorted. "I'm the daughter of a detective you know! This is our own special mystery case, and unless that ghost gets me first, I intend to get him!" With that threat, Penny rolled over and lost herself in sleep. The warm sun was streaming in at the windows when the girls aroused themselves. They dressed and went downstairs, finding the house quite deserted. Apparently Mrs. Leeds, her daughter and Max Laponi had gone to the village for breakfast. "I wish they had vanished for good but there's no use hoping that," Penny commented. "I doubt if even a ghost could keep Mrs. Leeds from remaining until the estate is settled." The girls cooked their own breakfast, utilizing supplies which they had purchased at the nearby town. As they washed the dishes and stacked them away, Rosanna mentioned again that she did not feel comfortable about making such free use of her unknown uncle's property. "Perhaps it isn't just the thing to do," Penny acknowledged, "but the situation isn't a normal one either. If Mr. Eckert says it is all right for us to stay on, I don't think we should worry." "Will it do us any good to remain?" Rosanna pondered in a troubled tone. "If Mr. Eckert can't tell us what became of my uncle, who could?" "That's just the point, Rosanna. I believe he knows more than he lets on." Penny's gaze wandered to the tiny log cabin set back in the pine woods. Wisps of thin smoke curled from the chimney. That meant that Caleb must be at home. "Let's walk down there and talk with him," she proposed impulsively. "It's time he answers a few of our questions." Caleb did not come to the door to answer their timid knock. Instead he called out a hearty, "Come in," which they instantly obeyed. Caleb was the picture of comfort, sitting propped back in his chair by the window, puffing at an old pipe. He arose reluctantly and dusted off two camp stools for the visitors. "We thought perhaps you might furnish us with a little information," Penny began pleasantly. Her eyes roved swiftly about the room. She noticed the open bookcase with four rows of well-thumbed volumes. The titles were impressive. Caleb Eckert, despite his rough appearance, seemingly had a liking for intellectual books. "Well, what is it you want to know?" Caleb demanded, not unkindly. "I've told you before that I'll have nothing to do with this muddle over Mr. Winters' property." "I've given up all hope of inheriting any of the estate," Rosanna said. "But I should like to hear about my uncle. What was he like?" "Some folks said he was the queerest man on Snow Mountain. I liked him because he attended to his own business. He was considered a remarkable sportsman by some." Penny's eyes traveled to a huge bear skin which hung on the cabin wall. Caleb followed her gaze. "Mr. Winters gave me that skin last year when he came back from his trip north. A mighty nice specimen." "Do you have a picture of Mr. Winters?" Penny asked, abruptly changing the subject. Caleb shook his head. He began to talk about the bear skin again. Rosanna listened eagerly, but Penny sensed that the old man was trying to monopolize the conversation and thus keep her from asking questions which he did not care to answer. When she succeeded in breaking in it was to bring up the subject of Mr. Winters' ivory collection. Caleb seemed reluctant to offer definite information. "All I know is that Mr. Winters was supposed to have one," he answered. "Folks said it was worth a fortune and that he had spent years gathering it." "What became of the collection?" Penny inquired curiously. "How should I know?" Caleb retorted crossly. "Seems to me you girls ask a lot of silly questions." "We didn't mean to be inquisitive," Penny apologized. "Only it struck me that Max Laponi has an unusual interest in that collection of ivory." Caleb eyed her strangely. "So you noticed it too?" he asked. Penny nodded. "Perhaps I shouldn't say it, but I don't trust that man, Mr. Eckert. If Mr. Winters' collection of ivory is still in the house, don't you think it should be removed to a safer place?" "That's what I'd like to do," Caleb muttered, looking out the window. "Then you do know where the ivory collection is," Penny tripped him. Caleb glared at her. "I didn't say so, did I? Why should Mr. Winters tell me where he kept his valuables? Bosh! I tell you I won't be mixed up in the muddle. Now go away and let me sleep!" Caleb stretched himself out on the couch and closed his eyes. Thus dismissed, the girls hastily departed. "Such a cross old man!" Rosanna exclaimed when they were out of earshot. "But even though he is irritable, I rather like him." "So do I," Penny admitted with a laugh. "You know, I think our questions about the ivory collection disturbed him more than he cared to show." "He did seem reluctant to tell us anything about it." "We'll nail him down yet," Penny declared grimly as they walked slowly toward the house on the cliff. "Unless I'm sadly mistaken, that ivory collection is hidden somewhere on the premises and he's scared silly for fear someone will find it!" CHAPTER IX A Scrap of Paper Penny and Rosanna entered the house by the side door. Hearing a murmur of voices from the direction of the library, they involuntarily paused to listen. "If we go into this thing as partners we're both bound to profit," they heard a man say in an insistent tone. "Think it over and I know you'll see how easily it can be accomplished. Those two girls are nit-wits. They'll make no trouble." Penny and Rosanna exchanged a startled glance. They recognized Max Laponi's voice. So he was plotting against them! Undoubtedly, planning to secure complete control of the Winters' estate. "I'm going to find out with whom he is talking," Penny whispered. Before Rosanna could protest, she walked to the library door and opened it. Mrs. Leeds and Max Laponi were sitting at the desk, examining some document which was spread out before them. As Penny came in, Laponi whisked it into his pocket. "Oh, I beg your pardon," Penny said casually. "I didn't mean to interrupt." "You aren't at all, my dear," Mrs. Leeds said more graciously than was her custom. "Mr. Laponi was just showing me a letter from his sister." "Yes, from my sister," Laponi echoed with a slight smirk. "She lives in Naples and writes such interesting letters." Penny found it difficult to refrain from smiling. She pretended to search in the bookcase for a volume. "I thought possibly you had discovered the will," she remarked mischievously. "The will! Oh, no!" Mrs. Leeds assured her. "That is a good joke," Laponi echoed. "Ha! Ha! Even a ferret couldn't find old Jacob Winters' will in this house!" Penny was aware that both Mrs. Leeds and Max Laponi were watching her shrewdly, trying to make up their minds if she had overheard anything. She dared say no more lest she betray herself. Picking up a book she quietly withdrew. "It's just as I thought," she told Rosanna when they were together in their bedroom. "Laponi is trying to get Mrs. Leeds involved in some scheme to steal the property. Unless we watch out, Rosanna, they'll get everything away from you." "I don't much care," Rosanna returned in disgust. "I never saw such disgraceful actions in all my life. As far as I'm concerned, I'd rather leave this place tomorrow and let the lawyers settle everything." "There will be nothing left to settle when Mrs. Leeds and Laponi get through. It's pretty evident that one or the other is an impostor." "But we can't prove that, Penny. If only I hadn't lost my key and the credentials!" "We're only starting to work on this case," Penny said cheerfully. "Let's keep our eyes and ears open. We may discover something of value." Since their arrival at the old house, the girls had awaited an opportunity to inspect the third floor, hoping to discover the cause of the mysterious music which had disturbed the household. Penny suggested that while Mrs. Leeds and Laponi were occupied in the library they might make their tour of investigation. Rosanna agreed but without enthusiasm. She was not as venturesome as her companion. Penny led the way to the third floor landing. The hall was dark and dusty; cobwebs hung from the corners of the ceiling. Penny cast an appraising glance about her. The doors leading from the hall were all closed. She was certain that upon her previous visit one had been slightly ajar. She reached for the knob and turned it. The door did not give. It was locked. "That's funny," Penny murmured. "What is?" "I'm sure this door was unlocked before." "Perhaps it was the other one," Rosanna suggested. They moved on down the hall to try the second door. It too was securely fastened. "I distinctly recall opening that other door," Penny maintained. "I started to go in and tripped over something. I suspect it was a rope stretched just inside the door." "Well, if we can't get in I guess we can't learn anything," Rosanna said, somewhat in relief. Penny made no response. She bent down to peer through the keyhole. "See anything?" Rosanna asked. "Just a big empty room. But there is something up against the far wall! Rosanna, it's a pipe organ!" After a minute she stepped away that her friend might see for herself. Rosanna agreed that the shadowy outline was an organ and a magnificent one. "The music came from this room all right," Penny said excitedly. "I wish we could get in." After trying the door again, the girls returned to the second floor. As Penny closed the stairway door she noticed that it had a key. Upon impulse she turned it in the lock and pocketed the key with a smile of satisfaction. "That should put a stop to the music for a few nights," she remarked. "I'll show that ghost I can lock a few doors myself!" As they reached their own bedroom, Rosanna said that she believed she would lie down for a half hour. The events of the past few days had worn her down, both physically and mentally. "Do," Penny urged: "A sleep will refresh you. I think I'll go downstairs and see if I can discover what plot is brewing." She descended the spiral stairway and paused at the library. It was empty. The house was strangely silent. Penny crossed the hall to the living room. Heavy draperies screened the arched doorway. As Penny pulled them aside to enter, she saw Mrs. Leeds standing at the fireplace, her back to the door. Something about her manner aroused Penny's suspicions. She waited and watched. Mrs. Leeds had built up a roaring fire on the hearth. She held a paper in her hand. Deliberately, she tore it into a dozen pieces and dropped them into the flames. Penny hastily entered the room. Mrs. Leeds wheeled, her cheeks flushing. "How you startled me, Miss Nichols! You surely have a way of coming in quietly." "Sorry," Penny said, walking over to the hearth. "How nice to have a fire, although it is a little warm today." "The room seemed damp," Mrs. Leeds said nervously. "I was cold. I think I'll go to my room and get a sweater." The instant Mrs. Leeds had disappeared, Penny snatched a charred piece of paper from the hearth. It was the only scrap which had not been completely consumed by the flames. Only a few scattered lines with many words missing were visible. The others were blackened or torn away. Penny distinguished a part of the writing: "Last will and testam-- --do bequeath to my niece, Ro--" "This must be a portion of Jacob Winters' will!" she thought. "Mrs. Leeds probably found it somewhere in the house and decided to destroy it because she or her daughter weren't mentioned!" She stared at the word which began Ro----. The remaining letters had been torn away. Had Mr. Winters written Rosanna's name? If only she had entered the living room a minute earlier she might have prevented the document from being destroyed! In reviewing Mrs. Leeds' actions during the past two days, Penny could not doubt that the woman had actually found the missing will. Since her arrival at Raven Ridge she had spent most of her time poking about into odd corners of the house. The locked drawer of the desk had annoyed her exceedingly. "I'll just take a look and see if it's still locked," Penny thought. She opened the desk and tried the drawer. It readily opened. "Empty," Penny commented grimly. "Just as I suspected." She examined the lock. It was evident at a glance that it had been broken by a sharp instrument and not unlocked with a key. "The will was hidden in this drawer," she mused. "I feel confident of it. And it must have been drawn up in Rosanna's favor or Mrs. Leeds never would have destroyed it." Penny closed the desk and carefully placed the charred bit of paper in her dress pocket. She was deeply disturbed over the discovery, realizing that Mrs. Leeds, by destroying the document, had gained a great advantage. However, she had no intention of abandoning the fight. "I'll keep this strictly to myself," she decided. "For the present I'll not even tell Rosanna. It would only disappoint her to learn that the will has been burned." Since Mrs. Leeds' arrival at Raven Ridge, Penny had done everything in her power to avoid a break with the arrogant society woman. She had ignored snubs and many unkind remarks. Now she felt that if Rosanna's interests were to be safeguarded, she no longer could afford to play a waiting game. "Mrs. Leeds and Max Laponi have shown their hand," she reflected. "They mean to gain their ends by any possible means. But since they're stooping to underhanded tricks, I may have a few little schemes of my own!" Penny was unusually silent that evening. Rosanna noticed it at once but thinking that her friend was absorbed in her own thoughts, refrained from questioning her. At six o'clock the girls motored to Andover for dinner. To their chagrin, Mrs. Leeds and her daughter Alicia chanced to select the same cafe. All during the meal, Penny noticed the woman's eyes upon her. As she and Rosanna arose to leave, Mrs. Leeds hastily followed them. "Miss Winters, may I speak with you a moment?" she began coldly. "Why, yes, of course," Rosanna responded. "I mean alone." Rosanna hesitated and glanced at Penny. The latter started to move away. "No, don't go," Rosanna said quickly. "I am sure that anything Mrs. Leeds may wish to say to me can be said in front of you." "Very well," Mrs. Leeds returned icily. "Evidence has reached me today which proves conclusively that I am Jacob Winters' sole heir." Rosanna took the blow without the quiver of an eyelash. "What evidence, may I ask, Mrs. Leeds?" "I don't feel compelled to go into that, Miss Winters. Certainly not in the presence of strangers or on the street." "Penny isn't exactly a stranger," Rosanna smiled. "From the first I have been very tolerant, I think," Mrs. Leeds went on, ignoring the orphan's remark. "By your own admission you have no credentials--we have only your word that you are even related to Jacob Winters." "I had a letter and key--the same as you," Rosanna faltered. "Either I lost them or they were stolen." "And Rosanna happens to be a niece of Mr. Winters," Penny added significantly. "I believe you are only a cousin, Mrs. Leeds?" The woman eyed her furiously. "Just what is it that you want me to do?" Rosanna asked. "I think you both should leave immediately." "And allow you to have everything your way," Penny interposed sweetly. "Now wouldn't that be nice--for you!" She took Rosanna by the arm and urged her toward the car. "Don't allow Miss Nichols to poison your mind!" Mrs. Leeds pleaded, following Rosanna to the curbing. "Unless you leave immediately you will receive no part of the fortune. If you go without making any further trouble, I might agree to some small settlement. After all, I mean to be generous." "Thanks for telling us," Penny smiled. She closed the car door and they drove away. "Perhaps we shouldn't have been so short with her," Rosanna said uneasily as they returned to the house on Snow Mountain. "If it's true that the property has been left to her, then she was being generous to offer to give me anything." "Don't worry, she'd forget her promise soon enough if she succeeded in getting you away from here, Rosanna. I detest that woman. She thinks she is so subtle and she's as transparent as glass!" "I wonder what evidence she referred to?" Rosanna mused. Penny started to speak, then changed her mind. Although Mrs. Leeds had no suspicion that she guessed the truth, she was well aware of the nature of the new evidence. However, she refrained from mentioning the burned will, realizing that Rosanna, in her present depressed state of mind, would be greatly disturbed by the information. If the orphan believed that she no longer had a definite claim to the fortune, she would insist upon leaving Raven Ridge without further delay. Penny did not intend to quit the scene until she had answered several questions to her satisfaction. The entire case seemed a trifle fantastic as she reviewed it. First, Rosanna had received the strange letter signed by a fictitious name. Then, although the orphan had lost the key, they had found the door of the Winters' mansion unlocked. Close upon the heels of their arrival, Mrs. Leeds, her daughter, and Max Laponi appeared. Since then, the house had been disturbed by haunting organ music and one baffling event had crowded upon another. "It's all very bewildering," Penny reflected. "But I believe that everything can be fitted together if only I am able to learn the identity of the mysterious ghost." The night closed in dark and windy. Penny and Rosanna sat by the fire, trying to read. They were relieved when Mrs. Leeds and her daughter retired to their rooms shortly after eight o'clock for it gave them an opportunity to talk. At ten o'clock the girls went to their own room. Max Laponi had not yet returned from Andover where he took his meals. Penny was tired and fell asleep almost as soon as her head touched the pillow. Hours later she was awakened by Rosanna who was sitting upright in bed. "What is it?" Penny mumbled drowsily. Then she knew. The house reverberated with the soft chords of a pipe organ. Without switching on the electric lights, Penny drew on her dressing gown. She started toward the door, then returned to grope in the drawer of the dresser where she found the key which locked the door leading to the attic floor. "What are you going to do?" Rosanna asked anxiously, drawing the bedclothes closer about her. Penny already had gone. Stealing quietly down the dark hall she reached the end of it and stood listening. The door leading to the third floor was closed. She could hear the music more distinctly than before and knew for a certainty that it came from above. She gently tried the door. It was still locked. Penny was momentarily baffled. She had half expected to find the door unlocked. She had been so confident that by taking the key she could put a stop to the ghost music. "How did the organist reach the third floor if he didn't pass through this door?" she debated. "That ghost must be quite a clever fellow if he can enter without keys." The entire house had been carefully locked up for the night. Penny and Rosanna had attended to it the last thing before retiring, knowing that Max Laponi could come in later by using his own pass key. They had secured every door and window. "Well, I won't learn anything by standing here," Penny thought uncomfortably. "I'll have to go up there." Her usual courage was at low ebb. She dreaded the ordeal. However, before she could open the stairway door, a shrill scream echoed down the hall. Terrified, Penny crouched back against the wall and waited. CHAPTER X The Wall Safe Recovering from her fright, Penny reached up and snapped on the light. She heard a door open down the hall. Mrs. Leeds, a dressing gown clutched about her unshapely figure, stumbled toward the girl. "There's something in my room! It struck my face while I was sleeping! Oh, oh, such a horrible house!" "Control yourself," Penny advised, taking her by the arm. "We'll see what it is." Mrs. Leeds jerked away, assuming an attitude of tense listening. For the first time she had paid heed to the organ music from above. "There it is again!" she whispered in awe. "This house is haunted." Rosanna came down the hall, joining the two at Mrs. Leeds' door. Alicia huddled nearby, too frightened to speak a word. Penny opened the door and groped for the electric switch. As the room was flooded with light, she looked quickly about. Everything was in disorder but that was because Mrs. Leeds had done no straightening or cleaning since her arrival. Suddenly Penny began to laugh. "Pray what do you find that is so humorous?" Mrs. Leeds demanded indignantly. "Bats!" Penny answered, laughing again. There were four of them blinded by the light, cowering in the corners of the room. Penny opened a window and with Rosanna's help drove them out into the night. "They must have come in through an open window," she said to Mrs. Leeds. "I didn't have a window open," the woman retorted. "I can't bear to sleep in this room again. Tomorrow I shall move into another. Come Alicia, we'll sit up until morning in the living room." Returning to her own room, Penny listened for the organ music. It had ceased as mysteriously as it had begun. She glanced curiously toward the room occupied by Max Laponi. The door was closed. He alone of the entire household seemed undisturbed by the strange things which went on about him. "I'd like to know if he really is in his room," Penny thought. She hesitated by the door but did not have the courage to try the knob. After a moment she followed Rosanna to their bedroom at the other end of the hall. Morning found Mrs. Leeds even more upset than upon the previous night. Her eyes were bloodshot, her face sallow, her clothes unpressed. She quarreled with her daughter and ignored Penny and Rosanna. However, when Max Laponi came down the stairs looking as dapper as ever, her attitude instantly changed. She spoke to him in a softer tone. "We were beginning to wonder if the ghost made off with you last night," she said archly. "What ghost?" "You mean to say you didn't hear the music?" "Not a sound," Laponi told her. "I am a very hard sleeper." He seemed disinclined to listen to Mrs. Leeds' account of all that had transpired, and very shortly drove away in his automobile, ostensibly to have breakfast in a nearby town. After straightening their room and making the bed, Rosanna and Penny went for a short walk. They sat down by the cliff where they could see the river below, discussing the situation. "I don't see that it's doing a particle of good to stay here," Rosanna insisted. "I don't feel right about letting you waste so much time and money." Rosanna was thinking of the expensive meals which they bought at Andover. Because her own supply of cash had run so low, Penny paid for everything. Rosanna meant to settle the debt and it steadily grew larger. "Now don't worry," Penny advised kindly. "I'm staying on here largely because I've determined to discover the identity of our ghost. Then, too, I can't bear to see Mrs. Leeds gain what doesn't belong to her." "I'd be glad to stay if I thought it would do the slightest good--" "I think it will Rosanna. I have a scheme which I intend to try. It will take a few days before we can work things out." Penny then explained a part of what was in her mind. She was not certain as to all the details of her plan, but little by little it was taking shape. After a time the girls walked down to Caleb Eckert's cabin. He was not at home. They sauntered leisurely back to the house on the cliff. Neither Mrs. Leeds' car nor the one belonging to Max Laponi was on the driveway. "I guess we're the only ones here this morning," Penny commented. They entered by the front door. From the direction of the living room they heard a muffled exclamation of impatience. Signaling for silence, Penny tiptoed toward the velvet curtains which hid the living room from view. She parted them. Caleb Eckert was working at the dials of a wall safe which had been concealed in a secret panel behind a large oil painting. Although the girls had made no sound, Caleb sensed their presence. He turned and faced them. "Why, Mr. Eckert, doesn't this call for some explanation?" Penny asked in bewilderment. "Surely you have no right to tamper with Mr. Winters' safe." The old man plainly was embarrassed. He moistened his lips, looked away, then said gruffly: "I didn't come here to steal. I came because I wanted to protect Mr. Winters' valuables. There's folks in this house that I don't trust." "But how does it happen you know the combination of the safe?" Rosanna inquired. "Mr. Winters gave it to me before he left. You see, he was my best friend. Jacob trusted me." "He must have," cut in a sneering voice from directly behind. Everyone turned to see Max Laponi standing in the doorway. His sharp little eyes moved swiftly about the room taking in everything. They came to rest upon the wall safe. Caleb spun the dials. He hastily pressed a concealed button and the picture swung back into place, hiding the safe. "Neat little device," Laponi commented dryly. His eyes narrowed. "Trying to steal the Winters' booty, were you?" "Certainly not," Caleb retorted angrily. Laponi caught him roughly by the shoulder, forcing him back against the wall. "You know a lot more than you let on," he accused. "Tell me, is that where old Winters hid his ivory collection?" "I'll tell you nothing," Caleb snapped. "You'll tell or I'll--" "Mr. Laponi, you're hurting him!" Rosanna cried. "Perhaps we should call the police if there's to be trouble," Penny added cunningly. At the mention of police, Laponi instantly released his grip on Caleb. He laughed harshly. "We'll let it go this time," he said, "but I'm warning you, Eckert, stay away from this house and this safe if you know what's good for you." "You might take that advice to yourself, too," the old man retorted, edging toward the door. From the window the girls watched him hurry down the path to his own cabin. His departure was almost flight. Obviously, Caleb was afraid. Penny did not know what to believe. An hour before she would have taken oath that he was strictly honest, devoted to the interests of Jacob Winters. Now she could not be sure. Max Laponi lingered in the living room. Suspecting that he intended to investigate the wall safe the instant he was alone, Penny and Rosanna settled themselves for a long stay. They pretended to read. After an hour, Laponi grew tired of the game, and went off, grumbling to himself. "We outlasted him that time," Penny chuckled. "However, we'll have to be on the lookout or he'll sneak back sometime when we're gone. I wonder if Mr. Winters did leave his ivory collection in the safe?" "Laponi seems to think so," Rosanna commented. "I'm glad he doesn't know the combination. I distrust him even more than I do Caleb." "So do I, but I intend to watch them both," Penny responded thoughtfully. "I'm convinced there's a deep plot brewing--something far more sinister than we've suspected." CHAPTER XI A Night Adventure Since taking leave of Mr. Nichols at Mt. Ashland, Penny had received no word from her father. She did not worry actively, yet it was a great relief when later in the afternoon a uniformed messenger boy delivered a telegram into her hand. "Remain as long as you wish," her father wired. "Am enjoying good rest here." From an upstairs window Mrs. Leeds had noted the arrival of the messenger boy. She came hurrying down to see if the message was for her. While Penny read the communication, the woman eyed her suspiciously. At last her curiosity could no longer be restrained. She asked carelessly: "I don't suppose your wire has anything to do with Jacob Winters or the estate?" "Only indirectly," Penny responded mischievously. To avoid further questioning, the girls went outdoors. "Let's see if Caleb is at home," Penny proposed. They rapped several times upon the door of the cabin and were about to turn away, when the old man opened it. "Sorry to bother you," Penny apologized. "I wanted to ask a few more questions about Mr. Winters." Caleb looked ill at ease. "Questions!" he fumed. "Well, what is it you want to know this time?" "Tell me, isn't there a pipe organ on the third floor of Mr. Winters' house?" "Certainly. Jacob was a talented musician. He installed the organ nearly fifteen years ago. But what of it may I ask?" "We'd like very much to see the organ." "Well, why don't you look at it then?" "We can't because the door is locked." "Locked?" Caleb seemed surprised. "That's funny. I didn't know Mr. Winters ever locked up his conservatory." "Then you haven't a key?" Penny asked. "Why should I have a key?" Caleb snorted. "You act as if I'm the caretaker of that house. It's nothing to me what goes on there, except that I don't like to see folks overrun the place and steal Mr. Winters' fine things." "You needn't look at us so accusingly," Rosanna said with surprising spirit. "We wouldn't take or damage one single thing in that house." Caleb's face softened. "I didn't mean to suggest that you would. I believe you two girls aren't like those others. But you were speaking of the organ. Why are you so interested in it?" "Because we've been hearing music at night," Penny informed. "It seems to come from that room on the third floor." Caleb regarded her in awe. "Then it's true, the things they say." "What things?" Rosanna asked impatiently. "That the house is haunted. If Mr. Winters really is dead it may be----" "Nonsense!" Penny cut in. "Rosanna and I don't believe in ghosts. And what's more, I doubt if you do, Caleb Eckert! That so-called ghost is a very live one. If you won't help me, I'll solve the mystery alone!" And with this declaration, Penny stalked from the cabin, followed by the faithful Rosanna. "Perhaps you've antagonized him now," the latter said as they went back to the house on the cliff. "I don't care if I have! Caleb knows a great deal more than he pretends. He could help us if he wanted to!" No one was stirring on the lower floor of the Winters' house when the girls entered. To Penny it seemed an admirable time to institute a search of the premises. "We'll let Mrs. Leeds hunt for the will," Penny declared, "but we'll look for something which may prove equally valuable." "What?" Rosanna asked curiously. "A picture of Jacob Winters." "I can't see what good it will do to find one except that I'd like to have a photo of my uncle as a keepsake." "If my plans work out I'll have a more important use for it," Penny smiled mysteriously. "I should think we could find one somewhere in the house," Rosanna declared. "Most people have old photographs stuck around in odd places." For nearly an hour the girls poked about in drawers and clothes closets until Rosanna protested that she felt as prying and sneaking as Mrs. Leeds. "This is in a better cause," Penny laughed. "It looks that way to us because it's my cause," Rosanna smiled. "Still, I'd never examine private papers or locked drawers." Penny made no response for in a lower table drawer she had come upon an old album. She displayed her discovery and page by page the girls went through it, laughing a little at the strange old-fashioned costumes and the stiff poses of the subjects. Names were written under a few of the photographs but Rosanna recognized only one or two as relatives. "I never knew many of my relation," she admitted. "If Mrs. Leeds and her daughter are samples, perhaps it's just as well." "The people in this album look nice, Rosanna. I suppose most of them are dead by this time." Penny turned a page and stared blankly down at an empty folder. "Why, here is your uncle's name," she cried, indicating a signature at the bottom of the page. "But the photo is gone!" "Oh, how disappointing." "Someone removed the photo, Rosanna. Perhaps deliberately too." "What makes you think that?" "I only said it. I have no evidence of course. Oh, all my plans will be upset if I don't find the photograph!" The arrival of Mrs. Leeds cut short the conversation. The girls hastily returned the album to the table drawer but not quickly enough to avoid being detected. Mrs. Leeds triumphantly pounced on the leather bound book. "Only an old-fashioned album," she said in disappointment, tossing it aside. "Did you think it was the will?" Penny chuckled as she and Rosanna departed. The girls impatiently awaited the coming of night. Penny had determined to make a supreme effort to discover the cause of the mysterious organ music. At first Rosanna had been enthusiastic over the plan but as nightfall approached she tried to dissuade her friend. "It's too dangerous," she insisted. "Please give up the scheme." Penny shook her head. She had made up her mind to spend the night on the third floor. Soon after the household retired she intended to steal upstairs and establish herself by the door of the conservatory. Evening came. At nine Mrs. Leeds and her daughter shut themselves into the bedroom which they had selected since their upsetting experience with bats. At eleven Penny heard Max Laponi's door close. She looked out into the hall. It was dark and deserted. "Please don't attempt it," Rosanna shivered. "What if something should happen?" "I hope it does," Penny said grimly. "It won't be any fun to sit up half the night without any purpose. I'll be disappointed if our ghost fails to provide his usual midnight concert." "If anything goes wrong scream for help," Rosanna urged. "I'll run for assistance." Penny promised. While Rosanna stood at the bedroom door watching, she tiptoed down the hall, past Mrs. Leeds' room, past Laponi's chamber to the third floor stairs. There she hesitated. Without a light the region above looked even more dark and awe-inspiring than she had remembered it. "Coward!" she accused herself, and quietly went up, leaving the door unlocked behind her. All was quiet on the third floor. Penny tried the door to the conservatory expecting to find it locked. To her astonishment it opened. The discovery disconcerted her for an instant. A minute later she mustered her courage and stepped inside the room. In the darkness she could make out objects only vaguely. The organ with its huge pipes occupied one end of the room. Sheet-draped chairs gave everything a ghostly atmosphere not at all conducive to a peaceful state of mind. After making a brief inspection of her quarters Penny sat down on the floor with her back against the outside door. She riveted her eyes upon the organ. Time dragged slowly. When it seemed to Penny that several hours must have passed, she heard a clock downstairs striking eleven-thirty. "At least another half hour to wait," Penny thought, shifting into a more comfortable position. She grew drowsy. Several times she caught herself on the verge of napping. She aroused herself only to find her eyes growing heavy again. It became increasingly difficult to watch the organ. "I wish that ghost would hurry up and come," she mused impatiently. "Perhaps after all my trouble this won't be one of his working nights!" That was the last thought of which she was aware. Suddenly she heard soft organ music rolling and swelling about her. With a start she aroused herself. She had been sleeping. It took an instant for Penny to gather her wits. She was still sitting with her back to the conservatory door. Yet at the far end of the great room, she distinctly could see a shadowy figure seated at the organ. Penny scrambled to her feet, starting forward. The floor creaked alarmingly. Penny halted, but too late. She had given warning of her presence. The shadowy figure at the organ jerked into alert attention. There was a discordant crash of chords, then silence. Penny blinked. She thought she had heard a sharp click as if a secret panel had opened and closed. That was all. And the organist had disappeared. CHAPTER XII A Suspicious Act Penny caught herself shivering. She decided that she had seen quite enough for one night. She turned toward the door, but with her hand on the brass knob, stood tensely listening. Someone was tiptoeing along the hall. It occurred to her that the mysterious organist might have escaped from the music room by means of a secret panel which opened directly into the adjoining corridor. Even now he could be effecting his escape to the lower floor. Crouching against the wall, Penny waited. She was startled to hear the footsteps coming closer. Then the door opened a tiny crack and the beam of a flashlight slowly circled the room. "Penny!" an anxious voice whispered. "Where are you?" Penny laughed in relief as she reached out to grip Rosanna's hand. "Oh! How you startled me!" the girl gasped. "I'm so glad you're safe, Penny. You stayed up here so long that I was frightened." "I had to wait for the ghost." "I heard the music," Rosanna said in awe. "It broke off so suddenly." "That was because I frightened the ghost away. At first I thought perhaps I had dreamed it all, but if you heard the music too then it must have been real." "It was real enough. But it lasted only a minute or two." "When the organist saw me I suspect he slipped out of the room by means of a secret panel," Penny reported. "But where he went is a mystery. You didn't see anyone as you came up the stairs to find me?" "No, I'm sure no one was in the hall, Penny." "I'm as certain as anything that this room has a secret entrance. Give me your flashlight and we'll see what we can discover." "Not tonight," Rosanna shivered, pulling her friend toward the door. "We can come back in the morning." "The room may be locked again then." "That's so." "Let's take advantage of the opportunity while we have it." Rosanna handed over the flashlight and together they crossed the room to the big organ. They inspected it with interest and Penny ran her fingers lightly over the keys. However, no sound came forth. "That's queer," Rosanna whispered. "I think someone has to pump air," Penny said. "It's probably shut off." She next turned her attention to the walls in the immediate vicinity of the organ. She could locate no hidden panel although in one place it seemed to her that when she rapped on a certain sector it emitted a hollow sound. "It's too dark to see anything tonight," Rosanna protested nervously. "I guess we may as well give it up until morning," Penny agreed. The girls stole quietly down the stairs to the lower floor. However, an unpleasant surprise awaited them. As they opened the door into the main passageway they found themselves face to face with Mrs. Leeds and Alicia. "So I find you here again!" the woman exclaimed. "I suspected before that you girls were at the bottom of these nightly disturbances. Now I have the proof." Penny was too annoyed to even try to explain why she had visited the third floor. She would have ignored the woman and passed on to her own room had not Rosanna been so distressed by the ridiculous accusation. "We've had absolutely nothing to do with the queer things which have been going on in this house," the orphan maintained indignantly. "Then why were you upstairs at this time of night? Only a minute or two ago Alicia and I heard music." "We were trying to learn what caused it, Mrs. Leeds." "A likely story!" Alicia said with a toss of her head. "You may believe it or not, just as you wish," Penny returned coldly. "It seems to me, Miss Nichols, that you are taking it upon yourself to do entirely too much investigating," Mrs. Leeds said cuttingly. "This isn't your home and you're not a relative of Jacob Winters." "And unless I'm sadly mistaken there are others here who are similarly situated!" Penny retorted. "Do you mean to suggest that Alicia and I are not related to Jacob Winters?" "I'm not suggesting anything," Penny replied evenly. "However, since you brought up the matter of an investigation, I might ask you about that paper which I saw you burn in the living room fireplace." Mrs. Leeds' face changed color and she grew confused. "Why, I don't know what you're talking about." "You know well enough, but we'll let it pass for the time being. Come on, Rosanna." The two girls walked down the hall and entered their own room, closing the door firmly behind them. "You held your own with her that time," Rosanna chuckled. "My, I wish I could talk up to people the way you can." "I talk entirely too much. But she made me provoked when she accused us of causing all the disturbance in this house." "What did you mean by asking about a paper she had burned?" Rosanna asked curiously. "Oh, I just wanted to throw a scare into her," Penny responded evasively as she snapped out the light and crept into bed. "I really have no proof of anything." Long after Rosanna had fallen asleep she lay awake thinking. Proof! The word seared itself into her brain. If only she could secure some evidence which would aid Rosanna! "The entire affair seems unreal," she mused. "Almost like a movie. It's obvious that someone is playing at being a ghost, trying to frighten the occupants of this house. But what can be the purpose behind it all?" Although Penny had been careful to make no such admission to Rosanna, she was becoming increasingly troubled. Nor were her worries confined solely to the hide-and-seek organist. She feared that the time was fast approaching when Mrs. Leeds or Max Laponi would make a legal claim to the Winters' property. "The chances are that Mrs. Leeds destroyed the will," she reasoned. "In that event, Rosanna may lose everything." Penny felt baffled, yet she was unwilling to admit defeat. Certainly not until Mrs. Leeds had thrown all her cards on the table. Events were fast approaching a crisis. Penny sensed that from the woman's attitude of increasing hostility and assurance. "I'm not defeated yet," she thought grimly as she closed her eyes and tried to sleep. "I still have a few tricks up my sleeve!" When Rosanna and Penny descended the stairs the next morning they heard a murmur of voices in the library. The door was closed. "I imagine Laponi and Mrs. Leeds are having another one of their secret conferences," Penny commented. "They're up to some mischief." "Why not leave this place today?" Rosanna demanded, "I don't care about the fortune any more. I'm so tired of all this plotting and scheming. I'd rather just go away and let them have it." "Now don't look so distressed," Penny smiled. "The battle of wits has only begun." "But I don't like to battle. It isn't my nature." "I'm your appointed gladiator, Rosanna. You have no idea how much pleasure it would give me to see these grasping imposters exposed." "We haven't any proof they're imposters," Rosanna said soberly. "After all, they had letters and keys to the house. I haven't even that much." "It's too bad they were lost, but you mustn't let it worry you," Penny chided. "Right now I'm more concerned over another matter." "The mysterious ghost?" "Yes, although I wasn't thinking of that at the moment. It's Mr. Winters' photograph. Who tore it out of the album?" "For all we know it may have been removed years ago." "Yes, that's so, but somehow I have a hunch it disappeared at a far more recent date. If I don't find a picture of Jacob Winters, I'm afraid my little plan will fall through." "You haven't told me much about this secret plan of yours, Penny." "That's because I haven't worked it out clearly in my own mind yet. But unless I find the photograph there simply won't be any." "We might search the house again." "I intend to do that if we can ever find a time when Mrs. Leeds and Max Laponi are both gone. Just now I'm eager to make another inspection of the organ room upstairs. This is our chance while those two are closeted in the library." Rosanna was not especially anxious to visit the third floor again, but she offered no objection to the suggestion. Penny led the way up the creaking stairs. The door of the music room was unlocked as they had left it the previous evening. However, the window shades were all drawn and the room was dark. Penny raised the blinds to admit light. Curiously, the girls gazed about them. Everything was covered with a thick coating of dust and cobwebs hung in misty veils from the corners of the room. Penny crossed over to the organ. She indicated the bench in front of it. "I guess that proves whether or not our ghost was real." "You mean the imprint on the dusty surface of the organ bench?" Rosanna asked doubtfully. "Yes, you can see where the organist sat." "Perhaps one of us brushed off the dust without realizing it. You tried to play a few notes on the organ, you know." "Yes, but I didn't sit down on the bench, Rosanna." Losing interest in the organ, Penny began to search for the secret panel through which she was firmly convinced that the "ghost" had disappeared. As her eyes moved swiftly over the smooth wall, she suddenly uttered a low exclamation. "See, Rosanna! The imprint of a man's hand!" The marking upon the wall was so faint that at first the other girl did not see it. But she too became excited as Penny pointed it out. "How do you suppose it came to be there?" she asked in awe. "I suspect our friend the organist was groping about in the dark searching for the secret panel. No doubt his hand was dusty and when he pressed it against the wall it left a faint imprint." "If you're right, we have a valuable clue as to the location of the panel!" Penny nodded eagerly. Already she was exploring the wall with her hand. "It's funny," she murmured impatiently. "I'm as sure as anything that the panel is here----" She broke off suddenly as her fingers touched a tiny round object which was hidden under the wall paper. "I believe I've found it!" she exclaimed gleefully pressing the button. The girls heard a faint click. But the panel did not open. "The stubborn thing!" Penny cried impatiently. "Why doesn't it open?" She pushed with both hands against the section of wall where she felt convinced the panel was located. To her own surprise and the horror of her companion, it suddenly gave way. Penny plunged headlong through the opening. And before Rosanna could recover from the shock of seeing her friend disappear, the panel fell back into place. "Penny, Penny," she cried anxiously, pounding upon the wall. "Are you hurt?" For several minutes there was no answer. Then Rosanna heard a smothered little giggle. "All my bones are still together I guess. But I seem to have tumbled down a flight of stairs. Come on in." "I don't know how to get in. The panel slammed shut when you fell through." "It's hinged at the top I think. Find the little button and press on it. Then when you hear a click push on the panel. Only push easy or you'll take a tumble the way I did." In a minute Rosanna had located the button. She pressed upon it as she had seen Penny do. Then as the lock clicked, she cautiously pushed against the panel. Light as was her touch the sector of wall swung instantly back and she stepped through the opening. So concerned was she over Penny that she failed to hear the panel close behind her. At first Rosanna could see nothing. Then as her eyes became accustomed to the gloomy interior she made out a long flight of stone steps leading downward into inky blackness. She felt reassured when Penny grasped her hand. "Come on, Rosanna! Isn't it exciting? Let's explore!" "Oh, it's too dark!" Rosanna whispered nervously. "What if we should run into that dreadful man--the organist?" "Well, perhaps it would be wiser to go back for a flashlight," Penny conceded. "Only we mustn't let Mrs. Leeds or Max Laponi suspect what we're up to. We must keep this discovery strictly to ourselves." She returned to the head of the stairs but although she groped her hand carefully along the wall she could find no hidden button or spring which controlled the panel. By this time Rosanna had grown frightened. "Don't tell me we're locked in!" Penny forced herself to speak calmly. She knew that it would never do to let Rosanna realize that she too was alarmed. "For the moment I'm afraid we are," she admitted quietly. "But don't give up hope. We'll get out of here somehow." CHAPTER XIII The Secret Stairs Ten minutes of unrewarded search convinced Penny that they were only wasting their time in attempting to locate the hidden spring without a light. "Let's follow the steps down and see where they lead," she suggested. "Surely there must be another exit." Rosanna permitted Penny to lead her down the steep flight of stairs. They presently reached the bottom. It was too dark to see very much but by feeling along the damp stone wall they discovered that they were in a narrow passageway. As they moved cautiously forward a breath of cold air struck Penny's face. "This must be the way to the exit," she declared cheerfully. "We'll soon be out of here now." "It can't be too soon for me," Rosanna chattered. Hand in hand they groped their way along the subterranean passage. Soon they came to the end of it but instead of an exit they found another flight of steps leading downward at a steep angle. "Careful or you'll fall," Penny warned as they began the treacherous descent. "Some of the stones are loose." "I wish we had a light," Rosanna complained. "Where do you suppose we're going anyway?" "Maybe to the center of the earth," Penny chuckled. "It seems like it anyway." "Unless I'm mixed up in my directions we're moving toward the lake." "It seems that way to me too," Penny readily agreed. "But we've twisted and turned so many times I couldn't be sure of anything." By this time the girls were convinced that they were underground for they had made a long, straight descent. The walls were moist and damp; the air chilly. Yet one thing puzzled them. If they actually were traveling toward the lake that meant that the tunnel had been bored into the side of the cliff. But such a feat obviously was nothing less than an engineering enterprise. At length the girls reached the bottom of the second flight of stairs only to find themselves in another passageway. It was much larger than the other and lighter. "Do you think we could be in an abandoned ore mine?" Penny suddenly demanded, pausing to inspect the walls. "It does look a little like it. Only I never heard of stone steps in a mine." "No, they have shafts. But it strikes me that the steps may have been added later, if you noticed, the upper passage was much smaller than this one." "As if it had been dug out to join with this one," Rosanna added eagerly. "Exactly. It's my theory that some person knew about this old mine and decided to connect it with a smaller tunnel which would lead up into the house." "But who do you suppose conceived such a plan?" "I can't answer that one," Penny laughed. "But come on, let's see if we aren't approaching the exit." Eagerly they moved forward, guided by the streak of light. A minute later Penny who was in the lead, gave a joyous shout. "We've come to the end of it! I can see trees!" "Thank goodness," Rosanna sighed in relief. "I was afraid we'd never get out alive." Penny parted the bushes which barred the exit and they peered out. "You were right, Rosanna. We did travel toward the lake. We're almost in it for that matter!" The water came within a few yards of the entrance and during a storm the girls imagined that it must flood the lower passageway. Penny noticed a rowboat tied up in a clump of bushes. "I suppose that's how our ghost makes his quick get-away," Penny remarked dryly. "We might take a ride on the lake," Rosanna proposed. "Don't you think it might advertise that we've discovered this tunnel? Especially if the ghost should happen to see us using his boat." "Of course, I didn't stop to think. Oh, Penny if only we knew the identity of this person who annoys the household!" "It shouldn't be so hard to learn it now," Penny declared in satisfaction. "At night we'll station ourselves here by the mouth of the tunnel and watch." "It wouldn't surprise me if it should turn out to be Max Laponi," Rosanna remarked. "He never seems to be in his room at night." Penny offered no response. Fearing that their long absence from the house might have aroused suspicion, the girls hurriedly left the scene. They found a trail which wound along the base of the cliff and which presently took them toward the house on the hill. As they passed the Eckert cabin they saw the old man cleaning fish by the back door. They greeted him perfunctorily and would have walked on had he not seemed in a mood to talk. "Out early this morning, aren't you?" he questioned. "Yes, we were down by the lake," Penny answered. "You must have crawled out of bed before the sun was up. I've been cleaning fish here all morning and I didn't see you go past." "We went around a different way," Penny answered, and then before he could ask another question, interposed one of her own. "By the way, do you know where I could get a picture of Jacob Winters?" Old Caleb dropped his fish knife. It took him a long time to recover it from the ground. "What do you want of a picture?" he questioned gruffly. "Oh, I just need it," Penny said evasively. "I'd like to have one myself," Rosanna added sincerely. "I never had a photo of my uncle." "If you find he's cut you out of all his property I guess you probably won't be so anxious to have a picture of the old cod," Caleb observed. Rosanna drew herself up proudly. "It wouldn't make the slightest difference, Mr. Eckert. After all, my uncle never saw me so why should he have left me any of his money? You say such disagreeable things!" "I'm a disagreeable old man," Caleb admitted cheerfully, "but my bark is worse than my bite." "Well, please don't call my uncle names," Rosanna went on with spirit. "Names?" "You spoke of Uncle Jacob as an old cod. I don't like it a bit." Old Caleb was startled by the outburst. But his eyes twinkled as he replied soberly: "Well, now, Miss Rosanna, I didn't mean to offend you or to speak disrespectfully of Jacob either. It was just my way of talking." "Then I'll forgive you," Rosanna smiled. The girls were on the verge of moving off when Caleb checked them with a question. "You haven't heard Mrs. Leeds or that Laponi fellow say anything about leaving have you?" "I don't believe they intend to go unless they're put out," Penny responded. "I heard Mrs. Leeds say the other day that she had sent for her lawyer." "They stick tighter than cockle burs," Caleb commented. "If only I had the right, I would send them both packing. Especially that Max Laponi. I don't trust him." "Neither do I," Penny agreed promptly. "That's why I think you should try to help me clear up this dreadful muddle." "What can I do? I have no authority." "It will help if you can find me a photograph of Mr. Winters." Caleb's face puckered into troubled wrinkles. "It's too late," he muttered under his breath. "It wouldn't do any good." "What was that you said?" Penny questioned sharply. "Nothing. I was just talking to myself. About the picture. I'll see what I can do. Don't count much on getting it though because I doubt if I can locate one for you." The girls chatted a few minutes longer but Caleb was not very good company. He responded briefly if at all to their conversational sallies and for the most part seemed lost in thought. They soon left him to his fish cleaning and went on toward the house. "I wonder what got into him all at once?" Rosanna mused. "Perhaps he was offended at the way I spoke to him." "I don't think he gave it a second thought," Penny responded. "I suspect Caleb rather likes to have folks talk up to him. No, I'm sure it wasn't anything you said that annoyed him. Likely enough it was my request for Mr. Winters' photograph." "Why should that bother him?" "That's what I'd like to know. Caleb is a queer one to say the least." "Do you think he'll ever produce the photo?" Penny laughed shortly. "It would be a great surprise to me if he did. And yet from the way he acted, I'm convinced he could get me one if he chose. Like as not he has one in his cabin now." Penny lapsed into a moody silence. From the day of her arrival at Raven Ridge she had sensed old Caleb's reluctance to help her. While she could not say that he was exactly unfriendly he had made no positive move of assistance. She had believed for a long time that he knew a great deal more than he would tell regarding Jacob Winters' absence. The girls entered the house by a side door. They noticed that Mrs. Leeds' car no longer stood on the driveway and took it for granted that she and her daughter had driven to Andover as was their daily custom. They glanced casually into the library and noticed that it was empty. However, Penny's keen eyes traveled to the desk. She observed that the ink bottle had been left uncorked and that a pen had been removed from its holder. "I wonder what Mrs. Leeds and Laponi were up to?" she speculated. "Oh, well, I'll probably find out soon enough." "I believe I'll go upstairs for a few minutes," Rosanna excused herself. "I haven't straightened my things yet this morning." Left alone, Penny crossed over to the desk and examined the paper in the wastebasket. She looked closely at the blotter, even holding it to the mirror, but it had been used so many times that the words which appeared upon it could not be read. There was not a scrap of evidence to show what Mrs. Leeds and Max Laponi had been writing. In disappointment Penny picked up a book and sat down to read. Presently she heard soft steps in the hallway but paid slight attention thinking that it was Rosanna. She was on the verge of calling her friend's name when she thought better of it. The sound of the footsteps told her that the person had gone into the living room. And by this time she was convinced that it was not Rosanna. She waited, listening. She heard a faint metallic click which caused her to lay aside her book and quietly steal to the doorway of the living room. Max Laponi stood with his back toward her, so absorbed in what he was about that he had not the slightest suspicion that he was being observed. Penny saw him carefully remove the oil painting from the wall. He deftly opened the panel, exposing the safe. Then, with a sureness of touch which amazed Penny, he began to spin the dials. CHAPTER XIV A Diamond Ring "Mr. Laponi, kindly move away from that safe!" Penny spoke sharply as she quietly stepped into the living room. The man whirled and saw her. Taken by surprise, his hand fell away from the dials and he looked confused. "You seem to be very much interested in Mr. Winters' valuables," Penny said sternly. By this time Max Laponi had recovered his composure. "Why shouldn't I be?" he retorted. "After all, I am Mr. Winters' heir." "That remains to be seen, Mr. Laponi. You appear to be very handy at opening safes, I notice." Penny crossed the room and after turning the handle to make certain that Laponi had not succeeded in his purpose, closed the panel and returned the oil painting to its former position. "I suppose you think I was trying to steal," Laponi began after a minute of dead silence. "Nothing was further from my intention." "No?" "Ever since I caught Caleb Eckert trying to break into this safe I've been worried. Last night I saw him prowling around the house after dark and it made me uneasy. I was afraid he would make another attempt to steal Mr. Winters' valuables." "So you thought you would just beat him to it!" Penny retorted sarcastically. "Certainly not. When you entered the room I was merely inspecting the safe to make certain that it was securely locked." Penny could not refrain from smiling. She did not believe a word of what Max Laponi was telling her. "That safe seems to be the real attraction of this house," she remarked. "I've suspected for some time that it contains Mr. Winters' ivory collection." If Max Laponi were taken aback he did not disclose it. But he eyed Penny shrewdly. "You're a smart little girl. Too smart to go around making trouble for yourself. Now if you're wise you'll team up with me and I'll promise you that you'll come out at the top of the heap." "Just what is your proposition?" Penny asked quickly. Max Laponi was too alert to place himself in any trap. "If you're willing to follow my orders I'll promise you that when I come into my fortune you'll be well paid." "And what are your orders?" "I'll tell you after you give me your promise." Penny regarded him coldly. "I'll promise nothing, Mr. Laponi, except that I intend to see justice done to Rosanna Winters! You and Mrs. Leeds are trying to cheat her out of her rightful inheritance." "She'll never get a cent. If you had an ounce of sense you'd ditch her and come in with us. It's all fixed--" "Fixed!" Penny tripped him. "And by 'us' I imagine you mean Mrs. Leeds. You're both hatching some scheme to defraud Rosanna." Laponi smiled impudently. "Well, don't say I didn't give you your choice, Miss Nichols. It is your decision to have no share in the spoils?" "It is." Laponi's face darkened slightly. "As you wish, Miss Nichols. But let me give you a little warning. Keep your nose out of my affairs or it will be the worse for you!" He turned and walked from the room. A minute later Penny saw him leave the house by the side door. "If he thinks he can frighten me with a threat he has another guess coming!" she thought indignantly. "For two cents I'd call in the police." Upon second consideration she decided that such a move would not be wise. After all she had no real evidence against Laponi. While she was convinced in her own mind that his motives were dishonest the police might take a more conservative attitude. Then too, she would be forced to offer a satisfactory explanation for her own presence in the house. "Laponi is after something more valuable than a will," Penny mused as she stood at the window watching his car vanish down the driveway. Her eye wandered to the oil painting on the wall. She felt certain that the safe which was screened beneath it guarded Mr. Winters' collection of ivory. And from the expression of Laponi's face when she had mentioned her belief, she was sure that he shared the same conviction. "He practically admitted he was involved in some scheme to defraud Rosanna," she thought. "I can't help feeling he's a crook even if he is a relative of Mr. Winters. I wish I dared search his room for evidence!" The more she considered the idea, the greater became its appeal. Probably Laponi would not return to the house for at least an hour. She would have ample time. Still, the undertaking would be a risky one and not at all to her liking. "I suppose a professional detective wouldn't feel squeamish about entering another person's room if the case demanded it," she encouraged herself. "Laponi practically admitted his guilt--that was because he thought I couldn't do anything about it. Maybe I'll show him!" By this time Penny's mind was made up. Quietly she stole up the stairway. In the upper corridor she paused to listen for a minute. Everything was still. Penny tiptoed down the hall to Max Laponi's room. She tried the door. It was locked. "That's funny," she thought. "He must keep something inside that he's afraid to have folks see." She was more eager than before to search the room. But with the key gone it seemed out of the question. Then Penny's face lighted as she recalled the empty bedroom adjoining the one occupied by Laponi. It was possible that they might have a connecting door. Looking carefully about to make certain that she was not under observation, she moved on down the hall and tried the next door. To her delight it opened. She entered the dusty chamber, gazing quickly about. She was disappointed to see that the two bedrooms had no connecting door. However, when she walked to the window and raised it, she noted a wide ledge which ran the length of the building. "If only I dared lower myself to it I could reach Max Laponi's room, for the ledge is only a few feet below from his window!" she reasoned. Penny decided that the chance was worth taking. She naturally was athletic and had confidence that she could maintain a foothold. Lowering herself to the ledge she flattened herself to the wall of the house and moved an inch at a time toward the next window. It was a long fall to the ground. Penny did not dare glance downward. Although the distance between the two windows was not more than twelve feet it seemed an age until her hands clutched the sill. As she pried at the window a sudden fear assailed her. What if it too were locked? The window had only stuck a little. A quick jerk brought it up. By sheer strength of muscle, Penny raised herself to the level of the sill, swinging her feet through the opening. "I must work fast," she told herself, glancing appraisingly about. "I'd not care to be caught here." Her attention was drawn to Max Laponi's open suitcase which had been left carelessly on the bed. Crossing over to it she began to explore the contents systematically. "My hunch about Laponi may have been wrong," she thought uncomfortably as the search revealed nothing of interest. Just then her hand touched something hard and cold. Penny knew instantly that it was a revolver. She was not afraid of firearms for her father had taught her to shoot. Carefully she inspected the weapon. "All this heavy artillery must have been brought here for a purpose," she reflected grimly. "It's clear Laponi is out to get what he wants by one means or another." After an instant's hesitation Penny placed the revolver on the table. She had decided to take it with her when she left. "Things in this house are fast approaching a crisis," she reasoned. "Before I get through I may need that weapon myself." Save for an inner pocket in the suitcase, Penny had completed her inspection. She ran her hand into the cloth pouch and brought to light several papers. Rapidly she went through them. Suddenly she uttered a cry of delight. She had discovered the letter which Max Laponi claimed had been sent him by the same lawyer who had notified Rosanna of her newly inherited fortune. Although Laponi, upon his arrival at Raven Ridge, had flourished the document, he had permitted no one to inspect it closely. Now as Penny read the letter carefully she recalled that the wording was identical with the message which Rosanna had received. Closely she studied the salutation, holding the paper to the light. "I believe the name has been changed!" she exclaimed. "Max Laponi has cleverly removed Rosanna's name and substituted his own. This must be the letter which Rosanna lost!" It occurred to her that the man doubtlessly had found the missing key as well. She again ran her hand into the cloth pocket and triumphantly brought it forth. "He's nothing but a rank impostor!" she told herself. "I'll keep this letter as evidence against him and the key will come in handy too!" Penny hastily rearranged the suitcase as she had found it and prepared to depart. The search had well repaid her for her efforts, but it had taken longer than she had intended. However, as she crossed the room toward the window she noticed a number of small objects spread out over the dresser and could not resist pausing to inspect them. They held her interest only briefly. She turned away again but as she moved off a button on her sleeve caught in the lace work of the runner which covered the dresser top. It pulled awry and Penny paused to straighten it. As she rearranged the piece, her fingers touched a small hard object on the under side. Her curiosity aroused she turned back the runner and looked beneath it. There lay a diamond ring. "A diamond!" she exclaimed. "As big as a house too. It's evidently been hidden here by Max Laponi!" She picked it up and examined it, reflecting that somewhere she had seen a similar piece of jewelry. She was certain the diamond was not an imitation for it sparkled brightly. However, she had no opportunity to give it more than a hasty glance for she was startled to hear footsteps coming down the hall. "Max Laponi may be coming back," she thought nervously. Leaving the diamond ring where she had discovered it she hastily rearranged the dresser cover. With her newly acquired evidence, she darted to the window and lowered herself to the outside ledge. CHAPTER XV Penny's Evidence The bedroom door opened and Max Laponi entered. Penny Nichols had lowered herself to the narrow ledge not an instant too soon. There had been no time to pull the window down after her. As she heard the man walk across the room she huddled fearfully against the wall, feeling certain that he would notice the open window immediately. Her position was a precarious one. She dared not move lest even a slight sound betray her to the man inside. On the other hand, it was doubtful how long she could remain where she was without losing her footing. She knew that if she once glanced downward her courage would fail her. Penny could hear Laponi muttering to himself. "I thought I left that window down," she heard him say. "If anyone has been in here--" He crossed to the bed and ran his hand under the pillow. Penny peeped through the window just as he removed a shiny object. "Another revolver!" she gasped. "That's one I missed." The sight of the weapon seemed to reassure Laponi for he appeared relieved. He next crossed over to the bureau and searched for the diamond ring. Penny was very glad that she had not touched it. "I guess everything is the same as I left it," the man muttered to himself. "Still, I'd have sworn I left that window down." As Penny huddled flat against the wall, he moved over toward it. She held her breath, waiting. Would he look out? If he did, then all was lost. Laponi stood for some minutes at the open window, seemingly absorbed in his thoughts. Then he abruptly slammed it down and turned away. "That was a narrow escape!" Penny congratulated herself. "If I ever get out of this mess I'll take care not to get myself into another position like it!" She cautiously crept along the ledge until at last she was able to stretch out her hand and grasp the sill of the next window. After pulling herself through she quietly closed it behind her. Then she tiptoed to the bedroom door and looked out. No one was in sight. Carefully secreting the articles which she had taken from Laponi's room, she darted past his door and safely on to the bedroom which she shared with Rosanna. The latter arose as she burst in upon her. "How you startled me, Penny." She was due for another shock as Penny dropped the revolver upon the dresser. "Penny, where did you get that thing?" she demanded nervously. "Not so loud or someone may hear you," Penny warned. "It came from Laponi's room, and that's not all I found either." She drew forth the letter and the missing key. Rosanna stared incredulously. "Surely they can't be mine, Penny." "I suspect they are. Take a look at this letter and tell me if you notice anything wrong." Rosanna studied the letter briefly, then shook her head. "It reads just like the one I received." "That's the point. Notice the name at the top." "Why, it looks as if it might have been changed!" Rosanna cried. "And I think it has been. It's my opinion that Max Laponi found your letter and the missing key. He's a rank impostor." "Then you believe he is the one who has been frightening the household by playing on the pipe organ?" "I haven't made up my mind about that yet," Penny returned thoughtfully. "But one thing I'm certain about. Laponi is a dangerous man." "Let's get away from here right away." Penny laughed shortly. "I should say not! This mystery is growing more exciting every minute. I mean to discover Max Laponi's little game!" "But he may harm us," Rosanna protested. "Especially if he suspects you've searched his room." "Laponi is armed," Penny admitted with a frown. "But for that matter so are we." "You wouldn't dare to carry that revolver!" "I most certainly would. Not that I'd care to use it, but it might serve as protection." "It seems to me we should call in the police." Penny shook her head. "Not yet. But I do intend to wire my father. I'm going to ask him to learn all he can about Laponi. It may turn out that the man has a prison record." "You suspect that because you found the revolver in his room?" "Well, honest citizens don't carry weapons without permits." "You're thinking of doing it," Rosanna challenged. Penny laughed. "This is an extra special emergency. But I have another reason for believing that Laponi is a crook. I suspect he has a stolen ring in his possession." She then told of finding the diamond ring under the dresser scarf. "All diamonds look somewhat alike," she acknowledged, "but I'm sure I've seen that ring before." "Where?" "In Bresham's Department Store. I think it's the same ring that was stolen the afternoon I met you there." "Laponi does bear a slight resemblance to the shoplifter," Rosanna admitted thoughtfully. "Only the store thief was a much older man." "Disguised perhaps. Oh, I may be wrong, but at least it will do no harm to have Father look into the matter." "When he gets your wire, Penny, he'll probably be so alarmed that he'll send word for you to start back to Mt. Ashland at once." "Not Dad. He'd rather catch a crook than eat. I'm sure he'll help me." "When will you send the wire?" "Right away. I'd like to leave the house before Laponi sees me." However, as the girls stepped out into the hall a few minutes later they heard loud voices coming up from the living room. Penny instantly recognized Laponi's sharp tones and paused at the top of the stairs to peer down. "It's Max and Caleb Eckert," she reported in a whisper. "My, what a quarrel they're having!" The girls listened for a minute but the voices of the two men died to a low murmur and they could distinguish only an occasional word. "Unless you want Laponi to see you we'd better slip down the back way," Rosanna suggested. Using the rear stairs the girls were able to leave the house without being observed. They drove directly to Andover where Penny dispatched a lengthy wire to her father. She requested him to learn all he could concerning Max Laponi and if possible to send her a complete description of the diamond ring which had been stolen from the department store. "I wonder why Caleb and Max Laponi were going at each other in such dreadful fashion?" Rosanna mused as they drove back toward the Winters' mansion. Penny had been pondering over the same question. "I suppose Caleb may be suspicious of him," Rosanna went on when Penny did not answer. "Possibly. Old Caleb hasn't acted too honestly himself, Rosanna." "I know he hasn't. He doesn't like to answer questions and his interest in Mr. Winters' safe is rather puzzling. It seems to me that everyone at Raven Ridge acts queerly." "Including me?" Penny teased. Rosanna laughed and squeezed her arm affectionately. "Of course I don't mean you. You've been wonderful and I'll never never be able to repay you for all you've done." "Nonsense, so far I've accomplished exactly nothing. But I have a feeling that before another twenty-four hours elapse things are going to start breaking for us." "I hope so," Rosanna sighed. Neither Max Laponi nor Caleb Eckert were in the living room when the girls returned to the house. Alicia was reading a book by the fireplace but at sight of Penny and Rosanna she coldly withdrew. "I'm glad she's gone," Penny smiled. "It clears the atmosphere." "Must we stay here tonight?" Rosanna asked. "Couldn't we go to a hotel and come back in the morning? Since I know that Max Laponi----" She broke off as Penny shot her a warning glance. "Even the walls seem to have ears in this house, Rosanna. Come outside and we'll do our planning there." They went out into the yard and sat down on a stone bench. "I know I'm a dreadful coward," Rosanna acknowledged. "Only I'm so afraid something terrible is about to happen." "Now don't let your nerves get the best of you," Penny advised kindly. "I shouldn't have shown you that revolver I found in Laponi's room. You haven't been the same since." "It wasn't just the revolver. It's everything." Penny was silent for a moment. Then she said quietly: "I don't blame you for feeling the way you do. Perhaps we are taking a chance to remain here tonight. I shouldn't do it only I feel that it will give me an opportunity to clear up the mystery." "But if you suspect Max----" "I do suspect him of a great many things, but I'm not certain of his game yet, Rosanna. Besides, I must have absolute proof before I dare notify the police. Tonight I intend to watch the mouth of the tunnel." "I can't permit you to do it by yourself. If you insist on taking such a chance I'll go with you!" Penny remonstrated but at length it was agreed that shortly after nightfall the two would steal down to the lake's edge and lie in wait at the mouth of the tunnel for the mysterious ghost to appear. For a long time the two girls sat staring out across the lake, each absorbed with her own thoughts. What would the night bring forth? "I believe I'll walk down to Caleb Eckert's cabin and chat with him for a few minutes," Penny remarked a little later as her companion arose from the bench. "Want to come along?" "No, I think I'll go inside. The air is growing chilly and my sweater is upstairs." "I'll be glad to wait for you." "If you don't mind, I believe I'll just rest. You go on alone." "You really don't mind?" "Of course not. But I doubt if you'll find Caleb at home. He usually goes fishing about this time of day." "Well, I may as well see anyhow. I want to ask him about that picture of Jacob Winters. I intend to keep annoying him until he gives me a satisfactory answer." As Rosanna returned to the house, Penny walked swiftly in the direction of the cabin. "I'm only wasting my time," she thought. "Caleb has no intention of ever producing that photograph." Penny rapped on the door, noticing that it was partly ajar. There was no response. She knocked a second time. Far out on the lake she could see a small rowboat with one lone fisherman. No doubt it was Caleb, she decided. She started away from the cabin, then abruptly halted as she was struck with a sudden thought. With Caleb out on the lake she would have an excellent opportunity to search his shack for the photograph of Jacob Winters. She felt convinced she would find it there. "Entering people's private quarters seems to be a bad habit of mine," she chuckled. "Still, it's all in a good cause." Penny surveyed the lake again. The rowboat was nearly out of sight. After a moment of indecision, she pushed open the cabin door and entered. Caleb had left everything in a clutter and she scarcely knew where to begin her search. She looked in the desk and in several table drawers. She searched in the magazine rack and even in the kitchen cupboard. She was growing discouraged when she finally opened a closet and peered up at the high shelves. Far above her head was a stack of old papers. Although Penny had given up hope of finding the picture, she brought a chair and climbing up on it, took down the papers. As she lifted the stack, an object which had been lying on the shelf was brushed to the floor. She bent down to pick it up. To her amazement and delight it was a photograph. She stared in disbelief at the man's face and then turned the photo over to read what had been written on the back. "_Jacob Winters._" "And Caleb told me he didn't know where he could get a photograph!" Penny thought indignantly. "All the time he had this one hidden here on the shelf. Why, I'm positive this picture came out of the album Rosanna and I found. Very likely Caleb tore it out himself!" Hastily replacing the papers on the shelf, Penny tucked the photograph into her pocket and prepared to leave the cabin. She was highly elated over her discovery. "This will prove quite a valuable addition to my collection of evidence," she chuckled. "No wonder Caleb was afraid to have me see it." CHAPTER XVI Mrs. Leeds' Strategy Penny was highly jubilant as she walked rapidly toward the house on the hill. The day had been an unusually successful one for her and with the photograph of Jacob Winters in her possession she felt that it would only be a matter of time until the mystery was solved. "But I must act quickly or it may be too late," she thought. Drawing near the house she saw Rosanna hurrying to meet her. Penny quickened her step as she observed that the girl appeared greatly agitated. "Oh, Penny," Rosanna gasped, "Mrs. Leeds has locked me out of the house!" "What?" "When I tried to get in after leaving you a few minutes ago she met me at the front door. She said I couldn't come in because the house and everything surrounding it belongs to her now." Penny laughed shortly. "She's been saying that ever since she came here." "I know, but this is different, Penny. She has the will to prove it." "The will?" "Yes, she showed it to me. And it's true. My uncle left all his property to her." "And where did she claim to have found this document?" Penny asked. "Why, somewhere in the house. I was so upset I didn't think to inquire. Now that I know Uncle Jacob left everything to her, I shall leave at once." Penny caught Rosanna by the arm. "Don't be in too much of a hurry to get away," she advised. "It may be that Mrs. Leeds' claims are false." "But I saw the will for myself." "Perhaps it was forged." "I never thought of that," Rosanna gasped. "Do you think she would resort to such a trick?" "I believe she'd do almost anything to gain a fortune." Penny had been thinking swiftly. She recalled the secretive actions of Mrs. Leeds and Max Laponi when they were closeted together in the library. They had been engrossed in writing a document of some sort. Doubtless it was the will which Mrs. Leeds now claimed to have found. Penny's face puckered into a worried frown. Mrs. Leeds' unexpected action might complicate the entire situation and ruin her own plans. She feared too that the woman actually had destroyed Jacob Winters' true will. "She was burning it in the fireplace that day when I came upon her," Penny thought. "That's why she feels so safe about forging another one in her own favor." "What were you saying?" Rosanna inquired. Penny had not realized that she was speaking aloud. "Only thinking," she responded. "We'll go in and talk with Mrs. Leeds." "But we can't get in for she has locked all the doors. Our luggage is sitting out on the porch." "Very considerate of her I must say," Penny grinned. "But we can get in all right." She produced the key which she had found in Max Laponi's room. "Weren't you smart to keep it!" Rosanna cried. "That remains to be seen. But come on, let's beard Mrs. Leeds in her den." Penny boldly walked up to the front door. It was locked as Rosanna had said, so inserting her key she opened it. As the girls entered, they heard Alicia calling shrilly to her mother and an instant later Mrs. Leeds came storming into the hall. "What is the meaning of this outrage?" she demanded furiously. "That is what we should like to know," Penny retorted. "Why did you lock us out?" "Because this is my house. Jacob Winters left everything to me and I have the will to prove it." "May I ask where you found it?" Penny inquired. The question confused Mrs. Leeds. She began to stammer. "Why, I--that is, it's none of your affair, Miss Nichols!" "I disagree with you there. I am interested in seeing Rosanna treated fairly. May I examine the will?" Mrs. Leeds hesitated and the girls thought that she would refuse the request. However, the woman said: "I will permit you to read it if you promise not to destroy it." "Destroying wills isn't in my line," Penny returned pointedly. Mrs. Leeds tossed her head angrily. An expression of bitter hatred which she made no attempt to hide, came into her eyes. She went to the living room desk and from a pigeon hole removed a document which she offered Penny. "There, read it for yourself." Penny inspected the will briefly. Since neither she nor Rosanna had ever seen Jacob Winters' handwriting it was impossible to tell if the document had been forged. To Rosanna's astonishment, she suddenly seemed to experience a change of attitude regarding Mrs. Leeds' claim to the property. "I may have made a mistake," Penny acknowledged. "This paper seems to give everything to you, Mrs. Leeds." "I am glad you are coming to your senses at last, Miss Nichols." "I suppose Rosanna and I may as well take our things and leave," she went on. "Your luggage is ready," the woman said with satisfaction. "Alicia and I packed for you." "Very thoughtful," Penny murmured ironically. "However, I think I'll just run upstairs and see if anything was missed." "Why, yes, you may do that if you like." Now that she was assured of victory, Mrs. Leeds felt that she could afford to make slight concessions. No sooner had the bedroom door closed behind the two girls than Rosanna faced Penny with a puzzled look. "Did you really think the will was genuine, Penny?" "No, of course not, but I decided that probably we could gain our ends best by appearing to give in to Mrs. Leeds." As she spoke, Penny ran her hand under the pillow of the bed and brought forth the revolver which she had taken from Max Laponi's room. "Penny, what do you intend to do with that weapon?" Rosanna demanded anxiously. "Don't worry, I'm not planning on committing any murders. But it may come in handy tonight." "You just told Mrs. Leeds that we would leave the house immediately," Rosanna reminded her in bewilderment. "I know, but that doesn't mean we'll leave the grounds. We'll appear to go away, but after dark we'll sneak back to the entrance of the tunnel." "To watch for the ghost?" "Yes, that's my plan. You'll not be afraid to go with me, will you?" "No," Rosanna returned quietly. "Only I can't see what good it will do now. Mrs. Leeds definitely has the property and anything we learn about the ghost can't alter the situation." "I'm not so sure of that," Penny smiled. She was so jubilant as they prepared to take their luggage and leave the house that Mrs. Leeds regarded her slightly with suspicion. However, the woman was reassured to see the girls drive away in their car. Rosanna and Penny dined early at Andover but the former ate little. Although she made every effort to carry on a cheerful conversation it was obvious to her companion that she was completely discouraged. "Cheer up," Penny advised optimistically. "I tell you everything will come out right yet. Even if my own plan fails, there are still lawyers to be hired. Mrs. Leeds can't take over the property legally until the court approves." "She'll have things fixed up her way," Rosanna maintained gloomily. "I'll have no money to hire a lawyer. I must try to find myself a job." "Father will help you get one if you need it." "I've accepted so many favors from you already," Rosanna protested. "You have not!" Penny cut in. "This trip to Raven Ridge has been sheer fun for me. And unless I'm mistaken tonight will prove the most exciting of all." "I'm afraid so," Rosanna shuddered. She glanced curiously at her companion. She could not understand Penny's eagerness to return to the mouth of the tunnel. In her own opinion the mysterious ghost was none other than Max Laponi and she had no desire to encounter him again. "Do you still want to go through with the plan?" she inquired doubtfully. "I certainly do. I'd never feel satisfied if I left Raven Ridge without solving the mystery. It's about time we start for the tunnel too." They left the restaurant, returning to Penny's car which had been parked outside. "Probably our friend the ghost won't put in an appearance much before midnight," Penny remarked as they drove slowly toward Raven Ridge, "but it will be wise I think to allow ourselves plenty of time to find a good hiding place." It had grown dark and the girls were pleased to note that heavy clouds would hide the moon and stars. Some distance from the Winters' house they parked in a dense thicket near the road. Before alighting, Penny removed a small package from the side pocket of the car. "What's that?" Rosanna asked curiously. "Dynamite," Penny chuckled. "Dynamite!" "In the form of evidence. Unless I'm mistaken, this little package will produce some startling results!" "You're talking in absolute riddles." "Just be patient and you'll soon know what I mean," Penny declared teasingly. "I'd tell you now only it would ruin the surprise." She locked the automobile and afoot they quietly stole down a steep winding trail which led to the entrance of the old mine. CHAPTER XVII The Man in the Boat Penny and Rosanna approached the mine entrance cautiously, fearing that someone in the vicinity might observe their movements. However, the place seemed deserted. "The rowboat is gone," Penny commented as she pulled aside a clump of bushes to survey the spot where it had been hidden. "Why, it is! Perhaps the ghost has come and left." "I certainly hope not. That would ruin everything. Anyway, we'll wait and see. It's early yet." After investigating the shore line thoroughly, they found an excellent hiding place in a dense thicket not far from the entrance to the mine. Then they settled themselves to wait. "What time is it?" Rosanna yawned. "Only a little after nine. We'll have a long siege of it." The night was cold and damp. Although both girls had worn sweaters they soon grew uncomfortable and huddled close together for warmth. Rosanna tried not to show her nervousness but even the screech of an owl startled her. She was aware of every sound and any unusual movement caused her to grow tense. "You'll be a wreck long before midnight," Penny declared. "We're armed and there's nothing to fear." Rosanna made a supreme effort to relax but it was not until several hours had elapsed that she began to grow accustomed to her surroundings. Penny, on the other hand, found it difficult to remain awake. At first she riveted her attention upon the lake but as there was no evidence of a boat, soon lost interest. For a time she watched the twinkling lights at Raven Ridge but one by one they disappeared until the old mansion on the hill was cloaked in darkness. "Now that the household has gone to bed our ghost should be starting in on his night's work," she remarked hopefully to Rosanna. Another half hour dragged by. Still no one came. Even Rosanna found it increasingly difficult to fight off drowsiness. "I don't believe the ghost is coming tonight," she declared. "It begins to look that way. But perhaps it's still too early. Surely it can't be any more than midnight." "It seems later than that," Rosanna sighed. "My back is nearly broken." A few minutes later, from far over the hills, the girls heard the faint chiming of a town clock. They counted twelve strokes. Minutes passed and still there was no sign of any visitor. At length, Penny arose to stretch her cramped limbs. "I thought I heard something just then!" Rosanna whispered tensely. Penny stood listening. "You're right. I can hear oars dipping in and out of the water. It must be a boat coming this way." Peering out through the bushes, the girls surveyed the lake. It was too dark to distinguish objects but they distinctly could hear the rhythmical splash made by the moving oars. "See anything?" Penny demanded. "Not yet--oh, yes, now I do. It is a boat, Penny." "And it's heading right for this spot! Let's creep a little closer to the opening of the tunnel." Stealthily they changed positions but remained well hidden by a screen of bushes. The boat by this time had drawn into the tiny cove. However, the night was so dark that neither of the girls was able to distinguish the features of the man who crouched in the stern. He beached the boat and carefully drew it up into the bushes. Next he lighted a lantern, but his back was toward the girls and they did not see his face. "Who can it be?" Rosanna whispered. Penny gripped her companion's hand as a warning to remain silent. The man with the lantern looked quickly about and then moved swiftly into the mouth of the tunnel. "We must follow him," Penny urged. They waited a minute, then noiselessly stole from their hiding place. As they peered into the dark mine tunnel they could see a moving light far ahead. Fearing that they might lose sight of the man, the girls hastened their steps. They did not walk as quietly as they imagined, for soon the man ahead paused. With one accord Penny and Rosanna froze against the tunnel wall. As the man turned to look back, the light from the lantern shone full upon his face. It was Caleb Eckert. Rosanna and Penny remained flat against the wall scarcely daring to breathe. Would they be seen? Apparently satisfied that no one was behind him in the tunnel, Caleb turned and walked slowly on. "That was a narrow escape," Penny whispered. "He nearly saw us." Rosanna was a trifle shaken. She had not expected to see Caleb Eckert. "I suspected it several days ago but I wasn't absolutely certain," Penny told her. "But what purpose can he have in playing such pranks?" Rosanna asked in bewilderment. "Caleb seemed rather nice even if he was gruff and outspoken. I never dreamed he'd resort to anything like this." "Don't take it so hard," Penny advised. "He may have a reason for what he is doing." The light had disappeared. The girls hurriedly moved on, fearing that they might lose sight of the old man entirely. With nothing to guide them it was difficult to find their way. "It's lucky we explored in the daytime or we'd have trouble following," Rosanna declared. "The ground is so rough." Even as she spoke she stubbed her toe on a rock and would have fallen had not Penny caught her by the arm. They came presently to the first flight of stairs and were relieved to glimpse the lantern far above them. Taking care to keep out of range of the beam, they followed through the narrower passage to the second flight of steps. By this time the girls were positive that Caleb intended to enter the house by means of the secret panel. At the risk of detection they drew a little closer. Caleb paused at the head of the stairs to listen for a moment. Then he blew out his lantern. Sensing that the old man would unlock the panel, Penny stole forward. She was just in time to see a section of the wall drop down. Caleb passed through the opening and with a click the panel closed behind him. "Now what shall we do?" Rosanna demanded. "We're locked in here the same as we were before." "I think I saw the place where he pressed the wall," Penny whispered. "I was watching closely." For several minutes she groped about in the dark. At last her fingers touched a small knob. "I believe I've found it," she proclaimed triumphantly. As she was on the verge of turning the knob, she stayed her hand. With Caleb in the organ room he would be certain to see the panel open. There was danger too that he might return at any instant to find them crouching at the head of the stairs. "Shouldn't we turn back?" Rosanna whispered nervously. "Let's wait until he begins to play the organ." They listened expectantly. Minutes passed but not a strain of music did they hear. "That's queer," Penny murmured. "I'm sure Caleb is the one who has been disturbing the household with his ghost music. Why doesn't he play as he's always done before?" They both knew that the wall was not soundproof. For that matter they could hear old Caleb walking about in the room. "He must be up to new tricks tonight," Penny whispered. "He'll be coming back here any minute. Let's get away before he catches us." Penny was reluctant to leave, for it struck her that Caleb Eckert had come to the Winters' house for a different purpose than that of his usual nightly visit. She was curious to learn what it was. "Listen!" she warned, as they heard a strange noise from within. "It sounded like a door closing," Rosanna declared. "That's exactly what I think it was. Caleb must have gone out of the room. We'll be safe in entering now." To make certain she listened for a few minutes but there was no sound of movement from within. Convinced that the coast was clear, she groped about for the knob which opened the panel. It turned in her hand. She heard a sharp metallic click, and almost before she was prepared for it, the panel swung open. It closed again before either of the girls could recover from their surprise. However, Penny turned the knob a second time and as the section of wall swung back, both girls stepped through into the room. As they had expected, it was deserted. "Where do you suppose he went?" Rosanna murmured. They tiptoed to the outside door and softly opened it. The hall was dark. At first they could distinguish nothing. Then Penny noticed that the door opening upon the second floor corridor was ajar. "He went downstairs," she whispered. "Let's find out what he's up to." The stairs creaked alarmingly as they crept down to the second floor. On the landing they hesitated an instant and were relieved to hear no unusual sound. They peered into the long corridor and saw that it was empty. Caleb was nowhere to be seen. "Perhaps he brought another bat for Mrs. Leeds' room," Rosanna suggested, glancing toward the chamber which the woman shared with her daughter. The door, however, was tightly closed. The one at the other end of the hall which opened into Max Laponi's room was slightly ajar. Rosanna and Penny failed to notice. Somewhere on the lower floor a board creaked. The two girls moved noiselessly to the stairway and looked down over the banister. Even Penny was unprepared for the sight which greeted her eyes. Caleb Eckert was working at the dials of the living room safe! CHAPTER XVIII A Daring Theft Old Caleb had relighted his lantern and in its dim yellow glow the girls could make out every detail of the center hall and living room. In astonishment they watched the man spin the tiny dials of the safe. He manipulated them with a speed and skill which was amazing. "Why, I do believe the scoundrel intends to steal Mr. Winters' valuables," Rosanna whispered with growing anger. "We can't let him do that." With one accord they tiptoed down the long spiral stairway to the center hall. For a minute they were exposed to view but Caleb was so absorbed in what he was doing that he did not even glance up. Hiding behind a heavy velvet curtain which partially screened the arched door of the living room, the girls watched. Twice Caleb tried without success to open the safe. Although his movements were deft and sure it was obvious that he had made some slight mistake in the combination. Each time he failed he grew more impatient. They could see his hand shake. "Drat it all!" they heard him mutter to himself. "That's the right combination. It ought to open." At length the old man's efforts were rewarded. As he manipulated the dials for the third time there was a significant click from within the safe. Chuckling to himself, Caleb turned the handle and swung open the steel door. Save for a long metal box, the safe was empty. In the act of reaching for the container, Caleb suddenly wheeled. The girls were startled at the action for they had heard nothing. After looking searchingly about the room the old man apparently was satisfied that he was alone. With an uneasy laugh he again turned his attention to the safe. "Guess I'm getting a mite jittery," he muttered. "I was positive I heard someone behind me just then." He thrust his hand into the safe and drew out the box. With fumbling fingers he unfastened the lid. A smile illuminated his wrinkled face as he regarded the contents. "Still here, safe and sound. I was a little afraid----" Without finishing, he lifted an object from the box and held it in the light. It was a tiny figure made of purest ivory. Penny and Rosanna exchanged a swift glance. They knew now that the box contained Jacob Winters' priceless collection of ivory pieces! After staring at the little figure for a minute Caleb carefully replaced it and closed the box. He then locked the safe and returned the oil painting to its former position on the wall. "Stop him now or it will be too late," Rosanna whispered tensely. Before Penny could act, there was a slight movement at the opposite end of the living room. The girls were horrified to see a closet door slowly open. Caleb's back was turned. Oblivious of danger he bent down to pick up his lantern. From within the closet a man was regarding Caleb with cold intensity. He held a revolver in his hand. Rosanna, terrified at the sight, would have cried out a warning, had not Penny suddenly placed her hand over the girl's mouth. Max Laponi, a cynical, cruel smile upon his angular face, stepped out into the living room, his revolver trained upon Caleb. "Much obliged to you for opening the safe, Mr. Eckert," he said coolly. "You saved me the trouble." Caleb wheeled and instinctively thrust the metal box behind his back. The gesture amused Laponi. He laughed harshly. "I guess you weren't quite as clever as you thought you were, Caleb! Hand over the ivories and be quick about it." "You're nothing but a crook!" the old man cried furiously. "Hand over the ivories if you value your life." Instead of obeying the order, Caleb slowly retreated toward the door. Max Laponi's eyes narrowed dangerously. "I don't want to shoot an old man but if you force me----" "Don't shoot," Caleb quavered. "I'll give up the ivory." "Good. Now you're acting sensibly. Drop the box on the table and raise your hands above your head." Slowly, Caleb complied with the order. Laponi moved with cat-like tread across the floor and snatched up the box. With his revolver still trained on the old man, he backed toward the door. "Thank you for a very profitable evening," he smirked. "And when you locate your friend Mr. Winters----" His words ended in a surprised gasp. Something had struck his right hand a stunning blow. The weapon fell from his bruised fingers, clattering to the floor. He felt a cold, hard object in the small of his back. "It's your turn now," said Penny Nichols. "I'll trouble you to hand over the little box!" CHAPTER XIX The Tables Turn Max Laponi whirled about and looked directly into the muzzle of Penny's revolver. "Drop that box and put up your hands," she ordered crisply. Laponi gazed at her jeeringly. "The gun isn't loaded," he sneered. "You should know," Penny retorted. "It's your own revolver. I took it from your room." The expression of the crook's face altered for he well remembered that the weapon had been left in readiness for instant use. While keeping Laponi covered, Penny kicked the other revolver across the floor in Caleb Eckert's direction. The old man hastily snatched it up. Laponi knew then that he did not have a chance. With a shrug of his shoulders he admitted defeat. He dropped the metal box on the table. Rosanna darted forward and snatched it up. "I might have known you'd be the one to ruin things," Laponi said bitterly to Penny. "I was afraid of you from the first." "Thank you for the compliment," Penny smiled. "Kindly keep your hands up, Mr. Laponi--if that's your true name." "He's nothing but an impostor," Caleb Eckert broke in angrily. "I knew from the moment I set eyes on him that he was no relative of Jacob Winters." "I can imagine that," Penny returned quietly. "But when explanations are in order, I think you'll need to clear up a few points yourself." The old man looked confused. However, before he could answer, footsteps were heard on the stairs. Mrs. Leeds, wrapped in her bath-robe, came hurrying into the room. She had been disturbed by the sound of voices. "Penny Nichols!" she cried furiously. "What are you doing in my house?" Then she noticed the revolver and recoiled a step. "What is the meaning of this?" she demanded. "Mr. Laponi, has this girl lost her senses?" "Apparently, she has," the man sneered. "She claims I came here to steal that box while I was only trying to keep Caleb from making off with it." "Release Mr. Laponi at once," Mrs. Leeds ordered haughtily. She glared at Caleb. "I always did distrust that man." "Our dislike was mutual," Caleb retorted. "You are a grasping, selfish woman and your daughter is a chip of the old block!" "How dare you!" Mrs. Leeds choked in fury. "Get out of this house, you meddlesome old man, or I'll have you arrested!" Penny was actually enjoying the scene but now she decided to put an end to it. "This little farce has gone far enough," she announced, turning to Caleb. "Tell them who you are, Mr. Eckert." The old man nodded. Eyeing Mrs. Leeds with keen satisfaction, he exploded his bomb shell. "I am Jacob Winters!" Mrs. Leeds gasped in astonishment and even Max Laponi looked dazed. Of the entire group only Rosanna appeared pleased. Yet she too recalled that at times she had spoken with embarrassing frankness to the old man. "I don't believe it!" Mrs. Leeds snapped when she had recovered from the first shock. "It's another one of your trumped up stories." "He has no proof," Max Laponi added. "If he hasn't, I have," Penny interposed. She took the small package from her dress pocket, giving it to Rosanna to unwrap for her. "Why, it's a photograph!" the girl exclaimed. "It's of you, Mr. Eckert, taken many years ago." "Look on the back," Penny directed. Rosanna turned the picture over and read the bold scrawl: "Jacob Winters--on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday." "That's all the proof I need," Rosanna cried, her eyes shining. "You are my uncle, aren't you, Mr. Eckert? This isn't another of your jokes?" "No, it isn't a joke this time, Rosanna, although for a time it looked as if the joke would be on me. And if it hadn't been for Penny Nichols this scoundrel certainly would have made off with my ivory collection." "I didn't mean to pry into your private affairs," Penny apologized. "I shouldn't have taken the photograph only I suspected the truth and needed proof of it." "It's just as well that you did take matters into your own hands. I guess I botched things up." The little package of evidence which Penny had produced contained not only the photograph but the letter and key which she had found in Max Laponi's room. Penny now directed attention to the signature appearing at the bottom of the letter. "Compare it with the writing on the back of the photograph." "They're identical," Rosanna declared. "Then Caleb Eckert wrote those letters himself!" Mrs. Leeds cried furiously. "Guilty," Caleb acknowledged with a grin. "You ought to be arrested!" Mrs. Leeds fairly screamed. "It was a cruel joke to play. You led us all to believe that we had inherited a fortune." "Tell me, why did you write the letters?" Penny inquired. "That's one thing I've not been able to figure out although I think I might make an excellent guess." Caleb sank down in the nearest chair. "I may as well tell the entire story," he said. "Since my wife died some years ago I have been a very lonely man. I longed for an agreeable companion in my old age, someone who would enjoy traveling with me. My friends were few for I had spent most of my time abroad. My only living relatives were unknown to me. I felt ashamed because I had never looked them up." "So you decided to become better acquainted," Penny prompted as Caleb hesitated. "Yes, but I wanted to be liked for myself and not my fortune. I conceived the plan of sending out letters inviting my relatives here. I thought I would subject them to a series of tests and all the while I could be studying their characters." "An insane plan!" Mrs. Leeds interposed. "The idea didn't work the way I expected," Caleb continued ruefully. "I sent out four letters but two of them were returned unopened as the individuals to whom they were addressed were no longer living. However, as you know, three persons came to Raven Ridge claiming to have received one of the communications." "Max Laponi must have found the letter and key which Rosanna lost," Penny declared. "He was the impostor." "You have it all figured out very nicely," the crook sneered. "I suspected right off that he was the one," Caleb went on with his story. "I knew I had no relative answering to his name." "Why didn't you send him away at once?" Rosanna questioned. "I couldn't very well do that without exposing my hand. If I admitted my identity then my little plan would be ruined." "You were caught in an awkward position," Penny smiled. "It kept getting worse all the time. I soon suspected that Laponi was nothing less than a crook. When I discovered that he knew the ivory collection was in the house I decided to remove it from the safe." "That was the day I came upon you when you were trying to open it," Penny recalled. "Yes, but Laponi was prowling about the house and it was my bad luck that he happened in upon me at exactly the wrong time. Of course he guessed instantly that the ivories were locked in the safe. "After that, I decided to get rid of him at any cost. I had a talk with him but even threats did no good." "Why didn't you call in the police?" Penny asked. "Surely they would have provided you with protection." "I thought I would make one more effort to get the ivories from the safe. Then if I failed I intended to admit my identity and send for help. I might have done it sooner only the police commissioner and I once had a little trouble--nothing serious. It was an argument over a tract of land. Still, I knew he'd enjoy making me look ridiculous if ever he learned what I had done." "Your pride very nearly cost you a fortune," Penny commented. She directed her gaze upon Max Laponi as she questioned: "How did you learn that Mr. Winters kept the ivory collection in this house?" "That's for you to find out," the man jeered. "You'll have a hard time proving anything against me." "This letter will be evidence enough," Penny retorted. "It's a plain case of forgery with intent to defraud. And then there's the matter of the will." "The will wasn't forged," Mrs. Leeds cut in although Penny had not made such a claim. "There never was a will," Caleb informed. Mrs. Leeds stared at him. "What of the document I found in the drawer of the desk?" she demanded. "You mean the one you discovered in the _locked_ drawer," Caleb corrected with a chuckle. "The one that was made out in Rosanna's favor. That was just another of my little jokes. If you had examined the will closely you would have noticed that the signature was never witnessed. It was a fake." "That was the document which I saw you burn in the fireplace," Penny accused. Mrs. Leeds flushed angrily. She realized that she had trapped herself. "By the way, how do you explain the will made out in your favor?" Penny probed maliciously. Mrs. Leeds turned her gaze upon Laponi for an instant. Then she said glibly: "I found the will just as I said." "You didn't find one made out in your favor," Caleb contradicted. "Because I never wrote such a document." "Let's take a look at it," Penny suggested. "Where is the will, Mrs. Leeds?" "I don't know what became of it. I misplaced it." "You're afraid to produce it," Penny challenged. Rosanna had been looking through the desk. She now triumphantly brought to light the paper which Mrs. Leeds had claimed to be Jacob Winters' last will and testament. "I never wrote a line of it," Caleb declared as he examined the document. "It's a forgery." "Forgery is a serious offense, Mrs. Leeds," Penny remarked significantly. "I didn't do it!" the woman cried nervously. "I expect we'll have to send you to jail along with Laponi here," Caleb cackled. Mrs. Leeds did not realize that he was only baiting her. She began to tremble with fright. "Don't send me to jail," she pleaded. "I'll tell everything." "Hold your tongue," Laponi cut in sharply. Mrs. Leeds whirled upon him. "You say that because you want me to take all the blame! Well, I won't do it. You forged that will yourself." "At your suggestion, Mrs. Leeds." "It wasn't my suggestion. I'd never have considered such a thing if you hadn't put the idea into my head." "You burned the first will which you believed to be genuine." "Perhaps I did. But I never forged anything in my life." "That was because you were afraid you'd be caught," Laponi sneered. "You wanted someone else to take the rap for you." "You tricked me," Mrs. Leeds accused. "If I had known you intended to rob Mr. Winters of his ivories I should have had nothing to do with you." "I suppose you thought it wasn't robbery when you decided to cheat Rosanna Winters out of her inheritance?" "She had no inheritance." "But you thought she did. No, Mrs. Leeds you paid me well to forge the will in your favor. You're involved every bit as deeply as I." Mrs. Leeds collapsed into a chair and burying her face in her hands began to sob. Penny felt a little sorry for her, realizing that at heart the woman was not a criminal. She had been goaded on by an overpowering ambition to improve her social position by gaining Jacob Winters' fortune. "We may as well call the police," Penny said after a slight hesitation. She had noticed that Laponi was casting cunning glances about the room and guessed that he was hoping for an opportunity to escape. Mrs. Leeds sprang to her feet. She darted over to Jacob Winters, grasping him by the arm. "Oh, please, please don't have me arrested. I didn't mean to do wrong. For the sake of my daughter let me go free. After all, we are relatives." "Unfortunately, we are," he agreed. Turning to Rosanna, he said quietly: "It is for you to decide, my dear." "Let her go free," Rosanna urged instantly. "I think that is best," he nodded. "But as far as Max Laponi is concerned we can't get him to the lock-up soon enough to please me." "If you'll guard him I'll telephone for the police," Penny offered. Leaving the old man with both revolvers she went into an adjoining room to place the call. No sooner had she disappeared than Max Laponi saw his opportunity to escape. For an instant Jacob Winters' attention wavered. That instant was enough for Laponi. Seizing the metal box which Rosanna had replaced upon the table, he darted out through the doorway. CHAPTER XX A Break for Freedom Max Laponi bolted across the center hall, flinging open the outside door. He looked directly into the face of Christopher Nichols. "Hello, what's the big hurry?" the detective demanded, grasping him firmly by the arm. Laponi tried to jerk free but he was no match for the detective. By this time Penny and the others had come streaming into the hall. "Don't let him get away!" Penny cried. As the crook struggled to escape, Mr. Nichols slipped a pair of handcuffs over the man's wrists. Recovering the metal box he handed it to his daughter. "Dad, how did you get here?" she asked eagerly. The detective did not hear for he was regarding Laponi with keen interest. "Well, well, if it isn't my old friend Leo Corley. Or possibly you have a new alias by this time." "He calls himself Max Laponi," Penny informed. "Is he a known criminal?" "Very well known, Penny. He's wanted in three states for forgery, blackmail and robbery. His latest escapade was to steal a diamond ring from the Bresham Department Store." "Then you did get my wire?" Penny cried. "Yes, that's what brought me here. After I received it I got busy right off and with the information you furnished it was easy to look up this man's record. The police have been after him for months." "You didn't waste any time coming here," Penny smiled. "I was afraid you girls might be in more danger than you realized. Max here isn't such a nice companion. By the way what's in the box?" Penny opened it to reveal Mr. Winters' fine collection of ivory. The detective whistled in awe. "That would have been a nice haul, Max," he said. "Too bad we had to spoil your little game." "If it hadn't been for that kid of yours I'd have gotten away with it," the crook growled. "I was dumb not to suspect she was the daughter of a detective." "You may as well cough up the diamond ring," Mr. Nichols advised. "It will save an unpleasant search." With a shrug of his shoulders, Laponi took the gem from an inner pocket and gave it to the detective. "When do we start for the station?" he asked. "We may as well get going." "I've already called the police," Penny told her father. "Then we won't have long to wait." He shoved Laponi toward a chair. "May as well make yourself comfortable until the wagon gets here." "Your kindness overwhelms me," the crook returned with exaggerated politeness. "How did you get wind that Mr. Winters' ivories were kept in the house?" the detective inquired curiously. Although the crook had refused to answer the same questions a few minutes before, he was now willing to talk, knowing that his last chance for escape had been cut off. "I read an item in the paper some months ago," he confessed. "It was a little news story to the effect that Jacob Winters had recently purchased several new pieces for his collection and that he intended to build special exhibit cases in his house as a means of displaying them. I clipped the item and forgot about it. "Then one day I chanced to pick up a letter which someone had dropped. It contained a key to this house. I decided it was too good an opportunity to miss. Posing as Jacob Winters' nephew I came here to look over the situation." "I never had a nephew," Mr. Winters declared. "That was the first mistake I made. The second was in underestimating the ability of Penny Nichols. I thought she was only a school girl." Penny smiled broadly as she inquired: "Didn't you enter into an agreement with Mrs. Leeds to defraud Rosanna?" "I forged the will for her if that's what you mean. I wasn't interested in getting any of the money myself." "That was because you knew it couldn't be done," the detective interposed. "You considered the ivory collection more profitable." "Of course you forged the letter stating that Jacob Winters had been buried at sea," Penny mentioned. With a nod of his head, the man acknowledged the charge. It was Christopher Nichols' turn to ask a question. Penny's letters had mentioned the mysterious mansion ghost and he was deeply interested in the subject. "I suppose you were the ghost, Max?" Jacob Winters answered for him. "I was the ghost. It was part of my joke to frighten the occupants of this house. Not a very good joke, I'll admit." "And you were the one who put bats in my room," Mrs. Leeds accused. "Yes, and a garter snake in your bed which you never found." "Oh!" "Of course, Mr. Eckert, your ghostly pranks included playing the organ," Penny smiled. "I suspected it when I learned Jacob Winters had been a talented musician." "I built the pipe organ into the house before my wife died," Mr. Winters explained. "I haven't used it a great deal in recent years." "You haven't told us about the tunnel," Rosanna reminded him. "How did you happen to construct it?" "I didn't. The lower branch of the passage was an old mine tunnel. The mine closed down forty years or so ago. The upper passage which connects with the house was built by my grandfather. This house, you know, has been in the Winters' family for generations. And I hope, upon my death, that it will pass on to another by the same name." He looked significantly at Rosanna as he spoke. Before the conversation could be continued, the police car drove up to the door. Max Laponi was loaded in and taken away. Mr. Nichols went with the police, promising to return to the Winters' house as soon as he could. After the commotion had subsided, Jacob Winters turned severely to Mrs. Leeds. "As for you, madam, kindly pack your things and leave this house at once. I never want to see you again." "But it isn't even daylight yet. Alicia, poor child, is sleeping----" "Wake her up. I'll give you just an hour to get out of the house." "You're a hard, cruel, old man!" Mrs. Leeds cried bitterly, but she hurried up the stairs to obey his command. After the woman had disappeared, Rosanna picked up her sweater which she had dropped on a chair. She turned toward the door. "Hold on there," Jacob called. "Where are you going?" "I was just leaving. You told Mrs. Leeds----" "Well, you're not Mrs. Leeds, are you?" the old man snapped. "If you're willing, I want you to stay here." "You mean--indefinitely?" "Yes, if you think you could stand to live with me. I'm cross and I like things done my own way, but if you could put up with me----" "If I could put up with you!" Rosanna ran to him and flung her arms about him. "Why, I think you're a darling! I was afraid to tell you so for fear you'd believe I was after your money." "Money! Fiddlesticks!" Jacob sniffed. He wiped a tear from his eye. "I'm going to try to make up to you for all that you've missed." The two had a great deal to say to each other, but presently they remembered Penny. She had been watching the little scene with eager delight. "I'll never be able to thank you," Rosanna declared happily. "You're responsible for everything, Penny." "I wish you'd permit me to reward you in a substantial way," Mr. Winters added. Penny smilingly shook her head. "It was fun coming here to Raven Ridge. But it would ruin everything if I accepted pay for it." "At least you'll stay a few days longer," Mr. Winters urged. "If Father will agree to it." When Mr. Nichols returned from police headquarters another pleasant surprise was in store for Penny. "It looks as if you've won the reward which the Bresham Store offered for the capture of Laponi," he told her. "Five hundred dollars." "Don't turn it down," Rosanna urged. "I won't," Penny laughed. "In fact, I know just how I'll use that money when I get it." "How?" her father inquired. "I'll buy myself a new car." "I thought perhaps you'd use it to go into business in competition with me," he teased. "Some day I'll solve a mystery which will be so big and important that you'll not be able to twit me about it," Penny announced. "I wasn't really teasing, my dear. I think you did a fine bit of work this time and I'm proud of you." "Honestly?" "Honestly," Mr. Nichols repeated, smiling broadly. "And I predict that you're only starting on this career of crime detection which you find so very thrilling." "I wish I could be sure of that," Penny sighed. With all her heart she longed for another adventure as exciting as the one she had experienced. Although she had no way of knowing what the future held, she was destined soon to have her wish gratified. In the third volume of the Penny Nichols' series, entitled, "The Secret of the Black Imp," she encounters a mystery more baffling than any she has previously solved. After Mrs. Leeds and her daughter left the house, the others took Mr. Nichols for a tour of the secret passageway. Jacob Winters explained in detail how the panel operated and entertained them by playing several selections on the pipe organ. "I love music," Rosanna remarked wistfully. "I've never even had an opportunity to learn to play the piano." "You'll have it now," he assured her. Mr. Nichols remained during the day but late in the afternoon he was forced to start for home as his work had been neglected. He was very willing, however, that Penny should remain as long as she wished at the old mansion. The days were all too short for the two girls who enjoyed rambling through the woods, rowing and swimming in the lake, and exploring every nook and cranny of the interesting old house. But at length the time came when Penny too was obliged to depart. "Come back and see us often, won't you?" Rosanna urged as they parted. "Whenever I can," Penny promised. "I've had a glorious time." She drove away, but at the bend in the road halted the car to glance back. The house, cloaked in the shadows of evening, looked nearly as mysterious as upon the occasion of her first visit. However, to her it would never again have a fearful aspect. Jacob Winters and his niece stood framed in the doorway. They waved. Penny returned the salute. Then regretfully she turned her back upon Raven Ridge and drove slowly down the mountain road which led home. M. W. THE END 
44980	----	Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed. Words printed in italics are noted with underscores: _italics_. Rochester Reprints XIII _One hundred copies on French hand-made paper for subscribers_ [Illustration: COL : BLOOD.] COLONEL THOMAS BLOOD CROWN-STEALER 1618-1680 BY WILBUR CORTEZ ABBOTT PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, SHEFFIELD SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL YALE UNIVERSITY ROCHESTER, NEW YORK 1910 COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY EDWARD WHEELOCK GENESEE PRESS ROCHESTER, N.Y. COLONEL THOMAS BLOOD The story which follows is, without doubt, one of the most curious and extraordinary in English history. It is, in fact, so remarkable that it seems necessary to begin by assuring the cautious reader that it is true. Much as it may resemble at times that species of literature known in England as the shilling shocker and in America as the dime novel, its material is drawn, not from the perfervid imagination of the author, but from sources whose very nature would seem to repudiate romance. The dullest and most sedate of official publications, Parliamentary reports, memoranda of ministers, warrants to and from officers and gaolers, newsletters full of gossip which for two hundred years and more has ceased to be news, these would seem to offer little promise of human interest. Yet even these cannot well disguise the fascination of a life like that of Thomas Blood. The tale of adventure has always divided honours with the love story. And such a career as his, full of mystery, of personal daring, and the successful defiance of law by one on whom its provisions seem to have borne too hardly, cannot be obscured even by the digest of official documents. Moreover it has historical significance. This most famous and successful of English lawbreakers was no common criminal. In a sense he was the representative of an important class during a critical period of history. Not merely to the Old Englander, but to those interested in the rise of the New England beyond seas, the fate of the irreconcilable Puritans, no less than that of their more submissive brethren, must seem of importance. This is the more true in that no small number of the men whose names appear in this narrative played parts on both sides of the Atlantic. The younger Vane, who had been the governor of Massachusetts, in 1636, and whose execution marked the early years of Restoration vengeance, is the most striking of these figures. Next to him come the fugitive regicides, Goffe, Whalley and Dixwell, who lived out their days in New Haven, Hartford and Hadley. It is not so well known, however, that Venner, whose insurrection in the early days of the Restoration was one of the most dramatic and important events of that time, was at one time a resident of Salem. Still less is it likely to be known that Paul Hobson, one of the contrivers and the involuntary betrayer of the great plot of 1663, was later allowed to remove to Carolina. The relationship of Lawrence Washington, whose activities in the early years of Charles II's reign gave the government such anxiety, to the Washingtons who settled in Virginia has been vigorously denied. But certainly no small element among these irreconcilables found sympathy, support or refuge among their brethren in the New World. And it was perhaps no more than chance that the subject of this sketch did not become governor of an English colony in America. This essay began as a serious historical study, whose larger results are chronicled in another place. But it grew insensibly into the only form of composition which seemed to do it any sort of justice, a species of story. It is, in short, a romance, which differs from its kind chiefly in that it has a larger proportion of truth. On the other hand it lacks in equal measure what is generally superabundant in such works, a plot. It has a plot, indeed many plots, but it is not always easy to determine just what the plot is or what relation the hero or villain as you like, bears to it. It has, above all, a mystery which may atone for its shortcomings in other directions. And it has, finally, for its central figure a character whose strange, surprising adventures were the marvel of his day and are not greatly dimmed by the dust of two centuries. On these grounds it seems not unprofitable nor uninteresting to contemplate again and in a new light the life and works of the man who has been generally conceded the bad eminence of being the most daring and successful of English rascals, Thomas Blood, courtesy-colonel of conspiracy and crown-stealer. The scene of his activity was that brilliant and obscure period we know as the Restoration, those years during which his most gracious Majesty, King Charles the Second, of far from blessed memory, presided over the destinies of the English race. And you are, if you wish, to transport yourself at once into the very midst of the reign of him who for his wit and wickedness has been forever miscalled the Merry Monarch. The great event of the winter of 1670-1 in English politics and society was a circumstance unprecedented in European affairs, the visit of the head of the House of Orange to the English Court. The young Prince William, soon to become the ruler of Holland, and later King of England, made this, his first visit to the nation which one day he was to rule, ostensibly to pay his respects to his uncle Charles who was then King, and his uncle James, who was Duke of York. Beside this his journey was officially declared to have no other purpose than pleasure and the transaction of some private business. What affairs of state were then secretly discussed by this precocious statesman of nineteen and His British Majesty's ministers of the Cabal, we have no need to inquire here, nor would our inquiries produce much result were they made. The web of political intrigue then first set on the roaring loom of time which was to plunge all England into agitation and revolution and unrest, and all western Europe into war, has, for the moment, little to do with this story. There was enough in the external aspects of his visit to fill public attention then and to serve our purpose now. The five months of his stay were one long round of gayety. Balls, receptions, and dinners, horse-races, cocking mains, gaming and drinking bouts followed each other in royal profusion. And a marriage already projected between the Prince and his cousin, the Princess Mary, gave a touch of romance to the affair, only qualified by the fact that she still played at dolls in the nursery. The court was not alone in its efforts to entertain the young prince. The ministers, the leaders of the opposition, and many private individuals beside, lent their energies to this laudable end. The work was taken up by certain public or semi-public bodies. And, in particular, the corporation of the great city of London felt that among these festivities it must not be outdone in paying some attention to the most distinguished citizen of the neighbouring republic, who, as it happened, was also the most promising Protestant candidate for the English throne. Accordingly on the afternoon of Tuesday, December 6, 1670, as the custom then was, they tendered him a banquet at Guildhall where were assembled the wealth and beauty of the city to do him honour. The great function, apart from a subtle political significance which might have been noted by a careful and well-informed observer, was not unlike others of that long series of splendid hospitalities by which the greatest city in the world has been accustomed for centuries to welcome its distinguished guests. There was the same splendour of civic display, the same wealth of courses, the same excellent old wine, doubtless the same excellent old speeches. And in spite of the greatness of the event and the position and importance of the guest of honour, the glories of this noble feast, like those of so many of its fellows, might well have passed into that oblivion which enfolds dead dinner parties had it not been that before the evening was over it had become the occasion of one of the most daring and sensational adventures in the annals of crime, the famous attempt on the Duke of Ormond. This extraordinary exploit, remarkable in itself for its audacity and the mystery which surrounded it, was made doubly so by the eminence and character of its victim. James Butler, famous then and since as "the great Duke of Ormond," bearer of a score of titles, member of the Council, sometime Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and still Lord High Steward of England, was by birth and ability one of the greatest, wealthiest and most powerful men in the three Kingdoms. He was, moreover, scarcely less distinguished for his noble character than for his high rank. Neither these nor the circumstances of his career in public life gave any apparent ground for belief that he was in danger of personal violence. During the Civil Wars he had followed the fortunes of King Charles the father with courage and fidelity, though with no great success. When the royal cause was lost he followed Charles the son into exile. When monarchy was restored he regained his ancient estates and dignities, he was made the virtual ruler of Ireland and with his two friends, the Chancellor, Clarendon, and the Treasurer, Southampton, completed a triumvirate which dominated English affairs during the first half dozen years of the Restoration. When our story opens, Southampton was dead, Clarendon in exile. But Ormond, last of the staunch Protestants and stately Cavaliers of the old regime, remained conspicuous in a corrupt and worthless court for his ability and his virtues. By reason of these, as well as his office, he had been chosen on this occasion to accompany the Prince of Orange to the city feast. And by reason of his years he had, before the concluding revels of the younger men, left the banquet to return home and so found his way into a most surprising adventure and this story. At the time of which we write he lived in a mansion opposite St. James's palace, built by his friend the Chancellor and still known as Clarendon House. His establishment, like that of most men of rank in those days, was on a scale almost feudal. It included some scores of servants, companions and dependents of the family. A porter sat at the gate, day and night, and when the Duke went abroad in his chariot he was attended by six footmen, a coachman and a runner. It would have seemed that in the three kingdoms there was scarce a man who, by virtue of his position, character and surroundings, was less likely to be exposed to violence than he. What enemies he might have made in his administration of Ireland, if such there were, could at best be men of little importance, living besides in a land then as distant from London as the United States is to-day. They would, presumably, not be well informed of his movements, least of all of his social engagements, and they would be helpless in the midst of London, against the power at his command. What rivals he had in England, it might be premised from their station, would be far above the practice of personal assault as a means of political triumph. Certainly nothing could have been farther from his thoughts or those of his family than that any danger beyond a possible attack of indigestion could threaten him in connection with a Guildhall dinner. As the early winter evening came on, therefore, the porter dozed at the gate, the family and servants retired early, according to the better customs of a ruder age, and the quiet of a house at peace with itself and the world settled down on the little community within its walls. It was of short duration. When the lumbering seventeenth century chariot was heard making its way up the street on its return about eight o'clock, the porter roused from his nap and came out to unbar the gates for the home-coming Duke. But to his dismay there was no Duke, and neither footmen nor runner, only an empty coach and a frightened coachman, crying that they had been set upon by seven or eight men in St. James Street almost in sight of the house, that the footman, lagging behind on the hill, had been overpowered or put to flight, that the Duke had been dragged out of the chariot and carried off down Piccadilly way, and that he was, perhaps, already killed. The porter was a man of courage and decision. He gave the alarm and, with a certain James Clark, one of the Duke's household, who happened to be passing through the courtyard when the coach came in, hastened off in the direction indicated. They found no one at the place where the attack had been made, but hurrying on past Devonshire House they came upon two men struggling in the mud of the Knightsbridge road. As they approached, one of the combatants, a man of huge stature, struggled to his feet. He was immediately joined by another who appeared from the shadows, and both fired their pistols at the prostrate figure. Then, without waiting to see the result, the ruffians mounted their horses which had meanwhile been held by a third man, and rode off. The rescuers, joined by many persons whom their alarm had brought together, hurried to the man in the road. He was too far spent for words and in the darkness was unrecognizable from dirt and wounds. It was only by feeling the great star of the order of the Garter on his breast that they identified him as the Duke. He was carried home and though much shaken by his adventure was found otherwise uninjured and after some days he fully recovered. His account of the night's happenings added a curious detail to the history of the attack and explained why he had been found so far from where the coach was stopped. The plan of his assailants, it appeared, was not merely to capture or kill him, nor, as might have been supposed, to hold him for ransom. They proposed, instead, to carry him to the place of public execution, Tyburn, and hang him from the gallows there like a common criminal. In pursuance of this design they had mounted him behind the large man, to whom he was securely bound, while the leader rode on to adjust the rope that there might be no delay at the gallows. When, however, the others failed to appear, this man rode back and found that the Duke, despite his age, had managed to throw himself and his companion from their horse and so gain time till help came.[1] [1] Carte, Life of the Duke of Ormond. Such was the extraordinary attempt on the Duke of Ormond, than which no event of the time showed more daring and ingenuity, nor created as great a sensation. The assailants were not recognized by the Duke nor his men, no assignable motive for their actions could be given, nor any further trace of them discovered. And this was not from lack of effort. The court, the city, and the administration were deeply stirred by the outrage, and the whole machinery of state was set in motion to discover and apprehend the criminals. Unprecedented rewards were offered, the ports were watched, the local authorities warned to be on the lookout for the desperadoes, and spies were sent in every direction to gain information. The House of Lords appointed a committee of no less than sixty-nine peers to examine into "the late barbarous assaulting, wounding and robbing the Lord High Steward of His Majesty's Household." For more than a month this august body, aided by the secret service officers, pursued its investigations. The result was small. The most important testimony was that of a "drawer" at the Bull Tavern, Charing Cross. He deposed that on the day of the assault, between six and seven in the evening, five men on horseback, with cloaks, who said they were graziers, rode up to the inn. They dismounted, ordered wine, some six pints in all, and sat there, drinking, talking and finally, having ordered pipes and tobacco, smoking for nearly an hour. About seven o'clock a man came by on foot crying, "Make way for the Duke of Ormond," and shortly after the Duke's coach passed by. Fifteen minutes later the five men paid their reckoning and rode off, still smoking, toward the Hay Market or Pall Mall, leaving behind some wine, which the boy duly drank. Beside this, a certain Michael Beresford, clerk or parson of Hopton, Suffolk, testified that on the same evening, somewhat earlier it would appear than the incident at the Bull, he had met in the "Piattza," Covent Garden, a man formerly known to him as a footman in the service of the regicide, Sir Michael Livesey. This man, Allen by name, appeared much disturbed, and after some conversation in which he hinted at "great designs" on foot, was called away by a page, who told him the horses were ready. The principal piece of evidence, however, was a sword, belt and pistol, marked "T. H." found at the scene of the struggle and identified as the property of one Hunt, who had been arrested in the preceding August under suspicion of highway robbery, but released for lack of evidence against him. Three horses were also found, one of which corresponded to the description of the animal ridden by the leader of the five men at the Bull. In addition to this there was the usual mass of more or less irrelevant informations, rumours, arrests, witnesses and worthless testimony which such a case always produces. After much deliberation the committee finally drew up a bill against three men, Thomas Hunt, Richard Halliwell, and one Thomas Allen, also called Allett, Aleck and Ayloffe. These were summoned to render themselves "by a short day" or stand convicted of the assault. The bill was duly passed by both houses and fully vindicated the dignity of the Lords. But it had no further result. The men did not render themselves by any day, short or long, the government agents failed to find them and there the matter rested. The result and indeed the whole procedure was thoroughly unsatisfactory to many in authority. At the outset of the investigation Justice Morton of London, the far-famed terror of highwaymen, was asked by Ormond to look into the matter and was furnished with the names of certain suspects. He reported on Hunt and his career, and went on to say that Moore and Blood, concerning whom his Grace had enquired, were in or about London. A month later, Lord Arlington, the Secretary of State, who had charge of the secret service, reported to the Lords' committee that of the men suspected, "Jones, who wrote _Mene Tekel_,[2] Blood, called Allen, Allec, etc., young Blood, his son, called Hunt, under which name he was indicted last year, Halliwell, Moore and Simons, were desperate characters sheltering themselves under the name of Fifth Monarchy men." "Would not this exposing of their names by act of Parliament," he asked, "make them hide themselves in the country, whereas the Nonconformists with whom they met, and who abhorred their crime would otherwise be glad to bring them to justice?" Apparently not, in the opinion of the Lords, and the result was what we have seen. Neither Arlington's advice nor the men were taken. And though in the minds of Ormond, Morton and Arlington, apparently little doubt existed as to the authors of the outrage, no way was found to put their opinions into effect. It needed another and even more daring exploit to demonstrate the truth of their conjecture and bring the criminal into custody. And it was not long until just such a circumstance confirmed their surmise that the man guilty of the assault was the most famous outlaw of his day, long known and much wanted, many times proclaimed, and on whose head a price had often been set. He was, in short, Thomas Blood, courtesy-colonel of conspiracy, plotter, desperado, and now, at last, highwayman, a man not much known to the world at large, but a source of long standing anxiety to the government. [2] A famous fanatic pamphlet against the government. Who was he and what was the motive of this apparently foolhardy and purposeless piece of bravado? The answer to that question lies deep in the history of the time, for Blood was no common rascal. Unlike the ordinary criminal he was not merely an individual lawbreaker. He was at once a leader and a type of an element in the state, and the part that he and his fellows played in affairs was not merely important in itself and in its generation, but even at this distance it has an interest little dimmed by two centuries of neglect. The story of his life, in so far as it can be pieced out from the materials at our command, is as follows: In the reign of James I, that is to say, in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, there lived at an obscure place called Sarney, County Meath, Ireland, a man named Blood. He was by trade a blacksmith and ironworker and seems to have been possessed of some little property, including an iron works. He was not a native Irishman but one of those north English or Scotch Presbyterians, colonized in that unhappy island according to the policy which had been pursued by the English government. Of him we know little more save this. About 1618 there was born to him a son, christened Thomas, who grew to young manhood unmarked by any noteworthy achievements or qualities of which any record remains. But if the circumstances of his own life were of no great importance, the times in which he lived were stirring enough, and remote as he was from the center of English political life, he could hardly have failed to know something of the great issues then agitating public affairs, and be moved by events far outside his own little circle. When he was ten years old, the long struggle between the English king and Parliament blazed up in the Petition of Right, by which the Commons strove to check the power of the Crown. Thereafter for eleven years no Parliament sat in England. There, supported by royal prerogative, the Archbishop Laud sought to force conformity to the Anglican ritual on multitudes of unwilling men and women, while the Attorney-General, Noy, and the Treasurer, Weston, revived long-lapsed statutes and privileges and stretched the technicalities of the law to extort unparliamentary revenue. Then it was that the Great Emigration poured thousands of settlers into the New World and established finally and beyond question the success of the struggling Puritan colonies oversea. Such matters touched the boy in the Irish village little. But when the greatest of the Royalists, Thomas Wentworth, Earl Strafford to be, was transferred from the presidency of the English Council of the North to rule Ireland, Blood, like all others in that troubled province, was brought face to face with the issues of the time. He, like others, saw in that administration the theory and practice of the enlightened despotism which English Parliamentarians said it was the aim of this man and his master to force upon England when English liberties should have been crushed with the Irish army then forming. Whether young Blood enlisted in that army we do not know, but it is not improbable. In any event, when the Civil War finally broke out, the Blood family seem to have been in the thick of it. Years afterward Prince Rupert said that he remembered the young man as a bold and dashing soldier in his command. And, later still, Blood himself wrote King Charles II, in behalf of his uncle Neptune, for thirty years dean of Kilfernora, noting among his virtues that he had been with Charles I at Oxford. Thus it would appear that the Bloods first sided with the royal cause. Beside this we know that, in the year before the execution of the King, Blood married a Miss Holcroft of Holcroft in Lancashire. And we know further that then or thereafter, like many another stout soldier, like the stoutest of them all, General Monk[3] himself, the young Royalist changed sides, for the next time he appears in history it is with the rank of lieutenant in the Cromwellian army. [3] This spelling of the General's name has been disputed of late, such authorities as Professor Firth and Mr. Willcock preferring Monck. But the form here used seems as good, it has much tradition and authority on its side, and the point is, after all, of no special importance. Before that, however, many great events had taken place, in war and politics. The Royalist resistance in England had been beaten down, and the king was dead, the title and office of king had been abolished, the House of Lords had been done away with, and England was a commonwealth with a Huntingdonshire gentleman, Oliver Cromwell, at its head. The war had shifted to Scotland and Ireland. Charles II had been proclaimed in Edinburgh, and Catholic and Royalist had risen in Ireland. Thither Cromwell had hastened with his invincible Ironsides, to crush the Irish before they could gather head and, with the aid of the Scotch, overthrow his hard-won power. His stroke was swift and merciless. The chief strongholds of his enemies, Drogheda and Wexford, were stormed and their inhabitants put to the sword after the manner of the old Testament. The Irish army was overpowered and Cromwell hurried back to crush the Scots at Dunbar and Worcester, leaving his son-in-law, the lawyer-general Ireton, to stamp out the embers of rebellion. Thereafter, he sent the ablest of his sons, Henry, to hold the island for the Commonwealth. With him Blood came into touch with the house of Cromwell. The young Irishman had probably been among the troops which were brought over to conquer the "rebels" serving under the Lord General and Ireton after him. For when the new government, following the example of its predecessors, confiscated the land of its enemies and the fair domains of Royalist and Catholic passed into the hands of the hard-hitting and loud-praying colonels and captains and even common soldiers of the Commonwealth, Blood not only acquired estates, but was further distinguished by being made Justice of the Peace under Henry Cromwell. Thus with his fellows, and in greater proportion than most of them, he prospered and after an adventurous career seemed about to achieve the ambition of most Englishmen then and since, and become a real country gentleman. For a space of seven years, under Commonwealth and Protectorate, he lived, like many others of his kind, satisfied and secure in the enjoyment of the fruits of his share in saving England from the tyrant, little moved by the great events oversea. And, had it not been for circumstances as far outside his little sphere as those which had raised him to this position, he might well have finished an obscure and peaceful existence, with little further interest for the historian or moralist. But at the end of those seven fat years Fate, who had been so kind to Blood and his fellows, changed sides, and he, like many others, missing the signs of the times, or moved by conviction, could not, or would not, at all events did not change with her. On September 3, 1658, Oliver Cromwell died and the fabric of government which for some years had rested on little more than his will and his sword, began at once to crumble. For a few months his son Richard endured the empty honour of the Protector's title. Then he resigned and the administration was left in a weltering chaos of Rump Parliament politicians and Cromwellian army generals. To end this anarchy came the governor of Scotland, General Monk, with his army, to London in the first months of 1660. Under his shrewd, stern management the old Parliament was forced to dissolve itself and a new House of Commons was chosen. The first act of this so-called Convention was to recall the House of Stuart to the throne, and on May 29, 1660, Charles II rode into London and his inheritance, welcomed by the same shouting thousands who had so recently assembled to pay the last honours to the Protectorate. As rapidly as might be thereafter the new regime was established. The old officers and officials were replaced by Royalists, the forces by land and sea were disbanded, save for five thousand trusty troops to guard the new monarchy, the leaders of the fallen party were arrested and executed, or driven into exile, or put under security. Some, like Monk and Montague and Browne, were now the strongest pillars in the new political edifice. Many, like Harrison and his fellow-regicides, were marked for speedy execution, while others, like Vane, were kept for future sacrifice. Many more, like Marten and Waller and Cobbet, dragged out a wretched existence as political prisoners, exchanging one prison for another till death released them. Some, like Hutchinson, were put under bonds and granted a half liberty that in too many cases led only to later imprisonment. Only a few, like Lambert, lived long in the more pleasant confinement of the Channel Islands and the Scillies. Yet many escaped. Ludlow and Lisle and their companions found protection if not safety in Switzerland. Many more sought refuge in Holland. Some like Algernon Sidney flitted over Europe like uneasy spirits. No small number joined the Emperor to fight the Turk, or took service in Holland or Sweden or the petty states of Germany. And still others, like Goffe and Whalley and Dixwell, sought and found security in the New World. The leaders of the fallen party out of the way, for the ensuing six years the government left no stone unturned to undo the work of revolution and to restore in so far as possible the old order. It was no easy task. For twenty years England had been engaged in a civil strife where political animosities were embittered by religious dissensions, emphasized by lines of social cleavage. Not merely had the ancient fabric of church and state been shattered, but society itself had been convulsed by the intrusion of ideas and classes hitherto little regarded as vital elements of public affairs. One by one institutions long held sacred fell before these new vandals who seemed about to set up a new heaven and a new earth. King, Lords, Church, local government, finally the House of Commons itself disappeared. An open way for the talents was created. A carter became a colonel and member of Parliament, a butcher became a major-general. The son of a country merchant developed into the greatest English naval commander of his time. Meeting house and conventicle took their place beside parish church and cathedral. Bishops, vestments, liturgy, at last the whole Establishment disappeared, and there came to be thousands of men who, like Pepys, saw a church service with its "singing men" for the first time after the Restoration. One section of the people in short had triumphed over another. Many of them, like Blood, actually entered into their enemies' inheritance and seemed likely to found a new dominant caste. Nor was the effect confined to England. That land where Puritanism had taken refuge across the sea, New England, felt the impulse no less strongly. The current of emigration which some years before had flowed so strongly toward the new world was checked and even turned back. With the clash of arms not a few New World Puritans hastened to the mother country to strike a blow for their cause. Thus the young George Downing, but just graduated from Harvard, entered the Parliamentary army as chaplain, turning thence to diplomacy, and with the overthrow of the Puritans, to Royalism. But many were more scrupulous or less fortunate than he. When 1660 came and this was all reversed, when the old party was in the ascendant, the king on the throne, what would become of them? They had been free to worship in their own way and had been largely exempt even from many forms of taxation. But all this was now suddenly reversed. The Royalists were again in the ascendant, the king was on his throne, Puritanism was discredited, its leaders gone, its organization destroyed. What were men like Blood to do? Matters moved rapidly in those early months of 1660 as they had need to do if the restoration of the old order was to be accomplished without bloodshed. From the first of January when Monk with his Scotch army entered England on its way to London to the end of May when Charles II rode into Whitehall and his inheritance, great events pressed close on each other's heels. The old Long Parliament was restored to decree its own dissolution and the summoning of its successor. A general election when Royalism was stimulated by the Declaration from Breda promising amnesty and toleration produced the Convention Parliament which under stress of Royal promise and fear of the sectaries recalled the King. A Royal Council was hurriedly brought together, the House of Lords filled up, the Commonwealth officials and officers replaced as rapidly as might be by Royalists and before the end of June administration had been secured for the new monarchy. Thus under the protection of Monk and his trusty regiments, King, Lords, Commons resumed their ancient place, administration came into new hands, the bishops were taking their place in the Lords, the clergy in their parishes as they could and all England seemed well on the way to accept a settlement. Yet great issues remained. For the moment the restoration had affected only the leaders of the fallen party and the army. The divisions in society and politics remained, and the three classes which had fought the civil war persisted. But their positions were greatly changed. The Anglicans were in power. The Presbyterians for the time shared that power with their rivals, and it was only by their aid the king had been recalled. But the Third Party, or sectaries--Independents, Baptists, Unitarians, Quakers, and the rest, were now hopelessly at sea. Cromwell, under whom they had risen to numbers and influence, was dead, their army was being disbanded, they had little voice in Parliament, and the shadow of persecution was already upon them. Yet though cast down they were not destroyed. They had not time to fully establish themselves as a factor in religion and politics. Their development was checked half way and they had been given no opportunity to work out their salvation unhindered. But they were there and they were to be reckoned with. For several months, though the Anglicans strove to prevent it, the Presbyterians at least, seemed likely to receive the recognition they had earned by their services to the restoration. In the Parliament they were the most powerful group. In the new Council twelve men of the thirty had borne arms against the late king. Among the royal chaplains ten Presbyterian divines found place. And beside issuing the Declaration from Breda promising liberty of conscience, the king presently called a conference of Anglicans and Presbyterians at the Savoy palace to consider some plan of toleration or comprehension. So far all promised well for an amicable adjustment of relations between the two great parties in church and state. But their very agreement boded ill for the third party. In the days of their prosperity they had suppressed Anglican and Presbyterian alike. Now that these had joined hands the sectaries had little to hope. They had early stirred to meet the danger. While the Convention debated the terms on which the king should return, their deliberations were cut short not less by the declaration of the king, than by the fear of a rising of the republicans and sects. But, as the event proved, it was not in the alliance of the two greater parties their danger lay, for that alliance was of a few days and full of trouble. The Convention was dissolved without the embodiment into legislation of those guarantees which might have made the Presbyterians secure. And before the new House was chosen, or the Savoy Conference held, their cause was hopelessly compromised by the third party with whom, against their will, the Anglicans successfully endeavored to identify them. For in January, 1661, fanaticism broke out in London. A cooper named Venner, a soldier of the old army, sometime conspirator against Cromwell, sometime resident of Salem, in New England, with some three score followers, all of that peculiar millennial sect known as Fifth Monarchy men, rose against the government, and for three days kept the city, the court and the administration in a state of feverish alarm. But the odds against them were too great. They found neither aid nor comfort from outside, and the children of this world triumphed over those who would have restored the rule of the saints under King Jesus. That rising helped destroy whatever chance the Presbyterians had of holding their strength in the new Parliament, and the House of Commons showed a clear majority of Royalist Anglicans. Hardly had this body begun its deliberations when the Savoy Conference met, and, after some wrangling, dissolved without reaching any agreement. Thence ensued a period of reaction whose results are writ large in religious history to this day, for this was the time when established church and denominations definitely parted company. The dominant party lost no time in destroying the strength of their rivals. The Corporation Act drove the dissenters from those bodies which governed the cities and towns and chose a majority of the Commons. The Act of Uniformity excluded all dissenting ministers from the Church of England. And the restoration of the bishops to the House of Lords, and of its confiscated property to the Church completed the discomfiture of the Presbyterians. These, indeed, suffered most for they had most to lose, but the new policy bore no less hardly on the sectaries. And these, joined by the more extreme Presbyterians, were less inclined to submit to the revived authority in church and state. Many moderate men, indeed, found it in their consciences to conform enough to evade the law. But many more were not able nor inclined to take this course. Deprived of their army, of their political position, of their religious liberty, even at length of their right to petition, in many cases of what they considered their rightful property, with no outlet for their opinions in Parliament, the case seemed hopeless enough. Some recanted, the most began a long and honorable course of silent endurance of their persecution. And some, of bolder spirit, turned to darker ways. These events in England had their counterpart in Scotland and Ireland. In the former a Royalist Parliament, intoxicated with power, a source, however, from which its name of the Drunken Parliament was not derived, repealed at one stroke all the acts of the preceding twenty-eight years, and abolished that document so dear to Presbyterian hearts, the Solemn League and Covenant. In the latter a Court of Claims was established to unravel the intricacies of the interminable land question and restore the estates, as far as possible, to their former owners. In all three kingdoms the dispossessed party was thrown into a ferment of discontent over this sudden reversal of their fortunes. The soldiers of the old army were especially enraged. They felt that they had lost by political trickery what had been won in fair fight. By a sudden turn of fortune's wheel, a bit of legal chicanery, their old enemy, the Parliament, had caught them off their guard and overthrown them. Their place had been taken by the ungodly, the Arminian and the idol-worshipper. And these brethren of the Covenant and the sword were not men to rest quietly under such wrongs. Many, indeed, turned aside from politics and war, taking no further part in public affairs. But not a few declared they would not be led into an Egyptian bondage under a new Pharaoh. They would not be turned adrift by the empty vote of a packed Parliament, whence they had been excluded. Those whom they had fairly fought and fairly conquered, those who had followed Mammon, and bowed the knee to Baal, the worshippers of Rimmon, the doers of abominations, the servants of the Scarlet Woman who sits on the Seven Hills, were these to enter upon that fair inheritance, so lately in the hands of the Saints, without a blow? Surely the Lord was on the side of His servants, as he had shown them by so many signal instances of His favour, at Naseby, at Marston Moor, at Dunbar and Worcester, and a hundred fights beside, in the great days gone by. Was He to look on unmoved? Had He abandoned them to their enemies? Was this not rather a device of His to try their constancy and courage? Was it not their part as brave and righteous men to strike another blow for the faith that was in them and the heritage He had put in their hands? A bold stroke had once prevailed against their oppressors. Might not another restore the Covenant and give back to the afflicted saints their inheritance and the spoil of the Philistines? A new king was on the throne who knew not Joseph. But his rule was recent, his hold precarious. His father had been overthrown though all the wealth and power of the mighty had been on his side. Now the land was honeycombed with sedition, there were thousands of bold spirits accustomed to discipline and the use of arms, and thousands more of the faithful with money and sympathy to aid in the great work of destroying the rule of grasping bishops and a Catholic king. Thus while the regicides fled from the wrath of the new government, or suffered the penalty of their deeds in London, while Parliament was driving Nonconformity from church and state and the greater part of the dispossessed party girded itself to endure the impending persecution, while new-fledged royalty flaunted its licentiousness in Whitehall, earnest and vindictive men plotted against the new order in England, in Ireland and Scotland and Wales, in London itself. Emissaries made their way by night along unfrequented roads, or stole from village to village in tiny fishing boats, or crept through narrow lanes of the old City and its environs, to cheer the secret and unlawful conventicles of Baptist and Quaker, Presbyterian and Congregationalist, Unitarian and Fifth Monarchist, with hopes and plans for the resurrection of the Kingdom of the Righteous. The old Republicans were approached, the holders of land taken in the recent troubles, the members of the old Rump Parliament, the exiles abroad, the officers and soldiers of the old army at home. Proclamations were printed promising all things to all men, but chiefly toleration and lighter taxes. Tracts were smuggled from London or Holland full of the language of prophecy. The new monarchy had been measured and found wanting, the old Covenant was about to rise, Phoenix-like, from its ashes, the heavens were full of signs and portents, and prodigies everywhere indicated the fall of king and bishop. A new Armageddon was at hand, the rule of King Jesus was to be restored, "even by Blood." Everywhere arms were gathered and men enlisted against that great day. A council of conspirators directed the activities of its agents from London and communicated with other groups throughout the three kingdoms and with the refugees on the Continent. In such wise were woven the threads of conspiracy against restored royalty and the pride of the Anglicans, widely but loosely. And everywhere, meanwhile, the government followed close on the trail of the conspirators and kept in close touch with the elements of discontent. Everywhere spies and informers were enlisted, even from the ranks of conspiracy itself, to discover and also, it was whispered, to foment conspiracy where none existed, that dangerous men might be drawn in and seized. From every county justices and deputy lieutenants poured a steady stream of prisoners and information into the hands of the administration. Under the careful direction of the Lord General the militia was reorganized, former strongholds weakened or destroyed, troops moved here and there, suspicious persons seized and incipient disturbance vigorously repressed. So for three years this underground warfare went on. Late in 1661 the government found or professed to find, a clue to conspiracy and exploited its discovery in Parliament to secure the act against corporations. Again in 1662 another, and perhaps more real danger was brought to light, and again this was used to pass the Act of Uniformity, a measure against dissenting ministers which drove some eighteen hundred from the Church and rendered comprehension finally impossible. Some of the alleged conspirators were hanged, some were used to get more information, but for the most part the leaders remained unknown, or escaped. Thus far the disaffected had played into the hands of their bitterest enemies, and had accomplished little more than furnish a much desired excuse for legislation to destroy Nonconformity root and branch. If insurrection had been planned at all it had been thwarted, and turned against its authors and their party. So useful had it been to the Anglicans, indeed, that it was more than hinted that the so-called conspiracies were in fact engineered by them for use in Parliament. This was not quite true. Conspiracy there had been, and was, as events were to prove. The increasing persecution of Dissent, the increasing weight of taxation, the increasing luxury of the court and the exactions of the church, provided an increasing basis of discontent, deep and far-reaching. And the administration learned presently that the plot they had so diligently pursued and exploited had a very real existence. By 1663 it was a wide spread and apparently well-organized conspiracy. It included the discontented Nonconformists of the west and north of England, the Scotch Covenanters, the dispossessed Cromwellians in Ireland, the London conventiclers and the Continental refugees. A central Committee of Six, chiefly old army officers, sat in London, whence they directed the movement from their hiding places in those little known regions of the metropolis where even the King's writ ran with difficulty or not at all. The scheme contemplated the surprise and seizure of Whitehall and the Tower, the capture of the King and his brother, of the Chancellor, and the Lord General. Simultaneous risings were to take place throughout the country whereby the local authorities were to be overpowered, the Guards, if possible, decoyed away from the capital, and the central administration paralyzed and destroyed. The forces of the conspirators, under their former leaders, especially General Ludlow, were to unite, march on London, and there either exact terms from the captive King or set up another Republic, but in any event relieve the people from the burdens of religious and financial oppression. Such was the dream of the discontented, which, transformed into action might well have plunged England again into the throes of civil war. Meanwhile what of our friend Blood amid all these great affairs? Had he, like many others, preferred the safer course, withdrawn into private life and abandoned his property and ambitions together? That, indeed, seems to have been his first course. The Court of Claims apparently deprived him, among many others, of part or all of his new-found fortune in land, and he seems to have taken up his residence in Dublin, with or near his brother-in-law, Lackie, or Lecky, a Presbyterian clergyman, and, like his modern namesake, the historian, a fellow of Trinity College. Even so he maintained his reputation as an active man, for on June 30, 1663, a Dublin butcher, Dolman by name, is found petitioning the Duke of Ormond for the return of an "outlandish bull and cow" of which he had been unlawfully deprived by Thomas Blood, lieutenant in the late army. The petition was duly granted and the animals doubtless duly recovered. But before that the gallant lieutenant was in far deeper designs than the benevolent assimilation of other people's outlandish bulls, and before the worthy butcher petitioned against him he had come under the direct attention of the Lord-lieutenant in a much more serious connection. It was not to be supposed that such a man was overlooked in the assignment of parts for the great conspiracy. A committee had been formed in Dublin to organize and enlist the old Cromwellians in the design and of this committee Blood and his brother-in-law were prominent members. They were, in fact, the chief means by which correspondence was maintained with the north Irish Presbyterians in Ulster, and the so-called Cameronians in Scotland, as well as the Nonconformist group in Lancashire and north England, with whom Blood's marriage had given him some connection. The local design, as evolved by this committee, was most ingenious. A day, the 9th or 10th of May, was set for its execution, men and arms were collected, and the details carefully arranged for the seizure of Dublin Castle and the person of Ormond. According to an old usage the Lord-lieutenant was accustomed from day to day to receive petitions in person from all who cared to carry their troubles to him in this way. Taking advantage of this custom, it was proposed by the conspirators to send certain men enlisted in the enterprise into the Castle in the guise of petitioners. Some eighty others, meanwhile, disguised as workingmen and loiterers, were to hang about the great gate of the Castle. Another, disguised as a baker, and carrying a basket of bread on his head, was to enter the gate, as if on his way to the kitchen. As he went in he was to stumble and let fall his pile of loaves. It was calculated that the careless guard would probably rush out to snatch the bread thus scattered. The baker would resist, the pretended workmen and loiterers would gather to see the fun, and, under cover of the disturbance, rush the gate, seize the guard-house and its arms, overpower the guard, and, with the aid of the petitioners within, occupy the Castle. Upon the news of this, risings were to take place throughout the country, and the English troops and officials overpowered and brought over or killed. It was an admirable plan. The volunteers were chosen, the disguises prepared, a proclamation to the people was printed, and the whole matter laid in train. The plot, in fact, wanted but one thing to succeed--secrecy. This it was not destined to have. At the proper time the inevitable informer appeared in the person of Mr. Philip Alden or Arden, a member of the committee. By him and by a certain Sir Theophilus Jones, to whom some knowledge of the plot had come, Ormond was warned of his danger. He took immediate steps to secure himself and arrest the conspirators. But they were warned of their danger in time to escape, and under the rules of the game they should have made off at once. Instead they boldly went on with their plans, but set the time four days ahead, for May 5th. Even this daring step failed to save them. The Castle guard was increased, troops and militia called out, the other districts warned, and the conspirators sought out and arrested. Among the first victims was Blood's brother-in-law, Lackie. He was thrown into prison, where the severity of his treatment is said to have driven him insane. His wife petitioned for his release, and there is a story that his colleagues, the fellows of Trinity College, joined her in begging that his life be spared. They were told that he might have his liberty if he would conform, which, however, even at that price, he refused to do. This much is quite certain, his wife was promised, not her husband's liberty but his body. And this, after his execution in December, was accordingly handed over to her. The other conspirators suffered likewise in life, or liberty, or property, and every effort was made to include Blood in the list of victims. A proclamation he had issued was burned by the hangman. He was declared an outlaw, his remaining estates were confiscated, and a price was set on his head. But the government was compelled to satisfy itself with this, the man himself disappeared. Among the brethren of his faith he was able to find plenty of hiding places. But, according to his own story, told many years later, he scorned to skulk in corners. Disguised as a Quaker, as a Dissenting minister, even as a Catholic priest, he made his way from place to place, living and preaching openly, and by his very effrontery keeping the officers off his scent for some years. And so great, it is said, was the terror of his name and his daring that a plot to rescue Lackie from the scaffold not only frightened away the crowd from the execution, but nearly succeeded in its object, while for months afterward Ormond was hindered from venturing out of Dublin by the fear of his friends that he would be kidnapped or killed by Blood and his companions. Meanwhile the great design in England, like that in Ireland, found its shipwreck in treachery. Two of the men entrusted with the secrets of the design revealed it to the government. One of the leaders, Paul Hobson, was early seized, and his correspondence intercepted. The first leader chosen went mad, and the miracles which were prophesied, did not come to pass. The plans for a rising in Durham, Westmoreland and Lancashire were betrayed, troops and militia were hurried to the points of danger, and the few who rose in arms during that fatal month of October, 1663, discouraged by the fewness of their numbers and the strength brought against them, dispersed without a blow. The rest was but the story of arrests, examinations, trials, and executions. More than a score of those who took part in the design were executed, more than a hundred punished by fine or imprisonment or exile, or all three. Hobson was kept prisoner in the Tower for more than a year. His health failed, and in consideration of information he had given, he and his family were permitted to go under heavy bonds, to the Carolinas, where, as elsewhere in the colonies, he doubtless found many kindred spirits. By the middle of 1664 the tale of victims was complete, and the conspiracy was crushed. The alarm again reacted on Parliament, and a bill against meetings of Dissenters, which had been long pending, was passed under pressure of the plot. By its provisions it became unlawful to hold a religious meeting of more than five persons beside the family in whose house the worshippers assembled under severe and cumulative penalties. This was the Conventicle Act. Blood, meanwhile, like several of his co-conspirators, flitted from place to place, in Ireland and England, the authorities always on his trail. Finally, like many before and after him, he seems to have found refuge in the seventeenth century sanctuary of political refugees, Holland. There no small number of the leaders and soldiers of the old army had preceded him, and many had taken service in the Dutch army and navy. It may be that he had some thought of following their example, perhaps his designs were deeper still. He had nothing to hope from England, for his confiscated estates had been leased to a certain Captain Toby Barnes, reserving the rights of the government, based on his forfeiture by treason. He therefore made his way and extended his acquaintance not only among the English, but among the Dutch as well, and, if his story is true, was introduced to no less a person than the great Dutch admiral, De Ruyter, the most formidable of all England's enemies. And this was of much importance, for while he sojourned abroad, England and Holland had drifted into war. From February, 1665, to July, 1667, the two strongest maritime powers strove for control of the sea. In the summer of 1665 the English won some advantage in the fierce battle of Lowestoft, but the noise of rejoicing was stilled by a terrible catastrophe. In that same summer the Plague fell upon London. The death list in the city alone swelled from 600 in April to 20,000 in August. Business was suspended, the court and most of the administration and the clergy fled, and the war languished. A few brave spirits like Sheldon, the bishop of London, a certain secretary in the Admiralty, Samuel Pepys, of much fame thereafter, and the old Cromwellian general, Monk, now Duke of Albemarle, stuck grimly to their posts. But they and their fellows were few among many. Amid the terror and confusion the Nonconformist clergy came out of their hiding places, ascended the pulpits which had been deserted by their brethren of the Anglican church, few of whom followed the example of their brave, intolerant old bishop, and ministered to the spiritual needs of the stricken people. Conventicles sprung up everywhere, and conspiracy again raised its head. This time new plans were devised. Hundreds of old soldiers were reported coming to London and taking quarters near the Tower. Arms were collected and a plan formed to surprise the great stronghold by an attack from the water side. In addition there was a design for risings elsewhere, aided by the Dutch. The government bestirred itself under the direction of the inevitable Monk. The London conspirators were seized, information was sent to the local authorities, who made arrests and called out the militia, and the danger was averted. Parliament met at Oxford in October and, as a sequel to the plot, passed the most ferocious of the persecuting measures, the Five Mile Act, by which no Nonconformist preacher or teacher was permitted to come within that distance of a city or borough, save on a duly certified journey. The next year repeated the history of its predecessor. The English fleet under the only man who seemed to rise to emergencies in this dark time, Monk, met the Dutch off the North Foreland and fought there a terrible battle which lasted three days, and was claimed as a victory by both sides. Again this was followed by a calamity. In September a fire broke out in London which raged almost unchecked for a week, and laid the greater part of the city in ashes. France, meanwhile, entered the war on the side of Holland, and the English government, corrupt and exhausted, seemed almost ready to fall. It was little wonder that the sectaries, though their arms had been lost in the fire, plucked up courage and laid more plans. Six weeks after the fire the Covenanters in west Scotland, maddened by persecution, were in arms, and maintained themselves for some weeks against the forces sent against them. During the following winter the English, short of money, and negotiating for peace, resolved not to set out a fleet in the spring. In June the Dutch, apprised of the defenceless condition of the English coasts, brought together a fleet under De Ruyter, sailed up the Medway and the Thames, took Sheerness and Chatham, broke through the defenses there and captured or destroyed the English ships they found at anchor. There was little to oppose them. The Guards were drawn out, the young gentlemen about the court enlisted, the militia was brought together, and volunteers collected. Some entrenchments were dug, and guns were mounted to oppose a landing. And the Lord General Monk, who had done all that was done, marched up and down the bank, before the Dutch ships whose big black hulks lay well within the sound of his voice, chewing tobacco, swearing like a pirate, shaking his heavy cane at the enemy, and daring them to land. They did not kill him as they might easily have done. From their ships came a brisk cannonade, volleys of jeers and profanity, and the insulting cries of English seamen aboard, deriding their fellow-countrymen ashore. And with these insults the fleet presently weighed anchor and sailed away to patrol the coasts, interrupt commerce, and attack other ports. In particular an attempt was made on Landguard fort, covering Harwich. There the Dutch fleet was taken into the harbour by English pilots, some twelve hundred men landed under command of an English exile, Colonel Doleman. But despite the heroic efforts of the "tall English lieutenant-colonel" who led them, efforts which extorted the admiration of his fellow-countrymen who held the fort against him, the Dutch were driven off. At Portsmouth and elsewhere similar attempts were made but with no greater success and, the negotiations then in progress at Breda having been expedited by this exploit, the Dutch fleet withdrew, leaving England seething with impotent rage and mortification. Peace was signed at Breda a month later, on terms influenced in no small degree by this notable raid, the first in centuries which had brought an enemy into the Thames. And what had become of our friend Blood in these stirring times? It is not to be supposed that the organizer of Irish rebellion, the correspondent of English revolutionary committee and Scotch Covenanters, and the friend of De Ruyter, sat quietly apart from this turmoil of war and conspiracy. Yet, working underground as he did, like a mole, it is possible to trace his movements only by an occasional upheaval on the surface. It seems quite certain that he did not, like so many of his countrymen, enlist in the Dutch service and that he was not among the four or five thousand troops, mostly English, which manned their fleet, nor did he, like them, take part in the attempt to storm the forts covering Harwich. On February 13, 1666, there is a secret service note, that Captain Blood may be found at Colonel Gilby Carr's in the north of Ireland, or at his wife's near Dublin, and that the fanatics had secretly held a meeting at Liverpool and put off their rising till after the engagement of the fleets. On May 3, there is a similar note concerning a man named Padshall, then prisoner in the Gatehouse in London, that if he is kept close he may discover where Allen, alias Blood, lodges, or "Joannes" alias Mene Tekel, and the note indicates their presence in the city. Then came the battle of the North Foreland and the failure of the Dutch to crush the English fleet. On August 24th we learn that these two men, Blood and Jones, have gone to Ireland to do mischief. There another plot was reported forming, which contemplated the seizure of Limerick. But this, like that of the preceding year on the Tower, both of which bear a strong family resemblance to the old design on Dublin Castle, were discovered and defeated. One insurrection alone, as we have seen, resulted from this unrest, the rising of the Scotch Covenanters in October. And among them, according to advices which came to the administration, was Blood. He had evidently found the Irish plot betrayed and with some of his companions, described in the accounts of the Pentland rising as "some Presbyterian ministers and old officers from Ireland," hurried to the only chance of real fighting. That was not great. The Covenanters, cooped up in the Pentland Hills, were beaten, dispersed and butchered, before concentrated aid could be given them. Blood, as usual, escaped. He seems first to have sought refuge in Lancashire among his relatives. Thence he went to Ireland, but, landing near Carrickfergus, was so closely pursued there by Lord Dungannon that he turned again to England, and by the first of the following April was reported to the government as being at the house of a rigid Anabaptist in Westmoreland. From there he watched the government unravel the web of conspiracy he had been so busy weaving. Yet even here lies another mystery. In 1665, at the time when he might be supposed to have been most active against the government, his wife petitioned, through him apparently, for the return of certain property seized from her father by one Richard Clively, then in prison for killing a bailiff, and in December of that year it appears that certain men convicted of attending conventicles are to be discharged, and the order is endorsed by Blood. More than that, there is a petition of September, 1666, the month of the Fire, noted as "Blood's memorial," requesting a permit from Secretary Arlington that the "hidden persons, especially the spies, be not seized till they are disposed of." From such data it has been conjectured that Blood was playing a double part, that he was, after all, no dangerous conspirator but a mere informer. And this brings us to a most curious phase of this whole movement, the relation of the conspirators to the government. It is a remarkable fact that no small number of those who to all appearances were most deeply implicated in conspiracy, corresponded at one time or another with the administration, in many instances furnishing information of each other to the secretaries. And this might lead, indeed, it has led, many to imagine that the whole of these vaunted conspiracies were, after all, nothing but what we should call in the language of modern crime, "plants," devised and executed by the government itself for purposes of its own. There is, in some instances, evidence of this. But in many others it is apparent that this is not a full explanation of cases like that of Blood. In that doubtful borderland between secret service and conspiracy it was often possible for a man to serve both sides. Having engineered a plot and acquired money and arms and companions to carry it out a man not infrequently found himself in the clutches of the law. The officers, because they did not have evidence to hang him, or because they hoped to gain more from him alive than dead, were often disposed to offer him his life, even his liberty, in return for information. He, on his part, was nearly always ready to furnish information in any quantity and of any sort, in return for this favour. And, if he were shrewd enough, he might amuse his captors for years with specious stories, with just enough truth to make them plausible, and just enough vagueness to make them unusable, and ultimately escape, meanwhile carrying on the very plans which he purported to betray. He might even get money from both sides and make a not to be despised livelihood from his trade. This is very different from the regular informer, who, like Alden, received a lump sum or an annuity from the government, and it was a very fair profession for a man with enough shrewdness and not too much conscience in those troubled times. If, indeed, Blood were such a man, as seems probable, he represented a considerable element in the underground politics of the early Restoration. And it is to be observed that no small proportion of the men who were executed for actual and undeniable complicity in the plots were of just this type and had at various times been in government service, only to be caught red-handed at the end. And that such was the case of Blood seems to be proved by the fact that the next time he appears above the horizon his actions seem to dissipate any idea of permanent accommodation with the government. The arrests and examinations which succeeded the abortive conspiracy of 1663 had led the secretaries of state into many dark ways of subterranean politics, and they had steadily pushed their investigations through the years of the war, the plague and the fire. They had broken up one group after another, pursuing a steady policy of enlisting the weaker men as informers, and executing or keeping in prison the irreconcilables. Among those they had thus discovered had been a little group, the "desperadoes," the names of some of whom we have come across before, Blood, his brother-in-law, Colonel Lockyer, Jones, the author of _Mene Tekel_, and a Captain John Mason. The last had been taken, had escaped, and some time during the Dutch war, was recaptured. On the 20th of July, 1667, while the Dutch fleets still patrolled the English coast and the peace of Breda was just about to be signed, warrants were issued from the Secretary of State to the Keeper of the Tower and the Keeper of Newgate to deliver Captain John Mason and Mr. Leving to the bearer to be conveyed to York gaol. This duty was assigned to a certain Corporal Darcy, otherwise unknown to fame, who with some seven or eight troopers proceeded to carry out his instructions. The little party thus made up rode north by easy stages for four days without incident. On the fourth day they were joined by one Scott, a citizen of York, apparently by profession a barber, who, not much fancying solitary travel in that somewhat insecure district, sought safety with the soldiers. About seven o'clock on the evening of the 25th of August the little party entered a narrow lane near the village of Darrington, Yorkshire, and there met a most extraordinary adventure. As they rode along, doubtless with no great caution, they heard behind them a sudden rattle of horses' hoofs. They turned to meet a pistol-volley from a small body of well armed and mounted men, and a demand for their prisoners. Several of the guard were wounded at the first fire, and the surprise was complete. But Corporal Darcy was not a man to be thus handled. He faced his little force about, delivered a volley in return, charged his assailants briskly and in a moment was the center of a sharp hand-to-hand fight. He was twice wounded and had his horse shot under him. Three of his companions were badly hurt. Of the attacking party at least one was severely wounded[4]. But when they drew off they carried Mason with them. Leving, feeling discretion the better part of valour, took refuge in a house near by and after the fight surrendered himself again to the stout corporal. Scott, the innocent by-stander who had sought protection with the soldiers, was killed outright, the only immediate fatality in either party, though some of the troopers died later of their wounds. The corporal, despite his disabled condition, managed to get one of his opponents' horses in place of the one he lost, and rode hurriedly into the nearby village for help. But the fearful villagers had barricaded themselves in their houses, and were moved neither by his promises nor his threats to join in the pursuit of the desperadoes. He had, therefore, to be content with giving information to the nearest justice, sending after them the hue and cry, and making his way to York with his remaining prisoner. [4] Blood's story of this exploit differs in some unimportant details, all reflecting credit on himself. He puts the number of his party at four, that of Darcy at eight. He tells how he happened on Darcy at an inn near Doncaster when almost ready to abandon the pursuit. He explains that two of Mason's party lingered behind and were put out of action by Blood and one of his companions, who then rode on to demand Mason from his guards and maintained an unequal fight with the seven men in Darcy's party for some time before reinforced by their two fellows. But Darcy's account supplemented by Leving's is much clearer and at least more plausible. This, it will be remembered, was one Leving. And with him we come upon a character, and a plot beneath a plot, which well illustrates the times. William Leving, or Levings, or Levering, or Leonard Williams, as he was variously called, was very far from being the man his guards thought him. It must have been a surprise to them after the fight to see one of their prisoners instead of making off with the rescuers, render himself again into their hands. But the explanation, though the good corporal and his men did not know it, nor yet the governor of York gaol to whom Leving was delivered, was only too well known to Captain Mason's friends, and explains the strange conduct of the Captain's fellow prisoner on other grounds than mere cowardice. Leving had been deeply implicated in the plots of 1661 and 1662, perhaps in that of 1663 as well. He had been caught, and, to save his life, he had "come in," to use an expressive phrase of the time. He was, in short, one of the most useful of the government's spies. It was he who had given news of Blood and his companions in Ireland. It was he who had furnished some of the information on which the government was then acting, and who proposed to furnish more, acquired, possibly, by this very ruse of sending him North with Mason. And it was he who now gave to the justice and the officers the names of the principal rescuers, Captain Lockyer, Major Blood, and Timothy Butler, and wrote to Secretary Arlington suggesting that the ways into London be watched as they would probably seek refuge there. It was little wonder that Mason's rescuers had sought to kill Leving, or that he had sought refuge in flight and surrender. These indeed availed him little. He was kept a prisoner at York even after it appeared from his examination who and what he was. This was doubtless done more for his own safety than for any other reason, but even this was not effectual. Not many weeks later he was found dead in his cell. Some time after another informer, similarly confined there, wrote Arlington a terrified letter begging protection or release, "that he might not, like Leving, be poisoned in his cell." Thus, it appears, his enemies found him out even there. And that you may not think too hardly of the poor spy, it may be added that on his dead body was found a letter, apparently one he was engaged on when he died, completely exonerating certain men then in hiding for the great conspiracy. It would, perhaps, be uncharitable to hint that this was part of an even more subtle plot beneath the other two, and that his murderers sought to shield their friends outside by this device. York gaol, in any event, was no place to keep men disaffected toward the government. From the Lord-lieutenant down the place was thick with discontent and conspiracy. Indeed no great while before the Council had arrested the Lord-lieutenant himself, no less a person than one of their own number, the great Duke of Buckingham, on the charge of corresponding with the sectaries, and had confined him for some time in the Tower. But what, meanwhile, had happened to Mason and his friends? On August 8th they were proclaimed outlaws by name and a hundred pounds reward was offered for Lockyer, Butler, Mason and Blood. But they had disappeared, as usual. Blood, it was said, had been mortally wounded, and was finally reported dead. That part of the story, at least, was greatly exaggerated, and was, no doubt, spread by Blood himself. He seems, in fact, to have retired to one of his hiding places and there recovered from his injuries, which were severe. The rest dispersed, and Mason, we know, found his way to London where three years later he appears in the guise of an innkeeper, still plotting for the inevitable rising. To us this seems strange. Our minds conjure up a well-ordered city, properly policed and thoroughly known. But apart from the fallacy of such a view even now, the London of Charles II was a far different place from the city of to-day in more ways than its size and the advances wrought by civilization. The City itself was then distant from the Court. The long thoroughfare connecting them, now the busy Strand, was then what its name implies still, the way along the river, and was the seat of only a few great palaces, like the Savoy, and the rising pile of Buckingham. Beside what is now Trafalgar Square stood then, as now, St. Martin's in the Fields. But the fields have long since fled from Piccadilly and Whitehall. Beyond and around in every direction outside the purlieus of the Court and the liberties of the City, stretched great collections of houses and hovels, affording rich hiding places for men outside the law. The inns abounding everywhere offered like facilities. Beneath the very walls of St. Stephen's where Parliament devised measures to suppress conventicles, those conventicles flourished. Among their numbers, among the small and secluded country houses round about, among the rough watermen and sailors along the river, in wide stretching districts where the King's writ ran with difficulty or not at all, and a man's life was safe only as his strength or skill made it so, or, it was whispered, even among some of the great houses like that of the Duke of Buckingham, men flying from justice might find safety enough. Later Mason seems to have been joined in London by Blood and the old practices were renewed. But the Major, for Blood had now by some subterranean means arrived at that title, was apparently not wholly content with this. He retired, it would appear, to the little village of Romford, in Surrey, and there, under the name of Allen or Ayloffe, set up--amazing choice among all the things he might have chosen--as a physician. His son-in-law was apprenticed to an apothecary, and thus, with every appearance of quiet and sobriety, the outlaw began life again. But it was not for long, at any rate. Most likely, indeed, this whole business, if it ever existed at all, was a sham. For on May 28th, 1670, we find Secretary Trevor, who had succeeded Arlington in office, ordering the Provost Marshal to search out and take in custody Henry Danvers and William Allen, alias Blood. In December of that same year came the assault on Ormond, with which our story began, and Blood, under his alias, was for the third time proclaimed an outlaw, and for the third time had a price set on his head. Surely, you will say, this is enough of that impudent scoundrel who so long disturbed the slumber of His Majesty's secretaries, and flouted the activities of their agents. And, in spite of the stir raised by the attempt on Ormond, if Blood had disappeared after that for the last time, he would not have lived again in the pages of history. For that he is indebted to the great exploit which at once ended his career of crime and raised him above the ordinary herd of outlaws and criminals. At the time of which we write the Tower of London served even more numerous and important purposes than it does to-day. It was then, as now, a depository of arms and ammunition, and the quarters of a considerable body of troops, which served to overawe possible disturbance in the city. But in 1670 it was also the principal prison for political offenders, and it was the place where the state regalia, the crown, the orb, and the scepter, were kept. Then, as now, the various functions of the great fortress were quite distinct. The visitor of to-day passes through a wide courtyard to the main edifice, the White Tower of William the Conqueror, whose chambers are filled with curious weapons and armour. He may climb the stone stairs to see the grim apartments once reserved for men reckoned dangerous to the state, and gaze with what awe he can muster upon the imitation crown jewels set out for the delectation of the tourists. Everywhere he finds in evidence the guardians of these treasures, the unobtrusive attendant, the picturesque beefeater, the omnipresent policeman, and if he looks down from the high windows he may see far below him the red tunics or white undercoats of the soldiers on parade or at work. In some measure this was true in 1670, and it is to this spot we must now turn our attention. We have already seen some of the characters in this story taken to or from the custody of the lieutenant of the Tower, and our steps in trace of our hero or villain, as you choose to call him, have often led perilously near its grim portals. At last they are to go inside. Among the various functionaries in and about the Tower in the year 1670 was one Edwards, the Keeper of the Regalia, an old soldier who lived with his wife and daughter within the walls, his son being away at the wars on the Continent. Some time after the attack on the Duke of Ormond there appeared one day, among the visitors who flocked to see the sights of the stronghold, a little party of strangers from the country, a clergyman, his wife and his nephew. They visited the usual places of interest, and presently under Edwards' guidance, were taken to see the regalia. They were pleasant folk and much interested in what they saw. But unfortunately while looking at the royal paraphernalia the lady fell ill with some sort of a chill or convulsion. Her husband and nephew and Edwards were greatly alarmed. They carried her to Edwards' apartments where his wife and daughter took her in charge, and administered cordials and restoratives until she recovered. The clergyman was deeply grateful. He rewarded Edwards generously for his attention and they were all profuse in acknowledging the kindness of the Keeper's family. Nor did the matter end here. From this little incident there sprang up an acquaintance which rapidly ripened into friendship between the two families. The clergyman and his nephew came in from time to time on visits. The nephew was young and dashing, the daughter was pretty and pleasing[5]. They were obviously attracted to each other, and their elders looked on the dawning romance with favor. So rapidly did the matter progress that the clergyman presently proposed a marriage between the young couple. Edwards was not unwilling and on the 9th of May, 1671, the clergyman, his nephew, and a friend, with two companions rode up about seven in the morning to make the final arrangements. Mrs. Edwards, however, was not prepared to meet guests at so early an hour and some delay occurred. To fill in the time the clergyman suggested that Edwards might show the regalia to his friend who had never seen it. So the four mounted the steps to the room where the treasures were kept. Edwards went on before to take the regalia out for exhibition. But as he stooped over the chest to get them he was seized suddenly from behind, a cloak was thrown over his head, he was bound and gagged, knocked on the head with a mallet, and all these measures having failed to prevent his giving an alarm, he was finally stabbed. One of the men with him seized the crown and bent it so that it went under his cloak. The other put the orb in the pocket of his baggy breeches, and began to file the scepter in two that it might be more easily carried. But as they were thus busied, by a coincidence, surely the strangest out of a play, at this precise instant Edwards' son, Talbot, returned from the wars, bringing a companion with him. They accosted the third man who had remained as a sentinel at the foot of the stairs. He gave the alarm, the two men ran down the stairs and all three hurried off toward the Tower Gate. But there fortune deserted them. Edwards roused from his stupor, tore out the gag and shouted "Treason and Murder!" The daughter hurried to his side and thence to Tower Hill crying, "Treason! the crown is stolen!" Young Edwards and his companion, Captain Beckman, took up the alarm and hurried to the Keeper's side. Gaining from him some idea of the situation they rushed down and saw the thieves just going out the gate. Edwards drew his pistols and shouted to the sentinels. But the warders were apparently terrified and young Edwards, Beckman, and others who joined the pursuit closed in on the outlaws. They in turn aided the confusion by also crying "Stop Thief" so that some were deceived into believing the parson a party to the pursuit. Beckman seems to have caught him and wrestled with him for the crown, while a servant seized one of the other men. Beckman and Blood had a most "robustious struggle." Blood had fired one pistol at Beckman, and when they grappled drew a second and fired again, but missed both times. The accomplices waiting outside, mounted and rode off in different directions. But the pursuit was too close. Two of the three principals having been taken almost at the gate, the third might have got away but was thrown from his horse by running into a projecting cart pole, and captured at no great distance. The other accomplices, two apparently, seem to have escaped. The prisoners were brought back to the Tower at once and identified. To the astonishment of their captors the clergyman was found to be our old friend Blood, the so-called nephew was his son[6], the third man an Anabaptist silk dyer, named Parret. Warrants were immediately made out to the governor of the Tower, Sir John Robinson, for their imprisonment; Blood's on the ground of outlawry for treason and other great and heinous crimes in England; young Blood's and Parret's for dangerous crimes and practices. [5] The Somers Tracts account says that it was Edwards' son and a pretended daughter of Blood, but this is almost certainly incorrect. [6] Though there is some confusion here. The cobbler who seized him exclaimed, "This is Tom Hunt who was in the bloody business against the Duke of Ormond," and Edwards' account to Talbot (_ Biog. Britt._ II, 366) speaks of him as Blood's son-in-law. But his pardon was certainly made out to Thomas Blood, Jr., and there is no mention of the name Hunt. The explanation probably is that he was Thomas Hunt, Blood's son-in-law, but was called Blood by his father-in-law, and, like many men in that time, used either of the two names indifferently. It appears from Talbot's account that the cobbler and a constable who came up took Hunt to a nearby Justice of the Peace, one Smith, who was about to release him when news came of the attempt on the crown, and Hunt was then taken back to the Tower. Thus fell the mighty Blood in this unique attempt at crime. The sensation caused by his extraordinary undertaking was naturally tremendous. Newsletters and correspondence of the time are all filled with the details of the exploit, for the moment the gravest affairs of state sunk into insignificance before the interest in this most audacious venture. An infinite number of guesses were hazarded at the motive for the theft, for it was felt that mere robbery would not account for it. It was even suspected that it was a prelude to the assassination of the king and the proclamation of a usurper who hoped to strengthen himself by the possession of the regalia. This view was reenforced by the fact that the Chancellor's house was entered at about the same time and nothing taken but the Great Seal. The darkest suspicions were afloat, and the relief at the capture of the noted outlaw and the failure of his attempt on the crown was intensified by the sense of having escaped from some vague and terrible danger which would have menaced the state had he succeeded. Broadsides and squibs of all sorts were inspired by the exploit. Among others the irrepressible Presbyterian satirist, Andrew Marvell, characteristically improved the occasion to make it the subject of a satire on the Church, as follows: _ON BLOOD'S STEALING THE CROWN._ _When daring Blood his rent to have regained Upon the English diadem restrained He chose the cassock, surcingle and gown, The fittest mask for one that robs the crown: But his lay pity underneath prevailed. And whilst he saved the keeper's life he failed; With the priest's vestment had he but put on The prelate's cruelty, the crown had gone._ The proceedings in Blood's case, therefore, excited extraordinary interest, which was not lessened by the unusual circumstances surrounding it. The prisoners were first brought before Sir Gilbert Talbot, the provost-marshal[7]. But Blood refused absolutely to answer any leading questions put him by that official as to his motives, accomplices, and the ultimate purpose of his exploit. This naturally deepened the interest in the matter, and increased the suspicion that there was more in it than appeared on the surface, the more so as the outlaw declared he would speak only with the king himself. To the further astonishment of the world this bold request was granted. Three days after his arrest, on May 12, he was taken by the king's express order to Whitehall and there examined by Charles, the Duke of York, and a select few of the royal family and household. The proceeding was not quite as unusual as it seemed, for in the earlier years of the Restoration it had been fairly common and the king had proved a master in the art of examination. But it had been given up of late and its revival seemed to indicate a matter of unusual gravity. "The man need not despair," said Ormond to Southwell when he heard that the king was to give Blood a hearing, "for surely no king would wish to see a malefactor but with intention to pardon him." But this opinion was not general and his conviction was never doubted by the world at large. A few days after his examination Secretary Williamson's Dublin correspondent wrote him that there was little news in Ireland save the talk of Blood's attempt on the crown, and he voiced the prevailing sentiment when he "hoped that Blood would receive the reward of his many wicked attempts." The coffee houses talked of nothing else and all London prepared to gratify itself with the spectacle of the execution of the most daring criminal of the time[8]. [7] He seems also to have been examined by Dr. Chamberlain and Sir William Waller. [8] It was hinted that Buckingham had set Blood on to steal the crown in pursuance of some of his mad schemes for ascending the throne. And it is also charged that the King himself had employed the outlaw to get the jewels, pawn or sell them abroad and divide the proceeds. Beside such suggestions as these even Blood's letter sinks into the commonplace. At all events, as in the Ormond affair, it was and is generally believed that there were other influences at work behind his exploit. But in this, at any rate for the present, they were to be disappointed. Blood was remanded to the Tower, and there held for some time while certain other steps were taken to probe the case deeper. Two months later Sir John Robinson wrote to Secretary Williamson that Lord Arlington had dined with him the Saturday before, and had given into his hands certain warrants, not as every one supposed for Blood's execution, but for his release and that of his son. Two weeks later a grant of pardon was issued to him for "all the treasons, murders, felonies, etc., committed by him alone or with others from the day of His Majesty's accession, May 29, 1660, to the present," and this was followed by a similar grant to his son. Later, to complete this incredible story, his estates were restored to him, he was given a place at Court, and a pension of five hundred pounds a year in Irish lands. Not long afterward the indefatigable diner-out, John Evelyn, notes in his diary that, dining with the Lord Treasurer, Arlington, a few days before, he had met there, among the guests, Colonel Thomas Blood. It is no wonder that a Londoner wrote in early August of that same year: "On Thursday last in the courtyard at Whitehall, I saw walking, in a new suit and periwig, Mr. Blood exceeding pleasant and jocose--a tall rough-boned man, with small legs, a pock-frecken face with little hollow blue eyes." And in September Blood had acquired enough credit, apparently, not only to get a new grant of pardon confirmed for himself and his son, but others for certain of his former companions as well. What is the explanation of this extraordinary circumstance? It is a question no one has yet answered satisfactorily, and it has remained one of the many unsolved mysteries of the period, along with the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey and the Popish Plot. If we knew fully we could clear up many dark ways of Restoration politics. We have certain second-hand accounts of what took place in that memorable interview between the vagabond king and the Irish outlaw, from which we may get some light on the matter. The latter "as gallant and hardy a villain as ever herded with the sneaking sect of Anabaptists," in the words of a contemporary, we are told, "answered so frankly and undauntedly that every one stood amazed." Snatches of Blood's comments on his most recent exploit have floated down to us. "It was, at all events, a stroke for a crown," had been his remark to Beckman when he was captured, a cool witticism which must have pleased the wittiest of monarchs when it was repeated to him. "Who are your associates?" he is said to have been asked, to which he replied that he "would never betray a friend's life nor deny guilt in defense of his own." Blood explained to the king, it is said, that he thought the crown was worth a hundred thousand pounds, when, in fact the whole regalia, had he known it, only cost six thousand. He told the story of his life and adventures with much freedom, and it must have been a good story to hear. He confessed to the attempt on Dublin Castle, to the rescue of Mason and the kidnapping of Ormond. There was found on his person a "little book in which he had set down sixty signal deliverances from eminent dangers." And one may remark, in passing, that it is a pity that it, instead of the dagger with which Edwards was stabbed, is not preserved in a London museum. Perhaps it may turn up some day, and allow us the whole story as he told it to Charles. Several about the monarch contributed their information of Blood. Prince Rupert, in particular, recalled him as "a very stout, bold fellow in the royal service," twenty years before. But the thing to which rumor credited his escape and which was reported to have made his fortune, was a story in connection with the king himself. A plot had been laid by Blood and his accomplices, according to his account, to kill the king while he was bathing in the river at Battersea. But as they hid in the reeds, said the outlaw turned courtier, with their victim before them, the majesty of royalty was too great--he could not fire the shot. But, he continued, there was a band to which he belonged, three hundred strong, pledged to avenge his death on the king, in case of his conviction. Doubtless truth lurks amid all this. It may all be true. Even so there is hardly material here for pardon, much less for reward. Other reasons not known at that time, must be assigned for such royal clemency. One, perhaps, lies in this letter written six days after the examination: "May 19, 1671. Tower. Col. Blood to the King. May it please your Majesty these may tell and inform you that it was Sir Thomas Osborne and Sir Thomas Littleton, both your treasurers for your Navy, that set me to steal your crown, but he that feed me with money was James Littleton, Esq. 'Tis he that pays under your treasurer at the Pay Office. He is a very bold villainous fellow, a very rogue, for I and my companions have had many a hundred pounds of him of your Majesty's money to encourage us upon this attempt. I pray no words of this confession, but know your friends. Not else but am your Majesty's prisoner and if life spared your dutiful subject whose name is Blood, which I hope is not that your Majesty seeks after." Surely of the two qualities then so necessary in the court, wit and effrontery, a plentiful supply was not lacking to a man who could write such a letter in such a situation. And his daring, his effrontery and his adventures undoubtedly made a great impression on the king. Another reason for the treatment Blood received was, strangely enough, his powerful influence at court. It will be remembered, in connection with the rescue of Mason, that the great Duke of Buckingham, Lord-lieutenant of Yorkshire, and one of the men highest in favour at court and in the country at large, had been arrested on a charge of conspiring with the fanatics against the throne. He had been released, and was now not only again in the royal favour, but was one of the leading men in the ministry of the day, the so-called Cabal. It was he who secured the interview with the king for Blood, and he doubtless lent his influence for mercy. And there was, perhaps, a deeper reason for this. Buckingham was the bitter enemy of Ormond. The king, whatever his inclination, could not, in decency, pardon Blood, after his confessing to the attack on Ormond, without at least some pretense of consulting the man who had been so maltreated. He sent, therefore, to Ormond to ask him to forgive Blood. Lord Arlington carried the message with those private reasons for the request, which still puzzles us. Blood, meanwhile, under direction, wrote a letter to Ormond, expressing his regret in unmeasured terms. The old Duke's reply was at once a lesson in dignity and loyalty. "If the king could forgive an attempt on his crown," he said proudly to Arlington, "I myself may easily forgive an attempt on my life, and since it is his Majesty's pleasure, that is reason sufficient for me, and your lordship may well spare the rest of the explanations." But Ormond's son, and his biographer, took refuge in no such dignity. The latter declares roundly that Buckingham instigated the attempt on his master. And not long after the affair, the former, the gallant young Earl of Ossory, coming into the royal presence and seeing the Duke of Buckingham standing by the king, his colour rose, and he spoke to this effect: "My lord, I know well that you are at the bottom of this late attempt of Blood's upon my father; and therefore I give you fair warning if my father comes to a violent end by sword or pistol, or if he dies by the hand of a ruffian, or by the more secret way of poison, I shall not be at a loss to know the first author of it; I shall consider you as the assassin; I shall treat you as such; and wherever I meet you I shall pistol you, though you stood behind the king's chair; and I tell it you in his Majesty's presence that you may be sure I shall keep my word." These were brave words, and had they come from other lips than those of the Restoration Bayard, might have been regarded as mere bravado. But he had proved his courage on too many occasions to count this lightly. Scarce five years before, while visiting Sir Thomas Clifford, in the country, he had heard the guns of the fleet off Harwich, in the fierce battle of Lowestoft. With no commission and with no connection with either the navy or the government, he had mounted a horse, and, accompanied by his host, had ridden to the shore and put off in an open boat to the English fleet to take his part in one of the hardest day's fighting the English fleet ever saw. The word of such a man, conspicuous for his honesty as for his courage, was not to be lightly set aside. And whether this threat was the cause or not, or whether Buckingham was really not responsible for an assault which might have been attributed to Blood's desire for revenge on the man who had confiscated his estates and hanged his brother-in-law, the old Duke was not further molested. But, apart from these matters, there is another, and one may be permitted to think, a more serious reason for Blood's escape. It lies in the political situation of the time. This was, in many ways, peculiar. Some four years before the events we have narrated in connection with the theft of the crown the administration of Clarendon had fallen and had been succeeded by that of a group called the Cabal, whose chief bond of union lay in the fact that they were none of them Anglicans and they were all opposed to Clarendon. They, with the aid of the king, who, largely through tenderness to the Catholics, had never favoured the persecuting policy, had relaxed the execution of the Clarendonian measures, and had thus far succeeded in preventing the re-enactment of the Conventicle Act which had expired some years before. The Anglicans in Parliament had been no less insistent that the old policy be maintained and that the Act be renewed. The king, now supported by his ministers, was no less eager to renew the attempt which had failed under Clarendon, and revive the dispensing power, whereby the toleration of Catholic and Protestant Nonconformist alike would rest in his own hands. This situation was complicated by the fact that king and ministers alike were bent on another war with Holland. It seemed highly desirable to them to pacify the still discontented Nonconformists before entering on such a struggle, particularly since the government had little money and must rely on the city, which was strongly Nonconformist in its sentiments. It seemed no less necessary to destroy, if possible, that group of extremists whose conspiracies were doubly dangerous in the face of a war. To gain information of the feelings of the dissenting bodies, and discover what terms would be most acceptable to them, to track down and bring in the fierce and desperate men from whom trouble might be anticipated, to discover if possible the connection that existed between the sects and those in high places, these were objects of the highest importance. They needed such a man as Blood. And it seemed worth while to Charles to tame this fierce bird of prey to his service to achieve such ends as he contemplated. Some such thought evidently occurred to the king during the examination. "What," he is said to have asked bluntly at its close, "What if I should give you your life?" Blood's reply is almost epic, "I would endeavor to deserve it." This, at any rate, became his immediate business. Almost at once he was taken in hand by the government, and it was soon reported that he was making discoveries. The arrest of three of Cromwell's captains is noted among the first fruits of his information. And close upon the heels of his pardon came the arrest and conviction of some twenty-four or twenty-five irreconcilables[9]. This may or may not show the hand of the new government agent, but the circumstantial evidence is strong. It is certain, however, that throughout the winter of 1671-2 Secretary Williamson was in close consultation with Blood over the situation and the demands of Dissenters, and he filled many pages of good paper with cryptic abbreviations of these long and important interviews, in which are to be found many curious secrets of conventicles and conspiracies, of back-stairs politics and the underground connections of men high in the councils of the nation. From Blood, from the Presbyterian ministers, through one or two of their number, and from sources to which these communications led, the court and ministry gradually obtained the information from which a great and far-reaching policy was framed. This took form in the beginning of the following year in the famous Declaration of Indulgence. This, taking the control of the Nonconformist situation from Parliament, placed it in the hands of the king. Licenses were to be issued to ministers to preach, to meeting-houses, and to other places for worship which was not according to the forms or under the direction of the Anglican church. The policy, owing to the bitter opposition of Parliament, lasted but a few months, but it marked an era in English history. The rioting which had accompanied the revival of the Conventicle Act, and which had encouraged the government to try the licensing system, disappeared. For a few months entire religious toleration prevailed, and, though Parliament forced the king to withdraw his Declaration, the old persecution was never revived. In this work Blood's share was not small. He not merely furnished information, he became one of the recognized channels through whom licenses were obtained, and in the few months while they were being issued he drove a thriving trade. And with one other activity which preceded the Dutch war he was doubtless closely connected. This was the issuing of pardons to many of those old Cromwellians who had sought refuge in Holland a dozen years before. No small number of these, taking advantage of the government's new lenience, came back from exile with their families and goods, and took up their residence again in England. Thus Colonels Burton and Kelsey, Berry and Desborough, Blood's brother-in-law Captain Lockyer, Nicholas, Sweetman and many others found pardons and were received again into England. "Through his means," wrote Mrs. Goffe to her husband, "as is reputed, Desborough and Maggarborn [Major Bourne?] and Lewson of Yarmouth is come out of Holland and Kelsi and have their pardon and liberty to live quietly, no oath being imposed on them." "The people of God have much liberty and meetings are very free and they sing psalms in many places and the King is very favourable to many of the fanatics and to some of them he was highly displeased with." It might have been that the regicides in New England could have returned but the cautious Mrs. Goffe warned her husband not to rely on the favourable appearance of affairs. "It is reported," she wrote, "that Whalley and Goffe and Ludlow is sent for but I think they have more wit than to trust them." [9] Variously noted as 20, 24 and 27. In the third great measure of the period, the Stop of the Exchequer, Blood naturally had no part, but when the war actually broke out, he found a new field of usefulness in obtaining information from Holland, in ferreting out the tracts which the Dutch smuggled into England, in watching for the signs of conspiracy at home. Thus he lived and flourished. His residence was in Bowling Alley, now Bowling Street, leading from Dean's Yard to Tufton Street, Westminster, convenient to Whitehall. His favorite resort is said to have been White's Coffee House, near the Royal Exchange[10]. His sinister face and ungraceful form became only too familiar about the court. His bearing was resented by many as insolent. He was both hated and feared as he moved through the atmosphere of intrigue by which the court was surrounded, getting and revealing to the king information of the conspirators, of the Dutch, and the other enemies of royalty. His was not a pleasant trade and there were undoubtedly many who, for good reasons of their own, wished him out of the way. There were many who contrasted his reward with the neglect of the unfortunate Edwards, and who railed at Blood and the king alike. Rochester allowed himself the usual liberty of rhymed epigram: [10] Thus Wheatley and Cunningham. John Timbs, in his _Romance of London_, says Blood lived first in Whitehall, then, according to tradition, in a house on the corner of Peter and Tufton Streets. _Blood that wears treason in his face Villain complete in parson's gown How much is he at court in grace For stealing Ormond and the crown? Since loyalty does no man good Let's steal the King and out do Blood._ There were doubtless many more who regretted that the king had not bestowed on him a reward that was at one time contemplated, the governorship of a colony, the hotter the better. In that event America would have had some direct share in the career of England's most distinguished criminal. And even so it is by no means certain she would have suffered greatly in comparison with the situation of some colonies under the governors they actually had. But Blood was far too useful at home to be wasted on a distant dependency. And, on the whole, the outlaw seems to have fully justified his existence and even his pardon, as an outer sentinel along the line of guards between King Charles and his enemies. That he was so hated is perhaps, in some sort a measure of his usefulness. For the times when men in the ministry or just out of the ministry conspired or connived at conspiracy against the government and held communication with an enemy in arms to compel their sovereign to their will are not those in which a ruler will be too squeamish about his means, least of all such a ruler as Charles. In such wise Blood lived until 1679. Then he seems to have fallen foul of the Duke of Buckingham, who had played such a great part in his career. He, with three others, was accused by the Duke of swearing falsely to a monstrous charge against his Grace and sued for the crushing sum of ten thousand pounds. A most curious circumstance brought out by this trial connects our story with the literature of to-day. In Scott's novel, _Peveril of the Peak_, it will be remembered that the villain is one Christian, brother of the deemster of the Isle of Man, who was executed by the Countess of Derby. This man, a most accomplished scoundrel, is there portrayed as the familiar Duke of Buckingham, who plays a part in the romance very like that which he plays in this story of real life. With the appearance of the later editions of the novel the author, in response to many inquiries concerning the authenticity of the various characters there portrayed, added some notes in which he gave some account of the originals of many of his characters. Concerning Christian, however, he declared that he was a wholly original creation, that, so far as he knew, no such man had ever existed, and that he was purely a fictitious character. Though, strange as it may seem, one of the men indicted with Blood in this action at law, was, in fact, named Christian, and Scott knew of him. And while he may not have played the part assigned to him in the story, he had for some time been in the service of the Duke, and to have had a reputation, if not a character, which might well have served as a model for the villain of the novel. The motive of Buckingham in beginning this suit is obscure, but it was suspected that he thought by this means to hush up certain accusations which might have been brought against his own machinations, then scarcely to be defended in the light of day. The curious and unusual procedure and the absurdity of the charge which one might suppose it beneath the dignity of so great a nobleman to press in such fashion against such men, lends a certain colour to this suspicion. In any event the suit was tried and Blood was duly found guilty. But he was never punished. He fell sick in the summer of 1680 and, after two weeks of suffering, died August 24, in his house on the southwest corner of Bowling Alley. He was firm and undaunted to the last, and looked death in the face at the end with the same courage he had exhibited many times before. All England was then in the throes of the excitement of the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Bill, and civil war seemed almost in sight. Whig and Tory stood arrayed against each other, with the crown as the prize between. It would not be supposed that the death of the old adventurer could have caused more than a passing ripple of interest. Quite the contrary was the case. Strange end of a strange story, the mystery which surrounded him during his life did not altogether end with his death and burial. Even that, said many, was but one of the old fox's tricks. And to prove that it was not his body which had been interred in the adjoining churchyard of New Chapel, Tothill Fields, the grave was opened after some days, the corpse carried before a coroner and identified by the curious fact that one of the thumbs was twice the natural size, a peculiarity which it seems would have betrayed Blood many times during his life. Thus ended the troubled life of a mysterious man. If his end was not peace it certainly was not worse than his beginning. Not a few persons must have breathed easier at the final burial of the secrets which died with him. He was not without some literary remains, chief of which was a Life, which though not written by his own hand, gives evidence of having been written, either under his direction, or from material furnished by him. It contains, as perhaps its chief matter of interest outside the facts here included, not many of which adorn its pages, a story of which Blood seems to have been very proud. It is that on one occasion some of the men in his following of desperadoes proved unfaithful. He caused them to be seized and brought before him for trial in a public house. There, after the case had been set forth and the arguments made, he sentenced them to death, but later reprieved them. This, of all the good stories he might have told, is left to us as almost his sole contribution to the account of his adventures. For the rest, his memory was promptly embalmed in prose and verse, mostly libellous and wholly worthless, from any standpoint, of which the following sample may suffice whether of history or literature: "_At last our famous hero, Colonel Blood, Seeing his projects all will do no good, And that success was still to him denied Fell sick with grief, broke his great heart and died._" But there is still one curious circumstance about his family which it would be too bad not to insert here, and with which this story may fittingly conclude. It concerns one of his sons whom we have not met, Holcroft Blood. This youth, evidently inheriting the paternal love of adventure, ran away from home at the age of twelve. He found his way, through an experience as a sailor, into the French army. After the Revolution of 1688 he became an engineer in the English service, owing chiefly to his escape from a suit brought against him by his enemies, which was intended to ruin him but by accident attracted to him instead the notice of the man with whose visit to England our story began, now William the Third of England and Holland. This became the foundation of his fortunes. In the English service young Blood rose rapidly through the long period of wars which followed. He gained the praise of the great Marlborough, and ultimately became the principal artillery commander of the allied forces in the War of the Spanish Succession, dying, full of honors, in 1707. Meanwhile Ormond's grandson and heir, the second Duke, distinguished himself likewise in that same war in other quarters, and bade fair to take high rank as a commander. But on the death of Queen Anne he took the Jacobite side, was driven into exile, and died many years later, a fugitive supported by a Spanish and Papal pension. Thus did Fate equalize the two families within a generation. I said at the beginning that this was to be the story of the greatest rascal in English history, but I am not so sure that it is, after all. It may be only the story of a brave man on the wrong side of politics and society. For his courage and ability, thrown on the other side of the scale, would, without doubt, have given him a far different place in history than the one he now occupies. What is the moral of it all? I do not know, and I am inclined to fall back on the dictum of a great man in a far different connection: "I do not think it desirable that we should always be drawing morals or seeking for edification. Of great men it may truly be said, 'It does good only to look at them.'" BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. The story here told has been related elsewhere though not in such detail nor, so far as I am aware, from precisely this point of view. Apart from the accounts in encyclopedias and biographical dictionaries, of which by far the best for its day is the _Biographia Brittanica_, the most accessible source of information is the article on Blood in the _Dictionary of National Biography_ and the fullest details are to be found in W. Hepworth Dixon's _Her Majesty's Tower_, VOL. IV, pp. 119, and in a note (No. 35) to Scott's _Peveril of the Peak_, in which novel the Colonel plays enough part to have a pen-portrait drawn of him by Scott in a speech by Buckingham. These, of course, touch but lightly on the broader aspects of the matter. The sources for nearly all the statements made in the foregoing narrative are to be found in the _Calendars of State Papers, Domestic and Ireland, 1660-1675_, in the _Reports of the Historical Manuscripts Commission_, especially in the _Ormond Papers_ and in Carte's _Life of Ormond_. In 1680 was published a pamphlet entitled _Remarks on the Life and Death of the Famed Mr. Blood, etc._, signed R. H., which includes, besides a general running account of several of the outlaw's chief adventures, a curious and obscure story of the Buckingham incident from which it is practically impossible to get any satisfaction. To this is added a Postscript written some time after the body of the work and describing Blood's illness, death and burial. This tract appears to have been written by some one who knew Blood, and in places seems to represent his own story. It would perhaps be too much to assume from the similarity of the initials that it was composed by that Richard Halliwell, Hallowell or Halloway, the tobacco cutter of Frying-Pan Alley, Petticoat Lane, whose name, or alias, appears among those often connected with Blood in his enterprises. Sir Gilbert Talbot's narrative of Blood's adventures, especially valuable for its full account of the attempt on the crown, is to be found in Strype's _Continuation of Stowe's Survey of London_. Some details as to Blood's London haunts may be found in Wheatley and Cunningham's _London, Past and Present_. There are several portraits of Blood extant of which the one in the _National Portrait Gallery_, painted by Gerard Soest, is the best. This is reproduced in Cust's _National Portrait Gallery_, VOL. I, p. 163. Another which appeared in the _Literary Magazine_, for the year 1791, is evidently a copy of the one prefixed to this study. This is reproduced from a contemporary mezzotint, which is described in Smith's _British Mezzotinto Portraits_, (Henry Sotheran & Co., Lond., 1884), as follows: THOMAS BLOOD. H. L. in oval frame directed to left facing towards and looking to front, long hair, cravat, black gown. Under: _G. White Fecit. Coll Blood. Sold by S. Sympson in ye Strand near Catherine Street._ H. 10; Sub. 8-3/4; W. 7-1/4; O.D.H. 8-1/4; W. 7. I. As described. II. Engraver's name and address erased, reworked, modern. Another reproduction of the same original may be found in Lord Ronald Gower's _Tower of London_, VOL. II, p. 66. The daggers of Blood and Parret which were used to stab Edwards are said to be preserved in the Royal Literary Fund Society's museum, Adelphi Terrace. The family of Blood among the earlier settlers of New England has sometimes been said to be closely connected with that of the Colonel, but there is no substantial evidence either way. (_Mass. Hist. Coll._) On the other hand a tablet to the memory of Blood's cousin, Neptune, is to be found in Kilfernora Cathedral (_Proc. Roy. Soc. Antiq. Irel. 1900_, p. 396). A note says that he was the son and namesake of his predecessor in the Deanery and grandson of Edmond Blood of Macknay in Derbyshire who settled in Ireland about 1595 and was M.P. for Ennis in 1613. A fuller account of the plots is to be found in articles by the author of this sketch in the _American Historical Review_ for April and July, 1909, under title of _English Conspiracy and Dissent, 1660-1674_. 
26651	----	THE FLAMING JEWEL ROBERT W. CHAMBERS ROBERT W. CHAMBERS _The Flaming Jewel_ TRIANGLE BOOKS NEW YORK COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY TRIANGLE BOOKS EDITION PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 1942 TRIANGLE BOOKS, 14 West Forty-ninth Street, New York, N. Y. PRINTED AND BOUND IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE AMERICAN BOOK--STRATFORD PRESS, INC., N. Y. C. TO MY FRIEND R. T. HAINES-HALSEY WHO UNRESERVEDLY BELIEVES EVERYTHING I WRITE To R. T. I Three Guests at dinner! That's the life!-- Wedgewood, Revere, and Duncan Phyfe! II You sit on Duncan--when you dare,-- And out of Wedgewood, using care, With Paul Revere you eat your fare. III From Paul you borrow fork and knife To wage a gastronomic strife In porringers; and platters rare Of blue Historic Willow-ware. IV Banquets with cymbal, drum and fife, Or rose-wreathed feasts with riot rife To your chaste suppers can't compare. V Let those deny the truth who dare!-- Paul, Duncan, Wedgewood! That's the life! All else is bunk and empty air. ENVOI The Cordon-bleu has set the pace With Goulash, Haggis, Bouillabaisse, Curry, Chop-suey, Kous-Kous Stew-- I can not offer these to you,-- Being a plain, old-fashioned cook,-- So pray accept this scrambled book. R. W. C. CONTENTS PAGE EPISODE ONE EVE 9 EPISODE TWO THE RULING PASSION 33 EPISODE THREE ON STAR PEAK 56 EPISODE FOUR A PRIVATE WAR 75 EPISODE FIVE DROWNED VALLEY 93 EPISODE SIX THE JEWEL AFLAME 110 EPISODE SEVEN CLINCH'S DUMP 134 EPISODE EIGHT CUP AND LIP 157 EPISODE NINE THE FOREST AND MR SARD 180 EPISODE TEN THE TWILIGHT OF MIKE 209 EPISODE ELEVEN THE PLACE OF PINES 233 EPISODE TWELVE HER HIGHNESS INTERVENES 255 THE FLAMING JEWEL EPISODE ONE EVE I During the last two years Fate, Chance, and Destiny had been too busy to attend to Mike Clinch. But now his turn was coming in the Eternal Sequence of things. The stars in their courses indicated the beginning of the undoing of Mike Clinch. From Esthonia a refugee Countess wrote to James Darragh in New York: "--After two years we have discovered that it was José Quintana's band of international thieves that robbed Ricca. Quintana has disappeared. "A Levantine diamond broker in New York, named Emanuel Sard, may be in communication with him. "Ricca and I are going to America as soon as possible. "VALENTINE." The day Darragh received the letter he started to look up Sard. But that very morning Sard had received a curious letter from Rotterdam. This was the letter: "Sardius--Tourmaline--Aragonite--Rhodonite * Porphyry--Obsidian--Nugget Gold--Diaspore * Novaculite * Yu * Nugget Silver--Amber--Matrix Turquoise--Elaeolite * Ivory--Sardonyx * Moonstone-- Iceland Spar--Kalpa Zircon--Eye Agate * Celonite-- Lapis--Iolite--Nephrite--Chalcedony--Hydrolite * Hegolite--Amethyst--Selenite * Fire Opal--Labradorite-- Aquamarine--Malachite--Iris Stone--Natrolite-- Garnet * Jade--Emerald--Wood Opal--Essonite-- Lazuli * Epidote--Ruby--Onyx--Sapphire --Indicolite--Topaz--Euclase * Indian Diamond * Star Sapphire--African Diamond--Iceland Spar-- Lapis Crucifer * Abalone--Turkish Turquoise * Old Mine Stone--Natrolite--Cats Eye--Electrum * * * 1/5 [=a] [=a]." That afternoon young Darragh located Sard's office and presented himself as a customer. The weasel-faced clerk behind the wicket laid a pistol handy and informed Darragh that Sard was away on a business trip. Darragh looked cautiously around the small office: "Can anybody hear us?" "Nobody. Why?" "I have important news concerning José Quintana," whispered Darragh; "Where is Sard?" "Why, he had a letter from Quintana this very morning," replied the clerk in a low, uneasy voice. "Mr. Sard left for Albany on the one o'clock train. Is there any trouble?" "Plenty," replied Darragh coolly; "do you know Quintana?" "No. But Mr. Sard expects him here any day now." Darragh leaned closer against the grille: "Listen very carefully; if a man comes here who calls himself José Quintana, turn him over to the police until Mr. Sard returns. No matter what he tells you, turn him over to the police. Do you understand?" "Who are you?" demanded the worried clerk. "Are you one of Quintana's people?" "Young man," said Darragh, "I'm close enough to Quintana to give _you_ orders. And give Sard orders.... And Quintana, too!" A great light dawned on the scared clerk: "_You_ are José Quintana!" he said hoarsely. Darragh bored him through with his dark stare: "Mind your business," he said. * * * * * That night in Albany Darragh picked up Sard's trail. It led to a dealer in automobiles. Sard had bought a Comet Six, paying cash, and had started north. Through Schenectady, Fonda, and Mayfield, the following day, Darragh traced a brand new Comet Six containing one short, dark Levantine with a parrot nose. In Northville Darragh hired a Ford. At Lake Pleasant Sard's car went wrong. Darragh missed him by ten minutes; but he learned that Sard had inquired the way to Ghost Lake Inn. That was sufficient. Darragh bought an axe, drove as far as Harrod's Corners, dismissed the Ford, and walked into a forest entirely familiar to him. He emerged in half an hour on a wood road two miles farther on. Here he felled a tree across the road and sat down in the bushes to await events. Toward sunset, hearing a car coming, he tied his handkerchief over his face below the eyes, and took an automatic from his pocket. Sard's car stopped and Sard got out to inspect the obstruction. Darragh sauntered out of the bushes, poked his pistol against Mr. Sard's fat abdomen, and leisurely and thoroughly robbed him. In an agreeable spot near a brook Darragh lighted his pipe and sat him down to examine the booty in detail. Two pistols, a stiletto, and a blackjack composed the arsenal of Mr. Sard. A large wallet disclosed more than four thousand dollars in Treasury notes--something to reimburse Ricca when she arrived, he thought. Among Sard's papers he discovered a cipher letter from Rotterdam--probably from Quintana. Cipher was rather in Darragh's line. All ciphers are solved by similar methods, unless the key is contained in a code book known only to sender and receiver. But Quintana's cipher proved to be only an easy acrostic--the very simplest of secret messages. Within an hour Darragh had it pencilled out: _Cipher_ "Take notice: "Star Pond, N. Y.... Name is Mike Clinch.... Has Flaming Jewel.... Erosite.... I sail at once. "QUINTANA." Having served in Russia as an officer in the Military Intelligence Department attached to the American Expeditionary Forces, Darragh had little trouble with Quintana's letter. Even the signature was not difficult, the fraction 1/5 was easily translated _Quint_; and the familiar prescription symbol [=a] [=a] spelled _ana_; which gave Quintana's name in full. He had heard of Erosite as the rarest and most magnificent of all gems. Only three were known. The young Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia had possessed one. * * * * * Darragh was immensely amused to find that the chase after Emanuel Sard should have led him to the very borders of the great Harrod estate in the Adirondacks. He gathered up his loot and walked on through the splendid forest which once had belonged to Henry Harrod of Boston, and which now was the property of Harrod's nephew, James Darragh. When he came to the first trespass notice he stood a moment to read it. Then, slowly, he turned and looked toward Clinch's. An autumn sunset flared like a conflagration through the pines. There was a glimmer of water, too, where Star Pond lay. * * * * * Fate, Chance, and Destiny were becoming very busy with Mike Clinch. They had started Quintana, Sard, and Darragh on his trail. Now they stirred up the sovereign State of New York. That lank wolf, Justice, was afoot and sniffing uncomfortably close to the heels of Mike Clinch. II Two State Troopers drew bridles in the yellowing October forest. Their smart drab uniforms touched with purple blended harmoniously with the autumn woods. They were as inconspicuous as two deer in the dappled shadow. There was a sunny clearing just ahead. The wood road they had been travelling entered it. Beyond lay Star Pond. Trooper Lannis said to Trooper Stormont: "That's Mike Clinch's clearing. Our man may be there. Now we'll see if anybody tips him off this time." Forest and clearing were very still in the sunshine. Nothing stirred save gold leaves drifting down, and a hawk high in the deep blue sky turning in narrow circles. Lannis was instructing Stormont, who had been transferred from the Long Island Troop, and who was unacquainted with local matters. Lannis said: "Clinch's dump stands on the other edge of the clearing. Clinch owns five hundred acres in here. He's a rat." "Bad?" "Well, he's mean. I don't know how bad he is. But he runs a rotten dump. The forest has its slums as well as the city. This is the Hell's Kitchen of the North Woods." Stormont nodded. "All the scum of the wilderness gathers here," went on Lannis. "Here's where half the trouble in the North Woods hatches. We'll eat dinner at Clinch's. His stepdaughter is a peach." The sturdy, sun-browned trooper glanced at his wrist watch, stretched his legs in his stirrups. "Jack," he said, "I want you to get Clinch right, and I'm going to tell you about his outfit while we watch this road. It's like a movie. Clinch plays the lead. I'll dope out the scenario for you----" He turned sideways in his saddle, freeing both spurred heels and lolled so, constructing a cigarette while he talked: "Way back around 1900 Mike Clinch was a guide--a decent young fellow they say. He guided fishing parties in summer, hunters in fall and winter. He made money and built the house. The people he guided were wealthy. He made a lot of money and bought land. I understand he was square and that everybody liked him. "About that time there came to Clinch's 'hotel' a Mr. and Mrs. Strayer. They were 'lungers.' Strayer seemed to be a gentleman; his wife was good looking and rather common. Both were very young. He had the consump bad--the galloping variety. He didn't last long. A month after he died his young wife had a baby. Clinch married her. She also died the same year. The baby's name was Eve. Clinch became quite crazy about her and started to make a lady of her. That was his mania." Lannis leaned from his saddle and carefully dropped his cigarette end into a puddle of rain water. Then he swung one leg over and sat side saddle. "Clinch had plenty of money in those days," he went on. "He could afford to educate the child. The kid had a governess. Then he sent her to a fancy boarding school. She had everything a young girl could want. "She developed into a pretty young thing at fifteen.... She's eighteen now--and I don't know what to call her. She pulled a gun on me in July." "What!" "Sure. There was a row at Clinch's dump. A rum-runner called Jake Kloon got shot up. I came up to get Clinch. He was sick-drunk in his bunk. When I broke in the door Eve Strayer pulled a gun on me." "What happened?" inquired Stormont. "Nothing. I took Clinch.... But he got off as usual." "Acquitted?" Lannis nodded, rolling another cigarette: "Now, I'll tell you how Clinch happened to go wrong," he said. "You see he'd always made his living by guiding. Well, some years ago Henry Harrod, of Boston, came here and bought thousands and thousands of acres of forest all around Clinch's----" Lannis half rose on one stirrup and, with a comprehensive sweep of his muscular arm, ending in a flourish: "--He bought everything for miles and miles. And that started Clinch down hill. Harrod tried to force Clinch to sell. The millionaire tactics you know. He was determined to oust him. Clinch got mad and wouldn't sell at any price. Harrod kept on buying all around Clinch and posted trespass notices. That meant ruin to Clinch. He was walled in. No hunters care to be restricted. Clinch's little property was no good. Business stopped. His stepdaughter's education became expensive. He was in a bad way. Harrod offered him a big price. But Clinch turned ugly and wouldn't budge. And that's how Clinch began to go wrong." "Poor devil," said Stormont. "Devil, all right. Poor, too. But he needed money. He was crazy to make a lady of Eve Strayer. And there are ways of finding money, you know." Stormont nodded. "Well, Clinch found money in those ways. The Conservation Commissioner in Albany began to hear about game law violations. The Revenue people heard of rum-running. Clinch lost his guide's license. But nobody could get the goods on him. "There was a rough backwoods bunch always drifting about Clinch's place in those days. There were fights. And not so many miles from Clinch's there was highway robbery and a murder or two. "Then the war came. The draft caught Clinch. Malone exempted him, he being the sole support of his stepchild. "But the girl volunteered. She got to France, somehow--scrubbed in a hospital, I believe--anyway, Clinch wanted to be on the same side of the world she was on, and he went with a Forestry Regiment and cut trees for railroad ties in southern France until the war ended and they sent him home. "Eve Strayer came back too. She's there now. You'll see her at dinner time. She sticks to Clinch. He's a rat. He's up against the dry laws and the game laws. Government enforcement agents, game protectors, State Constabulary, all keep an eye on Clinch. Harrod's trespass signs fence him in. He's like a rat in a trap. Yet Clinch makes money at law breaking and nobody can catch him red-handed. "He kills Harrod's deer. That's certain. I mean Harrod's nephew's deer. Harrod's dead. Darragh's the young nephew's name. He's never been here--he was in the army--in Russia--I don't know what became of him--but he keeps up the Harrod preserve--game-wardens, patrols, watchers, trespass signs and all." Lannis finished his second cigarette, got back into his stirrups and, gathering bridle, began leisurely to divide curb and snaffle. "That's the layout, Jack," he said. "Yonder lies the Red Light district of the North Woods. Mike Clinch is the brains of all the dirty work that goes on. A floating population of crooks and bums--game violators, boot-leggers, market hunters, pelt 'collectors,' rum-runners, hootch makers, do his dirty work--and I guess there are some who'll stick you up by starlight for a quarter and others who'll knock your block off for a dollar.... And there's the girl, Eve Strayer. I don't get her at all, except that she's loyal to Clinch.... And now you know what you ought to know about this movie called 'Hell in the Woods.' And it's up to us to keep a calm, impartial eye on the picture and try to follow the plot they're acting out--if there is any." Stormont said: "Thanks, Bill; I'm posted.... And I'm getting hungry, too." "I believe," said Lannis, "that you want to see that girl." "I do," returned the other, laughing. "Well, you'll see her. She's good to look at. But I don't get her at all." "Why?" "Because she _looks_ right and yet she lives at Clinch's with him and his bunch of bums. Would you think a straight girl could stand it?" "No man can tell what a straight girl can stand." "Straight or crooked she stands for Mike Clinch," said Lannis, "and he's a ratty customer." "Maybe the girl is fond of him. It's natural." "I guess it's that. But I don't see how any young girl can stomach the life at Clinch's." "It's a wonder what a decent woman will stand," observed Stormont. "Ninety-nine per cent. of all wives ought to receive the D. S. O." "Do you think we're so rotten?" inquired Lannis, smiling. "Not so rotten. No. But any man knows what men are. And it's a wonder women stick to us when they learn." They laughed. Lannis glanced at his watch again. "Well," he said, "I don't believe anybody has tipped off our man. It's noon. Come on to dinner, Jack." They cantered forward into the sunlit clearing. Star Pond lay ahead. On its edge stood Clinch's. III Clinch, in his shirt sleeves, came out on the veranda. He had little light grey eyes, close-clipped grey hair, and was clean shaven. "How are you, Clinch," inquired Lannis affably. "All right," replied Clinch; "you're the same, I hope." "Trooper Stormont, Mr. Clinch," said Lannis in his genial way. "Pleased to know you," said Clinch, level-eyed, unstirring. The troopers dismounted. Both shook hands with Clinch. Then Lannis led the way to the barn. "We'll eat well," he remarked to his comrade. "Clinch cooks." From the care of their horses they went to a pump to wash. One or two rough looking men slouched out of the house and glanced at them. "Hallo, Jake," said Lannis cheerily. Jake Kloon grunted acknowledgment. Lannis said in Stormont's ear: "Here she comes with towels. She's pretty, isn't she?" A young girl in pink gingham advanced toward them across the patch of grass. Lannis was very polite and presented Stormont. The girl handed them two rough towels, glanced at Stormont again after the introduction, smiled slightly. "Dinner is ready," she said. They dried their faces and followed her back to the house. It was an unpainted building, partly of log. In the dining room half a dozen men waited silently for food. Lannis saluted all, named his comrade, and seated himself. A delicious odour of johnny-cake pervaded the room. Presently Eve Strayer appeared with the dinner. There was dew on her pale forehead--the heat of the kitchen, no doubt. The girl's thick, lustrous hair was brownish gold, and so twisted up that it revealed her ears and a very white neck. When she brought Stormont his dinner he caught her eyes a moment--experienced a slight shock of pleasure at their intense blue--the gentian-blue of the summer zenith at midday. Lannis remained affable, even became jocose at moments: "No hootch for dinner, Mike? How's that, now?" "The Boot-leg Express is a day late," replied Clinch, with cold humour. Around the table ran an odd sound--a company of catamounts feeding might have made such a noise--if catamounts ever laugh. "How's the fur market, Jake?" inquired Lannis, pouring gravy over his mashed potato. Kloon quoted prices with an oath. A mean-visaged young man named Leverett complained of the price of traps. "What do you care?" inquired Lannis genially. "The other man pays. What are you kicking about, anyway? It wasn't so long ago that muskrats were ten cents." The trooper's good-humoured intimation that Earl Leverett took fur in other men's traps was not lost on the company. Leverett's fox visage reddened; Jake Kloon, who had only one eye, glared at the State Trooper but said nothing. Clinch's pale gaze met the trooper's smiling one: "The jays and squirrels talk too," he said slowly. "It don't mean anything. Only the show-down counts." "You're quite right, Clinch. The show-down is what we pay to see. But talk is the tune the orchestra plays before the curtain rises." Stormont had finished dinner. He heard a low, charming voice from behind his chair: "Apple pie, lemon pie, maple cake, berry roll." He looked up into two gentian-blue eyes. "Lemon pie, please," he said, blushing. * * * * * When dinner was over and the bare little dining room empty except for Clinch and the two State Troopers, the former folded his heavy, powerful hands on the table's edge and turned his square face and pale-eyed gaze on Lannis. "Spit it out," he said in a passionless voice. Lannis crossed one knee over the other, lighted a cigarette: "Is there a young fellow working for you named Hal Smith?" "No," said Clinch. "Sure?" "Sure." "Clinch," continued Lannis, "have you heard about a stick-up on the wood-road out of Ghost Lake?" "No." "Well, a wealthy tourist from New York--a Mr. Sard, stopping at Ghost Lake Inn--was held up and robbed last Saturday toward sundown." "Never heard of him," said Clinch, calmly. "The robber took four thousand dollars in bills and some private papers from him." "It's no skin off my shins," remarked Clinch. "He's laid a complaint." "Yes?" "Have any strangers been here since Saturday evening?" "No." There was a pause. "We heard you had a new man named Hal Smith working around your place." "No." "He came here Saturday night." "Who says so?" "A guide from Ghost Lake." "He's a liar." "You know," said Lannis, "it won't do you any good if hold-up men can hide here and make a getaway." "G'wan and search," said Clinch, calmly. * * * * * They searched the "hotel" from garret to cellar. They searched the barn, boat-shed, out-houses. While this was going on, Clinch went into the kitchen. "Eve," he said coolly, "the State Troopers are after that fellow, Hal Smith, who came here Saturday night. Where is he?" "He went into Harrod's to get us a deer," she replied in a low voice. "What has he done?" "Stuck up a man on the Ghost Lake road. He ought to have told me. Do you think you could meet up with him and tip him off?" "He's hunting on Owl Marsh. I'll try." "All right. Change your clothes and slip out the back door. And look out for Harrod's patrols, too." "All right, dad," she said. "If I have to be out to-night, don't worry. I'll get word to Smith somehow." Half an hour later Lannis and Stormont returned from a prowl around the clearing. Lannis paid the reckoning; his comrade led out the horses. He said again to Lannis: "I'm sure it was the girl. She wore men's clothes and she went into the woods on a run." As they started to ride away, Lannis said to Clinch, who stood on the veranda: "It's still blue-jay and squirrel talk between us, Mike, but the show-down is sure to come. Better go straight while the going's good." "I go straight enough to suit me," said Clinch. "But it's the Government that is to be suited, Mike. And if it gets you right you'll be in dutch." "Don't let that worry you," said Clinch. * * * * * About three o'clock the two State Troopers, riding at a walk, came to the forks of the Ghost Lake road. "Now," said Lannis to Stormont, "if you really believe you saw the girl beat it out of the back door and take to the woods, she's probably somewhere in there----" he pointed into the western forest. "But," he added, "what's your idea in following her?" "She wore men's clothes; she was in a hurry and trying to keep out of sight. I wondered whether Clinch might have sent her to warn this hold-up fellow." "That's rather a long shot, isn't it?" "Very long. I could go in and look about a bit, if you'll lead my horse." "All right. Take your bearings. This road runs west to Ghost Lake. We sleep at the Inn there--if you mean to cross the woods on foot." Stormont nodded, consulted his map and compass, pocketed both, unbuckled his spurs. When he was ready he gave his bridle to Lannis. "I'd just like to see what she's up to," he remarked. "All right. If you miss me come to the Inn," said Lannis, starting on with the led horse. * * * * * The forest was open amid a big stand of white pine and hemlock, and Stormont travelled easily and swiftly. He had struck a line by compass that must cross the direction taken by Eve Strayer when she left Clinch's. But it was a wild chance that he would ever run across her. And probably he never would have if the man that she was looking for had not fired a shot on the edge of that vast maze of stream, morass and dead timber called Owl Marsh. Far away in the open forest Stormont heard the shot and turned in that direction. But Eve already was very near when the young man who called himself Hal Smith fired at one of Harrod's deer--a three-prong buck on the edge of the dead water. * * * * * Smith had drawn and dressed the buck by the time the girl found him. He was cleaning up when she arrived, squatting by the water's edge when he heard her voice across the swale: "Smith! The State Troopers are looking for you!" He stood up, dried his hands on his breeches. The girl picked her way across the bog, jumping from one tussock to the next. When she told him what had happened he began to laugh. "Did you really stick up this man?" she asked incredulously. "I'm afraid I did, Eve," he replied, still laughing. The girl's entire expression altered. "So that's the sort you are," she said. "I thought you different. But you're all a rotten lot----" "Hold on," he interrupted, "what do you mean by that?" "I mean that the only men who ever come to Star Pond are crooks," she retorted bitterly. "I didn't believe you were. You look decent. But you're as crooked as the rest of them--and it seems as if I--I couldn't stand it--any longer----" "If you think me so rotten, why did you run all the way from Clinch's to warn me?" he asked curiously. "I didn't do it for _you_; I did it for my father. They'll jail him if they catch him hiding you. They've got it in for him. If they put him in prison he'll die. He couldn't stand it. I _know_. And that's why I came to find you and tell you to clear out----" The distant crack of a dry stick checked her. The next instant she picked up his rifle, seized his arm, and fairly dragged him into a spruce thicket. "Do you want to get my father into trouble!" she said fiercely. The rocky flank of Star Peak bordered the marsh here. "Come on," she whispered, jerking him along through the thicket and up the rocks to a cleft--a hole in the sheer rock overhung by shaggy hemlock. "Get in there," she said breathlessly. "Whoever comes," he protested, "will see the buck yonder, and will certainly look in here----" "Not if I go down there and take your medicine. Creep into that cave and lie down." "What do you intend to do?" he demanded, interested and amused. "If it's one of Harrod's game-keepers," said the girl drily, "it only means a summons and a fine for me. And if it's a State Trooper, who is prowling in the woods yonder hunting crooks, he'll find nobody here but a trespasser. Keep quiet. I'll stand him off." IV When State Trooper Stormont came out on the edge of Owl Marsh, the girl was kneeling by the water, washing deer blood from her slender, sun-tanned fingers. "What are you doing here?" she enquired, looking up over her shoulder with a slight smile. "Just having a look around," he said pleasantly. "That's a nice fat buck you have there." "Yes, he's nice." "You shot him?" asked Stormont. "Who else do you suppose shot him?" she enquired, smilingly. She rinsed her fingers again and stood up, swinging her arms to dry her hands,--a lithe, grey-shirted figure in her boyish garments, straight, supple, and strong. "I saw you hurrying into the woods," said Stormont. "Yes, I was in a hurry. We need meat." "I didn't notice that you carried a rifle when I saw you leave the house--by the back door." "No; it was in the woods," she said indifferently. "You have a hiding place for your rifle?" "For other things, also," she said, letting her eyes of gentian-blue rest on the young man. "You seem to be very secretive." "Is a girl more so than a man?" she asked smilingly. Stormont smiled too, then became grave. "Who else was here with you?" he asked quietly. She seemed surprised. "Did you see anybody else?" He hesitated, flushed, pointed down at the wet sphagnum. Smith's foot-prints were there in damning contrast to her own. Worse than that, Smith's pipe lay on an embedded log, and a rubber tobacco pouch beside it. She said with a slight catch in her breath: "It seems that somebody has been here.... Some hunter, perhaps,--or a game warden...." "Or Hal Smith," said Stormont. A painful colour swept the girl's face and throat. The man, sorry for her, looked away. After a silence: "I know something about you," he said gently. "And now that I've seen you--heard you speak--met your eyes--I know enough about you to form an opinion.... So I don't ask you to turn informer. But the law won't stand for what Clinch is doing--whatever provocation he has had. And he must not aid or abet any criminal, or harbour any malefactor." The girl's features were expressionless. The passive, sullen beauty of her troubled the trooper. "Trouble for Clinch means sorrow for you," he said. "I don't want you to be unhappy. I bear Clinch no ill will. For this reason I ask him, and I ask you too, to stand clear of this affair. "Hal Smith is wanted. I'm here to take him." As she said nothing, he looked down at the foot-print in the sphagnum. Then his eyes moved to the next imprint; to the next. Then he moved slowly along the water's edge, tracking the course of the man he was following. The girl watched him in silence until the plain trail led him to the spruce thicket. "Don't go in there!" she said sharply, with an odd tremor in her voice. He turned and looked at her, then stepped calmly into the thicket. And the next instant she was among the spruces, too, confronting him with her rifle. "Get out of these woods!" she said. He looked into the girl's deathly white face. "Eve," he said, "it will go hard with you if you kill me. I don't want you to live out your life in prison." "I can't help it. If you send my father to prison he'll die. I'd rather die myself. Let us alone, I tell you! The man you're after is nothing to us. We didn't know he had stuck up anybody!" "If he's nothing to you, why do you point that rifle at me?" "I tell you he is nothing to us. But my father wouldn't betray a dog. And I won't. That's all. Now get out of these woods and come back to-morrow. Nobody'll interfere with you then." Stormont smiled: "Eve," he said, "do you really think me as yellow as that?" Her blue eyes flashed a terrible warning, but, in the same instant, he had caught her rifle, twisting it out of her grasp as it exploded. The detonation dazed her; then, as he flung the rifle into the water, she caught him by neck and belt and flung him bodily into the spruces. But she fell with him; he held her twisting and struggling with all her superb and supple strength; staggered to his feet, still mastering her; and, as she struggled, sobbing, locked hot and panting in his arms, he snapped a pair of handcuffs on her wrists and flung her aside. She fell on both knees, got up, shoulder deep in spruce, blood running from her lip over her chin. The trooper took her by the arm. She was trembling all over. He took a thin steel chain and padlock from his pocket, passed the links around her steel-bound wrists, and fastened her to a young birch tree. Then, drawing his pistol from its holster, he went swiftly forward through the spruces. When he saw the cleft in the rocky flank of Star Peak, he walked straight to the black hole which confronted him. "Come out of there," he said distinctly. After a few seconds Smith came out. "Good God!" said Stormont in a low voice. "What are you doing here, Darragh?" Darragh came close and rested one hand on Stormont's shoulder: "Don't crab my game, Stormont. I never dreamed you were in the Constabulary or I'd have let you know." "Are _you_ Hal Smith?" "I sure am. Where's that girl?" "Handcuffed out yonder." "Then for God's sake go back and act as if you hadn't found me. Tell Mayor Chandler that I'm after bigger game than he is." "Clinch?" "Stormont, I'm here to _protect_ Mike Clinch. Tell the Mayor not to touch him. The men I'm after are going to try to rob him. I don't want them to because--well, I'm going to rob him myself." Stormont stared. "You must stand by me," said Darragh. "So must the Mayor. He knows me through and through. Tell him to forget that hold-up. I stopped that man Sard. I frisked him. Tell the Mayor. I'll keep in touch with him." "Of course," said Stormont, "that settles it." "Thanks, old chap. Now go back to that girl and let her believe that you never found me." A slight smile touched their eyes. Both instinctively saluted. Then they shook hands; Darragh, alias Hal Smith, went back into the hemlock-shaded hole in the rocks; Trooper Stormont walked slowly down through the spruces. When Eve saw him returning empty handed, something flashed in her pallid face like sunlight across snow. Stormont passed her, went to the water's edge, soaked a spicy handful of sphagnum moss in the icy water, came back and wiped the blood from her face. The girl seemed astounded; her face surged in vivid colour as he unlocked the handcuffs and pocketed them and the little steel chain. Her lip was bleeding again. He washed it with wet moss, took a clean handkerchief from the breast of his tunic and laid it against her mouth. "Hold it there," he said. Mechanically she raised her hand to support the compress. Stormont went back to the shore, recovered her rifle from the shallow water, and returned with it. As she made no motion to take it, he stood it against the tree to which he had tied her. Then he came close to her where she stood holding his handkerchief against her mouth and looking at him out of steady eyes as deeply blue as gentian blossoms. "Eve," he said, "you win. But you won't forgive me.... I wish we could be friends, some day.... We never can, now.... Good-bye." Neither spoke again. Then, of a sudden, the girl's eyes filled; and Trooper Stormont caught her free hand and kissed it;--kissed it again and again,--dropped it and went striding away through the underbrush which was now all rosy with the rays of sunset. * * * * * After he had disappeared, the girl, Eve, went to the cleft in the rocks above. "Come out," she said contemptuously. "It's a good thing you hid, because there was a real man after you; and God help you if he ever finds you!" Hal Smith came out. "Pack in your meat," said the girl curtly, and flung his rifle across her shoulder. Through the ruddy afterglow she led the way homeward, a man's handkerchief pressed to her wounded mouth, her eyes preoccupied with the strangest thoughts that ever had stirred her virgin mind. Behind her walked Darragh with his load of venison and his alias,--and his tongue in his cheek. Thus began the preliminaries toward the ultimate undoing of Mike Clinch. Fate, Chance, and Destiny had undertaken the job in earnest. EPISODE TWO THE RULING PASSION I Nobody understood how José Quintana had slipped through the Secret Service net spread for him at every port. The United States authorities did not know why Quintana had come to America. They realised merely that he arrived for no good purpose; and they had meant to arrest and hold him for extradition if requested; for deportation as an undesirable alien anyway. Only two men in America knew that Quintana had come to the United States for the purpose of recovering the famous "Flaming Jewel," stolen by him from the Grand Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia; and stolen from Quintana, in turn, by a private soldier in an American Forestry Regiment, on leave in Paris. This soldier's name, probably, was Michael Clinch. One of the men who knew why Quintana might come to America was James Darragh, recently of the Military Intelligence, but now passing as a hold-up man under the name of Hal Smith, and actually in the employment of Clinch at his disreputable "hotel" at Star Pond in the North Woods. The other man who knew why Quintana had come to America was Emanuel Sard, a Levantine diamond broker of New York, Quintana's agent in America. * * * * * Now, as the October days passed without any report of Quintana's detention, Darragh, known as Hal Smith at Clinch's dump, began to suspect that Quintana had already slid into America through the meshes of the police. If so, this desperate international criminal could be expected at Clinch's under some guise or other, piloted thither by Emanuel Sard. So Hal Smith, whose duty was to wash dishes, do chores, and also to supply Clinch's with "mountain beef"--or deer taken illegally--made it convenient to prowl every day in the vicinity of the Ghost Lake road. He was perfectly familiar with Emanuel Sard's squat features and parrot nose, having robbed Mr. Sard of Quintana's cipher and of $4,000 at pistol point. And one morning, while roving around the guide's quarters at Ghost Lake Inn, Smith beheld Sard himself on the hotel veranda, in company with five strangers of foreign aspect. During the midday dinner Smith, on pretense of enquiring for a guide's license, got a look at the Inn ledger. Sard's signature was on it, followed by the names of Henri Picquet, Nicolas Salzar, Victor Georgiades, Harry Beck, and José Sanchez. And Smith went back through the wilderness to Star Pond, convinced that one of these gentlemen was Quintana, and the remainder, Quintana's gang; and that they were here to do murder if necessary in their remorseless quest of "The Flaming Jewel." Two million dollars once had been offered for the Flaming Jewel; and had been refused. Clinch probably possessed it. Smith was now convinced of that. But he was there to rob Clinch of it himself. For he had promised the little Grand Duchess to help recover her Erosite jewel; and now that he had finally traced its probable possession to Clinch, he was wondering how this recovery was to be accomplished. To arrest Clinch meant ruin to Eve Strayer. Besides he knew now that Clinch would die in prison before revealing the hiding place of the Flaming Jewel. Also, how could it be proven that Clinch had the Erosite gem? The cipher from Quintana was not sufficient evidence. No; the only way was to watch Clinch, prevent any robbery by Quintana's gang, somehow discover where the Flaming Jewel had been concealed, take it, and restore it to the beggared young girl whose only financial resource now lay in the possible recovery of this almost priceless gem. * * * * * Toward evening Hal Smith shot two deer near Owl Marsh. To poach on his own property appealed to his sense of humour. And Clinch, never dreaming that Hal Smith was the James Darragh who had inherited Harrod's vast preserve, damned all millionaires for every buck brought in, and became friendlier to Smith. II Clinch's dump was the disposal plant in which collected the human sewage of the wilderness. It being Saturday, the scum of the North Woods was gathering at the Star Pond resort. A venison and chicken supper was promised--and a dance if any women appeared. Jake Kloon had run in some Canadian hooch; Darragh, alias Hal Smith, contributed two fat deer and Clinch cooked them. By ten o'clock that morning many of the men were growing noisy; some were already drunk by noon. Shortly after midday dinner the first fight started--extinguished only after Clinch had beaten several of the backwoods aristocracy insensible. Towering amid the wreck of battle, his light grey eyes a-glitter, Clinch dominated, swinging his iron fists. When the combat ended and the fallen lay starkly where they fell, Clinch said in his pleasant, level voice: "Take them out and stick their heads in the pond. And don't go for to get me mad, boys, or I'm liable to act up rough." They bore forth the sleepers for immersion in Star Pond. Clinch relighted his cigar and repeated the rulings which had caused the fracas: "You gotta play square cards here or you don't play none in my house. No living thumb-nail can nick no cards in my place and get away with it. Three kings and two trays is better than three chickens and two eggs. If you don't like it, g'wan home." He went out in his shirt sleeves to see how the knock-outs were reviving, and met Hal Smith returning from the pond, who reported progress toward consciousness. They walked back to the "hotel" together. "Say, young fella," said Clinch in his soft, agreeable way, "you want to keep your eye peeled to-night." "Why?" inquired Smith. "Well, there'll be a lot o' folks here. There'll be strangers, too.... Don't forget the State Troopers are looking for you." "Do the State Troopers ever play detective?" asked Smith, smiling. "Sure. They've been in here rigged out like peddlers and lumber-jacks and timber lookers." "Did they ever get anything on you?" "Not a thing." "Can you always spot them, Mike?" "No. But when a stranger shows up here who don't know nobody, he never sees nothing and he don't never learn nothing. He gets no hootch outa me. No, nor no craps and no cards. He gets his supper; that's what he gets ... and a dance, if there's ladies--and if any girl favours him. That's all the change any stranger gets out of Mike Clinch." They had paused on the rough veranda in the hot October sunshine. "Mike," suggested Smith carelessly, "wouldn't it pay you better to go straight?" Clinch's small grey eyes, which had been roaming over the prospect of lake and forest, focussed on Smith's smiling features. "What's that to you?" he asked. "I'll be out of a job," remarked Smith, laughing, "if they ever land you." Clinch's level gaze measured him; his mind was busy measuring him, too. "Who the hell are you, anyway?" he asked. "_I_ don't know. You stick up a man on the Ghost Lake Road and hide out here when the State Troopers come after you. And now you ask me if it pays better to go straight. Why didn't _you_ go straight if you think it pays?" "I haven't got a daughter to worry about," explained Smith. "If they get me it won't hurt anybody else." A dull red tinge came out under Clinch's tan: "Who asked _you_ to worry about Eve?" "She's a fine girl: that's all." Clinch's steely glare measured the young man: "You trying to make up to her?" he enquired gently. "No. She has no use for me." Clinch reflected, his cold tiger-gaze still fastened on Smith. "You're right," he said after a moment. "Eve is a good girl. Some day I'll make a lady of her." "She _is_ one, Clinch." At that Clinch reddened heavily--the first finer emotion ever betrayed before Smith. He did not say anything for a few moments, but his grim mouth worked. Finally: "I guess you was a gentleman once before you went crooked, Hal," he said. "You act up like you once was.... Say; there's only one thing on God's earth I care about. You've guessed it, too." He was off again upon his ruling passion. "Eve," nodded Smith. "Sure. She isn't my flesh and blood. But it seems like she's more, even. I want she should be a lady. It's _all_ I want. That damned millionaire Harrod bust me. But he couldn't stop me giving Eve her schooling. And now all I'm livin' for is to be fixed so's to give her money to go to the city like a lady. I don't care how I make money; all I want is to make it. And I'm a-going to." Smith nodded again. Clinch, now obsessed by his monomania, went on with an oath: "I can't make no money on the level after what Harrod done to me. And I gotta fix up Eve. What the hell do you mean by asking me would it pay me to travel straight I dunno." "I was only thinking of Eve. A lady isn't supposed to have a crook for a father." Clinch's grey eyes blazed for a moment, then their menacing glare dulled, died out into wintry fixity. "I wan't born a crook," he said. "I ain't got no choice. And don't worry, young fella; they ain't a-going to get me." "You can't go on beating the game forever, Clinch." "I'm beating it----" he hesitated--"and it won't be so long, neither, before I turn over enough to let Eve live in the city like any lady, with her autymobile and her own butler and all her swell friends, in a big house like she is educated for----" He broke off abruptly as a procession approached from the lake, escorting the battered gentry who now were able to wabble about a little. One of them, a fox-faced trap thief named Earl Leverett, slunk hastily by as though expecting another kick from Clinch. "G'wan inside, Earl, and act up right," said Clinch pleasantly. "You oughter have more sense than to start a fight in my place--you and Sid Hone and Harvey Chase. G'wan in and behave." He and Smith followed the procession of damaged ones into the house. The big unpainted room where a bar had once been was blue with cheap cigar smoke; the air reeked with the stench of beer and spirits. A score or more shambling forest louts in their dingy Saturday finery were gathered there playing cards, shooting craps, lolling around tables and tilting slopping glasses at one another. Heavy pleasantries were exchanged with the victims of Clinch's ponderous fists as they re-entered the room from which they had been borne so recently, feet first. "Now, boys," said Clinch kindly, "act up like swell gents and behave friendly. And if any ladies come in for the chicken supper, why, gol dang it, we'll have a dance!" III Toward sundown the first woodland nymph appeared--a half-shy, half-bold, willowy thing in the rosy light of the clearing. Hal Smith, washing glasses and dishes on the back porch for Eve Strayer to dry, asked who the rustic beauty might be. "Harvey Chase's sister," said Eve. "She shouldn't come here, but I can't keep her away and her brother doesn't care. She's only a child, too." "Is there any harm in a chicken supper and a dance?" Eve looked gravely at young Smith without replying. Other girlish shapes loomed in the evening light. Some were met by gallants, some arrived at the veranda unescorted. "Where do they all come from? Do they live in trees like dryads?" asked Smith. "There are always squatters in the woods," she replied indifferently. "Some of these girls come from Ghost Lake, I suppose." "Yes; waitresses at the Inn." "What music is there?" "Jim Hastings plays a fiddle. I play the melodeon if they need me." "What do you do when there's a fight?" he asked, with a side glance at her pure profile. "What do you suppose I do? Fight, too?" He laughed--mirthlessly--conscious always of his secret pity for this girl. "Well," he said, "when your father makes enough to quit, he'll take you out of this. It's a vile hole for a young girl----" "See here," she said, flushing; "you're rather particular for a young man who stuck up a tourist and robbed him of four thousand dollars." "I'm not complaining on my own account," returned Smith, laughing; "Clinch's suits me." "Well, don't concern yourself on my account, Hal Smith. And you'd better keep out of the dance, too, if there are any strangers there." "You think a State Trooper may happen in?" "It's likely. A lot of people come and go. We don't always know them." She opened a sliding wooden shutter and looked into the bar room. After a moment she beckoned him to her side. "There are strangers there now," she said, "--that thin, dark man who looks like a Kanuk. And those two men shaking dice. I don't know who they are. I never before saw them." But Smith had seen them at Ghost Lake Inn. One of them was Sard. Quintana's gang had arrived at Clinch's dump. A moment later Clinch came through the pantry and kitchen and out onto the rear porch where Smith was washing glasses in a tub filled from an ever-flowing spring. "I'm a-going to get supper," he said to Eve. "There'll be twenty-three plates." And to Smith: "Hal--you help Eve wait on the table. And if anybody acts up rough you slam him on the jaw--don't argue, don't wait--just slam him good, and I'll come on the hop." "Who are the strangers, dad?" asked Eve. "Don't nobody know 'em none, girlie. But they ain't State Troopers. They talk like they was foreign. One of 'em's English--the big, bony one with yellow hair and mustache." "Did they give any names?" asked Smith. "You bet. The stout, dark man calls himself Hongri Picket. French, I guess. The fat beak is a fella named Sard. Sanchez is the guy with a face like a Canada priest--José Sanchez--or something on that style. And then the yellow skinned young man is Nicole Salzar; the Britisher, Harry Beck; and that good lookin' dark gent with a little black Charlie Chaplin, he's Victor Georgiades." "What are those foreigners doing in the North Woods, Clinch?" enquired Smith. "Oh, they all give the same spiel--hire out in a lumber camp. But _they_ ain't no lumberjacks," added Clinch contemptuously. "I don't know what they be--hootch runners maybe--or booze bandits--or they done something crooked som'ers r'other. It's safe to serve 'em drinks." Clinch himself had been drinking. He always drank when preparing to cook. He turned and went into the kitchen now, rolling up his shirt sleeves and relighting his clay pipe. IV By nine o'clock the noisy chicken supper had ended; the table had been cleared; Jim Hastings was tuning his fiddle in the big room; Eve had seated herself before the battered melodeon. "Ladies and gents," said Clinch in his clear, pleasant voice, which carried through the hubbub, "we're a-going to have a dance--thanks and beholden to Jim Hastings and my daughter Eve. Eve, she don't drink and she don't dance, so no use askin' and no hard feelin' toward nobody. "So act up pleasant to one and all and have a good time and no rough stuff in no form, shape or manner, but behave like gents all and swell dames, like you was to a swarry on Fifth Avenue. Let's go!" He went back to the pantry, taking no notice of the cheering. The fiddler scraped a fox trot, and Eve's melodeon joined in. A vast scuffling of heavily shod feet filled the momentary silence, accented by the shrill giggle of young girls. "They're off," remarked Clinch to Smith, who stood at the pantry shelf prepared to serve whiskey or beer upon previous receipt of payment. In the event of a sudden raid, the arrangements at Clinch's were quite simple. Two large drain pipes emerged from the kitchen floor beside Smith, and ended in Star Pond. In case of alarm the tub of beer was poured down one pipe; the whiskey down the other. Only the trout in Star Pond would ever sample that hootch again. Clinch, now slightly intoxicated, leaned heavily on the pantry shelf beside Smith, adjusting his pistol under his suspenders. "Young fella," he said in his agreeable voice, "you're dead right. You sure said a face-full when you says to me, 'Eve's a lady, by God!' _You_ oughta know. You was a gentleman yourself once. Even if you take to stickin' up tourists you know a lady when you see one. And you called the turn. She _is_ a lady. All I'm livin' for is to get her down to the city and give her money to live like a lady. I'll do it yet.... Soon!... I'd do it to-morrow--to-night--if I dared.... If I thought it sure fire.... If I was dead certain I could get away with it.... I've _got_ the money. _Now!_ ... Only it ain't in _money_.... Smith?" "Yes, Mike." "You know me?" "Sure." "You size me up?" "I do." "All right. If you ever tell anyone I got money that ain't money I'll shoot you through the head." "Don't worry, Clinch." "I ain't. You're a crook; you won't talk. You're a gentleman, too. _They_ don't sell out a pal. Say, Hal, there's only one fella I don't want to meet." "Who's that, Mike?" "Lemme tell you," continued Clinch, resting more heavily on the shelf while Smith, looking out through the pantry shutter at the dancing, listened intently. "When I was in France in a Forestry Rig'ment," went on Clinch, lowering his always pleasant voice, "I was to Paris on leave a few days before they sent us home. "I was in the washroom of a caffy--a-cleanin' up for supper, when dod-bang! into the place comes a-tumblin' a man with two cops pushing and kickin' him. "They didn't see me in there for they locked the door on the man. He was a swell gent, too, in full dress and silk hat and all like that, and a opry cloak and white kid gloves, and mustache and French beard. "When they locked him up he stood stock still and lit a cigarette, as cool as ice. Then he begun walkin' around looking for a way to get out; but there wasn't no way. "Then he seen me and over he comes and talks English right away: 'Want to make a thousand francs, soldier?' sez he in a quick whisper. 'You're on,' sez I; 'show your dough.' 'Them Flics has went to get the Commissaire for to frisk me,' sez he. 'If they find this parcel on me I do twenty years in Noumea. Five years kills anybody out there.' 'What do you want I should do?' sez I, havin' no love for no cops, French or other. 'Take this packet and stick it in your overcoat,' sez he. 'Go to 13 roo Quinze Octobre and give it to the concierge for José Quintana.' And he shoves the packet on me and a thousand-franc note. "Then he grabs me sudden and pulls open my collar. God, he was strong. "'What's the matter with you?' says I. 'Lemme go or I'll mash your mug flat.' 'Lemme see your identification disc,' he barks. "Bein' in Paris for a bat, I had exchanged with my bunkie, Bill Hanson. 'Let him look,' thinks I; and he reads Bill's check. "'If you fool me,' says he, 'I'll folly ye and I'll do you in if it takes the rest of my life. You understand?' 'Sure,' says I, me tongue in me cheek. 'Bong! Allez vous en!' says he. "'How the hell,' sez I, 'do I get out of here?' 'You're a Yankee soldier. The Flics don't know you were in here. You go and kick on that door and make a holler.' "So I done it good; and a cop opens and swears at me, but when he sees a Yankee soldier was locked in the wash-room by mistake, he lets me out, you bet." Clinch smiled a thin smile, poured out three fingers of hooch. "What else?" asked Smith quietly. "Nothing much. I didn't go to no roo Quinze Octobre. But I don't never want to see that fella Quintana. I've been waiting till it's safe to sell--what was in that packet." "Sell what?" "What was in that packet," replied Clinch thickly. "What was in it?" "Sparklers--since you're so nosey." "Diamonds?" "And then some. I dunno what they're called. All I know is I'll croak Quintana if he even turns up askin' for 'em. He frisked somebody. I frisked him. I'll kill anybody who tries to frisk me." "Where do you keep them?" enquired Smith naïvely. Clinch looked at him, very drunk: "None o' your dinged business," he said very softly. The dancing had become boisterous but not unseemly, although all the men had been drinking too freely. Smith closed the pantry bar at midnight, by direction of Eve. Now he came out into the ballroom and mixed affably with the company, even dancing with Harvey Chase's sister once--a slender hoyden, all flushed and dishevelled, with a tireless mania for dancing which seemed to intoxicate her. She danced, danced, danced, accepting any partner offered. But Smith's skill enraptured her and she refused to let him go when her beau, a late arrival, one Charlie Berry, slouched up to claim her. Smith, always trying to keep Clinch and Quintana's men in view, took no part in the discussion; but Berry thought he was detaining Lily Chase and pushed him aside. "Hold on, young man!" exclaimed Smith sharply. "Keep your hands to yourself. If your girl don't want to dance with you she doesn't have to." Some of Quintana's gang came up to listen. Berry glared at Smith. "Say," he said, "I seen you before somewhere. Wasn't you in Russia?" "What are you talking about?" "Yes, you was. You was an officer! What you doing at Clinch's?" "What's that?" growled Clinch, shoving his way forward and shouldering the crowd aside. "Who's this man, Mike?" demanded Berry. "Well, who do you think he is?" asked Clinch thickly. "I think he's gettin' the goods on you, that's what I think," yelled Berry. "G'wan home, Charlie," returned Clinch. "G'wan, all o' you. The dance is over. Go peaceable, every one. Stop that fiddle!" The music ceased. The dance was ended; they all understood that; but there was grumbling and demands for drinks. Clinch, drunk but impassive, herded them through the door out into the starlight. There was scuffling, horse-play, but no fighting. The big Englishman, Harry Beck, asked for accommodations for his party over night. "Naw," said Clinch, "g'wan back to the Inn. I can't bother with you folks to-night." And as the others, Salzar, Georgiades, Picquet and Sanchez gathered about to insist, Clinch pushed them all out of doors in a mass. "Get the hell out o' here!" he growled; and slammed the door. He stood for a moment with head lowered, drunk, but apparently capable of reflection. Eve came from the melodeon and laid one slim hand on his arm. "Go to bed, girlie," he said, not looking at her. "You also, dad." "No.... I got business with Hal Smith." Passing Smith, the girl whispered: "You look out for him and undress him." Smith nodded, gravely preoccupied with coming events, and nerving himself to meet them. He had no gun. Clinch's big automatic bulged under his armpit. When the girl had ascended the creaking stairs and her door, above, closed, Clinch walked unsteadily to the door, opened it, fished out his pistol. "Come on out," he said without turning. "Where?" enquired Smith. Clinched turned, lifted his square head; and the deadly glare in his eyes left Smith silent. "You comin'?" "Sure," said Smith quietly. But Clinch gave him no chance to close in: it was death even to swerve. Smith walked slowly out into the starlight, ahead of Clinch--slowly forward in the luminous darkness. "Keep going," came Clinch's quiet voice behind him. And, after they had entered the woods,--"Bear to the right." Smith knew now. The low woods were full of sink-holes. They were headed for the nearest one. * * * * * On the edge of the thing they halted. Smith turned and faced Clinch. "What's the idea?" he asked without a quaver. "Was you in Roosia?" "Yes." "Was you an officer?" "I was." "Then you're spyin'. You're a cop." "You're mistaken." "Ah, don't hand me none like that! You're a State Trooper or a Secret Service guy, or a plain, dirty cop. And I'm a-going to croak you." "I'm not in any service, now." "Wasn't you an army officer?" "Yes. Can't an officer go wrong?" "Soft stuff. Don't feed it to me. I told you too much anyway. I was babblin' drunk. I'm drunk now, but I got sense. D'you think I'll run chances of sittin' in State's Prison for the next ten years and leave Eve out here alone? No. I gotta shoot you, Smith. And I'm a-going to do it. G'wan and say what you want ... if you think there's some kind o' god you can square before you croak." "If you go to the chair for murder, what good will it do Eve?" asked Smith. His lips were crackling dry; he moistened them. "Sink holes don't talk," said Clinch. "G'wan and square yourself, if you're the church kind." "Clinch," said Smith unsteadily, "if you kill me now you're as good as dead yourself. Quintana is here." "Say, don't hand me that," retorted Clinch. "Do you square yourself or no?" "I tell you Quintana's gang were at the dance to-night--Picquet, Salzar, Georgiades, Sard, Beck, José Sanchez--the one who looks like a French priest. Maybe he had a beard when you saw him in that café wash-room----" "What!" shouted Clinch in sudden fury. "What yeh talkin' about, you poor dumb dingo! Yeh fixin' to scare me? What do _you_ know about Quintana? Are you one of Quintana's gang, too? Is that what you're up to, hidin' out at Star Pond. Come on, now, out with it! I'll have it all out of you now, Hal Smith, before I plug you----" He came lurching forward, swinging his heavy pistol as though he meant to brain his victim, but he halted after the first step or two and stood there, a shadowy bulk, growling, enraged, undecided. And, as Smith looked at him, two shadows detached themselves from the trees behind Clinch--silently--silently glided behind--struck in utter silence. Down crashed Clinch, black-jacked, his face in the ooze. His pistol flew from his hand, struck Smith's leg; and Smith had it at the same instant and turned it like lightning on the murderous shadows. "Hands up! Quick!" he cried, at bay now, and his back to the sink-hole. Pistol levelled, he bent one knee, pushed Clinch over on his back, lest the ooze suffocate him. "Now," he said coolly, "what do you bums want of Mike Clinch?" "Who are you?" came a sullen voice. "This is none o' your bloody business. We want Clinch, not you." "What do you want of Clinch?" "Take your gun off us!" "Answer, or I'll let go at you. What do you want of Clinch?" "Money. What do you think?" "You're here to stick up Clinch?" enquired Smith. "Yes. What's that to you?" "What has Clinch done to you?" "He stuck _us_ up, that's what! Now, are you going to keep out of this?" "No." "We ain't going to hurt Clinch." "You bet you're not. Where's the rest of your gang?" "What gang?" "Quintana's," said Smith, laughing. A wild exhilaration possessed him. His flanks and rear were protected by the sink-hole. He had Quintana's gang--two of them--over his pistol. "Turn your backs and sit down," he said. As the shadowy forms hesitated, he picked up a stick and hurled it at them. They sat down hastily, hands up, backs toward him. "You'll both die where you sit," remarked Smith, "if you yell for help." Clinch sighed heavily, stirred, groped on the damp leaves with his hands. "I say," began the voice which Smith identified as Harry Beck's, "if you'll come in with us on this it will pay you, young man." "No," drawled Smith, "I'll go it alone." "It can't be done, old dear. You'll see if you try it on." "Who'll stop me? Quintana?" "Come," urged Beck, "and be a good pal. You can't manage it alone. We've got all night to make Clinch talk. We know how, too. You'll get your share----" "Oh, stow it," said Smith, watching Clinch, who was reviving. He sat up presently, and put both hands over his head. Smith touched him silently on the shoulder and he turned his heavy, square head in a dazed way. Blood striped his visage. He gazed dully at Smith for a little while, then, seeming to recollect, the old glare began to light his pale eyes. The next instant, however, Beck spoke again, and Clinch turned in astonishment and saw the two figures sitting there with backs toward Smith and hands up. Clinch stared at the squatting forms, then slowly moved his head and looked at Smith and his levelled pistol. "We know how to make a man squeal," said Harry Beck suddenly. "He'll talk. We can make Clinch talk, no fear! Leave it to us, old pal. Are you with us?" He started to look around over his shoulder and Smith hurled another stick and hit him in the face. "Quiet there, Harry," he said. "What's my share if I go in with you?" "One sixth, same's we all get." "What's it worth?" asked Smith, with a motion of caution toward Clinch. "If I say a million you'll tell me I lie. But it's nearer three--or you can have my share. Is it a go?" "You'll not hurt Clinch when he comes to?" "We'll make him talk, that's all. It may hurt him some." "You won't kill him?" "I swear by God----" "Wait! Isn't it better to shoot him after he squeals? Here's a lovely sink-hole handy." "Right-o! We'll make him talk first and then shove him in. Are you with us?" "If you turn your head I'll blow the face off you, Harry," said Smith, cautioning Clinch to silence with a gesture. "All right. Only you better make up your mind. That cove is likely to wake up now at any time," grumbled Beck. Clinch looked at Smith. The latter smiled, leaned over, and whispered: "Can you walk all right?" Clinch nodded. "Well, we'd better beat it. Quintana's whole gang is in these woods, somewhere, hunting for you, and they might stumble on us here, at any moment." And, to the two men in front: "Lie down flat on your faces. Don't stir; don't speak; or it's you for the sink-hole.... Lie down, I tell you! That's it. Don't move till I tell you to." Clinch got up from where he was sitting, cast one murderous glance at the prostrate forms, then followed Smith, noiselessly, over the stretch of sphagnum moss. * * * * * When they reached the house they saw Eve standing on the steps in her night-dress and bare feet, holding a lantern. "Daddy," she whimpered, "I was frightened. I didn't know where you had gone----" Clinch put his arm around her, turned his bloody face and looked at Smith. "It's _this_," he said, "that I ain't forgetting, young fella. What you done for me you done for _her_. "I gotta live to make a lady of her. That's why," he added thickly, "I'm much obliged to you, Hal Smith.... Go to bed, girlie----" "You're bleeding, dad?" "Aw, a twig scratched me. I been in the woods with Hal. G'wan to bed." He went to the sink and washed his face, dried it, kissed the girl, and gave her a gentle shove toward the stairs. "Hal and I is sittin' up talkin' business," he remarked, bolting the door and all the shutters. * * * * * When the girl had gone, Clinch went to a closet and brought back two Winchester rifles, two shot guns, and a box of ammunition. "Goin' to see it out with me, Hal?" "Sure," smiled Smith. "Aw' right. Have a drink?" "No." "Aw' right. Where'll you set?" "Anywhere." "Aw' right. Set over there. They may try the back porch. I'll jest set here a spell, n'then I'll kind er mosey 'round.... Plug the first fella that tries a shutter, Hal." "You bet." Clinch came over and held out his hand. "You said a face-full that time when you says to me, 'Clinch,' you says, 'Eve _is_ a lady.' ... I gotta fix her up. I gotta be alive to do it.... That's why I'm greatly obliged to yeh, Hal." He took his rifle and walked slowly toward the pantry. "You bet," he muttered, "she _is_ a lady, so help me God." EPISODE THREE ON STAR PEAK I Mike Clinch regarded the jewels taken from José Quintana as legitimate loot acquired in war. He was prepared to kill anybody who attempted to take the gems from him. At the very possibility his ruling passion blazed--his mania to make of Eve Strayer a grand lady. But now, what he had feared for years had happened. Quintana had found him,--Quintana, after all these years, had discovered the identity and dwelling place of the obscure American soldier who had robbed him in the wash-room of a Paris café. And Quintana was now in America, here in this very wilderness, tracking the man who had despoiled him. * * * * * Clinch, in his shirt-sleeves, carrying a rifle, came out on the log veranda and sat down to think it over. He began to realise that he was likely to have trouble with a man as cold-blooded and as dogged as himself. Nor did he doubt that those with Quintana were desperate men. On whom could he count? On nobody unless he paid their hire. None among the lawless men who haunted his backwoods "hotel" at Star Pond would lift a finger to help him. Almost any among them would have robbed him,--murdered him, probably,--if it were known that jewels were hidden in the house. He could not trust Jake Kloon; Leverett was as treacherous as only a born coward can be; Sid Hone, Harvey Chase, Blommers, Byron Hastings,--he knew them all too well to trust them,--a sullen, unscrupulous pack, partly cowardly, always fierce,--as are any creatures that live furtively, feed only by their wits, and slink through life just outside the frontiers of law. And yet, one of this gang had stood by him--Hal Smith--the man he himself had been about to slay. Clinch got up from the bench where he had been sitting and walked down to the pond where Hal Smith sat cleaning trout. "Hal," he said, "I been figuring some. Quintana don't dare call in the constables. I can't afford to. Quintana and I've got to settle this on our own." Smith slit open a ten-inch trout, stripped it, flung the entrails out into the pond, soused the fish in water, and threw it into a milk pan. "Whose jewels were they in the beginning?" he enquired carelessly. "How do I know?" "If you ever found out----" "I don't want to. I got them in the war, anyway. And it don't make no difference how I got 'em; Eve's going to be a lady if I go to the chair for it. So that's that." Smith slit another trout, gutted it, flung away the viscera but laid back the roe. "Shame to take them in October," he remarked, "but people must eat." "Same's me," nodded Clinch; "I don't want to kill no one, but Eve she's gotta be a lady and ride in her own automobile with the proudest." "Does Eve know about the jewels?" Clinch's pale eyes, which had been roving over the wooded shores of Star Pond, reverted to Smith. "I'd cut my throat before I'd tell her," he said softly. "She wouldn't stand for it?" "Hal, when you said to me, 'Eve's a lady, by God!' you swallered the hull pie. That's the answer. A lady don't stand for what you and I don't bother about." "Suppose she learns that you robbed the man who robbed somebody else of these jewels." Clinch's pale eyes were fixed on him: "Only you and me know," he said in his pleasant voice. "Quintana knows. His gang knows." Clinch's smile was terrifying. "I guess she ain't never likely to know nothing, Hal." "What do you purpose to do, Mike?" "Still hunt." "For Quintana?" "I might mistake him for a deer. Them accidents is likely, too." "If Quintana catches you it will go hard with you, Mike." "Sure. I know." "He'll torture you to make you talk." "You think I'd talk, Hal?" Smith looked up into the light-coloured eyes. The pupils were pin points. Then he went on cleaning fish. "Hal?" "What?" "If they get me,--but no matter; they ain't a-going to get me." "Were you going to tell me where those jewels are hidden, Mike?" enquired the young man, still busy with his fish. He did not look around when he spoke. Clinch's murderous gaze was fastened on the back of his head. "Don't go to gettin' too damn nosey, Hal," he said in his always agreeable voice. Smith soused all the fish in water again: "You'd better tell somebody if you go gunning for Quintana." "Did I ask your advice?" "You did not," said the young man, smiling. "All right. Mind your business." Smith got up from the water's edge with his pan of trout: "That's what I shall do, Mike," he said, laughing. "So go on with your private war; it's no button off _my_ pants if Quintana gets you." He went away toward the ice-house with the trout. Eve Strayer, doing chamber work, watched the young man from an upper room. The girl's instinct was to like Smith,--but that very instinct aroused her distrust. What was a man of his breeding and education doing at Clinch's dump? Why was he content to hang around and do chores? A man of his type who has gone crooked enough to stick up a tourist in an automobile nourishes higher--though probably perverted--ambitions than a dollar a day and board. She heard Clinch's light step on the uncarpeted stair; went on making up Smith's bed; and smiled as her step-father came into the room, still carrying his rifle. He had something else in his hand, too,--a flat, thin packet wrapped in heavy paper and sealed all over with black wax. "Girlie," he said, "I want you should do a little errand for me this morning. If you're spry it won't take long--time to go there and get back to help with noon dinner." "Very well, dad." "Go git your pants on, girlie." "You want me to go into the woods?" "I want you to go to the hole in the rocks under Star Peak and lay this packet in the hootch cache." She nodded, tucked in the sheets, smoothed blanket and pillow with deft hands, went out to her own room. Clinch seated himself and turned a blank face to the window. It was a sudden decision. He realised now that he couldn't keep the jewels in his house. War was on with Quintana. The "hotel" would be the goal for Quintana and his gang. And for Smith, too, if ever temptation overpowered him. The house was liable to an attempt at robbery any night, now;--any day, perhaps. It was no place for the packet he had taken from José Quintana. Eve came in wearing grey shirt, breeches, and puttees. Clinch gave her the packet. "What's in it, dad?" she asked smilingly. "Don't you get nosey, girlie. Come here." She went to him. He put his left arm around her. "You like me some, don't you, girlie?" "You know it, dad." "All right. You're all that matters to me ... since your mother went and died ... after a year.... That was crool, girlie. Only a year. Well, I ain't cared none for nobody since--only you, girlie." He touched the packet with his forefinger: "If I step out, that's yours. But I ain't a-going to step out. Put it with the hootch. You know how to move that keystone?" "Yes, dad." "And watch out that no game protector and none of that damn millionaire's wardens see you in the woods. No, nor none o' these here fancy State Troopers. You gotta watch out _this_ time, Eve. It means everything to us--to you, girlie--and to me. Go tip-toe. Lay low, coming and going. Take a rifle." Eve ran to her bed-room and returned with her Winchester and belt. "You shoot to kill," said Clinch grimly, "if anyone wants to stop you. But lay low and you won't need to shoot nobody, girlie. G'wan out the back way; Hal's in the ice house." II Slim and straight as a young boy in her grey shirt and breeches, Eve continued on lightly through the woods, her rifle over her shoulder, her eyes of gentian-blue always alert. The morning turned warm; she pulled off her soft felt hat, shook out her clipped curls, stripped open the shirt at her snowy throat where sweat glimmered like melted frost. The forest was lovely in the morning sunlight--lovely and still--save for the blue-jays--for the summer birds had gone and only birds destined to a long Northern winter remained. Now and then, ahead of her, she saw a ruffed grouse wandering in the trail. These, and a single tiny grey bird with a dreary note interminably repeated, were the only living things she saw except here and there a summer-battered butterfly of the Vanessa tribe flitting in some stray sunbeam. The haunting odour of late autumn was in the air--delicately acrid--the scent of frost-killed brake and ripening wild grasses, of brilliant dead leaves and black forest loam pungent with mast from beech and oak. Eve's tread was light on the moist trail; her quick eyes missed nothing--not the dainty imprint of deer, fresh made, nor the sprawling insignia of rambling raccoons--nor the big barred owl huddled on a pine limb overhead, nor, where the swift gravelly reaches of the brook caught sunlight, did she miss the swirl and furrowing and milling of painted trout on the spawning beds. Once she took cover, hearing something stirring; but it was only a yearling buck that came out of the witch-hazel to stare, stamp, then wheel and trot away, displaying the danger signal. In her cartridge-pouch she carried the flat, sealed packet which Clinch had trusted to her. The sack swayed gently as she strode on, slapping her left hip at every step; and always her subconscious mind remained on guard and aware of it; and now and then she dropped her hand to feel of the pouch and strap. The character of the forest was now changing as she advanced. The first tamaracks appeared, slim, silvery trunks, crowned with the gold of autumn foliage, outer sentinels of that vast maze of swamp and stream called Owl Marsh, the stronghold and refuge of forest wild things--sometimes the sanctuary of hunted men. From Star Peak's left flank an icy stream clatters down to the level floor of the woods, here; and it was here that Eve had meant to quench her thirst with a mouthful of sweet water. But as she approached the tiny ford, warily, she saw a saddled horse tied to a sapling and a man seated on a mossy log. The trappings of horse, the grey-green uniform of the man, left no room for speculation; a trooper of the State Constabulary was seated there. His cap was off; his head rested on his palm. Elbow on knee, he sat there gazing at the water--watching the slim fish, perhaps, darting up stream toward their bridal-beds hidden far away at the headwaters. A detour was imperative. The girl, from the shelter of a pine, looked out cautiously at the trooper. The sudden sight of him had merely checked her; now the recognition of his uniform startled her heart out of its tranquil rhythm and set the blood burning in her cheeks. There was a memory of such a man seared into the girl's very soul;--a man whose head and shoulders resembled this man's,--who had the same bright hair, the same slim and powerful body,--and who moved, too, as this young man moved. The trooper stirred, lifted his head to relight his pipe. The girl knew him. Her heart stood still; then heart and blood ran riot and she felt her knees tremble,--felt weak as she rested against the pine's huge trunk and covered her face with unsteady fingers. Until the moment, Eve had never dreamed what the memory of this man really meant to her,--never dreamed that she had capacity for emotion so utterly overwhelming. Even now confusion, shame, fear were paramount. All she wanted was to get away,--get away and still her heart's wild beating,--control the strange tremor that possessed her, recover mind and sense and breath. She drew her hand from her eyes and looked upon the man she had attempted to kill,--upon the young man who had wrestled her off her feet and handcuffed her,--and who had bathed her bleeding mouth with sphagnum,--and who had kissed her hands---- She was trembling so that she became frightened. The racket of the brook in his ears safeguarded her in a measure. She bent over nearly double, her rifle at a trail, and cautiously began the detour. * * * * * When at length the wide circle through the woods had been safely accomplished and Eve was moving out through the thickening ranks of tamarack, her heart, which seemed to suffocate her, quieted; and she leaned against a shoulder of rock, strangely tired. After a while she drew from her pocket _his_ handkerchief, and looked at it. The square of cambric bore his initials, J. S. Blood from her lip remained on it. She had not washed out the spots. She put it to her lips again, mechanically. A faint odour of tobacco still clung to it. By every law of loyalty, pride, self-respect, she should have held this man her enemy. Instead, she held his handkerchief against her lips,--crushed it there suddenly, closing her eyes while the colour surged and surged through her skin from throat to hair. Then, wearily, she lifted her head and looked out into the grey and empty vista of her life, where the dreary years seemed to stretch like milestones away, away into an endless waste. She put the handkerchief into her pocket, shouldered her rifle, moved on without looking about her,--a mistake which only the emotion of the moment could account for in a girl so habituated to caution,--for she had gone only a few rods before a man's strident voice halted her: "_Halte là! Crosse en air!_" "Drop that rifle!" came another voice from behind her. "You're covered! Throw your gun on the ground!" She stood as though paralysed. To the right and left she heard people trampling through the thicket toward her. "Down with that gun, damn you!" repeated the voice, breathless from running. All around her men came floundering and crashing toward her through the undergrowth. She could see some of them. As she stooped to place her rifle on the dead leaves, she drew the flat packet from her cartridge sack at the same time and slid it deftly under a rotting log. Then, calm but very pale, she stood upright to face events. The first man wore a red and yellow bandanna handkerchief over the lower half of his face, pulled tightly across a bony nose. He held a long pistol nearly parallel to his own body; and when he came up to where she was standing he poked the muzzle into her stomach. She did not flinch; he said nothing; she looked intently into the two ratty eyes fastened on her over the edge of his bandanna. Five other men were surrounding her, but they all wore white masks of vizard shape, revealing chin and mouth. They were different otherwise, also, wearing various sorts and patterns of sport clothes, brand new, and giving them an odd, foreign appearance. What troubled her most was the silence they maintained. The man wearing the bandanna was the only one who seemed at all a familiar figure,--merely, perhaps, because he was American in build, clothing, and movement. He took her by the shoulder, turned her around and gave her a shove forward. She staggered a step or two; he gave her another shove and she comprehended that she was to keep on going. Presently she found herself in a steep, wet deer-trail rising upward through a gully. She knew that runway. It led up Star Peak. Behind her as she climbed she heard the slopping, panting tread of men; her wind was better than theirs; she climbed lithely upward, setting a pace which finally resulted in a violent jerk backward,--a savage, wordless admonition to go more slowly. As she climbed she wondered whether she should have fired an alarm shot on the chance of the State Trooper, Stormont, hearing it. But she had thought only of the packet at the moment of surprise. And now she wondered whether, when freed, she could ever again find that rotting log. Up, up, always up along the wet gully, deep with silt and frost-splintered rock, she toiled, the heavy gasping of men behind her. Twice she was jerked to a halt while her escort rested. Once, without turning, she said unsteadily: "Who are you? What have I done to you?" There was no reply. "What are you going to do to me----" she began again, and was shaken by the shoulder until silent. At last the vast arch of the eastern sky sprang out ahead, where stunted spruces stood out against the sunshine and the intense heat of midday fell upon a bare table-land of rock and moss and fern. As she came out upon the level, the man behind her took both her arms and pulled them back and somebody bandaged her eyes. Then a hand closed on her left arm and, so guided, she stumbled and crept forward across the rocks for a few moments until her guide halted her and forced her into a sitting position on a smooth, flat boulder. She heard the crunching of heavy feet all around her, whispering made hoarse by breath exhausted, movement across rock and scrub, retreating steps. For an interminable time she sat there alone in the hot sun, drenched to the skin in sweat, listening, thinking, striving to find a reason for this lawless outrage. After a long while she heard somebody coming across the rocks, stiffened as she listened with some vague presentiment of evil. Somebody had halted beside her. After a pause she was aware of nimble fingers busy with the bandage over her eyes. At first, when freed, the light blinded her. By degrees she was able to distinguish the rocky crest of Star Peak, with the tops of tall trees appearing level with the rocks from depths below. Then she turned, slowly, and looked at the man who had seated himself beside her. He wore a white mask over a delicate, smoothly shaven face. His soft hat and sporting clothes were dark grey, evidently new. And she noticed his hands--long, elegantly made, smooth, restless, playing with a pencil and some sheets of paper on his knees. As she met his brilliant eyes behind the mask, his delicate, thin lips grew tense in what seemed to be a smile--or a soundless sort of laugh. "Veree happee," he said, "to make the acquaintance. Pardon my unceremony, miss, but onlee necissitee compels. Are you, perhaps, a little rested?" "Yes." "Ah! Then, if you permit, we proceed with affairs of moment. You will be sufficiently kind to write down what I say. Yes?" He placed paper and pencil in Eve's hand. Without demurring or hesitation she made ready to write, her mind groping wildly for the reason of it all. "Write," he said, with his silent laugh which was more like the soundless snarl of a lynx unafraid: "To Mike Clinch, my fathaire, from his child, Eve.... I am hostage, held by José Quintana. Pay what you owe him and I go free. "For each day delay he sends to you one finger which will be severed from my right hand----" Eve's slender fingers trembled; she looked up at the masked man, stared steadily into his brilliant eyes. "Proceed miss, if you are so amiable," he said softly. She wrote on: "--One finger for every day's delay. The whole hand at the week's end. The other hand then, finger by finger. Then, alas! the right foot----" Eve trembled. "Proceed," he said softly. She wrote: "If you agree you shall pay what you owe to José Quintana in this manner: you shall place a stick at the edge of the Star Pond where the Star rivulet flows out. Upon this stick you shall tie a white rag. At the foot of the stick you shall lay the parcel which contains your indebt to José Quintana. "Failing this, by to-night _one finger_ at sunset." The man paused: Eve waited, dumb under the surging confusion in her brain. A sort of incredulous horror benumbed her, through which she still heard and perceived. "Be kind enough to sign it with your name," said the man pleasantly. Eve signed. Then the masked man took the letter, got up, removed his hat. "I am Quintana," he said. "I keep my word. A thousand thanks and apologies, miss. I trust that your detention may be brief and not too disagreeable. I place at your feet my humble respects." He bowed, put on his hat, and walked quickly away. And she saw him descend the rocks to the eastward, where the peak slopes. When Quintana had disappeared behind the summit scrub and rocks, Eve slowly stood up and looked about her at the rocky pulpit so familiar. There was only one way out. Quintana had gone that way. His men no doubt guarded it. Otherwise, sheer precipices confronted her. She walked to the western edge where a sheet of slippery reindeer moss clothed the rock. Below the mountain fell away to the valley where she had been made prisoner. She looked out over the vast panorama of wilderness and mountain, range on range stretching blue to the horizon. She looked down into the depths of the valley where deep under the flaming foliage of October, somewhere, a State Trooper was sitting, cheek on hand, beside a waterfall--or, perhaps, riding slowly through a forest which she might never gaze upon again. There was a noise on the rocks behind her. A masked man came out of the spruce scrub, laid a blanket on the rocks, placed a loaf of bread, some cheese, and a tin pail full of water upon it, motioned her, and went away through the dwarf spruces. Eve walked slowly to the blanket. She drank out of the tin pail. Then she set aside the food, lay down, and buried her quivering face in her arms. * * * * * The sun was half way between zenith and horizon when she heard somebody coming, and rose to a sitting posture. Her visitor was Quintana. He came up to her quite close, stood with glittering eyes intent upon her. After a moment he handed her a letter. She could scarcely unfold it, she trembled so: "Girlie, for God's sake give that packet to Quintana and come on home. I'm near crazy with it all. What the hell's anything worth beside you girlie. I don't give a damn for nothing only you, so come on quick. Dad." * * * * * After a little while she lifted her eyes to Quintana. "So," he said quietly, "you are the little she-fox that has learned tricks already." "What do you mean?" "Where is that packet?" "I haven't it." "Where is it?" She shook her head slightly. "You had a packet," he insisted fiercely. "Look here! Regard!" and he spread out a penciled sheet in Clinch's hand: "José Quintana: "You win. She's got that stuff with her. Take your damn junk and let my girl go. "MIKE CLINCH." "Well," said Quintana, a thin, strident edge to his tone. "My father is mistaken. I haven't any packet." The man's visage behind his mask flushed darkly. Without warning or ceremony he caught Eve by the throat and tore open her shirt. Then, hissing and cursing and panting with his own violence, he searched her brutally and without mercy--flung her down and tore off her spiral puttees and even her shoes and stockings, now apparently beside himself with fury, puffing, gasping, always with a fierce, nasal sort of whining undertone like an animal worrying its kill. "Cowardly beast!" she panted, fighting him with all her strength--"filthy, cowardly beast!----" striking at him, wrenching his grasp away, snatching at the disordered clothing half stripped from her. His hunting knife fell clattering and she fought to get it, but he struck her with his open hand, knocking her down at his feet, and stood glaring at her with every tooth bared. "So," he cried, "I give you ten minutes, make up your mind, tell me what you do with that packet." He wiped the blood from his face where she had struck him. "You don't know José Quintana. No! You shall make his acquaintance. Yes!" Eve got up on naked feet, quivering from head to foot, striving to button the grey shirt at her throat. "Where?" he demanded, beside himself. Her mute lips only tightened. "Ver' well, by God!" he cried. "I go make me some fire. You like it, eh? We shall put one toe in the fire until it burn off. Yes? Eh? How you like it? Eh?" The girl's trembling hands continued busy with her clothing. "So!" he said, hoarsely, "you remain dumb! Well, then, in ten minutes you shall talk!" He walked toward her, pushed her savagely aside, and strode on into the spruce thicket. The instant he disappeared Eve caught up the knife he had dropped, knelt down on the blanket and fell to cutting it into strips. The hunting knife was like a razor; the feverish business was accomplished in a few moments, the pieces knotted, the cord strained in a desperate test over her knee. And now she ran to the precipice where, ten feet below, the top of a great pine protruded from the gulf. On the edge of the abyss was a spruce root. It looked dead, wedged deep between two rocks; but with all her strength she could not pull it out. Sobbing, breathless, she tied her blanket rope to this, threw the other end over the cliff's edge, and, not giving herself time to think, lay flat, grasped the knotted line, swung off. Knot by knot she went down. Half-way her naked feet brushed the needles. She looked over her shoulder, behind and down. Then, teeth clenched, she lowered herself steadily as she had learned to do in the school gymnasium, down, down, until her legs came astride of a pine limb. It bent, swayed, gave with her, letting her sag to a larger limb below. This she clasped, letting go her rope. Already, from the mountain's rocky crest above, she heard excited cries. Once, on her breakneck descent, she looked up through the foliage of the pine; and she saw, far up against the sky, a white-masked face looking over the edge of the precipice. But if it were Quintana or another of his people she could not tell. And, again looking down, she began again the terrible descent. * * * * * An hour later, Trooper Stormont of the State Constabulary, sat his horse in amazement to see a ragged, breathless, boyish figure speeding toward him among the tamaracks, her naked feet splashing through pool and mire and sphagnum. "Good heavens!" he exclaimed as she flung herself against his stirrup, sobbing, hysterical, and clinging to his knee. "Take me back," she stammered, "--take me back to daddy! I can't--go on--another step----" He leaned down, swung her up to his saddle in front, holding her cradled in his arms. "Lie still," he said coolly; "you're all right now." For another second he sat looking down at her, at the dishevelled hair, the gasping mouth,--at the rags clothing her, and at the flat packet clasped convulsively to her breast. Then he spoke in a low voice to his horse, guiding left with one knee. EPISODE FOUR A PRIVATE WAR I When State Trooper Stormont rode up to Clinch's with Eve Strayer lying in his arms, Mike Clinch strode out of the motley crowd around the tavern, laid his rifle against a tree, and stretched forth his powerful hands to receive his stepchild. He held her, cradled, looking down at her in silence as the men clustered around. "Eve," he said hoarsely, "be you hurted?" The girl opened her sky-blue eyes. "I'm all right, dad, ... just tired.... I've got your parcel ... safe...." "To hell with the gol-dinged parcel," he almost sobbed; "--did Quintana harm you?" "No, dad." As he carried her to the veranda the packet fell from her cramped fingers. Clinch kicked it under a chair and continued on into the house and up the stairs to Eve's bedroom. Flat on the bed, the girl opened her drowsy eyes again, unsmiling. "Did that dirty louse misuse you?" demanded Clinch unsteadily. "G'wan tell me, girlie." "He knocked me down.... He went away to get fire to make me talk. I cut up the blanket they gave me and made a rope. Then I went over the cliff into the big pine below. That was all, dad." Clinch filled a tin basin and washed the girl's torn feet. When he had dried them he kissed them. She felt his unshaven lips trembling, heard him whimper for the first time in his life. "Why the hell didn't you give Quintana the packet?" he demanded. "What does that count for--what does any damn thing count for against you, girlie?" She looked up at him out of heavy-lidded eyes: "You told me to take good care of it." "It's only a little truck I'd laid by for you," he retorted unsteadily, "--a few trifles for to make a grand lady of you when the time's ripe. 'Tain't worth a thorn in your little foot to me.... The hull gol-dinged world full o' money ain't worth that there stone-bruise onto them little white feet o' yourn, Eve. "Look at you now--my God, look at you there, all peaked an' scairt an' bleedin'--plum tuckered out, 'n' all ragged 'n' dirty----" A blaze of fury flared in his small pale eyes: "--And he hit you, too, did he?--that skunk! Quintana done that to my little girlie, did he?" "I don't know if it was Quintana. I don't know who he was, dad," she murmured drowsily. "Masked, wa'n't he?" "Yes." Clinch's iron visage twitched and quivered. He gnawed his thin lips into control: "Girlie, I gotta go out a spell. But I ain't a-leavin' you alone here. I'll git somebody to set up with you. You jest lie snug and don't think about nothin' till I come back." "Yes, dad," she sighed, closing her eyes. Clinch stood looking at her for a moment, then he went downstairs heavily, and out to the veranda where State Trooper Stormont still sat his saddle, talking to Hal Smith. On the porch a sullen crowd of backwoods riff-raff lounged in silence, awaiting events. Clinch called across to Smith: "Hey, Hal, g'wan up and set with Eve a spell while she's nappin'. Take a gun." Smith said to Stormont in a low voice: "Do me a favour, Jack?" "You bet." "That girl of Clinch's is in real danger if left here alone. But I've got another job on my hands. Can you keep a watch on her till I return?" "Can't you tell me a little more, Jim?" "I will, later. Do you mind helping me out now?" "All right." Trooper Stormont swung out of his saddle and led his horse away toward the stable. Hal Smith went into the bar where Clinch stood, oiling a rifle. "G'wan upstairs," he muttered. "I got a private war on. It's me or Quintana, now." "You're going after Quintana?" inquired Smith, carelessly. "I be. And I want you should git your gun and set up by Evie. And I want you should kill any living human son of a slut that comes botherin' around this here hotel." "I'm going after Quintana with you, Mike." "B'gosh, you ain't. You're a-goin' to keep watch here." "No. Trooper Stormont has promised to stay with Eve. You'll need every man to-day, Mike. This isn't a deer drive." Clinch let his rifle sag across the hollow of his left arm. "Did you beef to that trooper?" he demanded in his pleasant, misleading way. "Do you think I'm crazy?" retorted Smith. "Well, what the hell----" "They all know that some man used your girl roughly. That's all I said to him--'keep an eye on Eve until we can get back.' And I tell you, Mike, if we drive Star Peak we won't be back till long after sundown." Clinch growled: "I ain't never asked no favours of no State Trooper----" "He did you a favour, didn't he? He brought your daughter in." "Yes, 'n' he'd jail us all if he got anything on us." "Yes; and he'll shoot to kill if any of Quintana's people come here and try to break in." Clinch grunted, peeled off his coat and got into a leather vest bristling with cartridge loops. Trooper Stormont came in the back door, carrying his rifle. "Some rough fellow been bothering your little daughter, Clinch?" he inquired. "The child was nearly all in when she met me out by Owl Marsh--clothes half torn off her back, bare-foot and bleeding. She's a plucky youngster. I'll say so, Clinch. If you think the fellow may come here to annoy her I'll keep an eye on her till you return." Clinch went up to Stormont, put his powerful hands on the young fellow's shoulders. After a moment's glaring silence: "You _look_ clean. I guess you be, too. I wanta tell you I'll cut the guts outa any guy that lays the heft of a single finger onto Eve." "I'd do so, too, if I were you," said Stormont. "Would ye? Well, I guess you're a real man, too, even if you're a State Trooper," growled Clinch. "G'wan up. She's a-nappin'. If she wakes up you kinda talk pleasant to her. You act kind pleasant and cosy. She ain't had no ma. You tell her to set snug and ca'm. Then you cook her a egg if she wants it. There's pie, too. I cal'late to be back by sundown." "Nearer morning," remarked Smith. Stormont shrugged. "I'll stay until you show up, Clinch." The latter took another rifle from the corner and handed it to Smith with a loop of ammunition. "Come on," he grunted. On the veranda he strode up to the group of sullen, armed men who regarded his advent in expressionless silence. Sid Hone was there, and Harvey Chase, and the Hastings boys, and Cornelius Blommers. "You fellas comin'?" inquired Clinch. "Where?" drawled Sid Hone. "Me an' Hal Smith is cal'kalatin' to drive Star Peak. It ain't a deer, neither." There ensued a grim interval. Clinch's wintry smile began to glimmer. "Booze agents or game protectors? Which?" asked Byron Hastings. "They both look like deer--if a man gits mad enough." Clinch's smile became terrifying. "I shell out five hundred dollars for every _deer_ that's dropped on Star Peak to-day," he said. "And I hope there won't be no accidents and no mistakin' no _stranger_ for a deer," he added, wagging his great, square head. "Them accidents is liable to happen," remarked Hone, reflectively. After another pause: "Where's Jake Kloon?" inquired Smith. Nobody seemed to know. "He was here when Mike called me into the bar," insisted Smith. "Where'd he go?" Then, of a sudden, Clinch recollected the packet which he had kicked under a veranda chair. It was no longer there. "Any o' you fellas seen a package here on the pyazza?" demanded Clinch harshly. "Jake Kloon, he had somethin'," drawled Chase. "I supposed it was his lunch. Mebbe 'twas, too." In the intense stillness Clinch glared into one face after another. "Boys," he said in his softly modulated voice, "I kinda guess there's a rat amongst us. I wouldn't like for to be that there rat--no, not for a billion hundred dollars. No, I wouldn't. Becuz that there rat has bit my little girlie, Eve,--like that there deer bit her up onto Star Peak.... No, I wouldn't like for to be that there rat. Fer he's a-goin' to die like a rat, same's that there deer is a-goin' to die like a deer.... Anyone seen which way Jake Kloon went?" "Now you speak of it," said Byron Hastings, "seems like I noticed Jake and Earl Leverett down by the woods near the pond. I kinda disremembered when you asked, but I guess I seen them." "Sure," said Sid Hone. "Now you mention it, I seen 'em, too. Thinks I to m'self, they is pickin' them blackberries down to the crick. Yas, I seen 'em." Clinch tossed his rifle across his left shoulder. "Rats an' deer," he said pleasantly. "Them's the articles we're lookin' for. Only for God's sake be careful you don't mistake a _man_ for 'em in the woods." One or two men laughed. * * * * * On the edge of Owl Marsh Clinch halted in the trail, and, as his men came up, he counted them with a cold eye. "Here's the runway and this here hazel bush is my station," he said. "You fellas do the barkin'. You, Sid Hone, and you, Corny, start drivin' from the west. Harve, you yelp 'em from the north by Lynx Brook. Jim and Byron, you get twenty minutes to go 'round to the eastward and drive by the Slide. And you, Hal Smith,"--he looked around--"where 'n hell be you, Hal?----" Smith came up from the bog's edge. "Send 'em out," he said in a low voice. "I've got Jake's tracks in the bog." Clinch motioned his beaters to their duty. "Twenty minutes," he reminded Hone, Chase, and Blommers, "before you start drivin'." And, to the Hastings boys: "If you shoot, aim low for their bellies. Don't leave no blood around. Scrape it up. We bury what we get." He and Smith stood looking after the five slouching figures moving away toward their blind trails. When all had disappeared: "Show me Jake's mark," he said calmly. Smith led him to the edge of the bog, knelt down, drew aside a branch of witch-hopple. A man's footprint was plainly visible on the mud. "That's Jake," said Clinch slowly. "I know them half-soled boots o' hisn." He lifted another branch. "There's another man's track!" "The other is probably Leverett's." "Likely. He's got thin feet." "I think I'd better go after them," said Smith, reflectively. "They'll plug you, you poor jackass--two o' them like that, and one a-settin' up to watch out. Hell! Be you tired o' bed an' board?" Smith smiled: "Don't you worry, Mike." "Why? You think you're that smart? Jest becuz you stuck up a tourist you think you're cock o' the North Woods--with them two foxes lyin' out for to snap you up? Hey? Why, you poor dumb thing, Jake runs Canadian hootch for a livin' and Leverett's a trap thief! What could _you_ do with a pair o' foxes like that?" "Catch 'em," said Smith, coolly. "You mind your business, Mike." As he shouldered his rifle and started into the marsh, Clinch dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder; but the young man shook it off. "Shut up," he said sharply. "You've a private war on your hands. So have I. I'll take care of my own." "What's _your_ grievance?" demanded Clinch, surprised. "Jake Kloon played a dirty trick on me." "When was that?" "Not very long ago." "I hadn't heard," said Clinch. "Well, you hear it now, don't you? All right. All right; I'm going after him." As he started again across the marsh, Clinch called out in a guarded voice: "Take good care of that packet if you catch them rats. It belongs to Eve." "I'll take such good care of it," replied Smith, "that its proper owner need not worry." II The "proper owner" of the packet was, at that moment, on the Atlantic Ocean, travelling toward the United States. Four other pretended owners of the Grand Duchess Theodorica's jewels, totally unconscious of anything impending which might impair their several titles to the gems, were now gathered together in a wilderness within a few miles of one another. José Quintana lay somewhere in the forests with his gang, fiercely planning the recovery of the treasure of which Clinch had once robbed him. Clinch squatted on his runway, watching the mountain flank with murderous eyes. It was no longer the Flaming Jewel which mattered. His master passion ruled him now. Those who had offered violence to Eve must be reckoned with first of all. The hand that struck Eve Strayer had offered mortal insult to Mike Clinch. As for the third pretender to the Flaming Jewel, Jake Kloon, he was now travelling in a fox's circle toward Drowned Valley--that shaggy wilderness of slime and tamarack and depthless bog which touches the northwest base of Star Peak. He was not hurrying, having no thought of pursuit. Behind him plodded Leverett, the trap thief, very, very busy with his own ideas. To Leverett's repeated requests that Kloon halt and open the packet to see what it contained, Kloon gruffly refused. "What do we care what's in it?" he said. "We get ten thousand apiece over our rifles for it from them guys. Ain't it a good enough job for you?" "Maybe we make more if we take what's inside it for ourselves," argued Leverett. "Let's take a peek, anyway." "Naw. I don't want no peek nor nothin'. The ten thousand comes too easy. More might scare us. Let that guy, Quintana, have what's his'n. All I ask is my rake-off. You allus was a dirty, thieving mink, Earl. Let's give him his and take ours and git. I'm going to Albany to live. You bet I don't stay in no woods where Mike Clinch dens." They plodded on, arguing, toward their rendezvous with Quintana's outpost on the edge of Drowned Valley. * * * * * The fourth pretender to the pearls, rubies, and great gem called the Flaming Jewel, stolen from the young Grand Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia by José Quintana, was an unconscious pretender, entirely innocent of the rôle assigned her by Clinch. For Eve Strayer had never heard where the packet came from or what it contained. All she knew was that her stepfather had told her that it belonged to her. And the knowledge left her incurious. III Eve slept the sleep of mental and physical exhaustion. Reaction from fear brings a fatigue more profound than that which follows physical overstrain. But the healthy mind, like the healthy body, disposes very thoroughly of toxics which arise from terror and exhaustion. The girl slept profoundly, calmly. Her bruised young mind and body left her undisturbed. There was neither restlessness nor fever. Sleep swept her with its clean, sweet tide, cleansing the superb youth and health of her with the most wonderful balm in the Divine pharmacy. She awoke late in the afternoon, opened her flower-blue eyes, and saw State Trooper Stormont sitting by the window, and gazing out. Perhaps Eve's confused senses mistook the young man for a vision; for she lay very still, nor stirred even her little finger. After a while Stormont glanced around at her. A warm, delicate colour stained her skin slowly, evenly, from throat to hair. He got up and came over to the bed. "How do you feel?" he asked, awkwardly. "Where is dad?" she managed to inquire in a steady voice. "He won't be back till late. He asked me to stick around--in case you needed anything----" The girl's clear eyes searched his. "Trooper Stormont?" "Yes, Eve." "Dad's gone after Quintana." "Is he the fellow who misused you?" "I think so." "Who is he?" "I don't know." "Is he your enemy or your stepfather's?" But the girl shook her head: "I can't discuss dad's affairs with--with----" "With a State Trooper," smiled Stormont. "That's all right, Eve. You don't have to." There was a pause; Stormont stood beside the bed, looking down at her with his diffident, boyish smile. And the girl gazed back straight into his eyes--eyes she had so often looked into in her dreams. "I'm to cook you an egg and bring you some pie," he remarked, still smiling. "Did dad say I am to stay in bed?" "That was my inference. Do you feel very lame and sore?" "My feet burn." "You poor kid!... Would you let me look at them? I have a first-aid packet with me." After a moment she nodded and turned her face on the pillow. He drew aside the cover a little, knelt down beside the bed. Then he rose and went downstairs to the kitchen. There was hot water in the kettle. He fetched it back, bathed her feet, drew out from cut and scratch the flakes of granite-grit and brier-points that still remained there. From his first-aid packet he took a capsule, dissolved it, sterilized the torn skin, then bandaged both feet with a deliciously cool salve, and drew the sheets into place. Eve had not stirred nor spoken. He washed and dried his hands and came back, drawing his chair nearer to the bedside. "Sleep, if you feel like it," he said pleasantly. As she made no sound or movement he bent over to see if she had already fallen asleep. And noticed that her flushed cheeks were wet with tears. "Are you suffering?" he asked gently. "No.... You are so wonderfully kind...." "Why shouldn't I be kind?" he said, amused and touched by the girl's emotion. "I tried to shoot you once. That is why you ought to hate me." He began to laugh: "Is _that_ what you're thinking about?" "I--never can--forget----" "Nonsense. We're quits anyway. Do you remember what I did to _you_?" He was thinking of the handcuffs. Then, in her vivid blush he read what she was thinking. And he remembered his lips on her palms. He, too, now was blushing brilliantly at memory of that swift, sudden rush of romantic tenderness which this girl had witnessed that memorable day on Owl Marsh. In the hot, uncomfortable silence, neither spoke. He seated himself after a while. And, after a while, she turned on her pillow part way toward him. Somehow they both understood that it was friendship which had subtly filled the interval that separated them since that amazing day. "I've often thought of you," he said,--as though they had been discussing his absence. No hour of the waking day that she had not thought of him. But she did not say so now. After a little while: "Is yours a lonely life?" she asked in a low voice. "Sometimes. But I love the forest." "Sometimes," she said, "the forest seems like a trap that I can't escape. Sometimes I hate it." "Are you lonely, Eve?" "As you are. You see I know what the outside world is. I miss it." "You were in boarding school and college." "Yes." "It must be hard for you here at Star Pond." The girl sighed, unconsciously: "There are days when I--can scarcely--stand it.... The wilderness would be more endurable if dad and I were all alone.... But even then----" "You need young people of your own age,--educated companions----" "I need the city, Mr. Stormont. I need all it can give: I'm starving for it. That's all." She turned on her pillow, and he saw that she was smiling faintly. Her face bore no trace of the tragic truth she had uttered. But the tragedy was plain enough to him, even without her passionless words of revolt. The situation of this young, educated girl, aglow with youth, fettered, body and mind, to the squalor of Clinch's dump, was perfectly plain to anybody. She said, seeing his troubled expression: "I'm sorry I spoke that way." "I knew how you must feel, anyway." "It seems ungrateful," she murmured. "I love my step-father." "You've proven that," he remarked with a dry humour that brought the hot flush to her face again. "I must have been crazy that day," she said. "It scares me to remember what I tried to do.... What a frightful thing--if I had killed you----How _can_ you forgive me?" "How can you forgive _me_, Eve?" She turned her head: "I do." "Entirely?" "Yes." He said,--a slight emotion noticeable in his voice: "Well, I forgave you before the darned gun exploded in our hands." "How _could_ you?" she protested. "I was thinking all the while that you were acting as I'd have acted if anything threatened _my_ father." "Were you thinking of _that_?" "Yes,--and also how to get hold of you before you shot me." He began to laugh. After a moment she turned her head to look at him, and her smile glimmered, responsive to his amusement. But she shivered slightly, too. "How about that egg?" he inquired. "I can get up----" "Better keep off your feet. What is there in the pantry? You must be starved." "I could eat a little before supper time," she admitted. "I forgot to take my lunch with me this morning. It is still there in the pantry on the bread box, wrapped up in brown paper, just as I left it----" She half rose in bed, supported on one arm, her curly brown-gold hair framing her face: "--Two cakes of sugar-milk chocolate in a flat brown packet tied with a string," she explained, smiling at his amusement. So he went down to the pantry and discovered the parcel on the bread box where she had left it that morning before starting for the cache on Owl Marsh. He brought it to her, placed both pillows upright behind her, stepped back gaily to admire the effect. Eve, with her parcel in her hands, laughed shyly at his comedy. "Begin on your chocolate," he said. "I'm going back to fix you some bread and butter and a cup of tea." When again he had disappeared, the girl, still smiling, began to untie her packet, unhurriedly, slowly loosening string and wrapping. Her attention was not fixed on what her slender fingers were about. She drew from the parcel a flat morocco case with a coat of arms and crest stamped on it in gold, black, and scarlet. For a few moments she stared at the object stupidly. The next moment she heard Stormont's spurred tread on the stairs; and she thrust the morocco case and the wrapping under the pillows behind her. She looked up at him in a dazed way when he came in with the tea and bread. He set the tin tray on her bureau and came over to the bedside. "Eve," he said, "you look very white and ill. Have you been hurt somewhere, and haven't you admitted it?" She seemed unable to speak, and he took both her hands and looked anxiously into the lovely, pallid features. After a moment she turned her head and buried her face in the pillow, trembling now in overwhelming realization of what she had endured for the sake of two cakes of sugar-milk chocolate hidden under a bush in the forest. * * * * * For a long while the girl lay there, the feverish flush of tears on her partly hidden face, her nervous hands tremulous, restless, now seeking his, convulsively, now striving to escape his clasp--eloquent, uncertain little hands that seemed to tell so much and yet were telling him nothing he could understand. "Eve, dear," he said, "are you in pain? What is it that has happened to you? I thought you were all right. You seemed all right----" "I am," she said in a smothered voice. "You'll stay here with me, won't you?" "Of course I will. It's just the reaction. It's all over. You're relaxing. That's all, dear. You're safe. Nothing can harm you now----" "Please don't leave me." After a moment: "I won't leave you.... I wish I might never leave you." In the tense silence that followed her trembling ceased. Then his heart, heavy, irregular, began beating so that the startled pulses in her body awoke, wildly responsive. Deep emotions, new, unfamiliar, were stirring, awaking, confusing them both. In a sudden instinct to escape, she turned and partly rose on one elbow, gazing blindly about her out of tear-marred eyes. "I want my room to myself," she murmured in a breathless sort of way, "--I want you to go out, please----" A boyish flush burnt his face. He got up slowly, took his rifle from the corner, went out, closing the door, and seated himself on the stairs. And there, on guard, sat Trooper Stormont, rigid, unstirring, hour after hour, facing the first great passion of his life, and stunned by the impact of its swift and unexpected blow. * * * * * In her chamber, on the bed's edge, sat Eve Strayer, her deep eyes fixed on space. Vague emotions, exquisitely recurrent, new born, possessed her. The whole world, too, all around her seemed to have become misty and golden and all pulsating with a faint, still rhythm that indefinably thrilled her pulses to response. Passion, full-armed, springs flaming from the heart of man. Woman is slow to burn. And it was the delicate phantom of passion that Eve gazed upon, there in her unpainted chamber, her sun-tanned fingers linked listlessly in her lap, her little feet like bruised white flowers drooping above the floor. Hour after hour she sat there dreaming, staring at the tinted ghost of Eros, rose-hued, near-smiling, unreal, impalpable as the dusty sunbeam that slanted from her window, gilding the boarded floor. * * * * * Three spectres, gliding near, paused to gaze at State Trooper Stormont, on guard by the stairs. Then they looked at the closed door of Eve's chamber. Then the three spectres, Fate, Chance and Destiny, whispering together, passed on toward the depths of the sunset forest. EPISODE FIVE DROWNED VALLEY I The soft, bluish forest shadows had lengthened, and the barred sun-rays, filtering through, were tinged with a rosy hue before Jake Kloon, the hootch runner, and Earl Leverett, trap thief, came to Drowned Valley. They were still a mile distant from the most southern edge of that vast desolation, but already tamaracks appeared in the beauty of their burnt gold; little pools glimmered here and there; patches of amber sphagnum and crimson pitcher-plants became frequent; and once or twice Kloon's big boots broke through the crust of fallen leaves, soaking him to the ankles with black silt. Leverett, always a coward, had pursued his devious and larcenous way through the world, always in deadly fear of sink holes. His movements and paths were those of a weasel, preferring always solid ground; but he lacked the courage of that sinuous little beast, though he possessed all of its ferocity and far more cunning. Now trotting lightly and tirelessly in the broad and careless spoor of Jake Kloon, his narrow, pointed head alert, and every fear-sharpened instinct tensely observant, the trap-thief continued to meditate murder. Like all cowards, he had always been inclined to bold and ruthless action; but inclination was all that ever had happened. Yet, even in his pitiable misdemeanours he slunk through life in terror of that strength which never hesitates at violence. In his petty pilfering he died a hundred deaths for every trapped mink or otter he filched; he heard the game protector's tread as he slunk from the bagged trout brook or crawled away, belly dragging, and pockets full of snared grouse. Always he had dreamed of the day when, through some sudden bold and savage stroke, he could deliver himself from a life of fear and live in a city, grossly, replete with the pleasures of satiation, never again to see a tree or a lonely lake or the blue peaks which, always, he had hated because they seemed to spy on him from their sky-blue heights. They were spying on him now as he moved lightly, furtively at Jake Kloon's heels, meditating once more that swift, bold stroke which forever would free him from all care and fear. He looked at the back of Kloon's massive head. One shot would blow that skull into fragments, he thought, shivering. One shot from behind,--and twenty thousand dollars,--or, if it proved a better deal, the contents of the packet. For, if Quintana's bribery had dazzled them, what effect might the contents of that secret packet have if revealed? Always in his mean and busy brain he was trying to figure to himself what that packet must contain. And, to make the bribe worth while, Leverett had concluded that only a solid packet of thousand-dollar bills could account for the twenty thousand offered. There might easily be half a million in bills pressed together in that heavy, flat packet. Bills were absolutely safe plunder. But Kloon had turned a deaf ear to his suggestions,--Kloon, who never entertained ambitions beyond his hootch rake-off,--whose miserable imagination stopped at a wretched percentage, satisfied. One shot! There was the back of Kloon's bushy head. One shot!--and fear, which had shadowed him from birth, was at an end forever. Ended, too, privation,--the bitter rigour of black winters; scorching days; bodily squalor; ills that such as he endured in a wilderness where, like other creatures of the wild, men stricken died or recovered by chance alone. A single shot would settle all problems for him.... But if he missed? At the mere idea he trembled as he trotted on, trying to tell himself that he couldn't miss. No use; always the coward's "if" blocked him; and the coward's rage,--fiercest of all fury,--ravaged him, almost crazing him with his own impotence. * * * * * Tamaracks, sphagnum, crimson pitcher-plants grew thicker; wet woods set with little black pools stretched away on every side. It was still nearly a mile from Drowned Valley when Jake Kloon halted in his tracks and seated himself on a narrow ridge of hard ground. And Leverett came lightly up and, after nosing the whole vicinity, sat down cautiously where Kloon would have to turn partly around to look at him. "Where the hell do we meet up with Quintana?" growled Kloon, tearing a mouthful from a gnawed tobacco plug and shoving the remainder deep into his trousers pocket. "We gotta travel a piece, yet.... Say, Jake, be you a man or be you a poor dumb critter what ain't got no spunk?" Kloon, chewing on his cud, turned and glanced at him. Then he spat, as answer. "If you got the spunk of a chipmunk you and me'll take a peek at that there packet. I bet you it's thousand-dollar bills--more'n a billion million dollars, likely." Kloon's dogged silence continued. Leverett licked his dry lips. His rifle lay on his knees. Almost imperceptibly he moved it, moved it again, froze stiff as Kloon spat, then, by infinitesimal degrees, continued to edge the muzzle toward Kloon. "Jake?" "Aw, shut your head," grumbled Kloon disdainfully. "You allus was a dirty rat--you sneakin' trap robber. Enough's enough. I ain't got no use for no billion million dollar bills. Ten thousand'll buy me all I cal'late to need till I'm planted. But you're like a hawg; you ain't never had enough o' nothin' and you won't never git enough, neither,--not if you wuz God a'mighty you wouldn't." "Ten thousand dollars hain't nothin' to a billion million, Jake." Kloon squirted a stream of tobacco at a pitcher plant and filled the cup. Diverted and gratified by the accuracy of his aim, he took other shots at intervals. Leverett moved the muzzle of his rifle a hair's width to the left, shivered, moved it again. Under his soggy, sun-tanned skin a pallor made his visage sickly grey. "Jake?" No answer. "Say, Jake?" No notice. "Jake, I wanta take a peek at them bills." Merely another stream of tobacco soiling the crimson pitcher. "I'm--I'm desprit. I gotta take a peek. I gotta--gotta----" Something in Leverett's unsteady voice made Kloon turn his head. "You gol rammed fool," he said, "what you doin' with your----" The loud detonation of the rifle punctuated Kloon's inquiry with a final period. The big, soft-nosed bullet struck him full in the face, spilling his brains and part of his skull down his back, and knocking him flat as though he had been clubbed. Leverett, stunned, sat staring, motionless, clutching the rifle from the muzzle of which a delicate stain of vapour floated and disappeared through a rosy bar of sunshine. In the intense stillness of the place, suddenly the dead man made a sound; and the trap-robber nearly fainted. But it was only air escaping from the slowly collapsing lungs; and Leverett, ashy pale, shaking, got to his feet and leaned heavily against an oak tree, his eyes never stirring from the sprawling thing on the ground. * * * * * If it were a minute or a year he stood there he could never have reckoned the space of time. The sun's level rays glimmered ruddy through the woods. A green fly appeared, buzzing about the dead man. Another zig-zagged through the sunshine, lacing it with streaks of greenish fire. Others appeared, whirling, gyrating, filling the silence with their humming. And still Leverett dared not budge, dared not search the dead and take from it that for which the dead had died. A little breeze came by and stirred the bushy hair on Kloon's head and fluttered the ferns around him where he lay. Two delicate, pure-white butterflies--rare survivors of a native species driven from civilization into the wilderness by the advent of the foreign white--fluttered in airy play over the dead man, drifting away into the woodland at times, yet always returning to wage a fairy combat above the heap of soiled clothing which once had been a man. Then, near in the ferns, the withering fronds twitched, and a red squirrel sprung his startling alarm, squeaking, squealing, chattering his opinion of murder; and Leverett, shaking with the shock, wiped icy sweat from his face, laid aside his rifle, and took his first stiff step toward the dead man. But as he bent over he changed his mind, turned, reeling a little, then crept slowly out among the pitcher-plants, searching about him as though sniffing. In a few minutes he discovered what he was looking for; took his bearings; carefully picked his way back over a leafy crust that trembled under his cautious tread. He bent over Kloon and, from the left inside coat pocket, he drew the packet and placed it inside his own flannel shirt. Then, turning his back to the dead, he squatted down and clutched Kloon's burly ankles, as a man grasps the handles of a wheelbarrow to draw it after him. Dragging, rolling, bumping over roots, Jake Kloon took his last trail through the wilderness, leaving a redder path than was left by the setting sun through fern and moss and wastes of pitcher-plants. Always, as Leverett crept on, pulling the dead behind him, the floor of the woods trembled slightly, and a black ooze wet the crust of withered leaves. At the quaking edge of a little pool of water, Leverett halted. The water was dark but scarcely an inch deep over its black bed of silt. Beside this sink hole the trap-thief dropped Kloon. Then he drew his hunting knife and cut a tall, slim swamp maple. The sapling was about twenty feet in height. Leverett thrust the butt of it into the pool. Without any effort he pushed the entire sapling out of sight in the depthless silt. He had to manoeuvre very gingerly to dump Kloon into the pool and keep out of it himself. Finally he managed it. To his alarm, Kloon did not sink far. He cut another sapling and pushed the body until only the shoes were visible above the silt. These, however, were very slowly sinking, now. Bubbles rose, dully iridescent, floated, broke. Strings of blood hung suspended in the clouding water. Leverett went back to the little ridge and covered with dead leaves the spot where Kloon had lain. There were broken ferns, but he could not straighten them. And there lay Kloon's rifle. For a while he hesitated, his habits of economy being ingrained; but he remembered the packet in his shirt, and he carried the rifle to the little pool and shoved it, muzzle first, driving it downward, out of sight. As he rose from the pool's edge, somebody laid a hand on his shoulder. That was the most real death that Leverett ever had died. II A coward dies many times before Old Man Death really gets him. The swimming minutes passed; his mind ceased to live for a space. Then, as through the swirling waters of the last dark whirlpool, a dulled roar of returning consciousness filled his being. Somebody was shaking him, shouting at him. Suddenly instinct resumed its function, and he struggled madly to get away from the edge of the sink-hole--fought his way, blindly, through tangled undergrowth toward the hard ridge. No human power could have blocked the frantic creature thrashing toward solid ground. But there Quintana held him in his wiry grip. "Fool! Mule! Crazee fellow! What you do, eh? For why you make jumps like rabbits! Eh? You expec' Quintana? Yes? Alors!" Leverett, in a state of collapse, sagged back against an oak tree. Quintana's nervous grasp fell from his arms and they swung, dangling. "What you do by that pond-hole? Eh? I come and touch you, and, my God!--one would think I have stab you. Such an ass!" The sickly greenish hue changed in Leverett's face as the warmer tide stirred from its stagnation. He lifted his head and tried to look at Quintana. "Where Jake Kloon?" demanded the latter. At that the weasel wits of the trap-robber awoke to the instant crisis. Blood and pulse began to jump. He passed one dirty hand over his mouth to mask any twitching. "Where my packet, eh?" inquired Quintana. "Jake's got it." Leverett's voice was growing stronger. His small eyes switched for an instant toward his rifle, where it stood against a tree behind Quintana. "Where is he, then, this Jake?" repeated Quintana impatiently. "He got bogged." "Bogged? What is that, then?" "He got into a sink-hole." "What!" "That's all I know," said Leverett, sullenly. "Him and me was travellin' hell-bent to meet up with you,--Jake, he was for a short cut to Drowned Valley,--but 'no,' sez I, 'gimme a good hard ridge an' a long deetoor when there's sink-holes into the woods----'" "What is it the talk you talk to me?" asked Quintana, whose perplexed features began to darken. "Where is it, my packet?" "I'm tellin' you, ain't I?" retorted the other, raising a voice now shrill with the strain of this new crisis rushing so unexpectedly upon him: "I heard Jake give a holler. 'What the hell's the trouble?' I yells. Then he lets out a beller, 'Save me!' he screeches, 'I'm into a sink-hole! The quicksand's got me,' sez he. So I drop my rifle, I did,--there she stands against that birch sapling!--and I run down into them there pitcher-plants. "'Whar be ye!' I yells. Then I listens, and don't hear nothin' only a kina wallerin' noise an' a slobber like he was gulpin' mud. "Then I foller them there sounds and I come out by that sink-hole. The water was a-shakin' all over it but Jake he had went down plum out o' sight. T'want no use. I cut a sapling an' I poked down. I was sick and scared like, so when you come up over the moss, not makin' no noise, an' grabbed me--God!--I guess you'd jump, too." Quintana's dark, tense face was expressionless when Leverett ventured to look at him. Like most liars he realised the advisability of looking his victim straight in the eyes. This he managed to accomplish, sustaining the cold intensity of Quintana's gaze as long as he deemed it necessary. Then he started toward his rifle. Quintana blocked his way. "Where my packet?" "Gol ram it! Ain't I told you? Jake had it in his pocket." "My packet?" "Yaas, yourn." "My packet, it is down in thee sink 'ole?" "You think I'm lyin'?" blustered Leverett, trying to move around Quintana's extended arm. The arm swerved and clutched him by the collar of his flannel shirt. "Wait, my frien'," said Quintana in a soft voice. "You shall explain to me some things before you go." "Explain what!--you gol dinged----" Quintana shook him into speechlessness. "Listen, my frien'," he continued with a terrifying smile, "I mus' ask you what it was, that gun-shot, which I hear while I await at Drown' Vallee. Eh? Who fire a gun?" "I ain't heard no gun," replied Leverett in a strangled voice. "You did not shoot? No?" "No!--damn it all----" "And Jake? He did not fire?" "No, I tell yeh----" "Ah! Someone lies. It is not me, my frien'. No. Let us examine your rifle----" Leverett made a rush for the gun; Quintana slung him back against the oak tree and thrust an automatic pistol against his chin. "Han's up, my frien'," he said gently, "--up! high up!--or someone will fire another shot you shall never hear.... So!... Now I search the other pocket.... So!... Still no packet. Bah! Not in the pants, either? Ah, bah! But wait! Tiens! What is this you hide inside your shirt----?" "I was jokin'," gasped Leverett; "--I was jest a-goin' to give it to you----" "Is that my packet?" "Yes. It was all in fun; I wan't a-going to steal it----" Quintana unbuttoned the grey wool shirt, thrust in his hand and drew forth the packet for which Jake Kloon had died within the hour. Suddenly Leverett's knees gave way and he dropped to the ground, grovelling at Quintana's feet in an agony of fright: "Don't hurt me," he screamed, "--I didn't meant no harm! Jake, he wanted me to steal it. I told him I was honest. I fired a shot to scare him, an' he tuk an' run off! I wan't a-goin' to steal it off you, so help me God! I was lookin' for you--as God is my witness----" He got Quintana by one foot. Quintana kicked him aside and backed away. "Swine," he said, calmly inspecting the whimpering creature who had started to crawl toward him. He hesitated, lifted his automatic, then, as though annoyed by Leverett's deafening shriek, shrugged, hesitated, pocketed both pistol and packet, and turned on his heel. By the birch sapling he paused and picked up Leverett's rifle. Something left a red smear on his palm as he worked the ejector. It was blood. Quintana gazed curiously at his soiled hand. Then he stooped and picked up the empty cartridge case which had been ejected. And, as he stooped, he noticed more blood on a fallen leaf. With one foot, daintily as a game-cock scratches, he brushed away the fallen leaves, revealing the mess underneath. After he had contemplated the crimson traces of murder for a few moments, he turned and looked at Leverett with faint curiosity. "So," he said in his leisurely, emotionless way, "you have fight with my frien' Jake for thee packet. Yes? Ver' amusing." He shrugged his indifference, tossed the rifle to his shoulder and, without another glance at the cringing creature on the ground, walked away toward Drowned Valley, unhurriedly. III When Quintana disappeared among the tamaracks, Leverett ventured to rise to his knees. As he crouched there, peering after Quintana, a man came swiftly out of the forest behind him and nearly stumbled over him. Recognition was instant and mutual as the man jerked the trap-robber to his feet, stifling the muffled yell in his throat. "I want that packet you picked up on Clinch's veranda," said Hal Smith. "M-my God," stammered Leverett, "Quintana just took it off me. He ain't been gone a minute----" "You lie!" "I ain't lyin'. Look at his foot-marks there in the mud!" "Quintana!" "Yaas, Quintana! He tuk my gun, too----" "Which way!" whispered Smith fiercely, shaking Leverett till his jaws wagged. "Drowned Valley.... Lemme loose!--I'm chokin'----" Smith pushed him aside. "You rat," he said, "if you're lying to me I'll come back and settle your affair. And Kloon's, too!" "Quintana shot Jake and stuck him into a sink-hole!" snivelled Leverett, breaking down and sobbing; "--oh, Gawd--Gawd--he's down under all that black mud with his brains spillin' out----" But Smith was already gone, running lightly along the string of footprints which led straight away across slime and sphagnum toward the head of Drowned Valley. In the first clump of hard-wood trees Smith saw Quintana. He had halted and he was fumbling at the twine which bound a flat, paper-wrapped packet. He did not start when Smith's sharp warning struck his ear: "Don't move! I've got you over my rifle, Quintana!" Quintana's fingers had instantly ceased operations. Then, warily, he lifted his head and looked into the muzzle of Smith's rifle. "Ah, bah!" he said tranquilly. "There were three of you, then." "Lay that packet on the ground." "My frien'----" "Drop it or I'll drop _you_!" Quintana carefully placed the packet on a bed of vivid moss. "Now your gun!" continued Smith. Quintana shrugged and laid Leverett's rifle beside the packet. "Kneel down with your hands up and your back toward me!" said Smith. "My frien'----" "Down with you!" Quintana dropped gracefully into the humiliating attitude popularly indicative of prayerful supplication. Smith walked slowly up behind him, relieved him of two automatics and a dirk. "Stay put," he said sharply, as Quintana started to turn his head. Then he picked up the packet with its loosened string, slipped it into his side pocket, gathered together the arsenal which had decorated Quintana, and so, loaded with weapons, walked away a few paces and seated himself on a fallen log. Here he pocketed both automatics, shoved the sheathed dirk into his belt, placed the captured rifle handy, after examining the magazine, and laid his own weapon across his knees. "You may turn around now, Quintana," he said amiably. Quintana lowered his arms and started to rise. "Sit down!" said Smith. Quintana seated himself on the moss, facing Smith. "Now, my gay and nimble thimble-rigger," said Smith genially, "while I take ten minutes' rest we'll have a little polite conversation. Or, rather, a monologue. Because I don't want to hear anything from you." He settled himself comfortably on the log: "Let me assemble for you, Señor Quintana, the interesting history of the jewels which so sparklingly repose in the packet in my pocket. "In the first place, as you know, Monsieur Quintana, the famous Flaming Jewel and the other gems contained in this packet of mine, belonged to Her Highness the Grand Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia. "Very interesting. More interesting still--along comes Don José Quintana and his celebrated gang of international thieves, and steals from the Grand Duchess of Esthonia the Flaming Jewel and all her rubies, emeralds and diamonds. Yes?" "Certainly," said Quintana, with a polite inclination of acknowledgment. "Bon! Well, then, still more interesting to relate, a gentleman named Clinch helps himself to these famous jewels. How very careless of you, Mr. Quintana." "Careless, certainly," assented Quintana politely. "Well," said Smith, laughing, "Clinch was more careless still. The robber baron, Sir Jacobus Kloon, swiped,--as Froissart has it,--the Esthonian gems, and, under agreement to deliver them to you, I suppose, thought better of it and attempted to abscond. Do you get me, Herr Quintana?" "Gewiss." "Yes, and you got Jake Kloon, I hear," laughed Smith. "No." "Didn't you kill Kloon?" "No." "Oh, pardon. The mistake was natural. You merely robbed Kloon and Leverett. You should have killed them." "Yes," said Quintana slowly, "I should have. It was my mistake." "Signor Quintana, it is human for the human crook to err. Sooner or later he always does it. And then the Piper comes around holding out two itching palms." "Mr. Smith," said Quintana pleasantly, "you are an unusually agreeable gentleman for a thief. I regret that you do not see your way to an amalgamation of interests with myself." "As you say, Quintana mea, I am somewhat unusual. For example, what do you suppose I am going to do with this packet in my pocket?" "Live," replied Quintana tersely. "Live, certainly," laughed Smith, "but not on the proceeds of this coup-de-main. Non pas! I am going to return this packet to its rightful owner, the Grand Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia. And what do you think of that, Quintana?" Quintana smiled. "You do not believe me?" inquired Smith. Quintana smiled again. "Allons, bon!" exclaimed Smith, rising. "It's the unusual that happens in life, my dear Quintana. And now we'll take a little inventory of these marvellous gems before we part.... Sit very, very still, Quintana,--unless you want to lie stiller still.... I'll let you take a modest peep at the Flaming Jewel----" busily unwrapping the packet--"just one little peep, Quintana----" He unwrapped the paper. Two cakes of sugar-milk chocolate lay within. Quintana turned white, then deeply, heavily red. Then he smiled in ghastly fashion: "Yes," he said hoarsely, "as you have just said, sir, it is usually the unusual which happens in the world." EPISODE SIX THE JEWEL AFLAME I Mike Clinch and his men "drove" Star Peak, and drew a blanket covert. There was a new shanty atop, camp débris, plenty of signs of recent occupation everywhere,--hot embers in which offal still smouldered, bottles odorous of claret dregs, and an aluminum culinary outfit, unwashed, as though Quintana and his men had departed in haste. Far in the still valley below, Mike Clinch squatted beside the runway he had chosen, a cocked rifle across his knees. The glare in his small, pale eyes waned and flared as distant sounds broke the forest silence, grew vague, died out,--the fairy clatter of a falling leaf, the sudden scurry of a squirrel, a feathery rustle of swift wings in play or combat, the soft crash of a rotten bough sagging earthward to enrich the soil that grew it. And, as Clinch squatted there, murderously intent, ever the fixed obsession burned in his fever brain, stirring his thin lips to incessant muttering,--a sort of soundless invocation, part chronicle, part prayer: "O God A'mighty, in your big, swell mansion up there, all has went contrary with me sence you let that there damn millionaire, Harrod, come into this here forest.... He went and built unto hisself an habitation, and he put up a wall of law all around me where I was earnin' a lawful livin' in Thy nice, clean wilderness.... And now comes this here Quintana and robs my girlie.... I promised her mother I'd make a lady of her little Eve.... I loved my wife, O Lord.... Once she showed me a piece in the Bible,--I ain't never found it sence,--but it said: 'And the woman she fled into the wilderness where there was a place prepared for her of God.' ... That's what _you_ wrote into your own Bible, O God! You can't go back on it. I seen it. "And now I wanta to ask, What place did you prepare for my Eve? What spot have you reference to? You didn't mean my 'Dump,' did you? Why, Lord, that ain't no place for no lady.... And now Quintana has went and robbed me of what I'd saved up for Eve.... Does that go with Thee, O Lord? No, it don't. And it don't go with me, neither. I'm a-goin' to git Quintana. Then I'm a-goin' to git them two minks that robbed my girlie,--I am!... Jake Kloon, he done it in cahoots with Earl Leverett; and Quintana set 'em on. And they gotta die, O Lord of Israel, them there Egyptians is about to hop the twig.... I ain't aimin' to be mean to nobody. I buy hootch of them that runs it. I eat mountain mutton in season and out. I trade with law-breakers, I do. But, Lord, I gotta get my girlie outa here; and Harrod he walled me in with the chariots and spears of Egypt, till I nigh went wild.... And now comes Quintana, and here I be a-lyin' out to get him so's my girlie can become a lady, same's them fine folks with all their butlers and automobiles and what-not----" A far crash in the forest stilled his twitching lips and stiffened every iron muscle. As he lifted his rifle, Sid Hone came into the glade. "Yahoo! Yahoo!" he called. "Where be you, Mike?" Clinch slowly rose, grasping his rifle, his small, grey eyes ablaze. "Where's Quintana?" he demanded. "H'ain't you seen nobody?" "No." In the intense silence other sounds broke sharply in the sunset forest; Harvey Chase's halloo rang out from the rocks above; Blommers and the Hastings boys came slouching through the ferns. Byron Hastings greeted Clinch with upflung gun: "Me and Jim heard a shot away out on Drowned Valley," he announced. "Was you out that way, Mike?" "No." One by one the men who had driven Star Peak lounged up in the red sunset light, gathering around Clinch and wiping the sweat from sun-reddened faces. "Someone's in Drowned Valley," repeated Byron. "Them minks slid off'n Star in a hurry, I reckon, judgin' how they left their shanty. Phew! It stunk! They had French hootch, too." "Mebby Leverett and Kloon told 'em we was fixin' to visit them," suggested Blommers. "They didn't know," said Clinch. "Where's Hal Smith?" inquired Hone. Clinch made no reply. Blommers silently gnawed a new quid from the remains of a sticky plug. "Well," inquired Jim Hastings finally, "do we quit, Mike, or do we still-hunt in Drowned Valley?" "Not me, at night," remarked Blommers drily. "Not amongst them sink-holes," added Hone. Suddenly Clinch turned and stared at him. Then the deadly light from his little eyes shone on the others one by one. "Boys," he said, "I gotta get Quintana. I can't never sleep another wink till I get that man. Come on. Act up like gents all. Let's go." Nobody stirred. "Come on," repeated Clinch softly. But his lips shrank back, twitching. As they looked at him they saw his teeth. "All right, all right," growled Hone, shouldering his rifle with a jerk. The Hastings boys, young and rash, shuffled into the trail. Blommers hesitated, glanced askance at Clinch, and instantly made up his mind to take a chance with the sink-holes rather than with Clinch. "God A'mighty, Mike, what be you aimin' to do?" faltered Harvey. "I'm aimin' to stop the inlet and outlet to Drowned Valley, Harve," replied Clinch in his pleasant voice. "God is a-goin' to deliver Quintana into my hands." "All right. What next?" "Then," continued Clinch, "I cal'late to set down and wait." "How long?" "Ask God, boys. I don't know. All I know is that whatever is livin' in Drowned Valley at this hour has gotta live and die there. For it can't never live to come outen that there morass walkin' onto two legs like a real man." He moved slowly along the file of sullen men, his rifle a-trail in one huge fist. "Boys," he said, "I got first. There ain't no sink-hole deep enough to drowned me while Eve needs me.... And my little girlie needs me bad.... After she gits what's her'n, then I don't care no more...." He looked up into the sky, where the last ashes of sunset faded from the zenith.... "Then I don't care," he murmured. "Like's not I'll creep away like some shot-up critter, n'kinda find some lone, safe spot, n'kinda fix me f'r a long nap.... I guess that'll be the way ... when Eve's a lady down to Noo York 'r'som'ers----" he added vaguely. Then, still looking up at the fading heavens, he moved forward, head lifted, silent, unhurried, with the soundless, stealthy, and certain tread of those who walk unseeing and asleep. II Clinch had not taken a dozen strides before Hal Smith loomed up ahead in the rosy dusk, driving in Leverett before him. An exclamation of fierce exultation burst from Clinch's thin lips as he flung out one arm, indicating Smith and his clinking prisoner: "Who was that gol-dinged catamount that suspicioned Hal? I wa'nt worried none, neither. Hal's a gent. Mebbe he sticks up folks, too, but he's a gent. And gents is honest or they ain't gents." Smith came up at his easy, tireless gait, hustling Leverett along with prods from gun-butt or muzzle, as came handiest. The prisoner turned a ghastly visage on Clinch, who ignored him. "Got my packet, Hal?" he demanded. Smith poked Leverett with his rifle: "Tune up," he said; "tell Clinch your story." As a caged rat looks death in the face, his ratty wits working like lightning and every atom of cunning and ferocity alert for attack or escape, so the little, mean eyes of Earl Leverett became fixed on Clinch like two immobile and glassy beads of jet. "G'wan," said Clinch softly, "spit it out." "Jake done it," muttered Leverett, thickly. "Done what?" "Stole that there packet o' yourn--whatever there was into it." "Who put him up to it?" "A fella called Quintana." "What was there in it for Jake?" inquired Clinch pleasantly. "Ten thousand." "How about you?" "I told 'em I wouldn't touch it. Then they pulled their guns on me, and I was scared to squeal." "So that was the way?" asked Clinch in his even, reassuring voice. Leverett's eyes travelled stealthily around the circle of men, then reverted to Clinch. "I dassn't touch it," he said, "but I dassn't squeal.... I was huntin' onto Drowned Valley when Jake meets up with me." "'I got the packet,' he sez, 'and I'm a-going to double criss-cross Quintana, I am, and beat it. Don't you wish you was whacks with me?' "'No,' sez I, 'honesty is my policy, no matter what they tell about me. S'help me God, I ain't never robbed no trap and I ain't no skin thief, whatever lies folks tell. All I ever done was run a little hootch, same's everybody.'" He licked his lips furtively, his cold, bright eyes fastened on Clinch. "G'wan, Earl," nodded the latter, "heave her up." "That's all. I sez, 'Good-bye, Jake. An' if you heed my warnin', ill-gotten gains ain't a-going to prosper nobody.' That's what I said to Jake Kloon, the last solemn words I spoke to that there man now in his bloody grave----" "Hey?" demanded Clinch. "That's where Jake is," repeated Leverett. "Why, so help me, I wa'nt gone ten yards when, bang! goes a gun, and I see this here Quintana come outen the bush, I do, and walk up to Jake and frisk him, and Jake still a-kickin' the moss to slivers. Yessir, that's what I seen." "G'wan." "Yessir.... 'N'then Quintana he shoved Jake into a sink-hole. Thaswot I seen with my two eyes. Yessir. 'N'then Quintana he run off, 'n'I jest set down in the trail, I did; 'n'then Hal come up and acted like I had stole your packet, he did; 'n'then I told him what Quintana done. 'N'Hal, he takes after Quintana, but I don't guess he meets up with him, for he come back and ketched holt o' me, 'n'he druv me in like I was a caaf, he did. 'N'here I be." The dusk in the forest had deepened so that the men's faces had become mere blotches of grey. Smith said to Clinch: "That's his story, Mike. But I preferred he should tell it to you himself, so I brought him along.... Did you drive Star Peak?" "There wa'nt nothin' onto it," said Clinch very softly. Then, of a sudden, his shadowy visage became contorted and he jerked up his rifle and threw a cartridge into the magazine. "You dirty louse!" he roared at Leverett, "you was into this, too, a-robbin' my little Eve----" "Run!" yelled somebody, giving Leverett a violent shove into the woods. In the darkness and confusion, Clinch shouldered his way out of the circle and fired at the crackling noise that marked Leverett's course,--fired again, lower, and again as a distant crash revealed the frenzied flight of the trap-robber. After he had fired a fourth shot, somebody struck up his rifle. "Aw," said Jim Hastings, "that ain't no good. You act up like a kid, Mike. 'Tain't so far to Ghost Lake, n'them Troopers might hear you." After a silence, Clinch spoke, his voice heavy with reaction: "Into that there packet is my little girl's dower. It's all I got to give her. It's all she's got to make her a lady. I'll kill any man that robs her or that helps rob her. 'N'that's that." "Are you going on after Quintana?" asked Smith. "I am. 'N'these fellas are a-going with me. N' I want you should go back to my Dump and look after my girlie while I'm gone." "How long are you going to be away?" "I dunno." There was a silence. Then, "All right," said Smith, briefly. He added: "Look out for sink-holes, Mike." Clinch tossed his heavy rifle to his shoulder: "Let's go," he said in his pleasant, misleading way, "--and I'll shoot the guts outa any fella that don't show up at roll call." III For its size there is no fiercer animal than a rat. Rat-like rage possessed Leverett. In his headlong flight through the dusk, fear, instead of quenching, added to his rage; and he ran on and on, crashing through the undergrowth, made wilder by the pain of vicious blows from branches which flew back and struck him in the dark. Thorns bled him; unseen logs tripped him; he heard Clinch's bullets whining around him; and he ran on, beginning to sob and curse in a frenzy of fury, fear, and shame. Shots from Clinch's rifle ceased; the fugitive dropped into a heavy, shuffling walk, slavering, gasping, gesticulating with his weaponless fists in the darkness. "Gol ram ye, I'll fix ye!" he kept stammering in his snarling, jangling voice, broken by sobs. "I'll learn ye, yeh poor danged thing, gol ram ye----" An unseen limb struck him cruelly across the face, and a moose-bush tripped him flat. Almost crazed, he got up, yelling in his pain, one hand wet and sticky from blood welling up from his cheek-bone. He stood listening, infuriated, vindictive, but heard nothing save the panting, animal sounds in his own throat. He strove to see in the ghostly obscurity around him, but could make out little except the trees close by. But wood-rats are never completely lost in their native darkness; and Leverett presently discovered the far stars shining faintly through rifts in the phantom foliage above. These heavenly signals were sufficient to give him his directions. Then the question suddenly came, _which_ direction? To his own shack on Stinking Lake he dared not go. He tried to believe that it was fear of Clinch that made him shy of the home shanty; but, in his cowering soul, he knew it was fear of another kind--the deep, superstitious horror of Jake Kloon's empty bunk--the repugnant sight of Kloon's spare clothing hanging from its peg--the dead man's shoes---- No, he could not go to Stinking Lake and sleep.... And wake with the faint stench of sulphur in his throat.... And see the worm-like leeches unfolding in the shallows, and the big, reddish water-lizards, livid as skinned eels, wriggling convulsively toward their sunless lairs.... At the mere thought of his dead bunk-mate he sought relief in vindictive rage--stirred up the smouldering embers again, cursed Clinch and Hal Smith, violently searching in his inflamed brain some instant vengeance upon these men who had driven him out from the only place on earth where he knew how to exist--the wilderness. All at once he thought of Clinch's step-daughter. The thought instantly scared him. Yet--what a revenge!--to strike Clinch through the only creature he cared for in all the world!... What a revenge!... Clinch was headed for Drowned Valley. Eve Strayer was alone at the Dump.... Another thought flashed like lightning across his turbid mind;--_the packet_! Bribed by Quintana, Jake Kloon, lurking at Clinch's door, had heard him direct Eve to take a packet to Owl Marsh, and had notified Quintana. Wittingly or unwittingly, the girl had taken a packet of sugar-milk chocolate instead of the priceless parcel expected. Again, carried in, exhausted, by a State Trooper, Jake Kloon had been fooled; and it was the packet of sugar-milk chocolate that Jake had purloined from the veranda where Clinch kicked it. For two cakes of chocolate Kloon had died. For two cakes of chocolate he, Earl Leverett, had become a man-slayer, a homeless fugitive in peril of his life. He stood licking his blood-dried lips there in the darkness, striving to hatch courage out of the dull fury eating at a coward's heart. Somewhere in Clinch's Dump was the packet that would make him rich.... Here was his opportunity. He had only to dare; and pain and poverty and fear--above all else _fear_--would end forever!... * * * * * When, at last, he came out to the edge of Clinch's clearing, the dark October heavens were but a vast wilderness of stars. Star Pond, set to its limpid depths with the heavenly gems, glittered and darkled with its million diamond incrustations. The humped-up lump of Clinch's Dump crouched like some huge and feeding night-beast on the bank, ringed by the solemn forest. There was a kerosene lamp burning in Eve Strayer's rooms. Another light--a candle--flickered in the kitchen. Leverett, crouching, ran rat-like down to the barn, slid in between the ice house and corn-crib, crawled out among the wilderness of weeds and lay flat. The light burned steadily from Eve's window. IV From his form among frost-blackened rag-weeds, the trap-robber could see only the plastered ceiling of the bed chamber. But the kerosene lamp cast two shadows on that--tall shadows of human shapes that stirred at times. The trap-robber, scared, stiffened to immobility, but his little eyes remained fastened on the camera obscura above. All the cunning, patience, and murderous immobility of the rat were his. Not a weed stirred under the stars where he lay with tiny, unwinking eyes intent upon the shadows on the ceiling. * * * * * The shadows on the ceiling were cast by Eve Strayer and her State Trooper. Eve sat on her bed's edge, swathed in a lilac silk kimona--delicate relic of school days. Her bandaged feet, crossed, dangled above the rag-rug on the floor; her slim, tanned fingers were interlaced over the book on her lap. Near the door stood State Trooper Stormont, spurred, booted, trig and trim, an undecided and flushed young man, fumbling irresolutely with the purple cord on his campaign-hat. The book on Eve's knees--another relic of the past--was _Sigurd the Volsung_. Stormont had been reading to her--they having found, after the half shy tentatives of new friends, a point d'appui in literature. And the girl, admitting a passion for the poets, invited him to inspect the bookcase of unpainted pine which Clinch had built into her bedroom wall. Here it was he discovered mutual friends among the nobler Victorians--surprised to discover _Sigurd_ there--and, carrying it to her bedside, looked leisurely through the half forgotten pages. "Would you read a little?" she ventured. He blushed but did his best. His was an agreeable, boyish voice, betraying taste and understanding. Time passed quickly--not so much in the reading but in the conversations intervening. And now, made uneasy by chance consultation with his wrist-watch, and being rather a conscientious young man, he had risen and had informed Eve that she ought to go to sleep. And she had denounced the idea, almost fretfully. "Even if you go I shan't sleep till daddy comes," she said. "Of course," she added, smiling at him out of gentian-blue eyes, "if _you_ are sleepy I shouldn't dream of asking you to stay." "I'm not intending to sleep." "What are you going to do?" "Take a chair on the landing outside your door." "What!" "Certainly. What did you expect me to do, Eve?" "Go to bed, of course. The beds in the guest rooms are all made up." "Your father didn't expect me to do that," he said, smiling. "I'm not afraid, as long as you're in the house," she said. She looked up at him again, wistfully. Perhaps he was restless, bored, sitting there beside her half the day, and, already, half the night. Men of that kind--active, nervous young men accustomed to the open, can't stand caging. "I want you to go out and get some fresh air," she said. "It's a wonderful night. Go and walk a while. And--if you feel like--coming back to me----" "Will you sleep?" "No, I'll wait for you." Her words were natural and direct, but in their simplicity there seemed a delicate sweetness that stirred him. "I'll come back to you," he said. Then, in his response, the girl in her turn became aware of something beside the simple words--a vague charm about them that faintly haunted her after he had gone away down the stairs. _That_ was the man she had once tried to kill! At the sudden and terrible recollection she shivered from curly head to bandaged feet. Then she trembled a little with the memory of his lips against her bruised hands--bruised by handcuffs which he had fastened upon her. She sat very, very still now, huddled on the bed's edge, scarcely breathing. For the girl was beginning to dare formulate the deepest of any thoughts that ever had stirred her virgin mind and body. If it was love, then it had come suddenly, and strangely. It had come on that day--at the very moment when he flung her against the tree and handcuffed her--that terrible instant--if it were love. Or--what was it that so delicately overwhelmed her with pleasure in his presence, in his voice, in the light, firm sound of his spurred tread on the veranda below? Friendship? A lonely passion for young and decent companionship? The clean youth of him in contrast to the mangy, surly louts who haunted Clinch's Dump,--was that the appeal? Listening there where she sat clasping the book, she heard his steady tread patrolling the veranda; caught the faint fragrance of his brier pipe in the still night air. "I think--I think it's--love," she said under her breath.... "But he couldn't ever think of me----" always listening to his spurred tread below. After a while she placed both bandaged feet on the rug. It hurt her, but she stood up, walked to the open window. She wanted to look at him--just a moment---- By chance he looked up at that instant, and saw her pale face, like a flower in the starlight. "Why, Eve," he said, "you ought not to be on your feet." "Once," she said, "you weren't so particular about my bruises." Her breathless little voice coming down through the starlight thrilled him. "Do you remember what I did?" he asked. "Yes. You bruised my hands and made my mouth bleed." "I did penance--for your hands." "Yes, you kissed _them_!" What possessed her--what irresponsible exhilaration was inciting her to a daring utterly foreign to her nature? She heard herself laugh, knew that she was young, pretty, capable of provocation. And in a sudden, breathless sort of way an overwhelming desire seized her to please, to charm, to be noticed by such a man--whatever, on afterthought, he might think of the step-child of Mike Clinch. Stormont had come directly under her window and stood looking up. "I dared not offer further penance," he said. The emotion in his voice stirred her--but she was still laughing down at him. She said: "You _did_ offer further penance--you offered your handkerchief. So--as that was _all_ you offered as reparation for--my lips----" "Eve! I could have taken you into my arms----" "You _did_! And threw me down among the spruces. You really did everything that a contrite heart could suggest----" "Good heavens!" said that rather matter-of-fact young man, "I don't believe you have forgiven me after all." "I have--everything except the handkerchief----" "Then I'm coming up to complete my penance----" "I'll lock my door!" "Would you?" "I ought to.... But if you are in great spiritual distress, and if you really and truly repent, and if you humbly desire to expiate your sin by doing--penance----" And hesitated: "Do you so desire?" "Yes, I do." "Humbly? Contritely?" "Yes." "Very well. Say 'Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.'" "Mea maxima culpa," he said so earnestly, looking up into her face that she bent lower over the sill to see him. "Let me come up, Eve," he said. She strove to laugh, gazing down into his shadowy face--but suddenly the desire had left her,--and all her gaiety left her, too, suddenly, leaving only a still excitement in her breast. "You--you knew I was just laughing," she said unsteadily. "You understood, didn't you?" "I don't know." After a silence: "I didn't mean you to take me seriously," she said. She tried to laugh. It was no use. And, as she leaned there on the sill, her heart frightened her with its loud beating. "Will you let me come up, Eve?" No answer. "Would you lock your door?" "What do you think I'd do?" she asked tremulously. "You know; I don't." "Are you so sure I know what I'd do? I don't think either of us know our own minds.... I seem to have lost some of my wits.... Somehow...." "If you are not going to sleep, let me come up." "I want you to take a walk down by the pond. And while you're walking there all by yourself, I want you to think very clearly, very calmly, and make up your mind whether I should remain awake to-night, or whether, when you return, I ought to be asleep and--and my door bolted." After a long pause: "All right," he said in a low voice. V She saw him walk away--saw his shadowy, well-built form fade into the starlit mist. An almost uncontrollable impulse set her throat and lips quivering with desire to call to him through the night, "I do love you! I do love you! Come back quickly, quickly!----" Fog hung over Star Pond, edging the veranda, rising in frail shreds to her window. The lapping of the water sounded very near. An owl was very mournful in the hemlocks. The girl turned from the window, looked at the door for a moment, then her face flushed and she walked toward a chair and seated herself, leaving the door unbolted. For a little while she sat upright, alert, as though a little frightened. After a few moments she folded her hands and sat unstirring, with lowered head, awaiting Destiny. * * * * * It came, noiselessly. And so swiftly that the rush of air from her violently opened door was what first startled her. For in the same second Earl Leverett was upon her in his stockinged feet, one bony hand gripping her mouth, the other flung around her, pinning both arms to her sides. "The packet!" he panted, "--quick, yeh dirty little cat, 'r'I'll break yeh head off'n yeh damn neck!" She bit at the hand that he held crushed against her mouth. He lifted her bodily, flung her onto the bed, and, twisting sheet and quilt around her, swathed her to the throat. Still controlling her violently distorted lips with his left hand and holding her so, one knee upon her, he reached back, unsheathed his hunting knife, and pricked her throat till the blood spurted. "Now, gol ram yeh!" he whispered fiercely, "where's Mike's packet? Yell, and I'll hog-stick yeh fur fair! Where is it, you dum thing!" He took his left hand from her mouth. The distorted, scarlet lips writhed back, displaying her white teeth clenched. "Where's Mike's bundle!" he repeated, hoarse with rage and fear. "You rat!" she gasped. At that he closed her mouth again, and again he pricked her with his knife, cruelly. The blood welled up onto the sheets. "Now, by God!" he said in a ghastly voice, "answer or I'll hog-stick yeh next time! Where is it? Where! where!" She only showed her teeth in answer. Her eyes flamed. "Where! Quick! Gol ding yeh, I'll shove this knife in behind your ear if you don't tell! Go on. Where is it? It's in this Dump som'ers. I know it is--don't lie! You want that I should stick you good? That what you want--you dirty little dump-slut? Well, then, gol ram yeh--I'll fix yeh like Quintana was aimin' at----" He slit the sheet downward from her imprisoned knees, seized one wounded foot and tried to slash the bandages. "I'll cut a coupla toes off'n yeh," he snarled, "--I'll hamstring yeh fur keeps!"--struggling to mutilate her while she flung her helpless and entangled body from side to side and bit at the hand that was almost suffocating her. Unable to hold her any longer, he seized a pillow, to bury the venomous little head that writhed, biting, under his clutch. As he lifted it he saw a packet lying under it. "By God!" he panted. As he seized it she screamed for the first time: "Jack! Jack Stormont!"--and fairly hurled her helpless little body at Leverett, striking him full in the face with her head. Half stunned, still clutching the packet, he tried to stab her in the stomach; but the armour of bed-clothes turned the knife, although his violence dashed all breath out of her. Sick with the agony of it, speechless, she still made the effort; and, as he stumbled to his feet and turned to escape, she struggled upright, choking, blood running from the knife pricks in her neck. With the remnant of her strength, and still writhing and gasping for breath, she tore herself from the sheets and blankets, reeled across the room to where Stormont's rifle stood, threw in a cartridge, dragged herself to the window. Dimly she saw a running figure in the night mist, flung the rifle across the window sill and fired. Then she fired again--or thought she did. There were two shots. "Eve!" came Stormont's sharp cry, "what the devil are you trying to do to me?" His cry terrified her; the rifle clattered to the floor. The next instant he came running up the stairs, bare headed, heavy pistol swinging, and halted, horrified at sight of her. "Eve! My God!" he whispered, taking her blood-wet body into his arms. "Go after Leverett," she gasped. "He's robbed daddy. He's running away--out there--somewhere----" "Where did he hurt you, Eve--my little Eve----" "Oh, go! go!" she wailed,--"I'm not hurt. He only pricked me with his knife. I'm not hurt, I tell you. Go after him! Take your pistol and follow him and kill him!" "Oh," she cried hysterically, twisting and sobbing in his arms, "don't lose time here with me! Don't stand here while he's running away with dad's money!" And, "Oh--oh--_oh_!!" she sobbed, collapsing in his arms and clinging to him convulsively as he carried her to her tumbled bed and laid her there. He said: "I couldn't risk following anybody now, after what has happened to you. I can't leave you alone here! Don't cry, Eve. I'll get your man for you, I promise! Don't cry, dear. It was all my fault for leaving this room even for a minute----" "No, no, no! It's my fault. I sent you away. Oh, I wish I hadn't. I wish I had let you come back when you wanted to.... I was waiting for you.... I left the door unbolted for you. When it opened I thought it was you. And it was Leverett!--it was Leverett!----" Stormont's face grew very white: "What did he do to you, Eve? Tell me, darling. What did he do to you?" "Dad's money was under my pillow," she wailed. "Leverett tried to make me tell where it was. I wouldn't, and he hurt me----" "How?" "He pricked me with his knife. When I screamed for you he tried to choke me with the pillow. Didn't you hear me scream?" "Yes. I came on the jump." "It was too late," she sobbed; "--too late! He saw the money packet under my pillow and he snatched it and ran. Somehow I found your rifle and fired. I fired twice." Her only bullet had torn his campaign hat from his head. But he did not tell her. "Let me see your neck," he said, bending closer. She bared her throat, making a soft, vague complaint like a hurt bird,--lay there whimpering under her breath while he bathed the blood away with lint, sterilised the two cuts from his emergency packet, and bound them. He was still bending low over her when her blue eyes unclosed on his. "That is the second time I've tried to kill you," she whispered. "I thought it was Leverett.... I'd have died if I had killed you." There was a silence. "Lie very still," he said huskily. "I'll be back in a moment to rebandage your feet and make you comfortable for the night." "I can't sleep," she repeated desolately. "Dad trusted his money to me and I've let Leverett rob me. How can I sleep?" "I'll bring you something to make you sleep." "I can't!" "I promise you you will sleep. Lie still." He rose, went away downstairs and out to the barn, where his campaign hat lay in the weed, drilled through by a bullet. There was something else lying there in the weeds,--a flat, muddy, shoeless shape sprawling grotesquely in the foggy starlight. One hand clutched a hunting knife; the other a packet. Stormont drew the packet from the stiff fingers, then turned the body over, and, flashing his electric torch, examined the ratty visage--what remained of it--for his pistol bullet had crashed through from ear to cheek-bone, almost obliterating the trap-robber's features. * * * * * Stormont came slowly into Eve's room and laid the packet on the sheet beside her. "Now," he said, "there is no reason for you to lie awake any longer. I'll fix you up for the night." Deftly he unbandaged, bathed, dressed, and rebandaged her slim white feet--little wounded feet so lovely, so exquisite that his hand trembled as he touched them. "They're doing fine," he said cheerily. "You've half a degree of fever and I'm going to give you something to drink before you go to sleep----" He poured out a glass of water, dissolved two tablets, supported her shoulders while she drank in a dazed way, looking always at him over the glass. "Now," he said, "go to sleep. I'll be on the job outside your door until your daddy arrives." "How did you get back dad's money?" she asked in an odd, emotionless way as though too weary for further surprises. "I'll tell you in the morning." "Did you kill him? I didn't hear your pistol." "I'll tell you all about it in the morning. Good night, Eve." As he bent over her, she looked up into his eyes and put both arms around his neck. It was her first kiss given to any man, except Mike Clinch. After Stormont had gone out and closed the door, she lay very still for a long while. Then, instinctively, she touched her lips with her fingers; and, at the contact, a blush clothed her from brow to ankle. The Flaming Jewel in its morocco casket under her pillow burned with no purer fire than the enchanted flame glowing in the virgin heart of Eve Strayer of Clinch's Dump. Thus they lay together, two lovely flaming jewels burning softly, steadily through the misty splendour of the night. Under a million stars, Death sprawled in squalor among the trampled weeds. Under the same high stars dark mountains waited; and there was a silvery sound of waters stirring somewhere in the mist. EPISODE SEVEN CLINCH'S DUMP I When Mike Clinch bade Hal Smith return to the Dump and take care of Eve, Smith already had decided to go there. Somewhere in Clinch's Dump was hidden the Flaming Jewel. Now was his time to search for it. There were two other reasons why he should go back. One of them was that Leverett was loose. If anything had called Trooper Stormont away, Eve would be alone in the house. And nobody on earth could forecast what a coward like Leverett might attempt. But there was another and more serious reason for returning to Clinch's. Clinch, blood-mad, was headed for Drowned Valley with his men, to stop both ends of that vast morass before Quintana and his gang could get out. It was evident that neither Clinch nor any of his men--although their very lives depended upon familiarity with the wilderness--knew that a third exit from Drowned Valley existed. But the nephew of the late Henry Harrod knew. When Jake Kloon was a young man and Darragh was a boy, Kloon had shown him the rocky, submerged game trail into Drowned Valley. Doubtless Kloon had used it in hootch running since. If ever he had told anybody else about it, probably he had revealed the trail to Quintana. And that was why Darragh, or Hal Smith, finally decided to return to Star Pond;--because if Quintana had been told or had discovered that circuitous way out of Drowned Valley, he might go straight to Clinch's Dump.... And, supposing Stormont was still there, how long could one State Trooper stand off Quintana's gang? * * * * * No sooner had Clinch and his motley followers disappeared in the dusk than Smith unslung his basket-pack, fished out a big electric torch, flashed it tentatively, and then, reslinging the pack and taking his rifle in his left hand, he set off at an easy swinging stride. His course was not toward Star Pond; it was at right angles with that trail. For he was taking no chances. Quintana might already have left Drowned Valley by that third exit unknown to Clinch. Smith's course would now cut this unmarked trail, trodden only by game that left no sign in the shallow mountain rivulet which was the path. The trail lay a long way off through the night. But if Quintana had discovered and taken that trail, it would be longer still for him--twice as long as the regular trail out. For a mile or two the forest was first growth pine, and sufficiently open so that Smith might economise on his torch. He knew every foot of it. As a boy he had carried a jacob-staff in the Geological Survey. Who better than the forest-roaming nephew of Henry Harrod should know this blind wilderness? The great pines towered on every side, lofty and smooth to the feathery canopy that crowned them under the high stars. There was no game here, no water, nothing to attract anybody except the devastating lumberman. But this was a five thousand acre patch of State land. The ugly whine of the steam-saw would never be heard here. On he walked at an easy, swinging stride, flashing his torch rarely, feeling no concern about discovery by Quintana's people. It was only when he came into the hardwoods that the combined necessity for caution and torch perplexed and worried him. Somewhere in here began an outcrop of rock running east for miles. Only stunted cedar and berry bushes found shallow nourishment on this ridge. When at last he found it he travelled upon it, more slowly, constantly obliged to employ the torch. After an hour, perhaps, his feet splashed in shallow water. _That_ was what he was expecting. The water was only an inch or two deep; it was ice cold and running north. Now, he must advance with every caution. For here trickled the thin flow of that rocky rivulet which was the other entrance and exit penetrating that immense horror of marsh and bog and depthless sink-hole known as Drowned Valley. * * * * * For a long while he did not dare to use his torch; but now he was obliged to. He shined the ground at his feet, elevated the torch with infinite precaution, throwing a fan-shaped light over the stretch of sink he had suspected and feared. It flanked the flat, wet path of rock on either side. Here Death spread its slimy trap at his very feet. Then, as he stood taking his bearings with burning torch, far ahead in the darkness a light flashed, went out, flashed twice more, and was extinguished. Quintana! Smith's wits were working like lightning, but instinct guided him before his brain took command. He levelled his torch and repeated the three signal flashes. Then, in darkness, he came to swift conclusion. There were no other signals from the unknown. The stony bottom of the rivulet was his only aid. In his right hand the torch hung almost touching the water. At times he ventured sufficient pressure for a feeble glimmer, then again trusted to his sense of contact. For three hundred yards, counting his strides, he continued on. Then, in total darkness, he pocketed the torch, slid a cartridge into the breech of his rifle, slung the weapon, pulled out a handkerchief, and tied it across his face under the eyes. Now, he drew the torch from his pocket, levelled it, sent three quick flashes out into darkness. Instantly, close ahead, three blinding flashes broke out. For Hal Smith it all had become a question of seconds. Death lay depthless on either hand; ahead Death blocked the trail in silence. Out of the dark some unseen rifle might vomit death in his very face at any moment. He continued to move forward. After a little while his ear caught a slight splash ahead. Suddenly a glare of light enveloped him. "Is it you, Harry Beck?" Instinct led again while wits worked madly: "Harry Beck is two miles back on guard. Where is Sard?" The silence became terrible. Once the glaring light in front moved, then become fixed. There was a light splashing. Instantly Smith realised that the man in front had set his torch in a tree-crotch and was now cowering somewhere behind a levelled weapon. His voice came presently: "Hé! Drap-a that-a gun damn quick!" Smith bent, leisurely, and laid his rifle on a mossy rock. "Now! You there! Why you want Sard! Eh?" "I'll tell Sard, not you," retorted Smith coolly. "You listen to me, whoever you are. I'm from Sard's office in New York. I'm Abrams. The police are on their way here to find Quintana." "How I know? Eh? Why shall I believe that? You tell-a me queeck or I blow-a your damn head off!" "Quintana will blow-a _your_ head off unless you take me to Sard," drawled Smith. A movement might have meant death, but he calmly rummaged for a cigarette, lighted it, blew a cloud insolently toward the white glare ahead. Then he took another chance: "I guess you're Nick Salzar, aren't you?" "Si! I am Salzar. Who the dev' are you?" "I'm Eddie Abrams, Sard's lawyer. My business is to find my client. If you stop me you'll go to prison--the whole gang of you--Sard, Quintana, Picquet, Sanchez, Georgiades and Harry Beck,--and _you_!" After a dead silence: "Maybe _you'll_ go to the chair, too!" It was the third chance he took. There was a dreadful stillness in the woods. Finally came a slight series of splashes; the crunch of heavy boots on rock. "For why you com-a here, eh?" demanded Salzar, in a less aggressive manner. "What-a da matt', eh?" "Well," said Smith, "if you've got to know, there are people from Esthonia in New York.... If you understand that." "Christi! When do they arrive?" "A week ago. Sard's place is in the hands of the police. I couldn't stop them. They've got his safe and all his papers. City, State, and Federal officers are looking for him. The Constabulary rode into Ghost Lake yesterday. Now, don't you think you'd better lead me to Sard?" "Cristi!" exclaimed Salzar. "Sard he is a mile ahead with the others. Damn! Damn! Me, how should I know what is to be done? Me, I have my orders from Quintana. What I do, eh? Cristi! What to do? What you say I should do, eh, Abrams?" A new fear had succeeded the old one--that was evident--and Salzar came forward into the light of his own fixed torch--a well-knit figure in slouch hat, grey shirt, and grey breeches, and wearing a red bandanna over the lower part of his face. He carried a heavy rifle. He came on, sturdily, splashing through the water, and walked up to Smith, his rifle resting on his right shoulder. "For me," he said excitedly, "long time I have worry in this-a damn wood! Si! Where you say those carbinieri? Eh?" "At Ghost Lake. _Your_ signature is in the hotel ledger." "Cristi! You know where Clinch is?" "You know, too. He is on the way to Drowned Valley." "Damn! I knew it. Quintana also. You know where is Quintana? And Sard? I tell-a you. They march ver' fast to the Dump of Clinch. Si! And there they would discover these-a beeg-a dimon'--these-a Flame-Jewel. Si! _Now_, you tell-a me what I do?" Smith said slowly: "If Quintana is marching on Clinch's he's marching into a trap!" Salzar blanched above his bandanna. "The State Troopers are there," said Smith. "They'll get him sure." "Cristi," faltered Salzar, "--then they are gobble--Quintana, Sard, everybody! Si?" Smith considered the man: "You can save _your_ skin anyway. You can go back and tell Harry Beck. Then both of you can beat it for Drowned Valley." He picked up his rifle, stood a moment in troubled reflection: "If I could overtake Quintana I'd do it," he said. "I think I'll try. If I can't, he's done for. You tell Harry Beck that Eddie Abrams advises him to beat it for Drowned Valley." Suddenly Salzar tore the bandanna from his face, flung it down and stamped on it. "What I tell Quintana!" he yelled, his features distorted with rage. "I don't-a like!--no, not me!--no, I tell-a heem, stay at those Ghost-a Lake and watch thees-a fellow Clinch. Si! Not for me thees-a wood. No! I spit upon it! I curse like hell! I tell Quintana I don't-a like. Now, eet is trouble that comes and we lose-a out! Damn! _Damn!_ Me, I find me Beck. You shall say to José Quintana how he is a damfool. Me, I am finish--me, Nick Salzar! You hear me, Abrams! I am through! I go!" He glared at Smith, started to move, came back and took his torch, made a violent gesture with it which drenched the woods with goblin light. "You stop-a Quintana, maybe. You tell-a heem he is the bigg-a fool! You tell-a heem Nick Salzar is no damn fool. No! Adios, my frien' Abrams. I beat it. I save my skin!" Once more Salzar turned and headed for Drowned Valley.... Where Clinch would not fail to kill him.... The man was going to his death.... And it was Smith who sent him. Suddenly it came to Smith that he could not do this thing; that this man had no chance; that he was slaying a human being with perfect safety to himself and without giving him a chance. "Salzar!" he called sharply. The man halted and looked around. "Come back!" Salzar hesitated, turned finally, slouched toward him. Smith laid aside his pack and rifle, and, as Salzar came up, he quietly took his weapon from him and laid it beside his own. "What-a da matt'?" demanded Salzar, astonished. "Why you taka my gun?" Smith measured him. They were well matched. "Set your torch in that crotch," he said. Salzar, puzzled and impatient, demanded to know why. Smith took both torches, set them opposite each other and drew Salzar into the white glare. "Now," he said, "you dirty desperado, I am going to try to kill you clean. Look out for yourself!" For a second Salzar stood rooted in blank astonishment. "I'm one of Clinch's men," said Smith, "but I can't stick a knife in your back, at that! Now, take care of yourself if you can----" His voice died in his throat; Salzar was on him, clawing, biting, kicking, striving to strangle him, to wrestle him off his feet. Smith reeled, staggering under the sheer rush of the man, almost blinded by blows, clutched, bewildered in Salzar's panther grip. For a moment he writhed there, searching blindly for his enemy's wrist, striving to avoid the teeth that snapped at his throat, stifled by the hot stench of the man's breath in his face. "I keel you! I keel you! Damn! Damn!" panted Salzar, in convulsive fury as Smith freed his left arm and struck him in the face. Now, on the narrow, wet and slippery strip of rock they swayed to and fro, murderously interlocked, their heavy boots splashing, battling with limb and body. Twice Salzar forced Smith outward over the sink, trying to end it, but could not free himself. Once, too, he managed to get at a hidden knife, drag it out and stab at head and throat; but Smith caught the fist that wielded it, forced back the arm, held it while Salzar screamed at him, lunging at his face with bared teeth. Suddenly the end came: Salzar's body heaved upward, sprawled for an instant in the dazzling glare, hurtled over Smith's head and fell into the sink with a crashing splash. Frantically he thrashed there, spattering and floundering in darkness. He made no outcry. Probably he had landed head first. In a moment only a vague heaving came from the unseen ooze. Smith, exhausted, drenched with sweat, leaned against a tamarack, sickened. After all sound had ceased he straightened up with an effort. Presently he bent and recovered Salzar's red bandanna and his hat, lifted his own rifle and pack and struggled into the harness. Then, kicking Salzar's rifle overboard, he unfastened both torches, pocketed one, and started on in a flood of ghostly light. He was shaking all over and the torch quivered in his hand. He had seen men die in the Great War. He had been near death himself. But never before had he been near death in so horrible a form. The sodden noises in the mud, the deadened flopping of the sinking body--mud-plastered hands beating frantically on mud, spattering, agonising in darkness--"My God," he breathed, "anything but that--anything but that!----" II Before midnight he struck the hard forest. Here there was no trail at all, only spreading outcrop of rock under dying leaves. He could see a few stars. Cautiously he ventured to shine his compass close to the ground. He was still headed right. The ghastly sink country lay behind him. Ahead of him, somewhere in darkness--but how far he did not know--Quintana and his people were moving swiftly on Clinch's Dump. It may have been an hour later--two hours, perhaps--when from far ahead in the forest came a sound--the faint clink of a shod heel on rock. Now, Smith unslung his pack, placed it between two rocks where laurel grew. Salzar's red bandanna was still wet, but he tied it across his face, leaving his eyes exposed. The dead man's hat fitted him. His own hat and the extra torch he dropped into his basket-pack. Ready, now, he moved swiftly forward, trailing his rifle. And very soon it became plain to him that the people ahead were moving without much caution, evidently fearing no unfriendly ear or eye in that section of the wilderness. Smith could hear their tread on rock and root and rotten branch, or swishing through frosted fern and brake, or louder on newly fallen leaves. At times he could even see the round white glare of a torch on the ground--see it shift ahead, lighting up tree trunks, spread out, fanlike, into a wide, misty glory, then vanish as darkness rushed in from the vast ocean of the night. Once they halted at a brook. Their torches flashed it; he heard them sounding its depths with their gun-butts. Smith knew that brook. It was the east branch of Star Brook, the inlet to Star Pond. Far ahead above the trees the sky seemed luminous. It was star lustre over the pond, turning the mist to a silvery splendour. Now the people ahead of him moved with more caution, crossing the brook without splashing, and their boots made less noise in the woods. To keep in touch with them Smith hastened his pace until he drew near enough to hear the low murmur of their voices. They were travelling in single file; he had a glimpse of them against the ghostly radiance ahead. Indeed, so near had he approached that he could hear the heavy, laboured breathing of the last man in the file--some laggard who dragged his feet, plodding on doggedly, panting, muttering. Probably the man was Sard. Already the forest in front was invaded by the misty radiance from the clearing. Through the trees starlight glimmered on water. The perfume of the open land grew in the night air,--the scent of dew-wet grass, the smell of still water and of sedgy shores. Lying flat behind a rotting log, Smith could see them all now,--spectral shapes against the light. There were five of them at the forest's edge. They seemed to know what was to be done and how to do it. Two went down among the ferns and stunted willows toward the west shore of the pond; two sheered off to the southwest, shoulder deep in blackberry and sumac. The fifth man waited for a while, then ran down across the open pasture. Scarcely had he started when Smith glided to the wood's edge, crouched, and looked down. Below stood Clinch's Dump, plain in the starlight, every window dark. To the west the barn loomed, huge with its ramshackle outbuildings straggling toward the lake. Straight down the slope toward the barn ran the fifth man of Quintana's gang, and disappeared among the out-buildings. Smith crept after him through the sumacs; and, at the foot of the slope, squatted low in a clump of rag-weed. So close to the house was he now that he could hear the dew rattling on the veranda roof. He saw shadowy figures appear, one after another, and take stations at the four corners of the house. The fifth man was somewhere near the out-buildings, very silent about whatever he had on hand. The stillness was absolute save for the drumming dew and a faint ripple from the water's edge. Smith crouched, listened, searched the starlight with intent eyes, and waited. Until something happened he could not solve the problem before him. He could be of no use to Eve Strayer and to Stormont until he found out what Quintana was going to do. He could be of little use anyway unless he got into the house, where two rifles might hold out against five. There was no use in trying to get to Ghost Lake for assistance. He felt that whatever was about to happen would come with a rush. It would be all over before he had gone five minutes. No; the only thing to do was to stay where he was. As for his pledge to the little Grand Duchess, that was always in his mind. Sooner or later, somehow, he was going to make good his pledge. He knew that Quintana and his gang were here to find the Flaming Jewel. Had he not encountered Quintana, his own errand had been the same. For Smith had started for Clinch's prepared to reveal himself to Stormont, and then, masked to the eyes--and to save Eve from a broken heart, and Clinch from States Prison--he had meant to rob the girl at pistol-point. It was the only way to save Clinch; the only way to save the pride of this blindly loyal girl. For the arrest of Clinch meant ruin to both, and Smith realised it thoroughly. * * * * * A slight sound from one of the out-houses--a sort of wagon-shed--attracted his attention. Through the frost-blighted rag-weeds he peered intently, listening. After a few moments a faint glow appeared in the shed. There was a crackling noise. The glow grew pinker. III Inside Clinch's house Eve awoke with a start. Her ears were filled with a strange, rushing, crackling noise. A rosy glare danced and shook outside her windows. As she sprang to the floor on bandaged feet, a shrill scream burst out in the ruddy darkness--unearthly, horrible; and there came a thunderous battering from the barn. The girl tore open her bedroom door. "Jack!" she cried in a terrified voice. "The barn's on fire!" "Good God!" he said, "--my horse!" He had already sprung from his chair outside her door. Now he ran downstairs, and she heard bolt and chain clash at the kitchen door and his spurred boots land on the porch. "Oh," she whimpered, snatching a blanket wrapper from a peg and struggling into it. "Oh, the poor horse! Jack! Jack! I'm coming to help! Don't risk your life! I'm coming--I'm coming----" Terror clutched her as she stumbled downstairs on bandaged feet. As she reached the door a great flare of light almost blinded her. "Jack!" And at the same instant she saw him struggling with three masked men in the glare of the wagon-shed afire. His rifle stood in the corridor outside her door. With one bound she was on the stairs again. There came the crash and splinter of wood and glass from the kitchen, and a man with a handkerchief over his face caught her on the landing. Twice she wrenched herself loose and her fingers almost touched Stormont's rifle; she fought like a cornered lynx, tore the handkerchief from her assailant's face, recognised Quintana, hurled her very body at him, eyes flaming, small teeth bared. Two other men laid hold. In another moment she had tripped Quintana, and all four fell, rolling over and over down the short flight of stairs, landing in the kitchen, still fighting. Here, in darkness, she wriggled out, somehow, leaving her blanket wrapped in their clutches. In another instant she was up the stairs again, only to discover that the rifle was gone. The red glare from the wagon-house lighted her bedroom; she sprang inside and bolted the door. Her chamois jacket with its loops full of cartridges hung on a peg. She got into it, seized her rifle and ran to the window just as two masked men, pushing Stormont before them, entered the house by the kitchen way. Her own door was resounding with kicks and blows, shaking, shivering under the furious impact of boot and rifle-butt. She ran to the bed, thrust her hand under the pillow, pulled out the case containing the Flaming Jewel, and placed it in the breast pocket of her shooting jacket. Again she crept to the window. Only the wagon-house was burning. Somebody, however, had led Stormont's horse from the barn, and had tied it to a tree at a safe distance. It stood there, trembling, its beautiful, nervous head turned toward the burning building. The blows upon her bedroom door had ceased; there came a loud trampling, the sound of excited voices; Quintana's sarcastic tones, clear, dominant: "Dios! The police! Why you bring me this gendarme? What am I to do with a gentleman of the Constabulary, eh? Do you think I am fool enough to cut his throat? Well, Señor Gendarme, what are you doing here in the Dump of Clinch?" Then Stormont's voice, clear and quiet: "What are _you_ doing here? If you've a quarrel with Clinch, he's not here. There's only a young girl in this house." "So?" said Quintana. "Well, that is what I expec', my frien'. It is thees lady upon whom I do myse'f the honour to call!" Eve, listening, heard Stormont's rejoinder, still, calm, and very grave: "The man who lays a finger on that young girl had better be dead. He's as good as dead the moment he touches her. There won't be a chance for him.... Nor for any of you, if you harm her." "Calm youse'f, my frien'," said Quintana. "I demand of thees young lady only that she return to me the property of which I have been rob by Monsieur Clinch." "I knew nothing of any theft. Nor does she----" "Pardon; Señor Clinch knows; and I know." His tone changed, offensively: "Señor Gendarme, am I permit to understan' that you are a frien' of thees young lady?--a heart-frien', per'aps----" "I am her friend," said Stormont bluntly. "Ah," said Quintana, "then you shall persuade her to return to me thees packet of which Monsieur Clinch has rob me." There was a short silence, then Quintana's voice again: "I know thees packet is concel in thees house. Peaceably, if possible, I would recover my property.... If she refuse----" Another pause. "Well?" inquired Stormont, coolly. "Ah! It is ver' painful to say. Alas, Señor Gendarme, I mus' have my property.... If she refuse, then I mus' sever one of her pretty fingers.... An' if she still refuse--I sever her pretty fingers, one by one, until----" "You know what would happen to _you_?" interrupted Stormont, in a voice that quivered in spite of himself. "I take my chance. Señor Gendarme, she is within that room. If you are her frien', you shall advise her to return to me my property." After another silence: "Eve!" he called sharply. She placed her lips to the door: "Yes, Jack." He said: "There are five masked men out here who say that Clinch robbed them and they are here to recover their property.... Do you know anything about this?" "I know they lie. My father is not a thief.... I have my rifle and plenty of ammunition. I shall kill every man who enters this room." For a moment nobody stirred or spoke. Then Quintana strode to the bolted door and struck it with the butt of his rifle. "You, in there," he said in a menacing voice, "--you listen once to _me_! You open your door and come out. I give you one minute!" He struck the door again: "_One_ minute, señorita!--or I cut from your frien', here, the hand from his right arm!" There was a deathly silence. Then the sound of bolts. The door opened. Slowly the girl limped forward, still wearing the hunting jacket over her night-dress. Quintana made her an elaborate and ironical bow, slouch hat in hand; another masked man took her rifle. "Señorita," said Quintana with another sweep of his hat, "I ask pardon that I trouble you for my packet of which your father has rob me for ver' long time." Slowly the girl lifted her blue eyes to Stormont. He was standing between two masked men. Their pistols were pressed slightly against his stomach. Stormont reddened painfully: "It was not for myself that I let you open your door," he said. "They would not have ventured to lay hands on _me_." "Ah," said Quintana with a terrifying smile, "you would not have been the first gendarme who had--_accorded me his hand_!" Two of the masked men laughed loudly. * * * * * Outside in the rag-weed patch, Smith rose, stole across the grass to the kitchen door and slipped inside. "Now, señorita," said Quintana gaily, "my packet, if you please,--and we leave you to the caresses of your faithful gendarme,--who should thank God that he still possesses two good hands to fondle you! Alons! Come then! My packet!" One of the masked men said: "Take her downstairs and lock her up somewhere or she'll shoot us from her window." "Lead out that gendarme, too!" added Quintana, grasping Eve by the arm. Down the stairs tramped the men, forcing their prisoners with them. In the big kitchen the glare from the burning out-house fell dimly; the place was full of shadows. "Now," said Quintana, "I take my property and my leave. Where is the packet hidden?" She stood for a moment with drooping head, amid the sombre shadows, then, slowly, she drew the emblazoned morocco case from her breast pocket. What followed occurred in the twinkling of an eye: for, as Quintana extended his arm to grasp the case, a hand snatched it, a masked figure sprang through the doorway, and ran toward the barn. Somebody recognised the hat and red bandanna: "Salzar!" he yelled. "Nick Salzar!" "A traitor, by God!" shouted Quintana. Even before he had reached the door, his pistol flashed twice, deafening all in the semi-darkness, choking them with stifling fumes. A masked man turned on Stormont, forcing him back into the pantry at pistol-point. Another man pushed Eve after him, slammed the pantry door and bolted it. Through the iron bars of the pantry window, Stormont saw a man, wearing a red bandanna tied under his eyes, run up and untie his horse and fling himself astride under a shower of bullets. As he wheeled the horse and swung him into the clearing toward the foot of Star Pond, his seat and horsemanship were not to be mistaken. He was gone, now, the gallop stretching into a dead run; and Quintana's men still following, shooting, hallooing in the starlight like a pack of leaping shapes from hell. But Quintana had not followed far. When he had emptied his automatic he halted. Something about the transaction suddenly checked his fury, stilled it, summoned his brain into action. For a full minute he stood unstirring, every atom of intelligence in terrible concentration. Presently he put his left hand into his pocket, fitted another clip to his pistol, turned on his heel and walked straight back to the house. Between the two locked in the pantry not a word had passed. Stormont still peered out between the iron bars, striving to catch a glimpse of what was going on. Eve crouched at the pantry doors, her face in her hands, listening. Suddenly she heard Quintana's step in the kitchen. Cautiously she turned the pantry key from inside. Stormont heard her, and instantly came to her. At the same moment Quintana unbolted the door from the outside and tried to open it. "Come out," he said coldly, "or it will not go well with you when my men return." "You've got what you say is your property," replied. Stormont. "What do you want now?" "I tell you what I want ver' damn quick. Who was he, thees man who rides with my property on your horse away? Eh? Because it was not Nick Salzar! No! Salzar can not ride thees way. No! Alors?" "I can't tell you who he was," replied Stormont. "That's your affair, not ours." "No? Ah! Ver' well, then. I shall tell you, Señor Flic! He was one of _yours_. I understan'. It is a trap, a cheat--what you call a _plant_! Thees man who rode your horse he is disguise! Yes! He also is a gendarme! Yes! You think I let a gendarme rob me? I got you where I want you now. You shall write your gendarme frien' that he return to me my property, _one day's time_, or I send him by parcel post two nice, fresh-out right-hands--your sweetheart's and your own!" Stormont drew Eve's head close to his: "This man is blood mad or out of his mind! I'd better go out and take a chance at him before the others come back." But the girl shook her head violently, caught him by the arm and drew him toward the mouth of the tile down which Clinch always emptied his hootch when the Dump was raided. But now, it appeared that the tile which protruded from the cement floor was removable. In silence she began to unscrew it, and he, seeing what she was trying to do, helped her. Together they lifted the heavy tile and laid it on the floor. "You open thees door!" shouted Quintana in a paroxysm of fury. "I give you one minute! Then, by God, I kill you both!" Eve lifted a screen of wood through which the tile had been set. Under it a black hole yawned. It was a tunnel made of three-foot aqueduct tiles; and it led straight into Star Pond, two hundred feet away. Now, as she straightened up and looked silently at Stormont, they heard the trample of boots in the kitchen, voices, the bang of gun-stocks. "Does that drain lead into the lake?" whispered Stormont. She nodded. "Will you follow me, Eve?" She pushed him aside, indicating that he was to follow her. As she stripped the hunting jacket from her, a hot colour swept her face. But she dropped on both knees, crept straight into the tile and slipped out of sight. As she disappeared, Quintana shouted something in Portuguese, and fired at the lock. With the smash of splintering wood in his ears, Stormont slid into the smooth tunnel. In an instant he was shooting down a polished toboggan slide, and in another moment was under the icy water of Star Pond. Shocked, blinded, fighting his way to the surface, he felt his spurred boots dragging at him like a ton of iron. Then to him came her helping hand. "I can make it," he gasped. But his clothing and his boots and the icy water began to tell on him in mid-lake. Swimming without effort beside him, watching his every stroke, presently she sank a little and glided under him and a little ahead, so that his hands fell upon her shoulders. He let them rest, so, aware now that it was no burden to such a swimmer. Supple and silent as a swimming otter, the girl slipped lithely through the chilled water, which washed his body to the nostrils and numbed his legs till he could scarcely move them. And now, of a sudden, his feet touched gravel. He stumbled forward in the shadow of overhanging trees and saw her wading shoreward, a dripping, silvery shape on the shoal. Then, as he staggered up to her, breathless, where she was standing on the pebbled shore, he saw her join both hands, cup-shape, and lift them to her lips. And out of her mouth poured diamond, sapphire, and emerald in a dazzling stream,--and, among them, one great, flashing gem blazing in the starlight,--the Flaming Jewel! Like a naiad of the lake she stood, white, slim, silent, the heaped gems glittering in her snowy hands, her face framed by the curling masses of her wet hair. Then, slowly she turned her head to Stormont. "These are what Quintana came for," she said. "Could you put them into your pocket?" EPISODE EIGHT CUP AND LIP I Two miles beyond Clinch's Dump, Hal Smith pulled Stormont's horse to a walk. He was tremendously excited. With naïve sincerity he believed that what he had done on the spur of the moment had been the only thing to do. By snatching the Flaming Jewel from Quintana's very fingers he had diverted that vindictive bandit's fury from Eve, from Clinch, from Stormont, and had centred it upon himself. More than that, he had sown the seeds of suspicion among Quintana's own people. They never could discover Salzar's body. Always they must believe that it was Nicolas Salzar and no other who so treacherously robbed them, and who rode away in a rain of bullets, shaking the emblazoned morocco case above his masked head in triumph, derision and defiance. At the recollection of what had happened, Hal Smith drew bridle, and, sitting his saddle there in the false dawn, threw back his handsome head and laughed until the fading stars overhead swam in his eyes through tears of sheerest mirth. For he was still young enough to have had the time of his life. Nothing in the Great War had so thrilled him. For, in what had just happened, there was humour. There had been none in the Great Grim Drama. Still, Smith began to realise that he had taken the long, long chance of the opportunist who rolls the bones with Death. He had kept his pledge to the little Grand Duchess. It was a clean job. It was even good drama---- The picturesque angle of the affair shook Hal Smith with renewed laughter. As a moving picture hero he thought himself the funniest thing on earth. From the time he had poked a pistol against Sard's fat paunch, to this bullet-pelted ride for life, life had become one ridiculously exciting episode after another. He had come through like the hero in a best-seller.... Lacking only a heroine.... If there had been any heroine it was Eve Strayer. Drama had gone wrong in that detail.... So perhaps, after all, it was real life he had been living and not drama. Drama, for the masses, must have a definite beginning and ending. Real life lacks the latter. In life nothing is finished. It is always a premature curtain which is yanked by that doddering old stage-hand, Johnny Death. * * * * * Smith sat his saddle, thinking, beginning to be sobered now by the inevitable reaction which follows excitement and mirth as relentlessly as care dogs the horseman. He had had a fine time,--save for the horror of the Rocktrail.... He shuddered.... Anyway, at worst he had not shirked a clean deal in that ghastly game.... It was God's mercy that he was not lying where Salzar lay, ten feet--twenty--a hundred deep, perhaps--in immemorial slime---- He shook himself in his saddle as though to be rid of the creeping horror, and wiped his clammy face. Now, in the false dawn, a blue-jay awoke somewhere among the oaks and filled the misty silence with harsh grace-notes. Then reaction, setting in like a tide, stirred more sombre depths in the heart of this young man. He thought of Riga; and of the Red Terror; of murder at noon-day, and outrage by night. He remembered his only encounter with a lovely child--once Grand Duchess of Esthonia--then a destitute refugee in silken rags. What a day that had been.... Only one day and one evening.... And never had he been so near in love in all his life.... That one day and evening had been enough for her to confide to an American officer her entire life's history.... Enough for him to pledge himself to her service while life endured.... And if emotion had swept every atom of reason out of his youthful head, there in the turmoil and alarm--there in the terrified, riotous city jammed with refugees, reeking with disease, half frantic from famine and the filthy, rising flood of war--if really it all had been merely romantic impulse, ardour born of overwrought sentimentalism, nevertheless, what he had pledged that day to a little Grand Duchess in rags, he had fulfilled to the letter within the hour. As the false dawn began to fade, he loosened hunting coat and cartridge sling, drew from his shirt-bosom the morocco case. It bore the arms and crest of the Grand Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia. His fingers trembled slightly as he pressed the jewelled spring. It opened on an empty casket. In the sudden shock of horror and astonishment, his convulsive clutch on the spring started a tiny bell ringing. Then, under his very nose, the empty tray slid aside revealing another tray underneath, set solidly with brilliants. A rainbow glitter streamed from the unset gems in the silken tray. Like an incredulous child he touched them. They were magnificently real. In the centre lay blazing the great Erosite gem,--the Flaming Jewel itself. Priceless diamonds, sapphires, emeralds ringed it. In his hands he held nearly four millions of dollars. Gingerly he balanced the emblazoned case, fascinated. Then he replaced the empty tray, closed the box, thrust it into the bosom of his flannel shirt and buttoned it in. Now there was little more for this excited young man to do. He was through with Clinch. Hal Smith, hold-up man and dish-washer at Clinch's Dump, had ended his career. The time had now arrived for him to vanish and make room for James Darragh. Because there still remained a very agreeable rôle for Darragh to play. And he meant to eat it up--as Broadway has it. For by this time the Grand Duchess of Esthonia--Ricca, as she was called by her companion, Valentine, the pretty Countess Orloff-Strelwitz--must have arrived in New York. At the big hunting lodge of the late Henry Harrod--now inherited by Darragh--there might be a letter--perhaps a telegram--the cue for Hal Smith to vanish and for James Darragh to enter, play his brief but glittering part, and---- Darragh's sequence of pleasing meditations halted abruptly.... To walk out of the life of the little Grand Duchess did not seem to suit his ideas--indefinite and hazy as they were, so far. He lifted the bridle from the horse's neck, divided curb and snaffle thoughtfully, touched the splendid animal with heel and knee. As he cantered on into the wide forest road that led to his late uncle's abode, curiosity led him to wheel into a narrower trail running east along Star Pond, and from whence he could take a farewell view of Clinch's Dump. He smiled to think of Eve and Stormont there together, and now in safety behind bolted doors and shutters. He grinned to think of Quintana and his precious crew, blood-crazy, baffled, probably already distrusting one another, yet running wild through the night like starving wolves galloping at hazard across a famine-stricken waste. "Only wait till Stormont makes his report," he thought, grinning more broadly still. "Every State Trooper north of Albany will be after Señor Quintana. Some hunting! And, if he could understand, Mike Clinch might thank his stars that what I've done this night has saved him his skin and Eve a broken heart!" He drew his horse to a walk, now, for the path began to run closer to Star Pond, skirting the pebbled shallows in the open just ahead. Alders still concealed the house across the lake, but the trail was already coming out into the starlight. Suddenly his horse stopped short, trembling, its ears pricked forward. Darragh sat listening intently for a moment. Then with infinite caution, he leaned over the cantle and gently parted the alders. On the pebbled beach, full in the starlight, stood two figures, one white and slim, the other dark. The arm of the dark figure clasped the waist of the white and slender one. Evidently they had heard his horse, for they stood motionless, looking directly at the alders behind which his horse had halted. To turn might mean a shot in the back as far as Darragh knew. He was still masked with Salzar's red bandanna. He raised his rifle, slid a cartridge into the breech, pressed his horse forward with a slight touch of heel and knee, and rode slowly out into the star-dusk. What Stormont saw was a masked man, riding his own horse, with menacing rifle half lifted for a shot! What Eve Strayer thought she saw was too terrible for words. And before Stormont could prevent her she sprang in front of him, covering his body with her own. At that the horseman tore off his red mask: "Eve! Jack Stormont! What the devil are you doing over _here_?" Stormont walked slowly up to his own horse, laid one unsteady hand on its silky nose, kept it there while dusty, velvet lips mumbled and caressed his fingers. "I knew it was a cavalryman," he said quietly. "I suspected you, Jim. It was the sort of crazy thing you were likely to do.... I don't ask you what you're up to, where you've been, what your plans may be. If you needed me you'd have told me. "But I've got to have my horse for Eve. Her feet are wounded. She's in her night-dress and wringing wet. I've got to set her on my horse and try to take her through to Ghost Lake." Darragh stared at Stormont, at the ghostly figure of the girl who had sunk down on the sand at the lake's edge. Then he scrambled out of the saddle and handed over the bridle. "Quintana came back," said Stormont. "I hope to reckon with him some day.... I believe he came back to harm Eve.... We got out of the house.... We swam the lake.... I'd have gone under except for her----" In his distress and overwhelming mortification, Darragh stood miserable, mute, irresolute. Stormont seemed to understand: "What you did, Jim, was well meant," he said. "I understand. Eve will understand when I tell her. But that fellow Quintana is a devil. You can't draw a herring across any trail he follows. I tell you, Jim, this fellow Quintana is either blood-mad or just plain crazy. Somebody will have to put him out of the way. I'll do it if I ever find him." "Yes.... Your people ought to do that.... Or, if you like, I'll volunteer.... I've a little business to transact in New York, first.... Jack, your tunic and breeches are soaked; I'll be glad to chip in something for Eve.... Wait a moment----" He stepped into cover, drew the morocco box from his grey shirt, shoved it into his hip pocket. Then he threw off his cartridge belt and hunting coat, pulled the grey shirt over his head and came out in his undershirt and breeches, with the other garments hanging over his arm. "Give her these," he said. "She can button the coat around her waist for a skirt. She'd better go somewhere and get out of that soaking-wet night-dress----" Eve, crouched on the sand, trying to wring out and twist up her drenched hair, looked up at Stormont as he came toward her holding out Darragh's dry clothing. "You'd better do what you can with these," he said, trying to speak carelessly.... "_He_ says you'd better chuck--what you're wearing----" She nodded in flushed comprehension. Stormont walked back to his horse, his boots slopping water at every stride. "I don't know any place nearer than Ghost Lake Inn," he said ... "except Harrod's." "That's where we're going, Jack," said Darragh cheerfully. "That's _your_ place, isn't it?" "It is. But I don't want Eve to know it.... I think it better she should not know me except as Hal Smith--for the present, anyway. You'll see to that, won't you?" "As you wish, Jim.... Only, if we go to your own house----" "We're not going to the main house. She wouldn't, anyway. Clinch has taught that girl to hate the very name of Harrod--hate every foot of forest that the Harrod game keepers patrol. She wouldn't cross my threshold to save her life." "I don't understand, but--it's all right--whatever _you_ say, Jim." "I'll tell you the whole business some day. But where I'm going to take you now is into a brand new camp which I ordered built last spring. It's within a mile of the State Forest border. Eve won't know that it's Harrod property. I've a hatchery there and the State lets me have a man in exchange for free fry. When I get there I'll post my man.... It will be a roof for to-night, anyway, and breakfast in the morning, whenever you're ready." "How far is it?" "Only about three miles east of here." "That's the thing to do, then," said Stormont bluntly. He dropped one sopping-wet sleeve over his horse's neck, taking care not to touch the saddle. He was thinking of the handful of gems in his pocket; and he wondered why Darragh had said nothing about the empty case for which he had so recklessly risked his life. What this whole business was about Stormont had no notion. But he knew Darragh. That was sufficient to leave him tranquil, and perfectly certain that whatever Darragh was doing must be the right thing to do. Yet--Eve had swum Star Pond with her mouth filled with jewels. When she had handed the morocco box to Quintana, Stormont now realised that she must have played her last card on the utterly desperate chance that Quintana might go away without examining the case. Evidently she had emptied the case before she left her room. He recollected that, during all that followed, Eve had not uttered a single word. He knew why, now. How could she speak with her mouth full of diamonds? A slight sound from the shore caused him to turn. Eve was coming toward him in the dusk, moving painfully on her wounded feet. Darragh's flannel shirt and his hunting coat buttoned around her slender waist clothed her. The next instant he was beside her, lifting her in both arms. As he placed her in the saddle and adjusted one stirrup to her bandaged foot, she turned and quietly thanked Darragh for the clothing. "And that was a brave thing you did," she added, "--to risk your life for my father's property. Because the morocco case which you saved proved to be empty does not make what you did any the less loyal and gallant." Darragh gazed at her, astounded; took the hand she stretched out to him; held it with a silly expression on his features. "Hal Smith," she said with perceptible emotion, "I take back what I once said to you on Owl Marsh. No man is a real crook by nature who did what you have done. That is 'faithfulness unto death'--the supreme offer--loyalty----" Her voice broke; she pressed Darragh's hand convulsively and her lip quivered. Darragh, with the morocco case full of jewels buttoned into his hip pocket, stood motionless, mutely swallowing his amazement. What in the world did this girl mean, talking about an _empty_ case? But this was no time to unravel that sort of puzzle. He turned to Stormont who, as perplexed as he, had been listening in silence. "Lead your horse forward," he said. "I know the trail. All you need do is to follow me." And, shouldering his rifle, he walked leisurely into the woods, the cartridge belt sagging _en bandouliere_ across his woollen undershirt. II When Stormont gently halted his horse it was dawn, and Eve, sagging against him with one arm around his neck, sat huddled up on her saddle fast asleep. In a birch woods, on the eastern slope of the divide, stood the log camp, dimly visible in the silvery light of early morning. Darragh, cautioning Stormont with a slight gesture, went forward, mounted the rustic veranda, and knocked at a lighted window. A man, already dressed, came and peered out at him, then hurried to open the door. "I didn't know you, Captain Darragh----" he began, but fell silent under the warning gesture that checked him. "I've a guest outside. She's Clinch's step-daughter, Eve Strayer. She knows me by the name of Hal Smith. Do you understand?" "Yes, sir----" "Cut _that_ out, too. I'm Hal Smith to you, also. State Trooper Stormont is out there with Eve Strayer. He was a comrade of mine in Russia. I'm Hal Smith to him, by mutual agreement. _Now_ do you get me, Ralph?" "Sure, Hal. Go on; spit it out!" They both grinned. "You're a hootch runner," said Darragh. "This is your shack. The hatchery is only a blind. That's all you have to know, Ralph. So put that girl into my room and let her sleep till she wakes of her own accord. "Stormont and I will take two of the guest-bunks in the _L._ And for heaven's sake make us some coffee when you make your own. But first come out and take the horse." They went out together. Stormont lifted Eve out of the saddle. She did not wake. Darragh led the way into the log house and along a corridor to his own room. "Turn down the sheets," whispered Stormont. And, when the bed was ready: "Can you get a bath towel, Jim?" Darragh fetched one from the connecting bath-room. "Wrap it around her wet hair," whispered Stormont. "Good heavens, I wish there were a woman here." "I wish so too," said Darragh; "she's chilled to the bone. You'll have to wake her. She can't sleep in what she's wearing; it's almost as damp as her hair----" He went to the closet and returned with a man's morning robe, as soft as fleece. "Somehow or other she's got to get into that," he said. There was a silence. "Very well," said Stormont, reddening.... "If you'll step out I'll--manage...." He looked Darragh straight in the eyes: "I have asked her to marry me," he said. * * * * * When Stormont came out a great fire of birch-logs was blazing in the living-room, and Darragh stood there, his elbow on the rough stone mantel-shelf. Stormont came straight to the fire and set one spurred boot on the fender. "She's warm and dry and sound asleep," he said. "I'll wake her again if you think she ought to swallow something hot." At that moment the fish-culturist came in with a pot of steaming coffee. "This is my friend, Ralph Wier," said Darragh. "I think you'd better give Eve a cup of coffee." And, to Wier, "Fill a couple of hot water bags, old chap. We don't want any pneumonia in this house." When breakfast was ready Eve once more lay asleep with a slight dew of perspiration on her brow. Darragh was half starved: Stormont ate little. Neither spoke at all until, satisfied, they rose, ready for sleep. At the door of his room Stormont took Darragh's offered hand, understanding what it implied: "Thanks, Jim.... Hers is the loveliest character I have ever known.... If I weren't as poor as a homeless dog I'd marry her to-morrow.... I'll do it anyway, I think.... I _can't_ let her go back to Clinch's Dump!" "After all," said Darragh, smiling, "if it's only money that worries you, why not talk about a job to _me_!" Stormont flushed heavily: "That's rather wonderful of you, Jim----" "Why? You're the best officer I had. Why the devil did you go into the Constabulary without talking to me?" Stormont's upper lip seemed inclined to twitch but he controlled it and scowled at space. "Go to bed, you darned fool," said Darragh, carelessly. "You'll find dry things ready. Ralph will take care of your uniform and boots." Then he went into his own quarters to read two letters which, conforming to arrangements made with Mrs. Ray the day he had robbed Emanuel Sard, were to be sent to Trout Lodge to await his arrival. Both, written from the Ritz, bore the date of the day before: the first he opened was from the Countess Orloff-Strelwitz: "Dear Captain Darragh, "--You are so wonderful! Your messenger, with the _ten_ thousand dollars which you say you already have recovered from those miscreants who robbed Ricca, came aboard our ship before we landed. It was a godsend; we were nearly penniless,--and oh, _so_ shabby! "Instantly, my friend, we shopped, Ricca and I. Fifth Avenue enchanted us. All misery was forgotten in the magic of that paradise for women. "Yet, spendthrifts that we naturally are, we were not silly enough to be extravagant. Ricca was wild for American sport-clothes. I, also. Yet--only _two_ gowns apiece, excepting our sport clothes. And other necessaries. Don't you think we were economical?" "Furthermore, dear Captain Darragh, we are hastening to follow your instructions. We are leaving to-day for your château in the wonderful forest, of which you told us that never-to-be-forgotten day in Riga. "Your agent is politeness, consideration and kindness itself. We have our accommodations. We leave New York at midnight. "Ricca is so excited that it is difficult for her to restrain her happiness. God knows the child has seen enough unhappiness to quench the gaiety of anybody! "Well, all things end. Even tears. Even the Red Terror shall pass from our beloved Russia. For, after all, Monsieur, God still lives. "VALENTINE." "P. S. Ricca has written to you. I have read the letter. I have let it go uncensored." Darragh went to the door of his room: "Ralph! Ralph!" he called. And, when Wier hurriedly appeared: "What time does the midnight train from New York get into Five Lakes?" "A little before nine----" "You can make it in the flivver, can't you?" "Yes, if I start _now_." "All right. Two ladies. You're to bring them to the _house_, not _here_. Mrs. Ray knows about them. And--get back here as soon as you can." He closed his door again, sat down on the bed and opened the other letter. His hand shook as he unfolded it. He was so scared and excited that he could scarcely decipher the angular, girlish penmanship: "To dear Captain Darragh, our champion and friend-- "It is difficult for me, Monsieur, to express my happiness and my deep gratitude in the so cold formality of the written page. "Alas, sir, it will be still more difficult to find words for it when again I have the happiness of greeting you in proper person. "Valentine has told you everything, she warns me, and I am, therefore, somewhat at a loss to know what I should write to you. "Yet, I know very well what I would write if I dare. It is this: that I wish you to know--although it may not pass the censor--that I am most impatient to see you, Monsieur. _Not_ because of kindness past, nor with an unworthy expectation of benefits to come. But because of friendship,--_the deepest, sincerest of my_ WHOLE LIFE. "Is it not modest of a young girl to say this? Yes, surely all the world which was once _en régle_, formal, artificial, has been burnt out of our hearts by this so frightful calamity which has overwhelmed the world with fire and blood. "If ever on earth there was a time when we might venture to express with candour what is hidden within our minds and hearts, it would seem, Monsieur, that the time is now. "True, I have known you only for one day and one evening. Yet, what happened to the world in that brief space of time--and to us, Monsieur--brought _us_ together as though our meeting were but a blessed reunion after the happy intimacy of many years.... I speak, Monsieur, for myself. May I hope that I speak, also, for you? "With a heart too full to thank you, and with expectations indescribable--but with courage, always, for any event,--I take my leave of you at the foot of this page. Like death--I trust--my adieu is not the end, but the beginning. It is not farewell; it is a greeting to him whom I most honour in all the world.... And would willingly obey if he shall command. And otherwise--_all_ else that in his mind--and heart--he might desire. "THEODORICA." It was the most beautiful love-letter any man ever received in all the history of love. And it had passed the censor. III It was afternoon when Darragh awoke in his bunk, stiff, sore, confused in mind and battered in body. However, when he recollected where he was he got out of bed in a hurry and jerked aside the window curtains. The day was magnificent; a sky of royal azure overhead, and everywhere the silver pillars of the birches supporting their splendid canopy of ochre, orange, and burnt-gold. Wier, hearing him astir, came in. "How long have you been back! Did you meet the ladies with your flivver?" demanded Darragh, impatiently. "I got to Five Lakes station just as the train came in. The young ladies were the only passengers who got out. I waited to get their two steamer trunks and then I drove them to Harrod Place----" "How did they seem, Ralph--worn-out--worried--ill?" Wier laughed: "No, sir, they looked very pretty and lively to me. They seemed delighted to get here. They talked to each other in some foreign tongue--Russian, I should say--at least, it sounded like what we heard over in Siberia, Captain----" "It _was_ Russian.... You go on and tell me while I take another hot bath!----" Wier followed him into the bath-room and vaulted to a seat on the deep set window-sill: "--When they weren't talking Russian and laughing they talked to me and admired the woods and mountains. I had to tell them everything--they wanted to see buffalo and Indians. And when I told them there weren't any, enquired for bears and panthers. "We saw two deer on the Scaur, and a woodchuck near the house; I thought they'd jump out of the flivver----" He began to laugh at the recollection: "No, sir, they didn't act tired and sad; they said they were crazy to get into their knickerbockers and go to look for you----" "Where did you say I was?" asked Darragh, drying himself vigorously. "Out in the woods, somewhere. The last I saw of them, Mrs. Ray had their hand-bags and Jerry and Tom were shouldering their trunks." "I'm going up there right away," interrupted Darragh excitedly. "--Good heavens, Ralph, I haven't any clothes here, have I?" "No, sir. But those you wore last night are dry----" "Confound it! I meant to send some decent clothes here---- All right; get me those duds I wore yesterday--and a bite to eat! I'm in a hurry, Ralph----" He ate while dressing, disgustedly arraying himself in the grey shirt, breeches, and laced boots which weather, water, rock, and brier had not improved. In a pathetic attempt to spruce up, he knotted the red bandanna around his neck and pinched Salzar's slouch hat into a peak. "I look like a hootch-running Wop," he said. "Maybe I can get into the house before I meet the ladies----" "You look like one of Clinch's bums," remarked Wier with native honesty. Darragh, chagrined, went to his bunk, pulled the morocco case from under the pillow, and shoved it into the bosom of his flannel shirt. "That's the main thing anyway," he thought. Then, turning to Wier, he asked whether Eve and Stormont had awakened. It appeared that Trooper Stormont had saddled up and cantered away shortly after sunrise, leaving word that he must hunt up his comrade, Trooper Lannis, at Ghost Lake. "They're coming back this evening," added Wier. "He asked you to look out for Clinch's step-daughter." "She's all right here. Can't you keep an eye on her, Ralph?" "I'm stripping trout, sir. I'll be around here to cook dinner for her when she wakes up." Darragh glanced across the brook at the hatchery. It was only a few yards away. He nodded and started for the veranda: "That'll be all right," he said. "Nobody is coming here to bother her.... And don't let her leave, Ralph, till I get back----" "Very well, sir. But suppose she takes it into her head to leave----" Darragh called back, gaily: "She can't: she hasn't any clothes!" And away he strode in the gorgeous sunshine of a magnificent autumn day, all the clean and vigorous youth of him afire in anticipation of a reunion which the letter from his lady-love had transfigured into a tryst. For, in that amazing courtship of a single day, he never dreamed that he had won the heart of that sad, white-faced, hungry child in rags--silken tatters still stained with the blood of massacre,--the very soles of her shoes still charred by the embers of her own home. Yet, that is what must have happened in a single day and evening. Life passes swiftly during such periods. Minutes lengthen into days; hours into years. The soul finds itself. Then mind and heart become twin prophets,--clairvoyant concerning what hides behind the veil; comprehending with divine clair-audience what the Three Sisters whisper there--hearing even the whirr of the spindle--the very snipping of the Eternal Shears! * * * * * The soul finds itself; the mind knows itself; the heart perfectly understands. He had not spoken to this young girl of love. The blood of friends and servants was still rusty on her skirt's ragged hem. Yet, that night, when at last in safety she had said good-bye to the man who had secured it for her, he knew that he was in love with her. And, at such crises, the veil that hides hearts becomes transparent. At that instant he had seen and known. Afterward he had dared not believe that he had known. But hers had been a purer courage. * * * * * As he strode on, the comprehension of her candour, her honesty, the sweet bravery that had conceived, created, and sent that letter, thrilled this young man until his heavy boots sprouted wings, and the trail he followed was but a path of rosy clouds over which he floated heavenward. * * * * * About half an hour later he came to his senses with a distinct shock. Straight ahead of him on the trail, and coming directly toward him, moved a figure in knickers and belted tweed. Flecked sunlight slanted on the stranger's cheek and burnished hair, dappling face and figure with moving, golden spots. Instantly Darragh knew and trembled. But Theodorica of Esthonia had known him only in his uniform. As she came toward him, lovely in her lithe and rounded grace, only friendly curiosity gazed at him from her blue eyes. Suddenly she knew him, went scarlet to her yellow hair, then white: and tried to speak--but had no control of the short, rosy upper lip which only quivered as he took her hands. The forest was dead still around them save for the whisper of painted leaves sifting down from a sunlit vault above. Finally she said in a ghost of a voice: "My--friend...." "If you accept his friendship...." "Friendship is to be shared.... Ours mingled--on that day.... Your share is--as much as pleases you." "All you have to give me, then." "Take it ... all I have...." Her blue eyes met his with a little effort. All courage is an effort. Then that young man dropped on both knees at her feet and laid his lips to her soft hands. In trembling silence she stood for a moment, then slowly sank on both knees to face him across their clasped hands. So, in the gilded cathedral of the woods, pillared with silver, and azure-domed, the betrothal of these two was sealed with clasp and lip. Awed, a little fearful, she looked into her lover's eyes with a gaze so chaste, so oblivious to all things earthly, that the still purity of her face seemed a sacrament, and he scarcely dared touch the childish lips she offered. But when the sacrament of the kiss had been accomplished, she rested one hand on his shoulder and rose, and drew him with her. Then _his_ moment came: he drew the emblazoned case from his breast, opened it, and, in silence, laid it in her hands. The blaze of the jewels in the sunshine almost blinded them. That was _his_ moment. The next moment was Quintana's. * * * * * Darragh hadn't a chance. Out of the bushes two pistols were thrust hard against his stomach. Quintana's face was behind them. He wore no mask, but the three men with him watched him over the edges of handkerchiefs,--over the sights of levelled rifles, too. The youthful Grand Duchess had turned deadly white. One of Quintana's men took the morocco case from her hands and shoved her aside without ceremony. Quintana leered at Darragh over his levelled weapons: "My frien' Smith!" he exclaimed softly. "So it is you, then, who have twice try to rob me of my property! "Ah! You recollec'? Yes? How you have rob me of a pacquet which contain only some chocolate?" Darragh's face was burning with helpless rage. "My frien', Smith," repeated Quintana, "do you recollec' what it was you say to me? Yes?... How often it is the onexpected which so usually happen? You are quite correc', l'ami Smith. It has happen." He glanced at the open jewel box which one of the masked men held, then, like lightning, his sinister eyes focussed on Darragh. "So," he said, "it was also you who rob me las' night of my property.... What you do to Nick Salzar, eh?" "Killed him," said Darragh, dry lipped, nerved for death. "I ought to have killed you, too, when I had the chance. But--_I'm_ white, you see." At the insult flung into his face over the muzzles of his own pistols, Quintana burst into laughter. "Ah! You _should_ have shot me! You are quite right, my frien'. I mus' say you have behave ver' foolish." He laughed again so hard that Darragh felt his pistols shaking against his body. "So you have kill Nick Salzar, eh?" continued Quintana with perfect good humour. "My frien', I am oblige to you for what you do. You are surprise? Eh? It is ver' simple, my frien' Smith. What I want of a man who can be kill? Eh? Of what use is he to me? Voilà!" He laughed, patted Darragh on the shoulder with one of his pistols. "You, now--_you_ could be of use. Why? Because you are a better man than was Nick Salzar. He who kills is better than the dead." Then, swiftly his dark features altered: "My frien' Smith," he said, "I have come here for my property, not to kill. I have recover my property. Why shall I kill you? To say that I am a better man? Yes, perhaps. But also I should be oblige to say that also I am a fool. Yaas! A poor damfool." Without shifting his eyes he made a motion with one pistol to his men. As they turned and entered the thicket, Quintana's intent gaze became murderous. "If I mus' kill you I shall do so. Otherwise I have sufficient trouble to keep me from ennui. My frien', I am going home to enjoy my property. If you live or die it signifies nothing to me. No! Why, for the pleasure of killing you, should I bring your dirty gendarmes on my heels?" He backed away to the edge of the thicket, venturing one swift and evil glance at the girl who stood as though dazed. "Listen attentively," he said to Darragh. "One of my men remains hidden very near. He is a dead shot. His aim is at your--sweetheart's--body. You understan'?" "Yes." "Ver' well. You shall not go away for one hour time. After that----" he took off his slouch hat with a sweeping bow--"you may go to hell!" Behind him the bushes parted, closed. José Quintana had made his adieux. EPISODE NINE THE FOREST AND MR. SARD I When at last José Quintana had secured what he had been after for years, his troubles really began. In his pocket he had two million dollars worth of gems, including the Flaming Jewel. But he was in the middle of a wilderness ringed in by hostile men, and obliged to rely for aid on a handful of the most desperate criminals in Europe. Those openly hostile to him had a wide net spread around him--wide of mesh too, perhaps; and it was through a mesh he meant to wriggle, but the net was intact from Canada to New York. Canadian police and secret agents held it on the north: this he had learned from Jake Kloon long since. East, west and south he knew he had the troopers of the New York State Constabulary to deal with, and in addition every game warden and fire warden in the State Forests, a swarm of plain clothes men from the Metropolis, and the rural constabulary of every town along the edges of the vast reservation. Just who was responsible for this enormous conspiracy to rob him of what he considered his own legitimate loot Quintana did not know. Sard's attorney, Eddie Abrams, believed that the French police instigated it through agents of the United States Secret Service. Of one thing Quintana was satisfied, Mike Clinch had nothing to do with stirring up the authorities. Law-breakers of his sort don't shout for the police or invoke State or Government aid. As for the status of Darragh--or Hal Smith, as he supposed him to be--Quintana took him for what he seemed to be, a well-born young man gone wrong. Europe was full of that kind. To Quintana there was nothing suspicious about Hal Smith. On the contrary, his clever recklessness confirmed that polished bandit's opinion that Smith was a gentleman degenerated into a crook. It takes an educated imagination for a man to do what Smith had done to him. If the common crook has any imagination at all it never is educated. Another matter worried José Quintana: he was not only short on provisions, but what remained was cached in Drowned Valley; and Mike Clinch and his men were guarding every outlet to that sinister region, excepting only the rocky and submerged trail by which he had made his exit. That was annoying; it cut off provisions and liquor from Canada, for which he had arranged with Jake Kloon. For Kloon's hootch-runners now would be stopped by Clinch; and not one among them knew about the rocky trail in. All these matters were disquieting enough: but what really and most deeply troubled Quintana was his knowledge of his own men. He did not trust one among them. Of international crookdom they were the cream. Not one of them but would have murdered his fellow if the loot were worth it and the chances of escape sufficient. There was no loyalty to him, none to one another, no "honour among thieves"--and it was José Quintana who knew that only in romance such a thing existed. No, he could not trust a single man. Only hope of plunder attached these marauders to him, and merely because he had education and imagination enough to provide what they wanted. Anyone among them would murder and rob him if opportunity presented. Now, how to keep his loot; how to get back to Europe with it, was the problem that confronted Quintana after robbing Darragh. And he determined to settle part of that question at once. About five miles from Harrod Place, within a hundred rods of which he had held up Hal Smith, Quintana halted, seated himself on a rotting log, and waited until his men came up and gathered around him. For a little while, in utter silence, his keen eyes travelled from one visage to the next, from Henri Picquet to Victor Georgiades, to Sanchez, to Sard. His intent scrutiny focussed on Sard; lingered. If there were anybody he might trust, a little way, it would be Sard. Then a polite, untroubled smile smoothed the pale, dark features of José Quintana: "Bien, messieurs, the coup has been success. Yes? Ver' well; in turn, then, en accord with our custom, I shall dispose myse'f to listen to your good advice." He looked at Henri Picquet, smiled and nodded invitation to speak. Picquet shrugged: "For me, mon capitaine, eet ees ver' simple. We are five. Therefore, divide into five ze gems. After zat, each one for himself to make his way out----" "Nick Salzar and Harry Beck are in the Drowned Valley," interrupted Quintana. Picquet shrugged again; Sanchez laughed, saying: "If they are there it is their misfortune. Also, we others are in a hurry." Picquet added: "Also five shares are sufficient division." "It is propose, then, that we abandon our comrades Beck and Salzar to the rifle of Mike Clinch?" "Why not?" demanded Georgiades sullenly;--"we shall have worse to face before we see the Place de l'Opéra." "There remains, also, Eddie Abrams," remarked Quintana. Crooks never betray their attorney. Everybody expressed a willingness to have the five shares of plunder properly assessed to satisfy the fee due to Mr. Abrams. "Ver' well," nodded Quintana, "are you satisfy, messieurs, to divide an' disperse?" Sard said, heavily, that they ought to stick together until they arrived in New York. Sanchez sneered, accusing Sard of wanting a bodyguard to escort him to his own home. "In this accursed forest," he insisted, "five of us would attract attention where one alone, with sufficient stealth, can slip through into the open country." "Two by two is better," said Picquet. "You, Sanchez, shall travel alone if you desire----" "Divide the gems first," growled Georgiades, "and then let each do what pleases him." "That," nodded Quintana, "is also my opinion. It is so settle. Attention!" Two pistols were in his hands as by magic. With a slight smile he laid them on the moss beside him. He then spread a large white handkerchief flat on the ground; and, from his pockets, he poured out the glittering cascade. Yet, like a feeding panther, every sense remained alert to the slightest sound or movement elsewhere; and when Georgiades grunted from excess emotion, Quintana's right hand held a pistol before the grunt had ceased. It was a serious business, this division of loot; every reckless visage reflected the strain of the situation. Quintana, both pistols in his hands, looked down at the scintillating heap of jewels. "I estimate two and one quartaire million of dollaires," he said simply. "It has been agree that I accep' for me the erosite gem known as The Flaming Jewel. In addition, messieurs, it has been agree that I accep' for myse'f one part in five of the remainder." A fierce silence reigned. Every wolfish eye was on the leader. He smiled, rested his pair of pistols on either knee. "Is there," he asked softly, "any gentleman who shall objec'?" "Who," demanded Georgiades hoarsely, "is to divide for us?" "It is for such purpose," explained Quintana suavely, "that my frien', Emanuel Sard, has arrive. Monsieur Sard is a brokaire of diamon's, as all know ver' well. Therefore, it shall be our frien' Sard who will divide for us what we have gain to-day by our--industry." The savage tension broke with a laugh at the word chosen by Quintana to express their efforts of the morning. Sard had been standing with one fat hand flat against the trunk of a tree. Now, at a nod from Quintana, he squatted down, and, with the same hand that had been resting against the tree, he spread out the pile of jewels into a flat layer. As he began to divide this into five parts, still using the flat of his pudgy hand, something poked him lightly in the ribs. It was the muzzle of one of Quintana's pistols. Sard, ghastly pale, looked up. His palm, sticky with balsam gum, quivered in Quintana's grasp. "I was going to scrape it off," he gasped. "The tree was sticky----" Quintana, with the muzzle of his pistol, detached half a dozen diamonds and rubies that clung to the gum on Mr. Sard's palm. "Wash!" he said drily. Sard, sweating with fear, washed his right hand with whiskey from his pocket-flask, and dried it for general inspection. "My God," he protested tremulously, "it was accidental, gentlemen. Do you think I'd try to get away with anything like that----" Quintana coolly shoved him aside and with the barrel of his pistol he pushed the flat pile of gems into five separate heaps. Only he and Georgiades knew that a magnificent diamond had been lodged in the muzzle of his pistol. The eyes of the Greek flamed with rage at the trick, but he awaited the division before he should come to any conclusion. Quintana coolly picked out The Flaming Jewel and pocketed it. Then, to each man he indicated the heap which was to be his portion. A snarling wrangle instantly began, Sanchez objecting to rubies and demanding more emeralds, and Picquet complaining violently concerning the smallness of the diamonds allotted him. Sard's trained eyes appraised every allotment. Without weighing, and, lacking time and paraphernalia for expert examination, he was inclined to think the division fair enough. Quintana got to his feet lithely. "For me," he said, "it is finish. With my frien' Sard I shall now depart. Messieurs, I embrace and salute you. A bientôt in Paris--if it be God's will! Donc--au revoir, les amis, et à la bonheur! Allons! Each for himself and gar' aux flics!" Sard, seized with a sort of still terror, regarded Quintana with enormous eyes. Torn between dismay of being left alone in the wilderness, and a very natural fear of any single companion, he did not know what to say or do. En masse, the gang were too distrustful of one another to unite on robbing any individual. But any individual might easily rob a companion when alone with him. "Why--why can't we all go together," he stammered. "It is safer, surer----" "I go with Quintana and you," interrupted Georgiades, smilingly; his mind on the diamond in the muzzle of Quintana's pistol. "I do not invite you," said Quintana. "But come if it pleases you." "I also prefer to come with you others," growled Sanchez. "To roam alone in this filthy forest does not suit me." Picquet shrugged his shoulders, turned on his heel in silence. They watched him moving away all alone, eastward. When he had disappeared among the trees, Quintana looked inquiringly at the others. "Eh, bien, non alors!" snarled Georgiades suddenly. "There are too many in your trupeau, mon capitaine. Bonne chance!" He turned and started noisily in the direction taken by Picquet. They watched him out of sight; listened to his careless trample after he was lost to view. When at length the last distant sound of his retreat had died away in the stillness, Quintana touched Sard with the point of his pistol. "Go first," he said suavely. "For God's sake, be a little careful of your gun----" "I am, my dear frien'. It is of _you_ I may become careless. You will mos' kin'ly face south, and you will be kin' sufficient to start immediate. Tha's what I mean.... I thank you.... Now, my frien', Sanchez! Tha's correc'! You shall follow my frien' Sard ver' close. Me, I march in the rear. So we shall pass to the eas' of thees Star Pon', then between the cross-road an' Ghos' Lake; an' then we shall repose; an' one of us, en vidette, shall discover if the Constabulary have patrol beyon'.... Allons! March!" II Guided by Quintana's directions, the three had made a wide detour to the east, steering by compass for the cross-roads beyond Star Pond. In a dense growth of cedars, on a little ridge traversing wet land, Quintana halted to listen. Sard and Sanchez, supposing him to be at their heels, continued on, pushing their way blindly through the cedars, clinging to the hard ridge in terror of sink-holes. But their progress was very slow; and they were still in sight, fighting a painful path amid the evergreens, when Quintana suddenly squatted close to the moist earth behind a juniper bush. At first, except for the threshing of Sard and Sanchez through the massed obstructions ahead, there was not a sound in the woods. After a little while there _was_ a sound--very, very slight. No dry stick cracked; no dry leaves rustled; no swish of foliage; no whipping sound of branches disturbed the intense silence. But, presently, came a soft, swift rhythm like the pace of a forest creature in haste--a discreetly hurrying tread which was more a series of light earth-shocks than sound. Quintana, kneeling on one knee, lifted his pistol. He already felt the slight vibration of the ground on the hard ridge. The cedars were moving just beyond him now. He waited until, through the parted foliage, a face appeared. The loud report of his pistol struck Sard with the horror of paralysis. Sanchez faced about with one spring, snarling, a weapon in either hand. In the terrible silence they could hear something heavy floundering in the bushes, choking, moaning, thudding on the ground. Sanchez began to creep back; Sard, more dead than alive, crawled at his heels. Presently they saw Quintana, waist deep in juniper, looking down at something. And when they drew closer they saw Georgiades lying on his back under a cedar, the whole front of his shirt from chest to belly a sopping mess of blood. There seemed no need of explanation. The dead Greek lay there where he had not been expected, and his two pistols lay beside him where they had fallen. Sanchez looked stealthily at Quintana, who said softly: "Bien sure.... In his left side pocket, I believe." Sanchez laid a cool hand on the dead man's heart; then, satisfied, rummaged until he found Georgiades' share of the loot. Sard, hurriedly displaying a pair of clean but shaky hands, made the division. When the three men had silently pocketed what was allotted to each, Quintana pushed curiously at the dead man with the toe of his shoe. "Peste!" he remarked. "I had place, for security, a ver' large diamon' in my pistol barrel. Now it is within the interior of this gentleman...." He turned to Sanchez: "I sell him to you. One sapphire. Yes?" Sanchez shook his head with a slight sneer: "We wait--if you want your diamond, mon capitaine." Quintana hesitated, then made a grimace and shook his head. "No," he said, "he has swallow. Let him digest. Allons! March!" But after they had gone on--two hundred yards, perhaps--Sanchez stopped. "Well?" inquired Quintana. Then, with a sneer: "I now recollec' that once you have been a butcher in Madrid.... Suit your tas'e, l'ami Sanchez." Sard gazed at Sanchez out of sickened eyes. "You keep away from me until you've washed yourself," he burst out, revolted. "Don't you come near me till you're clean!" Quintana laughed and seated himself. Sanchez, with a hang-dog glance at him, turned and sneaked back on the trail they had traversed. Before he was out of sight Sard saw him fish out a Spanish knife from his hip pocket and unclasp it. Almost nauseated, he turned on Quintana in a sort of frightened fury: "Come on!" he said hoarsely. "I don't want to travel with that man! I won't associate with a ghoul! My God, I'm a respectable business man----" "Yaas," drawled Quintana, "tha's what I saw always myse'f; my frien' Sard he is ver' respec'able, an' I trus' him like I trus' myse'f." However, after a moment, Quintana got up from the fallen tree where he had been seated. As he passed Sard he looked curiously into the man's frightened eyes. There was not the slightest doubt that Sard was a coward. "You shall walk behin' me," remarked Quintana carelessly. "If Sanchez fin' us, it is well; if he shall not, that also is ver' well.... We go, now." * * * * * Sanchez made no effort to find them. They had been gone half an hour before he had finished the business that had turned him back. After that he wandered about hunting for water--a rivulet, a puddle, anything. But the wet ground proved wet only on the surface moss. Sanchez needed more than damp moss for his toilet. Casting about him, hither and thither, for some depression that might indicate a stream, he came to a heavily wooded slope, and descended it. There was a bog at the foot. With his fouled hands he dug out a basin which filled up full of reddish water, discoloured by alders. But the water was redder still when his toilet ended. As he stood there, examining his clothing, and washing what he could of the ominous stains from sleeve and shoe, very far away to the north he heard a curious noise--a far, faint sound such as he never before had heard. If it were a voice of any sort there was nothing human about it.... Probably some sort of unknown bird.... Perhaps a bird of prey.... That was natural, considering the attraction that Georgiades would have for such creatures.... If it were a bird it must be a large one, he thought.... Because there was a certain volume to the cry.... Perhaps it was a beast, after all.... Some unknown beast of the forest.... Sanchez was suddenly afraid. Scarcely knowing what he was doing he began to run along the edge of the bog. First growth timber skirted it; running was unobstructed by underbrush. With his startled ears full of the alarming and unknown sound, he ran through the woods under gigantic pines which spread a soft green twilight around him. He was tired, or thought he was, but the alarming sounds were filling his ears now; the entire forest seemed full of them, echoing in all directions, coming in upon him from everywhere, so that he knew not in which direction to run. But he could not stop. Demoralised, he darted this way and that; terror winged his feet; the air vibrated above and around him with the dreadful, unearthly sounds. The next instant he fell headlong over a ledge, struck water, felt himself whirled around in the icy, rushing current, rolled over, tumbled through rapids, blinded, deafened, choked, swept helplessly in a vast green wall of water toward something that thundered in his brain an instant, then dashed it into roaring chaos. * * * * * Half a mile down the turbulent outlet of Star Pond,--where a great sheet of green water pours thirty feet into the tossing foam below,--and spinning, dipping, diving, bobbing up like a lost log after the drive, the body of Señor Sanchez danced all alone in the wilderness, spilling from soggy pockets diamonds, sapphires, rubies, emeralds, into crystal caves where only the shadows of slim trout stirred. * * * * * Very far away to the eastward Quintana stood listening, clutching Sard by one sleeve to silence him. Presently he said: "My frien', somebody is hunting with houn's in this fores'. "Maybe they are not hunting _us_.... _Maybe._... But, for me, I shall seek running water. Go you your own way! Houp! Vamose!" He turned westward; but he had taken scarcely a dozen strides when Sard came panting after him: "Don't leave me!" gasped the terrified diamond broker. "I don't know where to go----" Quintana faced him abruptly--with a terrifying smile and glimmer of white teeth--and shoved a pistol into the fold of fat beneath Sard's double chin. "You hear those dogs? Yes? Ver' well; I also. Run, now. I say to you run ver' damn quick. Hé! Houp! Allez vous en! Beat eet!" He struck Sard a stinging blow on his fleshy ear with the pistol barrel, and Sard gave a muffled shriek which was more like the squeak of a frightened animal. "My God, Quintana----" he sobbed. Then Quintana's eyes blazed murder: and Sard turned and ran lumbering through the thicket like a stampeded ox, crashing on amid withered brake, white birch scrub and brier, not knowing whither he was headed, crazed with terror. Quintana watched his flight for a moment, then, pistol swinging, he ran in the opposite direction, eastward, speeding lithely as a cat down a long, wooded slope which promised running water at the foot. * * * * * Sard could not run very far. He could scarcely stand when he pulled up and clung to the trunk of a tree. More dead than alive he embraced the tree, gulping horribly for air, every fat-incrusted organ labouring, his senses swimming. As he sagged there, gripping his support on shaking knees, by degrees his senses began to return. He could hear the dogs, now, vaguely as in a nightmare. But after a little while he began to believe that their hysterical yelping was really growing more distant. Then this man whose every breath was an outrage on God, prayed. He prayed that the hounds would follow Quintana, come up with him, drag him down, worry him, tear him to shreds of flesh and clothing. He listened and prayed alternately. After a while he no longer prayed but concentrated on his ears. Surely, surely, the diabolical sound was growing less distinct.... It was changing direction too. But whether in Quintana's direction or not Sard could not tell. He was no woodsman. He was completely turned around. He looked upward through a dense yellow foliage, but all was grey in the sky--very grey and still;--and there seemed to be no traces of the sun that had been shining. He looked fearfully around: trees, trees, and more trees. No break, no glimmer, nothing to guide him, teach him. He could see, perhaps, fifty feet; no further. In panic he started to move on. That is what fright invariably does to those ignorant of the forest. Terror starts them moving. * * * * * Sobbing, frightened almost witless, he had been floundering forward for over an hour, and had made circle after circle without knowing, when, by chance, he set foot in a perfectly plain trail. Emotion overpowered him. He was too overcome to stir for a while. At length, however, he tottered off down the trail, oblivious as to what direction he was taking, animated only by a sort of madness--horror of trees--an insane necessity to see open ground, get into it, and lie down on it. And now, directly ahead, he saw clear grey sky low through the trees. The wood's edge! He began to run. As he emerged from the edge of the woods, waist-deep in brush and weeds, wide before his blood-shot eyes spread Star Pond. Even in his half-stupefied brain there was memory enough left for recognition. He remembered the lake. His gaze travelled to the westward; and he saw Clinch's Dump standing below, stark, silent, the doors swinging open in the wind. When terror had subsided in a measure and some of his trembling strength returned, he got up out of the clump of rag-weeds where he had lain down, and earnestly nosed the unpainted house, listening with all his ears. There was not a sound save the soughing of autumn winds and the delicate rattle of falling leaves in the woods behind him. He needed food and rest. He gazed earnestly at the house. Nothing stirred there save the open doors swinging idly in every vagrant wind. He ventured down a little way--near enough to see the black cinders of the burned barn, and close enough to hear the lake waters slapping the sandy shore. If he dared---- And after a long while he ventured to waddle nearer, slinking through brush and frosted weed, creeping behind boulders, edging always closer and closer to that silent house where nothing moved except the wind-blown door. And now, at last, he set a furtive foot upon the threshold, stood listening, tip-toed in, peered here and there, sidled to the dining-room, peered in. * * * * * When, at length, Emanuel Sard discovered that Clinch's Dump was tenantless, he made straight for the pantry. Here was cheese, crackers, an apple pie, half a dozen bottles of home-brewed beer. He loaded his arms with all they could carry, stole through the dance-hall out to the veranda, which overlooked the lake. Here, hidden in the doorway, he could watch the road from Ghost Lake and survey the hillside down which an intruder must come from the forest. And here Sard slaked his raging thirst and satiated the gnawing appetite of the obese, than which there is no crueller torment to an inert liver and distended paunch. Munching, guzzling, watching, Sard squatted just within the veranda doorway, anxiously considering his chances. He knew where he was. At the foot of the lake, and eastward, he had been robbed by a highwayman on the forest road branching from the main highway. Southwest lay Ghost Lake and the Inn. Somewhere between these two points he must try to cross the State Road.... After that, comparative safety. For the miles that still would lie between him and distant civilisation seemed as nothing to the horror of that hell of trees. He looked up now at the shaggy fringing woods, shuddered, opened another bottle of beer. In all that panorama of forest, swale, and water the only thing that had alarmed him at all by moving was something in the water. When first he noticed it he almost swooned, for he took it to be a swimming dog. In his agitation he had risen to his feet; and then the swimming creature almost frightened Sard out of his senses, for it tilted suddenly and went down with a report like the crack of a pistol. However, when Sard regained control of his wits he realised that a swimming dog doesn't dive and doesn't whack the water with its tail. He dimly remembered hearing that beavers behaved that way. Watching the water he saw the thing out there in the lake again, swimming in erratic circles, its big, dog-like head well out of the water. It certainly was no dog. A beaver, maybe. Whatever it was, Sard didn't care any longer. Idly he watched it. Sometimes, when it swam very near, he made a sudden motion with his fat arm; and crack!--with a pistol-shot report down it dived. But always it reappeared. What had a creature like that to do with him? Sard watched it with failing interest, thinking of other things--of Quintana and the chances that the dogs had caught him,--of Sanchez, the Ghoul, hoping that dire misfortune might overtake him, too;--of the dead man sprawling under the cedar-tree, all sopping crimson---- Faugh! Shivering, Sard filled his mouth with apple-pie and cheese and pulled the cork from another bottle of home-brewed beer. III About that time, a mile and a half to the southward, James Darragh came out on the rocky and rushing outlet to Star Pond. Over his shoulder was a rifle, and all around him ran dogs,--big, powerful dogs, built like foxhounds but with the rough, wiry coats of Airedales, even rougher of ear and features. The dogs,--half a dozen or so in number,--seemed very tired. All ran down eagerly to the water and drank and slobbered and panted, lolling their tongues, and slaking their thirst again and again along the swirling edge of a deep trout pool. Darragh's rifle lay in the hollow of his left arm; his khaki waistcoat was set with loops full of cartridges. From his left wrist hung a raw-hide whip. Now he laid aside his rifle and whip, took from the pocket of his shooting coat three or four leather dog-leashes, went down among the dogs and coupled them up. They followed him back to the bank above. Here he sat down on a rock and inspected his watch. He had been seated there for ten minutes, possibly, with his tired dogs lying around him, when just above him he saw a State Trooper emerge from the woods on foot, carrying a rifle over one shoulder. "Jack!" he called in a guarded voice. Trooper Stormont turned, caught sight of Darragh, made a signal of recognition, and came toward him. Darragh said: "Your mate, Trooper Lannis, is down stream. I've two of my own game wardens at the cross-roads, two more on the Ghost Lake Road, and two foresters and an inspector out toward Owl Marsh." Stormont nodded, looked down at the dogs. "This isn't the State Forest," said Darragh, smiling. Then his face grew grave: "How is Eve?" he asked. "She's feeling better," replied Stormont. "I telephoned to Ghost Lake Inn for the hotel physician.... I was afraid of pneumonia, Jim. Eve had chills last night.... But Dr. Claybourn thinks she's all right.... So I left her in care of your housekeeper." "Mrs. Ray will look out for her.... You haven't told Eve who I am, have you?" "No." "I'll tell her myself to-night. I don't know how she'll take it when she learns I'm the heir to the mortal enemy of Mike Clinch." "I don't know either," said Stormont. There was a silence; the State Trooper looked down at the dogs: "What are they, Jim?" "Otter-hounds," said Darragh, "--a breed of my own.... But that's _all_ they are capable of hunting, I guess," he added grimly. Stormont's gaze questioned him. Darragh said: "After I telephoned you this morning that a guest of mine at Harrod Place, and I, had been stuck up and robbed by Quintana's outfit, what did you do, Jack?" "I called up Bill Lannis first," said Stormont, "--then the doctor. After he came, Mrs. Ray arrived with a maid. Then I went in and spoke to Eve. Then I did what you suggested--I crossed the forest diagonally toward The Scaur, zig-zagged north, turned by the rock hog-back south of Drowned Valley, came southeast, circled west, and came out here as you asked me to." "Almost on the minute," nodded Darragh.... "You saw no signs of Quintana's gang?" "None." "Well," said Darragh, "I left my two guests at Harrod Place to amuse each other, got out three couple of my otter-hounds and started them,--as I hoped and supposed,--on Quintana's trail." "What happened?" inquired Stormont curiously. "Well--I don't know. I think they were following some of Quintana's gang--for a while, anyway. After that, God knows,--deer, hare, cotton-tail,--_I_ don't know. They yelled their bally heads off--I on the run--they're slow dogs, you know--and whatever they were after either fooled them or there were too many trails.... I made a mistake, that's all. These poor beasts don't know anything except an otter. I just _hoped_ they might take Quintana's trail if I put them on it." "Well," said Stormont, "it can't be helped now.... I told Bill Lannis that we'd rendezvous at Clinch's Dump." "All right," nodded Darragh. "Let's keep to the open; my dogs are leashed couples." They had been walking for twenty minutes, possibly, exchanging scarcely a word, and they were now nearing the hilly basin where Star Pond lay, when Darragh said abruptly: "I'm going to tell you about things, Jack. You've taken my word so far that it's all right----" "Naturally," said Stormont simply. The two men, who had been brother officers in the Great War, glanced at each other, slightly smiling. "Here it is then," said Darragh. "When I was on duty in Riga for the Intelligence Department, I met two ladies in dire distress, whose mansion had been burned and looted, supposedly by the Bolsheviki. "They were actually hungry and penniless; the only clothing they possessed they were wearing. These ladies were the Countess Orloff-Strelwitz, and a young girl, Theodorica, Grand Duchess of Esthonia.... I did what I could for them. After a while, in the course of other duty, I found out that the Bolsheviki had had nothing to do with the arson and robbery, but that the crime had been perpetrated by José Quintana's gang of international crooks masquerading as Bolsheviki." Stormont nodded: "I also came across similar cases," he remarked. "Well, this was a flagrant example. Quintana had burnt the château and had made off with over two million dollars worth of the little Grand Duchess's jewels--among them the famous Erosite gem known as The Flaming Jewel." "I've heard of it." "There are only two others known.... Well, I did what I could with the Esthonian police, who didn't believe me. "But a short time ago the Countess Orloff sent me word that Quintana really was the guilty one, and that he had started for America. "I've been after him ever since.... But, Jack, until this morning Quintana did not possess these stolen jewels. _Clinch did!_" "What!" "Clinch served over-seas in a Forestry Regiment. In Paris he robbed Quintana of these jewels. That's why I've been hanging around Clinch." Stormont's face was flushed and incredulous. Then it lost colour as he thought of the jewels that Eve had concealed--the gems for which she had risked her life. He said: "But you tell me Quintana robbed you this morning." "He did. The little Grand Duchess and the Countess Orloff-Strelwitz are my guests at Harrod Place. "Last night I snatched the case containing these gems from Quintana's fingers. This morning, as I offered them to the Grand Duchess, Quintana coolly stepped between us----" His voice became bitter and his features reddened with rage poorly controlled: "By God, Jack, I should have shot Quintana when the opportunity offered. Twice I've had the chance. The next time I shall kill him any way I can.... Legitimately." "Of course," said Stormont gravely. But his mind was full of the jewels which Eve had. What and whose were they,--if Quintana again had the Esthonian gems in his possession? "Had you recovered all the jewels for the Grand Duchess?" he asked Darragh. "Every one, Jack.... Quintana has done me a terrible injury. I shan't let it go. I mean to hunt that man to the end." Stormont, terribly perplexed, nodded. A few minutes later, as they came out among the willows and alders on the northeast side of Star Pond, Stormont touched his comrade's arm. "Look at that enormous dog-otter out there in the lake!" "Grab those dogs! They'll strangle each other," cried Darragh quickly. "That's it--unleash them, Jack, and let them go!"--he was struggling with the other two couples while speaking. And now the hounds, unleashed, lifted frantic voices. The very sky seemed full of the discordant tumult; wood and shore reverberated with the volume of convulsive and dissonant baying. "Damn it," said Darragh, disgusted, "--that's what they've been trailing all the while across-woods,--that devilish dog-otter yonder.... And I had hoped they were on Quintana's trail----" A mass rush and scurry of crazed dogs nearly swept him off his feet, and both men caught a glimpse of a large bitch-otter taking to the lake from a ledge of rock just beyond. Now the sky vibrated with the deafening outcry of the dogs, some taking to water, others racing madly along shore. Crack! The echo of the dog-otter's blow on the water came across to them as the beast dived. "Well, I'm in for it now," muttered Darragh, starting along the bank toward Clinch's Dump, to keep an eye on his dogs. Stormont followed more leisurely. IV A few minutes before Darragh and Stormont had come out on the farther edge of Star Pond, Sard, who had heard from Quintana about the big drain pipe which led from Clinch's pantry into the lake, decided to go in and take a look at it. He had been told all about its uses,--how Clinch,--in the event of a raid by State Troopers or Government enforcement agents,--could empty his contraband hootch into the lake if necessary,--and even could slide a barrel of ale or a keg of rum, intact, into the great tile tunnel and recover the liquor at his leisure. Also, and grimly, Quintana had admitted that through this drain Eve Strayer and the State Trooper, Stormont, had escaped from Clinch's Dump. So now Sard, full of curiosity, went back into the pantry to look at it for himself. Almost instantly the idea occurred to him to make use of the drain for his own safety and comfort. Why shouldn't he sleep in the pantry, lock the door, and, in case of intrusion,--other exits being unavailable,--why shouldn't he feel entirely safe with such an avenue of escape open? For swimming was Sard's single accomplishment. He wasn't afraid of the water; he simply couldn't sink. Swimming was the only sport he ever had indulged in. He adored it. Also, the mere idea of sleeping alone amid that hell of trees terrified Sard. Never had he known such horror as when Quintana abandoned him in the woods. Never again could he gaze upon a tree without malignant hatred. Never again did he desire to lay eyes upon even a bush. The very sight, now, of the dusky forest filled him with loathing. Why should he not risk one night in this deserted house,--sleep well and warmly, feed well, drink his bellyfull of Clinch's beer, before attempting the dead-line southward, where he was only too sure that patrols were riding and hiding on the lookout for the fancy gentlemen of José Quintana's selected company of malefactors? Well, here in the snug pantry were pies, crullers, bread, cheeses, various dried meats, tinned vegetables, ham, bacon, fuel and range to prepare what he desired. Here was beer, too; and doubtless ardent spirits if he could nose out the hidden demijohns and bottles. He peered out of the pantry window at the forest, shuddered, cursed it and every separate tree in it; cursed Quintana, too, wishing him black mischance. No; it was settled. He'd take his chance here in the pantry.... And there must be a mattress somewhere upstairs. He climbed the staircase, cautiously, discovered Clinch's bedroom, took the mattress and blankets from the bed, dragged them to the pantry. Could any honest man be more tight and snug in this perilous world of the desperate and undeserving? Sard thought not. But one matter troubled him: the lock of the pantry door had been shattered. To remedy this he moused around until he discovered some long nails and a claw-hammer. When he was ready to go to sleep he'd nail himself in. And in the morning he'd pry the door loose. That was simple. Sard chuckled for the first time since he had set eyes upon the accursed region. And now the sun came out from behind a low bank of solid grey cloud, and fell upon the countenance of Emanuel Sard. It warmed his parrot-nose agreeably; it cheered and enlivened him. Not for him a night of terrors in that horrible forest which he could see through the pantry window. A sense of security and of well-being pervaded Sard to his muddy shoes. He even curled his fat toes in them with animal contentment. A little snack before cooking a heavily satisfactory dinner? Certainly. So he tucked a couple of bottles of beer under one arm, a loaf of bread and a chunk of cheese under the other, and waddled out to the veranda door. And at that instant the very heavens echoed with that awful tumult which had first paralysed, then crazed him in the woods. Bottles, bread, cheese fell from his grasp and his knees nearly collapsed under him. In the bushes on the lake shore he saw animals leaping and racing, but, in his terror, he did not recognise them for dogs. Then, suddenly, he saw a man, close to the house, running: and another man not far behind. _That_ he understood, and it electrified him into action. It was too late to escape from the house now. He understood that instantly. He ran back through the dance-hall and dining-room to the pantry; but he dared not let these intruders hear the noise of hammering. In an agony of indecision he stood trembling, listening to the infernal racket of the dogs, and waiting for the first footstep within the house. No step came. But, chancing to look over his shoulder, he saw a man peering through the pantry window at him. Ungovernable terror seized Sard. Scarcely aware what he was about, he seized the edges of the big drain-pipe and crowded his obese body into it head first. He was so fat and heavy that he filled the tile. To start himself down he pulled with both hands and kicked himself forward, tortoise-like, down the slanting tunnel, sticking now and then, dragging himself on and downward. Now he began to gain momentum; he felt himself sliding, not fast but steadily. There came a hitch somewhere; his heavy body stuck on the steep incline. Then, as he lifted his bewildered head and strove to peer into the blackness in front, he saw four balls of green fire close to him in darkness. He began to slide at the same instant, and flung out both hands to check himself. But his palms slid in the slime and his body slid after. He shrieked once as his face struck a furry obstruction where four balls of green fire flamed horribly and a fury of murderous teeth tore his face and throat to bloody tatters as he slid lower, lower, settling through crimson-dyed waters into the icy depths of Star Pond. * * * * * Stormont, down by the lake, called to Darragh, who appeared on the veranda: "Oh, Jim! Both otters crawled into the drain! I think your dogs must have killed one of them under water. There's a big patch of blood spreading off shore." "Yes," said Darragh, "something has just been killed, somewhere ... Jack!" "Yes?" "Pull both your guns and come up here, quick!" EPISODE TEN THE TWILIGHT OF MIKE I When Quintana turned like an enraged snake on Sard and drove him to his destruction, he would have killed and robbed the frightened diamond broker had he dared risk the shot. He had intended to do this anyway, sooner or later. But with the noise of the hunting dogs filling the forest, Quintana was afraid to fire. Yet, even then he followed Sard stealthily for a few minutes, afraid yet murderously desirous of the gems, confused by the tumult of the hounds, timid and ferocious at the same time, and loath to leave his fat, perspiring, and demoralised victim. But the racket of the dogs proved too much for Quintana. He sheered away toward the South, leaving Sard floundering on ahead, unconscious of the treachery that had followed furtively in his panic-stricken tracks. About an hour later Quintana was seen, challenged, chased and shot at by State Trooper Lannis. Quintana ran. And what with the dense growth of seedling beech and oak and the heavily falling birch and poplar leaves, Lannis first lost Quintana and then his trail. The State Trooper had left his horse at the cross-roads near the scene of Darragh's masked exploit, where he had stopped and robbed Sard--and now Lannis hastened back to find and mount his horse, and gallop straight into the first growth timber. Through dim aisles of giant pine he spurred to a dead run on the chance of cutting Quintana from the eastward edge of the forest and forcing him back toward the north or west, where patrols were more than likely to hold him. The State Trooper rode with all the reckless indifference and grace of the Western cavalryman, and he seemed to be part of the superb animal he rode--part of its bone and muscle, its litheness, its supple power--part of its vertebræ and ribs and limbs, so perfect was their bodily co-ordination. Rifle and eyes intently alert, the rider scarce noticed his rushing mount; and if he guided with wrist and knee it was instinctive and as though the horse were guiding them both. And now, far ahead through this primeval stand of pine, sunshine glimmered, warning of a clearing. And here Trooper Lannis pulled in his horse at the edge of what seemed to be a broad, flat meadow, vividly green. But it was the intense, arsenical green of hair-fine grass that covers with its false velvet those quaking bogs where only a thin, crust-like skin of root-fibre and vegetation cover infinite depths of silt. The silt had no more substance than a drop of ink colouring the water in a tumbler. Sitting his fast-breathing mount, Lannis searched this wide, flat expanse of brilliant green. Nothing moved on it save a great heron picking its deliberate way on stilt-like legs. It was well for Quintana that he had not attempted it. Very cautiously Lannis walked his horse along the hard ground which edged this marsh on the west. Nowhere was there any sign that Quintana had come down to the edge among the shrubs and swale grasses. Beyond the marsh another trooper patrolled; and when at length he and Lannis perceived each other and exchanged signals, the latter wheeled his horse and retraced his route at an easy canter, satisfied that Quintana had not yet broken cover. Back through the first growth he cantered, his rifle at a ready, carefully scanning the more open woodlands, and so came again to the cross-roads. And here stood a State Game Inspector, with a report that some sort of beagle-pack was hunting in the forest to the northwest; and very curious to investigate. So it was arranged that the Inspector should turn road-patrol and the Trooper become the rover. There was no sound of dogs when Lannis rode in on the narrow, spotted trail whence he had flushed Quintana into the dense growth of saplings that bordered it. His horse made little noise on the moist layer of leaves and forest mould; he listened hard for the sound of hounds as he rode; heard nothing save the chirr of red squirrels, the shriek of a watching jay, or the startling noise of falling acorns rapping and knocking on great limbs in their descent to the forest floor. Once, very, very far away westward in the direction of Star Pond he fancied he heard a faint vibration in the air that might have been hounds baying. He was right. And at that very moment Sard was dying, horribly, among two trapped otters as big and fierce as the dogs that had driven them into the drain. But Lannis knew nothing of that as he moved on, mounted, along the spotted trail, now all a yellow glory of birch and poplar which made the woodland brilliant as though lighted by yellow lanterns. Somewhere among the birches, between him and Star Pond, was Harrod Place. And the idea occurred to him that Quintana might have ventured to ask food and shelter there. Yet, that was not likely because Trooper Stormont had called him that morning on the telephone from the Hatchery Lodge. No; the only logical retreat for Quintana was northward to the mountains, where patrols were plenty and fire-wardens on duty in every watch-tower. Or, the fugitive could make for Drowned Valley by a blind trail which, Stormont informed him, existed but which Lannis never had heard of. However, to reassure himself, Lannis rode as far as Harrod Place, and found game wardens on duty along the line. Then he turned west and trotted his mount down to the hatchery, where he saw Ralph Wier, the Superintendent, standing outside the lodge talking to his assistant, George Fry. When Lannis rode up on the opposite side of the brook, he called across to Wier: "You haven't seen anything of any crooked outfit around here, have you, Ralph? I'm looking for that kind." "See here," said the Superintendent, "I don't know but George Fry may have seen one of your guys. Come over and he'll tell you what happened an hour ago." Trooper Lannis pivotted his horse and put him to the brook with scarcely any take-off; and the splendid animal cleared the water like a deer and came cantering up to the door of the lodge. Fry's boyish face seemed agitated; he looked up at the State Trooper with the flush of tears in his gaze and pointed at the rifle Lannis carried: "If I'd had _that_," he said excitedly, "I'd have brought in a crook, you bet!" "Where did you see him?" inquired Lannis. "Jest west of the Scaur, about an hour and a half ago. Wier and me was stockin' the head of Scaur Brook with fingerlings. There's more good water--two miles of it--to the east, and all it needed was a fish-ladder around Scaur Falls. "So I toted in cement and sand and grub last week, and I built me a shanty on the Scaur, and I been laying up a fish-way around the falls. So that's how I come there----" He clicked his teeth and darted a furious glance at the woods. "By God," he said, "I was such a fool I didn't take no rifle. All I had was an axe and a few traps.... I wasn't going to let the mink get our trout whatever you fellows say," he added defiantly, "--and law or no law----" "Get along with your story, young man," interrupted Lannis; "--you can spill the rest out to the Commissioner." "All right, then. This is the way it happened down to the Scaur. I was eating lunch by the fish-stairs, looking up at 'em and kind of planning how to save cement, and not thinking about anybody being near me, when _something_ made me turn my head.... You know how it is in the woods.... I kinda _felt_ somebody near. And, by cracky!--there stood a man with a big, black automatic pistol, and he had a bead on my belly. "'Well,' said I, 'what's troubling _you_ and your gun, my friend?'--I was that astonished. "He was a slim-built, powerful guy with a foreign face and voice and way. He wanted to know if he had the honour--as he put it--to introduce himself to a detective or game constable, or a friend of Mike Clinch. "I told him I wasn't any of these, and that I worked in a private hatchery; and he called me a liar." Young Fry's face flushed and his voice began to quiver: "That's the way he misused me: and he backed me into the shanty and I had to sit down with both hands up. Then he filled my pack-basket with grub, and took my axe, and strapped my kit onto his back.... And talking all the time in his mean, sneery, foreign way--and I guess he thought he was funny, for he laughed at his own jokes. "He told me his name was Quintana, and that he ought to shoot me for a rat, but wouldn't because of the stink. Then he said he was going to do a quick job that the police were too cowardly to do;--that he was a-going to find Mike Clinch down to Drowned Valley and kill him; and if he could catch Mike's daughter, too, he'd spoil her face for life----" The boy was breathing so hard and his rage made him so incoherent that Lannis took him by the shoulder and shook him: "What next?" demanded the Trooper impatiently. "Tell your story and quit thinking how you were misused!" "He told me to stay in the shanty for an hour or he'd do for me good," cried Fry.... "Once I got up and went to the door; and there he stood by the brook, wolfing my lunch with both hands. I tell you he cursed and drove me, like a dog, inside with his big pistol--my God--like a dog.... "Then, the next time I took a chance he was gone.... And I beat it here to get me a rifle----" The boy broke down and sobbed: "He drove me around--like a dog--he did----" "You leave that to me," interrupted Lannis sharply. And, to Wier: "You and George had better get a gun apiece. That fellow _might_ come back here or go to Harrod Place if we starve him out." Wier said to Fry: "Go up to Harrod Place and tell Jansen your story and bring back two 45-70's.... And quit snivelling.... You may get a shot at him yet." Lannis had already ridden down to the brook. Now he jumped his horse across, pulled up, called back to Wier: "I think our man is making for Drowned Valley, all right. My mate, Stormont, telephoned me that some of his gang are there, and that Mike Clinch and his gang have them stopped on the other side! Keep your eye on Harrod Place!" And away he cantered into the North. * * * * * Behind the curtains of her open window Eve Strayer, lying on her bed, had heard every word. Crouched there beside her pillow she peered out and saw Trooper Lannis ride away; saw the Fry boy start toward Harrod Place on a run; saw Ralph Wier watch them out of sight and then turn and re-enter the lodge. Wrapped in Darragh's big blanket robe she got off the bed and opened her chamber door as Wier was passing through the living-room. "Please--I'd like to speak to you a moment," she called. Wier turned instantly and came to the partly open door. "I want to know," she said, "where I am." "Ma'am?" "What is this place?" "It's a hatchery----" "Whose?" "Ma'am?" "Whose lodge is this? Does it belong to Harrod Place?" "We're h-hootch runners, Miss----" stammered Wier, mindful of instructions, but making a poor business of deception; "--I and Hal Smith, we run a 'Easy One,' and we strip trout for a blind and sell to Harrod Place--Hal and I----" "_Who_ is Hal Smith?" she asked. "Ma'am?" The girl's flower-blue eyes turned icy: "Who is the man who calls himself Hal Smith?" she repeated. Wier looked at her, red and dumb. "Is he a Trooper in plain clothes?" she demanded in a bitter voice. "Is he one of the Commissioner's spies? Are _you_ one, too?" Wier gazed miserably at her, unable to formulate a convincing lie. She flushed swiftly as a terrible suspicion seized her: "Is this Harrod property? Is Hal Smith old Harrod's heir? _Is_ he?" "My God, Miss----" "He _is_!" "Listen, Miss----" She flung open the door and came out into the living-room. "Hal Smith is that nephew of old Harrod," she said calmly. "His name is Darragh. And you are one of his wardens.... And I can't stay here. Do you understand?" Wier wiped his hot face and waited. The cat was out; there was a hole in the bag; and he knew there was no use in such lies as he could tell. He said: "All I know, Miss, is that I was to look after you and get you whatever you want----" "I want my clothes!" "Ma'am?" "My _clothes_!" she repeated impatiently. "I've _got_ to have them!" "Where are they, ma'am?" asked the bewildered man. At the same moment the girl's eyes fell on a pile of men's sporting clothing--garments sent down from Harrod Place to the Lodge--lying on a leather lounge near a gun-rack. Without a glance at Wier, Eve went to the heap of clothing, tossed it about, selected cords, two pairs of woollen socks, grey shirt, puttees, shoes, flung the garments through the door into her own room, followed them, and locked herself in. * * * * * When she was dressed--the two heavy pairs of socks helping to fit her feet to the shoes--she emptied her handful of diamonds, sapphires and emeralds, including the Flaming Jewel, into the pockets of her breeches. Now she was ready. She unlocked her door and went out, scarcely limping at all, now. Wier gazed at her helplessly as she coolly chose a rifle and cartridge-belt at the gun-rack. Then she turned on him as still and dangerous as a young puma: "Tell Darragh he'd better keep clear of Clinch's," she said. "Tell him I always thought he was a rat. Now I know he's one." She plunged one slim hand into her pocket and drew out a diamond. "Here," she said insolently. "This will pay your _gentleman_ for his gun and clothing." She tossed the gem onto a table, where it rolled, glittering. "For heaven's sake, Miss----" burst out Wier, horrified, but she cut him short: "--He may keep the change," she said. "We're no swindlers at Clinch's Dump!" Wier started forward as though to intercept her. Eve's eyes flamed. And he stood still. She wrenched open the door and walked out among the silver birches. At the edge of the brook she stood a moment, coolly loading the magazine of her rifle. Then, with one swift glance of hatred, flung at the place that Harrod's money had built, she sprang across the brook, tossed her rifle to her shoulder, and passed lithely into the golden wilderness of poplar and silver birch. II Quintana, on a fox-trot along the rock-trail into Drowned Valley, now thoroughly understood that it was the only sanctuary left him for the moment. Egress to the southward was closed; to the eastward, also; and he was too wary to venture westward toward Ghost Lake. No, the only temporary safety lay in the swamps of Drowned Valley. And there, he decided as he jogged along, if worse came to worst and starvation drove him out, he'd settle matters with Mike Clinch and break through to the north. He meant to settle matters with Mike Clinch anyway. He was not afraid of Clinch; not really afraid of anybody. It had been the dogs that demoralised Quintana. He'd had no experience with hunting hounds,--did not know what to expect,--how to manoeuvre. If only he could have _seen_ these beasts that filled the forest with their hob-goblin outcries--if he could have had a good look at the creatures who gave forth that weird, crazed, melancholy volume of sound!---- "Bon!" he said coolly to himself. "It was a crisis of nerves which I experience. Yes.... I should have shot him, that fat Sard. Yes.... Only those damn dog---- And now he shall die an' rot--that fat Sard--all by himse'f, parbleu!--like one big dead thing all alone in the wood.... A puddle of guts full of diamonds! Ah!--mon dieu!--a million francs in gems that shine like festering stars in this damn wood till the world end. Ah, bah--nome de dieu de----" "Halte là!" came a sharp voice from the cedar fringe in front. A pause, then recognition; and Henri Picquet walked out on the hard ridge beyond and stood leaning on his rifle and looking sullenly at his leader. Quintana came forward, carelessly, a disagreeable expression in his eyes and on his narrow lips, and continued on past Picquet. The latter slouched after his leader, who had walked over to the lean-to before which a pile of charred logs lay in cold ashes. As Picquet came up, Quintana turned on him, with a gesture toward the extinguished fire: "It is cold like hell," he said. "Why do you not have some fire?" "Not for me, non," growled Picquet, and jerked a dirty thumb in the direction of the lean-to. And there Quintana saw a pair of muddy boots protruding from a blanket. "It is Harry Beck, yes?" he inquired. Then _something_ about the boots and the blanket silenced him. He kept his eyes on them for a full minute, then walked into the lean-to. The blanket also covered Harry Beck's features and there was a stain on it where it outlined the prostrate man's features, making a ridge over the bony nose. After a moment Quintana looked around at Picquet: "So. He is dead. Yes?" Picquet shrugged: "Since noon, mon capitaine." "Comment?" "How shall I know? It was the fire, perhaps,--green wood or wet--it is no matter now.... I said to him, 'Pay attention, Henri; your wood makes too much smoke.' To me he reply I shall go to hell.... Well, there was too much smoke for me. I arise to search for wood more dry, when, crack!--they begin to shoot out there----" He waved a dirty hand toward the forest. "'Bon,' said I, 'Clinch, he have seen your damn smoke!' "'What shall I care?' he make reply, Henri Beck, to me. 'Clinch he shall shoot and be damn to him. I cook me my déjeûner all the same.' "I make representations to that Johnbull; he say to me that I am a frog, and other injuries, while he lay yet more wood on his sacré fire. "Then crack! crack! crack! and zing-gg!--whee-ee! come the big bullets of Clinch and his voyous yonder. "'Bon,' I say, 'me, I make my excuse to retire.' "Then Henri Beck he laugh and say, 'Hop it, frog!' And that is all he has find time to say, when crack! spat! Bien droit he has it--tenez, mon capitaine--here, over the left eye!... Like a beef surprise he go over, crash! thump! And like a beef that dies, the air bellows out from his big lungs----" Picquet looked down at the dead comrade in a sort of weary compassion for such stupidity. "--So he pass, this ros-biff goddam Johnbull.... Me, I roll him in there.... Je ne sais pas pourquoi.... Then I put out the fire and leave." Quintana let his sneering glance rest on the dead a moment, and his thin lip curled immemorial contempt for the Anglo-Saxon. Then he divested himself of the basket-pack which he had stolen from the Fry boy. "Alors," he said calmly, "it has been Mike Clinch who shoot my frien' Beck. Bien." He threw a cartridge into the breech of his rifle, adjusted his ammunition belt _en bandoulière_, carelessly. Then, in a quiet voice: "My frien' Picquet, the time has now arrive when it become ver' necessary that we go from here away. Donc--I shall now go kill me my frien' Mike Clinch." Picquet, unastonished, gave him a heavy, bovine look of inquiry. Quintana said softly: "Me, I have enough already of this damn woods. Why shall we starve here when there lies our path?" He pointed north; his arm remained outstretched for a while. "Clinch, he is there," growled Picquet. "Also our path, l'ami Henri.... And, behind us, they hunt us now with _dogs_." Picquet bared his big white teeth in fierce surprise. "Dogs?" he repeated with a sort of snarl. "That is how they now hunt us, my frien'--like they hunt the hare in the Côte d'Or.... Me, I shall now reconnoitre--_that_ way!" And he looked where he was pointing, into the north--with smouldering eyes. Then he turned calmly to Picquet: "An' you, l'ami?" "At orders, mon capitaine." "C'est bien. Venez." They walked leisurely forward with rifles shouldered, following the hard ridge out across a vast and flooded land where the bark of trees glimmered with wet mosses. After a quarter of a mile the ridge broadened and split into two, one hog-back branching northeast! They, however, continued north. About twenty minutes later Picquet, creeping along on Quintana's left, and some sixty yards distant, discovered something moving in the woods beyond, and fired at it. Instantly two unseen rifles spoke from the woods ahead. Picquet was jerked clear around, lost his balance and nearly fell. Blood was spurting from his right arm, between elbow and shoulder. He tried to lift and level his rifle; his arm collapsed and dangled broken and powerless; his rifle clattered to the forest floor. For a moment he stood there in plain view, dumb, deathly white; then he began screaming with fury while the big, soft-nosed bullets came streaming in all around him. His broken arm was hit again. His screaming ceased; he dragged out his big clasp-knife with his left hand and started running toward the shooting. As he ran, his mangled arm flopping like a broken wing, Byron Hastings stepped out from behind a tree and coolly shot him down at close quarters. Then Quintana's rifle exploded twice very quickly, and the Hastings boy stumbled sideways and fell sprawling. He managed to rise to his knees again; he even was trying to stand up when Quintana, taking his time, deliberately began to empty his magazine into the boy, riddling him limb and body and head. Down once more, he still moved his arms. Sid Hone reached out from behind a fallen log to grasp the dying lad's ankle and draw him into shelter, but Quintana reloaded swiftly and smashed Hone's left hand with the first shot. Then Jim Hastings, kneeling behind a bunch of juniper, fired a high-velocity bullet into the tree behind which Quintana stood; but before he could fire again Quintana's shot in reply came ripping through the juniper and tore a ghastly hole in the calf of his left leg, striking a blow that knocked young Hastings flat and paralysed as a dead flounder. A mile to the north, blocking the other exit from Drowned Valley, Mike Clinch, Harvey Chase, Cornelius Blommers, and Dick Berry stood listening to the shooting. "B'gosh," blurted out Chase, "it sounds like they was goin' through, Mike. B'gosh, it does!" Clinch's little pale eyes blazed, but he said in his soft, agreeable voice: "Stay right here, boys. Like as not some of 'em will come this way." The shooting below ceased. Clinch's nostrils expanded and flattened with every breath, as he stood glaring into the woods. "Harve," he said presently, "you an' Corny go down there an' kinda look around. And you signal if I'm wanted. G'wan, both o' you. Git!" They started, running heavily, but their feet made little noise on the moss. Berry came over and stood near Clinch. For ten minutes neither man moved. Clinch stared at the woods in front of him. The younger man's nervous glance flickered like a snake's tongue in every direction, and he kept moistening his lips with his tongue. Presently two shots came from the south. A pause; a rattle of shots from hastily emptied magazines. "G'wan down there, Dick!" said Clinch. "You'll be alone, Mike----" "Au' right. You do like I say; git along quick!" Berry walked southward a little way. He had turned very white under his tan. "Gol ding ye!" shouted Clinch, "take it on a lope or I'll kick the pants off'n ye!" Berry began to run, carrying his rifle at a trail. For half an hour there was not a sound in the forests of Drowned Valley except in the dead timber where unseen woodpeckers hammered fitfully at the ghosts of ancient trees. Always Clinch's little pale eyes searched the forest twilight in front of him; not a falling leaf escaped him; not a chipmunk. And all the while Clinch talked to himself; his lips moved a little now and then, but uttered no sound: "All I want God should do," he repeated again and again, "is to just let Quintana come _my_ way. 'Tain't for because he robbed my girlie. 'Tain't for the stuff he carries onto him.... No, God, 'tain't them things. But it's what that there skunk done to my Evie.... O God, be you listenin'? He _hurt_ her, Quintana did. That's it. He misused her.... God, if you had seen my girlie's little bleeding feet!---- _That's_ the reason.... 'Tain't the stuff. I can work. I can save for to make my Evie a lady same's them high-steppers on Fifth Avenoo. I can moil and toil and slave an' run hootch--hootch---- They wuz wine 'n' fixin's into the Bible. It ain't you, God, it's them fanatics.... Nobody in my Dump wanted I should sell 'em more'n a bottle o' beer before this here prohybishun set us all crazy. 'Tain't right.... O God, don't hold a little hootch agin me when all I want of you is to let Quintana----" The slightest noise behind him. He waited, turned slowly. Eve stood there. Hell died in his pale eyes as she came to him, rested silently in his gentle embrace, returned his kiss, laid her flushed, sweet cheek against his unshaven face. "Dad, darling?" "Yes, my baby----" "You're watching to kill Quintana. But there's no use watching any longer." "Have the boys below got him?" he demanded. "They got one of his gang. Byron Hastings is dead. Jim is badly hurt; Sid Hone, too,--not so badly----" "Where's Quintana?" "Dad, he's gone.... But it don't matter. See here!----" She dug her slender hand into her breeches' pocket and pulled out a little fistful of gems. Clinch, his powerful arm closing her shoulders, looked dully at the jewels. "You see, dad, there's no use killing Quintana. These are the things he robbed you of." "'Tain't them that matter.... I'm glad you got 'em. I allus wanted you should be a great lady, girlie. Them's the tickets of admission. You put 'em in your pants. I gotta stay here a spell----" "Dad! Take them!" He took them, smiled, shoved them into his pocket. "What is it, girlie?" he asked absently, his pale eyes searching the woods ahead. "I've just told you," she said, "that the boys went in as far as Quintana's shanty. There was a dead man there, too; but Quintana has gone." Clinch said,--not removing his eyes from the forest: "If any o' them boys has let Quintana crawl through I'll kill _him_, too.... G'wan home, girlie. I gotta mosey--I gotta kinda loaf around f'r a spell----" "Dad, I want you to come back with me----" "You go home; you hear me, Eve? Tell Corny and Dick Berry to hook it for Owl Marsh and stop the Star Peak trails--both on 'em.... Can Sid and Jimmy walk?" "Jim can't----" "Well, let Harve take him on his back. You go too. You help fix Jimmy up at the house. He's a little fella, Jimmy Hastings is. Harve can tote him. And you go along----" "Dad, Quintana says he means to kill you! What is the use of hurting him? You have what he took----" "I gotta have more'n he took. But even that ain't enough. He couldn't pay for all he ever done to me, girlie.... I'm aimin' to draw on him on sight----" Clinch's set visage relaxed into an alarming smile which flickered, faded, died in the wintry ferocity of his eyes. "Dad----" "G'wan home!" he interrupted harshly. "You want that Hastings boy to bleed to death?" She came up to him, not uttering a word, yet asking him with all the tenderness and eloquence of her eyes to leave this blood-trail where it lay and hunt no more. He kissed her mouth, infinitely tender, smiled; then, again prim and scowling: "G'wan home, you little scut, an' do what I told ye, or, by God, I'll cut a switch that'll learn ye good! Never a word, now! On yer way! G'wan!" * * * * * Twice she turned to look back. The second time, Clinch was slowly walking into the woods straight ahead of him. She waited; saw him go in; waited. After a while she continued on her way. When she sighted the men below she called to Blommers and Dick Berry: "Dad says you're to stop Star Peak trail by Owl Marsh." Jimmy Hastings sat on a log, crying and looking down at his dead brother, over whose head somebody had spread a coat. Blommers had made a tourniquet for Jimmy out of a bandanna and a peeled stick. The girl examined it, loosened it for a moment, twisted it again, and bade Harvey Chase take him on his back and start for Clinch's. The boy began to sob that he didn't want his brother to be left out there all alone; but Chase promised to come back and bring him in before night. Sid Hone came up, haggard from pain and loss of blood, resting his mangled hand in the sling of his cartridge-belt. Berry and Blommers were already starting across toward Owl Marsh; and the latter, passing by, asked Eve where Mike was. "He went into Drowned Valley by the upper outlet," she said. "He'll never find no one in them logans an' sinks," muttered Chase, squatting to hoist Jimmy Hastings to his broad back. "I guess he'll be over Star Peak side by sundown," nodded Blommers. Eve watched him slouching off into the woods, followed sullenly by Berry. Then she looked down at the dead man in silence. "Be you ready, Eve?" grunted Chase. She turned with a heavy heart to the home trail; but her mind was passionately with Clinch in the spectral forests of Drowned Valley. III And Clinch's mind was on her. All else--his watchfulness, his stealthy advance--all the alertness of eye and ear, all the subtlety, the cunning, the infinite caution--were purely instinctive mechanics. Somewhere in this flooded twilight of gigantic trees was José Quintana. Knowing that, he dismissed that fact from his mind and turned his thoughts to Eve. Sometimes his lips moved. They usually did when he was arguing with God or calling his Creator's attention to the justice of his case. His _two_ cases--each, to him, a cause célèbre; the matter of Harrod; the affair of Quintana. Many a time he had pleaded these two causes before the Most High. But now his thoughts were chiefly concerned with Eve--with the problem of her future--his master passion--this daughter of the dead wife he had loved. He sighed unconsciously; halted. "Well, Lord," he concluded, in his wordless way, "my girlie has gotta have a chance if I gotta go to hell for it. That's sure as shootin'.... Amen." At that instant he saw Quintana. Recognition was instant and mutual. Neither man stirred. Quintana was standing beside a giant hemlock. His pack lay at his feet. Clinch had halted--always the mechanics!--close to a great ironwood tree. Probably both men knew that they could cover themselves before the other moved a muscle. Clinch's small, light eyes were blazing; Quintana's black eyes had become two slits. Finally: "You--dirty--skunk," drawled Clinch in his agreeably misleading voice, "by Jesus Christ I got you now." "Ah--h," said Quintana, "thees has happen ver' nice like I expec'.... Always I say myse'f, yet a little patience, José, an' one day you shall meet thees fellow Clinch, who has rob you.... I am ver' thankful to the good God----" He had made the slightest of movements: instantly both men were behind their trees. Clinch, in the ferocious pride of woodcraft, laughed exultingly--filled the dim and spectral forest with his roar of laughter. "Quintana," he called out, "you're a-going to cash in. Savvy? You're a-going to hop off. An' first you gotta hear why. 'Tain't for the stuff. Naw! I hooked it off'n you; you hooked it off'n me; now I got it again. _That's_ all square.... No, 'tain't _that_ grudge, you green-livered whelp of a cross-bred, still-born slut! No! It's becuz you laid the heft o' your dirty little finger onto my girlie. 'N' now you gotta hop!" Quintana's sinister laughter was his retort. Then: "You damfool Clinch," he said, "I got in my pocket what you rob of me. Now I kill you, and then I feel ver' well. I go home, live like some kings; yes. But you," he sneered, "you shall not go home never no more. No. You shall remain in thees damn wood like ver' dead old rat that is all wormy.... Hé! I got a million dollaire--five million franc in my pocket. You shall learn what it cost to rob José Quintana! Unnerstan'?" "You liar," said Clinch contemptuously, "I got them jools in my pants pocket----" Quintana's derisive laugh cut him short: "I give you thee Flaming Jewel if you show me you got my gems in you pants pocket!" "I'll show you. Lay down your rifle so's I see the stock." "First you, my frien' Mike," said Quintana cautiously. Clinch took his rifle by the muzzle and shoved the stock into view so that Quintana could see it without moving. To his surprise, Quintana did the same, then coolly stepped a pace outside the shelter of his hemlock stump. "You show me now!" he called across the swamp. Clinch stepped into view, dug into his pocket, and, cupping both hands, displayed a glittering heap of gems. "I wanted you should know who's gottem," he said, "before you hop. It'll give you something to think over in hell." Quintana's eyes had become slits again. Neither man stirred. Then: "So you are buzzard, eh, Clinch? You feed on dead man's pockets, eh? You find Sard somewhere an' you feed." He held up the morocco case, emblazoned with the arms of the Grand Duchess of Esthonia, and shook it at Clinch. "In there is my share.... Not all. Ver' quick, now, I take yours, too----" Clinch vanished and so did his rifle; and Quintana's first bullet struck the moss where the stock had rested. "You black crow!" jeered Clinch, laughing, "--I need that empty case of yours. And I'm going after it.... But it's because your filthy claw touched my girlie that you gotta hop!" * * * * * Twilight lay over the phantom wood, touching with pallid tints the flooded forest. So far only that one shot had been fired. Both men were still manoeuvring, always creeping in circles and always lining some great tree for shelter. Now, the gathering dusk was making them bolder and swifter; and twice, already, Clinch caught the shadow of a fading edge of something that vanished against the shadows too swiftly for a shot. Now Quintana, keeping a tree in line, brushed with his lithe back a leafless moose-bush that stood swaying as he avoided it. Instantly a stealthy hope seized him: he slipped out of his coat, spread it on the bush, set the naked branches swaying, and darted to his tree. Waiting, he saw that the grey blot his coat made in the dusk was still moving a little--just vibrating a little bit in the twilight. He touched the bush with his rifle barrel, then crouched almost flat. Suddenly the red crash of a rifle lit up Clinch's visage for a fraction of a second. And Quintana's bullet smashed Clinch between the eyes. * * * * * After a long while Quintana ventured to rise and creep forward. Night, too, came creeping like an assassin amid the ghostly trees. So twilight died in the stillness of Drowned Valley and the pall of night lay over all things,--living and dead alike. EPISODE ELEVEN THE PLACE OF PINES I The last sound that Mike Clinch heard on earth was the detonation of his own rifle. Probably it was an agreeable sound to him. He lay there with a pleasant expression on his massive features. His watch had fallen out of his pocket. Quintana shined him with an electric torch; picked up the watch. Then, holding the torch in one hand, he went through the dead man's pockets very thoroughly. When Quintana had finished, both trays of the flat morocco case were full of jewels. And Quintana was full of wonder and suspicion. Unquietly he looked upon the dead--upon the glittering contents of the jewel-box,--but always his gaze reverted to the dead. The faintest shadow of a smile edged Clinch's lips. Quintana's lips grew graver. He said slowly, like one who does his thinking aloud: "What is it you have done to me, l'ami Clinch?... Are there truly then two sets of precious stones?--_two_ Flaming Jewels?--two gems of Erosite like there never has been in all thees worl' excep' only two more?... Or is one set false?... Have I here one set of paste facsimiles?... My frien' Clinch, why do you lie there an' smile at me so ver' funny ... like you are amuse?... I am wondering what you may have done to me, my frien' Clinch...." For a while he remained kneeling beside the dead. Then: "Ah, bah," he said, pocketing the morocco case and getting to his feet. He moved a little way toward the open trail, stopped, came back, stood his rifle against a tree. For a while he was busy with his sharp Spanish clasp knife, whittling and fitting together two peeled twigs. A cross was the ultimate result. Then he placed Clinch's hands palm to palm upon his chest, laid the cross on his breast, and shined the result with complacency. Then Quintana took off his hat. "L'ami Mike," he said, "you were a _man_!... Adios!" * * * * * Quintana put on his hat. The path was free. The world lay open before José Quintana once more;--the world, his hunting ground. "But," he thought uneasily, "what is it that I bring home this time? How much is paste? My God, how droll that smile of Clinch.... Which is the false--his jewels or mine? Dieu que j'étais bête!---- Me who have not suspec' that there are _two_ trays within my jewel-box!... I unnerstan'. It is ver' simple. In the top tray the false gems. Ah! Paste on top to deceive a thief!... Alors.... Then what I have recover of Clinch is the _real_!... Nom de Dieu!... How should I know? His smile is so ver' funny.... I think thees dead man make mock of me--all inside himse'f----" So, in darkness, prowling south by west, shining the trail furtively, and loaded rifle ready, Quintana moved with stealthy, unhurried tread out of the wilderness that had trapped him and toward the tangled border of that outer world which led to safe, obscure, uncharted labyrinths--old-world mazes, immemorial hunting grounds--haunted by men who prey. * * * * * The night had turned frosty. Quintana, wet to the knees and very tired, moved slowly, not daring to leave the trail because of sink-holes. However, the trail led to Clinch's Dump, and sooner or later he must leave it. What he had to have was a fire; he realised that. Somewhere off the trail, in big timber if possible, he must build a fire and master this deadly chill that was slowly paralysing all power of movement. He knew that a fire in the forest, particularly in big timber, could be seen only a little way. He must take his chances with sink-holes and find some spot in the forest to build that fire. Who could discover him except by accident? Who would prowl the midnight wilderness? At thirty yards the fire would not be visible. And, as for the odour--well, he'd be gone before dawn.... Meanwhile, he must have that fire. He could wait no longer. He cut a pole first. Then he left the trail where a little spring flowed west, and turned to the right, shining the forest floor as he moved and sounding with his pole every wet stretch of moss, every strip of mud, every tiniest glimmer of water. At last he came to a place of pines, first growth giants towering into night, and, looking up, saw stars, infinitely distant, ... where perhaps those things called souls drifted like wisps of vapour. When the fire took, Quintana's thin dark hands had become nearly useless from cold. He could not have crooked finger to trigger. For a long time he sat close to the blaze, slowly massaging his torpid limbs, but did not dare strip off his foot-gear. Steam rose from puttee and heavy shoe and from the sodden woollen breeches. Warmth slowly penetrated. There was little smoke; the big dry branches were dead and bleached and he let the fire eat into them without using his axe. Once or twice he sighed, "Oh, my God," in a weary demi-voice, as though the content of well-being were permeating him. Later he ate and drank languidly, looking up at the stars, speculating as to the possible presence of Mike Clinch up there. "Ah, the dirty thief," he murmured; "--nevertheless a man. Quel homme! Mais bête à faire pleurer! Je l'ai bien triché, moi! Ha!" Quintana smiled palely as he thought of the coat and the gently-swaying bush--of the red glare of Clinch's shot, of the death-echo of his own shot. Then, uneasy, he drew out the morocco case and gazed at the two trays full of gems. The jewels blazed in the firelight. He touched them, moved them about, picked up several and examined them, testing the unset edges against his under lip as an expert tests jade. But he couldn't tell; there was no knowing. He replaced them, closed the case, pocketed it. When he had a chance he could try boiling water for one sort of trick. He could scratch one or two.... Sard would know. He wondered whether Sard had got away, not concerned except selfishly. However, there were others in Paris whom he could trust--at a price.... Quintana rested both elbows on his knees and framed his dark face between both bony hands. What a chase Clinch had led him after the Flaming Jewel. And now Clinch lay dead in the forest--faintly smiling. At _what_? In a very low, passionless voice, Quintana cursed monotonously as he gazed into the fire. In Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, he cursed Clinch. After a little while he remembered Clinch's daughter, and he cursed her, elaborately, thoroughly, wishing her black mischance awake and asleep, living or dead. Darragh, too, he remembered in his curses, and did not slight him. And the trooper, Stormont--ah, he should have killed all of them when he had the chance.... And those two Baltic Russians, also, the girl duchess and her friend. Why on earth hadn't he made a clean job of it? Over-caution. A wary disinclination to stir up civilization by needless murder. But after all, old maxims, old beliefs, old truths are the best, God knows. The dead don't talk! And that's the wisest wisdom of all. "If," murmured Quintana fervently, "God gives me further opportunity to acquire a little property to comfort me in my old age, I shall leave no gossiping fool to do me harm with his tongue. No! I kill. "And though they raise a hue and cry, dead tongues can not wag and I save myse'f much annoyance in the end." He leaned his back against the trunk of a massive pine. Presently Quintana slept after his own fashion--that is to say, looking closely at him one could discover a glimmer under his lowered eyelids. And he listened always in that kind of sleep. As though a shadowy part of him were detached from his body, and mounted guard over it. The inaudible movement of a wood-mouse venturing into the firelit circle awoke Quintana. Again a dropping leaf amid distant birches awoke him. Such things. And so he slept with wet feet to the fire and his rifle across his knees; and dreamed of Eve and of murder, and that the Flaming Jewel was but a mass of glass. * * * * * At that moment the girl of whose white throat Quintana was dreaming, and whining faintly in his dreams, stood alone outside Clinch's Dump, rifle in hand, listening, fighting the creeping dread that touched her slender body at times--seemed to touch her very heart with frost. Clinch's men had gone on to Ghost Lake with their wounded and dead, where there was fitter shelter for both. All had gone on; nobody remained to await Clinch's home-coming except Eve Strayer. Black Care, that tireless squire of dames, had followed her from the time she had left Clinch, facing the spectral forests of Drowned Valley. An odd, unusual dread weighted her heart--something in emotions that she never before had experienced in time of danger. In it there was the deathly unease of premonition. But of what it was born she did not understand,--perhaps of the strain of dangers passed--of the shock of discovery concerning Smith's identity with Darragh--Darragh!--the hated kinsman of Harrod the abhorred. Fiercely she wondered how much her lover knew about this miserable masquerade. Was Stormont involved in this deception--Stormont, the object of her first girl's passion--Stormont, for whom she would have died? Wretched, perplexed, fiercely enraged at Darragh, deadly anxious concerning Clinch, she had gone about cooking supper. The supper, kept warm on the range, still awaited the man who had no more need of meat and drink. * * * * * Of the tragedy of Sard Eve knew nothing. There were no traces save in the disorder in the pantry and the bottles and chair on the veranda. Who had visited the place excepting those from whom she and Stormont had fled, did not appear. She had no idea why her step-father's mattress and bed-quilt lay in the pantry. Her heart heavy with ceaseless anxiety, Eve carried mattress and bed-clothes to Clinch's chamber, re-made his bed, wandered through the house setting it in order; then, in the kitchen, seated herself and waited until the strange dread that possessed her drove her out into the starlight to stand and listen and stare at the dark forest where all her dread seemed concentrated. * * * * * It was not yet dawn, but the girl could endure the strain no longer. With electric torch and rifle she started for the forest, almost running at first; then, among the first trees, moving with caution and in silence along the trail over which Clinch should long since have journeyed homeward. In soft places, when she ventured to flash her torch, foot-prints cast curious shadows, and it was hard to make out tracks so oddly distorted by the light. Prints mingled and partly obliterated other prints. She identified her own tracks leading south, and guessed at the others, pointing north and south, where they had carried in the wounded and had gone back to bring in the dead. But nowhere could she discover any impression resembling her step-father's,--that great, firm stride and solid imprint which so often she had tracked through moss and swale and which she knew so well. Once when she got up from her knees after close examination of the muddy trail, she became aware of the slightest taint in the night air--stood with delicate nostrils quivering--advanced, still conscious of the taint, listening, wary, every stealthy instinct alert. She had not been mistaken: somewhere in the forest there was smoke. Somewhere a fire was burning. It might not be very far away; it might be distant. _Whose fire?_ Her father's? Would a hunter of men build a fire? The girl stood shivering in the darkness. There was not a sound. Now, keeping her cautious feet in the trail by sense of touch alone, she moved on. Gradually, as she advanced, the odour of smoke became more distinct. She heard nothing, saw nothing; but there was a near reek of smoke in her nostrils and she stopped short. After a little while in the intense silence of the forest she ventured to touch the switch of her torch, very cautiously. In the faint, pale lustre she saw a tiny rivulet flowing westward from a spring, and, beside it, in the mud, imprints of a man's feet. The tracks were small, narrow, slimmer than imprints made by any man she could think of. Under the glimmer of her torch they seemed quite fresh; contours were still sharp, some ready to crumble, and water stood in the heels. A little way she traced them, saw where their maker had cut a pole, peeled it; saw, farther on, where this unknown man had probed in moss and mud--peppered some particularly suspicious swale with a series of holes as though a giant woodcock had been "boring" there. Who was this man wandering all alone at night off the Drowned Valley trail and probing the darkness with a pole? She knew it was not her father. She knew that no native--none of her father's men--would behave in such a manner. Nor could any of these have left such narrow, almost delicate tracks. As she stole along, dimly shining the tracks, lifting her head incessantly to listen and peer into the darkness, her quick eye caught something ahead--something very slightly different from the wall of black obscurity--a vague hint of colour--the very vaguest tint scarcely perceptible at all. But she knew it was firelight touching the trunk of an unseen tree. Now, soundlessly over damp pine needles she crept. The scent of smoke grew strong in nostril and throat; the pale tint became palely reddish. All about her the blackness seemed palpable--seemed to touch her body with its weight; but, ahead, a ruddy glow stained two huge pines. And presently she saw the fire, burning low, but redly alive. And, after a long, long while, she saw a man. He had left the fire circle. His pack and belted mackinaw still lay there at the foot of a great tree. But when, finally, she discovered him, he was scarcely visible where he crouched in the shadow of a tree-trunk, with his rifle half lowered at a ready. Had he heard her? It did not seem possible. Had he been crouching there since he made his fire? Why had he made it then--for its warmth could not reach him there. And why was he so stealthily watching--silent, unstirring, crouched in the shadows? She strained her eyes; but distance and obscurity made recognition impossible. And yet, somehow, every quivering instinct within her was telling her that the crouched and shadowy watcher beyond the fire was Quintana. And every concentrated instinct was telling her that he'd kill her if he caught sight of her; her heart clamoured it; her pulses thumped it in her ears. Had the girl been capable of it she could have killed him where he crouched. She thought of it, but knew it was not in her to do it. And yet Quintana had boasted that he meant to kill her father. That was what terribly concerned her. And there must be a way to stop that danger--some way to stop it short of murder,--a way to render this man harmless to her and hers. No, she could not kill him this way. Except in extremes she could not bring herself to fire upon any human creature. And yet this man must be rendered harmless--somehow--somehow--ah!---- As the problem presented itself its solution flashed into her mind. Men of the wilderness knew how to take dangerous creatures alive. To take a dangerous and reasoning human was even less difficult, because reason makes more mistakes than does instinct. Stealthily, without a sound, the girl crept back through the shadows over the damp pine needles, until, peering fearfully over her shoulder, she saw the last ghost-tint of Quintana's fire die out in the terrific dark behind. Slowly, still, she moved until her sensitive feet felt the trodden path from Drowned Valley. Now, with torch flaring, she ran, carrying her rifle at a trail. Before her, here and there, little night creatures fled--a humped-up raccoon, dazzled by the glare, a barred owl still struggling with its wood-rat kill. She ran easily,--an agile, tireless young thing, part of the swiftness and silence of the woods--part of the darkness, the sinuous celerity, the ominous hush of wide, still places--part of its very blood and pulse and hot, sweet breath. Even when she came out among the birches by Clinch's Dump she was breathing evenly and without distress. She ran to the kitchen door but did not enter. On pegs under the porch a score or more of rusty traps hung. She unhooked the largest, wound the chain around it, tucked it under her left arm and started back. * * * * * When at last she arrived at the place of pines again, and saw the far, spectral glimmer of Quintana's fire, the girl was almost breathless. But dawn was not very far away and there remained little time for the taking alive of a dangerous man. Where two enormous pines grew close together near a sapling, she knelt down, and, with both hands, scooped out a big hollow in the immemorial layers of pine needles. Here she placed her trap. It took all her strength and skill to set it; to fasten the chain around the base of the sapling pine. And now, working with only the faintest glimmer of her torch, she covered everything with pine needles. It was not possible to restore the forest floor; the place remained visible--a darker, rougher patch on the bronzed carpet of needles beaten smooth by decades of rain and snow. No animal would have trodden that suspicious space. But it was with man she had to deal--a dangerous but reasoning man with few and atrophied instincts--and with no experience in traps; and, therefore, in no dread of them. * * * * * Before she started she had thrown a cartridge into the breech of her rifle. Now she pocketed her torch and seated herself between the two big pines and about three feet behind the hidden trap. Dawn was not far away. She looked upward through high pine-tops where stars shone; and saw no sign of dawn. But the watcher by the fire beyond was astir, now, in the imminence of dawn, and evidently meant to warm himself before leaving. Eve could hear him piling dry wood on the fire; the light on the tree trunks grew redder; a pungent reek of smoke was drawn through the forest aisles. She sniffed it, listened, and watched, her rifle across her knees. Eve never had been afraid of anything. She was not afraid of this man. If it came to combat she would have to kill. It never entered her mind to fear Quintana's rifle. Even Clinch was not as swift with a rifle as she.... Only Stormont had been swifter--thank God!---- She thought of Stormont--sat there in the terrific darkness loving him, her heart of a child tremulous with adoration. Then the memory of Darragh pushed in and hot hatred possessed her. Always, in her heart, she had distrusted the man. Instinct had warned her. A spy! What evil had he worked already? Where was her father? Evidently Quintana had escaped him at Drowned Valley.... Quintana was yonder by his fire, preparing to flee the wilderness where men hunted him.... But where was Clinch? Had this sneak, Darragh, betrayed him? Was Clinch already in the clutch of the State Troopers? Was he in _jail_? At the thought the girl felt slightly faint, then a rush of angry blood stung her face in the darkness. Except for game and excise violations the stories they told about Clinch were lies. He had nothing to fear, nothing to be ashamed of. Harrod had driven him to lawlessness; the Government took away what was left him to make a living. He had to live. What if he did break laws made by millionaire and fanatic! What of it? He had her love and her respect--and her deep, deep pity. And these were enough for any girl to fight for. Dawn spread a silvery light above the pines, but Quintana's fire still reddened the tree trunks; and she could hear him feeding it at intervals. Finally she saw him. He came out on the edge of the ruddy ring of light and stood peering around at the woods where already a vague greyness was revealing nearer trees. When, finally, he turned his back and looked at his fire, Eve rose and stood between the two big pines. Behind one of them she placed her rifle. It was growing lighter in the woods. She could see Quintana in the fire ring and outside,--saw him go to the spring rivulet, lie flat, drink, then, on his knees, wash face and hands in the icy water. It became plain to her that he was nearly ready to depart. She watched him preparing. And now she could see him plainly, and knew him to be Quintana and no other. He had a light basket pack. He put some articles into it, stretched himself and yawned, pulled on his hat, hoisted the pack and fastened it to his back, stood staring at the fire for a long time; then, with a sudden upward look at the zenith where a slight flush stained a cloud, he picked up his rifle. At that moment Eve called to him in a clear and steady voice. The effect on Quintana was instant; he was behind a tree before her voice ceased. "Hallo! Hi! You over there!" she called again. "This is Eve Strayer. I'm looking for Clinch! He hasn't been home all night. Have you seen him?" After a moment she saw Quintana's head watching her,--not at the shoulder-height of a man but close to the ground and just above the tree roots. "Hey!" she cried. "What's the matter with you over there? I'm asking you who you are and if you've seen my father?" After a while she saw Quintana coming toward her, circling, creeping swiftly from tree to tree. As he flitted through the shadows the trees between which she was standing hid her from him a moment. Instantly she placed her rifle on the ground and kicked the pine needles over it. As Quintana continued his encircling manoeuvres Eve, apparently perplexed, walked out into the clear space, putting the concealed trap between her and Quintana, who now came stealthily toward her from the rear. It was evident that he had reconnoitred sufficiently to satisfy himself that the girl was alone and that no trick, no ambuscade, threatened him. And now, from behind a pine, and startlingly near her, came Quintana, moving with confident grace yet holding his rifle ready for any emergency. Eve's horrified stare was natural; she had not realised that any man could wear so evil a smile. Quintana stopped short a dozen paces away. The dramatic in him demanded of the moment its full value. He swept off his hat with a flourish, bowed deeply where he stood. "Ah!" he cried gaily, "the happy encounter, Señorita. God is too good to us. And it was but a moment since my thoughts were of you! I swear it!----" It was not fear; it was a sort of slow horror of this man that began to creep over the girl. She stared at his brilliant eyes, at his thick mouth, too red--shuddered slightly. But the toe of her right foot touched the stock of her rifle under the pine needles. She held herself under control. "So it's you," she said unsteadily. "I thought our people had caught you." Quintana laughed: "Charming child," he said, "it is _I_ who have caught your people. And now, my God!--I catch _you_!... It is ver' funny. Is it not?" She looked straight into Quintana's black eyes, but the look he returned sent the shamed blood surging into her face. "By God," he said between his white, even teeth,--"by God!" Staring at her he slowly disengaged his pack, let it fall behind him on the pine needles; rested his rifle on it; slipped out of his mackinaw and laid that across his rifle--always keeping his brilliant eyes on her. His lips tightened, the muscles in his dark face grew tense; his eyes became a blazing insult. For an instant he stood there, unencumbered, a wiry, graceful shape in his woollen breeches, leggings, and grey shirt open at the throat. Then he took a step toward her. And the girl watched him, fascinated. One pace, two, a third, a fourth--the girl's involuntary cry echoed the stumbling crash of the man thrashing, clawing, scrambling in the clenched jaws of the bear-trap amid a whirl of flying pine needles. He screamed once, tried to rise, turned blindly to seize the jaws that clutched him; and suddenly crouched, loose-jointed, cringing like a trapped wolf--the true fatalist among our lesser brothers. Eve picked up her rifle. She was trembling violently. Then, mastering her emotion, she walked over to the pack, placed Quintana's rifle and mackinaw in it, coolly hoisted it to her shoulders and buckled it there. Over her shoulder she kept an eye on Quintana who crouched where he had fallen, unstirring, his deadly eyes watching her. She placed the muzzle of her rifle against his stomach, rested it so, holding it with one hand, and her finger at the trigger. At her brief order he turned out both breeches pockets. She herself stooped and drew the Spanish clasp-knife from its sheath at his belt, took a pistol from the holster, another out of his hip pocket. Reaching up and behind her, she dropped these into the pack. "Maybe," she said slowly, "your ankle is broken. I'll send somebody from Ghost Lake to find you. But whether you've a broken bone or not you'll not go very far, Quintana.... After I'm gone you'll be able to free yourself. But you can't get away. You'll be followed and caught.... So if you can walk at all you'd better go in to Ghost Lake and give yourself up.... It's that or starvation.... You've got a watch.... Don't stir or touch that trap for half an hour.... And that's all." As she moved away toward the Drowned Valley trail she looked back at him. His face was bloodless but his black eyes blazed. "If ever you come into this forest again," she said, "my father will surely kill you." To her horror Quintana slowly grinned at her. Then, still grinning, he placed the forefinger of his left hand between his teeth and bit it. Whatever he meant by the gesture it seemed unclean, horrible; and the girl hurried on, seized with an overwhelming loathing through which a sort of terror pulsated like evil premonition in a heavy and tortured heart. Straight into the fire of dawn she sped. A pale primrose light glimmered through the woods; trees, bushes, undergrowth turned a dusky purple. Already the few small clouds overhead were edged with fiery rose. Then, of a sudden, a shaft of flame played over the forest. The sun had risen. Hastening, she searched the soft path for any imprint of her father's foot. And even in the vain search she hoped to find him at home--hurried on burdened with two rifles and a pack, still all nervous and aquiver from her encounter with Quintana. Surely, surely, she thought, if he had missed Quintana in Drowned Valley he would not linger in that ghastly place; he'd come home, call in his men, take counsel perhaps---- * * * * * Mist over Star Pond was dissolving to a golden powder in the blinding glory of the sun. The eastern window-panes in Clinch's Dump glittered as though the rooms inside were all on fire. Down through withered weeds and scrub she hurried, ran across the grass to the kitchen door which swung ajar under its porch. "Dad!" she called, "Dad!" Only her own frightened voice echoed in the empty house. She climbed the stairs to his room. The bed lay undisturbed as she had made it. He was not in any of the rooms; there were no signs of him. Slowly she descended to the kitchen. He was not there. The food she had prepared for him had become cold on a chilled range. For a long while she stood staring through the window at the sunlight outside. Probably, since Quintana had eluded him, he'd come home for something to eat.... Surely, now that Quintana had escaped, Clinch would come back for some breakfast. Eve slipped the pack from her back and laid it on the kitchen table. There was kindling in the wood-box. She shook down the cinders, laid a fire, soaked it with kerosene, lighted it, filled the kettle with fresh water. In the pantry she cut some ham, and found eggs, condensed milk, butter, bread, and an apple pie. After she had ground the coffee she placed all these on a tray and carried them into the kitchen. Now there was nothing more to do until her father came, and she sat down by the kitchen table to wait. Outside the sunlight was becoming warm and vivid. There had been no frost after all--or, at most, merely a white trace in the shadow--on a fallen plank here and there--but not enough to freeze the ground. And, in the sunshine, it all quickly turned to dew, and glittered and sparkled in a million hues and tints like gems--like that handful of jewels she had poured into her father's joined palms--yesterday--there at the ghostly edge of Drowned Valley. At the memory, and quite mechanically, she turned in her chair and drew Quintana's basket pack toward her. First she lifted out his rifle, examined it, set it against the window sill. Then, one by one, she drew out two pistols, loaded; the murderous Spanish clasp-knife; an axe; a fry-pan and a tin pail, and the rolled-up mackinaw. Under these the pack seemed to contain nothing except food and ammunition; staples in sacks and a few cans--lard, salt, tea--such things. The cartridge boxes she piled up on the table; the food she tossed into a tin swill bucket. About the effects of this man it seemed to her as though something unclean lingered. She could scarcely bear to handle them,--threw them from her with disgust. The garment, also--the heavy brown and green mackinaw--she disliked to touch. To throw it out doors was her intention; but, as she lifted the coat, it unrolled and some things fell from the pockets to the kitchen table,--money, keys, a watch, a flat leather case---- She looked stupidly at the case. It had a coat of arms emblazoned on it. Still, stupidly and as though dazed, she laid one hand on it, drew it to her, opened it. The Flaming Jewel blazed in her face amid a heap of glittering gems. Still she seemed slow to comprehend--as though understanding were paralysed. It was when her eyes fell upon the watch that her heart seemed to stop. Suddenly her stunned senses were lighted as by an infernal flare.... Under the awful blow she swayed upright to her feet, sick with fright, her eyes fixed on her father's watch. It was still ticking. She did not know whether she cried out in anguish or was dumb under it. The house seemed to reel around her; under foot too. When she came to her senses she found herself outside the house, running with her rifle, already entering the woods. But, inside the barrier of trees, something blocked her way, stopped her,--a man--_her_ man! "Eve! In God's name!----" he said as she struggled in his arms; but she fought him and strove to tear her body from his embrace: "They've killed Dad!" she panted,--"Quintana killed him. I didn't know--oh, I didn't know!--and I let Quintana go! Oh, Jack, Jack, he's at the Place of Pines! I'm going there to shoot him! Let me go!--he's killed Dad, I tell you! He had Dad's watch--and the case of jewels--they were in his pack on the kitchen table----" "Eve!" "Let me go!----" "_Eve!_" He held her rigid a moment in his powerful grip, compelled her dazed, half-crazed eyes to meet his own: "You must come to your senses," he said. "Listen to what I say: they are _bringing in your father_." Her dilated blue eyes never moved from his. "We found him in Drowned Valley at sunrise," said Stormont quietly. "The men are only a few rods behind me. They are carrying him out." Her lips made a word without sound. "Yes," said Stormont in a low voice. There was a sound in the woods behind them. Stormont turned. Far away down the trail the men came into sight. Then the State Trooper turned the girl very gently and placed one arm around her shoulders. Very slowly they descended the hill together. His equipment was shining in the morning sun: and the sun fell on Eve's drooping head, turning her chestnut hair to fiery gold. * * * * * An hour later Trooper Stormont was at the Place of Pines. There was nothing there except an empty trap and the ashes of the dying fire beyond. EPISODE TWELVE HER HIGHNESS INTERVENES I Toward noon the wind changed, and about one o'clock it began to snow. Eve, exhausted, lay on the sofa in her bedroom. Her step-father lay on a table in the dance hall below, covered by a sheet from his own bed. And beside him sat Trooper Stormont, waiting. It was snowing heavily when Mr. Lyken, the little undertaker from Ghost Lake, arrived with several assistants, a casket, and what he called "swell trimmings." Long ago Mike Clinch had selected his own mortuary site and had driven a section of iron pipe into the ground on a ferny knoll overlooking Star Pond. In explanation he grimly remarked to Eve that after death he preferred to be planted where he could see that Old Harrod's ghost didn't trespass. Here two of Mr. Lyken's able assistants dug a grave while the digging was still good; for if Mike Clinch was to lie underground that season there might be need of haste--no weather prophet ever having successfully forecast Adirondack weather. Eve, exhausted by shock and a sleepless night, was spared the more harrowing details of the coroner's visit and the subsequent jaunty activities of Mr. Lyken and his efficient assistants. She had managed to dress herself in a black wool gown, intending to watch by Mike, but Stormont's blunt authority prevailed and she lay down for an hour's rest. The hour lengthened into many hours; the girl slept heavily on her sofa under blankets laid over her by Stormont. All that dark, snowy day she slept, mercifully unconscious of the proceedings below. In its own mysterious way the news penetrated the wilderness; and out of the desolation of forest and swamp and mountain drifted the people who somehow existed there--a few shy, half wild young girls, a dozen silent, lank men, two or three of Clinch's own people, who stood silently about in the falling snow and lent a hand whenever requested. One long shanked youth cut hemlock to line the grave; others erected a little fence of silver birch around it, making of the enclosure a "plot." A gaunt old woman from God knows where aided Mr. Lyken at intervals: a pretty, sulky-eyed girl with her slovenly, red-headed sister cooked for anybody who desired nourishment. When Mike was ready to hold the inevitable reception everybody filed into the dance hall. Mr. Lyken was master of ceremonies; Trooper Stormont stood very tall and straight by the head of the casket. Clinch wore a vague, indefinable smile and his best clothes,--that same smile which had so troubled José Quintana. Light was fading fast in the room when the last visitor took silent leave of Clinch and rejoined the groups in the kitchen, where were the funeral baked meats. Eve still slept. Descending again from his reconnaissance, Trooper Stormont encountered Trooper Lannis below. "Has anybody picked up Quintana's tracks?" inquired the former. "Not so far. An Inspector and two State Game Protectors are out beyond Owl Marsh. The Troopers from Five Lakes are on the job, and we have enforcement men along Drowned Valley from The Scaur to Harrod Place." "Does Darragh know?" "Yes. He's in there with Mike. He brought a lot of flowers from Harrod Place." The two troopers went into the dance hall where Darragh was arranging the flowers from his greenhouses. Stormont said quietly: "All right, Jim, but Eve must not know that they came from Harrod's." Darragh nodded: "How is she, Jack?" "All in." "Do you know the story?" "Yes. Mike went into Drowned Valley early last evening after Quintana. He didn't come back. Before dawn this morning Eve located Quintana, set a bear-trap for him, and caught him with the goods----" "What goods?" demanded Darragh sharply. "Well, she got his pack and found Mike's watch and jewelry in it----" "What jewelry?" "The jewels Quintana was after. But that was after she'd arrived at the Dump, here, leaving Quintana to get free of the trap and beat it. "That's how I met her--half crazed, going to find Quintana again. We'd found Mike in Drowned Valley and were bringing him out when I ran into Eve.... I brought her back here and called Ghost Lake.... They haven't picked up Quintana's tracks so far." After a silence: "Too bad this snow came so late," remarked Trooper Lannis. "But we ought to get Quintana anyway." Darragh went over and looked silently at Mike Clinch. "I liked you," he said under his breath. "It wasn't your fault. And it wasn't mine, Mike.... I'll try to square things. Don't worry." He came back slowly to where Stormont was standing near the door: "Jack," he said, "you can't marry Eve on a Trooper's pay. Why not quit and take over the Harrod estate?... You and I can go into business together later if you like." After a pause: "That's rather wonderful of you, Jim," said Stormont, "but you don't know what sort of business man I'd make----" "I know what sort of officer you made.... I'm taking no chance.... And I'll make my peace with Eve--or somebody will do it for me.... Is it settled then?" "Thanks," said Trooper Stormont, reddening. They clasped hands. Then Stormont went about and lighted the candles in the room. Clinch's face, again revealed, was still faintly amused at something or other. The dead have much to be amused at. As Darragh was about to go, Stormont said: "We're burying Clinch at eleven to-morrow morning. The Ghost Lake Pilot officiates." "I'll come if it won't upset Eve," said Darragh. "She won't notice anybody, I fancy," remarked Stormont. He stood by the veranda and watched Darragh take the Lake Trail through the snow. Finally the glimmer of his swinging lantern was lost in the woods and Stormont mounted the stairs once more, stood silently by Eve's open door, realised she was still heavily asleep, and seated himself on a chair outside her door to watch and wait. * * * * * All night long it snowed hard over the Star Pond country, and the late grey light of morning revealed a blinding storm pelting a white robed world. Toward ten o'clock, Stormont, on guard, noticed that Eve was growing restless. Downstairs the flotsam of the forest had gathered again: Mr. Lyken was there in black gloves; the Reverend Laomi Smatter had arrived in a sleigh from Ghost Lake. Both were breakfasting heavily. The pretty, sulky-faced girl fetched a tray and placed Eve's breakfast on it; and Trooper Stormont carried it to her room. She was awake when he entered. He set the tray on the table. She put both arms around his neck. "Jack," she murmured, her eyes tremulous with tears. "Everything has been done," he said. "Will you be ready by eleven? I'll come for you." She clung to him in silence for a while. * * * * * At eleven he knocked on her door. She opened it. She wore her black wool gown and a black fur turban. Some of her pallor remained,--traces of tears and bluish smears under both eyes. But her voice was steady. "Could I see Dad a moment alone?" "Of course." She took his arm: they descended the stairs. There seemed to be many people about but she did not lift her eyes until her lover led her into the dance hall where Clinch lay smiling his mysterious smile. Then Stormont left her alone there and closed the door. * * * * * In a terrific snow-storm they buried Mike Clinch on the spot he had selected, in order that he might keep a watchful eye upon the trespassing ghost of old man Harrod. It blew and stormed and stormed, and the thin, nasal voice of "Rev. Smatter" was utterly lost in the wind. The slanting lances of snow drove down on the casket, building a white mound over the flowers, blotting the hemlock boughs from sight. There was no time to be lost now; the ground was freezing under a veering and bitter wind out of the west. Mr. Lyken's talented assistants had some difficulty in shaping the mound which snow began to make into a white and flawless monument. The last slap of the spade rang with a metallic jar across the lake, where snow already blotted the newly forming film of ice; the human denizens of the wilderness filtered back into it one by one; "Rev. Smatter" got into his sleigh, plainly concerned about the road; Mr. Lyken betrayed unprofessional haste in loading his wagon with his talented assistants and starting for Ghost Lake. A Game Protector or two put on snow-shoes when they departed. Trooper Lannis led out his horse and Stormont's, and got into the saddle. "I'd better get these beasts into Ghost Lake while I can," he said. "You'll follow on snow-shoes, won't you, Jack?" "I don't know. I may need a sleigh for Eve. She can't remain here all alone. I'll telephone the Inn." Darragh, in blanket outfit, a pair of snow-shoes on his back, a rifle in his mittened hand, came trudging up from the lake. He and Stormont watched Lannis riding away with the two horses. "He'll make it all right, but it's time he started," said the latter. Darragh nodded: "Some storm. Where is Eve?" "In her room." "What is she going to do, Jack?" "Marry me as soon as possible. She wants to stay here for a few days but I can't leave her here alone. I think I'll telephone to Ghost Lake for a sleigh." "Let me talk to her," said Darragh in a low voice. "Do you think you'd better--at such a time?" "I think it's a good time. It will divert her mind, anyway. I want her to come to Harrod Place." "She won't," said Stormont grimly. "She might. Let me talk to her." "Do you realise how she feels toward you, Jim?" "I do, indeed. And I don't blame her. But let me tell you; Eve Strayer is the most honest and fair-minded girl I ever knew.... Except one.... I'll take a chance that she'll listen to me.... Sooner or later she will be obliged to hear what I have to tell her.... But it will be easier for her--for everybody--if I speak to her now. Let me try, Jack." Stormont hesitated, looked at him, nodded. Darragh stood his rifle against the bench on the kitchen porch. They entered the house slowly. And met Eve descending the stairs. The girl looked at Darragh, astonished, then her pale face flushed with anger. "What are you doing in this house?" she demanded unsteadily. "Have you no decency, no shame?" "Yes," he said, "I am ashamed of what my kinsman has done to you and yours. That is partly why I am here." "You came here as a spy," she said with hot contempt. "You lied about your name; you lied about your purpose. You came here to betray Dad! If he'd known it he would have killed you!" "Yes, he would have. But--do you know why I came here, Eve?" "I've told you!" "And you are wrong. I didn't come here to betray Mike Clinch: I came to save him." "Do you suppose I believe a man who has lied to Dad?" she cried. "I don't ask you to, Eve. I shall let somebody else prove what I say. I don't blame you for your attitude. God knows I don't blame Mike Clinch. He stood up like a man to Henry Harrod.... All I ask is to undo some of the rotten things that my uncle did to you and yours. And that is partly why I came here." The girl said passionately: "Neither Dad nor I want anything from Harrod Place or from you! Do you suppose you can come here after Dad is dead and pretend you want to make amends for what your uncle did to us?" "Eve," said Darragh gravely, "I've made some amends already. You don't know it, but I have.... You may not believe it, but I liked your father. He was a real man. Had anybody done to me what Henry Harrod did to your father I'd have behaved as your father behaved; I'd never have budged from this spot; I'd have hunted where I chose; I'd have borne an implacable hatred against Henry Harrod and Harrod Place, and every soul in it!" The girl, silenced, looked at him without belief. He said: "I am not surprised that you distrust what I say. But the man you are going to marry was a junior officer in my command. I have no closer friend than Jack Stormont. Ask him whether I am to be believed." Astounded, the girl turned a flushed, incredulous face to Stormont. He said: "You may trust Darragh as you trust me. I don't know what he has to say to you, dear. But whatever he says will be the truth." Darragh said, gravely: "Through a misunderstanding your father came into possession of stolen property, Eve. He did not know it had been stolen. I did. But Mike Clinch would not have believed me if I had told him that the case of jewels in his possession had been stolen from a woman.... Quintana stole them. By accident they came into your father's possession. I learned of this. I had promised this woman to recover her jewels. "I came here for that purpose, Eve. And for two reasons: first, because I learned that Quintana also was coming here to rob your father of these gems; second, because, when I knew your father, and knew _you_, I concluded that it would be an outrage to call on the police. It would mean prison for Clinch, misery and ruin for you, Eve. So--I tried to steal the jewels ... to save you both." He looked at Stormont, who seemed astonished. "To whom do these jewels belong, Jim?" demanded the trooper. "To the young Grand Duchess of Esthonia.... Do you remember that I befriended her over there?" "Yes." "Do you remember that the Reds were accused of burning her château and looting it?" "Yes, I remember." "Well, it was Quintana and his gang of international criminals who did that," said Darragh drily. And, to Eve: "By accident this case of jewels, emblazoned with the coat of arms of the Grand Duchess of Esthonia, came into your father's possession. That is the story, Eve." There was a silence. The girl looked at Stormont, flushed painfully, looked at Darragh. Then, without a word, she turned, ascended the stairs, and reappeared immediately carrying the leather case. "Thank you, Mr. Darragh," she said simply; and laid the case in his hand. "But," said Darragh, "I want you to do a little more, Eve. The owner of these gems is my guest at Harrod Place. I want you to give them to her yourself." "I--I can't go to Harrod Place," stammered the girl. "Please don't visit the sins of Henry Harrod on me, Eve." "I--don't. But--but that place----" After a silence: "If Eve feels that way," began Stormont awkwardly, "I couldn't become associated with you in business, Jim----" "I'd rather sell Harrod Place than lose you!" retorted Darragh almost sharply. "I want to go into business with you, Jack--if Eve will permit me----" She stood looking at Stormont, the heightened colour playing in her cheeks as she began to comprehend the comradeship between these two men. Slowly she turned to Darragh, offered her hand: "I'll go to Harrod Place," she said in a low voice. Darragh's quick smile brightened the sombre gravity of his face. "Eve," he said, "when I came over here this morning from Harrod Place I was afraid you would refuse to listen to me; I was afraid you would not even see me. And so I brought with me--somebody--to whom I felt certain you would listen.... I brought with me a young girl--a poor refugee from Russia, once wealthy, to-day almost penniless.... Her name is Theodorica.... Once she was Grand Duchess of Esthonia.... But this morning a clergyman from Five Lakes changed her name.... To such friends as you and Jack she is Ricca Darragh now ... and she's having a wonderful time on her new snow-shoes----" He took Eve by one hand and Stormont by the other, and drew them to the kitchen door and kicked it open. Through the swirling snow, over on the lake-slope at the timber edge, a graceful, boyish figure in scarlet and white wool moved swiftly over the drifts with all the naïve delight of a child with a brand new toy. As Darragh strode out into the open the distant figure flung up one arm in salutation and came racing over the drifts, her brilliant scarf flying. All aglow and a trifle breathless, she met Darragh just beyond the veranda, rested one mittened hand on his shoulder while he knelt and unbuckled her snow-shoes, stepped lightly from them and came forward to Eve with out-stretched hand and a sudden winning gravity in her lovely face. "We shall be friends, surely," she said in her quick, winning voice;--"because my husband has told me--and I am so grieved for you--and I need a girl friend----" Holding both Eve's hands, her mittens dangling from her wrist, she looked into her eyes very steadily. Slowly Eve's eyes filled; more slowly still Ricca kissed her on both cheeks, framed her face in both hands, kissed her lightly on the lips. Then, still holding Eve's hands, she turned and looked at Stormont. "I remember you now," she said. "You were with my husband in Riga." She freed her right hand and held it out to Stormont. He had the grace to kiss it and did it very well for a Yankee. Together they entered the kitchen door and turned into the dining room on the left, where were chairs around the plain pine table. Darragh said: "The new mistress of Harrod Place has selected your quarters, Eve. They adjoin the quarters of her friend, the Countess Orloff-Strelwitz." "Valentine begged me," said Ricca, smiling. "She is going to be lonely without me. All hours of day and night we were trotting into one another's rooms----" She looked gravely at Eve: "You will like Valentine; and she will like you very much.... As for me--I already love you." She put one arm around Eve's shoulders: "How could you even think of remaining here all alone? Why, I should never close my eyes for thinking of you, dear." Eve's head drooped; she said in a stifled voice: "I'll go with you.... I want to.... I'm very--tired." "We had better go now," said Darragh. "Your things can be brought over later. If you'll dress for snow-shoeing, Jack can pack what clothes you need.... Are there snow-shoes for him, too?" Eve turned tragically to her lover: "In Dad's closet----" she said, choking; then turned and went up the stairs, still clinging to Ricca's hand and drawing her with her. Stormont followed, entered Clinch's quarters, and presently came downstairs again, carrying Clinch's snow-shoes and a basket pack. He seated himself near Darragh. After a silence: "Your wife is beautiful, Jim.... Her character seems to be even more beautiful.... She's like God's own messenger to Eve.... And--you're rather wonderful yourself----" "Nonsense," said Darragh, "I've given my wife her first American friend and I've done a shrewd stroke of business in nabbing the best business associate I ever heard of----" "You're crazy but kind.... I hope I'll be some good.... One thing; I'll never get over what you've done for Eve in this crisis----" "There'll be no crisis, Jack. Marry, and hook up with me in business. That solves everything.... Lord!--what a life Eve has had! But you'll make it all up to her ... all this loneliness and shame and misery of Clinch's Dump----" Stormont touched his arm in caution: Eve and Ricca came down the stairs--the former now in the grey wool snow-shoe dress, and carrying her snow-shoes, black gown, and toilet articles. Stormont began to stow away her effects in the basket pack; Darragh went over to her and took her hand. "I'm so glad we are to be friends," he said. "It hurt a lot to know you held me in contempt. But I had to go about it that way." Eve nodded. Then, suddenly recollecting: "Oh," she exclaimed, reddening, "I forgot the jewel case! It's under my pillow----" She turned and sped upstairs and reappeared almost instantly, carrying the jewel-case. Breathless, flushed, thankful and happy in the excitement of restitution, she placed the leather case in Ricca's hands. "My jewels!" cried the girl, astounded. Then, with a little cry of delight, she placed the case upon the table, stripped open the emblazoned cover, and emptied the two trays. All over the table rolled the jewels, flashing, scintillating, ablaze with blinding light. And at the same instant the outer door crashed open and Quintana covered them with Darragh's rifle. "Now, by Christ!" he shouted, "who stirs a finger shall go to God in one jump! You, my gendarme frien'--_you_, my frien' Smith--turn your damn backs--han's up high!--tha's the way!--now, ladies!--back away there--get back or I kill!--sure, by Jesus, I kill you like I would some white little mice!----" With incredible quickness he stepped forward and swept the jewels into one hand--filled the pocket of his trousers, caught up every stray stone and pocketed them. "You gendarme," he cried in a menacing voice, "you think you shall follow in my track. Yes? I blow your damn head off if you stir before the hour.... After that--well, follow and be damn!" Even as he spoke he stepped outside and slammed the door; and Darragh and Stormont leaped for it. Then the loud detonation of Quintana's rifle was echoed by the splintering rip of bullets tearing through the closed door; and both men halted in the face of the leaden hail. Eve ran to the pantry window and saw Quintana in somebody's stolen lumber-sledge, lash a big pair of horses to a gallop and go floundering past into the Ghost Lake road. As he sped by in a whirl of snow he fired five times at the house, then, rising and swinging his whip, he flogged the frantic horses into the woods. In the dining room, Stormont, red with rage and shame, and having found his rifle in the corridor outside Eve's bedroom, was trying to open the shutters for a shot; and Darragh, empty-handed, searched the house frantically for a weapon. Eve, terribly excited, came from the pantry: "He's gone!" she cried furiously. "He's in somebody's lumber-sledge with a pair of horses and he's driving west like the devil!" Stormont ran to the tap-room telephone, cranked it, and warned the constabulary at Five Lakes. "Good God!" he exclaimed, turning to Darragh, scarlet with mortification, "what a ghastly business! I never dreamed he was within miles of Clinch's! It's the most shameful thing that ever happened to me----" "What could anybody do under that rifle?" said Eve hotly. "That beast would have murdered the first person who stirred!" Darragh, exasperated and dreadfully humiliated, looked miserably at his brand-new wife. Eve and Stormont also looked at her. She had come forward from the rear of the stairway where Quintana had brutally driven her. Now she stood with one hand on the empty leather jewel case, looking at everybody out of pretty, bewildered eyes. To Darragh, in a perplexed, unsteady voice: "Is it the same bandit who robbed us before?" "Yes; Quintana," he said wretchedly. Rage began to redden his features. "Ricca," he said, "I promised I'd find your jewels.... I promise you again that I'll never drop this business until your gems--and the Flaming Jewel--are in your possession----" "But, Jim----" "I swear it!" he exclaimed violently. "I'm not such a stupid fool as I seem----" "Dear!" she protested excitedly, "you _have_ done what you promised. My gems _are_ in my possession--I believe----" She caught up the emblazoned case, stripped out the first tray, then the second, and flung them aside. Then, searching with the delicate tip of her forefinger in the empty case, she suddenly pressed the bottom hard,--thumb, middle finger and little finger forming the three apexes of an equilateral triangle. There came a clear, tiny sound like the ringing of the alarm in a repeating watch. Very gently the false bottom of the case detached itself and came away in the palm of her hand. And there, each embedded in its own shaped compartment of chamois, lay the Esthonian jewels--the true ones--deep hidden, always doubly guarded by two sets of perfect imitations lining the two visible trays above. And, in the centre, blazed the Erosite gem--the magnificent Flaming Jewel, a glory of living, blinding fire. Nobody stirred or spoke. Darragh blinked at the crystalline blaze as though stunned. Then the young girl who had once been Her Serene Highness Theodorica, Grand Duchess of Esthonia, looked up at her brand-new husband and laughed. "Did you really suppose it was these that brought me across the ocean? Did you suppose it was a passion for these that filled my heart? Did you think it was for these that I followed you?" She laughed again, turned to Eve: "_You_ understand. Tell him that if he had been in rags I would have followed him like a gypsy.... They say there is gypsy blood in us.... God knows.... I think perhaps there is a little of it in all real women----" Still laughing she placed her hand lightly upon her heart--"In all women--perhaps--a Flaming Jewel imbedded here----" Her eyes, tender, and mocking, met his; she lifted the jewel-case, closed it, and placed it in his hands. "Now," she said, "you have everything in your possession; and we are safe--we are quite safe, now, my jewels and I." Then she went to Eve and rested both hands on her shoulders. "Shall we put on our snow-shoes and go--home?" Stormont flung open the bullet-splintered door. Outside in the snow he dropped on both knees to buckle on Eve's snow-shoes. Darragh was performing a like office for his wife, and the State Trooper, being unobserved, took Eve's slim hands and kissed them, looking up at her where he was kneeling. Her pale face blushed as it had that day in the woods on Owl Marsh, so long, so long ago, when this man's lips first touched her hands. As their eyes met both remembered. Then she smiled at her lover with the shy girl's soul of her gazing out at him through eyes as blue as the wild blind-gentians that grow among the ferns and mosses of Star Pond. * * * * * Far away in the northwestern forests Quintana still lashed his horses through the primeval pines. Triumphant, reckless, resourceful, dangerous, he felt that now nothing could stop him, nothing bar his way to freedom. Out of the wilderness lay his road and his destiny; out of it he must win his way, by strategy, by cunning, by violence--creep out, lie his way out, shoot his way out--it scarcely mattered. He was going out! He was going back to life once more. Who could forbid him? Who stop him? Who deny him, now, when, in his pockets, he held all that was worth living for--the keys to power, to pleasure,--the key to everything on earth! In fierce exultation he slapped the glass jewels in his pocket and laughed aloud. "The keys to the world!" he cried. "Let him stop me and take them who is a better man than I!" Then his long whip whistled and he cursed his horses. Then, of a sudden, close by in the snowy road ahead, he saw a State Trooper on snow-shoes,--saw the upflung arm warning him--screamed curses at his horses, flogged them forward to crush this thing to death that dared menace him--this object that suddenly rose up out of nowhere to snatch from him the keys of the world---- * * * * * For a moment the State Trooper looked after the runaway horses. There was no use following; they'd have to run till they dropped. Then he lowered the levelled rifle from his shoulder, looked grimly at the limp thing which had tumbled from the sledge into the snowy road and which sprawled there crimsoning the spotless flakes that fell upon it. THE END _Novels by_ ROBERT W. CHAMBERS THE FLAMING JEWEL THE TREE OF HEAVEN THE LITTLE RED FOOT THE MOONLIT WAY THE SLAYER OF SOULS IN SECRET THE CRIMSON TIDE CARDIGAN THE LAUGHING GIRL THE RECKONING THE RESTLESS SEX THE MAID-AT-ARMS BARBARIANS AILSA PAIGE THE DARK STAR SPECIAL MESSENGER THE GIRL PHILIPPA THE HAUNTS OF MEN WHO GOES THERE! LORRAINE ATHALIE MAIDS OF PARADISE THE BUSINESS OF LIFE ASHES OF EMPIRE THE GAY REBELLION THE RED REPUBLIC THE STREETS OF ASCALON BLUE-BIRD WEATHER THE COMMON LAW A YOUNG MAN IN A HURRY THE FIGHTING CHANCE THE GREEN MOUSE THE YOUNGER SET IOLE THE DANGER MARK THE MYSTERY OF CHOICE THE FIRING LINE THE CAMBRIC MASK JAPONETTE THE MAKER OF MOONS QUICK ACTION THE KING IN YELLOW THE ADVENTURES OF A MODEST MAN IN SEARCH OF THE UNKNOWN ANNE'S BRIDGE THE TRACER OF LOST PERSONS BETWEEN FRIENDS THE CONSPIRATORS THE BETTER MAN A KING AND A FEW DUKES POLICE!!! THE HIDDEN CHILDREN SOME LADIES IN HASTE IN THE QUARTER OUTSIDERS +------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber's Note: | | | |[=a] is a macron | | | |Page 14 "Stormond nodded" changed to "Stormont nodded" | | 40 Double close quotation mark added after "have a dance!" | | 95 "seated hmiself" changed to "seated himself" | | 96 "pallour" changed to "pallor" | | 103 Open bracket removed from "Ah, bah! (But wait!" | | 112 Double close quotation mark added after "that way, Mike."| | 118 Double close quotation mark added after "at roll call." | | 197 "swiming" changed to "swimming" | | 226 "her breeches pocket" changed to "her breeches' pocket | | 258 Double open quotation mark added to "But we ought to" | | | |All other inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation and dialect | |have been retained as they appear in the original book. | +------------------------------------------------------------------+ 
53466	----	courtesy of the Digital Library@Villanova University (http://digital.library.villanova.edu/)) MOTOR STORIES THRILLING ADVENTURE MOTOR FICTION NO. 31 SEPT. 25, 1909 FIVE CENTS MOTOR MATT'S MARINER OR FILLING THE BILL FOR BUNCE _By THE AUTHOR OF MOTOR MATT_ _STREET & SMITH PUBLISHERS NEW YORK_ [Illustration: _The jolt was terrific. Motor Matt was thrown roughly against the front seat and Bunce went into the air as though shot from a gun._] MOTOR STORIES THRILLING ADVENTURE MOTOR FICTION _Issued Weekly. By subscription $2.50 per year. Copyright, 1909, by_ STREET & SMITH, _79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York, N. Y._ =No. 31.= NEW YORK, September 25, 1909. =Price Five Cents.= MOTOR MATT'S MARINER; OR, Filling the Bill for Bunce. By the author of "MOTOR MATT." CONTENTS CHAPTER I. "BUDDHA'S EYE." CHAPTER II. THE GREEN PATCH. CHAPTER III. MOTOR MATT--TRUSTEE. CHAPTER IV. BUNCE HAS A PLAN. CHAPTER V. BUNCE SPEAKS A GOOD WORD FOR HIMSELF. CHAPTER VI. THE HOMEMADE SPEEDER. CHAPTER VII. TRAPPED. CHAPTER VIII. THE CUT-OUT UNDER THE LEDGE. CHAPTER IX. BETWEEN THE EYES. CHAPTER X. THE MAN FROM THE "IRIS." CHAPTER XI. ABOARD THE STEAM YACHT. CHAPTER XII. GRATTAN'S TRIUMPH. CHAPTER XIII. FROM THE OPEN PORT! CHAPTER XIV. LANDED--AND STUNG. CHAPTER XV. A CRAFTY ORIENTAL. CHAPTER XVI. THE MANDARIN WINS. JERRY STEBBINS' HOSS TRADE. THE PHANTOM ENGINEER. CHARACTERS THAT APPEAR IN THIS STORY. =Matt King=, otherwise Motor Matt. =Joe McGlory=, a young cowboy who proves himself a lad of worth and character, and whose eccentricities are all on the humorous side. A good chum to tie to--a point Motor Matt is quick to perceive. =Tsan Ti=, Mandarin of the Red Button, who proves adept in the ways of Oriental craft, and shows how easy it is for a person to shift his dangers and responsibilities to other shoulders--if only he goes about it in the right way. =Philo Grattan=, a talented person who devotes himself to "tricks that are dark and ways that are vain," and whose superb assurance leads him to flaunt his most memorable crime in the face of the authorities through the medium of moving pictures. A man fitted by nature for a worthier part than he plays, and whose keen mind is not able to save him from deception. =Bunce=, the mariner, and a pal of Grattan. =Pardo=, who charters a power-boat and uses it in forwarding a plot of Grattan's. =Bronson=, a railroad superintendent, who appears briefly but creditably. CHAPTER I. "BUDDHA'S EYE." "It's three long and weary hours, pard, before the boat for New York ties up at the landing. You don't want to cool your heels in the hotel, do you, while we're waiting? How about doing something to fill in the time?" It was about seven o'clock in the evening, and Motor Matt and his cowboy chum, Joe McGlory, were sitting on the porch of their hotel in Catskill-on-the-Hudson. The hotel was on an elevation, and the boys could look out over the river and see the lights of steamers, tugs, motor boats, and other craft gliding up and down in a glittering maze. Matt had been looking down at the river lights, and dreaming. He aroused himself with a start at the sound of his chum's voice. "What would you suggest, Joe?" he asked. "Let's take in the moving-picture shows. Say, they're the greatest thing for a nickel that I ever saw. Some yap gets into trouble, and then ladies and gents, and workmen, and clerks, and nurses with baby cabs take after the poor duffer, and there's a high old time for all hands. I'm plumb hungry for excitement, Matt. This town has become mighty tame since we parted company with Tsan Ti." "If you think the moving-picture shows will furnish what you need in the excitement line, Joe, we'll go out and take them in." Matt got up with a laugh, and he and McGlory left the hotel, and laid a course for the main street of the town. At the first nickel theatre they came to, they gave up a dime, and moved into the darkened room. An illustrated song was in the lantern, and a young man with a husky voice was singing something about a "stingy moon." The motor boys stumbled around in the dark, and McGlory tried to slip into a seat that was already occupied. A stifled scream made him aware of his mistake, and he tumbled all over himself to get somewhere else. "Speak to me about that!" he whispered to Matt, with a choppy chuckle. "That's the trouble with these moving-picture honkatonks when you come in after the lights are out. Oh, bother that stingy moon! I wish the chap with the raw voice would cut it out, and let the rest of the show get to climbing over the screen." "Don't be so impatient, old chap," returned Matt. "You've got to have something happening to you about once every fifteen minutes, or you get so nervous you can't sit still. In that respect, you're a lot like Dick Ferral, a sailor chum I cruised with a while ago. Now----" "Sh-h-h!" interrupted the cowboy. "The piano has had enough of the moon, and now here comes the first moving picture." White letters quivered on the screen. "Buddha's Eye" was the title of the series of pictures about to be shown. McGlory gulped excitedly, and Matt stared. The motor boys had just finished a wild entanglement with a great ruby called the "Eye of Buddha," and this, the first picture in the first theatre that claimed them, reminded them, with something like a shock, of recent experiences. "Sufferin' sparks!" muttered McGlory. "What's the difference between 'Buddha's Eye' and the 'Eye of Buddha,' Matt?" "No difference, Joe," answered Matt. "This is just a coincidence, that's all." The interior of a Buddhist temple was thrown on the screen. The views were colored, and priests in gray and yellow robes could be seen moving back and forth and prostrating themselves before a huge gilt idol. The idol was of a "sitting Buddha" and must have measured full twenty feet from the temple floor to the top of the head. With a flash, the interior of the temple gave way to an enlarged view of the idol's head. The head had but one eye, placed in the centre of the forehead--a huge ruby, which glowed like a splash of warm blood. "The Honam joss house, in the suburbs of Canton!" whispered McGlory excitedly. "If it ain't, I'm a Piute!" Motor Matt kept silence, wondering. The boys were next afforded a view of two men, plotting aboard a sampan near the island of Honam. One was tall and had a dark face and sinister eyes. He wore a solar hat with a pugree. The other had on sailor clothes, had a fringe of mutton-chop whiskers about his jaws and a green patch over his right eye. McGlory grabbed Matt's arm in a convulsive grip. "What do you think of that?" demanded the cowboy, in a husky whisper. "The tinhorn in the sun hat is Grattan, and the webfoot is Bunce. Am I in a trance, or what?" "Watch!" returned Matt, fully as mystified as was his chum. The next picture was labeled, "The Egyptian Balls--view of excavations at Karnak, on the Upper Nile." Ponderous ruins were brought into view, showing Egyptian fellahs digging in a subterranean chamber. An urn was lifted up and uncovered. From this urn the wondering workmen removed a number of crystalline spheres. One of the spheres dropped from an awkward hand, crashed to fragments on the floor of the chamber, and instantly all the workmen staggered, flung their hands to their faces, and fell sprawling, lying on the stones prone and silent. Two men stole in upon them, covered with flowing Arab robes, and their faces masked in white. Swiftly they gathered up some of the balls, and the camera followed them as they left the chamber and stood under the broken columns of the ancient temple of Karnak. The robes were flung away, and the masks removed. Grattan and Bunce, the sampan plotters, stood revealed. "I've got the blind staggers, I reckon!" mumbled McGlory, rubbing his eyes. "It was in Egypt Grattan got his dope balls--the glass spheres filled with the knock-out fumes. This--this--sufferin' brain twisters! It's more'n I can savvy." After Grattan and Bunce had gone through a pantomime expressive of their wild delight on securing the balls, the films entered into another series, entitled, "The Theft of the Great Ruby from the Honam Joss House, near Canton, China." The walls outside the temple were shown, and an avenue bordered with banyan trees, with rooks flapping among the branches. Grattan and Bunce were seen making their way along the avenue, entering the temple court, and coming into the chamber which had been flashed on the screen at the beginning. Here was the huge idol again, and the yellow-robed priests moving about. For a space, Grattan and Bunce stood and gazed; then, suddenly, Grattan pulled a hand from his coat, held one of the glass balls over his head for a space, then sent it crashing among the priests. The priests started up in amazement, recovered their wits, and rushed toward the foreign devils. But the priests were suddenly stricken before Grattan and Bunce could be roughly dealt with. White masks had been pushed over the faces of the two plotters, and the pair watched while the priests, overcome by the paralyzing, sense-destroying fumes from the broken balls, reeled to the temple floor, and lay there in inert heaps. The masks protected Grattan and Bunce from the baneful influence of the balls. As soon as the priests were stretched silent upon the floor, Grattan unwound a ladder of silk from about his waist. One end of the ladder was weighted with a bit of lead, and this end was thrown over the idol's head. Thereupon, Grattan mounted the ladder, and dug out the ruby with a knife. Upon descending, he and Bunce went through another pantomime, suggesting their joy over the success of their shameless work, and then passed quickly from the court, stuffing their white masks into their pockets as they went. The next scene was in the room of a house in the foreign quarter, on the sea wall, called Shameen. Grattan was secreting the ruby in the head of a buckthorn cane. Barely was the secreting done, when a fat mandarin burst in on them with a number of armed coolies at his heels. The mandarin seemed to be accusing Grattan. Grattan could be seen to shake his head protestingly. Then Grattan and Bunce were searched thoroughly, and the room ransacked. In the utmost chagrin, the mandarin and his coolies left, without having been able to discover anything. A few minutes later, the thieves took their triumphant departure, Grattan exultantly waving the buckthorn stick. Scarcely breathing, and with staring eyes, the motor boys continued to watch the pictures as they raced over the white screen. What wonder work was this? From Grattan's own lips Matt had heard of the robbery at the Honam joss house, in which Grattan had played such an important part. So far, the pictures had shown it substantially as the details had come from Grattan; there were a few minor differences, but they were insignificant. From this point, however, Grattan's story and the story as told by the pictures were at variance. The thieves got into a couple of sedan chairs, each chair carried by four coolies. Apparently, Grattan and Bunce were on their way to the river to embark for other shores. When near the landing, one of the poles supporting the chair in which Grattan was riding broke. The chair fell, the bamboo door burst open, and Grattan tumbled out. One of the coolies picked up the buckthorn cane, and another the sun hat with the pugree. Grattan, in anger, knocked down the coolie who had picked up his hat. The other, coming to his countryman's aid, struck at Grattan with the head of the cane. Grattan dropped to his knees. The cane passed over his head, and the force the coolie had put into the blow carried the stick out of his hand, and sent it smashing against the side of a "go-down." The head of the cane was broken, and the great ruby rolled over the earth out of the débris, and lay gleaming in the sun under the eyes of the astounded coolies. Then, with the inexplicable timeliness so prevalent in motion pictures, the fat mandarin and his coolies came upon the scene, the mandarin gathering in "Buddha's Eye" with extravagant expressions of joy, and Grattan and Bunce writhing desperately in the hands of the chair men and the mandarin's guard. That was all. The scenes to follow were of a humorous order, and probably had to do with some unfortunate getting into trouble and leading a varied assortment of people a gay chase, but McGlory had lost interest in the show. So had Matt. As by a common impulse, the boys got up and groped their bewildered way out of the room and into the street. They were dazed, thunderstruck, and hardly knew what to think. CHAPTER II. THE GREEN PATCH. Distracted by their mental speculations, the motor boys presently found themselves back on the porch of their hotel, occupying the same chairs they had left a little while before. Once more Matt was looking down on the river lights, coming and going across the broad stream like so many fireflies. "Am I locoed, I wonder?" inquired McGlory, as though speaking to himself. "Did I see that moving picture, with Grattan and Bunce in it and stealing the 'Eye of Buddha,' or didn't I?" "You saw the picture, Joe," returned Matt, "and so did I." "I reckon I did; and jumpin' tarantulas, how it got on my nerves! But how does it happen that the picture is being shown like it is? Grattan told you, Matt, just how the ruby was stolen from the Honam joss house by himself and Bunce; he told you how he went to Egypt after the glass balls that were more than two thousand years old, and had been dug up at Karnak. He didn't get the balls from Karnak just exactly in the way the picture shows it, but he did steal the ruby in exactly the same fashion those films brought the tinhorn trick under our eyes. Not only that, but Grattan hid the ruby in the head of his cane. Right up to that point the whole game is a dead ringer for the yarn Grattan batted up to you. The rest of the pictures are pure fake. It was you who helped recover 'Buddha's Eye,' and it happened right here in the Catskill Mountains, near the village of Purling, and not in China. But it was the smashing of the head of the cane that revealed the ruby."[A] [A] The thrilling adventures of the motor boys in recovering the Eye of Buddha were set forth in No. 30, Motor Stories. "We know," said Matt, his mind recovering from the shock occasioned by the strange series of pictures so suddenly sprung upon him and McGlory, "we know, pard, that Grattan was in the motion-picture business at the time he conceived the idea of stealing the ruby. He was traveling all over the world with his camera apparatus. Probably his line of work has something to do with his putting the robbery into the form we have just seen it." "But why should Grattan want to publish his criminal work all over the country in moving pictures? And he put himself into the pictures, too--and that old sea dog, Bunce." "That part of it is too many for me, Joe," answered Matt. "However, I can't see as the moving pictures of the robbery cut much figure now. The mandarin, Tsan Ti, has recovered the ruby, and is on his way to San Francisco to take ship for China. Grattan and Bunce made their escape, and are probably getting out of the country, or into parts unknown, as rapidly as they can. So far as we are concerned, the incident is closed. But it was certainly a startler to come face to face with a set of pictures like those--and so unexpectedly." "First nickelodeon we struck, and the first picture shoved through the lantern," muttered the cowboy. "Are you positive, Joe," went on Matt, "that the two thieves who figured in the picture were really Grattan and Bunce?" "It's a cinch!" declared McGlory. "There can't be any mistake. I never saw a clearer set of pictures, and I'd know Grattan and Bunce anywhere--could pick 'em out of a thousand." "That's the way it looked to me, and yet there's one point I can't understand. It's a point that doesn't agree with your assertion that Bunce was really in the picture." "What point is that?" "Why, it has to do with the green patch Bunce wears over his eye." "The patch was in the picture, all right." "Sure it was! But which of Bunce's eyes did it cover?" "The right eye!" "Exactly! The green patch was over Bunce's right eye, in the picture of the robbery, which we just saw; but when we had our several encounters with Bunce, a few days ago, the patch was over the mariner's left eye." McGlory straightened up in his chair and stared at his chum through the electric light that shone over them from the porch ceiling. "Glory to glory and all hands round!" he exclaimed. "You're right, pard. When we were trotting that heat with Bunce, here in the Catskills, it was his left eye that was gone. Now, in the picture, it's his right eye. How do you explain that?" "The explanation seems easy enough," answered Matt. "Bunce must have two good eyes, and he simply covers up one for the purpose of disguise. Either that, or else some one represented him when the moving pictures were taken, and got the patch over the wrong eye." "What good is a green patch as a disguise, anyway?" demanded McGlory. "Give it up. The difference in the position of the patch merely led me to infer that Bunce might not have really been in that moving picture. And if Bunce wasn't in it, then it's possible that Grattan wasn't in it, either. Two men might have been made up to represent the two thieves. I can't think it possible that Grattan and Bunce, as you said a moment ago, should want to publish their crime throughout the country by means of these moving pictures. The films are rented everywhere, and travel from place to place." McGlory heaved a long breath. "Well, anyhow, I don't want to bother myself any more with the Eye of Buddha," said he. "It's a hoodoo, and I never went through such a lot of close shaves, or such a series of rapid-fire events, as when we were helping Tsan Ti, the mandarin, recover the ruby. Let's forget about it. We can't understand how those pictures came to be shown, and we're completely at sea regarding the green patch. But it's nothing to us, any more. We're for New York by the night boat, and then it'll be 'Up the river or down the bay, over to Coney or Rockaway' for the motor boys. Sufferin' cat naps! A spell of pleasure in the metro-polus is all that brought me East with you, anyhow. It's us for the big town, and with you along to see that no one sells me a gold brick, I reckon I'll be able to pan out a good time." The prospect of a week or two in New York, with a little rest and a little motoring, was also appealing powerfully to Matt. He had not been in the big town for some time, and he longed to renew his acquaintance with its many "sights" and experiences. "We'll be there in the morning, Joe," Matt answered. "As you say, we need not bother our heads any longer about the Eye of Buddha, or Grattan, or Bunce, or Tsan Ti. We'll take our toll of enjoyment out of Manhattan Isle, and we'll forget there ever was such a thing as the big ruby." "You don't intend to think of business at all while you're there, eh?" "No. We'll just knock around for a couple of weeks and enjoy ourselves. Of course we'll be more or less among the motors--I couldn't be happy myself if we weren't--and then, when we've had enough of that, I want to take a run up to my old home in the Berkshire Hills." Great Barrington had been very much in Motor Matt's mind for several weeks. He felt a desire to go back to the old place, and revisit the scenes of his earlier life. There was a mystery concerning his parents which had never been solved. He did not have any idea that a return to Great Barrington would settle that problem, but, nevertheless, it had something to do with luring him in the direction of the Berkshires. "Speak to me about that!" murmured McGlory. "You've always been a good deal of a riddle to me, pard. You've never let out much about your early life, and I come from a country where it's a signal for fireworks if you press a man too closely about his past, so I've just taken you as I picked you up in 'Frisco, and let it go at that. But there are a few things I'd like to know, just the same." "I'll tell you about them sometime, Joe," Matt answered. "Just now, though, I'm not in the mood. When we're ready to start for the Berkshires----" He paused. The night clerk of the hotel had come out on the porch and was standing at his elbow, a small package in his hand. "Motor Matt," said he, in a voice of concern, "here's something that came for you by express, about five-thirty in the afternoon. It's been lying in the safe ever since. The day clerk couldn't find you, when the package came, so he receipted for it. He didn't tell me anything about it, when I went on duty, and he just happened to remember and to telephone down from his room. I'm sorry about the delay." "We're taking the ten-o'clock boat for New York," spoke up McGlory. "It would have been a nice layout if we'd got away and left that package behind." "I'm mighty sorry, but it's not my fault." "Well," answered Matt, taking the package, "no great harm has been done. It's an hour and a half, yet, before the New York boat gets here, and I have the package." The clerk went back into the hotel and Matt examined the package under the light. "What do you reckon it is, pard?" queried McGlory curiously. "You can give as good a guess as I can, Joe," Matt answered. "I'm not expecting anybody to send me anything. It's addressed plainly enough to Motor Matt, Catskill, New York, in care of this hotel." "And covered with red sealing wax," added McGlory. "Rip off the cover and let's see what's on the inside. Sufferin' tenterhooks! Haven't you got any curiosity?" Matt cut the cord that bound the package and took off the wrapper. A small wooden box was disclosed, bound with another cord. The box was opened, and seemed to be filled with cotton wadding. Resting the box on his knees, Matt proceeded to remove the wadding. Then he fell back in his chair with an astounded exclamation. A round object, glimmering in the rays of the electric light like a splash of blood against the cotton, lay under the amazed eyes of the motor boys. "Buddha's Eye!" whispered McGlory. Around the end of the veranda, in the wavering shadows, a face had pushed itself above the veranda railing--a face topped with a sailor cap and fringed with "mutton-chop" whiskers--a face with a green patch over one eye. CHAPTER III. MOTOR MATT--TRUSTEE. Matt and McGlory had seen the Eye of Buddha, and they were not slow in recognizing it. But the bewildering events of the evening were crowned by this arrival of the ruby, by express, consigned to Motor Matt. By all the laws of reasoning and logic, the gem, worth a king's ransom, should at that moment have been in the possession of Tsan Ti, en route to the Flowery Kingdom. "Oh, tell--me--about this!" stuttered McGlory. Matt picked the ruby up in his fingers and held it in the palm of his hand. Apparently he was loath to credit the evidence of his senses. From every angle he surveyed the glittering gem. "Wouldn't this rattle you?" he murmured, peering at his chum. "Rattle me!" exploded McGlory. "Why, pard, it leaves me high and dry--stranded--gasping like a fish. Tsan Ti must be locoed! At last accounts, he was in a flutter to get that ruby back to the Honam joss house and replace it in the idol's head, where it belongs. What came over the mandarin to box it up and ship it to you? I'm fair dazed, and no mistake. This cuts the ground right out from under me." Matt, with a hasty look around, dropped the ruby into his pocket; then he pulled out some more of the wadding and discovered, in the bottom of the box, a folded sheet of white paper. "Here's a letter," said he. "This will explain why the ruby was sent to me, I guess." "What good's an explanation?" grunted the cowboy. "I wouldn't be tangled up with that thing for a mint of money. Sufferin' centipedes! It's a regular hoodoo, and hands a fellow a hard-luck knock every time he turns around. What's in the letter, anyway? If it's from Tsan Ti, I'll bet his paper talk is heavy with big words and all kinds of Class A 'con' lingo. Read it, do. I can't tell how nervous you make me hanging fire." "It's from Tsan Ti, all right," said Matt, "and is dated New York." "New York! Why, he was hitting nothing but high places in the direction of 'Frisco, when he left here. How, in the name of all his ten thousand demons of misfortune, does he happen to be in New York?" "Listen," answered Matt, and began to read. "'Esteemed and illustrious youth, whose never-to-be-forgotten services to me shine like letters of gold on a tablet of silver: Behold----'" "Oh, the gush!" growled McGlory. "'Behold,'" continued Matt, "'I send you the Eye of Buddha, the priceless jewel which belongs in the temple of Hai-chwang-sze, in my beloved Canton. You ask, of your perplexity, why is the jewel sent to you? and I reply, for the security's sake. Upon my trail comes Grattan, of the evil heart, weaving his plans for recovering the costly gem. I fear to keep it about me, and so I send to you asking that you remain with it in the Catskill Mountains until such time as I may come to you and receive it from your hands. This will be when the scoundrel Grattan is safely beheaded, or in prison, and clear of my way for all time. I turn to you of my perfect trust, and I adjure you, by the five hundred gods, not to let the ruby get for one moment out of your possession. Leave it nowhere, keep it by you always, either sleeping or walking, and deliver it to no one except to me, who, at the right time, will come and request it of you in my own person. Will it be an insult to offer you one thousand silver dollars and expense money for consummating this task? I commend you to the good graces of the supernal ones whose years are ten thousand times ten thousand! "'TSAN TI, of the Red Button.'" The reading finished, McGlory eased himself of a sputtering groan. "Loaded up!" he exclaimed. "You and I, pard, just at the time we thought we were rid of Tsan Ti and Buddha's Eye for good, find the thing shouldered onto us again, and trouble staring us in the face! Why didn't the mandarin deposit the ruby in some bank, or safe-deposit vault? Better still, if Grattan was on his trail, why didn't he have the express company take it to San Francisco for him instead of sending it to you, at Catskill? He knows less, that Tsan Ti, than any other heathen on top of earth. In order to keep himself out of trouble he hands us the Eye of Buddha, and switches the responsibility to us. Wouldn't that rattle your spurs?" McGlory was profoundly disgusted. "I reckon," he went on, "that this sidetracks us, eh? The big town is cut out of our reckoning until the mandarin shows up and claims the ruby. He may do that to-morrow, or next week, or next month--and, meanwhile, here we are, kicking our heels in this humdrum, back-number, two-by-twice town on the Hudson! Say, pard, I'd like to fight--and I'd just as soon take a fall out of that pesky mandarin as any one else." "He offers us a thousand dollars and expenses," said Matt. "Tsan Ti wants to do the right thing, Joe." "A million dollars and expenses won't pay us for hanging onto that ruby. It's a hoodoo, and you know that as well as I do, pard. We can expect things to happen right from this minute. Say, put it somewhere where it'll be safe! Put it in the hotel safe, or in a bank, or any place. Pass the risk along." "Tsan Ti expressly stipulates that I am to keep the ruby about me," demurred Matt. "What of that?" snorted McGlory. "Are you working for Tsan Ti? Are you bound to do what he tells you to? What business is it of his if we choose to show a little sense and get some one else to take charge of the ruby? The mandarin's an old mutton-head! If he wasn't he'd know better than to send the Eye of Buddha to us. And in a common express package, at that. What value did he put on it?" McGlory picked up the wrapper that had covered the box and looked over the address side. "No value at all!" he exclaimed. "Either he didn't think of that, or else he didn't want to pay for the extra valuation. If there had been a railroad wreck, and the ruby had been lost, our excellent mandarin would have collected just fifty plunks from the express company--and I reckon the Eye of Buddha is worth fifty thousand if it's worth a cent." "Sometimes," said Matt reflectively, "it's safer to trust to luck than to put such a terrific value on a package that's to be carried by express." "Well," grunted McGlory, "I don't like his blooming Oriental way of doing business, and that shot goes as it lays. I'll tell you what we can do," he added, brightening. "What?" "We can jump aboard that New York boat and tote the ruby back to New York; then we can hunt up Tsan Ti and return the thing to him and tell him not any--that we have done as much for him as we're going to. Where's his letter sent from? What's the name of the hotel?" In his eagerness, McGlory snatched the letter from Matt's knee and began looking it over. "There's no address," said Matt. "Tsan Ti may be in Chinatown," went on McGlory. "Such a big high boy couldn't get lost in the shuffle around Pell and Doyer Streets. Let's go on by that boat and take our chances locating him!" "No," and Matt shook his head decidedly, "that's a move we can't make, Joe. I'm no more in love with this piece of work than you are, but we're in for it, and there's no way to dodge. Tsan Ti has unloaded the ruby upon us and we've got to stand for it." "But we're responsible----" "Of course, up to a certain point. If the stone should be taken away from us, though, Tsan Ti couldn't hold us responsible. We didn't ask for the job of looking after it, and we don't want the job, but we're doing what we can, you see, because there's no other way out of it." "You could stow it away in a safer place than your pocket," grumbled McGlory. "In that event," returned Matt, "we might be responsible. The thing for us to do is to follow out our instructions to the letter. If anything happens to the Eye of Buddha then it's the mandarin himself who's responsible." "And we're to hang out in the Catskill Mountains until Tsan Ti comes for the ruby!" mused McGlory, in an angry undertone; "and he's not going to come until Grattan is 'beheaded' or clapped into jail. We're liable to have a long wait. Of all the tinhorns I ever saw, or heard of, that Grattan is the sharpest of the lot. Fine job this red-button heathen has put onto us!" Matt disliked the work of taking care of the valuable gem, and he would have shirked the responsibility if he could have done so, but there was no way in which this could be brought about. He and Joe would have to stay in the Catskills, for a while anyway, and wait for Tsan Ti to present himself. Meanwhile, the trip to New York would have to be postponed. More to soothe his friend than as an expression of his own feelings, the king of the motor boys began taking a pleasanter view of the situation. "We know, pard," said he, "that Tsan Ti is a man of his word. When he says he'll do anything, he does it. He'll come for the ruby, and I think he's clever enough to fool Grattan, and we know he'll pay us a thousand dollars. That money will come in handy while we're in New York." "If we ever get there," growled the cowboy. "We may get into so much trouble on account of that Eye of Buddha that we'll be laid up in the hospital when Tsan Ti presents himself in these parts." Matt laughed. "You're so anxious to see the sights in the big town, Joe," he observed, "that it's the delay, more than anything else, that's bothering you." "When I get started for anywhere," answered McGlory, "a bee line and the keen jump is my motto. But, so long as we have anything to do with Tsan Ti, we never know what's going to happen. I wish the squinch-eyed heathen would leave us alone." Just then a form rounded the front of the hotel, gained the steps leading up to the porch, and climbed to a place in front of the motor boys. McGlory lifted his eyes. The moment they rested on the form, and realization of who it was had flashed through his brain, he jumped for the man and grabbed him with both hands. "Bunce!" he whooped. "I told you things would begin to happen, pard, and right here is where they start!" Then, with considerable violence, McGlory pushed the old sailor against one of the porch posts, and held him there, squirming. CHAPTER IV. BUNCE HAS A PLAN. "Avast, there!" gurgled Bunce, half choked, trying to pull the cowboy's hands from his throat. The green patch was over his left eye, and the right eye gleamed glassily in the electric light. Matt was as much surprised at Bunce's appearance as was McGlory, but he held his temper better in hand. The cowboy, profoundly disgusted with the trend of recent events, showed a disposition to take it out of the sailor. Had Bunce been even the half of an able seaman he would have given McGlory a hard scramble, but he seemed a wizened, infirm old salt, although he had proved active enough during the experiences the motor boys had already had with him. "Don't strangle him, Joe!" called Matt. "Take your hands from his throat and grab his arm. He came here openly, and he must have known we were here. Judging from that, I should say that his intentions are peaceable." "Ask him," gritted McGlory, "why he doesn't change eyes with the patch. Let's get to the bottom of this moving-picture business, too. We can have a little heart-to-heart talk, I reckon, and find out a few things before we turn the old webfoot over to the police." "Right you are, my blood," gasped the half-suffocated Bunce, as the cowboy dropped his hands to his arm and dragged him down into a chair, "a heart-to-heart talk's the thing. Didn't I bear away for this place for nothin' else than to fall afoul o' ye? Ay, ay, that was the way of it, but split me through if I ever expected such treatment as this what I'm a-gettin'. Motor Matt's the lad, says I to myself, to fill the bill for Bunce, so I trips anchor an' slants away, only to be laid holt of like I was a reg'lar skull-and-crossbones, walk-the-plank pirate, with the Jolly Roger at the peak." "Oh, put a crimp on that sort of talk," growled McGlory. "Sufferin' freebooters! If you're anything better than a pirate, I'd like to have you tell me." "So, ho!" and Bunce's eye glittered wrathfully, "if I had a cutlass, my fine buck, I'd slit ye like a herrin' for that. I'm a fair-weather sort of man, an' I hates a squall, but stir up nasty weather an' then give me somethin' to fight with, an' I'm a bit of a handful. Nigh Pangool, on the south coast o' Java, I laid out a hull boat's crew with my fists alone, once, not so many years back. That was when I was mate o' the brig _Hottentot_, as fine a two-sticker as ever shoved nose into the South Seas--reg'lar bucko mate, I was, an' a main hard man when roused." At the time the Eye of Buddha was recovered, Bunce had made his escape with Grattan; and he had been equally guilty, with Grattan, in the theft of the ruby from the Honam joss house. That the sailor should have shown himself at all, in those parts, was a wonder; and that he should have shown himself to Matt and McGlory, who knew of his evil deeds, was a puzzle past working out. "You say you came here to see me?" inquired Matt. "Ay, ay, my hearty," answered Bunce. "Motor Matt, says I to myself, is the lad to fill the bill for me, an' I luffed into the wind an' bore down for Catskill. Here I am, an' here's you, an' if I blow the gaff a bit that's my business, ain't it? But take me to the cabin; what I has to say is between us an' the mainmast with no other ears to get a sizing of it." McGlory glared at Bunce as though he would have liked to bore into him with his eyes and see what he had at the back of his head. "If you're trying to play double with us, you gangle-legged old hide rack," he threatened, "you'll live to wish you'd thought twice before you did it." "Now, burn me," snorted Bunce, "d'ye take me for a dog fish? By the seven holy spritsails, I'm as good a man as you, an' ye'll l'arn----" "Enough of that, Bunce," broke in Matt sharply, getting up from his chair. "You want to say something to us in private, and I'm going to give you the chance. Come after me; you trail along behind him, Joe," and, with that, Matt went into the hotel and up the stairs to the room jointly occupied by himself and McGlory. At the door, Matt pushed a button that turned on the lights. As soon as McGlory and Bunce were in the room, the door was locked and Matt took charge of the key. "That's the stuff, pard," approved McGlory, with great satisfaction. "If the old tinhorn don't spout to please us, we can phone the office for a policeman." "Ye're not sending me to the brig this trip, mates," spoke up Bunce. "'Cos why? 'Cos in fillin' the bill for me, ye're givin' the mandarin a leg up out of a purty bad hole." "What have you got to tell us?" inquired Matt curtly. "Out with it, Bunce." "When ye last seen me, my lad," said Bunce, "I was sailin' in convoy with Philo Grattan. But he's doin' things I don't approve of, not any ways. It was all right to put our helm up an' bear down on a chink joss house to lift the Eye o' Buddha, an' it was all right, too, when ye helped the big high boy get the ruby back. That was all in the game, an' we'd ought to've made the most of it. But not Philo Grattan. D'ye know what he's layin' to do? Nothin' more, on my soul, than to strangle Tsan Ti with a yellow cord an' take the ruby away from him. My eye, mates, but Grattan's a clever hand at overhauling his locker for a game like that. The boss of the Chinee Empire sends these yellow cords to the chinks he don't like an' don't want around. When the cords come to hand, then the chinks receivin' thereof uses them to choke out their lives. Tsan Ti is found, dead as a mackerel, with the yellow cord twisted into his fat neck. Eye o' Buddha is missin' from his clothes. What's the answer? Why, that Tsan Ti lost the ruby, an' used the cord sent him from the home country. That'll seem plain as a burgee flyin' from the gaff o' one o' these fresh-water yachts. Won't it, now?" Matt knew that Tsan Ti had received the yellow cord from China, and that he had been allowed two weeks in which either to find the stolen ruby or to use the cord. Of course, the ruby had been recovered, and there was no necessity for using the hideous cord; but, if he was found strangled, it would have seemed as though he himself had committed the deed in compliance with orders from the Chinese regent. Bunce may have been romancing, but there was a little plausibility back of his words. "Where is Grattan?" demanded Matt. "In these here hills, shipmate," replied Bunce. "Tsan Ti isn't in the Catskills!" "No more he ain't, which I grant ye offhand an' freely, but supposin' he's in Noo York, held a pris'ner in a beach comber's joint in Front Street? An' supposin', furthermore, this same beach comber is a mate o' Grattan's, an' waitin' only for Grattan to come afore he makes Tsan Ti peg out? Put that in your pipe an' smoke it careful." "You mean to say that Tsan Ti is a prisoner in New York--a prisoner of a confederate of Grattan's?" "That's gospel truth! It happened recent--no longer ago than early mornin'. I bore the word to the beach comber in a letter of hand from Philo, an' the beach comber met me in a snug harbor on the front where sailormen are regularly hocused an' shipped for all parts. I don't know where the beach comber's place is, not me, but I did get him topping the boom an' he reported the whole matter entire. However Tsan Ti fell into the net is a notch above my understandin', but there he is, hard an' fast, an' when I'd done with the beach comber I took the train for Catskill to find Grattan an' tell him what's been pulled off." Bunce was a trifle hard to follow. "Let's see if I've got this right," said Matt, "When you and Grattan escaped from the officers, at the time the ruby was recovered, you hid yourselves away among the Catskills?" "Ay, so we did!" "And then Grattan gave you a letter to some man in New York and you carried it personally?" "Personally, that's the word. I carried it personally." "And this man in New York entrapped the mandarin and is holding him a prisoner until he can hear what Grattan wants done?" "Ye've got the proper bearin's, an' no mistake." "And you came back on the train to tell Grattan?" Bunce nodded, and pulled at his fringe of whiskers. "Then, why didn't you go and tell Grattan," asked Matt, "instead of coming and telling me?" "I'm no blessed cut-an'-slash pirate," protested Bunce. "So long as the ruby was to be come by without any stranglin', I was willin' to bear a bob an' do my share; an' while mebby there ain't anythin' morilly wrong in chokin' the breath out of a heathen Chinee, yet they'll bowse a man up to the yardarm for doin' the same. Mates, on the ride back to the Catskills I overhauled the hull matter, an' I makes up my mind I'd sailed in company with Grattan as long as 'twas safe. If I can save the mandarin, I thinks to myself, mebby Motor Matt'll play square with me an' let me off for what I done in helpin' lift the ruby. If so be he thinks that way, says I to myself further, then he's the one to fill the bill for Bunce. So, instid o' slantin' for the cove where the motor car is hid away, I 'bouts ship an' lays a course for this hotel." "What's your plan, Bunce?" queried Matt. "Easy, does it; simple as a granny's knot. You kiss the Book that I'm free as soon's I do my part, then I takes you to where Grattan is, an' you lays him by the heels--just us three in it an' not a man Jack else. The beach comber don't do a thing to Tsan Ti till he hears from Grattan; an' how'll he ever hear from Grattan if he's safe in irons in some jail in these hills? That's my plan, an' you take it or leave it. If ye don't follow the course I've laid, then Grattan gets the ruby back, an' the mandarin's life along with it. If ye think I'm talkin' crooked, an' put the lashings on me an' hand me over to the police, then not a soul'll ever know where Grattan's hid, an' he'll clear out an' get to Noo York whether I see him or not--but Tsan Ti'll be for Davy Jones' locker, no matter what ye try to do to prevent it. I've said my say an' eased my mind; now it's you for it." With that, Bunce calmly drew a plug of tobacco from his pocket and nibbled at one corner reflectively. CHAPTER V. BUNCE SPEAKS A GOOD WORD FOR HIMSELF. Matt made a brief study of Bunce, leaning back in his seat and gazing at the mariner through half-closed eyes. The sailorman's get-up reminded Matt of _Dick Deadeye_ in "Pinafore." Whether Bunce was really a deep-water humbug, and whether he was to be taken seriously, were questions that gave Matt a good deal of bother. "He's stringing us, pard," averred McGlory bluntly. "That tongue of his is hung in the middle and wags at both ends." "Avast, my man-o'-war!" came hotly from the mariner. "I'm no loafing longshore scuttler to let go my mudhooks in these waters and then begin splicing the main brace out of hand. You'll get your whack, my blood, and get it hard, if you keep on in the style ye're goin'. Belay a bit, can't you?" McGlory snorted contemptuously and put his tongue in his cheek. Bunce began fingering his knife lanyard. "No more of that give-and-take," said Matt. "I'm a hard man," observed Bunce, "an' I've lived a hard life, winnin' my mate's berth on the ole _Hottentot_ off Trincomalee by bashing in the skull of a Kanaka. More things I've done as would make your blood run cold just by listenin' to, but I'm straight as a forestay for all that, d'ye mind, an' I've a clean bill from every master I ever sailed with. 'He ain't much fer looks, Bunce ain't,' as Cap'n Banks, of the ole _Hottentot_ used to say, 'but in a pinch you don't have to look twice for Bunce.' An' there ye have it, all wrapped up, tied small, an' ready for any swab as doubts me." "Bunce," said Matt dubiously, "I'm frank to say I don't know just how to take you. By your own confession you're a thief----" "Only when chinks has the loot," cut in Bunce hastily, "an' when it takes a bit of headwork an' a matchin' o' wits to beat 'em out." "You helped Grattan steal the Eye of Buddha. Plotted it on a sampan off Canton, didn't you?" Bunce shoved in his chair and showed signs of consternation. "Scuttle me!" he gulped. "Wherever did you find that out? Grattan never told you where we had our chin-chin in the river of Honam." "It's all pictured out," said Matt, "and you can drop into a theatre, in this town of Catskill, and see yourself and Grattan committing the robbery." Bunce fell limply back. "So, ho!" he mumbled. "Then them pictures are out, eh? They wasn't to come out for a month yet--it was in the agreement." "Agreement?" "Ay, no more nor less. It was on the trip from 'Frisco, east, mate, when Grattan an' me had the ruby but not a sou markee in our pockets. We needed money. Grattan knew some of these moving-picture swabs in Chicago, and he allowed he could turn a few reds by givin' 'em the plan of the robbery an' helpin' act it out. 'Avast,' says I, feelin' a warnin' twinge, 'don't touch it, Philo!' But he would--an' did, first gettin' an' agreement from the swabs that they wouldn't put out the pictures for two months. We got a couple of hundred yen for the work, an' that's what brought us on to the Catskills. So it's out, so it's out," and Bunce wagged his head forebodingly. "Did you play a part in the pictures, Bunce?" went on Matt. "Not I, mate! I may be lackin' in the head, once in a while, but there's a few keen thoughts rollin' around in my locker. I wouldn't go in for it, an' you can smoke my weather roll on that." "There's a one-eyed sailor in the picture," said Matt. "And he's a dead ringer for you," added McGlory. "Which it ain't me, d'ye see?" scowled the mariner. "It's a counterfeit, got up to look like me--an' nothin' more." "Then it's a mighty good counterfeit," averred the cowboy. "I'm a man o' high principles, mate, even though I do say it as shouldn't. I was brought up right, by a Marblehead fisherman who hated rum, couldn't abide playin' cards, an' believed the-ay-ters was milestones on the road to the hot place. Actin' in a play I wouldn't think of, an' that's the flat of it. But what's the good word, shipmate? Are you sailin' this cruise wi' me to save the life o' the mandarin? I must know one way or t'other." "Where is Grattan?" "Five miles away, snug as a bug in a rug where he'll never be found onless I con the course. We'll have to go to him soon, if he's captured. I'm due at the meetin' place to-night." "You spoke of a motor car----" "Ay, that I did. It's hid in the woods beyond the railroad yards. We'll use that." "You had a couple of motorcycles," said Matt. "Which you and Grattan stole from us," supplemented McGlory. "What's become of them, Bunce?" "Wrecked an' sunk," answered Bunce. "Mine sprung a leak an' went over a cliff in fifty fathoms of air; Grattan's bounced up on a reef an' went to pieces. Then we lifted the motor car, usin' of it for night cruises." "You stole a motor car, eh?" said McGlory grimly. "And on top of that you have the nerve to come along here and speak a good word for yourself." "Stow it," growled Bunce, "or you an' I'll be at loggerheads for good. What's the word?" and he turned his gleaming eye on Matt. "You can use the telephone an' hand me over to the police, or you can do as I say an' save the mandarin. What's the word?" "When will we have to start after Grattan?" asked Matt. "By early mornin', mate, just when it's light enough to see." "And where'll we meet you?" "In the woods beyond the railroad yards. Go there, stand on the track, an' whistle. I'll whistle back, then we'll come together--an' fill the bill." "You can expect us at six o'clock," said Motor Matt, unlocking the door and pulling it open. "Brayvo, my bully!" enthused Bunce. "An' ye'll come armed? Grattan is a hard man, an' sizable in a scrimmage." "We'll be prepared to take care of Grattan," answered Matt. "Good night, Bunce." "Good night it is," and the mariner vanished into the hall. As soon as the door was again closed, Matt turned to find McGlory staring at him as though he thought he was crazy. "Sufferin' tinhorns!" exclaimed the cowboy. "You can't mean it, pard?" "Yes, I do," was the answer. "Why, that old fore-and-after never told the truth in his life! He was using his imagination overtime." "The chances are that he was, but there's a bare possibility he was telling the truth. We know Tsan Ti is in New York, and we can't feel absolutely sure that the Chinaman hasn't fallen into some trap laid by Grattan. If that's the case, the mandarin may lose his life." "There's about as much chance of that, pard, as that you and I will get struck by lightning." "We'll say the chance that Bunce is telling the truth is about one in a hundred. Well, Joe, that hundredth chance is what we can't take. Besides, Grattan is wanted. If he is really in the hills, and we can capture him, that will clear the road for Tsan Ti." "But what will you do with the Eye of Buddha?" Matt was in a quandary about that. "Will you tote it along on a trip of this kind?" proceeded Joe, "or will you leave it in the hotel safe? Maybe that's what Bunce is playing for." "He don't know we have the ruby. How could he?" "I'm by. But he's up to something, and that's a cinch." "We'll have to give him the benefit of the doubt--on account of Tsan Ti." "Consarn that bungling chink!" grunted the cowboy, venting his anger on the mandarin as the original cause of their perplexing situation. "You can't do a thing with that red stone but lug it along." "If the banks were open between now and the time we start, I might leave it with one of them for safe-keeping." "And go dead against your letter of instructions! Then you would be responsible." "I'll think it over to-night," said Matt, and began his preparations for turning in. But sleeping over the question didn't answer it. Matt's quandary lasted until far into the night. He had no faith in Bunce; he couldn't understand why Tsan Ti should have sent the ruby to him for safe-keeping; he doubted the wisdom of going into the hills with the mariner, and he understood well the risk of carrying the priceless Eye of Buddha with him on the morning's venture. When McGlory opened his eyes in the first gray of the morning, Matt was tying up the box in which the ruby had come by express. "What are you going to do, pard?" inquired the cowboy, jumping out of bed and beginning to scramble into his clothes. "I guess, after all," answered Matt, "that I'll leave this box with the clerk." "Wish I knew whether that was the proper caper, or not, but I don't. One thing's as good as another, I reckon." At five-thirty they had a hurried breakfast, and, a little before six, Matt handed the small box to the hotel clerk and asked him to put it away in the office safe. Then the motor boys started for the railroad track and followed it away from the river and into the wooded ravine beyond the yards. "This is far enough, I guess," said Matt, and began to whistle. The signal was promptly returned from a place on the left, and the head of the mariner was pushed through a thicket of bushes. "Ahoy, my hearties!" came from Bunce. "Come up here and bear a fist with the car, will ye?" Puzzled not a little at this request, Matt and McGlory climbed the bank of the ravine and came alongside the mariner on a small, cleared shelf on the bank side. The "motor car" was before them, and at sight of it McGlory exploded a laugh. "Speak to me about this!" he exclaimed. "Had you any notion it was this sort of a bubble, Matt?" CHAPTER VI. THE HOMEMADE SPEEDER. What Matt saw was an ordinary hand car equipped with a two-cylinder gasoline engine. Across one end of the car was a bench, tightly bolted to the framework; back of this was a shorter bench for the driver of the queer machine. The king of the motor boys examined the car with a good deal of curiosity. Power was communicated to the rear axle by chain and sprocket. The gasoline tank was under the driver's bench, and he unscrewed the cap and tested the fuel supply by means of a clean twig picked up from the shelf. "Oh, she's loaded full," wheezed Bunce. "I filled her myself, not more'n ten minutes ago." "Do you know anything about motors, Bunce?" inquired Matt, giving the mariner a sharp look. "Ay, that I do--in a way. I can turn on the oil and the spark when I wants to start, an' I can cut 'em off an' jam on the brakes when I wants to stop. That's all ye got to know in runnin' these benzine machines." "Where does this belong?" "Track inspector owns it. Grattan an' me borried it." Bunce grinned. "When we're done with the machine, we'll give it back." "We'll make a picture, pard," grumbled McGlory, "trailin' along with this tinhorn on a stolen speeder." "Avast, I say!" growled Bunce. "Ye're too free with your jaw tackle. Lend a hand, an' let's get her on the track an' make off. The section gang'll be out purty soon, an' we want to be away afore they see us." "Sure you do," agreed McGlory sarcastically. "It'll be healthier for my pard and me, too, I reckon, if we're absent when the section men come along. That's why you wanted to make such an early start, eh?" Without more ado, the motor boys helped Bunce get the speeder down the slope and upon the rails. "Any trains coming or going at this hour?" asked Matt, with sudden thought. "Say," jeered McGlory, "it would be fine if we went head on into a local passenger!" "No trains comin' or goin', mate," said Bunce. "That's another reason for the early start. Want me to run the thing?" "I'll do the running," answered Matt. "You climb up in front with McGlory." Bunce and McGlory got on the front bench. Matt "turned the engine over" by running with the speeder for a few steps, then climbed to his seat, and they began laboring up a stiff grade through the ravine. The road was full of curves, and when it couldn't go around a hill it went over it. From his talk with Bunce, the night before, Matt had been under the impression that the stolen car was an automobile, and he had made up his mind to return the car to its owner--if the man's name could be learned--after it had been used for running down Philo Grattan. Now, that he had discovered that the car was a track speeder, he was no less resolved to hand it over to the railroad company on the return to Catskill. The speeder performed fairly well, considering that it must have been knocked together in the company's shops by men whose knowledge of their work was not extensive. A secondhand automobile engine had furnished the motor. "This isn't so bad," remarked McGlory, as they ducked around the shoulder of a hill, still on the up grade, with the motor fretting and pounding. "A motor ride's a motor ride, whether you're on an aëroplane, or rubber tires, or steel rails." "This is what they call a joy ride, Joe," called Matt, from the rear. "The owner of the car doesn't know we're out with it. I'll return it to the railroad company when we're through with our morning's work." "That's you. I hope the railroad company don't find out we've got it before we give it back. Gee, man, how she's workin'!" "Fine day an' clear weather for fillin' the bill," remarked Bunce. "Did ye come armed, mateys?" "Sufferin' hold-ups!" exclaimed McGlory. "Did you think for a minute, Bunce, we'd jump into this without being heeled?" The cowboy, as he spoke, reached behind him and drew a short, wicked-looking six-shooter from his hip pocket. Bunce recoiled. "Where'd you get that, Joe?" asked Matt. "Borrowed it from the hotel clerk." "Well, put it away. I don't think we're going to need it. If we find Grattan there'll be three of us to take care of him. He's alone, I suppose, Bunce?" "Sailin' by himself, mate," answered the mariner. "Better le' me take the gun, my hearty," he added, to McGlory. "Speak to me about that!" scoffed the cowboy. "Why?" "I'll have to go for'ard when we come close to the place, an' if Philo gets vi'lent, I'll look at him over the gun, an' it'll be soothin'." "I'm able to soothe him, I reckon, no matter whether you're ahead or behind." The speeder was making a terrific clatter. Everything rattled--the brake shoes barged against the wheel flanges, the engine rocked on its bed, and the levers jarred in their guides. In order to talk, and make themselves heard, those aboard had to lift their voices. "Sufferin' Bedlam!" cried McGlory. "It's a wonder Grattan and Bunce were ever able to steal a rattletrap like this and get away with it. We're making more noise than a limited express." Suddenly the motor gave a flash and a sputter and went out of business. In a twinkling the car lost headway and began sliding back down the grade toward Catskill. Matt threw on the brakes. The rear wheels locked, but still the car continued to slide downward. Shutting off the power, Matt dropped into the roadbed over the back of the bench, cleared the rails at a leap, and wedged one of the wheels with a stone. He had been obliged to work rapidly, for the car was on the move, and going faster and faster, as its weight gathered headway. But the stone sufficed, and the speeder was brought to a standstill. "What took us aback, like that?" demanded Bunce. "Too much gasoline," answered Matt, tinkering with the supply pipe, "and I couldn't check it with the lever control." "This is a great old chug cart," laughed McGlory. "The railroad company ought to have been willing to pay somebody for running away with it. How'd you ever get over this road with it, Bunce?" "When I came over the road it was downhill," answered the mariner, "an' all I had to do was to keep the craft on her course, an' scud along under bare poles." "You had to climb a hill before you took the down grade, didn't you?" "Ay, so I did, but the car came up the hill easy enough." Matt soon had the valve in the supply pipe adjusted, and all hands had to push in giving the car a start. When they were going, and the engine had taken up its cycle, there followed a wild scramble to get aboard. This was finally accomplished, and once more they were puffing up the hill, but with less pounding than before. "Say, Bunce," demanded McGlory suddenly, "did you take the speeder off the track and up the slope into those bushes alone?" "Ay, ay, mate," was the answer. "But I had a rope and tackle to help." McGlory was convinced that Bunce was wide of the truth, and Matt inclined to the same opinion, although why the mariner wanted to deceive them in such a small matter was difficult to understand. Presently, to the great relief of the motor boys, the top of the hill was reached. The descent angled downward, around rocky uplifts and through thick timber, so that it was impossible to watch the track in advance for any considerable distance. The descent, on such a makeshift power car as the speeder, was fraught with greater perils than the climb up the mountain. No power would be necessary, for the car would go fast enough without any added impetus. In order to keep it from going too fast, and jumping the track, the brakes would have to be judiciously used. "We're off!" cried McGlory, as the speeder began coasting down the grade. Matt tried out the brakes. They were capable of slackening the pace, but as for stopping the car, no appliance could have done that. With rear wheels locked, the speeder hurled itself down the mountain, acquiring greater and greater speed as it went. In and out of cuts the car dashed, here and there rumbling over a trestle which gave the passengers fearful glimpses of space below them. McGlory and Bunce hung to their bench with both hands. There was no talking, now, for all three passengers were holding their breath. Finally the descent became less steep. As the grade flattened out slowly into something approaching a level, Matt's work with the brakes began to achieve results. By degrees the mad flight of the car commenced to slacken. "Sharp curve ahead!" sang out McGlory, heaving a deep breath of relief as the car continued to slow down. Matt saw the sharp turn in the track where it rounded a shoulder of rock. Naturally he could not see around the turn, and he was speculating as to whether their reduced speed would be sufficient to throw the speeder off the rails at the bend, or whether the car would make it safely. Before his calculations had been brought to an end, the problem was working itself out. The speeder struck the curve, whirled around it with a shrieking of flanges against the rails, and then there went up a wild yell from McGlory and Bunce. Directly in front of the car was a tie across the track! A collision with the tie was inevitable. Matt foresaw it, and clung desperately to his bench. "Brace yourselves!" he yelled. The next moment they struck the tie. The jolt was terrific. Motor Matt was thrown roughly against the seat in front, and Bunce went into the air as though shot from a gun. CHAPTER VII. TRAPPED. Matt saw that McGlory had managed, like himself, to stay with the car, then both motor boys had a flash-light glimpse of the mariner ricochetting through the atmosphere and striking earth right side up by the track. But Bunce did not remain in an upright position. The force with which he had been thrown launched him into a series of eccentric cartwheels, and when he finally stopped turning he was in a sitting posture, with his back against a bowlder. Apparently he had escaped serious injury, which was a remarkable fact, in view of the circumstances. A broken neck might easily have resulted, or, at the least, a fractured arm or leg. "Shiver me!" gasped Bunce, dazed and bewildered by the suddenness of it all. Then Motor Matt's and McGlory's shocked senses laid hold of another detail of the situation which was most astounding. The green patch had been shaken from the mariner's head, and he was peering around him with two good eyes! "Tell me about that!" roared McGlory, pointing. "Look at his lamps, Matt! He's got two!" "I see," answered Matt grimly. "Suppose we approach closer, Joe, and find out about this." Bunce watched the boys descend from the speeder and advance upon him, but there was still a dazed gleam in his eyes which proved that he was slow in recovering his wits. "Are you all right, Bunce?" asked Matt, reaching the mariner's side and bending down. "That--that craft must have--have turned a handspring," mumbled Bunce. "Purty tolerable blow we had, mates, an' I was snatched away from the bench, an' tossed overboard. It was done so quick I--I hardly knowed what was goin' on. By the seven holy spritsails! it's a wonder I'm shipshape an' all together." He got up slowly and began feeling gingerly of his arms and legs. "Nothin' busted, I guess," he added. The ground where he had landed was cushioned with sand. To this fact, more than to anything else, he owed his escape from injury. McGlory picked up the green patch. "Here's an ornament you dropped during that ground-and-lofty tumbling, you old tinhorn," said he. "What did you wear it for, anyhow?" "Blow me tight!" exclaimed Bunce, staring at the patch with falling jaw. "Ain't that reedic'lous?" he added, with a feeble attempt to treat the matter lightly. "It is rather ridiculous, Bunce, and that's a fact," answered Matt. "You've a pair of very good eyes, it seems to me, and what's the good of that patch?" The mariner grabbed the bit of green cloth and pulled the string over his head. "I never said I'd lost one o' my lamps," he averred, settling the patch in place. "Off Table Mountain, South Africy, a cable parted on the ole _Hottentot_, an' I was hit in the eye with a loose rope's end. For a while, I thought I was goin' blind. But I didn't, only the eye has been weak ever sence, an' needs purtection. That's why I wear the patch." "You've got it over the wrong eye, Bunce," observed McGlory. "You've been wearing it over the left eye, and now it's over the right. Have you got any clear notion which eye was hit with that rope's end?" Bunce hastily changed the position of the patch. "I'm that rattled," said he, "that I'm all ahoo, an' don't rightly know what I'm about. I----" For an instant he stared up the track, breaking off his words abruptly; then, without any further explanation, he whirled and rushed for the timber. With a yell of anger, McGlory started after him. "Come back, Joe!" shouted Matt. "Here come some men who seem to have business with us." The cowboy whirled to an about face, and followed with his eyes the direction of his chum's pointing finger. Four men in flannel shirts and overalls, and carrying spades, picks, and tamping irons, were hurrying up the track in the direction of the curve. "The section gang!" muttered McGlory. "A good guess," laughed Matt. "We've been trapped." "Trapped?" "That's the way it looks to me. We were seen coming down the mountain and those men, recognizing the speeder, laid the tie across the rails to catch the thieves." "Sufferin' kiboshes, but here's a go! This comes of trying to fill the bill for an old tinhorn like Bunce." "Ketched!" yelled one of the approaching men, flourishing a tamping iron; "we've ketched the robbers that run off with Mulvaney's speeder! Don't you make no trouble," he added, slowing his pace and coming more warily. The other three men spread out and then closed in, barring escape for the motor boys in every direction. "You've made a mistake," said Matt. "Oh, sure!" jeered the section boss, "but I reckon we'll take ye to Catskill, an' let ye tell the superintendent all about the mistake." "Don't be in a rush about taking us to Catskill," threatened McGlory. "You listen to what Motor Matt says, and I reckon he'll make the layout clear to you." "Motor Matt!" returned the boss ironically. "Why don't ye say ye're the governor o' the State, or somethin' like that? Ye might jest as well. Motor Matt ain't stealin' speeders an' runnin' off with 'em." The king of the motor boys had become pretty well known in the Catskills through his previous work in recovering the ruby for Tsan Ti. Even these section men had heard of his exploits. Matt, seeing the impression his cowboy pard's words had made, resolved to prove his identity in the hope of avoiding trouble. "What my chum says is true, men," he declared. "I am Motor Matt. We didn't steal the railroad speeder. That was done by the man who was with us--the fellow who ran away. You saw him, didn't you?" "Sure we saw him," answered the section boss, "but I wouldn't try to put it all off onto him, if I was you." "Sufferin' blockheads!" rumbled McGlory. "Use your brains, if you've got any, can't you? Do we look like thieves?" "Can't most always tell from a feller's looks what he is," returned the boss skeptically. "And this other chap can't be Motor Matt, nuther, or he wouldn't have stole the speeder. That there speeder has been missin' for three days, an' orders has gone out, up an' down the line, for all hands to watch out for it. When I seen it comin' down the grade, I knowed we had ye. All we done was to throw that tie acrost the track, an' the trick was done. Ye'll have to go to Catskill, that's all about it." "Are you men from Catskill?" inquired Matt. "No, Tannersville, but Catskill's the place you're wanted. We'll put ye on the passenger, when it comes along." "But we don't want to go back to Catskill just yet," Matt demurred. "We've got business here, and it can't be put off." Matt believed that Bunce had run to get away from the section men, who, he must have realized, had caused the speeder's mishap in the hope of catching the ones who had stolen the car. There was yet a chance, Matt thought, to overhaul Bunce and find Grattan. To go back to Catskill, just then, would have been disastrous to the work he and McGlory were trying to do under the mariner's leadership. "Sure ye don't want to go to Catskill," went on the section boss, "right now, or any other time. But ye're goin', all the same. Grab 'em, you men," and the boss shouted the order to the three who had grouped themselves around Matt and McGlory. "Hands off!" shouted the cowboy. Matt saw him jerk the revolver from his pocket, and aim it at the man who was reaching to lay hold of him. The man fell back with an oath of consternation. "Don't do that, Joe!" cried Matt. "Oh, no," sneered the boss, "you fellers ain't thieves, I guess! What're you pullin' a gun on us for, if ye ain't?" "I'm not going to argue the case with you any further," Matt answered shortly. "We're going back to Catskill after a while, but not now. When we get there we'll report to your superintendent and explain how we happened to be aboard the stolen speeder. I was intending to return the car to the railroad company as soon as we had got through with it, and then----" "Sure ye was!" mocked the boss. "Ye wasn't intendin' to do anythin' but what was right an' lawful--to hear ye tell it. We got ye trapped, an' I ain't goin' to fool with ye any longer. Put down that gun, you!" and he whirled savagely upon McGlory. "We're goin' to take ye, an' if you do any shootin' ye'll find yerselves in a deeper hole than what ye are now." "You keep away from me," scowled McGlory, still holding the weapon leveled, "and keep your men away from me. Try to touch either of us, and this gun will begin to talk. We're not thieves, but that's something we can't pound into your thick head, so we're going to attend to our business in spite of you." The section boss was a man of courage, and was resolute in his intention to take the boys to Catskill. Certainly, so far as appearances went, he had the right of the matter, and Matt didn't feel that he could explain the exact situation with any chance of having his words believed. "Here's where I'm comin' for ye," proceeded the section boss, "an' if you shoot, you'll be tagged with more kinds o' trouble than you can take care of. Now----" The section boss got no farther. Just at that moment the rumble of a train coming up the grade could be heard. Instantly the attention of the section boss was called to another matter. "The passenger!" he cried, jumping around and staring at the speeder and the tie. "There'll be a wreck if we don't clear the track. Come on, men! Hustle!" The peril threatening the passenger train banished from the minds of the section men all thought of the boys. All four of the gang ran to remove the obstructions from the rails. "Come on, pard!" said McGlory; "now's our chance." Matt, with a feeling of intense relief, bounded after his chum, and they were soon well away in the timber. CHAPTER VIII. THE CUT-OUT UNDER THE LEDGE. McGlory was inclined to view recent events in a humorous light. "Speak to me about that, pard!" he laughed, when he and Matt had halted for breath, and to determine, if possible, which way Bunce had gone. "I told you what was on the programme if you became trustee for the Eye of Buddha. We never know when lightning's going to strike, or how." "I don't like episodes of that sort," muttered Matt. "It puts us in a bad light, Joe." "Oh, hang that part of it! We can explain the whole thing to the railroad superintendent as soon as we get back to Catskill. That section boss was a saphead. You couldn't pound any reason into his block with a sledge hammer. Forget it!" "But you drew a gun on the section men. That makes the business look bad for us." McGlory chuckled. "See here, pard," said he. With that, he "broke" the revolver and exposed the end of the cylinder. There were no cartridges in the weapon! "Now, what do you think?" laughed the cowboy. "I borrowed the gun in a hurry, and didn't think to ask whether it was loaded--and I reckon the hotel clerk didn't think to tell me. It's about as dangerous as a piece of bologna sausage, but it looks ugly--and that's about all there is to this revolver proposition, anyhow." Matt enjoyed the recent experience, in which the harmless revolver had played its part, fully as much as his chum. "Well," said the king of the motor boys, "what's done can't be helped, and we'd better be about our business with Bunce. But what's become of the mariner? He ought to be around here, somewhere." "He's ducked," returned McGlory, "and I'll bet it's for good. We've found out he had a pair of good eyes, and he's got shy of us." "If we don't find him," mused Matt, "it's a clear case that he was playing double with us. If we do find him, then we can take a little more stock in what he tells us about Tsan Ti. It will be worth something to feel sure, either way." "Maybe you're right, but how are we going to pick up the webfoot's trail?" Matt studied the ground. The earth was soft from a recent rain, and the fact gave him an idea. "Track him, Joe. You're used to that sort of thing. Put your knowledge to some account." "In order to track the mariner," said McGlory, "we'll have to go back to the place where we saw him duck into the timber. It'll be a tough job, but I'm willing to try if we can once pick up the trail." "That's the only thing for us to do. If Bunce was intending to deal squarely with us, he'd have shown himself before this." "Let's see," mused the cowboy. "He said that Grattan was hiding out about five miles from Catskill, didn't he?" "Yes." "Then I reckon the place is somewhere around here. We're about five miles from the town, I should judge. Still," and disgust welled up in the cowboy as he voiced the thought, "you can't tell whether Bunce was giving that part of it straight, or not. He's about as crooked as they make 'em, that tinhorn." The boys, during their talk, had been moving slowly back in the direction of the railroad track. Cautiously they came to the edge of the timber, close to the right of way, on the alert not only for the tracks left by Bunce, but for the presence of the section men, as well. The section gang, they discovered, had left the vicinity of the sharp curve, and were nowhere in sight. The speeder, badly shaken by the jar of its collision with the tie, was off the rails, and the tie lay beside it. "No sign of the section men," announced Matt, after a careful survey of the track. "Mighty good thing for us, too, pard," said McGlory. "Here's Bunce's trail, and he traveled so fast he only hit the ground with his toes. Come on! I can run it out for a ways, anyhow." McGlory's life on the cattle ranges had made him particularly apt in the lore of the plains. The trail was very dim in places, but even the disturbed leaves under the trees, and the broken bushes told McGlory where the mariner had passed. The course taken by Bunce led across a timbered "flat" and down into a rocky ravine, then along the ravine to a ledge of rock which jutted out from a side hill. The under side of the ledge was perhaps a dozen feet over the bottom of the ravine, and under it was a sort of "pocket" in the hill. Here there were evidences of a primitive camp. The soft earth under the ledge was trampled by human feet, and there was a large, five-gallon can that had once held gasoline, but which was now empty. A small mound of dried leaves had been heaped up at the innermost recess of the "pocket," and the bed still bore the faint impression of a man's body. "Bunce was right about Grattan being in hiding near Catskill," observed Matt. "Here's the place, sure enough." "And Bunce came here, pard," went on McGlory; "he made tracks straight for this hang-out as soon as he got clear of us. Judging from what we see, I should say Bunce met Grattan, and that they both hurried off. But what was that gasoline for?" "For the speeder, maybe," replied Matt. "They wouldn't keep the gasoline supply for the speeder so far from the track, would they?" "I shouldn't think so; still, I can't imagine what else they'd want gasoline for." "What sort of a game was Bunce up to? If Grattan was here, then everything was going right, so far as the plan to capture Grattan was concerned. Why didn't Bunce wait for us, back there in the timber, and give us the chance to come on here and put the kibosh on the man we want?" "It's a mystery, Joe," said the puzzled Matt. "Perhaps Bunce believed that we'd be captured by the section men and that it wouldn't be possible to get hold of Grattan. If he thought that, he might have come on to this place, given his New York report to Grattan, and made up his mind to see the rascally game through to a finish. Bunce couldn't have any idea that we'd escape from the section gang." "Well," growled McGlory, "he might have waited and made certain of it." There was no accounting for the queer actions of the mariner. It seemed as though, after the collision with the railroad tie and the coming of the section men, he had changed his mind about helping the boys capture Grattan. Matt and McGlory moved around under the ledge, trying to find something else that would point positively to the presence of Grattan in the "pocket." There was a strong odor of gasoline--much stronger than would have come from the uncorked, empty can. Suddenly Matt found something, and hurriedly called his chum. "What is it?" inquired McGlory, running to Matt's side. Matt pointed to two straight lines in the earth, leading out and up the ravine. "Motorcycles," said he laconically, "two of them!" McGlory struck his fist against his open palm. "Well, what do you think of that!" he cried. "Motorcycles and speeders! Say, those tinhorns were well fixed in the motor line. And Bunce told us both motorcycles had been destroyed! Sufferin' Ananias, but he's a tongue twister!" "There's no doubt but that Grattan was here," went on Matt, "and that he had the two motorcycles with him. The gasoline was used to fill the motorcycles' tanks. As soon as Bunce got to this place, the wheels were made ready and Bunce and Grattan rode off." "They're headed for New York, I reckon, to 'fill the bill' for poor old Tsan Ti!" "I don't believe it," declared Matt. "I didn't take much stock in the story when Bunce told it, but on the chance that it might be true, I felt as though we should give Tsan Ti the benefit of the doubt. But, now, I'm fairly certain the yarn was all moonshine." "Bunce took a whole lot of trouble for nothing, pard," commented McGlory. "What was the good of his coming to the hotel, running the risk of our turning him over to the police, and then motoring out here with us on that ramshackle speeder if he never intended to help us capture Grattan?" "Maybe we'll discover that later. Suppose we follow the trail of the motorcycles, Joe?" "Why? They're a dozen miles from here, by this time." "We can't overtake them, of course, but we can discover which way they went." It was an easy matter to trail the heavy machines up the ravine. About half a mile above the camp under the ledge, a wagon road crossed the ravine, and the wheels had turned into it. To the surprise of the boys, the wheels had turned in the direction of Catskill. "It can't be those two tinhorns would have the nerve to go to the town," said McGlory. "I don't think they would," agreed Matt, "but they have gone in that direction, at all events. It's up to us to walk back, so we may as well follow the road and the motorcycle trail." "This is what I call tough luck," said the cowboy, when he and Matt were swinging along the road. "I didn't think there was any sense taking up with Bunce, in the first place. Nice way for that move to pan out! We go gunning for Grattan on a speeder, and then hoof it back--to face a charge of robbery preferred by the section men!" "We'll settle that robbery charge quick enough," returned Matt. "No doubt about that. I wouldn't feel so worked up over the thing if I could make any sort of guess as to what it was all about." "Well," laughed Matt, repeating one of McGlory's favorite remarks, "we can't know so much all the time as we do just some part of the time, Joe." "No more we can't, pard," said the cowboy. CHAPTER IX. BETWEEN THE EYES. The wagon road which the boys were following led them into Catskill near the railroad station. The motorcycle tracks, after holding a straight course toward town for a long time, had finally vanished at an elevated point from which the motor boys had secured their first view of the river. "We might just as well call on the superintendent," suggested Matt, when they were close to the station, "and explain about the speeder. By doing this now, we may dodge trouble later." "Good idea," assented McGlory. They found the superintendent in his office, and he gave them an immediate hearing. "We called to tell you about that speeder, Mr. Bronson," began Matt, having caught the super's name off the painted window in the door. "You mean Mulvaney's speeder," returned Bronson, "the one that was stolen two days ago?" "Yes. My name's King, Matt King, and I'm stopping at the----" "Motor Matt?" interrupted Bronson, whirling squarely around in his swivel chair. He had suddenly developed a great interest in the interview. "Yes," laughed Matt, "I'm called that more often than I'm called by my last name. This is my chum, Joe McGlory," and he nodded toward the cowboy. "I've heard of both of you," smiled Bronson. "That was great business of yours, over near Purling. But what in the world have you got to tell me about the stolen speeder?" "Then you haven't heard about what happened this morning?" "Haven't heard a thing about the speeder to-day. Why?" "Well, Joe and I and another fellow were chasing down a grade with it, a few miles out of town, and a section gang from Tannersville saw us coming and put a tie across the rails." "That stopped you, did it?" "Did it!" echoed McGlory. "Why, it stopped us so hard and quick that one of the passengers was scattered all over the right of way." "We hadn't anything to do with stealing the machine," went on Matt, "and we didn't----" "Of course not!" struck in Bronson. "But where did you get it, and what were you doing with it?" "You heard how the great ruby was recovered, and how the thieves got away?" The superintendent's eyes sparkled. "Everybody around here has heard about that," he answered. "We thought we had a chance to capture one of the thieves," proceeded Matt. "The crook's pal came to us and offered to show us where Grattan was, and when we joined the fellow this morning, he had the speeder tucked away among the bushes. We knew the speeder had been stolen, and were intending to bring it back as soon as we had finished our work; but the section gang made things so warm for us we had to change our plans." "And now you're fretting for fear the section men will send in word, and that I'll have you pinched!" laughed the superintendent. "I guess I'd think twice before I had Motor Matt arrested for stealing an old speeder like that. Mulvaney, our track inspector, made it himself. He's rather choice of it, and that's why I sent out word to have the thing found, if possible. But, tell me, did you capture Grattan?" "No, sir. We found where he has been staying, but he had got away before we reached the place." "Hard luck! By the way, they've got a moving picture in one of the nickelodeons here, that tells the story of a ruby called 'Buddha's Eye.' Everybody is going to see it. Is that the same story as the one connected with the 'Eye of Buddha?'" "It's the same, Mr. Bronson, even down to the minor detail of the identity of the thieves." Bronson whistled. "How in the dickens does that happen, eh?" he asked. Matt could see no harm in explaining that point, as Bunce had covered it, and told how the thieves, needing money in Chicago, had suggested the idea for the picture, and how at least one of them had volunteered to play a leading part. The superintendent was astounded at the audacity of a thief who, after perpetrating such a successful robbery, and with the ruby then in his possession, could publish his crime through the medium of a moving picture. "It merely goes to prove," said the superintendent, "what a clever and daring scoundrel this fellow Grattan is. Too bad he escaped at the time the ruby was so cleverly recovered. More than likely, Motor Matt, he'll make trouble for you." "I guess he'll be too busy looking out for himself," laughed Matt, "to pay any attention to me." "I hope so, certainly." Matt and McGlory got up to leave. "Don't bother your head about the speeder," the superintendent went on. "I'm glad your report reached me ahead of the one from the section gang. I'll know how to handle the matter, now, when I hear from the section boss. Good-by, my lads, and good luck to you." "It didn't take long to fix that up," said McGlory, when he and Matt were once more on their way to the hotel. "I knew it wouldn't," returned Matt, "just as soon as we could get to some one who would be willing to take our word for what happened." "What the super said about Grattan trying to get back at you, Matt, for what you did in the old sugar camp, near Purling, sounded to me like it had a lot of good horse sense mixed up in it." "What I told the super had a little horse sense in it, too, didn't it, Joe?" "You mean about Grattan having so much to do to keep out of the clutches of the law that he won't find any time to hit up your trail?" "Yes." "I don't know about that. Grattan is a tinhorn who is in a class all by himself. He seems to have all kinds of nerve, and to be willing to take all sorts of chances. That moving-picture deal gives us a pretty good line on him." When the boys got to the hotel, McGlory stumbled into a chair on the veranda. "Gee, man, but I'm tired!" he exclaimed. "A cowboy is built for riding, and not for this footwork. It sure gets me going. Sit down here for a while, Matt, and let's palaver about New York, and what the chances are for our getting there." "They're pretty slim, I guess," answered Matt, dropping into a seat at his chum's side, "if we're to wait until Grattan is captured. Tsan Ti says, in his letter, that he won't come on until Grattan is behind the bars, or safely off his trail." "Which means to hang on here until--we don't know when. We're rid of Bunce, but there'll be something else to hit us between the eyes before we're many minutes older. You can bet your moccasins on that. As long as we're tangled up with that ruby, we'll find hard luck flagging us all along the pike." At that moment the clerk emerged from the hotel office and crossed the veranda. He wore a troubled look, as though something had happened to worry him. "That man came, Motor Matt," said he, "and I gave him the box." McGlory fell back as though some one had struck him. "What man? What box?" he roused up to inquire wildly. The clerk caught the alarm in the cowboy's voice and manner. "Why, don't you know?" he cried, appealing to Matt. "It was the small box you left with me early this morning." "And--and you gave it up?" gasped McGlory huskily. "What else could I do?" protested the clerk. "I had the written order from Motor Matt. The man brought it." McGlory was too dazed to answer. His jaw fell, and he stared at the king of the motor boys. "Let me see the order," said Matt. The clerk pulled a letter from his pocket. "I hope there's nothing wrong?" he asked, handing the letter to Matt. "I've been thinking there might be something wrong, but I didn't see how there could be. The handwriting of that letter matches your fist on the register--I was careful to look that up before I gave the man the box." "Read it, pard," implored McGlory, in a mechanical tone. "'Please deliver to bearer the small box which I left with you for safe-keeping, early this morning,'" Matt read. "'I need it at once, and find that I can't come for it in person.' That's all of it, Joe," said Matt, "and I must say that it's a pretty good imitation of my handwriting. The name is a tremendously good forgery." The clerk nearly threw a fit; and McGlory nearly helped him. "Then the letter is a forgery?" cried the clerk. "The man didn't have any right to the box?" "How could he have any right to the box," stormed McGlory, "when the letter asking you to turn it over to him was never written by Motor Matt? Corral your wits. Sufferin' hold-ups, it's come! We no sooner get out of one raw deal, than we tumble headfirst into another. Now----" "Take it easy, Joe," cut in Matt. "Wait a minute." He turned to the clerk. "Don't get worked up about this," said he; "you're not to blame. When did the man call and deliver the forged letter?" "Not more than an hour ago," answered the clerk, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. "Was there anything very valuable in the box?" "What sort of looking man was he?" proceeded Matt. "Slim, and dark, and undersized. Fairly well dressed." "Well, never mind. Don't let it worry you." The clerk, visibly distressed, in spite of Matt's reassuring words, went back into the office. As soon as he had vanished inside the hotel, the king of the motor boys gave vent to a low laugh. McGlory peered at him. "Pard!" he murmured, leaning over to drop a hand on Matt's knee. "Have you gone off the jump on account of that confounded ruby? It's a blow between the eyes, all right, but, for heaven's sake, don't let it get you locoed." "Locoed!" and Matt pulled himself together, reached inside his vest and brought out a knotted handkerchief. Untying the knotted ends of the handkerchief, he opened it out on his knee. "See here, Joe!" said he; "that's how badly I am locoed." What McGlory saw was the ruby, glowing redly against the white linen. CHAPTER X. THE MAN FROM THE "IRIS." Not many times in McGlory's life had he been so tremendously at a loss for words as he was then. He stared at the ruby and he stared at Matt. "You see, pard," said Matt, "the ruby wasn't in the box when I gave it to the clerk. I kept the Eye of Buddha safely about me, all the time. It gouged me a little when the speeder stopped and I was slammed against the forward bench." "Speak to me about this!" rumbled the cowboy. "It wasn't in the box--a tinhorn blew in with a forged letter--he got the box, but he didn't get the ruby. Matt's done something--and he never told me what he was doing. What--how--why---- Look here, you blooming old maverick, how did you ever come to think of such a dodge?" "It wasn't much of a dodge," answered Matt. "In the first place, I didn't take any stock in that wild yarn told us by Bunce. At the same time, while I didn't believe in it, I couldn't afford not to go with Bunce on Tsan Ti's account. I tried to think why Bunce should want to coax us into the hills, and the only idea that came to me had to do with the ruby. Now, I reasoned, if the ruby _was_ back of Bunce's little game, then it was clear he knew it had been sent to me for safe-keeping. I wanted to find just how much Bunce knew, so I left the box with the clerk. Bunce was watching, or else he had somebody else watching. If he'd thought I had the ruby with me, an attempt would have been made to get it while we were in the hills. But Bunce believed I had left the ruby in the safe, so he dodged away, leaving you and me to be nabbed by the section men, while he went on to that 'pocket' under the ledge, found Grattan, told him where I had placed the box, and the two got on their motorcycles and came close enough to town to get a man to help them secure the box. "Grattan must have forged the letter. Then this third man took it. The rascals had to work quick, for the game was played while we were taking a look around at the camp in the ravine, and walking into town. Can't you understand, Joe? By getting us into the hills, with that fairy story about Tsan Ti, Grattan could play his hand either way. If we had the ruby with us, he could get hold of it; if we had left it behind, he could take advantage of our absence from Catskill to execute some ruse in town while we were out in the country." "Clever?" breathed McGlory; "why, he's the cleverest crook that ever happened. But I'd like to have a picture of him now!" The cowboy fell back in his seat and roared with mirth. "Wouldn't I like to look in on him while he and Bunce are opening that box?" he sputtered. "Oh, but it's rich! Clever as he is, Grattan has found that he's butted up against some one who can give him cards and spades, and then beat him out. I've been proud of you, pard, more times than I can tell, but I'm just a little prouder now than I ever was before. Shake!" Matt caught his chum's hand. "It was only a guess, Joe," he deprecated, "and it happened to work our way. There was nothing clever about what I did. The result was entirely a--an accident." "You had your head with you, all the same," insisted McGlory, "when you put that empty box in the safe. But how in thunder did Bunce get next to that? How did he know that Tsan Ti had sent you the ruby, in the first place?" "Well, he did know, and that's enough. A third man has jumped into the deal--another pal, who is helping Grattan and Bunce. Perhaps he had something to do with keeping track of the ruby." "Perhaps. But that old two-eyed counterfeit with the green patch--I wonder how much he'd sell out for, about now?" "Bunce is pretty clever, in his own way, too," averred Matt. "He must have laughed in his sleeve when he saw how we had swallowed that fish story of his about Tsan Ti." "He can laugh, now, on t'other side of his face. We're helping Tsan Ti, all right. Grattan is on our trail instead of his. I'm not saying it was the right thing for the mandarin to shift the responsibility for that ruby onto you, but he was pretty long headed when he did it. He understood that if any one could take care of the ruby it was Motor Matt." "It will soon be dinner time, Joe," said Matt. "Suppose we go up to our room, shake the dust out of our clothes, take a bath, and get ready to eat?" "That reminds me how hungry I am!" exclaimed McGlory, springing up. By the time dinner was ready, the boys were ready for dinner. Their experiences of the forenoon had put a keen edge on their appetite, and the cowboy was in high good humor. He and Matt had put in a strenuous morning, and so long as McGlory thought they had not accomplished anything, he was disgusted and "out of sorts." But to learn that Grattan and Bunce had been beaten at their own game, set twanging a most delightful chord in the cowboy's make-up. The motor boys had no plans for the afternoon, so they put in their time idling about the veranda. It was about three o'clock when a tall man, dressed in a natty white yachting costume with the name "Iris," in gilt letters on the band of his cap, came briskly up the veranda steps, passed Matt and McGlory and went on into the hotel. The man claimed only casual attention, on his first appearance, but, a few seconds later, he captured the entire attention of the two boys. He returned to the veranda, ushered by the clerk, and both stepped toward Motor Matt. "Matt," said the clerk, "this is Mr. Pardo, of the yacht _Iris_. Mr. Pardo, Mr. King. He wants to see you about some business matter," the clerk added, as he vanished back into the hotel. The man from the _Iris_ smiled cordially as he clasped Matt's hand. "This is a pleasure, I assure you," said Pardo. "I have heard quite a little about Motor Matt." "What can I do for you, Mr. Pardo?" asked Matt. "That's the business part of our interview," was the answer, as Pardo helped himself to a chair, "and I'm going to get right down to it. You are familiar with gasoline motors, I understand?" "Yes." "With marine motors?" "I reckon you never heard how he put an automobile engine in a launch, at Madison, Wisconsin," struck in McGlory, "and won a big race. He's right at home with every kind of an explosive engine, whether it drives a craft in the air, on wheels, or in the water." "My chum is a trifle prejudiced, Mr. Pardo," smiled Matt. "Well, I guess you can do the work, all right. The question now is, can I secure your services?" "What for?" "Of course," laughed Pardo, "that's what you naturally want to know. I'm the owner of a power yacht, fifty feet over all, ten feet beam, equipped with a fifty-horse-power motor. She's the _Iris_. I dropped down from Albany, this afternoon, and when we tied up at Catskill my engineer received a telegram from Buffalo saying that his father was dangerously sick. He left at once, and here I am, anxious to make a quick run to New York, but caught in the worst kind of a hole. Can't I get you to help me out? As soon as I reach New York I can get any number of reliable men to take charge of my engine room, but here in Catskill help of that sort is scarce." McGlory's joy shone in his face. Here was a chance to get down the river in style, and all that stood between Matt and the trip was the ruby. "Can't you run the motor, Mr. Pardo?" asked Matt. "Don't know the first thing about it," was the answer. "You see, I haven't had time to learn. This is my first trip in the _Iris_, and I haven't had much chance to pick up a knowledge of her machinery. It's my idea that every man ought to know how to run his own boat--and I'll know it, too, before I'm many days older. But, just now, I've got to have some one. What do you say?" Pardo noticed that Matt was not especially eager to help him out. "If you can just get me down to New York," he pleaded, "that's all I will ask. If you have to come back to Catskill for anything, you can come on the train in the morning. You won't be away very long, and it will be a big accommodation to me. I'll pay you well for your trouble, too, if that will be any inducement." "Better go, pard," urged McGlory. "I don't think your business will suffer any. We can be back here by nine in the morning, if we want to." It was hardly likely, as Matt reasoned the matter out, that Tsan Ti would present himself and ask for the ruby before he and McGlory could get back from New York. The opportunity to make a little money in a pleasant way was appealing, for the king of the motor boys had long desired to have the run of the engine room on a big power boat. "What time do you want to start, Mr. Pardo?" Matt asked. "At nine, this evening," was the reply. "If you can help me out, you'd better arrange to be aboard at, say, eight-thirty. The _Iris_ is close to the day-line dock, and you can't help but find her." "How much are you willing to pay for the trip?" queried Matt. "It's just as well, you know, to have all that settled beforehand." "I'll give you a hundred dollars--not so much for the work, you understand, as for the time you are losing. Your time may be worth even more than that. If it is----" "You are more than liberal," broke in Matt. "I and my chum will be aboard the _Iris_ at eight-thirty." The man from the _Iris_ heaved a deep breath. "That's a big load off my mind," said he. "I could have telegraphed New York and had an engineer come up on a late train--but that would have delayed the start until close upon midnight. I shall expect you, Motor Matt," and Pardo got up and went his way briskly. CHAPTER XI. ABOARD THE STEAM YACHT. "I don't know," said Matt, "whether this is the thing for us to do, or not, Joe. Tsan Ti's letter asked us to stay in the Catskills." "Oh, bother the old heathen!" returned the cowboy. "He won't show up here for quite a spell. Anyhow, if he does arrive to-morrow morning, before we do, he can wait for us, can't he?" "He's paying us for our time." "What if he is, pard? The old boy won't find any fault if we take this little run down the river. There's a point, too, that you don't seem to have thought of." "What is it?" "Why, Grattan has quit trailing Tsan Ti and gone to trailing you. By taking this trip down the river we may be able to throw Grattan off the track." "That's so," answered Matt, struck with the idea. "If the tinhorn is laying any more of his plans," chuckled the cowboy, "we'll fool him." "I'll leave word with the clerk," said Matt, "to tell Tsan Ti where we've gone, and when we'll return; then, if he _does_ happen to get here before we do, he'll know we're intending to come back and meet him." "That's the talk!" Matt immediately went into the hotel and stepped to the clerk's desk. "Are you acquainted with Mr. Pardo?" he asked. "Never saw him before," answered the clerk. "He came in here, introduced himself, and said he was looking for Motor Matt. I knew you were on the porch, so I volunteered to take him out and introduce you. Looks like a fine gentleman. Interview satisfactory?" "Yes. He has a power yacht at the landing, and wants an engineer to get her to New York for him. I've taken the job, and Joe and I will be away all night and not get back until sometime to-morrow forenoon. If any one calls and asks for me, you need not tell them where I have gone, but just let them know when I expect to return." "I'll do it, Matt. Didn't know you had an engineer's license?" "He's got everything," put in McGlory, "that goes with running a motor." The boys had no preparations to make, and as there were two hours to be passed before supper they concluded to run down to the dock and take a look at the _Iris_. There was no difficulty at all in locating her, and the sight of her trim and graceful lines made Matt eager to have a look at her interior plan. There was no one about her decks, however, whom he and McGlory could hail, and he hesitated to go aboard and arouse any one who might chance to be in the cabin. The cowboy, who was a wretched sailor, quite unaccountably was an enthusiast about boats, and his doting eyes sparkled as they traveled over the _Iris_. She had a very high freeboard forward, and this, with her perfect lines, gave her an easy entrance and a guarantee that she would not pound or ship seas in any sort of weather. There was no midship bridge, or forward pilot house, but the boat was steered and the engine controlled from a big and roomy after deck. "She's a fair daisy!" declared the cowboy, "as spick and span as a freshly coined four-bit piece. Sufferin' bones, but I'd like to own a boat like that!" "You'd find such a craft an expensive luxury, Joe," said Matt. "If you did much cruising, it would keep you poor just buying gasoline. Let's go back up the hill. We can't see inside the boat, and it don't take long to get a pretty fair idea of the outside." Returning to the hotel, the boys idled away the time until the supper call sounded. The meal over, there were still some two hours of waiting before they were due aboard the _Iris_. McGlory suggested another visit to the theatre for a second look at the "Buddha's Eye" pictures. Matt, thinking that as good a way as any for passing the time, acquiesced, and they were soon at the moving-picture place. There was standing room only--which proved how much of a hit the ruby robbery had made. The hit, of course, was entirely because of Matt's adventures while recovering the gem for Tsan Ti. If those attending the show had known that Motor Matt was also present, and that he had the very Eye of Buddha in his pocket, there would have followed a furore of no small proportions. But the king of the motor boys, often in direct opposition to his best interests, was reserved and diffident. "Gee!" exclaimed the cowboy, as he and Matt left the theatre and wandered along the street, "if those people back there had only known who you were, and what you had in your pocket, there'd have been something of a stir." "I don't like that kind of a stir," said Matt. "That's you! Say, pard, you're altogether too modest and retiring. If you wanted to splurge a little, you could make yourself talked about from one end of the country to the other." "I'll leave that to those who like it. It's the quiet chap, who plugs along and does things without blowing his own horn who makes the biggest hit in the end." "I don't know but that's right, too." They dropped in at another show, promenaded the street, and finally discovered that it was nearly eight-thirty. Turning their steps toward the water front, they presently reached the wharf alongside the _Iris_. The craft had her "running" lights in position. There was a white light in the bow, visible from straight ahead and for ten points on either side, a green light to starboard and a red light to port, each screened so that it could be seen from dead ahead to two points aft of the beam, and a high white light aft and directly over the keel, showing all around the horizon. But, notwithstanding all these lights on deck, there were none visible through the cabin ports. "I wonder if Mr. Pardo has got here?" said Matt. "What's the odds, Matt?" returned McGlory. "It's eight-thirty, and we're due." They got aboard, gaining the after deck. The elevated white light cast a dim glow over polished mahogany and glittering brasswork, and Matt bent down to examine the bulkhead controls. A door opened in the bulkhead, on the right of the steering wheel, and a man showed shadowily in the dark. "Is that Motor Matt?" he called. "Yes," was the reply. The man clambered up two or three steps, knocking his shins and swearing because of the darkness. "You're expected," said he. "Go down into the saloon--a stateroom is the first thing you come to, and the saloon is beyond that." "Why don't you light up?" asked Matt. "Mr. Pardo has a headache, and the light bothers him. Go on down--he's waiting for you." Matt led the way, and McGlory followed. They left the door open, and a faint radiance followed them, but they were in unfamiliar surroundings, and had to grope their way along. "Is that you, Motor Matt?" called a voice, which they recognized as Pardo's. "Yes," Matt answered. "Come on in here. I'm not feeling very well to-night, and the light hurts my eyes. You can guide yourself by the sound of my voice, can't you?" "We'll get there, all right." "Is your friend with you?" "Yes. I never travel without him." The next moment Matt gained the open door in another bulkhead. Before he could pass through it, two sinewy arms went around him from behind and a hand was clapped over his lips. He struggled, but he was caught as in a vise, and his efforts to free himself were useless. From near at hand, too, he heard sounds which indicated that McGlory, also, had been seized. "Got them?" came the voice of Pardo. "Yes, sir," answered the man who was holding Matt, "but they're fightin' like a pair o' young demons." "Then throw them down on the side seats and hold pillows over their heads. We'll get under way at once." Matt felt himself borne down on a cushioned bench. The hand was jerked from his lips, and the half-formed cry that escaped him was smothered in the pillow that was immediately pushed over his head. A bell jingled, and steps could be heard on the deck above, moving swiftly. "All right!" came a muffled voice. Matt, half suffocated, could hear no more. He was fighting fiercely for his breath. Presently he was conscious that the _Iris_ was moving, and, as he lay gasping and helpless under the strong hands of his captor, there came faintly to his ears the hum of a motor and the lapping of waves against the hull. How long he was held down on the seat, half smothered by the pillow, he did not know. It seemed hours, but was probably no more than so many minutes. Then, suddenly, the pillow was jerked away, and he lifted himself on his elbow, a glare of light in his eyes. For a moment or two the dazzling light blinded him. When his eyes became somewhat used to it, he discovered a man standing near him, his flannel shirt parted at the throat and his bronzed arms bare to the elbows. The man held a dirk in one hand and a piece of rope in the other. From this frowning figure, Matt's gaze shifted across the narrow aisle to a cushioned bench opposite. McGlory was there, and there was likewise a ruffian keeping watch of him. "What--what does this mean?" demanded Matt. "You'll find out, quick enough. Are you goin' to make any trouble? If you are, say so, now, and you'll save yourself a knife in the ribs." "I want to know about this!" declared Matt. "Then get up and go into the saloon." "You, too," said the man who had charge of McGlory. "Foller yer mate inter the saloon, an' if either o' ye let out a yell ye'll never know what struck you." Matt, fearing the worst, swung his feet down from the upholstered seat and started forward. McGlory, who appeared to be in a trance, followed him mechanically. The door of the saloon was open, and Matt passed through it, and stopped. McGlory crowded in beside him. The saloon was the full width of the boat, with seats on each side, and a table at one end. The small room was flooded with light, and three figures were seen in an angle formed by one of the seats where it partly crossed the forward bulkhead. The fixed table stood in the angle, and the three figures were leaning upon it. One of the men was Grattan, another was Bunce, and the third was Pardo. In front of Grattan, on the table top, lay two objects. One was a revolver, and the other the small box in which the ruby had been expressed to Matt from New York. All three of the men were smiling. "Speak to me about this!" muttered McGlory. "Nabbed! Nabbed as slick as you please! And I never guessed a thing. Oh, sufferin' easy marks!" CHAPTER XII. GRATTAN'S TRIUMPH. Motor Matt understood the situation. The full realization came to him with something like a shock. In some way Grattan had secured the aid of the owner and crew of the _Iris_ in carrying out his villainous designs. He had triumphed, for he had only to have Matt searched in order to secure the ruby. Philo Grattan was an educated fellow, and could be a man of pleasing address when he so desired. In almost any honest line of work he could have distinguished himself, for his ability was high above the average. Yet, like so many others equally gifted, he had been drawn toward a life of crime. "Motor Matt," said he, in a tone and with a manner that was friendly, "we meet again. The pleasure, on your part, I presume, is unexpected, and perhaps of a doubtful quality, but so far as I am concerned, I assure you that this renewing of our acquaintance leaves nothing to be desired." "Not a blessed thing," struck in Bunce, contorted with inward mirth, "sink me, if it does!" Grattan dropped a heavy hand on the mariner's shoulder. "Keep a still tongue in your head," he ordered sternly. "I'm able to do the talking." "Then," and Matt turned toward Pardo, "this is simply a plot you have engineered to get me into the hands of Grattan?" "Simply and solely," was Pardo's cheerful answer. "Pardo is my friend," explained Grattan. "He lives in Albany, when he's at home--but he's rarely at home. He has been fortunate, of late, in sundry little ventures, and happened to be well supplied with money. No sooner had I lost my buckthorn cane, there in the old sugar camp, at Purling, and been made aware of the fact that the Eye of Buddha had been found, than I communicated with friend Pardo. I had met him in Albany on my way to the Catskills, so I knew he was at home. He met me in my temporary camp, and agreed to charter the _Iris_ to help me down the river and out of the country after I had got back the ruby. The _Iris_, together with a crew of men on whom we can depend, has been awaiting my convenience for the past two days. Of course," and Grattan showed his teeth in a smile, "my friend's name is not Pardo, any more than mine is Grattan, or than this salt-water bungler on my left is named Bunce." Although Matt followed Grattan closely, he had, at the same time, been covertly using his eyes. The door leading into the stateroom behind him was closed. On the other side of it he knew there was one brawny ruffian, and perhaps two. Beyond the saloon's forward bulkhead he could hear the purring motor. There, he inferred, was the engine room and the galley, with another man who could be "depended on." At the steering and engine controls on the after deck was surely another man, and probably one on the deck overhead. He and McGlory were hemmed in on all sides. There must have been, counting those in the saloon, all of seven or eight men against them. So far as Matt could see, the case was hopeless. Matt's covert looks had not escaped the keen eyes of Grattan. The scoundrel seemed able to read even the young motorist's thoughts. "Don't think of escape, Motor Matt," said he. "That is entirely out of the question. Neither you nor your friend are in any danger. I think too highly of you to rob the world of so much talent and ingenuity. Let us have another friendly and intimate chat such as we had in the old sugar camp. I do not object to telling you things of great moment to me, because I have already taken measures to make the knowledge harmless. I escaped from the sugar camp, did I not? And all I told you then did not in any way hamper me in proceeding with my plans. I am willing to be equally frank now, in the hope that you, on your part, will give me some of your confidence. "You thought Tsan Ti, the mandarin, had started for San Francisco with the ruby. Orientals are crafty. He gave it out that he was going to San Francisco, and immediately started for New York. I had him followed from the Hotel Kaaterskill, and shadowed while in New York. The man who served me was clever, but not clever enough to keep Tsan Ti from learning that he was under espionage. The mandarin became nervous. He did not appeal to the police, as his heathen mind counsels him to have nothing to do with the peace officers who serve the foreign devils. But he had his man, Sam Wing, and other Chinamen, continually guard him. One of these Chinamen was faithless. Some of my money, expended by the man I had set to watch Tsan Ti, bought him. This Chinaman was Charley Foo, and he betrayed the mandarin's trust for the sum of ten silver dollars. "Charley was in the room with Tsan Ti when the ruby was boxed, wrapped and addressed to Motor Matt. Charley, also, went with Tsan Ti and Sam Wing to the express office, and saw the package sent. Then, quite naturally, Charley told my man, and my man telegraphed Pardo at Hudson, and Pardo got the message to me, out there in that lonely ravine. "Then I began rehearsing Bunce in his part. Bunce is a natural blockhead, and I was three hours teaching him what he was to say and do. As an example of his folly, I will say that it was Bunce who stole the speeder. The owner of the machine was inspecting a bit of siding that wound around a low hill. The speeder was on the main track. All Bunce had to do was to get aboard, switch on the gasoline and the spark--and there you are. But why did we need the speeder when we had two good motorcycles? Bunce can't tell. He doesn't know. He has a low mind, and the itch to steal unimportant things runs in his blood--and has more than once proved embarrassing to me. "However, I saw a chance to use the speeder in beguiling you to my ravine. The motorcycles would only have carried two, and there were to be three of you, including Bunce. Besides, the machines might have aroused your suspicions. So the speeder was used, and Pardo went over the hill with Bunce and helped him hide the speeder within an arrow flight of the Catskill railroad yards. "Bunce took a risk. He knew it. I impressed upon him the fact that, if he did not carry out his programme with earnestness, you would make a prisoner of him and turn him over to the police. We knew Tsan Ti had written that you must keep the ruby about you, and leave it nowhere for security. I flattered myself you would bring the gem with you, concealed somewhere upon your person. But Pardo, wearing clothes which made him look vastly different, saw you leave the little box with the hotel clerk. Instantly Pardo ran ahead of you to the place where Bunce was waiting, and told him. The seeming failure of our plans threw Bunce into a panic--you can expect so little of Bunce in a pinch!--and he would have thrown over the whole matter, then and there, had not Pardo advised him. 'Take them out into the hills,' said Pardo, 'and leave them stranded there while you get away to the ravine and tell Grattan. Grattan will know what to do.' And Grattan did." An ironical smile crossed the face of the strange man, and he paused a space. When he continued, his manner was again easy and vivacious. "Ah, those section men! They helped gain time for me, and afforded Bunce his opportunity to get away from you. Bunce fled--you know how. He came to me and told me about the box, the box Motor Matt had left with the hotel clerk to be put in the safe. A fountain pen and a sheet of letter paper sufficed for the letter. I have seen your written name, Motor Matt, and when I have once seen a person's handwriting, I can copy it from memory after a lapse of one year or ten. Some say it is a gift. "We had sharp work ahead of us, Bunce and I. We rolled out of the ravine on our motorcycles, gained the river bank below Catskill and signaled the _Iris_. Pardo came ashore in the tender, and he loaned us his motor-man for the work that claimed us. You know how he got the box, and we know what it contained--cotton wadding, but no ruby. Motor Matt, I could have shaken your hand and congratulated you--if you had been near and I had had time. "A few rebuffs are what I need to bring out the best that is in me. Quick as a flash I thought of the motor-man's sick father in Buffalo, and Pardo's call at your hotel to get you to take the _Iris_ to New York. Shall I call it an inspiration? I believe it amounted to that. "Bunce and I, snugged away in this saloon, slept and waited for the issue of our scheming. Pardo came to report that you would be aboard the _Iris_ at eight-thirty. I was almost sure of success, but not certain. You have a way, Motor Matt, of disappointing people like me, and I was not counting positively upon success until I had you in my hands. "Well, here you are. I have only the kindliest feelings toward you, but you know what I want, and what I want, in this instance, I am going to have." Grattan got up and stood beside the table, a superb figure of a man whose head just cleared the deck above. "I have devoted time, and study, and faced dangers innumerable," he proceeded, betrayed into passionate vehemence, "to secure the Eye of Buddha! I have beaten down every obstacle, and secured the stone only to lose it; now it is mine again, mine. Motor Matt," and he stretched out his hand, "I will trouble you for the Eye of Buddha!" CHAPTER XIII. FROM THE OPEN PORT! Motor Matt made no move to give the ruby into the possession of Grattan. Thief though he was, yet Philo Grattan had a remarkable personality. Matt had listened to him with deepest interest, but one hand had been busy in his pocket. McGlory was so deeply absorbed in what the master rogue was saying that his jaws gaped, and he hung breathlessly upon his words. Near Matt's left hand, with only the width of the side seat between, was an open port. "What!" exclaimed Grattan, as though intensely surprised, "you hesitate? I dislike to treat you with any more roughness, Motor Matt. It seems to me you might understand how hopeless it is for you to try to keep the ruby. What is this Tsan Ti to you that you will risk so much for him? Is it the money he pays you? I can't believe that. You have made a good deal of money in your work, I have been told, and you are not in need. "Is it because you desire to help an unfortunate Chinaman who must use the yellow cord in case he cannot return to China with the Eye of Buddha? Foolish sentiment! What would this fat mandarin of the red button do for you if your positions were reversed? Take the present case. What has Tsan Ti done? He is a coward. Instead of facing his risks like a man, he turns the ruby over to you, thereby unloading the danger and responsibility. After you have me safely jailed"--and Grattan's voice throbbed with contempt and scorn--"then this mandarin will hunt you up, take the ruby, which is worth a fortune, and pay you a thousand dollars! Why are you the friend of such a coward? Tell me, will you? Here is where I should like a frank expression of your views." "I don't think Tsan Ti is a coward," Matt answered. "You have the proof." "I have your side of the question, not his." "My side of the question! Is there any other side?" "There may be." "I am disappointed in you, Motor Matt. Such talk is foolish--almost worthy of Bunce, here." "There is something else, too, Grattan," went on Matt, "something, I suppose, you will appreciate even less than what I have just said." "I don't think there can be anything I would appreciate less. However, let's hear what it is." "Being true to a trust," answered Matt sturdily. "Even if a Chinaman trusts you, standing fast and not betraying his confidence." Bunce snickered, and Pardo laughed outright. Only Grattan kept a serious face and peered steadily at Matt. "Yes," murmured Grattan, "there is something in that. It is not for me--I have turned my back on such principles--but you are young and quite likely you have started right. That, however, does not affect our present situation. It is impossible for you to remain true to the trust the cowardly Tsan Ti reposes in you. I have you in my power. It is night, and the _Iris_ is in the middle of the Hudson River. The ruby is tied up in a handkerchief in your coat pocket. I tell you I want it." The voice was imperious, compelling. Motor Matt still passively faced Grattan. "Oh, shiver me!" grunted Bunce. "Let's lay hold of him an' take it." Pardo pushed a hand toward the revolver on the table. With one movement, Grattan, although still with his eyes on Matt, dropped his own hand to the revolver and another hand on Bunce's shoulder. "You'll speak when you're spoken to, Bunce," said he savagely, "and Pardo, you'll leave the revolver alone. I've managed this matter with fair success, up to now, and I believe I can wind it up. The ruby, Motor Matt!" "There it is!" said Matt. His hand darted toward the open port. A knotted handkerchief, weighted with some small object, flashed through the port and vanished downward. A yell escaped Bunce, and he flung himself across the table in a frantic attempt to lay hold of Matt. Pardo leaped for him, and the door leading into the stateroom opened and the man who was waiting stepped into the room. McGlory had jumped to help Matt against Pardo. The man who had just entered grabbed the cowboy and flung him roughly on the seat at the side of the room; then he and Pardo hurled Matt to the floor. "Search him!" ordered Grattan calmly. "By the seven holy spritsails!" bellowed Bunce, "what's the use o' searchin' him? Didn't he just throw the Eye o' Buddha into the river?" "He ought to be strangled for that!" cried Pardo, in a temper. "Search him, I tell you!" roared Grattan. "Are you all a pack of fools? He didn't throw the ruby into the river." "But we saw him," insisted Pardo. "You saw his handkerchief go into the river, but it was only a trick. Do you think he would sacrifice the ruby, even to prevent me from getting it? Search him, I tell you." The search was made, and thoroughly. Motor Matt's pockets were turned inside out, but without result. Garment by garment his clothes were stripped away and crushed in eager hands, but still without result. The ruby was as large as a small hen's egg, and not easily to be hidden. McGlory had gone into a trance again. As he lay on the seat and stared, he wondered if Matt had really tossed the priceless gem into the Hudson. "He hasn't got it, Grattan," announced Pardo. "Then his friend has it," answered Grattan confidently. "Search him." Thereupon the cowboy came in for his share of the rough handling. Matt once more got into his clothes. Just as the search of McGlory was finished, Motor Matt was reaching for his cap, which had tumbled off in the scuffle in the other room, and had been thrown into the saloon after the boys had entered it. "Nothing here," announced Pardo, as he turned from McGlory. "Nary, there ain't," fumed McGlory. "Motor Matt's not the lad to shift his responsibilities like Tsan Ti. Sufferin' hornets! You're a fine outfit of tinhorns, I must say." Stepping quickly out from behind the table, Grattan passed to Matt and snatched off his cap. He weighed the cap for a moment in his hand, felt of the crown with his fingers, and then, still holding the cap, returned quietly to his seat. "Sit down, Bunce, you and Pardo," ordered Grattan. "Pierson, go out and close the door." When the two men were seated, and after Pierson had left the saloon, Grattan leaned his elbows on the table, Matt's cap between them. "This Motor Matt," said he, "is a lad whom I greatly admire. He takes precautions. His first precaution was removing the ruby from the box and depositing the box with the hotel clerk before he went out into the hills with Bunce. In running away from the ravine with Bunce to carry out my plan for securing the box, I ran directly away from Motor Matt and the ruby. Motor Matt had the ruby tied up in his handkerchief, then. He was seen, on the hotel veranda, to untie his handkerchief and show the ruby to his friend. When he came aboard the _Iris_ he had taken another precaution. Something else was tied up in the handkerchief, and the ruby was in the lining of his cap." Swiftly Grattan's hands descended, tore at the cap lining, and brought out the imperial stone. He laid it on the table, turning and turning it so the light might catch its fiery flash. "Blow me tight!" mumbled Bunce. "Say, mates," he added, drawing a sleeve across his forehead, "that was a scare I don't want ever to go through ag'in. We've risked so much for that bloomin' Eye o' Buddha that I near went wrong in the head with the thought that it was in the bottom o' the river!" "It's comparatively easy for you to go wrong in the head, Bunce," taunted Grattan. "So that's the thing!" murmured Pardo, his fascinated eyes on the gleaming stone. "Did you ever see anything more beautiful?" asked Grattan. "It's a true pigeon-blood ruby, and worth ten times the value of a diamond the same size." Then, drawing out his own handkerchief, he wrapped the ruby carefully, and as carefully stowed it away in his pocket. "So," said he, "after a number of startling adventures in the Catskills, the ruby is finally where it ought to be." "It ought to be in the head of that idol, in Canton," said Matt. The king of the motor boys was calm, and, while he may have had regrets, he had nothing to reproach himself for. He had done his best to keep the ruby--and he had failed. "Motor Matt," returned Grattan, "a heathen temple is no place for such a jewel as this. In the Honan joss house it benefits no one. When I sell it, it will benefit me a great deal, and Bunce a little." "And me," put in Pardo. "Don't forget that I stand in on the divvy." "And Pardo," added Grattan. "And Tsan Ti must strangle himself with the yellow cord," said Matt. "If that is his will, yes. I have no patience with these pagan superstitions. A heathen, who lives by them, cannot let them shuffle him out of the world too quickly. As for you, Motor Matt, you have nothing to be sorry for. You did your best to keep the ruby out of my hands--no one else could have done so much." "It's not the ruby I care for so much as saving Tsan Ti," answered Matt. "Find out if there's a landing near this point, Pardo," said Grattan. Pardo stepped out of the room and could be heard talking with the man at the steering wheel. "No," he reported, coming back, "there's no safe landing for the _Iris_ anywhere near here." "Then put over the tender," ordered Grattan; "Motor Matt and his friend are going ashore." CHAPTER XIV. LANDED--AND STUNG. Pardo left the saloon to give the necessary orders to the man outside. There was a splash in the water as the tender was put over, and the _Iris_ slowed until she had no more than steerage way. "Get into your clothes, McGlory," said Grattan to the cowboy. "I'm about ready to send you ashore." "The quicker the better!" exclaimed McGlory wrathfully. "We don't want to lose a minute getting to some place where we can send the officers after you." Grattan laughed. "You will have your trouble for your pains," said he. "After you are landed, the _Iris_ and those aboard her will vanish as completely as though they had gone to the bottom. I have planned for this. Do what you please, and as soon as you please. Philo Grattan and his friends will never be captured." "Ten thousand demons of misfortune pester a man who has anything to do with the Eye of Buddha," snarled McGlory, stamping into his shoes. "My pard and I know that. Sufferin' hoodoos! Haven't we been tangled up with all sorts of backsets since we met Tsan Ti? If it ain't one thing, it's two. You never know what minute's going to be the next." "I'll risk the ten thousand demons," smiled Grattan. "Something'll hit you," declared McGlory. "You take that from me, and spread your blankets on it." "You forget that I have carried the ruby for a good many thousands of miles." "I'm gloomed up more to think we ever saw that Eye of Buddha," scowled McGlory, getting up from the seat and jamming on his hat, "than to know that we lost it." "Are you ready?" asked Grattan. "I've been ready to leave this boat ever since we came aboard! You're a fine bunch of outlaws, the lot of you, and you'll all get hung, one of these days. I'd like to be around when it happens." Matt left his wrathful chum to do the talking. So far as he was concerned, he had nothing to say. "We're going to put you ashore near a place where you can catch a train north, to Catskill," said Grattan, after a brief, whispered conversation with Pardo. "There doesn't happen to be any telegraph station at the place, but the train will stop on signal." "There are other telegraph stations," fumed McGlory. "I reckon we can find 'em." "I hope, Motor Matt," went on Grattan, "that you don't cherish any hard feelings?" "No matter how I feel, Grattan," returned Matt, "I think you've made a big mistake." "How?" "Why, in your choice of a career. Half the energy you put into your criminal work would make you a power in the world." "I used to talk like that," said Grattan, with a tinge of bitterness, "when I was young. Good-by." Matt did not answer, but went out of the saloon and through the stateroom to the steps leading to the after deck. McGlory came close behind him. When they gained the deck, Pierson was in the tender, and another man stood ready to help them over the side. Silently Pierson rowed them ashore through the moonlight. When the boys had debarked, Pierson rowed swiftly back to the _Iris_, and the lads on shore could hear the noise as the tender was taken aboard. "Landed," muttered Matt. "And stung," finished McGlory. "Wasn't it neat? Say, I take off my hat to Grattan. He's the king bee of all the tinhorns. Let's watch and see which way the _Iris_ goes." The boys watched, but under their staring eyes the lights vanished one by one from forward and aft, and from starboard and port. The cabin windows winked out in darkness, and the gloom of the river swallowed up the motor yacht. Her disappearance was helped by a cloud which floated across the face of the moon and threw the river into deepest shadow. "Speak to me about that, pard!" exclaimed McGlory. "I wonder if it would do any good to send out telegrams?" "I don't think it would, Joe," Matt answered, "but if there was a telegraph office handy, we'd try it." "Let's find the place where the trains stop. If a train comes along pretty soon, we can get to a telegraph office." When the cloud had swept on, and the moon shone out again, a survey of the place showed the boys a dark building at the top of the bank. They climbed up to the structure and found that it was an open shed, with benches. There was no light, and the cowboy struck a match and hunted for a time card. He could find none. "Oh, hang such a place!" grumbled McGlory. "If we knew how far it was to the next station, pard, we could set out and hoof it." "Haven't you done enough walking for one day, Joe?" asked Matt. "I believe I have. I'm going to sit down here and wait for a train to come along." Suiting his action to the word, Matt dropped down on one of the benches. His chum took a place beside him. "You're as full of surprises, pard," remarked McGlory, "as a cocoanut is of milk. There's no guessing what you're going to do next. You didn't tell me anything about taking the Eye of Buddha from that empty box when you left it with the clerk, and you never let out a yip about removing the ruby from the handkerchief and putting it in your cap. Regular greaser trick--carrying things in your hat." "I thought I had to do something, Joe. When I was at work in the engine room, I had planned to take off the cap and put it in my pocket." "What did you have in that handkerchief?" "My pocketknife." "Great guns! Was the knife in the handkerchief when we left Catskill?" "No. The knife and the handkerchief were both in the same pocket. I managed to tie the knife up in the handkerchief, after a fashion, while we were facing Grattan, and he was talking." "Well, glory to glory and all sashay! And Grattan never saw you!" "I'm inclined to think he did, from the way the thing turned out." "You didn't think you could fool Grattan so he wouldn't search you, did you?" "It was a desperate chance to keep him from looking into my cap. But I might have known I couldn't fool him." Just at that moment a lantern could be seen coming from down the track. A man reached the shed and began lighting a lamp at each end of it. "Hello, neighbor!" called McGlory. "Do you belong around here?" The man turned and looked toward the boys. Evidently he had not seen them before, and the call startled him. "I live down the track a ways," he answered. "Do you take care of this palatial depot?" "I put out the lights," was the reply. "A little late getting them out to-night, aren't you?" "Well, no. There's no use putting them out before, 'cause the first train to stop hasn't come along yet." "How far is it to Catskill?" "Twenty mile." "Where's the nearest telegraph office?" "Three miles below. You fellers waitin' to ketch a train for Catskill?" "Yes. When will it be along?" "It's due now." "Does it stop here?" "Yes, if it's signaled." "How'll we flag it?" "I'll do that for ye with the lantern. That's what I come up here for--to put out the lights an' do the flaggin'." "Here's a piece of luck, anyhow, Matt," said McGlory. "We can go on to Catskill and do our telegraphing from there." "We might just as well," said Matt. Matt's failure to keep the ruby was preying on his spirits. He couldn't help what had happened, but the sting of failure, when he always prided himself on "making good," was hard to bear. "Buck up, pardy!" cried McGlory. "Old Tsan Ti can't find any fault with you." "I know that. I'm thinking, though, we weren't cautious enough in going aboard that boat." "Cautious? Tell me about that! Who wouldn't have been fooled, when the game was worked like Grattan worked it? I don't know how any one could have helped what happened." "Anyhow," said Matt, "we fell down. It might have been just as well if I had disobeyed Tsan Ti's instructions and placed the ruby in some bank vault." "But the mandarin said no. You carried out orders to the letter, and that's what lost us the ruby." "We were to stay in the Catskills, and we didn't. Because we broke over our instructions, we fell into the hands of Grattan." "He'd have got at you somehow even if we'd stayed in Catskill. I never saw such a man to keep after a thing he's set his mind on. Now, if we----" "Train's comin'," called the man, stepping upon the track and waving the lantern. The rumble of the passenger could be heard, growing rapidly in volume. "Well," remarked McGlory, as he and Matt got up, "we've shuffled off the hoodoo and nothing more will go crossways with us. That's worth a whole lot. And if Tsan Ti is fool enough to choke himself with that yellow cord, well, let him do it. Grattan was more than half right in what he said about that." The train, with its row of dimly lighted windows, came to a halt. Matt and McGlory climbed aboard, and the train started on again. The boys walked from one car into another trying to find a vacant seat which they could share together. At last Matt, who was in the lead, came to a halt in the aisle at the rear of the second coach. "Move on, pard," said McGlory. "We'll try the next car. It can't be that all the coaches are as full as this one." But Matt did not move on. He turned, amazement shining in his gray eyes, and pointed to a seat ahead of him, and on the right. Two drowsy Chinamen occupied the seat. One of them was fleshy, and took up two-thirds of the space. This man wore a black silk cap with a red button. His chin was sunk on his breast and he was snoring loudly. "Tsan Ti!" murmured McGlory, wondering if his eyes were playing him a trick. "And Sam Wing," added Matt. "The mandarin is going to Catskill to get the ruby. Here's where I have to tell him the truth." With that, Motor Matt leaned over and touched Tsan Ti on the shoulder. CHAPTER XV. A CRAFTY ORIENTAL. Meeting Tsan Ti in this peculiar fashion was a seven-day wonder to the motor boys. The workings of chance, in connection with various matters appertaining to the stolen ruby, could not have been better exemplified. Tsan Ti roused himself under Matt's touch, and blinked up at him through sleepy eyes. By degrees the lad's face took form before him, and he gave an incredulous grunt and floundered to his feet. "Estimable, never-to-be-forgotten friend!" the mandarin wheezed, his flabby face beaming as he reached for Motor Matt's hand. "Also the notable McGlory, friend of my friend! This is a delight, all the more joyful because not expected until Catskill. Why is it I have the great honor to see you here?" "That's quite a yarn, Tsan Ti," replied Matt. "Let me hear it forthwith, I beseech!" and Tsan Ti ordered Sam Wing out of the seat and motioned for Matt to take his place. The mandarin had been educated at one of the most famous colleges in the United States, and seemed, as McGlory expressed it, to have spent most of his time corralling adjectives. Sam Wing, apparently not in the least excited by the sudden appearance of the motor boys, got a seat across the aisle and continued his doze. McGlory managed to secure a place behind Matt. "I, most devoted youth," said Tsan Ti, as soon as Matt was seated, "am on my way to Catskill of a purpose to talk with you. No longer am I followed by the suspicious person whom I know to have been in the service of Grattan. So soon as I discovered this, I started immediately to find you. The five hundred gods of good luck must have decreed this meeting." "Rather," answered Matt, "the ten thousand demons of misfortune. I suppose, Tsan Ti, you are after the Eye of Buddha?" "Quite true, honorable youth." "Well," said Matt, "I haven't got it." Tsan Ti started, then slumped back into his seat. "It has escaped you, vigilant one?" he inquired, his puffy eyelids half closing as he regarded Matt. "It has escaped me, all right." "And who has it now?" "Grattan." The mandarin turned his face away and looked out of the car window into the night. Motor Matt felt miserable enough. His words, just uttered, might have sealed the doom of the mandarin. "Converse with me at length upon the subject," said Tsan Ti, again turning toward Matt. "What you say is of vast importance, excellent friend." Matt had twenty miles of slow traveling in which to make his disclosures, and he made them in detail, with now and then an explanatory word from McGlory. He began at the point where he had received the ruby, and set forth the manner in which Bunce had presented himself. Bunce's cock-and-bull story was gone into, and Tsan Ti's eyes twinkled humorously--Matt wondered at the humor--as he heard how he had been lured into a basement by a beach comber and was being held a prisoner. The leaving of the box with the hotel clerk, the flight into the hills, and the disappearance of Bunce, all dropped into the recital in chronological form; then came the tracking to the "pocket" under the ledge, and the following of the motorcycle trails in the direction of Catskill, the arrival of the boys in town, and the report of the clerk concerning the forged letter and the removal of the box. "So there," put in the mandarin, "is where my ruby escaped from your unfortunate hands." "Don't be so quick in your snap judgments, Tsan," spoke up McGlory. "The ruby wasn't in the box, but in Motor Matt's pocket. My pard had left the empty box with the clerk for a bluff." The mandarin chuckled, and his body shook with his suppressed mirth. "Remarkably well planned!" approved Tsan Ti. "Who could have done better? You have a brain of great power, my renowned friend, and your talk gives me much amusement and instruction. Grattan had the empty box and you had the ruby. What then?" Then followed the call at the hotel of the man from the _Iris_, and Matt's agreement to take charge of the yacht's motor on the down-river trip, Matt to return to Catskill on the following morning. The treachery aboard the boat was listened to by the mandarin with flashing eyes. "Grattan is possessed of a demon," declared Tsan Ti. "His wits are as keen as a sword's edge, and he knows how to use them. I do not wonder, estimable friend, that you fell into his power. Even I, had I been in your place, could not have saved the jewel." "What's to be done now, Tsan Ti?" asked Matt anxiously. "Nothing," was the answer. "But--but--the yellow cord!" "It shall not be used by me." Here was a mystery. If Tsan Ti could not bear the Eye of Buddha back to the Canton temple, it was the august decree of the regent that he should perish by the yellow cord. The ruby had been recovered, and lost again, but Tsan Ti had no intention of strangling himself by invitation of his ruler. Failing to understand this point, Matt shifted the subject. "Did you know, Tsan Ti," he queried, "that while you were in New York you had a Chinese spy around with you? A man who was carrying news of everything you did to an agent of Grattan's?" "You refer to Charley Foo, honorable one?" "Yes." "Grattan can plan, my son, and so can the mandarin. This agent of Grattan paid Charley Foo ten silver dollars to betray me, and Charley Foo told me of it, showed the money, and asked what it was I would have him tell this hireling of Grattan's. Charley Foo was of much help to me." Tsan Ti folded his hands complacently over his capacious stomach. "Well, sufferin' bluffs!" murmured McGlory. "Charley Foo was the kind of a dark horse they were playing both ways. He told Grattan's man only what Tsan Ti wanted him to know; then why, in the name of all that's hard to figure out, did Tsan tell Charley to let it be known that the ruby was being sent to Motor Matt?" "It was my wish that Grattan should know about the sending of the ruby," said this most amazing Chinaman. "Then," went on McGlory, "you expected that Grattan would get on Motor Matt's trail and make a dead set to get back the Eye of Buddha." "I thought it most likely, sagacious youth." "Then," averred McGlory warmly, "you can't blame Motor Matt for losing the ruby." "Am I blaming him, inconsiderate one?" returned Tsan Ti. "Have I said one scolding word, or emitted anything but praise? Motor Matt has done excellently well, and I shall engrave his deeds on the tablets of my memory." "But the ruby is gone!" said Matt. "Not so, highly esteemed but most deceived friend. Observe!" With that, Tsan Ti opened his yellow silk blouse and revealed a small bag suspended by a chain from his neck. Opening the bag, he gave Matt and McGlory a swift glimpse of a shining, blood-red jewel. "Behold the Eye of Buddha," smiled the mandarin. "Not Grattan, with all his evil work, has it, but I." This, as might be expected, heaped up the measure of astonishing events and topped off the motor boys' bewilderment. "But the ruby--the Eye of Buddha Grattan took from me----" "That, generous youth," answered the mandarin, dropping the bag on his breast and rearranging his blouse, "was not a ruby, but a base replica of the true gem. It is worth, possibly, five dollars. I secured it from a stonecutter in New York." By degrees the mandarin's crafty performance dawned on the motor boys. They were awed by the scope and audacious success of the design--completely fooling Grattan as it had done. As a specimen of Oriental craft, it was a revelation to Matt and McGlory. CHAPTER XVI. THE MANDARIN WINS. "Listen, honorable friends," said Tsan Ti, "while I talk to you instructively. In the words of the great Confucius, 'the cautious man seldom errs.' When I departed from you, amiable ones, on recovering the Eye of Buddha, I said that I was returning to my country by way of San Francisco. Such was my intention, of the moment, but further reflection dissuaded me. I decided to go to New York and proceed to China by the longer, but perhaps the safer, way. "In the great city I discovered that I was being pursued and spied upon, and a great fear overcame me. Immediately I thought of Motor Matt. Should I visit him with possible dangers, I besought of myself, in order that I might preserve the precious relic from the temple at Honam? I thought of your bravery, never sufficiently to be praised, and I decided to make the risk. The cutter of precious stones was sent for, and I showed my ruby and asked that he make a counterfeit of it that would deceive any but a dealer in jewels. This was done, and quickly. I sent this comparatively valueless replica to you, Motor Matt, and told Charley Foo to let Grattan's man know what I had done. Also, the man was to be informed of my desire that Motor Matt should carry the stone about with him continually. "What would happen? I inquired of myself. Most certainly, reflection made answer. Grattan will be upon the brave youth's track, and he will never rest until he secures the gem. This is as I desired, although I dared not so express myself in my letter which accompanied the false gem. "After the package had left me, my heart failed. I feared I had exposed you to dangers which might cause your undoing. Hence, without lingering further, Sam Wing and I took this train for Catskill, I being of the intention to tell you what I had planned, and to let it be known, through Charley Foo, that the real gem was in my hands and not yours. "And see, I have come too late. Grattan, the wise and unscrupulous, has taken the counterfeit ruby and is pleased to think he has cheated me, and that I shall pass by means of the yellow cord. All is well, and my plans are maturing most successfully. The five hundred gods of good fortune are smiling upon me. While Grattan goes his course, firmly believing he has the Eye of Buddha, I travel mine, knowing he has been justly deceived." There was a little resentment in Matt's heart as he listened to the mandarin's explanation of his crafty ways and means for circumventing Grattan. Tsan Ti had thrown upon Matt the weight of the whole proceeding, and had not taken means to inform him of the true state of affairs. The king of the motor boys, had he understood the nature of the mandarin's scheme, could have worked out his part of it even more successfully than he had done while being kept in ignorance. "You're a keen one, Tsan," grunted McGlory, "but I'm a Piute if I admire the free-and-easy fashion you have of making dupes of your friends." "It is that which has pained me," admitted the mandarin, "and it is my regret which was carrying me speedily to Catskill to tell my widely known friend the exact truth. Fate was quicker in the race than I. Events have come swiftly to pass, and out of them rises Grattan with the false ruby. I have been fortunate, and while he goes to parts unknown, I shall hope to reach China before he discovers his error." "Queer that Grattan, who knows the great ruby so well," said Matt, "could be fooled with a piece of glass of the same shape and size." "And likewise of the exact color," returned Tsan Ti. "The color was most important of all. That Grattan was fooled shows how admirably the cutter of precious stones has done his work." "You're really going to China this time, are you, Tsan Ti?" "Of a certainty," declared the mandarin. "Now that you have been met most wonderfully on this train, I shall not get off at Catskill, but will accompany the cars to Buffalo. From there, without delay, I shall go on to Chicago, from there to Denver, and so to San Francisco, where I will embark on the first ship that will carry me across the Pacific." Tsan Ti leaned over in front of Matt and called out something in Chinese to Sam Wing. Sam Wing lifted his nodding head with a start, and from his blouse produced a small sack of alligator skin, which he handed to his master. The sack was stuffed with banknotes, and from the lot the mandarin extracted three five-hundred-dollar bills. "Will you consider it of an insulting nature if I offer you these?" inquired the mandarin of Matt. "I won't, if he does," chimed in McGlory. "I think I'm entitled to the money, Tsan Ti," said Matt. "The way you Chinamen do business doesn't make much of a hit with me. Your little plot wouldn't have been hurt in the least if you had just mentioned in the letter you sent with that supposed ruby that the gem was false, and that you sent it to me hoping Grattan would get it and keep off your trail. I could have helped you even more in achieving your purpose." "It is to be regretted deeply that I did not," answered the mandarin humbly. "In my own country I would not have given two thoughts to the troubles I caused another, so long as my aim was just and wise; but here, in America, different standards rule, and that I brought dangers upon your head I shall never forget." The door of the coach opened and a brakeman thrust in his head to call out the station of Catskill. "That means us, pard," said McGlory. "Grab your money and let's hike." Matt took the money and slowly placed it in his pocket. "You bear no ill will, worthy one, and friend whose memory will always blossom in the gardens of my recollections?" asked Tsan Ti. "It's all right, Tsan Ti," returned Matt, getting up. "You win, and are off for the Flowery Kingdom with the Eye of Buddha. Grattan loses, and he'll find it out sooner or later. As for Joe and me, we'll call accounts square. Good-by, and good luck to you." He took the mandarin's hand cordially. "May the five hundred gods of good luck smile continually upon you," said Tsan Ti. With that, Motor Matt and McGlory left the coach and dropped off the train. "Back in Catskill!" said the cowboy, "and after being fooled by Bunce, and Grattan, and Tsan Ti!" "We've fooled Grattan twice where he has fooled us once, Joe," returned Matt. "Right you are, pard; and there's plenty of chance for Tsan Ti to run into a snag between here and China." "I'm hoping he makes the trip without any trouble." "I don't know but I hope the same thing, although I get a trifle hot under the collar every time I think of the way we fretted over a piece of colored glass." They stood on the platform until the tail lights of the train had vanished from sight up the track. "The mandarin is getting a good start on the home trail, anyhow," remarked McGlory, as he and Matt turned away to climb the slope that led to their hotel. "He's bound west by train, while Grattan is fooling around, somewhere on the Hudson, with the _Iris_. I wouldn't turn over my hand, after what Tsan Ti told us, to put the kibosh on Grattan, or even Bunce." "Grattan and Bunce have got their deserts," asserted Matt. "They'll be punished enough when they discover that they've had all their trouble and taken so many chances for nothing more than a bogus ruby." "Fine business," chuckled McGlory; "and yet," he added, with a perceptible change in his voice, "there's something about that Philo Grattan that makes a hit with me. Maybe I've got a yellow streak in my make-up, somewhere, and that it's wrong for me to own up to such a notion, but it's the truth." "If Grattan was honest," said Matt, "he'd be a fellow any one could like. But his ideas are all wrong. He can't see where the harm comes in removing a valuable ruby from an idol in a heathen temple, but if he'd step into Tiffany's, in New York, and extract a gem like that from the show case and make off with it, his crime wouldn't be any the less." "A heathen has got property rights," agreed the cowboy, "just the same as you or me--or Grattan, himself. Where do you suppose Grattan, and that choice assortment of tinhorns he has with him on the _Iris_, are going?" "I don't know, pard, and what happens to them now doesn't bother me much. We're rid of them all, and I'm thankful for it. We've had too much of Tsan Ti, as well as of Grattan and Bunce." "That's what you say now, but just let the mandarin write you one of those embroidered letters of his, asking for help, and you'll head in his direction just a-smoking." "Not again, Joe. I know what the Yellow Peril is, now, and I'm going to fight shy of it." "Amen to that, pard, and I hope you stick to it." "I will." "And there's nothing more between us and a high old time in Manhattan?" "Nothing but a stretch of river--or of railroad track, Joe, if you'd rather go by train." "Hooray!" jubilated McGlory. THE END. THE NEXT NUMBER (32) WILL CONTAIN Motor Matt's Double-trouble; OR, THE LAST OF THE HOODOO. The Red Jewel--Another End of the Yarn--Shock Number One--Shocks Two and Three--A Hot Starter--McGlory is Lost, and Found--"Pocketed"--Springing a Coup--Motor Matt's Chase--The Chase Concluded--A Double Capture--Another Surprise--Baiting a Trap--How the Trap was Sprung--Back to the Farm--Conclusion. MOTOR STORIES THRILLING ADVENTURE MOTOR FICTION NEW YORK, September 25, 1909. TERMS TO MOTOR STORIES MAIL SUBSCRIBERS. (_Postage Free._) Single Copies or Back Numbers, 5c. Each. 3 months 65c. 4 months 85c. 6 months $1.25 One year 2.50 2 copies one year 4.00 1 copy two years 4.00 =How to Send Money=--By post-office or express money-order, registered letter, bank check or draft, at our risk. At your own risk if sent by currency, coin, or postage-stamps in ordinary letter. =Receipts=--Receipt of your remittance is acknowledged by proper change of number on your label. If not correct you have not been properly credited, and should let us know at once. ORMOND G. SMITH, } GEORGE C. SMITH, } _Proprietors_. STREET & SMITH, Publishers, 79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York City. JERRY STEBBINS' HOSS TRADE. At a recent interview with one Jeremiah Stebbins, he freed his mind in the following choice language: "Everybody I've saw lately has ben a-winking and a-smirking, and a-laughing, and a-saying, 'How de dew, Jerry? how's the hoss trade?' and sich like, and I've got tired on't; and I'm a going to tell the hull story to you newspaper fellers, and let you print it and done with it. "You see, the way on't was this. I live up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and once in a while I takes a trip down to Philadelphia to see the sights, do some dickering, buy some store things, and so on. "I've al'ays considered myself pooty cute, and have gi'n lots o' advice to them that's around me, telling 'em about the city, and its big shows, and its cheating scamps, and what to do when they goes there, and how not to get took in, and all sich; and I 'spect it's jest because I've done all this ere that the laugh comes in agin me pooty rough-like. "You see there's a feller living right nigh me, named Jim Smithers, who's been down to Philadelphia four times, and every time so'thing's happened to him in the way o' getting fooled by some o' them confounded scamps what don't 'pear to do nothing for a living but lay around, like nasty spiders, watching for flies, to ketch some o' us country chaps by some dirty trick or other, and git hold o' some o' our hard-earned dollars to loaf around on. I ain't afeared to speak my mind about 'em, and I don't keer a goll darn if you print it, nuther, and let 'em know that I think they're just about as mean as mean kin be. "Waal, about Jim Smithers. He's pooty green yit; but the first time he went down to the big city he was as raw as a new cabbage, and he got took in fifteen dollars' worth on what you newspaper fellers calls the drap game. "In course you know all about that ere. A feller comes up behind the country chap, and, all unbeknown to him, drops a pocketbook, picks it up, and tells him it's hisn. But it ain't, you know, and the country feller says so. Then the city scamp opens it a lettle, and it 'pears to be stuffed full o' bank bills; and he says it's a pity that some honest man has got to lose it, 'cause he hisself's a stranger in town, and is jest a-going out ag'in, and he can't stop to advertise it, and git the big reward that's sartin to be offered for it; but if the country feller's a mind to take it, give him fifteen or twenty dollars or so, he'll let him have his chance, and so on. "Waal, Jim Smithers was ketched in this way, and he gin the other feller fifteen dollars--nigh all the money he had--and when he went to put so'thing into the _Public Ledger_ about it, and handed over one o' the bills to pay for 't, the grinning clerk told him as how he'd ben 'sold,' and the money wa'n't wo'th as much as white paper. Wa'n't Jim mad, then? and didn't us fellers plague him peskily about it arter he got home? "Waal, the next time Jim went to the city he got ketched in some keerd trick, and lost a twenty-dollar bill afore he knowed it. The third time he spent five dollars, a-buying prize packages that didn't have no prizes in 'em 'cept brass rings; and the last time some scamp ketched him ag'in on a hoss affair. "'Jim Smithers,' says I, arter he'd told me all about it, 'if I's you I wouldn't go down to Philadelphia ag'in alone--I swon I wouldn't. Jest as like as not some critter, a-running loose in the streets, will take you fer a green pumpkin, and eat you all right up, so's you won't never git back to your mar any more,' says I. "'Oh, you think your darn smart, Jerry Stebbins, don't ye?' says Jim back ag'in. 'Jest you look out that you don't git ketched some day your own self.' "'They've all tried me, and found me too smart for 'em,' says I. "'We'll see in the end,' says Jim. "'Bout a week or so arter that, I went down ag'in to Philadelphia. I had some arrants to do for some o' my neighbors; and I'd a notion to tend a auction sale of hosses, and if I could see any going right cheap, I thought mebbe I might buy one on a spec--for, though I says it myself, I'm pooty cute in a hoss trade, and have made a good many dollars afore now in fatting up some old critter and then swapping him off and gitting boot. "Waal, I went to town, and, arter gitting through with my other business, I started right over to the bazaar, where they sells hosses--for I'd been there afore and knowed exactly where it was. "Jest as I was a-going in, I met a dressy-looking chap a-coming out; and he says to me, says he: "'Mister, kin you tell me where I kin buy a right good hoss pooty cheap?' "'I couldn't, less it's in here,' says I 'for that's jest what I wants to do myself.' "'Waal, I shan't buy in this here cheating place,' says he, 'for I done that once afore, and paid a hundred dollars for a critter that I arterward had to sell for thirty-five; and right glad I was to git that much, and only lose sixty-five on the trade. If I's you I wouldn't risk no money in here.' "'I knows a hoss when I sees him,' says I, pooty proud, feeling my oats, 'and if anybody makes anything off o' Jerry Stebbins in a hoss trade, I hope they'll let me know.' "'S'pose you could pick out a good nice critter for me, Mr. Stebbins, and not get cheated in the price?' says he. "'I s'pose I could if I'd try,' says I. "'And would five dollars make you try?' says he. "'I guess it would,' says I. "'Wal, then,' says he, 'I'll give you a five-dollar bill to do it,' says he. "He rammed his hand into his pocket to git the money; but afore he'd drawed it out, a slick-looking feller comes riding up on hossback, and says to my chap, says he: "'Do you know anybody what wants to buy a right good hoss dirt cheap?' "'I dew,' says my man. "'How high be you willing to go?' says the hossback chap. "'I don't keer a darn, so's the critter's wo'th the money,' says t'other, and he gin me a sly wink. "'Then I'll take you to a place where I know you'll be suited,' says the hossback chap. "'Fur from here?' axes t'other. "'Not more'n a mile at the outside,' says him on the hoss. "'Will you jest go along, 'arn the five, and see that I ain't cheated?' says the foot feller to me, in a tone so low that t'other couldn't hear. "I said I would; and then my man axed the man on the hoss for his keerd, which he gin him and rid away. "While we was a-going to the place, my feller told me that his name was John Jenkins; that he'd got as much money as he keerd about having, and if he could only git a hoss to suit him, and not pay more for't than 'twas wo'th, he'd be mighty pleased. "''Tain't 'cause I ker a darn for the money, Mr. Stebbins,' says he to me, confiding-like; 'but it's 'cause I knows as how all these racehoss-jockey fellers takes a pride in gitting the best of everybody they deals with, and I hates to be beat in that are way. Now I sees by your eyes, Mr. Stebbins, that you ain't a chap to be took in in a hoss trade, and I wants you to use 'em for me; and if things comes out all right, I won't stop to put another ten or twenty a-top of the five, you know.' "'I'll do my best, Mr. Jenkins,' says I; 'and I guess you'll find my best right up to the handle.' "When we got to the place we seen a stable, in a little, back, dirty street, and in it was two men and three hosses. "Two of these 'ere hosses wan't o' no great account, but t'other one was a pooty slick smart-looking critter. "'How much for this 'ere one?' says Mr. Jenkins, putting his hand onto the beast. "Waal, really,' says the dealer, 'we don't keer about selling that are critter.' "'I was recommended to come here for a place where I could buy a good hoss cheap,' says Mr. Jenkins. "'We really hain't got nothing to sell 'cept the other two critters,' says the jockey. 'We'll sell you them cheap.' "'I don't want 'em,' says Jenkins, 'but only this 'ere one. Hey, Stebbins! what d'you say?' he says, speaking to me. "'Waal, the critter you've picked out is pooty likely,' says I, 'but I don't think much of t'others.' "He called me out one side, and axed me what the best hoss was really wo'th. "'A good hundred and twenty-five,' says I. "'How about a hundred and fifty?' says he. "'I wouldn't go a mite over a hundred and forty,' says I. "'I'll have him, though, at some price, for I've sot my mind on't,' says he, in a determined way. "Then he went back to the jockey, and offered him a hundred dollars for that critter. "The jockey chap laughed right in his face at fust, and then he 'peared to get mad, and said, says he: "'You're either a dealer yourself, or else you wants to insult me; and no matter which it are, I ain't a-going to trade with you at no price.' "'I'll give you a hundred and twenty-five,' says Jenkins. "'Pshaw!' says jockey. "'A hundred and fifty,' says Jenkins. "'No,' says t'other. "'A hundred and seventy-five, then.' "'No.' "'I'll give you two hundred.' "'You can't buy him at no price,' says the hoss dealer, looking awful mad. "'Then let us go to a more decenter place, Mr. Stebbins,' says Jenkins to me. "We started off together, and as soon as we'd got out of sight of the stable, Jenkins says to me, says he: "'Friend Stebbins, I wants that are hoss right bad, 'cause he's jest the critter to suit me. I wonder if you couldn't buy him for me?' "'I don't 'spect I could,' says I, 'for the feller that owns him has got his Dutch up, and won't sell him to neither of us.' "'Would you mind going back by yourself and trying?' says he. "'To obleege you I'll dew it,' says I. 'But the hoss ain't wo'th what you offered, and nothink like it.' "'I don't keer for that, Mr. Stebbins,' says he; 'it a'nt making a spec' I'm arter; I wants the hoss for hisself, 'cause I've sot my mind on't, and money ain't no object with me. I'll tell ye what I'll dew. If you'll buy that are hoss and fetch him round to my stable, I'll jest plank down two hundred and fifty dollars cash for him, and you may make what profit you kin. I don't keer what you give for him, but I'll give you two hundred and fifty dollars jest the minute he reaches my stable, and I'll go right down there now and wait for you.' "I told him I'd try my luck, and he writ down the direction for me to come to. "Waal, I went back and found the two hoss fellers talking with the chap that had fust told us about the place. "The minute this chap seen me, he come for'ard and said he was right down sorry that his pardners had got mad at my friend--and if he'd been there it wouldn't have turned out so--though it was a insult for him to offer only a hundred dollars for a hoss like that are, which nobody could find his match nowhere for a cent less than three hundred dollars in gold. "'Tell you what 'tis, mister,' he says, 'I know your friend, John Jenkins--though he don't recollect me--and I know he's mighty rich, and a right down good customer where he likes to deal, and I hate like fury that he went away disapp'inted. Now if you'll find him, and fetch him back, and git him to trade with us, I'll give you a five-dollar bill.' "I thought I'd got a good chance for a spec, so I says, says I: "'I don't think I could git him back; but if you folks here wants to sell that are hoss, and will take what he's wo'th, I don't mind buying him for my own self.' "'You kin have him for two hundred and twenty-five dollars, and not a cent short,' says he. "'That's more'n I'd give my old daddy for him,' says I. "Then we began to talk, and palaver, and hile, and at last I got him down to two hundred and ten, and him to give in a old saddle and bridle, so's I could ride him off. "Waal, I paid down the money, and then rode off for Jenkins' stable feeling pooty proud and happy that I'd made a clean forty dollars by my barg'in. "But, somehow or other, I couldn't find Jenkins' stable, nor Jenkins nuther, and I hain't found 'em since. "To git right down to the gist on't, I'd been awfully fooled, and tricked into paying two hundred and ten dollars for a hoss that I didn't want myself, and that I's glad to git rid on, arterwards for one hundred and five, jest one-half the critter cost me. "Waal, mister, that's the story that all the folks round my way is a-grinning and a-snickering over, and I s'pose I've got to grin and bear it till the hull darned thing dies out and be darned to it. "It's l'arned me for one thing, that them slick-looking, slick-talking city fellers kin lie and cheat like thunder; and for another thing, that it don't dew for a country chap to butt his brains ag'in them city scamps and al'ays 'spect to git the best on't." THE PHANTOM ENGINEER. "Whenever I tell the story," said Alf Whitney, throwing away his half-smoked cigar, and putting his long legs on the top of the table, in a way some men have when a story is to be forthcoming, "everybody winks at everybody else, as much as to say, 'Alf had taken too much whisky that time,' or 'Alf was asleep and dreamed the whole thing.' But I tell you, comrades, though you are at liberty to disbelieve what I tell you, it is true; and that's all I know about it. I'm no long-headed metaphysician to reason it all out--I only know what happened, and it's that I'm going to tell." We gathered closer around the red-hot stove in the bar-room of the Anderson House, for it was a biting cold night, and the snow was too much for our train, destitute as we were of a snowplow, and we had given up the attempt to push through to C---- that night, and retaken ourselves to the hospitalities of the Arlington. It had often been whispered among the railway employees that Alf Whitney had once had something strange happen to him. He was a young man yet, though the oldest and most skillful engineer on the road--noted for his skill and judgment, no less than for his sturdy endurance and his bravery, which nothing ever overcame. I suppose you people who ride in Pullman cars, rocked in velvet cushions, and look at the scenery rushing past, through plate glass windows, heavy with gilt and rosewood mouldings, never think much of the man upon whom your safety depends--the man who, with his hand upon the lever which controls the monster that is bearing you along, stands tireless at his post, through cold and heat, through storm and sunshine, smutty, grimy with smoke, greasy and weather-hardened, but oftentimes the bravest and noblest man among you all. But this is a digression. We all hastened to assure Alf that we were ready to believe whatever he might say; and he, smiling a little, as if he doubted the sincerity of our assurances, began his story. I give it in his own words, which are much better than mine would be. "Six years ago, one dark stormy night, Jack Horton lost his life in a smash-up at Rowley's Bend. Jack was an engineer, and as fine a fellow as ever trod the ground. He was handsome, too, and notwithstanding his dirty occupation, a great favorite with the ladies; for when he was off the machine long enough to get the oil and cinders washed off, and his other clothes on, he was the best-looking, as well as the best-mannered, young man anywhere in this vicinity. "He was engaged to marry Esther Clay; and Esther was a beauty without anything by way of art to help her--a sound-looking, wholesome, healthy young girl--none of your die-away kind, fainting at the sight of a spider, and going into tantrums over a cow a mile off. She was just the kind of woman I could worship, and not put myself out any to do it, either!" "Why didn't you go for her after Jack was dead?" asked Tom Barnard carelessly. "Hush! she is dead!" said Alf, in a subdued voice; and the unwonted pallor that settled round his mouth gave me a slight clue to the reason he had never married. And afterward I knew that Esther Clay, dead, and pledged through all eternity to another, was more to him than any living woman! After a little he went on. "When Jack was killed, it was the breaking of an axle that caused the mischief; and, of course, this axle broke on just the worst part of the road. They always do. You all know Rowley's Bend? You all know just how high the grade is there, and just how rough and jagged the rocks lie all along the embankment, clear down to the river. No need to dwell on this. The train pitched down into the dark, head first, and Jack, true to his duty, never stirred from his post. It was a good while before we could get to him, the broken timbers of the piled-up cars so completely caged him in. She came there before we had taken his body out, and I shall never forget how she went down into the ruins where even the bravest of us hardly dared to venture, so insecure was the footing, and worked with her white, slender hands, until the blood ran from their wounds. She never minded it a particle, but worked on, with a face as pale and rigid as marble. But I am making a long story, and dwelling too much on details. Jack was dead when they found him, and she lived just a month afterward. And, though everybody lamented at her funeral, and said it was 'so sad,' I do not think it was sad, for when two people love each other, truly and loyally, and one of them dies, it seems to me Heaven's special mercy if the other is suffered to go along. "Jack and I had always been great friends; and once when we were talking about the supernatural nonsense that so many believe in, Jack said to me laughingly: "'If I die first, I'll keep a watch over you, old fellow; and when I see you running into danger, I'll whistle the brakes down. Now remember!' After he died these careless words of his kept coming back to me, and try as I would not to remember them, the more they were present to my mind. "It was nearly two years after Jack's death that I was taking the ten-fifty accommodation out to L----. It was a dark, drizzly night, and the headlight on the front of the engine pierced but a short distance into the gloom and fog ahead of us. I was running carefully, as I always run on such nights, and had nearly reached Carney's Ford when I saw something on the track before us. I whistled to down brakes, and reversed the lever. The train slackened, and I could see distinctly ahead of us the tall figure of a man. But we got no nearer to him, for though he seemed to be only walking, his speed was fully equal to ours. We should never overtake him. A cold shiver ran through me as I noted this fact. No mortal man could walk like that. "'Richards,' said I to the fireman, who, ghastly and trembling with fear, was gazing at the strange apparition, 'it must be Old Nick himself, with the seven-league boots on!' "As I spoke, the figure turned toward us, and then I saw that in his hand he carried a red lantern, the well-known signal of danger. He lifted it, swung it slowly round his head once, and, as he did so, the blood-red light fell full on his face--the face of Jack Horton. For a moment he stood motionless, then he was enveloped in a pale, azure flame, which died out instantly, and left--nothing! "All this, which it has taken me so long to describe, took place in an instant of time, and by the time the phantom had vanished Richards and I had managed to stop the train. We got off and went ahead. The red lantern had not signaled 'danger' for nothing. A heavy stick of timber was spiked across the track, and, had we gone on at full speed, it would have sent us to swift destruction. "The company ferreted out the rascal who had done this vile thing, and he is serving out a long term in the State prison now. I have seen him and talked with him, and he swore to me, with a voice that trembled even then with horror, that after he had spiked down the timber and had hidden in some bushes near by to watch the result, he had seen a tall man, with a red lantern in his hand, start up in front of the engine and walk, as nothing human could walk, until he reached the very spot where the danger lay. "'And then,' said the miscreant, 'he changed into a blue flame, and vanished, and I knew that my plan was upset, and that for once Satan had gone back on them as he'd set to work.'" "Well," said Tom Barnard, "what else?" "That is all," said Alf, lighting another cigar. "But what was the fellow's object in seeking to disable the train?" "Plunder. He had ascertained that a carrying company would have a large sum of money on board that night, and he was not averse to turning an honest penny." "But the phantom--how do you explain it?" persisted Tom. "I don't explain it," said Alf quietly. LATEST ISSUES BRAVE AND BOLD WEEKLY All kinds of stories that boys like. The biggest and best nickel's worth ever offered. =High art colored covers. Thirty-two big pages. Price, 5 cents.= 342--Through the Earth; or, Jack Nelson's Invention. By Fred Thorpe. 343--The Boy Chief; or, Comrades of Camp and Trail. By John De Morgan. 344--Smart Alec; or, Bound to Get There. By Weldon J. Cobb. 345--Climbing Up; or, The Meanest Boy Alive. By Harrie Irving Hancock. 346--Comrades Three; or, With Gordon Keith in the South Seas. By Lawrence White, Jr. 347--A Young Snake-charmer; or, The Fortunes of Dick Erway. By Fred Thorpe. 348--Checked Through to Mars; or, Adventures in Other Worlds. By Weldon J. Cobb. 349--Fighting the Cowards; or, Among the Georgia Moonshiners. By Harrie Irving Hancock. 350--The Mud River Boys; or, The Fight for Penlow's Mill. By John L. Douglas. 351--Grit and Wit; or, Two of a Kind. By Fred Thorpe. 352--Right on Top; or, Yankee to the Backbone. By Cornelius Shea. 353--A Clue from Nowhere; or, On a Phantom Trail. By Harrie Irving Hancock. 354--Never Give Up; or, Harry Holton's Resolve. By John L. Douglas. 355--Comrades Under Castro; or, Young Engineers in Venezuela. By Victor St. Clair. MOTOR STORIES The latest and best five-cent weekly. We won't say how interesting it is. See for yourself. =High art colored covers. Thirty-two big pages. Price, 5 cents.= 20--Motor Matt Makes Good; or, Another Victory for the Motor Boys. 21--Motor Matt's Launch; or, A Friend in Need. 22--Motor Matt's Enemies; or, A Struggle for the Right. 23--Motor Matt's Prize; or, The Pluck That Wins. 24--Motor Matt on the Wing; or, Flying for Fame and Fortune. 25--Motor Matt's Reverse; or, Caught in a Losing Game. 26--Motor Matt's "Make or Break"; or, Advancing the Spark of Friendship. 27--Motor Matt's Engagement; or, On the Road With a Show. 28--Motor Matt's "Short Circuit"; or, The Mahout's Vow. 29--Motor Matt's Make-up; or, Playing a New Rôle. 30--Motor Matt's Mandarin; or, Turning a Trick for Tsan Ti. 31--Motor Matt's Mariner; or, Filling the Bill for Bunce. 32--Motor Matt's Double-trouble; or, The Last of the Hoodoo. 33--Motor Matt's Mission; or, The Taxicab Tangle. TIP TOP WEEKLY The most popular publication for boys. The adventures of Frank and Dick Merriwell can be had only in this weekly. =High art colored covers. Thirty-two pages. Price, 5 cents.= 691--Dick Merriwell's Dandies; or, A Surprise for the Cowboy Nine. 692--Dick Merriwell's "Skyscooter"; or, Professor Pagan and the "Princess." 693--Dick Merriwell in the Elk Mountains; or, The Search for "Dead Injun" Mine. 694--Dick Merriwell in Utah; or, The Road to "Promised Land." 695--Dick Merriwell's Bluff; or, The Boy Who Ran Away. 696--Dick Merriwell in the Saddle; or, The Bunch from the Bar--Z. 697--Dick Merriwell's Ranch Friends; or, Sport on the Range. 698--Frank Merriwell at Phantom Lake; or, The Mystery of the Mad Doctor. 699--Frank Merriwell's Hold-back; or, The Boys of Bristol. 700--Frank Merriwell's Lively Lads; or, The Rival Campers. 701--Frank Merriwell as Instructor; or, The Skill of the Wizard. 702--Dick Merriwell's Cayuse; or, The Star of the Big Range. 703--Dick Merriwell's Quirt; or, The Sting of the Lash. 704--Dick Merriwell's Freshman Friend; or, A Question of Manhood. _For sale by all newsdealers, or will be sent to any address on receipt of price, 5 cents per copy, in money or postage stamps, by_ STREET & SMITH, Publishers, 79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York =IF YOU WANT ANY BACK NUMBERS= of our Weeklies and cannot procure them from your newsdealer, they can be obtained from this office direct. Fill out the following Order Blank and send it to us with the price of the Weeklies you want and we will send them to you by return mail. =POSTAGE STAMPS TAKEN THE SAME AS MONEY.= ________________________ _190_ _STREET & SMITH, 79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York City._ _Dear Sirs: Enclosed please find_ ___________________________ _cents for which send me_: TIP TOP WEEKLY, Nos. ________________________________ NICK CARTER WEEKLY, " ________________________________ DIAMOND DICK WEEKLY, " ________________________________ BUFFALO BILL STORIES, " ________________________________ BRAVE AND BOLD WEEKLY, " ________________________________ MOTOR STORIES, " ________________________________ _Name_ ________________ _Street_ ________________ _City_ ________________ _State_ ________________ A GREAT SUCCESS!! MOTOR STORIES Every boy who reads one of the splendid adventures of Motor Matt, which are making their appearance in this weekly, is at once surprised and delighted. Surprised at the generous quantity of reading matter that we are giving for five cents; delighted with the fascinating interest of the stories, second only to those published in the Tip Top Weekly. Matt has positive mechanical genius, and while his adventures are unusual, they are, however, drawn so true to life that the reader can clearly see how it is possible for the ordinary boy to experience them. _HERE ARE THE TITLES NOW READY AND THOSE TO BE PUBLISHED_: 1--Motor Matt; or, The King of the Wheel. 2--Motor Matt's Daring; or, True to His Friends. 3--Motor Matt's Century Run; or, The Governor's Courier. 4--Motor Matt's Race; or, The Last Flight of the "Comet." 5--Motor Matt's Mystery; or, Foiling a Secret Plot. 6--Motor Matt's Red Flier; or, On the High Gear. 7--Motor Matt's Clue; or, The Phantom Auto. 8--Motor Matt's Triumph; or, Three Speeds Forward. 9--Motor Matt's Air Ship; or, The Rival Inventors. 10--Motor Matt's Hard Luck; or, The Balloon House Plot. 11--Motor Matt's Daring Rescue; or, The Strange Case of Helen Brady. 12--Motor Matt's Peril; or, Cast Away in the Bahamas. 13--Motor Matt's Queer Find; or, The Secret of the Iron Chest. 14--Motor Matt's Promise; or, The Wreck of the "Hawk." 15--Motor Matt's Submarine; or, The Strange Cruise of the "Grampus." 16--Motor Matt's Quest; or, Three Chums in Strange Waters. 17--Motor Matt's Close Call; or, The Snare of Don Carlos. 18--Motor Matt in Brazil; or, Under the Amazon. 19--Motor Matt's Defiance; or, Around the Horn. 20--Motor Matt Makes Good; or, Another Victory for the Motor Boys. 21--Motor Matt's Launch; or, A Friend in Need. 22--Motor Matt's Enemies; or, A Struggle for the Right. 23--Motor Matt's Prize; or, The Pluck that Wins. 24--Motor Matt on the Wing; or, Flying for Fame and Fortune. 25--Motor Matt's Reverse; or, Caught in a Losing Game. 26--Motor Matt's "Make or Break"; or, Advancing the Spark of Friendship. 27--Motor Matt's Engagement; or, On the Road With a Show. 28--Motor Matt's "Short Circuit"; or, The Mahout's Vow. To be Published on September 6th. 29--Motor Matt's Make-up; or, Playing a New Role. To be Published on September 13th. 30--Motor Matt's Mandarin; or, Turning a Trick for Tsan Ti. To be Published on September 20th. 31--Motor Matt's Mariner; or, Filling the Bill for Bunce. To be Published on September 27th. 32--Motor Matt's Double-trouble; or, The Last of the Hoodoo. PRICE, FIVE CENTS At all newsdealers, or sent, postpaid, by the publishers upon receipt of the price. STREET & SMITH, _Publishers_, NEW YORK Transcriber's Notes: Added table of contents. Italics are represented with _underscores_, bold with =equal signs=. Page 5, added missing quote before "Tsan Ti expressly stipulates." Page 9, corrected "qundary" to "quandary." Page 11, changed "thrown" to "throw" in "throw the speeder off the rails." Page 12, added missing apostrophe to "if ye ain't?" Page 13, changed "anl" to "and" in "and he's got shy." Changed "or" to "of" in "vicinity of the sharp curve." Page 14, changed "declarel" to "declared" after "I don't believe it." Changed "her" to "here" in "a dozen miles from here." Page 15, corrected double quote to single quote before "Eye of Buddha." Page 16, corrected double "man" in "third man took it." Page 27, corrected "countefeit" to "counterfeit" ("asked that he make a counterfeit"). Page 29, retained error ("your darn smart") from original on assumption it is intended as part of dialect. Page 30, corrected "pickel" to "picked" ("critter you've picked"). 
53533	----	courtesy of the Digital Library@Villanova University (http://digital.library.villanova.edu/)) MOTOR STORIES THRILLING ADVENTURE MOTOR FICTION NO. 32 OCT. 2, 1909 FIVE CENTS MOTOR MATT'S DOUBLE-TROUBLE OR THE LAST OF THE HOODOO _BY THE AUTHOR OF "MOTOR MATT"_ _STREET & SMITH PUBLISHERS NEW YORK_ [Illustration: _"Stop!" shouted Motor Matt laying back on the end of the rope_] MOTOR STORIES THRILLING ADVENTURE MOTOR FICTION _Issued Weekly. By subscription $2.50 per year. Copyright, 1909, by_ STREET & SMITH, _79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York, N. Y._ =No. 32.= NEW YORK, October 2, 1909. =Price Five Cents.= Motor Matt's Double Trouble OR, THE LAST OF THE HOODOO. By the author of "MOTOR MATT." CONTENTS CHAPTER I. THE RED JEWEL. CHAPTER II. ANOTHER END OF THE YARN. CHAPTER III. SHOCK NUMBER ONE. CHAPTER IV. SHOCKS TWO AND THREE. CHAPTER V. A HOT STARTER. CHAPTER VI. M'GLORY IS LOST--AND FOUND. CHAPTER VII. "POCKETED." CHAPTER VIII. SPRINGING A "COUP." CHAPTER IX. MOTOR MATT'S CHASE. CHAPTER X. THE CHASE CONCLUDED. CHAPTER XI. A DOUBLE CAPTURE. CHAPTER XII. ANOTHER SURPRISE. CHAPTER XIII. BAITING A TRAP. CHAPTER XIV. HOW THE TRAP WAS SPRUNG. CHAPTER XV. BACK TO THE FARM. CHAPTER XVI. CONCLUSION. HUDSON AND THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE. THE DEATH BITE. MIGRATION OF RATS. SOME GREAT CATASTROPHES. CHARACTERS THAT APPEAR IN THIS STORY. =Matt King=, otherwise Motor Matt. =Joe McGlory=, a young cowboy who proves himself a lad of worth and character, and whose eccentricities are all on the humorous side. A good chum to tie to--a point Motor Matt is quick to perceive. =Tsan Ti=, Mandarin of the Red Button, who continues to fall into tragic difficulties, and to send in "four-eleven" alarms for the assistance of Motor Matt. =Sam Wing=, San Francisco bazaar-man, originally from Canton, and temporarily in the employ of Tsan Ti. By following his evil thoughts he causes much trouble for the mandarin, and, incidentally, for the motor boys. =Philo Grattan=, a rogue of splendid abilities, who aims to steal a fortune and ends in being brought to book for the theft of a motor car. =Pardo=, a pal of Grattan. =Neb Hogan=, a colored brother whose mule, stolen by Sam Wing, plays a part of considerable importance. Neb himself engineers a surprise at the end of the story, and goes his way so overwhelmed with good luck that he is unable to credit the evidence of his senses. =Banks and Gridley=, officers of the law who are searching for the stolen blue motor. =Boggs=, a farmer who comes to the aid of Motor Matt with energy and courage. =Bunce=, a sailor with two good eyes who, for some object of his own, wears a green patch and prefers to have the public believe he is one-eyed. A pal of Grattan, who is caught in the same net that entangles the rest of the ruby thieves. CHAPTER I. THE RED JEWEL. Craft and greed showed in the eyes of the hatchet-faced Chinaman. He seemed to have been in deep slumber in the car seat, but the drowsiness was feigned. The train was not five minutes out of the town of Catskill before he had roused himself, wary and wide-awake, and looked across the aisle. His look and manner gave evidence that he was meditating some crime. It was in the small hours of the morning, and the passenger train was rattling and bumping through the heavy gloom. The lights in the coach had been turned low, and all the passengers, with the exception of the thin-visaged Celestial, were sprawling in their uncomfortable seats, snoring or breathing heavily. Across the aisle from this criminally inclined native of the Flowery Kingdom was another who likewise hailed from the land of pagodas and mystery; and this other, it could be seen at a glance, was a person of some consequence. He was fat, and under the average height. Drawn down over his shaven head was a black silk cap, with a gleaming red button sewn in the centre of the flat crown. From under the edge of the cap dropped a queue of silken texture, thick, and so long that it crossed the Chinaman's shoulder and lay in one or two coils across his fat knees. Yellow is the royal color in China, and it is to be noted that this Celestial's blouse was of yellow, and his wide trousers, and his stockings--all yellow and of the finest Canton silk. His sandals were black and richly embroidered. From the button and the costume, one at all informed of fashions as followed in the country of Confucius might have guessed that this stout person was a mandarin. And that guess would have been entirely correct. To go further and reveal facts which will presently become the reader's in the logical unfolding of this chronicle, the mandarin was none other than Tsan Ti, discredited guardian of the Honam joss house, situated on an island suburb of the city of Canton. He of the slant, lawless gleaming eyes was Sam Wing, the mandarin's trusted and treacherous servant. A Chinaman, like his Caucasian brother, is not always proof against temptation when the ugly opportunity presents itself at the right time and in the right way. Sam Wing believed he had come face to face with such an opportunity, and he was determined to make the most of it. Sam Wing was a resident of San Francisco. He owned a fairly prosperous bazaar, and, once every year, turned his profits into Mexican dollars and forwarded the silver to an uncle in Canton for investment in the land of his birth. Some day Sam Wing cherished the dream of returning to Canton and living like a grandee. But wealth came slowly. Now, there in that foreign devil's choo-choo car such a chance offered to secure unheard-of riches that Sam Wing's loyalty to the mandarin, no less than his heathen ideas of integrity, were brushed away with astounding suddenness. Tsan Ti slept. His round head was wabbling on his short neck--rolling and swaying grotesquely with every lurch of the train. The red button of the mandarin's cap caught the dim rays of the overhead lamps and threw crimson gleams into the eyes of Sam Wing. This flashing button reminded Sam Wing of the red jewel, worth a king's ransom, which the mandarin was personally conveying to San Francisco, en route to China and the city of Canton. Already Sam Wing was intrusted with the mandarin's money bag--an alligator-skin pouch containing many oblong pieces of green paper marked with figures of large denomination. The money was good, what there was of it, but that was not enough to pay for theft and flight. Sam Wing's long, talon-like fingers itched to lay hold of the red jewel. With a swift, reassuring look at the passengers in the car, Sam Wing caught at the back of the seat in front and lifted himself erect. He was not a handsome Chinaman, by any means, and he appeared particularly repulsive just at that moment. Hanging to the seat, he steadied himself as he stepped lightly across the aisle. Another moment and he was at the mandarin's side, looking down on him. Tsan Ti, in his dreams, was again in Canton. Striding through the great chamber of the Honam joss house, he was superintending the return of the red jewel to the forehead of the twenty-foot idol, whence it had been stolen. While the mandarin dreamed, Sam Wing bent down over him and, with cautious fingers, unfastened the loop of silk cord that held together the front of the yellow blouse. The rich garment fell open, revealing a small bag hanging from the mandarin's throat by a chain. Swiftly, silently, and with hardly a twitch of the little bag, two of Sam Wing's slim, long-nailed fingers were inserted, and presently drew forth a resplendent gem, large as a small hen's egg. A gasping breath escaped Sam Wing's lips. For a fraction of an instant he hesitated. What if his ancestors were regarding him, looking out of the vastness of the life to come with stern disapproval? A Chinaman worships his ancestors, and the shades of the ancient ones of his blood have a great deal to do with the regulating of his life. What were Sam Wing's forefathers thinking of this act of vile treachery? The thief ground his teeth and, with trembling hands, stowed the red jewel in the breast of his blouse. He started toward the rear door of the car--and hesitated again. Sam Wing was a Buddhist, as the Chinese understand Buddhism, wrapping it up in their own mystic traditions. This red jewel had originally been stolen from a great idol of Buddha. In short, the jewel had been the idol's eye, and the idol, sightless in the Honam joss house, was believed to be in vengeful mood because of the missing optic. The idol had marshalled all the ten thousand demons of misfortune and had let them loose upon all who had anything to do with the pilfering of the sacred jewel. Who was Sam Wing that he should defy these ten thousand demons of misfortune? How could he, a miserable bazaar man, fight the demons? But his skin tingled from the touch of the red jewel against his breast. He would dare all for the vast wealth which might be his in case he could "get away with the goods." Closing his eyes to honor, to the ten thousand demons, to every article of his heathen faith, he bolted for the rear of the car. Opening the door, he let himself out on the rear platform. A lurch of the car caused the door to slam behind him. Meanwhile Tsan Ti had continued his delightful dreaming. His subconscious mind was watching the priests as they worked with the red jewel, replacing it in the idol's forehead. The hideous face of the graven image seemed to glow with satisfaction because of the recovery of the eye. The priest, at the top of the ladder, fumbled suddenly with his hands. The red jewel dropped downward, with a crimson flash, struck the tiles of the floor, and rolled away, and away, until it vanished. A yell of consternation burst from the mandarin's lips. He leaped forward to secure the red jewel--and came to himself with his head aching from a sharp blow against the seat back in front. He straightened up, and the alarm died out of his face. After all, it was only a dream! "Say!" cried a man in the seat ahead, turning an angry look at Tsan Ti. "What you yellin' for? Can't a heathen like you let a Christian sleep? Huh?" "A million pardons, most estimable sir," answered Tsan Ti humbly. "I had a dream, a bad dream." "Too much bird's-nest soup an' too many sharks' fins for supper, I guess," scowled the man, rearranging himself for slumber. "Pah!" Tsan Ti peered across the aisle. The seat occupied by his servant, Sam Wing, was vacant. Sam Wing, the mandarin thought, must have become thirsty and gone for a drink. The mandarin heaved a choppy sigh of relief. How real a dream sometimes is! Now, if he---- His hand wandered instinctively to the breast of his blouse, and he felt for the little lump contained in the bag suspended from his throat. He could not feel it. Pulling himself together sharply Tsan Ti used both hands in his groping examination. Then he caught his breath and sat as though dazed. A slow horror ran through his body. His blood seemed congealing about his heart, and his yellow face grew hueless. The red jewel was gone! The front of his blouse was open! Then, after his blunted wits had recovered their wonted sharpness, Tsan Ti leaped for the aisle with another yell. "Say," cried the man in the forward seat, lifting himself wrathfully, "I'll have the brakeman kick you off the train if you don't hush! By jing!" The mandarin began running up and down the aisle of the car, wringing his fat hands and yelling for Sam Wing. He said other things, too, but it was all in his heathen gibberish and could not be comprehended. By then every person in the car was awake. "Crazy chink!" shouted the man who had spoken before. "He's gone dotty! Look out for him!" At that moment the train lumbered to a halt and the lights of a station shone through the car windows. The brakeman jammed open the door and shouted a name. "Motor Matt!" wailed Tsan Ti. "Estimable friend, come to my wretched assistance!" "Here, brakeman!" cried the wrathful passenger who had already aired his views, "take this slant-eyed lunatic by the collar of his kimono and give him a hi'st into the right of way. Chinks ought to be carried in cattle cars, anyhow." Tsan Ti, however, did not wait to be "hoisted into the right of way." With a final yell, he flung himself along the aisle and out the rear door, nearly overturning the astounded brakeman. Once on the station platform, he made a bee line for the waiting room and the telegraph office. There was but one person in all America in whom the mandarin had any confidence, but one person to whom he would appeal. This was the king of the motor boys, who, at that moment, was in the town of Catskill. CHAPTER II. ANOTHER END OF THE YARN. On the same night this Oriental treachery manifested itself aboard the train bound north through the Catskills, a power yacht dropped anchor below the town of Catskill. There was something suspicious about this motor yacht. She carried no running lights, and her cabin ports were dark as Erebus. She came to a halt silently--almost sullenly--and her anchor dropped with hardly a splash. A tender was heaved over the side, and four men got into it and were rowed ashore by one of their number. When the tender grounded, three of the passengers got out. One of them turned to speak to the man who remained in the boat. "Leave the tender in the water, when you get back to the _Iris_, Pierson. If the tender is wanted here, a light will be shown." "All right, Grattan," answered the man in the boat, shoving off and rowing noiselessly back to the yacht. "Hide the lantern in that clump of bushes, Bunce," went on Grattan. "Ay, ay, messmate," answered the person addressed as Bunce. "Look here, Grattan," grumbled the third member of the party, "Motor Matt has cooked our goose for us, and I'll be hanged if I can see the use of knocking around the town of Catskill." "There are a lot of things in this world, Pardo," returned Grattan dryly, "that are advisable and that you haven't sense enough to see." Pardo muttered wrathfully but indistinctly. "Now," proceeded Grattan, "this is the way of it: We got Motor Matt and his chum, McGlory, aboard the _Iris_--lured them there on the supposition that Tsan Ti had sent Motor Matt the red jewel to keep safely for him for a time. Motor Matt and McGlory walked into our trap. We got the red jewel and put the two boys ashore some fifteen or twenty miles below here. Half an hour later I put the supposed ruby to some tests and found it was counterfeit----" "Are you sure the ruby you stole from the Honam joss house was a true gem?" "Yes. Tsan Ti sent Motor Matt a counterfeit replica for the purpose of getting us off the track. Motor Matt and McGlory will take the first train for Catskill from the place where we put them ashore. We'll lie in wait for them on the path they must take between the railroad station and their hotel. It's a dark night, few passengers will arrive at this hour, and we can recapture the two motor boys and take them back to the _Iris_." "What good will that do?" demurred Pardo. "Motor Matt hasn't the real stone--Tsan Ti must have that." "I'll find out from Motor Matt where Tsan Ti is," said Grattan, between his teeth, "and then I'll flash a message to the mandarin that he must give up the real gem, or Motor Matt _will suffer the consequences_!" "You can't mean," gasped Pardo, in a panic, "that you will----" "It's a bluff, that's all," snapped Grattan. "It will scare the mandarin out of his wits. Have you hid the lantern, Bunce?" he demanded, as the other member of the party came close. "Ay, Grattan," was the reply. "First bunch of bushes close to where we came ashore." "All right; come on, then. I've figured out what train Motor Matt and Joe McGlory will catch, and it should soon be at the depot." With Grattan in the lead, the party scrambled up the slope through the darkness, passed some ice houses, crossed a railroad track, and finally came to a halt in a lonely part of the town, near the walk leading from the railroad station to the business street and the hotels. A billboard afforded them a secure hiding place. Grattan had figured the time of the train pretty accurately. He and his companions waited no longer than five minutes before the "local" drew to a halt at the station. "If those boys are not on the train," muttered Pardo, "then we're fooled again. Confound that Motor Matt, anyhow!" "He has my heartiest admiration," returned Grattan, "but I'm not going to match wits with him and call myself beaten. Hist!" he added abruptly, "here come two people--and maybe they're the ones we're looking for. Mind, both of you, and don't make a move till I give the word." Breathlessly the three men waited. Footsteps came slowly up the walk and voices could be heard--voices which were recognized as belonging to the motor boys. "Well, pard," came the voice of McGlory, "New York for ours in the morning. Tsan Ti, with the big ruby, is on the train, bound for China and heathen happiness, Grattan has the bogus stone and is making himself absent in the _Iris_, and you and I are rid of the hoodoo at last, and have fifteen hundred to the good. That's what I call----" By then the two lads had passed the billboard and were so far away that spoken words could not be distinguished. And Grattan had given no word for an attack! "What's the matter with you, Grattan?" whispered Pardo. "They're too far off for us to bag them now." "We're not going to bag them." Grattan was a man of quick decisions. "We've changed our plans." While the other two mumbled their surprise and asked questions, Grattan had taken pencil, notebook, and an electric torch from his pocket. Snapping on the torch, he handed it to Bunce. "Put a stopper on your jaw tackle and hold that," said he crisply. Then he wrote the following: "CONDUCTOR, LOCAL PASSENGER, NORTH BOUND: Fat Chinaman, answering to name of Tsan Ti and claiming to be mandarin, on your train. He's a thief and has stolen big ruby called Eye of Buddha. Put him off train in charge of legal officer, first station after you receive this. Answer. JAMES PHILO, Detective." "This is a telegram," said Grattan, and read it aloud for the benefit of his two companions. "You'll take it down to the railroad station, Pardo," he went on, "and have it sent at once to the nearest point that will overtake the train Matt and McGlory just got off of. Bunce and I will wait here, and you stay in the station till you receive an answer." "But how do you know Tsan Ti is on that train?" asked Pardo. "Didn't you hear what was said when the motor boys passed us?" "But nothing was said about the mandarin being on _that_ particular train." "I'm making a guess. If the conductor replies that no such chink is on the train, then my guess is wrong. If he answers that the chink was there, and that he has put him off, red jewel and all, into the hands of the legal authorities, then James Philo Grattan will play the part of James Philo, detective, and fool these country authorities out of their eye teeth--and, incidentally, out of the Eye of Buddha." The daring nature of Grattan's hastily formed plan caused Pardo and Bunce to catch their breath. Grattan was a fugitive from the law, and yet here he was making the law assist him in stealing the red jewel for the second time! "You're a wonder," murmured Pardo, "if you can make that game work." "Trust me for that, Pardo. Now you hustle for the railroad station and get that message on the wires. Hurry back here as soon as you receive an answer." Pardo took the paper and made off down the slope. He was gone three-quarters of an hour--a weary, impatient wait for Bunce, but passed calmly by Grattan. When Pardo returned he came at a run. "Your scheme's no good, Grattan!" were his first breathless words. "Why not?" demanded Grattan. "Wasn't Tsan Ti on the train?" "Yes--and another chink, as well. Fat Chinaman, though, jumped off at Gardenville, first station north of Catskill. Here, read the conductor's message for yourself." Grattan, still cool and self-possessed, switched the light into his torch and read the following: "Two Chinamen, one answering description, came through on train from Jersey City. Fat Chinaman jumped off at Gardenville, although had ticket reading Buffalo. Don't know what became of other Chinaman. Two young men boarded train River View, talked with fat Chinaman, got off Catskill. CONDUCTOR." Grattan must have been intensely disappointed, but he did not give rein to his temper. While Bunce spluttered and Pardo swore under his breath, Grattan was wrapped in profound thought. "We'll have to change our plans again," he observed finally. "We gave over the idea of capturing Motor Matt and McGlory for the purpose of getting Tsan Ti held by the authorities as a thief; now we've got to give that up. Why did Tsan Ti get off the train at Gardenville when he was going to Buffalo? It was an Oriental trick to pull the wool over my eyes. The mandarin is afraid of me. We must proceed at once to Gardenville before Tsan Ti has a chance to get out of the town." "How are we going to get to Gardenville?" demanded Pardo. "If we take the _Iris_----?" "We won't." "If we walk----" "We won't do that, either. We'll take an automobile. It may be, too, that our motor cycles will come in handy. You go down to the bank, Pardo, signal the yacht, and have Pierson bring the two machines ashore. While you're about that, Bunce and I will visit the garage and borrow a fast machine. You know these hills?" "As well as I do my two hands." "On your way to the _Iris_ I'll give you something to leave at the hotel for Motor Matt." Grattan did some more scribbling on a blank sheet of his notebook; then, tearing out the sheet, he wrapped it around a small object and placed both in a little box with a sliding cover. "They may recognize me at the hotel," protested Pardo. "I don't think so. It will do me good to have you leave this, anyhow. I don't want Motor Matt to think that I was fooled very long by that bogus ruby. If we're quick, Pardo, we're going to catch Tsan Ti before he can leave Gardenville. And when we nab the mandarin we secure the ruby." Grattan was a master rogue, and not the least of his shining abilities was his readiness in adjusting himself to changing circumstances. Fate, in the present instance, had conspired to place him on the wrong track--but he was following the course with supreme confidence. CHAPTER III. SHOCK NUMBER ONE. When Motor Matt and Joe McGlory dropped off that "local" passenger train at the Catskill station they had just finished a series of strenuous experiences. These had to do with the great ruby known as the Eye of Buddha. A cunning _facsimile_ of the gem had been sent by Tsan Ti to Matt, by express, with a letter desiring him to take care of the ruby until the mandarin should call for it. This responsibility, entirely unsought by the king of the motor boys, plunged him and his cowboy pard into a whirl of adventures, and ended in their being decoyed aboard the _Iris_. Here the ruby was taken from Matt by force--Grattan, who secured it, not learning until some time later that the object Matt had been caring for was merely a base counterfeit of the original gem. And Matt and McGlory did not find this out until they caught the train at Fairview, when they discovered that Tsan Ti and Sam Wing were aboard. The twenty-mile ride from Fairview to Catskill with the mandarin proved quite an eye opener for the motor boys. They learned how Tsan Ti had deliberately set Grattan on their track to recover the bogus ruby, while he--Tsan Ti--made his escape with the real gem. This part of the mandarin's talk failed to make much of a "hit" with Matt and McGlory. The mandarin had used them for his purposes in a particularly high-handed manner, keeping them entirely in the dark regarding the fact that the stone intrusted to Matt was a counterfeit. Although the boys parted in a friendly way with the mandarin on leaving the train at Catskill, yet they nevertheless remembered their grievance and were heartily glad to think that they were done for all time with Tsan Ti and his ruby. Very often it happens that when we think we are done with a thing we have reckoned without taking account of a perverse fate. This was the case with the motor boys with reference to Tsan Ti and the Eye of Buddha. While they were climbing the slope from the railroad station to their hotel, glad of the prospect of securing a little much-needed rest, only a few chance remarks by McGlory prevented them from having an encounter with Grattan, Pardo, and Bunce, who were lurking beside the walk. And at that same moment the faithless Sam Wing was engineering his stealthy theft in the darkened passenger coach. So stirring events were forming, all unheeded by the boys. Upon reaching the hotel they proceeded immediately to the room which they occupied, hastily disrobed, and crept into their respective beds. In less than five minutes the room was resounding with McGlory's snores. Matt remained awake long enough to review the events of the day and to congratulate himself that he and his cowboy pard were finally rid of the "hoodoo" gem and the "hoodoo" Chinaman who had been looking for it. Then the king of the motor boys himself fell asleep. It was McGlory's voice that aroused Matt. "Sufferin' thunderbolts!" Matt awoke with a start and turned his eyes toward the other side of the room. The cowboy was sitting up in bed. "Talk about your shocking times, pard," he went on, "why, I've been jumping from one shock into another ever since I hit this mattress. Thought I was chased by a blind idol, twenty feet high, and sometimes that idol looked like Grattan, sometimes it was a dead ringer for Tsan Ti, and sometimes it was its own wabble-jawed, horrible self. Woosh! And listen"--McGlory's eyes grew wide and he became very serious--"the idol that chased me had _red hair_!" "What difference does that make, Joe?" inquired Matt, observing that the sun was high and forthwith tumbling out of bed. "What difference does it make!" gasped McGlory. "Speak to me about that! Don't you know Matt, that whenever you dream about a person with red hair, trouble's on the pike and you've got up your little red flag?" "Oh, gammon!" grunted Matt. "Pile out and get into your clothes, Joe. We're taking the eleven a. m. boat for the big town, and we haven't any too much time to make our 'twilight,' help ourselves to a late breakfast, and amble down to the landing." "Hooray!" cried McGlory, forgetting his dream in the prospect called up by his chum's words. "We're going to have the time of our lives in New York, pard! All I hope is that nothing gets between us and that eleven a. m. boat. Seems like we never make a start for down the river but Johnny Hardluck comes along, jolts us with an uppercut, and faces us the wrong way. Look here, once." "Well?" "If you get a letter from Tsan Ti, promise me to say 'manana' and give it the cut direct." "What chance is there of our receiving a letter from the mandarin? He's on his way West with the Eye of Buddha, and Grattan is on his way no one knows where with a glass imitation. Both of them are satisfied, and I guess you and I, Joe, haven't any cause for complaint. The mandarin is too busy traveling to write any letters." "Well," insisted McGlory, "give me your solemn promise you won't pay any attention to a letter from the mandarin if you receive one. If you're so plumb certain he won't write, why not promise?" "It's a go," laughed Matt, "if that will make you feel any easier in your mind." "It does, a heap. I'd rather have measles than another attack of mandarinicutis, complicated with rubyitis, and----" "Oh, splash!" interrupted Matt. "We've been well paid for all the time we were ailing with those two troubles. Give your hair a lick and a promise, and let's go down to breakfast. They'll be ringing the last bell on us if we wait much longer." "Lead on, Macduff!" answered McGlory, throwing himself around in the air and then striking a pose, with one arm up, like Ajax defying the lightning. "Remember Monte Cristo like that, pard?" he asked. "'The world is mine!' That's how I feel. Us for New York, with fifteen hundred of the mandarin's _dinero_ in our clothes! Oh, say, I'm a brass band and I've just got to toot!" The cowboy "tooted" all the way downstairs and into the office; then, as they passed the desk on their way to the dining room, the rejoicing died on the cowboy's lips. "Just a minute, Motor Matt!" called the clerk, leaning over the desk and motioning. "Lightning's going to strike," muttered McGlory; "I can see it coming." He followed Matt to the desk. As they lined up there, the clerk fished a small box out of the office safe. "This was left here for you last night, Matt," went on the clerk. "I was told to hand it to you this morning by the night clerk when he went off duty." The little box was placed on the counter. Matt and McGlory stared at it. That was not the first time they had seen that small receptacle. With the counterfeit ruby inside, it had first come into Matt's hands by express, direct from Tsan Ti; then, by a somewhat devious course of events, it had gone into the possession of Philo Grattan. Why should Grattan have returned the box to Matt? How _could_ he have returned it when, as Matt and McGlory believed, he was at that very moment hurrying to get out of the country and escape the law? "Shock number one," shuddered McGlory. "Not much of a shock about this--so far," returned Matt, picking up the box. "Wait till you see what's inside." "We'll open it in the dining room," and Matt turned away. "I'll bet a bowl of birds'-nest soup against a plate of sharks' fins it's going to spoil your breakfast." They went in and took their usual places at one of the tables. All the other guests had breakfasted, and the motor boys had the big dining room--with the exception of two or three waiters--wholly to themselves. "Open it quick," urged McGlory. Matt sawed through the string with his knife, pulled out the lid of the box, and dropped a gleaming red object on the tablecloth. "Sufferin' snakes!" exclaimed McGlory. "The Eye of Buddha, or I'm a Piute! How in blazes did old Tsan Ti get the thing back to us? When I saw that last it was in a silk bag around the mandarin's neck." "It can't be the Eye of Buddha, Joe," said Matt. "It looks to me more like the bogus gem than the real one." "How can you tell the difference?" "From the fact that the real stone could not by any possibility get into our hands again." "Neither could the bogus gem--if it's where we think it is." "I guess here's something that will explain," and Matt drew a piece of paper from the box. "Who's it from?" queried McGlory, in a flutter. "From Grattan," answered Matt grimly. "Listen," and he read: "'MOTOR MATT: You don't know what a tight squeak you and McGlory had to-night--not aboard the _Iris_, but after you were put ashore. Pray accept the inclosed piece of glass with my compliments. I don't think you knew, any more than I did, that it was counterfeit. If Tsan Ti gets into any more difficulties, you take my advice and let him weather them alone. GRATTAN.'" "Shocked?" muttered McGlory. "Why, I feel as though somebody had hit me with a live wire. So Grattan found out the ruby was an imitation! And he found out in time to send that back to you last night! Say, that fellow's the king bee of all the crooks that ever lived. Present the jewel to one of these darky waiters, and let's you and I get busy with the ham and eggs. I'm glad we're for New York by the eleven-o'clock boat, and that the mandarin isn't worrying us any more." The cowboy threw the box under the table, and would have reached for the gleaming bit of glass had not Matt grabbed it first and dropped it into his pocket. CHAPTER IV. SHOCKS TWO AND THREE. The motor boys were very much in the dark concerning Philo Grattan's movements and intentions. "He was right," observed Matt, referring to Grattan's note, "when he said I was in the dark as much as he was concerning that piece of glass. He wasn't fooled very long." "There's good advice in that note," said McGlory, who was beginning to have apprehensions that he and Matt were not yet done with the Eye of Buddha. "I mean where he says that if the mandarin gets into any more difficulties we'll be wise to let him get out of them alone the best way he can." "That's more than a piece of advice, Joe. If I catch the true meaning, it's a threat." McGlory at once saw a light in the general gloom. "Then, if it's a threat, pard, Grattan must be ready to make another try for the Eye of Buddha!" "That's the way it strikes me." "But what can Grattan do? Tsan Ti ought to be whooping it up pretty well to the west by now. He's got a good long start of Grattan in the run to 'Frisco." "What Grattan can do," said Matt reflectively, "is as hard to understand as what he has already done. We know he has discovered that this red jewel is a counterfeit, we know he sent some one here to return the piece of crimson glass to me, and it's a fair inference that he's going to make another attempt to recover the real ruby. How he has managed to do all this, however, or what he can possibly accomplish in overhauling Tsan Ti, is far and away beyond me." "We're out of it, anyhow," remarked McGlory, with an airy confidence he was far from feeling. "You've promised not to pay any attention to any four-eleven alarms you receive from the mandarin, and I'd feel tolerably comfortable over the outlook if--if----" He paused. "If what?" queried Matt. "Why, if I hadn't seen that red-headed idol chasing me in my sleep. I had two good looks at it. One look means trouble, two looks mean double trouble. Call me a Piegan if I ever knew it to fail." Matt laughed. "Never trouble trouble," he admonished, "till trouble troubles you." "Fine!" exclaimed McGlory; "but it's like a good many of these keen old saws--hard to live up to. I'll bet the inventor of that little spiel died of worry in some poorhouse. I'm always on my toes, shading my eyes with my hat brim and looking for miles along the trail of life to see if I can't pick up a little hard luck heading my way. Can't wait till I come company front with it. Well, maybe it's all right. Life would be sort of tame if something didn't happen now and then to make us ginger up. But we're for New York at eleven o'clock, no matter what happens!" A few minutes later they finished their breakfast and went out into the office. As Matt pushed up to the desk to ask the amount of his hotel bill, and settle for it, the clerk shoved a yellow envelope at him. "Telegram, Matt. Just got here." "Shock two," groaned McGlory, grabbing at the edge of the desk. "_Now_ what? Oh, tell me!" Matt tore open the envelope, read the message, stared at it, whistled, then read it again. "Somebody want us to run an air ship or go to sea in a submarine?" palpitated McGlory. "Sufferin' tenterhooks, pard! Stop your staring and whistling, and hand it to me right off the bat." Matt caught McGlory's arm and conducted him to a corner where there were a couple of easy-chairs. "It's from the mandarin," he announced. "Sufferin' chinks!" breathed the cowboy. "Didn't I tell you? Say, _didn't_ I? What's hit him now?" "I'll read you the message, Joe." "Go ahead. All I want you to do, pard, is just to remember what you promised me." "'Esteemed friend,'" read Matt, "'and highly treasured assistant in time of storm----'" "Speak to me about that!" grunted the disgusted McGlory. "His word box is full of beadwork." "'Again I call from the bottomless pit of distress,'" continued Matt, "'and from this place named Gardenville announce the duplicity of Sam Wing, who suddenly absented himself from the train with my supply of cash and the Eye of Buddha. Having no money, I have requested of the honorable telegraph company to receive pay from you. If----'" "He's lost the ruby!" gasped McGlory, "and Sam Wing is the guilty man! Oh, Moses, what a throwdown! Why, I had a notion Sam Wing thought the sun rose and set in Tsan Ti. And Sam Wing lifted the ruby and the mandarin's funds and hot-footed it for parts unknown! Well, _well_!" "'If,'" continued Matt, continuing the reading, "'I cannot recover the priceless gem, then nothing is left for me but the yellow cord. Hasten, noble youth, and aid in catching the miserable Sam Wing.' That's all, Joe," finished Matt, with a frown. "Then drop it in the waste basket and let's settle our bill and start for the landing. It's a quarter to eleven. While you're paying up I'll go to the room after our grips." The cowboy started impatiently to his feet. Matt continued to sit in his chair, frowning and peering into vacancy. "Mosey!" urged Joe. "It seems too bad to turn Tsan Ti down in such cold-blooded fashion," said Matt. "There you go! That's you! Say, pard, the mandarin thinks he's got a mortgage on you. What's the good of helping a chink who's so locoed he totes a fifty-thousand-dollar ruby around with him rather than hand it over to the express company for transportation? Take it from me, you can keep helping Tsan Ti for the next hundred years, and he'll never get out of the country till he separates himself from the Eye of Buddha and let some one else take the risk of getting it to Canton. Are you going?" "The poor old duffer," continued Matt, "is always right up in the air when anything goes wrong with him. We know what the safe return of that ruby to the Honam joss house means to him, Joe. The ruler of China has sent him a yellow cord--a royal invitation for him to strangle himself if the ruby is not found and returned to the forehead of the idol." "Look here," snapped McGlory, "time's getting scarce. Are you going down the river with me, pard, or have I got to go alone?" Before Matt could answer, a well-dressed man hurried into the lobby from the street and rushed for the desk as though he had something on his mind. "That's Martin," said Matt, looking at the man. Martin was proprietor of the local garage and had been of considerable assistance to the motor boys during the first days of their stay in Catskill. It was Martin who owned the two motor cycles which had been stolen from Matt and McGlory by Bunce and a pal. The boys had had to put up three hundred dollars to settle for that escapade, but Tsan Ti had made the amount good. Martin talked excitedly with the hotel clerk for a moment, and the clerk leaned over the desk and pointed toward the corner where the motor boys had seated themselves. Martin, a look of satisfaction crossing his troubled face, bore down on the corner. "Look out for shock number three," growled McGlory. "Sufferin' hoodoos! We've taken root here in Catskill, and I'll bet we won't be able to pull out for the rest of our natural lives." The cowboy, apparently discouraged with the outlook, dropped down into his chair and leaned back in weary resignation. "Matt!" exclaimed Martin, "you're just the fellow I want to find." "What's wrong, Mr. Martin?" inquired Matt. "A three-thousand-dollar car was stolen out of my garage last night. The night man was attacked, knocked over the head, and then bound hand and foot. It was a most brazen and dastardly piece of work." "Too bad," spoke up McGlory, "but things like that will happen occasionally. Think of Matt and me getting done out of those two motor cycles of yours." "But I'll have to put up ten times what you fellows did for the motor cycles--that is, if we can't get the car back." "_We!_" boomed McGlory, starting forward in his chair. "If _we_ can't get the car back! Are Motor Matt and Pard McGlory mixed up in that 'we'?" "Well, I thought when you knew the circumstances that----" "Don't hem, and haw, and sidestep," cut in McGlory keenly. "You're in trouble, and whenever anybody in the whole country stumbles against something that's gone crosswise, then it's 'Hurrah, boys,' and send for Motor Matt. I wish I had words to tell you how inexpressibly weary all this makes me. Didn't you ever stop to think, Martin, that, off and on, the motor boys might have troubles of their own?" "But listen. You haven't heard the facts." "What are the facts, Martin?" asked Matt. "Why, the night man recognized one of the scoundrels who struck him down. The rascal was dressed in sailor clothes and had a green patch over one eye." "Bunce!" exclaimed Matt, starting up. "That's it," cried Martin, glad of the impression he was making. "I knew you and McGlory had been mixed up with that sailor, and I naturally thought you'd be glad of a chance to help nab him." "About what time was the car stolen?" asked Matt, quieting McGlory with a quick look. "About half-past two," answered Martin. "I've got a car ready to chase the scoundrels. Have you any notion which way that car ought to go?" "You're a trifle late taking up the pursuit," remarked Matt. "Here it is nearly eleven, and the automobile was stolen at half-past two--more than eight hours ago." "I was up at Cairo," explained Martin, "and didn't get back till ten o'clock this morning." "I've something of a clue," said Matt, "but it may be too late to follow it." "Where does the clue lead?" "To Gardenville." "Then we'll make a fast run to Gardenville. Will you go along?" "Yes," said Matt. "Come on, Joe." And McGlory dutifully went. As he, and Matt, and Martin passed out of the hotel, the down-river boat from Albany whistled for Catskill Landing. The cowboy looked at it. "We'll never get to New York," he murmured; "not in a thousand years. We're out for two different kinds of trouble, and we'll be into both of 'em up to our eyes before we're many hours older." CHAPTER V. A HOT STARTER. Motor Matt disliked any further entanglements with Tsan Ti and the fateful ruby fully as much as did his cowboy pard, and he was greatly perturbed over the unexpected developments which had again drawn him and McGlory into the plots and counterplots hovering around the valuable gem. But it was impossible for the king of the motor boys to turn his back upon an appeal from any one in distress when it was in his power to be of help. Nevertheless, Matt might have cut loose from the mandarin, for he did not like his Oriental methods, but his temper was stirred by that half-veiled threat in the note from Grattan. Matt and Grattan had been at swords' points ever since the motor boys had been in the Catskills. It was largely a battle of wits, with now and then a little violence thrown in for good measure, and up to that moment neither Matt nor Grattan had scored decisively. Through Matt's intrepid work, Tsan Ti had recovered the stolen ruby, but, as in the case where he had lost the counterfeit gem, Matt's success had been merely a fortunate blunder. On the other side of the account, Grattan could be charged with a theft of the two motor cycles and with sundry other sharp practices which had gone too much "against the grain" for Matt to overlook. The daring theft of the automobile from the garage pointed the way not only for Matt to help Martin recover the machine, but perhaps, also, to recover the motor cycles, to worst Grattan, and to be of some assistance to Tsan Ti. On the way to the garage with Martin, Matt explained these matters to McGlory. With the whistle of the New York boat still sounding in his ears, the cowboy listened to his chum, at first, with intense disapproval; but, at the back of McGlory's nature, there was as intense a dislike for being worsted by such a crook as Grattan as there was at the back of Matt's. Cleverly the king of the motor boys harped on this chord, and aroused in his chum a wild desire to do something that would curb, finally and effectually, the audacious lawlessness of Philo Grattan. To such an extent did Matt influence McGlory that the latter began to wonder how he could ever have thought of leaving the Catskills while Grattan was at large. "Sufferin' justice!" exclaimed the cowboy. "Grattan is trying to bluff us out of helping the mandarin. That's as plain as the pay streak in a bonanza mine. He must have been with Bunce when the bubble was lifted, and if we chase the chug cart we can hand the boss tinhorn a black eye by getting back the machine and landing the thieves in the skookum house. Say, that would be nuts for me! The mandarin and his idol's eye can go hang--it's Grattan we're after this trip." Matt left his chum with that impression, well knowing that if Grattan could be captured, the affairs of the mandarin would adjust themselves satisfactorily. The night man at the garage, his head bandaged, was lingering in the big room, watching one of the day men give a final wipe to the lamps of a six-cylinder flyer that was to take the trail after Grattan. The night man's face flushed joyfully when he saw Matt and McGlory. "Good!" he exclaimed. "I guess there'll be something doing in these parts, now that Motor Matt is going to help in the chase." "You're the man who was on duty when the automobile was stolen?" inquired Matt. "Don't I look the part?" "Martin says you identified one of the men as the old sailor who wears a green patch over one of his eyes." "Seen him as plain as I do you, this minute." "What did the other thief look like?" "Didn't have a chance to tell, the attack was that sudden an' unexpected." "You are sure there were no more than two of the thieves?" "I could take my solemn Alfred on that." "All aboard!" called Martin, from the car. "I'm going to let you do the driving, Matt. You can forget more about automobiles than I ever knew." Matt stepped to the side of the car and drew on a pair of gauntlets that lay in the driver's seat; then he climbed to his place, McGlory got in behind, and the car was backed around and glided out through the wide door of the garage. With Martin indicating the way, the machine slipped rapidly out of Catskill and darted off on the Gardenville road. "What sort of clue is taking us to Gardenville?" asked Martin, as they weaved in and out among the tree-covered hills, catching occasional glimpses of the sparkling waters of the Hudson. Matt informed Martin briefly of Tsan Ti's predicament and of Grattan's persistent attempts to get hold of the ruby. "You think Grattan has gone to Gardenville to intercept Tsan Ti?" asked Martin. "It would be like Grattan," Matt answered, "to hire Sam Wing to steal the ruby from the mandarin. I don't know that Grattan has done that, but it would be like him. If he did, then he would travel toward Gardenville to pick up Sam Wing." "This looks too much like guesswork," muttered Martin, "and not very bright guesswork, either." "I think the same way, Martin; but it's the only clue we have. Grattan and Bunce certainly had an object in view when they stole the motor car. The theft, happening at the time it did, rather inclines me to think that Grattan is beginning a swift campaign to recover the Eye of Buddha." "Since half-past two he has had oceans of time to reach Gardenville and pick up Sam Wing and the ruby--if that was his game." "Exactly," returned Matt. "I was telling you the same thing back at the hotel. What sort of a car was it that was stolen?" "It was a blue car, six cylinder, and had a tonneau and top. It belonged to a man from New York. He's been telegraphing and telephoning all through the mountains. If the thieves didn't get away last night, they'll have a hard time doing it to-day." Matt was watching the road. It was a popular highway for motor-car owners, and the surface bore evidence of the passage of many pneumatic tires. Half a dozen cars passed them, going the other way, and inquiries were made as to the blue car. The stolen automobile had not been seen or heard of. At least two of the passing drivers had come from Gardenville, and their failure to have seen anything of the stolen machine promised ill for the success of the pursuers when they should reach their destination. "I guess I'm up against it, all right," growled Martin. "This Grattan is a clever scoundrel, and he'll know what to do to keep from getting captured." "What's that place ahead there?" asked Matt. What he saw was a spot where the road curved a little to one side in a valley between two hills. There were two or three hitching posts planted beside the road, and from one of the posts swung a tin bucket. "That's a spring," said Martin, "and it furnishes ice-cold water in the very hottest part of the summer. People stop there to water their horses--and to get a drink themselves if they're thirsty." "Let's stop, pard," called McGlory, from the tonneau. "I'm dryer than a sand pile and my throat's full of dust." "We're only three miles from Gardenville," spoke up Martin, his words significant of the fact that there would be plenty of drinking water to be had in the town without delaying the journey at the spring. "We'll only be a minute," said Matt, swerving to the side of the road and bringing the car to a halt. All three jumped out, and Martin led the way to a small pool, shaded by overhanging trees. From beyond the pool came a tinkle of falling water. "Horses are watered from this basin," remarked Martin. "The water falls from the rocks, farther on, and we'll find a cup there." A well-worn path followed the rill that supplied the pool, and the three continued onward along the path in single file. Half a dozen yards brought them to the rocky side hill where the water welled from a crack in the granite and fell in a miniature cataract to a bowl-shaped depression at the foot of the wall. A man was standing beside the spring when Martin, Matt, and McGlory emerged from the tangle of brush and vines. The man was just lifting himself erect after filling a tin cup that was chained to the rocks. Startled into inaction, the man stood staring at the three newcomers, the filled cup in his hand. The surprise, it may be observed, was mutual. The man by the spring was a Chinaman--a lean, hatchet-faced individual whose blouse and baggy trousers gave evidence of rough work in the undergrowth. "Sam Wing!" yelled McGlory. Yes, it was the treacherous Celestial, there was not the slightest doubt about that. Simultaneously with his shout, McGlory leaped forward, closely followed by Matt. Sam Wing awoke to his peril not a second too soon. Casting the cup of water full in the cowboy's face, the Chinaman gave vent to a defiant yell, whirled, and vanished among the trees. McGlory sputtered wrathfully as he shook the water out of his eyes. Matt bounded on in frantic pursuit of the fugitive. "Come back!" cried Martin, thinking of nothing but the stolen car. "What's the use of chasing the chink?" "You freeze to the automobile, Martin," the cowboy paused to answer. "Matt and I will put the kibosh on this yellow grafter and then we'll rejoin you. We'll not be gone long." The words faded in a rattle and crash of violently disturbed bushes, and McGlory had vanished along his chum's trail. CHAPTER VI. M'GLORY IS LOST--AND FOUND. This unexpected encounter with Sam Wing was certainly a "hot starter" in the matter of the stolen ruby, although of apparently small consequence in the matter of the stolen car. But Motor Matt was not particular as to which end of the double thread fortune wafted his way. He followed Sam Wing just as zealously as he would have followed Philo Grattan, had it been the white thief instead of the yellow who had fled from the spring. The cold spring water had run down the cowboy's face, under his collar, and had glued his shirt to his wet skin. "Speak to me about that!" he breathed angrily, as he labored on. "If the rat-eater hadn't slammed that water into my face, I'd have had him by his yellow throat in a brace of shakes! Wow, but it's cold! I feel as though I was hugging an iceberg. Where's Matt?" McGlory had not seen his chum since he had plunged into the bushes, but had followed blindly in a course he believed to be the right one, trying only to see how much ground he could cover. Now, realizing suddenly that he might be on the wrong track, the cowboy halted, peered around him, and listened intently. The timber was thick and the bushes dense on every side. There were no sounds in any direction even remotely suggesting the Chinaman's flight and Matt's pursuit. "I'm off my bearings and no mistake," reflected the cowboy, searching the ground in vain for some signs of the course taken by Sam Wing and Matt. "Matt will have a time overhauling the chink in this chaparral, and the two of us are needed. But which way am I to go?" McGlory had been hurrying along the side hill that edged the valley and the road. He swept his eyes across the narrow valley, and then up the slope toward the top of the hill. "It's a cinch," he ruminated, "that Sam Wing wouldn't go near the trail, but would do his level best to get as far away from it as he could. That means, if I'm any guesser, that he climbed the hill and tried to lose himself beyond. Me for the other side," and the cowboy began pawing and scrambling up the steep slope. Ten minutes of hard work brought him to the crest, and here again he halted to peer anxiously around and to listen. He could neither hear nor see anything that gave him a line on Matt and the Chinaman. "Whoop-ya!" he yelled at the top of his lungs. "Matt! Where are you, pard?" A jaybird mocked him from somewhere in the timber, and a frightened hawk took wing and soared skyward. "Blamed if this ain't real excitin'!" growled the cowboy. "I'm going to do something to help lay that yellow tinhorn by the heels, though, and you can paste that in your hat. If Matt came over the hill, then it stands to reason he went down on this other side. I'll keep on, by guess and by gosh, and maybe something will happen." McGlory kept on for half an hour, floundering through the bushes, making splendid time in his slide to the foot of the hill, and from there striking out on an erratic course that carried him toward all points of the compass. He climbed rocky hills and descended them, he followed ravines, and he sprinted across narrow levels, yelling for Matt from time to time, but receiving no answer. Then he discovered that something had happened--and that he was lost. Trying to locate himself by the position of the sun, he endeavored to return to the road. Instead of calling for Matt, he now began whooping it up for Martin. The sun appeared to be in the wrong place, and the road and the spring had vanished. The farther McGlory went, the more confused and bewildered he became. At last he dropped down on a bowlder and panted out his chagrin and disgust. "Lost! Me, Joseph Easy Mark McGlory, Arizona puncher and boss trailer of the deserts and the foothills! Lost, plumb tangled up in my bearings, clean gone off the jump--and in this two-by-twice range of toy mountains where Rip Van Winkle snoozed for twenty years. I wonder if Rip was as tired as I am when he laid down to snatch his forty winks. Sufferin' tenderfoot! I've walked far enough to carry me plumb to Albany, if it had all been in a straight line. Matt!" and again he lifted his voice. "Martin!" The lusty yell echoed and reverberated through the surrounding woods, but brought no answer. Then, suddenly, the cowboy was seized from behind by a pair of stout arms, pulled backward off the bowlder, and flattened out on the ground by a heavy knee on his chest. It had all happened so quickly that McGlory was dazed. He was a moment or two in recovering his wits and in recognizing the sinister face and mocking eyes that bent down over him. "Grattan!" he gasped. "Ay, messmate," gibed a voice from near at hand; "Grattan and Bunce. Don't forget Bunce." The cowboy turned his head and saw the sailor. The green patch decorated one of the sailor's eyes, but the other eye taunted the luckless prisoner with an exultant gleam. McGlory struggled desperately under Grattan's hands. "Stop it!" ordered Grattan. As McGlory had made no headway with his frantic struggles, he decided to obey the command. "What are you doing out here in the woods?" inquired Grattan. "Ease up on that throat a little," wheezed the cowboy. "Want to take the breath all out of me?" The thief's fingers relaxed slightly. "I left the road a spell ago," proceeded McGlory, "and went wide of my bearings somewhere--I don't know just where." "Lost, eh?" laughed Grattan. "Well, my lad, you've been found." "How did you happen to find me?" "How?" jeered Bunce. "You was makin' more noise than a foghorn. The way you was askin' Motor Matt for help, it's a wonder they didn't hear you in Catskill." "Tie his hands with something, Bunce," said Grattan. Bunce looked taken aback for a space, then whipped his knife laniard from about his neck, removed the knife, doubled the cord, and contrived a lashing that was strong enough to answer the purpose. Grattan heaved the cowboy over upon his face and pulled his wrists behind him. In less than a minute the cord was in place, and the prisoner was freed of Grattan's gripping hands and allowed to sit up, his back against the bowlder. "This meeting," grinned Grattan, "was entirely unexpected, and a pleasant surprise." "A pleasant surprise for you, I reckon," grunted McGlory. "What did you jump onto me for like this? What good is it going to do you?" "What benefit I am to derive from this encounter," replied Grattan, "remains to be seen. Tell me, my lad, are you and Motor Matt looking for Tsan Ti?" An angry denial was on the cowboy's lips, but he thought better of the words before they were spoken. "Never you mind who we're looking for, Grattan," said he. "It's for Tsan Ti, I am sure," went on Grattan. "He's somewhere in this section, for he left Gardenville on foot, early this morning, preceded by his man, Sam Wing. I don't know exactly what's up, but I'm rather inclined to think that the mandarin is afraid of me, and is trying to get back to Catskill and place himself under the wing of his estimable protector, Motor Matt. You and Matt heard he was coming and advanced to meet him. The same man who told me the fat Chinaman was in the hills must have given you boys the same information." "Who was the _hombre_, Grattan?" queried McGlory, secretly delighted to think Grattan's speculations were so wide of the mark. "A man in a white runabout with a red torpedo beard." "I wouldn't know a red torpedo beard from a Piute's scalplock, but I do recollect a shuffer in a white car." This white runabout was one of the cars Matt, Martin, and McGlory had passed on the road, and the driver was one of those of whom they had made inquiries. The inquiries, of course, had been all about the stolen automobile and not about the fat Chinaman. If Grattan had been in the stolen car when asking the man in the white runabout for news of Tsan Ti, then why hadn't the runabout driver remembered the blue car and told Matt something about it? "Where were you," went on the cowboy, "when you hailed the man in the white car?" "On foot, by the spring," answered Grattan genially. He was an educated man and usually good-natured--sometimes under the most adverse circumstances. That was his way, perhaps on the principle that an easy manner is best calculated to disarm suspicion. "Where was the car you and Bunce stole from the Catskill garage?" asked the cowboy. "We tucked it away in a pocket of the hills that my friend Pardo knew about," explained Grattan, tacitly admitting the theft and, in his customary fashion, not hesitating to go elaborately into details. "We failed to finish the work that took us to Gardenville last night. When we learned at the railroad station in that town that the fat Chinaman had started south on foot, about break of day, following another of his countrymen, we rushed the car back into an obscure place. It is not advisable, you understand, to make that car too prominent. We shall have to use it by night. Bunce and I rode to the spring on our motor cycles for the purpose of watching the road. The white runabout came along, and the driver told us, he had passed Tsan Ti, walking this way. We waited for him to pass the spring, but he did not. Thinking he had taken to the rough country, Bunce and I returned our wheels to the place where we have pitched temporary camp and began prowling around in the hope of finding the mandarin. Then, quite unexpectedly, I assure you, we heard you calling. We came to this place, guided by the sound of your voice. You know the rest, and----" Grattan bit off his words abruptly. From a distance came a hail, so far off as to be almost indistinguishable. "Motor Matt!" exclaimed Grattan, with a laugh. "He's looking for you, McGlory. If this keeps up, we're going to have quite a reunion. Put a hand over his lips, Bunce," he added to the sailor. McGlory tried to give a desperate yell before the hand closed over his mouth, but he was not quick enough. Grattan, leaning against the bowlder, threw back his head and answered the distant call. The voice in the woods drew closer and closer. "Call again, excellent one!" came the weary voice from the scrub. "I heard you shouting some time ago, and you were calling the name of an esteemed friend for whom I am looking. Speak loudly to me, so that I may come where you are." The three by the bowlder were astounded. "Tsan Ti," muttered Grattan, "or I don't know the voice. Luck, Bunce! Whoever thought this could happen? The mandarin heard McGlory calling for Motor Matt--and now the mandarin is looking for McGlory and is going to find _us_." A chuckle came with the words. "Lie low, Bunce, and watch McGlory. Leave the trapping of Tsan Ti to me." CHAPTER VII. "POCKETED." For the cowboy pleasant fancies were cropping out of this surprising turn of events. He reflected that Grattan did not know Sam Wing had stolen the ruby from Tsan Ti. By entrapping Tsan Ti, Grattan was undoubtedly counting upon getting hold of the Eye of Buddha. If Bunce had known how little love McGlory had for the mandarin, he would not have been at so much pains to keep a hand over his lips. Just at that moment nothing could have induced the cowboy to shout a warning to the approaching Chinaman. Kneeling behind the bowlder, Grattan lifted his voice for Tsan Ti's benefit. Presently the mandarin was decoyed around the side of the bowlder, and his capture expeditiously effected. He was a badly demoralized Chinaman. His usually immaculate person had been eclipsed by recent hardships, and he was tattered and torn and liberally sprinkled with dust. His flabby cheeks were covered with red splotches where thorny undergrowth had left its mark. He was so fagged, too, that he could hardly stand. At the merest touch from Grattan he tumbled over. A most melancholy spectacle he presented as he sat on the ground and stared at Grattan with jaws agape. "Oh, friend of my friend," wheezed Tsan Ti, passing his gaze to McGlory, "was it you who shouted?" "First off it was," answered McGlory; "after that, Grattan took it up." "And you are a prisoner?" "I wouldn't be here if I wasn't." "I'm the man for you to talk to, Tsan Ti," put in Grattan grimly. "It's me you're to reckon with." "Evil individual," answered the mandarin, "my capture will not help you in your rascally purposes. Is not my present distress sufficient, without any of your unwelcome attentions? Behold my plight! What more can you do to make me miserable?" "I can take the ruby away from you, for one thing." A mirthless smile crossed the mandarin's fat face. A chuckle escaped McGlory. Grattan stared hard at the Chinaman, and then flashed a quick glance at the cowboy. "What are you thinking of, McGlory?" he demanded. "I'm thinking that you're fooled again, Grattan," answered McGlory. "You know so much that I wonder you haven't heard that the mandarin has lost the ruby." "Lost it?" A look of consternation crossed Grattan's face. "I'll never believe that," he went on. "Tsan Ti knows where the Eye of Buddha is, and there are ways to make him tell me." "Ay, ay," flared Bunce, with a fierce look, "we'll make him tell if we have to lash him to a tree and flog the truth out o' him." "Wretches," said the mandarin, "no matter what your hard thoughts may counsel, or your wicked hands contrive, you cannot make me tell what I do not know." Grattan would not trust Bunce to search the mandarin, but proceeded about the work himself. Two chopsticks, a silver cigarette box, an ivory case with matches, a bone-handled back scratcher, a handkerchief, a fan, and a yellow cord some three feet long were the results of the search. There was no ruby. Grattan prodded a knife blade into Tsan Ti's thick queue in his search for the gem, and even ripped out the lining of his sandals, but uselessly. "You know where the ruby is," scowled Grattan, giving way to more wrath than McGlory had ever seen him show before; "and, by Heaven, I'll make you tell before I'm done with you." Tossing the yellow cord to Bunce, Grattan drew back and ordered the sailor to secure the mandarin's hands in the same way he had lashed the cowboy's. Tsan Ti seemed to accept the situation philosophically. But that he was in desperate straits and hopeless was evidenced by his remark when Bunce was done with the tying: "Despicable person, I had rather you put the yellow cord about my throat than around my wrists." "You'll get it around the throat when we get back to the pocket," said Grattan brutally. "Take charge of McGlory, Bunce," he added, "and come with me." Tsan Ti was ordered to his feet. Thereupon, Grattan seized his arm and pulled him along through the woods. McGlory would have given something handsome if he could have had the use of his hands for about a minute. Bunce would have been an easy problem for him to solve if he had not been hampered by the knife laniard. As it was, however, the cowboy was forced to get to his feet and, with the sailor as guard, follow after Grattan and Tsan Ti. Captors and captives traveled for nearly a mile through uneven country, thick with timber, then descended into a ravine, followed it a little way beyond a point where it was crossed by a wagon road, and came to a niche in the gully wall. Perhaps the term "cavern" would better describe the place where Grattan, Pardo, and Bunce had pitched their temporary camp. The hole was an ancient washout, its face covered with a screen of brush and creepers. In front of the niche, standing in a place where it had been backed from the road on the "reverse," was the blue automobile. Leaning against the automobile were the two motor cycles; and from the tonneau of the car, as Grattan and Bunce approached with their prisoners, arose the form of Pardo. "Well, well!" exclaimed Pardo, thrusting his head out from under the top. "If we haven't got visitors! Where did you pick up the mandarin, Grattan?" "Between here and the Gardenville road," answered Grattan. "It was easy work. Both the chink and the cowboy were kind enough to yell and tell us where they were." Pardo, understanding little of what had really occurred, opened his eyes wide. "Tell me more about it," said he. "After I get the prisoners in the pocket. Bunce, bring a rope. Hold McGlory, Pardo, while he's doing it." Pardo jumped down from the automobile and caught the cowboy's arm. "I guess you're a heap easier to deal with than your friend, Motor Matt," was his comment. "No guess about it," said McGlory, "it's a cinch. But I'm not fretting any." The cowboy's eyes were on the stolen car. What a pleasure it would have been to snatch that automobile out of Grattan's clutches, leaving him and his rascally companions stranded in the hills! But that was a dream--and McGlory had already had too many dreams for his peace of mind. Tsan Ti was shoved by Grattan through the bushes, under the trailing vines and into the washout. Pardo dragged McGlory through, close on their heels. "Sit down, both of you," ordered Grattan, when the prisoners were in the gloomy confines of the niche. Tsan Ti and McGlory lowered themselves to the bare earthen floor. Bunce came with the rope, and it was coiled around the cowboy's ankles, and then around the mandarin's. "I've taken you in, McGlory," observed Grattan, to the cowboy, "for the purpose of finding out what Motor Matt is doing; and I've captured the mandarin with the idea of getting the ruby. I'm a man who hews steadily to the line, once he marks it out. I'll have my way with both of you before I am done. Mark that. You can't get away from here. Even if you were not bound hand and foot, you'd have to pass the automobile in order to reach the road--and Pardo, Bunce, and I will be in the automobile. We're all heeled, which is a point you will do well to remember." Having eased his mind in this manner, Grattan went out of the niche, Bunce and Pardo following him. They could be heard climbing into the automobile, and then their low voices came in a mumble to the ears of the prisoners. "Fated friend," gulped the mandarin, "the ten thousand demons of misfortune are working sad havoc with Tsan Ti." "Buck up!" returned McGlory. "We're pocketed, all right, but matters might be worse." "What cheering thoughts can I possibly have?" mourned the mandarin. "The Eye of Buddha has escaped me, gone I do not know where, in the possession of that Canton dog, Sam Wing, who----" "Hist!" breathed McGlory, in a warning voice. "Grattan doesn't know who has the ruby, and it may be a good thing if we keep it to ourselves. Don't lose your nerve. Motor Matt is around, and you can count on him to do something." "Motor Matt is both notable and energetic," droned the mandarin, "but for him to secure the ruby from Sam Wing is too much to hope for." "There you're shy a few, Tsan Ti. I'll bet my scalp against that queue of yours that Matt has already captured Sam Wing and recovered the Eye of Buddha." Tsan Ti stirred restlessly. "Do not deceive me with hope, honorable friend," he begged. "Well, listen," and McGlory proceeded to tell Tsan Ti what had happened at the spring. Tsan Ti's hopes arose. He had been ready to grasp at anything, and here McGlory had offered him undreamed-of encouragement. "There are many brilliant eyes in the plumage of the sacred peacock," he murmured, "but by them all, I vow to you that there is no other youth of such accomplishments as Motor Matt. And, by the five hundred gods of the temple at----" "Cut it out," grunted McGlory. "You've got Matt and me into no end of trouble with your foolishness. When you get that ruby into your hands again, stop fumbling with it. Pass it over to some one who knows how to look after it, but don't try the job yourself. This is first-chop pidgin I'm giving you, Tsan Ti, and I don't know why I'm handing it out, after the way you hocused my pard and me with that piece of red glass. But it's good advice, for all that, and you'd better keep it under your little black cap." Tsan Ti relapsed into thoughtful silence. The mumble of voices continued to creep in through the swinging vines and the bush tops, but otherwise the quiet that filled the "pocket" was intense. The mandarin was first to speak. Leaning toward the cowboy, he whispered: "There's a chance, companion of my distress, that we may be able to make our escape." "What's the number?" queried the cowboy. Thereupon the mandarin began revealing the plan that had formed in his mind. It was the fruit of considerable reflection and promised well. CHAPTER VIII. SPRINGING A "COUP." Stripped of its ornamental trimmings, the mandarin's plan was marvelously simple. McGlory was to roll over with his back to him, and he engaged to gnaw through the knife laniard. When the cowboy's hands were free it would be only a few moments until he removed the ropes from his ankles and set Tsan Ti at liberty. This accomplished, McGlory was to set up a racket, calling Grattan, Bunce, and Pardo into the pocket. As they crashed through the brush in one direction, the mandarin would crash through it in another, reach the motor cycles, and rush away on one before Grattan or his companions had an opportunity to use their firearms. "H'm," reflected McGlory. "That's a bully plan, Tsan Ti--for you. You're the boy to look out for Number One, eh? This surprise party you're thinking of springing reminds me of the way you unloaded that imitation ruby on Motor Matt, and then sat back and allowed Matt and me to play tag with Grattan." "What is the fault with my plan, generous sir?" asked the mandarin. "Of course," went on the cowboy, with fine sarcasm, "I don't amount to much. I kick up a disturbance in here, and when Grattan, Pardo, and Bunce rush in on me, you make a run for one of the motor cycles. In other words, I hold the centre of the stage and make things interesting for the three tinhorns while you burn the air on a benzine bike and get as far outdoors as you can. Fine!" "Pardon, exalted friend," demurred Tsan Ti, "but you overlook the point that I will be pursued." "I don't think I overlook a blessed point, Tsan Ti. But just answer me this: What's the good of escaping? Grattan will have to let us go sooner or later. If we put up with these uncomfortable ropes for a spell, we'll both get clear and without running the risk of stopping a bullet." "Accept my excuses, noble youth, and please remember Grattan made some remarks about choking me with the cord in case I did not reveal the whereabouts of the ruby. That would not be pleasant." "Sufferin' stranglers!" exclaimed McGlory; "I'd forgotten about that. Can't say that I blame you for thinking twice for yourself and once for me. I'll help on the game." The cowboy rolled over with his back to the mandarin. "Now get busy with your teeth," he added, "and be in a rush. There's no telling when the pallavering outside will be over with, and if those fellows get through before we do, the kibosh will be on us and not on them." The logic of this last remark was not lost upon the mandarin. He grunted and wheezed and used his teeth with frantic energy. While he panted and labored, both he and the cowboy kept their ears sharp for the mumble of talk going on outside. Fortunately for the _coup_ the prisoners were intending to spring, the talk continued unabated. The laniard was gnawed in half, and McGlory sat up, brought his hands around in front of him, and rubbed the places where the mandarin's sharp teeth had slipped from the cord. "You've turned part of the trick, Tsan Ti," commended the cowboy; "now watch me do my share." With his pocket knife he slashed through the coil that held his feet, and he would then have treated the yellow cord about the mandarin's wrists in like manner had he not been stopped by a quick word. "The yellow cord, illustrious one," said the Chinaman, "must be untied. It is a present from his imperial highness, my regent, and I may yet be obliged to use it in the customary way." "Oh, hang your regent!" grumbled McGlory, but yielded to the mandarin's request and began untying the cord with his fingers. This was slow work, for McGlory's fingers were still numb from the effects of his own bonds. In due course, however, the cord was removed, and the Chinaman lifted himself to a sitting posture. The cowboy used the knife on the rope that secured Tsan Ti's feet, while the latter was solicitously coiling up the yard of yellow cord and putting it away in his pocket. "Now, courageous friend," whispered the mandarin, getting up noiselessly and stepping to the swinging green barrier at the mouth of the niche, "we are ready." "You know how to manage a motor cycle?" queried McGlory, suddenly stifling the roar that was almost on his lips. "Excellently well, superlative one." "Then good luck to you. Here goes." Above the fearsome commotion McGlory made, the words "Help!" and "Hurry!" might have been distinguished. Startled exclamations came from the automobile, followed by a sound of scrambling as the three thieves tumbled out. Then there was a crashing among the bushes and the vines, and McGlory rolled back at full length and shoved his unbound hands under him. "What's the matter?" cried Grattan, who was first to enter the pocket. "Mandarin tried to knife me!" whooped McGlory. "Why didn't you take his knife away from him? I might have been sent over the one-way trail if I hadn't yelled." All three of the men were in the niche by that time. "Where is the chink?" shouted Grattan. The poppety-pop-pop of a motor in quick action came from without. "He's tripped his anchor and is makin' off!" yelled Bunce. "Stop him!" fumed Grattan, and instantly he followed Bunce and Pardo back through the swinging screen of vines and bushes. Chuckling with delight, McGlory leaped erect, sprang to the vines, and parted them so he could look out. Tsan Ti, his motor working splendidly, was streaking down the ravine toward the road. Bunce, who had led in the rush from the pocket, had mounted the other motor cycle and was coaxing his engine into action with the pedal. "Catch him, Bunce!" bellowed Grattan. Bunce's answer was lost in a series of explosions as his motor got to work. As he whirled away, Grattan and Pardo ran after him to watch the pursuit as long as possible. And thus it chanced that good luck came McGlory's way, after all. He had pretended, when Grattan and the other two came into the pocket, that he was tied, and the excitement following Bunce's discovery that the mandarin was escaping prevented any examination of the cowboy's bonds. Now McGlory had the neighborhood of the pocket to himself, and within a dozen feet of where he stood was the blue touring car, unguarded! A daring plan rushed through the cowboy's head. Why not crank up the automobile's engine and rush down the ravine? There was a chance that he could reach the road. If Grattan or Pardo got in his way, he could run them down; if they drew off to one side and fired at him, he could trust to luck. "Nothing venture, nothing win!" muttered the reckless cowboy, and pushed through the vines and bushes and jumped for the front of the car. An angle of the ravine hid Grattan and Pardo. One look made McGlory certain on this point, and another look showed him the rough surface which the automobile had to get over. There was a fine chance to blow up a tire or come to grief against a jutting rock, but the cowboy had staked everything on a single throw, and he was not to be frightened by difficulties. He gave the crank a couple of turns, and the engine answered with a fierce sputter and an increasing rattle of explosions. That sound, if Grattan and Pardo were near enough to hear, advertised plainly what McGlory was about. He lost not a moment in scrambling into the driver's seat and getting the car to going. The automobile started with a jump, and lurched and swayed over the uneven ground like a ship in a storm. Bending to the steering wheel, McGlory nursed the car onward with the spark. The machine rounded the turn. The road was in plain view--but so were Grattan and Pardo. Consternation was written large in the faces of the two thieves. The car was being hurled toward them, plunging and buck-jumping as it met the high places, and the two men had to throw themselves sideways to clear the path. "Stop!" roared Grattan, drawing a revolver. McGlory's answer was a defiant yell. As the car rushed by Pardo he made a jump for it--and was knocked roughly back toward the ravine wall. _Bang!_ That was Grattan's weapon, echoing high about the racket of the unmuffled motor. Something ripped through the rear of the top and crooned its wicked song within an inch of McGlory's head. But the cowboy laughed. He hadn't blown up a tire or smashed any of the machinery, he was turning into the road, and Grattan and Pardo were behind him! "We've knocked the hoodoo galley west!" McGlory exulted. "Oh, what do you think of this! _What_ do you think of it!" and he let the sixty champing horses under the bonnet snatch him along the road at their best clip. CHAPTER IX. MOTOR MATT'S CHASE. Meanwhile, the king of the motor boys, without the remotest idea as to what was happening to his cowboy pard, was exacting his own tribute from the realm of exciting events. When he started after Sam Wing, Matt had no time to give to any one else. He supposed that McGlory was following him, but was altogether too busy to look behind and make sure. It was a trifling matter, anyhow. The main thing was to catch Sam Wing, and Matt threw himself into the pursuit with ardor. McGlory, it will be remembered, had worked upon the theory that the Chinaman, eager to get as far from the road as possible, had gone over the hill. But this was incorrect. Sam Wing hustled along the hillside slope, his course paralleling the valley and the road. Very early in the chase the Chinaman lost his grass sandals, and a little later his stockings, but loss of his footwear seemed to help rather than diminish his speed. Motor Matt was "no slouch" as a long-distance runner, but Sam Wing proved a handful for him. From time to time Matt would gain, coming so close to the hustling Celestial that he shouted a call for him to stop, but the Chinaman, gathering himself together for a spurt, ducked away to his usual lead, and the chase went merrily on. Once Matt nearly had him. A section of treacherous bank broke away under Sam Wing's feet, and the pursued man flung up his arms and dropped straight downward. Matt paused on the brink and looked below for three or four yards to a little shelf gouged from the bankside. Sam Wing, scarred and apparently senseless, was lying sprawled on the shelf. Matt slipped and slid downward, fairly certain that he was at the end of his exciting trail; but, just as his feet struck the shelf, the Chinaman rolled over the edge and carromed away in a break-neck descent that finally plunged him into the road. This was the identical road that led past the spring, and Matt and Sam Wing were somewhere between the spring and Gardenville. Where Martin was with the automobile, Matt did not know, but if Martin had been at that point in the road when the Chinaman rolled into it, an easy capture could have been made. There was some one in the road besides Sam Wing, however, and the traveler was an old colored man, riding toward Gardenville on a mule. The mule and the colored man were about a hundred feet away from Wing when he got to his feet. As soon as the Chinaman's eyes rested on the long-eared brute and its aged rider, he started at speed in their direction. Matt jumped into the road with less than twenty-five feet between himself and Sam Wing. Once more he deceived himself with the idea that the chase was narrowing to a close. The mule, throwing its head and swinging its long ears, was ambling leisurely along the way. The old darky appeared to be in a doze. Matt, divining Sam Wing's intentions, gave vent to a warning yell. The darky aroused himself and flung a look over his shoulder. But it was too late, for Wing had already grabbed him by one of his dangling feet. Another moment and the negro had been roughly pulled into the road. Wing scrambled to the mule's back and dug into the animal with his naked heels. Probably the mule was as startled as his former rider, for he broke into a lumbering lope. The chase, just then, took on a hopeless outlook for Motor Matt. If Martin had only happened along in the automobile, the fleeing Chinaman could have been brought up with a round turn, but Matt, with only his feet under him, could not hope to overtake the galloping mule. The darky, as Matt came up with him, was gathering in his ragged hat and climbing to an upright position. He wore a look of puzzled astonishment. "Ain't dat scan'lous?" he cried. "Ah done been slammed into de road by er Chinymum! En he's got mah mu-el! He's er runnin' erway wif mah Gin'ral Jackson mu-el. By golly, whaffur kind ob way is dat tuh treat an ole moke lak me?" "It was pretty rough, uncle, and that's a fact," replied Matt, smothering an inclination to laugh at the ludicrous picture the old negro presented. "If we had another mule, I could catch the rascal, but it is too much of a job for me with nothing to ride." "You chasin' dat 'ar Chinymum, boss?" inquired the darky. "Yes." "Has he been up tuh somefin' dat he hadn't ort?" "He has." "Den yo' lis'en heah, chile," and a slow grin crept over the wizened, ebony face of the negro. "Erbout er mile ahead dar's a bridge ovah a creek, en dat 'ar Chinyman ain't gwine tuh ride Gin'ral Jackson ovah dat bridge." "Why not?" "'Case dat fool mu-el won't cross no bridge if yo' doan' cotch his off eah en give hit a pull. Mu-els is mouty queer daterway, en Gin'ral Jackson is a heap queerer dan any othah mu-el yo' most evah see. He's skeered ob a bridge, en pullin' his off eah done takes his min' off'n de bridge, lak, en he goes ovah wifout mistrustin'. Now, dat yalluh Chinymum trash doan' know dat, en ef he try to mek Gin'ral Jackson cross de bridge wifout pullin' his off eah, dar's suah gwine to be doin's, en----" Just at that moment a boy came along on a bicycle. He was evidently making a long journey, for he had a bag strapped to the handle bars. "Wait a minute!" called Matt to the boy. The bicycle halted, and the lad rested one foot on the ground and looked inquiringly at Matt. "I wish you'd lend me your wheel for a few minutes," said Matt. "A Chinaman just stole this old darky's mule, and I believe I can overhaul the thief if you'll let me take your bicycle." "Gee!" exclaimed the boy. "How much of a start has the Chinaman got?" "About three minutes. The darky says there's a bridge a mile ahead, and that the mule won't cross the bridge unless he's coaxed. Perhaps I can come up with the thief at the bridge." "There you are," said the stranger generously, getting out of the saddle and holding the wheel for Matt. "Much obliged," returned Matt. "You and the darky come on to the bridge, and perhaps you'll find me rounding up the mule and the Chinaman." "We'll do it," was the answer. Matt mounted easily, thrust his toes into the toe clips, and got under way. When he turned an angle of the road, and vanished behind a screen of timber, he was going like a steam engine. It had been a long time since Matt had ridden an ordinary bicycle, but he had by no means forgotten the knack. He was not long in coming within sight of the bridge, and there, sure enough, were the Chinaman and the mule at the bridge approach. The Chinaman was having trouble. General Jackson would not cross the bridge, and he was braced back, immovable as the rock of Gibraltar. Sam Wing was using his heels and the flat of his hand in a furious attempt to force the brute onward. General Jackson did not budge an inch, but, from the way he wagged his ears, it was evident that his wrath was growing. Matt remained silent and bent to the pedals. While Sam Wing was busy urging the mule, Matt was planning to come alongside and treat the Celestial as he had treated the old negro. This design might have been successfully executed had not General Jackson interfered with it. The mule's temper suddenly gave way under the rain of kicks and blows, and he put his head down between his forelegs and hoisted the rear half of his body into the air. The manoeuvre was as sudden as it was unexpected, and Sam Wing went rocketing into space. The bridge was merely a plank affair, without any guard rails at the sides, and after the Chinaman had done a couple of somersaults in the air he landed with a thump on the bridge, close to the unprotected edge. He started to struggle upright, and the hurried movement caused him to slip over the brink. He vanished from before Matt's eyes just as he had disappeared from the caving bank--there was a flutter, a yell, a splash, and Sam Wing was gone. Matt threw on the brake, jumped from the wheel, and, after leaning the machine against a tree, rushed to the bridge. The creek was narrow, but seemed to be deep, and the Chinaman was floating down with the current. There was no time for Matt to linger and explain events to the bicyclist and the negro. Each would recover his property, however, and that ought to satisfy both of them. Springing from the bridge approach, Matt hurried down the bank of the little stream. The Chinaman, the king of the motor boys thought, must have been made of india rubber to bear so well the series of mishaps that had come his way. He came out of every one with astonishing ability to keep up his flight. Matt's rush down the creek bank was not continued for long. Sam Wing saw him and made haste to effect a landing on the opposite bank. He emerged, a dripping and forlorn spectacle, and left a damp trail up the bank and into the woods. Matt did not care to swim the creek in his clothes, and a tree, fallen partly over the stream, afforded him an opportunity to cross dry-shod. The tree was not a large one, and there was a gap of water at the end of it, where the trunk had been splintered and broken away. With a clear, steady brain and sure feet the king of the motor boys passed to the end of his swaying, insecure bridge; then, with a leap, he cleared the stretch of water and landed on the bank. The force he had put into the jump displaced the tree and caused it to tumble into the creek. It had served its purpose, however, and Matt, without a backward look, tore away along the watery trail of the Chinaman. CHAPTER X. THE CHASE CONCLUDED. When Matt came near enough to see Sam Wing, it seemed plain that the Celestial was yielding to the "blows of circumstance." His flight dragged. Time and time again he cast a wild look over his shoulder at the relentless pursuer, and tried in vain to increase his pace. His random course crossed a road through the timber with a line of telegraph or telephone poles on one side of it. After a moment's hesitation, Sam Wing chose the road. It was easier going, no doubt, and for that reason probably appealed to him in his fagged condition. But if it was easier for Sam Wing, so was it for Matt. Now, at last, the eventful chase was certainly approaching its finish. As the pursuit went on, Matt resolutely closing up the gap between him and the Chinaman, the timber suddenly broke away to give a view of a farmhouse and a barn. Between the house and barn stood a farmer with a rake. Sam Wing, at the end of his rope and apparently determined on making a last desperate stand, swerved from the road and ran in the direction of the barn. "Hi, there!" shouted Matt, waving his arms to attract the attention of the farmer, "head him off!" It was not difficult for the farmer to understand enough of the situation to make him useful in the emergency, and he started energetically to do what he could. Swinging the rake around his head, he hurried toward a point which would intersect the path of the Chinaman. Sam Wing, even though he was weary and almost spent, continued "game." A small, V-shaped hencoop stood close to the point where he halted and confronted the farmer. "By Jerry," threatened the farmer, "yew stop! Don't yew try no shenanigin with me, or I'll comb out your pigtail with this here rake. What yew---- Gosh-all-hemlocks!" It was absolutely necessary for Sam Wing to do something if he did not want to be trapped between the farmer in front and Matt, who was hurrying up behind. Calling upon all his strength, Wing stooped, grabbed the small coop, and hurled it at the farmer's legs. The coop struck the farmer's shins and doubled his lank frame up like a closed jackknife. He went down, rake and all, and Wing passed around him and lumbered on toward the open barn door. The farmer's ire was aroused. Getting up on his knees, he began calling, at the top of his lungs: "Tige! Here, Tige!" Tige, a brindled bulldog, came scurrying from the direction of the house. "Take 'im, Tige!" bellowed the farmer, pointing toward Sam Wing with the rake. The Chinaman's Waterloo was close upon him. He had time to give one last frantic look behind, and then Tige caught him by the slack of his dripping garments and pulled him down. "Don't let the dog hurt him!" yelled Matt. "Watch 'im, Tige!" cried the farmer. "Good dorg, Tige! Watch 'im!" The farmer got up and gave the hencoop a vicious kick. "Jee-whillikins, mister," said he, "what's that slant-eyed heathen been up to, hey? He looks like he'd dropped outen a wet rag bag." "He's a thief," answered Matt. "He barked my shins somethin' turrible with that hencoop. But yew got him now, an' don't yew fergit it. That Tige is the best dorg fer tramps an' sich yew ever seen." Together they walked to the place where Tige, growling savagely and showing his teeth, was standing over the prone Chinaman. Sam Wing dared not make a move. Had he so much as lifted a finger, the bulldog would have been at his throat. "Order the dog away," said Matt to the farmer. "I want to talk with the Chinaman, and we'll take him into the barn where we can both sit down on something and rest a little. We've had a hard chase." The farmer spoke to the dog and the animal slunk away, still keeping his glittering eyes on Sam Wing. "Looks purty meachin', don't he?" muttered the farmer, peering at the prisoner. "He's a bad Chinaman," returned Matt, "and he knows it. Get up, Sam Wing," he added, "and go into the barn. Don't try to do any more running. You haven't strength enough to go far, and it won't be best for you." With wary eyes on the dog, Wing got up and moved toward the barn door. When they were all inside, Matt took down a coil of rope that swung from a nail and started toward the prisoner. "What yew goin' to do, friend?" asked the farmer. "Tie him," replied Matt. "That ain't necessary. Tige is better'n all the ropes that was ever made. All I got ter do is ter tell him ter watch the heathen, an' yew can bet a pair o' gum boots he'll do it." The farmer spoke to the dog, that had followed them into the barn, and the animal drew close to Sam Wing and sat down within biting distance. Matt, satisfied with the arrangement for the time being, dropped the rope and seated himself on the tongue of a wagon. "Sam Wing," said the king of the motor boys severely, "you're a mighty bad Chinaman." "Me savvy," answered Wing, whose English was far from being as good as the mandarin's. "You stole the ruby from Tsan Ti," went on Matt. Sam Wing had strength enough left to show some surprise. "How you savvy?" he inquired. "I know it, and that's enough. You're a treacherous scoundrel to turn against the mandarin as you did." "All same," answered Sam Wing, in extreme dejection. "Ten thousand demons makee heap tlouble fol Wing. Me plenty solly." "You ought to be sorry. Tsan Ti trusted you with his money and had a lot of confidence in you. And you betrayed that confidence." Sam Wing groaned heavily and caressed his numerous bruises. One of his hands finally reached the breast of his torn blouse, and he fished from it a very wet alligator-skin pouch. "Here Tsan Ti's money," said he, offering the pouch to Matt. "Me velly bad Chinaman. You takee money, lettee Sam Wing go?" "I'll take the money," and Matt suited his action to the word, "but I can't let you go until you give up the ruby." "No gottee luby," came the astonishing assertion from Sam Wing. "You took it from the mandarin, didn't you?" demanded Matt. "My takee las' night, no gottee now." "Where is it?" "Me losee when me makee lun flom spling. No savvy where me losee--p'laps where me makee fall down bank, p'laps on load, p'laps in cleek--no savvy. Luby gone, me no gottee Eye of Buddha." It seemed strange to Matt that Sam Wing could carry the alligator-skin pouch safely through all his varied adventures and yet not be able to retain the most valuable part of his cargo--the part which, presumably, he would take care to stow safely. "Don't tell any lies, Sam Wing!" said Matt sternly. "No tellee lie--all same one piecee tluth!" protested the Chinaman. "I'll have to make sure of that," went on Matt. He searched carefully through the Chinaman's torn and waterlogged apparel, but without discovering anything of value--much less the missing gem. "Where did you have it?" he asked. Sam Wing showed him the inside pocket where the ruby had been placed. "Where have you been since you took the ruby?" A wave of emotion convulsed the Chinaman's features. "Evel place," he murmured. "My stay in Galdenville one piecee time, makee tly keepee 'way flom Tsan Ti. Bymby me makee lun fol countlee. Tsan Ti makee see, makee lun, too. My makee hide in hills, foolee Tsan Ti so he no ketchee. My heap hungly, heap thirsty. Findee spling to takee dlink. You come." Sam Wing shook his head sadly. "You had the ruby when you were at the spring?" inquired Matt. The Chinaman nodded. "And you lost it while I was chasing you?" Another nod. Matt, oppressed with what he had heard, and which he felt instinctively was the truth, resumed his seat on the wagon tongue. The ruby might be lying anywhere over the wild course Sam Wing had taken in his flight. Perhaps it was mixed with the loose earth of the side hill where the Chinaman had fallen, or it might be under the leaves in the woods, or in the dust of the road, or in the bottom of the creek. Of one thing Matt was sure, and that was that to retrace the exact line of Sam Wing's flight would be impossible; and, even if it were possible, finding the red gem would be as difficult as looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. The Eye of Buddha seemed to be lost irretrievably. This was like to prove a tragic event for Tsan Ti. It was strange what ill luck had attended upon all in any way connected with the idol's eye; and doubly strange was this final loss of the precious stone. While Matt was busily turning the catastrophe over in his mind, the farmer suddenly gave a shout and pointed through the open barn door and along the road. "Great sassafrass!" he exclaimed. "I never seen sich a day fer Chinamen! Look there, will yew?" Matt looked, and what he saw staggered him. Two motor cycles were coming down the road. Bunce was riding one and Tsan Ti the other. Here was another flight and pursuit, for the sailor was pushing hard upon the heels of the mandarin. For only a moment was Matt at loss. Gathering up the coil of rope which he had taken from the nail in the barn wall, he called to the farmer to watch the prisoner and ran out of the barn and toward the road. CHAPTER XI. A DOUBLE CAPTURE. Matt was bewildered by the strange turn events were taking. Encountering Sam Wing at the spring was odd enough, in all truth, and the weird happenings during his pursuit had been as novel as they were thrilling; but here, in a most inexplicable way, came the mandarin and the mariner on motor cycles, wabbling down the road, Tsan Ti in a panic and Bunce aggressive and determined. Matt shouted, but the two on the motor cycles were so deeply immersed in their own efforts that they paid no attention to the call. To stop the motor cycles was the first step, and the young motorist went about it in his usual resourceful way. Swiftly he secured one end of the rope to a telegraph pole at the side of the road; then, bounding back, he took a turn with the free end of the rope around a convenient tree. Hanging to the cable that was to form a blockade for the charging wheels, Matt once more gave his attention to Bunce and Tsan Ti. The pursuit of the mandarin had reached a crisis. The sailor had come close enough to reach out and grab the Chinaman's flying queue, and he was hauling rearward, pulling the mandarin back until his hands had left the handle bars. "Stop!" shouted Motor Matt, laying back on the end of the rope. The command was useless, for pursuer and pursued were obliged to halt in spite of it. The mandarin's swaying motor cycle was first to hit the rope. Before the machine could topple over, Bunce crashed into it. There followed a rasping volley of gasoline explosions, a roar from the sailor, and a chattering yell from the mandarin. The two were on the ground, tangled up with each other and with the motor cycles. Dropping the rope, Matt rushed at the struggling pair, seized Bunce by the shoulders, and hauled him out of the mix-up. A revolver had fallen from the sailor's pocket. Matt sprang to secure it, and then faced Bunce, who was on his knees and staring about him dazedly. "Noble friend!" cried the mandarin, carefully extricating his head from the frame of one of the motor cycles, "you have again preserved the wretched Tsan Ti! The evil personage yonder would presently have caught me!" Bunce, having finally decided that the situation was one that boded him no good, started to get up and remove himself from the scene. "I don't believe you'd better leave us just yet, Bunce," called Matt, waving the revolver. "Stay right where you are. This is a complication which you can help the mandarin explain." "By the seven holy spritsails!" muttered Bunce, falling back in his original position and looking at Matt and then at the farmer. "How, in the name o' Davy Jones," he cried, his gaze returning to Matt, "do you happen to be cruisin' in these waters?" "Never mind that, for the present. What I want to know is, where have you and the mandarin come from? And why were you chasing him?" "I have escaped, highly appreciated friend whose kindness is much reciprocated," babbled the mandarin, coming blithely to Matt's side and carefully knocking the dust out of his little black cap. "I have made a never-to-be-forgotten escape from the hands of evil-minded enemies. It was your friend from the cattle districts who helped me." So far, all that Matt had heard and seen had merely bogged him the more deeply in a mire of misunderstanding. At the mandarin's mention of McGlory, his speculations went off at a wild tangent. "Did Grattan and Bunce capture the other car?" he demanded. "Where did you find Joe and Martin? Where are they now? What's happened to them?" "Peace, distinguished youth," said the mandarin, putting on his cap and fluttering his hand reassuringly. "I know nothing about any car except the blue one by the pocket." "Blue car? Did you see a blue car?" "Even so, my amazed friend. And beside the blue car leaned those go-devil bicycles. McGlory--faithful assistant in my time of need--helped me beguile Grattan, Pardo, and Bunce into the pocket, whereupon I secured one of the go-devil machines and fled swiftly. The one-eyed sailor followed. Which way we came I do not know. Wherever I saw another road I turned into it. How long we raced is too much for my disturbed faculties to understand. We went, and went, and at last we were here, and I found you! Oh, loyal defender of the most wretched of mandarins, to you I owe my peace, my happiness, and my life! May the six thousand peri of the land of enchantment afford you joy in the life to come!" "Well, by gum!" muttered the wide-eyed farmer, shifting his rake to the other hand and rubbing a palm against his forehead. "I never seen a heathen that could talk like that before. Some remarkable now, ain't it?" Matt was too deeply concerned with what Tsan Ti had said to pay much attention to the farmer. He kept his watchful eyes on Bunce, however, while seeking to get deeper into the perplexing situation that so suddenly confronted him. "Let's begin at the beginning, Tsan Ti," said he, "and try and smooth out the knots of this amazing tangle with some sort of system. McGlory and I received your telegram. What happened to you after Sam Wing stole the ruby?" "I awoke from my dreams in great fright, inquiring friend," responded the mandarin, "and found the ruby gone, and Sam Wing gone. There was but one thing for me to think, and I thought it. The train was at a station, and I jumped from the steps. I looked for Sam Wing, but he had vanished; then I sent my telegram and waited until you might arrive. In the gray dawn that came into the east, I saw Sam Wing suddenly flash by the open door of the railroad station. I shouted and ran after him, but he evaded me. Ah, the dreary heart-sickness in my breast as I pursued the traitor!" The mandarin clutched at his frayed yellow blouse and wrung a fold of it in his fat fingers. "Who can tell of that? I followed the wagon road through the mountains, looking and listening. Then I heard some one, afar off, shouting the name of Motor Matt. Hope leaped high within me, for that name, notable sir, has a magic of its own. I turned from the road, climbed many rocks, and crushed through thick growths of prickly bushes, striving to reach the one who had shouted. Also, I shouted myself, and presently, to my great but mistaken delight, other shoutings were returned to me. I went on, in my deceived state, and came to a place where I was captured--made a prisoner by Grattan and that contemptible mariner of the single eye! Your friend of the cattle districts was likewise a prisoner." "McGlory--captured by Grattan!" gasped Matt. "How did that happen? Why, I thought he was with Martin." "Not so, deceived friend. He had tried to follow you in the pursuit of Sam Wing, and he had lost knowledge of his location, and was shouting to hear some speak and tell him where he was. That is what I heard. Before I could reach your friend, Grattan and Bunce had also heard him, and made him a prisoner. Then they heard me, and made _me_ a captive. Verily, the ten thousand demons have had me under the ban." "I'm beginning to get at this," said Matt grimly. "Where did you and Grattan come from, Bunce, that you were placed so handily for entrapping McGlory and the mandarin?" "We'd made port in the hills," replied Bunce, "an' was out lookin' for Tsan Ti an' the ruby." "They, miserable creatures," resumed the mandarin, with a glance of contempt at Bunce, "had the blue car and the go-devil bicycles in a gashed-out spot among the mountains. A cavern, named by them a pocket, was in the wall of the rough valley. There were McGlory and I taken and bound. While Grattan, Bunce, and Pardo, birds of evil feather, were plotting in the blue car, I gnawed the cord that secured your unfortunate friend's hands, and he freed himself and me. After that McGlory raised a great clamor. Grattan, Bunce, and Pardo came hastily to observe what might be the trouble, and I went out of the pocket as they came in. Then I took the motor cycle, as I have said, and moved away, followed by the mariner. Is the matter clear, esteemed friend?" "I'm beginning to understand it," answered Matt. "It's the queerest mix-up I ever heard of. Strange that you and Joe should fall into the hands of Grattan and Bunce, as you did, and that you should happen to lead Bunce this way when you fled on the motor cycle." "Matter-of-fact youth," remarked the mandarin earnestly, "do you not realize how strange events happen swiftly in the wake of the Eye of Buddha? The ten thousand demons are doing their worst continually, and their powers for evil are vast beyond imagining!" "We'll pass over that phase of the matter," said Matt dryly, "and try to get at something that will benefit McGlory. Can you take me to this 'pocket,' as you call it?" "Not so," replied the mandarin. "I have no recollection how I came from it, or what roads I took. The roads were many, and the way was long, and my mind was too greatly disturbed to pay attention." "Where's the pocket, Bunce?" asked Matt, addressing the sailor. "I know, messmate," scowled Bunce, "but I'm not showin' ye the course." Matt was in a quandary. He could not understand why Grattan had captured McGlory, but he was not intending to let his chum remain any longer in the hands of the thieves than was absolutely necessary. A way would be found to make Bunce lead him to the pocket. "Generous and agreeable friend," spoke up Tsan Ti, "did you succeed in capturing Sam Wing?" "I did," replied Matt. "Then may I request of you the Eye of Buddha?" "I'll take you to Sam Wing and you can request it of him," said Matt. "Get up, Bunce," he ordered, "and start yourself for the barn. Will you," and Matt shot a glance at the farmer, "kindly remove that rope from the road and set the motor cycles upright in a place where they will be safe?" "Glad to do anythin' fer yew that I can," answered the farmer, dropping his rake and getting busy with the rope. Matt, face to face with the ordeal of acquainting Tsan Ti with the fact that the ruby was irretrievably lost, was wondering, as he drove Bunce toward the barn, what the result of the catastrophe was to be. CHAPTER XII. ANOTHER SURPRISE. Bunce was accepting his hard luck with all the complaisance he could muster. His pursuit of the mandarin had led him into difficulties undreamed of, but he still indulged a hope that the resourceful Grattan might come to his aid. He went into the barn, and recoiled a little as a savage growl struck on his ears. Tige was still guarding Sam Wing. "Sit down," said Matt, to Bunce, nodding toward some bags of ground feed lying on the barn floor. "The dog won't molest you; he's looking after Sam Wing." Bunce, plainly uncomfortable, seated himself, watching Tige warily. The instant Tsan Ti came through the barn door and saw Sam Wing, a cry of rage burst from his lips, and he flew at his treacherous servant. Matt grabbed the angry mandarin and held him back. "That won't do, Tsan Ti," said Matt. "Sit down and take things calmly. There's your money," and he pointed to the alligator-skin pouch which lay by the wagon tongue. "Sam Wing turned it over to me. You'd better count it and make sure it's all there. Hereafter, it would be wise for you to take care of your money yourself." Tsan Ti glared at Sam Wing, then stooped down, and recovered the pouch. The receptacle was filled with soggy banknotes, and, while the mandarin was fingering them over, he kept up a running fire of talk in Chinese. The condemnation must have been of the most scathing sort, for the wretched Sam Wing shivered as he listened. Presently Sam Wing himself began to talk. He spoke at length, and must have been acquainting the mandarin with the dread fact that the Eye of Buddha was lost, for, suddenly, Tsan Ti dropped the alligator-skin pouch and the wet bills and reeled back against the barn wall. His eyes became glassy and his face turned white. Presently he sank down on the barn floor, listless and staring. "Has he told you about the ruby, Tsan Ti?" asked Matt, his pity for the mandarin rising paramount to any other feeling he may have cherished against him. Tsan Ti did not answer; in fact, he did not seem to hear. He had suffered a blow that paralyzed his faculties. "Blow me tight!" breathed Bunce, astonished. "Hasn't he got the ruby?" "Didn't Grattan search him?" returned Matt. "Ah, he looked through his pockets and his sandals, and even tried to find the Eye of Buddha in his queue, but it wasn't there. For all that, we thought the chink knowed where the stone was an' could be made to tell." "He knew where it was--Sam Wing had it." "Hocused it?" "Stole it--then lost it!" "Shiver me!" exclaimed Bunce, aghast. "Then Tsan Ti ain't got the ruby, an' Grattan won't never be able to put hands on it!" "It's gone for good," answered Matt. "Now you can see, Bunce, just how much good Grattan's trickery and double-dealing has benefited him. You and he stole the ruby from the Honam joss house and brought it to America; Tsan Ti followed you, under orders from the regent of China to recover the idol's eye or else to strangle himself with the yellow cord; the ruby was recovered for Tsan Ti here in the Catskills, but Grattan kept up his wild scheming and committed one piece of lawless villainy after another in his attempts to get the ruby away from Tsan Ti; now we're at the end of the whole business, and neither Grattan nor Tsan Ti has the ruby, or will ever have it." Just at that moment the farmer came into the barn. "I got them machines where they'll be safe," he announced, "an'---- Gosh all Whittaker! What's the fat Chinaman doin'?" Matt turned to look at Tsan Ti. He had the yellow cord around his throat, rove into a running bowline, and was pulling at the loose end. The king of the motor boys hurried to him and jerked his hands from the cord with a quick movement. "That will do, Tsan Ti!" cried Matt sternly. "Can't you be a man? You're not going to strangle yourself while I'm around!" "There is no hope for Tsan Ti," mumbled the mandarin. "The august decree of my regent--may his years be many and glorious!--calls for my quick dispatch." Matt pulled the cord from the mandarin's neck. "Listen, Tsan Ti," said he; "don't give up until you know the case is really hopeless. We can go back over the ground Sam Wing covered while I was chasing him, and it is possible we can find the ruby." "Not possible, deluded friend," answered the mandarin. "The contemptible Canton dog says the gem may be in the water, or in many other places where its recovery is out of the question. The blandishments of hope pale into the heavy darkness of my certain destruction. Present me with the cord, I beg of you. Tsan Ti, mandarin of the red button, is not afraid to join his exalted ancestors in the country dear to true believers." "Wrong in the upper story, ain't he?" put in the farmer. "In a way," replied Matt. "He sure had himself goin' with that piece o' yellow string. Them heathens is queer, anyway." "I'll not give you this cord, Tsan Ti," declared Matt, "until I can look over the course followed by Sam Wing and make an attempt to find the ruby." "There are other means for performing the quick dispatch," said Tsan Ti calmly. "I prefer the cord; it is an honor to use an instrument direct from the regent's hands; but, if the cord is not at hand, other means will avail me, ungenerous youth." Matt studied the mandarin for a few moments. In his eyes he read determination. Matt, matter-of-fact American lad that he was, could not understand the Oriental custom now exemplified by Tsan Ti--he could not understand the thousands of years' usage which had made the custom part of a Chinaman's faith, and he had nothing but contempt for the exhibition the mandarin was making of himself. "Get the rope, please," said Matt to the farmer. "I think we'll use it." The farmer brought the rope, and Matt, with his assistance, tied Tsan Ti's hands and feet. The mandarin yielded passively. "This will not serve," was all he said; "the time for my dispatch will arrive, in spite of you." "If you keep on acting in this foolish way, Tsan Ti," answered Matt, "I'll lose all the respect I ever had for you. Face the music, can't you? There's no merit in throwing up your hands and quitting just because you have run into a streak of hard luck." "You don't understand, ignorant one." "I understand, fast enough, that you can't hurt yourself while you're tied up." He turned away. "Do you think Tige can watch two prisoners?" he asked of the farmer. "Yew bet he can," answered the farmer enthusiastically, "two 'r a dozen. Why, that dorg's quicker'n chain lightnin'." "Then," went on Matt, "just give Tige to understand that he's to watch the sailor, as well as that other Chinaman." The farmer spoke to the dog, and the animal took up a position between Sam Wing and Bunce. The sailor tried to draw back, but Tige stopped the movement with a savage snarl and a half move as though he would bite. "Keelhaul me!" cried Bunce. "Is this what ye call treatin' a feller white? Why, I wouldn't treat a Hottentot swab like this!" "I've got you, Bunce," said Matt grimly, "and, no matter what becomes of Grattan and Pardo, the law won't be cheated entirely." "What've I done that ye can send me to the brig for? Tell me that!" "Isn't the theft of the ruby enough to send you to jail?" "That happened in Chiny, an' we're in America now." "Well, putting that aside, there remains the criminal work you did at the Catskill garage last night. You can be sent to the penitentiary for that, Bunce." That was a blow that left Bunce gasping. "Grattan done that," he cried; "it wasn't me planned it." "You helped Grattan, Bunce, and you were recognized by the night man. There's a clear case against you, and you'll deserve all the punishment you receive." "Say," said Bunce, with a sudden inspiration, "if ye'll let me go, I'll take ye to that pocket where McGlory is! I'll do more'n that, sink me if I won't! You let me slip my hawse and slant away clear o' these hills, an' I'll help ye git McGlory away from Grattan an' Pardo. What d'ye say, mate? It ain't a job ye could do alone, an' it ain't a place ye can find onless I show the way. What's the word?" "I've had enough experience with you, Bunce," returned Matt, "to know that you're not to be depended on. You'd play some treacherous trick that would----" Here a voice--a very familiar voice--came floating through the open barn door. "Whoop-ya! Any one around? Show up, somebody, and tell me where I am and how to go to get to the spring on the trail from Catskill to Gardenville! Whoo-ee!" "Woods is full o' strangers to-day, seems like!" exclaimed the farmer. Matt bolted past him through the door, then halted, and gazed spellbound at a blue automobile with Joe McGlory in the driver's seat. This might have been considered the culminating surprise of the day's events. And it was a mutual surprise, too, judging by the way McGlory acted. Leaning over the steering wheel, the cowboy gazed like one in a trance. "Matt!" he shouted at last, "is this a dream, or the real thing? Say something, you old hardshell. Sufferin' tenterhooks! I can't tell how nervous you make me." CHAPTER XIII. BAITING A TRAP. "Is that the New York man's automobile, Joe?" asked Matt, "the one that was stolen from Martin's garage last night?' "It's the one, pard," jubilated the cowboy. "I've come through a-smoking with it from that place where Grattan had me pocketed with the mandarin. It's queer I stopped here, although I'm off my bearings, haven't the least notion where I am, and this is the first farmhouse I've seen for a dozen miles; but it won't seem quite so queer when I tell you that I saw those machines leaning against the corncrib, and that the familiar look of 'em brought me in to stir up the natives and ask a few questions." McGlory pointed toward a corncrib off at the rear of the barn. The two motor cycles were leaning against the structure, just where the farmer had left them. "I see," said Matt. "Are those motor cycles the ones that belong to Martin, that were stolen from us and that we bled a hundred and fifty apiece for?" "They're the ones." "Well, now!" chuckled McGlory, "what sort of a day's work would you call this, pard? We get back the stolen automobile and both motor cycles. I'm ready to hear the whistle blow." "There's something else to be done before we finish this piece of work, Joe." "Tell me about it." "Sam Wing is in the barn, there----" "Whoop! Then you _did_ get the kibosh on him, after all!" "And Tsan Ti," proceeded Matt, "and Bunce." "Better and better; but I'd almost guessed that just from seeing the motor cycles. What have you been doing since we went two different ways from the spring?" The king of the motor boys sketched rapidly the main points of Sam Wing's flight and the pursuit, following with the blockade of the road and the capture of Bunce. "And Tsan Ti is in the barn this minute," finished Matt, "roped hand and foot to keep him from taking his own life on account of the lost ruby. If possible, I'd like to go over the course of Wing's flight and look for the Eye of Buddha." "Might as well look for a nickel in the Pacific Ocean," scowled McGlory. "It looks like a hopeless case, I'll admit, but I can't leave the poor old mandarin without trying to do something for him." "You're too easy with the crafty old heathen." "You'd be sorry for him, too, Joe, if you could see what a plight he's in." "He was as hard-looking a sight as I ever saw when he fell into Grattan's clutches a few hours ago. If you're bound to go rainbow-chasing after the Eye of Buddha, why, of course I'm in on the deal. We'll have to be about it, I reckon, while we've got daylight to help." "We can use this car for a part of the work. Wing came along the road from that direction." Matt pointed as he spoke. "Why," said McGlory, "I came from that direction myself. I don't reckon it's safe to go back that way." "Not safe?" echoed Matt. "Why isn't it safe?" "Mainly for the reason, pard, that Grattan and Pardo are trailing this car. They didn't like to lose it. That hole through the back"--and McGlory turned to point it out--"was made by a bullet that Grattan sent after me. I've been traveling roads that automobiles never took before, and the marks this car left would make easy trailing." "Do you know positively that Grattan and Pardo are following the car?" "Well, yes, if you want to pin me down. One of the electric terminals got loose when I was a short distance away from the pocket, and I had a time finding out what was wrong. While I was groping around, I saw Grattan and Pardo chasing toward me. They were a good ways off, but if you want a picture of a chap in a hurry you ought to've had a snapshot of me! I was lucky enough to find the loose wire just in time to screw it to the post, crank up, and fly. The tinhorns were within a hundred feet of the blue car when we jumped away on the high speed. And that's how I know Grattan and Pardo are after me. Besides, now that the motor cycles are gone, those fellows need the blue car to help them make a dash out of the hills. Jump in, though, if you want to take chances, and we'll go looking for that hoodoo ruby." But Matt was not in so much of a hurry now. Leaning against the side of the car, he fell into a brown study. "What's to pay?" asked McGlory. "Something else on your mind?" "Well, yes," laughed Matt; "I'd like to use you and the blue car in baiting a trap." "Oh, well, I don't mind. Grattan used me for bait in trapping Tsan Ti, so I'm getting used to it. But what sort of a trap is it?" "If Grattan and Pardo are really following you," said Matt, "why couldn't you go back down the road, stop the car, and pretend you had a breakdown?" "Bee-yu-ti-ful!" rapped out McGlory. "I could do all that, pard, and Grattan and Pardo could show up and gobble me, blue car and all. Fine! Say, you're most as good a hand at planning as the mandarin." "But suppose," supplemented Matt, "that two or three fellows were hid in the tonneau of the car and that they jumped out at the right moment and made things interesting for Grattan and Pardo?" McGlory lifted his clinched fist and brought it down emphatically on the steering wheel. "Speak to me about that! I might have known you had something up your sleeve. I think it would work, pard, but who's to hide in the tonneau? You, for one, of course, but who else?" "The farmer who lives here seems to be rather handy and to have plenty of courage, and he's got a bulldog that's a whole team and something to spare. I guess the farmer, and I, and the dog will be enough." "Keno! Trot out the Rube and the kyoodle and we'll slide back down the road with a chip on our shoulder." Matt went into the barn for a talk with the farmer. He listened attentively while Matt gave him a résumé of events and a synopsis of the plan he had evolved. "I'm with yew," cried the farmer, slapping his hands, "but yew'll have to wait till I tell Josi' where I'm goin'. If we take the dorg away from the barn, Josi' ought to watch these fellers till we git back." "We'll put ropes on the sailor and that other Chinaman," said Matt, "but it will be a good idea to have them watched, just the same." The farmer got some spare halters and helped with the tying. When it was finished, he hurried away to find "Josi'" and to tell him what he was to do. In ten minutes he was back, bringing a long, spare individual clad in a "wamus" and overalls. "Here's the fellers yew're to watch, Josi'," said the farmer, waving a hand toward Tsan Ti, Bunce, and Sam Wing. "Don't yew let 'em git away, nuther." "If they git away, by jing," answered Josi', pushing up the sleeves of his wamus, "they'll have to walk over me to do it. You be kerful, Zeke Boggs. 'Pears mighty like you had the hot end o' this job." "Don't yew fret none about me," answered Boggs. "I wasn't born yestiddy." He called the dog, and he, and Matt, and Tige left the barn and crawled into the tonneau of the blue car. "How far down the road am I to go, pard?" queried McGlory, getting out to turn over the engine. "Oh, a mile or two," answered Matt. "Maybe there'll not be anything doing," said Joe, as he climbed back to his seat. "Grattan and Pardo may have become discouraged, and given up the trail. Even if they hung to it, we'll have to wait some time for them." "They'll come," said Matt. "I never had a day pan out so much excitement as this one has given us. Events have been crowding our way so thick and fast that they're not going to stop until we have a chance at Grattan and Pardo." "I'm agreeable," expanded McGlory. "Anything from a fight to a foot race goes with _me_. After the way I starred myself by getting lost in this little bunch of toy mountains, I'm hungry to square myself by doing something worth while." "You've squared yourself already by getting back the blue car," returned Matt. "Not so you could notice. Tsan Ti helped me along with that move. The chance jumped up when I wasn't expecting it, and hit me square between the eyes. Anyone could have turned that trick." McGlory was pushing the blue car back along the road at a lively clip. Matt stood up to look ahead, in the vain hope of getting track of the red jewel. "I know what you're looking for, pard," remarked the cowboy, "and you're not going to find it. A good many peculiar things have happened to-day, and no mistake; but picking that red stone out of a couple of square miles of country would be too uncommon. Good luck won't strain itself to that extent. Think we're far enough?" "This will do," answered Matt, and McGlory halted the blue car in about the loneliest spot in the Catskills. There was a marsh on one side of the road, bordered with stunted trees and matted bushes. On the other side was the timber. "Maybe," suggested McGlory, "I'd better head the car t'other way? That's how I was going when Grattan and Pardo saw me last, and----" He cut short his remarks abruptly and peered off along the road. "What's the matter, Joe?" asked Matt. "Car coming," was the reply. "I don't reckon many cars take this road, and it's possible Grattan and Pardo borrowed one from somebody who wasn't looking and are using it to hunt for the blue automobile. Lie low, Matt, you, and Boggs, and the dog. Here's where I begin to pretend--listen while I tinker." "If we have a fight," said Boggs, as he and Matt crouched down in the tonneau, "by gum, I want yew to let me do my share." "We'll all have plenty to do, Mr. Boggs," answered Matt, well pleased with the farmer's spirit, "if those fellows who are coming are the ones we're after. Don't make a move, though, and don't let Tige loose until I give the word." Silence fell over those in the tonneau. McGlory could be heard pottering around with a wrench, and presently the hum of the approaching car could be heard. "I don't like the looks of things," called the cowboy, in a guarded tone, from the front of the blue car. "Why not?" asked Matt. "Can't tell yet. You fellows stay where you are and keep mum." The noise of the other automobile had grown to proportions which proved that it was almost at hand. McGlory said something, but it was impossible for Matt or Boggs to hear what it was. The other car stopped so close to the blue automobile that the mud guards almost scraped. Matt, from the depths of the tonneau, caught sight of a high-powered roadster with two business-like appearing men on the seats. But they were not Grattan and Pardo. "That's the car, sure as shooting!" declared one. "Get out, Gridly," said the second man, "and look at the number." Gridly jumped down from the roadster and hurried to the rear of the touring car. "We've won out, Banks!" he called. "The number's eighty-one-two-sixty-three." "What's the matter?" inquired Matt, rising in the tonneau and looking out from under the top. "Matter?" grinned Banks. "Nothin' much, only I'm the sheriff and all you fellows are arrested. You stole this car from Martin's garage in Catskill last night. Jest be peaceable, and everythin' 'll be fine: but try to make trouble and there'll be warm doings." "Sufferin' Jonah!" laughed McGlory. "Wouldn't this rattle your spurs, Matt?" CHAPTER XIV. HOW THE TRAP WAS SPRUNG. Matt remembered that Martin had said the New York man who owned the stolen car had sent telegrams and telephone messages all through the hills. Perhaps, if there was any wonderment to be indulged in, it should have been because McGlory had escaped the officers as long as he had. The king of the motor boys opened the tonneau door and stood on the footboard, facing Banks. "You've made a slight mistake, Mr. Banks," said Matt. "From your point of view," answered the sheriff, "I guess maybe I have. There happens to be five hundred dollars in this for me an' Gridly, though, and we ain't takin' your word for it that there's a mistake. This car answers the description of the one that was stolen, right down to the number." "This is the car, all right," proceeded Matt, "but we're not the fellows who stole it." "Caught with the goods," jeered Gridly, "an' then deny the hull job! Nervy, but it won't wash." "Where'd the car fall into your hands if you ain't the ones that stole it?" asked Banks. "My chum, there, got it away from the thieves." "Oh, that's what your chum did, eh?" "You're to get five hundred dollars for recovering the car?" said Matt. "_And_ capturin' the thieves," returned Banks. "Was one of the thieves supposed to be a sailor with a green patch over one eye?" Gridly and Banks must have experienced something of a shock. For a moment they gazed at each other. "Somethin' _was_ said in that telegraft about a sailor with a green patch over one eye, Banks," observed Gridly. "That's a fact," admitted Banks reflectively. "But we've got the car and there ain't no sailor with it. I guess that part of the telegram must have been a mistake." "There's no mistake about it," said Matt. "We have captured the sailor, and he's at the farm of Mr. Boggs, here." Matt drew to one side so the officers could see the farmer. "Well, if it ain't Boggs!" exclaimed Banks, startled. "Zeke Boggs an' his brindled bulldog!" added Gridly. "What the young feller says is straight goods, Banks," declared the farmer. "The sailor with the patch over his eye is up to my place in the barn. Josi's watchin' 'im." "What're you doin' here? That's what I want to know,' said Banks. "Come out to help these young fellers spring a trap." "What sort of a trap?" "Why," put in Matt, "a trap to catch two pals of the sailor--one of them is the man who helped the sailor take this car from Martin's garage." Banks helped himself to a chew of tobacco. "Jest for the sake of bein' sociable, an' gettin' at the nub of this thing," he remarked, "you might tell us who you are, young feller, an' what you happen to be doing in this part of the hills?" "My name's King, Matt King----" "Otherwise," cut in McGlory, "Motor Matt. Maybe you've heard of Motor Matt?" "I have," said Banks; "he's been doing things around Catskill for the last few days." The sheriff passed his shrewd eyes over the king of the motor boys as he balanced himself on the footboard. There was nothing in the lad's appearance to indicate that he was not telling the truth. "I'm not doubting your word at all, young feller," remarked Banks, "but I'll feel a lot more like believing you if you tell me about this trap you're arrangin' to spring." Matt told how McGlory had run away from the pocket, and how Grattan and Pardo had followed him. He finished by describing the manner in which Grattan and Pardo were to be lured into the vicinity of the blue automobile and captured. "That sounds like a play of Motor Matt's, right enough," said Gridly. "Anyhow, I don't think it'll work," announced Banks. "Why not?" asked Matt. "You can't be sure Grattan and Pardo are follerin' the car; an', if they _are_ follerin', maybe they've got off the track." "That's possible, of course; but the chances for success, though slight, are worth waiting and working for, don't you think? If the plan fails, we'll be out nothing but our time." "Two boys, a farmer, an' a dog ain't enough to make the play if it should come to a showdown," declared Banks. "Gridly and I will be in on it, I guess. I'll take this machine up the road and tuck it away in the bushes, then I'll come back, an' Gridly an' I will crowd into the tonneau with the rest of you. If the game works, I'll be capturin' one of the men I'm arter; if it don't work, then, as you say, all we'll be out is a little time. I'll be back in a minute. Pull the crank, Gridly." The roadster flashed up the road, and Matt could see Banks forcing the machine into the bushes at the roadside. In a little while the sheriff was back at the touring car. "The back part of that machine will be a little crowded," said he, "but we'll have to stand it if we make the play you've laid out, Motor Matt." "Suppose you and Gridly get into the tonneau," suggested Matt, "and leave Boggs, and me, and the dog to hide in the bushes at the edge of the marsh? We'll be close enough to help if anything happens, and won't interfere with you if you should have to work in a hurry." There remained in the sheriff's mind a lingering suspicion that this idea was launched with some ulterior purpose in view, but a look into Motor Matt's face dispelled the unworthy thought. "That's a good suggestion," said Banks. "Get in here with me, Gridly." "You'd better turn the car around, Joe," went on Matt, as soon as the officers were in the car. McGlory started the engine and threw on the reverse, backing the blue car until he had it headed the other way. "Now we're ready for whatever's to come," said Banks. "And it can't come too quick, either," supplemented Gridly. Matt, Boggs, and the dog retired to the edge of the marsh and made themselves comfortable among the bushes. The king of the motor boys was well pleased with the way the encounter with the sheriff had turned out. There had been, for a few moments, the promise of a serious complication, but Banks had proved reasonable and there was nothing more to worry about. Matt's hope now was that Grattan and Pardo would fall into the trap that was laid for them. If they did, the motor boys' account with the unscrupulous Grattan would be settled for all time. They would always have some regrets on account of the poor old mandarin, but after they had looked carefully over the course of Sam Wing's flight, they would have done everything possible to help Tsan Ti. "By gum," remarked Boggs, while he and Matt were waiting, "I never knowed yew was Motor Matt!" "I didn't suppose you'd ever heard of Motor Matt, Mr. Boggs," answered the young motorist. "I take a Gardenville paper, and that had a lot to say about what yew been doin' down to Catskill. Yew've given things quite a stirrin' up in that town. Is that fat chink the one that come from Chiny to get holt of the idol's eye?" "He's the one." "Well, I'm s'prised; I am, for a fact! Jest to think all this took place right on my farm! Josi' won't hardly know what to think, and the----" "Quiet in there, pard!" came the low voice of McGlory. "They're coming." "Grattan and Pardo?" returned Matt. "Sure, and they walk as though they were tired. Now I've got to rustle around and pretend to be so busy I don't see 'em." The cowboy opened the hood and fell to tinkering with the wrench. All was quiet in the tonneau, but there was a load of danger for Grattan and Pardo in that blue car had they but known it! Peering from the bushes, Matt and Boggs saw the two men come swiftly and silently along the road. McGlory, with steady nerves, kept at his work. Pardo crept up behind the cowboy and caught him suddenly about the shoulders. "I guess that puts the boot on the other leg!" exulted Pardo, drawing McGlory roughly away from the machine. "The fellow that laughs last," cried Grattan, "laughs best. You've given us a good hard run of it, McGlory, but we just _had_ to have this car. It means everything to Pardo and me. What's the trouble with it?" "Loose burr," answered the cowboy, with feigned sullenness. "It's been bothering me ever since I left the pocket. If it hadn't been for that, you'd never have caught me." "Probably not," said Grattan. "Small things sometimes lead to big results. Show me the loose burr and I'll tighten it. After that, McGlory, we'll bid you an affectionate farewell and show these mountains our heels." "The wrench I've got isn't large enough," went on McGlory. "You'll have to get another out of the tool box." This was a clever ruse on the cowboy's part to draw the thief to the footboard of the car--placing him handily for Banks and Gridly. The tool box was open. Grattan, entirely unsuspicious, went back around the side of the car and stooped over to get the wrench. The next moment Banks had thrown himself on top of him, Gridly had dropped out the other side of the car, McGlory had whirled on Pardo, and Matt, Boggs, and Tige were rushing out of the bushes. The trap had been sprung, and sprung so neatly that neither Grattan nor Pardo had the slightest chance of getting out of it or of using their firearms. CHAPTER XV. BACK TO THE FARM. The skirmish--for it amounted to little more than that--was over with in short order. Grattan resisted stoutly, but Boggs went to Banks' assistance, while Matt and Gridly went to McGlory's. In almost less time than it takes to tell it, handcuffs were snapped on the wrists of the prisoners and they were loaded into the tonneau with the two officers. "It worked as slick as greased lightning, Motor Matt!" cried the delighted sheriff. "Those two crooks never suspected a thing!" Pardo was exceedingly bitter. "Now, see what your confounded plans have done for me, Grattan!" he cried angrily. "I was a fool to ever tie up with you." "If we'd been successful," returned Grattan coolly "and secured the ruby, you'd have talked the other way. Where's your nerve, Pardo?" Pardo, still dazed by the suddenness of the capture, sank back into the corner of the tonneau, muttering. "This is your work, is it, Motor Matt?" inquired Grattan, leaning over the side of the car and fixing his gaze on the young motorist. "I helped plan it," said Matt. "He was the whole works," spoke up McGlory. "Maybe it wasn't _quite_ so clever as the way you played it on me and Tsan Ti, Grattan," and a tantalizing grin accompanied the words; "but I reckon it'll do." "The more I see and learn about Motor Matt," declared Grattan, "the more I admire his shining abilities. He's a wonder. We've matched wits several times, and he's always had a shade the best of it. Will you answer a civil question, my lad?" "What is it?" "Where's Tsan Ti and the ruby?" "Tsan Ti and Bunce are at a farm near here, but----" "So that old idiot has got tangled in the net, too!" "But the ruby," finished Matt, "has been lost." "Lost?" Grattan showed considerable excitement. "How was it lost?" "Sam Wing stole the ruby from Tsan Ti, on the train, and jumped off at Gardenville. The mandarin discovered his loss in time to leave the train at the same station." "Oh, thunder!" exclaimed Grattan disgustedly. "So _that_ was why Tsan Ti followed Sam Wing out of Gardenville!" "And you thought the mandarin was afraid of you, and that that was his reason for hot-footing it into the hills," derided Pardo. "Where and how was the ruby lost?" went on Grattan, paying no attention to Pardo. "I started out with Martin to look for this automobile," said Matt, "and we found Sam Wing at the watering place on the Gardenville road. McGlory and I followed him, but my chum got lost and I was left to keep up the chase alone. It was somewhere along the course Sam Wing led me that the ruby was lost." "Sam Wing is fooling you!" "I think he's telling the truth, Grattan." "Bosh! The chink has hidden the ruby and is trying to make you believe he lost it. If you let him go, he'll find the stone and get away with it." "Why not turn him loose, an' then follow him?" suggested Banks. Matt shook his head. "I'm positive Sam Wing is giving the straight of it," he declared. "Well," laughed Grattan, but with an undernote of regret, "I hope he is. If I can't have the ruby that I've worked for so long, I'm glad to think that no one else will have it. Where are we bound for, gentlemen?" and Grattan turned to Banks and Gridly. "To the Boggs farm to pick up the sailor," Banks replied, "then for the Catskill jail." "Very pleasant outlook," observed Grattan. "Can you drive a motor car, Matt?" asked Gridly. "_Can_ he?" exploded McGlory. "Say, pard," he added, turning to Matt, "do you know a spark-plug from the carburetor?" "No offense," proceeded Gridly hastily. "I was only going to ask Matt if he would bring our roadster along." "Boggs and I will come in the roadster," said Matt. "You take the blue car to the farm, Joe." "On the jump, pard!" came heartily from McGlory. "You motor boys are a great team!" exclaimed Banks. "They're hard to beat," put in Grattan. "If it hadn't been for them, I should have been in Paris about now, in very comfortable circumstances." Matt waited for no more, but, accompanied by Boggs and Tige, hurried along the road to the place where Banks had left the roadster. Matt was cranking when McGlory whirled past on his way to the farm. Two minutes later the roadster was crowding the touring car hard, and Matt was honking for the cowboy to make better time. "Everybody seems to be your friend, Motor Matt," said Boggs, "even that there thief." "Grattan is a strange fellow, Boggs," answered Matt. "He's as talented a chap as you'll find anywhere, but he'd rather steal for a living than work honestly." "Some folks is that way," ruminated Boggs. "They'll waste more brains an' elbow grease pullin' off a robb'ry that'll bring 'em in a thousand dollars than they'd need for makin' ten thousand honestly. Look at me, scrubbin' along on a stony farm, raisin' garden truck for the hotels, when I might go out with a drill an' a jimmy, an'----" "Make a nice comfortable home for yourself in a stone house with iron doors and barred windows," laughed Matt. "There are lots of worse places than a stony truck farm, Boggs." "I guess yew're right." At that moment the touring car turned in at the farmyard and came to a halt near the barn. The roadster followed and stopped alongside. Leaving Gridly to take care of Grattan and Pardo, Banks accompanied Matt and Boggs into the barn. Josi' met them at the door. "What luck, Zeke?" he asked. "Best kind, Josi'," replied Boggs. "Got our men, too easy for any use. The sheriff, here, and his deputy, Gridly, come along jest in time to help. They want one o' the prisoners we left yew to take keer of." "They're all here, you bet," said Josi', with laudable pride. "The' wa'n't any of 'em could git away from _me_." Banks cast his eyes over the three men. "What's to be done with the two Chinamen?" he asked. "I think they ought to go to Catskill, too," said Matt. "We can carry the sailor in the tonneau of the big car, and there's room for one of the Chinamen on the seat alongside McGlory. T'other chink could go with you, in the roadster. Which is the mandarin that got robbed of the ruby?" Matt pointed to the dejected figure of Tsan Ti. "What is he roped for?" asked Banks. "So he can't put himself out of the way," said Matt. "The regent of China sent him a yellow cord, and told him that if he did not recover the ruby in two weeks he was please to strangle himself. I had to tie the mandarin in that way to keep him from obeying orders." Banks was not a hard-hearted man, and something in the mandarin's plight touched him. Perhaps it was the Celestial's hopeless air, coupled with his torn and dusty garments. The sheriff stood for a few minutes in front of Tsan Ti, looking down at him and shaking his head. "They're a queer lot, these chinks," he commented finally. "Their ideas are not ours, by a long shot, but I don't know as that's anything against them. Do you want to take the mandarin with you in the roadster, Matt?" "I think I'd better." Matt bent down and removed the rope from Tsan Ti's ankles. The mandarin did not want to get up or make a move, but Matt and Banks lifted him to his feet and succeeded in getting him out of the barn. As they stood beside the roadster, the mandarin slumping limply in their supporting hands, a cry came from the road. "Well, by golly! If dar ain't de man whut got ole Gin'ral Jackson back fo' me. Ah's monsus 'bliged tuh yo', boss, Ah is, fer er fac'." Matt looked around and saw the old darky ambling toward the barn on his mule. "That's Neb Hogan," spoke up Boggs. "He's got a cabin down beyond about half a mile. Do you know him, Motor Matt?" Although old Neb Hogan did not look it, yet he was, at that moment, engaged upon one of the most important missions of his life. CHAPTER XVI. CONCLUSION. "What can I do for you, Neb?" asked Matt, facing the darky as he pulled his mule to a halt. "Ah dunno as yo' can do nuffin' fo' me, boss," answered Neb. "Ah reckons yo's done about all fo' dis moke dat he can expec'. Yo' done got Gin'ral Jackson back fo' me, an' dat odder feller found his bicycle, too. Ah 'lows yo' must hab been in er hurry, 'case yo' didn't wait fo' me to tell yo' Ah was obliged fo' whut yo' done. Lucky Ah seed yo' while Ah was passin' Mars Boggs' place. Close tuh where dat white boy found his bicycle dar was somefin' right on de aidge o' de bridge. Ah gaddered it in, en Ah thought mebby yo' was de one whut drapped hit. Ah was wonderin' en mah ole head how Ah was gwine tuh diskibber whedder what Ah found belonged tuh you--en heah, right when Ah was gittin' clost tuh home, Ah done sees yuh! Ain't dat fine? Somefin' strodinary 'bout dat." A faint hope was rising in Motor Matt's breast, but it was very faint. The foundation of it was almost too preposterous for belief. "What did you find, Neb?" he asked. "Ah don't know whedder hit amounts to nuffin' er not, but Ah reckons yo' kin tell." Thereupon Neb shoved one hand into a pocket of his tattered coat and brought out, mixed in his yellow palm with two nails, a fishline, and a piece of chewing tobacco---- _The Eye of Buddha!_ It was almost sunset, and the early shadows were beginning to fly over the eastern borders of the Catskills, but there was enough light to strike sparkling crimson gleams from the fateful gem that lay in the old darky's hand. "Does dat 'ar thing b'long tuh yo', boss?" said Neb Hogan. "Hold it just that way for a minute, Neb," returned Matt. Then quickly he slipped the cords from the mandarin's wrists. "Look up, Tsan Ti," went on Matt. "See here a minute." Apathetically the mandarin raised his head. His gaze fell on the red gem, glittering amid the poor treasures which the old negro "toted" in his pocket. The mandarin's body stiffened, his hands flew to his forehead, and he gazed spellbound; then, with a hoarse cry, he caught the ruby from Neb's hand, pushed it against his breast, and fell to his knees, muttering wildly in his native tongue. "Well, by thunder!" exclaimed Banks. "Is that the idol's eye, Matt?" Matt nodded. "You found that red jewel at the edge of the bridge, you say, Neb?" "Dat's whar Ah done picked it up. What is dat thing, anyhow? By golly, dat Chinymum ack lak he done gone crazy." "It's a ruby, Neb," explained Matt, "and very valuable. The Chinaman who stole your mule had taken the ruby away from this other Chinaman, and was trying to escape with it. General Jackson wouldn't take the bridge, and the Chinaman on his back kicked and pounded him so that the mule bucked and tossed him to the edge of the bridge. Before the Chinaman could save himself he fell into the creek. The ruby must have dropped out of his pocket upon the planks of the bridge. I didn't see it, though, and it remained for you to pick it up." "By golly!" breathed Neb. "Ain't dat a mos' 'sprisin' purceedin'? Ah done finds de ruby fo' de feller whut got mah mu-el back fo' me. Is we squar' now, boss?" "Square?" laughed Matt. "Why, Neb, we're a whole lot more than square. How much do you think that ruby's worth?" "Kain't be hit's worf mo' dan ten dollahs, I reckons," he guessed. "It's worth thousands of dollars, Neb!" "Go 'long wif yo' foolishness! Dat red thing kain't be worf all dat money, nohow. Yo's foolin' de pore ole moke." "It's the truth, Neb." Tsan Ti, jabbering wildly, arose from his bended knees and pulled his alligator-skin pouch from his blouse. "Excellent stranger of the dusky race," said he, "I gather from what I hear that I am in your debt for the recovery of the Eye of Buddha. Will it insult you if I offer, of my goodness of heart, five hundred dollars?" Neb Hogan nearly fell from General Jackson's back. "Whut's dat he's er-sayin' tuh me?" he asked, rolling up the whites of his eyes. "Talkin' 'bout five--five hunnerd dollahs, en 'bout insultin' me wif it. By golly, Ah's brack, but Ah don't 'low no yalluh trash tuh mek spo't ob me. Somebody hole mah mu-el twill Ah climb down. Five hunnerd dollahs! Ah won't 'low no Chinymun tuh say no such thing. Ah--Ah----" Words died on the old negro's lips. Tsan Ti had pushed a bundle of money up in front of his face, and Neb was gazing at the bills like one demented. "Accept of my gratitude, illustrious one," chanted the mandarin. "You are worthy--it is little enough." The darky tried to talk, but the words stuck in his throat. Mechanically he took the bills, smoothed them out in his hands, and finally pushed them into his pocket. "Ah reckons dishyer's a dream," he managed to gasp finally. "Ah reckons Ah'll wake up tuh heah Mandy buildin' de fiah fo' breakfus. Eider dat, or Ah's suah gone crazy." Then, turning General Jackson, Neb Hogan rode out of the gate, looking back fearfully as long as he was in sight, wondering, no doubt, if those he had left were not the phantoms of his disordered imagination. This little scene had been enacted under the eyes of McGlory and the prisoners in the blue touring car. Grattan's feelings, perhaps, may be imagined better than described. McGlory was "stumped," as he would have expressed it. "Now that Tsan Ti has got the ruby again, pard," called the cowboy, "I move we pack him in a box, idol's eye and all, and turn him over to the express company for safe transportation to Canton. If we don't, something is sure going to happen to him." "Nothing will happen to him now," said Matt. "The men he had to fear are in the custody of the law, and from now on Tsan Ti will experience no more trouble." "Esteemed friend," palpitated the overjoyed mandarin, "I shall yet deposit the ruby in the express company's care as soon as I get to Catskill. The lessons I have had are sufficient." "That's the talk!" approved the cowboy. "What shall we do with Sam Wing?" asked Matt. For an instant a flash of rage drove the happiness from the mandarin's eyes. But the flash died as swiftly as it came. "Have you a knife, illustrious youth?" inquired the mandarin. "Better keep it, pard!" warned McGlory. "Tsan Ti's going to do for Wing!" But Matt believed otherwise. Taking his knife from his pocket, he handed it to Tsan Ti and the latter went into the barn. He reappeared in a few moments, and Sam Wing, freed of his ropes, accompanied him. Harsh words in Chinese broke from Tsan Ti's lips. He talked for perhaps two minutes steadily, the harshness leaving his voice as the torrent of speech flowed on. When he had finished, he reached into his alligator-skin pouch, brought out some money, and placed it in Sam Wing's hand; then, sternly, he pointed toward the road. "What a fool!" growled Grattan. "Why didn't he send the thief over the road?" muttered Pardo. "Speak to me about this!" cried McGlory. "Looks like there was a few things we could learn from the chinks," pondered Banks. "You're right, Mr. Banks," said Matt. "Tsan Ti is the right sort, and I'm glad I did what I could to help him. Let's start for Catskill--I suppose Martin is back there, by this time, and wondering what has become of Joe and me. Ready for New York in the morning, Joe?" "I'm ready," was the prompt response, "but will we go?" "I believe we will," said Matt, climbing into the roadster. "We've seen the last of the hoodoo. Get in, Tsan Ti, and we'll hit it up between here and Catskill. You're to ride with me." THE END. MOTOR STORIES THRILLING ADVENTURE MOTOR FICTION NEW YORK, October 2, 1909. TERMS TO MOTOR STORIES MAIL SUBSCRIBERS. (_Postage Free._) Single Copies or Back Numbers, 5c. Each. 3 months 65c. 4 months 85c. 6 months $1.25 One year 2.50 2 copies one year 4.00 1 copy two years 4.00 =How to Send Money=--By post-office or express money-order, registered letter, bank check or draft, at our risk. At your own risk if sent by currency, coin, or postage-stamps in ordinary letter. =Receipts=--Receipt of your remittance is acknowledged by proper change of number on your label. If not correct you have not been properly credited, and should let us know at once. ORMOND G. SMITH, } GEORGE C. SMITH, } _Proprietors_. STREET & SMITH, Publishers, 79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York City. HUDSON AND THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE. A short time ago the newspapers announced that a feat which for four hundred years stout ships and bold crews have been attempting had been accomplished by a little Norwegian vessel of forty tons and seven men. Long ago, the news would have thrilled the harbors of England and Holland with joy and keen expectancy. Coming in the twentieth century, it has created little sensation. Perhaps, of all those who read the announcement, only the few to whom "the Northwest Passage" was a name full of history and heroism and romance realized what an interesting achievement had been made. For the practical value of the discovery had long since been discounted, and no "merchant adventurer" of the present day would have sunk half his fortune in equipping an expedition to solve the riddle that puzzled the brains of the men of long ago. For the search for the Northwest Passage was from the first a business affair. It was a mercantile question. The whole inquiry arose out of a trade competition between the northern and southern seafaring nations. This was the situation: Spain and Portugal had been first in the field, as regards over-sea discovery; they had found the way to the treasure house of Asia, and the unspoiled riches of the New World. The Portuguese held the monopoly of maritime trade with India--the Venetians had long governed the overland route, and grown wealthy thereby--and the Spaniards looked upon South America as their private property. Of the two, the Spanish settlements on the American coasts with the mines behind them drew the eyes of the adventurer, who secured his prizes at the sword's point, but Asia was the more tempting to the trader. The former dreamed of the sack of opulent cities; the latter dreamed of bustling wharves, and barter, and English ships coming home laden with spices and silks, the peaceful spoils of the market place and the tropical forest and the shark-haunted seas. How to reach India "by a quick route, without crossing the sea paths of the Portuguese and the Spaniards," this, in a word, was the origin of the long and arduous search for the Northwest Passage. It was the general belief that America was an island, but the size and shape of it was still only imperfectly known. That there was a water way round the southern end of the great continent had been proved by Magellan, who, in his voyage round the world, had passed through the straits that bear his name. The question now was, did a similar waterway exist at the northern end? They believed that America tapered to a point northward, as it did southward. They little realized how the northern continent spread itself out into the cold Arctic seas, and with what a network of islands and ice floes it ended. And so they sent out ships to search for a water way through those inhospitable seas, and the first to go was an Englishman, Martin Frobisher. Greatly did he dare. We in these days of perfectly appointed ships, built of steel and driven by steam, can appreciate the hardihood of this hero and his crews, setting forth in two tiny craft of twenty-five and twenty tons burden, respectively, to solve the riddle of the northern seas! They sailed away--Queen Elizabeth herself waving them adieu from the windows of her palace at Greenwich--on June 12th, 1576, and a month later they were off the coast of Greenland. Then came stormy weather. A pinnace with her crew of four was sunk, and Frobisher found himself alone--one ship among the never-ending ice. For his consort had gone home, discouraged by the forbidding outlook. But almost immediately after this disappointment there came a gleam of hope. He beheld what appeared to be a passageway trending westward. It seems that this is still called Frobisher Bay. As he sailed through he thought that he had Asia on one side and America on the other. It was but a happy delusion. The projecting corner of Asia was far away; he was only abreast of what has since been named Baffin's Land. Frobisher's second voyage, made in 1577, was rather a gold quest than a journey of discovery. A lump of stone (probably iron pyrites) had been brought home by one of the sailors as a souvenir of the first voyage. The particles of gold in it fired the fancies of some Londoners with the idea that Eldorado might perhaps, after all, be among the northern ice. So Frobisher's ships went out again, and brought home something like 200 tons of the black stone. A third time they made the voyage, no less than fifteen ships taking part in the expedition, the object of which was to establish a sort of settlement for the working of the supposed "gold mine." But nothing came of the attempt. Bewildering fogs and perilous storms and threatening icebergs beset the puny fleet; sickness followed hard upon the exposure and privations long endured by the poor fellows who manned it, and at last the scheme was abandoned. Yet in this disappointing third voyage Frobisher had unknowingly come very near the discovery which originally he had in view! For, in the words of the writer before quoted, "the truth was that Frobisher's foremost ships had got farther to the south than was realized, and unwittingly he had discovered what is now known as Hudson's Strait--the sea gate of that very Northwest Passage on which his waking and sleeping thoughts so long had brooded." He had been carried some sixty leagues up the strait, but as he knew nothing as to whither it led he reaped no advantage. Several years went by without another attempt being made to solve the problem, of the Northwest Passage, but at last, in the summer of 1585, some English merchants planned a fresh expedition. Two ships were fitted out--one the _Sunshine_, of London, fifty tons; the other the _Moonshine_, of Dartmouth, thirty-five tons. The command was intrusted to a young Devonshire sailor, Captain John Davis, whose name is familiar to all schoolboys who have drawn maps of the northern parts of North America. Though the records of the voyage abound with incidents relating to the various encounters that Davis' men had with spouting whales and basking seals, uncouth Eskimos, and Polar bears, the actual achievements of this expedition were not great. The ships traversed part of what is now called Davis Strait, and went some way up Cumberland Gulf, but by the end of September they were back in Dartmouth. Davis set forth again, next summer, with three ships and a pinnace. The latter and one of the ships were dispatched up the east coast of Greenland, while the commander, with the two other vessels, sailed northwest. He got as far as Hudson Strait and farther. And in a third voyage he reached a headland not far from Upernavik. The hardihood and pluck displayed in these attempts to penetrate the ice-encumbered seas were splendid, but the results did not throw much light on the question of how to get northwest by sea to the Indies. Soon after this the kindred question of a Northeast Passage forced itself upon the seafaring people of Holland, and the city of Amsterdam fitted out four ships, and sent them forth under William Barents, in the June of 1594. The story of this and subsequent expeditions cannot, however, be told here, though it is full of heroism and strange adventures. It was the idea of a Northeast route which first laid hold of Henry Hudson, the intrepid Englishman whose name figures so prominently on the map of North America. Like Barents, he made his way to Nova Zembla, but, baffled by the seemingly insuperable difficulties to the eastward, he turned westward in his third voyage, and again when he set forth on his fourth and last voyage. Some of his men were evidently less stout of heart than their commander, and when there began to be real prospects of being caught in the ice, the spirit of mutiny got the upper hand. On June 21st, 1610, with a cowardice that was happily in strange contrast to the usual behavior of English crews, it was decided to get rid of the captain. Next morning he and his little son, a loyal-hearted sailor (the ship's carpenter), and half a dozen sick and helpless members of the crew, were put over the ship's side into one of the boats, and left to their fate. The years went by. Other expeditions were fitted out and sent northward, but the old reasons for finding out the Northwest Passage were fast disappearing. The Portuguese monopoly of the sea-borne trade with India and the supremacy of Spain on the ocean highways were things of the past. The ships of other nations had no longer to skulk past these aforetime kings of the sea. Arctic exploration went on, but the idea of reaching the North Pole was beginning to take the place of the idea of "making" the Northwest Passage. That old problem, however, was in prospect of being solved by the attempts made to solve the former. So that by the year 1853 Collinson was able to sail so far that he came within fifty-seven miles--a mere pin prick on the map--of accomplishing the Northwest Passage. Finally, in 1906, the Passage, which, like a mountain tunnel, had been worked at from both ends, was penetrated from one opening to the other by the little _Gjöa_, a Norwegian sloop of forty tons, which sailed from Christiania on June 1st, 1903. She was under the command of Captain Roald Amundsen, of that city, and his right-hand man was Lieutenant Godfred Hansen, of the Danish navy; the crew numbered seven. She had not been built with a view to Arctic work, so that before she went north into the realm of the ice king she had to be fortified somewhat. An ice sheathing of two-inch oak planks added greatly to her resisting power, and her petroleum motor of 13 horse power enabled her, when she put to sea, to attain a traveling speed of three knots in smooth water. But the _Gjöa_ trusted chiefly, like the stout little barks of other days, to the skillful handling of her sails. The winters of 1903 and 1904 were spent in harbor on the shores of King William's Land. Only the premature closing in of the ice prevented the little vessel from achieving the Passage in 1905. THE DEATH BITE. "Well, Ed, let us hear from you to-night. You are always talking of strategy, flanks, and other soldiering knickknacks. Now tell us a story." The boys drew their chairs about the roaring fire, which cast its ruddy glow about the room, while without the north wind held revelry in the branches of the trees. Ed looked over the top of his paper, and smiled. "What's that you say, Bib? I can't tell much of a story." Ed drew his chair to the fire. A chorus of supplications came from all parts of the room, and Ed laid aside his paper. "In the early spring of 1863 we were encamped near the Pamunky River, about the time they were undermining the enemy's fort on the other side of the river. One rainy night a party of us were formed and marched out. It was well known the enemy was not far off, and I felt anything but pleasant. The rain poured down in a deluge, and we picked our way through the woods by the blinding flashes of lightning which now and then illumined the forest. The heavy rains had transformed the ground into a swamp. Near the edge of the forest we halted and separated in squads of five. "By good luck I had charge of one squad. From under our overcoats we drew our spades and waited for the rain to slack. "'Now, Ed,' said the lieutenant, 'you take your men and select a spot and dig a rifle pit, and if anything comes in your way bang away at it, for things are getting hot.' "A few minutes more and the lieutenant and his party were gone. Between two huge trees we began to dig, and in a few hours we had finished our pit. The boys tumbled in and all were soon asleep, except Barry; he was a down-Easter and had been through most of the campaigns. "The rain ceased falling, and no sound reached us save the pattering raindrops as the wind dislodged them from the trees. "I had scarcely taken forty winks, when Barry poked me in the ribs. I awoke immediately. "'Look there!' he whispered. "I looked over the pit and saw a small light swaying to and fro. I thought at first it was a will-o'-the-wisp. "'Will I fire at it?' asked Barry. "'You know your orders, don't you?' I replied. 'Let us both fire at it.' Both of our muskets were shoved over the top of the pit, and taking a hasty aim, we fired. "A loud yell followed the reports, and we saw the light fly upward and fall to the ground; then all was darkness, and the same quietness returned. "'I wonder is he dead?' was the question that arose; and then the boys returned to their corners and slumbered on. "Soon the faint gray streaks of morning began to light up the east; and as I felt very thirsty I took my canteen, and clambered out of the pit, and started off. A few minutes' walk brought me to a small creek, and I filled my canteen and stooped to drink. The snapping of a twig caused me to look up; and my hair fairly raised, for not two yards from me stood a powerful man dressed in gray; he had pistols, a musket and an ugly-looking toothpick. A low chuckle came from his lips, and I gave myself up for lost, as I had not even so much as a penknife with me. In my eagerness to get water I forgot all. The Confederate seemed to read me through, for he said: "'Well, Yank, have you got enough water?' "I managed to say 'Yes'. "'Well,' he said, 'get away from here, and think yourself lucky.' "It did not take me long to get away from that spot. Then I noticed, for the first time, that our pit was dug on the top of a little hill. A few yards off on the other side of the creek stood a large barn. I could see forms walking about from where I now stood. The man I had met walked toward the barn. The boys in the pit saw him, and the muzzles of their guns frowned over the top in a minute. At that moment a detachment of men came to relieve us. They had hardly reached us, when from behind the barn a party of soldiers hove in sight, dragging a small fieldpiece, and in a moment more a crashing iron ball came tearing in our midst. With whoops and yells the enemy dashed on our little party, and we were soon engaged hand to hand. I felt myself hurled to the ground and a hand tightening about my throat. Then the fear of death stole upon me, and the strength of a Hercules took possession of my limbs. I turned my assailant over and placed my knee on his breast. "In vain I looked about for something to put an end to the struggling man whom I held, but could find nothing. In his belt I saw the handle of a knife. I seized it with one hand, but in doing so my grasp relaxed upon his throat, and before I could prevent it he had my finger in his mouth, and his teeth closed upon it. I fairly howled with pain and drove the knife into his heart several times. His jaws grew rigid in death and his teeth cut slowly to the bone and partly bit that, too. How I yelled! If it had been taken off at once the pain would have been nothing, but being bitten slowly off was intense. I had to pry open his jaws with the knife to get my finger out of his mouth." Ed paused and the boys crowded about him, and the second finger was minus an inch. We all dispersed that night thinking there has been many an adventure that befell the brave boys of which the public will never know anything. MIGRATION OF RATS. In nearly all countries a seasonal movement of rats from houses and barns to the open fields occurs in spring, and the return movement takes place as cold weather approaches. The movement is noticeable even in large cities. More general movements of rats often occur. In 1903 a multitude of migrating rats spread over several counties of western Illinois. They were noticed especially in Mercer and Rock Island Counties. For several years prior to this invasion no abnormal numbers were seen, and their coming was remarkably sudden. An eye-witness to the phenomenon informed the writer that as he was returning to his home by moonlight he heard a general rustling in the field near by, and soon a vast army of rats crossed the road in front of him, all going in one direction. The mass stretched away as far as could be seen in the dim light. These animals remained on the farms and in the villages of the surrounding country, and during the winter and summer of 1904 were a veritable plague. A local newspaper stated that between March 20 and April 20, 1904, F. U. Montgomery, of Preëmption, Mercer County, killed three thousand four hundred and thirty-five rats on his farm. He caught most of them in traps. In 1877 a similar migration occurred into parts of Saline and Lafayette Counties, Mo., and in 1904 another came under the writer's observation in Kansas River Valley. This valley for the most part was flooded by the great freshet of June, 1903, and for about ten days was covered with several feet of water. It is certain that most of the rats in the valley perished in this flood. In the fall of 1903 much of the district was visited by hordes of rats, which remained during the winter, and by the following spring had so increased in numbers that serious losses of grain and poultry resulted. No doubt the majority of the so-called migrations of rodents are in reality instances of unusual reproduction or of enforced migration owing to lack of food. In England a general movement of rats inland from the coast occurs every October. This is closely connected with the closing of the herring season. During the fishing the rodents swarm to the coast, attracted by the offal left from cleaning the herring, and when this food supply fails they hasten back to the farms and villages. In South America periodic plagues of rats have taken place in Parana, Brazil, at intervals of about thirty years, and in Chili at intervals of from fifteen to twenty-five years. These plagues in the cultivated lands follow the ripening and decay of the dominant species of bamboo in each country. The ripening of the seed furnishes for two or more years a favorite food for rats in the forests, where the animals multiply greatly; when this food fails they are forced to the cultivated districts for subsistence. In 1878 almost the entire crops of corn, rice, and mandioca in the State of Parana were destroyed by rats, causing a serious famine. An invasion of black rats in the Bermuda Islands occurred about the year 1615. In a space of two years they had increased so alarmingly that none of the islands was free from them. The rodents devoured everything which came in their way--fruit, plants, and even trees--so that for two years the people were destitute of bread. A law was passed requiring every man in the islands to set twelve traps. In spite of all efforts the animals increased, until they finally disappeared with a suddenness which could have resulted only from a pestilence. SOME GREAT CATASTROPHES. "It is the general opinion that earthquakes constitute the most terrible of the world's catastrophes, both as regards loss of life and destruction of property," says an English writer. "This, however, is not so. The convulsion in southern Italy killed not less than two hundred thousand people, and in this respect it is easily the most dreadful occurrence of its kind. The historic Lisbon earthquake, which ranks next below it in regard to the number of fatalities, caused fifty thousand deaths in that one city alone and about an equal number elsewhere. The South American one of 1867 was responsible for thirty thousand. That which destroyed Aleppo in 1822 slew twenty thousand. These are the four worst earthquakes concerning which anything like reliable statistics are obtainable, and the total combined loss of life, it will be observed, did not, at any rate, exceed three hundred and fifty thousand. "But when the Yellow River burst its banks in September, 1887, more than seven million people were drowned in the resultant great flood, which covered to an average depth of six feet a populous Chinese province the size of Scotland. Thus, in this one catastrophe, more lives were lost than in all the earthquakes recorded in the world's history. Then, again, there is pestilence. The black death killed in China, where it broke out, thirteen million people; in the rest of Asia, twenty-four million, and thirty million in Europe, or sixty-seven million in all. In India alone, and that within the past twelve years, bubonic plague has slain over six million people, and the epidemic still rages. "Famines run plagues a close second. The one that raged in Bombay and Madras in 1877 slew five million people; and that which prevailed in northern China in the same year, and which was due to the same climatic causes, cost nine million five hundred thousand lives." LATEST ISSUES MOTOR STORIES The latest and best five-cent weekly. We won't say how interesting it is. See for yourself. =High art colored covers. Thirty-two big pages. Price, 5 cents.= 20--Motor Matt Makes Good; or, Another Victory for the Motor Boys. 21--Motor Matt's Launch; or, A Friend in Need. 22--Motor Matt's Enemies; or, A Struggle for the Right. 23--Motor Matt's Prize; or, The Pluck That Wins. 24--Motor Matt on the Wing; or, Flying for Fame and Fortune. 25--Motor Matt's Reverse; or, Caught in a Losing Game. 26--Motor Matt's "Make or Break"; or, Advancing the Spark of Friendship. 27--Motor Matt's Engagement; or, On the Road With a Show. 28--Motor Matt's "Short Circuit"; or, The Mahout's Vow. 29--Motor Matt's Make-up; or, Playing a New Rôle. 30--Motor Matt's Mandarin; or, Turning a Trick for Tsan Ti. 31--Motor Matt's Mariner; or, Filling the Bill for Bunce. 32--Motor Matt's Double-trouble; or, The Last of the Hoodoo. 33--Motor Matt's Mission; or, The Taxicab Tangle. TIP TOP WEEKLY The most popular publication for boys. The adventures of Frank and Dick Merriwell can be had only in this weekly. =High art colored covers. Thirty-two pages. Price, 5 cents.= 691--Dick Merriwell's Dandies; or, A Surprise for the Cowboy Nine. 692--Dick Merriwell's "Skyscooter"; or, Professor Pagan and the "Princess." 693--Dick Merriwell in the Elk Mountains; or, The Search for "Dead Injun" Mine. 694--Dick Merriwell in Utah; or, The Road to "Promised Land." 695--Dick Merriwell's Bluff; or, The Boy Who Ran Away. 696--Dick Merriwell in the Saddle; or, The Bunch from the Bar-Z. 697--Dick Merriwell's Ranch Friends; or, Sport on the Range. 698--Frank Merriwell at Phantom Lake; or, The Mystery of the Mad Doctor. 699--Frank Merriwell's Hold-back; or, The Boys of Bristol. 700--Frank Merriwell's Lively Lads; or, The Rival Campers. 701--Frank Merriwell as Instructor; or, The Skill of the Wizard. 702--Dick Merriwell's Cayuse; or, The Star of the Big Range. 703--Dick Merriwell's Quirt; or, The Sting of the Lash. 704--Dick Merriwell's Freshman Friend; or, A Question of Manhood. NICK CARTER WEEKLY The best detective stories on earth. Nick Carter's exploits are read the world over. =High art colored covers. Thirty-two big pages. 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Fill out the following Order Blank and send it to us with the price of the Weeklies you want and we will send them to you by return mail. =POSTAGE STAMPS TAKEN THE SAME AS MONEY.= ________________________ _190_ _STREET & SMITH, 79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York City._ _Dear Sirs: Enclosed please find_ ___________________________ _cents for which send me_: TIP TOP WEEKLY, Nos. ________________________________ NICK CARTER WEEKLY, " ________________________________ DIAMOND DICK WEEKLY, " ________________________________ BUFFALO BILL STORIES, " ________________________________ BRAVE AND BOLD WEEKLY, " ________________________________ MOTOR STORIES, " ________________________________ _Name_ ________________ _Street_ ________________ _City_ ________________ _State_ ________________ A GREAT SUCCESS!! MOTOR STORIES Every boy who reads one of the splendid adventures of Motor Matt, which are making their appearance in this weekly, is at once surprised and delighted. Surprised at the generous quantity of reading matter that we are giving for five cents; delighted with the fascinating interest of the stories, second only to those published in the Tip Top Weekly. Matt has positive mechanical genius, and while his adventures are unusual, they are, however, drawn so true to life that the reader can clearly see how it is possible for the ordinary boy to experience them. _HERE ARE THE TITLES NOW READY AND THOSE TO BE PUBLISHED_: 1--Motor Matt; or, The King of the Wheel. 2--Motor Matt's Daring; or, True to His Friends. 3--Motor Matt's Century Run; or, The Governor's Courier. 4--Motor Matt's Race; or, The Last Flight of the "Comet." 5--Motor Matt's Mystery; or, Foiling a Secret Plot. 6--Motor Matt's Red Flier; or, On the High Gear. 7--Motor Matt's Clue; or, The Phantom Auto. 8--Motor Matt's Triumph; or, Three Speeds Forward. 9--Motor Matt's Air Ship; or, The Rival Inventors. 10--Motor Matt's Hard Luck; or, The Balloon House Plot. 11--Motor Matt's Daring Rescue; or, The Strange Case of Helen Brady. 12--Motor Matt's Peril; or, Cast Away in the Bahamas. 13--Motor Matt's Queer Find; or, The Secret of the Iron Chest. 14--Motor Matt's Promise; or, The Wreck of the "Hawk." 15--Motor Matt's Submarine; or, The Strange Cruise of the "Grampus." 16--Motor Matt's Quest; or, Three Chums in Strange Waters. 17--Motor Matt's Close Call; or, The Snare of Don Carlos. 18--Motor Matt in Brazil; or, Under the Amazon. 19--Motor Matt's Defiance; or, Around the Horn. 20--Motor Matt Makes Good; or, Another Victory for the Motor Boys. 21--Motor Matt's Launch; or, A Friend in Need. 22--Motor Matt's Enemies; or, A Struggle for the Right. 23--Motor Matt's Prize; or, The Pluck that Wins. 24--Motor Matt on the Wing; or, Flying for Fame and Fortune. 25--Motor Matt's Reverse; or, Caught in a Losing Game. 26--Motor Matt's "Make or Break"; or, Advancing the Spark of Friendship. 27--Motor Matt's Engagement; or, On the Road With a Show. 28--Motor Matt's "Short Circuit"; or, The Mahout's Vow. To be Published on September 6th. 29--Motor Matt's Make-up; or, Playing a New Role. To be Published on September 13th. 30--Motor Matt's Mandarin; or, Turning a Trick for Tsan Ti. To be Published on September 20th. 31--Motor Matt's Mariner; or, Filling the Bill for Bunce. To be Published on September 27th. 32--Motor Matt's Double-trouble; or, The Last of the Hoodoo. PRICE, FIVE CENTS At all newsdealers, or sent, postpaid, by the publishers upon receipt of the price. STREET & SMITH, _Publishers_, NEW YORK _For sale by all newsdealers, or will be sent to any address on receipt of price, 5 cents per copy, in money or postage stamps, by_ STREET & SMITH, Publishers, 79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York =IF YOU WANT ANY BACK NUMBERS= of our Weeklies and cannot procure them from your newsdealer, they can be obtained from this office direct. Fill out the following Order Blank and send it to us with the price of the Weeklies you want and we will send them to you by return mail. =POSTAGE STAMPS TAKEN THE SAME AS MONEY.= ________________________ _190_ _STREET & SMITH, 79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York City._ _Dear Sirs: Enclosed please find_ ___________________________ _cents for which send me_: TIP TOP WEEKLY, Nos. ________________________________ NICK CARTER WEEKLY, " ________________________________ DIAMOND DICK WEEKLY, " ________________________________ BUFFALO BILL STORIES, " ________________________________ BRAVE AND BOLD WEEKLY, " ________________________________ MOTOR STORIES, " ________________________________ _Name_ ________________ _Street_ ________________ _City_ ________________ _State_ ________________ A GREAT SUCCESS!! MOTOR STORIES Every boy who reads one of the splendid adventures of Motor Matt, which are making their appearance in this weekly, is at once surprised and delighted. Surprised at the generous quantity of reading matter that we are giving for five cents; delighted with the fascinating interest of the stories, second only to those published in the Tip Top Weekly. Matt has positive mechanical genius, and while his adventures are unusual, they are, however, drawn so true to life that the reader can clearly see how it is possible for the ordinary boy to experience them. _HERE ARE THE TITLES NOW READY AND THOSE TO BE PUBLISHED_: 1--Motor Matt; or, The King of the Wheel. 2--Motor Matt's Daring; or, True to His Friends. 3--Motor Matt's Century Run; or, The Governor's Courier. 4--Motor Matt's Race; or, The Last Flight of the "Comet." 5--Motor Matt's Mystery; or, Foiling a Secret Plot. 6--Motor Matt's Red Flier; or, On the High Gear. 7--Motor Matt's Clue; or, The Phantom Auto. 8--Motor Matt's Triumph; or, Three Speeds Forward. 9--Motor Matt's Air Ship; or, The Rival Inventors. 10--Motor Matt's Hard Luck; or, The Balloon House Plot. 11--Motor Matt's Daring Rescue; or, The Strange Case of Helen Brady. 12--Motor Matt's Peril; or, Cast Away in the Bahamas. 13--Motor Matt's Queer Find; or, The Secret of the Iron Chest. 14--Motor Matt's Promise; or, The Wreck of the "Hawk." 15--Motor Matt's Submarine; or, The Strange Cruise of the "Grampus." 16--Motor Matt's Quest; or, Three Chums in Strange Waters. 17--Motor Matt's Close Call; or, The Snare of Don Carlos. 18--Motor Matt in Brazil; or, Under the Amazon. 19--Motor Matt's Defiance; or, Around the Horn. 20--Motor Matt Makes Good; or, Another Victory for the Motor Boys. 21--Motor Matt's Launch; or, A Friend in Need. 22--Motor Matt's Enemies; or, A Struggle for the Right. 23--Motor Matt's Prize; or, The Pluck that Wins. 24--Motor Matt on the Wing; or, Flying for Fame and Fortune. 25--Motor Matt's Reverse; or, Caught in a Losing Game. 26--Motor Matt's "Make or Break"; or, Advancing the Spark of Friendship. 27--Motor Matt's Engagement; or, On the Road With a Show. 28--Motor Matt's "Short Circuit"; or, The Mahout's Vow. To be Published on September 6th. 29--Motor Matt's Make-up; or, Playing a New Role. To be Published on September 13th. 30--Motor Matt's Mandarin; or, Turning a Trick for Tsan Ti. To be Published on September 20th. 31--Motor Matt's Mariner; or, Filling the Bill for Bunce. To be Published on September 27th. 32--Motor Matt's Double-trouble; or, The Last of the Hoodoo. PRICE, FIVE CENTS At all newsdealers, or sent, postpaid, by the publishers upon receipt of the price. STREET & SMITH, _Publishers_, NEW YORK Transcriber's Notes: Added table of contents. Italics are represented with _underscores_, bold with =equal signs=. Page 3, changed "come, on then" to "come on, then." Page 4, added missing period after "asked Pardo." Page 7, corrected "Mat" to "Matt" in "Matt continued to sit." Corrected "let's some one else" to "let some one else." Page 8, corrected typo "mardarin" in "bluff us out of helping the mandarin." Page 9, corrected "Mat" to "Matt" in "Matt and I will put the kibosh." Page 13, corrected typo "tellling" in "no telling when the pallavering." Page 14, corrected typo "folowing" in "excitement following Bunce's discovery." Corrected typo "Gardenvile" in "between the spring and Gardenville." Page 15, expanded ligature in "manoeuvre." Ligature is retained in HTML version. Page 18, corrected typo "flutering" in "fluttering his hand reassuringly." Corrected "spiritsails" to "spritsails." Page 21, corrected typo "your'" in "while you're tied up." Page 23, corrected typo "boad" in "marsh on one side of the road." Page 25, added missing period after "kept at his work." Page 29, removed unnecessary quotes around paragraph beginning "They believed that America tapered..." 
61872	----	TREASURE OF TRITON By CHARLES A. BAKER The Space Patrol and the terrible guards of Triton pursued Wolf Larsen. But the black pirate had two aces in the hole--creation's richest prize, and a ray-death route to freedom. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1941. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Triton was a dead world. The hydrogen snow that covered the illimitable desolation of the plain glowed a weird green in the dying Neptune-light. Above it, grim and black, towered the west wall of the great Temple of Triton. The evening gale had drifted the snow high against its east wall, but here, in its lee, the ground was bare. The faint light struck sparks of color from the gravel, the stones, the boulders--gravel that was ruby and sapphire, stones that were giant moissonites, boulders that were titanic diamonds. The _Wolf Cub_ rested on that gravel, its beryllium sides a sickly green. In all that world, only Wolf Larsen lived and moved and breathed. An alien might have correctly supposed that this world had been dead for untold ages, that the builders of its Temple had perished incalculably long ago, that nothing would ever live here again. Wolf Larsen knew better. In a few hours, it would be dawn, and the strange life of Triton would revive. That was the reason for his haste. The job had taken longer than he had expected. The Temple was built of cyclopean blocks of bort--black diamond, the hardest of all substances. The life-span of a Tritonian is ten times that of a human, but no one would ever know how many generations it had taken the Tritonians, with their primitive technique, to hew those innumerable blocks. Nor did the Tritonians themselves know for how long they had worshiped at that fane. Most authorities agreed that it must have been old before the Pyramids of Egypt were begun. The Temple was windowless, and had only one door, some six feet square. Set in the middle of the west face, it was hewn from a single gigantic block of bort. With that door, Larsen had been struggling ever since the evening gale died down. It had proved harder to blast a hole through the bort than he had anticipated. And its thickness had amazed him. He had been unable to get at its lock; if, indeed, it had a lock. In fact, he might as well have tried to blast through the wall itself. Triton, Neptune's moon, keeps one face always turned toward that planet, and the Temple was built directly beneath it. While Larsen toiled, the slender crescent of the primary had broadened to the full, ten times brighter than earth's moon, and now was dwindling once more. Larsen had not slept for over sixty hours; and despite his vacuum-walled, electrically heated space-suit, he was chilled to the bone, his hands numbed with a cold but a few degrees above absolute zero. Not in twenty years in the mines of Mercury had he toiled as he had done in those sixty hours. First, he had burned holes in the bort. Then he had filled them with cartridges of the fine hydrogen snow, intimately mixed with solid oxygen pulverized equally fine. Finally he had exploded the mixture with a micro-wave, and cleared out the shattered bort. Where the tough stuff had merely crackled, he had pried it out with a crowbar, until the bar, brittle with cold, had snapped short. But now the worst of his task was finished. At long last, he had holed through the door. Larsen emerged from the _Wolf Cub_ carrying his oxy-hydrogen cutting torch, a heavy load even in the light gravity of Triton. A star of blue light flared from it, and snowflakes dropped from the star, as the products of its combustion condensed in the cold. If he once extinguished that torch, its fuel would freeze solid, and there would be no lighting it again. For all his weariness, and for all the cold, a fierce exultation fired him. His long planning, his months-long voyage through the void, were about to bring fruit. The most priceless jewel in the solar system was within his grasp. Larsen had done many things for jewels. He had violated every law of every world. He had killed more men than he himself could remember. He had stolen meteoric diamonds from Mars, and rubies from Ganymede; emeralds from Titan, and priceless moissonites from Oberon. And these he had hidden well on a nameless asteroid, and they could stay there till the end of time for all Larsen, or anyone else, cared. By the time the Interplanetary Patrol caught up with him, and he served a twenty-year term in the mines of Mercury, the spacemen had reached Triton. And there they had found rubies and emeralds, diamonds and moissonites and every gemstone known in the solar system, as common as clay or lime on earth, and Larsen's carefully hidden jewels were worth as much as so many pebbles. * * * * * At first, Larsen had come very near to killing himself, when he learned that. But a scheme had come to him. There was the Eye of Triton, the great stone which people of Neptune's moon had worshiped for untold Neptunian ages. It was clearly unique on Triton, where all other gems were so abundant. It must be unique in the system; certainly in its historical value. What value the Tritonians themselves set on it could be judged from the immense strength of the Temple they had built to guard it. Tradition held that the Eye had dropped from the heavens; a meteor, perhaps torn from the heart of Neptune; perhaps from another system. Few humans had ever seen it, and those only from a distance, and in the worst of lights. But they agreed that it was transparent white, like a diamond. Moreover, it was set as the eye of a life-sized statue of a Tritonian--and the eye of a Tritonian is upwards of five inches in diameter. A certain plutocrat of Cyrene had offered Larsen a cool million for the Eye, even if it turned out to be nothing but a diamond. For a million, you could buy everything that Cyrene had to offer and Cyrene, the pleasure-dome on the far side of earth's moon, offered every pleasure and every luxury that mankind had ever developed. Men could prolong their lives, and their vigor, indefinitely nowadays if they could afford to pay for all the resources of modern medicine. Best of all, the I.P.P. had no jurisdiction in Cyrene, and the local authorities never bothered any resident of the little planet provided he was supplied with money enough. It would be doubly pleasant to win such a fortune at the expense of the Tritonians. To be sure, they had never been known to harm anyone. But it was precisely such inoffensive beings that Larsen loathed and despised most bitterly. Besides, he blamed them for the discovery of the gems which had made his own valueless. In any case, he had gone too far to back down now. Landing on Triton without a license, as he had done, was itself a violation of Interplanetary Law. Attempted violation of a Tritonian temple was a serious offense. If the Patrol caught him, he would spend the rest of his life in the mines of Mercury. And they would be sure to catch him if he failed to get the Eye. It wasn't like the good old days, when an outlaw could always keep a million miles ahead of the Patrol. Now every port where he might obtain supplies was too closely watched. Only Cyrene offered a place of refuge, and there only to a man with plenty of money. Larsen smiled grimly. Whatever happened, he was not going back to the mines. There was always one very sure way of cheating the law! He pushed the torch ahead of him through the hole, cautiously. Its exhaust condensed to ice on the cold bort. A few projections of the bort barred his way. Larsen turned up the torch, directed it on them. The bort glowed yellow in the fierce heat, as the pure carbon burned, which condensed to dry ice on his space-suit. When those obstructions were gone, Larsen crawled past into the Temple, and stood up. A thin powder of snow covered everything. The bluish glare of the torch, reflected from it, suggested but faintly the vastness of the place. Before him crouched a monstrous figure, human sized, but lobster shaped, its head enormous, its dozen legs many jointed. Many similar figures lay on the floor, as stiffly motionless, each grasping a massive double-headed ax. Larsen had to turn up his torch before he could be sure that the crouching figure was indeed the idol he sought, and those others its guardian priests, frozen in the death-like sleep of their kind. Not till dawn could anything awaken them. Dawn, he knew, could not be far off. But he reckoned that it would take some time for its reviving warmth to penetrate the immense thickness of those walls. Cautiously, he wiped the snow off the single enormous eye that occupied the center of the idol's forehead. The eye flashed fire at him; blue-white, transparent, lustrous as a diamond. It had been cut, diamond fashion, in many facets, to resemble the many-lensed, insect-like eyes of the Tritonians themselves. The eye was set in a band of cement. Larsen tested that cement with a chisel. He cursed. It was almost as hard as the bort from which the idol had been hewn. He dared take no chances on scratching the Eye. He turned on his torch full blast, and began to cut into the bort around the cement, careful to keep the flame away from the Eye. Sudden heating might crack that mysterious stone. * * * * * Larsen worked feverishly, forgetful of time, sweating despite the chill, until he felt a draught on his back; a cold that bit through his space-suit to his very marrow. Snowflakes were swirling around him. The dawn-wind, blowing through the hole in the door! On Triton, the hydrogen atmosphere froze every night. From either side, winds rushed in to fill the vacuum, but themselves froze before they had gone far. The Eye seemed loose in its socket. Larsen turned down the torch. Cautiously, he grasped the cement. The Eye came away in his hand. He was used, by now, to the low gravity of Triton, but the lightness of the stone surprised him. It seemed as light as pumice. Larsen looked up just in time. The Tritonians were stirring! The wind, so cold to him, was warm to them; it meant air to them. Those great pale eyes--one to each Tritonian--were fixed on him, glaring with a phosphorescent luster. There was no expression on their gargoyle faces. Their cavernous mouths gaped open; toothless, but rimmed with razor-sharp horn, like the jaws of a snapping turtle. The snow dropped from them; their lobster-segmented shells were dull black, like the bort of the statue. They were closing in on him. He could not tell their numbers; behind those visible, more kept crowding out of the shadows. As the Tritonians neared him, he saw that they turned their heads away. Those enormous eyes, adapted to the faint sunlight of Triton, could not bear the glare of the torch. An ax rose over a helmeted head, grasped by four tentacular arms. Larsen put down the Eye, and turned up the torch, aiming it at the dragon's head, looming behind those arms. It shriveled, turned from black to red. Its owner slumped to the floor, its limbs still writhing feebly. Larsen picked up the Eye again, and started for the door. He moved deliberately, spraying death around him. The Tritonians could not face the blazing heat of the torch, or its blinding glare. Some fled in panic, some retired more slowly, some stood, as if bewildered, in his very path, until he burned them out of it. At the door, he wheeled to face them, turning down the torch. They started to close in again, and he turned it up, sweeping them at close range. Half a dozen fell, the others broke. The torch was flickering now, as its fuel ran low. In frantic haste, Larsen unsnapped its carrying strap, dropped it, and plunged into the hole he had blasted. In utter blackness, he clawed through it, expecting, every instant, to feel monstrous jaws or talons seize him from behind. He emerged into the blinding white smother of the dawn blizzard. Thin as the air was, the force of it hurled his light body back against the door as he tried to rise. He dropped on all fours, and crawled forward, dead into the freezing wind, the Eye still clutched in one hand. The twenty yards to the _Wolf Cub_ seemed twenty miles; he had about given up all hope when suddenly he bumped into it. * * * * * Larsen groped along its smooth side until he found the air-lock door. As he opened it, the light inside went on automatically. * * * * * At that precise instant, steely arms wrapped themselves around him, a monstrous face loomed over him, open-jawed. In a frenzy, Larsen thrust out his right hand. Those jaws closed on his wrist. A blazing agony shot up his arm. His own scream, echoing from his helmet, deafened him. The pain was gone as abruptly as it had come. The face of the Tritonian seemed to melt, to explode. Those arms went limp, the thing collapsed like a punctured balloon. There was no feeling at all in Larsens' hand now. Not daring to look at it, he stumbled through the air-lock, into the cabin. Even now, he was careful to put the Eye of Triton in the velvet-lined jewel-case he had prepared for it, before strapping himself into his pilot's seat. Awkwardly, with his left hand, he opened the throttle of the rocket-tube, gave the _Wolf Cub_ three gravities acceleration. That was agony to his weary body. But the warmth of the cabin offset the pain. Gingerly, Larsen looked at his right hand. The glove had been torn clean off it. It was dead white, swollen. The swelling, extending to the wrist, had prevented much air escaping from his suit, before he could get inside the cabin. The skin was covered with fine, bloodless cracks, but the jaws of the Tritonian had never touched it. The inconceivable cold had instantly frozen every drop of blood and lymph in it, bursting every blood-vessel, every capillary, every cell. His hand was dead. Presently, as it thawed, it would rot, turn black, and drop off. Before that, he must get a tourniquet on it. On the other hand, the warm air from his space-suit, escaping into the jaws of the Tritonian, had been as fatal to it as the breath of a blast furnace would have been to a human. He had been lucky, after all. The surgeons of Cyrene could graft on a new hand--for a price. And he would have that price! In fifteen minutes, awkward with his left hand, Larsen had the _Wolf Cub_ on her course to Luna, and could shut off his rocket-jet. His right arm was beginning to throb, as the nerves thawed. It would give him hell, in the months of voyaging before him, and he knew his slender stock of drugs would never last. But, as he fixed the tourniquet, the thought of his million was more soothing than any narcotic could have been. Larsen unstrapped himself, and shoved over to the jewel case. He blinked down at it incredulously. The charred ring of cement was there. But it no longer enclosed the Eye of Triton. Instead, the case was half filled with a transparent liquid. Larsen dipped a trembling finger into it. It was cold. He carried the finger to his lips. The walls of the tiny cabin echoed to his mad laughter. The Eye of Triton, the one priceless gem on a world of gems, had been a block of ice--the only ice on Triton. The warmth of the cabin had melted it to water, worth exactly as much as any other water. Suddenly, Larsen realized that he was parched with a feverish thirst. He lifted the jewel case to his lips, and drained it in one single prodigious gulp. He had spent plenty of money on liquor before, he reflected. But this must be the first time in history a man had drunk up a million at one draught. His arm hurt like fire now, the ache of it mingling with the ache of his weary body, the ache of his sick brain. With his left hand, he began to spin the handle of the Kingston valve. The last sound Wolf Larsen heard was the hiss of the air, as it rushed out of the cabin. That, and the laugh with which his last breath left his lungs. There was always one sure way to cheat Interplanetary Law. 
47179	----	courtesy of the Digital Library@Villanova University (http://digital.library.villanova.edu/)) MOTOR STORIES THRILLING ADVENTURE MOTOR FICTION NO. 5 MAR. 27, 1909 FIVE CENTS MOTOR MATT'S MYSTERY OR FOILING A SECRET PLOT [Illustration: "That's Motor Matt!" yelled the man in the automobile, "Get him, Spangler!"] MOTOR STORIES THRILLING ADVENTURE MOTOR FICTION _Issued Weekly. By subscription $2.50 per year. Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1909, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C., by_ STREET & SMITH, _79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York, N. Y._ No. 5. NEW YORK, March 27, 1909. Price Five Cents. Motor Matt's Mystery; OR, FOILING A SECRET PLOT. By the author of "MOTOR MATT." CONTENTS CHAPTER I. A DUTCHMAN IN TROUBLE. CHAPTER II. THE RUNAWAY AUTO. CHAPTER III. THE MAN AT THE ROADSIDE. CHAPTER IV. THE MYSTERY DEEPENS. CHAPTER V. MATT GETS A JOB. CHAPTER VI. CONCERNING THE LETTER. CHAPTER VII. THE TWO HORSEMEN. CHAPTER VIII. ON THE ROAD. CHAPTER IX. IN THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY. CHAPTER X. A SHIFT IN THE SITUATION. CHAPTER XI. A SURPRISE. CHAPTER XII. ESCAPE. CHAPTER XIII. THE HUT IN THE HILLS. CHAPTER XIV. BACK TO THE CAR. CHAPTER XV. A RACE AND A RUSE. CHAPTER XVI. IN ASH FORK. A YOUNG MARINER'S PERIL. SWANS CARRIED OVER NIAGARA FALLS. PARA RUBBER AND ITS GATHERING. QUEER CALIFORNIAN TRADERS. BURROWING FISHES. TURN RIVER TO MINE ITS BED. CHARACTERS THAT APPEAR IN THIS STORY. =Matt King=, concerning whom there has always been a mystery--a lad of splendid athletic abilities, and never-failing nerve, who has won for himself, among the boys of the Western town, the popular name of "Mile-a-minute Matt." =Carl Pretzel=, a cheerful and rollicking German lad, who is led by a fortunate accident to hook up with Motor Matt in double harness. =James Q. Tomlinson=, the jeweler from Denver, who seems to have troubles of his own, and about whose identity there is more or less confusion. =Trymore=, } a trio of sporting gentlemen who believe in hunting big =Hank=, } game, and who consider themselves experts in the line =Spangler=,} of choice gems. =Pringle=, once honest Carl's pardner in vaudeville, but latterly engaged in a far less honorable business. =Gregory=, a chauffeur. =Hop Loo=, } =Charley Sing=,} the two eccentric laundrymen of Ash Fork. CHAPTER I. A DUTCHMAN IN TROUBLE. Whiz, bang! "Dutchee boy no good! Have gotee mon, no makee pay. Whoosh! Allee same cheap skate!" Whiz, _bang_, clatter, _bang_! "Vat's der madder mit you, hey? You vas grazier as I can't tell! Py shiminy grickets, oof you hit me mit a flad-iron I vill mad be as some hornets. Shtop a leedle, und I vill----" There followed a wild yell, a pandemonium as though Bedlam had been turned loose, and then a heavy fall and sudden quiet. Motor Matt, just turning into the yard of a small adobe house, heard the tremendous uproar and came to a startled halt. Hop Loo, a Chinese laundryman, lived in the house, and Matt was just coming after his week's wash. Under a cotton-wood tree in the yard, some fifteen feet from the house, was a wash-tub mounted on a couple of chairs. Between the tree and a corner of the house, and running thence to a post set at right angles with the adobe wall, was a line strung with clothes. Charley Sing, who worked for Hop Loo, was at the tub, up to his elbows in hot suds. The racket in the house had claimed Charley's attention just as it had caught Matt's. Pulling his hands out of the wash-water, Charley dried them on his kimono, jerked the wash-board out of the tub, and, holding it by one leg for use as a weapon, stole toward the open door of the adobe. Matt had been so situated that he could look into the house and catch a restricted view of what was going on. The thumping had been caused by flat-irons striking against the inner walls, each one being nimbly dodged by a fat youth of decidedly odd appearance. Hop Loo, who was ironing, had shrilly piped his denunciation of the fat boy; the latter had replied; and Hop Loo, failing to make a bull's-eye with the flat-iron, had sprung at the boy. The latter, with an astonishingly quick move, considering his size, had grabbed a rack of ironed clothes and hurled it in Hop Loo's way. Thereupon Hop Loo had turned a somersault over the clothes, and was now standing on his head very quietly in a wood-box. "Meppy you t'ink I vas a Vandefeller, or Rockybilt," cried the fat boy, breaking the silence, "but you bet my life you got anodder guess coming. You make me some drouples, by shinks, und I don'd like dot. Goot-py, Hob Loo! Sorry dot I can't vait undil you ged right-site-oop, aber I haf pitzness in some odder blaces, und vill broceed to fly my kite!" The fat boy turned and wabbled through the door. Matt, now that he had a good look at him, began to laugh. "Dutchman" was written all over the boy's face. He had a mop of carroty hair, and on top of it was a little plaid cap that looked as though it was lost in the wilderness. His ample dimensions were covered with a suit whose pattern consisted of a very "loud" plaid, and under the open coat could be seen a crimson vest that made even more noise than the rest of his apparel. As this ponderous vision ambled through the door, it was met by Charley Sing and the wash-board. "Ged oudt oof my vay!" yelled the fat Dutch boy. "Oof you don'd, py shiminy, somet'ing is going to take blace vat is nod on der pills." Charley, grimly determined, whirled the wash-board and let drive with it. The strength he put into the blow caused the board to leave his hands. The Dutchman dropped, the wash-board flew over his head and hit Hop Loo, who had up-ended himself and was just returning to the attack, in the pit of the stomach. "Wow!" gurgled Hop Loo, catching his middle with both hands and doing a wild dance in his straw sandals. Charley Sing was now thoroughly aroused. Jabbering in frantic "pidgin," he proceeded to make front on the Dutchman. The latter, continuing to display his surprising agility, ducked sideways between Hop Loo and Charley Sing, and rushed in the direction of the cottonwood. Charley followed him with such speed that his pigtail stood straight out behind him, and the sandals flew right and left from his rapidly moving feet. The German boy circled around the wash-tub. Charley would have circled, too, only his toes caught in a wringer that was lying on the ground, and he pitched heavily against the chairs that held the tub. A catastrophe followed. The tub went down, and Charlie turned a handspring in the hot suds and came up covered with foam and wet clothes. "Whoosh!" he spluttered; "killee Dutchee boy! Allee same debble! Makee go topside!" Falling over against the tree, he began clearing the soap-suds out of his eyes and throat. He looked like an animated drying-post, and the Dutch boy, in spite of his troubles, began to haw-haw wildly. By that time, however, Hop Loo had recovered his wind, grabbed up a stick of stove-wood, and was bearing down on the fat Teuton with blood in his eye. The youth saw him coming, whirled, and ran into the clothes-line. His weight ripped the line from the tree and the house-corner, and when he went on he carried it with him, the dried clothes flapping like so many distress-signals. Perhaps the boy traveled a dozen yards. At the end of that distance, he got tangled in the rope, went down and rolled over and over, completely wrapping himself up in a choice assortment of laundry. It is hard to tell what Hop Loo would have done when he came up with that fluttering heap that was twisting and writhing on the ground. He had the stick of wood in his hand and much bitterness in his heart, but if he struck too hard he would make a bad matter worse by damaging some of the linen. Besides, when Hop Loo got ready to take revenge, Matt was standing between him and the helpless Dutchman. "Easy there, Hop Loo!" cried Matt. "You no stopee China boy!" howled Hop Loo, dancing all around Matt and trying to get at the bundle. "Dutchee boy spoilee heap washee, makee plenty tlouble. Me sendee topside, you bettee!" Grabbing Hop Loo's waving arm, Matt deftly relieved the yellow fist of the billet of wood. "Hold up, Hop Loo," said he soothingly; "let's get down to cases on this thing and find out what's wrong." "By jim' Klismus," shrilled Hop Loo, "he tly beatee China boy! No makee pay fo' launly! Kickee up plenty lumpus. No likee!" "Vell, der olt rat-eader! I vas drying to tell him some t'ings und he vouldn't lis'en. He made me more drouples as you can guess, und pegan drowing me at all der flad-irons in der blace." Matt looked around. The Dutch boy had managed to scramble to his feet and paw his head free of the clothes. A red undershirt was draped gracefully over his right shoulder, and he was completely swathed in other garments and clothes-pins. Matt grinned. The sight was too much for him. "Meppy id's funny," said the Dutch boy, with a wink, "aber der Chink ain't enchoying himseluf so as any vone can nodice." "Who are you?" asked Matt. "Carl is der lapel vat I tote, Carl Pretzel." "Do you owe the Chinaman money?" "Vell, I vas pusted, und I vanted him to vait undil I get some chobs, und he got mad und pegun drowing t'ings. He vould haf drowed der kitchen stof ad me, only it vas hotter as he could hantle. My, my, vat a grazy Chink id iss." "How much does he owe you, Hop?" inquired Matt. "Fittyfi' cent fo' launly," answered the Chinaman, "two dol' fo' spoilee clothes," and he waved a discouraged hand at the garments on the ground and at the overturned wash-tub. "Two fittyfi', you savvy? Him one piecee bad Dutchee boy." "How much is my laundry?" asked Matt. "Fortyfi'." "That makes three dollars," said Matt, pulling some money from his pocket. "Take it, Hop, and call the account square. Now run in and get Carl's laundry and mine while I'm getting him out of his tangle." The three silver dollars soothed the Chinaman's injured feelings, and he turned and vanished into the house. "Say," cried Carl, "you vas a pooty goot feller! Vat's your name, hey?" "Matt King." "You lif in Ash Fork?" "No; I'm just here waiting for a man I'm anxious to see." "Vell, dot's my fix. I'm likevise vaitin' for a man dot I vant do see mit a club. He's aboudt my size, only not kevite so goot looging as me, und pigger oop an' down as I am der odder vay. His name iss Pringle. He vas a pad egg, I tell you dot. Can you tell me vere dot feller iss?" Matt shook his head. "Never heard of him, Carl," he answered. "Chonny Hartluck has been hitting me like anyt'ing," sighed Carl, as Matt stripped away the last of the clothes-line, "und you peen der fairest friendt I haf hat since I don'd know. Shake vonce." Carl put out his hand, and Matt grasped it cordially. "How you t'ink I efer pay you pack dot money, Matt?" asked Carl. "I'm not thinking much about it, one way or the other," said Matt. "No great loss, Carl, if you never pay it back." "You vas a fine feller, und ve vill go some place und I vill tell you somet'ing." Just then Hop Loo showed himself with two bundles of laundry. Matt took one, and Carl the other, and they left at once for the main part of the town. There was joy in the faces of Hop Loo and Charley Sing as the Dutch boy departed, and they immediately began bringing order out of their demoralized "plant." When they were out of the yard, and bound along the road, Carl Pretzel threw back his head and began to laugh. "You seem to get a good deal of fun out of your troubles, Carl," remarked Matt, who had developed a deep interest in his odd companion. "Dot's me!" guffawed Carl. "Id iss easy to be jeerful ven luck is comin' your vay, aber you bed you it takes a pooty goot feller to be jeerful ven it ain't. So dot's vy I laff mit meinseluf. I peen more jeerful now, schust pecause I vas blayin' in der vorst luck vat efer habbened, und I bed you someding for nodding it ain't eferypody vat could do dot. Now, oof I----" Carl never finished his remark. The boys had been walking in the center of the road, and Matt suddenly heard a sound behind them and almost on their heels. "Look out!" he yelled, grabbing Carl by the arm and giving him a jerk toward the roadside. CHAPTER II. THE RUNAWAY AUTO. "Vat's der madder?" gasped Carl, as he came to a staggering halt. "Look!" cried Matt, pointing. An automobile--a big, red touring-car--rolled past the boys. If they had not jumped just when they did it would have run them down. It had come without warning, other than the muffled noise caused by its machinery, and Matt had been so taken up with the talk of his new acquaintance that he had not heard the car's approach until the last moment. "Vy didn't he honk?" sputtered Carl. "_He_?" flung back Matt, staring, and hardly able to believe his eyes. "Why, there wasn't any one to honk!" This amazing statement was literally true. As the car passed them, the boys could see that there was no one in either of the front seats, or in the tonneau. The car had no passengers, _and was running itself_! "Vell, py chimineddy!" murmured Carl, aghast. The car was not going at a high rate of speed--perhaps fifteen miles an hour--but, even at that gait, it was rapidly leaving a wide gap between it and the boys. Matt was nonplused, but he side-tracked his bewilderment in a hurry and tried to think of some means for overtaking the runaway auto and bringing it to a halt. This must be done before the car reached town, or there would surely be an accident. Matt flashed his eyes about him. Houses were few and far between in that part of the settlement, but, as luck would have it, a horse was standing in front of a dwelling on the right of the road. Without losing a moment, Matt rushed to the horse, jerked the bridle-reins over the top of a post, clambered into the saddle and dug out after the red car. Carl was yelling and talking excitedly, but Matt had no attention to pay to him, and the Dutch boy's words soon died out in the distance. For several miles that road into Ash Fork was perfectly straight. The runaway car, however, was heading for a bend where trees and telephone-poles would surely wreck it unless it was halted or turned. As Matt, with the horse on the keen jump, came closer to the car, he saw that the steering-wheel had been lashed by a rope. Attached to one of the top-irons on the right side of the front seat, the lashing engaged the spokes of the steering-wheel and crossed to the top-iron on the left. This fastening held the wheel rigid, and kept the car on a straight course. How to drop from the saddle of the running horse and into the car was a point that Matt turned over in his mind as he raced. He had not many seconds in which to mark out a line of action--and he did not need many. Pushing the horse to top speed, Matt passed the car; then, with a quick jerk on the reins, he brought the horse to a slower pace, tumbled out of the saddle, caught his footing in the road and flung himself at the running-board as the car came abreast of him. He was jolted considerably, although no particular damage was done, and got into the tonneau with a wild scramble. By then the car was dangerously close to the bend, and Matt threw himself across the back of the front seat and into the driver's position. With lightning quickness he cut off the power and threw on the emergency brake. The machine halted, but with a telephone-pole almost between the front wheels! With a deep breath of relief, Matt stood up to see what Carl was doing. The fat Dutchman was trying to head off and stop the horse. The animal, as soon as Matt had dropped from the saddle, had whirled back along the road. Not a little frightened, the horse seemed now about to turn in Matt's direction in order to escape Carl. Hastily cutting away the wheel-lashing with his knife, Matt sprang from the car and ran back, so he and Carl could keep the horse between them. This move was successful, and the Dutch boy, by an exercise of marvelous agility for one of his build, managed to grab the horse by the bits. "Vat shall I do mit him, Matt?" cried Carl. "Take him back to the place where I got him, Carl," called Matt, "then bring that laundry of ours and come to the car. There's a mystery here that we've got to look into." Matt's wild ride on horseback, and his capture of the car, had not brought a single person out of the squat little adobe houses sprinkled along the road. For the most part, the houses were inhabited by Chinamen, and they had little curiosity for the Melican man's devil-wagon; not enough, at least, to let the stopping of the car draw them from their own affairs. Matt looked the machine over with an admiring eye. It was a fine late model, with six cylinders under the long hood. From the amount of dust with which the machine was covered it seemed to have come a long distance. The tires, however, were in excellent condition, the gasoline-tank was half full, and there was still a good supply of oil. Familiar as Matt was with motor vehicles, he knew the car must have cost five or six thousand dollars. Why was such a valuable machine loose in the road? Who was the owner? And _where_ was the owner? Getting into the tonneau, Matt searched for something that would offer a clue to the mystery. He could find nothing. He was just straightening up after his unsuccessful examination when Carl came along. "Py chiminy," puffed Carl, "I nefer heardt oof anyt'ing like dot! Matt, you vas a great feller. Dot's righdt. Oof you hatn't done vat you dit, I bed you somet'ing der modor-car vould haf peen a lot oof junk. Yah, so. Vere you learn how to run audomopiles, hey?" "Used to work in a motor factory," answered Matt. "What do you think of this lay out, Carl?" he asked. "Here's a fine big touring-car running itself along the road, no clue to the owner, and the steering-wheel lashed to keep it on a straight line!" Apparently the question was too difficult for Carl. Thoughtfully he tossed the two bundles of laundry into the tonneau, walked around in front and opened the bonnet. The beautiful mechanism disclosed brought an admiring cry from the Dutch boy's lips. "Py shinks," he murmured, "you don'd find cylinters like dot in cheap cars, Matt!" "What do you know about cylinders?" demanded Matt, opening his eyes at this new side of the Teuton's character. "Vell," and Carl ran his fingers through the mop of hair, "meppy I don'd know how to dake a car apart und put him togedder again, aber I t'ink yah. I vorked vonce in some factories meinseluf--pefore I got foolish und vent on der stage mit Pringle. You bed you I know der carpuretter from der spark-plug, but I don'd got der nerf to make a drifer." Carl had been through experiences about which Matt was anxious to learn, but, for the present, the mystery of the red car claimed his entire attention. "Why should any one want to cut a car like this adrift?" queried Matt. "Dat's more as I know," answered Carl, closing the bonnet, "aber led's be jeerful, Matt. Oof fife t'ousant tollars comes rolling indo our hants, all py itseluf, for vy shouldn't ve be jeerful?" "This car don't belong to us, Carl, just because we happened to stop it." "Vell, oof you hatn't shtopped it it vouldn't haf peen vort' nodding! Und der feller vat hat it didn't vant it, or he vouldn't haf let it go. So helup me, I t'ink it pelongs py us. I vant to go py Tenver. Vere do you vant to go?" "I came from Phoenix to Ash Fork, two weeks ago, with a letter of recommendation to a wealthy cattleman who has just bought a big automobile and wants a driver. I had my eye on the job, Carl, but the cattleman hasn't shown up. He lives here, though, and I'm waiting for him. If it wasn't for that, I'd just as soon pull out for Denver, myself." "I don'd got some money," said Carl, "und along comes der audomopile und say, 'Chump in, boys, und led me dake you py Tenver!' Und I, in der jeerful vay vat I haf, make some remarks aboudt 'Vy nod?'" Matt went around to the front and began cranking. "Well, jump in," said he, coming back and getting into the driver's seat; "we're going to start." "For Tenver?" cried Carl. "Hardly," laughed Matt, backing away and turning the car in the road; "we're off along the back trail to look for the touring-car's owner." "Vell, meppy he don'd vant it?" "Then, if we find him, we'll give him a chance to say so." "How you t'ink ve vas goin' to find him?" "This car hasn't been abandoned very long, nor very many miles back on the road. You see, the road is straight for only a few miles, and the car, with the wheel lashed as it was, could only travel along the straight track. If it had been abandoned _before_ it was put on the straight track, it would have been in the ditch." "You know more in a minit as I in a year know, Matt," said Carl, heaving a long breath, "und dot's all aboudt it. Ve vill look for der owner, und I vill shdill be jeerful efen oof he dakes der car und makes me valk by Tenver, yah, so. It vas some pig mysderies, anyvay; py chimineddy, it vas der piggest vale oof a mysdery vat efer come my vay." Motor Matt agreed with Carl. Somewhere along the straight stretch of road ahead of them he felt sure the key to the mystery would be found. And what would it reveal? CHAPTER III. THE MAN AT THE ROADSIDE. Back past Hop Loo's adobe Matt drove the car, and on into the open country. For five or six miles the road ran as straight as an arrow, and was almost as level and smooth as a boulevard. Ahead of them, as they moved forward, the boys could see the marks left by the wheels when the car had passed over the road headed toward town. No other pneumatic tires had left a trail in the dust. "I bed you somet'ing, Matt," remarked Carl, "dot dis car don'd pelong py Ash Fork." "There's only one car owned in Ash Fork," said Matt, "and that belongs to the cattleman I came to the town to see. From the looks of the road, no car has come into town or gone out of it for several hours, except this one. Keep a sharp watch on your side of the road, Carl. We've got to find the place where the car stopped while the driver was lashing the wheel and getting out." "Py shinks, I haf peen vatching as sharp as some veasels, aber I don'd see nodding." Matt was covering the back trail slowly, so that no clues which might have been left in the road could get away from his keen eyes. For a long time neither he nor Carl saw anything of importance; and then, suddenly, when they were about four miles from town, Matt's sharp glance showed him something that caused him to bring the car to a quick stop. "Vat it iss?" asked Carl excitedly. "Get down and I'll show you," answered Matt. When they were both in the road, beside the car, Matt pointed to a spot close to the wheel-marks left by the car on its trip into town. "Py shinks," muttered Carl, pushing his fingers through his carroty hair in a puzzled way, "dot looks schust like some feller had t'rowed a bag der car off. Dose marks in der dust look schust like dey vas made mit some pags." "It must have been a bag that could move, then," said Matt. "Huh?" queried Carl, his bewilderment growing. Matt showed him how the broad mark in the dust had moved toward the roadside. "And that bag, as you call it, Carl," continued Matt, "wasn't thrown out. If I'm figuring this thing right, it _fell_ out." "Hoop-a-la!" exulted Carl admiringly, "you vas some Sherlock Holmes, I bed you. How you make dot figuring, anyvay? I know as mooch as you, meppy, oof I could only t'ink oof it. You tell me somet'ing, und den I know." Matt stepped toward the side of the road opposite from that where the broad, flat mark ran toward the edge. "You see, Carl," he explained, "this road isn't quite so level here. There's a bit of a ridge, and when the car came into town, the wheels on the left side went over that ridge, tilting the machine to the right. What you call the bag dropped over the right side and into the road." "Yah, so! Und ven it hit der road it moofed mit itseluf. Funny pitzness. Der furder vat ve go, der less vat ve know, hey? Vat next, Matt?" "We'll follow the trail and see where it leads." "Sure! Aber ve don'd vant to go too far avay from der car. Some goot-for-nodding fellers might come along und shnook it on us." "I don't think we'll have to go very far, Carl." "Veil, be jeerful. Vatefer ve findt, Matt, schust be jeerful. Oof I can't go py Tenfer in dot car it vill be a plow in der face; aber vatch und see how I took it." Low bushes lined the roadside. Matt, not paying much attention to Carl's last remarks, was moving off in the direction of the bushes, following the strange broad trail. Parting the branches at the outer edge of the thicket, he moved into the tangled undergrowth. Carl, who was pushing along behind him, saw him stoop down and disappear below the tops of the bushes. The next moment, the Dutch boy heard a startled exclamation, and Matt straightened up quickly. His face, which he turned toward Carl, had gone suddenly white. "Come here, Carl!" he called. "You findt der moofing pag, hey?" asked Carl, floundering through the brush. Then, a second later, Carl's face also blanched. Coming close to Matt, and looking down, he saw the form of a man curled up in a little cleaned space in the thicket. The man's hat lay beside him, and about his forehead was tied a blood-stained handkerchief. His face was pallid and deathlike, and his eyes were closed. "Himmelblitzen!" whispered Carl. "Iss he deadt, I vonder?" Matt knelt down and laid a hand on the man's breast; then, lifting up one of his limp wrists, he pressed his fingers against the pulse. "He's alive," said Matt. "Den it vasn't a pag vat tropped oudt oof der car----" "It was this man," cut in Matt. "He was sitting in the driver's seat. When the car pitched to the right he was too weak to hold himself in, so he fell into the road." "Und hurt his head ven he fell!" "No, he must have hurt his head before he fell. It wasn't so very long ago, Carl, that he took his header from the car, and that bandage must have been around his temples for two or three hours, at least." "Den vat? Oof he vas too veak to shtay py der car, how he tie der veel like vat it vas?" "He must have been running the car and steering. Feeling his strength going, he lashed the wheel in order to keep the machine on a straight course. Probably he hoped the car would get him into town." "How you t'ink he vas hurt?" "Give it up. It looks like foul play to me." "Ach, blitzen! Dot's schust vat I say: Der more vat ve hunt aroundt der less vat ve find oudt." The man was well dressed, and thirty-five or forty years old. "Anyhow," said Matt, "he must have been the owner of the car. I shouldn't wonder if some one had robbed him." "Den der roppers didn't know deir pitzness, Matt," returned Carl. "See dot pig, goldt chain in his vest! Und look at here vonce." Carl bent over and pulled a fine gold watch from the vest pocket. "Vat vas der roppers t'inking aboudt ven dey held der feller oop und didn't take dis? Und den, again, dere iss der car. Vy didn't dey shdeal dot, hey? No, I bed you, it vasn't roppers. It vas somet'ing else vat gif dot poor feller a crack on der headt." "Some one may have _tried_ to rob him, Carl," said Matt. "The car is a fast one, and it's easy to guess that he got away." "Vell, meppy. My prain vas all in kinks und I don'd know noddings aboudt it." "The quickest way to find out what happened is to get the man to Ash Fork and into a doctor's hands. We ought to do that, anyway, and the quicker we do it the better. Let's take him and put him in the tonneau." "Dot's der talk!" Matt stepped to the man's head and started to lift him by the shoulders. As the limp form was slowly raised something dropped out of hip pocket. "Py chimineddy!" exploded Carl. "Vait a leedle, Matt. See vat iss dis." Matt waited while Carl stooped and picked up an object that glittered in the sunlight. "A revolver!" exclaimed Matt "Yah, so! Der feller vent heeled mit himseluf. Meppy he vas expecding drouble?" "That may be! or, if he was touring through this part of the country, it would only have been a wise policy to carry arms. Any bullets in the gun, Carl?" The Dutch boy examined the weapon. "Dere iss doo empty shells und four goot vones," he announced. "He must haf fired a gouple oof dimes." "Well, drop the gun in your pocket and let's get him to the car." Thereupon the unconscious form was picked up and carried out of the thicket and into the road. Close to the car the burden was laid down while the tonneau door was opened. "After the man fell from the car," said Matt, "he had to drag himself into the bushes." "Vy vas dot? Oof he hat shtaid in der roadt somepody who vas passing vould haf seen him." "He may have had his reasons for getting out of sight. Anyhow, the only way for us to get to the bottom of this thing is by taking the man to town and having a doctor look after him." When Carl had opened the door and thrown the two packages of laundry from the seat into the bottom of the car, the boys picked the man up again and heaved him into the tonneau. While he was being lifted something else dropped out of his pockets and fell on the foot-board with a muffled _thump_. "Iss dot anoder gun?" puffed Carl, who was in the tonneau and fixing the man on the seat. "Not exactly," answered Matt, taking the object from the running-board and holding it up. It was a small green bag. "See vat iss inside alreaty," suggested Carl. "Meppy it vill gif us a line on who der feller iss." The bag was of heavy silk, and its mouth was closed with a silken cord. To open the bag took only a moment, and Matt thrust in his hand and drew out several small spheres about the size of so many peas. They were dark in color and cast off a lustrous gleam in the sun's rays. Matt stared at the little objects in amazement. "Chee grickets!" grunted Carl. "Vy he vas carrying pills in a silk pag? He must be a great feller!" "Pills!" exclaimed Matt. "You're 'way wide of the mark, Carl. These are not pills, but pearls--black pearls, the rarest gems that come out of the sea. There--there's a fortune in this green bag!" CHAPTER IV. THE MYSTERY DEEPENS. The effect of Matt's announcement on Carl was startling. The Dutch boy, of course, might be supposed to evince some surprise at finding the bag of pearls, but his amazement went so deep it left him speechless. More than that, his astonishment grew rather than lessened. "Bearls!" he whispered, as soon as he could find his voice, staring strangely at Matt over the side of the tonneau. "Iss dot vat you say, Matt--bearls?" "Yes," answered Matt excitedly, counting the contents of the bag. "There are twenty of them, Carl, and I know that black pearls bring a big price." "Veil, by shinks und den some!" wheezed Carl. "Vouldn't dot knock you slap-sited? Bearls! Und vat vas dot t'ing I findt me in Pringle's room. Say, Matt, I got to shpeak mit you, righdt avay!" "We've got to take care of the man, Carl," returned Matt, closing the silk bag and stowing it carefully in his pocket. "This is a big thing we're up against, and we've got to handle it right. Make the man as comfortable as you can. I'll go back after his hat and then we'll hustle him into Ash Fork." Carl went about his work mechanically, his face full of wonder. Matt returned to the place where the man had been found, picked up his automobile-cap and gave a hasty look around for anything else that might have been dropped. Failing to find anything, he returned quickly to the car. "You better stay in the tonneau, Carl," suggested Matt, "and keep the man from being jarred off the seat." "I vant to talk," said Carl; "py chimineddy, I got to shpeak mit you aboudt vat has habbened mit me. I don'd ged der time since der Chinks blayed tag mit me, und----" Matt was cranking the machine. As he came around and crawled into the front seat, he looked back to see that everything was all right. "You can talk while we run into town, Carl," said he, throwing in the clutch and manipulating the side lever. "Pefore you ged to going too fast," said Carl, leaning over the back of the seat and pushing a scrap of paper under Matt's eyes, "read dot." There were only a few words on the sheet, and Matt read them almost at a glance. What he read thrilled him on the instant. "Pearls on the way. Break loose and meet us as per letter sent you at Albuquerque." It was the one word, "pearls," that sent an electric shock through Matt's nerves. "Where'd that note come from?" he asked, keeping his eyes ahead on the road. "Dot's all vot Pringle left pehindt," answered Carl, putting the note back in his pocket. "Ven he flew der coop he took mit him der trunk mit eferyding else vat he hat. Yah, so. Ven I knocked py his room in der morning, I don'd ged no answer. I knock some more, und den I findt me der door vas oben, und I valk in mit meinseluf. No Pringle. No trunk. No nodding aber schust dot paper lying on der floor. Pringle hat vamoosed. He took vat money dere vas, und my shdreet clodings, so I hat to vear my stage make-oop." "Where were you and Pringle at the time?" "Py Flagstaff." "What were you doing in Flagstaff?" "Ve vas a knockaboudt moosickal team. Yah, so. Ve use a shlap-shtick, und make some monkey-doodle pitzness, und I blay der zillyphone, und der drompone, und der moosickal glasses, und der sleigh-pells. Pringle he blow der horn und plinkety-plunk der pancho. Ve vas vorkin' our vay agross der gontinent py San Francisco, vere ve blay a circuit in vaudeville. Aber Pringle he pull out mit himseluf, und I vas left in some lurches. I go on py Ash Fork, and t'ink meppy Pringle come up from Phoenix, so I vait py Ash Fork. Vell, he leaf me doo shirts und dree pairs oof socks, und vile I peen in Ash Fork vaiting, I dake dem py Hop Loo. Ach, I haf some pooty pad dimes vile I vait for Pringle, aber I vas jeerful. Now I t'ink meppy he don'd vas in Phoenix ad all, und dot he vas in Tenver. Dere iss somet'ing in dot note aboudt bearls. Ve findt bearls in dot leedle pag. Funny, ain't dot? For vy iss id, Matt?" Matt couldn't answer that question. The mystery was deepening. "Somebody sent that note to Pringle, Carl, and he cut loose from you." "Yah, so. He cut loose from me und he dook eferyt'ing vat I haf. He vas a pad egg, you bed you. Oof I ketch him vonce, I make him t'ink he vas hit mit some cyclones!" "The fellow who wrote that note may not have meant that these pearls in the bag were 'on the way.'" "Meppy nod, aber it looks doo keveer for a habbenchance. It gif me a cholt, Matt, ven you saidt dose t'ings vas bearls, und I recollectioned vat vas saidt in der note about bearls. Meppy Pringle und some odder pad egg dry to holt dis feller oop und dake der pag avay from him." "That may be. How is the man now?" "Aboudt der same like he vas." Matt had been driving the car at a smart clip, and they had taken the turn in the road and were reaching out for the main street of the town. There was a doctor's office across the street from the hotel, and Matt drew up in front of it. Some loungers on the sidewalk, observing the unconscious form in the tonneau, began crowding around the car and asking questions. "I don't know what's the matter," said Matt. "We found this car running away and picked up the man from the roadside. Is the doctor in?" The doctor himself looked from a second-story window and answered the question. Some of the bystanders helped remove the man from the tonneau and carry him up the stairs to the doctor's office. Matt and Carl followed. "Keep quiet, Carl," whispered Matt to the Dutch boy; "don't tell any of these people what we've found. That information will have to go to the officers." "Sure t'ing," returned Carl, with a wink. "I know more as you t'ink, Matt. Ve ought to ged a rake-off on dot pag. Id vould be easy to be jeerful mit a rake-off." The unconscious man was laid down on a couch in the doctor's office, and the room was cleared of all the morbidly curious people. Only Matt and Carl were left with the doctor. The latter, busily stripping away the blood-stained bandage, kept up a running fire of talk as he worked. He wanted to know all about the runaway car, how it had been stopped, just where the man had been found, whether he had been unconscious ever since he was picked up, and so on. Carl let Matt answer the questions, and Matt was glad that none of the doctor's remarks brought up anything about the pearls. "His injury is not serious," said the doctor. "His forehead has been grazed by a bullet. A tight squeak, but in a case like this a miss is always as good as a mile." "Why is he unconscious?" queried Matt. "Just weak from loss of blood. We'll bring him around in a jiffy, and then he can tell all about what happened to him." The doctor proceeded to cleanse the man's wound, and to put on a fresh bandage. Then, holding up his head, he forced a stimulant between his lips. "He must be a wealthy man," remarked the doctor, his eyes on the watch-chain and the good clothes. "But what does a wealthy man want to be pounding around the country for--especially a country like this--all by himself?" Before either Matt or Carl could hazard a guess, the man gave a slight start and opened his eyes. For an instant he stared blankly into the faces of the doctor and the boys, muttered something, and tried to get up. "I wouldn't do that," said the doctor. "You're weak, yet. Wait till you get a little strength. Here, drink some more of this." The man took another swallow of the stimulant, and seemed to get better control of himself. "How did I come here?" he asked. Matt, obeying a gesture from the doctor, told how the car had been stopped, and how he and Carl had gone back along the road and found the man unconscious among the bushes. For a minute or two after hearing Matt's explanations the man lay silent and thoughtful. "If you did all that," said he to Matt finally, "you must know how to run a car." Matt nodded. "I used to work for a motor company in Albany," he answered, "and they had me give demonstrations. I had to know all about cars and take out a license." A queer gleam arose in the man's eyes. "I am James Q. Tomlinson, of Denver," said he, "and have been touring Southern California and Arizona for my health. With my chauffeur, I came up from Yuma in the 'Red Flier,' and the chauffeur was taken sick at the Needles. Am expecting to pick up a friend in Flagstaff. The friend is waiting there for me, and I thought I would drive the car through to Flagstaff from the Needles myself. I found I didn't know as much about it as I thought I did. However, I managed to peg along. "Early this morning, about twenty miles out of Ash Fork, I was set upon by three masked men. They ordered me to stop, but I opened up the machine and made a run past them. The scoundrels fired at me, and one of their bullets grazed my head. I was stunned for a moment, but managed to keep my senses and hold the automobile in the road. Had an idea that I could get to Ash Fork, but somehow I kept growing weaker and weaker. It became hard for me to manage the steering-wheel, so I tied it with a rope; then, all at once, the car tilted, and I was thrown out. "I can remember falling into the road, and crawling to some bushes where I could be out of the hot sun. After that my wits left me, and I remember nothing more until now." A knock fell on the door of the outer office. The doctor excused himself for a moment and went out, closing the door of the private office behind him. As soon as he was gone, Mr. Tomlinson's manner changed quickly. Thrusting a hand into his pocket, he withdrew it with a cry of alarm. Then he fixed upon Matt and Carl a suspicious look. "Did you boys see anything of a bag, a little green silk bag?" he demanded. Matt took the bag from his pocket and handed it to him. "It dropped out of your coat as we were lifting you into the car," said he. A gasp of relief went up from the man. "Do you know what it contains?" he queried, opening the bag with trembling fingers. "Pearls," said Matt, "twenty black pearls." Assuring himself that the pearls were all in the bag, Tomlinson closed it and pushed it into his pocket. "These pearls are worth thirty thousand dollars," said he, in a guarded tone. "You boys are honest, and will be rewarded, but say nothing to anybody about the bag. Understand?" Matt nodded, and just then the doctor came in with a roughly dressed individual whom he introduced as a deputy sheriff. CHAPTER V. MATT GETS A JOB. "What's the trouble here?" asked the deputy sheriff. "I hear that Matt King and the Dutchman brought you to town in an automobile, Mr. Tomlinson, and that you have been robbed." "Not robbed," replied Tomlinson. "I was shot at, and wounded slightly, but the car was too fast for the thieves and I got away." "Where 'bouts was this?" "About twenty miles west of Ash Fork. I don't think it would do you any good to go after the rascals, though." "I reckon not. They're prob'ly a good long ways from where they tried to hold you up. You wasn't hurt very bad, eh?" "It wasn't serious at all. I feel pretty weak, but I'll soon get over that. It's necessary for me to go on to Flagstaff to-night, or early to-morrow morning." "You'd better rest up for three or four days, anyhow, Mr. Tomlinson," admonished the doctor. "Haven't the time. As I told you, there's a friend waiting for me at Flagstaff." Tomlinson's tone was decided, and he turned to Matt. "So your name is King," he asked, "Matt King?" "Yes," answered the young motorist. "Are you the Motor Matt I've been hearing about, down Phoenix way?" "I've been living in Phoenix for a while, and that's what they call me down there." "What are you doing in Ash Fork?" "Came here looking for a job." "Good! I need a driver for my car, and will pay you one hundred dollars a month and expenses. Is it a go?" Matt jumped at the chance. This was not the job he had been expecting to get, but it seemed fully as good as anything he could pick up in Ash Fork. Besides, there was a prospect of getting to Denver, and he had long had that city in his mind's eye. "I'll take it," said Matt. "Where do we go after leaving Flagstaff?" "Right back to Colorado," answered Tomlinson. "I guess this will stop my knocking around. I went away for my health, and now I'll go back to Denver for the same reason." He took a roll of bills from his pocket, stripped off a twenty-dollar bank-note and handed it to Matt. "Here's some money, King," said he. "Look after the Red Flier and have her all ready to start early to-morrow morning. How much do I owe you, doctor?" he added. "Oh, a ten will about square us," answered the doctor, and must have pocketed more money for less work than he had done for some time. "Help me to the hotel, will you?" asked Tomlinson, of the deputy sheriff. "I'm not very steady on my legs, yet." "Sure," said the officer readily. "Schust a minid, oof you blease," spoke up Carl. "Oof you vas going to Tenver, Misder Domlinson, vat's der madder mit ledding me rite along? Dot's vere I vant to go, und I don'd haf some money to ged dere." Tomlinson looked Carl over for a moment. "Well," said he, "I don't know why I shouldn't. I owe you something, anyhow." Carl brightened perceptibly. He had taken a great liking to Matt, in the few hours he had known him, and was glad that they were both going to Denver together. Tomlinson was assisted out of the office by the deputy sheriff, the doctor opening the doors obsequiously ahead of them. When the doctor returned to Matt and Carl he was rubbing his hands and smiling. "I'll bet you boys don't know what that man is," said he. "Why, he's one of the biggest wholesale jewelers in the West, and he's got more money than you can count. This was a lucky day's work for you." "Vell," returned Carl grimly, "it don'd open oop like it. He gifs me a rite py Tenver for vat I dit, und he gifs Matt a chob like vat he could ged anyvere for der same money. Domlinson iss an olt skinflint." "Tut, tut," said the doctor reprovingly. "Before you get through with him you'll find that he does the right thing by you." "Have you ever seen him before, doctor?" asked Matt. "No, but I've read a lot about him in the Denver newspapers. You chaps are in for a streak of luck." "Dot's vat I peen vaidin' for, all righdt," said Carl, as he and Matt left, "aber I got some hunches dot I'm goin' to keep righdt on vaidin', und being jeerful schust to show vat goot shtuff a Pretzel iss made of." When they got down on the walk, Carl laid a hand on Matt's arm. "How vould you like to lend me a leedle more money, Matt?" he asked. "You see, I owe a fife-tollar board-pill in town und it iss pedder dot I pay it pefore I hike. I can't gif you nodding but my vort dot I pay him back, shdill you alretty took some chances on me, und you mighdt as vell took a few more." "There you are, Carl," laughed Matt, handing him the money. "I wouldn't want you to go along with us if you didn't have your debts paid. I'm getting a hundred a month, now, and I'll stand back of you until you find a job of your own." "You vas a pully poy," answered Carl, "und ve vill be fast friendts so long as you like." "That suits me," answered Matt heartily, "right up to the handle." They shook hands cordially, and while Carl went off to square his board-bill Matt gave his attention to the Red Flier. Now that Matt had charge of that fine big car, he was conscious of a feeling of pride as he stood off and surveyed the superb machine. From now on the car was to be under his care, and to run under his hands. Motors were his hobby, particularly gasoline-motors, and he was never so happy as when he had something to do with them. He wondered a little why a wealthy wholesale jeweler should be traveling about the Southwest in a touring-car with no more baggage than Mr. Tomlinson had with him. But that was Mr. Tomlinson's business, and Matt was so wrapped up in the six-cylinder machine that he gave little attention to anything else. His first move was to begin an examination of the car to see that everything was in proper shape. The cylinders and valves under the hood claimed his first care; then he examined the water-tank, the sparking-apparatus, and finally came to the point where he wanted a look at the gear. This was reached by a trap in the tonneau, and he pulled up a rubber mat in order to get at the opening. Under the mat he found something besides the trap-door. The object was a letter, which might have got under the mat by mistake or have been put there for the purpose of secreting it. Matt picked the letter up and gave it closer scrutiny. It had passed through the mails, and had been posted in Flagstaff several days before. The address, in a scrawling hand, read, "Mr. James Trymore, Brockville, A. T." Brockville was the next station west of Ash Fork. The address was evidence enough that the letter did not belong to Tomlinson; but, if not, how did it happen to be in the car? There was a chance that the missive belonged to Tomlinson's chauffeur, who had been left sick at the Needles. Thinking that this was the way of it, Matt started to put the letter in his pocket. At that moment the deputy sheriff came across the street from the hotel. "Well, King," said he jovially, bracing up alongside the car, "you've feathered your nest in good shape. Tomlinson is loaded down with money and you've done a big thing for him to-day." "Think so?" queried Matt. "Wisht I was as sure I was goin' to make a million as I am of that." "Did you talk with Mr. Tomlinson any?" "Well, a little." "Did he tell you the name of his other chauffeur?" "No, I can't remember that he did." "Are you acquainted over in Brockville?" "Know about everybody in the town." "Who's Trymore, James Trymore?" The effect of that question on the deputy sheriff was amazing. He gave a jump and his eyes narrowed as they peered at Matt. "What did you ask me that for?" he demanded. "Because I wanted to know." "Look here, son, have you got a line on that feller, or have you jest seen one of the notices?" "What notices?" "Why, I got a letter through the mails, from Denver, not more'n three days ago, saying that a crook named Denny Jerome, otherwise Denver Denny, otherwise James Trymore, had escaped from jail and was believed to be somewhere in this part of the country. How'd you hear about him?" Matt was not taking the deputy sheriff into his confidence merely on that showing. Parrying his curiosity with some offhand remark, Matt pushed the letter into his pocket and went on with his examination of the car. His mind was full of all sorts of surmises. Why should a letter addressed to a Denver crook be in Mr. Tomlinson's car? Matt began to think that the day's proceedings, taken all together, had a queer look. Perhaps his new job wasn't going to be as pleasant a one as he had imagined. CHAPTER VI. CONCERNING THE LETTER. Carl came back in time to help Matt clean the dust and dirt off the Red Flier, to replenish the oil, fill the water-tank and strain a full supply of gasoline into the fuel-chamber. The car was then backed into an unused barn connected with the hotel, and the boys washed the dirt off their hands and faces and went in to supper. Mr. Tomlinson did not show himself down-stairs. His meal was carried to his room. Carl babbled continually while he and Matt were eating, but Matt had very little to say in reply. His mind was busy with the letter. When they had finished supper, Matt and Carl went up to their own room. Inasmuch as the Red Flier was to make an early start for Flagstaff, the following morning, Matt had invited the Dutch boy to spend the night with him. As soon as they were in the room, and Matt had closed and locked the door, he drew up a chair close to Carl's and began telling him, in a low voice, about what he had found under the rubber mat in the tonneau. "Py shinks!" exploded Carl, "dere iss unterhandt vork going on, Matt, I bed you!" "Not so loud, Carl," cautioned Matt. "I don't know where Tomlinson's room is, but it may be next to this one." "You t'ink he knows somet'ing aboudt dot?" whispered Carl, in amazement. "He may, and he may not. I don't know what to think. Anyhow, the letter doesn't belong to him, and I'm going to read it and see what it has to say. If it contains any information worth while, I've got to tell the deputy sheriff." "Sure!" returned Carl. "It's funny dot you don'd read it pefore." "I've been thinking about it, and trying to figure out what I had better do. If James Trymore is a Denver crook, I can't understand how a letter to him got into Mr. Tomlinson's car." "Dere's monkey-doodle pitzness somevere," muttered Carl, shaking his head ominously. "Vell, let's see vat dot ledder say, den ve know pedder vat to do." The letter was short, but its contents were amazing. "JIM: Got your note this morning. Glad to hear the pearls are on the way. Count on me. Will cut loose from Wienerwurst to-night, check trunk through to the Needles and leave on night train, getting off at Brockville and meeting you there. PRINGLE." "Pringle!" gurgled Carl. "Py shiminy grickets, dot's der feller vat run avay und took all vat I hat! Vell, vell! Vouldn't dot gif you a twist!" "This note," murmured Matt, as several things dawned on his mind, "was written in answer to the one you found on the floor of Pringle's room, the morning you discovered he had skipped." "Sure!" averred Carl. "Dot's as blain as anyt'ing. Und Pringle say somet'ing aboudt der bearls, doo. Say, look here vonce! I bed you dot Drymore und Pringle put oop some chobs to rop Domlinson oof dose bearls, und Domlinson vas doo sharp for dem. He sailed avay from der roppers und dey don'd ged nodding! Vell, led's be jeerful. I like pooty goot to see dot kind oof luck hit Pringle, afder vat he dit py me. Yah, you bed you!" Carl couldn't see very far ahead. But Matt could, and he began to open up a line of speculation that took Carl's breath. "The question is, Carl, how did that letter get under the rubber mat in the tonneau of the Red Flier? Tomlinson says he didn't stop, when the robbers commanded him to, but hit it up and sailed away from them. Now, if Trymore had that letter, and if he and Pringle were the robbers, how could the letter get out of Trymore's pocket and into the car? That had to happen in some way." "I'm oop a shtump," admitted the puzzled Carl, shoving his fingers through his hair. "I nefer vas mooch oof a feller ad guessing oudt cornundums. Vat you t'ink, Matt?" "I think Tomlinson must have been mixed up in it, in some way." "How could dot be?" returned Carl. "Domlinson iss a rich man, und he vouldn't haf nodding to do mit fellers like Drymore und Pringle. Pesides, Domlinson hat der bearls. He vouldn't vant to go indo a game vere he vas to rop himseluf!" "You don't catch my idea at all, Carl," whispered Matt excitedly. "Maybe this fellow who calls himself Tomlinson isn't the real Tomlinson at all! Maybe he's some one else, and just posing as Tomlinson!" "Aber der toctor say dot Domlinson iss a real feller, und dot he lifs in Tenver, und dot he read aboudt him in der Tenver bapers." "That may all be," went on Matt. "I don't mean to say that there isn't any one by the name of Tomlinson, or that he isn't a rich man, and hasn't a jewelry-store, and all that. If Tomlinson is a jeweler, he might naturally be on the lookout for pearls. Trymore may have found out he had that fortune in black pearls, and have put up a deal to get hold of them. That's the way it looks to me from what evidence we have. But, for all that, the man we brought in may not be Tomlinson, but one of the thieves who got the pearls!" Carl fell back in his seat with a gasp. His brain was whirling with the startling surmises Matt had evolved. "Meppy you vas righdt, Matt," Carl finally returned, "aber you don'd know nodding for sure. Oof you tell der deputy sheriff, und make some misdakes, den you lose your chob, und ve bot' lose a shance to ged to Tenver. Be jeerful, pard, und don'd go und do someding dot you'll be sorry vat you done." "I'm going to find out whether Tomlinson--or the man who says he's Tomlinson--put that Trymore letter under the mat. If we find that he did it, then we'll know he must be one of the robbers, and not Tomlinson at all. If we find he didn't, then it's a cinch he's straight goods." "How you do dot, Matt?" "Well, we'll steal out to the barn and put the letter where I found it. Then we'll watch and see if Tomlinson goes after it. If Tomlinson is mixed up in this business, he'll be thinking about it, and he'll know that letter is under the mat. He'll be wondering if I got hold of it, and he'll be anxious to sneak down and find out. See?" "Sure!" approved Carl. "Dot's a fine biece oof pitzness. Ve'll take der ledder down und put him vere he come from--aber vait schust a leedle. Dere iss somet'ing yet in der writing vat I don'd undershtand." With the letter open in his hand, Carl ran his finger over some of the words. "'Vill cut loose from Wienerwurst'," read Carl. "Vat dit Pringle mean by dot?" Matt laughed softly. Carl was as good as a circus, now and then. "Why," answered Matt, "he means that he'll cut loose from _you_. Which is just what he did." "Yah, so," said Carl grimly. "Dot's a new vone. Wienerwurst! I fix him for dot vone oof dose days. Anyvay, led's be jeerful. Pringle ain'd so mooch himseluf. Den look, vat I see again. 'Vill check trunk drough to der Needles.' He means py dot, meppy, dot der trunk, mit vat I got insite, has gone on to der Needles. Vell, pympy I ged dot trunk. Yah, you bed you! 'Wienerwurst!' Ach, du lieber!" Carl threw the letter away from him and got up. "Pringle make some monkey-doodle pitzness mit me, und you bed you I do der same mit him." Matt picked up the letter, returned it to the envelope, and he and Carl cautiously opened the door and let themselves out into the hall. Making as little noise as possible, they descended to the outside door, passed into the dark street, turned the corner of the hotel and made for the barn. It was about eight o'clock, and everything was gloomy and silent in the vicinity of the hotel. "Meppy you pedder shtrike some lights, hey?" suggested Carl, following Matt into the blank darkness that reigned in the makeshift garage. "No, we don't have to do that," said Matt. "I know right where the machine is, and a light might give us away. You stand in the door, Carl, and I'll put the letter where I found it and be with you again in a brace of shakes." "Vell, hurry oop. Oof Domlinson vas to come vile ve vas here, den ve vould be der vones vat got fooled." Matt, with the location of the Red Flier firmly fixed in his mind, groped his way through the gloom and came to the front of the machine. With one hand sliding over the bonnet, he reached the side of the car, opened the tonneau door and stepped to the foot-board. Just at that moment, while he was bending over with the letter in his hand, a pencil of light leaped suddenly out of the gloom and rested full on him. Straightening up suddenly, he whirled his face into the light. For an instant his eyes were blinded, and he could see nothing. "Quick!" he heard a husky voice mutter from somewhere in the darkness. "Down him and grab that letter!" The next instant a fist leaped out of the gloom and into the ray of light. Matt dropped downward, falling off the foot-board. The fist hit him a glancing blow on the shoulder, and he toppled backward. At the same moment the letter was snatched out of his hand. "Py shinks," came the voice of Carl, "vat vas going on, anyvay? Who you fellers vas? Keep avay from me, or----" Running feet had sounded along the barn floor. While Carl was talking, some one ran into him and knocked him flat with a quick blow. As the boy went down, two men bounded over him. Carl was up almost as soon as he was down. Some one else was coming, and he flung out his hands and made a grab. "Vaid a leedle!" he puffed savagely. "I got _you_, anyvay, und----" "Let go, Carl!" came Matt's excited voice. "Take after those two men! See who they are, if you can!" Carl gasped and withdrew his hands. "Vell, oof it ain'd Matt!" he muttered. "So many t'ings vas habbening, all in a punch, dot I peen all mixed oop in my mindt!" With that, Carl rushed away in the direction taken by Matt. CHAPTER VII. THE TWO HORSEMEN. The attack in the barn was so utterly unexpected and so suddenly made that Matt and Carl hardly realized what had happened until it was all over. Although a little dazed by the whirl of events, and still partly blinded by the gleam from the dark lantern, the king of the motor boys had his wits about him. The letter was gone, but that was no great loss. The value of the letter lay in the use Matt had intended to make of it, by discovering who had placed it under the rubber mat in the tonneau. Such a discovery would have given the young motorist a clue as to who "James Trymore" really was. Neither Matt nor Carl were very much damaged by their rough experience. In their rush from the barn they were only a few yards behind the men who had attacked them, and they would have been right on the others' heels if Carl had not made a mistake and caught hold of Matt just at the moment when there was no time for delay. Matt, who was in the lead, heard a sound of running around the side, and toward the rear, of the barn. Flinging away in that direction, he came out on an alley, with the sounds he had been following abruptly blotted into silence. While he stood there, wondering which way the men had gone, a pounding of horses' hoofs jumped out of the stillness, somewhere to the left. He turned barely in time to see the forms of two mounted men melting away in the blank darkness. Matt was disappointed. He had not expected to overtake the men, but he had hoped to come close enough so that he could get a fairly good look at them. "Who vas dem fellers, anyvay, und vat vas der mix-oop aboudt?" came the voice of Carl as he pushed toward Matt through the gloom. "That's too deep for me, Carl," returned Matt. "There were two of them, and they had their horses in the alley. One of them grabbed that Trymore letter just as I was going to put it in the car." "Vell, der ledder don'd amount to nodding. Ve know vat it hat on der insite, und dot's plenty for us. Be jeerful." "I guess I'll have to revise my opinion of Tomlinson. Neither of those horsemen could by any possibility have been him, and it's a cinch they were in the barn to get that letter. We blundered into their hands too slick for any use! As things look now, Carl, Tomlinson is straight goods." "I t'ink he vas some skinflints, all righdt, aber dot's der vorst vat can be saidt oof Domlinson. Dose two fellers vas de vones vat dry to rop der car, hey?" "They must have been." "Und meppy vone vas Pringle! Der tinhorn vat cut loose from Wienerwurst! Say, I vish I could haf hanted him a cholt in der slats. I could blay ragdime moosic all ofer dat feller." "We'll go back and take a look at the Red Flier," said Matt, "and make sure those two men haven't done anything to put the car out of business. This is a mighty puzzling proposition we're up against, and I can't make head or tail out of it. If Tomlinson didn't have anything to do with that letter, I can't understand how it got into the bottom of the tonneau. And if he was the one who put it there, why did those men come after it?" "Tough luck, Matt, aber take it jeerfully," counseled Carl. "I haf hat more money come indo my hants since I peen hooked oop mit you dan I efer t'ought I vould ged a look ad in all my life. Dot's righdt. Dot pig ret car comes rolling righdt oop to us, invitationing us to grab holt und keep it--vich ve don'd. Den ve findt t'irty t'ousant tollars' vort oof bearls vich likevise say for us to cash dem in, go off py ourselufs und be rich und jeerful--vich also ve don'd. Oudt oof all dose shances, you pull down a huntert-tollar chob und I get a rite py Tenver. Ach, himmel!" and Carl heaved a long sigh. Paying no attention to his comrade's regrets, Matt had been making his way back to the barn door. The excitement in and around the barn had not claimed the notice of any one in the hotel or on the street. What racket there was had been confined to a limited space and had evidently not been heard by the townspeople. "Close the door, Carl," said Matt, as the Dutch boy followed him into the barn. "I saw a lantern on the wall, when we brought the machine in, and I'll light it while we look around." Carl shut the door, and Matt struck a match, found the lantern, and lighted it. "Nopody heardt vat vent on here," remarked Carl, while Matt was moving about the Red Flier. "Ve couldt haf peen laidt oudt for keeps mitoudt addracting any addention. Vy, oof dose fellers had vanted to, dey could haf shtole der car, py chiminy!" "There ought to be some way to lock the barn," said Matt, "but, as there isn't, I have a notion to bunk down on the tonneau seat for the rest of the night." "Oof you do dot," asserted Carl, "I vill keep along mit you." "That would be foolish. All I want to do is to watch and see that those two horsemen don't come back." "Two to watch is pedder as vone, Matt," answered Carl firmly. "Is der Red Flier hurt anyvere?" "I can't see that the machine has been tampered with at all." He stepped around in front and "turned over" the engine. "Everything appears to be just as we left it," he added, "so I am compelled to think that those two horsemen rode into town after that letter." "Und Domlinson didn'd know a ting aboudt it, hey?" "That's the way it looks. Of course, it's hard to under----" Matt bit off his words abruptly and whirled around from the front of the machine. A crunch of footsteps could be heard outside, cautiously approaching the barn door. Swiftly Matt extinguished the light, caught Carl by the arm and pulled him across the barn and into a box-stall. There they crouched down and peered out. "By shinks!" whispered Carl. "A lod oof t'ings vas habbenin' to-nighdt. Dose two fellers vas comin' pack! How ve ketch dem, hey?" "Hist!" warned Matt. Just then the barn door opened, and a dark form could be seen against the lighter background of the doorway. The man slipped into the barn stealthily and pulled the door shut behind him. It was impossible for the boys to see him very plainly, and after the door was closed they could not see him at all. While they crouched breathlessly in the box-stall they heard a sound of fumbling movements, then the scratching of a match. Two hands could be seen, one holding the match and the other a piece of candle. When the candle was lighted the face of the man was brought out with positive distinctness. It was Tomlinson! Carl, fairly shaking with suppressed excitement, gripped Matt's arm. Taking the hand from his arm, Matt pressed it to signify that they were to remain where they were, and watch and see what happened. Having lighted his candle, Tomlinson raised erect and peered about him through the gloom. Rest and food had brought back most of his strength, and he moved toward the car quickly and carefully. Following down the right side of the machine, he opened the tonneau door, stooped and pulled up the rubber mat. The next moment a disappointed exclamation came from him. Throwing the mat aside, he searched frantically, getting down on his knees in the tonneau and then carrying his hunt to the forward part of the machine. He was all of five minutes bobbing around in the machine, and when he got out of it, and stood for a moment in front of the car, there was an ugly and perplexed look on his face. Muttering to himself, he pinched out the candle, flung it away from him, turned, and went through the door. "Pinch me vonce!" murmured Carl, with a long breath. "Meppy I vas treaming." "You're wide-awake, Carl," said Matt grimly, "and so am I. What do you think of that?" "I don'd know vat to t'ink, und dot's all aboudt it. Dere's peen nodding but funny pitzness efer since you shtopped der car ven it vas running avay mit itseluf--schust vone keveer t'ing afder some more. Chiminy plazes! I feel like I vas going pughouse. Domlinson come afder dot ledder, too." "Sure he did." "Und dose odder fellers vas afder it." "No doubt." "Und dose odder fellers got it----" "And Tomlinson will think I was the one who took it, and that I am keeping it." "Vat you t'ink, Matt? Vill you go und tell der deputy sheriff?" "No. What we have discovered we will keep to ourselves. We don't know enough, yet, to lodge a complaint against anybody." "Ve'll go on to Tenver mit Domlinson?" "Yes, and keep our eyes and ears open every foot of the way. I've got a hunch that we'll find the key to this mystery somewhere between Ash Fork and Flagstaff. You go on up to the room, Carl, and go carefully. I'll sleep in the Red Flier. The car will be fairly comfortable for one, and it wouldn't be for two. Besides, it will be better if some one occupies our room." Carl protested a little, but was finally prevailed upon to carry out Matt's suggestion. Matt got into the car and doubled up on the rear seat. His mind was so full of the queer developments of the mystery that it was a long time before he went to sleep. However, he dozed off at last and did not open his eyes again until, in the early morning, he was aroused by the opening of the barn door. As he started up quickly in the tonneau, the face of Tomlinson met him. Tomlinson was startled by the sight of Matt, and leaped back in consternation; then, recovering himself, he came on into the barn and drew near the machine. There was flaming suspicion in his eyes and a fierce look on his face. CHAPTER VIII. ON THE ROAD. "What are you doing here?" demanded Tomlinson. "Watching your car," replied Matt. "How long have you been here?" "Most of the night." "Did anything happen? Did----" Tomlinson snapped off the words and glared. Matt was astounded at his manner. "I should say something did happen!" said Matt. "Before turning in, I came out here to make sure the machine was all right. You see, Mr. Tomlinson, there's no lock on the door, and I was worried a little. It was well I came. Two men rushed out of the barn, and I followed them. They had horses hitched in the alley, and they got away." "Are you giving it to me straight?" demanded Tomlinson, peering steadily into Matt's eyes. "Certainly I am." "Did you get a good look at those men?" "No, it was too dark. They got away on their horses before I had a chance to get very near them." Tomlinson was thoughtful for a few moments. He was wondering, no doubt, if Matt was pursuing the intruders while he was in the barn looking for the letter. Evidently he made up his mind that Matt knew nothing about his night visit to the barn, and it seemed equally evident that he believed the two men had got the letter. The fierce expression vanished from his face and he became more amiable. "After that," said he, "you were afraid the machine might be tampered with, and so you came here and stayed all night?" "That's the way of it, Mr. Tomlinson," replied Matt. "I'm glad to know that I've got such a careful and discreet driver. I was worried about the car myself, and came out here, during the evening. I saw no one around, though, and suppose, at that time, you were chasing the two men. Wonder what they wanted here?" "Perhaps they were two of the men who tried to hold you up," suggested Matt. "What object would they have in coming here?" "That's hard to tell. They might have wanted to injure the car just to get even with you." Tomlinson shook his head. "That would have been a foolish move," said he, "and I can't believe that was their object. Well," he added briskly, "it doesn't much matter. We'll get away from Ash Fork in less than an hour. Come in to breakfast. The landlord promised to have an early one for us." "How are you feeling, sir?" Matt inquired, as they walked toward the hotel. "First-rate," said Tomlinson; "almost as good as ever. Where's the Dutchman?" "He spent the night in my room." "Who is he? A friend of yours?" Tomlinson spoke carelessly, but it was clear to Matt that the question had more significance than he cared to make it seem. "Yes, he's a friend," Matt answered. "He's been playing in hard luck lately. He and a man named Pringle were doing a turn in vaudeville. Pringle got out between two days, when he and his partner were in Flagstaff, and took about everything Carl had." "Hard lines!" muttered Tomlinson. "Well, he helped me, and I'm glad to be able to do something for him." Carl was coming down-stairs just as Matt and Tomlinson entered the hotel office. He seemed surprised to see Matt and the owner of the car together, but was clever enough to keep his feelings from Tomlinson. All three went into the dining-room and ate a hurried meal. When it was done, Matt brought down a grip which contained all his reserve wardrobe, packed his bundle of laundry away in it and stowed it in the bottom of the tonneau. The rest of the tonneau Tomlinson appropriated for his own use. It was seven o'clock when the Red Flier, guided by Matt's skilful hands, swept out of Ash Fork and pointed for Flagstaff. Carl, more "jeerful" than he had been for a long time, occupied the seat on Matt's left. Matt was not familiar with the road, but Tomlinson furnished him with a road-map and Carl kept the map open and followed the course with his eyes, from time to time giving Matt directions. They had left Ash Fork no more than a mile behind when Tomlinson, braced in a corner of the tonneau, broached a subject which was vastly interesting to both boys. "You lads," said Tomlinson, "are probably wondering about those pearls. You see, I am a wholesale jeweler, in Denver, and rare gems like those are directly in my line. They're from the Gulf of California, and were picked up by a La Paz Mexican, who brought them into Yuma. Hearing that I was in Yuma, the Mexican came to me and offered the pearls for sale. I bought them at a bargain. I asked you to say nothing about the pearls in Ash Fork, because, if it were known I had such valuable property about me, some one might lay a plan to hold us up. That's what happened the other side of Ash Fork, and it was an experience I don't care to have repeated." "It's hardly safe to carry such valuable property around with you in this part of the country, Mr. Tomlinson," remarked Matt. "No one knows that better than I do," the other answered, "hence my desire to keep the matter quiet." "Why didn't you send the pearls to Denver by express, after you got them in Yuma?" asked Matt. The question seemed to surprise Tomlinson. "I was careless, I suppose," he answered, after a brief pause. "Anyhow," went on Matt, "after your narrow escape on the road to Ash Fork, I should think you would have got the pearls into the hands of the express company as soon as you could." "I pay you a hundred a month to look after this car," said Tomlinson sharply, "and not to offer suggestions as to how I run my business." Carl rolled his eyes at Matt, and a slow grin worked its way over his fat face. Matt himself felt like grinning, for he was putting these questions for a purpose. Tomlinson's answers were hardly calculated to allay any suspicions that might be forming in Matt's mind. At that time the Red Flier had dipped into a piece of road that skirted the foot of a mountain. According to the road-map, the course circled around the uplift to a point on the opposite side. The mountain was low, oblong in shape, and covered with pine timber. Carl, stealing a covert look behind, now and then, saw that Tomlinson was staring at the tree-covered slope with uneasy eyes. "This is a good road, King," said Tomlinson presently, "and I think it would be well to let the car out. A better place than this for a hold-up could hardly be imagined, and----" The words were hardly out of his mouth when a thumping of hoofs was heard in the trail behind. "Hold up, there!" yelled a voice; "wait!" Matt took one look rearward. Two mounted men were behind--rough-looking fellows in slouch-hats and blue flannel shirts. It was plain that they had ridden into the road from the timber, probably intending to get ahead of the car, but making a miscalculation. "Hit 'er up!" cried Tomlinson, crouching down in the tonneau. "Those are two of the men who tried to rob me before! Dig out, King! Don't let any grass grow under this car now!" Matt advanced the spark, and sent the Red Flier ahead at a furious speed. The horsemen were armed, but made no attempt to shoot. They spurred wildly, and slapped their horses with their hats, but, of course, a six-cylinder machine could walk away from anything on hoofs. In less than a minute the two men were out of sight. Matt, keenly watching the road and keeping steady hands on the steering-wheel, was wondering if those were the same men who had been prowling about the barn the night before. He judged that they were, and he wondered at their foolish attempt to try to chase the Red Flier and bring the car to a halt from the rear. Three minutes later, and while they were still making for the point of the mountain, Tomlinson leaned over the back of the seat and gave a surprising order. "Stop her, King! I'm going to get out here." "Going to get out!" echoed Matt, cutting off the power and clamping on the brake. "If you do, those fellows will capture you." "You don't understand," went on Tomlinson, stepping down from the tonneau. "Those fellows are after me, and I ought to have kept right on with these pearls and not laid over in Ash Fork last night. That gave them a chance to get ahead of us and lay a trap." "Trap?" queried Matt. "That's it. This road winds around to the other side of the mountain. See that gap up there?" Tomlinson pointed up the wooded slope to a place where the ridgelike uplift was broken. "Do you understand what those scoundrels can do, King?" pursued Tomlinson. "They can ride through that gap and get to the other side of the mountain ahead of us. I don't want to be in the car when that happens--and if I'm not in the car the chances are it won't happen. I'll climb up and get through the gap myself, and you pull up and wait for me after you get a mile beyond the gap on the other side. Understand? That's the only way we can fool those fellows. If we turn back toward Ash Fork, they'll get me, and if I stay in the car and go around the end of the mountain the result will be the same. They can watch, from up there, and make the move that's best calculated to help them; but, by getting out, I can dodge through the timber on foot and we'll all give them the go-by. Wait for me a mile beyond the gap, on the other side," he repeated, and started up the slope. Matt stared at Carl for a moment. "Be jeerful," grinned Carl. "Ve nefer know vat's going to habben, dis trip, so it iss pedder dot ve take eferyt'ing as it comes. Domlinson must know vat he's aboudt." "It looks to me as though he was getting into more trouble than if he had stayed with the car," muttered Matt. "He has some hard climbing ahead of him, for one who's been through what he has. However, I've got my orders, and here goes." There was enough gas in the cylinders so that the Red Flier took the spark without cranking, and the boys rolled on around the end of the mountain and doubled back on the opposite side. The road continued good, but the roadside was covered with jagged stones and it would have been impossible for the car to have turned out if any wagons had been met going the other way. On this side of the uplift the trail bore off from the bottom of the slope, but it was easy to keep an eye on the gap and calculate the point where Tomlinson had told Matt to stop and wait for him. As Matt figured it, there was a good two miles yet before that point would be reached, and he let the car out, once more, in order to hurry over the distance. But he had hardly got under full headway before he shut off the gasoline and got busy with the foot-brake. "Py chimineddy!" cried Carl; "dose fellers haf plocked der road!" That was the exact condition of affairs. A pine-tree, growing close to the trail, had been felled in such a manner as to fall across it at right angles, making it impossible for the car to proceed. It was also impossible for the car to go around the tree, on account of the rocky ground at the trailside. Wondering what the two ruffians hoped to gain by this move, Motor Matt leaped down from his seat and went forward to investigate the situation. CHAPTER IX. IN THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY. Matt had no more than reached the tree when he heard a sound of scrambling behind him. Just as he whirled about to see what was going on, a husky yell rang out. "I'll take care o' the Dutchman, Spangler. You nail the other 'un!" Simultaneously with the words a big, ruffianly-looking fellow sprang into the tonneau of the car, grabbed Carl as he was about to rise and pulled him over the back of the seat with an arm about his throat. There was another man on the ground, moving warily in Matt's direction. These were the two scoundrels who had chased the car on the other side of the mountain, there was no doubt about that. They had made their counter-move exactly as Tomlinson had surmised. But why had they made it, now that Tomlinson was not with the car? And where were their horses? It seemed clear that they had made a quick ride through the gap, and had reached the trailside and hidden behind the bushes, ready to make a capture as soon as the tree had stopped the boys and before they could take the back track. And what was the use of it all, now that Tomlinson had got away with the pearls? These thoughts flashed through Matt's mind with the swiftness of lightning. A dead branch had been broken from the pine-tree in its fall. Matt grabbed at it and began waving it around his head. "Keep away from me!" he cried, to the fellow who was closing in on him. The ruffian, seeing the snapping gray eyes and the whirling club, paused undecidedly. "That's Motor Matt!" yelled the man in the automobile; "get him, Spangler!" "Oh, blazes!" snarled the man. "If ye think I'm goin' to walk inter that club, Hank, ye've got another guess comin'. I'll git him, though." Spangler threw a hand behind him and jerked a revolver from his hip pocket. "Now, younker," said he, leveling the weapon, "drop yer club an' be reasonable. I'd hate like sin ter cut ye off in yer youth an' bloom, but Hank an' me ain't here fer the fun o' the thing, not noways." Matt could see with half an eye that the man meant business, and that he would be quick to use the revolver if he had to. If the two ruffians were after the pearls, they would probably leave Matt and Carl and go away as soon as they found out they were on the wrong track. Then, if ever, was the time to do a little talking. "What do you want?" asked Matt, throwing the club away and leaning back against the tree. "You seen anything of a green bag?" asked Hank, still hanging to Carl. "I've seen it, yes," answered Matt. "If that's what you want, we haven't got it." "Where is it? Don't you lie to me--it won't be healthy for you." "Mr. Tomlinson has got the bag," said Matt. The man on the ground gave a jump and began to swear. "Do you mean to say," shouted the man in the car, "that the _hombre_ who was in this car with you didn't have that bag?" "Yes, he's the one. His name's Tomlinson. He's in the jewelry business, in Denver." An odd expression crossed the faces of the two men. Then Spangler began to laugh. "What d'ye think o' that, Hank?" he demanded. "Tomlinson! He said his name was Tomlinson! Waal, wouldn't that rattle yer spurs?" "You say he had the bag?" went on Hank. "Yes," said Matt. "They didn't try to take it away from him in Ash Fork?" "No. Why should they, if it belonged to him?" "What became of--er--Tomlinson?" "He got out of the car on the other side of the mountain. He thought you'd cross over through the gap, and head us off." This information put both men in a swearing temper. "If he's on foot anywhere within a dozen miles of us," growled Hank, "we'll get him. Come on, Spangler! Spurs and quirts, while we run the coyote down." Releasing the half-strangled Carl, Hank leaped out of the car. Together they started for the trailside, and the wooded slope leading to the gap. But they were not gone, yet. Just as they began to mount the slope, Spangler gave vent to an angry yell. "Look thar, Hank," he roared, pointing along the road beyond the tree. "_Now_ who's played it low-down on us?" Matt ran back to the car and climbed up to the front seat. From that elevation he was able to look off and see what it was that had claimed Hank's frantic attention. Carl was already staring across the tree and into the distance. Two mounted men were galloping up the road, one of them leading a horse with an empty saddle. One of the men was Tomlinson; the other was---- "Pringle!" muttered Carl; "py chiminy grickets, dere goes dot feller vat shkipped mit all vat I hat!" Hank and Spangler were furious. "They're makin' off with our hosses!" bellowed Spangler. "And they've got the pearls!" added Hank. "We got ter ketch 'em!" stormed Spangler. "We got ter pick up hosses some'rs an' git holt of 'em!" He started to run along the slope in the direction the horses were going. "Come back here, you fool!" ordered Hank. "We couldn't overhaul them in a thousand years, on foot." "What'll we do?" flung back Spangler. "We kain't stand here an' watch 'em go skyhootin' off with our hosses an' them pearls. Of all the Injun plays I ever heerd of, this takes the banner!" Hank was already retracing his way down the slope. "We'll take the automobile!" he yelled, over his shoulder. "We'll be climbing right on top of 'em in a brace of shakes." "Dot means us, Matt!" exclaimed Carl. "You do vat dey say, und py chimineddy I vill catch oop mit dot Pringle feller! Wienerwurst! I'll make him t'ink I vas vorse as dot!" With revolvers in their hands, Spangler and Hank came plunging for the car. "Snake us out of this, Motor Matt!" shouted Hank. "Lay us alongside that outfit ahead, and see how quick you can do it!" "Can't do it," answered Matt. "You fellows have blocked the road." In their excitement, neither Hank nor Spangler had thought of the tree. It was a case of their own weapons being turned against them. The ruffians let loose their billingsgate again, but only for a moment. "Get out here, you two," shouted Hank, "and help us snake the log out of the way. I reckon the four of us will be plenty." Carl piled out briskly, and Matt followed. Spangler and Hank worked like beavers, and after a two minutes' struggle the way was cleared. "Now for it!" panted Hank, rushing back to the car. "All in, everybody! If you try any tricks with the machinery, Motor Matt," he finished savagely, "I'll make a lead-mine out of you. Top speed!" It was an odd situation, take it all around. Matt was being forced to help the would-be robbers, but his suspicions of Tomlinson, since his talk with Spangler and Hank, had reached a point where he was more than willing to do his best to overhaul the men ahead. Carl, of course, was thinking only of Pringle, and of what Pringle had done to him. The Red Flier leaped onward with a bound, Matt leaning over the wheel and coaxing the six cylinders up, notch by notch, to their limit of power. Hank was in front with Matt. Behind them, standing in the tonneau, gripping the seat-back and leaning over their heads, were Carl and Spangler. "Gif her all she vill shtand, Matt!" cried Carl. "Hit her oop like anyding! Tear off der miles so kevick as dey nefer vas yet!" "Whoop-ya!" yelled Spangler. "We'll purty near git thar afore we start! Talk about yer travelin'--why, this here's like bein' shot out of a gun!" "That fellow isn't Tomlinson, you say?" shouted Matt to the man beside him. "No more than I am!" answered Hank. "Is he Denver Denny, otherwise James Trymore?" "You've hit it!" A light had suddenly dawned on Matt. Denver Denny was playing a bold game, and the stakes were $30,000 worth of black pearls. Although Matt was helping Spangler and Hank, yet there was a hope, deep down in his heart, that he might somehow be able to worst all the robbers and recover the pearls for the man who owned them. But where was that man? While all this fighting was going on for the possession of the pearls, what had become of James Q. Tomlinson, of Denver? CHAPTER X. A SHIFT IN THE SITUATION. Matt had never done any more rapid-fire thinking than he did then. While Carl and Spangler, carried away by the excitement of the chase, were yelping frantically and throwing themselves around in the tonneau, and while Hank was growling and threatening, Motor Matt was driving mechanically and turning the situation over in his mind. Pringle, Trymore, Hank, and Spangler were all concerned in the robbery of Tomlinson. Trymore, in some way yet to be explained, must have got hold of the pearls and have tried to get away with them and leave his pals in the lurch. Hank, Spangler, and Pringle had been trying to get hold of Trymore, and had felled the tree and laid that trap where the road wound around the mountain. Pringle had been left with the horses while Hank and Spangler made their attack on the car; by getting out, as he had done, Trymore had checkmated his pals, had found Pringle and the horses, and the two had made it up between them to hustle away with all the live stock and leave Hank and Spangler tied up with the automobile on the wrong side of the tree. All this, at least, represented Matt's quick guess at the situation, built upon certain things he knew and others which he took for granted. Trymore and Pringle had about five minutes' start of the Red Flier; but the motor-car, under Matt's skilful control, was registering fifty miles an hour by the speedometer on the dashboard. If Trymore and Pringle kept to the road, they must surely be overtaken in short order. Spangler was the first to sight the horsemen. "Thar they are, by thunder!" he cried, in savage exultation, "we're goin' a dozen feet to their one, an' we'll smash right inter 'em, in half a minit." "We'll empty the saddles, that's what we'll do!" said Hank, through his teeth. "We'll teach that brace of come-ons to play lame duck with _us_!" Out of the tails of his eyes Matt saw Hank draw a revolver; and over his shoulder leaned Spangler with another weapon. The young motorist, no matter how desperate the situation, did not intend to allow any successful shooting from the Red Flier. Quick as a flash, he steered the car over a roughened part of the road. During the shake-up that followed, the aim of the two ruffians was disconcerted, and their shots went wild. Trymore and Pringle, goading their horses frantically, were doing their utmost to get away from their vengeful comrades. They knew, however, that if they kept to the road it would be only a matter of seconds before they were overhauled. The whistle of the bullets impelled a quick change of tactics, and they turned from the trail and took to the timber. By this move, they screened themselves from the weapons of the pursuers, but got into country where they would have to travel more slowly. In the haste with which this fresh maneuver was executed, the led horse got away. "Consarn 'em!" exclaimed Hank. "If they think they're going to get away by pulling off such a game as that, they're going to get fooled. Stop the car!" he added, to Matt. Matt slowed down to a halt. Before the Red Flier had been brought to a standstill, Hank and Spangler were over the side, Hank catching the loose horse and spurring after the fugitives, and Spangler floundering after him on foot. Presently, pursued and pursuers vanished, and Matt and Carl sat in the car and wondered what was going to happen next. "You bed my life," fumed Carl, "I hope dey ged Pringle." The Dutch boy was so deeply concerned over Pringle that he had lost sight of the more important points of the situation. "They're crooks, all four of them," said Matt. "They stole the pearls from Tomlinson, in the first place, and now they're trying to beat each other out of them." "Und Domlinson don'd vas Domlinson afder all?" inquired Carl. "The fellow who called himself Tomlinson is Denver Denny, _alias_ James Trymore. Didn't you hear what Hank and I said to each other, a few minutes ago, Carl?" "I don'd hear nodding but schust some yells made py dot odder feller. Vell, vell! Led's all dry und be jeerful. Der deputy sheriff hat dot news aboudt Tenver Tenny in his bocket all der time, und he heluped der crook across der shdreet, und made him comfordable py der hodel, und dit eferyt'ing he could for him! Ach, Drymore vas a shrewrd sgoundrel, I bed you." "He's a bold one!" declared Matt. "Vere iss der real Domlinson alretty? Und how dit Drymore ged der audomopile?" "That's what we've got to find out, Carl." "It vas a pig orter." "But we're going to fill it--and get back the pearls, too." Carl shook his head. "I like to t'ink dot, aber it don'd vas bossiple. How ve do anyt'ing ven ve shday here mit der car? Drymore von't come pack." "I think he will," said Matt confidently. "I'll bet something handsome that Hank and Spangler make that mountain too hot to hold Trymore, and that he comes rushing for the car. Trymore won't know that we've found out who he is, and he'll try to keep on with the Tomlinson rôle. We'll let him think we're fooled, then capture him and recover the pearls." "Dot vas some pright itees," returned Carl admiringly, pulling down his fiery vest and smoothing the wrinkles out of it, "aber my vone pitzness in life, schust now, iss to ketch Pringle und ged py Tenver. It seems like ve vas gedding furder und furder avay from Tenver all der time. You t'ink ve pedder shday righdt here, Matt?" "Trymore saw us here last," answered Matt, "so it will be here that he comes to find us." "Und oof ve can ged avay mit him und mit der bearls," said Carl, "ve vill fool der odder roppers, aber I don'd ged no shance ad Pringle. 'Wienerwurst!' He say it in der note. Pympy, vone oof dose tays, I make him know vich iss der saussage. Yah, so!" Matt had been listening for sounds of the flight and pursuit. They had died out, shortly after the quartet of thieves had disappeared, but Matt was confident that he would hear them again. The contour of the mountain was such, at that place, that it would be impossible for Trymore and Pringle to cross to the other side. They would have to make along the slope, trusting to luck to dodge Hank and Spangler and get back to the trail. Unless they were captured, it was a foregone conclusion that Trymore and Pringle would try to reach the car. Inasmuch as Hank was mounted, he would be able to press the fugitives hard. While the boys waited and watched, they heard the distant report of a revolver. The dull echoes, ringing through the woods, were taken up by a faint yell. "Somepody vas shot!" cried Carl excitedly. "Oof it vas Pringle, I don'd ged him; und oof id vas Drymore, ve don't ged der bearls." "Listen!" said Matt. "Somebody is coming this way." There was a crashing of brush up the slope, growing louder by swift degrees. Matt sprang out, cranked up the engine, and hurriedly got back into the car. "Vat now?" queried Carl. "I'm going to turn around," said Matt, "and be ready to rush Trymore back to Ash Fork. He's coming--I'm sure of it. That means that we capture him and recover the pearls. A big day's work, Carl!" "Meppy ve ged some rake-offs, den, hey?" returned Carl. "Ve don'd got mooch luck so far, oudt oof dis shake-oop." Matt, having turned the Red Flier, brought the machine to a halt and sprang out to be ready with the crank. If Trymore came, with Hank hot at his heels, not a second could be lost in getting away. The scrambling noise was still coming down the mountainside, growing louder and louder, but with no one breaking into view. As Matt stood by the front of the machine, trying to follow the sound with his eyes, he saw a horseman appear in an opening among the timber. It was Hank. He slid across the open space like a streak, bound down the slope and evidently in pursuit of Trymore. Just as Hank disappeared, a form tore through the bushes close to the trailside and rushed for the car. "Help!" cried the man. "Get me out of this or I'll be killed." Poppety-pop! spluttered the engine, as Matt bent to the crank. "Pringle!" shouted Carl; "oof it ain'd Pringle I vas a geezer! Oh, be jeerful, eferypody. Come, Pringle, come to me! I peen vaiding here, und somepody else vas vaiding pehindt, aber meppy you pedder dake shances mit me." A thrill of disappointment ran through Matt. He was expecting Trymore with the pearls, and now to be forced to run away with Pringle looked like losing out on the whole proposition. But there could be no lingering with the hope of ultimately securing Trymore. Hank and Spangler would be quick to understand the possibilities of the car, in Trymore's case, and they might puncture a tire, or do some other damage to eliminate the machine. Pringle, caught between two fires, did not hesitate to take his chances with Carl. With a wild leap he slammed himself on the foot-board and against the tonneau. Carl had the door open, and laid hold of him and dragged him in. Matt, smothering his disappointment, slid into his seat and started the car. At that moment, Hank plunged out of the timber. "Here, you!" he yelled to Matt. "Wait! I want that fellow!" "You can't have him," shouted Matt, and jumped to the high gear. Then away they went, covering the back trail as rapidly as they had gone over it the other way. CHAPTER XI. A SURPRISE. Hank made a desperate attempt to overhaul the car. In fact, he tried so hard to capture Pringle that Matt wondered at it. Why should he give so much attention to the fellow when the man he and Spangler wanted most was still on the mountainside? Hank goaded his horse to top speed, shouted threats, and even smashed the tail lamp with a bullet before the Red Flier could get out of the way. No other damage was done, and Matt drew a long breath of relief when the angry robber was safely left behind. Meanwhile things had been happening in the tonneau. Carl's idea of revenge was to take his troubles out of Pringle's hide, and he was going about it with considerable violence. The body of the car rocked from side to side on the chassis under the fierce turmoil in the tonneau. "Wienerwurst, hey?" sputtered Carl, rolling Pringle over on the seat. "You cut loose from Wienerwurst, hey? I make you t'ink it tifferent, you lopster!" "Leave go o' me. Pretzel!" cried Pringle. "I'll eat you, if you don't, an' that's what. Say, you monkey----" "Monkey!" gurgled Carl. "Dot's somet'ing more. Pringle und Pretzel, der moosickal team haf bust oop! Und now come der firevorks. How you like dot, hey? Und dot, und dot! Dose vas my gompliments. Wienerwurst hants dem to you mit jeerfulness." Thump, smack, bang! went Carl's fists. Matt, having made sure that there was now no danger to be apprehended from Hank, halted the car and leaned over the back of the seat to take a hand in the squabble himself. "That'll do, Carl!" he cried, grabbing the Dutch boy by the collar as he pummeled the form on the leather cushions. "I hafen't paid him all vat I owe him yet," shouted Carl. "That's enough, anyway. Leave him alone. If----" "Dere he goes!" screamed Carl; "und look--look vat he's got in his hant alretty!" The moment Matt dragged the Dutch boy from his late partner, the latter had leaped from the seat, grabbed something that had fallen from his pocket, and had sprung down from the car. As he leaped away, Matt saw that the object in his hand was _the green silk bag_! Pringle had been saved from Hank, and he was now anxious to save himself from Carl and Matt. With a flying leap from the car, Matt made after him. A sharp run followed. Pringle was no match for the athletic Motor Matt. Catching up with him at the end of a fifty-yard dash, the young motorist grabbed the fellow by the arm and jerked him to a halt. Pringle was a slab-sided, beak-faced youth with buttermilk eyes. Merely a glance at him was enough to show Matt that he was thoroughly unreliable. "No more fighting," said Matt sharply, snatching the bag from Pringle's hand. "Back to the car with you, on the double-quick." "That ain't yours," snarled Pringle, referring to the bag. "Nor yours, either," answered Matt. "I'm taking charge of it for Tomlinson." This remark about Tomlinson seemed to take Pringle's breath. "Who's Tomlinson?" he asked, trying to play the innocent. "You know." "Some one's been stringing you." "You're trying it now, Pringle, but it won't work." Carl, leaning out of the tonneau, was waving a revolver. "Py shiminy, Matt," he called, "here I vas heeled all der time und forgot aboudt it. Dis gun pelongs mit der Drymore feller. Shtep avay vile I draw some beads on dot gangle-legged hide-rack, vat you got along." "Put that up!" said Matt sternly. "If it went off, I'd be in as much danger as Pringle. That rope that was used to lash the wheel is wrapped around the foot-rest in the tonneau. Get it, and we'll tie Pringle's hands." "What are you mutts trying to do?" demanded Pringle. "You ain't got no call to handle me like this." "Oh, no, I guess nod!" taunted Carl, pulling Pringle's hands to his back and getting busy with the rope. "You vas a fine sbecimen oof a tinhorn, hey. Wienerwurst! Vell, I vas more oof a hot tamale as dot, hey?" "What do you want to knock a partner like this for, Dutch?" demanded Pringle. "Just because I had to pull my freight without getting your permission? Aw, you make me tired!" "See here," said Matt sharply, as Pringle was made to get into the tonneau, "there's no use of your trying to play possum with us, Pringle. We know all about what you've done--not only to Carl, but to Tomlinson. You'll go to Yuma, all right. Just now we're going to take you to Ash Fork and leave you, and the pearls, with the deputy sheriff." This announcement took the wind out of Pringle's sails. The white ran into his face, and he sank back and stared helplessly from Carl to Matt. At that moment the pounding of a motor was heard along the road in the direction of Ash Fork. In that region, where automobiles were few and far between, the sound claimed Matt's instant attention. The other car was coming like the wind. It was a high-powered runabout with a single rumble-seat behind. There were two passengers--one a big man in cap and dust-coat, and the other a businesslike driver in leather fixings and goggles. The runabout was new, as could easily be seen, and there was an extra tire in irons at the driver's side. At that point in the road passing was easy, and the runabout surged by without decreasing speed. "Look out ahead!" shouted Matt, making a trumpet of his hands. But his warning didn't even win a backward glance from the big fellow with the driver. The dust the runabout kicked up soon screened the car from sight. A few moments later, the dust whisked out of view around the point of the mountain. "Chiminy grickets, dot feller vas going some!" exclaimed Carl. "He don'd vas on speaking-derms mit anypody to-day, I guess." "I'll bet that's the fellow I came to Ash Fork to see about a job," said Matt. "He answers the description, all right, but from the looks of things he's got a driver." "Vich leds you oudt," returned Carl. "Dis odder chob oof yours ad a hundert tollars a mont I don'd t'ink vill last. Meppy ve don'd ged py Tenver, neider. Vat a luck it iss! Aber be jeerful. Pringle iss here," and Carl reached over to nudge Pringle in the ribs. "Cut it out!" scowled Pringle. "What can I do to get clear of this?" "You can go py Ash Fork fairst, und den py Yuma. Dot vill led you oudt in den years, meppy." "Rub it in! Oh, by all means!" "Do you want to tell us what you know?" asked Matt, facing Pringle. "Will it put me in deeper, or help me out?" returned Pringle. "It won't do you any harm. We know a good deal about this business, as it is. For instance, Pringle, you got a note from Denver Denny telling you that the pearls were on the way----" "Dere id iss," said Carl, pushing the note in front of Pringle's eyes. "Look him ofer, den you know ve don'd make some pluffs." "You answered the letter from Flagstaff," went on Matt, "and sent it to Brockville, saying you were glad the pearls were on the way and that you would meet Trymore at that place." "Und dere iss dot vone, too--only ve don'd got it," put in Carl. "Dot's der vone vere you say someding aboudt Wienerwurst, vich iss me." "No," said Pringle, "I know you don't got it. Hank got it. You're real cute in that red vest. It's almost like we were in the lime-light, doing the sketch. Quite a line you lads have got on me. But I wouldn't linger around here. That other benzine buggy is coming back, and Hank's up front. Spang's behind, too, and they're reaching out for us." Pringle was turned partly around in the tonneau, so that his eyes could command the road in the rear. Matt took a quick glance toward the point of the mountain. Pringle was right! The runabout was charging along the trail like a thunderbolt. The big man in the dust-coat had vanished. In his place sat Hank, and behind Hank was Spangler. Hank had a revolver in his hand and was pointing it at the driver, holding him to his work. "Ach, du lieber!" whooped Carl. "Pull avay, Matt! Dey're afder us." Matt turned over the engine in record time, jumped for his seat and started. CHAPTER XII. ESCAPE. It was easy for Matt to guess what had happened. Hank and Spangler had stopped the other car--by rolling the tree across the road again, or in some other way--and had taken possession of the runabout. The scoundrels were in luck to have such a car come their way at just that time. Being a lighter machine than the touring-car, and fully as powerful, Matt knew that Hank and Spangler had the advantage. The two scoundrels were in desperate earnest, there could be no doubt about that. They had risked much for the pearls and would not let them slip through their fingers now if they could help it. Pringle was as anxious to get away from the runabout as were Matt and Carl. If Hank and Spangler caught him, their vengeance would be swift and terrible. Pringle's easiest way out of the difficulty was to stay with the two boys. Although the country through which the road ran was bluffy and rough, yet the road itself traveled the level places and was hard and firm. Matt speeded up the engine to the limit and drew out every ounce of power. "Dey're gaining!" shouted Carl; "dey're coming oop on us, Matt! Vell, I t'ink dis is our hoodoo tay, anyvays." "Tear her to pieces!" cried Pringle. "Is this the best you can do? It will be all day with me if Hank comes alongside!" They were doing fifty-five miles an hour, and Matt knew that they could not do any better, no matter what happened. He was hoping for something to turn up--that was all that could help them now. Carl thought that was their hoodoo day, but he had occasion to change his mind. "Somet'ing iss going wrong mit der odder machine, Matt!" he called. "Dey're preaking down, I bed you." "That's what!" came from Pringle. "Hank acts as though he wanted to kill the driver. Is the driver making a play, or has something really slipped a cog? They're at a standstill." Matt decreased the Red Flier's speed and looked back. The driver of the other car was on the ground and both Hank and Spangler were standing over him with drawn guns. "Judging from what the driver is doing," said Matt, "it can't be a tire they've blown up. Water in the carburetter, perhaps. If that's the case, they'll be after us like a singed cat in less than a minute." A bend in the road hid those in the touring-car from a view of their enemies behind. The road curved back and forth, through that part of the hills, and Matt was just making ready to let the Flier out again when Pringle made a suggestion. "You can't give them the slip on a straightaway run, can you?" he called. "No," answered Matt. "And if they're only hung up for two or three minutes they'll catch us?" "Easy." "Well, I don't want to be hooked by that outfit, and I know a way we can dodge 'em." "How?" "Right ahead, on the left, there's a gully in the hills. You can go through it from end to end, easy enough, and at the farther end there's another road. Duck into that gully, quick!" This seemed like a good move to Matt. He pulled the Red Flier down to the low gear. "Oof you vas drying to make us some drouples, Pringle," warned Carl, "you vill ged vorse as you have hat yet." "Aw, splash!" snorted Pringle. "What do you take me for? I was helpin' Denny to skip with the pearls, and Hank would kill me for that, if he could. I'm a lot more anxious to dodge him than you fellows are. Take the gully! I know what I'm talking about. I was through the place with Hank and Spang this morning." Matt's keen eyes were already surveying the gully, and the ground that lay between the mouth of it and the road. The other car could be heard coming, and there was scant time for making a decision. A turn with the steering-wheel headed the Flier for the opening, and she glided in between the sloping walls of the narrow swale. Hardly was the car out of sight when the runabout came ripping along in a cloud of dust. None of those aboard saw the Red Flier, but had their eyes on the next turn of the trail. "Fooled!" laughed Pringle huskily. "If you take my advice, you'll keep going through the gully. As I just said, there is another good road beyond." This advice seemed good to Matt, for, if they had pushed out into the road again and headed the other way, they might soon find the runabout once more behind them. The bed of the gully was sandy, but there were no sharp stones or anything else to injure the tires. Proceeding carefully, Matt kept the car headed for the other road. "I got a bottle of corn-juice in my back pocket," said Pringle, after a while, "and I feel the need of a nip. How about having one, all around?" "Not for me," returned Matt promptly. "Und nod for you, neider, Pringle," said Carl. "You vas too mooch oof a feller for der booze, und dot's vat's blayed der tickens mit you." "How did you come to hook up with Hank, Spangler, and Trymore?" asked Matt. "If I put you next," replied Pringle, "I expect you to do what you can for me." "I'll do that--only I want the truth." "That's what you'll get, right off the bat. I'm down, and you've got the pearls, and Hank and Spang are hot on my trail. I've all to win by putting you wise, and I don't see how I've got anything to lose. "This Denny Jerome, otherwise Denver Denny, otherwise James Trymore, and some others, is an old pal of mine. We used to turn a knockabout spiel behind the footlights on a little two-by-four Western circuit; but Denny got to selling gold bricks to Jaspers and quit on me. I did a little with him, on the side, but the pace was too swift for my nerve. Denny got jugged, and made a getaway, and a friend told him that Tomlinson had picked up some pearls down in Yuma, and was to bring them back to Denver in his touring-car. That looked like good picking for Denny, and he slid for Brockville, A. T., and sent Hank to Yuma to see whether Tomlinson was really going to tote the pearls along with him or have the sense to put them through to Denver by express. "Hank's the wise boy, all right, and he not only discovered that Tomlinson was just as foolish as he was made out to be, but picked up the road they were taking from Tomlinson's chauffeur. Hank then took the train for Brockville, Denny sent word to me, and I pulled out to join him and Hank and Spang. "We laid for the touring-car beyond Ash Fork--stopped it by rolling a big stone into the road. Tomlinson and his driver showed fight, and Denny got a bit of a gouge in the block. He seemed all right, though, and pulled himself together in time to relieve Tomlinson of the silk bag. "Close by that place where we blocked the trail there's an old adobe hut between two hills. From the looks of it, no one has lived there for a hundred years. The play was for Hank, Spang, and little Bright-eyes to take Tomlinson and the chauffeur to the hut and leave them there, neatly roped. Well, we did it; then, when we flocked back to the road, we found that this nice big car was gone and Denny gone with it. Strange as it may seem, Denny had forgot to leave the pearls. "Oh, well, the air was blue for a while. Then, after Hank and Spang had taken their oaths they'd get the pearls and Denny's scalp along with 'em, we soldiered along toward Ash Fork, hugging the hills all the way. We went into camp in a dry-wash close to town, and when evening settled down, Hank sneaked into the burg and came back with a hot clue. The Red Flier was in the hotel barn, and Denny was in the hotel. The question was, did Denny have the pearls in his clothes, or had he hid 'em around the automobile? It looked like a raw play for him to keep the pearls in his pocket and run the risk of being caught with the goods, and we were all thinking he must have put 'em in the buzz-wagon. "Hank and Spang went into town on their horses to have a look through the barn. Just as they had given up trying to find the pearls, some one came in and went to the machine while some one else stood in the door. Hank had a dark lantern--all of Denny's belongings he'd left with us--and he flashed it on the chap by the car. The fellow had a letter. Spang got it. They went after pearls and came back with the paper-talk I'd sent to Spang at Brockville. Then there was more language, and more swearing about what we'd do to Denny when we dropped onto him. "There were only two ways Denny could go out of Ash Fork. One road was back toward the place where Tomlinson was held up. We knew he wouldn't go that way. The other road headed for Flagstaff. Hank stole an ax and we moved along the Flagstaff road early in the morning. We rode through this gully--that's how I came to know about it--and we crossed the mountain through the crack in the top of it and dropped a tree across the trail. Then we went up into the gap, where we could see a mile or two in every direction, and spotted the car when it came along with our absent-minded pal. "Hank and Spang rushed down with their horses, just throwing a bluff in order to make sure the car got around the mountain to the tree. After that, Hank and Spang came up the hill, left their horses with me, and scrambled down to a lot of bushes. "I was holding three horses in the gap. See? Then, all at once, who shows up but Denny. I was for yelling to Hank and Spang, but Denny stops me. He had the pearls, he says, and I might as well have half of 'em. What's the use of letting Hank and Spang in on a good thing when we could have it all to ourselves? Well, I went him one. Denny got onto one horse, and I got onto the other and led the third. You're wise, I guess, that we counted on getting away while that buzz-wagon was hooked to the tree; consequently, we were scared stiff when we heard it climbing after us. "We took to the timber. What else could we do? The led horse parted company with me, Hank caught it, and then he pushed us hard. My horse tumbled; that left me on foot. All Denny and I had been thinking about was getting back to the car and making you fellows get us out of our hole. We might have made the riffle, I guess, if Denny hadn't played out and tumbled from his saddle. That hurt in the head must have weakened him some; anyhow, he laid on the ground as stiff as a mackerel. Not being able to do anything for Denny, I guessed I'd do what I could for Bright-eyes, so I stopped to get the silk bag. Came pretty near stopping too long, because some one took a shot at me, and I guess I jumped twenty feet. "Hank was after me, and Hank was on his horse. What's more, Hank had seen me taking the silk bag. I knew right off it was a nip-and-tuck race, with the chances in favor of a man called Pringle getting nipped. Well, I traveled. When I reached a high place and couldn't go on my feet I laid down and rolled over. That's how I got to the car, and was warmly greeted by Pretzel. You know the rest. Is the spiel worth anything?" Matt, while steering the car through the gully, had been following Pringle closely. "I'm willing to let you go, Pringle," said he, "providing you take us to the place where you left Tomlinson and his chauffeur, and providing neither of them is hurt." "Und broviding," added Carl, "you gif me pack vat you dook dot vas mine." "You're on, both of you!" said Pringle. "I didn't think my dope would bring all that. Ahead of the car is the end of the gully, and just over the end is that nice road I was telling you about. That road will take us past the adobe hut and keep us out of Ash Fork all the way. It might be well to push the pace, though. Now that Hank and Spang have got a machine of their own, they may get the notion that we'll try to do something for James Q. Tomlinson, and make a play to block us." The unfortunate jeweler had been in Matt's mind all the time, ever since the mystery had cleared enough so he could understand what had happened. In order to reach the road Pringle described, it was necessary to climb the gully-bank. The climb was a stiff one, but Matt put the Red Flier at it without loss of a moment. There was warm work ahead--and it would be warmer if Hank and Spang tried to block proceedings with the runabout. CHAPTER XIII. THE HUT IN THE HILLS. The Red Flier made fine work of the climb, rounding the crest of the gully-bank in excellent form. The road they were after lay in plain sight, with smooth ground between. "Which way now, Pringle?" asked Matt, when they had reached the trail. "Turn to the right," answered Pringle. "You and your new partner are in luck, Pretzel," he added, when the turn was made and the car was skimming along toward the adobe hut and Tomlinson. "You'll cut a fine large cake when you break in on Mr. Gotrocks and tell him he's saved, and that you're prepared to hand him all the pearls in the bag. Wish I had you for the next twenty-four hours, Dutch." "Oof you hat blayed skevare mit me, Pringle," replied Carl, "you vouldn't haf peen in sooch a mix. I alvays t'ought you vas a pad egg, aber you know how to blay der panjo." "Sure, and we make a good team. How'll it be if I meet you in Brockville, after I get away, and we hit up Needles with the sketch? All the stuff's at Needles." "Say, I vouldn't haf nodding more to do mit you. I'm for Tenver so kevick as I can ged dere." "Well, be jeerful, be jeerful." "Schust vatch my shmoke a leedle und see. Vill you send my shtuff py Tenver?" "I will, so help me!" "You vill--I don'd t'ink. You check der trunk, hey?" "Sure." "Vere iss der check?" "In my jeans. Going to frisk me for it?" Carl pushed his hand into Pringle's trousers pocket, and dug up a brass tag. "Vell," said he, "you dit tell der trut'. I vill keep der sheck, Pringle, und ven I got some time I vill sendt it on und have der paggage come to me ad Tenver." "What about my stuff? You ain't going to hog the whole business, are you?" "Vell, oof you know anypody in Tenver, I vill leaf your shtuff any blace vat you say." "Andy Hickman has a saloon there. Leave it with him. What's the use of keeping me tied any longer? You might just as well take off the rope." "Not until we see how we find things in the hut in the hills," said Matt. "Yah," agreed Carl, "meppy you vas sdringing us. How ve know dot undil ve findt it oudt?" "Have I strung you any, so far?" protested Pringle. "It vas all righdt, so far, aber somet'ing mighdt come oop farder on. Hey, Matt?" "That's right, Carl," answered Matt. "We'll keep him a prisoner until we find Tomlinson." This road, like the one they had left, angled about through the hills. They passed one vehicle--a buckboard with two passengers--going in the other direction. The horses attached to the buckboard were not used to automobiles, and shied badly. Matt slowed to a stop while the driver of the team was going past. "Seen anything of another automobile, mister?" called Matt. "Nary, I haven't," answered one of the men, "although I hear Lem Nugent, o' Ash Fork, has been blowin' himself fer one o' the things." The horses danced past on their hind legs, and Matt started up again. "There's the Fork," announced Pringle, a few minutes later, nodding his head toward the left. "This is as near as we come to the town." They were forging along rising ground, just then, and the huddle of buildings that represented the town lay below them, and about a mile away. "How far is the hut from here, Pringle?" asked Matt. "Twenty-five miles, I should say, at a rough guess," was the answer. "We'll cross the railroad in another mile, and after that you'd better look for buzz-wagon tracks in the dust. If you see any, then you can bank heavy that Hank and Spang are ahead of you." "Couldn't they go the other road?" "They could, but they wouldn't. They'd make a nice picture running through town, Hank with a gun at the driver's head, wouldn't they? Nix. They'll keep in the background as much as they can--and this road is pretty well back. They don't want to be seen by anybody but us, just now, Hank and Spang don't." "Does this road run into the Ash Fork trail?" "Yep--a mile t'other side of the hut. The hut's between the two roads, close to this and not so close to the other. If the hut had been closer to the other road, maybe Hank, Spang, and I would have heard Denny when he cut loose from us with this car." The Red Flier descended a slope just then, crossed the railroad-track, and climbed another slope beyond. Matt was worrying about the other car. There were no tracks in the road, so it was certain the runabout hadn't passed that way as yet, but there was plenty of time for it to reach the road and catch up with the Red Flier. The one thing to do was to travel at speed, forestalling possible interference from Hank and Spang by getting well ahead of them. During the rest of the trip, which Matt made at the top gait, no travelers or vehicles were met. The twenty-five miles were covered in thirty minutes, and when Pringle called on Matt to stop, he brought the Red Flier to a standstill at a place where the hills rose steeply on each side of the trail. "Here we are," said Pringle. "The hut is on the left side of the road?" queried Matt. "Through that gouge," and Pringle, with a nod, indicated a break in the hills. "Going to take me along?" "I guess I can find the place, all right," answered Matt. "You can stay here with Carl until I see if things are as you say." "What if Hank and Spang come along?" Matt turned to the Dutch boy. "You have that revolver, Carl," said he, "and if you see the other car, or hear it, fire a signal. I'll not be gone any longer than I can help." "I vill keep a sharp lookoudt, you bed you," answered Carl, "und I vill shoot oof I vant you. Mach schnell, Matt, for I haf der feeling in my pones dot somet'ing iss going crossvays." Without pausing for further talk, Matt ran into the passage between the hills. A hundred feet carried him through it and out upon a little plateau. Here there was a spring, a thicket of manzanita, and a small ruin of a house. Opposite the point where Matt came upon the plateau was another narrow valley, leading toward the east and apparently communicating with the other road. Hurrying to the house, Matt stepped through an unclosed breach in the mud wall that had once served for a door. The gloomy interior blinded him for a space and it was impossible for him to see any one. "You scoundrel!" cried an impassioned voice. "Untie these ropes and let us go at once. You will save yourself trouble if you do that, and give me back that bag of pearls. There's law in this country yet, and I'll make it my business to see that it reaches you." Gradually, as Matt's eyes became accustomed to the gloom, he made out the forms of two men seated on a bench along one of the walls. "Are you Mr. Tomlinson, of Denver?" inquired Matt, stepping toward the man who had spoken. "My name, sir," was the haughty reply. "How long are you going to leave us here, without a mouthful of food and no water to drink? By gad, you'll suffer for this!" "You're mistaken, Mr. Tomlinson," said the young motorist. "I'm not one of the robbers, and had nothing to do with putting you here. By a stroke of luck I have been able to recover your pearls and to find out where you were. Your car is waiting in the west road, and I am here to release you and take you to Ash Fork." This startling news left Tomlinson speechless for a moment. "You--you have come to release us?" he returned. "Yes," and Matt, with an open knife in his hand, passed to the bench and began severing the cords that held Tomlinson and his chauffeur to the hard seat. The prisoners had been in their cramped positions all night, and when the ropes fell away, so numb were their limbs that they could hardly hold themselves upright. "Give us some water," begged Tomlinson. There was a canteen lying on the floor. Matt picked it up, found that it was full, and uncapped it and held it to Tomlinson's lips. "The villains that brought us here," spoke up the chauffeur, "left that canteen, but they never stopped to figure out how we were to get at it with our hands tied." "They were willing, Gregory," said Tomlinson, "to let us starve and die, right here. I never thought a set of men could be such inhuman wretches. But who are you, young man?" "My name is King, Matt King," replied the youth. "You say that by a stroke of luck you were able to get my pearls and find out where I had been left? I wish you would explain how----" "I haven't time to explain anything, just now, as we may be interfered with by the robbers at any moment. They have stolen a fast motor-car and are chasing us. If you and your chauffeur are able to walk, Mr. Tomlinson, we'd better get to the west road as soon as we can. The thieves----" A noise at the door caused Matt to whirl in that direction. He was astounded to see Spangler standing in the entrance. CHAPTER XIV. BACK TO THE CAR. There was but one place where Spangler could have come from, and that was the east road. The stolen car must have been driven along the direct trail leading to Ash Fork and have stopped so as to let Spangler out at the nearest point to the hut. As Matt turned on the ruffian, Tomlinson and Gregory started up from the bench. "There's one of the rascals!" exclaimed Tomlinson. Spangler, for a moment, had shown evidences of surprise. Getting quick control of himself, he pushed into the hut and started for Matt. "Waal, my bantam," he sneered, "I reckon ye didn't make sich a clean gitaway, arter all. Here's where ye git what's comin' if ye don't fork over that bag. Hurry up with it! Ye've made us a heap o' trouble an' we ain't allowin' ter put up with any more o' yer foolishness." "Why, you infernal scoundrel," cried Tomlinson wrathfully, "you're my prisoner! Put down that revolver, or----" "Oh, you say moo an' chase yerself!" scoffed Spangler. "I got bizness with young King, here, an' if you butt in ye're goin' ter git hurt. I'll take them pearls," he added to Matt, "an' I'll take 'em _now_." Spangler was only one against three, but he was armed, and two of the men he faced were worn out with the physical suffering they had endured. The ruffian was counting confidently on having things his own way, and Matt was wondering how he could checkmate him. Hank must be somewhere around. Probably, Matt reasoned to himself, Hank was in the east road keeping guard of the driver of the stolen car. "Your lease of liberty is short," fumed Tomlinson; "I'll spend my last dollar, if I have to, in bringing you and the rest of your infernal gang to book." "Fer the last time, King!" growled Spangler, moving his revolver significantly. "I've chinned all I'm goin' ter about that bag. Either pass it over or take what's comin'." Matt had got around behind the bench. He had done this in a casual manner so as not to arouse Spangler's suspicions. Just as the ruffian finished, Matt kicked the bench against his legs. Spangler staggered back. He did not lose his balance, but, in order to keep from falling, he had to throw up his arms. This was the opportunity Matt wanted. Like a flash he jumped over the bench and his right fist shot out in a blow straight from the shoulder. It was no light tap, for the young motorist put all his heart and science into that darting right-hander. Spangler was caught on the point of the jaw and driven against the crumbling adobe wall. The revolver fell from his hand, and Matt pounced upon it and brought it level with Spangler's breast. "By gad!" cried the admiring Tomlinson. "What do you think of that, Gregory? Did you ever see anything neater than that? King, you're a wonder! Bravo!" "He's quicker'n chain lightning!" averred Gregory. Spangler was having recourse to his usual tactics whenever things went wrong with him, and was swearing like an army teamster. "That will do, Spangler!" said Matt sternly. "Swearing never helped anybody and it's not going to help you. Stow it." "I'll have yer life fer this, my buck," gritted Spangler, rubbing the point of his jaw, and glaring. "Not right away you won't," returned Matt coolly. "Step around to the other wall. We want to pass that door, and you're too close to it." "If ye think ye're goin' ter make a clean gitaway," scowled Spangler, as he moved across the room, "ye've got a surprise ahead o' ye. Ye kain't bump Hank as easy as ye bumped me." "What are you going to do, King?" asked Tomlinson. "Get away from here as quick as we can," answered Matt. "Aren't you going to take that scoundrel along, now that we've captured him?" "No, it's impossible." "Impossible?" echoed Tomlinson incredulously. "Why, we've got him right in our hands." "His partner is close by, in another road, and his partner has a faster car than your Red Flier, Mr. Tomlinson. We've got to get away from here in a hurry. Take my word for it. There's no time to talk about it. Hurry out, you and Gregory, and make for the west road. I've got a friend there watching the car." "But----" "Hurry!" There was a compelling note in Matt's voice that caused Gregory to catch hold of his employer's arm and pull him toward the door. "He knows what he's talking about, Mr. Tomlinson," said Gregory. "Here's a chance for you to get away, and get back your pearls and the car. The boy has shown that he has pluck and sense, and we'd better do what he says." This logic overcame Tomlinson's objections, and the two passed out of the hut. Matt backed after them. "Ye better leave that gun," called Spangler. "I'll leave it," answered Matt, "just as soon as it's safe. Where's Hank?" "Ye'll find him quick enough!" was the grim response. Getting through the door, Matt turned and hurried after Tomlinson and Gregory. Tomlinson was bareheaded. He wore an automobile-coat that reached to his heels, but there was no coat or vest underneath it. The missing garments, it seemed clear, had been appropriated by the scheming Trymore. "If we could have taken that villain with us," fretted Tomlinson when Matt came up with him and Gregory, "we would have had at least one of the gang. Now they'll all go scot-free." "We've got to think of ourselves, first and foremost," said Matt. "If you and Gregory escape, and you get your car and your pearls, the sheriff can go after the gang." "But see what they did to me!" went on Tomlinson querulously, opening his dust-coat and showing himself stripped to the shirt. "The rascal I wounded took part of my clothes, my watch, pocketbook, and some personal papers. Then, to throw us into that miserable hovel as though we were dogs? Gad, it makes my blood boil to think of it." "You might take the pearls," said Matt, and handed him the bag. "If you could travel a little faster----" "Can't go any faster!" declared Tomlinson. "We haven't had anything to eat or drink for nearly twenty-four hours, and my hands and feet feel like sticks. I'm anxious to know how you managed to get these pearls, King----" "I'll tell you all about that just as soon as we get to Ash Fork." Matt's anxiety was intense. He felt sure that Hank was doing something, and the thought bothered him. Tomlinson and Gregory were creeping along, gathering strength with every minute, yet not fast enough to suit Matt. "I was foolish ever to carry these pearls with me," went on Tomlinson, "but I expected to dispose of part of them to a dealer in Albuquerque, and thought I could take the lot that far in the automobile. How did the robbers know I had them? That's what I can't understand." "Did you write to Denver that you had secured the pearls and were going to carry them with you as far as Albuquerque?" asked Matt. "Yes, but----" "Then the news must have got out there. I happen to know that a Denver man was back of the plot to steal the gems. There was a leak in your Denver office. How long did you stay in Yuma, Mr. Tomlinson?" "Ten days." "That gave the Denver man plenty of time to lay his plans. You bought the pearls from a Mexican who came to Yuma from La Paz?" "Where did you find that out?" "Is it the truth?" "Yes." "Well, that shows there must have been some one in your Denver office who told what you were doing. The information I just gave you came from Denver Denny, the fellow you wounded at the time of the robbery." "By gad, I'll overhaul my office force from the errand-boy up, as soon as I get back home!" "A good idea." "That robbery was the most barefaced proceeding you ever heard of! Gregory and I were spinning along toward Ash Fork, never dreaming of trouble, when we were halted by a big stone in the road. Gregory got out and had just rolled the stone out of the way, when four men rushed at us. I had a revolver and I blazed away. One of the villains staggered--but he couldn't have been very badly hurt, for he pulled himself together and came at me. Two of them laid hold of Gregory, and two laid hold of me; then one of them--the fellow I wounded--stayed with the car while the other three took Gregory and me to that wretched hut. If I live, I'll make every one of those men answer for what they've done! How such a robbery could take place, on a public road, in broad day, is something I can't----" Tomlinson's rambling remarks were interrupted by a sound that brought Matt's heart into his throat. Two revolver-shots, in quick succession, came from the west road! That meant that Carl saw trouble of some sort coming the way of the red car. "Run!" yelled Matt, dropping the revolver and grabbing Tomlinson by the arm: "you've got to run! Catch hold of him on the other side, Gregory. You'll be captured again if we don't hike out of this in short order." Gregory was a younger man than Tomlinson and had withstood their recent physical discomforts much better. He and Matt, between them, contrived to rush the Denver man toward the road. They did not have much farther to go, and when they broke through the little gap Carl greeted them with a wild shout: "Der odder car! It vas coming, Matt, coming like a house afire!" CHAPTER XV. A RACE AND A RUSE. Carl, as he yelled his startling announcement, was standing up in the tonneau and pointing toward the place where the west and east roads came together, a mile farther on. The stolen runabout, while Spangler had been at the hut, had doubled the fork of the trail. Running along the east road it had put about and was now charging along the west. The Red Flier was facing the direction from which the runabout was coming, and would have to be turned. "Get Tomlinson aboard, Gregory!" shouted Matt, dropping the Denver man's arm and springing to the front of the machine. Frantically he turned the lever, then jumped for the driver's seat. By that time, Gregory had got Tomlinson into the back of the Flier, and had scrambled for a place alongside of Matt. "Can you run 'er?" he asked. "Watch me," flung back Matt. To make a turn, in that narrow roadway, called for plenty of skill, but it was accomplished swiftly. By the time the nose of the Red Flier was pointed the other way, however, the runabout was dangerously close. Hank was still in front with the captive driver, and still overawing him with the revolver. Matt bent to his levers and steering-wheel. For him there was nothing but the road in front--his eyes saw nothing else. But how could they hope to win that race, with a better car against them? "She can do sixty," cried Tomlinson, from behind. "You know her, Gregory! Perhaps you'd better take the wheel." Gregory had been watching Motor Matt sharply. "King can forget more about driving a car than I ever knew, Mr. Tomlinson," said he. "Leave the thing as it is. If any one can get us out of this, it's King." The Red Flier was going like the wind. "Watch behind, Carl!" shouted Matt. "Sure," answered Carl, "you bed you. Py shinks! Der odder car is slowing down aboudt vere ve vas. Ah, ha! Dere comes Spangler, oudt oof der blace vere you come, und he chumps by der car. Now dey're rushing ad us again! Himmel, how dey vas purnin' der vind! No use, Matt. Der Red Flier ain'd in it mit dot odder car." "How's she going, Gregory?" cried Tomlinson. Gregory bent forward over the speedometer. "Fifty-eight," he answered. No car ever worked more sweetly than did the Red Flier. She hummed like a swarm of bees, and Matt's trained ear told him that the machinery was working to perfection. "She can do sixty!" again shouted Tomlinson. "We mustn't let the scoundrels overhaul us now! Five hundred dollars for you, King, if you keep us away from them!" "Oof anypody can do dot," yelled Carl, "id vas Modor Matt. Hoop-a-la, Matt! Hid 'er oop, hid 'er oop! Ve don't vant to get ketched any more dan vat Domlinson does." "They're gaining, they're gaining!" cried Pringle. He had freed his hands himself, accomplishing it the moment Gregory had hustled Tomlinson into the tonneau. If Tomlinson or Gregory recognized Pringle as one of the robbers, they failed to say anything about it in the general excitement. But if Tomlinson was urging Motor Matt onward, the desperate Hank was doing no less with the driver of the runabout. And Hank's urging carried with it a threat of life and death. Foot by foot, steadily and relentlessly, the runabout drew closer to the touring-car. With frenzied eyes Tomlinson watched the closing gap. Presently the racer behind was so close that those in the Flier could see the grimly resolute look on Hank's face, and could hear the fierce words with which he threatened the man under his revolver-point. "Who's got a revolver?" cried Tomlinson desperately. "Here you vas!" Carl answered, and handed over the gun he had in his pocket. "It's mine!" exclaimed Tomlinson, as he took the weapon. "Ve got it from der feller vat heluped rop you." It was hardly a time for explanations, but Carl made that one mechanically--for his thoughts were elsewhere. Tomlinson lifted the gun, training it on the occupants of the car behind. Hank saw the move but never flinched. "I wouldn't do that," he shouted. "We don't want to kill you, Tomlinson. That isn't part of the game. We want those pearls, and we're not going to be euchered out of them after all this fuss." Then Spangler, from the rumble, leaned forward over the front seat of the runabout. He had picked up his own weapon from the place where Matt had dropped it, or else he had taken a second six-shooter from Hank's pocket. He leveled the gun at Tomlinson. "Pull that trigger an' I'll fill ye fuller o' holes than a pepper-box!" he cried. Gregory, reaching over from the front, caught Tomlinson's arm and jerked it down. "You're mad, Mr. Tomlinson!" said he. "Don't take such a risk." "What's our pace?" demanded Tomlinson, his iron-gray hair snapping about his face with the speed of their flight. "Fifty-nine!" "Then the other car is doing better than a mile a minute! A thousand dollars for you, King, if you land me, with those pearls, safe in Ash Fork!" The hot blood went dancing through Motor Matt's veins. Could he do it? Reason told him that the feat was impossible, but---- A thought at that instant leaped through his alert brain. There was a chance--a long chance. "Slide into this seat, Gregory!" he cried. "Careful, now. I'll hang to the wheel while you get under me." "What are you going to do?" demanded the astonished Gregory. "The best I can--and trust to luck." A note of thrilling determination rang in Motor Matt's voice. Gregory crawled and scrambled over the front of the lurching car and got into the driver's seat. Matt, relinquishing the wheel, went on his knees in the seat vacated by Gregory. "Pringle," called Matt, leaning into the tonneau, "you have a bottle in your pocket?" "Yes, I----" "Give it here." Pringle pulled a quart bottle from his pocket. It was half-full of liquor. Matt drew the cork and spilled the whisky into the road; then, again on his knees, he studied the car behind. The driver of the runabout was holding his car to a steady line. The left-hand wheels tracked the road a point two feet to the left of the trail of the Red Flier. Standing in the car and bracing himself with his left hand, Matt raised the empty bottle in his right. _Crash_! The bottle, broken to fragments in the road, offered a danger-point for the car behind. The speed of the Flier had scattered the jagged glass, but most of it had gone to the place Matt had in mind. Hank, hearing the crash, instinctively divined what had happened. "To the right, to the right!" he roared, brandishing his revolver in the driver's face. But the speed of the runabout was so great that swerving the car, before the danger-zone was reached, was out of the question. One of the front tires hit the broken glass and instantly there came a sharp "pop." The runabout slewed around and the driver cut off the power and put on the brakes just in the nick of time to avoid a bad accident. The Red Flier glided onward, leaping away from its defeated rival like a glittering streak. Tomlinson, overcome with the tension of the struggle, collapsed in his seat with a breathless, "By gad." "King," exulted Gregory, "you're the best ever!" "Hoop-a-la!" gloried Carl, in a frenzy of delight. "Meppy Modor Matt ditn't do somet'ing dot time! Oh, I bed you! Be jeerful, eferypody, be jeerful! Modor Matt has safed der tay und von a t'ousand tollars. Yah, yah, yah!" and Carl flopped to an about face and shook his clenched fist at the car behind, now almost out of sight. "Wonderful!" cried Tomlinson. "King, how did you ever manage to think of that?" "How does he efer manage to t'ink oof eferyt'ing, hey?" asked Carl. "He has his headt mit him all der time. Dot's vy he cuts so mooch ice verefer he goes! Oh, he vas a pully-poy, you bed my life!" "Well," said Tomlinson, "I'll not forget this." "There's Ash Fork," spoke up Pringle suddenly, pointing to the right. "Just across the railroad-track there's a road leading down to the place. I guess you better stop here and let me out." "Stop, Gregory," said Matt. "Pringle isn't going into town with us." "Yes, he is!" averred Tomlinson, bristling. "He was one of the four men who held us up. I didn't recognize him at first, but I do now. Don't stop, Gregory." "Mr. Tomlinson," said Matt, facing about, "I promised Pringle he should have his freedom if he told us what the robbers had done with you. But for the information he gave us, we would never have been able to get you away from that hut. I think he's entitled to something, don't you?" "Is that the way of it?" asked Tomlinson. Matt assured him that it was. "Then," went on Tomlinson, "if you promised him his freedom, Matt, Gregory had better stop." The car halted and Pringle, highly elated, jumped to the ground. "Don't forget to leave my stuff where I told you, Pretzel," he called. "Vell, I von't," answered Carl; "und don'd you forged to leadt some tifferent lives oder you vill findt yourseluf pehindt der pars yet." "Oh, blazes! Say, I'll be wearing diamonds while you're still doing stunts back of the footlights." "You vill be vearing shdripes, dot's vat." "By-by, Wienerwurst!" Carl gurgled and tried to get out of the car. Matt grabbed him and threw him back in his seat. "Never mind, old chap," he said. "You're well rid of that fellow, and you ought to be thankful." "I don'd like dot Wienerwurst pitzness," grunted Carl. "He vas rupping it in too mooch, py shinks. Don'd he vas der vorst pad egg vat you efer see?" Just then Gregory switched on the spark, and the Red Flier glided into the branch road with the town well in sight. CHAPTER XVI. IN ASH FORK. Once more the Red Flier found shelter in the hotel barn, and once more James Q. Tomlinson was quartered in the hotel. But, of course, it was a different James Q. Tomlinson. One of the first things Matt did, as soon as he had helped Gregory take care of the Red Flier, was to hunt up the deputy sheriff and tell him what had happened. If there was ever a dumfounded man in Arizona, that man was the deputy. "Well, thunder an' kerry one!" said he. "Ain't I the bright boy, though? Why, I helped that Denver Denny across the street from the doctor's office, did everythin' I could to make him comfortable, and--oh, gadhook it all! He played me for fair, and no mistake! But I reckon you was a bit fooled yourself, eh?" "For a while, yes," answered Matt. "But you'd better get busy. Denver Denny is out there on the mountain, and Hank and Spangler are back on the west road with a stolen car. If you hustle you may be able to capture the whole gang--or three of them, anyhow." "That's me, on the jump." Ten minutes later the deputy sheriff had collected a posse, and had split the force into two detachments. One party went toward the place where the stolen car had been left, and the other headed along the Flagstaff trail. As a matter of fact, which may as well be stated in this place, neither detachment accomplished anything. The owner of the runabout, Lem Nugent, arrived in town on foot, late that afternoon, full of wrath, footsore, and weary. "Hang the blooming luck, anyhow!" said he, to a group of loungers in front of the hotel. "Got held up for my new car--two fellows snaked it right out from under me. There was a tree across the trail, and of course we had to stop. Next I knew a revolver was looking at me from both sides. I had to get out, and the two hold-up boys went away in the runabout, taking Henry along to run the car for them. As for me--whoosh! I walked into town. Never liked walking much, anyhow. And where's my new runabout? That's what I want to know. Henry's with it, wherever it is." But Lem Nugent was mistaken. Henry wasn't with the car, at that moment, but was hoofing it into Ash Fork from the hills, glad to have his scalp with him. He reported to his employer an hour after the theft of the runabout had been described by its owner. "They made me chase a red touring-car," said Henry, "kept a gun poked into my ribs all the time an' said they'd blow holes in me if I didn't do the right thing. What they thought was the right thing, and what I thought, was some different, but guns was trumps an' they had the best hands. First time we chased the red car the machinery of the runabout went wrong, and the other machine got away from us. Came pretty near getting shot, then, as the strong-arm boys thought I'd made the runabout go wrong a-purpose. "When we got ready to do some more scorching, the other car had given us the slip. We kept chasing around, and finally dipped over a divide into that east road, a couple o' miles beyond the Fork. By and by we stopped at a place where a feller called Spangler got out and lost himself in a swale. Hank and me jogged on to where the west road come into the other trail, an' turned back along that course. We was to pick up Spangler on the new road, after he'd done something or other, I don't know what. "Well, unexpectedlike, we sighted the red car. That was our signal to whoop it up, takin' Spangler in behind on the fly. Then we had a race an' no mistake. It would have been our race, too, if the young fellow in the red car hadn't busted a bottle in the trail and spoiled a tire for us. Say, that was the slickest move I ever saw made! "It took us half an hour to get on a new tire, and by that time, of course, the red car was safe in Ash Fork. Hank made me give him lessons in handling the runabout, then told me to go home and say that he and Spangler liked the machine so well they was going to keep it." The cattleman swore roundly; and likewise declared that he'd spend the price of a new car getting the old one back. Tomlinson remained in Ash Fork for two days, recovering from his trying experiences. And when he finally went on to Albuquerque he went by train. As for the Red Flier, the arrangement he had made to have the car taken on developed in a conversation he had with Matt a few minutes before he got aboard the steam-cars. Matt was at the station with Tomlinson and Gregory, for both were going to Albuquerque by train. "Here's what I owe you, Matt," said the Denver man, pressing a roll of bills into the young motorist's hand. "A thousand dollars, and I call it cheap, considering the great service you rendered me. The Red Flier will have to come on to Albuquerque, but I don't care to travel with her myself, and I want Gregory to go with me. I'll give you an extra hundred, Matt, if you'll bring the car through. I shall be in Albuquerque for some time, and you can jog along at your leisure. What do you say? If you have anything else on hand, and feel that you can't do it, don't hesitate to say so. Henry, Nugent's driver, will take the Red Flier to Albuquerque, if you can't. But, frankly, I'd rather trust the car in your hands." "I'll do it," said Matt. "You see, I want to get to Denver myself, and I'll be able to get over a long lap of the run on the trip." "Good!" exclaimed Tomlinson, with a look of relief. "You're going to Denver, you say?" "That's my intention." "What are you going to do there?" "Something with motor-cars--I can't tell just what, at the present time." "You'd make a good driver for a racing-car. You've got nerve, and steadiness, and presence of mind. How'd you like a job of that kind?" Matt's eyes sparkled. "That would suit me right down to the ground, Mr. Tomlinson," said he. "Then I think I can help you. A friend of mine is a manufacturer of automobiles, and I know he's looking for a good driver for his racing-machines. If you say so, I'll write him from Albuquerque." "I'd be obliged to you if you would, Mr. Tomlinson," returned Matt. "All right, then. You can count on me to give you a good recommendation." Just then the train came along, Tomlinson and Gregory shook hands with Matt and Carl, and were soon pulling out of Ash Fork. "Vell, vell!" murmured Carl, staring after the disappearing train, "you vas some lucky poys, Matt. Meppy I vill be lucky, too, oof I shtay hooked oop mit you." "Nothing would please me better, old chap," said Matt heartily, "than to have you trail along with me." "Und go mit you py Albuquerque, und den py Tenver?" "Sure!" "Hoop-a-la!" jubilated Carl, gripping Matt's hand. THE END. THE NEXT NUMBER (6) WILL CONTAIN Motor Matt's Red Flier; OR, ON THE HIGH GEAR. Stranded "Uncle Tommers"--The Red Flier Gets a Load--The Stolen Runabout--The Coat in the Rumble--Matt Begins a Search--Losing the Box--A Mysterious Disappearance--Spirited Away--An Unexpected Meeting--A Daring Plan--On the Road--A Close Call--Car Against Car--Down the Mountain--Motor Matt's Tenstrike--More Trouble for the "Uncle Tommers"--Conclusion. MOTOR STORIES THRILLING ADVENTURE MOTOR FICTION NEW YORK, March 27, 1909. TERMS TO MOTOR STORIES MAIL SUBSCRIBERS. (_Postage Free._) Single Copies or Back Numbers, 5c. Each. 3 months 65c. 4 months 85c. 6 months $1.25 One year 2.50 2 copies one year 4.00 1 copy two years 4.00 =How to Send Money=--By post-office or express money-order, registered letter, bank check or draft, at our risk. At your own risk if sent by currency, coin, or postage-stamps in ordinary letter. =Receipts=--Receipt of your remittance is acknowledged by proper change of number on your label. If not correct you have not been properly credited, and should let us know at once. ORMOND G. SMITH, } GEORGE C. SMITH, } _Proprietors_. STREET & SMITH, Publishers, 79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York City. A YOUNG MARINER'S PERIL. By RUFUS HALL. Day after day the poisonous malarial vapors from thickets and jungles, combined with the heat of an equatorial clime, told even upon some of the hardy sailors and marines who had been sent from the sloop of war _Trenton_ to protect a party of engineers away up in the Gaboon country of Lower Guinea, near the mountains, in Western Africa. In a tent where the marines were encamped, they had put little Jack Winton, the lieutenant's nephew, a boy of fourteen, ill with a fever; and, one morning, as he lay there, with burning cheeks and parched lips, a vision of big red cherries, smooth and round, kept rising in fancy before his wistful eyes. His delirious mutterings were of these cherries, and his hands now and then crossed and recrossed his pillow, as if he thought the fruit must be there. Then it was that Will Worth, a marine private of sixteen, hearing him, made up his mind to hunt for what he knew the invalid coveted--a cherrylike fruit, to be found among the glens and ravines of the mountains--and to bring some, as a pleasant surprise, to the sufferer. Without mentioning his purpose to any one, he left the camp, being at present off duty, and sped on his way. Mr. Dale, a youthful ensign, noticing how hurriedly he plunged into the upland thicket ahead, suspected that he meant to desert. His lieutenant had already found fault with him for one soldier's desertion, and he did not relish the idea of another reprimand of this sort. He, therefore, resolved to follow the lad, watch him, and, if he went far, order him back to the camp. Entering the thicket, he moved rapidly on. The foliage and the brush became denser as he proceeded. He heard the tapping and humming of bees in the hollows of trees. In and out of the great bell-shaped flowers around him they flew, spitefully buzzing at the big green gnats in their way. Hundreds of large white lilies, enormous tulips, and wild roses brightened the shrubbery. High above hovered the scarlet cardinal-bird, sounding its shrill "fife." Below, the hook-nosed falcon boldly confronted the youth, as if inclined to dispute his progress. At last he caught sight of Worth down in the jungle, on the opposite side of a deep ravine, which he had evidently reached by a roundabout direction through brambles and vines leading past the front of the chasm. Down where he was could be seen gleaming in profusion the small red globes of the cherrylike fruit he had come to gather for his sick little comrade. The ravine was evidently hundreds of feet in depth, the bottom hidden by the black shadows from the jungle on both sides. A few yards below Worth the chasm, which was about eighteen feet wide, was crossed by a tree-trunk--a mere sapling, eight inches thick--probably all that remained of a former bridge. The trunk was smooth, except within five feet of the end nearest the boy, where there was a clipped branch. This end was in a sort of long hollow, overhung by tough roots. The ensign cautiously descended on his side of the ravine and watched Worth until he had filled a haversack at his side with the "cherries" and was about to ascend, when he called out sharply: "That fruit will make you a poor meal, my boy, if you mean to desert!" The startled lad looked across the gorge, saw the ensign, and answered, much hurt by the officer's suspicion: "I had no intention of deserting, sir. I came here after the fruit for Jack Winton." "Now, upon my word," said the ensign, who was a good fellow at heart, "I believe you, Worth, and am sorry I made the mistake of suspecting you. Those 'cherries' are just the things for little Jack." Worth was going to respond, when behind and above him he fancied he heard a low, guttural voice. Turning and looking up, he saw two humanlike but fierce eyes shining amid a thick, dark screen of interlacing vines. "Who's there--a 'Pongwe?" he inquired, thinking one of the natives of the Mpongwe tribe had been watching him pick the fruit. There was no reply to his question. But the leafy bower rustled, and now from out the dark screen there rose an awful roar, that was echoed to the chasm's very depths. From among the concealing vines stepped forth a hideous monster, which the boy at first thought was a chimpanzee, but which, from its black color and ferocious aspect, he concluded must be a gorilla. Nearly erect it stood, beating its breast with its hands. Being a greedy lover of fruit, it glared in a fierce, remonstrative way at the lad's full haversack, as if enraged at his having come to pluck the "cherries" it wanted entirely for its own use. The animal, about five feet high, was covered with black hair, had very broad shoulders and enormous hands, while its stomach bulged as if nearly filled to bursting with the "cherries" it had been eating, the red stain of which was all about its mouth. The diabolical face, with its great flat nose and projecting open jaws, the latter disclosing two enormous hooked lower teeth and a row of smaller ones above as sharp as a saw, was thrust slightly downward, showing the encircling edges of the hair on its head so distinctly defined as to give it the grotesque appearance of wearing a sort of big furry cap. It was plain that the brute meant to attack the boy. In fact, it suddenly raised one of its big paws and, with a rush, came crashing toward him through the shrubbery. Unfortunately he had left his musket, thinking it would be in his way, near the edge of the ravine above. But his bayonet was by his side in its sheath. He drew the steel, and, flourishing it before him, retreated toward the tree-trunk that extended across the chasm. He had once heard a hunter say that the gorilla, unlike the common monkey, is not a very skilful climber. Neither would it, he thought, attempt, for the same reason, to follow him should he creep out on the horizontal sapling. But just as he got close to the tree the ferocious brute, uttering a terrible roar, aimed a blow at him with its uplifted paw. He held up his bayonet. It was dashed from his grasp, but not before the point had inflicted a wound in the monster's arm. So great was the strength of this hairy arm that that single blow must have lacerated the boy's side had not the big paw fallen upon his cartridge-box. The force of the stroke whirled him over upon his back, knocking him into the hollow in which rested the end of the tree-trunk. He quickly pushed himself under the tough roots overhanging the hollow. The gorilla, bending over, looked at its wounded arm, lapped it, and pressed it against its breast, all the time growling as if with blended pain and wrath. Then, using both its left paw and its teeth, it commenced to tear away the protecting roots above the lad, with the probable intention of dealing him a finishing blow. Its strength was so enormous that the earth broke and flew in all directions as the animal shook, pulled, and bit at the roots. Worth, knowing that these would soon give way, expected to be finally torn to death by the infuriated beast. Meanwhile, the young ensign on the other side of the ravine had been watching for a chance to shoot at the gorilla with the long double-barreled pistol he had with him, which he had drawn from his belt. But the boy and his assailant were, from the first, so close to each other that he did not dare to fire, lest the bullet should strike his comrade. He now ran his gaze along the sapling that bridged the chasm. The slender tree was covered with a green, slippery slime. He doubted if he would be able to creep over it, but he saw no other way of attempting to get within close enough range of the fierce beast to shoot it without risk of hitting Worth. Therefore, replacing his pistol in his belt, he started, crawling along on his hands and knees. It was a daring venture. The horizontal tree was probably more than two hundred feet above the bottom of the chasm. If he lost his balance, certain death awaited him; he would be precipitated into the black depths so far below. On he went. As he proceeded, the narrow trunk shook with his weight. When he had reached its center, it bent, oscillated, and one of his knees slid off the slippery surface. He felt himself going over. His distended eyes were turned downward toward the dark, yawning gulf beneath, into which he expected to fall headlong. But the thought now occurred to him of throwing himself flat upon his breast along the sapling and of hugging it with his arms. He did so, and the action saved him. Cautiously he then regained his former position and crept on. At length he reached the clipped branch, within five feet of the end of the tree. The gorilla had nearly torn away all the roots that protected Worth. It seemed about to raise its left paw to deal him a fatal blow. The young officer knew he had no time to lose. He clutched the stumped branch with his left hand, drew his pistol, and, aiming as well as his position would admit of, he fired. The bullet inflicted a flesh-wound in the monster's side. With a roar that shook the air to the chasm's very depths, the brute turned, saw its assailant, and threw itself toward him, resting its big stomach on the sapling. Up went its mighty left paw, and down it came slantingly toward the officer's head. Worth uttered a cry of dismay. He expected to see the ensign killed and dashed from the tree's trunk into the black pit of the ravine, hundreds of feet below. It was a critical moment. Had Dale drawn his head back, the great paw would still have reached him, have struck his neck, and sent him to his doom. But instead of attempting in his present cramped position any backward movement, he threw his head and shoulders forward. Thus the big paw clove, with a whirring sound, the empty air above him, and, placing the muzzle of his pistol between the monster's eyes, he fired. The brute, as the bullet passed through its brain, slid away from the tree, then clawed wildly at the air with both hands, uttered one loud, humanlike scream, and went whirling down into the black abyss of the ravine. The ensign crept to land and helped Worth from the hollow. The boy had been badly, though not seriously, injured by the force of the gorilla's blow upon his cartridge-box, which had thus been jammed, as if with the stroke of a sledge-hammer, against his body. As with his rescuer's assistance he limped back toward the camp, now and then carefully adjusting his broken haversack so that the "cherries" in it might not drop out, he warmly thanked his companion for saving his life. "Don't mention it," was the answer. "I am glad enough to have been able to do something for you toward making up for my mistake of suspecting that you meant to desert." It was a joyful surprise to little Jack Winton when Worth brought the "cherries" to him. They were of great benefit to the fever-stricken lad, whose health began to improve the moment he had partaken of them. The ensign had made light of his rescue of Worth, and had advised him not to mention so "trifling a matter," as he termed it, to his comrades. The boy, fearing that the knowledge of it would tend to unduly excite the invalid, said nothing about it until Jack was fully recovered from his illness, when he gave him an account of the whole affair. The little fellow made it known to his uncle, the lieutenant; and Dale's promotion, not long after, was, perhaps, partly due to this circumstance. Worth, who had never dreamed of being favored for the slight service he had rendered his sick comrade, now attracted the notice of his commander. The latter, perceiving his unvarying good conduct, soon made him a corporal, from which position he eventually won his way to a higher rank. SWANS CARRIED OVER NIAGARA FALLS. All naturalists and many sportsmen will recall the great destruction of swans which took place in March, 1908, at Niagara Falls. A great flock of these large and beautiful birds was carried down the river and over the falls, and an authoritative account of the occurrence recently appeared in a paper by James Savage, of Buffalo, N. Y., printed in the bulletin of the Buffalo Society of Natural History, says _Forest and Stream_. While the whistling swan occurs regularly along the Niagara River, it is always a rare migrant, and would scarcely ever be captured were it not for the fact that it often floats down the river to injury or death at the great cataract. Observers declare that scarcely a year passes without one or more swans going over the falls. About twenty made the fatal plunge in March, 1906, and five in the same month, 1907, but no such destruction of swans has been known as took place on March 15, 1908, when more than 100 were destroyed. During the greater part of the day a severe rain-storm prevailed. About eleven o'clock in the morning, between showers, William Leblond, of Niagara Falls, Ontario, was engaged in removing from the ice bridge a temporary structure that had been used during the winter season as a souvenir and refreshment-stand, when he was startled by a loud cry. Turning around, his attention was first attracted to a swan struggling in the water at the upper end of the ice bridge; but, on looking toward the falls, he saw a great company of swans in distress coming toward the bridge. The scene was a sad one for any bird-lover to contemplate. These splendid birds, helpless after their terrible plunge over the cataract, were dashed against the ice bridge by the swift current, amid cakes of loose ice which were constantly coming down from the upper river. Some had been killed outright by the falls. Others, unable to fly because of injury to their wings, attempted to stem the rushing waters, but here their wonderful swimming powers were of no avail. They were soon imprisoned in the ice, where their pitiful cries were heartrending. The game-laws of Ontario will permit the taking of geese and swan in the spring until April 30, and it was not long before men and boys, armed with guns and sticks, availed themselves of the privilege and became the chief factors in the closing scene of nature's great tragedy--the sacrifice of the swans. As soon as he learned of the occurrence, Mr. Savage visited Niagara Falls, and from his investigation concluded that the number of swans taken March 15 was 102. On the morning of March 18 two more were taken at the ice bridge, and a third was picked up alive on the shore. It was secured by Mr. Savage and photographed. Placed in the zoological collection in Delaware Park, Buffalo, it recovered. Eleven more swans were taken later, and some others were seen which, though apparently carried over the falls, were still able to take wing and fly away. But swans are not the only water-fowl that are in danger from Niagara. On March 18, 1908, Mr. Savage saw a handsome male canvasback come down against the ice bridge. It appeared to be unable to fly. On the same day he saw a golden-eye duck struggle out of the foaming water below the Horseshoe Falls and reach the shore. It made no attempt to escape when picked up, and seemed unable to walk or fly. Later, however, it recovered and did fly off. Of the swans which went over the falls, many afterward appeared on the table. A number were preserved by the taxidermists of Niagara Falls and Toronto. A group of five appears in the museum of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences. Mr. Savage saw not less than fifty of these dead birds and looked them over carefully, thinking that perhaps there might be among them a trumpeter swan, but none was found. Mr. Savage believes that fully one-third of the 116 swans taken would have survived if given proper care, but the impulse to kill was stronger than the spirit to save, and not even a pair of these unfortunate birds was rescued from nature's doom and restored to nature's freedom. PARA RUBBER AND ITS GATHERING. Rubber is collected by the natives in Brazil, who gather the thick, creamlike sap which oozes from the hatchet-cut in the bark of the rubber-trees. It is received in tiny cups of clay or tin, several of which are emptied daily into pots and carried where the sap is coagulated and "cured." The flow of sap from each tapping lasts but a few hours, and the tree must be bled in fresh places daily. The total yield from the most vigorous tree does not exceed three or four pints in a season, and a considerable percentage of this is lost by evaporation. In the camps the Para rubber sap is coagulated over a fire of Uricuri palm-nuts, built under an earthen pot, something like a slender-necked jug without a bottom. A paddle is dipped into the thick sap, and then, holding it in thick smoke, it is deftly turned in the operator's hands until a thin layer of rubber is formed. An hour's work at this would produce a lump, the foundation of a biscuit weighing five or six pounds. When the biscuit has reached a weight of twenty-five pounds or more, it is slit open, the paddle removed, and the rubber hung up to dry. Rubber thus gathered and cured is the finest known. From the forest the rubber is sent down the stream on crude boats, later being placed on the steamers which ply the Amazon. When Manaos, the second largest city in the Amazon country, is reached, the rubber is boxed, though this is often left until its arrival at Para, at the mouth of the Amazon River. Manaos is 1,200 miles from the sea, so that considerable time is consumed in bringing the rubber to its shipping-point to foreign lands. At Para it is placed in the ocean liners destined for New York or some of the European countries. QUEER CALIFORNIAN TRADERS. The queerest "traders" in all vast California are the odd little animals known as "trade rats." They never steal, but give miscellaneous articles in exchange for what they take. A paste-pot left overnight in an assay office was found in the morning filled with the oddest collection of rubbish. This was the work of trade rats. They had stolen the paste, and left in exchange a piece of stick, a length of rope, some odds and ends of wire, and an unbroken glass funnel. A trade rat's nest, found in an unoccupied house, was composed of iron spikes laid in perfect symmetry, with the points outward. Interlaced with the spikes were two dozen forks and spoons and three large butcher-knives. There were also a quantity of small carpenters' tools, and a watch, of which the outside casing, the glass, and the works were all distributed separately--to make a good show! We are unable to state what this particular trade rat left in exchange for all this "loot." BURROWING FISHES. In Brazil are to be found fishes, eellike in form, which burrow in the mud during seasons of drought. In wet weather this curious class of fish stores up in its system a reserve of fat, and then, when the dry season arrives and the rivers dry up, it constructs a deep tubular burrow, in which it doubles up, with head and tail together. The mouth of the burrow is closed with a most ingeniously constructed mud flap, through which are several small perforations, which permit the animal to breathe air directly, as it is also one of the few species gifted with both lungs and gills. While enclosed in its nest, the fish is frequently dug out by the natives, who highly prize its flesh. In the period of incubation it lives upon the reserve of fat accumulated during the rainy season. When the early rains soften the soil, the fish emerges from its burrow and resumes its aquatic existence. TURN RIVER TO MINE ITS BED. The tunnel to turn the Trinity River from its channel so that the river-bed may be mined for gold is now in 1,150 feet. The total length will be 1,400 feet. The tunnel cuts across a bend two miles above Lewiston. The Trinity River Mining Company has a crew of eight men at work. The tunnel is being dug 8 � 10 feet in size. When it is cut through the hill at that size it will be enlarged to 10 � 12 feet, making it big enough to carry the whole river at ordinary stages. The water will be used at the tunnel outlet to run low-pressure turbines, furnishing power for mining purposes. The river-bed is known to be rich in gold. Over a mile of the bed can be mined when the river is turned through the tunnel less than one-third of a mile in length. _ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT!!_ MOTOR STORIES _A New Idea in the Way of Five-Cent Weeklies._ Boys everywhere will be delighted to hear that Street & Smith are now issuing this new five-cent weekly which will be known by the name of MOTOR STORIES. This weekly is entirely different from anything now being published. It details the astonishing adventures of a young mechanic who owned a motor cycle. Is there a boy who has not longed to possess one of these swift little machines that scud about the roads everywhere throughout the United States? Is there a boy, therefore, who will not be intensely interested in the adventures of "Motor Matt," as he is familiarly called by his comrades? Boys, you have never read anything half so exciting, half so humorous and entertaining as the first story listed for publication in this line, called "=Motor Matt; or, The King of the Wheel=." Its fame is bound to spread like wildfire, causing the biggest demand for the other numbers in this line, that was ever heard of in the history of this class of literature. Here are the titles to be issued during the next few weeks. Do not fail to place an order for them with your newsdealer. No. 1. Motor Matt; or, The King of the Wheel. No. 2. Motor Matt's Daring; or, True to His Friends. No. 3. Motor Matt's "Century" Run; or, The Governor's Courier. No. 4. Motor Matt's Race; or, The Last Flight of the _Comet_. 32 LARGE SIZE PAGES SPLENDID COLORED COVERS PRICE, FIVE CENTS PER COPY AT ALL NEWSDEALERS, OR SENT POSTPAID BY THE PUBLISHERS UPON RECEIPT OF THE PRICE. _STREET & SMITH, Publishers, NEW YORK_ _THE BEST OF THEM ALL!!_ MOTOR STORIES IT IS NEW AND INTENSELY INTERESTING We knew before we published this line that it would have a tremendous sale and our expectations were more than realized. It is going with a rush, and the boys who want to read these, the most interesting and fascinating tales ever written, must speak to their newsdealers about reserving copies for them. =MOTOR MATT= sprang into instant favor with American boy readers and is bound to occupy a place in their hearts second only to that now held by Frank Merriwell. The reason for this popularity is apparent in every line of these stories. They are written by an author who has made a life study of the requirements of the up-to-date American boy as far as literature is concerned, so it is not surprising that this line has proven a huge success from the very start. Here are the titles now ready and also those to be published. You will never have a better opportunity to get a generous quantity of reading of the highest quality, so place your orders now. =No. 1.--Motor Matt; or, The King of the Wheel.= =No. 2.--Motor Matt's Daring; or, True to His Friends.= =No. 3.--Motor Matt's Century Run; or, The Governor's Courier.= =No. 4.--Motor Matt's Race; or, The Last Flight of the "Comet."= TO BE PUBLISHED ON MARCH 22nd =No. 5.--Motor Matt's Mystery; or, Foiling a Secret Plot.= TO BE PUBLISHED ON MARCH 29th =No. 6.--Motor Matt's Red Flier; or, On the High Gear.= TO BE PUBLISHED ON APRIL 5th =No. 7.--Motor Matt's Clue; or, The Phantom Auto.= TO BE PUBLISHED ON APRIL 12th =No. 8.--Motor Matt's Triumph; or, Three Speeds Forward.= =Price, Five Cents= To be had from newsdealers everywhere, or sent, postpaid, upon receipt of the price by the publishers _STREET & SMITH, Publishers, NEW YORK_ Transcriber's Notes: Added table of contents. Italics are represented with _underscores_, bold with =equal signs=. Phoenix was printed with oe ligatures in the original text. Some inconsistent spellings within dialect have been retained. Some inconsistent hyphenation (e.g. cottonwood vs. cotton-wood) has been retained from the original. Page 1, changed "Tomilson" to "Tomlinson" and "Ling" to "Sing" in cast of characters. Page 6, changed "under der drompone" to "und der drompone," "un der sleigh-pells" to "und der sleigh-pells" and "No noddng" to "No nodding." Page 10, added missing quote after "der Tenver bapers." Page 12, changed ? to , after "Watching your car." Page 17, changed "away then went" to "away they went." Page 21, changed "had he pearls" to "had the pearls." Page 22, added missing quote before "Does this road run." Page 23, removed extra quote before "Spangler, for a moment." Page 28, changed "west rode" to "west road" and added missing quote before "Well, unexpectedlike." Page 29, changed "hundred of feet" to "hundreds of feet." 
53390	----	courtesy of the Digital Library@Villanova University (http://digital.library.villanova.edu/)) MOTOR STORIES THRILLING ADVENTURE MOTOR FICTION NO. 30 SEPT. 18, 1909 FIVE CENTS MOTOR MATT'S MANDARIN OR TURNING A TRICK FOR TSAN TI _By THE AUTHOR OF MOTOR MATT_ _STREET & SMITH_ _PUBLISHERS_ _NEW YORK_ [Illustration: _Certainly it was not a time to laugh but Motor Matt could hardly help it_] MOTOR STORIES THRILLING ADVENTURE MOTOR FICTION _Issued Weekly. By subscription $2.50 per year. Copyright, 1909, by_ STREET & SMITH, _79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York, N. Y._ =No. 30.= NEW YORK, September 18, 1909. =Price Five Cents.= MOTOR MATT'S MANDARIN; OR, TURNING A TRICK FOR TSAN TI. By the author of "MOTOR MATT." CONTENTS CHAPTER I. ON THE MOUNTAINSIDE. CHAPTER II. THE YELLOW CORD. CHAPTER III. THE GLASS BALLS. CHAPTER IV. THE PAPER CLUE. CHAPTER V. PUTTING TWO AND TWO TOGETHER. CHAPTER VI. A SMASH. CHAPTER VII. NIP AND TUCK. CHAPTER VIII. TSAN TI VANISHES AGAIN. CHAPTER IX. TRICKED ONCE MORE. CHAPTER X. THE DIAMOND MERCHANT. CHAPTER XI. THE OLD SUGAR CAMP. CHAPTER XII. A TIGHT CORNER. CHAPTER XIII. A MASTER ROGUE. CHAPTER XIV. THE GLASS SPHERES. CHAPTER XV. THE EYE OF BUDDHA. CHAPTER XVI. THE BROKEN HOODOO. A REAL PIRATE. SOME QUEER PHILIPPINE CUSTOMS. HIGH LEAPS BY DEER. CHARACTERS THAT APPEAR IN THIS STORY. =Matt King=, otherwise Motor Matt. =Joe McGlory=, a young cowboy who proves himself a lad of worth and character, and whose eccentricities are all on the humorous side. A good chum to tie to--a point Motor Matt is quick to perceive. =Tsan Ti=, Mandarin of the Red Button, who appeals to Motor Matt for help in a very peculiar undertaking. =Sam Wing=, a San Francisco Chinaman, member of a _tong_ that is amiably disposed toward Tsan Ti. =Kien Lung=, courier of the Chinese Regent, who respectfully delivers the yellow cord to Tsan Ti. =Grattan=, a masterful rogue who consummates one of the cleverest robberies in the annals of crime. =Bunce=, a sailor who assists Grattan and makes considerable trouble for the motor boys and the mandarin. =Goldstein=, a diamond broker with a penchant for dealing in stolen goods. =Pryne=, a brother-in-law of Grattan, who plays a short but important part in the events of the story. CHAPTER I. ON THE MOUNTAINSIDE. "Sufferin' treadmills! Say, pard, here's where I drop down in the shade and catch my breath. How much farther have we got to go?" "Not more than a mile, Joe." "We must have gone a couple of hundred miles already." "We've traveled about six miles, all told." "Speak to me about that! A mile up and down is a heap longer than a mile on the straightaway. We've been hanging to this sidehill like a couple of flies to a wall. What do you say to a rest?" "I'm willing, Joe; and here's a good place. Look out for that tree root. It's a bad one, and runs straight across the road." Motor Matt and his cowboy pard, Joe McGlory, were pop-popping their way up a steep mountainside on a couple of motor cycles. They were bound for the Mountain House, a hotel on the very crest of the uplift. A day boat had brought them down the Hudson River from Albany, and they had disembarked at Catskill Landing, hired the two machines, and started for the big hotel. The motor cycles were making hard work of the climb--such hard work, in fact, that the boys, time and time again, had been compelled to get out of their saddles and lead the heavy wheels up a particularly steep place in the trail. This was trying labor, and McGlory's enthusiasm over the adventure had been on the wane for some time. The big root of a tree, lying across the road like a half-buried railroad tie, was safely dodged, and under the shade of the tree to which the root belonged Matt and McGlory threw themselves down. The cowboy mopped his dripping face with a handkerchief, pulled off his hat, and began fanning himself with it. "One of these two-wheeled buzz carts is all right," he remarked, "where the motor does the work for you; but I'll be gad-hooked if there's any fun doin' the work for the motor. And what's it all about? You don't know, and I don't. We made this jump from the middle West to the effete East on the strength of a few lines of 'con' talk. I wish people would leave you alone when they get into trouble. Every stranger knows, though, that all he's got to do is to send you a hurry-up call whenever anything goes crosswise, and that you'll break your neck to boil out on his part of the map and share his hard luck." McGlory finished with a grunt of disgust. "I've got a hunch, Joe," answered Matt, "that there's a whole lot to that letter." "A whole lot of fake and false alarm. Read it again, if you've got breath enough." "I've read it to you a dozen times already," protested Matt. "Then make it thirteen times, pard. The more you read it, the more I realize what easy marks we are for paying any attention to it. It's fine discipline, pard, to keep thinking where you've made a fool of yourself." Matt laughed as he drew an envelope out of his coat pocket. The envelope was addressed, in a queer hand, to "His Excellency, Motor Matt, Engaged in aëroplane performances with Burton's Big Consolidated Shows, Grand Rapids, Michigan." Drawing out the enclosed sheet, Matt unfolded it. There was a humorous gleam in his gray eyes as he read aloud the following: "HONORABLE AND MOST EXCELLENT SIR: It is necessary that I have of your wonderful aid in matters exceedingly great and important. I, a mandarin of the red button, with some store of English knowledge, and much trouble, appeal to king of motor boys with overwhelming desire that he come to me at Mountain House, near town named Catskill Landing, in State of New York. Noble and affluent sir, will it be insult should I offer one thousand dollars and expenses if I get my wish for your most remarkable help? Not so, for I promise with much goodness of heart. Let it be immediately that you come, and sooner if convenient. May your days be fragrant as the blossoms of paradise, your joys like the countless stars, and your years many and many. "'TSAN TI, OF THE RED BUTTON.'" "Sounds like a skin game," grumbled McGlory, as Matt returned the letter to its envelope, and the latter to his pocket. "It's the first time a stranger in trouble ever sent me a letter like that," remarked Matt. "Regular josh. Button, button, who's got the button? Not us, pard, and we're _It_. There'll be no mandarin at the end of this blooming trail we're running out. You take it from me. Now----" McGlory broke off suddenly, his eyes fastened on the pitch of the road above. "Great hocus-pocus!" he exclaimed, jumping to his feet. "See what's coming!" Matt, turning his eyes in the direction of his pard's pointing finger, was likewise brought up standing by the spectacle that met his gaze. A bicycle was coasting down the steep path, coming with the speed of a limited express train; and some fifty feet behind this bicycle came another, moving at a rate equally swift. In the saddle of the leading machine was a fat Chinaman--a Chinaman of consequence, to judge by his looks. He wore a black cap, yellow blouse and trousers and embroidered sandals. His thin, baggy garments fluttered and snapped about him as he shot down the road, and his pigtail, fully a yard long, and bound at the end with a ribbon, stood out straight behind him. The Celestial behind was leaner and dressed in garments more subdued. It was exceedingly plain to the two boys that his heart was in his work, and that the end and aim of his labors was the overhauling of the man ahead. "Wow!" wheezed the fat fugitive. "Wow! wow! wow!" For about two seconds this stirring situation was before the eyes of Matt and McGlory. Then the tree root insinuated itself into proceedings. The fugitive saw the root heaving across his path with a promise of disaster, but going around it was out of the question, and stopping the speeding wheel an impossibility. The inevitable happened. Matt and McGlory saw the bicycle bound into the air and turn a half somersault. The fat Chinaman landed on his back with the wheel on top of him; then machine and Chinaman rolled over and over until the impetus of the flight was spent. The two boys ran to the unfortunate bicyclist, gathered him up, and separated him from the broken wheel. The Celestial refused to be lifted to his feet, but contented himself with sitting up. "My cap, excellent friend," he requested, pointing to where the cap was lying. "Gee, but that was a jolt!" commiserated McGlory. "How do you feel about now?" "Kindest regards for your inquiry," said the Chinaman, extracting a small stone from the collar of his blouse, and then emptying a pint of dust from one of his flowing sleeves. "I am variously shaken, thank you, but the terrible part is yet to come. Kindly recede until it is over, and add further to my obligations." Matt had picked up the black cap. As he handed it to the Chinaman, he observed that there was a red button in the centre of the flat top. He was astonished at the Chinaman's manner, no less than at his use of English. His clothes were all awry, and soiled with dust, but he seemed to mind that as little as he did his bruises. Putting the cap on his head, he took a fan from somewhere about his person, waved the boys aside with it, then opened it with a "snap," and proceeded methodically to fan himself. His eyes were turned up the road. Matt and McGlory exchanged wondering glances as they stepped apart. The other Chinaman, having a greater space in which to manoeuvre, had managed to avoid the tree root. By means of the brake he had caused his machine to slow down, and had then leaped off. After carefully leaning the bicycle against a tree, he approached his fat countryman in a most deferential manner. The latter nodded gravely from his seat on the ground. The pursuer thereupon flung himself to his knees, and beat his forehead three times in the dust. After that, the fat Chinaman said something. Presumably it was in his native tongue, for it sounded like heathen gibberish, and the boys could make nothing out of it. But the lean Chinaman seemed to understand. Lifting himself and sitting back on his heels, he pushed a hand into the breast of his coat, and brought out a little black box about the size of a cigarette case. This, with every sign of respect and veneration, he offered to the other Celestial. The fat man took the box, waved his fan, and eased himself of a few more remarks. The lean fellow once more kotowed, then arose silently, regained his wheel, and vanished from sight down the road. The fat Mongolian was left balancing the black box in his hand and eying it with pensive interest. "Well, speak to me about this!" breathed McGlory. "What do you make out of it, Matt?" "Not a thing," whispered Matt. "That fellow has a red button in his cap." McGlory showed traces of excitement. "Glory, and all hands round!" he gasped. "Have you any notion that the chink we're looking for has lammed into us in this violent fashion, right here on the mountainside?" "Give it up. Watch; see what he's up to." The fat Chinaman, laying aside his fan, took the box in his left palm, and, with the fingers of his right hand, pressed a spring. The lid flew open. On top of something in the box lay a white card covered with Chinese hieroglyphics. The Chinaman lifted the card and read the written words. His yellow face turned to the color of old cheese, his eyes closed spasmodically, and his breath came quick and raspingly. McGlory grabbed Matt's arm. "There's something on that card, Matt," said he, "that's got our fat friend on the run." While the boys continued to look, the Chinaman laid aside the card, and drew from the box a pliable yellow cord, a yard in length. That was all there was in the box, just the card and the cord. Feeling that there was a deep mystery here, and a mystery in which he and his chum were concerned, the king of the motor boys stepped forward. "Tsan Ti?" he queried. Box and cord fell from the fat Chinaman's hands, and he turned an eagerly inquiring look in Matt's direction. CHAPTER II. THE YELLOW CORD. "Excellent youth," said the Chinaman, "you pronounce my name. How is this?" "I'm Motor Matt," answered the king of the motor boys, "and this is my chum, Joe McGlory. You asked us to come, and here we are. There's your letter to me." Matt opened the written sheet and held it in front of Tsan Ti's face. The Celestial's face underwent a change. A flicker of hope ran through the fear and consternation. "_Omito fuh!_" he muttered, rising slowly to his feet. "The five hundred gods have covered me with much disgrace, this last hour, but now they bring me a gleam of hope from the clouds of despair. By the plumes of the sacred peacock, I bow before you with much gratefulness." He bowed--or tried to. His ponderous stomach interfered with the manoeuvre, and he caught a crick in his back--the direct result, probably, of his recent spill. "You are here to be of aid to the unfortunate mandarin, are you not, illustrious sirs?" went on Tsan Ti, leaning against a tree, and rubbing his right sandal up and down his left shin. Quite likely the left shin was barked, and the right sandal was affording it consolation. "First aid to the injured, Tsan," grinned McGlory, getting a good deal of fun out of this novel encounter. The cowboy had met many Chinamen, but never before one of this sort. The experience was mildly exciting. "Wit," chanted Tsan Ti, "is the weapon of the wise, the idol of the fool; a runaway knock at laughter's door; arrows from the quiver of genius; intellectual lightning from the thunder clouds of talent; the lever of----" "Sufferin' cats!" exploded McGlory. "What is he talking about? In that letter, Tsan, you speak about insulting us with a thousand plunks and expenses. Was that a rhinecaboo or the real thing?" Without changing his countenance by so much as a line, Tsan Ti lifted the bottom of his blouse, and unbuttoned the pocket of a leather belt around his huge girth. From the pocket he took five gold double eagles in good American money. "Have I the understanding," he asked, "that you will be of help to my distress?" "Tell us, first," answered Matt, a little bewildered by the mandarin's queer talk and actions, "what it is you want." "What I want, notable friend, is the Eye of Buddha, the great ruby which was stolen from the forehead of the idol in temple of Hai-chwang-sze, in the city named Canton. I, even I, now the most miserable of creatures, was guardian of the temple when this theft occurred. I fled to find the thief, and Kien Lung, by order of the Son of the Morning, our imperial regent, fled after me with that invitation to death, the yellow cord." Tsan Ti pointed to the ground where the cord was lying. His flabby cheeks grew hueless, and he caught his breath. "An invitation to death?" repeated Matt, staring at the yellow cord. "It is so, gracious youth," explained Tsan Ti. "When our regent wishes one of his officials to efface himself, he sends the yellow cord. It is the death warrant. The card tells me that I have two weeks before it is necessary that I should strangle myself. This happy dispatch must be performed unless, through you, I can recover the Eye of Buddha. So runs the scroll." "Speak to me about this!" muttered McGlory. "But look here, old man, you don't have to strangle yourself because some High Mucky Muck, a few thousand miles off, sends you the thing to do it with, do you?" "Unless it is done," was the calm response, "I shall be disgraced for all time, and my memory reviled." "Oh, blazes! I'd rather be a live Chinaman in disgrace, than a dead one with a monument a mile high." "You converse without knowledge," said Tsan Ti. "That's horse sense, anyhow." "Let's get at the nub of this thing, Tsan Ti," said Matt, feeling a deep interest in the strange Chinaman in spite of himself. "You were in charge of a Canton temple in which was an image of Buddha. That image had a ruby set in the forehead. The ruby was stolen. You ran away from China to find the thief, and this Kien Lung, as you call him, trailed after you with the yellow cord from the regent. The cord was accompanied by a written order to the effect that, if you did not succeed in recovering the ruby in two weeks, you must strangle yourself. Before the cord was delivered to you, you sent that letter to me." "What you say is true," answered Tsan Ti. "I have been for a long period endeavoring to keep away from Kien Lung. I knew what he had to give me, and I did not want it. Now that I have the cord, you can understand, out of courtesy I must slay myself--unless, through you, I regain the Eye of Buddha." "How did you come to pick _me_ out for an assistant?" went on Matt. "What you ought to have is a detective. This part of the country is full of detectives." "I cannot trust the detectives. The ruby is valuable, and I am a discredited mandarin in a far country. The detectives would keep the ruby, and then there would be for me only death by the cord. I read in the public prints generous and never-to-be-forgotten things about Motor Matt, and my heart assures me that you are the one, and the only one, to come to my aid." "You tune up like a professor," remarked McGlory. "Where'd you corral so much good pidgin, Tsan?" "I was educated in one of your institutions of learning," was the reply. "But, illustrious sirs, shall we return to the hotel on the mountain top? I have this go-devil machine to pay for. It did not belong to me. A dozen of the machines were near the porch of the hotel, where I was drinking tea. I saw Kien Lung coming toward me along the porch, and I left my tea and sprang to one of the machines. I learned to ride while I was educating myself in this country. Kien Lung was also able to ride, but that I did not know until I saw him later. Shall we go on to the hotel? I am bruised and in much distress." "We might just as well find out all you can tell us about the Eye of Buddha before we go to the hotel," returned Matt. "We are by ourselves, here, and I'd like to get all the information possible." Tsan Ti picked up the card and the yellow cord. Thoughtfully he twisted the cord around and around his fat palm and tucked it into the black box. On the cord he placed the card, and over all closed the box lid. With a rumbling sigh, he dropped the black box into the breast of his blouse. "Foreign devils," said he, once more bracing himself against the tree trunk, "call the temple of Hai-chwang-sze the Honam Joss House. It is by the beautiful river, in the suburb named Honam. Around the temple there is a wall. The avenue of a thousand delights leads from the great gate to the temple courts, and noble banyan trees shade the avenue. At vespers, some weeks ago, two foreign devils were present. The hour was five in the afternoon. One of the foreign devils was English, and wore a tourist hat with a pugree; the other had but a single eye. Lob Loo, a priest, told me what happened. "The Englishman threw a shimmering ball upon the temple floor. Odors came from it, quick as an eyeflash. Quick as another eyeflash, the priests reeled where they stood, their senses leaving them. Lob Loo tells me the foreign devils had covered their faces suddenly with white masks. Then, after seeing that much, Lob Loo lost his five senses, and wandered in fields of darkness. "When Lob Loo opened his eyes, he saw glass fragments on the floor, and a ladder of silk swinging from the neck of the god. The image, renowned sirs, is twenty feet in height, and to reach the ruby eye the foreign devils had to climb. The eye was gone. When Lob Loo told me these things, I was seized of a mighty fear, and fled to Hongkong. There the five hundred gods favored me, and I learned that a man in a tourist hat with a pugree, and another with a single eye, had sailed for San Francisco. Quickly I caught the next steamer, after sending cable messages to the leaders of a San Francisco _tong_ who are Cantonese, and friends of mine. When the ship brought the thieves through the Golden Gate, some of the _tong_ watched the landing. The thieves were in San Francisco three days, and Sam Wing followed them when they left for Chicago, then for New York, and then for these Catskill Mountains. When I reached San Francisco, the leading men of the _tong_ had telegrams from Sam Wing. By use of the telegrams, I followed, and arrived here. Wing had left a writing for me at the hotel, telling me to wait. I waited, but Wing had disappeared. I kept on waiting, and out of my discouragement, remarkable sir, I wrote to you. That is all, until this morning, when Kien Lung came with the yellow cord. Two weeks are left me. If the Eye of Buddha is not found in that time, then"--and Tsan Ti tapped the breast of his sagging blouse--"all that remains is the quick dispatch." Both Matt and McGlory had listened with intense interest to this odd yarn. Although a heathen, and lately keeper of a heathen temple, the mandarin was nevertheless a person of culture and of considerable importance. The sending of the yellow cord was a custom of his country, and it was evident that he intended to abide by the custom in case the Eye of Buddha was not recovered within two weeks. "Shall we turn the trick for him, pard?" asked McGlory. "This palaver of his makes a bit of a hit with me. I'd hate like Sam Hill to have him shut off his breath with that yellow cord. If----" The hum of an approaching automobile reached the ears of those at the roadside. The machine was coming from above, and Matt pulled the broken bicycle out of the road. The boys and the mandarin stood in a group while waiting for the car to pass. Tsan Ti, seemingly wrapped up in his own miseries, gave no attention to the car, at first. There were two passengers in the car--the driver, and another in the tonneau. The car, on the down grade, was coming at a terrific clip, and the man in the tonneau was hanging on for dear life and yelling at the top of his voice: "Avast there, mate, or you'll have me overboard! By the seven holy spritsails----" The voice broke off and gave vent to a frantic yell. Although the driver had shut off the power and applied a brake, the car had leaped into the air when it struck the root. The man in the tonneau shot straight up into the air for two or three feet, and Matt and McGlory had a glimpse of a grizzled red face with a patch over one eye, a fringe of "mutton-chop" whiskers, and a blue sailor cap. "The mariner!" came in a clamoring wheeze, from Tsan Ti. As the automobile whirled past, the mandarin flung himself crazily at the rear of the tonneau, only to be knocked head over heels for his pains. As he floundered in the dust, Matt rushed for his motor cycle. "Is that one of the two men who stole the ruby?" cried Matt. "What fortune!" puffed Tsan Ti. "Pursue and capture the villain! If he has the Eye of Buddha----" But the rest of it was lost. Matt, followed by McGlory, was tearing away on the track of the automobile. CHAPTER III. THE GLASS BALLS. Turning the trick for Tsan Ti--as McGlory had termed it--was destined to entangle the motor boys in a whirl of the most astounding events; and these events, as novel as they were mysterious, followed each other like the reports of a Gatling gun. The journey to Albany, and down the river to Catskill Landing, and thence by motor cycle part way up the mountain, had been monotonous; but from the moment the mandarin and the bicycle went sprawling into the air over the tree root, and the lads had made the Chinaman's acquaintance, Fate began whirling the wheel of amazing events. Matt and McGlory had had no time to discuss the weird tale recounted for their benefit by the mandarin. There was no opportunity to view the theft of the Eye of Buddha from any angle save that offered by the philosophical Tsan Ti. No sooner had the ostensible facts connected with the stolen ruby been retailed, than one of the thieves flashed down the mountain road, leaving the boys no choice but to fling away after him. The two motor cycles had absolutely no chance to go wrong on that downhill trail. Had either motor "bucked," the weight of the heavy machine would have hurled its rider onward in a breakneck coast toward the foot of the hill. "Sufferin' streaks!" cried the cowboy. "If we were to meet anybody coming up, there'd be nothing left but the pieces!" "I'm keeping a lookout ahead, Joe!" Matt called back, over his shoulder. He was in the lead, and his rear wheel was firing a stream of dust and sand into McGlory's eyes. But the cowboy was too excited to pay much attention to that. "We're goin' off half-cocked, seems to me!" he yelled. "We've known that fat chink for about ten minutes, and here we are, lamming into his game like a couple of wolves. What's the use of brains, pard, if you don't use 'em?" "While we were thinking matters over," Matt answered, ripping around a sharp turn, "the one-eyed man would be getting away." "What're we going to do when we overhaul him? Make an offhand demand for the Eye of Buddha? It sounds flat enough, and if the webfoot tells us we're crazy, and gives us the laugh, what're we going to do?" "Brakes! brakes!" cried Matt, and his motor cycle began to stagger and buck-jump as he angled for a halt. McGlory was startled by the command, but instantly he obeyed it. In order to avoid running his chum down, he not only bore down with the brakes but also swerved toward the roadside. He came to a sudden stop in a thicket of bushes, and extricated himself with some difficulty. Matt was in the road, his motor cycle leaning against a tree. A yard in front of him lay a flat cap. He pointed to it. "What's that to do with a breakneck stop like we just made?" snorted the cowboy. "It's not the headgear we want, pard, but the man that owns it." "Sure," returned Matt. "Look farther down the road, Joe, and then you'll understand." A straight drop in the road stretched ahead of the boys for a quarter of a mile. Halfway along the stretch was the automobile. The machine was at a stop, and the driver and the one-eyed man were leaning over the motor. The hood had been opened, and the driver was tinkering. "Something has gone wrong," said Matt, "and it happened soon after the sailor had lost his cap. Our one-eyed friend, I think, will come back after his property. If he does, we'll talk with him. We can't go too far in this business, you know. I have considerable confidence in Tsan Ti, but still we're not absolutely sure of our ground." "The poor old duck is bound to snuff himself out with the yellow cord if he don't recover the ruby," returned the cowboy. "That's what hits me close to home. We're going it blind"--and here McGlory dug some of the sand out of his eyes--"and we jumped into this with a touch-and-go that don't seem reasonable; still, I've got a sneaking notion we're on the right track. What's that on the hat ribbon?" Matt had picked up the hat, and was turning it over in his hand. "It's the name of a boat, I suppose," answered Matt, taking a look at the gilt letters. "'_Hottentot_,'" he added, reading the name. "Oh, tell me!" exclaimed McGlory. "_Hottentot!_ That's a warm label for a boat. But, say! Suppose One-Eye don't think enough of his cap to come back for it?" "But he will," answered Matt. "This will bring him, I'll bet something handsome." As he spoke. Matt pulled a square of folded paper out of the crown of the cap. "Cowboy trick!" grinned McGlory. "Carryin' letters under the sweatband of a Stetson reminds me of home." Matt had stepped to the roadside, the folded paper to one hand and the cap in the other. "Had we better?" he pondered, voicing his thoughts. "Better what?" queried McGlory. "Why, keep this paper. It may prove important." "Sure, keep it! What're you side-stepping for about a little thing like that? We're after the Eye of Buddha, and if that paper has anything to do with it, the thing's ours by rights." "But suppose Tsan Ti is working some game of his own? That was a fearsome yarn he gave us, Joe." "Sufferin' tenderfeet! Say, didn't we come all the way from Michigan to help him? Think of that yellow cord, and what it means to---- Oh, Moses!" the cowboy broke off. "Here comes the webfoot, now." Matt, taking a chance that the sailor was a thief, that he had guilty knowledge of the whereabouts of the Eye of Buddha, and that the paper might furnish valuable information, thrust the note into his pocket, and hastily replaced it with a bit of paper quickly drawn from his coat. Then, tossing the hat into the road, he stepped out and waited. The sailor was scrambling up the steep ascent with the agility of an A. B. making for the maintop. At sight of Matt, appearing suddenly above him, he hesitated, only to come on again at redoubled speed. "Ahoy, shipmates!" bellowed the old salt, as soon as he had come close enough for a hail. "Seen anythin' of a bit of headgear hereabouts?" "There it is," Matt answered, pointing. "Blow me tight if there it ain't!" He jumped for the hat, and gathered it in with a sweep of one hand. "Obliged to ye," he added, looking into the crown, and then placing the hat on his head with visible satisfaction. He would have turned and made off down the road, had not Matt stepped toward him and lifted his hand. "Just a minute, my friend," said Matt. The sailor flashed a look toward the automobile. The driver had closed the hood, and was waving his arms. "Nary a minute have I got to spare, shipmate," the sailor answered. "The skipper of that craft has plugged the hole in her bow, and we're ready to trip anchor and bear away." "Wait!" and a sternness crept into Matt's voice. "We must have a talk with you. Perhaps you'll save yourself trouble if you give us a few minutes of your time." At the word "trouble," the sailor squared around. "Now, shiver me," he cried, "I'm just beginning to take the cut of your jib. Trouble, says you. Are ye sailin' in company with that chink we passed a ways back on our course?" "What do you know about the Eye of Buddha?" demanded Matt. "Oh, ho," roared the other, "so that's yer lay, my hearty? Well, you take my advice, and keep your finger out o' that pie. I'm not sayin' a word about the Eye o' Buddha. Mayhap I know somethin' consarnin' the same, an' mayhap I don't. But I wouldn't give the fag end o' nothin' mixed in a kittle o' hot water for your chances if you stick an oar in that little matter." There was that about the sailor which convinced Matt that he knew more concerning the ruby than he cared to tell. "Stop!" cried the king of the motor boys. "Not me," was the gruff answer, and both of the sailor's hands dropped into his pockets. "If he won't stop," cried McGlory, "then here's where we make him!" He and Matt started on a run toward the sailor. The latter whirled around, his arms drew back, and his hands shot forward. Two round, glimmering objects left his palms and tinkled into fragments at the feet of the two boys. An overpowering odor arose in the still air--wafted upward in a cloud of strangling fumes that caught at the throats of Matt and McGlory, blinded their eyes, and sapped at their strength. McGlory fell to his knees. "The--glass--balls----" he gasped, and flattened out helplessly, the last word fading into a gurgle. "Leave the Eye o' Buddha alone!" were the hoarse words that echoed in Matt's ears. And they were the last sounds of which he was cognizant for some time. He crumpled down at the side of his chum, made one last desperate struggle to recover his strength, and then the darkness closed him in. CHAPTER IV. THE PAPER CLUE. Now and then there are episodes in life which, when they are past and one comes to look back on them, seem more like dreams than actual occurrences. This matter of the Chinaman, the Eye of Buddha, the sailor, and the glass balls looked particularly unreal to Motor Matt and Joe McGlory. When Matt opened his eyes, he found himself in a hammock. For a minute or two he lay quiet, trying to figure out how and when he had got into the hammock, and where Joe was, and just how much of a dream he had had. The hammock was strung between a couple of trees, and from a distance came a subdued chatter of voices, and the low, soft strains of an orchestra. Matt sat up in the hammock and looked in the direction from which the sounds came. The lofty, porticoed front of a huge hotel was no more than two hundred feet away. Men in flannels and women in lawn dresses were coming and going about the porticoes, and the music was wafted out from inside the building. The young motorist's bewilderment grew, and he brushed a hand across his eyes. Then he looked in another direction. Two yards from the tree supporting one end of the hammock, the ground broke sharply into a precipitous descent, falling sheer away for a hundred feet or more. He could look off over a rolling country checkered with meadows and grainland and timber patches, with a river cutting through the vista and holding the scene together like a silver ribbon. He drew a long breath, and swerved his gaze to the right. Here there was another hammock, one end of it secured to the same tree that helped support Matt's airy couch, and the other end to a third tree which formed an acute angle with respect to the other two. In this second hammock was McGlory. Like Matt, he was sitting up; and, like Matt again, he was staring. Leaning against one of the three trees, were the two motor cycles. "Joe!" cried Matt. "Is that you?" "Hooray!" exclaimed the cowboy, with sudden animation. "I was just waiting for you to speak, in order to make sure I wasn't still asleep. Jumpin' jee-whiskers, what a dream I've had!" "Where are we?" inquired Matt. A puzzled look crossed the cowboy's face. "Don't you _sabe_ that?" he returned. "No." "Shucks! That's just the question I was going to bat up to you." "How did we get here?" "I'm by, again. But, sufferin' brain-twisters, what a dream I've had!" He began laughing softly to himself. "What sort of a dream was it?" went on Matt. "Funnier'n a Piute picnic! It was all mixed up with a fat Chinaman, and a yellow cord, and a ruby called the Eye of Buddha, and a one-eyed sailor, and--and a couple of glass balls. Oh, speak to me about that! Say, pard, but it was a corker! The fat chink was doing all sorts of funny stunts, tumbling off a bike, and all over himself." "There wasn't any dream about it," declared Matt, swinging his feet to the ground with sudden energy. The laugh died out of McGlory's face, and a blank look took its place. "Go on!" he scoffed, not a little startled. "Two fellows couldn't have the same kind of a dream," persisted Matt, "and I went through identically the same things you did. That proves they were _real_! But--but," and Matt's voice wavered, "how did we get here?" "There are the motor cycles we used when we buzzed out of Catskill Landing," and McGlory brightened as he pointed to the two wheels. "I see," mused Matt, drumming his forehead with his knuckles. "Nobody seems to be paying much attention to us," he added, his eyes on the groups around the hotel porches. "Not a terrible sight, and that's a fact," agreed McGlory. "But why should they, pard? They don't know us." "Somebody must have brought us here and laid us in the hammocks. The last I remember we were down and out. Now, Joe, a move of that kind would naturally stir up a commotion." "Well, yes," admitted the cowboy, going blank again, "Are you and I locoed, Matt, or what?" "Come on and let's try and find out." Matt started for a man who was sitting in a canvas chair smoking a cigar and nursing a golf club on his knees. McGlory trailed after him. "I beg your pardon, sir," said Matt, halting beside the chair, "but have you been here long?" "Two weeks," was the answer with a hard stare. "I come to the Mountain House every summer, and spend my va----" "I mean," interrupted Matt, "were you sitting here when my friend and I were brought in?" "Brought in? You weren't brought in. You two rode in on those motor cycles, leaned them against the tree, and preëmpted the hammocks." "Sufferin' lunatics!" breathed McGlory. "I reckon we'd better call somebody in to look at our plumbing, pard." "What appears to be the trouble?" went on the stranger, politely curious. "It just 'appears,' and that's all," rambled the cowboy. "If we could only get a strangle-hold on the trouble, and hog-tie it, maybe we could take it apart, and see what makes it act so." The stranger sprang up, grabbed his golf stick, and looked alarmed. "Never mind my friend, sir," said Matt reassuringly; "we're just a little bit bothered, that's all." "A little bit!" repeated the stranger ironically; "it looks to me like a whole lot." "This is the Mountain House, is it?" went on Matt. He was severely shocked himself, but tried manfully to hide it while trying to work out the mystery. "Certainly, sir," growled the man with the golf stick. "Don't you try to make game of me, young man! I'm old enough to be your father, and such----" "We are not trying to make game of any one," protested Matt. "But somebody is making game of _us_," put in McGlory, "and playing us up and down and all across the table. Here in these hills is where Rip Van Winkle went to sleep, ain't it? I wonder if he dreamed about fat Chinamen, yellow cords, one-eyed sailors, and----" "Cut it out, Joe!" whispered Matt sternly, grabbing his chum by the arm and pulling him toward the hotel. "Can't you see he thinks we're crazy?" "_Thinks_ we're crazy?" stuttered the cowboy. "Then I've got a cinch on him, for I _know_ we are. Where next?" "We'll go into the hotel and make some inquiries," replied Matt, noting how the man with the cigar and the golf stick turned in his chair to keep an eye on them. "And for Heaven's sake, Joe," Matt added, "let me do the talking. If you don't, we're liable to be locked up." "We ought to be locked up," mumbled McGlory. "We're lost, and we ought to be shooed into some safe corral and kept there till we find ourselves. Sufferin' hurricanes! What kind of a brain-storm are we going through, _any_how?" Matt and McGlory passed through the chattering groups on the porch and entered the lobby of the hotel. The music, which now came to them in increased volume, was accompanied by a clatter of dishes from the dining room. Matt laid a direct course for the counter at one side of the lobby. "Can you tell me," he asked, leaning over the counter and addressing the carefully groomed clerk, "If there is a gentleman named Tsan Ti staying at this hotel?" "Come again, please," was the answer. "What was that name?" "Tsan Ti." "Where's he from?" "Canton, China." "Wears a black cap and a yellow kimono," put in Joe. "Button in the cap--red button. He's the high old Whoop-a-gamus that bossed the temple of What-you-call-um and let the Eye of Buddha get away from him. He _must_ be here." "Such jocosity is out of place," said the clerk chillingly. "Sufferin' zero!" muttered McGlory. "I reckon his home ranch is the North Pole. What's jocosity, Matt?" "Then Tsan Ti isn't here?" asked Matt. "Certainly _not_. You might try the Hotel Kaaterskill." "Kaaterskill!" minced McGlory. "Now, what the blooming----" "Joe," muttered Matt, grasping his chum's arm, and pulling him away. "What's come over you, anyhow? You're acting like a Hottentot." "That's it!" cried Joe. "What?" "The name that one-eyed webfoot had on his cap. Hottentot! Hottentot! Hottentot!" "Joe!" warned Matt, for the cowboy had sung out the word at the top of his voice. "What _ails_ you? Great spark plugs!" McGlory brushed a hand across his face. "I feel like I'd taken a foolish powder, pard," he answered huskily. "Let's get out of here before I make a holy show of myself." All at sea, they went back to the hammocks and sat down by the two motor cycles. "And this," remarked McGlory, breaking a long silence, "is what you call turning the trick for Tsan Ti! I told you that letter we received in Grand Rapids was plain bunk. Read it again, pard." "I've read it thirteen times, Joe," answered Matt. "Well, read it fourteen times and break the hoodoo." Matt took the envelope from his pocket, and drew out the inclosed sheet. Then he stared, then whistled, then leaned back against the tree. "Now it's you who's doped," grinned McGlory. "Can't you read it?" "Sure," answered Matt; "listen." "'BUNCE: Be in Purling at ten a. m., Thursday. Show this to Pryne at the general store in the village, and Pryne will show you to me. Important developments. Mum's the word. GRATTAN.'" McGlory threw off his hat, and pawed at his hair. "Put a chain on us, somebody, _please_!" he gasped. "Where, oh, where, did you get that?" "Here's a paper clue," said Matt. "I took this out of that cap we found in the road, and, by an oversight, I tucked that letter from Tsan Ti into the cap so the sailor wouldn't notice the original note was missing." "Then there _was_ a cap," muttered McGlory, "and it _did_ have 'Hottentot' on the ribbon, and you _sure_ took out a note, and it's a cinch there _was_ a sailor. Now, if all that's true, then where, in the name of the great hocus-pocus, is the fat Chinaman?" CHAPTER V. PUTTING TWO AND TWO TOGETHER. With a sudden thought, Matt stepped to the motor cycle McGlory had used, and gave the front wheel a critical examination. "What's that for?" asked the cowboy. "I'm only putting two and two together, Joe," Matt answered, returning to his place at his chum's side. "I reckon they make five, this inning," said McGlory. "I believe I've got the hang of it," went on Matt. "You're just getting back to your natural self, Joe. Ever since we awoke in those hammocks, and up to this minute, you've been a trifle 'flighty.'" "Well," acknowledged McGlory, "I felt as though I'd been browsing on loco weed." "How do you account for it?" "I don't. You're doing this sum in arithmetic. What's the answer?" "Glass balls," said Matt. "Speak to me about those glass balls! That webfoot threw two of them, and they smashed right in front of us! And--and---- But, say, pard, it's not in reason to think that two things like those balls could lay us out." "Remember how the Eye of Buddha was stolen? The one-eyed sailor and the Englishman broke one of the glass balls in the temple, and all the priests were laid out." "Oh, well, if you're going to take any stock in that fat Chinaman and his yarn, I reckon you----" "Now, listen," continued Matt earnestly. "Strange as it may seem, Joe, there _are_ balls like those Tsan Ti was telling us about. We have had an experience with them, and we _know_. I suppose the glass spheres are filled with some powerful narcotic fumes which are set free the moment the balls are broken." "It's not in reason," protested Joe. "It's a hard thing to believe that such objects exist, I'll admit," proceeded Matt, "but we have got to credit the evidence of our senses. While one of the balls was enough to overcome the priests, in the temple, it was necessary for the sailor to use two against us, there in the open. The air, naturally, would soon dissipate the fumes. I shouldn't wonder," Matt added reflectively, "but those balls were invented by the Chinese. They seem to have a knack for that sort of thing." "Queerest knock-out drops I ever heard of." "When you and I recovered sufficient strength to get up out of the road," continued Matt, "we hadn't yet recovered full possession of our wits. You remember, Joe, your front tire was punctured. Well, that puncture was neatly mended, and the air pump must have been used to inflate the tire again. You and I must have done that, then rode up here and taken possession of the hammocks." The cowboy whistled. "Able to make repairs, and to navigate, but plumb locoed for all that, eh?" he remarked. "That's my idea, Joe. When we finally recovered our senses, in these hammocks, all that had happened seemed to have been a dream." "Seems so yet, pard. What's become of Tsan Ti? And the other hatchet boy that brought the yellow cord? They don't know anything about Tsan at the hotel, so he must have been overworking his imagination when he told us he had been having tea there. And that other yarn about seeing the man with the yellow cord and ducking on a borrowed wheel to get away from him! Say, I reckon they'd have known something about a commotion of that sort if it had happened here." McGlory wagged his head incredulously. "The fat chink is up to something, Matt," he finished, "and he's been talking with the double tongue." "I'll admit," said Matt, "that there are some parts of the problem that look rather dubious, but, on the whole, Tsan Ti's story holds together pretty well. That story of the ruby was corroborated, in a way, by the sailor. From the fellow's actions, he must have known a good deal about the Eye of Buddha. Why did he throw the glass balls at us? Simply to keep us from following him. If the sailor hadn't been guilty of some treacherous work, he wouldn't have done that." "I'm over my head," muttered McGlory. "But, if the mandarin is so hungry to have us help him, what's the reason he's making himself absent? Why isn't he here?" "Let's give him time to get here. We weren't on that mountainside for more than two hours. It was nine when we left Catskill Landing, and about half-past ten, I should say, when we met Tsan Ti. It's nearly one, now." "Well, what's the next move, pard? Are you going to that Purling place and ask for Pryne at the general store?" "Not right away. We'll give Tsan Ti a chance to present himself, first." "You don't think"--and here McGlory assumed a tragic look--"that Tsan would go off into the timber and use that yellow cord, do you?" "He has two weeks before he has to do that." "_Has_ to do it! Why, he don't have to do it at all, except to be polite to that squinch-eyed boss of the Flowery Kingdom. Honest, these chinks are the limit." Matt got up and pulled his motor cycle away from the tree. "Let's go into the hotel, and have dinner, Joe," he suggested. "If we don't hear anything from Tsan Ti by four, this afternoon, we'll return to Catskill." "And not do anything about that paper you got out of the sailor's hat?" asked the cowboy. "If Tsan Ti doesn't think we're worth bothering with, after we've come all the way from Grand Rapids to lend him a hand, we'll let him do his own hunting for the ruby." "Keno, correct, and then some," agreed the cowboy heartily. "I've thought, all along, there'd be some sort of bobble about this Eastern trip. But let's eat. I've been hungry enough to sit in at chuck-pile any time the last three hours." The boys left their wheels in charge of a man who looked after the motor cars belonging to guests, and went into the office for the second time. The clerk surveyed McGlory with pronounced disfavor while Matt was registering. The cowboy met the look with an easy grin, and, after he and Matt had washed their faces, brushed their hair, and knocked the dust out of their clothes, they went into the big dining room and did full justice to an excellent meal. Neither had much to say about Tsan Ti. Matt was half fearing the mandarin's business was a good deal of a wild-goose chase, and that the ponderous Celestial, for reasons of his own, had absented himself permanently. Following the meal, the boys went out to sit on the veranda. They had hardly taken their chairs when a big red automobile, with a rumble seat behind in place of a tonneau, sizzled up to the front of the hotel and came to a stop. There was one man in the car. As soon as the dust had settled a little, a black cap with a red button, a long queue, and a yellow blouse emerged with startling distinctness upon the gaze of the two boys. McGlory sat in his chair as though paralyzed. "It's Tsan Ti!" he murmured feebly, switching his eyes to Matt. "Tsan Ti, and no mistake," answered Matt. "First he rides a bike," said the cowboy, rapidly recovering, "and now he blows in on us at the steering wheel of a gasoline cart. He's the handiest all-around heathen I ever met up with. And look at him! He acts just as though nothing had happened. Well, let me know about that, will you?" Tsan Ti turned sidewise in the driver's seat, and swept his gaze over the front of the hotel. He was less than half a minute getting the range of the motor boys. Lifting a hand, he beckoned for them to come. "He wants us," said Matt grimly. "We'd better go, and hear what he has to say for himself." "That's the talk!" agreed McGlory. A bland smile crossed the flabby face of the Chinaman as the boys came close. "Embark, distinguished friends," said he. After all the rough and tumble of the morning, Tsan Ti now appeared in perfect condition. He was entirely at his ease, and as well groomed a mandarin as ever left the Chinese Empire. "Just a minute, Tsan Ti," returned Matt coldly. "There are a few things we would like to have explained before we go any farther in this business of yours." "All shall be made transparent to you, most excellent youth," was the reply, "only just now embark, so that we may proceed on our way." "You said you were stopping at the Mountain House," said Matt severely. "A play upon words, no more. I was staying at the Kaaterskill. What says the great Confucius? 'The cautious seldom err.' I was cautious. Time passes swiftly, and----" "Get out and explain everything to us, Tsan Ti," broke in Matt firmly. "If you want us to help you, you've got to take time to set us right on a few important matters. We hadn't talked twenty minutes with you before we jumped in to give you a helping hand--and succeeded in getting ourselves into trouble. As you say, 'the cautious seldom err.' That means us, you know, as well as you." The mandarin heaved a sigh of disappointment, floundered out of the machine, and accompanied the boys in the direction of the three trees and the swinging hammocks. CHAPTER VI. A SMASH. The Hotel Kaaterskill was within a stone's throw of the Mountain House. So far as situation went, there was small choice between them, but Matt resented Tsan Ti's deception in declaring he was staying at one when he was really staying at the other. It seemed so trivial a matter compared with the mandarin's critical situation--as set forth by himself. "I don't like the way you are acting, Tsan Ti," said Matt, as soon as they had reached the trees. "In your letter to me you asked me to meet you at the Mountain House; and on the mountainside, after you received the yellow cord, you spoke about our going up to the Mountain House; and again, as I remember it, it was on the porch of the Mountain House where you were drinking tea when you saw Kien Lung coming toward you, and bolted away on the bicycle. What excuse was there for such a deception? And how can we help you if you are not open and aboveboard with us?" "The left hand, honored and exalted sir," returned Tsan Ti, "must not know what the right hand does when one is so unfortunate as I. Sam Wing, in leaving word for me at the house named Kaaterskill, remarked upon the courier Kien Lung being after me upon his unhappy errand, and counseled that I keep myself obscurely. But I should have made communication with you at the Mountain House had you arrived by that place for meeting me. My intentions were high-minded, albeit secretive." "Then, for now," pursued Matt, "we will let that pass. Why did you vanish from the mountainside after we had been left to chase the one-eyed sailor? He threw two of those glass balls at us, and we were dropped in the road, unconscious. It was not a long distance from where we had left you, and you could easily have come down to us." "_Omito fuh!_" muttered Tsan Ti. "My regret is most consuming! The gods crossed my will, notable one; nothing else could have kept me at a distance from you. It was thus. Young men on bicycles, pursuing Kien Lung and me who had made away at high speed on two of their go-devil machines, swarmed suddenly around me like the sacred rocks in the banyans at Honam. In spite of my entreaties, they carried me to the Kaaterskill, and there I made repayment for the broken machine, and for the one which Kien Lung took for himself and did not return. These affairs occupied me profoundly until half an hour since; then I hired yonder devil wagon and started to find you. Behold, you were on the veranda of the hotel as I fared past. Confucius said, in ancient times, 'When I have presented one corner of a subject, and the pupil cannot of himself make out the other three, I do not repeat my lesson.' So the sight of you informed me the sailor of the single eye had escaped, and I concluded best that we hurry after him. Am I not right, honorable friend?" "He's good with his bazoo," remarked McGlory. "I reckon he makes out a clean case for himself." Matt was satisfied. Still, he thought that instead of attending to his personal appearance and running around hiring an automobile, Tsan Ti might have taken some quicker method of finding out what had happened down the mountainside. But he was a Chinaman, and his ways and means were not those of a Caucasian. "Where did you learn to drive an automobile, Tsan Ti?" asked Matt. "We have the devil wagons in Canton. There are many in the foreign quarter, and I have one of my own." Tsan Ti fanned himself and looked troubled. "There is something," he went on presently, "of which I must inform you. Perhaps, when you know, you will leave me to find the Eye of Buddha unaided. But it is right that I should tell you." "What is it?" inquired Matt. "This, courageous youth: The ten thousand demons of misfortune have been let loose upon those most closely concerned with the loss of the ruby. While the great Buddha sits eyeless in the temple at Honam, his wrath falls upon me in particular; and, now that you are helping me, it will likewise fall upon you. Disasters have crowded upon me, and if you keep on in the search, they will surely overtake you. Already you have had experience of them." "Sufferin' snakes!" grunted McGlory. "It'll take more'n a heathen idol over in China to get me on the run." "I guess we'll face the music," laughed Matt. "That ruby eye may be a hoodoo, but we're not superstitious enough to get scared." "Excellent!" wheezed Tsan Ti. "I have done well to secure your invaluable services. Shall we now proceed down the mountain in pursuit of the sailor?" "Why, he may be a hundred miles from here by this time." "Not so!" was the positive answer. "I have my warning that he is near, and that we must hasten." "Warning?" repeated Matt. Tsan Ti poked two fingers down the neck of his blouse and fished up a small black V-shaped object attached to a gold chain. "Observe," he said solemnly, "my jade-stone amulet, covered with choice ideographs from the Book of Auguries. When it burns the skin upon the speaking of a name, then have I a warning. Look!" He held the stone on his fat palm. "With it thus I breathe the words 'one-eyed thief' and"--he winced as though from pain--"the amulet nearly burns." McGlory dropped his head, and his shoulders shook with suppressed mirth. Never had he met so humorous a person as this mandarin of the red button, with his yellow cord, his jade-stone amulet, and his load of trouble. Matt was also possessed of a desire to laugh, but managed to keep his features straight. Tsan Ti observed the incredulity of the boys, and dropped the amulet back down his blouse. "Let us go, doubting ones," he puffed, "and you will see. Come, accompany me, and you will not be long in learning why the amulet burns!" "Our motor cycles are here, at the garage," demurred Matt, "and----" "They will be safely kept until you come for them again. Let us, as you say, hustle." He was up and waddling toward the automobile before Matt or McGlory could answer. The boys followed him, Matt climbing into the front seat at the mandarin's side, and the cowboy getting into the seat behind. "Hadn't I better drive?" queried Matt. "It is a pleasure for me to guide and control the pounding demon," the Chinaman answered. "Ha, we start." But they did not start. Naturally, the long halt had not left enough gas in the cylinders to take the spark, and Tsan Ti had neglected to use the crank. Matt got down and turned the engine over--and came within one of being run down before he could get out of the way. Regaining the car at a flying leap, he snuggled down in his seat and proceeded to hold his breath. Of all the reckless drivers he had ever seen, Tsan Ti was the limit. He banged over the edge of the level into the long slope, engaging the high speed so quickly that Matt wondered he did not strip the gear. As the car lurched, and swayed, and bounded Tsan Ti's joy shone in his puffy face. "Glory to glory, and all hands 'round!" yelled the cowboy, from behind. "Change seats with him, Matt! If you don't, he'll string us from the Mountain House clean to Catskill." Matt leaned over and gave the steering wheel a turn barely in time to keep them from hitting a tree. The wake the machine left behind it looked like a zigzag streak. First they were on one side of the road, and then on the other, juggling back and forth by the narrowest of margins, and keeping right side up in defiance with every law of gravity with which Matt was familiar. "Cut out the high speed!" shouted Matt. "It's suicide to use that gear on such a slope as this. We could coast down this hill without an ounce of power." A mud guard was loose, and it rattled horribly. The Chinaman was feeding too much gasoline part of the time, and not enough the rest of the time. Now and again, the cylinders would misfire, pop wildly, then jump into a racing hum. That high-powered roadster made as much noise as a railroad train; and what with Matt yelling directions, and McGlory whooping like a Comanche at every close call they nipped out of, the uproar was tremendous. Through it all the fat Chinaman glowed and, at intervals, gave vent to ecstatic howls. Whenever they escaped a tree that had threatened them, he exploded jubilantly. "I can't stand this, pard!" roared McGlory. "I'm goin' to jump out, if you don't stop him!" To argue with Tsan Ti, in all that turmoil of sound, was out of the question. Hardly had the cowboy ceased speaking when, through the wild hubbub of noise, Matt thought he heard a sharp detonation. Of this he was not sure, but, almost immediately, a front tire blew up, and the machine swerved wildly. Bang--_crash!_ The automobile made a wild effort to climb a tree, and the next thing Motor Matt realized was the fact that he was turning handsprings in the road. Silence, sudden and grim, followed the frantic medley of sound. A bird twittered somewhere off in the woods, and the flutelike notes hit Matt's tortured ear-drums like a volley of musketry. He got up, dazedly. His hat was gone, and one of his trouser legs was missing. The back of his head, still tender from a blow he had received in Grand Rapids, reminded him by a sharp twinge that it had been badly treated. Matt limped to the tree that had caused the wreck, and leaned against it. Then, and not till then, was he able to make a comprehensive view of the scene. The front of the automobile was badly smashed--so badly that it was a wonder Matt had ever escaped with his life. One of the forward wheels had come off. McGlory, in his shirt sleeves--and with one sleeve missing--was on his hands and knees. He was facing the mandarin--staring at that remarkable person with a well-what-do-you-think-of-that expression. The mandarin was sitting up in the road. The black cap with the red button was hanging to one side of his head, one of his embroidered sandals was gone, and the yellow silk blouse and trousers were torn. In some manner the steering wheel had become detached from the post, and Tsan Ti was hanging to it like grim death. He seemed still to be driving, for the steering wheel was in the correct position. Certainly it was not a time to laugh, but Motor Matt could hardly help it. CHAPTER VII. NIP AND TUCK. "That's right," whooped McGlory, twisting his head to get a look at Matt, "laugh--laugh, and enjoy yourself! Sufferin' smash-ups! It's a wonder the hospital corps didn't have to shovel us up in a bushel basket." "Are you hurt, Joe?" inquired Matt. "Hurt?" snapped McGlory, his gorge rising. "Oh, no, of course not! We weren't going more than a hundred and twenty miles an hour when we hit that tree, so how could I possibly have suffered any damage? This comes of trotting a heat with a half-baked rat-eater. Here's where I quit. That's right. Go on and hunt your idol's eye, if you want to. Say, if I could get hold of that yellow cord, I'd strangle the mandarin myself." McGlory climbed to his feet lamely and looked himself over, up and down. His coat was about twenty feet away, in one place, and his hat lay at an equal distance in another. As he moved about collecting his property and muttering to himself, Matt stepped to the side of Tsan Ti. The mandarin, still dazed and bewildered, continued to cling to the steering wheel. Matt bent down and took the wheel away from him. "Illustrious friend," said the Chinaman, blinking his eyes, "the suddenness was most remarkable. Once more the thousand demons of misfortune have visited their wrath upon me!" "Don't talk about misfortune," returned Matt. "We're the luckiest fellows that ever lived to get out of a wreck like that with whole skins. The car's a ruin, Tsan Ti, and you'll have to pay for it." "Of what use is money, interesting youth, to a mandarin who has received the yellow cord? I have rice fields and tea plantations, and millions of taels to my credit. The bagatelle of a cost does not concern me." Matt helped him upright and dusted him off. As soon as he had pushed a foot into the missing sandal, he gave vent to a wail, and sat down on the side of the machine. "Such vastness of misfortune takes my courage," he groaned. "The Eye of Buddha can not be recovered with all the thousand demons fighting against me. The jade-stone amulet burns me fiercely----" "Wish it had burned a hole clear through you before you'd ever written that letter to Matt," cried McGlory. "I have involved two honorable assistants in my so-great ill luck," went on the mandarin. "Never mind that," said Matt. "I thought you knew how to drive a car?" "He's the craziest thing on wheels when it comes to drivin' a bubble," called out McGlory. "Here's where I quit. Scratch my entry in the race for the Eye of Buddha. I always know when I've got enough. We've had four hours of this, and it's a-plenty." Motor Matt began looking for his cap. Where it had gone was a mystery. He finally discovered it hanging to a clump of bushes. As he turned around, he was startled to see Tsan Ti with the yellow cord coiled about his throat. Could it be possible that the mandarin, cast down by his latest accident, was on the point of carrying out the mandate of the regent? "I say!" shouted Matt, hurrying forward. But the Chinaman was interrupted in his fell purpose by an explosion in the car directly behind him. Bang! He jumped about four feet, straight up in the air. Matt saw a tongue of flame shoot upward from the car. The gasoline tank had been smashed. The inflammable contents, dripping upon the hot exhaust pipe leading from the muffler, must have caused the blaze. Sizz-z-, _bang_, boom! The gasoline was vaporizing. As the startled mandarin watched the blaze, paralyzed and speechless by the unexpected exhibition, the yellow cord swung limply downward from his throat. McGlory rushed up behind him, and jerked the cord away. Tsan Ti did not seem to notice the manoeuvre--he was all wrapped up in the blaze and the explosions. The fire shot skyward, and Matt grabbed the Chinaman and hauled him to a safe distance. "Bring the wheel, Joe," Matt yelled, "the one that came off!" McGlory had not the least notion what Matt wanted with the wheel, but he got it, and they were all well down the road when a final terrific boom scattered fragments of the wreck every which way and sent little jets of flame from the diffused gasoline spitting in all directions. "Good-by, you old benzine buggy!" said McGlory, addressing the flame-wrapped car. "You wasn't worth much, anyways, but I bet the mandarin bleeds for twice your value, just the same. What you looking at that wheel for, Matt?" he finished, turning to his chum. "It was punctured by a bullet," replied Matt, pointing to a clean-cut rent in the shoe. "Bullet?" echoed McGlory. "Speak to me about that! I didn't hear any shooting." "The car made so much noise that's not to be wondered at. I wasn't sure that what I'd heard was a shot, but----" Matt had lifted his head to speak to McGlory. As he did so, his eyes glimpsed a figure skulking among the bushes at the roadside. The sunshine, and the glare from the fire, caused a ghastly radiance to hover about the bushes. In the weird shadows of the bushes and trees, a face stood out prominently--a face topped with a sailor hat, fringed with mutton-chop whiskers, and with a patch over one eye. The king of the motor boys gave a whoop and darted for the bushes. The face vanished as if by magic, but Matt kept furiously on, McGlory chasing after him. "What's to pay, pard?" the cowboy was demanding. "The sailor!" flung back Matt. "I saw him in the brush! He must have been the one who put that bullet into our front tire!" "Whoop-ya!" yelled McGlory, all his hostility springing to the surface and causing him to forget his announced determination to "quit" and let the mandarin shift for himself. "Let's put the kibosh on him! He's the cause of all this. Hang the idol's eye! We've got an account of our own to settle. But look out for the glass balls." Ahead of him Matt could hear the crash and crackle of undergrowth, and now and then he caught a glimpse of the racing sailor. The timber grew more dense, and presently, just as Matt thought he had the fellow, he was brought up short with the quarry out of sight and hearing. "He's dodged away," panted the cowboy. "Maybe he's doubled back." "I'd have heard him if he'd done that," answered Matt. "He has either stopped, and is lying low, or else he has gone on ahead. I thought I had him, for a minute. Come on, Joe!" Matt flung onward, and leaped suddenly from the edge of the timber into a cornfield on a little flat between two shoulders of the mountain. He stopped and listened. The leaves of the corn rustled in the faint breeze, and, in the centre of the field, an ungainly scarecrow half reared itself above the tasseled stalks. "He's in the corn, that's where he is," puffed the cowboy. "Mind your eye, pard, and look out for the dope balls." "You go one way across the field," suggested Matt, "and I'll go the other. Sharp's the word now, old chap. We're giving that fellow the run of his life, and he's having it nip and tuck to get away." The field was not large, and Matt and McGlory crossed it rapidly, the king of the motor boys on one side of the scarecrow, and the cowboy on the other. They met on the opposite side of the field, without having seen the sailor. "I reckon he's dodged us!" growled McGlory, in savage disappointment. "The ornery old webfoot has----" He stopped aghast, his eyes on the scarecrow. The tattered figure was moving briskly through the corn, toward the side of the field from which the boys had just come. "There he goes!" shouted Matt, darting away again. "He got into the scarecrow's clothes, and didn't have the nerve to wait until we had left the field." "Speak--speak to me about--about this!" returned McGlory breathlessly, plunging after his chum through the rustling rows. Once more in the woods, the boys found themselves even closer to the fleeting mariner than they had been before. He was in plain sight now, and shedding his ragged disguise as he raced for liberty. Up the shoulder of the mountain he went, pawing and scrambling, then down on the other side, Matt and McGlory close after him. He was making strenuously for a cleared space at the foot of the little slope. In the centre of the clearing were the remains of a stone wall, and near the wall stood a little stone house. The house appeared to be deserted, and the half-opened door swung awry on one hinge. "He's makin' for the 'dobe!" wheezed the cowboy. The words had hardly left his lips before the sailor vanished within the stone walls. Matt ran recklessly after him. "Look out for the double-X brand of dope!" warned McGlory. "You know what he did before, Matt." But Matt was already inside the house. The interior apparently consisted of a hall and two rooms, although the boarded-up windows cast a funereal gloom over the place, and made it difficult to see anything distinctly. Matt sprang through one of the two doors that opened off the hall, and McGlory, still clamoring wildly for his chum to beware of the glass balls, followed. Slam went the door of the room--probably the only door in the house that was in commission--and rattle-rattle went a key in the lock. Then came a husky laugh, and the words: "Belay a bit, you swabs! Leave the Eye o' Buddha alone. An' that's a warnin'." Feet pattered along the hall and out of it. "Nip and tuck," sang out McGlory, while Matt wrestled with the door, "and it wasn't the webfoot that got nipped, not so any one could notice. Catch your breath, pard, and calm down. Old One Eye has made his getaway, and we might just as well laugh as be sorry." CHAPTER VIII. TSAN TI VANISHES AGAIN. There was wisdom in the cowboy's words, and Matt gave over his attack on the door and turned to his chum with a disappointed laugh. "We can get out of here easy enough," said he, "but the sailor gains so much time while we're doing it that he wins out in the race. Great spark plugs, but we're having a time! I'm almost tempted to think that those ten thousand demons, the mandarin talks about, are really pestering us." "Ten thousand horned toads," scoffed McGlory. "This is what we naturally get for trying to turn an impossible trick for a heathen. What was the good of paying any attention to that letter, in the first place?" "Well," answered Matt, "we've discussed that point a good many times already, Joe. I wanted to go to New York, anyway, and it was only a little out of our road to come down the river and drop off at Catskill Landing." "Suppose we get our wheels, go back to Catskill, and then take the next boat down the river? What's the good of all this strain we've taken upon ourselves? If we don't let well enough alone, something is sure going to snap, and like as not it'll be mighty serious. It's a wonder we ever came through that smash-up with our scalps." There was one window in the room. Matt had passed to it and was making an examination. The glass was broken out of the sash, and the boards nailed to the outside of the casing were loose. He pushed two of the boards off, leaving a gap through which he and his chum could easily crawl. "If we'd done this in the first place, Joe," said he, "we might have picked up the mariner's trail before he had got too far away." "Too late now. It was our luck to get into the only room in the 'dobe, I reckon, that had a good door and a usable lock." "Well," returned Matt, "let's get out and hunt up the mandarin. I hope he won't make 'way with himself while we're moseying around in this part of the woods." The boys climbed through the window and the gap in the boards, and Matt made a casual survey of the house's vicinity. Of course the sailor was gone, and had left no clue as to the direction of his flight. Setting their faces in the direction of the road, the boys started off briskly on their return to the wrecked car. "There's one thing you didn't do, pard," remarked McGlory, while they were on their way through the timber. "What's that?" "Why, you didn't lisp a word to the mandarin about that note you took from the Hottentot's cap. Maybe, if the Chinaman knew about that, he'd quit thinking of doing the polite and courteous thing for the regent." "I had intended telling Tsan Ti about the note," returned Matt, struck by the illuminating suggestion, "but I hadn't time. I'll put it up to Tsan Ti, though, the first thing after we meet him again." "I've got the yellow string. If he has to make the happy dispatch with that, then I've blocked his game for a while. I don't know much about the etiquette of this yellow-cord _game_. Do you?" "No." "Well, leaving that out of the discussion for now, here's another point. Do you reckon old One Eye has found out, yet, how you juggled the notes on him?" "I can't see as that makes much difference," answered Matt. "He left us in a hurry, there at that stone house. If he'd known we had the note, why didn't he stop and palaver about it?" "We were two against him, and he was in too much of a hurry." "Why didn't he use the glass balls and take the note away from us while we were down and out?" "Probably his supply of glass balls is running low." "That note is to be shown to the man in Purling, and the man in Purling is then to show the bearer of the note where this Grattan is. Now----" "That's a chance for us to find Grattan," cut in Matt. "You're planning on that, are you? Sufferin' trouble! If it wouldn't be actin' more like a hired man than a pard, I'd go on a strike." "We're onto this mandarin's business now, Joe," said Matt, "and we ought to see it through to a finish." "It'll be our finish, I reckon." At this moment they stepped out onto the road close to the car. The machine was a charred and twisted wreck, and fit only for the junk heap. Matt looked around for Tsan Ti, but he was nowhere in evidence. "Vanished again!" exclaimed McGlory. Matt threw back his head and shouted the mandarin's name at the top of his voice. No answer was returned, but the echoes of the call had hardly died away before they were taken up by the humming of another motor, and a little runabout came whirling down the road and brought up at the side of the wrecked car. Two men were in the runabout, and one of the men was in a tremendously bad humor. The angry individual jumped from the runabout and peered at the number on the smoking board at the rear of the chassis. "It was my car, all right!" he cried. "And look at it! Great Scott, just look at it! Total loss, and only a fat chink to look to for damages. Oh, I'm s, t, u, n, g to the queen's taste, all right. Who're you?" he demanded, whirling suddenly on the boys. Matt told him. "You're from up the mountain, are you?" inquired Matt. "Where else?" replied the other crossly. "What's become of the chink that hired this car? Do you know?" "Probably he's gone back to the hotel." "Oh, probably," was the sarcastic retort; "yes, probably! I've got money that says he's sloped for good. Look here. They say there were two fellows in the car with the chink when it left the Mountain House. Are you the fellows?" "Yes." "Then, by jing, I'll hold _you_. Twenty-five hundred is what I want, and I want it quick." "Oh, rats!" grunted the man in the runabout. "I'll bet those fellows couldn't rake up twenty-five hundred cents. Quit foolin', Jackson, and let's go back." Matt and McGlory, after their recent experiences in the collision and while chasing the sailor, were most assuredly not looking their best. But they could have drawn a draft on Chicago for twenty-five hundred dollars and had it honored--had they been so minded. "Oh, say moo and chase yourself!" cried McGlory. "You rented the car to the Chinaman; you didn't rent it to us." "I'm going to hold you, anyhow," declared the man called Jackson. "You'll have a good time trying it," retorted the cowboy truculently. Jackson stepped toward McGlory. "Don't you get gay with me," he shouted. "I'm not going to lose a twenty-five hundred dollar car and not make somebody smart for it. I told the chink that was what the car was worth." "I know something about cars," put in Matt mildly, "and this one is out of date--four years old, if it's a day. If it had been a modern car, with the gasoline tank in the right place, it would never have caught fire, and you could have saved something out of the wreck. The proper feed is by gravity, and the right place for the tank is under the seat----" "Oh, you!" sneered Jackson, "what do you know about cars?" "He can forget more in a minute about these chug wagons," bristled McGlory, "than you know in a year. Put that in your brier and whiff it. This fellow's Motor Matt, motor expert, late of Burton's Big Consolidated Shows, where he's been exhibiting the Traquair aëroplane. Now bear down on your soft pedal, will you?" "Thunder!" breathed the man in the runabout. "Is--is that a fact?" queried Jackson, visibly impressed. "It's a fact," said Matt, "but it needn't make any difference in this case. That car of yours, Jackson, would have been dear at a thousand dollars. You'll get every cent the car is worth, too. The Chinaman who hired it is a mandarin. He's in this country on private business. He has tea plantations, rice fields, and money in the bank till you can't rest. Now, stop worrying about the damages and give my chum and me a lift up the hill. We'll find Tsan Ti at the Kaaterskill. That's where he's been staying for a week or two." Jackson was mollified. "Of course," said he, "I don't want to be rough with anybody, but you understand how it is. This country is hard on cars, and I have to charge good prices and be sure the cars are hired by men who can put up for them if they go over a cliff or meet with any other kind of a wreck. I'm obliged to you for your information about Tsan Ti. He's been a good deal of a conundrum at the Kaaterskill since he's put up there. A man, riding up from below, passed a couple of Chinamen chin-chinning beside this wreck, and he brought word to me. That's how Jim and I happened to come down." "You say the man from below passed _two_ Chinamen talking near the car?" queried Matt, with a surprised glance at McGlory. "That's what he said." "There was only the mandarin in the car when we had the smash," said Matt. "Where could that other one have come from?" McGlory said nothing, but his face was full of things he might have said--doubts of the mandarin, of course, and vague suspicions of double dealing. Jim backed the runabout around, and Matt and McGlory crowded into it. There was a hard climb up the hill, overloaded as the runabout was, but finally the Mountain House was passed and the other hotel reached. The boys, in their tattered garments, aroused considerable curiosity among the hotel guests as they crossed the colonnaded porches and made their way into the office. They inquired for Tsan Ti, and bellboys were sent to the Chinaman's room and around the porches and grounds, calling his name. But he wasn't to be found. "Up a stump some more," growled McGlory, "and all because that jade-stone amulet got overheated and caused the mandarin to look for trouble. Oh, blazes! _When_ will we ever acquire a proper amount of horse sense for a couple of our size? You couldn't expect much more of me, Matt, but--well, pard, I'm surprised at _you_." CHAPTER IX. TRICKED ONCE MORE. Matt and McGlory were bruised and sore. They were also pretty tired. From the moment they had met Tsan Ti on the mountainside that morning, they had been knocked about from pillar to post. "If trouble will please hold off for a couple of hours," said McGlory, "I'll give a good imitation of a fellow snatching his forty winks and getting ready for another round. What do you say, Matt? The mandarin isn't here. He may come, but I wouldn't bet on it, as I'm sort of losing faith in the yellow boy with the red button. He has a disagreeable habit of getting out from under whenever anything goes wrong, and we find ourselves stalled. I reckon, though, you'll want to stay here and give him a chance to blow in?" "We can hold on here for two or three hours," answered Matt, "take a bath, and a rub down, and a bit of a rest, then fasten our clothes together with a supply of safety pins and motor back to Catskill and get another outfit of clothes from our grips. Then, after a good night's sleep, we'll go to Purling." "No matter whether the mandarin shows up or not?" "No matter what the mandarin does, Joe. I've worked up a big interest in that Eye of Buddha, and I'm going to find out whether it's a fair shake or a myth." "I'll bet all my share of the aëroplane money against two bits that we never see the old hatchet boy again, and also that something hits us before we can get back to Catskill." "You're guessing, Joe." "Well, that's my chirp, in anything from doughnuts to double eagles. That Jackson party might as well hang that wrecked bubble in a tree as a memento--the man with the rice fields and the tea plantations, and so on, has started for the high timber just to dodge paying for that pile of scrap down the trail." "You're wrong," said Matt confidently. "Wait till the cards are all on the table, pard, and then we'll see." They had a most refreshing bath and a long rest in a couple of lazy-back chairs on an upper veranda. Orders had been left with the clerk that word should be brought to them at once if Tsan Ti put in an appearance. McGlory awoke from a drowse to unbosom himself of a subject which had not, as yet, claimed its proper share of attention. "The fellow who came up the mountain and told Jackson there was a burning car piled by the roadside," said he, "said there were two Chinamen watching the conflagration. Think chink number two was Kien Lung with another yellow cord, Matt?" "No." "Then who was he?" "I've been thinking that it was Sam Wing, the San Francisco Chinaman, who has been keeping track of the two thieves for the mandarin." "That's you!" exclaimed McGlory. "Why, I never thought of that dark horse. Have you any notion he coaxed the mandarin away on important business?" "That's likely." "Anything's likely. For instance, it's quite likely the fat Chinaman is a washee-washee boy from 'Frisco with a fine, large imagination, and that he's stringing us." "Why should he want to do that?" "No _sabe_, but there's a lot of things we can't _sabe_ concerning this layout." "Tsan Ti has money----" "He showed us all of a hundred in double eagles. But did he let us get our hands on the coin? Not any. He allows, in his large and offhand way, that he has millions of taels--but that may be one of his tales," and McGlory grinned. "Anyhow," said Matt doggedly, "we ride to Purling to-morrow and see the man at the general store." Matt fell into a drowse again. No one from the office came to announce the arrival of Tsan Ti, and when the hour arrived for the evening meal the boys had their supper sent to their room. They were not arrayed properly for "dining out." Following the meal they patched up their garments with safety pins, settled their bill, and walked over to the Mountain House garage. Dusk was falling as they trundled their machines into the road and lighted their lamps. "We'll have an easier time of it going down the mountain," said Matt, "than we had coming up." "Don't be so sure, pard," answered McGlory. "There are a number of things to trouble us besides the road." "Don't cross any trouble bridges until you come to them, Joe," advised Matt. The motor boys were feeling a little stiff and sore, but their engines were humming cheerfully, and there was a joy for them in the downward spin through the woods. They remembered the tree root, and slowed down for it as it came under their headlights; and they also remembered the location of the wrecked automobile and gave it a wide berth. At about the place where they had encountered the one-eyed sailor, with everything going smoothly and a fair prospect of reaching Catskill in record time, the crack of a firearm suddenly split the still air to the left of the road. Startled, they clamped on the brakes and came to a halt in time to hear a shrill cry of "Help! help!" ringing out weirdly from the dark woods. "Sufferin' hold-ups!" murmured McGlory. "And here we are with nothing more than a couple of jack-knives to our names." "What do you suppose it can be?" asked Matt, dropping the bracket from his rear wheel and letting the motor cycle stand in the road. He moved off toward the left and listened. "There's a row on in there," declared McGlory. "I can hear some one pounding around in the timber." "So can I," said Matt. "We've got to do what we can, Joe. That may mean robbery--or worse. Come on!" The generous instincts of the motor boys prompted them to go at once to the assistance of a possible victim, and they hurried into the timber. The sounds of scuffling which they had heard died out suddenly, and while they were moving around through the gloom, trying to locate the scene of the trouble, there reached their ears the chug-chugging of motors getting under way. "Our motor cycles!" exclaimed Matt, darting back toward the road. "Gad-hook it all!" cried McGlory; "it was a frame-up! A trick to run off our wheels!" Although they were only a few moments regaining the road, the lamps of the two motor cycles were gleaming more than a hundred feet away. "Stop!" yelled Matt, racing down the road. His answer was a raucous laugh--such a laugh as they had heard before. And then came the words, bellowed hoarsely: "Leave the Eye o' Buddha alone!" After that silence, during which the gleaming lamps turned an angle in the road and were blotted from sight. "Seems to me," said McGlory grimly, "I've heard that voice before." Motor Matt did not reply at once. Perhaps his feelings were too deep for words. "And I was expecting something, too!" said the cowboy, in a spasm of self-reproach. "Sufferin' easy marks! Matt, some of the stuff from those glass balls must still be playing hob with our brains. Otherwise, how is it these backsets keep happening in one, two, three order? There go a pair of motor bikes that'll stand us in four hundred good big cart wheels. That was right, what you said before we left those wheels and flocked into the timber. That shot and those sounds of a scuffle _did_ mean robbery. That's a lesson for us never to help a person in distress. Likewise it's a hint that we'd better pull out and leave the mandarin to manage his own troubles." "It's a hint that we'd better go to Purling to-morrow and look for Grattan," and there was an unwonted sharpness in Motor Matt's voice that caused McGlory to straighten up and take notice. "When you tune up that way," said the cowboy, "it means mischief. There was another man with the Hottentot. Do you think the _hombre_ was this Grattan sharp?" "No. Grattan is expecting the sailor at Purling to-morrow. This was some one else." "The ruby thieves have quite an extensive gang. It's walk for us, from here to Catskill." "From here to the first farmhouse," corrected Matt. "We'll get some one to take us to Catskill with a horse and buggy." He bit off his words crisp and sharp, which, to McGlory, proved how deeply he resented the scurvy trick by which they had been lured away from the motor cycles. "How easy it is to understand things when you look back at' em," philosophized the cowboy, swinging along at Matt's side, down the dark road. "The webfoot and his pal fired that shot and raised a yell for help, then they jumped up and down in the bushes, and the result had all the effect of a knock-down and drag-out. One-Eye must have had us spotted, and he and his pal were lingering in the trailside brush, watching for our headlights. Oh, yes, it was easy. The 'illustrious ones' tumbled over themselves to fall into the trap. If I had that----" "There's a farmhouse," said Matt, and indicated a point of light close to the foot of the mountain. "Nearly every house in these parts is either a boarding house or a hotel. We can get a rig, all right, I'm pretty sure." CHAPTER X. THE DIAMOND MERCHANT. It was midnight before the motor boys were deposited on the walk in front of their hotel in Catskill. A team and two-seated wagon had brought them, and they had not left the vicinity of the road at the foot of the mountain until they had driven around for an hour, made inquiries concerning two men on motor cycles, given a description of the sailor, and passed word that the men were thieves and were to be arrested and held if found. Matt, according to agreement, paid the driver who had brought them to Catskill five dollars for his services. Before going to bed Matt gathered a little information concerning the village of Purling. He learned that it was six miles from Cairo, and that Cairo was on the railroad and could be reached by a morning train. But the train would not serve. By proceeding to the village in that way, the boys would not be able to arrive before noon, and, according to the note in the sailor's cap, they were expected at the general store by ten o'clock. "We'll hire an automobile," said Matt, "and a driver that knows the mountains. I guess we'd better speak for the machine to-night." At the same place where they had secured the motor cycles they arranged for a touring car and a driver who knew the country, but the arrangement was not effected until they had deposited three hundred dollars as a guaranty that the motor cycles would be returned, or the owner indemnified for their loss. "Three hundred plunks gone where the woodbine twineth," mourned McGlory, as they were going to bed, "and all because we're helping to turn a trick for Tsan Ti. Good business--I don't think." "This Grattan," said Matt, "is probably lying low somewhere near Purling. If he isn't, he wouldn't be making it so hard for his pal to get at him. The sailor will be there, and he won't get to see Grattan without the letter. We'll catch the fellow, and we may catch Grattan--say nothing of the possibility of recovering the Eye of Buddha." "We'll draw a blank in the matter of that idol's eye, pard, you take it from me. But there's a chance of our putting a fancy kibosh on Bunce and getting back the go-devil machines. Still, there's also a splendid chance for a fall down. Listen. The _Hottentot_ man examines the note in his cap. He sees it's not the few lines he got from Grattan, but a lot of 'con' talk from the mandarin. That leaves One Eye in the air, but gives him a line on _us_. What'll happen? I wish I knew." "The sailor may not look at the letter in his hat until he gets to Purling, so----" "Don't think it, pard. That would be too much luck to come at a time when we're hocussed crisscross and both ways." By seven the boys were up, had overhauled their grips, and got into fresh clothes, and were sitting down to breakfast at the first call. By seven-thirty the touring car was at the door for them, freshly groomed and shining like a new dollar. It was a sixty horse-power machine, and a family carryall for the personal use of the proprietor of the garage. Not having been used for hackabout purposes, the car was more dependable than one that had been hammered about over the rough roads by anybody who could tell the spark plug from the magneto and had five dollars an hour to pay for a junket. The proprietor, who was a good fellow at heart and wanted to do everything possible to help the boys recover the stolen motor cycles, made this concession. So, with Matt in the driver's seat, the native who knew the way beside him, and McGlory with the tonneau all to himself, the touring car flashed out of Catskill Landing and took to the hills. Of the drive Motor Matt made that morning, the driver on his left entertained the most enthusiastic recollections. Never had he seen a car handled so cleverly; and when the car balked--which the best of cars will do now and then--the way the king of the motor boys located the difficulty and adjusted it was something to think about. At nine-thirty the touring car landed its passengers in front of the general store. Two men were sunning themselves on the bench in front, and a sleeping dog looked up lazily, snapped at a fly, and then went to sleep again. "Where's Mr. Pryne?" asked Matt, stepping up to the two men on the bench. "I'm Pryne," answered one of the two, measuring Matt with an expectant light in his faded blue eyes. "Look at this," said Matt, and presented the letter from Grattan. The man, who was roughly dressed and certainly had nothing to do with the store, studied the writing carefully. "This is all right," he remarked; "_all_ right, but"--and his eyes traveled doubtfully over McGlory--"only one was expected." "Don't worry about that, Mr. Pryne," answered Matt genially; "this chap," and he lowered his voice to a whisper, "is a pal." "There's another one to go," murmured Pryne. Matt was startled; then, thinking the other one was the sailor, he braced himself for short, sharp work. "Where is the other one, Pryne?" "Here," and Pryne indicated the other man who had been sitting with him on the bench. Matt gave more careful attention to this other individual. He was a Hebrew--one glance was sufficient to decide that. Also, he was ornately clad, wearing many large diamonds and making a fulsome display of heavy gold watch chain. The Jew pushed forward with a wink and an ingratiating smile. "Goldstein is der name," said he, thrusting out a hand. "I'm der man from New York, yes, der"--and he whispered the rest in Matt's ear--"diamond merchant. You know for vat I come." A thrill ran through the king of the motor boys. No, he did not know "for vat" the diamond merchant had come, but he guessed that it was to purchase the Eye of Buddha. The mandarin's story was being borne out by every fresh development. "We're a little ahead of time," observed Pryne, "but I guess it won't make no difference." "Not the least," replied Matt. "I don't believe it will be necessary for me to take my pal along, so I'll just give him a few instructions about the motor car and we'll be going. This way, Joe," and Matt took McGlory to one side for a brief talk. "What you going to do when you reach where you're going, with all that gang against you?" whispered the cowboy. "The outfit would be more than a handful for the two of us--and here you're cutting me out of the game right at the start." "No," whispered Matt, "I'm not cutting you out of the game. You've got the most important part to play. Listen. Find a constable, if you can do it in a hurry, and pick up two or three more men and follow us. Do it carefully, so that Pryne won't suspect. Also tell the driver of the car to look out for the one-eyed sailor. If he comes here at ten o'clock, tell the driver to have him captured and held--and the other man, too, if they both come. That's your programme, Joe, and everything depends on you." The cowboy's eyes began to glitter and snap as the gist and vital importance of his pard's instructions drifted through his mind. "You know you can bank on me, Matt," he answered. "But don't move too fast--make a delay. I've got a lot to do, and you're liable to get so far ahead I'll lose track of you." "I'll delay matters as much as I can." Matt returned to Goldstein. "Where's Pryne?" he queried, observing, with a qualm, that the guide had vanished. "He is gone for der team," replied Goldstein. "I am sorry," he added, jumping to another subject, "that der price of precious stones is come down. Fancy prices don't rule no more for such luxuries." "You'll have to pay something for this treasure from the temple of Honam if you get it," answered Matt. "I will do all that is in reason, yes, but der chances vas great, and I take them." "Haven't Grattan and I taken chances, Goldstein?" returned Matt sharply. "You have, yes. Well, we shall see, we shall see." Goldstein was carrying a small satchel which he kept in hand continually, whether he was sitting down or standing up. "I come prepared to talk business," he said, with a sly grin, directing his glance at the satchel. "My orders was to wait here until Bunce iss arrived with der letter. I had a letter myself," he laughed. At this juncture Pryne drove around the corner of the building and drew up at the platform in front of the store. "Jump in, gents," said he. "It won't be long till I snake you out to my place." Matt and Goldstein climbed into the back seat. Under the seat was a bag of ground feed. As Pryne was driving out of town, Matt drew his knife from his pocket, opened the blade, and dropped a hand over the back of the seat. A jab or two with the knife made a hole in the bag. The wagon was an old one, and the boards in the bottom of the box had wide cracks between them. Looking back casually, Matt saw that a fine trail of "middlings" was leaking into the road. "That will do the trick," he thought exultantly. "My cowboy pard can be depended on to attend to the rest." CHAPTER XI. THE OLD SUGAR CAMP. Pryne's team was by no means a swift one. The horses jogged slowly out into the hills, Pryne constantly plying a gad. "Seems to me like," remarked Pryne, looking around suddenly, "that Grattan allowed Bunce had only one eye." "That's another pal of his," said Matt coolly. "You've got us mixed, Pryne." "Waal, mebby. Git ap, there," he added to the horses; "you critters are slower'n merlasses in January." For a few minutes they rode in silence, the dust eddying around them and only the creak of the wagon, the thump of the horses' hoofs, and the swish of the gad breaking the stillness. Goldstein, his satchel on his knees, kept flicking a gaudy and heavily perfumed handkerchief in front of his face to clear away the dust. Matt was busy with his thoughts, and was wondering what was to happen at the end of the journey. Abruptly, Pryne turned again in his seat. "Seems, too," he ventured, "as how Grattan said this Bunce was a sailor an' wore sailor clothes." "That's the other fellow again, Pryne," Matt smiled. "You haven't got much of a memory, I guess." "Waal, it ain't long, but it's mighty keen." "My cracious," murmured Goldstein, "but der dust is bad. How much farther is it yet?" "We turn at the next crossroads and pull up a hill," answered Pryne; "then we leave the hill road for a ways, an' we're there. It's my ole sugar camp. Trees is mostly played out, though, an' we don't make sugar there no more. It kinder 'pears to me like," he added, another thought striking him, "Grattan said Bunce had whiskers around his jaws." "That's the other pal," said Matt. "Git ap, there, Prince!" called Pryne, slapping the off horse with the gad. "How long have you known Grattan, Pryne?" inquired Matt. "Always, since I got married. My wife's his sister. Annaballe--that's the old woman--she's English, she is. Come over visitin' in Cairo, ten year back, an' I up and asked her to marry me. Grattan was to the weddin', an' that was the first an' only time we'd met till a few days ago. Great traveler, Grat is. He's been to Ejup, an' Rooshia, an' Chiny an' all them countries. Great traveler. Takes pictur's for these here movin'-picture machines." Matt heard this with interest. It reminded him of another time when he had encountered a moving-picture man and had had a particularly thrilling experience. And this experience with Grattan promised to be even more thrilling. "Is the sugar camp a safe place?" asked Matt. "Nobody ever goes to the old camp now no more," replied Pryne. "My cracious, vat a dust!" said Goldstein. "How big is der Eye?" he whispered to Matt. "Wait till you see it," Matt answered. "Pigeon's blood, yes?" Matt supposed he meant to ask if the Eye of Buddha was a pigeon's blood ruby. Taking a chance, Matt nodded. "She is a true Oriental, eh?" went on Goldstein, a greedy glint coming into his eyes. "It must be if it comes from China." "So! If she weigh five carat, she is vorth ten times so much as a diamond. But diamonds ain't vorth so much now." Matt looked behind him. The sack of middlings was half emptied. "Are we halfway to the old sugar camp, Pryne?" Matt called. "Better'n that," was the reply. "Here's where we turn for up the hill." The hill was long and high, and the road turned into a little-used trail and ascended through timber. The horses pulled and panted and the gad fell mercilessly. "Somethin' of a climb," said Pryne casually. "One of them tires back there is loose--the one on the right-hand side. Kinder keep an eye on it, will you?" Matt looked at the tire, which was on his side of the wagon. As yet, it was all right. Matt hoped it would remain so, for if Pryne got out to drive it on he might discover the loss of his middlings--and other things which would have a tendency to excite his suspicions. "Der dust ain't so much here," observed Goldstein, in a tone of relief. "Ain't so many wagons to churn it up," said Pryne. Then fell silence again, Matt busy with his thoughts. Where was Tsan Ti? While Matt was running down the Eye of Buddha for him, what was the Chinaman, to whom the recovery of the ruby meant so much, doing? These speculations were bootless, and Matt fell to thinking of the glass balls. If Grattan had a supply of them, all the men McGlory could bring would not be able to prevent him from getting away. Success in the king of the motor boys' venture hung by an exceedingly slender thread. "It will be hard business to cut it up," came the voice of Goldstein, breaking roughly into Matt's somber reflections. "Hard to cut what up?" Matt asked. "Der Eye. When it ain't best to sell precious stones in one piece, then we cut them up." Matt understood what the Jew was driving at. Large diamonds are hard to market, especially if the diamonds have been stolen. In order to dispose of them they are often cut up into smaller stones. "You see," proceeded Goldstein, "dis ruby is valuable because of its size, yes. Der size makes all der difference. If it is cut under fife carat, dere vasn't much sale. Anyhow, diamonds is sheaper as they was. I lose a lot of money by der fall in der price of diamonds." "Here's where we turn from the hill road an' strike out for the sugar camp," remarked Pryne. He swerved from the steep road as he spoke and drove into a bumpy swath cut through the timber. For half a mile or more they jolted and banged along, then Pryne pulled to a halt. "I'll hitch here," said he, getting out, "an' I'll leave the rig. The rest of the way we'll go on foot. It ain't fur," he added hastily, noticing the solicitous glance which Goldstein threw at his patent-leather shoes. "First time I efer come to a place like this to buy precious stones," remarked the Jew, clambering slowly down. Matt had a bad two minutes waiting for Pryne to hitch the horses and fearing he would come to the rear of the wagon and discover the slashed bag of feed. But Pryne was apparently unsuspicious. Turning away from the tree to which he had hitched the horses, he called to Matt and Goldstein to follow him. Their path took them through the old sugar "bush," among maples that were dead and dying and whose trunks were deeply scarred by the sap hunters. Presently an old log building came into view. "There's the place," said Pryne. Part of the building was nothing more than a tumble-down shed. One end of the structure, however, was walled in, and seemed to have been made habitable by the use of rough boards. A length of stovepipe stuck up through the roof--about the only visible sign that the place was used as a dwelling. With Pryne in the lead, the odd little group moved around the side of the log wall to a door. To say that Matt's heart did not beat more quickly, or that visions of violence did not float before his mental gaze, would be to say that he was not human. He had a keen realization of the dangers into which he was about to throw himself. The moment he passed the door deception would be a thing of the past. Grattan would recognize him as a stranger--a prying stranger who had come to the sugar camp with the intention of securing the Eye of Buddha. Matt's problem was to engage Grattan's attention, and keep him from going to extremes, until McGlory should arrive with reënforcements. Just how Matt was to do this he did not know. He was trusting to luck--and luck had not been favoring him to any great extent lately. The door of the log hut was closed. Pryne rapped on it. "Who's there?" demanded a voice from within. "It's Pryne, Grat," was the answer. "Goldstein and Bunce with you?" "Sure. I've fetched 'em." "Then bring them in. I'm ready and waiting." Pryne bore down on the wooden latch and threw open the door. "Go right in, gents," said he, stepping back. Goldstein, with a laugh, passed through the door first. Matt followed. Pryne brought up the rear and closed the door. What light there was in the one room in which Matt found himself came through the broken roof. There were no windows in the log walls. "He was there, all right, Grat," cried Pryne, with a loud guffaw, "an' he didn't make no bones about comin' with me. He was mighty anxious to come, seemed like, but I don't calculate he guessed he'd find so many folks here." Matt's eyes, by that time, had become accustomed to the gloom, and he was able to look around and distinguish various objects. First, he saw a heavy-set man on a bench. This man had a dark face and a sinister eye, and was leaning back against the wall. Both his hands clung to a buckthorn cane with a large wooden handle. The cane was crossed against one of his knees and held it slightly elevated. "Throw yer binnacle lights this way, my hearty, as soon's ye're done sizin' up my shipmate," came a voice from the opposite side of the room. Matt whirled, a startled exclamation escaping his lips. It was the one-eyed sailor who had spoken. The fellow was sitting on another bench, a wide grin on his weather-beaten face. The trap had been sprung--and it was the most complete trap Matt had ever been in. "I told ye more'n once to leave the Eye o' Buddha alone," chuckled Bunce, "but ye wouldn't take a warnin'. _Now_, see where ye are!" CHAPTER XII. A TIGHT CORNER. It was a characteristic of Motor Matt that he never became "rattled." A clear head and steady nerves were absolutely essential in his chosen career. To these he added a quick and sure judgment. "Surprised, are you?" asked Grattan, with a choppy laugh. "Well, yes, in a way," replied Matt coolly. "I wonder if you know what you're up against?" "You have a stolen ruby, called the Eye of Buddha, and Goldstein is here to buy it." "My cracious!" gasped the Jew, throwing up his hands. There was no doubting his surprise, so Matt knew that he, at least, was not in the plot. "Close your face, Goldstein," scowled Grattan. "This business isn't going to bother you. Take a seat, Motor Matt," he added. "We'll have a little chin-chin before we get busy." There was an empty bench along the end wall. Matt walked over to it and seated himself, glad that there was to be a "chin-chin." This meant delay, and would give time for McGlory to arrive with reënforcements. "I don't understand what's der matter," gulped Goldstein, pressing back against the wall and hugging his satchel in his arms. "I don't like der looks of things, no." "You can't help the looks of things," snapped Grattan, "and you'll understand the situation a lot better before you get away from this sugar camp. Sit down." There was a three-legged stool close to the Jew, and he dropped down on it in a state of semi-collapse. His eyes passed to Pryne, who had drawn a revolver and was standing in front of the door. Undoubtedly Goldstein had a lot of money in his satchel with which to pay for the ruby, so it is small wonder he was worried upon finding himself a participator in such a scene. "I thought der young feller was Bunce!" he exclaimed, moistening his dry lips with his tongue. "Put a stopper on your jaw-tackle!" yelled the sailor. "That's the line we've run out to you for now, and you'll lay to it." The Jew swallowed hard on a lump in his throat and fell limply against the wall behind him. Goldstein had even more to lose as the outcome of that desperate situation than had Matt, but the king of the motor boys saw at a glance that he was absolutely useless so far as resistance was concerned. Grattan dropped his suspended foot on the floor and turned to Pryne. "Did any one come with Motor Matt, Pryne?" he inquired. "Two fellers come with him," was the response. "They got to Purling in a automobile." "Who were those fellows, Motor Matt?" demanded Grattan, shooting a sharp glance at the young motorist. "The driver of the car, from Catskill Landing," said Matt, "and my chum, Joe McGlory." "Why did you leave them in Purling?" "The driver had to stay to look after the car, and I didn't think it was necessary to bring McGlory along for a bodyguard." Grattan threw back his head and peered at Matt through half-closed eyes. "You're a cool one," he remarked. "Why were you coming here to see me?" "I wanted to get the ruby." Bunce roared. Grattan commanded silence sharply, and the sailor's merriment ceased as suddenly as it had begun. "Did you think," went on Grattan, "that you could, single-handed, take the ruby from me by force?" Matt was silent. "Or did you think you could talk me out of it?" "I hadn't much of an idea what I could do," said Matt. "It was just barely possible you'd be generous enough, when you learned the circumstances, to give or sell the Eye of Buddha to Tsan Ti." Grattan curbed the old sailor's fresh inclination to laugh with a quick look. "What are the circumstances?" he queried. "Tsan Ti has received the yellow cord. If he does not recover the idol's eye in two weeks, he must destroy himself." "Young man," said Grattan, "I have been two years planning to get my clutches on the Eye of Buddha. I have haunted Canton, feasted my eyes upon that priceless splash of red in the forehead of the idol in the Honam Joss House until the itch to possess it fairly drove me mad. But the temple was too well guarded, the priests too many, and the walls too high. It was only when I learned of the balls of Ptah and their powers that the feat looked at all feasible. In order to see these balls of Ptah for myself, I made the long journey from Hongkong to the ruins of Karnak on the Nile." Taking the buckthorn cane under his arm, Grattan stepped across the room to a table near the bench where Bunce was sitting. On the table rested a small box with a strap handle. Grattan opened the lid of the box, and from a nest of cotton picked one of the shimmering glass balls. He handled the ball gently, and a glow came into his eyes as he held it up. "A quantity of these balls," he proceeded, "were unearthed a year ago from among the ruins of Karnak. They are of Egyptian glass, thousands of years old, and each of the big beads has blown into its surface the _praenomen_ of Hatasu, a queen who is conjectured to have lived more than fourteen hundred years before our era. A party of workmen discovered the balls, and chanced to break one of them." Grattan paused, turning the shimmering sphere around and around in his hand. "All the workmen," he went on, "were thrown into an unconscious condition, and it was in this manner that the peculiar properties of the balls were discovered. Why they are called the balls of Ptah I don't know, and what they contain that has such a peculiar effect on living beings, no one has ever been able to discover. But I heard of them, stole a dozen, and tried one on the museum guards in making my escape. It answered the purpose," he went on dryly. "If it had not, I would have been caught." Almost reverently he replaced the ball in the cotton-lined case and closed the lid. Returning to his bench, he resumed his original position, sweeping an amused glance around him at the awed faces of Goldstein, Pryne, and Matt. "Armed with one of the balls of Ptah," he proceeded, "I picked up the ancient mariner"--he nodded toward Bunce--"and we manufactured a silk ladder twenty feet long, and weighted it at one end. Then, one day, we repaired to the Honam Joss House at five in the afternoon. That ball of Egyptian glass, crushed to fragments on the floor, overcame the priests. Bunce and I protected our own faces with masks, equipped with oxygen tubes reaching into small tanks of compressed air in our pockets. To throw the weighted end of the ladder over the head of Ptah took us possibly a minute; for me to climb the ladder and dig the ruby from the idol's forehead consumed possibly five minutes; and for Bunce and me to get out of the temple took five minutes more. We were safely out of Canton when the storm broke." Matt had listened to all this in supreme wonder. The audacity of the undertaking caused his pulses to stir, but he wondered why Grattan should recount such an exploit to him, and in the hearing of Pryne and Goldstein. "You know now," continued Grattan, "what the Eye of Buddha has cost me, and you say it is just barely possible I would be generous enough to yield the gem to Tsan Ti in order to save his life!" "Or you might sell it to him," suggested Matt. "I might, if he could pay what it is worth." "Grattan," spoke up Goldstein with sudden fervor, "you have promised me der first shance!" "Keep still!" growled Grattan. "You'll get all the chance you want before you leave here." "The mandarin is a rich man," said Matt, who, of course, was parleying merely to gain time. "He has a little money with him, but that is all. Every plantation he owns in China, every string of cash in his strong boxes is guarded by the regent. If he does not recover the Eye of Buddha, the property will be confiscated. And he can't touch a cent of his fortune until he returns the ruby to its place in the idol's head. So, you see, your friend, the mandarin of the red button, is in a bally hard fix. He can't buy the ruby, and certainly I won't give it to him." This was intensely interesting to Matt. He was listening, now, in a casual way, for the approach of McGlory and his party, and he was planning what he could do with the balls of Ptah in order to keep Grattan from using them. "You're a clever lad, Motor Matt," went on Grattan, "and I admire clever people. You performed a neat trick when you removed that folded note from Bunce's cap. It was a foolish place to keep such a thing, but Bunce is a good deal of a fool. For instance, I reached the Catskill Mountains with six of the balls of Ptah--the only ones of the kind to be had--and the crack-brained sailor man stole two of them and threw them away on you and your chum, gaining little and losing something which might prove of priceless value to us." "Now, shipmate," began Bunce, in a wheedling voice, "you don't get the right splice on that piece of rope; you----" "That'll do," said Grattan, waving his hand. Bunce subsided. The power of Grattan over the sailor was absolute. It was easy to see whose had been the plotting mind and the guiding hand in the exploits of the two. "You are sharp enough to wonder, I suppose," said Grattan, again addressing Matt, "why I am going into these private details for your benefit. The answer is simple. Our plans are laid to leave here to-day. You can't stop us, no one can stop us. The balls of Ptah will disarm all opposition, and the four of them will see us out of the country with Goldstein's money." "But if Goldstein has the Eye of Buddha," said Matt, "I will know it and can prove it. He can't hold stolen property." "Certainly he can't. Goldstein gets the ruby and we get Goldstein's money. You have Goldstein arrested and prove in a court of law that he bought the idol's eye from the original thieves. Then----" A howl came from Goldstein. "I von't buy, I von't buy! That is a skin game. I von't buy der stone." "Oh, yes, you will," and, for the first time, a laugh came from Grattan's lips. "You've brought the money and you'll buy before you leave." Then, for the first time, Goldstein understood the true meaning of the situation. He flashed a wild look at Pryne and the revolver, and sank back against the wall and groaned. CHAPTER XIII. A MASTER ROGUE. "As I said before," resumed Grattan, "I admire clever people. Goldstein is not clever. I send a letter to him at New York and tell him to come to Purling, ask for Pryne at the general store, and bring money enough to buy the Eye of Buddha. His covetous soul prompts him to defy the law, buy the ruby for half its value, and cheat Bunce and me. He rushes into the trap. I tell you he is as big a fool as Bunce--almost." "Mercy!" begged Goldstein. "Oh, Mister Grattan, don't rob me! Der price of diamonds has gone off, and I lose much money----" "Silence!" thundered Grattan. Goldstein fell whimpering back against the wall. "It was only by a chance, Motor Matt," went on Grattan, "that I discovered your trick in exchanging a letter of your own for one of mine in the ancient mariner's cap. Bunce did not know I was harbored in this old sugar camp. Pryne knew it, and also my sister, who happens to be Pryne's wife. No one else knew it. Bunce and I had discovered that we were being trailed by a San Francisco Chinaman, and that he was firing telegrams back to the slope for Tsan Ti. From Catskill I came here to wait until the ruby could be exchanged for Goldstein's money. Bunce went around the vicinity of Catskill keeping watch for the spying Chinaman, and for Tsan Ti. He didn't find the 'Frisco hatchet boy, but he did discover, this forenoon, that the mandarin was staying at the hotel on the mountain. Bunce was traveling around in an automobile, and he had my letter asking him to come to Purling, which I had mailed to him at the Catskill post office. When he found Tsan Ti was staying in the hotel, Bunce thought he would hurry to Purling and take his chance of finding me. On the way down the mountain, as ill luck would have it, he passed you and the mandarin. Then came that exchange of notes. When Bunce discovered that, his panic was still further increased. The road he took to Purling passed along the foot of this hill. "I was out taking my constitutional, at the time, and fate threw Bunce and me together, for I hailed him as he was passing. The driver of the automobile was a man we both knew we could trust. Bunce and I had a talk, and I read the letter you had put in his hat in the place of the one I had sent. The circumstances attending the exchange of that note convinced me that in you I had an uncommonly clever person to deal with. I guessed that you would use the note and try to find out where I was. I didn't want you to do that, but I arranged with Pryne, if you did, to bring you out here. I also sent Bunce on the rightabout back to the mountainside, and told him to make away with your motor cycles. That, I hoped, would keep you from Purling by giving you something else to hunt for instead of the Eye of Buddha. But I didn't know you--I failed to do your cleverness full justice. "Bunce went into hiding at the roadside from the mountain top, knowing you would have to come that way. When you sped down the road in an automobile, with your chum and Tsan Ti, Bunce was rattled. He had been expecting you on motor cycles, and had framed up a little plan which he worked so successfully later. However, he put a bullet into one of the automobile tires and caused a smash. The fool! He came near getting us into the toils of the law so deep we could never have escaped. His folly continued, however, when he skulked close to the burning machine to note the extent of the ruin he had caused. He had a close call when you took after him. More by luck than by any good judgment, he got away from you, and was close enough to see and hear what went on when the owner of the wrecked automobile met and talked with you in the road. "Bunce hunted up the driver of the car, who had been waiting for him in a convenient place not far from the road. The two went into hiding in the brush, spotted your motor-cycle lamps, captured your machines, and the wheels are now handily by to help us in our getaway." Matt had listened to this talk abstractedly. He was waiting and listening for McGlory and the reënforcements. Why didn't they come? They had had ample time, and Matt was positive they would pick up the trail he had left and follow without difficulty. McGlory was a good trailer, and he would be quick to understand the sifted line of middlings when he saw it. "Shipmate," said Bunce, "you haven't given me my proper rating. It wasn't all luck an' touch an' go with me. I done noble, I did." "You mean well, Bunce, but you're not clever," said Grattan. "My eye! Wasn't it clever the way I put on them scarecrow fixin's in the cornfield?" "And then lost your nerve and ducked while Motor Matt and his chum were looking at you? Oh, yes, that _was_ clever." There was scorn in Grattan's voice. Matt had heard enough to realize that Grattan was a master rogue. He was playing a bold game, and with consummate skill. He was willing to talk, to lay bare the innermost details of his work, for he had planned escape and felt sure he would get away. Matt wondered if he would not succeed in spite of McGlory and the men he was to bring with him. Those balls, those balls of Ptah! They appeared to be the key that was to help Grattan through the coil of the law. "I am rewarding you, Motor Matt, for your cleverness," pursued Grattan, "and for the narrow escape Bunce gave you in that automobile. The reward is the Eye of Buddha. I sell it to Goldstein for the money he has in that satchel; then, while Bunce and I are safely out of the hut, I break one of the balls of Ptah by hurling it through the open door; you and Goldstein become unconscious; you recover and make a prisoner of Goldstein; and, finally, by due process of law, you recover the ruby for Tsan Ti. Very simple. So far as I can see, Goldstein is the only one to suffer." Matt was still listening, listening. Where in the world was McGlory? Grattan turned toward the shivering Jew. "Goldstein," said he sternly, "how much money have you in that satchel?" "Mercy, Mr. Grattan!" implored the diamond merchant. "I have lost much money by der decline in----" "How much have you in the satchel?" repeated Grattan. "Only a little, Mr. Grattan. I dit not bring much." "Didn't you bring enough to pay a good price for the ruby?" "How was I to know vat der ruby was worth? Fife thousand dollars is what I brought----" "Five thousand! Five thousand to pay me for two years of planning, and the risk! You have brought more than that." "Where is der ruby, Mr. Grattan?" "Where you'll not find it until I see how much money you have in the satchel. Give it to Bunce. Bunce, you open the grip and count the money." "Don't do that, please, Mr. Grattan! I have lost much money by der drop in----" "Take it over and give it to Bunce." Tremblingly, Goldstein got up with his precious satchel. His face was pallid, and he seemed scarcely able to move. He started toward the sailor; then, suddenly, when he was close to Pryne, he whirled and grabbed at the exposed revolver. The satchel dropped, and Goldstein, with the fury of desperation, fought like a madman. It was his money he was fighting for--money that was, perhaps, dearer to him than life itself. Nothing else could have goaded him into such a mad attempt to escape from the hut. Bunce sprang toward the struggling pair at the door, and Grattan also arose and stepped toward them. This offered Matt a chance for a daring _coup_. Unseen in the excitement, and unheard because of the noise of the scuffle, he glided to the table and opened the box. Deftly he extracted one of the balls and allowed the box-cover to fall into place. The ball passed into his pocket. While he stood by the table, Grattan suddenly caught sight of him. "Go back to your bench, Motor Matt!" he ordered. "You have everything to gain and nothing to lose by sitting tight and obeying orders. Get back, I tell you." Matt backed to the bench and sat down. Bunce and Pryne flung Goldstein to the floor, and while Pryne kicked him toward his seat Bunce regained his own place with the satchel. "I did not think Goldstein had it in him," laughed Grattan. "When you take his money, you touch him in a vital place. Be sensible, Goldstein," he added. "We've got too strong a grip on you." The Jew lifted himself to the stool, bruised and battered. His head was bowed and he presented a pitiable sight. "Now, then, Bunce," said Grattan, "look into the satchel. Let's see how much Goldstein brought with him for purposes of barter. I didn't expect to get anywhere near what the Eye of Buddha was worth, but----" There came a pounding on the door. Instantly all were on their feet, consternation written large in every face but Grattan's and Matt's. Grattan believed that, even with intruders at hand, he was master of the situation. Matt, armed with one of the balls of Ptah, was inclined to dispute the question with him. "Open up!" cried a voice. There was a bar across the door and Pryne stood with one hand on the fastening to make sure it held against the attack. Grattan fluttered a hand for silence. "Who's there?" he demanded. "Porter, the constable, from Purling, and five other men." Grattan leaped to the table and caught up the box. Holding it in front of him, the buckthorn cane under his arm, he whispered to his confederates: "Bunce, you and Pryne stand ready to leave the room. When I give the word, go--and go quick." Then, lifting his voice, Grattan added: "Open the door, Pryne, and admit the constable from Purling and five men." Pryne bent to the bar. "Stop!" cried Matt. Pryne raised himself quickly. He and Bunce, Grattan and even Goldstein stared at the king of the motor boys. Matt was standing on the bench, his right hand lifted, and one of the shimmering spheres in his hand. "Don't come in here yet, McGlory!" shouted Matt. "I'll give the word when I want you to come. You see, Grattan," he added, "I'd a little rather have my friends stay on the outside until they can come in here _after_ I break the glass ball." CHAPTER XIV. THE GLASS SPHERES. Tremors shook the one-eyed sailor. The satchel quivered in his hands. Pryne was filled with consternation, and showed it as plainly as did Bunce. The full meaning of the situation had not dawned on Goldstein as yet, but the light was slowly breaking. Grattan alone, of all those confronting Matt, seemed in full possession of his wits. "Don't throw that, don't throw that!" stuttered Bunce. "Avast, I say!" "Where'd he get the thing?" demanded Pryne. "Clever lad!" murmured Grattan. "You must have taken that out of the box during the disturbance caused by Goldstein. I saw you by the table, but I didn't think that was your game. Well, what are you intending to do? You have one of the balls and I have three. I don't know that I grasp your intentions." "If these glass balls are broken," answered Matt steadily, "it means that all of us, every person in this room, will be stretched out on the floor, unconscious and helpless. Those outside will escape the effects of the narcotic, or whatever it is contained in the spheres. Those who are at the door happen to be my friends. They will wait a space; then, after the fumes have cleared out of the room, they will come in, make prisoners of you, Bunce and Pryne, save Goldstein's money for him, and recover the Eye of Buddha." "Let me understand this fully," continued Grattan. "How do you know those outside are your friends?" "Listen," said Matt. "McGlory!" he called. "On deck, pard!" came the answer of the cowboy. "You're in a nice row of stumps, I must say. Who's in there with you?" "Grattan, Bunce, Goldstein, and Pryne." "What's the layout?" "I'm on a bench at one side of the room with one of the glass balls. Grattan stands opposite me with three more. If I throw the ball I'm holding, then I want you fellows to wait until it's safe to come in." "Speak to me about that!" Grattan was thoughtful. "How did those fellows manage to find their way here?" he asked. "Pryne had a sack of ground feed in the back of the wagon. I slashed it with my knife and we left a plain trail." "Jumpin' Mariar!" breathed Pryne. "You've hit it off nicely, Pryne!" scowled Grattan. "Annabelle ought to be proud of you for that. Bunce isn't the only fool I've been tied up with, this time." He turned again to the king of the motor boys. "You're deeper than I imagined, but you're a point shy in your reasoning, son. You'll not get the Eye of Buddha by proceeding in that fashion. I was dealing generously with you when I offered to trade the ruby for Goldstein's money." "You have no right to rob Goldstein," said Matt. "I couldn't help you without being equally guilty." "Goot boy!" applauded Goldstein. "That's der truth." "This diamond merchant," argued Grattan, "is only a 'fence' for stolen property. He came out here to cheat me, cheat Tsan Ti, cheat the law. We're simply beating him at his own game." "Two wrongs never made a right," answered Matt. "You talk foolishly. But, even though you carry out your plan, I say again _you will not get the Eye of Buddha_. That is safely hidden where it will never be found. Besides--look at Bunce." Matt had been giving his full attention to Grattan. He now swerved his eyes toward the sailor and found a revolver leveled in his direction. "Here's Scoldin' Sairy starin' ye in the face," said Bunce. "Don't tease us no more or she'll speak." "The moment that ball leaves your hand, Motor Matt," declared Grattan, "Bunce will fire. The rest of us will be left merely unconscious on the floor, but you--well, you're clever enough to imagine what will happen to _you_. Are you willing to talk sense? I promise to leave the Eye of Buddha with Goldstein in exchange for his satchel of money, but we must be allowed to escape with the satchel." "I'll not help you rob Goldstein," answered Matt. "Ye'd rather be sent to Davy Jones' locker, I suppose?" put in Bunce. "That's where ye'll go, as quick an' sure as though ye was wrapped in canvas and thrown over the side with a hundred-pound shot at yer pins." Goldstein, palpitating between hope and despair, watched and listened to this crossfire of threat and defiance wherein the fate of his money was at stake. A half-crazy light arose in his eyes and he seemed meditating some desperate move. Grattan lifted his voice. "Hello, out there! We've got Motor Matt under the point of a revolver, and if you don't retreat from the vicinity of this hut, there'll be shooting." "Is that so, pard!" came wildly from McGlory. "Stay where you are," cried Matt. "They won't shoot--they don't dare." "Bunce," began Grattan, "you'd better----" Grattan had no time to finish. With a wild yell of fury Goldstein flung himself at Grattan and seized the buckthorn cane, jerking it away and whirling it about his head. "The buckthorn!" shouted Bunce, in more of a panic than the Jew's manoeuvre seemed to call for; "he's got the buckthorn cane!" Grattan let go of his temper for the first time, and whirled and leaped at Goldstein. The Jew struck at him viciously, the blow falling short and knocking the box of glass balls out of his hand and upon the floor. "Mask! mask!" bellowed Grattan. The box flew open as it fell and Matt caught a glimpse of broken glass fragments flying out of it, and of something white lifted to the faces of Grattan and Bunce. All was turmoil in the room. Grattan rushed at Goldstein and tried to recover the cane. Matt flung at him the ball--the last conscious act the king of the motor boys could remember. The pungent odor arose to his nostrils, choking him, blinding his eyes and robbing him of his strength. He crashed down from the bench, and then a mighty hand seemed to sweep over him and drop a black pall of silence. Motor Matt opened his eyes. He was lying out in the sun, the bare boughs of the maples over him, and McGlory kneeling at his side. "You had a rough time of it, old pard," said McGlory, "but you didn't stop a bullet--and that's some satisfaction." Matt groped around in his mind to pick up the trend of events. Suddenly all the details flashed through his brain. "What became of Grattan and Bunce?" he asked, sitting up. "They smashed through a boarded-up window, pard," replied McGlory. "And got away?" "Like a couple of streaks. They used our motor cycles." "Why don't you follow them?" "Follow them? What's the good? That happened an hour ago. The Purling constable rushed back to the village to do some telephoning, and it's barely possible the two tinhorns will be corralled. I wouldn't bank on it, though. Luck hasn't been coming that way for us since we struck the Catskills." "An hour ago!" muttered Matt, rubbing his forehead. "It seems as though all this excitement had only just happened." "That's the way those dope balls act. I was afraid of 'em. And it wasn't so blooming pleasant for us fellows to stand out here while all that ruction was going on in the house. When One Eye and his pal crashed through the window--or maybe it wasn't a window but a hole in the wall that was just patched up with boards--we all took after 'em. Out close to the road they jumped on a couple of motor cycles--ours, by the looks of them--and were off a-smoking. When they came out of the cabin they had white things over their faces----" "Masks," said Matt. "They had them handy. But for that you'd have found them in the cabin along with Goldstein and me. By the way, where _is_ Goldstein?" "We left him in the house. We weren't in so much of a hurry to bring him to his senses as we were you." "And Pryne--what's become of him?" "Stretched out beside the diamond buyer." "Did you find the Eye of Buddha?" "That's a dream, Matt. No, we didn't find it. All we found was a satchel of money--the satchel Goldstein had with him at the store in Purling." "There were six of you--five with the constable. Where are the other four?" "The constable miscalled the number," laughed McGlory, "so his talk would have a bigger effect. There were only four of us all told. You see, we left the driver of the car in Purling to look after Bunce when he showed up there. And he was here, all the time! Sufferin' surprises! Say, I was sure stumped when I heard the Hottentot was in that cabin." "There were three besides you," went on Matt, persisting in his attempt to get the matter of numbers straight in his mind, "and the constable has gone to Purling. Where are the other two?" "Here they come," and McGlory pointed to a couple of Chinamen, who at that moment emerged from the hut. Matt stared and rubbed his eyes. "Am I still under the influence of those glass balls?" he muttered, "or is that really Tsan Ti coming this way?" "It's the mandarin, fast enough," chuckled McGlory, "and the chink that's with him is Sam Wing." Observing that Matt had recovered his senses, Tsan Ti hastened forward. CHAPTER XV. THE EYE OF BUDDHA. Tsan Ti was not particularly happy. He seemed pleased to meet Matt once more, but underlying this pleasure was a deep and settled melancholy. "Greetings, astonishing friend," said the mandarin. "You have performed actions never to be forgotten; imperishable deeds which----" "Cut out the frills, Tsan Ti," interrupted Matt, "and tell me where you went after Joe and I left you at the wrecked car." "Sam Wing approached me while I was seeking exhaustively for the yellow cord, which I had lost and which I had the overwhelming desire to use. Sam Wing was ascending the mountain, traveling on foot, to gain the top and find me. He had a report to convey. He conveyed it. He had seen the aged mariner in Purling, and he had come at once for me. I stopped for nothing--not even to explain my absence to you who had left me in such hurry. I went with Sam Wing forthwith, and we found some one to transport us to Purling. There we watched out the night in vain, and toward morning repaired to the house of a poor person, who afforded us food and a couch on which to rest. I was resting when Sam Wing came to my side and declared there was a youth in the place who was hunting for the peace officer. I went out, hoping to meet the peace officer myself and ask for news of the sailor. Imagine my marvelous astonishment upon discovering your distinguished friend. He wanted men and he could find few, so Sam Wing and myself accompanied him. Accept my congratulations, eminent friend, upon your escape. It is with sorrow, however, that I view the flight of the sailor and that other, whom I saw, on a former momentous occasion, wearing a sun hat with a pugree. These, I imagine, assisted their escape out of the sense-destroying fumes." From his blouse, Tsan Ti developed two squares of white cloth with holes clipped in each to fit a pair of eyes. A strong odor of drugs accompanied the display of the masks. "It was objects similar to these," went on the mandarin in pensive retrospection, "with which the thieves covered their faces in the temple at Honam. Pah!" and he flung the bits of cloth from him in repulsion. "You were a long time getting here, Joe," said Matt, turning to his chum. "I was a long time getting the constable," answered Joe, "and there wasn't another _hombre_ in the town who cared to take the risk of going with me. Finally I found the constable, and then Tsan Ti and Sam Wing came our way. We started, in a rig the constable borrowed from in front of the general store." "You picked up the trail?" "Tell me about that!" laughed McGlory. "Sure we picked it up, pard. How could we have missed it?" "It is unfortunate," spoke up Tsan Ti gloomily, "that the yellow cord was lost at the time the devil car took fire. It was of great importance to me as the means of carrying out the invitation given by our gracious regent. The sailor and his confederate have fled, and the Eye of Buddha has gone with them. The ten thousand demons of misfortune continue to make me feel their displeasure. There is nothing left but the happy dispatch." "Aw, cheer up," growled McGlory. "Buy a string of laundries, somewhere, and tell your gracious regent to go hang." "I am bound by ancient ceremony to accept and use the cord," insisted Tsan Ti, mildly but firmly. "Well, you've got a few days yet. Don't use the cord until you have to." "I cannot use it until I find it, solicitous friend." "Suppose you never find it?" "Then Kien Lung will hunt for me and give me a second." "Sufferin' heathens!" murmured McGlory, in disgust. Matt got to his feet. "Let's go and see how Goldstein is getting along," he suggested. "What became of that satchel, Joe?" "We left it in the house--thought that was the safest place for it." "We'll have to take care of that. It contains the money Goldstein brought to use in buying the Eye of Buddha." Together Matt, McGlory, Tsan Ti and Sam Wing made their way back to the hut. Just as they reached the door Goldstein sprang to his feet, the buckthorn cane in his hand. "Look at him!" exclaimed McGlory. "He's still locoed, Matt, and in about the same state of mind you and I were when we repaired that bursted tire, rode to the Mountain House, and went to sleep in the hammocks." The diamond merchant's face was full of anger and apprehension. His clouded faculties were still possessed of the notion, it seemed, that his satchel of money continued to be the object of Grattan's designs. Jumping at the log wall, Goldstein struck a terrific blow with the head of the cane. "I hope he keeps hammering the wall," breathed the cowboy. "If he ever came at one of us like that we'd have to take him down and lash his hands and feet. Gee, but he's vicious." Again and again Goldstein struck the logs with the cane. At last the head of the cane snapped and flew into fragments, and a glittering object flashed toward the door, struck Sam Wing and dropped downward. A gleam of sun caught the object, and it glowed like a huge drop of blood. A chattering screech went up from Tsan Ti, and forthwith he slumped to his knees and picked the object up in his trembling hands. Startled Chinese words came from Sam Wing; the mandarin answered, and there followed a frantic give and take of native gibberish, mostly whoops, grunts and falling inflections. "Sufferin' gold mines!" cried McGlory. "Say, pard, is that red thing the Eye of Buddha?" "It must be," answered Matt excitedly, hurrying into the room and picking up the cane and some of the fragments of the head. "Great spark plugs!" he exclaimed, examining the pieces. "What do you make out, pard?" demanded McGlory. "Why," went on Matt, "the head of the cane was hollow, _and the ruby was concealed in it_!" "No!" "Fact! Here, look for yourself. I wondered why Grattan was so careful of that cane. The last thing I remember was seeing him rush at Goldstein and try to get the cane away from him. Goldstein had grabbed the stick and had knocked the box of glass balls out of Grattan's hand with it. Of course, at the time Grattan tried to get the stick back, the balls were spilling their knock-out fumes all over the room, and he couldn't waste much time getting into his mask and lighting out. He had to leave the cane behind--it was either that or be laid out by the glass balls and captured. Perhaps he thought we'd never find out the ruby was in the cane and that he could come back later and recover it." "Goldstein has smashed the mystery!" jubilated McGlory, "and when he comes to he won't know a thing about it." Matt was dazed, and the two excited Chinamen were still gabbling like a couple of frantic ducks; McGlory was walking around, rubbing his eyes, and Goldstein was sitting on the stool undergoing the last stage of his awakening. "What's der matter?" inquired the diamond broker. "Where is--what is---- Ach, der satchel, der satchel!" His eyes had alighted on the grip, and he shot off the stool and gathered up the precious object. His first move was to open it and make sure of the contents. "Where is Grattan?" he asked, with a sudden tremor. "Where is der feller that wanted to steal my money?" "You don't have to fret about him any more," said McGlory. "He's lit out--in something of a hurry. I don't reckon he'll be back." "What a lucky escape, what a lucky escape!" chanted Goldstein; "mein gracious, what a lucky escape!" Matt, observing that Tsan Ti and Sam Wing were not yet done with their wild felicitations, strolled around the room. He saw the place where Bunce and Grattan had crashed through the wall. Fire, at some time or other when the sugar makers were boiling their sap, had eaten into the logs, leaving a large hole which had been covered with boards. Grattan and Bunce, knowing about the weak spot in the wall, had chose to get out of the cabin in that way rather than by attempting to pass through the door. While Matt was looking at the breach in the timbers, he heard a series of shouts from the Chinamen. A glance in their direction gave him a fleeting glimpse of Pryne, forcing his way through the door and over the heads of Tsan Ti and Sam Wing. "That tinhorn's getting away!" shouted McGlory. He would have chased after Pryne had Matt not gripped him by the shoulder and held him back. "Let the fellow go," said Matt. "He was roped into the game by Grattan, and was only a tool, at the most. We've recovered the Eye of Buddha, and have saved Goldstein's money for him, so I guess we're doing well enough." The rough way the Chinamen had been treated by Pryne appeared to have made them remember that there were others in the cabin besides themselves. Tsan Ti got up, balanced the ruby on the palm of his hand, and stepped toward Matt, as happy a mandarin as could be found, in China or out of it. "See, estimable and glorious friend," he cried. "This is the Eye of Buddha, which caused me so much misfortune and came near to causing my death. It has been found, and but for you it would have been lost to me forever. My life is yours, illustrious one, my fortune, my lands--everything I own!" Matt paid little heed to the mandarin's rapturous talk. His eyes were on the ruby, which was as large as a small hen's egg and of the true pigeon's blood color. Its flashing beauty was marvelous to behold. "Out of my goodness of heart," went on the mandarin, "and from no desire to insult, believe me, I shall present my eminent friend with a thousand dollars and his expenses. Is it well, excellent one?" "Quite well, thank you," laughed McGlory, answering for his chum. "Here, Tsan, take this and send it back to your gracious regent. Tell him to use it on himself, and oblige." With that, the cowboy laid the ominous yellow cord across the mandarin's shoulders. CHAPTER XVI. THE BROKEN HOODOO. The constable, in leaving the sugar camp for Purling to do his telephoning, had taken his own rig. Having finished his work in Purling, he made his return journey to the sugar camp in the automobile which Matt and McGlory had hired. A few words were enough to convince the driver of the car that it was useless for him to wait at the general store for the one-eyed sailor. The automobile could not ascend the rough hill road, but waited at the foot of the slope while the constable climbed to the sugar camp and informed those there that a conveyance was ready to take them wherever they wanted to go. Pryne having suddenly recovered and bolted, only Matt, McGlory, Goldstein, and the two Chinamen were in the hut. Without loss of time they accompanied the constable down the long wooded slope. "What are the prospects for capturing Bunce and Grattan, officer?" inquired Matt, while they were slipping toward the foot of the hill. "Mighty poor," answered the constable, "if you want me to give it to you straight. But I've done everythin' I could. There ain't any telegraft line to Purling, so I had to telephone my message to Cairo. They're pretty much all over the hills by now." "Then what makes you think Bunce and Grattan will get away?" "Why, they'll be goin' so tarnation fast on them pesky machines there won't be any constable in the hills with an eye quick enough to recognize 'em from the description. Anyhow, what do you care? The fat Chinaman's happy, an' the Jew's so glad he walks lop-sided. What is it to you whether them hoodlums git away or not?" "Oh, hear him!" muttered McGlory. "It means three hundred cold, hard plunks to us, constable. The two pesky machines that took those tinhorns away have to be paid for by Motor Matt and Pard McGlory." "Do tell!" "If you hated to hear it as bad as I hate to tell it you wouldn't ask me to repeat." "Noble sir," spoke up Tsan Ti, "you and your worshipful friend shall not be out a single tael. I, whom you have benefited, will pay for the go-devil machines. That, if you will allow me, comes in as part of your expenses." "Now, by heck," said the constable, "that's what I call doin' the han'some thing. I've put in a leetle time myself, to-day," he added, "an' I cal-late I'm out nigh onto ten dollars. But I helped do some good, an' that's enough fer me." "Here, exalted sir," observed the mandarin, and dropped a twenty-dollar gold piece into the constable's palm. "I don't believe I got any change," said the officer. "No change would be acceptable to me," answered Tsan Ti, with dignity. "Waal, now, ain't I tickled? There's a dress in that fer S'manthy an' the kids. 'Bliged to ye." "The old boy's beginning to get generous, Matt," whispered McGlory. "Maybe, after all, he really intends to fork over that thousand and expenses." "Of course he does," said Matt. When they reached the automobile, all six of them crowded into the car. Seven passengers--counting the driver--made tight squeezing in accommodations built for five, but Goldstein and the constable were dropped at Purling, and comfort followed those who remained, thereon. Goldstein, following his burst of ecstasy over the recovery of the satchel, had relapsed into a subdued condition. Very likely he realized that he was under something of a cloud, inasmuch as he had come to Purling to treat with a thief for the loot of a magnificent haul. Goldstein remembered that Grattan had not been at all backward in giving Motor Matt the details of everything connected with the Eye of Buddha, and the reflections of the diamond broker could not have been at all comfortable or reassuring. Matt allowed the Jew to go his way without a rebuke. He felt that the man had been punished enough; and, besides, he was the cause of their discovering the place where the ruby had been concealed. But for Goldstein, the Eye of Buddha might never have been located. On the way to Catskill from Purling, Matt gave an account of what had taken place in the old sugar camp. Grattan had been at considerable pains to explain many things that had been dark to Matt and his friends, and the king of the motor boys passed along the explanation. The history of the Egyptian balls was particularly interesting to Tsan Ti, no less than other details connected with the robbery; and the way Bunce had played tag up and down the mountainside with Matt and McGlory held a deep fascination for the cowboy. "Taking this little fracas by and large," observed McGlory, when Matt had finished, "I think it's about the most novel piece of business I ever had anything to do with. It began with a lot of 'con' paper talk shoved at Pard Matt by Tsan Ti, and from the moment we met up with the mandarin there's been nothing to it but excitement, and a little uncertainty as to just where the lightning was going to strike next." "You two illustrious young men," said Tsan Ti gravely, "have laid me under staggering obligations. Money may pay you for your loss of time, but nothing except my gratitude can requite you for the excellence of your service. You will hear from me through Sam Wing to-morrow." The boys got out of the automobile at the hotel, and Matt had the car take Tsan Ti and Sam Wing up the mountain to the Kaaterskill. "They're a pair of pretty good chinks, after all," said McGlory, "and I'm glad to think I had a little something to do with keeping the yellow cord from getting in its work on Tsan Ti." On the following day, Tsan Ti sent Sam Wing to Catskill with a heavy canvas bag. "Me blingee flom Tsan Ti," explained Sam Wing. "Him takee choo-choo tlain fol San Flisco, bymby ketchee boat fol China. Heap happy." "He has a right to be happy," said McGlory. "How much did he have to put up for that wrecked motor car, Sam?" asked Matt. "Twenty-fi' hunnerd dol'." "He went and stung him!" whooped McGlory. "The old robber." "No makee hurt. Twenty-fi' hunnerd dol' all same Tsan Ti likee twenty-fi' cent to me. Him plenty lichee man." When Sam Wing went away, Matt and McGlory dumped the contents of the canvas sack out on the table. The money was all in gold, and totaled two thousand dollars, even. "He figured out expenses at a thousand dollars," remarked the cowboy. "They're 'way inside that figure." "He's the sort of fellow, Joe," said Matt, "who'd rather pay a man ten dollars when he only owed him five, than five when he owed ten." "Sure! He's the clear quill, but he sure had me guessing, the way he jumped around. I'll bet he connected with more good, hard jolts on this trip to America than he ever encountered in his life before." "We came pretty near it, ourselves," laughed Matt. "I can't remember that I ever had a more violent time." "It was some strenuous, and that's a fact. If you live a hundred years, pard, and drive automobiles all the while, you'll never scrape closer to kingdom come, and miss it, than you did when we came down the mountainside with the mandarin at the steering wheel." "I wouldn't go through that experience again for ten times the amount of money there was in that bag." "I wouldn't, either--not for the Eye of Buddha. There's no easy money in turning a trick for Tsan Ti. I reckon we earned all we got." THE END. THE NEXT NUMBER (31) WILL CONTAIN Motor Matt's Mariner; OR, FILLING THE BILL FOR BUNCE. "Buddha's Eye"--The Green Patch--Motor Matt, Trustee--Bunce has a Plan--Bunce Speaks a Good Word for Himself--The Home-made Speeder--Trapped--The Cut-out Under the Ledge--Between the Eyes--The Man from the "Iris"--Aboard the Steam Yacht--Grattan's Triumph--From the Open Port--Landed, and Strung--A Crafty Oriental--The Mandarin Wins. MOTOR STORIES THRILLING ADVENTURE MOTOR FICTION NEW YORK, September 18, 1909. TERMS TO MOTOR STORIES MAIL SUBSCRIBERS. (_Postage Free._) Single Copies or Back Numbers, 5c. Each. 3 months 65c. 4 months 85c. 6 months $1.25 One year 2.50 2 copies one year 4.00 1 copy two years 4.00 =How to Send Money=--By post-office or express money-order, registered letter, bank check or draft, at our risk. At your own risk if sent by currency, coin, or postage-stamps in ordinary letter. =Receipts=--Receipt of your remittance is acknowledged by proper change of number on your label. If not correct you have not been properly credited, and should let us know at once. ORMOND G. SMITH, } GEORGE C. SMITH, } _Proprietors_. STREET & SMITH, Publishers, 79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York City. A REAL PIRATE. "At the time I commenced following the sea," said old Captain Gifford, in relating a thrilling experience of his early life, "there were pirates all about the West Indies, and the dread of them was always uppermost in a sailor's thoughts. We didn't mind the yellow fever. When a man died with that, he died--it was a visitation of Providence, and his fate was to be thought upon calmly and sorrowfully; there was no horror in the reflection. But to be murdered--murdered upon the high seas--that was a thing which it made one sick to think of. "Resistance on the part of a ship's crew, if unsuccessful, was certain death--and often, too, in the most cruel form; for the revengeful, drunken pirates, with their worst passions aroused by the conflict, would in such a case take delight in torturing their victims. And even where no opposition had been attempted, the plea that 'dead men tell no tales' was generally sufficient to insure the massacre of all on board. "So you see it was about as long as it was broad. There was very little encouragement to surrender. It was simply a question as to whether one would die fighting like a lion or be butchered on the deck like a sheep. "Of course there were exceptions; but these were not frequent enough to inspire much hope in the event of capture. Slaughter was the rule, and if not committed in every instance, the fortunate ones might thank their stars. "In those days we used to hear dreadful stories of such tragedies. Sometimes these would come to light through the confessions of condemned pirates; while in other cases a single survivor of some hapless crew of a merchantman would relate the tale of the capture and death of his shipmates--he himself having been spared through some freak of the miscreants, perhaps to serve on board their vessel. "I commenced following the sea at the age of fifteen, making my first voyage in the brig _Agenora_, Captain Christopher Allen, bound to Trinidad de Cuba. In all there were nine persons belonging to her, being the captain, the two mates, and the cook, with five hands before the mast, counting a son of Captain Allen and myself. But, of course, I did not amount to much at that time. "Young Argo Allen was seventeen, so that he had the advantage of me by two years, besides having made one voyage to the West Indies. He was one of the best fellows that ever lived; and having learned on his first voyage to 'hand, reef, and steer' after a fashion, he was always ready to assist me to the extent of his knowledge. Indeed, I think one young sailor generally feels a sort of pride in helping another who knows less than himself. "We had a long passage out, with calms and head winds, and Argo and I talked much of pirates. He told me how scared he had been upon his former voyage, when the vessel was overtaken by a low, black schooner, which, upon coming up with her, sailed past within a cable's length, with a crew of fifty or sixty horrible-looking wretches staring at the brig in perfect silence. "'After getting a little ahead,' said Argo, 'she tacked and came back. My hair rose right up then--it fairly lifted my hat! But she simply repassed us on the other side, and went off about her business.' "'How do you account for it all?' I asked. "'Oh, that's easy enough,' he replied. 'We were outward bound, with a cargo of New England produce, and the pirates knew that we were not likely to have money on board. This was all that saved us; but I wouldn't be so scared again for the price of the brig!' "So Argo Allen had seen a real pirate, and it actually made me look up to him with a kind of admiring awe, not that I had any desire to meet with a like experience; but then it must, I thought, have been so thrilling--such a thing to think of and to tell of! "On arriving at Trinidad, we disposed of our cargo at a very high price; while, on the other hand, our return invoice of molasses was purchased at an unusually low figure; so that, after loading for home, Captain Allen found that he had, above all expenses, a good three thousand dollars in doubloons. "Meanwhile Argo and I were greatly pleased at meeting with two of our townspeople, a Mr. and Mrs. Howard; and it delighted us still more to learn that they were to take passage with us for the North. They had been sojourning in Cuba for a number of months, but were now anxious to go home, as the yellow fever season had arrived and there were already many cases of it in the city. "Although Captain Allen was in high spirits at having made such a profitable voyage, he felt some uneasiness at the idea of sailing with so much money on board. The pirates, he said, had their spies in all the Cuban ports, and these secret agents, by watching the run of trade, could easily determine what vessels were likely to offer the most tempting booty. "At length, all being ready, and Mr. and Mrs. Howard coming off to us, we hove up our anchor and made sail. The greatest danger, Captain Allen believed, would be close off the port, and so he had given out that we should probably remain three or four days longer. It may have been this which saved us from being molested at the start, and I think it was. "But now an unexpected misfortune came upon us. We sailed with the land breeze very early in the morning, and while we were getting under way one of our crew was taken down with the yellow fever. We were only a few miles clear of the land when another was attacked in the same manner, and before night the cook and second mate also took to their berths. We kept on, however, and indeed the course of the wind would have prevented us from returning had we thought of doing so. "There remained, capable of doing duty, only the captain and chief mate, one old seaman, Argo, and myself; but Captain Allen said that should no more of us be disabled, the vessel could still be managed. As a last resort, he added, he might put into Havana or Key West. "On the second day we passed that famous resort of the West Indian pirates, the Isle of Pines. The _Agenora_ gave it a wide berth, I assure you; but our hearts were in our throats for the whole fifty miles of its coast line. It seemed as if the breeze were all the time threatening to die out and leave us becalmed there. However, we ran the gantlet in safety, and continued our course toward Cape St. Antonio, the most western point of Cuba. "During the following night, the chief mate and the remaining seaman were both stricken with the fever, leaving only the captain and us two boys, together with our passenger, Mr. Howard, to handle the brig, with six dreadfully sick people on board. "This was a sad state of things; but the breeze was bright and fair, and we hoped to double Cape St. Antonio the next day, thus getting to the northward of Cuba, after which it would be easy to reach Havana. "On that day, however, it fell entirely calm, with a dense fog covering the sea, so that the vessel lay idle, heading by turns all around the compass. "We had by this time nearly come up with the cape, and it was a bad place to meet with a calm, for this headland was a notorious piratical rendezvous, almost as much so as the Isle of Pines. However, if we must lie helpless, the fog would be in our favor, the captain said. "In the meantime Mrs. Howard showed herself an extraordinary woman. She was only twenty-four years old--a mere girl, as it were, and a very beautiful one--but she seemed as if she knew just what to do and how to do it. She cooked for us who were well, and, in spite of her husband's remonstrances, braved all the danger of attending upon the sick, like a veritable Florence Nightingale. "After lasting for about twenty-four hours the fog disappeared and a light breeze sprang up. A current had taken us along for some miles, and we were directly off Cape St. Antonio. "At first no water craft of any description was to be seen, but presently we were startled at perceiving a small sloop-rigged vessel putting out from the land and making directly toward us. That she must be a pirate was beyond all question, as no other vessel would have been hiding in such a place. "Looking through his glass, the captain saw that, in addition to her sails, she had out a number of long sweeps, or oars, and this at once told us that there was no possibility of escaping from her with the faint breeze which we had. "The _Agenora_ carried two six-pounders and a good supply of small arms, yet, with only four of us to handle them, they offered but a forlorn hope against thirty or forty men, with probably a heavy pivot gun and other cannon. Nevertheless, there was but one thing to do, and that was to fight to the death if necessary. "'My poor wife!' we heard Mr. Howard say to the captain; 'she shall never fall into the hands of those wretches while I have a single breath remaining.' "Captain Allen was pale, but very cool. He and Mr. Howard loaded the six-pounders, while we boys attended the muskets, putting heavy charges into all of them. "In a short time we were able to count the sweeps which the sloop had out. They were fourteen in number--seven on a side, with two men at each. This made twenty-eight men, besides the fellow at the tiller and six or seven others; so that there were at least thirty-five of them. The only cannon that we could see was one mounted amidships, and no doubt on a pivot. "As they got nearer we brought the _Agenora_ around so that both the six-pounders would bear upon them, and then Captain Allen sighted one of the guns, while Mr. Howard stood by with a glowing portfire, ready to clap it upon the priming at the word. "'Now,' said the captain presently, 'let it go!' "Instantly there was a deafening bang! and the recoil of the gun fairly shook the brig. How we watched for the result! Skip, skip, skip, went the shot from wave to wave, close to the sloop, yet without touching her. "Almost before we could speak or think, a sheet of smoke burst from the pirate vessel, and 'pat, pat, pat,' right on board of us, came a charge of grape shot, and a twelve-pound ball--as we found afterward it must have been, from the hole it made in our bulwarks. "There was no time to lose, and our second cannon was fired as quickly as possible; but its contents missed the pirate, though they struck near enough to throw a shower of spray upon her deck. "Again the miscreants fired in return, and redoubled their labor at the sweeps. The breeze was at last wholly gone, so that they had to depend entirely upon their strength of muscle, but of this they had enough and to spare. "Argo and myself now opened fire with the muskets--'bang, bang, bang!' but I don't think we hit a single one of the villains. We saw them loading their big gun for a third shot, and it seemed as if, at such short range, they must tear us all to pieces. But Captain Allen and Mr. Howard were also loading--cramming one of the six-pounders to the muzzle with grape and cannon balls. "The pirates were just ready to fire as the captain ranged along his gun. "'Quick, Mr. Howard!' he cried. 'Touch her off!' "The report rang through our ears, and we could have shouted as we saw the effect. The sloop's long gun was tumbled over, and the men who managed it strewn mangled upon the deck. A number of the heavy sweeps dropped from the hands that held them, or were sent whirling into the air. I think this one discharge must have killed more than a dozen men. "For a few moments the victory appeared to be won; but just then the _Agenora_ swung around in such a manner that neither of the cannons could be made to bear upon the enemy. The pirates saw our dilemma, and a few powerful strokes of their sweeps brought them right under our bow. "We ran forward to prevent them from boarding, but they swarmed over the bowsprit and head rail, cutlass in hand, till it was plain that two men and two boys were to be no match for such a number of desperate villains. In spite of all we could do, they were in a fair way to make short work with us, when on a sudden the scene was changed. "Mrs. Howard had anticipated such an emergency from the very first, and now, with a ladle in one hand and a kettle of boiling hot tar in the other, she ran to our relief. "The tar in such a state could be dipped up as easily as water, and in a quarter of a minute all the headmost pirates had got it full in their faces. Filling their eyes and mouths, or running down their half-naked breasts, it must have put them in great agony. They went tumbling back upon those behind them, and as we quickly followed up our advantage, the deck was almost instantly cleared. "In a few minutes the sloop was making all possible speed away from us, but she had out only six sweeps instead of the fourteen with which she had commenced the chase. "All of us except Mrs. Howard had been more or less wounded, so that we did not attempt to molest the pirates as they retreated; while on their part, as the cannon we had knocked over for them was their only one, they could not fire upon us. I think they must have had nearly twenty men killed or disabled, to say nothing of those who were scalded by the hot tar. "I shall never forget how carefully Mrs. Howard bound up the ugly cuts in our arms. She seemed to know everything, just like one's own mother--and yet she was such a young woman! "We got a breeze soon after the fight was over, and were thankful for it, too, as we did not know how many more pirates there might be in the neighborhood. It took us around Cape St. Antonio, and two days later we arrived at Key West, where we were put into quarantine. "Of our yellow-fever patients, two died just as we dropped anchor, but the remaining four soon after began to improve and finally recovered. We lay in quarantine for a number of weeks, and then, with the vessel thoroughly fumigated, were permitted to sail for home. "Upon our arrival there, the good old _Agenora_ became an object of much curiosity, while as to Mrs. Howard, she was visited by a host of friends, anxious to hear the story of our peril from her own lips. "I am sometimes asked if in all my seafaring life it was ever my fortune to meet with a real pirate--one whom I knew to be such. To that question I think myself justified in saying 'yes'--and further, that it was an experience which I never desired to repeat." SOME QUEER PHILIPPINE CUSTOMS. The occurrence of a death in a Filipino family in Bulacan is the signal for an immediate celebration. "Our brother has gone to a happy land, and we must rejoice," they say. Relatives and friends are invited to come, and an orchestra is summoned. Then the dancing and feasting begin, and continue until the time of the funeral, which in this climate takes place within twenty-four hours. Those who have the means buy a black cloth-covered casket ornamented with spangles and bows of bright blue ribbon. The poor rent the "town coffin," a plain tin box, evidently designed for those of medium stature, for a year or two ago, in a funeral procession, the feet of the deceased, incased in bright blue plush chinelas, were seen sticking out at one end. The orchestra heads the procession through the streets, usually playing some lively air learned from the American soldiers. The popular funeral music is "A Hot Time," and it keeps the procession moving at a brisk pace. Thursday is the favorite day for weddings in Bulacan, as it is "bargain day" in the matrimonial market. On Thursdays the priest marries many couples at a time, and consequently at less expense to each couple. Four o'clock in the morning is the favorite hour. Following the ceremony the newly married pair return to the bride's home, where dancing and feasting ensue till sundown. A bride to whose wedding feast some Americans were invited had a romantic prelude to her nuptials. The parents of the bride were strenuously opposed to the match, owing to a strong disinclination on the part of the groom to do any sort of labor. So Anastasia was sent up into the mountains to visit among relatives, and traces of her whereabouts were carefully concealed from Felicidad, the groom elect. But Felicidad, although too indolent to support his prospective bride, did not purpose that another should win her, so he summoned several faithful friends to his aid and began an active search. His devotion was rewarded with success, and three weeks later Felicidad returned in triumph, with radiant Anastasia borne aloft on the shoulders of two of his trusty friends. The following Thursday, in company with fifteen other happy couples, they were married. HIGH LEAPS BY DEER. Mr. Gordon Boles, a sportsman who has hunted all over the world, has recorded some remarkable leaps taken by deer when pursued. His observations have been chiefly in his native district, Exmoor, the land of "Lorna Doone," in India, and in Northwestern Canada. Uncontrollable fear and partial blindness caused by long pursuit, he gives as reasons for deer taking leaps which usually end in death. Once, while hunting with the Devon and Somerset stag hounds, he saw a hind leap 300 feet from a cliff to the seashore. She was dashed to pieces. In the excitement of the chase one of the hounds followed her. On another occasion a stag made a bold burst for the open, going straight for the sea. He came to the edge of a cliff, some hundreds of feet above the beach, and then dashed restlessly backward and forward, as if seeking a path to descend. He either missed his footing or jumped, and when the hunters came up he was seen below, a shattered mass, with the horns broken into small pieces. Mr. Boles is inclined to think that the stag committed suicide deliberately. Another deer, which made the leap at about the same place, landed safely and swam out to sea. Men pursued him in a boat and killed him. In India Mr. Boles wounded a sambur, which resembles somewhat the common deer. The sambur showed fight on a narrow path overhanging a precipice. Mr. Boles fired again, but in his excitement aimed too low, the ball passing beneath the deer and striking the ground just back of his hind legs. The deer turned and deliberately leaped over the height. A fine buck he wounded in Northwestern Canada, when pursued by the dog, jumped from a height of 100 feet into a shallow stream and broke his neck. LATEST ISSUES BUFFALO BILL STORIES The most original stories of Western adventure. The only weekly containing the adventures of the famous Buffalo Bill. =High art colored covers. Thirty-two big pages. Price, 5 cents.= 425--Buffalo Bill's Balloon Escape; or, Out of the Grip of the Great Swamp. 426--Buffalo Bill and the Guerrillas; or, The Flower Girl of San Felipe. 427--Buffalo Bill's Border War; or, The Mexican Vendetta. 428--Buffalo Bill's Mexican Mix-up; or, The Bullfighter's Defiance. 429--Buffalo Bill and the Gamecock; or, The Red Trail on the Canadian. 430--Buffalo Bill and the Cheyenne Raiders; or, The Spurs of the Gamecock. 431--Buffalo Bill's Whirlwind Finish; or, The Gamecock Wins. 432--Buffalo Bill's Santa Fe Secret; or, The Brave of Taos. 433--Buffalo Bill and the Taos Terror; or, The Rites of the Red Estufa. 434--Buffalo Bill's Bracelet of Gold; or, The Hidden Death. 435--Buffalo Bill and the Border Baron; or, The Cattle King of No Man's Land. BRAVE AND BOLD WEEKLY All kinds of stories that boys like. The biggest and best nickel's worth ever offered. =High art colored covers. Thirty-two big pages. 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Matt has positive mechanical genius, and while his adventures are unusual, they are, however, drawn so true to life that the reader can clearly see how it is possible for the ordinary boy to experience them. _HERE ARE THE TITLES NOW READY AND THOSE TO BE PUBLISHED_: 1--Motor Matt; or, The King of the Wheel. 2--Motor Matt's Daring; or, True to His Friends. 3--Motor Matt's Century Run; or, The Governor's Courier. 4--Motor Matt's Race; or, The Last Flight of the "Comet." 5--Motor Matt's Mystery; or, Foiling a Secret Plot. 6--Motor Matt's Red Flier; or, On the High Gear. 7--Motor Matt's Clue; or, The Phantom Auto. 8--Motor Matt's Triumph; or, Three Speeds Forward. 9--Motor Matt's Air Ship; or, The Rival Inventors. 10--Motor Matt's Hard Luck; or, The Balloon House Plot. 11--Motor Matt's Daring Rescue; or, The Strange Case of Helen Brady. 12--Motor Matt's Peril; or, Cast Away in the Bahamas. 13--Motor Matt's Queer Find; or, The Secret of the Iron Chest. 14--Motor Matt's Promise; or, The Wreck of the "Hawk." 15--Motor Matt's Submarine; or, The Strange Cruise of the "Grampus." 16--Motor Matt's Quest; or, Three Chums in Strange Waters. 17--Motor Matt's Close Call; or, The Snare of Don Carlos. 18--Motor Matt in Brazil; or, Under the Amazon. 19--Motor Matt's Defiance; or, Around the Horn. 20--Motor Matt Makes Good; or, Another Victory for the Motor Boys. 21--Motor Matt's Launch; or, A Friend in Need. 22--Motor Matt's Enemies; or, A Struggle for the Right. 23--Motor Matt's Prize; or, The Pluck that Wins. 24--Motor Matt on the Wing; or, Flying for Fame and Fortune. 25--Motor Matt's Reverse; or, Caught in a Losing Game. 26--Motor Matt's "Make or Break"; or, Advancing the Spark of Friendship. 27--Motor Matt's Engagement; or, On the Road With a Show. 28--Motor Matt's "Short Circuit"; or, The Mahout's Vow. To be Published on September 6th. 29--Motor Matt's Make-up; or, Playing a New Role. To be Published on September 13th. 30--Motor Matt's Mandarin; or, Turning a Trick for Tsan Ti. To be Published on September 20th. 31--Motor Matt's Mariner; or, Filling the Bill for Bunce. To be Published on September 27th. 32--Motor Matt's Double-trouble; or, The Last of the Hoodoo. PRICE, FIVE CENTS At all newsdealers, or sent, postpaid, by the publishers upon receipt of the price. STREET & SMITH, _Publishers_, NEW YORK Transcriber's Notes: Added table of contents. Italics are represented with _underscores_, bold with =equal signs=. Throughout this text version, the oe ligature in manoeuvre has been expanded; the ligature is retained in the HTML version. Page 6, changed "consarnin 'the" to "consarnin' the". Page 9, removed unnecessary quote before "Tsan Ti turned sidewise." Page 18, corrected "boy's" to "boys'" in "king of the motor boys'." Page 24, removed unnecessary quote after "revolver leveled in his direction." Page 29, corrected double to single quote before "dead men tell no tales." Page 30, corrected typo Angenora in "The _Agenora_ carried two six-pounders". 
9378	----	Distributed Proofreaders THE LONE WOLF By LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE 1914 CONTENTS I. TROYON'S II. RETURN III. A POINT OF INTERROGATION IV. A STRATAGEM V. ANTICLIMAX VI. THE PACK GIVES TONGUE VII. L'ABBAYE VIII. THE HIGH HAND IX. DISASTER X. TURN ABOUT XI. FLIGHT XII. AWAKENING XIII. CONFESSIONAL XIV. RIVE DROIT XV. SHEER IMPUDENCE XVI. RESTITUTION XVII. THE FORLORN HOPE XVIII. ENIGMA XIX. UNMASKED XX. WAR XXI. APOSTATE XXII. TRAPPED XXIII. MADAME OMBER XXIV. RENDEZVOUS XXV. WINGS OF THE MORNING XXVI. THE FLYING DEATH XXVII. DAYBREAK THE LONE WOLF I TROYON'S It must have been Bourke who first said that even if you knew your way about Paris you had to lose it in order to find it to Troyon's. But then Bourke was proud to be Irish. Troyon's occupied a corner in a jungle of side-streets, well withdrawn from the bustle of the adjacent boulevards of St. Germain and St. Michel, and in its day was a restaurant famous with a fame jealously guarded by a select circle of patrons. Its cooking was the best in Paris, its cellar second to none, its rates ridiculously reasonable; yet Baedeker knew it not. And in the wisdom of the cognoscenti this was well: it had been a pity to loose upon so excellent an establishment the swarms of tourists that profaned every temple of gastronomy on the Rive Droit. The building was of three storeys, painted a dingy drab and trimmed with dull green shutters. The restaurant occupied almost all of the street front of the ground floor, a blank, non-committal double doorway at one extreme of its plate-glass windows was seldom open and even more seldom noticed. This doorway was squat and broad and closed the mouth of a wide, stone-walled passageway. In one of its two substantial wings of oak a smaller door had been cut for the convenience of Troyon's guests, who by this route gained the courtyard, a semi-roofed and shadowy place, cool on the hottest day. From the court a staircase, with an air of leading nowhere in particular, climbed lazily to the second storey and thereby justified its modest pretensions; for the two upper floors of Troyon's might have been plotted by a nightmare-ridden architect after witnessing one of the first of the Palais Royal farces. Above stairs, a mediaeval maze of corridors long and short, complicated by many unexpected steps and staircases and turns and enigmatic doors, ran every-which-way and as a rule landed one in the wrong room, linking together, in all, some two-score bed-chambers. There were no salons or reception-rooms, there was never a bath-room, there wasn't even running water aside from two hallway taps, one to each storey. The honoured guest and the exacting went to bed by lamplight: others put up with candlesticks: gas burned only in the corridors and the restaurant--asthmatic jets that, spluttering blue within globes obese, semi-opaque, and yellowish, went well with furnishings and decorations of the Second Empire to which years had lent a mellow and somehow rakish dinginess; since nothing was ever refurbished. With such accommodations the guests of Troyon's were well content. They were not many, to begin with, and they were almost all middle-aged bourgeois, a caste that resents innovations. They took Troyon's as they found it: the rooms suited them admirably, and the tariff was modest. Why do anything to disturb the perennial peace of so discreet and confidential an establishment? One did much as one pleased there, providing one's bill was paid with tolerable regularity and the hand kept supple that operated the cordon in the small hours of the night. Papa Troyon came from a tribe of inn-keepers and was liberal-minded; while as for Madame his wife, she cared for nothing but pieces of gold.... To Troyon's on a wet winter night in the year 1893 came the child who as a man was to call himself Michael Lanyard. He must have been four or five years old at that time: an age at which consciousness is just beginning to recognize its individuality and memory registers with capricious irregularity. He arrived at the hotel in a state of excitement involving an almost abnormal sensitiveness to impressions; but that was soon drowned deep in dreamless slumbers of healthy exhaustion; and when he came to look back through a haze of days, of which each had made its separate and imperative demand upon his budding emotions, he found his store of memories strangely dulled and disarticulate. The earliest definite picture was that of himself, a small but vastly important figure, nursing a heavy heart in a dark corner of a fiacre. Beside him sat a man who swore fretfully into his moustache whenever the whimpering of the boy threatened to develop into honest bawls: a strange creature, with pockets full of candy and a way with little boys in public surly and domineering, in private timid and propitiatory. It was raining monotonously, with that melancholy persistence which is the genius of Parisian winters; and the paving of the interminable strange streets was as black glass shot with coloured lights. Some of the streets roared like famished beasts, others again were silent, if with a silence no less sinister. The rain made incessant crepitation on the roof of the fiacre, and the windows wept without respite. Within the cab a smell of mustiness contended feebly with the sickening reek of a cigar which the man was forever relighting and which as often turned cold between his teeth. Outside, unwearying hoofs were beating their deadly rhythm, _cloppetty-clop_.... Back of all this lurked something formlessly alluring, something sad and sweet and momentous, which belonged very personally to the child but which he could never realize. Memory crept blindly toward it over a sword-wide bridge that had no end. There had been (or the boy had dreamed it) a long, weariful journey by railroad, the sequel to one by boat more brief but wholly loathsome. Beyond this point memory failed though sick with yearning. And the child gave over his instinctive but rather inconsecutive efforts to retrace his history: his daily life at Troyon's furnished compelling and obliterating interests. Madame saw to that. It was Madame who took charge of him when the strange man dragged him crying from the cab, through a cold, damp place gloomy with shadows, and up stairs to a warm bright bedroom: a formidable body, this Madame, with cold eyes and many hairy moles, who made odd noises in her throat while she undressed the little boy with the man standing by, noises meant to sound compassionate and maternal but, to the child at least, hopelessly otherwise. Then drowsiness stealing upon one over a pillow wet with tears ... oblivion.... And Madame it was who ruled with iron hand the strange new world to which the boy awakened. The man was gone by morning, and the child never saw him again; but inasmuch as those about him understood no English and he no French, it was some time before he could grasp the false assurances of Madame that his father had gone on a journey but would presently return. The child knew positively that the man was not his father, but when he was able to make this correction the matter had faded into insignificance: life had become too painful to leave time or inclination for the adjustment of such minor and incidental questions as one's parentage. The little boy soon learned to know himself as Marcel, which wasn't his name, and before long was unaware he had ever had another. As he grew older he passed as Marcel Troyon; but by then he had forgotten how to speak English. A few days after his arrival the warm, bright bed-chamber was exchanged for a cold dark closet opening off Madame's boudoir, a cupboard furnished with a rickety cot and a broken chair, lacking any provision for heat or light, and ventilated solely by a transom over the door; and inasmuch as Madame shared the French horror of draughts and so kept her boudoir hermetically sealed nine months of the year, the transom didn't mend matters much. But that closet formed the boy's sole refuge, if a precarious one, through several years; there alone was he ever safe from kicks and cuffs and scoldings for faults beyond his comprehension; but he was never permitted a candle, and the darkness and loneliness made the place one of haunted terror to the sensitive and imaginative nature of a growing child. He was, however, never insufficiently fed; and the luxury of forgetting misery in sleep could not well be denied him. By day, until of age to go to school, he played apprehensively in the hallways with makeshift toys, a miserable, dejected little body with his heart in his mouth at every sudden footfall, very much in the way of femmes-de-chambre who had nothing in common with the warm-hearted, impulsive, pitiful serving women of fiction. They complained of him to Madame, and Madame came promptly to cuff him. He soon learned an almost uncanny cunning in the art of effacing himself, when she was imminent, to be as still as death and to move with the silence of a wraith. Not infrequently his huddled immobility in a shadowy corner escaped her notice as she passed. But it always exasperated her beyond measure to look up, when she fancied herself alone, and become aware of the wide-eyed, terrified stare of the transfixed boy.... That he was privileged to attend school at all was wholly due to a great fear that obsessed Madame of doing anything to invite the interest of the authorities. She was an honest woman, according to her lights, an honest wife, and kept an honest house; but she feared the gendarmerie more than the Wrath of God. And by ukase of Government a certain amount of education was compulsory. So Marcel learned among other things to read, and thereby took his first blind step toward salvation. Reading being the one pastime which could be practiced without making a noise of any sort to attract undesirable attentions, the boy took to it in self-defence. But before long it had become his passion. He read, by stealth, everything that fell into his hands, a weird mélange of newspapers, illustrated Parisian weeklies, magazines, novels: cullings from the débris of guest-chambers. Before Marcel was eleven he had read "Les Misérables" with intense appreciation. His reading, however, was not long confined to works in the French language. Now and again some departing guest would leave an English novel in his room, and these Marcel treasured beyond all other books; they seemed to him, in a way, part of his birthright. Secretly he called himself English in those days, because he knew he wasn't French: that much, at least, he remembered. And he spent long hours poring over the strange words until; at length, they came to seem less strange in his eyes. And then some accident threw his way a small English-French dictionary. He was able to read English before he could speak it. Out of school hours a drudge and scullion, the associate of scullions and their immediate betters, drawn from that caste of loose tongues and looser morals which breeds servants for small hotels, Marcel at eleven (as nearly as his age can be computed) possessed a comprehension of life at once exact, exhaustive and appalling. Perhaps it was fortunate that he lived without friendship. His concept of womanhood was incarnate in Madame Troyon; so he gave all the hotel women a wide berth. The men-servants he suffered in silence when they would permit it; but his nature was so thoroughly disassociated from anything within their experience that they resented him: a circumstance which exposed him to a certain amount of baiting not unlike that which the village idiot receives at the hands of rustic boors--until Marcel learned to defend himself with a tongue which could distil vitriol from the vernacular, and with fists and feet as well. Thereafter he was left severely to himself and glad of it, since it furnished him with just so much more time for reading and dreaming over what he read. By fifteen he had developed into a long, lank, loutish youth, with a face of extraordinary pallor, a sullen mouth, hot black eyes, and dark hair like a mane, so seldom was it trimmed. He looked considerably older than he was and the slightness of his body was deceptive, disguising a power of sinewy strength. More than this, he could care very handily for himself in a scrimmage: la savate had no secrets from him, and he had picked up tricks from the Apaches quite as effectual as any in the manual of jiu-jitsu. Paris he knew as you and I know the palms of our hands, and he could converse with the precision of the native-born in any one of the city's several odd argots. To these accomplishments he added that of a thoroughly practised petty thief. His duties were by day those of valet-de-chambre on the third floor; by night he acted as omnibus in the restaurant. For these services he received no pay and less consideration from his employers (who would have been horrified by the suggestion that they countenanced slavery) only his board and a bed in a room scarcely larger, if somewhat better ventilated, than the boudoir-closet from which he had long since been ousted. This room was on the ground floor, at the back of the house, and boasted a small window overlooking a narrow alley. He was routed out before daylight, and his working day ended as a rule at ten in the evening--though when there were performances on at the Odéon, the restaurant remained open until an indeterminate hour for the accommodation of the supper trade. Once back in his kennel, its door closed and bolted, Marcel was free to squirm out of the window and roam and range Paris at will. And it was thus that he came by most of his knowledge of the city. But for the most part Marcel preferred to lie abed and read himself half-blind by the light of purloined candle-ends. Books he borrowed as of old from the rooms of guests or else pilfered from quai-side stalls and later sold to dealers in more distant quarters of the city. Now and again, when he needed some work not to be acquired save through outright purchase, the guests would pay further if unconscious tribute through the sly abstraction of small coins. Your true Parisian, however, keeps track of his money to the ultimate sou, an idiosyncrasy which obliged the boy to practise most of his peculations on the fugitive guest of foreign extraction. In the number of these, perhaps the one best known to Troyon's was Bourke. He was a quick, compact, dangerous little Irishman who had fallen into the habit of "resting" at Troyon's whenever a vacation from London seemed a prescription apt to prove wholesome for a gentleman of his kidney; which was rather frequently, arguing that Bourke's professional activities were fairly onerous. Having received most of his education in Dublin University, Bourke spoke the purest English known, or could when so minded, while his facile Irish tongue had caught the trick of an accent which passed unchallenged on the Boulevardes. He had an alert eye for pretty women, a heart as big as all out-doors, no scruples worth mentioning, a secret sorrow, and a pet superstition. The colour of his hair, a clamorous red, was the spring of his secret sorrow. By that token he was a marked man. At irregular intervals he made frantic attempts to disguise it; but the only dye that would serve at all was a jet-black and looked like the devil in contrast with his high colouring. Moreover, before a week passed, the red would crop up again wherever the hair grew thin, lending him the appearance of a badly-singed pup. His pet superstition was that, as long as he refrained from practising his profession in Paris, Paris would remain his impregnable Tower of Refuge. The world owed Bourke a living, or he so considered; and it must be allowed that he made collections on account with tolerable regularity and success; but Paris was tax-exempt as long as Paris offered him immunity from molestation. Not only did Paris suit his tastes excellently, but there was no place, in Bourke's esteem, comparable with Troyon's for peace and quiet. Hence, the continuity of his patronage was never broken by trials of rival hostelries; and Troyon's was always expecting Bourke for the simple reason that he invariably arrived unexpectedly, with neither warning nor ostentation, to stop as long as he liked, whether a day or a week or a month, and depart in the same manner. His daily routine, as Troyon's came to know it, varied but slightly: he breakfasted abed, about half after ten, lounged in his room or the café all day if the weather were bad, or strolled peacefully in the gardens of the Luxembourg if it were good, dined early and well but always alone, and shortly afterward departed by cab for some well-known bar on the Rive Droit; whence, it is to be presumed, he moved on to other resorts, for he never was home when the house was officially closed for the night, the hours of his return remaining a secret between himself and the concierge. On retiring, Bourke would empty his pockets upon the dressing-table, where the boy Marcel, bringing up Bourke's petit déjeuner the next morning, would see displayed a tempting confusion of gold and silver and copper, with a wad of bank-notes, and the customary assortment of personal hardware. Now inasmuch as Bourke was never wide-awake at that hour, and always after acknowledging Marcel's "bon jour" rolled over and snored for Glory and the Saints, it was against human nature to resist the allure of that dressing-table. Marcel seldom departed without a coin or two. He had yet to learn that Bourke's habits were those of an Englishman, who never goes to bed without leaving all his pocket-money in plain sight and--carefully catalogued in his memory.... One morning in the spring of 1904 Marcel served Bourke his last breakfast at Troyon's. The Irishman had been on the prowl the previous night, and his rasping snore was audible even through the closed door when Marcel knocked and, receiving no answer, used the pass-key and entered. At this the snore was briefly interrupted; Bourke, visible at first only as a flaming shock of hair protruding from the bedclothes, squirmed an eye above his artificial horizon, opened it, mumbled inarticulate acknowledgment of Marcel's salutation, and passed blatantly into further slumbers. Marcel deposited his tray on a table beside the bed, moved quietly to the windows, closed them, and drew the lace curtains together. The dressing-table between the windows displayed, amid the silver and copper, more gold coins than it commonly did--some eighteen or twenty louis altogether. Adroitly abstracting en passant a piece of ten francs, Marcel went on his way rejoicing, touched a match to the fire all ready-laid in the grate, and was nearing the door when, casting one casual parting glance at the bed, he became aware of a notable phenomenon: the snoring was going on lustily, but Bourke was watching him with both eyes wide and filled with interest. Startled and, to tell the truth, a bit indignant, the boy stopped as though at word of command. But after the first flash of astonishment his young face hardened to immobility. Only his eyes remained constant to Bourke's. The Irishman, sitting up in bed, demanded and received the piece of ten francs, and went on to indict the boy for the embezzlement of several sums running into a number of louis. Marcel, reflecting that Bourke's reckoning was still some louis shy, made no bones about pleading guilty. Interrogated, the culprit deposed that he had taken the money because he needed it to buy books. No, he wasn't sorry. Yes, it was probable that, granted further opportunity, he would do it again. Advised that he was apparently a case-hardened young criminal, he replied that youth was not his fault; with years and experience he would certainly improve. Puzzled by the boy's attitude, Bourke agitated his hair and wondered aloud how Marcel would like it if his employers were informed of his peculations. Marcel looked pained and pointed out that such a course on the part of Bourke would be obviously unfair; the only real difference between them, he explained, was that where he filched a louis Bourke filched thousands; and if Bourke insisted on turning him over to the mercy of Madame and Papa Troyon, who would certainly summon a sergent de ville, he, Marcel, would be quite justified in retaliating by telling the Préfecture de Police all he knew about Bourke. This was no chance shot, and took the Irishman between wind and water; and when, dismayed, he blustered, demanding to know what the boy meant by his damned impudence, Marcel quietly advised him that one knew what one knew: if one read the English newspaper in the café, as Marcel did, one could hardly fail to remark that monsieur always came to Paris after some notable burglary had been committed in London; and if one troubled to follow monsieur by night, as Marcel had, it became evident that monsieur's first calls in Paris were invariably made at the establishment of a famous fence in the rue des Trois Frères; and, finally, one drew one's own conclusions when strangers dining in the restaurant--as on the night before, by way of illustration--strangers who wore all the hall-marks of police detectives from England--catechised one about a person whose description was the portrait of Bourke, and promised a hundred-franc note for information concerning the habits and whereabouts of that person, if seen. Marcel added, while Bourke gasped for breath, that the gentleman in question had spoken to him alone, in the absence of other waiters, and had been fobbed off with a lie. But why--Bourke wanted to know--had Marcel lied to save him, when the truth would have earned him a hundred francs? "Because," Marcel explained coolly, "I, too, am a thief. Monsieur will perceive it was a matter of professional honour." Now the Irish have their faults, but ingratitude is not of their number. Bourke, packing hastily to leave Paris, France and Europe by the fastest feasible route, still found time to question Marcel briefly; and what he learned from the boy about his antecedents so worked with gratitude upon the sentimental nature of the Celt, that when on the third day following the Cunarder Carpathia left Naples for New York, she carried not only a gentleman whose brilliant black hair and glowing pink complexion rendered him a bit too conspicuous among her first-cabin passengers for his own comfort, but also in the second cabin his valet--a boy of sixteen who looked eighteen. The gentleman's name on the passenger-list didn't, of course, in the least resemble Bourke. His valet's was given as Michael Lanyard. The origin of this name is obscure; Michael being easily corrupted into good Irish Mickey may safely be attributed to Bourke; Lanyard has a tang of the sea which suggests a reminiscence of some sea-tale prized by the pseudo Marcel Troyon. In New York began the second stage in the education of a professional criminal. The boy must have searched far for a preceptor of more sound attainments than Bourke. It is, however, only fair to say that Bourke must have looked as far for an apter pupil. Under his tutelage, Michael Lanyard learned many things; he became a mathematician of considerable promise, an expert mechanician, a connoisseur of armour-plate and explosives in their more pacific applications, and he learned to grade precious stones with a glance. Also, because Bourke was born of gentlefolk, he learned to speak English, what clothes to wear and when to wear them, and the civilized practice with knife and fork at table. And because Bourke was a diplomatist of sorts, Marcel acquired the knack of being at ease in every grade of society: he came to know that a self-made millionaire, taken the right way, is as approachable as one whose millions date back even unto the third generation; he could order a dinner at Sherry's as readily as drinks at Sharkey's. Most valuable accomplishment of all, he learned to laugh. In the way of by-products he picked up a working acquaintance with American, English and German slang--French slang he already knew as a mother-tongue--considerable geographical knowledge of the capitals of Europe, America and Illinois, a taste that discriminated between tobacco and the stuff sold as such in France, and a genuine passion for good paintings. Finally Bourke drilled into his apprentice the three cardinal principles of successful cracksmanship: to know his ground thoroughly before venturing upon it; to strike and retreat with the swift precision of a hawk; to be friendless. And the last of these was the greatest. "You're a promising lad," he said--so often that Lanyard would almost wince from that formula of introduction--"a promising lad, though it's sad I should be to say it, instead of proud as I am. For I've made you: but for me you'd long since have matriculated at La Tour Pointue and graduated with the canaille of the Santé. And in time you may become a first-chop operator, which I'm not and never will be; but if you do, 'twill be through fighting shy of two things. The first of them's Woman, and the second is Man. To make a friend of a man you must lower your guard. Ordinarily 'tis fatal. As for Woman, remember this, m'lad: to let love into your life you must open a door no mortal hand can close. And God only knows what'll follow in. If ever you find you've fallen in love and can't fall out, cut the game on the instant, or you'll end wearing stripes or broad arrows--the same as myself would, if this cursed cough wasn't going to be the death of me.... No, m'lad: take a fool's advice (you'll never get better) and when you're shut of me, which will be soon, I'm thinking, take the Lonesome Road and stick to the middle of it. 'He travels the fastest that travels alone' is a true saying, but 'tis only half the truth: he travels the farthest into the bargain.... Yet the Lonesome Road has its drawbacks, lad--it's _damned_ lonely!" Bourke died in Switzerland, of consumption, in the winter of 1910--Lanyard at his side till the end. Then the boy set his face against the world: alone, lonely, and remembering. II RETURN His return to Troyon's, whereas an enterprise which Lanyard had been contemplating for several years--in fact, ever since the death of Bourke--came to pass at length almost purely as an affair of impulse. He had come through from London by the afternoon service--via Boulogne--travelling light, with nothing but a brace of handbags and his life in his hands. Two coups to his credit since the previous midnight had made the shift advisable, though only one of them, the later, rendered it urgent. Scotland Yard would, he reckoned, require at least twenty-four hours to unlimber for action on the Omber affair; but the other, the theft of the Huysman plans, though not consummated before noon, must have set the Chancelleries of at least three Powers by the ears before Lanyard was fairly entrained at Charing Cross. Now his opinion of Scotland Yard was low; its emissaries must operate gingerly to keep within the laws they serve. But the agents of the various Continental secret services have a way of making their own laws as they go along: and for these Lanyard entertained a respect little short of profound. He would not have been surprised had he ran foul of trouble on the pier at Folkestone. Boulogne, as well, figured in his imagination as a crucial point: its harbour lights, heaving up over the grim grey waste, peered through the deepening violet dusk to find him on the packet's deck, responding to their curious stare with one no less insistently inquiring.... But it wasn't until in the gauntlet of the Gare du Nord itself that he found anything to shy at. Dropping from train to platform, he surrendered his luggage to a ready facteur, and followed the man through the crush, elbowed and shouldered, offended by the pervasive reek of chilled steam and coal-gas, and dazzled by the brilliant glare of the overhanging electric arcs. Almost the first face he saw turned his way was that of Roddy. The man from Scotland Yard was stationed at one side of the platform gates. Opposite him stood another known by sight to Lanyard--a highly decorative official from the Préfecture de Police. Both were scanning narrowly every face in the tide that churned between them. Wondering if through some fatal freak of fortuity these were acting under late telegraphic advice from London, Lanyard held himself well in hand: the first sign of intent to hinder him would prove the signal for a spectacular demonstration of the ungentle art of not getting caught with the goods on. And for twenty seconds, while the crowd milled slowly through the narrow exit, he was as near to betraying himself as he had ever been--nearer, for he had marked down the point on Roddy's jaw where his first blow would fall, and just where to plant a coup-de-savate most surely to incapacitate the minion of the Préfecture; and all the while was looking the two over with a manner of the most calm and impersonal curiosity. But beyond an almost imperceptible narrowing of Roddy's eyes when they met his own, as if the Englishman were struggling with a faulty memory, neither police agent betrayed the least recognition. And then Lanyard was outside the station, his facteur introducing him to a ramshackle taxicab. No need to speculate whether or not Roddy were gazing after him; in the ragged animal who held the door while Lanyard fumbled for his facteur's tip, he recognized a runner for the Préfecture; and beyond question there were many such about. If any lingering doubt should trouble Roddy's mind he need only ask, "Such-and-such an one took what cab and for what destination?" to be instantly and accurately informed. In such case to go directly to his apartment, that handy little rez-de-chaussée near the Trocadéro, was obviously inadvisable. Without apparent hesitation Lanyard directed the driver to the Hotel Lutetia, tossed the ragged spy a sou, and was off to the tune of a slammed door and a motor that sorely needed overhauling.... The rain, which had welcomed the train a few miles from Paris, was in the city torrential. Few wayfarers braved the swimming sidewalks, and the little clusters of chairs and tables beneath permanent café awnings were one and all neglected. But in the roadways an amazing concourse of vehicles, mostly motor-driven, skimmed, skidded, and shot over burnished asphalting all, of course, at top-speed--else this were not Paris. Lanyard thought of insects on the surface of some dark forest pool.... The roof of the cab rang like a drumhead; the driver blinked through the back-splatter from his rubber apron; now and again the tyres lost grip on the treacherous going and provided instants of lively suspense. Lanyard lowered a window to release the musty odour peculiar to French taxis, got well peppered with moisture, and promptly put it up again. Then insensibly he relaxed, in the toils of memories roused by the reflection that this night fairly duplicated that which had welcomed him to Paris, twenty years ago. It was then that, for the first time in several months, he thought definitely of Troyon's. And it was then that Chance ordained that his taxicab should skid. On the point of leaving the Ile de la Cité by way of the Pont St. Michel, it suddenly (one might pardonably have believed) went mad, darting crabwise from the middle of the road to the right-hand footway with evident design to climb the rail and make an end to everything in the Seine. The driver regained control barely in time to avert a tragedy, and had no more than accomplished this much when a bit of broken glass gutted one of the rear tyres, which promptly gave up the ghost with a roar like that of a lusty young cannon. At this the driver (apparently a person of religious bias) said something heartfelt about the sacred name of his pipe and, crawling from under the apron, turned aft to assess damages. On his own part Lanyard swore in sound Saxon, opened the door, and delivered himself to the pelting shower. "Well?" he enquired after watching the driver muzzle the eviscerated tyre for some eloquent moments. Turning up a distorted face, the other gesticulated with profane abandon, by way of good measure interpolating a few disconnected words and phrases. Lanyard gathered that this was the second accident of the same nature since noon that the cab consequently lacked a spare tyre, and that short of a trip to the garage the accident was irremediable. So he said (intelligently) it couldn't be helped, paid the man and over tipped precisely as though their journey had been successfully consummated, and standing over his luggage watched the maimed vehicle limp miserably off through the teeming mists. Now in normal course his plight should have been relieved within two minutes. But it wasn't. For some time all such taxis as did pass displayed scornfully inverted flags. Also, their drivers jeered in their pleasing Parisian way at the lonely outlander occupying a position of such uncommon distinction in the heart of the storm and the precise middle of the Pont St. Michel. Over to the left, on the Quai de Marché Neuf, the façade of the Préfecture frowned portentously--"La Tour Pointue," as the Parisian loves to term it. Lanyard forgot his annoyance long enough to salute that grim pile with a mocking bow, thinking of the men therein who would give half their possessions to lay hands on him who was only a few hundred yards distant, marooned in the rain!... In its own good time a night-prowling fiacre ambled up and veered over to his hail. He viewed this stroke of good-fortune with intense disgust: the shambling, weather-beaten animal between the shafts promised a long, damp crawl to the Lutetia. And on this reflection he yielded to impulse. Heaving in his luggage--"Troyon's!" he told the cocher.... The fiacre lumbered off into that dark maze of streets, narrow and tortuous, which backs up from the Seine to the Luxembourg, while its fare reflected that Fate had not served him so hardly after all: if Roddy had really been watching for him at the Gare du Nord, with a mind to follow and wait for his prey to make some incriminating move, this chance-contrived change of vehicles and destination would throw the detective off the scent and gain the adventurer, at worst, several hours' leeway. When at length his conveyance drew up at the historic corner, Lanyard alighting could have rubbed his eyes to see the windows of Troyon's all bright with electric light. Somehow, and most unreasonably, he had always believed the place would go to the hands of the house-wrecker unchanged. A smart portier ducked out, seized his luggage, and offered an umbrella. Lanyard composed his features to immobility as he entered the hotel, of no mind to let the least flicker of recognition be detected in his eyes when they should re-encounter familiar faces. And this was quite as well: for--again--the first he saw was Roddy. III A POINT OF INTERROGATION The man from Scotland Yard had just surrendered hat, coat, and umbrella to the vestiaire and was turning through swinging doors to the dining-room. Again, embracing Lanyard, his glance seemed devoid of any sort of intelligible expression; and if its object needed all his self-possession in that moment, it was to dissemble relief rather than dismay. An accent of the fortuitous distinguished this second encounter too persuasively to excuse further misgivings. What the adventurer himself hadn't known till within the last ten minutes, that he was coming to Troyon's, Roddy couldn't possibly have anticipated; ergo, whatever the detective's business, it had nothing to do with Lanyard. Furthermore, before quitting the lobby, Roddy paused long enough to instruct the vestiaire to have a fire laid in his room. So he was stopping at Troyon's--and didn't care who knew it! His doubts altogether dissipated by this incident, Lanyard followed his natural enemy into the dining-room with an air as devil-may-care as one could wish and so impressive that the maitre-d'hotel abandoned the detective to the mercies of one of his captains and himself hastened to seat Lanyard and take his order. This last disposed of; Lanyard surrendered himself to new impressions--of which the first proved a bit disheartening. However impulsively, he hadn't resought Troyon's without definite intent, to wit, to gain some clue, however slender, to the mystery of that wretched child, Marcel. But now it appeared he had procrastinated fatally: Time and Change had left little other than the shell of the Troyon's he remembered. Papa Troyon was gone; Madame no longer occupied the desk of the caisse; enquiries, so discreetly worded as to be uncompromising, elicited from the maitre-d'hôtel the information that the house had been under new management these eighteen months; the old proprietor was dead, and his widow had sold out lock, stock and barrel, and retired to the country--it was not known exactly where. And with the new administration had come fresh decorations and furnishings as well as a complete change of personnel: not even one of the old waiters remained. "'All, all are gone, the old familiar faces,'" Lanyard quoted in vindictive melancholy--"damn 'em!" Happily, it was soon demonstrated that the cuisine was being maintained on its erstwhile plane of excellence: one still had that comfort.... Other impressions, less ultimate, proved puzzling, disconcerting, and paradoxically reassuring. Lanyard commanded a fair view of Roddy across the waist of the room. The detective had ordered a meal that matched his aspect well--both of true British simplicity. He was a square-set man with a square jaw, cold blue eyes, a fat nose, a thin-lipped trap of a mouth, a face as red as rare beefsteak. His dinner comprised a cut from the joint, boiled potatoes, brussels sprouts, a bit of cheese, a bottle of Bass. He ate slowly, chewing with the doggedness of a strong character hampered by a weak digestion, and all the while kept eyes fixed to an issue of the Paris edition of the London Daily Mail, with an effect of concentration quite too convincing. Now one doesn't read the Paris edition of the London Daily Mail with tense excitement. Humanly speaking, it can't be done. Where, then, was the object of this so sedulously dissembled interest? Lanyard wasn't slow to read this riddle to his satisfaction--in as far, that is, as it was satisfactory to feel still more certain that Roddy's quarry was another than himself. Despite the lateness of the hour, which had by now turned ten o'clock, the restaurant had a dozen tables or so in the service of guests pleasantly engaged in lengthening out an agreeable evening with dessert, coffee, liqueurs and cigarettes. The majority of these were in couples, but at a table one removed from Roddy's sat a party of three; and Lanyard noticed, or fancied, that the man from Scotland Yard turned his newspaper only during lulls in the conversation in this quarter. Of the three, one might pass for an American of position and wealth: a man of something more than sixty years, with an execrable accent, a racking cough, and a thin, patrician cast of features clouded darkly by the expression of a soul in torment, furrowed, seamed, twisted--a mask of mortal anguish. And once, when this one looked up and casually encountered Lanyard's gaze, the adventurer was shocked to find himself staring into eyes like those of a dead man: eyes of a grey so light that at a little distance the colour of the irises blended indistinguishably with their whites, leaving visible only the round black points of pupils abnormally distended and staring, blank, fixed, passionless, beneath lashless lids. For the instant they seemed to explore Lanyard's very soul with a look of remote and impersonal curiosity; then they fell away; and when next the adventurer looked, the man had turned to attend to some observation of one of his companions. On his right sat a girl who might be his daughter; for not only was she, too, hall-marked American, but she was far too young to be the other's wife. A demure, old-fashioned type; well-poised but unassuming; fetchingly gowned and with sufficient individuality of taste but not conspicuously; a girl with soft brown hair and soft brown eyes; pretty, not extravagantly so when her face was in repose, but with a slow smile that rendered her little less than beautiful: in all (Lanyard thought) the kind of woman that is predestined to comfort mankind, whose strongest instinct is the maternal. She took little part in the conversation, seldom interrupting what was practically a duologue between her putative father and the third of their party. This last was one, whom Lanyard was sure he knew, though he could see no more than the back of Monsieur le Comte Remy de Morbihan. And he wondered with a thrill of amusement if it were possible that Roddy was on the trail of that tremendous buck. If so, it would be a chase worth following--a diversion rendered the more exquisite to Lanyard by the spice of novelty, since for once he would figure as a dispassionate bystander. The name of Comte Remy de Morbihan, although unrecorded in the Almanach de Gotha, was one to conjure with in the Paris of his day and generation. He claimed the distinction of being at once the homeliest, one of the wealthiest, and the most-liked man in France. As to his looks, good or bad, they were said to prove infallibly fatal with women, while not a few men, perhaps for that reason, did their possessor the honour to imitate them. The revues burlesqued him; Sem caricatured him; Forain counterfeited him extensively in that inimitable series of Monday morning cartoons for Le Figaro: one said "De Morbihan" instinctively at sight of that stocky figure, short and broad, topped by a chubby, moon-like mask with waxed moustaches, womanish eyes, and never-failing grin. A creature of proverbial good-nature and exhaustless vitality, his extraordinary popularity was due to the equally extraordinary extravagance with which he supported that latest Gallic fad, "le Sport." The Parisian Rugby team was his pampered protégé, he was an active member of the Tennis Club, maintained not only a flock of automobiles but a famous racing stable, rode to hounds, was a good field gun, patronized aviation and motor-boat racing, risked as many maximums during the Monte Carlo season as the Grand Duke Michael himself, and was always ready to whet rapiers or burn a little harmless powder of an early morning in the Parc aux Princes. But there were ugly whispers current with respect to the sources of his fabulous wealth. Lanyard, for one, wouldn't have thought him the properest company or the best Parisian cicerone for an ailing American gentleman blessed with independent means and an attractive daughter. Paris, on the other hand--Paris who forgives everything to him who contributes to her amusement--adored Comte Remy de Morbihan ... But perhaps Lanyard was prejudiced by his partiality for Americans, a sentiment the outgrowth of the years spent in New York with Bourke. He even fancied that between his spirit and theirs existed some subtle bond of sympathy. For all he knew he might himself be American... For some time Lanyard strained to catch something of the conversation that seemed to hold so much of interest for Roddy, but without success because of the hum of voices that filled the room. In time, however, the gathering began to thin out, until at length there remained only this party of three, Lanyard enjoying a most delectable salad, and Roddy puffing a cigar (with such a show of enjoyment that Lanyard suspected him of the sin of smuggling) and slowly gulping down a second bottle of Bass. Under these conditions the talk between De Morbihan and the Americans became public property. The first remark overheard by Lanyard came from the elderly American, following a pause and a consultation of his watch. "Quarter to eleven," he announced. "Plenty of time," said De Morbihan cheerfully. "That is," he amended, "if mademoiselle isn't bored ..." The girl's reply, accompanied by a pretty inclination of her head toward the Frenchman, was lost in the accents of the first speaker--a strong and sonorous voice, in strange contrast with his ravaged appearance and distressing cough. "Don't let that worry you," he advised cheerfully. "Lucia's accustomed to keeping late hours with me; and who ever heard of a young and pretty woman being bored on the third day of her first visit to Paris?" He pronounced the name with the hard C of the Italian tongue, as though it were spelled Luchia. "To be sure," laughed the Frenchman; "one suspects it will be long before mademoiselle loses interest in the rue de la Paix." "You may well, when such beautiful things come from it," said the girl. "See what we found there to-day." She slipped a ring from her hand and passed it to De Morbihan. There followed silence for an instant, then an exclamation from the Frenchman: "But it is superb! Accept, mademoiselle, my compliments. It is worthy even of you." She flushed prettily as she nodded smiling acknowledgement. "Ah, you Americans!" De Morbihan sighed. "You fill us with envy: you have the souls of poets and the wealth of princes!" "But we must come to Paris to find beautiful things for our women-folk!" "Take care, though, lest you go too far, Monsieur Bannon." "How so--too far?" "You might attract the attention of the Lone Wolf. They say he's on the prowl once more." The American laughed a trace contemptuously. Lanyard's fingers tightened on his knife and fork; otherwise he made no sign. A sidelong glance into a mirror at his elbow showed Roddy still absorbed in the Daily Mail. The girl bent forward with a look of eager interest. "The Lone Wolf? Who is that?" "You don't know him in America, mademoiselle?" "No...." "The Lone Wolf, my dear Lucia," the valetudinarian explained in a dryly humourous tone, "is the sobriquet fastened by some imaginative French reporter upon a celebrated criminal who seems to have made himself something of a pest over here, these last few years. Nobody knows anything definite about him, apparently, but he operates in a most individual way and keeps the police busy trying to guess where he'll strike next." The girl breathed an incredulous exclamation. "But I assure you!" De Morbihan protested. "The rogue has had a wonderfully successful career, thanks to his dispensing with confederates and confining his depredations to jewels and similar valuables, portable and easy to convert into cash. Yet," he added, nodding sagely, "one isn't afraid to predict his race is almost run." "You don't tell me!" the older man exclaimed. "Have they picked up the scent--at last?" "The man is known," De Morbihan affirmed. By now the conversation had caught the interest of several loitering waiters, who were listening open-mouthed. Even Roddy seemed a bit startled, and for once forgot to make business with his newspaper; but his wondering stare was exclusively for De Morbihan. Lanyard put down knife and fork, swallowed a final mouthful of Haut Brion, and lighted a cigarette with the hand of a man who knew not the meaning of nerves. "Garçon!" he called quietly; and ordered coffee and cigars, with a liqueur to follow.... "Known!" the American exclaimed. "They've caught him, eh?" "I didn't say that," De Morbihan laughed; "but the mystery is no more--in certain quarters." "Who is he, then?" "That--monsieur will pardon me--I'm not yet free to state. Indeed, I may be indiscreet in saying as much as I do. Yet, among friends..." His shrug implied that, as far as _he_ was concerned, waiters were unhuman and the other guests of the establishment non-existent. "But," the American persisted, "perhaps you can tell us how they got on his track?" "It wasn't difficult," said De Morbihan: "indeed, quite simple. This tone of depreciation is becoming, for it was my part to suggest the solution to my friend, the Chief of the Sûreté. He had been annoyed and distressed, had even spoken of handing in his resignation because of his inability to cope with this gentleman, the Lone Wolf. And since he is my friend, I too was distressed on his behalf, and badgered my poor wits until they chanced upon an idea which led us to the light." "You won't tell us?" the girl protested, with a little moue of disappointment, as the Frenchman paused provokingly. "Perhaps I shouldn't. And yet--why not? As I say, it was elementary reasoning--a mere matter of logical deduction and elimination. One made up one's mind the Lone Wolf must be a certain sort of man; the rest was simply sifting France for the man to fit the theory, and then watching him until he gave himself away." "You don't imagine we're going to let you stop there?" The American demanded in an aggrieved tone. "No? I must continue? Very well: I confess to some little pride. It was a feat. He is cunning, that one!" De Morbihan paused and shifted sideways in his chair, grinning like a mischievous child. By this manoeuvre, thanks to the arrangement of mirrors lining the walls, he commanded an indirect view of Lanyard; a fact of which the latter was not unaware, though his expression remained unchanged as he sat--with a corner of his eye reserved for Roddy--speculating whether De Morbihan were telling the truth or only boasting for his own glorification. "Do go on--please!" the girl begged prettily. "I can deny you nothing, mademoiselle.... Well, then! From what little was known of this mysterious creature, one readily inferred he must be a bachelor, with no close friends. That is clear, I trust?" "Too deep for me, my friend," the elderly man confessed. "Impenetrable reticence," the Count expounded, sententious--and enjoying himself hugely--"isn't possible in the human relations. Sooner or later one is doomed to share one's secrets, however reluctantly, even unconsciously, with a wife, a mistress, a child, or with some trusted friend. And a secret between two is--a prolific breeder of platitudes! Granted this line of reasoning, the Lone Wolf is of necessity not only unmarried but practically friendless. Other attributes of his will obviously comprise youth, courage, imagination, a rather high order of intelligence, and a social position--let us say, rather, an ostensible business--enabling him to travel at will hither and yon without exciting comment. So far, good! My friend the Chief of the Sûreté forthwith commissioned his agents to seek such an one, and by this means several fine fish were enmeshed in the net of suspicion, carefully scrutinized, and one by one let go--all except one, the veritable man. Him they sedulously watched, shadowing him across Europe and back again. He was in Berlin at the time of the famous Rheinart robbery, though he compassed that coup without detection; he was in Vienna when the British embassy there was looted, but escaped by a clever ruse and managed to dispose of his plunder before the agents of the Sûreté could lay hands on him; recently he has been in London, and there he made love to, and ran away with, the diamonds of a certain lady of some eminence. You have heard of Madame Omber, eh?" Now by Roddy's expression it was plain that, if Madame Omber's name wasn't strange in his hearing, at least he found this news about her most surprising. He was frankly staring, with a slackened jaw and with stupefaction in his blank blue eyes. Lanyard gently pinched the small end of a cigar, dipped it into his coffee, and lighted it with not so much as a suspicion of tremor. His brain, however, was working rapidly in effort to determine whether De Morbihan meant this for warning, or was simply narrating an amusing yarn founded on advance information and amplified by an ingenious imagination. For by now the news of the Omber affair must have thrilled many a Continental telegraph-wire.... "Madame Omber--of course!" the American agreed thoughtfully. "Everyone has heard of her wonderful jewels. The real marvel is that the Lone Wolf neglected so shining a mark as long as he did." "But truly so, monsieur!" "And they caught him at it, eh?" "Not precisely: but he left a clue--and London, to boot--with such haste as would seem to indicate he knew his cunning hand had, for once, slipped." "Then they'll nab him soon?" "Ah, monsieur, one must say no more!" De Morbihan protested. "Rest assured the Chief of the Sûreté has laid his plans: his web is spun, and so artfully that I think our unsociable outlaw will soon be making friends in the Prison of the Santé.... But now we must adjourn. One is sorry. It has been so very pleasant...." A waiter conjured the bill from some recess of his waistcoat and served it on a clean plate to the American. Another ran bawling for the vestiaire. Roddy glued his gaze afresh to the Daily Mail. The party rose. Lanyard noticed that the American signed instead of settling the bill with cash, indicating that he resided at Troyon's as well as dined there. And the adventurer found time to reflect that it was odd for such as he to seek that particular establishment in preference to the palatial modern hostelries of the Rive Droit--before De Morbihan, ostensibly for the first time espying Lanyard, plunged across the room with both hands outstretched and a cry of joyous surprise not really justified by their rather slight acquaintanceship. "Ah! Ah!" he clamoured vivaciously. "It is Monsieur Lanyard, who knows all about paintings! But this is delightful, my friend--one grand pleasure! You must know my friends.... But come!" And seizing Lanyard's hands, when that one somewhat reluctantly rose in response to this surprisingly over-exuberant greeting, he dragged him willy-nilly from behind his table. "And you are American, too. Certainly you must know one another. Mademoiselle Bannon--with your permission--my friend, Monsieur Lanyard. And Monsieur Bannon--an old, dear friend, with whom you will share a passion for the beauties of art." The hand of the American, when Lanyard clasped it, was cold, as cold as ice; and as their eyes met that abominable cough laid hold of the man, as it were by the nape of his neck, and shook him viciously. Before it had finished with him, his sensitively coloured face was purple, and he was gasping, breathless--and infuriated. "Monsieur Bannon," De Morbihan explained disconnectedly--"it is most distressing--I tell him he should not stop in Paris at this season--" "It is nothing!" the American interposed brusquely between paroxysms. "But our winter climate, monsieur--it is not fit for those in the prime of health--" "It is I who am unfit!" Bannon snapped, pressing a handkerchief to his lips--"unfit to live!" he amended venomously. Lanyard murmured some conventional expression of sympathy. Through it all he was conscious of the regard of the girl. Her soft brown eyes met his candidly, with a look cool in its composure, straightforward in its enquiry, neither bold nor mock-demure. And if they were the first to fall, it was with an effect of curiosity sated, without hint of discomfiture.... And somehow the adventurer felt himself measured, classified, filed away. Between amusement and pique he continued to stare while the elderly American recovered his breath and De Morbihan jabbered on with unfailing vivacity; and he thought that this closer scrutiny discovered in her face contours suggesting maturity of thought beyond her apparent years--which were somewhat less than the sum of Lanyard's--and with this the suggestion of an elusive, provoking quality of wistful languor, a hint of patient melancholy.... "We are off for a glimpse of Montmartre," De Morbihan was explaining--"Monsieur Bannon and I. He has not seen Paris in twenty years, he tells me. Well, it will be amusing to show him what changes have taken place in all that time. One regrets mademoiselle is too fatigued to accompany us. But you, my friend--now if you would consent to make our third, it would be most amiable of you." "I'm sorry," Lanyard excused himself; "but as you see, I am only just in from the railroad, a long and tiresome journey. You are very good, but I--" "Good!" De Morbihan exclaimed with violence. "I? On the contrary, I am a very selfish man; I seek but to afford myself the pleasure of your company. You lead such a busy life, my friend, romping about Europe, here one day, God-knows-where the next, that one must make one's best of your spare moments. You will join us, surely?" "Really I cannot to-night. Another time perhaps, if you'll excuse me." "But it is always this way!" De Morbihan explained to his friends with a vast show of mock indignation. "'Another time, perhaps'--his invariable excuse! I tell you, not two men in all Paris have any real acquaintance with this gentleman whom all Paris knows! His reserve is proverbial--'as distant as Lanyard,' we say on the boulevards!" And turning again to the adventurer, meeting his cold stare with the De Morbihan grin of quenchless effrontery--"As you will, my friend!" he granted. "But should you change your mind--well, you'll have no trouble finding us. Ask any place along the regular route. We see far too little of one another, monsieur--and I am most anxious to have a little chat with you." "It will be an honour," Lanyard returned formally.... In his heart he was pondering several most excruciating methods of murdering the man. What did he mean? How much did he know? If he knew anything, he must mean ill, for assuredly he could not be ignorant of Roddy's business, or that every other word he uttered was rivetting suspicion on Lanyard of identity with the Lone Wolf, or that Roddy was listening with all his ears and staring into the bargain! Decidedly something must be done to silence this animal, should it turn out he really did know anything! It was only after profound reflection over his liqueur (while Roddy devoured his Daily Mail and washed it down with a third bottle of Bass) that Lanyard summoned the maitre-d'hôtel and asked for a room. It would never do to fix the doubts of the detective by going elsewhere that night. But, fortunately, Lanyard knew that warren which was Troyon's as no one else knew it; Roddy would find it hard to detain him, should events seem to advise an early departure. IV A STRATAGEM When the maitre-d'hôtel had shown him all over the establishment (innocently enough, en route, furnishing him with a complete list of his other guests and their rooms: memoranda readily registered by a retentive memory) Lanyard chose the bed-chamber next that occupied by Roddy, in the second storey. The consideration influencing this selection was--of course--that, so situated, he would be in position not only to keep an eye on the man from Scotland Yard but also to determine whether or no Roddy were disposed to keep an eye on him. In those days Lanyard's faith in himself was a beautiful thing. He could not have enjoyed the immunity ascribed to the Lone Wolf as long as he had without gaining a power of sturdy self-confidence in addition to a certain amount of temperate contempt for spies of the law and all their ways. Against the peril inherent in this last, however, he was self-warned, esteeming it the most fatal chink in the armour of the lawbreaker, this disposition to underestimate the acumen of the police: far too many promising young adventurers like himself were annually laid by the heels in that snare of their own infatuate weaving. The mouse has every right, if he likes, to despise the cat for a heavy-handed and bloodthirsty beast, lacking wit and imagination, a creature of simple force-majeure; but that mouse will not advisedly swagger in cat-haunted territory; a blow of the paw is, when all's said and done, a blow of the paw--something to numb the wits of the wiliest mouse. Considering Roddy, he believed it to be impossible to gauge the limitations of that essentially British intelligence--something as self-contained as a London flat. One thing only was certain: Roddy didn't always think in terms of beef and Bass; he was nobody's facile fool; he could make a shrewd inference as well as strike a shrewd blow. Reviewing the scene in the restaurant, Lanyard felt measurably warranted in assuming not only that Roddy was interested in De Morbihan, but that the Frenchman was well aware of that interest. And he resented sincerely his inability to feel as confident that the Count, with his gossip about the Lone Wolf, had been merely seeking to divert Roddy's interest to putatively larger game. It was just possible that De Morbihan's identification of Lanyard with that mysterious personage, at least by innuendo, had been unintentional. But somehow Lanyard didn't believe it had. The two questions troubled him sorely: Did De Morbihan _know_, did he merely suspect, or had he only loosed an aimless shot which chance had sped to the right goal? Had the mind of Roddy proved fallow to that suggestion, or had it, with its simple national tenacity, been impatient of such side issues, or incredulous, and persisted in focusing its processes upon the personality and activities of Monsieur le Comte Remy de Morbihan? However, one would surely learn something illuminating before very long. The business of a sleuth is to sleuth, and sooner or later Roddy must surely make some move to indicate the quarter wherein his real interest lay. Just at present, reasoning from noises audible through the bolted door that communicated with the adjoining bed-chamber, the business of a sleuth seemed to comprise going to bed. Lanyard, shaving and dressing, could distinctly hear a tuneless voice contentedly humming "Sally in our Alley," a rendition punctuated by one heavy thump and then another and then by a heartfelt sigh of relief--as Roddy kicked off his boots--and followed by the tapping of a pipe against grate-bars, the squeal of a window lowered for ventilation, the click of an electric-light, and the creaking of bed-springs. Finally, and before Lanyard had finished dressing, the man from Scotland Yard began placidly to snore. Of course, he might well be bluffing; for Lanyard had taken pains to let Roddy know that they were neighbours, by announcing his selection in loud tones close to the communicating door. But this was a question which the adventurer meant to have answered before he went out.... It was hard upon twelve o'clock when the mirror on the dressing-table assured him that he was at length point-device in the habit and apparel of a gentleman of elegant nocturnal leisure. But if he approved the figure he cut, it was mainly because clothes interested him and he reckoned his own impeccable. Of their tenant he was feeling just then a bit less sure than he had half-an-hour since; his regard was louring and mistrustful. He was, in short, suffering reaction from the high spirits engendered by his cross-Channel exploits, his successful get-away, and the unusual circumstances attendant upon his return to this memory-haunted mausoleum of an unhappy childhood. He even shivered a trifle, as if under premonition of misfortune, and asked himself heavily: Why not? For, logically considered, a break in the run of his luck was due. Thus far he had played, with a success almost too uniform, his dual rôle, by day the amiable amateur of art, by night the nameless mystery that prowled unseen and preyed unhindered. Could such success be reasonably expected to attend him always? Should he count De Morbihan's yarn a warning? Black must turn up every so often in a run of red: every gambler knows as much. And what was Michael Lanyard but a common gambler, who persistently staked life and liberty against the blindly impartial casts of Chance? With one last look round to make certain there was nothing in the calculated disorder of his room to incriminate him were it to be searched in his absence, Lanyard enveloped himself in a long full-skirted coat, clapped on an opera hat, and went out, noisily locking the door. He might as well have left it wide, but it would do no harm to pretend he didn't know the bed-chamber keys at Troyon's were interchangeable--identically the same keys, in fact, that had been in service in the days of Marcel the wretched. A single half-power electric bulb now modified the gloom of the corridor; its fellow made a light blot on the darkness of the courtyard. Even the windows of the conciergerie were black. None the less, Lanyard tapped them smartly. "_Cordon_!" he demanded in a strident voice. "_Cordon, s'il vous plait! _" "_Eh? _" A startled grunt from within the lodge was barely audible. Then the latch clicked loudly at the end of the passageway. Groping his way in the direction of this last sound, Lanyard found the small side door ajar. He opened it, and hesitated a moment, looking out as though questioning the weather; simultaneously his deft fingers wedged the latch back with a thin slip of steel. No rain, in fact, had fallen within the hour; but still the sky was dense with a sullen rack, and still the sidewalks were inky wet. The street was lonely and indifferently lighted, but a swift searching reconnaissance discovered nothing that suggested a spy skulking in the shelter of any of the nearer shadows. Stepping out, he slammed the door and strode briskly round the corner, as if making for the cab-rank that lines up along the Luxembourg Gardens side of the rue de Medicis; his boot-heels made a cheerful racket in that quiet hour; he was quite audibly going away from Troyon's. But instead of holding on to the cab-rank, he turned the next corner, and then the next, rounding the block; and presently, reapproaching the entrance to Troyon's, paused in the recess of a dark doorway and, lifting one foot after another, slipped rubber caps over his heels. Thereafter his progress was practically noiseless. The smaller door yielded to his touch without a murmur. Inside, he closed it gently, and stood a moment listening with all his senses--not with his ears alone but with every nerve and fibre of his being--with his imagination, to boot. But there was never a sound or movement in all the house that he could detect. And no shadow could have made less noise than he, slipping cat-footed across the courtyard and up the stairs, avoiding with super-developed sensitiveness every lift that might complain beneath his tread. In a trice he was again in the corridor leading to his bed-chamber. It was quite as gloomy and empty as it had been five minutes ago, yet with a difference, a something in its atmosphere that made him nod briefly in confirmation of that suspicion which had brought him back so stealthily. For one thing, Roddy had stopped snoring. And Lanyard smiled over the thought that the man from Scotland Yard might profitably have copied that trick of poor Bourke's, of snoring like the Seven Sleepers when most completely awake.... It was naturally no surprise to find his bed-chamber door unlocked and slightly ajar. Lanyard made sure of the readiness of his automatic, strode into the room, and shut the door quietly but by no means soundlessly. He had left the shades down and the hangings drawn at both windows; and since these had not been disturbed, something nearly approaching complete darkness reigned in the room. But though promptly on entering his fingers closed upon the wall-switch near the door, he refrained from turning up the lights immediately, with a fancy of impish inspiration that it would be amusing to learn what move Roddy would make when the tension became too much even for his trained nerves. Several seconds passed without the least sound disturbing the stillness. Lanyard himself grew a little impatient, finding that his sight failed to grow accustomed to the darkness because that last was too absolute, pressing against his staring eyeballs like a black fluid impenetrably opaque, as unbroken as the hush. Still, he waited: surely Roddy wouldn't be able much longer to endure such suspense.... And, surely enough, the silence was abruptly broken by a strange and moving sound, a hushed cry of alarm that was half a moan and half a sob. Lanyard himself was startled: for that was never Roddy's voice! There was a noise of muffled and confused footsteps, as though someone had started in panic for the door, then stopped in terror. Words followed, the strangest he could have imagined, words spoken in a gentle and tremulous voice: "In pity's name! who are you and what do you want?" Thunderstruck, Lanyard switched on the lights. At a distance of some six paces he saw, not Roddy, but a woman, and not a woman merely, but the girl he had met in the restaurant. V ANTICLIMAX The surprise was complete; none, indeed, was ever more so; but it's a question which party thereto was the more affected. Lanyard stared with the eyes of stupefaction. To his fancy, this thing passed the compass of simple incredulity: it wasn't merely improbable, it was preposterous; it was anticlimax exaggerated to the proportions of the grotesque. He had come prepared to surprise and bully rag the most astute police detective of whom he had any knowledge; he found himself surprised and discountenanced by _this_...! Confusion no less intense informed the girl's expression; her eyes were fixed to his with a look of blank enquiry; her face, whose colouring had won his admiration two hours since, was colourless; her lips were just ajar; the fingers of one hand touched her cheek, indenting it. The other hand caught up before her the long skirts of a pretty robe-de-chambre, beneath whose edge a hand's-breadth of white silk shimmered and the toe of a silken mule was visible. Thus she stood, poised for flight, attired only in a dressing-gown over what, one couldn't help suspecting, was her night-dress: for her hair was down, and she was unquestionably all ready for her bed....But Bourke's patient training had been wasted if this man proved one to remain long at loss. Rallying his wits quickly from their momentary rout, he reasserted command over them, and if he didn't in the least understand, made a brave show of accepting this amazing accident as a commonplace. "I beg your pardon, Miss Bannon--" he began with a formal bow. She interrupted with a gasp of wondering recognition: "Mr. Lanyard!" He inclined his head a second time: "Sorry to disturb you--" "But I don't understand--" "Unfortunately," he proceeded smoothly, "I forgot something when I went out, and had to come back for it." "But--but--" "Yes?" Suddenly her eyes, for the first time detached from his, swept the room with a glance of wild dismay. "This room," she breathed--"I don't know it--" "It is mine." "Yours! But--" "That is how I happened to--interrupt you." The girl shrank back a pace--two paces--uttering a low-toned monosyllable of understanding, an "_O!_" abruptly gasped. Simultaneously her face and throat flamed scarlet. "_Your_ room, Mr. Lanyard!" Her tone so convincingly voiced shame and horror that his heart misgave him. Not that alone, but the girl was very good to look upon. "I'm sure," he began soothingly; "it doesn't matter. You mistook a door--" "But you don't understand!" She shuddered.... "This dreadful habit! And I was hoping I had outgrown it! How can I ever explain--?" "Believe me, Miss Bannon, you need explain nothing." "But I must...I wish to...I can't bear to let you think...But surely you can make allowances for sleepwalking!" To this appeal he could at first return nothing more intelligent than a dazed repetition of the phrase. So that was how...Why hadn't he thought of it before? Ever since he had turned on the lights, he had been subjectively busy trying to invest her presence there with some plausible excuse. But somnambulism had never once entered his mind. And in his stupidity, at pains though he had been to render his words inoffensive, he had been guilty of constructive incivility. In his turn, Lanyard coloured warmly. "I beg your pardon," he muttered. The girl paid no attention; she seemed self-absorbed, thinking only of herself and the anomalous position into which her infirmity had tricked her. When she did speak, her words came swiftly: "You see...I was so frightened! I found myself suddenly standing up in darkness, just as if I had jumped out of bed at some alarm; and then I heard somebody enter the room and shut the door stealthily...Oh, please understand me!" "But I do, Miss Bannon--quite." "I am so ashamed--" "Please don't consider it that way." "But now that you know--you don't think--" "My dear Miss Bannon!" "But it must be so hard to credit! Even I... Why, it's more than a year since this last happened. Of course, as a child, it was almost a habit; they had to watch me all the time. Once... But that doesn't matter. I _am_ so sorry." "You really mustn't worry," Lanyard insisted. "It's all quite natural--such things do happen--are happening all the time--" "But I don't want you--" "I am nobody, Miss Bannon. Besides I shan't mention the matter to a soul. And if ever I am fortunate enough to meet you again, I shall have forgotten it completely--believe me." There was convincing sincerity in his tone. The girl looked down, as though abashed. "You are very good," she murmured, moving toward the door. "I am very fortunate." Her glance of surprise was question enough. "To be able to treasure this much of your confidence," he explained with a tentative smile. She was near the door; he opened it for her, but cautioned her with a gesture and a whispered word: "Wait. I'll make sure nobody's about." He stepped noiselessly into the hall and paused an instant, looking right and left, listening. The girl advanced to the threshold and there checked, hesitant, eyeing him anxiously. He nodded reassurance: "All right--coast's clear!" But she delayed one moment more. "It's you who are mistaken," she whispered, colouring again beneath his regard, in which admiration could not well be lacking, "It is I who am fortunate--to have met a--gentleman." Her diffident smile, together with the candour of her eyes, embarrassed him to such extent that for the moment he was unable to frame a reply. "Good night," she whispered--"and thank you, thank you!" Her room was at the far end of the corridor. She gained its threshold in one swift dash, noiseless save for the silken whisper of her garments, turned, flashed him a final look that left him with the thought that novelists did not always exaggerate, that eyes could shine like stars.... Her door closed softly. Lanyard shook his head as if to dissipate a swarm of annoying thoughts, and went back into his own bed-chamber. He was quite content with the explanation the girl had given, but being the slave of a methodical and pertinacious habit of mind, spent five busy minutes examining his room and all that it contained with a perseverance that would have done credit to a Frenchman searching for a mislaid sou. If pressed, he would have been put to it to name what he sought or thought to find. What he did find was that nothing had been tampered with and nothing more--not even so much as a dainty, lace-trimmed wisp of sheer linen bearing the lady's monogram and exhaling a faint but individual perfume. Which, when he came to consider it, seemed hardly playing the game by the book. As for Roddy, Lanyard wasted several minutes, off and on, listening attentively at the communicating door; but if the detective had stopped snoring, his respiration was loud enough in that quiet hour, a sound of harsh monotony. True, that proved nothing; but Lanyard, after the fiasco of his first attempt to catch his enemy awake, was no more disposed to be hypercritical; he had his fill of being ingenious and profound. And when presently he again left Troyon's (this time without troubling the repose of the concierge) it was with the reflection that, if Roddy were really playing 'possum, he was welcome to whatever he could find of interest in the quarters of Michael Lanyard. VI THE PACK GIVES TONGUE Lanyard's first destination was that convenient little rez-de-chaussée apartment near the Trocadéro, at the junction of the rue Roget and the avenue de l'Alma; but his way thither was so roundabout that the best part of an hour was required for what might have been less than a twenty-minute taxicab course direct from Troyon's. It was past one when he arrived, afoot, at the corner. Not that he grudged the time; for in Lanyard's esteem Bourke's epigram had come to have the weight and force of an axiom: "The more trouble you make for yourself, the less the good public will make for you." Paradoxically, he hadn't the least intention of attempting to deceive anybody as to his permanent address in Paris, where Michael Lanyard, connoisseur of fine paintings, was a figure too conspicuous to permit his making a secret of his residence. De Morbihan, moreover, through recognizing him at Troyon's, had rendered it impossible for Lanyard to adopt a nom-de-guerre there, even had he thought that ruse advisable. But he had certain businesses to attend to before dawn, affairs demanding privacy; and while by no means sure he was followed, one can seldom be sure of anything, especially in Paris, where nothing is impossible; and it were as well to lose a spy first as last. And his mind could not be at ease with respect to Roddy, thanks to De Morbihan's gasconade in the presence of the detective and also to that hint which the Count had dropped concerning some fatal blunder in the course of Lanyard's British campaign. The adventurer could recall leaving no step uncovered. Indeed, he had prided himself on conducting his operations with a degree of circumspection unusually thorough-going, even for him. Yet he was unable to rid himself of those misgivings roused by De Morbihan's declaration that the theft of the Omber jewels had been accomplished only at cost of a clue to the thief's identity. Now the Count's positive information concerning the robbery proved that the news thereof had anticipated the arrival of its perpetrator in Paris; yet Roddy unquestionably had known nothing of it prior to its mention in his presence, after dinner. Or else the detective was a finer actor than Lanyard credited. But how could De Morbihan have come by his news? Lanyard was really and deeply perturbed.... Pestered to distraction by such thoughts, he fitted key to latch and quietly let himself into his flat by a private street-entrance which, in addition to the usual door opening on the court and under the eye of the concierge, distinguished this from the ordinary Parisian apartment and rendered it doubly suited to the adventurer's uses. Then he turned on the lights and moved quickly from room to room of the three comprising his quarters, with comprehensive glances reviewing their condition. But, indeed, he hadn't left the reception-hall for the salon without recognizing that things were in no respect as they ought to be: a hat he had left on the hall rack had been moved to another peg; a chair had been shifted six inches from its ordained position; and the door of a clothes-press, which he had locked on leaving, now stood ajar. Furthermore, the state of the salon, which he had furnished as a lounge and study, and of the tiny dining-room and the bed-chamber adjoining, bore out these testimonies to the fact that alien hands had thoroughly ransacked the apartment, leaving no square inch unscrutinized. Yet the proprietor missed nothing. His rooms were a private gallery of valuable paintings and antique furniture to poison with envy the mind of any collector, and housed into the bargain a small museum of rare books, manuscripts, and articles of exquisite workmanship whose individuality, aside from intrinsic worth, rendered them priceless. A burglar of discrimination might have carried off in one coat-pocket loot enough to foot the bill for a twelve-month of profligate existence. But nothing had been removed, nothing at least that was apparent in the first tour of inspection; which, if sweeping, was by no means superficial. Before checking off more elaborately his mental inventory, Lanyard turned attention to the protective device, a simple but exhaustive system of burglar-alarm wiring so contrived that any attempt to enter the apartment save by means of a key which fitted both doors and of which no duplicate existed would alarm both the concierge and the burglar protective society. Though it seemed to have been in no way tampered with, to test the apparatus he opened a window on the court. The lodge of the concierge was within earshot. If the alarm had been in good order, Lanyard could have heard the bell from his window. He heard nothing. With a shrug, he shut the window. He knew well--none better--how such protection could be rendered valueless by a thoughtful and fore-handed housebreaker. Returning to the salon, where the main body of his collection was assembled, he moved slowly from object to object, ticking off items and noting their condition; with the sole result of justifying his first conclusion, that whereas nothing had escaped handling, nothing had been removed. By way of a final test, he opened his desk (of which the lock had been deftly picked) and went through its pigeon-holes. His scanty correspondence, composed chiefly of letters exchanged with art dealers, had been scrutinized and replaced carelessly, in disorder: and here again he missed nothing; but in the end, removing a small drawer and inserting a hand in its socket, he dislodged a rack of pigeon-holes and exposed the secret cabinet that is almost inevitably an attribute of such pieces of period furniture. A shallow box, this secret space contained one thing only, but that one of considerable value, being the leather bill-fold in which the adventurer kept a store of ready money against emergencies. It was mostly for this, indeed, that he had come to his apartment; his London campaign having demanded an expenditure far beyond his calculations, so that he had landed in Paris with less than one hundred francs in pocket. And Lanyard, for all his pride of spirit, acknowledged one haunting fear that of finding himself strapped in the face of emergency. The fold yielded up its hoard to a sou: Lanyard counted out five notes of one thousand francs and ten of twenty pounds: their sum, upwards of two thousand dollars. But if nothing had been abstracted, something had been added: the back of one of the Bank of England notes had been used as a blank for memorandum. Lanyard spread it out and studied it attentively. The handwriting had been traced with no discernible attempt at disguise, but was quite strange to him. The pen employed had been one of those needle-pointed nibs so popular in France; the hand was that of an educated Frenchman. The import of the memorandum translated substantially as follows: _"To the Lone Wolf-- "The Pack sends Greetings "and extends its invitation "to participate in the benefits "of its Fraternity. "One awaits him always at "L'Abbaye Thêléme."_ A date was added, the date of that very day... Deliberately, having conned this communication, Lanyard produced his cigarette-case, selected a cigarette, found his briquet, struck a light, twisted the note of twenty pounds into a rude spill, set it afire, lighted his cigarette there from and, rising, conveyed the burning paper to a cold and empty fire-place wherein he permitted it to burn to a crisp black ash. When this was done, his smile broke through his clouding scowl. "Well, my friend!" he apostrophized the author of that document which now could never prove incriminating--"at all events, I have you to thank for a new sensation. It has long been my ambition to feel warranted in lighting a cigarette with a twenty-pound note, if the whim should ever seize me!" His smile faded slowly; the frown replaced it: something far more valuable to him than a hundred dollars had just gone up in smoke ... VII L'ABBAYE His secret uncovered, that essential incognito of his punctured, his vanity touched to the quick--all that laboriously constructed edifice of art and chicane which yesterday had seemed so substantial, so impregnable a wall between the Lone Wolf and the World, to-day rent, torn asunder, and cast down in ruins about his feet--Lanyard wasted time neither in profitless lamentation or any other sort of repining. He had much to do before morning: to determine, as definitely as might in discretion be possible, who had fathomed his secret and how; to calculate what chance he still had of pursuing his career without exposure and disaster; and to arrange, if investigation verified his expectations, which were of the gloomiest, to withdraw in good order, with all honours of war, from that dangerous field. Delaying only long enough to revise plans disarranged by the discoveries of this last bad quarter of an hour, he put out the lights and went out by the courtyard door; for it was just possible that those whose sardonic whim it had been to name themselves "the Pack" might have stationed agents in the street to follow their dissocial brother in crime. And now more than ever Lanyard was firmly bent on going his own way unwatched. His own way first led him stealthily past the door of the conciergerie and through the court to the public hall in the main body of the building. Happily, there were no lights to betray him had anyone been awake to notice. For thanks to Parisian notions of economy even the best apartment houses dispense with elevator-boys and with lights that burn up real money every hour of the night. By pressing a button beside the door on entering, however, Lanyard could have obtained light in the hallways for five minutes, or long enough to enable any tenant to find his front-door and the key-hole therein; at the end of which period the lamps would automatically have extinguished themselves. Or by entering a narrow-chested box of about the dimensions of a generous coffin, and pressing a button bearing the number of the floor at which he wished to alight, he could have been comfortably wafted aloft without sign of more human agency. But he prudently availed himself of neither of these conveniences. Afoot and in complete darkness he made the ascent of five flights of winding stairs to the door of an apartment on the sixth floor. Here a flash from a pocket lamp located the key-hole; the key turned without sound; the door swung on silent hinges. Once inside, the adventurer moved more freely, with less precaution against noise. He was on known ground, and alone; the apartment, though furnished, was untenanted, and would so remain as long as Lanyard continued to pay the rent from London under an assumed name. It was the convenience of this refuge and avenue of retreat, indeed which had dictated his choice of the rez-de-chaussée; for the sixth-floor flat possessed one invaluable advantage--a window on a level with the roof of the adjoining building. Two minutes' examination sufficed to prove that here at least the Pack had not trespassed.... Five minutes later Lanyard picked the common lock of a door opening from the roof of an apartment house on the farthest corner of the block, found his way downstairs, tapped the door of the conciergerie, chanted that venerable Open Sesame of Paris, "_Cordon, s'il vous plait!_" and was made free of the street by a worthy guardian too sleepy to challenge the identity of this late-departing guest. He walked three blocks, picked up a taxicab, and in ten minutes more was set down at the Gare des Invalides. Passing through the station without pause, he took to the streets afoot, following the boulevard St. Germain to the rue du Bac; a brief walk up this time-worn thoroughfare brought him to the ample, open and unguarded porte-cochére of a court walled with beetling ancient tenements. When he had made sure that the courtyard was deserted, Lanyard addressed himself to a door on the right; which to his knock swung promptly ajar with a clicking latch. At the same time the adventurer whipped from beneath his cloak a small black velvet visor and adjusted it to mask the upper half of his face. Then entering a narrow and odorous corridor, whose obscurity was emphasized by a lonely guttering candle, he turned the knob of the first door and walked into a small, ill-furnished room. A spare-bodied young man, who had been reading at a desk by the light of an oil-lamp with a heavy green shade, rose and bowed courteously. "Good morning, monsieur," he said with the cordiality of one who greets an acquaintance of old standing. "Be seated," he added, indicating an arm-chair beside the desk. "It seems long since one has had the honour of a call from monsieur." "That is so," Lanyard admitted, sitting down. The young man followed suit. The lamplight, striking across his face beneath the greenish penumbra of the shade, discovered a countenance of Hebraic cast. "Monsieur has something to show me, eh?" "But naturally." Lanyard's reply just escaped a suspicion of curtness: as who should say, what did you expect? He was puzzled by something strange and new in the attitude of this young man, a trace of reserve and constraint.... They had been meeting from time to time for several years, conducting their secret and lawless business according to a formula invented by Bourke and religiously observed by Lanyard. A note or telegram of innocent superficial intent, addressed to a certain member of a leading firm of jewellers in Amsterdam, was the invariable signal for conferences such as this; which were invariably held in the same place, at an hour indeterminate between midnight and dawn, between on the one hand this intelligent, cultivated and well-mannered young Jew, and on the other hand the thief in his mask. In such wise did the Lone Wolf dispose of his loot, at all events of the bulk thereof; other channels were, of course, open to him, but none so safe; and with no other receiver of stolen goods could he hope to make such fair and profitable deals. Now inevitably in the course of this long association, though each remained in ignorance of his confederate's identity, these two had come to feel that they knew each other fairly well. Not infrequently, when their business had been transacted, Lanyard would linger an hour with the agent, chatting over cigarettes: both, perhaps, a little thrilled by the piquancy of the situation; for the young Jew was the only man who had ever wittingly met the Lone Wolf face to face.... Why then this sudden awkwardness and embarrassment on the part of the agent? Lanyard's eyes narrowed with suspicion. In silence he produced a jewel-case of morocco leather and handed it over to the Jew, then settled back in his chair, his attitude one of lounging, but his mind as quick with distrust as the fingers that, under cover of his cloak, rested close to a pocket containing his automatic. Accepting the box with a little bow, the Jew pressed the catch and discovered its contents. But the richness of the treasure thus disclosed did not seem to surprise him; and, indeed, he had more than once been introduced with no more formality to plunder of far greater value. Fitting a jeweller's glass to his eye, he took up one after another of the pieces and examined them under the lamplight. Presently he replaced the last, shut down the cover of the box, turned a thoughtful countenance to Lanyard, and made as if to speak, but hesitated. "Well?" the adventurer demanded impatiently. "This, I take it," said the Jew absently, tapping the box, "is the jewellery of Madame Omber." "_I_ took it," Lanyard retorted good-naturedly--"not to put too fine a point upon it!" "I am sorry," the other said slowly. "Yes?" "It is most unfortunate..." "May one enquire what is most unfortunate?" The Jew shrugged and with the tips of his fingers gently pushed the box toward his customer. "This makes me very unhappy," he admitted: "but I have no choice in the matter, monsieur. As the agent of my principals I am instructed to refuse you an offer for these valuables." "Why?" Again the shrug, accompanied by a deprecatory grimace: "That is difficult to say. No explanation was made me. My instructions were simply to keep this appointment as usual, but to advise you it will be impossible for my principals to continue their relations with you as long as your affairs remain in their present status." "Their present status?" Lanyard repeated. "What does that mean, if you please?" "I cannot say monsieur. I can only repeat that which was said to me." After a moment Lanyard rose, took the box, and replaced it in his pocket. "Very well," he said quietly. "Your principals, of course, understand that this action on their part definitely ends our relations, rather than merely interrupts them at their whim?" "I am desolated, monsieur, but ... one must assume that they have considered everything. You understand, it is a matter in which I am wholly without discretion, I trust?" "O quite!" Lanyard assented carelessly. He held out his hand. "Good-bye, my friend." The Jew shook hands warmly. "Good night, monsieur--and the best of luck!" There was significance in his last words that Lanyard did not trouble to analyze. Beyond doubt, the man knew more than he dared admit. And the adventurer told himself he could shrewdly surmise most of that which the other had felt constrained to leave unspoken. Pressure from some quarter had been brought to bear upon that eminently respectable firm of jewel dealers in Amsterdam to induce them to discontinue their clandestine relations with the Lone Wolf, profitable though these must have been. Lanyard believed he could name the quarter whence this pressure was being exerted, but before going further or coming to any momentous decision, he was determined to know to a certainty who were arrayed against him and how much importance he need attach to their antagonism. If he failed in this, it would be the fault of the other side, not his for want of readiness to accept its invitation. In brief, he didn't for an instant contemplate abandoning either his rigid rule of solitude or his chosen career without a fight; but he preferred not to fight in the dark. Anger burned in him no less hotly than chagrin. It could hardly be otherwise with one who, so long suffered to go his way without let or hindrance, now suddenly, in the course of a few brief hours, found himself brought up with a round turn--hemmed in and menaced on every side by secret opposition and hostility. He no longer feared to be watched; and the very fact that, as far as he could see, he wasn't watched, only added fuel to his resentment, demonstrating as it did so patently the cynical assurance of the Pack that they had him cornered, without alternative other than to supple himself to their will. To the driver of the first taxicab he met, Lanyard said "L'Abbaye," then shutting himself within the conveyance, surrendered to the most morose reflections. Nothing of this mood was, however, apparent in his manner on alighting. He bore a countenance of amiable insouciance through the portals of this festal institution whose proudest boast and--incidentally--sole claim to uniquity is that it never opens its doors before midnight nor closes them before dawn. He had moved about with such celerity since entering his flat on the rue Roget that it was even now only two o'clock; an hour at which revelry might be expected to have reached its apogee in this, the soi-disant "smartest" place in Paris. A less sophisticated adventurer might have been flattered by the cordiality of his reception at the hands of that arbiter elegantiarum the maitre-d'hôtel. "Ah-h, Monsieur Lanya_rrr_! But it is long since we have been so favoured. However, I have kept your table for you." "Have you, though?" "Could it be otherwise, after receipt of your honoured order?" "No," said Lanyard coolly, "I presume not, if you value your peace of mind." "Monsieur is alone?" This with an accent of disappointment. "Temporarily, it would seem so." "But this way, if you please...." In the wake of the functionary, Lanyard traversed that frowsy anteroom where doubtful wasters are herded on suspicion in company with the corps of automatic Bacchanalians and figurantes, to the main restaurant, the inner sanctum toward which the naïve soul of the travel-bitten Anglo-Saxon aspires so ardently. It was not a large room; irregularly octagonal in shape, lined with wall-seats behind a close-set rank of tables; better lighted than most Parisian restaurants, that is to say, less glaringly; abominably ventilated; the open space in the middle of the floor reserved for a handful of haggard young professional dancers, their stunted bodies more or less costumed in brilliant colours, footing it with all the vivacity to be expected of five-francs per night per head; the tables occupied by parties Anglo-Saxon and French in the proportion of five to one, attended by a company of bored and apathetic waiters; a string orchestra ragging incessantly; a vicious buck-nigger on a dais shining with self-complacence while he vamped and shouted "_Waitin' foh th' Robuht E. Lee_"... Lanyard permitted himself to be penned in a corner behind a table, ordered champagne not because he wanted it but because it was etiquette, suppressed a yawn, lighted a cigarette, and reviewed the assemblage with a languid but shrewd glance. He saw only the company of every night; for even in the off-season there are always enough English-speaking people in Paris to make it possible for L'Abbaye Thêléme to keep open with profit: the inevitable assortment of respectable married couples with friends, the men chafing and wondering if possibly all this might seem less unattractive were they foot-loose and fancy-free, the women contriving to appear at ease with varying degrees of success, but one and all flushed with dubiety; the sprinkling of demi-mondaines not in the least concerned about _their_ social status; the handful of people who, having brought their fun with them, were having the good time they would have had anywhere; the scattering of plain drunks in evening dress.... Nowhere a face that Lanyard recognized definitely: no Mr. Bannon, no Comte Remy de Morbihan.... He regarded this circumstance, however, with more vexation than surprise: De Morbihan would surely show up in time; meanwhile, it was annoying to be obliged to wait, to endure this martyrdom of ennui. He sipped his wine sparingly, without relish, considering the single subsidiary fact which did impress him with some wonder--that he was being left severely to himself; something which doesn't often fall to the lot of the unattached male at L'Abbaye. Evidently an order had been issued with respect to him. Ordinarily he would have been grateful: to-night he was merely irritated: such neglect rendered him conspicuous.... The fixed round of delirious divertissement unfolded as per schedule. The lights were lowered to provide a melodramatic atmosphere for that startling novelty, the Apache Dance. The coon shouted stridently. The dancers danced bravely on their poor, tired feet. An odious dwarf creature in a miniature outfit of evening clothes toddled from table to table, offensively soliciting stray francs--but shied from the gleam in Lanyard's eyes. Lackeys made the rounds, presenting each guest with a handful of coloured, feather-weight celluloid balls, with which to bombard strangers across the room. The inevitable shamefaced Englishman departed in tow of an overdressed Frenchwoman with pride of conquest in her smirk. The equally inevitable alcoholic was dug out from under his table and thrown into a cab. An American girl insisted on climbing upon a table to dance, but swayed and had to be helped down, giggling foolishly. A Spanish dancing girl was afforded a clear floor for her specialty, which consisted in singing several verses understood by nobody, the choruses emphasized by frantic assaults on the hair of several variously surprised, indignant, and flattered male guests--among them Lanyard, who submitted with resignation.... And then, just when he was on the point of consigning the Pack to the devil for inflicting upon him such cruel and inhuman punishment, the Spanish girl picked her way through the mob of dancers who invaded the floor promptly on her withdrawal, and paused beside his table. "You're not angry, mon coco?" she pleaded with a provocative smile. Lanyard returned a smiling negative. "Then I may sit down with you and drink a glass of your wine?" "Can't you see I've been saving the bottle for you?" The woman plumped herself promptly into the chair opposite the adventurer. He filled her glass. "But you are not happy to-night?" she demanded, staring over the brim as she sipped. "I am thoughtful," he said. "And what does that mean?" "I am saddened to contemplate the infirmities of my countrymen, these Americans who can't rest in Paris until they find some place as deadly as any Broadway boasts, these English who adore beautiful Paris solely because here they may continue to get drunk publicly after half-past twelve!" "Ah, then it's la barbe, is it not?" said the girl, gingerly stroking her faded, painted cheek. "It is true: I am bored." "Then why not go where you're wanted?" She drained her glass at a gulp and jumped up, swirling her skirts. "Your cab is waiting, monsieur--and perhaps you will find it more amusing with that Pack!" Flinging herself into the arms of another girl, she swung away, grinning impishly at Lanyard over her partner's shoulder. VIII THE HIGH HAND Evidently his first move toward departure was signalled; for as he passed out through L'Abbaye's doors the carriage-porter darted forward and saluted. "Monsieur Lanyarr'?" "Yes?" "Monsieur's car is waiting." "Indeed?" Lanyard surveyed briefly a handsome black limousine that, at pause beside the curb, was champing its bits in the most spirited fashion. Then he smiled appreciatively. "All the same, I thank you for the compliment," he said, and forthwith tipped the porter. But before entrusting himself to this gratuitous conveyance, he put himself to the trouble of inspecting the chauffeur--a capable-looking mechanic togged out in a rich black livery which, though relieved by a vast amount of silk braiding, was like the car guiltless of any sort of insignia. "I presume you know where I wish to go, my man?" The chauffeur touched his cap: "But naturally, monsieur." "Then take me there, the quickest way you know." Nodding acknowledgement of the porter's salute, Lanyard sank gratefully back upon uncommonly luxurious upholstery. The fatigue of the last thirty-six hours was beginning to tell on him a bit, though his youth was still so vital, so instinct with strength and vigour, that he could go as long again without sleep if need be. None the less he was glad of this opportunity to snatch a few minutes' rest by way of preparation against the occult culmination of this adventure. No telling what might ensue of this violation of all those principles which had hitherto conserved his welfare! And he entertained a gloomy suspicion that he would be inclined to name another ass, who proposed as he did to beard this Pack in its den with nothing more than his wits and an automatic pistol to protect ten thousand-francs, the jewels of Madame Omber, the Huysman plans, and (possibly) his life. However, he stood committed to his folly, if folly it were: he would play the game as it lay. As for curiosity concerning his immediate destination, there was little enough of that in his temper; a single glance round on leaving the car would fix his whereabouts beyond dispute, so thorough was his knowledge of Paris. He contemplated briefly, with admiration, the simplicity with which that affair at L'Abbaye had been managed, finding no just cause to suspect anyone there of criminal complicity in the plans of the Pack: a forged order for a table to the maitre-d'hotel, ten francs to the carriage-porter and twenty more to the dancing woman to play parts in a putative practical joke--and the thing had been arranged without implicating a soul!... Of a sudden, ending a ride much shorter than Lanyard would have liked, the limousine swung in toward a curb. Bending forward, he unlatched the door and, glancing through the window, uttered a grunt of profound disgust. If this were the best that Pack could do...! He had hoped for something a trifle more original from men with wit and imagination enough to plot the earlier phases of this intrigue. The car had pulled up in front of an institution which he knew well--far too well, indeed, for his own good. None the less, he consented to get out. "Sure you've come to the right place?" he asked the chauffeur. Two fingers touching the visor of his cap: "But certainly, monsieur!" "Oh, all right!" Lanyard grumbled resignedly; and tossing the man a five-franc piece, applied his knuckles to the door of an outwardly commonplace hôtel particulier in the rue Chaptal between the impasse of the Grand Guignol and the rue Pigalle. Now the neophyte needs the introduction of a trusted sponsor before he can win admission to the club-house of the exclusive Circle of Friends of Humanity; but Lanyard's knock secured him prompt and unquestioned right of way. The unfortunate fact is, he was a member in the best of standing; for this society of pseudo-altruistic aims was nothing more nor less than one of those several private gambling clubs of Paris which the French Government tolerates more or less openly, despite adequate restrictive legislation; and gambling was Lanyard's ruling passion--a legacy from Bourke no less than the rest of his professional equipment. To every man his vice (the argument is Bourke's, in defence of his failing). And perhaps the least mischievous vice a professional cracksman can indulge is that of gambling, since it can hardly drive him to lengths more desperate than those whereby he gains a livelihood. In the esteem of Paris, Count Remy de Morbihan himself was scarcely a more light-hearted plunger than Monsieur Lanyard. Naturally, with this reputation, he was always free of the handsome salons wherein the Friends of Humanity devoted themselves to roulette, auction bridge, baccarat and chemin-de-fer: and of this freedom he now proceeded to avail himself, with his hat just a shade aslant on his head, his hands in his pockets, a suspicion of a smile on his lips and a glint of the devil in his eyes--in all an expression accurately reflecting the latest phase of his humour, which was become largely one of contemptuous toleration, thanks to what he chose to consider an exhibition of insipid stupidity on the part of the Pack. Nor was this humour in any way modified when, in due course, he confirmed anticipation by discovering Monsieur le Comte Remy de Morbihan lounging beside one of the roulette tables, watching the play, and now and again risking a maximum on his own account. A flash of animation crossed the unlovely mask of the Count when he saw Lanyard approaching, and he greeted the adventurer with a gay little flirt of his pudgy dark hand. "Ah, my friend!" he cried. "It is you, then, who have changed your mind! But this is delightful!" "And what has become of your American friend?" Asked the adventurer. "He tired quickly, that one, and packed himself off to Troyon's. Be sure I didn't press him to continue the grand tour!" "Then you really did wish to see me to-night?" Lanyard enquired innocently. "Always--always, my dear Lanyard!" the Count declared, jumping up. "But come," he insisted: "I've a word for your private ear, if these gentlemen will excuse us." "Do!" Lanyard addressed in a confidential manner those he knew at the table, before turning away to the tug of the Count's hand on his arm--"I think he means to pay up twenty pounds he owes me!" Some derisive laughter greeted this sally. "I mean that, however," Lanyard informed the other cheerfully as they moved away to a corner where conversation without an audience was possible--"you ruined that Bank of England note, you know." "Cheap at the price!" the Count protested, producing his bill-fold. "Five hundred francs for an introduction to Monsieur the Lone Wolf!" "Are you joking?" Lanyard asked blankly--and with a magnificent gesture abolished the proffered banknote. "Joking? I! But surely you don't mean to deny--" "My friend," Lanyard interrupted, "before we assert or deny anything, let us gather the rest of the players round the table and deal from a sealed deck. Meantime, let us rest on the understanding that I have found, at one end, a message scrawled on a bank-note hidden in a secret place, at the other end, yourself, Monsieur le Comte. Between and beyond these points exists a mystery, of which one anticipates elucidation." "You shall have it," De Morbihan promised. "But first, we must go to those others who await us." "Not so fast!" Lanyard interposed. "What am I to understand? That you wish me to accompany you to the--ah--den of the Pack?" "Where else?" De Morbihan grinned. "But where is that?" "I am not permitted to say--" "Still, one has one's eyes. Why not satisfy me here?" "Your eyes, by your leave, monsieur, will be blindfolded." "Impossible." "Pardon--it is an essential--" "Come, come, my friend: we are not in the Middle Ages!" "I have no discretion, monsieur. My confrères--" "I insist: there will be trust on both sides or no negotiations." "But I assure you, my dear friend--" "My dear Count, it is useless: I am determined. Blindfold? I should say not! This is not--need I remind you again?--the Paris of Balzac and that wonderful Dumas of yours!" "What do you propose, then?" De Morbihan enquired, worrying his moustache. "What better place for the proposed conference than here?" "But not here!" "Why not? Everybody comes here: it will cause no gossip. I am here--I have come half-way; your friends must do as much on their part." "It is not possible...." "Then, I beg you, tender them my regrets." "Would you give us away?" "Never that: one makes gifts to one's friends only. But my interest in yours is depreciating so rapidly that, should you delay much longer, it will be on sale for the sum of two sous." "O--damn!" the Count complained peevishly. "With all the pleasure in life.... But now," Lanyard went on, rising to end the interview, "you must forgive me for reminding you that the morning wanes apace. I shall be going home in another hour." De Morbihan shrugged. "Out of my great affection for you," he purred venomously, "I will do my possible. But I promise nothing." "I have every confidence in your powers of moral suasion, monsieur," Lanyard assured him cheerfully. "Au revoir!" And with this, not at all ill-pleased with himself, he strutted off to a table at which a high-strung session of chemin-de-fer was in process, possessed himself of a vacant chair, and in two minutes was so engrossed in the game that the Pack was quite forgotten. In fifteen minutes he had won thrice as many thousands of francs. Twenty minutes or half an hour later, a hand on his shoulder broke the grip of his besetting passion. "Our table is made up, my friend," De Morbihan announced with his inextinguishable grin. "We're waiting for you." "Quite at your service." Settling his score and finding himself considerably better off than he had imagined, he resigned his place gracefully, and suffered the Count to link arms and drag him away up the main staircase to the second storey, where smaller rooms were reserved for parties who preferred to gamble privately. "So it appears you succeeded!" he chaffed his conductor good-humouredly. "I have brought you the mountain," De Morbihan assented. "One is grateful for small miracles...." But De Morbihan wouldn't laugh at his own expense; for a moment, indeed, he seemed inclined to take umbrage at Lanyard's levity. But the sudden squaring of his broad shoulders and the hardening of his features was quickly modified by an uneasy sidelong glance at his companion. And then they were at the door of the cabinet particulier. De Morbihan rapped, turned the knob, and stood aside, bowing politely. With a nod acknowledging the courtesy, Lanyard consented to precede him, and entered a room of intimate proportions, furnished chiefly with a green-covered card-table and five easy-chairs, of which three were occupied--two by men in evening dress, the third by one in a well-tailored lounge suit of dark grey. Now all three men wore visors of black velvet. Lanyard looked from one to the other and chuckled quietly. With an aggrieved air De Morbihan launched into introductions: "Messieurs, I have the honour to present to you our confrère, Monsieur Lanyard, best known as 'The Lone Wolf.' Monsieur Lanyard--the Council of our Association, known to you as 'The Pack.'" The three rose and bowed ceremoniously, Lanyard returned a cool, good-natured nod. Then he laughed again and more openly: "A pack of knaves!" "Monsieur doubtless feels at ease?" one retorted acidly. "In your company, Popinot? But hardly!" Lanyard returned in light contempt. The fellow thus indicated, a burly rogue of a Frenchman in rusty and baggy evening clothes, started and flushed scarlet beneath his mask; but the man next him dropped a restraining hand upon his arm, and Popinot, with a shrug, sank back into his chair. "Upon my word!" Lanyard declared gracelessly, "it's as good as a play! Are you sure, Monsieur le Comte, there's no mistake--that these gay masqueraders haven't lost their way to the stage of the Grand Guignol?" "Damn!" muttered the Count. "Take care, my friend! You go too far!" "You really think so? But you amaze me! You can't in reason expect me to take you seriously, gentlemen!" "If you don't, it will prove serious business for you!" growled the one he had called Popinot. "You mean that? But you are magnificent, all of you! We lack only the solitary illumination of a candle-end--a grinning skull--a cup of blood upon the table--to make the farce complete! But as it is.... Messieurs, you must be rarely uncomfortable, and feeling as foolish as you look, into the bargain! Moreover, I'm no child. ... Popinot, why not disembarrass your amiable features? And you, Mr. Wertheimer, I'm sure, will feel more at ease with an open countenance--as the saying runs," he said, nodding to the man beside Popinot. "As for this gentleman," he concluded, eyeing the third, "I haven't the pleasure of his acquaintance." With a short laugh, Wertheimer unmasked and exposed a face of decidedly English type, fair and well-modelled, betraying only the faintest traces of Semitic cast to account for his surname. And with this example, Popinot snatched off his own black visor--and glared at Lanyard: in his shabby dress, the incarnate essence of bourgeoisie outraged. But the third, he of the grey lounge suit, remained motionless; only his eyes clashed coldly with the adventurer's. He seemed a man little if at all Lanyard's senior, and built upon much the same lines. A close-clipped black moustache ornamented his upper lip. His chin was square and strong with character. The cut of his clothing was conspicuously neither English nor Continental. "I don't know you, sir," Lanyard continued slowly, puzzled to account for a feeling of familiarity with this person, whom he could have sworn he had never met before. "But you won't let your friends here outdo you in civility, I trust?" "If you mean you want me to unmask, I won't," the other returned brusquely, in fair French but with a decided transatlantic intonation. "American, eh?" "Native-born, if it interests you." "Have I ever met you before?" "You have not." "My dear Count," Lanyard said, turning to De Morbihan, "do me the favour to introduce this gentleman." "Your dear Count will do nothing like that, Mr. Lanyard. If you need a name to call me by, Smith's good enough." The incisive force of his enunciation assorted consistently with the general habit of the man. Lanyard recognized a nature no more pliable than his own. Idle to waste time bickering with this one.... "It doesn't matter," he said shortly; and drawing back a chair, sat down. "If it did, I should insist--or else decline the honour of receiving the addresses of this cosmopolitan committee. Truly, messieurs, you flatter me. Here we have Mr. Wertheimer, representing the swell-mobsmen across Channel; Monsieur le Comte standing for the gratin of Paris; Popinot, spokesman for our friends the Apaches; and the well-known Mr. Goodenough Smith, ambassador of the gun-men of New York--no doubt. I presume one is to understand you wait upon me as representing the fine flower of the European underworld?" "You're to understand that I, for one, don't relish your impudence," the stout Popinot snapped. "Sorry.... But I have already indicated my inability to take you seriously." "Why not?" the American demanded ominously. "You'd be sore enough if we took you as a joke, wouldn't you?" "You misapprehend, Mr.--ah--Smith: it is my first aim and wish that you do not take me in any manner, shape or form. It is you, remember, who requested this interview and--er--dressed your parts so strikingly!" "What are we to understand by that?" De Morbihan interposed. "This, messieurs--if you must know." Lanyard dropped for the moment his tone of raillery and bent forward, emphasizing his points by tapping the table with a forefinger. "Through some oversight of mine or cleverness of yours--I can't say which--perhaps both--you have succeeded in penetrating my secret. What then? You become envious of my success. In short, I stand in your light: I'm always getting away with something you might have lifted if you'd only had wit enough to think of it first. As your American accomplice, Mr. Mysterious Smith, would say, I 'cramp your style.'" "You learned that on Broadway," the American commented shrewdly. "Possibly.... To continue: so you get together, and bite your nails until you concoct a plan to frighten me into my profits. I've no doubt you're prepared to allow me to retain one-half the proceeds of my operations, should I elect to ally myself with you?" "That's the suggestion we are empowered to make," De Morbihan admitted. "In other words, you need me. You say to yourselves: 'We'll pretend to be the head of a criminal syndicate, such as the silly novelists are forever writing about, and we'll threaten to put him out of business unless he comes to our terms.' But you overlook one important fact: that you are not mentally equipped to get away with this amusing impersonation! What! Do you expect me to accept you as leading spirits of a gigantic criminal system--you, Popinot, who live by standing between the police and your murderous rats of Belleville, or you, Wertheimer, sneak-thief and black-mailer of timid women, or you, De Morbihan, because you eke out your income by showing a handful of second-storey men where to seek plunder in the homes of your friends!" He made a gesture of impatience, and lounged back to wait the answer to this indictment. His gaze, ranging the four faces, encountered but one that was not darkly flushed with resentment; and this was the American's. "Aren't you overlooking me?" this last suggested gently. "On the contrary: I refuse to recognize you as long as you lack courage to show your face." "As you will, my friend," the American chuckled. "Make your profit out of that any way you like." Lanyard sat up again: "Well, I've stated your case, messieurs. It amounts to simple, clumsy blackmail. I'm to split my earnings with you, or you'll denounce me to the police. That's about it, isn't it?" "Not of necessity," De Morbihan softly purred, twisting his moustache. "For my part," Popinot declared hotly, "I engage that Monsieur of the High Hand, here, will either work with us or conduct no more operations in Paris." "Or in New York," the American amended. "England is yet to be heard from," Lanyard suggested mockingly. To this Wertheimer replied, almost with diffidence: "If you ask me, I don't think you'd find it so jolly pleasant over there, if you mean to cut up nasty at this end." "Then what am I to infer? If you're afraid to lay an information against me--and it wouldn't be wise, I admit--you'll merely cause me to be assassinated, eh?" "Not of necessity," the Count murmured in the same thoughtful tone and manner--as one holding a hidden trump. "There are so many ways of arranging these matters," Wertheimer ventured. "None the less, if I refuse, you declare war?" "Something like that," the American admitted. "In that case--I am now able to state my position definitely." Lanyard got up and grinned provokingly down at the group. "You can--all four of you--go plumb to hell!" "My dear friend!" the Count cried, shocked--"you forget--" "I forget nothing!" Lanyard cut in coldly--"and my decision is final. Consider yourselves at liberty to go ahead and do your damnedest! But don't forget that it is you who are the aggressors. Already you've had the insolence to interfere with my arrangements: you began offensive operations before you declared war. So now if you're hit beneath the belt, you mustn't complain: you've asked for it!" "Now just what _do_ you mean by that?" the American drawled ironically. "I leave you to figure it out for yourselves. But I will say this: I confidently expect you to decide to live and let live, and shall be sorry, as you'll certainly be sorry, if you force my hand." He opened the door, turned, and saluted them with sarcastic punctilio. "I have the honour to bid adieu to Messieurs the Council of--'The Pack'!" IX DISASTER Having fulfilled his purpose of making himself acquainted with the personnel of the opposition, Lanyard slammed the door in its face, thrust his hands in his pockets, and sauntered down stairs, chuckling, his nose in the air, on the best of terms with himself. True, the fat was in the fire and well a-blaze: he had to look to himself now, and go warily in the shadow of their enmity. But it was something to have faced down those four, and he wasn't seriously impressed by any one of them. Popinot, perhaps, was the most dangerous in Lanyard's esteem; a vindictive animal, that Popinot; and the creatures he controlled, a murderous lot, drug-ridden, drink bedevilled, vicious little rats of Belleville, who'd knife a man for the price of an absinthe. But Popinot wouldn't move without leave from De Morbihan, and unless Lanyard's calculations were seriously miscast, De Morbihan would restrain both himself and his associates until thoroughly convinced Lanyard was impregnable against every form of persuasion. Murder was something a bit out of De Morbihan's line--something, at least, which he might be counted on to hold in reserve. And by the time he was ready to employ it, Lanyard would be well beyond his reach. Wertheimer, too, would deprecate violence until all else failed; his half-caste type was as cowardly as it was blackguard; and cowards kill only impulsively, before they've had time to weigh consequences. There remained "Smith," enigma; a man apparently gifted with both intelligence and character.... But if so, what the deuce was _he_ doing in such company? Still, there he was: and the association damned him beyond consideration. His sorts were all of a piece, beneath the consideration of men of spirit.... At this point, the self-complacence bred of his contempt for Messrs. de Morbihan et Cie. bred in its turn a thought that brought the adventurer up standing. The devil! Who was he, Michael Lanyard, that held himself above such vermin, yet lived in such a way as practically to invite their advances? What right was his to resent their opening the door to confraternity, as long as he trod paths so closely parallel to theirs that only a sophist might discriminate them? What comforting distinction was to be drawn between on the one hand a blackmailer like Wertheimer, a chevalier-d'industrie like De Morbihan, or a patron of Apaches like Popinot, and on the other himself whose bread was eaten in the sweat of thievery? He drew a long face; whistled softly; shook his head; and smiled a wry smile. "Glad I didn't think of that two minutes ago, or I'd never have had the cheek..." Without warning, incongruously and, in his understanding, inexplicably, he found himself beset by recurrent memory of the girl, Lucia Bannon. For an instant he saw her again, quite vividly, as last he had seen her: turning at the door of her bed-chamber to look back at him, a vision of perturbing charm in her rose-silk dressing-gown, with rich hair loosened, cheeks softly glowing, eyes brilliant with an emotion illegible to her one beholder.... What had been the message of those eyes, flashed down the dimly lighted length of that corridor at Troyon's, ere she vanished? Adieu? Or au revoir? ... She had termed him, naïvely enough, and a gentleman. But if she knew--suspected--even dreamed--that he was what he was?... He shook his head again, but now impatiently, with a scowl and a grumble: "What's the matter with me anyway? Mooning over a girl I never saw before to-night! As if it matters a whoop in Hepsidam what she thinks!... Or is it possible I'm beginning to develop a rudimentary conscience, at this late day? Me!..." If there were anything in this hypothesis, the growing-pains of that late-blooming conscience were soon enough numbed by the hypnotic spell of clattering chips, an ivory ball singing in an ebony race, and croaking croupiers. For Lanyard's chair at the table of chemin-de-fer had been filled by another and, too impatient to wait a vacancy, he wandered on to the salon dedicated to roulette, tested his luck by staking a note of five hundred francs on the black, won, and incontinently subsided into a chair and an oblivion that endured for the space of three-quarters of an hour. At the end of that period he found himself minus his heavy winnings at chemin-de-fer and ten thousand francs of his reserve fund to boot. By way of lining for his pockets there remained precisely the sum which he had brought into Paris that same evening, less subsequent general disbursements. The experience was nothing novel in his history. He rose less resentful than regretful that his ill-luck obliged him to quit just when play was most interesting, and resignedly sought the cloak-room for his coat and hat. And there he found De Morbihan--again!--standing all garmented for the street, mouthing a huge cigar and wearing a look of impatient discontent. "At last!" he cried in an aggrieved tone as Lanyard appeared in the offing. "You do take your time, my friend!" Lanyard smothered with a smile whatever emotion was his of the moment. "I didn't imagine you really meant to wait for me," he parried with double meaning, both to humour De Morbihan and hoodwink the attendant. "What do you think?" retorted the Count with asperity--"that I'm willing to stand by and let you moon round Paris at this hour of the morning, hunting for a taxicab that isn't to be found and running God-knows-what risk of being stuck up by some misbegotten Apache? But I should say not! I mean to take you home in my car, though it cost me a half-hour of beauty sleep not lightly to be forfeited at my age!" The significance that underlay the semi-humourous petulance of the little man was not wasted. "You're most amiable, Monsieur le Comte!" Lanyard observed thoughtfully, while the attendant produced his hat and coat. "So now, if you're ready, I won't delay you longer." In another moment they were outside the club-house, its doors shut behind them, while before them, at the curb, waited that same handsome black limousine which had brought the adventurer from L'Abbaye. Two swift glances, right and left, showed him an empty street, bare of hint of danger. "One moment, monsieur!" he said, detaining the Count with a touch on his sleeve. "It's only right that I should advise you ... I'm armed." "Then you're less foolhardy than one feared. If such things interest you, I don't mind admitting I carry a life-preserver of my own. But what of that? Is one eager to go shooting at this time of night, for the sheer fun of explaining to sergents de ville that one has been attacked by Apaches? ... Providing always one lives to explain!" "It's as bad as that, eh?" "Enough to make me loath to linger at your side in a lighted doorway!" Lanyard laughed in his own discomfiture. "Monsieur le Comte," said he, "there's a dash in you of what your American pal, Mysterious Smith, would call sporting blood, that commands my unstinted admiration. I thank you for your offered courtesy, and beg leave to accept." De Morbihan replied with a grunt of none too civil intonation, instructed the chauffeur "To Troyon's," and followed Lanyard into the car. "Courtesy!" he repeated, settling himself with a shake. "That makes nothing. If I regarded my own inclinations, I'd let you go to the devil as quick as Popinot's assassins could send you there!" "This is delightful!" Lanyard protested. "First you must see me home to save my life, and then you tell me your inclinations consign me to a premature grave. Is there an explanation, possibly?" "On your person," said the Count, sententious. "Eh?" "You carry your reason with you, my friend--in the shape of the Omber loot." "Assuming you are right--" "You never went to the rue du Bac, monsieur, without those jewels: and I have had you under observation ever since." "What conceivable interest," Lanyard pursued evenly, "do you fancy you've got in the said loot?" "Enough, at least, to render me unwilling to kiss it adieu by leaving you to the mercies of Popinot. You don't imagine I'd ever hear of it again, when his Apaches had finished with you?" "Ah!... So, after all, your so-called organization isn't founded on that reciprocal trust so essential to the prosperity of such--enterprises!" "Amuse yourself as you will with your inferences, my friend," the Count returned, unruffled; "but don't forget my advice: pull wide of Popinot!" "A vindictive soul, eh?" "One may say that." "You can't hold him?" "That one? No fear! You were anything but wise to bait him as you did." "Perhaps. It's purely a matter of taste in associates." "If I were the fool you think me," mused the Count "I'd resent that innuendo. As it happens, I'm not. At least, I can wait before calling you to account." "And meantime profit by your patience?" "But naturally. Haven't I said as much?" "Still, I'm perplexed. I can't imagine how you reckon to declare yourself in on the Omber loot." "All in good time: if you were wise, you'd hand the stuff over to me here and now, and accept what I chose to give you in return. But inasmuch as you're the least wise of men, you must have your lesson." "Meaning--?" "The night brings counsel: you'll have time to think things over. By to-morrow you'll be coming to offer me those jewels in exchange for what influence I have in certain quarters." "With your famous friend, the Chief of the Sûreté, eh?" "Possibly. I am known also at La Tour Pointue." "I confess I don't follow you, unless you mean to turn informer." "Never that." "It's a riddle, then?" "For the moment only.... But I will say this: it will be futile, your attempting to escape Paris; Popinot has already picketted every outlet. Your one hope resides in me; and I shall be at home to you until midnight to-morrow--to-day, rather." Impressed in spite of himself, Lanyard stared. But the Count maintained an imperturbable manner, looking straight ahead. Such calm assurance would hardly be sheer bluff. "I must think this over," Lanyard mused aloud. "Pray don't let me hinder you," the Count begged with mild sarcasm. "I have my own futile thoughts...." Lanyard laughed quietly and subsided into a reverie which, undisturbed by De Morbihan, endured throughout the brief remainder of their drive; for, thanks to the smallness of the hour, the streets were practically deserted and offered no obstacle to speed; while the chauffeur was doubtless eager for his bed. As they drew near Troyon's, however, Lanyard sat up and jealously reconnoitered both sides of the way. "Surely you don't expect to be kept out?" the Count asked dryly. "But that just shows how little you appreciate our good Popinot. He'll never object to your locking yourself up where he knows he can find you--but only to your leaving without permission!" "Something in that, perhaps. Still, I make it a rule to give myself the benefit of every doubt." There was, indeed, no sign of ambush that he could detect in any quarter, nor any indication that Popinot's Apaches were posted thereabouts. Nevertheless, Lanyard produced his automatic and freed the safety-catch before opening the door. "A thousand thanks, my dear Count!" "For what? Doing myself a service? But you make me feel ashamed!" "I know," agreed Lanyard, depreciatory; "but that's the way I am--a little devil--you really can't trust me! Adieu, Monsieur le Comte." "Au revoir, monsieur!" Lanyard saw the car round the corner before turning to the entrance of Troyon's, keeping his weather-eye alert the while. But when the car was gone, the street seemed quite deserted and as soundless as though it had been the thoroughfare of some remote village rather than an artery of the pulsing old heart of Paris. Yet he wasn't satisfied. He was as little susceptible to psychic admonition as any sane and normal human organism, but he was just then strongly oppressed by intuitive perception that there was something radically amiss in his neighbourhood. Whether or not the result of the Count's open intimations and veiled hints working upon a nature sensitized by excitement and fatigue, he felt as though he had stepped from the cab into an atmosphere impregnated to saturation with nameless menace. And he even shivered a bit, perhaps because of the chill in that air of early morning, perhaps because a shadow of premonition had fallen athwart his soul.... Whatever its cause, he could find no reason for this; and shaking himself impatiently, pressed a button that rang a bell by the ear of the concierge, heard the latch click, thrust the door wide, and re-entered Troyon's. Here reigned a silence even more marked than that of the street, a silence as heavy and profound as the grave's, so that sheer instinct prompted Lanyard to tread lightly as he made his way down the passage and across the courtyard toward the stairway; and in that hush the creak of a greaseless hinge, when the concierge opened the door of his quarters to identify this belated guest, seemed little less than a profanity. Lanyard paused and delved into his pockets, nodding genially to the blowsy, sleepy old face beneath the guardian's nightcap. "Sorry to disturb monsieur," he said politely, further impoverishing himself in the sum of five francs in witness to the sincerity of his regret. "I thank monsieur; but what need to consider me? It's my duty. And what is one interruption more or less? All night they come and go...." "Good night, monsieur," Lanyard cut short the old man's garrulity; and went on up the stairs, now a little wearily, of a sudden newly conscious of his vast and enervating fatigue. He thought longingly of bed, yawned involuntarily and, reaching his door, fumbled the key in a most unprofessional way; there were weights upon his eyelids, a heaviness in his brain.... But the key met with no resistance from the wards; and in a trice, appreciating this fact, Lanyard was wide-awake again. No question but that he had locked the door securely, on leaving after his adventure with the charming somnambulist.... Had she, then, taken a whim to his room? Or was this but proof of what he had anticipated in the beginning--a bit of sleuthing on the part of Roddy? He entertained little doubt as to the correctness of this latter surmise, as he threw the door open and stepped into the room, his first action being to grasp the electric switch and twist it smartly. But no light answered. "Hello!" he exclaimed softly, remembering that the lights could readily have been turned off at the bulbs. "What's the good of that?" In the same breath he started violently, and swung about. The door had closed behind him, swiftly but gently, eclipsing the faint light from the hall, leaving what amounted to stark darkness. His first impression was that the intruder--Roddy or whoever--had darted past him and out, pulling the door to in that act. Before he could consciously revise this misconception he was fighting for his life. So unexpected, so swift and sudden fell the assault, that he was caught completely off guard: between the shutting of the door and an onslaught whose violence sent him reeling to the wall, the elapsed time could have been measured by the fluttering of an eyelash. And then two powerful arms were round him, pinioning his hands to his sides, his feet were tripped up, and he was thrown with a force that fairly jarred his teeth, half-stunning him. For a breath he lay dazed, struggling feebly; not long, but long enough to enable his antagonist to shift his hold and climb on top of his body, where he squatted, bearing down heavily with a knee on either of Lanyard's forearms, hands encircling his neck, murderous thumbs digging into his windpipe. He revived momentarily, pulled himself together, and heaved mightily in futile effort to unseat the other. The sole outcome of this was a tightening pressure on his throat. The pain grew agonizing; Lanyard's breath was almost completely shut off; he gasped vainly, with a rattling noise in his gullet; his eyeballs started; a myriad coruscant lights danced and interlaced blindingly before them; in his ears there rang a roaring like the voice of heavy surf breaking upon a rock-bound coast. And of a sudden he ceased to struggle and lay slack, passive in the other's hands. Only an instant longer was the clutch on his throat maintained. Both hands left it quickly, one shifting to his head to turn and press it roughly cheek to floor. Simultaneously he was aware of the other hand fumbling about his neck, and then of a touch of metal and the sting of a needle driven into the flesh beneath his ear. That galvanized him; he came to life again in a twinkling, animate with threefold strength and cunning. The man on his chest was thrown off as by a young earthquake; and Lanyard's right arm was no sooner free than it shot out with blind but deadly accuracy to the point of his assailant's jaw. A click of teeth was followed by a sickish grunt as the man lurched over.... Lanyard found himself scrambling to his feet, a bit giddy perhaps, but still sufficiently master of his wits to get his pistol out before making another move. X TURN ABOUT The thought of Lanyard's pocket flash-lamp offering itself, immediately its wide circle of light enveloped his late antagonist. That one was resting on a shoulder, legs uncouthly a-sprawl, quite without movement of any perceptible sort; his face more than half-turned to the floor, and masked into the bargain. Incredulously Lanyard stirred the body with a foot, holding his weapon poised as though half-expecting it to quicken with instant and violent action; but it responded in no way. With a nod of satisfaction, he shifted the light until it marked down the nearest electric bulb, which proved, in line with his inference, to have been extinguished by the socket key, while the heat of its bulb indicated that the current had been shut off only an instant before his entrance. The light full up, he went back to the thug, knelt and, lifting the body, turned it upon its back. Recognition immediately rewarded this manoeuvre: the masked face upturned to the glare was that of the American who had made a fourth in the concert of the Pack--"Mr. Smith," Quickly unlatching the mask, Lanyard removed it; but the countenance thus exposed told little more than he knew; he could have sworn he had never seen it before. None the less, something in its evil cast persistently troubled his memory, with the same provoking and baffling effect that had attended their first encounter. Already the American was struggling toward consciousness. His lips and eyelids twitched spasmodically, he shuddered, and his flexed muscles began to relax. In this process something fell from between the fingers of his right hand--something small and silver-bright that caught Lanyard's eye. Picking it up, he examined with interest a small hypodermic syringe loaded to the full capacity of its glass cylinder, plunger drawn back--all ready for instant service. It was the needle of this instrument that had pricked the skin of Lanyard's neck; beyond reasonable doubt it contained a soporific, if not exactly a killing dose of some narcotic drug--cocaine, at a venture. So it appeared that this agent of the Pack had been commissioned to put the Lone Wolf to sleep for an hour or two or more--_perhaps_ not permanently!--that he might be out of the way long enough for their occult purposes. He smiled grimly, fingering the hypodermic and eyeing the prostrate man. "Turn about," he reflected, "is said to be fair play.... Well, why not?" He bent forward, dug the needle into the wrist of the American and shot the plunger home, all in a single movement so swift and deft that the drug was delivered before the pain could startle the victim from his coma. As for that, the man came to quickly enough; but only to have his clearing senses met and dashed by the muzzle of a pistol stamping a cold ring upon his temple. "Lie perfectly quiet, my dear Mr. Smith," Lanyard advised; "don't speak above a whisper! Give the good dope a chance: it'll only need a moment, or I'm no judge and you're a careless highbinder! I'd like to know, however--if it's all the same to you--" But already the injection was taking effect; the look of panic, which had drawn the features of the American and flickered from his eyes with dawning appreciation of his plight, was clouding, fading, blending into one of daze and stupour. The eyelids flickered and lay still; the lips moved as if with urgent desire to speak, but were dumb; a long convulsive sigh shook the American's body; and he rested with the immobility of the dead, save for the slow but steady rise and fall of his bosom. Lanyard thoughtfully reviewed these phenomena. "Must kick like a mule, that dope!" he reflected. "Lucky it didn't get me before I guessed what was up! If I'd even suspected its strength, however, I'd have been less hasty: I could do with a little information from Mr. Mysterious Stranger here!" Suddenly conscious of a dry and burning throat, he rose and going to the washstand drank deep and thirstily from a water-bottle; then set himself resolutely to repair the disarray of his wits and consider what was best to be done. In his abstraction he wandered to a chair over whose back hung a light dressing-gown of wine-coloured silk, which, because it would pack in small compass, was in the habit of carrying with him on his travels. Lanyard had left this thrown across his bed; and he was wondering subconsciously what use the man had thought to make of it, that he should have taken the trouble to shift it to the chair. But even as he laid hold of it, Lanyard dropped the garment in sheer surprise to find it damp and heavy in his grasp, sodden with viscid moisture. And when, in a swift flash of intuition, he examined his fingers, he discovered them discoloured with a faint reddish stain. Had the dye run? And how had the American come to dabble the garment in water--to what end? Then the shape of an object on the floor near his feet arrested Lanyard's questing vision. He stared, incredulous, moved forward, bent over and picked it up, clipping it gingerly between finger-tips. It was one of his razors--a heavy hollow-ground blade--and it was foul with blood. With a low cry, smitten with awful understanding, Lanyard wheeled and stared fearfully at the door communicating with Roddy's room. It stood ajar an inch or two, its splintered lock accounted for by a small but extremely efficient jointed steel jimmy which lay near the threshold. Beyond the door ... darkness ... silence... Mustering up all his courage, the adventurer strode determinedly into the adjoining room. The first flash of his hand-lamp discovered to him sickening verification of his most dreadful apprehensions. Now he saw why his dressing-gown had been requisitioned--to protect a butcher's clothing. After a moment he returned, shut the door, and set his back against it, as if to bar out that reeking shambles. He was very pale, his face drawn with horror; and he was powerfully shaken with nausea. The plot was damnably patent: Roddy proving a menace to the Pack and requiring elimination, his murder had been decreed as well as that the blame for it should be laid at Lanyard's door. Hence the attempt to drug him, that he might not escape before police could be sent to find him there. He could no longer doubt that De Morbihan had been left behind at the Circle of Friends of Harmony solely to detain him, if need be, and afford Smith time to finish his hideous job and set the trap for the second victim. And the plot had succeeded despite its partial failure, despite the swift reverse chance and Lanyard's cunning had meted out to the Pack's agent. It was _his_ dressing-gown that was saturate with Roddy's blood, just as they were his gloves, pilfered from his luggage, which had measurably protected the killer's hands, and which Lanyard had found in the next room, stripped hastily off and thrown to the floor--twin crumpled wads of blood-stained chamois-skin. He had now little choice; he must either flee Paris and trust to his wits to save him, or else seek De Morbihan and solicit his protection, his boasted influence in high quarters. But to give himself into the hands, to become an associate, of one who could be party to so cowardly a Crime as this ... Lanyard told himself he would sooner pay the guillotine the penalty.... Consulting his watch, he found the hour to be no later than half-past four: so swiftly (truly treading upon one another's heels) events had moved since the incident of the somnambulist. This left at his disposal a fair two hours more of darkness: November nights are long and black in Paris; it would hardly be even moderately light before seven o'clock. But that were a respite none too long for Lanyard's necessity; he must think swiftly in contemplation of instant action were he to extricate himself without the Pack's knowledge and consent. Granted, then, he must fly this stricken field of Paris. But how? De Morbihan had promised that Popinot's creatures would guard every outlet; and Lanyard didn't doubt him. An attempt to escape the city by any ordinary channel would be to invite either denunciation to the police on the charge of murder, or one of those fatally expeditious forms of assassination of which the Apaches are past-masters. He must and would find another way; but his decision was frightfully hampered by lack of ready money; the few odd francs in his pocket were no store for the war-chest demanded by this emergency. True, he had the Omber jewels; but they were not negotiable--not at least in Paris. And the Huysman plans? He pondered briefly the possibilities of the Huysman plans. In his fretting, pacing softly to and fro, at each turn he passed his dressing-table, and chancing once to observe himself in its mirror, he stopped short, thunderstruck by something he thought to detect in the counterfeit presentment of his countenance, heavy with fatigue as it was, and haggard with contemplation of this appalling contretemps. And instantly he was back beside the American, studying narrowly the contours of that livid mask. Here, then, was that resemblance which had baffled him; and now that he saw it, he could not deny that it was unflatteringly close: feature for feature the face of the murderer reproduced his face, coarsened perhaps but recognizably a replica of that Michael Lanyard who confronted him every morning in his shaving-glass, almost the only difference residing in the scrubby black moustache that shadowed the American's upper lip. After all, there was nothing wonderful in this; Lanyard's type was not uncommon; he would never have thought himself a distinguished figure. Before rising he turned out the pockets of his counterfeit. But this profited him little: the assassin had dressed for action with forethought to evade recognition in event of accident. Lanyard collected only a cheap American watch in a rolled-gold case of a sort manufactured by wholesale, a briquet, a common key that might fit any hotel door, a broken paper of Régie cigarettes, an automatic pistol, a few francs in silver--nothing whatever that would serve as a mark of identification; for though the grey clothing was tailor-made, the maker's labels had been ripped out of its pockets, while the man's linen and underwear alike lacked even a laundry's hieroglyphic. With this harvest of nothing for his pains, Lanyard turned again to the wash-stand and his shaving kit, mixed a stiff lather, stropped another razor to the finest edge he could manage, fetched a pair of keen scissors from his dressing-case, and went back to the murderer. He worked rapidly, at a high pitch of excitement--as much through sheer desperation as through any appeal inherent in the scheme either to his common-sense or to his romantic bent. In two minutes he had stripped the moustache clean away from that stupid, flaccid mask. Unquestionably the resemblance was now most striking; the American would readily pass for Michael Lanyard. This much accomplished, he pursued his preparations in feverish haste. In spite of this, he overlooked no detail. In less than twenty minutes he had exchanged clothing with the American in detail, even down to shirts, collars and neckties; had packed in his own pockets the several articles taken from the other, together with the jointed jimmy and a few of his personal effects, and was ready to bid adieu to himself, to that Michael Lanyard whom Paris knew. The insentient masquerader on the floor had called himself "good-enough Smith"; he must serve now as good-enough Lanyard, at least for the Lone Wolf's purposes; the police at all events would accept him as such. And if the memory of Michael Lanyard must needs wear the stigma of brutal murder, he need not repine in his oblivion, since through this perfunctory decease the Lone Wolf would gain a freedom even greater than before. The Pack had contrived only to eliminate Michael Lanyard, the amateur of fine paintings; remained the Lone Wolf with not one faculty impaired, but rather with a deadlier purpose to shape his occult courses.... Under the influence of his methodical preparations, his emotions had cooled appreciably, taking on a cast of cold malignant vengefulness. He who never in all his criminal record had so much as pulled trigger in self-defence, was ready now to shoot to kill with the most cold-blooded intent--given one of three targets; while Popinot's creatures, if they worried him, he meant to exterminate with as little compunction as though they were rats in fact as well as in spirit.... Extinguishing the lights, he stepped quickly to a window and from one edge of its shade looked down into the street. He was in time to see a stunted human silhouette detach itself from the shadow of a doorway on the opposite walk, move to the curb, and wave an arm--evidently signaling another sentinel on a corner out of Lanyard's range of vision. Herein was additional proof, if any lacked, that De Morbihan had not exaggerated the disposition of Popinot. This animal in the street, momentarily revealed by the corner light as he darted across to take position by the door, this animal with sickly face and pointed chin, with dirty muffler round its chicken-neck, shoddy coat clothing its sloping shoulders, baggy corduroy trousers flapping round its bony shanks--this was Popinot's, and but one of a thousand differing in no essential save degree of viciousness. It wasn't possible to guess how thoroughly Popinot had picketed the house, in co-operation with Roddy's murderer, by way of provision against mischance; but the adventurer was satisfied that, in his proper guise as himself, he needed only to open that postern door at the street end of the passage, to feel a knife slip in between his ribs--most probably in his back, beneath the shoulder-blade.... He nodded grimly, moved back from the window, and used the flash-lamp to light him to the door. XI FLIGHT Now when Lanyard had locked the door, he told himself that the gruesome peace of those two bed-chambers was ensured, barring mischance, for as long as the drug continued to hold dominion over the American; and he felt justified in reckoning that period apt to be tolerably protracted; while not before noon at earliest would any hôtelier who knew his business permit the rest of an Anglo-Saxon guest to be disturbed--lacking, that is, definite instructions to the contrary. For a full minute after withdrawing the key the adventurer stood at alert attention; but the heavy silence of that sinister old rookery sang in his ears untroubled by any untoward sound.... That wistful shadow of his memories, that cowering Marcel of the so-dead yesterday in acute terror of the hand of Madame Troyon, had never stolen down that corridor more quietly: yet Lanyard had taken not five paces from his door when that other opened, at the far end, and Lucia Bannon stepped out. He checked then, and shut his teeth upon an involuntary oath: truly it seemed as though this run of the devil's own luck would never end! Astonishment measurably modified his exasperation. What had roused the girl out of bed and dressed her for the street at that unholy hour? And why her terror at sight of him? For that the surprise was no more welcome to her than to him was as patent as the fact that she was prepared to leave the hotel forthwith, enveloped in a business-like Burberry rainproof from her throat to the hem of a tweed walking-skirt, and wearing boots both stout and brown. And at sight of him she paused and instinctively stepped back, groping blindly for the knob of her bed-chamber door; while her eyes, holding to his with an effect of frightened fascination, seemed momentarily to grow more large and dark in her face of abnormal pallor. But these were illegible evidences, and Lanyard was intent solely on securing her silence before she could betray him and ruin incontinently that grim alibi which he had prepared at such elaborate pains. He moved toward her swiftly, with long and silent strides, a lifted hand enjoining rather than begging her attention, aware as he drew nearer that a curious change was colouring the complexion of her temper: she passed quickly from dread to something oddly like relief, from repulsion to something strangely like welcome; and dropping the hand that had sought the door-knob, in her turn moved quietly to meet him. He was grateful for this consideration, this tacit indulgence of the wish he had as yet to voice; drew a little hope and comfort from it in an emergency which had surprised him without resource other than to throw himself upon her generosity. And as soon as he could make himself heard in the clear yet concentrated whisper that was a trick of his trade, a whisper inaudible to ears a yard distant from those to which it was pitched, he addressed her in a manner at once peremptory and apologetic. "If you please, Miss Bannon--not a word, not a whisper!" She paused and nodded compliance, questioning eyes steadfast to his. Doubtfully, wondering that she betrayed so little surprise, he pursued as one committed to a forlorn hope: "It's vitally essential that I leave this hotel without it becoming known. If I may count on you to say nothing--" She gave him reassurance with a small gesture. "But how?" she breathed in the least of whispers. "The concierge--!" "Leave that to me--I know another way. I only need a chance--" "Then won't you take me with you?" "Eh?" he stammered, dashed. Her hands moved toward him in a flutter of entreaty: "I too must leave unseen--I _must_! Take me with you--out of this place--and I promise you no one shall ever know--" He lacked time to weigh the disadvantages inherent in her proposition; though she offered him a heavy handicap, he had no choice but to accept it without protest. "Come, then," he told her--"and not a sound--" She signified assent with another nod; and on this he turned to an adjacent door, opened it gently, whipped out his flash-lamp, and passed through. Without sign of hesitancy, she followed; and like two shadows they dogged the dancing spot-light of the flash-lamp, through a linen-closet and service-room, down a shallow well threaded by a spiral of iron steps and, by way of the long corridor linking the kitchen-offices, to a stout door secured only by huge, old-style bolts of iron. Thus, in less than two minutes from the instant of their encounter, they stood outside Troyon's back door, facing a cramped, malodorous alley-way--a dark and noisome souvenir of that wild mediaeval Paris whose effacement is an enduring monument to the fame of the good Baron Haussmann. Now again it was raining, a thick drizzle that settled slowly, lacking little of a fog's opacity; and the faint glimmer from the street lamps of that poorly lighted quarter, reflected by the low-swung clouds, lent Lanyard and the girl little aid as they picked their way cautiously, and always in complete silence, over the rude and slimy cobbles of the foul back way. For the adventurer had pocketed his lamp, lest its beams bring down upon them some prowling creature of Popinot's; though he felt passably sure that the alley had been left unguarded in the confidence that he would never dream of its existence, did he survive to seek escape from Troyon's. For all its might and its omniscience, Lanyard doubted if the Pack had as yet identified Michael Lanyard with that ill-starred Marcel who once had been as intimate with this forgotten way as any skulking tom of the quarter. But with the Lone Wolf confidence was never akin to foolhardiness; and if on leaving Troyon's he took the girl's hand without asking permission and quite as a matter-of-course, and drew it through his arm--it was his left arm that he so dedicated to gallantry; his right hand remained unhampered, and never far from the grip of his automatic. Nor was he altogether confident of his companion. The weight of her hand upon his arm, the fugitive contacts of her shoulder, seemed to him, just then, the most vivid and interesting things in life; the consciousness of her personality at his side was like a shaft of golden light penetrating the darkness of his dilemma. But as minutes passed and their flight was unchallenged, his mood grew dark with doubts and quick with distrust. Reviewing it all, he thought to detect something too damnably adventitious in the way she had nailed him, back there in the corridor of Troyon's. It was a bit too coincidental--"a bit thick!"--like that specious yarn of somnambulism she had told to excuse her presence in his room. Come to examine it, that excuse had been far too clumsy to hoodwink any but a man bewitched by beauty in distress. Who was she, anyway? And what her interest in him? What had she been after in his room?--this American girl making a first visit to Paris in company with her venerable ruin of a parent? Who, for that matter, was Bannon? If her story of sleep-walking were untrue, then Bannon must have been at the bottom of her essay in espionage--Bannon, the intimate of De Morbihan, and an American even as the murderer of poor Roddy was an American! Was this singularly casual encounter, then, but a cloak for further surveillance? Had he in his haste and desperation simply played into her hands, when he burdened himself with the care of her? But it seemed absurd; to think that she... a girl like her, whose every word and gesture was eloquent of gentle birth and training...! Yet--what _had_ she wanted in his room? Somnambulists are sincere indeed in the indulgence of their failing when they time their expeditions so opportunely--and arm themselves with keys to fit strange doors. Come to think of it, he had been rather willfully blind to that flaw in her excuse.... Again, why should she be up and dressed and so madly bent on leaving Troyon's at half-past four in the morning? Why couldn't she wait for daylight at least? What errand, reasonable duty or design could have roused her out into the night and the storm at that weird hour? He wondered! And momentarily he grew more jealously heedful of her, critical of every nuance in her bearing. The least trace of added pressure on his arm, the most subtle suggestion that she wasn't entirely indifferent to him or regarded him in any way other than as the chance-found comrade of an hour of trouble, would have served to fix his suspicions. For such, he told himself, would be the first thought of one bent on beguiling--to lead him on by some intimation, the more tenuous and elusive the more provocative, that she found his person not altogether objectionable. But he failed to detect anything of this nature in her manner. So, what was one to think? That she was mental enough to appreciate how ruinous to her design would be any such advances? ... In such perplexity he brought her to the end of the alley and there pulled up for a look round before venturing out into the narrow, dark, and deserted side street that then presented itself. At this the girl gently disengaged her hand and drew away a pace or two; and when Lanyard had satisfied himself that there were no Apaches in the offing, he turned to see her standing there, just within the mouth of the alley, in a pose of blank indecision. Conscious of his regard, she turned to his inspection a face touched with a fugitive, uncertain smile. "Where are we?" she asked. He named the street; and she shook her head. "That doesn't mean much to me," she confessed; "I'm so strange to Paris, I know only a few of the principal streets. Where is the boulevard St. Germain?" Lanyard indicated the direction: "Two blocks that way." "Thank you." She advanced a step or two, but paused again. "Do you know, possibly, just where I could find a taxicab?" "I'm afraid you won't find any hereabouts at this hour," he replied. "A fiacre, perhaps--with luck: I doubt if there's one disengaged nearer than Montmartre, where business is apt to be more brisk." "Oh!" she cried in dismay. "I hadn't thought of that.... I thought Paris never went to sleep!" "Only about three hours earlier than most of the world's capitals.... But perhaps I can advise you--" "If you would be so kind! Only, I don't like to be a nuisance--" He smiled deceptively: "Don't worry about that. Where do you wish to go?" "To the Gare du Nord." That made him open his eyes. "The Gare du Nord!" he echoed. "But--I beg your pardon--" "I wish to take the first train for London," the girl informed him calmly. "You'll have a while to wait," Lanyard suggested. "The first train leaves about half-past eight, and it's now not more than five." "That can't be helped. I can wait in the station." He shrugged: that was her own look-out--if she were sincere in asserting that she meant to leave Paris; something which he took the liberty of doubting. "You can reach it by the Métro," he suggested--"the Underground, you know; there's a station handy--St. Germain des Prés. If you like, I'll show you the way." Her relief seemed so genuine, he could have almost believed in it. And yet--! "I shall be very grateful," she murmured. He took that for whatever worth it might assay, and quietly fell into place beside her; and in a mutual silence--perhaps largely due to her intuitive sense of his bias--they gained the boulevard St. Germain. But here, even as they emerged from the side street, that happened which again upset Lanyard's plans: a belated fiacre hove up out of the mist and ranged alongside, its driver loudly soliciting patronage. Beneath his breath Lanyard cursed the man liberally, nothing could have been more inopportune; he needed that uncouth conveyance for his own purposes, and if only it had waited until he had piloted the girl to the station of the Métropolitain, he might have had it. Now he must either yield the cab to the girl or--share it with her.... But why not? He could readily drop out at his destination, and bid the driver continue to the Gare du Nord; and the Métro was neither quick nor direct enough for his design--which included getting under cover well before daybreak. Somewhat sulkily, then, if without betraying his temper, he signalled the cocher, opened the door, and handed the girl in. "If you don't mind dropping me en route..." "I shall be very glad," she said ... "anything to repay, even in part, the courtesy you've shown me!" "Oh, please don't fret about that...." He gave the driver precise directions, climbed in, and settled himself beside the girl. The whip cracked, the horse sighed, the driver swore; the aged fiacre groaned, stirred with reluctance, crawled wearily off through the thickening drizzle. Within its body a common restraint held silence like a wall between the two. The girl sat with face averted, reading through the window what corner signs they passed: rue Bonaparte, rue Jacob, rue des Saints Pères, Quai Malquais, Pont du Carrousel; recognizing at least one landmark in the gloomy arches of the Louvre; vaguely wondering at the inept French taste in nomenclature which had christened that vast, louring, echoing quadrangle the place du Carrousel, unliveliest of public places in her strange Parisian experience. And in his turn, Lanyard reviewed those well-remembered ways in vast weariness of spirit--disgusted with himself in consciousness that the girl had somehow divined his distrust.... "The Lone Wolf, eh?" he mused bitterly. "Rather, the Cornered Rat--if people only knew! Better still, the Errant--no!--the Arrant Ass!" They were skirting the Palais Royal when suddenly she turned to him in an impulsive attempt at self-justification. "What _must_ you be thinking of me, Mr. Lanyard?" He was startled: "I? Oh, don't consider me, please. It doesn't matter what I think--does it?" "But you've been so kind; I feel I owe you at least some explanation--" "Oh, as for that," he countered cheerfully, "I've got a pretty definite notion you're running away from your father." "Yes. I couldn't stand it any longer--" She caught herself up in full voice, as though tempted but afraid to say more. He waited briefly before offering encouragement. "I hope I haven't seemed impertinent...." "No, no!" Than this impatient negative his pause of invitation evoked no other recognition. She had subsided into her reserve, but--he fancied--not altogether willingly. Was it, then, possible that he had misjudged her? "You've friends in London, no doubt?" he ventured. "No--none." "But--" "I shall manage very well. I shan't be there more than a day or two--till the next steamer sails." "I see." There had sounded in her tone a finality which signified desire to drop the subject. None the less, he pursued mischievously: "Permit me to wish you bon voyage, Miss Bannon... and to express my regret that circumstances have conspired to change your plans." She was still eyeing him askance, dubiously, as if weighing the question of his acquaintance with her plans, when the fiacre lumbered from the rue Vivienne into the place de la Bourse, rounded that frowning pile, and drew up on its north side before the blue lights of the all-night telegraph bureau. "With permission," Lanyard said, unlatching the door, "I'll stop off here. But I'll direct the cocher very carefully to the Gare du Nord. Please don't even tip him--that's my affair. No--not another word of thanks; to have been permitted to be of service--it is a unique pleasure, Miss Bannon. And so, good night!" With an effect that seemed little less than timid, the girl offered her hand. "Thank you, Mr. Lanyard," she said in an unsteady voice. "I am sorry--" But she didn't say what it was she regretted; and Lanyard, standing with bared head in the driving mist, touched her fingers coolly, repeated his farewells, and gave the driver both money and instructions, and watched the cab lurch away before he approached the telegraph bureau.... But the enigma of the girl so deeply intrigued his imagination that it was only with difficulty that he concocted a non-committal telegram to Roddy's friend in the Prefecture--that imposing personage who had watched with the man from Scotland Yard at the platform gates in the Gare du Nord. It was couched in English, when eventually composed and submitted to the telegraph clerk with a fervent if inaudible prayer that he might be ignorant of the tongue. _"Come at once to my room at Troyon's. Enter via adjoining room prepared for immediate action on important development. Urgent. Roddy."_ Whether or not this were Greek to the man behind the wicket, it was accepted with complete indifference--or, rather, with an interest that apparently evaporated on receipt of the fees. Lanyard couldn't see that the clerk favoured him with as much as a curious glance before he turned away to lose himself, to bury his identity finally and forever under the incognito of the Lone Wolf. He couldn't have rested without taking that one step to compass the arrest of the American assassin; now with luck and prompt action on the part of the Préfecture, he felt sure Roddy would be avenged by Monsieur de Paris.... But it was very well that there should exist no clue whereby the author of that mysterious telegram might be traced.... It was, then, not an ill-pleased Lanyard who slipped oft into the night and the rain; but his exasperation was elaborate when the first object that met his gaze was that wretched fiacre, back in place before the door, Lucia Bannon leaning from its lowered window, the cocher on his box brandishing an importunate whip at the adventurer. He barely escaped choking on suppressed profanity; and for two sous would have swung on his heel and ignored the girl deliberately. But he didn't dare: close at hand stood a sergent de ville, inquisitive eyes bright beneath the dripping visor of his kepi, keenly welcoming this diversion of a cheerless hour. With at least outward semblance of resignation, Lanyard approached the window. "I have been guilty of some stupidity, perhaps?" he enquired with lip-civility that had no echo in his heart. "But I am sorry--" "The stupidity is mine," the girl interrupted in accents tense with agitation. "Mr. Lanyard, I--I--" Her voice faltered and broke off in a short, dry sob, and she drew back with an effect of instinctive distaste for public emotion. Lanyard smothered an impulse to demand roughly "Well, what now?" and came closer to the window. "Something more I can do, Miss Bannon?" "I don't know.... I've just found it out--I came away so hurriedly I never thought to make sure; but I've no money--not a franc!" After a little pause he commented helpfully: "That does complicate matters, doesn't it?" "What am I to do? I can't go back--I won't! Anything rather. You may judge how desperate I am, when I prefer to throw myself on your generosity--and already I've strained your patience--" "Not much," he interrupted in a soothing voice. "But--half a moment--we must talk this over." Directing the cocher to drive to the place Pigalle, he reentered the cab, suspicion more than ever rife in his mind. But as far as he could see--with that confounded sergo staring!--there was nothing else for it. He couldn't stand there in the rain forever, gossiping with a girl half-hysterical--or pretending to be. "You see," she explained when the fiacre was again under way, "I thought I had a hundred-franc note in my pocketbook; and so I have--but the pocketbook's back there, in my room at Troyon's." "A hundred francs wouldn't see you far toward New York," he observed thoughtfully. "Oh, I hope you don't think--!" She drew back into her corner with a little shudder of humiliation. As if he hadn't noticed, Lanyard turned to the window, leaned out, and redirected the driver sharply: "Impasse Stanislas!" Immediately the vehicle swerved, rounded a corner, and made back toward the Seine with a celerity which suggested that the stables were on the Rive Gauche. "Where?" the girl demanded as Lanyard sat back. "Where are you taking me?" "I'm sorry," Lanyard said with every appearance of sudden contrition; "I acted impulsively--on the assumption of your complete confidence. Which, of course, was unpardonable. But, believe me; you have only to say no and it shall be as you wish." "But," she persisted impatiently--"you haven't answered me: what is this impasse Stanislas?" "The address of an artist I know--Solon, the painter. We're going to take possession of his studio in his absence. Don't worry; he won't mind. He is under heavy obligation to me--I've sold several canvasses for him; and when he's away, as now, in the States, he leaves me the keys. It's a sober-minded, steady-paced neighbourhood, where we can rest without misgivings and take our time to think things out." "But--" the girl began in an odd tone. "But permit me," he interposed hastily, "to urge the facts of the case upon your consideration." "Well?" she said in the same tone, as he paused. "To begin with--I don't doubt you've good reason for running away from your father." "A very real, a very grave reason," she affirmed quietly. "And you'd rather not go back--" "That is out of the question!"--with a restrained passion that almost won his credulity. "But you've no friends in Paris--?" "Not one!" "And no money. So it seems, if you're to elude your father, you must find some place to hide pro tem. As for myself, I've not slept in forty-eight hours and must rest before I'll be able to think clearly and plan ahead....And we won't accomplish much riding round forever in this ark. So I offer the only solution I'm capable of advancing, under the circumstances." "You are quite right," the girl agreed after a moment. "Please don't think me unappreciative. Indeed, it makes me very unhappy to think I know no way to make amends for your trouble." "There may be a way," Lanyard informed her quietly; "but we'll not discuss that until we've rested up a bit." "I shall be only too glad--" she began, but fell silent and, in a silence that seemed almost apprehensive, eyed him speculatively throughout the remainder of the journey. It wasn't a long one; in the course of the next ten minutes they drew up at the end of a shallow pocket of a street, a scant half-block in depth; where alighting, Lanyard helped the girl out, paid and dismissed the cocher, and turned to an iron gate in a high stone wall crowned with spikes. The grille-work of that gate afforded glimpses of a small, dark garden and a little house of two storeys. Blank walls of old tenements shouldered both house and garden on either side. Unlocking the gate, Lanyard refastened it very carefully, repeated the business at the front door of the house, and when they were securely locked and bolted within a dark reception-hall, turned on the electric light. But he granted the girl little more than time for a fugitive survey of this ante-room to an establishment of unique artistic character. "These are living-rooms, downstairs here," he explained hurriedly. "Solon's unmarried, and lives quite alone--his studio-devil and femme-de-ménage come in by the day only--and so he avoids that pest a concierge. With your permission, I'll assign you to the studio--up here." And leading the way up a narrow flight of steps, he made a light in the huge room that was the upper storey. "I believe you'll be comfortable," he said--"that divan yonder is as easy a couch as one could wish--and there's this door you can lock at the head of the staircase; while I, of course, will be on guard below.... And now, Miss Bannon... unless there's something more I can do--?" The girl answered with a wan smile and a little broken sigh. Almost involuntarily, in the heaviness of her fatigue, she had surrendered to the hospitable arms of a huge lounge-chair. Her weary glance ranged the luxuriously appointed studio and returned to Lanyard's face; and while he waited he fancied something moving in those wistful eyes, so deeply shadowed with distress, perplexity, and fatigue. "I'm very tired indeed," she confessed--"more than I guessed. But I'm sure I shall be comfortable.... And I count myself very fortunate, Mr. Lanyard. You've been more kind than I deserved. Without you, I don't like to think what might have become of me...." "Please don't!" he pleaded and, suddenly discountenanced by consciousness of his duplicity, turned to the stairs. "Good night, Miss Bannon," he mumbled; and was half-way down before he heard his valediction faintly echoed. As he gained the lower floor, the door was closed at the top of the stairs and its bolt shot home with a soft thud. But turning to lock the lower door, he stayed his hand in transient indecision. "Damn it!" he growled uneasily--"there can't be any harm in that girl! Impossible for eyes like hers to lie!... And yet ... And yet!... Oh, what's the matter with me? Am I losing my grip? Why stick at ordinary precaution against treachery on the part of a woman who's nothing to me and of whom I know nothing that isn't conspicuously questionable?... All because of a pretty face and an appealing manner!" And so he secured that door, if very quietly; and having pocketed the key and made the round of doors and windows, examining their locks, he stumbled heavily into the bedroom of his friend the artist. Darkness overwhelmed him then: he was stricken down by sleep as an ox falls under the pole. XII AWAKENING It was late afternoon when Lanyard wakened from sleep so deep and dreamless that nothing could have induced it less potent than sheer systemic exhaustion, at once nervous, muscular and mental. A profound and stifling lethargy benumbed his senses. There was stupor in his brain, and all his limbs ached dully. He opened dazed eyes upon blank darkness. In his ears a vast silence pulsed. And in that strange moment of awakening he was conscious of no individuality: it was, for the time, as if he had passed in slumber from one existence to another, sloughing en passant all his three-fold personality as Marcel Troyon, Michael Lanyard, and the Lone Wolf. Had any one of these names been uttered in his hearing just then it would have meant nothing to him--or little more than nothing: he was for the time being merely _himself_, a shell of sensations enclosing dull embers of vitality. For several minutes he lay without moving, curiously intrigued by this riddle of identity: it was but slowly that his mind, like a blind hand groping round a dark chamber, picked up the filaments of memory. One by one the connections were renewed, the circuits closed.... But, singularly enough in his understanding, his first thought was of the girl upstairs in the studio, unconsciously his prisoner and hostage--rather than of himself, who lay there, heavy with loss of sleep, languidly trying to realize himself. For he was no more as he had been. Wherein the difference lay he couldn't say, but that a difference existed he was persuaded--that he had changed, that some strange reaction in the chemistry of his nature had taken place during slumber. It was as if sleep had not only repaired the ravages of fatigue upon the tissues of his brain and body, but had mended the tissues of his soul as well. His thoughts were fluent in fresh channels, his interests no longer the interests of the Michael Lanyard he had known, no longer self-centred, the interests of the absolute ego. He was concerned less for himself, even now when he should be most gravely so, than for another, for the girl Lucia Bannon, who was nothing to him, whom he had yet to know for twenty-four hours, but of whom he could not cease to think if he would. It was her plight that perturbed him, from which he sought an outlet--never his own. Yet his own was desperate enough.... Baffled and uneasy, he at length bethought him of his watch. But its testimony seemed incredible: surely the hour could not be five in the afternoon!--surely he could not have slept so close upon a full round of the clock! And if it were so, what of the girl? Had she, too, so sorely needed sleep that the brief November day had dawned and waned without her knowledge? That question was one to rouse him: in an instant he was up and groping his way through the gloom that enshrouded bed-chamber and dining-room to the staircase door in the hall. He found this fast enough, its key still safe in his pocket, and unlocking it quietly, shot the beam of his flash-lamp up that dark well to the door at the top; which was tight shut. For several moments he attended to a taciturn silence broken by never a sound to indicate that he wasn't a lonely tenant of the little dwelling, then irresolutely lifted a foot to the first step--and withdrew it. If she continued to sleep, why disturb her? He had much to do in the way of thinking things out; and that was a process more easily performed in solitude. Leaving the door ajar, then, he turned to one of the front windows, parted its draperies, and peered out, over the little garden and through the iron ribs of the gate, to the street, where a single gas-lamp, glimmering within a dull golden halo of mist, made visible the scant length of the impasse Stanislas, empty, rain-swept, desolate. The rain persisted with no hint of failing purpose.... Something in the dreary emptiness of that brief vista deepened the shadow in his mood and knitted a careworn frown into his brows. Abstractedly he sought the kitchen and, making a light, washed up at the tap, then foraged for breakfast. Persistence turned up a spirit-stove, a half-bottle of methylated, a packet of tea, a tin or two of biscuit, as many more of potted meats: left-overs from the artist's stock, dismally scant and uninviting in array. With these he made the discovery that he was half-famished, and found no reason to believe that the girl would be in any better case. An expedition to the nearest charcuterie was indicated; but after he had searched for and found an old raincoat of Solon's, Lanyard decided against leaving the girl alone. Pending her appearance, he filled the spirit-stove, put the kettle on to boil, and lighting a cigarette, sat himself down to watch the pot and excogitate his several problems. In a fashion uncommonly clear-headed, even for him, he assembled all the facts bearing upon their predicament, his and Lucia Bannon's, jointly and individually, and dispassionately pondered them.... But insensibly his thoughts reverted to their exotic phase of his awakening, drifting into such introspection as he seldom indulged, and led him far from the immediate riddle, by strange ways to a revelation altogether unpresaged and a resolve still more revolutionary. A look of wonder flickered in his brooding eyes; and clipped between two fingers, his cigarette grew a long ash, let it fall, and burned down to a stump so short that the coal almost scorched his flesh. He dropped it and crushed out the fire with his heel, all unwittingly. Slowly but irresistibly his world was turning over beneath his feet.... The sound of a footfall recalled him as from an immeasurable remove; he looked up to see Lucia at pause upon the threshold, and rose slowly, with effort recollecting himself and marshalling his wits against the emergency foreshadowed by her attitude. Tense with indignation, quick with disdain, she demanded, without any preface whatever: "Why did you lock me in?" He stammered unhappily: "I beg your pardon--" "Why did you lock me in?" "I'm sorry--" "Why did you--" But she interrupted herself to stamp her foot emphatically; and he caught her up on the echo of that: "If you must know, because I wasn't trusting you." Her eyes darkened ominously: "Yet you insisted I should trust you!" "The circumstances aren't parallel: you're not a notorious malefactor, wanted by the police of every capital in Europe, hounded by rivals to boot--fighting for life, liberty and"--he laughed shortly--"the pursuit of happiness!" She caught her breath sharply--whether with dismay or mere surprise at his frankness he couldn't tell. "Are you?" she demanded quickly. "Am I what?" "What you've just said--" "A crook--and all that? Miss Bannon, you know it!" "The Lone Wolf?" "You've known it all along. De Morbihan told you--or else your father. Or, it may be, you were shrewd enough to guess it from De Morbihan's bragging in the restaurant. At all events, it's plain enough, nothing but desire to find proof to identify me with the Lone Wolf took you to my room last night--whether for your personal satisfaction or at the instigation of Bannon--just as nothing less than disgust with what was going on made you run away from such intolerable associations.... Though, at that, I don't believe you even guessed how unspeakably vicious those were!" He paused and waited, anticipating furious denial or refutation; such would, indeed, have been the logical development of the temper in which she had come down to confront him. Rather than this, she seemed calmed and sobered by his charge; far from resenting it, disposed to concede its justice; anger deserted her expression, leaving it intent and grave. She came quietly into the room and faced him squarely across the table. "You thought all that of me--that I was capable of spying on you--yet were generous enough to believe I despised myself for doing it?" "Not at first.... At first, when we met back there in the corridor, I was sure you were bent on further spying. Only since waking up here, half an hour ago, did I begin to understand how impossible it would be for you to lend yourself to such villainy as last night's." "But if you thought that of me then, why did you--?" "It occurred to me that it would be just as well to prevent your reporting back to headquarters." "But now you've changed your mind about me?" He nodded: "Quite." "But why?" she demanded in a voice of amazement. "Why?" "I can't tell you," he said slowly--"I don't know why. I can only presume it must be because--I can't help believing in you." Her glance wavered: her colour deepened. "I don't understand..." she murmured. "Nor I," he confessed in a tone as low.... A sudden grumble from the teakettle provided welcome distraction. Lanyard lifted it off the flames and slowly poured boiling water on a measure of tea in an earthenware pot. "A cup of this and something to eat'll do us no harm," he ventured, smiling uneasily--"especially if we're to pursue this psychological enquiry into the whereforeness of the human tendency to change one's mind!" XIII CONFESSIONAL And then, when the girl made no response, but remained with troubled gaze focused on some remote abstraction, "You will have tea, won't you?" he urged. She recalled her thoughts, nodded with the faintest of smiles--"Yes, thank you!"--and dropped into a chair. He began at once to make talk in effort to dissipate that constraint which stood between them like an unseen alien presence: "You must be very hungry?" "I am." "Sorry I've nothing better to offer you. I'd have run out for something more substantial, only--" "Only--?" she prompted, coolly helping herself to biscuit and potted ham. "I didn't think it wise to leave you alone." "Was that before or after you'd made up your mind about me--the latest phase, I mean?" she persisted with a trace of malice. "Before," he returned calmly--"likewise, afterwards. Either way you care to take it, it wouldn't have been wise to leave you here. Suppose you had waked up to find me gone, yourself alone in this strange house--" "I've been awake several hours," she interposed--"found myself locked in, and heard no sound to indicate that you were still here." "I'm sorry: I was overtired and slept like a log.... But assuming the case: you would have gone out, alone, penniless--" "Through a locked door, Mr. Lanyard?" "I shouldn't have left it locked," he explained patiently.... "You would have found yourself friendless and without resources in a city to which you are a stranger." She nodded: "True. But what of that?" "In desperation you might have been forced to go back--" "And report the outcome of my investigation!" "Pressure might have been brought to induce admissions damaging to me," Lanyard submitted pleasantly. "Whether or no, you'd have been obliged to renew associations you're well rid of." "You feel sure of that?" "But naturally." "How can you be?" she challenged. "You've yet to know me twenty-four hours." "But perhaps I know the associations better. In point of fact, I do. Even though you may have stooped to play the spy last night, Miss Bannon--you couldn't keep it up. You had to fly further contamination from that pack of jackals." "Not--you feel sure--merely to keep you under observation?" "I do feel sure of that. I have your word for it." The girl deliberately finished her tea, and sat back, regarding him steadily beneath level brows. Then she said with an odd laugh: "You have your own way of putting one on honour!" "I don't need to--with you." She analyzed this with gathering perplexity. "What do you mean by that?" "I mean, I don't need to put you on your honour--because I'm sure of you. Even were I not, still I'd refrain from exacting any pledge, or attempting to." He paused and shrugged before continuing: "If I thought you were still to be distrusted, Miss Bannon, I'd say: 'There's a free door; go when you like, back to the Pack, turn in your report, and let them act as they see fit.'... Do you think I care for them? Do you imagine for one instant that I fear any one--or all--of that gang?" "That rings suspiciously of egoism!" "Let it," he retorted. "It's pride of caste, if you must know. I hold myself a grade better than such cattle; I've intelligence, at least.... I can take care of myself!" If he might read her countenance, it expressed more than anything else distress and disappointment. "Why do you boast like this--to me?" "Less through self-satisfaction than in contempt for a pack of murderous mongrels--impatience that I have to consider such creatures as Popinot, Wertheimer, De Morbihan and--all their crew." "And Bannon," she corrected calmly--"you meant to say!" "Wel-l--" he stammered, discountenanced. "It doesn't matter," she assured him. "I quite understand, and strange as it may sound, I've very little feeling in the matter." And then she acknowledged his stupefied stare with a weary smile. "I know what I know," she added, with obscure significance.... "I'd give a good deal to know how much you know," he muttered in his confusion. "But what do _you_ know?" she caught him up--"against Mr. Bannon--against my father, that is--that makes you so ready to suspect both him and me?" "Nothing," he confessed--"I know nothing; but I suspect everything and everybody.... And the more I think of it, the more closely I examine that brutal business of last night, the more I seem to sense his will behind it all--as one might glimpse a face in darkness through a lighted lattice.... Oh, laugh if you like! It sounds high-flown, I know. But that's the effect I get.... What took you to my room, if not his orders? Why does he train with De Morbihan, if he's not blood-kin to that breed? Why are you running away from him if not because you've found out his part in that conspiracy?" His pause and questioning look evoked no answer; the girl sat moveless and intent, meeting his gaze inscrutably. And something in her impassive attitude worked a little exasperation into his temper. "Why," he declared hotly--"if I dare trust to intuition--forgive me if I pain you--" She interrupted with impatience: "I've already begged you not to consider my feelings, Mr. Lanyard! If you dared trust to your intuition--what then?" "Why, then, I could believe that Mr. Bannon, your father ... I could believe it was his order that killed poor Roddy!" There could be no doubting her horrified and half-incredulous surprise. "Roddy?" she iterated in a whisper almost inaudible, with face fast blanching. "Roddy--!" "Inspector Roddy of Scotland Yard," he told her mercilessly, "was murdered in his sleep last night at Troyon's. The murderer broke into his room by way of mine--the two adjoin. He used my razor, wore my dressing-gown to shield his clothing, did everything he could think of to cast suspicion on me, and when I came in assaulted me, meaning to drug and leave me insensible to be found by the police. Fortunately--I was beforehand with him. I had just left him drugged, insensible in my place, when I met you in the corridor.... You didn't know?" "How can you ask?" the girl moaned. Bending forward, an elbow on the table, she worked her hands together until their knuckles shone white through the skin--but not as white as the face from which her eyes sought his with a look of dumb horror, dazed, pitiful, imploring. "You're not deceiving me? But no--why should you?" she faltered. "But how terrible, how unspeakably awful! ..." "I'm sorry," Lanyard mumbled--"I'd have held my tongue if I hadn't thought you knew--" "You thought I knew--and didn't lift a finger to save the man?" She jumped up with a blazing face. "Oh, how could you?" "No--not that--I never thought that. But, meeting you then and there, so opportunely--I couldn't ignore the coincidence; and when you admitted you were running away from your father, considering all the circumstances, I was surely justified in thinking it was realization, in part at least, of what had happened that was driving you away." She shook her head slowly, her indignation ebbing as quickly as it had risen. "I understand," she said; "you had some excuse, but you were mistaken. I ran away--yes--but not because of that. I never dreamed ..." She fell silent, sitting with bowed head and twisting her hands together in a manner he found it painful to watch. "But please," he implored, "don't take it so much to heart, Miss Bannon. If you knew nothing, you couldn't have prevented it." "No," she said brokenly--"I could have done nothing ... But I didn't know. It isn't that--it's the horror and pity of it. And that you could think--!" "But I didn't!" he protested--"truly I did not. And for what I did think, for the injustice I did do you, believe me, I'm truly sorry." "You were quite justified," she said--"not only by circumstantial evidence but to a degree in fact. You must know ... now I must tell you ..." "Nothing you don't wish to!" he interrupted. "The fact that I practically kidnapped you under pretence of doing you a service, and suspected you of being in the pay of that Pack, gives me no title to your confidence." "Can I blame you for thinking what you did?" She went on slowly, without looking up--gaze steadfast to her interlaced fingers: "Now for my own sake I want you to know what otherwise, perhaps, I shouldn't have told you--not yet, at all events. I'm no more Bannon's daughter than you're his son. Our names sound alike--people frequently make the same mistake. My name is Shannon--Lucy Shannon. Mr. Bannon called me Lucia because he knew I didn't like it, to tease me; for the same reason he always kept up the pretence that I was his daughter when people misunderstood." "But--if that is so--then what--?" "Why--it's very simple." Still she didn't look up. "I'm a trained nurse. Mr. Bannon is consumptive--so far gone, it's a wonder he didn't die years ago: for months I've been haunted by the thought that it's only the evil in him keeps him alive. It wasn't long after I took the assignment to nurse him that I found out something about him.... He'd had a haemorrhage at his desk; and while he lay in coma, and I was waiting for the doctor, I happened to notice one of the papers he'd been working over when he fell. And then, just as I began to appreciate the sort of man I was employed by, he came to, and saw--and knew. I found him watching me with those dreadful eyes of his, and though he was unable to speak, knew my life wasn't safe if ever I breathed a word of what I had read. I would have left him then, but he was too cunning for me, and when in time I found a chance to escape--I was afraid I'd not live long if ever I left him. He went about it deliberately; to keep me frightened, and though he never mentioned the matter directly, let me know plainly, in a hundred ways, what his power was and what would happen if I whispered a word of what I knew. It's nearly a year now--nearly a year of endless terror and..." Her voice fell; she was trembling with the recrudescent suffering of that year-long servitude. And for a little Lanyard felt too profoundly moved to trust himself to speak; he stood aghast, staring down at this woman, so intrinsically and gently feminine, so strangely strong and courageous; and vaguely envisaging what anguish must have been hers in enforced association with a creature of Bannon's ruthless stamp, he was rent with compassion and swore to himself he'd stand by her and see her through and free and happy if he died for it--or ended in the Santé! "Poor child!" he heard himself murmuring--"poor child!" "Don't pity me!" she insisted, still with face averted. "I don't deserve it. If I had the spirit of a mouse, I'd have defied him; it needed only courage enough to say one word to the police--" "But who is he, then?" Lanyard demanded. "What is he, I mean?" "I hardly know how to tell you. And I hardly dare: I feel as if these walls would betray me if I did.... But to me he's the incarnation of all things evil...." She shook herself with a nervous laugh. "But why be silly about it? I don't really know what or who he is: I only suspect and believe that he is a man whose life is devoted to planning evil and ordering its execution through his lieutenants. When the papers at home speak of 'The Man Higher Up' they mean Archer Bannon, though they don't know it--or else I'm merely a hysterical woman exaggerating the impressions of a morbid imagination.... And that's all I know of him that matters." "But why, if you believe all this--how did you at length find courage--?" "Because I no longer had courage to endure; because I was more afraid to stay than to go--afraid that my own soul would be forfeit. And then, last night, he ordered me to go to your room and search it for evidence that you were the Lone Wolf. It was the first time he'd ever asked anything like that of me. I was afraid, and though I obeyed, I was glad when you interrupted--glad even though I had to lie the way I did.... And all that worked on me, after I'd gone back to my room, until I felt I could stand it no longer; and after a long time, when the house seemed all still, I got up, dressed quietly and ... That is how I came to meet you--quite by accident." "But you seemed so frightened at first when you saw me--" "I was," she confessed simply; "I thought you were Mr. Greggs." "Greggs?" "Mr. Bannon's private secretary--his right-hand man. He's about your height and has a suit like the one you wear, and in that poor light--at the distance I didn't notice you were clean-shaven--Greggs wears a moustache--" "Then it was Greggs murdered Roddy and tried to drug me! ... By George, I'd like to know whether the police got there before Bannon, or somebody else, discovered the substitution. It was a telegram to the police, you know, I sent from the Bourse last night!" In his excitement Lanyard began to pace the floor rapidly; and now that he was no longer staring at her, the girl lifted her head and watched him closely as he moved to and fro, talking aloud--more to himself than to her. "I wish I knew! ... And what a lucky thing, you did meet me! For if you'd gone on to the Gare du Nord and waited there....Well, it isn't likely Bannon didn't discover your flight before eight o'clock this morning, is it?" "I'm afraid not...." "And they've drawn the dead-line for me round every conceivable exit from Paris: Popinot's Apaches are picketed everywhere. And if Bannon had found out about you in time, it would have needed only a word..." He paused and shuddered to think what might have ensued had that word been spoken and the girl been found waiting for her train in the Gare du Nord. "Mercifully, we've escaped that. And now, with any sort of luck, Bannon ought to be busy enough, trying to get his precious Mr. Greggs out of the Santé, to give us a chance. And a fighting chance is all I ask." "Mr. Lanyard"--the girl bent toward him across the table with a gesture of eager interest--"have you any idea why he--why Mr. Bannon hates you so?" "But does he? I don't know!" "If he doesn't, why should he plot to cast suspicion of murder on you, and why be so anxious to know whether you were really the Lone Wolf? I saw his eyes light up when De Morbihan mentioned that name, after dinner; and if ever I saw hatred in a man's face, it was in his as he watched you, when you weren't looking." "As far as I know, I never heard of him before," Lanyard said carelessly. "I fancy it's nothing more than the excitement of a man-hunt. Now that they've found me out, De Morbihan and his crew won't rest until they've got my scalp." "But why?" "Professional jealousy. We're all crooks, all in the same boat, only I won't row to their stroke. I've always played a lone hand successfully; now they insist on coming into the game and sharing my winnings. And I've told them where they could go." "And because of that, they're willing to----" "There's nothing they wouldn't do, Miss Shannon, to bring me to my knees or see me put out of the way, where my operations couldn't hurt their pocketbooks. Well ... all I ask is a fighting chance, and they shall have their way!" Her brows contracted. "I don't understand.... You want a fighting chance--to surrender--to give in to their demands?" "In a way--yes. I want a fighting chance to do what I'd never in the world get them to credit--give it all up and leave them a free field." And when still she searched his face with puzzled eyes, he insisted: "I mean it; I want to get away--clear out--chuck the game for good and all!" A little silence greeted this announcement. Lanyard, at pause near the table, resting a hand on it, bent to the girl's upturned face a grave but candid regard. And the deeps of her eyes that never swerved from his were troubled strangely in his vision. He could by no means account for the light he seemed to see therein, a light that kindled while he watched like a tiny flame, feeble, fearful, vacillant, then as the moments passed steadied and grew stronger but ever leaped and danced; so that he, lost in the wonder of it and forgetful of himself, thought of it as the ardent face of a happy child dancing in the depths of some brown autumnal woodland.... "You," she breathed incredulously--"you mean, you're going to stop--?" "I _have_ stopped, Miss Shannon. The Lone Wolf has prowled for the last time. I didn't know it until I woke up, an hour or so ago, but I've turned my last job." He remarked her hands were small, in keeping with the slightness of her person, but somehow didn't seem so--wore a look of strength and capability, befitting hands trained to a nurse's duties; and saw them each tight-fisted but quivering as they rested on the table, as though their mistress struggled to suppress the manifestation of some emotion as powerful as unfathomable to him. "But why?" she demanded in bewilderment. "But why do you say that? What can have happened to make you--?" "Not fear of that Pack!" he laughed--"not that, I promise you." "Oh, I know!" she said impatiently--"I know that very well. But still I don't understand...." "If it won't bore you, I'll try to explain." He drew up his chair and sat down again, facing her across the littered table. "I don't suppose you've ever stopped to consider what an essentially stupid animal a crook must be. Most of them are stupid because they practise clumsily one of the most difficult professions imaginable, and inevitably fail at it, yet persist. They wouldn't think of undertaking a job of civil engineering with no sort of preparation, but they'll tackle a dangerous proposition in burglary without a thought, and pay for failure with years of imprisonment, and once out try it again. That's one kind of criminal--the ninety-nine per-cent class--incurably stupid! There's another class, men whose imagination forewarns them of dangers and whose mental training, technical equipment and sheer manual dexterity enable them to attack a formidable proposition like a modern safe--by way of illustration--and force its secret. They're the successful criminals, like myself--but they're no less stupid, no less failures, than the other ninety-nine in our every hundred, because they never stop to think. It never occurs to them that the same intelligence, applied to any one of the trades they must be masters of, would not only pay them better, but leave them their self-respect and rid them forever of the dread of arrest that haunts us all like the memory of some shameful act.... All of which is much more of a lecture than I meant to inflict upon you, Miss Shannon, and sums up to just this: _I_'ve stopped to think...." With this he stopped for breath as well, and momentarily was silent, his faint, twisted smile testifying to self-consciousness; but presently, seeing that she didn't offer to interrupt, but continued to give him her attention so exclusively that it had the effect of fascination, he stumbled on, at first less confidently. "When I woke up it was as if, without my will, I had been thinking all this out in my sleep. I saw myself for the first time clearly, as I have been ever since I can remember--a crook, thoughtless, vain, rapacious, ruthless, skulking in shadows and thinking myself an amazingly fine fellow because, between coups, I would play the gentleman a bit, venture into the light and swagger in the haunts of the gratin! In my poor, perverted brain I thought there was something fine and thrilling and romantic in the career of a great criminal and myself a wonderful figure--an enemy of society!" "Why do you say this to me?" she demanded abruptly, out of a phase of profound thoughtfulness. He lifted an apologetic shoulder. "Because, I fancy, I'm no longer self-sufficient. _I_ was all of that, twenty-four hours ago; but now I'm as lonesome as a lost child in a dark forest. I haven't a friend in the world. I'm like a stray pup, grovelling for sympathy. And you are unfortunate enough to be the only person I can declare myself to. It's going to be a fight--I know that too well!--and without something outside myself to struggle toward, I'll be heavily handicapped. But if ..." He faltered, with a look of wistful earnestness. "If I thought that you, perhaps, were a little interested, that I had your faith to respect and cherish ... if I dared hope that you'd be glad to know I had won out against odds, it would mean a great deal to me, it might mean my salvation!" Watching her narrowly, hanging upon her decision with the anxiety of a man proscribed and hoping against hope for pardon, he saw her eyes cloud and shift from his, her lips parted but hesitant; and before she could speak, hastily interposed: "Please don't say anything yet. First let me demonstrate my sincerity. So far I've done nothing to persuade you but--talk and talk and talk! Give me a chance to prove I mean what I say." "How"--she enunciated only with visible effort and no longer met his appeal with an open countenance--"how can you do that?" "In the long run, by establishing myself in some honest way of life, however modest; but now, and principally, by making reparation for at least one crime I've committed that's not irreparable." He caught her quick glance of enquiry, and met it with a confident nod as he placed between them the morocco-bound jewel-case. "In London, yesterday," he said quietly, "I brought off two big coups. One was deliberate, the other the inspiration of a moment. The one I'd planned for months was the theft of the Omber jewels--here." He tapped the case and resumed in the same manner: "The other job needs a diagram: Not long ago a Frenchman named Huysman, living in Tours, was mysteriously murdered--a poor inventor, who had starved himself to perfect a stabilizator, an attachment to render aeroplanes practically fool-proof. His final trials created a sensation and he was on the eve of selling his invention to the Government when he was killed and his plans stolen. Circumstantial evidence pointed to an international spy named Ekstrom--Adolph Ekstrom, once Chief of the Aviation Corps of the German Army, cashiered for general blackguardism with a suspicion of treason to boot. However, Ekstrom kept out of sight; and presently the plans turned up in the German War Office. That was a big thing for Germany; already supreme with her dirigibles, the acquisition of the Huysman stabilizator promised her ten years' lead over the world in the field of aeroplanes.... Now yesterday Ekstrom came to the surface in London with those self-same plans to sell to England. Chance threw him my way, and he mistook me for the man he'd expected to meet--Downing Street's secret agent. Well--no matter how--I got the plans from him and brought them over with me, meaning to turn them over to France, to whom by rights they belong." "Without consideration?" the girl enquired shrewdly. "Not exactly. I had meant to make no profit of the affair--I'm a bit squeamish about tainted money!--but under present conditions, if France insists on rewarding me with safe conduct out of the country, I shan't refuse it.... Do you approve?" She nodded earnestly: "It would be worse than criminal to return them to Ekstrom...." "That's my view of the matter." "But these?" The girl rested her hand upon the jewel-case. "Those go back to Madame Omber. She has a home here in Paris that I know very well. In fact, the sole reason why I didn't steal them here was that she left for England unexpectedly, just as I was all set to strike. Now I purpose making use of my knowledge to restore the jewels without risk of falling into the hands of the police. That will be an easy matter.... And that brings me to a great favour I would beg of you." She gave him a look so unexpectedly kind that it staggered him. But he had himself well in hand. "You can't now leave Paris before morning--thanks to my having overslept," he explained. "There's no honest way I know to raise money before the pawn-shops open. But I'm hoping that won't be necessary; I'm hoping I can arrange matters without going to that extreme. Meanwhile, you agree that these jewels must be returned?" "Of course," she affirmed gently. "Then ... will you accompany me when I replace them? There won't be any danger: I promise you that. Indeed, it would be more hazardous for you to wait for me elsewhere while I attended to the matter alone. And I'd like you to be convinced of my good faith." "Don't you think you can trust me for that as well?" she asked, with a flash of humour. "Trust you!" "To believe ... Mr. Lanyard," she told him gently but earnestly, "I do believe." "You make me very happy," he said ... "but I'd like you to see for yourself.... And I'd be glad not to have to fret about your safety in my absence. As a bureau of espionage, Popinot's brigade of Apaches is without a peer in Europe. I am positively afraid to leave you alone...." She was silent. "Will you come with me, Miss Shannon?" "That is your sole reason for asking this of me?" she insisted, eyeing him steadily. "That I wish you to believe in me--yes." "Why?" she pursued, inexorable. "Because ... I've already told you." "That you want someone's good opinion to cherish.... But why, of all people, me--whom you hardly know, of whom what little you do know is hardly reassuring?" He coloured, and boggled his answer.... "I can't tell you," he confessed in the end. "Why can't you tell me?" He stared at her miserably.... "I've no right...." "In spite of all I've said, in spite of the faith you so generously promise me, in your eyes I must still figure as a thief, a liar, an impostor--self-confessed. Men aren't made over by mere protestations, nor even by their own efforts, in an hour, or a day, or a week. But give me a year: if I can live a year in honesty, and earn my bread, and so prove my strength--then, perhaps, I might find the courage, the--the effrontery to tell you why I want your good opinion.... Now I've said far more than I meant or had any right to. I hope," he ventured pleadingly--"you're not offended." Only an instant longer could she maintain her direct and unflinching look. Then, his meaning would no more be ignored. Her lashes fell; a tide of crimson flooded her face; and with a quick movement, pushing her chair a little from the table, she turned aside. But she said nothing. He remained as he had been, bending eagerly toward her. And in the long minute that elapsed before either spoke again, both became oddly conscious of the silence brooding in that lonely little house, of their isolation from the world, of their common peril and mutual dependence. "I'm afraid," Lanyard said, after a time--"I'm afraid I know what you must be thinking. One can't do your intelligence the injustice to imagine that you haven't understood me--read all that was in my mind and"--his voice fell--"in my heart. I own I was wrong to speak so transparently, to suggest my regard for you, at such a time, under such conditions. I am truly sorry, and beg you to consider unsaid all that I should not have said.... After all, what earthly difference can it make to you if one thief more decides suddenly to reform?" That brought her abruptly to her feet, to show him a face of glowing loveliness and eyes distractingly dimmed and softened. "No!" she implored him breathlessly--"please--you mustn't spoil it! You've paid me the finest of compliments, and one I'm glad and grateful for ... and would I might think I deserved! ... You say you need a year to prove yourself? Then--I've no right to say this--and you must please not ask me what I mean--then I grant you that year. A year I shall wait to hear from you from the day we part, here in Paris.... And to-night, I will go with you, too, and gladly, since you wish it!" And then as he, having risen, stood at loss, thrilled, and incredulous, with a brave and generous gesture she offered him her hand. "Mr. Lanyard, I promise...." To every woman, even the least lovely, her hour of beauty: it had not entered Lanyard's mind to think this woman beautiful until that moment. Of her exotic charm, of the allure of her pensive, plaintive prettiness, he had been well aware; even as he had been unable to deny to himself that he was all for her, that he loved her with all the strength that was his; but not till now had he understood that she was the one woman whose loveliness to him would darken the fairness of all others. And for a little, holding her tremulous hand upon his finger-tips as though he feared to bruise it with a ruder contact, he could not take his eyes from her. Then reverently he bowed his head and touched his lips to that hand ... and felt it snatched swiftly away, and started back, aghast, the idyll roughly dissipated, the castle of his dreams falling in thunders round his ears. In the studio-skylight overhead a pane of glass had fallen in with a shattering crash as ominous as the Trump of Doom. XIV RIVE DROIT Falling without presage upon the slumberous hush enveloping the little house marooned in that dead back-water of Paris, the shock of that alarm drove the girl back from the table to the nearest wall, and for a moment held her there, transfixed in panic. To the wide, staring eyes that questioned his so urgently, Lanyard promptly nodded grave reassurance. He hadn't stirred since his first, involuntary and almost imperceptible start, and before the last fragment of splintered glass had tinkled on the floor above, he was calming her in the most matter-of-fact manner. "Don't be alarmed," he said. "It's nothing--merely Solon's skylight gone smash!" "You call that nothing!" she cried gustily. "What caused it, then?" "My negligence," he admitted gloomily. "I might have known that wide spread of glass with the studio electrics on, full-blaze, would give the show away completely. The house is known to be unoccupied; and it wasn't to be expected that both the police and Popinot's crew would overlook so shining a mark.... And it's all my fault, my oversight: I should have thought of it before.... High time I was quitting a game I've no longer the wit to play by the rules!" "But the police would never...!" "Certainly not. This is Popinot's gentle method of letting us know he's on the job. But I'll just have a look, to make sure.... No: stop where you are, please. I'd rather go alone." He swung alertly through to the hall window, pausing there only long enough for an instantaneous glance through the draperies--a fugitive survey that discovered the impasse Stanislas no more abandoned to the wind and rain, but tenanted visibly by one at least who lounged beneath the lonely lamp-post, a shoulder against it: a featureless civilian silhouette with attention fixed to the little house. But Lanyard didn't doubt this one had a dozen fellows stationed within call.... Springing up the stairs, he paused prudently at the top-most step, one quick glance showing him the huge rent gaping black in the skylight, the second the missile of destruction lying amid a litter of broken glass--a brick wrapped in newspaper, by the look of it. Swooping forward, he retrieved this, darted back from the exposed space beneath the shattered skylight, and had no more than cleared the threshold than a second something fell through the gap and buried itself in the parquetry. This was a bullet fired from the roof of one of the adjoining buildings: confirming his prior reasoning that the first missile must have fallen from a height, rather than have been thrown up from the street, to have wrought such destruction with those tough, thick panes of clouded glass.... Swearing softly to himself, he descended to the kitchen. "As I thought," he said coolly, exhibiting his find. "They're on the roof of the next house--though they've posted a sentry in the street, of course." "But that second thump--?" the girl demanded. "A bullet," he said, placing the bundle on the table and cutting the string that bound it: "they were on the quivive and fired when I showed myself beneath the skylight." "But I heard no report," she objected. "A Maxim silencer on the gun, I fancy," he explained, unwrapping the brick and smoothing out the newspaper.... "Glad you thought to put on your hat before you came down," he added, with an approving glance for the girl; "it won't be safe to go up to the studio again--of course." His nonchalance was far less real than it seemed, but helped to steady one who was holding herself together with a struggle, on the verge of nervous collapse. "But what are we to do now?" she stammered. "If they've surrounded the house--!" "Don't worry: there's more than one way out," he responded, frowning at the newspaper; "I wouldn't have picked this place out, otherwise. Nor would Solon have rented it in the first instance had it lacked an emergency exit, in event of creditors.... Ah--thought so!" "What--?" "Troyon's is gone," he said, without looking up. "This is to-night's Presse.... '_Totally destroyed by a fire which started at six-thirty this morning and in less than half an hour had reduced the ancient structure to a heap of smoking ashes_'! ..." He ran his eye quickly down the column, selecting salient phrases: "'_Believed to have been of incendiary origin though the premises were uninsured_'--that's an intelligent guess!... '_Narrow escape of guests in their '_whatyemaycallems...._'Three lives believed to have been lost ... one body recovered charred almost beyond recognition_'--but later identified as Roddy--poor devil! ... '_Two guests missing, Monsieur Lanyard, the well-known connoisseur of art, who occupied the room adjoining that of the unfortunate detective, and Mademoiselle Bannon, daughter of the American millionaire, who himself escaped only by a miracle with his secretary Monsieur Greggs, the latter being overcome by fumes_'--what a shame!... '_Police and firemen searching the ruins_'--hm-hm--' _extraordinary interest manifested by the Préfecture indicates a suspicion that the building may have been fired to conceal some crime of a political nature_.'" Crushing the newspaper between his hands, he tossed it into a corner. "That's all of importance. Thoughtful of Popinot to let me know, this way! The Préfecture, of course, is humming like a wasp's-nest with the mystery of that telegram, signed with Roddy's name and handed in at the Bourse an hour or so before he was 'burned to death.' Too bad I didn't know then what I do now; if I'd even remotely suspected Greggs' association with the Pack was via Bannon.... But what's the use? I did my possible, knowing the odds were heavy against success." "What was written on the paper?" the girl demanded obliquely. He made his eyes blank: "Written on the paper--?" "I saw something in red ink at the head of the column. You tried to hide it from me, but I saw.... What was it?" "Oh--that!" he laughed contemptuously: "just Popinot's impudence--an invitation to come out and be a good target." She shook her head impatiently: "You're not telling me the truth. It was something else, or you wouldn't have been so anxious to hide it." "Oh, but I assure you--!" "You can't. Be honest with me, Mr. Lanyard. It was an offer to let you off if you'd give me up to Bannon--wasn't it?" "Something like that," he assented sheepishly--"too absurd for consideration.... But now we're due to clear out of this before they find a way in. Not that they're likely to risk a raid until they've tried starving us out; but it would be as well to put a good distance between us before they find out we've decamped." He shrugged into his borrowed raincoat, buttoned it to his chin, and turned down the brim of his felt hat; but when he looked up at the girl again, he found she hadn't moved; rather, she remained as one spellbound, staring less at than through him, her expression inscrutable. "Well," he ventured--"if you're quite ready, Miss Shannon--?" "Mr. Lanyard," she demanded almost sharply--"what was the full wording of that message?" "If you must know--" "I must!" He lifted a depreciative shoulder. "If you like, I'll read it to you--or, rather, translate it from the thieves' argot Popinot complimented me by using." "Not necessary," she said tersely. "I'll take your word for it.... But you must tell me the truth." "As you will.... Popinot delicately suggested that if I leave you here, to be reunited to your alleged parent--if I'll trust to his word of honour, that is, and walk out of the house alone, he'll give me twenty-four hours in which to leave Paris." "Then only I stand between you and--" "My dear young woman!" he protested hastily. "Please don't run away with any absurd notion like that. Do you imagine I'd consent to treat with such canaille under any circumstances?" "All the same," she continued stubbornly, "I'm the stumbling-block. You're risking your life for me--" "I'm not," he insisted almost angrily. "You are," she returned with quiet conviction. "Well!" he laughed--"have it your own way!..." "But it's _my_ life, isn't it? I really don't see how you're going to prevent my risking it for anything that may seem to me worth the risk!" But she wouldn't laugh; only her countenance, suddenly bereft of its mutinous expression, softened winningly--and her eyes grew very kind to him. "As long as it's understood I understand--very well," she said quietly; "I'll do as you wish, Mr. Lanyard." "Good!" he cried cheerfully. "I wish, by your leave, to take you out to dinner.... This way, please!" Leading through the scullery, he unbarred a low, arched door in one of the walls, discovering the black mouth of a narrow and tunnel-like passageway. With a word of caution, flash-lamp in his left hand, pistol in right, Lanyard stepped out into the darkness. In two minutes he was back, with a look of relief. "All clear," he reported; "I felt pretty sure Popinot knew nothing of this way out--else we'd have entertained uninvited guests long since. Now, half a minute...." The electric meter occupied a place on the wall of the scullery not far from the door. Prying open its cover, he unscrewed and removed the fuse plug, plunging the entire house in complete darkness. "That'll keep 'em guessing a while!" he explained with a chuckle. "They'll hesitate a long time before rushing a dark house infested by a desperate armed man--if I know anything about that mongrel lot!... Besides, when they do get their courage up, the lack of light will stave off discovery of this way of escape.... And now, one word more." A flash of the lamp located her hand. Calmly he possessed himself of it, if without opposition. "I've brought you into trouble enough, as it is, through my stupidity," he said; "but for that, this place should have been a refuge to us until we were quite ready to leave Paris. So now we mustn't forget, before we go out to run God-only-knows-what gauntlet, to fix a rendezvous in event of separation.... Popinot, for instance, may have drawn a cordon around the block; we can't tell until we're in the street; if he has, you must leave me to entertain them until you're safe beyond their reach.... Oh, don't worry: I'm perfectly well able to take care of myself....But afterwards, we must know where to find each other. Hotels, cafés and restaurants are out of the question: in the first place, we've barely money enough for our dinner; besides, they'll be watched closely; as for our embassies and consulates, they aren't open at all hours, and will likewise be watched. There remain--unless you can suggest something--only the churches; and I can think of none better suited to our purposes than the Sacré-Cour." Her fingers tightened gently upon his. "I understand," she said quietly; "if we're obliged to separate, I'm to go direct to the Sacré-Cour and await you there." "Right! ...But let's hope there'll be no such necessity." Hand-in-hand like frightened children, these two stole down the tunnel-like passageway, through a forlorn little court cramped between two tall old tenements, and so came out into the gloomy, sinuous and silent rue d'Assas. Here they encountered few wayfarers; and to these, preoccupied with anxiety to gain shelter from the inclement night, they seemed, no doubt, some student of the Quarter with his sweetheart--Lanyard in his shabby raincoat, striding rapidly, head and shoulders bowed against the driving mist, the girl in her trim Burberry clinging to his arm.... Avoiding the nearer stations as dangerous, Lanyard steered a roundabout course through by-ways to the rue de Sèvres station of the Nord-Sud subway; from which in due course they came to the surface again at the place de la Concorde, walked several blocks, took a taxicab, and in less than half an hour after leaving the impasse Stanislas were comfortably ensconced in a cabinet particulier of a little restaurant of modest pretensions just north of Les Halles. They feasted famously: the cuisine, if bourgeois, was admirable and, better still, well within the resources of Lanyard's emaciated purse. Nor did he fret with consciousness that, when the bill had been paid and the essential tips bestowed, there would remain in his pocket hardly more than cab fare. Supremely self-confident, he harboured no doubts of a smiling future--now that the dark pages in his record had been turned and sealed by a resolution he held irrevocable. His spirits had mounted to a high pitch, thanks to their successful evasion. He was young, he was in love, he was hungry, he was--in short--very much alive. And the consciousness of common peril knitted an enchanting intimacy into their communications. For the first time in his history Lanyard found himself in the company of a woman with whom he dared--and cared--to speak without reserve: a circumstance intrinsically intoxicating. And stimulated by her unquestionable interest and sympathy, he did talk without reserve of old Troyon's and its drudge, Marcel; of Bourke and his wanderings; of the education of the Lone Wolf and his career, less in pride than in relief that it was ended; of the future he must achieve for himself. And sitting with chin cradled on the backs of her interlaced fingers, the girl listened with such indulgence as women find always for their lovers. Of herself she had little to say: Lanyard filled in to his taste the outlines of the simple history of a young woman of good family obliged to become self-supporting. And if at times her grave eyes clouded and her attention wandered, it was less in ennui than because of occult trains of thought set astir by some chance word or phrase of Lanyard's. "I'm boring you," he surmised once with quick contrition, waking up to the fact that he had monopolized the conversation for many minutes on end. She shook a pensive head. "No, again.... But I wonder, do you appreciate the magnitude of the task you've undertaken?" "Possibly not," he conceded arrogantly; "but it doesn't matter. The heavier the odds, the greater the incentive to win." "But," she objected, "you've told me a curious story of one who never had a chance or incentive to 'go straight'--as you put it. And yet you seem to think that an overnight resolution to reform is all that's needed to change all the habits of a life-time. You persuade me of your sincerity of today; but how will it be with you tomorrow--and not so much tomorrow as six months from tomorrow, when you've found the going rough and know you've only to take one step aside to gain a smooth and easy way?" "If I fail, then, it will be because I'm unfit--and I'll go under, and never be heard of again.... But I shan't fail. It seems to me the very fact that I want to go straight is proof enough that I've something inherently decent in me to build on." "I do believe that, and yet..." She lowered her head and began to trace a meaningless pattern on the cloth before she resumed. "You've given me to understand I'm responsible for your sudden awakening, that it's because of a regard conceived for me you're so anxious to become an honest man. Suppose ... suppose you were to find out ... you'd been mistaken in me?" "That isn't possible," he objected promptly. She smiled upon him wistfully--and leniently from her remote coign of superior intuitive knowledge of human nature. "But if it were--?" "Then--I think," he said soberly--"I think I'd feel as though there were nothing but emptiness beneath my feet!" "And you'd backslide--?" "How can I tell?" he expostulated. "It's not a fair question. I don't know what I'd do, but I do know it would need something damnable to shake my faith in you!" "You think so now," she said tolerantly. "But if appearances were against me--" "They'd have to be black!" "If you found I had deceived you--?" "Miss Shannon!" He threw an arm across the table and suddenly imprisoned her hand. "There's no use beating about the bush. You've got to know--" She drew back suddenly with a frightened look and a monosyllable of sharp protest: "No!" "But you must listen to me. I want you to understand.... Bourke used to say to me: 'The man who lets love into his life opens a door no mortal hand can close--and God only knows what will follow in!' And Bourke was right.... Now that door is open in my heart, and I think that whatever follows in won't be evil or degrading.... Oh, I've said it a dozen different ways of indirection, but I may as well say it squarely now: I love you; it's love of you makes me want to go straight--the hope that when I've proved myself you'll maybe let me ask you to marry me.... Perhaps you're in love with a better man today; I'm willing to chance that; a year brings many changes. Perhaps there's something I don't fathom in your doubting my strength and constancy. Only the outcome can declare that. But please understand this: if I fail to make good, it will be no fault of yours; it will be because I'm unfit and have proved it.... All I ask is what you've generously promised me: opportunity to come to you at the end of the year and make my report.... And then, if you will, you can say no to the question I'll ask you and I shan't resent it, and it won't ruin me; for if a man can stick to a purpose for a year, he can stick to it forever, with or without the love of the woman he loves." She heard him out without attempt at interruption, but her answer was prefaced by a sad little shake of her head. "That's what makes it so hard, so terribly hard," she said.... "Of course I've understood you. All that you've said by indirection, and much besides, has had its meaning to me. And I'm glad and proud of the honour you offer me. But I can't accept it; I can never accept it--not now nor a year from now. It wouldn't be fair to let you go on hoping I might some time consent to marry you.... For that's impossible." "You--forgive me--you're not already married?" "No...." "Or promised?" "No...." "Or in love with someone else?" Again she told him, gently, "No." His face cleared. He squared his shoulders. He even mustered up a smile. "Then it isn't impossible. No human obstacle exists that time can't overthrow. In spite of all you say, I shall go on hoping with all my heart and soul and strength." "But you don't understand--" "Can you tell me--make me understand?" After a long pause, she told him once more, and very sadly: "No." XV SHEER IMPUDENCE Though it had been nearly eight when they entered the restaurant, it was something after eleven before Lanyard called for his bill. "We've plenty of time," he had explained; "it'll be midnight before we can move. The gentle art of house-breaking has its technique, you know, its professional ethics: we can't well violate the privacy of Madame Omber's strong-box before the caretakers on the premises are sound asleep. It isn't _done_, you know, it isn't class, to go burglarizing when decent, law-abiding folk are wide-awake.... Meantime we're better off here than trapezing the streets...." It's a silent web of side ways and a gloomy one by night that backs up north of Les Halles: old Paris, taciturn and sombre, steeped in its memories of grim romance. But for infrequent, flickering, corner lamps, the street that welcomed them from the doors of the warm and cosy restaurant was as dismal as an alley in some city of the dead. Its houses with their mansard roofs and boarded windows bent their heads together like mutes at a wake, black-cloaked and hooded; seldom one showed a light; never one betrayed by any sound the life that lurked behind its jealous blinds. Now again the rain had ceased and, though the sky remained overcast, the atmosphere was clear and brisk with a touch of frost, in grateful contrast to the dull and muggy airs that had obtained for the last twenty-four hours. "We'll walk," Lanyard suggested--"if you don't mind--part of the way at least; it'll eat up time, and a bit of exercise will do us both good." The girl assented quietly.... The drum of their heels on fast-drying sidewalks struck sharp echoes from the silence of that drowsy quarter, a lonely clamour that rendered it impossible to ignore their apparent solitude--as impossible as it was for Lanyard to ignore the fact that they were followed. The shadow dogging them on the far side of the street, some fifty yards behind, was as noiseless as any cat; but for this circumstance--had it moved boldly with unmuffled footsteps--Lanyard would have been slow to believe it concerned with him, so confident had be felt, till that moment, of having given the Pack the slip. And from this he diagnosed still another symptom of the Pack's incurable stupidity! Supremely on the alert, he had discovered the pursuit before they left the block of the restaurant. Dissembling, partly to avoid alarming the girl, partly to trick the spy, he turned this way and that round several corners, until quite convinced that the shadow was dedicated to himself exclusively, then promptly revised his first purpose and, instead of sticking to darker back ways, struck out directly for the broad, well-lighted and lively boulevard de Sébastopol. Crossing this without a backward glance, he turned north, seeking some café whose arrangements suited his designs; and, presently, though not before their tramp had brought them almost to the Grand Boulevards, found one to his taste, a cheerful and well-lighted establishment occupying a corner, with entrances from both streets. A hedge of forlorn fir-trees knee-deep in wooden tubs guarded its terrasse of round metal tables and spindle-shanked chairs; of which few were occupied. Inside, visible through the wide plate-glass windows, perhaps a dozen patrons sat round half as many tables--no more--idling over dominoes and gossip: steady-paced burghers with their wives, men in small ways of business of the neighbourhood. Entering to this company, Lanyard selected a square marble-topped table against the back wall, entrenched himself with the girl upon the seat behind it, ordered coffee and writing materials, and proceeded to light a cigarette with the nonchalance of one to whom time is of no consequence. "What is it?" the girl asked guardedly as the waiter scurried off to execute his commands. "You've not stopped in here for nothing!" "True--but lower, please!" he begged. "If we speak English loud enough to be heard it will attract attention.... The trouble is, we're followed. But as yet our faithful shadow doesn't know we know it--unless he's more intelligent than he seems. Consequently, if I don't misjudge him, he'll take a table outside, the better to keep an eye on us, as soon as he sees we're apparently settled for some time. More than that, I've got a note to write--and not merely as a subterfuge. This fellow must be shaken off, and as long as we stick together, that can't well be done." He interrupted himself while the waiter served them, then added sugar to his coffee, arranged the ink bottle and paper to his satisfaction, and bent over his pen. "Come closer," he requested--"as if you were interested in what I'm writing--and amused; if you can laugh a bit at nothing, so much the better. But keep a sharp eye on the windows. You can do that more readily than I, more naturally from under the brim of your hat.... And tell me what you see...." He had no more than settled into the swing of composition, than the girl--apparently following his pen with closest attention--giggled coquettishly and nudged his elbow. "The window to the right of the door we came in," she said, smiling delightedly; "he's standing behind the fir-trees, staring in." "Can you make out who he is?" Lanyard asked without moving his lips. "Nothing more than that he's tall," she said with every indication of enjoying a tremendous joke. "His face is all in shadow...." "Patience!" counselled the adventurer. "He'll take heart of courage when convinced of our innocence." He poised his pen, examined the ceiling for inspiration, and permitted a slow smile to lighten his countenance. "You'll take this note, if you please," he said cheerfully, "to the address on the envelope, by taxi: it's some distance, near the Etoile.... A long chance, but one we must risk; give me half an hour alone and I'll guarantee to discourage this animal one way or another. You understand?" "Perfectly," she laughed archly. He bent and for a few moments wrote busily. "Now he's walking slowly round the corner, never taking his eyes from you," the girl reported, shoulder to his shoulder and head distractingly near his head. "Good. Can you see him any better?" "Not yet...." "This note," he said, without stopping his pen or appearing to say anything "is for the concierge of a building where I rent stabling for a little motor-car. I'm supposed there to be a chauffeur in the employ of a crazy Englishman, who keeps me constantly travelling with him back and forth between Paris and London. That's to account for the irregularity with which I use the car. They know me, monsieur and madame of the conciergerie, as Pierre Lamier; and I _think_ they're safe--not only trustworthy and of friendly disposition, but quite simple-minded; I don't believe they gossip much. So the chances are De Morbihan and his gang know nothing of the arrangement. But that's all speculation--a forlorn hope!" "I understand," the girl observed. "He's still prowling up and down outside the hedge." "We're not going to need that car tonight; but the hôtel of Madame Omber is close by; and I'll follow and join you there within an hour at most. Meantime, this note will introduce you to the concierge and his wife--I hope you won't mind--as my fiancée. I'm telling them we became engaged in England, and I've brought you to Paris to visit my mother in Montrouge; but am detained by my employer's business; and will they please give you shelter for an hour." "He's coming in," the girl announced quietly. "In here?" "No--merely inside the row of little trees." "Which entrance?" "The boulevard side. He's taken the corner table. Now a waiter's going out to him." "You can see his face now?" Lanyard asked, sealing the note. "Not well...." "Nothing you recognize about him, eh?" "Nothing...." "You know Popinot and Wertheimer by sight?" "No; they're only names to me; De Morbihan and Mr. Bannon mentioned them last night." "It won't be Popinot," Lanyard reflected, addressing the envelope; "he's tubby." "This man is tall and slender." "Wertheimer, possibly. Does he suggest an Englishman, any way?" "Not in the least. He wears a moustache--blond--twisted up like the Kaiser's." Lanyard made no reply; but his heart sank, and he shivered imperceptibly with foreboding. He entertained no doubt but that the worst had happened, that to the number of his enemies in Paris was added Ekstrom. One furtive glance confirmed this inference. He swore bitterly, if privately and with a countenance of child-like blandness, as he sipped the coffee and finished his cigarette. "Who is it, then?" she asked. "Do you know him?" He reckoned swiftly against distressing her, recalling his mention of the fact that Ekstrom was credited with the Huysman murder. "Merely a hanger-on of De Morbihan's," he told her lightly; "a spineless animal--no trouble about scaring him off.... Now take this note, please, and we'll go. But as we reach the door, turn back--and go out the other. You'll find a taxi without trouble. And stop for nothing!" He had shown foresight in paying when served, and was consequently able to leave abruptly, without giving Ekstrom time to shy. Rising smartly, he pushed the table aside. The girl was no less quick, and little less sensitive to the strain of the moment; but as she passed him her lashes lifted and her eyes were all his for the instant. "Good night," she breathed--"good night ... my dear!" She could have guessed no more shrewdly what he needed to nerve him against the impending clash. He hadn't hesitated as to his only course, but till then he'd been horribly afraid, knowing too well the desperate cast of the outlawed German's nature. But now he couldn't fail. He strode briskly toward the door to the boulevard, out of the corner of his eye aware that Ekstrom, taken by surprise, half-started from his chair, then sank back. Two paces from the entrance the girl checked, murmured in French, "Oh, my handkerchief!" and turned briskly back. Without pause, as though he hadn't heard, Lanyard threw the door wide and swung out, turning directly to the spy. At the same time he dropped a hand into the pocket where nestled his automatic. Fortunately Ekstrom had chosen a table in a corner well removed from any in use. Lanyard could speak without fear of being overheard. But for a moment he refrained. Nor did Ekstrom speak or stir; sitting sideways at his table, negligently, with knees crossed, the German likewise kept a hand buried in the pocket of his heavy, dark ulster. Thus neither doubted the other's ill-will or preparedness. And through thirty seconds of silence they remained at pause, each striving with all his might to read the other's purpose in his eyes. But there was this distinction to be drawn between their attitudes, that whereas Lanyard's gaze challenged, the German's was sullenly defiant. And presently Lanyard felt his heart stir with relief: the spy's glance had winced. "Ekstrom," the adventurer said quietly, "if you fire, I'll get you before I fall. That's a simple statement of fact." The German hesitated, moistened the corners of his lips with a nervous tongue, but contented himself with a nod of acknowledgement. "Take your hand off that gun," Lanyard ordered. "Remember--I've only to cry your name aloud to have you torn to pieces by these people. Your life's not worth a moment's purchase in Paris--as you should know." The German hesitated, but in his heart knew that Lanyard didn't exaggerate. The murder of the inventor had exasperated all France; and though tonight's weather kept a third of Paris within doors, there was still a tide of pedestrians fluent on the sidewalk, beyond the flimsy barrier of firs, that would thicken to a ravening mob upon the least excuse. He had mistaken his man; he had thought that Lanyard, even if aware of his pursuit, would seek to shake it off in flight rather than turn and fight--and fight here, of all places! "Do you hear me?" Lanyard continued in the same level and unyielding tone. "Bring both hands in sight--upon the table!" There was no more hesitation: Ekstrom obeyed, if with the sullen grace of a wild beast that would and could slay its trainer with one sweep of its paw--if only it dared. For the first time since leaving the girl Lanyard relaxed his vigilant watch over the man long enough for one swift glance through the window at his side. But she was already vanished from the café. He breathed more freely now. "Come!" he said peremptorily. "Get up. We've got to talk, I presume--thrash this matter out--and we'll come to no decision here." "Where do we go, then?" the German demanded suspiciously. "We can walk." Irresolutely the spy uncrossed his knees, but didn't rise. "Walk?" he repeated, "walk where?" "Up the boulevard, if you like--where the lights are brightest." "Ah!"--with a malignant flash of teeth--"but I don't trust you." Lanyard laughed: "You wear only one shoe of that pair, my dear captain! We're a distrustful flock, we birds of prey. Come along! Why sit there sulking, like a spoiled child? You've made an ass of yourself, following me to Paris; sadly though you bungled that job in London, I gave you credit for more wit than to poke your head into the lion's mouth here. But--admitting that--why not be graceful about it? Here am I, amiably treating you like an equal: you might at least show gratitude enough to accept my invitation to flâner yourself!" With a grunt the spy got upon his feet, while Lanyard stood back, against the window, and made him free of the narrow path between the tree-tubs and the tables. "After you, my dear Adolph...!" The German paused, half turned towards him, choking with rage, his suffused face darkly relieving its white scars won at Heidelberg. At this, with a nod of unmistakable meaning, Lanyard advanced the muzzle of his pocketed weapon; and with an ugly growl the German moved on and out to the sidewalk, Lanyard respectfully an inch or two behind his elbow. "To your right," he requested pleasantly--"if it's all the same to you: I've business on the Boulevards..." Ekstrom said nothing for the moment, but sullenly yielded to the suggestion. "By the way," the adventurer presently pursued, "you might be good enough to inform me how you knew where we were dining--eh?" "If it interests you--" "I own it does--tremendously!" "Pure accident: I happened to be sitting in the café, and caught a glimpse of you through the door as you went upstairs. Therefore I waited till the waiter asked for your bill at the caisse, then stationed myself outside." "But why? Can you tell me what you thought to accomplish?" "You know well," Ekstrom muttered. "After what happened in London ... it's your life or mine!" "Spoken like a true villain! But it seems to me you overlooked a conspicuous chance to accomplish your hellish design, back there in the side streets." "Would I be such a fool as to shoot you down before finding out what you've done with those plans?" "You might as well have," Lanyard informed him lightly ... "For you won't know otherwise." With an infuriated oath the German stopped short: but he dared not ignore the readiness with which his tormentor imitated the manoeuvre and kept the pistol trained through the fabric of his raincoat. "Yes--?" the adventurer enquired with an exasperating accent of surprise. "Understand me," Ekstrom muttered vindictively: "next time I'll show you no mercy--" "But if there _is_ no next time? We're not apt to meet again, you know." "That's something beyond your knowledge--" "You think so? ... But shan't we resume our stroll? People might notice us standing here--you with your teeth bared like an ill-tempered dog.... Oh, thank you!" And as they moved on, Lanyard continued: "Shall I explain why we're not apt to meet again?" "If it amuses you." "Thanks once more! ... For the simple reason that Paris satisfies me; so here I stop." "Well?" the spy asked with a blank sidelong look. "Whereas you are leaving Paris tonight." "What makes you think that?" "Because you value your thick hide too highly to remain, my dear captain." Having gained the corner of the boulevard St. Denis, Lanyard pulled up. "One moment, by your leave. You see yonder the entrance to the Metro--don't you? And here, a dozen feet away, a perfectly able-bodied sergent de ville? Let this fateful conjunction impress you properly: for five minutes after you have descended to the Métro--or as soon as the noise of a train advises me you've had one chance to get away--I shall mention casually to the sergo--that I have seen Captain Ek--" "Hush!" the German protested in a hiss of fright. "But certainly: I've no desire to embarrass you: publicity must be terribly distasteful to one of your sensitive and retiring disposition.... But I trust you understand me? On the one hand, there's the Métro; on the other, there's the flic; while here, you must admit, am I, as large as life and very much on the job! ... And inasmuch as I shall certainly mention my suspicions to the minion of the law--as aforesaid--I'd advise you to be well out of Paris before dawn!" There was murder in the eyes of the spy as he lingered, truculently glowering at the smiling adventurer; and for an instant Lanyard was well-persuaded he had gone too far, that even there, even on that busy junction of two crowded thoroughfares, Ekstrom would let his temper get the better of his judgment and risk everything in an attempt upon the life of his despoiler. But he was mistaken. With a surly shrug the spy swung about and marched straight to the kiosk of the underground railway, into which, without one backward glance, he disappeared. Two minutes later the earth beneath Lanyard's feet quaked with the crash and rumble of a north-bound train. He waited three minutes longer; but Ekstrom didn't reappear; and at length convinced that his warning had proved effectual, Lanyard turned and made off. XVI RESTITUTION For all that success had rewarded his effrontery, Lanyard's mind was far from easy during the subsequent hour that he spent before attempting to rejoin Lucy Shannon, dodging, ducking and doubling across Paris and back again, with design to confuse and confound any jackals of the Pack that might have picked up his trail as adventitiously as Ekstrom had. His delight, indeed, in discomfiting his dupe was chilled by apprehension that it were madness, simply because the spy had proved unexpectedly docile, to consider the affaire Ekstrom closed. In the very fact of that docility inhered something strange and ominous, a premonition of evil which was hardly mitigated by finding the girl safe and sound under the wing of madame la concierge, in the little court of private stables, where he rented space for his car, off the rue des Acacias. Monsieur le concierge, it appeared, was from home; and madame, thick-witted, warm-hearted, simple body that she was, discovered a phase of beaming incuriosity most grateful to the adventurer, enabling him as it did to dispense with embarrassing explanations, and to whisk the girl away as soon as he liked. This last was just as soon as personal examination had reassured him with respect to his automobile--superficially an ordinary motor-cab of the better grade, but with an exceptionally powerful engine hidden beneath its hood. A car of such character, passing readily as the town-car of any family in modest circumstances, or else as what Paris calls a voiture de remise (a hackney car without taximeter) was a tremendous convenience, enabling its owner to scurry at will about cab-ridden Paris free of comment. But it could not be left standing in public places at odd hours, or for long, without attracting the interest of the police, and so was useless in the present emergency. Lanyard, however, entertained a shrewd suspicion that his plans might all miscarry and the command of a fast-travelling car soon prove essential to his salvation; and he cheerfully devoted a good half-hour to putting the motor in prime trim for the road. With this accomplished--and the facts established through discreet interrogation of madame la concierge that no enquiries had been made for "Pierre Lamier," and that she had noticed no strange or otherwise questionable characters loitering in the neighbourhood of late--he was ready for his first real step toward rehabilitation.... It was past one in the morning when, with the girl on his arm, he issued forth into the dark and drowsy rue des Acacias and, moving swiftly, crossed the avenue de la Grande Armée. Thereafter, avoiding main-travelled highways, they struck southward through tangled side streets to aristocratic Passy, skirted the boulevards of the fortifications, and approached the private park of La Muette. The hôtel particulier of that wealthy and amiable eccentric, Madame Hélène Omber, was a souvenir of those days when Passy had been suburban. A survival of the Revolution, a vast, dour pile that had known few changes since the days of its construction, it occupied a large, unkempt park, irregularly triangular in shape, bounded by two streets and an avenue, and rendered private by high walls crowned with broken glass. Carriage gates opened on the avenue, guarded by a porter's lodge; while of three posterns that pierced the walls on the side streets, one only was in general use by the servants of the establishment; the other two were presumed to be permanently sealed. Lanyard, however, knew better. When they had turned off from the avenue, he slackened pace and moved at caution, examining the prospect narrowly. On the one hand rose the wall of the park, topped by naked, soughing limbs of neglected trees; on the other, across the way, a block of tall old dwellings, withdrawn behind jealous garden walls, showed stupid, sleepy faces and lightless eyes. Within the perspective of the street but three shapes stirred; Lanyard and the girl in the shadow of the wall, and a disconsolate, misprized cat that promptly decamped like a terror-stricken ghost. Overhead the sky was breaking and showing ebon patches and infrequent stars through a wind-harried wrack of cloud. The night had grown sensibly colder, and noisy with the rushing sweep of a new-sprung wind. Several yards from the postern-gate, Lanyard paused definitely, and spoke for the first time in many minutes; for the nature of their errand had oppressed the spirits of both and enjoined an unnatural silence, ever since their departure from the rue des Acacias. "This is where we stop," he said, with a jerk of his head toward the wall; "but it's not too late--" "For what?" the girl asked quickly. "I promised you no danger; but now I've thought it over, I can't promise that: there's always danger. And I'm afraid for you. It's not yet too late for you to turn back and wait for me in a safer place." "You asked me to accompany you for a special purpose," she argued; "you begged me to come with you, in fact.... Now that I have agreed and come this far, I don't mean to turn back without good reason." His gesture indicated uneasy acquiescence. "I should never have asked this of you. I think I must have been a little mad. If anything should come of this to injure you...!" "If you mean to do what you promised--" "Do you doubt my sincerity?" "It was your own suggestion that you leave me no excuse for doubt..." Without further remonstrance, if with a mind beset with misgivings, he led on to the gate--a blank door of wood, painted a dark green, deeply recessed in the wall. In proof of his assertion that he had long since made every preparation to attack the premises, Lanyard had a key ready and in the lock almost before they reached it. And the door swung back easily and noiselessly as though on well-greased hinges. As silently it shut them in. They stood upon a weed-grown gravel path, hedged about with thick masses of shrubbery; but the park was as black as a pocket; and the heavy effluvia of wet mould, decaying weeds and rotting leaves that choked the air, seemed only to render the murk still more opaque. But Lanyard evidently knew his way blindfold: though motives of prudence made him refrain from using his flash-lamp, he betrayed not the least incertitude in his actions. Never once at loss for the right turning, he piloted the girl swiftly through a bewildering black labyrinth of paths, lawns and thickets.... In due course he pulled up, and she discovered that they had come out upon a clear space of lawn, close beside the featureless, looming bulk of a dark and silent building. An admonitory grasp tightened upon her fingers, and she caught his singularly penetrating yet guarded whisper: "This is the back of the house--the service-entrance. From this door a broad path runs straight to the main service gateway; you can't mistake it; and the gate itself has a spring lock, easy enough to open from the inside. Remember this in event of trouble. We might become separated in the darkness and confusion...." Gently returning the pressure, "I understand," she said in a whisper. Immediately he drew her on to the house, pausing but momentarily before a wide doorway; one half of which promptly swung open, and as soon as they had passed through, closed with no perceptible jar or click. And then Lanyard's flash-lamp was lancing the gloom on every hand, swiftly raking the bounds of a large, panelled servants' hall, until it picked out the foot of a flight of steps at the farther end. To this they moved stealthily over a tiled flooring. The ascent of the staircase was accomplished, however, only with infinite care, Lanyard testing each rise before trusting it with his weight or the girl's. Twice he bade her skip one step lest the complaints of the ancient woodwork betray them. In spite of all this, no less than three hideous squeals were evoked before they gained the top; each indicating a pause and wait of several breathless seconds. But it would seem that such servants as had been left in the house, in the absence of its chatelaine, either slept soundly or were accustomed to the midnight concert of those age-old timbers; and without mischance, at length, they entered the main reception-hall, revealed by the dancing spot-light as a room of noble proportions furnished with sombre magnificence. Here the girl was left alone for a few minutes, while Lanyard darted above-stairs for a review of the state bedchambers and servants' quarters. With a sensation of being crushed and suffocated by the encompassing dark mystery, she nerved herself against a protracted vigil. The obscurity on every hand seemed alive with stealthy footfalls, whisperings, murmurings, the passage of shrouded shapes of silence and of menace. Her eyes ached, her throat and temples throbbed, her skin crept, her scalp tingled. She seemed to hear a thousand different noises of alarm. The only sounds she did not hear were those--if any--that accompanied Lanyard's departure and return. Had he not been thoughtful enough, when a few feet distant, to give warning with the light, she might well have greeted with a cry of fright the consciousness of a presence near her: so silently he moved about. As it was, she was startled, apprehensive of some misadventure, to find him back so soon; for he hadn't been gone three minutes. "It's quite all right," he announced in hushed accents--no longer whispering. "There are just five people in the house aside from ourselves--all servants, asleep in the rear wing. We've got a clear field--if no excuse for taking foolish chances! However, we'll be finished and off again in less than ten minutes. This way." That way led to a huge and gloomy library at one extreme of a chain of great salons, a veritable treasure-gallery of exquisite furnishings and authentic old masters. As they moved slowly through these chambers Lanyard kept his flash-lamp busy; involuntarily, now and again, he checked the girl before some splendid canvas or extraordinary antique. "I've always meant to happen in some day with a moving-van and loot this place properly!" he confessed with a little affected sigh. "Considered from the viewpoint of an expert practitioner in my--ah--late profession, it's a sin and a shame to let all this go neglected, when it's so poorly guarded. The old lady--Madame Omber, you know--has all the money there is, approximately, and when she dies all these beautiful things go to the Louvre; for she's without kith or kin." "But how did she manage to accumulate them all?" the girl wondered. "It's the work of generations of passionate collectors," he explained. "The late Monsieur Omber was the last of his dynasty; he and his forebears brought together the paintings and the furniture; madame added the Orientals gathered together by her first husband, and her own collection of antique jewellery and precious stones--_her_ particular fad...." As he spoke the light of the flash-lamp was blotted out. An instant later the girl heard a little clashing noise, of curtain rings sliding along a pole; and this was thrice repeated. Then, following another brief pause, a switch clicked; and streaming from the hood of a portable desk-lamp, a pool of light flooded the heart of a vast place of shadows, an apartment whose doors and windows alike were cloaked with heavy draperies that hung from floor to ceiling in long and shining folds. Immense black bookcases lined the walls, their shelves crowded with volumes in rich bindings; from their tops pallid marble masks peered down inquisitively, leering and scowling at the intruders. A huge mantelpiece of carved marble, supporting a great, dark mirror, occupied the best of one wall, beneath it a wide, deep fireplace yawned, partly shielded by a screen of wrought brass and crystal. In the middle of the room stood a library table of mahogany; huge leather chairs and couches encumbered the remainder of its space. And the corner to the right of the fireplace was shut off by a high Japanese screen of cinnabar and gold. To this Lanyard moved confidently, carrying the lamp. Placing it on the floor, he grasped one wing of the screen with both hands, and at cost of considerable effort swung it aside, uncovering the face of a huge, old-style safe built into the wall. For several seconds--but not for many--Lanyard studied this problem intently, standing quite motionless, his head lowered and thrust forward, hands resting on his hips. Then turning, he nodded an invitation to draw nearer. "My last job," he said with a smile oddly lighted by the lamp at his feet--"and my easiest, I fancy. Sorry, too, for I'd rather have liked to show off a bit. But this old-fashioned tin bank gives no excuse for spectacular methods!" "But," the girl objected, "You've brought no tools!" "Oh, but I have!" And fumbling in a pocket, Lanyard produced a pencil. "Behold!" he laughed, brandishing it. She knitted thoughtful brows: "I don't understand." "All I need--except this." Crossing to the desk, he found a sheet of note-paper and, folding it, returned. "Now," he said, "give me five minutes...." Kneeling, he gave the combination-knob a smart preliminary twirl, then rested a shoulder against the sheet of painted iron, his cheek to its smooth, cold cheek, his ear close beside the dial; and with the practised fingers of a master locksmith began to manipulate the knob. Gently, tirelessly, to and fro he twisted, turned, raced, and checked the combination, caressing it, humouring it, wheedling it, inexorably questioning it in the dumb language his fingers spoke so deftly. And in his ear the click and whir and thump of shifting wards and tumblers murmured articulate response in the terms of their cryptic code. Now and again, releasing the knob and sitting back on his heels, he would bend intent scrutiny to the dial; note the position of the combination, and with the pencil jot memoranda on the paper. This happened perhaps a dozen times, at intervals of irregular duration. He worked diligently, in a phase of concentration that apparently excluded from his consciousness the near proximity of the girl, who stood--or rather stooped, half-kneeling--less than a pace from his shoulder, watching the process with interest hardly less keen than his own. Yet when one faint, odd sound broke the slumberous silence of the salons, instantly he swung around and stood erect in a single movement, gaze to the curtains. But it had only been a premonitory rumble in the throat of a tall old clock about to strike in the room beyond. And as its sonorous chimes heralded two deep-toned strokes, Lanyard laughed quietly, intimately, to the girl's startled eyes, and sank back before the safe. And now his task was nearly finished. Within another minute he sat back with face aglow, uttered a hushed exclamation of satisfaction, studied his memoranda for a space, then swiftly and with assured movements threw the knob and dial into the several positions of the combination, grasped the lever-handle, turned it smartly, and swung the door wide open. "Simple, eh?" he chuckled, with a glance aside to the girl's eager face, bewitchingly flushed and shadowed by the lamp's up-thrown glow--"when one knows the trick, of course! And now ... if one were not an honest man!" A wave of his hand indicated the pigeonholes with which the body of the safe was fitted: wide spaces and deep, stored tight with an extraordinary array of leather jewel-cases, packets of stout paper bound with tape and sealed, and boxes of wood and pasteboard of every shape and size. "They were only her finest pieces, her personal jewels, that Madame Omber took with her to England," he explained; "she's mad about them ... never separated from them.... Perhaps the finest collection in the world, for size and purity of water.... She had the heart to leave these--all this!" Lifting a hand he chose at random, dislodged two leather cases, placed them on the floor, and with a blade of his pen-knife forced their fastenings. From the first the light smote radiance in blinding, coruscant welter. Here was nothing but diamond jewellery, mostly in antique settings. He took up a piece and offered it to the girl. She drew back her hand involuntarily. "No!" she protested in a whisper of fright. "But just look!" he urged. "There's no danger ... and you'll never see the like of this again!" Stubbornly she withheld her hand. "No, no!" she pleaded. "I--I'd rather not touch it. Put it back. Let's hurry. I--I'm frightened." He shrugged and replaced the jewel; then yielded again to impulse of curiosity and lifted the lid of the second case. It contained nothing but pieces set with coloured stones of the first order--emeralds, amethysts, sapphires, rubies, topaz, garnets, lapis-lazuli, jacinthes, jades, fashioned by master-craftsmen into rings, bracelets, chains, brooches, lockets, necklaces, of exquisite design: the whole thrown heedlessly together, without order or care. For a moment the adventurer stared down soberly at this priceless hoard, his eyes narrowing, his breathing perceptibly quickened. Then with a slow gesture, he reclosed the case, took from his pocket that other which he had brought from London, opened it, and held it aside beneath the light, for the girl's inspection. He looked not once either at its contents or at her, fearing lest his countenance betray the truth, that he had not yet succeeded completely in exorcising that mutinous and rebellious spirit, the Lone Wolf, from the tenement over which it had so long held sway; and content with the sound of her quick, startled sigh of amaze that what she now beheld could so marvellously outshine what had been disclosed by the other boxes, he withdrew it, shut it, found it a place in the safe, and without pause closed the door, shot the bolts, and twirled the dial until the tumblers fairly sang. One final twist of the lever-handle convincing him that the combination was effectively dislocated, he rose, picked up the lamp, replaced it on the desk with scrupulous care to leave no sign that it had been moved, and looked round to the girl. She was where he had left her, a small, tense, vibrant figure among the shadows, her eyes dark pools of wonder in a face of blazing pallor. With a high head and his shoulders well back he made a gesture signifying more eloquently than any words: "All that is ended!" "And now...?" she asked breathlessly. "Now for our get-away," he replied with assumed lightness. "Before dawn we must be out of Paris.... Two minutes, while I straighten this place up and leave it as I found it." He moved back to the safe, restored the wing of the screen to the spot from which he had moved it, and after an instant's close examination of the rug, began to explore his pockets. "What are you looking for?" the girl enquired. "My memoranda of the combination--" "I have it." She indicated its place in a pocket of her coat. "You left it on the floor, and I was afraid you might forget--" "No fear!" he laughed. "No"--as she offered him the folded paper--"keep it and destroy it, once we're out of this. Now those portières..." Extinguishing the desk-light, he turned attention to the draperies at doors and windows.... Within five minutes, they were once more in the silent streets of Passy. They had to walk as far as the Trocadéro before Lanyard found a fiacre, which he later dismissed at the corner in the Faubourg St. Germain. Another brief walk brought them to a gate in the garden wall of a residence at the junction of two quiet streets. "This, I think, ends our Parisian wanderings," Lanyard announced. "If you'll be good enough to keep an eye out for busybodies--and yourself as inconspicuous as possible in this doorway..." And he walked back to the curb, measuring the wall with his eye. "What are you going to do?" He responded by doing it so swiftly that she gasped with surprise: pausing momentarily within a yard of the wall, he gathered himself together, shot lithely into the air, caught the top curbing with both hands, and... She heard the soft thud of his feet on the earth of the enclosure; the latch grated behind her; the door opened. "For the last time," Lanyard laughed quietly, "permit me to invite you to break the law by committing an act of trespass!" Securing the door, he led her to a garden bench secluded amid conventional shrubbery. "If you'll wait here," he suggested--"well, it will be best. I'll be back as soon as possible, though I may be detained some time. Still, inasmuch as I'm about to break into this hôtel, my motives, which are most commendable, may be misinterpreted, and I'd rather you'd stop here, with the street at hand. If you hear a noise like trouble, you've only to unlatch the gate.... But let's hope my purely benevolent intentions toward the French Republic won't be misconstrued!" "I'll wait," she assured him bravely; "but won't you tell me--?" With a gesture, he indicated the mansion back of the garden. "I'm going to break in there to pay an early morning call and impart some interesting information to a person of considerable consequence--nobody less, in fact, than Monsieur Ducroy." "And who is that?" "The present Minister of War.... We haven't as yet the pleasure of each other's acquaintance; still, I think he won't be sorry to see me.... In brief, I mean to make him a present of the Huysman plans and bargain for our safe-conduct from France." Impulsively she offered her hand and, when he, surprised, somewhat diffidently took it, "Be careful!" she whispered brokenly, her pale sweet face upturned to his. "Oh, do be careful! I am afraid for you...." And for a little the temptation to take her in his arms was stronger than any he had ever known.... But remembering his stipulated year of probation, he released her hand with an incoherent mumble, turned, and disappeared in the direction of the house. XVII THE FORLORN HOPE Established behind his splendid mahogany desk in his office at the Ministère de la Guerre, or moving majestically abroad attired in frock coat and glossy topper, or lending the dignity of his presence to some formal ceremony in that beautiful uniform which appertained unto his office, Monsieur Hector Ducroy cut an imposing figure. Abed ... it was sadly otherwise. Lanyard switched on the bedside light, turning it so that it struck full upon the face of the sleeper; and as he sat down, smiled. The Minister of War lay upon his back, his distinguished corpulence severely dislocating the chaste simplicity of the bed-clothing. Athwart his shelving chest, fat hands were folded in a gesture affectingly naïve. His face was red, a noble high-light shone upon the promontory of his bald pate, his mouth was open. To the best of his unconscious ability he was giving a protracted imitation of a dog-fight; and he was really exhibiting sublime virtuosity: one readily distinguished individual howls, growls, yelps, against an undertone of blended voices of excited non-combatants... As suddenly as though some one, wearying of the entertainment, had lifted the needle from that record, it was discontinued. The Minister of War stirred uneasily in his sleep, muttered a naughty word, opened one eye, scowled, opened the other. He blinked furiously, half-blinded but still able to make out the disconcerting silhouette of a man seated just beyond the glare: a quiet presence that moved not but eyed him steadfastly; an apparition the more arresting because of its very immobility. Rapidly the face of the Minister of War lost several shades of purple. He moistened his lips nervously with a thick, dry tongue, and convulsively he clutched the bed-clothing high and tight about his neck, as though labouring under the erroneous impression that the sanctity of his person was threatened. "What do you want, monsieur?" he stuttered in a still, small voice which he would have been the last to acknowledge his own. "I desire to discuss a matter of business with monsieur," replied the intruder after a small pause. "If you will be good enough to calm yourself--" "I am perfectly calm--" But here the Minister of War verified with one swift glance an earlier impression, to the effect that the trespasser was holding something that shone with metallic lustre; and his soul began to curl up round the edges. "There are eighteen hundred francs in my pocketbook--about," he managed to articulate. "My watch is on the stand here. You will find the family plate in the dining-room safe, behind the buffet--the key is on my ring--and the jewels of madame my wife are in a small strong-box beneath the head of her bed. The combination--" "Pardon: monsieur labours under a misapprehension," the housebreaker interposed drily. "Had one desired these valuables, one would readily have taken them without going to the trouble of disturbing the repose of monsieur.... I have, however, already mentioned the nature of my errand." "Eh?" demanded the Minister of War. "What is that? But give me of your mercy one chance to explain! I have never wittingly harmed you, monsieur, and if I have done so without my knowledge, rest assured you have but to petition me through the proper channels and I will be only too glad to make amends!" "_Still_ you do not listen!" the other insisted. "Come, Monsieur Ducroy--calm yourself. I have not robbed you, because I have no wish to rob you. I have not harmed you, for I have no wish to harm you. Nor have I any wish other than to lay before you, as representing Government, a certain matter of State business." There was silence while the Minister of War permitted this exhortation to sink in. Then, apparently reassured, he sat up in bed and eyed his untimely visitor with a glare little short of truculent. "Eh? What's that?" he demanded. "Business? What sort of business? If you wish to submit to my consideration any matter of business, how is it you break into my home at dead of night and rouse me in this brutal fashion"--here his voice faltered--"with a lethal weapon pointed at my head?" "Monsieur will admit he speaks under an error," returned the burglar. "I have yet to point this pistol at him. I should be very sorry to feel obliged to do so. I display it, in fact, simply that monsieur may not forget himself and attempt to summon servants in his resentment of this (I admit) unusual method of introducing one's self to his attention. When we understand each other better there will be no need for such precautions, and then I shall put my pistol away, so that the sight of it may no longer annoy monsieur." "It is true, I do not understand you," grumbled the Minister of War. "Why--if your errand be peaceable--break into my house?" "Because it was urgently necessary to see monsieur instantly. Monsieur will reflect upon the reception one would receive did one ring the front door-bell and demand audience at three o'clock in the morning!" "Well ..." Monsieur Ducroy conceded dubiously. Then, on reflection, he iterated the monosyllable testily: "Well! What is it you want, then?" "I can best explain by asking monsieur to examine--what I have to show him." With this Lanyard dropped the pistol into his coat-pocket, from another produced a gold cigarette-case, and from the store of this last with meticulous care selected a single cigarette. Regarding the Minister of War in a mystifying manner, he began to roll the cigarette briskly between his palms. A small shower of tobacco sifted to the floor: the rice-paper cracked and came away; and with the bland smile and gesture of a professional conjurer, Lanyard exhibited a small cylinder of stiff paper between his thumb and index-finger. Goggling resentfully, Monsieur Ducroy spluttered: "Eh--what impudence is this?" His smile unchanged, Lanyard bent forward and silently dropped the cylinder into the Frenchman's hand. At the same time he offered him a pocket magnifying-glass. "What is this?" Ducroy persisted stupidly. "What--what--!" "If monsieur will be good enough to unroll the papers and examine them with the aid of this glass--" With a wondering grunt, the other complied, unrolling several small sheets of photographer's printing-out paper, to which several extraordinarily complicated and minute designs had been transferred--strongly resembling laborious efforts to conventionalize a spider's web. But no sooner had Monsieur Ducroy viewed these through the glass, than he started violently, uttered an excited exclamation, and subjected them to an examination both prolonged and exacting. "Monsieur is, no doubt, now satisfied?" Lanyard enquired when his patience would endure no longer. "These are genuine?" the Minister of War demanded sharply, without looking up. "Monsieur can readily discern notations made upon the drawings by the inventor, Georges Huysman, in his own hand. Furthermore, each plan has been marked in the lower left-hand corner with the word '_accepted_' followed by the initials of the German Minister of War. I think this establishes beyond dispute the authenticity of these photographs of the plan for Huysman's invention." "Yes," the Minister of War agreed breathlessly. "You have the negatives from which these prints were made?" "Here," Lanyard said, indicating a second cigarette. And then, with a movement so leisurely and careless that his purpose was accomplished before the other in his preoccupation was aware of it, the adventurer leaned forward and swept up the prints from the counterpane in front of Monsieur Ducroy. "Here!" the Frenchman exclaimed. "Why do you do that?" "Monsieur no longer questions their authenticity?" "I grant you that." "Then I return to myself these prints, pending negotiations for their transfer to France." "How did you come by them?" demanded Monsieur Ducroy, after a moment's thought. "Need monsieur ask? Is France so ill-served by her spies that you do not already know of the misfortune one Captain Ekstrom recently suffered in London?" Ducroy shook his head. Lanyard received this indication with impatience. It seemed hardly possible that the French Minister of War could be either so stupid or so ignorant.... But with a patient shrug, he proceeded to elucidate. "Captain Ekstrom," he said, "but recently succeeded in photographing these plans and took them to London to sell to the English. Unfortunately for himself--unhappily for perfidious Albion!--Captain Ekstrom fell in with me and mistook me for Downing Street's representative. And here are the plans." "You are--the Lone Wolf--then?" "I am, as far as concerns you, monsieur, merely the person in possession of these plans, who offers them through you, to France, for a price." "But why introduce yourself to me in this extraordinary fashion, for a transaction for which the customary channels--with which you must be familiar--are entirely adequate?" "Simply because Ekstrom has followed me to Paris," Lanyard explained indulgently. "Did I venture to approach you in the usual way, my chances of rounding out a useful life thereafter would be practically nil. Furthermore, my circumstances are such that it has become necessary for me to leave France immediately--without an hour's delay--also secretly; else I might as well remain here to be butchered.... Now you command the only means I know of, to accomplish my purpose. And that is the price, the only price, you will have to pay me for these plans." "I don't understand you." "It is on schedule, is it not, that Captain Vauquelin of the Aviation Corps is to attempt a non-stop flight from Paris to London this morning, with two passengers, in a new Parrott biplane?" "That is so.... Well?" "I must be one of those passengers; and I have a companion, a young lady, who will take the place of the other." "It isn't possible, monsieur. Those arrangements are already fixed." "You will countermand them." "There is no time--" "You can get into telephonic communication with Port Aviation in two minutes." "But the passengers have been promised--" "You will disappoint them." "The start is to be made in the first flush of daylight. How could you reach Port Aviation in time?" "In your motor-car, monsieur." "It cannot be done." "It must! If the start must be delayed till we arrive, you will give orders that it shall be so delayed." For a minute the Minister of War hesitated; then he shook his head definitely. "The difficulties are insuperable--" "There is no such thing, monsieur." "I am sorry: it can't be done." "That is your answer?" "It is regrettable, monsieur..." "Very well!" Lanyard bent forward again, took a match from the stand on the bedside table, and struck it. Very calmly he advanced the flame toward the cigarette containing the roll of inflammable films. "Monsieur!" Ducroy cried in horror. "What are you doing?" Lanyard favoured him with a look of surprise. "I am about to destroy these films and prints." "You must never do that!" "Why not? They are mine, to do with as I like. If I cannot dispose of them at my price, I shall destroy them!" "But--my God!--what you demand is impossible! Stay, monsieur! Think what your action means to France!" "I have already thought of that. Now I must think of myself." "But--one moment!" Ducroy sat up in bed and dangled hairy fat legs over the side. "But one moment only, monsieur. Don't make me waste your matches!" "Monsieur, it shall be as you desire, if it lies in my power to accomplish it." With this the Minister of War stood up and made for the telephone, in his agitation forgetful of dressing-gown and slippers. "You must accomplish it, Monsieur Ducroy," Lanyard advised him gravely, puffing out the flame; "for if you fail, you make yourself the instrument of my death. Here are the plans." "You trust them to me?" Ducroy asked in astonishment. "But naturally: that makes it an affair of your honour," Lanyard explained suavely. With a gesture of graceful capitulation the Frenchman accepted the little roll of film. "Permit me," he said, "to acknowledge the honour of monsieur's confidence!" Lanyard bowed low: "One knows with whom one deals, monsieur!... And now, if you will be good enough to excuse me...." He turned to the door. "But--eh--where are you going?" Ducroy demanded. "Mademoiselle," Lanyard said, pausing on the threshold--"that is, the young lady who is to accompany me--is waiting anxiously in the garden, out yonder. I go to find and reassure her and--with your permission--to bring her in to the library, where we will await monsieur when he has finished telephoning and--ah--repaired the deficiencies in his attire; which one trusts he will forgive one's mentioning!" He bowed again, impudently, gaily, and--when the Minister of War looked up again sheepishly from contemplation of his naked shanks--had vanished. In high feather Lanyard made his way to a door at the rear of the house which gave upon the garden--in his new social status of Governmental protégé disdaining any such a commonplace avenue as that conservatory window whose fastenings he had forced on entering. And boldly unbolting the door, he ran out into the night, to rejoin his beloved, like a man waking to new life. But she was no more there: the bench was vacant, the garden deserted, the gateway yawning on the street. With a low, stifled cry, Lanyard turned from the bench and stumbled out to the junction of the cross-street. But nowhere in their several perspectives could he see anything that moved. After some time he returned to the garden and quartered it with the thoroughness of a pointer beating a covert. But he did this hopelessly, bitterly aware that the outcome would be precisely what it eventually was, that is to say, nothing.... He was kneeling beside the bench--scrutinizing the turf with microscopic attention by aid of his flash-lamp, seeking some sign of struggle to prove she had not left him willingly, and finding none--when a voice brought him momentarily out of his distraction. He looked up wildly, to discover Ducroy standing over him, his stout person chastely swathed in a quilted dressing-gown and trousers, his expression one of stupefaction. "Well, monsieur--well?" the Minister of War demanded irritably. "What--I repeat--what are you doing there?" Lanyard essayed response, choked up, and gulped. He rose and stood swaying, showing a stricken face. "Eh?" Ducroy insisted with an accent of exasperation. "Why do you stand glaring at me like that--eh? Come, monsieur: what ails you? I have arranged everything, I say. Where is mademoiselle?" Lanyard made a broken gesture. "Gone!" he muttered forlornly. Instantly the countenance of the stout Frenchman was lightened with a gleam of eager interest--inveterate romantic that he was!--and he stepped nearer, peering closely into the face of the adventurer. "Gone?" he echoed. "Mademoiselle? Your sweetheart, eh?" Lanyard assented with a disconsolate nod and sigh. Impatiently Ducroy caught him by the sleeve. "Come!" he insisted, tugging--"but come at once into the house. Now, monsieur--now at length you enlist all one's sympathies! Come, I say! Is it your desire that I catch my death of cold?" Indifferently Lanyard suffered himself to be led away. He was, indeed, barely conscious of what was happening. All his being was possessed by the thought that she had forsaken him. And he could well guess why: impossible for such an one as she to contemplate without a shudder association with the man who had been what he had been! Infatuate!--to have dreamed that she would tolerate the devotion of a criminal, that she could ever forget his identity with the Lone Wolf. Inevitably--soon or late--she must have fled that ignominious thought in dread and horror, daring whatever consequences to escape and forget both it and him. And better now, perhaps, than later.... XVIII ENIGMA He found no reason to believe she had left him other than voluntarily, or that their adventures since the escape from the impasse Stanislas had been attended upon by spies of the Pack. He could have sworn they hadn't been followed either to or from the rue des Acacias; their way had been too long and purposely too roundabout, his vigilance too lively, for any sort of surveillance to have been practised without his remarking some indication thereof, at one time or another. On the other hand (he told himself) there was every reason to believe she hadn't left him to go back to Bannon; concerning whom she had expressed herself too forcibly to excuse a surmise that she had preferred his protection to the Lone Wolf's. Reasoning thus, he admitted, one couldn't blame her. He could readily see how, illuded at first by a certain romantic glamour, she had not, until left to herself in the garden, come to clear perception of the fact that she was casting her lot with a common criminal's. Then, horror overmastering her of a sudden she had fled--wildly, blindly, he didn't doubt. But whither? He looked in vain for her at their agreed rendezvous, the Sacré Coeur. She had neither money nor friends in Paris. True: she had mentioned some personal jewellery she planned to hypothecate. Her first move, then, would be to seek the mont-de-piété--not to force himself again upon her, but to follow at a distance and ward off interference on Bannon's part. The Government pawn-shop had its invitation for Lanyard himself: he was there before the doors were open for the day; and fortified by loans negotiated on his watch, cigarette-case, and a ring or two, retired to a café commanding a view of the entrance on the rue des Blancs-Manteaux, and settled himself against a day-long vigil. It wasn't easy; drowsiness buzzed in his brain and weighted his eyelids; now and again, involuntarily, he nodded over his glass of black coffee. And when evening came and the mont-de-piété closed for the night, he rose and stumbled off, wondering if possibly he had napped a little without his knowledge and so missed her visit. Engaging obscure lodgings close by the rue des Acacias, he slept till nearly noon of the following day, then rose to put into execution a design which had sprung full-winged from his brain at the instant of wakening. He had not only his car but a chauffeur's license of long standing in the name of Pierre Lamier--was free, in short, to range at will the streets of Paris. And when he had levied on the stock of a second-hand clothing shop and a chemist's, he felt tolerably satisfied it would need sharp eyes--whether the Pack's or the Préfecture's--to identify "Pierre Lamier" with either Michael Lanyard or the Lone Wolf. His face, ears and neck he stained a weather-beaten brown, a discreet application of rouge along his cheekbones enhancing the effect of daily exposure to the winter winds and rains of Paris; and he gave his hands an even darker shade, with the added verisimilitude of finger-nails inked into permanent mourning. Also, he refrained from shaving: a stubble of two days' neglect bristled upon his chin and jowls. A rusty brown ulster with cap to match, shoddy trousers boasting conspicuous stripes of leaden colour, and patched boots completed the disguise. Monsieur and madame of the conciergerie he deceived with a yarn of selling his all to purchase the motor-car and embark in business for himself; and with their blessing, sallied forth to scout Paris diligently for sight or sign of the woman to whom his every heart-beat was dedicated. By the close of the third day he was ready to concede that she had managed to escape without his aid. And he began to suspect that Bannon had fled the town as well; for the most diligent enquiries failed to educe the least clue to the movements of the American following the fire at Troyon's. As for Troyon's, it was now nothing more than a gaping excavation choked with ashes and charred timbers; and though still rumours of police interest in the origin of the fire persisted, nothing in the papers linked the name of Michael Lanyard with their activities. His disappearance and Lucy Shannon's seemed to be accepted as due to death in the holocaust; the fact that their bodies hadn't been recovered was no longer a matter for comment. In short, Paris had already lost interest in the affair. Even so, it seemed, had the Pack lost interest in the Lone Wolf; or else his disguise was impenetrable. Twice he saw De Morbihan "flânning" elegantly on the Boulevards, and once he passed close by Popinot; but neither noticed him. Toward midnight of the third day, Lanyard, driving slowly westward on the boulevard de la Madeleine, noticed a limousine of familiar aspect round a corner half a block ahead and, drawing up in front of Viel's, discharge four passengers. The first was Wertheimer; and at sight of his rather striking figure, decked out in evening apparel from Conduit street and Bond, Lanyard slackened speed. Turning as he alighted, the Englishman offered his hand to a young woman. She jumped down to the sidewalk in radiant attire and a laughing temper. Involuntarily Lanyard stopped his car; and one immediately to the rear, swerving out to escape collision, shot past, its driver cursing him freely; while a sergent de ville scowled darkly and uttered an imperative word. He pulled himself together, somehow, and drove on. The girl was entering the restaurant by way of the revolving door, Wertheimer in attendance; while De Morbihan, having alighted, was lending a solicitous arm to Bannon. Quite automatically the adventurer drove on, rounded the Madeleine, and turned up the boulevard Malesherbes. Paris and all its brisk midnight traffic swung by without claiming a tithe of his interest: he was mainly conscious of lights that reeled dizzily round him like a multitude of malicious, mocking eyes.... At the junction with the boulevard Haussmann a second sergent de ville roused him with a warning about careless driving. He went more sanely thereafter, but bore a heart of utter misery; his eyes still wore a dazed expression, and now and again he shook his head impatiently as though to rid it of a swarm of tormenting thoughts. So, it seemed, he had all along been her dupe; all the while that he had been ostentatiously shielding her from harm and diffidently discovering every evidence of devotion, she had been laughing in her sleeve and planning to return to the service she pretended to despise, with her report of a fool self-duped. A great anger welled in his bosom. Turning round, he made back to the boulevard de la Madeleine, and on one pretext and another contrived to haunt the neighbourhood of Viel's until the party reappeared, something after one o'clock. It was plain that they had supped merrily; the girl seemed in the gayest humour, Wertheimer a bit exhilarated, De Morbihan much amused; even Bannon--bearing heavily on the Frenchman's arm--was chuckling contentedly. The party piled back into De Morbihan's limousine and was driven up the avenue des Champs Élysées, pausing at the Élysée Palace Hotel to drop Bannon and the girl--his daughter?--whoever she was! Whither it went thereafter, Lanyard didn't trouble to ascertain. He drove morosely home and went to bed, though not to sleep for many hours: bitterness of disillusion ate like an acid in his heart. But for all his anguish, he continued in an uncertain temper. He had turned his back on the craft of which he was acknowledged master--for a woman's sake; for nothing else (he argued) had he dedicated himself to poverty and honest effort; and what little privation he had already endured was hopelessly distasteful to him. The art of the Lone Wolf, his consummate cunning and subtlety, was still at his command; with only himself to think of, he was profoundly contemptuous of the antagonism of the Pack; while none knew better than he with what ease the riches of careless Paris might be diverted to his own pockets. A single step aside from the path he had chosen--and tomorrow night he might dine at the Ritz instead of in some sordid cochers' cabaret! And since no one cared--since _she_ had betrayed his faith--what mattered? Why not...? Yet he could not come to a decision; the next day saw him obstinately, even a little stupidly, pursuing the course he had planned before his disheartening disillusionment. Because his money was fast ebbing and motives of prudence alone--if none more worthy--forbade an attempt to replenish his pocketbook by revisiting the little rez-de-chaussée in the rue Roget and realizing on its treasures, he had determined to have a taximeter fitted to his car and ply for hire until time or chance should settle the question of his future. Already, indeed, he had complied with the police regulations, and received permission to convert his voiture de remise into a taxicab; and leaving it before noon at the designated dépôt, he was told it would be ready for him at four with the "clock" installed. Returning at that hour, he learned that it couldn't be ready before six; and too bored and restless to while away two idle hours in a café, he wandered listlessly through the streets and boulevards--indifferent, in the black melancholy oppressing him, whether or not he were recognized--and eventually found himself turning from the rue St. Honoré through the place Vendôme to the rue de la Paix. This was not wise, a perilous business, a course he had no right to pursue. And Lanyard knew it. None the less, he persisted. It was past five o'clock--deep twilight beneath a cloudless sky--the life of that street of streets fluent at its swiftest. All that Paris knew of wealth and beauty, fashion and high estate, moved between the curbs. One needed the temper of a Stoic to maintain indifference to the allure of its pageant. Trudging steadily, he of the rusty brown ulster all but touched shoulders with men who were all that he had been but a few days since--hale, hearty, well-fed, well-dressed symbols of prosperity--and with exquisite women, exquisitely gowned, extravagantly be-furred and be-jewelled, of glowing faces and eyes dark with mystery and promise: spirited creatures whose laughter was soft music, whose gesture was pride and arrogance. One and all looked past, over, and through him, unaffectedly unaware that he existed. The roadway, its paving worn as smooth as glass, and tonight by grace of frost no less hard, rang with a clatter of hoofs high and clear above the resonance of motors. A myriad lights filled the wide channel with diffused radiance. Two endless ranks of shop-windows, facing one another--across the tide, flaunted treasures that kings might pardonably have coveted--and would. Before one corner window, Lanyard paused instinctively. The shop was that of a famous jeweller. Separated from him by only the thickness of plate-glass was the wealth of princes. Looking beyond that display, his attention focussed on the interior of an immense safe, to which a dapper French salesman was restoring velvet-lined trays of valuables. Lanyard studied the intricate, ponderous mechanism of the safe-door with a thoughtful gaze not altogether innocent of sardonic bias. It wore all the grim appearance of a strong-box that, once locked, would prove impregnable to everything save acquaintance with the combination and the consent of the time-lock. But give the Lone Wolf twenty minutes alone with it, twenty minutes free from interruption--he, the one man living who could seduce a time-lock and leave it apparently inviolate!... To one side of that window stood a mirror, set at an angle, and suddenly Lanyard caught its presentment of himself--a gaunt and hungry apparition, with a wolfish air he had never worn when rejoicing in his sobriquet, staring with eyes of predaceous lustre. Alarmed and fearing lest some passer-by be struck by this betrayal, he turned and moved on hastily. But his mind was poisoned by this brutal revelation of the wide, deep gulf that yawned between the Lone Wolf of yesterday and Pierre Lamier of today; between Michael Lanyard the debonnaire, the amateur of fine arts and fine clothing, the beau sabreur of gentlemen-cracksmen and that lean, worn, shabby and dispirited animal who had glared back at him from the jeweller's mirror. He quickened his pace, with something of that same instinct of self-preservation that bids the dipsomaniac avert his eyes and hurry past the corner gin-mill, and turned blindly off into the rue Danou, toward the avenue de l'Opéra. But this only made it worse for him, for he could not avoid recognition of the softly glowing windows of the Café de Paris that knew him so well, or forget the memory of its shining rich linen, its silver and crystal, its perfumed atmosphere and luxury of warmth and music and shaded lights, its cuisine that even Paris cannot duplicate. And the truth came home to him, that he was hungry not with that brute appetite he had money enough in his pocket to satisfy, but with the lust of flesh-pots, for rare viands and old vintage wines, to know once more the snug embrace of a dress-coat and to breathe again the atmosphere of ease and station. In sudden panic he darted across the avenue and hurried north, determined to tantalize himself no longer with sights and sounds so provocative and so disturbing. Half-way across the boulevard des Capucines, to the east of the Opéra, he leapt for his life from a man-killing taxi, found himself temporarily marooned upon one of those isles of safety which Paris has christened "thank-Gods," and stood waiting for an opening in the congestion of traffic to permit passage to the farther sidewalk. And presently the policeman in the middle of the boulevard signalled with his little white wand; the stream of east-bound vehicles checked and began to close up to the right of the crossing, upon which they encroached jealously; and a taxi on the outside, next the island, overshot the mark, pulled up sharply, and began to back into place. Before Lanyard could stir, its window was opposite him, and he was looking in, transfixed. There was sufficient light to enable him to see clearly the face of the passenger--its pale oval and the darkness of eyes whose gaze clung to his with an effect of confused fascination.... She sat quite motionless until one white-gloved hand moved uncertainly toward her bosom. That brought him to; unconsciously lifting his cap, he stepped back a pace and started to move on. At this, she bent quickly forward and unlatched the door. It swung wide to him. Hardly knowing what he was doing, he accepted the dumb invitation, stepped in, took the empty seat, and closed the door. Almost at once the car moved on with a jerk, the girl sinking back into her corner with a suggestion of breathlessness, as though her effort to seem composed had been almost too much for her strength. Her face, turned toward Lanyard, seemed wan in the half light, but immobile, expressionless; only her eyes were darkly quick with anticipation. On his part, Lanyard felt himself hopelessly confounded, in the grasp of emotions that would scarce suffer him to speak. A great wonder obsessed him that she should have opened that door to him no less than that he should have entered through it. Dimly he understood that each had acted without premeditation; and asked himself, was she already regretting that momentary weakness. "Why did you do that?" he heard himself demand abruptly, his voice harsh, strained, and unnatural. She stiffened slightly, with a nervous movement of her shoulders. "Because I saw you... I was surprised; I had hoped--believed--you had left Paris." "Without you? Hardly!" "But you must," she insisted--"you _must_ go, as quickly as possible. It isn't safe--" "I'm all right," he insisted--"able-bodied--in full possession of my senses!" "But any moment you may be recognized--" "In this rig? It isn't likely.... Not that I care." She surveyed his costume curiously, perplexed. "Why are you dressed that way? Is it a disguise?" "A pretty good one. But in point of fact, it's the national livery of my present station in life." "What do you mean by that?" "Simply that, out of my old job, I've turned to the first resort of the incompetent: I'm driving a taxi." "Isn't it awfully--risky?" "You'd think so; but it isn't. Few people ever bother to look at a chauffeur. When they hail a taxi they're in a hurry, as a rule--preoccupied with business or pleasure. And then our uniforms are a disguise in themselves: to the public eye we look like so many Chinamen!" "But you're mistaken: I knew you instantly, didn't I? And those others--they're as keen-witted as I--certainly. Oh, you should not have stopped on in Paris!" "I couldn't go without knowing what had become of you." "I was afraid of that," she confessed. "Then why--?" "Oh, I know what you're going to say! Why did I run away from you?" And then, since he said nothing, she continued unhappily: "I can't tell you... I mean, I don't know how to tell you!" She kept her face averted, sat gazing blankly out of the window; but when he sat on, mute and unresponsive--in point of fact not knowing what to say--she turned to look at him, and the glare of a passing lamp showed her countenance profoundly distressed, mouth tense, brows knotted, eyes clouded with perplexity and appeal. And of a sudden, seeing her so tormented and so piteous, his indignation ebbed, and with it all his doubts of her were dissipated; dimly he divined that something behind this dark fabric of mystery and inconsistency, no matter how inexplicable to him, excused all her apparent faithlessness and instability of character and purpose. He could not look upon this girl and hear her voice and believe that she was not at heart as sound and sweet, tender and loyal, as any that ever breathed. A wave of tenderness and compassion brimmed his heart; he realized that he didn't matter, that his amour propre was of no account--that nothing mattered so long as she were spared one little pang of self-reproach. He said, gently: "I wouldn't have you distress yourself on my account, Miss Shannon... I quite understand there must be things I _can't_ understand--that you must have had your reasons for acting as you did." "Yes," she said unevenly, but again with eyes averted--"I had; but they're not easy, they're impossible to explain--to you." "Yet--when all's said and done--I've no right to exact any explanation." "Ah, but how can you say that, remembering what we've been through together?" "You owe me nothing," he insisted; "whereas I owe you everything, even unquestioning faith. Even though I fail, I have this to thank you for--this one not-ignoble impulse my life has known." "You mustn't say that, you mustn't think it. I don't deserve it. You wouldn't say it--if you knew--" "Perhaps I can guess enough to satisfy myself." She gave him a swift, sidelong look of challenge, instinctively on the defensive. "Why," she almost gasped--"what do you think--?" "Does it matter what I think?" "It does, to me: I wish to know!" "Well," he conceded reluctantly, "I think that, when you had a chance to consider things calmly, waiting back there in the garden, you made up your mind it would be better to--to use your best judgment and--extricate yourself from an embarrassing position--" "You think that!" she interrupted bitterly. "You think that, after you had confided in me; after you'd confessed--when I made you, led you on to it--that you cared for me; after you'd told me how much my faith meant to you--you think that, after all that, I deliberately abandoned you because I suddenly realized you had been the Lone Wolf--!" "I'm sorry if I hurt you. But what can I think?" "But you are wrong!" she protested vehemently--"quite, quite wrong! I ran away from myself--not from you--and with another motive, too, that I can't explain." "You ran away from yourself--not from me?" he repeated, puzzled. "Don't you understand? Why make it so hard for me? Why make me say outright what pains me so?" "Oh, I beg of you--" "But if you won't understand otherwise--I must tell you, I suppose." She checked, breathless, flushed, trembling. "You recall our talk after dinner, that night--how I asked what if you found out you'd been mistaken in me, that I had deceived you; and how I told you it would be impossible for me ever to marry you?" "I remember." "It was because of that," she said--"I ran away; because I hadn't been talking idly; because you _were_ mistaken in me, because I _was_ deceiving you, because I could never marry you, and because--suddenly--I came to know that, if I didn't go then and there, I might never find the strength to leave you, and only suffering and unhappiness could come of it all. I had to go, as much for your sake as for my own." "You mean me to understand, you found you were beginning to--to care a little for me?" She made an effort to speak, but in the end answered only with a dumb inclination of her head. "And ran away because love wasn't possible between us?" Again she nodded silently. "Because I had been a criminal, I presume!" "You've no right to say that--" "What else can I think? You tell me you were afraid I might persuade you to become my wife--something which, for some inexplicable reason, you claim is impossible. What other explanation can I infer? What other explanation is needed? It's ample, it covers everything, and I've no warrant to complain--God knows!" She tried to protest, but he cut her short. "There's one thing I don't understand at all! If that is so, if your repugnance for criminal associations made you run away from me--why did you go back to Bannon?" She started and gave him a furtive, frightened glance. "You knew that?" "I saw you--last night--followed you from Viel's to your hotel." "And you thought," she flashed in a vibrant voice--"you thought I was in his company of my own choice!" "You didn't seem altogether downcast," he countered, "Do you wish me to understand you were with him against your will?" "No," she said slowly.... "No: I returned to him voluntarily, knowing perfectly what I was about." "Through fear of him--?" "No. I can't claim that." "Rather than me--?" "You'll never understand," she told him a little wearily--"never. It was a matter of duty. I had to go back--I had to!" Her voice trailed off into a broken little sob. But as, moved beyond his strength to resist, Lanyard put forth a hand to take the white-gloved one resting on the cushion beside her, she withdrew it with a swift gesture of denial. "No!" she cried. "Please! You mustn't do that... You only make it harder..." "But you love me!" "I can't. It's impossible. I would--but I may not!" "Why?" "I can't tell you." "If you love me, you must tell me." She was silent, the white hands working nervously with her handkerchief. "Lucy!" he insisted--"you must say what stands between you and my love. It's true, I've no right to ask, as I had no right to speak to you of love. But when we've said as much as we have said--we can't stop there. You will tell me, dear?" She shook her head: "It--it's impossible." "But you can't ask me to be content with that answer!" "Oh!" she cried--"_how_ can I make you understand?... When you said what you did, that night--it seemed as if a new day were dawning in my life. You made me believe it was because of me. You put me above you--where I'd no right to be; but the fact that you thought me worthy to be there, made me proud and happy: and for a little, in my blindness, I believed I could be worthy of your love and your respect. I thought that, if I could be as strong as you during that year you asked in which to prove your strength, I might listen to you, tell you everything, and be forgiven.... But I was wrong, how wrong I soon learned.... So I had to leave you at whatever cost!" She ceased to speak, and for several minutes there was silence. But for her quick, convulsive breathing, the girl sat like a woman of stone, staring dry-eyed out of the window. And Lanyard sat as moveless, the heart in his bosom as heavy and cold as a stone. At length, lifting his head, "You leave me no alternative," he said in a voice dull and hollow even in his own hearing: "I can only think one thing..." "Think what you must," she said lifelessly: "it doesn't matter, so long as you renounce me, put me out of your heart and--leave me." Without other response, he leaned forward and tapped the glass; and as the cab swung in toward the curb, he laid hold of the door-latch. "Lucy," he pleaded, "don't let me go believing--" She seemed suddenly infused with implacable hostility. "I tell you," she said cruelly--"I don't care what you think, so long as you go!" The face she now showed him was ashen; its mouth was hard; her eyes shone feverishly. And then, as still he hesitated, the cab pulled up and the driver, leaning back, unlatched the door and threw it open. With a curt, resigned nod, Lanyard rose and got out. Immediately the girl bent forward and grasped the speaking-tube; the door slammed; the cab drew away and left him standing with the pose, with the gesture of one who has just heard his sentence of death pronounced. When he roused to know his surroundings, he found himself standing on a corner of the avenue du Bois. It was bitter cold in the wind sweeping down from the west, and it had grown very dark. Only in the sky above the Bois a long reef of crimson light hung motionless, against which leafless trees lifted gnarled, weird silhouettes. While he watched, the pushing crimson ebbed swiftly and gave way to mauve, to violet, to black. XIX UNMASKED When there was no more light in the sky, a profound sigh escaped Lanyard's lips; and with the gesture of one signifying submission to an omen, he turned and tramped heavily back across-town. More automaton than sentient being, he plodded on along the second enceinte of flaring, noisy boulevards, now and again narrowly escaping annihilation beneath the wheels of some coursing motor-cab or ponderous, grinding omnibus. Barely conscious of such escapes, he was altogether indifferent to them: it would have required a mortal hurt to match the dumb, sick anguish of his soul; more than merely a sunset sky had turned black for him within that hour. The cold was now intense, and he none too warmly clothed; yet there was sweat upon his brows. Dully there recurred to him a figure he had employed in one of his talks with Lucy Shannon: that, lacking his faith in her, there would be only emptiness beneath his feet. And now that faith was wanting in him, had been taken from him for all his struggles to retain it; and now indeed he danced on emptiness, the rope of temptation tightening round his neck, the weight of criminal instincts pulling it taut--strangling every right aspiration in him, robbing him of the very breath of that new life to which he had thought to give himself. If she were not worthy, of what worth the fight?... At one stage of his journey, he turned aside and, more through habit than desire or design, entered a cheap eating-place and consumed his customary evening meal without the slightest comprehension of what he ate or whether the food were good or poor. When he had finished, he hurried away like a haunted man. There was little room in his mood for sustained thought: his wits were fathoming a bottomless pit of black despair. He felt like a man born blind, through skilful surgery given the boon of sight for a day or two, and suddenly and without any warning thrust back again into darkness. He knew only that his brief struggle had been all wasted, that behind the flimsy barrier of his honourable ambition, the Lone Wolf was ravening. And he felt that, once he permitted that barrier to be broken down, it could never be repaired. He had set it up by main strength of will, for love of a woman. He must maintain it now for no incentive other than to retain his own good will--or resign himself utterly to that darkness out of which he had fought his way, to its powers that now beset his soul. And ... he didn't care. Quite without purpose he sought the machine-shop where he had left his car. He had no plans; but it was in his mind, a murderous thought, that before another dawn he might encounter Bannon. Interim, he would go to work. He could think out his problem while driving as readily as in seclusion; whatever he might ultimately elect to do, he could accomplish little before midnight. Toward seven o'clock, with his machine in perfect running order, he took the seat and to the streets in a reckless humour, in the temper of a beast of prey. The barrier was down: once more the Lone Wolf was on the prowl. But for the present he controlled himself and acted perfectly his temporary rôle of taxi-bandit, fellow to those thousands who infest Paris. Half a dozen times in the course of the next three hours people hailed him from sidewalks and restaurants; he took them up, carried them to their several destinations, received payment, and acknowledged their gratuities with perfunctory thanks--thoroughly in character--but all with little conscious thought. He saw but one thing, the face of Lucy Shannon, white, tense, glimmering wanly in shadow--the countenance with which she had dismissed him. He had but one thought, the wish to read the riddle of her bondage. To accomplish this he was prepared to go to any extreme; if Bannon and his crew came between him and his purpose, so much the worse for them--and, incidentally, so much the better for society. What might befall himself was of no moment. He entertained but one design, to become again what he had been, the supreme adventurer, the prince of plunderers, to lose himself once more in the delirium of adventurous days and peril-haunted nights, to reincarnate the Lone Wolf and in his guise loot the world anew, to court forgetfulness even at the prison's gates.... It was after ten when, cruising purposelessly, without a fare, he swung through the rue Auber into the place de l'Opéra and, approaching the Café de la Paix, was hailed by a door-boy of that restaurant. Drawing in to the curb with the careless address that had distinguished his every action of that evening, he waited, with a throbbing motor, and with mind detached and gaze remote from the streams of foot and wheeled traffic that brawled past on either hand. After a moment two men issued from the revolving door of the café, and approached the cab. Lanyard paid them no attention. His thoughts were now engaged with a certain hôtel particulier in the neighbourhood of La Muette and, in his preoccupation, he would need only the name of a destination and the sound of the cab-door slammed, to send him off like a shot. Then he heard one of the men cough heavily, and in a twinkling stiffened to rigidity in his seat. If he had heard that cough but once before, that once had been too often. Without a glance aside, hardening his features to perfect immobility, he knew that the cough was shaking the slighter of those two figures. And of a sudden he was acutely conscious of the clearness of the frosty atmosphere, of the merciless glare of electricity beating upon him from every side from the numberless street lamps and café lights. And poignantly he regretted neglecting to mask himself with his goggles. He wasn't left long in suspense. The coughing died away by spasms; followed the unmistakable, sonorous accents of Bannon. "Well, my dear boy! I have to thank you for an excellent dinner and a most interesting evening. Pity to break it up so early. Still, les affaires--you know! Sorry you're not going my way--but that's a handsome taxi you've drawn. What's its number--eh?" "Haven't the faintest notion," a British voice drawled in response. "Never fret about a taxi's number until it has run over me." "Great mistake," Bannon rejoined cheerfully. "Always take the number before entering. Then, if anything happens ... However, that's a good-looking chap at the wheel--doesn't look as if he'd run you into any trouble." "Oh, I fancy not," said the Englishman, bored. "Well, you never can tell. The number's on the lamp. Make a note of it and be on the safe side. Or trust me--I never forget numbers." With this speech Bannon ranged alongside Lanyard and looked him over, keenly malicious enjoyment gleaming in his evil old eyes. "You are an honest-looking chap," he observed with a mocking smile but in a tone of the most inoffensive admiration--"honest and--ah--what shall I say?--what's the word we're all using now-a-days?--efficient! Honest and efficient-looking, capable of better things, or I'm no judge! Forgive an old man's candour, my friend--and take good care of our British cousin here. He doesn't know his way around Paris very well. Still, I feel confident he'll come to no harm in _your_ company. Here's a franc for you." With matchless effrontery, he produced a coin from the pocket of his fur-lined coat. Unhesitatingly, permitting no expression to colour his features, Lanyard extended his palm, received the money, dropped it into his own pocket, and carried two fingers to the visor of his cap. "Merci, monsieur," he said evenly. "Ah, that's the right spirit!" the deep voice jeered. "Never be above your station, my man--never hesitate to take a tip! Here, I'll give you another, gratis: get out of this business: you're too good for it. Don't ask me how I know; I can tell by your face--Hello! Why do you turn down the flag? You haven't started yet!" "Conversation goes up on the clock," Lanyard replied stolidly in French. He turned and faced Bannon squarely, loosing a glance of venomous hatred into the other's eyes. "The longer I have to stop here listening to your senile monologue, the more you'll have to pay. What address, please?" he added, turning back to get a glimpse of his passenger. "Hotel Astoria," the porter supplied. "Very good." The porter closed the door. "But remember my advice," Bannon counselled coolly, stepping back and waving his hand to the man in the cab. "Good night." Lanyard took his car smartly away from the curb, wheeled round the corner into the boulevard des Capucines, and toward the rue Royale. He had gone but a block when the window at his back was lowered and his fare observed pleasantly: "That you, Lanyard?" The adventurer hesitated an instant; then, without looking round, responded: "Wertheimer, eh?" "Right-O! The old man had me puzzled for a minute with his silly chaffing. Stupid of me, too, because we'd just been talking about you." "Had you, though!" "Rather. Hadn't you better take me where we can have a quiet little talk?" "I'm not conscious of the necessity--" "Oh, I say!" Wertheimer protested amiably--"don't be shirty, old top. Give a chap a chance. Besides, I have a bit of news from Antwerp that I guarantee will interest you." "Antwerp?" Lanyard iterated, mystified. "Antwerp, where the ships sail from," Wertheimer laughed: "not Amsterdam, where the diamonds flock together, as you may know." "I don't follow you, I'm afraid." "I shan't elucidate until we're under cover." "All right. Where shall I take you?" "Any quiet café will do. You must know one--" "Thanks--no," said Lanyard dryly. "If I must confabulate with gentlemen of your kidney, I prefer to keep it dark. Even dressed as I am, I might be recognized, you know." But it was evident that Wertheimer didn't mean to permit himself to be ruffled. "Then will my modest diggings do?" he suggested pleasantly. "I've taken a suite in the rue Vernet, just back of the Hôtel Astoria, where we can be as private as you please, if you've no objection." "None whatever." Wertheimer gave him the number and replaced the window.... His rooms in the rue Vernet proved to be a small ground-floor apartment with private entrance to the street. "Took the tip from you," he told Lanyard as he unlocked the door. "I daresay you'd be glad to get back to that rez-de-chaussée of yours. Ripping place, that.... By the way--judging from your apparently robust state of health, you haven't been trying to live at home of late." "Indeed?" "Indeed yes, monsieur! If I may presume to advise--I'd pull wide of the rue Roget for a while--for as long, at least, as you remain in your present intractable temper." "Daresay you're right," Lanyard assented carelessly, following, as Wertheimer turned up the lights, into a modest salon cosily furnished. "You live here alone, I understand?" "Quite: make yourself perfectly at ease; nobody can hear us. And," the Englishman added with a laugh, "do forget your pistol, Mr. Lanyard. I'm not Popinot, nor is this Troyon's." "Still," Lanyard countered, "you've just been dining with Bannon." Wertheimer laughed easily. "Had me there!" he admitted, unabashed. "I take it you know a bit more about the Old Man than you did a week ago?" "Perhaps." "But sit down: take that chair there, which commands both doors, if you don't trust me." "Do you think I ought to?" "Hardly. Otherwise I'd ask you to take my word that you're safe for the time being. As it is, I shan't be offended if you keep your gun handy and your sense of self-preservation running under forced draught. But you won't refuse to join me in a whiskey and soda?" "No," said Lanyard slowly--"not if you drink from the same bottle." Again the Englishman laughed unaffectedly as he fetched a decanter, glasses, bottled soda, and a box of cigarettes, and placed them within Lanyard's reach. The adventurer eyed him narrowly, puzzled. He knew nothing of this man, beyond his reputation--something unsavoury enough, in all conscience!--had seen him only once, and then from a distance, before that conference in the rue Chaptal. And now he was becoming sensitive to a personality uncommonly insinuating: Wertheimer was displaying all the poise of an Englishman of the better caste More than anybody in the underworld that Lanyard had ever known this blackmailer had an air of one acquainted with his own respect. And his nonchalance, the good nature with which he accepted Lanyard's pardonable distrust, his genial assumption of fellowship and a common footing, attracted even as it intrigued. With the easy courtesy of a practised host, he measured whiskey into Lanyard's glass till checked by a "Thank you," then helped himself generously, and opened the soda. "I'll not ask you to drink with me," he said with a twinkle, "but--chin-chin!"--and tilting his glass, half-emptied it at a draught. Muttering formally, at a disadvantage and resenting it, Lanyard drank with less enthusiasm if without misgivings. Wertheimer selected a cigarette and lighted it at leisure. "Well," he laughed through a cloud of smoke--"I think we're fairly on our way to an understanding, considering you told me to go to hell when last we met!" His spirit was irresistible: in spite of himself Lanyard returned the smile. "I never knew a man to take it with better grace," he admitted, lighting his own cigarette. "Why not! I _liked_ it: you gave us precisely what we asked for." "Then," Lanyard demanded gravely, "if that's your viewpoint, if you're decent enough to see it that way--what the devil are you doing in that galley?" "Mischief makes strange bed-fellows, you'll admit. And if you think that a fair question--what are you doing here, with me?" "Same excuse as before--trying to find out what your game is." Wertheimer eyed the ceiling with an intimate grin. "My dear fellow!" he protested--"all _you_ want to know is everything!" "More or less," Lanyard admitted gracelessly. "One gathers that you mean to stop this side the Channel for some time." "How so?" "There's a settled, personal atmosphere about this establishment. It doesn't look as if half your things were still in trunks." "Oh, these digs! Yes, they are comfy." "You don't miss London?" "Rather! But I shall appreciate it all the more when I go back." "Then you can go back, if you like?" "Meaning your impression is, I made it too hot for me?" Wertheimer interposed with a quizzical glance. "I shan't tell you about that. But I'm hoping to be able to run home for an occasional week-end without vexing Scotland Yard. Why not come with me some time?" Lanyard shook his head. "Come!" the Englishman rallied him. "Don't put on so much side. I'm not bad company. Why not be sociable, since we're bound to be thrown together more or less in the way of business." "Oh, I think not." "But, my dear chap, you can't keep this up. Playing taxi-way man is hardly your shop. And of course you understand you won't be permitted to engage in any more profitable pursuit until you make terms with the powers that be--or leave Paris." "Terms with Bannon, De Morbihan, Popinot and yourself--eh?" "With the same." "Mr. Wertheimer," Lanyard told him quietly, "none of you will stop me if ever I make up my mind to take the field again." "You haven't been thinking of quitting it--what?" Wertheimer demanded innocently, opening his eyes wide. "Perhaps..." "Ah, now I begin to see a light! So that's the reason you've come down to tooling a taxi. I wondered! But somehow, Mr. Lanyard"--Wertheimer's eyes narrowed thoughtfully--"I can hardly see you content with that line... even if this reform notion isn't simple swank!" "Well, what do you think?" "I think," the Englishman laughed--"_I_ think this conference doesn't get anywhere in particular. Our simple, trusting natures don't seem to fraternize as spontaneously as they might. We may as well cut the sparring and go, down to business--don't you think? But before we do, I'd like your leave to offer one word of friendly advice." "And that is--?" "'Ware Bannon!" Lanyard nodded. "Thanks," he said simply. "I say that in all sincerity," Wertheimer declared. "God knows you're nothing to me, but at least you've played the game like a man; and I won't see you butchered to make an Apache holiday for want of warning." "Bannon's as vindictive as that, you think?" "Holds you in the most poisonous regard, if you ask me. Perhaps you know why: I don't. Anyway, it was rotten luck that brought your car to the door tonight. He named you during dinner, and while apparently he doesn't know where to look for you, it is plain he's got no use for you--not, at least, until your attitude towards the organization changes." "It hasn't. But I'm obliged." "Sure you can't see your way to work with us?" "Absolutely." "Mind you, I'll have to report to the Old Man. I've got to tell him your answer." "I don't think I need tell you what to tell him," said Lanyard with a grin. "Still, it's worth thinking over. I know the Old Man's mind well enough to feel safe in offering you any inducement you can name, in reason, if you'll come to us. Ten thousand francs in your pocket before morning, if you like, and freedom to chuck this filthy job of yours--" "Please stop there!" Lanyard interrupted hotly. "I was beginning to like you, too... Why persist in reminding me you're intimate with the brute who had Roddy butchered in his sleep?" "Poor devil!" Wertheimer said gently. "That was a sickening business, I admit. But who told you--?" "Never mind. It's true, isn't it?" "Yes," the Englishman admitted gravely--"it's true. It lies at Bannon's door, when all's said.... Perhaps you won't believe me, but it's a fact I didn't know positively who was responsible till to-night." "You don't really expect me to swallow that? You were hand-in-glove--" "Ah, but on probation only! When they voted Roddy out, I wasn't consulted. They kept me in the dark--mostly, I flatter myself, because I draw the line at murder. If I had known--this you won't believe, of course--Roddy would be alive to-day." "I'd like to believe you," Lanyard admitted. "But when you ask me to sign articles with that damned assassin--!" "You can't play our game with clean hands," Wertheimer retorted. Lanyard found no answer to that. "If you've said all you wished to," he suggested, rising, "I can assure you my answer is final--and go about my business." "What's your hurry? Sit down. There's more to say--much more." "As for instance--?" "I had a fancy you might like to put a question or two." Lanyard shook his head; it was plain that Wertheimer designed to draw him out through his interest in Lucy Shannon. "I haven't the slightest curiosity concerning your affairs," he observed. "But you should have; I could tell you a great many interesting things that intimately affect your affairs, if I liked. You must understand that I shall hold the balance of power here, from now on." "Congratulations!" Lanyard laughed derisively. "No joke, my dear chap: I've been promoted over the heads of your friends, De Morbihan and Popinot, and shall henceforth be--as they say in America--the whole works." "By what warrant?" "The illustrious Bannon's. I've been appointed his lieutenant--vice Greggs, deposed for bungling." "Do you mean to tell me Bannon controls De Morbihan and Popinot?" The Englishman smiled indulgently. "If you didn't know it, he's commander-in-chief of our allied forces, presiding genius of the International Underworld Unlimited." "Bosh!" cried Lanyard contemptuously. "Why talk to me as if I were a child, to be frightened by a bogey-tale like that?" "Take it or leave it: the fact remains.... I know, if you don't. I confess I didn't till to-night; but I've learned some things that have opened my eyes.... You see, we had a table in a quiet corner of the Café de la Paix, and since the Old Man's sailing for home before long it was time for him to unbosom rather thoroughly to the man he leaves to represent him in London and Paris. I never suspected our power before he began to talk...." Lanyard, watching the man closely, would have sworn he had never seen one more sober. He was indescribably perplexed by this ostensible candour--mystified and mistrustful. "And then there's this to be considered, from your side," Wertheimer resumed with the most business-like manner: "you can work with us without being obliged to deal in any way with the Old Man or De Morbihan, or Popinot. Bannon will never cross the Atlantic again, and you can do pretty much as you like, within reason--subject to my approval, that is." "One of us is mad," Lanyard commented profoundly. "One of us is blind to his best interests," Wertheimer amended with entire good-humour. "Perhaps... Let it go at that. I'm not interested--never did care for fairy tales." "Don't go yet. There is still much to be said on both sides of the argument." "Has there been one?" "Besides, I promised you news from Antwerp." "To be sure," Lanyard said, and paused, his curiosity at length engaged. Wertheimer delved into the breast-pocket of his dress-coat and produced a blue telegraph-form, handing it to the adventurer. Of even date, from Antwerp, it read: "_Underworld--Paris--Greggs arrested today boarding steamer for America after desperate struggle killed himself immediately afterward poison no confession--Q-2._" "_Underworld?_" Lanyard queried blankly. "Our telegraphic address, of course. 'Q-2' is our chief factor in Antwerp." "So they got Greggs!" "Stupid oaf," Wertheimer observed; "I've no sympathy for him. The whole affair was a blunder, from first to last." "But you got Greggs out and burned Troyon's--!" "Still our friends at the Préfecture weren't satisfied. Something must have roused their suspicions." "You don't know what?" "There must have been a leak somewhere--" "If so, it would certainly have led the police to me, after all the pains you were at to saddle me with the crime. There's something more than simple treachery in this, Mr. Wertheimer." "Perhaps you're right," said the other thoughtfully. "And it doesn't speak well for the discipline of your precious organization--granting, for the sake of the argument, the possibility of such nonsense." "Well, well, have your own way about that. I don't insist, so long as you agree to join forces with me." "Oh, it's with you alone, now--is it? Not with that insane fiction, the International Underworld Unlimited?" "With me alone. I offer you a clear field. Go where you like, do what you will--I wouldn't have the cheek to attempt to guide or influence you." Lanyard kept himself in hand with considerable difficulty. "But you?" he asked. "Where do you come in?" Wertheimer lounged back in his chair and laughed quietly. "Need you ask? Must I recall to you the foundations of my prosperity? You had the name of it glib enough on your tongue the other night in the rue Chaptal.... When you've done your work, you'll come to me and split the proceeds fairly--and as long as you do that, never a word will pass my lips!" "Blackmail...!" "Oh, if you insist! Odd, how I dislike that word!" Abruptly the adventurer got to his feet. "By God!" he cried, "I'd better get out of this before I do you an injury!" The door slammed behind him on a room ringing with Wertheimer's unaffected laughter. XX WAR But why?--he asked himself as he swung his cab aimlessly away--why that blind rage with which he had welcomed Wertheimer's overtures? Unquestionably the business of blackmailing was despicable enough; and as a master cracksman, of the highest caste of the criminal world, the Lone Wolf had warrantably treated with scorn and contempt the advances of a pariah like Wertheimer. But in no such spirit had he comprehended the Englishman's meaning, when finally that one came to the point; no cool disdain had coloured his attitude, but in the beginning hot indignation, in the end insensate rage.... He puzzled himself. That fit of passion had all the aspect of a psychical inconsistency impossible to reconcile with reason. He recalled in perplexity how, toward the last, the face of the Englishman had swum in haze before his eyes; with what disfavour, approaching hatred, he had regarded its fixed, false smirk; with what loathing he had suffered the intimacy of Wertheimer's tone; how he had been tempted to fly at the man's throat and shake him senseless in reward of his effrontery: emotions that had suited better a man of unblemished honour and integrity subjected to the insolent addresses of a contemptible blackguard, emotions that might well have been expected of the man Lanyard had once dreamed to become. But now, since he had resigned that infatuate ambition and turned apostate to all his vows, his part in character had been to laugh in Wertheimer's face and bid him go to the devil ere a worse thing befall him. Instead of which, he had flown into fury. And as he sat brooding over the wheel, he knew that, were the circumstances to be duplicated, his demeanour would be the same. Was it possible he had changed so absolutely in the course of that short-lived spasm of reform? He cried no to that: knowing well what he contemplated, that all his plans were laid and serious mischance alone could prevent him from putting them into effect, feeling himself once more quick with the wanton, ruthless spirit of the Lone Wolf, invincibly self-sufficient, strong and cunning. When at length he roused from his reverie, it was to discover that his haphazard course had taken him back toward the heart of Paris; and presently, weary with futile cruising and being in the neighbourhood of the Madeleine, he sought the cab-rank there, silenced his motor, and relapsed into morose reflections so profound that nothing objective had any place in his consciousness. Thus it was that without his knowledge a brace of furtive thugs were able to slouch down the rank, scrutinizing it covertly but in detail, pause opposite Lanyard's car under pretext of lighting cigarettes, identify him to their satisfaction, and hastily take themselves off. Not until they were quite disappeared did the driver of the cab ahead dare warn him. Lounging back, this last looked the adventurer over inquisitively. "Is it, then," he enquired civilly, when Lanyard at length looked round, "that you are in the bad books of the good General Popinot, my friend?" "Eh--what's that you say?" Lanyard asked, with a stare of blank misapprehension. The man nodded wisely. "He who is at odds with Popinot," he observed, sententious, "does well not to sleep in public. You did not see those two who passed just now and took your number--rats of Montmartre, if I know my Paris! You were dreaming, my friend, and it is my impression that only the presence of those two flies over the way prevented your immediate assassination. If I were you, I should go away very quickly, and never stop till I had put stout walls between myself and Popinot." A chill of apprehension sent a shiver stealing down Lanyard's spine. "You're sure?" "But of a certainty, my old one!" "A thousand thanks!" Jumping down, the adventurer cranked the motor, sprang back to his seat, and was off like a hunted hare.... And when, more than an hour later, he brought his panting car to a pause in a quiet and empty back-street of the Auteuil quarter, after a course that had involved the better part of Paris, it was with the conviction that he had beyond question shaken off pursuit--had there in fact been any attempt to follow him. He took advantage of that secluded spot to substitute false numbers for those he was licensed to display; then at a more sedate pace followed the line of the fortifications northward as far as La Muette, where, branching off, he sought and made a circuit of two sides of the private park enclosing the hôtel of Madame Omber. But the mansion showed no lights, and there was nothing in the aspect of the property to lead him to believe that the chatelaine had as yet returned to Paris. Now the night was still young, but Lanyard had his cab to dispose of and not a few other essential details to arrange before he could take definite steps toward the reincarnation of the Lone Wolf. Picking a most circumspect route across the river--via the Pont Mirabeau--to the all-night telegraph bureau in the rue de Grenelle he despatched a cryptic message to the Minister of War, then with the same pains to avoid notice made back toward the rue des Acacias. But it wasn't possible to recross the Seine secretly--in effect, at least--without returning the way he had come--a long detour that irked his impatient spirit to contemplate. Unwisely he elected to cross by way of the Pont des Invalides--how unwisely was borne in upon him almost as soon as he turned from the brilliant Quai de la Conférence into the darkling rue François Premier. He had won scarcely twenty yards from the corner when, with a rush, its motor purring like some great tiger-cat, a powerful touring-car swept up from behind, drew abreast, but instead of passing checked speed until its pace was even with his own. Struck by the strangeness of this manoeuvre, he looked quickly round, to recognize the moon-like mask of De Morbihan grinning sardonically at him over the steering-wheel of the black car. A second hasty glance discovered four men in the tonneau. Lacking time to identify them, Lanyard questioned their character as little as their malign intent: Belleville bullies, beyond doubt, drafted from Popinot's batallions, with orders to bring in the Lone Wolf, dead or alive. He had instant proof that his apprehensions were not exaggerated. Of a sudden De Morbihan cut out the muffler and turned loose, full strength, the electric horn. Between the harsh detonations of the exhaust and the mad, blatant shrieks of the warning, a hideous clamour echoed and re-echoed in that quiet street--a din in which the report of a revolver-shot was drowned out and went unnoticed. Lanyard himself might have been unaware of it, had he not caught out of the corner of his eye a flash that spat out at him like a fiery serpent's tongue, and heard the crash of the window behind him as it fell inward, shattered. That the shot had no immediate successor was due almost wholly to Lanyard's instant and instinctive action. Even before the clash of broken glass registered on his consciousness, he threw in the high-speed and shot away like a frightened greyhound. So sudden was this move that it caught De Morbihan himself unprepared. In an instant Lanyard had ten yards' lead. In another he was spinning on two wheels round an acute corner, into the rue Jean Goujon; and in a third, as he shot through that short block to the avenue d'Antin, had increased his lead to fifteen yards. But he could never hope to better that: rather, the contrary. The pursuit had the more powerful car, and it was captained by one said to be the most daring and skilful motorist in France. The considerations that dictated Lanyard's simple strategy were sound if unformulated: barring interference on the part of the police--something he dared not count upon--his sole hope lay in open flight and in keeping persistently to the better-lighted, main-travelled thoroughfares, where a repetition of the attempt would be inadvisable--at least, less probable. There was always a bare chance of an accident--that De Morbihan's car would burst a tire or be pocketed by the traffic, enabling Lanyard to strike off into some maze of dark side-streets, abandon the cab, and take to cover in good earnest. But that was a forlorn hope at best, and he knew it. Moreover, an accident was as apt to happen to him as to De Morbihan: given an unsound tire or a puncture, or let him be delayed two seconds by some traffic hindrance, and nothing short of a miracle could save him.... As he swung from the avenue d'Antin into Rond Point des Champs Élysées, the nose of the pursuing car inched up on his right, effectually blocking any attempt to strike off toward the east, to the Boulevards and the centre of the city's life by night. He had no choice but to fly west-wards. He cut an arc round the sexpartite circle of the Rond Point that lost no inch of advantage, and straightened out, ventre-à-terre, up the avenue for the place de l'Étoile, shooting madly in and out of the tide of more leisurely traffic--and ever the motor of the touring-car purred contentedly just at his elbow. If there were police about, Lanyard saw nothing of them: not that he would have dreamed of stopping or even of checking speed for anything less than an immovable obstacle.... But as minutes sped it became apparent that there was to be no renewed attempt upon his life for the time being. The pursuers could afford to wait. They could afford to ape the patience of Death itself. And it came then to Lanyard that he drove no more alone: Death was his passenger. Absorbed though he was with the control of his machine and the ever-shifting problems of the road, he still found time to think quite clearly of himself, to recognize the fact that he was very likely looking his last on Paris ... on life.... But a little longer, and the name of Michael Lanyard would be not even a memory to those whose lives composed the untiring life of this broad avenue. Before him the Arc de Triomphe loomed ever larger and more darkly beautiful against the field of midnight stars He wondered, would he reach it alive.... He did: still the pursuit bided its time. But the hood of the touring-car nosed him inexorably round the arch, away from the avenue de la Grande Armée and into the avenue du Bois. Only when in full course for Porte Dauphine did he appreciate De Morbihan's design. He was to be rushed out into the midnight solitudes of the Bois de Boulogne and there run down and slain. But now he began to nurse a feeble thrill of hope. Once inside the park enclosure, he reckoned vaguely on some opportunity to make sudden halt, abandon the car and, taking refuge in the friendly obscurity of trees and shrubbery, either make good his escape afoot or stand off the Apaches until police came to his aid. With night to cloak his movements and with a clump of trees to shelter in, he dared believe he would have a chance for his life--whereas in naked streets any such attempt would prove simply suicidal. Infrequent glances over-shoulder showed no change in the gap between his own and the car of the assassins. But his motor ran sweet and true: humouring it, coaxing it, he contrived a little longer to hold his own. Approaching the Porte Dauphine he became aware of two sergents de ville standing in the middle of the way and wildly brandishing their arms. He held on toward them relentlessly--it was their lives or his--and they leaped aside barely in time to save themselves. And as he slipped into the park like a hunted shadow, he fancied that he heard a pistol-shot--whether directed at himself by the Apaches, or fired by the police to emphasize their indignation, he couldn't say. But he was grateful enough it was a taxicab he drove, not a touring-car: lacking the body of his vehicle to shield him, he little doubted that a bullet would long since have found him. In that dead hour the drives of the Bois were almost deserted. Between the porte and the first carrefour he passed only one motor-car, a limousine whose driver shouted something inarticulate as Lanyard hummed past. The freedom from traffic dangers was a relief: but the pursuit was creeping up, inch by inch, as he swung down the road-way along the eastern border of the lake; and still he had found no opening, had recognized no invitation in the lay of the land to attempt his one plan; as matters stood, the Apaches would be upon him before he could jump from his seat. Bending low over the wheel, searching with anxious eyes the shadowed reaches of that winding drive, he steered for a time with one hand, while the other tore open his ulster and brought his pistol into readiness. Then, as he topped the brow of the incline, above the whine of his motor, the crackle of road-metal beneath the tires, and the boom of the rushing air in his ears, he heard the sharp clatter of hoofs, and surmised that the gendarmerie had given chase. And then, on a slight down-grade, though he took it at perilous speed and seemed veritably to ride the wind, the following machine, aided by its greater weight, began to close in still more rapidly. Momentarily the hoarse snoring of its motor sounded more loud and menacing. It was now a mere question of seconds.... Inspiration of despair came to him, as wild as any ever conceived by mind of man. They approached a point where, on the left, a dense plantation walled the road. To the right a wide foot walk separated the drive from a gentle declivity sown with saplings, running down to the water. Rising in his place, Lanyard slipped from under him the heavy waterproof cushion. Then edging over to the left of the middle of the road, abruptly he shut off power and applied the brakes with all his might. From its terrific speed the cab came to a stop within twice its length. Lanyard was thrown forward against the wheel, but having braced in anticipation, escaped injury and effected instant recovery. The car of the Apaches was upon him in a pulse-beat. With no least warning of his intention, De Morbihan had no time to employ brakes. Lanyard saw its dark shape flash past the windows of his cab and heard a shout of triumph. Then with all his might he flung the heavy cushion across that scant space, directly into the face of De Morbihan. His aim was straight and true. In alarm, unable to comprehend the nature of that large, dark, whirling mass, De Morbihan attempted to lift a warding elbow. He was too slow: the cushion caught him in the face, full-force, and before he could recover or guess what he was doing, he had twisted the wheel sharply to the right. The car, running a little less than locomotive speed, shot across the strip of sidewalk, caught its right forewheel against a sapling, swung heavily broadside to the drive, and turned completely over as it shot down the slope to the lake. A terrific crash was followed by a hideous chorus of oaths, shrieks, cries and groans. Promptly Lanyard started his motor anew and, trembling in every limb, ran on for several hundred yards. But time pressed, and the usefulness of his car was at an end, as far as he was concerned; there was no saying how many times its identity might not have been established by the police in the course of that wild chase through Paris, or how soon these last might contrive to overhaul and apprehend him; and as soon as a bend in the road shut off the scene of wreck, he stopped finally, jumped down, and plunged headlong into the dark midnight heart of the Bois, seeking its silences where trees stood thickest and lights were few. Later, like some worried creature of the night, panting, dishevelled, his rough clothing stained and muddied, he slunk across an open space, a mile or so from his point of disappearance, dropped cautiously down into the dry bed of the moat, climbed as stealthily a slippery glacis of the fortifications, darted across the inner boulevard, and began to describe a wide arc toward his destination, the hôtel Omber. XXI APOSTATE He was singularly free from any sort of exultation over the manner in which he had at once compassed his own escape and brought down catastrophe upon his self-appointed murderers; his mood was quick with wonder and foreboding and bewilderment. The more closely he examined the affair, the more strange and inexplicable it bulked in his understanding. He had not thought to defy the Pack and get off lightly; but he had looked for no such overt effort at disciplining him so long as he kept out of the way and suspended his criminal activities. An unwilling recruit is a potential traitor in the camp; and retired competition isn't to be feared. So it seemed that Wertheimer hadn't believed his protestations, or else Bannon had rejected the report which must have been made him by the girl. In either case, the Pack had not waited for the Lone Wolf to prove his insincerity; it hadn't bothered to declare war; it had simply struck; with less warning than a rattlesnake gives, it had struck--out of the dark--at his back. And so--Lanyard swore grimly--even so would he strike, now that it was his turn, now that his hour dawned. But he would have given much for a clue to the riddle. Why must he be saddled with this necessity of striking in self-defence? Why had this feud been forced upon him, who asked nothing better than to be let alone? He told himself it wasn't altogether the professional jealousy of De Morbihan, Popinot and Wertheimer; it was the strange, rancorous spite that animated Bannon. But, again, why? Could it be that Bannon so resented the aid and encouragement Lanyard had afforded the girl in her abortive attempt to escape? Or was it, perhaps, that Bannon held Lanyard responsible for the arrest and death of Greggs? Could it be possible that there was really anything substantial at the bottom of Wertheimer's wild yarn about the pretentiously named "International Underworld Unlimited"? Was this really a demonstration of purpose to crush out competition--"and hang the expense"? Or was there some less superficially tangible motive to be sought? Did Bannon entertain some secret, personal animus against Michael Lanyard himself as distinguished from the Lone Wolf? Debating these questions from every angle but to no end, he worked himself into a fine fury of exasperation, vowing he would consummate this one final coup, sequestrate himself in England until the affair had blown over, and in his own good time return to Paris to expose De Morbihan (presuming he survived the wreck in the Bois) exterminate Popinot utterly, drive Wertheimer into permanent retirement at Dartmoor, and force an accounting from Bannon though it were surrendered together with that invalid's last wheezing breaths.... In this temper he arrived, past one in the morning, under the walls of the hôtel Omber, and prudently selected a new point of attack. In the course of his preliminary examinations of the walls, it hadn't escaped him that their brick-and-plaster construction was in bad repair; he had marked down several spots where the weather had eaten the outer coat of plaster completely away. At one of these, midway between the avenue and the junction of the side-streets, he hesitated. As he had foreseen, the mortar that bound the bricks together was all dry and crumbling; it was no great task to work one of them loose, making a foothold from which he might grasp with a gloved hand the glass-toothed curbing, cast his ulster across this for further protection, and swing himself bodily atop the wall. But there, momentarily, he paused in doubt and trembling. In that exposed and comfortless perch, the lifeless street on one hand, the black mystery of the neglected park on the other, he was seized and shaken by a sudden revulsion of feeling like a sickness of his very soul. Physical fear had nothing to do with this, for he was quite alone and unobserved; had it been otherwise faculties trained through a lifetime to such work as this and now keyed to concert pitch would not have failed to give warning of whatever danger his grosser senses might have overlooked. Notwithstanding, he was afraid as though Fear's very self had laid hold of his soul by the heels and would not let it go until its vision of itself was absolute. He was afraid with a great fear such as he had never dreamed to know; who knew well the wincing of the flesh from risk of pain, the shuddering of the spirit in the shadow of death, and horror such as had gripped him that morning in poor Roddy's bed-chamber. But none of these had in any way taught him the measure of such fear as now possessed him, so absolute that he quaked like a naked soul in the inexorable presence of the Eternal. He was afraid of himself, in panic terror of that ego which tenanted the shell of functioning, sensitive stuff called Michael Lanyard: he was afraid of the strange, silent, incomprehensible Self lurking occult in him, that masked mysterious Self which in its inscrutable whim could make him fine or make him base, that Self impalpable and elusive as any shadow yet invincibly strong, his master and his fate, in one the grave of Yesterday, the cup of Today, the womb of Tomorrow.... He looked up at the tired, dull faces of those old dwellings that loomed across the way with blind and lightless windows, sleeping without suspicion that he had stolen in among them--the grim and deadly thing that walked by night, the Lone Wolf, creature of pillage and rapine, scourged slave of that Self which knew no law.... Then slowly that obsession lifted like the passing of a nightmare; and with a start, a little shiver and a sigh, Lanyard roused and went on to do the bidding of his Self for its unfathomable ends.... Dropping silently to the soft, damp turf, he made himself one with the shadows of the park, as mute, intangible and fugitive as they, until presently coming out beneath the stars, on an open lawn running up to the library wing of the hôtel, he approached a shallow stone balcony which jutted forth eight feet above the lawn--an elevation so inconsiderable that, with one bound grasping its stone balustrade, the adventurer was upon it in a brace of seconds. Nor did the long French windows that opened on the balcony offer him any real hindrance: a penknife quickly removed the dried putty round one small, lozenge-shaped pane, then pried out the pane itself; a hand through this space readily found and turned the latch; a cautious pressure opened the two wings far enough to admit his body; and--he stood inside the library. He had made no sound; and thanks to thorough familiarity with the ground, he needed no light. The screen of cinnabar afforded all the protection he required; and because he meant to accomplish his purpose and be out of the house with the utmost expedition, he didn't trouble to explore beyond a swift, casual review of the adjoining salons. The clock was chiming the three-quarters as he knelt behind the screen and grasped the combination-knob. But he did not turn it. That mellow music died out slowly, and left him transfixed, there in the silence and gloom, his eyes staring wide into blackness at nothing, his jaw set and rigid, his forehead knotted and damp with sweat, his hands so clenched that the nails bit deep into his palms; while he looked back over the abyss yawning between the Lone Wolf of tonight and the man who had, within the week, knelt in that spot in company with the woman he loved, bent on making restitution that his soul might be saved through her faith in him. He was visited by clear vision of himself: the thief caught in his crime by his conscience--or whatever it was, what for want of a better name he must call his conscience: this thing within him that revolted from his purpose, mutinied against the dictates of his Self, and stopped his hand from reaping the harvest of his cunning and daring; this sense of honour and of honesty that in a few brief days had grown more dear to him than all else in life, knitting itself inextricably into the fibre of his being, so that to deny it were against Nature.... He closed his eyes to shut out the accusing vision, and knelt on, unstirring, though torn this way and that in the conflict of man's dual nature. Minutes passed without his knowledge. But in time he grew more calm; his hands relaxed, the muscles of his brow smoothed out, he breathed more slowly and deeply; his set lips parted and a profound sigh whispered in the stillness. A great weariness upon him, he rose slowly and heavily from the floor, and stood erect, free at last and forever from that ancient evil which so long had held his soul in bondage. And in that moment of victory, through the deep hush reigning in the house, he detected an incautious footfall on the parquetry of the reception-hall. XXII TRAPPED It was a sound so slight, so very small and still, that only a super-subtle sense of hearing could have discriminated it from the confused multiplicity of almost inaudible, interwoven, interdependent sounds that make up the slumberous quiet of every human habitation, by night. Lanyard, whose training had taught him how to listen, had learned that the nocturnal hush of each and every house has its singular cadence, its own gentle movement of muted but harmonious sound in which the introduction of an alien sound produces immediate discord, and to which, while at his work, he need attend only subconsciously since the least variation from the norm would give him warning. Now, in the silence of this old mansion, he detected a faint flutter of discordance that sounded a note of stealth; such a note as no move of his since entering had evoked. He was no longer alone, but shared the empty magnificence of those vast salons with one whose purpose was as furtive, as secret, as wary as his own; no servant or watchman roused by an intuition of evil, but one who had no more than he any lawful business there. And while he stood at alert attention the sound was repeated from a point less distant, indicating that the second intruder was moving toward the library. In two swift strides Lanyard left the shelter of the screen and took to cover in the recess of one of the tall windows, behind its heavy velvet hangings: an action that could have been timed no more precisely had it been rehearsed; he was barely in hiding when a shape of shadow slipped into the library, paused beside the massive desk, and raked the room with the light of a powerful flash-lamp. Its initial glare struck squarely into Lanyard's eyes, dazzling them, as he peered through a narrow opening in the portières; and though the light was instantly shifted, for several moments a blur of peacock colour, blending, ebbing, hung like a curtain in the darkness, and he could see nothing distinctly--only the trail traced by that dancing spot-light over walls and furnishings. When at length his vision cleared, the newcomer was kneeling in turn before the safe; but more light was needed, and this one, lacking Lanyard's patience and studious caution, turned back to the desk, and, taking the reading-lamp, transferred it to the floor behind the screen. But even before the flood of light followed the dull click of the switch, Lanyard had recognized the woman. For an instant he felt dazed, half-stunned, suffocating, much as he had felt with Greggs' fingers tightening on his windpipe, that week-old night at Troyon's; he experienced real difficulty about breathing, and was conscious of a sickish throbbing in his temples and a pounding in his bosom like the tolling of a great bell. He stared, swaying.... The light, gushing from the opaque hood, made the safe door a glare, and was thrown back into her intent, masked face, throwing out in sharp silhouette her lithe, sweet body, indisputably identified by the individual poise of her head and shoulders and the gracious contours of her tailored coat. She was all in black, even to her hands, no trace of white or any colour showing but the fair curve of the cheek below her mask and the red of her lips. And if more evidence were needed, the intelligence with which she attacked the combination, the confident, business-like precision distinguishing her every action, proved her an apt pupil in that business. His thoughts were all in a welter of miserable confusion. He knew that this explained many things he would have held questionable had not his infatuation forbidden him to consider them at all, lest he be disloyal to this woman whom he adored; but in the anguish of that moment he could entertain but one thought, and that possessed him altogether--that she must somehow be saved from the evil she contemplated.... But while he hesitated, she became sensitive to his presence; though he had made no sound since her entrance, though he had not even stirred, somehow she divined that he--someone--was there in the recess of the window, watching her. In the act of opening the safe--using the memorandum of its combination which he had jotted down in her presence--he saw her pause, freeze to a pose of attention, then turn to stare directly at the portière that hid him. And for an eternal second she remained kneeling there, so still that she seemed not even to breathe, her gaze fixed and level, waiting for some sound, some sign, some tremor of the curtain's folds, to confirm her suspicion. When at length she rose it was in one swift, alert movement. And as she paused with her slight shoulders squared and her head thrown back defiantly, challengingly, as one without will of his own but drawn irresistibly by her gaze, he stepped out into the room. And since he was no more the Lone Wolf, but now a simple man in agony, with no thought for their circumstances--for the fact that they were both house-breakers and that the slightest sound might raise a hue-and-cry upon them--he took one faltering step toward her, stopped, lifted a hand in a gesture of appeal, and stammered: "Lucy--you----" His voice broke and failed. She didn't answer, more than by recoiling as though he had offered to strike her, until the table stopped her, and she leaned back as if glad of its support. "Oh!" she cried, trembling--"why_--why_ did you do it?" He might have answered her in kind, but self-justification passed his power. He couldn't say, "Because this evening you made me lose faith in everything, and I thought to forget you by going to the devil the quickest way I knew--this way!"--though that was true. He couldn't say: "Because, a thief from boyhood, habit proved too strong for me, and I couldn't withstand temptation!"--for that was untrue. He could only hang his head and mumble the wretched confession: "I don't know." As if he hadn't spoken, she cried again: "Why--_why_ did you do it? I was so proud of you, so sure of you, the man who had turned straight because of me!... It compensated... But now...!" Her voice broke in a short, dry sob. "Compensated?" he repeated stupidly. "Yes, compensated!" She lifted her head with a gesture of impatience: "For this--don't you understand?--for this that I'm doing! You don't imagine I'm here of my own will?--that I went back to Bannon for any reason but to try to save you from him? I knew something of his power, and you didn't; I knew if I went away with you he'd never rest until he had you murdered. And I thought if I could mislead him by lies for a little time--long enough to give you a chance to escape--I thought--perhaps--I might be able to communicate with the police, s denounce him----" She hesitated, breathless and appealing. At her first words he had drawn close to her; and all their talk was murmurings. But this was quite instinctive; for both were beyond considerations of prudence, the one coherent thought of each being that now, once and forever, all misunderstanding must be done away with. Now, as naturally as though they had been lovers always, Lanyard took her hand, and clasped it between his own. "You cared as much as that!" "I love you," she told him--"I love you so much I am ready to sacrifice everything for you--life, liberty, honour----" "Hush, dearest, hush!" he begged, half distracted. "I mean it: if honour could hold me back, do you think I would have broken in here tonight to steal for Bannon?" "He sent you, eh?" Lanyard commented in a dangerous voice. "He was too cunning for me... I was afraid to tell you... I meant to tell--to warn you, this evening in the cab. But then I thought perhaps if I said nothing and sent you away believing the worst of me--perhaps you would save yourself and forget me----" "But never!" "I tried my best to deceive him, but couldn't. They got the truth from me by threats----" "They wouldn't dare----" "They dare anything, I tell you! They knew enough of what had happened, through their spies, to go on, and they tormented and bullied me until I broke down and told them everything... And when they learned you had brought the jewels back here, Bannon told me I must bring them to him--that, if I refused, he'd have you killed. I held out until tonight; then just as I was about to go to bed he received a telephone message, and told me you were driving a taxi and followed by Apaches and wouldn't live till daylight if I persisted in refusing." "You came alone?" "No. Three men brought me to the gate. They're waiting outside, in the park." "Apaches?" "Two of them. The other is Captain Ekstrom." "Ekstrom!" Lanyard cried in despair. "Is he----" The dull, heavy, crashing slam of the great front doors silenced him. XXIII MADAME OMBER Before the echo of that crash ceased to reverberate from room to room, Lanyard slipped to one side of the doorway, from which point he could command the perspective of the salons together with a partial view of the front doors. And he was no more than there, in the shadow of the portières, when light from an electrolier flooded the reception-hall. It showed him a single figure, that of a handsome woman, considerably beyond middle age but still a well-poised, vigorous, and commanding presence, in full evening dress of such magnificence as to suggest recent attendance at some State function. Standing beneath the light, she was restoring a key to a brocaded hand-bag. This done, she turned her head and spoke indistinguishably over her shoulder. Promptly there came into view a second woman of about the same age, but even more strong and able of appearance--a serving-woman, in plain, dark garments, undoubtedly madame's maid. Handing over the brocaded bag, madame unlatched the throat of her ermine cloak and surrendered it to the servant's care. Her next words were audible, and reassuring in as far as they indicated ignorance of anything amiss. "Thank you, Sidonie. You may go to bed now." "Madame will not need me to undress her?" "I'm not ready yet. When I am--I'm old enough to take care of myself. Besides, I prefer you to go to bed, Sidonie. It doesn't improve your temper to lose your beauty sleep." "Many thanks, madame. Good night." "Good night." The maid moved off toward the main staircase, while her mistress turned deliberately through the salons toward the library. At this, swinging back to the girl in a stride, and grasping her wrist to compel attention, Lanyard spoke in a rapid whisper, mouth close to her ear, but his solicitude so unselfish and so intense that for the moment he was altogether unconscious of either her allure or his passion. "This way," he said, imperatively drawing her toward the window by which he had entered: "there's a balcony outside--a short drop to the ground." And unlatching the window, he urged her through it. "Try to leave by the back gateway--the one I showed you before--avoiding Ekstrom----" "But surely you are coming too?" she insisted, hanging back. "Impossible: there's no time for us both to escape undetected. I shall keep madame interested only long enough for you to get away. But take this"--and he pressed his automatic into her hand. "No--take it; I've another," he lied, "and you may need it. Don't fear for me, but go--O my heart!--go!" The footfalls of Madame Omber were sounding dangerously near, and without giving the girl more opportunity to protest, Lanyard closed the windows, shot the latch and stole like a cat round the farther side of the desk, pausing within a few feet of the screen and safe. The desk-lamp was still burning, where the girl had left it behind the cinnabar screen; and Lanyard knew that the diffusion of its rays was enough to render his figure distinctly and immediately visible to one entering the doorway. Now everything hung upon the temper of the house-holder, whether she would take that apparition quietly, deceived by Lanyard's mumming into believing she had only a poor thievish fool to deal with, or with a storm of bourgeois hysteria. In the latter event, Lanyard's hand was ready planted, palm down, on the top of the desk: should the woman attempt to give the alarm, a single bound would carry the adventurer across it in full flight for the front doors. In the doorway the mistress of the house appeared and halted, her quick bright eyes shifting from the light on the floor to the dark figure of the thief. Then, in a stride, she found a switch and turned on the chandelier, a blaze of light. As this happened, Lanyard cowered, lifting an elbow as though to guard his face--as though expecting to find himself under the muzzle of a revolver. The gesture had the calculated effect of focussing the attention of the woman exclusively to him, after one swift glance round had shown her a room tenanted only by herself and a cringing thief. And immediately it was made manifest that, whether or not deceived, she meant to take the situation quietly, if in a strong hand. Her eyes narrowed and the muscles of her square, almost masculine jaw hardened ominously as she looked the intruder up and down. Then a flicker of contempt modified the grimness of her countenance. She took three steps forward, pausing on the other side of the desk, her back to the doorway. Lanyard trembled visibly.... "Well!"--the word boomed like the opening gun of an engagement--"Well, my man!"--the shrewd eyes swerved to the closed door of the safe and quickly back again--"you don't seem to have accomplished much!" "For God's sake, madame!" Lanyard blurted in a husky, shaken voice, nothing like his own--"don't have me arrested! Give me a chance! I haven't taken anything. Don't call the flics!" He checked, moving an uncertain hand towards his throat as if his tongue had gone dry. "Come, come!" the woman answered, with a look almost of pity. "I haven't called anyone--as yet." The fingers of one strong white hand were drumming gently on the top of the desk; then, with a movement so quick and sure that Lanyard himself could hardly have bettered it, they slipped down to a handle of a drawer, jerked it open, closed round the butt of a revolver, and presented it at the adventurer's head. Automatically he raised both hands. "Don't shoot!" he cried. "I'm not armed----" "Is that the truth?" "You've only to search me, madame!" "Thanks!" Madame's accents now discovered a trace of dry humour. "I'll leave that to you. Turn out your pockets on the desk there--and, remember, I'll stand no nonsense!" The weapon covered Lanyard steadily, leaving him no choice but to obey. As it happened, he was glad of the excuse to listen for sounds to tell how the girl was faring in her flight, and made a pretence of trembling fingers cover the slowness with which he complied. But he heard nothing. When he had visibly turned every pocket inside out, and their contents lay upon the desk, the woman looked the exhibits over incuriously. "Put them back," she said curtly. "And then fetch that chair over there--the one in the corner. I've a notion I'd like to talk to you. That's the usual thing, isn't it?" "How?" Lanyard demanded with a vacant stare. "In all the criminal novels I've ever read, the law-abiding householder always sits down and has a sociable chat with the house-breaker--before calling in the police. I'm afraid that's part of the price you've got to pay for my hospitality." She paused, eyeing Lanyard inquisitively while he restored his belongings to his pockets. "Now, get that chair!" she ordered; and waited, standing, until she had been obeyed. "That's it--there! Sit down." Leaning against the desk, her revolver held negligently, the speaker favoured Lanyard with a more leisurely inspection; the harshness of her stare was softened, and the anger which at first had darkened her countenance was gone by the time she chose to pursue her catechism. "What's your name? No--don't answer! I saw your eyes waver, and I'm not interested in a makeshift alias. But it's the stock question, you know.... Do you care for a cigar?" She opened a mahogany humidor on the desk. "No, thanks." "Right--according to Hoyle: the criminal always refuses to smoke in these scenes. But let's forget the book and write our own lines. I'll ask you an original question: Why were you acting just now?" "Acting?" Lanyard repeated, intrigued by the acuteness of this masterful woman's mentality. "Precisely--pretending you were a common thief. For a moment you actually made me think you afraid of me. But you're neither the one nor the other. How do I know? Because you're unarmed, your voice has changed in the last two minutes to that of a cultivated man, you've stopped cringing and started thinking, and the way you walked across the floor and handled that chair showed how powerfully you're made. If I didn't have this revolver, you could overpower me in an instant--and I'm no weakling, as women go. So--why the acting?" Studying his captor with narrow interest, Lanyard smiled faintly and shrugged, but made no answer. He could do no more than this--no more than spare for time: the longer he indulged madame in her whim, the better Lucy's chances of scot-free escape. By this time, he reckoned, she would have found her way through the service gate to the street. But he was on edge with unending apprehension of mischance. "Come, come!" Madame Omber insisted. "You're hardly civil, my man. Answer my question!" "You don't expect me to--do you?" "Why not? You owe me at least satisfaction of my curiosity, in return for breaking into my house." "But if, as you suggest, I am--or was--acting with a purpose, why expect me to give the show away?" "That's logic. I knew you could think. More's the pity!" "Pity I can think?" "Pity you can get your own consent to waste yourself like this. I'm an old woman, and I know men better than most; I can see ability in you. So I say, it's a pity you won't use yourself to better advantage. Don't misunderstand me: this isn't the conventional act; I don't hold with encouraging a fool in his folly. You're a fool, for all your intelligence, and the only cure I can see for you is drastic punishment." "Meaning the Santé, madame?" "Quite so. I tell you frankly, when I'm finished lecturing you, off you go to prison." "If that's the case I don't see I stand to gain much by retailing the history of my life. This seems to be your cue to ring for servants to call the police." A trace of anger shone in the woman's eyes. "You're right," she said shortly; "I dare say Sidonie isn't asleep yet. I'll get her to telephone while I keep an eye on you." Bending over the desk, without removing her gaze from the adventurer, his captor groped for, found, and pressed a call-button. From some remote quarter of the house sounded the grumble of an electric bell. "Pity you're so brazen," she observed. "Just a little less side, and you'd be a rather engaging person!" Lanyard made no reply. In fact he wasn't listening. Under the strain of that suspense, the iron control which had always been his was breaking down--since now it was for another he was concerned. And he wasted no strength trying to enforce it. The stress of his anxiety was both undisguised and undisguisable. Nor did Madame Omber overlook it. "What's the trouble, eh? Is it that already you hear the cell door clang in your ears?" As she spoke, Lanyard left his chair with a movement in the execution of which all his wits co-operated, with a spring as lithe and sure and swift as an animal's, that carried him like a shot across the two yards or so between them. The slightest error in his reckoning would have finished him: for the other had been watching for just such a move, and the revolver was nearly level with Lanyard's head when he grasped it by the barrel, turned that to the ceiling, imprisoned the woman's wrist with his other hand, and in two movements had captured the weapon without injuring its owner. "Don't be alarmed," he said quietly. "I'm not going to do anything more violent than to put this weapon out of commission." Breaking it smartly, he shot a shower of cartridges to the door, and tossed the now-useless weapon into a wastebasket beneath the desk. "Hope I didn't hurt you," he added abstractedly--"but your pistol was in my way!" He took a stride toward the door, pulled up, and hung in hesitation, frowning absently at the woman; who, without moving, laughed quietly and watched him with a twinkle of malicious diversion. He repaid this with a stare of thoughtful appraisal; from the first he had recognized in her a character of uncommon tolerance and amiability. "Pardon, madame, but----" he began abruptly--and checked in constrained appreciation of his impudence. "If that's permission to interrupt your reverie," Madame Omber remarked, "I don't mind telling you, you're the most extraordinary burglar I ever heard of!" Footfalls became audible on the staircase--the hasty scuffling of slippered feet. "Is that you, Sidonie?" madame called. The voice of the maid replied: "Yes, madame--coming!" "Well--don't, just yet--not till I call you." "Very good, madame." The woman returned complete attention to Lanyard. "Now, monsieur-of-two-minds, what is it you wish to say to me?" "Why did you do that?" the adventurer asked, with a jerk of his head toward the hall. "Tell Sidonie to wait instead of calling for help? Because--well, because you interest me strangely. I've got a theory you're in a desperate quandary and are about to throw yourself on my mercy." "You are right," Lanyard admitted tersely. "Ah! Now you do begin to grow interesting! Would you mind explaining why you think I'll be merciful?" "Because, madame, I've done you a great service, and feel I can count upon your gratitude." The Frenchwoman's eyebrows lifted at this. "Doubtless, monsieur knows what he's talking about----" "Listen, madame: I am in love with a young woman, an American, a stranger and friendless in Paris. If anything happens to me tonight, if I am arrested or assassinated----" "Is that likely?" "Quite likely, madame: I have enemies among the Apaches, and in my own profession as well; and I have reason to believe that several of them are in this neighbourhood tonight. I may possibly not escape their attentions. In that event, this young lady of whom I speak will need a protector." "And why must I interest myself in her fate, pray?" "Because, madame, of this service I have done you ... Recently, in London, you were robbed----" The woman started and coloured with excitement: "You know something of my jewels?" "Everything, madame: it was I who stole them." "You? You are, then, that Lone Wolf?" "I was, madame." "Why the past tense?" the woman demanded, eyeing him with a portentous frown. "Because I am done with thieving." She threw back her head and laughed, but without mirth: "A likely story, monsieur! Have you reformed since I caught you here----?" "Does it matter when? I take it that proof, visible, tangible proof of my sincerity, more than a meaningless date, would be needed to convince you." "No doubt of that, Monsieur the Lone Wolf!" "Could you ask better proof than the restoration of your stolen property?" "Are you trying to bribe me to let you off with an offer to return my jewels?" "I'm afraid emergency reformation wouldn't persuade you----" "You may well be afraid, monsieur!" "But if I can prove I've already restored your jewels----?" "But you have not." "If madame will do me the favour to open her safe, she will find them there--conspicuously placed." "What nonsense----!" "Am I wrong in assuming that madame didn't return from England until quite recently?" "But today, in fact----" "And you haven't troubled to investigate your safe since returning?" "It had not occurred to me----" "Then why not test my statement before denying it?" With an incredulous shrug Madame Omber terminated a puzzled scrutiny of Lanyard's countenance, and turned to the safe. "But to have done what you declare you have," she argued, "you must have known the combination--since it appears you haven't broken this open." The combination ran glibly off Lanyard's tongue. And at this, with every evidence of excitement, at length beginning to hope if not to believe, the woman set herself to open the safe. Within a minute she had succeeded, the morocco-bound jewel-case was in her hand, and a hasty examination had assured her its treasure was intact. "But why----?" she stammered, pale with emotion--"why, monsieur, _why_?" "Because I decided to leave off stealing for a livelihood." "When did you bring these jewels here?" "Within the week--four or five nights since----" "And then--repented, eh?" "I own it." "But came here again tonight, to steal a second time what you had stolen once?" "That's true, too." "And I interrupted you----" "Pardon, madame: not you, but my better self. I came to steal--I could not." "Monsieur--you do not convince. I fail to fathom your motives, but----" A sudden shock of heavy trampling feet in the reception-hall, accompanied by a clash of excited voices, silenced her and brought Lanyard instantly to the face-about. Above that loud wrangle--of which neither had received the least warning, so completely had their argument absorbed them--Sidonie's accents were audible: "Madame--madame!"--a cry of protest. "What is it?" madame demanded of Lanyard. He threw her the word "Police!" as he turned and flung himself into the recess of the window. But when he wrenched it open the voice of a picket on the lawn saluted him in sharp warning; and when, involuntarily, he stepped out upon the balcony, a flash of flame split the gloom below, a loud report rang in the quiet of the park, and a bullet slapped viciously the stone facing of the window. XXIV RENDEZVOUS With as little ceremony as though the bullet had lodged in himself, Lanyard tumbled back into the room, tripped, and fell sprawling; while to a tune of clattering boots two sergents de ville lumbered valiantly into the library and pulled up to discover Madame Omber standing calmly, safe and sound, beside her desk, and Lanyard picking himself up from the floor by the open window. Behind them Sidonie trotted, wringing her hands. "Madame!" she bleated--"they wouldn't listen to me, madame--I couldn't stop them!" "All right, Sidonie. Go back to the hall. I'll call you when needed.... Messieurs, good morning!" One of the sergents advanced with an uncertain salute and a superfluous question: "Madame Omber----?" The other waited on the threshold, barring the way. Lanyard measured the two speculatively: the spokesman seemed a bit old and fat, ripe for his pension, little apt to prove seriously effective in a rough-and-tumble; but the other was young, sturdy, and broad-chested, with the poise of an athlete, and carried in addition to his sword a pistol naked in his hand, while his clear blue eyes, meeting the adventurer's, lighted up with a glint of invitation. For the present, however, Lanyard wasn't taking any. He met that challenge with a look of utter stupidity, folded his arms, lounged against the desk, and watched Madame Omber acknowledge, none too cordially, the other sergent's query. "I am Madame Omber--yes. What can I do for you?" The sergent gaped. "Pardon!" he stammered, then laughed as one who tardily appreciates a joke. "It is well we are arrived in time, madame," he added--"though it would seem you have not had great trouble with this miscreant. Where is the woman?" He moved a pace toward Lanyard: hand-cuffs jingled in his grasp. "But a moment!" madame interposed. "Woman? What woman?" Pausing, the older sergent explained in a tone of surprise: "But his accomplice, naturally! Such were our instructions--to proceed at once to madame's hôtel, come in quietly by the servants' entrance--which would be open--and arrest a burglar with his female accomplice." Again the stout sergent moved toward Lanyard; again Madame Omber stopped him. "But one moment more, if you please!" Her eyes, dense with suspicion, questioned Lanyard; who, with a significant nod toward the jewel-case still in her hands, gave her a glance of dumb entreaty. After brief hesitation, "It is a mistake," madame declared; "there is no woman in this house, to my certain knowledge, who has no right to be here... But you say you received a message? I sent none!" The fat sergent shrugged. "That is not for me to dispute, madame. I have only my orders to go by." He glared sullenly at Lanyard; who returned a placid smile that (despite such hope as he might derive from madame's irresolute manner) masked a vast amount of trepidation. He felt tolerably sure Madame Omber had not sent for police on prior knowledge of his presence in the library. All this, then, would seem to indicate a new form of attack on the part of the Pack. He had probably been followed and seen to enter; or else the girl had been caught attempting to steal away and the information wrung from her by _force majeure_.... Moreover, he could hear two more pair of feet tramping through the salons. Pending the arrival of these last, Madame Omber said nothing more. And, unceremoniously enough, the newcomers shouldered into the library--one pompous uniformed body, of otherwise undistinguished appearance, promptly identified by the sergents de ville as monsieur le commissaire of that quarter; the other, a puffy mediocrity, known to Lanyard at least (if apparently to no one else) as Popinot. At this confirmation of his darkest fears, the adventurer abandoned hope of aid from Madame Omber and began quietly to reckon his chances of escape through his own efforts. But he was quite unarmed, and the odds were heavy: four against one, all four no doubt under arms, and two at least--the sergents--men of sound military training. "Madame Omber?" enquired the commissaire, saluting that lady with immense dignity. "One trusts that this intrusion may be pardoned, the circumstances remembered. In an affair of this nature, involving this repository of so historic treasures--" "That is quite well understood, monsieur le commissaire," madame replied distantly. "And this monsieur is, no doubt, your aide?" "Pardon!" the official hastened to identify his companion: "Monsieur Popinot, agent de la Sûreté, who lays these informations!" With a profound obeisance to Madame Omber, Popinot strode dramatically over to confront Lanyard and explore his features with his small, keen, shifty eyes of a pig; a scrutiny which the adventurer suffered with superficial calm. "It is he!" Popinot announced with a gesture. "Messieurs, I call upon you to arrest this man, Michael Lanyard, alias 'The Lone Wolf.'" He stepped back a pace, expanding his chest in vain effort to eclipse his abdomen, and glanced triumphantly at his respectful audience. "Accused," he added with intense relish, "of the murder of Inspector Roddy of Scotland Yard at Troyon's, as well as of setting fire to that establishment--" "For this, Popinot," Lanyard interrupted in an undertone, "I shall some day cut off your ears!" He turned to Madame Omber: "Accept, if you please, madame, my sincere regrets ... but this charge happens to be one of which I am altogether innocent." Instantly, from lounging against the desk, Lanyard straightened up: and the heavy humidor of brass and mahogany, on which his right hand had been resting, seemed fairly to leap from its place as, with a sweep of his arm, he sent it spinning point-blank at the younger sergent. Before that one, wholly unprepared, could more than gasp, the humidor caught him a blow like a kick just below the breastbone. He reeled, the breath left him in one great gust, he sat down abruptly--blue eyes wide with a look of aggrieved surprise--clapped both hands to his middle, blinked, turned pale, and keeled over on his side. But Lanyard hadn't waited to note results. He was busy. The fat sergent had leaped snarling upon his arm, and was struggling to hold it still long enough to snap a hand-cuff round the wrist; while the commissaire had started forward with a bellow of rage and two hands extended and itching for the adventurer's throat. The first received a half-arm jab on the point of his chin that jarred his entire system, and without in the least understanding how it happened, found himself whirled around and laid prostrate in the commissaire's path. The latter tripped, fell, and planted two hard knees, with the bulk of his weight atop them, on the apex of the sergent's paunch. At the same time Lanyard, leaping toward the doorway, noticed Popinot tugging at something in his hip-pocket. Followed a vivid flash, then complete darkness: with a well-aimed kick--an elementary movement of la savate--Lanyard had dislocated the switch of the electric lights, knocking its porcelain box from the wall, breaking the connection, and creating a short-circuit which extinguished every light in that part of the house. With his way thus apparently cleared, the police in confusion, darkness aiding him, Lanyard plunged on; but in mid-stride, as he crossed the threshold, his ankle was caught by the still prostrate younger sergent and jerked from under him. His momentum threw him with a crash--and may have spared him a worse mishap; for in the same breath he heard the report of a pistol and knew that Popinot had fired at his fugitive shadow. As he brought one heel down with crushing force on the sergent's wrist, freeing his foot, he was dimly conscious of the voice of the commissaire shouting frantic prayers to cease firing. Then the pain-maddened sergent crawled to his knees, lunged blindly forward, knocked the adventurer back in the act of rising, and fell on top of him. Hampered by two hundred pounds of fighting Frenchman, Lanyard felt his cause was lost, yet battled on--and would while breath was in him. With a heave, a twist and a squirm, he slipped from under, and swinging a fist at random barked his knuckles against the mouth of the sergent. Momentarily that one relaxed his hold, and Lanyard struggled to his knees, only to go down as the indomitable Frenchman grappled yet a second time. Now, however, as they fell, Lanyard was on top: and shifting both hands to his antagonist's left forearm, he wrenched it up and around. There was a cry of pain, and he jumped clear of one no longer to be reckoned with. Nevertheless, as he had feared, the delay had proved ruinous. He had only found his feet when an unidentified person hurled himself bodily through the gloom and wrapped his arms round Lanyard's thighs. And as both went down, two others piled up on top.... For the next minute or two, Lanyard fought blindly, madly, viciously, striking and kicking at random. For all that--even with one sergent hors de combat--they were three to one; and though with the ferocity of sheer desperation he shook them all off, at one time, and gained a few yards more, it was only again to be overcome and borne down, crushed beneath the weight of three. His wind was going, his strength was leaving him. He mustered up every ounce of energy, all his wit and courage, for one last effort: fought like a cat, tooth and nail; toiled once more to his knees, with two clinging to him like wolves to the flanks of a stag; shook one off, regained his feet, swayed; and in one final gust of ferocity dashed both fists repeatedly into the face of him who still clung to him. That one was Popinot; he knew instinctively that this was so; and a grim joy filled him as he felt the man's clutches relax and fall away, and guessed how brutal was the damage he had done that fat, evil face. At length free, he made off, running, stumbling, reeling: gained the hall; flung open the door; and heedless of the picket who had fired on him from below the window, dashed down the steps and away.... Three shots sped him through that intricate tangle of night-bound park. But all went wide; the pursuit--what little there was--blundered off at hap-hazard and lost itself, as well. He came to the wall, crept along in shelter of its shadow until he found a tree with a low-swung branch that jutted out over the street, climbed this, edged out over the wall, and dropped to the sidewalk. A shout from the quarter of the carriage gates greeted his appearance. He turned and ran again. Flying footsteps for a time pursued him; and once, with a sinking heart, he heard the rumble of a motor. But he recovered quickly, regained his wind, and ran well, with long, steady, ground-consuming strides; and he doubled, turned and twisted in a manner to wake the envy of the most subtle fox. In time he felt warranted in slowing down to a rapid walk. Weariness was now a heavy burden upon him, and his spirit numb with desperate need of rest; but his pace did not flag, nor his purpose falter from its goal. It was a long walk if a direct one to which he set himself as soon as confident the pursuit had failed once more. He plodded on, without faltering, to the one place where he might feel sure of finding his beloved, if she lived and were free. He knew that she had not forgotten, and in his heart he knew that she would never again of her own will fail him.... Nor had she: when--weary and spent from that heartbreaking climb up the merciless acclivity of the Butte Montmartre--he staggered rather than walked past the sleepy verger and found his way through the crowding shadows to the softly luminous heart of the basilica of the Sacré-Cour, he found her there, kneeling, her head bowed upon hands resting on the back of the chair before her: a slight and timid figure, lost and lonely in the long ranks of empty chairs that filled the nave. Slowly, almost fearfully, he went to her, and silently he slipped into the chair by her side. She knew, without looking up, that it was he.... After a little her hand stole out, closed round his fingers, and drew him forward with a gentle, insistent pressure. He knelt then with her, hand in hand--filled with the wonder of it, that he to whom religion had been nothing should have been brought to this by a woman's hand. He knelt for a long time, for many minutes, profoundly intrigued, his sombre gaze questioning the golden shadows and ancient mystery of the distant choir and shining altar: and there was no question in his heart but that, whatever should ensue of this, the unquiet spirit of the Lone Wolf was forevermore at rest. XXV WINGS OF THE MORNING About half-past six Lanyard left the dressing-room assigned him in the barracks at Port Aviation and, waddling quaintly in the heavy wind-resisting garments supplied him at the instance of Ducroy, made his way between two hangars toward the practice field. Now the eastern skies were pulsing with fitful promise of the dawn; but within the vast enclosure of the aerodrome the gloom of night lingered so stubbornly that two huge search-lights had been pressed into the service of those engaged in tuning up the motor of the Parrott biplane. In the intense, white, concentrated glare--that rippled oddly upon the wrinkled, oily garments of the dozen or so mechanics busy about the machine--the under sides of those wide, motionless planes hung against the dark with an effect of impermanence: as though they were already afloat and needed but a breath to send them winging skyward.... To one side a number of young and keen-faced Frenchmen, officers of the corps, were lounging and watching the preparations with alert and intelligent interest. To the other, all the majesty of Mars was incarnate in the person of Monsieur Ducroy, posing valiantly in fur-lined coat and shining top-hat while he chatted with an officer whose trim, athletic figure was well set off by his aviating uniform. As Lanyard drew near, this last brought his heels together smartly, saluted the Minister of War, and strode off toward the flying-machine. "Captain Vauquelin informs me he will be ready to start in five minutes, monsieur," Ducroy announced. "You are in good time." "And mademoiselle?" the adventurer asked, peering anxiously round. Almost immediately the girl came forward from the shadows, with a smile apologetic for the strangeness of her attire. She had donned, over her street dress, an ample leather garment which enveloped her completely, buttoning tight at throat and wrists and ankles. Her small hat had been replaced by a leather helmet which left only her eyes, nose, mouth and chin exposed, and even these were soon to be hidden by a heavy veil for protection against spattering oil. "Mademoiselle is not nervous?" Ducroy enquired politely. Lucy smiled brightly. "I? Why should I be, monsieur?" "I trust mademoiselle will permit me to commend her courage. But pardon! I have one last word for the ear of Captain Vauquelin." Lifting his hat, the Frenchman joined the group near the machine. Lanyard stared unaffectedly at the girl, unable to disguise his wonder at the high spirits advertised by her rekindled colour and brilliant eyes. "Well?" she demanded gaily. "Don't tell me I don't look like a fright! I know I do!" "I daren't tell you how you look to me," Lanyard replied soberly. "But I will say this, that for sheer, down right pluck, you--" "Thank you, monsieur! And you?" He glanced with a deprecatory smile at the flimsy-looking contrivance to which they were presently to entrust their lives. "Somehow," said he doubtfully, "I don't feel in the least upset or exhilarated. It seems little out of the average run of life--all in the day's work!" "I think," she said, judgmatical, "that you're very like the other lone wolf, the fictitious one--Lupin, you know--a bit of a blagueur. If you're not nervous, why keep glancing over there?--as if you were rather expecting somebody--as if you wouldn't be surprised to see Popinot or De Morbihan pop out of the ground--or Ekstrom!" "Hum!" he said gravely. "I don't mind telling you now, that's precisely what I am afraid of." "Nonsense!" the girl cried in open contempt. "What could they do?" "Please don't ask me," Lanyard begged seriously. "I might try to tell you." "But don't worry, my dear!" Fugitively her hand touched his. "We're ready." It was true enough: Ducroy was moving impressively back toward them. "All is prepared," he announced in sonorous accents. A bit sobered, in silence they approached the machine. Vauquelin kept himself aloof while Lanyard and a young officer helped the girl to the seat to the right of the pilot, and strapped her in. When Lanyard had been similarly secured in the place on the left, the two sat, imprisoned, some six feet above the ground. Lanyard found his perch comfortable enough. A broad band of webbing furnished support for his back; another crossed his chest by way of provision against forward pitching; there were rests for his feet, and for his hands cloth-wound grips fixed to struts on either side. He smiled at Lucy across the empty seat, and was surprised at the clearness with which her answering smile was visible. But he wasn't to see it again for a long and weary time; almost immediately she began to adjust her veil. The morning had grown much lighter within the last few minutes. A long wait ensued, during which the swarm of mechanics, assistants and military aviators buzzed round their feet like bees. The sky was now pale to the western horizon. A fleet of heavy clouds was drifting off into the south, leaving in their wake thin veils of mist that promised soon to disappear before the rays of the sun. The air seemed tolerably clear and not unseasonably cold. The light grew stronger still: features of distant objects defined themselves; traces of colour warmed the winter landscape. At length their pilot, wearing his wind-mask, appeared and began to climb to his perch. With a cool nod for Lanyard and a civil bow to his woman passenger, he settled himself, adjusted several levers, and flirted a gay hand to his brother-officers. There was a warning cry. The crowd dropped back rapidly to either side. Ducroy lifted his hat in parting salute, cried "Bon voyage!" and scuttled clear like a startled rooster before a motor-car. And the motor and propeller broke loose with a mighty roar comparable only, in Lanyard's fancy, to the chant of ten thousand rivetting locusts. He felt momentarily as if his ear-drums must burst with the incessant and tremendous concussions registered upon them; but presently this sensation passed, leaving him with that of permanent deafness. Before he could recover and regain control of his startled wits the aviator had thrown down a lever, and the great fabric was in motion. It swept down the field like a frightened swan; and the wheels of its chassis, registering every infinitesimal irregularity in the surface of the ground, magnified them all a hundred-fold. It was like riding in a tumbril driven at top-speed over the Giant's Causeway. Lanyard was shaken violently to the very marrow of his bones; he believed that even his eyes must be rattling in their sockets.... Then the Parrott began to ascend. Singularly enough, this change was marked, at first, by no more than slight lessening of the vibration: still the machine seemed to be dashing over a cobbled thoroughfare at breakneck speed; and Lanyard found it difficult to appreciate that they were afloat, even when he looked down and discovered a hundred feet of space between himself and the practice-field. In another breath they were soaring over housetops. Momentarily, now, the shocks became less frequent. And presently they ceased almost altogether, to be repeated only at rare intervals, when the drift of air opposing the planes developed irregularities in its velocity. There succeeded, in contrast, the sublimest peace; even the roaring of the propeller dwindled to a sustained drone; the biplane seemed to float without an effort upon a vast, still sea, flawed only occasionally by inconsiderable ripples. Still rising, they surprised the earliest rays of the sun; and in their virgin light the aeroplane was transformed into a thing of gossamer gold. Continually the air buffeted their faces like a flood of icy water. Below, the scroll of the world unrolled like some vast and intricately illuminated missal, or like some strange mosaic, marvellously minute.... Lanyard could see the dial of the compass, fixed to a strut on the pilot's left. By that telltale their course lay nearly due northeast. Already the weltering roofs of Paris were in sight, to the right, the Eiffel Tower spearing up like a fairy pillar of gold lace-work, the Seine looping the cluttered acres like a sleek brown serpent, the Sacré-Coeur a dream-palace of opalescent walls. Versailles broke the horizon to port and slipped astern. Paris closed up, telescoped its panorama, became a mere blur, a smoky smudge. But it was long before the distance eclipsed that admonitory finger of the Eiffel. Vauquelin manipulating the levers, the plane tilted its nose and swam higher and yet higher. The song of the motor dropped an octave to a richer tone. The speed was sensibly increased. Lanyard contemplated with untempered wonder the fact of his equanimity: there seemed nothing at all strange in this extraordinary experience; he was by no means excited, remained merely if deeply interested. And he could detect in his physical sensations no trace of that qualmish dread he always experienced in high places: the sense he had of security, of solidity, was and ever remained wholly unaccountable in his understanding. Of a sudden, surprised by a touch on his arm, he turned to see through the mica windows of the wind-mask the eyes of the aviator informed with importunate doubt. Infinitely mystified and so an easy prey to sickening fear lest something were going wrong with the machine, Lanyard shook his head to indicate lack of comprehension. With an impatient gesture the aviator pointed downward. Appreciating the fact that speech was impossible, Lanyard clutched the struts and bent forward. But the pace was now so fast and their elevation so great that the landscape swimming beneath his vision was no more than a brownish plain fugitively maculated with blots of contrasting colour. He looked up blankly, but only to be treated to the same gesture. Piqued, he concentrated attention more closely upon the flat, streaming landscape. And suddenly he recognized something oddly familiar in an approaching bend of the Seine. "St.-Germain-en-Laye!" he exclaimed with a start of alarm. This was the danger point.... "And over there," he reminded himself--"to the left--that wide field with a queer white thing in the middle that looks like a winged grub--that must be De Morbihan's aerodrome and his Valkyr monoplane! Are they bringing it out? Is that what Vauquelin means? And if so--what of it? I don't see ..." Suddenly doubt and wonder chilled the adventurer. Temporarily Vauquelin returned entire attention to the management of the biplane. The wind was now blowing more fitfully, creating pockets--those holes in the air so dreaded by cloud pilots--and in quest of more constant resistance the aviator was swinging his craft in a wide northerly curve, climbing ever higher and more high. The earth soon lost all semblance of design; even the twisted silver wire of the Seine vanished, far over to the left; remained only the effect of firm suspension in that high blue vault, of a continuous low of iced water in the face, together with the tuneless chanting of the motor. After some forty minutes of this--it may have been an hour, for time was then an incalculable thing--Lanyard, in a mood of abnormal sensitiveness, began to divine additional disquiet in the mind of the aviator, and stared until he caught his eye. "What is it?" he screamed in futile effort to lift his voice above the din. But the Frenchman understood, and responded with a sweep of his arm toward the horizon ahead. And seeing nothing but cloud in the quarter indicated, Lanyard grasped the nature of a phenomenon which, from the first, had been vaguely troubling him. The reason why he had been able to perceive no real rim to the world was that the earth was all a-steam from the recent heavy rains; all the more remote distances were veiled with rising vapour. And now they were approaching the coast, to which, it seemed, the mists clung closest; for all the world before them slept beneath a blanket of dull grey. Nor was it difficult now to understand why the aviator was ill at ease facing the prospect of navigating a Channel fog. Several minutes later, he startled Lanyard with another peremptory touch on his arm followed by a significant glance over his shoulder. Lanyard turned quickly. Behind them, at a distance which he calculated roughly as two miles, the silhouette of a monoplane hung against the brilliant firmament, resembling, with its single spread of wings, more a solitary, soaring gull than any man-directed mechanism. Only an infrequent and almost imperceptible shifting of the wings proved that it was moving. He watched it for several seconds, in deepening perplexity and anxiety, finding it impossible to guess whether it were gaining or losing in that long chase, or who might be its pilot. Yet he had little doubt but that the pursuing machine had risen from the aerodrome of Count Remy de Morbihan at St.-Germain-en-Laye; that it was nothing less, in fact, than De Morbihan's Valkyr, reputed the fastest monoplane in Europe and winner of a dozen International events; and that it was guided, if not by De Morbihan himself, by one of the creatures of the Pack--quite possibly, even more probably, by Ekstrom! But--assuming all this--what evil could such pursuit portend? In what conceivable manner could the Pack reckon to further its ends by commissioning the monoplane to overtake or distance the Parrott? They could not hinder the escape of Lanyard and Lucy Shannon to England in any way, by any means reasonably to be imagined. Was this simply one more move to keep the pair under espionage? But that might more readily have been accomplished by telegraphing or telephoning the Pack's confreres, Wertheimer's associates in England! Lanyard gave it up, admitting his inability to trump up any sane excuse for such conduct; but the riddle continued to fret his mind without respite. From the first, from that moment when Lucy's disappearance had required postponement of this flight, he had feared trouble; it hadn't seemed reasonable to hope that the Parrott could be held in waiting on his convenience for many days without the secret leaking out; but it was trouble to develop before the start from Port Aviation that he had anticipated. The possibility that the Pack would be able to work any mischief to him, after that, had never entered his calculations. Even now he found it difficult to give it serious consideration. Again he glanced back. Now, in his judgment, the monoplane loomed larger than before against the glowing sky, indicating that it was overtaking them. Beneath his breath Lanyard swore from a brimming heart. The Parrott was capable of a speed of eighty miles an hour; and unquestionably Vauquelin was wheedling every ounce of power out of its willing motor. Since drawing Lanyard's attention to the pursuer he had brought about appreciable acceleration. But would even that pace serve to hold the Valkyr if not to distance it? His next backward look reckoned the monoplane no nearer. And another thirty minutes or go elapsed without the relative positions of the two flying machines undergoing any perceptible change. In the course of this period the Parrott rose to an altitude, indicated by the barograph at Lanyard's elbow, of more than half a mile. Below, the Channel fog spread itself out like a sea of milk, slowly churning. Staring down in fascination, Lanyard told himself gravely: "Blue water below that, my friend!" It seemed difficult to credit the fact that they had made the flight from Paris in so short a time. By his reckoning--a very rough one--the Parrott was then somewhere off Dieppe: it ought to pick up England, in such case, not far from Brighton. If only one could see...! By bending forward a little and staring past the aviator Lanyard could catch a glimpse of Lucy Shannon. Though all her beauty and grace of person were lost in the clumsy swaddling of her makeshift costume, she seemed to be comfortable enough; and the rushing air, keen with the chill of that great altitude, moulded her wind-veil precisely to the exquisite contours of her face and stung her firm cheeks until they glowed with a rare fire that even that thick dark mesh could not wholly quench. The sun crept above the floor of mist, played upon it with iridescent rays, shot it through and through with a warm, pulsating glow like that of a fire opal, and suddenly turned it to a tumbled sea of gold which, apparently boundless, baffled every effort to surmise their position, whether they were above land or sea. None the less Lanyard's rough and rapid calculations persuaded him that they were then about Mid-Channel. He had no more than arrived at this conclusion when a sharp, startled movement, that rocked the planes, drew his attention to the man at his side. Glancing in alarm at the aviator's face, he saw it as white as marble--what little of it was visible beyond and beneath the wind-mask. Vauquelin was holding out an arm, and staring at it incredulously; Lanyard's gaze was drawn to the same spot--a ragged perforation in the sleeve of the pilot's leather surtout, just above the elbow. "What is it?" he enquired stupidly, again forgetting that he could not be heard. The eyes of the aviator, lifting from the perforation to meet Lanyard's stare, were clouded with consternation. Then Vauquelin turned quickly and looked back. Simultaneously he ducked his head and something slipped whining past Lanyard's cheek, touching his flesh with a touch more chill than that of the icy air itself. "Damnation!" he shrieked, almost hysterically. "That madman in the Valkyr is firing at us!" XXVI THE FLYING DEATH Steadying himself with a splendid display of self-control and sheer courage, Captain Vauquelin concentrated upon the management of the biplane. The drone of its motor thickened again, its speed became greater, and the machine began to rise still higher, tracing a long, graceful curve. Lanyard glanced apprehensively toward the girl, but apparently she remained unconscious of anything out of the ordinary. Her face was still turned forward, and still the wind-veil trembled against her glowing cheeks. Thanks to the racket of the motor, no audible reports had accompanied the sharp-shooting of the man in the monoplane; while Lanyard's cry of horror and dismay had been audible to himself exclusively. Hearing nothing, Lucy suspected nothing. Again Lanyard looked back. Now the Valkyr seemed to have crept up to within the quarter of a mile of the biplane, and was boring on at a tremendous pace, its single spread of wings on an approximate level with that of the lower plane of the Parrott. But this last was rising steadily.... The driver's seat of the Valkyr held a muffled, burly figure that might be anybody--De Morbihan, Ekstrom, or any other homicidal maniac. At the distance its actions were as illegible as their results were unquestionable: Lanyard saw a little tongue of flame lick out from a point close beside the head of the figure--he couldn't distinguish the firearm itself--and, like Vauquelin, quite without premeditation, he ducked. At the same time there sounded a harsh, ripping noise immediately above his head; and he found himself staring up at a long ragged tear in the canvas, caused by the bullet striking it aslant. "What's to be done?" he screamed passionately at Vauquelin. The aviator shook his head impatiently; and they continued to ascend; already the web of gold that cloaked earth and sea seemed thrice as far beneath their feet as it had when Vauquelin made the appalling discovery of his bullet-punctured sleeve. But the monoplane was doggedly following suit; as the Parrott rose, so did the Valkyr, if a trace more slowly and less flexibly. Lanyard had read somewhere, or heard it said, that monoplanes were poor machines for climbing. He told himself that, if this were true, Vauquelin knew his business; and from this reflection drew what comfort he might. And he was glad, very glad of the dark wind-veil that shrouded his face, which he believed to be nothing less than a mask of panic terror. He was, in fact, quite rigid with fright and horror. It were idle to argue that only unlikely chance would wing one of the bullets from the Valkyr to a vital point: there was the torn canvas overhead, there was that hole through Vauquelin's sleeve.... And then the barograph on the strut beside Lanyard disappeared as if by magic. He was aware of a slight jar; the framework of the biplane quivered as from a heavy blow; something that resembled a handful of black crumbs sprayed out into the air ahead and vanished: and where the instrument had been, nothing remained but an iron clamp gripping the strut. And even as any one of these bullets might have proved fatal, their first successor might disable the aviator if it did not slay him outright; in either case, the inevitable result would be death following a fall from a height, as recorded on the barograph dial an instant before its destruction, of more than four thousand feet. They were still climbing.... Now the pursuer was losing some of the advantage of his superior speed; the Parrott was perceptibly higher; the Valkyr must needs mount in a more sweeping curve. None the less, Lanyard, peering down, saw still another tongue of flame spit out at him; and two bullet-holes appeared in the port-side wings of the biplane, one in the lower, one in the upper spread of canvas. White-lipped and trembling, the adventurer began to work at the fastenings of his surtout. After a moment he plucked off one of his gloves and cast it impatiently from him. A-sprawl, it sailed down the wind like a wounded sparrow. He caught Vauquelin's eye upon him, quick with a curiosity which changed to a sudden gleam of comprehension as Lanyard, thrusting his hand under the leather coat, groped for his pocket and produced an automatic pistol which Ducroy had pressed upon his acceptance. They were now perhaps a hundred feet higher than the Valkyr, which was soaring a quarter of a mile off to starboard. Under the guidance of the Frenchman, the Parrott swooped round in a narrow circle until it hung almost immediately above the other--a manoeuvre requiring, first and last, something more than five minutes to effect. Meanwhile, Lanyard rebuttoned his surtout and clutched the pistol, trying hard not to think. But already his imagination was sick with the thought of what would ensue when the time came for him to carry out his purpose. Vauquelin touched his arm with urgent pressure; but Lanyard only shook his head, gulped, and without looking surrendered the weapon to the aviator.... Bearing heavily against the chest-band, he commanded the broad white spread of the Valkyr's back and wings. Invisible beneath these hung the motor and driver's seat. An instant more, and he was aware that Vauquelin was leaning forward and looking down. Aiming with what deliberation was possible, the aviator emptied the clip of its eight cartridges in less than a minute. The vicious reports rang out against the drum of the motor like the cracking of a blacksnake-whip. Momentarily, Lanyard doubted if any one bullet had taken effect. He could not, with his swimming vision, detect sign of damage in the canvas of the Valkyr. He saw the empty automatic slip from Vauquelin'p numb and nerveless fingers. It vanished.... A frightful fascination kept his gaze constant to the soaring Valkyr. Beyond it, down, deep down a mile of emptiness, was that golden floor of tumbled cloud, waiting ... He saw the monoplane check abruptly in its strong onward surge--as if it had run, full-tilt, head-on, against an invisible obstacle--and for what seemed a round minute it hung so, veering and wobbling, nuzzling the wind. Then like a sounding whale it turned and dived headlong, propeller spinning like a top. Down through the eighth of a mile of space it plunged plummet-like; then, perhaps caught in a flaw of wind, it turned sideways and began to revolve, at first slowly, but with increasing rapidity in its fatally swift descent. Toward the beginning of its revolutions, something was thrown off, something small, dark and sprawling ... like that glove which Lanyard had discarded. But this object dropped with a speed even greater than that of the Valkyr, in a brace of seconds had diminished to the proportions of a gnat, in another was engulfed in that vast sea of golden vapour. Even so the monoplane itself, scarcely less precipitate, spun down through the abyss and plunged to oblivion in the fog-rack.... And Lanyard was still hanging against the chest-band, limp and spent and trying not to vomit, when, of a sudden and without any warning whatever, the stentorian chant of the motor ceased and was blotted up by that immense silence, by the terrible silence of those vast solitudes of the upper air, where never a sound is heard save the voices of the elements at war among themselves: a silence that rang with an accent as dreadful as the crack of Doom in the ears of those three suspended there, in the heart of that unimaginably pellucid and immaculate radiance, in the vast hollow of the heavens, midway between the deep blue of the eternal dome and the rose and golden welter of the fog--that fog which, cloaking earth and sea, hid as well every vestige of the tragedy they had wrought, every sign of the murder that they had done that they themselves might not be murdered and cast down to destruction. And, its propeller no longer gripping the air, the aeroplane drifted on at ever-lessening speed, until it had no way whatever and rested without motion of any sort; as it might have been in the cup of some mighty and invisible hand, held up to that stark and merciless light, under the passionless eye of the Infinite, to await a Judgment.... Then, with a little shudder of hesitation, the planes dipped, inclined slightly earthwards, and began slowly and as if reluctantly to slip down the long and empty channels of the air. At this, rousing, Lanyard became aware of his own voice yammering wildly at Vauquelin: "Good God, man! Why did you do that?" Vauquelin answered only with a pale grimace and a barely perceptible shrug. Momentarily gathering momentum, the biplane sped downward with a resistless rush, with the speed of a great wind--a speed so great that when Lanyard again attempted speech, the breath was whipped from his lips and he could utter no sound. Thus from that awful height, from the still heart of that immeasurable void, they swept down and ever down, in a long series of sickening swoops, broken only by negligible pauses. And though they approached it on a long slant, the floor of vapour rose to meet them like a mighty rushing wave: in a trice the biplane was hovering instantaneously before plunging on down into that cold, grey world of fog. In that moment of hesitation, while still the adventurer gasped for breath and pawed at his streaming eyes with an aching hand, pierced through and through with cold, the fog showed itself as something less substantial than it had seemed; blurs of colour glowed through its folds of gauze, and with these the rounded summit of a brownish, knoll. Then they plunged on, down out of the bleak, bright sunshine into cool twilight depths of clinging vapours; and the good green earth lifted its warm bosom to receive them. Tilting its nose a trifle, fluttering as though undecided, the Parrott settled gracefully, with scarcely a Jar, upon a wide sweep of untilled land covered with short coarse grass. For some time the three remained in their perches like petrified things, quite moveless and--with the possible exception of the aviator--hardly conscious. But presently Lanyard became aware that he was regularly filling his lungs with air sweet, damp, wholesome, and by comparison warm, and that the blood was tingling painfully in his half-frozen hands and feet. He sighed as one waking from a strange dream. At the same time the aviator bestirred himself, and began a bit stiffly to climb down. Feeling the earth beneath his feet, he took a step or two away from the machine, reeling and stumbling like a drunken man, then turned back. "Come, my friend!" he urged Lanyard in a voice of strangely normal intonation--"look alive--if you're able--and lend me a hand with mademoiselle. I'm afraid she has fainted." The girl was reclining inertly in the bands of webbing, her eyes closed, her lips ajar, her limbs slackened. "Small blame to her!" Lanyard commented, fumbling clumsily with the chest-band. "That dive was enough to drive a body mad!" "But I had to do it!" the aviator protested earnestly. "I dared not remain longer up there. I have never before been afraid in the air, but after _that_ I was terribly afraid. I could feel myself going--taking leave of my senses--and I knew I must act if we were not to follow that other... God! what a death!" He paused, shuddered, and drew the back of his hand across his eyes before continuing: "So I cut off the ignition and volplaned. Here--my hand. So-o! All right, eh?" "Oh, I'm all right," Lanyard insisted confidently. But his confidence was belied by a look of daze; for the earth was billowing and reeling round him as though bewitched; and before he knew what had happened he sat down hard and stared foolishly up at the aviator. "Here!" said the latter courteously, his wind-mask hiding a smile--"my hand again, monsieur. You've endured more than you know. And now for mademoiselle." But when they approached the girl, she surprised both by shivering, sitting up, and obviously pulling herself together. "You feel better now, mademoiselle?" Vauquelin enquired, hastening to loosen her fastenings. "I'm better--yes, thank you," she admitted in a small, broken voice--"but not yet quite myself." She gave a hand to the aviator, the other to Lanyard, and as they helped her to the ground, Lanyard, warned by his experience, stood by with a ready arm. She needed that support, and for a few minutes didn't seem even conscious of it. Then gently disengaging, she moved a foot or two away. "Where are we--do you know?" "On the South Downs, somewhere?" Lanyard suggested, consulting Vauquelin. "That is probable," this last affirmed--"at all events, judging from the course I steered. Somewhere well in from the coast, at a venture; I don't hear the sea." "Near Lewes, perhaps?" "I have no reason to doubt that." A constrained pause ensued. The girl looked from the aviator to Lanyard, then turned away from both and, trembling with fatigue and enforcing self-control by clenching her hands, stared aimlessly off into the mist. Painfully, Lanyard set himself to consider their position. The Parrott had come to rest in what seemed to be a wide, shallow, saucer-like depression, whose irregular bounds were cloaked in fog. In this space no living thing stirred save themselves; and the waste was crossed by not so much as a sheep track. In brief, they were lost. There might be a road running past the saucer ten yards from its brim in any quarter. There might not. Possibly there was a town or village immediately adjacent. Quite as possibly the Downs billowed away for desolate miles on either hand. "Well--what do we do now?" the girl demanded suddenly, in a nervous voice, sharp and jarring. "Oh, we'll find a way out of this somehow," Vauquelin asserted confidently. "England isn't big enough for anybody to remain lost in it--not for long, at all events. I'm sorry only on Miss Shannon's account." "We'll manage, somehow," Lanyard affirmed stoutly. The aviator smiled curiously. "To begin with," he advanced, "I daresay we might as well get rid of these awkward costumes. They'll hamper walking--rather." In spite of his fatigue Lanyard was so struck by the circumstances that he couldn't help remarking it as he tore off his wind-veil. "Your English is remarkably good, Captain Vauquelin," he observed. The other laughed shortly. "Why not?" said he, removing his mask. Lanyard looked up into his face, stared, and fell back a pace. "Wertheimer!" he gasped. XXVII DAYBREAK The Englishman smiled cheerfully in response to Lanyard's cry of astonishment. "In effect," he observed, stripping off his gauntlets, "you're right, Mr. Lanyard. 'Wertheimer' isn't my name, but it is so closely identified with my--ah--insinuative personality as to warrant the misapprehension. I shan't demand an apology so long as you permit me to preserve an incognito which may yet prove somewhat useful." "Incognito!" Lanyard stammered, utterly discountenanced. "Useful!" "You have my meaning exactly; although my work in Paris is now ended, there's no saying when it may not be convenient to be able to go back without establishing a new identity." Before Lanyard replied to this the look of wonder in his eyes had yielded to one of understanding. "Scotland Yard, eh?" he queried curtly. Wertheimer bowed. "Special agent," he added. "I might have guessed, if I'd had the wit of a goose!" Lanyard affirmed bitterly. "But I must admit..." "Yes," the Englishman assented pleasantly; "I did pull your leg--didn't I? But not more than our other friends. Of course, it's taken some time: I had to establish myself firmly as a shining light of the swell mob over here before De Morbihan would take me to his hospitable bosom." "I presume I'm to consider myself under arrest?" With a laugh, the Englishman shook his head vigorously. "No, thank you!" he declared. "I've had too convincing proof of your distaste for interference in your affairs. You fight too sincerely, Mr. Lanyard--and I'm a tired sleuth this very morning as ever was! I would need a week's rest to fit me for the job of taking you into custody--a week and some able-bodied assistance!... But," he amended with graver countenance, "I will say this: if you're in England a week hence, I'll be tempted to undertake the job on general principles. I don't in the least question the sincerity of your intention to behave yourself hereafter; but as a servant of the King, it's my duty to advise you that England would prefer you to start life anew--as they say--in another country. Several steamers sail for the States before the end of the week: further details I leave entirely to your discretion. But go you must," he concluded firmly. "I understand..." said Lanyard; and would have said more, but couldn't. There was something suspiciously like a mist before his eyes. Avoiding the faces of his sweetheart and the Englishman, he turned aside, put forth a hand blindly to a wing of the biplane to steady himself, and stood with head bowed and limbs trembling. Moving quietly to his side, the girl took his other hand and held it tight.... Presently Lanyard shook himself impatiently and lifted his head again. "Sorry," he said, apologetic--"but your generosity--when I looked for nothing better than arrest--was a bit too much for my nerves!" "Nonsense!" the Englishman commented with brusque good-humour. "We're all upset. A drop of brandy will do us no end of good." Unbuttoning his leather surtout, he produced a flask from an inner pocket, filled its metal cup, and offered it to the girl. "You first, if you please, Miss Shannon. No--I insist. You positively need it." She allowed herself to be persuaded, drank, coughed, gasped, and returned the cup, which Wertheimer promptly refilled and passed to Lanyard. The raw spirits stung like fire, but proved an instant aid to the badly jangled nerves of the adventurer. In another moment he was much more himself. Drinking in turn, Wertheimer put away the flask. "That's better!" he commented. "Now I'll be able to cut along with this blessed machine without fretting over the fate of Ekstrom. But till now I haven't been able to forget----" He paused and drew a hand across his eyes. "It was, then, Ekstrom--you think?" Lanyard demanded. "Unquestionably! De Morbihan had learned--I know--of your bargain with Ducroy; and I know, too, that he and Ekstrom spent each morning in the hangars at St. Germain, after your sensational evasion. It never entered my head, of course, that they had any such insane scheme brewing as that--else I would never have so giddily arranged with Ducroy--through the Sûreté, you understand--to take Vauquelin's place.... Besides, who else could it have been? Not De Morbihan, for he's crippled for life, thanks to that affair in the Bois; not Popinot, who was on his way to the Santé, last I saw of him; and never Bannon--he was dead before I left Paris for Port Aviation." "Dead!" "Oh, quite!" the Englishman affirmed nonchalantly, "When we arrested him at three this morning--charged with complicity in the murder of Roddy--he flew into a passion that brought on a fatal haemorrhage. He died within ten minutes." There was a little silence.... "I may tell you, Mr. Lanyard," the Englishman resumed, looking up from the motor, to which he was paying attentions with monkey-wrench and oil-can, "that you were quite off your bat when you ridiculed the idea of the 'International Underworld Unlimited.' Of course, if you _hadn't_ laughed, I shouldn't feel quite as much respect for you as I do; in fact, the chances are you'd be in handcuffs or in a cell of the Santé, this very minute.... But, absurd as it sounded--and was--the 'Underworld' project was a pet hobby of Bannon's--who'd been the brains of a gang of criminals in New York for many years. He was a bit touched on the subject: a monomaniac, if you ask me. And his enthusiasm won De Morbihan and Popinot over ... and me! He took a wonderful fancy to me, Bannon did; I really was appointed first-lieutenant in Greggs' stead.... So you first won my sympathy by laughing at my offer," said Wertheimer, restoring the oil-can to its place in the tool-kit; "wherein you were very wise.... In fact, my personal feeling for you is one of growing esteem, if you'll permit me to say so. You've most of the makings of a man. Will you shake hands--with a copper's nark?" He gave Lanyard's hand a firm and friendly grasp, and turned to the girl. "Good-bye, Miss Shannon. I'm truly grateful for the assistance you gave us. Without you, we'd have been sadly handicapped. I understand you have sent in your resignation? It's too bad: the Service will feel the loss of you. But I think you were right to leave us, the circumstances considered.... And now it's good-bye and good luck! I hope you may be happy.... I'm sure you can't go far without coming across a highroad or a village; but--for reasons not unconnected with my profession--I prefer to remain in ignorance of the way you go." Releasing her hand, he stepped back, saluted the lovers with a smile and gay gesture, and clambered briskly to the pilot's seat of the biplane. When firmly established, he turned the switch of the starting mechanism. The heavy, distinctive hum of the great motor filled that isolated hollow in the Downs like the purring of a dynamo. With a final wave of his hand, Wertheimer grasped the starting-lever. Its _brool_ deepening, the Parrott stirred, shot forward abruptly. In two seconds it was fifty yards distant, its silhouette already blurred, its wheels lifting from the rim of the hollow. Then lightly it leaped, soared, parted the mists, vanished.... For some time Lanyard and Lucy Shannon remained motionless, clinging together, hand-in-hand, listening to the drone that presently dwindled to a mere thread of sound and died out altogether in the obscurity above them. Then, turning, they faced each other, smiling a trace uncertainly, a smile that said: "So all that is finished! ... Or, perhaps, we dreamed it!"... Suddenly, with a low cry, the girl gave herself to Lanyard's arms; and as this happened the mists parted and bright sunlight flooded the hollow in the Downs. THE END 
8931	----	[Transcriber's note: _The Gem Collector_ was revised and republished in 1910 as _The Intrusion of Jimmy_, also known as _A Gentleman of Leisure_. This version, as published in _Ainslee's_, had two chapters headed "Chapter XVIII" and ended with "Chapter XIX"; the last two chapters are now labelled "Chapter XIX" and "Chapter XX." The word "pubrescent" in Chapter VI has been changed to "putrescent."] THE GEM COLLECTOR By P. G. WODEHOUSE Published in _Ainslee's Magazine_, December 1909. CHAPTER I. The supper room of the Savoy Hotel was all brightness and glitter and gayety. But Sir James Willoughby Pitt, baronet, of the United Kingdom, looked round about him through the smoke of his cigarette, and felt moodily that this was a flat world, despite the geographers, and that he was very much alone in it. He felt old. If it is ever allowable for a young man of twenty-six to give himself up to melancholy reflections, Jimmy Pitt might have been excused for doing so, at that moment. Nine years ago he had dropped out, or, to put it more exactly, had been kicked out, and had ceased to belong to London. And now he had returned to find himself in a strange city. Jimmy Pitt's complete history would take long to write, for he had contrived to crowd much into those nine years. Abridged, it may be told as follows: There were two brothers, a good brother and a bad brother. Sir Eustace Pitt, the latter, married money. John, his younger brother, remained a bachelor. It may be mentioned, to check needless sympathy, that there was no rivalry between the two. John Pitt had not the slightest desire to marry the lady of his brother's choice, or any other lady. He was a self-sufficing man who from an early age showed signs of becoming some day a financial magnate. Matters went on much the same after the marriage. John continued to go to the city, Eustace to the dogs. Neither brother had any money of his own, the fortune of the Pitts having been squandered to the ultimate farthing by the sportive gentleman who had held the title in the days of the regency, when White's and the Cocoa Tree were in their prime, and fortunes had a habit of disappearing in a single evening. Four years after the marriage, Lady Pitt died, and the widower, having spent three years and a half at Monte Carlo, working out an infallible system for breaking the bank, to the great contentment of Mons. Blanc and the management in general, proceeded to the gardens, where he shot himself in the orthodox manner, leaving many liabilities, few assets, and one son. The good brother, by this time a man of substance in Lombard Street, adopted the youthful successor to the title, and sent him to a series of schools, beginning with a kindergarten and ending with Eton. Unfortunately Eton demanded from Jimmy a higher standard of conduct than he was prepared to supply, and a week after his seventeenth birthday, his career as an Etonian closed prematurely. John Pitt thereupon delivered an ultimatum. Jimmy could choose between the smallest of small posts in his uncle's business, and one hundred pounds in banknotes, coupled with the usual handwashing and disowning. Jimmy would not have been his father's son if he had not dropped at the money. The world seemed full to him of possibilities for a young man of parts with a hundred pounds in his pocket. He left for Liverpool that day, and for New York on the morrow. For the next nine years he is off the stage, which is occupied by his Uncle John, proceeding from strength to strength, now head partner, next chairman of the company into which the business had been converted, and finally a member of Parliament, silent as a wax figure, but a great comfort to the party by virtue of liberal contributions to its funds. It may be thought curious that he should make Jimmy his heir after what had happened; but it is possible that time had softened his resentment. Or he may have had a dislike for public charities, the only other claimant for his wealth. At any rate, it came about that Jimmy, reading in a Chicago paper that if Sir James Willoughby Pitt, baronet, would call upon Messrs. Snell, Hazlewood, and Delane, solicitors, of Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, he would hear of something to his advantage, had called and heard something very much to his advantage. Wherefore we find him, on this night of July, supping in lonely magnificence at the Savoy, and feeling at the moment far less conscious of the magnificence than of the loneliness. Watching the crowd with a jaundiced eye, Jimmy had found his attention attracted chiefly by a party of three a few tables away. The party consisted of a pretty girl, a lady of middle age and stately demeanor, plainly her mother, and a light-haired, weedy young man of about twenty. It had been the almost incessant prattle of this youth and the peculiarly high-pitched, gurgling laugh which shot from him at short intervals which had drawn Jimmy's notice upon them. And it was the curious cessation of both prattle and laugh which now made him look again in their direction. The young man faced Jimmy; and Jimmy, looking at him, could see that all was not well with him. He was pale. He talked at random. A slight perspiration was noticeable on his forehead. Jimmy caught his eye. There was a hunted look in it. Given the time and the place, there were only two things which could have caused that look. Either the light-haired young man had seen a ghost, or he had suddenly realized that he had not enough money to pay the check. Jimmy's heart went out to the sufferer. He took a card from his case, scribbled the words, "Can I help?" on it, and gave it to a waiter to take to the young man, who was now in a state bordering on collapse. The next moment the light-haired one was at his table, talking in a feverish whisper. "I say," he said, "it's frightfully good of you, old chap. It's frightfully awkward. I've come out with too little money. I hardly like to--What I mean to say is, you've never seen me before, and----" "That's all right," said Jimmy. "Only too glad to help. It might have happened to any one. Will this be enough?" He placed a five-pound note on the table. The young man grabbed at it with a rush of thanks. "I say, thanks fearfully," he said. "I don't know what I'd have done. I'll let you have it back to-morrow. Here's my card. Blunt's my name. Spennie Blunt. Is your address on your card? I can't remember. Oh, by Jove, I've got it in my hand all the time." The gurgling laugh came into action again, freshened and strengthened by its rest. "Savoy Mansions, eh? I'll come round to-morrow. Thanks, frightfully, again old chap. I don't know what I should have done." He flitted back to his table, bearing the spoil, and Jimmy, having finished his cigarette, paid his check, and got up to go. It was a perfect summer night. He looked at his watch. There was time for a stroll on the Embankment before bed. He was leaning on the balustrade, looking across the river at the vague, mysterious mass of buildings on the Surrey side, when a voice broke in on his thoughts. "Say, boss. Excuse me." Jimmy spun round. A ragged man with a crop of fiery red hair was standing at his side. The light was dim, but Jimmy recognized that hair. "Spike!" he cried. The other gaped, then grinned a vast grin of recognition. "Mr. Chames! Gee, dis cops de limit!" Three years had passed since Jimmy had parted from Spike Mullins, Red Spike to the New York police, but time had not touched him. To Jimmy he looked precisely the same as in the old New York days. A policeman sauntered past, and glanced curiously at them. He made as if to stop, then walked on. A few yards away he halted. Jimmy could see him watching covertly. He realized that this was not the place for a prolonged conversation. "Spike," he said, "do you know Savoy Mansions?" "Sure. Foist to de left across de way." "Come on there. I'll meet you at the door. We can't talk here. That cop's got his eye on us." He walked away. As he went, he smiled. The policeman's inspection had made him suddenly alert and on his guard. Yet why? What did it matter to Sir James Pitt, baronet, if the whole police force of London stopped and looked at him? "Queer thing, habit," he said, as he made his way across the road. CHAPTER II. A black figure detached itself from the blacker shadows, and shuffled stealthily to where Jimmy stood on the doorstep. "That you, Spike?" asked Jimmy, in a low voice. "Dat's right, Mr. Chames." "Come on in." He led the way up to his rooms, switched on the electric light, and shut the door. Spike stood blinking at the sudden glare. He twirled his battered hat in his hands. His red hair shone fiercely. Jimmy inspected him out of the corner of his eye, and came to the conclusion that the Mullins finances must be at a low ebb. Spike's costume differed in several important details from that of the ordinary well-groomed man about town. There was nothing of the _flaneur_ about the Bowery boy. His hat was of the soft black felt, fashionable on the East Side of New York. It was in poor condition, and looked as if it had been up too late the night before. A black tail coat, burst at the elbows, stained with mud, was tightly buttoned across his chest. This evidently with the idea of concealing the fact that he wore no shirt--an attempt which was not wholly successful. A pair of gray flannel trousers and boots out of which two toes peeped coyly, completed the picture. Even Spike himself seemed to be aware that there were points in his appearance which would have distressed the editor of a men's fashion paper. "'Scuse dese duds," he said. "Me man's bin an' mislaid de trunk wit' me best suit in. Dis is me number two." "Don't mention it, Spike," said Jimmy. "You look like a matinee idol. Have a drink?" Spike's eye gleamed as he reached for the decanter. He took a seat. "Cigar, Spike?" "Sure. T'anks, Mr. Chames." Jimmy lit his pipe. Spike, after a few genteel sips, threw off his restraint and finished the rest of his glass at a gulp. "Try another," suggested Jimmy. Spike's grin showed that the idea had been well received. Jimmy sat and smoked in silence for a while. He was thinking the thing over. He had met Spike Mullins for the first time in rather curious circumstances in New York, and for four years the other had followed him with a fidelity which no dangers or hardships could affect. Whatever "Mr. Chames" did, said, or thought was to Spike the best possible act, speech, or reflection of which man was capable. For four years their partnership had continued, and then, conducting a little adventure on his own account in Jimmy's absence, Spike had met with one of those accidents which may happen to any one. The police had gathered him in, and he had passed out of Jimmy's life. What was puzzling Jimmy was the problem of what to do with him now that he had reëntered it. Mr. Chames was one man. Sir James Willoughby Pitt, baronet, another. On the other hand, Spike was plainly in low water, and must be lent a helping hand. Spike was looking at him over his glass with respectful admiration. Jimmy caught his eye, and spoke. "Well, Spike," he said. "Curious, us meeting like this." "De limit," agreed Spike. "I can't imagine you three thousand miles away from New York. How do you know the cars still run both ways on Broadway?" A wistful look came into Spike's eye. "I t'ought it was time I give old Lunnon a call. De cops seemed like as if they didn't have no use for me in New York. Dey don't give de glad smile to a boy out of prison." "Poor old Spike," said Jimmy, "you've had bad luck, haven't you?" "Fierce," agreed the other. "But whatever induced you to try for that safe without me? They were bound to get you. You should have waited." "Dat's right, boss, if I never says anudder word. I was a farmer for fair at de game wit'out youse. But I t'ought I'd try to do somet'ing so dat I'd have somet'ing to show youse when you come back. So I says here's dis safe and here's me, and I'll get busy wit' it, and den Mr. Chames will be pleased for fair when he gets back. So I has a try, and dey gets me while I'm at it. We'll cut out dat part." "Well, it's over now, at any rate. What have you been doing since you came to England?" "Gettin' moved on by de cops, mostly. An' sleepin' in de park." "Well, you needn't sleep in the park any more, Spike. You can pitch your moving tent with me. And you'll want some clothes. We'll get those to-morrow. You're the sort of figure they can fit off the peg. You're not too tall, which is a good thing." "Bad t'ing for me, Mr. Chames. If I'd bin taller I'd have stood for being a New York cop, and bin buying a brownstone house on Fifth Avenue by this. It's de cops makes de big money in old Manhattan, dat's who it is." "You're right there," said Jimmy. "At least, partly. I suppose half the New York force does get rich by graft. There are honest men among them, but we didn't happen to meet them." "That's right, we didn't. Dere was old man McEachern." "McEachern! Yes. If any of them got rich, he would be the man. He was the worst grafter of the entire bunch. I could tell you some stories about old Pat McEachern, Spike. If half those yarns were true he must be a wealthy man by now. We shall hear of him running for mayor one of these days." "Say, Mr. Chames, wasn't youse struck on de goil?" "What girl?" said Jimmy quietly. "Old man McEachern's goil, Molly. Dey used to say dat youse was her steady." "If you don't mind, Spike, friend of my youth, we'll cut out that," said Jimmy. "When I want my affairs discussed I'll mention it. Till then--See?" "Sure," said Spike, who saw nothing beyond the fact, dimly realized, that he had said something which had been better left unsaid. Jimmy chewed the stem of his pipe savagely. Spike's words seemed to have touched a spring and let loose feelings which he had kept down for three years. Molly McEachern! So "they" used to say that he was engaged to Molly. He cursed Spike Mullins in his heart, well-meaning, blundering Spike, who was now sitting on the edge of his chair drawing sorrowfully at his cigar and wondering what he had done to give offense. The years fell away from Jimmy, and he was back in New York, standing at the corner of Forty-second Street with half an hour to wait because the fear of missing her had sent him there too early; sitting in Central Park with her while the squirrels came down and begged for nuts; walking--Damn Spike! They had been friends. Nothing more. He had never said a word. Her father had warned her against him. Old Pat McEachern knew how he got his living, and could have put his hand on the author of half a dozen burglaries by which the police had been officially "baffled". That had been his strong point. He had never left tracks. There was never any evidence. But McEachern knew, and he had intervened stormily when he came upon them together. And Molly had stood up for him, till her father had apologized confusedly, raging inwardly the while at his helplessness. It was after that---- "Mr. Chames," said Spike. Jimmy's wits returned. "Hullo?" he said. "Mr. Chames, what's doing here? Put me next to de game. Is it de old lay? You'll want me wit' youse, I guess?" Jimmy laughed, and shut the door on his dreams. "I'd quite forgotten I hadn't told you about myself, Spike. Do you know what a baronet is?" "Search me. What's de answer?" "A baronet's the noblest work of man, Spike. I am one. Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning--or is it art and learning?--die, but leave us still our old nobility. I'm a big man now, Spike, I can tell you." "Gee!" "My position has also the advantage of carrying a good deal of money with it." "Plunks!" "You have grasped it. Plunks. Dollars. Doubloons. I line up with the thickwads now, Spike. I don't have to work to turn a dishonest penny any longer." The horrid truth sank slowly into the other's mind. "Say! What, Mr. Chames? Youse don't need to go on de old lay no more? You're cutting it out for fair?" "That's the idea." Spike gasped. His world was falling about his ears. Now that he had met Mr. Chames again he had looked forward to a long and prosperous partnership in crime, with always the master mind behind him to direct his movements and check him if he went wrong. He had looked out upon the richness of London, and he had said with Blücher: "What a city to loot!" And here was his leader shattering his visions with a word. "Have another drink, Spike," said the lost leader sympathetically. "It's a shock to you, I guess." "I t'ought, Mr. Chames----" "I know you did, and I'm very sorry for you. But it can't be helped. _Noblesse oblige_, Spike. We of the old aristocracy mustn't do these things. We should get ourselves talked about." Spike sat silent, with a long face. Jimmy slapped him on the shoulder. "After all," he said, "living honestly may be the limit, for all we know. Numbers of people do it, I've heard, and enjoy themselves tremendously. We must give it a trial, Spike. We'll go out together and see life. Pull yourself together and be cheerful, Spike." After a moment's reflection the other grinned, howbeit faintly. "That's right," said Jimmy Pitt. "You'll be the greatest success ever in society. All you have to do is to brush your hair, look cheerful, and keep your hands off the spoons. For in society, Spike, they invariably count them after the departure of the last guest." "Sure," said Spike, as one who thoroughly understood this sensible precaution. "And now," said Jimmy, "we'll be turning in. Can you manage sleeping on the sofa for one night?" "Gee, I've bin sleepin' on de Embankment all de last week. Dis is to de good, Mister Chames." CHAPTER III. In the days before the Welshman began to expend his surplus energy in playing football, he was accustomed, whenever the monotony of his everyday life began to oppress him, to collect a few friends and make raids across the border into England, to the huge discomfort of the dwellers on the other side. It was to cope with this habit that Corven Abbey, in Shropshire, came into existence. It met a long-felt want. Ministering to the spiritual needs of the neighborhood in times of peace, it became a haven of refuge when trouble began. From all sides people poured into it, emerging cautiously when the marauders had disappeared. In the whole history of the abbey there is but one instance recorded of a bandit attempting to take the place by storm, and the attack was an emphatic failure. On receipt of one ladle full of molten lead, aimed to a nicety by John the Novice, who seems to have been anything but a novice at marksmanship, this warrior retired, done to a turn, to his mountain fastnesses, and is never heard of again. He would seem, however, to have passed the word round among his friends, for subsequent raiding parties studiously avoided the abbey, and a peasant who had succeeded in crossing its threshold was for the future considered to be "home" and out of the game. Corven Abbey, as a result, grew in power and popularity. Abbot succeeded abbot, the lake at the foot of the hill was restocked at intervals, the lichen grew on the walls; and still the abbey endured. But time, assisted by his majesty, King Henry the Eighth, had done its work. The monks had fled. The walls had crumbled, and in the twentieth century, the abbey was a modern country house, and the owner a rich American. Of this gentleman the world knew but little. That he had made money, and a good deal of it, was certain. His name, Patrick McEachern, suggested Irish parentage, and a slight brogue, noticeable, however, only in moments of excitement, supported this theory. He had arrived in London some four years back, taken rooms at the Albany, and gone into society. England still firmly believes that wealth accrues to every resident of New York by some mysterious process not understandable of the Briton. McEachern and his money were accepted by society without question. His solecisms, which at first were numerous, were passed over as so quaint and refreshing. People liked his rugged good humor. He speedily made friends, among them Lady Jane Blunt, the still youthful widow of a man about town, who, after trying for several years to live at the rate of ten thousand per annum with an income of two and a half, had finally given up the struggle and drank himself peacefully into the tomb, leaving her in sole charge of their one son, Spencer Archbald. Possibly because he was the exact antithesis of the late lamented, Lady Jane found herself drawn to Mr. McEachern. Whatever his faults, he had strength; and after her experience of married life with a weak man, Lady Jane had come to the conclusion that strength was the only male quality worth consideration. When a year later, McEachern's daughter, Molly, had come over, it was Lady Jane who took her under her wing and introduced her everywhere. In the fifth month of the second year of their acquaintance, Mr. McEachern proposed and was accepted. "The bridegroom," said a society paper, "is one of those typical captains of industry of whom our cousins 'across the streak' can boast so many. Tall, muscular, square-shouldered, with the bulldog jaw and twinkling gray eye of the born leader. You look at him and turn away satisfied. You have seen a man!" Lady Jane, who had fallen in love with the abbey some years before, during a visit to the neighborhood, had prevailed upon her square-shouldered lord to turn his twinkling gray eye in that direction, and the captain of industry, with the remark that here, at last, was a real bully old sure-fire English stately home, had sent down builders and their like, not in single spies, but in battalions, with instructions to get busy. The results were excellent. A happy combination of deep purse on the part of the employer and excellent taste on the part of the architect had led to the erection of one of the handsomest buildings in Shropshire. To stand on the hill at the back of the house was to see a view worth remembering. The lower portion of the hill, between the house and the lake, had been cut into broad terraces. The lake itself, with its island with the little boathouse in the centre, was a glimpse of fairyland. Mr. McEachern was not poetical, but he had secured as his private sanctum a room which commanded this view. He was sitting in this room one evening, about a week after the meeting between Spennie and Jimmy Pitt at the Savoy. "See, here, Jane," he was saying, "this is my point. I've been fixing up things in my mind, and this is the way I make it out. I reckon there's no sense in taking risks when you needn't. You've a mighty high-toned bunch of guests here. I'm not saying you haven't. What I say is, it would make us all feel more comfortable if we knew there was a detective in the house keeping his eye skinned. I'm not alluding to any of them in particular, but how are we to know that all these social headliners are on the level?" "If you mean our guests, Pat, I can assure you that they are all perfectly honest." Lady Jane looked out of the window, as she spoke, at a group of those under discussion. Certainly at the moment the sternest censor could have found nothing to cavil at in their movements. Some were playing tennis, some clock golf, and the rest were smoking. She had frequently complained, in her gentle, languid way, of her husband's unhappily suspicious nature. She could never understand it. For her part she suspected no one. She liked and trusted everybody, which was the reason why she was so popular, and so often taken in. Mr. McEachern looked bovine, as was his habit when he was endeavoring to gain a point against opposition. "They may be on the level," he said. "I'm not saying anything against any one. But I've seen a lot of crooks in my time, and it's not the ones with the low brows and the cauliflower ears that you want to watch for. It's the innocent Willies who look as if all they could do was to lead the cotillon and wear bangles on their ankles. I've had a lot to do with them, and it's up to a man that don't want to be stung not to go by what a fellow looks like." "Really, Pat, dear, I sometimes think you ought to have been a policeman. What _is_ the matter?" "Matter?" "You shouted." "Shouted? Not me. Spark from my cigar fell on my hand." "You know, you smoke too much, Pat," said his wife, seizing the opening with the instinct which makes an Irishman at a fair hit every head he sees. "I'm all right, me dear. Faith, I c'u'd smoke wan hondred a day and no harm done." By way of proving the assertion he puffed out with increased vigor at his cigar. The pause gave him time to think of another argument, which might otherwise have escaped him. "When we were married, me dear Jane," he said, "there was a detective in the room to watch the presents. Two of them. I remimber seeing them at once. There go two of the boys, I said to mysilf. I mean," he added hastily, "two of the police force." "But detectives at wedding receptions are quite ordinary. Nobody minds them. You see, the presents are so valuable that it would be silly to risk losing them." "And are there not valuable things here," asked McEachern triumphantly, "which it would be silly to risk losing? And Sir Thomas is coming to-day with his wife. And you know what a deal of jewelry she always takes about her." "Oh, Julia!" said Lady Jane, a little disdainfully. Her late husband's brother Thomas' wife was one of the few people to whom she objected. And, indeed, she was not alone in this prejudice. Few who had much to do with her did like Lady Blunt. "That rope of pearls of hers," said Mr. McEachern, "cost forty thousand pounds, no less, so they say." "So she says. But if you were thinking of bringing down a detective to watch over Julia's necklace, Pat, you needn't trouble. I believe she takes one about with her wherever she goes, disguised as Thomas' valet." "Still, me dear----" "Pat, you're absurd," laughed Lady Jane. "I won't have you littering up the house with great, clumsy detectives. You must remember that you aren't in horrid New York now, where everybody you meet wants to rob you. Who is it that you suspect? Who is the--what is the word you're so fond of? Crook. That's it. Who is the crook?" "I don't want to mention names," said McEachern cautiously, "and I cast no suspicions, but who is that pale, thin Willie who came yesterday? The one that says the clever things that nobody understands?" "Lulu Wesson! Why, _Pat_rick! He's the most delightful boy. What _can_ you suspect him of?" "I don't suspect him of anything. But you'll remimber what I was telling about the sort of boy you want to watch. That's what that boy is. He may be the straightest ever, but if I was told there was a crook in the company, and wasn't put next who it was, he's the boy that would get my vote." "What dreadful nonsense you are talking, Pat. I believe you suspect every one you meet. I suppose you will jump to the conclusion that this man whom Spennie is bringing down with him to-day is a criminal of some sort." "How's that? Spennie bringing a friend?" There was not a great deal of enthusiasm in McEachern's voice. His stepson was not a young man whom he respected very highly. Spennie regarded his stepfather with nervous apprehension, as one who would deal with his shortcomings with a vigor and severity of which his mother was incapable. The change of treatment which had begun after her marriage with the American had had an excellent effect upon him, but it had not been pleasant. As Nebuchadnezzar is reported to have said of his vegetarian diet, it may have been wholesome, but it was not good. McEachern, for his part, regarded Spennie as a boy who would get into mischief unless he had an eye fixed upon him. So he proceeded to fix that eye. "Yes, I must be seeing Harding about getting the rooms ready. Spennie's friend is bringing his man with him." "Who is his friend?" "He doesn't say. He just says he's a man he met in London." "H'm!" "And what does that grunt mean, I should like to know? I believe you've begun to suspect the poor man already, without seeing him." "I don't say I have. But a man can pick up strange people in London." "Pat, you're perfectly awful. I believe you suspect every one you meet. What do you suspect me of, I wonder?" "That's easy answered," said McEachern. "Robbery from the person." "What have I stolen?" "Me heart, me dear," replied McEachern gallantly, with a vast grin. "After that," said his wife, "I think I had better go. I had no idea you could make such pretty speeches. Pat!" "Well, me dear?" "Don't send for that detective. It really wouldn't do. If it got about that we couldn't trust our guests, we should never live it down. You won't, will you?" "Very well, me dear." What followed may afford some slight clue to the secret of Mr. Patrick McEachern's rise in the world. It certainly suggests singleness of purpose, which is one of the essentials of success. No sooner had the door closed behind Lady Jane than he went to his writing table, took pen and paper, and wrote the following letter: _To the Manager, Wragge's Detective Agency,_ _Holborn Bars, London, E. C._ Sir: With ref'ce to my last of the 28th ult., I should be glad if you would send down immediately one of your best men. Am making arrangements to receive him. Shall be glad if you will instruct him as follows, viz. (a) that he shall stay at the village inn in character of American seeing sights of England and anxious to inspect the abbey; (b) that he shall call and ask to see me. I shall then recognize him as old New York friend, and move his baggage from above inn to the abbey. Yours faithfully, P. McEACHERN. P.S.--Kindly not send a rube, but a real smart man. This brief but pregnant letter cost him some pains in its composition. He was not a ready writer. But he completed it at last to his satisfaction. There was a crisp purity in the style which pleased him. He read it over, and put in a couple of commas. Then he placed it in an envelope, and lit another cigar. CHAPTER IV. Jimmy's acquaintance with Spennie Blunt had developed rapidly in the few days following their first meeting. Spennie had called next morning to repay the loan, and two days later had invited Jimmy to come down to Shropshire with him. Which invitation, Jimmy, bored with London, had readily accepted. Spike he had decided to take with him in the rôle of valet. The Bowery boy was probably less fitted for the post than any one has ever been since the world began; but it would not do to leave him at Savoy Mansions. It had been arranged that they should meet Spennie at Paddington station. Accompanied by Spike, who came within an ace of looking almost respectable in new blue serge, Jimmy arrived at Paddington with a quarter of an hour to spare. Nearly all London seemed to be at the station, with the exception of Spennie. Of that light-haired and hearted youth there were no signs. But just as the train was about to start, the missing one came skimming down the platform and hurled himself in. For the first ten minutes he sat panting. At the conclusion of that period, he spoke. "Dash it!" he said. "I've suddenly remembered I never telegraphed home to let 'em know what train we were coming by. Now what'll happen is that there won't be anything at Corven to meet us and take us up to the abbey. And you can't get a cab. They don't grow such things." "How far is it to walk?" "Five solid miles. And uphill most of the way. And I've got a bad foot!" "As a matter of fact," said Jimmy, "it's just possible that we shall be met, after all. While I was waiting for you at Paddington I heard a man asking if he had to change for Corven. He may be going to the abbey, too." "What sort of a looking man?" "Tall. Thin. Rather a wreck." "Probably my Uncle Thomas. Frightful man. Always trying to roast a chap, don't, you know. Still, there's one consolation. If it is Uncle Thomas, they'll have sent the automobile for him. I shouldn't think he'd ever walked more than a hundred yards in his natural, not at a stretch. He generally stays with us in the summer. I wonder if he's bringing Aunt Julia with him. You didn't see her, I suppose, by any chance? Tall, and talks to beat the band. He married her for her money," concluded Spennie charitably. "Isn't she attractive, either?" "Aunt Julia," said Spennie with feeling, "is the absolute limit. Wait till you see her. Sort of woman who makes you feel that your hands are the color of a frightful tomato and the size of a billiard table, if you know what I mean. By gad, though, you should see her jewels. It's perfectly beastly the way that woman crams them on. She's got one rope of pearls which is supposed to have cost forty thousand pounds. Look out for it to-night at dinner. It's worth seeing." Jimmy Pitt was distressed to feel distinct symptoms of a revival of the Old Adam as he listened to these alluring details. It was trying a reformed man a little high, he could not help thinking with some indignation, to dangle forty thousand pounds' worth of pearls before his eyes over the freshly turned sods of the grave of his past. It was the sort of test which might have shaken the resolution of the oldest established brand from the burning. He could not keep his mind from dwelling on the subject. Even the fact that--commercially--there was no need for him to think of such things could not restrain him. He was rich now, and could afford to be honest. He tried to keep that fact steadily before him, but instinct was too powerful. His operations in the old days had never been conducted purely with an eye to financial profit. He had collected gems almost as much for what they were as for what they could bring. Many a time had the faithful Spike bewailed the flaw in an otherwise admirable character, which had induced his leader to keep a portion of the spoil instead of converting it at once into good dollar bills. It had had to go sooner or later, but Jimmy had always clung to it as long as possible. To Spike a diamond brooch of cunning workmanship was merely the equivalent of so many "plunks". That a man, otherwise more than sane, should value a jewel for its own sake was to him an inexplicable thing. Jimmy was still deep in thought when the train, which had been taking itself less seriously for the last half hour, stopping at stations of quite minor importance and generally showing a tendency to dawdle, halted again. A board with the legend "Corven" in large letters showed that they had reached their destination. "Here we are," said Spennie. "Hop out. Now what's the betting that there isn't room for all of us in the bubble?" From farther down the train a lady and gentleman emerged. "That's the man. Is that your uncle?" said Jimmy. "Guilty," said Spennie gloomily. "I suppose we'd better go and tackle them. Come on." They walked up the platform to where Sir Thomas stood smoking a meditative cigar and watching in a dispassionate way the efforts of his wife to bully the solitary porter attached to the station into a frenzy. Sir Thomas was a very tall, very thin man, with cold eyes, and tight, thin lips. His clothes fitted him in the way clothes do fit one man in a thousand. They were the best part of him. His general appearance gave one the idea that his meals did him little good, and his meditations rather less. His conversation--of which there was not a great deal--was designed for the most part to sting. Many years' patient and painstaking sowing of his wild oats had left him at fifty-six with few pleasures; but among those that remained he ranked high the discomfiting of his neighbors. "This is my friend Pitt, uncle," said Spennie, presenting Jimmy with a motion of the hand. Sir Thomas extended three fingers. Jimmy extended two, and the handshake was not a success. At this point in the interview, Spike came up, chuckling amiably, with a magazine in his hand. "P'Chee!" said Spike. "Say, Mr. Chames, de mug what wrote dis piece must ha' bin livin' out in de woods for fair. His stunt ain't writin', sure. Say, dere's a gazebo what wants to get busy wit' de heroine's jools what's locked in de drawer in de dressin' room. So dis mug, what do youse t'ink he does? Why----" "Another friend of yours, Spennie?" inquired Sir Thomas politely, eying the red-haired speaker with interest. "It's----" He looked appealingly at Jimmy. "It's only my man," said Jimmy. "Spike," he added in an undertone, "to the woods. Chase yourself. It's not up to you to do stunts on this beat. Fade away." "Sure," said the abashed Spike, restored to a sense of his position. "Dat's right. I've got wheels in me coco, that's what I've got, comin' buttin' in here. Sorry, Mr. Chames. Sorry, gents. Me for the tall grass." He trotted away. "Your man seems to have a pretty taste in literature," said Sir Thomas to Jimmy. "Well, my dear, finished your chat with the porter?" Lady Blunt had come up, flushed and triumphant, having left the solitary porter a demoralized wreck. "I'm through," she announced crisply. "Well, Spencer? How are you? Who's this? Don't stand gaping, child. Who's your friend?" Spennie explained with some incoherence that his name was Pitt. His uncle had shaken him; the arrival of his aunt seemed to unnerve him completely. "Pleased to meet you," snapped Lady Blunt. "Spencer, where are your trunks? Left them behind, I suppose? No? Well, that's a surprise. Tell that porter to look after them. If you have any trouble with him, mention it to me. _I'll_ make him jump around. Where's the automobile? Outside? Where? Take me to it." Lady Blunt, when conversing, resembled a Maxim gun more than anything else in the world. "I'm afraid," said Spennie in an abject manner, as they left the station, "that it will be rather a bit of a frightful squash--what I mean to say is, I hardly think we shall all find room in the auto. I see they have only sent the small one." Lady Blunt stopped short, and fixed him with a glittering eye. "I know what it is, Spencer," she said. "You never telegraphed to your mother to tell her what time you were going to arrive." Spennie opened his mouth feebly, but apparently changing his mind, made no reply. "My dear," said Sir Thomas smoothly, "we must not expect too much of Spennie." "Pshaw!" This was a single shot from the Maxim. The baited youth looked vainly for assistance to Jimmy. "But--er--aunt," said Spennie. "Really, I--er--I only just caught the train. Didn't I, Pitt?" "What? Oh, yes. Got in just as it was moving." "That was it. I really hadn't time to telegraph. Had I, Pitt?" "Not a minute." "And how was it you were so late?" Spennie plunged into an explanation, feeling all the time that he was making things worse for himself. Nobody is at his best in the matter of explanations if a lady whom he knows to be possessed of a firm belief in the incurable weakness of his intellect is looking fixedly at him during the recital. A prolonged conversation with Lady Blunt always made him feel exactly as if he were being tied into knots. "All this," said Sir Thomas, as his nephew paused for breath, "is very, very characteristic of our dear Spennie." Our dear Spennie broke into a perspiration. "However," continued Sir Thomas, "there's room for either you or----" "Pitt," said Jimmy. "P--i double t." Sir Thomas bowed. "In front with the chauffeur, if you care to take the seat." "I'll walk," said Jimmy. "I'd rather." "Frightfully good of you, old chap," whispered Spennie. "Sure you don't mind? I do hate walking, and my foot's hurting fearfully." "Which is my way?" "Straight as you can go. You go to the----" "Spennie," said Sir Thomas suavely, "your aunt expresses a wish to arrive at the abbey in time for dinner. If you could manage to come to some arrangement about that seat----" Spennie climbed hurriedly into the automobile. The last Jimmy saw of him was a hasty vision of him being prodded in the ribs by Lady Blunt's parasol, while its owner said something to him which, judging by his attitude, was not pleasant. He watched them out of sight, and started to follow at a leisurely pace. It certainly was an ideal afternoon for a country walk. The sun was just hesitating whether to treat the time as afternoon or evening. Eventually it decided that it was evening, and moderated its beams. After London, the country was deliciously fresh and cool. Jimmy felt, as the scent of the hedges came to him, that the only thing worth doing in the world was to settle down somewhere with three acres and a cow, and become pastoral. There was a marked lack of traffic on the road. Once he met a cart, and once a flock of sheep with a friendly dog. Sometimes a rabbit would dash out into the road, stop to listen, and dart into the opposite hedge, all hind legs and white scut. But except for these he was alone in the world. And gradually there began to be borne in upon him the conviction that he had lost his way. It is difficult to judge distance when one is walking, but it certainly seemed to Jimmy that he must have covered five miles by this time. He must have mistaken the way. He had certainly come straight. He could not have come straighter. On the other hand, it would be quite in keeping with the cheap substitute which served Spennie Blunt in place of a mind that he should have forgotten to mention some important turning. Jimmy sat down by the roadside. As he sat, there came to him from down the road the sound of a horse's feet, trotting. He got up. Here was somebody at last who would direct him. The sound came nearer. The horse turned the corner; and Jimmy saw with surprise that it bore no rider. "Hullo!" he said. "Accident? And, by Jove, a side saddle!" The curious part of it was that the horse appeared in no way a wild horse. It did not seem to be running away. It gave the impression of being out for a little trot on its own account, a sort of equine constitutional. Jimmy stopped the horse, and led it back the way it had come. As he turned the bend in the road, he saw a girl in a riding habit running toward him. She stopped running when she caught sight of him, and slowed down to a walk. "Thank you _so much_," she said, taking the reins from him. "Oh, Dandy, you naughty old thing." Jimmy looked at her flushed, smiling face, and uttered an exclamation of astonishment. The girl was staring at him, open-eyed. "Molly!" he cried. "Jimmy!" And then a curious feeling of constraint fell simultaneously upon them both. CHAPTER V. "How are you, Molly?" "Quite well, thank you, Jimmy." A pause. "You're looking very well." "I'm feeling very well. How are you?" "Quite well, thanks. Very well, indeed" Another pause. And then their eyes met, and at the same moment they burst out laughing. "Your manners are _beautiful_, Jimmy. And I'm so glad you're so well! What an extraordinary thing us meeting like this. I thought you were in New York." "I thought you were. You haven't altered a bit, Molly." "Nor have you. How queer this is! I can't understand it." "Nor can I. I don't want to. I'm satisfied without. Do you know before I met you I was just thinking I hadn't a single friend in this country. I'm on my way to stay with a man I've only known a few days, and his people, whom I don't know at all, and a bunch of other guests, whom I've never heard of, and his uncle, who's a sort of human icicle, and his aunt, who makes you feel like thirty cents directly she starts to talk to you, and the family watchdog, who will probably bite me. But now! You must live near here or you wouldn't be chasing horses about this road." "I live at a place called Corven Abbey." "What Corven Abbey? Why, that's where I'm going." "Jimmy! Oh, I see. You're Spennie's friend. But where is Spennie?" "At the abbey by now. He went in the auto with his uncle and aunt." "How did you meet Spennie?" "Oh, I did a very trifling Good Samaritan act, for which he was unduly grateful, and he adopted me from that moment." "How long have you been living in England, then? I never dreamed of you being here." "I've been on this side about a week. If you want my history in a nutshell, it's this. Rich uncle. Poor nephew. Deceased uncle. Rich nephew. I'm a man with money now. Lots of money." "How nice for you, Jimmy. Father came into money, too. That's how I come to be over here. I wish you and father had got on better together." "Your father, my dear Molly, has a manner with people he is not fond of which purists might call slightly abrupt. Perhaps things will be different, now." The horse gave a sudden whinny. "I wish you wouldn't do that sort of thing without warning," said Jimmy to it plaintively. "He knows he's near home, and he knows it's his dinner time. There, now you can see the abbey. How do you like it?" They had reached a point in the road where the fields to the right sloped sharply downward. A few hundred yards away, backed by woods, stood the beautiful home which ex-Policeman McEachern had caused to be builded for him. The setting sun lit up the waters of the lake. No figures were to be seen moving in the grounds. The place resembled a palace of sleep. "Well?" said Molly. "By Jove!" "Isn't it?" said Molly. "I'm so glad you like it. I always feel as if I had invented everything round here. It hurts me if people don't appreciate it. Once I took Sir Thomas Blunt up here. It was as much as I could do to induce him to come at all. He simply won't walk. When we got to where we are standing now, I pointed and said: 'There!'" "And what did he do? Moan with joy?" "He grunted, and said it struck him as rather rustic." "Beast! I met Sir Thomas when we got off the train. Spennie Blunt introduced me to him. He seemed to bear it pluckily, but with some difficulty. I think we had better be going, or they will be sending out search parties." "By the way, Jimmy," said Molly, as they went down the hill. "Can you act?" "Can I what?" "Act. In theatricals, you know." "I've never tried. But I've played poker, which I should think is much the same." "We are going to do a play, and we want another man. The man who was going to play one of the parts has had to go back to London." "Poor devil! Fancy having to leave a place like this and go back to that dingy, overrated town." * * * * * The big drawing-room of the abbey was full when they arrived. Tea was going on in a desultory manner. In a chair at the far end of the room, Sir Thomas Blunt surveyed the scene gloomily through the smoke of a cigarette. The sound of Lady Blunt's voice had struck their ears as they opened the door. The Maxim gun was in action with no apparent prospect of jamming. The target of the moment was a fair, tired-looking lady, with a remarkable resemblance to Spennie. Jimmy took her to be his hostess. There was a resigned expression on her face, which he thoroughly understood. He sympathized with her. The other occupants of the room stared for a moment at Jimmy in the austere manner peculiar to the Briton who sees a stranger, and then resumed their respective conversations. One of their number, a slight, pale, young man, as scientifically clothed as Sir Thomas, left his group, and addressed himself to Molly. "Ah, here you are, Miss McEachern," he said. "At last. We were all getting so anxious." "Really?" said Molly. "That's very kind of you, Mr. Wesson." "I assure you, yes. Positively. A gray gloom had settled upon us. We pictured you in all sorts of horrid situations. I was just going to call for volunteers to scour the country, or whatever it is that one does in such circumstances. I used to read about it in books, but I have forgotten the technical term. I am relieved to find that you are not even dusty, though it would have been more romantic if you could have managed a little dust here and there. But don't consider my feelings, Miss McEachern, please." Molly introduced Jimmy to the newcomer. They shook hands, Jimmy with something of the wariness of a boxer in the ring. He felt an instinctive distrust of this man. Why, he could not have said. Perhaps it was a certain subtle familiarity in his manner of speaking to Molly that annoyed him. Jimmy objected strongly to any one addressing her as if there existed between them some secret understanding. Already the mood of the old New York days was strong upon him. His instinct then had been to hate all her male acquaintances with an unreasoning hatred. He found himself in much the same frame of mind, now. "So you're Spennie's friend," said Mr. Wesson, "the man who's going to show us all how to act, what?" "I believe there is some idea of my being a 'confused noise without', or something." "Haven't they asked you to play _Lord Algernon_?" inquired Wesson, with more animation than he usually allowed himself to exhibit. "Who is _Lord Algernon_?" "Only a character in the piece we are acting." "What does he do?" "He talks to me most of the time," said Molly. "Then," said Jimmy decidedly, "I seem to see myself making a big hit." "It's a long part if you aren't used to that sort of thing," said Wesson. He had hoped that the part with its wealth of opportunity would have fallen to himself. "I am used to it," said Jimmy. "Thanks." "If that little beast's after Molly," thought Jimmy, "there will be trouble." "Come along," said Molly, "and be introduced, and get some tea." "Well, Molly, dear," said Lady Jane, with a grateful smile at the interruption, "we didn't know what had become of you. Did Dandy give you trouble?" "Dandy's a darling, and wouldn't do anything of the sort if you asked him to. He's a kind little 'oss, as Thomas says. He only walked away when I got off to pick some roses, and I couldn't catch him. And then I met Jimmy." Jimmy bowed. "I hope you aren't tired out," said Lady Jane to him. "We thought you would never arrive. It's such a long walk. It was really too careless of Spennie not to let us know when he expected you." "I was telling Spencer in the automobile," put in Lady Blunt, with ferocity, "that _my_ father would have horsewhipped him if he had been a son of his. He would." "Really, Julia!" protested Lady Jane rather faintly. "That's so. And I don't care who knows it. A boy doesn't want to forget things if he's going to make his way in the world. I told Spencer so in the automobile." Jimmy had noticed that Spennie was not in the room. He now understood his absence. After the ride he had probably felt that an hour or two passed out of his aunt's society would not do him any harm. He was now undergoing a rest cure, Jimmy imagined, in the billiard room. "I can assure you," said he, by way of lending a helping hand to the absent one, "I really preferred to walk. I have only just landed in England from New York, and it's quite a treat to walk on an English country road again." "Are you from New York? I wonder if----" "Jimmy's an old friend," said Molly. "We knew him very well indeed. It was such a surprise meeting him." "How interesting," said Lady Jane languidly, as if the intellectual strain of the conversation had been too much for her. "You will have such lots to talk about, won't you?" "I say," said Jimmy, as they moved away, "who is that fellow Wesson?" "Oh, a man," said Molly vaguely. "There's no need to be fulsome," said Jimmy. "He can't hear." "Mother likes him. I don't." "Mother?" "Hullo," said Molly, "there's father." The door had opened while they were talking, and Mr. Patrick McEachern had walked solidly into the room. The ornaments on the Chippendale tables jingled as he came. Secretly he was somewhat embarrassed at finding himself in the midst of so many people. He had not yet mastered the art of feeling at home in his own house. At meals he did not fear his wife's guests so much. Their attention was in a manner distributed at such times, instead of being, as now, focused upon himself. He stood there square and massive, outwardly the picture of all that was rugged and independent, looking about him for a friendly face. To offer a general remark, or to go boldly and sit down beside one of those dazzling young ladies, like some heavyweight spider beside a Miss Muffet, was beyond him. In his time he had stopped runaway horses, clubbed mad dogs, and helped to break up East Side gang fights, when the combatants on both sides were using their guns lavishly and impartially; but his courage failed him here. "Why," said Jimmy, "is your father here, too? I didn't know that." To himself he reviled his luck. How much would he see of Molly now? Her father's views on himself were no sealed book to him. Molly looked at him in surprise. "Didn't know?" she said. "Didn't I tell you the place belonged to father?" "What!" said Jimmy. "This house?" "Yes. Of course." "And--by gad, I've got it. He has married Spennie Blunt's mother." "Yes." "Well, I'm--surprised." Suddenly he began to chuckle. "What _is_ it, Jimmy?" "Why--why, I've just grasped the fact that your father--your father, mind you--is my host. I'm the honored guest. At his house!" The chuckle swelled into a laugh. The noise attracted McEachern's attention, and, looking in the direction whence it proceeded, he caught sight of Molly. With a grin of joy, he made for the sofa. "Well, father, dear?" said Molly nervously. Mr. McEachern was staring horribly at Jimmy, who had risen to his feet. "How do you do, Mr. McEachern?" The ex-policeman continued to stare. "Father," said Molly in distress. "Father, let me present--I mean, don't you remember Jimmy? You must remember Jimmy, father! Jimmy Pitt, whom you used to know in New York." CHAPTER VI. On his native asphalt there are few situations capable of throwing the New York policeman off his balance. In that favored clime, _savoir faire_ is represented by a shrewd left hook at the jaw, and a masterful stroke of the truncheon amounts to a satisfactory repartee. Thus shall you never take the policeman of Manhattan without his answer. In other surroundings, Mr. Patrick McEachern would have known how to deal with his young acquaintance, Mr. Jimmy Pitt. But another plan of action was needed here. First of all, the hints on etiquette with which Lady Jane had favored him, from time to time, and foremost came the mandate: "Never make a scene." Scenes, Lady Jane had explained--on the occasion of his knocking down an objectionable cabman during their honeymoon trip--were of all things what polite society most resolutely abhorred. The natural man in him must be bound in chains. The sturdy blow must give way to the honeyed word. A cold "Really!" was the most vigorous retort that the best circles would countenance. It had cost Mr. McEachern some pains to learn this lesson, but he had done it; and he proceeded on the present occasion to conduct himself high and disposedly, according to instructions from headquarters. The surprise of finding an old acquaintance in this company rendered him dumb for a brief space, during which Jimmy looked after the conversation. "How do you do, Mr. McEachern?" inquired Jimmy genially. "Quite a surprise meeting you in England. A pleasant surprise. By the way, one generally shakes hands in the smartest circles. Yours seem to be down there somewhere. Might I trouble you? Right. Got it? Thanks!" He bent forward, possessed himself of Mr. McEachern's right hand, which was hanging limply at its proprietor's side, shook it warmly, and replaced it. "'Wahye?" asked Mr. McEachern gruffly, giving a pleasing air of novelty to the hackneyed salutation by pronouncing it as one word. He took some little time getting into his stride when carrying on polite conversation. "Very well, thank you. You're looking as strong as ever, Mr. McEachern." The ex-policeman grunted. In a conversational sense, he was sparring for wind. Molly had regained her composure by this time. Her father was taking the thing better than she had expected. "It's Jimmy, father, dear," she said. "Jimmy Pitt." "Dear old James," murmured the visitor. "I know, me dear, I know. Wahye?" "Still well," replied Jimmy cheerfully. "Sitting up, you will notice," he added, waving a hand in the direction of his teacup, "and taking nourishment. No further bulletins will be issued." "Jimmy is staying here, father. He is the friend Spennie was bringing." "This is the friend that Spennie brought," said Jimmy in a rapid undertone. "This is the maiden all forlorn who crossed the seas, and lived in the house that sheltered the friend that Spennie brought." "I see, me dear," said Mr. McEachern slowly. "'Wah----" "No, I've guessed that one already," said Jimmy. "Ask me another." Molly looked reproachfully at him. His deplorable habit of chaffing her father had caused her trouble in the old days. It may be admitted that this recreation of Jimmy's was not in the best taste; but it must also be remembered that the relations between the two had always been out of the ordinary. Great as was his affection for Molly, Jimmy could not recollect a time when war had not been raging in a greater or lesser degree between the ex-policeman and himself. "It is very kind of you to invite me down here," said he. "We shall be able to have some cozy chats over old times when I was a wanderer on the face of the earth, and you----" "Yis, yis," interrupted Mr. McEachern hastily, "somewhere ilse, aftherward." "You shall choose time and place, of course. I was only going to ask you how you liked leaving the----" "United States?" put in Mr. McEachern, with an eagerness which broadened his questioner's friendly smile, as the Honorable Louis Wesson came toward them. "Well, I'm not after saying it was not a wrinch at firrst, but I considered it best to lave Wall Street--Wall Street, ye understand, before----" "I see. Before you fell a victim to the feverish desire for reckless speculation which is so marked a characteristic of the American business man, what?" "That's it," said the other, relieved. "I, too, have been speculating," said Mr. Wesson, "as to whether you would care to show me the rose garden, Miss McEachern, as you promised yesterday. Of all flowers, I love roses best. You remember Bryant's lines, Miss McEachern? 'The rose that lives its little hour is prized beyond the sculptured flower.'" Jimmy interposed firmly. "I'm very sorry," he said, "but the fact is Miss McEachern has just promised to take me with her to feed the fowls. "I gamble on fowls," he thought. "There must be some in a high-class establishment of this kind." "I'd quite forgotten," said Molly. "I thought you had. We'd better start at once. Nothing upsets a fowl more than having to wait for dinner." "Nonsense, me dear Molly," said Mr. McEachern bluffly. "Run along and show Mr. Wesson the roses. Nobody wants to waste time over a bunch of hens." "Perhaps not," said Jimmy thoughtfully, "perhaps not. I might be better employed here, amusing the people by telling them all about our old New York days and----" Mr. McEachern might have been observed, and was so observed by Jimmy, to swallow somewhat convulsively. "But as Molly promised ye----" said he. "Just so," said Jimmy. "My own sentiments, neatly expressed. Shall we start, Miss McEachern?" "That fellah," said Mr. Wesson solemnly to his immortal soul, "is a damn bounder. _And_ cad," he added after a moment's reflection. The fowls lived in a little world of noise and smells at the back of the stables. The first half of the journey thither was performed in silence. Molly's cheerful little face was set in what she probably imagined to be a forbidding scowl. The tilt of her chin spoke of displeasure. "If a penny would be any use to you," said Jimmy, breaking the tension. "I'm not at all pleased with you," said Molly severely. "How _can_ you say such savage things! And me an orphan, too! What's the trouble? What have I done?" "You know perfectly well. Making fun of father like that." "My dear girl, he loved it. Brainy badinage of that sort is exchanged every day in the best society. You should hear dukes and earls! The wit! the _esprit_! The flow of soul! Mine is nothing to it. What's this in the iron pot? Is this what you feed them? Queer birds, hens--I wouldn't touch the stuff for a fortune. It looks perfectly poisonous. Flock around, you pullets. Come in your thousands. All bad nuts returned, and a souvenir goes with every corpse. A little more of this putrescent mixture for you, sir. Certainly, pick up your dead, pick up your dead." An unwilling dimple appeared on Molly's chin, like a sunbeam through clouds. "All the same," she said, "you ought to be ashamed of yourself, Jimmy." "I haven't time when I find myself stopping in the same house with a girl I've been looking for for three years." Molly looked away. There was silence for a moment. "Used you ever to think of me?" she said quietly. That curious constraint which had fallen upon Jimmy in the road came to him again, now, as sobering as a blow. Something which he could not define had changed the atmosphere. Suddenly in an instant, like a shallow stream that runs babbling over the stones into some broad, still pool, the note of their talk had deepened. "Yes," he said simply. He could find no words for what he wished to say. "I've thought of you--often," said Molly. He took a step toward her. But the moment had passed. Her mood had changed in a flash, or seemed to have changed. The stream babbled on over the stones again. "Be careful, Jimmy! You nearly touched me with the spoon. I don't want to be covered with that horrible stuff. Look at that poor, little chicken out there in the cold. It hasn't had a morsel." Jimmy responded to her lead. There was nothing else for him to do. "It's in luck," he said. "Give it a spoonful." "It can have one if it likes. But it's taking big risks. Here you are, Hercules. Pitch in." He scraped the last spoonful out of the iron pot, and they began to walk back to the house. "You're very quiet, Jimmy," said Molly. "I was thinking." "What about?" "Lots of things." "New York?" "That among others." "Dear old New York," said Molly, with a little sigh. "I'm not sure it wasn't--I mean, I sometimes wish--oh, you know. I mean it's lovely here, but it _was_ nice in the old days, wasn't it, Jimmy? It's a pity that things change, isn't it?" "It depends." "What do you mean?" "I don't mind things changing, if people don't." "Do you think I've changed? You said I hadn't when we met in the road." "You haven't, as far as looks go." "Have I changed in other ways?" Jimmy looked at her. "I don't know," he said slowly. They were in the hall, now. Keggs had just left after beating the dressing gong. The echoes of it still lingered. Molly paused on the bottom step. "I haven't, Jimmy," she said; and ran on up the stairs. CHAPTER VII. Jimmy dressed for dinner in a very exalted frame of mind that night. It seemed to him that he had awakened from a sort of a stupor. Life was so much fuller of possibilities than he had imagined a few days back. The sudden acquisition of his uncle's money had, in a manner, brought him to a halt. Till then the exhilarating feeling of having his hand against the world had lent a zest to life. There had been no monotony. There had always been obstacles. One may hardly perhaps dilate on the joys of toil in connection with him, considering the precise methods by which he had supported himself; but nevertheless his emotions when breaking the law of the United States had been akin to those of the honest worker in so far that his operations had satisfied the desire for action which possesses every man of brains and energy. They had given him something to do. He had felt alive. His uncle's legacy had left him with a sensation of abrupt stoppage. Life had suddenly become aimless. But now everything was altered. Once more the future was a thing of importance, to-morrow a day to be looked forward to with keen expectation. He tried to throw his mind back to the last occasion when he had seen Molly. He could not remember that he had felt any excessive emotion. Between _camaraderie_ and love there is a broad gulf. It had certainly never been bridged in the old New York days. Then the frank friendliness of which the American girl appears to have the monopoly had been Molly's chief charm in his eyes. It had made possible a comradeship such as might have existed between men. But now there was a difference. England seemed to have brought about a subtle change in her. Instinctively he felt that the old friendship, adequate before, was not enough now. He wanted more. The unexpected meeting, following so closely upon Spike's careless words in London, had shown him his true feelings. Misgivings crept upon him. Had he a right? Was it fair? He looked back at the last eight years of his life with the eye of an impartial judge. He saw them stripped of the glamour which triumphant cunning had lent them; saw them as they would appear to Molly. He scowled at his reflection in the glass. "You've been a bad lot, my son," he said. "There's only one thing in your favor; and that is the fact that you've cut it all out for keeps. We must be content with that." There was a furtive rap at the door. "Hullo?" said Jimmy. "Yes?" The door opened slowly. A grin, surmounted by a mop of red hair, appeared round the edge of it. "Well, Spike. Come in. What's the matter?" The rest of Mr. Mullins entered the room. "Gee, Mr. Chames, I wasn't sure dat dis was your room. Say, who do youse t'ink I nearly bumped me coco ag'in out in de corridor? Why, old man McEachern, de cop. Dat's right!" "Yes?" "Sure. Say, what's he doin' on dis beat? Youse c'u'd have knocked me down wit' a bit of poiper when I see him. I pretty near went down and out. Dat's right. Me heart ain't got back home yet." "Did he recognize you?" "Sure! He starts like an actor on top de stoige when he sees he's up against de plot to ruin him, an' he gives me de fierce eye." "Well?" "I was wondering was I on Third Avenue, or was I standing on me coco, or what was I doin', anyhow. Den I slips off and chases meself up here. Say, Mr. Chames, can _youse_ put me wise? What's de game? What's old man McEachern doin' stunts dis side for?" "It's all right, Spike. Keep calm. I can explain. Mr. McEachern owns the house." "On your way, Mr. Chames! What's dat?" "This is his house we're in, now. He left the force three years ago, came over here, and bought this place. And here we are again, all gathered together under the same roof, like a jolly little family party." Spike's open mouth bore witness to his amazement. "Den all dis----" "Belongs to him? That's it. We are his guests, Spike." "But what's he goin' to do?" "I couldn't say. I'm expecting to hear shortly. But we needn't worry ourselves. The next move's with him. If he wants to say anything about it, he must come to me." "Sure. It's up to him," agreed Spike. "I'm quite comfortable. Speaking for myself, I'm having a good time. How are you getting on downstairs?" "De limit, Mr. Chames. Honest, I'm on pink velvet. Dey's an old gazebo, de butler, Keggs his name is, dat's de best ever at handing out long woids. I sit and listen. Dey calls me Mr. Mullins down dere," said Spike, with pride. "Good. I'm glad you're all right. There's no reason why we shouldn't have an excellent time here. I don't think that Mr. McEachern will turn us out, after he's heard one or two little things I have to say to him. Just a few reminiscences of the past which may interest him. I have the greatest affection for Mr. McEachern, though he did club me once with his night stick; but nothing shall make me stir from here for the next week at any rate." "Not on your life," agreed Spike. "Say, Mr. Chames, he must have got a lot of plunks to buy dis place. And I know how he got dem, too. Dat's right. I comes from old New York meself." "Hush, Spike, this is scandal!" "Sure," said the Bowery boy doggedly, securely mounted now on his favorite hobby horse. "I knows, and youse knows, Mr. Chames. Gee, I wish I'd bin a cop. But I wasn't tall enough. Dey's de fellers wit' de long green in der banks. Look at dis old McEachern. Money to boin a wet dog wit', he's got, and never a bit of woik for it from de start to de finish. An' look at me, Mr. Chames." "I do, Spike, I do." "Look at me. Getting busy all de year round, woiking to beat de band all----" "In prisons oft," said Jimmy. "Dat's right. And chased all roun' de town. And den what? Why, to de bad at de end of it all. Say, it's enough to make a feller----" "Turn honest." said Jimmy. "You've hit it, Spike. You'll be glad some day that you reformed." But on this point Spike seemed to be doubtful. He was silent for a moment; then, as if following upon a train of thoughts, he said: "Mr. Chames, dis is a fine big house." "Splendid!" "Say, couldn't we----" "Spike!" said Jimmy warningly. "Well, couldn't we?" said Spike doggedly. "It ain't often youse butts into a dead-easy proposition like dis one. We shouldn't have to do a t'ing excep' git busy. De stuff's just lying about, Mr. Chames." "I have noticed it." "Aw, it's a waste to leave it." "Spike," said Jimmy, "I warned you of this. I begged you to be on your guard, to fight against your professional instincts; and you must do it. I know it's hard, but it's got to be done. Try and occupy your mind. Collect butterflies." Spike shuffled in gloomy silence. "'Member dose jools we got in de hotel de year before I was copped?" he asked at length irrelevantly. Jimmy finished tying his tie, looked at the result for a moment in the glass, then replied: "Yes, I remember." "We got anudder key dat fitted de door. 'Member dat?" Jimmy nodded. "And some of dose knock-out drops. What's dat? Chloryform? Dat's right. An' we didn't do a t'ing else. An' we lived for de rest of de year on dose jools." Spike paused. "Dat was to de good," he said wistfully. Jimmy made no reply. "Dere's a loidy here," continued Spike, addressing the chest of drawers, "dat's got a necklace of jools what's wort' two hundred thousand plunks." "I know." Silence again. "Two hundred thousand plunks," breathed Spike. "What a necklace!" thought Jimmy. "Keggs told me dat. De old gazebo what hands out de long woids. I could find out where dey're kept dead easy.' "What a king of necklaces!" thought Jimmy. "Shall I, Mr. Chames?" "Shall you what?" asked Jimmy, coming out of his thoughts with a start. "Why, find out where de loidy keeps de jools." "Confound you, Spike! How often am I to tell you that I have done with all that sort of thing forever? I never want to see or touch another stone that doesn't belong to me. I don't want to hear about them. They don't interest me." "Sorry, Mr. Chames. But dey must cop de limit for fair, dose jools. Two hundred t'ousand plunks! What's dat dis side?" "Forty thousand pounds," said Jimmy shortly. "Now, drop it." "Yes, Mr. Chames. Can I help youse wit' de duds?" "No, thanks. Spike; I'm through, now. You might just give me a brush down, though, if you don't mind. Not that. That's a hair brush. Try the big black one." "Dis is a dude suit for fair," observed Spike, pausing in his labors. "Glad you like it, Spike." "It's de limit. Excuse me. How much of de long green did youse pungle for it, Mr. Chames?" "I really can't remember," said Jimmy, with a laugh. "I could look up the bill and let you know. Seventy guineas, I fancy." "What's dat--guineas? Is dat more dan a pound?" "A shilling more. Why?" Spike resumed his brushing. "What a lot of dude suits youse could get," he observed meditatively, "if youse had dose jools." "Oh, _curse_ the jewels for the hundredth time!" snapped Jimmy. "Yes, Mr. Chames. But, say, dat must be a boid of a necklace, dat one. You'll be seeing it at de dinner, Mr. Chames." Whatever comment Jimmy might have made on this insidious statement was checked by a sudden bang on the door. Almost simultaneously the handle turned. "P'Chee!" cried Spike. "It's de cop!" Jimmy smiled pleasantly. "Come in, Mr. McEachern," he said, "come in. Journeys end in lovers meeting. You know my friend, Mr. Mullins, I think? Shut the door, and sit down and let's talk of many things." CHAPTER VIII. "It's a conspiracy!" thundered Mr. McEachern. He stood in the doorway, breathing heavily. It has been shown that the ex-policeman was somewhat prone to harbor suspicions of those round about him, and at the present moment his mind was aflame. Indeed, a more trusting man might have been excused for feeling a little doubtful as to the intentions of Jimmy and Spike. When McEachern had heard that his stepson had brought home a casual London acquaintance, he had suspected the existence of hidden motives on the part of the unknown. Spennie, he had told himself, was precisely the sort of youth to whom the professional bunko-steerer would attach himself with shouts of joy. Never, he had assured himself, had there been a softer proposition than his stepson since bunko-steering became a profession. When he found that the strange visitor was Jimmy Pitt, his suspicions had increased a thousandfold. And when, going to his dressing room to get ready for dinner, he had nearly run into Spike Mullins, Red Spike of shameful memory, his frame of mind had been that of a man to whom a sudden ray of light reveals the fact that he is on the very brink of a black precipice. Jimmy and Spike had been a firm in New York. And here they were, together again, in his house in Shropshire. To say that the thing struck McEachern as sinister is to put the matter baldly. There was once a gentleman who remarked that he smelt a rat and saw it floating in the air. Ex-constable McEachern smelt a regiment of rats, and the air seemed to him positively congested with them. His first impulse had been to rush to Jimmy's room there and then; but Lady Jane had trained him well. Though the heavens might fall, he must not be late for dinner. So he went and dressed, and an obstinate tie put the finishing touches to his wrath. Jimmy regarded him coolly, without moving from the chair in which he had seated himself. Spike, on the other hand, seemed embarrassed. He stood first on one leg and then on the other, as if he were testing the respective merits of each, and would make a definite choice later on. "Ye scoundrels!" growled McEachern. Spike, who had been standing for a few moments on his right leg, and seemed at last to have come to a decision, hastily changed to the left, and grinned feebly. "Say, youse won't want me any more, Mr. Chames?" he whispered. "No; you can go, Spike." "Ye stay where y'are, ye red-headed limb." "Run along, Spike!" said Jimmy. The Bowery boy looked doubtfully at the huge form of the ex-policeman, which blocked access to the door. "Would you mind letting my man pass?" said Jimmy. "Ye stay----" began McEachern. Jimmy got up, and walked round him to the door, which he opened. Spike shot out like a rabbit released from a trap. He was not lacking in courage, but he disliked embarrassing interviews, and it struck him that Mr. Chames was the man to handle a situation of this kind. He felt that he himself would only be in the way. "Now we can talk comfortably," said Jimmy, going back to his chair. McEachern's deep-set eyes gleamed, and his forehead grew red; but he mastered his feelings. "An' now," said he, "perhaps ye'll explain!" "What exactly?" asked Jimmy. "What ye're doin' here." "Nothing at the moment." "Ye know what I mane. Why are ye here, you and that red-headed devil?" He jerked his head in the direction of the door. "I am here because I was very kindly invited to come by your stepson." "I know ye." "You have that privilege." "I know ye, I say, and I want to know what ye're here to do." "To do? Well, I shall potter about the garden, don't you know, and smell the roses, and look at the horses, and feed the chickens, and perhaps go for an occasional row on the lake. Nothing more. Oh, yes, I believe they want me to act in these theatricals." "An' I'll tell ye another thing ye'll be wanted to do, and that is to go away from here at wance!" "My dear old sir!" "Ye hear me? At wance." "Couldn't think of it," said Jimmy decidedly. "Not for a moment." "I'll expose ye," stormed McEachern. "I'll expose ye. Will ye deny that ye was a crook in New York?" "What proofs have you?" "Proofs! Will you deny it?" "No. It's quite true." "I knew it." "But I'm a reformed character, now, Mr. McEachern. I have money of my own. It was left me. I hear you had money left you, too." "I did," said McEachern shortly. "Congratulate you. I'm glad I know, because otherwise I might have formed quite a wrong impression when I came here and found you with money to burn. Quite the old English squire now, Mr. McEachern, what?" "Ye'll lave the house to-morrow." "All the more reason why we should make the most of this opportunity of talking over old times. Did you mind leaving the force?" "And ye'll take that blackguard Mullins wid ye." "Judging from the stories one hears, it must be a jolly sort of life. What a pity so many of them go in for graft. I could tell you some stories about a policeman I used to know in New York. He was the champion grafter. I remember hearing one yarn from a newspaper man out there. This reporter chap happened to hear of the grumblings of some tenants of an apartment house uptown which led them to believe that certain noises they complained of were made by burglars who used the flat as a place to pack up the loot for shipment to other cities. You know that habit of ours, don't you? He was quite right, and when he tipped off his newspaper they reported the thing to the police. Now, I could have gone right up and made those men show up their hands by merely asking them to. "Not so the police. I wonder if you remember the case. You look as if you were beginning to. The police went blundering at wrong doors, and most of the gang got away. And while they were in the house after the raid a woman was able to slip in and take away on an express wagon the three trunks which were to have been held for evidence. And that's not all, either. There was one particular policeman who held the case for the prosecution in his hands. If he had played up in court next day, the one man that had been captured would have got all that was coming to him. What happened? Why, his evidence broke down, and the man was discharged. It's a long story. I hope it hasn't bored you." McEachern did not look bored. He was mopping his forehead, and breathing quickly. "It was a most interesting case," said Jimmy. "I've got all the names." "It's a lie!" "Not at all. True as anything. Ever heard of that policeman--I've got his name, too--who made a lot of money by getting appointments in the force for men of his acquaintance? He used to be paid heavily for it, and you'd hardly believe what a lot of scoundrels he let in in that way." "See here----" began McEachern huskily. "I wonder if you ever came across any men in the force who made anything by that dodge of arresting a person and then getting a lawyer for them. Ever heard of that? It's rather like a double ruff at bridge. You--I'm awfully sorry. I shouldn't have used that word. What I meant to say was the policeman makes his arrest, then suggests that the person had better have a bondsman. He gathers in a bondsman, who charges the prisoner four dollars for bailing him out. Two dollars of this goes to the sergeant, who accepts the bail without question, and the policeman takes one. Then the able and intelligent officer says to the prisoner: 'What you want is a lawyer.' 'Right,' says the prisoner, 'if you think so.' Off goes the policeman and gets the lawyer. Five more dollars, of which he gets his share. It's a beautiful system. It might interest the people at dinner to-night to hear about it. I think I'll tell them." "You'll----" "And when you come to think that some policemen in New York take tribute from peddlers who obstruct the traffic, tradesmen who obstruct the sidewalk, restaurant keepers who keep open after one o'clock in the morning, drivers who exceed speed limits, and keepers of pool rooms, you'll understand that there's a good bit to be made out of graft, if you go in for it seriously. It's uncommonly lucky, McEachern, that you were left that money. Otherwise you might have been tempted, mightn't you?" There was a somewhat breathless silence in the room. Mr. McEachern was panting slightly. "You couldn't reconsider your decision about sending me away to-morrow, I suppose?" said Jimmy, flicking at his shoes with a handkerchief. "It's a lovely part of the country, this. I would be sorry to leave it." Mr. McEachern's brain was working with unwonted rapidity. This man must be silenced at all costs. It would be fatal to his prospects in English society if one tithe of these gruesome stories were made public. And he believed Jimmy capable of making them public, being guilty thereby of an error of judgment. Jimmy, though he had no respect at all for Mr. McEachern, would have died sooner than spread any story which, even in an indirect way, could reflect upon Molly. Mr. McEachern, however, had not the advantage of knowing his antagonist's feelings, and the bluff was successful. "Ye can stay," he said. "Thanks," said Jimmy. "And I'll beg ye not to mention the force at dinner or at any other time." "I won't dream of it." "They think I made me money on Wall Street." "It would have been a slower job there. You were wise in your choice. Shall we go down to the drawing-room, now?" "Ye say y'are rich yerself," said McEachern. "Very," said Jimmy, "so don't you worry yourself, my Wall Street speculator." Mr. McEachern did not worry himself. He had just recollected that in a very short time he would have a trained detective on the premises. Any looking after that James Willoughby Pitt might require might safely be left in the hands of this expert. CHAPTER IX. It was at dinner that Jimmy had his first chance of seeing the rope of pearls which had so stimulated the roving fancy of Spike Mullins. Lady Blunt sat almost opposite to him. Her dress was of unrelieved black, and formed a wonderfully effective foil to the gems. It was not a rope of pearls. It was a collar. Her neck was covered with them. There was something Oriental and barbaric in the overwhelming display of jewelry. And this suggestion of the East was emphasized by the wearer's regal carriage. Lady Blunt knew when she looked well. She did not hold herself like one apologizing for venturing to exist. Jimmy stared hungrily across the table. The room was empty to him but for that gleaming mass of gems. He breathed softly and quickly through clinched teeth. "Jimmy!" whispered a voice. It seemed infinitely remote. A hand shook his elbow gently. He started. "_Don't_ stare like that, _please_. What is the matter?" Molly, seated at his side, was looking at him wide-eyed. Jimmy smiled with an effort. Every nerve in his body seemed to be writhing. "Sorry," he said. "I'm only hungry. I always look like that at the beginning of a meal." "Well, here comes Keggs with some soup for you. You'd better not waste another moment. You looked perfectly awful." "No!" "Like a starved wolf." "You must look after me," said Jimmy, "see that the wolf's properly fed." * * * * * The conversation, becoming general with the fish, was not of a kind to remove from Jimmy's mind the impression made by the sight of the pearls. It turned on crime in general and burglary in particular. Spennie began it. "Oh, I say," he said, "I forgot to tell you, mother. Number Six was burgled the other night." Number Six-a, Easton Square, was the family's London house. "Burgled!" "Well, broken into," said Spennie, gratified to find that he had got the ear of his entire audience. Even Lady Blunt was silent and attentive. "Chap got in through the scullery window about one o'clock, in the morning. It was the night after you dined with me, Pitt." "And what did our Spennie do?" inquired Sir Thomas. "Oh, I--er--I was out at the time," said Spennie. "But something frightened the feller," he went on hurriedly, "and he made a bolt for it without taking anything." Jimmy, looking down the table, became conscious that his host's eye was fixed gloomily upon him. He knew intuitively what was passing in McEachern's mind. The ex-policeman was feeling that his worst suspicions had been confirmed. Jimmy had dined with Spennie--obviously a mere excuse for spying out the land; and the very next night the house had been burgled. Once more Mr. McEachern congratulated himself on his astuteness in engaging the detective from Wragge's Agency. With Jimmy above stairs and Spike Mullins below, that sleuthhound would have his hands full. "Burglary," said Wesson, leaning back and taking advantage of a pause, "is the hobby of the sportsman and the life work of the avaricious." Everybody seemed to have something to say on the subject. One young lady gave it as her opinion that she would not like to find a burglar under her bed. Somebody else had known a man whose father had fired at the butler, under the impression that he was a housebreaker, and had broken a valuable bust of Socrates. Spennie knew a man at Oxford whose brother wrote lyrics for musical comedy, and had done one about a burglar's best friend being his mother. "Life," said Wesson, who had had time for reflection, "is a house which we all burgle. We enter it uninvited, take all that we can lay hands on, and go out again." "This man's brother I was telling you about," said Spennie, "says there's only one rhyme in the English language to 'burglar', and that's 'gurgler'. Unless you count 'pergola', he says----" "Personally," said Jimmy, with a glance at McEachern, "I have rather a sympathy for burglars. After all, they are one of the hardest-working classes in existence. They toil while everybody else is asleep. They are generally thorough sportsmen. Besides, a burglar is only a practical socialist. Philosophers talk a lot about the redistribution of wealth. The burglar goes out and does it. I have found burglars some of the decentest criminals I have ever met. Out of business hours they are charming." "I despise burglars!" ejaculated Lady Blunt, with a suddenness which stopped Jimmy's eloquence as if a tap had been turned off. "If I found one coming after my jewels and I had a gun handy, I'd shoot him. I would." "My dear Julia!" said Lady Jane. "Why suggest such dreadful things? At any rate, this house has never been burgled, and I don't think it's likely to be." "Beroofen!" said Jimmy, touching the back of his chair. As he did so, he met McEachern's eye, and smiled kindly at him. The ex-policeman was looking at him with the gaze of a baffled but malignant basilisk. "I take very good care no one gets a chance at my jewels," said Lady Blunt. "I've had a steel box made for me with a special lock which would drive the cunningest burglar on this earth mad before he'd been at it ten minutes. It would. He'd go right away and reform." Jimmy's lips closed tightly, and a combative look came into his eye at this unconscious challenge. This woman was too aggressively confident. A small lesson. He could return the jewels by post. It would give her a much-needed jolt. Then he pulled himself up. "James, my boy," he said to himself, with severity, "this is hypocrisy. You know perfectly well that is not why you want those pearls. Don't try and bluff yourself, because it won't do." The conversation turned to other topics. Jimmy was glad of it. He wanted to think this thing over. From where he sat, he had an excellent view of the rope of pearls which was tugging him back to his old ways. And when he looked at them he could not see Molly. The thing was symbolical. It must be one or the other. He was at the crossroads. The affair was becoming a civil war. He felt like a rudderless boat between two currents. Eight years of gem collecting do not leave a man without a deep-rooted passion for the sport. As for that steel box, that was all nonsense. It was probably quite a good steel box, and the lock might very well be something out of the ordinary; but it could not be a harder job than some of those he had tackled. The pearls shone in the lamplight. They seemed to be winking at him. CHAPTER X. In a cozy corner of the electric flame department of the infernal regions there stands a little silver gridiron. It is the private property of his Satanic majesty, and is reserved exclusively for the man who invented amateur theatricals. It is hard to see why the amateur actor has been allowed to work his will unchecked for so long. These performances of his are diametrically opposed to the true sport of civilization, which insists that the good of the many should be considered as being of more importance than that of the few. In the case of amateur theatricals, a large number of inoffensive people are annoyed simply in order that a mere handful of acquaintances may amuse themselves. Usually the whole thing can be laid at the door of the man, the organizer. He is the serpent in the Eden. Before his arrival, the house party were completely happy, and asked for nothing else but to be left alone. Then he arrives. At breakfast on his first morning, he strikes the first blow--casually helping himself to scrambled eggs the while, with the air of a man uttering some agreeable commonplace. "I say," he remarks, "why not get up some theatricals?" Eve, in the person of some young lady who would be a drawing-room reciter if drawing-room reciters were allowed nowadays, snatches at the apple. "Oh, yes," she says. "It ought to be for a charity," suggests somebody else. "Of course for a charity," says the serpent. Ten minutes later he has revealed the fact that he has brought down a little thing of his own which will just do, and is casting the parts. And after that the man who loves peace and quiet may as well pack up and leave. He will have no more rest in that house. In the present case, the serpent was a volatile young gentleman of the name of Charteris. This indomitable person had the love of the stage ineradicably implanted in him. He wrote plays, and lived in hopes of seeing them staged at the leading theatres. Meanwhile, he was content to bring them out through the medium of amateur performances. It says much for the basic excellence of this man's character that he was popular among his fellows, who, liking the man, overlooked the amateur stage manager. The reign of unrest at the abbey was complete by the time Jimmy arrived there. The preliminary rehearsals had been gone through with by the company, who, being inexperienced, imagined the worst to be over. Having hustled Jimmy into the vacant part, Charteris gave his energy free play. He conducted rehearsals with a vigor which occasionally almost welded the rabble which he was coaching into something approaching coherency. He never rested. He painted scenery, and left it about--wet--and people sat on it. He nailed up horseshoes for luck, and they fell on people. He distributed typed parts of the play among the company, and they lost them. But nothing daunted him. "Mr. Charteris," said Lady Blunt after one somewhat energetic rehearsal, "is indefatigable. He whirled me about!" This was perhaps his greatest triumph, that he had induced Lady Blunt to take part in the piece. Her first remark, on being asked, had been to the effect that she despised acting. Golden eloquence on the part of the author-manager had induced her to modify this opinion; and finally she had consented, on the understanding that she was not to be expected to attend every rehearsal, to play a small part. The only drawback to an otherwise attractive scheme was the fact that she would not be able to wear her jewels. Secretly, she would have given much to have done so; but the scene in which she was to appear was a daylight scene, in which the most expensive necklace would be out of place. So she had given up the idea with a stoicism that showed her to be of the stuff of which heroines are made. These same jewels had ceased, after their first imperious call, to trouble Jimmy to the extent he had anticipated. It had been a bitter struggle during the first few days of his stay, but gradually he had fought the craving down, and now watched them across the dinner table at night with a calm which filled him with self-righteousness. On the other hand, he was uncomfortably alive to the fact that this triumph of his might be merely temporary. There the gems were, winking and beckoning to him across the table. At any moment----. When his thoughts arrived at this point, he would turn them--an effort was sometimes necessary--to Molly. Thinking of her, he forgot the pearls. But the process of thinking of Molly was not one of unmixed comfort. A great uneasiness had gripped him. More than ever, as the days went by, he knew that he loved her, that now the old easy friendship was a mockery. But on her side he could see no signs that she desired a change in their relationship. She was still the old Molly of the New York days, frank, cheerful unembarrassed. But he found that in this new world of hers the opportunities of getting her to himself for any space of time were infinitesimal. It was her unfortunate conviction, bred of her American upbringing, that the duty of the hostess is to see that her guests enjoy themselves. Lady Jane held the English view that visitors like to be left to themselves. And Molly, noticing her stepmother's lack of enterprise and putting it down as merely another proof of her languid nature, had exerted herself all the more keenly to do the honors. The consequence was that Jimmy found himself one of a crowd, and disliked the sensation. The thing was becoming intolerable. Here was he, a young man in love, kept from proposing simply by a series of ridiculous obstacles. It could not go on. He must get her away somewhere by himself, not for a few minutes, as he had been doing up to the present, but for a solid space of time. It was after a long and particularly irritating rehearsal that the idea of the lake suggested itself to him. The rehearsals took place in one of the upper rooms, and through the window, as he leaned gloomily against the wall, listening to a homily on the drama from Charteris, he could see the waters of the lake, lit up by the afternoon sun. It had been a terribly hot, oppressive day and there was thunder in the air. The rehearsal had bored everybody unspeakably. It would be heavenly on the lake, thought Jimmy. There was a Canadian canoe moored to that willow. If he could only get Molly. "I'm awfully sorry, Jimmy," said Molly, as they walked out into the garden. "I should love to come. It would be too perfect. But I've half promised to play tennis." "Who wants to play?" "Mr. Wesson." A correspondent of a London daily paper wrote to his editor not long ago to complain that there was a wave of profanity passing over the country. Jimmy added a silent but heartfelt contribution to that wave. "Give him the slip," he said earnestly. It was the chance of a lifetime, a unique chance, perhaps his last chance, and it was to be lost for the sake of an ass like Wesson. Molly looked doubtful. "Well, come down to the water, and have a look at it," said Jimmy. "That'll be better than nothing." They walked to the water's edge together in silence, Jimmy in a fever of anxiety. He looked behind him. No signs of Wesson yet. All might still be well. "It does look nice, Jimmy, doesn't it?" said Molly, placing a foot on the side of the boat and rocking it gently. "Come on," said Jimmy hoarsely. "Give him the slip. Get in." Molly looked round hesitatingly. "Well--oh, bother, there he is. And he's seen me." Jimmy followed her gaze. The dapper figure of Mr. Wesson was moving down the lawn. He had a tennis racquet in his hand. His face wore an inviting smile. Jimmy glared at him hopelessly. Mr. Wesson had vanished now behind the great clamp of laurels which stood on the lowest terrace. In another moment he would reappear round them. "Bother!" said Molly again. "Jimmy!" For gently, but with extreme firmness and dispatch, Jimmy, who ought to have known better, had seized her hand on the other side of the waist, swung her off her feet, and placed her carefully on the cushions in the bow of the canoe. Then he had jumped in himself with a force which made the boat rock, and was now paddling with the silent energy of a dangerous lunatic into the middle of the lake; while Mr. Wesson, who had by this time rounded the laurels, stood transfixed, gazing glassily after the retreating vessel. To the casual spectator, he might have seemed stricken dumb. But at the end of the first ten seconds any fear that the casual spectator might have entertained as to the permanence of the seizure would have been relieved. CHAPTER XI. "The man who lays a hand upon a woman," said Jimmy, paddling strongly, "save in the way of kindness--I'm very sorry, Molly, but you didn't seem able to make up your mind. You aren't angry, are you?" There was a brief pause, while Molly apparently debated the matter in her mind. "You wouldn't take me back even if I were angry," she said. "You have guessed it," said Jimmy approvingly. "Do you read much poetry, Molly?" "Why?" "I was only thinking how neatly some of these poets put a thing. The chap who said, 'distance lends enchantment to the view,' for instance. Take the case of Wesson. He looks quite nice when you see him at a distance like this, with a good strip of water in between." Mr. Wesson was still standing in a statuesque attitude on the bank. Molly, gazing over the side of the boat into the lake, abstained from feasting her eyes on the picturesque spectacle. "Jolly the water looks," said Jimmy. "I was just thinking it looked rather dirty." "Beastly," agreed Jimmy. The water as a topic of conversation dried up. Mr. Wesson had started now to leave the stricken field. There was a reproachful look about his back which harassed Molly's sensitive conscience. Jimmy, on the other hand--men being of coarser fibre than women, especially as to the conscience--appeared in no way distressed at the sight. "You oughtn't to have done it, Jimmy," said Molly. "I had to. There seemed to be no other way of ever getting you by yourself for five minutes at a stretch. You're always in the middle of a crowd nowadays." "But I must look after my guests." "Not a bit of it. Let 'em rip. Why should they monopolize you?" "It will be awfully unpleasant meeting Mr. Wesson after this." "It is always unpleasant meeting Wesson." "I shan't know what to say." "Don't say anything." "I shan't be able to look him in the face." "That's a bit of luck for you." "You aren't much help, Jimmy." "The subject of Wesson doesn't inspire me somehow--I don't know why. Besides, you've simply got to say you changed your mind. You're a woman. It's expected of you." "I feel awfully mean." "What you want to do is to take your thoughts off the business. Keep your mind occupied with something else. Then you'll forget all about it. Keep talking to me about things. That's the plan. There are heaps of subjects. The weather, for instance, as a start. Hot, isn't it?" "We're going to have a storm. There's a sort of feel in the air. We'd better go back, I think." "Tush! And possibly bah!" said Jimmy, digging the paddle into the water. "We've only just started. I say, who was that man I saw you talking to after lunch?" "How soon after lunch?" "Just before the rehearsal. He was with your father. Short chap with a square face. Dressed in gray. I hadn't seen him before." "Oh, that was Mr. Galer. A New York friend of father's." "Did you know him out in New York?" "I didn't. But he seems to know father very well." "What's his name, did you say?" "Galer. Samuel Galer. Did you ever hear of him?" "Never. But there were several people in New York I didn't know. How did your father meet him over here?" "He was stopping at the inn in the village, and he'd heard about the abbey being so old, so he came over to look at it, and the first person he met was father. He's going to stay in the house now. The cart was sent down for his things this afternoon. Did you feel a spot of rain then? I wish you'd paddle back." "Not a drop. That storm's not coming till to-night. Why, it's a gorgeous evening." He turned the nose of the boat toward the island, which lay, cool and green and mysterious, in the middle of the lake. The heat was intense. The sun, as if conscious of having only a brief spell of work before it, blazed fiercely, with the apparent intention of showing what it could do before the rain came. The air felt curiously parched. "There!" said Molly. "Surely you felt something, then." "I did." "Is there time to get back before it begins?" "No." "We shall get soaked!" "Not a bit of it. On the other side of the island there is a handy little boat-house sort of place. We will put in there." The boathouse was simply a little creek covered over with boards and capable of sheltering an ordinary rowing boat. Jimmy ran the canoe in just as the storm began, and turned her broadside on so that they could watch the rain, which was sweeping over the lake in sheets. "Just in time," he said, shipping the paddle. "Snug in here, isn't it?" "We _should_ have got wet in another minute! I hope it won't last long." "I hope it will, because I've got something very important to say to you, and I don't want to have to hurry it. Are you quite comfortable?" "Yes, thanks." "I don't know how to put it exactly. I mean, I don't want to offend you or anything. What I mean to say is--do you mind if I smoke? Thanks. I don't know why it is, but I always talk easier if I've got a cigarette going." He rolled one with great deliberation and care. Molly watched him admiringly. "You're the only man I've ever seen roll a cigarette properly, Jimmy," she said. "Everybody else leaves them all flabby at the ends." "I learned the trick from a little Italian who kept a clothing store in the Bowery. It was the only useful thing he could do." "Look at the rain!" Jimmy leaned forward. "Molly----" "I wonder if poor Mr. Wesson got indoors before it began. I do hope he did." Jimmy sat back again. He scowled. Every man is liable on occasion to behave like a sulky schoolboy. Jimmy did so. "You seem to spend most of your time thinking about Wesson," he said savagely. Molly had begun to hum a tune to herself as she watched the rain. She stopped. A profound and ghastly silence brooded over the canoe. "Molly," said Jimmy at last, "I'm sorry." No reply. "Molly." "Well?" "I'm sorry." Molly turned. "I wish you wouldn't say things like that, Jimmy. It hurts--from you." He could see that there were tears in her eyes. "Molly, don't!" She turned her head away once more. "I can't help it, Jimmy. It hurts. Everything's so changed. I'm miserable. You wouldn't have said a thing like that in the old days." "Molly, if you knew----" "It's all right, Jimmy. It was silly of me. I'm all right now! The rain has stopped. Let's go back, shall we?" "Not yet. For God's sake, not yet! This is my only chance. Directly we get back, it will be the same miserable business all over again; the same that it's been every day since I came to this place. Heavens! When you first told me that you were living at the abbey, I was absolutely happy, like a fool. I might have known how it would be. Every day there's a crowd round you. I never get a chance of talking to you. I consider myself lucky if you speak a couple of words to me. If I'd known the slow torture it was going to be, I'd have taken the next train back to London. I can't stand it. Molly, you remember what friends we were in the old days. Was it ever anything more with you? Was it? Is it now?" "I was very fond of you, Jimmy." He could hardly hear the words. "Was it ever anything more than that? Is it now? That was three years ago. You were a child. We were just good friends then. I don't want friendship now. It's not enough. I want you--_you_. You were right a moment ago. Everything _has_ changed. For me, at least. Has it for you? Has it for you, Molly?" On the island a thrush had begun to sing. Molly raised her head, as if to listen. The water lapped against the sides of the canoe. "Has it, Molly?" She bent over, and dabbled one finger in the water. "I--I think it has, Jimmy," she whispered. CHAPTER XII. The Honorable Louis Wesson, meanwhile, having left the water side, lit a cigarette, and proceeded to make a moody tour of the grounds. He felt aggrieved with the world. One is never at one's best and sunniest when a rival has performed a brilliant and successful piece of cutting-out work beneath one's very eyes. Something of a jaundiced tinge stains one's outlook on life in such circumstances. Mr. Wesson did not pretend to himself that he was violently in love with Molly. But he certainly admired her, and intended, unless he changed his mind later on, to marry her. He walked, drawing thoughtfully at his cigarette. The more he reviewed the late episode, the less he liked it. He had not seen Jimmy put Molly in the canoe, and her departure seemed to him a deliberate desertion. She had promised to play tennis with him, and at the last moment she had gone off with this fellow Pitt. Who _was_ Pitt? He was always in the way--shoving himself in. At this moment, a large, warm raindrop fell on his hand. From the bushes all round came an ever-increasing patter. The sky was leaden. He looked round him for shelter. He had reached the rose garden in the course of his perambulations. At the far end was a summerhouse. He turned up his coat collar and ran. As he drew near, he heard a slow and dirgelike whistling proceeding from the interior. Plunging in out of breath, just as the deluge began, he found Spennie seated at the little wooden table with an earnest expression on his face. The table was covered with cards. "How Jim took exercise," said Spennie, glancing up. "Hello, Wesson. By Jove, isn't it coming down!" With which greeting he turned his attention to his cards once more. He took one from the pack in his left hand, looked at it, hesitated for a moment, as if doubtful whereabouts on the table it would produce the most artistic effect; and finally put it down, face upward. Then he moved another card from the table, and put it on top of the other one. Throughout the performance he whistled painfully. Wesson regarded him with disfavor. "That looks damned exciting," he said. He reserved his more polished periods for use in public. "What are you playing at?" "Wha-a-a'?" said Spennie abstractedly, dealing another card. "Oh, don't sit there looking like a frog," said Wesson irritably. "_Talk_, man." "What's the matter? What do you want? Hello, I've done it. No, I haven't. No luck at all. Haven't brought up a demon all day." He gathered up the cards, and began to shuffle. "Ah, lov'," he sang sentimentally, with a vacant eye on the roof of the summerhouse, "could I bot tell thee how moch----" "Oh, stop it!" said Wesson. "You seem depressed, laddie. What's the matter? Ah, lov', could I bot tell thee----" "Spennie, who's this fellow Pitt?" "Jimmy Pitt? Pal of mine. One of the absolute. Ay, nutty to the core, good my lord. Ah, lov', could I bot tell----" "Where did you meet him?" "London. Why?" "He and your sister seem pretty good friends." "I shouldn't wonder. Knew each other out in America. Bridge, bridge, ber-ridge, a capital game for two. Shuffle and cut and deal away, and let the lo-oser pay-ah. Ber-ridge----" "Well, let's have a game, then. Anything for something to do. Curse this rain! We shall be cooped up here till dinner at this rate." "Double dummy's a frightfully rotten game," said Spennie. "Ever played picquet? I could teach it to you in five minutes." A look of almost awe came into Wesson's face, the look of one who sees a miracle performed before his eyes. For years he had been using all the large stock of diplomacy at his command to induce callow youths to play picquet with him and here was this admirable young man, this pearl among young men, positively offering to teach him. It was too much happiness. What had he done to deserve this? He felt as a toil-worn lion might have felt if an antelope, instead of making its customary bee line for the horizon, had expressed a friendly hope that it would be found tender and inserted its head between his jaws. "I--it's very good of you. I shouldn't mind being shown the idea." He listened attentively while Spennie explained at some length the principles which govern the game of picquet. Every now and then he asked a question. It was evident that he was beginning to grasp the idea of the game. "_What_ exactly is repicquing?" he asked, as Spennie paused. "It's like this," said Spennie, returning to his lecture. "Yes, I see now," said the neophyte. They began playing. Spennie, as was only to be expected in a contest between teacher and student, won the first two hands. Wesson won the next. "I've got the hang of it all right, now," he said complacently. "It's a simple sort of game. Make it more exciting, don't you think, if we played for something?" "All right," said Spennie slowly, "if you like." He would not have suggested it himself, but after all, hang it, if the man simply _asked_ for it--It was not his fault if the winning of a hand should have given the fellow the impression that he knew all that there was to be known about picquet. Of course, picquet was a game where skill was practically bound to win. But--After all, Wesson had plenty of money. He could afford it. "All right," said Spennie again. "How much?" "Something fairly moderate. Ten bob a hundred?" There is no doubt that Spennie ought at this suggestion to have corrected the novice's notion that ten shillings a hundred was fairly moderate. He knew that it was possible for a poor player to lose four hundred points in a twenty-minute game, and usual for him to lose two hundred. But he let the thing go. "Very well," he said. Twenty minutes later, Mr. Wesson was looking somewhat ruefully at the score sheet. "I owe you eighteen shillings," he said. "Shall I pay you, now, or shall we settle up in a lump after we've finished?" "What about stopping now?" said Spennie. "It's quite fine out." "No, let's go on. I've nothing to do till dinner, and I'm sure you haven't." Spennie's conscience made one last effort. "You'd much better stop, you know, Wesson, really," he said. "You can lose a frightful lot at this game." "My dear Spennie," said Wesson stiffly, "I can look after myself, thanks. Of course, if you think you are risking too much, by all means--" "Oh, if _you_ don't mind," said Spennie, outraged, "I'm only too frightfully pleased. Only, remember I warned you." "I'll bear it in mind. By the way, before we start, care to make it a sovereign a hundred?" Spennie could not afford to play picquet for a sovereign a hundred, or anything like it; but after his adversary's innuendo it was impossible for a young gentleman of spirit to admit the humiliating fact. He nodded. * * * * * "It's about time, I fancy," said Mr. Wesson, looking at his watch an hour later, "that we were going in to dress for dinner." Spennie made no reply. He was wrapped in thought. "Let's see, that's twenty pounds you owe me, isn't it?" continued Mr. Wesson. "No hurry, of course. Any time you like. Shocking bad luck you had." They went out into the rose garden. "Jolly everything smells after the rain," said Mr. Wesson. "Freshened everything up." Spennie did not appear to have noticed it. He seemed to be thinking of something else. His air was pensive and abstracted. CHAPTER XIII. The emotions of a man who has just proposed and been accepted are complex and overwhelming. A certain stunned sensation is perhaps predominant. Blended with this is relief, the relief of a general who has brought a difficult campaign to a successful end, or of a member of a forlorn hope who finds that the danger is over, and he is still alive. To this must be added a newly born sense of magnificence, of finding oneself to be, without having known it, the devil of a fellow. We have dimly suspected, perhaps, from time to time that we were something rather out of the ordinary run of men, but there has always been a haunting fear that this view was to be attributed to a personal bias in our own favor. When, however, our suspicion is suddenly confirmed by the only judge for whose opinion we have the least respect, our bosom heaves with complacency, and the world has nothing more to offer. With some accepted suitors there is an alloy of apprehension in the metal of their happiness; and the strain of an engagement sometimes brings with it even a faint shadow of regret. "She makes me buy new clothes," one swain, in the third quarter of his engagement, was overheard to moan to a friend. "Two new ties only yesterday." He seemed to be debating within himself whether human nature could stand the strain. But, whatever tragedies may cloud the end of the period, its beginning at least is bathed in sunshine. Jimmy, regarding his lathered face in the glass as he dressed for dinner that night, called himself the luckiest man on earth, and wondered if he were worthy of such happiness. Thinking it over, he came to the conclusion that he was not, but that all the same he meant to have it. No doubt distressed him. It might have occurred to him that the relations between Mr. McEachern and himself offered a very serious bar to his prospects; but in his present frame of mind he declined to consider the existence of the ex-constable at all. In a world that contained Molly there was no room for other people. They were not in the picture. They did not exist. There are men in the world who, through long custom, can find themselves engaged without any particular whirl of emotion. King Solomon probably belonged to this class; and even Henry the Eighth must have become a trifle blasé in time. But to the average man, the novice, the fact of being accepted seems to divide existence into two definite parts, before and after. A sensitive conscience goads some into compiling a full and unexpurgated autobiography, the edition limited to one copy, which is presented to the lady most interested. Some men find a melancholy pleasure in these confessions. They like to draw the girl of their affections aside and have a long, cozy chat about what scoundrels they were before they met her. But, after all, the past is past and cannot be altered, and it is to be supposed that, whatever we may have done in that checkered period, we intend to behave ourselves for the future. So, why harp on it? Jimmy acted upon this plan. Many men in his place, no doubt, would have steered the conversation skillfully to the subject of the eighth commandment, and then said: "Talking about stealing, did I ever tell you that I was a burglar myself for about six years?" Jimmy was reticent. All that was over, he told himself. He had given it up. He had buried the past. Why exhume it? It did not occur to him to confess his New York crimes to Molly any more than to tell her that, when seven, he had been caned for stealing jam. These things had happened to a man of the name of Jimmy Pitt, it was true. But it was not the Jimmy Pitt who had proposed to Molly in the canoe on the lake. The vapid and irreflective reader may jump to the conclusion that Jimmy was a casuist, and ought to have been ashamed of himself. He will be perfectly right. On the other hand, one excuse may urged in his favor. His casuistry imposed upon himself. To Jimmy, shaving, there entered, in the furtive manner habitual to that unreclaimed buccaneer, Spike Mullins. "Say, Mr. Chames," he said. "Well," said Jimmy, "and how goes the world with young Lord Fitz Mullins? Spike, have you ever been best man?" "On your way! What's that?" "Best man at a wedding. Chap who stands by the bridegroom with a hand on the scruff of his neck to see that he goes through with it. Fellow who looks after everything, crowds the crisp banknotes onto the clergyman after the ceremony, and then goes off and marries the first bridesmaid, and lives happily ever after." "I ain't got no use for gettin' married, Mr. Chames." "Spike, the misogynist! You wait, Spike. Some day love will awake in your heart, and you'll start writing poetry." "I'se not dat kind of mug, Mr. Chames," protested Spike. "Dere _was_ a goil, dough. Only I was never her steady. And she married one of de odder boys." "Why didn't you knock him down and carry her off?" "He was de lightweight champion of de woild." "That makes a difference, doesn't it? But away with melancholy, Spike! I'm feeling as if somebody had given me Broadway for a birthday present." "Youse to de good," agreed Spike. "Well, any news? Keggs all right? How are you getting on?" "Mr. Chames." Spike sank his voice to a whisper. "Dat's what I chased meself here about. Dere's a mug down in de soivant's hall what's a detective. Yes, dat's right, if I ever saw one." "What makes you think so?" "On your way, Mr. Chames! Can't I tell? I could pick out a fly cop out of a bunch of a thousand. Sure. Dis mug's vally to Sir Thomas, dat's him. But he ain't no vally. He's come to see dat no one don't get busy wit de jools. Say, what do you t'ink of dem jools, Mr. Chames?" "Finest I ever saw." "Yes, dat's right. De limit, ain't dey? Ain't youse really----" "No, Spike, I am not, thank you _very_ much for inquiring. I'm never going to touch a jewel again unless I've paid for it and got the receipt in my pocket." Spike shuffled despondently. "All the same," said Jimmy, "I shouldn't give yourself away to this detective. If he tries pumping you at all, give him the frozen face." "Sure. But he ain't de only one." "What, _more_ detectives? They'll have to put up 'house full' boards at this rate. Who's the other?" "De mug what came dis afternoon. Ole man McEachern brought him. I seed Miss Molly talking to him." "The chap from the inn? Why, that's an old New York friend of McEachern's." "Anyhow, Mr. Chames, he's a sleut'. I can tell 'em by deir eyes and deir feet, and de whole of dem." An idea came into Jimmy's mind. "I see," he said. "Our friend McEachern has got him in to spy on us. I might have known he'd be up to something like that." "Dat's right, Mr. Chames." "Of course you may be mistaken." "Not me, Mr. Chames." "Anyhow, I shall be seeing him at dinner. I can get talking to him afterward. I shall soon find out what his game is." For the moment, Molly was forgotten. The old reckless spirit was carrying him away. This thing was a deliberate challenge. He had been on parole. He had imagined that his word was all that McEachern had to rely on. But if the policeman had been working secretly against him all this time, his parole was withdrawn automatically. The thought that, if he did nothing, McEachern would put it down complacently to the vigilance of his detective and his own astuteness in engaging him stung Jimmy. His six years of burglary had given him an odd sort of professional pride. "I've half a mind," he said softly. The familiar expression on his face was not lost on Spike. "To try for de jools, Mr. Chames?" he asked eagerly. His words broke the spell. Molly resumed her place. The hard look died out of Jimmy's eyes. "No," he said. "Not that. It can't be done." "Yes, it could, Mr. Chames. Dead easy. I've been up to de room, and I've seen de box what de jools is put in at night. We could get at them easy as pullin' de plug out of a bottle. Say, dis is de softest proposition, dis house. Look what I got dis afternoon, Mr. Chames." He plunged his hand into his pocket, and drew it out again. As he unclosed his fingers, Jimmy caught the gleam of precious stones. He started as one who sees snakes in the grass. "What the----" he gasped. Spike was looking at his treasure-trove with an air of affectionate proprietorship. "Where on earth did you get those?" asked Jimmy. "Out of one of de rooms. Dey belonged to one of de loidies. It was de easiest old t'ing ever, Mr. Chames. I went in when dere was nobody about, and dere dey were on de toible. I never butted into anyt'ing so soft, Mr. Chames." "Spike." "Yes, Mr. Chames?" "Do you remember the room you took them from?" "Sure. It was de foist on de----" "Then just listen to me for a moment. When we're at dinner, you've got to go to that room and put those things back--all of them, mind you--just where you found them. Do you understand?" Spike's jaw had fallen. "Put dem back, Mr. Chames!" he faltered. "Every single one of them." "Mr. Chames!" said Spike plaintively. "You'll bear it in mind? Directly dinner has begun, every one of those things goes back where it belongs. See?" "Very well, Mr. Chames." The dejection in his voice would have moved the sternest to pity. Gloom had enveloped Spike's spirit. The sunlight had gone out of his life. CHAPTER XIV. Spennie Blunt, meanwhile, was not feeling happy. Out of his life, too, had the sunshine gone. His assets amounted to one pound seven and fourpence and he owed twenty pounds. He had succeeded, after dinner, in borrowing five pounds from Jimmy, who was in the mood when he would have lent five pounds to anybody who asked for it, but beyond that he had had no successes in the course of a borrowing tour among the inmates of the abbey. In the seclusion of his bedroom, he sat down to smoke a last cigarette and think the thing over in all its aspects. He could see no way out of his difficulties. The thought had something of the dull persistency of a toothache. It refused to leave him. If only this had happened at Oxford, he knew of twenty kindly men who would have rallied round him, and placed portions of their fathers' money at his disposal. But this was July. He would not see Oxford again for months. And, in the meantime, Wesson would be pressing for his money. "Oh, damn!" he said. He had come to this conclusion for the fiftieth time, when the door opened, and his creditor appeared in person. To Spennie, he looked like the embodiment of Fate, a sort of male Nemesis. "I want to have a talk with you, Spennie," said Wesson, closing the door. "Well?" Wesson lit a cigarette, and threw the match out of the window before replying. "Look here, Spennie," he said, "I want to marry Miss McEachern." Spennie was in no mood to listen to the love affairs of other men. "Oh!" he said. "Yes. And I want you to help me." "Help you?" "You must have a certain amount of influence with her. She's your sister." "Stepsister." "Same thing." "Well, anyhow, it's no good coming to me. Nobody's likely to make Molly do a thing unless she wants to. I couldn't, if I tried for a year. We're good pals, and all that, but she'd shut me up like a knife if I went to her and said I wanted her to marry some one." "Not being a perfect fool," said Wesson impatiently, "I don't suggest that you should do that." "What's the idea, then?" "You can easily talk about me to her. Praise me, and so on." Spennie's eyes opened wide. "Praise you? How?" "Thanks," said Wesson, with a laugh. "If you can't think of any admirable qualities in me, you'd better invent some." "I should feel such a silly ass." "That would be a new experience for you, wouldn't it? And then you can arrange it so that I shall get chances of talking to her. You can bring us together." Spennie's eyes became rounder. "You seem to have mapped out quite a programme for me." "She'll listen to you. You can help me a lot." "Can I?" Wesson threw away his cigarette. "And there's another thing," he said. "You can queer that fellow Pitt's game. She's always with him now. You must get her away from him. Run him down to her. And get him out of this place as soon as possible. You invited him here. He doesn't expect to stop here indefinitely, I suppose? If you left, he'd have to, too. What you must do is to go back to London directly after the theatricals are over. He'll have to go with you. Then you can drop him in London and come back." It is improbable that Wesson was blind to certain blemishes which could have been urged against this ingenious scheme by a critic with a nice sense of the honorable; but, in his general conduct of life, as in his play at cards, he was accustomed to ignore the rules when he felt disposed to do so. He proceeded to mention in detail a few of the things which he proposed to call upon his ally to do. A delicate pink flush might have been seen to spread over Spennie's face. He began to look like an angry rabbit. He had not a great deal of pride in his composition, but the thought of the ignominious rôle which Wesson was sketching out for him stirred what he had to its shallow depths. Talking on, Wesson managed with his final words to add the last straw. "Of course," he said, "that money you lost to me at picquet--What was it? Ten? Twenty? Twenty pounds, wasn't it? Well, we could look on that as canceled, of course. That will be all right." Spennie exploded. "Will it?" he cried, pink to the ears. "Will it, by George? I'll pay you every frightful penny of it before the end of the week. What do you take me for, I should like to know?" "A fool, if you refuse my offer." "I've a fearfully good mind to give you a most frightful kicking." "I shouldn't try, Spennie, if I were you. It's not the form of indoor game at which you'd shine. Better stick to picquet." "If you think I can't pay you your rotten money----" "I do. But if you can, so much the better. Money is always useful." "I may be a fool in some ways----" "You understate it, my dear Spennie." "But I'm not a cad." "You're getting quite rosy, Spennie. Wrath is good for the complexion." "And if you think you can bribe me to do your dirty work, you never made a bigger mistake in your life." "Yes, I did," said Wesson, "when I thought you had some glimmerings of intelligence. But if it gives you any pleasure to behave like the juvenile lead in a melodrama, by all means do. Personally, I shouldn't have thought the game would be worth the candle. Your keen sense of honor, I understand you to say, will force you to pay your debt. It's an expensive luxury nowadays, Spennie. You mentioned the end of the week, I believe? That will suit me admirably. But if you change your mind, my offer is still open. Good night, Galahad." CHAPTER XV. For pure discomfort there are few things in the world that can compete with the final rehearsals of an amateur theatrical performance at a country house. Every day the atmosphere becomes more and more heavily charged with restlessness and irritability. The producer of the piece, especially if he is also the author of it, develops a sort of intermittent insanity. He plucks at his mustache, if he has one; at his hair, if he has not. He mutters to himself. He gives vent to occasional despairing cries. The soothing suavity which marked his demeanor in the earlier rehearsals disappears. He no longer says with a winning smile: "Splendid, old man; splendid. Couldn't be better. But I think we'll take that over just once more, if you don't mind. You missed out a few rather good lines, and you forgot to give Miss Robinson her cue for upsetting the flowerpot." Instead, he rolls his eyes and snaps out: "Once more, please. This'll never do. At this rate we might just as well cut out the show altogether. For Heaven's sake, Brown, do try and remember your lines. It's no good having the best part in the piece if you go and forget everything you've got to say. What's that? All right on the night? No, it _won't_ be all right on the night. And another thing. You _must_ remember to say, 'How calm and peaceful the morning is', or how on earth do you think Miss Robinson is going to know when to upset that flowerpot? Now, then, once more; and do pull yourself together this time." After which the scene is sulkily resumed by the now thoroughly irritated actors; and conversation, when the parties concerned meet subsequently, is cold and strained. Matters had reached this stage at the abbey. Everybody was thoroughly tired of the piece, and, but for the thought of the disappointment which--presumably--would rack the neighboring nobility and gentry if it were not to be produced, would have resigned without a twinge of regret. People who had schemed to get the best and longest parts were wishing now that they had been content with _First Footman_ or _Giles, a villager_. "I'll never run an amateur show again as long as I live," confided Charteris to Jimmy, almost tearfully the night before the production. "It's not good enough. Most of them aren't word-perfect yet. And we've just had the dress rehearsal!" "It'll be all right on----" "Oh, don't say it'll be all right on the night." "I wasn't going to," said Jimmy. "I was going to say it'll be all right after the night. People will soon forget how badly the thing went." "You're a nice, comforting sort of man, aren't you?" said Charteris. "Why worry?" said Jimmy. "If you go on like this, it'll be Westminster Abbey for you in your prime. You'll be getting brain fever." Jimmy himself was feeling particularly cheerful. He was deriving a keen amusement at present from the manoeuvres of Mr. Samuel Galer, of New York. This lynx-eyed man, having been instructed by Mr. McEachern to watch Jimmy, was doing so with a pertinacity which would have made a man with the snowiest of consciences suspicious. If Jimmy went to the billiard room after dinner, Mr. Galer was there to keep him company. If, during the course of the day, he had occasion to fetch a handkerchief or a cigarette case from his bedroom, he was sure, on emerging, to stumble upon Mr. Galer in the corridor. The employees of Wragge's Detective Agency, Ltd., believed in earning their salaries. Occasionally, after these encounters, Jimmy would come upon Sir Thomas Blunt's valet, the other man in whom Spike's trained eye had discerned the distinguishing trait of the detective. He was usually somewhere round the corner at these moments, and, when collided with, apologized with great politeness. It tickled Jimmy to think that both these giant brains should be so greatly exercised on his account. Spennie, meanwhile, had been doing quite an unprecedented amount of thinking. Quite an intellectual pallor had begun to appear on his normally pink cheeks. He had discovered the profound truth that it is one thing to talk about paying one's debts, another actually to do it, and that this is more particularly the case when we owe twenty pounds and possess but six pounds seven shillings and fourpence. Spennie was acutely conscious of the fact that, if he could not follow up his words to Wesson with actual coin, the result would be something of an anticlimax. Somehow or other he would have to get the money--and at once. The difficulty was that no one seemed at all inclined to lend it to him. There is a good deal to be said against stealing as a habit; but it cannot he denied that, in certain circumstances, it offers an admirable solution of a difficulty, and if the penalties were not so exceedingly unpleasant, it is probable that it would become far more fashionable than it is. Spennie's mind did not turn immediately to this outlet from his embarrassment. He had never stolen before, and it did not occur to him directly to do so now. There is a conservative strain in all of us. But gradually, as it was borne in upon him that it was the only course possible, unless he applied to his stepfather--a task for which his courage was not sufficient--he found himself contemplating the possibility of having to secure the money by unlawful means. By lunch time, on the morning of the day fixed for the theatricals, he had decided definitely to do so. By dinner time he had fixed upon the object of his attentions. With a vague idea of keeping the thing in the family, he had resolved to make his raid upon Sir Thomas Blunt. Somehow it did not seem so bad robbing one's relatives. A man's first crime is, as a rule, a shockingly amateurish affair. Now and then, it is true, we find beginners forging with the accuracy of old hands or breaking into houses with the finish of experts. But these are isolated cases. The average tyro lacks generalship altogether. Spennie may be cited as a typical novice. It did not strike him that inquiries might be instituted by Sir Thomas, when he found his money gone, and that Wesson, finding a man whom he knew to be impecunious suddenly in possession of twenty pounds, might have suspicions. His mind was entirely filled with the thought of getting the money. There was no room in it for any other reflection. His plan was simple. Sir Thomas, he knew, always carried a good deal of money with him. It was unlikely that he kept this on his person in the evening. A man to whom the set of his clothes is as important as it was to Sir Thomas, does not carry a pocket-book full of banknotes when he is dressed for dinner. He would leave it somewhere, reasoned Spennie. Where, he asked himself. The answer was easy. In his dressing room. Spennie's plan of campaign was complete. The theatricals began at half-past eight. The audience had been hustled into their seats, happier than is usual in such circumstances from the rumor that the proceedings were to terminate with an informal dance. The abbey was singularly well constructed for such a purpose. There was plenty of room, and a sufficiency of retreat for those who sat out, in addition to a conservatory large enough to have married off half the couples in the county. The audience was in an excellent humor, and the monologue, the first item of the programme, was received with a warmth which gave Charteris, whom rehearsals had turned into a pessimist, a faint hope that the main item on the programme might not be the complete failure it had promised to be. Spennie's idea had been to get through his burglarious specialty during the monologue, when his absence would not be noticed. It might be that if he disappeared later in the evening people would wonder what had become of him. He lurked apart till the last of the audience had taken their seats. As he was passing through the hall, a hand fell on his shoulder. Conscience makes cowards of us all. Spennie bit his tongue and leaped three inches into the air. "Hello, Charteris!" he said gaspingly. "Spennie, my boyhood's only friend," said Charteris, "where are you off to?" "What--what do you mean? I was just going upstairs." "Then don't. You're wanted. Our prompter can't be found. I want you to take his place till he blows in. Come along." The official prompter arrived at the end of the monologue with the remark that he had been having a bit of a smoke in the garden and his watch had gone wrong. Leaving him to discuss the point with Charteris, Spennie slipped quietly away, and flitted up the stairs toward Sir Thomas' dressing room. At the door, he stopped and listened. There was no sound. The house might have been deserted. He opened the door, and switched on the electric light. Fortune was with him. On the dressing table, together with a bunch of keys and some small change, lay a brown leather pocketbook. Evidently Sir Thomas did not share Lady Blunt's impression that the world was waiting for a chance to rob him as soon as his back was turned. Spennie opened the pocketbook, and counted the contents. There were two ten-pound notes, and four of five pounds. He took a specimen of each variety, replaced the pocketbook, and crept out of the door. Then he walked rapidly down the corridor to his own room. Just as he reached it, he received a shock only less severe than the former one from the fact that this time no hand was placed on his shoulder. "Spennie!" cried a voice. He turned, to see Molly. She wore the costume of the stage milkmaid. Coming out of her room after dressing for her part, she had been in time to see Spennie emerge through Sir Thomas' door with a look on his face furtive enough to have made any jury bring in a verdict of guilty on any count without further evidence. She did not know what he had been doing; but she was very certain that it was something which he ought to have left undone. "Er--hullo, Molly!" said Spennie bonelessly. "What were you doing in Uncle Thomas' room, Spennie?" "Nothing. I was just looking round." "Just looking round?" "That's all." Molly was puzzled. "Why did you look like that when you came out?" "Like what?" "So guilty." "Guilty! What _are_ you talking about?" Molly suddenly saw light. "Spennie," she said, "what were you putting in your pocket as you came out?" "Putting in my pocket!" said Spennie, rallying with the desperation of one fighting a lost cause. "What do you mean?" "You were putting something." Another denial was hovering on Spennie's lips, when, in a flash, he saw what he had not seen before, the cloud of suspicion which must hang over him when the loss of the notes was discovered. Sir Thomas would remember that he had tried to borrow money from him. Wesson would wonder how he had become possessed of twenty pounds. And Molly had actually seen him coming out of the room, putting something in his pocket. He threw himself at the mercy of the court. "It's like this, Molly," he said. And, having prefaced his narrative with the sound remark that he had been a fool, he gave her a summary of recent events. "I see," said Molly. "And you must pay him at once?" "By the end of the week. We had--we had a bit of a row." "What about?" "Oh, nothing," said Spennie. "Anyhow, I told him I'd pay him by Saturday, and I don't want to have to climb down." "Of course not. Jimmy shall lend you the money." "Who? Jimmy Pitt?" "Yes." "But, I say, look here, Molly. I mean, I've been to him, already. He lent me a fiver. He might kick if I tried to touch him again so soon." "I'll ask him for it." "But, look here, Molly----" "Jimmy and I are engaged, Spennie." "What! Not really? I say, I'm frightfully pleased. He's one of the best. I'm fearfully glad. Why, that's absolutely topping. It'll be all right. I'll sweat to pay him back. I'll save out of my allowance. I can easily do it if I cut out a few things and don't go about so much. You're a frightfully good sort, Molly. I say, will you ask him to-night? I want to pay Wesson first thing to-morrow morning." "Very well. You'd better give me those notes, Spennie. I'll put them back." The amateur cracksman handed over his loot, and retired toward the stairs. Molly could hear him going down them three at a time, in a whirl of relief and good resolutions. She went to Sir Thomas' room, and replaced the notes. Having done this, she could not resist the temptation to examine herself in the glass for a few moments. Then she turned away, switched off the light, and was just about to leave the room when a soft footstep in the passage outside came to her ears. She shrank back. She felt a curiously guilty sensation, as if she had been in the room with criminal rather than benevolent intentions. Her motives in being where she was were excellent--but she would wait till this person had passed before coming out into the passage. Then it came to her with a shock that the person was not going to pass. The footsteps halted outside the door. There was a curtain at her side, behind which hung certain suits of Sir Thomas'. She stepped noiselessly behind this. The footsteps passed on into the room. CHAPTER XVI. Jimmy had gone up to his room to put on the costume he was to wear in the first act at about the time when Spennie was being seized upon by Charteris to act as prompter. As he moved toward the stairs, a square-cut figure appeared. It was the faithful Galer. There was nothing in his appearance to betray the detective to the unskilled eye, but years of practice had left Spike with a sort of sixth sense as regarded the force. He could pierce the subtlest disguise. Jimmy had this gift in an almost equal degree, and it had not needed Mr. Galer's constant shadowing of himself to prove to Jimmy the correctness of Spike's judgment. He looked at the representative of Wragge's Detective Agency, Ltd., as he stood before him now, taking in his every detail: the square, unintelligent face; the badly cut clothes; the clumsy heels; the enormous feet. "And this," he said to himself, "is the man McEachern thinks capable of tying my hands!" There were moments when the spectacle of Mr. Galer filled Jimmy with an odd sort of fury, a kind of hurt professional pride. The feeling that this espionage was a direct challenge enraged him. Behind this clumsy watcher he saw always the self-satisfied figure of Mr. McEachern. He seemed to hear him chuckling to himself. "If it wasn't for Molly," he said to himself, "I'd teach McEachern a lesson. I'm trying to hold myself in, and he sets these fool detectives onto me. I shouldn't mind if he'd chosen somebody who knew the rudiments of the game, but Galer! Galer! "Well, Mr. Galer," he said, aloud, "you aren't trying to escape, are you? You're coming in to see the show, aren't you?" "Oh, yes," said the detective. "Jest wanted to go upstairs for 'alf a minute. You coming, too?" "I was going to dress," said Jimmy, as they went up. "See you later," he added, at the door. "Hope you'll like the show." He went into his room. Mr. Galer passed on. * * * * * Jimmy had finished dressing, and had picked up a book to occupy the ten minutes before he would be needed downstairs, when there burst into the room Spike Mullins, in a state of obvious excitement. "Gee, Mr. Chames!" "Hello, Spike." Spike went to the door, opened it, and looked up and down the passage. "Mr. Chames," he said, in a whisper, shutting the door, "there's bin doin's to-night for fair. Me coco's still buzzin'. Say, I was to Sir Thomas' dressin' room----" "What! What were you doing there?" Spike looked somewhat embarrassed. He grinned apologetically, and shuffled his feet. "I've got dem, Mr. Chames," he said. "Got them? Got what?" "Dese." He plunged his hand in his pocket, and drew forth a glittering mass. Jimmy's jaw dropped as he gazed at Lady Blunt's rope of pearls. "Two hundred t'ousand plunks," murmured Spike, gazing lovingly at them. "I says to myself, Mr. Chames ain't got no time to be getting' after dem himself. He's too busy dese days wit' jollyin' along the swells. So it's up to me, I says, 'cos Mr. Chames'll be tickled to deat', all right, all right, if we can git away wit' dem. So I----" Jimmy gave tongue with an energy which amazed his faithful follower. "Spike! You lunatic! Didn't I tell you there was nothing doing when you wanted to take those things the other day?" "Sure, Mr. Chames. But dose was little dinky t'ings. Dese poils is boids, for fair." "Good heavens, Spike, you must be mad. Can't you see--Oh, Lord! Directly the loss of those pearls is discovered, we shall have those detectives after us in a minute. Didn't you know they had been watching us?" An involuntary chuckle escaped Spike. "'Scuse me, Mr. Chames, but dat's funny about dem sleut's. Listen. Dey's bin an' arrest each other." "What!" "Dat's right. Dey had a scrap in de dark, each finking de odder was after de jools, an' not knowin' dey was bote sleut's, an' now one of dem's bin an' taken de odder off, an' locked him in de cellar." "What on earth do you mean?" Spike giggled at the recollection. "Listen, Mr. Chames, it's dis way. I'm in de dressin' room, chasin' around wit' dis lantern here for de jool box"--he produced from his other pocket a small bicycle lamp--"and just as I gets a line on it, gee! I hears a footstep comin' down de passage straight for de door. Was to de bad? Dat's right. Gee, I says to m'self, here's one of de sleut' guys what's bin an' got wise to me, and he's comin' in to put de grip on me. So I gets up, an' I blows out de lantern, and I stands dere in de dark, waitin' for him to come in. And den I'm going to get busy before he can see who I am, and jolt him one on de point, and den, while he's down and out, chase meself for de soivants' hall." "Yes?" said Jimmy. "Well, dis guy, he gets to de door, and opens it, and I'm just goin' to butt in, when dere suddenly jumps out from de room on de odder side de passage anodder guy, and gets de rapid strangleholt on dis foist mug. Say, wouldn't dat make you wonder was you on your feet or your coco?" "Go on. What happened, then?" "Dey begins to scrap good and hard in de dark. Dey couldn't see me, and I couldn't see dem, but I could hear dem bumpin' about an' sluggin' each odder, all right, all right. And by an' by one of dem puts de odder to de bad, so dat he goes down and takes de count; an' den I hears a click. And I know what dat is. One of de guys has put de irons on de odder guy. Den I hears him strike a light--I'd turned de switch what lights up de passage before I got into de room--and den he says, 'Ah', he says, 'got youse, have I? Not the boid I expected, but you'll do.' I knew his voice. It was dat mug what calls himself Galer." "I suppose I'm the bird he expected," said Jimmy. "Well?" "De odder mug was too busy catchin' up wit' his breat' to shoot it back swift, but after he's bin doin' de deep breathin' stunt for a while, he says, 'You mutt', he says, 'youse to de bad. You've made a break, you have.' He put it different, but dat's what he meant. Den he says that he's a sleut', too. Does de Galer mug give him de glad eye? Not on your life. He says dat dat's de woist tale that's ever bin handed to him. De odder mug says, 'I'm Sir Tummas' vally', he says. 'Aw, cut it out', says Galer. 'Sure youse ain't Sir Tummas himself?' 'Show me to him', says de foist guy, 'den you'll see.' 'Not on your life', says Galer. 'What! Butt in among de swells what's enjoyin' themselves and spoil deir evenin' by showin' dem a face like yours? To de woods! It's youse for de coal cellar, me man, and we'll see what youse has got to say afterward. G'wan!' And off dey went. And I lit me lantern again, got de jools, and chased meself here." Jimmy stretched out his hand. "All very exciting," he said. "And now you'll just hand me those pearls, and I'll seize the opportunity while the coast is clear to put them back where they belong." Only for a moment did Spike hesitate. Then he pulled out the jewels, and placed them in Jimmy's hand. Mr. Chames was Mr. Chames, and what he said went. But his demeanor was tragic, telling eloquently of hopes blighted. Jimmy took the necklace with a thrill. He was an expert in jewels, and a fine gem affected him much as a fine picture affects the artistic. He went to the light, and inspected them gloatingly. As he did so, he uttered a surprised exclamation. He ran the jewels through his fingers. He scrutinized them again, more closely this time. Then he turned to Spike, with a curious smile. "You'd better be going downstairs," he said. "I'll just run along and replace them. Where is the box?" "It's on de floor against de wall, near de window, Mr. Chames." "Good. Better give me that lamp." There was no one in the passage. He raced softly along it to Sir Thomas Blunt's dressing room. He lit his lamp, and found the box without difficulty. Dropping the necklace in, he closed down the lid. "They'll want a new lock, I'm afraid," he said. "However!" He rose to his feet. "Jimmy!" said a startled voice. He whipped round. The light of the lamp fell on Molly, standing, pale and open-eyed, beside the curtain by the door. CHAPTER XVII. Pressed, rigid, against the wall behind her curtain, Molly had listened in utter bewilderment to the sounds of strife in the passage outside. The half-heard conversation between the detectives had done nothing toward a solution of the mystery. Galer's voice she thought she recognized as one that she had heard before; but she could not identify it. When the detectives had passed away together down the corridor, she had imagined that the adventure was at an end and that she was at liberty to emerge--cautiously--from her hiding place and follow them downstairs. She had stretched out a hand, to draw the curtain aside, when she caught sight of the yellow ray of the lamp on the floor, and shrank back again. As she did so, she heard the sound of breathing. Somebody was still in the room. Her mystification deepened. She had supposed that the tale of visitors to the dressing room was complete with the two who had striven in the passage. Yet here was another. She strained her ears to catch a sound. For a while she heard nothing. Then came a voice that she knew well; and, abandoning concealment, she came out into the room, and found Jimmy kneeling on the floor beside the rifled jewel box. For a full minute they stood staring at each other, without a word. The light of the lamp hurt Molly's eyes. She put up a hand, to shade them. The silence was oppressive. It seemed to Molly that they had been standing like this for years. Jimmy had not moved. There was something in his attitude which filled Molly with a vague fear. In the shadow behind the lamp, he looked shapeless and inhuman. "What are you doing here?" he said at last, in a harsh, unnatural voice. "I----" She stopped. "You're hurting my eyes," she said. "I'm sorry. I didn't think. Is that better?" He turned the light from her face. Something in his voice and the apologetic haste with which he moved the lamp seemed to relax the strain of the situation. The feeling of stunned surprise began to leave her. She found herself thinking coherently again. The relief was but momentary. Why was Jimmy in the room at that time? Why had he a lamp? What had he been doing? The questions shot from her brain like sparks from an anvil. The darkness began to tear at her nerves. She felt along the wall for the switch, and flooded the room with light. Jimmy laid down the lantern, and stood for a moment, undecided. He looked at Molly, and suddenly there came over him an overwhelming desire to tell her everything. He had tried to stifle his conscience, to assure himself that the old days were over, and that there was no need to refer to them. And for a while he had imposed upon himself. But lately the falseness of his position had come home to him. He could not allow her to marry him, in ignorance of what he had been. It would be a villainous thing to do. Often he had tried to tell her, but had failed. He saw that it must be done, here and now. He lifted the lid of the jewel box, and dangled the necklace before her eyes. She drew back. "Jimmy! You were--stealing them?" "No, I was putting them back." "Putting them back?" "Listen. I'm going to tell you the truth, Molly--I've been trying to for days, but I never had the pluck. I wasn't stealing this necklace, but for seven years I lived by this sort of thing." "By----" "By stealing. By breaking into houses and stealing. There. It isn't nice, is it? But it's the truth. And whatever happens, I'm glad you know." "Stealing!" said Molly slowly. "You!" He took a step forward, and laid his hand on her arm. She shrank away from him. His hand fell to his side like lead. "Molly, do you hate me?" "How could you?" she whispered. "How could you?" "Molly, I want to tell you a story. Are you listening? It's the story of a weak devil who was put up to fight the world, and wasn't strong enough for it. He got a bad start, and he never made it up. They sent him to school, the best school in the country; and he got expelled. Then they gave him a hundred pounds, and told him to make out for himself. He was seventeen, then. Seventeen, mind you. And all he knew was a little Latin and Greek, a very little, and nothing else. And they sent him out to make his fortune." He stopped. "It will be much simpler to tell it in the first person," he said, with a short laugh. "I arrived in New York--I was seventeen, you will remember--with ninety pounds in my pocket. It seemed illimitable wealth at the time. Two pounds was the most I had ever possessed before. I could not imagine its ever coming to an end. In dollars it seemed an inconceivable amount of money. I put up at the Waldorf. I remember, I took a cab there. I gave the man three dollars." He laughed again. "You can guess how long my ninety pounds lasted. Within a month I had begun to realize that my purse was shallower than I had thought. It occurred to me that work of some sort would be an advantage. I went round and tried to get some. My God! Remember, I was seventeen, and absolutely ignorant of every useful trade under the sun." "Go on." "One day I was lunching at the Quentin, when a man came and sat down at the same table, and we got into conversation. I had spent the morning answering want advertisements, and I was going to break my last twenty-dollar bill to pay for my lunch. I was in the frame of mind when I would have done anything, good or bad, that would have given me some money. The man was very friendly. After lunch, he took me off to his rooms. He had a couple of parlor rooms in Forty-fifth Street. Then he showed his hand. He was a pretty scoundrel, but I didn't care. I didn't care for anything, except that there seemed to be money to be had from him. Honesty! Put a man in New York with nineteen dollars and a few cents in his pockets, and no friends, and see what happens! It's a hell for the poor, in New York. An iron, grinding city. It frightens you. It's so big and hard and cruel. It takes the fight out of you. I've felt it, and I know." He stopped, and gave a little shiver. Nine years had passed since that day, but a man who has all but gone under in a big city does not readily forget the nightmare horror of it. "Stone--that was the man's name--was running a tapless wire-tapping game. You've read about the trick, I expect. Every one has known about it since Larry Summerfield was sent to Sing Sing. But it was new then. There are lots of ways of doing it. Stone's was to hire a room and fix it up to look like a branch of the Western Union Telegraph Company. He would bring men in there and introduce them to a man he called the manager of the branch, who was supposed to get racing results ten minutes before they were sent out to the pool rooms. The victim would put up the money for a bet, and Stone and his friends got it at once. Stone was looking for an assistant. He wanted a man who looked like a gentleman. To inspire confidence! I looked older than I was, and he took me on. It was a filthy business, but I was in a panic. I was with Stone eight months. Then I left him. It was too unsavory--even for me. "It was after that that I became a cracksman. I wanted money. It was no use hoping for work. I couldn't get it, and I couldn't have done it if I had got it. I was a pirate, and fit for nothing except piracy. One night I met a man in a Broadway rathskeller. I knew him by sight. I had seen him about at places. 'You're with Stone, aren't you?' he said, after we had talked about racing and other things for a while. I stared at him in surprise. I was frightened, too. 'It's all right', he said, 'I know all about Stone. You needn't be afraid of me. Aren't you with him?' 'I was', I said. 'You left him? Why?' I told him. 'You seem a bright kid', he said. 'Join me if you feel like it.' He was a cracksman. I never found out his real name. He was always called Bob. A curious man. He had been at Harvard, and spoke half a dozen languages. I think he took to burglary from sheer craving for excitement. He used to speak of it as if it were an art. I joined him, and he taught me all he knew. When he died--he was run over by a car--I went on with the thing. Then my uncle died, and I came back to England, rich. "When I left the lawyer's office, I made up my mind that I would draw a line across my life. I swore I would never crack another crib. And when I met you I swore it again." "And yet----" "No. It isn't as bad as you think. When I was in London I fell in with a man named Mullins, who used to work with me in the old days. He was starving, so I took him in, and brought him along here with me, to keep him out of mischief. To-night he came to me with this necklace. He had been in here, and stolen it. I took it from him, and came to put it back. You believe me, don't you, Molly?" "Yes," said she simply. He came a step nearer. "Molly, don't give me up. I know I've been a blackguard, but I swear that's all over now. I've drawn a line right through it. I oughtn't to have let myself love you. But I couldn't help it. I couldn't, dear. You won't give me up, will you? If you'd only take me in hand, you could make what you liked of me. I'd do anything for you. Any mortal thing you wanted. You can make me just anything you please. Will you try? Molly!" He stopped. She held out both her hands to him. The next moment she had gone. CHAPTER XVIII. With a wonderful feeling of light-heartedness, Jimmy turned once more to the jewel box. He picked up the lamp and switched off the electric light. He had dropped the necklace to the floor, and had knelt to recover it when the opening of the door, followed by a blaze of light and a startled exclamation, brought him to his feet with a bound, blinking but alert. In the doorway stood Sir Thomas Blunt. His face expressed the most lively astonishment. His bulging eyes were fixed upon the pearls in Jimmy's hand. "Good evening," said Jimmy pleasantly. Sir Thomas stammered. It is a disquieting experience to find the floor of one's dressing room occupied by a burglar. "What--what--what--" said Sir Thomas. "Out with it," said Jimmy. "What----" "I knew a man once who stammered," said Jimmy. "He used to chew dog biscuit while he was speaking. It cured him. Besides being nutritious." "You--you blackguard!" said Sir Thomas. Jimmy placed the pearls carefully on the dressing table. Then he turned to Sir Thomas, with his hands in the pockets of his coat. It was a tight corner, but he had been in tighter in his time, and in this instance he fancied that he held a winning card. He found himself enjoying the interview. "So--so it's you, is it?" said Sir Thomas. "Who told you?" "So you're a thief," went on the baronet viciously, "a low thief." "Dash it all--I say, come now," protested Jimmy. "Not low. You may not know me, over here, but I've got a big American reputation. Ask anybody. But---- "And, I say," added Jimmy, "I know you don't mean to be offensive, but I wish you wouldn't call me a thief. I'm a cracksman. There's a world of difference between the two branches of the profession. I mean, well, suppose you were an actor-manager, you wouldn't like to be called a super, would you? I mean--well, you see don't you? An ordinary thief, for instance, would use violence in a case like this. Violence--except in extreme cases; I hope this won't be one of them--is contrary to cracksmen's etiquette. On the other hand, Sir Thomas, I should like to say that I have you covered." There was a pipe in the pocket of his coat. He thrust the stem of this earnestly against the lining. Sir Thomas eyed the protuberance apprehensively, and turned a little pale. "My gun, as you see, is in my pocket. It is loaded and cocked. It is pointing straight at you at the present moment, and my finger is on the trigger. I may add that I am a dead shot at a yard and a half. So I should recommend you _not_ to touch that bell you are looking at." Sir Thomas' hand wavered. "Do, if you like, of course," said Jimmy agreeably. "In any case, I shan't fire to kill you. I shall just smash your knees. Beastly painful, but not fatal." He waggled the pipe suggestively. Sir Thomas blanched. His hand fell to his side. "How are the theatricals going?" asked Jimmy. "Did you like the monologue?" Sir Thomas had backed away from the bell, but the retreat was merely for the convenience of the moment. He understood that it might be inconvenient to press the button just then; but he had recovered his composure by this time, and he saw that the game must be his. Jimmy was trapped, and he hastened to make this clear to him. "How, may I ask," he said, "do you propose to leave the abbey?" "I suppose they'll let me have the automobile," said Jimmy. "They can hardly ask me to walk. But I wasn't thinking of leaving just yet." "You mean to stop!" "Why not? It's a pretty place." "And what steps, if I may ask, do you imagine I shall take?" "Waltz steps. They're going to have a dance after the show, you know. You ought to be in that." "You wish me, in fact, to become a silent accomplice? To refrain from mentioning this little matter?" "You put things so well." "And do you propose to keep my wife's jewels, or may I have them?" "Oh, you may have those," said Jimmy. "Thank you." "I never touch paste." Sir Thomas failed to see the significance of this remark. Jimmy repeated it, with emphasis. "I never touch paste," he said, "and Lady Blunt's necklace is, I regret to say, made of that material." Sir Thomas grew purple. "Mind you," said Jimmy, "it's very good paste. I'll say that for it. I didn't see through it till I had it in my hands. Looking at the thing--even quite close--I was taken in for a moment." The baronet made strange, gurgling noises. "Paste!" he said, speaking with difficulty. "Paste! Paste! Damn your impertinence, sir! Are you aware that that necklace cost forty thousand pounds?" "Then whoever paid that sum for it wasted a great deal of money. Paste it is, and paste it always will be." "It can't be paste. How do you know?" "How do I know? I'm an expert. Ask a jeweler how he knows diamonds from paste. He can feel them. He can almost smell them." "Let me look. It's impossible." "Certainly. I don't know the extent of your knowledge of pearls. If it is even moderate, I think you will admit that I am right." Sir Thomas snatched the necklace from the table and darted with it to the electric light. He scrutinized it, breathing heavily. Jimmy's prophecy was fulfilled. The baronet burst into a vehement flood of oaths, and hurled the glittering mass across the room. The unemotional mask of the man seemed to have been torn off him. He shook with futile passion. Jimmy watched him in interested silence. Sir Thomas ran to the jewels, and would have crushed them beneath his feet, had not Jimmy sprang forward and jerked him away from them. "Be quiet," he said. "Confound you, sir, will you stop that noise?" Sir Thomas, unaccustomed to this style of address, checked the flood for a moment. "Now," said Jimmy, "you see the situation. At present, you and I are the only persons alive, to the best of our knowledge, who know about this. Stay, though, there must be one other. The real necklace must have been stolen. It is impossible to say when. Years ago, perhaps. Well, that doesn't affect us. The thief, whoever he is, is not likely to reveal what he knows. So here you have it in a nutshell. Let me go, and don't say a word about having found me here, and I will do the same for you. No one will know that the necklace is not genuine. I shall not mention the subject, and I imagine that you will not. Very well, then. Now, for the alternative. Give me up, give the alarm, and I get--well, whatever they give me. I don't know what it would be, exactly. Something unpleasant. But what do you get out of it? Lady Blunt, if I may say so, is not precisely the sort of lady, I should think, who would bear a loss like this calmly. If I know her, she will shout loudly for another necklace, and see that she gets it. I should fancy you would find the expense unpleasantly heavy. That is only one disadvantage of the alternative. Others will suggest themselves to you. Which is it to be?" Sir Thomas suspended his operation of glaring at the paste necklace to glare at Jimmy. "Well?" said Jimmy. "I should like your decision as soon as it's convenient to you. They will be wanting me on the stage in a few minutes. Which is it to be?" "Which?" snapped Sir Thomas. "Why, go away, and go to the devil!" "All in good time," said Jimmy cheerfully. "I think you have chosen wisely. Coming downstairs?" Sir Thomas made no response. He was regarding the necklace moodily. "You'd better come. You'll enjoy the show. Charteris says it's the best piece there's been since 'The Magistrate'! And he ought to know. He wrote it. Well, good-by, then. See you downstairs later, I suppose?" For some time after he had gone Sir Thomas stood, motionless. Then he went across the room and picked up the necklace. It occurred to him that if Lady Blunt found it lying in a corner, there would be questions. And questions from Lady Blunt ranked among the keenest of his trials. * * * * * "If I had gone into the army," said Jimmy complacently to himself, as he went downstairs, "I should have been a great general. Instead of which I go about the country, scoring off dyspeptic baronets. Well, well!" CHAPTER XIX. The evening's entertainment was over. The last of the nobility and gentry had departed, and Mr. McEachern had retired to his lair to smoke--in his shirt sleeves--the last and best cigar of the day, when his solitude was invaded by his old New York friend, Mr. Samuel Galer. "I've done a fair cop, sir," said Mr. Galer, without preamble, quivering with self-congratulation. "How's that?" said the master of the house. "A fair cop, sir. Caught him in the very blooming act, sir. Dark it was. Oo, pitch. Fair pitch. Like this, sir. Room opposite where the jewels was. One of the gents' bedrooms. Me hiding in there. Door on the jar. Waited a goodish bit. Footsteps. Hullo, they've stopped! Opened door a trifle and looked out. Couldn't see much. Just made out man's figure. Door of dressing room was open. Showed up against opening. Just see him. Caught you at it, my beauty, have I? says I to myself. Out I jumped. Got hold of him. Being a bit to the good in strength, and knowing something about the game, downed him after a while and got the darbies on him. Took him off and locked him in the cellar. That's how it _was_, sir." "Good boy," said Mr. McEachern approvingly. "You're no rube." "No, sir." "Put one of these cigars into your face." "Thank you, sir. Very enjoyable thing, a cigar, sir. 'Specially a good un. I have a light, I thank you, sir." "Well, and who was he?" "Not the man you told me to watch, for. 'Nother chap altogether." "That red-headed----" "No, sir. Dark-haired chap. Seen him hanging about, suspicious, for a long time. Had my eye on him." Mr. Galer chuckled reminiscently. "Rummest card, sir, _I_ ever lagged in my natural," he said. "How's that? inquired Mr. McEachern amiably. "Why," grinned Mr. Galer, "you'll hardly believe it, sir, but he had the impudence, the gall, if I may use the word, the sauce to tell me he was in my own line of business. A detective, sir! Said he was going into the room to keep guard. I said to him at the time, I said, it's too thin, cocky. That's to say----" Mr. McEachern started. "A detective!" "A detective, sir," said Mr. Galer, with a chuckle. "I said to him at the time----" "The valet!" cried Mr. McEachern. "That's it, sir. Sir Thomas Blunt's valet, he was. That's how he got into the house, sir." Mr. McEachern grunted despairingly. "The man was right. He is a detective. Sir Thomas brought him down from London. He niver travels without him. Ye've done it. Ye've arristed wan of the bhoys." Mr. Galer's jaw dropped slightly. "He was? He really was----" "Ye'd better go straight to where it was ye locked him up, and let him loose. And I'd suggest ye hand him an apology. G'wan, mister. Lively as you can step." "I never thought----" "That's the trouble with you fly cops," said his employer caustically. "Ye niver do think." "It never occurred to me----" "G'wan!" said the master of the house. "Up an alley!" Mr. Galer departed. "And I asked them," said Mr. McEachern, "I asked them particularly not to send me a rube!" He lit another cigar, and began to brood over the folly of mankind. He was in a very pessimistic frame of mind when Jimmy curveted into the room, with his head in the clouds and his feet on air. "Can you spare me a few minutes, Mr. McEachern?" said Jimmy. The policeman stared heavily. "I can," he said slowly. "What is ut?" "Several things," said Jimmy, sitting down. "I'll take them in order. I'll start with our bright friend, Galer." "Galer!" "Of New York, according to you. Personally, I should think that he's seen about as much of New York as I have of Timbuctoo. Look here, McEachern, we've known each other some time, and I ask you, as man to man, do you think it playing the game to set a farmer like poor old Galer to watch me? I put it to you?" The policeman stammered. The question chimed in so exactly with the opinion he had just formed, on his own account, of the human bloodhound who was now in the cellar making the peace with his injured fellow worker. "Hits you where you live, that, doesn't it?" said Jimmy. "I wonder you didn't have more self-respect, let alone consideration for my feelings. I'm surprised at you." "Ye're----" "In fact, if you weren't going to be my father-in-law, I doubt if I could bring myself to forgive you. As it is, I overlook it." The policeman's face turned purple. "Only," said Jimmy, with quiet severity, taking a cigar from the box and snipping off the end, "don't let it occur again." He lit the cigar. Mr. McEachern continued to stare fixedly at him. So might the colonel of a regiment have looked at the latest-joined subaltern, if the latter, during mess, had offered to teach him how to conduct himself on parade. "I'm going to marry your daughter," said Jimmy. "You are going to marry me daughter!" echoed Mr. McEachern, as one in a trance. "I am going to marry your daughter." The purple deepened on Mr. McEachern's face. "More," said Jimmy, blowing a smoke ring. "_She_ is going to marry me. We are going to marry each other," he explained. McEachern's glare became frightful. He struggled for speech. "I must congratulate you," said Jimmy, "on the way things went off tonight. It was a thorough success. Everybody was saying so. You're the most popular man in the county. What would they say of you at Jefferson Market, if they knew? By the way, do you correspond with any of the old set? Splendid fellows, they were. I wish we had some of them here tonight." Mr. McEachern's emotions found relief in words. He rose, and waved a huge fist in Jimmy's face. His great body was shaking with rage. "You!" shouted the policeman. "You!" The fist was within an inch of Jimmy's chin. Outwardly calm, inwardly very much alive to the fact that at any moment the primitive man in him might lead his prospective father-in-law beyond the confines of self-restraint, Jimmy sat still in his chair, his eyes fixed steadily on those of his relative-to-be. It was an uncomfortable moment. Mr. McEachern, if he made an assault, might regret it subsequently. But he would not be the first to do so. The man who did that would be a certain James Pitt. If it came to blows, the younger man could not hope to hold his own with the huge policeman. "You!" roared McEachern. Jimmy fancied he could feel the wind of moving fist. "You marry me daughter! A New York crook. The sweepings of the Bowery. A man who ought to be in jail. I'd like to break your face in." "I noticed that," said Jimmy. "If it's all the same to you, will you take your fist out of my mouth? It makes it a little difficult to carry on a conversation. And I've several things I should like to say." "Ye'll listen to me!" "Certainly. You were saying?" "Ye come here. Ye worm yourself into my house, crawl into it----" "I came by invitation, and in passing, not on all fours. Mr. McEachern, may I ask one question?" "What is ut?" "If you didn't want me, why did you let me stop here?" The policeman stopped as if he had received a blow. There came flooding back into his mind the recollection of his position. In his wrath, he had forgotten that Jimmy knew his secret. And he looked on Jimmy as a man who would use his knowledge. He sat down heavily. Jimmy went on smoking in silence for a while. He saw what was passing in his adversary's mind, and it seemed to him that it would do no harm to let the thing sink in. "Look here, Mr. McEachern," he said, at last, "I wish you could listen quietly to me for a minute or two. There's really no reason on earth why we should always be at one another's throats in this way. We might just a well be friends, as we should be if we met now for the first time. Our difficulty is that we know too much about each other. You knew me in New York, and you know what I did there. Naturally, you don't like the idea of my marrying your daughter. You can't believe that I'm not simply an ordinary yegg, like the rest of the crooks you used to know. I promise you, I'm not. Can't you see that it doesn't matter what a man has been? It's what he is and what he means to be that counts. Mr. Patrick McEachern, of Corven Abbey, isn't the same as Constable McEachern, of the New York police. Well, then, I have nothing to do with the man I was when you knew me first. I have disowned him. He's a back number. I am an ordinary English gentleman now. My uncle has left me more than well off. I am a baronet. And is it likely that a baronet--_with_ money, mind you--is going to carry on the yegg business as a side line? Be reasonable. There's really no possible objection to me now. Let's shake, and call the fight off. Does that go?" The policeman was plainly not unmoved by these arguments. He drummed his fingers on the table, and stared thoughtfully at Jimmy. "Is Molly--" he said, at length, "does Molly----" "Yes," said Jimmy. "And I can promise you I love her. Come along, now. Why wait?" McEachern looked doubtfully at Jimmy's outstretched hand. He moved his own an inch from the table, then let it fall again. "Come on," said Jimmy. "Do it now. Be a sport." And with a great grunt, which might have meant anything, from resignation to cordiality, Mr. McEachern capitulated. CHAPTER XX. The American liner, _St. Louis_, lay in the Empress Dock, at Southampton, taking aboard her passengers. All sorts and conditions of men flowed in an unceasing stream up the gangway. Leaning over the second-class railing, Jimmy Pitt and Spike Mullins watched them thoughtfully. Jimmy looked up at the Blue Peter that fluttered from the foremast, and then at Spike. The Bowery boy's face was stolid and expressionless. He was smoking a short wooden pipe, with an air of detachment. "Well, Spike," said Jimmy. "Your schooner's on the tide now, isn't it? Your vessel's at the quay. You've got some queer-looking fellow travellers. Don't miss the two Cinghalese sports, and the man in the turban and the baggy breeches. I wonder if they're air-tight. Useful if he fell overboard." "Sure," said Spike, directing a contemplative eye toward the garment in question. "He knows his business." "I wonder what those men on the deck are writing. They've been scribbling away ever since we came here. Probably society journalists. We shall see in next week's _Sphere_: 'Among the second-class passengers we noticed Mr. "Spike" Mullins, looking as cheery as ever.' It's a pity you're so set on going, Spike. Why not change your mind, and stop?" For a moment, Spike looked wistful. Then his countenance resumed its woodenness. "Dere ain't no use for me dis side, Mr. Chames," he said. "New York's de spot. Youse don't want none of me, now you're married. How's Miss Molly, Mr. Chames?" "Splendid, Spike; thanks. We're going over to France by to-night's boat." "It's been a queer business," said Jimmy, after a pause. "A deuced rum business. Well, I've come very well out of it, at any rate. It seems to me that you're the only one of us who doesn't end happily, Spike. I'm married. McEachern's butted into society so deep that it would take an excavating party with dynamite to get him out of it. Molly. Well, Molly's made a bad bargain, but I hope she won't regret it. We're all going some, except you. You're going out on the old trail again--which begins in Third Avenue and ends in Sing Sing. Why tear yourself away, Spike?" Spike concentrated his gaze on a weedy young emigrant in a blue jersey, who was having his eye examined by the overworked doctor, and seemed to be resenting it. "Dere's nuttin' doin' dis side, Mr. Chames," he said, at length. "I want to get busy." "Ulysses Mullins!" said Jimmy, looking at him curiously. "I know the feeling. There's only one cure, and I don't suppose you'll ever take it. You don't think a lot of women, do you? You're the rugged bachelor." "Goils----" began Spike comprehensively, and abandoned the topic without dilating on it further. Jimmy lit his pipe, and threw the match overboard. The sun came out from behind a cloud, and the water sparkled. "Dose were great jools, Mr. Chames," said Spike thoughtfully. "I believe you're still brooding over them, Spike." "We could have got away wit' dem, if you'd have stood for it. Dead easy." "You _are_ brooding over them. Spike, I'll tell you something which will console you a little before you start out on your wanderings. That necklace was paste." "What's dat?" "Nothing but paste. They weren't worth thirty dollars." A light of understanding came into Spike's eyes. His face beamed with the smile of one to whom dark matters are made clear. "So _dat's_ why you wouldn't stand for gettin' away wit' dem!" he exclaimed. * * * * * The last voyager had embarked. The deck was full to congestion. "They'll be sending us ashore in a minute," said Jimmy. "I'd better be moving. Let me know how you're making out, Spike, from time to time. You know the address. And, I say. It's just possible you may find you want a dollar or two, every now and then. When you're going to buy another automobile, for instance. Well, you know where to write for it, don't you?" "T'anks, Mr. Chames. But dat'll be all right. I'm going to sit in at another game dis time. Politics, Mr. Chames. A fr'en' of a mug what I knows has got a pull. Me brother Dan is an _alderman_ wit' a grip on de 'Levent' Ward," he went on softly. "He'll find me a job!" "You'll be a boss before you know where you are." "Sure!" said Spike, grinning modestly. "You ought to be a thundering success in American politics," said Jimmy. "You've got all the necessary qualities." A steward passed. "Any more for the shore?" "Which shore?" asked Jimmy. "Well, Spike----" "Good-by, Mr. Chames." "Good-by," said Jimmy. "And good luck!" * * * * * Two tugs attached themselves excitedly to the liner's side. The great ship began to move slowly from the shore. Jimmy stood at the water side, and watched her. The rails were lined with gesticulating figures. In the front row, Spike waved his hat with silent vigor. The sun had gone behind the clouds. As the ship slid out on its way, a stray beam pierced the grayness. It shone on a red head. 
9908	----	THE FALSE FACES FURTHER ADVENTURES FROM THE HISTORY OF THE LONE WOLF BY LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE 1918 CONTENTS I Out of No Man's Land II From a British Port III In the Barred Zone IV In Deep Waters V On the Banks VI Under Suspicion VII In Stateroom 29 VIII Off Nantucket IX Sub Sea X At Base XI Under the Rose XII Resurrection XIII Reincarnation XIV Defamation XV Recognition XVI Au Printemps XVII Finesse XVIII Danse Macabre XIX Force Majeure XX Riposte XXI Question XXII Chicane XXIII Amnesty I OUT OF NO MAN'S LAND On the muddy verge of a shallow little pool the man lay prone and still, as still as those poor dead whose broken bodies rested all about him, where they had fallen, months or days, hours or weeks ago, in those grim contests which the quick were wont insensately to wage for a few charnel yards of that debatable ground. Alone of all that awful company this man lived and, though he ached with the misery of hunger and cold and rain-drenched garments, was unharmed. Ever since nightfall and a brisk skirmish had made practicable an undetected escape through the German lines, he had been in the open, alternately creeping toward the British trenches under cover of darkness and resting in deathlike immobility, as he now rested, while pistol-lights and star-shells flamed overhead, flooding the night with ghastly glare and disclosing in pitiless detail that two-hundred-yard ribbon of earth, littered with indescribable abominations, which set apart the combatants. When this happened, the living had no other choice than to ape the dead, lest the least movement, detected by eyes that peered without rest through loopholes in the sandbag parapets, invite a bullet's blow. Now it was midnight, and lights were flaring less frequently, even as rifle-fire had grown more intermittent ... as if many waters might quench out hate in the heart of man! For it was raining hard--a dogged, dreary downpour drilling through a heavy atmosphere whose enervation was like the oppression of some malign and inexorable incubus; its incessant crepitation resembling the mutter of a weary, sullen drum, dwarfing to insignificance the stuttering of machine-guns remote in the northward, dominating even a dull thunder of cannonading somewhere down the far horizon; lowering a vast and shimmering curtain of slender lances, steel-bright, close-ranked, between the trenches and over all that weary land. Thus had it rained since noon, and thus--for want of any hint of slackening--it might rain for another twelve hours, or eighteen, or twenty-four.... The star-rocket, whose rays had transfixed him beside the pool, paled and winked out in mid-air, and for several minutes unbroken darkness obtained while, on hands and knees, the man crept on toward that gap in the British barbed-wire entanglements which he had marked down ere daylight waned, shaping a tolerably straight course despite frequent detours to avoid the unspeakable. Only once was his progress interrupted--when straining senses apprised him that a British patrol was taking advantage of the false truce to reconnoitre toward the enemy lines, its approach betrayed by a nearing _squash_ of furtive feet in the boggy earth, the rasp of constrained respiration, a muttered curse when someone slipped and narrowly escaped a fall, the edged hiss of an officer's whisper reprimanding the offender. Incontinently he who crawled dropped flat to the greasy mud and lay moveless. Almost at the same instant, warned by a trail of sparks rising in a long arc from the German trenches, the soldiers imitated his action, and, as long as those triple stars shone in the murk, made themselves one with him and the heedless dead. Two lay so close beside him that the man could have touched either by moving a hand a mere six inches; he was at pains to do nothing of the sort; he was sedulous to clench his teeth against their chattering, even to hold his breath, and regretted that he might not mute the thumping of his heart. Nor dared he stir until, the lights fading out, the patrol rose and skulked onward. Thereafter his movements were less stealthy; with a detachment of their own abroad in No Man's Land, the British would refrain from shooting at shadows. One had now to fear only German bullets in event the patrol were discovered. Rising, the man slipped and stumbled on in semi-crouching posture, ready to flatten to earth as soon as any one of his many overshoulder glances detected another sky-spearing flight of sparks. But this necessity he was spared; no more lights were discharged before he groped through the wires to the parapet, with almost uncanny good luck, finding the very spot where the British had come over the top, indicated by protruding uprights of a rough wooden scaling ladder. As he turned, felt with a foot for the uppermost rung, and began to descend, he was saluted by a voice hoarse with exposure, from the black bowels of the trench: "Blimy! but ye're back in a 'urry! Wot's up? Forget to put perfume on yer pocket-'andkerchief--or wot?" The man's response, if he made any, was lost in a heavy splash as his feet slipped on the slimy rungs, delivering him precipitately into a knee-deep stream of foul water which moved sluggishly through the trench like the current of a half-choked sewer--a circumstance which neither suprised him nor added to his physical discomfort, who could be no more wet or defiled than he had been. Floundering to a foothold, he cast about vainly for a clue to the other's whereabouts; for if the night was thick in the open, here in the trench its density was as that of the pit; the man could distinguish positively nothing more than a pallid rift where the walls opened overhead. "Well, sullen, w'ere's yer manners? Carn't yer answer a civil question?" Turning toward the speaker, the man replied in good if rather carefully enunciated English: "I am not of your comrades. I am come from the enemy trenches." "The 'ell yer are! 'Ands up!" The muzzle of a rifle prodded the man's stomach. Obediently he lifted both hands above his head. A thought later, he was half blinded by the sudden spot-light of an electric flash-lamp. "Deserter, eh? You kamerad--wot?" "Kamerad!" the man echoed with an accent of contempt. "I am no German--I am French. I have come through the Boche lines to-night with important information which I desire to communicate forthwith to your commanding officer." "Strike me!" his catechist breathed, skeptical. There was a new sound of splashing in the trench. A third voice chimed in: "'Ello? Wot's all the row abaht?" "Step up and tike a look for yerself. 'Ere's a blighter wot sez 'e's com from the Germ trenches with important information for the O.C." "Bloody liar," the newcomer commented dispassionately. "Mind yer eye. Likely it's just another pl'yful little trick of the giddy Boche. 'Ere you!" The splashing drew nearer. "Wot's yer gime? Speak up if yer don't want a bullet through yer in'ards." "I play no game," the man said patiently. "I am unarmed--your prisoner, if you like." "I like, all right. Mike yer mind easy abaht that. But wot's all this 'important information'?" "I shall divulge that only to the proper authorities. Be good enough to conduct me to your commanding officer without more delay." "Wot do yer mike of 'im, corp'ril?" the first soldier enquired. "'Ow abaht an inch or two o' the bay'net to loosen 'is tongue?" After a moment's hesitation in perplexed silence, the corporal took the flash-lamp from the private and with its beam raked the prisoner from head to foot, gaining little enlightenment from this review of a tall, spare figure clothed in the familiar gray overcoat of the German private--its face a mere mask of mud through which shone eyes of singular brilliance and steadiness, the eyes of a man of intelligence, determination, and courage. "Keep yer 'ands 'igh," the corporal advised curtly. "Ginger, you search 'im." Propping his rifle against the wall of the trench, its butt on the firing-step just out of water, the private proceeded painstakingly to examine the person of the prisoner; in course of which process he unbuttoned and threw open the gray overcoat, exposing a shapeless tunic and trousers of shoddy drab stuff. "'E 'asn't got no arms--'e 'asn't got nothink, not so much as 'is blinkin' latch-key." "Very good. Get back on yer post. I'll tike charge o' this one." Grounding his own rifle, the corporal fixed its bayonet, then employed it in a gesture of unpleasant significance. "'Bout fice," he ordered. "March. Yer can drop yer 'ands--but don't go forgettin' I'm right 'ere be'ind yer." In silence the prisoner obeyed, wading down the flooded trench, the spot-light playing on his back, striking sullen gleams from the inky water that swirled about his knees, and disclosing glimpses of coated figures stationed at regular intervals along the firing-step, faces steadfast to loopholes in the parapet. Now and again they passed narrow rifts in the walls of the trench, entrances to dugouts betrayed by glimmers of candle-light through the cracks of makeshift doors or the coarse mesh of gunnysack curtains. From one of these, at the corporal's summons, a sleepy subaltern stumbled to attend ungraciously to his subordinate's report, and promptly ordered the prisoner taken on to the regimental headquarters behind the lines. A little farther on captive and captor turned off into a narrow and tortuous communication trench. Thereafter for upward of ten minutes they threaded a labyrinth of deep, constricted, reeking ditches, with so little to differentiate one from another that the prisoner wondered at the sure sense of direction which enabled the corporal to find his way without mis-step, with the added handicap of the abysmal darkness. Then, of a sudden, the sides of the trench shelved sharply downward, and the two debouched into a broad, open field. Here many men lay sleeping, with only waterproof sheets for protection from that bitter deluge which whipped the earth into an ankle-deep lake of slimy ooze and lent keener accent to the abiding stench of filth and decomposing flesh. A slight hillock stood between this field and the firing-line--where now lively fusillades were being exchanged--its profile crowned with a spectral rank of shell-shattered poplars sharply silhouetted against a sky in which star-shells and Verey lights flowered like blooms of hell. Here the corporal abruptly commanded his prisoner to halt and himself paused and stood stiffly at attention, saluting a group of three officers who were approaching with the evident intention of entering the trench. One of these loosed upon the pair the flash of a pocket lamp. At sight of the gray overcoat all three stopped short. A voice with the intonation of habitual command enquired: "What have we here?" The corporal replied: "A prisoner, sir--sez 'e's French--come across the open to-night with important information--so 'e sez." The spot-light picked out the prisoner's face. The officer addressed him directly. "What is your name, my man?" "That," said the prisoner, "is something which--like my intelligence--I should prefer to communicate privately." With a startled gesture the officer took a step forward and peered intently into that mud-smeared countenance. "I seem to know your voice," he said in a speculative tone. "You should," the prisoner returned. "Gentlemen," said the officer to his companions, "you may continue your rounds. Corporal, follow me with your prisoner." He swung round and slopped off heavily through the mud of the open field. Behind them the sound of firing in the forward trenches swelled to an uproar augmented by the shrewish chattering of machine-guns. Then a battery hidden somewhere in the blackness in front of them came into action, barking viciously. Shells whined hungrily overhead. The prisoner glanced back: the maimed poplars stood out stark against a sky washed with wave after wave of infernal light.... Some time later he was conscious of a cobbled way beneath his sodden footgear. They were entering the outskirts of a ruined village. On either hand fragments of walls reared up with sashless windows and gaping doors like death masks of mad folk stricken in paroxysm. Within one doorway a dim light burned; through it the officer made his way, prisoner and corporal at his heels, passing a sentry, then descending a flight of crazy wooden steps to a dank and gloomy cellar, stone-walled and vaulted. In the middle of the cellar stood a broad table at which an orderly sat writing by the light of two candles stuck in the necks of empty bottles. At another table, in a corner, a sergeant and an operator of the Signal Corps were busy with field telephone and telegraph instruments. On a meagre bed of damp and mouldy straw, against the farther wall, several men, orderlies and subalterns, rested in stertorous slumbers. Despite the cold the atmosphere was a reek of tobacco smoke, sweat, and steam from wet clothing. The man at the centre table rose and saluted, offering the commanding officer a sheaf of scribbled messages and reports. Taking the chair thus vacated, the officer ran an eye over the papers, issued several orders inspired by them, then turned attention to the prisoner. "You may return to your post, corporal." The corporal executed a smart about-face and clumped up the steps. In answer to the officer's steadfast gaze the prisoner stepped forward and confronted him across the table. "Who are you?" "My name," said the prisoner, after looking around to make sure that none of the other tenants of the cellar was within earshot, "is Lanyard--Michael Lanyard." "The Lone Wolf!" Involuntarily the officer jumped up, almost overturning his chair. "That same," the prisoner affirmed, adding with a grimace of besmirched and emaciated features that was meant for a smile--"General Wertheimer." "Wertheimer is not my name." "I am aware of that. I uttered it merely to confirm my identity to you; it is the only name I ever knew you by in the old days, when you were in the British Secret Service and I a famous thief with a price upon my head, when you and I played hide and seek across half Europe and back again--in the days of Troyon's and 'the Pack,' the days of De Morbihan and Popinot and...." "Ekstrom," the officer supplied as the prisoner hesitated oddly. "And Ekstrom," the other agreed. There was a little silence between the two; then the officer mused aloud: "All dead!" "All ... but one." The officer looked up sharply. "Which--?" "The last-named." "Ekstrom? But we saw him die! You yourself fired the shot that--" "It was not Ekstrom. Trust that one not to imperil his precious carcase when he could find an underling to run the risk for him! I tell you I have seen Ekstrom within this last month, alive and serving the Fatherland as the genius of that system of espionage which keeps the enemy advised of your every move, down to the least considerable--that system which makes it possible for the Boche to greet every regiment by name when it moves up to serve its time in your advanced trenches." "You amaze me!" "I shall convince you; I bring intelligence which will enable you to tear apart this web of treason within your own lines and...." Lanyard's voice broke. The officer remarked that he was trembling--trembling so violently that to support himself he must grip the edge of the table with both hands. "You are wounded?" "No--but cold to my very marrow, and faint with hunger. Even the German soldiers are on starvation rations, now; the civilians are worse off; and I--I have been over there for years, a spy, a hunted thing, subsisting as casually as a sparrow!" "Sit down. Orderly!" And there was no more talk between these two for a time. Not only did the officer refuse to hear another word before Lanyard had gorged his fill of food and drink, but an exigent communication from the front, transmitted through the trench telephone system, diverted his attention temporarily. Gnawing ravenously at bread and meat, Lanyard watched curiously the scenes in the cellar, following, as best he might, the tides of combat; gathering that German resentment of a British bombing enterprise (doubtless the work of that same squad which had stolen past him in the gloom of No Man's Land) had developed into a violent attempt to storm the forward trenches. In these a desperate struggle was taking place. Reinforcements were imperatively wanted. Activities at the signallers' table became feverish; the commanding officer stood over it, reading incoming messages as they were jotted down and taking such action thereupon as his judgment dictated. Orderlies, dragged half asleep from their nests of straw, were shaken awake and despatched to rouse and rush to the front the troops Lanyard had seen sleeping in the open field. Other orderlies limped or reeled down the cellar steps, delivered their despatches, and, staggered out through a breach in the wall to have their injuries attended to in the field dressing-station in the adjoining cellar, or else threw themselves down on the straw to fall instantly asleep despite the deafening din. The Boche artillery, seeking blindly to silence the field batteries whose fire was galling their offensive, had begun to bombard the village. Shells fled shrieking overhead, to break in thunderous bellows. Walls toppled with appalling crashes, now near at hand, now far. The ebb and flow of rifle-fire at the front contributed a background of sound not unlike the roaring of an angry surf. Machine-guns gibbered like maniacs. Heavier artillery was brought into play behind the British lines, apparently at no great distance from the village; the very flag-stones of the cellar floor quaked to the concussions of big-calibre guns. Through the breach in the wall echoed the screams and groans of wounded. The foul air became saturated with a sickening stench of iodoform. Gusts of wet wind eddied hither and yon. Candles flickered and flared, guttered out, were renewed. Monstrous shadows stole out from black corners, crept along mouldy walls, crouched, sprang and vanished, or, inscrutably baffled, retreated sullenly to their lairs.... For the better part of an hour the struggle continued; then its vigour began to wane. The heaviest British metal went out of action; some time later the field batteries discontinued their activities. The volume of firing in the advance trenches dwindled, was fiercely renewed some half a dozen times, died away to normal. Once more the Boche had been beaten back. Returning to his chair, the commanding officer rested his elbows upon the table and bowed his head between his hands in an attitude of profound fatigue. He seemed to remind himself of Lanyard's presence only at 'cost of a racking effort, lifting heavy-lidded eyes to stare almost incredulously at his face. "I presumed you were in America," he said in dulled accents. "I was ... for a time." "You came back to serve France?" Lanyard shook his head. "I returned to Europe after a year, the spring before the war." "Why?" "I was hunted out of New York. The Boche would not let me be." The officer looked startled. "The Boche?" "More precisely, Herr Ekstrom--to name him as we knew him. But this I did not suspect for a long time, that it was he who was responsible for my persecution. I knew only that the police of America, informed of my identity with the Lone Wolf, sought to deport me, that every avenue to an honourable livelihood was closed. So I had to leave, to try to lose myself." "Your wife ... I mean to say, you married, didn't you?" Lanyard nodded. "Lucy stuck by me till ... the end.... She had a little money of her own. It financed our flight from the States. We made a round-about journey of it, to elude surveillance--and, I think, succeeded." "You returned to Paris?" "No: France, like England, was barred to the Lone Wolf.... We settled down in Belgium, Lucy and I and our boy. He was three months old. We found a quiet little home in Louvain--" The officer interrupted with a low cry of apprehension, Lanyard checked him with a sombre gesture. "Let me tell you.... "We might have been happy. None knew us. We were sufficient unto ourselves. But I was without occupation; it occurred to me that my memoirs might make good reading--for Paris; my friends the French are as fond of their criminals as you English of your actors. On the second of August I journeyed to Paris to negotiate with a publisher. While I was away the Boche invaded Belgium. Before I could get back Louvain had been occupied, sacked...." He sat for a time in brooding silence; the officer made no attempt to rouse him, but the gaze he bent upon the man's lowered head was grave and pitiful. Abruptly, in a level and toneless voice, Lanyard resumed: "In order to regain my home I had to go round by way of England and Holland. I crossed the Dutch frontier disguised as a Belgian peasant. When I reentered Louvain it was to find ... But all the world knows what the blond beast did in Louvain. My wife and little son had vanished utterly. I searched three months before I found trace of either. Then ... Lucy died in my arms in a wretched hovel near Aerschot. She had seen our child butchered before her eyes. She herself...." Lanyard's hand, that rested on the table, clenched and whitened beneath its begrimed skin. His eyes fathomed distances immeasurably removed beyond the confines of that grim cellar. But he presently continued: "Ekstrom had accompanied the army of invasion, had seen and recognized Lucy in passing through Louvain. Therefore she and my son were among the first to be sacrificed.... When I stood over her grave I dedicated my life to the extermination of Ekstrom and all his breed. I have since done things I do not like to think about. But the Prussian spy system is the weaker for my work.... "But Ekstrom I could never find. It was as if he knew I hunted him. He was seldom twenty-four hours ahead of me, yet I never caught up with him but once; and then he was too closely guarded.... I pursued him to Berlin, to Potsdam, three times to the western front, to Serbia, once to Constantinople, twice to Petrograd." The officer uttered an exclamation of astonishment. Lanyard looked his way with a depreciatory air. "Nothing strange about that. To one of my early training that was easy--everything was easy but the end I sought.... En passant I collected information concerning the workings of the Prussian spy system. From time to time I found means to communicate somewhat of this to the Surété in Paris. I believe France and England have already profited a little through my efforts. They shall profit more, and quickly, when I have told all that I have to tell.... "Of a sudden Ekstrom vanished. Overnight he disappeared from Germany. A false lead brought me back to this front. Two days ago I learned he had been sent to America on a secret mission. Knowing that the States have severed diplomatic relations with Berlin and tremble on the verge of a declaration of war, we can surmise something of the nature of his mission. I mean to see that he fails.... To follow him to America, making my way out through Belgium and Holland, pursuing such furtive ways as I must in territory dominated by the Boche, meant much time lost. So I came through the lines to-night. Fortune was kind in throwing me into your hands: I count upon your assistance. As an ex-agent of the Secret Service you are in a position to make smooth my path; as an Englishman, you will advance the interests of a prospective ally of England if you help me to the limit of your ability; for what I mean to do in America will serve that country, by exposing the conspiracies of the Boche across the water, as much as it will serve my private ends." The officer's hand fell across the table and closed upon the knotted fist of the Lone Wolf. "As an Englishman," he said simply--"of course. But no less as your friend." II FROM A BRITISH PORT "And one man in his time plays many parts": few more than this same Lanyard. In no way to be identified with the hunted creature who crept into the British lines out of No Man's Land was the Monsieur Duchemin who, ten days after that wintry midnight, took passage for New York from "a British port," aboard the steamship _Assyrian_. André Duchemin was the name inscribed in the credentials furnished him in recognition of signal assistance rendered the British Secret Service in its task of scotching the Prussian spy system. And the personality he chose to assume suited well the name. A man of modest and amiable deportment, viewing the world with eyes intelligent and curious, his temper reacting from its ways in terms of grave humour, Monsieur Duchemin passed peaceably on his lawful occasions, took life as he found it, made the best of irksome circumstances. This last idiosyncrasy stood him in good stead. For the _Assyrian_ failed to clear upon her proposed sailing date and for a livelong week thereafter chafed alongside her landing stage, steam up, cargo laden and stowed, nothing lacking but the Admiralty's permission to begin her westbound voyage--a permission inscrutably withheld, giving rise to a common discontent which the passengers dissembled to the various best of their abilities, that is to say, in most cases thinly or not at all. Yet they were none of them unreasonable beings. They had come aboard one and all keyed up to a high nervous pitch, pardonable in such as must commit their lives to the dread adventure of the barred zone, wanting nothing so much as to get it over with, whatever its upshot. And everlasting procrastination required them day after day to steel their hearts anew against that Terror which followed its furtive ways beneath the leaden waters of the Channel! Alone among them this Monsieur Duchemin paraded successfully a false face of resignation, protesting no predilection whatsoever for a watery grave, no infatuate haste to challenge the Hun upon his chosen hunting-ground. In the fullness of time it would be permitted to him to go down to the sea in this ship. Meanwhile he found it apparently pleasant and restful to explore the winding cobbled ways of that antiquated waterside community, made over by the hand of War into a bustling seaport, or to tramp the sunken lanes that seamed those green old Cornish hills which embosomed the wide harbour waters, or to lounge about the broad white decks of the _Assyrian_ watching the diurnal traffic of the haven--a restless, warlike pageant. Daily, in earliest dusk of dawn, the wakeful might watch the faring forth of a weirdly assorted fleet of small craft, the day patrol, to relieve a night patrol as weirdly heterogeneous. Daily, at all hours, mine-sweepers came and went, by twos and twos, in flocks, in schools; and daily bellowing offshore detonations advertised their success in garnering those horned black seeds of death which the Hun and his kin were sedulous to sow in the fairways. While daily battleships both great and small rolled in wearily to refit and dress their wounds, or took swift departure on grim and secret errands. There was, moreover, the not-infrequent spectacle of some minor ship of war--a truculent, gray destroyer as like as not--shepherding in a sleek submarine, like a felon whale armoured and strangely caparisoned in gray-brown steel, to be moored in chains with a considerable company of its fellows on the far side of the roadstead, while its crew was taken ashore and consigned to some dark limbo of oblivion. And once, with a light cruiser snapping at her heels, a drab Norwegian tramp plodded sullenly into port, a mine-layer caught red-handed, plying its assassin's trade beneath a neutral flag. Not long after its crew had been landed, volleys of musketry crashed in the town gaol-yard. One of a group of three idling on the promenade deck of the _Assyrian_, Lanyard turned sharply and stared through narrowed eyelids into the quarter whence the sounds reverberated. The man at his side, a loose-jointed American of the commercial caste, paused momentarily in his task of masticating a fat dark cigar. "This way out," he commented thoughtfully. Lanyard nodded; but the third, a plumply ingratiative native of Geneva, known to the ship as Emil Dressier, frowned in puzzlement. "Pardon, Monsieur Crane, but what is that you say--'this way out'?" "Simply," Crane explained, "I take the firing to mean the execution of our nootral friends from Norway." The Swiss shuddered. "It is most terrible!" "Well, I don't know about that. They done their damnedest to fix it for us to drown somewhere out there in the nice, cold English Channel. I'm just as satisfied it's them, instead, with their backs to a stone wall in the warm sunlight, getting their needin's. That's only justice. Eh, Monsieur Duchemin?" "It is war," said Lanyard with a shrug. "And war is ... No: Sherman was all wrong. Hell's got perfectly good grounds for a libel suit against William Tecumseh for what he up and said about it and war, all in the same breath." Lanyard smiled faintly, but Dressler pondered this obscure reference with patent distress. Crane champed his cigar reflectively. "What's more to our purpose," he said presently: "I shouldn't be surprised if this meant the wind-up of our rest-cure here. That's the third mine-layer they've collected this week--two subs, and now this benevolent nootral. Am I right, Monsieur Duchemin?" "Who knows?" Lanyard replied with a smile. "Even now the mine-sweeping flotilla is coming home, as you see; which means, the neighbouring waters have been cleared. It is altogether a possibility that we may be permitted to depart this night." Even so the event: as that day's sun declined amid a portentous welter of crimson and purple and gold, the moorings were cast off and the _Assyrian_ warped out into mid-channel and anchored there for the night. Inasmuch as she was to sail as the tide served, some time before sunrise, the passengers were advised to seek their berths at an early hour. Thirty minutes before the steamship entered the danger zone (as she would soon after leaving the harbour) they would be roused and were expected promptly to assemble on deck, with life-preservers, and station themselves near the boats to which they were individually assigned. For their further comforting they were treated, in the ebb of the chill blue twilight, to boat-drill and final instructions in the right adjustment of life-belts. A preoccupied company assembled in the dining saloon for what might be its last meal. In the shadow of the general apprehension, conversation languished; expressions of relief on the part of those who had been loudest in complaining at the delays were notably unheard; even Crane, Lanyard's nearest neighbour at table, was abnormally subdued. Reviewing that array of sobered and anxious faces, Lanyard remarked--not for the first time, but with renewed gratitude--that in all the roster of passengers none were children and but two were women: the American widow of an English officer and her very English daughter, an angular and superior spinster. Avoiding the customary post-prandial symposium in the smoking room, Lanyard slipped away with his cigar for a lonely turn on deck. Beneath a sky heavily canopied, the night was stark black and loud with clashing waters. A fitful wind played in gusts now grim, now groping, like a lost thing blundering blindly about in that deep darkness. Ashore a few wan lights, widely spaced, winked uncertainly, withdrawn in vast remoteness; those near at hand, of the anchored shipping, skipped and swayed and flickered in mad mazes of goblin dance. To him who paced those vacant, darkened decks, the sense of dissociation from all the common, kindly phenomena of civilization was something intimate and inescapable. Melancholy as well rode upon that black-winged wind. At pause beneath the bridge, the adventurer rested elbows upon the teakwood rail and with importunate eyes searched the masked face of his destiny. There was great fear in his heart, not of death, but lest death overtake him before that scarlet hour when he should encounter the man whom he must always think of as "Ekstrom." After that, nothing would matter: let Death come then as swiftly as it willed.... He was not even middle-aged, on the hither side of thirty; yet his attitude was that of one who had already crossed the great divide of the average mortal span: he looked backward upon a life, never forward to one. To him his history seemed a thing written, lacking the one word Finis: he had lived and loved and lost--had arrayed himself insolently against God and Man, had been lifted toward the light a little way by a woman's love, had been thrust relentlessly back into the black pit of his damnation. He made no pretense that it was otherwise with him: remained now merely the thing he had been in the beginning, minus that divine spark which love had once kindled into consuming aspiration toward the right; the Lone Wolf prowled again to-day and would henceforth forevermore, the beast of prey callous to every human emotion, animated by one deadly purpose, existing but to destroy and be in turn destroyed.... Two decks below, about amidships, a cargo port was thrust open to the night. A thick, broad beam of light leaped out, buffeting the murk, striking evanescent glimmers from the rocking facets of the waters. Deckhands busied themselves rigging out an accommodation ladder. A tender of little tonnage panted nervously up out of nowhere and was made fast alongside. The light raked its upper deck, picking out in passing a group of men in uniforms. Fugitively something resembling a petticoat snapped in the wind. Then several persons moved toward the accommodation ladder, climbed it, disappeared through the cargo port. The wearer of the petticoat did not accompany them. Lanyard noted these matters subconsciously, for the time altogether preoccupied, casting forward his thoughts along those dim trails his feet must tread who followed his dark star.... Ten minutes later a deck-steward found him, and paused, touching his cap. "Beg pardon, sir, but all passingers is requested to report immedately in the music room." Indifferently Lanyard thanked the man and went below, to find the music room tenanted by a full muster of his fellow passengers, all more or less indignantly waiting to be cross-examined by the party of port officials from the tender--the ship's purser standing by together with the second and third officers and a number of stewards. Resentment was not unwarranted: already, before being suffered to take up quarters on board the _Assyrian_, each passenger had submitted to a most comprehensive survey of his credentials, his mental, moral, and social status, his past record, present affairs, and future purposes. A formality to be expected by all such as travel in war time, it had been rigid but mild in contrast with this eleventh-hour inquisition--a proceeding so drastic and exhaustive that the only plausible inference was official determination to find excuse for ordering somebody ashore in irons. Nothing was overlooked: once passports and other proofs of identity had been scrutinized, each passenger was conducted to his stateroom and his person and luggage subjected to painstaking search. None escaped; on the other hand, not one was found guilty of flagitious peculiarity. In the upshot the inquisitors, baffled and betraying every symptom of disappointment, were fain to give over and return to their tender. By this time Lanyard, one of the last to be grilled and passed, found himself as little inclined for sleep as the most timorous soul on board. Selecting an American novel from the ship's library, he repaired to the smoking room, where, established in a corner apart, he became an involuntary and, at first, a largely inattentive, eavesdropper upon an animated debate involving some eight or ten gentlemen at a table in the middle of the saloon--its subject, the recent visitation. Measures so extraordinary were generally held to indicate an incentive more extraordinary still. "You can't get away from it," he heard Crane declare: "there's some sort of funny business going on, or liable to go on, aboard this ship. She wasn't held up for a solid week out of pure cussedness. Neither did they come aboard to-night to give us another once-over through sheer voluptuousness. There's a reason." "And what," a satiric English voice enquired, "do you assume that reason to be?" "Search me. 'Sfar's I'm concerned the processes of the British Intelligence Office are a long sight past finding out." "It is simple enough," one of Crane's compatriots suggested: "the _Assyrian_ is suspected of entertaining a devil unawares." "Monsieur means--?" the Swiss enquired. "I mean, the authorities may have been led to believe some one of us a questionable character." "German spy?" "Possibly." "Or an English traitor?" "Impossible," asserted another Briton heavily. "There is to-day no such thing in England. Two years ago the supposition might have been plausible. But that breed has long since been stamped out--in England." "Another guess," Crane cut in: "they've taken considerable trouble to clear the track for us. Maybe it occurred to somebody at the last moment to make sure none of us was likely to pull off an inside job." "'Inside job?'" Dressler pleaded. "Planting bombs in the coal bunkers--things like that--anything to crab our getting through the barred zone in spite of mines and U-boats." "Any such attempt would mean almost certain death!" "What of it? It's been tried before--and got away with. You've got to hand it to Fritz, he'll risk hell-for-breakfast cheerful any time he gets it in his bean he's serving Gott und Vaterland." "Granted," said the Englishman. "But I fancy such an one would find it far from easy to secure passage upon this or any other vessel." "How so? You may have haltered all your traitors, but there's still a-plenty German spies living in England. Even you admit that. And if they can get by your Secret Service, to say nothing of Scotland Yard, what's to prevent their fixing to leave the country?" "Nothing, certainly. But I still contend it is hardly likely." "Of course it's hardly likely. Look at these guys to-night--dead set on making an awful example of anybody that couldn't come clean. I didn't notice them missing any bets. They combed me to the Queen's taste; for a while I was sure scared they'd extract my pivot tooth to see if there wasn't something incriminating and degrading secreted inside it. And nobody got off any easier. _I_ say the good ship _Assyrian_ has a pretty clean bill of health to go sailing with." "On the other hand"--yet another American voice was speaking--"no spy or criminal worth his salt would try to ship without preparations thorough enough to insure success, barring accidents." "Criminal?" drawled the Briton incredulously. "The enterprisin' burglar keeps a-burglin', even in war time. There have been notable burglaries in London of late, according to your newspapers." "And you think the thief would attempt to smuggle his loot out of the country aboard such a ship as this?" "Why not?" "Scotland Yard to the contrary notwithstanding?" "If Scotland Yard is as efficient as you think, sir, certainly any sane thief would make every effort to leave a country it was making too hot for him." "Considerable criminal!" Crane jeered. "Undeceive yourself, señor." This was a Brazilian, a quiet little dark body who commonly contented himself with a listening rôle in the smoking-room discussions. "There are truly criminals of intelligence. And war conditions are driving them out of Europe." Of a sudden Lanyard--stretched out at length upon the leather cushions, in full view of these gossips--became aware that he was being closely scrutinised. By whom, with what reason or purpose, he could not surmise; and it were unwise to look up from that printed page. But that sixth sense of his--intuition, what you will--that exquisitively sensitive sentinel admonished that at least one person in the room was watching him narrowly. Though he made no move other than to turn a page, his glance followed blindly blurring lines of text, and his quickened wits overlooked no shade of meaning or intonation as that talk continued. "A criminal of intelligence," some one observed, "is a giddy paradox whose fatuous existence is quite fittingly confined to the realm of fable." "You took the identical words right out of my mouth," Crane complained bitterly. "Your pardon, señores: history confutes your incredulity." "But we are talking about to-day." "Even to-day--can you deny it?--men attain high places by means which the law would construe as criminal, were they not intelligent enough to outwit it." "Big game," Crane objected; "something else again. What we contend is no man of ordinary common sense could get his own consent to crack a safe, or pick a pocket, or do second-story work, or pull any rough stuff like that." "Again you overlook living facts," persisted the Brazilian. "Name one--just one." "The Lone Wolf, then." "Unnatural history is out of my line," Crane objected. "Why is a lone wolf, anyway?" The Brazilian's voice took on an accent of exasperation. "Señores, I do not jest. I am a student of psychology, more especially of criminal psychology. I lived long in Paris before this war, and took deep interest in the case of the Lone Wolf." "Well, you've got me all excited. Go on with your story." "With much pleasure.... This gentleman, then, this Michael Lanyard, as he called himself, was a distinguished Parisian figure, a man of extraordinary attainment, esteemed the foremost connoisseur d'art in all Europe. Suddenly, at the zenith of his career, he disappeared. Subsequently it became known that he had been identical with that great Parisian criminal, the Lone Wolf, a superman of thieves who had plundered all Europe with unvarying success for almost a decade." "Then what made the silly ass quit?" "According to my information, he won the love of a young woman--" "And reformed for her sake, of course?" "To the contrary, señor; Lanyard renounced his double life because of a theory on which he had founded his astonishing success. According to this theory, any man of intelligence may defy society as long as he will, always providing he has no friend, lover, or confederate in whom to confide. A man self-contained can never be betrayed; the stupid police seldom apprehend even the most stupid criminal, save through the treachery of some intimate. This Lanyard proved his theory by confounding not only the utmost efforts of the police but even the jealous enmity of that association of Continental criminals known as the Bande Noire--until he became a lover. Then he proved his intelligence: in one stroke he flouted the police, delivered into their hands the inner circle of the Bande Noire, and vanished with the woman he loved." "And then--?" "The rest," said the Brazilian, "is silence." "It is for to-night, anyway," Crane observed, yawning. "It's bedtime. Here comes the busy steward to put the lights and us out." There was a general stir; men drained glasses, knocked out pipes, got up, murmured good-nights. Lanyard closed the American novel upon a forefinger, looked up abstractedly, rose, moved toward the door. The utmost effort of exceptional powers of covert observation assured him that, at the moment, none of the company favoured him with especial attention; the author of that interest whose intensity had so weighed upon his consciousness had been swift to dissemble. On his way forward he exchanged bows and smiles with Crane and one or two others, his gesture completely casual. Yet when he entered the starboard alleyway he carried with him a complete catalogue of those who had contributed to the conversation. With all, thanks to seven days' association, he stood on terms of shipboard acquaintance. Not one, in his esteem, was more potentially mischievous than any other--not even the Brazilian Velasco, though he had been the first to name the Lone Wolf. It was, furthermore, quite possible that the mention of his erstwhile sobriquet had been utterly fortuitous. And yet, one might not forget that sensation of being under intent surveillance.... In his stateroom Lanyard stood for several minutes gravely peering into the mirror above the washstand. The face he scanned was lean and worn in feature, darkly weathered, framed in hair whose jet already boasted an accent of silver at either temple--the face of a man inured to hardship, seasoned in suffering, strong in self-knowledge. The incandescence of an intelligence coldly dispassionate, quick and shrewd, lighted those dark eyes. Distinctively a face of Gallic cast, three years of long-drawn torment had served in part to erase from it wellnigh all resemblance to both the brilliant social freebooter of ante-bellum Paris and that undesirable alien whom the authorities had sought to deport from the States. Amazing facility in impersonation had done the rest; unrecognisable as what he had been, he was to-day flawlessly the incarnation of what he elected to seem--Monsieur Duchemin, gentleman, of Paris. Impossible to believe his disguise had been so soon penetrated.... And yet, again, that gossip of the smoking room.... Police work? Or had Ekstrom's creatures picked up his trail once more? Beneath that urbane mask of his, a hunted, wild thing poised in question, mistrustful of the very wind, prick-eared, fangs agleam, eyes grimly apprehensive.... A little sound, the least of metallic clicks, breaking the hush of his solitude, froze the adventurer to attention. Only his glance swerved swiftly to a fastened door in the forward partition--his stateroom being the aftermost of three that might be thrown together to form a suite. The nickeled knob was being tried with infinite precaution. On the half turn it checked with a faint repetition of the click. Then the door itself quivered almost imperceptibly to pressure, though it yielded not a fraction of an inch. Lanyard's eyes hardened. He did not stir from where he stood, but one hand whipped an automatic from his pocket while the other darted out to the switch-box by the head of his berth and extinguished the light. Instantly a glimmer of light in the forward stateroom showed through a narrow strip of iron grill-work set in the top of the partition for ventilating purposes. Simultaneously the door-knob was gently released, and with another louder click the light in the adjoining cubicle was blotted out. Mystified, Lanyard undressed and turned in, but not to sleep--not for a little, at least. Who might this neighbour be who tried his door so stealthily? Before to-night that room had had no tenant. Apparently one of the passengers had seen fit to shift his quarters. To what end? To keep a jealous eye on the Lone Wolf, perhaps? So much the better, then: Lanyard need only make enquiry in the morning to identify his enemy. Deliberately closing his eyes, he dismissed the enigma. He possessed in marked degree that attribute of genius, ability to command slumber at will. Swiftly the troubled deeps of thought grew calm; on their placid surface inconsequent visions were mirrored darkly, fugitive scenes from the store of subconscious memory: Crane's lantern-jawed physiognomy, keen eyes semi-veiled by humorously drooping lids, the extreme corner of his mouth bulging round his everlasting cigar ... grimy lions in Trafalgar Square of a rainy afternoon ... the octagonal room of L'Abbaye Thêléme at three in the morning, a swirl of Bacchanalian shapes ... Wertheimer's soldierly figure beside the telegraphers' table in that noisome cave at the Front ... the deck of a tender in darkness swept by a shaft of yellow light which momentarily revealed a group of folk with upturned faces, a petticoat fluttering in its midst.... III IN THE BARRED ZONE Day broke with rather more than half a gale blowing beneath a louring sky. Once clear of the bottleneck mouth of the harbour, the _Assyrian_ ran into brutal quartering seas. An old hand at such work, for upward of a decade a steady-paced Dobbin of the transatlantic lanes, she buckled down to it doggedly and, remembering her duty by her passengers, rolled no more than she had to, buried her nose in the foaming green only when she must. For all her care, the main deck forward was alternately raked by stinging volleys of spray and scoured by frantic cascades. More than once the crew of the bow gun narrowly escaped being carried overboard to a man. Blue with cold, soaked to the buff despite oilskins, they stuck stubbornly to their posts. Perched beyond reach of shattering wavecrests, the passengers on the boat-deck huddled unhappily in the lee of the superstructure--and snarled in response to the cheering information that better conditions for baffling the ubiquitous U-boat could hardly have been brewed by an indulgent Providence. Sheeting spindrift contributed to lower visibility: two destroyers standing on parallel courses about a mile distant to port and to starboard were more often than not barely discernible, spectral vessels reeling and dipping in the haze. The ceaseless whistle of wind in the rigging was punctuated by long-drawn howls which must have filled any conscientious banshee with corrosive envy. Toward mid-morning rain fell in torrents, driving even the most fearful passengers to shelter within the superstructure. A majority crowded the landing at the head of the main companionway close by the leeward door. Bolder spirits marched off to the smoking room--Crane starting this movement with the declaration that, for his part, he would as lief drown like a rat in a trap as battling to keep up in the frigid inferno of those raging seas. A handful of miserables, too seasick to care whether the ship swam or sank, mutinously took to their berths. Stateroom 27--adjoining Lanyard's--sported obstinately a shut door. Lanyard, sedulous not to discover his interest by questioning the stewards, caught never a glimpse of its occupant. For his own satisfaction he took a covert census of passengers on deck as the vessel entered the danger zone, and made the tally seventy-one all told--the number on the passenger list when the _Assyrian_ had left her landing stage the previous evening. It seemed probable, therefore, that the person in 27 had come aboard from the tender, either with or following the official party. Lanyard was unable to say that more had not left the tender than appeared to sit in inquisition in the music room. By noon the wind was beginning to moderate, and the sea was being beaten down by that relentlessly lashing rain. Visibility, however, was more low than ever. A fairly representative number descended to the dining saloon for luncheon--a meal which none finished. Midway in its course a thunderous explosion to starboard drove all in panic once more to the decks. Within two hundred yards of the _Assyrian_ a floating mine had destroyed a patrol boat. No more was left of it than an oil-filmed welter of splintered wreckage: of its crew, never a trace. Imperturbably the _Assyrian_ proceeded. Not so her passengers: now the smoking room was deserted even by the insouciant Crane, and the seasick to a woman brought their troubles back to the boat-deck. Alone the tenant of 27 stopped below. And the riddle of this ostensible indifference to terrors that clawed at the vitals of every other soul on board grew to intrigue Lanyard to the point of obsession. Was the reason brute apathy or sheer foolhardihood? He refused either explanation, feeling sure some darker and more momentous motive dictated this obstinate avoidance of the public eye. Exasperation aroused by failure to fathom the mystery took precedence in his thoughts even to the personal solicitude excited by last night's gossip of the smoking room.... With no other disturbing incident the afternoon wore away, the wind steadily flagging, the waves as steadily subsiding. When twilight closed in there was nothing more disturbing to one's equilibrium than a sea of long and sullen rolls scored by the pelting downpour. Perhaps as many as ten venturesome souls dined in the saloon, their fellows sticking desperately to the decks and contenting themselves with coffee and sandwiches. Daylight waned, terrors waxed: passengers instinctively gravitated into little knots and clusters, conversing guardedly as if fearful lest their normal accents bring down upon them those Apaches of the underseas for signs of whom their frightened glances incessantly ranged over-rail and searched the heaving wastes. The understanding was tacit that all would spend the night on deck. Dusk at length blotted out the shadows of their guardian destroyers, and a great and desolating loneliness settled down upon the ship. One by one the passengers grew dumb; still they clung together, but seemingly their tongues would no more function. With nightfall, the rain ceased, the breeze freshened a trifle, the pall of cloud lifted and broke, giving glimpses of remote, impersonal stars. Later a gibbous moon leered through the flying wrack, checkering the sea with a restless pattern of black and silver. In this ghastly setting the _Assyrian_, showing no lights, a shape of flying darkness pursuing a course secret to all save her navigators, strained ever onward, panting, groaning, quivering from stem to stern ... like an enchanted thing doomed to perpetual labours, striving vainly to break bonds invisible that transfixed her to one spot forever-more, in the midst of that bleak purgatory of shadow and moonshine and dread.... Sensitive to the eerie influence of the hour, Lanyard interrupted the tour of the decks which he had steadily pursued for the better part of the evening, and rested at the forward rail, looking down over the main deck, its bleached planking dotted with dark shapes of fixed machinery. In the bows the formless, uncouth bulk of the gun squatted in its tarpaulin. Its crew tramped heavily to and fro, shivering in heavy jackets, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched up to ears. Farther aft an iron door clanged heavily behind a sailor emerging from an alleyway; he approached the ship's bell, with practised hand sounded two double strokes, then turned and sang out in the weird minor traditional in his calling: "_Four bells--and a-a-all's well_!" Even as the wind made free with the melancholy echoes of that assurance, the spell upon the ship was exorcised. Overhead, from the foremast crow's-nest, a voice screamed, hoarsely urgent: "_Torpedo! 'Ware submarine to port_!" Many things happened simultaneously, or in a span of seconds strangely scant. The gunners sprang to station, whipping away the tarpaulin, while their lieutenant focussed binoculars upon the confused distances of the night. Obedient to his instructions, the long, gleaming tube of steel pivoted smoothly to port. From the bridge a signal rocket soared, hissing. The whistle loosed stentorian squalls of indignation and distress--one long and four short. Commands were shouted; the engine-room telegraph wrangled madly. The momentum of the _Assyrian_ was checked startlingly; her bows sheered smartly off to port. A rumour of frightened voices and pounding feet came from the leeward boat-deck, where the main body of the passengers was congregated, hidden from Lanyard by the shoulder of the foreward deck-house. A number of men ran forward, paused by the rail, stared, and scurried back, yelling in alarm. At this the din swelled to uproar. Scanning closely the surface of the sea, Lanyard himself descried a silvery arrow of spray lancing the swells, making with deadly speed toward the port bow of the _Assyrian_. But now both screws were churning full speed astern; the vessel lost headway altogether. Then her engines stopped. For a breathless instant she rested inert, like something paralyzed with fright, bows-on to the torpedo, the telegraph ringing frantically. Then the starboard screw began to turn full ahead, the port remaining idle. The bows swung off still more sharply to port. The torpedo shot in under them, vanished for a breathless moment, reappeared a boat's-length to starboard, plunged harmlessly on its unhindered way down the side of the vessel, and disappeared astern. Amidships terrified passengers milled like sheep, hampering the work of the boat-crews at the davits. Ship's officers raged among them, endeavouring to restore order. Half a mile or so dead ahead a tiny tongue of flame spat viciously in the murk. A projectile shrieked overhead, and dropped into the sea astern. Another followed and fell short. The U-boat was shelling the _Assyrian_. The forward gun barked violent expostulation, if without visible effect; the submarine lobbing two more shells at the steamship with an indifference to its own peril astonishing in one of its craven breed, trained to strike and run before counterstroke may be delivered. Its extraordinary temerity, indeed, argued ignorance of the convoying destroyers. Coincident with the second shot, however, these unleashed searchlights slashed the dark through and through with their great, white, fanlike blades, till first one then the other picked up and steadied relentlessly upon a toy-boat shape that swam the swells about midway between the _Assyrian_ and the destroyer off the port bows. Simultaneously the quickfirers of the latter went into action, jetting orange flame. In the searchlights' glare, spurts of white water danced all round the submarine. A mutter of gunfire rolled over to the _Assyrian_, abruptly silenced by an imperative deep voice of heavier metal--which spoke but once. With the lurid unreality of clap-trap theatrical illusion the U-boat vomited a great, spreading sheet of flame.... Someone at the rail, near Lanyard's shoulder, uttered a hushed cry of horror. He paid no heed, his interest wholly focussed upon that distant patch of shining water. As his dazzled vision cleared he saw that the submarine had disappeared. Unconsciously, in French, he commented: "So that is finished!" Likewise in French, but in a woman's voice of uncommon quality, deep and bell-sweet, came the protest from the passenger at his side: "But, monsieur, what are we doing? We turn away from them--those poor things drowning there!" That was quite true: under forced draught the _Assyrian_ was heading away on a new course. "They drown out there in that black water--and we leave them to that!" Lanyard turned. "The destroyers will take care of them," he said--"if any survived that explosion with strength enough to swim." He spoke from the surface of his thoughts and with a calm that veiled profound surprise. The woman by his side was neither the American widow nor her English daughter, but wholly a stranger to the ship's company he knew. The training of the Lone Wolf had been wasted if one swift glance had failed to comprehend every essential detail: that tall, straight, slender figure cloaked in the folds of a garment whose hood framed a face of singular pallor and sweetness in the moonlight, its shadowed eyes wide with emotion, its lips a little parted.... With a shiver she lifted her hands to her eyes as if to darken the visions of her imagination. "They die out there," she said, in murmurs barely audible.... "We turn our backs on them.... You think that right?" "We play the game by the rules the enemy himself laid down," Lanyard returned. "They would have sunk us without one qualm of pity--would, in all probability, have shelled our boats had any succeeded in getting off. They have done as much before, and will again. It is out of reason to insist that the captain risk his ship in the hope of picking up one or two drowning assassins." "Risk his ship? How? They are helpless--" "As a rule, U-boats hunt in pairs; always, when specially charged to sink one certain vessel. It was so with the _Lusitania_, with the _Arabic_ as well; I don't doubt it was so in this instance--that we should have heard from a second submarine had not the destroyers opened fire when they did." The woman stared. "You think that--?" "That the Boche had specific instructions to waylay and sink the _Assyrian_? I begin to think that--yes." This declaration affected the woman curiously; she shrank away a little, as from a blow, her eyes winced, her pale lips quivered. When she spoke, it was, strangely enough, in English so naturally enunciated that Lanyard could not doubt that this was her mother tongue. "Then you think it is because...." Of a sudden she wilted, clinging to the rail and trembling wildly. Lanyard shot a glance aft. The disorder among the passengers was measurably less, though excitement still ran so high that he felt sure they were as yet unnoticed. On impulse he stepped nearer. "Pardon, mademoiselle," he said quietly; "you are excusably unstrung. But all danger is past; and there is still time to regain your stateroom unobserved. If you will permit me to escort you...." He watched her narrowly, but she showed no surprise at this suggestion of intimacy with her affairs. After a brief moment she pulled herself together and dropped a hand upon the arm he offered. In another minute he was helping her over the raised watersill of the door. Like all the ship the landing and main companionway were dark; but below, on the promenade deck, the second doorway aft on the starboard side stood ajar, affording a glimpse of a dimly lighted stateroom. With neither hesitation nor surprise--for he was already satisfied in this matter--Lanyard conducted the woman to this door and stopped. Her hand fell from his arm. She faltered on the threshold of Stateroom 27, eyeing him dubiously. "Thank you, monsieur...?" There was just enough accent of enquiry to warrant his giving her the name: "Duchemin, mademoiselle." "Monsieur Duchemin.... Please to tell me how you knew this was my stateroom?" "I occupy Stateroom 29. There was no one in 27 till after the tender came out last night. Furthermore, your face was strange, and I have come to know all others on board during our week's delay in port." The light was at her back; he could distinguish little of her shadowed features, but fancied her a bit discountenanced. In a subdued voice she said, "Thank you," once more, a hand resting significantly on the door-knob. But still he lingered. "If mademoiselle would be so good as to tell me something in return--?" "If I can...." "Then why, mademoiselle, did you try my door last night?" "It was neither locked nor bolted on my side. I wished to make sure--" "So one fancied. Thank you. Good-night, mademoiselle...?" She was impervious to his hint. "Good-night, Monsieur Duchemin," she said, and closed the door. Now Lanyard's quarters opened not on this alleyway fore-and-aft but on a short and narrow athwartship passage. And as he turned away he saw out of the corner of an eye a white-jacketed figure emerge from this passageway and move hurriedly aft. Something furtive in the round of the fellow's shoulders challenged his curiosity. He called quietly: "Steward!" There was no answer. By now the white jacket was no more than a blur moving in that deep gloom. He cried again, more loudly: "I say, steward!" He could hardly see, but fancied that the man quickened his steps: in another instant he vanished altogether. Smothering an impulse to give chase, the adventurer swung alertly into the narrow passage and opened the door to Stateroom 29. The room was dark, but as he fumbled for the switch, the door in the forward partition was thrust open and the girl's slight figure showed, tensely poised against the light behind her. "Monsieur Duchemin!" she cried, in a voice sharp with doubt. Lanyard turned the switch. "Mademoiselle," he said, and coolly crossed to the port, drawing the light-proof curtains. "This door was locked all day--locked when the firing alarmed me and I went out to the deck." "And on my side, mademoiselle, it was locked and bolted when last I was here, shortly before dinner." "Whoever unfastened it entered my room during my absence and tampered with my luggage." "You have missed something?" Gaze intent to his she nodded. He shrugged and cast shrewdly round his quarters for some clue to the enigma. His glance fastened on a leather bellows-bag beneath the berth. Dropping to his knees he pulled this out, and looked up with a quizzical grimace, his forefinger indicating the lock, which was uncaught. "I left this latched but not locked," he said. "Perhaps I, too, have lost something." Opening the bag out flat, he sat back on his heels, with practised eye inspecting its neat arrangement of intimate things. "Nothing has been taken, mademoiselle," he announced gravely. "But something--I think--has been generously added. I seem to have an anonymous admirer on board." Bending forward, he rummaged beneath a sheaf of shirts and brought forth a small jewel-box of grained leather, with a monogram stamped on the lid--"C.B." "The lock is broken," he observed, and handed it up to the woman. "As to its contents, mademoiselle herself knows best...." The woman opened the box. "Nothing is missing," she said in a thoughtful voice. "I am relieved." Lanyard closed the bag, thrust it back beneath the berth, and got upon his feet. "But you are quite sure--?" "My jewels are all in order," she affirmed, without meeting his gaze. "And you miss nothing else?" "Nothing." Was there an accent of hesitation in this response? "Then, I take it, the thief was disappointed." Now she glanced quickly at his eyes. "Why do you say that?" "If the thief had found what he sought, he would never have presented it to me, mademoiselle would never again have seen her jewels. Failing in his object, after breaking that lock, and interrupted by your unexpected return, he planted the case with me, hoping to have me suspected. I am fortunately able to prove the best of alibis.... So then," said Lanyard, smiling, "it would appear that, though we met ten minutes ago for the first time--and I have yet to know mademoiselle by name--we are allies in a common cause." "My name is Brooke--Cecelia Brooke," she said quietly--"if it matters. But why 'allies'?" "It appears we own a common enemy. Each of us possesses something which that one desires--you a secret, I a good name. (Duchemin, indeed, I have always held to be an excellent name.) I shall not hesitate to call on you if my treasure is again violated. May I venture to hope mademoiselle will prove as ready to command my services?" "Thank you. I fancy, however, there will be no need." She moved irresolutely toward the communicating door, paused in its frame, eyeing him speculatively from under level brows. He detected, or imagined, a tremor of impulse toward him, as though she faltered on the verge of some grave confidence. If so, she curbed her tongue in time. Her gaze dropped, fixed itself abstractedly on the door.... "This must be fastened," she said, in a tone of complete disinterest. "I will speak to the chief steward immediately." "Don't trouble." She roused. "It doesn't matter, really, for to-night. I shall leave what valuables I have in the purser's care and stop on deck till daybreak." He gave a gesture of bewilderment. "You abandon your seclusion--leave your secret unguarded?" "Why not?" She shrugged slightly with a little _moue_ of discontent. "If, as you assume, I had a secret, it was that for certain reasons I did not wish my presence on board to become known. But it seems it has become known: my secret is no more. So I need no longer risk being cut off from the boats in the event of any accident." Momentarily her gravity was dissipated by a smile at once delightful and provocative. "Once more, monsieur--good-night!" After some moments Lanyard, with a start, found himself staring blankly at a blankly incommunicative communicating door. IV IN DEEP WATERS Following this abrupt introduction to his interesting neighbour, Lanyard went back to his deck-chair and, bundling himself up against the cold, settled down to ponder the affair and await developments in a spirit of chastened resignation. That a dénouement would duly unfold he was quite satisfied; that he himself must willy-nilly play some part therein he was too well persuaded. Not that he wished to meddle. If this Miss Cecelia Brooke (as she named herself) fostered any sort of intrigue, he wanted nothing so fervently as to be left altogether out of it. But already he had been dragged in, without wish or consent of his; whoever coveted her secret--whatever that was, more precious to her than jewels--harboured designs upon his own as well. It was his duty henceforth to go warily, overlooking no circumstance, however trifling and inconsiderable it might appear. The slenderest thread may lead to the heart of the most intricate maze--and the heart of this was become Lanyard's immediate goal, for there his enemy lay perdu. It was never this man's fault to underrate an enemy, least of all an unknown; and he entertained wholesome respect for Secret Service operators--picked men, as a rule, the meanest no mean antagonist. And this business, he fancied, had all the flavour of Secret Service work--one of those blind duels, desperate and grim affairs of masked combatants feinting, thrusting, guarding in the dark, each with the other's sword ever feeling for his throat, fighting for life itself and making his own rules as the contest swayed. But what was this Brooke girl doing in that galley? What conceivable motive induced her to dabble those slender hands in the muck and blood of Secret Service work? Lanyard was fain to let that question rest. After all, it was no concern of his. There she was, up to her pretty eyebrows in some dark, bad business; and it was not for him to play the gratuitous ass, rush in unasked, and seek to extricate her.... Through endless hours he sat brooding, vision blindly focussed upon the misty, shimmering mystery of that night. Ekstrom!... Slowly in his understanding intuition shaped the conviction that it was Ekstrom whom he was fighting now, Ekstrom in the guise of one of his creatures, some agent of the Prussian spy system who had contrived to smuggle himself aboard this British steamship. Out of those nine in the smoking room the previous night, then, he must beware of one primarily, perhaps of more. Four he was disposed, with reservations, to reckon negligible: Baron von Harden, head of a Netherlands banking house, a silent body whose acute mental processes went on behind a pallid screen of flabby features; Julius Becker, a theatrical manager of New York, whose right name ended in ski; Bartlett Putnam, late chargé d'affaires of the American embassy in Madrid; Edmund O'Reilly, naturalized citizen of the United States, interested in the manufacture of motor tractors somewhere in Michigan. Of the other five, two were English: Lieutenant Thackeray, a civilly reticent gentleman whose right arm rested in a black silk sling, making a flying trip to visit a married sister in New York; Archer Bartholomew, Esq., solicitor, a red-cheeked, bright-eyed, white-haired, brisk little Cockney, beyond the military age. There remained Dressier, the stout, self-satisfied Swiss, whose fawning manner was possibly accounted for by his statement that he journeyed to New York to engage in the trade of restaurateur in partnership with his brother; Crane, long and awkward and homely, of saturnine cast, slow of gesture and negligent as to dress, his humorous sense clouding a power of shrewd intelligence; and Señor Arturo Velasco, of Buenos Aires, middle-aged, apparently extremely well-to-do, a thoughtful type, more self-contained than most of his countrymen. One of these probably ... But which?... Nor must he permit himself to forget that the _Assyrian_ carried fifty-nine other male passengers, in addition to her complement of officers, crew, and stewards, that any one of these might prove to be Potsdam's cat's-paw. Awesome pallor tinged the eastern horizon, gaining strength, spread in imperceptible yet rapid gradations toward the zenith. Stars faded, winked out, vanished. Silver and purple in the sea gave place to livid gray. Almost visibly the routed night rolled back over the western rim of the world. Shafts of supernal radiance lanced the formless void between sky and sea. Swollen and angry, the sun lifted up its enormous, ensanguined portent. And the discountenanced moon withdrew hastily into the immeasurable fastnessness of a cloudless firmament, yet failed therein to find complete concealment. Keen, sweet airs of dawn raked the decks, now to port, now to starboard, as the _Assyrian_ twisted and writhed on her corkscrew way. Passengers whose fears had become sufficiently numb to permit them to drowse, stirred in their chairs, roused blinking and blear-eyed, arose and stretched cramped, cold bodies. Others lay listless, enervated by the sleepless misery of that night. Crane found Lanyard awake and marched him off for coffee and cigarettes in the smoking room. Later, starting out for a turn around the decks, they passed a deck-chair sheltered in a jog where the engine-room ventilating shaft joined the forward deck-house, in which Miss Brooke lay cocooned in wraps and furs, her profile, turned aside from the sea, exquisitely etched against the rich blackness of a fox stole. She slept as quietly as the most carefree, a shadowy smile touching her lips. Crane's stride faltered. He whistled low. "In the name of all things wonderful! how did that get on board?" Lanyard mentioned the girl's name. "She has the stateroom next to mine--came off that tender, night before last." "And me sore on that darn' li'l boat because it brought aboard all the nosey Johnnies! Ain't it the truth, you never know your luck?" The American ruminated in silence till another lap of their walk took them past the girl again. "Funny," he mused, "if that's why they held us up...." "Comment, monsieur?" "Oh, I was just wondering if it was on that young lady's account they kept us kicking our heels back there so long." "I am still stupid," Lanyard confessed. "Why, she might be a special messenger, you know--something like that--the British Government wanted to smuggle out of the country without anybody suspecting." "Monsieur is a romantic." "You can't trust me," Crane averred unblushingly. When they passed the chair again it was empty. At breakfast Lanyard saw the girl from a distance: their places were separated by the width of the saloon. She had no neighbours at her table, did not look up when Lanyard entered, finished her meal some time before he did, and retired immediately to her stateroom, in whose seclusion she remained for the rest of the day. That second day was altogether innocent of untoward incident. At least superficially the life of the ship settled into the groove of "business as usual." Only the company of the _Assyrian's_ faithful convoys was an ever-present reminder of peril. And in the middle of the afternoon she passed close by a derelict, a torpedoed tramp, deep down by the stern, her bows helplessly high in air and crimson with rust, the melancholy haunt of a great multitude of gulls. More than slightly to Lanyard's surprise he received no quiet invitation to the captain's quarters to be interrogated concerning the burglary in Stateroom 27. Apparently, the young woman had contented herself with reporting merely that the communicating door had carelessly been left unfastened. For his own part, neither seeking nor avoiding individual members of the smoking-room group, Lanyard permitted himself to be drawn into their company, and sat among them amiably receptive. But this profited him scantily; there was no further talk of the Lone Wolf; he was not again aware of that covert surveillance. But when--the evening chill driving him below to don a fur-lined topcoat--the Brooke girl, coming up the companionway, acknowledged his look of recognition with the most distant of nods, he accepted the apparent rebuff without resentment. He understood. She was playing the game. The enemy was watching, listening. After that he was studious to refrain from seeming either to avoid or to seek her neighbourhood; and if he did keep a sharp eye on her, it was so circumspectly as to mock detection. To the best of his observation she found no friends on board, contracted no new acquaintances, kept herself to herself within walls of inexorable reserve. Dawn, ending the second night at sea, found the _Assyrian_ pursuing a course still devious, and now alone; the destroyers had turned back during the night. The western boundary of the barred zone lay astern. Ahead, at the end of a brief interval of time, the ivory towers of New York loomed, a-shimmer with endless sunlight, glorious in golden promise. Accordingly, the spirits of the passengers were exalted. The very ship seemed to grin in self-complacence; she had won safely through. Unremitting vigilance was none the less maintained. No hour of the twenty-four found either gun, forward or aft, wanting a full working crew on the keen qui vive. The life boats remained on outswung davits; boat drills for passengers as well as crew were features of the daily programme. Regulations concerning light and smoking on deck after dark were rigidly enforced. Fuel was never spared in the effort to widen the blue gulf between the steamship and those waters wherein she had so nearly met her end. By day a hunted thing, racing frantically toward a port of refuge in the West, all her stout fabric labouring with titanic pulsations, shying in panic from the faintest suspicion of smoke upon the horizon, the _Assyrian_ slipped into the grateful obscurity of night like a snake into a thicket, made herself akin to its densest shadows, strained hopelessly not to be outdistanced by its fugitive mantle. And the benison of unseasonably clement weather was hers; day after shining day, night after placid night, the Atlantic revealed a singularly gracious humour, mirrored the changeful panorama of the heavens in a surface little flawed. So that the most squeamish voyagers, as well as those most beset with fears, slept sweetly in the comfort of their berths. Lanyard, however, never went to bed without first securing his door so that it might be opened by force alone; and never slept without a pistol beneath his pillow. But the truth is, he slept little. For the first time in his history he learned what it meant to will sleep to come and have his will defied. He lay for hours staring wide-eyed into darkness, hearkening to the steady throbbing of the engines, unable to dismiss the thought that their every revolution brought him so much nearer to America, so much the nearer to his hour with Ekstrom. In vain he sought to fatigue his senses by over-indulgence in his weakness for gambling. Day-long sessions at poker and auction in the smoking room--where he found formidable antagonists, principally in the persons of Crane, Bartlett Putnam, Velasco, Bartholomew, Julius Becker and Baron von Harden--served only to forward his financial fortunes; his luck was phenomenal; he multiplied many times that slender store of English banknotes with which he had embarked upon this adventure. But he left each exhausting sitting only to toss upon a wakeful pillow or to roam uneasily the dark and desolate decks, a man haunted by ghosts of his own raising, hagridden by passions of his own nurturing.... About two o'clock on the third night (the first outside the danger zone, when every other passenger might reasonably be expected to be in his berth) Lanyard lay in a deck-chair deep in shadows, wondering if it was worthwhile to go below and woo sleep in his stateroom. By way of experiment he shut his eyes. When after a moment he opened them again he was no longer alone. Some distance away, at the rail, the woman of Stateroom 27 was standing with her back to Lanyard, looking intently forward, unquestionably ignorant of his presence. Without moving, he watched in listless incuriosity till he saw her straighten and stand away from the rail as if bracing herself against some crisis. A man was coming aft from the entrance to the main companionway, impatience in his stride--a tall man, of good carriage, muffled almost to the heels in a heavy ulster, a steamer-cap well forward over his eyes. But the light was poor, the pale shine of the aged moon blending trickily with the swaying shadows; Lanyard was unable to place him among the passengers. There was a suggestion of Lieutenant Thackeray--but that one was handicapped by one shell-shattered arm, whereas this man had the use of both. He demonstrated that promptly, taking the girl into them. She yielded herself gladly, with a hushed little cry, hiding her face in the bosom of his ulster, clinging to him. This, then, was an assignation prearranged! Miss Cecelia Brooke had a lover aboard the _Assyrian_, a lover whom she denied by day but met in stealth by night! And yet, after that first, swift embrace, their conduct became oddly unloverlike. The man released her of his own initiative, held her by the shoulders at arm's length. There was irritation in his manner. He seemed tempted to shake the young woman. "Celia! what madness!" So much, at least, Lanyard overheard; the rest was a mumble into the hand which the girl placed over the man's lips. She cried breathlessly: "Hush! not so loud!" And then she remembered to guard her own voice. In an undertone she spoke passionately for a moment. The man interrupted in a tone of profound vexation. She drew away, as if hurt, caught him up as he hesitated for a word, returned, clung to the lapels of his coat, her accents rapid and pitiful, eloquent of explanation, entreaty, determination. The man lifted his hands to her wrists, broke her grasp, cut her brusquely short, put her forcibly from him. She sobbed softly.... Thus swiftly the scene suffered disillusioning transition. The pretty fiction of lovers meeting in secret was no more. Remained a man annoyed to the verge of anger, a woman desperately importunate. The wind, sweeping aft, carried broken snatches of their communications: "... _all I have ... could not let you go_...." "_Insanity_!" "_I was desperate_...." "... _drive me mad with your nonsense_...." Lanyard sat up, scraping his chair harshly on the deck. Stricken mute, the pair at the rail moved only to turn his way the pallid ovals of their faces. Heedless of the prohibition, he struck a vesta, cupped its flame in his hands, bending his face close and deliberately lighting a cigarette. Appreciably longer than necessary he permitted the flare to reveal his features. Then he blew it out, rose, sauntered to the rail, cast the cigarette into the sea, went aft and so below, satisfied that the girl must have recognised him and so knew that her secret was safe. But it was in an oddly disgruntled humour that he turned in--he who had been so ready to twit Crane with his fantastic speculations concerning the English girl, who had himself been the readiest to endue her with the romantic attributes becoming a heroine of her country's Secret Service! What if he must now esteem her in the merciless light of to-night's exposure, as the most pitiable of all human spectacles, a poor lovesick thing sans dignity, sans pride, sans heed for the world's respect, a woman pursuing a man weary of her? He resented unreasonably the unreasonable resentment which the affair inspired in him. What was it to him? He who had struck off all fettering bonds of common human interests, who had renounced all common human emotions, who had set his hand against all mankind that stood between him and that vengeful purpose to which he had dedicated his life! He, the Lone Wolf, the heartless, soulless, pitiless beast of prey! God in Heaven! what was any woman to him? V ON THE BANKS Unaccountably enough in his esteem, and more and more to Lanyard's exasperation, the evil flavour of that overnight incident lasted; it tinctured distastefully his first waking thoughts; and through all that fourth day at sea his mood was dark with irrational depression. And the fifth day and the sixth were like unto the fourth. Constantly he caught himself on watch for the young woman, wondering how she would comport herself toward him, unwilling witness though he had been to that shabby scene. But, save distantly at meal times, he saw nothing of her. And though he knew that she was much on deck after midnight, he was studious to keep out of her way. The tedium of stopping in a stuffy stateroom, when the spell of restlessness was on him, waiting for the sounds of his neighbour's return before he might venture forth, was nothing; anything were preferable to figuring as the innocent bystander at another encounter between the Brooke girl and her reluctant lover.... Then that happened which lent the business another complexion altogether. Its second phase, of close development, drew toward an end. Subtle underlying forces began to stir in their portentous latency. The rapiers which thus far had merely touched, shivering lightly against each other, measuring each its opponent's strength, feeling out his skill, fell apart, then re-engaged in sharp and deadly play. Steel met steel and, clashing, struck off sparks whose fugitive glimmerings lightened measurably the murk.... On the sixth night out, at eleven o'clock as a matter of routine, the smoking room was closed for the night, terminating an uncommonly protracted and, in Lanyard's esteem, irksome sitting at cards. Well tired, he went immediately to his quarters, undressed, stretched out in his berth, and switched off the light. Incontinently he found himself bedevilled by thoughts that would not rest. For upward of an hour he lay moveless, seeking oblivion in that very effort to preserve immobility, while the _Assyrian_, lunging heavily on her way, moaned and muttered tedious accompaniment to the chant of the working engines. Despairing at length, and fretted by the closeness of his quarters, he got up, dressed sketchily, and was shrugging into his fur-lined coat when he heard the door to the adjoining stateroom open and close, stealth in the sound of it. At that he hung up his overcoat, and threw himself down with a book on the lounge seat beneath the port. The novel was dull enough in all conscience; for that matter no tale within the compass of the cunningest weaver of words could have enthralled his temper at that time. He read and read again page after page, but without intelligence. Between his eyes and the type-blackened paper mirages of the past trembled and wavered; old faces, old scenes, old illusions took unsubstantial form, dissolved, blended, faded away: a saddening show of shadows. His heavy eyelids drooped; slumber's drowsy vestments trailed lazily athwart the sea of consciousness.... A slight noise startled him, either the shutting of the door to Stateroom 27, or the sound of the book dropping from his relaxed grasp. He sat up and consulted his watch. The hour was half after twelve. The ship's bell sounded remotely a single, doleful stroke. He might have dozed five minutes or fifteen--long enough at least to leave its tantalising effect of sleep desperately desirable, mockingly elusive, almost grasped, whisked beyond grasping. And with this he was aware of something even less tangible, a sense of something amiss, of something vaguely wrong, as of an evil spirit stalking furtively through the darkened labyrinth of the ship ... as impalpable and ineluctable as miasmic exhalations of a morass.... Lanyard passed a hand across his forehead. Had he been dreaming, then? Was this merely the reaction from some bitter nightmare? He could not remember. On sheer impulse he stood up, extinguished the light, opened the door. As he did this he noted that a light burned in Stateroom 27, visible through the ventilating grille. So the girl must have returned while he slept. Or had she neglected to turn the switch when she went out? He could not be certain. On the threshold he paused a little, attentive to the familiar rumour of the ship by night: the prolonged sloughing of riven waters down the side, gnashing of swells hurled back by the bows, sibilance of draughts in alleyways, groaning of frames, a thin metallic rattle of indeterminate origin, the crunching grind of the steering gear, the everlasting deep-throated diapason of the engines, somewhere aft in that tier of staterooms a persistent human snore ... nothing unusual, no alarming discordance.... Yet the feeling that mischief was afoot would not be still. Lanyard moved down to the junction of the thwartship passage with the fore-and-aft alleyway. Here he commanded a view of the promenade-deck landing and the main companionway, all in darkness but for a feeble glimmer of reflected starlight through the open deck port on the far side of the vessel. Beyond this the rail was stencilled against the dull face of the sea with its far lifting and falling horizon; within, no more was visible than the dimmed whiteness of the forward partition, the dense, indefinite mass of balusters winding up to the boat-deck, and the flat plane of the tiled landing. On this last, near the mouth of the port alleyway, half obscured by the intervening balusters, something moved, something huge, black, and formless swayed and writhed strangely, and in the strangest silence, like a dumb, tormented misshapen brute transfixed to one spot from which its most anguished efforts might not avail to budge it. Lanyard ran forward, rounded the well of the companionway, and pulled up. Now the nature of the thing was revealed. Blackly silhouetted against the square of the doorway two human figures were close-locked and struggling desperately, straining, resisting, thrusting, giving, recovering ... and all with never a sound more than the deadened thump of a shifting foot or the rasp of hard-won breathing. For several seconds the spectator could not distinguish one contestant from the other. Then a change in the fortunes of war enabled him to make out that one was a woman, the other, and momentarily more successful, a man. Slender and youthful and strong, she fought with the indomitable fury of a pantheress. He on his part had won this much temporary advantage--had broken the woman's clutch upon his throat and was bending her back over his hip, one hand fumbling at her windpipe, the other imprisoning her two wrists. Yet she was far from being vanquished. Even as Lanyard moved toward the pair, she drove a savage knee into the man's middle and, as he checked instantaneously with a grunt of pained surprise, regained her footing and planted both elbows against his chest, striving frantically to free her hands. Simultaneously Lanyard took the fellow from behind, wound an arm around his neck, jerked his head sharply back, twisted his forearm till he released the woman's wrists, and threw him with a force that must have jarred his every bone. The woman staggered back against the partition, panting and sobbing beneath her breath. The man rebounded from his fall with astonishing agility, and flew back at Lanyard. An object in his right hand gave off the dull gleam of polished steel. Lanyard, his automatic in his stateroom, in the pocket of the overcoat where he had deposited it when meaning to go out on deck, lacked any means of defense other than his two hands; but his one-time fame as an amateur pugilist had been second only to his fame as a connaisseur d'art; and to one whose youth had been passed in association with the Apaches of Paris, some mastery of la savate was an inevitable accomplishment. A lightning coup de pied planted a heel against one of the man's shins, and his onslaught faltered in a gust of curses. Then the point of his jaw received the full force of Lanyard's right fist with all the ill will imaginable behind it. The man reared back, reeled into the black mouth of the alleyway, fell heavily. Even so, he demonstrated extraordinary vitality and appetite for punishment. He had no more gone down than the adventurer, peering into the gloom, saw him struggle up on his knees. Instantly Lanyard made toward him, intent on finishing this work so well begun, but in his second stride tripped over a heavy body hidden in the shadows, and pitched headlong. Falling, he was conscious of a flashing thing that sped past his cheek, immediately above his shoulder. There followed an echoing thud against the forward partition. Picking himself up smartly, Lanyard crept several paces down the alleyway, flattening against the wall, straining his vision, listening intently, rewarded by neither sign nor sound of his antagonist. That one must have been swift to advantage himself of Lanyard's tumble. If he had not vanished into thin air, or gone to earth in some untenanted stateroom thereabouts, he found in the close blackness of that narrow passage a cloak of positive invisibility to cover his escape. And there is little wisdom in stalking an armed man whom one cannot see, with what little light there is at one's own back. So Lanyard went back to the landing, stepping carefully over the obstacle which had both thrown him and saved his life--the supine body of a third man, motionless; whether dead or merely insensible, he did not stop to investigate. His immediate concern was for the woman. As he came upon her now, she stood en profile to the partition, tugging strongly at something embedded in the woodwork close by her side, between her waist and armpit. At the sound of his approach she looked up with a tremor of apprehension quickly calmed. "Monsieur Duchemin! If you please--" Lanyard, in no way surprised to recognise the voice of Miss Cecelia Brooke, stepped closer. "What is it?" he enquired; and then, bending over to look, found that her cloak was pinned to the partition by the blade of a heavy knife buried a full half of its considerable length. "He threw it as you fell," the girl explained. "I was in the direct line." "Permit me, mademoiselle...." He laid hold of the haft of the weapon and with some difficulty withdrew it. "Who was it?" he asked, weighing the knife in his palm and examining it as closely as he could without the aid of light. There was no reply. Directly her cloak was freed, the girl had moved hastily away to the body over which Lanyard had stumbled. He heard an imploring whisper--"Please!"--and looked up to see her on her knees. "Who, then, is this?" he demanded, joining her. "Lionel--Lieutenant Thackeray. Please--O please!--tell me he is not dead." Her voice broke; he saw her slender body convulsed with racking emotions. Kneeling, Lanyard made a hasty and superficial examination, necessarily no more under the conditions. "His heart beats," he announced--"he breathes. I do not think him seriously injured." He made as if to get up. "I will get a light--a flash-lamp from my stateroom--or, better still, the ship's surgeon--" Her hand fell upon his arm. "Please, no! Not that--not now. Later, if necessary; but now--surely, you can help me carry him to his stateroom." "You know the number?" "It's close by--30." "Find it, and light up. No--leave this to me; I can carry him without assistance." The girl rose and disappeared. Lanyard passed his arms beneath the Englishman's body, gathered him into them, and struggled to his feet: no inconsiderable task. Light gushed from an open doorway, the third aft from the landing. Staggering, the adventurer entered and deposited the body upon the berth. Immediately the girl closed and bolted the door, then passed between him and the berth to bend over the unconscious man. He lay in deep coma, limbs a-sprawl, unpleasant glints of white between his half-closed eyelids, his breathing stertorous through parted lips. Free of its sling, his wounded arm dangled over the edge of the berth. In putting him down, Lanyard had remarked that its sleeve had been slit to the shoulder, and that its bandages were undone. Now, in amazement, he saw the arm was firm and muscular, with an unbroken skin, never a sign of any injury in all its length. Gently the girl lifted the lieutenant's head to the light, discovering a hideously bruised swelling at the base of the skull, blood darkly matting the close-clipped hair. She requested without looking round: "Water, please--and a towel." Obediently Lanyard ran hot and cold water into the hand-basin in equal proportions. "Would it not be well now to call the ship's surgeon?" he suggested diffidently. "Is that necessary? I am something of a nurse. This is simply a bad contusion--no worse, I believe. He was struck down from behind, a cowardly blow in the dark, as he started to go up on deck. I had been waiting for him. When he didn't come I suspected something was wrong. I came down, found him lying there, that brute kneeling over him." She spoke coolly enough, in contrast with the high excitement that inflamed her eyes as she turned away from the berth. "Monsieur Duchemin, are you armed?" "I have this," he said, exhibiting the knife thrown by the would-be murderer--a simple trench dagger, without distinguishing marks of any sort. "Then take this, please." Extracting an automatic pistol from a holster belted beneath Thackeray's coat, she proffered it. "You won't mind staying here a moment, standing guard, while I fetch a dressing from my room?" Before he could utter a word of protest she had slipped out into the alleyway, shutting the door behind her. When several minutes had passed the adventurer found himself beset by increasing concern. This long delay seemed not only inconsistent with her solicitude, but indicated a possibility that the girl had braved unwisely the chance of a resumption of hostilities on the part of her late and as yet anonymous assailant. Darkening the room as a matter of common-sense precaution, Lanyard, pistol in hand, stepped out into the alleyway in time to see the girl in the act of rising from her knees on the landing, near the spot where Thackeray had fallen. The light of her flash-lamp was blotted out as she came hurriedly aft. Perplexed, he turned back and switched on the light as she entered. Her eyes challenged his almost defiantly. "Was I long?" she asked, breathless. "I dropped something...." Lanyard bowed without speaking. Instinctively he knew that she was lying; and divining this in his attitude, she coloured and, disconcerted, turned away. For a moment, while she busied herself arranging on a convenient chair an assortment of first-aid accessories, he fancied that her half-averted face wore a look of sullen chagrin, with its compressed lips, downcast eyes, and faintly gathered brows. But directly she needed assistance, and requested it of him in a subdued and impersonal manner, showing a countenance devoid of any incongruous emotion. Lanyard, lifting the lieutenant's head and heavy torso, helped turn him face downward on the berth, then stood aside, thoughtfully watching the girl's deft fingers sop absorbent cotton in an antiseptic wash and apply it to the injury. After a little, he said: "If mademoiselle has no more immediate use for me--" "Thank you, monsieur. You have already done so very much!" "Then, if mademoiselle will supply the name of this assassin--" "I know it no more than you, monsieur!" She glanced up at him, startled. "What do you mean to do?" "Why, naturally, lodge an information with the captain concerning this outrage--" "Oh, please, no!" At a loss, Lanyard shrugged eloquently. "Not yet, at all events," she hastened to amend. "Let Lionel judge what is best to be done when he comes to." "But, mademoiselle, who can say when that will be?" He pointed out the ugly, ragged abrasion in the young Englishman's scalp exposed by the cleansing away of the clotted blood. "No ordinary blow," he commented; "something very like a slung-shot or a loaded cane did that work. If I may venture again to advise--unless mademoiselle is herself a surgeon--" Her colour faded and she caught her breath sharply. "You think it as serious as all that?" "I do not know. Such a blow might easily fracture the skull, possibly bring about a concussion of the brain. Regard, likewise, his laborious breathing. I most assuredly advise consulting competent authority." She did not immediately answer, turning back undivided attention to her task; but he noticed that her hands were tremulous, however, dextrously they finished dressing and bandaging the hurt; and deep distress troubled the handsome eyes she turned to his when she rose. "You are right," she murmured--"unquestionably right, monsieur. We must have the surgeon in...." But when Lanyard advanced a hand toward the bell-push, to call the steward, she interposed in quick alarm: "No--if you please, a moment; I must have time to think!" Her slender fingers writhed together in her agony of doubt and irresolution. "If only I knew what to do...." Lanyard was dumb. There was, indeed, nothing helpful he could offer, who was without a solitary tangible or trustworthy clue to the nature of this strange business. He owned himself sadly mystified. In the light--or, rather, the shadow--of this latest development, his revised suspicions seemed unwarranted to the point of impertinence; unless, of course, one assumed the unknown assailant to be a rejected lover or wronged husband. And somehow one did not, in the presence of this clear-eyed, straight-limbed, courageous young Englishwoman, so wanting in self-consciousness. And yet ... what the deuce was she to this man whom, indisputably, she followed against his wish? And what conceivable chain of circumstances linked their fortunes with his, and that double burglary of the first night out with this murderous assault of to-night? Nor was to-night's work, considered by itself, lacking in questionable features. Why had Thackeray carried that sound arm in a sling? How had its bandages come to be unwrapped? Not in struggles before being placed hors de combat, for he had never had a chance to resist. Had his assailant, then, unwrapped it subsequently? If so, with what end in view? Why had this Miss Cecelia Brooke, surprising the thug at his work, joined battle with him so bravely and so madly without calling for help? What hidden motive excused this singular hesitation to summon the surgeon, this reluctance to inform the officers of the ship? What duplicity was that which the girl had paraded concerning her procrastination when Lanyard had surprised her on her knees out there on the landing? If this were what Lanyard had first inclined to think it, Secret Service intrigue, surely it was weirdly intricate when an English girl hesitated to safeguard an Englishman by taking into her confidence the officers of a British ship, British manned! Nevertheless, and however much he might wonder and doubt, Lanyard would never question her. Never of his own volition would he probe more deeply into this mystery, take one farther step into the intricacies of its maze. So, in silence, he waited, passively courteous, at her further service if she had need of him, content if she had not, tolerant of her tacit prayer for time in which to think a way out of her difficulties. After some few moments he grew uncomfortably aware that he had become the object of a speculative regard not at all unfavourable. He indulged in a mental gesture of resignation. Then what he had feared befell, not altogether as he had apprehended, but in the girl's own fashion, if without material difference in the upshot. "I am afraid," said she in an even voice, so quietly pitched as to be inaudible to any eavesdropper. "This becomes a task greater than I had dreamed, more than my wits can cope with. Monsieur Duchemin...." She hesitated. He bowed slightly. "If mademoiselle can make any use of my poor abilities, she has but to command me." "We--I have much to thank you for already, monsieur, much more than I can ever hope to reward adequately--" "Reward?" he echoed. "But, mademoiselle--!" "Please don't misunderstand." She flushed a little, very prettily. "I am simply trying to express my sense of obligation, not only for what you have already done, but for what I mean to ask you to do." Again he bowed, without comment, amiably receptive. She resumed with perceptible effort: "I can trust you--" "You must make sure of that before you do," he warned her, smiling. "I am sure," she averred gravely. "You know nothing concerning me, mademoiselle--pardon! For all you know I may be the greatest rogue in Christendom. And I must tell you in all candour, sometimes I think I am." "What I may or may not know concerning you, Monsieur Duchemin, is immaterial as long as I know you are what you have proved yourself to me, a gentleman, considerate, generous, brave, and--not inquisitive." He was frankly touched. If this were flattery, tone and manner robbed it of fulsomeness, rendered it subtle beyond the coarser perceptions of the man. He knew himself for what he was, knew himself unworthy; and that part of him which was unaffectedly French, whether by accident of birth or influence of environment, and so impulsive and emotional, reacted in spontaneous gratitude to this implicit acceptance of him for what he strove to seem to be. "Mademoiselle is gracious beyond my deserts," he protested. "Only let me know how I may be of use...." "In three ways: Continue to be lenient in your judgments, and ask me no more questions than you must because ... I may not answer...." Her hands worked together again. She added unhappily, in a faint voice: "I dare not." That, too, moved him, since he had been far from lenient in his judgments. He responded the more readily: "All that is understood, mademoiselle." "Please go at once back to your stateroom, and as quietly as possible. There is a bare chance you were not recognised, that nobody knows who came to my aid to-night. If you can slip away without attracting attention, so much the better for us, for all of us. You may not be suspected." "Trust me to use my best discretion." "Lastly ... take and keep this for me, till I ask you for it again. Hide it as secretly as you can. It may be sought for, is certain to be if you are believed to be in my confidence. It must not be found. And I may not want it again before we land in New York." She extended a hand on whose palm rested a small and slender white cylinder, no longer and little thicker than the toy pencil that dangles from a dance-card: a tight roll of plain white paper enclosed in a wrapping of transparent oiled silk, gummed fast down its length and, at either end, sealed with miniature blobs of black wax. "Will you do this for me, Monsieur Duchemin? I warn you, it may cost you your life." He took it, his temper veering to the whimsical. "What is life?" he questioned. "A prelude--perhaps an overture to that great drama, Death. Who knows? Who cares?" She heard him in a stare. "You place no value on life?" "Mademoiselle," he said, "I have lived nearly thirty years in this world, three years in the theatre of war, seldom far from the trenches of one front or another. I tell you, I know death too well...." He shrugged and put the roll of paper away in a pocket. "You understand it must not be taken from you under any circumstance? As a last resort, it must be destroyed rather than yielded up." "It shall be," he said quietly. "Is there anything more?" She shook her head, thoughtfully knuckling her underlip. "How can I communicate with you in event of necessity after we get to New York?" she asked. "I shall stop for a week or two at the Hotel Knickerbocker." "If anything should happen"--with a swift glance of anxiety toward the motionless figure in the berth--"if anything should prevent my calling for it within a week after our arrival, you will be good enough to deliver it to--" She caught herself up quickly, the unuttered words trembling on her lip. "I will write down the address of the person to whom you will deliver it, and slip it underneath the door between our rooms--first making certain you are there to receive it--if I do not ask you to return the--thing--before we land." "That shall be as you will." "When you have memorized the address you will destroy it?" "Depend on that." "I think that is all. Thank you, Monsieur Duchemin--and good-night." She extended her hand. He saluted it punctiliously with fingertips and lips. "If you will put out the light, mademoiselle, it may aid me to get away unseen." She nodded and offered him Thackeray's pistol. "Take this. O, I have another with me." Lanyard accepted the weapon and, when she had darkened the room, opened the door, slipped out, and closed it behind him so noiselessly that the girl could not believe he was gone. Nothing hindered his return to Stateroom 29. Fully two minutes after he had locked himself in he heard the distant clamour of the annunciator, calling a steward to Stateroom 30. VI UNDER SUSPICION He sat for a long time on the edge of his berth, elbow on knee, chin in hand, unstirring, gaze fixed upon that little cylinder of white paper resting in the hollow of his palm, in profoundest concentration pondering the problems it presented: what it was, what possession of it meant to Michael Lanyard, what safe disposition to make of it pending welcome relief from this unsought and most unwelcome trust. This last question alone bade fair to confound his utmost ingenuity. As for what it was, Lanyard was well satisfied that he now held the true focus of this conspiracy, a secret of the first consequence, far too momentous to the designs of England to be entrusted, though couched in the most cryptic cipher ever mind of man devised, even to cables or mails which England herself controlled. Solely to prevent this communication from reaching America, Lanyard believed, Germany had sown mines broadcast in all the waters which the _Assyrian_ must cross, and had commissioned her U-boats, without fail and at whatever cost, to sink the vessel if by any accident she won safely through the mine-fields. In the effort to steal this secret, German spies had sailed on the _Assyrian_ knowing well the double risk they ran, of being shot like rats if found out, of being drowned like neutrals if the ship went down through the efforts of their compatriots. It was the zeal of Potsdam's agents, seeking the bearer of this secret, which had caused the rifling of Miss Brooke's luggage when she fell under suspicion, thanks to her clandestine way of coming aboard; and through the same agency young Thackeray had been all but murdered when suspicion, for whatever reason, shifted to him. To insure safe transmission of this communication, England had held the _Assyrian_ idle in port, day after day, while her augmented patrols scoured the seas, hunting down ruthlessly every submarine whose periscope dared peer above the surface, and while her trawlers innumerable swept the channels clear of mines. To prevent its theft, Lieutenant Thackeray had invented the subterfuge of the "wounded" arm, amid whose splints and bandages (Lanyard never doubted) the cylinder had been secreted. Finally, it was as a special agent, deep in her country's confidence, that this English girl had smuggled herself aboard at the last moment, bringing, no doubt, this very cylinder to be transferred to the keeping of Lieutenant Thackeray or, perhaps, another confrère, should she find reason to think herself suspected, her trust endangered. Nothing strange in that; women had served their countries in such capacities before; the secret archives of European chancellories are replete with their records. Lanyard himself remembered many such women, brilliant mondaines from many lands domiciled in that Paris of the so-dead yesterday to serve by stealth their respective governments; but never, it was true, a woman of the caste of Cecelia Brooke; unless, indeed, this were an actress of surpassing talent, gifted to hoodwink the most skeptical and least susceptible of men. And yet.... Lanyard's train of thought faltered. New doubt of the girl began to shadow his meditations. Contradictory circumstances he had noted intruded, uninvited, to challenge overcredulous conclusions concerning her. Would any secret agent worth her salt invite suspicion by making such a conspicuously furtive embarkation, by such ostentatious avoidance of her fellow passengers, by surrounding herself with an atmosphere of such palpable mystery? Would such an one confess she had a "secret" to an utter stranger, as she had to Lanyard that first night out? Would she, under any conceivable circumstances, entrust to that same stranger that selfsame secret upon whose inviolate preservation so much depended? And would she make love-trysts on the decks by night? Would a brother-agent take her in his arms, then reprove her with every symptom of vexation for her "madness," her "insanity," her "nonsense" that was like to "drive me mad"?--Thackeray's own words! Vainly Lanyard cudgelled his wits for some plausible reading of this riddle. Was this Brooke girl possibly (of a sudden he sat bolt upright) a Prussian agent infatuated with this young Englishman and by him beloved in spite of all that forbade their passion? Did not this explanation reconcile every apparent inconsistency in her conduct, even to the entrusting to a stranger of the stolen secret, the purloined paper she dared not keep about her lest it be found in her possession? Lanyard's eyes narrowed. Visibly his features hardened. If this surmise of his were any way justified in the outcome, he promised Miss Cecelia Brooke an hour of most painful penitence. Woman or not, she need not look for mercy from him, who must ever be merciless in his dealings with Ekstrom's crew. To be made that one's tool! The very thought was intolerable.... As for himself, possession of this paper meant that pitfalls were digged for his every step. If ever the British found cause to suspect him, his certain portion would be to face a firing squad in dusk of early day. If, on the other hand, these Prussian agents on board the _Assyrian_ ever got wind of the fact that the cylinder was in his care, his fate was apt to be a knife between his ribs the first time he was caught alone and--with his back to the assassin. Two courses, then, were open to him: the most sensible and obvious, to go straightway to the captain of the _Assyrian_, report all that he knew or surmised, and turn over the paper for safekeeping; one alternative, to hide the cylinder so absolutely that the most drastic search would overlook it, yet so handily that he could rid himself of it at an instant's notice. But the first course involved denunciation of the Brooke girl. And what if she were innocent? What if, after all, these doubts of her were the specious spawn of facts misinterpreted, misconstrued? What if she proved to be all she seemed? Could he, even though what he had warned her he might be, the greatest rogue unhung, be false to a trust reposed in him by such a woman? As to that, there was no question in his mind; he would never betray her, lacking irrefutable conviction that she was an employee of the Prussian spy system. Then how to hide the paper? Kneeling, Lanyard drew from beneath the berth his bellows-bag, selected from its contents a black japanned tin case containing a rather elaborate though compact trench medicine kit, the idle purchase of an empty afternoon in London. Extracting from its fittings a small leather-covered case, he replaced the kit, relocked and shoved the bag back beneath the berth. Then, standing over the hand-basin, he opened the leather-covered case. Its velvet-lined compartments held a hypodermic syringe and needle, and a glass phial of twenty-four one-thirtieth grain morphia tablets. Uncorking the phial, he shook out all the tablets, replaced three, then slid the paper cylinder into the tube; it fitted precisely, concealed by the label of the manufacturing chemist, leaving room for six more tablets. Lanyard inserted four on top of the cylinder, moistening the lowermost slightly to make it stick, recorked the phial, and returned it to its compartment. Next he dissolved three morphia tablets in a little water in the bottom of a glass, filled the syringe with the strong solution, fitted on the needle, squirted most of the contents down the waste-pipe, and consigned the remaining tablets to the same innocuous fate. Finally he replaced needle and syringe in the case, let the glass which had held the solution stand without rinsing, and put the open case upon the shelf above the basin. A light tapping sounded on the panels of his door. "Well? Who's there?" "Your steward, sir. Captain Osborne's compliments, an' 'e'd like to see you in 'is room as soon as convenient, sir." "You may say I will come at once." "'Nk you, sir." A summons to have been expected as a sequel to the surgeon's report after attending Lieutenant Thackeray; none the less, Lanyard had not expected it so soon. Authority, he reflected, ran true to form afloat as well as ashore; it was prompt enough when required to apply a pound or so of cure. Surely the officers, at least the captain, must have been advised why this voyage was apt to prove exceptionally hazardous; and surely in the light of such information it had been wiser to set armed watches on every deck by night, rather than permit the lives of passengers to be imperilled through the possible activities of Prussian agents among them incogniti. And now that he was reminded of it, was not this, perhaps, but a device of the enemy's to decoy him from the comparative safety of his stateroom? It was with a hand in his jacket pocket, grasping Thackeray's automatic, that he presently left the room. The alleyway, however, was deserted except for his steward; who, as he appeared, turned and led the way up to the boat-deck. Rounding the foot of the companionway, Lanyard contrived a hasty glance down the port alleyway. The door to Stateroom 30 was on the hook; a light burned within. Outside a guard was stationed, a sailor with a cutlass: the first application of the pound of cure! At the heels of his guide, he approached a door in the deck-house, devoted to officers' accommodations, beneath the bridge. Here the steward knocked discreetly. A heavy voice grumbling within was stilled for a moment, then barked a sharp invitation to enter. The steward turned the knob, announced dispassionately "Monseer Duchemin," and stood aside. Lanyard entered a well-lighted room, simply but comfortably furnished as the captain's office and sitting room; sleeping quarters adjoined, the head of a berth with a battered pillow showing through a door a foot or so ajar. Four persons were present; the notion entered Lanyard's head that a fifth possibly lurked in the room beyond, spying, eavesdropping: not a bad scheme if Thackeray had an associate on board whose identity it was desirable to keep under cover. The door closed gently behind him as he stood politely bowing, conscious that the four faces turned his way were distinguished by a singular variety of expression. Miss Cecelia Brooke was nearest him, beside a chair from which she had evidently just risen, her pretty young face rather pale and set, a scared look in her candid eyes. Beyond her, the captain sat with his back to a desk: a broad-beamed, vigorous body, intensely masculine, choleric by habit, and just now in an extraordinarily grim temper, his iron-gray hair bristling from his pillow, and his stout person visibly suffering the discomfort of wearing night-clothes beneath his uniform coat and trousers. Bending upon Lanyard the steel-hard regard of small, steel-blue eyes, he drummed the arms of his chair with thick and stubby fingers. To one side, standing, was the third officer, a Mr. Sherry, a youngish man with a pleasant cast of countenance which temporarily wore a look, rarely British, of ingrained sense of duty at odds with much embarrassment. Lastly Mr. Crane's lanky person was draped, with its customary effect of carelessness, on one end of the lounge seat. He looked up, nodded shortly but cheerfully to Lanyard, then resumed a somewhat quizzical contemplation of the half-smoked cigar which etiquette obliged him to neglect in the presence of a lady. "This is the gentleman?" Captain Osborne queried heavily of the girl. Receiving a murmured affirmative, he continued: "Good morning, Monsieur Duchemin.... Thanks, Miss Brooke; we won't keep you up any longer to-night." He rose, bowed stiffly as Mr. Sherry opened the door for the girl, and when she was gone threw himself back into his chair with a force which made it enter a violent protest. "Sit down, sir. Daresay you know what we want of you." "It is not difficult to guess," Lanyard admitted. "A sad business, monsieur." "Sad!" the captain iterated in a tone of harsh sarcasm. "That's a mild name to give murder." Even had it not been blurted violently at him, that word was staggering. The adventurer echoed it blankly. "You can't mean Lieutenant Thackeray--?" "Not yet, though doctor says it may come to that; the poor chap's in a bad way--concussion." "So one feared. But monsieur said 'murder'...." Captain Osborne sat forward, steely gaze mercilessly boring into Lanyard's eyes. "Monsieur Duchemin," he said slowly, "Lieutenant Thackeray was not the only passenger to suffer through to-night's villainy. The other died instantly." "In God's name, monsieur--who?" "Bartholomew." "Mr. Bartholomew!" A memory of that brisk little body's ruddy, cheerful, British personality flashed athwart the screen of memory. Lanyard murmured: "Incredible!" "Murdered," the captain proceeded, "in Stateroom 28. Lieutenant Thackeray and he were friends, shared the suite. Apparently Mr. Bartholomew heard some unusual noise in 30 and left his berth to investigate. He was struck down from behind as he approached the communicating door. The murderer had got in by way of the sitting room, 26." Mr. Sherry added in an awed voice: "Frightful blow--skull crushed like an eggshell." There was a pause. Crane thoughtfully relighted his cigar, and wrapped his right cheek round it. The captain glared glassily at Lanyard. Mr. Sherry looked, if possible, more uncomfortable than ever. Lanyard pondered, aghast. Ekstrom's work, of a certainty! This was his way, the way he imposed upon his creatures. Ekstrom, ever a killer, obsessed by the fallacious notion that dead men tell no tales.... And Bartholomew had been in this mess with Thackeray, both of them operatives of the British Secret Service! "Miss Brooke has given her version of the attack on Lieutenant Thackeray," the captain pursued. "Be good enough to let us have yours." Succinctly Lanyard recounted the happenings between the moment when premonition of evil drew him from his stateroom and the moment when he returned thereto. He was at pains, however, to omit all mention of the cylinder of paper; that, pending definite knowledge to the contrary, was a sacred trust, a matter of his honour, solely the affair of the Brooke girl. The captain squared himself toward Lanyard, his face louring, his jaw pugnacious. "How did you happen to be up and dressed at that late hour, so ready to respond to this--ah--premonition of yours?" "I sleep not well, monsieur. It was my intention to go on deck and endeavour to walk off my insomnia." Captain Osborne commented with a snort. "Why did you leave Miss Brooke alone before she called the doctor?" "At mademoiselle's request, naturally." "You'd been deuced gallant up to that time. I presume it didn't occur to you that the young woman might need further protection?" Lanyard shrugged. "It did not occur to me to refuse her request, monsieur." "Didn't it strike you as odd she should wish to be left alone with Lieutenant Thackeray?" "It was not my affair, monsieur. It was her wish." "Excuse me, cap'n." Crane sat up. "I'd like to ask Mr. Lanyard a question." But Lanyard had prepared himself against that, and acknowledged the touch with a quiet smile and the hint of a bow. "Monsieur Crane...." "U.S. Secret Service," Crane informed him with a grin. "Velasco spotted you--had seen you years ago in Paruss--tipped me off." "So one inferred. And these gentlemen?" Lanyard indicated the captain and third officer. "I wised them up--had to, when this happened." "Naturally, monsieur. Proceed...." "I only wanted to ask if you noticed anything to make you think perhaps there was an understanding between Miss Brooke and the lieutenant?" "Why should I?" "I ain't curious why you should. What I want to know is, did you?" "No, monsieur," Lanyard lied blandly. "The little lady didn't seem to take on more'n she naturally would if the lieutenant'd been a stranger, eh?" "How to judge, when one has never seen mademoiselle distressed on behalf of another?" Crane abandoned his effort, resuming contemplation of his cigar. "Now we come to the point. Monsieur Lanyard, or whatever your name is." "I have found Duchemin very agreeable, monsieur le capitaine." "I daresay," Captain Osborne sneered. He hesitated, glowering in the difficulty of thinking. "See here, Monsieur Duchemin--since you prefer that style--I'm not going to beat about the bush with you. I'm a plain man, plain-spoken. They tell me you reformed. I don't know anything about that. It's my conviction, once a thief, always a thief. I may be wrong." "Right or wrong, monsieur might easily be less offensive." The captain's dark countenance became still more darkly congested. Implacable prejudice glinted in his small eyes. Nor was his temper softened by the effrontery of this offender in giving back look for look with a calm poise that overshadowed his arrogance of an honest, law-abiding man. He made a vague gesture of impatience. "The point is," he said, "this crime was accompanied by robbery." "Am I to understand I am accused?" "Nobody is accused," Crane cut in hastily. "You have found no clues--?" "Nary clue." "What I want to say to you, Monsieur Duchemin, is this: the stolen property has got to be recovered before this ship makes her dock in New York. It means the loss of my command if it isn't. It means more than that, according to my information; it means a disastrous calamity to the Allied cause. And you're a Frenchman, Monsieur--Duchemin." "And a thief. Monsieur le capitaine must not forget his pet conviction." "As to that, a man can't always be particular about the tools he employs. I believe the old saying, set a thief to catch a thief, holds good." "Do I understand," Lanyard suggested sweetly, "you are about to honour me by utilizing my reputed talents, by commissioning a thief to catch this thief of to-night?" "Precisely. You know more of this matter than any of us here. You were at hand-grips with the murderer--and let him get away." "To my deep regret. But I have told you how that happened." "Seems a bit strange you made no real effort to find out what the scoundrel looked like." "It was dark in that alleyway, monsieur." The captain made an inarticulate noise, apparently meant to convey an effect of ironic incredulity. More intelligible comment was interrupted by a ring of the telephone. He swung around, clapped receiver to ear, snapped an impatient "Well?" and listened with evident exasperation. Lanyard's eyes narrowed. This business of telephoning was conceivably well-timed; not improbably the captain was receiving the report of somebody who had been sent to search Stateroom 29 in Lanyard's absence. He wondered and, wondering, glanced at Crane, to find that gentleman watching him with a whimsical glimmer which he was quick to extinguish when the captain said curtly, "Very good, Mr. Warde," and turned back from the telephone, his manner more than ever truculent. "Mr. Lanyard," he said--"Monsieur Duchemin, that is--a valuable paper has been stolen, an exceedingly valuable document. I don't know which carried it, Lieutenant Thackeray or Mr. Bartholomew. But I do know such a paper was in their possession. And to the best of my knowledge, we three were the only ones on board that did know it. And it has disappeared. Now, sir, you may or may not be deeper in this affair than you have admitted. If you are, I'd advise you to own up." "Monsieur le capitaine implies my complicity in this dastardly crime!" Osborne shook his head doggedly. "I imply nothing. I only say this: if you know anything you haven't told us, my advice is to make a clean breast of it." "I have nothing to tell you, monsieur, beyond the fact that I find you, your tone, your manner, and your choice of words, intolerably insolent." "Then you know nothing--?" "Monsieur!" Lanyard cried sharply. "Very good," the captain persisted. "I'll take your word for it--and give you till we take on our pilot to find the real criminal and make him give up that paper." "And if I fail?" "Not a soul on board leaves the _Assyrian_ till the murderer and thief are found--if they are not one." "But that is a general threat; whereas monsieur has honoured me by making this a personal matter. What punishment have you prepared for me specifically, if I fail to accomplish this task which baffles your--shrewdness?" "I'll at least inform the port authorities in New York, tell them who you are, and have you barred out of the country." "I want to say, Lanyard," Crane interposed, "this isn't my notion of how to deal with you, or in any way by my advice." "Thank you, monsieur," the adventurer replied icily, without removing his attention from the captain. "What else, Captain Osborne?" "That is all I have to say to you to-night, sir. Good-night." "But I have something more to say to you, monsieur le capitaine. First, I desire to give over to you this article which it will doubtless please you to consider stolen property." Lanyard placed the automatic pistol on the desk. "One of Lieutenant Thackeray's," he explained; "at Miss Brooke's suggestion, I borrowed it as a life-preserver, in event of another brush with this homicidal maniac." "She told us about that," Osborne said heavily, fumbling with the weapon. "What else, sir?" "Only this, monsieur le capitaine: I shall use my best endeavour to uncover the author of these crimes. If I succeed, be sure I shall denounce him. If I succeed only in securing this valuable paper you speak of, be equally sure you will never see it; for it shall leave my hands only to pass into those which I consider entirely trustworthy." "The devil!" Captain Osborne leaped from his chair quaking with fury. "You dare accuse me of disloyalty--!" "Now you mention it...." Lanyard cocked his head to one side with a maddening effect of deliberation. "No," he concluded--"no; I wouldn't accuse you of intentional treason, monsieur; for that would involve an imputation of intelligence...." He opened the door and nodded pleasantly to Crane and the third officer. "Good-night, gentlemen," he said silkily. "Oh, and you, too, Captain Osborne--good-night, I'm sure." VII IN STATEROOM 29 In spite of his own anger, something far from being either assumed or inconsiderable, Lanyard was fain to pause, a few paces from the deck-house, and laugh quietly at a vast and incoherent booming which was resounding in the room he had just quitted--Captain Osborne trying to do justice to the emotions inspired in his virtuous bosom by the cheek of this damned gaol-bird. But suddenly, reminded of the grim reason for all this wretched brawling, Lanyard shrugged off his amusement. Beneath his very feet, almost a man lay dead, another perhaps dying, while the beast who had wrought that devilishness remained at large. He comprehended in a wondering regard that wide, star-blazoned arch of skies, that broad, dark, restful mystery of waters, that still, sweet world of peace through which the _Assyrian_ forged, muttering contentedly at her toil ... while Murder with foul hands and slavering chops skulked somewhere in the darkened fabric of her, somewhere beyond that black mouth of the deck-port yawning at Lanyard's elbow. From that same portal a man came abruptly but quietly, saw Lanyard standing there, gave him a staring look and grudging nod, and strode forward to the captain's quarters: Mr. Warde, the first officer. Lanyard recollected himself, and went below. Still the sailor guarded the door in that port alleyway; but now it stood wide, and Cecelia Brooke was on its threshold, conversing guardedly with the surgeon. Even as Lanyard caught sight of them, the latter bowed and turned aft, while the girl retreated and refastened the door on its hook. Thus reminded of Crane's shrewd questions, Lanyard was speculating rather foggily concerning the reason therefor as he turned down the passage to his own quarters. What had the American noticed, or been told, to make him surmise covert sympathy between the girl and the lieutenant? He caught himself yawning. Drowsiness buzzed in his brain. He had an incoherent feeling that he would now sleep long and heavily. Entering his stateroom, he put a shoulder against the door, pushing it to as he fumbled for the switch. The circumstance that the lights were no longer burning as he had left them failed to impress him as noteworthy in view of his belief that, by the captain's orders, Mr. Warde had been ransacking his effects in his absence. But when no more than a click responded to a turn of the switch, the room remaining quite dark, Lanyard uttered an imprecation, abruptly very wide awake indeed. Before he could move he stiffened to positive immobility: the cool, hard nose of a pistol had come into contact with his skull, just behind the ear. Simultaneously a softly-modulated voice advised him in purest German: "Be quite still, Herr Lanyard, and hold up your hands--so! Also, see that you utter no sound till I give you leave.... Karl, the handkerchief." Lanyard stood motionless, hands well elevated, while a heavy silk blindfold was whipped over his eyes and knotted tight at the back of his head. "Now your paws, Herr Lone Wolf--put them together behind your back, prudently making no attempt to reach a pocket." Obediently Lanyard permitted his wrists to be caught together with a second silk handkerchief. He could feel a slight sensation of heat upon his hands, and guessed that this was caused by the light of a flash-lamp held close to the flesh. None the less he took the chance of clenching his fists and tensing the muscles of his wrists. "Tightly, Karl." The bonds were made painfully fast. Still it did not seem to occur to his captors to oblige their prisoner to open his hands and relax his wrists. Lanyard perceived a glimmer of hope in this oversight: the enemy was normally stupid. "Now the lights again." After a little wait, during which he could hear the bulbs being pressed back into their sockets, the switch clicked once more. "And now, swine-dog!"--the pistol tapped his skull significantly--"if you value your life, speak, and speak quickly. Where is that document?" "Document?" Lanyard repeated in a tone of wonder. "Unless you are eager to explore the hereafter, tell us where we may find it without delay." "Upon my word, I don't know what you're talking about." "You lie!" the German snapped. "Face about!" Somebody grasped his shoulders roughly and swung him round to the light, the nose of the pistol shifting to press against his abdomen. "Search him, Karl." Unseen hands investigated his pockets cunningly. As they finished, the man who answered to the name of Karl became articulate for the first time, following a grunt of disappointment: "Nothing--he has it not upon him." "Look more thoroughly. Did you think him idiot enough to carry it where you'd find it at the first dip? Imbecile!" For the purpose of this second search Lanyard's garments were ripped open, and the enemy made sure that he carried nothing next his skin more incriminating than a money-belt, which was forcibly removed. "His shoes--see to his shoes!" the first speaker insisted irritably. "Sit down, Lanyard!" A petulant push sent the adventurer reeling across the cabin to fall upon the lounge seat beneath the port. With some effort he assumed a sitting position, while Karl, kneeling, hastily unlaced and tore off his shoes and socks. "Nothing, captain," was the report. "Damnation!... Continue to search his luggage. Leave nothing unexamined. In particular look into every hole and corner where none but a fool would attempt to hide anything. This fine gentleman imagines we value his intelligence too highly to believe he would leave the paper in plain sight." To an accompaniment of sounds indicating that Karl was obeying his superior, this last resumed in a tone of lofty contempt: "How is it you have abandoned the habit of going armed, Herr Lone Wolf? That is not like you. Is it that you grow unwary through drug-using? But that matters nothing. We have more important business to speak over, you and I. You will be very, very docile, and answer promptly, also in a low voice, if you would avoid getting hurt. Do you understand?" "Perfectly," Lanyard replied, furtively working at the bonds on his wrists. "Good. We speak together like good friends, yes?" "Naturally," said Lanyard. "It is so conducive to chumminess to be caressed with an automatic pistol--you've no idea!" "Oblige by speaking German. Our ears are sick with all this bastard English. Also, more quietly speak. Do not put me to the regrettable necessity of shooting you." "How regrettable? You didn't stick at braining those others--" "Hardly the same thing. You are not like those English swine. You are French; and Germany has no hatred for France, but only pity that it so fatuously opposes manifest destiny. In truth, you are not even French, but a great thief; and criminals have no patriotism, nor loyalty to any State but their own, the state of moral turpitude." The speaker interrupted himself to relish his wit with a thick chuckle. And Lanyard's jaws ached with the strain of self-control. He continued to pluck at the folds of silk while concentrating in effort to memorise the voice, which he failed utterly to place. Undoubtedly this animal was a shipboard acquaintance, one who knew him well; but those detestable German gutturals disguised his accents quite beyond identification. "For all that, you are not wise so to try my patience. I permit you five minutes by my watch in which to make up your mind to surrender that document." "How often must I tell you," Lanyard enquired, "all this talk of documents is Greek to me?" "Then you have five minutes to brush up your classical education, and translate into terms suited to your intelligence. I will have that document from you or--in four more minutes--shoot you dead." To this Lanyard said nothing. But his patient attentions to the handkerchief round his wrists were beginning perceptibly to be rewarded. "Moreover, Herr Lanyard, you will do yourself a very good turn by confessing--entirely aside from saving your life." "How is that?" "Providing you persuade me of your good faith, I am empowered to offer you employment in our service." Lanyard's breath passed hardly through a throat swollen with rage, chagrin, and hatred, all hopelessly impotent. But he succeeded in preserving an unruffled countenance, as his captor's next words demonstrated. "You are surprised, yes? You are thinking it over? Take your time--you have three minutes more. Or perhaps you are sulky, resenting that our cleverness has found you out? Be reasonable, my good man. Think: you cannot be insensible to the honour my offer does you." "What do you want of me?" "First, that paper--thereafter to use your surpassing talents to the glory of God and Fatherland. In addition, you will be greatly rewarded." "Now you do begin to interest me," Lanyard said coolly.... Surely he could contrive some way to slay this beast with his naked hands! He must play for time.... "How rewarded?" "As I say, with a place in the Prussian Secret Service, its protection, freedom to ply your trade unhindered in America, even countenanced, till that country becomes a German province under German laws." "But do I hear you offer this to a Frenchman?" "Undeceive yourself. Men of all nations to-day, recognising that the star of Germany is in the ascendant, that soon all nations will be German, are hastening to make their peace beforehand by rendering Germany good service." "Something in that, perhaps," Lanyard admitted thoughtfully. "Think well, my friend.... Yes, Karl?" The voice of the other spy responded sullenly: "Nothing--absolutely nothing." "Two minutes, Herr Lanyard." Of a sudden Lanyard's face was violently distorted in a grimace of terror. He lurched his shoulders forward, openly struggling with his bonds. "But--good God!" he protested in a voice of terror, "you can't possibly be so unreasonable! I tell you, I haven't got your damned paper!" A loop of the handkerchief slipped over one hand. "Be still! Cease your struggles. And not so loud, my friend!" The peremptory voice dropped into mockery as Lanyard, pale and exhausted, sat back trembling--and a second loop of silk dropped over the other hand. "So you begin to appreciate that we mean business, yes? One minute and thirty seconds!" "Have mercy!" the adventurer whined desperately--and licked his lips as if he found them dry with fear. Now both hands were all but wholly free. True: he remained blindfolded and covered by a deadly weapon. "Give me a chance. I'll do anything you wish! But I can't give you what I haven't got." "Be silent! Here, Karl." There was a sound of unintelligible murmuring as the two spies conferred together. Lanyard writhed in apparent extremity of terror. His hands were free. He sought hopelessly for inspiration. What to do without arms? "Be grateful to Karl. He urges that perhaps you know nothing of the document." "Don't you think I'd tell if I did know?" "Then you have one minute--no, forty seconds--in which to pledge yourself to the Prussian Secret Service." "You want me to swear--?" "Certainly." "Then hear me," said Lanyard earnestly: "_You damned canaille_!" And in one movement he tore the bandage from his eyes and launched himself head foremost at the man who stood over him. He caught part of an oath drowned out by the splitting report of a pistol that went off within an inch of his ear. Then his head took the man full in the belly, and both went sprawling to the deck, Lanyard fighting like a maniac. Sheer luck had guided clawing fingers to the right wrist of his antagonist, round which they shut like jaws of a trap. At the same time he wrenched the other's arm high above his head. Momentarily expecting the shock of a bullet from the pistol of the second spy, he found time to wonder that it was so long deferred, and even in the fury of his struggles, out of the corner of one eye caught a fugitive glimpse of a tallish man, masked, standing back to the forward partition in a pose of singular indecision, pistol poised in his grasp. Then the efforts of his immediate adversary threw him into a position in which he was unable to see the other. Of a sudden the stateroom was filled with the thunder of an automatic, its seven cartridges discharged in one brisk, rippling crash. It was as if a white-hot iron had been laid across Lanyard's shoulder. Beneath him the man started convulsively, with such force as almost to throw him off bodily, then relaxed altogether and lay limp and still, pinning one of Lanyard's arms under him. Its visor displaced, the face of Baron von Harden was revealed, features distorted, eyes glaring, a frozen mask of hate and terror. His arm free, the adventurer rolled away from the corpse in time to see the open window-port blocked by the body of the other spy. Gathering himself together, he snatched up the pistol that dropped from the inert grasp of the dead man, and levelled it at the port. But now that space was empty. He rose and paused for an instant, his glance instinctively seeking the ledge above the hand-basin. The hypodermic outfit was there, but minus the phial. In the alleyway rose a confusion of running feet and shouting tongues. A heavy banging rang on the door to Stateroom 29. Crane's nasal accents called upon Lanyard to open. VIII OFF NANTUCKET Upon the authors of that commotion Lanyard wasted no consideration whatever. Let them knock and clamour; he had more urgent work in hand, and knew too well the penalty were he stupid enough to unbolt to them. Their bodies would dam the doorway hopelessly; insistent hands would hinder him; innumerable importunate enquiries would be dinned at him, all immaterial in contrast with this emergency, a catechism one would need an hour to satisfy. And all attempts would be futile to make them understand that, while they plagued him with futile questions, a murderer and spy and thief was making good his escape, being afforded ample opportunity to slough all traces of his recent work and resume unchallenged his place among them. No; if by any freak of good fortune, any exertion of wit or daring, that one were to be apprehended, it must be within the next few minutes, it could only be through immediate pursuit. Nor did the adventurer waste time debating the better course. With him, whose ways of life were ceaselessly beset by instant and mortal perils, each with its especial and imperative demand upon his readiness and ingenuity, action must ever press so hard upon the heels of thought as to make the two seem one. For that matter, the whole transaction had been characterised by almost unbelievable rapidity. And that square opening of the window-port was hardly vacant when Lanyard sprang to his feet; the fugitive had barely time to find his own upon the outer deck before Lanyard leaped after him; the first thumps upon the panels of his door were still echoing when he thrust head and shoulders out of the port and began to pump the automatic at a shadow fleeing aft upon that narrow breadth of planking between rail and wall. Then, at the third shot, the automatic jammed upon a discharged shell. Exasperated, the adventurer cast the weapon from him, shrugged hastily out of his unfastened coat and waistcoat, hitched tight his belt, and clambered through the port. Dropping to the deck, he turned in time to see the fugitive dart round the shoulder of the superstructure. As Lanyard gained the after rail of the promenade deck a man standing on the boat-deck at the head of the companion-ladder greeted him with pistol fire. He dodged back, untouched, and instantaneously devised a stratagem to cope with this untoward development. Overhead, at the side, a lifeboat hung on its davits, ready for emergency launching, the gap in the rail which it filled when normally swung inboard spanned only by a length of line. And the darkness in the shadow of the boat was dense, an excellent screen. Climbing upon the rail, Lanyard grasped the edge of the deck overhead and drew himself up undetected by his quarry, whom he espied still holding the head of the companion ladder, hidden from the bridge by the after deck-house, standing ready to shoot Lanyard should he attempt to renew the pursuit by that approach. At the same time, "Karl" seemed mysteriously occupied with some object or objects in whose manipulation he was hampered to a degree by the necessity under which he laboured of holding his pistol ready and dividing his attention. A man of good stature, broad at the shoulders, slender at the hips, he poised himself with athletic grace--the lower part of his face masked by what Lanyard took to be a dark silk handkerchief. Lanyard heard him swearing in German. Then a brisk little spray of sparks jetted from the flint and steel of a patent cigar-lighter in the hands of the spy. And as Lanyard rose from his knees after ducking beneath the line, a stream of fatter sparks spat from the end of a fuse. The man leaned over the rail and cast a small black object to which the sputtering fuse was attached, down to the main deck. As it struck midway between superstructure and stern it burst into brilliant flame, releasing upon the night an electric-blue glare that must have been visible from any point within the compass of the horizon. A yell of profane remonstrance saluted the light, and throughout the brief passage that followed Lanyard was conscious that pistols and rifles on the after deck below were making him and his antagonist their targets. Before the German could face about, Lanyard, moving almost noiselessly in his bare feet, had covered more than half the intervening space. In another breath he might have had the fellow at a disadvantage. But the distance was too great. Twice the automatic blazed in his face as he closed in, the bullets clearing narrowly--or else he fancied that their deadly cold breath fanned his cheek. Then the spy's weapon in turn went out of action. Half blinded, Lanyard clipped the man round the body and hugged him tight, exerting all his skill and strength to effect a throw. That effort failed; his onslaught was met with address and ability that all but matched his own. The animal he embraced had muscles like tempered springs and the cunning and fury of a wild beast in a trap. For a moment Lanyard was able to accomplish no more than to smother resistance in a rib-crushing embrace; no sooner did he relax it than all attempts to shift his hold were anticipated and met half way, forcing him back upon the defensive. Yet he was given little chance to prove himself the master. The first phase of the struggle was still in contest when the rear door of the smoking room opened and a man stepped out, paused, summed up the situation in a glance, seized Lanyard from behind. The adventurer felt his arms grasped by hands whose strength seemed little short of superhuman, and wrenched back so violently that his very bones cracked. Fairly lifted from his feet, he was held as helpless as an infant kicking in the arms of its nurse. Released, the other spy stepped back and swung his left fist viciously to Lanyard's jaw. Something in the brain of the adventurer seemed to let go; his head dropped weakly to one side. The man who had struck him said quietly, "Loose the fool, Ed," and followed as Lanyard reeled away, striking him repeatedly. For a giddy moment Lanyard was darkly conscious--as one dreams an evil dream--of blows raining mercilessly about his head and body, blows that drove him back athwartships toward a fate dark and terrible, a great void of blackness. He felt unutterably weary, and was weakened by a sensation of nausea. Beneath him his knees buckled. There fell one final blow, ruthless as the wrath of God. He was falling backward into nothingness, into an everlasting gulf of night that yawned for him.... As he shot under the guard rope and into space between the edge of the deck and the keel of the lifeboat, the spy rounded smartly on a heel and darted to the smoking-room door. His confederate was in the act of stepping across the raised threshold. He followed, closed the door. The first officer, charging aft from the bridge, rounded the deck-house and pulled up with a grunt of surprise to find the deck completely deserted.... The shock of icy immersion reanimated Lanyard. He felt himself plunging headlong down, down, and down to inky depths unguessable. The sheer habit of an accustomed swimmer alone bade him hold his breath. Then came a pause: he was no more descending; for a time of indeterminate duration, an age of anguish, he seemed to float without motion, suspended in frigid purgatory. Against his ribs something hammered like a racing engine. In his ears sounded a vast roaring, the deafening voices of a thousand waterfalls. His head felt swollen and enormous, on the point of bursting wide. Without warning expelled from those depths, he shot full half-length out of water, and fell back into the milky welter of the _Assyrian's_ wake. Instinctively he kept afloat with feeble strokes. The cold was bitter, as sharp as the teeth of death; but his head was now clear, he was able to appreciate what had befallen him. Already the _Assyrian_, forging onward unchecked, had left him well astern, her progress distinctly disclosed by that infernal bluish glare spouting from her after deck. She seemed absurdly small. Incredulity infected Lanyard's mind. Nothing so tiny, so insignificant, so make-believe as that silhouette of a ship could conceivably be that great liner, the _Assyrian_.... Temporarily a burning pain in his left shoulder drove all other considerations out of mind. The salt water was beginning to smart in the raw, superficial wound made by that assassin's bullet ... back there in the stateroom ... long ago.... Then the cold began to bite into his marrow, and he struggled manfully to swim, taking long, slow strokes, at first comparatively powerful, by insensible degrees losing force. Just why he took this trouble he did not know: for some dim reason it seemed desirable to live as long as possible. Withal he was aware he could not live. Whether careless or utterly ignorant of his fate, the _Assyrian_ was trudging on and on, leaving him ever farther astern, lost beyond rescue in that weird, bleak waste. Even were an alarm to be given, were she to stop now and put out a boat, it would find him, if it found him at all, too late. The cold was killing. He felt very sleepy. Drowsily he apprehended the beginning of the end. His senses, growing numb with cold, presently must cease to function altogether. Then he would forget, and nothing would matter any more. Yet the will to live persisted amazingly. Had Lanyard wished it he could not have ceased to swim, at least to keep afloat. Vaguely he wondered how people ever managed to commit suicide by drowning; it seemed to pass human power to resist that buoyancy which sustained one, to let go, let one's self go down. Impossible to conceive how that was ever done.... Why should he care to go on living? No reading that riddle!... On obscure impulse he gave up swimming, turned upon his back, floated face to the sky, derelict, resigning himself to the cradling arms of the sea. The gradual, slow rocking of the swells soothed his passion like a kindly opiate. The cold no more irked him, but seemed somehow strangely anodynous. Imperturbably he envisaged death, without fear, without welcome. What must be, must.... For all that, life clutched at him with jealous hands. More than ever sleepy, before he slept that last, long sleep he must somehow solve this enigma, learn the reason why life continued so to allure his failing senses. Athwart the drab texture of consciousness wild fancies played like heat lightning in a still midsummer night. Death's countenance was kind. That wide field of stars, drooping low and lifting away with rhythmic motion, would sometime dip swiftly down to the very sea itself and, swinging back, take with it his soul to some remote bourne.... The deeps were yielding up their mysteries. Past him a huge pale monster swept at furious pace, hissing grimly as it passed, like some spectral Nemesis pursuing the _Assyrian_. Indifferently he speculated concerning the reality of this phenomenon. The heave of a swell enabled him to glance incuriously after the steamship. She seemed smaller, less genuine than ever, a shadow shape that boasted visibility solely through that unearthly light on her after deck. Even that now had waned to a mere glimmer, the flicker of a candle lost in the immensities of that night-bound world of empty sky and empty ocean. Even as he that had been named Michael Lanyard was a lost light, a tiny flame that guttered toward its swift extinction.... Why live, when one might die and, dying, find endless rest? Like a blazing thunderbolt one word rent the slumbrous web of sentience: _Ekstrom_! Galvanised by the flood of hatred unpent by the syllables of that name, Lanyard began again to swim, flailing the water with frantic arms as if to win somewhither by the very violence of his efforts. This the one cogent reason why he must not, could not, die.... Unjust to require him to give up life while that one lived. Unfair.... It must not be!... Across the sea rolled a dull, brutish detonation. The swimmer, swung high on the bosom of a great swell, saw a vast sheet of fire raving heavenward from the _Assyrian_. It vanished instantly. When his dazzled vision cleared, he could see no more of the ship. He imagined a faint, wild rumour of panic voices, conjured up scenes of horror indescribable as that great fabric sank almost instantaneously, as if some gigantic hand plucked her under. What had happened? Had the accomplices of the dead Baron von Harden set off an infernal machine aboard the vessel? In the name of reason, why? They had got what they sought, that accursed document, whatever it was, that page torn from the Book of Doom. Then why...? And to what end had they exploded that light bomb on the after deck? To make the _Assyrian_ a glaring target in the night--what else? A target for what?... Of a sudden all rational mental processes were erased from Lanyard's consciousness. A wave of pure fear flooded him, body, mind, and soul. He began to struggle like a maniac, fighting the waters that hindered his flight from some hideous thing that was lifting up from the ocean's ooze to drag him down. He heard a voice screaming thinly, and knew it was his own. The impossible was happening to him, out there, alone and helpless on the face of the waters. A shape of horror was rising out of the deep to engorge him. He could feel distinctly the slow, irresistible heave of its bulk beneath him. His feet touched and slipped upon its horrible sleek flanks. His most desperate efforts were all unavailing. He could not escape. The thing came up too rapidly. Following that first mad thrill of contact with it underfoot, he was lifted swiftly and irresistibly into the air. Almost instantly he was floundering in knee-deep waters that parted, cascading away on either hand. Then, elevated well above the sea, he slid and fell prone upon a slimy wet surface. His clawing hands clutched something solid and substantial, an upright bar of metal. Incredulously Lanyard pawed the body of the monster beneath him. His hands passed over a riveted joint of metal plates. Looking up, he made out the truncated cone of a conning tower with its antennae-like periscope tubes stencilled black upon the soft purple of the star-strewn sky. Slowly the truth came home: a submarine had risen beneath him. He lay upon its after deck, grasping a stanchion that supported the small raised bridge round the conning tower. He sobbed a little in sheer hysteric gratitude, that this miracle had been vouchsafed unto him, that he had thus been spared to live on against his hour with Ekstrom. But when he sought to drag himself up to the bridge, he could not, he was too weak and faint. Ceasing to struggle, he rested in half stupour, panting. With a harsh clang a hatch was thrown back. Rousing, Lanyard saw several figures emerge from the conning tower. Men uncouthly clothed in shapeless, shiny leather garments, straddled and stretched above him, filling their lungs with the sweet air. He tried to call to them, but evoked a mere rattle from his throat. Two came to the edge of the bridge and stood immediately over him, fixing binoculars to their eyes, their voices quite audible. A pang of despair shot through Lanyard when he heard them conferring together in the German tongue. Death, then, was but a little delayed. Thereafter he lay in dumb apathy, save that he shivered and his teeth chattered uncontrollably. Through the torpor that rested like a black cloud upon his senses he caught broken phrases, snatches of sentences: "... _sinking fast ... struck square amidships ... broke her back_...." "... _trouble with her boats. There goes one over_!..." "... _fools jumping overboard like cattle_...." "_What's that rocket? Do the swine want us to shell their boats_?" "_Why not? They're asking for it_!" One of the officers lowered his glasses and barked a series of sharp commands. The crew on deck leaped to attention. One leaned over the conning-tower hatch and shouted to his mates below. A hatch forward of the tower opened, and a quick-firing gun on a disappearing carriage swung smoothly and silently up from its lair. The other officer, looking down, started violently. "_Verdammt_! What's this?" The first rejoined him. "Impossible!" "Impossible or not--a man or a cadaver!" "Have him up and see...." By order, two of the crew dragged Lanyard up to the bridge, supporting him by main strength while the officers examined him. "At the last gasp, but alive," one announced. "How the devil did he get out here?" "From the _Assyrian_--" "Impossible for any man to swim this far since our torpedo struck--" "Then he must have gone overboard before it struck--or was thrown--" A cry of alarm from the group about the gun, awaiting final orders to open fire upon the _Assyrian's_ boats, interrupted the conference. The officers swung away in haste. "Hell's fury! what's that searchlight?" "A Yankee destroyer--in all probability the one we dodged yesterday afternoon." "She'll find us yet if we don't submerge. Forward, there--house that gun! And get below--quickly!" During a moment of apparent confusion, one of the men sustaining Lanyard caught the attention of an officer. "What shall we do with this fellow, sir?" he enquired. "Leave him here to sink or swim as we go down," snapped the officer--"and be damned to him!" With a supreme effort the adventurer sank his fingers deep into the arms of the two men. "Wait!" he gasped faintly in German. "On the Emperor's service--" "What's that?" The officer turned back sharply. "Imperial Secret Service," Lanyard faltered--"Personal Division--Wilhelmstrasse Number 27--" A brilliant glare settled suddenly upon the deck of the submarine, and was welcomed by a panicky gust of oaths. One officer had already popped through the conning-tower hatch, followed by several of the crew. There remained only those supporting Lanyard, and the second officer. "Take him below!" the latter ordered. "He may be telling the truth. If not...." In the distance a gun boomed. A shell shrieked over the submarine and dropped into the sea not a hundred yards to starboard. The men rushed Lanyard toward the conning tower. He tried feebly to help them. In that effort consciousness was altogether blotted out.... IX SUB SEA When he opened his eyes again he was resting, after a fashion, naked between harsh, damp blankets in a narrow, low-ceiled bunk inches too short for one of his stature. After an experimental squirm or two he lay very still; his back and all his limbs were stiff and sore, his bullet-seared shoulder burned intolerably beneath a rudely applied first-aid dressing, and he was breathing heavily long, labouring inhalations of an atmosphere sickeningly dank, close, and foul with unspeakable stenches, for which the fumes of sulphuric acid with a rank reek of petroleum and lubricating oils formed but a modest and retiring background. Also his head felt very thick and dull. He found it extremely difficult to think, and for some time, indeed, was quite unable to think to any purpose. His very eyes ached in their sockets. In the ceiling glowed an electric bulb, dimly illuminating a cubicle barely big enough to accommodate the bunk, a dresser, and a small desk with a folding seat. The inner wall was a slightly concave surface of steel plates whose seams oozed moisture. In the opposite wall was a sliding door, open, beyond which ran a narrow alleyway floored with metal grating. Everything in sight was enamelled with white paint and clammy with the sweat of that foetid air. Over all an unnatural hush brooded, now and again accentuated by a rumble of distant voices and gusts of vacant laughter, once or twice by a curious popping. For a long time he heard nothing else whatever. The effect was singularly disquieting and did its bit to quicken torpid senses to grasp his plight. Sluggishly enough Lanyard pieced together fragments of lurid memories, reconstructing the sequence of last night's events scene by scene to the moment of his rescue by the U-boat. So, it appeared, he was aboard a German submersible, virtually a prisoner, though posing as an agent of the Personal Intelligence Department of the German Secret Service. To that inspiration of failing consciousness he owed his life, or such of its span as now remained to him, a term whose duration could only be defined by his ability to carry off the imposture pending problematic opportunity to escape. And, assuming that this last were ever offered him, there was no present possibility of guessing how long it might not be deferred. Its butcher's mission successfully accomplished, the U-boat was not improbably even now en route for Heligoland, beginning a transatlantic cruise of weeks that might never end save in a nameless grave at the bottom of the Four Seas. Only the matter of impersonation failed to embarrass in prospect. A natural linguist, Lanyard's three years within the German lines had put a rare finish upon his mastery of German. More than this, he was well versed in the workings of the Prussian spy system. As Dr. Paul Rodiek, Wilhelmstrasse Agent Number 27, he was safe as long as he found no acquaintance of that gentleman in the complement of the submarine; for, largely upon information furnished by Lanyard himself, Dr. Rodiek had been secretly apprehended and executed in the Tower the day before Lanyard left London to join the _Assyrian_. But the question of the U-boat's present whereabouts and its movements in the immediate future disturbed the adventurer profoundly. He was elaborately incurious about Heligoland; and several weeks' association with the Boche in the close quarters of a submarine was a prospect that revolted. Wellnigh any fate were preferable.... Uncertain footsteps sounded in the alleyway, paused at the entrance to his cubicle. He turned his head wearily on the pillow. In the doorway stood a man whose slenderly elegant carriage of a Prussian officer was not disguised even by his shapeless wreck of a naval lieutenant's uniform, a man with a countenance of singularly unpleasant cast, leaving out of all consideration the grease and grime that discoloured it. His narrow forehead slanted back just a trace too sharply, his nose was thin and overlong, his mouth thin and cruel beneath its ambitious mustache à la Kaiser; his small black eyes, set much too close together, blazed with unholy exhilaration. As soon as he spoke Lanyard understood that he was drunk, drunk with more than the champagne of which he presently boasted. "Awake, eh?" he greeted Lanyard with a mirthless snarl. "You've slept like the dead man I took you for at first, my friend--a solid fourteen hours, my word for it! Feeling better now?" Lanyard's essays to reply began and ended in a croak for water. The Prussian nodded, disappeared, returned with an aluminium cup of stale cold water mixed with a little brandy. "Champagne if you like," he offered, as Lanyard, painfully propping himself up on an elbow, gulped like an animal from the vessel held to his lips. "We are holding a little celebration, you know." Lanyard dropped back to the pillow, the question in his eyes. "Celebrating our success," the Prussian responded. "We got her, and that means much honour and a long furlough to boot, when we get home, just as failure would have spelled--I don't like to think what. I shouldn't care to fill the shoes of those poor devils who let the _Assyrian_ escape them off Ireland, I can tell you." Something very much like true fear flickered in his small eyes as he pondered the punishment meted out to those who failed. So the U-boat was homeward bound! Strange one noticed no motion of her progress, heard no noise of machinery. "Where are we?" Lanyard whispered. "Peacefully asleep on the bottom, about five miles south of Martha's Vineyard, waiting till it is dark enough to slip in to our base." "Base?" The Prussian hiccoughed and giggled. "On the south shore of the Vineyard," he confided with alcoholic glee: "snuggest little haven heart could wish, well to the north of all deep-sea traffic; and the coastwise trade runs still farther north, through Vineyard Sound, other side the island. Not a soul ever comes that way, not a soul suspects. How should they? The admirable charts of the Yankee Coast and Geodetic Survey"--he sneered--"show no break in the south beach of the island, between the ocean and the ponds. But there is one. The sea made the breach during a gale, our people helped with a little Trotyl, tides and storms did the rest. Now we can enter a secluded, landlocked harbour with just enough water at low tide, and lie hidden there till the word comes to move again--three miles of dense scrub forest, all privately owned as a game preserve, fenced and patrolled, between us and the nearest cultivated land--and friends in plenty on the island to keep all our needs supplied--petroleum, fresh vegetables, champagne, all that. Just the same we take no chances--never make our landfall by day, never enter or leave harbour except at night." He paused, contemplating Lanyard owlishly. "Ought not to tell you all this, I presume," he continued, more soberly, though the wild light still flickered ominously in his eyes. "But it is safe enough; you will see for yourself in a few hours; and then ... either you are all right, or you will never live to tell of it. We radio'd for information about Wilhelmstrasse Number 27 just before dawn, after we had dodged that damned Yankee destroyer. Ought to get an answer to-night, when we come up." Heavier footsteps rang in the alleyway. The Prussian made a grimace of dislike. "Here comes the commander," he cautioned uneasily. A great blond Viking of a German in the uniform of a captain shouldered heavily through the doorway and, acknowledging the salute of the rat-faced subaltern with a bare nod, stood looking down at Lanyard in taciturn silence, hostility in his blood-shot blue eyes. "How long since he wakened?" he asked thickly, with the accent of a Bavarian. "A minute or two ago." "Why did you not inform me?" The tone was offensively domineering, thanks like enough to drink, nerves, and hatred of his job and all things and persons pertaining to it. The subaltern coloured. "He asked for water--I got it for him." The commander stared churlishly, then addressed Lanyard: "How are you now?" "Very faint," Lanyard said truthfully. But he would have lied had it been otherwise with him. It was his book to make time in which to collect his thoughts, concoct a bullet-proof story, plan against an adverse answer to that wireless enquiry. "Can you eat, drink a little champagne?" Lanyard nodded slightly, adding a feeble "Please." The Bavarian glanced significantly at his subaltern, who hastened to leave them. "Who are you? What is your name?" "Dr. Paul Rodiek." "Your employment?" "Personal Intelligence Bureau--confidential agent." "What were you doing on board the _Assyrian_?" Lanyard mustered enough strength to look the man squarely in the eye. "Pardon," he said coldly. "You must know your question is indiscreet." "I must know more about you." "It should be enough," Lanyard ventured boldly, "to know that I set off that flare as arranged, at risk of my life." "How came you overboard?" "In the scuffle caused by my lighting the flare." "So you tell me. But we found you half clothed, lacking any sort of identification. Am I to accept your unsupported word?" "My papers are naturally at the bottom of the sea, in the garments I discarded lest their weight drag me down. If you have doubts," Lanyard continued firmly, "it is your privilege to settle them by communicating via radio with Seventy-ninth Street." He shut his eyes wearily and turned his head aside on the pillow, confident that this reference to the headquarters and secret wireless station of the Prussian spy system in New York would win him peace for a time at least. After a moment the commander uttered a non-committal grunt. "We shall see," he prophesied darkly, and went away. Later, one of the crew brought Lanyard a dish of greasy stew and potatoes, lukewarm, with bread and a half-bottle of excellent champagne. He ate all he could stomach of the first, devoured the second ravenously, and drained the bottle of its ultimate life-giving drop. Then, immeasurably refreshed and fortified in body and spirit, he turned face to the wall, composed himself as if to sleep, shut his eyes, adjusted the tempo of his respiration, and lay quite still, wide awake and thinking hard. After a while somebody tramped into the cubicle, bent over Lanyard inquisitively and, satisfied that he slept, retired, taking away the empty bottle and dishes. Otherwise his meditations were disturbed only by those echoes of revelry in honour of the late manifestation of the Hun's divine right to do wanton murder on the high seas. The rumour waxed and waned, died into dull mutterings, broke out afresh in spurts of merriment that held an hysterical note. Once a quarrel sprang up and was silenced by the commander's deep, unpleasant tones. Corks popped spasmodically. Again there were sounds much like a man's sobbing; but these were promptly blared down by a phonograph with a typically American accent. When that palled, a sentimental disciple of frightfulness sang Tannenbaum in a melting tenor. Everything tended to effect an impression that all, commander and meanest mechanic alike, were making forlorn efforts to forget. Devoutly Lanyard prayed they might be successful, at least until the submarine made her secret base. If too much alcohol was bad, too much brooding was infinitely worse for the German temperament. He remembered one U-boat commander who, returning to the home port after a conspicuously successful cruise, had been taken ashore in a strait-jacket. Lanyard himself did not care to dwell upon those scenes which must have been enacted on board the _Assyrian_ after the torpedo struck.... Deliberately ignoring all else, he set himself the task of reviewing those events which had led up to his going overboard. One by one he considered the incidents of that night, painstakingly dissected them, examined their every phase in minute analysis, weighing for ulterior meaning every word uttered in his presence, harking even farther back to reconstruct his acquaintance with each actor from the very moment of its inception, seeking that hint which he was convinced must be somewhere hidden in the history of the affair, waiting only recognition to lead straightway out of this gloomy maze of mystery into a sunlit open of understanding. In vain: there was an ambiguity in that business to baffle the keenest and most pertinacious investigation. The conduct of Cecelia Brooke alone bristled with inconsistencies inexplicable, the conduct of the German spies no less. To get better perspective upon the problem, he reduced the premises to their barest summary: A valuable dossier brought on board the _Assyrian_ (no matter by whom) had come into the possession of British agents, with the knowledge of Captain Osborne. Thackeray had secreted it in that fraudulent bandage. German agents, apparently under the leadership of Baron von Harden, had waylaid him, knocked him senseless, unwrapped the bandage, but somehow (probably in the first instance through the interference of the Brooke girl) had overlooked the document. Subsequently the Brooke girl had found and entrusted it to Lanyard. (No matter why!) He on his part had exerted his utmost inventiveness in hiding it away. Nevertheless it had been discovered and abstracted within an hour. By whom? Not improbably by the Brooke girl herself. Repenting her impulsiveness, after leaving Lanyard with the captain, from whom she had doubtless learned the truth about "Monsieur Duchemin," she might well have gone directly to Lanyard's stateroom and hit upon the morphia phial as the likeliest hiding place without delay, thanks to prior acquaintance with the proportions of the paper cylinder. But why should she have assumed that Lanyard had not disposed of the trust about his person? Not impossibly the thing had been found by the first officer of the _Assyrian_, searching by order of the captain--as Lanyard assumed he had. But, if Mr. Warde had found it, he had not reported his find when telephoning to Captain Osborne; or else the latter had gone to great lengths to mystify Lanyard. There remained the chance that the paper had been stolen by one of the two German agents--by either without the knowledge of the other. If Baron von Harden had found it--necessarily before Lanyard returned to the room--he had subsequently been at elaborate pains to conceal his success from both his victim and his confederate. Why? Did he distrust the latter? Again, why? If "Karl" had been the thief, it must have been after Lanyard's return, and while the Baron was preoccupied with the task of keeping the prisoner quiet, to let the search proceed. In that event "Karl" had lied deliberately to his superior. Why? Because the document was salable, and "Karl" intended to realize its value for his personal benefit? Not an unlikely explanation. Nor could this be called the first instance in which the Prussian spy system, admirably organized though it was, had been betrayed by one of its own agents. This hypothesis, too, accounted for that most perplexing circumstance of all, the murder of Baron von Harden. For Lanyard was fully persuaded that had been nothing less than premeditated murder, in no way an accident of faulty aim. Even the most nervous and unstrung man could hardly have missed six shots out of seven, point blank. A nervous man, indeed, could hardly have gained his own consent to take so hideous a chance of injuring or killing a collaborator. It appeared, then, that one of four things had happened to the cylinder of paper: Miss Brooke had taken it back into her own care. In which case Lanyard was no more concerned. Captain Osborne had secured it through Mr. Warde. This, however, Lanyard did not seriously credit. It had gone to the bottom when the _Assyrian_ sank with the body--among others--of Baron von Harden. Or "Karl" had stolen it. Privately, indeed, Lanyard rather inclined to hope that the last might prove to be the true solution. He desired earnestly to meet "Karl" once more, on equal terms. And the more counts in the score, the greater his satisfaction in exacting a reckoning in full. But he anticipated. That chapter might only too possibly have been closed forever by the hand of Death. As yet he knew nothing concerning the mortality of the _Assyrian_ débâcle. He had not enquired of the officers of the U-boat because they knew little if anything more than he. Their glasses had discovered to them trouble with the lifeboats; they had spoken of one boat capsizing, of "people going overboard like cattle." There must have been many drownings, even with a United States destroyer near by and speeding to the rescue. A single question troubled Lanyard greatly. Officers and crew of the U-boat had betrayed profoundest consternation upon the advent of that destroyer, presumably a warship of a neutral nation. And that same ship had without hesitation fired upon the submarine. Was it possible, then, that the United States had already declared war on Germany? It seemed extremely probable; in such event these Germans would have been notified instantly by wireless from the New York bureau of their country's Secret Service; whereas, Captain Osborne, receiving the same advice by wireless, might reasonably have kept it quiet lest the news stir to more formidable activity those agents of the Wilhelmstrasse whose presence among the passengers he must at least have strongly suspected. Presently the closeness of the atmosphere began to work upon Lanyard's perceptions. In spite of his long rest, a new drowsiness drugged his senses. He yielded without struggle, knowing he would soon need every ounce of strength and vitality that sleep could give him.... The din of an inferno startled him awake. Those narrow metal walls were echoing a clangour of machinery maniacal in character and overpowering in volume. Clankings, tappings, hissings, coughings, clatterings, stridulation of a wireless spark, drone of dynamos, shrewdish scolding of Diesel motors developing two thousand horsepower, individual efforts of some two thousand valves, combined--or, declined to combine--in a cacophony like nothing under the sun but the chant of a submersible under way on the surface. Lanyard, gratefully aware of a current of fresh air sweeping through the hold, rolled out of his bunk to find that, while he slept, clothing had been provided for him, rough but adequate; heavy woollen underwear and socks, a sweater, a dungaree coat, trousers of the same stuff, all vilely damp, and a friendless pair of oil-sodden shoes: the sweepings of a dozen lockers, but as welcome as disreputable. Dressed, he turned aft through the alleyway, entering immediately the central operating room and storm center of that typhoon of noise, a wilderness of polished machinery in active being. Of the score or more leather-clad machinists silent at their posts, none paid him more heed than a passing, incurious glance as he crossed to a narrow steel companion ladder and ascended to the conning tower. This he found deserted; but its deck-hatch was open. He climbed out to the bridge. The night was calm and heavily overcast, with no sea more than long, slow swells. Through its windless quiet the U-boat racketed with the raving abandon of the Spirit of Discord on a spree in a boiler factory. To the riot of its internal strife was added the remonstrance of waters sliced by the stem and flung back by the sides, a prolonged and stertorous hiss like the rending of an endless sheet of canvas. To eyes new from the electric illumination of the hold, the blackness was positive, with the palpable quality of an element, relieved alone by the dull glow of the binnacle housing the gyroscope telltale, from which the faintest of golden reflections struck back to pick out a pair of seemingly severed fists gripping the handles of the bridge steering wheel with a singular effect of desperation. For some moments Lanyard could see nothing more. The mirthless chuckle of the lieutenant sounded at his elbow. "So the good Herr Doctor thought he had better come up for air, eh? My friend, the very dead might envy you the sincerity of your slumbers. We have been half an hour on the surface, with all this uproar--and you are only just wakened!" "Half an hour?" Lanyard repeated thoughtfully. "Then we should be close in...." "Give us ten minutes more ... if we don't go aground in this accursed blackness!" A broad-shouldered body passed between Lanyard and the binnacle, momentarily eclipsing its light. Down below in the operating room a bell shrilled, and of a sudden the Diesels were silenced. The dead quiet that followed the sharp extinction of that hubbub was as startling as the detonation of high explosive had been. Through this sudden stillness the submarine slipped stealthily, the hissing beneath her bows dying down to gentle sibilance. From forward the calls of an invisible leadsman were audible. In response the commander uttered throaty orders to the helmsman at his elbow, and those unattached hands shifted the wheel minutely. Lanyard started to speak, but a growl from the captain, and a touch of the lieutenant's hand on his sleeve cautioned him to silence. There was a small pause. The vessel seemed to have lost way altogether, to swim like a spirit ship that Stygian tide. The lieutenant moved forward, leaving Lanyard alone. The voice of the leadsman was stilled. By the wheel the captain stood absolutely motionless, his body vaguely silhouetted against the glow of the binnacle. The hands that gripped the wheel so savagely were as steady as if carven out of stone. An atmosphere of suspense enveloped the boat like a cloud. Lanyard grew conscious of something huge and formidable, a denser shadow in the darkness beyond the bows, the loom of land. Off to starboard a point of light appeared abruptly, precisely as if a golden pin had punctured the black blanket of the night. The captain growled gutturals of relief and command. The hands on the wheel shifted, steering exceeding small. A second light shone out to port, then shifted slowly into range with the first, till the two were as one. Again the bell sang in the operating room, and the vessel forged ahead quietly to the urge of electric motors alone. A third light and a fourth appeared, well apart to port and starboard, the range lights precisely equidistant between them. Between these the U-boat moved swiftly. They swam back on either hand and were abruptly extinguished as if the night, resenting their insolent trespass, had gobbled both at a gulp. The temperature became sensibly warmer and the salt air of the sea was strongly tinctured with the sweet smell of pines and forest mould. Up forward carbons sputtered and spat; a searchlight was unsheathed and carved the gloom as if it was butter, ranging swiftly over the tree-clad shore of a burnished black lagoon, picking out en passant several unpainted wooden structures, then steadying on a long and substantial landing stage, on which several men stood waiting. X AT BASE As the U-boat, with motors dead and way lessening, glided up alongside the head of that T-shaped landing stage and was made fast, the wireless operator popped up from below, saluted the commander, and delivered a written message. Lanyard, instinctively aware that this was the expected report from Seventy-ninth Street on Dr. Paul Rodiek, quietly pulled himself together and took quick observations. At best his chances in the all-too-probable emergency were far from brilliant. Yet one might better perish trying, however hopelessly, than passively submit to being shot down. The lieutenant, waspishly superintending the work of crew and base guards at the mooring lines, stood preoccupied within an arm's length; while the landing stage was a fair six feet away. From its T-head to the shore, the distance was nothing less than two hundred yards. Desperate action and miraculous luck might take the Prussian by surprise and enable one to snatch the service automatic from its holster at his belt, leap to the stage, and shoot a way landward through the guards clustered there; after which everything would depend on swiftness of foot and the uncertain light permitting one to gain a refuge in the surrounding woodland without a bullet in one's back. It was a sorry hope.... With catlike attention Lanyard watched the hands holding that paper to the binnacle light--large hands, heavy and muscular but tremulous with drink and nervous reaction from the long strain and cumulative horror of the cruise then ending. Their aim would not be good, except by accident. None the less, if the report were unfavourable, their first gesture would be toward the holster, signalling to Lanyard that the moment had come to initiate heroic measures. The Bavarian was an unconscionable time absorbing the import of the message. Bending his face close to the paper, the better to make out the writing, he read with moving lips, slowly, a doltish frown of concentration clouding his congested countenance. At length, however, he stood up, swaying a little as he folded and pocketed the paper. Lanyard relaxed. The man was too far gone in drink to be crafty, too sure of his absolute power of life and death to imagine a need for craft. Since his hand had not immediately sought the holster, it would not. Turbid accents uttered the name of Dr. Rodiek. Lanyard stepped forward alertly. "Yes, Herr Captain?" "New York says it had no knowledge of your intention to leave England on the _Assyrian_, but that you may well have done so. The Wilhelmstrasse will know, of course. It has already been telegraphed. Pending its reply, I am to detain you." "How long?" Lanyard demurred. "As you know, transatlantic communications must now go by land telegraph to the Border, by hand into Mexico, thence by radio via Venezuela to Berlin. All that takes time. Also, we may not signal New York but at stated times of night. You will be detained another twenty-four hours at least, possibly longer." "My errand cannot wait." "It must." "You will obstruct the business of the Imperial Government at your peril." "I would incur still greater peril did I let you go," the commander replied nervously. "With these swine-dogs at war with the Fatherland, our lives are not worth _that_ should this base be betrayed." "Do I understand America has declared war?" "Two days since. Did you not know?" "The _Assyrian's_ wireless room was under guard: the captain published no bulletins whatever." The Bavarian gave a gesture of impatience. "You will remain on board for the night," he announced heavily. "Pardon!" Lanyard insisted with every evidence of anxious excitement. "What you tell me makes it more than ever imperative that I reach New York without an hour's avoidable delay. I warn you, think well before you hinder the discharge of my duty." "It is not necessary that I think," the commander replied. "My thinking has all been done for me. Me, I obey my orders; it is not my part to question their wisdom. Moreover, Herr Doctor, to my mind your insistence is to say the least suspicious. Even had I discretion in the matter, I should hold you. Therefore, you will keep a civil tongue in your head, or go below in irons immediately!" He swung on his heel, showing an insolent back while he conferred with his subaltern. And Lanyard shrugged appreciation of the futility of more contention against such mulishness. Not that the Bavarian was not right enough! As to that, one had really hoped for no better issue; but every shift is worth trial till proved worthless; and he was no worse off now than if he had submitted without complaint. Still one had Chance to look to for aid and comfort in this stress; and Chance, the jade, is not always unkind to her audacious suitors. Even now she flashed upon Lanyard a provoking intimation of her smile. He began to divine possibilities in this overt ill-feeling between the officers; advantage might be made of the racial hostility of Prussian and Bavarian. The commander's attitude and tone were consistently overbearing, if his words were inaudible to Lanyard. The lieutenant quite evidently submitted only in form; his salute was punctiliously correct and curt; and as the commander lumbered off down the landing stage, he grumbled indistinctly in Lanyard's hearing: "Dog of a Bavarian!" "The good Herr Captain," Lanyard suggested pleasantly, "is not in the most agreeable of tempers, yes?" The high and well-born lieutenant spat comprehensively into the darkness overside. After a moment of hesitation he moved nearer and spoke in confidential accents. And the fragrant air of the night was tainted with the vinous effluvium of his breath. "Always he prattles of his precious duty!" the Prussian muttered. "Damn his duty! Look you, Herr Doctor: months we have been on this cruise, yes, more than three months out of Heligoland, penned together in this ramshackle stinkpot, or isolated here in this God-forgotten hole, seeing nothing of life, hearing nothing of the world but what little the radio tells us--sick of the very sight of one another's faces! And now, when we have accomplished a glorious feat and have every right to look for prompt recall and the rewards of heroes, orders come to remain indefinitely and operate against the North Atlantic fleet of the contemptible Yankee navy! The life of a dog! And that noble commander of mine pretends to welcome it, talks of one's duty to the Fatherland--as if he liked the work any better than I!--solely to spite me!" "But why?" "Because he hates me," the lieutenant snarled passionately--"hates me even as I hate him--he knows how well!" He interrupted himself to define his conception of the commander's character in the freest vernacular of the Berlin underworld. Lanyard laughed amiably. "They are like that," he agreed--"those Bavarians!" Which inspired the Prussian to deliver a phosphorescent diatribe on the racial traits of the Bavarian people as comprehended by the North German junker. "To be cooped up God knows how long in this putrescent death-trap with such cattle," he concluded mutinously--"it passes all endurance!" "I wonder you stand it," Lanyard sympathised--"a man of spirit and good birth, as one readily perceives. Though the life of a secret agent is not altogether heavenly either, if you ask me," he added gratuitously. "Regard me now, charged with a mission of most vital moment--more than ever so since the Yankees have shown their teeth--delayed here indefinitely because your excellent Herr Captain chooses to doubt my word." "Patience. Maybe your release comes quickly. Then he will regret--or would had he wit enough. There is no cure for a fool." The sententiousness of this aphorism was unhappily marred by a hiccough. "Anybody with eyes in his head could see you are what you are...." The last of the operating-room crew piled up the hatchway, saluted, and hurried ashore to join in noisy jubilations. There remained on the U-boat only the lieutenant with Lanyard, and two base guards detailed as anchor watch. "I must go," the lieutenant volunteered. "And believe me, one welcomes a change of clothing and a dry bed after a week in this reeking sieve. As for you, my friend, if it lay with me, you should receive the treatment due a gentleman." A wave of maudlin camaraderie affected him. He passed an affectionate arm through Lanyard's and was suffered, though the gorge of the adventurer revolted at the familiarity. "I am sorry to leave you. No, do not be astonished! No protestations, please! It is quite true. I know a man of the right sort when I meet one, the sort even I can associate with without loss of self-respect. It is a great pity you may not come with me and make a night of it." "Another time, perhaps," Lanyard said. "The night may yet come when you and I shall meet at the Metropole or the Admiral's Palace.... Who knows?" "Ah!" sighed the Prussian, enchanted. "What a night that will be, my friend!... But now, it is too bad, I really must ask you to step below. Such are my silly orders. I am made responsible for you. What do you think of that for a joke, eh?" He laughed vacantly but loudly, and, attempting to poke a derisive thumb into Lanyard's ribs, lost his balance. "What a responsibility!" said Lanyard gravely, holding him up. "Nonsense, that's what it is. You have no possible chance to escape." "Suppose I make one--tip you overboard, take to my heels--?" "You would be shot like a rabbit before you got half way to the shore." "Ah, but grant, for the sake of argument, that these brave fellows, the guards, aim poorly in this gloom?" "Where would you go? Into the forest, naturally. But how far? You may believe me when I tell you, not a hundred yards. It's a true wilderness, scrub-oak and cedar and second growth choked with underbrush, almost trackless. In five minutes you would be helplessly lost, in this blackness, with no stars to steer by. We need only wait till daylight to find you walking in a circle." "You can't mean," Lanyard pursued, learning something helpful every moment, "there is no communicating road?" "The main woods road, yes: but that is far too well patrolled. Without the countersign, you would be caught or shot a dozen times before you reached the end of it." "Ah, well!"--with the sigh of a philosopher--"then I presume there's no way out but by swimming." "Over to the beach you mean? Well, what then? You have got a twenty-mile walk either way through deep sand sure to betray your footprints. At dawn we follow and bag you at our leisure." "You are discouraging!" Lanyard complained. "I see I may as well go below and be good. It's a dull life." "Tell you what," giggled the lieutenant, leading his prisoner to the conning-tower hatch and lowering his voice: "do just that, go below and be nice, and presently I will come back and we'll split a bottle. What do you say to that, eh?" "Colossal!" "Not a bad notion, is it? I like it myself. One gets weary for the society of a gentleman, you've no idea.... As soon as my commander is drunk enough, I will slip away. How's that?" "Grossartig!" Lanyard approved, turning to descend. "Wait. You shall see for yourself what it means to have the friendship of a man of my stamp." The lieutenant raised his voice, addressing the anchor watch: "Attention. Heed with care: this gentleman is my friend. He is detained merely as a matter of form. I do not wish him to be annoyed. Do you understand? You are to leave him to himself as long as he remains quietly below. But he is not to come on deck again till I return. Is all that clear, imbeciles?" The imbeciles, saluting mechanically, indicated glimmerings of comprehension. "Then below you go, Dr. Rodiek. And don't get impatient: I will rejoin you as soon as possible." "Don't be long," Lanyard implored. As he lowered himself through the hatch he saw the Prussian stumble down the gangplank and reel shoreward. Well satisfied with his diplomacy, Lanyard lingered a while in the conning tower, closely studying and memorising the more salient features of the Island of Martha's Vineyard and its adjacent waters and mainland as delineated on a most comprehensive large-scale chart published by the German Admiralty from exhaustive soundings and surveys of its own navigators and typographers, with corrections of as recent date as the first part of the year 1917. Here the breach in the south coast line which permitted the utilisation of what had formerly been an extensive fresh-water pond as this secret submarine base, was clearly shown. And a single glance confirmed the lieutenant's statement concerning its remote isolation from settled sections of the island. Somewhat dismayed, Lanyard descended to the central operating compartment and scouted through the hold from bow bulkhead to stern, making certain he enjoyed undisputed privacy. And it was so; every man-jack of the U-boat's personnel--jaded to the marrow with its cramped accommodations, unremitting toil and care, unsanitary smells and forbidding associations--having naturally seized the earliest opportunity to escape so loathsome a prison. Lanyard, however, was anything but resentful of condemnation to this solitary confinement. His interest in the interior arrangements of submersibles seemed all but feverish, as intense as sudden; witness the minute attention to detail which marked his second tour of inspection. On this round he took his time. He had all night in which to work out his salvation; the wildest schemes were revolving in his mind, the least fantastic utterly impracticable without accurate knowledge of many matters; and such knowledge might be gained only through patient investigation and ungrudging expenditure of time. It was now something past ten by the chronometers. He could hardly do much before dawn, lacking the instinct of a red Indian to guide him through that night-bound waste of woodland. So he felt little need to slight his researches through haste, except in anticipation of his lieutenant's return. And as to that, Lanyard was moderately incredulous: he expected to see nothing more of this new-found friend, unless the infatuation of the Prussian proved far stronger than his head. Turning first to the private quarters of the commander, a somewhat more commodious cubicle than that across the alleyway in which Lanyard had been berthed, his interest was attracted by a small safe anchored to the deck beneath the desk. To this Lanyard addressed himself without hesitation, solving the secret of its combination readily through exercise of the most rudimentary of professional principles. The problem it offered, indeed, was child's play to such cunning of touch and hearing as had made the reputation of the Lone Wolf. Open, the safe discovered to him a variety of articles of interest: some five thousand dollars in English and American banknotes of large denomination, several hundred in American gold; three distinct cipher codes, one of these wholly novel in Lanyard's experience and so, he believed, in the knowledge of the Allied secret services; the log of the U-boat and the intimate diary of its commander, both in cryptograph; a compact directory of German agents domiciled in Atlantic coast ports; a very considerable accumulation of German Admiralty orders; together with many documents of lesser moment. Rapidly sorting out the more valuable of these, Lanyard disposed them about his person, then confiscated the banknotes as indemnity for his stolen money-belt, replaced the rejections, and reclosed and locked the safe. His next interest was to arm himself. After several disappointments he discovered arms-lockers beneath the berths for the crew in the forward compartment just aft of that devoted to torpedo tubes. Here he selected a latest pattern German navy automatic pistol with three extra cartridge clips and, after some hesitation, a peculiarly devilish magazine rifle firing explosive bullets. The latter he placed handily, yet out of sight, near the foot of the companion ladder. The pistol fitted snugly a trousers pocket, its bulk hidden by the sag of his sweater.... Some time later the lieutenant, slipping down the ladder, found Lanyard studying with a convincing aspect of childlike bewilderment the complicated combinations of machinery which crowded the central operating compartment. Fresh from a bath and shave and wearing a clean uniform, the Prussian showed vast improvement in looks if not in equilibrium. But his mouth twitched fitfully, his eyes wandered and disclosed a disquieting superabundance of white, and his tongue was noticeably thicker than before. "Well, my friend!" he said--"you are truly disappointing. The watch said you had made no sound since going below. I was afraid of another of those famous naps of yours." "With the prospect of a bottle with you? Impossible! I have been waiting and waiting, with my tongue hanging out." "Too bad. Why did you not look around, help yourself? Why not?" the lieutenant demanded. "Have I not given you freedom of ship? It is yours, everything here 'yours!" "I want nothing but an end to this great thirst," Lanyard protested. "Then--God in Heaven!--why we standing here? Come!" Releasing the handrail the Prussian took careful aim for the alleyway door, launched himself toward it, slipped on the greasy metal grating, and would have fallen heavily but for Lanyard. Cursing pettishly, he stood up, threw off Lanyard's arms without thanks, and made a new attempt, this time shooting headlong through the alleyway, to bring up against the wing table in the third forward compartment, the kitchen and messroom in one. "A great pity," he muttered, opening a locker and fumbling in its depths--"rotten pity...." "What?" "Keep you waiting so long. Not my fault." The lieutenant brought forth two bottles of champagne and one of brandy. "You open them, Herr Doctor, like 'good fellow," he said, placing the three on the table. "I just wish you 'understand no discourtesy meant ... unavoidably detained ... beastly commander ... drunk. Give 'my word, hopelessly drunk. Poor fool...." "If my judgment is sound," Lanyard said, "this noble vessel will soon need a new commander." "True. Quite true." The Prussian placed two aluminium cups upon the table and half filled one with brandy, then brimmed it with champagne. "Try that," he said thickly, "That will keep your tail up, my friend." "Many thanks," Lanyard protested, filling another cup with undiluted champagne. "I prefer one thing at a time." "Unfortunate ... don't know what is good ... King's peg ... wonderful drink. No matter. To 'new commander--prosit!" He drained his cup at a gulp. "To the new commander!" Lanyard echoed, and drank judiciously. "Excellent.... How long can he last, do you think, at this pace?" "No telling--not long--too long for my liking. Shall I tell 'something?" He filled his cup again, half and half, and sat down, his wicked, rat-like face more than ever pale and repulsive. "Not 'whisper of this, mind--though I think 'crew sometimes suspects: he's going mad!" "Not that Bavarian?" The lieutenant nodded wisely. "If 'knew him as I know him, 'never be surprised, my friend. You think too much drink. Yes, but not entirely. He keeps seeing things, hearing them, especially by night." "What sort of things?" "Faces." The Prussian licked his lips, glanced furtively over his shoulder, and drank. "Dead faces, eyes eaten out, seaweed in their hair.... And voices--he's forever hearing voices ... people trying to talk, 'can't make him understand because 'mouths 'full of water, you know. But they understand one another, keep discussing how to get at him.... He tells me about it ... I tell you, it is Hell to hear him talk ... especially when submerged, as last night. Then he hears them fumbling all over the hull with their stumpy fingers, trying to find 'way in, talking about him. And he tells me, and keeps insisting, till sometimes I seem to hear them, too. But I don't. Before God, I don't! You don't believe I do, do you?" His eyes rolled wildly. "Why should you?" "Just so: why should I?" The lieutenant's accents rose to a shrill pitch. "I have not his record ... still in training when he sent _Lusitania_ to the bottom. Yes: it was he, second-in-command, in charge of torpedo tubes. His own hand fired that torpedo...." He fell silent, staring moodily into his cup, perhaps thinking of the number of torpedoes it had been his own lot to discharge upon errands of slaughter. And the dead silence of the ship was made audible by a stealthy drip-drip of water from the seams, and the furtive slaver of the tide on the outer plates. A shiver ran through the body of the Prussian. He pulled himself together with obvious effort, looked up with an uncertain grin, and passed a shaking hand across his writhing lips. "All foolishness, of course, but 'gets on one's nerves ... constant association with man like that.... 'Know what he's doing now, or was, when I came away? Sitting up with doors and windows locked and blinds drawn, drinking brandy neat. He can't sleep by night if sober, or without 'light in the room. If he does, he knows they will get him ... people he hears crawling up from the sea, slopping round the house, mumbling, whimpering in the dark--" He broke off abruptly, with a whisper more dreadful than a shriek--"_God_!"--and jumped to his feet, whipping the automatic from his belt. A footfall sounded in one of the after compartments. Others followed. Someone was coming slowly down the alleyway, someone with dragging, heavy feet. The lieutenant waited motionless, as one petrified with terror. The bulkhead doorway framed the figure of the commander. He paused there, louring at his subaltern with haunted eyes ablaze in a face like parchment. "So!" he said, nodding. "As I thought. It is thus I find you, fraternising with one who may be, for all we know, an enemy to the Fatherland. You drunken, babbling fool! Get ashore!" His angry foot thumped the grating. "Get ashore, and report yourself under arrest!" With no more warning than a strangled snarl, the lieutenant shot him through the head. XI UNDER THE ROSE Vague stupefaction replaced the scowl upon the countenance of the commander. He swayed, a hand faltering to his forehead, where dark blood was beginning to well from a cleanly drilled puncture. Then he collapsed completely, falling prone across the raised sill of the bulkhead opening. A convulsive tremor shook savagely his huge frame. Thereafter he was quite still. The report of that one shot had reverberated stunningly within those narrow walls of steel. Momentarily Lanyard looked to see the alarmed anchor watch appear; so too, apparently, the lieutenant, who remained immobile, pistol poised in a hand for the moment strangely steady, gaze fixed upon the mouth of the alleyway. But through a long minute no other sounds were audible than that ceaseless dripping from frames and seams, with that muted, terrible mouthing of waters on the plates. Unable either to fathom or forecast the workings of the drink-maddened mentality masked by that rat-like face, Lanyard waited with a hand covertly grasping the automatic in his pocket. There was no telling; at any moment that murderous mania might veer his way. And he was not content to die, not yet, not in any event by the hand of a decadent little beast of a Boche. Slowly the arm of the lieutenant dropped, lowering the pistol till its muzzle chattered on the top of the table: a noise that broke the spell upon his senses. He looked down in dull brutish wonder, then roused and with a gesture of horror let the weapon fall clattering. His glance shifting to the body of his commander, he started violently, backing up against the plates to put all possible distance between himself and his handiwork. His lips moved, framing phrases at first incoherent, presently articulate in part: "... _done it at last!... Knew I must soon_...." Abruptly he looked up at Lanyard. "Bear witness," he cried: "I was provoked beyond human endurance. He insulted me in your presence ... me!... that scum!" Lanyard said nothing, but met his gaze with a blank, non-committal stare, under which the eyes of the lieutenant wavered and fell. Then with a start he realised anew the significance of that still figure at his feet, and tried to shake some of the swagger back into his wretched, fear-racked being. "A good job!" he muttered defiantly. "And you will stand by me, I know.... Only there is nothing in that, of course, no justification possible before a court martial. Even your testimony could not save me ... I am done for, utterly...." He hung his head. Lanyard heard whispered words: "_degraded," "dishonour," "firing squad_".... A chronometer in the central operating compartment tolled eight bells. With a sharp cry the lieutenant dropped to his knees. "He can't be dead!" he shrilled. "It is all play-acting, to frighten me!" Frantically he sought to turn the body over. Lanyard's hand shot swiftly out, capturing the automatic on the table. With rapid and sure gestures he extracted and pocketed the clip, drew back the breech, ejecting into his palm the one shell in the barrel, and replaced the weapon, all before the Prussian gave over his insane efforts to resurrect the dead. "He is dead enough," he announced, eyeing Lanyard morosely--"beyond helping.... Look here; are you with me or against me?" "Need you ask?" "I count on you, then. Good. I think we can cover this up." He checked and stood for a while lost in thought. "How?" Lanyard roused him. "Simply enough: I go on deck, send the watch ashore on some trumped-up errand. They suspect nothing, thinking the commander and I have you in charge. If they heard that shot, I will say one of us dropped a bottle of champagne, and it exploded.... When they are gone, I bring the dory alongside; and with your help it should be an easy matter to carry this body up, weight it, row it out to the middle of the lagoon, dump it overboard. Then we return. Our story is, the commander followed the anchor watch ashore; if later he wandered off, got lost in the woods in his alcoholic delirium, that is no affair of ours. Do you understand?" "Perfectly," said Lanyard with a look of fatuous innocence. "But how about the water--is it deep enough?" The Prussian took no pains to dissemble his scorn of this question, seemingly so witless. "To cover the body? Why, even here there is sufficient depth at low tide for us to submerge completely, barring the periscopes. And it is deeper yet in the middle." "Thanks," Lanyard replied meekly. "Have another drink? No?" The Prussian tossed off a half cupful of undiluted brandy, and shuddered. "Then stop here. I'll be back in a--" "Half a minute." The lieutenant halted in the act of stepping across the body. Lanyard levelled a hand at the automatic. "Do you mind taking that with you? I have no desire to be found here with it and a dead man, should anything prevent your return." With a sickly grimace the murderer snatched up the weapon, thrust it in its holster, and hurriedly departed. Lanyard watched him pass through the alleyway and turn toward the companion ladder, then followed quietly. As the lieutenant climbed out on deck, Lanyard ascended to the conning tower and waited there, listening. He could not quite make out what was said; but after a few brusque words of command two pair of boots rang on the gangplank and thumped away down the stage. At the same time Lanyard let himself noiselessly out through the hatch. As soon as his vision grew reconciled to the change from light to darkness, he discovered the slender figure of the lieutenant skulking on tip-toe after the retreating anchor watch; about midway on the landing stage, however, he paused and bent over one of the piles, apparently fumbling with the painter of a small boat moored in the black shadows below. At this Lanyard began to move along the deck, one by one working the mooring lines clear of their cleats and dropping them gently overboard, till but two were left to hold the U-boat in place. Throughout he kept watch upon the manoeuvres of the lieutenant--saw him drop over the side of the stage, heard a thump of feet as he landed in a boat, and a subsequent creak of oar-locks. The small boat was rounding the bows of the submarine when the adventurer ducked back through conning tower to hold. He was standing where he had been left when the lieutenant came below. "It's all right," this last announced with shabby bravado as he stepped over the body in the doorway. "We are rid of that damned watch for a time. They won't return within half an hour at least. I have the dory moored amidships. If we are lively, this dirty job will be over in no time at all." Lanyard nodded. "I am ready." "No need to hurry--plenty of time for one more drink." The Prussian splashed brandy into the cup, filling it to the brim. "And God knows I need it!" Lanyard watched critically as, with head well back, he drained that staggering dose of raw spirit gulp by gulp without once removing the cup from his lips. No mortal man could drink like that and stand up under it: it was now a mere question of time.... Hardly that: the hand of the murderer shook and wavered widely as he put down the cup. For a moment he swayed with eyes fixed and glazing, features visibly losing plasticity, then lurched forward, knocking the brandy bottle to the floor, swung around a full half turn in blind effort to re-establish equilibrium, fell backward upon the table, and lay racked from head to foot with savage spasms, hands clawing empty air, chest labouring vainly to win sufficient oxygen to combat the poison with which his system was saturated. Moving to his side, Lanyard laid a hand upon the left breast. The man's heart was hammering his ribs with agonizing blows, at first rapid, by degrees more slow and feeble. No power on earth could save him now: he had committed suicide as surely as murder. Wasting not another glance or thought upon him Lanyard hurried aft to the central operating room. The time he had spent there, an hour earlier, was by no means lost in purposeless marvelling. He boasted a certain aptitude for mechanics, perhaps legitimately inherited from that obscure origin of his, largely fostered by the requirements of his craft; into the bargain, he had been privileged ere now to gain some slight insight into the principles of submersible operation. If obliged to work swiftly and in some instances upon the advice of intuition rather than practical knowledge, he went not unintelligently about his task, made few false moves. Turning first to the diving controls, he adjusted the hydroplanes to their extreme downward inclination, then made the rounds of the vent valves, opening all wide. With a sharp hissing and whistling the air from the auxiliary tanks was driven inboard, and as Lanyard manipulated the wheels operating the forward and aft groups of Kingston valves, to the hissing was added the suck and gurgle of water flooding the main and auxiliary ballast and adjusting tanks. Immediately the U-boat began to sink. Lanyard delayed only to close the switches which controlled the electric motors. As their drone gained volume he grasped the rifle and swarmed up the companion-ladder, passing through the conning tower to deck with little or nothing to spare--with, in fact, barely time to throw off the two mooring lines and jump into the small boat before water, sweeping hungrily up over deck and bridge, began to cascade through conning tower and torpedo hatchways. Constrained to cut the painter lest the dory be drawn down with the fast-sinking submarine, he fitted oars to locks and put his back to them, swinging the small boat hastily clear of whirlpools which formed as the waves closed over the spot where the U-boat had rested. From first to last less than five minutes' activity had been needed for the task of scotching this water-moccasin of the salt seas and putting its keepers at the mercy of the country whose hospitality they had too long abused. Well content, after a little, Lanyard lay on his oars and contemplated with much interest what the night permitted to be visible: the landing stage, no more than a dark, vague mass in the darkness; the land picked out with but few lights, mainly at windows of the base buildings, painting dim ribbons upon the polished floor of the lagoon. Methodically these were eclipsed as a moving figure passed before them. Listening intently, Lanyard could distinguish the slow footfalls of an unsuspecting sentry--no other sounds, more than gentle voices of the night: murmurs of blind wavelets, the plaintive whisper of a little breeze belated amid the tree-tops of that dark forest, and a slow, weary soughing of swells upon the distant ocean shore. Perceiving as yet not the slightest indication of an alarm ashore, Lanyard ventured to continue rowing, but with utmost caution, lifting and dipping his blades as gingerly as though they were fashioned of brittle glass, and for want of a better guide keeping the stern of the dory square to the shank of the T-stage. In time the bows grounded lightly on sand. The melancholy voice of the sea now seemed a heavier sighing in the stillness. He pushed off and rowed on parallel with a dark shore line, so close in that his starboard oar touched bottom at each stroke. At intervals he paused and rested, striving vainly to garner some clue to his bearings. Inexorably the blackness forbade that. He might have failed ere dawn to grope a way out of that trap had not the disappearance of the submarine been discovered within the hour. A sudden clamour rose in the quarter of the landing stage, first one great shout of dismay, then two voices bellowing together, then others. Several rifle-shots were fired in the air. More lights broke out in windows ashore. Many feet drummed resoundingly upon the stage, and the confusion of voices attained a pitch of wild, hysteric uproar. Of a sudden a flare was lighted and tossed far out upon the bosom of the lagoon. Surprised by that sharp and merciless blue glare, Lanyard instinctively shipped oars and picked up the rifle. He could see so clearly that huddle of figures upon the head of the landing stage that he confidently apprehended being fired upon at any moment; but minutes lengthened and he was not. Either the Germans were looking for bigger game than a dory adrift, or the dazzling flare hindered more than aided their vision. At length persuaded that he had not been detected, Lanyard put aside the rifle and resumed the oars. Now his course was made beautifully clear to him: the blue light showed him that outlet to the sea which he sought within a hundred yards' distance. Presently the flare began to wane. It was not renewed. Altogether unseen, unsuspected, Lanyard swung the dory into the breach, and drove it seaward with all his might. Swiftly the lagoon was shut out by narrow closing banks. The blue glare died out behind a black profile of rounded dunes. Lanyard turned the bow eastward, rowing broadside to the shore. After something more than an hour of this mode of progress, he struck in toward the beach, disembarked in ankle-deep waters, slung the rifle over his shoulder by its strap and, pushing the dory off, abandoned it to the whim of the sea. Then again he set his face to the east, following the contour of the beach just within the wash of the tide: thereby making sure that there should be no trail of footprints in the sand to guide a possible pursuit in the morning. The rising sun found him purposefully splashing on, weary but enheartened by the discovery that he had left behind the more thickly wooded section of the island. Presently, turning in to the dry beach for the first time, he climbed to the summit of a dune somewhat higher than its fellows, and took observations, finding that he had come near to the eastern extremity of the island. At some distance to his right a wagon road, faintly rutted in sand and overgrown with beach grass, struck inland. Following this at a venture, he came, at about eight o'clock, upon the outskirts of a waterside community. Before proceeding he hid the magazine rifle in a thicket, then made a wide detour, and picked up a roadway which entered the village from the north. If his disreputable appearance was calculated to excite comment, readiness in disbursing money to remedy such shortcomings made amends for Lanyard's taciturnity. Within two hours, shaved, bathed, and inconspicuously dressed in a cheap suit of ready-made clothing, he was breakfasting famously upon the plain fare of a commercial tavern. The town, he learned, was the one-time important whaling port of Edgartown. He would be able to leave for the mainland on a ferry steamer sailing early in the afternoon. Ten minutes before going abroad he filed a long telegram in code addressed to the head of the British Secret Service in New York.... Consequences manifold and various ensued. When the telegram had been delivered and decoded--both transactions being marked by reasonable promptitude--the head of the British Secret Service in New York called the British Embassy in Washington on the long distance telephone. Shortly thereafter an attaché of the British Embassy jumped into a motor-car and had himself driven to one of the cardinal departments of the Federal Government. When he had kicked his heels in an antechamber upward of an hour, he was received, affably enough, by the head of the department, a smug, open-faced gentleman whose mood was largely preoccupied with illusions of grandeur, who was, in short, interested far more in considering how splendid it was to be himself than in hearing about any mare's-nest of a German U-boat base on the south shore of Martha's Vineyard. He was, however, indulgent enough to promise to give the matter his distinguished consideration in due course. He even went so far as to have his secretary make a note of what alleged information this young Englishman had to impart. During the night he chanced to wake up and recall the matter, and concluded that, all things considered, it would do no harm to give the United States Navy a little amusement and exercise, even if it should turn out that the rumour of this submarine base was a canard. So, the next morning, he went to his desk some time before noon, and issued a lot of orders. One of them had to do with the necessity for absolute secrecy. During the day several minor officials of the department might have been, and indeed were, observed going about their business with painfully tight-lipped expressions. Also many messages were transmitted by wireless, telephone, and telegraph, to various persons charged with the defense of the Atlantic Coast; some of these were code messages, some were not. That same night a great forest fire sprang up on the south shore of Martha's Vineyard, both preceded and accompanied by a series of heavy explosions. The first United States vessel to reach the lagoon found only charred remains of a landing stage and several buildings and, at the bottom of the lagoon, an incoherent mass of wreckage, a twisted and shattered chaos of steel plates and framework that might possibly have been a perfectly sound submarine, though sunken, had somebody not been warned in ample time to permit its destruction through the agency of trinitrotoluene, that enormously efficient modern explosive nicknamed by British military and naval experts "T.N.T.," and by the Germans "Trotyl." XII RESURRECTION The early editions of those New York evening newspapers which Lanyard purchased in Providence, when he changed trains there en route from New Bedford to New York, carried multi-column and most picturesque accounts of the _Assyrian_ disaster. But the whole truth was in none. Lanyard laid aside the last paper privately satisfied that, for no-doubt praiseworthy reasons of its own, Washington had seen fit to dictate the suppression of a number of extremely pertinent circumstances and facts which could hardly have escaped governmental knowledge. Already, one inferred, a sort of censorship was at work, an effective if comparatively modest precursor to that noble volunteer committee which was presently with touching spontaneity to fasten itself upon an astonished Ship of State before it could gather enough way to escape such cirripede attachments. Presumably it was not thought wise to disconcert a great people, in the complacence of its awakening to the fact that it was remotely at war with the Hun, with information that a Boche submersible was, or of late had been, operating in the neighbourhood of Nantucket. Unanimously the sinking of the _Assyrian_ was ascribed to an internal explosion of unknown origin. No paper hinted that German secret agents might possibly have figured incogniti among her passengers. There was mention neither of the flare which had burned on her after deck to make the _Assyrian_ a conspicuous target in the night, nor of any of the other untoward events which had led up to the explosion. Nothing whatever was said of the shot fired at the submerging U-boat by a United States torpedo-boat destroyer speeding to the rescue. Still, the bare facts alone were sufficiently appalling. Reading what had been permitted to gain publication, Lanyard experienced a qualm of horror together with the thought that, even had he drowned as he had expected to drown, such a fate had almost been preferable to participation in those awful ten minutes precipitated by that pale messenger of death which had so narrowly missed Lanyard himself as he rested on the bosom of the sea. Within ten minutes after receiving her coup de grâce the _Assyrian_ had gone under; barely that much time had been permitted a passenger list of seventy-two and a personnel of nearly three hundred souls in which to rouse from dreams of security and take to the lifeboats. Thanks to the frenzied haste compelled by the swift settling of the ship, more than one boat had been capsized. Others had been sunk--literally driven under--by masses of humanity cascading into them from slanting decks. Others, again, had never been launched at all. The utmost efforts of the destroyer, fortuitously so near at hand, had served to rescue but thirty-one passengers and one hundred and eighty of the crew. In the list of survivors Lanyard found these names: Becker, Julius--New York Brooke, Cecelia--London Crane, Robert T.--New York Dressier, Emil--Geneva O'Reilly, Edmund--Detroit Putnam, Bartlett--Philadelphia Velasco, Arturo--Buenos Aires Among the injured, Lieutenant Lionel Thackeray, D.S.O., was listed as suffering from concussion of the brain, said to have been contracted through a fall while attempting to aid the launching of a lifeboat. In the long roster of the drowned these names appeared: Bartholomew, Archer--London Duchemin, André--Paris Von Harden, Baron Gustav--Amsterdam Osborne, Captain E. W.--London Of all the officers, Mr. Sherry was a solitary survivor, fished out of the sea after going down with his ship. No list boasted the name "Karl." Lacking accommodations for the rescued, it was stated, the destroyer had summoned by wireless the east-bound freight steamship _Saratoga_, which had trans-shipped the unfortunates and turned back to New York.... Throughout the best part of that journey from Providence to New York Lanyard sat blankly staring into the black mirror of the window beside his chair, revolving schemes for his immediate future in the light of information derived, indirectly as much as directly, from these newspaper stories. Retrospective consideration of that voyage left little room for doubt that the designs of the German agents had been thoughtfully matured. They had been quiet enough between their first stroke in the dark and their last, between the burglary of Cecelia Brooke's stateroom the first night out and those murderous attacks on Bartholomew and Thackeray. Unquestionably, had they bided their time pending that hour when, according to their information, the submersible would be off Nantucket, awaiting their signal to sink the _Assyrian_--a signal which would never have been given had their plans proved successful, had they not made the ship too hot to hold them, and finally had they not made every provision for their own escape when the ship went down. Lanyard was confident that all of their company had been warned to hold themselves ready, and consequently had come off scot free--all, that is, save that victim of treachery, the unhappy Baron von Harden. If the number of that group which Lanyard had selected as comprising a majority of his enemies, those nine who had discussed the Lone Wolf in the smoking room, was now reduced to five--Becker, Dressier, O'Reilly, Putnam, and Velasco--or four, eliminating Putnam, of whose loyalty there could be no question--Lanyard still had no means of knowing how many confederates among the other passengers these four might not have had. And even four men who appreciated what peril to their plans inhered in the Lone Wolf, even four made a ponderable array of desperate enemies to have at large in New York, apt to be encountered at any corner, apt at any time to espy and recognise him without his knowledge. This situation imposed upon him two major tasks of immediate moment: he must hunt down those four one by one and either satisfy himself as to their innocence of harmful intent or put them permanently _hors de combat_; and he must extinguish utterly, once and for all time, that amiable personality whose brief span had been restricted to the decks of the _Assyrian_, Monsieur André Duchemin. That one must be buried deep, beyond all peradventure of involuntary resurrection. Fortunately the last step toward the positive metamorphosis indicated had been taken that very morning, when the Gallic beard of Monsieur Duchemin was erased by the razor of a New England barber, whose shears had likewise eradicated every trace of a Continental mode of hair-dressing. There remained about Lanyard little to remind of André Duchemin but his eyes; and the look of one's eyes, as every good actor knows, is something far more easy to disguise than is commonly believed. But it was hardly in human nature not to mourn the untimely demise of so useful a body, one who carried such beautiful credentials and serviceable letters of introduction, whose character boasted so much charm with a solitary fault--too facile vulnerability to the prying eyes of those to whom Paris meant those days and social strata in which Michael Lanyard had moved and had his being. Witness--according to Crane--the demoniac cleverness of the Brazilian in unmasking the Duchemin incognito. Suspicion was taking form in Lanyard's reflections that he had paid far too little attention to Señor Arturo Velasco of Buenos Aires, whose avowed avocation of amateur criminologist might easily be synonymous with interests much less innocuous. Or why had Velasco been so quick to communicate recognition of Lanyard to an employee of the United States Secret Service? For that matter, why had he felt called so publicly to descant upon the natural history of the Lone Wolf? In order to focus upon that one the attentions of his enemies? Or to put him on guard? It was altogether perplexing. Was one to esteem Velasco friend or foe? Lanyard could comfort himself only with the promise he should one day know, and that without undue delay. Alighting in Grand Central Terminus late at night, he made his way to Forty-second Street and there, in the staring headlines of a "Late Extra," read the news that the steamship _Saratoga_ had suffered a crippling engine-room accident and was limping slowly toward port, still something like eighteen hours out. Wondering if it were presumption to construe this as an omen that the stars in their courses fought for him, Lanyard went west to Broadway afoot, all the way beset with a sense of incredulity; it was difficult to believe that he was himself, alive and at large in this city of wonder and space, where people moved at leisure and without fear on broad streets that resembled deep-bitten channels for rivers of light. He was all too wont with nights of dread and trembling, with the mediaeval gloom that enwrapped the cities of Europe by night, their grim black streets desolate but for a few, infrequent, scurrying shapes of fright.... While here the very beggars walked with heads unbowed, and men and women of happier estate laughed and played and made love lightly in the scampering taxis that whisked them homeward from restaurants of the feverish midnight. A people at war, actually at grips with the Blond Beast, arrayed to defend itself and all humanity against conquest by that loathsome incubus incarnate, a people heedless, carefree, irresponsible, refusing to credit its peril.... Here and there a recruiting poster, down the broad reaches of Fifth Avenue a display of bunting, no other hint of war-time spirit and gravity.... Longacre Square, a weltering lake of kaleidoscopic radiance, even at this late hour thronged with carnival crowds, not one note of sobriety in the night.... Lanyard lifted a wondering gaze to the livid sky whose far, clear stars were paled and shamed by the up-flung glare, like eyes of innocence peering down into a pit of hell. Inscrutable! Yet one could hardly be numb to the subtle, heady intoxication of those cool, immaculate, sea-sweet airs which swept the streets, instilling self-confidence and lightness of spirit even in heads shadowed with the woe of war-worn Europe. Lanyard had not crossed the Avenue before he found himself walking with a brisker stride, holding his own head high.... On impulse, despite the lateness of the hour, albeit with misgivings justified in the issue, he hailed a taxicab and had himself driven to the headquarters of the British Secret Service in America, an unostentatious dwelling on the northwest corner of West End Avenue at Ninety-fifth Street. Here a civil footman answered the door and Lanyard's enquiries with the information that Colonel Stanistreet had unexpectedly been called out of town and would not return before evening of the next day, while his secretary, Mr. Blensop, had gone to a play and might not come home till all hours. More impatient than disappointed, Lanyard climbed back into his cab, and in consequence of consultation with its friendly minded chauffeur, eventually put up for the night in an Eighth Avenue hotel of the class that made Senator Raines famous, a hostelry brazenly proclaiming accommodations "for gentlemen only," whereas it offered entertainment for both man and beast and catered rather more to beast than to man. However, it served; it was inconspicuous and made no demands upon a shabby traveller sans luggage, more than payment in advance. Early abroad, Lanyard breakfasted with attention fixed to the advertising columns of the _Herald_, and by mid-morning was established as sub-tenant of a furnished bachelor apartment on Fifty-eighth Street near Seventh Avenue, a tiny nest of few rooms on the street level, with entrances from both the general lobby and the street direct: an admirable arrangement for one who might choose to come and go without supervision or challenge. Lacking local references as to his character, Lanyard was obliged to pay three months' rent in advance in addition to making a substantial deposit to cover possible damage to the furnishings. His name, a spur-of-the-moment selection, was recorded in the lease as Anthony Ember. At noon he brought to his lodgings two trunks salvaged from a storage warehouse wherein they had been deposited more than three years since, on the eve of his flight with his family from America, an affair of haste and secrecy forbidding the handicap of heavy impedimenta. Thus Lanyard became once more possessor of a tolerably comprehensive wardrobe. But, those trunks released more than his personal belongings; intermingled were possessions that had been his wife's and his boy's. As he unpacked, memories peopled those perfunctorily luxurious lodgings of the transient with melancholy ghosts as sweet and sad as lavender and rue. For hours on end the man sat idle, head bowed down, hands plucking aimlessly at small broidered garments. And if in the sweep and turmoil of late events he seemed to have forgotten for a little that feud which had brought him overseas, he roused from this brief interlude of saddened dreaming with the iron of deadly purpose newly entered into his soul, and in his heart one dominant thought, that now his hour with Ekstrom could not, must not, be long deferred. In the street there rose an uproar of inhuman bawling. Lanyard went to the private door, hailed one of the husky authors of the din, an itinerant news-vendor, and disbursed a nickel coin for one cent's worth of spushul uxtry and four cents' worth of howling impudence. He found no more of interest in the newspaper than the information that the _Saratoga_ had been sighted off Fire Island and was expected to dock in New York not later than eight o'clock that night. This, however, was acceptable reading. Lanyard had work to do which were better done before "Karl" and his crew found opportunity to communicate directly with their collaborators ashore, work which it were unwise to initiate before nightfall lent a cloak of shadows to hoodwink the ever-possible adventitious German spy. Nor was he so fatuous as to fancy it would profit him to call before nine o'clock at the house on West End Avenue. No earlier might he hope to find Colonel the Honourable George Fleetwood-Stanistreet near the end of his dinner, and so in a mood approachable and receptive. But there could be no harm in reconnaissance by daylight. He whiled away the latter part of the afternoon in taxicabs, by dint of frequent changes contriving in the most casual fashion imaginable to pass the Seventy-ninth Street branch of the Wilhelmstrasse no less than four times. Little rewarded these tactics other than a fairly accurate mental photograph of the building and its situation--and a growing suspicion that the United States Government had profited nothing by England's lessons of early war days in respect of the one way to cope with resident enemy aliens. The house stood upon a corner, occupying half of an avenue block--the northern half of which was the site of a towering apartment house in course of construction--and loomed over its lesser neighbours a monumental monstrosity of architecture, as formidable as a fortress, its lower tiers of windows barred with iron, substantial iron grilles ready to bar its main entrance, even heavier gates guarding the carriage court in the side street. In all a stronghold not easy for the most accomplished house-breaker to force; yet the heart of it was Lanyard's goal; for there, he believed, Ekstrom (under whatever _nom de guerre_) lay hidden, or if not Ekstrom, at least a clear lead to his whereabouts. Certainly that one could not be far from the powerful wireless station secretly maintained on the roof of this weird jumble of architectural periods, its aërials cunningly hidden in the crowning atrocity of its minaret: a station reputedly so powerful that it could receive Berlin's nightly outgivings of news and orders, and, in emergency, transmit them to other secret stations in Cuba, Mexico, and Venezuela. Yet the shrewdest scrutiny of eyes trained to detect police agents at sight, however well disguised, failed to espy one sign of any sort of espionage upon this nest of rattlesnakes. Apparently its tenants came and went as they willed, untroubled by and contemptuous of governmental surveillance. A handsome limousine car pulled up at its carriage block as Lanyard drove by, one time, and a pretty woman, exquisitely gowned, alighted and was welcomed by hospitable front doors that opened before she could ring: a woman Lanyard knew as one of the most daring, diabolically clever, and unscrupulous creatures of the Wilhelmstrasse, one whose life would not have been worth an hour's purchase had she ventured to show herself in Paris, London, or Petrograd at any time since the outbreak of the war. He drove on, deep in amaze. Indications were not wanting, on the other hand, that enemy spies maintained close watch upon the movements of those who frequented the house on West End Avenue. A German agent whom Lanyard knew by sight was strolling by as his taxi rounded its corner and swung on down toward Riverside Drive. This more modest residence possessed a brick-walled garden at the back, on the Ninety-fifth Street side. And if the top of the wall was crusted with broken glass in a fashion truly British, it had a door, and the door a lock. And Lanyard made a note thereon. And when he went home to dress for dinner, he opened up the false bottom of one of his trunks and selected from a store of cloth-wrapped bundles therein one which contained a small bunch of innocent-looking keys whose true _raison d'être_ was anything in the world but guileless. Later he did himself very well at Delmonico's, enjoying for the first time in many years a well-balanced dinner faultlessly cooked and served amid quiet surroundings that carried memory back half a decade to the Paris that was, the Paris that nevermore will be.... At nine precisely he paid off a taxicab at the corner of Ninety-fifth Street. While waiting on the doorstep of the corner house, he raked the street right and left with searching glances, and was somewhat reassured. Apparently he called at an hour when the Boche pickets were off duty; at the moment there was no pedestrian visible within a block's distance on either hand, nobody that he could see skulked in the areas of the old-fashioned brownstone houses across the way. The neighbourhood was, indeed, quiet even for an upper West Side residential quarter. A block over to the east Broadway was strident in the flood of its nocturnal traffic; a like distance to the west Riverside Drive hummed with pleasure cars taking advantage of the first bland night of that belated spring. But here, now that the taxi had wheeled away, there was never a car in sight, nor even a strolling brace of sidewalk lovers. The door opened, revealing the same footman. "Colonel Stanistreet? I will see, sir." Lanyard entered. "If you will be kind enough to be seated," the footman suggested, indicating a small waiting room. "And what name shall I say?" It had been Lanyard's intention to have himself announced simply as the author of that telegram from Edgartown. Obscure impulse made him change his mind, some premonition so tenuous as to defy analysis. "Mr. Anthony Ember." "Thank you, sir." After a little the footman returned. "If you will come this way, sir...." He led toward the back of the house, introducing Lanyard to a spacious apartment, a library uncommonly well furnished, rather more than comfortably yet without a trace of ostentation in its complete luxury, a warm room, a room intimately lived in, a room, in short, characteristically British in atmosphere. Waist-high bookcases lined the walls, broken on the right by a cheerful fireplace with a grate of glowing cannel coal, in front of it a great club lounge upholstered, like all the chairs, in well-used leather. Opposite the chimney-piece, a handsome thing in carved oak, a door was draped with a curtain that swung with it. In the back of the room two long and wide French windows stood open to the night, beyond them that garden whose wall had attracted Lanyard's attention. There were a number of paintings, portraits for the most part, heavily framed, with overhead picture-lights. In the middle of the room was a table-desk, broad and long, supporting a shaded reading lamp. On the far side of the table a young man sat writing, with several dockets of papers arranged before him. As Lanyard entered, this one put down his pen, pushed back his chair, and came round the table: a tallish, well-made young man, dressed a shade too foppishly in spite of an unceremonious dinner coat, his manner assured, amiable, unconstrained, perhaps a little over-tolerant. "Mr. Ember, I believe?" he said in a voice studiously musical. "Yes," Lanyard replied, vaguely annoyed with himself because of an unreasoning resentment of this musical quality. "Mr. Blensop?" "I am Mr. Blensop," that one admitted gracefully. "And how may I have the pleasure of being of service?" He waved a hand toward an easy chair beside the table, and resumed his own. But Lanyard hesitated. "I wished to see Colonel Stanistreet." Mr. Blensop looked up with an indulgent smile. His face was round and smooth but for a perfectly docile little moustache, his lips full and red, his nose delicately chiselled; but his eyes, though large, were set cannily close together. "Colonel Stanistreet is unfortunately not at home. I am his secretary." "Yes," said Lanyard, still standing. "In that case I'd be glad if you would be good enough to make an appointment for me with Colonel Stanistreet." "I am afraid he will not be home till very late to-night, but--" "Then to-morrow?" Mr. Blensop smiled patiently. "Colonel Stanistreet is a very busy man," he uttered melodiously. "If you could let me know something about the nature of your business...." "It is the King's," said Lanyard bluntly. The secretary went so far as to betray well-bred surprise. "You are an Englishman, Mr. Ember?" "Yes." And for all he knew to the contrary, so Lanyard was. "I am Colonel Stanistreet's secretary," the young man again suggested hopefully. "That is precisely why I ask you to make an appointment for me with your employer," Lanyard retorted politely. "You won't say what you wish to see him about?" A trace of asperity marred the music of those tones; Mr. Blensop further indicated distaste of the innuendo inherent in Lanyard's use of the word "employer" by delicately wrinkling his nose. "I am sorry," Lanyard replied sufficiently. The door behind him opened, and the footman intruded. "Beg pardon, Mr. Blensop...." "Yes, Walker?" The servant advanced to the table and proffered a visiting card on a tray. Mr. Blensop took it, arched pencilled brows over it. "To see me, Walker?" "The gentleman asked for Colonel Stanistreet, sir." "H'm.... You may show him in when I ring." The footman retired. Mr. Blensop looked up brightly, bending the card with nervous fingers. "You were saying your business was...?" "I was not," Lanyard replied with disarming good humour. "I'm afraid that is something much too important and confidential to reveal even to Colonel Stanistreet's secretary, if you don't mind my saying so." Mr. Blensop did mind, and betrayed vexation with an impatient little gesture which caused the card to fly from his fingers and fall face uppermost on the table. Almost instantly he recovered it, but not before Lanyard had read the name it bore. "Of course not," said the secretary pleasantly, rising. "But you understand my instructions are rigid ... I'm sorry." "You refuse me the appointment?" "Unless you can give me an inkling of your business--or perhaps bring a letter of introduction." "I can do neither, Mr. Blensop," said Lanyard earnestly. "I have information of the gravest moment to communicate to the head of the British Secret Service in this country." The secretary looked startled. "What makes you think Colonel Stanistreet is connected with the British Secret Service?" "I don't think so; I know it." After a moment of hesitation Mr. Blensop yielded graciously. "If you can come back at nine to-morrow morning, Mr. Ember, I'll do my best to persuade Colonel Stanistreet--" "I repeat, my business is of the most pressing nature. Can't you arrange for me to see your employer to-night?" "It is utterly impossible." Lanyard accepted defeat with a bow. "To-morrow at nine, then," he said, turning toward the door by which he had entered. "At nine," said Mr. Blensop, generous in triumph. "But do you mind going out this way?" He moved toward the curtained door opposite the chimney-piece. Lanyard paused, shrugged, and followed. Mr. Blensop opened the door, disclosing a vista of Ninety-fifth Street. "Thank _you_, Mr. Ember. _Good_-night," he intoned. The door closed with the click of a spring latch. Lanyard stood alone in the street, looking swiftly this way and that, his hand closing upon that little bunch of keys in his pocket, his humour lawless. For the name inscribed on that card which Mr. Blensop had so carelessly dropped was one to fill Lanyard with consuming anxiety for better acquaintance with its present wearer. Written in pencil, with all the individual angularity of French chirography, the name was André Duchemin. XIII REINCARNATION It took a little time and patience but, on his third essay, Lanyard found a key which agreed with the lock. He permitted himself a sigh of relief; Ninety-fifth Street was bare, the door set flush with the outside of the wall afforded no concealment to the trespasser, while the direct light of a street lamp at the corner made his lonely figure uncomfortably conspicuous. Apparently, however, he had not been observed. Gently pushing the door open, he slipped in, as gently closed it, then for a full minute stood stirless, spying out the lay of the land. Fitting precisely his anticipations, the garden discovered a fine English flavour; it was well-kept, modest, fragrant and, best of all, quite dark, especially so in the shadow of the street wall. Only a glimmer of starlight enabled him to pick out the course of a pebbled footpath. A border of deep turf between this and the wall muffled his footsteps as he moved toward the back of the house. The library windows, deeply recessed, opened on a low, broad stoop of concrete, with a pergola effect above, and a few wicker pieces upon a grass mat underfoot. Noiselessly Lanyard stepped across the low sill and paused in the cover of heavy draperies, commanding a tolerably full view of the library if one somewhat unsatisfactory, since the light within was by no means bright. Still, this circumstance had its advantages for him; with his dark topcoat buttoned to the throat and its collar turned up to hide his linen, he was confident he would not be detected unless he gave his presence away by an abrupt movement--something which the Lone Wolf never made. At the moment Mr. Blensop seemed to be engaged in the surprising occupation of discoursing upon art to his caller. The latter occupied that chair which Lanyard had refused, on the far side of the table. Thus placed, the lamplight masked more than revealed him, throwing a dull glare into Lanyard's eyes. His man sat in a pose of earnest attention, bending forward a trifle to follow the exposition of Mr. Blensop, who stood beneath a portrait on the wall between the chimney-piece and the windows, his attitude incurably graceful, a hand on the switch controlling the picture-light. Apparently he had just finished speaking, for he paused, looking toward his guest with a quiet and intimate smile as he turned off the light. "And that's all there is to it," he declared, moving back to the table. "I see," said the other thoughtfully. Lanyard felt himself start almost uncontrollably: rage swept through him, storming brain and body, like a black squall over a hill-bound lake. For the moment he could neither see or hear clearly nor think coherently. For the voice of this latest incarnation of André Duchemin was the voice of "Karl." When the tumult of his senses subsided he heard Blensop saying, "I'll write it out for you," and saw him pick up a pad and pencil and jot down a memorandum. "There you are," he added, ripping off the sheet and passing it across the table. "Now you can't go wrong." "I precious seldom do," his caller commented drily. "I think--" Blensop began, and checked sharply as the man Walker came into the room. "Beg pardon, Mr. Blensop--" There was an accent of impatience in those beautifully modulated tones: "Well, what is it now?" "A lady to see you, sir." Blensop took the card from the proffered salver. "Never heard of her," he announced brusquely at a glance. "She asked for Colonel Stanistreet or for me?" "Colonel Stanistreet, sir. But when I said he was not at home, she asked to see his secretary." "Any idea what she wants?" "She didn't say, sir--but she seemed much distressed." "They always are. H'm.... Young and good-looking?" "Quite, sir." "Dessay I may as well see her," said Mr. Blensop wearily. "Show her in when I ring." Walker shut himself out of the room. "It's just as well," Blensop added to his caller. "You understand, my clear fellow--?" "Assuredly." The man got up; but Blensop contrived exasperatingly to keep between him and the windows. "I'm to be back at midnight?" "Twelve sharp; you'll be sure to find him here then. Mind leaving by this emergency exit?" "Not in the least." "Then _good_-night, my dear Monsieur Duchemin!" Was there a hint of irony in Blensop's employment of that style? Lanyard half fancied there was, but did not linger to analyse the impression. Already the secretary had opened the side door. In a bound Lanyard cleared the stoop, then ran back to the door in the wall. But with all his quickness he was all too slow; already, as he emerged to Ninety-fifth Street, his quarry was rounding the Avenue corner. Defiant of discretion, Lanyard gave chase at speed but, though he had not thirty yards to cover, again was baffled by the swiftness with which "Karl" got about. He had still some distance to go when the peace of the quarter was shattered by a door that slammed like a pistol shot, and with roaring motor and grinding gears a cab swung away from the curb in front of the Stanistreet residence and tore off down the Avenue. Swearing petulantly in his disappointment, Lanyard pulled up on the corner. The number on the license plate was plainly revealed as the vehicle showed its back to the street lamp. But what good was that to him? He memorised it mechanically, in mutinous appreciation of the fact that the taxi was setting a pace with which he could not hope to compete afoot. The rumble of another motor-car caught his ear, and he looked round eagerly. A second taxicab--undoubtedly that which had brought the young woman now presumably closeted with Mr. Blensop--was moving up into the place vacated by the first. In two strides Lanyard was at its side. "Follow that taxi!" he cried--"number seventy-six, three-eighty-five. Don't lose sight of it, but don't pass it--don't let them know we're following!" "Engaged," the driver growled. "Hang your engagement! Here"--Lanyard pressed a golden eagle into the fellow's palm--"there will be another of those if you do as I say!" "Le's go!" the driver agreed with resignation. If the cab was moving before Lanyard could hop in and shut the door, the other had already established a killing lead; and though Lanyard's man demonstrated characteristic contempt for municipal regulations governing the speed of motor-driven vehicles, and racketed his own madly down the Avenue, he was wholly helpless to do more than keep the tail-lamp of the first in sight. More than once that dull red eye seemed sardonically to wink. Still, Lanyard did not think "Karl" knew he was pursued. His conveyance had passed the corner before Lanyard emerged from the side street. There being no reason that Lanyard knew of why the spy should believe himself under suspicion, his haste seemed most probably due to natural desire to avoid adventitious recognition, coupled with, no doubt, other urgent business. At Seventy-second Street the chase turned east, with Lanyard two blocks behind, and for a few agonizing moments was altogether lost to him. But at Broadway the tide of southbound traffic hindered it momentarily, and it swung into that stream with its pursuer only a block astern. Thereafter through a ride of another mile and a half, the distance between the two was augmented or abbreviated arbitrarily by the rules of the road. At one time less than two cab-lengths separated them; then a Ford, driven Fordishly, wandered vaguely out of a crosstown street and hesitated in the middle of the thoroughfare with precisely the air of a staring yokel on a first visit to the city; and Lanyard's driver slammed on the emergency brake barely in time to escape committing involuntary but justifiable flivvercide. When he was able once more to throw the gears into high, the chase was a long block ahead. They were entering Longacre Square before he made up that loss. And at Forty-fourth Street, again, a stream of east-bound cars edged in between the two, reducing Lanyard's driver to the verge of gibbering lunacy. A car resembling "Karl's" was crossing Broadway at Forty-second Street when Lanyard was still on Seventh Avenue north of the Times Building. But only a minute later his driver pulled up in front of the Hotel Knickerbocker, and Lanyard, peering through the forward window, saw the number 76-385 on the license plate of a taxicab drawing away, empty, from the curb beneath the hotel canopy. He tossed the second gold piece to the driver as his feet touched the sidewalk, and shouldered through a cluster of men and women at the main entrance to the lobby. That rendezvous of Broadway was fairly thronged despite the slack mid-evening hour, between the dinner and the supper crushes; but Lanyard reviewed in vain the little knots of guests and loungers; if "Karl" were among them, he was nobody whom Lanyard had learned to know by sight on board the _Assyrian_. With as little success he searched unobtrusively all public rooms on the main floor. It was, of course, both possible and probable that "Karl," himself a guest of the hotel, had crossed directly to the elevators and been whisked aloft to his room. With this in mind, Lanyard paused at the desk, asked permission to examine the register and, being accommodated, was somewhat consoled; if his chase had failed of its immediate objective, it now proved not altogether fruitless. A majority of the _Assyrian_ survivors seemed to have elected to stop at the Knickerbocker. One after another Lanyard, scanning the entries, found these names: Edmund O'Reilly--Detroit Arturo Velasco--Buenos Aires Bartlett Putnam--Philadelphia Cecelia Brooke--London Emil Dressier--Genève Half inclined to commit the imprudence of sending a name up to Miss Brooke--any name but André Duchemin, Michael Lanyard, or Anthony Ember--together with a message artfully worded to fix her interest without giving comfort to the enemy, should it chance to go astray, the adventurer hesitated by the desk; and of a sudden was satisfied that such a move would be not only injudicious but waste of time; for, now that he paused to think of it, he surmised that the young woman--"young and good-looking", on Walker's word--who had called to see Colonel Stanistreet was none other than this same Cecelia Brooke. What more natural than that she should make early occasion to consult the head of the British Secret Service in America? A pity he had not waited there in the window! If he had, no doubt the mystery with which the girl had surrounded herself would be no more mystery to Lanyard; he would have learned the secret of that paper cylinder as well as the part the girl had played in the intrigue for its possession, and so be the better advised as to his own future conduct. But in his insensate passion for revenge upon one who had all but murdered him, he had forgotten all else but the moment's specious opportunity. With a grunt of impatience Lanyard turned away from the desk, and came face to face with Crane. The Secret Service man was coming from the direction of the bar in company with Velasco, O'Reilly, and Dressier. Of the three last named but one looked Lanyard's way, O'Reilly, and his gaze, resting transiently on the countenance of André Duchemin minus the Duchemin beard, passed on without perceptible glimmer of recognition. Why not? Why should it enter his head that one lived and had anticipated his own arrival in New York by twenty hours whom be believed to be buried many fathoms deep off Nantucket? As for Crane, his cool gray, humorous eyes, half-hooded with their heavy lids, favoured Lanyard with casual regard and never a tremor of interest or surprise; but as he passed his right eye closed deliberately and with a significance not to be ignored. To this Lanyard responded only with a look of blankest amaze. Chatting with an air of subdued self-congratulation pardonable in such as have come safe to land through many dangers of the deep, the quartet strolled round the desk and boarded one of the elevators. Not till its gate had closed did Lanyard stir. Then he went away from there with all haste and cunning at his command. The route through the café to Broadway offered the speediest and least conspicuous of exits. From the side door of the hotel he plunged directly into the mouth of the Subway kiosk and, chance favouring him, managed to purchase a ticket and board a southbound local train an instant before its doors ground shut. Believing Crane would take the next elevator down, once he had seen the others safely in their rooms, Lanyard was content to let him find the lobby destitute of ghosts, to let him fume and wonder and think himself perhaps mistaken. The last thing he desired was entanglement with the American Secret Service. For Crane he entertained personal respect and temperate liking, thought the man socially an amusing creature, professionally a deadly peril to one who had a feud to pursue. Leaving the train at Grand Central, the adventurer passed through the back ways of the Terminus, into the Hotel Biltmore, upstairs to its lobby, thence out by the Vanderbilt Avenue entrance, walking through Forty-fourth Street to Fifth Avenue, where he chartered a taxicab, gave the address of his lodgings, and lay back in the corner of its seat satisfied he had successfully eluded pursuit and very, very grateful to the Subway system for the facilities it afforded fugitives like himself through its warren of underground passages. One thing troubled him, however, without respite: the Brooke girl was on his conscience. To her he owed an accounting of his stewardship of that trust which she had reposed in him. It was intolerable in his understanding that she should be permitted to go one unnecessary hour in ignorance of the truth about that business--the truth, that is, as far as he himself knew it. If through Crane or in some unforseeable fashion she were to learn that André Duchemin lived, she would think him faithless. If she knew that Duchemin had been one with Michael Lanyard, the Lone Wolf, she would not be surprised. But that, too, was intolerable; even the Lone Wolf had his code of honour. Again, if she remained in ignorance of the fact that Lanyard had escaped drowning, she would continue to believe her secret at the bottom of the sea with him; whereas, in the hands of the enemy, in the possession of "Karl" and his, confederates, it was potentially Heaven only knew how dangerous a weapon. Abruptly Lanyard reflected that at least one doubt had been eliminated by that encounter in the Knickerbocker. It was barely possible that "Karl" had gone to the bar on entering and added himself to Crane's party, but it was hardly creditable in Lanyard's consideration. He was convinced that, whether or not Velasco, O'Reilly, and Dressier were parties to the Hun conspiracy, none of these was "Karl." As for the Brooke matter, he felt it incumbent upon him immediately to find some safe means of communicating with the girl. She could be trusted not to betray him to the police, however much she might at first incline to doubt him. But he would persuade her of his sincerity, never fear! The telephone offered one solution of his difficulty, an agency non-committal enough, provided one were at pains not to call from one's private station, to which the call might be traced back. With this in mind he stopped and dismissed his taxicab at Fifty-seventh Street and Sixth Avenue, and availed himself of a coin-box telephone booth in the corner druggist's. The experience that followed was nothing out of the ordinary. Lanyard, connected with the Knickerbocker promptly, with the customary expenditure of patience laboriously spelled out the name B-r-double-o-k-e, and was told to hold the wire. Several minutes later he began to agitate the receiver hook and was eventually rewarded with the advice that the Knickerbocker operator, being informed his party was in the rest'runt, was having her paged. Still later the central operator told him his five minutes was up and consented to continue the connection only on deposit of an additional nickel. Eventually, in sequel to more abuse of the hook, he received this response from the Knickerbocker switchboard: "Wait a min'te, can't you? Here's your party." Lanyard was surprised at the eagerness with which he cried: "Hello!" A click answered, and a bland voice which was not the voice he had expected to hear: "Hello? That you, Jack?" He said wearily: "I am waiting to speak with Miss Cecelia Brooke." "Oh, then there _must_ be some mistake. This is Miss _Crooke_ speaking." Lanyard uttered a strangled "Sorry!" and hung up, abandoning further effort as hopeless. That matter would have to stand over till morning. Time now pressed: it was nearly eleven; he had a rendezvous with Destiny to keep at midnight, and meant to be more than punctual. Walking to his apartment house, he proceeded to establish an alibi by entering through the public hallway and registering with the telephone attendant a call for seven o'clock the next morning. In the course of the next half hour Lanyard let himself quietly out of the private door, slipped around the block and boarded a Riverside Drive bus. Alighting at Ninety-third Street, he walked two blocks north on the Drive, turned east, and without misadventure admitted himself a second time to the Stanistreet garden. XIV DEFAMATION It was hardly possible to watch Mr. Blensop functioning in his vocational capacity without reflecting on that cruel injustice which Nature only too often practises upon her offspring in secreting most praiseworthy qualities within fleshy envelopes of hopelessly frivolous cast. The flowing gestures of this young man, his fluting accents, poetic eyes, and modestly ingratiating moustache, the preciosity of his taste in dress, assorted singularly with an austere devotion to duty rare if unaffected. Beyond question, whether or not naturally a man of studious and conscientious temper, Mr. Blensop figured to admiration in the role of such an one. Seated, the shaded lamplight an aureole for his fair young head, he wrought industriously with a beautiful gold-mounted fountain pen for fully five minutes after Lanyard had stolen into the draped recess of the French window, pausing only now and again to take a fresh sheet of paper or consult one of the sheaves of documents that lay before him. At length, however, he hesitated with pen lifted and abstracted gaze focussed upon vacancy, shook a bewildered head, and rose, moving directly toward the windows. For as long as thirty breathless seconds Lanyard remained in doubt; there was the barest chance that in his preoccupation Blensop might pass through to the garden without noticing that dark figure flattened against the inswung half of the window, in the dense shadow of the portière. Otherwise the game was altogether up; Lanyard could see no way to avoid the necessity of staggering Blensop with a blow, racing for freedom, abandoning utterly further effort to learn the motive of "Karl's" impersonation of Duchemin. He gathered himself together, waited poised in readiness for any eventuality--and blessed his lucky stars to find his apprehensions idle. Three paces from the windows, Mr. Blensop made it plain that he was after all not minded to stroll in the garden. Pausing, he swung a high-backed wing chair round to face the corner of the room, switched on a reading lamp, sat down and selected a volume of some work of reference from the well-stocked book shelves. For several minutes, seated within arm's length of the trespasser, he studied intently, then with a cluck of satisfaction replaced the volume, extinguished the light, and went back to his writing. But presently he checked with a vexed little exclamation, shook his pen impatiently, and fixed it with a frown of pained reproach. But that did no good. The cussedness of the inanimate was strong in this pen: since its reservoir was quite empty it mulishly refused more service without refilling. With a long-suffering sigh, Mr. Blensop found a filler in one of the desk drawers, and unscrewed the nib of the pen. This accomplished, he paused, listened for a moment with head cocked intelligently to one side, dropped the dismembered implement, and got up alertly. At the same moment the door to the hallway opened, and two women entered, apparently sisters: one a lady of mature and distinguished charm, the other an equally prepossessing creature much her junior, the one strongly animated with intelligent interest in life, the other a listless prey to habitual ennui. To these fluttered Mr. Blensop, offering to relieve them of their wraps. "Permit me, Mrs. Arden," he addressed the elder woman, who tolerated him dispassionately. "And Mrs. Stanistreet ... I say, aren't you a bit late?" "Frightfully," assented Mrs. Stanistreet in a weary voice. "It must be all of midnight." "Hardly that, Adele," said Mrs. Arden with a humorous glance. "Dinner, the play, supper, and home before twelve!" commented Blensop, shocked. "I say, that is going some, you know." "George would insist on hurrying home," the young wife complained. "Frightfully tiresome. We were so comfy at the Ritz, too...." "The Crystal Room?" Dissembled envy poisoned Blensop's accents. "Frightfully interestin'--everybody was there. I did so want to dance--missed you, Arthur." "I say, you didn't, did you, really?" "Poor Mr. Blensop!" Mrs. Arden interjected with just a hint of malice. "What a pity you must be chained down by inexorable duty, while we fly round and amuse ourselves." "I must not complain," Blensop stated with humility becoming in a dutiful martyr, a pose which he saw fit quickly to discard as another man came briskly into the room. "Ah, good evening, Colonel Stanistreet." "Evening, Blensop." With a brusque nod, Colonel Stanistreet went straightway to the desk, stopping there to take up and examine the work upon which his secretary had been engaged: a gentleman considerably older than his wife, of grave and sturdy cast, with the habit of standing solidly on his feet and giving undivided attention to the matter in hand. "Anything of consequence turned up?" he enquired abstractedly, running through the sheets of pen-blackened paper. "Three persons called," Blensop admitted discreetly. "One returns at midnight." Stanistreet threw him a keen look. "Eh!" he said, making swift inference, and turned to his wife and sister-in-law. "It is nearly twelve now. Forgive me if I hurry you off." "Patience," said Mrs. Arden indulgently. "Not for worlds would I hinder your weighty affairs, dear old thing, but I sleep more sound o' nights when I know my trinkets are locked up securely in your safe." With a graceful gesture she unfastened a magnificent necklace and deposited it on the desk. "Frightful rot," her sister commented from the doorway. "As if anybody would dare break in here." "Why not?" Mrs. Arden enquired calmly, stripping her fingers of their rings. "With a watchman patrolling the grounds all night--" "Letty is sensible," Stanistreet interrupted. "Howson's faithful enough, and these American police dependable, but second-storey men happen in the best-guarded neighbourhoods. Be advised, Adele: leave your things here with Letty's." "No fear," his wife returned coolly. "Too frightfully weird...." She drifted across the threshold, then hesitated, a pretty figure of disdainful discontent. "But really, Colonel Stanistreet is right," Blensop interposed vivaciously. "What do you imagine I heard to-night? The Lone Wolf is in America!" "What is that you say?" Mrs. Arden demanded sharply. "The Lone Wolf ... Fact. Have it on most excellent authority." "The Lone Wolf!" Mrs. Stanistreet drawled. "If you ask me, I think the Lone Wolf nothing in the world but a scapegoat for police stupidity." "You wouldn't say that," Mrs. Arden retorted, "if you had lived in Paris as long as I. There, in the dear old days, we paid that rogue too heavy a tax not to believe in him." "Frightful nonsense," insisted the other. "I'm off. 'Night, Arthur. Shall you be long, George?" "Oh, half an hour or so," her husband responded absently as she disappeared. With a little gesture consigning her jewellery, heaped upon the desk, to the care of her brother-in-law, Mrs. Arden uttered good-nights and followed her sister. Blensop bowed her out respectfully, shut the door and returned to the desk. "What's this about the Lone Wolf?" Stanistreet enquired, sitting down to con the papers more intently. "Oh!" Blensop laughed lightly. "I was merely repeating the blighter's own assertion. I mean to say, he boasted he was the Lone Wolf." "Who boasted he was the Lone Wolf?" "Chap who called to-night, giving the name of Duchemin--André Duchemin. Had French passports, and letters from the Home Office recommending him rather highly. Useful creature, one would fancy, with his knowledge of the right way to go about the wrong thing. What? Ought to be especially helpful to us in hunting down the Hun over here." "Is this the man who returns at midnight?" "Yes, sir. I thought it best to make the appointment." "Why?" "He said he had crossed on the _Assyrian_, said it significantly, you know. I fancied he might be the person you have been expecting." Stanistreet looked up with a frown. "Hardly," he said--"if, that is, he is really what he claims to be. I wonder how he came by those letters." "Does seem odd, doesn't it, sir? A confessed criminal!" "An extraordinary man, by all accounts.... Those other callers--?" "Nobody of importance, I should say. A man who gave his name as Ember and got a bit shirty when I asked his business. Told him you might consent to see him at nine in the morning." "And the other?" "A young woman--deuced pretty girl--also reticent. What was her name? Brooke--that was it: Cecelia Brooke." "The devil!" Stanistreet exclaimed, dropping the papers. "What did you say to her?" "What could I say, sir? She refused to divulge a word about her business with us. I told her--" Warned by a gesture from Colonel Stanistreet, Blensop broke off. Walker was opening the door. "Well, Walker?" "A Mr. Duchemin, sir, says Mr. Blensop made an appointment with you for twelve to-night." "Show him in, please." The footman shut himself out. Blensop clutched nervously at Mrs. Arden's jewels. "Hadn't I better put these in the safe first?" "No--no time." Stanistreet opened a drawer of the desk--"Here!"--and closed it as Blensop hastily swept the jewellery into it. "Safe enough there--as long as he doesn't know, at all events. But don't forget to put them away after he goes." "No, sir." Again the door opened. Walker announced: "Mr. Duchemin." Stanistreet rose in his place. A man strode in with the assurance of one who has discounted a cordial welcome. Through the gap which he had quietly created between the portière and the side of the window, Lanyard stared hungrily, and for the second time that night damned heartily the inadequate light in the library. The impostor's face, barely distinguishable in the up-thrown penumbra of the lampshade, wore a beard--a rather thick, dark beard of negligent abundance, after a mode popular among Frenchmen--above which his features were an indefinite blur. Lanyard endeavoured with ill success to identify the fellow by his carriage; there was a perceptible suggestion of a military strut, but that is something hardly to be termed distinctive in these days. Otherwise, he was tall, quite as tall as Lanyard, and had much the same character of body, slender and lithe. But he was "Karl" beyond question, confederate and murderer of Baron von Harden, the man who had thrown the light bomb to signal the U-boat, the brute with whom Lanyard had struggled on the boat deck of the _Assyrian_--though the latter, in the confusion of that struggle, had thought the German's beard a masking handkerchief of black silk. Now by that same token he was no member of that smoking-room coterie upon which Lanyard's suspicions had centered. On the other hand, any number of passengers had worn beards, not a few of much the same mode as that sported by this nonchalant fraud. Vainly Lanyard cudgelled his wits to aid a laggard memory, haunted by a feeling that he ought to know this man instantly, even in so poor a light. Something in his habit, something in that insouciance which so narrowly escaped insolence, was at once strongly reminiscent and provokingly elusive.... Pausing a little ways within the room, the fellow clicked heels and bowed punctiliously in Continental fashion, from the hips. "Colonel Stanistreet, I believe," he said in a sonorous voice--"Karl's" unmistakable voice--"chief of the American bureau of the British Secret Service?" "I am Colonel Stanistreet," that gentleman admitted. "And you, sir--?" "I have adopted the name of André Duchemin," the impostor stated. "With permission I retain it." Colonel Stanistreet inclined his head slightly. "As you will. Pray be seated." He dropped back into his chair, while "Karl" with a murmur of acknowledgment again took the armchair on the far side of the desk, where the lamp stood between him and the secret watcher. "My secretary tells me you have letters of introduction...." "Here." Calmly "Karl" produced and offered those purloined papers. "You will smoke?" Stanistreet indicated a cigarette-box and leaned back to glance through the letters. During a brief pause Blensop busied himself with collecting together the documents which had occupied him and began reassorting them, while "Karl," helping himself to a cigarette, smoked with manifest enjoyment. "These seem to be in order," Stanistreet observed. "I note from this code letter that your true name is Michael Lanyard, you were once a professional French thief known as 'The Lone Wolf', but have since displayed every indication of desire to reform your ways, and have been of considerable use to the Intelligence Office. I am desired to employ your services in my discretion, contingent--pardon me--upon your continued good behaviour." "Precisely," assented "Karl." "Proceed, Monsieur Duchemin." "It is an affair of some delicacy.... Do we speak alone, Colonel Stanistreet?" "Mr. Blensop is my confidential secretary...." "Oh, no objection. Still--if I may venture the suggestion--those windows open upon a garden, I take it?" "Yes. Blensop, be good enough to close the windows." "Certainly, sir." Stepping delicately, Blensop moved toward the end of the room. Again Lanyard was confronted with the alternatives of incontinent flight or attempting to remain undetected through the adoption of an expedient of the most desperate audacity. He had prepared against such contingency, he did not mean to go; but the feasibility of his contemplated manoeuvre depended entirely upon chance, its success in any event was forlornly problematic. "Karl" remained hidden from him by the lamp, so he from "Karl." Colonel Stanistreet, facing his caller, sat half turned away from the windows. Everything rested with Blensop's choice, which of the two windows he would elect first to close. A right-handed man, he turned, as Lanyard had foreseen, to the right, and momentarily disappeared in the recess of the farther window. In the same instant Lanyard slipped noiselessly from behind the portière, and dropped into that capacious wing chair which Blensop had thoughtfully placed for him some time since. Thus seated, making himself as small and still as possible, he was wholly concealed from all other occupants of the library but Blensop; and even this last was little likely to discover him. He did not. He closed and latched the farther window, then that wherein Lanyard had lurked, and ambled back into the room with never a glance toward that shadowed corner which held the wing chair. And Lanyard drew a deep breath, if a quiet one. Behind him the conversation had continued without break. It was true, he could see nothing; but he could hear all that was said, he had missed no syllable, and now every second was informing him to his profit.... "Your secretary, no doubt, has told you I am a survivor of the _Assyrian_ disaster." "Yes...." "You were, I believe, expecting a certain communication of extraordinary character by the _Assyrian_, to be brought, that is, by an agent of the British Secret Service." After an almost imperceptible pause Stanistreet said evenly: "It is possible." "A communication, in fact, of such character that it was impossible to entrust it to the mails or to cable transmission, even in code." "And if so, sir...?" "And you are aware that, of the two gentlemen entrusted with the care of this document, one was drowned when the _Assyrian_ went down, and the other so seriously injured that he has not yet recovered consciousness, but was transferred directly from the pier to a hospital when the _Saratoga_ docked." "What then, Monsieur Duchemin?" "Colonel Stanistreet," said the impostor deliberately, "I have that communication. I will ask you not to question me too closely as to how it came into my possession. I have it: that is sufficient." "If you possess any document which you conceive to be so valuable to the British Government, monsieur, and consequently to the Allied cause, I have every confidence in your intention to deliver it to me without delay." A note of mild derision crept into the accents of "Karl." "I have every intention of so doing, my dear sir.... But you must appreciate I have incurred considerable personal danger, hardship, and inconvenience in taking good care of this document, in seeing that it did not fall into the wrong hands; in short, in bringing it safely here to you to-night." A slightly longer pause prefaced Stanistreet's reply, something which he delivered in measured tones: "I am able to promise you the British Government will show due appreciation of your disinterested services, Monsieur--Duchemin." "Not disinterested--not that!" the cheat protested. "Gentlemen of my kidney, sir, seldom put themselves out except in lively anticipation of favours to come." "Be good enough to make yourself more clear." "Cheerfully. I possess this document. I understand its character is such that Germany would pay a round price for it. But I am a good patriot. In spite of the fact that nobody knew I possessed it, in spite of the fact that I need only have quietly taken it to Seventy-ninth Street to-night--" "Monsieur Duchemin!" Stanistreet's voice was icy. "Your price?" "Sorry you feel that way about it," said "Karl" with ill-concealed insincerity. "You must know thieving is no more what it once was. Even I, too, often am put to it to make both ends--" "If you please, sir--how much?" "Ten thousand dollars." Silence greeted this demand, a lull that to Lanyard seemed endless. For in his fury he was trembling so that he feared lest his agitation betray him. The very walls before his eyes seemed to quake in sympathy. He was aware of the ache of swollen veins in his temples, his teeth hurt with the pressure put upon them, his breath came heavily, and his nails were digging painfully into his palms. "Blensop?" "Sir?" "How much have we on hand, in the emergency fund?" "Between ten and twelve thousand dollars, sir." "Intuition, monsieur, is an indispensable item in the equipment of a successful _chevalier d'Industrie_. So, at least, the good novelists tell us...." "Open the safe, Blensop, and fetch me ten thousand dollars." "Very good, sir." "I presume you won't object to satisfying me that you really have this document, before I pay you your price." "It is this which makes it a pleasure to deal with an Englishman, monsieur: one may safely trust his word of honour." "Indeed...." "Permit me: here is the document. Use that magnifying glass I see by your elbow, monsieur; take your time, satisfy yourself." "Thanks; I mean to." Another break in the dialogue, during which the eavesdropper heard an odd sound, a sort of muffled swishing ending in a slight thud, then the peculiar metallic whine of a combination dial rapidly manipulated, finally the dull clank of bolts falling back into their sockets. "Your _coffre-fort_--what do you say?--strong-box--safe--is cleverly concealed, Colonel Stanistreet." There was no direct reply, but after a moment Stanistreet announced quietly: "This seems to be an authentic paper.... Monsieur Duchemin, what knowledge precisely have you of the nature of this document?" "Surely monsieur cannot have overlooked the circumstance that its seals were intact." "True," Stanistreet admitted. "Still...." "I trust Monsieur does not question my good faith?" "Why not?" Stanistreet enquired drily. "Monsieur!" "Oh, damn your play-acting, sir! If you can be capable of one infamy, you are capable of more. None the less, you are right about an Englishman's word: here is your money. Count it and--get out!" "Thanks"--the impostor's tone was an impertinently exact imitation of Stanistreet's--"I mean to." "Permit me to excuse myself," Stanistreet added; and Lanyard heard the muffled scrape of chair-legs on the rug as the Englishman got up. "Gladly," the spy returned--"and ten thousand thanks, monsieur!" The secretary intoned melodiously: "This way, Monsieur Duchemin, if you please." "Pardon. Is it material which way I leave?" "What do you mean?" Stanistreet demanded. "I should be far easier in my mind if monsieur would permit me to go by way of his garden, rather than run the risk of his front door." "What's this?" "In these little affairs, monsieur, I try to make it a rule to avoid covering the same ground twice." "You have the insolence to imply I would lend myself to treachery!" "I beg monsieur's pardon very truly for suggesting such a thing. Nevertheless, one cannot well be overcautious when one is a hunted man." "Blensop ... be good enough to see this man out through the garden." "Yes, sir." "Again, monsieur, my thanks." "Good-night," said Stanistreet curtly. Blensop passed Lanyard's chair, unlatched and opened the window and stood aside. An instant later "Karl" joined him, swung on a heel, facing back, clicked heels again and bowed mockingly. Apparently he got no response, for he laughed quietly, then turned and went out through the window, Blensop mincing after. With a struggle Lanyard mastered the temptation to dash after the spy, overtake and overpower him, expose and give him up to justice. Only the knowledge that by remaining quiescent, by biding his time, he might be enabled to redeem his word to the Brooke girl, gave him strength to be still. But he suffered exquisitely, maddened by the defamation imposed upon his nick-name of a thief by this brazen impostor. Nor was wounded _amour-propre_ mended by an exclamation in the room behind his chair, the accents of Colonel Stanistreet thick with contempt: "The Lone Wolf! Faugh!" XV RECOGNITION Presently Blensop came back, closed the window, and passed blindly by Lanyard, his reappearance saluted by Stanistreet in tones that shook with contained temper. "You saw that animal outside the walls?" Mildly injured surprise was indicated in the reply: "Surely, sir!" "And locked the door after him?" "Yes, sir--securely." "Howson anywhere about?" "I didn't see him. Daresay he's prowling somewhere within call. Do you wish to speak to him?" "No.... But you might, if you see anything of him, tell him to keep an extra eye open to-night. I don't trust this self-styled Lone Wolf." "Naturally not, sir, under the circumstances." Stanistreet acknowledged this with an irritated snort. "No matter," he thought aloud; "if it has cost us a pretty penny, we have got this safe in hand at last. I've not had too much sleep, I can promise you, since the report came through of Bartholomew's death and Thackeray's disablement. Nor am I satisfied that this Monsieur Duchemin came by the document fairly--confound his impudence! If he hadn't put me on honour, tacitly, I'd not hesitate an instant about informing the police." "Rather chancy course to take in this business, what?" "I don't know.... That Yankee invention known as the 'frame-up' would easily make America too small for the Lone Wolf without the British Secret Service ever being mentioned in the matter." "Yes; but suppose the beast knows the contents of this paper, suspects the authorship of the 'frame-up'--as he instinctively would--and blabs? Messages have been unsealed and copied and resealed before this." "That one consideration ties my hands.... Here, my boy: take this and put it in the safe--and don't forget Mrs. Arden's things, of course. Good-night." "Trust me, sir. Good-night." A door closed with a slight jar, and for half a minute the room was so positively quiet that Lanyard was beginning to wonder if Blensop himself had gone out with his employer, when he heard a low and musical chuckle, followed by a soft clashing as the secretary scooped Mrs. Arden's jewellery out of the desk drawer. Itching with curiosity, Lanyard turned with infinite care and peered round the wing of the chair, thus gaining a view of the wall farthest from the street. Blensop remaining invisible, Lanyard's interest centred immediately upon the safe the ingenuity of whose concealment had excited "Karl's" favourable comment, and with much excuse. One of the portraits--that upon whose merits Blensop had descanted to "Karl" earlier in the night--was, Lanyard saw, so mounted upon a solid panel of wood that, by means of hidden mechanism, it could be moved sidelong from its frame, uncovering the face of a safe built into the wall. This last now stood open, its door, swung out toward Lanyard, showing a simple arrangement of dials and locks with which he was on terms of contemptuous familiarity; only the veriest tyro of a cracksman would want more than a good ear and a subtle sense of touch in order to open it without knowledge of the combination. With all its reputation for efficiency and astuteness the British Secret Service entrusted its mysteries to an antiquated contraption such as this! Humming a blithe little air, Blensop moved into Lanyard's field of vision and stopped between him and the safe, deftly pigeonholing therein the docketed papers and Mrs. Arden's jewels. Then, closing the door, he shot its bolts, gave the dial a brisk twirl, located a lever in the side of the frame and thrust it into its socket. With the same swish and thud which had puzzled Lanyard at first hearing, the portrait slipped back into place. Rounding on a heel, Blensop paused, head to one side, a slight frown shadowing his bland countenance, and stood briefly rooted in some perplexity of obscure origin. Twice he shook a peevish head, then smiled radiantly and brought his hands together in an audible clap. "I have it!" he cried in delight and, dancing briskly toward the desk, once more disappeared. Now what was this which Mr. Blensop so spontaneously had, and from the having of which he derived so much apparently innocent enjoyment? Wanting an answer, Lanyard settled back in disgust, then sat sharply forward, gaze riveted to the near sash of the adjacent window. In showing "Karl" out, Blensop had moved the portières, exposing more glass than previously had been visible. Now this mirrored darkly to the adventurer a somewhat distorted vision of Blensop standing over the desk, seemingly employed in no more amusing occupation than filling his fountain-pen. But undoubtedly he was in the highest spirits; for the lilt of his humming rose sweet and clear and ever louder. To this accompaniment he pocketed his pen, two-stepped to the windows, drew the portières jealously close, returned to the desk, switched off the reading lamp, and left the room completely dark but for a dim glow from the ash-filmed embers of the fire. But before he went out the secretary interrupted his humming to laugh with a mischievous élan which completely confounded Lanyard. He was not unacquainted with the Blensop type, but the secret glee which seemed to animate this specimen was something far beyond his comprehension. As the door softly closed Lanyard moved silently across the room and bent an ear to its panels, meanwhile drawing over his hands a pair of thin white kid gloves. From beyond came no sound other than a faint creaking of stair-treads quickly silenced. Opening the door, Lanyard peered out, finding the hallway deserted and dimly lighted by a single bulb of little candle-power at its far end, then scouted out as far as the foot of the stairs, listened there for a little, hearing no sounds above, and reconnoitred through the other living rooms, at length returning to the library persuaded he was alone on the ground floor of the house. A Yale lock was fixed to the library side of the door. Lanyard released its catch, insuring freedom from interruption on the part of anybody who lacked the key, crossed to the other side door, left this on the latch and, having thus provided an avenue for escape, turned attention to business, in brief, to the safe. Turning on the picture-light he found and operated the lever, with his other hand so restraining the action of the panel that it moved aside without perceptible jar. Then with an ear to that smooth, cold face of enamelled steel, he began to manipulate the combination. From within the door a succession of soft clicks and knocks punctuated the muted whine of the dial, speaking a language only too intelligible to the trained hearing of a thief; synchronous breaks and resistance in the action of the dial conveyed additional information through the medium of supersensitive finger tips. Within two minutes he had learned all he needed to know, and standing back twirled the knob right and left with a confident hand. At its fourth stop he heard the dull bump of released tumblers, grasped the handle, and twisted it strongly. The door swung open. Systematically Lanyard searched the pigeonholes, emptying all but one, examining minutely their contents without finding that slender roll of paper. Mystified, he hesitated. The thing, of course, was somewhere there, only hidden more cunningly than he had hoped. It was possible, even probable, that Blensop had stowed the cylinder away in a secret compartment. But the interior arrangement was disconcertingly simple. Lanyard saw no sign of waste space in which such a drawer might be secreted. Unless, to be sure, one of the pigeonholes had a false back.... He began a fresh examination, again emptying each pigeonhole and sounding its rear wall without result till there remained only that in which Blensop had placed the Arden jewels. It was necessary to move these, but Lanyard long withheld his hand, reluctant to touch them, for that same reason which had influenced him to avoid them in his first search. Jewels such as these he both worshipped and desired with the passionate adoration of connoisseur and lover in one. He feared violently the temptation of physical contact with such stuff. For his was no thief's errand to-night, but a matter, as he conceived it, of his private honour, something apart and distinct from the code of rogue's ethics which guided his professional activities. He had pledged his word to Cecelia Brooke to keep safe for her that cylinder of paper, to return it upon her demand for whatsoever disposition she might choose to make of it. It was no concern of his what that choice might turn out to be, any more than it was his affair if the document were a paper of international importance. But she must and should, if act of his could compass it, be given opportunity to redeem her word of honour if, as one believed, that likewise were involved in the fate of the document. He had stolen into this house like a thief because he had given his pledge and perforce had been made false to that pledge, because he had been despoiled of the concrete evidence of the trust reposed unasked in him, and because he had learned that his spoiler was to meet Stanistreet in this room at midnight. He was here solely to make good his word, to take away that cylinder, could he find it, and to return it to the girl ... not to thieve.... Never that!... Slowly, reluctantly, inevitably he put forth his hand and selected from among those brilliant symbols of his soul's profound damnation the necklace, a rope of diamonds consummately matched, a rivulet of frozen fire, no single stone less lovely than another. "Admirable!" he whispered. "Oh, admirable!" Hesitant to do this thing which to him, by the strange standard of his warped code, spelled dishonour, he would and he would not; and while he paltered, was visited by an oddly vivid memory of the clear and candid eyes of Cecelia Brooke, seemed veritably to see them searching his own with their look of grieving wonder ... the eyes of one woman who had reckoned him worthy of her trust.... Almost he won victory in this fight he was foredoomed to lose. Under the level and steadfast regard of those eyes his hand went out to replace the necklace, moved unsteadily, faltered.... Beyond the windows an incautious footfall sounded. In the darkness out there someone blundered into a piece of wicker furniture and disturbed it with a small scraping sound, all but inaudible, but to the thief as loud as the blast of a police whistle. Instantly and instinctively, in two simultaneous gestures, Lanyard dropped the necklace into an inner pocket of his coat and switched off the picture-light. With hands now as steady and sure as they had been vacillant a moment since, he closed the safe door noiselessly, shot its bolts, and was yards away, crouching behind an armchair, before the man outside had ceased to fumble with the window fastenings. If this were the watchman Howson, doubtless he would be satisfied with finding the room dark and apparently untenanted, and would go off upon his rounds unsuspecting. If he did not, or if he noticed the displaced panel, then would come Lanyard's time to break cover and run for it. With a faint creak one of the windows swung inward. Curtain-rings clashed dully on their poles. Someone came through the portières and paused, pulling them together behind him. The beam of an electric flash-lamp lanced the gloom and its spotlight danced erratically round the walls. Now there was no more thought of flight in Lanyard's humour, but rather a firm determination to stand his ground. This was no night watchman, but a housebreaker, one with no more title to trespass upon those premises than himself; and at that an unskilled hand at such work, the rawest of amateurs practising methods as clumsy and childish as any actor playing at burglary on a stage before a simple-minded audience. The noise he made on entering alone proved that, then this fatuous business with the flash-lamp. And as he moved inward from the windows it became evident that he had not even had the wit to close the portières completely; a violet glimmer of starlight shone in through a deep triangular gap between them at the top. For all that, the intruder seemed to know what he wanted and where to seek it, betrayed a nice acquaintance with the room, proceeding directly to the safe picked out by his lamp. Arrived beneath it he uttered a low sound which might have been interpreted as surprise due to finding the panel already out of place. If so, surprise evidently roused in him no suspicion that all might not be well. On the contrary, he quite calmly located and turned the switch controlling the picture-light. Immediately, as its rays gushed down and disclosed the man, Lanyard rose boldly from his place in hiding. Now there was no more need for concealment; now was his enemy delivered into his hands. The man was "Karl." His back to Lanyard, unconscious of that one's catlike approach, the spy put up his flash-lamp, searched in a waistcoat pocket and produced a slip of paper, and bent his face close to the combination dial, studying its figures; but abruptly, like a startled animal, whirled round to face the windows. One of the sashes was thrown back roughly, and a figure clad in the gray livery of a private watchman parted the portières and entered the library. "Everything all right in here, Mr. Blensop?" Lanyard saw the sheen of blue steel in the hands of "Karl," and leaped too late: even as he fell upon the spy's shoulders, the pistol exploded. The watchman reeled back with a choking cry, caught wildly at the portières, and dragged them down with him as he fell. His screams of agony made hideous the night. And the second cry was no more than uttered when Lanyard, even in the heat of his struggle, heard sounds indicating that already the household was alarmed. But the door would hold for a while; it was not probable that the first to come downstairs would think to bring with him the key. Time enough to think of escape when Lanyard had settled his score with this one: no light undertaking; not only was the score a long one, longer than Lanyard then dreamed, but, as he had learned to his cost, the man was an antagonist of skill and strength not to be despised. Nevertheless, aided by the surprise of his onslaught, Lanyard succeeded in disarming the spy, forcing him to drop the pistol at the outset, and through attacking from behind had him at a further disadvantage. For all that he found his hands full till, by a trick of jiu-jitsu, he wrenched one of the fellow's arms behind him so roughly as almost to dislocate it at the shoulder and, forcing the forearm up toward his shoulder blades, held him temporarily helpless. "Be still, you murderous canaille!" he growled--"or must I tear your arm from its socket? Still, I say!" "Karl" uttered a grunt of pain and ceased to struggle. Pinning him against the bookcase, Lanyard hastily rifled his pockets, at the first dip bringing forth a thin sheaf of American bank-notes with the figures $1000 conspicuous on the uppermost. "Ten thousand dollars," he said grimly--"precisely my fee for the use of my name--to say nothing of its abuse!" A torrent of untranslatable German blasphemy answered him. Intelligible was the half-frantic demand: "Who the devil are you?" "Take a look, assassin--see for yourself!" Lanyard twisted the spy around to face him, holding him helpless against the wall with a knee in his middle and a hand gripping his throat inexorably. "Do you know me now--the man you thought you'd drowned a hundred fathoms deep?" Blows thundered on the hallway door. Neither heeded. The spy was staring into Lanyard's face, his eyes starting with horror and affright. "Lanyard!" he gasped. "Good God! will you never die?" "Never by your hand--" Lanyard began, but stopped sharply. For a moment he glared incredulously, and in that moment knew his enemy. "Ekstrom!" he cried; and the man at his mercy winced and quailed. The din in the hallway grew louder. Voices cried out for the key. Somebody threw himself against the door so heavily that it shook. The emergency forced itself upon Lanyard's consciousness, would not be denied. Its dilemma seemed calculated to unseat his reason. If he lingered, he was lost. Either he must grant this creature new lease of life, or be caught and pay the penalty of murder for an execution as surely just as any in the history of mankind. It was bitter, too bitter to have come to this his hour so long desired, so long deferred, so arduously sought, and have the fruits of it snatched from his craving grasp. He could not bring himself to this renunciation; slowly his fingers tightened on the other's throat. Driven to desperation by the light of madness that began to flicker in Lanyard's eyes, the Prussian abruptly put all he had of might and fury into one final effort, threw Lanyard off, and in turn attacked him, fighting like a lunatic for footroom, for space enough to turn and make for the windows. In spite of all he could do Lanyard saw the man work away from the wall and manoeuvre his back toward the windows; then he flew at him with redoubled fury, driving home blow after blow that beat down Ekstrom's guard and sent him staggering helplessly, till an uppercut, swinging in under his uplifted forearms, put an end to the combat. Ekstrom shot backward half a dozen feet, stumbled over the prostrate body of the watchman, and crashed headlong into the windows, going down in a shower of shattered glass. In one and the same instant Lanyard darted back and dropped upon his knees in the shadow of the club lounge, and the door to the hallway slammed open. A knot of men, to the number of half a dozen, tumbling into the library, saw that figure floundering amid the ruins of the window, and made for it, passing on the other side of the lounge, between it and the fireplace. Unseen, Lanyard rose, ran crouching across the room; found the side door, opened it just far enough to permit the passage of his body, and drew it to behind him. Ninety-fifth Street was a lonely lane of midnight quiet. He sped across it like the shadow of a cloud wind-hunted. XVI AU PRINTEMPS In those days New York nights were long; this was still young when Lanyard sauntered sedately from a side street and stopped on a corner of Broadway in the Nineties; he had not long to wait ere a southbound taxicab hove in sight and sheered over to the curb in answer to his signal. It was still something short of one o'clock when he was set down at his door. Wearily he let himself in by the private entrance, made a light, and without troubling even to discard his overcoat threw himself into a chair. Leaden depression weighed down his heart, and the flavour of failure was as aloes in his mouth. Thrice within an hour he had fallen short of his promises, to Cecelia Brooke, to himself, to his _idée fixe_. His three chances, to redeem his word to the girl, to measure up to his queer criterion of honour, to rid his world of Ekstrom, all had slipped through fingers seemingly too infirm to profit by them. He felt of a sudden old; old, and tired, and lonely. The uses of his world, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable! What was his life? An emptiness. Himself? A shuttlecock, the helpless sport of his own failings, a vain thing alternately strutting and stumbling, now swaggering in the guise of an avenger self-appointed, now sneaking in the shameful habiliments of a felon self-condemned. What had prevented his dealing out to Ekstrom the punishment he had so well earned? That insatiable lust for loot of his. But for that damning evidence against him of the stolen necklace in his pocket he might have had his will of Ekstrom, and justified himself when discovered by proving that he had merely done justice to a thief who sold what he had stolen and stole back to steal again what he had sold. Self-contempt attacked self-conceit like an acid. He saw Michael Lanyard a sorry figure, sitting stultified with self-pity ... crying over spilt milk.... Impatiently he shook himself. What though he had to-night forfeited his chances? He could, nay, would, make others. He must.... To what end? Would life be sweeter if one found a way to restore to Cecelia Brooke her precious document and to smuggle back to Mrs. Arden her pilfered diamonds? Would this deadly ache of loneliness be less poignant with Ekstrom dead? With lack-lustre eyes he looked round that cheerless room, reckoning its perfunctory pretense of comfort the forlornest mockery. To lodgings such as this he was condemned for life, to an interminable sequence of transient quarters, sordid or splendid, rich or mean, alike in this common quality of hollow loneliness.... His aimless gaze wandered toward the door opening on the public hallway, and became fixed upon a triangular shape of white paper, the half of an envelope tucked between door and sill. Presently he rose and got the thing, not until he touched it quite persuaded he was not the victim of an optical hallucination. A square envelope of creamy paper, it was superscribed simply in a hand strange to him, _Anthony Ember, Esq_., with the address of his apartment house. Tearing the envelope he found within a double sheet of plain notepaper bearing a message of five words penned hastily: "_Au Printemps_-- "_one o'clock_-- "_Please_!" Nothing else, not another word or pen-scratch.... Opening the door Lanyard hailed the hall-attendant, a sleepy and not over-intelligent negro. "When did this come for me?" "'Bout anour ago, Mistuh Embuh." "Who brought it?" "A messenger boy done fotch it, suh--look lak th' same boy." "What same boy?" "Same as come in when you do, 'bout 'leven o'clock--remembuh?" Lanyard nodded, recalling that on his way up the street from Sixth Avenue he had been subconsciously irritated by the shrill, untuneful whistling of a loutish youth in Western Union uniform, who had followed him into the house and become engaged in some minor altercation with the attendants while Lanyard was unlocking the door to his apartment. "What of him?" "Why, he bulge in heah an' say we done send a call, an' we tell him we don' know nuffin' 'bout no call, an' he sweah an' carry on, an' aftuh you done gone in he ast whut is yo' name, an' somebody tell him an' he go away. An' then 'bout haffanour aftuhwuds he come back with that theah lettuh--say to stick it undeh yo' do, ef yo' ain't home. Leastways he look to me lak th' same boy. Ah dunno fo' suah." Repeated efforts failing to extract more enlightenment from this source, Lanyard again shut himself in with the puzzle. Somebody had set a messenger boy to dog him and find out his name and address. Not Crane: Lanyard had seen that one disappear in the elevator of the Knickerbocker and had thereafter moved too quickly to permit of Crane's returning to the lobby, calling a messenger boy, and pointing out Lanyard. For that matter, Lanyard was prepared to swear nobody had followed him from the Knickerbocker to the Biltmore. Vaguely he seemed to recall a first impression of the boy at the time when he emerged from the drug store after his unprofitable effort to telephone Cecelia Brooke, an indefinite memory of a shambling figure with nose flattened against the druggist's window, apparently fascinated by the display of a catch-penny corn cure. Was there a link between that circumstance and the long delay which Lanyard had suffered in the telephone booth? Had the Knickerbocker operator been less stupid and negligent than she seemed? Was the truth of the matter that Crane had surmised Lanyard would attempt communication with the Brooke girl and had set a watch on the switchboard for the call? Assuming that the Secret Service man had been clever enough for that, it was not difficult to understand that Lanyard had purposely been kept dangling at the other end of the wire till the call could be traced back to its source and a messenger despatched from the nearest Western Union office with instructions to follow the man who left the booth, and report his name and local habitation. Sharp work, if these inferences were reasonable. And, satisfied that they were, Lanyard inclined to accord increased respect to the detective abilities of the American. But this note, this hurried, unsigned scrawl of five unintelligible words: what the deuce did it mean? On the evidence of the handwriting a woman had penned it. Cecelia Brooke? Who else? Crane might well have been taken into her confidence, subsequent to the sinking of the _Assyrian_, and on discovering that Lanyard had survived have used this means of relieving the girl's distress of mind. But its significance?... "Au Printemps" translated literally meant "in the springtime," and "in the springtime at one o'clock" was mere gibberish, incomprehensible. There is in Paris a department store calling itself "Au Printemps"; but surely no one was suggesting to Lanyard in New York a rendezvous in Paris! Nevertheless that "Please!" intrigued with a note at once pleading and imperative which decided Lanyard to answer it without delay, in person. "_Au Printemps--one o'clock--please_!" Upon the screen of memory there flashed a blurred vision of an electric sign emblazoning the phrase, "Au Printemps," against the façade of a building with windows all blind and dark save those of the street level, which glowed pink with light filtered through silken hangings; a building which Lanyard had already passed thrice that night without, in the preoccupation of his purpose, paying it any heed; a building on Broadway somewhere above Columbus Circle, if he were not mistaken. Already it was one o'clock. Fortunately he was still in evening dress, and needed only to change collar and tie to repair the disarray caused by his encounter with Ekstrom. In two minutes he was once more in the street. Within five a cab deposited him in front of the Restaurant Au Printemps, an institution of midnight New York whose title for distinction resided mainly in the fact that it opened its upper floors for the diversion of "members" about the time when others put up their shutters. Lanyard's advent occurred at the height of its traffic. The dining rooms on the street level were closed and unlighted: but men and women in pairs and parties were streaming across the sidewalk from an endless chain of motor-cars and being ground through the revolving doors like grist in the hopper of an unhallowed mill, the men all in evening dress, the women in garments whose insolence outrivalled the most Byzantine nights of L'Abbaye Thêlème. Drawn in with the current through the turnstile door, Lanyard found himself in an absurdly little lobby thronged to suffocation, largely with people of the half-world--here and there a few celebrities, here and there small tight clusters of respectabilities making a brave show of feeling at ease--all waiting their turn to be lifted to delectable regions aloft in an elevator barely big enough to serve in a private residence. For a moment Lanyard lingered unnoticed on the outskirts of this assemblage, searching its pretty faces for the prettier face he had come to find and wondering that she should have chosen for her purpose with him a resort of this character. His memory of her was sweet with the clean smell of the sea; there was incongruity to spare in this atmosphere heady with the odours of wine, flesh, scent, and tobacco. Perplexing.... A harpy with a painted leer and predacious eyes pounced upon him, tore away his hat and coat, gave him a numbered slip of pasteboard by presenting which he would be permitted to ransom his property on extortionate terms. And still he saw no Cecelia Brooke, though his aloof attitude coupled with an intent but impersonal inspection of every feminine face within his radius of vision earned him more than one smile at once furtively provocative and unwelcome. By degrees the crowd emptied itself into the toy elevator--such of it, that is, as was passed by a committee on membership consisting of one chubby, bearded gentleman with the look of a French diplomatist, the empressement of a head waiter and the authority of the Angel with the Flaming Sword. _Personae non gratae_ to the management--inexplicably so in most instances--were civilly requested to produce membership cards and, upon failure to comply, were inexorably rejected, and departed strangely shamefaced. Others of acceptable aspect were permitted to mingle with the upper circles of the elect without being required to prove their "membership." In the person of this suave but inflexible arbiter Lanyard identified a former maître d'hôtel of the Carlton who had abruptly and discreetly fled London soon after the outbreak of war. He fancied that this one knew him and was sedulous both to keep him in the corner of his eye and never to meet his regard directly. And once he saw the man speak covertly with the elevator attendant, guarding his lips with a hand, and suspected that he was the subject of their communication. The lobby was still comfortably filled, a constant trickle of arrivals replacing in measure the losses by election and rejection, when Lanyard, watching the revolving doors, saw Cecelia Brooke coming in. She was alone, at least momentarily; and in his sight very creditably turned out, remembering that all her luggage must have been lost with the _Assyrian_. But what Englishwoman of her caste ever permitted herself to be visible after nightfall except in an evening gown of some sort, even though a shabby sort? Not that Miss Brooke to-night was shabbily attired: she was much otherwise; from some mysterious source of wardrobe she had conjured wraps, furs, and a dancing frock as fresh and becoming as it was, oddly enough, not immodest. And with whatever cares preying upon her secret mind, she entered with the light step and bright countenance of any girl of her age embarked upon a lark. All that was changed at sight of Lanyard. He bowed formally at a moment when her glance, resting on him, seemed about to wander on; instead it became fixed in recognition. Instantly her smile was erased, her features stiffened, her eyes widened, her lips parted, the colour ebbed from her cheeks. And she stopped quite still in front of the door till lightly jostled by other arrivals. Then moving uncertainly toward him, she said, "Monsieur Duchemin!" not loudly, for she was not a woman to give excuse for a scene under any circumstances, but in a tone of complete dumbfounderment. Covering his own dashed contenance with a semblance of unruffled amiability, he bowed again, now over the hand which the girl tentatively offered, letting it rest lightly on his fingers, touching it as lightly with his lips. "It is such a pleasant surprise," he said at a venture, then added guardedly: "But my name--I thought you knew it was now Anthony Ember." Her eyes were blank. "I don't understand," she faltered. "I thought you ... I never dreamed.... Is it really you?" "Truly," he averred, lips smiling but mind rife with suspicion and distrust. This was not acting; he was convinced that her surprise was absolutely unfeigned. So she had not expected to find him "Au Printemps" at one o'clock in the morning, till that very moment had believed him as dead as any of those poor souls who had perished with the _Assyrian_! Therefore that note had not come from her, therefore Lanyard had complimented Crane without warrant, crediting him with another's cleverness. Then whose...? And while Lanyard's head buzzed with these thoughts, an independent chamber of his mind was engaged in admiring the address with which the girl was recovering from what must have been, what plainly had been, a staggering shock. Already she had begun to grapple with the situation, to take herself in hand and dissemble; already her face was regaining its accustomed cast of self-confidence, composure, and intelligent animation. Throughout she pursued without a break the thread of conventional small talk. "It is a surprise," she said calmly. "Really, you are a most astonishing person, Mr. Ember. One never knows where to look for you." "That is my good fortune, since it provides me with unexpected pleasures such as this. You are with friends?" "With a friend," she corrected quietly--"with Mr. Crane. He stopped outside to pay our taxi-driver. How odd it seems to find any place in the world as much alive as this New York!" "It seems almost impossible," Lanyard averred--"indeed, somehow wrong. I've a feeling one has no right to encourage so much frivolity. And yet...." "Yes," she responded quickly. "It is good to hear people laugh once more. That is why Mr. Crane suggested coming here to-night, to cheer me up. He said Au Printemps was unique, promised I'd find it most amusing." "I'm sure...." Lanyard began as Crane entered, breezing through the turnstile and comprehending the situation in a glance. "Hello!" he cried. "Didn't I tell you everybody alive would be here?" Nor was Cecelia Brooke less ready. "But fancy meeting Mr. Ember here! I had no idea he was in New York--had you?" "Perhaps a dim suspicion," Crane admitted with a twinkle, taking Lanyard's hand. "Howdy, Ember? Glad to see you, gladder'n you'd think." "How is that?" Lanyard asked, returning the cordiality of his grasp. Crane's penetrating accents must have been audible in the remotest corner of the ground-floor rooms: he made no effort to modulate them to a quieter pitch. "You can help me out of a fix if you feel like it. You see, I promised Miss Brooke if she'd take me for her guide, she'd see life to-night; and now, just when we're going good, I've got to renig. Man I know held me up outside, says I'm wanted down town on special business and must go. I might be able to toddle back later, but can't bank on it. Do you mind taking over my job?" "Chaperoning Miss Brooke's investigations into the seamy side of current social history? That will be delightful." "Attaboy! If I'm not back in half an hour you'll see her safely home, of course?" "Trust me." "And you'll excuse me, Miss Brooke? I hope you don't think--" "What I do think, Mr. Crane, is that you have been most kind to a lonely stranger. Of course I'll excuse you, not willingly, but understanding you must go." "That makes me a heap easier in my mind. But I' got to run. So it's good-night, unless maybe I see you later. So long, Ember!" With a flirt of a raw-boned hand, Crane swung about, threw himself spiritedly into the revolving door, was gone. "Amazing creature," Lanyard commented, laughing. "I think him delightful," the girl replied, surrendering her wraps to a maid. "If all Americans are like that--" "Shall we go up?" She nodded--"Please!"--and turned with him. The committee on membership himself bowed them into the elevator. Several others crowded in after them. For thirty seconds, while the car moved slowly upward, Lanyard was free to think without interruption. But what to think now? That Crane, actuated by some motive occult to Lanyard, had engineered this apparently adventitious _rencontre_ for the purpose of throwing him and the Brooke girl together? Or, again, that Crane was innocent of guile in this matter--that other persons unknown, causing Lanyard to be traced to his lodgings, had framed that note to entice him to this place to-night? In the latter event, who was conceivably responsible but Velasco, Dressier, O'Reilly--any one of these, or all three working in concert? The last-named had looked Lanyard squarely in the face without sign of recognition, back there in the lobby of the Knickerbocker, precisely as he should, if implicated in the conspiracies of the Boche; though it might easily have been Velasco or Dressier who had recognized the adventurer without his knowledge.... The car stopped, a narrow-chested door slid open, a gush of hectic light coloured morbidly the faces of alighting passengers, a blare of syncopated noise singularly unmusical saluted the astonished ears of Lanyard and Cecelia Brooke. She met his gaze with a smiling _moue_ and slightly lifted eyebrows. "More than we bargained for?" he laughed. "But there is always something new in this America, I promise you. Au Printemps itself is new, at all events did not exist when I was last in New York." Following her out, he paused beside the girl in a constricted space hedged about with tables, waiting for the maître d'hôtel to seat those who had been first to leave the elevator. The room, of irregular conformation, held upward of two hundred guests and habitués seated at tables large and small and so closely set together that waiters with difficulty navigated narrow and tortuous channels of communication. In the middle, upon a small dancing floor, rudely octagonal in shape, made smaller by tables crowded round its edge to accommodate the crush, a mob of couples danced arduously, close-locked in one another's arms, swaying in rhythm with the over-emphasized time beaten out by a perspiring little band of musicians on a dais in a far corner, their activities directed by an antic conductor whose lantern-jawed, sallow face peered grotesquely out through a mop of hair as black and coarse and lush as a horse's mane. Execrable ventilation or absence thereof manufactured an atmosphere that reeked with heat animal and artificial and with ill-blended effluvia from a hundred sources. Perhaps the odour of alcohol predominated; Lanyard thought of a steam-heated wine-cellar. He observed nothing but champagne in any glass, and if food were being served it was done surreptitiously. Sweat dripped from the faces of the dancers, deep flushes discoloured all not so heavily enamelled as to preserve an inalterable complexion, the eyes of many stared with the fixity of hypnosis. Yet when the music ended with an unexpected crash of discord these dancers applauded insatiably till the jaded orchestra struck up once more, when they renewed their curious gyrations with quenchless abandon. The Brooke girl caught Lanyard's eye, her lips moved. Thanks to the din, he had to bend his head near to hear. She murmured with infinite expression: "Au Printemps!" The maître d'hôtel was plucking at his sleeve. "Monsieur had made reservations, no?" Startled recognition washed the man's tired and pasty countenance. "Pardon, monsieur: this way!" He turned and began to thread deviously between the jostling tables. Dubiously Lanyard followed. He likewise had known the maître d'hôtel at sight: a beastly little decadent whose cabaret on the rue d'Antin, just off the avenue de l'Opéra, had been a famous rendezvous of international spies till war had rendered it advisable for him to efface himself from the ken of Paris with the same expedition and discretion which had marked the departure from London of his confrère who now guarded the lower gateway to these ethereal regions of Au Printemps. The coincidence of finding those two so closely associated worked with the riddle of that note further to trouble Lanyard's mind. Was he to believe Au Printemps the legitimate successor in America of that less pretentious establishment on the rue d'Antin, an overseas headquarters for Secret Service agents of the Central Powers? He began to regret heartily, not so much that he had presented himself in answer to that note, but the responsibility which now devolved upon him of caring for Miss Brooke. Much as he had wished to see her an hour ago, now he would willingly be rid of her company. Why had he been lured to this place, if its character were truly what he feared? Conceivably because he was believed--since it now appeared he had cheated death--still to possess either that desired document or knowledge of its whereabouts. Naturally the enemy would not think otherwise. He must not forget that Ekstrom was playing double; as yet none but Lanyard knew he had stolen the document and done a murder to cover the theft from his associates and leave him free to sell to England without exciting their suspicion. Consequently, Lanyard believed, he had been invited to this place to be sounded, to be tempted, bribed, intimidated--if need be, and possible--somehow to be won over to the uses of the Prussian spy system. Leading them to the farther side of the room, the maître d'hôtel paused bowing and mowing beside a large table already in the possession of a party of three. Lanyard's eyes narrowed. One of the three was Velasco, another a young man unknown to him, a mannerly little creature who might have been written by the author of "What the Man Will Wear" in the theatre programmes. The third was Sophie Weringrode, the Wilhelmstrasse agent whom he had only that afternoon observed entering the house in Seventy-ninth Street. He stopped short, in a cold rage. Till that moment a mirror-sheathed pillar had hidden from him Velasco and the Weringrode; else Lanyard had refused to come so far; for obviously there were no unreserved tables, indeed few vacant chairs, in that part of the room. Not that he minded the cynical barefacedness of the dodge; that was indeed amusing; he was sanguine as to his ability to dominate any situation that might arise, and to a degree indifferent if the upshot should prove his confidence misplaced; and he did not in the least object to letting the enemy show his cards. But he did enormously resent what was, after all, something quite outside the calculations of these giddy conspirators, the fact that he must either beat incontinent retreat or introduce Cecelia Brooke to the company of Sophie Weringrode. His face darkened, a stinging reproof for the maître d'hôtel trembled on his tongue's tip; but that one was busily avoiding his eye on the far side of the table, drawing out a chair for "mademoiselle," while Velasco and the Weringrode were alert to read Lanyard's countenance and forestall any steps he might contemplate in defiance of their designs. At first glimpse of the Brooke girl Velasco jumped up and hastened to her, with eager Latin courtesy expressing his unanticipated delight in the prospect of her consenting to join their party. And she was suffering with quiet graciousness his florid compliments. At the same time the Weringrode was greeting Lanyard in the most intimate fashion--and damning him in the understanding of Cecelia Brooke with every word. "My dear friend!" she cried gayly, extending a bedizened hand. "I had begun to despair of you. Is it part of your system with women always to be a little late, always to keep us wondering?" Schooling his features to a civil smile, Lanyard bowed over the hand. "In warfare such as ours, my dear Sophie," he said with meaning, "one uses all weapons, even the most primitive, in sheer self-defense." The woman laughed delightedly. "I think," she said, "if you rose from the dead at the bottom of the sea, _Tony_, it would be with wit upon your lips.... And you have brought a friend with you? How charming!" She shifted in her chair to face Cecelia Brooke. "I wish to know her instantly!" Velasco was waiting only for that opening. "Dear princess," he said, instantly, "permit me to present Miss Cecelia Brooke ... Princess de Alavia...." Completely at ease and by every indication enjoying herself hugely, the girl bowed and took the hand the Weringrode thrust upon her. Her eyes, a-brim with excitement and mischief, veered to Lanyard's, ignored their warning, glanced away. "How do you do?" she said simply. "I didn't understand Mr. Ember expected to meet friends here, but that only makes it the more agreeable. May we sit down?" XVII FINESSE The person in the educated evening clothes was made known as Mr. Revel. For Lanyard's benefit and his own he vacated the chair beside Sophie Weringrode, seating himself to one side of Cecelia Brooke, who had Velasco between her and the soi-disant princess. Already a waiter had placed and was filling glasses for Lanyard and the girl. With the best grace he could muster the adventurer sat down, accepted a cigarette from the Weringrode case, and with openly impertinent eyes inspected the intrigante critically. She endured that ordeal well, smiling confidently, a handsome creature with a beautiful body bewitchingly gowned. Time, he considered, had been kind to Sophie--time, the mysteries of the modern toilette, and the astonishing adaptability of womankind. Splendidly vital, like all of her sort who survive, she seemed mysteriously able to renew that vitality through the very extravagance with which she squandered it. She had lived much of late years, rapidly but well, had learned much, had profited by her lessons. To-night she looked legitimately the princess of her pretensions; the manner of the grande dame suited her type; her gesture was as impeccable as her taste; prettier than ever, she seemed at worst little more than half her age. And her quick intelligence mocked the privacy of his reflections. "Fair, fast, and forty," she interpreted smilingly. He pretended to be stunned. "Never!" he protested feebly. The woman reaffirmed in a series of rapid nods. "Have I ever had secrets from you? You are too quick for me, monsieur: I do not intend to begin deceiving you at this late day--or trying to." "Flattery," he declared, "is meat and drink to me. Tell me more." She laughed lightly. "Thank you, no; vanity is unbecoming in men; I do not care to make you vain." Aware that Cecelia Brooke was listening all the while she seemed to be enchanted with the patter of Mr. Revel and the less vapid observations of Velasco, Lanyard sought to shunt personalities from himself. "And now a princess!" "Did you not know I had married? Yes, a princess of Spain--and with a castle there, if you must know." "Quite a change of atmosphere from Berlin," he remarked. "But it has done you no perceptible harm." That won him a black look. "Oh, Berlin!" she said with contemptuous lips. "I haven't been there since the beginning of the war. I wish never to see the place again. True: I was born an Austrian; but is that any reason why I should love Germany?" She leaned forward, her fan gently tapping the knuckles of his hand. "Pay less attention to me," she insisted, with a nod toward the middle of the room. "You are missing something. Me, I never tire of her." The floor had been cleared. A drummer on the dais was sounding the long-roll crescendo. At the culminating crash the lights were everywhere darkened save for an orange-coloured spot-light set in the ceiling immediately above the dancing floor. Into that circular field of torrid glare bounded a woman wearing little more than an abbreviated kirtle of grass strands with a few festoons of artificial flowers. Applause roared out to her, the orchestra sounded the opening bars of an Americanised Hawaiian melody, the woman with extraordinary vivacity began to perform a denatured hula: a wild and tawny animal, superbly physical, relying with warrant upon the stark sensuality of her body to make amends for the censored phrases of the primitive dance. The floor resounded like a great drum to the stamping of her bare feet, till one marvelled at such solidity of flesh as could endure that punishment. Sophie Weringrode lounged negligently upon the table, bringing her head near Lanyard's shoulder. "Play fair," she said between lips that barely moved. Without looking round Lanyard answered in the same manner: "Why ask more than you are prepared to give?" "The police ran you out of America once. We need only publish the fact that Mr. Anthony Ember is the Lone Wolf...." "Well?" "Leave Berlin out of it before this girl." Lanyard shrugged and laughed quietly. "What else?" "We can't talk now. Ask me for the next dance." The woman sat back in her chair, attentive to the posturing of the dancer, slowly fanning herself. Lanyard's semblance of as much interest was nothing more; furtively his watchfulness alternated between two quarters of the room. On the farther edge of the circle of tropical radiance he had marked down a table at which two men were seated, Dressier and O'Reilly. No more question now as to the personnel of the conspiracy; even Velasco had thrown off the mask. The enemy had come boldly into the open, indicating a sense of impudent assurance, indicating even more, contempt of opposition. No longer afraid, they no longer skulked in shadows. Lanyard experienced a premonition of events impending. In addition he was keeping an eye on the door to the elevator shaft. Once already it had opened, letting a bright window into the farther wall of the shadowed room, discovering the figure of the maître d'hôtel in silhouette, anxiety in his attitude. He was waiting for somebody, waiting tensely. So were the others waiting, all that crew and their fellow workers scattered among the guests. Lanyard told himself he could guess for whom. Only Ekstrom was wanting to complete the circle. When he appeared--if by chance he should--things ought to begin to happen. If tolerably satisfied that Ekstrom would not come--not that night, at all events--Lanyard, none the less, continued to be jealously heedful of that doorway. But the hula came to an end without either his vigilance or the impatience of the maître d'hôtel being rewarded. Writhing with serpentine grace to the edge of the illuminated area, the dancer leaped back into darkness and the folds of a wrap held by a maid, in which garment she was seen, bowing and laughing, when the lights again blazed up. Without ceasing to play, changing only the time of the tune, the orchestra swung into a fox-trot. Lanyard glanced across the table to see Cecelia Brooke rising in response to the invitation of dapper Mr. Revel. In his turn, he rose with Sophie Weringrode. "Be patient with me," he begged. "It is long since I danced to music more frivolous than a cannonade." "But it is simple," the woman promised--"simple, at least, to one who can dance as you could in the old days. Just follow me till you catch the step. It doesn't matter, anyway; I desire only the opportunity to converse." Yielding to his arms, she shifted into French when next she spoke. "You do admirably, my friend. Never again depreciate your dancing. If you knew how one suffers at the feet of these Americans--!" "Excellent!" he said. "Now that is settled: what is it you are instructed to propose to me?" She laughed softly. "Always direct! Truly you would never shine as a secret agent." "Not as they shine," Lanyard countered--"in the dark." "Don't be a fraud. We are what we are, and so are you. Let us not begin to be censorious of one another's methods of winning a living." "Agreed. But when do we begin to talk business?" "Why do you continue so persistently antagonistic?" "I am French." "That is silly. You are an outlaw, a man without a country. Why not change all that?" "And how does one effect miracles?" "Germany offers you a refuge, security, freedom to ply your trade unhindered--within reasonable limits." "And in exchange what do I give?" "Your services, as and when required, in our service." "Beginning when?" "To-night." "With what specific performance?" "We want, we must without fail have, that document you took from the Brooke girl." "Perhaps we had better continue in English. You are speaking a tongue unknown to me." "Don't talk rot. You know well what I mean. We know you have the thing. You didn't steal it to turn it over to England or the States. What is your price to Germany?" "Whatever you have in mind, believe me when I say I have nothing to sell to the Wilhelmstrasse." "But what else can you do with it? What other market--?" "My dear Sophie, upon my word I haven't got what you want." "Then why so keen to get the Brooke girl on the telephone as soon as you found out where she was stopping?" "How did you learn about that, by the way?" "Let the credit go to Señor Velasco. He saw you first." "One thought as much.... Nevertheless, I haven't what you want." "You gave it back to Miss Brooke?" "Having nothing to give her, I gave her nothing." The woman was silent throughout a round of the floor; then, "Tell me something," she requested. "Can I keep anything from you?" "Are you in love with the English girl?" Lanyard almost lost step, then laughed the thought to derision. "What put that into your pretty head, Sophie?" "Do you not know it yourself, my friend?" "It is absurd." She laughed maliciously. "Think it over. Possibly you have not stopped to think as yet. When you know the truth yourself, you will be the better qualified to fib about it. Also, you will not forget...." "What?" he demanded bluntly as she paused with intention. "That as long as she possesses the document--since you have it not--her life is endangered even more than yours." "She hasn't got it!" Lanyard declared, as nearly in panic as he ever was. "Ah!" the woman jeered. "So you confess to some knowledge of it after all!" "My dear," he said, teasingly, "do you really want to know what has become of that paper?" "I do, and mean to." "What if I tell you?" Her eyes lifted to his in childlike candour. "Need you ask?" "You are irresistible.... Ask Karl." She demanded sharply: "Whom?" "Ekstrom." "Ah!" Again the adventuress was silent for a little. "What does he know?" "Ask him, enquire why he murdered von Harden, then what business took him to Ninety-fifth Street twice this evening--once about nine o'clock, again at midnight." "You must be mad, monsieur. Karl would not dare...." "You don't know him--or have forgotten he was trained in the International Bureau of Brussels, and there learned how to sell out both parties to a business that won't bear publicity." "I wonder," the woman mused. "Never have I wholly trusted that one." "Shall I give you the key?" "If you love Karl as little as I...." "But where do you suppose the good man is, this night of nights?" "Who knows? He was not here when I arrived at midnight. I have seen nothing of him since." "When you do--if he shows himself at all--look him over carefully for signs of wear and tear." "Yes, monsieur? And in what respect?" "Look for cuts about his head and hands, possibly elsewhere. And should he confess to an affair with a wind-shield in a motor accident, ask him what happened to the study window in the house at Ninety-fifth Street." Impish glee danced in the woman's eyes. "Your handiwork, dear friend?" "A mere beginning.... You may tell him so, if you like." He was subjected to a convulsive squeeze. "Never have I felt so kindly disposed toward an enemy!" "It is true, I were a better foe to Germany if I kept my counsel and let Ekstrom continue to play double." The music ceasing, to be followed by the inevitable clamour for more, Lanyard offered an arm upon which Sophie rested a detaining hand. "No--wait. We dance this encore. I have more to say." He submitted amiably, the more so since not ill-pleased with himself. And when again they were moving round the floor, she bore more heavily upon his shoulder and was thoughtful longer than he had expected. Then-- "Attention, my friend." "I am listening, Sophie." "If what you hint is true--and I do not doubt it is--Karl's day is done." "More nearly than he dreams," Lanyard affirmed grimly. "I shan't be sorry. I am German through and through; what I do, I do for the Fatherland, and in that find absolution for many things I care not to remember. If through what you tell me I may prove Karl traitor, I owe you something." "Always it has been my fondest hope, Sophie, some day to have you in my debt." Her fingers tightened on his. "Do not jest in the shadow of death. Since you have been unwise enough to venture here to-night, you will not be permitted to leave alive--unless you pledge yourself to us and prove your sincerity by producing that paper." "That sounds reasonable--like Prussia. What next?" "I have warned you, so paid off my debt. The rest is your affair." "Do you imagine I take this seriously?" "It will turn out seriously for you if you do not." "How can I be prevented from leaving when I will, from a public restaurant?" "Is it possible you don't know this place? It is maintained by the Wilhelmstrasse. Attempt to leave it without coming to a satisfactory understanding, and see what happens." "What, for instance?" "The lights would be out before you were half across the room. When they went up again, the Lone Wolf would be no more, and never a soul here would know who stabbed him or what became of the knife." "Are you by any chance amusing yourself at my expense?" Once more the woman showed him her handsome eyes: he found them frankly grave, earnest, unwavering. "If you will not listen, your blood be on your own head." "Forgive me. I didn't mean to be rude...." "Still, you do not believe!" "You are wrong. I am merely amused." "If you understood, you could never mock your peril." "But I don't mock it. I am enchanted with it. I accept it, and it renews my youth. This might be Paris of the days when you ran with the Pack, Sophie--and I alone!" The woman moved her pretty shoulders impatiently. "I think you are either mad or ... the very soul of courage!" The encore ended; they returned to the table, Sophie leaning lightly on Lanyard's arm, chattering gay inconsequentialities. Dropping into her chair, she bent over toward Cecelia Brooke. "He dances adorably, my dear!" the intrigante declared. "But I dare say you know that already." The English girl shook her head, smiling. "Not yet." "Then lose no time. You two should dance well together, for you are more of a size. I think the next number will be a waltz. We get altogether too few of them; these American dances, these one-steps and foxtrots, they are not dances, they are mere romps, favourites none the less. And there is always more room on the floor; so few waltz nowadays. Really, you must not miss this opportunity." This playful insistence, the light stress she laid upon her suggestion that Cecelia Brooke dance with him, considered in conjunction with her recent admonition, impressed Lanyard as significantly inconsistent. Sophie was no more a woman to make purposeless gestures than she was one sufficiently wanting in finesse to signal him by pressures of her foot. There was sheer intention in that iteration: "... _lose no time ... you must not miss this opportunity_." Something had happened even since their dance; she had observed something momentous, and was warning him to act quickly if he meant to act at all. With unruffled amiability, amused, urbane, Lanyard bowed his petition across the table, and was rewarded by a bright nod of promise. Lighting another cigarette, he lounged back, poised his wine glass delicately, with the eye of a connoisseur appraised its pale amber tint, touched it lightly to his lips, inhaling critically its bouquet, sipped, and signified approval of the vintage by sipping again: all without missing one bit of business in a scene enacted on the far side of the room, directly behind him but reflected in a mirror panel of the wall he faced. The diplomatist charged with the task of discriminating the sheep from the goats in the lower lobby had come up to confer with his colleague, the maître d'hôtel of the upper storey. When Lanyard first saw the man he was standing by the elevator shaft, none too patiently awaiting the attention of the other, who, caught by inadvertence at some distance, was moving to join him, with what speed he could manage threading the thick-set tables. Was this what Sophie had noticed? Had she likewise, perhaps, received some secret signal from the guardian of the lower gateway? A signal possibly indicating that Ekstrom had arrived They met at last, those two, and discreetly confabulated, the maître d'hôtel betraying welcome mitigation of that nervous tension which had heretofore so palpably affected him; and, as the other stepped back into the elevator, Lanyard saw this one's glance irresistibly attracted to the table dedicated to the service of the Princess de Alavia. Something much resembling satisfaction glimmered in the fellow's leaden eyes: it was apparent that he anticipated early relief from a distasteful burden of responsibility. Then, at ease in the belief that he was unobserved, he turned to a near-by table round which four sat without the solace of feminine society--four men whose stamp was far from reassuring despite their strikingly quiet demeanour and inconspicuously correct investiture of evening dress. Two were unmistakable sons of the Fatherland; all were well set up, with the look of men who would figure to advantage in any affair calling for physical competence and courage, from coffee and pistols at sunrise in the Parc aux Princes to a battle royal in a Tenderloin dive. Their table commanded both ways out, by the stairs and by the elevator, much too closely for Lanyard's peace of mind. And more than one looked thoughtfully his way while the maître d'hôtel hovered above them, murmuring confidentially. Four nods sealed an understanding with him. He strutted off with far more manner than had been his at any time since the arrival of Lanyard, and vented an excess of spirits by berating bitterly an unhappy clown of a waiter for some trivial fault. The first bars of another dance number sang through the confusion of voices: truly, as Sophie had foretold, a waltz. XVIII DANSE MACABRE Trained in the old school of the dance, Lanyard was unversed in that graceless scamper which to-day passes as the waltz with a generation largely too indolent or too inept of foot to learn to dance. His was that flowing waltz of melting rhythm, the waltz of yesterday, that dance of dances to whose measures a civilization more sedate in its amusements, less jealous of its time, danced, flirted, loved, and broke its hearts. Into the swinging movement of that antiquated waltz Lanyard fell without a qualm of doubt, all ignorant as he was of his benighted ignorance; and instantly, with the ease and gracious assurance of a dancer born, Cecelia Brooke adapted herself to his step and guidance, with rare pliancy made her every movement exquisitely synchronous with his. No need to lead her, no need for more than the least of pressures upon her yielding waist, no need for anything but absolute surrender to the magic of the moment.... Effortless, like creatures of the music adrift upon its sounding tides, they circled the floor once, twice, and again, before reluctantly Lanyard brought himself to shatter the spell of that enchantment. Looking down with an apologetic smile, he asked: "Mademoiselle, do you know you can be an excellent actress?" As if in resentment the girl glanced upward sharply, with clouded eyes. "So can most women, in emergency." "I mean ... I have something serious to say; nobody must guess your thoughts." She said simply: "I will do my best." "You must--you must appear quite charmed. Also, should you catch me smirking like an infatuated ninny, remember I am only doing my own indifferent best to act." Laughter trembled deliciously in her voice: "I promise faithfully to bear in mind your heartlessness!" "I am an ass," he enunciated with the humility of conviction. "But that can't be helped. Attend to me, if you please--and do not start. This place turns out to be a nest of Prussian spies. I was brought here by a trick. I understand the order is I may not leave alive." Playing her part so well as almost to embarrass Lanyard himself, the girl smiled daringly into his eyes. "Because of that packet?" she breathed. "Because of that, mademoiselle." "Where is it?" For an instant Lanyard lost countenance absolutely. Through sheer good fortune the girl was now dancing with face averted, her head so nearly touching his shoulder that it seemed to rest upon it. Nevertheless, it was at cost of an heroic struggle that he fought down all signs of that shock with which it had been borne in upon him that he dared not assure the girl her packet was in safe hands. If he had failed in his efforts to restore the thing to her, that she might consign it as she saw fit and so discharge her personal trust, till now Lanyard had solaced himself with a hazy notion that she would in turn be comforted when she learned the document was in the keeping of her country's Secret Service. Impossible to tell her that: his own act had rendered it impossible, that act the outcome of wilful trifling with his infirmity, his itch for thieving. Of a sudden the pilfered necklace secreted in an inner pocket of his waistcoat, above his heart, seemed to have gained the weight of so much lead. The hideous consciousness of the thing stung like the bite of live coals. This woman was in distress; he yearned to lighten her burden; he could do that with half a dozen words; his guilt prohibited. A thief! Now indeed the Lone Wolf tasted shame and realized its bitterness.... Puzzled by his constraint, the girl's eyes again sought his; and warned in time by the movement of her head, he mustered impudence to meet their question with the look of tenderness that went with the rôle she suffered him to play. "What is the matter?" "I am ashamed that I have failed you...." "Don't think of that. I know you did your best. Only tell me what became of it." "It was stolen; when I returned to my stateroom that night I was held up and robbed. The thief shot at me, killed his confederate, decamped by way of the port. I pursued. Another aided him to overpower and cast me overboard." "Yet you escaped...!" Strange she should seem more intrigued by that than concerned about her loss! "I escaped, no matter how...." "You don't know who stole the packet?" "I don't recall the man among the passengers, but he may have been in one of the boats, a fellow of about my stature, with a flowing beard...." He sketched broadly Ekstrom as he had seen him in the Stanistreet library. Her eyes quickened. "One such escaped in our boat, the second steward; I think his name was Anderson." "Doubtless the same." "Then it is gone!" For once in his acquaintance with her, that brave spirit seemed to falter: she became a burden, bereft for a little of all grace and spontaneity. He was constrained to swing her forcibly into time. Almost instantly she recollected herself, covered her lapse with a little laugh innocent of any hint of its forced falsity, and showed him and the room as well a radiant countenance: all with such address and art that the incident might well have escaped notice, otherwise have passed for a bit of natural by-play. Yet distress was too eloquent in the broken query: "What _am_ I to do?" Heartsick, self-sick to boot, he essayed to suggest that she consult Colonel Stanistreet, but lacking so much effrontery, stammered and fell silent. Perhaps misinterpreting, she cried in quick contrition: "I am forgetting! Forgive me. I should have said: what are you to do?" He whipped his wits together. "Look down, turn your face aside, smile.... I have a plan, a desperate remedy, but the best I can contrive. When next the lift comes up, we must try to be near it. There is one row of tables which we must break through by main force. Leave that to me, follow as I clear a way, go straight into the lift. If anything happens, run down the stairway on the left. The ground floor is two flights below. If I am any way detained, don't stop--go on, get your wraps, take the first taxi you see, return directly to the Knickerbocker. I will telephone you later." "If you live," she breathed. "Never fear for me...." "But if I do? Do you imagine I could rest if I thought you had sacrificed yourself for me?" "You must not think that. I am far too selfish--" "That is not so. And I refuse positively to do as you wish unless you tell me how I may communicate with you." Resigned to humour her, he recited his address and the number of the house telephone, and when she had memorized both by iteration, resumed: "Once outside, if anybody tries to hinder you, don't let them intimidate you into keeping quiet, but scream, scream at the top of your lungs. These beasts abominate a screaming woman, or any other undue noise. Not only will that frighten them off, but it will fetch the nearest policeman." The music ceased. She stood flushed, smiling, adorably pretty, eyes star-like for him alone. "We are not far from the lift now," she said just audibly. "But the door is shut. Hush. Here comes the encore. Once more around...." They drifted again into that witching maze of melody and movement made one. "You are silent," she said, after a little. "Why?" Lanyard answered with a warning pressure on her hand. The elevator was stationary at the floor, its door wide, the maître d'hôtel engaged in a far quarter of the room, while those four formidable guardians of the exit were gossiping with animation over their glasses. "Steady. Now is our time." Abruptly they stopped. A couple that had been following them avoided collision by a close margin. Over his partner's head the man scowled portentously--and dissipated his display of temper on Lanyard's indifferent back. Upon those guests who sat between the dancing floor and elevator, Lanyard wasted no consideration. Pushing roughly between two adjoining tables, he lifted one chair with its astonished occupant bodily out of the way, then turned, swung an arm round the girl's waist, all but threw her through the lane he had created, followed without an instant's pause. It was all so quickly accomplished that the girl was in the car before another person in the room appreciated what was happening. And Lanyard, in the act of slamming the door shut without heed for the protesting operator, saw only a room full of amazed faces with gaping mouths and rounded eyes--and one man of the four at the near-by table in the act of rising uncertainly, with a stupefied look. Elbowing the boy aside, he seized the operating lever and thrust it to the notch labelled "Descend." An instant of pause followed: like its attendant the elevator seemed stalled in inertia of stupefaction. Beyond the door somebody loosed an infuriated screech. Angry hands drummed on the glass panel. With a premonitory shudder the car started spasmodically, moved downward at first gently, then with greater speed, coming to an abrupt stop at the street level with a shock that all but threw its passengers from their feet. Up the shaft that senseless punishment of the panel continued. Some other intelligence conceived the notion for ringing for the car to return: its annunciator buzzed stridently, continuously. Unlatching the lower door, Lanyard threw it back, stepped out, finding the lobby deserted but for a simpering group of coat-room girls, to one of whom he flipped a silver dollar. "Find this lady's wraps--be quick!" Deftly catching the coin, the girl snatched the check from Cecelia Brooke, and darted into the women's dressing room. Throughout a wait of agonising suspense, the elevator boy remained cowering in a corner of the car, staring at Lanyard as at some shape of terror, while the ignored buzzer droned without cessation to persistent pressure from above. Out of the dark entrance to the lower dining room the bearded diplomatist popped with the distracted look of a jack-in-the-box about to be ravished of its young. "Monsieur is not leaving?" he expostulated shrilly, darting forward. Lanyard stopped him with a look whose menace was like a kick. "I am seeing this lady to her cab," he said in a cold and level voice. The coat-room girl emerged from her lair with an armful of wraps and furs. Again the bearded one made as if to block the doorway. "But, monsieur--mademoiselle--!" Lanyard caught the fellow's arm and sent him spinning like a top. "Out of the way, you rat!" he snapped; then to the girl: "Be quick!" As she shouldered into a compartment of the revolving door incoherent yells began to echo down the staircase well. At length it had occurred to those above to utilize that means of descent. Wedged in the wheeling door, a final glimpse of the lobby showed Lanyard the startled, putty-like mask of the maître d'hôtel at the head of the stairway with, beyond him, the head of one who, though in shadow, uncommonly resembled Ekstrom--but Ekstrom as he was in the old days, without his beard. That picture passed like a flash on a cinema screen. They were on the sidewalk, and the girl was running toward a taxicab, the only vehicle of its sort in sight, at the curb just above the entrance. Coatless and bareheaded, Lanyard swung to face the door porter, a towering, brawny animal in livery, self-confident and something more than keen to interfere; but his mouth, opening to utter some sort of protest, shut suddenly without articulation when Lanyard displayed for his benefit a .22 Colt's automatic. And he fell back smartly. Jerking open the cab door, the girl stumbled into the far corner of the seat. The motor was churning in promising fashion, the chauffeur settling into place at the wheel. Into his hand Lanyard thrust a ten-dollar bill. "The Knickerbocker," he ordered. "Stop for nobody. If followed steer for the nearest policeman. There'll be no change." He closed the door sharply, leaned over it, dropped the little pistol into the girl's lap. "Chances are you won't want that--but you may." She bent forward quickly, eyes darkly lustrous with alarm, and placed a hand upon his arm. "But you?" "It is I whom they want, not you. I won't subject you to the hazard of my company." Gently Lanyard lifted the hand from his sleeve, brushed it gallantly with his lips, released it. "Good-night!" he laughed, then stepped back, waved a hand to the chauffeur--"Go!" The taxicab shot away like a racing hound unleashed. With a sigh of relief Lanyard gave himself wholly to the question of his own salvation. The rank of waiting motor-cars offered no hope: all but one were private town cars and limousines, operated by liveried drivers. A solitary roadster at the head of the line tempted and was rejected; even though it had no guardian chauffeur, something of which he could not be sure, he would be overhauled before he could start the motor and get the knack of its gear-shift mechanism. Even now Au Printemps was in frantic eruption, its doors ejecting violently a man at each wild revolution. Down Broadway an omnibus of the Fifth Avenue line lumbered, at no less speed than twenty miles an hour, without passengers and sporting an illuminated "Special" sign above the driver's seat. Dashing out into the roadway, Lanyard launched himself at the narrow platform of the unwieldy vehicle and, in spite of a yell of warning from the guard, landed safely on the step and turned to repel boarders. But his manoeuvre had been executed too swiftly and unexpectedly. The group before Au Printemps huddled together in ludicrous inaction, as if stunned. Then one raged through it, plying vicious elbows. As he paused against the light Lanyard identified unmistakably the silhouette of Ekstrom. So that one had, after all, escaped the net of his own treachery! The 'bus guard was shaking Lanyard's arm with an ungentle hand. "Here, now, you got no business boardin' a Special." From his pocket Lanyard whipped the first bank-note his fingers encountered. "Divide that with the chauffeur," he said crisply--"tell him to drive like the devil. It's life or death with me!" The protruding eyeballs of the guard bore witness to the magnitude of the bribe. "You're on!" he breathed hoarsely, and ran forward through the body of the conveyance to advise the driver. Swarming up the curved stairway to the roof, Lanyard dropped into the rear seat, looking back. The group round the doorway was recovering from its stupefaction. Three struck off from it toward the line of waiting cars. Of these the foremost was Ekstrom. Simultaneously the 'bus, lumbering drunkenly, lurched into Columbus Circle, and the roadster left the curb carrying in addition to the driver two passengers--Ekstrom on the running-board. Tardily Lanyard repented of that impulse which had moved him to bestow his one weapon upon Cecelia Brooke. The night air had a biting edge. A chill rain had begun to drizzle down in minute globules of mist, which both lent each street light its individual nimbus of gold and dulled deceitfully the burnished asphaltum, rendering its surface greasy and treacherous. More than once Lanyard feared lest the 'bus skid and overturn; and before the old red brick building between Broadway and Eighth Avenue shut out the western sector of the Circle, he saw the roadster, driven insanely, shoot crabwise toward the curb, than answer desperate work at the wheel and whirl madly, executing a volte-face so violent that Ekstrom's hold was broken and he was hurled a dozen feet away. And Lanyard's chances were measurably advanced by the delay required in order to pick up the sprawling one, start the engine anew, and turn more cautiously to resume the pursuit. Striking diagonally across Broadway the 'bus swung into Fifty-seventh Street at the moment when the roadster turned the corner of Columbus Circle. The head of the guard lifted above the edge of the roof. Clinging to the supports of the stairway, he addressed Lanyard in accents of blended suspicion and respect. "Lis'n, boss: is this all right, on the level, now?" "Absolutely, unless that racing-car catches up with us, in which case you'll have a dead man--myself--on your hands." "Well ... we don't wanna lose our jobs, that's all." "You won't unless I lose my life." "Anything you'd like me to do?" "Go down, wait on the platform, if anybody attempts to get aboard kick him in the act." "Sure I will!" The guard disappeared. Wallowing like a barge in a strong seaway, the omnibus crossed Seventh Avenue and sped downhill toward Sixth with dangerous momentum. Shortly, however, this began to be modified by the brakes, a precaution against mishap which even the fugitive must approve. Ahead loomed the gaunt structure of the Sixth Avenue "L," bridging the roadway at so low an elevation as to afford the omnibus little more than clear headroom. Once beneath it a single bounce up from the surface-car tracks must mean a wreck. But the pursuit was less than half a block astern and gaining swiftly, even as the speed of the omnibus was growing less and desperately less. At what seemed little better than a snail's pace it began to pass beneath the span of the Elevated. Like a racing thoroughbred the roadster swept up alongside, motor chanting triumphantly, running-board level with the platform step. Ekstrom, poised to leap aboard, hesitated; a pistol in his hand exploded; a shattered window fell crashing. There was a yell from the guard, not of pain but of fright. Apparently he executed a von Hindenburg retreat. Without more opposition Ekstrom gained the platform. In the same breath Lanyard stood up. The lowermost girder of the "L" was immediately overhead. He grasped it, doubled his legs beneath him, swung clear. The omnibus shot from under him, the roadster convoying. Drawing himself up, he seized a round iron upright of guard-rail and heaved his body in over the edge of the platform round the switching-tower, which was at this hour dark and untenanted. In the street below a police whistle shrieked, and a fusillade of pistol shots woke scandalised echoes. Bending almost double Lanyard moved rapidly northward on the footway beside the western tracks, and so gained the old station on the west side of Fifty-eighth Street, for years dedicated to the uses of desuetude. Through this he crept, then down the stairs, encountering at the lower landing an iron gate which obliged him to climb over and jump. Not a soul paid the least attention to this matter of a gentleman in evening dress without hat or top coat dropping from the stairway of a disused elevated station at two o'clock in the morning. In New York anything can happen, and most things do, without stirring up meddlesome impulses in innocent bystanders. XIX FORCE MAJEURE This visit to his rooms was the briefest of the several Lanyard made that night, considerations of mortal urgency dictating its drastic abbreviation. If the events of the last few hours had meant anything whatever they had demonstrated two truths which shone like beacon lights: that Manhattan Island was overpopulated as long as both he and Ekstrom remained on it; that Ekstrom had been goaded to the verge of aberration by the discovery that Lanyard had come safely through the _Assyrian_ débâcle to take up anew his self-appointed office of Nemesis to the Prussian spy system in general and to the genius of its American bureau in particular. Henceforth that one would know no more rest while Lanyard lived. Thus that little street-level apartment forfeited whatever attractions it originally had possessed in the adventurer's estimation. Not only was the address known to Ekstrom's associates, and so open to him, but its peculiar characteristics, its facilities for access from the street direct, rendered it a highly practicable death-trap for a hunted man. Lanyard was well persuaded he need only wait there long enough to receive a deputation from Seventy-ninth Street. And with any assurance that Ekstrom would come alone, he might have been content to wait. Not only had he through too intimate acquaintance with his methods every assurance that Ekstrom would never brave alone what he could induce another to risk with him, but Lanyard was never one willing to play the passive part. A banal axiom of all warfare applied: The advantage is with him who fights upon the offensive. Since midnight the offensive had shifted from Lanyard's grasp to the enemy's. He was determined to recapture it; and that was something never to be accomplished by sitting still and waiting for events to unfold, but only by carrying the war into the enemy's camp. He delayed, then, only long enough to change his clothing and to conceal about him certain properties which it seemed unwise to expose to chance discovery on the part of Ekstrom or in the ever-possible event of police intervention. Within five minutes from the time of his return he was closing behind him the private door. Wearing a quiet lounge suit but no top coat, with a hat not so soft as to lack character but soft enough to stick upon one's head in time of action, and carrying a stick neither brutishly stout nor ineffectively slender, he strolled up to Seventh Avenue, turned north, entered Central Park--and strolled no more. Kindly shadows enfolded him, engulfed him altogether. One minute after he had passed through the gateway he would have defied unaided apprehension by the most zealous officer of the peace. He went swiftly and secretly, avoiding all lighted ways. Not till then did conscience stir and remind him of his slighted promise to call up Cecelia Brooke. No time now for that; the errand that engaged him was of a nature to brook no more procrastination. The girl must wait. He was sorry if, as she had protested, solicitude for his welfare must interfere with her night's rest. But what must be, must: until he saw the end of this adventure he could be influenced by no minor consideration whatsoever. Not that he seriously believed Cecelia's sleep would be uneasy because of him. That was too much. His temper was grim and skeptical. The resentment roused by the trap that had so nearly laid him by the heels, together with the subsequent effort to assassinate him out of hand, had settled into a phase of smouldering fury whose heat consumed like misty vapours every lesser emotion, every humane consideration. Some by-thought recalling the Weringrode's innuendo that he was in love without his knowledge, moved him to laugh outright if strangely, an unpleasant laugh that held as much of pain as of derision. What room in that dark heart of his for love?... the heart of a thief and a potential assassin, the heart of the Lone Wolf!... How was he to know he had hardly left his lodgings before their hush was interrupted by the grumble of the house telephone? Intermittently for upward of three minutes that sound persisted. When at length it discontinued the quiet of the untenanted rooms reigned undisturbed for a brief time only. An odd metallic stridor became audible, a succession of scrapings of stealthy accent at the private entrance. Its latch clicked. The door swung back against the wall with a muffled bump. Two pairs of furtive feet padded in the little private hallway. The flash of an electric hand-lamp flickered hither and yon like a searching poignard, picked out the door to the one bedchamber and vanished. There was guarded whispering, then a thud as one of the intruders gained the middle of the bedchamber in a bound. An instant later a switch snapped, and the room was flooded with light. Beneath the chandelier stood a man in evening dress the worse for misadventure, one knee of his trousers cut open, both legs caked with a film of half-dry mud, his linen dingy with mud-stains, his top coat shockingly bedraggled. He was bareheaded, apparently having lost his hat; a black smear across one cheek added emphasis to the pallor of newly shaven jowls; and his eyes were blazing. "Stole away!" he muttered briefly in disgust, then called: "Ed!" As quietly as a shadow a second man joined him, greeting him with a "Hush!" This gentleman was in far more presentable repair and a more equable frame of mind. There was even a glint of amusement in his hard blue eyes. His countenance had an Irish cast. "Hush?" the other iterated with contempt. "What for? The hound's not here." "No, Karl," Ed admitted; "but there are others in the house. If it's known to them that Lanyard's out, they may turn in a police alarm; and I for one have had enough of bulls for one night." Karl grunted disdainfully. "I told you this would be a waste of time...." "And I agreed with you entirely. But you would come." "Lanyard's no such fool as to stick round a place he knows I know about." Karl's hands twitched and his features worked nervously. "He knows me too well, knows that if ever I lay hands on him again--" His voice was rising to an hysterical pitch when the other checked him with a sibilant hiss. At the same time his hand darted out and switched off the light. Karl uttered a startled ejaculation. "_Sssh_!" his companion repeated. In the street a motor-car was rumbling, stationary before the door. Then the remote grinding of the house door-bell was heard. "Let's get out of this," suggested the Irishman. "It's no good waiting, anyway." "Hold hard! We won't go till we have a clear field." The Prussian stole out into the sitting room and stood listening at the door to the public hallway, his companion standing by with a mutinous air. "Oh, come along!" he insisted, in a stage whisper. "Shut up! Listen...." Shuffling footfalls traversed the hallway. The front door was opened. The clear voice of an Englishwoman was answered in the slurring patois of a negro. "No'm, he ain't in." The next enquiry was intelligible: the speaker had entered the hallway. "Are you sure?" "Yas'm. Sumbody done call him up 'bout ten min'tes ago, an' I rung an' rung an' he don' answer. He ain't in or he don' mean to answer nobody, tha's all." "I am very anxious about him. Have you a key to his rooms?" "Yas'm, I got a pass-key, but--" "Please use it. Take this. Go in and make sure he is out, or if at home that he is all right." "Yas'm, thanky ma'am, but--" "Do as I tell you. I will see that you don't get into trouble." "All right, ma'am." The negro chuckled, probably over his tip. "Yo' sho' has got the p'suadin'est way...." The Irishman caught the German's arm. "Come out of this," he pleaded. "No fear. I'll see it through. That's the Brooke girl the fool got in with on the boat. She may know something...." "But--" "Leave this to me. You look out for the negro. I'll take care of Miss Cecelia Brooke." Swearing unhappily, the Irishman flattened against the wall to one side of the door. Karl waited behind it as it admitted the hall attendant, who made directly toward the central chandelier. "Yo' jes' wait, ma'am, an' I'll mek a light an'--" But the girl had impetuously followed him in. The light went up, and Karl put a heavy shoulder against the door, closing it with a slam. The negro turned and stood with gaping mouth and staring eyes, dumb with terror. The girl recognised Karl with a little cry, and darted back toward the door. Immediately he caught her in his arms. Her lips opened, but their utterance was stifled by a handkerchief thrust between them with the dexterity of a practised hand. Without one word of warning the Irishman stepped forward and struck the negro brutally in the face. The boy reeled, whimpering. Two more blows delivered with murderous ferocity silenced him altogether. He collapsed like a broken puppet, insensible on the floor, his face a curious ashen colour beneath its glossy skin of brown. XX RIPOSTE The drizzle had grown thicker, the night blacker, the early morning air still more chill. But Lanyard was moving too swiftly to be affected by this last circumstance; the first he anathematised with the perfunctory bitterness of a skilled artisan who sees his work in a fair way to be obstructed by elemental depravity. Another of his trade would have termed such weather conditions ideal, and so might the Lone Wolf on an everyday job; but the prospect of a footing rendered insecure by rain trebled the hazards attending a plan of campaign that would brook neither revision nor delay. There was only one way to break into the house on Seventy-ninth Street; this Lanyard had appreciated upon his first reconnaissance of the previous afternoon. He could have wished for more time in which to prepare and assemble tested equipment instead of relying upon chance to supply the requisite gear; but with all time at his disposal the mechanical difficulties of the problem would remain. Far from indifferent to these, Lanyard addressed himself to their conquest doggedly and with businesslike economy of motion. Shunning the public paths he went over the park wall like a cat, sped across town through Eightieth Street, and so came to that plot of land upon which an apartment building was in process of erection, immediately to the north of the American headquarters of the Prussian spy system. Walled in with stone two storeys deep, its gaunt skeleton of steel had been joined together as far as the seventh level. How much higher it was destined to rise was immaterial; for Lanyard's purpose it was enough that the frame had already outgrown its neighbour on the south. A litter of lumber, huge steel girders, and other material narrowed the side street to half its normal width. The sidewalk space was trampled earth roofed with heavy planks for the protection of pedestrian heads, a passage lighted by electric bulbs widely spaced; midway in this an entrance to the structure was flanked by a wooden shanty, by day a tool house, after working hours a shelter for the night watchman. This boasted one glazed window dull with orange light. Approaching with due precaution, Lanyard peered in. The light came from a single electric bulb and a potbellied sheet-iron stove, glowing red. Near by, in a chair tipped against the wall, sat the watchman, corncob pipe in hand, head drooping, eyes closed, mouth ajar. A snore of the first magnitude seemed to vibrate the very walls. On the floor beside the chair stood a two-quart tin pail full of arid emptiness. Dismissing further consideration of the watchman as a factor, satisfied that the entire neighbourhood as well was sound asleep, Lanyard darted up the plank walk that led into the building, then paused to get his bearings. Effluvia of mortar and damp lumber saluted him in an uncanny place whose darkness was slightly qualified by a faint refracted glow from the low canopy of cloud and by equally dim shafts of diffused street light. There was more or less flooring of a temporary character over a sable gulf of cellars, and overhead a sullen, weeping sky cross-hatched with stark black ironwork. With infinite patience Lanyard groped his way through that dark labyrinth to the foot of a ladder ascending an open shaft wherein a hoisting tackle dangled. Here he stumbled over what he had been seeking, a great coil of one-inch hempen cable, from which he measured off roughly what he would require, if his calculations were correct, and something over. This length he re-coiled and slung over his shoulder: an awkward, weighty handicap. Nevertheless he began to climb. Above the third level there was merely steel framework; he had somewhat more light to guide him, with a view of the north wall of the Seventy-ninth Street house, bright in the glare of avenue lamps. The wall was absolutely blank. At the seventh level the ladders ended. He stepped off upon a foot-wide beam, paused to make sure of his poise, and began to walk the girders with a sureness of foot any aviator might have envied. At regular intervals he encountered uprights: between these he had to depend upon his sense of direction and equilibrium to guide him safely across those narrow walks of steel made slippery by rain. But, thanks to forethought, his footwork was faultless: he wore shoes old, well-broken, very soft, flexible, and silent. The building was in the shape of a squat E, with two courts facing south. On this seventh level the first court was bridged by a single girder, the middle of which was Lanyard's immediate objective. Since it lacked uprights he took it cautiously on hands and knees until approximately equidistant from both ends, when he straddled it, took the cable from his shoulders, uncoiled a length and made it fast round the girder with a clove hitch: giddy work, in that darkness, on that greasy span, fashioning by simple sense of touch the knot upon which his life was to depend, half of the time prone upon the girder and fishing blindly beneath it for the rope's end, with nothing but a seventy--foot drop between him and eternity, not even another girder to break a fall.... He was now immediately opposite the minaret, at an elevation of about twenty feet above the roof he wished to reach, and as far away, or perhaps a trifle farther. Still he detected no signs of life about that nest of spies: if the wireless were in operation its apparatus was well-housed; there was no sound of the spark, never a glimmer of its violet flash. Laboriously--the knot completed to his satisfaction--Lanyard returned via the eastern arm of the E, paying out the coiled cable as he progressed, working round to the north side of the court. Once again pausing opposite the minaret, he knotted the end of the cable loosely round an upright connecting with the sixth level, let it slide down, followed it, repeated the process, and rested finally on the fifth. Now his ordeal approached a climax which he contemplated with what calmness he could while securing the rope beneath the arms. In another sixty seconds or less it must be demonstrated whether his dead reckoning would set him down safe and sound on the roof or dash him against the walls of the Seventy-ninth Street house, to swing back and dangle impotently in mid-air till daylight and police discovered him--unless, escaping injury, he were able to pull himself up hand over hand to the girder. With one arm round the upright to prevent the sag of rope from dragging him over prematurely, he essayed a final survey. Either the murk deceived or Lanyard had judged shrewdly. His feet were on an approximate level with the coping round the roof, and he stood about as far from the upper girder to which the rope was hitched as that was distant from the coping. One look up and round at those louring skies, duskily flushed by subdued city lights: with no more ceremony Lanyard released the upright and committed his body to space. If the downward sweep was breathless, what followed was breath-taking: once past the nadir of that giant swing, he was borne upward by an impetus steadily and sensibly slackening. Instant followed leaden-winged instant while the wall, looming like a mountainside, seemed to be toppling, insensately bent upon his annihilation; even so his momentum, decreasing with frightful swiftness, seemed possessed of demoniac desire to frustrate him. After an age-long agony of doubt it became evident he was not destined to crash into the wall, but not that he was to gain the coping: through fractions of a second hideously protracted this last drew near, nearer, slowly, ever more slowly. And he was twisting dizzily.... With frantic effort he crooked an arm over the coping at a juncture when, had he not acted instantly, he must have swung back. There was a racking wrench, as though his arm were being torn from its socket. At the end of a struggle even more wearing he flung his other arm across the ledge, and for some time hung there, at the end of an almost taut rope, unable to overcome its resistance and pull himself in over the coping, stubbornly refusing to loose his grasp. Presently, grown desperate, he let go with his right hand, holding fast only with the left, fumbled in a pocket, found his knife, opened it with his teeth, and began, to saw at the rope round his chest. Strand after strand parted grudgingly till it fell away altogether and reaction from its tension threw him against the coping with such violence that he all but lost his hold. Dropping the knife, he swept his right arm up and once more hooked his fingers over the inside of the ledge. Far down the knife clinked suggestively upon stone. Breathing deep, Lanyard braced knees and feet against the wall, worried, heaved, hauled, squirmed like a mad thing, in the end rolled over the top and fell at length upon the roof, panting, trembling, bathed in sweat, temporarily tormented by impulses to retch. By degrees regaining physical control, he sat up, took his bearings, and crept toward the foot of the minaret. A small, narrow doorway in its base was on the latch. He passed through to the landing of a dark winding stairway with a dim light at the bottom of its circular well. While he stood attentive, intermittent stridor troubled the stillness, originating at some point on the floors below: the proscribed wireless was at work. Hearing no other sounds, Lanyard went on down the steps, at their foot pausing to spy out through a half-open doorway to the topmost storey. Nobody moved in the corridor. He saw nothing but a line of closed doors, presumably to servants' quarters. Now, however, the vibrant rasp of the radio spark was perceptibly stronger and had a background of subdued noise, echoes of distant voices, deadened sounds of hasty footfalls, now and again a heavy thump or the bang of a door. Moving out, he commanded the length of the corridor. Toward one end a door stood open. He could see no more of the room beyond than a narrow patch of wall fitfully illuminated by a play of violet light. Then a man stepped out of this operating room, turning on the threshold to utter some parting observation; and Lanyard retired hastily to the shaft of the minaret stairway, but not before recognising Velasco. A moment later the Brazilian passed his lurking-place, walking with bended head, a worried frown darkening his swarthy countenance; and Lanyard emerged in time to see his head and shoulders vanish down a stairway at the far end of the corridor. Following with discretion, Lanyard leaned over the head of the main staircase well, looking down three flights to the ground floor, to which Velasco was descending. The house seemed veritably to hum with secret and, to judge by the pitch of its rumour, well-nigh panic activity. One divined a scurrying as of rats about to desert a sinking ship. Untoward events had thrown this establishment into a state of excited confusion: their nature Lanyard could not surmise, but their conjunction with his designs was exasperatingly inopportune. To search this place and find his man--if he were there at all--without being discovered, while its inmates buzzed about like so many startled hornets, was a fair impossibility; to attempt it was to court death. None the less he was inflexible in determination to go on, to push his luck to its extremity, by sheer force to bend fortuity to his service and suffer without complaint whatever the consequences of its recoil. Yet even as he advanced a foot to begin the descent, he withdrew it. On the ground floor, a door closing with a resounding crash had proved the signal for an outburst of expostulant, acrimonious voices: some half a dozen men giving angry tongue at one and the same time, their roars of polysyllabic gutturalisms fusing into utterly unintelligible clamour. One thought of a mutiny in a German madhouse. Moment after moment passed, the squall persisting with unmitigated viciousness. If now and again it subsided momentarily, it was only into uglier growls and swiftly to rise once more to high frenzy of incoherence. Two of the disputants appeared in the square frame of the staircase well, oddly foreshortened figures brandishing wild arms, one of them Velasco, the other a man whom Lanyard failed to identify, seemingly united in common anger directed at the head of some person invisible. Abruptly, with a gesture of almost homicidal fury, the Brazilian darted out of sight. The other followed. Then the object of their wrath took to the stairs, stopping at the rail of the first landing and gesticulating savagely over the heads of his audience, Velasco and the others returning amid a knot of fellows to bay round the newel post. His voice, full-throated, cried them all down--Ekstrom's deep and resonant voice, domineering over the uproar, hectoring one after another into sullen silence. In the beginning employing nothing but terms and phrases of insolence and objurgation untranslatable, when he had secured a measure of attention he delivered a short address in tones of unqualified contempt. "I will have obedience!" he stormed. "Let no one misunderstand my status here: I am come direct from His Majesty the Emperor with full power and authority to command and direct affairs which you have, individually, collectively, proved yourselves either unfit or unable to cope with. What I do, I do in my absolute discretion, with the full sanction and confidence of the Kaiser. He who questions my judgment or my actions, questions the wisdom of the All-Highest. Let it be clearly understood I am answerable to no one under God but myself and my Imperial master. Henceforth be good enough to hold your tongues or take the consequences--and be damned to you all!" Briefly he stood glowering down at their upturned faces, then sneered, and turned away. "Come along, O'Reilly," he said. "Fetch the woman, and give no more heed to swine-dogs!" His hand slipped up the rail to the first floor, vanished. If O'Reilly followed with the woman mentioned, both kept back from the rail and so out of Lanyard's field of vision. The group at the foot of the stairs moved away, grumbling profanely. At once Lanyard began to descend, rapidly and without care to avoid detection. One flight down he met face to face a manservant, evidently a footman, with an armful of clothing which he was conveying from one chamber to another. The fellow stopped short, jaw dropping, eyes popping; whereupon Lanyard paused and addressed him in German with a manner of overbearing contempt, that is to say, in character. "You're wanted upstairs in the radio room," he said--"at once!" The servant bleated one word of protest: "But--!" "Be silent. Do as I bid you. It is an emergency. Drop those things and go! Do you hear, imbecile?" Completely cowed and cheated, the man obeyed literally, letting his burden of garments fall to the floor and bounding hurriedly up the stairs. Another flight was negotiated without misadventure; on this floor as well servants were flitting busily to and fro, but none favoured the adventurer with the least attention. Midway down the third flight he pulled up to one side of the landing, and reconnoitred. It was on the next floor below, the first above the street, that Ekstrom had stopped. But in what quarter thereof? The exigency forbade the risk of one false turn. If Lanyard were to take Ekstrom unawares it must be at the first cast. From the ground floor came semi-coherent snatches of surly comment, like growls of a thunderstorm passing off into the distance: "_At a time such as this_...." "... _Secret Service snapping at our heels_ ..." "... _base on the Vineyard discovered_ ..." "... _Au Printemps raided, Sophie Weringrode under arrest. God knows whether she will hold her tongue_!" "_Trust her! But this ass_ ..." "_Bringing a woman here, putting all our necks into a halter_ ..." Immediately opposite the foot of the stairway, on the first storey, a door opened. O'Reilly came alertly forth, closed the door behind him, paused, fished in his pocket for a cigarette case, lighted and inhaled with deep appreciation, meantime eavesdropping on the utterances below with his head cocked to one side and a malicious smile shadowing his handsome Irish face. In his own good time he shrugged an indifferent shoulder, thrust his hands into his pockets, and sauntered coolly on down the stairs. The moment he disappeared, Lanyard went into action, in two bounds cleared landing and stairs, in another threw himself upon the door. It opened readily. Entering, he put his back to it, with his left hand groped for, found and turned a key, his right holding ready the automatic pistol he had taken from the lockers of the U-boat. The room was a combination of administrative bureau and study, very handsomely if somewhat over-decorated and furnished, with an atmosphere as distinctively German as that of a Bierstube, the sombreness of its colour scheme lending weight to its array of massive desks, tables, chairs, bookcases, and lounges. Between great draped windows and an impressive chimney-piece opposite, beside a broad, long desk, in a straight-backed chair sat a woman, gagged, bound as to her wrists, strips of cloth which had but lately bound ankles as well on the floor about her feet. That woman was Cecelia Brooke. Ekstrom stood behind her, in the act of loosening the knots which held the gag secure. For a space of thirty seconds, transfixed by the apparition of his enemy, he did not stir other than to raise weaponless hands in deference to the pistol trained upon his head. But the blood ebbed from his face, leaving it a ghastly mask in which shone the eyes of a man who sees certain death closing in upon him and is powerless to combat it, even to die fighting for life. And his lips curled back in a snarl neither of contempt nor of hatred but of terror. And for as long Lanyard remained as motionless, rooted in a despondency of thwarted hopes no less profound than the despair of the Prussian, apprehending what that one could not yet guess, that once more, and now certainly for the last time, vengeance was denied him, the fulfilment of all his labours and their sole purpose snatched from his grasp. The instincts of a killer were not his. Barring injudicious attempt to summon aid or take the offensive, Ekstrom was safe from injury at the hands of Michael Lanyard. His cunning, his favour in the countenance of fortune, or whatever it was that had enabled him to make the girl his prisoner and bring her here, bade fair to prove his salvation. Deep in Lanyard's consciousness an echo stirred of half-forgotten words: "_Vengeance is mine_...." The sense of frustration brewed a hopelessness as stark as that of a brow-beaten child. A blackness seemed to be settling down upon his faculties. A mist wavered momentarily before his eyes. He gulped convulsively, swallowing what had almost been a sob. But he spoke in a voice positively dispassionate. "Keep your hands up." Lanyard removed and pocketed the key, crossed to the middle of the room without once letting his gaze waver from the face of the Prussian, passed behind him, planted the muzzle of the pistol beneath Ekstrom's shoulder-blade, and methodically searched him, finding and putting aside on the desk one automatic, nothing else. "Stand aside!" The almost puerile measure of his disappointment was betrayed in the thrust with which he shouldered Ekstrom out of the way, so forcibly that the man was sent staggering wildly half a dozen paces. "Don't move, assassin!... Pardon, mademoiselle: one moment," Lanyard muttered, with his one free hand undoing the gag. He made slow work of that, fumbling while watching Ekstrom with unremitting intentness, hoping against hope that his enemy might make one false move, one only, by some infatuate endeavour to turn the tables excuse his killing. But Ekstrom would not. Recovery of his equilibrium had been coincident with the shock administered to his hardihood and sense of security by Lanyard's entrance. He stood now in a pose of insouciant grace, hands idly clasped before him, disdain glimmering in languid-lidded eyes, contempt in the set of his lips--an ensemble eloquent of brazen effrontery, the outgrowth of perception of the fact that Lanyard, being what he was, could neither shoot him down in cold blood nor, with the Brooke girl present, even attempt to injure him: compunctions unassembled in the make-up of the Boche, therefore when discovered in men of other races at once despicable and ridiculous.... The gag came away. "Mademoiselle has not been injured?" Lanyard enquired, solicitous. The girl coughed and gasped, shaking her head, enunciating with difficulty in little better than a husky whisper: "... roughly handled, nothing worse." Lanyard's face burned as if his blood were molten mercury. "_Nothing worse_!" Appreciation of what handling she must have suffered, if she had resisted at all, before those beasts could have bound her, excited an indignation from whose light, as it blazed in Lanyard's eyes, even Ekstrom winced. The hand was tremulous with which he sought to loose her wrists, so much so that she could not but notice. "Don't mind me--look to that man!" she begged. "Leave me to unfasten these with my teeth. He can't be trusted for a single instant." "Mademoiselle," Lanyard mumbled, instinctively employing the French idiom--"you have reason." For an instant only he hesitated, swayed this way and that by the maddest of impulses, then resigned himself absolutely to their ascendancy. "This goes beyond all bounds," he said in an undertone. Deliberately leaving the Englishwoman to free herself according to her suggestion--forgetful, indeed, for the moment, that she was not altogether free--he moved to the desk and left his own automatic there beside Ekstrom's. "Mademoiselle," he said mechanically, without looking at the girl, without power to perceive aught else in the world but the white, evil face of his enemy, "for what I am about to do, I beg you forgive me, of your charity. I can endure no more. It is too much...." He strode past her. She twisted in her chair, then rose, following him with wide eyes of alarm above her hands, whose bonds her teeth worried without rest. Ekstrom had not stirred, though one flash of pure exultation had transfigured his countenance on comprehension of Lanyard's purpose: thanks to the silly scruples of this animal, one more chance for life was granted him. Nor would the Prussian give an inch when Lanyard paused, confronting him squarely, within arm's length. "Ekstrom," the adventurer began in a voice lacking perceptible inflection ... "what is between you and me needs no recounting. You know it too well--I likewise. It is my wish and my intention to kill you with my two hands. Nothing can prevent that, not even what you count upon, my reluctance--to you incomprehensible--to commit an act of violence in the presence of a woman. But because Miss Brooke is here, because you have brought her here by force, because you are what you are and so have treated her insolently ... before we come to our final accounting, you shall get down upon your knees and ask her pardon." He saw no yielding in the eyes of the Prussian, only arrogance; and when he paused, he was answered in one phrase of the gutters of Berlin, couched in the imagery of its lowest boozing-kens, so unspeakably vile in essence and application that Lanyard heard it with an incredulity almost stupefying--almost, not altogether. It was barely spoken when those lips that framed it were crushed by a blow of such lightning delivery that, though he must have been prepared for it, Ekstrom's guard was still lowered as he reeled back, lost footing, and went to his knees. Panting, snarling, uttering teeth and blasphemy, the Prussian recoiled like a serpent, gathered himself together and launched headlong at Lanyard, only to be met full tilt by a second blow and a third, each more merciless than its predecessor, beating him down once more. This time Lanyard did not wait for him to come back for punishment, but closed in, catching him as he strove to rise, meeting each fresh effort with ruthless accuracy, battering him into insanity of despair, so that Ekstrom came back again and again without thought, animated only by frenzied brute instinct to find the throat of his tormenter, and ever and ever failing; till at length he crumpled and lay crushed and writhing, then subsided into insensibility, was quite still but for heaving lungs and the spasmodic clutchings of his broken and ensanguined fingers.... With a start, a broken sigh, a slight movement of the hand interpreting a crushing sense of the futility of human passion, Lanyard relaxed, drew back from standing over his antagonist, abstractedly found a handkerchief and dried his hands, of a sudden so inexpressibly shamed and degraded in his own sight that he dared not look the girl's way, but stood with hang-dog air, avoiding her regard. Yet, could he have mustered up heart, he might have surprised in her eyes a light to lift him out from this slough of humiliation, to obliterate chagrin in a flood of wonder and--misgivings. When, however, he did after a moment turn to her, that look was gone, replaced by one that reflected something of his own apprehension; for a heavy hand was hammering on the study door, and more than one voice on the other side was calling on "Karl" to open. Either the servant whom Lanyard had met and victimised on his way downstairs had given the alarm, or else the noise of the encounter within the study had brought that pack of spies to the door, wildly demanding admission. Steadied by one swift exchange of alarmed glances with the girl, Lanyard hastily reviewed the room, seeking some avenue of escape. None offered but the windows. He ran to them, tore back their draperies, and found them closed with shutters of steel and padlocked. Simultaneously the din at the door redoubled. With a worried shake Lanyard crossed to the chimney-piece, ducked his head, and stepped into its huge fireplace. One upward glance sufficed to dash his hopes: here was no way out, arduous though feasible; immediately above the fireplace the flue narrowed so that not even the most active man of normal stature might hope to negotiate its ascent. He returned with only a gesture of disconcertion to answer the girl's look of appeal. "Can we do nothing?" she asked, raising her voice a trifle to make it heard above the tumult in the corridor. "There's no help for it, I'm afraid," he said, going to the desk and taking up the pistols--"nothing to do but shoot our way out, if we can. Take this," he added, offering her one of the weapons, which she accepted without spirit. "If you can't get your own consent to use it, give it to me when I've emptied the other." She breathed a dismayed "Yes ..." and wonderingly consulted his face, since he did not stir other than thoughtfully to replace his pistol on the desk, then stood staring at his soot-smeared palms. "What is it?" she demanded nervously. "Why do you hesitate?" As one fretted by inconsequential questions, he merely shook his head, glancing sidelong once at the unconscious Prussian, again with calculation toward the door. This he saw quivering under repeated blows. With brusque decision he said: "Get a chair--brace it beneath the door-knob, please!"--and leaving her without more explanation turned back to the fireplace. Motionless, in dumb confusion, the girl stood staring after him till roused by a blow of such splintering force as to suggest that an axe had been brought into play upon the door, then ran to a ponderous club chair and with considerable exertion managed to trundle it to the door and tip it over, wedging its back beneath the knob. By this time it had become indisputably patent that an axe was battering the panels. But the door, in character with the room, was a substantial piece of workmanship and needed more than a few blows, even of an axe, to break down its barrier of solid oak. She looked round to discover Lanyard kneeling beside Ekstrom, insanely--so it seemed to the girl--engaged in blackening the upper half of the man's face with a handful of soot. Unconsciously uttering a little cry of distress she sped to his side and caught his shoulder with an importunate hand. "In Heaven's name, Monsieur Duchemin, what are you doing? Is this a time for childishness--?" He responded with a smile of boyish mischief so genuine that her doubts of his reason seemed all too well confirmed. "Making up my understudy," he said simply. And brushing his hands over the rug to rid them of superfluous soot, Lanyard rose. "Please go back and stand by the door--on the side of the hinges. I'll be with you in one minute." Resigned to humour this lunatic whim--what else could she do?--the girl retreated to the position designated, and watched with ever darker doubts of his sanity, while Lanyard hurriedly drew the shells from his automatic and carefully placed its butt in the slack grasp of Ekstrom's fingers. Then, lifting from a near-by table a great cut-glass bowl of flowers, the adventurer inverted it over Ekstrom's body. Expending its full force upon the man's chest, that miniature deluge splashed widely, wetting his face, half filling his open mouth. Some of the soot was washed away, but not a great deal: enough stuck fast to suit Lanyard's purpose. Roused by that cool shock, half strangled as well, Ekstrom coughed violently, squirmed, spat out a mouthful of water, and lifted on an elbow, still more than half dazed. Joining the girl by the door, Lanyard saw the Prussian sit up and glare blankly round the room, a figure of tragic fun, drenched, woefully disfigured, eyes rolling wildly in the wide spaces round them which Lanyard had left unblackened. Swinging the club chair away from the door, the adventurer placed it with its back to the room. "Get down behind that," he indicated shortly, and drew the key from his pocket. "Don't show yourself for your life. And let me have that pistol, please." A bright triangular wedge of steel broke through one of the panels as he fitted and turned the key in the lock. His wits clearing, Ekstrom saw him and with a howl of fury staggered to his feet, clutching the unloaded pistol and endeavouring to level it for steady aim. Simultaneously Lanyard turned the knob and let the door fly open, remaining beside the chair that hid the girl. A knot of spies, O'Reilly and Velasco among them, whirled into the room, pulled up at sight of that strange, grim figure, disguised beyond all recognition by its half-mask of black, facing and menacing them with a pistol. O'Reilly fired in the next breath, his shot echoed by half a dozen so closely bunched as to resemble the rattle of a mitrailleuse. At the first report the pistol dropped from Ekstrom's grasp. He carried a hand vaguely to his throat, staggered a single step, uttered a strangled moan, and fell forward, his body fairly riddled, his death little short of instantaneous. While the fusillade was still resounding Lanyard, seizing the girl's wrist, unceremoniously dragged her from behind the chair and thrust her through the door, retreating after her with his face to the roomfull, his pistol ready. None of that lot paid him any heed, the attention of all wholly absorbed by the tragedy their violent hands had wrought. Velasco, the first to stir, ran forward and dropped to his knees beside the dead man. Others followed. Gently Lanyard drew the door to, locked it on the outside, and at the sound of a choking cry from Cecelia Brooke, whirled smartly round, prepared if need be to make good his promise to clear with gun-play a way to the street though opposed by every inmate of the establishment. But the first face he saw was Crane's. The Secret Service man stood within a yard. To him as to a rock of refuge Cecelia Brooke had flown, to his hand she was clinging like a frightened child, trying to speak, failing because she choked on sobs and gasps of horror. Behind him, on the landing at the head of the staircase, running up from below, ascending to the upper storeys, were a score' or more of men of sturdy and business-like bearing and indubitably American stamp. Of these two were herding into a corner a little group of frightened German servants. Lanyard's stare of astonishment was met by Crane's twisted smile. "My friend," he said, as quietly as anyone could with his accent of a quizzical buzz-saw, "I sure got to hand it to you. Every time I try to pull anything off on the dead quiet you beat me to it clean. Everywhere I think you ain't and can't be, that's just where you are. But I ain't complaining; I got to admit, if you hadn't staged your act to occupy the minds of those gents in there, we might've had a lot more difficulty raiding this joint." Quickly he wound an arm round the waist of Cecelia Brooke when, without warning, she swayed blindly and would have fallen. "Here, now!" he protested. "That's no way to do.... Why, she's flickered out! Well, Monsieur Duchemin-Lanyard-Ember, to a man up a tree this looks like your job. You take this little lady off my hands and see her home, and I'll just naturally try and finish what I started--or what you did. For, son, I got to give you credit: you sure are one grand li'l trouble-hound!" XXI QUESTION Through the breathing hush of that dark hour which foreruns the dawn, that hour in which the head that knows a wakeful pillow is prone to sudden and disquieting apprehension of its insignificance and it's soul's dread isolation, the cab sped swiftly south upon the Avenue, shadowed reaches of the park upon its right, upon its left the dull, tired faces of those homes whose tenants lay wrapped in the cotton-wool of riches. The rain had ceased. A little wind was blowing up. There was a fresh smell in the air. Sidewalks began to be maculated with spreading areas of dryness, but the roadway was still wet and shining, the wide black mirror of a myriad lights. Through the windows of the speeding cab an orderly procession of street lamps, marching past, threw each its fugitive and pallid glimmer. Periods of modified darkness intervened, when the face of the girl in her corner seemed a vision subtle and wraithlike. But ever the recurrent lights revealed her sweetly incarnate if deep in enervation of crushing weariness. Once she stirred and sighed profoundly; and Lanyard, bending toward her, asked if he could be in any way of service. She replied in an undertone scarcely better than a whisper: "Thank you, I am quite comfortable.... Please--what time is it?" The cab was passing Sixtieth Street. Lanyard caught a fleeting glimpse of a street clock with a dial like a little golden moon. "It's just four." "Thank you...." "Very tired?" "Very...." He had the maddest notion that her head inclined to droop toward his shoulder. Perhaps the motion of the cab.... If so, she recovered easily. "Can I do anything?" "No, thank you, only ..." An ungloved hand stirred from her lap and for the merest instant rested lightly above his own, or hovered rather, barely touching it with a touch tenuous and elusive, no sooner realised than gone. "I mean," she murmured, "I am a bit too overwrought, too tired, to talk." "I quite understand," he said. "Please forget I'm here; just rest." Perhaps she smiled drowsily. Or was that, too, a freak of his imagination? Lanyard assured himself it was, in excess of consideration even tried to persuade himself he had dreamed that ghost of a caress upon his hand. It seemed so little like her. Not that anything had happened more than a gesture of transient inadvertence due to fatigue. It could not have been intentional, that act of intimacy, when the girl was altogether engrossed in young Thackeray. There was something one must not forget, something that gave the lie flatly to that innuendo of the Weringrode's. Ignorant of the circumstances the intrigante had leaped blindly at conclusions, after the habit of her kind. True, Sophie had not implied that this girl cared for him, but vice versa: either supposition, however, was as absurd as the other. As if Lanyard could love a woman who loved another! As if the name of love meant aught to him but the memory of a sweetness like a vagrant air of Spring that had breathed fitfully for a season upon the Winter of his heart! A corner of Lanyard's mouth lifted in a sneer. That precious heart of his! the heart of a thief upon which even now the fruits of his thieving weighed.... Irritated, he wrenched his thoughts into another channel, and began to piece together inconsecutive snatches of information gained from Crane in the confusion of the quarter hour just past, while the Secret Service operatives were busy rounding up the inmates of that spy-fold and searching for evidences of their impudent activities. It appeared that Washington had at length, however tardily, roused out of its inertia and at midnight had telegraphed instructions to arrest out of hand every enemy alien in the land against whom there was evidence of conspiracy or even a ponderable suspicion. So unexpected was this order that Crane had volunteered to show Cecelia Brooke that midnight rendezvous of the Prussian spy system without the least notion that he might be required before morning to lead a raiding force against the establishment; and even when a messenger stopped him as he turned to enter Au Printemps, he was not advised concerning the cause of this demand for his immediate presence at headquarters. The first cast of what Crane aptly termed the dragnet had brought in the management and service staff to a man, with a number of the restaurant's habitues, including Sophie Weringrode and her errand-boy, the exquisite Mr. Revel. Velasco, however, had somehow mysteriously managed to slip through the meshes and had straightway hastened to spread the alarm. As for O'Reilly and Dressier, they had left with Ekstrom in pursuit of Lanyard less than five minutes before, and so had escaped not only arrest but all knowledge of the raid prior to their return to Seventy-ninth Street. The second cast of the net had been made at the latter place as soon as the watchers were able to assure Crane that Ekstrom and O'Reilly had returned--Dressier having anticipated them there by something like half an hour. By daybreak, then, these gentry would be interned on Ellis Island.... And break of day impended visibly in grayish shades that stole westward through the cross-town streets like clouds of secret agents spying out the city against invasion by the serried lances of the sun. A garish twilight washed Forty-second Street from wall to wall by the time the car swung round in front of the Knickerbocker. As yet, however, there was little evidence that the town was growing restive in its sleep with premonition of the ardour of another day. Lanyard stepped down and offered the girl a hand in whose palm her slender fingers rested lightly for an instant ere she passed on, while he turned to bid the driver wait. Following, he overtook her in the entrance, where by tacit consent both paused and lingered in an odd constraint. There was so much to be said that was impossible to say just then. Visibly the woman drooped, betraying physical exhaustion in every line of her pose, seeming scarcely strong enough to lift the silken lashes that trembled upon cheeks a little drawn and pale, with the faintest of bluish rings beneath the eyes. "I must not keep you," Lanyard broke the silence. "I merely wished to say good-night and ... I am sorry." "Sorry?" she echoed. "That you had such an unhappy experience," he explained--"thanks to your thoughtfulness for me. I do not deserve so much consideration; and that only makes me feel all the more regretful." "It was silly of me," she admitted with a shadowy, rueful smile. "I'm afraid my silliness makes too much trouble...." He commented honestly: "I don't understand." "If I had only been patient enough to wait for you to call me...." "Forgive that oversight. I was pressed for time, as you may imagine." "Oh, it all comes back to my own stupidity. I might have known you had come through all right." "How should you?" "Why not?--when you turn up here in New York safe and sound after being drowned on the _Assyrian_!--as if that were not proof enough that you bear a charmed life!" "Charmed!" he laughed. "And you haven't yet told me how you survived that adventure." "You are kind to be interested, and I am unfortunate in never seeing you save under circumstances unfavourable for yarn-spinning." "You might be more fortunate." "Only tell me how!" "If you cared to ask me to dine with you to-morrow--I mean, to-night--" "You would--?" He was distressed by consciousness that his voice had thrilled impetuously. But perhaps she had not noticed; there was no change in the even friendliness of her tone. "I'm as inquisitive as any woman that ever lived. Even if I wished to, I'm afraid I shouldn't be able to resist an invitation to hear your Odyssey." "Delmonico's at eight?" "Thank you," she said primly. "You make me too happy. May I call for you?" "Please." She offered a hand whose touch he found cool, steady, and impersonal. "Good morning, Mr. Ember." He stood in a stare while she went quickly through the lobby to a waiting elevator, then roused and went back to his cab. It was by daylight that he reentered his rooms and found them tenanted by a negro boy bound and gagged, bruised and sore, and scared beyond intelligible expression. Freeing him and salving his injuries bodily and spiritual with a liberal douceur, Lanyard exacted an oath of silence, then turned him out. He had approximately five hours to put in somehow before his appointment with Colonel Stanistreet at nine, and was too well versed in the lore of late hours to think of giving any part of that time to sleep. By so doing he would only insure a mutinous awakening, with mind and body sluggish and unrested. If, on the other hand, he remained awake, he would go to that interview in a state of supernormal animation exceedingly to be desired if he were to round out this adventure without discredit. For its end was not yet. He had still a part to play whose lines were not yet written, whose business remained to be invented. He neither dared shirk that appointment, for reasons of policy, nor wished to, while there remained reparation to be accomplished, a wrong to be righted, justice to be done, a question to be answered. Only when these matters had been put in order would he feel his honour discharged of its burdens, himself free once more to drop out and go in peace his lonely ways in life, ways henceforth to be both lonely and aimless. For, when he strove to peer into the future, only an emptiness confronted him. With Ekstrom accounted for finally and forevermore, there was nothing to come but the final accounting of the Lone Wolf with that civilization which had bred and suffered him. One way presented itself to make that reckoning even. The Foreign Legion of France asks no embarrassing questions of its recruits, and enlistment in its ranks offers with anonymity a consoling certainty. Thus alone might he find his way home to the heart of that enigma whence he had emerged, a nameless waif astray in grim Parisian by-ways.... This vision of his end contenting him, he began to scheme a campaign for the day that was simple enough in prospect: a little chicanery with Stanistreet, a personal appeal to Crane to restore the passports of Monsieur André Duchemin which must have been found on Ekstrom's body, a berth on some steamer sailing for Europe, then the last evanishment. One detail alone troubled him, his promise to the Brooke girl that she should dine with him that night. Reminded of this obligation, figuratively he seized Michael Lanyard by the scruff of his neck and shook him with a savage hand. What insensate folly was ever his, what want of wit and strength to keep out of temptation's ways! Why must he have fallen in so readily with her suggestion? Why this infatuate thirst for sympathy, this eagerness to violate the seals of reticence at the wish of a strange woman? Was there any reasonable explanation of the strange lack of his wonted self-sufficiency in the company of Cecelia Brooke? No matter. If he might not contrive somehow to squirm out of that engagement, he could at all events school himself to decent reticence. He promised himself to make his account of the submarine adventure drearily bald and trite, to minimize to the last degree his part therein, above all things to refrain from painting the Lone Wolf in romantic colours. She was much too good a sort, too straight, sincere, fair-minded, honest--the sort of girl who deserved the Thackeray sort of man, never a thief. If she even dreamed.... Lanyard brought forth from its hiding place the necklace, weighed it in his hand, examined it minutely. Granting its marvellous perfection, he recognized no more its beauty, dispassionately reviewed in turn each stone of matchless loveliness, no more susceptible to their seductive purity, perceiving in them nothing but hard, bright, translucent pebbles, cold, soulless, cruel. One by one they slipped through his fingers like beads of an unholy rosary. At length, crushing them together in the hollow of his palm, he stood a while in thought, then turning to his writing-desk bundled the necklace in wrappings of white tissue secured with rubber bands, counted carefully the sheaf of bills he had taken from Ekstrom, sealed the whole amount in a plain, long envelope, and put this aside in company with the necklace. Already two hours had passed and, since he meant to call at the house on West End Avenue well in advance of the hour when Cecelia Brooke might be there--presuming Blensop to have given her the same appointment as he had given "Mr. Ember," that is, nine o'clock--it was now time to prepare. Returning to his bedchamber, he laid out a carefully selected change of clothing, shaved, parboiled himself in a hot bath, chilled him to the pith in one of icy coldness, and dressed with scrupulous heed to detail, studiously effacing every sign of his sleepless night. That experience was in no way to be surmised from his appearance when he sallied forth to breakfast at the Plaza. At eight precisely, presenting himself at the Stanistreet residence, he desired the footman to announce him as the author of a certain telegram from Edgartown. He was obliged to wait less than a minute, the footman returning in haste to request him to step into the library. This apartment--which he found much as he had last seen it, eight hours ago, its window shattered, the portières down, the furniture in some disorder--was, on his introduction, occupied by two persons, one an elderly, iron-gray gentleman of untidy dress and unobtrusive habit in spite of a discerning cool, gray eye, the other Mr. Blensop in the neatest of one-button morning-coat effects, with striped trouserings neither too smart nor too sober for that state of life unto which it had pleased God to call him, and fair white spats. If his attire was radiant, so was the temper of the secretary sunny. He tripped forward in sprightliest fashion, offering cordial hands to the caller till he recognized him, and even then was discountenanced only for the briefest moment. "My dear Mr. Ember!" he purred soothingly--"why didn't you tell me last night it was you who had sent that telegram? If I had for a moment suspected the truth you should have had your appointment with Colonel Stanistreet at any hour you might have cared to name, no matter how ungodly!" Lanyard bowed gravely. "Thank you," he said. "And Colonel Stanistreet--?" "Is just finishing breakfast. He will be down directly. Please be seated, make yourself entirely at ease. And will you excuse me--?" "With pleasure," Lanyard assured him, his gravity unbroken. A doubt clouded Mr. Blensop's bright eyes, but its transit was instantaneous. He turned forthwith to join the iron-gray man before the portrait which concealed the safe. "And now, Mr. Stone," said Mr. Blensop, with indulgence. "Well, sir," said Mr. Stone quietly, "if you'll be good enough to show me how this contraption works, maybe I'll find out something interesting, maybe not." Mr. Blensop proceeded to oblige by operating the lever and sliding aside the portrait. "Thanks," said Mr. Stone, producing a magnifying glass from a waistcoat pocket and beginning to peer myopically at the face of the safe. "I take it nobody's been pawing over this since the late, as you might say, unpleasantness?" "Not a soul has touched it. By Colonel Stanistreet's order it was covered as soon as we found it had been tampered with." "_Um-m_," Mr. Stone acknowledged, bending close to his work. Partially, perhaps, by way of administering an urbane rebuke to Lanyard for his readiness to dispense with his society, Mr. Blensop remained in the neighbourhood of Mr. Stone, hovering round him like a domesticated humming-bird. "Do you find anything?" he enquired, when Stone straightened up. "Fingerprints a-plenty," Mr. Stone admitted with a hint of temper--"a slew of the damn things. Looks like you must've called in the neighbours to help make a good show. However, we'll see what we can make of 'em." He conjured from some recess in his clothing a squat bottle, from another a stopper in which was fitted a blowpipe, joined the two together, approached the safe with one end of the pipe between his lips and sprayed it with a thin film of white powder, the contents of the bottle. "I say, do tell me what that's for?" "That," said Mr. Stone patiently, "is to make the fingerprints stand out, so we can get a good likeness of 'em." He put the bottle aside, blinked at the safe approvingly, and by further exercise of powers of legerdemain materialized a pocket kodak and a flashlight pistol. "Can't I help you?" Blensop offered eagerly. "I used to be rather a dab at amateur photography, you know." "Well, I'm kind of stuck on pressing the button myself," Stone confessed, adjusting the focus. "But if you want to work that flashlight, I don't mind." "Delighted," Mr. Blensop asserted. "How does it go, now?" "Like this." Stone set his camera down to demonstrate. "Now just stand behind me," he concluded, "and pull the trigger when I say 'now'." "I'll do my best, but--I say--will it bang?" Stone had taken up the camera once more. His sole answer was a grunt upon which his hearers placed two distinct interpretations--Lanyard's affording him considerable gratification. "If you're ready," said Stone--"_now_" Mr. Blensop squinted unbecomingly and pressed the trigger. A vivid flare lifted from the pan of the pistol, and winked out in a cloud of vapour, slowly dissipating. "Is that all?" "Yes, sir--that's all of that." Stone stowed the camera away about his person and from another cranny produced a small cardboard box of glass slides, one of which he offered. "Now if you'll just run your fingers through your hair and rest them on this slide, light but steady...." "What for?" Blensop demanded with a giggle of nervous reluctance. "You don't think I'm the thief, do you?" "No, sir, I don't. But if I haven't got your fingerprints, how am I going to tell them from the thief's?" "Oh, I see," Blensop said with a note of allayed apprehension, and put himself on record. The door opening to admit Colonel Stanistreet, Lanyard rose. At sight of him the Englishman checked and stared enquiringly, his eyes shadowed by careworn brows; for it was apparent that, if the events of the night had not depressed the spirits of the secretary, his employer had known little sleep or none since the burglary. "Colonel Stanistreet," Blensop said melodiously, abandoning Stone to his unsupervised devices, "this is Mr. Ember, the gentleman who called last night before you got home. It appears he is the person who sent us that telegram from Edgartown day before yesterday." "Indeed? Ember is not the name with which the message was signed." "The message was purposely left unsigned," Lanyard explained. Stanistreet nodded approval. "I am glad to meet you, Mr. Ember," he said, offering a hand. "Be seated. I am most anxious first to express our gratitude, next to learn how you came by your information." "You will find it an interesting story." "No doubt of that." Stanistreet took the desk chair, opened a cigar humidor, and offered it. "I shall be even more interested, however," he said with an evanescent trace of humour, "to know who the devil you are, sir." "That is something I am prepared to prove to your satisfaction." "If you will be so good.... But excuse me for one moment." Stanistreet turned in his chair. "Mr. Stone?" "Yes, sir." "Have you finished with the safe? If so, I want my secretary to check over its contents carefully and make sure nothing else is missing." "I'm all through with it, Colonel Stanistreet. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to mouse around and see if I can nose out anything else that's useful." "That shall be entirely as you will. Now, Blensop"--Stanistreet nodded to the secretary--"let us make certain...." "Yes, sir." Blithely Mr. Blensop addressed himself to the safe. "There has been an accident of some sort, Colonel Stanistreet?" Lanyard enquired civilly, nodding toward the shattered French window. "A burglary, sir." "The criminal escaped--?" Stanistreet nodded. "Our watchman surprised him, and was shot for his pains--not seriously, I'm happy to say. The burglar got himself tangled up in that window, but extricated in time, and went over the garden wall before we could determine which way he had taken." "I trust you lost nothing of value?" Stanistreet shrugged. "Unhappily, we did--a diamond necklace, the property of my sister-in-law, and--ah--a document we could ill afford to part with.... But you offered to show me credentials, I believe." "Such as they are," Lanyard replied. "My passports and letters were stolen from me. But these, I think, should serve as well to prove my bona fides." He laid out in order upon the desk his plunder from the safe aboard the U-boat--all but the money--the three cipher codes, the log, the diary of the commander, the directory of German secret agents, and such other documents as he had selected. The first Colonel Stanistreet took up with a dubious frown which swiftly lightened, yielding, as he pursued his examination into the papers and began to recognize their surpassing value to the Allied cause, to a subdued glimmer of gratulatory excitement. But he was at pains to satisfy himself as to the authenticity of each paper in turn, providing a lull for which Lanyard was not ungrateful since it gave him a chance to adjust his understanding to an unexpected development in the affair. He lounged at ease, smoking, his eyes, half-veiled by lowered lids, keenly reviewing the room and its tenants. Stone, the detective (an operative, Lanyard rightly inferred, of the American Secret Service, loaned to the British in order to keep the burglary out of police records and newspapers), had wandered out into the garden that glowed with young April sunlight beyond the windows. From time to time he was to be seen stooping and inspecting the earth with the gravity of an earnest, efficient, sober-sided sleuth of the old school. Blensop was busy before the safe, extracting the contents of each pigeonhole in turn, thumbing its dockets of papers, checking each off upon a typewritten list several pages in length. To that lithe and debonair figure Lanyard's gaze oftenest reverted. So not only had the necklace been stolen but "a document" which the British Secret Service "could ill afford to part with"! Lanyard entertained no least doubt as to the identity of the document in question. There could be but one, he felt, which Stanistreet would so characterize. That document had not been in the safe when Lanyard had opened it at midnight. After a moment Mr. Blensop uttered a musical note of vexation. The lead of his pencil had broken. He threw it pettishly aside, came over to the desk, took up a penholder, dipped it in the ink-well, and returned to his task. XXII CHICANE Colonel Stanistreet put down the last of the papers and slapped his hand upon it resoundingly. "This is one of the most remarkable collections of data, I venture to assert, that has ever come into the hands of the British Government. Have you any idea of its value?" Lanyard lifted a whimsical eyebrow. "Some," he admitted drily. "And what do you ask for it, sir?" "Nothing." The gaze of the Englishman bored into his eyes; but he met their challenge with an unshaken countenance, smiling. "My dear sir," Stanistreet demanded--"who are you?" "The name under which I sailed for New York on board the _Assyrian_," Lanyard announced quietly, "was André Duchemin." Disturbed by a startled exclamation, together with a sound of shuffling and a slight thump, he looked round in mild curiosity to see Blensop staggered and astare, standing over a litter of documents which had slipped from his grasp to the floor. Mastering his emotion quickly enough, the secretary knelt with a mumbled apology and began to pick up the papers. With no more notice of the incident Lanyard returned undivided attention to Colonel Stanistreet. "I had another name," he confessed, "and a reputation none too savoury, as, I daresay, you know. Through the courtesy of the British Intelligence Office I was permitted to disguise these; but on the _Assyrian_ I was recognized--in short, ran afoul of German Secret Service agents who knew me, but whom I did not know. On the sixth night out circumstances conspired to make me seem a serious obstacle to their schemes. Consequently I was waylaid, robbed, and thrown overboard. Within the next few minutes a torpedo struck the ship and the submarine which fired it came up under me as I struggled to keep afloat. By passing myself off as a Boche spy, I succeeded in inducing the commander to take me below, and so reached the Martha's Vineyard base. There chance played into my hands: I contrived to sink the U-boat and escape, as reported in my telegram." During a brief silence he found opportunity to observe that Mr. Blensop was working with hands that trembled singularly. "Incredible!" Stanistreet commented. "Yet here is proof," Lanyard asserted, indicating the papers beneath Stanistreet's hand. "My dear sir, I didn't mean--" "Pardon!" Lanyard smiled, with a lifted hand. "I never thought you did, Colonel Stanistreet. But it is your duty to make sure you are not imposed upon by plausible adventurers. Therefore--since my papers have been stolen--I am glad to be able to prove my identity with André Duchemin by referring to survivors of the _Assyrian_ disaster, among others Mr. Sherry, the second officer, Mr. Crane of the United States Secret Service, and a countrywoman of yours, a Miss Cecelia Brooke, whose acquaintance I was fortunate enough to make." Stanistreet nodded heavily, and consulted his watch. "Miss Brooke," he said, "should be here shortly. Blensop made an appointment with her last night, which I confirmed by telephone this morning." "Then, with permission, I shall remain and ask her to vouch for me," Lanyard suggested in resignation, since it appeared he was not to be permitted to escape this girl, that destiny was not yet finished with their entanglement. "I shall be glad if you will, sir.... Monsieur Duchemin," Stanistreet began, but hesitated--"or do you prefer another style?" "I am content with Duchemin." "That is a matter for your own discretion, but I should warn you it may already have acquired an evil odour on this side. To my knowledge it has been used within the last twenty-four hours, and the pretensions of its wearer supported by your stolen credentials." "I am not surprised," Lanyard stated reflectively. "A chap with a beard, perhaps?" "Why, yes...." "Anderson," the adventurer nodded: "that, at least, was his alias when he jockeyed himself into the second steward's berth aboard the _Assyrian_." He glanced idly across the room, discovered Blensop once more at pause in a stare, and grinned amiably. "He came here last night," Stanistreet volunteered deliberately-- "representing himself as André Duchemin--to sell me a certain paper, the same which subsequently, I am convinced, he returned to steal." "And did," Lanyard added. "And did," the Briton conceded. "Now you have told me who he is, I promise you every effort shall be made to apprehend him and prevent further misuse of the name you have assumed." "It has," Lanyard said tersely. "I beg your pardon?" "I say every effort has been made--and successfully--to accomplish the ends you mention." "What's that you say?" Blensop demanded shrilly, crossing to the desk. "My secretary," Stanistreet explained, "was present at the interview, and is naturally interested." "And very good of him, I'm sure," Lanyard agreed. "I was about to explain, Mr. Blensop, that Ekstrom, alias Anderson, was killed in the course of a raid on the Prussian spy headquarters in Seventy-ninth Street this morning." "Amazing!" Blensop gasped. "I am glad to hear it," he added, and went slowly back to his task. "I may as well tell you, sir," Lanyard pursued, "I have every reason to believe the document sold you last night was one of those stolen from me." Stanistreet wagged a contentious head. "I cannot conceive how it could have come into your possession, sir." "Simply enough. Miss Brooke requested me to take care of it for her." The eyes of the Englishman grew stony. "Miss Brooke!" he repeated testily. "I don't understand." "It was a document--I do not seek to know its nature from you, sir--of vital importance in this present crisis, with the United States newly entered into the war." Stanistreet affirmed with an inclination of his head. "I may tell you this much, Monsieur Duchemin: if it had not reached this country safely.... What am I saying? If it be not recovered without delay, the chances of America's early and efficient participation in the war will suffer a tremendous setback ... Blensop, be good enough to call up the American Secret Service at once and ask whether the document in question was found on the body of this--ah--Ekstrom." "Pardon," Lanyard interposed as Blensop hesitantly approached the telephone. "It would be a waste of time. I happen to know, because I was there, that no such document was found on Ekstrom's body." "The devil!" Stanistreet grumbled. "What can have become of it? This business grows only the blacker the deeper one seeks to fathom it. I must own myself completely at a loss. How it came into the hands of Miss Brooke--" "I can explain that, I think. The document was in the care of two gentlemen, Mr. Bartholomew and Lieutenant Thackeray. The former was murdered by the Huns in search of it, Lieutenant Thackeray murderously assaulted. But for Miss Brooke's intervention the assassins must have succeeded. As it was, the young woman herself found it and, one presumes, took charge of it because her fiancé was incapacitated, and possibly with the notion that she might thereby prevent further mischief of the same nature." "Her fiancé?" Stanistreet echoed blankly. "Lieutenant Thackeray--" "Her brother, sir!" the Briton laughed. "Thackeray was his nom de service." It was Lanyard's turn to stare. "Ah!" he murmured. "A light begins to dawn...." "Upon me as well," Stanistreet confessed. "Miss Brooke and her brother are orphans and, before the war, were inseparable companions. I do not doubt that, learning he had been commissioned with an uncommonly perilous errand, she booked passage by the _Assyrian_ without his consent, in order to be near him in event of danger." "This explains much," Lanyard conceded--"much that perplexed more than one can say." "But in no way advances us on the trail of the purloined document." "I am afraid, sir," Lanyard lied deliberately, "you may as well abandon all hope of ever seeing it again. Ekstrom made away with it: no question about that. There was time enough and to spare between his exploit here and his death for him to deliver it to safe hands. It is doubtless decoded by this time, a copy of it already well on the way to the Wilhelmstrasse." "I am afraid," Stanistreet echoed--"I am very much afraid you are right." His thick, spatulate fingers of an executive drummed heavily upon the desk. Stone's figure darkened the windows. "Colonel Stanistreet?" he called diffidently. "Yes, Mr. Stone?" "There's something here I'd like to consult you about, sir, if you can spare a minute." "Certainly." The Englishman rose. "If you will excuse me, Monsieur Duchemin...." Half way to the windows he hesitated. "By the bye, Blensop, I wish you'd call up Apthorp and ask after Howson's condition." "Very good, sir," Blensop intoned cheerfully. "And do it without delay, please. I don't like to think of the poor fellow suffering." "Immediately, sir." As his employer passed out into the garden with Stone, the secretary discontinued his checking and came over to the desk, drawing up a chair and sitting down to telephone. At the same time Lanyard got up and began to pace thoughtfully to and fro. "Howson is the wounded night watchman, I take it, Mr. Blensop?" "Yes--an excellent fellow.... Schuyler nine, three hundred," Blensop cooed into the transmitter. Conceivably that ostensible discomfiture whose symptoms Lanyard had remarked had been a transitory humour. Mr. Blensop was now in what seemed the most equable and blithe of tempers. His very posture at the telephone eloquently betokened as much: he had thrown himself into the chair with picturesque nonchalance, sitting with body half turned from the desk, his right hand holding the receiver to his ear, his left thrust carelessly into his trouser pocket, thus dragging back the lapel of that impeccable morning-coat and exposing the bright cap of his gold-mounted fountain pen. Something in that implement seemed to possess for Lanyard overpowering fascination. His gaze yearned for it, returned again and again to it. He changed his course to stroll up and down behind Blensop, between him and the safe. "I understood Colonel Stanistreet to say the watchman was not seriously injured, I believe," he observed, with interest. "Shot through the shoulder, that is all.... Schuyler nine, three hundred? Dr. Apthorp, please. This is Mr. Blensop speaking, secretary to Colonel Stanistreet.... Are you there, Dr. Apthorp?" With professional dexterity Lanyard en passant dropped a hand over the young man's shoulder and lightly lifted the pen from its place in the pocket of Blensop's waistcoat; the even tempo of his step unbroken, he tossed it toward the safe, where it fell without sound upon a heavy Persian rug. "Yes--about Howson," the musical accents continued, "Colonel Stanistreet is most solicitous...." Swiftly Lanyard moved toward the safe, glanced through the French windows to assure himself that Stanistreet and Stone were safely preoccupied, whipped out the envelope he had prepared, and thrust it into a file of papers which did not crowd its pigeonhole; accomplishing the complete manoeuvre with such adroitness that, like the business of the pen, it passed utterly without the knowledge of the secretary. "Thank you so much. _Good_ morning, Dr. Apthorp." Lanyard was passing the desk when Blensop rose, and the footman was entering with his salver. "A lady to see Colonel Stanistreet, sir--by appointment, she says." Blensop glanced at the card. At the same time Stanistreet came in from the garden, leaving Stone to potter about visibly in the distance. "Miss Brooke is here, sir," the secretary announced. "Ask her to come in, please." The footman retired. "Howson is resting easily, Dr. Apthorp reports," Blensop added, going back to the safe. "Has Stone turned up anything of interest, sir?" "Footprints," Stanistreet replied with a snort of moderate impatience. "He's quite upset since I've informed him the man who made them is--" "_Good God_!" The interruption was Blensop's in a voice strangely out of tune. Stanistreet wheeled sharply upon him. "What the deuce--!" he snapped. By every indication the secretary had suffered the most severe shock of his experience. His face was ghastly, his eyes vacant; his knees shook beneath him; one hand pressed convulsively the bosom of his waistcoat. His endeavours to reply evoked only a husky, rattling sound. "What the devil has come over you?" Stanistreet insisted. The rattle became articulate: "I've lost it! It's gone!" "What have you lost?" "N-nothing, sir. That is--I mean to say--my fountain pen." "The way you take it, I should say you'd lost your head," Stanistreet commented. "You must have dropped the thing somewhere. Look about, see if you can't find it." Thus admonished, the secretary began to search the floor with frantic glances, and as the footman ushered in Cecelia Brooke, Lanyard saw the young man dart forward and retrieve the pen with a start of relief wellnigh as unmanning as the shock of loss had seemed. With that Lanyard's interest in the fellow waned; he was too poor a thing to consider seriously; while here was one who compelled anew, as ever when they met, the homage of sincere and marvelling admiration. Yet another of those miracles of feminine adaptability and makeshift had brought the girl to this meeting in the guise of one who had never known a broken night or an hour's care, with a look of such fresh tranquility that it seemed hardly possible she could be one and the same with that wilted little woman whom Lanyard had left in the gray dawn at the entrance to the Hotel Knickerbocker. A tailored suit, necessarily borrowed plumage, became her so completely that it was difficult to believe it not her own. Her eyes were calm and sweet with candour; her colour was a clear and artless glow; the hand she offered the Briton was tremorless. "Colonel Stanistreet?" "I am he, Miss Brooke. It is kind of you to call so early to relieve my mind about your brother. I have known Lionel so long...." "He is resting easily," said the girl. "His complete recovery is merely a matter of time and nursing." "That is good news," said Stanistreet. "Monsieur Duchemin I believe you know." "I have been fortunate in that at least." Gravely Lanyard saluted the hand extended to him in turn. "Mademoiselle is most gracious," he said humbly. "Then--I understand--Monsieur Duchemin must have told you--?" The girl addressed Stanistreet. "Permit me to leave you--" Lanyard interposed. "No," she begged--"please not! I've nothing to say that you may not hear. You have been too much involved--" "If mademoiselle insists," Lanyard demurred. "I feel it is not right I should stay. And yet--if you will indulge me--I should like very much to demonstrate the truth of an old saw...." Two confused looks were his response. "I fear I, for one, do not follow," Stanistreet admitted. "I will explain quite briefly," Lanyard promised. "The adage I have in mind is as old as human wit: Set a thief to catch a thief. And the last time it was quoted in my hearing, it was not to my advantage. I recall, indeed, resenting it enormously." He paused with purpose, looking down at the desk. A pad of blank paper caught his eye. He took it up and examined it with an abstracted manner. "Well, monsieur: the application of your adage?" "Colonel Stanistreet, what would you think if I were to tell you the combination of your safe?" "I should be inclined to suspect that you were the devil," Stanistreet chuckled. "By all accounts a gentleman of intelligence: one is flattered.... Very well: I proceed to demonstrate black art with the aid of this white paper pad. The combination, monsieur, is as follows: nine, twenty-seven, eighteen, thirty-six." A low cry of bewilderment greeted this announcement. Blensop had drawn near and was eyeing Lanyard as if under the influence of hypnotism. "How--how do you know that?" he asked in a broken voice. "Clairvoyance, Mr. Blensop. I seem to see, as I hold this pad, somebody writing upon it the combination for the information of another who had no right to have it--somebody using a pencil with a hard lead, Mr. Blensop; which was very foolish of him, since it made a distinct impression on the under sheet. So you see my magic is rather colourless, after all.... Now, a wiser man, Mr. Blensop, would have used a pen, a fountain pen by preference, with a soft gold nib, well broken. That would leave no impression. If you will lend me the beautiful pen I observe in your pocket, I will give a further demonstration." The eyes of the secretary shifted wildly. He hesitated, moistening dry lips with the tip of a nervous tongue. "And don't try to get out of it, Mr. Blensop, because I am armed and don't mean to let you escape. Besides, that good Mr. Stone patrols the garden." Lanyard's tone changed to one of command. "That pen, monsieur!" Blensop's hand faltered to his waistcoat pocket, hesitated, withdrew, and feebly extended the pen. "I think you _are_ the devil," he stammered in an under-tone--"the devil himself!" Deftly unscrewing the pen-point, Lanyard inverted the barrel above the desk. The cylinder of paper dropped out. "And now, Colonel Stanistreet, if you will call Mr. Stone and have this traitor removed...." XXIII AMNESTY When Stanistreet had gone out in company with Stone, and the broken, weeping Blensop, ending a scene indescribably painful, a lull almost as uncomfortable to Lanyard ensued. Then--"How did you guess?" Cecelia Brooke asked in wonder. Discountenanced by the admiration glowing in her eyes, Lanyard stood fumbling with the disjointed members of Blensop's pen. "Do not give me too much credit," he depreciated: "anybody acquainted with that roll of paper could have guessed that an empty fountain pen would furnish an ideal place of concealment for it. Moreover, just before you came in, that traitor missed his pen, and his consternation betrayed him beyond more doubt to one whose distrust was already astir. As for the other, it was true: Blensop did write down the combination on this pad, using a pencil with a hard lead; the marks are very plain." "But for whose use?" "Ekstrom--Anderson--was here last night, and saw Blensop alone. Colonel Stanistreet was not at home. Knowing what we know now, that Blensop was a creature of the German system here, bought body, soul, and conscience through its studied pandering to his vices, we know he could not well have refused to surrender the combination on demand." "Still I fail to understand...." "Ekstrom, being Ekstrom, could not resist the opportunity to play double. Here was a property he could sell to England at a stiff price. Why not despoil the enemy, put the money in pocket, then return, steal the paper anew for the use of Germany, and collect the stipulated reward from that source? But he reckoned without Blensop's avarice, there; he showed Blensop too plainly the way to profit through betraying both parties to a bargain; Blensop saw no reason why he should not play the game that Ekstrom played. So he stole it for himself, to sell to Germany, but being a poor, witless fool, lacking Ekstrom's dash and audacity, was foredoomed to failure and exposure." The girl continued to eye him steadfastly, and he as steadfastly to evade her direct gaze. "Nothing that you tell me detracts from the wonder of your guessing so accurately," she insisted. "Now I know what Mr. Crane said of you was true, that you are one of the most extraordinary of men." "He was too kind when he said that," Lanyard protested wretchedly. "It is not true. If you must know...." "Well, Monsieur Lanyard?" Her tone was that of a light-hearted girl, arch with provocation. Of a sudden Lanyard understood that he might no longer stop here alone with her. "If you will be a little indulgent with me," he suggested, "I will try to explain what I mean." "And how indulgent, monsieur?" "I have a whim to take the air in this garden. Will you accompany me?" "Why not?" As she led the way through the French windows, he noted with deeper misgivings how her action matched the temper of her voice, how she seemed to-day more deliciously alive and happier than any common mortal. So light her heart! And all since she had found him here! At his wits' ends, he conceded now what he had so long denied. With all her wit and wisdom, with all her charm of beauty, winsomeness, and breeding, with all her ingrained love of truth and honesty, she was no more than Nature had meant her to be, a woman with woman's weakness for the man she must admire. She liked him, divined in him latent qualities somehow excellent. Something in him worked upon her imagination, something, no doubt, in the overcoloured, romantic yarns current about the Lone Wolf, and so had touched her heart. She liked him too well already, and she was willing to like him better. But that must never be. He must rend ruthlessly apart this illusion of romance with which she chose to transfigure the prowling parasite of night, the sneaking thief.... The garden was sweet with the bright promise of Spring. A few weeks more, and its formal walks would wend a riot of flowers. Now its sunlight made amends for what it lacked in beauty of growing things; and its air was warm and fragrant and still in the shelter of the red-brick walls. Midway down that walk, by the side of which a thief had skulked nine hours ago, near that door whose lock had yielded to his cunning keys, the girl paused and confronted Lanyard spiritedly as he came up with heavy step and hang-dog head. "Well, monsieur?" she demanded. "Do you mean to tantalize me longer with your reticence?" But something in the haggard eyes he showed her made the girl catch her breath. "What is it?" she cried anxiously. "Monsieur Duchemin, what is your trouble?" "Only this truth that I must tell you," he said bitterly: "I merely played a part back there, just now. There was neither wit nor guess-work in that business; once I had seen Blensop's panic over the fancied loss of his pen, the rest was knowledge. I saw him and Ekstrom together last night--skulking in those windows, I watched them; and though in my denseness I didn't understand, I saw him write upon that pad, tear off and give the sheet to Ekstrom. And I knew Ekstrom had not succeeded in stealing back what he had sold to Colonel Stanistreet, knew he was guiltless in fact if not in deed." "But--how could you know that?" "Because I was there, in the room, when he entered it after it had been shut up for the night." Conscious of her hands that fluttered like wounded things to her bosom, he looked away in misery. "What were you doing there?" she whispered in the end. "Trying to find that paper, which I had seen Ekstrom sell to Colonel Stanistreet, so that I might make good my promise and relieve your distress by returning it to you. I had opened the safe before he entered, and searched it thoroughly, and knew the paper was not there--though at that time it never entered my thick head to suspect Blensop of treachery. It was neither Blensop nor Ekstrom, Miss Brooke ... it was I who stole that necklace." She made no sound and did not stir; and though he dared not look he knew her stricken gaze was steadfast to his face. "I will say this much in my defence: I did not come with intent to steal, but only to take back what had been stolen from me, and return it to you, who had trusted it to my care. I wanted to do that, because I did not then understand the ins and outs of this intrigue, and had no means of knowing how deeply your honour might be involved." "But you did _not_ take that necklace!" "I am sorry.... I saw it, and could not resist it." "But Mr. Crane assured me you had given up all that sort of thing years ago!" "Notwithstanding that, it seems I may not be trusted...." After another trying silence she declared vehemently: "I do not believe you! You say this thing for some secret purpose of your own. For some reason I can't understand you wish to abase yourself in my sight, to make me think you capable of such infamy. Why--ah, monsieur!--why must you do this?" "Because it isn't fair to represent myself as what I am not, mademoiselle. Once a thief, always--" "No! It isn't true!" "Again I am sorry, but I know. You have been most generous to believe in me. If anything could save me from myself, it would be your confidence. That, I presume, is why I felt called upon to undo my thieving, and make good the loss. The money Colonel Stanistreet paid Ekstrom is now in the safe, back there in the library. The necklace is ... here." Blindly he thrust the tissue packet into her hands. "If you will consent to return it to its owner, when I have gone, I shall be most grateful." Her hands shook so that, when she would open the packet, it escaped her grasp and dropped into a little pool of rain-water which had collected in a hollow of the walk. Lanyard picked it up, stripped off the soiled and sodden paper, dried the necklace with his handkerchief, replaced it in her hand. He heard the deep intake of her breath as she recognized its beauty, then her quavering voice: "You give this back because of me...!" "Because I cannot be an ingrate. I know no other way to prove how I have prized your faith in me.... And now, with your leave, I will go away quietly by this garden gate--" "No--please, no!" "But--" "I have more to say to you. It isn't fair of you to go like this, when I--" She interrupted herself, and when next she spoke he was dashed by a change in her voice from a tone of passionate expostulation to one of amused animation. "Colonel Stanistreet!" she called clearly. "Do come here at once, please!" Startled, Lanyard saw that Stanistreet had appeared in the French windows in company with Crane. In response to Cecelia's hail both came out into the garden, Stanistreet briskly leading, Crane lounging at his heels, champing his cigar, his weathered features knitted against the brightness of the sun. "Good morning, Miss Brooke. Howdy, Lanyard--or are you Duchemin again?" he said; but his salutations were lost in the wonder excited by the girl's next move. "See, Colonel Stanistreet, what we have found!" she cried, and showed him the necklace. "I mean, what Monsieur Duchemin found. It was he who saw it, lying beneath that rose-bush over there. Your burglar must have dropped it in making his escape; you can see the paper he wrapped it in, all rain-wet and muddied." Stanistreet's eyes protruded alarmingly, and his face grew very red before he found breath enough to ejaculate: "God bless my soul!" Breathing hard, he accepted the necklace from Cecelia's hands. "I must--excuse me--I must tell my sister-in-law about this immediately!" He turned and trotted hastily back into the house. Crane lingered but a moment longer. His cheek, as ever, was bulging round his everlasting cigar. Was his tongue therein as well? Lanyard never knew; the man's eyes remained inscrutable for all the kindly shrewdness that glimmered amid their netted wrinkles. "Excuse _me_!" he said suddenly. "I got to tell the colonel something." He got lankily into motion and presently passed in through the windows.... Irresistibly her gaze drew Lanyard's. He lifted careworn eyes and realized her with a great wistfulness upon him. She awaited in silence his verdict, her chin proudly high, her face adorably flushed, her shining eyes level and brave to his, her generous hands outstretched. "Must you go now?" she said tenderly, as he stood hesitant and shamed. "Must you go now, my dear?" THE END 
41005	----	The Great Court Scandal, by Willian Le Queux. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ THE GREAT COURT SCANDAL, BY WILLIAN LE QUEUX. PREFACE. WILLIAM LE QUEUX. William Le Queux, one of the most popular of present-day authors, was born in London on July 2, 1864. He has followed many callings in his time. After studying art in Paris, he made a tour on foot through France and Germany. Then he drifted into journalism, attaching himself to the Paris "Morning News." Later, he crossed to London, where he joined the staff of the "Globe" in the Gallery of the House of Commons. This was in 1888, and he continued to report Parliament till 1891, when he was appointed a sub-editor on the "Globe." Along with his work as a journalist he developed his faculty for fiction, and in 1893 resigned his position on the press to take up novel-writing as a business. His first book was "Guilty Bonds" published in 1890. Since that date he has issued an average of three novels a year. One of Mr. Le Queux's recreations is revolver practice, and that may account for the free use of the "shooting iron" which distinguishes some of his romances. PROLOGUE. "The Ladybird will refuse to have anything to do with the affair, my dear fellow. It touches a woman's honour, and I know her too well." "Bah! We'll compel her to help us. She must." "She wouldn't risk it," declared Harry Kinder, shaking his head. "Risk it! Well, we'll have to risk something! We're in a nice hole just now! Our traps at the Grand, with a bill of two thousand seven hundred francs to pay, and `the Ladybird' coolly sends us from London a postal order for twenty-seven shillings and sixpence--all she has!" "She might have kept it and bought a new sunshade or a box of chocolates with it." "The little fool! Fancy sending twenty-seven bob to three men stranded in Paris! I can't see why old Roddy thinks so much of her," remarked Guy Bourne to his companion. "Because she's his daughter, and because after all you must admit that she's jolly clever with her fingers." "Of course we know that. She's the smartest woman in London. But what makes you think that when the suggestion is made to her she will refuse?" "Well, just this. She's uncommonly good-looking, dresses with exquisite taste, and when occasion demands can assume the manner of a high-born lady, which is, of course, just what we want; but of late I've noticed a very great change in her. She used to act heedless of risk, and entirely without pity or compunction. Nowadays, however, she seems becoming chicken-hearted." "Perhaps she's in love," remarked the other with a sarcastic grin. "That's just it. I honestly think that she really is in love," said the short, hard-faced, clean-shaven man of fifty, whose fair, rather scanty hair, reddish face, tightly-cut trousers, and check-tweed suit gave him a distinctly horsey appearance, as he seated himself upon the edge of the table in the shabby sitting-room _au troisieme_ above the noisy Rue Lafayette, in Paris. "`The Ladybird' in love! Whatever next!" ejaculated Guy Bourne, a man some ten years his junior, and extremely well, even rather foppishly, dressed. His features were handsome, his hair dark, and outwardly he had all the appearance of a well-set-up Englishman. His gold sleeve-links bore a crest and cipher in blue enamel, and his dark moustache was carefully trained, for he was essentially a man of taste and refinement. "Well," he added, "I've got my own opinion, old chap, and you're quite welcome to yours. `The Ladybird' may be in love, as you suspect, but she'll have to help us in this. It's a big thing, I know; but look what it means to us! If she's in love, who's the jay?" he asked, lighting a cigarette carelessly. "Ah! now you ask me a question." "Well," declared Bourne rather anxiously, "whoever he may be, the acquaintanceship must be broken off--and that very quickly, too. For us the very worst catastrophe would be for our little `Ladybird' to fall in love. She might, in one of her moments of sentimentality, be indiscreet, as all women are apt to be; and if so--well, it would be all up with us. You quite recognise the danger?" "I do, most certainly," the other replied, with a serious look, as he glanced around the poorly-furnished room, with its painted wood floor in lieu of carpet. "As soon as we're back we must keep our eyes upon her, and ascertain the identity of this secret lover." "But she's never shown any spark of affection before," Bourne said, although he knew that the secret lover was actually himself. "We must ask Roddy all about it. Being her father, he may know something." "I only wish we were back in London again, sonny," declared Kinder. "Paris has never been safe for us since that wretched affair in the Boulevard Magenta. Why Roddy brought us over I can't think." "He had his eye on something big that unfortunately hasn't come off. Therefore we're now landed at the Grand with a big hotel bill and no money to pay it with. The Johnnie in the bureau presented it to me this morning, and asked for payment. I bluffed him that I was going down to the bank and would settle it this evening." "With twenty-seven and sixpence!" remarked the clean-shaven man with sarcasm. "Yes," responded his companion grimly. "I only wish we could get our traps away. I've got all my new rig-out in my trunk, and can't afford to lose it." "We must get back to London somehow," Harry said decisively. "Every moment we remain here increases our peril. They have our photographs at the Prefecture, remember, and here the police are pretty quick at making an arrest. We're wanted, even now, for the Boulevard Magenta affair. A pity the Doctor hit the poor old chap so hard, wasn't it?" "A thousand pities. But the Doctor was always erratic--always in fear of too much noise being made. He knocked the old fellow down when there was really no necessity: a towel twisted around his mouth would have been quite as effectual, and the affair would not have assumed so ugly a phase as it afterwards did. No; you're quite right, Harry, old chap; Paris is no place for us nowadays." "Ah!" Kinder sighed regretfully. "And yet we've had jolly good times here, haven't we? And we've brought off some big things once or twice, until Latour and his cadaverous crowd became jealous of us, and gave us away that morning at the St. Lazare station, just when Roddy was working the confidence of those two American women. By Jove! we all had a narrow escape, and had to fly." "I remember. Two agents pounced upon me, but I managed to give them the slip and get away that night to Amiens. A good job for us," the younger man added, "that Latour won't have a chance to betray his friends for another fifteen years." "What! has he been lagged?" asked the horsey man as he bit the end off a cigar. "Yes, for a nasty affair down at Marseilles. He was opening a banker's safe--that was his speciality, you know--and he blundered." "Then I'm not sorry for him," Kinder declared, crossing the room and looking out of the window into the busy thoroughfare below. It was noon, on a bright May day, and the traffic over the granite setts in the Rue Lafayette was deafening, the huge steam trams snorting and clanging as they ascended the hill to the Gare du Nord. Guy Bourne was endeavouring to solve a very serious financial difficulty. The three shabbily-furnished rooms in which they were was a small apartment which Roddy Redmayne, alias "The Mute," alias Ward, alias Scott-Martin, and alias a dozen other names beside, had taken for a month, and were, truth to tell, the temporary headquarters of "The Mute's" clever and daring gang of international thieves, who moved from city to city plying their profession. They had been unlucky--as they were sometimes. Harry Kinder had succeeded in getting some jewellery two days before, only to discover to his chagrin that the diamonds were paste. He had seen them in a bad light, otherwise, expert that he was, he would never have touched them. He always left pearls religiously alone. There were far too many imitations, he declared. For three weeks the men had done themselves well in Paris, and spent a considerable amount in ingratiating themselves with certain English and American visitors who were there for the season. Kinder and Bourne worked the big hotels--the Grand, the Continental, and the Chatham, generally frequenting the American bar at the latter place each afternoon about four o'clock, on the keen lookout for English pigeons to pluck. This season, however, ill-luck seemed to constantly follow them, with the result that they had spent their money all to no purpose, and now found themselves with a large hotel bill, and without the wherewithal to discharge it. Guy Bourne's life had been a veritable romance. The son of a wealthy country squire, he had been at Eton and at Balliol, and his father had intended him to enter the Church, for he had an uncle a bishop, and was sure of a decent preferment. A clerical career had, however, no attractions for Guy, who loved all kinds of sport, especially racing, a pastime which eventually proved his downfall. Like many other young men, he became mixed up with a very undesirable set--that unscrupulous company that frequents racecourses--and finding his father's door shut to him, gradually sank lower until he became the friend of Kinder and one of the associates and accomplices of the notorious Roddy Redmayne-- known as "The Mute"--a king among Continental thieves. Like the elder man who stood beside him, he was an audacious, quick-witted, and ingenious thief, very merry and easy-going. He was a man who lived an adventurous life, and generally lived well, too; unscrupulous about annexing other people's property, and therefore retaining nowadays few of the traits of the gentleman. At first he had not been altogether bad; at heart he hated and despised himself; yet he was a fatalist, and had long ago declared that the life of a thief was his destiny, and that it was no use kicking against the pricks. An excellent linguist, a well-set-up figure, a handsome countenance, his hair slightly turning grey, he was always witty, debonair and cosmopolitan, and a great favourite with women. They voted him a charming fellow, never for one moment suspecting that his polished exterior and gentlemanly bearing concealed the fact that he had designs upon their jewellery. His companion, Harry Kinder, was a man of entirely different stamp; rather coarse, muscular, well versed in all the trickery and subterfuge of the international criminal; a clever pickpocket, and perhaps one of the most ingenious sharpers in all Europe. He had followed the profession ever since a lad; had seen the interior of a dozen different prisons in as many countries; and invariably showed fight if detected. Indeed, Harry Kinder was a "tough customer," as many agents of police had discovered to their cost. "Then you really don't think `the Ladybird' will have anything to do with the affair?" Guy remarked at last, standing beside him and gazing aimlessly out of the window. "I fear she won't. If you can persuade her, then it'll all be plain sailing. They'll help us, and the risk won't be very much. Yet after all it's a dirty trick to play, isn't it?" His companion shrugged his shoulders, saying, "Roddy sees no harm in it, and we must live the same as other people. We simply give our services for a stated sum." "Well," declared Kinder, "I've never drawn back from any open and straightforward bit of business where it was our wits against another's, or where the victim is a fool or inexperienced; but I tell you that I draw a line at entrapping an innocent woman, and especially an English lady." "What!" cried Bourne. "You've become conscientious all at once! Do you intend to back out of it altogether?" "I've not yet decided what I shall do. The only thing is that I shall not persuade `the Ladybird' either way. I shall leave her entirely in Roddy's hands." "Then you'd better tell Roddy plainly when he comes back. Perhaps you're in love, just as you say `the Ladybird' is!" "Love! Why, my dear Guy--love at my age! I was only in love once--when I was seventeen. She sat in a kind of fowl-pen and sold stamps in a grocer's shop at Hackney. Since then I can safely say that I've never made a fool of myself over a woman. They are charming all, from seventeen to seventy, but there is not one I've singled out as better than the rest." "Ah, Harry!" declared Guy with a smile, "you're a queer fellow. You are essentially a lady's man, and yet you never fall in love. We all thought once that you were fond of `the Ladybird.'" "`The Ladybird!'" laughed the elder man. "Well, what next? No. `The Ladybird' has got a lover in secret somewhere, depend upon it. Perhaps it is yourself. We shall get at the truth when we return to town." "When? Do you contemplate leaving your things at the Grand, my dear fellow? We can't. We must get money from somewhere--money, and to-day. Why not try some of the omnibuses, or the crowd at one of the railway stations? We might work together this afternoon and try our luck," Guy suggested. "Better the Cafe Americain, or Maxim's to-night," declared Kinder, who knew his Paris well. "There's more money there, and we're bound to pick up a jay or two." At that moment the sharp click of a key in the lock of the outer door caused them to pause, and a moment later they were joined by an elderly, grey-haired, gentlemanly-looking man in travelling-ulster and grey felt hat, who carried a small brown kit-bag which, by its hotel labels, showed sign of long travel. "Hulloa, Roddy!" Kinder cried excitedly in his Cockney dialect. "Luck, I see! What have you got?" "Don't know yet," was the newcomer's reply, his intonation also that of a born Londoner. "I got it from a young woman who arrived by the _rapide_ at the Gare de l'Est." And throwing off his travelling get-up he placed the kit-bag upon the table. Then touching a spring in the lock he lifted it again, and there remained upon the table a lady's dressing-bag with a black waterproof cover. "Looks like something good," declared Guy, watching eagerly. The innocent-looking kit-bag was one of those specially constructed for the use of thieves. The bottom was hinged, with double flaps opening inward. The interior contained sharp iron grips, so that the bag, when placed upon any object smaller than it, would cover it entirely, the flaps forming the bottom opening inward, while the grips, descending, held the bag or other object tight. So the kit-bag, when removed, would also remove the object concealed within it. Roddy, a grey-faced, cool, crafty old fellow of sixty, bore such a serious expression that one might readily have taken him for a dissenting minister or a respectable surgeon. He carefully took off the outer cover of the crocodile-skin dressing-case, examined its gilt lock, and then, taking from his pocket a piece of steel about six inches long, with a pointed end, almost a miniature of a burglar's jemmy, he quickly prised it open. The trio eagerly looked within, and saw that it was an elegantly-fitted bag, with gold-topped bottles, and below some miscellaneous articles and letters lay a small, cheap leather bag. In a moment the wily old thief had it open, and next instant there was displayed a magnificent bodice ornament in diamonds, a pair of exquisite pearl earrings, several fine bracelets, a long rope of splendid pearls, a fine ruby brooch, and a quantity of other ornaments. "Excellent!" exclaimed Guy. "We're on our feet once more! Well done, Roddy, old man! We were just thinking that we'd have to pick the pockets of some poor wretches if things didn't change, and I never like doing that." "No," remarked the leader of the gang, critically examining one after another of the articles he had stolen. "I wonder to whom these belong?" he added. "They're uncommonly good stuff, at any rate. Ascertain what those letters say." Guy took up the letters and glanced at the superscriptions upon the envelopes. "By Heaven!" he gasped next instant, and crushing the letters in his hand stood staring at the open bag. "What infernal irony of Fate is this? What curse is there upon us now? Look! They are hers--hers! And we have taken them!" The three men exchanged glances, but no word was uttered. The startling truth held Guy Bourne speechless, staggered, stupefied. CHAPTER ONE. CONCERNS A COURT INTRIGUE. The bright moon shed a white light over the great, silent courtyards of the Imperial palace at Vienna. A bugle had just sounded, the guards had changed with a sudden clang of arms that rang out in the clear night, followed by the sound of men marching back to the guardhouse. A sharp word of command, a second bugle note, and then all was quiet again, save for the slow, measured tread of the sentries at each angle of the ponderous palace. From without all looked grim and gloomy, in keeping with that strange fate that follows the hapless Hapsbourgs; yet beyond those black walls, in the farther wing of the Imperial palace were life and gaiety and music; indeed there was presented perhaps the most magnificent scene in all Europe. The first Court ball of the season was at its height, and the aged Emperor Francis-Joseph was himself present--a striking figure in his uniform and orders. Filled with the most brilliant patrician crowd in all the world--the women in tiaras and blazing with jewels, and the men in Court dress or in gorgeous uniforms--the huge ballroom, with its enormous crystal electroliers and its gold--and--white Renaissance decorations, had never been the scene of a more dazzling display. Archdukes and archduchesses, princes and princesses, nobles and diplomatists, ministers of the empire and high functionaries of State danced or gossiped, intrigued or talked scandal; or those whose first ball it was worried themselves over points of etiquette that are always so puzzling to one not born in the Court atmosphere. The music, the scent of the flowers, the glare and glitter, the beauty of the high-born women, the easy swagger of the bestarred and beribboned men, combined to produce a scene almost fairy-like. Laughter rang from pretty lips, and men bent to whisper into the ears of their partners as they waltzed over the perfect floor, after having paid homage to their Emperor--that lonely, broken man whose good wife, alas! had fallen beneath the assassin's knife. A sovereign's heart may be broken, but he must nevertheless keep up a brave show before his subjects. So he stood at the end of the room with the Imperial circle about him, smiling upon them and receiving their homage, although he longed to be back in his own quiet room at the farther end of the palace, where their laughter and the strains of music could not reach his ears. One pale, sweet-faced woman in that gay, irresponsible crowd glanced at him and read his heart. Her fair beauty was extremely striking, and her neat-waisted figure perfect. Indeed, she had long ago been acknowledged to be the most lovely figure at the Austrian Court--the most brilliant Court of Europe--a countenance which even her wide circle of enemies could not criticise without showing their ill nature; a perfect countenance, which, though it bore the hallmark of her imperial birth as an Archduchess, yet was sweet, dimpled, and innocent as a child's. The Princess Claire--Cecille-Marie-Alexandrine was twenty-four. Born and bred at that Court, she had three years before been married to the Crown Prince of a German house, the royal house of Marburg, and had left it for the Court at Treysa, over which her husband would, by reason of his father's great age, very soon be sovereign. At that moment she was back in Vienna on a brief visit to her father, the Archduke Charles, and had taken a turn around the room with a smart, well-set-up man in cavalry uniform--her cousin Prince George of Anhalt. She was dressed in ivory white, wearing in her fair hair a wonderful tiara; while in the edge of her low-cut bodice there showed the crosses and ribbons of the Orders of St. Elizabeth and Teresa--decorations bestowed only upon Imperial princesses. Many eyes were turned upon her, and many of the friends of her girlhood days she saluted with that charming frankness of manner which was so characteristic of her open nature. Suddenly, while walking around the room, a clean-shaven, dark-haired, quick-eyed man of thirty in Court dress bowed low before her, and in an instant, recognising him, she left her cousin's side, and crossing spoke to him. "I must see your Imperial Highness before she leaves Vienna," he whispered quickly to her in English, after she had greeted him in German and inquired after his wife. "I have something private and important to tell you." The Crown Princess looked at him quickly, and recognised that the man was in earnest. Her curiosity became aroused; but she could ask no questions, for a hundred eyes were now upon her. "Make an appointment--quickly, your Highness. I am here expressly to see you," he said, noticing that Prince George was approaching to carry her off to the upper end of the room, where the members of the Imperial family were assembled. "Very well. In the Stadtpark, against the Caroline Bridge, at eight to-morrow night. It will be dark then." "Be careful that you are not followed," he whispered; and then he bowed deeply as she left him. When her cousin came up he said,-- "You are very foolish, Claire! You know how greatly such a breach of etiquette annoys the Emperor. Why do you speak with such people?" "Because I like to," she answered defiantly. "If I have the misfortune to be born an Imperial Archduchess and am now Crown Princess, it need surely not preclude me from speaking to people who are my friends?" "Oh, he is a friend, is he? Who is the fellow?" inquired the Prince, raising his eyebrows. "Steinbach. He is in our Ministry of Foreign Affairs." "You really possess some queer friends, Claire," the young man said, smiling. "They will suspect you of being a Socialist if you go on in this way. You always shock them each time you come back to Vienna because of your extraordinary unconventionality." "Do I?" she laughed. "Well, I'm sure I don't care. When I lived here before I married they were for ever being scandalised by my conduct in speaking to people. But why shouldn't I? I learn so much them. We are all too narrow-minded; we very little of the world beyond the palace walls." "I heard yesterday that you'd been seen walking in the Kamthnerstrasse with two women who were not of the nobility. You really oughtn't to do that. It isn't fair to us, you know," he said, twisting his moustache. "We all know how wilful you are, and how you love to scandalise us; but you should draw the line at displaying such socialistic tendencies openly and publicly." "My dear old George," she laughed, turning her bright eyes to him, "you're only my cousin and not my husband. I shall do exactly what I like. If it amuses and interests me to see the life of the people, I shall do so; therefore it's no use talking. I have had lots of lectures from the Emperor long ago, and also from my stiff old father-in-law the King. But when they lecture me I only do it all the more," she declared, with a mischievous laugh upon her sweet face. "So they've given me up." "You're incorrigible, Claire--absolutely incorrigible," her cousin declared as he swung along at her side. "I only _do_ hope that your unconventionality will not be taken advantage of by your jealous enemies. Remember, you are the prettiest woman at our Court as well as at your own. Before long, too, you will be a reigning queen; therefore reflect well whether this disregard of the first rule of Court etiquette, which forbids a member of the Imperial family to converse with a commoner, is wise. For my own part, I don't think it is." "Oh, don't lecture me any more for goodness' sake," exclaimed the Crown Princess with a little musical laugh. "Have this waltz with me." And next moment the handsome pair were on their way down the great room with all eyes turned upon them. When, ten minutes later, they returned to join the Imperial circle about the Emperor, the latter motioned his niece towards him. "Come to me when this is ended," he said in a serious voice. "I wish to talk to you. You will find me in the white room at two o'clock." The Crown Princess bowed, and returned to the side of her father, the Archduke Charles, a tall, thin, grey-haired man in a brilliant uniform glittering with orders. She knew that his Majesty's quick eye had detected that she had spoken with the commoner Steinbach, and anticipated that she was to receive another lecture. Why, she wondered, was Steinbach there? Truth to tell, Court life bored her. She was tired to death of all that intrigue and struggle for place, power, and precedence, and of that unhealthy atmosphere of recklessness wherein she had been born and bred. She longed for the free open life in the country around Wartenstein, the great old castle in the Tyrol that was her home, where she could tramp for miles in the mountains and be friendly with the honest country folk. After her marriage--a marriage of convenience to unite two royal houses--she had found that she had exchanged one stiff and brilliant Court for another, more dull, more stiff, and where the etiquette was even more rigid. Those three years of married life had wrought a very great change in her. She had left Vienna a bright, athletic girl, fond of all sports, a great walker, a splendid horsewoman, sweet, natural, and quite unaffected; yet now, after those three years of a Court, smaller yet far more severe than that of Austria, she had become rebellious, with one desire--to forsake it all and live the private life of an ordinary citizen. Her own world, the little patrician but narrow world behind the throne, whispered and shrugged its shoulders. It was believed that her marriage was an unhappy one, but so clever was she that she never betrayed her bitterness of heart. Like all her Imperial family, she was a born diplomatist, and to those who sought to read her secret her face was always sphinx-like. Her own Court saw her as a merry, laughter-loving woman, witty, clever, a splendid dancer, and with a polished and charming manner that had already endeared her to the people over whom she was very shortly to reign. But at Court her enemies looked upon her with distrust. She exhibited no sign of displeasure on any occasion, however provoking. She was equally pleasant with enemies as with friends. For that reason they suspected her. Her charming ingenuousness and her entire disregard of the traditional distinction between the Imperial house and the people had aroused the anger of her husband's father, the aged King, a sovereign of the old school, who declared that she was fast breaking up all the traditions of the royal house, and that her actions were a direct incentive to Socialism and Anarchism within the kingdom. But she only laughed. She had trained herself to laugh gleefully even when her young heart was filled with blackest sorrow; even though her husband neglected and despised her; even though she was estranged for ever from her own home and her own beloved family circle at the great mountain stronghold. Next to the Emperor Francis-Joseph, her father, the Archduke Charles, was the greatest and wealthiest man in Austria. He had a Court of his own with all its appendages and functionaries, a great palace in the Parkring in Vienna, another in Buda-Pesth, the magnificent castle of Wartenstein, near Innsbruck, besides four other castles in various parts of Austria, and a beautiful villa at Tivoli, near Rome. From her birth the Princess Claire had always breathed the vitiated air of the courts of Europe; and yet ever since a girl, walking with her English governess at Wartenstein, she had longed and dreamed of freedom. Her marriage, however, was arranged for her, and she awakened from the glamour of it all to find herself the wife of a peevish prince who had not finished the sowing of his wild oats, and who, moreover, seemed to have no place for her in his heart. Too late she realised the tragedy of it all. When alone she would sit for hours in tears. Yet to no living soul, not even to her father or to the dark-haired, middle-aged Countess de Trauttenberg, her lady-in-waiting and confidante, did she utter one single syllable. She kept her secret. The world envied her her marvellous beauty, her exquisite figure, her wealth, her position, her grace and ineffable charm. Yet what would it have said had it known the ugly truth? Surely it would have pitied her; for even an Imperial archduchess, forbidden to speak with the common world, has a human heart, and is entitled to human sympathy. The Crown Prince was not present. He was, alas I seldom with the Princess. As she stood there in the Imperial circle with folded hands, laughing merrily and chatting vivaciously with the small crowd of Imperial Highnesses, no one would have guessed that she was a woman whose young heart was already broken. Ah yes! she made a brave show to conceal her bitterness and sorrow from the world, because she knew it was her duty to do so--her duty to her princely family and to the kingdom over which she was soon to be queen. The Emperor at last made his exit through the great white-and-gold doors, the Imperial chamberlains bowing low as he passed out. Then at two o'clock the Crown Princess managed to slip away from the Imperial circle, and with her rich train sweeping behind her, made her way rapidly through the long, tortuous corridors to his Majesty's private workroom, known as the White Chamber, on the other side of the great palace. She tapped upon the door with her fan, and obtained entrance at once, finding the Emperor alone, standing near the great wood fire, for it was a chilly evening, close to his big, littered writing-table. His heavy expression told her that he was both thoughtful and displeased. The chamber, in contrast to the luxury of the splendid palace, was plainly furnished, essentially the workroom of the ruler of a great empire--the room in which he gave audiences and transacted the affairs of the Austria-Hungarian nation. "Claire," he said, in a low, hard voice, "be seated; I wish to speak to you." "Ah, I know," exclaimed the brilliant woman, whose magnificent diamonds glittered beneath the electric light, "I know! I admit, sire, that I committed an unpardonable breach of etiquette in speaking with Steinbach. You are going to reprove me--I know you are," she pouted. "But do forgive me. I did not reflect. It was an indiscretion." "You never reflect, Claire; you are too irresponsible," the Emperor said in a tone of distinct displeasure. "But it is not that. I have called you here to learn why the Crown Prince is not in Vienna with you." He fixed his grey, deep-sunken eyes upon hers, and awaited her answer. "Well--" she faltered. "There are some Court dinners, and--and I believe he has some military engagements--anniversaries or something." The Emperor smiled dubiously. "You are shielding him, Claire," he said slowly; "I see you are. I know that Ferdinand is estranged from you. Of late I have learnt things concerning you--more than you imagine. You are unloved by your husband, and unhappy, and yet you are bearing your burden in silence, though you are a young and beautiful woman. Now, Claire," he said in a changed voice, placing his hand tenderly upon his niece's shoulder, "tell me the truth. I wish to hear the truth from your own lips. Do you know what they say of you? They say," he added, lowering his voice--"they say that you have a lover!" "A lover!" she gasped hoarsely, starting from her chair, her beautiful face as white as the dress she wore; "a lover! Who--who told you so?" CHAPTER TWO. HER IMPERIAL HIGHNESS. Whatever passed between the Emperor and his niece, whether she confessed the truth or defied him, one fact was plain--she had been moved to bitter tears. When, half an hour later, she went back through those long corridors, her rich train sweeping over the red carpets, her white-gloved hands were clenched, her teeth set hard, her eyes red, her countenance changed. Her face was changed; it was that of a woman heart-broken and desperate. She did not return to the ballroom, but descended to the courtyard, where one of the Imperial servants called her carriage, and she returned alone to her father's splendid palace in the Parkring. Ascending straight to her room, she dismissed the Countess de Trauttenberg, her lady-in-waiting, and Henriette, her French maid; and then locking the door, she tore off her tiara and her jewels and sank upon her knees upon the old carved prie-dieu before the ivory crucifix placed opposite her bed. Her hands were clasped, her fair head bent, her sweet lips moved in fervent prayer, her eyes the while streaming with tears. Plunged in grief and unhappiness, she besought the Almighty to aid and counsel her in the difficult situation in which she now found herself. "Help me, my Father!" she sobbed aloud. "Have mercy upon me--mercy upon a humble woman who craves Thy protection and direction." And her clasped hands trembled in the fervency of her appeal. Those who had seen her an hour ago, the gay, laughing figure, blazing with jewels, the centre of the most brilliant Court of Europe, would have been astounded to see her at that moment prostrated before her Maker. In Austria, as in Germany, she was believed to be a rather giddy woman, perhaps by reason of her uncommon beauty, and perhaps because of her easy-going light-heartedness and disregard for all Court etiquette. Yet the truth was that the strong religious principles instilled into her by her mother, the deceased Archduchess Charles, had always remained, and that no day passed without one hour set apart for her devotions, in secret even from the Countess, from Henriette, and from the Crown Prince, her husband. She was a Catholic, of course, like all her Imperial house, but upon one point she disagreed--that of confession. Her husband, though he professed Catholicism, at heart scoffed at religion; and more than once when he had found her in the private chapel of the palace at Treysa had jeered at her. But she bore it all in patience. She was his wife, and she had a duty to perform towards his nation--to become its queen. For nearly an hour she remained upon her knees before the crucifix, with the tiny oil-light flickering in its cup of crimson glass, kneeling in mute appeal, strong in her faith, yet humble as the humblest commoner in the land. "My God!" she cried aloud at last. "Hear me! Answer my prayer! Give me strength and courage, and direct my footsteps in the right path. I am a weak woman, after all; a humble sinner who has repented. Help me, O God! I place all my trust in Thee! Amen." And, crossing herself, she rose slowly with a deep-drawn breath that sounded weirdly through the fine room, and walking unsteadily towards the big cheval glass, gazed at her own reflection. She saw how pale and haggard was her face, and looked at her trembling hands. The ribbons and stars at the edge of her bodice caught her eye, and with a sudden movement she tore them off and cast them heedlessly upon the table as though the sight of them annoyed her. They had been conferred upon her on her marriage. She sighed as she looked back at them. Ah, the hollow mockery of it all! She glanced out of the window, and saw in the bright moonlight the sentry pacing up and down before the palace. Across the wide boulevard were the dark trees of the park. It recalled to her the appointment she had made there for the next evening. "I wonder why Steinbach has followed me here?" she exclaimed to herself. "How did he obtain entrance to the Court ball? Probably he has some friend here. But surely his mission is urgent, or he would never have run this risk. I was, however, foolish to speak to him before them all--very foolish. Yet," she added slowly to herself, "I wonder what he has to tell me? I wonder--" And, without concluding her sentence, she stood gazing out upon the dark park, deep in thought, her mind full of grave apprehensions of the future. She was a Hapsbourg--and evil fate follows a Hapsbourg always. She had prayed to God; for God alone could save her. She, the most brilliant and the most envied woman in the Empire, was perhaps the most heart-broken, the most unhappy. Casting herself into an armchair before the log fire, she covered her drawn, white face with her hands and sobbed bitterly, until at last she sat immovable, staring straight into the embers watching the spark die out, until she fell asleep where she sat. Next day her sweet, fresh face bore no traces of her desperation of the night. She was as gay and merry as ever, and only Henriette noticed in her eyes a slight redness, but discreetly said nothing. The Countess, a rather pleasant-faced but stiff-mannered person, brought her her engagement-book, from which it appeared that she was due at a review by the Emperor at eleven o'clock; therefore, accompanied by her lady-in-waiting, she drove there, and was everywhere admired by the great crowds assembled. The Austrian people called her "our Claire," and the warm-hearted Viennese cheered when they recognised that she was back again among them. It was a brilliant scene in the bright spring sunlight, for many of the Imperial Court were present, and the troops made a brave show as they marched past his Majesty and the assembled members of the Imperial house. Then she had a luncheon engagement with the Archduchess Gisela, the wife of Prince Leopold of Bavaria, afterwards drove in the Ringstrasse and the Prater, dined early at her father's palace, after giving Henriette leave of absence for the evening, and also allowing the Countess de Trauttenberg her freedom, saying that she intended to remain at home. Then, shortly before eight o'clock, she ascended to her room, exchanged her turquoise-blue dinner-gown for a plain, stiff, tailor-made dress, put on a hat with a lace veil that concealed her features, and managed to slip across the courtyard of the domestic offices and out of the palace unseen. The night was cloudy and dark, with threatening rain, as she crossed the broad Parkring, entering the park near the Kursalon, and traversing the deserted walks towards the River Wien. The chill wind whistled in the budding trees above, sweeping up the dust in her path, and the statuesque guard whom she passed in the shadow glanced inquisitively at her, of course not recognising her. There was no one in the Stadtpark at that hour, and all was silent, gloomy, and dismal, well in keeping with her own sad thoughts. Behind her, the street lamps of the Parkring showed in a long, straight line, and before her were the lights on the Caroline Bridge, the spot appointed for the meeting. Her heart beat quickly. It was always difficult for her to escape without the knowledge of De Trauttenberg or Henriette. The former was, as a good lady-in-waiting should be, ever at her side, made her engagements for her, and saw that she kept them. That night, however, the Countess desired to visit her sister who was in Vienna with her husband, therefore it had happened opportunely; and, freed of Henriette, she had now little to fear. The dress she wore was one she used when in the country. She had thrown a short cape of Henriette's about her shoulders, and was thus sufficiently disguised to avoid recognition by people in the streets. As she came around a sudden bend in the pathway to the foot of the bridge the dark figure of a man in a black overcoat emerged from the shadow, and was next instant at her side, holding his hat in his hand and bowing before her. "I began to fear that your Imperial Highness would not come," he said breathlessly in German. "Or that you had been prevented." "Is it so very late, then?" she inquired in her sweet, musical voice, as the man walked slowly at her side. "I had difficulty in getting away in secret." "No one has followed you, Princess?" he said, glancing anxiously behind him. "Are you quite sure?" "No one. I was very careful. But why have you asked me to come here? Why were you at the ball last night? How did you manage to get a card?" "I came expressly to see you, Princess," answered the young man in a deep earnest voice. "It was difficult to get a command to the ball, but I managed it, as I could approach you by no other way. At your Highness's own Court you, as Crown Princess, are unapproachable for a commoner like myself, and I feared to write to you, as De Trauttenberg often attends to your correspondence." "But you are my friend, Steinbach," she said. "I am always to be seen by my friends." "At your own risk, your Highness," he said quickly. "I know quite well that last night when you stopped and spoke to me it was a great breach of etiquette. Only it was imperative that I should see you to-night. To you, Princess, I owe everything. I do not forget your great kindness to me; how that I was a poor clerk out of work, with my dear wife ill and starving, and how, by your letter of recommendation, I was appointed in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, first as French translator, and now as a secretary. Were it not for you, Princess, I and my family would have starved. You saved me from ruin, and I hope you are confident that in me, poor and humble though I am, you at least have a friend." "I am sure of that, Steinbach," was her Highness's kindly reply. "We need not cross the bridge," she said. "It is quiet along here, by the river. We shall meet no one." For a few moments a silence fell between them, and the Princess began to wonder why he had asked her there to meet him. At last, when they were in a dark and narrower pathway, he turned suddenly to her and said,-- "Princess, I--I hardly know how to speak, for I fear that you may take what I have to say in a wrong sense. I mean," he faltered, "I mean that I fear you may think it impertinent of me to speak to you, considering the great difference in our stations." "Why?" she asked calmly, turning to him with some surprise. "Have you not just told me that you are my friend?" She noticed at that moment that he still held his hat in his hand, and motioned to him to reassume it. "Yes. I am your Highness's friend," he declared quickly. "If I were not, I would not dare to approach you, or to warn you of what at this moment is in progress." "What is in progress?" she exclaimed in surprise. "Tell me." She realised that this man had something serious to say, or surely he would never have followed her to Vienna, and obtained entrance to the Imperial Court by subterfuge. "Your Highness is in peril," he declared in a low voice, halting and standing before her. "You have enemies, fierce, bitter enemies, on every side; enemies who are doing their utmost to estrange you from your husband; relentless enemies who are conspiring might and main against you and the little Princess Ignatia. They--" "Against my child?" cried the Princess, amazed. "Do you really mean that there is actually a conspiracy against me?" "Alas! that is so, Highness," said the man, seriously and distinctly. "By mere chance I have learnt of it, and being unable to approach you at your own Court, I am here to give you timely warning of what is intended." She was silent, gazing straight into her companion's face, which was, however, hardly distinguishable in the darkness. She could scarcely believe the truth of what this commoner told her. Could this man, whom she had benefited by her all-powerful influence, have any ulterior motive in lying to her? "And what is intended?" she inquired in a strange, hard voice, still half dubious and half convinced. "There is a plot, a dastardly, widespread conspiracy to cause your Highness's downfall and part you from the Crown Prince before he comes to the throne," was his answer. "But why? For what motive?" she inquired, starting at the amazing revelation. "Cannot your Highness discern that your jealous enemies are in fear of you?" he said. "They know that one day ere long our invalid King must die, and your husband will then ascend the throne. You will be Queen, and they feel convinced that the day of your accession will be their last day at Court--frankly, that having seen through their shams and intrigues, you will dismiss them all and change the entire entourage." "Ah! I see," replied the Crown Princess Claire in a hoarse, bitter voice. "They fear me because they have realised their own shortcomings. So they are conspiring against me to part me from my husband, and drive me from Court! Yes," she sighed heavily, "I know that I have enemies on every side. I am a Hapsbourg, and that in itself is sufficient to prejudice them against me. I have never been a favourite with their Majesties the King and Queen because of my Liberal tendencies. They look upon me as a Socialist; indeed, almost as a revolutionist. Their sycophants would be glad enough to see me banished from Court. And yet the Court bow to me with all that hateful obsequiousness." "Your Highness is, unfortunately, quite right," declared the man Steinbach. "The Crown Prince is being enticed farther and farther from you, as part of the ingenious plot now afoot. The first I knew of it was by accident six months ago, when some letters from abroad fell into my hands at the Ministry. The conspiracy is one that permeates the whole Court. The daily talk of your enemies is the anticipation of your downfall." "My downfall! But how is that to be accomplished?" she demanded, her fine eyes flashing with indignation. "I surely have nothing to fear-- have I? I beg of you to be quite candid with me, Steinbach. In this affair your information may be of greatest service, and I am deeply indebted to you. It staggers me. What have I done that these people should seek my ruin?" she cried in blank dismay. "Will your Highness pardon me if I tell the truth?" asked the man at her side, speaking very seriously. "You have been too free, too frank, and too open-minded. Every well-meant action of yours is turned to account by those who seek to do you evil. Those whom you believe to be your friends are your worst antagonists. I have longed to approach you and tell you this for months, but I always feared. How could I reach you? They are aware that the secret correspondence passed through my hands, and therefore they suspect me of an intention of betraying them." "Then you are here at imminent risk to yourself, Steinbach," she remarked very slowly, looking again straight into his dark face. "I am here as your Highness's friend," replied the young man simply. "It is surely worth the risk to save my gracious benefactress from falling victim to their foul, dastardly conspiracy?" "And who, pray, are my worst antagonists?" she asked hoarsely. He gave her rapidly half a dozen names of Court officials and persons in the immediate entourage of their Majesties. "And," he added, "do not trust the Countess de Trauttenberg. She is playing you false. She acts as spy upon you and notes your every action." "The Countess--their spy!" she gasped, utterly taken aback, for if there was one person at Court in whom she had the utmost confidence it was the woman who had been in her personal service ever since her marriage. "I have documentary proof of it," the man said quietly. "I would beg of your Highness to make no sign whatever that the existence of the plot is known to you, but at the same time exercise the greatest caution, both for your own sake and that of the little Princess." "Surely they do not mean to kill me, Steinbach?" she exclaimed in alarm. "No--worse. They intend to banish your Highness from Court in disgrace, as a woman unworthy to reign over us as Queen. They fear you because you have discovered their own intrigues, corruptions, and scandals, and they intend that, at all costs, you shall never ascend the throne." "But my husband! He should surely know this!" "Princess," exclaimed the clean-shaven young man, speaking very slowly and seriously, "I regret that it is I who am compelled to reveal this to you, but the Crown Prince already believes ill of you. He suspects; and therefore whatever lies they, now invent concerning you he accepts as truth. Princess," he added in a low, hard voice, "you are in deadly peril. There, the truth is out, for I cannot keep it from you longer. I am poor, unknown, without influence. All I can do is to give you this warning in secret, because I hope that I may call myself your friend." The unhappy daughter of the Imperial house was silent. The revelation was startling and amazing. She had never realised that a plot was afoot against her in her husband's kingdom. Words entirely failed her. She and her little daughter Ignatia were marked down as victims. She now for the first time realised her peril, yet she was powerless to stem the tide of misfortune that, sooner or later, must overwhelm her and crush her. She stood there a defenceless woman. CHAPTER THREE. THE REVELATIONS OF A COMMONER. Princess and commoner walked in silence, side by side. The rough night wind blew the dust in their faces, but they bent to it heedlessly, both too full of their own thoughts for words; the man half confused in the presence of the brilliant woman who ere long would be his sovereign; the woman stupefied at the dastardly intrigue that had not only estranged her husband from her, but had for its object the expulsion from the kingdom of herself and her child. Open-hearted as she was, liberal-minded, pleasant, easy-going, and a delightful companion, she had never sufficiently realised that at that stiff, narrow-minded Court there were men and women who hated her. All of us are so very loth to believe that we have enemies, and more especially those who believe in the honesty and integrity of mankind. She reflected upon her interview with the Emperor. She remembered his Majesty's hard words. Had those conspiring against her obtained his ear? Even De Trauttenberg, the tall, patient, middle-aged woman in whom she had reposed such confidence, was their spy! Steinbach's story staggered belief. And yet--and yet was not the Emperor's anger plain proof that he knew something--that a foul plot was really in progress? Along those dark winding paths they strolled slowly, meeting no one, for the place was utterly deserted. It was an exciting escapade, and dangerous withal. The man at last broke the silence, saying,-- "I need not impress upon your Imperial Highness the necessity for discretion in this matter. To betray your knowledge of the affair would be to betray me." "Trust me," was her answer. "I know how to keep a secret, and I am not likely to forget this important service you have rendered me." "My only regret is that I was unable to approach you months ago, when I first made the discovery. Your Highness would have then been able to avoid the pitfalls constantly set for you," the man said meaningly. The Princess Claire bit her lip. She knew to what he referred. She had been foolish, ah yes; very foolish. And he dare not be more explicit. "Yes," she sighed. "I know--I know to what you refer. But surely we need not discuss it. Even though I am Crown Princess, I am a woman, after all." "I beg your Highness's pardon," he exclaimed quickly, fearing that she was annoyed. "There is nothing to pardon," was her reply. "You are my friend, and speak to me in my own interests. For that I thank you. Only--only--" she added, "all that you've just told me is such a startling revelation. My eyes are opened now. I see the dastardly ingenuity of it all. I know why my husband--" But she checked herself instantly. No. However ill-treated she had been she would preserve her secret. She would not complain to a commoner at risk of her domestic infelicity going forth to her people. It was true that within a year of marriage he had thrown her down in her room and kicked her in one of his paroxysms of temper. He had struck her blows innumerable; but she had borne all in patience, and De Trauttenberg had discovered dark marks upon her white shoulders which she had attributed to a fall upon the ice. She saw now the reason of his estrangement; how his sycophants had poisoned his mind against her because they feared her. "Steinbach," she said at last, "tell me the truth. What do the people think of me? You are a commoner and live among them. I, imprisoned at Court, unfortunately, know nothing. The opinions of the people never reach us." "The people, your Highness, love you. They call you `their Claire.' You surely know how, when you drive out, they raise their hats and shout in acclamation." "Yes," she said in a low, mechanical voice, "but is it real enthusiasm? Would they really love me if I were Queen?" "Your Highness is at this moment the most popular woman in the whole kingdom of Marburg. If it were known that this plot was in progress there would in all probability be a revolution. Stuhlmann and his friends are hated everywhere, and their overthrow would cause universal satisfaction." "And the people do not really think ill of me?" "Think ill of you, Princess?" he echoed. "Why, they literally worship you and the little Princess Ignatia." She was silent again, walking very slowly, and reflecting deeply. It was so seldom she had opportunity of speaking with one of the people unless he were a deputy or a diplomatist, who then put on all his Court manners, was unnatural, and feared to speak. From the man beside her, however, she saw she might learn the truth of a matter which was ever uppermost in her mind. And yet she hesitated to approach what was, after all, a very delicate subject. Suddenly, with her mind made up, she halted, and turning to him, said,-- "Steinbach, I want you to answer me truthfully. Do not evade the question for fear of annoying me. Speak openly, as the friend you are to me. I wish to know one thing," and she lowered her voice until it almost faltered. "Have you heard a--well, a scandal concerning myself?" He made no answer. She repeated her question; her veiled face turned to his. "Your Highness only a few moments ago expressed a desire not to discuss the matter," he replied in a low, distinct voice. "But I want to know," she urged. "I must know. Tell me the truth. If you are my friend you will at least be frank with me when I command." "If you command, Princess, then I must obey, even with reluctance," was his response. "Yes. I have heard some gossip. It is spoken openly in Court by the _dames du palais_, and is now being whispered among the people." She held her breath. Fortunately, it was dark, for she knew that her countenance had gone crimson. "Well?" she asked. "And what do they say of me?" "They, unfortunately, couple your Highness's name with that of Count Leitolf, the chief of the private cabinet of his Majesty," was his low answer. "Yes," she said in a toneless voice. "And what more?" "They say that Major Scheel, attache at the Embassy in Paris, recognised you driving with the Count in the Avenue de l'Opera, when you were supposed to be at Aix-les-Bains with the little Princess Ignatia." "Yes. Go on." "They say, too, that he follows you everywhere--and that your maid Henriette helps you to leave the palace in secret to meet him." She heard his words, and her white lips trembled. "They also declare," he went on in a low voice, "that your love of the country is only because you are able to meet him without any one knowing, that your journey here to Vienna is on account of him--that he has followed you here." She nodded, without uttering a word. "The Count has, no doubt, followed your Highness, indiscreetly if I may say so, for I recognised him last night dining alone at Breying's." "He did not see you?" she exclaimed anxiously. "No. I took good care not to be seen. I had no desire that my journey here should be known, or I should be suspected. I return to-night at midnight." "And to be frank, Steinbach, you believe that all this has reached my husband's ears?" she whispered in a hard, strained voice. "All that is detrimental to your Highness reaches the Crown Prince," was his reply to the breathless woman, "and certainly not without embellishments. That is why I implore of you to be circumspect--why I am here to tell you of the plot to disgrace you in the people's eyes." "But the people themselves are now speaking of--of the Count?" she said in a low, uncertain voice, quite changed from her previous musical tones when first they met. "A scandal--and especially a Court one--very soon spreads among the people. The royal servants gossip outside the palace, and moreover your Highness's many enemies are only too delighted to assist in spreading such reports. It gives motive for the Crown Prince's estrangement." Her head was bent, her hands were trembling. The iron had entered her soul. The people--the people whom she so dearly loved, and who had waved their hands and shouted those glad welcomes to her as she drove out--were now whispering of Leitolf. She bit her lip, and her countenance went pale as death as the truth arose before her in all its hideous ghastliness. Even the man at her side, the humble man who had stood by her as her friend, knew that Leitolf was there--in Vienna--to be near her. Even Steinbach could have no further respect for her as a woman--only respect because she was one day to be his sovereign. Her hands were clenched; she held her breath, and shivered as the chill wind cut through her. She longed to be back in her father's palace; to be alone in her room to think. "And nothing more?" she asked in that same blank voice which now caused her companion to wonder. "Only that they say evil of you that is not worth repeating," was his brief answer. She sighed again, and then when she had sufficiently recovered from the effect of his words, she whispered in a low voice,-- "I--I can only thank you, Steinbach, for giving me this warning. Forgive me if--if I am somewhat upset by it--but I am a woman--and perhaps it is only natural. Trust me to say nothing. Leave Vienna to-night and return home. If you ever wish to communicate with me write guardedly, making an appointment, and address your letter to Madame Emond at the Poste Restante in Brussels. You will recollect the name?" "Most certainly I shall, your Highness. I can only ask pardon for speaking so openly. But it was at your request." "Do not let us mention it further," she urged, her white lips again compressed. "Leave me now. It is best that I should walk down yonder to the Parkring alone." He halted, and bowing low, his hat in his hand, said,-- "I would ask your Imperial Highness to still consider me your humble servant to command in any way whatsoever, and to believe that I am ever ready to serve you and to repay the great debt of gratitude I owe to you." And, bending, he took her gloved hand and raised it to his lips in obeisance to the princess who was to be his queen. "Adieu, Steinbach," she said in a broken voice. "And for the service you have rendered me to-night I can only return you the thanks of an unhappy woman." Then she turned from him quickly, and hurried down the path to the park entrance, where shone a single gas lamp, leaving him standing alone, bowing in silence. He watched her graceful figure out of sight, then sighed, and turned away in the opposite direction. A few seconds later the tall, dark figure of a man emerged noiselessly from the deep shadow of the tree where, unobserved, he had crept up and stood concealed. The stranger glanced quickly up and down at the two receding figures, and then at a leisurely pace strode in the direction the Princess had taken. When at last she had turned and was out of sight he halted, took a cigarette from a silver case, lit it after some difficulty in the tearing wind, and muttered some words which, though inaudible, were sufficiently triumphant in tone to show that he was well pleased at his ingenious piece of espionage. CHAPTER FOUR. HIS MAJESTY CUPID. As the twilight fell on the following afternoon a fiacre drew up before the Hotel Imperial, one of the best and most select hotels in the Kartner Ring, in Vienna, and from it descended a lady attired in the deep mourning of a widow. Of the gold-laced concierge she inquired for Count Carl Leitolf, and was at once shown into the lift and conducted to a private sitting-room on the second floor, where a young, fair-moustached, good-looking man, with well-cut, regular features and dark brown eyes, rose quickly as the door opened and the waiter announced her. The moment the door had closed and they were alone he took his visitor's hand and raised it reverently to his lips, bowing low, with the exquisite grace of the born courtier. In an instant she drew it from him and threw back her veil, revealing her pale, beautiful face--the face of her Imperial Highness the Crown Princess Claire. "Highness!" the man exclaimed, glancing anxiously at the door to reassure himself that it was closed, "I had your note this morning, but--but are you not running too great a risk by coming here? I could not reply, fearing that my letter might fall into other hands; otherwise I would on no account have allowed you to come. You may have been followed. There are, as you know, spies everywhere." "I have come, Carl, because I wish to speak to you," she said, looking unflinchingly into his handsome face. "I wish to know by what right you have followed me here--to Vienna?" He drew back in surprise, for her attitude was entirely unexpected. "I came here upon my own private affairs," he answered. "That is not the truth," she declared in quick resentment. "You are here because you believed that you might meet me at the reception after the State dinner to-night. You applied for a card for it in order that you could see me--and this, after what passed between us the other day! Do you consider that you are treating me fairly? Cannot you see that your constant attentions are compromising me and causing people to talk?" "And what, pray, does your Imperial Highness care for this idle Court gossip?" asked the well-dressed, athletic-looking man, at the same time placing a chair for her and bowing her to it. "There has been enough of it already, and you have always expressed the utmost disregard of anything that might be said, or any stories that might be invented." "I know," she answered. "But this injudicious action of yours in following me here is utter madness. It places me in peril. You are known in Vienna, remember." "Then if that is your view, your Highness, I can only apologise," he said most humbly. "I will admit that I came here in order to be able to get a few minutes' conversation with you to-night. At our Court at home you know how very difficult it is for me to speak with you, for the sharp eye of the Trauttenberg is ever upon you." The Princess's arched brows contracted slightly. She recollected what Steinbach had revealed to her regarding her lady-in-waiting. "And it is surely best that you should have difficulty in approaching me," she said. "I have not forgotten your foolish journey to Paris, where I had gone incognito to see my old nurse, and how you compelled me to go out and see the sights in your company. We were recognised. Do you know that?" she exclaimed in a hard voice. "A man who knew us both sent word to Court that we were in Paris together." "Recognised!" he gasped, the colour fading instantly from his face. "Who saw us?" "Of his identity I'm not aware," she answered, for she was a clever diplomatist, and could keep a secret well. She did not reveal Scheel's name. "I only know that our meeting in Paris is no secret. They suspect me, and I have you to thank for whatever scandal may now be invented concerning us." The lithe, clean-limbed man was silent, his head bent before her. What could he reply? He knew, alas! too well, that in following her from Germany to Paris he had acted very injudiciously. She was believed to be taking the baths at Aix, but a sudden caprice had seized her to run up to Paris and see her old French nurse, to whom she was much attached. He had learnt her intention in confidence, and had met her in Paris and shown her the city. It had been an indiscretion, he admitted. Yet the recollection of those few delightful days of freedom remained like a pleasant dream. He recollected her childish delight of it all. It was out of the season, and they believed that they could go hither and thither, like the crowds of tourists do, without fear of recognition. Yet Fate, it seemed, had been against them, and their secret meeting was actually known! "Cannot you see the foolishness of it all?" she asked in a low, serious voice. "Cannot you see, Carl, that your presence here lends colour to their suspicions? I have enemies--fierce, bitter enemies--as you must know too well, and yet you imperil me like this!" she cried reproachfully. "I can make no defence, Princess," he said lamely. "I can only regret deeply having caused you any annoyance." "Annoyance!" she echoed in anger. "Your injudicious actions have placed me in the greatest peril. The people have coupled our names, and you are known to have followed me on here." Her companion was silent, his eyes downcast, as though not daring to meet her reproachful gaze. "I have been foolish--very foolish, I know," she cried. "In the old days, when we knew each other at Wartenstein, a boy-and-girl affection sprang up between us; and then, when you left the University, they sent you as attache to the Embassy in London, and we gradually forgot each other. You grew tired of diplomacy, and returned to find me the wife of the Crown Prince; and in a thoughtless moment I promised, at your request, to recommend you to a post in the private cabinet of the King. Since that day I have always regretted. I ought never to have allowed you to return. I am as much to blame as you are, for it was an entirely false step. Yet how was I to know?" "True, my Princess!" said the man in a low, choking voice. "How were you to know that I still loved you in silence, that I was aware of the secret of your domestic unhappiness, that I--" "Enough!" she cried, drawing herself up. "The word love surely need not be spoken between us. I know it all, alas! Yet I beg of you to remember that I am the wife of another, and a woman of honour." "Ah yes," he exclaimed, his trembling hand resting on the back of the chair upon which she sat. "Honour--yes. I love you, Claire--you surely know that well. But we do not speak of it; it is a subject not to be discussed by us. Day after day, unable to speak to you, I watch you in silence. I know your bitterness in that gilded prison they call the Court, and long always to help you and rescue you from that--that man to whom you are, alas! wedded. It is all so horrible, so loathsome, that I recoil when I see him smiling upon you while at heart he hates you. For weeks, since last we spoke together, how I have lived I scarcely know-- utter despair, insane hopes alternately possess me--but at last the day came, and I followed you here to speak with you, my Princess." She remained silent, somewhat embarrassed, as he took her gloved hand and again kissed it. She was nervous, but next instant determined. "Alas! I have not failed to notice your strong affection for me, Carl," she said with a heavy sigh, her beautiful face slightly flushed. "You must therefore control this passion that seems to have been rekindled within your heart. For my sake go, and forget me," she implored. "Resign your appointment, and re-enter the diplomatic service of the Emperor. I will speak to Lindenau, who will give you an appointment, say, in Rome or Paris. But you must not remain at Treysa. I--I will not allow it." "But, Princess," he cried in dismay, "I cannot go and leave you there alone among your enemies. You--" "You must; for, unintentionally, because you have my interests at heart, you are my worst enemy. You are indiscreet, just as every man is who loves a woman truly." "Then you really believe I love you still, Claire," he cried, bending towards her. "You remember those delightfully happy days at Wartenstein long ago, when--" She held up her hand to stop the flow of his words. He looked at her. For an instant her glance wavered and shrank. She was his idol, the beautiful idol with eyes like heaven. Yes, she was very beautiful--beautiful with all the beauty of woman now, not with the beauty of the girl. And she, with her sad gaze fixed upon him, remembered all the past--the great old castle in the far-off Tyrol, her laughter at his awkwardness; their chats in English when both were learning that language; the quarrel over the lilac blossom. At Arcachon--the shore and the pine forest; the boyish kiss stolen under the mistletoe; the declaration of their young love on that lonely mountain-side with the world lying at their feet; the long, sweet, silent kisses exchanged on their homeward walk; the roses she had given him as farewell pledge when he had left for London. All had gone--gone for ever. Nevertheless, though everything was past, she could not resist an impulse to recall it--oh, very briefly--in a few feeling words, as one may recall some sweet and rapturous dream. "We were very foolish," she said. He was silent. His heart was too full for words. He knew that a woman who can look back on the past--on rapture, delight, the first thrilling kiss, the first fervent vow--and say, "We were very foolish," is a woman changed beyond recall. In other days, had he heard such sacrilegious words a cry of horror would have sprung from his lips. But now, though he shuddered with anguish, he simply said,-- "I shall always remember it, Princess;" adding, with a glance at her, "and you." Her wonderful eyes shrank once more and her lips quivered, as though for one second touched again by the light wing of love--as if, indeed, she felt she had done something unworthy of her, something which might bring her regret hereafter. In the midst of his confusion, the man remained victorious. She would never be his, and yet she would be his for ever. No matter how she might strive, she would never entirely forget. She sighed, and rising, walked unsteadily to the window, where, below, the street lamps were just being lit. Daylight had faded, and in the room it was almost dark. "To-night, Carl, we meet for the last time," she said with an effort, in a hard, strained voice. "Both for you and for me it is best that we should part and forget. I did wrong to recommend you to the post at Court, and I ought to have foreseen the grave peril of the situation. Fortunately, I have realised it in time, even though our enemies already believe ill and invent lies concerning us. You must not return to Court. Remember, I forbid you. To-night, at the State dinner, I will speak to Lindenau and ask him to send you as attache to Rome or to Petersburg. It is the wisest course." "Then your Highness really intends to banish me?" he said hoarsely, in a low, broken voice of reproach. "Yes," she faltered. "I--I must--Carl--to--to save myself." "But you are cruel--very cruel--Princess," he cried, his voice trembling with emotion. "You must realise my peril," she said seriously. "Your presence at Court increases my danger hourly, because"--and she hesitated--"because, Carl, I confess to you that I do not forget--I never shall forget," she added as the tears sprang to her blue eyes. "Therefore, go! Let me bear my own burden as best I can alone, and let me remember you as what you have always been--chivalrous to an unhappy woman; a man of honour." Slowly she moved across the room towards the door, but he arrested her progress, and took her small hand quickly in his grasp. For some moments, in the falling gloom, he looked into her sweet, tearful face without speaking; then crushing down the lump that arose in his throat, he raised to his hot, passionate lips the hand of the woman he loved, and, imprinting upon it a tender, lingering kiss, murmured,-- "Adieu, Claire--my Princess--my first, my only love!" She drew her hand away as his passionate words fell upon her ear, sighed heavily, and in silence opened the door and passed out from his presence. And thus were two brave hearts torn asunder. CHAPTER FIVE. SOME SUSPICIONS. State dinners, those long, tedious affairs at which the conversation is always stilted and the bearing of everybody is stiff and unnatural, always bored the Crown Princess Claire to death. Whenever she could she escaped them; but as a Crown Princess she was compelled by Court etiquette to undergo ordeals which, to a woman not educated as an Imperial Archduchess, would have been impossible. She had trained herself to sit for hours smiling and good-humoured, although at heart she hated all that glittering formality and rich display. There were times when at her own Court at Treysa, at the military anniversary dinners that were so often held, she had been compelled to sit at table with her husband and the guests for four and five hours on end, without showing any sign of fatigue beyond taking her smelling-salts from the hand of her lady-in-waiting. Yet she never complained, though the eating, and more especially the drinking, disgusted her. It was a duty--one of the many wearisome, soul-killing duties which devolve upon a Crown Princess--of which the world at large is in utter ignorance. Therefore she accepted it in silence, yet bored always by meeting and speaking with the same circle of people day after day--a small circle which was ever intriguing, ever consumed by its own jealousies, ever striving for the favour of the aged king; the narrow-minded little world within the Palace who treated those outside as though of different flesh and blood to themselves. Whether at a marriage, at a funeral, at the opera, at a review, or at a charity _fete_--everywhere where her Court duties called her--she met the same people, she heard the same interminable chatter and the same shameful scandals, until, unhappy in her own domestic life, she had grown to loathe it all, and to long for that liberty of which she had dreamed when a girl at her father's castle at Wartenstein, or at the great old Residenz-Schloss, or palace, at Pressburg. Yet what liberty could she, heiress to a throne, obtain; what, indeed, within her husband's Court, a circle who dined at five o'clock and were iron-bound by etiquette? The State dinner at the Imperial palace that night differed but little from any other State dinner--long, dull, and extremely uninteresting. Given in honour of a Swedish Prince who was at the moment the guest of the Emperor, there were present the usual circle of Imperial Archdukes and Archduchesses, who after dinner were joined in the great reception room by the Ministers of State, the British, French, and Italian Ambassadors, the Swedish Minister and the whole staff of the Swedish Embassy in the Schwindgasse. Every one was in uniform and wore his orders, the Emperor himself standing at the end of the room, chatting with his young guest in French. The Crown Princess Claire, a striking figure in turquoise chiffon, was standing near, discussing Leoncavallo's new opera with her cousin, the Princess Marie of Bourbon, who had arrived only a few days before from Madrid. Suddenly her eye caught the figure she had all the evening been in Search of. Count de Lindenau, Privy Councillor, Chamberlain, Minister of the Imperial Household, and Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Austrian Empire--a short, rather stout, bald-headed man, with heavy white moustache, with the crimson ribbon of the Order of Saint Stephen of Hungary across his shirt-front and the Grand Cross in brilliants upon his coat--stopped to bow low before the Crown Princess, who in an instant seized the opportunity to leave her cousin and speak with him. "It is really quite a long time since we met, Count," she exclaimed pleasantly. "I met the Countess at Cannes in January, and was delighted to see her so much better. Is she quite well again?" "I thank your Imperial Highness," responded the Minister. "The Countess has completely recovered. At present she is at Como. And you? Here for a long stay in Vienna, I hope. We always regret that you have left us, you know," he added, smiling, for she had, ever since a girl, been friendly with him, and had often visited his wife at their castle at Mauthhausen. "No; I regret that I must return to Treysa in a few days," she said as she moved along and he strolled at her side down the great gilded room where the little groups were standing gossiping. Then, when his Excellency had asked after the health of the Crown Prince and of the little Princess Ignatia, she drew him aside to a spot where they could not be overheard, and halting, said in a lower tone,-- "I have wished to meet you, Count, because I want you to do me a favour." "Your Imperial Highness knows quite well that if I can serve you in any way I am always only too delighted." And he bowed. More than once she had asked favour of Lindenau, the stern Foreign Minister and favourite of the Emperor, and he had always acted as she wished. She had known him ever since her birth. He had, indeed, been present at her baptism. "Well, it is this," she said. "I want to give my recommendation to you on behalf of Count Leitolf, who is at present chief of the King's private cabinet at Treysa, and who is strongly desirous of returning to the Austrian diplomatic service, and is anxious for a post abroad." Mention of Leitolf's name caused the wily old Minister to glance at her quickly. The rumour had reached his ears, and in an instant he recognised the situation--the Crown Princess wished to rid herself of him. But the old fellow was diplomatic, and said, as though compelled to recall the name,-- "Leitolf? Let me see. That is Count Carl, whom I sent to London a few years ago? He resigned his post to take service under your father-in-law the King. Ah yes, I quite recollect. And he now wishes to be appointed abroad again, eh? And you wish to recommend him?" "Exactly, Count," she answered. "I think that Leitolf is tired of our Court; he finds it too dull. He would prefer Rome, he tells me." "Your Imperial Highness is well aware that any recommendation of yours always has the most earnest attention," said the Minister, with a polite bow. His quick grey eyes were watching the beautiful woman sharply. He wondered what had occurred between her and Count Carl. "Then you will send him to Rome?" she asked, unable to conceal her eagerness. "If he will present himself at the Ministry, he will be at once appointed to the Embassy to the Quirinal," responded his Excellency quietly. "But he will not present himself, I am afraid." "Oh, why not?" inquired the great Austrian diplomatist, regarding her in surprise. "Because--" and she hesitated, as a slight flush crossed her features--"because he is rather ashamed to ask for a second appointment, having resigned from London." The old Minister smiled dubiously. "Ah!" he exclaimed confidentially, "I quite understand. Your Imperial Highness wishes to get rid of him from your Court, eh?" The Princess started, twisting her diamond bracelet nervously round her wrist. "Why do you think that, Count?" she asked quickly, surprised that he should have thus divined her motive. "Well, your Imperial Highness is rather unduly interested in the man--if you will permit me to say so," was his answer. "Besides, if I may speak frankly, as I know I may, I have regarded his presence in your Court as distinctly dangerous--for you. There are, you know, evil tongues ever ready to invent scandal, even against a Crown Princess." "I know," she said, in a low, changed voice. "But let us walk; otherwise they will all wonder why I am talking with you so long," and the two moved slowly along side by side. "I know," she went on--"I know that I have enemies; and, to confess the truth, I wish, in order to show them that they lie, to send him from me." "Then he shall go. To-morrow I will send him orders to rejoin the service, and to proceed to Rome immediately. And," he added in a kindly voice, "I can only congratulate your Imperial Highness upon your forethought. Leitolf is entirely without discretion. Only this evening I was actually told that he had followed you to Vienna, and--" But he stopped abruptly, without concluding his sentence. "And what else?" she asked, turning pale. Even the Minister knew; therefore Leitolf had evidently allowed himself to be seen. "Shall I tell you, Princess?" "Certainly; you need not keep anything from me." "I was also told that he is staying at the Hotel Imperial, and that you had called upon him this afternoon." She started, and looked him straight in the face. "Who told you that?" she demanded. "I learned it from the report of the secret agents of the Ministry." "Then I am spied upon here!" she exclaimed, pale with anger. "Even in my own home watch is kept upon me." "Not upon your Imperial Highness," was the great Minister's calm reply, "but upon the man we have recently been discussing. It was, I venture to think, rather indiscreet of you to go to the hotel; although, of course, the knowledge of your visit is confidential, and goes no further than myself. It is a secret of the Ministry." "Indiscreet!" she echoed with a sigh. "In this polluted atmosphere, to breathe freely is to be indiscreet. Because I am an Archduchess I am fettered as a prisoner, and watched like a criminal under surveillance. My enemies, jealous of my position and power, have invented scandalous stories that have aroused suspicion, and for that reason you all believe ill of me." "Pardon me, Princess," said the crafty old man, bowing, "I, for one, do not. Your anxiety to rid yourself of the fellow is proof to me that the scandal is a pure invention, and I am only too pleased to render you this service. Your real enemies are those around your husband, who have hinted and lied regarding you in order to estrange you from Court." "Then you are really my friend, Count?" she asked anxiously. "You do not believe what they say regarding me?" "I do not, Princess," he replied frankly; "and I trust you will still regard me, as I hope I have ever been, your Imperial Highness's friend. I know full well how Leitolf craved your favour for recommendation to your King; and you, with a woman's blindness to the grave eventualities of the future, secured him the appointment. Of late you have, I suppose, realised the fatal mistake?" "Yes," she said in a low voice; "I have now foreseen my own peril. I have been very foolish; but I have halted, and Leitolf must go." "Very wise--very wise indeed! Your Imperial Highness cannot afford to run any further risk. In a few months, or a couple of years at most, the poor King's disease must prove fatal, and you will find yourself Queen of a brilliant kingdom. Once Queen, your position will be assured, and you will make short work of all those who have conspired to secure your downfall. You will, perhaps, require assistance. If so, rely upon me to render you in secret whatever help lies in my power. With you, a Hapsbourg, as Queen, the influence of Austria must be paramount, remember. Therefore I beg of your Imperial Highness to exercise the greatest discretion not to imperil yourself. The Crown Prince must be allowed no loophole through which he can openly quarrel with you. Remain patient and forbearing until you are Queen." They were in a corner of the great hall, standing behind one of the high marble columns and unobserved. "I am always patient, Count," was her rather sad response, her chest heaving beneath her chiffon. "As you well know, my marriage has not been a happy one; but I strive to do my duty to both the Court and the people. I make no denial to you. You doubtless know the truth--that when a girl I loved Count Leitolf, and that it was an act prompted by foolish sentimentalism to have connived at his appointment at my husband's own Court. Betrayed, perhaps, by my own actions, my enemies have seized upon my embarrassing situation to lie about me. Ah," she added bitterly, "how little they know of my own dire unhappiness!" "No, no," urged the Minister, seemingly full of sympathy for her, knowing the truth as he did. "Bear up; put a brave countenance always towards the world. When Leitolf has gone your Imperial Highness will have less embarrassment, and people cannot then place any misconstructions upon your actions. You will not have the foolish young man following you wherever you go, as he now does. At noon to-morrow I will sign the decree for his immediate appointment to Rome, and he will receive but little leave of absence, I can assure you. He will be as much a prisoner in the Palazzo Chigi as is his Holiness in the Vatican," he added. "Thank you," she answered simply, glancing gratefully into his grey, deeply-lined face; and as he bowed to her she left him and swept up the room to where the Emperor was engaged in conversation with Lord Powerstock, the British Ambassador. The old Minister's face had changed the instant he left her. The mask of the courtier had fallen from the wily old countenance, and glancing after her, he muttered some words that were inaudible. If she had but seen the evil smile that played about the old diplomatist's lips, she would have detected that his intention was to play her false, and she might then have saved herself. But, alas! in her ignorance she went on light-heartedly, her long train sweeping behind her, believing in De Lindenau's well-feigned sympathy, and congratulating herself that the all-powerful personage behind the Emperor was still her friend. The Minister saw that she was satisfied; then turning on his heel, he gave vent to a short, hard laugh of triumph. CHAPTER SIX. THE HOUSE OF HER ENEMIES. Two days later the Crown Princess Claire returned to Marburg. In the twilight the express from Vienna came to a standstill in the big, echoing station at Treysa, the bright and wealthy capital, and descending from her private saloon, she walked over the red carpet laid for her, bowing pleasantly to the line of bareheaded officials waiting to receive her; then, mounting into her open landau, she drove up the fine, tree-lined Klosterstrasse to the royal palace. De Trauttenberg was with her--the woman whom she now knew to be a spy. Around her, on every side, the crowd at her side shouted a glad welcome to "their Claire," as they called her, and just before the royal carriage could move off, two or three of the less timorous ones managed to seize her hand and kiss it, though the police unceremoniously pushed them away. She smiled upon the enthusiastic crowd; but, alas! she was heavy of heart. How little, she thought, did those people who welcomed her dream of her unhappiness! She loved the people, and, looking upon them, sighed to think that she was not free like them. Behind her clattered the hoofs of her cavalry escort, and beside the carriage were two agents of police on bicycles. Wherever she moved in her husband's kingdom she was always under escort, because of anarchist threats and socialistic rumours. Marburg was one of the most beautiful and wealthiest of the kingdoms and duchies comprised in the German Empire. The fine capital of Treysa was one of the show cities of Germany, always bright, gay, and brilliant, with splendid streets, wide, tree-lined promenades, a great opera house, numerous theatres, gay restaurants, and an ever-increasing commerce. Frequented much by English and Americans, there were fine hotels, delightful public gardens, and pleasant suburbs. In no other part of the Empire were the nobility so wealthy or so exclusive, and certainly no Court in Europe was so difficult of access as that of Marburg. The kingdom, which possessed an area of nearly seven thousand square miles and a population of over fifteen millions, was rich in manufactures and in minerals, besides being a smiling country in a high state of cultivation, with beautiful mountainous and wooded districts, where in the valleys were situated many delightful summer resorts. Through its length and breadth, and far beyond the frontiers, the name of the Crown Princess Claire was synonymous of all that was good and affable, generous to the poor, and ever interested in the welfare of the people. The big electric globes were already shining white in the streets as she drove back to the beautiful royal palace that was, alas! to her a prison. Her few days of liberty in Vienna were over, and when presently, after traversing many great thoroughfares full of life and movement, the carriage swung out into a broader tree-lined avenue, at the end of which were the great gates of the royal gardens, her brave heart fell within her. Beyond was the house of her enemies, the house in which she was compelled to live friendless, yet surrounded by those who were daily whispering of her overthrow. The great gates swung open to allow the cavalcade to pass, then closed again with a clang that, reaching her ear, caused her to shudder. The Countess noticed it, and asked whether she felt cold. To this she gave a negative reply, and still remained silent, until the carriage, passing up through the beautiful park, at last drew up before the magnificent palace. Descending, she allowed the gorgeously-dressed man in the royal livery to take her cloak from her shoulders; and then, without a word, hastened along the great marble hall, up the grand staircase and along corridor after corridor--those richly-carpeted corridors of her prison that she knew so well--to her own splendid suite of apartments. The servants she met at every turn bowed to her, until she opened the door of a large, airy, well-furnished room, where a middle-aged woman, in cap and apron, sat reading by a shaded lamp. In an instant, on recognising the newcomer, she sprang to her feet. But at the same moment the Princess rushed to the dainty little cot in the corner and sank down beside the sleeping curly-haired child--her child-- the little Princess Ignatia. So passionately did she kiss the sweet chubby little face of the sleeping child that she awoke, and recognising who it was, put out her little hands around her mother's neck. "Ah, my little pet!" cried the Princess. "And how are you? It seems so long, so very long, since we parted." And her voice trembled, for tears stood in her eyes. The child was all she had in the world to love and cherish. She was her first thought always. The glare and glitter of the brilliant Court were all hateful to her, and she spent all the time she dared in the nursery with little Ignatia. The English nurse, Allen, standing at her side, said, with that formality which was bound to be observed within those walls,-- "The Princess is in most excellent health, your Imperial Highness. I have carried out your Highness's instructions, and taken her each day for a walk in the park." "That's right, Allen," responded the mother, also in English. "Where is the Crown Prince?" "I have not seen him, your Highness, since you left. He has not been in to see Ignatia." Claire sighed within herself, but made no outward sign. "Ah, I expect he has been away--to Berlin, perhaps. Is there any function to-night, have you heard?" "A State ball, your Highness. At least they said so in the servants' hall." The Princess glanced at the little silver timepiece, for she feared that her presence was imperative, even though she detested all such functions, where she knew she would meet that brilliant crowd of men and women, all of them her sworn enemies. What Steinbach had told her in confidence had lifted the scales from her eyes. There was a wide and cleverly-contrived conspiracy against her. She took her fair-haired child in her arms, while Allen, with deft fingers, took off her hat and veil. Her maids were awaiting her in her own room, but she preferred to see Ignatia before it was too late to disturb the little one's sleep. With the pretty, blue-eyed little thing clinging around her neck, she paced the room with it, speaking, in German, as every fond mother will speak to the one she adores. Though born to the purple, an Imperial Princess, Claire was very human after all. She regretted always that she was not as other women were, allowed to be her own mistress, and to see and to tend to her child's wants instead of being compelled so often to leave her in the hands of others, who, though excellent servants, were never as a mother. She sent Allen upon a message to the other end of the palace in order to be alone with the child, and when the door closed she kissed its soft little face fondly again and again, and then burst into tears. Those Court sycophants were conspiring, to drive her away--perhaps even to part her from the only one for whom she entertained a spark of affection. Many of her enemies were women. Could any of them really know all that was meant by a mother's heart? Prince Ferdinand-Leopold-Joseph-Marie, her husband, seldom, if ever, saw the child. For weeks he never mentioned its existence, and when he did it was generally with an oath, in regret that it was not a son and an heir to the throne. In his paroxysms of anger he had cursed her and his little daughter, and declared openly that he hated the sight of them both. But she was ever patient. Seldom she responded to his taunts or his sarcasm, or resented his brutal treatment. She was philosophic enough to know that she had a heavy burden to bear, and for the sake of her position as future Queen of Marburg she must bear it bravely. Allen was absent fully a quarter of an hour, during which time she spoke continually to little Ignatia, pacing up and down the room with her. The child, seeing her mother's tears, stared at her with her big, wide-open eyes. "Why does mother cry?" she asked in her childish voice, stroking her cheek. "Because mother is not happy, darling," was the Princess's sad answer. "But," she added, brightening up, "you are happy, aren't you? Allen has bought you such a beautiful doll, she tells me." "Yes, mother," the child answered. "And to-morrow, Allen promises, if I am very good, that we will go to buy a perambulator for my dolly to ride in. Won't that be nice?" "Oh, it will! But you must be very, very good--and never cry, like mother, will you?" "No," answered the little one. "I'll never cry, like mother does." And the unhappy woman, hearing the child's lisping words, swallowed the great lump that arose in her throat. It was surely pathetic, that admission of a heart-broken mother to her child. It showed that even though an Imperial Princess, she was still a womanly woman, just as any good woman of the people. A few moments later Allen returned with the reply to the message she had sent to the aged King. "His Majesty says that, though regretting your Imperial Highness is tired after her journey, yet your presence with the Crown Prince at the ball is imperative." Claire sighed with a heavy heart, saying,-- "Very well, Allen. Then we will put Ignatia to bed, for I must go at once and dress," and she passed her hand across her hot, wearied brow. Again and again she kissed the child, and then, having put her back into her cot, over which was the royal crown of Marburg in gold, she bade the infant Princess goodnight, and went along to eat a hasty dinner--for she was hungry after her eighteen-hour journey--and afterwards to put herself in the charge of her quick-handed maids, to prepare her for the brilliant function of that evening. Two hours later, when she swept into the magnificent Throne Room, a brilliant, beautiful figure in her Court gown of cream, and wearing her wonderful tiara, her face was as stern and haughty as any of those members of the royal family present. With her long train rustling behind her, and with her orders and ribbons giving the necessary touch of colour to her bodice, she took up her position beside her husband, a fair-headed, round-faced, slight-moustached man, in a dark-blue uniform, and wearing a number of orders. His face was flat and expressionless. Though they had not met for a week, no word of greeting escaped him. They stood side by side, as though they were strangers. He eyed her quickly, and his countenance turned slightly pale, as though displeased at her presence. Yet the whole assembly, even though hating her, could not but admire her neat waist, her splendid figure, and matchless beauty. In the whole of the Courts of Europe there was no prettier woman than the Crown Princess Claire; her figure was perfect, and her gait always free--the gait of a princess. Even when dressed in her maid's dresses, as she had done on occasion, her walk betrayed her. Imperial blood can seldom be disguised. The hundred women, those German princesses, duchesses, countesses, baronesses, to each of whom attached their own particular scandal--the brilliant little world that circled around the throne--looked at her standing there with her husband, her hands clasped before her, and envied her looks, figure, position--everything. She was a marked woman. The proud, haughty expression upon her face as she regarded the assembly was only assumed. It was the mask she was compelled to wear at Court at the old King's command. Her nature was the reverse of haughty, yet the artificiality of palace life made it necessary for the Crown Princess to be as unapproachable as the Queen herself. The guests were filing before the white-haired King, the hide-bound old martyr to etiquette, when the Crown Prince spoke to his wife in an undertone, saying roughly, with bitter sarcasm,-- "So you are back? Couldn't stay away from us longer, I suppose?" "I remained in Vienna as long as I said I should," was the sweet-faced woman's calm reply. "A pity you didn't stay there altogether," he muttered. "You are neither use nor ornament here." "You have told me that several times before. Much as I regret it, Ferdinand, my place is here." "Yes, at my side--to annoy me," he said, frowning. "I regret to cause you any annoyance," she answered. "It is not intentional, I assure you." A foul oath escaped him, and he turned from her to speak with Count Graesal, grand-marechal of the Court. Her face, however, betrayed nothing of his insult. At Court her countenance was always sphinx-like. Only in her private life, in that gorgeous suite of apartments on the opposite side of the palace, did she give way to her own bitter unhappiness and blank despair. CHAPTER SEVEN. A SHAMEFUL TRUTH. When at last the brilliant company moved on into the great ballroom she had an opportunity of walking among those men and women who, though they bent before her, cringing and servile, were, she knew, eagerly seeking her ruin. The Ministers, Stuhlmann, Hoepfner, and Meyer, all three creatures of the King, bowed low to her, but she knew they were her worst enemies. The Countess Hupertz, a stout, fair-haired, masculine-looking woman, also bent before her and smiled--yet this woman had invented the foulest lies concerning her, and spread them everywhere. In all that brilliant assembly she had scarcely one single person whom she could term a friend. And for a very simple reason. Friendliness with the Crown Princess meant disfavour with the King, and none of those place-seekers and sycophants could afford to risk that. Yet, knowing that they were like a pack of hungry wolves about her, seeking to tear her reputation to shreds and cast her out of the kingdom, she walked among them, speaking with them, and smiling as though she were perfectly happy. Presently, when the splendid orchestra struck up and dancing commenced, she came across Hinckeldeym, the wily old President of the Council of Ministers, who, on many occasions, had showed that, unlike the others, he regarded her as an ill-used wife. A short, rather podgy, dark-haired man, in Court dress, he bowed, welcomed her back to Treysa, and inquired after her family in Vienna. Then, as she strolled with him to the farther end of the room, lazily fanning herself with her great ostrich-feather fan, she said in a low voice,-- "Hinckeldeym, as you know, I have few friends here. I wonder whether you are one?" The flabby-faced old Minister pursed his lips, and glanced at her quickly, for he was a wily man. Then, after a moment's pause, he said,-- "I think that ever since your Imperial Highness came here as Crown Princess I have been your partisan. Indeed, I thought I had the honour of reckoning myself among your Highness's friends." "Yes, yes," she exclaimed quickly. "But I have so many enemies here," and she glanced quickly around, "that it is really difficult for me to distinguish my friends." "Enemies!" echoed the tactful Minister in surprise. "What causes your Highness to suspect such a thing?" "I do not suspect--I know," was her firm answer as she stood aside with him. "I have learnt what these people are doing. Why? Tell me, Hinckeldeym--why is this struggling crowd plotting against me?" He looked at her for a moment in silence. He was surprised that she knew the truth. "Because, your Imperial Highness--because they fear you. They know too well what will probably occur when you are Queen." "Yes," she said in a hard, determined voice. "When I am Queen I will sweep clear this Augean stable. There will be a change, depend upon it. This Court shall be an upright and honourable one, and not, as it now is, a replica of that of King Charles the Second of England. They hate me, Hinckeldeym--they hate me because I am a Hapsbourg; because I try and live uprightly and love my child, and when I am Queen I will show them that even a Court may be conducted with gaiety coupled with decorum." The Minister--who, though unknown to her, was, perhaps, her worst enemy, mainly through fear of the future--listened to all she said in discreet silence. It was a pity, he thought, that the conspiracy had been betrayed to her, for although posing as her friend he would have been the first to exult over her downfall. It would place him in a position of safety. He noted her threat. It only confirmed what the Court had anticipated-- namely, that upon the death of the infirm old monarch, all would be changed, and that brilliant aristocratic circle would be sent forth into obscurity--and by an Austrian Archduchess, too! The Princess Claire unfortunately believed the crafty Hinckeldeym to be her friend, therefore she told him all that she had learnt; of course, not betraying the informer. "From to-day," she went on in a hard voice, "my attitude is changed. I will defend myself. Against those who have lied about me, and invented their vile scandals, I will stand as an enemy, and a bitter one. Hitherto I have been complacent and patient, suffering in silence, as so many defenceless women suffer. But for the sake of this kingdom, over which I shall one day be Queen, I will stand firm; and you, Hinckeldeym, must remain my friend." "Your Imperial Highness has but to command me," replied the false old courtier, bowing low with the lie ever ready upon his lips. "I hope to continue as your friend." "From the day I first set foot in Treysa, these people have libelled me and plotted my ruin," she went on. "I know it all. I can give the names of each of my enemies, and I am kept informed of all the scandalous tales whispered into my husband's ears. Depend upon it that those liars and scandalmongers will in due time reap their reward." "I know very little of it," the Minister declared in a low voice, so that he could not be overheard. "Perhaps, however, your Highness has been indiscreet--has, I mean, allowed these people some loophole through which to cast their shafts?" "They speak of Leitolf," she said quite frankly. "And they libel me, I know." "I hear to-day that Leitolf is recalled to Vienna, and is being sent as attache to Rome," he remarked. "Perhaps it is as well in the present circumstances." She looked him straight in the face as the amazing truth suddenly dawned upon her. "Then you, too, Hinckeldeym, believe that what is said about us is true!" she exclaimed hoarsely, suspecting, for the first time, that the man with the heavy, flabby face might play her false. And she had confessed to him, of all men, her intention of changing the whole Court entourage the instant her husband ascended the throne! She saw how terribly injudicious she had been. But the cringing courtier exhibited his white palms, and with that clever exhibition of sympathy which had hitherto misled her, said,-- "Surely your Imperial Highness knows me sufficiently well to be aware that in addition to being a faithful servant to his Majesty the King, I am also a strong and staunch friend of yours. There may be a plot," he said; "a vile, dastardly plot to cast you out from Marburg. Yet if you are only firm and judicious, you must vanquish them, for they are all cowards--all of them." She believed him, little dreaming that the words she had spoken that night had sealed her fate. Heinrich Hinckeldeym was a far-seeing man, the friend of anybody who had future power in his hands--a man who was utterly unscrupulous, and who would betray his closest friend when necessity demanded. And yet, with his courtly manner, his fat yet serious face, his clever speech, and his marvellous tact, he had deceived more than one of the most eminent diplomatists in Europe, including even Bismarck himself. He looked at her with his bright, ferret-like eyes, debating within himself when the end of her should be. He and his friends had already decided that the blow was soon to be struck, for every day's delay increased their peril. The old King's malady might terminate fatally at any moment, and once Queen, then to remove her would be impossible. She had revealed to him openly her intention, therefore he was determined to use in secret her own words as a weapon against her, for he was utterly unscrupulous. The intrigues of Court had a hundred different undercurrents, but it was part of his policy to keep well versed in them all. His finger was ever upon the pulse of that circle about the throne, while he was also one of the few men in Marburg who had the ear of the aristocratic old monarch with whom etiquette was as a religion. "Your Imperial Highness is quite right in contemplating the Crown Prince's accession to the throne," he said ingeniously, in order to further humour her. "The doctors see the King daily, and the confidential reports made to us Ministers are the reverse of reassuring. In a few months at most the end must come--suddenly in all probability. Therefore the Crown Prince should prepare himself for the responsibilities of the throne, when your Highness will be able to repay your enemies for all their ill-nature." "I shall know the way, never fear," she answered in a low, firm voice. "To-day their power is paramount, but to-morrow mine shall be. I shall then live only for my husband and my child. At present I am living for a third reason--to vindicate myself." "Then your Imperial Highness contemplates changing everything?" he asked simply, but with the ingenuity of a great diplomatist. Every word of her reply he determined to use in order to secure her overthrow. "I shall change all Ministers of State, Chamberlains, every one, from the Chancellor of the Orders down to the Grand Master of the Ceremonies. They shall all go, and first of all the _dames du palais_--those women who have so cleverly plotted against me, but of whose conspiracy I am now quite well aware." And she mentioned one or two names--names that had been revealed to her by the obscure functionary Steinbach. The Minister saw that the situation was a grave, even desperate one. He was uncertain how much she knew concerning the plot, and was therefore undecided as to what line he should adopt. In order to speak in private they left the room, pacing the long, green-carpeted corridor that, enclosed in glass, ran the whole length of that wing of the palace. He tried by artful means to obtain from her further details, but she refused to satisfy him. She knew the truth, and that, she declared, was all sufficient. Old Hinckeldeym was a power in Marburg. For eighteen years he had been the confidant of the King, and now fearing his favour on the wane, had wheedled himself into the good graces of the Crown Prince, who had given him to understand, by broad hints, that he would be only too pleased to rid himself of the Crown Princess. Therefore, if he could effect this, his future was assured. And what greater weapon could he have against her than her own declaration of her intention to sweep clear the Court of its present entourage? He had assuredly played his cards wonderfully well. He was a past master in deception and double-dealing. The Princess, believing that he was at least her friend, had spoken frankly to him, never for one moment expecting a foul betrayal. Yet, if the truth were told, it was that fat-faced, black-eyed man who had first started the wicked calumny which had coupled her name with Leitolf; he who had dropped scandalous hints to the Crown Prince of his beautiful wife's _penchant_ for the good-looking _chef du cabinet_; he who had secretly stirred up the hostility against the daughter of the Austrian Archduke, and whose fertile brain had invented lies which were so ingeniously concocted that they possessed every semblance of truth. A woman of Imperial birth may be a diplomatist, versed in all the intricacies of Court etiquette and Court usages, but she can never be at the same time a woman of the world. Her education is not that of ordinary beings; therefore, as in the case of the Princess Claire, though shrewd and tactful, she was no match for the crafty old Minister who for eighteen years had directed the destiny of that most important kingdom of the German Empire. The yellow-haired Countess Hupertz, one of Hinckeldeym's puppets, watched the Princess and Minister walking in the corridor, and smiled grimly. While the orchestra played those dreamy waltzes, the tragedy of a throne was being enacted, and a woman--a sweet, good, lovable woman, upright and honest--was being condemned to her fate by those fierce, relentless enemies by which she was, alas! surrounded. As she moved, her splendid diamonds flashed and glittered with a thousand fires, for no woman in all the Court could compare with her, either for beauty or for figure. And yet her husband, his mind poisoned by those place-hunters--a man whose birth was but as a mushroom as compared with that of Claire, who possessed an ancestry dating back a thousand years--blindly believed that which they told him to be the truth. De Trauttenberg, in fear lest she might lose her own position, was in Hinckeldeym's pay, and what she revealed was always exaggerated--most of it, indeed, absolutely false. The Court of Marburg had condemned the Crown Princess Claire, and from their judgment there was no appeal. She was alone, defenceless--doomed as the victim of the jealousies and fears of others. Returning to the ballroom, she left the Minister's side; and, by reason of etiquette, returned to join that man in the dark-blue uniform who cursed her--the man who was her husband, and who ere long was to reign as sovereign. Stories of his actions, many of them the reverse of creditable, had reached her ears, but she never gave credence to any of them. When people discussed him she refused to listen. He was her husband, the father of her little Ignatia, therefore she would hear nothing to his discredit. Yes. Her disposition was quiet and sweet, and she was always loyal to him. He, however, entirely misjudged her. An hour later, when she had gone to her room, her husband burst in angrily and ordered the two maids out, telling them that they would not be wanted further that night. Then, when the door was closed, he strode up to where she sat before the great mirror, lit by its waxen candles, for Henriette had been arranging her hair for the night. "Well, woman!" he cried, standing before her, his brows knit, his eyes full of fire, "and what is your excuse to me this time?" "Excuse?" she echoed, looking at him in surprise and very calmly. "For what, Ferdinand?" "For your escapade in Vienna!" he said between his teeth. "The instant you had left, Leitolf received a telegram calling him to Wiesbaden, but instead of going there he followed you." "Not with my knowledge, I assure you," she said quickly. "Why do you think so ill of me--why do you always suspect me?" she asked in a low, trembling voice of reproach. "Why do I suspect you? You ask me that, woman, when you wrote to the man at his hotel, made an appointment, and actually visited him there? One of our agents watched you. Do you deny it?" "No," she answered boldly. "I do not deny going to the Count's hotel. I had a reason for doing so." He laughed in her face. "Of course you had--you, who pretend to be such a good and faithful wife, and such a model mother," he sneered. "I suppose you would not have returned to Treysa so soon had he not have come back." "You insult me!" she cried, rising from her chair, her Imperial blood asserting itself. "Ah!" he laughed, taunting her. "You don't like to hear the truth, do you? It seems that the scandal concerning you has been discovered in Vienna, for De Lindenau has ordered the fellow to return to the diplomatic service, and is sending him away to Rome." She was silent. She saw how every word and every action of hers was being misconstrued. "Speak, woman!" he cried, advancing towards her. "Confess to me that you love the fellow." "Why, Ferdinand, do you wish me to say what is untrue?" she asked in a low voice, quite calm again, notwithstanding his threatening attitude. "Ah, you deny it! You lie to me, even when I know the truth--when all the Court discuss your affection for the fellow whom you yourself introduced among us. You have been with him in Paris. Deny that!" "I deny nothing that is true," she answered. "I only deny your right to charge me with what is false." "Oh yes," he cried. "You and your brat are a pretty pair. You believe we are all blind; but, on the contrary, everything is known. Confess!" he muttered between his teeth. "Confess that you love that man." She was silent, standing before him, her beautiful eyes fixed upon the carpet. He repeated his question in a harder tone than before, but still she uttered no word. She was determined not to repeat the denial she had already given, and she recognised that he had some ulterior motive in wringing from her a confession which was untrue. "You refuse to speak!" he cried in a quick paroxysm of anger. "Then take that!" and he struck her with his fist a heavy blow full in the face, with such force, indeed, that she reeled, and fell backwards upon the floor. "Another time perhaps you'll speak when I order you to," he said through his set teeth, as with his foot he kicked her savagely twice, the dull blows sounding through the big, gilt-ceilinged room. Then with a hard laugh of scorn upon his evil lips the brute that was a Crown Prince, and heir to a European throne, turned and left with an oath upon his lips, as he slammed the door after him. In the big, gorgeous room, where the silence was broken by the low ticking of the ormolu clock, poor, unhappy Claire lay there where she had fallen, motionless as one dead. Her beautiful face was white as death, yet horribly disfigured by the cowardly blow, while from the corner of her mouth there slowly trickled a thin red stream. CHAPTER EIGHT. IS MAINLY ABOUT THE COUNT. Next morning, when she saw her reflection in the mirror, she sighed heavily, and hot tears sprang to her eyes. Her beautiful countenance, bruised and swollen, was an ugly sight; her mouth was cut, and one of her even, pretty teeth had been broken by the cowardly blow. Henriette, the faithful Frenchwoman, had crept back to her mistress's room an hour after the Crown Prince had gone, in order to see if her Highness wanted anything, when to her horror she discovered her lying insensible where she had been struck down. The woman was discreet. She had often overheard the Prince's torrents of angry abuse, and in an instant grasped the situation. Instead of alarming the other servants, she quickly applied restoratives, bathed her mistress's face tenderly in eau de Cologne, washing away the blood from the mouth, and after half an hour succeeded in getting her comfortably to bed. She said nothing to any one, but locked the door and spent the remainder of the night upon the sofa near her Princess. While Claire was seated in her wrap, taking her chocolate at eight o'clock next morning, the Countess de Trauttenberg, her husband's spy, who probably knew all that had transpired, entered with the engagement-book. She saw what a terrible sight the unhappy woman presented, yet affected not to notice it. "Well, Trauttenberg?" asked the Princess in a soft, weary voice, hardly looking up at her, "what are our engagements to-day?" The lady-in-waiting consulted the book, which upon its cover bore the royal crown above the cipher "C," and replied,-- "At eleven, the unveiling of the monument to Schilling the sculptor in the Albert-Platz; at one, luncheon with the Princess Alexandrine, to meet the Duchess of Brunswick-Lunebourg; at four, the drive; and to-night, `Faust,' at the Opera." Her Highness sighed. The people, the enthusiastic crowd who applauded her, little knew how wearying was that round of daily duties, how soul-killing to a woman with a broken heart. She was "their Claire," the woman who was to be their Queen, and they believed her to be happy! "Cancel all my engagements," she said. "I shall not go out to-day. Tell the Court newsman that I am indisposed--a bad cold--anything." "As your Imperial Highness commands," responded De Trauttenberg, bowing, and yet showing no sign that she observed the disfiguration of her poor face. The woman's cold formality irritated her. "You see the reason?" she asked meaningly, looking into her face. "I note that your Imperial Highness has--has met with a slight accident," she said. "I trust it is not painful." That reply aroused the fire of the Hapsbourg blood within her veins. The woman was her bitter enemy. She had lied about her, and had poisoned her husband's mind against her. And yet she was helpless. To dismiss her from her duties would only be a confirmation of what the woman had, no doubt, alleged. It was upon the tip of her tongue to charge her openly as an enemy and a liar. It was that woman, no doubt, who had spied upon her when she had called upon Count Leitolf, and who on her return to Treysa had gone straight to the Crown Prince with a story that was full of vile and scandalous inventions. "Oh, dear, no," she said, managing to control her anger by dint of great effort. "It is not at all painful, I assure you. Perhaps, Trauttenberg, you had better go at once and tell the newsman, so that my absence at the Schilling unveiling will be accounted for." Thus dismissed, the woman, with her false smiles and pretended sympathy, went forth, and the journals through Germany that day reported, with regret, that the Crown Princess Claire of Marburg was confined to her room, having caught a severe chill on her journey from Vienna, and that she would probably remain indisposed for a week. When her maids had dressed her she passed on into her gorgeous little blue-and-gold boudoir, her own sanctum, for in it were all the little nick-nacks, odds and ends which on her marriage she had brought from her own home at Wartenstein. Every object reminded her of those happy days of her youth, before she was called upon to assume the shams of royal place and power; before she entered that palace that was to her but a gilded prison. The long windows of the room looked out upon the beautiful gardens and the great lake, with its playing fountains beyond, while the spring sunlight streaming in gave it an air of cheerfulness even though she was so despondent and heavy of heart. The apartment was gorgeously furnished, as indeed was the whole of the great palace. Upon the backs of the chairs, embroidered in gold upon the damask, was the royal crown and cipher, while the rich carpet was of pale pastel blue. For a long time she stood at the window, looking out across the park. She saw her husband in his cavalry uniform riding out with an escort clattering behind him, and watched him sadly until he was out of sight. Then she turned and glanced around the cosy room which everywhere bore traces of her artistic taste and refinement. Upon the side-tables were many photographs, signed portraits of her friends, reigning sovereigns, and royal princes; upon the little centre-table a great old porcelain bowl of fresh tea-roses from the royal hot-houses. Her little buhl escritoire was littered with her private correspondence--most of it being in connection with charities in various parts of the kingdom in which she was interested, or was patroness. Of money, or of the value of it, she knew scarcely anything. She was very wealthy, of course, for her family were one of the richest in Europe, while the royal house of Marburg was noted for its great wealth; yet she had never in her life held in her possession more than a few hundred marks at a time. Her bills all went to the official of the household whose duty it was to examine and pay them, and to charities she sent drafts through that same gold-spectacled official. She often wondered what it was like to be poor, to work for a daily wage like the people she saw in the street and in the theatres. They seemed bright, contented, happy, and at least they had their freedom, and loved and married whom they chose. Only the previous night, when she had entered her carriage at the station, a working-man had held his little child up to her for her to pat its head. She had done so, and then sighed to compare the difference between the royal father and that proud father of the people. Little Ignatia, sweet and fresh, in her white frock and pale pink sash, was presently brought in by Allen to salute her mother, and the latter snatched up the child gladly in her arms and smothered its chubby face with fond kisses. But the child noticed the disfigured countenance, and drew herself back to look at it. "Mother is hurt," she said in English, in her childish speech. "Poor mother!" "Yes, I fell down, darling," she answered. "Wasn't that very unfortunate? Are you sorry?" "Very sorry poor mother is hurt," answered the child. "And, why!--one of poor mother's tooths have gone." The Princess saw that Allen was looking at her very hard, therefore she turned to her and explained,-- "It is nothing--nothing; a slight accident. I struck myself." But the child stroked its mother's face tenderly with the soft, chubby little hand, saying,-- "Poor mother must be more careful another time or I shall scold her. And Allen will scold her too." "Mother will promise to be more careful," she assured the little one, smiling. And then, seating herself, listened for half an hour to the child's amusing prattle, and her joyous anticipation of the purchase of a perambulator for her dolly. With tender hands the Crown Princess retied the broad pink ribbon of the sash, and presently produced some chocolates from the silver bon-bon box which she kept there on purpose for her little one. And Allen, the rather plain-faced Englishwoman, who was the best of nurses, stood by in silence, wondering how such an accident could have happened to her Imperial mistress, but, of course, unable to put any question to her. "You may take Ignatia to buy the perambulator, Allen," said she at last in English. "Get a good one; the best you can. And after luncheon let me see it. I shall not go out to-day, so you can bring the Princess back to me at two o'clock." "Very well, your Highness." And both she and the child withdrew, the latter receiving the maternal kiss and caramels in each hand. Again alone, Claire sat for a long time in deep thought. The recollection of those cruel, bitter accusations which her husband had uttered was still uppermost in her mind. What her humble friend Steinbach had told her was, alas! only too true. At Court it was said that she loved Leitolf, and the Crown Prince believed the scandalous libel. "Ah, if Ferdinand only knew!" she murmured to herself. "If he could only read my heart! Then he would know the truth. Perhaps, instead of hating me as he does, he would be as forbearing as I try to be. He might even try to love me. Yet, alas!" she added bitterly, "such a thing cannot be. The Court of Marburg have decided that, in the interests of their own future, I must be ruined and disgraced. It is destiny, I suppose," she sighed; "my destiny!" Then she was silent, staring straight before her at Bronzino's beautiful portrait of the Duchess Eleanor on the wall opposite. The sound of a bugle reached her, followed by the roll of the drums as the palace guard was changed. The love of truth, the conscientiousness which formed so distinct a feature in Claire's character, and mingled with its picturesque delicacy a certain firmness and dignity, she maintained consistently always. The Trauttenberg returned, but she dismissed her for the day, and when she had left the boudoir the solitary woman murmured bitterly aloud,-- "A day's leave will perhaps allow you to plot and conspire further against the woman to whom you owe everything, and upon whose charity your family exist. Go and report to my husband my appearance this morning, and laugh with your friends at my unhappiness!" She rose and paced the room, her white hands clasped before her in desperation. "Carl! Carl!" she cried in a hoarse, low voice. "I have only your indiscretion to thank for all this! And yet have I not been quite as indiscreet? Why, therefore, should I blame you? No," she said in a whisper, after a pause, "it is more my own fault than yours. I was blind, and you loved me. I foolishly permitted you to come here, because your presence recalled all the happiness of the past--of those sweet, idyllic days at Wartenstein, when we--when we loved each other, and our love was but a day-dream never to be realised. I wonder whether you still recollect those days, as I remember them--those long rambles over the mountains alone by the by-paths that I knew from my childhood days, and how we used to stand together hand in hand and watch the sinking sun flashing upon the windows of the castle far away. Nine years have gone since those days of our boy-and-girl love--nine long, dark years that have, I verily believe, transformed my very soul. One by one have all my ideals been broken and swept away, and now I can only sit and weep over the dead ashes of the past. The past--ah! what that means to me--life and love and freedom. And the future?" she sighed. "Alas! only black despair, ignominy, and shame." Again she halted at the window, and hot tears coursed down her pale cheeks. Those words, uttered almost without consciousness on her own part, contained the revelation of a life of love, and disclosed the secret burden of a heart bursting with its own unuttered grief. She was repulsed, she was forsaken, she was outraged where she had bestowed her young heart with all its hopes and wishes. She was entangled inextricably in a web of horrors which she could not even comprehend, yet the result seemed inevitable. "These people condemn me! They utter their foul calumnies, and cast me from them unjustly," she cried, pushing her wealth of fair hair from her brow in her desperation. "Is there no justice for me? Can a woman not retain within her heart the fond remembrance of the holy passion of her youth--the only time she has loved--without it being condemned as a sin? without--" The words died on her dry lips, for at that moment there was a tap at the door, and she gave permission to enter. One of the royal servants in gorgeous livery bowed and advanced, presenting to her a small packet upon a silver salver, saying,-- "The person who brought this desired that it should be given into your Imperial Highness's hands at once." She took the packet, and the man withdrew. A single glance was sufficient to show her that the gummed address label had been penned by Count Carl Leitolf's own hand. Her heart beat quickly as she cut the string and opened the packet, to find within a book--a dull, uninteresting, philosophical treatise in German. There was no note or writing of any kind. She ran through the leaves quickly, and then stood wondering. Why had he sent her that? The book was one that she certainly could never read to understand. Published some fifteen years before, it bore signs of not being new. She was much puzzled. That Leitolf had a motive in sending it to her she had no doubt. But what could it denote? Again and again she searched in it to find some words or letters underlined--some communication meant for her eye alone. Presently, utterly at a loss to understand, she took up the brown-paper wrapping, and looked again at the address. Yes, she was not mistaken. It was from Carl. For a few moments she held the paper in her hand, when suddenly she detected that the gummed address label had only been stuck on lightly by being wetted around the edge, and a thought occurred to her to take it off and keep it, together with the book. Taking up the large ivory paper-knife, she quickly slipped it beneath the label and removed it, when to her astonished eyes there were presented some written words penned across the centre, where the gum had apparently been previously removed. The words, for her eye alone, were in Carl's handwriting, lightly written, so that they should not show through the label. The message--the last message from the man who loved her so fondly, and whose heart bled for her in her gilded unhappiness--read:-- "Adieu, my Princess. I leave at noon to-day, because you have willed it so. I have heard of what occurred last night. It is common knowledge in the palace. Be brave, dear heart. May God now be your comforter. Recollect, though we shall never again meet, that I shall think ever and eternally of you, my Princess, the sweet-faced woman who was once my own, but who is now, alas! lost to me for ever. Adieu, adieu. I kiss your hand, dear heart, adieu!" It was his last message. His gentle yet manly resignation, the deep pathos of his farewell, told her how full of agony was his own heart. How bitter for her, too, that parting, for now she would stand alone and unprotected, without a soul in whom to confide, or of whom to seek advice. As she reread those faintly-traced words slowly and aloud the light died from her face. "I kiss your hand, dear heart, adieu!" she murmured, and then, her heart overburdened by grief, she burst into a flood of emotion. CHAPTER NINE. THE THREE STRANGERS. By noon all Treysa knew, through the papers, of the indisposition of the Crown Princess; and during the afternoon many smart carriages called at the gates of the royal palace to inquire after her Imperial Highness's health. The pompous, scarlet-liveried porters told every one that the Princess had, unfortunately, caught a severe chill on her journey from Vienna, and her medical advisers, although they did not consider it serious, thought, as a precaution, it was best that for a few days she should remain confined to her room. Meanwhile the Princess, in her silent, stunning, overwhelming sorrow, was wondering how she might call Steinbach. She was unapproachable to any but the Court set, therefore to call a commoner would be an unheard-of breach of etiquette. And yet she desired to see him and obtain his advice. In all that gay, scheming circle about her he was the only person whom she could trust. He was devoted to her service because of the little charitable actions she had rendered him. She knew that he would if necessary lay down his very life in order to serve her, for he was one of the very few who did not misjudge her. The long day dragged by. She wrote many letters--mostly to her family and friends in Vienna. Then taking a sheet of the royal notepaper from the rack, she again settled herself, after pacing the boudoir in thought for some time, and penned a long letter, which when finished she reread and carefully corrected, afterwards addressing it in German to "His Imperial Majesty the Emperor, Vienna," and sealing it with her own private seal. "He misjudges me," she said to herself very gravely; "therefore it is only right that I should defend myself." Then she rang, and in answer to her summons one of the royal footmen appeared. "I want a special messenger to carry a letter for me to Vienna. Go at once to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and ask the Under-Secretary, Fischer, whether Steinbach may be placed at my service," she commanded. "Yes, your Imperial Highness," answered the clean-shaven, grave-faced man, who bowed and then withdrew. Allen soon afterwards brought in little Ignatia to show the doll's perambulator, with which the child was delighted, wheeling it up and down the boudoir. With the little one her mother played for upwards of an hour. The bright little chatterbox caused her to forget the tragedy of her own young life, and Allen's kindly English ways were to her so much more sympathetic than the stiff formalities of her treacherous lady-in-waiting. The little one in her pretty speeches told her mother of her adventures in the toy-shops of Treysa, where she was, of course, recognised, and where the shopkeepers often presented her little Royal Highness with dolls and games. In the capital the tiny Ignatia was a very important and popular personage everywhere; certainly more popular with the people than the parrot-faced, hard-hearted old King himself. Presently, while the Crown Princess was carrying her little one pick-a-pack up and down the room, the child crowing with delight at its mother's romping and caresses, there came a loud summons at the door, the rap that announced a visitor, and the same grave-faced manservant opened the long white doors, saying,-- "Your Imperial Highness. Will it please you to receive Herr Steinbach of the Department of Foreign Affairs?" "Bring Herr Steinbach here," she commanded, and then, kissing the child quickly, dismissed both her and her nurse. A few moments later the clean-shaven, dark-haired man in sombre black was ushered in, and bending, kissed the Crown Princess's hand with reverent formality. As soon as they were alone she turned to him, and, taking up the letter, said,-- "I wish you, Steinbach, to travel to Vienna by the express to-night, obtain audience of the Emperor, and hand this to him. Into no other hand must you deliver it, remember. In order to obtain your audience you may say that I have sent you; otherwise you will probably be refused. If there is a reply, you will bring it; if not--well, it does not matter." The quick-eyed man, bowing again, took the letter, glanced at the superscription, and placing it in the inner pocket of his coat, said,-- "I will carry out your Imperial Highness's directions." The Princess crossed to the door and opened it in order to satisfy herself that there were no eavesdroppers outside. Then returning to where the man stood, she said in a low voice,-- "I see that you are puzzled by the injury to my face when the papers are saying I have a chill. I met with a slight accident last night." Then in the next breath she asked, "What is the latest phase of this conspiracy against me, Steinbach? Tell me. You need conceal nothing for fear of hurting my feelings." The man hesitated a moment; then he replied,-- "Well, your Imperial Highness, a great deal of chatter has been circulated regarding Count Leitolf. They now say that, having grown tired of him, you have contrived to have him transferred to Rome." "Well?" "They also say that you visited Leitolf while you were in Vienna. And I regret," he added, "that your enemies are now spreading evil reports of you among the people. Certain journalists are being bribed to print articles which contain hints against your Highness's honour." "This is outrageous!" she cried. "Having ruined me in the eyes of my husband and the King, they now seek to turn the people against me! It is infamous!" "Exactly. That really seems their intention. They know that your Highness is the most popular person in the whole Kingdom, and they intend that your popularity shall wane." "And I am helpless, Steinbach, utterly helpless," she cried in desperation. "I have no friend except yourself." The man sighed, for he was full of sympathy for the beautiful but unjustly-treated woman, whose brave heart he knew was broken. He was aware of the love-story of long ago between the Count and herself, but he knew her too well to believe any of those scandalous tales concerning her. He knew well how, from the very first days of her married life, she had been compelled to endure sneers, insult, and libellous report. The King and Queen themselves had been so harsh and unbending that she had always held aloof from them. Her every action, either in private or in public, they criticised adversely. She even wore her tiaras, her jewels, and her decorations in a manner with which they found fault; and whatever dress she assumed at the various functions, the sharp-tongued old Queen, merely in order to annoy her, would declare that she looked absolutely hideous. And all this to a bride of twenty-one, and one of the most beautiful girls in Europe! All, from the King himself down to the veriest palace lackey, had apparently united to crush her, to break her spirit, and drive her to despair. "I hope, as I declared when we last met, Princess, that I shall ever remain your friend," said the humble employe of the Foreign Ministry. "I only wish that I could serve you to some good purpose--I mean, to do something that might increase your happiness. Forgive me, your Highness, for saying so." "The only way to give me happiness, Steinbach, is to give me freedom," she said sadly, as though speaking to herself. "Freedom--ah, how I long for it! How I long to escape from this accursed palace, and live as the people live! I tell you," she added in a low, half-whisper, her pale, disfigured face assuming a deadly earnest look--"I tell you that sometimes I feel--well, I feel that I can't endure it much longer, and that I'm slowly being driven insane." He started at her words, and looked her straight in the face. Should he tell her the truth of an amazing discovery he had made only on the previous day; or was it really kinder to her to hold his tongue? His very heart bled for her. To her influence he owed all--everything. No; he could not tell her of that new and dastardly plot against her--at least not yet. Surely it was not yet matured! When he returned from Vienna would be quite time enough to warn her against her increased peril. Now that Leitolf had left her, life might perhaps be a trifle more happy; therefore why should he, of all men, arouse her suspicions and cause her increased anxiety? Steinbach was a cautious man; his chief fault perhaps was his over-cautiousness. In this affair he might well have spoken frankly; yet his desire always was to avoid hurting the feelings of the woman with whom he so deeply sympathised--the Imperial Princess, to whom he acted as humble, devoted, and secret friend. "You must not allow such fears to take possession of you," he urged. "Do not heed what is said regarding you. Remember only that your own conscience is clear, even though your life is, alas, a martyrdom! Let them see that you are heedless and defiant, and ere long they will grow tired of their efforts, and you will assume a power at Court far greater than hitherto." "Ah no--never!" she sighed. "They are all against me--all. If they do not crush me by force, they will do so by subterfuge," declared the unhappy woman. "But," she added quickly with an effort, "do not let us speak of it further. I can only thank you for telling me the truth. Go to-night to Vienna, and if there is a reply, bring it to me immediately. And stay--what can I do to give you recompense? You have no decoration! I will write at once a recommendation for you for the cross of St. Michael, and whenever you wear it you will, I hope, remember the grateful woman who conferred it upon you." "I thank your Highness most truly," he said. "I have coveted the high honour for many years, and I can in turn only reassure you that any mission you may entrust to me will always be carried out in secret and faithfully." "Then adieu, Steinbach," she said, dismissing him. "_Bon voyage_, and a quick return from Vienna--my own dear Vienna, where once I was so very happy." The man in black bent low and again kissed the back of the soft white hand, then, backing out of the door, bowed again and withdrew. When Henriette came that evening to change her dress the woman said in French,-- "I ask your Imperial Highness's pardon, but the Prince, who returned half an hour ago, commanded me to say that he would dine with you this evening, and that there would be three men guests." "Guests!" she cried. "But the Prince must be mad! How can I receive guests in this state, Henriette?" "I explained that your Imperial Highness was not in a fit state to dine in public," said the maid quietly; "but the Prince replied that he commanded it." What fresh insult had her husband in store for her? Did he wish to exhibit her poor bruised face publicly before her friends? It was monstrous! Yet he had commanded; therefore she allowed Henriette to brush her fair hair and dress her in a black net dinner-gown, one that she often wore when dining in the privacy of her own apartments. Henriette cleverly contrived, by the aid of powder and a few touches of make-up, to half conceal her mistress's disfiguration; therefore at eight o'clock the Princess Claire entered the fine white-and-gold reception-room, lit by its hundreds of small electric lamps, and there found her husband in uniform, speaking earnestly with three elderly and rather distinguished-looking men in plain evening dress. Turning, he smiled at her as though nothing had occurred between them, and then introduced his friends by name; but of their names she took no notice. They were strangers, and to her quite uninteresting. Yet she bowed, smiled, and put on that air of graciousness that, on account of her Court training, she could now assume at will. The men were from somewhere in North Germany, she detected by their speech, and at the dinner-table the conversation was mostly upon the advance of science; therefore she concluded, from their spectacled appearance and the technical terms they used, that they were scientists from Berlin to whom her husband wished to be kind, and had invited them quite without formality. Their conversation did not interest her in the least; therefore she remained almost silent throughout the meal, except now and then to address a remark to one or other of her guests. She noticed that once or twice they exchanged strange glances. What could it mean? At last she rose, and after they had bowed her out they reseated themselves, and all four began conversing in a lower tone in English, lest any servant should enter unexpectedly. Then ten minutes later, at a signal from the Prince, they rose and passed into the _fumoir_, a pretty room panelled with cedar-wood, and with great palms and plashing fountains, where coffee was served and cigars were lit. There the conversation in an undertone in English was again resumed, the Prince being apparently very interested in something which his guests were explaining. Though the door was closed and they believed themselves in perfect privacy, there was a listener standing in the adjoining room, where the cedar panelling only acted as a partition. It was the Princess Claire. Her curiosity had been aroused as to who the strangers really were. She could hear them speaking in English at first with difficulty, but presently her husband spoke. The words he uttered were clear. In an instant they revealed to her an awful, unexpected truth. She held her breath, her left hand upon her bare chest above her corsage, her mouth open, her white face drawn and haggard. Scarce believing her own ears, she again listened. Could it really be true? Her husband again spoke. Ah yes! of the words he uttered there could be not the slightest doubt. She was doomed. With uneven steps she staggered from her hiding-place along the corridor to her own room, and on opening the door she fell forward senseless upon the carpet. CHAPTER TEN. THE PERIL OF THE PRINCESS. That night, six hours later, when the great palace was silent save for the tramping of the sentries, the Princess sat in the big chair at her window, looking out upon the park, white beneath the bright moonbeams. The room was in darkness, save for the tiny silver lamp burning before the picture of the Madonna. The Trauttenberg had found her lying insensible, and with Henriette's aid had restored her to consciousness and put her to bed. Then the Countess had gone along to the Crown Prince and told him that his wife had been seized with a fainting fit, and was indisposed. And the three guests, when he told them, exchanged significant glances, and were silent. In the darkness, with the moonlight falling across the room, the Princess, in her white silk dressing-gown, sat staring straight before her out upon the fairy-like scene presented below. No word escaped her pale lips, yet she shuddered, and drew her laces about her as though she were chilled. She was recalling those hard words of her husband's which she had overheard--the words that revealed to her the ghastly truth. If ever she had suffered during her married life, she suffered at that moment. It was cruel, unjust, dastardly. Was there no love or justice for her? The truth was a ghastly one. Those three strangers whom her husband had introduced to her table as guests were doctors, two from Berlin and the third from Cologne--specialists in mental disease. They had come there for the purpose of adding their testimony and certificates to that of Veltman, the crafty, thin-nosed Court physician, to declare that she was insane! What fees were promised those men, or how that plot had been matured, she could only imagine. Yet the grim fact remained that her enemies, with the old King and her husband at their head, intended to confine her in an asylum. She had heard her husband himself suggest that on the morrow they should meet Veltman, a white-bearded, bald-headed old charlatan whom she detested, and add their testimony to his that she was not responsible for her actions. Could anything be more cold-blooded, more absolutely outrageous? Those words of her husband showed her plainly that in his heart there now remained not one single spark either of affection or of sentiment. He was anxious, at all hazards and at whatever cost, by fair means or foul, to rid himself of her. Her enemies were now playing their trump card. They had no doubt bribed those three men to certify what was a direct untruth. A royal sovereign can, alas I command the services of any one; for everybody, more or less, likes to render to royalty a service in the hope of decoration or of substantial reward. Most men are at heart place-seekers. Men who are most honest and upright in their daily lives will not hesitate to perjure themselves, or "stretch a point" as they would doubtless put it, where royalty is concerned. Gazing out into the brilliant moonlight mirrored upon the smooth surface of the lake, she calmly reviewed the situation. She was in grave peril--so grave, indeed, that she was now utterly bewildered as to what her next step should be. Once certified as a lunatic and shut up in an asylum somewhere away in the heart of the country, all hope of the future would be cut off. She would be entirely at the mercy of those who so persistently and unscrupulously sought her end. Having failed in their other plot against, her, they intended to consign her to a living tomb. Yet by good fortune had her curiosity been aroused, and she had overheard sufficient to reveal to her the truth. Her face was now hard, her teeth firmly set. Whatever affection she had borne her husband was crushed within her now that she realised how ingeniously he was conspiring against her, and to what length he was actually prepared to go in order to rid himself of her. She thought of Ignatia, poor, innocent little Ignatia, the child whom its father had cursed from the very hour of its birth, the royal Princess who one day might be crowned a reigning sovereign. What would become of her? Would her own Imperial family stand by and see their daughter incarcerated in a madhouse when she was as sane as they themselves--more sane, perhaps? She sat bewildered. With the Emperor against her, however, she had but little to hope for in that quarter. His Majesty actually believed the scandal that had been circulated concerning Leitolf, and had himself declared to her face that she must be mad. Was it possible that those hot words of the Emperor's had been seized upon by her husband to obtain a declaration that she was really insane? Insane? She laughed bitterly to herself at such a thought. "Ah!" she sighed sadly, speaking hoarsely to herself. "What I have suffered and endured here in this awful place are surely sufficient to send any woman mad. Yet God has been very good to me, and has allowed me still to preserve all my faculties intact. Why don't they have some assassin to kill me?" she added desperately. "It would surely be more humane than what they now intend." Steinbach, her faithful but secret friend, was on his way to Vienna. She wondered whether, after reading the letter, the Emperor would relent towards her? Surely the whole world could not unite as her enemy. There must be human pity and sympathy in the hearts of some, as there was in the heart of the humble Steinbach. Not one of the thirty millions over whom she would shortly rule was so unhappy as she that night. Beyond the park shone the myriad lights of the splendid capital, and she wondered whether any one living away there so very far from the world ever guessed how lonely and wretched was her life amid all that gorgeous pomp and regal splendour. Those three grave, spectacled men who had dined at her table and talked their scientific jargon intended to denounce her. They had been quick to recognise that a future king is a friend not to be despised, while the bankers' drafts that certain persons had promised them in exchange for their signatures as experts would no doubt be very acceptable. Calmly she reviewed the situation, and saw that, so clearly had her enemies estranged her from every one, she was without one single friend. For her child's sake it was imperative for her to save herself. And she could only save herself by flight. But whither? The only course open to her was to leave secretly, taking little Ignatia with her, return to her father, and lay before him the dastardly plot now in progress. Each hour she remained at the palace increased her peril. Once pronounced insane by those three specialists there would be no hope for her. Her enemies would take good care that she was consigned to an asylum, and that her actions were misconstrued into those of a person insane. Her heart beat quickly as she thought out the best means of secret escape. To leave that night was quite impossible. Allen was sleeping with Ignatia; and besides, the guards at the palace gate, on seeing her make her exit at that hour, would chatter among themselves, in addition to which there were no express trains to Vienna in the night. The best train was at seven o'clock in the evening, for upon it was a _wagon-lit_ and dining-car that went through to the Austrian capital, _via_ Eger. About six o'clock in the evening would be the best time to secure the child, for Allen and Henriette would then both be at dinner, and little Ignatia would be in charge of the under-nurse, whom she could easily send away upon some pretext. Besides, at that hour she could secure some of Henriette's clothes, and with her veil down might pass the sentries, who would probably take her for the French maid herself. She calculated that her absence would not be noted by her servants till nearly eight; for there was a Court ball on the morrow, and on nights of the balls she always dressed later. And so, determined to leave the great palace which to her was a prison, she carefully thought over all the details of her flight. On the morrow she would send to the royal treasurer for a sum of money, ostensibly to make a donation to one of her charities. Presently rising, she closed the shutters, and switching on the electric light, opened the safe in the wall where her jewels were kept--mostly royal heirlooms that were worth nearly a million sterling. Case after case she drew out and opened. Her two magnificent tiaras, her emerald and diamond necklet, the great emerald pendant, once the property of Catherine di Medici, six wonderful collars of perfect pearls and some other miscellaneous jewels, all of them magnificent, she replaced in the safe, as they were heirlooms of the Kingdom. Those royal tiaras as Crown Princess she placed in their cases and put them away with a sigh, for she knew she was renouncing her crown for ever. Her own jewels, quite equal in magnificence, she took from their cases and placed together upon the bed. There was her magnificent long rope of pearls, that when worn twice twisted around her neck hung to below the knees, and was declared to be one of the finest in the world; her two diamond collars, her wonderful diamond bodice ornaments, her many pairs of earrings, antique brooches, and other jewels--she took them all from their cases until they lay together, a brilliant, scintillating heap, the magnificent gems flashing with a thousand fires. At last she drew forth a leather case about six inches square, and opening it, gazed upon it in hesitancy. Within was a large true-lover's knot in splendid diamonds, and attached to it was the black ribbon and the jewelled cross--her decoration as Dame de la Croix Etoilee of Austria, the order bestowed upon the Imperial Archduchesses. She looked at it wistfully. Sight of it brought to her mind the fact that in renouncing her position she must also renounce that mark of her Imperial birth. Yet she was determined, and with trembling fingers detached the ribbon and cross from the diamond ornament, threw the latter on to the heap upon the bed, and replaced the former with the jewels she intended to leave behind. The beautiful cross had been bestowed upon her by her uncle the Emperor upon her marriage, and would now be sent back to him. She took two large silk handkerchiefs from a drawer, and made two bundles of the precious gems. Then she hid them away until the morrow, and reclosing the safe, locked it; and taking the key off the bunch, placed it in the drawer of her little escritoire. Thus she had taken the first step towards her emancipation. Her eye caught the Madonna, with its silver lamp, and she halted before it, her head bowed, her lips moving in silent prayer as she sought help, protection, and guidance in the act of renunciation she was about to commit. Then, after ten minutes or so, she again moved slowly across the room, opening the great inlaid wardrobe where hung a few of her many dresses. She looked upon them in silence. All must be left behind, she decided. She could only take what she could carry in her hand. She would leave her personal belongings to be divided up by that crowd of human wolves who hungered to destroy her. The Trauttenberg might have them as her perquisites--in payment for her treachery. By that hour to-morrow she would have left Treysa for ever. She would begin a new life--a life of simplicity and of freedom, with her darling child. Presently she slept again, but it was a restless, fevered sleep. Constantly she wondered whether it would be possible for her to pass those palace guards with little Ignatia. If they recognised the child they might stop her, for only Allen herself was permitted to take her outside the palace. Yet she must risk it; her only means of escape was that upon which she had decided. Next day passed very slowly. The hours dragged by as she tried to occupy herself in her boudoir, first with playing with the child, and afterwards attending to her correspondence. She wrote no letter of farewell, as she deemed it wiser to take her leave without a word. Yet even in those last hours of her dignity as Crown Princess her thoughts were with the many charitable institutions of which she was patroness, and of how best she could benefit them by writing orders to the royal treasurer to give them handsome donations in her name. She saw nothing of her husband. For aught she knew, those three grave-faced doctors might have already consulted with Veltman; they might have already declared her insane. The afternoon passed, and alone she took her tea in English fashion, little Ignatia being brought to her for half an hour, as was the rule when she was without visitors. She had already been to Henriette's room in secret, and had secured a black-stuff dress and packet, a long black travelling-coat and a felt canotte, all of which she had taken to her own room and hidden in her wardrobe. When Allen took the child's hand in order to lead her out, her mother glanced anxiously at the clock, and saw that it was half-past five. "You can leave Ignatia here while you go to dinner," she said in English; "she will be company for me. Tell the servants that I am not to be disturbed, even by the Countess de Trauttenberg." "Very well, your Highness," was the Englishwoman's answer, as bowing she left the room. For another quarter of an hour she laughed and played with the child, then said,-- "Come, darling, let us go along to my room." And taking her tiny hand, led her gently along the corridor to her own chamber. Once within she locked the door, and quickly throwing off her own things, assumed those of the maid which she took from the wardrobe. Then upon Ignatia she put a cheap dark coat of grey material and a dark-blue woollen cap which at once concealed the child's golden curls. This concluded, she assumed a thick black lace veil, which well concealed her features, and around her throat she twisted a silken scarf. The collar of her coat, turned up, hid the colour of her hair, and her appearance was in a few moments well transformed. Indeed, she presented the exact prototype of her maid Henriette. The jewels were in a cheap leather hand-bag, also the maid's property. This she placed in her dressing-bag, and with it in her hand she took up little Ignatia, saying,-- "Hush, darling! don't speak a word. You'll promise mother, won't you?" The child, surprised at all this preparation, gave her promise, but still remained inquisitive. Then the Crown Princess Claire gave a final glance around the room, the scene of so much of her bitter domestic unhappiness. Sighing heavily, she crossed herself before the Madonna, uttered a few low words in prayer, and unlocking the door stole out into the long, empty corridor. Those were exciting moments--the most exciting in all her life. With her heart beating quickly she sped onward to the head of the great marble gilt staircase. Along one of the side corridors a royal valet was approaching, and the man nodded to her familiarly, believing her to be Henriette. At the head of the staircase she looked down, but saw nobody. It was the hour when all the servants were at their evening meal. Therefore, descending quickly, she passed through the great winter garden, a beautiful place where, among the palms and flowers, were cunningly placed tiny electric lamps. Across a large courtyard she went--as it was a short cut from that wing of the palace in which her apartments were situated--and at last she reached the main entrance, where stood the head concierge in his cocked hat and scarlet livery, and where idled an agent of police in plain clothes, reading the evening paper. At her approach they both glanced at her. She held her breath. What if they stopped her on account of the child? But summoning all her courage she went forward, compelled to pass them quite closely. Then as she advanced she nodded familiarly to the gold-laced janitor, who to her relief wished her good-evening, and she passed out into the park. She had successfully passed through one peril, but there was yet a second--those carefully-guarded gilded gates which gave entrance to the royal demesne. Day and night they were watched by palace servants and the agents of police entrusted with his Majesty's personal safety. She sped on down the broad gravelled drive, scarce daring to breathe, and on arrival at the gatehouse passed in it, compelled to make her exit through the small iron turnstile where sat two men, the faithful white-bearded old gatekeeper, who had been fifty years in the royal service, and a dark-faced brigadier of police. Recognition would mean her incarceration in an asylum as insane. Both men looked up as she entered. It was the supreme moment of her peril. She saw that the detective was puzzled by her veil. But she boldly passed by them, saying in French, in a voice in imitation of Henriette's,-- "_Bon soir, messieurs_!" The old gatekeeper, in his low, gruff German, wished her good-night unsuspiciously, drew the lever which released the turnstile, and next moment the Crown Princess Claire stepped out into the world beyond--a free woman. CHAPTER ELEVEN. DOOM OR DESTINY. With quickened footsteps she clasped the child to her, and hurrying on in the falling gloom, skirted the long, high walls of the royal park, where at equal distances stood the sentries. More than one, believing her to be Mademoiselle, saluted her. She was free, it is true; but she had yet to face many perils, the greatest of them all being that of recognition by the police at the station, or by any of the people, to whom her countenance was so well known. Presently she gained the broad Klosterstrasse, where the big electric lamps were already shining; and finding a fiacre at the stand, entered it and drove to a small outfitter's shop, where she purchased two travelling-rugs and a shawl for little Ignatia. Thence she went to a pastrycook's and bought some cakes, and then drove up the wide Wolbeckerstrasse to the central railway station. The streets were alive with life, for most of the shops were closed, the main thoroughfares were illuminated, and all Treysa was out at the cafes or restaurants, or promenading the streets, for the day was a national festival. The national colours were displayed everywhere, and the band of the 116th Regiment was playing a selection from "La Boheme" as she crossed the great Domplatz. Hers was indeed a strange position. Unknown and unrecognised, she drove in the open cab, with the tiny, wondering Princess at her side, through the great crowds of holiday-makers--those people who had they known of her unhappiness would in all probability have risen in a body and revolted. She remembered that she had been "their Claire," yet after that night she would be theirs no longer. It was a sad and silent leave-taking. She had renounced her crown and imperial privileges for ever. Many men and women stared at her as she passed under the bright electric street lamps, and once or twice she half feared that they might have penetrated her disguise. Yet no cheer was raised; none rushed forward to kiss her hand. She gave the cabman orders to drive up and down several of the principal thoroughfares, for there was still plenty of time for the train; and, reluctant to take leave of the people of Treysa whom she loved so well, and who were her only friends, she gazed upon them from behind her veil and sighed. At the busy, echoing station she arrived ten minutes before the express was due, and took her tickets; but when she went to the _wagon-lit_ office, the official, not recognising her, sharply replied that the places had all been taken by an American tourist party. Therefore she was compelled to enter an ordinary first-class compartment. The train was crowded, and all the corner seats were taken. Fearing to call a porter to her assistance lest she should be recognised--when the royal saloon would at once be attached to the train for her--she was compelled to elbow her way through the crowd and take an uncomfortable seat in the centre of a compartment, where all through the night she tried to sleep, but in vain. Little Ignatia soon closed her eyes and was asleep, but Claire, full of regrets at being compelled to renounce husband, crown, everything, as she had done, and in wonder of what the future had in store for her, sat silent, nursing her child through the long night hours. Her fellow-travellers, two fat Germans of Jewish cast, and three women, slept heavily, the men snoring. The grey dawn showed at last over the low green hills. Had her absence been discovered? Most certainly it had, but they had now passed the confines of the kingdom, and she was certain that the people at the palace would not telegraph news of her disappearance for fear of creating undue scandal. At last she had frustrated their dastardly plot to incarcerate her in an asylum. She sat there, a figure of sweet loveliness combined with exceeding delicacy and even fragility--one of the most refined elegance and the most exquisite modesty. At a small wayside station where they stopped about seven o'clock she bought a glass of coffee, and then they continued until the Austrian frontier at Voitersreuth was reached; and at Eger, a few miles farther on, she was compelled to descend and change carriages, for only the _wagon-lit_ went through to the capital. It was then eleven o'clock in the morning, and feeling hungry, she took little Ignatia into the buffet and had some luncheon, the child delighted at the novel experience of travelling. "We are going to see grandfather," her mother told her. "You went to see him when you were such a wee, wee thing, so you don't remember him." "No," declared the child with wide-open, wondering eyes; "I don't remember. Will Allen be there?" "No, darling, I don't think so," was the evasive reply to a question which struck deep into the heart of the woman fleeing from her persecutors. While Ignatia had her milk, her mother ate her cutlet at the long table among the other hasty travellers, gobbling up their meal and shouting orders to waiters with their mouths full. Hitherto, when she passed there in the royal saloon, the railway officials had come forward, cap in hand, to salute her as an Imperial Archduchess of Austria; but now, unknown and unrecognised, she passed as an ordinary traveller. Presently, when the Vienna express drew up to the platform, she fortunately found an empty first-class compartment, and continued her journey alone, taking off her hat and settling herself for the remaining nine hours between there and the capital. Little Ignatia was still very sleepy, therefore she made a cushion for her with her cape and laid her full length, while she herself sat in a corner watching the picturesque landscape, and thinking--thinking deeply over all the grim tragedy of the past. After travelling for three hours, the train stopped at a small station called Protovin, the junction of the line from Prague, whence a train had arrived in connection with the express. Here there seemed quite a number of people waiting upon the platform. She was looking out carelessly upon them when from among the crowd a man's eyes met hers. He stared open-mouthed, turned pale, and next instant was at the door. She drew back, but, alas! it was too late. She was without hat or veil, and he had recognised her. She gave vent to a low cry, half of surprise, half of despair. Next second the door opened, and the man stood before her, hat in hand. "Princess!" he gasped in a low, excited voice. "What does this mean? You--alone--going to Vienna?" "Carl!" she cried, "why are _you_ here? Where have you come from?" "I have been to my estate up at Rakonitz, before going to Rome," was his answer. "Is it Destiny that again brings us together like this?" And entering the carriage, he bent and kissed her hand. Was it Destiny, or was it Doom? "You with Ignatia, and no lady-in-waiting? What does this mean?" he inquired, utterly puzzled. The porter behind him placed his bag in the carriage, while he, in his travelling-ulster and cap, begged permission to remain there. What could she say? She was very lonely, and she wanted to tell him what had occurred since her return to Treysa and of the crisis of it all. So she nodded in the affirmative. Then he gave the porter his tip, and the man departed. Presently, before the train moved off, the sleeping child opened her eyes, shyly at first, in the presence of a stranger; but a moment later, recognising him, she got up, and rushing gladly towards him, cried in her pretty, childish way,-- "Leitolf! Good Leitolf to come with us! We are so very tired!" "Are you, little Highness?" exclaimed the man laughing, and taking her upon his knee. "But you will soon be at your destination." "Yes," she pouted, "but I would not mind if mother did not cry so much." The Princess pressed her lips together. She was a little annoyed that her child should reveal the secret of her grief. If she did so to Leitolf she might do so to others. After a little while, however, the motion of the train lulled the child off to sleep again, and the man laid her down as before. Then, turning to the sorrowing woman at his side, he asked,-- "You had my message--I mean you found it?" She nodded, but made no reply. She recollected each of those finely-penned words, and knew that they came from the heart of as honest and upright a man as there was in the whole empire. "And now tell me, Princess, the reason of this second journey to Vienna?" he asked, looking at her with his calm, serious face. For a moment she held her breath. There were tears welling in her eyes, and she feared lest he might detect them--feared that she might break down in explaining to him the bitter truth. "I have left Treysa for ever," she said simply. He started from his seat and stared at her. "Left Treysa!" he gasped. "Left the Court--left your husband! Is this really true?" "It is the truth, Carl," was her answer in a low, tremulous tone. "I could bear it no longer." He was silent. He recognised the extreme gravity of the step she had taken. He recognised, too, that, more serious than all, her unscrupulous enemies who had conspired to drive her from Court had now triumphed. His brows were knit as he realised all that she was suffering--this pure, beautiful woman, whom he had once loved so fondly, and whose champion he still remained. He knew that the Crown Prince was a man of brutal instinct, and utterly unsuited as husband of a sweet, refined, gentle woman such as Claire. It was, indeed, a tragedy--a dark tragedy. In a low voice he inquired what had occurred, but she made no mention of the brutal, cowardly blow which had felled her insensible, cut her lip, and broken her white teeth. She only explained very briefly the incident of the three guests at dinner, and the amazing conversation she had afterwards overheard. "It is a dastardly plot!" he cried in quick anger. "Why, you are as sane as I am, and yet the Crown Prince, in order to get rid of you, will allow these doctors to certify you as a lunatic! The conspiracy shall be exposed in the press. I will myself expose it!" he declared, clenching his fists. "No, Carl," she exclaimed quickly. "I have never done anything against my husband's interest, nor have I ever made complaint against him. I shall not do so now. Remember, what I have just told you is in strict confidence. The public must not know of it." "Then will you actually remain a victim and keep silence, allowing these people to thus misjudge you?" he asked in a tone of reproach. "To bring opprobrium upon my husband is to bring scandal upon the Court and nation," was her answer. "I am still Crown Princess, and I have still my duty to perform towards the people." "You are a woman of such high ideals, Princess," he said, accepting her reproof. "Most other wives who have been treated as you have would have sought to retaliate." "Why should I? My husband is but the weak-principled puppet of a scandalous Court. It is not his own fault. He is goaded on by those who fear that I may reign as Queen." "Few women would regard him in such a very generous light," Leitolf remarked, still stunned by the latest plot which she had revealed. If there was an ingenious conspiracy to confine her in an asylum, then surely it would be an easy matter for the very fact of her flight to be misconstrued into insanity. They would tear her child from her, and imprison her, despairing and brokenhearted. The thought of it goaded him to desperation. She told him of her intention of returning to her father, the Archduke Charles, and of living in future in her old home at Wartenstein--that magnificent castle of which they both had such pleasant recollections. "And I shall be in Rome," he sighed. "Ah, Princess, I shall often think of you, often and often." "Never write to me, I beg of you, Carl," she said apprehensively. "Your letter might fall into other hands, and certainly would be misunderstood. The world at large does not believe in platonic friendship between man and woman, remember." "True," he murmured. "That is why they say that you and I are still lovers, which is a foul and abominable lie." Their eyes met, and she saw a deep, earnest look in his face that told her that he was thinking still of those days long ago, and of that giddy intoxication of heart and sense which belongs to the novelty of passion which we feel once, and but once, in our lives. At that moment the train came to a standstill at the little station of Gratzen, and, unnoticed by them, a man passed the carriage and peered in inquisitively. He was a thick-set, grey-bearded, hard-faced German, somewhat round-shouldered, rather badly dressed, who, leaning heavily upon his stick, walked with the air of an invalid. He afterwards turned quickly upon his heel and again limped past, gazing in, so as to satisfy himself that he was not mistaken. Then entering a compartment at the rear of the train the old fellow resumed his journey, smiling to himself, and stroking his beard with his thin, bony hand, as though he had made a very valuable discovery and yet was puzzled. CHAPTER TWELVE. "AN OPEN SCANDAL!" At Klosterneuberg, six miles from Vienna, Leitolf kissed her hand in deep reverence, taking sad leave of her, for on arrival at the capital she would probably be recognised, and they both deemed it judicious that she should be alone. "Good-bye," he said earnestly, holding her hand as the train ran into the suburban station. "This meeting of ours has been a strange and unexpected one, and this is, I suppose, our last leave-taking. I have nothing to add," he sighed. "You know that I am ever your servant, ever ready to serve your Imperial Highness in whatsoever manner you may command. May God bless and comfort you. Adieu." "Good-bye, Carl," she said brokenly. It was all she could say. She restrained her tears by dint of great effort. Then, when he had gone and closed the carriage door, she burst into a fit of sobbing. By his absence it seemed to her that the light of her life had been extinguished. She was alone, in hopeless despair. Darkness had now fallen, and as the train rushed on its final run along the precipitous slopes of the Kahlenberg, little Ignatia placed her arms around her mother's neck and said,-- "Mother, don't cry, or I shall tell Allen, and she'll scold you. Poor, dear mother!" The Princess kissed the child's soft arms, and at length managed to dry her own eyes, assuming her hat and veil in preparation for arrival at the capital. And none too soon, for ere she had dressed Ignatia and assumed her own disguise the train slowed down and stopped, while the door was thrown open and a porter stood ready to take her wraps. She took Ignatia in her arms and descended in the great station, bright beneath its electric lamps, and full of bustle and movement. She saw nothing more of Leitolf, who had disappeared into the crowd. He had wished her farewell for ever. A fiacre conveyed her to her father's magnificent palace in the Parkring, where on arrival the gorgeous concierge, mistaking her for a domestic, treated her with scant courtesy. "His Imperial Highness the Archduke is not in Vienna," was his answer. "What's your business with him, pray?" The Princess, laughing, raised her veil, whereupon the gruff old fellow, a highly-trusted servant, stammered deep apologies, took off his hat, and bent to kiss the hand of the daughter of the Imperial house. "My father is away, Franz? Where is he?" "At Wartenstein, your Imperial Highness. He left yesterday," and he rang the electric bell to summon the major-domo. She resolved to remain the night, and then resume her journey to the castle. Therefore, with little Ignatia still in her arms, she ascended the grand staircase, preceded by the pompous servitor, until she reached the small green-and-gilt salon which she always used when she came there. Two maids were quickly in attendance, electric lights were switched on everywhere, and the bustle of servants commenced as soon as the news spread that the Archduchess Claire had returned. Several of the officials of the Archducal Court came to salute her, and the housekeeper came to her to receive orders, which, being simple, were quickly given. She retired to her room with little Ignatia, and after putting the child to bed, removed the dust of travel and went to one of the smaller dining-rooms, where two men in the Imperial livery served her dinner in stiff silence. Her father being absent, many of the rooms were closed, the furniture swathed in holland, and the quiet of the great, gorgeous place was to her distinctly depressing. She was anxious to know how her father would take her flight--whether he would approve of it or blame her. She sent distinct orders to Franz that no notice was to be given to the journals of her unexpected return, remarking at the same time that he need not send to the station, as she had arrived without baggage. If it were known in Vienna that she had returned, the news would quickly be telegraphed back to Treysa. Besides, when the fact of her presence in the Austrian capital was known, she would, as Crown Princess, be compelled by Court etiquette to go at once and salute her uncle the Emperor. This she had no desire to do just at present. His hard, unjust words at her last interview with him still rankled in her memory. His Majesty was not her friend. That had recently been made entirely plain. So, after dining, she chatted for a short time with De Bothmer, her father's private secretary, who came to pay his respects to her, and then retired to her own room--the room with the old ivory crucifix where the oil light burnt dimly in its red glass. She crossed herself before it, and her lips moved in silent prayer. A maid came to her and reported that little Ignatia was sleeping soundly, but that was not sufficient. She went herself along the corridor to the child's room and saw that she was comfortable, giving certain instructions with maternal anxiety. Then she returned to her room accompanied by the woman, who, inquisitive regarding her young mistress's return, began to chat to her while she brushed and plaited her hair, telling her all the latest gossip of the palace. The Archduke, her father, had, it appeared, gone to Wartenstein for a fortnight, and had arranged to go afterwards to Vichy for the cure, and thence to Paris; therefore, next morning, taking the maid with her to look after little Ignatia, she left Vienna again for the Tyrol, travelling by Linz and Salsburg to Rosenheim, and then changing on to the Innsbruck line and alighting, about six o'clock in the evening, at the little station of Rattenberg. There she took a hired carriage along the post road into the beautiful Zillerthal Alps, where, high up in a commanding position ten miles away, her old home was situated--one of the finest and best-preserved mediaeval castles in Europe. It was already dark, and rain was falling as the four horses, with their jingling bells, toiled up the steep, winding road, the driver cracking his whip, proud to have the honour of driving her Imperial Highness, who until four years ago had spent the greater part of her life there. Little Ignatia, tired out by so much travelling, slept upon her mother's knee, and the Crown Princess herself dozed for a time, waking to find that they were still toiling up through the little village of Fugen, which was her own property. Presently, three miles farther on, she looked out of the carriage window, and there, high up in the darkness, she saw the lighted windows of the great, grim stronghold which, nearly a thousand years ago, had been the fortress of the ancient Kings of Carinthia, those warlike ancestors of hers whose valiant deeds are still recorded in song and story. Half an hour later the horses clattered into the great courtyard of the castle, and the old castellan came forth in utter amazement to bow before her. Electric bells were rung, servants came forward quickly, the Archduke's chamberlain appeared in surprise, and the news spread in an instant through the servants' quarters that the Archduchess Claire--whom the whole household worshipped--had returned and had brought with her the tiny Princess Ignatia. Everywhere men and women bowed low before her as, preceded by the black-coated chamberlain, she went through those great, old vaulted halls she knew so well, and up the old stone winding stairs to the room which was still reserved for her, and which had not been disturbed since she had left it to marry. On entering she glanced around, and sighed in relief. At last she was back at home again in dear old Wartenstein. Her dream of liberty was actually realised! Little Ignatia and the nurse were given an adjoining room which she had used as a dressing-room, and as she stood there alone every object in the apartment brought back to her sweet memories of her girlhood, with all its peaceful hours of bliss, happiness, and high ideals. It was not a large room, but extremely cosy. The windows in the ponderous walls allowed deep alcoves, where she loved to sit and read on summer evenings, and upon one wall was the wonderful old fourteenth-century tapestry representing a tournament, which had been a scene always before her ever since she could remember. The bed, too, was gilded, quaint and old-fashioned, with hangings of rich crimson silk brocade of three centuries ago. Indeed, the only modern innovations there were the big toilet-table with its ancient silver bowl and ewer, and the two electric lights suspended above. Old Adelheid, her maid when she was a girl, came quickly to her, and almost shed tears of joy at her young mistress's return. Adelheid, a stout, round-faced, grey-haired woman, had nursed her as a child, and it was she who had served her until the day when she had left Vienna for Treysa after her unfortunate marriage. "My sweet Princess!" cried the old serving-woman as she entered, and, bending, kissed her hand, "only this moment I heard that you had come back to us. This is really a most delightful surprise. I heard that you were in Vienna the other day, and wondered whether you would come to see us all at old Wartenstein--or whether at your Court so far away you had forgotten us all." "Forgotten you, Adelheid!" she exclaimed quickly, pushing her fair hair from her brow, for her head ached after her fatiguing journey; "why, I am always thinking of the dear old place, and of you--who used to scold me so." "When you deserved it, my Princess," laughed the pleasant old woman. "Ah!" she added, "those were happy times, weren't they? But you were often really incorrigible, you know, especially when you used to go down into the valley and meet young Carl Leitolf in secret. You remember-- eh? And how I found you out?" Claire held her breath for a moment at mention of that name. "Yes, Adelheid," she said in a somewhat changed tone. "And you were very good. You never betrayed our secret." "No. Because I believed that you both loved each other--that boy-and-girl love which is so very sweet while it lasts, but is no more durable than the thistledown. But let us talk of the present now. I'll go and order dinner for you, and see that you have everything comfortable. I hope you will stay with us a long, long time. This is your first return since your marriage, remember." "Where is my father?" her Highness asked, taking off her hat, and rearranging her hair before the mirror. "In the green salon. He was with the secretary, Wernhardt, but I passed the latter going out as I came up the stairs. The Archduke is therefore alone." "Then I will go and see him before I dine," she said; so, summoning all her courage, she gave a final touch to her hair and went out, and down the winding stairs, afterwards making her way to the opposite side of the ponderous stronghold, where her father's study--called the green salon on account of the old green silk hangings and upholstery--was situated. She halted at the door, but for an instant only; then, pale-faced and determined, she entered the fine room with the groined roof, where, at a table at the farther end, her father, in plain evening dress, was writing beneath a shaded lamp. He raised his bald head and glanced round to see who was the intruder who entered there without knocking. Then, recognising his daughter, he turned slowly in his writing-chair, his brows knit, exclaiming coldly the single inquiry,-- "Well?" His displeasure at her appearance was apparent. He did not even welcome her, or inquire the reason of her return. The expression upon his thin, grey face showed her that he was annoyed. She rushed across to kiss him, but he put out his hand coldly, and held her at arm's length. "There is time for that later, Claire," he said in a hard voice. "I understand that you have left Treysa?" "Yes, I have. Who told you?" "The Crown Prince, your husband, has informed me by telegraph of your scandalous action." "Scandalous action!" she cried quickly, while in self-defence she began to implore the sympathy of the hard-hearted old Archduke, a man of iron will and a bigot as regarded religion. In a few quick sentences, as she stood before him in the centre of the room, she told him of all she had suffered; of her tragic life in her gilded prison at Treysa; of the insults heaped upon her by the King and Queen; of her husband's ill-treatment; and finally, of the ingenious plot to certify her as demented. "And I have come to you, father, for protection for myself and my child," she added earnestly. "If I remain longer at Treysa my enemies will drive me really insane. I have tried to do my duty, God knows, but those who seek my downfall are, alas! too strong. I am a woman, alone and helpless. Surely you, my own father, will not refuse to assist your daughter, who is the victim of a foul and dastardly plot?" she cried in tears, advancing towards him. "I have come back to live here with my child in seclusion and in peace--to obtain the freedom for which I have longed ever since I entered that scandalous and unscrupulous Court of Treysa. I implore of you, father, for my dear, dead mother's sake, to have pity upon me, to at least stand by me as my one friend in all the world--you--my own father!" He remained perfectly unmoved. His thin, bloodless face only relaxed into a dubious smile, and he responded in a hard voice,-- "You have another friend, Claire," Then he rose from his chair, his eyes suddenly aflame with anger as he asked, "Why do you come here with such lies as these upon your lips? To ask my assistance is utterly useless. I have done with you. It is too late to-night for you to leave Wartenstein, but recollect that you go from here before ten o'clock to-morrow morning, and that during my lifetime you never enter again beneath this roof!" "But, father--why?" she gasped, staring at him amazed. "Why? Why, because the whole world is scandalised by your conduct! Every one knows that the reason of your unhappiness with the Crown Prince is because you have a lover--that low-bred fellow Leitolf--a man of the people," he sneered. "Your conduct at Treysa was an open scandal, and in Vienna you actually visited him at his hotel. The Emperor called me, and told me so. He is highly indignant that you should bring such an outrageous scandal upon our house, and--" "Father, I deny that Count Leitolf is my lover!" she cried, interrupting him. "Even you, my own father, defame me," she added bitterly. "Defame you!" he sneered. "Bah! you cannot deceive me when you have actually eloped from Treysa with the fellow. See," he cried, taking a telegram from the table and holding it before her, "do you deny what is here reported--that you and he travelled together, and that he descended from the train just before reaching Vienna, in fear of recognition. No," he went on, while she stood before him utterly stunned and rendered speechless by his words, which, alas! showed the terrible misconstruction placed upon their injudicious companionship upon the journey. "No, you cannot deny it! You will leave Wartenstein tomorrow, for you have grown tired of your husband; you have invented the story of the plot to declare you insane; and you have renounced your crown and position in order to elope with Leitolf! From to-night I no longer regard you as my daughter. Go!" and he pointed imperiously to the door. "Go back to the people--the common herd of whom you are so very fond-- go back to your miserable lover if you wish. To me your future is quite immaterial, and understand perfectly that I forbid you ever to return beneath my roof. You have scandalised the whole of Europe, and you and your lover may now act just as you may think proper." "But, father!" she protested, heartbroken, bursting into bitter tears. "Leitolf is not my lover! I swear to you it is all untrue!" "Go!" he shouted, his face red with anger. "I have said all I need say. Go! Leave me. I will never see you again--never--_never_!" CHAPTER THIRTEEN. THE MAN WITH THE RED CRAVAT. A secret service agent--one of the spies of the crafty old Minister Minckeldeym--had followed Claire from Treysa. Her accidental meeting with Leitolf had, he declared, been prearranged. It was now said that she, a Crown Princess of the Imperial blood, had eloped with her lover! The Court scandal was complete. Alone in her room that night she sat for hours sobbing, while the great castle was silent. She was now both homeless and friendless. All the desperate appeals she had made to her father had been entirely unavailing. He was a hard man always. She had, he declared, brought a shameful scandal upon this Imperial house, and he would have nothing further to do with her. Time after time she stoutly denied the false and abominable charge, trying to explain the dastardly plot against her, and the combination of circumstances which led to her meeting with the Count at Protovin. But he would hear no explanation. Leitolf was her lover, he declared, and all her excuses were utterly useless. He refused her his protection, and cast her out as no child of his. After long hours of tears and ceaseless sobbing, a strange thought crossed her mind. True, she was unjustly condemned as having eloped with Carl; yet, after all, was not even that preferable to the fate to which her husband had conspired to relegate her? The whole of Europe would say that she left the Court in company with a lover, and she bit her lip when she thought of the cruel libel. Yet, supposing that they had no ground for this gossip, was it not more than likely that her enemies would seek to follow her and confine her in an asylum? The strange combination of circumstances had, however, given them good ground for declaring that she had eloped, and if such report got abroad, as it apparently had done, then her husband would be compelled to sue for a divorce. She held her breath. Her fingers clenched themselves into her palms at thought of it--a divorce on account of the man who had always, from her girlhood, been her true, loyal, and platonic friend! And if it was sought to prove what was untrue? Should she defend herself, and establish her innocence? Or would she, by refusing to make defence, obtain the freedom from Court which she sought? She had been utterly dumbfounded by her father's allegations that she had eloped. Until he had denounced her she had never for one moment seen the grave peril in which his presence at Protovin had placed her. He had compromised her quite unintentionally. Her own pure nature and open mind had never suspected for one moment that those who wished her ill would declare that she had eloped. Now, as she sat there in the dead silence, she saw plainly, when too late, how injudicious she had been--how, indeed, she had played into the hands of those who sought her downfall. It was a false step to go to Leitolf at the hotel in Vienna, and a worse action still to ask that he should be recalled from her Court and sent away as attache to Rome. The very fact that she showed interest in him had, of course, lent colour to the grave scandals that were being everywhere whispered. Now the report that she, an Imperial Archduchess, had eloped with him would set the empires of Austria and Germany agog. What the future was to be she did not attempt to contemplate. She was plunged in despair, utterly hopeless, broken, and without a friend except Steinbach. Was it destiny that she should be so utterly misjudged? Even her own father had sent her forth as an outcast! Early next morning, taking little Ignatia and the bag containing her jewels, but leaving the maid behind, she drove from the castle, glancing back at it with heavy heart as the carriage descended into the green, fertile valley, gazing for the last time upon that old home she loved so well. It was her last sight of it. She would never again look upon it, she sadly told herself. She, an Imperial Archduchess of Austria, Crown Princess of a great German kingdom, a Dame of the Croix Etoilee, a woman who might any day become a reigning queen, had renounced her crown and her position, and was now an outcast! Hers was a curious position--stranger, perhaps, than that in which any woman had before found herself. Many a royalty is to-day unhappy in her domestic life, suffering in silence, yet making a brave show towards the world. She had tried to do the same. She had suffered without complaint for more than three long, dark years--until her husband had not only struck her and disfigured her, but had contemplated ridding himself of her by the foulest and most cowardly means his devilish ingenuity could devise. As she drove through those clean, prosperous villages which were on her own private property, the people came forth, cheering with enthusiasm and rushing to the carriage to kiss her hand. But she only smiled upon them sadly--not, they said, shaking their heads after she had passed, not the same smile as in the old days, before she married the German Prince and went to far-off Treysa. The stationmaster at Rattenberg came forward to make his obeisance, and as certain military manoeuvres were in progress and some troops were drawn up before the station, both officers and men drew up and saluted. An old colonel whom she had known well before her marriage came forward, and bowing, offered to see her to her compartment, expressing delight at having met her again. "Your Imperial Highness will never be forgotten here," declared the gallant, red-faced old fellow, who wore fierce white moustaches. "The poor are always wondering whether you are ever coming back. And at last your Highness is here! And going--where?" She hesitated. Truth to tell, she had never thought of her destination. "I go now to Lucerne, incognito," she replied, for want of something else to say; and they both walked on to the platform, he carrying Henriette's cheap little leather bag containing her jewels. "So this," he said, "is our little Princess Ignatia, about whom we have heard so much." And laughingly he touched the shy child's soft cheek caressingly. "And who are you?" inquired the child wonderingly, examining his bright uniform from head to foot. The Princess joined in the Colonel's laughter. Usually the child was shy, but, strangely enough, always talkative with any one who wore a uniform, even though he might be a private soldier on sentry duty at the palace. The Colonel was not alone in remarking within himself the plainness and cheapness of her Imperial Highness's costume. It had been remarked everywhere, but was supposed that she wore that very ordinary costume in order to pass incognito. The train took her to Innsbruck, and after luncheon at the buffet she continued her journey to Lucerne, arriving there late in the evening, and taking the hotel omnibus of the Schweizerhof. There she gave her name as the Baroness Deitel, and declared that her luggage had been mis-sent--a fact which, of course, aroused some suspicion within the mind of the shrewd clerk in the bureau. Visitors without luggage are never appreciated by hotel-keepers. Next day, however, she purchased a trunk and a number of necessaries, _lingerie_ for herself and for the little Princess, all of which was sent to the hotel--a fact that quickly re-established confidence. A good many people were staying in the place as usual, and very quickly, on account of her uncommon beauty and natural grace, people began to inquire who she was. But the reply was that she was Baroness Deitel of Frankfort--that was all. From her funereal black they took her for a young widow, and many of the idle young men in the hotel endeavoured to make her acquaintance. But she spoke to no one. She occupied herself with her child, and if alone in the hall she always read a book or newspaper. The fact was that she was watching the newspapers eagerly, wondering if they would give currency to the false report of her elopement. But as day after day went by and nothing appeared, she grew more assured, hoping that at least the Court at Treysa had suppressed from the press the foul lie that had spread from mouth to mouth. One paragraph she read, however, in a Vienna paper was very significant, for it stated that the Crown Prince Ferdinand of Marburg had arrived in Vienna at the invitation of the Emperor, who had driven to the station to meet him, and who had embraced him with marked cordiality. She read between the lines. The Emperor had called him to Vienna in order to hear his side of the story--in order to condemn her without giving her a chance to explain the truth. The Emperor would no doubt decide whether the fact of her leaving the Court should be announced to the public or not. Her surmise was not far wrong, for while sitting in the big hall of the hotel after luncheon four days later, she saw in the _Daily Mail_ the following telegram, headed, "A German Court Scandal: Startling Revelations." Holding her breath, and knowing that, two young Englishmen, seated together and smoking, were watching her, she read as follows:-- "Reuter's correspondent at Treysa telegraphs it has just transpired that a very grave and astounding scandal has occurred at Court. According to the rumour--which he gives under all reserve--late one night a week ago the Crown Princess Ferdinand escaped from the palace, and taking with her her child, the little Princess Ignatia, eloped to Austria with Count Charles-Leitolf, an official of the Court. A great sensation has been caused in Court circles in both Germany and Austria. The Crown Princess before her marriage was, it will be remembered, the Archduchess Claire, only daughter of the Archduke Charles of Austria, and notable at the Court of Vienna on account of her extreme beauty. It appears that for some time past at the Court of Treysa there have been rumours regarding the intimate friendship between the Crown Princess and the Count, who was for some time attache at the Austrian Embassy in London. Matters culminated a short time ago when it became known that the Count had followed the Princess to Vienna, where she had gone to visit her father. She returned to Treysa for a few days, still followed by Leitolf, and then left again under his escort, and has not since been seen. "In Treysa the sensation caused is enormous. It is the sole topic of conversation. The Crown Princess was greatly beloved by the people, but her elopement has entirely negatived her popularity, as the scandal is considered utterly unpardonable. The Crown Prince has left hurriedly for Vienna in order to confer with the Emperor, who, it is rumoured, has issued an edict withdrawing from the Princess her title, and all her rights as an Imperial Archduchess, and her decorations, as well as forbidding her to use the Imperial arms. The excitement in the city of Treysa is intense, but in the Court circle everything is, of course, denied, the King having forbidden the press to mention or comment upon the matter in any way. Reuter's correspondent, however, has, from private sources within the palace, been able to substantiate the above report, which, vague though it may be, is no doubt true, and the details of which are already known in all the Courts of Europe. It is thought probable in Treysa that the Crown Prince Ferdinand will at once seek a divorce, for certain of the palace servants, notably the lady-in-waiting, the Countess de Trauttenberg, have come forward and made some amazing statements. A Council of Ministers is convened for to-morrow, at which his Majesty will preside." "De Trauttenberg!" exclaimed the Princess bitterly between her teeth. "The spy! I wonder what lies she has invented." She saw the two Englishmen with their eyes still upon her, therefore she tried to control her feelings. What she had read was surely sufficient to rouse her blood. She returned to her room. "I am no longer popular with the people!" she thought to herself. "They too believe ill of me! My enemies have, alas! triumphed." She re-read the telegram with its bold heading--the announcement which had startled Europe two days before--and then with a low sigh replaced the paper upon the table. This crisis she had foreseen. The Court had given those facts to the press correspondent because they intended to hound her down as an infamous and worthless woman, because they had conspired to drive her out of Treysa; and victory was now theirs. But none of the tourist crowd in the Schweizerhof ever dreamed that the cheaply-dressed, demure little widow was the notorious woman whom all; the world was at that moment discussing--the royal Ionian who had boldly cast aside a crown. What she read caused her to bite her lips till they bled. She returned to her room, and sat for an hour plunged in bitter tears. All the world was against her, and she had no single person in whom to confide, or of whom to seek assistance. That night, acting upon a sudden impulse, she took little Ignatia with her, and left by the mail by way of Bale for Paris, where she might the better conceal herself and the grief that was slowly consuming her brave young heart. The journey was long and tedious. There was no _wagon-lit_, and the child, tired out, grew peevish and restless. Nevertheless, half an hour before noon next day the express ran at last into the Gare de l'Est, and an elderly, good-natured, grave-looking man in black, with a bright red tie, took her dressing-bag and gallantly assisted her to alight. She was unused to travelling with the public, for a royal saloon with bowing servants and attendants had always been at her disposal; therefore, when the courteous old fellow held out his hand for her bag, she quite mechanically gave it to him. Next instant, however, even before she had realised it, the man had disappeared into the crowd of alighting passengers. The truth flashed upon her in a second. All her magnificent jewels had been stolen! CHAPTER FOURTEEN. IN SECRET. Realising her loss, the Princess quickly informed one of the station officials, who shouted loudly to the police at the exit barrier that a theft had been committed, and next moment all was confusion. Half a dozen police agents, as well as some gardes in uniform, appeared as though by magic, and while the exit was closed, preventing the weary travellers who had just arrived from leaving, an inspector of police came up and made sharp inquiry as to her loss. In a moment a knot of inquisitive travellers gathered around her. "A man wearing a bright red cravat has taken my dressing-bag, and made off with it. All my jewels are in it!" Claire exclaimed excitedly. "Pardon, madame," exclaimed the police official, a shrewd-looking functionary with fair, pointed beard, "what was the dressing-bag like?" "A crocodile one, covered with a black waterproof cover." "And the man wore a red tie?" "Yes. He was dressed in black, and rather elderly. His red tie attracted me." For fully a quarter of an hour the iron gate was kept closed while, accompanied by the inspector and two agents, she went among the crowd trying to recognise the gallant old fellow who had assisted her to alight. But she was unable. Perhaps she was too agitated, for misfortune seemed now to follow upon misfortune. She had at the first moment of setting foot in Paris lost the whole of her splendid jewels! With the police agents she stood at the barrier when it was reopened, and watched each person pass out; but, alas! she saw neither the man with the red tie nor her dressing-bag. And yet the man actually passed her unrecognised. He was wearing a neat black tie and a soft black felt hat in place of the grey one he had worn when he had taken the bag from her hand. He had the precious dressing-case, but it was concealed within the serviceable pigskin kit-bag which he carried. She was looking for the grey hat, the red tie, and her own bag, but, of course, saw none of them. And so the thief, once outside the station, mounted into a fiacre and drove away entirely unsuspected. "Madame," exclaimed the inspector regretfully, when the platform had at last emptied, "I fear you have been the victim of some clever international thief. It is one of the tricks of jewel-thieves to wear a bright-coloured tie by which the person robbed is naturally attracted. Yet in a second, so deft are they, they can change both cravat and hat, and consequently the person robbed fails to recognise them in the excitement of the moment. This is, I fear, what has happened in your case. But if you will accompany me to the office I will take a full description of the missing property." She went with him to the police-office on the opposite side of the great station, and there gave, as far as she was able, a description of some of the stolen jewels. She, however, did not know exactly how many ornaments there were, and as for describing them all, she was utterly unable to do so. "And Madame's name?" inquired the polite functionary. She hesitated. If she gave her real name the papers would at once be full of her loss. "Deitel," she answered. "Baroness Deitel of Frankfort." "And to what hotel is Madame going?" She reflected a moment. If she went to Ritz's or the Bristol she would surely be recognised. She had heard that the Terminus, at the Gare St. Lazare, was a large and cosmopolitan place, where tourists stayed, so she would go there. "To the Terminus," was her reply. Then, promising to report to her if any information were forthcoming after the circulation of the description of the thief and of the stolen property, he assisted her in obtaining her trunk, called a fiacre for her, apologised that she should have suffered such loss, and then bowed her away. She pressed the child close to her, and staring straight before her, held her breath. Was it not a bad augury for the future? With the exception of a French bank-note for a thousand francs in her purse and a little loose change, she was penniless as well as friendless. At the hotel she engaged a single room, and remained in to rest after her long, tiring journey. With a mother's tender care her first thought was for little Ignatia, who had stood wondering at the scene at the station, and who, when her mother afterwards explained that the thief had run away with her bag, declared that he was "a nasty, bad man." On gaining her room at the hotel the Princess put her to bed, but she remained very talkative, watching her mother unpack the things she had purchased in Lucerne. "Go to sleep, darling," said her mother, bending down and kissing her soft little face. "If you are very good Allen will come and see you soon." "Will she? Then I'll be ever so good," was the child's reply; and thus satisfied, she dropped off to sleep. Having arranged the things in the wardrobe, the Princess stood at the window gazing down upon the traffic in the busy Rue Saint Lazare, and the cafes, crowded at the hour of the absinthe. Men were crying "_La Presse_" in strident voices below. Paris is Paris always--bright, gay, careless, with endless variety, a phantasmagoria of movement, the very cinematograph of human life. Yet how heavy a heart can be, and how lonely is life, amid that busy throng, only those who have found themselves in the gay city alone can justly know. Her slim figure in neat black was a tragic one. Her sweet face was blanched and drawn. She leaned her elbows upon the window-ledge, and looking straight before her, reflected deeply. "Is there any further misfortune to fall upon me, I wonder?" she asked herself. "The loss of my jewels means to me the loss of everything. On the money I could have raised upon them I could have lived in comfort in some quiet place for years, without any application to my own lawyers. Fate, indeed, seems against me," she sighed. "Because I have lived an honest, upright life, and have spoken frankly of my intention to sweep clean the scandalous Court of Treysa, I am now outcast by both my husband and by my father, homeless, and without money. Many of the people would help me, I know, but it must never be said that a Hapsbourg sought financial aid of a commoner. No, that would be breaking the family tradition; and whatever evil the future may have in store for me I will never do that." "I wonder," she continued after a pause--"I wonder if the thief who took my jewels knew of my present position, my great domestic grief and unhappiness, whether he would not regret? I believe he would. Even a thief is chivalrous to a woman in distress. He evidently thinks me a wealthy foreigner, however, and by to-night all the stones will be knocked from their settings and the gold flung into the melting-pot. With some of them I would not have parted for a hundred times their worth--the small pearl necklace which my poor mother gave me when I was a child, and my husband's first gift, and the Easter egg in diamonds. Yet I shall never see them again. They are gone for ever. Even the police agent held out but little hope. The man, he said, was no doubt an international thief, and would in an hour be on his way to the Belgian or Italian frontier." That was true. Jewel-thieves, and especially the international gangs, are the most difficult to trace. They are past masters of their art, excellent linguists, live expensively, and always pass as gentlemen whose very title and position cause the victim to be unsuspicious. The French and Italian railways are the happy hunting-ground of these wily gentry. The night expresses to the Riviera, Rome, and Florence in winter, and the "Luxe" services from Paris to Arcachon, Vichy, Lausanne, or Trouville in summer, are well watched by them, and frequent hauls are made, one of the favourite tricks being that of making feint to assist a lady to descend and take her bag from her hand. "I don't suppose," she sighed, "that I shall ever see or hear of my ornaments again. Yet I think that if the thief but knew the truth concerning me he would regret. Perhaps he is without means, just as I am. Probably he became a thief of sheer necessity, as I have heard many men have become. Criminal instinct is not always responsible for an evil life. Many persons try to live honestly, but fate is ever contrary. Indeed, is it not so with my own self?" She turned, and her eyes fell upon the sleeping child. She was all she had now to care for in the whole wide world. Recollections of her last visit to Paris haunted her--that visit when Carl had so very indiscreetly followed her there, and taken her about incognito in open cabs to see the sights. There had been no harm in it whatsoever, no more harm than if he had been her equerry, yet her enemies had, alas! hurled against her their bitter denunciations, and whispered their lies so glibly that they were believed as truth. Major Scheel, the attache at the Embassy, had recognised them, and being Leitolf's enemy, had spread the report. It had been a foolish caprice of hers to take train from Aix-les-Bains to Paris to see her old French nurse Marie, who had been almost as a mother to her. The poor old woman, a pensioned servant of the Archducal family, had, unfortunately, died a month ago, otherwise she would have had a faithful, good friend in Paris. Marie, who knew Count Leitolf well, could have refuted their allegations had she lived; but an attack of pneumonia had proved fatal, and she had been buried with a beautiful wreath bearing the simple words "From Claire" upon her coffin. As the sunset haze fell over Paris she still sat beside the sleeping child. If her enemies condemned her, then she would not defend herself. God, in whom she placed her fervent trust, should judge her. She had no fear of man's prejudices or misjudgment. She placed her faith entirely in her Maker. To His will she bowed, for in His sight the pauper and the princess are equal. That evening she had a little soup sent to her room, and when Ignatia was again sleeping soundly she went forth upon the balcony leading from the corridor, and sitting there, amused herself by looking down upon the life and movement of the great salon below. To leave the hotel was impossible because of Ignatia, and she now began to regret that she had not brought the maid with her from Wartenstein. Time after time the misfortune of the loss of her jewels recurred to her. It had destroyed her independence, and it had negatived all her plans. Money was necessary, even though she were an Imperial Archduchess. She was incognito, and therefore had no credit. The gay, after-dinner scene of the hotel was presented below--the flirtations, the heated conversations, and the lazy, studied attitudes of the bloused English girl, who lolls about in cane lounge-chairs after dining, and discusses plays and literature. From her chair on the balcony above she looked down upon that strange, changeful world--the world of tourist Paris. Born and bred at Court as she had been, it was a new sensation to her to have her freedom. The life was entirely fresh to her, and would have been pleasant if there were not behind it all that tragedy of her marriage. Several days went by, and in order to kill time she took little Ignatia daily in a cab and drove in the Bois and around the boulevards, revisiting all the "sights" which Leitolf had shown her. Each morning she went out driving till the luncheon-hour, and having once lunched with old Marie upstairs at the Brasserie Universelle in the Avenue de l'Opera, she went there daily. You probably know the place. Downstairs it is an ordinary _brasserie_ with a few chairs out upon the pavement, but above is a smart restaurant peculiarly Parisian, where the _hors d'oeuvres_ are the finest in Eurorie and the _vin gris_ a speciality. The windows whereat one sits overlook the Avenue, and from eleven o'clock till three it is crowded. She went there for two reasons--because it was small, and because the life amused her. Little Ignatia would sit at her side, and the pair generally attracted the admiration of every one on account of their remarkably good looks. The habitues began inquiring of the waiters as to who was the beautiful lady in black, but the men only elevated their shoulders and exhibited their palms. "A German," was all they could answer. "A great lady evidently." That she attracted attention everywhere she was quite well aware, yet she was not in the least annoyed. As a royalty she was used to being gazed upon. Only when men smiled at her, as they did sometimes, she met them with a haughty stare. The superiority of her Imperial blood would on such occasions assert itself, much to the confusion of would-be gallants. Thus passed those spring days with Paris at her gayest and best. The woman who had renounced a crown lived amid all that bright life, lonely, silent, and unrecognised, her one anxiety being for the future of her little one, who was ever asking when Allen would return. CHAPTER FIFTEEN. THE SHY ENGLISHMAN. One afternoon about four o'clock, as the Princess, leading little Ignatia, who was daintily dressed in white, was crossing the great hall of the Hotel Terminus on her way out to drive in the Bois, a rather slim, dark-haired man, a little under forty, well dressed in a blue-serge suit, by which it required no second glance to tell that he was an Englishman, rose shyly from a chair and bowed deeply before her. At that hour there were only two or three elderly persons in the great hall, all absorbed in newspapers. She glanced at the stranger quickly and drew back. At first she did not recognise him, but an instant later his features became somehow familiar, although she was puzzled to know where she had met him before. Where he had bowed to her was at a safe distance from the few other people in the hall; therefore, noticing her hesitation, the man exclaimed in English with a smile,-- "I fear that your Imperial Highness does not recollect me, and I trust that by paying my respects I am not intruding. May I be permitted to introduce myself? My name is Bourne. We met once in Treysa. Do you not recollect?" In an instant the truth recurred to her, and she stood before him open-mouthed. "Why, of course!" she exclaimed. "Am I ever likely to forget? And yet I saw so little of your face on that occasion that I failed now to recognise you! I am most delighted to meet you again, Mr. Bourne, and to thank you." "Thanks are quite unnecessary, Princess," he declared; whereupon in a low voice she explained that she was there incognito, under the title of the Baroness Deitel, and urged him not to refer to her true station lest some might overhear. "I know quite well that you are here incognito," he said. "And this is little Ignatia, is it?" and he patted the child's cheeks. Then he added, "Do you know I have had a very great difficulty in finding you. I have searched everywhere, and was only successful this morning, when I saw you driving in the Rue Rivoli and followed you here." Was this man a secret agent from Treysa, she wondered. In any case, what did he want with her? She treated him with courtesy, but was at the same time suspicious of his motive. At heart she was annoyed that she had been recognised. And yet was she not very deeply indebted to him? "Well, Mr. Bourne," said the Princess, drawing herself up, and taking the child's hand again to go out, "I am very pleased to embrace this opportunity of thanking you for the great service you rendered me. You must, however, pardon my failure to recognise you." "It was only natural," the man exclaimed quickly. "It is I who have to apologise, your Highness," he whispered. "I have sought you because I have something of urgent importance to tell you. I beg of you to grant me an interview somewhere, where we are not seen and where we cannot be overheard." She looked at him in surprise. The Englishman's request was a strange one, yet from his manner she saw that he was in earnest. Why, she wondered, did he fear being seen with her? "Cannot you speak here?" she inquired. "Not in this room, among these people. Are there not any smaller salons upstairs? they would be empty at this hour. If I recollect aright, there is a small writing-room at the top of the stairs yonder. I would beg of your Highness to allow me to speak to you there." "But what is this secret you have to tell me?" she inquired curiously. "It surely cannot be of such a nature that you may not explain it in an undertone here?" "I must not be seen with you, Princess," he exclaimed quickly. "I run great risk in speaking with you here in public. I will explain all if you will only allow me to accompany you to that room." She hesitated. So ingenious had been the plots formed against her that she had now grown suspicious of every one. Yet this man was after all a mystery, and mystery always attracted her, as it always attracts both women and men equally. So with some reluctance she turned upon her heel and ascended the stairs, he following her at a respectful distance. Their previous meeting had indeed been a strange one. Fond of horses from her girlhood, she had in Treysa made a point of driving daily in her high English dogcart, sometimes a single cob, and sometimes tandem. She was an excellent whip, one of the best in all Germany, and had even driven her husband's coach on many occasions. On the summer's afternoon in question, however, she was driving a cob in one of the main thoroughfares of Treysa, when of a sudden a motor car had darted past, and the animal, taking fright, had rushed away into the line of smart carriages approaching on the opposite side of the road. She saw her peril, but was helpless. The groom sprang out, but so hurriedly that he fell upon his head, severely injuring himself; while at that moment, when within an ace of disaster, a man in a grey flannel suit sprang out from nowhere and seized the bridle, without, however, at once stopping the horse, which reared, and turning, pinned the stranger against a tree with the end of one of the shafts. In an instant a dozen men, recognising who was driving, were upon the animal, and held it; but the next moment she saw that the man who had saved her had fallen terribly injured, the shaft having penetrated his chest, and he was lying unconscious. Descending, she gazed upon the white face, from the mouth of which blood was oozing; and having given directions for his immediate conveyance to the hospital and for report to be made to her as soon as possible, she returned to the palace in a cab, and telephoned herself to the Court surgeon, commanding him to do all in his power to aid the sufferer. Next day she asked permission of the surgeon that she might see the patient, to thank him and express her sympathy. But over the telephone came back the reply that the patient was not yet fit to see any one, and, moreover, had expressed a desire that nobody should come near him until he had quite recovered. In the fortnight that went by she inquired after him time after time, but all that she was able to gather was that his name was Guy Bourne, and that he was an English banker's clerk from London, spending his summer holiday in Treysa. She sent him beautiful flowers from the royal hothouses, and in reply received his thanks for her anxious inquiries. He told the doctor that he hoped the Princess would not visit him until he had quite recovered. And this wish of his she had of course respected. His gallant action had, without a doubt, saved her from a very serious accident, or she might even have lost her life. Gradually he recovered from his injuries, which were so severe that for several days his life was despaired of, and then when convalescent a curious thing happened. He one day got up, and without a word of thanks or farewell to doctors, staff, or to the Crown Princess herself, he went out, and from that moment all trace had been lost of him. Her Highness, when she heard of this, was amazed. It seemed to her as though for some unexplained reason he had no wish to receive her thanks; or else he was intent on concealing his real identity with some mysterious motive or other. She had given orders for inquiry to be made as to who the gallant Englishman was; but although the secret agents of the Government had made inquiry in London, their efforts had been futile. It happened over two years ago. The accident had slipped from her memory, though more than once she had wondered who might be the man who had risked his life to save hers, and had then escaped from Treysa rather than be presented to her. And now at the moment when she was in sore need of a friend he had suddenly recognised her, and come forward to reveal himself! Naturally she had not recognised in the dark, rather handsome face of the well-dressed Englishman the white, bloodless countenance of the insensible man with a brass-tipped cart-shaft through his chest. And he wanted to speak to her in secret? What had he, a perfect stranger, to tell her? The small writing-room at the top of the stairs was fortunately empty, and a moment later he followed her into it, and closed the door. Little Ignatia looked with big, wondering eyes at the stranger. The Princess seated herself in a chair, and invited the Englishman to take one. "Princess," he said in a refined voice, "I desire most humbly to apologise for making myself known to you, but it is unfortunately necessary." "Unfortunately?" she echoed. "Why unfortunately, Mr. Bourne, when you risked your life for mine? At that moment you only saw a woman in grave peril; you were not aware of my station." "That is perfectly true," he said quietly. "When they told me at the hospital who you were, and when you sent me those lovely flowers and fruit, I was filled with--well, with shame." "Why with shame?" she asked. "You surely had no need to be ashamed of your action? On the contrary, the King's intention was to decorate you on account of your brave action, and had already given orders for a letter to be sent to your own King in London, asking his Majesty to allow you as a British subject to receive and wear the insignia of the Order of the Crown and Sword." "And I escaped from Treysa just in time," he laughed. Then he added, "To tell you the truth, Princess, it is very fortunate that I left before--well, before you could see me, and before his Majesty could confer the decoration." "But why?" she asked. "I must confess that your action in escaping as you did entirely mystified me." "You were annoyed that I was ungentlemanly enough to run away without thanking your Highness for all your solicitude on my behalf, and for sending the surgeon of the royal household to attend to my injuries. But, believe me, I am most deeply and sincerely grateful. It was not ingratitude which caused me to leave Treysa in secret as I did, but my flight was necessary." "Necessary? I don't understand you." "Well, I had a motive in leaving without telling any one." "Ah, a private motive!" she said--"something concerning your own private affairs, I suppose?" He nodded in the affirmative. How could he tell her the truth? His disinclination to explain the reason puzzled her sorely. That he was a gallant man who had saved a woman without thought of praise or of reward was proved beyond doubt, yet there was something curiously mysterious about him which attracted her. Other men would have at least been proud to receive the thanks and decoration of a reigning sovereign, while he had utterly ignored them. Was he an anarchist? "Princess," he said at last, rising from his chair and flushing slightly, "the reason I have sought you to-day is not because of the past, but is on account of the present." "The present! why?" "I--I hardly know what to say, Princess," he said confusedly. "Two years ago I fled from you because you should not know the truth--because I was in fear. And now Fate brings me again in your path in a manner which condemns me." "Mr. Bourne, why don't you speak more plainly? These enigmas I really cannot understand. You saved my life, or at least saved me from a very serious accident, and yet you escaped before I could thank you personally. To-day you have met me, and you tell me that you escaped because you feared to meet me." "It is the truth, your Highness. I feared to meet you," he said, "and, believe me, I should not have sought you to-day were it not of most urgent necessity." "But why did you fear to meet me?" "I did not wish you to discover what I really am," he said, his face flushing with shame. "Are you so very timid?" she asked with a light laugh. But in an instant she grew serious. She saw that she had approached some sore subject, and regretted. The Englishman was a strange person, to say the least, she thought. "I have nothing to say in self-defence, Princess," he said very simply. "The trammels of our narrow world are so hypocritical, our laws so farcical and full of incongruities, and our civilisation so fraught with the snortings of Mother Grundy, that I can only tell you the truth and offer no defence. I know from the newspapers of your present perilous position, and of what is said against you. If you will permit me to say so, you have all my sympathy." And he paused and looked straight into her face, while little Ignatia gazed at him in wonder. "I wonder if your Highness will forgive me if I tell you the truth?" he went on, as though speaking to himself. "Forgive you? Why, of course," she laughed. "What is there to forgive?" "Very much, Princess," he said gravely. "I--I'm ashamed to stand here before you and confess; yet I beg of you to forgive me, and to accept my declaration that the fault is not entirely my own." "The fault of what?" she inquired, not understanding him. "I will speak plainly, because I know that your good nature and your self-avowed indebtedness to me--little as that indebtedness is--will not allow you to betray me," he said in a low, earnest tone. "You will recollect that on your Highness's arrival at the Gare de l'Est your dressing-bag was stolen, and within it were your jewels--your most precious possession at this critical moment of your life?" "Yes," she said in a hard voice of surprise, her brows contracting, for she was not yet satisfied as to the stranger's _bona fides_. "My bag was stolen." "Princess," he continued, "let me, in all humility, speak the truth. The reason of my escape from Treysa was because your police held a photograph of me, and I feared that I might be identified. I am a thief--one of an international gang. And--and I pray you to forgive me, and to preserve my secret," he faltered, his cheeks again colouring. "Your jewels are intact, and in my possession. You can now realise quite plainly why--why I escaped from Treysa!" She held her breath, staring at him utterly stupefied. This man who had saved her, and so nearly lost his own life in the attempt, was a thief! CHAPTER SIXTEEN. LIGHT FINGERS. Her Highness was face to face with one of those clever international criminals whose _coups_ were so constantly being reported in the Continental press. She looked straight into his countenance, a long, intense look, half of reproach, half of surprise, and then, in a firm voice, said,-- "Mr. Bourne, I owe you a very great debt. To-day I will endeavour to repay it. Your secret, and the secret of the theft, shall remain mine." "And you will give no information to the police?" he exclaimed quickly--"you promise that?" "I promise," she said. "I admire you for your frankness. But, tell me--it was not you who took my bag at the station?" "No. But it was one of us," he explained. "When the bag containing the jewels was opened I found, very fortunately, several letters addressed to you--letters which you evidently brought with you from Treysa. Then I knew that the jewels were yours, and determined, if I could find you, to restore them to you with our apologies." "Why?" she asked. "You surely do not get possession of jewels of that value every day?" "No, Princess. But the reason is, that although my companions are thieves, they are not entirely devoid of the respect due to a woman. They have read in the newspapers of your domestic unhappiness, and of your flight with the little Princess, and have decided that to rob a defenceless woman, as you are at this moment, is a cowardly act. Though we are thieves, we still have left some vestige of chivalry." "And your intention is really to restore them to me?" she remarked, much puzzled at this unexpected turn of fortune. "Yes, had I not found those letters among them, I quite admit that, by this time, the stones would have been in Amsterdam and re-cut out of all recognition," he said, rather shamefacedly. Then, taking from his pocket the three letters addressed to her--letters which she had carried away from Treysa with her as souvenirs--he handed them to her, saying,-- "I beg of you to accept these back again. They are better in your Imperial Highness's hands than my own." Her countenance went a trifle pale as she took them, and a sudden serious thought flashed through her mind. "Your companions have, I presume, read what is contained in these?" "No, Princess; they have not. I read them, and seeing to whom they were addressed, at once took possession of them. I only showed my companions the addresses." She breathed more freely. "Then, Mr. Bourne, I am still more deeply in your debt," she declared; "you realised that those letters contained a woman's secret, and you withheld it from the others. How can I sufficiently thank you?" "By forgiving me," he said. "Remember, I am a thief, and if you wished you could call the hotel manager and have me arrested." "I could hardly treat in that way a man who has acted so nobly and gallantly as you have," she remarked, with perfect frankness. "If those letters had fallen into other hands they might, have found their way back to the Court, and to the King." "I understand perfectly," he said, in a low voice. "I saw by the dates, and gathered from the tenor in which they were written that they concealed some hidden romance. To expose what was written there would have surely been a most cowardly act--meaner even than stealing a helpless, ill-judged woman's jewels. No, Princess," he went on; "I beg that although I stand before you a thief, to whom the inside of a gaol is no new experience, a man who lives by his wits and his agility and ingenuity in committing theft, you will not entirely condemn me. I still, I hope, retain a sense of honour." "You speak like a gentleman," she said. "Who were your parents?" "My father, Princess, was a landed proprietor in Norfolk. After college I went to Sandhurst, and then entered the British Army; but gambling proved my ruin, and I was dismissed in disgrace for the forgery of a bill in the name of a brother officer. As a consequence, my father left me nothing, as I was a second son; and for years I drifted about England, an actor in a small travelling company; but gradually I fell lower and lower, until one day in London I met a well-known card-sharper, who took me as his partner, and together we lived well in the elegant rooms to which we inveigled men and there cheated them. The inevitable came at last--arrest and imprisonment. I got three years, and after serving it, came abroad and joined Roddy Redmayne's gang, with whom I am at present connected." The career of the man before her was certainly a strangely adventurous one. He had not told her one tithe of the remarkable romance of his life. He had been a gentleman, and though now a jewel thief, he still adhered to the traditions of his family whenever a woman was concerned. He was acute, ingenious beyond degree, and a man of endless resource, yet he scorned to rob a woman who was poor. The Princess Claire, a quick reader of character, saw in him a man who was a criminal, not by choice, but by force of circumstance. He was now still suffering from that false step he had taken in imitating his brother officer's signature and raising money upon the bill. However she might view his actions, the truth remained that he had saved her from a terrible accident. "Yours has been an unfortunate career, Mr. Bourne," she remarked. "Can you not abandon this very perilous profession of yours? Is there no way by which you can leave your companions and lead an honest life?" When she spoke she made others feel how completely the purely natural and the purely ideal can blend into each other, yet she was a woman breathing thoughtful breath, walking in all her natural loveliness with a heart as frail-strung, as passion-touched, as ever fluttered in a female bosom. "Ah, Princess!" he cried earnestly, "I beg of you not to reproach me; willingly I would leave it all. I would welcome work and an honest life; but, alas! nowadays it is too late. Besides, who would take me in any position of trust, with my black record behind me? Nobody." And he shook his head. "In books one reads of reformed thieves, but there are none in real life. A thief, when once a thief, must remain so till the end of his days--of liberty." "But is it not a great sacrifice to your companions to give up my jewellery?" she asked in a soft, very kindly voice. "They, of course, recognise its great value?" "Yes," he smiled. "Roddy, our chief, is a good judge of stones--as good, probably, as the experts at Spink's or Streeter's. One has to be able to tell good stuff from rubbish when one deals in diamonds, as we do. Such a quantity of fake is worn now, and, as you may imagine, we don't care to risk stealing paste." "But how cleverly my bag was taken!" she said. "Who took it? He was an elderly man." "Roddy Redmayne," was Bourne's reply. "The man who, if your Highness will consent to meet him, will hand it back to you intact." "You knew, I suppose, that it contained jewels?" "We knew that it contained something of value. Roddy was advised of it by telegraph from Lucerne." "From Lucerne? Then one of your companions was there?" "Yes, at your hotel. An attempt was made to get it while you were on the platform awaiting the train for Paris, but you kept too close a watch. Therefore, Roddy received a telegram to meet you upon your arrival in Paris, and he met you." What he told her surprised her. She had been quite ignorant of any thief making an attempt to steal the bag at Lucerne, and she now saw how cleverly she had been watched and met. "And when am I to meet Mr. Redmayne?" she asked. "At any place and hour your Imperial Highness will appoint," was his reply. "But, of course, I need not add that you will first give your pledge of absolute secrecy--that you will say nothing to the police of the way your jewels have been returned to you." "I have already given my promise. Mr. Redmayne may rely upon my silence. Where shall we fix the meeting? Here?" "No, no," he laughed--"not in the hotel. There is an agent of police always about the hall. Indeed, I run great risk of being recognised, for I fear that the fact of your having reported your loss to the police at the station has set Monsieur Hamard and his friends to watch for us. You see, they unfortunately possess our photographs. No. It must be outside--say at some small, quiet cafe at ten o'clock to-night, if it will not disturb your Highness too much." "Disturb me?" she laughed. "I ought to be only too thankful to you both for restoring my jewels to me." "And we, on our part, are heartily ashamed of having stolen them from you. Well, let us say at the Cafe Vachette, a little place on the left-hand side of the Rue de Seine. You cross the Pont des Arts, and find it immediately; or better, take a cab. Remember, the Vachette, in the Rue de Seine, at ten o'clock. You will find us both sitting at one of the little tables outside, and perhaps your Highness will wear a thick veil, for a pretty woman in that quarter is so quickly noticed." She smiled at his final words, but promised to carry out his directions. Surely it was a situation unheard of--an escaped princess making a rendezvous with two expert thieves in order to receive back her own property. "Then we shall be there awaiting you," he said. "And now I fear that I've kept you far too long, Princess. Allow me to take my leave." She gave him her hand, and thanked him warmly, saying-- "Though your profession is a dishonourable one, Mr. Bourne, you have, nevertheless, proved to me that you are at heart still a gentleman." "I am gratified that your Imperial Highness should think so," he replied, and bowing, withdrew, and stepped out of the hotel by the restaurant entrance at the rear. He knew that the agent of police was idling in the hall that led out into the Rue St. Lazare, and he had no desire to run any further risk of detection, especially while that bag with its precious contents remained in the shabby upstairs room in the Rue Lafayette. Her Highness took little Ignatia and drove in a cab along the Avenue des Champs Elysees, almost unable to realise the amazing truth of what her mysterious rescuer of two years ago had revealed to her. She now saw plainly the reason he had left Treysa in secret. He was wanted by the police, and feared that they would recognise him by the photograph sent from the Prefecture in Paris. And now, on a second occasion, he was serving her against his own interests, and without any thought of reward! With little Ignatia prattling at her side, she drove along, her mind filled with that strange interview and the curious appointment that she had made for that evening. Later that day, after dining in the restaurant, she put Ignatia to bed and sat with her till nine o'clock, when, leaving her asleep, she put on a jacket, hat, and thick veil--the one she had worn when she escaped from the palace--and locking the door, went out. In the Rue St. Lazare she entered a cab and drove across the Pont des Arts, alighting at the corner of the Rue de Seine, that long, straight thoroughfare that leads up to the Arcade of the Luxembourg, and walked along on the left-hand side in search of the Cafe Vachette. At that hour the street was almost deserted, for the night was chilly, with a boisterous wind, and the small tables outside the several uninviting cafes and _brasseries_ were mostly deserted. Suddenly, however, as she approached a dingy little place where four tables stood out upon the pavement, two on either side of the doorway, a man's figure rose, and with hat in hand, came forward to meet her. She saw that it was Bourne, and with scarcely a word, allowed herself to be conducted to the table where an elderly, grey-haired man had risen to meet her. "This is Mr. Redmayne," explained Bourne, "if I may be permitted to present him to you." The Princess smiled behind her veil, and extended her hand. She recognised him in an instant as the gallant old gentleman in the bright red cravat, who, on pretence of assisting her to alight, had made off with her bag. She, an Imperial Archduchess, seated herself there between the pair of thieves. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. IN WHICH "THE MUTE" IS REVEALED. When, in order to save appearances, Bourne had ordered her a _bock_, Roddy Redmayne bent to her, and in a low whisper said,-- "I beg, Princess, that you will first accept my most humble apologies for what I did the other day. As to your Highness's secrecy, I place myself entirely in your hands." "I have already forgiven both Mr. Bourne and yourself," was her quiet answer, lifting her veil and sipping the _bock_, in order that her hidden face should not puzzle the waiter too much. "Your friend has told me that, finding certain letters in the bag, you discovered that it belonged to me." "Exactly, and we were all filled with regret," said the old thief. "We have heard from the newspapers of your flight from Treysa, owing to your domestic unhappiness, and we decided that it would be a coward's action to take a woman's jewels in such circumstances. Therefore we resolved to try and discover you and to hand them back intact." "I am very grateful," was her reply. "But is it not a considerable sacrifice on your part? Had you disposed of them you would surely have obtained a good round sum?" The man smiled. "We will not speak of sacrifice, your Highness," the old fellow said. "If you forgive us and accept back your property, it is all that we ask. I am ashamed, and yet at the same time gratified, that you, an Imperial Princess, should offer me your hand, knowing who and what I am." "Whatever you may be, Mr. Redmayne," she said, "you have shown yourself my friend." "And I am your friend; I'll stand your friend, Princess, in whatever service you may command me," declared the keen-eyed old man, who was acknowledged by the Continental police to be one of the cleverest criminals in the length and breadth of Europe. "We have discovered that you are alone here; but remember that you are not friendless. We are your friends, even though the world would call us by a very ugly name--a gang of thieves." "I can only thank you," she sighed. "You are extremely good to speak like this. It is true that misfortune has fallen upon me, and being friendless, it is reassuring to know that I have at least two persons in Paris ready to perform any service I require. Mr. Bourne once rendered me a very great service, but refused to accept any reward." And she added, laughing, "He has already explained the reason of his hurried departure from Treysa." "Our departures are often hurried ones, your Highness," he said. "Had we not discovered that the jewels were yours, we should in an hour have dispersed, one to England, one to Germany, and one to Amsterdam. But in order to discover you we remained here, and risked being recognised by the police, who know me, and are aware of my profession. To-morrow we leave Paris, for already Hamard's agents, suspecting me of the theft, are searching everywhere to discover me." "But you must not leave before I make you some reward," she said. "Where are the jewels?" "In that closed cab. Can you see it away yonder?" and he pointed to the lights of a vehicle standing some distance up the street. "Kinder, one of our friends, has it with him. Shall we get into the cab and drive away? Then I will restore the bag to you, and if I may advise your Highness, I would deposit it in the Credit Lyonnais to-morrow. It is not safe for a woman alone to carry about such articles of great value. There are certain people in Paris who would not hesitate to take your life for half the sum they represent." "Thank you for your advice, Mr. Redmayne," she said. "I will most certainly take it." "Will your Highness walk to the cab with me?" Bourne asked, after he had paid the waiter. "You are not afraid to trust yourself with us?" he added. "Not at all," she laughed. "Are you not my friends?" And she rose and walked along the street to where the cab was in waiting. Within the vehicle was a man whom he introduced to her as Mr. Kinder, and when all four were seated within, Bourne beside her and Redmayne opposite her, the elder man took the precious bag from Kinder's hand and gave it to her, saying,-- "We beg of your Highness to accept this, with our most humble apologies. You may open it and look within. You will not, I think, find anything missing," he added. She took the dressing-bag, and opening it, found within it the cheap leather bag she had brought from Treysa. A glance inside showed her that the jewels were still there, although there were so many that she, of course, did not count them. For a few moments she remained in silence; then thanking the two for their generosity, she said,-- "I cannot accept their return without giving you some reward, Mr. Redmayne. I am, unfortunately, without very much money, but I desire you to accept these--if they are really worth your acceptance," and taking from the bag a magnificent pair of diamond earrings she gave them into his hand. "You, no doubt, can turn them into money," she added. The old fellow, usually so cool and imperturbable, became at once confused. "Really, Princess," he declared, "we could not think of accepting these. You, perhaps, do not realise that they are worth at least seven hundred pounds." "No; I have no idea of their value. I only command you to accept them as a slight acknowledgment of my heartfelt gratitude." "But--" "There are no buts. Place them in your pocket, and say nothing further." A silence again fell between them, while the cab rolled along the asphalte of the boulevard. Suddenly Bourne said,-- "Princess, you cannot know what a weight of anxiety your generous gift has lifted off our minds. Roddy will not tell you, but it is right that you should know. The fact is that at this moment we are all three almost penniless--without the means of escape from Paris. The money we shall get for those diamonds will enable us to get away from here in safety." She turned and peered into his face, lit by the uncertain light of the street lamps. In his countenance she saw a deep, earnest look. "Then the truth is that without money to provide means of escape you have even sacrificed your chances of liberty, in order to return my jewels to me!" she exclaimed, for the first time realising the true position. He made no response; his silence was an affirmative. Kinder, who had spoken no word, sat looking at her, entirely absorbed by her grace and beauty. "Well," she exclaimed at last, "I wonder if you would all three do me another small favour?" "We shall be only too delighted," was Bourne's quick reply. "Only please understand, your Highness, that we accept these earrings out of pure necessity. If we were not so sorely in need of money, we should most certainly refuse." "Do not let us mention them again," she said quickly. "Listen. The fact is this. I have very little ready money, and do not wish at this moment to reveal my whereabouts by applying to my lawyers in Vienna or in Treysa. Therefore it will be best to sell some of my jewellery--say one thousand pounds' worth. Could you arrange this for me?" "Certainly," Roddy replied, "with the greatest pleasure. For that single row diamond necklet we could get from a thousand to twelve hundred pounds--if that amount is sufficient." She reopened the bag, and after searching in the fickle light shed by the street lamps she at length pulled out the necklet in question--one of the least valuable of the heap of jewels that had been restored to her in so curious and romantic a manner. The old jewel thief took it, weighed it in his hand, and examined it critically under the feeble light. He had already valued it on the day when he had secured it. It was worth in the market about four thousand pounds, but in the secret channel where he would sell it he would not obtain more than twelve hundred for it, as, whatever he said, the purchaser would still believe it to be stolen property, and would therefore have the stones recut and reset. "You might try Pere Perrin," Guy remarked. "It would be quicker to take it to him than to send it to Amsterdam or Leyden." "Or why not old Lestocard, in Brussels? He always gives decent prices, and is as safe as anybody," suggested Kinder. "Is time of great importance to your Highness?" asked the head of the association, speaking with his decidedly Cockney twang. "A week or ten days--not longer," she replied. "Then we will try Pere Perrin to-morrow, and let you know the result. Of course, I shall not tell him whose property it is. He will believe that we have obtained it in the ordinary way of our profession. Perrin is an old Jew who lives over at Batignolles, and who asks no questions. The stuff he buys goes to Russia or to Italy." "Very well. I leave it to you to do your best for me, Mr. Redmayne," was her reply. "I put my trust in you implicitly." "Your Imperial Highness is one of the few persons--beyond our own friends here--who do. To most people Roddy Redmayne is a man not to be trusted, even as far as you can see him!" and he grinned, adding, "But here we are at the Pont d'Austerlitz. Harry and I will descend, and you, Bourne, will accompany the Princess to her hotel." Then he shouted an order to the man to stop, and after again receiving her Highness's warmest thanks, the expert thief and his companion alighted, and, bowing to her, disappeared. When the cab moved on again towards the Place de la Bastille, she turned to the Englishman beside her, saying-- "I owe all this to you, Mr. Bourne, and I assure you I feel most deeply grateful. One day I hope I may be of some service to you, if," and she paused and looked at him--"well, if only to secure your withdrawal from a criminal life." "Ah, Princess," he sighed wistfully, "if I only could see my way clear to live honestly! But to do so requires money, money--and I have none. The gentlemanly dress which you see me wearing is only an imposture and a fraud--like all my life, alas! nowadays." She realised that this man, a gentleman by birth, was eager to extricate himself from the low position into which he had, by force of adverse circumstances, fallen. He was a cosmopolitan of cosmopolitans, a quiet, slow-speaking, slightly built, high-browed, genial-souled man, with his slight, dark moustache, shrewd dark eyes, and a mouth that had humour smiling at the corners; a man of middle height, his dark hair showing the first sign of changing early to grey, and a countenance bitten and scarred by all the winds and suns of the round globe; a wise and quiet man, able to keep his own counsel, able to get his own end with few words, and yet unable to shape his own destiny; a marvellous impostor, the friend of men and women of the _haut monde_, who all thought him a gentleman, and never for one instant suspected his true occupation. Such was the man who had once risked his life for hers, the man who had now returned her stolen jewels to her, and who was at that moment seated at her side escorting her to her hotel on terms of intimate friendship. She thought deeply over his bitter words of regret that he was what he was. Could she assist him, she wondered. But how? "Remain patient," she urged, in a calm, kindly tone. "I shall never forget my great indebtedness to you, and I will do my utmost in order that you may yet realise your wish to lead an honest life. At this moment I am, like yourself, an outcast, wondering what the future may have in store for me. But be patient and hope, for it shall be my most strenuous endeavour to assist you to realise your commendable desire." "Ah! really your Highness is far too kind," he answered, in a voice that seemed to her to falter in emotion. "I only hope that some way will open out to me. I would welcome any appointment, however menial, that took me out of my present shameful profession--that of a thief." "I really believe you," she said. "I can quite understand that it is against the nature of a man of honour to find himself in your position." "I assure you, Princess, that I hate myself," he declared in earnest confidence. "What greater humility can befall a man than to be compelled to admit that he is a thief--as I admitted to you this afternoon? I might have concealed the fact, it is true, and have returned the jewels anonymously; yet an explanation of the reason of my sudden flight from Treysa after all your kindness was surely due to you. And--well, I was forced to tell you the whole truth, and allow you to judge me as you will." "As I have already said, Mr. Bourne, your profession does not concern me. Many a man of note and of high position and power in the Ministries of Europe commits far greater peculations than you do, yet is regarded as a great man, and holds the favour of his sovereign until he commits the unpardonable sin of being found out. No, a man is not always what his profession is." "I thank you for regarding me in such a lenient light, your Highness, and I only look forward with hope to the day when, by some turn of Fortune's wheel, I gain the liberty to be honest," he answered. "Remember, Mr. Bourne, that I am your friend; and I hope you are still mine in return," she said, for the cab had now stopped at the corner of the Rue d'Amsterdam, as he had ordered it, for it was running unnecessary risk for him to drive with her up to the hotel. "Thank you, Princess," he said earnestly, raising his hat, his dark, serious eyes meeting hers. "Let us be mutual friends, and perhaps we can help each other. Who knows? When I lay in the hospital with my chest broken in I often used to wonder what you would say if you knew my real identity. You, an Imperial Princess, were sending flowers and fruit from the royal table to a criminal for whom half the police in Europe were in active search!" "Even an Imperial Princess is not devoid of gratitude," she said, when he was out upon the pavement and had closed the door of the cab. The vehicle moved forward to the hotel, and he was left there, bowing in silence before her, his hat in his hand. To the hall porter she gave the precious bag, with orders to send it at once to her room, and then turned to pay the cabman. But the man merely raised his white hat respectfully, saying,-- "Pardon, Madame, but I have already been paid." Therefore she gave him a couple of francs as tip. Then she ascended in the lift to her room, where a porter with the bag was awaiting her, and unlocking the door, found that little Ignatia, tired out by her afternoon drive, had not stirred. Locking the door and throwing off her things, she opened the bag and took out the magnificent ornaments one by one. She had not counted them before leaving the palace, therefore could not possibly tell if all were intact. In handfuls she took them out and laid them in a glittering heap upon the dressing-table, when of a sudden she found among them a small envelope containing something hard to the touch. This she opened eagerly, and took out a cheap, tiny little brooch, about half an inch long, representing a beetle, scarlet, with black spots--the innocent little insect which has so interested all of us back in our youthful days--a ladybird. The ornament was a very cheap one, costing one franc at the outside, but in the envelope with it was a letter. This she opened, scanned the few brief lines quickly, then re-read it very carefully, and stood staring at the little brooch in her hand, puzzled and mystified. The words written there revealed to her the existence of a secret. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. THE LADYBIRD. The note enclosed with the cheap little brooch ran,-- "If your Imperial Highness will wear this always in a prominent position, so that it can be seen, she will receive the assistance of unknown friends." That was all. Yet it was surely a curious request, for her to wear that cheap little ornament. She turned it over in her hand, then placing it upon a black dress, saw how very prominently the scarlet insect showed. Then she replaced all the jewels in her bag and retired, full of reflections upon her meeting with the friendly thieves and her curious adventure. Next morning she took the bag to the Credit Lyonnais, as Roddy Redmayne had suggested, where it was sealed and a receipt for it was given her. After that she breathed more freely, for the recovery of her jewels now obviated the necessity of her applying either to her father or to Treysa. The little ladybird she wore, as old Roddy and his companions suggested, and at the bank and in the shops a number of people glanced at it curiously, without, of course, being aware that it was a secret symbol-- of what? Claire wondered. Both Roddy and Guy had told her that they feared to come to her at the Terminus, as a detective was always lurking in the hall; therefore she was not surprised to receive, about four o'clock, a note from Roddy asking her to meet him at the Vachette at nine. When Ignatia was asleep she took a cab to the dingy little place, where she found Roddy smoking alone at the same table set out upon the pavement, and joined him there. She shook hands with him, and then was compelled to sip the _bock_ he ordered. "We will go in a moment," he whispered, so that a man seated near should not overhear. "I thought it best to meet you here rather than risk your hotel. Our friend Bourne asked me to present his best compliments. He left this morning for London." "For London! Why?" "Because--well," he added, with a mysterious smile, "there were two agents of police taking an undue interest in him, you know." "Ah!" she laughed; "I understand perfectly." The old thief, who wore evening dress beneath his light black overcoat, smoked his cigar with an easy, nonchalant air. He passed with every one as an elderly Englishman of comfortable means; yet if one watched closely his quick eyes and the cunning look which sometimes showed in them, they would betray to the observer that he was a sly, ingenious old fellow--a perfect past master of his craft. Presently they rose, and after she had dismissed her cab, walked in company along the narrow street, at that hour almost deserted. "The reason I asked you here, your Highness, was to give you the proceeds of the necklet. I sold it to-day to old Perrin for twelve hundred and sixty pounds. A small price, but it was all he would give, as, of course, he believed that I could never have come by it honestly," and he grinned broadly, taking from his pocket an envelope bulky with French thousand-franc bank-notes and handing it to her. "I am really very much obliged," she answered, transferring the envelope to her pocket. "You have rendered me another very great service, Mr. Redmayne; for as a matter of fact I was almost at the end of my money, and to apply for any would have at once betrayed my whereabouts." "Ah, your Highness," replied the old thief, "you also have rendered me a service; for with what you gave us last night we shall be able to leave Paris at once. And it is highly necessary, I can tell you, if we are to retain our liberty." "Oh! then you also are leaving," she exclaimed, surprised, as they walked slowly side by side. She almost regretted, for he had acted with such friendliness towards her. "Yes; it is imperative. I go to Brussels, and Kinder to Ostend. Are you making a long stay here?" "To-morrow I too may go; but I don't know where." "Why not to London, Princess?" he suggested. "My daughter Leucha is there, and would be delighted to be of any service to you--act as your maid or nurse to the little Princess. She's a good girl, is Leucha." "Is she married?" asked her Highness. "No. I trained her, and she's as shrewd and clever a young woman as there is in all London. She's a lady's maid," he added, "and to tell you the truth--for you may as well know it at first as at last--she supplies us with much valuable information. She takes a place, for instance, in London or in the country, takes note of where her lady's jewels are kept, and if they are accessible, gives us all the details how best to secure them, and then, on ground of ill-health, or an afflicted mother, or some such excuse, she leaves. And after a week or two we just look in and see what we can pick up. So clever is she that never once has she been suspected," he added, with paternal pride. "Of course, it isn't a nice profession for a girl," he added apologetically, "and I'd like to see her doing something honest. Yet how can she? we couldn't get on without her." The Princess remained silent for a few moments. Surely her life now was a strange contrast to that at Treysa, mixing with criminals and becoming the confidante of their secrets! "I should like to meet your daughter," she remarked simply. "If your Imperial Highness would accept her services, I'm sure she might be of service to you. She's a perfect maid, all the ladies have said; and besides, she knows the world, and would protect you in your present dangerous and lonely position. You want a female companion--if your Highness will permit me to say so--and if you do not object to my Leucha on account of her profession, you are entirely welcome to her services, which to you will be faithful and honest, if nothing else." "You are very fond of her!" the Princess exclaimed. "Very, your Highness. She is my only child. My poor wife died when she was twelve, and ever since that she has been with us, living upon her wits--and living well too. To confess all this to you I am ashamed; yet now you know who and what I am, and you are our friend, it is only right that you should be made aware of everything," the old fellow said frankly. "Quite right. I admire you for telling me the truth. In a few days I shall cross to London, and shall be extremely glad of your daughter's services if you will kindly write to her." "When do you think of leaving?" "Well, probably the day after to-morrow, by the first service _via_ Calais." "Then Leucha shall meet that train on arrival at Charing Cross. She will be dressed as a maid, in black, with a black straw sailor hat and a white lace cravat. She will at once enter your service. The question of salary will not be discussed. You have assisted us, and it is our duty to help you in return, especially at this most perilous moment, when you are believed to have eloped with a lover." "I'm sure you are very, very kind, Mr. Redmayne," she declared. "Truth to tell, it is so very difficult for me to know in whom to trust; I have been betrayed so often. But I have every confidence in both you and your daughter; therefore I most gladly accept your offer, for, as you say, I am sadly in need of some one to look after the child--some one, indeed, in whom I can trust." An exalted charm seemed to invest her always. "Well, your Highness," exclaimed the pleasant-faced old fellow, "you have been kind and tolerant to us unfortunates, and I hope to prove to you that even a thief can show his gratitude." "You have already done so, Mr. Redmayne; and believe me, I am very much touched by all that you have done--your actions are those of an honest man, not those of an outlaw." "Don't let us discuss the past, your Highness," he said, somewhat confused by her kindly words; "let's think of the future--your own future, I mean. You can trust Leucha implicitly, and as the police, fortunately, have no suspicion of her, she will be perfectly free to serve you. Hitherto she has always obtained employment with an ulterior motive, but this fact, I hope, will not prejudice her in your eyes. I can only assure you that for her father's sake she will do anything, and that for his sake she will serve you both loyally and well." He halted beneath a street lamp, and tearing a leaf from a small notebook, wrote an address in Granville Gardens, Shepherd's Bush, which he gave to her, saying: "This is in case you miss her at Charing Cross. Send her a letter, and she will at once come to you." Again she thanked him, and they walked to the corner of the Boulevard Saint Germain, where they halted to part. "Remember, Princess, command me in any way," said the old man, raising his hat politely. "I am always at your service. I have not concealed anything from you. Take me as I am, your servant." "Thank you, Mr. Redmayne. I assure you I deeply appreciate and am much touched by your kindness to a defenceless woman. _Au revoir_." And giving him her hand again, she mounted into a fiacre and drove straight back to her hotel. Her friendship with this gang of adventurers was surely giving a curious turn to the current of strange events. She, a woman of imperial birth, had at last found friends, and among the class where one would hesitate to look for them--the outcasts of society! The more she reflected upon the situation, the more utterly bewildering it was to her. She was unused as a child to the ways of the world. Her life had always been spent within the narrow confines of the glittering Courts of Europe, and she had only known of "the people" vaguely. Every hour she now lived more deeply impressed her that "the people" possessed a great and loving heart for the ill-judged and the oppressed. At the hotel she counted the notes Roddy had given her, and found the sum that he had named. The calm, smiling old fellow was actually an honest thief! The following day she occupied herself in making some purchases, and in the evening a police agent called in order to inform her that up to the present nothing had been ascertained regarding her stolen jewels. They had knowledge of a gang of expert English jewel thieves being in Paris, and were endeavouring to discover them. The Princess heard what the man said, but, keeping her own counsel, thanked him for his endeavours and dismissed him. She congratulated herself that Roddy and his two associates were already out of France. On the following afternoon, about half-past four, when the Continental express drew slowly into Charing Cross Station, where a knot of eager persons as usual awaited its arrival, the Princess, leading little Ignatia and wearing the ladybird as a brooch, descended from a first-class compartment and looked about her in the bustling crowd of arrivals. A porter took her wraps and placed them in a four-wheeled cab for her, and then taking her baggage ticket said,-- "You'll meet me yonder at the Custom 'ouse, mum," leaving her standing by the cab, gazing around for the woman in black who was to be her maid. For fully ten minutes, while the baggage was being taken out of the train, she saw no one answering to Roddy's description of his daughter; but at last from out of the crowd came a tall, slim, dark-haired, rather handsome young woman, with black eyes and refined, regular features, neatly dressed in black, wearing a sailor hat, a white lace cravat, and black kid gloves. As she approached the Princess smiled at her; whereupon the girl, blushing in confusion, asked simply,-- "Is it the Crown Princess Claire? or am I mistaken?" "Yes. And you are Leucha Redmayne," answered her Highness, shaking hands with her, for from the first moment she became favourably impressed. "Oh, your Highness, I really hope I have not kept you waiting," she exclaimed concernedly. "But father's letter describing you was rather hurried and vague, and I've seen several ladies alone with little girls, though none of them seemed to be--well, not one of them seemed to be a Princess--only yourself. Besides, you are wearing the little ladybird." Her Highness smiled, explained that she was very friendly with her father, who had suggested that she should enter her service as maid, and expressed a hope that she was willing. "My father has entrusted to me a duty, Princess," was the dark-eyed girl's serious reply. "And I hope that you will not find me wanting in the fulfilment of it." And then they went together within the Customs barrier and claimed the baggage. The way in which she did this showed the Princess at once that Leucha Redmayne was a perfectly trained maid. How many ladies, she wondered, had lost their jewels after employing her? CHAPTER NINETEEN. LEUCHA MAKES CONFESSION. Leucha Redmayne was, as her father had declared, a very clever young woman. She was known as "the Ladybird" on account of her habit of flitting from place to place, constantly taking situations in likely families. Most of the ladies in whose service she had been had regretted when she left, and many of them actually offered her higher wages to remain. She was quick and neat, had taken lessons in hairdressing and dressmaking in Paris, could speak French fluently, and possessed that quiet, dignified demeanour so essential to the maid of an aristocratic woman. Her references were excellent. A well-known Duchess--whose jewels, however, had been too carefully guarded--and half a dozen other titled ladies testified to her honesty and good character, and also to their regret on account of her being compelled to leave their service; therefore, armed with such credentials, she never had difficulty in obtaining any situation that was vacant. So ingenious was she, and so cleverly did she contrive to make her excuses for leaving the service of her various mistresses, that nobody, not even the most astute officers from Scotland Yard, ever suspected her. The case of Lady Harefield's jewels, which readers of the present narrative of a royal scandal will well remember, was a typical one. Leucha, who saw in the _Morning Post_ that Lady Harefield wanted a maid to travel, applied, and at once obtained the situation. She soon discovered that her Ladyship possessed some extremely valuable diamonds; but they were in the bank at Derby, near which town the country place was situated. She accompanied her Ladyship to the Riviera for the season, and then returning to England found out that her mistress intended to go to Court upon a certain evening, and that she would have the diamonds brought up from Derby on the preceding day. His Lordship's secretary was to be sent for them. As soon as she obtained this information she was taken suddenly ill, and left Lady Harefield's service to go back to her fictitious home in the country. At once she called her father and Bourne, with the result that on the day in question, when Lord Harefield's secretary arrived at St. Pancras Station, the bag containing the jewels disappeared, and was never again seen. More than once too, she had, by pre-arrangement with her father, left her mistress's bedroom window open and the jewel-case unlocked while the family were dining, with the result that the precious ornaments had been mysteriously abstracted. Many a time, after taking a situation, and finding that her mistress's jewels were paste, she had calmly left at the end of the week, feigning to be ill-tempered and dissatisfied, and not troubling about wages. If there were no jewels she never remained. And wherever she chanced to be--in London, in the country, or up in Scotland--either one or other of her father's companions was generally lurking near to receive her secret communications. Hers had from childhood been a life full of strange adventures, of ingenious deceptions, and of clever subterfuge. So closely did she keep her own counsel that not a single friend was aware of her motive in so constantly changing her employment; indeed, the majority of them put it down to her own fickleness, and blamed her for not "settling down." Such was the woman whom the Crown Princess Claire had taken into her service. At the Savoy, where she took up a temporary abode under the title of Baroness Deitel of Frankfort, Leucha quickly exhibited her skill as lady's maid. Indeed, even Henriette was not so quick or deft as was this dark-eyed young woman who was the spy of a gang of thieves. While she dressed the Princess's hair, her Highness explained how her valuable jewels had been stolen, and how her father had so generously restored them to her. "Guy--Mr. Bourne, I mean--has already told me. He is back in London, and is lying low because of the police. They suspect him on account of a little affair up in Edinburgh about three months ago." "Where is he?" asked the Princess; "I would so like to see him." "He is living in secret over at Hammersmith. He dare not come here, I think." "But we might perhaps pay him a visit--eh?" From the manner in which the girl inadvertently referred to Bourne by his Christian name, her Highness suspected that they were fond of each other. But she said nothing, resolving to remain watchful and observe for herself. That same evening, after dinner, when Ignatia was sleeping, and they sat together in her Highness's room overlooking the dark Thames and the long lines of lights of the Embankment, "the Ladybird," at the Princess's invitation, related one or two of her adventures, confessing openly to the part she had played as her father's spy. She would certainly have said nothing had not her Highness declared that she was interested, and urged her to tell her something of her life. Though trained as an assistant to these men ever since she had left the cheap boarding-school at Weymouth, she hated herself for the despicable part she had played, and yet, as she had often told herself, it had been of sheer necessity. "Yes," she sighed, "I have had several narrow escapes of being suspected of the thefts. Once, when in Lady Milborne's service, down at Lyme Regis, I discovered that she kept the Milborne heirlooms, among which were some very fine old rubies--which are just now worth more than diamonds in the market--in a secret cupboard in the wall of her bedroom, behind an old family portrait. My father, with Guy, Kinder, and two others, were in the vicinity of the house ready to make the _coup_; and I arranged with them that on a certain evening, while her Ladyship was at dinner, I would put the best of the jewels into a wash-leather bag and lower them from the window to where Guy was to be in waiting for them in the park. He was to cut the string and disappear with the bag, while I would draw up the string and put it upon the fire. Her Ladyship seldom went to the secret cupboard, and some days might elapse before the theft was discovered. Well, on the evening in question I slipped up to the bedroom, obtained the rubies and let them out of the window. I felt the string being cut, and hauling it back again quickly burnt it, and then got away to another part of the house, hoping that her Ladyship would not go to her jewels for a day or two. In the meantime I dare not leave her service, or suspicion might fall upon me. Besides, the Honourable George, her eldest son--a fellow with a rather bad reputation for gambling and racing--was about to be married to the daughter of a wealthy landowner in the neighbourhood; a most excellent match for him, as the Milbornes had become poor owing to the depreciation in the value of land. "About two hours after I had let down the precious little bag I chanced to be looking out into the park from my own window, and saw a man in the public footway strike three matches in order to light his pipe--the signal that my friends wanted to speak to me. In surprise I slipped out, and there found Guy, who, to my utter amazement, told me that they had not received the bag; they had been forestalled by a tall man in evening dress who had emerged from the Hall, and who chanced to be walking up and down smoking when the bag dangled in front of him! Imagine my feelings! "Unfortunately I had not looked out, for fear of betraying myself; and as it was the exact hour appointed, I felt certain that my friend would be there. The presence of the man in evening dress, however, deterred them from emerging from the bushes, and they were compelled to remain concealed and watch my peril. The man looked up, and though the room was in darkness, he could see my white apron. Then in surprise he cut the string, and having opened the bag in the light, saw what it contained, placed it in his pocket, and re-entered the house. Guy described him, and I at once knew that it was the Honourable George, my mistress's son. He would no doubt denounce me as a thief. "I saw the extreme peril of the situation. I had acted clumsily in not first ascertaining that the way was clear. To fly at once was to condemn myself. I reflected for a moment, and then, resolving upon a desperate course of action, returned to the house, in spite of Bourne's counsel to get away as quickly as possible. I went straight to her Ladyship's room, but from the way she spoke to me saw that up to the present her son had told her nothing. This was fortunate for me. He was keeping the secret in order, no doubt, to call the police on the morrow and accuse me in their presence. I saw that the only way was to bluff him; therefore I went very carefully to work. "Just before midnight I slipped into his sitting-room, which adjoined his bedroom, and secreted myself behind the heavy plush curtains that were drawn; then when he was asleep I took the rubies from the drawer in which he had placed them, but in doing so the lock of the drawer clicked, and he awoke. He saw me, and sprang up, openly accusing me of theft. Whereupon I faced him boldly, declaring that if he did not keep his mouth closed I would alarm the household, who would find me alone in his room at that hour. He would then be compromised in the eyes of the woman whom in two days he was about to marry. Instantly he recognised that I held the whip-hand. He endeavoured, however, to argue; but I declared that if he did not allow me to have the rubies to replace in the cupboard and maintain silence, I would arouse the household. Then he laughed, saying, `You're a fool, Leucha. I'm very hard up, and you quite providentially lowered them down to me. I intend to raise money on them to-morrow.' `And to accuse me!' I said. `No, you don't. I shall put them back, and we will both remain silent. Both of us have much to lose--you a wife, and I my liberty. Why should either of us risk it? Is it really worth while?' This argument decided him. I replaced the jewels, and next day left Lady Milborne's service. "That was, however, one of the narrowest escapes I ever had, and it required all my courage to extricate myself, I can tell you." "So your plots were not always successful," remarked the Princess, smiling and looking at her wonderingly. She was surely a girl of great resource and ingenuity. "Not always, your Highness. One, which father had planned here a couple of months ago, and which was to be effected in Paris, has just failed in a peculiar way. The lady went to Paris, and, unknown to her husband, suddenly sold all her jewels _en masse_ in order to pay her debts at bridge." "She forestalled him!" "Exactly," laughed the girl. "But it was a curious _contretemps_, was it not?" Next day proved an eventful one to the Crown Princess, for soon after eleven o'clock, when with Leucha and Ignatia she went out of the hotel into the Strand, a man selling the _Evening News_ held a poster before her, bearing in large capitals the words:-- EVENING NEWS, FRIDAY, JUNE 26th. DEATH OF THE KING OF MARBURG. EVENING NEWS. She halted, staring at the words. Then she bought a newspaper, and opening it at once upon the pavement, amid the busy throng, learnt that the aged King had died suddenly at Treysa, on the previous evening, of senile decay. The news staggered her. Her husband had succeeded, and she was now Queen--a reigning sovereign! In the cruelly wronged woman there still remained all the fervour of youthful tenderness, all the romance of youthful fancy, all the enchantment of ideal grace--the bloom of beauty, the brightness of intellect, and the dignity of rank, taking the peculiar hue from the conjugal character which shed over all like a consecration and a holy charm. Thoughts of her husband, the man who had so cruelly ill-judged her, were in her recollections, acting on her mind with the force of a habitual feeling, heightened by enthusiastic passion, and hallowed by a sense of duty. Her duty to her husband and to her people was to return at once to Treysa. As she walked with Leucha towards Trafalgar Square she reflected deeply. How could she go back now that her enemies had so openly condemned her? No; she saw that for her own happiness it was far better that she still remain away from Court--the Court over which at last she now reigned as Queen. "My worst enemies will bow to me in adulation," she thought to herself. "They fear my retaliation, and if I went back I verily believe that I should show them no mercy. And yet, after all, it would be uncharitable. One should always repay evil with good. If I do not return, I shall not be tempted to revenge." That day she remained very silent and pensive, full of an acute sense of the injustice inflicted upon her. Her husband the King was no doubt trying to discover her whereabouts, but up to the present had been unsuccessful. The papers, which spoke of her almost daily, stated that it was believed she was still in Germany, at one or other of the quieter spas, on account of little Ignatia's health. In one journal she had read that she had been recognised in New York, and in another it was cruelly suggested that she was in hiding in Rome, so as to be near her lover Leitolf. The truth was that her enemies at Court were actually paying the more scurrilous of the Continental papers--those which will publish any libel for a hundred francs, and the present writer could name dozens of such rags on the Continent--to print all sorts of cruel, unfounded scandals concerning her. During the past few days she had scarcely taken up a single foreign paper without finding the heading, "The Great Court Scandal," and something outrageously against her; for her enemies, who had engaged as their secret agent a Jew money-lender, had started a bitter campaign against her, backed with the sum of a hundred thousand marks, placed by Hinckeldeym at the unscrupulous Hebrew's disposal with which to bribe the press. A little money can, alas! soon ruin a woman's good name, or, on the other hand, it can whitewash the blackest record. This plot against an innocent, defenceless woman was as brutal as any conceived by the ingenuity of a corrupt Court of office-seekers and sycophants, for at heart the King had loved his wife--until they had poisoned his mind against her and besmirched her good name. Of all this she was well aware, conscious of her own weakness as a woman. Yet she retained her woman's heart, for that was unalterable, and part of her being: but her looks, her language, her thoughts, even in those adverse circumstances, assumed the cast of the pure ideal; and to those who were in the secret of her humane and pitying nature, nothing could be more charming and consistent than the effect which she produced upon others. As the hot, fevered days went by, she recognised that it became hourly more necessary for her to leave London, and conceal her identity somewhere in the country. She noticed at the Savoy, whenever she dined or lunched with Leucha, people were noting her beauty and inquiring who she was. At any moment she might be recognised by some one who had visited the Court at Treysa, or by those annoying portraits that were now appearing everywhere in the illustrated journals. She decided to consult Guy Bourne, who, Leucha said, usually spent half his time in hiding. Therefore one evening, with "the Ladybird," she took a cab to a small semi-detached villa in Wolverton Gardens, off the Hammersmith Road, where she alighted and entered, in utter ignorance, unfortunately, that another hansom had followed her closely all the way from the Savoy, and that, pulling up in the Hammersmith Road, the fare, a tall, thin, middle-aged man, with a black overcoat concealing his evening dress, had alighted, walked quickly up the street, and noted the house wherein she and her maid had entered. The stranger muttered to himself some words in German, and with a smile of self-satisfaction lit a cigar and strolled back to the Hammersmith Road to wait. A fearful destiny had encompassed her. CHAPTER TWENTY. THE HERMIT OF HAMMERSMITH. Guy Bourne, in his shirt sleeves, was sitting back in a long cane lounge-chair in the little front parlour when the Princess and her companion entered. He had just finished his frugal supper. He jumped up confusedly, threw the evening paper aside, and apologised that her Highness had discovered him without a coat. "Please don't apologise, Mr. Bourne. This is rather an unusual hour for a visit, is it not? But pray forgive me," she said in English, with scarcely any trace of a German accent. "Your Highness is always welcome--at any hour," he laughed, struggling into his coat and ordering his landlady to clear away the remnants of the meal. "Leucha was here yesterday, and she told me how you were faring. I am sorry that circumstances over which I, unfortunately, have no control have not permitted my calling at the Savoy. At present I can only go out after midnight for a breath of air, and time passes rather slowly, I can assure you. As Leucha has probably told you, certain persons are making rather eager inquiries about me just now." "I understand perfectly," she laughed. "It was to obtain your advice as to the best way to efface myself that I came to see you this evening. Leucha tells me you are an expert in disappearing." "Well, Princess," he smiled, offering her a chair, "you see it's part of my profession to show myself as little as possible, though self-imprisonment is always very irksome. This house is one among many in London which afford accommodation for such as myself. The landlady is a person who knows how to keep her mouth shut, and who asks no questions. She is, as most of them are, the widow of a person who was a social outcast like myself." "And this is one of your harbours of refuge," her Highness exclaimed, looking around curiously upon the cheaply furnished but comfortable room. There was linoleum in lieu of carpet, and to the Londoner the cheap walnut overmantel and plush-covered drawing-room suite spoke mutely of the Tottenham Court Road and the "easy-payment" system. The Princess was shrewd enough to notice the looks which passed between Leucha and the man to whom she was so much indebted. She detected that a passion of love existed between them. Indeed, the girl had almost admitted as much to her, and had on several occasions begged to be allowed to visit him and ascertain whether he was in want of anything. It was an interesting and a unique study, she found, the affection between a pair of the criminal class. What would the world say had it known that she, a reigning Queen, was there upon a visit to a man wanted by the police for half a dozen of the most daring jewel robberies of the past half-century? She saw a box of cheap cigarettes upon the table, and begged one, saying,-- "I hope, Mr. Bourne, you will not be shocked, but I dearly love a cigarette. You will join me, of course?" "Most willingly, your Highness," he said, springing to his feet and holding the lighted match for her. She was so charmingly unconventional that people of lower station were always fascinated by her. "You know," she exclaimed, laughing, "I used to shock them very much at Court because I smoked. And sometimes," she added mischievously, "I smoked at certain functions in order purposely to shock the prudes. Oh, I've had the most delightful fun very often, I assure you. My husband, when we were first married, used to enter into the spirit of the thing, and once dared me to smoke a cigarette in the Throne Room in the presence of the King and Queen. I did so--and imagine the result!" "Ah!" he cried, "that reminds me. Pray pardon me for my breach of etiquette, but you have come upon me so very unexpectedly. I've seen in the _Mail_ the account of his Majesty's death, and that you are now Queen. In future I must call you `your Majesty.' You are a reigning sovereign, and I am a thief. A strange contrast, is it not?" "Better call me your friend, Mr. Bourne," she said, in a calm, changed voice. "Here is no place for titles. Recollect that I am now only an ordinary citizen, one of the people--a mere woman whose only desire is peace." Then continuing, she explained her daily fear lest she might be recognised at the Savoy, and asked his advice as to the best means of hiding herself. "Well, your Majesty," said the past master of deception, after some thought, "you see you are a foreigner, and as such will be remarked in England everywhere. You speak French like a _Parisienne_. Why not pass as French under a French name? I should suggest that you go to some small, quiet South Coast town--say to Worthing. Many French people go there as they cross from Dieppe. There are several good hotels; or you might, if you wished to be more private, obtain apartments." "Yes," she exclaimed excitedly; "apartments in an English house would be such great fun. I will go to this place Worthing. Is it nice?" "Quiet--with good sea air." "I was once at Hastings--when I was a child. Is it anything like that?" "Smaller, more select, and quieter." "Then I will go there to-morrow and call myself Madame Bernard," she said decisively. "Leucha will go with me in search of apartments." Having gained her freedom, she now wanted to see what an English middle-class house was like. She had heard much of English home life from Allen and from the English notabilities who had come to Court, and she desired to see it for herself. Hotel life is the same all the world over, and it already bored her. "Certainly. Your Majesty will be much quieter and far more comfortable in apartments, and passing as an ordinary member of the public," Leucha said. "I happen to know a very nice house where one can obtain furnished apartments. It faces the sea near the pier, and is kept by a Mrs. Blake, the widow of an Army surgeon. When I was in service with Lady Porthkerry we stayed there for a month." "Then we will most certainly go there; and perhaps you, Mr. Bourne, will find it possible to take the sea air at Worthing instead of being cooped up here. You might come down by a night train--that is, if you know a place where you would be safe." He shook his head dubiously. "I know a place in Brighton--where I've stayed several times. It is not far from Worthing, certainly. But we will see afterwards. Does your Majesty intend to leave London to-morrow?" "Yes; but please not `your Majesty,'" she said, in mild reproach, and with a sweet smile. "Remember, I am in future plain Madame Bernard, of Bordeaux, shall we say? The landlady--as I think you call her in English--must not know who I am, or there will soon be paragraphs in the papers, and those seaside snap-shotters will be busy. I should quickly find myself upon picture postcards, as I've done, to my annoyance, on several previous occasions when I've wanted to be quiet and remain incognito." And so it was arranged that she should establish herself at Mrs. Blake's, in Worthing, which she did about six o'clock on the following evening. The rooms, she found, were rather frowzy, as are those of most seaside lodgings, the furniture early Victorian, and on the marble-topped whatnot was that ornament in which our grandmothers so delighted--a case of stuffed birds beneath a glass dome. The two windows of the first-floor sitting-room opened out upon a balcony before which was the promenade and the sea beyond--one of the best positions in Worthing, without a doubt. Mrs. Blake recognised Leucha at once, terms were quickly fixed, and the maid--as is usual in such cases--received a small commission for bringing her mistress there. When they were duly installed, Leucha, in confidence, told the inquisitive landlady that her mistress was one of the old French aristocracy, while at the same moment "Madame" was sitting out upon the balcony watching the sun disappear into the grey waters of the Channel. In the promenade a few people were still passing up and down, the majority having gone in to dinner. But among them was one man, who, though unnoticed, lounged past and glanced upward--the tall, thin, grey-haired man who had on the previous night watched her enter the house in Hammersmith. He wore a light grey suit, and presented the appearance of an idler from London, like most of the other promenaders, yet the quick, crafty look he darted in her direction was distinctly an evil one. Yet in ignorance she sat there, in full view of him, enjoying the calm sundown, her eyes turned pensively away into the grey, distant haze of the coming night. Her thoughts were away there, across the sea. She wondered how her husband fared, now that he was King. Did he ever think of her save with angry recollections; or did he ever experience that remorse that sooner or later must come to every man who wrongs a faithful woman? That morning, before leaving the Savoy, she had received two letters, forwarded to her in secret from Brussels. One was from Treysa, and the other bore the postmark "Roma." The letter from Treysa had been written by Steinbach three days after the King's death. It was on plain paper, and without a signature. But she knew his handwriting well. It ran:-- "Your Majesty will have heard the news, no doubt, through the newspapers. Two days ago our King George was, after luncheon, walking on the terrace with General Scheibe, when he was suddenly seized by paralysis. He cried, `I am dying, Scheibe. Help me indoors!' and fell to the ground. He was carried into the palace, where he lingered until nine o'clock in the evening, and then, in spite of all the physicians could do, he expired. The Crown Prince was immediately proclaimed Sovereign, and at this moment I have just returned from the funeral, whereat the greatest pomp has been displayed. All the Sovereigns of Europe were represented, and your Majesty's absence from Court was much remarked and commented upon. The general opinion is that you will return--that your difference with the King will now be settled; and I am glad to tell you that those who were your Majesty's bitterest enemies a week ago are now modifying their views, possibly because they fear what may happen to them if you really do return. At this moment the Court is divided into two sets--those who hope that you will take your place as Queen, and those who are still exerting every effort to prevent it. The latter are still crying out that you left Treysa in company with Count Leitolf, and urging his Majesty to sue for a divorce--especially now that the Emperor of Austria has degraded you by withdrawing your Imperial privileges and your right to bear the Imperial arms of Austria, and by decree striking you off the roll of the Dames de la Croix Etoilee. From what I have gathered, a spy of Hinckeldeym's must have followed your Majesty to Vienna and seen you meet the Count. At present, however, although every effort is being made to find you, the secret agents have, it is said, been unsuccessful. I have heard that you are in Italy, to be near Leitolf; evidently a report spread by Hinckeldeym and his friends. "The people are clamouring loudly for you. They demand that `their Claire' shall be brought back to them as Queen. Great demonstrations have been made in the Dom Platz, and inflammatory speeches have been delivered against Hinckeldeym, who is denounced as your arch-enemy. The mob on two occasions assumed an attitude so threatening that it had to be dispelled by the police. The situation is serious for the Government, inasmuch as the Socialists have resolved to champion your cause, and declare that when the time is ripe they will expose the plots of your enemies, and cause Hinckeldeym's downfall. "I am in a position to know that this is no mere idle talk. One of the spies has betrayed his employers; hence the whole Court is trembling. What will the King do? we are all asking. On the one hand the people declare you are innocent and ill-judged, while on the other the Court still declares with dastardly motive that your friendship with Leitolf was more than platonic. And, unfortunately, his Majesty believes the latter. "My own opinion is that your Majesty's best course is still to remain in concealment. A squadron of spies have been sent to the various capitals, and photographs are being purposely published in the illustrated press in order that you may be identified. I hope, however, that just at present you will not be discovered, for if so I fear that in order to stem the Socialistic wave even your friends must appear to be against you. Your Majesty knows too well the thousand and one intrigues which form the undercurrent of life at our Court, and my suggestion is based upon what I have been able to gather in various quarters. All tends to show that the King, now that he has taken the reins of government, is keenly alive to his responsibility towards the nation. His first speech, delivered to-day, has shown it. He appears to be a changed man, and I can only hope and pray that he has become changed towards yourself. "If you are in Paris or in London, beware of secret agents, for both capitals swarm with them. Remain silent, patient and watchful; but, above all, be very careful not to allow your enemies any further food for gossip. If they start another scandal at this moment, it would be fatal to all your Majesty's interests; for I fear that even the people, faithful to your cause up to the present, would then turn against you. In conclusion, I beg to assure your Majesty of my loyalty, and that what ever there is to report in confidence I will do so instantly through this present channel. I would also humbly express a hope that both your Majesty and the Princess Ignatia are in perfect health." The second letter--the one bearing the Rome postmark--was headed, "Imperial Embassy of Austria-Hungary, Palazzo Chigi," and was signed "Carl." CHAPTER TWENTY ONE. LOVE AND "THE LADYBIRD." Re-entering the room she found herself alone, Leucha having gone downstairs into the garden to walk with Ignatia. Therefore she drew the letter from her pocket and re-read it. "Dearest Heart," he wrote,--"To-night the journals in Rome are publishing the news of the King's death, and I write to you as your Majesty--my Queen. You are my dear heart no longer, but my Sovereign. Our enemies have again libelled us. I have heard it all. They say that we left Treysa in company, and that I am your lover; foul lies, because they fear your power. The _Tribuna_ and the _Messagero_ have declared that the King contemplates a divorce; yet surely you will defend yourself. You will not allow these cringing place-seekers to triumph, when you are entirely pure and innocent? Ah, if his Majesty could only be convinced of the truth--if he could only see that our friendship is platonic; that since the clay of your marriage no word of love has ever been spoken between us! You are my friend--still my little friend of those old days at dear old Wartenstein. I am exiled here to a Court that is brilliant though torn by internal intrigue, like your own. Yet my innermost thoughts are ever of you, and I wonder where you are and how you fare. The spies of Hinckeldeym have, I hope, not discovered you. Remember, it is to that man's interest that you should remain an outcast. "Cannot you let me know, by secret means, your whereabouts? One word to the Embassy, and I shall understand. I am anxious for your sake. I want to see you back again at Treysa with the scandalous Court swept clean, and with honesty and uprightness ruling in place of bribery and base intrigue. Do not, I beg of you, forget your duty to your people and to the State. By the King's death the situation has entirely changed. You are Queen, and with a word may sweep your enemies from your path like flies. Return, assert your power, show them that you are not afraid, and show the King that your place is at his side. This is my urgent advice to you as your friend--your oldest friend. "I am sad and even thoughtful as to your future. Somehow I cannot help thinking that wherever you are you must be in grave peril of new scandals and fresh plots, because your enemies are so utterly unscrupulous. Rome is as Rome is always--full of foreigners, and the Corso bright with movement. But the end of the season has come. The Court moves to Racconigi, and we go, I believe, to Camaldoli, or some other unearthly hole in the mountains, to escape the fever. I shall, however, expect a single line at the Embassy to say that my Sovereign has received my letter. I pray ever for your happiness. Be brave still, and may God protect you, dear heart.--Carl." Tears sprang to her beautiful eyes as she read the letter of the man who was assuredly her greatest friend--the man whom the cruel world so erroneously declared to be her lover. The red afterglow from over the sea streamed into the room as she sat with her eyes fixed away on the distant horizon, beyond which lay the wealthy, picturesque kingdom over which she was queen. Leucha entered, and saw that she was _triste_ and thoughtful, but, like a well-trained maid, said nothing. Little Ignatia was already asleep after the journey, and dinner would be served in half an hour. "I hope Madame will like Worthing," the maid remarked presently, for want of something else to say. She had dropped the title of Majesty, and now addressed her mistress as plain "Madame." "Delightful--as far as I have seen," was the reply. "More rural than Hastings, it appears. To-morrow I shall walk on the pier, for I've heard that it is the correct thing to do at an English watering-place. You go in the morning and after dinner, don't you?" "Yes, Madame." "Mr. Bourne did well to suggest this place. I don't think we shall ever be discovered here." "I hope not," was Leucha's fervent reply. "Yet what would the world really say, I wonder, if it knew that you were in hiding here?" "It would say something against me, no doubt--as it always does," she answered, in a hard voice; and then she recollected Steinbach's serious warning. Dinner came at last, the usual big English joint and vegetables, laid in that same room. The housemaid, in well-starched cap, cuffs, and apron, was a typical seaside domestic, who had no great love for foreigners, because they were seldom lavish in the manner of tips. An English servant, no matter of what grade, reflects the same askance at the foreigner as her master exhibits. She regards all "forriners" as undesirables. "Madame" endeavoured to engage the girl in conversation, but found her very loath to utter a word. Her name was Richards, she informed the guest, and she was a native of Thrapston, in Northamptonshire. The bright, sunny days that followed Claire found most delightful. Leucha took little Ignatia down to the sea each morning, and in the afternoon, while the child slept, accompanied her mistress upon long walks, either along the sea-road or through the quiet Sussex lanes inland, now bright in the spring green. The so-called season at Worthing had not, of course, commenced; yet there were quite a number of people, including the "week-enders" from London, the people who came down from town "at reduced fares," as the railway company ingeniously puts it--an expression more genteel than "excursion." She hired a trap, and drove with Leucha to Steyning, Littlehampton, Shoreham, those pretty lanes about Amberley, and the quaint old town of Arundel, all of which highly interested her. She loved a country life, and was never so happy as when riding or driving, enjoying the complete freedom that now, for the first time in her life, was hers. Weeks crept by. Spring lengthened into summer, and Madame Bernard still remained in Worthing, which every day became fuller of visitors, mostly people from London, who came down for a fortnight or three weeks to spend their summer holiday. And with Leucha she became more friendly, and grew very fond of her. She had written to Leitolf the single line of acknowledgment, and sent it to the Austrian Embassy in Rome, enclosing it in the official envelope which he had sent her, in order to avoid suspicion. To Steinbach too she had written, urging him to keep her well informed regarding the undercurrent of events at Court. In reply he had sent her other reports which showed most plainly that, even though the King might be contemplating an adjustment of their differences in order that she might take her place as Queen, her enemies were still actively at work in secret to complete her ruin. Up to the present, however, the spies of Hinckeldeym had entirely failed to trace her, and their cruel story that she was in Rome had on investigation turned out to be incorrect. Her enemies were thus discomfited. In the London papers she read telegrams from Treysa--no doubt inspired by her enemies--which stated that the King had already applied to the Ministry of Justice for a divorce, and that the trial was to be heard _in camera_ in the course of a few weeks. Should she now reveal her whereabouts? Should she communicate with her husband and deny the scandalous charges before it became too late? By her husband's accession her position had been very materially altered. Her duty to the country of her adoption was to be at her husband's side, and assist him as ruler. Not that she regretted for one single instant leaving Treysa. She had not the slightest desire to re-enter that seething world of intrigue; it was only the call of duty which caused her to contemplate it. At heart, indeed, if the truth were told, she still retained a good deal of affection for the man who had treated her so brutally. When her mind wandered back to the early days of her married life and the sweetness of her former love, she recollected that he possessed many good traits of character, and felt convinced that only the bitterness of her enemies had aroused the demon jealousy within him and made him what he had now become. If she were really able to clear herself of the stigma now upon her, there might, after all, be a reconciliation--if not for her own sake, then for the sake of the little Princess Ignatia. These were the vague thoughts constantly in her mind during those warm days which passed so quietly and pleasantly before the summer sea. Ignatia was often very inquisitive. She asked her mother why they were there, and begged that Allen might come back. From Leucha she was learning to speak English, but with that Cockney twang which was amusing, for the child, of course, imitated the maid's intonation and expression. One calm evening, when Ignatia had gone to bed and they were sitting together in the twilight upon a seat before the softly-lapping waves up at the west end of the town, Leucha said,-- "To-day I heard from father. He is in Stockholm, and apparently in funds. He arrived in Sweden from Hamburg on the day of writing, and says he hopes in a few days to visit us here." Claire guessed by what means Roddy Redmayne had replenished his funds, but made no remark save to express pleasure at his forthcoming visit. From Stockholm to Worthing was a rather far cry, but with Roddy distance was no object. He had crossed the Atlantic a dozen times, and was, indeed, ever on the move up and down Europe. "Guy has also left London," "the Ladybird" said. "He is in Brighton, and would like to run over and call--if Madame will permit it." "To call on you--eh, Leucha?" her royal mistress suggested, with a kindly smile. "Now tell me quite truthfully. You love him, do you not?" The girl flushed deeply. "I--I love him!" she faltered. "Whatever made you suspect that?" "Well, you know, Leucha, when one loves one cannot conceal it, however careful one may be. There is an indescribable look which always betrays both man and woman. Therefore you may as well confess the truth to me." She was silent for a few moments. "I do confess it," she faltered at last, with downcast eyes. "We love each other very fondly; but, alas, ours is a dream that can never be realised! Marriage and happiness are not for such as we," she added, with a bitter sigh. "Because you have not the means by which to live honestly?" Claire replied, in a voice of deep, heartfelt sympathy, for she had become much attached to the girl. "That is exactly the difficulty, madame," was the lady's maid's reply. "Both Guy and myself hate this life of constant scheming and of perpetual fear of discovery and arrest. He is a thief by compulsion, and I an assistant because I--well, I suppose I was trained to it so early that espionage and investigation come to me almost as second nature." "And yet you can work--and work extremely well," remarked her royal mistress, with a woman's tenderness of heart. "I have had many maids from time to time, in Vienna and at Treysa, but I tell you quite openly that you are the handiest and neatest of them all. It is a pity--a thousand pities--that you lead the life of an adventuress, for some day, sooner or later, you must fall into the hands of the police, and after that--ruin." "I know," sighed the girl; "I know--only too well. Yet what can I do? Both Guy and I are forced to lead this life because we are without means. And again, I am very unworthy of him," she added, in a low, despondent tone. "Guy is, after all, a gentleman by birth; while I, `the Ladybird' as they call me, am merely the daughter of a thief." "And yet, Leucha, you are strangely unlike other women who are adventuresses. You love this man both honestly and well, and he is assuredly one worthy a woman's love, and would, under other circumstances, make you a most excellent husband." "If we were not outlaws of society," she said. "But as matters are it is quite hopeless. When one becomes a criminal, one must, unfortunately, remain a criminal to the end. Guy would willingly cut himself away from my father and the others if it were at all possible. Yet it is not. How can a man live and keep up appearances when utterly without means?" "Remain patient, Leucha," Claire said reassuringly. "One day you may be able to extricate yourselves--both of you. Who knows?" But the girl with the dark eyes shook her head sadly, and spoke but little on their walk back to the house. "Ah, Leucha," sighed the pale, thoughtful woman whom the world so misjudged, "we all of us have our sorrows, some more bitter than others. You are unhappy because you are an outlaw, while I am unhappy because I am a queen! Our stations are widely different; and yet, after all, our burden of sorrow is the same." "I know all that you suffer, madame, though you are silent," exclaimed the girl, with quick sympathy. "I have never referred to it, because you might think my interference impertinent. Yet I assure you that I reflect upon your position daily, hourly, and wonder what we can do to help you." "You have done all that can be done," was the calm, kind response. "Without you I should have been quite lost here in England. Rest assured that I shall never forget the kindnesses shown by all of you, even though you are what you are." She longed to see the pair man and wife, and honest; yet how could she assist them? Next evening, Guy Bourne, well-dressed in a grey flannel suit and straw hat, and presenting the appearance of a well-to-do City man on holiday, called upon her, and was shown up by the servant. The welcome he received from both mistress and maid was a warm one, and as soon as the door was closed he explained,-- "I managed to get away from London, even though I saw a detective I knew on the platform at London Bridge. Very fortunately he didn't recognise me. I've found a safe hiding-place in Brighton, in a small public-house at the top of North Street, where lodgers of our peculiar class are taken in. Roddy is due to arrive at Hull to-day. With Harry and two others, he appears to have made a fine haul in Hamburg, and we are all in funds again, for which we should be truly thankful." "To whom did the stuff belong?" Leucha inquired. "To that German Baroness in whose service you were about eight months ago--Ackermann, wasn't the name? You recollect, you went over to Hamburg with her and took observation." "Yes, I remember," answered "the Ladybird" mechanically; and her head dropped in shame. Little Ignatia came forward, and in her sweet, childish way made friends with the visitor, and later, leaving Leucha to put the child to bed, "Madame Bernard" invited Guy to stroll with her along the promenade. She wished to speak with him alone. The night was bright, balmy, and starlit, the coloured lights on the pier giving a pretty effect to the picture, and there were a good many promenaders. At first she spoke to him about Roddy and about his own dull, cheerless life now that he was in such close hiding. Then, presently, when they gained the seat where she had sat with "the Ladybird" on the previous evening, she suddenly turned to him, saying,-- "Mr. Bourne, Leucha has told me the truth--that you love each other. Now I fully recognise the tragedy of it all, and the more so because I know it is the earnest desire of both of you to lead an honest, upright life. The world misjudges most of us. You are an outlaw and yet still a gentleman, while she, though born of criminal parents, yet has a heart of gold." "Yes, that she has," he asserted quickly. "I love her very deeply. To you I do not deny it--indeed, why should I? I know that we both possess your Majesty's sympathy." And he looked into her splendid eyes in deep earnestness. "You do. And more. I urge you not to be despondent, either of you. Endeavour always to cheer her up. One day a means will surely be opened for you both to break these hateful trammels that bind you to this unsafe life of fraud and deception, and unite in happiness as man and wife. Remember, I owe you both a deep debt of gratitude; and one day, I hope, I may be in a position to repay it, so that at least two loving hearts may be united." Though crushed herself, her great, generous heart caused her to seek to assist others. "Ah, your Majesty!" he cried, his voice trembling with emotion as, springing up, he took her hand, raising it reverently to his lips. "How can I thank you sufficiently for those kind, generous words--for that promise?" "Ah!" she sighed, "I myself, though my position may be different to your own, nevertheless know what it is to love, and, alas! know the acute bitterness of the want of love." Then a silence fell between them. He had reseated himself, his manly heart too full for words. He knew well that this woman, whose unhappiness was even tenfold greater than his own, was his firm and noble friend. The world spoke ill of her, and yet she was so upright, so sweet, so true. And while they sat there--he, a thief, still holding the soft white hand that he had kissed with such reverence--a pair of shrewdly evil eyes were watching them out of the darkness and observing everything. At midnight, when he returned to Brighton, the secret watcher, a hard-faced, thin-nosed woman, slight, narrow-waisted, rather elegantly dressed in deep mourning, travelled by the same train, and watched him to his hiding-place; and having done so, she strolled leisurely down to the King's Road, where, upon the deserted promenade, she met a bent, wizened-faced, little old man, who was awaiting her. With him she walked up and down until nearly one o'clock in the morning, engaged in earnest conversation, sometimes accompanied by quick gesticulation. And they both laughed quietly together, the old man now and then shrugging his shoulders. CHAPTER TWENTY TWO. SHOWS HINCKELDEYM'S TACTICS. Five weeks later. A hot summer's night in Treysa. It was past midnight, yet before the gay, garish cafes people still lingered at the little tables, enjoying to the full the cool breeze after the heat and burden of the day, or strolled beneath the lime avenues in the Klosterstrasse, gossiping or smoking, all loth to retire. In the great palace beyond the trees at the end of the vista the State dinner had ended, and the lonely King, glad to escape to the privacy of his own workroom in the farther wing of the palace, had cast himself into a long lounge-chair and selected a cigar. He was still in his military uniform, rendered the more striking by the many glittering orders across his breast--the Golden Fleece, the Black Eagle, the Saint Hubert, the Saint Andrew, and the rest. As he lit his cigar very slowly his face assumed a heavy, thoughtful look, entirely different from the mask of careless good-humour which he had worn at the brilliant function he had just left. The reception had not ended; it would continue for a couple of hours longer. But he was tired and bored to death of it all, and the responsibility as ruler already weighed very heavily upon him. Though he made no mention of it to a single soul, he thought of his absent wife often--very often. Now and then a pang of remorse would cause him to knit his brows. Perhaps, after all, he had not treated her quite justly. And yet, he would reassure himself, she was surely not as innocent as she pretended. No, no; she was worthless. They were therefore better apart--far better. Since his accession he had, on several occasions, been conscience-stricken. Once, in the empty nursery, he had noticed little Ignatia's toys, her dolls and perambulator, lying where the child had left them, and tears had sprung to his eyes. Allen, the kindly Englishwoman, too, had been to him and resigned her appointment, as she had no further duties to perform. The Crown Princess's disappearance had at first been a nine-days' wonder in Treysa, but now her continued absence was regarded with but little surprise. The greatest scandal in the world dies down like grass in autumn. Those who had conspired against her congratulated themselves that they had triumphed, and were now busy starting fresh intrigues against the young Queen's partisans. Since the hour that his sweet-faced wife had left the palace in secret, the King had received no word from her. He had learned from Vienna that she had been to Wartenstein, and that her father had cast her out; but after that she had disappeared--to Rome he had been told. As Crown Prince he had had his liberty, but now as King he lived apart, and was unapproachable. His was a lonely life. The duties of kingship had sobered him, and now he saw full well the lack of a clever consort as his wife was--a queen who could rule the Court. Those about him believed him to be blind to their defects and their intrigues, because he was silent concerning them. Yet, if the truth were told, he was extremely wideawake, and saw with regret how, without the Queen's aid, he must fall beneath the influence of those who were seeking place and power, to the distinct detriment of the nation. Serious thoughts such as these were consuming him as he sat watching the smoke rings ascend to the dark-panelled ceiling. "Where is she, I wonder?" he asked himself aloud, his voice sighing through the room. "She has never reproached me--never. I wonder if all they have told me concerning her is really true." As he uttered these words of suspicion his jaws became firmly set, and a hardness showed at the corners of his mouth. "Ah, yes!" he added. "It is, alas! only too true--too true. Hinckeldeym would never dare to lie to me!" And he sat with his serious eyes cast upon the floor, reflecting gloomily upon the past, as he now so very often reflected. The room was luxurious in its appointments, for since his father's death he had had it redecorated and refurnished. The stern old monarch had liked a plain, severe, business-like room in which to attend to the details of State, but his son held modern ideas, and loved to surround himself with artistic things, hence the white-and-gold decorations, the electric-light fittings, the furniture and the pale green upholstery were all in the style of the _art nouveau_, and had the effect of exquisite taste. A tiny clock ticked softly upon the big, littered writing-table, and from without, in the marble corridor, the slow, even tread of the sentry reached his ear. Suddenly, while he was smoking and thinking, a low rap was heard; and giving permission to enter, he looked round, and saw Hinckeldeym, who, in Court dress, bowed and advanced, with his cocked hat tucked beneath his arm, saying,-- "I regret, sire, to crave audience at this hour, but it is upon a matter both imperative and confidential." "Then shut the inner door," his Majesty said in a hard voice, and the flabby-faced old fellow closed the second door that was placed there as precaution against eavesdroppers. "Well?" asked the King, turning to him in some surprise that he should be disturbed at that hour. "After your Majesty left the Throne Room I was called out to receive an urgent dispatch that had just arrived by Imperial courier from Vienna. This dispatch," and he drew it from his pocket, "shows most plainly that his Majesty the Emperor is seriously annoyed at your Majesty's laxness and hesitation to apply for a divorce. Yesterday he called our Ambassador and remarked that although he had degraded the Princess, taken from her all her titles, her decorations, and her privileges, yet you, her husband, had done absolutely nothing. I crave your Majesty's pardon for being compelled to speak so plainly," added the wily old fellow, watching the disturbing effect his words had upon his Sovereign. "That is all very well," he answered, in a mechanical voice. "The Emperor's surprise and annoyance are quite natural. I have been awaiting your reports, Hinckeldeym. Before my wife's disappearance you seemed to be particularly well-informed--through De Trauttenberg, I suppose--of all her movements and her intentions. Yet since she left you have been content to remain in utter ignorance." "Not in entire ignorance, sire. Did I not report to you that she went to Vienna in the man's company?" "And where is the man at the present moment?" "At Camaldoli, a health resort in central Italy. The Ambassador and several of the staff are spending the summer up there." "Well, what else do you know?" the King asked, fixing his eyes upon the crafty old scoundrel who was the greatest power in the Kingdom. "Can you tell me where my wife is--that's the question? I don't think much of your secret service which costs the country so much, if you cannot tell me that," he said frankly. "Yes, your Majesty, I can tell you that, and very much more," the old fellow answered, quite unperturbed. "The truth is that I have known where she has been for a long time past, and a great deal has been discovered. Yet, for your Majesty's peace of mind, I have not mentioned so painful a subject. Had I not exerted every effort to follow the Princess I should surely have been wanting in my duties as Minister." "Then where is she?" he asked quickly, rising from his chair. "In England--at a small watering-place on the South Coast, called Worthing." "Well--and what else?" Heinrich Hinckeldeym made no reply for a few moments, as though hesitating to tell his royal master all that he knew. Then at last he said, with that wily insinuation by which he had already ruined the poor Princess's reputation and good name,-- "The rest will, I think, best be furnished to the counsel who appears on your Majesty's behalf to apply for a divorce." "Ah!" he sighed sadly. "Is it so grave as that? Well, Hinckeldeym, you may tell me everything, only recollect I must have proof--proof. You understand?" he added hoarsely. "Hitherto I have always endeavoured to give your Majesty proof, and on certain occasions you have complimented me upon my success in discovering the secrets of the pair," he answered. "I know I have, but I must have more proof now. There must be no surmises--but hard, solid facts, you understand! In those days I was only Crown Prince. To-day I am King, and my wife is Queen--whatever may be her faults." The old Minister was considerably taken aback by this sudden refusal on his royal master's part to accept every word of his as truth. Yet outwardly he exhibited no sign of annoyance or of disappointment. He was a perfect diplomatist. "If your Majesty will deign to give them audience, I will, within half an hour, bring here the two secret service agents who have been to England, and they shall tell you with their own lips what they have discovered." "Yes, do so," the King exclaimed anxiously. "Let them tell me the whole truth. They will be discreet, of course, and not divulge to the people that I have given them audience--eh?" "They are two of the best agents your Majesty possesses. If I may be permitted, I will go at once and send for them." And walking backwards, he bowed, and left the room. Three-quarters of an hour later he returned, bringing with him a middle-aged, thin-faced woman, rather tall and thin, dressed plainly in black, and a tall, grey-haired, and rather gentlemanly looking man, whom he introduced to their Sovereign, who was standing with his back to the writing-table. The woman's name was Rose Reinherz and the man's Otto Stieger. The King surveyed both of them critically. He had never seen any member of his secret service in the flesh before, and was interested in them and in their doings. "The Minister Hinckeldeym tells me," he said, addressing Stieger, "that you are both members of our secret service, and that you have returned from England. I wish to hear your report from your own lips. Tell me exactly what you have discovered without any fear of giving me personal offence. I want to hear the whole truth, remember, however disagreeable it may be." "Yes," added the evil-eyed old Minister. "Tell his Majesty all that you have discovered regarding the lady, who for the present purposes may remain nameless." The spy hesitated for a moment, confused at finding himself called so suddenly into the presence of his Sovereign, and without an opportunity of putting on another suit of clothes. Besides, he was at a loss how to begin. "Did you go to Vienna?" asked the King. "I was sent to Vienna the instant it became known that the Crown Princess--I mean the lady--had left the palace. I discovered that she had driven to her father's palace, but finding him absent had gone to Wartenstein. I followed her there, but she had left again before I arrived, and I entirely lost track of her. Probably she went to Paris, but of that I am not sure. I went to Rome, and for a fortnight kept observation upon the Count, but he wrote no letters to her, which made me suspect that she was hiding somewhere in Rome." "You reported that she was actually in Rome. Hinckeldeym told me that." The Minister's grey brows were knit, but only for a second. "I did not report that she was actually there, sire. I only reported my suspicion." "A suspicion which was turned into an actual fact before it reached my ears--eh?" he said in a hard voice. "Go on." Hinckeldeym now regretted that he had so readily brought his spies face to face with the King. "After losing touch with the lady for several weeks, it was discovered that she was staying under an assumed name at the Savoy Hotel, in London. I travelled from Rome to London post haste, and took a room at the hotel, finding that she had engaged a young Englishwoman named Redmayne as maid, and that she was in the habit of meeting in secret a certain Englishman named Bourne, who seemed to be leading a curiously secluded life. I reported this to the Minister Hinckeldeym, who at once sent me as assistant Rose Reinherz, now before your Majesty. Together we have left no stone unturned to fully investigate the situation, and-- well, we have discovered many things." "And what are they? Explain." "We have ascertained that Count Leitolf still writes to the lady, sending her letters to the same address in Brussels as previously. A copy of one letter, which we intercepted, I placed in the Minister's hands. It is couched in terms that leave no doubt that this man loves her, and that she reciprocates his affection." "You are quite certain that it is not a mere platonic friendship?" asked the King, fixing his eyes upon the spy very earnestly. "As a man of the world, your Majesty, I do not think there is such a thing as platonic friendship between man and woman." "That is left to poets and dreamers," remarked the wily Hinckeldeym, with a sneer. "Besides," the spy continued, "we have carefully watched this man Bourne, and find that when she went to live at Worthing he followed her there. They meet every evening, and go long walks together." "I have watched them many times, your Majesty," declared Rose Reinherz. "I have seen him kiss her hand." "Then, to be frank, you insinuate that this man is her latest lover?" remarked the King with a dark look upon his face. "Unfortunately, that is so," the woman replied. "He is with her almost always; and furthermore, after much inquiry and difficulty, we have at last succeeded in establishing who he really is." "And who is he?" "A thief in hiding from the police--one of a clever gang who have committed many robberies of jewels in various cities. This is his photograph--one supplied from London to our own Prefecture of Police in Treysa." And he handed the King an oblong card with two portraits of Guy Bourne, full face and profile, side by side. His Majesty held it in his hand, and beneath the light gazed upon it for a long time, as though to photograph the features in his memory. Hinckeldeym watched him covertly, and glanced at the spy approvingly. "And you say that this man is at Worthing, and in hiding from the police? You allege that he is an intimate friend of my wife's?" "Stieger says that he is her latest lover," remarked Hinckeldeym. "You have written a full and detailed report. Is not that so?" he asked. The spy nodded in the affirmative, saying,-- "The fellow is in hiding, together with the leader of the association of thieves, a certain Redmayne, known as `the Mute,' who is wanted by the Hamburg police for the theft of the Baroness Ackermann's jewels. The papers of late have been full of the daring theft." "Oh! then the police are searching for both men?" exclaimed the King. "Is there any charge in Germany against this person--Bourne, you called him?" "One for theft in Cologne, eighteen months ago, and another for jewel robbery at Eugendorf," was the spy's reply. "Then, Hinckeldeym, make immediate application to the British Government for their arrest and extradition. Stieger will return at once to Worthing and point them out to the English police. It will be the quickest way of crushing out the--well, the infatuation, we will call it," he added grimly. "And your Majesty will not apply for a divorce?" asked the Minister in that low, insinuating voice. "I will reflect, Hinckeldeym," was the King's reply. "But in the meantime see that both these agents are rewarded for their astuteness and loyalty." And, turning, he dismissed the trio impatiently, without further ceremony. CHAPTER TWENTY THREE. SECRET INSTRUCTIONS. "You did exceedingly well, Stieger. I am much pleased!" declared his Excellency the Minister, when, outside the palace, he caused them both to enter his carriage and was driving them to his own fine house on the opposite side of the capital. "His Majesty is taking a severe revenge," he laughed. "This Englishman Bourne will certainly regret having met the Queen. Besides, the fact of her having chosen a low-born criminal lover condemns her a thousandfold in the King's eyes. I, who know him well, know that nothing could cause him such anger as for her to cast her royalty into the mud, as she has done by her friendship with this gaolbird." "I am pleased to have earned your Excellency's approbation," replied the man. "And I trust that his Majesty's pleasure will mean advancement for me--at your Excellency's discretion, of course." "To-morrow I shall sign this decree, raising you to the post of functionary of the first class, with increased emoluments. And to you," he added, turning to the thin-nosed woman, "I shall grant a gratification of five thousand marks. Over an affair of this kind we cannot afford publicity. Therefore say nothing, either of you. Recollect that in this matter you are not only serving the King, but the whole Ministry and Court. The King must obtain a divorce, and we shall all be grateful to you for the collection of the necessary evidence. The latter, as I told you some time ago, need not be based on too firm a foundation, for even if she defends the action the mere fact of her alliance with this good-looking criminal will be sufficient to condemn her in the eyes of a jury of Treysa. Therefore return to England and collect the evidence carefully--facts that have foundation--you understand?" The spy nodded. He understood his Excellency's scandalous suggestion. He was to manufacture evidence to be used against the Queen. "You must show that she has lightly transferred her love from Leitolf to this rascal Bourne. The report you have already made is good, but it is not quite complete enough. It must contain such direct charges that her counsel will be unable to bring evidence to deny," declared the fat-faced man--the man who really ruled the Kingdom. The old monarch had been a hard, level-headed if rather eccentric man, who had never allowed Hinckeldeym to fully reach the height of his ambition; yet now, on the accession of his son, inexperienced in government and of a somewhat weak and vacillating disposition, the crafty President of the Council had quickly risen to be a power as great, if not greater than, the King himself. He was utterly unscrupulous, as shown by his conversation with Stieger. He was Claire's bitterest enemy, yet so tactful was he that she had once believed him to be her friend, and had actually consulted him as to her impossible position at Court. Like many other men, he had commenced life as a small advocate in an obscure provincial town, but by dint of ingenious scheming and dishonest double-dealing he had wormed himself into the confidence of the old King, who regarded him as a necessity for the government of the country. His policy was self-advancement at any cost. He betrayed both enemies and friends with equal nonchalance, if they were unfortunate enough to stand in his way. Heinrich Hinckeldeym had never married, as he considered a wife an unnecessary burden, both socially and financially, and as far as was known, he was without a single relative. At his own splendid mansion, in a severely furnished room, he sat with his two spies, giving them further instructions as to how they were to act in England. "You will return to-morrow by way of Cologne and Ostend," he said, "and I will at once have the formal requisition for their arrest and extradition made to the British Foreign Office. If this man Bourne is convicted, the prejudice against the Queen will be greater, and she will lose her partisans among the people, who certainly will not uphold her when this latest development becomes known." And his Excellency's fat, evil face relaxed into a grim smile. Presently he dismissed them, urging them to carry out the mission entrusted to them without scruple, and in the most secret manner possible. Then, when they were gone, he crossed the room to the telephone and asked the Ministers Stuhlmann, Meyer, and Hoepfner--who all lived close by--whether they could come at once, as he desired to consult them. All three responded to the President's call, and in a quarter of an hour they assembled. Hinckeldeym, having locked the door and drawn the heavy _portiere_, at once gave his friends a resume of what had taken place that evening, and of the manner in which he had rearoused the King's anger and jealousy. "Excellent!" declared Stuhlmann, who held the portfolio of Foreign Affairs. "Then I shall at once give Crispendorf orders to receive Stieger and to apply to the British Foreign Office for the arrest of the pair. What are their names? I did not quite catch them." Hinckeldeym crossed to his writing-table and scribbled a memorandum of the names Bourne and Redmayne, and the offences for which they were wanted. "They will be tried in Berlin, I suppose?" Stuhlmann remarked. "My dear friend, it does not matter where they are tried, so long as they are convicted. All we desire to establish is the one fact which will strike the public as outrageous--the Queen has a lover who is a criminal. Having done that, we need no longer fear her return here to Treysa." "But is not the Leitolf affair quite sufficient?" asked Meyer, a somewhat younger man than the others, who, by favour of Hinckeldeym, now held the office of Minister of Justice. "The King suspects it is a mere platonic friendship." "And it really may be after all," remarked Meyer. "In my opinion-- expressed privately to you here--the Queen has not acted as a guilty woman would act. If the scandal were true she would have been more impatient. Besides, the English nurse, Allen, came to me before she left Treysa, and vowed to me that the reports were utterly without foundation. They were lovers, as children--that is all." Hinckeldeym turned upon him furiously. "We have nothing to do with your private misgivings. Your duty as Minister is to act with us," he said in a hard, angry voice. "What does it matter if the English nurse is paid by the Queen to whitewash her mistress? You, my dear Meyer, must be the very last person to express disbelief in facts already known. Think of what would happen if this woman returned to Treysa! You and I--and all of us--would be swept out of office and into obscurity. Can we afford to risk that? If you can, I tell you most plainly that I can't. I intend that the King shall obtain a divorce, and that the woman shall never be permitted to cross our frontier again. The day she does, recollect, will mark our downfall." Meyer, thus reproved by the man to whom he owed his present office, pursed his lips and gave his shoulders a slight shrug. He saw that Hinckeldeym had made up his mind, even though he himself had all along doubted whether the Queen was not an innocent victim of her enemies. Allen had sought audience of him, and had fearlessly denounced, in no measured terms, the foul lies circulated by the Countess de Trauttenberg. The Englishwoman had declared that her mistress was the victim of a plot, and that although she was well aware of her friendliness with Count Leitolf, yet it was nothing more than friendship. She had admitted watching them very closely in order to ascertain whether what was whispered was really true. But it was not. The Queen was an ill-treated and misjudged woman, she declared, concluding with a vow that the just judgment of God would, sooner or later, fall upon her enemies. What the Englishwoman had told him had impressed him. And now Hinckeldeym's demeanour made it plain that what Allen had said had very good foundation. He, Ludwig Meyer, was Minister of Justice, yet he was compelled to conspire with the others to do to a woman the worst injustice that man's ambition could possibly conceive. His companion Hoepfner, Minister of Finance, was also one of Hinckeldeym's creatures, and dared not dissent from his decision. "You forget, my dear Meyer," said the old President, turning back to him. "You forget all that the Countess Hupertz discovered, and all that she told us." "I recollect everything most distinctly. But I also recollect that she gave us no proof." "Ah! You, too, believe in platonic friendship!" sneered the old man. "Only fools believe in that." "No," interposed Stuhlmann quickly. "Do not let us quarrel over this. Our policy is a straightforward and decisive one. The King is to apply for a divorce, and our friend Meyer will see that it is granted. The thing is quite simple." "But if she is innocent?" asked the Minister of Justice. "There is no question of her innocence," snapped Hinckeldeym. "It is her guilt that concerns you--you understand!" Then, after some further consultation, during which time Meyer remained silent, the three men rose and, shaking hands with the President, departed. When they had gone Hinckeldeym paced angrily up and down the room. He was furious that Meyer should express the slightest doubt or compunction. His hands were clenched, his round, prominent eyes wore a fierce, determined expression, and his gross features were drawn and ashen grey. "We shall see, woman, who will win--you or I!" he muttered to himself. "You told me that when you were Queen you would sweep clean the Augean stable--you would change all the Ministers of State, Chamberlains--every one, from the Chancellor of the Orders down to the Grand Master of the Ceremonies. You said that they should all go--and first of all the _dames du palais_. Well, we shall see!" he laughed to himself. "If your husband is such a fool as to relent and regard your friendship with Leitolf with leniency, then we must bring forward this newest lover of yours--this man who is to be arrested in your company and condemned as a criminal. The people, after that, will no longer call you `their Claire' and clamour for your return, and in addition, your fool of a husband will be bound to accept the divorce which Meyer will give him. And then, woman," he growled to himself, "you will perhaps regret having threatened Heinrich Hinckeldeym!" CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR. ROMANCE AND REALITY. Roddy Redmayne, having returned safely from abroad, was living in quiet seclusion with Guy in apartments in a small, pleasantly situated cottage beyond West Worthing, on the dusty road to Goring. Immediately on his arrival from Hull he had gone to Brighton, but after a few days had taken apartments in the ancient little place, with its old-world garden filled with roses. Both he and Guy, under assumed names, of course, represented themselves as clerks down from London, spending their summer holidays, and certainly their flannel suits, white shoes, and Panama hats gave them that appearance. Kinder was in hiding in a house up in Newcastle-on-Tyne, having crossed to that port from Antwerp. The Baroness's jewels, which were a particularly fine lot, had been disposed of to certain agents in Leyden, and therefore Roddy and his friends were in funds, though they gave no sign of wealth to their landlady, the thrifty wife of a cab proprietor. It was a very pleasant little cottage, standing quite alone, and as the two men were the only lodgers they were quite free to do as they liked. The greater part of the day they smoked and read under the trees in the big, old-fashioned garden, and at evening would walk together into Worthing, and generally met Claire upon the pier. "Madame," as they called her, went with Leucha several times and lunched with them at the little place, while once or twice they had had the honour of dining at her table, when they had found her a most charming hostess. Both men tried to do all they could to render her what little services lay in their power, and each day they sent her from the florist's large bunches of tea-roses, her favourite flowers. Little Ignatia was not forgotten, for they sent her dolls and toys. Claire's life was now at last calm and peaceful, with her three strange friends. Leucha was most attentive to Ignatia, and took her each morning for a run with bare feet upon the sands, while the two men who seldom, if ever, went out before dusk, generally met her and walked with her after dinner beside the sea. Often, when alone, she wondered how her husband fared at Treysa, and how Carl was enduring the broiling heat of the long, thirsty Italian summer. Where was that traitress, the Trauttenberg, and what, she wondered, had become of those two faithful servants, Allen and Henriette? Her past unhappiness at Treysa sometimes arose before her like some hideous but half-remembered dream. In those days she lived among enemies, but now she was with friends, even though they might be outlawed from society. With all her timid flexibility and soft acquiescence Claire was not weak; for the negative alone is weak, and the mere presence of goodness and affection implies in itself a species of power, power with repose-- that soul of grace. Many a pleasant stroll after sundown she took with the courtly old adventurer, who looked quite a gay old dog in his flannels and rakish Panama pulled down over his eyes; or with Guy, who dressed a trifle more quietly. The last-named, however, preferred, of course, the society of Leucha, and frequently walked behind with her. Claire treated Roddy's daughter more as an equal than as a dependant--indeed, treated her as her lady-in-waiting, to fetch and carry for her, to tie her veil, to button her gloves, and to perform the thousand and one little services which the trained lady-in-waiting does so deftly and without ceremony. Though at first very strange to the world, Claire was now beginning to realise its ways, and to enjoy and appreciate more and more the freedom which she had at last gained. She delighted in those evening walks beneath the stars, when they would rest upon a seat, listening to the soft music of the sea, and watching the flashing light of the Owers and the bright beacon on Selsea Bill. Yes, life in the obscurity of Worthing was indeed far preferable to the glare and glitter of the Court at Treysa. The people in the town-- shopkeepers and others--soon began to know Madame Bernard by sight, and so many were her kindly actions that the common people on the promenade--cabmen, baggage-porters, bath-chair men, and the like-- touched their hats to her in respect, little dreaming that the beautiful, sweet-faced foreigner with the pretty child was actually queen of a German kingdom. As the summer days went by, and the two men met her each evening at the entrance to the pier, she could not close her eyes to the fact that the affection between Guy and Leucha had increased until it now amounted to a veritable passion. They loved each other both truly and well, yet what could be done? There was, alas! the ghastly barrier of want between them--a barrier which, in this cruel, hard world of ours, divides so many true and loving hearts. And as those peaceful summer days went by, the two strangers, a man and a woman, who lived at separate hotels, and only met on rare occasions, were ever watchful, noting and reporting the Queen's every action, and keeping close observation upon the two men who were living at that rose-embowered cottage in calm ignorance of the dastardly betrayal that was being so ingeniously planned. One evening, just before she sat down to dinner, the maidservant handed her a letter with a Belgian stamp, and opening it, she saw that enclosed was a communication from the faithful Steinbach. She tore open the envelope with breathless eagerness, and read as follows:-- "Your Majesty.--In greatest haste I send you warning to acquaint you with another fresh conspiracy, the exact nature of which I am at present unaware. Confidential papers have, however, to-day passed through my hands in the Ministry--a report for transmission to Crispendorf, in London. This report alleges that you are unduly friendly with a certain Englishman named Guy Bourne, said to be living in the town of Worthing, in the county of Sussex. This is all I can at present discover, but it will, I trust, be sufficient to apprise you that your enemies have discovered your whereabouts, and are still seeking to crush you. The instant I can gather more I will report further. Your Majesty's most humble and obedient servant.--S." She bit her lip. Then they had discovered her, and, moreover, were trying now to couple her name with Bourne's! It was cruel, unjust, inhuman. In such a mind as hers the sense of a cruel injury, inflicted by one she had loved and trusted, without awakening any violent anger or any desire of vengeance, sank deep--almost incurably and lastingly deep. Leucha, who entered the room at that moment, noticed her grave expression as she held the letter in her hand, but was silent. The tender and virtuous woman reread those fateful lines, and reflected deeply. Steinbach was faithful to her, and had given her timely warning. Yes, she had on many occasions walked alone with Guy along the promenade, and he had, unseen by any one, kissed her hand in homage of her royal station. She fully recognised that, unscrupulous liars as her enemies were, they might start another scandal against her as cruel as that concerning Carl Leitolf. She had little appetite for dinner but afterwards, when she went out with Leucha into the warm summer's night, and, as usual, they met the two men idling near the pier, she took Guy aside and walked with him at some distance behind Roddy and his daughter. At first their conversation was as usual, upon the doings of the day. She gave him permission to smoke, and he lit his cigar, the light of the match illuminating his face. It was a delightful August night, almost windless, and with a crescent moon and calm sea, while from the pier there came across the waters the strains of one of the latest waltzes. She was dressed all in white, and Guy, glancing at her now and then, thought he had never seen her looking more graceful and beautiful. Nevertheless her Imperial blood betrayed itself always in her bearing, even on those occasions when she had disguised herself in her maid's gowns. Presently, when father and daughter were some distance ahead, she turned to him and, looking into his countenance, said very seriously,-- "Much as I regret it, Mr. Bourne, our very pleasant evenings here must end. This is our last walk together." "What! Madame!" he exclaimed. "Are you leaving?" and he halted in surprise. "I hardly know yet," she replied, just a trifle confused, for she hesitated to tell the cruel truth to this man who had once risked his life for hers. "It is not, however, because I am leaving, but our parting is imperative, because--well--for the sake of both of us." "I don't quite follow your Majesty," he said, looking inquiringly at her. They were quite alone, at a spot where there were no promenaders. "No," she sighed. "I expect not. I must be more plain, although it pains me to be so. The fact is that my enemies at Court have learnt that we are friends, and are now endeavouring to couple our names--you and I. Is it not scandalous--when you love Leucha?" "What!" he cried, starting back amazed. "They are actually endeavouring to again besmirch your good name! Ah! I see! They say that I am your latest lover--eh? Tell me the truth," he urged fiercely. "These liars say that you are in love with me! They don't know who I am," he laughed bitterly. "I, a thief--and you, a sovereign!" "They are enemies, and will utter any lies to create scandal concerning me," she said, with quiet resignation. "For that reason we must not be seen together. To you, Mr. Bourne, I owe my life--a debt that I fear I shall never be able to sufficiently repay. Mr. Redmayne and yourself have been very kind and generous to me, a friendless woman, and yet I am forced by circumstances to withdraw my friendship because of this latest plot conceived by the people who have so ingeniously plotted my ruin. As you know, they declared that Count Leitolf was my lover, but I swear before God that he was only my friend--my dear, devoted friend, just as I believe that you yourself are. And yet," she sighed, "it is so very easy to cast scandal against a woman, be she a seamstress or of the blood royal." "I am certainly your devoted friend," the man declared in a clear, earnest tone. "You are misjudged and ill-treated, therefore it is my duty as a man, who, I hope, still retains some of the chivalry of a gentleman, to stand your champion." "In this, you, alas! cannot--you would only compromise me," she declared, shaking her head sadly. "We must part. You and Mr. Redmayne are safe here. Therefore I shall to-morrow leave Worthing." "But this is dastardly!" he cried in fierce resentment. "Are you to live always in this glass house, for your enemies to hound you from place to place, because a man dares to admire your beauty? What is your future to be?" She fixed her calm gaze upon him in the pale moonlight. "Who can tell?" she sighed sadly. "For the present we must think only of the present. My enemies have discovered me, therefore it is imperative that we should part. Yet before doing so I want to thank you very much for all the services you and Mr. Redmayne have rendered me. Rest assured that they will never be forgotten--never." Roddy and Leucha had seated themselves upon a seat facing the beach, and they were now slowly approaching them. "I hardly know how to take leave of you," Guy said, speaking slowly and very earnestly. "You, on your part, have been so good and generous to Leucha and myself. If these scandalmongers only knew that she loved me and that I reciprocated her affection, they surely would not seek to propagate this shameful report concerning us." "It would make no difference to them," she declared in a low, hoarse voice of grief. "For their purposes--in order that I shall be condemned as worthless, and prevented from returning to Treysa--they must continue to invent their vile fictions against my honour as a woman." "The fiends!" he cried fiercely. "But you shall be even with them yet! They fear you--and they shall, one day, have just cause for their fears. We will assist you--Roddy and I. We will together prove your honesty and innocence before the whole world." They gained the seat whereon Leucha and her father were sitting, and Claire sat down to rest before the softly sighing sea, while her companion stood, she having forgotten to give him permission to be seated. She was so unconventional that she often overlooked such points, and, to her intimate friends, would suddenly laugh and apologise for her forgetfulness. While all four were chatting and laughing together--for Roddy had related a droll incident he had witnessed that day out at Goring--there came along the sea-path two figures of men, visitors like themselves, judging from their white linen trousers and straw hats. Their approach was quite unnoticed until of a sudden they both halted before the group, and one of them, a brown-bearded man, stepping up to the younger man, said, in a stern, determined voice,-- "I identify you as Guy Bourne. I am Inspector Sinclair of the Criminal Investigation Department, and I hold a warrant for your arrest for jewel robbery!" Claire gave vent to a low cry of despair, while Leucha sprang up and clung to the man she loved. But at that same instant three other men appeared out of the deep shadows, while one of them, addressing Roddy, who in an instant had jumped to his feet, said,-- "I'm Detective-sergeant Plummer. I identify you as Roddy Redmayne, _alias_ Scott-Martin, _alias_ Ward. I arrest you on a charge of jewel robbery committed within the German Empire. Whatever statement you may make will be used in evidence against you on your trial." Both men were so utterly staggered that neither spoke a word. Their arrest had been so quickly and quietly effected that they had no opportunity to offer resistance, and even if they had they would have been outnumbered. Roddy uttered a fierce imprecation beneath his breath, but Guy, turning sadly to Claire, merely shrugged his shoulders, and remarked bitterly,-- "It is Fate, I suppose!" And the two men were compelled to walk back with a detective on either side of them, while Leucha, in a passion of tears, crushed and heart-broken, followed with her grave-faced mistress--a sad, mournful procession. Claire spoke to them both--kind, encouraging words, urging them to take courage--whereupon one of the detectives said,-- "I really think it would be better if you left us, madam." But she refused, and walked on behind them, watched from a distance by the German agent Stieger and Rose Reinherz, and, alas! in ignorance of the vile, despicable plot of Hinckeldeym--the plot that was to ruin her for ever in the eyes of her people. CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE. SOME UGLY TRUTHS. Poor Leucha was beside herself with grief, for she, alas! knew too well the many serious charges upon which her father and her lover were wanted. Both would receive long terms of penal servitude. Against them stood a very ugly list of previous convictions, and for jewel robbery, judges were never lenient. Claire was in deadly fear that Roddy's daughter might also be arrested for the part she had played in the various affairs, but it appeared that the information received by the police did not extend to "the Ladybird." The blow was complete. It had fallen and crushed them all. That night Leucha lay awake, reflecting upon all that might be brought against the pair--the Forbes affair, when the fine pearls of Mrs. Stockton-Forbes, the wife of the American railroad king, were stolen from the house in Park Lane; the matter of the Countess of Henham's diamonds; the theft of Lady Maitland's emeralds, and a dozen other clever jewel robberies that had from time to time startled readers of the newspapers. Claire, on her part, also lay wondering--wondering how best to act in order to extricate the man who had so gallantly risked his life to save hers, and the easygoing old thief who had showed her such great kindness and consideration. Could she extricate them? No; she saw it was quite impossible. The English police and judges could not be bribed, as she had heard they could be in some countries. The outlook was hopeless-- utterly and absolutely hopeless. Somebody had betrayed them. Both men had declared so, after their arrest. They had either been recognised and watched, or else some enemy had pointed them out to the police. In either case it was the same. A long term of imprisonment awaited both of them. Though they were thieves, and as such culpable, yet she felt that she had now lost her only friends. Next morning, rising early, she sent Leucha to the police station to inquire when they would be brought before the magistrate. To her surprise, however, "the Ladybird" brought back the reply that they had been taken up to London by the six o'clock train that morning, in order to be charged in the Extradition Court at Bow Street--the Court reserved for prisoners whose extradition was demanded by foreign Governments. Post-haste, leaving little Ignatia in charge of the landlady and the parlour-maid, Madame Bernard and Leucha took the express to London, and were present in the grim, sombre police court when the chief magistrate, a pleasant-faced, white-headed old gentleman, took his seat, and the two prisoners were placed in the dock. Guy's dark eyes met Claire's, and he started, turning his face away with shame at his position. She was a royal sovereign, and he, after all, only a thief. He had been unworthy her regard. Roddy saw her also, but made no sign. He feared lest his daughter might be recognised as the ingenious woman who had so cleverly acted as their spy and accomplice, and was annoyed that she should have risked coming there. The men were formally charged--Redmayne with being concerned with two other men, not in custody, in stealing a quantity of jewellery, the property of the Baroness Ackermann, at Uhlenhorst, outside Hamburg. The charge against Guy Bourne was "that he did, on June 16th, 1903, steal certain jewellery belonging to one Joseph Hirsch of Eugendorf." In dry, hard tones Mr. Gore-Palmer, barrister, who appeared on behalf of the German Embassy, opened the case. "Your Worship," counsel said, "I do not propose to go into great length with the present case to-day. I appear on behalf of the German Imperial Embassy in London to apply for the extradition of these men, Redmayne and Bourne, for extensive thefts of jewels within the German Empire. The police will furnish evidence to you that they are members of a well-known, daring, and highly ingenious international gang, who operate mainly at the large railway stations on the Continent, and have, it is believed, various accomplices, who take places as domestic servants in the houses of persons known to be in possession of valuable jewellery. For the last two years active search has been made for them; but they have always succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the police until last night, when they were apprehended at Worthing, and brought to this Court. The first case, that against Redmayne, is that one of the gang, a woman unknown, entered the service of the Baroness Ackermann in London, and after a few weeks accompanied her to Hamburg, where, on discovering where this lady kept her jewels, she made an excuse that her mother was dying, and returned to England. Eight months afterwards, however, the prisoner Redmayne, _alias_ Ward, _alias_ Scott-Martin, made a daring entry into the house while the family were at dinner, opened the safe, and escaped with the whole of its precious contents, some of which were afterwards disposed of in Leyden and in Amsterdam. The charge against Bourne is that, on the date named, he was at the Cologne railway station, awaiting the express from Berlin, and on its arrival snatched the dressing-case from the Countess de Wallwitz's footman and made off with it. The servant saw the man, and at the police office afterwards identified a photograph which had been supplied to the German police from Scotland Yard as that of a dangerous criminal. Against both men are a number of charges for robbery in various parts of France and Germany, one against Bourne being the daring theft, three years ago, of a very valuable ruby pendant from the shop of a jeweller named Hirsch, in the town of Eugendorf, in the Kingdom of Marburg. This latter offence, as your Worship will see, has been added to the charge against Bourne, and the Imperial German Government rely upon your Worship granting the extradition sought for under the Acts of 1870 and 1873, and the Treaty of 1876." Mention of the town of Eugendorf caused Claire to start quickly. He had actually been guilty of theft in her own Kingdom! For that reason, then, he had escaped from Treysa the instant he was well enough to leave the hospital. "I have here," continued counsel, "a quantity of evidence taken on commission before British Consuls in Germany, which I will put in, and I propose also to call a servant of the Baroness Ackermann and the jeweller Hirsch, both of whom are now in the precincts of the Court. I may add that the Imperial German Government have, through their Ambassador, made diplomatic representations to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, as they attach the greatest importance to this case. The men, if my instructions are correct, will be found to be the leaders of a very dangerous and daring gang, who operate mostly in Germany, and seek refuge here, in their own country. I therefore hope that your Worship, after reading the depositions and hearing the evidence, will make the order for them to be handed over to the German authorities to be dealt with." "I must have direct evidence," remarked the magistrate. "Evidence on commission is not sufficient. They are both British subjects, remember." "I have direct evidence of identification against each prisoner," counsel replied. "I take it that your Worship will be obliged to adjourn the case for seven days, as usual; and if further evidence is required from Germany, it will be forthcoming." "Very well," said the magistrate, taking the mass of documents handed to him, and proceeding to hear the formal evidence of arrest, as given by the inspector and sergeant from New Scotland Yard. Afterwards the interpreter of the Court was sworn, and following him a tall, clean-shaven, yellow-haired German entered the witness-box, and gave his name as Max Wolff, in the employ of the Baroness Ackermann, of Uhlenhorst, near Hamburg. The instant "the Ladybird" saw him she made an excuse to Claire, and rising, escaped from the Court. They had been in service together, and he might recognise her! The man's evidence, being translated into English, showed that suspicion fell upon an English maid the Baroness had engaged in London, and who, a few days after arriving in Hamburg, suddenly returned. Indeed, she had one day been seen examining the lock of the safe; and it was believed that she had taken an impression of the key, for when the robbery was committed, some months later, the safe was evidently opened by means of a duplicate key. "And do you identify either of the prisoners?" inquired the magistrate. "I identify the elder one. I came face to face with him coming down the principal staircase with a bag in his hand. I was about to give the alarm; but he drew a revolver, and threatened to blow out my brains if I uttered a word." The accused man's face relaxed into a sickly smile. "And you were silent?" "For the moment, yes. Next second he was out into the road, and took to the open country. I am quite certain he is the man; I would know him among ten thousand." "And you have heard nothing of this English lady's maid since?" asked the magistrate. "No; she disappeared after, as we suppose, taking the impression of the key." The next witness was a short, stout, dark-faced man with a shiny bald head, evidently a Jew. He was Joseph Hirsch, jeweller, of the Sternstrasse, Eugendorf, and he described how, on a certain evening, the prisoner Bourne--whom he identified--had entered his shop. He took him to be a wealthy Englishman travelling for pleasure, and showed him some of his best goods, including a ruby pendant worth about fifty thousand marks. The prisoner examined it well, but saying that the light was not good, and that he preferred to return next morning and examine it in the daylight, he put it down and went out. A quarter of an hour later, however, he had discovered, to his utter dismay, that the pendant had been cleverly palmed, and in its place in the case was left a cheap ornament, almost a replica, but of brass and pieces of red glass. He at once took train to Treysa and informed the chief of police, who showed him a photograph of the prisoner--a copy of one circulated by Scotland Yard. "And do you see in Court the man who stole the pendant?" asked the magistrate. "Yes; he is there," the Jew replied in German--"the younger of the two." "You have not recovered your property?" "No, sir." The court was not crowded. The London public take little or no interest in the Extradition Court. The magistrate glanced across at the well-dressed lady in dark grey who sat alone upon one of the benches, and wondered who she might be. Afterwards one of the detectives informed him privately that she had been with the men at Worthing when they were arrested. "I do not know, your Worship, if you require any further evidence," exclaimed Mr. Gore-Palmer, again rising. "Perhaps you will glance at the evidence taken on commission before the British Consul-General at Treysa, the British Consul in Hamburg, and the British Vice-Consul at Cologne. I venture to think that in face of the evidence of identification you have just heard, you will be convinced that the German Government have a just right to apply for the extradition of these two persons." He then resumed his seat, while the white-headed old gentleman on the bench carefully went through folio after folio of the signed and stamped documents, each with its certified English translation and green Consular stamps. Presently, when about half-way through the documents, he removed his gold pince-nez, and looking across at counsel, asked,-- "Mr. Gore-Palmer, I am not quite clear upon one point. For whom do you appear to prosecute--for the Imperial German Government, or for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Marburg?" "I appear for both, your Worship, but I am instructed by the latter." "By the Minister Stuhlmann himself, on behalf of the Government--not by Herr Hirsch?" "Yes, your Worship, by the Minister himself, who is determined to crush out the continually increasing crimes committed by foreign criminals who enter the Kingdom in the guise of tourists, as in the case of the present prisoners." Claire, when counsel's explanation fell upon her ears, sat upright, pale and rigid. She recollected Steinbach's warning, and in an instant the vile, dastardly plot of Hinckeldeym and his creatures became revealed to her. They would condemn this man to whom she owed her life as a low-bred thief, and at the same time declare that he was her latest lover! For her it was the end of all things--the very end! CHAPTER TWENTY SIX. PLACE AND POWER. The grey-faced London magistrate had remanded the prisoners in custody for seven days, and the papers that evening gave a brief account of the proceedings under the heading: "Smart Capture of Alleged Jewel Thieves." During the return journey to Worthing Claire remained almost silent at Leucha's side. The girl, whose gallant lover had thus been snatched from her so cruelly, was beside herself in utter dejection and brokenness of heart. Surely they were a downcast pair, seated in the corners of an empty first-class carriage on the way back to the seaside town which possessed no further charm for them. To Claire the plot was now revealed as clear as day. She had, however, never dreamed that Hinckeldeym and Stuhlmann would descend to such depths of villainy as this. Their spies had been at work, without a doubt. She had been watched, and the watchers, whoever they were, had evidently established the identity of the two men to whom she owed so very much. And then Hinckeldeym, with that brutal unscrupulousness that distinguished him, had conceived the hellish plot to create a fresh scandal regarding the jewel thief Guy Bourne and herself. The man who had risked his life for hers had now lost his liberty solely on her account. It was cruel, unjust, inhuman! Night and day she had prayed to her Maker for peace and for protection from the thousand pitfalls that beset her path in that great complex world of which she was almost as ignorant as little Ignatia herself. Yet it seemed as though, on the contrary, she was slowly drifting on and on to a ruin that was irreparable and complete. She felt herself doubting, but instantly her strong faith reasserted itself. Yes, God would hear her; she was sure He would. She was a miserable sinner, like all other women, even though she were queen of an earthly kingdom. He would forgive her; He would also forgive those two men who stood charged with the crime of theft. God was just, and in Him she still placed her implicit trust. In silence, as the train rushed southward, she again appealed to Him for His comfort and His guidance. Her bounden duty was to try and save the men who had been her friends, even at risk to herself. Their friendliness with her had been their own betrayal. Had they disappeared from Paris with her jewels they would still have been at liberty. Yet what could she do? how could she act? Twenty years' penal servitude was the sentence which Leucha declared would be given her father if tried in England, while upon Bourne the sentence would not be less than fifteen years, having in view his list of previous convictions. In Germany, with the present-day prejudice against the English, they would probably be given even heavier sentences, for, according to Mr. Gore-Palmer, an attempt was to be made to make an example of them. Ah! if the world only knew how kind, how generous those two criminals had been to her, a friendless, unhappy woman, who knew no more of the world than a child in her teens, would it really judge them harshly, she wondered. Or would they receive from the public that deep-felt compassion which she herself had shown them? Many good qualities are, alas! nowadays dead in the human heart; but happily chivalry towards a lonely woman is still, even in this twentieth century, one of the traits of the Englishman's character, be he gentleman or costermonger. Alone in her room that night, she knelt beside the bed where little Ignatia was sleeping so peacefully, and besought the Almighty to protect her and her child from this last and foulest plot of her enemies, and to comfort those who had been her friends. Long and earnestly she remained in prayer, her hands clasped, her face uplifted, her white lips moving in humble, fervent appeal to God. Then when she rose up she pushed back the mass of fair hair from her brow, and paced the room for a long time, pondering deeply, but discerning no way out of the difficulties and perils that now beset her. The two accused men would be condemned, while upon her would be heaped the greatest shame that could be cast upon a woman. Suddenly she halted at the window, and leaning forward, looked out upon the flashing light far away across the dark, lonely sea. Beyond that far-off horizon, mysterious in the obscurity of night, lay the Continent, with her own Kingdom within. Though freedom was so delightful, without Court etiquette and without Court shams, yet her duty to her people was, she recollected, to be beside her husband; her duty to her child was to live that life to which she, as an Imperial Archduchess, had been born, no matter how irksome it might be to her. Should she risk all and return to Treysa? The very suggestion caused her to hold her breath. Her face was pale and pensive in her silent, lofty, uncomplaining despair. Would her husband receive her? Or would he, at the instigation of old Hinckeldeym and his creatures, hound her out of the Kingdom as what the liars at Court had falsely declared her to be? Again she implored the direction of the Almighty, sinking humbly upon her knees before the crucifix she had placed at the head of her bed, remaining there for fully a quarter of an hour. Then when she rose again there was a calm, determined look on her pale, hard-set face. Yes; her patience and womanhood could endure no longer. She would take Leucha and go fearlessly to Treysa, to face her false friends and ruthless enemies. They would start to-morrow. Not a moment was to be lost. And instead of retiring to bed, she spent the greater part of the night in packing her trunks in readiness for the journey which was to decide her fate. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The summer's evening was breathless and stifling in Treysa. Attired in Henriette's coat and skirt, and wearing her thick lace veil, Claire alighted from the dusty _wagon-lit_ that had brought her from Cologne, and stood upon the great, well-remembered platform unrecognised. The _douaniers_ at the frontier had overhauled her baggage; the railway officials had clipped her tickets; the _wagon-lit_ conductor had treated her with the same quiet courtesy that he had shown to her fellow-passengers, and she had passed right into the splendid capital without a single person recognising that the Queen--"their Claire"--had returned among them. Leucha descended with Ignatia, who at once became excited at hearing her native tongue again; and as they stood awaiting their hand-baggage an agent of police passed them, but even he did not recognise in the neat-waisted figure the brilliant and beautiful soft-eyed woman who was his sovereign. At first she held her breath, trembling lest she might be recognised, and premature information of her return be conveyed to Hinckeldeym or to the Prefect of Police, who, no doubt, had his orders to refuse her admittance. Yet finding her disguise so absolutely complete, she took courage, and passed out of the station to hail a closed cab. They were all three utterly tired out after thirty-six hours of rail, crossing by way of Dover and Ostend. When Leucha and Ignatia had entered the cab she said to the man sharply, in German,-- "Drive to the royal palace." The man, who took her for one of the servants, settled himself upon his box and drove up the straight tree-lined avenue to the great entrance gates of the royal park, which were, as usual, closed. As they approached them, however, her Majesty raised her veil, and waited; while Leucha, with little Ignatia upon her knee, sat wondering. She, "the Ladybird," the accomplice of the cleverest gang of thieves in Europe, was actually entering a royal palace as intimate friend of its Queen! The cab halted, the sentries drew up at attention, and the gorgeous porter came forward and put in his head inquisitively. Next instant he recognised who it was, and started back; then, raising his cocked hat and bowing low, gave orders to the cabman to drive on. Afterwards, utterly amazed, he went to the telephone to apprise the porter up at the palace that her Majesty the Queen had actually returned. When they drew up at the great marble steps before the palace entrance, the gaudily-dressed porter stood bare-headed with three other men-servants and the two agents of police who were always on duty there. All bowed low, saluting their Queen in respectful silence as she descended, and Leucha followed her with the little Princess toddling at her side. It was a ceremonious arrival, but not a single word was uttered until Claire passed into the hall, and was about to ascend the grand staircase on her way to the royal private apartments; for she supposed, and quite rightly, that her husband had, on his accession, moved across to the fine suite occupied by his late father. Bowing slightly to acknowledge the obeisance of the servants, she was about to ascend the broad stairs, when the porter came forward, and said apologetically,-- "Will your Majesty pardon me? I have orders from the Minister Hinckeldeym to say that he is waiting in the blue anteroom, and wishes to see you instantly upon your arrival." "Then he knows of my return?" she exclaimed surprised. "Your Majesty was expected by him since yesterday." She saw that his spies had telegraphed news of her departure from London. "And the King is in the palace?" "Yes, your Majesty; he is in his private cabinet," responded the man, bowing. "Then I will go to him. I will see Hinckeldeym afterwards." "But, your Majesty, I have strict orders not to allow your Majesty to pass until you have seen his Excellency. See, here he comes!" And as she turned she saw approaching up the long marble hall a fat man, her arch-enemy, attired in funereal, black. "Your Majesty!" he said, bowing, while an evil smile played upon his lips. "So you have returned to us at Treysa! Before seeing the King I wish to speak to you in private." Deadly and inexorable malice was in his countenance. She turned upon him with a quick fire in her eyes, answering with that hauteur that is inherent in the Hapsbourg blood,-- "Whatever you have to say can surely be said here. You can have nothing concerning me to conceal!" she added meaningly. "I have something to say that cannot be said before the palace servants," he exclaimed quickly. "I forbid you to go to the King before I have had an opportunity of explaining certain matters." "Oh! you forbid--_you_?" she cried, turning upon him in resentment at his laconic insolence. "And pray, who are you?--a mere paid puppet of the State, a political adventurer who discerns further advancement by being my enemy! And you _forbid_?" "Your Majesty--I--" "Yes; when addressing me do not forget that I am your Queen," she said firmly, "and that I know very well how to deal with those who have endeavoured to encompass my ruin. Now go to your fellow-adventurers, Stuhlmann, Hoepfner, and the rest, and give them my message." Every word of hers seemed to blister where it fell. Then turning to Leucha, she said in English,-- "Remain here with Ignatia. I will return to you presently." And while the fat-faced officer of State who had so ingeniously plotted her downfall stood abashed in silence, and confused at her defiance, she swept past him, mounted the stairs haughtily, and turning into the corridor, made her way to the royal apartments. Outside the door of the King's private cabinet--that room wherein Hinckeldeym had introduced his spies--she held her breath. She was helpless at once, and desperate. Her hand trembled upon the door knob, and the sentry, recognising her, started, and stood at attention. With sudden resolve she turned the handle, and next second stood erect in the presence of her husband. CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN. A WOMAN'S WORDS. The King sprang up from his writing-table as though electrified. "You!" he gasped, turning pale and glaring at her--"you, Claire! Why are you here?" he demanded angrily. "To speak with you, Ferdinand. That scheming reptile Hinckeldeym forbade me to see you; but I have defied him--and have come to you." "Forbade you! why?" he asked, in a deep voice, facing her, and at once noticing that she was disguised as Henriette. "Because he fears that I may expose his ingenious intrigue to you. I have discovered everything, and I have come to you, my husband, to face you, and to answer any charges that this man may bring against me. I only ask for justice," she added, in a low, earnest voice. "I appeal to you for that, for the sake of our little Ignatia; for the sake of my own good name, not as Queen, but as a woman!" "Then Hinckeldeym was aware that you were returning?" "His spies, no doubt, telegraphed information that I had left London. He was awaiting me in the blue anteroom when I arrived, ten minutes ago." "He told me nothing," her husband remarked gruffly, knitting his brows in marked displeasure. "Because he fears the revelation of his dastardly plot to separate us, and to hurl me down to the lowest depths of infamy and shame." Her husband was silent; his eyes were fixed upon hers. Only yesterday he had called Meyer, the Minister of Justice, and given orders for an application to the Court for a divorce. Hinckeldeym, by continually pointing out the Imperial displeasure in Vienna, had forced him to take this step. He had refrained as long as he could, but at last had been forced to yield. As far as government was concerned, Hinckeldeym was, he considered, an excellent Minister; yet since that night when the man had introduced his spies, he had had his shrewd suspicions aroused that all he had told him concerning Claire was not the exact truth. Perhaps, after all, he had harshly misjudged her. Such, indeed, was the serious thought that had a thousand times of late been uppermost in his mind--ever since, indeed, he had given audience to the Minister Meyer on the previous morning. Claire went on, shining forth all her sweet, womanly self. Her intellectual powers, her elevated sense of religion, her high honourable principles, her best feelings as a woman, all were displayed. She maintained at first a calm self-command, as one sure of carrying her point in the end; and yet there was, nevertheless, a painful, heart-thrilling uncertainty. In her appeal, however, was an irresistible and solemn pathos, which, falling upon her husband's heart, caused him to wonder, and to stand open-mouthed before her. "You allege, then, that all this outrageous scandal that has been the talk of Europe has been merely invented by Hinckeldeym and his friends?" asked the King, folding his arms firmly and fixing his eyes upon his wife very seriously. "I only ask you, Ferdinand, to hear the truth, and as Sovereign to render justice where justice is due," was her calm response, her pale face turned to his. "I was too proud in my own honesty as your wife to appeal to you: indeed, I saw that it was hopeless, so utterly had you fallen beneath the influence of my enemies. So I preferred to leave the Court, and to live incognito as an ordinary person." "But you left Treysa with Leitolf, the man who was your lover! You can't deny that, eh?" he snapped. "I deny it, totally and emphatically," was her response, facing him unflinchingly. "Carl Leitolf loved me when I was a child, but years before my marriage with you I had ceased to entertain any affection for him. He, however, remained my friend--and he is still my friend." "Then you don't deny that to-day he is really your friend?" he said, with veiled sarcasm. "Why should I? Surely there is nothing disgraceful that a man should show friendliness and sympathy towards a woman who yearns for her husband's love, and is lonely and unhappy, as I have been? Again, I did not leave Treysa with him. He joined my train quite by accident, and we travelled to Vienna together. He left me at the station, and I have not seen him since." "When you were in Vienna, a few days before, you actually visited him at his hotel?" "Certainly; I went to see him just as I should call upon any other friend. I recognised the plot against us, and arranged with him that he should leave the Court and go to Rome." "I don't approve of such friends," he snapped again quickly. "A husband should always choose his wife's male friends. I am entirely in your hands, Ferdinand." "But surely you know that a thousand and one scandalous stories have been whispered about you--not only in the palace, but actually among the people. The papers, even, have hinted at your disgraceful and outrageous behaviour." "And I have nothing whatever to be ashamed of. You, my husband, I face boldly to-night, and declare to you that I have never, for one single moment, forgotten my duty either to you or to our child," she said, in a very low, firm voice, hot tears at that moment welling in her beautiful eyes. "I am here to declare my innocence--to demand of you justice, Ferdinand!" His lips were pressed together. He was watching her intently, noticing how very earnestly and how very boldly she refuted those statements which, in his entire ignorance of the conspiracy, he had believed to be scandalous truths. Was it really possible that she, his wife, whom all Europe had admired for her grace, her sweetness, and her extraordinary beauty, was actually a victim of a deeply-laid plot of Hinckeldeym's? To him it seemed utterly impossible. She was endeavouring, perhaps, to shield herself by making these counter allegations. A man, he reflected, seldom gets even with a woman's ingenuity. "Hinckeldeym has recently revealed to me something else, Claire," he said, speaking very slowly, his eyes still fixed upon hers--"the existence of another lover, an interesting person who, it appears, is a criminal!" "Listen, Ferdinand, and I will tell you the truth--the whole truth," she said very earnestly. "You will remember the narrow escape I had that day when my cob shied at a motor car and ran away, and a stranger--an Englishman--stopped the animal, and was so terribly injured that he had to be conveyed to the hospital, and remained there some weeks in a very precarious state. And he afterwards disappeared, without waiting for me to thank him personally?" "Yes; I remember hearing something about him." "It is that man--the criminal," she declared; and then, in quick, breathless sentences, she explained how her jewels had been stolen in Paris, and how, when the thieves knew of her identity, the bag had been restored to her intact. He listened to every word in silence, wondering. The series of romantic incidents held him surprised. They were really gallant and gentlemanly thieves, if--if nothing else, he declared. "To this Mr. Bourne I owe my life," she said; "and to him I also owe the return of my jewels. Is it, therefore, any wonder when these two men, Bourne and Redmayne, have showed me such consideration, that, lonely as I am, I should regard them as friends? I have Redmayne's daughter with me here, as maid. She is below, with Ignatia. It is this Mr. Bourne, who is engaged to be married to Leucha Redmayne, that Hinckeldeym seeks to denounce as my lover!" "He says that both men are guilty of theft within the Empire; indeed, Bourne is, it is said, guilty of jewel robbery in Eugendorf." "They have both been arrested at Hinckeldeym's instigation, and are now in London, remanded before being extradited here." "Oh! he has not lost very much time, it seems." "No. His intention is that Mr. Bourne shall stand his trial here, in Treysa, and at the same time the prisoner is to be denounced by inspired articles in the press as my lover--that I, Queen of Marburg, have allied myself with a common criminal! Cannot you see his dastardly intention? He means that this, his last blow, his master stroke, shall crush me, and break my power for ever," she cried desperately. "You, Ferdinand, will give me justice--I know you will! I am still your wife!" she implored. "You will not allow their foul lies and insinuations to influence you further; will you?" she asked. "In order to debase me in your eyes and in the eyes of all Europe, Hinckeldeym has caused the arrest of this man to whom I owe my life--the man who saved me, not because I was Crown Princess, but because I was merely a woman in peril. Think what betrayal and arrest means to these men. It means long terms of imprisonment to both. And why? Merely in order to attack me-- because I am their friend. They may be guilty of theft--indeed they admit they are; nevertheless I ask you to give them your clemency, and to save them. You can have them brought here for trial; and there are ways, technicalities of the law, or something, by which their release can be secured. A King may act as he chooses in his own Kingdom." Every word she spoke was so worthy of herself, so full of sentiment and beauty, poetry and passion. Too naturally frank for disguise, too modest to confess her depth of love while the issue remained in suspense, it was a conflict between love and fear and dignity. "I think you ask me rather too much, Claire," he said, in a somewhat quieter tone. "You ask me to believe all that you tell me, without giving me any proof whatsoever." "And how can I give you proof when Mr. Bourne and his friend are in custody in London? Let them be extradited to Treysa, and then you may have them brought before you privately and questioned." For some moments he did not speak. What she had just alleged had placed upon the matter an entirely different aspect. Indeed, within himself he was compelled to admit that the suspicions he had lately entertained regarding Hinckeldeym had now been considerably increased by her surprising statements. Was she speaking the truth? Whenever he allowed his mind to wander back he recollected that it had been the crafty old President who had first aroused those fierce jealous thoughts within his heart. It was he who had made those allegations against Leitolf; he who, from the very first weeks of his marriage, had treated Claire with marked antipathy, although to her face he had shown such cordiality and deep obeisance that she had actually believed him to be her friend. Yes, he now recognised that this old man, in whom his father had reposed such perfect confidence, had been the fount of all those reports that had scandalised Europe. If his calm, sweet-faced wife had, after all, been a really good and faithful woman, then he had acted as an outrageous brute to her. His own cruelty pricked his conscience. It was for her to forgive, not for her to seek forgiveness. She saw his hesitation, and believed it due to a reluctance to accept her allegations as the real truth. "If you doubt me, Ferdinand, call Hinckeldeym at this instant. Let me face this man before you, and let me categorically deny all the false charges which he and his sycophants have from time to time laid against me. Here, at Court, I am feared, because they know that I am aware of all my secret enemies. Make a clearance of them all and commence afresh," she urged, a sweet light in her wonderful eyes. "You have clever men about you who would make honest and excellent Ministers; but while you are surrounded by such conspirators as these, neither you nor the throne itself is safe. I know," she went on breathlessly, "that you have been seized by a terrible jealousy--a cruel, consuming jealousy, purposely aroused against me in order to bring about the result which was but the natural outcome--my exile from Treysa and our estrangement. It is true that you did not treat me kindly--that you struck me--that you insulted me--that you have disfigured me by your blows; but recollect, I beg, that I have never once complained. I never once revealed the secret of my dire unhappiness; only to one man, the man who has been my friend ever since my childhood--Carl Leitolf. And if you had been in my place, Ferdinand, I ask whether you would not have sought comfort in relating your unhappiness to a friend. I ask you that question," she added, in a low, intense, trembling voice. "For all your unkindness and neglect I have long ago really forgiven you. I have prayed earnestly to God that He would open your eyes and show me in my true light--a faithful wife. I leave it to Him to be my judge, and to deal out to my enemies the justice they deserve." "Claire!" he cried, suddenly taking her slim white hand in his and looking fiercely into her beautiful eyes, "is this the real truth that you have just told me?" "It is!" she answered firmly; "before God, I swear that it is! I am a poor sinner in His sight, but as your wife I have nothing with which to reproach myself--nothing. If you doubt me, then call Leitolf from Rome; call Bourne. Both men, instead of being my lovers, are your friends-- and mine. I can look both you and them in the face without flinching, and am ready to do so whenever it is your will." All was consummated in that one final touch of truth and nature. The consciousness of her own worth and integrity which had sustained her through all her trials of heart, and that pride of station for which she had contended through long years--which had become more dear by opposition and by the perseverance with which she had asserted it-- remained the last strong feeling upon her mind even at that moment, the most fateful crisis of her existence. Her earnest, fearless frankness impressed him. Was it really possible that his wife--this calm-faced woman who had been condemned by him everywhere, and against whom he had already commenced proceedings for a divorce--was really, after all, quite innocent? He remembered Hinckeldeym's foul allegations, the damning evidence of his spies, the copies of certain letters. Was all this a tissue of fraud, falsehood, and forgery? In a few rapid words she went on to relate how, in that moment of resentment at such scandalous gossip being propagated concerning her, she had threatened that when she became Queen she would change the whole entourage, and in a brief, pointed argument she showed him the strong motive with which the evil-eyed President of the Council had formed the dastardly conspiracy against her. "Claire," he asked, still holding her soft hand with the wedding ring upon it, "after all that has passed--after all my harsh, inhuman cruelty to you--can you really love me still? Do you really entertain one single spark of love for me?" "Love you!" she cried, throwing herself into his arms in a passion of tears; "love you, Ferdinand!" she sobbed. "Why, you are my husband; whom else have I to love, besides our child?" "Then I will break up this damnable conspiracy against you," he said determinedly. "I--the King--will seek out and punish all who have plotted against my happiness and yours. They shall be shown no mercy; they shall all be swept into obscurity and ruin. They thought," he added, in a hard, hoarse voice, "to retain their positions at Court by keeping us apart, because they knew that you had discovered their despicable duplicity. Leave them to me; Ferdinand of Marburg knows well how to redress a wrong, especially one which concerns his wife's honour," and he ran his hand over his wife's soft hair as he bent and kissed her lips. So overcome with emotion was she that at the moment she could not speak. God had at last answered those fervent appeals that she had made ever since the first year of their marriage. "I have wronged you, Claire--deeply, very deeply wronged you," he went on, in a husky, apologetic voice, his arm tenderly about her waist, as he again pressed his lips to hers in reconciliation. "But it was the fault of others. They lied to me; they exaggerated facts and manufactured evidence, and I foolishly believed them. Yet now that you have lifted the scales from my eyes, the whole of their devilishly clever intrigue stands plainly revealed. It utterly staggers me. I can only ask you to forgive. Let us from to-night commence a new life--that sweet, calm life of trust and love which when we married we both believed was to be ours for ever, but which, alas! by the interference and malignity of our enemies, was turned from affection into hatred and unhappiness." "I am ready, Ferdinand," she answered, a sweet smile lighting up her beautiful features. "We will bury the past; for you are King and I am Queen, and surely none shall now come between us. My happiness tonight, knowing that you are, after all, good and generous, and that you really love me truly, no mere words of mine can reveal. Yet even now I have still a serious thought, a sharp pang of conscience for those who are doomed to suffer because they acted as my friends when I was outcast and friendless." "You mean the men Bourne and Redmayne," the King said. "Yes, they are in a very perilous position. We must press for their extradition here, and then their release will be easy. To-morrow you must find some means by which to reassure them." "And Hinckeldeym?" "Hinckeldeym shall this very night answer to his Sovereign for the foul lies he has spoken," replied the King, in a hard, meaning tone. "But, dearest, think no more of that liar. He will never cross your path again; I shall take good care of that. And now," he said, imprinting a long, lingering caress upon her white, open brow--"and now let us call up our little Ignatia and see how the child has grown. An hour ago I was the saddest man in all the kingdom, Claire; now," he laughed, as he kissed her again, "I admit to you I am the very happiest!" Their lips met again in a passionate, fervent caress. On her part she gazed up into his kind, loving eyes with a rapturous look which was more expressive than words--a look which told him plainly how deeply she still loved him, notwithstanding all the bitterness and injustice of the black, broken past. CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT. CONCLUSION. The greatest flutter of excitement was caused throughout Germany--and throughout the whole of Europe, for the matter of that--when it became known through the press that the Queen of Marburg had returned. Reuter's correspondent at Treysa was the first to give the astounding news to the world, and the world at first shrugged its shoulders and grinned. When, however, a few days later, it became known that the Minister Heinrich Hinckeldeym had been summarily dismissed from office, his decorations withdrawn, and he was under arrest for serious peculation from the Royal Treasury, people began to wonder. Their doubts were, however, quickly set at rest when the Ministers Stuhlmann and Hoepfner were also dismissed and disgraced, and a semi-official statement was published in the Government _Gazette_ to the effect that the King had discovered that the charges against his wife were, from beginning to end, a tissue of false calumnies "invented by certain persons who sought to profit by her Majesty's absence from Court." And so, by degrees, the reconciliation between the King and Queen gradually leaked out to the English public through the columns of their newspapers. But little did they guess that the extradition case pressed so very hard at Bow Street last August against the two jewel thieves, Redmayne, _alias_ Ward, and Guy Bourne, had any connection with the great scandal at the Court of Marburg. The men were extradited, Redmayne to be tried in Berlin and Bourne at Treysa; but of their sentences history, as recorded in the daily newspapers, is silent. The truth is that neither of them was sentenced, but by the private request of his Majesty, a legal technicality was discovered, which placed them at liberty. Both men afterwards had private audience of the King, and personally received the royal thanks for the kindness they had shown towards the Queen and to little Ignatia. In order to mark his appreciation, his Majesty caused a lucrative appointment in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where a knowledge of English was necessary, to be given to Roddy Redmayne, while Guy Bourne, through the King's recommendation, was appointed to the staff of an important German bank in New York; and it has been arranged that next month Leucha--who leaves her Majesty and Ignatia with much regret--goes to America to marry him. To her place, as Ignatia's nurse, the faithful Allen has now returned, while the false de Trauttenberg, who, instantly upon Hinckeldeym's downfall, went to live in Paris, has been succeeded by the Countess de Langendorf, one of Claire's intimate friends of her days at the Vienna Court, prior to her marriage. What actually transpired between Hinckeldeym and his Sovereign on that fateful night will probably never be known. The people of Treysa are aware, however, that a few hours after "their Claire's" return the President of the Council was commanded to the royal presence, and left it ruined and disgraced. On the following day he was arrested in his own mansion by three gendarmes and taken to the common police office, where he afterwards attempted suicide, but was prevented. The serious charges of peculation against him were, in due course, proved up to the hilt, and at the present moment he is undergoing a well-merited sentence of five years' imprisonment in the common gaol at Eugendorf. Count Carl Leitolf was recalled from Rome to Treysa a few days later, and had audience in the King's private cabinet. The outcome was, however, entirely different, for the King, upon the diplomat's return to Rome, signed a decree bestowing upon him _di moto proprio_ the Order of Saint Stephen, one of the highest of the Marburg Orders, as a signal mark of esteem. Thus was the public opinion of Europe turned in favour of the poor, misjudged woman who, although a reigning sovereign, had, by force of adverse circumstances, actually resigned her crown, and, accepting favours of the criminal class as her friends, had found them faithful and devoted. Of the Ministers of the Kingdom of Marburg only Meyer retains his portfolio at the present moment, while Steinbach has been promoted to a very responsible and lucrative appointment. The others are all in obscurity. Ministers, chamberlains, _dames du palais_ and _dames de la cour_, all have been swept away by a single stroke of the pen, and others, less prone to intrigue, appointed. Henriette--the faithful Henriette--part of whose wardrobe Claire had appropriated on escaping from Treysa, is back again as her Majesty's head maid; and though the popular idea is that little real, genuine love exists between royalties, yet the King and Queen are probably the very happiest pair among the millions over whom they rule to-day. Her Majesty, the womanly woman whose sweet, even temperament and constant solicitude for the poor and distressed is so well known throughout the Continent, is loudly acclaimed by all classes each time she leaves the palace and smiles upon them from her carriage. The people, who have universally denounced Hinckeldeym and his unscrupulous methods, still worship her and call her "their Claire." But, by mutual consent, mention is no longer made of that dark, dastardly conspiracy which came so very near wrecking the lives of both King and Queen--that dastardly affair which the journalists termed "The Great Court Scandal." The End. 
42813	----	MRS. VANDERSTEIN'S JEWELS MRS. VANDERSTEIN'S JEWELS BY MRS. CHARLES BRYCE [Illustration] LONDON: JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY TORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN MCMXIV THE ANCHOR PRESS, LTD., TIPTREE, ESSEX. MRS. VANDERSTEIN'S JEWELS CHAPTER I The room looked very cool in the afternoon light. A few bowls of white roses that were arranged about it seemed to lend it an aspect of more than usual specklessness. To Madame Querterot, a person of no taste, who made no pretension of being fastidious, and who had, moreover, little sympathy with a passion for cleanliness when this was carried to exaggeration, the airy lightness of the place suggested the convent school of her youthful days; and, bringing again before her the figure of a stern sister superior who had been accustomed in those vanished times to deal out severe penalties to the youthful but constantly erring Justine, caused her invariably to enter Mrs. Vanderstein's bedroom after a quick intake of the breath on the threshold, as if she were about to plunge into an icy bath. Mrs. Vanderstein, ever the essence of punctuality, was ready for her on this particular evening, as she always was. Wrapped in some diaphanous white garment, which she would perhaps have called a dressing-gown, she lay on a silk covered sofa and lazily watched Madame Querterot unpacking the little bag in which she carried the accessories of her profession, that of a hairdresser and beauty specialist. "You must make me very beautiful to-night, Madame Justine," she said, with a smile. "We are going to hear _La Bohème_, and the Queen will be there. My box is nearly opposite the Royal box, and in case Her Majesty's eyes fall in my direction I wish to look my best." "All eyes will not fail to be directed to your side of the theatre, madame," replied Madame Querterot, taking out her collection of pomade pots, powder boxes and washes, and arranging them in a semicircle upon a Louis XVI table. "Royalties know the use of opera glasses as well as any citizen. As for making you beautiful, the good God has occupied Himself with that! I can only preserve what I find. I can make your beauty endure, madame. More than that one must not ask of me. I am not the good God, me!" and Madame Querterot's plump shoulders shook with easy merriment. Mrs. Vanderstein, too, smiled. She did not suffer from any affectation of modesty as far as her obvious good looks were concerned. But she was obliged to own regretfully--though only to herself--that she was no longer as young as she had been; and the masseuse's assurances that her youthful appearance could be indefinitely preserved fell on her ears as melodiously as if they were indeed a prelude to the magic strains that would presently rise to charm her through the envied, if stuffy atmosphere of Covent Garden. "You are a flatterer, Madame Justine," she murmured. Then, before she laid her head back against the cushions and gave herself up to Madame Querterot's ministrations, she called to a figure that was seated in the window, half hidden among the muslin curtains that fluttered before it: "Barbara, be sure and tell me if you see anything interesting." Barbara Turner answered without looking round: "Nothing has come yet, but I am keeping a good look-out." Mrs. Vanderstein closed her eyes, and Madame Querterot, after turning up her sleeves and arraying herself in an apron, began to pass her short fingers over the placid features and smooth skin of the lady's face. For a time nothing else stirred in the big room. A ray of sunlight passed very slowly across a portion of the grey panelled walls, and coming to a gilded mirror climbed cautiously over the carved frame, only to be caught and held a while on the flashing surface of the looking-glass. On every side the subdued gold of ancient frames, surrounding priceless pictures that had been acquired by the help of the excellent judgment and long purse of the late Mr. Vanderstein, shone softly and pleasantly. The furniture, of the best period of the reign of Louis XVI--as was the case all over the house--had been collected by the same unerring connoisseur, and each piece would have been welcomed with tears of joy by many an eager director of museums. The thick carpet that covered the floor exactly matched the pale grey tone of the walls and upholstery, and the extreme lightness of these imparted that air of great luxury which the lavish use of fragile colours, in a town as dirty as London, does more to convey than any more ostentatious sign of extravagance. Through the open casements many noises rose from the street, for the bedroom was at the front of the house, which stood in a street in Mayfair immediately opposite to a great hotel where the overflow of foreign Royalty is frequently sheltered at times of Court festivals, when the hospitable walls of the Palace are filled to bursting point. The coming and going of these distinguished guests was always a source of the most unquenchable interest to Mrs. Vanderstein, to whom every trivial action, if it were performed by any sort of a Highness, was brimming with thrilling suggestion. At the period of which I speak, London was astir with preparations for a great function, and representatives of the Courts of Europe were arriving by every train from the Continent. Mrs. Vanderstein could hear the sounds of a constant stream of carriages and motors stopping or starting below her window, and knew that it was not to her door that they crowded, but across the road under the magnificent stucco portico of Fianti's Hotel. "Barbara, has no one interesting appeared?" she called again after a few minutes. "Not yet," was the reply. "There's a victoria driving along the street now, though, which looks something like a Royal turnout. Rather a nice looking pair in it." "Is it a pair of foreign looking gentlemen?" asked Mrs. Vanderstein excitedly. "No, a pair of Cleveland bays. I hate them as a rule, but from here they don't look bad. All back, though, of course." "My dear girl, do tell me about the people. I don't want to hear about your horrid horses. I believe all sorts of celebrities go in and out of Fianti's while I am lying here, and you never even notice them." "Yes, yes, I do," said Barbara. "I will call you directly any one passes who looks as if he might be accustomed to wield the sceptre, or who is wearing a crown over his top hat." Mrs. Vanderstein made a little impatient movement. It annoyed her that her companion did not take her duties more seriously--did not, in fact, seem to understand how much more important was this task of keeping a good look-out in the wide bow of the window than any of the others that she was apt to approach in a quite admirable spirit of thoroughness. Why, wondered Mrs. Vanderstein, could the girl not do as she was asked in this matter, without making those attempts to be facetious which appeared so ill-advised, and which fell so extremely flat, as a moment's observation would have made apparent to her? She did not make jokes about the flowers while she arranged them, nor about Mrs. Vanderstein's correspondence, to which it was her business to attend. She was able to answer the telephone or order the carriage without indulging in unseemly giggles. Why then, in heaven's name, couldn't she take up her post of observation at the window without finding in it an excuse for pleasantries as dull as they were pointless? Mrs. Vanderstein sighed deeply and wriggled her head deeper in the cushions. Madame Querterot saw the cloud and guessed very easily what had caused it: she had often noticed similar disturbances of her customer's otherwise easy-going temper. Knowing with remarkable accuracy on which side of her bread the butter was applied, she at once set herself to calm the troubled waters. "You did not see me to-day, madame," she began, "but me, I have already seen you. I passed in Piccadilly where your auto was stopped in a block before the Ritz." "Yes, we were kept there quite a long time, but I did not see you, Madame Justine," said Mrs. Vanderstein indifferently. "How should you have seen me? I was in a bus. It's not there that you would look for your acquaintances. That understands itself! But I was not the only one to see you, and what I heard said of you then will make you smile. I said to myself at the moment, 'It is quite natural, Justine, but it will make her laugh all the same.'" "What was it? Who can have said anything of me in an omnibus?" "Ah, madame! Even in buses people do not cease to talk. One hears things to make one twist with laughter! But one hears the truth too, sometimes, and this young man, even if he made a mistake, one cannot surprise oneself at that!" "But you do not tell me what you heard," cried Mrs. Vanderstein. "It was this young man of whom I speak to you. He was a nice smart looking young gentleman, and he had with him a lady, well dressed and very chic. What they did in that _galère_ I know not, but as we passed the Ritz he touched his companion on the arm and pointed out of the window. 'Look, Alice,' said he, 'you see the dark lady in that motor? It is the Russian Princess they talk so much about, Princess Sonia. Is she not handsome? She was pointed out to me last night at the Foreign Office reception.' The lady he called Alice looked where he pointed and every one in the bus looked also. I, too, turned round and followed the eyes of the others. And who did I see, madame? Can you not guess? It was at you they looked, as you sat there in your beautiful car with Mademoiselle Turner beside you. You, with your flowers and your pretty hat with the long white feather, and your wonderful pearls. And your face, madame! But I must not permit myself to speak of that!" "You talk great nonsense, and I do not believe a word you say," said Mrs. Vanderstein gaily, her good-humour more than restored. "No one could mistake me for a moment for the beautiful Princess Sonia." "Nevertheless, madame, it happened as I say. And I see nothing strange about it. It was a very natural mistake, as anyone who has seen both you and the Princess will readily agree." Madame Querterot had not seen the Princess herself, but she had studied her photograph in the illustrated papers and devoutly hoped that Mrs. Vanderstein had not herself met the lady at closer quarters. "The poor young man was not near enough to observe my wrinkles and my double chin, Madame Justine!" "Bah! You will have forgotten the word wrinkle, which is not _d'ailleurs_ a pretty one, by the time I have finished giving you my course of treatment. And as for a double chin, look at me, madame! I assure you that, in my time, I have developed no less than five double chins. And I have rubbed them all away. Do you suppose, then, that I shall allow you to have one?" Mrs. Vanderstein looked as she was bidden. Indeed she lost no opportunity of studying the countenance of the little Frenchwoman, who, on her own admission, was at least ten years older than herself, but whose face was as smooth and unlined as that of a girl, though there was an indefinable something in the expression, an experienced glimmer, perhaps, in the eyes, that prevented her appearance from being entirely youthful. Still, she might very well have been taken for Mrs. Vanderstein's junior, even for her younger sister, possibly, if she had been as well dressed, for there was a certain resemblance between the two women. Both were short and plump, both had long oval faces and brown eyes set rather near together beneath arched, well-marked eyebrows, and, though Madame Querterot had not a drop of Jewish blood in her veins and her nose did not assume the Hebraic droop that in Mrs. Vanderstein betrayed her race, yet it was distinctly of the hooked variety and gave her a family likeness to the children of Israel, on which fact her relations and friends had frequently considered it entertaining to dwell. Her hair, however, was golden and fluffy, curling about her head with a juvenile abandon; while Mrs. Vanderstein's dark, straight locks were simply and severely dressed at the back, and concealed on her forehead by a large, flat curled fringe in the manner affected by the English Royal ladies. Mrs. Vanderstein at all events was sincere in her admirations. "If you can make me look as young as you do," she said now, "I ask nothing better. But indeed London in this hot weather is very wearing, and I see myself grow older every morning. To-day it was oppressive to drive even in an open motor." To drive? Ah! Madame Querterot was not imaginative, but a vision of the crowded bus in which she went about her business floated before her, side by side with one of a rushing motor car; and she paused in her work for a minute and looked around her. An electric fan revolved tirelessly above the window, and on a table at the foot of the bed was placed a large block of ice, half hidden in flowers and ferns. She raised herself, inhaling the cool air in long, deep breaths. "It has been hot, very hot, these last days," she admitted. "It reminds me of our beautiful Paris, and of much in my young days that I would be content to forget," she added, with a laugh. "Ah, the room in that city, in which as a girl I used to work; the little dark room where I learnt my trade! It was hot in that room in the summer. But, madame, I could not tell you how hot it was. I remember one of the girls who used to pray quite seriously to die, because, she explained to us, wherever she went in another world it could not fail to be more cool. It was over a baker's kitchen and had no window except one which gave on to a sort of shaft that ran up the middle of the house, so that we had the gas always burning. Oh, la, la!" "How dreadful!" murmured Mrs. Vanderstein comfortably. "I wonder it was allowed." "Allowed? Ah, madame, there are plenty of worse workrooms than that in Paris. I wonder what you would say if you could see your dresses made! We liked it very well in the winter, for there were no stairs, and it was agreeable then to shut the window and profit by the warmth from the kitchen. That was all long ago, before I married that poor Eugène and came to live in London. They were, all the same, not so bad, those days. Ah, la jeunesse, la belle jeunesse, which one does not know how to enjoy when one has it." Madame Querterot crossed over to the table and laid her hands on the block of ice, casting a glance over her shoulder to the window where Barbara sat at her sentry post. The motionless, silent figure annoyed Madame Querterot. To be conscious that all her chatter was overheard by that quiet listener got on her nerves and sometimes made her, as she said, feel as if her own words would suffocate her. There was so much she could have said to Mrs. Vanderstein from time to time if they had been alone--much that she instinctively felt would have been very acceptable to that lady--but in the presence of Miss Turner, even though nothing of her were visible except the back of her head, there were, it appeared, lengths of flattery to which Madame Querterot found herself incapable of proceeding. Thus did a feeling of awkwardness, some sense of restraint, cast a certain gloom over hours that should have been the brightest in the day. "These roses, madame, how fine they are," she murmured, bending towards a bowl that stood on the table, and unconsciously her voice took on a note of defiance as she faced the window. "They are as beautiful as if they were artificial. One would say they were made of silk!" Mrs. Vanderstein laughed tolerantly, but Barbara, her face turned to the street, made a naughty face. Madame Querterot, with hands ice cool, went back to her massage, and for a little while again no one spoke. Suddenly Barbara turned. "Here comes a Royal carriage," she said. "I think it is Prince Felipe of Targona and his mother." "Oh I must see them," cried Mrs. Vanderstein, jumping up, and brushing Madame Querterot unceremoniously aside. "Where are they?" She ran to the window. The masseuse followed more slowly, and three heads were thrust out over the street. CHAPTER II A carriage was driving up to the steps of Fianti's. To allow it to approach, a waiting motor was obliged to move away, and in the short interval that elapsed while this was being wound up and started off the carriage paused almost immediately opposite the window of Mrs. Vanderstein's bedroom; she had thus a better view of its occupants than it had ever previously been her fortune to obtain. On the right of the barouche sat an elderly lady, with grey hair piled high under a very small black hat. She sat very upright and stiff, giving a little nervous start when the horses moved forward impatiently and were drawn up with a jerk by the coachman. "That is the Princess," said Barbara, whose head was touching Mrs. Vanderstein's. Prince Felipe sat beside his mother, a middle-aged young man of forty with a black upturned moustache and an eyeglass. He had a cigarette in his hand and, as they looked, he turned round and gazed after a smartly dressed woman who was driving by. On the back seat of the carriage sat two other men--gentlemen in waiting, no doubt. Mrs. Vanderstein's eyes were, however, fully occupied with the Princess and her son. "Isn't he handsome?" she whispered to Barbara, as if there were a danger of being overheard above the rattle and din of the busy roadway. But it almost seemed as if the words reached the ears of the man she was watching, for, the motor in the portico having at last got under way and left the road clear for Their Highnesses, the Prince threw back his head as the carriage moved on, and looking up met Mrs. Vanderstein's eyes fixed admiringly on him. She drew back her head in some confusion, but the Prince was still looking up when the barouche disappeared in the shade of the portico. "Madame! Son Altesse vous a reconnue!" cried Madame Querterot, her face wreathed in smiles. "He never saw me before," replied Mrs. Vanderstein, retreating into the room. "How odd that he should have looked up just then! What a charming face he has." And she subsided once more on the sofa, her own face aglow with excitement and pleasure. "Don't move from the window, Barbara, whatever you do," she said. "Just think if we had missed them!" As Madame Querterot resumed her rubbing, a knock came at the door, and Mrs. Vanderstein's maid entered bearing the jewels her mistress intended wearing that night at the opera. As she set the cases down on the dressing-table and busied herself in laying out the various garments of her mistress' evening toilet, she cast from time to time disapproving glances in the direction of Madame Querterot, whom, although a compatriot, she disliked very heartily, considering that in the privacy of Mrs. Vanderstein's chamber any ministrations besides her own were unnecessary, and having altogether a strong tendency to look upon her countrywoman as an interloper, who had possibly an eye to a share in various perquisites for which Amélie preferred to see no other candidate in the field. She took an elaborate gown from the wardrobe and spread it out upon the bed together with divers other articles of attire. She placed a jug of hot water in the basin and a jar of aromatic salts beside it. She straightened several objects on the dressing-table, which had no need of being made straight; tilted the looking-glass forward and tilted it back again; lifted up a chair and set it down with a thud; and finally, despairing of ever witnessing the departure of her dreaded rival, was about to leave the room when her mistress' voice called her back. "Amélie," she said, "just show me what necklace you have brought up for me to-night. Is it the one with the flower pendants or the stone drops?" Amélie carried all the cases over to the sofa; and Madame Querterot left off rubbing while Mrs. Vanderstein sat up and opened them one by one. In the largest a magnificent diamond necklace, imitating a garland of wild roses and their leaves, glistened against its blue velvet background. The other cases, when opened, displayed bracelets and a diamond tiara, as well as rings and a pair of ear-rings formed of immense single stones. Mrs. Vanderstein shut them all up again and handed them back to Amélie. "Take them down again to Blake," she said, "and tell him I have changed my mind and will wear the emeralds instead. They go better with that dress." "Ah, madame," sighed Madame Querterot, as Amélie departed with the jewels, "what marvellous diamonds! Wherever one goes one hears the jewels of Mrs. Vanderstein spoken of." "It is true," said Mrs. Vanderstein, "that my jewels are very good. My dear husband had a passion for them and collected stones as another man collects bric-à-brac. He never made a mistake, they say, and my ornaments are rather out of the way in consequence. For myself I feel it an extravagance to lock up such a vast amount of capital in mere gewgaws." "My poor Eugène," said Madame Querterot, "had also this same enthusiasm for precious stones. He loved so to adorn his wife with diamonds, that dear soul! But with him it was, alas, more than an extravagance. It was our ruin; for he was not a connoisseur, like monsieur votre mari, and when the crisis came and we would have turned my jewellery back into money, behold, we were told that we had been cheated in our purchases, and that, for the most part, the stones were without value. Ah, the sad day! As you know, madame, bankruptcy followed, and we had to give up our beautiful _établissement_ in Bond Street. It broke the heart of that poor Eugène. He never recovered from the blow and soon left me, I trust for a happier world, by way, it goes without saying, of purgatory," added the masseuse, crossing herself like a good Catholic. "Since that day I have faced the troubles of this life alone, without friendship, without sympathy." Here her emotion overcame Madame Querterot, and she turned away for a moment with a display of her handkerchief. She had omitted from her affecting narrative the fact that "that poor Eugène" had perished by his own hand, on discovering the state of his affairs; and she slightly trifled with the truth when she asserted that it was his unfortunate craze for covering his wife with jewels which had brought about such a disastrous state of things. It was Madame Querterot's own passion for the adornment of her person that had resulted in the dissipation of Eugène's savings, and brought him, at the last, to see with despair the total disappearance of the business, which she had neglected and ruined. Mrs. Vanderstein's kind heart was touched. She had heard vaguely the reason of the Querterots' removal from their gorgeous Bond Street rooms after the death of Eugène, the incomparable hairdresser, and it was from a creditable desire not to desert the unfortunate that she continued to employ the little Frenchwoman since the day of the catastrophe. But no details of the affair had reached her, and she now heard for the first time, and not without being sincerely moved, the sad story of a man who, having spent his all in lavishing tokens of affection on his wife, had in the end reduced her to a state of poverty bordering on want, and even left her to confront this terror in solitude, as a result of his misdirected tenderness. Considerably affected, she tried to speak words of comfort to the poor woman. "It is dreadfully sad," she murmured. "Poor Madame Justine, how sorry I am. Your poor husband, I see well how he must have adored you and that what he did was all for the best. But you are not absolutely alone in the world, are you? Have you not a daughter?" "Yes, it is true, madame, that I have a daughter," replied Madame Querterot, wiping her eyes and resuming her work. "And she is no doubt a great comfort to you?" "Children, madame, are at once a joy and a trouble," returned the masseuse evasively. "I hope your daughter has not caused you much trouble." "She has given me nothing but worry since the day she was born. Her childhood, her education, her illnesses! Measles, chicken pox, whooping cough, mumps, scarlet fever; she has had them all one after the other." "But not while you have been coming to see me!" cried Mrs. Vanderstein, alarmed. "Ah no, madame, all that is long finished," replied Madame Querterot, "but since then I have been obliged to provide for her education, and every year she has become more expensive. Now she is eighteen, and you would imagine her anxious to repay some of the expense and _ennuis_ she has caused me during all these years." "Yes, no doubt," agreed Mrs. Vanderstein, "she will be a great help to you now." "So one would think. But figure to yourself, madame, what this young girl proposes to me to do with her life. She desires to enter a convent and to spend her days in good works rather than be of assistance to her mother!" and Madame Querterot laughed bitterly. "I think she ought not to take such a decisive step at present," said Mrs. Vanderstein; "at the age of eighteen she can hardly know if a religious life is really her vocation." "She is obstinate like a donkey, madame. Just think of it, a young girl, healthy, not ugly; already she has had offers of marriage. There is a young man, very _bien_, very _comme il faut_, who demands her hand and who thinks of nothing but her. But will she take him? No. Not at all. We prefer to be a religious; and _voilà_!" Madame Querterot, having finished her massaging, was repacking the brown bag in which she had brought her apparatus. "I hope that you will amuse yourself at the opera, madame," she went on, folding her apron and laying it on top of the other things in the bag, the lock of which clicked as she shut it down with an impatient snap. "A demain, mesdames," she concluded, taking up the bag by the handle and giving it a shake as if she only wished she could so shake her unsatisfactory child. "A cette heure-ci, n'est-ce pas?" And with that she bowed herself from the room. CHAPTER III Mrs. Vanderstein and Barbara hurried over their dinner and were early in their places in Covent Garden. Mrs. Vanderstein always arrived before the orchestra had tuned up. She had, like many of her race, a great appreciation of music and did not like to miss a bar of the overture, even though she had already heard the opera that was being given so often that she knew it by heart. She felt very much in a mood to enjoy herself that evening, and till the first act was over leant back in her chair with half-closed eyes, hardly moving at all, and absolutely absorbed in listening to the wonderful singers who were that night interpreting Puccini's melodious work. Even the Royal box opposite barely distracted her attention for more than a few moments. Barbara Turner was not musical, but she, too, was always pleased to go to the opera. She liked the sensation of luxury, which enveloped her there even more than elsewhere; she liked the feeling that the entertainment offered them was costing a huge amount of money, and therefore could only be witnessed by a privileged few. Although she laughed at Mrs. Vanderstein's passion for Royalty, she shared her simple satisfaction in the knowledge that the box in which they were now sitting was sandwiched between that occupied by the Duke of Mellinborough on their left, and the one tenanted by Sir Ian Fyves, the sporting Scotch millionaire. Barbara rejoiced in the exclusiveness obtainable by the rich, therein differing from some other people who depreciate the advantages of wealth on the grounds that the largest fortunes may be made and handled by the most vulgar, and that banking accounts are not in these days the exclusive property of the refined, or even of the intellectual. Mrs. Vanderstein made no secret of the benefit to her health derived from hours spent in the closest proximity to the aristocracy, the air inhaled by a duchess being separated from that which filled her own lungs merely by the thinnest of partitions. She invariably occupied the chair on the left-hand side of the box, so that the space between her and her unseen neighbours might be thought of in terms of inches; and it cannot be denied that Barbara herself relished the thought of the company of the great who surrounded her, heedless though they might be of the pleasure they were providing. It was not really to be expected, besides, that the nearness of Sir Ian Fyves, whose horse had already so easily won the Derby the year before, and who was again the lucky owner of the favourite for the coming contest, should leave unmoved the daughter of Bill Turner, the trainer. All Barbara's childhood had been passed at Newmarket, and the talk of the racing men with whom her father associated had been the first to fall on her infantile ears. The horses in his charge had grown to be her chief interest in life, as they were that of every one she was brought in contact with; and at the age of ten she knew as much about them--their points, prowess, value, and chances--as any stable boy on the place. On a small but truculent pony she followed her father and his friends to the heath in the early mornings and watched the morning gallops with a critical eye; with the same edifying companions she pottered about the stableyard during most of the rest of the day, and only when bed-time came--and it came at eight o'clock, for on that one point her father was firm--was she reluctantly torn away. All Mr. Vanderstein's horses were trained by her father, and many a time the childish eyes followed them to victory. In earlier days, before Barbara had made her bow upon the scene, Turner had been associated in various affairs of business with Mr. Vanderstein, then plain Mr. Moses Stein, familiarly known to his intimates of those days by the endearing nickname of Nosey Stein; sometimes in moments of rare affection, when some particularly brilliant _coup_ had just been brought off, he was alluded to as Nosey Posey. Mrs. Vanderstein, then Miss Ruth Hengersohn, had changed all this. The name of Stein was repugnant to her, though it seems a good enough sort of appellation in its way; Nosey or Nosey Posey she could only think of with a shudder; while the idea of being herself known as Mrs. Nosey filled her with a burning determination, which, as it cooled, hardened to the inflexible consistency of chilled steel. Before their marriage took place, Mr. Stein, who always admiringly recognised, when he met it, a will more adamant than his own, had at great trouble, inconvenience, and expense changed his name for that of Vanderstein, by which he was afterwards known. The enterprises, chiefly connected with the promotion of companies, in which this gentleman had, in his early, forgotten--and best forgotten--youth, the assistance and co-operation of Mr. William Turner, were in their nature precarious and not a source, unfortunately, of the profit foreseen by those who set out upon them. At the conclusion of one of them, indeed, things took on a very unexpected complexion, assuming in the twinkling of an eye so disagreeable a hue, that the directors of the company, whose management was suddenly the centre of attraction and which was in danger of receiving a most unwelcome, if flattering, attention from the public prosecutor, thought it best to disappear with a rapidity and unobtrusiveness highly creditable to a modest desire for self-effacement at a moment when free advertisement was within the grasp of each of them. Luckily for Mr. Stein, his name did not appear among those who sat on the board of this particular company and he was able to pursue his way in a retiring and profitable manner; but it was otherwise with his less fortunate friend, Bill Turner. It was to the search for this worthy though too incautious person that the efforts of the authorities were principally directed; and it was only by returning once more, under an assumed name, to the racing circles which he had during a short interval forsaken for the city, and still further owing to the absence of the chief witness for the prosecution, whose whereabouts could not for a long time be ascertained, that Turner was able to escape the fate which ought assuredly to have been his. He settled finally at Newmarket, and married the daughter of a neighbouring squire, who never spoke again to a child who could so far forget her father's position and ignore his commands as to unite herself to the more than questionable William. The poor lady, however, took her revenge on her relations, and her leave of a world in which she had found time to suffer some disillusions, on the day that saw Barbara ushered into the light; so that the little girl was left to grow up entirely in that odour of the stables which her father preferred, in his heart, to any more delicate perfume. It was not until she was ten years old that Turner began to suffer from the attentions of blackmailers, but these, having once discovered him, saw in him a mine of gold which they fondly expected to prove inexhaustible. Such, however, was not the case. After a year's persecution the wretched man found himself penniless, and on the advice of Vanderstein, the only one of his old pals who did not ignore him in his trouble, he left the country with precipitation and secrecy. So little was his intention suspected that he eluded all further detection and bolted successfully to South America, where he remained untraced by undesirable acquaintances and finally drank himself to death after several years of the most gratifying obscurity. Turner's only regret at leaving England was that he could not take with him his little girl; but hampered by the company of a child escape would have been impossible, and he sorrowfully yielded to the representations of Vanderstein on that point. The Jew promised to take charge of Barbara in the future, and assured Turner with every mark of solemnity that as long as he or his wife lived the girl should not lack a home. Turner, who knew that Vanderstein never ceased to chafe under a sense of obligations incurred in the early days of their struggles, placed every confidence in the words, and had no doubt that his friend would live up to his promises. And Vanderstein did not fail to do so. Barbara, whose grief at parting from her father was intense and pathetic, was comforted as best might be and sent to school at the select academy of the Misses Yorke Brown at Brighton. Here she received the best of educations in the company of about thirty other young ladies, the daughters of well-to-do middle class people. In their society she obtained a nodding acquaintance with algebra, history, science, and literature; with them she attended dancing classes, learnt a little French and German, and disported herself on the tennis court and hockey field. She roller-skated and played golf, became proficient in the art of swimming, and with a chosen and fortunate few rode daily on the downs. At the end of six or seven years she had grown into a self-possessed, capable young woman, a little old for her years perhaps, as was obvious to those who knew her well, but to outward appearance still a mere child, easily amused at trifles, and with a rare capacity for enjoying life, which made her a delightful companion. Her face had an innocent and helpless expression at variance with her real nature, which was eminently self-reliant and independent. She would never forgive her mother's relations who had despised her father, and at any mention of them her large blue eyes would always flash resentfully. Her relatives for their part made no effort to seek her out and were quite content to leave her to the Vandersteins' tender mercies. Before Barbara left school Mr. Vanderstein died, leaving in his will a provision to the effect that his widow was to continue the care of his friend's daughter, either making her an annual allowance of £500 a year or taking her to live with her as friend and companion. There was a further bequest of £30,000 to Barbara, which was to become hers on Mrs. Vanderstein's death. This was not the only thing in the will which filled Mrs. Vanderstein with indignation. She found to her disgust that half the fortune, which she had formed the habit of considering hers, was left to young Joe Sidney, the son of her husband's sister. This lady had committed the horrid offence of marrying a Christian, and to her, during her lifetime, the orthodox and scandalised Moses never alluded. Her death occurred a year or two before his own, and after it Mr. Vanderstein had displayed a certain interest in his nephew, but not enough to prepare his wife for his preposterous action in regard to the division of his money. Indeed, he expressed in the will his wish that after her death it should all go to Joe, though he left the final decision on this point to her judgment. Old Vanderstein had amassed considerably over half a million sterling during the latter and most prosperous portion of his career, so that his widow was not altogether the pauper she was fond of declaring herself; but in the first shock of seeing her income divide itself by two she decided to save the £500 provided for Barbara and to submit instead to the infliction of her presence. She had never seen the girl, who had, indeed, been a subject of disagreement between her husband and herself, but she was so easy-going and good-natured at heart that a very short period of Barbara's society had sufficed to change her prejudices and distrust into a warm affection, and she soon looked on her as she might have done on a younger sister. There were occasions certainly when, if anything annoyed her, she would not refrain from pointing out to Barbara how much had been done for her and how exaggerated had been Mr. Vanderstein's views in this direction. "My dear husband," she would exclaim, "would have ruined himself, if he had lived longer, by his own unbounded philanthropy. He was constitutionally unable to say 'no' to anyone, and goodness knows in what difficulties he would have landed himself if time had only been afforded him. How often he would admit to me that certain people had tried to borrow from him and that he had let them have what they wanted. In vain I begged him to be more firm. He would make me promises, but I would soon discover that he had been doing the same thing again. 'My dear,' he would reply to my reproaches, 'I have really not the heart to refuse to help these poor young men.'" Mr. Vanderstein did not bother his wife with details of his private affairs, holding that women have no concern with business; and he decidedly never thought it necessary to mention that he used a certain discretion in his benevolence, steeling himself against more supplications than she suspected. It was true, however, that he never refused to lend money to such poor young men as were heirs to entailed estates or could offer other satisfactory security for the repayment of his kindness, and it was by these unobtrusive charities that his fortune was collected. Mrs. Vanderstein's prejudices against Joe Sidney had also decreased very rapidly when she became acquainted with that young man, as she did shortly after his mother's death, and by the time this story begins--that is to say, three years after she herself had been left a widow--he had become a great favourite of hers, although there were still moments when she thought a little bitterly of the large sums he had deprived her of by the fact of his existence. However, she liked him well enough to let him know that it was her intention to comply with Mr. Vanderstein's wishes in regard to the ultimate disposal of his fortune, and that her will constituted Sidney her sole legatee. As she was only a few years older than himself and of a robust health, there was every likelihood that this provision would not affect his fortunes for many years to come, or even that she might survive him. CHAPTER IV When that night, during the interval between the first and second acts of the opera, the door of the box opened and Sidney made his appearance, Mrs. Vanderstein greeted him with a beaming smile and the most sincere pleasure. "How nice to see you, dear Joe," she said. "I didn't know you were in London." "I only came up from York last night," said her nephew, "or I should have been to see you before. The Garringdons asked me to their box, which is more or less under this, so I couldn't see if you were here, but I thought you would be." He sat down and began to talk about his doings and to ask questions about theirs, Mrs. Vanderstein looking at him meanwhile with a feeling of gratification at the decorative effect on her box of this good looking youth. She hoped the audience, or at least some members of it, had noticed his entrance, and she thought to herself that even inconvenient nephews had their uses. Joe Sidney was twenty-five years of age and his father's son. The late Mr. Sidney had been a very tall, fair individual, and Joe resembled him, showing the merest trace of the Jew in the droop of his nose, which, however, was not very marked. His eyes too, perhaps--but why pick to pieces a young man who really was, taken altogether, a very fine specimen of his kind? Though he had not, or scarcely had, inherited the appearance of his mother's race, he showed much of its sympathy with art and music; and his intelligence was equalled by his prepossessing manner, which had made him a favourite since his boyhood with nearly all with whom he came in contact, and, combined with his wealth, rendered him extremely popular in the cavalry regiment in which he was a subaltern. He knew a great many smart people whose acquaintance Mrs. Vanderstein would have given her ears to make, and from time to time he invited her to meet one or two of them at a restaurant dinner or theatre, quite unconscious of the pleasure he was giving; for the very intensity of her longing made Mrs. Vanderstein shy of letting this superior young relative guess at it, and Barbara had never hinted to him at the weakness of his uncle's widow. Poor Mrs. Vanderstein! One pities her when one reflects that if the good Moses had survived a few years, till the advent of a Radical government which was extremely short of sympathisers in the Upper House, she might have lived to hear him called "My Lord," and have answered with beating heart to the delicious salutation of "My Lady." She seized the opportunity afforded by Sidney's presence now to gather information about the occupants of the boxes facing them. Did Joe see anyone he knew? Of course she knew by sight every one in the Royal box, except that man behind the Queen. Who was that? Sidney thought it was the Italian ambassador. What a distinguished looking man! And in the next box? Sidney didn't know. And the one beyond that? He didn't know either. Mrs. Vanderstein was disappointed in him. Well, who did he know? Couldn't he tell her anyone? "Really," said Sidney, "I don't see many, but there are one or two. That woman with the red face and the purple dress is Lady Generflex, and the man two boxes off hers on the right is Sir William Delaplage. Then that girl in pink who has just taken up her opera glasses is Lady Vivienne Shaw, and the man in the same box is Tom Cartwright, who was at Eton with me. Down in the stalls there are one or two men I know, and I think that's all. Of course there's old Fyves, next door. You know him, don't you?" Mrs. Vanderstein gazed with intent interest at the people he pointed out; and then let her attention wander back to the Royal box while Sidney talked to Barbara. "Have you been racing?" she asked him soon. "Off and on. I went to see my horse, Benfar, run the other day. He came in easily last." "I don't think that man can ride him well. He's a good horse. I saw him as a two-year-old." "There's something wrong somewhere, that's certain. If I don't have better luck this year than I had last I shall give up keeping race-horses," said Sidney with decision. "Oh, you mustn't do that," cried Barbara in a tone of so much distress that Sidney laughed. "Why do you care?" he asked. "I care a lot. I never see anything of racing people nowadays, or meet anyone except you who knows a horse from a centipede. If you give up racing I shall feel that my last link of connection with the turf is severed." "Why don't you get my aunt to bring you down to Epsom to-morrow?" "Oh, she wouldn't like it a bit," said Barbara regretfully. "I daresay she'd enjoy it enormously. Aunt Ruth, why don't you come racing with me sometimes? Miss Turner and I will show you the ropes and you'll probably be plunging wildly by this time next week." "I hate spending a hot day walking from the stand to the paddock and back again," said Mrs. Vanderstein. "I hate horses and I hate seeing their heels waving round my head on every side, which seemed to me to be the case the only time I went to a race meeting. Nasty vicious animals. The way they are led about among the crowd by people who can't control them is most dangerous, I consider." "I expect you saw one let off a kick or two out of sheer lightness of heart," said Barbara. "Horses are darlings, really; I wish you knew them as well as I do." Mrs. Vanderstein not only disliked horses herself, but she strongly disapproved of Barbara's fondness for them. The career of the late Mr. Turner had been unedifying to such a point that even Mr. Vanderstein had been unable to disguise entirely from his wife some of its more notorious features, and Mrs. Vanderstein would have been better pleased if she could have persuaded herself that the girl had forgotten all about the days of her companionship with so undesirable a father. She had, moreover, no sympathy for speculation in any form, and especially mistrusted that which took the shape of gambling on the turf. Her greatest friend had married a man who had entirely ruined himself by the practice of backing losers; and the sight of the misery and privation that had, in this manner, been brought on a woman for whom she felt a sincere affection left on Mrs. Vanderstein one of those deep impressions that determine many of our strongest opinions and prejudices throughout life. To Mrs. Vanderstein betting was one of the most unpardonable sins. It was true that Mr. Vanderstein had kept a racing-stable and she had never really forgiven him for not giving it up at her request. But he had always assured her that he never betted. She turned away without answering, and Barbara's conscience--for she knew how much her friend disliked the subject of the turf--made her think she detected an impatient expression in the back of the white shoulders and told her it would be better to change the conversation. The temptation was too strong, however, and she continued, dropping her voice to a murmur: "You are going to Epsom to-morrow yourself?" "Yes," said Sidney, wondering why she leant so confidentially towards him. "Well, I wonder if you would be very kind and put a little money on a horse for me. Would it be too much trouble?" "Not a bit. What horse is it?" "It's a tip Ned Foster sent me. He was one of my father's grooms, you know, and I hear of him sometimes. He used to be very good to me when I was a child. I had a letter from him to-day begging me to back Averstone. He says he's absolutely certain to romp in on Wednesday." "How much do you want me to put on him?" asked Sidney. "I haven't got much, I'm afraid," said Barbara ruefully, "but I've saved a little out of the pocket money your aunt gives me. It's only £20. I wish it was more." "Are you going to risk your entire fortune?" said Sidney. "You're a pretty rash young lady, aren't you?" "Oh, I must have a flutter. Besides, it's a dead certainty. I'd put a thousand on if I had it." "What a fearful gambler! When you've lost as much as I have you'll go a bit slower." "Have you lost much?" asked Barbara sympathetically. "I'm so sorry. Just lately?" "Well, yes, since you ask me I don't mind telling you that I have had some rather nasty blows during the last few months. That brute, Benfar, has a lot to answer for, my word!" "He'll turn out a winner yet," said Barbara hopefully. "He might come in first if all the other starters tumbled down," said Sidney, with an effort to treat the subject lightly, "but I'm afraid before that happens I shall have to shut up shop. Things can't go on like this. I lost £10,000 over the Lincolnshire meeting, and that's only a drop in the ocean. But I don't know why I'm bothering you with my troubles," he concluded, pulling himself up abruptly. "I am glad you tell me," she replied simply. "I am so very sorry that you have had such rotten luck. You'd better change it by backing my tip. Ned Foster would never have advised me to put my all on Averstone unless he knew it was a sure thing. He really has a regard for me, I believe, and he often used to say that the day would come when he'd make my fortune and his own. He doesn't approve of betting as a general thing. He's a most steady, cautious kind of individual." "I wonder," said Sidney. "I think perhaps I'll have a last fling. What are the odds?" "They're long. Averstone's not supposed to have a ghost of a chance. I think it's about 40 to 1 against him." "My word, just think if one had a few thousands on him and it came off!" said Sidney. "The bookies would all die on the spot." "It would be rather annoying for some one," laughed Barbara. "I hope it will come off." "I'm afraid it would be too good to be true," said Sidney gloomily, "but it would certainly save the situation if it did. If I lost a very little more I'd have to leave the army." "Is it as bad as that?" asked Barbara, for the first time realising the graveness of the position for Sidney. "How dreadful. I _am_ sorry!" The young man laughed awkwardly. "It's awfully good of you," he said. "I've been a perfect ass, of course. If I could win back half what I've lost, I swear I'd never back a horse again!" "I expect your luck will turn," repeated Barbara hopefully. She had all a gambler's instinct of optimism. But Sidney only laughed again rather recklessly as he got up to go. The interval was over and the people were hurrying back to their seats. "As the orchestra seems to be going to make another effort," he said, "I must get back to the Garringdons' box. Good night, Miss Turner; good night, Aunt Ruth; I'll come and look you up in a day or two, if I get over to-morrow without being obliged to put a sudden end to my career." "What did Joe mean by his last remark?" Mrs. Vanderstein asked as the door shut behind the young man's vanishing form. "I don't understand what he meant about putting an end to his career." "He was telling me he has lost a lot of money lately, racing," Barbara murmured rather reluctantly, for she was not sure if Sidney would like her to repeat what he had said. Still, she thought, it was surely absurd for her to imagine that he would confide in her anything he would hesitate to tell a relation. "I suppose he was trying to joke about that." "It's nothing to joke about," said Mrs. Vanderstein severely. "Not that I saw anything like a joke. I think it's disgraceful, and I shall alter my opinion of him very seriously if he really has been betting. But hush, the music is going to begin." And she was soon entirely engrossed in listening to it. But Barbara, to whose ear any but the most elementary tunes presented nothing but a confused medley of noises, wriggled rather impatiently on her chair from time to time, as she waited for the act to come to an end. Recollections that had lain dormant for a long time, put away on some high shelf of the wardrobe of memory, had been awakened again by her conversation with Sidney and the letter she had that day received from the old stableman. How happy her childhood seemed when viewed now through the flattering medium of the intervening years, which obscured all that had been disagreeable, and magnified the delights of her unrestrained wanderings and of the free and easy company of her father and her father's delightfully jocular friends. How they used to laugh at each other's witty remarks, and how she, too, had laughed, joining in the mirth without understanding in the least what aroused it but with enjoyment none the less complete on that account. With closed eyes she leant back against the wall of the box, her lips curved in a smile and her head a little to one side in an attitude of listening. But it was not the voices of the singers she heard. Instead, the thud, thud of galloping hoofs sounded in her ears, coming nearer and nearer, and, mixed with the creaking of leather, the excited snorts of her pony and the jingling of bits. She seemed to see around her the bare, open spaces of the heath and the figures of the watchers, among them herself, crouching low in the saddle with her back to the bitter east winds that sweep across the bleak Newmarket country in the spring. Splendid bracing air, her father used to say, and for her part she had never given a thought to the weather. Happy, happy times! Oh, that they could return. Why could not Mrs. Vanderstein give her that £500 a year, thought Barbara, and let her take a cottage, however tiny, within reach of a race-course and within hail of a training stable? If only she had a little money of her own. Money was everything, after all. It meant liberty. If Averstone won his race it would be something to the good. Mrs. Vanderstein, turning to catch her eye at a point in the music which, even more than the rest, gave her a pleasure that asked to be shared, saw only the closed lids and the smiling lips, and with a sensation of gratified surprise said to herself that Barbara was at last developing an appreciation of music. CHAPTER V When Madame Querterot left the cool, airy house, which reminded her so unpleasantly of one which was associated principally in her inmost consciousness with the sensation of corporal punishment applied in no niggardly spirit, she turned her steps towards her own home, which was situated in the remotest part of Pimlico. By the time she got off her bus and set out on foot into the dreary labyrinth of dingy streets, in one of which she lived, the shadows were lengthening fast and the pavement was losing some of the blistering heat accumulated during the day. Madame Querterot climbed rather wearily the flight of steps before her door. When she entered the little shop where Julie sat sewing behind the counter, she passed through it without a word to her daughter, and going into the tiny room, which served as a sitting-room, threw herself into the one arm-chair with something like a groan. Julie, whose smile of welcome had faded on her lips when she saw the expression on her mother's face, bent again over her work, and for a little while all was still in the tiny, two-storied house. There was not room for many customers in the shop. Julie often wondered what she would do if more than two came in at the same time, but such an embarrassing contingency had not so far occurred. Quite half the space was taken up by the counter, on which stood a tray containing hair-pins and hair-nets. In one corner a space was curtained off for such clients as should wish to have their hair dressed or washed. No one had as yet requested this last service. In the window Madame Querterot displayed a few superior articles which had survived the wreck of the Bond Street establishment. There was a waxen lady, with fair hair wonderfully curled and twisted, who obscured the light a good deal as she stood with her shoulders disdainfully turned to the interior of the room and her snow white nose close against the plate glass, which separated her from the street. Plainly she felt it a come-down to look out on to this gloomy Pimlico roadway. Around her were strewn combs and brushes, bottles of brillantine and china pots containing creams for the complexion, curls and tails of false hair--in some cases attached to gruesome scalps of pink wax--and half a dozen elaborately carved tortoise-shell combs, which the luckless Eugène had invested in in a fit of mistaken enthusiasm shortly after his arrival in England, but which had never received so much as a comment or an inquiry as to price from any of those who had since looked on them. They had remained, however, a source of pride to Madame Querterot, who would often remark to Julie what an air they bestowed. Presently, after a glance at the clock, Julie put down her work and came to the door between the two rooms. "You are back, mother," she said, looking at her gravely. "So it appears," snapped her mother without raising her eyes. "I am afraid you must be tired," went on Julie calmly. "The day has been so hot. Will you not take a glass of lemonade before supper?" "Have you got a lemon?" asked Madame Querterot somewhat less crossly. "Yes," said Julie. She opened the cupboard and taking out a lemon, a tumbler, and a lemon squeezer, went about the business of preparing a cool drink for her heated parent. "Has anyone bought anything to-day?" Madame Querterot asked when after a few minutes the beverage was handed to her. "Put a little more sugar in the glass." "A boy came in for a bottle of hair-oil," replied Julie, "and a few women have bought hair-pins and hair-curlers. It has been a dull day." "We shall soon be in the street at this rate," said Madame Querterot despairingly. "One cannot live on a few packets of hair-pins and a bottle of hair-oil. No. If only we could move to a fashionable locality. Here no one ever comes and we have but to die of hunger." "We haven't been here very long. We may do better presently. It is the customers whom you massage that keep us from starvation." Julie propped open the door into the shop and taking up her work sat down by the table in the parlour. "Bah! Who knows how long they will continue? They have the skin of crocodiles, all of them. What can I do with it? Nothing. And in time they will find that out, and I shall be put to the door. What will happen then? You, I suppose, think you will be safe in your religious house. And your poor mother, you will be able to mock yourself of her then, _hein_!" "Mother, you know I shall not leave you while you want me. I have not spoken of becoming a nun since father died, have I?" "Your father!" exclaimed Madame Querterot with emotion. "Your father was a poltroon. No sooner did I need his assistance than he deserted me!" "Mother!" cried Julie, and there was that in her tone which made Madame Querterot's lamentations die away into inaudible mumblings. The girl did not say any more, but went on quietly with her sewing, till after a while her mother rose to go upstairs. At the door she paused. "Bert is coming to supper," she said over her shoulder. "You have not forgotten that it is to-night we go with him to the theatre? He will be here soon, I should think," and she went on up the narrow stairs without waiting for an answer. Half an hour later, when they sat down to a cold meal, which Julie had carefully prepared--for Madame Querterot was particularly fond of eating and had seen that her daughter early acquired the principles of good cookery--they had been joined by the guest to whom she had alluded. This was a young man of anæmic aspect, with fair hair that lay rather untidily across a high, narrow forehead. His face, which was pale and thin, was not at first sight particularly prepossessing. The contour of it was unusually pointed, though the chin receded so much that it could hardly be said to exhibit a point. The mouth was weak and large and always half open, so that the teeth, stained brown by the smoking of continuous cigarettes, were not completely hidden when he talked under the straggling little moustache, the end of which he had an unpleasant habit of chewing. The nose was prominent and looked too large for the rest of his face, the eyes, dark and deep-set, seemed to flash with unsuspected fires when talk turned on a subject that interested him. It was they that redeemed the whole man from total insignificance. They were the eyes of an enthusiast, almost of a fanatic. He did not talk much, but seemed content to devour the food set before him and to gaze untiringly at Julie who sat opposite him at the small square table. Julie was a very good-looking girl in her way, which was not at all an English way, although the English language came more naturally to her lips than her mother tongue. To tell the truth, she was not very proficient in that, her mother and father having both found it easier, after she began to go to school, to talk to her in broken English. Indeed, after twenty years or so of residence in London that language became as natural to them as their own tongue, and Madame Querterot's French had by now grown quite as anglicised as that of many linguists in her adopted country. She found, however, that many of her customers preferred her to talk in broken English; they liked to feel that here was some one come straight from the gay city to do their pleasure. Her daughter inherited her mother's oval face and arched eyebrows, but there the likeness ceased. Julie was tall while Madame Querterot was short; she was dark, while her mother was fair, and of a fairness that owed nothing to art. Julie had a straight, short nose and a little rosebud of a mouth, her skin was dark but glowing with health, and the brown eyes, set far apart under the low brow, had a wide-open look of sorrowful surprise as if she found herself in a world that failed continually to come up to her expectations. Bert, it was plain to see, found all this very much to his liking, and was so taken up with the contemplation of it that a great deal of Madame Querterot's conversation fell unheeded on his ears, and his answers, when he made any, were for the most part quite irrelevant. Madame Querterot had by this time completely recovered her good temper, or at all events displayed the amiability habitual to her in intercourse with strangers. She prattled away about the weather, the letter she had that day received from her relations in Paris, asked about Bert's work, and showed, and possibly felt, great interest in his meagre replies. Presently she began to talk about the occupation of her own day. "There is an old lady whom I visit for the massage," she said, "who would make you laugh to see. She is ugly, she is fat, she has the complexion of a turkey! Yet there is no one so anxious as she to become young again. Was she ever beautiful? I do not know; but it is certain that she will not be so again. Every day I find her with a mirror in her hand and every day as I leave her she takes it up again to see if there is any improvement. For all I know she sits like that, gazing at her unsympathetic reflection till the next day when I come once more." Madame Querterot paused and took a draught of her lemonade. "A little more sugar, Julie, my cherished, and it would be better still," she said. "In this country sugar is less dear and you are unnecessarily careful of it. If we were in France I would not say so; there, there are _impôts_. But this, one must admit it, is the cheapest place one can live in. That is why one finds here so many Jews. Bah! the Jews! Why does one suffer them? In England as in France one sees nothing else; but even more in England since l'affaire Dreyfus. There is one lady to whom I go daily who would gladly live in France, I think, if it had not become less disagreeable for her race here since that business. But perhaps it is not only on that account that she stays here, now that I reflect. She is not one of those who amuse themselves well in a republic." "How is that, mother?" asked Julie without much interest, while their guest, for his part, merely grunted indifferently. "She is more than a Royalist," said Madame Querterot; "she loves to see a head which knows how it feels to wear a crown. She goes every day to watch the Queen drive through the park. Mon Dieu! I think she lives only for that. To-day a Prince passed below her window, and as chance had it he looked up at her as he went. She was mad with joy; one would have said it was the happiest hour of her existence. She said nothing, but I have my eyes! And it is a woman who has everything to make her enjoy life. She is not bad-looking, not at all bad-looking; for a Jewess, even handsome; she is still young, and rich. Oh, but rich!" Madame Querterot put down her knife and fork and raised both hands in the air to convey the extent of the wealth enjoyed by the lucky Jewess. For the first time Bert displayed some interest in the conversation, or monologue, as one might more properly call it. "It's disgraceful," he said, "it ought to be put a stop to. These people! They suck the blood of the poor!" "The Jews, yes; it is their _métier_," agreed Madame Querterot. "I don't refer to the Jew especially. What I'm alluding to at the present moment is all these useless rich folk. The drones of the hive, as you may say. These bloated capitalists who occupy the land that ought by rights to jolly well belong to the people. They'd better look out for themselves, I can tell them. There's a day coming when society won't stand it any longer. In other words, we're going to drive them out. Tax them out of their very existence. Do I make myself perfectly clear?" Bert glared triumphantly round as he brought his hand down on the table with a conclusive emphasis which made the glasses on the table jump nervously. "This Mrs. Vanderstein of whom I speak," resumed Madame Querterot composedly, "has no land so far as I know. She has only a house in London. But she is rich all the same. One sees it at each step. In the house, what luxury! Such pictures! such furniture! such flowers! And automobiles, and boxes at the opera! Such dresses! And above all, such jewels! Oh, she is very rich, that one." "It's all the same," declared Bert, "whether she spends her money on land, or on clothes, or what not. The point I want to impress on you is that she does spend it, and that while she's living on the fat of the land the rest of us may starve!" He helped himself as he spoke to another plateful of _oeufs à la neige_. Julie watched him, the shadow of a smile playing about her mouth. "Have you seen this lady's jewels, mother?" she asked. "I adore precious stones." "I have seen some of them," said her mother. "To-night her maid brought to her a necklace and bracelets of diamonds, besides a coiffure and rings of great beauty, no doubt without price. But she sent them away again, saying that she would wear others. Those I did not see, but it is certain that she has many, and all wonderful. Every day she wears different ones and, constantly, a string of enormous pearls. Without those last I have never seen her. They are as large as marbles and, to tell the truth, not much more pretty, for my taste. When I tell you that she employs a night watchman, whose sole duty is to patrol the house every night, you will understand that the value of what it contains must be large." "That's just what these capitalists do," cried Bert excitedly. "They lock away thousands of pounds like that when the money ought to be out in the world paying just and equal wages. I should like to see it made a criminal offence to wear jewellery." "But what would happen to the people who make it?" asked Julie. "They would all lose their means of earning a livelihood, is it not so? What would the pearl fisher do, or those who dig precious stones out of the earth? And the polishers and setters? Every industry has a host depending on it for a demand for its labour." "There would be less need for labour," said Bert more gently, as was always the case when he spoke to her, "if the money was taken from the capitalists and divided among the people." "Still----" objected Julie again. Madame Querterot, however, did not propose to listen to an argument on the benefits to be expected from Socialism; she had frequently heard all that Bert had to say on the subject, and it had bored her very considerably. She pushed back her chair and stood up. "It is half-past seven," she said, "we must put on our hats for the theatre. It begins at nine, but we shall take twenty minutes getting there, and I want to have good places. Come and get ready, Julie." CHAPTER VI The two women went upstairs; Bert lit a cigarette, and retired to smoke in the tiny yard behind the house. Soon he heard footsteps descending, and hastily throwing away his cigarette he entered the little room again just as Julie came into it. She had been quicker than her mother. Bert did not waste time in preambles. He knew he only had a few minutes at the best. "Joolie," he began hurriedly, "why do you never let me see you alone? Will you never be any nicer to me?" "Aren't I nice to you, Bertie? I don't mean not to be." "You know quite well what I mean. I want you to like me better. Oh, Joolie, you haven't a notion how fond I am of you. It seemed to come over me all of a sudden that day we walked in the Park, when your mother for once didn't come with us. And since then I haven't had a moment's peace. Not a single solitary moment. Wherever I look, whether it's going to the office, or at my work, or after it's done, I seem to see nothing but you, Joolie, and I don't want to see anything else either." He moved closer to her and she retreated instinctively. "Don't be afraid! I won't touch you," he said with a certain bitterness. "I know you can't bear the sight of me, but I'd give my life to make you happy." "Oh, Bert," she said, and her tone was full of contrition. "It isn't true that I can't bear the sight of you. I like you very much, I do indeed. We are such old friends. And it is so nice of you to like me so much, but why can't we go on just being friends?" "Joolie, Joolie," cried the young man. "You don't understand. I love you, Joolie. I love you so much, dear! Don't you think you could marry me some day? There, I didn't mean to ask you now," he went on quickly, seeing the look on the girl's face, "don't answer me now. I know what you're going to say and I can't bear to hear it. Wait a while and perhaps I shall be able to get you to care for me in time." Before she could reply Madame Querterot's foot was on the stair, and in another moment she came in smiling and arrayed in her best. They set out without further delay and proceeded by a succession of buses to the Strand. Descending there, they made their way into one of the neighbouring streets and took their places in a queue of people who were already waiting for the doors of the theatre to open. Though not by any means the first to enter, they secured good places in the pit and settled down in them to await the beginning of the performance, each of them, in his or her different way, prepared to enjoy the evening to the utmost. When at length the curtain rose they followed the fortunes of the characters with a breathless intensity of interest, and the play itself formed the subject of a heated discussion afterwards, which lasted all the way home, Julie maintaining that an honest course was always desirable whatever excuses might be adduced for other conduct. Bert and Madame Querterot held, it appeared, more elastic opinions, Bert declaring that there were people it was a sin to leave in possession of their ill-gotten gains, and Madame Querterot inclining to the view that if anyone was so stupid as not to be able to keep what they had, small blame need attach to those who were clever enough to take it from them. She upheld this contention by pointing out that no one did blame the gentleman burglar who formed the central figure of the play; the heroine herself, who was assuredly in a high degree the pattern of all the virtues, had easily forgiven his little lapses, slips which had been made entirely for her sake. "For my part," she asserted, "I admire a man of that sort. Not that it is common to find one like him. Most men have too high a regard for the safety of their own skins. But one must admit that the young girl, for whom this brave man took all those risks, was of no ordinary beauty. It is possible that if there were more like her there would also be more lovers, young and ardent, ready to chance prison and the gallows to win the wealth that should make her theirs. Ah, there is no chivalry nowadays," and Madame Querterot heaved a heavy sigh. Possibly she was thinking of the base way in which Eugène had deserted her in the hour of need. "Wealth is not always enough," said Bert disconsolately, "and, anyhow, wealth is an abomination and a snare. In the ideal socialistic state there won't be any such thing. All riches will be equally divided and every one will have enough to live on, but no more. Anyone who wants luxuries will just have to work for them." "You look too far ahead, my young friend," returned Madame Querterot philosophically. They were walking up the dark streets that led to her house, Bert having insisted on seeing them home in spite of protests as to the lateness of the hour and the necessity for his getting up early next morning. "You have brains," she continued, "and you use them, which is not too general. But in this world it is a mistake to show that one is clever. The stupid only dislike one for differing from them in a way that they cannot understand, and clever people actually hate others who dare in this manner to resemble them. If you wish to be loved it is best to appear foolish. No one desires a lover too intelligent to care for their opinions. If you wish to obtain respect do not show yourself unusually brilliant. You will only be thought eccentric or even mad. And finally if you want to make money never allow anyone to suspect that you are not perfectly an idiot. People will be on their guard if they think they have to do with a clever man, but if they think you a fool precautions will seem unnecessary and it will be very easy for you to deal with them to your own advantage." Bert listened to these remarks with more attention than he usually displayed. "Do you really think a man has more chance with a girl if he is foolish and rich?" he asked in a low tone. They were walking behind Julie, the pavement having narrowed so as to make it impossible to continue three abreast. Madame Querterot slackened her pace and fell back a little. "Run on, Julie, my angel," she called out, "and prepare me a cup of coffee. I feel a kind of faintness and will walk more slowly if Bertie will give me his arm." Bert made a gesture of annoyance, and would have left her in pursuit of Julie, who hurried on as she was told, but Madame Querterot clutched at his arm and held him back. "Stay with me, I wish to speak to you," she said, clinging so tightly to him that without roughness he could not have shaken her off. "What is it? I want to speak to Joolie," he said crossly. "You can speak to her any time; listen to me now. You asked me a minute ago if I thought one had more chance with a girl if one was rich." "Yes." He spoke with returning interest. "You do think so, I suppose?" "Bert, let me speak. I must tell you that for some time I have seen clearly that you have a tenderness for my daughter. You wish to marry her, is it not so?" "It is the only wish of my life." "It is easy to see. You show it in each word, in your whole manner towards her. But let me tell you, my friend, that in my country it is not only the consent of a young girl that is sought by a would-be husband. It would have been more _convenable_ if you had approached me, her mother, in this matter." "Madame Querterot, will you help me? Joolie doesn't seem to care about me. Is there any other man?" "There is no other man. Julie has an absurd idea of entering into a religious house, but she is a dutiful daughter and will not go against my wishes in that or any other matter. As regards this question of marriage she will, I am convinced, be guided by me. Ah, how she loves me, that child! There is nothing she would not do to please me. I say to you that Julie is not a girl. She is an angel!" "I know that," grunted Bert; "if you'll help me with her, Madame Querterot, and there's ever anything I can do to show my gratitude, why, you can take it that I'll do it, that's all." "Ah, Bert, now is the time to prove that. Words, words, words! But if it came to the point what would you do, not to show gratitude, but to win the hand of Julie? That is what I ask myself." "I'd do anything. By Jove, I believe there's nothing I would stick at." "Very well. Now, with me as your friend and ally I think you might make certain that my daughter will consent to the marriage. But I, Bert, will never agree to her marrying a poor man. I have other ideas for her, I assure you." "You know I am poor," said Bert. "I despise riches, but for Joolie I wouldn't raise an objection to them if they were in my reach. But you know very well I shall always be poor as long as this beastly capitalist government has its own way. Some day perhaps things will change." "Bert," said Madame Querterot, dropping her voice, "it is yourself who have suggested to me a way by which one might become rich. Supposing I were to tell you that I had a plan; that I knew a way by which in a flash you might gain both riches and Julie, and at the same time show your faith in the truth of your own gospel? What then, Bert? Have you a little courage, my boy? Girls do not understand your modern ideas, that every one should be of an equal poverty; they like to have money, they like what money can give them. Did you not hear Julie say this evening that she adored jewels?" They had reached the door of the shop and Bert turned towards it without answering. But Madame Querterot made as if to continue their walk, and after a moment's hesitation he turned and paced beside her. "I would give her all the diamonds in the world," he said, "if she wanted them and I could get them for her. What do you suppose I care for my ideas, as you call them? Nothing! Oh, nothing matters beside Joolie! Still, I'm hanged," said Bert, "if I can see what you're driving at." "I see a way," replied his companion, "of doing a little good business. For it I need the assistance that a young man like yourself can give. Some one with courage, with determination, and who will not be discouraged by a few apparent difficulties. But to succeed the affair must be kept secret. It is indeed of the most private character. Before I say more, swear to me by your love for Julie that you will die before you repeat a word of what I am going to tell you." "I swear it," said Bert solemnly. Madame Querterot gave one more quick, penetrating glance at his pale face and, apparently reassured by the light that burned in the dark eyes, began to talk again in low, persuasive tones as they paced up and down before the little house. Julie came to the door and cried to them that the coffee was ready; then despairing of an answer she retired to her bedroom, where a light burned for a little while; presently it was extinguished, and Julie in a few minutes was peacefully asleep. But still her mother and her lover walked and turned on the pavement beneath her window. CHAPTER VII The next day, Mrs. Vanderstein, busy with a watering-can among the pots of roses that during the season adorned her balcony, and keeping a sharp look-out on the entrance to Fianti's opposite, was disappointed not to catch another glimpse of Prince Felipe of Targona whom she thought every minute to see issue from beneath the portico. "What can keep him indoors on so fine a day?" she asked herself repeatedly, for again the sun smote down on the city out of a cloudless azure. Having spent the hour immediately after luncheon in this vain expectancy, at the imminent risk of both sunstroke and indigestion, she began to despair of her hopes ever being fulfilled, and went back into the drawing-room, where she threw herself dejectedly into a chair. "If this weather goes on," she said to Barbara, "we might run over to Dieppe for a few days." Mrs. Vanderstein was very much in the habit of making sudden excursions to the other side of the Channel; whenever she was bored at home she would dash off at a moment's notice to Dieppe or Ostend. Barbara enjoyed these trips, but sometimes wished Mrs. Vanderstein would not make up her mind to depart quite at the last minute, as she nearly always did. It was awkward occasionally to have only half an hour given one in which to pack. "Will you go to-day?" she asked, with a shade of anxiety in her voice. "Oh, I don't know," Mrs. Vanderstein answered wearily. "I daresay I may." Barbara walked over to the open window. "There's Madame Justine coming out of Fianti's," she remarked presently. "Really?" said Mrs. Vanderstein, getting up and going to Barbara's side. "I wonder what she can have been doing there?" Madame Querterot was hurrying along the pavement, bag in hand. She looked up at the balcony and made a little smiling bow in response to Mrs. Vanderstein's friendly nod. Then she rounded a corner and was out of sight. "What a good kind face she has," Mrs. Vanderstein said as she turned back into the house. "It would cheer up anyone, that delightful smile. It always does me good to see Madame Justine." "I can't think why you like her so much," said Barbara, as she also came back into the room. "I don't think she looks particularly nice." "Ah, Barbara," said Mrs. Vanderstein, "at your age you are no judge of character. Now I know a good woman when I see one, and I do admire that one. Look at the way she works day and night to support her idle, ungrateful daughter." "I don't suppose she's so ungrateful as her mother makes out," said Barbara. She seemed determined to see no good in poor Madame Querterot. In the cool of the afternoon the two ladies drove in the Park and visited one or two of the houses of their friends. It was past six when they returned home, and for once the masseuse was waiting for them. She came forward as Mrs. Vanderstein entered, and her manner showed some excitement. In the background hovered Amélie, who would have died sooner than allow Madame Querterot to remain alone in her mistress' room, hinting darkly, if vaguely, to the other servants that mysterious and terrible results would have to be expected if such a liberty were accidentally permitted. "Oh, madame," cried Madame Querterot, "I have such amusing news. At all events I hope that you will laugh and not be offended if I repeat it to you." "What is it, Madame Justine?" "Figure to yourself, madame, that this morning I received a summons--but, madame," said Madame Querterot, checking herself on a sudden and casting a look of scarcely veiled malice towards the other occupants of the bedroom, "what I have to tell you is of a nature somewhat private. Is it possible that you permit that I speak with you alone?" "Yes," said Mrs. Vanderstein; "why not, if you wish. Amélie, I will ring when I want you, please. Barbara, do you mind going away till I call you? Thanks so much. I must hear this amusing story of Madame Justine's." Barbara and the maid lost no time in obeying, and left the room; but while the one did so with alacrity, her pride preventing her from showing any curiosity, even for a moment, as to what Madame Querterot might have to relate, Amélie was at no pains to conceal the dislike, almost amounting to hatred, which shone in her eyes as she fixed them in an angry stare on her compatriot before she slowly moved towards the door. Some day she hoped to be revenged on this woman, this odious, talkative bourgeoise, for the way in which she had wormed herself, if not into her mistress' confidence, at all events into such familiar impertinent terms with her; when, if Mrs. Vanderstein could but be brought to feel about her, in her bones, as Amélie felt, she would recognise her for a person to whom an honest woman, let alone a lady at all _comme il faut_, would scorn to address herself. Her rage and indignation continued to augment as the minutes passed and no bell summoned her back to her duties. Though no fonder of work than her fellows, Amélie's whole soul rose in revolt against the idea that she could be dispensed with. And when at last, after an hour's waiting, both she and Miss Turner were recalled to the bedroom, one of them at least re-entered it with murderous feelings in her heart, which she vented by making faces at the masseuse behind the ladies' backs and vowing to herself that the day of vengeance could not be much longer delayed. As for Barbara, she was struck immediately she returned to her friend by a suppressed excitement, a restlessness of manner, which seemed to betray that there had been something of personal interest in Madame Querterot's confidences. She did not like, however, to ask what the Frenchwoman had had to tell in private, and as Mrs. Vanderstein did not volunteer any information, but was very silent all the evening, fully occupied apparently with her own thoughts, Barbara was not sorry when bedtime came. "Do you still think of running over to Dieppe?" she asked, as she said good night. "To Dieppe!" cried her friend, "good gracious, no! I have all kinds of engagements, and you have forgotten that my box is taken for the gala performance of the opera on Monday. I shall certainly stay in London for the present!" Clearly Mrs. Vanderstein had forgotten the half-formed intention of the afternoon. Well, that would not prevent her changing her mind again, thought Barbara, and they might be off across the Channel in a day or two in spite of to-night's decision. But days elapsed and no more was said on the subject. Every evening saw Madame Querterot arrive as usual; but now there was always a private interview between her and Mrs. Vanderstein, which left that lady flushed and smiling. Barbara could not imagine what was happening to cause all these changes. She disliked Madame Querterot and vaguely resented the secret that she felt was being kept from her. Why should Mrs. Vanderstein have secrets with this horrid little Frenchwoman and leave her out in the cold? How could she allow the woman's familiarity? Barbara was both piqued and disgusted at the whole trend of the matter. On Sunday they walked in the Park with a certain Mrs. Britterwerth, a friend of Mrs. Vanderstein. After a day or two of clouds and rain, during which people shivered and said it was like winter, the weather had cleared again to the radiant brightness which distinguished that summer from those preceding and following it. The Park was gay with light dresses and brilliant coloured parasols. The flowers, too, were at their best--the rain had come at the right moment for them and the beds were a vision of beauty--but they received scanty attention, as usual, people flocking to the other side of the road, where, to tell the truth, it was very pleasant on the green lawns beneath the trees. The three ladies strolled up and down in the shade. Mrs. Vanderstein called it taking exercise, and did it once a week for the sake of her figure. Mrs. Britterwerth was really stout and would gladly have sat down after a turn or two, but was not allowed to by her more energetic friend. "Consider, my dear, what a lot of good it does us," said Mrs. Vanderstein. Here, presently, they were joined by Joseph Sidney, and soon Barbara found herself walking on ahead with him, while the two others followed them at a little distance. She had not seen him since the night at Covent Garden, and she noticed with concern that he looked worn and worried. "I saw that Averstone did no good," she said, as soon as they were out of earshot. "No," said Sidney shortly. "Did you back him?" she asked, and knew the answer before he spoke. "Oh yes," he said, "I backed him all right. He'd have won, I daresay, if I hadn't spoilt his chance with my rotten luck." Barbara walked on in silence for a minute. "I'm sorry," she said at length. "It was my fault. I gave you the tip." "Nonsense," he answered almost roughly. "Your money's gone too." "Did you lose much last week?" she asked abruptly. "So much," he replied, "that it's no good trying to hide it from you. It's bound to come out in a few days. The truth is that I've lost every penny my uncle left me and every sixpence I had before. Worse than that! I've lost money I can't pay, and I shall not only have to leave the regiment, but----" he broke off bitterly and slashed with his stick at the grass. "Well, you know what it means," he finished lamely. "Oh, it can't be as bad as that!" cried Barbara. "Tell Mrs. Vanderstein. She will help you. How I wish I had some money!" "Do you think she would help me?" asked Sidney. "She would let me blow my brains out first. You don't realise, perhaps, what a violent prejudice she has against betting. Look at this letter. I got it the day after I saw you at the opera." He pulled from his pocket a large sheet of blue writing paper on which Barbara at once recognised Mrs. Vanderstein's unmistakable handwriting. "MY DEAR JOSEPH," it ran, "I hope there is no truth in what I hear about your betting on race-horses. It is a practice I deplore with all my heart and I should be very sorry to see you descend to such unprincipled depths. Without entering upon a long dissertation, I must tell you that, unless you henceforward sever all connection with bookmakers and their kind, I shall think it my duty to depart from your uncle's wishes and leave my money away from you altogether. It pains me to write like this and I trust it is unnecessary, but it is best to have things understood. "Your affectionate aunt, "RUTH VANDERSTEIN." Barbara read the letter in horror-struck silence. "That's the sort of help I should get from her," said Sidney, as she gave it back to him. "Something must be done," she repeated dully; "can't you borrow from some one?" "I've been losing steadily for three years," replied the young man, "and I had to go to the money-lenders long ago. I can't get another penny from them. It's rather funny if you think of how my uncle made his money, isn't it? But perhaps you don't know," he went on hastily, seeing the blank look on Barbara's face. "So that's how it is," he started afresh. "It's all up with me, you see. I'm absolutely done for unless I can get £10,000 by next week. I'm pretty desperate, I can tell you. There's nothing I wouldn't do to get the money." He spoke in emphatic tones, and several of the passing crowd turned their heads to see who it was who so loudly published the unfortunate state of his financial affairs. Sidney was quick to realise the attention he was attracting, and lowered his voice to a more confidential pitch. Neither he nor his companion specially remarked one among those who glanced up at them on hearing the outspoken words, a small spare man with a clean-shaven face and brown hair fading to a premature greyness. Nor if they had done so would either of them have recognised in this correctly dressed, spick and span Londoner, whose well-fitting morning coat and patent leather boots so exactly resembled those worn by Sidney himself and nearly every smart young man to be met with in the Park that day, the well-known private detective, Mr. Gimblet, the man most dreaded by the criminal class of the entire kingdom. Walking at a more rapid pace than they, he was in the act of overtaking the couple as they strolled along, when something in Sidney's voice, a note of despairing recklessness more than the words themselves that he uttered, aroused his interest and wakened his ever ready curiosity. He continued to walk on without slackening his speed, and did not look back until he had advanced some fifty yards. Then he hesitated, loitered a moment, and finally sat down on one of the green chairs, which stood conveniently unoccupied, just before Sidney and Barbara strolled unconcernedly by. Before they had passed, Gimblet had made a quick survey of the young man's face, on which signs of worry and anxiety were very plainly to be noted. "I wonder who it is," he thought; and continued, when they had gone on, to gaze meditatively after the young people. In his turn he failed to observe two ladies who came up in the opposite direction to that in which his head was turned. Mrs. Vanderstein observed his intent expression as she approached, and following the direction of his eyes murmured to her friend: "Do you see that man staring at Barbara? He looks quite moonstruck. She attracts a great deal of attention. Such a dear girl, I don't know what I should do without her." "You are so good to her," murmured her companion. "The question is rather, what would she do without you? But she is certainly an attractive young person, especially to men. I wonder that you are not afraid to let that delightful nephew of yours see so much of her." To Barbara, walking mechanically by Sidney's side, it seemed suddenly as if some strange darkness hung over the face of nature. The lightness of heart with which she had gone forth out of the house, the high spirits natural to her that constituted the only legacy of any value which she had inherited from her father, deserted her now to make place for distress on the young man's account. Nor was it only at the thought of the trouble that had fallen on him that she recoiled horror-struck and that the sunlight took on a quality of gloom, which made the present hour such a dismal one and those of the future to appear encircled in a dusk that deepened, as it receded, till it merged into that utter obscurity over whose boundaries Joe seemed already to be slipping and vanishing. It was the effect of his disaster on her own life that chiefly terrified and shocked her. What would she do without the only man friend of anything like her own age whom she knew in London and whose tastes so much resembled her own? She would hear no more sporting gossip, be cut off from her one remaining link with the racing world. What would she do without him if he disappeared as he threatened? What would she do without the only person in the world she cared to see? The only person in the world she cared for.... The knowledge came to her suddenly like a revelation and she stumbled for a moment in her walk as she realised with a flash of self-comprehension the full meaning of her dread. In that instant she saw and realised that to lose Joe Sidney would be, for her, to lose all. He, occupied in a recital of his troubles, noticed nothing beyond his own almost unconscious relief in speaking at length of the worries he had for so long kept to himself. It was a comfort to have so sympathetic a listener. Still, not much comfort could be extracted even from that, with the crisis in his life so real and so near at hand, and he was soon repeating his earlier assertions that it was no use talking, and that there was no hope for him of anything but absolute ruin. "Your aunt. She must, oh, she must help you!" Barbara heard herself saying again. Again Sidney shook his head. "You don't understand her. She will act in accordance with her ideas. We Jews----" "You are not a Jew!" Her voice was indignant. "My mother was a Jewess. You don't suppose I am ashamed of it? We Jews have stronger convictions--opinions--principles--call them what you like--than Christians are in the habit of hampering themselves with. We are more apt, I should say, to live up to our theories. My aunt looks on gambling as the most deadly of sins. Where you or I perceive a green track and a few bookies, she sees, I do believe, a personage with horns and a tail, brandishing a pitchfork. I'm not at all sure she isn't right. I am at least quite sure that if I could get out of this mess I'd never go near a race-course or have so much as a look at the odds again as long as I lived. It's not much use saying that now, is it? But believe me, help from Aunt Ruth is out of the question. You may scratch it. This is the end of all for me. I shall just have to go. Drop out, as many better men have had to do before me." "Oh don't talk like that," cried Barbara. She had pulled herself together, and was thinking clearly and rapidly. "Listen to me. If you can't go to Mrs. Vanderstein with the truth, can't you go to her with"--she hesitated--"something else?" "A lie," said Joe bluntly. "I don't wonder you think I'd not be above a lie if it could save me. But can you suggest one with which I could go to her and ask for £10,000? If you can, let's hear it, for goodness' sake. But of course you can't. She's not an absolute fool!" He laughed again, a short, hard laugh. "You don't know Mrs. Vanderstein as well as I do, though you are a relation," said Barbara. "She has weak points, you know. At least she has one weakness. I wonder if you know what it is?" They had come to the Corner and paused by the rails. Instinctively Barbara turned about, looking to see if Mrs. Vanderstein were within earshot. "Why, look at her now," she cried. Sidney, too, turned, and followed the direction of her gaze. His aunt and her friend had reached a point some fifty yards behind them. Mrs. Vanderstein's face was radiant. A rosy colour dyed her cheeks. Her eyes sparkled, when for a moment she lifted them and glanced in the direction of the roadway. But for the most part they seemed to be modestly cast down and Mrs. Vanderstein appeared interested solely in the toes of her shoes; these, though of the most pleasing aspect, did not entirely justify the delight the lady seemed to feel in them. She may, perhaps, have been wondering whether or no they touched the ground, for so lightly did she tread that a mere spectator might have felt very grave doubts on the subject. She looked, indeed, to be walking upon air. Even Sidney, unobservant as he commonly was of the expressions of people to whom he was not at the moment talking, could not help noticing her unusual demeanour. Indeed she looked the incarnation of happiness. "What's the matter with her?" he asked, turning again to the girl beside him. For answer she made a movement of her hand towards the road. "Do you see that?" she inquired. There was very little traffic in the Park on that Sunday evening. A motor or two rolled through, but they were few and far between. Joe saw nothing remarkable or that could, to his thinking, in any way account for his aunt's strange looks. One carriage only was driving by, a barouche occupied by an elderly lady and three foreign-looking men. There was nothing about them to attract attention. "What in the world is there to see?" he said, in bewilderment. "In that carriage are Prince Felipe of Targona and his mother," said Barbara, "and Mrs. Vanderstein gets as excited as that whenever she sees any kind of a Royal personage. I don't think," she added truthfully, "that I ever saw her show it quite so plainly, but you can see the effect they have on her. Royalty is what really interests her most in life. You wouldn't believe how much she is thrilled by it. It is an infatuation, almost a craze." "I had no notion she was like that," said Joe, with an air of some disgust. "I should never have thought she was such a frightful snob." "I don't think it is snobbishness with Mrs. Vanderstein," said Barbara. "It's more a sort of romanticness. But I don't suppose you understand. The point is that there's nothing she wouldn't do to meet any kind of a little princeling. And if she once met him, there's nothing he could ask she wouldn't give. After all," she went on in an argumentative tone, "she ought not to let you be ruined. I am sure Mr. Vanderstein never would have. And £10,000 is really so little to her. Why, her pearls alone are worth far more. What does a sum like that matter? It's only four or five hundred a year. She wouldn't miss it a bit." "I daresay," said Sidney, "but I don't see what good that does me." "Have you got a friend you can trust who would stretch a point to help you?" "Not a decimal point as far as cash is concerned. In other ways, I daresay I have got one or two. They'd help me all right, poor chaps, if they'd got any money themselves." "It's not money. I mean some one who would take a little trouble." "Oh yes, I think I can raise one of that sort. For that matter," said Sidney, "if you don't mind my calling you a friend, I think no one could want a better one. It's no end good of you to be so sympathetic and let me bore you with my rotten affairs." The girl turned away her face. "Of course I am a friend," she said, "but you will want a man, if my idea is any good. Now listen, I have got a plan." Barbara hesitated. She was very conscious that the idea which had come to her was not one which would commend itself to Joe. A few hours before she would have scornfully rejected the suggestion that she herself could ever be brought to tolerate such an expedient, but now everything was changed and all her convictions of right and wrong were shaken and tottering, if not entirely swept aside by the fear of the imminent danger to the man she loved. Her one feeling now was that at any cost the peril must be averted, and the question of the moment was how to represent her design in such terms as would prevail on him to see in it a path that a man might conceivably follow and yet retain some remnant of self-esteem. Very carefully, choosing her words with deliberation, she disclosed to Sidney the plan that to her seemed to offer the only chance of setting his affairs in order. As she expected, he refused at first to entertain the idea at all; undismayed, she returned to the attack and persisted, with Jesuitical reasonings and syllogisms, in showing him that in the method she proposed lay his only hope of obtaining the necessary money. Very slowly and reluctantly he allowed himself to be persuaded. No one could have listened for half an hour to Barbara's cajolements without giving way. At the first sign of his weakening she redoubled her efforts, and as she talked, refusing to allow herself to be discouraged by Joe's objections and the difficulties he pointed out, he gradually succumbed to her wheedling, and once he had thrust his scruples into the background became nearly as enthusiastic as she was herself. Before they parted the plan was worked out in every point. It remained but to take the faithful necessary friend of Joe's into their confidence. This, Joe told her, had better be a subaltern in his regiment, by name Baines, luckily in London at the present moment. "As long," he said with a return to former doubts, "as old Baines is equal to the job. There's not much he'd stick at, though." "Yes," said Barbara, and was silent a minute during which the difficulties of carrying out her plan successfully seemed to swarm around her with quite a new vigour. "If anything should turn up," she faltered, "to make this idea impossible, you will try telling Mrs. Vanderstein the truth, won't you? It is a chance, after all." "Well, it can't make things worse, I suppose," he agreed. "I hope it won't come to that. I don't think it will now; but if it does, I promise, if it pleases you, that I will make a clean breast of it to her." "Thank you," she murmured; and then as they turned, "there she is now, making signs that we should go back." CHAPTER VIII When they had driven away Sidney wandered off beyond the outskirts of the crowd to a lonely spot among the trees, where he walked up and down, whistling softly to himself and pausing from time to time to aim a blow at the head of an unoffending daisy with his stick. "What an ass I am," he exclaimed presently in heartfelt tones, but a listener who had fancied he was alluding to his foolish gambling on the turf would have been mistaken. His thoughts were engaged on quite a different and much pleasanter subject. How lovely she had looked! How sorry she had seemed! What sympathy had shone in her eyes as she listened to his discreditable troubles. How determined she had been to find a way out; surely she could not show such interest in the concerns of all her acquaintances. The way out, by the by, now that he thought of it dispassionately, was hardly, perhaps, quite one that a man could take after all and keep the little self-respect left to him; but it was overwhelmingly sweet that she should have lost sight so completely of all considerations except the one of retrieving his fortunes. He had always liked and admired her, of course, but never till to-day had he realised what a loyal, brave spirit dwelt behind those sea-blue, childish eyes. There was no girl in the world like her, and was it unduly conceited of him to think she must like him a little to show such agitation at the tale of his misfortunes? And here he frowned and pulled himself up short. What business had he, a ruined gambler, a man whose career was, to all intents and purposes, at an end, to think twice about any girl, much less to feel so absurdly happy? He determined heroically to banish Barbara from his thoughts, and in pursuance of that excellent resolution walked off across the Park at such a tearing speed that little boys whom he passed asked derisively where the other competitors in the race had got to. * * * * * It was on the following morning that Mrs. Vanderstein made certain confidences to Barbara, thereby dashing to earth the high hopes she had built of rescuing Sidney from the ruinous meshes in which he had entangled himself. To that which Mrs. Vanderstein told her the girl listened at first with incredulity, but a scoffing comment was received with such extreme disfavour that she dared not venture another; and finally, as she heard more and fuller accounts and Mrs. Vanderstein, chafing under a sense of her friend's disbelief, went so far as to produce written evidence of the truth of the story, Barbara was no longer able to deny to herself that the astounding tale was undoubtedly not the joke she had taken it for, but represented the plain facts of the case. With increasing dismay she heard all that Mrs. Vanderstein had to tell her, seeing her hopes for Joe vanish more completely at each new piece of information; and when at the end of the tale her friend reproached her for her lack of sympathy she had much ado to prevent herself from bursting into unavailing tears. She was able, however, to summon enough self-control to find some words of affection, which seemed to fill the requirements of the situation; at all events they seemed to satisfy Mrs. Vanderstein. The girl only made one stipulation, and on this point remained obstinate till the elder lady, failing to shake her determination, was at last obliged to yield a reluctant consent. As soon as she could escape, Barbara, making the first excuse that occurred to her, ran to her room, where she pinned on a hat without so much as waiting to glance in the looking-glass. Then, snatching up a latch key, she let herself out of the hall door and hurried to the nearest post office. Several telegraph forms were filled in, only to be torn up and discarded before she worded the message to her satisfaction; and even when she handed it in under the barrier--which protects young ladies of the post office from too close contact with a public who might, were it not for these precautions, be exasperated into showing signs of violence--she was still regarding it doubtfully, and her fingers lingered on the paper as if reluctant to let it go. It was addressed to Joseph Sidney, and covered more than one form. "Plan completely spoilt will explain meanwhile try telling your aunt the truth as you promised she will be in at teatime and it will be best to get it over one way or another." Would he come? she asked herself, as she went back to the house; and all the afternoon the same question echoed in her mind. Would he come? And, if he came and did not succeed in enlisting Mrs. Vanderstein's sympathies, what then? There seemed no other possible course. In vain, as she sat beside her friend in the motor, she racked her brains to imagine some way in which Joe could still raise the money if this attempt failed. But she had his assurance that he had already exhausted all practicable means. Mrs. Vanderstein wished to visit a shop in the Strand, and their way to it led them past the theatre that Madame Querterot had visited a week before, in the company of her daughter and her daughter's suitor. Large placards ornamented the front of the house, depicting some of the more thrilling episodes of the play. These were varied by photographs of the young actor who played the principal rôle. He was portrayed in immaculate evening dress and in the act of opening the safe; another picture showed him snapping his fingers at the officers of the law; and yet a third displayed him as he took--in the fourth act--the heroine to his arms. Mrs. Vanderstein and Barbara had seen the play, which was making a roaring success, on more than one occasion. Mrs. Vanderstein smiled as she observed the posters. "That is a good play," she said to her companion. "I can hardly help screaming when he escapes by the window as the police burst into the room. It is almost too exciting. And he, the gentleman burglar, you know, is so good-looking. One can't help being on his side, can one? And of course one is intended to be. All the honest people are so terribly dull. Besides, of course, he was a count and quite charming really. I don't wonder the heroine forgave him." She put down her parasol, as they turned into a shady street. "Do you know, Barbara," she went on, "I think that sort of play might do a lot of harm. It can't be right to make dishonesty appear so attractive." Barbara made no reply, and Mrs. Vanderstein, glancing at her in surprise, was still more astonished at the strange look in the girl's eyes. "What do you think about it?" she asked again. "It depends on what you call harm," Barbara answered slowly, and as they pulled up at their destination the conversation came to an end. They went home early and had barely finished tea when Sidney was announced. He looked rather pale and shook hands with Barbara without speaking as she made a hasty excuse and left the room. Going into another sitting-room, she waited in an agony of suspense till the drawing-room door should open and the interview be over for good or ill. She had not long to wait. Five minutes had scarcely passed before she heard the sound of hurried footsteps descending the stairs, and a moment later the front door banged behind Sidney's retreating figure. At the same time a bell pealed violently and, before it could be answered, Barbara caught the sound of the swish of silken skirts and the light tread of Mrs. Vanderstein's feet as she ran down a few steps and called over the banisters to the butler. "Blake," she called, as that portly person emerged from the door leading to the basement. "Is that you, Blake?" "Yes, ma'am." "Blake, I am not at home in future to Mr. Joseph Sidney. You are never to let him come into this house again. Do you understand?" "Very good, ma'am." Blake's tones were as imperturbed as if he were receiving an order to post a letter. "And tell the footmen. I will not see him again on any account whatever. Let it be clearly understood. And, Blake, please telephone at once to Sir Gregory Aberhyn Jones and say, if it is convenient to him, I should like to see him immediately. Ask him to come at once; or to come to dinner; or to the opera. No," she corrected herself, "not to the opera to-night. But ask him to come and see me before I start if he possibly can. It is most important." "Yes, ma'am." Blake showed no surprise: in moments of distress his mistress always telephoned to Sir Gregory Aberhyn Jones. Mrs. Vanderstein, still in a state of great agitation, retreated to write a letter before dressing for the opera, a matter that demanded, to-night of all nights, both time and undistracted attention. When she descended to the dining-room all traces of the disturbance caused by Sidney's visit had vanished from her face; and her expression was again one of joyful expectation, as it had been throughout the day. After writing a hurried note, she had entirely dismissed all memory of her husband's nephew. It was natural that, in the contest with other interests so enthralling as those which that evening filled the mind of his uncle's widow, Sidney should cease to occupy a place in Mrs. Vanderstein's thoughts; should become, as he would have expressed it, an "also ran." What was more remarkable was the fact that Barbara's countenance, when she took her place at the early dinner, wore a look of pleasant anticipation almost equalling that of her friend, very different from the signs of anxiety and distress that had been visible upon it during the earlier part of the day. Mrs. Vanderstein had seen nothing of the weeping figure which, after Joe's dismissal, lay with its face buried in the pillows on Barbara's bed trying to stifle the great sobs that shook it in spite of every effort, or even she, preoccupied as she was, would have felt astonished at so complete a recovery of spirits. The change, indeed, had been instantaneous and coincided with the moment, when, in the midst of her grief, a sudden idea had flashed into Barbara's mind, an inspiration, it seemed, that immediately smoothed away all trouble and made plain the way by which Sidney's difficulties should be removed. How was it possible that she had not thought of it before? The knowledge that Joe would never agree to the means she proposed to take, that the persuasions and sophistries of yesterday would be of no use here, that it would be impossible even to broach the subject to him, she swept from her impetuously. There was no need that he should ever suspect her hand in the matter. Care must be taken; she must act with prudence and caution, and all would be well. One thought only held her mind to the exclusion of all else, the wish to protect and save this boy whom she loved from the consequences of his own folly. Nothing was worth considering except this. No fear of the possible effect on her own life shook her resolution, for what, she thought, is life or for that matter death, if it does not imply the prolongation on the one hand, or, on the other, the cutting short of the ties of affection. She remembered the reckless air with which Joe had said that this business would be the end of all for him, and with a shudder she told herself that the words could only have one meaning. If by sacrificing her life his could be saved, she would not hesitate to give it. Here plain to her eye was the opportunity to serve him, and whatever the result might be to herself she did not shrink from it. As she dressed for the evening, Barbara smiled gladly to herself and sang softly a little song. One thought disturbed her. Sidney was unaware that his salvation was so near. She could not bear to think of him now, worried and despairing. Yet how could she reassure him without betraying herself and the great idea? With a little frown Barbara mused over this question, as she stuck a paste comb that Mrs. Vanderstein had given her into the masses of her thick fair hair. Presently she scrawled a few words upon a sheet of paper, and hastily folding it into an envelope tucked it into the front of her dress; then, fearing she was late, she ran down the stairs. "Sir Gregory Aberhyn Jones is out of town, ma'am," Blake was saying as she entered the room. "Oh well, never mind now," said Mrs. Vanderstein. Dinner that evening was a silent meal. Mrs. Vanderstein, gloriously arrayed, sat smiling abstractedly at nothing from one end of the small table. So preoccupied was she that she forgot to eat, and Blake was obliged to ask her repeatedly whether she would partake of a dish before she could be brought to notice that it was being handed to her. Once, as, recalled suddenly to the present, she brought her thoughts back with a start from their wanderings and turned with some trivial remark towards Barbara, she noticed with a faint feeling of amusement that the girl was as much engrossed in her own imaginings as she was herself, and was sitting absently pulling a flower to pieces, her great eyes fixed vacantly on the shining pearls that swung suspended from the neck of her friend. They started in good time, Barbara begging to be allowed to stop for one minute at a post office on the way. She had, she said, forgotten to reply to an invitation, and thought that now it was so late she had better send an answer by wire. She gave the message, which was already written out and in a sealed envelope, to the footman, together with some money, and told him to hand it in as it was, and not to waste time in waiting to see it accepted. The man was back in a minute, and they drove on, to take their places a few minutes later in the long string of motors and carriages which was slowly advancing to the doors of the Covent Garden opera house. CHAPTER IX Mr. Gimblet lived in a flat in the neighbourhood of Whitehall. It was a fad of his to be more comfortably housed than most solitary men. The situation was conveniently near to Scotland Yard, where officials were much in the habit of requiring to see him at odd moments. The view from the windows, overlooking the river, was delightful to one of cultivated and artistic propensities, and the rooms, large and well-proportioned, were capable of displaying to advantage the old and valuable pictures and furniture with which it was the detective's delight to surround himself. Much of his time was spent in curiosity shops, and he was among the first to discover that former happy hunting ground of the bargain seeker--the Caledonian market. Many an impatient member of the Force, sent round from the "Yard" to ask Mr. Gimblet's assistance in some obscure case, had, after kicking his heels for an hour or two in the hall, left the flat in desperation, only to meet the detective coming up the stairs with a dusky, dust-covered picture in his hand, or hugging to his breast a piece of ancient china. The younger son of a Midland family, which had moderately enriched itself in the course of the preceding century by commercial transactions in which a certain labour-saving machine for the weaving industries had played a large part, Mr. Gimblet had received the usual public school education, and had spent two or three subsequent years at Oxford. His artistic propensities had always been strongly marked, but his family showing much opposition to his becoming an artist, and he himself having a modest idea of his own genius and doubting his ability to make his way very high up the ladder of success by the aid of talent which he knew to be somewhat limited, he had ended by going into an architect's office, where he had worked with interest and enjoyment for several more years. It was by accident that he discovered his capacity for tracking the most wary of criminals to his hiding place and for discovering the authors of mysterious and deeply plotted crimes. It happened that a workman employed in the building of a house for which Gimblet had provided the design was found murdered in circumstances as peculiar as they were sinister. There appeared to be no clue to the author of the deed, and after a week or two the official investigators had confessed among themselves that they were completely at a loss. To Gimblet, visiting the scene of the crime in his capacity of architect--but not without an unwonted and hitherto unknown quickening of the pulse--a piece of board nailed upright where it should have been horizontal had proved immediately suggestive; and its removal had brought to light certain hastily concealed objects, which with one or two previously unnoticed trifles had resulted in the capture and ultimate hanging of the murderer. This success had led the young man to feel an interest in other mysterious affairs of the same nature; and it was not long before he found the task of assisting the police in such researches so much more profitable and engrossing than his work as an architect, that he gradually came to give more and more of his leisure to the attempt to discover secrets and to solve problems which at first sight seemed to offer no solution. By the time he was thirty there was scarcely a crime of any importance that he was not called upon to assist in bringing home to its perpetrator; and he had entirely abandoned the pursuit of architectural learning for that of criminal mankind. He refused an invitation to become attached to the official staff, although this was conveyed in terms that were in the highest degree flattering, preferring to be at liberty to decide for himself whether or no he should take up a case. It was the sensational and odd that attracted him; and he found that quite enough of this came his way to make his occupation an extremely profitable one. Early on Tuesday afternoon Gimblet sat in his dining-room, contemplating with some satisfaction a large dish of strawberries and a pot of cream sent him by a Devonshire friend. He was finishing a luncheon which he considered well earned, as that morning he had discovered in a narrow back street in Lambeth, and purchased for a mere song, a little picture black with age and dirt, in which his hopeful eye discerned a crowd of small but masterfully painted figures footing it to the strains of a fiddle upon the grass under a spreading tree. Gimblet told himself that it was in all probability from the brush of Teniers, and he had propped it on the dining-room mantelpiece so that in the intervals of eating he could refresh his eyes as well as his body. Beside him lay the day's paper which he had hardly had time to read before going out that morning. He heaped cream upon his strawberries, sprinkled them with sugar, and took, in succession, a spoonful of the mixture, a look at his picture, and a glance at the paper. With a contented sigh he repeated the process. At the moment he had no work in hand, and no one more thoroughly enjoyed an occasional loaf. It was good, he felt, to have nothing to do for once; to have time to idle; to eat greedily delicious food; to spend as many hours as he chose in the dusty recesses of second-hand shops; to do a little painting sometimes; even to be able to arrange beforehand to play a game of golf. Gimblet had an excellent eye, and had been rather good at games in early days. He seldom had time now and, if he did go down to a golf ground occasionally in the afternoons, had to resign himself to play with anyone he could find, as he never knew till the last minute whether he would be able to get away. He thought of going this afternoon, and looked at his watch. There would be a train from Waterloo in half an hour. Just time to finish his strawberries and catch it. That picture would look well when he had cleaned it. He took up the paper again. It must have been a fine sight last night at Covent Garden. And what a list of singers. Gimblet, who loved music, wished he had been there. "The Verterexes might have asked me to their box," he said to himself. "Life is full of ingratitude. After all I did for them." And then it struck him that he had not done much for the Verterexes after all, beyond nearly arresting Mr. Verterex by mistake for a murder he had not committed. Gimblet laughed. Then his thoughts reverted lazily to the pleasures of loafing. "I think I shall give up work," he said to himself. "Why not? I have enough money put by to keep me, with economy, in moderate comfort. Not quite so many strawberries perhaps," he added regretfully, taking another mouthful, "but what I want is leisure. Yes. I am decided I will do no more work. Let the police catch its own burglars!" He spoke aloud, and defiantly, addressing himself to the picture. At that moment his servant came into the room. "A gentleman very anxious to see you, sir," he said. "I have shown him into the library." "Ask him to come in here if he's in a hurry," said Gimblet. "I haven't finished lunch." A minute later the man opened the door again, announcing: "Major Sir Gregory Aberhyn Jones." Major Sir Gregory Aberhyn Jones was a little man with a pink complexion and a small brown moustache. He was short and rather plumper than he could wish, but carried himself very uprightly and with a great sense of his own importance, glaring at those who might be so obtuse as not immediately to recognise it with such concentrated disapproval that it was usual for the offenders to realise their mistake in the quickest possible time. Behind a fussy, self-satisfied exterior he hid a fund of kindness and good nature seldom to be met with. Sir Gregory prided himself on his youthful appearance, was, in his turn, a source of some pride to one of the best tailors in London, took remarkable interest in his ties and boots, trained his remaining hair in the way it should go, and, though he was sixty-five, flattered himself that he looked not a day over fifty-nine. "I am in luck to find you, Mr. Gimblet," he said, advancing with outstretched hand as Gimblet rose to receive him. "But this is a sad occasion, a very sad occasion, I fear." "Dear me," said Gimblet, "I'm sorry to hear that. But won't you sit down? I thought as my man said you were in a hurry you would rather come in here than wait for me. May I offer you some strawberries? No? I'm sorry I can't give you any wine, but I'm a teetotaller, you know. Don't have any in the house. Afraid you'll think me faddy. And now that the servant has gone, may I ask what is the sad event which has given me the pleasure of seeing you?" "Bad habit, drinking water," commented Sir Gregory, seating himself in an arm-chair by the fire-place. "But nowadays young men have no heads. They can't stand it, that's what it is. Show them three or four glasses of port and they say it gives them a headache. Absurd, sir! The country is rotten through and through. The men can't eat, they can't drink, they can't even dance! They stroll about a ball-room now in a way that would make you sick. In my days we used to valse properly. But they don't dance the _deux-temps_ any more, I'm told. They say it makes them giddy! Giddy! Rotten constitutions, that's what we suffer from nowadays. It's the same with all this talk of reforming the army. Compulsory service indeed," the major snorted. "What should we want compulsory service for? In my day one Englishman was as good as twenty Germans or any kind of foreigner. At least he would have been if we'd had a European war, which as it happened was not the case while I was in the Service. But now there are actually people who think that if it comes to a fight it would be an advantage for us to have as many men as the enemy. They ought to be ashamed of themselves, if there's any truth in it. No, no, the army doesn't need reforming, take my word for it. There are a few alterations which I could suggest in the uniforms which would make all the difference in the world, but except for that, what I say is, let sleeping dogs lie." Having delivered himself of these remarks, Sir Gregory felt in his pocket, drew forth a cigar case, selected a cigar and asked for a match. "Did you come to persuade me to your views on compulsory service?" asked Gimblet pleasantly as he continued to devour his strawberries, which were now nearly all gone. "Because I'm afraid it's no good. You can't possibly convince me that its adoption is not a vital necessity to the nation." "I'm sorry to hear you think that," said the other, "for I have the highest opinion of your intellect. Believe me, when you discovered the frauds that were being perpetrated at the Great Continental Bank last year, I marked you down, Mr. Gimblet, as the man I should consult in case of need. And it is to consult you that I am here. I said it was a sad occasion. Well, it is sad for me, but I am not yet, as a matter of fact, quite sure whether or no it is desperately so. What has happened, in a word, is this. A lady to whom I am deeply attached has disappeared." "Disappeared?" said Gimblet, pushing back his chair. He had eaten the last of the strawberries. "May I ask who the lady is--a relation of yours?" "Not exactly. She is a Mrs. Vanderstein, for whom, as I have just said, I have a great regard, I may say an affection. In fact," said Sir Gregory, leaning forward and speaking in confidential tones, "I don't mind telling you that she is the lady I have chosen to be the future Lady Aberhyn Jones." "Indeed. You are engaged to marry her?" "Not precisely engaged," admitted Sir Gregory, with a slightly troubled look. As a matter of strict accuracy, he had proposed to Mrs. Vanderstein about three times a year ever since the death of her husband; but Mrs. Vanderstein, although tempted by his title, had already been the wife of one man twice her age and did not intend to repeat the experiment. Still, his friendship was dear to her; he was the only baronet of her acquaintance and she liked to have him about the house. He had been a director on the board of one of her husband's companies, and, when introduced by him, her pretty face and amiable disposition had quite captured Sir Gregory's heart, so that he had cultivated Mr. Vanderstein's society to such good purpose as to become a constant habitué of the house in Grosvenor Street. After Mr. Vanderstein's death he lost no more time than decency demanded in proposing to his widow; and, though she refused to marry him, and refused over and over again, yet she did it in so sympathetic a manner and was so kind in spite of her obstinacy that Sir Gregory believed her absence of alacrity in accepting his hand to be prompted by anything rather than a lack of affection. She treated him as her best friend and consulted him on every question of business, to the wise conduct of which her own shrewdness was a far better guide, and had imperceptibly fallen into the habit of never making a decision of any importance without first threshing out the pros and cons in conversation with him. Nothing so strengthened her faith in the soundness of her own judgment as his disapproval of any course she intended to adopt. "For some reason," Sir Gregory continued after a pause, "Mrs. Vanderstein has never consented to an actual engagement. It is that which makes me so uneasy now. Can it be--Mr. Gimblet, I give you my word I feel ashamed of mentioning such a suspicion even to you--but can it be that she has fled with another?" He uttered the last words in such a tragic tone that Gimblet, though he felt inclined to smile, restrained the impulse, and, summoning up all the sympathy at his command, inquired again: "Will you not explain the circumstances to me a little more fully? When did the lady vanish? Have you any reason to think she did not go alone? Was there some kind of understanding between you, and what did it amount to?" "I will be perfectly frank with you," said Sir Gregory, "much the best thing in these cases is to be absolutely candid. You agree with me there? I thought you would. At the same time where a lady is concerned--you follow me? One must avoid anything that looks like giving her away. But in this case there is really no reason why I should conceal anything from you. Mrs. Vanderstein has never accepted my proposals. On the contrary she has refused to marry me on each of the occasions when I have suggested it to her. You ask me why? My dear sir, I cannot reply to that question. Who can account for a woman's whims? Not I, sir, not I. Nor you either; if you will allow me to say so." Sir Gregory's hands and eyes were uplifted in bewilderment as he considered the inexplicable behaviour of woman in general and of Mrs. Vanderstein in particular. "But I have no doubt that in time she would have reconsidered her decision," he went on puffing at his cigar, "that is to say I _had_ no doubt until this morning." "And what happened then?" asked the detective. "I came up from Surrey, where I had been paying a week-end visit," pursued his visitor, "arriving at my rooms at midday. My servant at once informed me that Mrs. Vanderstein had sent a telephone message yesterday evening, begging me to go immediately to see her and adding that it was most important. I only waited to change into London clothes, Mr. Gimblet, before I hurried to her house in Grosvenor Street. And when I got there, what did I hear? 'Pon my soul," exclaimed Sir Gregory, taking his cigar out of his mouth, "you might have knocked me down with a feather!" "You heard that the lady had disappeared?" "Exactly. Not been seen or heard of since last night. Drove away from her own door, they tell me, in her own motor car; and has never come back from that hour to this." "Did she leave no word as to where she was going?" "None whatever. She dined early, of course, on account of the opera." "The opera! In that case what makes you think she didn't go there?" "Of course she went. Didn't I say so? She drove off to Covent Garden and that's the last that's been heard of her." "You interest me," said Gimblet. "Was she not seen to leave the opera house?" "I don't know about that," said Sir Gregory. "I found the servants very much disturbed; and very glad they were, I may say, to see me." "She has probably met with some accident and has been taken to a hospital," suggested Gimblet. "Have any inquiries been made?" "I rather think they have been telephoning to the hospitals, but I told them not to communicate with the police till I had seen you. Wouldn't do, you know. She would dislike it extremely, especially if it turns out as I fear and she has gone off with some other man." "I can't see why she should have done that," said Gimblet. "She was her own mistress, I suppose, and had no need to conceal her movements. Depend on it," he went on, for the anxiety on Sir Gregory's face moved him to pity, "she will be found at one of the hospitals; and I advise you to make inquiries at them. A woman, alone as she was, would be carried to one of them if she were taken ill or met with a slight accident that prevented her for the moment from giving her address." "But she was not alone," urged Sir Gregory. "Miss Turner, her companion, was with her, of course." "Indeed," said Gimblet, "you said nothing of there being anyone with her. And what has Miss Turner to say on the subject?" "She's not there. She's vanished too." "Really," said the detective. "This is getting interesting. That two ladies should set out for Covent Garden opera house on a gala night and never return from it, is, to say the least, slightly unconventional. Now, before we go any further," he went on quickly, "what do you wish me to do in the matter?" "I want you to find Mrs. Vanderstein, naturally," returned Sir Gregory, staring at him in astonishment; "I feel the greatest anxiety on her account, the more so since you consider her likely to have met with an accident." "But if, as you seem to suspect, the lady has gone off deliberately, will she not be annoyed at our seeking her out? Will she not be angry with you for trying to discover her movements if she wishes them unknown?" "I daresay she'd think it dashed impertinent. But I can't help that. She may be in need of me; in fact," cried Sir Gregory with sudden recollection, "I know she is! Don't I tell you she telephoned for me last night? A most urgent message. That proves she wishes for my help in some matter of importance to her, and how can I assist her without knowing where she is?" "As you say," said Gimblet, "it does look as if she did not wish to leave you unacquainted with her whereabouts. Well, I have nothing to do just now and if you wish me to make inquiries I will do so with pleasure, though I do not think it will prove to be an affair altogether in my line." "Thank 'ee. Thank 'ee," mumbled the old soldier with his cigar between his teeth. "That's what I want. Now, how are you going to set about it?" "I am going to ask you a few questions first. You have not yet furnished me with that comprehensive clear account in which the trivial details which look so unimportant and may yet be of such moment are never omitted: the lucid narrative so dear to the detective's heart. I do not think, if you will pardon my saying so, that I am likely to get it from you, Sir Gregory." Sir Gregory glared, but said nothing; and Gimblet continued, with a smile: "To begin with, who is Mrs. Vanderstein?" "The widow of a Jewish money-lender." Sir Gregory spoke somewhat shortly. He considered Gimblet's remarks disrespectful. "Rich, then?" "Yes." "Does she live alone in Grosvenor Street?" "A young lady, Miss Barbara Turner, lives with her." "And who is she?" "She is the daughter of an old pal of Vanderstein's. A man who used to train his racehorses at Newmarket. He was a bad lot and had to fly the country long ago. Dead now, I believe." "Has Miss Turner any money of her own?" "Old Vanderstein left her a good large sum, £30,000 I think it is, but Mrs. Vanderstein has a life interest in it. The girl has nothing as long as she lives with Mrs. Vanderstein, who, however, I have no doubt, is most generous to her." "I suppose you know Miss Turner well? What is she like?" "Oh, she's a very ordinary girl, rather pretty some people think, apparently. I don't admire the robust, muscular type that is fashionable nowadays. Mrs. Vanderstein is very fond of her." "That means you don't like her yourself?" Sir Gregory hesitated. It was not in him, really, to dislike anyone without very much provocation, but he always had an idea that Barbara was laughing at him, and he cherished his dignity. "I don't suppose there's any harm in the girl," he grunted at last. "Has Mrs. Vanderstein the full control of her fortune?" asked Gimblet, after a quick look at him. "I believe she has, absolutely. But if you think I was after her for her money," exclaimed Sir Gregory in an angry tone and half rising as he spoke, "you're dashed well mistaken!" Gimblet hastened to reassure him on this point and he sat down again, still grumbling. "It was Vanderstein's expressed wish that all the money should ultimately be left to his nephew, young Joe Sidney," he explained, "and I am sure his widow would not disregard his ideas on that point." The dining-room faced south-west, and the afternoon sun, creeping round, already shone full on the small square panes of the casement windows, so that the temperature of the room was rapidly rising to an intolerable warmth. Gimblet thought of the train that was to have carried him to the golf links. It would have been unbearably hot in it, he told himself. And the disappearance of a wealthy lady from her house in London was sufficiently unusual to excite his curiosity. Already his vivid imagination was seething with guesses and speculations. His resolution to do no more detective work was utterly forgotten. "What is Mrs. Vanderstein like to look at?" he asked abruptly. "She is quite young," began Sir Gregory, "about your own age, I should say. She is not very tall and has dark hair and a perfect figure, not one of those great maypoles of women one sees about so much now, but beautifully proportioned and just right in every way. She has wonderful brown eyes and a smile for every one. I think she is most beautiful," concluded her old friend simply. Gimblet got up. "I will give instructions about having inquiries made at the hospitals," he said, "though it does seem hardly likely that both ladies should have been hurt, without some news of it having come before now. And then let us go round to the house. I should like to see the servants and hear what they may have to tell. I hope there may, even now, be some tidings awaiting you there." CHAPTER X There was no news of the missing ladies in Grosvenor Street; but Gimblet interviewed all the servants and heard several facts, which gave him food for thought. It was from Blake, the butler, that he received most information. It was Blake himself, looking heartily scared, with half his usual pompousness driven out of him by his anxiety, who opened the door to them and, on hearing from Sir Gregory who it was that accompanied him, begged Gimblet to allow him to speak to him for a few moments. They went into the morning-room, a cheerful white-walled apartment, gay with books and flowers, and Blake addressed himself to the detective. "I'm very glad you've come, sir, I am indeed. Sir Gregory will have told you, sir, that Mrs. Vanderstein and Miss Turner, who lives here with her, went out last night to the opera and have not returned. I have been very uneasy about them and at a loss to know what to do, sir, for Mrs. Vanderstein mightn't like me to inform the police if so be that she's gone away on purpose. But I never knew her to go away without informing me of the fact or without any luggage and leaving no address, though she does go off very sudden sometimes to spend a week or so in foreign parts, Dieppe being her favourite, I may say." "Indeed," said Gimblet, "was Mrs. Vanderstein in the habit of going abroad at a moment's notice?" "She went very sudden, when the fancy took her, sir, but not so sudden as this. I've known her say at lunchtime to Miss Turner, 'My dear, we will go to Boulogne by the 2.20 from Charing Cross,' which, lunch being at one o'clock, didn't leave much time for packing, sir." "No, it wouldn't," agreed Gimblet. "But in such cases," continued Blake, "the maid would often be left to follow with the luggage, the ladies taking no more than what they required for the night. But nothing was said to the maid yesterday on the subject, and I can't think Mrs. Vanderstein would ever go off like that anywhere, sir, in her evening dress and diamonds." "Of course, it being a gala night at the opera, she would be wearing jewels," Gimblet assented. "Yes, sir, and that's partly what makes me feel so upset, sir; I've never known Mrs. Vanderstein to wear so many jewels on one occasion. It would have been well worth anyone's while to rob her last night, sir." "Really. What was she wearing? Had she valuable jewels?" "Indeed, yes," broke in Sir Gregory, "the Vanderstein jewels were famous." "Yes, sir," repeated Blake; "beautiful jewellery indeed. A great responsibility, sir, in a household. But I have them always in a safe in the pantry, where I sleep myself, and if I go out in the daytime it's never without one of the footmen stays in the room all the time I'm away. At night we have a night watchman always on the premises, sir, and it was him that first alarmed me this morning. He came to my door about five o'clock and knocked me up. 'What's the matter?' I called out, thinking at first what with sleep and one thing and another that the house was on fire. 'She haven't come in yet,' he said, and it was a few minutes before I understood what he was driving at. And then I didn't really feel anxious; though we'd all thought it very strange last night, when Thomas, the second footman, who had gone with the motor to Covent Garden, came back saying that he'd received orders that the car wasn't to go back to fetch the ladies at all." "What? the car was not to go back after the performance?" exclaimed Gimblet. "No, sir, orders were given to that effect. Still, I thought possibly they were coming home with some friends, and even this morning I said to myself that perhaps they were staying the night at a friend's house, having for some reason not been able to get a cab home. I had no doubt I should get a telephone message at any moment, which would explain the whole of the circumstances. But the morning passed away without our hearing anything whatever, and by the time Sir Gregory called I was just about getting ready to go out and make inquiries at the police station." Gimblet considered in silence for a few moments. "Have you noticed anything unusual of late," he asked, "in the habits or demeanour of anyone in the house?" "No, nothing unusual beyond the fact that Mrs. Vanderstein seemed to be enjoying uncommonly good spirits. I also thought, but it might be it was only my fancy, that you couldn't say the same of Miss Turner. Yesterday she appeared to be very much down on her luck." "Did the idea of an accident occur to you?" asked Gimblet. "Have you inquired at any of the hospitals?" "I telephoned to St. George's, sir, but with no result. I didn't know where else to make inquiries." "I understand," said the detective presently, "that Mrs. Vanderstein has relatives and friends living in London. Did you communicate with any of them this morning?" "No, sir, I did not. I had already telephoned to Sir Gregory last night and heard he was out of town." "Is there no one else to whom you could have appealed for advice? I understand that Mrs. Vanderstein has a nephew or nephew by marriage. Does he live in London?" "No, sir, his regiment is quartered in the north of England. But it is true," Blake stammered, with some appearance of reluctance, "that Mr. Sidney is off and on in London, according as he is able to obtain leave, and I believe he is up at the present moment." "I should have thought you would have telephoned to him to-day. Did it not occur to you to do so?" Blake hesitated again. He looked from Gimblet to Sir Gregory, then let his eyes roam to the window and round the room as if help might be hoped for from some unlikely source. Finally, they once more encountered those of the detective and, under that compelling gaze, he spoke. "I did think of it," he faltered, "I should have done so if it had not been for one thing. Mr. Sidney came to the house yesterday afternoon and, I don't like to mention it, sir, but I am afraid that he had words with his aunt. I have no idea what it was about, sir, but he only stayed a few minutes and as soon as he was gone Mrs. Vanderstein called me and gave me strict orders not to allow him to enter the house in future. She seemed very much put out about something and I am sure she wouldn't like me to have any communications with Mr. Sidney now. It isn't my place to allude to such a thing at all, but in the peculiar circumstances, sirs, I hope you will excuse my saying that Mrs. Vanderstein appeared to me to be very much put out indeed." "Quite so," said Gimblet, "in the peculiar circumstances your proper course is to tell me everything you can, whether it bears on Mrs. Vanderstein's failure to return home or not. I shall be less likely to go astray after some false scent if I have a thorough knowledge of the private affairs of these ladies, and there is no knowing what trifling detail may not turn out to be useful. Now about these jewels, can you tell me what your mistress wore last night? I should also like to see the place you keep them in." Blake conducted them to the pantry. A small safe let into the wall contained a quantity of jewel cases, for the most part empty. The butler gave Gimblet a list of what they had contained. "I never knew Mrs. Vanderstein to wear so many ornaments at once," he repeated. "She would mostly wear her pearls and a necklace and perhaps a tiara and a few bracelets and rings, but last night besides these she had the two diamond necklaces sewn on to her dress, and the emerald set, which takes to pieces so as to make one big ornament, was sewn on it too. I don't suppose there were many ladies at the gala performance," said Blake, with some pride, "who wore better jewels than she did--unless it was the Queen herself." Gimblet requested to be taken over the house, and in the various sitting-rooms he hunted for some evidence of a documentary character to show that Mrs. Vanderstein had not intended to return on the previous evening. He looked on the mantelpieces for an invitation which should have been stuck up there, on the writing tables for something of the same kind. But though cards for different entertainments were not wanting--most of them bearing well-known Jewish names and conveying invitations to musical parties--there was nothing suggesting that the ladies were to attend one on Monday night. He noticed the subtle odour that hung about the rooms, and his scrutinising eyes noted with delight the many beautiful and rare objects of Mr. Vanderstein's collection. He would gladly have lingered to examine the pictures that decorated the walls, and the priceless china, which stood on cabinets against the white panelling. But, deferring this pleasure, he continued his methodical search in the expectant company of Sir Gregory and the half-scandalised Blake, who could not decide in his own mind whether he was doing right in allowing a detective, even one so well known as Mr. Gimblet, to turn over his mistress' correspondence in this unceremonious fashion. When the detective's search led him to the door of Mrs. Vanderstein's bedroom, Blake felt himself unable to remain with him any longer, and summoning Amélie from her workroom he turned over to her the duty of keeping an eye on these doubtful proceedings. The news of the detective's presence had spread through the house like wildfire, and Amélie for her part was burning to assist the great man. Quite unhampered by such scruples as those which were felt by the worthy butler, she dragged open drawers, threw wide the doors of cupboards, thrust any letters she could find into Gimblet's hands and invited him to verify for himself the information, or lack of it, which she volubly imparted. She knew there was nothing enlightening in the letters and did not hesitate to say so. She had read them all long ago. "That poor lady," she cried, "they have assassinated her to rob her of her marvellous jewels. Ah, but of that I am well convinced," she declared, nodding her head with gloomy satisfaction. "She wore too many--it was to tempt Providence." Gimblet asked her for a list of the jewels and received the same that he had had from Blake. "And will you describe to me what clothes Mrs. Vanderstein wore," he asked, "and also those of Miss Turner?" "Madame had on a dress of white _mousseline de soie_, all _diamantée_," Amélie told him, "ce qu'elle était belle avec cette robe-là! Over it she wore a magnificent cloak of _crêpe de Chine_ and silver lace. The cloak is mauve in the daylight, but in the evening one would say that it was pink. She had on silver shoes and white stockings and carried an antique fan of great value." "And Miss Turner?" Gimblet was writing down her description in his notebook. "Mademoiselle also was dressed in white, but with a dress much more simple. She had a cloak of flame-coloured brocade that Madame gave her on her birthday. It is lined with white chiffon; nothing can be more chic." As she spoke she glanced in surprise at Gimblet, who was standing in the middle of the room, his head thrown back, his nostrils expanding and contracting. As each succeeding drawer had been pulled out he had stood there, sniffing appreciation. The vague scent that clung about the lower part of the house was more penetrating here, and with each disturbance of Mrs. Vanderstein's belongings grew stronger. There were flowers about the room, tea roses in many bowls of shining glass; but their faint sweetness was drowned beneath the more powerful smell that pervaded the air. "Your mistress uses a delicious perfume," said the detective. "Did she always have the same one?" "It smells good in here, is it not?" said Amélie. "Yes, Madame uses always the same perfume. See, here it is on her table. It sells itself very expensive, but with one drop one may perfume a whole dress. Everything that Madame touches smells of it." Gimblet went to the dressing-table and took up the bottle she indicated; he lifted it to his nose and, removing the stopper, took a long, deep sniff. Then recorking the bottle he put it down again with a glance at the label. "Arome de la Corse," he read, and below, the name of a French perfumery celebrated for the excellence and high prices of its products. "Madame is an admirer of the great Napoléon," explained Amélie helpfully. "Who does not share her admiration?" rejoined the detective. "And now may I see Miss Turner's room?" In Barbara's chamber his stay was short. Here was no arresting perfume, very little suggestion of feminine personality. The room was more like that of a boy. Photographs adorned the walls; a few books lay about. A couple of letters were on the table; one was a bill. The other, which Gimblet perused under the sympathetic eyes of Amélie, ran as follows: "DEAR MISS TURNER, "I put the money on Averstone as you said. So sorry he wasn't placed. He got away badly and had no luck from the start. In haste, "Yours sincerely, "J. SIDNEY." "Thanks, I think that is all I want just now," said Gimblet, and he turned to leave the room. But Amélie was in no mind to let him go like that. She had hoped for some confidences, that she might have a theory to retail downstairs. "If Monsieur will listen to my idea," she said, "I will tell him what I believe has happened to Madame. She has been killed for the sake of her jewels. That is what I think. And it would be prudent before making so many inquiries that one should look for her on the floor of her box at the opera. It is probable that she is there, _la pauvre_, just as they struck her down and left her!" "Thank you for your suggestion," replied Gimblet gravely. "I assure you that I will not neglect to visit the box. But I think that the bodies of two ladies, 'struck down' in it, would have called forth some expression of astonishment on the part of the caretakers." "Monsieur is laughing at me," began Amélie in injured tones, but Gimblet was already half-way down the stairs. On the landing outside the drawing-room door Blake was still hovering. "Ah, there you are," Gimblet said. "Can I see the second footman now? Thomas, I think you said he was called." Thomas, being summoned, proved to be a tall lad possessing an honest and ingratiating smile, adorning a fair and open countenance. "It was you, I think," the detective said to him, "who accompanied the motor last night when it left here with the two ladies?" "Yes, sir," said Thomas, "I did, sir." "And you were told the car would not be required again after the opera?" "Yes, sir." "Can you remember Mrs. Vanderstein's exact words when she gave you the order not to return?" "It wasn't Mrs. Vanderstein who told me, sir," said Thomas, "it was Miss Turner. 'Mrs. Vanderstein says she won't have the car again this evening,' she said, and, 'do you understand, Wilcox?' she says--that's the chauffeur, Wilcox is; she come running down to speak to him just as he put the clutch in and we was moving off--'You're not to come to fetch us to-night after the opera,' I heard every word of course as plain as Wilcox did. 'Very good, miss,' he says, and she ran back through the swing doors. Mrs. Vanderstein had gone straight in and I didn't see her again. We was very surprised, Wilcox and me, as it was the first time that Mrs. Vanderstein hadn't had the motor to bring her home that either of us could remember. But orders is orders," concluded Thomas with an engaging smile at Mr. Gimblet, who ignored it. "Thank you, that will do for the present," he said; and, when Thomas had gone, turned once more to Blake. "How long has Wilcox been in Mrs. Vanderstein's service?" he asked. "He was with Mr. Vanderstein before he married," replied Blake. "The same as I was myself, sir. Wilcox was a groom in the old days, but they had him taught to drive the motor some years ago. He's a most respectable, steady man, sir." "Thanks, I should like to see him," said Gimblet. Wilcox, it appeared, was in the house at the moment, having come round from the garage to hear if there was any news, and Gimblet had him in and cross-examined him. His story was the same as Thomas', with one small addition. "Was there anything that struck you as the least unusual?" Gimblet asked him. "Did you notice anything in the appearance of either of the ladies, or overhear anything they said to each other as they got in or out of the car, that was not perfectly natural?" "No, sir, I did not," said Wilcox stolidly. He was rather a fat man with a very horsey look. "Not that I paid any heed to what they might be saying so long as it wasn't to me they said it. As far as I remember, Mrs. Vanderstein got into the car and Miss Turner after her, and 'To Covent Garden' one of them says to Thomas, and Miss Turner calls out, 'Just stop at a post office on the way.' And so we did." "Ah," said Gimblet, "you stopped at a post office, did you? Was that quite in the usual course? And which post office did you stop at?" "It was not in the usual course," admitted Wilcox, "in fact, I don't remember doing it on the way to the opera before. But Miss Turner had a telegram to send. We stopped in Piccadilly and she gave the form to Thomas to take into the office. After that we drove straight on to the opera house." Thomas, recalled, remembered handing in the telegram, certainly. Didn't know why he hadn't thought of mentioning it before. Miss Turner gave him a sealed envelope with "Telegram" written outside it, and told him to give it with some money to the young person in the office, and not to bother about waiting for the change, as they were in a hurry. He did as she said, and that was all he could tell about it. Not much information to be collected from Thomas. Possibly Gimblet's face showed a trace of disappointment, for the footman added in a regretful tone: "I'm very sorry, sir, that I didn't open the envelope so as I could tell you what the telegram was, sir; but the ladies being in a hurry I didn't scarcely have time. If I'd known it was important, or anyway if I'd had a minute or two to myself, I'd have taken a look at it. I'm very sorry indeed, sir." Gimblet dismissed him somewhat peremptorily. He felt that he was taking an unreasoning dislike for the apologising Thomas, so anxious to ingratiate himself. CHAPTER XI In the morning-room he found Sir Gregory, who had refrained, with an impatient delicacy, from following him further than the drawing-room. He was walking to and fro before the hearth, another big cigar between his lips. "Well?" he asked, as the detective entered. Gimblet looked at him with a disapproving sternness. "If you intend to accompany me further in my investigations, Sir Gregory," he began, "I must warn you that I can allow no smoking. The sense of smell is as valuable to me in my work as it is to a questing hound, and I cannot have red herrings like your cigars dragged across the trail I might possibly be following." "My cigars! Red herrings!" Sir Gregory stuttered. "This, Mr. Gimblet, is the finest Havana!" "No doubt," said Gimblet, "as tobacco it is good enough. But if it came straight from Paradise I could not let the strong smell of it interfere with my business. I must keep my nose free from such gross odours, or it will not serve me when I most need it. When we first came into this room it was filled with a perfume all its own. Now that I return I can smell nothing but the taint of your cigar." Though considerably incensed at Gimblet's choice of words--Sir Gregory nearly choked when he heard them--he controlled his feelings of indignation as best he could, for he was bent on seeing the detective at work. "If the flavour of the best tobacco really impedes you," said he, swallowing his annoyance, "I will defer the pleasure of smoking until you have arrived at some conclusion. I suppose you have not discovered anything of importance so far?" "I think I have added to my knowledge by this visit," returned Gimblet, "whether importantly or not it is too soon to say. You did not mention to me, by the way, that Miss Turner had inherited her father's partiality for horses." "Didn't I? I didn't know it would interest you. Yes; she seems very devoted to riding." "And to racing," added Gimblet. "I don't know about that. She's never been near a race-course, as far as I know. What makes you think so? Have you been talking to Blake about her?" "When a young lady's room is full of pictures of race-horses, and 'Ruff's Guide to the Turf' occupies a prominent position on her bookshelf," said Gimblet indifferently, "it is not really necessary to ask the servants whether she takes an interest in racing. But come, Sir Gregory, I think we have no more to do here. Shall we go back to my flat and see if anything has been heard at the hospitals?" With a farewell word to Blake they prepared to leave the house, the butler hastening before them to open the hall door. As he drew back the latch and they stepped forth into the street, they were confronted by a grey-haired man carrying a small black bag, who stood with a hand already upon the bell. "Whom have we here?" said the detective to himself, and taking Sir Gregory's arm he drew him back into the house, leaving Blake to parley with the new-comer. "No, sir, Mrs. Vanderstein's not at home," they could hear him saying. The two men retreated to the morning-room but here in a few minutes Blake followed them. "If you please, sirs," he said, "here is Mr. Chark, Mrs. Vanderstein's solicitor." On his heels came the stranger. "You will excuse me coming to see you, gentlemen," said he, fixing his eyes, after a momentary hesitation, upon the detective, "but hearing that Mr. Gimblet was in the house"--here he bowed to that gentleman--"I thought I had better seize the opportunity of offering such help as I may be able to furnish in your investigations. Very little, I fear, still possibly I am in possession of a fact which may as yet be unknown to you." Mr. Chark, partner in the firm of D'Allby and Chark, was a man of medium height, of medium age, less than medium good looks, and medium intellect. His face and hair were of different shades of grey and, although clean-shaven, he conveyed the impression that he wore side whiskers. His manner and movements were precise and deliberate. He spoke slowly, and as he did so his hands slowly revolved round each other. It seemed as if he were grinding out each word by some secret mill-like process differing from that of ordinary speech. "I have just heard from the butler," he continued, after Gimblet and Sir Gregory had acknowledged his greeting in suitable terms, "that my client, Mrs. Vanderstein, is absent under circumstances I must be permitted to designate as unusual. That, in short, she went out last night, 'on gaiety intent,' he he! and has not since been heard of. This is very startling news, very strange news indeed. I think I can prove to you, Mr. Gimblet, that Mrs. Vanderstein's continued absence is unintentional." So saying Mr. Chark unlocked his black bag, which he had placed on the floor between his feet as if fearing that it might be surreptitiously removed if he did not keep in touch with it, and drew from its dark recesses a letter in a large mauve coloured envelope, which he handed with another bow to Mr. Gimblet. The detective took it and lifted it to his nose with a look of surprise. "This," he cried, "is a letter from Mrs. Vanderstein herself." "Your surmise is correct," said Mr. Chark. "I was unaware that you and my client were acquainted, but I see that you know her handwriting." "I never saw it before," Gimblet answered absently. He was studying it now with a look of deep interest. "Indeed. Then, may I inquire your reason for thinking that this document bore her inscription?" Mr. Chark's drawling tones were plainly sceptical. "Arome de la Corse," murmured Gimblet, as he handed the letter to Sir Gregory. "You, Sir Gregory, know the lady's writing, I suppose?" "Yes," said Sir Gregory. "It is from her. Will you not read it aloud? Without spectacles, I'm sorry to say, I should find a difficulty in doing so," and he gave it back to Gimblet. The detective opened the envelope and unfolding the sheet it contained read aloud what was written on it: "Grosvenor Street: "Monday Evening. "DEAR SIRS, "I shall be much obliged if one of your firm will call on me to-morrow, Tuesday, between four and five o'clock, for the purpose of altering my will. Mr. Sidney has made it impossible for me to contemplate longer the thought of his inheriting any portion of my late husband's fortune. If Mr. Vanderstein were alive I am sure he would agree with me on this point, but as he is no more and has left the matter to my discretion, it becomes a sacred duty with me utterly to ignore the wishes he expressed, and to alter my will immediately to that effect. Trusting you will make it convenient to call at teatime to-morrow, "I remain, "Yours faithfully, "RUTH VANDERSTEIN." Gimblet folded the letter carefully, replaced it in the envelope, and handed it back to Mr. Chark. "We heard something of a quarrel between Mrs. Vanderstein and Mr. Sidney," he said. "I wonder whether she would have stuck to her threat of cutting him off with a penny. People write this sort of letter when they lose their tempers, but very often they have calmed down by the following day." "You do not know Mrs. Vanderstein, Mr. Gimblet," interrupted Sir Gregory. "She isn't one of those women who fly into a rage about nothing at all, or try to frighten people with threats. She does not suffer from nerves; her health is as excellent as her temper. I am persuaded she wouldn't have written that letter unless she had the gravest reasons for doing so." "That also is my view," agreed Mr. Chark. "I can endorse Sir Gregory Aberhyn Jones's opinion as regards the character of my client, Mr. Gimblet; I can endorse it thoroughly. Mrs. Vanderstein is a level-headed, shrewd woman, far from being driven by every impulse." "There is something decidedly womanly about the way she considers it her sacred duty to ignore her husband's wishes," commented Gimblet, and then, as he saw the wrathful light flashing in Sir Gregory's eyes, he added quickly, "I hope that Mrs. Vanderstein herself will be able to make everything clear in a few hours' time at the most. Sir Gregory and I, Mr. Chark, were on our way to see if she had been heard of at the hospitals, at the moment of your arrival. We fear she may have met with some misadventure." Mr. Chark was disappointed. Beneath his stiff, outer shell there lurked a tiny spark of romantic fire, which had never been entirely extinguished by the stifling routine of the legal casuistries with which D'Allby and Chark principally occupied themselves. Mortgages, settlements of property, the continual framing in a maze of words of those deeds which should mystify any but creatures like himself, to whom their lack of intelligibility meant profitable business; all this systematic dullness had failed to choke that imperceptible glimmer, and at the mere knowledge of Gimblet's presence in the house it had leapt on a sudden to a hot and burning flame. All his life he had cherished a secret regret that his way had not lain along the precipitous bypaths of criminal law, and now his excited imagination saw murder and violence beckoning from all sides, with fingers redly fascinating. He gave a stiff bow at the detective's words, and spoke with a feeling of irritation and a sensation of being played with, which he was careful to conceal beneath his usual precise and colourless tones. "Indeed," he drawled, his hands revolving as ever in their stroking movement. "I may venture to say that my impression is a different one. Though no detective, I am still, in my capacity of lawyer, able to put two and two together. This letter"--he tapped Mrs. Vanderstein's note--"and the evidence of the butler that a quarrel between my client and her nephew did occur yesterday afternoon in this house, and immediately preceded the writing of this letter; the knowledge that the lady left her home intending to return in two or three hours, but has actually failed to do so in twenty--these facts, gentlemen, if they convey nothing to you, appear to me to be eminently suggestive." Gimblet made no reply; but Sir Gregory, whose face had been getting pinker and pinker till it resembled a full-blown peony, burst out with a truculent snort: "And what do they suggest to you, sir?" "They suggest," Mr. Chark resumed with apparent calm, "that Mr. Joseph Sidney could very probably inform us of his aunt's whereabouts." "I have the pleasure of Mr. Sidney's acquaintance," exclaimed Sir Gregory, "and let me inform you, Mr. Chark, if that is your name, that he is a gentleman holding a commission in His Majesty's army. I hope it is unnecessary to say more. Your insinuations are absurd." "You cannot deny in the face of the facts that matters look very black against this young gentleman," drawled the lawyer. "Black!" Sir Gregory seemed about to choke. "I consider it black behaviour, sir, to come here and make these libellous and scandalous assertions about an officer and a gentleman. One who, moreover, is, as I gather, entirely unknown to you. Do you know him, sir, or do you not?" demanded Sir Gregory, leaning forward and rapping out an accompaniment to the words with the palm of his hand on a small table which stood near him, so that the flower glasses on it danced and jingled. "I do not know him, it is true," admitted Mr. Chark, "but I do know that he would benefit to the extent of several hundred thousands of pounds, if Mrs. Vanderstein should die before she found it possible to revise her will. And I have no doubt that she told him her intention of altering it." "Die? What do you say?" Sir Gregory's voice came faintly. The rosy colour faded from his cheeks. The utmost horror and astonishment were depicted in his countenance. Gimblet, at the sight, got up from his chair. "Mr. Chark," he said severely, "you are letting your imagination run away with you. You are, indeed, talking like a halfpenny feuilleton. There is no reason to take so melodramatic a view while Mrs. Vanderstein's absence still admits of some more or less ordinary explanation. I am going now to ascertain if she has not been discovered in the accident ward of one of the hospitals. Are you coming, Sir Gregory?" With a word of farewell they left the house, cutting short more observations on the part of Mr. Chark, who followed them, deeply chagrined at being treated with such scant ceremony. Sir Gregory, as he drove with Gimblet in the direction of Whitehall, returned nervously to the implication of foul play. "What made him think of such a thing, d'ye think?" he asked. "It is impossible that young Sidney would harm her. A nice civil lad; I have always liked him. Why should he? I'll not believe it." He spoke disjointedly; the suggestion had shaken him. Gimblet did his best to reassure him, but when they reached his flat, and found that the hospitals had been drawn blank for news of the two ladies, he felt more concerned than he liked to show. Still, the order that had been given to the chauffeur, not to return to the opera house, seemed to point to some intention other than that of going back to Grosvenor Street, and it was still to be hoped that any moment might bring tidings. There were, however, other considerations not quite so encouraging. Gimblet, who had left Sir Gregory below while he ran up to his rooms, gave some instructions to Higgs, the man who at times combined the duties of servant with those of an assistant in the more tiresome but necessary details of the detective's work. Then he went down again to break to the baronet, with reluctant gravity, that there was no news. "We will go to Covent Garden now," he said; and they got into another taxi. Sir Gregory had become very silent. His face was drawn with anxiety. "What can have happened?" he kept muttering to himself. To divert his thoughts, Gimblet recalled the suspicion he had harboured at first--that Mrs. Vanderstein had flown with some other admirer. But the fear that she was in danger, or that worse had befallen her, had taken hold of the man, and it was he who now pooh-poohed the idea and found arguments to show its improbability. "She had no need to run away," he objected in his turn, "she could marry whom she liked. And whoever heard of a woman's taking a friend on a wedding trip? No, if it had been anything of the sort, Miss Turner would have been left behind, we may be sure of that." At Covent Garden they learnt very little. The box had been cleaned out, and bore no sign of having been used the night before. Gimblet went sniffing round it, but could find no trace of lingering Arome de la Corse. The box opener told them that Mrs. Vanderstein and the young lady who generally came with her had occupied it at the gala performance, and had left before the end of the last scene. She hadn't noticed anything strange or otherwise about either of them, and as far as she knew no one had visited the box during the intervals. No one, it appeared, had observed their departure from the doors of the theatre. One commissionaire thought he remembered two ladies coming out early and driving off in a carriage, but he couldn't say, he was sure, what they were like. Might have been young and lovely, or again, might have been old and ugly. He had seen a powerful lot of ladies in the course of the evening, and never had enjoyed what you might call a memory for faces. If it had not been for the lack of that useful talent, the commissionaire concluded regretfully, he would, as likely as not, have been sitting in the hall of a West End club at the present moment, with no more to do than to answer the inquiries of one gentleman for another gentleman. Never had been what you might call the victim of good luck. They left him testing a shilling doubtfully with his teeth, as if unwilling to believe that his fortune could have changed sufficiently for the coin to be other than a bad one. It was growing late, the doors of the theatres would soon be open. Already shutters were up in front of shop windows, and the crowds that still filled the streets had no excuse for loitering now there was nothing to look at, nowhere left for noses to be flattened. Instead, every one seemed to be hurrying in one direction, the direction of railway station or tram, or whatever would carry them to their homes. The sinking sun had at last left the streets full of shadows and, though the pavements and walls still radiated heat, a cool breeze had arisen and was rushing in from the river. In open spaces, where the tall walls of houses did not prevent a glimpse of the western sky, one could see a cloud or two slowly climbing the heavens. The two men walked together in silence for a little way, and then Gimblet stopped, holding out his hand. "I don't think we can do any more to-night," he said. "Put away your anxieties for a few hours, Sir Gregory; it does no good to worry. To-morrow, if fresh tidings come, we must see what else can be done. I think perhaps you will be wise to consult the police." But at this Sir Gregory raised an outcry. "Well, we will see about that when to-morrow comes," said Gimblet. "In the meantime I must say good night." Gimblet saw Sir Gregory off in the direction of his club, and then, after a moment's hesitation, hailed a taxi himself, and drove to the residence of the Postmaster-General. He thought that at this hour he had a good chance of finding that Minister at home, and he was not mistaken. Sir James was in, said the footman who answered his ring, but at the present moment engaged in dressing, before dining early and going to the theatre. He would take up Mr. Gimblet's card. As luck had it, it had been Gimblet's fortune to render a considerable service to Sir James Mossing, at a date in this gentleman's career when his foot was still insecurely placed on the first rung of the ladder he subsequently climbed; and, as he rose in power, the politician had never failed to show that he gratefully remembered the obligation. The detective had only to wait ten minutes before the man he had come to see hurried into the room, with apologies for keeping him waiting. Gimblet lost no time in explaining the object of his visit, and had little difficulty in obtaining the written order he wished for. Armed with this, he detained the affable statesman no longer, but withdrew quickly and turned his steps homeward. "Higgs," he said, as his servant met him in the hall of the flat. "I want you to go at once to the post office in Piccadilly and get a telegram which was handed in last evening by a footman. It was in a sealed envelope, which also held the money for the message. It may, or may not, be signed by Miss Barbara Turner. It was certainly written by her. Here is an order from the Postmaster-General, which will make things easy for you. I have one or two things to do that ought to have been finished this morning or I should go myself. They will take me about an hour, and I hope you will be back by that time." In an hour Higgs was back. He looked pleased with himself, and proffered the detective a sheet of paper. "That's right, Higgs, you've been quick," Gimblet commended him. "They were a little while looking through the forms," said Higgs, "but luckily there was no fuss about giving it to me after I'd shown your card and Sir James' order." Gimblet was reading the paper. It was a telegraph form addressed to Joseph Sidney, and contained a short message: "Luck is coming your way at last expect to have good news by Wednesday removing all difficulties." There was no signature. "How do you know this is the right one?" Gimblet asked sharply. "The young person at the office happened to remember it, sir. It was handed in, enclosed in an envelope, and when she opened it and saw there was no signature she ran out after the footman, intending to ask that the space at the back of the form, where the name and address is requested for reference only, should be filled in. She was only in time to see the motor drive away. Still, it stamped the message on her memory, especially as there was some change to give back." "She may easily be mistaken," grumbled the detective. "I thought you might not be satisfied, sir," said Higgs, "so I went on to Grosvenor Street and asked the butler to let me have a specimen of Miss Turner's writing. I didn't tell him why I wanted it, of course. I just let him think a letter had been found and that you wanted something to identify it by," added Higgs, with some pride. He produced a menu as he spoke, written in a large round hand. "Miss Turner always writes the menus in Grosvenor Street," he explained. Gimblet took it and compared it with the telegram. It was easy to see that both had been written by the same person. CHAPTER XII The next morning dawned grey and boisterous. The English climate was giving an example of that infinite variety to which custom never reconciles the stranger within our gates. Julie Querterot, whose life had been passed entirely in London, suffered from an hereditary sensitiveness to the changes of the weather, and was never able to prevent her spirits from drooping as the barometer fell. Rain and gloomy skies made her dismal even when her whole day was spent within doors, and on this Wednesday morning, when she had done with the business of sweeping and cleaning about the house, and took up her station in the little shop behind the hair-pins and pomades, the view from the window must have had more than its usual depressing effects upon her, for if the unlooked for had happened and a customer had chanced to enter he might have seen that her eyelids were swollen as by the shedding of many tears. Soon after midnight the storm that had been brewing had burst over the empty streets; for hours the lightning had torn the clouds and the tremendous noise of the thunder had made sleep impossible. All night torrents of rain had fallen, and people lying awake, or at best dozing uneasily, had heard its constant patter. Julie's face, white and weary, looked as if to her at least the night had brought no rest. Sitting in the half-dusk of the shop she took up her work with slow deliberation; then letting it fall back to her knee leant her chin upon her palm with a hopeless gesture. She had had no breakfast, and hunger was combining with fatigue to bring her to the point of exhaustion. By her, on the counter where she had put it down, a halfpenny paper lay spread out; and presently she took it up, and glanced again at the prominent headlines, which in large black type flaunted across the page. "DISAPPEARANCE OF LADIES FROM THEIR HOME IN WEST END." "Mystery of Missing Millionairess." After a while Julie rose and put away her needlework. Going up to her little bedroom, she took from the cupboard a small black hat, and regardless of the weather prepared to go out. Not that she made an elaborate toilette. A neat coat of plainest black was added to her blouse and skirt, a rather tawdry brooch pinned where a button had been torn off, and another, for pure ornament, in a place where it was not needed. It has already been said that Julie was fond of trinkets, and she seemed to derive some slight comfort from them even this morning. Two or three bracelets jingled already on either wrist, and when she had added a pair of gloves her attire was complete. A few minutes later the girl opened her umbrella and stepped into the street; then, locking the shop door behind her, she set her face westward. The rain was falling less heavily, and before she had taken many turnings it ceased altogether. Julie shut her umbrella with a sigh of relief. Since leaving the house she had not been able to put aside a minor, but still consuming, anxiety, as to the fate of her hat. * * * * * In his rooms in Whitehall, Gimblet was studying a copy of the same newspaper that lay now neglected in the Pimlico shop. One glance at the headlines had told him to whom they referred, and the paragraph that followed was still more explicit. "We learn that anxiety is felt as to the whereabouts of Mrs. Vanderstein, a lady residing at No. 90, Grosvenor Street, W. Mrs. Vanderstein left her house on the evening of Monday last for the purpose of attending the gala performance at the Royal opera house at Covent Garden. She was accompanied by a young lady, Miss Barbara Turner, who lives at Grosvenor Street in the capacity of friend and companion to Mrs. Vanderstein. The two ladies drove to the opera in their private motor car, and some surprise was felt by the servants on being told at the door of the theatre that their return after the performance was over was not desired. No alarm, however, was experienced until yesterday morning, when the household awoke to find that neither of the ladies had returned. "Inquiry at the hospitals, where it was thought the ladies might have been carried in the event of an accident having occurred, were productive of no result, and as the day passed without news of their whereabouts being obtained it was deemed advisable to secure the services of a detective. It is whispered that one of London's most celebrated criminal investigators has consented to look into the matter. Rumours reach us that differences between Mrs. Vanderstein and one of her nearest relatives have more to do with her disappearance than at first seems obvious. Mrs. Vanderstein is the widow of the late Mr. Moses Vanderstein, a financier well known in city circles. She is a lady of remarkable personal attractions, and is a great favourite in Jewish society. Miss Turner is the daughter of the late Mr. William Turner, of Newmarket, and is not much over twenty years of age. It is believed that the police have a clue to the continued absence of the two ladies, and that foul play is apprehended." "So," said Gimblet to himself, "it appears that the worthy Mr. Chark has been talking." As he threw aside the paper, and took up another to see if it also had something to say on the same subject, the bell of the flat rang, and a moment later Higgs announced Mr. Joseph Sidney. With a scarcely perceptible start Gimblet recognised the young man he had observed in the Park on Sunday. "I hope I don't disturb you," Sidney said at once, "but they told me in Grosvenor Street that you had been up there asking questions, and so I suppose Sir Gregory has engaged you to look into this business." "That is so," said Gimblet. "I hope you have come to give me some assistance." "Why, I wish to goodness I could," said Sidney, "but I never heard a word about it till I saw the paper this morning; and then I couldn't believe it. But I rang up Grosvenor Street pretty quick, and old Blake, my aunt's butler, swears it's gospel. It's a queer thing to happen, isn't it? What can they have done with themselves? Really, women ought not to be allowed out alone. If my aunt couldn't take care of herself, I do think she might have made an effort to look after Miss Turner!" "It's a queer business indeed," said Gimblet, "and I'm afraid it looks stranger every minute, and very much more serious than it did at first. For here's another night gone by and no news of either of the ladies. And we have no clue, no idea where to hunt, nor anything whatever to go on in our search. I was in hopes you might have some information to offer me, Mr. Sidney; you were, I believe, one of the last people who spoke with Mrs. Vanderstein on Monday." Gimblet looked narrowly at the young man, who, for his part, seemed not altogether at his ease. He hesitated, crossed to the window and drummed with his fingers on the pane. In the detective's ears was echoing a sentence heard above the murmur of the crowd: "I'm pretty desperate, I can tell you. There's nothing I wouldn't do to get the money." A second later Sidney turned; and, coming back to where Gimblet sat impassively waiting, drew up a chair upon which he sat himself down with an air of resolution. "I did see my aunt on Monday, Mr. Gimblet, and to tell you the truth I don't like telling you what she said to me then. One doesn't care about confiding one's private family affairs to strangers. Still, if you think it can be of any possible use.... Well, the fact is that I had a frightful row with Mrs. Vanderstein on Monday." "What about?" asked Gimblet. "I," Sidney hesitated again, and then continued with a plunge, "I have been losing a great deal of money lately; I am ashamed to say that I have lost it on race-courses, and that it is a sum far larger than I can afford. I went to my aunt to ask for help. I asked her, in fact, to lend me some money to tide over my difficulties for the present. She was very irate about it. She can't stand betting; and as soon as I told her she got in a fearful rage and threw me out of the house. That is all the conversation I had with her on Monday. You can understand I don't much like owning up to it, as it's not precisely to my credit." Sidney ended with a rueful laugh. "Mrs. Vanderstein absolutely refused to help you in any way?" "Said she'd see me damned first. Well, you know, she mayn't have put it exactly like that." "Hardly, I should think. I'd rather have her own words, if you can remember them, please." Sidney searched his memory. "As far as I can recollect, what she actually said was, 'I will have nothing whatever to do with a gambler like you. Not only will I not give you money now, but you shall never have a penny that is mine to use for that degrading vice. I shall alter my will,' she said, 'and that to-morrow. And never let me see you again. I'll not have you in my house.' That's what she said, and I had nothing to do but to go out of the house like a whipped dog. And I went." Sidney's voice was bitter as he recalled his humiliation, but when he spoke again he had recovered his normal good temper. "Poor Aunt Ruth," he said, "there's a good deal to be said on her side, you know, and just about nothing at all on mine. However, I didn't come to talk about my own rotten affairs. I wonder where she can have got to? There's something uncommon fishy about her vanishing this way, don't you think? Hope to goodness she's not been knocked on the head for the sake of her diamonds, you know." His tone was light, but Gimblet seemed to perceive a note of genuine anxiety underlying it. "I hope not, indeed," he agreed gravely. "I really feel a bit worried about her--her and Miss Turner," went on the young man. "Hang it all, since I've begun confiding in you I think I may as well make a clean breast of the whole show. The fact is I've got a beastly guilty conscience sort of feeling, because I was on the verge, a day or two ago, of playing the dickens of a shabby trick on Aunt Ruth. You can see how badly I want this money, as I told you, to pay my debts next week. Well, I as near as makes no difference tried to get it out of my aunt by what I suppose you'd call false pretences--which sounds a nice blackguardly thing to do, don't it? I don't suppose anyone's told you that she had a craze for Royalty in any shape? Well, I didn't know it myself till lately, but it seems there's nothing she wouldn't do to get in contact with great people. A friend of mine suggested that we should get another of my pals to impersonate some royal prince, and that I should introduce him to my aunt. The idea was that he should rather make up to her, and then intercede on my behalf, or get the money out of her in some way. I don't think I should have done it when it came to the point, because I saw very plainly the next day what an impossible thing it was to do. And if I'd gone as far as to ask my friend to help, I haven't the slightest doubt he would have told me not to be an ass. But there you are--I did think of it, and it sticks on my conscience now. I shall never get the taste out of my mouth, I believe, and if there's anything you think I could do to be of any use, now that she's gone and mislaid herself, you can understand that I'd do it all the more gladly since I feel I owe her a good turn." He ceased speaking, crossed one leg over the other, and leant back, looking at Gimblet with an air half ashamed, half ingenuous. The detective returned his gaze with interest. "Here," he was saying to himself, "is a young man either very innocent or beyond the common crafty." "Who was it who suggested this questionable proceeding in the first place?" he asked. "Oh, I really can't tell you that," cried Sidney; "it can't have any importance, and I'm not so dead to all sense of decency as you naturally think!" "You say you only contemplated it for a short time. Did you tell your friend ultimately that, on second thoughts, you didn't like the idea and had decided to give it up?" "It wasn't necessary. Before I could communicate with my friend I got a message from her--him--my friend, I mean----" Sidney grew scarlet as he realised his slip, but continued hastily in the vain hope of covering it, "a message to say that the plan was ruined. I don't know what had happened, but for some reason, apparently, it was completely off, irrespective of my jibbing." "And so now," said Gimblet, after a pause, "you have no hope, I suppose, of paying your debts." A shade crossed Sidney's face as he replied sadly: "Devil a hope." "There has been no alteration in your prospects since Monday then," pursued the detective; "you have had no better news to-day? Your difficulties have not so far been removed?" He spoke with great deliberation, while one hand, hidden in his pocket, fingered the telegraph form that Barbara Turner had omitted to sign. Sidney looked up suspiciously, but the little man's face wore no expression beyond one of calm inquiry. "No," said he slowly, "everything is just as it was. I have heard nothing at all and my prospects are as bad as they can be." There was something about Sidney that disarmed suspicion, and Gimblet did not fail to be influenced by it. In vain he reflected that the young man was certainly refraining from telling him of Miss Turner's telegram, and deliberately, since Gimblet had purposely reminded him of it by quoting words it actually contained. As he sat considering what should be his next move, the door opened, and Sir Gregory Aberhyn Jones was announced. "Good morning, Mr. Gimblet. Have you any news for me? No, I see you have not; and there is none in Grosvenor Street, as you doubtless know. Ah, Sidney, how are you? This is a trying time for us all. I am glad to see you, very." He shook hands warmly with the young man; and then, before Gimblet guessed what he would be at, the harm was done. "I'm more than glad to meet you, my dear boy," Sir Gregory was declaring, "so as to be able to tell you that I don't believe a word they may say against you. I'm positive you never had a hand in this black business, any more than I did myself. And all the Charks and beastly rags of newspapers in London shan't convince me to the contrary." Sir Gregory, still holding Joe by the hand, shook it up and down with extra and exaggerated heartiness. Sidney wrenched it away. "What the deuce are you talking about?" he exclaimed. "Who's been saying things about me?" "I tell you I don't believe a word of it," said Sir Gregory soothingly. "But you must have seen it in the papers. 'It is believed,' they say, 'that a quarrel took place between Mrs. Vanderstein and a near relative, which has more to do with the unfortunate ladies' disappearance than seems plain at first.' You did quarrel with her, didn't you? And Chark, her lawyer, you know, is taken with the idea; in fact, he's been round telling me this morning that he's ascertained for a fact that you're infernally hard up, which would provide a motive, he says. Infernal nonsense, of course." "Infernal lies," cried Sidney; "what the devil does anyone mean by suggesting such things? Do they imagine I've spirited away not only Aunt Ruth but Miss Turner too, and am holding them for ransom, or what? Or perhaps your friend Chark would rather think that I was given to poisoning my relations? If it comes to that, I'll begin on him if he don't look out. Infernal ass." He was furious. Gimblet, watching him with interest, wondered whether his face was so red from anger or from some other emotion. Sir Gregory, for once, was silenced. "Where's this newspaper editor?" demanded Sidney. "I'm going to kick him, now, at once." "You'd better wait till he gets up," said Gimblet; "at this hour he's probably still in bed." "I'll soon get him out." "Better not take any notice of it. More dignified not to," urged Sir Gregory, repenting too late his well-meant assurances. "Best treat that sort of idiot with contempt," he went on. "Chark's the worst. It's he that's put them up to it." "Mr. Chark," said Gimblet, "has a longing to be mixed up in a sensational affair. I saw that yesterday. He ought to know better than to indulge in libel, a lawyer too! I daresay he's frightened to death, now that he has done it, and has time to think of the consequences." "I'll frighten him," said the young man. He calmed down, however, as the detective continued to pour oil on the troubled waters, and was at last persuaded to depart peacefully. Gimblet wrote out a short description of the missing ladies, together with the promise of a reward to whosoever should bring news of either of them, and this he gave into Sidney's keeping, charging him to have it inserted in the evening papers, of which the early editions were already appearing in the streets. CHAPTER XIII Sir Gregory lingered. "I suppose there's nothing to do but wait?" he said, as the door closed behind Sidney. "Not much, I'm afraid," replied the detective. "Believe me, I am doing what is possible, and now that Chark has been talking to the press no doubt the police, on their side, will do what they can. Did you hear anything in Grosvenor Street?" "No," said Sir Gregory, "no one had been there. They had seen no more of Mr. Chark. But no doubt there will be folks calling to-day. I daresay the street will be blocked by people wanting to know if what they've seen in the papers is true. There's plenty of curiosity about. It was beginning already, from what I could see, when I came away; there were three or four idlers staring at the house. What they thought they saw in it, don't ask me. Expect the police soon moved them on. Too much of this lazy loafing about; I'd soon compel them to do some honest work, if I had my way." "And yet you're against compelling them to be trained for the defence of the country!" murmured Gimblet. "Well, well! Just ordinary loafers, were they?" he went on. "That's all," said Sir Gregory, after a moment, during which he glared fiercely at Gimblet. "Except one young woman," he continued, as an afterthought. "Poor thing, she seemed really distressed; but more because she thought she'd never see her money than on Mrs. Vanderstein's account." "One of the maidservants?" suggested the detective. "No, no, I think not. She came up just as I was leaving the house. 'Oh, sir,' she cried, 'can you tell me if there's any truth in what I've seen in the papers, about the lady that lives here having disappeared? Surely it's not true?' She seemed so much concerned that I explained the state of affairs to her. 'It is true,' I said, 'that the ladies of this house went out on Monday night, and have not yet come back. But I hope we may find out where they are at any moment.' To my surprise no sooner had I said this than she leant back against the door-post as if she were going to faint or something, devilish ill she looked, poor creature, and then quite suddenly covered her face with her hands and burst into tears. I must own," Sir Gregory confessed, "that the sight of so much feeling exhibited on Mrs. Vanderstein's account moved me considerably. A very little more and I should have mingled my tears with those of the poor girl. 'Don't cry, my dear child,' I said, a good deal affected. 'It is natural that those who care for her should feel anxious and upset, but we must show a brave face and hope for the best.' Still, in spite of all I could say, she went on crying, and sobbed very piteously, poor thing; till at last, on my asking her how it was that she was so anxious about Mrs. Vanderstein, she managed to regain control of herself, and said in a doleful tone: 'I'm only a poor girl, sir, and the lady owes us money. If she is lost it means a great deal to me.' I own I was disappointed, having thought her distress prompted by affection rather than mercenary considerations; but people are all alike in this world; self-interest, Mr. Gimblet, that's the only motive that rules men's actions nowadays. However, I did my best to comfort her, and told her that whatever happened Mrs. Vanderstein's bills would not go unpaid. I can't say I was very successful in my efforts to reassure her and she went off in the end looking dreadfully woe-begone. 'Pon my word, I never saw such a miserable, frightened-looking little creature! I didn't like to let her go without trying to help her in some way, but I hardly knew what to do, for she didn't look the sort one could offer money to," concluded Sir Gregory, who had the kindest heart in the world. "What was she like?" asked Gimblet with a show of interest. "A shop girl, I should say, but she had a foreign look about her: a lot of dark hair, and big dark eyes to match, and she was neatly dressed, trim and tidy. You know the sort of way these French girls get themselves up, but all in black or some dark colour. Very quiet and respectable-looking girl. The only thing I thought looked a bit flashy about her was that she wore a heap of common jewellery, bracelets and brooches all over, cheap and nasty; and I could see a string of great beads round her neck under her blouse, imitation pearls as big as marbles. I was astonished, I must say, at her going in for that sort of thing, for in other ways she seemed a very nice, quiet girl. Looked terribly ill, too, poor thing." "I wonder who she was," said Gimblet. "Do you say she wore her necklace under her blouse?" "Yes, I could see it through the muslin or whatever it was she had on. Some transparent stuff." "That was rather curious. Girls of that class, who are fond of decking themselves out with such cheap ornaments, don't generally hide their finery. It's generally quite on the surface, I think." "I should think it was unusual," agreed Sir Gregory. "She must have dressed in a hurry, and done it by mistake; don't you think so?" Gimblet did not answer. He had been wandering about the room, in an aimless fashion, and now he paused beside a table and offered Sir Gregory the contents of a glass jar that stood upon it. "Have some barley sugar?" he suggested. And, as Sir Gregory indignantly refused: "One must have a pet vice, and after all, this is my only one," said he, putting a large piece into his mouth. But Sir Gregory only shook his head mournfully and refused to smile. "I suppose," he said after a moment, with a shamefaced look, "that there can't be anything in Chark's idea, can there?" His tone was that of one who pleads to have a disturbing and discreditable doubt utterly removed. Gimblet remembered the warmth of the baronet's protestations to Sidney, and suppressed a smile. "I think we may hope for a solution less shocking than Mr. Chark's," he said hopefully. "As for whether his suspicions can have anything in them or not, I can only say that they are nothing much more than the wildest of surmises. They amount to this. Mr. Sidney has lost money in a way disapproved of by Mrs. Vanderstein, and, on appealing to her for assistance, was met not only by reproaches but by threats that he would be cut off from his inheritance. On the other hand, Mrs. Vanderstein is not very much older than her nephew, so that his expectations of enjoying that inheritance could never be other than extremely remote, since the lady enjoys the best of health. Mr. Chark does not hesitate to hint that Sidney may have taken his aunt's life, in order that he may at once inherit the money of which he is certainly in urgent need. And if he could contemplate such a deed at all there may be said to be this further inducement, that in the event of Mrs. Vanderstein remaining alive she would most likely marry again; when, if she had children, she would probably--since she has full power over it--leave most if not all her fortune to them, whatever her late husband's hopes may have been regarding the disposal of it. "Chark takes these circumstances and finds in them a motive; he then takes Mrs. Vanderstein's disappearance and proceeds to infer from that, that young Sidney has made away with her. His motive may exist, though it is a question whether such a motive is strong enough to induce so terrible a crime in a young man of Sidney's class and upbringing, who is in normal health, and we will presume, for the sake of argument, sane. But Chark has not, as far as I know, a shadow of evidence on which to assert that the lady has been injured in any way; and I think any such conjecture is ridiculous without more to support it; while to suggest it publicly, as he has done, is quite scandalous. It is still perfectly possible that Mrs. Vanderstein or Miss Turner received some urgent message while at the opera, which caused them to leave before the end of the performance. It may have been an appeal for help from some friend in trouble, or something involving a certain secrecy of procedure. There are thousands of possible situations that might arise, to the conduct of which privacy would be essential. Wait, Sir Gregory, at least to see if we get an answer to our advertisements, before allowing your imagination to follow headlong in the wake of Mr. Chark's speculations." CHAPTER XIV Late in the afternoon, Gimblet, returning to the flat in Whitehall, found a visitor awaiting him there. Higgs, hearing his footstep in the hall, hurried out to meet him and inform him of the fact. "A young lady, sir. She gave me this card, and wants to see you on business. She's been here about ten minutes, and I've taken tea in to her, not knowing how long you might be, sir." Gimblet took the card and read: "Miss Seraphina Finner, Inanity Theatre." "Where is she?" he asked. "In the waiting-room," replied Higgs; and Gimblet went at once into the small sitting-room he set apart to be used by people unknown to him. As he opened the door Gimblet checked himself for a moment on the threshold with the sensation of entering some one else's room by mistake. His visitor had pushed most of the furniture back against the wall, and was, when he first caught sight of her, in the act of pirouetting round in the middle of the floor, with her skirts lifted high and one foot raised to the level of the mantelpiece. Her back was towards him, but at the sound of the opening door she twisted round with a swinging movement, and confronted him with a laugh. "They told me you were out," said Miss Finner gaily, and without any trace of embarrassment, "so I just started doing a bit of practising to fill up the time while the tea is standing. Waste not, want not, that's my motto," she added. "I'm sorry to have kept you waiting," the detective began; "won't you sit down now?" And he pulled out a chair she had piled with some others in a corner, and offered it to her. "I suppose I may as well," admitted the young woman; "though it does seem a pity not to do a bit of exercising now I've cleared the room. You see, I dance in 'The Jodeling Girl,' and one has to keep one's limbs supple, or, if you aren't up to the mark one night, they put on somebody else. Fact is," she added confidentially, "that's why they took me on. Dixie Topping, who used to be one of the four of us that do the dance I'm in, let herself get stiff, and one night when it came to kicking William Tell's apple off the boy's head, she missed it clean, and, as it's got to be done in time with the music, that put the conductor out, so when she had another try, and missed it again, he got so mad that they sacked her and put me on. Ill wind that blows no one any good," said Miss Seraphina philosophically. Her belongings were strewn about the room: a great bouquet of carnations lay on a chair, gloves and scarf were thrown on the bookshelf, while an enormous hat covered with flowers and ribbons was poised on a cabinet. She had drawn a curtain across the window, no doubt out of consideration for her complexion, as Gimblet happened to have chosen for this room hangings of a becoming rose colour; and the air was filled with the reek of inexpensive scent. The detective compared it mentally, and extremely unfavourably, with the Arome de la Corse. Altogether he would not have recognised his own room, to such an extent had ten minutes of Miss Seraphina Finner's occupation removed all former traces of his own individuality. He actually started as he suddenly noticed, perched on the mantelpiece, a pair of small white animals: a smooth-haired cat with eyes of a greenish yellow, and a dog no bigger, but with a long, silky coat. It appeared to be one of the tribe known to the unappreciative as Fidos, and to the admiring owners as Toy Poms. It stood at one end of the shelf, fidgeting and whining, but not daring to jump. The cat had retired to the extreme opposite corner, where it sat with its paws very close together and its tail curled tightly round them, surveying the restless behaviour of the dog with a look of sleepy disdain. The feelings with which Gimblet saw these two, but more especially the dog, sharing this point of vantage with his best blue and white china may be imagined. He was speechless; and perhaps it was just as well. "I hope you don't mind Nigger and Pompom," said Miss Finner, as she accepted a cup of tea, "lots of lumps, please, and heaps of cream too. Seraphina's pets are her inseparable companions! Don't they look sweet up there? I put them there to be out of the way while I was on my light fantastic. It bothers me never to know when my foot will come down on one of them, instead of the floor. Pompom seems to enjoy being trampled on by the way he's always in the middle of the room." She seized the woolly dog by the scruff of the neck and deposited it in her lap. "Was you frightened of falling on your heady peady, darling," she murmured, fondling it ecstatically. "No, no, you mustn't lick your auntie's face; might give you a pain in your little inside. Isn't she a sweet little affectionate thing?" she asked, raising her eyes for a moment to Gimblet's. "Yes," she went on, as the little dog danced on her knee in a frantic effort to make clear his need to share the cake she had taken, "Pompom shall have a cake too. His auntie wouldn't let her darling go hungry, no, she wouldn't! And Nigger shall have some cream for a nice treat." She poured some cream into a saucer and placed it on the floor at her feet. The cat, which had watched the attentions showered on Pompom with the cold eye of indifference, now abandoned its pose of superiority, and jumping lightly to the ground approached the saucer on noiseless, unhurried tiptoes. It began to lap the cream with a genteel, condescending air, and with due regard for its whiskers, shaking its head sharply if a drop adhered to one of their long, stiff hairs. Miss Finner contemplated the sight with admiring delight. "Doesn't it do your heart good to see how he likes it?" she asked, "and aren't his manners lovely? Oh, Pompom, what an example he is to you, darling!" she exclaimed, as Pompom snatched at a piece of cake and swallowed it with one gulp. "Try and behave like your brother does, my angel. He's always the same," she went on, "I don't care where you put him, Nigger is always the perfect gentleman. Why! I took them across to Paris at Easter. Didn't know what a trouble I should have smuggling Pompom home again, or I should have left her behind in London. I tied feathers all over her, though, and put her in a bonnet box, so they took her for a hat, the darling. As if any hat was half as beautiful! But, as I was saying, we had a beast of a crossing. Oh my! that channel! And poor Pompom was one of the first to feel it. And much as I love her, I must say, she just gave way, and never made the tiniest little effort to hide her feelings. But Nigger! If you'll believe me, that cat was so ashamed of the way he felt he was going to behave that the tears streamed down his face, and he just mewed and mewed till I could have cried; only being so sick myself I really didn't care, as a matter of fact. But though he felt so bad he didn't forget his manners and he wouldn't be sick, he simply wouldn't, till I gave him a basin. Then certainly. Oh Lord!" Miss Finner stopped. The recollection was too much even for her; she was also slightly out of breath. Gimblet listened to her with amusement. Though he wondered vaguely what her business with him could be, he let her run on, supposing that she would disclose it in time. After a moment she resumed in serious tones: "It's a good thing, don't you think, to have a fad of some kind? It's so hard to get noticed, isn't it? Expect you found that when you started looking for thieves? People won't see that one's any different to anyone else, do what you like. But manage to have something really out of the common about you, and you get your chance. That's what I think. They forget me all right, but they remember my white cat and dog, and after a little they begin to notice me too. I had a pretty hard time at first, I tell you," Miss Finner sighed. "But I'm getting on well now, thanks," she continued, with a return of her former vivacity. "Of course I haven't got a speaking part yet, but I'm doing a dance, and that's something at the Inanity. Some one sent me a diamond brooch last week," she added with pride, pointing to an ugly little diamond star. "What do you think of it? You're a judge of stones, I should think, being always in the society of burglars, as one may say." Gimblet examined and admired. "I'm afraid, though, I'm not really a judge," he said. "That's your modesty. But, as you see, I'm prosperous. And it isn't after the reward that I've come. Not that I'll deny that the money would always be useful. Still, it's the ad. I'm thinking about. Will you put my name in the paper now? 'Miss Seraphina Finner of the Inanity brings news of the missing ladies.' That's what I'd like to see, right across a poster." A flicker of interest showed itself for an instant on Gimblet's face. "So that's it," he said to himself. Aloud he answered: "I don't know whether I can promise you that just yet. It rather depends, you know. But if I am called upon to send any communication on the subject to the press, you may be sure that, if possible, your name shall be inserted." Seraphina pouted. "I call that stingy," she complained. "He might put us on a poster, Pompom, mightn't he? He's an unkind, cruel man, he is." "What do you know of the missing ladies?" asked Gimblet, disregarding these observations. Miss Finner assumed an air of importance. "I didn't know anything about it till lunchtime," she said. "Not being what you'd call an early riser, it's not often I take a squint at the newspapers unless it's in the afternoon. But to-day a friend came to see me and we had lunch together. By and by she begins talking about one thing and another, and presently she says: 'Have you read about these ladies that have disappeared?' So I said no, what was it, and she said: 'What! haven't you seen the paper? There's an exciting bit about them in this morning's _Crier_.' When she'd told me all she could remember, I began to get interested. I had a feeling, you know, as if this was in my part. So I sent out for a paper, and they brought in one of the evening editions which had the reward and description of the ladies in it, as well as everything, or so my friend said, that the _Crier_ had. I read it all out loud, and when I came to the part about wearing a white dress with mauve cloak heavily embroidered and a large amount of valuable jewellery, I said to myself: 'This, Seraphina, my dear, is where you walk on.' By the time I'd finished the paragraph I was certain sure. It was just a fluke," said Miss Finner reflectively, "that I ever saw that description or heard anything about it at all, for, as I say, I don't look at the papers more than about once in a fortnight, unless it's the notices of a new show." Gimblet's murmured comment might have passed for astonishment, agreement, or merely encouragement to proceed. He thought it best to let her tell her story in her own way. "It's a funny thing," she went on after a moment's silence; "it seems somehow as if it was meant to be, doesn't it? Well, the reason why I felt so excited, when I read the description, was because I had seen the ladies later than anyone else. I saw them on Monday night, after they left the opera." "And where did you see them?" asked Gimblet, bending over the cat, which, having finished the cream, was rubbing itself in a friendly fashion against his leg, where it left a covering of white hairs on his dark trousers. "Poor pussy," he said, stroking it. "I was driving home from the theatre in a taxi," said Seraphina. "I live up in Carolina Road, N.W. I don't suppose you know it; up beyond Regent's Park, to the right, as you may say, of Maida Vale. It was a very hot, sultry night, you remember, and I'd got the cab open so as to get a little air. I was tired for some reason--it's not often you can tire me--and I put my head back, and my feet on one of the back seats, and as near as possible went off into a snooze. That's why I can't tell you exactly which street it was in, and I'm afraid that makes it very awkward." Miss Finner's voice was full of regret. "Suddenly we swung round a corner with such a bump that it roused me, and I sat up and took notice. We were driving through a nice wide street, with trees on each side, and good-sized houses set back in little gardens, all separate from each other. Each garden had two gates, and just room for a carriage to drive in and out. There wasn't a light to be seen in one of them, and I thought how early the people in those parts went to bye-bye. And then I caught sight of an open doorway, with the light shining from it out into the small yard or garden in front, and a street lamp standing exactly in front of it; so that between the two the place was well lit up. There was a carriage just driving out through the gate, and there were no shrubs or bushes in the garden, nothing but a little yard it was, I think, so I could see the two ladies standing in front of the door as plain as the nose on your face. "I turned round when we'd passed and stared back at them, for the street wasn't crowded with people in gorgeous opera cloaks and blazing with diamonds, like one of these two was. I suppose it was Mrs. Vanderstein. She was standing a little to one side, as if she'd taken a step or two after the carriage, and was looking after it still. She had on a white dress, all sparkling, and a mauve or pink cloak thrown open and back on her shoulders, so I could see the jewels flashing and shining away all over her as right as rain, just like it says in the papers. There was a tiara on the top of her head as big as, as--" Seraphina gazed round searchingly for a simile--"as big as that chandelier. Oh, it can't have been anyone else! And besides, there was the other young lady; I didn't look at her so much, but I can swear she had a red cloak on. There now! As soon as I read about them I remembered what I'd seen on Monday night, and I said to my friend: 'My dear, I'm going out to keep an appointment with my photographer. Ta-ta.' I wasn't going to let on to her, of course. She's a bit of a cat, as a matter of fact." Miss Finner stopped, fixing on Gimblet a gaze full of modest pride. But Gimblet sat, to all appearance, lost in thought. Though his eye met hers, it was with an abstracted look, and this in spite of the fact that Miss Finner's eyes were blue and darkly fringed. He could not fail to observe her curls of gold, the pink transparency of her cheek, the broad green and white stripes of her silken gown. He could not fail to hear, whenever she moved, the jingling of bracelets, of the many charms that were suspended from the chain around her white throat, and the merry peal of her laugh; but all this seemed to be escaping his attention, and Miss Finner could detect nowhere the glances of admiration, which she considered the least that was due to her. Instead, he had nothing but prosaic questions for her. "What time do you say this was?" "After the theatre. Nearly midnight. I was late getting away." "You don't know the name of the street? Could you find your way to it again?" "Afraid not, it's not the way one generally goes. I've no idea where it was, beyond what I've told you." "And the house? Did you notice nothing about it to distinguish it from its neighbours?" "No, I didn't look at it specially. Yes, I did, though; there was a board with 'To Let' on it, up on the railings. The light from the lamp showed it very clearly." "That's the only thing you can remember?" "Yes," said Seraphina. "You said the door was open. Could you see anything of the inside of the house?" "No, or at least I didn't notice anything. There might have been some one standing in the hall. I don't know." "Try and remember," urged Gimblet. Miss Finner shut her eyes, contracted her brows, and gave herself up to reflection. "No good," she remarked, after an interval in which one might have counted twenty. "Did you notice the carriage which was driving away?" "Can't say I did. It was a brougham, I think. I looked at the people on the pavement." "Did you see lights in the house--in the windows, I mean?" "No, I think the only light came from the door." "Were you able to observe the expression on the ladies' faces?" "Oh no, we went by too quick for anything of that sort. I didn't notice their faces at all, except that I believe they were both more or less young women." "You can't think of anything else, however trivial?" Miss Finner could not. "If anything else comes back to me, I'll let you know," she said hopefully. "Don't you think you can find them from what I've told you?" "I don't think there ought to be much difficulty in discovering the house, or at all events the street," said the detective, "thanks for your information, which may prove most valuable. You must allow me to present you with the reward offered in the papers." After a slight show of protest she did allow him. "Well, I must be off now," she said, after that formality was accomplished, and proceeded to gather her things together. "Thank you for the tea. But, I say, don't you want to know a little more of the beauteous stranger who is the bearer of the good tidings? You don't even know my name." "Oh yes, Miss Finner, I do know it," Gimblet assured her. "You left a card in the hall; I saw it as I came in, but I should of course be delighted to know more of you than that." "Know then," said Seraphina, speaking in high, clear tones and with an assumption of affectation, "know then that I am not what I seem. My name, indeed, is a disguise, for my father, worthy man, was a Fynner with a y, an obscure relation of the noble house of Fynner of Loch Fyne. Though honest, he was poor; and my beloved and beautiful mother came of a line as well connected and impecunious as his own. The marriage aroused the wrath of both families, and the head of my father's house, proud and haughty earl that he was, would never be brought to acknowledge his unhappy cousins. I was educated in a convent, and, at the death of my parents, found myself at the age of sixteen alone, and without a penny in the world. Scorning to beg, I adopted the profession of the stage, chiefly with a view to supporting an aged and suffering relative, the aunt of my father's cousin. Now you know all there is to know about the innocent and unfortunate daughter of a gallant gentleman, the scion of a proud, but noble race." Miss Finner tilted her nose skyward and drew herself up haughtily. Then, with a disconcerting suddenness, she winked at Gimblet, and burst into a peal of laughter. "If you can't detect something fishy in that story," she cried, "you're not the detective you're cracked up to be! But I often say that piece about my family. A poor chap I used to know in my young days, when I was in the provinces, made it up for me. A poet, he called himself, and was always making up things; very pretty some of them were--if you like that sort of thing. It was him that thought of my name, and I've never regretted it really. But I never heard that he got anyone else to take any notice of his composings, poor fellow." Miss Finner sighed and looked rather sadly out of the window. "He was a good sort," she added reminiscently; "one of the best. I put that bit in myself about being educated in a convent," she concluded, pulling at her gloves. "It's the usual thing." With a white dog under one arm and a white cat under the other, Miss Seraphina Finner, of the Inanity, talked herself out into the hall, and, after an interval for the purpose of regaling Gimblet with an anecdote of her earlier struggles, finally talked herself through the door and out of the flat altogether. Gimblet, returning to the little room and absently rearranging the displaced chairs and tables in their habitual order, found it more silent and lonely than before Seraphina had ever entered there, with her incessant chatter, her boisterous mirth, and her happy vulgarity. As he moved about the place, restoring to it the appearance of every-day tidiness, his mind was busy with the information she had brought and the question of his next move. He decided on it quickly as he was finishing his task, and only lingered to pull back the curtain and throw open the window, so that the odour of scent that Seraphina had bequeathed might have an opportunity of dispersing. This he did, and then taking his hat and a light overcoat, for the evening was chilly and the weather had turned afresh to rain, he went down to the street and hailed a taxi. CHAPTER XV "Drive to the Inanity," said the detective as he got into the cab; and when the man stopped before the theatre: "Do you know Carolina Road, North West?" he asked him, leaning out of the window to do so. "Yes," the driver said. "The other side of Regent's Park, isn't it?" "Then go there." Gimblet drew his head back and sat down as the man let in the clutch and the taxi started again. It was almost seven o'clock and the roads were comparatively clear of traffic, while the pavement seemed still more deserted, the few people who were to be seen walking quickly to get out of the rain; but it appeared that for the most part the world was within doors, resting after the day's work, or preparing for the entertainments of the evening. The taxi went swiftly, and in a short time had drawn near to its destination. As they left the more fashionable streets behind and passed northward into semi-suburban districts, Gimblet leant eagerly forward, noting every characteristic of the neighbourhood with an observant eye and an expectant alertness. They soon came upon tree-lined roadways, bordered by houses that boasted small plots of ground before their doors. Railings enclosed these plots, and in many cases a minute carriage drive circled from the pavement to the entrance of the house; but as they turned corner after corner and the same scene, with slight variations, continually repeated itself, Gimblet's hopes gave way to an incredulous disappointment, for of all these dwellings not one answered to the description given by Miss Finner. She had mentioned particularly that the house he was looking for stood alone in its little garden; but in all the streets traversed by the detective not so much as a cottage was to be seen of the kind known technically as "detached." They turned at length into Carolina Road and the driver slowed up, looking round as he did so for instructions. Again Gimblet's head went out of the window. "Go back towards the theatre," he said, "but go another way," and after much noise and backing--for the street was a narrow one--the cab turned, and off they started again. Rain was falling heavily by this time in a cold, persistent downpour. The wind blew chill from the west, and the detective, all a-shiver on this summer's evening, told himself, as he drew up the windward pane, that there must be icebergs sailing down the North Atlantic. He wrapped his coat closer around him, and hugged himself in a corner of the taxi. Again they splashed and bumped over the muddy, streaming macadam; the water swished from the wheels; the driver cowered under his shining waterproof screen; and the car skidded unpleasantly as they swung round corners and narrowly avoided collision with other vehicles in the same plight. Gimblet kept a look-out no less sharp than before, but with no better result. Here were houses, indeed, in plenty, here were gardens and carriage gates, and dripping trees; but here was no single detached building of any shape or kind whatsoever. Another drive Gimblet took, following devious ways. He felt inclined to ring at Miss Finner's door and reproach her with inaccuracy; but she had not told him the number in Carolina Road of the house she lived in. Besides, at this hour she would be at the theatre preparing to remove the apple which young Tell was undauntedly balancing. For an unpleasant moment the detective wondered if she had merely made a mistake, or whether the whole tale were a fabrication. He remembered uneasily the readiness with which he had accepted it and his urgent pressing upon the voluble lady of the reward offered in the papers. No doubt she was laughing at his gullibility, and regaling her friends with an embellished account of how easily she had taken in the well-known detective. Gimblet's lips tightened as he thought of it. Was he becoming unduly credulous in his old age? There was the story Sidney had told him, too. He had assured himself that he had kept an open mind as to the truth of it, and had reserved his opinion till proofs were offered him; but, as a matter of fact, as he now acknowledged sardonically, he had believed every word spoken by the young man, and allowed himself to be absurdly influenced by an honest face and an appearance of frank trustfulness. "A nice sort of detective you are!" said Gimblet to his reflection in the little slip of looking-glass that adorned the cab; and he cried to the driver to go back to Whitehall. Higgs was waiting for him, and reported that he had taken a second advertisement to the advertising agents, and that he had also been to most of the principal taxi garages, where he had made inquiries and posted notices. "The man is sure to turn up to-morrow morning, sir," he said. In the morning there was no news. Gimblet telephoned to Grosvenor Street and was himself called up by Sidney. To him he replied coldly that so far he had nothing to report. Directly after breakfast Sir Gregory arrived, panting. "I couldn't get you on the telephone," he said. "Have you heard nothing?" "I had an answer to my advertisement," replied Gimblet, "but I am afraid the information brought me was quite unreliable." He told Sir Gregory in a few words of Miss Finner's visit. "I tested her story pretty severely yesterday," he said, "but there still remains a chance that the man who drove her may appear, and be able to remember the exact route by which he took her on Monday night. There is no doubt her own account is so inaccurate as to be worthless; and it is possible," he added, owning the secret dread he could not keep from his thoughts, "that she was only indulging in a kind of practical joke." Sir Gregory was beginning to show the effect of his days of anxiety. Though his face was still pink, the lines on it seemed to have become deeper and more numerous, and he had the weary, listless air of one to whom sleep has denied herself. Gimblet was not anxious for his company, but Sir Gregory would not be shaken off. The detective said he had letters to write and business that must be attended to; but was met by a pleading request to be allowed to remain, in case the taxi driver should make his appearance. "I don't know what to do with myself if I go away," said Sir Gregory miserably. "If I am here I feel that, if any news does come, I shan't have to wait longer than is necessary for it. Nothing like being at headquarters." Finally Gimblet consented to his staying, and himself withdrew into another room with a bundle of papers that needed his attention. When he went back after an hour's work to the library, where he had left Sir Gregory surrounded by newspapers and books, he found these cast aside or strewn on the floor and the baronet himself standing by the telephone, in the act of hanging up the receiver. "I got tired of reading," he explained; "nothing of interest in the papers, or I can't take any interest in them, whichever it is; so I just thought I'd call up young Sidney, and tell him about the ladies having been seen by that young woman. Relieve his anxiety, poor chap, to have some one to talk about it to." On the incidental relief to his own feelings afforded by having a listener into whose ears to pour them, Sir Gregory did not think it necessary to expatiate. Gimblet showed his vexation. "Really, Sir Gregory, you might have known better than to put him on his guard in that way! Supposing there's anything in Chark's suspicions, don't you see that the more complete Sidney thinks our ignorance and mystification, the better? While, as soon as he knows us to be on the track, we lose any advantage we may have?" "But--but you said you didn't suspect him!" stammered Sir Gregory, dumfounded. "I didn't say so. I said there was no reason to take a tragic view or to suspect anyone at all at first. I certainly do not accuse anyone now. But day after day is passing, and the matter looks very much more serious with each succeeding hour. It seems impossible, if all were well, that the ladies should not have communicated with their friends before now. This is Thursday. They vanished on Monday. I have been anxious to spare you, Sir Gregory. I know you have been only too ready to imagine the worst, and I did not wish to add to your fears; but this is the third day without news, and it is impossible to disguise any longer that you have grave reason for them." Poor Sir Gregory's last hopes flickered and were extinguished. "You think--you think----" he murmured. "I think there is cause for grave anxiety, but that is not to say that I am without hope. Far from it. Still, it is necessary to act with caution; and it was most imprudent of you to tell Sidney that we had heard anything. It is true that what we have heard is probably a mare's nest, but in any case there is no need to go blurting things out like that." Sir Gregory paid little attention to what Gimblet was saying. "So you do think Sidney may know more of this business than he admits," he repeated, half to himself. "Well, perhaps it was a pity I spoke to him just now, though I don't see what harm it can do either. The question is, what do you think he's done with her? Do you think"--Sir Gregory's voice seemed to fail him but he cleared his throat and continued with a gulp--"he's killed her?" The words came with a rush, and the question was plainer than Gimblet cared to answer. "I don't think anything," he replied, still rather testily, "but I must consider everything and anything possible. At present it is all mere suspicion, but things look rather black, though not only against Sidney. As a matter of personal opinion I incline to the idea that that young man is innocent; still, I can't admit his character cleared on that account. I've no evidence worth mentioning one way or the other." "Who else are you thinking of, when you say things look black against others than Sidney?" asked Sir Gregory eagerly. "I have thought myself, that, perhaps, the servants----" "Mrs. Vanderstein's servants? I don't think they can have anything to do with it. It would have been impossible for one of them to have got rid of the two ladies, while they were at home, without the knowledge of the others. And we can hardly contemplate the possibility of an organised conspiracy at present. The chauffeur and footman, you think, may have disposed of them by some means when they were supposed to be driving to the opera? But the chauffeur is an old and trusted servant, and, moreover, the box opener says that the ladies occupied their box. There is also the night watchman, who is an ex-corporal of the Foot-guards, and whose character is of the best. Suppose that, on their late return to the house, he let them in quietly, as it was his business to do, and then killed them both in order to possess himself of Mrs. Vanderstein's jewels. The difficulties that would then confront him before he could dispose of the bodies would be well nigh insurmountable, even if it were possible for him to silence two women simultaneously so effectively as to prevent anyone in the house from being aroused. The probabilities are strongly against the night watchman's having anything to do with it; and, indeed, I think all the servants may safely be left out of the reckoning." "Then who can have harmed them?" Sir Gregory asked. "I hesitate to mention anything more to you, Sir Gregory, after your recent injudicious conduct. However, I don't think you'd be able to warn the other person upon whom suspicion may fall. It is odd that it should not have occurred to our friend Chark that Sidney is not the only one who would benefit by Mrs. Vanderstein's death," said Gimblet. "Why, what do you mean; who would benefit?" "Surely you know. It was you that told me." "I told you?" Sir Gregory looked the picture of bewilderment. "I don't know anyone, except, of course, Miss Turner, who would be a penny the better if my dear friend should die." "Exactly." Gimblet, his chin on his hand, gazed over Sir Gregory's head at his newly-discovered Teniers, which he had found time to hang up in a central position. "A little further to the right, and it would be still better," he thought. But Sir Gregory was bounding in his chair. "Miss Turner! Impossible! A young girl, sir! You don't know what you are saying." "I thought you disliked her." Gimblet was very calm, almost indifferent. "That's a very different thing from thinking her capable ... surely it's impossible.... What makes you suspect her?" Sir Gregory finished by asking, his curiosity getting the better of his incredulity. "I don't say I suspect her," Gimblet answered patiently. "I say that suspicion might possibly fall on her more reasonably than on Mr. Sidney, with whom, by the way, I think she is in love." "Really, how do you know that?" "I have evidence that she sympathised very deeply with his troubles, and carried her sympathy to a length unusual in young ladies for men to whom they are not attached. I saw him last Sunday in the company of a girl, who I think must have been she. If it was, there is no doubt about the thing. Anyone could see it in her face at a glance." "Still, if that were so, I don't see why she should injure Mrs. Vanderstein." "Love is a very common prompter of crime. I don't say it is likely, but it is not impossible that this young woman, knowing Sidney to be in terrible straits for want of money, his career threatened, heaven knows what other threats on his tongue, should be prepared to go to desperate lengths to procure him what he needs. You never can tell what they will do in such cases; and the one piece of real evidence that I have shows that she did not mean to sit by idle while her lover went to his ruin." Gimblet took Barbara's telegraph form from his notebook, and spread it on the table before him. "Look at this," he said; and Sir Gregory got up and peered eagerly over his shoulder, eyeglasses on nose. "Luck is coming your way at last expect to have good news by Wednesday removing all difficulties." "There's no signature. Who is it from?" he asked. "It is from Miss Turner. I was able to get this form from the post office and to compare it with a specimen of her handwriting," said Gimblet. "The absence of signature alone looks as if a good deal of intimacy exists between her and Sidney, though the name may possibly have been omitted accidentally." "But what could she mean?" "Her meaning is plain enough. She promises Sidney that the money he wants shall be forthcoming. I do not know how much he requires, but he told me that the sum is a large one. Now, how was she going to get a large sum by Wednesday?" "She might raise something on the legacy from old Vanderstein, in which his widow has a life interest," suggested the baronet. "I don't know the exact conditions of the will; but, supposing she dies before Mrs. Vanderstein, what happens?" "I don't know," Sir Gregory confessed. "If it reverts to Mrs. Vanderstein, there wouldn't be much security to borrow money on. In any case, there is little difference between the ages of the two ladies, and rates would be very high. She might not be able to raise nearly enough, even if she could get any at all," said Gimblet. "It would be too terrible if a girl like that so much as lifted a finger against one who has been the soul of kindness to her," Sir Gregory repeated. "Ah, Sir Gregory, terrible indeed! But terrible things happen every day. Let a crisis arise, and you never know who may not surprise and horrify you by showing the cloven hoof. I hope that Miss Turner is entirely innocent of all knowledge of this affair, but there are two points which are against her." "And what are they?" "One is her parentage. I have been making inquiries about her father, and find that William Turner was a most unholy scoundrel, a man who would shrink at nothing to gain his ends, always escaping the penalties of the law by the skin of his teeth. He slipped from beneath the hand of justice over and over again, and finally bolted to South America, where he is reported to have died. Suppose that there was no truth in that rumour? Suppose he should in reality have returned to Europe, that he is even now in England, in London, his presence unknown to anyone but his daughter? With such a man to instigate her to crime, who can say what the girl might not venture? In any case she has bad blood in her; and there is much truth, Sir Gregory, in the old saying that 'blood will tell,' despite the socialistic opinions to the contrary which now prevail." "True enough," murmured the baronet. He was leaning forward listening intently to Gimblet's every word. "But you said there were two points against her." "Yes. The second is what may have prevented you from suspecting her before. It is the fact that she appears to have been spirited away as well as Mrs. Vanderstein. Well, if there has been foul play--which heaven forbid, but we must consider all the possibilities now--if, I say, the vanishing of these ladies has its origin in crime, the disappearance of Miss Turner is the most suspicious part of the whole affair. For why in the world should she share with Mrs. Vanderstein the attentions of any hypothetical criminal? She had no diamonds to be robbed of; she did not go about covered with jewels, having none of any value to display. She could only be an additional danger, and one that no ordinary robber would willingly burden himself with, since her presence could be no possible source of profit. "No, it seems clear that if Mrs. Vanderstein were to be decoyed away and murdered for her jewels it would be on an occasion when she was unattended by her companion. So far, Sir Gregory, you may take that as an encouragement to think that she is uninjured. It is indeed a most hopeful sign, and one of the reasons why I have refused, until to-day, to take a gloomy view of the business. Still, why has the girl disappeared? We are driven back on the supposition that she did so of her own free will; and, if that was the case, what was her purpose? Remember, all this is the merest theory, which it would be ridiculous to accept before we obtain further facts by which to test it. At present we have a very insufficient acquaintance with anything that does not involve these wild conjectures." As he finished speaking, Gimblet took out his watch and gazed at it long and significantly. With a sigh, Sir Gregory was at last obliged to take the hint. It was luncheon time: the footsteps of Higgs as he journeyed between the kitchen and the dining-room; the clatter of the dishes as he placed them upon the table or sideboard; the delicious smell of pie that was wafted in whenever the door was opened--all these proclaimed that the hour had sounded on the stroke of which it was Gimblet's custom to take his place before the dining table, full of the pleasantest anticipations. He was an eccentric gourmet, devising for himself meals in which strange dishes appeared in the menu, and he had an excellent cook, who was content to humour his taste and to labour secretly to prevent his poisoning himself altogether; so that, when he ordered fried oysters and Schwalbach _soufflé_ for luncheon, or lobster and chocolate ice for dinner, she would intersperse what she considered more wholesome dishes, such as legs of mutton and rice puddings, among those he had chosen for himself, in the vain hope that they might tempt him from his dangerous combinations. He gave up remonstrating with her after a while, although he refused to be coerced into eating what he did not like, and his persistent neglect to partake of the rice puddings caused such distress in the kitchen that Higgs fell into the habit of removing a spoonful from them before he cleared them away, and consumed it himself rather than that the cook should what he called "take on." To tell the truth, Sir Gregory was not without hope that Gimblet would have asked him to stay to lunch; but it was plain to the most sanguine that the detective had no such intention, and with hesitating reluctance the baronet was obliged to depart. He turned in the doorway, however, to say firmly: "I shall come back this afternoon," and then hurried away before Gimblet had time to put into words the objection his lips were struggling to form. Sir Gregory walked to his club, and regaled himself on cold lamb and a glass of claret. He had no appetite, and soon pushed away his plate and wandered into the smoking-room, where he fidgeted about, disconsolate and dejected. Several members whom he knew, aware of his friendship with the ladies whose mysterious disappearance was by now arousing general interest and, as a topic, shared the favour of the newspapers with the preparations for the Royal function that was to take place during the following week, came up to him and tried to get him to talk about it. But if they hoped to glean from him some grains of gossip beyond the reach of common knowledge, too scandalous possibly for a decorous press, wherewith they should proceed to acquire a libellous popularity among their acquaintances, these gentlemen were to know the leaden flavour of disappointment. Sir Gregory, with the sting of Gimblet's reproaches fresh in his mind, shut his mouth like a vice at any attempt to turn the conversation in the forbidden direction, and scowled as horribly at his friends as his naturally amiable cast of countenance rendered practicable; so that they soon moved off, telling each other that old Jones was becoming a cantankerous old fool and seemed likely to go off his head altogether, as far as they could judge. It happened in this way that the baronet found himself more and more neglected and alone; till, after standing it for a couple of hours, he could at last bear no longer a state of things as disastrous to his nerves as it was wearing to his temper. About half-past four he put his pride in his pocket, and leaving the smoking-room caught up his hat and hastened from the building. Ten minutes later he was again ringing at Gimblet's door. Scarcely had he been ushered into the detective's presence than the bell rang again, and Higgs came in to say that a taxi driver had arrived in answer to an advertisement, and asked to see Mr. Gimblet. To Sir Gregory's despair Gimblet at once left him, and called the man into the little waiting-room. "Good afternoon," he said to the taxi man, an intelligent looking fellow with a clean-shaven face, who returned his greeting civilly as he followed him into the room; "are you the man who drove a lady from the Inanity on Monday night to a house in Carolina Road?" "That's me, sir," answered the man, "leastways, as you may say, I drove one of them there." "What?" said Gimblet. "Was there more than one?" "Yes, sir, there was two young ladies when I took them up, but only one of them went to Carolina Road." "What happened to the other?" "I took her to another address first, sir," said the driver; "I forget the exact number, but somewhere about half-way down Hilliard Street it was, and on the right hand side as I went. That's Maida Vale way, Hilliard Street is." "And you went there first," cried the detective, "why then, of course I see it all now; the lady only told me she went from the theatre to Carolina Road, and my not knowing of the detour you made on the way has led me to some wrong conclusions." "To Hilliard Street first. Those were the orders they give me," repeated the man. "Yes, of course," said Gimblet. "Now, as you drove on from there to Carolina Road, do you by any chance remember seeing two ladies, very richly dressed, standing in front of the open door of a house, which had a small garden or yard between it and the street?" "Now you're asking me a riddle," said the taxi man. "I may have seen two ladies, or again I may have seen a hundred of them, or I mayn't have seen none at all. That's more than I could tell you." "You didn't happen to notice any particular two?" "No, sir, I did not. If I was to go driving about the streets a-looking at all the pretty ladies I see about, I'd be troubling the insurance people a bit too often. I keep my eyes on what's in the roadway and that takes me all my time, I don't think." "Quite so," said Gimblet. "Of course you are perfectly right not to look about you. Well now, perhaps you could tell me this. In going from Hilliard Street to Carolina Road, would you pass through a row of single detached houses on the way? Houses all standing in their own gardens some little way apart from each other?" The man considered, mumbling to himself the names of the streets, as he made a mental journey along the route the detective indicated. In a minute he looked up. "There's Scholefield Avenue," he suggested, "that's all little places like what you say." "Did you go by it on Monday?" asked Gimblet. "I did, sir. It's about half-way. There isn't no other street on the road with the houses all separate like that, so far's I can recollect. I've got me cab down at the door, sir; why don't you jump in and let me take you along to see for yourself?" "I think that's exactly what I will do," said Gimblet. "You go down and I'll follow in a moment." Gimblet was all eagerness. Here at last he seemed to be off on a definite scent, and he leapt to it all the more keenly for last night's check. The door had not closed upon the driver of the taxi before the detective had decided in his mind more than one question requiring an answer. First, he would take Higgs, secondly, he would not take Sir Gregory. He tiptoed along the passage, and noiselessly turned the handle of the pantry door. "Higgs," he said, "I am going out to have a look at a certain house. I may want you. Get ready to come. I give you three minutes." As quietly, he repaired to his own bedroom, and going to a cupboard made a rapid selection of various small articles, which he stuffed in his pockets. Then, opening a drawer, he took out a Browning pistol, and that also was stowed away. He stood an instant in the middle of the room with his head on one side, tugging absently at his ear. Had he forgotten anything? Ah, he knew what it was, and springing back to a shelf he seized and added to his collection a box of chocolates. "One never knows when one will get back from these sort of jaunts," he said to himself, "and I have been very hungry before now on my hunting trips." One more look round satisfied him that he had everything he could imaginably need, and he returned to the hall, where Higgs was waiting by the door. A minute more and they would have got clear away, but at the very instant that Gimblet, hurrying quietly towards his servant, snatched at his hat and lifted it to his head, the library door opened, and Sir Gregory's pink and anxious countenance peered out on him. "Mr. Gimblet," he cried, "where are you off to? The taxi man brought news then; and you would go without telling me! No, don't let me delay you," as Gimblet paused, hesitating, "I will come with you wherever you are going, and you shall tell me on the way," and grasping his hat and stick, the baronet prepared to accompany the others. There was no help for it, and the detective surrendered at once. Indeed, the anxious face reproached him, and he knew he had been patently a little less willing to endure Sir Gregory's society than was, under the circumstances, altogether charitable. The poor man's distress, though it made him rather a depressing companion, bore witness to the kindness of his heart and was if anything a circumstance entirely to his credit; and the accident that he bored Gimblet ought not really to be allowed to prevent him from participating in the rescue of his friends, if rescue there were to be. "Come along, Sir Gregory," said Gimblet. CHAPTER XVI Scholefield Avenue was a short street of moderate-sized houses, which, when they were built, had stood at the extreme margin of what was then a suburb; indeed, some of the original tenants had called it the country. There was considerable variety of appearance about them, but they were alike in one respect: each stood apart from its neighbours, in grounds that differed in extent from a tiny yard to half an acre. Thus No. 1, at the south-eastern corner, possessed a large kitchen garden running back a long way, with outbuildings at the further end, a stable, with a coach house on one side of the stable gate, and a chicken house and run on the other. The old lady who lived at No. 1 was very proud of the fact that she supplied herself with vegetables, eggs, and poultry all the year round, though, as she was fond of saying, her house was within three miles of the Marble Arch. She often thought of keeping a cow. No. 3, next door, had hardly any garden behind it at all, the ground that should by rights have belonged to it having been bought up by No. 1 in former days and added to its own; and this caused an unneighbourly feeling to exist between the two houses, which was inherited by each successive occupier of No. 3. Most of the other dwellings in the street were more equally provided with land; and the row came to an end with No. 17, a very small house surrounded by nothing more interesting than an asphalt path, with a thin hedge of laurel between it and the outer railings. Some of the houses showed the large, high window of a studio. On the opposite side of the road the same variety existed. The taxi containing Gimblet, Sir Gregory, and Higgs drove slowly down the street, and was more than halfway along it when the detective caught sight of the board "To Let" for which he was looking. It adorned the railings of No. 6, which stood on the left hand side as they went north. They stopped after they had turned the corner, and got out of the cab. Gimblet paid and dismissed it, and they walked back to No. 6. It did not look very promising, presenting a shuttered and unbroken front to the spectator, and bearing marks of age and disrepair. The gate swung on a broken hinge, and, in the cold wind that was still blowing, a door at the back banged every now and then with uncontrolled and unprofitable violence. Higgs, at a sign from Gimblet, rang the bell and stood aside, while they waited for some one to answer it. For a few minutes they heard nothing but the jar of the banging door and the rustle of the wind in the trees that lined the street; then they were aware of a slatternly woman, carrying a wooden bucket in her hand, who was trying to attract their attention from the steps of the house next door. "If you gentleman are a-ringing," she began, addressing them in a shout over the intervening bushes, "a-thinking, as it might be, by so doing to get into that there house, it ain't no good; you can't do it. There ain't no one in it." "Who's got the key?" Gimblet cried back to her. "I've got it meself. I'll come round and unlock the door." Descending the steps as she spoke she proceeded to make her way into the street, and so in at the swinging gate of No. 6. "'Ave you got a horder from the hagents?" she demanded when she arrived. "No? Well, I don't mind you having a look at the 'ouse all the same, if you're set on it. There ain't much to see, I reckon, but a lot of dirt and litter." As she spoke she inserted the key in the lock, and opened the door. Sir Gregory, who was nearest, was about to enter, but Gimblet laid a hand upon his arm. "Please, Sir Gregory, I must pass before you to-day," he said, and putting him gently on one side he stepped across the threshold. The woman was in the act of following, but he motioned her back, and stood for a moment staring at the floor. Then he turned to her. "I see on the board that the house is to be let unfurnished, or would be sold," he said, "and I understand it has been empty a considerable time. Can you tell me how long it is since anyone has been to look at it?" "It's stood hempty more'n two years," said the woman, "so I've 'eard say. There ain't been no one come to look at it since I've been 'ere. I'm caretaking, I am, for a party what live next door. 'E's away in foreign parts, that's where 'e is, and time I've been a-caretaking for 'im you're the first what's asked to see the hinside of this yere 'ouse." "And how long have you been caretaking here, do you say?" Gimblet inquired. "I've been 'ere a matter of four months come next Monday," replied the woman. "Thanks," said Gimblet; and turned again towards the interior of the building. He bent down, and looked close at the bare boards of the passage, on which lay the dust and dirt that accumulates in an empty house. Then as an idea struck him he stood upright again. "I don't think we will bother to go over the house," he said to the woman. "I fear it wouldn't suit me. At all events, you can perhaps tell me one more thing I am anxious to know," he continued, coming out of the house and facing the street. "There was another board up in this street about a week ago, but I see they have taken it down. Do you know which number it was, and whether the house has been let?" "Why yes, sir, they 'ave been and took down the board from No. 13," said the caretaker, "took it down beginning of the week, they did. But the 'ouse's let, I think; it won't be no good your going after it. If it's a furnished 'ouse you're looking for, I see a board hup in the next street t'other day. Little Cumberland Street." "Thank you very much," said Gimblet. "I'll take a look at it if I find No. 13 is let. Good morning, and I'm sorry to have troubled you." They left the woman to lock up the house and return to her caretaking, and started off up the street. Sir Gregory went reluctantly, visibly hanging back. "Look here," he said to Gimblet, "why don't you go over that house? It wouldn't take a minute. Supposing they've got her shut up in an empty room at the top somewhere. Much better make sure." "My dear Sir Gregory, no one has been in that house for months; the dust was deep on the floor and there were no signs of its having been disturbed recently. Do you think two women in long evening dresses could go in without leaving some mark of their passage so short a time ago. Their dresses would either have swept away some of the dust or, if they held them high, their footmarks would have remained. It is impossible that No. 6 is the house, unless some one has spread fresh dust in the hall since Monday. Besides, it is very improbable that they should have gone to such a deserted, filthy building, and, on the contrary, more than likely that they should go to a house that had just been let. I felt sure there must have been a board up at another house in this street when Miss Finner passed, as soon as I looked at the floor. Come, here is No. 13, and I have a feeling that we shall find it a more profitable hunting ground." Gimblet opened, as he spoke, the gate of No. 13, and took a rapid scrutiny of its exterior as he walked quickly up the short distance that separated it from the road. It showed a striking contrast to the forlorn and gloomy front offered to the world by the house they had just visited. No. 13 was spick and span; its white walls and shutters shone with the brightness of new paint; a neat grass plot, with a diminutive carriage drive winding in a half-circle round it, divided it from the railings of the street, the whole occupying no more than a few square yards of space. On each side of the flight of steps that led up to the front door there was a little triangular flower bed, gay with pansies, and, as the three men approached, the sun, breaking for the first time that day through the dilatory dispersal of the clouds, cast a shining beam about the place and was caught and reflected from the surface of the windows. The change in the day was not without its effect even on Sir Gregory, and as he watched Higgs spring forward to ring the bell a new and sudden inrush of hope mounted to his heart. "I have an excuse by which we may get into the house if they seem disinclined to admit us," Gimblet was murmuring in his ear. "Back me up in all I say, but leave the chief part of the talking to me." They waited eagerly, with eyes fixed on the door and ears strained to catch the sound of footsteps; but minutes passed and no such sound greeted them. Higgs rang again; the loud pealing of the bell could be heard jingling itself to a standstill in the basement, and must surely be audible all over the house. Still no one came, and he tried the area with no better result. Leaving Higgs to continue his efforts, Gimblet backed across the little lawn, and looked up at the windows to see if he could detect any sign of life. There were muslin curtains in the bedroom windows and he tried in vain to catch sight of a pair of eyes peeping from behind one of them; but not a movement was visible anywhere. The shutters of the drawing-room were closed, and the parapet of the broad balcony shut them out from a searching inspection, which was still further impeded by a wide wooden stand which took up most of the balcony, and extended its whole length. In it were planted flowers, tall daisies and geraniums, which appeared somewhat withered and neglected, and, with the closed shutters, contributed the only hint of disorder in the clean and cheerful aspect of the house. The detective made his way round to the back. Here the ground fell away, and the basement appeared on the surface instead of below the level of the ground. Another and longer flight of iron steps led up to a door used, no doubt, to give access to the garden. There was no bell here, and the door, of which Gimblet tried the handle, was locked. Through the windows of the basement he could see into the kitchen, clean and orderly as the outside of the house, with white tiled walls and rows of shining stewpans. The table was bare, he noticed, and no fire burnt in the grate; on a summer's evening such as this it might well have been allowed to go out. On the other side of the steps he looked into what must be the scullery, and beyond this was a larder; over these was a small window into which he could not see, while above the kitchen a large one was hidden, like those of the drawing-room, by outside shutters. The back window of the first floor, however, and all the other windows at the back of the house were without shutters, and veiled only by curtains of white muslin. Gimblet took a hasty survey of the garden. It was not large, extending back for some sixty or seventy yards from the house, but bright with flowers and green with lawn and leaf; trees surrounded it on all sides, now golden in the rays of the descending sun; and a high wall gave it privacy from an inquisitive world. Here again the beds were dappled with pansies; here were pinks and poppies, daisies and tall larkspurs, with such other flowers as could be induced to derive nourishment from the unrefreshing showers of smuts, which was their daily portion. By the end wall was a hut, of which the door yielded to Gimblet's touch, and disclosed a mowing machine in one corner, some garden implements in another, and a potting bench with boxes of mould and some packets of seeds; by the door were stacked a few red pots. Gimblet stood for a moment looking in, and then went back to the front of the house. Here he found Sir Gregory engaged in conversation with an elderly man, whose velvet coat and the paint brush he carried stuck behind his ear suggested that he was an artist. He introduced himself as the detective came up. "Mr. Gimblet, I think," said he; "my name is Brampton. I live next door," and he waved his hand towards the south. Gimblet ground his teeth as he realised that Sir Gregory had given away his identity, but he replied civilly that it was indeed he. "Although only a stay-at-home painter, I have heard of you," said the new-comer; "but of course I had no idea who was ringing, when I came round. My wife saw your friends at the door here, and suggested that I should come and tell you that she believes there is no one in the house. We heard that it was let, and the other day a man came and took down the board, but my wife says that no one has been seen to go in or leave the house for several days; she and the servants are of opinion that it is empty at the present moment, and that the new tenant has not yet arrived." "Indeed," said Gimblet, "I am grateful for your information; but I have some reason to think that the new tenant took possession some time ago." "It can hardly be very long," observed Brampton, "for the Mills, to whom it belongs, only went away last week." "Really," said Gimblet, "you interest me. Who are the Mills? Do you know them at all?" "Most certainly I do. They are great friends of ours, and their having to go away like this is a sad loss to us. Arthur Mill is the son of an old acquaintance of mine--a manufacturer of glass--and is employed in his father's business. His wife is a charming woman, and we are devoted to them both. It was only lately decided that he was to go abroad, to look after a branch of the business in Italy, and they had very little time to make arrangements about letting their house. They only left on Friday last, and it was a great surprise to us to hear on Monday that the house had been let." "Did you hear who had taken it?" inquired Gimblet. "I think I did hear the man's name, but I am afraid I have forgotten it. My wife saw a charwoman going in on Monday morning whom she often employs herself, so she ran in here, as she told me, to ask her what she was doing, as the house had been all cleaned up on Friday and Saturday after the Mills left. The charwoman said she had been sent in by the house agents to see if anything remained to be put in order, as the new tenant, or so she understood, wanted to go in at once. That is all we heard; but as no one has been seen or heard about the place since that day it looks as if they had changed their minds." "Thanks very much," said Gimblet. "If you could tell me the name of the agents I think my best plan is to go and try to get the key from them, as it seems impossible to rouse anyone here." "Ennidge and Pring are the agents; in Sentinel Street, about ten minutes' walk from here. You'll have to be quick, or you won't catch them. They're sure to close at six." "I will go now," said Gimblet, and he drew Higgs on one side. "Higgs," he said, "keep an eye on the front of the house, and if anyone comes out and you fail to detain him, follow him, leaving Sir Gregory to watch the house. In the meantime, let him watch the back. I shall be back soon if I can get a taxi." He started off, Mr. Brampton accompanying him as far as his own door and pointing out the way to Sentinel Street. At the gate they glanced back at the shuttered first floor windows and the faded flowers on the balcony. "Mrs. Mill would be terribly upset if she saw how her flowers are being neglected," said Mr. Brampton. "She is so very fond of her garden, and is always watering and attending to her plants. A man is to come once a week, on Saturday mornings, to look after the garden and mow the lawn, and I shall tell him to insist on watering the balcony boxes. That's your way now, up the street and bear to the left. Ah, there's a taxi." A cab had indeed that moment turned into the street, and Gimblet hailed it and drove rapidly to the offices of Messrs. Ennidge and Pring, house agents. CHAPTER XVII Mr. Ennidge was a short, middle-aged man, with grey hair, and a mild, benignant eye, which gazed at you vaguely through gold-rimmed spectacles. Mr. Pring, his partner, tall, thin, nervous and excitable, was the very antithesis of him, and that is possibly why they got on so well together. While Mr. Pring was always able to display enthusiasm in regard to the properties he had to dispose of, to the people who were inquiring for houses, and was never at a loss when it was necessary to explain that what the intending client took for geese were really swans, he was apt to relapse into gloom when called upon to deal with would-be sellers, or those who had houses to let and were disappointed with the rent obtainable, or the failure of Ennidge and Pring to procure them a tenant at any price. He was then only too likely, if left to himself, to disclose his plain and truthful opinion as to their property. This was seldom productive of good results, for, as a rule, the transference of the property in question to the books of another agent followed these outbursts; and, Ennidge and Pring's business being a small one, they could not afford to lose customers. It was in such cases, however, that Mr. Ennidge was seen at his best. It was he who, with friendly smile and hopeful, encouraging word, cheered the downhearted householder and sent him away with confidence restored, convinced once more that a tenant would shortly be forthcoming to whom the absence of a bath-room, of a back door, of gas or hot water laid on, and the presence of blackened ceilings, wallpaper hanging in strips, and dirt-encrusted paint, would if anything prove a veritable inducement to clinch a bargain most satisfactory to the landlord. Mr. Pring had already left the office when Gimblet arrived on the scene, and in another quarter of an hour he would have found it wholly deserted. He gave his card to the only clerk of the establishment, who took it in to the little inner room, where he was immediately received by the smiling Mr. Ennidge; and to him he quickly stated his business. "There can be no possible objection to my giving you all the information in my power with regard to the gentleman who has taken 13 Scholefield Avenue," said the house agent, "and since you cannot get an answer at the house I will send down my clerk with the key to let you in and assist, if necessary, in explaining matters to the tenant, if he should be discovered to be there after all. A very eccentric gentleman, I fancy, and something of a recluse. I could not, of course, take it on myself to use the spare key, which the owner happens to have left with us, at the request of a less well-known and responsible person than yourself, if I may say so, Mr. Gimblet; but since the capture of the forgers at the Great Continental last year, your name, sir, has been in every one's mouth; and you will allow me to add that I am, although hitherto unknown, one of your most fervent admirers." Thus was it ever Mr. Ennidge's pleasant way to oil the wheels of intercourse with his fellows. "The name of the tenant of No. 13," he continued, "is Mr. West, Mr. Henry West. He has taken the house for a month with the option of taking it on for a year or longer; and I fancy he must be a man of means, as the offer which he made appears to be an unusually high one--unnecessarily so, I may say, between you and me, Mr. Gimblet; but in the interests of our client, the owner of the lease, I need hardly tell you we did not quarrel with him on that account!" "What aged man is he?" inquired Gimblet. "I really can hardly tell you," replied Mr. Ennidge. "The fact is that I myself have not yet seen him. Both I and my partner happened to be out when Mr. West came to the office, and he made all the arrangements with our clerk. Perhaps you would like him to come in?" "I should be glad to ask him a few questions," said Gimblet. Mr. Ennidge put his head into the outer office. "Tremmels," he called, with his hand on the door. "Just come in here a moment." The clerk appeared, a white-faced young Londoner, showing very plainly the effects of an indoor life and long, hot hours spent upon an office stool; he moved languidly, as if every step were an exertion almost too great to repeat, and stood before Gimblet in a drooping attitude of fatigue. "Mr. Gimblet wants to hear about the tenant of No. 13 Scholefield Avenue," Mr. Ennidge told him. The clerk straightened himself with a perceptible effort, and stared fixedly at Gimblet, who had long since become accustomed to the interest the mention of his name commonly aroused. No doubt this youth knew the detective by repute; but he had an expression of such wooden stupidity, and withal looked so terribly ill and exhausted, that Gimblet wondered if he would be able to extract much sense from him. "It was you," he said, "who let the house to Mr. West?" "Yes," said the clerk. "He came in one day last week." "Friday," interposed Mr. Ennidge. "Yes, he came in here last Friday morning, and said he'd been over No. 13 Scholefield Avenue, having seen the board 'To Let' in front of the house," replied the clerk. "The owners, Mr. and Mrs. Mill, had only gone away that morning, and Mr. West was shown over by a servant who had been left behind to clear up and follow by a later train. He told me he required a furnished house for a year. He said he was very fond of solitude; that he had lived in India all his life and didn't care to meet strangers, but wanted a house with a garden, where he could be private, so to speak. He said he thought Scholefield Avenue would suit him admirably, but that he wished to take it for a month first to see how he liked it, and to have the option of taking it on. I was uncertain whether Mr. Mill would be agreeable to such an arrangement, and suggested waiting till we could communicate with the owner, but he wouldn't hear of that; said he wished to go in immediately, and would take some other house he'd seen unless he could clinch the matter then and there. He made an offer of fifteen guineas a week for the first month, and eight for the rest of the year if he should decide to take it on. This is such a very high price for this part of London that I felt sure Mr. Ennidge or Mr. Pring, if they had been here, would not have let it escape, but would have hit the iron while it was hot, if you take my meaning; and as I was aware that Mr. Mill had left an absolute discretion to the firm with regard to letting the house, and that he was very anxious to do so as quickly as possible, I didn't hesitate any longer, but agreed to Mr. West's conditions. "He said that he wished to have possession of the house from midday of Monday last; told me to get a charwoman in on Monday morning, in case any cleaning up remained to be done, and that he wished me to meet him at the house on Monday for the purpose of going over the inventory. Then he took out a pocket book, which seemed to be stuffed full of bank notes, paid me thirty guineas, the rent for half the first month, and asked me to get the agreement for him to sign. I got him two agreement forms such as we use, as a rule, when letting furnished houses, and he signed them both and put one in his pocket." "Perhaps Mr. Gimblet would like to glance at our copy," said Mr. Ennidge, diving into a drawer. "Here it is," and he handed a paper to the detective, who turned it over thoughtfully. There was nothing on it beyond the ordinary printed clauses setting forth the terms of the contract. At the end the tenant had signed his name, "Henry West," in large, sprawling characters, the strokes of which seemed a trifle uncertain, as if the hand that held the pen had not been absolutely steady. Below, in a neat business-like writing, was the clerk's signature: "A. W. Tremmels, for Messrs. Ennidge and Pring." Gimblet put it in his pocket. "I may keep it for the present, I suppose?" he asked Mr. Ennidge, who looked rather as if he would have liked to object, but on the whole decided not to. "Can you describe what Mr. West looked like?" Gimblet asked the clerk. "But perhaps you had better tell me that on the way to the house. Mr. Ennidge has promised to send you down with me. One thing, however, before we start: I should like to see the inventory, if I may." "By all means," Mr. Ennidge replied. "Just get it, Tremmels, and the key too. You know where they are kept," and as the clerk went into the outer office he turned again to Gimblet. "If you would like me to come myself?" he suggested. "Oh no, thanks," Gimblet answered, "do not trouble to come. As the clerk is the only one who met Mr. West, I think he will really be more useful to me. I suppose he can stand a walk down to Scholefield Avenue? He looks dreadfully ill, poor chap; what's wrong with him? Consumptive?" "He is ill, I'm afraid," said Mr. Ennidge regretfully, "but it will do him good to get a walk and a breath of fresh air. The hot weather we had last week was very trying; Tremmels certainly looks very bad since the heat. I have told him to take a holiday to-morrow," he added kindly, "a day in the country will be the best thing for him, and there is not very much to be done in the office at this time of the year. Business is very slack, Mr. Gimblet. I daresay, now, yours keeps your nose to the grindstone, at one season as much as another?" "Well, yes," said Gimblet. "I'm afraid the criminal classes aren't very regular in their holiday-making. It's very inconsiderate of them, but I'm afraid they're a selfish lot." The house agent's ever-present smile broadened, and at that moment young Tremmels made his reappearance with the inventory. In an instant Gimblet's keen nose had told him that with the clerk there now entered the room a pervading smell of brandy, and his quick eye noted a tinge of colour in the pale cheek of the young man, which had previously not been visible there. "O-ho," he said to himself, "so that's the trouble, is it?" Then, with a word of thanks to Mr. Ennidge, Gimblet led the way out into the street, and turned his steps towards Scholefield Avenue. "Now then," he said to his companion as they hurried along, "about this Mr. West. What is he like?" "He's an elderly, rather horsey-looking gentleman, and odd in his manner," said the clerk. "What I mean to say is, he has a very pleasant way of talking, and yet somehow he doesn't talk like an ordinary gentleman might. Seems rather fond of what I may term the habit of using bad language." "What does he look like?" "He isn't what you'd call a tall man; not that I should call him short either; and thin, very thin. Don't know if I make myself clear?" "Perfectly," said Gimblet patiently, "would you know him again?" "Oh yes. He's a very uncommon sort to meet about. I'd know him anywhere. He's got a leather coloured face, which looks as if he'd been out in the sun more than a few weeks, and a funny little bit of a pointed beard on his chin. Tell you what he looks like," said Tremmels, with more show of animation than he had so far exhibited, "he looks more like an American than he does an Indian; and, come to think of it, he's got a nasty sort of voice, same as they have, but not very strong." "Anything else you can remember about him?" Gimblet asked. He was listening with intense interest. "Well, he has got a way of standing with his legs apart, and getting up on his tiptoes; and then down he lets himself go with a jerk, if I make myself plain. His wool is a bit grey and is commencing to get baldish on the top. He seems to dislike seeing strangers or making new acquaintances, as you may say. He gave me to understand that he's a scholar, and going in for reading and what not when he's settled in Scholefield Avenue; says his health's bad too, but I shouldn't wonder if it was more likely something else. More this sort of thing." The clerk made an upward movement with his right arm and hand, of which, as Gimblet was walking on his other side, the significance was lost on him. "I beg your pardon?" he inquired doubtfully. "Granted," said Tremmels; "what I mean is, if you understand me, I shouldn't be surprised if anyone was to tell me that he takes a drop too much. Rather rosy about the beak, I thought, and when he left the office I watched him go down the street till he was nearly out of sight, when what should he do but nip across into the private bar of the _Lion and Crown_." "Ah," said Gimblet, "I observed a certain shakiness in the signature of the lease." In his own mind he was thinking that it was more than probable that the clerk had accompanied Mr. West to the _Lion and Crown_. "Did you notice anything else?" "I don't know that I did," said Tremmels thoughtfully. "He wore ordinary sort of clothes. Gent's lounge suit with a large check pattern, brown boots, and a very genteel diamond pin in the centre of his tie. Altogether quite the gentleman, and very civil-spoken and pleasant when not swearing. He told me that he wouldn't want any coals ordered in, as his cooking would be done chiefly on the gas stove with which the kitchen of No. 13 is fitted. There is every convenience, as you may say," concluded the clerk. As Gimblet pondered over what he had heard, and reflected that the powers of observation that his companion showed were greater than he had given him credit for, they drew near to Scholefield Avenue and passed beneath its lines of branching plane trees to the gate of Mr. Mill's house. Higgs was at his post before it and reported that nothing had stirred during the detective's absence. Sir Gregory came from the back of the house in the company of Mr. Brampton, who had joined him there. The artist was plainly excited. "Your friend tells me," he said, as he came up to Gimblet's side, "that you think that the two ladies of whose disappearance the papers are so full--Mrs. Vanderstein and her companion--came to this house on the night that they vanished. It will be the greatest favour if you will allow me to witness your methods of investigating this affair." "By all means," said Gimblet ungraciously, "why shouldn't the whole street come? I think it is very probable that it will do so, since Sir Gregory Aberhyn Jones appears to be perfectly incapable of keeping his own counsel, no matter whether the safety of his friends is endangered or not." So saying he turned and held out his hand for the key of the house to the clerk, who, panting and gasping after his walk, now leant against the door as if no longer able to support himself unaided. Sir Gregory and the artist, off whom Gimblet's right and left shots had glanced with a sting but produced no permanent wounds, fell back silenced for the moment, though unflinchingly determined to see anything there was to be seen. The quick, searching eyes of Brampton rested on the clerk, and he took in his woeful condition with the rapidity of his trade. "That young fellow ought to be in bed," he said, in a low voice, in Sir Gregory's ear, "but I suppose, like the rest of us, he won't be able to tear himself away from this exciting spot." They followed Gimblet, who had opened the door and passed through it into the hall. He looked round him in despair. "Really, gentleman," he cried, "you must stay at the door for the present. If this house has anything to tell, it will never do so after you have trampled all traces from the very floors with your innumerable feet. I will just see if there is anyone here; and, if not, you can come in after I have begun my thorough examination, as long as you keep out of my way and do as I tell you. Otherwise I warn you, Sir Gregory, that you will ruin every chance of success." "He talks as if we were centipedes," murmured Brampton. Sir Gregory motioned him to silence, and they remained obediently in the doorway while the detective and Higgs ran over the house, opening all the doors and glancing into the rooms to see if there were anyone in them. Whatever secret might lurk beneath that roof, for the moment at least there was no visible human occupant to divulge it; and, if he was to arrive at any answer to the problem of what had taken place on Monday night after the arrival of the ladies, it was clear to Gimblet that he must do so with no help other than the dumb aid he might receive from the inanimate objects still within the walls, or even from the very walls themselves. As soon as he had completed the first hurried general survey, the detective began a systematic examination of the house, starting with the hall and passage of the ground floor. The other men had to move away from the steps while he was here, as their figures crowding in the open doorway blocked the light, and he wanted all he could get. There was no electric light. In Scholefield Avenue, Brampton told Sir Gregory, all the houses were dependent on gas for their illumination. Gimblet knelt down and examined the carpet of the hall on his hands and knees. He took a small magnifying lens from his pocket, and applied it to certain spots, which he lingered over longer than the rest of the floor; at the foot of the stairs he picked up a small object from under the corner of the mat; he held it to the light for a moment between finger and thumb, and then put it carefully away in a little box like a pill-box, which he also produced from his pocket. Then he stood up, and examined the furniture with the same patient deliberation. Presently he spoke to the clerk, who was standing before the door, a little apart from the others. "Have you got that inventory?" he asked. "Just read out the contents of the hall." Tremmels came up the steps and opened the book he carried. "Two oak chairs, one oak table, one mirror, one mat," he read. "One umbrella stand; two chairs on landing, eight engravings in frames." "Wait a bit," interposed the detective, "we haven't got there yet." He went to the door, and called to Sir Gregory and Brampton. "I've finished the hall," he said. "If you want to come in, you can, as long as you stay behind me and don't bother me with talking." Then he turned back to his search, and began to subject each tread of the staircase to the same minute examination as the hall had received. From time to time he added another tiny object to the one he had already placed in the pill-box; four or five were deposited there before they reached the first floor. In this way the party ascended, a step at a time, till Brampton's curiosity began to succumb to the boredom of such ineffably slow, crawling, snail-like progress. "I think I'll not inflict my presence any longer, Mr. Gimblet," said he, "it is time I dressed for dinner, or my wife will have to wait for me." Receiving no answer from Gimblet, who was now absolutely absorbed in his work, he whispered to Sir Gregory that he would come back after dinner, and retired from the scene, escorted to the door by Higgs, who let him out and shut it behind him before he returned to his post at the foot of the staircase. At the top of the house Gimblet straightened himself and turned to Sir Gregory and the clerk, who were on the stairs a few steps below him. Sir Gregory, who was nearly choking with pent-up questions, seized the opportunity. "Have you found anything?" he cried, and Tremmels, though he said nothing, was a living echo of the words, as he strained forward behind Sir Gregory to catch the reply. "Nothing definite as yet," said Gimblet, "but I may say it appears to me probable that, if Mrs. Vanderstein did come here on Monday night, she did not stay in the house long. I should say she went no higher, at all events, than the drawing-room floor." And he proceeded to the examination of the rooms working his way downwards. The bedrooms yielded no harvest; they wore the dismal look of unoccupied rooms and had apparently not been entered since, having been swept and cleaned with great thoroughness, they had been left ready for the use of the tenant. None of the beds were made, there was no water in the jugs, there was absolutely no indication of so much as one of them having been used since the departure of Mr. and Mrs. Mill. Gimblet did not spend so long over them as he had over the staircase, but it was past eight o'clock when at length he came out of the last one and descended to the first floor. "I can always try upstairs again if there is nothing conclusive here," he said to Sir Gregory, as they went down. With his hand on the knob of the drawing-room door he paused an instant, looking with more sympathy than he had lately shown at the anxious face of the old soldier. A feeling crept over him that it would not be good for Sir Gregory to enter this room; it was a vague impalpable feeling, which he could not explain; and in a moment it had passed. He opened the door and went into the drawing-room, leaving the baronet, in obedience to instructions received, faithfully standing on the landing, the white face of the clerk showing over his shoulder, framed in the square of the doorway against the dusky shadows beyond. CHAPTER XVIII In the preliminary hasty search over the house, it had fallen to Higgs to reach the first floor earlier than his master. Gimblet had left it to him to examine, while he himself hurried to the upper stories; so that he now entered the drawing-room for the first time. He stood for a moment turning his head to right and left, taking in the principal features of the apartment with quick, comprehensive glances. Then, of a sudden, the whole figure of the man stiffened; and it was hard to recognise Mr. Gimblet, the dilettante, the frequenter of curiosity shops, the lounger in picture galleries, in the tense, motionless form of Gimblet, the detective, at this moment. He stood, as a pointer stands when it catches the wind of game, erect and stiff, in an attitude of interrupted movement, one knee still bent for the step he had been in the very act of making; his whole form absolutely still, save for a series of short, successive intakings of the breath, as, with head thrown back and his eyes shining with the keen, well-balanced excitement of the hunter, he sniffed the air. What was it he smelt? Something so faint, so indefinite, that after the first arresting instant he had lost it altogether; and with it the knowledge of what it was--which in that one second had seemed almost his--slipped away and was gone, nor could his most strenuous effort recall it. Oh, for one more whiff of that evasive, troubling odour! But sniff as he might he could no longer detect anything, and slowly his attitude relaxed, and he brought other senses to bear upon the scene. The room was divided, by its shape, into a front and back drawing-room, as is commonly the case in London houses; but the two had been thrown into one and the door led into the narrower back part, so that the light from the window overlooking the garden, which was obscured by trees, while it still illumined all that lay on Gimblet's right, hardly penetrated into the front and larger portion of the place. There the closed shutters of the three windows leading to the balcony prevented the light from finding an entrance, and it was very dark. The detective lit the gas and looked around him. It was a cheerful, pleasant room; not overcrowded with furniture, and showing taste and judgment in its arrangement and decoration, though there was nothing very original about it. On the walls, which were covered with some light coloured paper, were hung three or four good modern pictures; the mantelpiece was an eighteenth century one, and on either side of it was placed a Chippendale cabinet, with shelves for china, of which some good pieces could be seen through the small panes of the glass doors. At the opposite end of the room was a long, low bookcase and, except for a large writing bureau, the rest of the furniture consisted of sofas and chairs, with one or two small tables. It was a room at once dainty and desolate, gay and forlorn. The empty flower vases which stood on the tables, the absence of stray books, work, papers, or other signs of human occupancy, gave it a look of discomfort and dreariness; but it was plain, from the bright chintzes and curtains and the soft luxury of the carpet, that it only needed the presence of its owners to assume a cheerful and lively aspect. Gimblet began his examination in his usual methodical manner, working his way over the floor on hands and knees, gazing at the carpet through his lens at any place where there appeared a doubtful mark or change in the appearance of its surface from that of the surrounding parts. As he came to chairs or tables he moved them to one side, and continued his quest on the spot where they had stood. There were two small Chesterfield sofas, one of which jutted out at right angles to the fire-place before the right hand window of the front part of the room, the other facing the door with its back against the wall. When the detective came to the sofa by the fireplace, he pushed it to one side as he had pushed each piece of furniture in its turn, and as his eyes fell on the floor beneath it a low whistle escaped him: there was a patch of reddish stain on the green Wilton carpet, about three inches in diameter, and a smaller spot or two near by of the same rusty colour. With his head on one side, and his lips still pursed as if to emit a whistling sound, but with no audible noise issuing from them, Gimblet gazed at the stain on the carpet; and the longer he looked the sterner his face became; the whistling expression vanished, and he opened and shut his mouth with a grinding sound as the teeth met. He rubbed his finger over the marks, and the patch seemed to crumble away at his touch, till a hole appeared in the carpet and the white boards of the flooring were exposed to view. He applied his lens to the edges of the hole and plucked at the frayed wool with his fingers. A small piece that he pulled off he bestowed in one of the little specimen boxes with which he had provided himself. Then he replaced the sofa in its original position, and continued his examination of the floor. Under the fender he discovered another of the little objects he had picked up on the stairs, but nothing else did he find of any interest till he began to turn his attention to the furniture. Almost the first thing he looked at was the sofa that concealed the hole in the carpet; he was drawn back to it with an irresistible attraction. A careful scrutiny, however, did not reveal much more than the fact that the chintz cover was rather tumbled. Gimblet dug his hand down at the back of the seat, and pulled out the part of it which was tucked down. As he did so he felt a little lump under his fingers, and holding it up saw that it was yet another tiny shining thing for his pill-box collection, and as he looked at the piece of chintz he had pulled out he perceived several more of the same kind. They glittered in the gaslight like little diamonds, but had evidently come off the spangled tulle of a lady's dress. Gimblet remembered that Mrs. Vanderstein's dress had been described by her maid as "_diamantée_"; but then it was possible, indeed probable, that Mrs. Mill, or her friends, possessed gowns of similar material. Gimblet stooped again, and tugged up the rest of the sofa covering from the depths behind the cushions. This time he pulled it all up; the whole covering lay spread before him in an untidy, unwieldy mass, and from the end, as he plucked it out, there shot two small objects, which fell to the floor at his feet. In a moment he had lifted them from the ground and stood staring at them: they were a piece of crushed and folded paper and a minute powder puff. The detective unfolded the paper, and held it to the light; it was a sheet of thick white notepaper, and on it was embossed a crown and device in heavy gold lettering. Below these was written in a fine, slanting foreign hand "Most adored, I count the hours, the minutes, till I shall hear for the first time the sound of your voice. Heaven be praised that I have not long to wait, and you, whom heaven has sent to me, accept the thanks of my grateful heart. I send this by Madame Q." The signature that followed made Gimblet open his eyes. "Felipe," in conjunction with the crown at the head of the paper and the foreign character of the penmanship, could refer to one person only. Gimblet was well aware that the Prince of Targona was honouring London with his presence. He glanced carefully round the room to make sure no one was near, folded the paper carefully, and placed it in his notebook. Then he turned his attention to the powder puff. It was an ordinary little powder puff of pink silk and white down--very small, very dainty, if very commonplace. Gimblet turned it over and over, but could see nothing about it which stamped it as different from other powder puffs. Not that it was a curio in the peculiarities of which he was very well versed; he could not help realising that in the matter of powder puffs his education had been neglected. A French detective, he told himself sadly, would have read a whole history in this soft toy. He brushed it across the back of his hand, but it left no mark; he shook it into the palm, but no powder fell from it. It was plain to him that, whatever uses it might have served in the white hands that had formerly clasped it, it was not of any use at all in his, and in his irritation he was inclined to hurl it from him. But his methodical habits prevailed and he felt in his coat for a box to contain it. And suddenly, with what seemed like an involuntary movement, he lifted the hand that held the powder puff, and held it to his nose. "Ah," he sighed, and it was a sigh of deep content. Then he stored away the precious fluffy thing, and put it in his pocket. He finished the tour of the furniture without further discovery; at the end of it he requested Tremmels to read out the contents of the room from the inventory, as he had done at the conclusion of his visits to each room or landing, checking off each object as the clerk read out its description. "I am in hopes," he said to Sir Gregory, "of finding something not mentioned in the inventory, which we might take to be the property of Mr. West. But so far there is nothing that can possibly be his, not so much as a toothbrush. He certainly seems to be a leader of the simple life." Then he turned to Tremmels again. "Is there no mention of the chair covers?" he asked. But the young man only stared at him open-mouthed, and he seized the book from his hand. "Let me see," he murmured, running a finger down the page. "Here we are. 'Two Chesterfield sofas and five arm-chairs with loose chintz covers.' Might mean anything. Look here!" he turned to the clerk again, "you went over the inventory. What do you remember about that sofa?" He pointed to the one opposite the door, which, unlike the other sofas and chairs, had no chintz covering. Tremmels was flurried by the detective's sharp tone. "I--I don't remember anything at all," he stammered. "What, don't you remember that it had a cover?" Gimblet's second question was still more sharply spoken. The clerk shot a glance at him in which suspicion, timidity, and bewilderment were oddly mixed, and he answered stubbornly, repeating his former words as if he imagined a trap were being laid for him. "I don't remember anything about it." His pale face wore an expression more wooden than ever. The detective turned from him with an impatient movement, and stood looking down at the sofa with a frown on his face. It was exactly the same as the one in the front part of the room, but, instead of a cover of pink and white chintz, it displayed only the upholstery with which it had been originally covered by the makers: a kind of white tapestry with grey flowers and flecks of red, in general colouring not unlike the chintz on the other sofas and chairs, but tightly fitting and leaving exposed the bare legs of brown varnished wood, which were of a particularly ugly shape. "Come," said Gimblet at last, "I must go downstairs." "What did you find?" Sir Gregory asked him anxiously as they went down, followed at a distance by the clerk, "what did you find by the other sofa?" The detective hesitated an instant. "Sir Gregory," he said, "there is something here, some story to be read, if I can read it. The walls are trying to speak to me, I believe, if I could only listen rightly. There are things very plain that I can see, but not enough of them, and there is something that I don't understand. But what I have seen points to sinister things, and I must warn you that I don't like the look of them." "Mr. Gimblet!" cried Sir Gregory. "What do you mean?" "Yes, Sir Gregory," said the detective. "I am very much more--uneasy about your friend than I have yet been. I fear that, when I am in a position to give you news of her, it may be very bad. You may have to stand a shock. Don't you think it would be best if you went home and waited till I came to you?" But, though on Sir Gregory's face there crept a look of terrified grief, he would not go. The dining-room told nothing, Gimblet's researches there were vain, and he soon adjourned to the room behind it, which seemed to be a library or smoking-room. The shutters, as they had seen from the garden, were fastened, but by this time the last of the long summer twilight was fading and the night promised to fall dark and windy. Gimblet's first act was to light the gas. It was a small room, this back room, where, no doubt, Mr. Mill, when he was at home, was accustomed to smoke his pipe and attend to his correspondence. Two of the walls were lined with bookshelves; one side was taken up by the window; and on the fourth, opposite the door and above the fire-place, were hung a quantity of mezzotints framed in sombre black. They surrounded a small oil painting that filled the place of honour immediately over the chimney piece, and which caught Gimblet's interested eye directly. It appeared to be an example of the early Dutch school, and he was seized with the desire to examine it more closely. The fire-place below it was lined with old blue and white tiles, and at these too he cast an envious glance, but the feelings of the collector were subservient just now to those of the detective, and he turned to the more everyday furniture of the room. There was not very much in it: a couple of arm-chairs stood one on each side of the fire-place, and before the window was a large writing table with inkstand and blotting book disposed upon it, together with a few odds and ends. Even with these the table looked empty; one missed the papers that by rights should have been scattered there. As Gimblet stood beside it, he was conscious of the cold draught that whistled by his ear, and it was then that he first looked toward the window. "It must be open," he said to himself, and then, as he looked closer: "By Jingo!" It was a sash window of the old-fashioned kind, with a dozen or so wood-framed panes to each half of it, and the usual metal catch holding the top and bottom in position together when the window was shut. It was shut now, and the cold air that pervaded the place entered through cracks in the shutters, and after that encountered no further obstacle, for the top middle pane of the lower sash was destitute of glass. Gimblet pushed away the table and examined the empty framework carefully, touching the edges with an incautious finger, which, however, he withdrew rather hurriedly and transferred to his mouth. He looked at the floor; and then, following his usual custom, knelt down on it, lens in hand. The gaslight was obscured by the shadow of the writing table, and he had recourse to the aid of a pocket electric torch. He was satisfied with what he saw, apparently, for he soon rose and turned to the window again. He unfastened the catch, and placing one hand on the framework sought to raise the sash, but it stuck stiffly, and both hands and a good deal of strength had to be exerted before he was able to lift it. Then he flashed the light of the little torch on the window sill, and took from it a splinter of broken glass. After this he pursued his inspection of the room and its contents. There was, as has been said, little enough in it except books, but everything there was came in for the usual close scrutiny; the waste paper basket was not forgotten, nor were the empty grate and coal scuttle. In the end, after comparing the things mentioned in the inventory with those in the room, Gimblet shut the door into the hall, and ran his lens hastily over its woodwork. Apparently he saw on it more than he expected, for he returned more slowly to the task and spent several minutes examining some small spots of dirt, which were visible to the naked eye on the white paint. At last he had done, and there only remained the basement to be investigated. This took some time, and the results disappointed him, with the exception of a cupboard under the stairs where he discovered a housemaid's dustpan full of pieces of broken glass. He seized on it with eager excitement, and examined the surface of the tin very carefully with his lens; only to put it down again with an irritated clicking of the tongue. Sir Gregory watched these proceedings in a stricken silence; his hopes had turned to lead at the words Gimblet had addressed to him on leaving the drawing room; as each successive door was thrown open he felt a tightening of the heart and a sick fear of being confronted with some terrible sight. Now he would almost have preferred that the detective should find no clue, so much he dreaded the solution to which he instinctively felt that these small discoveries were irresistibly leading. The face of the clerk, who equally shared the rôle of silent onlooker, wore an expression of excited interest, except when he was addressed, when it relaxed into its usual wooden apathy. At other times he peered over Sir Gregory's shoulder with feverish, straining eyes, evidently possessed by all the passion for sensation in any form which is common to his class; though, that he was as much in the dark as Sir Gregory, with regard to the conclusions suggested to the detective by the various objects he examined, was clear from the look of something like elation with which he watched the minute attention bestowed upon the unprofitable dustpan. Gimblet returned this article to its place, and drew out, one by one, the other things in the cupboard: a water-can, a bucket, a scrubbing brush, and other odds and ends. The last thing he brought to light was a crumpled ball of newspaper, stuffed away at the back of some brooms and pails. This did not look interesting; and, while Sir Gregory saw with relief the handling of anything which gave him breathing space, Tremmel's face fell. Gimblet, however, was too methodical to ignore anything, even so unpromising an object as an old newspaper. He opened it out on the floor of the passage, unrolling the crumpled pages and spreading them flat on the boards. In the middle of the ball was a small quantity of dust, or rather what looked more like earth. Gimblet scooped it up in one hand and let it fall through his fingers into the palm of the other; it was black and fine, but gritty to the touch. With a puzzled expression he stowed some of it away in one of his little boxes, and put the rest in his pocket, wrapped in a piece of the newspaper. Then he disappeared into the coal cellar, which was the only place left that he had not visited. He found nothing there. By this time it was nearly ten o'clock. They went back into the hall and Gimblet opened the door of the little library. "Sit down in here, Sir Gregory," he said, "you have been on your feet for hours"--and indeed the baronet was dropping with fatigue--. "I am just going out into the garden, and you may as well rest a little. As for you," he added to Tremmels, "you can go home if you like. I've done with the inventory." "There's the key," the clerk reminded him, "and, if you don't mind my sitting down here in the hall for a few minutes before I go ... I'm feeling a bit tired myself, sir." He certainly looked it, but then he had looked so ill from the beginning that the effect of these hours of standing about and the lack of food, which told heavily upon Sir Gregory, hardly added to the miserable aspect of Tremmels, whatever he might be feeling. Gimblet told him to sit down, and leaving them went out into the garden. He walked round to the back, and along the path which led to the toolshed. Going into it he hunted, by the light of his torch, among the implements that leant against the wall; but what he sought was not there, and he retreated, unsatisfied. As he returned slowly to the house, he moved his lamp from side to side, so that the light shone on the flower beds between which he walked and not on the path beneath his feet; it was as if he hoped to find what he wanted among the flowers. Turning the corner of the wall, he saw a dark figure in the act of shutting the further gate; it came towards him and he recognised the artist, Brampton. "You work late, Mr. Gimblet," he said, as he met the detective. "Any discoveries?" Gimblet did not reply; he was looking at his watch. "It _is_ late," he said after a pause; and then half to himself, "late! too late, and too dark," he murmured; and again, "perhaps it is just as well. It will do Sir Gregory no harm to wait till to-morrow for bad news." "What," said Brampton, "you have bad news for him?" "I fear there will be bad news--to-morrow," said Gimblet. The night was very dark, for clouds had gathered afresh, and the wind was getting up again. The leaves of the trees in the street rustled loudly as if in protest; from a distance the tinkle of a barrel organ sounded fitfully in the intervals between gusts of wind. "It's as cold as winter," grumbled Brampton. Gimblet was staring up at the front of the house, and when he spoke Brampton was struck by the change in his voice. "Of course!" he cried, "the crumpled newspaper! What have I been about? Now, ah, now I know! Mr. Brampton," he said, moving, so that he faced the other in the darkness, "there is something very terrible here; something to be done that is quite unfit for Sir Gregory to take part in. I am only too well convinced that a crime has been committed in this house, a gruesome and dastardly crime, which but for the merest accident might not have been discovered for weeks. No ordinary criminals have been at work here; we have to deal with some scoundrel so cold-blooded and resourceful, so prudent, and so full of forethought and vile cunning, as I do not think I have ever encountered before. What is your nerve like, Mr. Brampton? I see you are muscularly a strong man, and I shall have need of help. What do you say? Can you give me the assistance I want, or shall I go and find the policeman on this beat?" The solemn words of the detective, and still more acutely the grave and urgent note in his voice, thrilled the imagination of the artist, and awoke in him a horrified perception of the seriousness of the situation, which hitherto he had looked on with an eye, half amused, half derisive, as we may contemplate a game of Red Indians played by some earnest and dramatic children. The spirit of adventure cried aloud in him, and overcame the shrinking of a refined nature from contact with the horrible. "You can rely on me," was all he said, and thereupon Gimblet ran up to the door, calling to Higgs to open it. The other men were sitting as he had left them, Sir Gregory in an arm-chair by the library fire-place, and the clerk in the hall; both drooped in attitudes of extreme weariness. "Will you please stay where you are a little longer?" Gimblet said to Sir Gregory. "I am going upstairs with Mr. Brampton, to see if he can tell me one or two things I want to know about the ordinary disposal of the furniture; and after that we will go home, unless you will be guided by me and do so at once. No? Well, we shall not be long. We shall not want you," he added to Tremmels, who was struggling stiffly to rise from his seat. At Gimblet's words he sank back again, and leant his head weakly against the wall. With a sign to Higgs and Brampton to follow him, Gimblet went upstairs. The gas was still burning in the drawing-room, and the door stood open as he had left it. Gimblet paused on the threshold and drew Brampton's attention to the sofa opposite. "Do you remember," he asked, "whether that sofa had a cover like the other before Mr. Mill went away?" Brampton looked at it doubtfully. "I can't say I do really," he said. "I ought to know, of course, but I don't feel quite sure. You see, the colouring is so much like that of the chintzes. One might never notice it. Still, the legs are very ugly; I think I should have observed them. And it is not like Mrs. Mill to leave an ugly thing so plainly displayed. But on the whole I'm not certain about it." "Don't you feel," said Gimblet, "that there is something terrible, something fearful, in those shining brown pieces of wood? Their ugliness should be decently covered. Unfortunately, I am afraid I know where to look for their covering." He led the way to one of the French windows of the front room and threw it open. Unfastening the shutters, which still barred the way, he flung them back and went out on to the balcony, followed by the two men. It was, as he had seen from the ground, an unusually broad one, and extended across the whole width of the house. A low wall about nine inches high ran round its edge, supporting a balustrade of stone. A large green painted wooden box, or trough, about ten feet long by a yard wide, and as tall as the balustrade, was planted with flowers, which did not appear to be in a very flourishing condition. By the light of the street lamp they could see that the geraniums' petals were turning black, and that the marguerites hung their heads on stalks from which all vigour seemed to have departed. Within the balustrade the black shadows lay like a pool of ink, and the floor of the balcony was quite invisible, except where the open window through which they had stepped let out a narrow stream of light. "Open the shutters of the other windows," Gimblet said to Higgs. When this was done they could see better. To Brampton's amazement Gimblet's next act was to grasp one of the geraniums and pull it up by the roots; a daisy followed, and in a few minutes he had torn up every plant. Brampton, as he stood watching, noticed how easily they came up. Then Gimblet called to him. "Now, Mr. Brampton, if you and Higgs will take that end of the box, I can manage this one. I want to tilt it up a little." It needed all the efforts of the three men to move the box, full to the brim of soil as it was. Panting and heaving, they shifted it first away from the balustrade, and tilted it towards the wall of the house. The earth poured out as the angle increased, and in a minute the floor was deep in it. "Gently, gently," said Gimblet. "Look, what is that?" and he pointed to something white, which was poking out through the earth in the box. His electric torch flashed upon it, and the others, balancing the tilted flower box on its edge, peered in, and saw that it was a bit of pink and white chintz. It seemed a long while before Gimblet spoke. He stood as if turned to stone, and Brampton felt an indefinable horror stealing over him, a dread of he knew not what, but which he seemed to be conscious was in some way a reflection or telepathic transference of the other's unspoken thoughts. At last with an obvious effort Gimblet straightened himself. "We must tilt out a little more earth," he said in a low tone, "very carefully now." Very cautiously they raised the side of the stand again, and a rush of soil poured over the edge; the little patch of white they had seen in a corner became a large piece, and almostly instantly it was plain to them all that the greater part of the box was full of it. Leaving the others to manage the box, which was now easily steadied, Gimblet ran round and knelt at its side, scooping out handfuls of garden mould and disclosing what looked like a very long, bulky bundle of flowered chintz. Suddenly, in a voice hardly above a whisper, Brampton broke the silence. "My God!" he said, pointing, and staring with horrified eyes. From the corner of the wrapper a hand protruded, half covered with earth; it was a white and shapely hand, the hand of a woman. "Do you see it?" whispered Brampton again, and leant shaking against the wall. "It's a hand," said Higgs, troubled but stolid. Gimblet was very pale, and he took a quick breath as he braced himself to lift the enveloping chintz. The lighted windows cast three streaks of light out into the darkness and threw grotesque distorted shadows of the men upon the coping of the balcony. A sudden gust of wind made the trees in the street moan and shiver as though they had been swept by the passing broom of some night-riding hag; all around them the darkness gathered close like a wicked thing that would if it dared swallow up the tiny protecting lights men burn in self-defence. Gimblet felt himself struggling against some such malevolent influences; half conscious fears, some sensation of evil presences in the air, gibing, mocking, clustering round to gloat over the results of earthly villainy, seemed to paralyse him; and he had to call up his reserves of will power before, after a moment's hesitation, he bent forward and unrolled the chintz covering. Inside it was the body of a young woman. Long black hair lay in masses on her shoulders and streamed over the single white garment she wore. The face was so terribly disfigured as to be quite unrecognisable. With a shudder Gimblet drew the wrapping over her again. "Vitriol," he muttered, and became aware, as he spoke, of some one behind him in the opening of the window. Before he could turn, a heartstricken cry sounded in his ear, and he was not in time to catch Sir Gregory, who staggered back in the embrasure, and from there slid fainting to the ground. As Gimblet sprang to his help, he had a fleeting vision of a ghastly face and a crouching figure in the back of the drawing-room: it was the face of Tremmels, the clerk, but so wild and white with terror, so distorted by the shock of what he had seen as to be almost like that of another man. Suspecting from the noise made by the opening shutters, followed by the sudden and prolonged silence, that something was happening on the floor above them, and unable any longer to bear the suspense and curiosity accentuated by waiting and inactivity, Sir Gregory, followed by the clerk, had crept upstairs into the drawing-room without attracting the attention of Gimblet or his assistants, and the horror of what they had seen was too much for both of them. As with the help of Higgs Gimblet lifted the inanimate form of the baronet from where it had dropped, a sudden loud noise from the street below made them nearly let fall their burden; and it was a second before any of them realised that the sound was only the first jangling bar of a popular music hall tune. The barrel organ they had heard a quarter of an hour earlier had wandered into Scholefield Avenue, and, attracted without doubt by the lighted windows, had thought fit to draw up before No. 13 and there begin its headlong plunge into melody. Half the rollicking air it was playing had been thumped forth, with all the usual din of banging bass and clanking scales, before any one of those who stood above it in the grim presence of death sufficiently recovered his presence of mind to be able to stop it. Telling the clerk curtly not to be an ass, but to pull himself together and follow them, Gimblet, with the help of Higgs and Brampton, carried Sir Gregory out of the fatal house and into No. 15, the home of the artist. Here they gave him over to the care of Mrs. Brampton, a capable, bustling woman with common-sense written all over her, to whom her husband explained in guarded terms as much of the situation as was inevitable. "There has been a terrible tragedy next door, my dear," he told her. "This poor gentleman has fainted on learning of the death of his friend," and the kind-hearted, sensible creature took charge of Sir Gregory without wasting precious time in questions. At his request, Brampton conducted the detective to the telephone, while Higgs was sent out to look for a policeman. "Is that Scotland Yard?" Gimblet was asking, as the artist shut the door on him and returned to his wife. By the time the detective had finished telephoning, Higgs was back with two policemen, the one he had found in the next street having whistled for a comrade. Gimblet went with them to No. 13, and together they entered the silent drawing-room, where the gas was still flaring and the windows stood open to the night like three black doors to a villainous and tragic world. With the help of the new-comers the body of the dead woman was lifted out of the flower box and carried into the house, where, still enveloped in the chintz cover, it was gently deposited on one of the sofas. For a moment they turned back the wrapping, while Gimblet searched hastily for some clue that should have inadvertently been enclosed in it, but there was nothing besides the body and the one garment in which it was clad. "See," he murmured in a low voice, pointing to an oblong incision at the edge of the chemise, "they have cut away the linen there. No doubt the name, or initial, was embroidered in that place. What fine linen it is; and this lace trimming is as delicate as a cobweb! If we had nothing else to go by, this would show that the murdered woman was rich and luxury-loving. Most women, if they had such lace, would keep it to adorn their dresses with." He drew the covering over her again; and, going back to the balcony, stood looking at the half-empty box and the mound of earth that was heaped upon the floor. "They must have had a job to clear away the surplus soil," he remarked to Higgs, who had followed him. "I suspect it was carried down to the garden, bucketful by bucketful, and the last handful or two were swept up into a newspaper. I found some trace of it in a cupboard downstairs." Leaving the police to guard the house, they went in search of Sir Gregory, and found him so far recovered as to be sent home in a taxi in the care of Higgs. The clerk also was seen safely started on the way to his lodgings, where, Gimblet thought to himself, he would probably take the brandy bottle to bed with him. "You will have to attend the inquest, you know," he said to him as he was departing. "It may be to-morrow or the next day. Good evening, and don't stay awake all night." After renewed thanks and apologies to the Bramptons, Gimblet found another taxi, and, getting in, gave the driver the address of Joe Sidney's rooms. "I think," he said to himself, "it's just about time I paid that young gentleman a visit." CHAPTER XIX It was close on eleven when the cab drew up before the door of Sidney's lodging in York Street, St. James's, and as luck would have it Sidney himself was standing on the doorstep, in the act of inserting his latch-key in the lock. Gimblet saw himself recognised as he sprang out of the taxi, and saw also a look of unmistakable pleasure in the recognition. "This man is as innocent as I am," he thought, as the young soldier greeted him. "Come in, do," Sidney said, "you're the very man I wanted to see. I went to your flat this evening, but you'd just gone out, so the porter said. I am anxious to hear if you have any news of my aunt and Miss Turner." He led the way upstairs as he spoke, and ushered the detective into a sitting-room on the first floor, switching on the light as he did so. Gimblet waited till the door was shut behind them, and then turned a grave face to his host. "The news is very bad," he said slowly, and waited a moment to give time for the significance of the words to sink in, and to prepare Sidney for what was to come. "What has happened?" cried Sidney. "Are they hurt? Is Miss Turner----" He stopped short, grasping the back of a chair. "I don't know what has happened to Miss Turner," Gimblet said, "but I have terrible news of your poor aunt. Mrs. Vanderstein has been foully and cruelly murdered. I come now from the discovery of her dead body." "Murdered!" cried Sidney, "murdered! Who by? How? Where?" He sat down mechanically, and stared at Gimblet. "And Miss Turner? Have they killed her too?" The detective repeated that at present he knew nothing of the younger lady. "Good God!" said Sidney, "what a dreadful thing." Leaning his elbows on the table, he hid his face in his hands for a few minutes, and Gimblet sat silent opposite him, waiting till he should recover from the first shock of the news. When Sidney raised his head again the face he disclosed was pale and drawn. "Poor Aunt Ruth," he said. "Poor thing, poor thing. To think that she should be dead. I can hardly realise it, you know. She has been killed for her jewels, I suppose, after all. The devils! You haven't caught them, have you?" and, as Gimblet only shook his head: "How can such a thing be possible here in civilised London? And to think of that beastly old raven, Chark, going about croaking as he has been, and hinting that I'd killed her! To think of his being right after all! I don't mean about my killing her," he added, "but there it is, she's dead; and I come into her money just in time to save me from ruin. I hate the thought of it!" He was talking to himself more than to his listener, and Gimblet let him talk. "I almost wish she had altered her will," he went on, "it's a beastly notion: her death being my profit, you know. And I suppose they'll say I've murdered her all the more now?" He looked up interrogatively; then, as he received no answer, his expression changed and he started up, alert and wide awake once more. "I say," said he, "do you think I did it, too?" Gimblet hesitated a moment before answering. "As a matter of fact," he said at last, "I do not. I don't think so for a moment. But that is merely my personal opinion and, to tell you the truth, I think it will be just as well if you can account for your movements since Monday to the satisfaction of more people than myself. I ought to suspect you--it's my business to suspect every one--but, as I say, I don't." "I daresay things do look rather black against me," Sidney said; "it's my fault for not having bothered to defend myself. You see, it seems so eccentric to me that anyone should think such a thing. It seems so impossible, and absurd, if you don't mind my saying so. One forgets that other people don't know what one is capable of as one does oneself, and it never struck me yesterday that you, or Sir Gregory either, might suspect me. I did go and see the editor of the worst of the newspapers, and explained things to him, and told him to let old Chark know he was wrong. You may have noticed he's eaten his words in to-day's paper. But I didn't think it necessary to say anything to anyone else. You see, I've got what you call an alibi. I was in the country from Monday evening till yesterday morning. I met a pal almost on Aunt Ruth's doorstep when she turned me out of the house, and he got me to go off with him down to his house near Ascot to play golf, and I was down there till Wednesday. I had only just come back, in fact, when I came to see you. I didn't know about my aunt's disappearance till I read it in the train coming up; my friend came up at the same time and stayed with me till I left him at your door. It's waste of time suspecting me; I admit that it looks as if I ought to have murdered the poor dear, but in view of the facts that theory doesn't hold water." "I'm very glad to hear what you say," said Gimblet, "and I wish you'd told me before, though I never really thought you had any direct knowledge of the affair. Still, you must confess, Mr. Sidney, that you were not quite open with me: there was something which you knew, and which you kept to yourself when we talked about it." "I'm blessed if there was!" cried Sidney. "What was it?" For answer Gimblet took Barbara's telegraph form out of his notebook and handed it to the young man. "You didn't tell me you had received this telegram from Miss Turner," he said, "not even though I quoted most of its contents to you by way of a hint." Sidney took the form, and stared at it for a moment. "It is her writing," he said at last. "I wonder what the deuce she meant." He, also, produced a folded paper from his pocket and pushed it across the table to the detective. It was the message as he had received it. "You will observe," he said, "that there is no signature. How was I to know who it came from? As a matter of fact, I guessed, or at least thought it possible she had sent it, as no one else cares whether I go to blazes or not. But I've no idea whatever why she chose to think I should get some money or good news on Wednesday. I need hardly say that I didn't. And I saw no reason to speak to you of what only concerns a young lady and myself. It can have no possible bearing on her disappearance, or that of my aunt." "You think not?" Gimblet looked at him oddly. "How could it? I can't imagine what connection there could be. But of course you're the sort of fellow who can read the secret of dark mysteries in anything, from the Tower Bridge to a baked potato, aren't you? So perhaps there's some occult inference that I fail to draw. By the way, you've not told me much yet. How did you discover the murder, and where?" "I found the poor lady's body buried in a house in the north of London," said Gimblet, "No. 13 Scholefield Avenue. As to how I discovered it, it was by the help of two or three facts from which I was able to draw certain inferences." "I wish you would tell me all about it." "Well," said Gimblet, "as Sir Gregory told you over the telephone this morning, I heard, as a result of the advertisement I gave you yesterday to have inserted in the papers, that the two ladies were seen by an actress on Monday night, standing under a board 'To Let,' before a detached house in some street on the way to Carolina Road. I was unable to find that street yesterday, and it was not until I could get hold of the cabman who had driven the actress that I ascertained that Scholefield Avenue was the only street he had passed through on Monday night which contains detached houses. I went there at once and found out that No. 13 had recently been let, the board having been removed on Tuesday morning. I rang the bell, but no one came to the door, so after getting the name of the house agent from a neighbour I went to the office and interviewed the agent. From him I learnt that the house had only been let since Monday, and that the tenant was a man named West who had been ready to pay a high rent for immediate possession, and who gave out that he was a recluse, desiring nothing so much as solitude and privacy. The agent happened to have a spare key of No. 13 Scholefield Avenue and he sent his clerk down with me to open the door. "As soon as I got in I ran over the house with my servant, who as well as Sir Gregory had accompanied me, but there was no one to be seen in it, and so I proceeded to make a careful and searching examination. Not to weary you with details, I soon found a considerable number of small paste spangles, or imitation diamonds, such as are sewn on to the more elaborate and gorgeous kinds of ladies' evening dresses. As I found several of these on the staircase between the hall and the drawing-room and a good many more in the drawing-room itself, but none in any other part of the house, I thought it was likely that, if they came off Mrs. Vanderstein's gown, this was the only room she had visited. There was, of course, the possibility that they had fallen from the dress of some one who had been in the room before the place was let, but I set against this the improbability of the mistress of the house or her friends being rich people who would wear such expensively ornamented materials, and also the fact that your aunt's maid in describing her toilette to me had spoken of it as '_diamantée_.' "The next discovery was a most alarming one. On moving the sofa I saw beneath it a large stain in the carpet, which various indications assured me was the result of some acid that had been upset. From the nature of the damage I was pretty certain that it had been caused by sulphuric acid or vitriol. Now this is a strange thing to find traces of in a lady's drawing-room, and when you find it in an empty house which a young and beautiful lady has been seen to enter, but which she has never been seen to leave, and when you further reflect that the disappearance of this lady appears to be complete, and on the fact that when last seen she was wearing a fortune in jewellery, one of two conclusions appears inevitable, unless you assume that all these facts are entirely unconnected and the result of pure coincidence. Assume them on the contrary to be related to each other, and you are led, as I say, to consider two possibilities. So I asked myself at once whether Mrs. Vanderstein had been decoyed to the house by some demented creature bent on assuaging a mad jealousy by throwing vitriol at her, or whether she had been induced to visit it to satisfy the still more fatal greed of a robber. And the more I looked at it, the more likely it seemed that the poor lady had been murdered for her jewels and that the vitriol was used to make the recognition of her body, if it should be discovered, a negligible danger. A few minutes later I came across a powder puff perfumed with the peculiar scent your aunt was in the habit of using--I daresay you know it--and this dispelled any doubts I still had as to her having been in the room. "I still hoped against hope, however, that she might have left it alive, and I found some evidence downstairs which led me to think she had been locked in one of the lower rooms for a time; but if so it must have been before she was taken up to the drawing-room. In the library a pane of the window was broken, no doubt by some one trying to escape or attract attention, and obviously it had been done by a woman, as a man could have opened the window, which was so stiff as to require more than a woman's strength. The broken glass had been carefully removed from the frame, so that, but for the draught, it might well have passed unnoticed. "That it had been broken since the letting of the house was clear, since I found a dustpan full of broken glass, which would not have been left so by the landlord's servants, or by the charwoman who cleaned up after their departure. The sight of that dustpan filled me with hopes that were doomed to disappointment. Nothing offers a better ground for the impression and retention of finger marks than a piece of shining metal, and I expected to find a whole collection on the tin surface of the pan. But to my astonishment and disgust I could not find a single one; and this strengthened my opinion that I had to deal with deliberate crime, and that of no ordinary stamp, for it was plain that not only had some one cleaned and polished the dustpan after using it, but that the person who had done so had worn gloves. And it was the same all over the house. Not a finger-print to be seen, except in the room with the broken pane, on the white painted door of which I found several distinct marks of fingers. What more likely than that the poor lady, finding herself locked into a strange room, should have broken the window and beaten on the door with her hands in a sudden panic? In the same cupboard as the dustpan was an old newspaper crumpled into a ball, which I found to contain a handful or so of what appeared to be garden mould, and I could not at first imagine why it should be there, though I can account for it now. I had by this time been all over the house and made the most thorough and exhaustive search, but the only other clue I could discover was a negative one. "I must tell you that I had made sure that there was no article in the house belonging to the tenant, Mr. West, as he called himself; everything was accounted for in the inventory and belonged to Mr. Mill, the owner. It became clear to me that West must have taken the place for a definite purpose other than the usual one of living in it, and since I knew that it had been occupied on Monday evening, his object doubtless fulfilled itself then in a terrible manner and he probably fled from the scene of his crime the moment he had, to the best of his ability, removed all traces of it. In his haste he had left the little spangles which had scattered themselves in the wake of his victim; and, though he cleaned up the dustpan as if he feared it should tell tales in spite of the precautionary gloves, he seemed to have thought the broken glass could not betray him, or else, perhaps, he had no time to dispose of it. But, if he had left nothing behind him, it looked as if he had taken something away. "The chairs and sofas in the drawing-room were provided with loose chintz covers, with one exception. There was a small sofa which stood opposite the door naked and unashamed, in all the hideousness of the original, ugly upholstery. Not only was the tapestry which covered it of a meretricious nineteenth-century design, quite out of keeping with the good taste displayed all over the house in the choice of pattern and decoration, but the legs and arms, which were very much in evidence, were made of brown varnished wood peculiarly objectionable in appearance. It seems to me in the last degree unlikely that in a room so full of beauty and quiet refinement this one thing should have been allowed to flaunt its vulgarity, and hold the eye of the visitor with an awful fascination. I felt convinced that West was responsible for its nakedness, and it was quite likely that he, a man doubtless devoid of any artistic sense, would imagine that the absence of that cover might pass unnoticed, as the tapestry resembled the chintzes in general colouring." "But why should he remove it? What could he want with a loose chintz sofa cover?" asked Sidney, as the detective paused. "I asked myself these questions," continued Gimblet, "and I saw that there were only two explanations which met all the facts. It might be that the chintz bore traces of his crime that at all costs must be destroyed; it might be, for instance, stained with blood. But in that case he would probably have tried to burn it; that would be a difficult job, and there was no sign of a fire having been lighted lately in any of the grates. No coal in the cellar and no firewood. He would have needed brushes and blacking to make all ship-shape again, and his grate cleaning would probably have been amateurish. Or he might have had a use for the chintz. It would be a handy thing to wrap a dead body in before carrying it out to the grave he would dig for it in the garden. For it seemed to me certain that after killing his victim he would have buried her in the garden. There was a toolshed at the end of it, and I hunted there for a spade that should show signs of recent use; but to my surprise there was no spade at all. "By this time it was dark and late, and I returned to the house with the intention of deferring till to-morrow a search for the grave, which I felt sure of finding if it was there. I had little hope that the poor lady had escaped, but it was still quite possible that my theories were mistaken, and that even the signs of vitriol having been used were capable of some other interpretation; and I gladly admitted to myself that I had no actual proof of foul play. And then, just as I was on the point of knocking off for the night, an elusive memory that had been troubling me ever since I entered the house suddenly flashed clearly into conscious recollection, and I knew that I had made no mistake. "When I opened the drawing-room door for the first time I had been aware of a faint odour, which I seemed to catch a whiff of as it passed me, so to speak, and to lose again immediately. During the second in which I perceived it, its name was on my tongue, but before I could utter it the smell was gone and with it my knowledge of what it was. I racked my brains to remember it without the least result; but, though I gave up the attempt and concentrated every effort on investigating what was apparent to my other senses, the thing bothered me, and I did not entirely forget it. As I stood in front of the house after my vain search for a spade, it suddenly flashed into my mind what it was that I had smelt: it was the never to be mistaken smell of chloroform. "I was staring absently up at the balcony of the drawing-room when the knowledge came to me, and in an instant another light dawned on me with equal suddenness. There was a great box or stand for plants on the balcony, and the neighbour who had given me some information as to the tenant had remarked that the mistress of the house would be sad to see her flowers so neglected. Indeed, they were all faded and withered, and he had implied that it was for want of water. Now, the thought that leapt into my brain as swift and as illuminating as lightning was this one: Why should the flowers die for want of water when we have had constant rain for the last two days? Clearly it was not drought that they were suffering from. But how if the _soidisant_ West, having cruelly murdered your unfortunate aunt, proceeded to uproot the flowers and to bury her, wrapped in the sofa cover, in the flower stand? It was quite large enough for such a purpose, and if he had then replanted the flowers it was probable enough that they would feel the effects of his attempt at gardening. "I went up at once and put this theory to the test. I am very sorry to say that it proved to be correct in every detail." Gimblet ceased speaking, and Sidney, who had listened in sad silence, lifted his head, and asked a question. "The vitriol? They had used it--as you thought?" His voice was hoarse, and his face stern and grim. "Alas, yes." "Hanging is too good for such brutes; but I will never rest till they hang for it. Have you any idea who are the fiends who did this?" "An idea? Say rather that I have a suspicion," returned Gimblet. "Surely you can see the direction in which the circumstances point?" "Unless it was the chauffeur," said Sidney, "I can't imagine who can have done it." "I don't think there is anything in the theory that the chauffeur or any one of the servants had a hand in it. There are several things which make that idea hardly worth considering. But there is one person against whom things look very black. Do you mean to say you can't see who it is?" "No, I can't," repeated Sidney. "Mr. Sidney," said the detective slowly, "where do you suppose Miss Turner is?" "I only wish I knew," answered the young man; "it is horrible not to know. Where do you think she can possibly be? Tell me the truth, Mr. Gimblet: do you believe she is dead?" He spoke harshly, and with averted eyes. "No," said Gimblet, "I don't think she is dead." Something in his tone made Sidney look up. Gimblet was looking at him with a strange expression, and as their eyes met he turned away uneasily. For a minute Sidney stared at him wonderingly, and then an incredulous enlightenment stole over him. "You can't mean," he said slowly, "that you imagine she had any knowledge of the attack on my aunt?" Gimblet was silent; and his silence was more eloquent than words. "But it is impossible," cried Sidney, "that anyone out of a lunatic asylum should think such a thing. You don't know her, Mr. Gimblet, she is the sweetest, dearest girl. The most unselfish, the most devoted, the loyalest girl in the world! How can you hint at it? Oh, I know it is your business to suspect people, but you go too far! I cannot hear a word against her." Gimblet turned and faced him. "Be reasonable, Mr. Sidney," he said, "and accept it as a fact that the young lady will be suspected. If she is innocent it will be better to try and clear her than to refuse to hear what there is to be said as to her possible complicity. I understand your feelings, but you must see that there is nothing to gain by disguising the truth. It is because I thought it possible that you might feel a keen interest in Miss Turner that I have told you I suspect her. I hope you may be able to help me to convince myself of her innocence, and surely the best way to do that is to try and get at the truth." "I will try and be reasonable, as you call it," said Sidney, after a pause, "and I suppose by that you mean listening to your abominable accusations. Well, let's hear your evidence, and if I can prevent myself from throttling you I will! More than that no man could say," he added, with an attempt at a smile. "And I feel a beast even to allow you to speak of the thing." "I am extremely sorry to have to do it," said Gimblet, "but no good ever came of shutting one's eyes to facts, and it's facts that make me suspect Miss Turner. In the first place, there is the fact that she stands to profit by Mrs. Vanderstein's death to the tune of £30,000." "That applies to me, too, only more so," interrupted Sidney. "Yes, and I don't think it of much importance," admitted the detective. "I mention it as one of the points which is outside the region of speculation, and therefore not negligible. The second fact is that you were at your wits' end for money." "I daresay! But what that's got to do with your suspecting Miss Turner beats me," cried Sidney. "It's got this to do, though I'm afraid you will not like my alluding to your most private affairs--Miss Turner is in love with you. We may call that fact No. 3." "There is absolutely no foundation for that statement," said Sidney, flushing hotly, while he could not but be conscious of a strange acceleration in the beating of his heart. "Is there not?" asked Gimblet, looking at him thoughtfully. "Well, we will waive that point if you like. Let us say that Miss Turner has an unusually friendly feeling for you. So friendly that she would go to any length to provide you with the necessary funds. You yourself have as good as told me so much. You cannot deny that she was the person who urged you to try to get the money by false pretences." "I am sure she did not look at it in that light," protested Sidney, while inwardly he cursed himself for the slip by which, on the previous day, he had allowed the sex of his friend to escape him. "I saw you with her in the Park last Sunday, did I not?" said the detective; "I noticed her expression. I am rather an observant fellow in my way, you know. I have only seen that look on the faces of people very much in love. I find I must go back to that, after all, in spite of your objection to the suggestion." "I do object very much. Miss Turner has no such feelings for me, I am sure, and I can't let you impute them to her." "I am afraid you must," said Gimblet tranquilly. "People who are madly in love," he continued, "as I believe her to be, are capable of any sacrifice, of any heroism, or of any villainy. In that state of exaltation they are apt to lose their sense of proportion, and to confound extremes; they may see in the basest depths of infamy only another aspect of noble heights of self-abnegation; if the object of their affections is in danger, they may consider no expedient too shameful if it can be made to provide a means of extricating him. "There is nothing inherently impossible in imagining that Miss Turner, conscious of nothing but your need, blindly strove to supply it and was in no mood to boggle at any feasible method. I don't know if you are aware of the character borne by her father. He was a man of the worst reputation: an utterly merciless and unscrupulous swindler. His daughter may not have escaped the taint of heredity; it is, at all events, conceivable that her principles suffered from her early association with him. He is said to have died in South America, where he was obliged to fly to escape his just deserts, but there is no proof at all that he really did die. "I know that I am for the moment dealing in theory, if I say, suppose this man to be secretly in London and in secret communication with his daughter. Suppose she let him see how direly she needed money at this moment. Might not a scoundrel of his description seize the opportunity to persuade her to help him in some such nefarious business as the robbery of Mrs. Vanderstein, and secure her silence, if not her assistance, in even a more dastardly business? To return to the realm of fact; the order to the motor not to fetch the ladies from the opera was given by Miss Turner. She ran back alone to tell the chauffeur, after your aunt had gone into the theatre. She had previously sent you this wire, in which she was very positive that the money you required would be forthcoming. "She was seen by Miss Finner standing at the door of the house in Scholefield Avenue in the company of your aunt, and it is not too much to presume that she subsequently entered it with her. There would be no imaginable motive to induce a thief or gang of thieves to decoy her to the house: she had no jewels to be deprived of. There would be, on the contrary, every reason why she should be prevented from going anywhere near the place. Since, then, she assuredly went there on her own initiative, it seems probable that Mrs. Vanderstein was persuaded to accompany her by the girl herself. "To go back for the moment to speculation, one may imagine that it was old Turner who masqueraded as West, the tenant, who is described as a horsey-looking elderly man who had lived much in a hot climate. This accords with a description of Turner I took the trouble to obtain yesterday, with the exception of the beard or imperial worn by West, which he may easily have grown of late years. It may have been the girl's father, therefore, who opened the door to the two women, and who, once he had her safe inside, first locked your aunt in the library while he finished his preparations upstairs, and then led her to the drawing-room, as in times more in harmony with his deeds he might have led her to the nearest tree. "Finally, in support of this theory, or at least of Miss Turner's complicity in the affair, we have the facts that the two ladies were last seen together, and that, while the one has been found robbed and murdered, the other has departed without a word or a sign. It is only too likely that she is half way to America. The ports are being watched, but by now it is probably too late." Gimblet finished speaking and sat watching the face of the younger man. Sidney looked troubled, but his manner was confident as he gave his opinion. "If she has not been heard of," he said, "it is because for some reason she is unable to communicate with anyone. I have heard all your arguments attentively, Mr. Gimblet, and I must confess that you have not in the least convinced me that there is anything in your idea. It all sounds very plausible, no doubt, but if you knew the young lady as I have the pleasure of doing you would see that the whole thing is ridiculous. No one can be what she is and act in the way you suggest. Her nature is such as to put it out of the question. I can only repeat that the thing is ludicrously impossible, and that if you knew her you would be the first to see it. However, I agree with you that the best way of proving what I say is to find the real murderer. My only fear is that to-morrow you may discover that she too has been killed and buried in the garden." "I am not afraid of that," said Gimblet, "because, as I tell you, if her presence had not been desirable she would never have been near the place. She would have been kept as unaware of its existence as you were yourself. The first essential of such a plan as the murderer must have concocted would be to get hold of Mrs. Vanderstein alone and unsuspected by anyone who was not a confederate." Sidney made an impatient movement. "I am absolutely convinced that Miss Turner had nothing whatever to do with it," he said. "Well," returned Gimblet as he rose to go, "I hope you are right and that further investigations will lead me to share your view. If we can lay hands on Mr. West we shall get at the truth, and unless he is very careful how he disposes of the jewels we are sure to catch him. From what I hear, Mrs. Vanderstein's rope of pearls is well known to every jeweller in Europe; and, if he tries to sell so much as one of them, he'll find a very different sort of rope around his neck. Now I must be off; they are expecting me at Scotland Yard." CHAPTER XX It was long past one when at last Gimblet got to bed. He had had a long and tiring day, full of strain and excitement, and his head was no sooner on the pillow than he slept soundly and dreamlessly. It seemed to him that he had only just shut his eyes when Higgs awoke him the next morning by coming in with his hot water. He rolled over yawning and rubbing his eyes, as his servant pulled up the blinds and laid ready his clothes. When he had finished and gone away, the detective turned over again for another snooze; but in a minute Higgs was back again. "The young man from Ennidge and Pring has called, sir," he said, "the clerk who came with the key last evening, you know, sir. He wants to know if the inquest is to be to-day, as, if not, he has been given a holiday and is going to spend it in the country." "He can go," said Gimblet; "the inquest won't be till to-morrow." He was thoroughly awakened by now, and went to his bath as soon as Higgs had departed. Breakfast was on the table when he entered the dining-room, and he helped himself to omelet and sat down and poured out his tea before he took up the morning paper, which lay beside his plate. As he folded back the sheet and cast his eye over the page, he uttered a startled exclamation and sat staring incredulously at the paper as he read: MYSTERY OF MISSING LADIES PROVES MYTHICAL. Mrs. Vanderstein is Staying at Boulogne. "Our correspondent at Boulogne telegraphs that Mrs. Vanderstein, of 90 Grosvenor Street, is staying at the Hôtel de Douvres in that town. Having observed her name in the visitors' book of the hotel, our correspondent inquired of the manager if the lady could be she who had been reported missing for the last two or three days, and learnt that, while the manager was unaware of the anxiety which has been felt in England on her account, it is certainly Mrs. Vanderstein, of 90 Grosvenor Street, who is at present beneath his roof. Further conversation with the affable and obliging host of the Hôtel de Douvres elicited the information that the lady arrived early on Tuesday morning with the intention of staying for one night only. She complained of feeling indisposed, however, and sent for a doctor, who ordered complete rest; so that Mrs. Vanderstein kept her room till this evening, when, her health being improved, she dined in her apartment as usual, but afterwards went out to the Casino. "As luck would have it, the manager was relating these details to our correspondent at the very moment--about 11 p.m.--when a carriage drove up to the door, and the lady herself re-entered the hotel. On our correspondent's introducing himself and explaining that grave anxiety was being felt on her behalf in this country, she expressed considerable astonishment, and said that this explained the fact that letters she had written had not been answered. She conjectured further that they could not even have been delivered, remarking that the French postal system left much to be desired. In reply to further questions, the lady proclaimed her aversion to being interviewed, and said merely that she would send some telegrams in the morning; upon which our correspondent withdrew, and she entered the lift and mounted to the first floor, where she has a suite of rooms. "Mrs. Vanderstein, who appeared to be entirely recovered in health, was elegantly dressed in a black and white casino costume, with a rose coloured toque trimmed with an osprey, which was very becoming to her dark hair and superb complexion. She was wearing some of the magnificent jewels with which rumour has been so busy during the last few days." Gimblet read the paragraph twice, and then pushing back his chair walked restlessly about the room. His appetite was gone for the time being; his eyes glowed again with the excitement of a new problem. One second he spared, in which to be glad that Mrs. Vanderstein still lived; he was glad for Sir Gregory's sake, and for Sidney's sake, and even a little for her own, though he had never to his knowledge set eyes on her. But from the first he had felt an indefinable sympathy for the fastidious lady whose house was scented with the delicate, delicious perfume that he associated with her name. But, as a matter of fact, Mrs. Vanderstein, alive and well and disporting herself at Boulogne, slipped quickly out of the place in Gimblet's interest hitherto filled by Mrs. Vanderstein dead and cruelly murdered. His mind now occupied itself busily and eagerly with the questions raised by this shifting of rôles in the tragedy of Scholefield Avenue. If Mrs. Vanderstein had not played the piteous part of the victim on that fatal Monday night, who had? Not Miss Barbara Turner, for she was described as having very fair hair, while that of the murdered woman was very dark. And if Miss Turner were not flying from justice, where was she? Could she and Mrs. Vanderstein have combined to kill their hostess, when they visited the house hired by Mr. West of tropical origin? In any case here was a tangled knot to unravel, and a black crime to bring home to its perpetrator. Gimblet saw that he was not likely to solve the puzzle off-hand, and reflected that in the meantime he had better fortify himself with food while he had the opportunity. His breakfast was rather cold by the time he again sat down to it. What, in heaven's name, had Mrs. Vanderstein and Miss Turner been doing in that house on Monday night? Had Miss Finner been mistaken, after all, and was it not they whom she had seen before the door? If so, by what astounding coincidence had he been led to search there of all places, by what incredible freak had Fortune taken him to the scene of this black and cold-blooded crime? His brain, while he ate, busied itself with these and such-like riddles. Soon after breakfast a high official from the Yard called for him in accordance with arrangements made the night before, and they set forth together in a taxi for Fianti's. "For," said the official, as they went, "whether it was Mrs. Vanderstein or some one else whose body you found, we want the man who did it equally badly, and we want your help in finding him. I suppose your commission from Sir Gregory Aberhyn Jones dies a natural death now?" "I suppose so," said Gimblet, "but I'll see him presently and let you know. There's still Miss Turner to account for, but I daresay she's at Boulogne too." "As likely as not," agreed his companion. "It's just the sort of little detail they'd forget to mention." "Well, we shall soon know," was Gimblet's only comment. At Fianti's they sent up their cards by the detective of the regular force who was always in attendance on the Prince and Princess of Targona, with a request for the favour of an audience. They had not long to wait, and were very graciously received by Prince Felipe, who listened with grave attention to the explanation of the object of their visit, and read the note presented for his inspection by Gimblet with a lively curiosity. No, His Highness was afraid he could not assist them in this matter. The writing paper was certainly his--how obtained he could offer no suggestion--the writing was of course a forgery, if that could be called a forgery which made absolutely no pretence of resembling the original. He had no notion to whom the appellation of Madame Q. might refer. No doubt more than one lady whose name began with that initial had been presented to him on different occasions, but he could not for the moment recall.... Possibly some of his suite could be of more assistance. But no one of the Prince's household could give them any help. In the matter of the writing paper, it was suggested that the hotel servants might know something as to how it was obtained, but nothing definite could be found out about it. The Prince sent for them again before they left, but it was only to say that they had his best wishes for the success of their investigations, and to ask a few questions as to points of English police procedure in which he appeared to be interested. "Truly, a strange country!" he murmured from time to time on receiving the answers to his inquiries. Before they were dismissed, Gimblet once more produced the crumpled paper which bore the Targona arms over the Prince's name, and asked the Prince if he could detect a certain odour which clung about it. "Delicious," said Prince Felipe, when he had pressed it to his nose, "a delicate, pungent fragrance! But no, I do not know what it is." The official parted from Gimblet at the door of Fianti's and while the one returned in a hurried taxi to his sanctum at Scotland Yard, the other strolled across the street to Mrs. Vanderstein's house. He found a relieved and rejoicing household. "You've seen the news, of course, sir," said Blake, himself opening the door in answer to the detective's ring. "And we've had a telegram this morning. Here it is." He handed it to Gimblet, who read: "Blake 90 Grosvenor Street London W. Think letters must have missed am staying at Hotel de Douvres Boulogne till further notice writing. "VANDERSTEIN." The telegram had been sent off at 8.14 that morning. "I suppose Miss Turner is with her, sir," Blake was saying, as Gimblet gave him back the paper, "the newspaper doesn't mention her." "No," said Gimblet. "Still, as you say, I daresay she is there all the same. It is Mrs. Vanderstein, and above all Mrs. Vanderstein's jewels, that the public is interested in." He went back to his flat, where he found Sidney and Sir Gregory, both radiant. "What splendid news!" Sir Gregory greeted him as they met, with a joyful cry. "I could not believe it at first; it seems too good to be true. But oh, Mr. Gimblet! what a night I have spent! I shall send that reporter man a fiver. These newspaper chaps sometimes have their uses, after all!" "I hope you see now," Sidney remarked, "what a mistake it is to suspect people of doing impossible things." Sir Gregory looked towards them with a puzzled expression. Gimblet, however, merely smiled. "I am delighted to be in the wrong, Mr. Sidney," was all he said. "She will laugh when she hears what a fuss I've been making," resumed Sir Gregory, pursuing his own thoughts. "I think I shall run over to Boulogne to-morrow and see her. I assure you, Mr. Gimblet, I feel ten years younger again. What a nightmare it has been!" "I found a wire for me at the club," put in Sidney; "she says she is sorry we have been worried, and that her letter must have missed the post. It's jolly good of her to wire to me; I didn't think she meant to have anything more to do with me when I last saw her." "It looks as if she had forgiven you, doesn't it?" said Gimblet. He was thinking that it was not every young man in Sidney's position who would have looked so delighted to hear that his aunt was alive after all, when all his difficulties seemed removed by her supposed death. "She doesn't say a word about Miss Turner," Sidney continued. "She might have, you'd think. Of course she doesn't realise in the least that we've been imagining her murdered." "I telegraphed this morning as soon as I'd seen the paper," said Sir Gregory, "and said we had been most anxious and that I trusted they were both well. I expect there will be an answer for me by the time I get back. Must be going now in fact. You see she has been ill; kept her room till last night, the hotel man said." "It's a very odd business," said Gimblet. "I have done a little telegraphing on my own account, I may tell you, for I want to know whether Mrs. Vanderstein did go to Scholefield Avenue, or whether Miss Finner took some one else for her. I ought to get the reply any minute. And the police are sending a man of theirs over to see her, by the afternoon boat. They want me to help them with investigations of the tragedy we discovered yesterday. I suppose, Sir Gregory, that I can be of no further use to you?" "Thankee, Mr. Gimblet, I hope I shan't trouble you any more." After a little more mutual congratulation the two visitors took themselves off, and Gimblet composed himself to await the answer to his telegram, which was now due. He was sitting contemplating his Teniers, the beauties of which he had not had much leisure to gaze at of late, and munching sweets as he mused, when the expected ring came at the door of the flat; but instead of the message he thought to receive it was Inspector Jennins from Scotland Yard, an astute and good-humoured officer, who had before now been his associate in more than one important case. "I came round to tell you, Mr. Gimblet," he exclaimed as he was shown in, "that the young lady has been found." "What, Miss Turner?" "That's it. She's in the Middlesex Hospital and, what's more, has been there all the time." "Then how in the world was it that no one knew it? That was one of the first places I inquired at, and I daresay you did too." "Yes; she was brought in on Wednesday morning about 3 a.m. by a police constable who had been on night duty in Regent's Park. He saw her knocked down by a man, and picked her up unconscious, and she has been so ever since. The man got away in the dark, and at the hospital no one recognised the young lady from the description given in the inquiries that were made, as the account of the clothes she wore was all wrong. But there have been a lot of photographs of her and Mrs. Vanderstein in the papers to-day and yesterday, and this morning one of the nurses who'd been studying her portrait recognised the original in spite of her wounds. The hospital authorities communicated with us, and I'm off to the hospital now. I thought perhaps you'd like to come." "I should, certainly," said Gimblet, and they were soon on their way. "I have only once seen Miss Turner, and that was only a passing glimpse," Gimblet said as the taxi sped along. "Don't you think it would be a good plan to take one of the Grosvenor Street servants with us to identify the young lady? It is possible that the nurse may be mistaken; people look so different in a horizontal position. And their saying that her clothes were wrongly described looks to me as if there were some error somewhere." "I think that's a very good idea of yours," agreed Jennins, and putting his head out of the window he told the driver to go to 90 Grosvenor Street. They called for Amélie, Mrs. Vanderstein's maid, who appeared after a few minutes, in high delight and excitement at the prospect of assisting the police. She looked rather reproachfully at Gimblet, as though she would have liked to point out to him that it was to be regretted that he had hitherto failed to appreciate how valuable her co-operation might be. "Ah, cette pauvre demoiselle," she murmured as they got into the cab; and her manner indicated that she would have liked to add: "How different it would have been if you had consulted me earlier." At the hospital there was a little delay before they were led upstairs and handed over to the guidance of a pleasant-faced nurse who led them to a ward full of casualty cases, which had suffered various injuries at the hands of Fortune. In one bed was a woman who had been knocked down by a van; in the next a child who had fallen into the kitchen fire; in the third a woman whose husband had kicked her to the very verge of the grave; the fourth held a girl with an arm crushed in the machinery of the factory she worked in--so the nurse informed the inspector. She led the party through the ward, keeping up a running commentary as they advanced, till they reached the end bed of all, in which lay a young girl whose head was covered with bandages, and who lay quiet and still as if asleep. "Here she is," said their guide. Gimblet looked at Amélie. "Mais oui, monsieur," she answered his unspoken question. "C'est bien Mademoiselle Turner. Ah, là là! the poor one, what have they done to her?" Barbara looked terribly white and fragile. Her face had grown thin to emaciation, and there were deep blue lines under her eyes. "Poor young lady," said the nurse, "she's got concussion of the brain, and it must have been a frightful blow that did it." When they left the ward Gimblet asked: "How was it Miss Turner was not recognised till to-day?" "Well," said the nurse, "you see the pictures in the papers aren't very good, and her hair is so hidden by the bandages that it's rather hard to see the likeness. But what really put us off here was the description of the clothes she was supposed to have been wearing. Of course no one ever thought of connecting her with a young lady in a white evening dress and a red opera cloak!" "Why," asked Jennins, "were those not the colours she wore?" "Just wait a moment," said the nurse; "I'll show you her things." She hurried away and returned in a minute with a bundle of apparel. "Look at them," she said, and held them up for them to see. "Look at this old black coat and skirt; do you see how threadbare and old-fashioned it is? It isn't even very clean. And this horrible hat," she pointed to a battered straw, "it is almost in pieces; and the boots are, quite. Her underclothes were of such coarse, stiff calico that you would take them for workhouse things, and all darned and mended till you could hardly see the original stuff. The stockings weren't even mended. They were just one large hole. And there was no blouse under the coat at all. Nothing but a chemise. How was one to imagine that this was the young lady who was being inquired for? There's a tremendous amount in appearances, and she appeared to be the poorest of the poor." Gimblet seized upon the miserable garments and examined them eagerly. But they rendered him no information. Nothing was marked, the boots were odd ones and of a prehistoric age; there was no distinctive feature about any of the things. With injunctions that they should be telephoned to if Miss Turner awoke to consciousness, they left the hospital and dismissed Amélie, who went back to Grosvenor Street to pack and return to the hospital with some of Barbara's belongings, so that she might find them there if they were needed. "Now what I want is to see the constable who brought that young lady into the hospital," Gimblet said to Jennins. "So do I," said the inspector. "He's been sent for and should be at the Yard by now," and they drove off in another taxi. Police-Constable Matterson of S division had already arrived, and was awaiting them when they reached Scotland Yard. Jennins called him into his private office, and there, in response to their questions, he told his story. "At about 2 a.m. on Wednesday morning," said he, "it being a dark, wet night, with the rain pouring down like water out of a bucket, and the thunder claps as near overhead, and as frequent, as ever I heard, I was on duty near St. Mark's Church just outside Regent's Park. There is a small bridge for foot passengers across the canal opposite and I crossed it on my way to the outer circle of the Park. I was just resting a minute on the bridge, for I didn't like to stay under the trees more than I need with that storm so close, when a flash of lightning that must have been almost over me, it was that bright, showed up the canal below, as I leant on the parapet, so clear that I could have counted every blade of grass. There was the canal winding out of sight, and the surface of it all jumping and hissing as the rain-drops hit it; and there were the banks on either side and the trunks of the trees lit up as light as day. But the thing that caught my eye was the sight of two people struggling on the bank, a few yards from the water. It was a man and a woman, and he seemed to be trying to catch hold of her round the neck, while she was dodging and defending herself as best she could. It was all very clear for half a second and then the dark swallowed everything up again, and the thunder burst, as it seemed, just on my head. "Apart from what I had seen it seemed to me that folks wouldn't be out for any good in that weather, and at that hour and place; and when the noise of the clap rumbled away I caught the sound of the tail end of a scream which made me sure of it. I turned my lantern towards the place and hollered back, running to get over the fence and down to the canal as I did so. "As I came near to where I'd seen the pair, two successive flashes coming close one after the other showed them up again no more than a few yards away, and they saw me in the same instant. The man had got a great spade in his hand, and when he caught sight of me he lifted it up sideways and aimed a fearful blow at the woman with the edge of it. She ducked and dodged again--very active she was, poor thing--and he missed, so that the blade glanced off her shoulder and he as near as possible lost his balance. But he recovered himself at once and threw up his arms again with the spade clutched in both hands, as I saw by the second flash, and brought it down with all his force flat on the top of her head. "I didn't see her go down, for the light went before the blow had fallen, and in the dark I lost him, and he got clear away. "While I was groping about with my lantern, I fell over the body of the girl, lying where he had struck her to the ground, and at the first start off I thought he had done for her sure enough. So I let her lie for a few minutes, while I blew my whistle and kept on searching around for the scoundrel. Two more of our men came up after a time and we had a regular hunt, but he'd got a good start and we never saw him. On turning our attention to the girl again, we found that she was still alive, though unconscious, so we got an ambulance and took her to the hospital. There was nothing to show who she was, but from her clothes I judged her to be one of the lowest and poorest class. I reported the occurrence at the time, and made a further search by daylight on the spot. I picked up the spade near by, where the fellow had evidently dropped it as he ran; it had a piece of stout cord attached to the handle about four or five feet long, but was otherwise without distinguishing mark of any kind. It's outside, if you wish to see it, sir." Jennins told him to bring it in. "Of course," he said to Gimblet, "no one ever thought of connecting this story of violence and brutality with the two missing ladies. The report didn't come my way, as it happens, but I don't suppose for a moment I should have been a scrap the wiser if it had. Still, it makes one feel a bit foolish now, I'll own." Matterson returned with the spade and cord, which proved to be very ordinary; and Gimblet's inquiring lens could discover nothing about them in any way remarkable. "What was the man like?" he asked the policeman. "I didn't have much time to take notice, sir," replied Matterson, "but he was a dark fellow with a black beard, and tall." "Did you see if he wore gloves?" "Come to think of it, now you ask me, sir, I believe he did. I saw his hands plain enough as he lifted the spade, and I ought to know. But I couldn't swear to it, I'm afraid, though my impression is that he did, and that it struck me as curious at the time, in the sort of way a thing will strike you for a moment and then slip out of your memory like a dream does." CHAPTER XXI "I bet it's our man," said Gimblet, as Jennins dismissed the constable. "Well, he must have altered his appearance if he is Mr. West, the gentleman from South America, unless Matterson's account is very wrong indeed," was Jennins' only comment. "Aren't you going a bit out of your way, Mr. Gimblet," he asked, "to see any connection between this violent attempt on Miss Turner's life and the actual murder which has taken place at 13 Scholefield Avenue? For my part I don't see any reason to think the two affairs have anything to do with each other. I admit it looked as if Miss Turner and Mrs. Vanderstein had been in the house, but surely that theory is disposed of now and it is clear that your friend the actress was mistaken in thinking it was them she saw. Remember, she didn't even know them by sight, but merely guessed at their identity from the description in the advertisement: two ladies in white, one wearing a red cloak and the other a mauve one. Why, there may have been dozens of couples dressed in these colours going about London on Monday, or any other night!" "But the jewels," said Gimblet, "she saw them too, you know." "Mrs. Vanderstein hasn't a monopoly of diamonds. And besides, at that distance, and at the pace Miss Finner was going, she could only have received the vaguest impression, in any case." "I suppose I have got my head full of Scholefield Avenue," said Gimblet. "I admit that I find it very hard to remember that Mrs. Vanderstein, at all events, is a very long way from that spot. And I daresay you are right, and Miss Turner never was much nearer to it. Still...." Gimblet fell into an introspective silence from which he soon roused himself with a start. "Tell me what you think, Jennins," he said. "Have you any theory?" "I haven't any theory about the Scholefield Avenue business," replied Jennins reluctantly, "but there doesn't seem much mystery about the other affair, to my way of thinking. Surely it is clear that when Mrs. Vanderstein went off so secretly to Boulogne, for some reason she wished it to appear that Miss Turner went with her, while as a matter of fact the young lady remained in London. Ten to one we shall find that Mrs. Vanderstein had a more compromising companion with her in France than she left in England. Miss Turner, no doubt, retired to some secluded spot till her presence should be again required, probably to lodgings near Regent's Park. Very likely she stayed indoors all day for fear of meeting acquaintances who might call for troublesome explanations as to her presence there, and being in want of exercise and fresh air went for a walk at night in order to procure them. Is it surprising that this ruffian of whom Matterson caught a glimpse, meeting her at such an hour and in so lonely a place, should not have spared her his unwelcome advances? Matterson saw him trying to put an arm round her neck, and it was very natural for her to scream in such circumstances. On our man running up, the black-bearded loafer, thinking himself caught, struck out at the girl in a fit of temper, and then took to his heels just in time to save himself." "All very fine, Jennins," said Gimblet, "but I can pick holes in that theory till you'll take it for a sieve. To put aside the question whether such a young lady as Miss Turner is said to be would lend herself to the deception you suggest, is it conceivable that, if she did go out to seek fresh air after dark, she should defer doing so till two in the morning and then choose a particularly violent thunderstorm to walk about in? Would her desire for exercise have led her to stand half way up the embankment of the canal when the rain was falling in torrents, and had been doing so since midnight? There is another thing as inexplicable, and that is the attire in which she took this midnight ramble. The clothes we saw at the hospital were mere rags. It seems incredible that this young lady, whom we know to have been clad on Monday night in purple and fine linen, should have been going about on Wednesday morning in garments which were not only threadbare and indescribably ancient but actually dirty. The battered state of the hat may be due to the blow from the spade, and all the garments were of course drenched by the rain, but there is something beyond that in their repulsiveness. I can't imagine how she can have brought herself to wear such things. "Apart from this behaviour of hers, which is in itself a mystery, what was the black-bearded one doing in the same place and hour and in the same unpropitious conditions? They could hardly both have been wandering there for the innocuous purpose you attribute to Miss Turner. And, mark you, the man was no destitute waif devoid of the means of procuring himself shelter from the rain. He carried a good serviceable spade which would have got him the price of a night's lodging whenever he liked to pawn it. Now the kind of rough you are thinking of does not carry a spade or anything so suggestive of hard and honest labour. On the other hand, who does use that implement in a town like this? A gardener might have one, or a scavenger; or one or two other people. I think one of the most likely, especially at night, would be a gravedigger." "There you go!" exclaimed Jennins; "your mind is running on bodies buried in the flower pots! I suppose you think this fellow was going to bury the girl in one of the beds in the park!" "It's all very strange," mused Gimblet, unheeding the inspector's jeering tones. "The rope now. That is a puzzle. What could he be going to do with a rope? And why was it tied to a spade? Had he got the thing in his hands when he was trying to put his arms round Miss Turner's neck? It must have hampered him a good deal and perhaps helped her to avoid his clutches." Gimblet, with unseeing eyes, stared fixedly at his companion, his mind busy with the problem. Suddenly a light seemed to fall upon it. "By Jove!" he cried, "I believe I see the whole thing. If only Matterson were certain about the gloves." "What is it?" asked Jennins eagerly. "No, no," said Gimblet. "It is too wild an idea at present, though indeed I do not think I can be mistaken. But you have all the facts before you, Jennins, and are as able to come to the right conclusion as myself. I will leave you to think over the puzzle, while I go back to my flat and see if the answer to the wire I sent to Mrs. Vanderstein has yet arrived. It ought to be there by now." But he found no telegram awaiting him. He was annoyed and surprised at this, but the time taken by foreign telegrams is always uncertain, and Mrs. Vanderstein might have been out when his reached Boulogne. Lunch was being kept warm for him, and he made a hearty meal of Scotch woodcock and asparagus; with which he drank iced coffee and ate sponge cake instead of bread. There were strawberries to finish up with, and he left the dining-room with a peaceful smile on his face. It was three o'clock, and the telegram was still undelivered. Gimblet decided to wait in for it, and, having now leisure to think of others, rang up Sidney on the telephone and told him of the discovery of Barbara Turner's whereabouts. Incoherent questions came to him over the wire, but after a minute or two Sidney said "good-bye" and rang off hastily. The detective smiled as he hung up the receiver. In his mind's eye he saw the young man dash out and drive swiftly in the direction of the hospital, and indeed the picture his imagination drew for him could not have been more accurate. The afternoon passed and the evening wore away, and yet no wire came from Mrs. Vanderstein. It was tiresome, and Gimblet felt irritated with the lady for her lack of courtesy. Surely she might have replied by now. He felt that she held the clue to many things which perplexed him, and he could not understand her failure to give it to him. His own telegram had been very urgent. Well, the police were sending a man to see her; he was to go over by the 2.20 from Charing Cross, and by now he would be arriving at Boulogne. There could not be much more delay, telegram or no telegram. Gimblet gave up waiting and went out again. He felt he must go to Scholefield Avenue once more. The tragedy that had taken place there filled his thoughts; and, being convinced in spite of Jennins' contemptuous incredulity that the two mysteries were in some remote way connected, he was inclined to go and see if there were not some trifling point about things at No. 13 which he had overlooked, instead of waiting longer for the minute glimmer of light which Mrs. Vanderstein might be able to throw upon the darkness with which the whole affair was enveloped. Scholefield Avenue looked very quiet and peaceful in the evening light; the few boys who still hovered about the gate, survivals of the crowd which the report of the murder had gathered there earlier in the day, wore the tranquil air of those to whom time is no object, and Gimblet, looking up and down the road, where the shadows lay long and the air was cool in the green twilight of the overhanging trees, thought again what a good place the murderer had chosen for his deed. Who would ever suspect evil in so calm and bright an oasis among the mazes of dusty, traffic-worn streets which surrounded it on every hand? The house was in charge of a couple of policemen, who let Gimblet in without demur when he showed them his card, and followed him with their eyes with looks in which curiosity and admiration were blended. He went over the garden again, examining half-obliterated footmarks, and poking about between flowering plants lest something should be thrust away there and had escaped his notice. Then into the house, where he renewed his search, but without result. He looked into the drawing-room again, where all was as he had left it except that the body had been removed to a bedroom, then went into the library and gazed again at the dirty finger marks on the white paint of the door. Whose fingers were they, he wondered, which had left so many imprints? Was it the murdered woman who had been shut up in that room? Had Mrs. Vanderstein and her companion been there too, or was Jennins right, and their presence in that vicinity on Monday night been a figment of Miss Finner's excited imagination? His thoughts reverted to the powder puff and the forged note, and he took the folded paper from his pocket book and sniffed at it again. The odour of scent, now faint indeed, but still clinging sweetly to the impassioned words, was unmistakably that which hovered about the house in Grosvenor Street. Arome de la Corse, it was called, he remembered, and Amélie had said that Mrs. Vanderstein had it sent to her direct from Paris. Such extraordinary things happen every day that anything short of a miracle hardly attracts attention, but surely it would be a strain on the long arm of coincidence to suppose that, having strayed on to the scene of a murder owing to the mistaken idea that he was on the track of Mrs. Vanderstein, he should then find that not only did the dead woman resemble that lady and wear similar clothes but that she even used the same uncommon perfume! Gimblet's whole soul revolted at such an impossibility. In the name of common sense, he said to himself, it must be Mrs. Vanderstein who had been seen on the doorstep on Monday night, and none other, in spite of all probability to the contrary; though what she was doing in that _galère_ certainly seemed incomprehensible from nearly every point of view. No contingency was ever dismissed by Gimblet as too wild for consideration, and the only reasonable explanation of her presence, he felt, was that she was in some way mixed up with the murder, an accomplice at least, if not the actual author of the deed; but this view involved so complete a shifting of ideas, that he put it aside for further consideration in the light of the information which the man sent by Scotland Yard to Boulogne might be able to furnish. If only the walls could speak! he thought, as he finally realised that nothing more was to be gathered, and, before leaving the room, strolled over to the mantelpiece in order to have a nearer look at the picture which hung there, and which he had noticed the day before. It was a small oil painting, dark with dirt and age, and much of the detail lost in a general blackness. Still the figures, those of a man in blue and another in greenish brown in the act of lighting a long pipe, could be clearly enough distinguished, together with enough of the background to make it plain that this represented an interior. Gimblet studied it with the keenest appreciation; it was just the class of picture he most delighted in. A longing took him to remove it from its nail and carry it to the light, and with rather a guilty glance back at the door, which he had, however, shut as he entered, he put up his hand and lifted it off. As he delicately lowered his prize he caught sight of something which made him very nearly drop it. On the square of wall paper which had been hidden by the picture was some pencilled writing, scrawled irregularly in a large round hand: "I am locked in this room. I write this hoping it may be the means of delivering these people to justice, for I am sure they intend no good. I can see that by the fact that the man with the black beard has promised to help me to escape. Why should there be need to escape? But I do not believe he will keep his word. I have been here so long, I do not know how long, but many hours, perhaps days, and God knows what dreadful thing they are doing in the drawing-room to Mr" The writing broke off abruptly about half way down the square of darker colour, where the paper had been prevented from fading by the protecting picture. Gimblet gazed at it with all the emotions of the scientist whose theory has stood the decisive test. His hands fumbled in his excitement, as he hastily snatched out his notebook, and sought in it for the telegraph form Higgs had obtained from the Piccadilly office. He flattened it against the wall below the pencilled words, more in order to gloat over this proof of the soundness of his deductions than for the sake of comparing the two handwritings, for it had only needed the first glance to make it plain to him that they were one and the same. The writing on the wall was larger; the letters followed each other unevenly, and while some of the lines drooped lower and lower as they advanced, others rose crookedly to meet them, so that one or two actually overlapped and were rather hard to decipher, but the essential character of the hand was clearly identical with that of the telegram. There was no mistaking the slant of the short line of the h's or the oval converging lines of the w's and the low crossing of the t's, besides a hundred other small points which left the trained eye in no doubt as to the authorship of the message. "I wonder what Jennins will say to this," thought Gimblet, as he copied down the words on a page of his notebook. "That Scholefield Avenue has got on my brain, I suppose." Excited as he was, he did not forget his original purpose in taking down the painting, but carried it to the window and examined it closely by the now diminishing light. On nearer inspection it proved to be of less interest than he had expected, and he hung it up again with the less regret. "But even Jennins will have to admit that a leaning towards Art comes in very useful sometimes," he thought, as he once more hid the scrawled message from view. It was long past eight when the detective returned to his flat, only to find that there was still no answer to his telegram to Boulogne. "Nothing has come and no one has been to see us since you went out, sir," Higgs told him. Higgs always spoke of himself as "us" when he was engaged on Gimblet's affairs, just as he alluded, with a fine impartiality, to matters in which his master alone was concerned as "ours." "They've been ringing us up from the Yard," he went on, "been ringing every few minutes for the last half-hour, and said I was to ask you to speak to them on the telephone the minute you come in. There they go again," he concluded, as the bell tinkled violently in the library at the same moment as there came a ring at the front door. Gimblet hurried to the instrument and Higgs went to answer the door. "Are you there?" "Yes, is that Mr. Gimblet? Hold the line, please, sir." In a moment Jennins' voice sounded in his ear. "Mr. Gimblet, that you? Oh, Mr. Gimblet, our man has wired from Boulogne and it appears that things have taken a very unexpected turn. I daresay you've seen an evening paper?" Gimblet had heard so much when the library door burst open, and Sir Gregory rushed into the room. "Look at this," he almost screamed, evidently beside himself with some painful emotion. "Look at this!" He waved an evening paper. "Oh, do go away, Sir Gregory," said Gimblet; "can't you see I'm busy? Hullo, Jennins! Jennins, are you there?" But Sir Gregory would not be denied. Seizing Gimblet's arm he tore him away from the telephone, and holding the newspaper under his eyes pointed to it with a shaking hand. He would have spoken, but sobs choked his utterance, and, glancing at him for the first time and in no very friendly humour, Gimblet was surprised to see that tears were rolling down the kindly pink face. "Why, what's the matter?" he said, but Sir Gregory only pointed to the unfolded sheet. The detective's eyes at last followed the outstretched finger, and he read: "Murder of Mrs. Vanderstein. "Missing Lady Found Dead in Her Hotel at Boulogne." CHAPTER XXII "What do you think about going over to Boulogne, Mr. Gimblet?" It was the following morning, and Jennins was sitting in Gimblet's rooms. He had come round to talk matters over and discuss plans and methods of carrying them out. "I think I may be more useful if I stay here," Gimblet said, in answer to his question. "Your fellow, Burford, who is over there, is a good sound man who will, at least, not overlook the obvious, and Bonnot, the French detective, who is said to have been summoned, is a master of his profession. These murders are certainly the work of the same gang, and it may be easier to trace them here in London, if it is, as it appears to be, their starting point, than it will be to do so in a foreign country. There is no more news from Burford, I suppose?" "Nothing new since last night. And no more than the papers have, anyhow. These reporters are the deuce." "They are," Gimblet agreed. "Let's see again what they say about it." He took up a paper, turned to the sinister headline, and read aloud: "A startling sequel has followed the mysterious disappearance of Mrs. Vanderstein and Miss Turner, who left their home early in the week and whose whereabouts were only yesterday discovered. One of these ladies, Mrs. Vanderstein, who, it will be remembered, we ascertained to be staying at Boulogne, was found dead in her room at the Hôtel de Douvres yesterday afternoon, and foul play is strongly suspected. Traces of violence were plainly to be seen and it is thought likely that the poor lady was strangled to death. A curious feature of the affair is that though Mrs. Vanderstein had with her a large quantity of her valuable jewellery, some of which was actually lying on the table at the time, so far as is at present known none of it has been stolen. "A page in the service of the hotel reports that he showed a visitor to Mrs. Vanderstein's room soon after luncheon, and this stranger, who is described as a tall man with a black beard, left the hotel shortly before three o'clock, after delivering a message from the lady to the effect that she did not wish to be disturbed again that day. The order was duly given to the domestics of the hotel, and if a messenger from London had not arrived by the five o'clock boat on important business and insisted on penetrating to Mrs. Vanderstein's presence, it is probable that the murder would not have been discovered until to-day. The authorities are investigating the affair with the utmost energy, and it is believed that they are on the track of the man with the black beard." Gimblet put down the paper. "There are various other paragraphs saying the same thing in different words," he remarked. "It certainly looks as if you were right again," observed Jennins reflectively, "about all this being the work of the same gang, I mean." "There's not a doubt of it," said Gimblet. "I was sure of it from the first, though I admit that I had not much to go on. A mere whiff of perfume. Let us see how much we know now. To go back to Monday night, Mrs. Vanderstein and Miss Turner voluntarily entered the house in Scholefield Avenue, though whether in response to an invitation from the so-called West or not we do not know, in spite of a theory I have on the subject. They then presumably separated, Miss Turner being imprisoned in the room on the ground floor, very much against her will and to her alarm since she broke a window in the hope of escaping, and when that attempt failed wrote a despairing message on the wall, in which she stated her fear that something dreadful was being done to somebody in the drawing-room. You will, I am sure, agree with me that, though the message says that her alarm was for 'Mr' and then stops, an s would have been added if Miss Turner had not been interrupted, and it was her intention to write 'Mrs.' But whether this would have referred to the woman who was buried in the flower stand or whether she was thinking of her friend, Mrs. Vanderstein, is not clear. "Was Mrs. Vanderstein in the drawing-room at the time of the murder, and if so what was her business there, is the next question where our knowledge fails us. We know she was in that room at some time or other--I knew that the moment I smelt her perfume on the powder puff and note--but whether or no she was there at the moment of the crime we cannot tell. In either case her subsequent proceedings are extraordinary. If she was detained in the house against her will and made her escape by some unknown means, why did she fly to Boulogne, instead of to her own house or to the nearest police station? Why, when she got to Boulogne, did she not communicate with her friends until yesterday? It is true she said she had written previously, but it would have been more natural if she had telegraphed, and if she received no reply had telegraphed again. Why did she display no anxiety on Miss Turner's account? Her actions seem at present to be inexplicable and strange to the last degree. Had she suddenly gone off her head? That is the most probable solution, to my mind. If so, it may well be that it was she who committed the terrible crime I discovered in Scholefield Avenue, and then, with the mixture of cunning and recklessness common to lunatics of a criminal type, retired to Boulogne to wait till the affair should have blown over. There are, however, several drawbacks to such a theory, and one of them is that it does not account for the black-bearded man, unless he was a lover, and indeed it seems most likely that he was. "We don't know what was the part he played on Monday night. Perhaps he helped Mrs. Vanderstein to escape more effectually than he did Miss Turner, in spite of his promise to her. "All we know is that he took the girl out of the house on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning and that they went together to the bank of the canal in Regent's Park, where Matterson came upon them. We know that 'black-beard' carried a heavy spade with him. What for? Not to use it as he did, I think; neither was it to dig a grave with after Miss Turner had been disposed of in some other way. Think, Jennins, there was a cord attached to the handle, and the canal was within a few yards of them. Do those two facts suggest nothing to you? Surely it is obvious that his intention was to throw the young lady into the water, having previously tied the spade to her so as to make sure she would sink. No doubt she guessed what was in his mind, and that was why Matterson saw her defending herself, poor girl, and heard her scream. Such at least is my opinion." "I shouldn't wonder if you've hit the nail on the head this time," agreed the inspector. "The question is, what's the next thing to be done?" "It's high time I followed up a clue contained in the letter purporting to come from Prince Felipe," replied Gimblet. "I should have done so long ago, if I had not waited for Mrs. Vanderstein's version of the affair. You remember a Madame Q. is mentioned as the bearer of the note. Well, who is Madame Q.? I telegraphed early yesterday to Mrs. Vanderstein saying, 'Were you at 13 Scholefield Avenue on Monday night, and who else was present? Letter has been found there apparently addressed to you by Prince F. mentioning Madame Q. Please wire very fully, and give Madame Q.'s full name and address. Very grave matters involved.' If the lady had replied to my wire we should doubtless have been spared a lot of trouble, though we might not have been able to save her life; but, as things are, I propose to try and sift the question of Madame Q.'s identity for myself." Jennins went away; and Gimblet, after being detained by a short visit from Sidney--who was on his way to catch the eleven o'clock train to Boulogne--also took up his hat and left the house. A quarter of an hour later he was standing on the doorstep of Mrs. Vanderstein's Grosvenor Street house. He found, as was natural, a shocked and dislocated household. The cook and Blake were seated in the morning-room, where the cook was flourishing a handkerchief, and reiterating observations to the effect that she had always known something terrible was going to happen ever since the second footman had broken the looking-glass in the pantry; while the young man referred to was standing just outside the door, and putting his head into the room every few minutes to remark defiantly, though with a certain uneasiness, that it wasn't in nature for so tremendous an event to be brought about by such an insignificant piece of glass as the one he had had the "misfortune" with. From the drawing-room came the penetrating shrillness of Amélie's voice, apparently filling in the newspaper account of the murder, with all the embellishing detail an unshrinkingly gruesome imagination could suggest, for the benefit of the rest of the maids, whose chorusing groans could also be distinguished. But, on the whole, there was more perturbation as to the effect the tragedy would be likely to have on their own futures than distress at the dreadful fate of their mistress; and Gimblet, if he had to listen to much lamentation, found himself also beset with many anxious questions. It was some minutes before he was able to introduce his own object in coming there; but at last he drew Blake to one side, and asked him if Mrs. Vanderstein had kept a visiting book with a list of the people she called on. She had done so, and it was produced, but to Gimblet's disappointment contained no name beginning with the letter Q. There were, however, the names of two or three French ladies, and he wondered whether Q were merely a cipher for Gerady or Kerigoet. Blake, cross-questioned, could think of no foreign lady with whom Mrs. Vanderstein was on familiar terms. Gimblet remembered Amélie's thorough knowledge in the matter of her mistress' correspondence, and called to her to come and speak to him. "Had Mrs. Vanderstein a friend of your nationality?" he asked. "Was there any French lady whom she knew well, and whose name, perhaps, began with a Q?" "A lady? No," said Amélie. "A friend? Hardly! Il ne manquait plus que cela! But she was acquainted with a French woman, whose name begins with Q. Without doubt, it is of that Justine you speak." "Justine?" "Eh! Yes. Justine Querterot. Madame Querterot, as she calls herself, though, for me, I never saw that she had a husband. It is said that he shot himself, the poor man, and I do not see what he could have done better with a wife like that one! Ah, monsieur, a nasty, bad woman!" "There are people like that," Gimblet agreed diplomatically; "but tell me, how did Mrs. Vanderstein know this Madame Querterot?" "She came for a time to _coiffer_ Madame, and to rejuvenate her complexion, which needed nothing of the kind, I assure you. But she had the idea to be massaged, and for some months that woman was daily in the house. Never did I comprehend how Mrs. Vanderstein could tolerate her. A woman so vulgar, so familiar, and who never ceased to talk and talk and talk!" Amélie spoke with virtuous indignation, as one to whom the gift of silence has been vouchsafed. "She is a masseuse, then?" "Not a real masseuse, though so she calls herself; but, to say the truth, she is just a hairdresser who tries to make people believe she knows something of the care of the skin. For some reason she appeared to amuse Madame, and I think it was chiefly for that reason that she let her come." "Did she come every day, and has she been here since Mrs. Vanderstein left home?" "For two or three months she came every day," replied Amélie bitterly. "Indeed I thought she was coming always, but only last Monday--the very day Madame went away--I heard la Justine say that it was her final visit; and, in truth, she has not been here since, I am very happy to say it." "Ah," said Gimblet. "Well, I shall have to go and see her. Let me see, you said she is a tall, dark woman, did you not?" "But no," cried Amélie, "on the contrary she is short, and has yellow hair in the worst possible taste." "What makes you dislike this woman so much? Do you know anything against her, by any chance?" But it appeared that Amélie knew nothing against Madame Querterot. Vague accusations and dark charges of a general character were all she had to bring; and, after listening to a tirade of this kind for a considerable time, Gimblet cut it short by asking for the masseuse's address. "Your mistress left a letter for her," he said, "which has been sent over to us by the French police. It is of no importance, and contains, I think, only a reference to Madame Querterot's account, but I am anxious to deliver it; and, as the poor lady had got no further with the address than Madame Q, without your assistance it would have been a matter of some difficulty." It was unfortunate that the detective should have hit upon this excuse to explain his interrogations, for the idea that even death had not put a stop to intercourse between Mrs. Vanderstein and her enemy nearly suffocated Amélie, whose jealous suspicions woke again at the challenge. "This is the address, monsieur," she said, as she gave it to him, "but I would not count on finding the bird in the nest. It is in the neighbourhood of Boulogne that you should look for that infamous woman. One of her kind is capable of everything; and, in my opinion, nothing is more probable than that it is she who is the real assassin of my poor Madame! A black beard, indeed! Is she not a hairdresser?" Gimblet fled before the storm of words he had provoked, and hurried to the Pimlico address that he had obtained. In spite of himself, Amélie's words echoed in his ears: "Is she not a hairdresser?" A black beard was a simple enough disguise, and fair hair may be covered. But he had been told also that the masseuse was a short woman, and height is not so easily simulated. Such were his thoughts as he turned the handle of the shop door. There was no one inside, and Gimblet had time to remark the empty shelves and forlorn look of the window--which the waxen lady no longer graced with her presence--before, in answer to the rapping of his hand on the counter and his repeated cry of "Shop, please," the door leading to the back room opened and Julie Querterot made her appearance. It was a sad enough figure she presented to him that day: paler, thinner, more tired-looking than ever. There was a scared look in her eyes now, and black lines under them. She came forward slowly, almost timidly. "Did you want anything?" she said. "I am afraid our stock is nearly all--sold out." "Thanks," said Gimblet. "I called to see Madame Querterot--is it possible that I am speaking to her?" "Oh no," said Julie with a little smile. "I am her daughter. But I fear you cannot see my mother just now. She is--out." "Never mind," returned Gimblet. "I will wait. Perhaps she will be in by luncheon-time? I have a message for her." "I do not know when she will be back," said the girl. "Can you not leave the message with me?" "It is for her own ear," said Gimblet. "If you don't mind, I will wait a little." He sat down as he spoke, and Julie, after a hesitating glance, went back to the inner room, leaving the door ajar between the two. Gimblet, left to himself, was surprised to notice again how very few were the articles exposed for sale. Bare as the shop had looked when he first entered, he now saw it to be even emptier than he had thought. A tradesman's almanack on one wall, a picture from an illustrated paper on the other, two or three bottles of hair-wash and a few packets of hair-pins seemed to constitute the whole stock in trade. Gimblet was still wondering whether the massage was in as bad a way as the hairdressing side of the Querterot business, when a subdued sound coming from the next room drew his attention. What was it, that sort of low, muffled panting? The detective got up softly, and stole to the door. Peeping shamelessly through the crack, he saw that a chair had been drawn up to the table and that Julie sat there with her head bent and resting on her hands. It was from her that the sound came which had caught his ear, for her whole body was shaking with the sobs which she tried in vain to stifle. Gimblet opened the door and passed boldly through. "I am so sorry," he said, "to have come at a time when you are unhappy. But won't you tell me all about it? Who knows, I may be able to help you." At sight of him the girl started up, with a renewed effort to get the better of her grief; but the kind tone of Gimblet's voice put the finishing touch to her emotions: losing all attempt at self-control, she laid her head down on the table before her and gave way to unrestrained and passionate tears. Gimblet let her weep for a while, then he sat down near her and tried to comfort her. He took one of her hands and patted it gently, as if she had been a child. "There, there," he said, "don't cry any more. Tell me what's the matter and let's see if something can't be done about it." Gradually her tears came more slowly; the convulsive sobs that had shaken her died away, and she sat up and dried her eyes, looking at him from time to time with furtive shyness. "You are very kind, sir," she said at last, succumbing reluctantly to that feeling of confidence which Gimblet always succeeded in inspiring if he tried. "It was--it was only because you asked to see my mother." "How's that?" "She--she--I don't know where she is." "No? But never mind. You will hear where she has been when she comes home." "You don't understand. She hasn't been home for four days, and I have no idea when she is coming back. She did not tell me anything." "Dear me!" Gimblet looked grave. "When do you say you saw her last?" "It was on Tuesday morning," said Julie. "She came and woke me very early; she seemed to have been out, for she still wore her hat, and in her hand she had a black bag. After that she went away. I heard her moving about for some time, till at last she went downstairs and I heard the front door slam. I jumped out of bed and looked out of the window and saw her going down the street with a big bag in each hand. And I haven't seen or heard anything of her since. But I am sure, oh, I _know_ she did not mean to come back!" "How do you know that?" Gimblet asked. "I know it from what she said, and from what she did, before she went." "Won't you tell me?" Julie looked at him doubtfully. "Bert--that is a friend of mine--tried to make me promise not to say anything about it, but I told him I should go to the police if I didn't hear soon. And I feel I must tell some one, for something dreadful may have happened to her," Julie added, half to herself. "Have you anything to do with the police?" she asked. "Well, yes, I have, as a matter of fact; in an indirect way." "You will know what to do then, if I tell you. Bert doesn't seem to know what to do; he only rages. Well, I think my mother has gone away for good, because, before she went, she got a man to come to the house and buy nearly every portable thing in it. There is hardly anything left besides these chairs and table, and my bed upstairs. Soon after she had gone they came and took away the things." "Did she leave you no money?" "No, but she left me the house, you see; only the rent is due and I have nothing to pay it with. And she told me to collect any bills that were due for her services, and that she made me a present of the money. So when she was gone I looked in the ledger and found that everything owing to her had been paid up during the last few days, except one account. It was that of Mrs. Vanderstein, the poor lady who was murdered at Boulogne yesterday, as perhaps you have seen in the papers?" Gimblet inclined his head gravely, and she went on. "My mother used to go to massage the complexion of Mrs. Vanderstein, and the amount owing was large, over twenty pounds. I was grateful that such a sum should be given to me; but, when I saw the next morning that the lady had disappeared, I made sure it was because she was unable to pay her bills, and it seemed likely that my mother had known this when she was so generous to me. I made sure I should never see a penny of that money, and I was in despair, as I didn't know what to do about the rent, or even how to live in the meantime. I went up to Mrs. Vanderstein's house to see if she had really gone, and a kind old gentleman told me the bill would be paid all the same. That was a great comfort, but I knew it would not be for some time, at any rate, and perhaps not till I was starving. It did not really matter so very much," Julie added loyally, "for I am anxious to enter a religious sisterhood, and they will take me, I am sure, even if I have nothing to bring them. But I can't bear to go to them as a beggar, and I wish, I wish she hadn't left me quite destitute without any warning," she concluded, her eyes filling with tears again. "Then what did she wake you up to say, early on Tuesday morning?" "I told you she had a bag in her hand? She took some clothes out of it and gave them to me. She told me to burn them and that she would explain why when she came back. But she said I might keep the linings to make myself petticoats. Such fine petticoats would be no use to me. Still, it was kind of her. And then she took out this and gave it to me to take care of"--Julie put her hand to her neck and pulled out from under her blouse a long string of enormous pearls. "She said that one of her customers had asked her to look after them while she was travelling," continued the girl, lifting the necklace over her head and holding it out to Gimblet. "I don't know if they are real, though she told me to be very careful of them and to wear them always. But I think if they had been real she would not have left them." Gimblet took the necklace without a word. He was for the moment incapable of speaking. "That was all my mother said to me," went on Julie, "but she seemed very pleased about something; and at the same time excited. When I looked out of the window and saw her walking away, she was wearing clothes I had never seen before; they must have been quite new. They were simple, certainly, just a coat and skirt and a small hat; but they were beautifully made and fitted her so well, not at all like what she generally wore. There is something about expensive clothes that makes people look so different. I should hardly have known her if it had not been for a way she has of walking. I could only see the top of her head, but the hat was a very smart one, with a beautiful osprey in it. Somehow she had the air of a person going to a wedding, and I can't help thinking that perhaps it was her own wedding she was going to. She may have married some one above us in station and not have wanted him to know of my existence. That is what I think, but Bert says not." Gimblet cleared his throat. "I wonder," he said, "if you would mind showing me the clothes you spoke of that your mother gave you before she left." "I'm afraid I can't," said Julie. "I--you see I had no money--I sold them to a second-hand clothes shop in Victoria Street. Bert wanted to see them too. He thinks my mother must have had some special reason for saying they were to be burnt, but I don't believe she would have told me I could keep the linings if they had been infectious." "What were they like?" Gimblet asked. It needed all his self-control to keep the eagerness out of his voice. "Two beautiful white evening dresses," said Julie, "and two opera cloaks of red and mauve silk all covered with lovely embroidery and lace. Of course I could never have worn them and it seemed a pity to cut them up. I simply couldn't have burned them. The shop only gave me five pounds for the lot, but that will keep me for some time till I have decided what to do. Still, Bert says I ought not to have sold them." "By the way," said Gimblet, "who is Bert?" The girl flushed. "He's just a boy I know," she said. "He used to go to school with me, and he is always good to me. I shouldn't like to annoy him or to hurt his feelings, and I ought not to have spoken of him, because when he advised me not to go to the police, and I wouldn't promise, he said that I should see that harm would come of it. And so I told him that if my mother came back and blamed me for having spoken of her absence, as he seems to think she would, I would say that he had urged me not to. And then he got quite angry and told me to do as I pleased, but not to mix him up in it, and so I said of course I'd never mention his name if he didn't like; but now I've done it." She stopped, breathless. "Well, give Bert a message from me," said Gimblet; "tell him I agree with him so far, and think you have no need to go to the police yet awhile. But you had better not tell him I have anything to do with them, as he seems to dislike them so much. Shall you see him soon?" "Yes, I expect he will come this evening when he leaves off work; he generally does. And I think I shan't tell him anything about you. Really, it isn't his business and I don't like being always lectured." "I think you are quite right," said Gimblet. "Now one question. Have you any idea as to the man with whom you think your mother may have gone off? Had you any suspicion before that she was thinking of marrying again?" The girl hesitated a moment. "No," she said, "I have no idea at all who it could be." CHAPTER XXIII Gimblet was late for the inquest, which had been fixed for two o'clock. By the time he arrived the evidence of Higgs and the policeman he had fetched, and that of Brampton, the artist, and the house agents' clerk had been already taken, and there only remained his own and the doctor's to be heard. Nothing new was brought to light, and the jury returned a verdict of "Wilful murder against some person or persons unknown." Gimblet did not judge it expedient to disclose the theories he had formed on the subject of the crime. As he walked away from the house in the company of Jennins, whom he had found there when he arrived, the inspector said to him: "An old-clothes dealer in Victoria Street has communicated with us. They have bought what they think, from the published description, to be the dresses and cloaks worn by Mrs. Vanderstein and Miss Turner on Monday night. I am going to get that French maid of theirs to go down to the place with me and see if the people are right in their assumption. They say they bought the things from a young woman who gave an address in Pimlico and the name of Julie Querterot. Can she be the Madame Q. of the note? If she is, it is strange that she should not give a false name; but everything about this case is mysterious." "It is not she," said Gimblet, "it was her mother. I have just been to their house and seen her. As for mysteries, there is only one left as far as I am concerned, and that is the whereabouts of West, and the question whether he has not by this time exchanged his disguise of a black beard for another in which it will be harder to identify him. Everything else, I think, is quite clear, with the exception of a few trifling details, and I do not think it will be long before we may hope to lay our hands on Mr. West himself." Gimblet refused, however, to impart his lately acquired information to Jennins, telling him, much to the inspector's disgust, that he would know all about it soon enough. "And a tangled web you'll find it, Jennins," said he. They were interrupted by a messenger, who informed Jennins that Miss Turner was conscious and anxious to make a statement. Gimblet and the inspector went together to the hospital, where they found Barbara looking very much better than the day before. She was recovering wonderfully, they were told, but must not excite herself more than could be avoided. Indeed, she would not have been allowed to see them yet, if she had not been fretting so much to tell her story that it was thought best to let her do it. She must not, however, be made aware of the death of her friend if it were possible to conceal it from her for the next few days. She greeted the two men with a feeble smile. "I hear that I was rescued by one of your men," she said to Jennins, "and I am more grateful to him than I can say, though I do not remember very much after I realised that that man was trying to tie his spade round my neck." "It's lucky you were seen in time," replied Jennins. "We don't want to bother you to-day, but at the same time we are, of course, anxious to hear anything you can tell us about the scoundrel you were with." "Oh, I want to tell you all about it so that you may be able to catch him--and the woman too. I suppose you haven't got them yet?" Jennins shook his head. "I thought perhaps Mrs. Vanderstein had been able to put you on the track. How glad I am that she escaped. I was afraid--but no matter now. Has she told you how she managed to get away?" "Mrs. Vanderstein went abroad immediately," said Gimblet evasively; "we have not heard any details from her yet. But will you not tell us your adventures from the beginning? How was it you found yourselves in Scholefield Avenue?" Barbara looked at him blankly. "Scholefield Avenue," she repeated, "where is that?" "The house in which you were imprisoned is there," said Gimblet; "have you forgotten? You went there with Mrs. Vanderstein on Monday night after the opera. I want you to tell us why you went to it." "I didn't know where it was," said Barbara, "but I don't think I can tell you why we went. I don't think Mrs. Vanderstein would like me to do that." "As you wish," replied Gimblet; "but this will show you that I already know something of your friend's private affairs." He took out the sheet of notepaper bearing the arms of Targona, and handed it to her. "She gave you this!" cried the girl, and as Gimblet remained silent: "Then she cannot mind my speaking of it. Yes, it is true that we went to that house to meet Prince Felipe, but I don't know if he came there or not." "No, he did not go." "Then the whole thing was false! I thought so at the beginning, but afterwards I was not sure. It was on Monday morning that Mrs. Vanderstein spoke to me about it. For a week she had been looking strange: excited, pleased--I don't know what exactly--happier, younger, somehow different from her usual look. And on Monday she came to my room and told me, blushing and smiling, that it was her happiness to be loved by Prince Felipe of Targona, and that in all probability she was going to marry him. They had only seen each other in the distance, she said, but it had been love at first sight for both of them, and she was so happy, so happy! And wouldn't I say I was glad? I asked her how she knew what he felt for her, if they had never met, and she said she had had letters from him and had written to him herself, and that she was going to meet him that very night after the opera, at the house of a friend of his. She said they could not meet in public, or at his hotel, or in her own home, as he was surrounded by his suite, and his mother, who was also with him, watched his every movement, so that all his comings and goings were seen and marked. "They were staying at Fianti's Hotel just opposite to us in Grosvenor Street, you know, so it would have been rather difficult for the Prince to come to our house without being noticed. It was intended that he should marry for political reasons, and at any sign of his affections being bestowed on a private individual an outcry would have been raised, which would have been hard to ignore. It was Prince Felipe's plan, so Mrs. Vanderstein told me, that they should be married quietly and that he should then abdicate; to which less objection would be made when it was known that he was irretrievably disposed of from a matrimonial point of view. The whole story appeared to me so improbable and fantastic that I couldn't help laughing at it, which offended my friend very much, and in order to convince me she finally showed me some of the Prince's letters, including the one you have there. I could not doubt any longer after I had seen them, though I was surprised and, I must say, shocked to hear that the go-between in the affair and the bearer of all the notes was a Frenchwoman, a hairdresser employed by Mrs. Vanderstein, and also, it seemed, by one of the suite of Prince Felipe. "When I heard that Mrs. Vanderstein had no idea where the house to which she was to go that night was situated, but had left all details to Madame Querterot and the Prince, I tried to convince her of the folly of such an arrangement, but nothing I could say had any effect. At last I told her that I should accompany her on this escapade; and, though she didn't like the idea and even grew quite angry with me about it, I stuck to my point, and was so firm on the subject that in the end she gave in and said I could come if I liked. It was, all the same, with serious misgivings that I set forth with her that evening for Covent Garden, where we were first to attend the gala performance. We had hardly entered the theatre when Mrs. Vanderstein told me to run back and tell the motor not to come to fetch us. We were to go away in a carriage sent by the Prince, she said. "I was too much worried to enjoy the opera. I don't know whether Mrs. Vanderstein did or not, but she kept looking at her watch and fidgeting, so I think her thoughts were elsewhere. Before the last act was nearly over we left the box and went down into the hall, which was nearly empty, and told a man to call Mr. Targon's carriage, for so it appeared the Prince was to be alluded to on this occasion. In a few minutes a brougham drove up, drawn by a dun coloured horse, which dished badly and had an odd white blaze across its nose and one eye. I noticed, too, that it was driven by a very odd-looking man, who wore a hat much too large for him crammed down over his eyes and a great scarf wrapped round his neck and high over his chin and ears; though even so I could see that he wore a beard, which is, to say the least of it, unusual in a coachman." "One moment," Jennins interrupted; "do you think you could recognise the horse, Miss Turner, if you should see him again?" "I am nearly sure I should," Barbara replied. "There can't be many with a blaze like that. I am more sure of it than I am of the driver. He drove very badly," she went on, "pulling up under the arch with a jerk and throwing up his hands, each of which clutched at a rein, nearly over his head. 'Surely there is some mistake,' I said. 'Are you from Mr. Targon?' 'I am from Mr. Targon,' he answered hoarsely, 'but I think there is a mistake, as you say; I was to fetch one lady, not two.' 'Oh, that's all right,' said Mrs. Vanderstein hurriedly. 'Jump in, Barbara.' And she got into the brougham herself, so that I had no choice but to follow her, and we drove off. "Oh dear, how badly that man drove! Luckily there was hardly any traffic about, but we bumped into three things before we got to the top of Regent Street, and went over the curb at the corners I don't know how often. Once the carriage stopped and the driver leant down and called through the window that he had orders to fetch one lady, and that I must get out. This I absolutely refused to do, and by this time Mrs. Vanderstein was so much alarmed by the reckless way in which he drove that I don't think she would have allowed me to leave her even if I had wished to do so. After a heated dispute a small crowd began to gather round us, and the coachman seeing, I fancy, the shadow of an approaching policeman, suddenly abandoned the contest, and whipping up his horse we lurched forward again as the animal started with a bound. "It was a long drive, and towards the end of it I lost all notion of direction and had no idea where we were going. At last, with a final bump and jolt, we drove in at the gate of a little house, which seemed to stand back from the road in a tiny garden, and pulled up with a jerk before a flight of steps, at the top of which a door was flung open the moment we stopped, and I recognised the figure of Madame Querterot standing back from it in the half light of the passage. "We got out, and Mrs. Vanderstein, who is timid driving at any time, began to abuse the man in a very angry tone. She had been thoroughly frightened, poor dear, and had sat holding my hand with a white face all the way, as I could see from time to time in the light of a passing lamp. 'What do you mean by driving like that?' she called out from the pavement. 'I think you are drunk. A nice thing, indeed. I shall complain of you, do not fear. It is most disgraceful to be in such a state. Never, never have I been driven like that! It is a wonder we were not all killed!' The man flicked at the horse and drove away, but Mrs. Vanderstein was so angry with him that she actually made as if to follow. She only went a step or two, however, and then with a laugh turned back, and we went up the steps, into the house. "We were received by Madame Querterot, looking, I must say, more tidy than usual, in a neat black dress and a large apron, put on, I suppose, in keeping with her part of parlourmaid. I was struck by the strange expression on her face when she first caught sight of me, and she murmured something to the effect that Mrs. Vanderstein had promised to come alone; but my friend, who was still flushed from her encounter with the coachman, did not answer her at all and marched on with her chin in the air. Madame Querterot recovered her usual amiability in a moment, and with many smiles and blandishments conducted us up to the drawing-room, where she left us, saying that His Highness had not yet arrived. "There we waited for what seemed a long time; twenty minutes perhaps, or half an hour. My friend was very nervous and could not sit still, but walked up and down, up and down, restlessly, the whole time. Now she would plump down on a sofa and arrange herself in a graceful attitude; a minute later she would jump to her feet and run to the looking-glass to pat her curls into place, or dab her nose with powder. 'How do I look?' she asked me more than once, and hardly seemed to hear me when I answered her. "At last there was a slight noise downstairs; the front door shut, and I could catch the mumble of voices talking low. After what seemed again an interminable delay the door opened and Madame Querterot came in. 'If Mademoiselle will come with me into another room for a short time,' said she. 'His Highness has just arrived.' I only hesitated a second. There was such an imploring look in Mrs. Vanderstein's eyes that I could not refuse to go, much as I disapproved of the whole thing. I took her hand, and kissed her encouragingly, and then left the room without a word; for indeed there was something pathetic about her emotion, and I was too much moved by it myself to trust my voice. "Madame Querterot led me down to a small back room that seemed to be a library, and left me, shutting the door behind her. I heard feet ascending the stairs, the drawing-room door open and shut, and then all was still for a moment. "Suddenly, however, there came a noise from above. Something seemed to have been knocked over, then came a sound of running footsteps and finally a dragging noise as if a heavy object were being pulled across the floor overhead. I started up in alarm. What was happening upstairs? Surely there was something wrong! Without waiting to think, I rushed into the hall and tore upstairs and in at the drawing-room door. I found myself confronted by a tall man with a thick black beard and a pale, blotchy face. Behind him at the further end of the room I caught a glimpse of Mrs. Vanderstein, apparently lying on a sofa, and Madame Querterot bending over her. 'What is it. Is she ill?' I cried. 'Take her away, take her away,' exclaimed Madame Querterot, looking up over her shoulder, and before I had time to speak again I was hustled out of the room by the tall man and dragged downstairs again to the library. I was so infuriated at his daring to touch me that I could scarcely speak, but I managed to stammer again: 'Is she ill? Is Mrs. Vanderstein ill?' 'She is not feeling quite well,' he replied, 'she will be best without you.' "I looked at him curiously. I had seen Prince Felipe, and this was not he. Indeed I thought I recognised the driver of the brougham. He was a strange-looking man, dressed in ordinary day clothes, and I noticed with astonishment that he wore thick brown leather gloves on both hands. 'I think she will be better with me,' I said defiantly, and advanced towards the door, but he barred the way. 'You must stay here,' he said. 'Must!' I said; 'what do you mean? Let me go this instant.' He didn't answer, but just stood with his back to the door, grinning in a foolish way. 'Let me out, let me out,' I exclaimed, on the point of tears by this time, I am afraid. 'Let me out or--or--I'll set fire to the house!' "I caught up my scarf and held it towards the gas, but the man leapt forward and, before I knew what he was doing, had turned out the flame altogether, leaving us in the dark. As I still stood, bewildered, I heard the door open and in an instant he had vanished through it and the key was turned in the lock outside. "This was followed by the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and in the silence that succeeded it is no exaggeration to say that the noise of my pulses throbbing in my ears sounded as loud as the tramp of a whole army on the march. I felt my way to a chair, and for a time sat in a trembling silence, shaken and unstrung by terror the most unnerving, if of the vaguest nature. "Why would they not let me go to Mrs. Vanderstein if she was ill? What was the matter with her? Why had Madame Querterot looked as she did when she saw me on the doorstep? What was she doing, kneeling by the sofa? And, above all, what was the meaning of the man's behaviour to me? It was, I think, the touch of his hand, as he dragged me downstairs, that took away my courage altogether. "I sat for a long while, immovable in the darkness. From time to time sounds came from the room above, but they did not convey any meaning to me. At last I grew calmer, and indignation began to take the place of my fears. I got up and moved about the room, feeling my way as I went. In this manner I soon had an idea of the position and character of the furniture, even of the fire-place and the coal scuttle; and I must have blacked my fingers nicely in the process. I had a wild notion that it might be useful to me to know where the poker was, though I had no definite idea what I would do with it. Still, in one way or another I was determined to escape from this imprisonment. What did they mean by shutting me in this room? They must, they should, let me out! "I began to cry for help. I felt my way to the door and beat against it with my hands, but no answer came. Then I had a brilliant thought--the room was on the ground floor, surely I could get out of the window. I reached it and tried to open it, but it was stiff and heavy. In spite of all my efforts I could not raise the sash. I groped for the poker again and, standing back for fear of the splintering glass, I aimed a blow at the place where I knew the window to be and heard with delight the crash of a shattered pane. Even as I delivered the blow, it struck me as curious that no light came into the room from the night outside; and, thrusting the poker through the hole I had broken, I found to my dismay that there were strong wooden shutters beyond it. But the noise I had made seemed to have attracted some attention at last, for I heard a door open and the sound of some one running down the stairs. "A moment later the key was turned, and the door opened just enough to let in the tall man, who shut it behind him again as soon as he was inside. He had a little electric torch, which he turned in my direction, so that the glare blinded me and I couldn't see him at all. 'It's no good making all this row, Miss Turner,' he said, 'no sort of earthly, kicking up such a shindy as a young lady like you ought to be ashamed to raise. Besides,' he said, and now there was something in his tone that turned me sick, 'it isn't _safe_. Do you understand? It is not _safe_. Now, you see I don't mean you any harm or I simply shouldn't bother to warn you. But no, I like the look of you, and I'm sorry to see you in this house, where I tell you again it's dangerous to stay. But be a sensible young lady and do as I tell you, and I'm blowed if I don't help you to escape when the time comes. What do you say to that? I can't say fairer, can I?' "I suppose you will think me a dreadful coward, but there was something about the man which frightened me horribly. I think it was that he seemed to be himself in the extremity of fear. How I gathered that impression I am not sure. It may have been the low, hurried agitation of his voice, or the way in which his hand was shaking, so that the light behind which he was concealed danced and wavered between us like a will-o'-the-wisp; or perhaps it was the mere telepathic infection of fear. At all events I was ready to agree to anything he said, and jumped at the idea of escape. 'I'll do anything, I'll be as quiet as a mouse,' I cried beseechingly, 'if you'll only let me go away.' 'That's right,' he said approvingly. 'I'll help you, never fear. And to show that I mean it,' he went on, 'here's a change of clothes for you. You'd never escape in that white and red costume, you know.' He threw down a bundle on the table. 'Make haste and get into these togs, and let me take away your own things. I'll leave you the lamp to change by, but you must look sharp, and mind you change every single thing, down to your shift.' "So saying he put down the lamp and left the room again. No sooner was the door shut than I caught up the lamp and ran to the window. Peering through the glass, I tried to make out the fastening of the shutters and to see if I could get at it by putting my arm through the broken pane; but it was quite out of reach and I realised that I could do nothing without smashing more glass, and I did not dare do that now. So I put down the lamp again, and fell to changing my clothes as the man had suggested. "They were horrible clothes he had brought, and it made me sick to put them on; but I felt he was right in saying that I could not escape in my evening dress. So, though I didn't see why I should change all my under things, I thought there might be some reason for that also, and anyhow I think I was too much frightened not to do as I was told. It was soon done, but not too soon, for without so much as a knock the wretch walked in again as I was fastening the last button of the shabby coat over a chemise so rough that my skin prickled all over. He looked at me with some satisfaction. 'You must alter your hair,' he said; 'do it up tight and plain, so that it won't show more than can be helped.' "With that, he gathered up my clothes and went away, taking the lamp with him this time, and I saw no more of him for a long while. There was no need to twist my hair up so hurriedly, for after that was done I sat down and waited for what seemed like days. It was terrible, waiting, waiting, waiting in the darkness, which my fears peopled with invisible presences, so that I found myself holding my breath lest the door handle should turn again, and some one, or some thing, enter unheard by me. At the thought, I got up and dragged a heavy chair across the room, where I sat down on it with my back against the door, my anxiety to get out quite forgotten and overwhelmed in the awful possibility of not being certain whether or not I were alone. "If only Mrs. Vanderstein had still been with me. But, believe me, it was not only selfishly that I longed for her: the vision of her, ill, and no doubt in danger equal to mine as an inmate of this dreadful house, sat on me like a nightmare; and, if I was frightened by the peril of my own position, I trembled still more at the danger to which my friend might be exposed. Why was the man afraid? It was the recollection of his terror that cowed me, so that I sat there rigid, paralysed by the fear of I knew not what. From time to time noises broke the silence, the noise of people moving in the room above; and presently some one descended the stairs and approached the door against which I crouched. "A violent trembling fit seized me and my teeth chattered so convulsively that I could hardly hear the footsteps outside; but they passed on, and I heard a door opened at the end of the passage. A minute later they returned, sounding loud on the linoleum of the hall and muffled as they went up the stairs; only to come down again in a few moments. Over and over again this process was repeated: some one apparently walking down the stairs, down the passage, and through a door at the back of the house, then retracing his steps, and in a minute or two beginning all over again. This went on, I should think, for more than an hour, and then after an interval I heard two people come down and go to the door; soon it was gently shut and only one pair of feet returned. "Presently another noise began--rather a comforting, familiar noise--the sound of sweeping and brushing, both on the stairs and in the room overhead. It seemed as if a housemaid were about, beginning the morning's work, for by now I could see through a tiny space in the shutters that it was daylight. I called out once: 'Is there anyone there?' at which the noise of sweeping ceased, and a warning 'Hush' was breathed at me through the keyhole, close by my ear. After a time all these sounds stopped altogether. The sweeper passed my door again, and again went through the door at the end of the passage. This time it was closed with a snap of the lock, and then silence settled on the house. I don't know how long I sat there without hearing a sound. I think I must have dozed. I know I began to feel so stiff and tired that fear seemed a secondary consideration, and I didn't care what happened any more. Heaven knows how long he left me there, dozing and waking, perhaps for hours, perhaps for days. You know more about that than I do. "It was after what seemed like a week that the storm began. It was that which definitely roused me from the sort of stupor into which I had fallen, and stirred me to rack my brains again for some means of escape. It was dreadfully hot in that little room; the atmosphere was close and stifling till it seemed to weigh one down with an unbearable oppression, and if it had not been for the glass I had broken--through which an occasional breath of air penetrated by way of a crack in the shutter--I suppose it would have been even worse than it was. From time to time I had been conscious of the distant rumbling of thunder, and hoped dimly that it would clear the air, for before the storm actually burst my head was like to split; and it was with a certain relief that I heard the first large drops of rain begin to fall. Soon afterwards there was a tremendous clap of thunder. "I was appallingly hungry, and wondered if I were being purposely left to die of starvation. With a vague idea that I might find something edible I began feeling about again around the room and considering the possibility, if the worst came to the worst, of eating my shoes, as I had heard of starving men being forced to do. But I was not hungry enough for that yet, and besides I wasn't sure if the soles of my satin slippers were of leather, or only _papier mâché_. On the table my fingers came across a stump of pencil, and that distracted my thoughts for a little while. I had to feel it all over before I was sure what it was; it was the point that made me almost certain, and I began at once to ask myself whether I could not by some means send a message to the outside world. I could think of no way of doing so, however, and even if I could have, I had nothing to write on. Then the idea came to me of writing on the wall. I thought to myself that if the man meant to play me false, at least I could leave a token of my presence, which possibly at some future day might lead to the punishment of these people. I knew there were pictures on the walls, and feeling my way to the fire-place I lifted up one hanging above it, so that by inserting my hand under the frame I could write on that part of the wallpaper which, as far as I could tell, lay behind. "I had only written a few words, when the key was turned and the door opened. A rumbling of thunder had prevented my hearing the sound of approaching feet, and I had only just time to let the picture fall back into its place and to move a few steps away from the mantelpiece before the black-bearded man entered the room. Fortunately, the chair I had pushed against the door retarded its opening for a moment, or he would have seen what I was doing. 'Come,' he said, taking hold of my arm, 'now is the time for you to escape to a place of safety.' "Without further words he led me into the hall, and along it to the front door. Here we paused, while he opened it very cautiously and peered out. For my part, I was more nervous with regard to dangers that might lurk in the house behind us; but his inspection of the outside world seemed to satisfy him, for picking up, to my astonishment, a large garden spade that was leaning against the wall he opened the door wide and we passed through it together. I cannot tell you with what feelings of gladness and thankfulness I hastened down the steps and out into the street, nor with what joy I felt my unrestrained feet splashing into the puddles, and the free air of the night blow freshly on my face. We had gone some hundreds of yards and turned more than one corner before I dared speak. 'What has happened to my friend?' I then said; 'has she escaped too?' 'She has gone,' he answered evasively, and still quickened his pace till I was half running to keep up with him. "It was wild weather to be abroad: the storm was still at its height and the flashes of lightning and the thunder claps succeeded each other with increasing frequency; rain was falling in torrents, the roads and pavements were like seething rivers, and the gutters ran a foot deep at the edge of the kerb, as I discovered by stepping into one when we crossed the street. There was not a soul to be seen except the black-cloaked figure of an occasional policeman, and whenever we approached one of these my companion gripped my arm more tightly, and wheeled away in a new direction. It was thus, with many turns and by circuitous routes, that we progressed on our way. And, though I asked more than once where we were going, not another word did I extract from the black-bearded man; and I soon fell the more readily into a like silence, as the rapid pace at which we walked left me little breath for speech. "In this manner, and after we had hurried along for at least half an hour, we made our way into an enclosure, which I guessed to be Regent's Park. The first elation caused by leaving the house where I had been imprisoned was wearing off and I had time to ask myself whither I was being led, receiving in reply no very comforting assurances. Was I being taken from one place of incarceration to another? I wondered, and at the thought I tried to shake off the hand that lay upon my arm. 'If you will let me go now,' I said timidly, 'I shall be all right by myself. I shall never forget that you helped me to escape, but now, if you don't mind, I--I had rather be alone.' But I got no answer, nor did the clutch on my arm relax. In a fresh panic I made up my mind that the next time we saw a policeman I would scream for help. "It was not many minutes after I had taken this decision that my companion paused in his rapid walk; and after looking about him doubtfully seemed to recognise some landmark in the darkness, and came to a sudden halt. 'Can you get over these railings?' he said. We had been following the line of an iron fence that bordered the path, and I could feel rather than see that it reached above the height of my waist and was ornamented with spikes. 'I think it is hardly possible,' I replied; 'but why should I get over?' He did not answer, but seemed to consider. 'I think I can lift you over,' he said at length, and before I could object he had his arms around me, and with a tremendous effort swung me up in the air and across the railings. 'Now you must help me,' he said, holding tightly to my arm as I landed safely on the other side. And partly by my help, partly by holding on to a tree that leant up against the fence near by, he managed to scramble over. "Now, by the roughness of the ground under my feet, I knew we were on the grass, even before a flash of lightning showed me that we had wandered away from the fence and were standing on the top of an embankment, at the bottom of which I caught sight of a high wooden paling. With instinctive reluctance, I hung back as my companion began to descend the bank, tugging me in his wake. At the bottom of the hill we came to the high wall, which we followed for a little way, and presently stopped before an opening through which I saw the gleam of water. 'We must get through here,' said the man. 'There's plenty of room where these two boards have been torn off.' There was, as he said, a gap where some planks were missing and only the cross pieces of wood remained. 'Why should we go this way?' I asked again, full of misgivings. 'Where are you taking me?' 'Where you will be safe,' said he. 'Come on,' and stepping before me through the gap he dragged me roughly after him. "Then, for the first time, he suddenly removed the hand that all this while had clutched me by the arm; and as I stood there, bewildered, not knowing what to do with my freedom, the scene was lighted up by a tremendous flash, brighter than any that had gone before, and I saw that he was fumbling with a cord that was attached to the handle of the spade he carried. His arms were stretched towards me, and before the light had faded from the sky I realised that he was trying to throw the end of the rope round my neck, passing it from one hand to the other as he did so. "Perhaps I leapt too suddenly to a conclusion, or perhaps--as I think more likely--my understanding was quickened by fear, but in that instant I became as certain of his intention as though he had explained it to me in every detail. He was going to drown me in the canal, first tying the heavy spade to me to make sure that I should sink, never to rise again. I screamed aloud and pushed him away with all my strength. On that steeply sloping bank he was at a disadvantage, the rain had made it slippery, and for a minute I frustrated his purpose. Then came another flash, and by it the man seemed to catch sight of something behind me, which at the same time horrified and infuriated him, for I saw his expression change, and with a snarl of frightened rage he lifted up the spade and hit at me with it. Somehow I managed to jump aside, but I saw him raise it for another blow, and after that--after that--I can remember no more." Barbara's story was finished. It had been told slowly, and at intervals the girl lay back with closed eyes, too weak to continue. But on any proposal to defer her account to another day she had roused herself, and proceeded with it resolutely till she came to the end. The shadows had time to grow long during the telling of it, so that when at length, after they had finally taken leave of the invalid and issued forth once more from the doors of the hospital, the two men found themselves again in the open air it was already dinnertime. "Come back with me, Jennins, and have something to eat," said Gimblet, as they walked away. "There is sure to be food of sorts ready for me at the flat." But Jennins was bound elsewhere. "I'm going to have a try at hunting out that horse," he said. "Miss Turner thinks she'd know it again and, as she says, the number of dun coloured beasts with a decided dish and a peculiar crooked blaze of white over the nose and one eye must be more or less limited. Then, you remember, she thinks the driver was no other than our friend West, and if, after he had set the ladies down in Scholefield Avenue, he was less than half an hour in making his reappearance, one may argue that the stables were not half a mile away from No. 13. Don't you think I am right?" "I think your reasoning is perfectly sound," said Gimblet. "You ought to be able to find out something about the horse without much trouble; and incidentally, I hope, about the driver. Let me know as soon as you have news. For my part I will try and see if I can't get some information about him also. In the meantime, I've eaten nothing since breakfast, and exhausted nature calls. I'm off to get some dinner." "I suppose," Jennins called after him, "from what you said to me this afternoon, that you have ascertained that this Madame Querterot is beyond our reach for the moment?" "Yes," said Gimblet. "And do you think the girl, her daughter, has any idea as to the woman's whereabouts?" "No," said Gimblet gently, "I am sure she has not." In the flat Gimblet found a telegram awaiting him. It was from Boulogne, and ran as follows: "Murdered woman not my aunt Mrs. Vanderstein or anyone known to me there is no clue to her identity. "SIDNEY." Gimblet crumpled it up and flung it into a waste-paper basket. "A pity to squander five shillings," he murmured, "in telling me what I already knew." Then he hastened hungrily to the dining-room. After a hearty meal he felt considerably better, and when he presently pushed back his chair and strolled over to the open window he was ready and eager for more work. His mind, which had been busy during the meal with attempts to devise a plan that should bring him to closer quarters with the person he most desired to meet, that should cause the phantom figure of Mr. West of the black beard to materialise and become a solid form discernible to the naked eye and capable of wearing handcuffs, had not yet furnished him with a method by which this desirable object might be attained. "Surely," he said to himself, "I must be able to trace Madame Querterot's meetings with this man. It is impossible that she can have been on such terms of intimacy with him without some one knowing it." He looked at his watch, helped himself to a sweet from a box which stood on the shelf, and decided to go down to Pimlico and see if he could not find out something more from Julie. It was half-past nine, but she was not likely to have gone to bed yet, and he wanted a specimen of her mother's handwriting. He went out and took a taxi to Warwick Square, where he dismissed it, and pursued his way on foot. It was quite dark by now, with the soft blue darkness of summer, for the weather had turned warm again and the sun had gone down in a clear sky. There were plenty of people about, as it was Saturday night; many a small coin was being carried snug in its earner's pocket that would no longer be lying there in a couple of hours' time, and the tills of the publicans were already flooded with the rise of the weekly tide. As he drew near the little shop in the gloomy, sordid little street, the door of it opened suddenly and a man came out and walked rapidly away. After a few steps he paused; and, turning, gazed for a moment longingly back at the window--from which a pale light shone forth, so that the pavement beneath it was bathed in a gentle radiance--before he swung round once more and made off up the street. It happened that, as he stood for that instant, hesitating perhaps whether or no to return and make a final appeal to the girl he worshipped, the light of the street lamp fell full upon his white, haggard face; and Gimblet, with a start, experienced the surprise of his life, as he realised that he and Bert had met before. Everything was clear to him now, and, with a sigh of something between relief and regret, he abandoned his proposed visit to Julie and went about the ordering of more important business. * * * * * An hour later, Albert Tremmels, clerk to Messrs. Ennidge and Pring, house agents, was arrested in his lodgings for the murders of Mrs. Vanderstein and Madame Querterot, and for the attempted murder of Miss Turner. CHAPTER XXIV Bert offered no resistance to the officers of the law. Indeed, after the first moment, he showed a kind of relief at his arrest, and went with his captors almost gladly. "I knew you'd get me sooner or later," he said, although warned that his words would be used against him, "and it's best to get it over. Julie won't ever forgive me, let alone have anything to do with me, so what have I got to live for? I can't go on like this; no one could. Still, mind you, I'm not so much to blame as you think, and it's my belief any one of you chaps would have done the same as I did, in my place." Bert had always been ready to justify himself. He was willing enough to confess, to the police, to the prison chaplain, to anyone. He showed, indeed, considerable satisfaction, not to say pride, in the interest his story excited, and was not a little annoyed with Gimblet when he found there was practically nothing he could tell the detective of which he was not already aware. Bert did not dilate so much on his love for Julie, the one real thing about him and the innocent incentive of all his crimes. It is perhaps best not to give the exact words in which he poured forth the history of the dark deeds in which he had been concerned, but to offer to the reader a _résumé_ of his tale in so far as it was corroborated by the evidence. Albert Tremmel's father was a West End dairyman who had the misfortune to marry above him, as the saying is. He had a small shop in Hanover Street and carried on a profitable business, but his wife despised it from the first, and refused to allow their only child to assist her husband when he became old enough to do so. She wished him to be a clerk, and, as she had a way of getting what she wanted, young Bert at the age of eighteen had entered, in that capacity, the office of Messrs. Ennidge and Pring, house and estate agents. He was then, as later, a cadaverous, unpleasant-looking youth, with a surly, combative temper and a strongly marked tendency to look on most people as his natural enemies. This in itself did not bring him friends, and he made matters worse as often as he could by adopting a dictatorial manner of speech and the habit of pointing out to comparative strangers his opinion that they erred in thinking they knew their own business. He would also mention their duty as another thing they were ignorant of. This line of conversation he varied by assuring them that if it were true, as they would have him believe, that they knew both better in any case than he did, it was still more to be regretted that they should mismanage the one and fail to do the other. Boys of his own age frankly refused to have anything to do with him, and he found his most congenial surroundings at a Socialistic Club, where all the members shared his disapproval of the world in general, and descanted as much as they pleased on the shameful conduct and character of those who were not of their own way of thinking. Here all ranks and parts of the community were equally denounced, and if one could hardly find words strong enough to censure the attitude of the rich who wished to retain control of their own wealth, neither could one sufficiently display one's anger and disgust at the behaviour of the poor who showed themselves so regardless of the socialistic movement as to take benefits from the capitalist classes. Fond as these young men were of employing the words "give" and "take," the meaning generally conveyed by their joint use was peculiarly repugnant to them. Take, in their view, should always come first in any case, and a thing taken lost half its value in their eyes if it came as a gift. They would have abolished both generosity and gratitude from a world that can ill afford the loss of those virtues. Bert drank in every tenet of this creed, and revelled in the discussions and execrations as much as he delighted in the wishy-washy sentimentalism. He was an unhealthy, discontented, miserable boy, his hand against every one; and his club was the only place where he felt himself more or less at his ease. There was, however, one spot which he liked better to be in, and that was the household of the Querterots. He had gone to school with Julie Querterot, for it so happened that Bert's father was a Lancashire man and a Roman Catholic. It is true that when he died, as he did when Bert was only thirteen, the boy's mother immediately removed him to another school and saw to it that he imbibed her hatred of Rome; but he did not take any more kindly to her own church, and when she herself died five or six years later he was going pretty much his own way, which was a way devoid of religious belief of any kind. In spite of this, he never lost touch with his little schoolfellow; and, as the Querterots dealt at Tremmels' shop and the children were always together, the two families became acquainted, and a certain friendship even sprang up between Madame Querterot and Mrs. Tremmels. These ladies drank tea together, and smiled over the devotion of Bert for little Julie. This was in the days when prosperity reigned in both houses. It was different after Mrs. Tremmels' death, when Bert discovered that the business, of which he had never been allowed to learn the details, was on the verge of bankruptcy, Mrs. Tremmels having conducted it since her husband's death with an eye more to her own aggrandisement than to profit. She had opened two large branches and started milk carts drawn by Shetland ponies; and, having no capital, had borrowed money to do it. Custom under her management had fallen off; the branches had had to be closed; the smart ponies sold; and, at the time of her death, she could no longer find the interest on the borrowed money and the mortgagees were at the point of foreclosing. Bert, who spent half his evenings in advocating the redistribution of wealth, did not at all enter into the spirit of the thing when he found himself quietly set on one side while his own wealth, that is to say, the competency to which he had always believed himself heir, was redistributed without anyone consulting him. He took it very ill indeed, and said things about his dead mother which would have brought him his dismissal from the office if they had come to the ears of either Mr. Ennidge or Mr. Pring. He had been in their employment about a year when she died, and had done fairly well in it, for he was not a bad worker, nor even without intelligence of a kind. Still, he only kept his post by the skin of his teeth, for he had been in the office more than long enough for Mr. Pring to take a violent dislike to him, and if it had not been for the extremely kind heart of Mr. Ennidge, who argued that he could not dismiss the youth to whom Fortune had already dealt so severe a blow, Bert would have been sacked a dozen times a week. He had, however, no idea of this, and considered himself indispensable and miserably underpaid. He certainly was not paid a great deal, though more than he was worth to Mr. Pring, at all events, and Madame Querterot ceased abruptly to invite him to her house. He continued, however, to visit it from time to time, and a couple more years went by without further event. Then came the sudden and tragic failure of the Querterots. Eugène Querterot shot himself; and in the fallen state of their fortunes the two impoverished women he left behind him were glad of any friend who stood by them. The sudden dropping off of their old acquaintances created a new bond of sympathy between them and the young man, and when they moved to Pimlico and he was the only person who ever went to see them, he received a much warmer welcome, at all events from the mother, than he had lately grown to expect. Gradually he went more and more often, until he formed the habit of dropping in at least every other evening. He had always been fond of Julie, and perhaps of no one else in the world, since he had shown little affection for his parents; now, as he saw her with increasing frequency, his feelings for her became more intense, till every day he seemed to see in her new and more entrancing perfections, and even his enthusiasms for Socialism faded under the continual protest of her aversion to it. He admitted to himself with a kind of thrill of self-defiance that Julie was so clever, so sensible, so wonderfully reasonable and clear-sighted, that her opinion on any subject could not be despised, and it became more and more plain to him that if she thought badly of Socialism that doctrine would find difficulty in retaining his complete loyalty. To be short, by the time she reached her eighteenth birthday Bert was head over ears in love with the girl, and had scarcely a thought in which she did not predominate. Madame Querterot watched it all from beneath her heavy eyelids. She said nothing, but the idea that here was one who in time might be useful to her crept into her brain and took deep root there as the weeks went by. Julie was pious and devout. It was about this time that she began to speak about entering a religious sisterhood, but the storm of reproach and upbraiding that this desire provoked in her mother caused her to relinquish the idea for the time being, and, more particularly, not to talk of it any more. The only visible effect of the suggestion was that Madame Querterot welcomed Bert more effusively than usual, and now often invited him to stay to supper. It may be judged how readily he accepted, and these evenings were certainly the happiest hours in his life. He used to come early and help Julie to lay the table, and sometimes even to prepare the meal; and if her sleeve chanced to brush against his shoulder as she stooped over the fire or reached up to a shelf he would be reduced to a state of speechless ecstasy, which Madame Querterot found a pleasant change from the usual aggressive torrent of his talk. In spite of her quiet and demure ways, Julie had a girlish fondness for dress and finery, and the offerings that from time to time Bert laid at her feet, of gloves and trinkets, were a great source of innocent pleasure to her. There was a time when he sallied forth from his lodgings armed with the savings of months, and the intention of buying a ring, which he should present to her accompanied by a speech he prepared for the occasion, in which the secret of his heart was to be imparted, together with the request that the ring should be a token of their engagement. But his courage failed him at the jeweller's counter; he felt suddenly a conviction, amounting to a certainty, that Julie would refuse; and, rather than risk knowing the worst, he abandoned his project and spent his hoardings on a brooch which he himself did not really admire, and which Julie, when she received it, thought hideous. The only person who was pleased was the jeweller, who had had the thing in his shop two years and simply loathed the sight of it. It was soon after this that the great plan, of which Madame Querterot had had the elements incubating in her mind for a long while, was hatched, and presented itself to her in a complete and material form. She knew from the first that she could not carry it out alone; and, casting over in her thoughts for the help she required, saw in Bert a tool made ready to her hand. When she broached her idea to him she had her design prepared, down to every detail. It was on the night when he had treated the two women to the theatre, as has been related in an early page of this narrative. Madame Querterot began by telling the young man that she would never allow her daughter to marry one so poor as himself, and added quickly that she knew of a way by which he could attain both money and the assistance of her influence exerted on his behalf with Julie. Having excited his curiosity and his hopes she bound him to secrecy and disclosed her purpose to him. "It is yourself who gave me the good idea," she assured him. "It is your socialistic teaching, is it not, to take from the rich? they have more than is reasonable, those others!" They were walking up and down before the little house in Pimlico where the Querterots lived in these days of poverty; Julie had left them and gone to bed; the glimmer of a candle came from behind a blind in the room upstairs. "Of course they have," Bert grunted. "But it's no use your thinking you can take their money from them without further legislation. What price the police?" "Ah, the police," sighed Madame Querterot, "if only they would not meddle in what is not their affair! But, look you, there are cases which are exceptional. There are cases which ought to receive immediate attention, which cry out for treatment of the most drastic. If the law is slow--and I grant you that the law has great need of alteration--when a matter is exceptionally urgent, I say, the good citizen must take it in his own hands to see justice done. And if while we render a service to humanity we do so with profit to ourselves, it is clear that the ends of justice are doubly served." Bert could not help agreeing with these excellent precepts. Indeed, Madame Querterot's air of supernatural wisdom would have impressed the most sceptical. "It is not enough to talk, one must demonstrate one's faith in a theory. By the means I shall propose you can prove how well Socialism will work in practice; for here will the poor, as represented by us, be made richer, and yet the rich person who will have changed our fortunes need scarcely feel any deprivation. You remember my talking to you at supper-time about a lady, a very wealthy lady, one of my clientele?" "Yes," said Bert. "A Jewess, wasn't it?" "It is true. A Jewess! And have not the Jews for centuries ground the bones of the poor? Who more fitted to be the first to contribute some of their ill-gotten gains in return? Should they not be obliged to restore some of that money which they never earned?" "I daresay," assented Bert; "but I wish you'd hurry up and let's see what you're getting at, that's all." "Eh bien! This woman, this Jewess, is enormously rich, as I tell you. And what does she do with her money? My friend, she covers herself with diamonds! It is those diamonds which I propose to myself to deprive her of." "What, steal them?" Bert's tone was troubled, although in his heart he had known from the first whither her talk drifted. "Steal! What a word." Impossible to convey the contempt of Madame Querterot's tone. "Is it right then, that she should be permitted to have so much when others starve? Is it right that she should flaunt her jewels in the face of the hungry poor?" Madame Querterot, who had a good memory, went on to quote phrase after phrase she had at various times heard fall from Bert's own lips. She poured his favourite catchwords into his ears, and strengthened them with arguments of her own. She painted the robbery she designed in such glowing colours that you would have thought, to hear her, that it was a sacrifice she was going to make for the good of humanity. She passed imperceptibly to picturing the delight of Julie when she should be presented with one of the less easily identified jewels, to the readiness with which, at the advice and with the glad consent of her mother, she would accept the heart and hand of the prosperous and enriched Albert, to the happiness of the young couple ensconced in their charming house, surrounded by motors, gramophones, champagne; in fine, all the luxuries due to a girl of Julie's perfections. Madame Querterot did not stop till she came to her own prospective joys, her grandchildren climbing on her knee. It was enough for the blushing and intoxicated Bert. He surrendered, agreed to all she proposed, put himself entirely under her directions, and these his prospective mother-in-law willingly proceeded to give him. She explained to him first at some length the character of Mrs. Vanderstein, and the means by which she hoped to play upon her weakness. "There is," said she, "a young Prince--the Prince Felipe of Targona--now in London and staying at Fianti's Hotel in Grosvenor Street, which is situated just opposite to the house of this Jewess. It so happened to-day, as I was in the midst of my massaging, that she jumped up and ran to the window to see this young man pass, and I also looked out. Now by some chance the Prince, as he drove by, happened to lift his head and look straight into Mrs. Vanderstein's face. It was a most lucky occurrence, and I could not have hoped for anything so providential to arrive. One would say, indeed, that it is an omen for me, a mandate to carry out my plan. Mrs. Vanderstein was delighted at this encounter of the eyes, and did not disguise her pleasure. Well, see how simple is now my part. I have in the shop some tortoise-shell combs, purchased at a ridiculous price by that poor Eugène when we first started in business here in London. They are very beautiful, of the finest workmanship, exquisitely and intricately carved, but of a pattern antiquated and _démodé_. We have never been able to sell them. "Now see, I shall take those combs, and present myself at Fianti's with a petition that I may see the Princess of Targona, mother of Prince Felipe. For her I have a story that my husband was of Targona, and that the combs also come from that country. I shall offer them to Her Highness as a present from a humble and expatriated subject, and say that my late husband refused to part with them out of patriotism, and, when everything else he possessed had to be sold, clung always to the only objects he had left to remind him of his beloved Targona. It is quite probable that the Princess will be affected by this touching history. She may even make me a present; but that is by the way. What is really of importance is that I should be left alone in one of the apartments occupied by the Royal party for a few minutes. If I can manage that--and I think you may have confidence that I will do so--I shall obtain some pieces of the Prince's notepaper on which his royal device or monogram is certainly engraved; at all events it will bear some distinguishing mark, and it will go hard if a few sheets of it do not find their way into my bag. "The next step will be easy. I shall issue from the hotel at a moment when I have ascertained, by peeping from a window, that Mrs. Vanderstein is on her balcony, where at a certain hour she very often goes to water some flowers she has there. She will see me pass; and, as she is very curious about all that goes on at Fianti's, she will remark on the incident. I shall tell her that I have been called by the Prince of Targona, who has fallen madly in love with her at first sight. You may think she will not believe this, but trust me to make it plausible; and she will be readier to credit such an idea than you imagine, for in the first place all beautiful women are ready to believe that their attractions are irresistible--and she is beautiful, this Jewess, not unlike what I was myself when I was younger--and in the second place, Mrs. Vanderstein is of a nature romantic to the point of ridicule, and is always, I am convinced, fabricating for herself stories of heroes and princes, with herself for the heroine of these fables. "How do I know, you ask me? I tell you I know. I am a judge of character; I have an aptitude for that. Eh bien! I shall convince the Jewess that she is adored by a reigning Prince, with frenzy, with devotion, with passion; that he thinks of nothing but her; that he would put his hand in the fire for her sake, that he is ready to abdicate his throne, to give up the government of his country. In short, that he wishes to marry her, and that if she will not listen to his addresses he has nothing further to live for in this world. What is perhaps the weak point in my tale is the idea that Prince Felipe should have chosen to make a confidante of myself, but, believe me, my dear Bert, I shall make even that appear not unnatural, and, as a matter of fact, stranger things are done every day. All this will take time, I do not know how long--days, perhaps weeks. I must find out how long the Prince stays in London," added Madame Querterot, more to herself than to her companion. It was the one thing she had forgotten. "I shall write her letters on the Royal notepaper, and as she will send the answers by my hand, I shall know their contents and be able to reply to them without arousing any suspicions on her part. In his impassioned epistles the Prince will beg for an interview; he will lament the obstacles that prevent his seeing her either at the hotel or in her own residence, and he will finally, I am sure, persuade her to meet him for the purpose of making his acquaintance, in a house which he will indicate. "She will consent to all he proposes, or I am much mistaken. It is at this point, my dear Bert, that your assistance becomes so indispensable. You are a house agent's clerk. I shall require a house; and it is you who must take it for me, in an assumed name, of course, and without the knowledge of your employers." "I don't see how that can ever be done," Bert objected. They were still pacing slowly up and down the dingy street. A policeman at the corner of the road looked at them once or twice, decided they were harmless, and ceased his attentions. The light in Julie's bedroom was long since extinguished. Madame Querterot cleared her throat and began again. "There will be a gentleman from India, let us say," she resumed, "who will call at the office at an hour when the two partners are out. No one will regret this more than yourself, but in their absence you will do your best to attend to the requirements of the gentleman from India. He will want a house, and he will want it immediately. He will desire to take it by the week and he will be ready to pay a large rent. He is somewhat eccentric, this gentleman, and dislikes meeting strangers. He will tell you to see about getting a charwoman to make the house ready for him, and he will settle then and there on the terms, on the day he is to take possession, and upon every necessary detail. Then, having signed the agreement, he will pay you the first week's rent in advance--for which I will provide the money--and he will walk out of the office. You will tell Mr. Ennidge and Mr. Pring, when they return, about the eccentric gentleman from India, and they will not be suspicious about him since there will be the money for the rent." "Are you going to act being this gentleman you're talking about?" asked Bert. "No," replied Madame Querterot. "He will not exist at all; it is not necessary that he should ever appear. But it may be very useful that he should be thought to exist." "Then who is to sign the lease?" "You will do that," said the Frenchwoman, "you must begin at once to practise writing with your left hand. Choose a short name--we will call him Mr. West--and write it over and over again many times on a sheet of foolscap, which you will always burn when you have covered it. Never forget to burn it, Bert. You will find it quite easy in a few days, and it will not in the least resemble your own hand." "I don't half like it," Bert commented. "I promise you it will be all that is most simple. The Indian gentleman will ask you personally to meet him at the house on the day he takes possession, and he will tell you to be sure to come yourself, as he dislikes strangers and prefers not to do business with more than one person. So you will get the house ready for him and hand him the key and leave him in it. That is all the trouble there will be about the house. Not much to take, for the sake of gaining a fortune and a charming wife, you must admit? The Vanderstein will come to the house to meet Prince Felipe. She will find us there, masked and unknown to her. We shall relieve her of her jewels, which I shall have arranged that she will wear; Prince Felipe is so fond of jewellery, it is a perfect passion with him to see women so adorned! So I shall tell her, and she will not fail to bedeck herself with them. When all is done she may return home; disappointed, I fear; but life is full of disillusions, and the blame will rest on the eccentric Mr. West from India." It was all very plausible. Bert could pick no holes in the plan. He tried to offer one or two objections, but was quickly overruled, and finally said good night and went home to bed committed to aid and abet Madame Querterot in her purpose to the best of his power. All went well. Madame Querterot succeeded even beyond her expectations. The Vanderstein, as she called her, was all a flutter of excitement and delight, and Madame Querterot related to Bert at great length and with huge enjoyment the scene in which she had embarked upon the hoax, and the easy gullibility of "la Juive." "'Figure to yourself,' I said to her, 'that this morning I receive a summons to Fianti's from a lady in waiting on the Princess of Targona! What an honour! You can imagine my excitement! This lady used formerly to stay much at her country's legation here, in London, and she was in the habit of making herself _coiffée_ by that poor Eugène. So it appears that yesterday she sent for him; but, when they told her that the poor dear was no longer on this earth, she had the amiability to seek me out, having heard of all our cruel misfortune, and asked that I should present myself in his place. To-day, therefore, I attended at the hotel, and had the pleasure of making the _coiffure_ of a charming lady. Mais elle est charmante, cette dame-là! But--and here follows the affair that is of interest to you, madame--as I left the apartment of the lady in waiting and was about to descend the staircase, a voice called me back, and, looking round, what was my surprise to perceive no less a person than His Highness, Prince Felipe, who appeared to be beckoning to me to join him in a dark part of the passage.' "Mrs. Vanderstein interrupted me with sparkling eyes. 'Do tell me,' she cried, 'the words that His Highness spoke to you! Sit down, Madame Justine, and tell me every single thing you can remember about it.' I drew a chair close to the sofa where Mrs. Vanderstein was seated, and I continued my narrative in a confidential undertone. 'I could not imagine what it was that Prince Felipe had to say to me, but I thought for a moment that possibly his mother required my services, and I was enchanted at the idea that perhaps I was this day to dress the hair of a Royal personage. But as soon as I drew near, the Prince began to ask me questions of which at first I could not understand the purport. Soon, however, I comprehended. "You live in this street?" he asked. "No, monsieur," I replied; "I live far from here." "But I saw you," he cried, "I am convinced that it was you I saw!" "When did Your Highness see me?" I inquired. I was indeed flattered that he should condescend to recognise me. "I saw you yesterday. You were looking out of the window of a house opposite this hotel," said he positively. "Ah yes, monsieur, it is true. I was in the house of Mrs. Vanderstein, one of my clients, and we had the good fortune to see you drive past." "'I began now to see why I was receiving the honour of this interview. "Mrs. Vanderstein!" he exclaimed. "Is that then her name? But," he added, "there were two ladies. Which was Mrs. Vanderstein?" "The elder of the two, monsieur, the one whose hair is dark." "It is she," he said. "Ah, how beautiful she is! In all my life I have never seen a face that so haunts my memory. It is the face I have dreamed of all these years. But stay," cried he in a different tone and with a look of despair. "You call her Mrs. Vanderstein! Am I to understand then that she is married? No matter, her husband must perish! One of my gentlemen may engage him in a duel. These things can arrange themselves." Such were his words. Ah, madame! one sees that His Highness is not used to opposition.' "The Vanderstein was transformed. Her eyes flashed with unaccustomed fires. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips parted, her breath came a little quickly. I was astonished at the change. 'She looks ten years younger,' I said to myself. 'Is it the massage that has had an effect after all?' Aloud I continued my tale. 'I explained to the Prince that Mr. Vanderstein had saved him the trouble of arranging a duel. "Then," cried he, "there is no obstacle! Except," he added in a different and depressed tone, "the wishes of my mother, and of the government of Targona. They are very decided that I must marry for reasons of state, but I have told them again and again that I will not do it. I will abdicate if they like, but I will never marry except in accordance with the dictates of my heart. And my heart has never before been touched; so that I am sure now that there is but one woman in the world for me. But how am I to meet her? If anyone suspects my feelings, unimaginable difficulties will be thrown in the way. And how can I ever win the affections of the beautiful and adorable Mrs. Vanderstein, if I cannot even imagine a means by which I may make her acquaintance? One thing, however, is sure. Without her I cannot live." "'Ah, madame,' I said, 'if you could have seen the poor gentleman your heart would have ached for him. On his face so sad an expression! He had an air so miserable and disconsolate. One can see that he has a tender nature! In his despair he strode up and down the corridor, gesticulating with his hands, and rumpling his hair--which is fine like silk--by tearing at it with his fingers! Again and again he would clap his hand to his forehead, or smite himself upon the breast, and, if he abstained from bursting into actual tears, you may be sure it was because the rigorous code, which forbids any public display of feeling in persons of Royal blood, would not allow him to show his emotion even in the presence of so insignificant a person as myself. Ah, the poor young man. I, madame, I, whom he noticed as he would observe your looking-glass or your boot-lace, felt myself ready to take him in my arms and to embrace and comfort him like a mother.' "I paused for breath, and Mrs. Vanderstein cried: 'Oh, Madame Justine, is it really possible that he should feel like that after only seeing me once, and that at a distance?' 'Love at first sight,' I replied, 'is not a thing of which one has never heard; and assuredly he is in love, this poor Prince Felipe, or I do not know what love is. Several times again he stopped in front of me, and cried out: "How, how am I to arouse her interest, gain her respect, above all how can I win her heart, when I have no chance of making myself known to her? I cannot hope that she will be attracted by my personal appearance. With one of her mental and spiritual superiority--as I can see at a glance--my rank and position will scarcely avail; it is, then, only by learning the depth and sincerity of my passion, only by realising the fond and tender quality of my love for her, that she may in time be prevailed on to look not altogether unfavourably upon my suit." And much more he said of the same kind. As for me, madame, I assured him I would, in a tactful way, convey to you some hints as to the state of his feelings. He insisted that they should be no more than hints, fearing that you would be offended at his making of me a messenger; so if I have, in my sympathy, overstepped the bounds of discretion, you must judge the fault entirely my own and not attribute it to any lack of manners on the part of the Prince. His intentions are of the most perfect correctness. "'He questioned me closely as to your way of life, your opinions and habits. "Ah," he cried, "I see we are made for one another, she and I. You say that she likes to surround herself with pictures, flowers, jewels, and the luxurious things of life. She is fond of music and of the arts. Now remark this! I am a collector of paintings and _objets d'art_. I, too, adore music and roses. I, also, have a passion for precious stones and personal adornment. Wherein do we differ? _Hein!_ It is plain that we have the same tastes, that I shall be _sympathique_ to her. Oh, we must meet! Somehow, somewhere I will arrange, if she consents, that we should meet. Not here. Impossible! Not at her house. I should feel my mother's eye on me. I could not escape observation if I merely crossed the road. No, neither here nor there, but in some other place of which I will consider. In the meanwhile do you, with the utmost delicacy, sound her feelings as regards myself, and prepare her for a further expression of my own." I think, madame, that that is all that passed between us, but I am to return to Fianti's to-morrow and report to him whether you appeared displeased.' It seemed that Mrs. Vanderstein was not displeased. She spoke very little more, but I could see, by the happy, excited air she wore under her assumed calm, that my words were having all the effect I could wish." All this Madame Querterot retailed with many details to the interested and amazed Bert, and each succeeding day she had new accounts of her cleverness and success to relate. She wrote impassioned, but eminently "correct" letters on the royal notepaper she had filched in accordance with her plan, and carried them to Mrs. Vanderstein with a hidden, jeering smile at that lady's glad and confiding acceptance of their authenticity. The night of the gala performance at the opera was fixed on for the deed, and at their every meeting Madame Querterot repeated to Bert her instructions as to the part played by the gentleman from India. She elaborated and filled in her first sketch of his character and behaviour, till at last the young man almost believed in the real existence of Mr. West, and certainly knew far more about him than about most of the people with whom he was actually in daily contact, for, as a rule, he was unobservant to the last degree. She saw also to his learning to write with his left hand, and he was able in a couple of days to do this to her satisfaction. By now Bert was as keen about the project as she could have wished. An evening spent at his club had strengthened and confirmed his conviction that no one woman had a right to the exclusive enjoyment of so much wealth; and he was now well assured that he would deserve nothing but commendation for trying to readjust the scales. There were moments when, for the fraction of an otherwise optimistical second, he beheld a vision of Julie as she would look at him if she ever heard of what was contemplated; and it was a vision that caused in him a catching of the breath. But the idea for the most part only hovered in the background of his thoughts, so that, while he was always conscious of its neighbourhood, so to speak, he was able with an effort to turn away his mental eyes, and to avoid looking it in the face; and it was then that he would seem to Madame Querterot most eager, most impatient for the night to arrive. The house in Scholefield Avenue was taken, and Messrs. Ennidge and Pring showed themselves only mildly interested in the mythical Mr. West, and that chiefly on account of his readiness to pay a high rent. Then a difficulty arose; and it was Bert, to his satisfaction and pride, who suggested a way out of it. Madame Querterot met him one evening with an expression of dismay she made no attempt to conceal. "There is after all something I have forgotten," she cried. "_Nom d'un nom!_ that I can have been so stupid, so idiot! Listen, it is this. The Jewess must drive from the opera to Scholefield Avenue. But in what? It is impossible that she should go in her own automobile, and if she takes a taxi we are equally betrayed. _Aïe, aïe!_ what to do?" CHAPTER XXV It was then that Bert had his brilliant idea. To explain it, reference must be made again to his family history. His father's sister had married a grocer at Richmond, named Stodder, she having been cook in a family at Hampton Court previous to this event. The pair had five children, and Bert, when a child, was often taken down to visit his relations; in the hot weather holidays the Stodders had him to stay with them for most of the summer. The children hated him, for he was a spoilt, ill-tempered little boy from the start, but they had to put up with him, and he grew up on familiar if rather quarrelsome terms with the whole family. The eldest boy, Ned, after he left school, was employed in driving his father's cart about the neighbourhood every day, in order to deliver orders received and to collect fresh ones. It was Bert's favourite occupation to sit in the back of the van, his legs dangling, or kicking against the backboard, while he watched the white roads slip under him and the grocer's dog trotting with extended tongue beneath his drumming heels. Ned was quite aware of the pleasure his cousin took in this not very arduous form of exercise, and he soon devised a way of turning it to his own profit. He pointed out to Bert that he could not expect anyone to put up with his company unless he did something to make it worth their while, and that he for one would not suffer Bert's company in the van unless he justified his presence by cleaning it when they came home, and by helping to look after the harness and the horse. Bert disliked work, but he hated to be cut off from his drives, and, as Ned was quite firm besides being older and stronger than he was, he told himself that needs must--and Ned that he was the devil--and took up the duties of stable boy. Under his critical and unsparing master and to the accompaniment of more than a few cuffs and kicks when he tried to shirk his work, Bert became more proficient in the care of the grocer's steed than any less well-adjusted mixture of pain and pleasure would have been likely to result in. As a further reward, too, the stern Ned so far relented as to allow him occasionally to take the reins. The combination of discipline and fresh air did the Tremmels' boy a world of good, and that was a happy summer for him. Unfortunately, when he returned to Hanover Street his mother soon undid the good effects of Ned's cuffings; and the following summer when he found himself again under his uncle's hospitable roof Ned had left it to enter private service in the stables, and his next cousin had come out of school and succeeded to the job of driving the van. Geoffrey was of a less good-humoured, easy-going disposition than his brother Ned, and Bert was at this age becoming more and more objectionable; it was seldom that Geoffrey could be induced to let him go with him on his rounds, but he followed his brother's example in forcing his cousin to assist him with the horse and cart when he returned with them. This only enraged and embittered Bert, and of the good done the year before the last remnant was now utterly destroyed. In the meantime, as the years went on, Ned grew up a credit to his family, and a good and favoured servant. So rapid was his progress, and so astounding--as the Tremmels said--his luck, that by the time he was three-and-twenty he had risen to the situation of coachman to an old lady named Mrs. Wilkinson, the aunt of his former master. This lady kept only one horse and a brougham, and with them drove out every afternoon, in winter from three to five, in summer from four to six. It was impossible to imagine an easier or more comfortable place, and Bert often envied his cousin the soft thing he had stepped into. Ned was the only one of his relations whom he ever went near nowadays, but he used often to go round to his stable during the luncheon hour and explain to the young coachman how little he deserved his good fortune. It was not till, for the first time, he beheld Madame Querterot at a loss, not till he heard what in their great plan she had forgotten to provide for, that he suddenly realised that Ned's good fortune was possibly his own as well. "See here," he said to the agitated Frenchwoman, "I can manage that part." And he told her of his cousin the coachman. "Mrs. Wilkinson, the lady he works for, has by the rarest luck a house in the same street as the one I have taken. She lives at No. 1 Scholefield Avenue, only a few doors away from No. 13. More than that, it happens that she has a large garden at the back of the house, and the stable is situated at the end of it, quite away from any other buildings. There's luck for you!" "How is that?" cried Madame Querterot, "explain yourself quick." She was very nervous and excited, and for the only time during the whole business her calm confidence deserted her. It was so near the hour! She had already smoothed away so many difficulties, done the impossible; and if all her hopes were to be shattered now, and by so small an obstacle, it would be, she told herself, the _comble_. "Why, this way," Bert reassured her. "Ned is always wanting to go home to Richmond, because the young lady he's keeping company with lives down there, though he makes out to me that it's his family he wants to see. As if anyone wanted to see their family! But his old lady drives out till six every day, and by the time Ned has cleaned up and rubbed down the horse, and fed him, and washed the brougham and the rest of it, it's too late to get a decent train down to Richmond, for it's a tidy way from Scholefield Avenue to Gloucester Road, where the trains connect. "Now suppose I go to Ned, and tell him I know he wants an evening off, and that if he likes I don't mind doing his job for once, so as he can have it. I'll offer to be about on Monday, when he comes in from taking old Mrs. Wilkinson out for her drive, and to look after the horse and to put it to bye-bye. I've often done it for him when I was a lad, so he knows I can manage, though I don't say he won't be a bit surprised at my offering, so to speak. I think perhaps I'd best say I'll do it for a consideration; he'll be good for a bob where his young lady's concerned, I'll bet. What's more, I'll say I'll feed the horse in the morning, so he won't have to catch the last train back, but can stay down home for the night. After I've seen him off the premises I'll get inside his livery--he's a bigger man than me, though not so long in the leg--and I'll put the horse in again and drive down to Covent Garden and fetch the lady up. We can say the Prince is sending his own carriage for her." Madame Querterot nearly wept on Bert's neck in her joy and emotion. "You will save us, my dear friend!" she exclaimed, pressing his hand, a demonstration that he resented by snatching it savagely away. "What a mind, what a genius, to think of so splendid, so heaven-given a device! Let it be as you say. I am well assured now that all will go well." These last days were a busy time for Madame Querterot, for there were certain personal details, essential to the success of her plan, to be attended to: there were bills to collect, sales to arrange, and purchases to be made. At last all was done, everything ready, and she stood in the hall of No. 13 Scholefield Avenue awaiting, with only the least flicker of the nerves, the sound of wheels before the door. CHAPTER XXVI Early as it was in the adventure, Bert was already realising the difficulties of the part he had to play. He had induced the gratified--though suspicious and thankless--Ned to accept his services in the matter of the horse; and, having seen him depart with a small brown paper parcel--which furnished the outward evidence of his intention to stay the night with his people--had harnessed the animal again in good time, arrayed himself in the livery belonging to Ned, and adorned his chin with the false beard provided by Madame Querterot, so that no time should be wasted on his return. "I do look a guy," he said to himself, as he contemplated his reflection in the strip of looking-glass in the harness-room. Nothing remained but to drive down to Covent Garden, and take his place on the rank of waiting vehicles. This, he was surprised to find, was not so easy as he had expected. He discovered that attempting to control Mrs. Wilkinson's dun horse, which had a willing spirit and a hard mouth, was a very different affair from driving the old and sluggish beast that used to meander between the shafts of his uncle's van. Their progress was erratic in the extreme, and he several times narrowly avoided an accident. The Providence which looks after bad drivers did not fail him, however, and at length he found himself, a good deal to his surprise--for at one period of the journey hope had altogether deserted him--forming one of the long string of motors and carriages that had already drawn into line in the vicinity of the opera house. Now began a time during which the fear that the expected summons would never reach him alternated with something very like hope that it would not. As he sat on the box, while minute after minute passed, and still no voice cried for Mr. Targon's carriage, he was beset with ever growing misgivings as to the appearance he presented, and felt that his ill-fitting livery and the false beard, which the scarf he had wrapped round his neck and chin only partially concealed, must be riveting upon him the eyes of every beholder; so that not a look was cast in his direction but he read in it distrust and suspicion. Even the most seemingly interminable suspense comes to an end at last, and he had not endured these torments more than a short half-hour before the words for which he had been waiting fell upon his ear, and making his way out of the line he succeeded in guiding the dun horse beneath the portico of the theatre. The safe accomplishment of this manoeuvre, however, fully occupied his every faculty, and it was only when the carriage had come to a standstill before the doors that he had time to glance in the direction of the lady he was to carry off. With a shock of surprise and dismay he saw that not one but two elegantly attired women were about to enter the carriage. He had not the courage for more than a feeble remonstrance; indeed, it needed all the courage he could muster to lift up his voice at all in the presence of the waiting attendants, and in the brilliant glare of the lamps. After he had driven some way in increasing perplexity and irresolution, he stopped, and tried again to induce Barbara to get out; but the attention the ensuing discussion aroused from the passers-by and the sight of an approaching policeman were too much for his nerves, and he decided hastily to drive on and allow Madame Querterot to deal with this unexpected complication. A glimpse of her face when they arrived in Scholefield Avenue, and she saw what had happened, did not add to his peace of mind. He drove round to Mrs. Wilkinson's stables, extinguished the carriage lamps, and unharnessed the dun horse by the light of his pocket electric torch as quietly and quickly as he might, his heart sinking at the prospect of what she would say to him when he returned. It was lucky that the stable gate opened on to such a lonely street as the one which ran at the back of the gardens of the houses in Scholefield Avenue. A blank wall faced it across the road, studded at intervals with the doors to the gardens at the back of the houses in Westford Avenue, which lay beyond. There was another stable some hundred yards further down; but, unless some one were awake and about in that direction, Bert knew that there was little chance of his presence and movements being discovered. Still he could not feel secure for a moment, and it was not till he had put everything in some kind of order and shut the door of the loose box behind him that he breathed again. He hurried round to No. 13, seeing the fancied forms of lurking policemen behind every tree and in every shadow, and it was with a hand already shaking with agitation that he gave the three taps on the door, with which it had been agreed that he should signal his return to Madame Querterot. She greeted him, as he had feared she would, with a storm of whispered reproaches. What had he been thinking of to bring that girl to the house? Was he mad? As she looked at him, however, in the light of the gas jet which burned at the foot of the stairs, she saw plainly enough that he was in a state of nervousness which she had not expected; and that, if he was to be of any use to her in the crisis that was upon them, she had better employ herself in soothing rather than adding to his distress of mind. "Well, well," she interrupted her own words, "it is perhaps of no such great consequence. A little more trouble, possibly, for you; but of that we will talk later. For the moment we must get to business. These summer nights are short and we have much to do before morning. Go into the dining-room, while I prevail upon Miss Turner to leave her friend. I will put her in the library, where she will be out of the way for the present." After a few minutes, during which Bert waited, breathless, in the darkness of the dining-room, she was back again, and announced in a whisper that all was well. Barbara had been shown into the back room; and upstairs Mrs. Vanderstein, alone and expectant, awaited the coming of the Prince. "She has got on all her jewels," sniggered the Frenchwoman, drawing on her gloves. "And she little thinks that there are here two people who appreciate them as her Prince never could. Ah! Bah! Are there imbeciles in the world? Now then, my friend, you know what you have to do. We rush into the room, you seize this fair creature and hold her fast, while I administer a little whiff of chloroform that shall keep her quiet and prevent any outcry, so that we can remove from her the gems at our ease. See, I have the bottle ready. Allons donc; à la besogne!" They went softly and quickly up the stairs. Now that the moment for action had arrived, Bert's confidence was in some measure restored. The sight of the diamonds glittering in the light of the brougham lamp, when Mrs. Vanderstein had stood upbraiding him for his bad driving, had sharpened his appetite for them, and the prospect of fingering the shining things was a pleasant one. Inside the four walls of the house, with the door bolted between them and the interfering outside world, it seemed again safe and desirable enough to take her jewels from this pampered member of the idle rich, and afterwards to lead her blindfolded to some sequestered place, as they had planned, and there release her to find her own way home. Even if she knew where the house was to which she had been decoyed, it would be empty and discreetly silent by the time she could bring to it the avenging hosts of the police. He himself was so well disguised that she never could recognise him again; besides, she would only see him for one moment. True, Madame Querterot was well known to her, but Madame Querterot had her own plans for avoiding any unpleasant consequences of their deed; so she had informed him, and knowing her as he did, he never doubted her intention and capacity of taking care of herself. A medley of these thoughts was in his mind as they mounted the stairs, and paused for an instant at the drawing-room door. No sound came from behind it, and with an encouraging whisper to her companion Madame Querterot turned the handle and went in. From the end of the room Mrs. Vanderstein rose to greet them, with a radiant, blushing countenance. Always a beautiful woman, she had never been more lovely than at this moment. The smile faded from her lips as she realised that here was not the lover she looked to see; but before she had time to speak Bert was beside her, clutching her round the waist and dragging her back towards the sofa, while over the mouth she opened with a remonstrating cry were clapped the plump hands of Madame Querterot, holding between them something that choked her with its sickly, overwhelming odour. "See," said Madame Querterot, after a short interval, "see, she sleeps!" But still she continued to hold the mouth of the bottle over Mrs. Vanderstein's mouth and nose. It was at this moment that the door was flung open, and Barbara rushed into the room. Bert sprang to meet her, fully alive to the undesirability of her presence. It hardly needed Madame Querterot's cry of "Take her away," to make him grasp her by the arms, and half push, half carry her out on to the landing and down the narrow stairs to the library, where he left her after a minute or two safely locked in. He listened for a little while outside the door, for he fancied the girl might raise the alarm or do some unimagined, desperate thing which should imperil their safety. She had already threatened to set fire to the house, and he racked his brains to guess what might be her next move. He was in no hurry to return to the drawing-room, moreover, for his heart was beating unpleasantly fast, and the sight of the helpless lady they had so violently treated, sinking quiet and motionless on to the sofa, had filled him with vague discomfort. After all--the thought would not be kept away any longer--what would Julie think of all this? Could she ever be brought to care for a robber? Yes, that was what he was--a robber. His fortifying socialistic claptrap refused, somehow, to come to his aid in this hour of need. What would Julie say? Already misgivings undermined his unstable resolves. He sat down half-way up the stairs and buried his face in his hands. It was ten minutes before he could make up his mind to go back to the drawing-room. Madame Querterot looked up quickly as he entered; she was on her knees beside the unconscious form of Mrs. Vanderstein, engaged in unfastening the clasp of a bracelet. A bright silk-covered cushion lay on the floor beside her. "Where have you been?" she said. "Come and help me to get these things off." Bert went over and stood opposite her. As his eyes rested on the figure that lay so still upon the sofa, a horrible doubt leapt into his mind. How white, how dreadful Mrs. Vanderstein looked! How quiet, how motionless she was. Could she indeed be sleeping? There was no movement to show that she breathed. Bert looked at Madame Querterot. "Madame Querterot!" was all he could find to say. But there was a world of accusation in his hoarse tones, and the Frenchwoman, looking up in reply to his words, was unable to stand the fixed stare with which he glared into her face, as if expecting to read the terrible truth upon it. Poor innocent, to look for the truth upon that face! Still, for once, she could not meet his eyes, and her glance shifted furtively to one side. He knew now; and in the horror and rage which fell upon him he would have struck her, if the sofa on which Mrs. Vanderstein was stretched had not been between them. With dropping jaw and eyes starting from his head he thrust his face forward towards her. "You have killed her!" he whispered. Madame Querterot laughed a little nervously "It was an accident. I gave her a little more chloroform than I had the intention." "That is a lie. You meant to kill her all along. That cushion! You have suffocated her! I see it now. Oh! I see it in your face; murderess!" "Bert, don't be a fool!" "Well, we'll see who's a fool," said he. "I am going for the police!" "My good Bert, you are, as I say, a fool," said Madame Querterot, resuming with an effort her usual assurance. "For what will you fetch the police? What will you tell them, eh? That you brought this woman here in some one else's carriage, which you stole for the purpose; and that I killed her, I suppose? A likely story! When you are gone I shall scream and run to Miss Turner, who knows me well; and her I shall tell that you have done this thing, and that now you would murder me, and her also. Do you think the police would believe that I have done it? Why, I am not stronger than Mrs. Vanderstein; it is impossible that I could have done it alone, and they will see that easily. But it is very possible that you could have done it, and believe me, Bert, if you are not sensible and do all that I tell you, it is you, and you alone, who will dangle in the air as a sequel to this accident." At this forecast, which he saw too plainly had a smack of probability about it, Bert's resolution, never a dependable feature in his composition, wavered and failed him. He flung himself down in a corner of the room, bewailing his fate and cursing his companion with impartial heartiness. Madame Querterot waited till he had exhausted his powers of recrimination, and busied herself in transferring the jewels from the body of Mrs. Vanderstein to the bag she had provided for the purpose. Then she had her turn. "What," she cried, "did you actually suppose I was sufficiently imbecile to contemplate allowing this woman to live, when her first act would have been to have me arrested? How do you suppose either of us could have escaped, when it was I who made all the arrangements with her that she should come to this house, and when she knew as well as you do that it was I that chloroformed her? I could not have done it without your help, so that you are as responsible as I; and more, for it was you who brought her to the house. You brought the other girl too, you great, stupid, whimpering baby, and she will have to die as well before either you or I are safe. And that will be entirely your doing, for if she had not come she could have lived till Doomsday for all I cared. Now, what you have to do is to get the spade which I brought this afternoon from the tool house in the garden, and dig a grave under the trees at the back of the house, where you can hide this." She patted the arm of Mrs. Vanderstein with gruesome familiarity. But Bert, sick and faint with horror, absolutely refused to do as he was told in this matter. To go down into the starlit garden, to dig for interminable hours in the open, with every shadow full of unknown terrors, which would leap on him from out of the darkness, pounce on him from behind, come creeping and gibbering at him with every leaf that stirred or every chance footfall in a distant street! No. Again, it was a long job to dig a grave; he knew that. The ground would be hard; he would want a pickaxe. In any case he would not do it. Nothing Madame Querterot could say shook him in this determination. She was growing really anxious, for it wanted only two or three hours to dawn, and it began to look as if the body must be left where it lay, when, by a lucky inspiration, she thought of the flower stand on the balcony. Would Bert help her there? It would be quicker done and less dangerous if he would, but if needs must, she said, she could manage that alone. With a furious, shuddering sulkiness, Bert consented to help. He opened a window and undid the fastening of the shutters. Then, after putting out the gas, they stepped cautiously out on to the balcony, Madame Querterot carrying the spade, and, stooping behind the balustrade, peered anxiously up and down the deserted street. There was no one to be seen or heard, and with frenzied haste they began to pull up the plants which adorned the flower box. At Madame Querterot's direction Bert ladled out shovelfuls of loose soil, till the box was more than half empty and the balcony was heaped high with black mould. They stole back to the drawing-room and Madame Querterot took from a parcel that she had stored away in a corner of the room a bundle of clothing, which she told Bert to carry downstairs and give to Miss Turner to put on. "It would never do," she said, "for either of them to be found with clothes on them that could be identified as their own. It would be best that never should they be found at all, but it is well to be prepared for everything, and though I fear Mrs. Vanderstein is sure to come to light sooner or later, I prefer to take even more precautions with regard to Miss Turner, as I shall be obliged to leave the disposal of her to your scanty wits. Tell the girl, therefore, some cock and bull story about intending to help her to escape, so that she may readily attire herself in these clothes, which I had intended for the Vanderstein. They are all bought in different rag shops, and there is nothing on any of them to identify them by. Tell her also to undo her hair and to screw it up plainly so as to hide it as much as possible. Now go and do as I say." "But it is impossible," cried Bert, "that that girl should be killed too. I cannot, I will not let you do it!" "So far from letting me do it, my dear Bert," replied Madame Querterot placidly, "it is probable that you will have to do it yourself. But we will speak of that again." Bert went reluctantly on his mission, and by the time he returned Madame Querterot had undressed and decently enveloped the body in the chintz cover of one of the sofas. Mrs. Vanderstein's clothes lay in a heap on a chair near by, and the Frenchwoman was vainly trying, with a silken petticoat, to rub away some large stains which appeared on the carpet, beside the couch. As Bert came in she got up quickly, abandoning her efforts. "What is it?" he asked, "what is that on the floor?" "Nothing. Only something I spilt. Some of the chloroform. It can easily be hidden." And she pushed the sofa over the place. She said nothing to Bert about the vitriol she had used, nor did he suspect it till the following Thursday night, when he was obliged to undergo the ghastly ordeal of seeing the body unearthed by Mr. Gimblet. With a preliminary reconnaissance of the balcony to make sure that no policeman was patrolling the street below, the young man and the woman carried out the body of their victim, laid it in the grave they had made ready, and then fell in silence to the task of restoring to the box the mound of earth that was heaped upon the floor. When all was finished and the flowers planted and blooming once more in their former places, there still remained a quantity of soil for which there was no room in the stand. Madame Querterot fetched a couple of housemaid's pails and they carried the superfluous mould out by the back door to the garden, where they scattered it widely upon the flower beds. It was a slow business and necessitated many journeys, but by now Bert, in a paroxysm of fear, which was in part for his own neck and almost as much at the certainty that he would irretrievably lose Julie if any trace should ever be discovered of that night's work, showed himself more tractable, and by the time they had made the place shipshape was ready to lend a receptive ear to the proposals of his resourceful leader as to their future conduct. At her suggestion they sat down opposite to one another in the back of the drawing-room, to talk over the best means of averting even a shadow of suspicion. "We are safe enough," Madame Querterot asserted positively; "how is it you say? safe as a church! Once the girl is disposed of, that is. Ah, my friend, you made a mistake when you permitted the inclusion of Miss Turner in the _partie_, but it is not impossible to remedy that error. Here is the chloroform. What do you say? Shall we repeat the comedy which we have just performed? For me, I am ready, for your sake, to do my share." "No, no," cried Bert with a shiver, "not that, not that! Besides," he added weakly, "there is only one flower box on the balcony." "It is true," mused the Frenchwoman, "that there is no room there for another burial. And you still refuse to dig a grave? Perhaps to-morrow night you will have more courage?" she suggested hopefully. But of this Bert held out no hope. "It would take too long," he said. "I might screw myself up to commence the job, but I simply couldn't stick to it for an hour, no more than I could fly. I'll do what I can, Madame Querterot; I don't want to be hung for your beastly murders, and if I can't keep my neck out of a noose any other way I suppose I've got to do what you say--within reason, that is. It's the girl's life or mine right enough, I believe, and I can't be blamed for thinking of myself first in such a case," said Bert, nearly crying; "though as a matter of fact it's not so much myself I'm thinking of, in a manner of speaking, as it's Joolie. A nice thing for her it would be, to have it said that her mother was hung! A fair treat, that 'ud be!" "It's very considerate of you, I'm sure, Bert, to take that view," said Madame Querterot, with bitter sarcasm, "but it's no good talking like that if you refuse to do anything to prevent such a scandal, which I agree with you in thinking is one to be avoided if possible. Here is another idea, though I think I am too patient with you, and shall not waste much more time in trying to assist you out of a danger you have yourself brought upon us. Suppose you take the girl out to a place where there is some deep water--there is a canal near the Zoological Gardens, is there not?--and push her in when she is walking beside it. She will go with you willingly, if you let her think you are helping her to escape, and you can find a pretext for attaching something heavy to her first, so that she will not trouble us by rising again to the surface. It should be easy to do on a dark night, and there is no moon now, as you know." Bert had plenty of objections to raise to this plan, and they discussed others with no better result. In the end he was obliged to admit that drowning offered the best and easiest solution to the difficulty, and she wrung from him a promise that he would get rid of the unfortunate young lady by this means on the following night. In vain Madame Querterot urged the danger of delay, and the perils which would attend on their keeping Barbara in the house for the next twenty-four hours. Bert was obstinately determined not to venture forth with her at this hour, for it wanted but a short time to sunrise and any delay would mean that the culminating act must be performed after the full darkness of the night had been diluted by the coming dawn. Even Madame Querterot was obliged to admit that there was something in his argument, and it was finally decided that he should wait till another day had passed. In the meantime the Frenchwoman, as had previously been arranged, would lose no time in leaving England, carrying with her the jewels, which, she assured Bert, would be very easy for her to dispose of in her own country without detection, as she had old friends there who were "in that business." She promised faithfully to send him one-half of the proceeds as soon as she received the money. "And then, mon cher," said she, "you and Julie will set up your little _ménage_. I think you will find my daughter less capricious when I am gone. She will be lonely, the poor little one, without her mother." Madame Querterot's voice quavered with emotion at the thought, and she lifted her handkerchief to her face to wipe away a tear--or was it to conceal a smile? In spite of all assurances, she was unable to impart to Bert her confidence in their safety from suspicion. "You'll see, something will give the whole show away," he kept saying, half for the comfort of hearing himself contradicted. "Murder will out; that's well known." "It is impossible." Madame Querterot spoke with refreshing conviction. "Absolutely impossible if you manage the canal affair with discretion. Consider. You walk innocently along a public path by the waterside, with a companion who, mon Dieu! is so maladroit as to stumble and to fall in. If anyone should be attracted by the splash, or she should scream and be heard, are you not doing your utmost to rescue her?--though, if possible, at a different place on the bank to the spot at which she displayed such unfortunate clumsiness--but that is a remote chance, for with proper care you will be able to manage so that the contretemps occurs at a point from which no noise will reach the ears of strangers." "I know where there's a gap in the fence that runs along the park side of the canal," Bert interrupted involuntarily. "Mourning her loss," Madame Querterot went on, "but silently, you understand, you continue your walk, and the world hears no more of Miss Barbara Turner. Even if her body is eventually found, there will be nothing on it which can be recognised as belonging to any particular person; and who would connect the wearer of the clothes I have provided with the fashionable young lady, who may, perchance, be missing from her home in Grosvenor Street? No one. I repeat, no one. With regard to Mrs. Vanderstein we are even more entirely beyond suspicion. In the first place nobody will even enter this house for some weeks at least. When they do so it is unlikely that the flower stand will be touched. Though the plants will be renewed there will be no occasion, as far as I can see, to disturb the soil to a regrettable depth. But admitting that luck may go against us and the body be discovered, it will not be identified. I cut off the initials that were embroidered on her chemise, and the rest of the clothing I will take home with me now, and burn before I start on my journey. And I have a still better idea for diverting any suspicion from us. Listen to this." And she expounded to Bert a plan, which made him open his eyes in unwilling admiration of the coolness and courage of the woman. Such a course as she proposed to adopt would have been entirely beyond his powers, and well he knew it; indeed at first sight it seemed to require an almost inhuman audacity to carry it out successfully. Her intention was to go to a large hotel at some French watering place, Boulogne or Dieppe for choice, and there to pass herself off as Mrs. Vanderstein for a day or two, not long enough for the Jewess' friends to discover that she was there, but long enough to allow no doubt to exist of her having really been there when the fact should subsequently come to be known. "I shall be far away by the time inquiries begin to reach to the other side of the channel," she told Bert, "and the proprietor of the hotel will answer all questions to our satisfaction. I shall so contrive that it is not I who write my name in the visitors' book. The manager will be so obliging as to do it for me when he hears that I have slightly injured my finger. But I shall not be feeling very well, I shall need repose after the journey. I think, yes, I think that I shall send for the doctor. When he is gone I shall give out that he has told me to keep to my room for a few days, and I shall therefore remain upstairs during the whole of my visit. When I leave I shall have established beyond doubt that the lady I impersonate was staying in the hotel when she was being sought in London, and after that she will be looked for abroad. Once the police have got the idea fixed in their stupid heads that Mrs. Vanderstein has left England, they may dig up her body as soon as they like, and I, for one, shall not feel a moment's anxiety." "But," objected the startled Bert, "the people at the hotel will describe you, and that will be a give away." "They will describe me," said Madame Querterot airily, "or they will describe Mrs. Vanderstein. It will be the same thing. We are much alike, she and I. That is," she added hastily, "we were much alike. In the matter of the colour of my hair, it is true, I must make a great sacrifice. But I have resolved to forget the value that not I alone have always attached to the golden hue of my _chevelure_, and to dye it black this same morning, before I start on my travels. You see that I shrink at nothing! I promise you that, with a dress such as the Vanderstein would have worn and a trifling alteration in my colouring, you yourself would have doubts as to who I am. There will be no risk to speak of, though it is worth a little to cover my retreat by a stratagem so masterly." With Bert's aid the clothes belonging to the two ladies were folded and made into a tidy parcel, then with a few more words of advice, and a special recommendation never to come into the house without the precaution of wearing gloves--for she was deeply impressed with the dangers attendant on careless finger-prints--Madame Querterot said a hasty farewell, the early summer dawn being at hand, and in another moment the back door of the house had shut behind her vanishing figure. Bert, left alone without the support of the woman's ready resource and calm confidence, would have soon sunk again into despair if his time had not been too much occupied to admit of reflection. He was by now, besides, so tired and exhausted with the emotions he had undergone as to be incapable of coherent thought, and he was more than content to give his whole mind to carrying out the instructions he had received. His first business was to get a brush from the cupboard under the stairs and to sweep and brush the floor of the hall, and the carpets of the stairs and drawing-room. He was awkward at the work, but made up in thoroughness what he lacked in skill. Little shining pieces of paste off Mrs. Vanderstein's dress were scattered everywhere; he swept up quantities of them, but still some, better concealed than others, escaped his diligence. Then having set straight such of the furniture as had been moved or disarranged, he quietly opened the dining-room shutters and those of the back drawing-room, for he did not wish the place to look uninhabited. The shutters of the front drawing-room, however, he could not bring himself to touch, though he seemed to hear the words of scorn which Madame Querterot would have used if she had still been present. He listened at the door of the library for some time, but not a sound came from within; at last, seeing no more to do, he stole quietly out of the house and back to his lodgings, where, in spite of the fears that pursued him and the dreadful memory of the night's work, he soon slept the sleep of exhaustion. Not for long, however. In a couple of hours his alarm clock awakened him, and he started up to face the new terrors which the day would bring. He had to feed the dun horse, he remembered; it would not do to annoy Ned. After that came breakfast, for which he was surprised to find he had a certain appetite, and soon it was time to begin his daily routine at Ennidge and Pring's office. Every time the door opened that day, and on the days that succeeded it, Bert expected to see a policeman enter. But the evening came without any such nightmare materialising, and he even managed to snatch some more uneasy slumber during the evening, before he once more assumed his disguising beard and stealthily returned to the house in Scholefield Avenue, knowing that before him lay far the worst part of the whole business. He was too frightened for his own safety, however, to hesitate. Madame Querterot had counted on that when she mentally balanced his regard for his own neck against what she would have designated his milksoppy squeamishness. It was hard to stay in that house of death alone and in the dark, waiting till the small hours, when his project might be best entered upon. Bert was very, very sorry for himself as he sat, trembling violently, in an arm-chair in the dining-room. His pity did not extend to the other side of the partition wall, where the girl whose life he was about to take had sat in the same darkness and solitude for the last twenty-four hours. For her, Bert, thoroughly selfish by nature and education--as, cowering among the shadows in the grim company of his fears, he shuddered away the hours--was shaken from start to finish by no disabling pang of sympathy. Though at times his heart was like to burst with compassion, it held barely enough to meet the urgent need of Albert Tremmels; and when like her he heard the far-off murmurs which heralded the approaching storm and the angry boom of the thunder began to rumble closer and closer, though he started at each clap as if it were indeed the wrathful voice of the Avenger drawing near to him, his whole being cried out in resentful protest against this judgment that was being passed on him in the heavens, and against the certainty that it would be endorsed by mankind. His intention was to wait till two o'clock, but it was not yet half-past one when he got to his feet, unable to face his solitary vigil any longer. Better get it over, he said to himself, like a patient in a dentist's room who has got to have a tooth out. Only this tooth was not his. He had long since decided that the spade would be the best thing to ensure the sinking of his victim, and he had placed it, with a piece of cord tied to it, ready by the door. Weighted with that heavy piece of iron, so he comforted himself, there would be a single splash and all would be over. He would be spared the sight of a struggling figure rising to the surface, perhaps crying to him for help or mercy, which above all things was what he most dreaded. Fortifying himself with a mental vision, in which Julie, the hangman, and the body in the flower stand upstairs were all mingled, he unlocked the library door and pushed it open. It is not necessary to tell again of his walk with Barbara through the drenching rain and clamour of the storm, which was more severe and prolonged than any of those that burst over London during a year remarkable for the number and fierceness of its atmospheric disturbances. The horror with which, at the last moment, as he was trying to tie the spade to Barbara before pushing her into the water, he beheld the running figure of the advancing policeman need not be described. In a frenzy of disappointment, rage and fear, he lifted the spade and struck at the girl again and again, missing her the first time, and, as the handle twisted in his weak grasp, bringing it down flat on the top of her head at the second blow, instead of edgeways as he was trying to do. He did not stay to see the result, but throwing down the spade fled for dear life. His legs were long, and he could run fast for a short distance. In a few minutes he had lost himself and his pursuer in the darkness, but he still ran blindly on, till his utmost efforts would drag him no further, when he threw himself at full length on one of the park seats and endeavoured to still his panting, laboured breath. If the policeman should come upon him now, he thought his only chance lay in being able to simulate profound slumber. Luckily the working powers of this plan were not put to the test. Minutes passed, and no one came near him. It was some time before he could convince himself that he had eluded all pursuit for the present. When he was at last sure of it the fact heartened him wonderfully. If he could so easily escape when caught in the actual perpetration of a violent attack, it would bother the authorities indeed to fasten on him as one of those concerned in a crime so well concealed as that in which he had only unwillingly assisted. It was when he remembered that he was quite ignorant of the damage he had inflicted on Barbara that doubts assailed him again. It seemed to him that he must have killed her. But if not ... if not? Why then, even though she could hardly denounce him, she would not forget Madame Querterot. And Madame Querterot's first line of defence would be to accuse him, as she herself had declared. Curse the woman, how he hated her! From first to last everything was her doing; he wished, oh, how he wished that it was she he had killed. If he had thought of that sooner, he told himself savagely, all these troubles would have been saved. As things were he would probably be arrested that day. He did not lose his head, however, and went back presently to Scholefield Avenue, where he cleared away the broken glass in the library and put everything in that room to rights, as he had already done upstairs. Then he conquered his repugnance and went out on to the balcony with his brush, and swept up a handful or so of earth, which they had not been able to remove with the spade. He did not know how to get rid of the broken glass, as by now it was daylight and he did not dare go out to bury it in the garden; so he left it in the dustpan, and swept the grains of soil into an old newspaper, which he crumpled up and thrust into the back of the cupboard in the basement. Then he closed the shutters again, for he could not bear to be a moment in the room without the friendly screen that interposed between him and the flower stand. Finding, however, no more to do upstairs, he went down, and knocked out the pieces of the window pane in the library that still remained stuck in the frame; he thought that the empty space might well pass unobserved for a considerable time. In doing this he cut his hand, through the glove he was wearing in obedience to Madame Querterot's reiterated commands, and some drops of blood fell on to the shining tin of the dustpan, but he wiped them off carefully and polished the pan with his sleeve as it had certainly never been polished since it left the shop and entered into domestic service. At last his anxious mind could suggest nothing further, and he surveyed the results of his efforts with some complacency. "I'm bothered," said Bert to himself, "if the brainiest detective on this rotten earth could set his fingers on a clue now." CHAPTER XXVII There was no sleep for him that morning, and he felt wretchedly ill and exhausted when the time came to go to the office. Mr. Ennidge, always kind, remarked sympathetically upon his looks, and he replied that he had been kept awake all night by the storm. The day passed without the expected appearance of the policeman, though he saw in the papers the first allusion to the disappearance of Mrs. Vanderstein and Miss Turner, and felt a horrified sinking at the heart when he read that search was being made, even though he had of course known all along that there must be a hue and cry. He could not find any reference to his exploit in Regent's Park, and he was afraid this meant that the girl had survived, for if he had killed her surely there would have been some mention of it. Yet if she were alive it was strange that Miss Turner should still be thought to be missing. Perhaps it was a dodge of the police to fill him with false confidence. He could not guess what it meant, anyhow, and at all events he was thankful for one thing: that he had cleared up and finished with Scholefield Avenue. If they thought they would catch him there again they were jolly well wrong. He would never set foot in the place again, so help him! He supposed that his confederate had got clear away, and after his work was over he went to see Julie, to make sure that everything had gone well. He found her in despair at her mother's departure, or, rather, at the manner of it; and it was with the utmost horror and indignation that he learned that Julie--as she afterwards admitted to Gimblet--had been left absolutely penniless. All his savings had been willingly given to Madame Querterot to help her flight, but he had things which could be pawned, and he pressed Julie to accept his assistance. This she would not do. Then she showed him the string of pearls, and he recognised it at once as the necklace Mrs. Vanderstein had worn. He had seen since, in the newspapers, that these enormous pearls were well known to every jeweller in Europe, and there had not been wanting forecasts to the effect that, if they had been stolen, an attempt to sell them would lead to the arrest of the thieves. He had wondered if Madame Querterot knew this, and reassured himself by thinking that, if she did not, the friends she was to consult certainly would. But now, with passionate resentment, he realised that she had known it very well and had left the necklace to Julie, careless of the suspicion that might fall on her daughter if she should be tempted to try and sell it. Nay, it seemed even possible that she deliberately wished to cast suspicion upon Julie; her action was otherwise unaccountable. But was it possible that she would risk not only his safety but her own, in order to gratify her spite against her daughter? Before he had fully grasped the meaning of this last manoeuvre on the part of the woman he hoped to call his mother-in-law, Julie was telling him of the clothes her mother had given her, and which she had already sold to a second-hand dealer. In hoarse tones he demanded a description of the garments, and, when he had received it, burst forth into such raging comments on the girl's folly in selling them, and such furious imprecations at the wickedness and stupidity of her mother, that Julie took offence, and in a fit of anger as hot as his own, though less justly provoked, told him to leave the house. He was all penitence in a moment, and she ended by accepting his grovelling apologies. All the same, the fire of his wrath was not extinguished, but smouldered with a dull red heat in his heart, ready at any moment to leap into a fierce flame, burning to consume and devour. When the night came he could not sleep, in spite, or perhaps because, of his extreme fatigue and harassed nerves. Not till daylight did he drop at last into an uneasy slumber, from which a nightmare sent him leaping up in bed, disturbing the house with his cries. His irate landlady appeared in his room, in extreme deshabille, and her scathing references to delirium tremens gave him the idea of the brandy bottle. He bought one at the nearest public-house the moment he was dressed, and drank a good wineglassful before he opened the daily paper that he procured at the same time. There was nothing new in it, however. Though it contained plenty of allusions to the missing ladies there was nothing about a girl being knocked on the head in Regent's Park; and to Bert's fears this silence appeared ominous as a denunciation. He found the brandy very comforting, and took it to the office with him. There his appearance--rendered still more ghastly by want of sleep than it had been on the preceding days--moved Mr. Ennidge to such genuine concern that, Mr. Pring being away and not returning till Monday, he told Bert he had better take a holiday on the next day, which would be Friday. In the afternoon he was beginning to feel a little better and to hope that after all things were going right for him somehow, when at the eleventh hour Mr. Gimblet made his appearance upon the scene. From the moment when Bert understood who he was and what was his business, he gave himself up for lost. Some unsuspected gleam of courage came to his aid now, however--a sort of phantom of the real thing, found, it may be imagined, in the brandy bottle--and he made up his mind that, if he must be taken, it should not be due, at all events, to any revelation of his own. The agony of mind endured during the hours which followed is not to be described in mere words. The dread, the suspense, the feeling of physical weakness which nearly overcame him as he witnessed the detective's search, and the final horrible moment when he saw the body of the poor lady drawn from the grave where he had thought it hidden for ever from his own, if not from every other eye, would have strained the nerve of any man. It was, indeed, a heaping of horror upon horror. What unthinkable clairvoyance, what supernatural omniscience had led Gimblet to pick out that house, of all the dwellings in the great city and its suburbs, for his investigations, was as much beyond Bert's imagination as the means by which he himself succeeded in refraining from revealing, then and there, the part he had taken in the ghastly business. To his almost incredulous astonishment no one seemed to suspect him, and instead of being removed in irons, as he expected, he found himself free to return to his lodgings, there to recuperate from the shocks he had sustained, in a deep, brandy induced sleep. The next morning he was out early, and the first poster gave him the news that Mrs. Vanderstein was found, and staying at Boulogne. He bought the paper, and, even as he read the paragraph in which the news was related, made up his mind to spend the holiday given him by Mr. Ennidge in running over to Boulogne to see Madame Querterot. He had no definite idea in doing so. But his rage at her treatment of her daughter was still red-hot, and now was added to it a furious resentment at her departure from the conduct they had agreed she should observe. What possessed her not to stay quietly in her room? It was madness to have gone out; yes, actually to have gone to the Casino, the place of all others where she was most likely to be seen by some acquaintances of Mrs. Vanderstein's. Did she want to lose them all by her folly and recklessness? And in any case he could not rest till he had told her what he thought of her. He went out to a pawnbroker's, and by pawning his watch and some odds and ends of jewellery that had belonged to his mother collected enough money for the return journey. Then he took a taxi for the first time in his life, and drove to Whitehall. He had seen Gimblet's address on the card he sent in to Mr. Ennidge. Higgs told him, in answer to his inquiries, that the inquest would not be till the next day, so that there was nothing to prevent him from taking the ten o'clock train from Charing Cross. There was time before it started to put on his false beard, in an empty waiting-room, and to gulp down a strong dose of brandy at the bar of the refreshment-room. He felt safer when he had taken these precautions, for he had been haunted by an uneasy feeling that Higgs might have followed him from the flat. The journey was uneventful, the sea as smooth as a pond. He hardly knew how the time passed before they arrived at Boulogne pier. He walked round the harbour, asking the way by the simple repetition of the words "Hôtel de Douvres," and following the direction in which the fingers of those who answered him were pointed. Soon he came upon the hotel on the Digue, facing the sea. The name in golden letters a yard long danced before his eyes, but with a great effort of the will he steadied himself, and passed through the door into the hall. As luck would have it there was no one about, and the only person to come forward at his entrance was a small page or lift boy. Yes, Madame Vanderstein was in her room. Would Monsieur go up? Certainly Monsieur would; and he was ushered into the lift and carried aloft. He heard Madame Querterot's voice say "Come in" in response to the boy's knock, and in another minute he was in the room, with the door closing behind him. For a moment he thought there must be some mistake, and, if she had not spoken, would have turned and fled. Surely he had never seen before the beautifully dressed, dark-haired lady who was bending over a box at the end of the room. But at the sound of her voice he knew her again, though the difference in her appearance caused by her dyed hair and painted complexion was truly marvellous. She wore her elaborate dress with quiet assurance, and jewels sparkled at her throat, in her ears, on her fingers, her wrists. "What in the world are you doing here?" she said, in a tone of the deepest disapproval. Bert's voice shook as he took the paper from his pocket and held it out to her. "Have you seen this?" he asked. "Every one in London knows you are here. It is madness to stay." "Of course I have seen it," she answered coolly. "And of course I shall not stay. I do but finish my packing. In ten minutes I shall ring to have my luggage taken downstairs. There is a train in half an hour." "You will never escape now," he said gloomily. "Do you know, too, that they have found the body of Mrs. Vanderstein?" This time she was startled. "What do you say?" she cried. "What _bêtise_ is this?" "It is true," he said. "They found it last night. I was there." "You were there? Last night?" she repeated. "And you were not arrested, not suspected? Why, then, our star is indeed guarding us." "No, I wasn't arrested," he said, watching her, "and Joolie hasn't been arrested yet, either." She started, and for a moment her eyes shone with the hatred and spite she cherished for her daughter. Then they fell before his. "Julie," she said; "why should Julie be arrested?" "Don't you know?" he asked. "How is she to account for the pearls, and for the dresses and opera cloaks?" "Oh, the dresses. Hasn't she burnt them? I told her to. If she has not she must do so at once." "And the pearls--was she to burn them too?" said Bert quietly. "They looked so well round her neck, the dear child. I left them as my wedding gift to you both." "You left them because you knew you couldn't get rid of them. My God! I believe you meant to keep the whole lot for yourself. But the pearls were too dangerous, so you gave them to Joolie! You must have meant suspicion to fall upon her!" "My dear Bert, you are absurd. Come and help me to fasten this portmanteau. I shall register the luggage to Paris, and leave the train myself at Amiens. From there I can go off in another direction, and you will never hear of me again." "Nor of the jewels either, no doubt." "Oh, don't be afraid, you shall have the money for the jewels!" Madame Querterot began to go on with her packing, which for the moment she had abandoned. As she bent over the trunk, filling up corners with crumpled newspapers, she hummed a merry little tune, and the implied disregard of his reproaches exasperated Bert beyond endurance. He stood quite still, making a violent effort at self-control, and looking about him in an unconscious attempt to regain his balance by a concentration of his attention upon some everyday object. The fresh breeze off the water was fluttering the white muslin blinds by the open window and, as Bert passed his tongue over his parched lips, he tasted the salt taste of the sea. The tide was up, and the room full of the noise of the breaking waves, so that the rattle of a cart passing on the road beneath was merged and lost in the continuous volume of sound. On the table were several outspread pieces of blue paper, and he read the typed messages from where he stood. They were the telegrams which Sir Gregory, Gimblet, and Sidney had dispatched that morning to Mrs. Vanderstein. "Have you answered those?" he said, pointing to them. "I answered Mr. Sidney's, and I sent one to the servants in Grosvenor Street," Madame Querterot broke off her tune to reply. "I don't know who Aberhyn Jones is," she added, "nor where he lives, so I can't answer him; and I haven't quite decided what to say to the detective." She went on packing, and resumed her humming. Bert did not speak for a minute, then he said very quietly: "I took the girl to Regent's Park, to the very edge of the water; and then a policeman came up and prevented me doing as we arranged." "What!" Madame Querterot almost screamed. She stood erect and gazed at Bert in incredulous dismay. "I hit her and ran," he went on. "I don't suppose I did her much damage or I should have seen it mentioned in the papers, and there has been nothing about it." "If she is alive I don't understand how it is they still believe Mrs. Vanderstein is here. But never mind that now. The point is, the girl, if she lives, will put them on my track. I shall not be able to escape now so easily. Perhaps the best thing to do is to go back and face it out. Better get my story in before they have time to puzzle out the truth." She spoke musingly, more to herself than to her companion. "Your story!" Bert repeated, speaking only a little above a whisper. His voice would not come out somehow; he felt as if he were choking. "You mean you will say that I did it! Why not say that you have been hiding from me in fear of your own life, all these days? That would round it off well!" "Not a bad suggestion, Bert," she said. "I must look after myself, you know. It would be a pity, wouldn't it, for people to say that Julie's mother was hanged?" She spoke with a sneer. She had not forgotten that Bert had used those words to her, nor forgiven him. She was not afraid to let him see that his guess at her intentions was a good one; she felt for him a contempt too complete and profound to dread anything he might say or do. It is a common failing among clever rascals to despise their dupes, but they often learn to their cost that danger may come from the most unlikely quarter. The derisive note in her voice was the last straw on Bert's frayed nerves. His rage took hold of him so that he no longer knew what he was about; he became a tool in other hands than Madame Querterot's. "Oh you fiend, you fiend!" he cried, and his voice was high and cracked, "hanging would be too good for a devil like you! You needn't be afraid, people never shall say that of Joolie's mother. You would have let her be hanged, you devil! Her and me, both of us. Oh--oh----" The air was full of the murmur of the sea. It mingled with a maddening noise that buzzed in his ears and made thought impossible. A mist gathered before his eyes--a dreadful red mist in which everything swam and danced. He bounded upon the woman, holding his hands outstretched before his face as though to fend off something unspeakably hideous and terrifying. Then they closed upon her throat and, with a sob, he shook her to and fro as a dog shakes a rat that has bitten it badly. At last his rage spent itself. As it passed he became conscious of what he was doing, and with an exclamation of disgust loosened his grip. She fell backwards, with a crash, across the open lid of the box she had been packing. The hinges snapped under the impact and the lid broke off and dropped to the floor with her. There she lay, head downwards, in an untidy heap, one arm twisted at a curious angle under her body. Bert never doubted that she was dead, and he felt a glow of satisfaction stealing over him at the knowledge. There were great livid marks on her neck where his convulsive fingers had clutched at it, and he stooped over her and looked at them with a gratified smile. They were already turning black. A slight noise in the next room brought him to his senses. He crept on tiptoe to the door and listened intently with his ear to it. The sounds in the next room continued, some one seemed to be opening and shutting drawers; but there was no movement in the passage, and after a moment he opened the door cautiously and went out. No one was in sight, and as an afterthought he went back, and removing the key locked the door on the outside, as silently as he had opened it. Then putting the key in his pocket he ran down the stairs. The page who had shown him up was idling in the hall, but no one else was about, though he caught a glimpse of a seated figure in the bureau as he passed. Forcing himself to pause as he passed the page, he said to him: "Mrs. Vanderstein has asked me to tell you that she has a headache, and does not wish to be disturbed again to-day. Do you understand?" "Yes, sir. I will give the message at the bureau. They will tell the waiter and chambermaid." The page spoke English perfectly, and Bert felt assured that he would do his errand. To make sure, he repeated his injunction and gave the boy a shilling to impress it on his memory. Then he walked down the steps with every outward appearance of calm. His impulse was to go back towards the harbour, but as a precaution he started off in the opposite direction and only approached the docks after several turnings separated him from the sea-front. There was no boat back to England, however, till past seven, and he hung about the port for three whole hours that seemed like three centuries. In a quiet corner behind some empty trucks he got rid of his black beard, and applying a match to it saw it frizzle up and disappear in two or three seconds. He ground the ashes into the earth with his heel, and with a recklessness which surprised himself walked back past the doorway of the Hôtel de Douvres, to see if he would be known. The page was still lolling in the doorway, and, to Bert's satisfaction, stared at him as he passed with a vacant eye. He felt certain he had not been recognised, and went back to the harbour with a lighter heart. There he watched the steamer from Folkestone arrive and disembark her passengers, among whom--though he did not know it--was the man sent by the London police to interview Mrs. Vanderstein; and a few minutes later it was time to go on board the boat, which took him back to England. The next morning found him back in his place at the house agents' office, and as the day passed without event he began to feel a sense of security to which he had lately been a stranger. After all, he had passed hours in the company of London's greatest detective without arousing any suspicion; and every hour, he believed, added to his safety. He was comparatively cheerful when he went down to Pimlico that evening to see Julie. But he found her in a harder mood than usual; and when, with exceeding want of discretion, he chose that most unpropitious moment to urge his suit, she told him very plainly that she would never consent to be his wife. She had no intention of marrying, she said; she was going to enter the convent as she had always wished. But, she added, with unnecessary cruelty--for she was still angry with him for his behaviour a day or two before--in no case would she have married him. She did not reciprocate his feelings, and she considered that he and she were quite unsuited to each other; he had much better never think of her again. Thus it happened that he went away in the blackest depths of misery and despair, so that when the police rapped at his door an hour later they found a man broken and unstrung to such a point as to hail their coming with something like relief. Such was the gist of Albert Tremmels' story; and, as it never varied in the smallest detail in the course of its many repetitions, it may be imagined that it was true in substance. Whether this would have been the opinion expressed by a jury cannot now be known, for Bert died in prison while awaiting his trial. His constitution, always frail, had not been able to withstand the bodily fatigues, and more especially those torments of the mind which he had endured during that week of stress, and a latent tendency to disease was not slow to take advantage of his weakened condition. Its rapid development was perhaps due, in part, to the fact that he made little effort to get well, and seemed to have no wish to live. What, indeed, as he said, had he to live for? He showed no repentance for his attack on Miss Turner, beyond saying that it would have been unnecessary if he had had the sense to kill Madame Querterot first, but he maintained with his last breath that the idea was not his, any more than the thought of murdering Mrs. Vanderstein, which he persisted in affirming had never crossed his mind. He gloried in the death of his confederate, however, nor could all the efforts of the prison chaplain move him to a better frame of mind with regard to his deed. On the contrary, he did not cease to gloat over the remembrance of it. Not even when he heard that Julie piously refused him her forgiveness, in spite of her mother's designs upon herself, would Bert admit that he regretted that which he had done. It is a cynical freak of circumstance that his love for the girl, which was pure and unselfish and the only creditable part of his whole nature, should from first to last have been the inspiring source from which his crimes proceeded. CHAPTER XXVIII It was a few days before Joe Sidney was allowed to see Barbara. The news of her friend's death had been broken to her by the doctor, and though her grief was profound she bore the shock better than they had feared likely, and continued to make good progress towards recovery. It was on the day following that on which she learnt the truth, or rather a bowdlerised version of it, that Sidney refused to be longer denied, and practically forced his way into the private room at the hospital to which she had been moved. At sight of her sad, tear-stained face, framed in bandages, and wearing such a different aspect from when he had last looked on it, the little speech he had prepared to greet her with died on his lips, and he could only take her hand in silence and gaze at her without a word till the door had shut behind the nurse, who, dearly as she would have liked to remain, was luckily prevented from doing so by an urgent summons to attend on the house surgeon elsewhere. "Oh, my dear, I thought you were dead," he stammered. She was very weak still, and while the tenderness in his voice, still more than the words themselves, brought a feeble little smile of the purest content to play a moment round the corners of her mouth, they also caused the blood to rush to her face in a hot, embarrassing wave, so that she turned her head away, and lay facing the wall with no conscious wish except to hide from him. Then the flush died away, leaving her very white and still and silent, with eyes tightly shut. She knew that if she opened them or tried to speak she would not be able to help crying. Sidney did not understand her stillness. A dreadful fear came upon him that she had fainted, and he looked round for the bell. It was just out of reach; but, when he tried to withdraw the hand which still held hers, her clasp gently tightened on it, and would not let him go. With a muffled exclamation he fell on his knees beside the pillow. "Barbara, Barbara," he cried, "will you always go hand in hand with me now?" And with face still averted she murmured: "Always, always!" It was half an hour later that he asked her about the unsigned telegram she had sent him. What had she meant by saying good luck was coming his way? She reluctantly confessed her determination to provide him with the money he needed. "Of course I always knew you were clever and dear enough to manage even that," he said. "That's why I didn't bother unnecessarily over the mess I'd got into." "Oh," cried Barbara, "how dare you say that! Why, you were desperate; I was terrified by the things you hinted at." "It was disgraceful of me to talk in that way," he admitted, ashamed. "But you haven't told me how you intended to provide me with money. As if I'd have taken it from you! I didn't know you were a millionaire." "You know Mr. Vanderstein left me £30,000, which I was to have if poor Mrs. Vanderstein died? I shall get it now, I suppose," said Barbara, her eyes filling with tears. Joe stroked her hand in silent sympathy, and with a quaver in her voice she went on. "Well, I meant to borrow £10,000 on the strength of my prospects, and place it anonymously to your credit at Cox's. So you see you would have had to take it!" she concluded triumphantly. "You wouldn't have known who it was from." "I should have known perfectly well," he said. "Who else could good luck come to me from if not from you? I knew you sent the telegram, you see." "You couldn't have proved it, and you'd have had to take the money, because there would have been no one to send it back to." "It was like you to think of it," Joe said, "but I don't believe you could have raised the money anyhow. Aunt Ruth's life was nearly as good as yours then, and you hadn't really any security to offer, you silly darling." Barbara's face fell. "I didn't think of that, but surely I could have got £10,000 when I would have offered £30,000 in exchange," she said sadly. "But it doesn't matter now, does it?" He hastened to reassure and comfort her. "And you will never bet again?" she asked presently. "I have sworn that I never will," Joe answered. "I've had a lesson more severe than even I needed, I think." "If ever you want to have a teeny tiny bet," she smiled, "I can do it for you, perhaps, if you're good." "No, no," he said seriously, "you must give it up too. I shall want you to help me to stick to my resolutions. Promise!" "Very well," she said, seeing how grave he looked; "I promise faithfully never to gamble again in any way, as long as I live." "Now we are safe!" he cried. "Indeed, I have used up all the luck one man can scrape together in a lifetime in winning you, and I shall think of that, if I am ever again tempted to stake anything on the chance of further kindness at the hands of Fortune." "Don't be foolish," Barbara urged; "there is heaps and heaps more luck in store for you." And so, in their serene confidence of the happy future which awaits them, we will leave these two young people, who, if any more dangers lie unsuspected in the path down which they are to travel through the years, will brave them no longer in solitary isolation, but strengthened and reinforced by an enduring love. THE END =JOHN LANE'S LIST OF FICTION= BY ARTHUR H. ADAMS =GALAHAD JONES= A TRAGIC FARCE CROWN 8VO 6s With 16 full-page Illustrations by NORMAN LINDSAY =A TOUCH OF FANTASY= CROWN 8VO 6s A Romance For Those who are Lucky Enough to Wear Glasses BY W. M. ARDAGH =THE MAGADA= CROWN 8VO 6s =THE KNIGHTLY YEARS= CROWN 8VO 6s BY WILLIAM ARKWRIGHT =THE TREND= CROWN 8VO 6s BY H. F. PREVOST BATTERSBY =THE SILENCE OF MEN= CROWN 8VO 6s =THE LAST RESORT= CROWN 8VO 6s BY GERARD BENDALL =THE ILLUSIONS OF MR. & MRS. BRESSINGHAM= CROWN 8VO 6s =THE PROGRESS OF MRS. CRIPPS-MIDDLEMORE= CROWN 8VO 6s BY PAUL BERTRAM =THE SHADOW OF POWER= THIRD THOUSAND CROWN 8VO 6s =THE FIFTH TRUMPET= CROWN 8VO 6s BY WALTER BLOEM =THE IRON YEAR= CROWN 8VO 6s Translated from the German by STELLA BLOCH BY MRS. CHARLES BRYCE =MRS. VANDERSTEIN'S JEWELS= CROWN 8VO 6s BY JAMES BRYCE =THE STORY OF A PLOUGH BOY= An Autobiography CROWN 8VO 6s BY WILLIAM CAINE =THE IRRESISTIBLE INTRUDER= CROWN 8VO 6s =HOFFMAN'S CHANCE= CROWN 8VO 6s BY DANIEL CHAUCER =THE SIMPLE LIFE LIMITED= CROWN 8VO 6s =THE NEW HUMPTY DUMPTY= CROWN 8VO 6s BY MAUD CRUTTWELL =FIRE AND FROST= CROWN 8VO 6s BY SIDNEY DARK =THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT BE KING= CROWN 3VO 6s BY MARION FOX =THE BOUNTIFUL HOUR= CROWN 8VO 6s THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE IN ENGLISH Edited by FREDERIC CHAPMAN DEMY 8VO 6s =THE ANGELS= A Translation by ALFRED ALLINSON =THE OPINIONS OF JERÔME COIGNARD= A Translation by Mrs. WILFRID JACKSON =ON LIFE AND LETTERS= A Translation by A. W. EVANS. Vols. 2, 3, and 4. =THE GODS ARE ATHIRST= A Translation by ALFRED ALLINSON =MY FRIEND'S BOOK= A Translation by J. 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A few missing periods were added, also the following corrections were made, on page 82 "Vande stein" changed to "Vanderstein" (that Mrs. Vanderstein had sent a telephone message) 168 "st aightened" changed to "straightened" (The clerk straightened himself with a perceptible effort) 347 "OE" changed to "OF" (=THE CRIME OF SYLVESTRE BONNARD=) 349 underlining added (=HENRIETTA TAKING NOTES=) 354 "Transtated" changed to "Translated" (Translated from the Danish). Otherwise the original has been preserved. 
10327	----	Distributed Proofreaders [Illustration: "And who would ever believe anybody else guilty who knew your guest was Michael Lanyard, alias 'The Lone Wolf'?"] ALIAS THE LONE WOLF BY LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE [Illustration: FRUCTUS QUAM FOLIA ] 1921 TO ROBERT AITKEN SWAN WHOSE FRIENDSHIP I HAVE TRIED IN MANY OTHER WAYS, THIS YARN WITH DIFFIDENCE IS DEDICATED NOTE: This is the fourth of the Lone Wolf stories. Its predecessors were, in chronological sequence, "The Lone Wolf," "The False Faces," "Red Masquerade." Each story, however, is entirely self-contained and independent of the others. If it matters.... LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE Westport--9 September, 1921. CONTENTS CHAPTER I WALKING PAPERS II ONE WALKS III MEETING BY MOONLIGHT IV EVE V PHINUIT & CO VI VISITATION VII TURN ABOUT VIII IN RE AMOR ET AL IX BLIND MAN'S BUFF X BUT AS A MUSTARD SEED XI AU REVOIR XII TRAVELS WITH AN ASSASSIN XIII ATHENAIS XIV DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND XV ADIEU XVI THE HOUSE OF LILITH XVII CHEZ LIANE XVIII BROTHER AND SISTER XIX SIX BOTTLES OF CHAMPAGNE XX THE SYBARITES XXI SOUNDINGS XXII OUT OF SOUNDINGS XXIII THE CIGARETTE XXIV HISTORIC REPETITION XXV THE MALCONTENT XXVI THE BINNACLE XXVII ÇA VA BIEN! XXVIII FINALE ALIAS THE LONE WOLF I WALKING PAPERS Through the suave, warm radiance of that afternoon of Spring in England a gentleman of modest and commonly amiable deportment bore a rueful countenance down Piccadilly and into Halfmoon street, where presently he introduced it to one whom he found awaiting him in his lodgings, much at ease in his easiest chair, making free with his whiskey and tobacco, and reading a slender brown volume selected from his shelves. This dégagé person was patently an Englishman, though there were traces of Oriental ancestry in his cast. The other, he of the doleful habit, was as unmistakably of Gallic pattern, though he dressed and carried himself in a thoroughly Anglo-Saxon fashion, and even seemed a trace intrigued when greeted by a name distinctively French. For the Englishman, rousing from his appropriated ease, dropped his book to the floor beside the chair, uprose and extended a cordial hand, exclaiming: "H'are ye, Monsieur Duchemin?" To this the other responded, after a slight pause, obscurely enough: "Oh! ancient history, eh? Well, for the matter of that: How are you, Mister Wertheimer?" Their hands fell apart, and Monsieur Duchemin proceeded to do away his hat and stick and chamois gloves; while his friend, straddling in front of a cold grate and extending his hands to an imaginary blaze, covered with a mild complaint the curiosity excited by a brief study of that face of melancholy. "Pretty way you've got of making your friends wait on your pleasure. Here I've wasted upwards of two hours of His Majesty's time..." "How was I to know you'd have the cheek to force your way in here in my absence and help yourself to my few poor consolations?" Duchemin retorted, helping himself to them in turn. "But then one never does know what fresh indignity Fate has in store..." "After you with that whiskey, by your leave. I say: I'd give something to know where you ignorant furriners come by this precious pre-War stuff." But without waiting to be denied this information, Mr. Wertheimer continued: "Going on the evidence of your looks and temper, you've been down to Tilbury Docks this afternoon to see Karslake and Sonia off." "A few such flashes of intelligence applied professionally, my friend, should carry you far." "And the experience has left you feeling a bit down, what?" "I imagine even you do not esteem parting with those whom one loves an exhilarating pastime." "But when it's so obviously for their own good..." "Oh, I know!" Duchemin agreed without enthusiasm. "If anything should happen to Karslake now, it would break Sonia's heart, but..." "And after the part he played in that Vassilyevski show his lease of life wouldn't be apt to be prolonged by staying on in England." "I agree; but still--!" sighed Duchemin, throwing himself heavily into a chair. "Which," Wertheimer continued, standing, "is why we arranged to give him that billet with the British Legation in Peking." "Didn't know you had a hand in that," observed Duchemin, after favouring the other with a morose stare. "Oh, you can't trust me! When you get to know me better you'll find I'm always like that--forever flitting hither and yon, bestowing benefits and boons on the ungrateful, like any other giddy Providence." "But one is not ungrateful," Duchemin insisted. "God knows I would gladly have sped Karslake's emigration with Sonia to Van Dieman's Land or Patagonia or where you will, if it promised to keep him out of the way long enough for the Smolny Institute to forget him." "Since the said Smolny inconsiderately persists in failing to collapse, as per the daily predictions of the hopeful." "Just so." "But aren't you forgetting you yourself have given that Smolny lot the same and quite as much reason for holding your name anathema?" "Ah!" Duchemin growled--"as for me, I can take care of myself, thank you. My trouble is, I want somebody else to take care of. I had a daughter once, for a few weeks, long enough to make me strangely fond of the responsibilities of a father; and then Karslake took her away, leaving me nothing to do with my life but twiddle futile thumbs and contemplate the approach of middle age." "Middle age? Why flatter yourself? With a daughter married, too!" "Sonia's only eighteen..." "She was born when you were twenty. That makes you nearly forty, and that's next door to second childhood, Man!" the Englishman declared solemnly--"you're superannuated." "I know; and so long as I feel my years, even you can abuse me with impunity." But Wertheimer would not hear him. "Odd," he mused, "I never thought of it before, that you were growing old. And I've been wondering, too, what it was that has been making you so precious slow and cautious and cranky of late. You're just doddering--and I thought you were simply tired out and needed a holiday." "Perhaps I am and do," said Duchemin patiently. "One feels one has earned a holiday, if ever anybody did in your blessed S. S." "Ah! You think so?" "You'd think so if you'd been mucking round the East End all Winter with your life in your hands." "Still--at your age--I'd be thinking about retiring instead of asking for a rest." Although Duchemin knew very well that he was merely being ragged in that way of deadly seriousness which so often amuses the English, he chose to suggest sourly: "My resignation is at your disposal any time you wish it." "Accepted," said Wertheimer airily, "to take effect at once." To this Duchemin merely grunted, as who should say he didn't consider this turn of conversation desperately amusing. And Wertheimer resuming his chair, the two remained for some moments in silence, a silence so doggedly maintained on both sides that Duchemin was presently aware of dull gnawings of curiosity. It occurred to him that his caller should have found plenty to do in his bureau in the War Office.... "And to what," he enquired with the tedious irony of ennui, "is one indebted for this unexpected honour on the part of the First Under-Secretary of the British Secret Service? Or whatever your high-sounding official title is..." "Oh!" Wertheimer replied lazily--and knocked out his pipe--"I merely dropped in to say good-bye." Duchemin discovered symptoms of more animation. "Hello! Where are you off to?" "Nowhere--worse luck! I mean I'm here to bid you farewell and Godspeed and what not on the eve of your departure from the British Isles." "And where, pray, am I going?" "That's for you to say." Monsieur Duchemin meditated briefly. "I see," he announced: "I'm to have a roving commission." "Worse than that: none at all." Duchemin opened his eyes wide. "'The wind bloweth where it listeth,'" Wertheimer affirmed. "How do I know whither you'll blow, now you're a free agent again, entirely on your own? I've got no control over your movements." "The S. S. has." "Never no more. Didn't you tender me your resignation a moment ago? Wasn't it promptly accepted?" "Look here: What the devil----!" "Well, if you must know," the Englishman interrupted hastily, "my instructions were to give you your walking papers if you refused to resign. So your connection with the S. S. is from this hour severed. And if you ain't out of England within twenty-four hours, we'll jolly well deport you. And that's that." "One perceives one has served England not wisely but too well." "Shrewd lad!" Wertheimer laughed. "You see, old soul, we admire you no end, and we're determined to save your life. Word has leaked through from Petrograd that your name has been triple-starred on the Smolny's Index Expurgatorius. Karslake's too. An honour legitimately earned by your pernicious collaboration in the Vassilyevski bust. Karslake's already taken care of, but you're still in the limelight, and that makes you a public nuisance. If you linger here much longer the verdict will undoubtedly be: Violent death at the hands of some person or persons unknown. So here are passports and a goodish bit of money. If you run through all of it before this blows over, we'll find a way, of course, to get more to you. You understand: No price too high that buys good riddance of you. And there will be a destroyer waiting at Portsmouth to-night with instructions to put ashore secretly anywhere you like across the Channel. After that--as far as the British Empire is concerned--your blood be on your own head." The other nodded, investigating the envelope which his late chief had handed him, then from his letter of credit and passports looked up with a reminiscent smile. "It isn't the first time you've vouched for me by this style. Remember?" "Well, you've earned as fair title to the name of Duchemin as I ever did to that of Wertheimer." But the smile was fading from the eyes of the man whom England preferred to recognize as André Duchemin. "But where on earth is one to go?" "Don't ask me," the Englishman protested. "And above all, don't tell me. I don't want to know. Since I've been on this job, I've learned to believe in telepathy and mind reading and witchcraft and all manner of unholy rot. And I don't want you to come to a sudden end through somebody's establishing illicit intercourse with my subconscious mind." He took his leave shortly after that; and Monsieur Duchemin settled down in the chair which his guest had quitted to grapple with his problem: where under Heaven to go? After a wasted while, he picked up in abstraction the book which Wertheimer had been reading--and wondered if, by any chance, he had left it there on purpose, so strong seemed the hint. It was Stevenson's 'Travels with a Donkey.' Duchemin was familiar enough with the work, and had no need to dip anew into its pages to know it offered one fair solution to his quandary. If--he assured himself--there were any place in Europe where one might count on being reasonably secure from the solicitous attentions of the grudge-bearing Bolsheviki, it was the Cévennes, those little-known hills in the south of France, well inland from the sea. II ONE WALKS A little place called Le Monastier, in a pleasant highland valley fifteen miles from Le Puy ... notable for the making of lace, for drunkenness, for freedom of language, and for unparalleled political dissension was Mr. Stevenson's point of departure on his Travels with a Donkey. Monsieur Duchemin made it his as well; and on the fourth morning of his hegira from England set out from Le Monastier afoot, a volume of Montaigne in his pocket, a stout stick in his fist--the fat rucksack strapped to his shoulders enabling this latter-day traveller to dispense with the society of another donkey. The weather was fine, his heart high, he was happy to be out of harness and again his own man. More than once he laughed a little to think of the vain question of his whereabouts which was being mooted in the underworld of Europe, where (as well he knew) men and women spat when they named him. For his route from the Channel coast to Le Monastier had been sufficiently discreet and devious to persuade him that his escape had been as cleanly executed as it was timely instigated. Thus for upwards of a fortnight he fared southward in the footsteps of Mr. Stevenson; and much good profit had he of the adventure. For it was his common practice to go to bed with the birds and rise with the sun; and more often than not he lodged in the inn of the silver moon, with moss for a couch, leafy boughs for a canopy and the stars for night-lights--accommodations infinitely more agreeable than those afforded by the grubby and malodorous auberge of the wayside average. And between sun and sun he punished his boots famously. Constant exercise tuned up muscles gone slack and soft with easy living, upland winds cleansed the man of the reek of cities and made his appetite a thing appalling. A keen sun darkened his face and hands, brushed up in his cheeks a warmer glow than they had shown in many a year, and faded out the heavier lines with which Time had marked his countenance. Moreover, because this was France, where one may affect a whisker without losing face, he neglected his razors; and though this was not his first thought, a fair disguise it proved. For when, toward the end of the second week, he submitted that wanton luxuriance to be tamed by a barber of Florac, he hardly knew the trimly bearded mask of bronze that looked back at him from a mirror. Not that it mattered to Monsieur Duchemin. From the first he met few of any sort and none at all whom a lively and exacting distrust reckoned a likely factor in his affairs. It was a wild, bold land he traversed, and thinly peopled; at pains to avoid the larger towns, he sought by choice the loneliest paths that looped its quiet hills; such as passed the time of day with him were few and for the most part peasants, a dull, dour lot, taciturn to a degree that pleased him well. So that he soon forgot to be forever alert for the crack of an ambushed pistol or the pattering footfalls of an assassin with a knife. It was at Florac, on the Tarnon, that he parted company with the trail of Stevenson. Here that one had turned east to Alais, whereas Duchemin had been lost to the world not nearly long enough, he was minded to wander on till weary. The weather held, there was sunshine in golden floods, and by night moonlight like molten silver. Between beetling ramparts of stone, terraced, crenellated and battlemented in motley strata of pink and brown and yellow and black, the river Tarn had gouged out for itself a canyon through which its waters swept and tumbled, as green as translucent jade in sunlight, profound emerald in shadow, cream white in churning rapids. The lofty profiles of its cliffs were fringed with stunted growths of pine and ash, a ragged stubble, while here and there châteaux, forsaken as a rule, and crumbling, reared ruined silhouettes against the blue. Eighteen hundred feet below, it might be more, the Tarn threaded lush bottom-lands, tilled fields, goodly orchards, plantations of walnut and Spanish chestnut, and infrequent, tiny villages that clung to precarious footholds between cliffs and water. On high again, beyond the cliffs, stretched the Causses, vast, arid and barren plateaux, flat and featureless save for an occasional low, rounded mound, a menhir or a dolmen, and (if such may be termed features) great pits that opened in the earth like cold craters, which the countryfolk termed avens. A strange, bleak land, inhospitable, wind-harried, haunted, the home of seven howling devils of desolation... Rain at length interned the traveller for three days in a little place called Meyrueis, which lies sweetly in the valley of the Jonte, at its confluence with the Butézon, long leagues remote from railroads and the world they stitch together--that world of unrest, uncertainty and intrigue which in those days seemed no better than a madhouse. The break in the monotony of daily footfaring proved agreeable. It suited one well to camp for a space in that quaint town, isolate in the heart of an enchanted land, with which one was in turn enchanted, and contemplate soberly the grave issues of Life and Death. Here (said Duchemin) nothing can disturb me; and it is high time for me to be considering what I am to make of the remainder of my days. Too many of them have been wasted, too great a portion of my span has been sacrificed to vanities. One must not forget one is in a fair way to become a grandfather; it is plainly an urgent duty to reconcile oneself to that estate and cultivate its proper gravity and decorum. Yet a little while and one must bid adieu to that Youth which one has so heedlessly squandered, a last adieu to Youth with its days of high adventure, its carefree heart, its susceptibility to the infinite seductions of Romance. Quite seriously the adventurer entertained a premonition of his to-morrow, a vision of himself in skull-cap and seedy clothing (the trousers well-bagged at the knees) with rather more than a mere hint of an equator emphasized by grease-spots on his waistcoat, presiding over the fortunes of one of those dingy little Parisian shops wherein debatable antiques accumulate dust till they fetch the ducats of the credulous; and of a Sunday walking out, in a shiny frock-coat with his ribbon of the Legion in the buttonhole, a ratty topper crowning his placid brows, a humid grandchild adhering to his hand: a thrifty and respectable bourgeois, the final avatar of a rolling stone! Yes: it is amusing, but quite true; though it would need a deal of contriving, something little short of a revolution to bring it about, to precisely such a future as that did Duchemin most seriously propose to dedicate himself. But always, they say, it is God who disposes.... And for all this mood of premature resignation to the bourgeois virtues Duchemin was glad enough when his fourth day in Meyrueis dawned fair, and by eight was up and away, purposing a round day's tramp across the Causse Noir to Montpellier-le-Vieux (concerning which one heard curious tales), then on by way of the gorge of the Dourbie to Millau for the night. Nor would he heed the dubious head shaken by his host of Meyrueis, who earnestly advised a guide. The Causses, he declared, were treacherous; men sometimes lost their way upon those lofty plains and were never heard of more. Duchemin didn't in the least mind getting lost, that is to say failing to make his final objective; at worst he could depend upon a good memory and an unfailing sense of direction to lead him back the way he had come. He was to learn there is nothing more unpalatable than the repentance of the headstrong.... He found it a stiffish climb up out of the valley of the Jonte. By the time he had managed it, the sun had already robbed all vegetation of its ephemeral jewellery, the Causse itself showed few signs of a downpour which had drenched it for seventy-two hours on end. To that porous limestone formation water in whatever quantity is as beer to a boche. Only, if one paused to listen on the brink of an aven, there were odd and disturbing noises to be heard underfoot, liquid whisperings, grim chuckles, horrible gurgles, that told of subterranean streams in spate, coursing in darkness to destinations unknown, unguessable. His path (there was no trace of road) ran snakily through a dense miniature forest of dwarfed, gnarled pines, of a peculiarly sombre green, ever and again in some scant clearing losing itself in a web of similar paths that converged from all points of the compass; so that the wayfarer was fain to steer by the sun--and at one time found himself abruptly on the brink of a ravine that gashed the earth like a cruel wound. He worked his way to an elevation which showed him plainly that--unless by a debatable detour of several miles--there was no way to the farther side but through the depths of the ravine itself. If that descent was a desperate business, the subsequent climb was heartbreaking. He needed a long rest before he was able to plod on, now conceiving the sun in the guise of a personal enemy. The sweat that streamed from his face was brine upon his lips. For hours it was thus with Duchemin, and in all that time he met never a soul. Once he saw from a distance a lonely château overhanging another ravine; but it was apparently only one more of the many ruins indigenous to that land, and he took no step toward closer acquaintance. Long after noon, sheer fool's luck led him to a hamlet whose mean auberge served him bread and cheese with a wine singularly thin and acid. Here he enquired for a guide, but the one able-bodied man in evidence, a hulking, surly animal, on learning that Duchemin wished to visit Montpellier-le-Vieux, refused with a growl to have anything to do with him. Several times during the course of luncheon he caught the fellow eyeing him strangely, he thought, from a window of the auberge. In the end the peasant girl who waited on him grudgingly consented to put him on his way. In a rocky gorge, called the Rajol, a spot as inhumanly grotesque as a nightmare of Gustave Doré's, with the heat of a pit in Tophet, he laboured for hours. The hush of evening and its long shadows were on the land when finally he scrambled out to the Causse again. Then he lost his path another time, missed entirely the village of Maubert, where he had thought to find a conveyance, or at least a guide, and in the silver and purple mystery of a perfect moonlight night found himself looking down from a hilltop upon Montpellier-le-Vieux. Rumour had prepared him to know the place when he saw it, nothing for its stupendous lunacy. Heaven knows what convulsion or measured process of Nature accomplished this thing. For his part Duchemin was unable to accept any possible scientific explanation, and will go to his grave believing that some half-witted cyclops, back beyond the dimmest dawn of Time, created Montpellier-le-Vieux in an hour of idleness, building him a play city of titanic monoliths, then wandered away and forgot it altogether. He saw what seemed to be a city at least two miles in length, more than half as wide, a huddle of dwellings of every shape and size, a labyrinth of narrow, tortuous streets broken here and there by wide and stately avenues, with public squares and vast cirques (of such amphitheatres he counted no less than six) and walls commanded by a citadel. But never door or window broke the face of any building, no chimney exhaled a breath of smoke, neither wheel nor foot disturbed these grass-grown thoroughfares.... Montpellier-the-Old indeed! Duchemin reflected; but rather Montpellier-the-Dead--dead with the utter deadness of that which has never lived. Marvelling, he went down into the city of stone and passed through its desolate ways, shaping a course for the southern limits, where he thought to find the road to Millau. Fatigue alone dictated this choice of the short cut. But for that, he confesses he might have gone the long way round; he was no more prone to childish terrors than any other man, but to his mind there was something sinister in the portentous immobility of the place; in its silence, its want of excuse for being, a sense of age-old evil like an inarticulate menace. Out of this mood he failed to laugh himself. Time and again he would catch himself listening for he knew not what, approaching warily the corner of the next huge monolith as if thinking to surprise behind it some ghoulish rite, glancing apprehensively down the corridors he passed, or overshoulder for some nameless thing that stalked him and was never there when he looked, but ever lurked impishly just beyond the tail of his eye. So that, when abruptly a man moved from behind a rock some thirty or forty paces ahead, Duchemin stopped short, with jangled nerves and a barely smothered exclamation. Possibly a shape of spectral terror would have been less startling; in that weird place and hour humanity seemed more incongruous than the supernatural. It was at once apparent that the man had neither knowledge of nor concern with the stranger. For an instant he stood with his back to the latter, peering intently down the aisle which Duchemin had been following, a stout body filling out too well the uniform of a private soldier in the American Expeditionary Forces--that most ungainly, inutile, unbecoming costume that ever graced the form of man. Then he half turned, beckoned hastily to one invisible to the observer, and furtively moved on. As furtively his signal was answered by a fellow who wore the nondescript garments of a peasant. And as suddenly as they had come into sight, the two slipped round a rocky shoulder, and the street of monoliths was empty. III MEETING BY MOONLIGHT Now granting that a soldier should be free to spend his leave where he will, unchallenged, it remained true that the last of the A.E.F. had long since said farewell to the shores of France, while the Tarn country seemed a far cry from the banks of the Rhine, in those days still under occupation by forces of the United States Regular Army. Then, too, it was a fact within the knowledge of Monsieur Duchemin that the uniform of the Americans had more than frequently been used by those ancient acquaintances of his, the Apaches of Paris, as a cloak for their own misdoings. So it didn't need the air of stealth that marked this business to persuade him there was mischief in the brew. But indeed he got in motion to investigate without stopping to debate an excuse for so doing, and several seconds before he heard the woman's cries. Of these the first sounded, shrill with alarm, as Duchemin turned the corner where the prowlers had gone from sight. But a high wall of rock alone met his vision, and he broke into a run that carried him round still another corner and then plumped him headlong into the theatre of villainy. This was open ground, a breadth of turf bordering on one of the great cirques--a rudely oval pit at a guess little less than seven hundred feet in its narrowest diameter and something like four hundred in depth, a vast black well against whose darkness the blue-white moonglare etched a strange grouping of figures, seven in all. On his one hand Duchemin saw a woman in mourning clasping to her bosom a terrified young girl, the author of the screams; on the other, three men close-locked in grimmest combat, one defending himself against two with indifferent success; while in between stood a third woman with her back to and perilously near the chasm, shrinking from the threat of a pistol in the hands of the fourth man. This last was the one nearest Duchemin, who was upon him so suddenly that it would be difficult to say which was the more surprised when Duchemin's stick struck down the pistol hand of the other with such force as must have broken his wrist. The weapon fell, he uttered an oath as he swung round, clutching the maimed member; and then, seeing his assailant for the first time, he swooped down to recover the weapon so swiftly that it was in his left hand and spitting vicious tongues of orange flame before Duchemin was able to get in a second blow. But there was the abrupt end of that passage. Smitten cruelly between the eyes, the fellow grunted thickly and went over backwards like a bundle of rags, head and shoulders jutting out over the brink of the precipice so far that, though his body checked perceptibly as it struck the ground, his own weight carried him on, he shot out into space and vanished as though some unseen hand had lifted up from these dark depths and plucked him down to annihilation. The young girl shrieked again, the woman gave a gasp of horror, Duchemin himself knew a sickish qualm. But he had no time to spare for that: it was going ill with the man contending against two. The adventurer's stick might have been bewitched that night, so magical was its work; a single blow on the nearest head (but believe it was selected with care!) and instantaneously that knot of contention was resolved into its three several parts. The smitten clapped hands to his hurt, moaning. His brother scoundrel started back with staring eyes in which rage gave place to dismay as he grasped the change in the situation and saw the stick swinging for his head in turn. He ducked neatly; the stick whistled through thin air; and before Duchemin could recover the other had turned and was running for dear life. Duchemin delayed a bare instant; but manifestly his assistance was no more needed here. In a breath he who had been so recently outmatched recollected his wits and took the initiative with admirable address. Duchemin saw him fly furiously at his late opponent, trip and lay him on his back; then turned and gave chase to the fugitive. This was the masquerader in the American uniform; and an amazingly fleet pair of heels he showed, taking into account his heaviness of body. Already he had a fair lead; and had he maintained for long the pace he set in the first few hundred yards he must have won away scot-free. But whether he lacked staying powers or confidence, he made the mistake of adopting another and less fatiguing means of locomotion. Duchemin saw him swerve from his first course and steer for a vehicle standing at some distance--evidently the conveyance which had brought the sightseers to view the spectacle of Montpellier-le-Vieux by moonlight. Waiting in the middle of a broad avenue of misshapen obelisks, a dilapidated barouche with a low body sagging the lower for debilitated springs, on either side its pole drooped two sorry specimens of crowbait. And their pained amazement was so unfeigned that Duchemin laughed aloud when the fat rogue bounded to the box, snatched up reins and whip and curled a cruel lash round their bony flanks. From this one inferred that he was indifferently acquainted with the animals, certainly not their accustomed driver. And since it took them some moments to come to their senses and appreciate that all this was not an evil dream, Duchemin's hands were clutching for the back of the carriage when the horses broke suddenly into an awkward, lumbering gallop and whisked it out of reach. But not for long. Extending himself, Duchemin caught the folded top, jumped, and began to clamber in. The man on the box was tugging fretfully at something wedged in the hip-pocket of his breeches; proof enough that he was not the original tenant of the uniform, since it fitted too snugly to permit ready extraction of a pistol in an emergency. But he got no chance whatever to use the weapon; for the moment Duchemin found his own feet in the swaying vehicle he leaped on the shoulders of the other and dragged him backwards from the box. What followed was not very clear to him, a mélange of impressions. The mock-American fought like a devil unchained, cursing Duchemin fluently in the purest and foulest argot of Belleville--which is not in the French vocabulary of the doughboy. The animals at the pole caught fire of this madness and ran away in good earnest, that wretched barouche rolled and pitched like a rudderless shell in a crazy sea, the two men floundered in its well like fish in a pail. They fought by no rules, with no science, but bit and kicked and gouged and wrenched and struck as occasion offered and each to the best of his ability. Duchemin caught glimpses of a face like a Chinese devil-mask, hideously distorted with working features and disfigured with smears of soot through which insane eyeballs rolled and glared in the moonlight. Then a hand like a vice gripped his windpipe, he was on his back, his head overhanging the edge of the floor, a thumb was feeling for one of his eyes. Yet it could not have been much later when he and his opponent were standing and swaying as one, locked in an embrace of wrestlers. Still, Duchemin knew as many tricks of hand-to-hand fighting as the other, perhaps a few more. And then he was, no doubt, in far better condition. At all events the fellow was presently at his mercy, in a hold that gave one the privilege of breaking his back at will. A man of mistaken scruples, Duchemin failed to do so, but held the other helpless only long enough to find his hip-pocket and rip out the pistol--a deadly Luger. Then a thrust and a kick, which he enjoyed infinitely, sent the brute spinning out to land on his head. The fall should have broken his neck. At the worst it should have stunned him. Evidently it didn't. When Duchemin had scrambled up to the box, captured the reins and brought the nags to a stop--no great feat that; they were quite sated with the voluptuousness of running away and well content to heed the hand and voice of authority--and when, finally, he swung them round and drove back toward the cirque, he saw no sign of his Apache by the roadside. So he congratulated himself on the forethought which had possessed him of the pistol. Otherwise the assassin, since he had retained sufficient wit and strength to crawl into hiding, could and assuredly would have potted Monsieur Duchemin with neither difficulty nor compunction. Not five figures but four only were waiting beside the cirque when, wheeling the barouche as near the group as the lay of the ground permitted, he climbed down. A man lay at length in the coarse grass, his head pillowed in the lap of one woman. Another woman stood aside, trembling and wringing aged hands. The third knelt beside the supine man, but rose quickly as Duchemin drew near, and came to meet him. In this one he recognised her to whose salvation Chance had first led him, and now found time to appreciate a face of pallid loveliness, intelligent and composed, while she addressed him quietly and directly to the point in a voice whose timbre was, he fancied, out of character with the excellent accent of its French. An exquisite voice, nevertheless. English, he guessed, or possibly American, but much at home in France.... "Monsieur d'Aubrac has been wounded, a knife thrust. It will be necessary to get him to a surgeon as quickly as possible. I fancy there will be none nearer than Nant. Do you know the way?" "One can doubtless find it," said Duchemin modestly. "But I myself am not without knowledge of wounds. Perhaps..." "If monsieur would be so good." Duchemin knelt beside the man, who welcomed him with open eyes and a wry smile that was almost as faint as his voice. "It is nothing, monsieur--a clean cut in the arm, with some loss of blood." "But let me see." The young girl in whose lap rested the head of Monsieur d'Aubrac sat back and watched Duchemin with curious, grave eyes in which traces of moisture glimmered. "Had the animal at my mercy, I thought," d'Aubrac apologised, "when suddenly he drew that knife, stuck me and broke away." "I understand," Duchemin replied. "But don't talk. You'll want all your strength, my friend." With his pocket-knife he laid open the sodden sleeves of coat and shirt, exposing an upper arm stained dark with blood that welled in ugly jets from a cut both wide and deep. "Artery severed," he announced, and straightened up and looked about, at a loss. "My pack--?" One's actions in moments of excitement are apt to be largely directed by the subconscious, he knew; still he found it hard to believe that he could unwittingly have unshipped and dropped his rucksack while making ready to pursue the American uniform. Nevertheless, it seemed, that was just what he had done. The woman who had spoken to him found and fetched it from no great distance; and its contents enabled Duchemin to improvise a tourniquet, and when the flow of blood was checked, a bandage. During the operation d'Aubrac unostentatiously fainted. The young girl caught her breath, a fluttering hiss. "Don't be alarmed, mademoiselle," Duchemin soothed her. "He will come round presently, he will do splendidly now till we get him to bed; and then his convalescence will be merely the matter of a while of rest." He slipped his arms beneath the unconscious man, gathered him up bodily and bore him to the carriage--and, thanks to man's amusing amour propre, made far less of the effort than it cost him. Then, with d'Aubrac disposed as comfortably as might be on the back seat, once again pillowed in a fashion to make any man envious, Duchemin turned to find the other women at his elbow. To the eldest he offered a bow suited to her condition and a hand to help her into the barouche. "Madame ..." Her agitation had measurably subsided. The gentle inclination of the aged head which acknowledged his courtesy was as eloquent of her quality as he found the name which she gave him in quavering accents. "Madame de Sévénié, monsieur." "With madame's permission: I am André Duchemin." "Monsieur Duchemin has placed us all deeply in his debt. Louise ..." The girl in the carriage looked up and bowed, murmuring. "Mademoiselle de Montalais, monsieur: my granddaughter. And Eve ..." She turned to the third, to her whose voice of delightful accent was not in Duchemin's notion wholly French: "Madame de Montalais, my daughter by adoption, widow of my grandson, who died gloriously for his country at La Fère-Champenoise." IV EVE When she had graciously permitted Duchemin to assist her to a place in the carriage, Madame Sévénié turned immediately to comfort her granddaughter. It was easy to divine an attachment there, between d'Aubrac and Louise de Montalais; Duchemin fancied (and, as it turned out, rightly) the two were betrothed. But Madame de Montalais was claiming his attention. "Monsieur thinks--?" she enquired in a guarded tone, taking advantage of the diversion provided by the elder lady to delay a little before entering the barouche. "Monsieur d'Aubrac is in no immediate danger. Still, the services of a good surgeon, as soon as may be ..." "Will it be dangerous to wait till we get to Nant?" "How far is that, madame?" "Twelve miles." Duchemin looked aside at the decrepit conveyance with its unhappy horses, and summed up a conclusion in a shrug. "Millau is nearer, is it not, madame?" "But Nant is not far from the Château de Montalais; and at La Roque-Sainte-Marguerite our automobile is waiting, less than two miles below. The chauffeur advised against bringing over the road from La Roque to Montpellier; it is too rough and very steep." "Oh!" said Duchemin, as one who catches a glimmering of light. "Pardon, monsieur?" "Madame's chauffeur is waiting with the automobile, no doubt?" "But assuredly, monsieur." He recollected himself. "We shall see what we shall see, then, at La Roque. With an automobile at your disposal, Nant is little more distant than Millau, certainly. Nevertheless, let us not delay." "Monsieur is too good." Momentarily a hand slender and firm and cool rested in his own. Then its owner was setting into place beside Madame de Sévénié, and Duchemin clambering up to his on the box. The road proved quite as rough and declivitous as its reputation. One surmised that the Spring rains had found it in a bad way and done nothing to better its condition. Deep ruts and a liberal sprinkling of small boulders collaborated to keep the horses stumbling, plunging and pitching as they strained back against the singletrees. Duchemin was grateful for the moonlight which alone enabled him to keep the road and avoid the worst of the going--until he remembered that without the moon there would have been no expedition that night to view the mock ruins of Montpellier by its unearthly light, and consequently no adventure to entangle him. Upon this reflection he swore softly but most fervently into his becoming beard. He was well fed up with adventures, thank you, and could have done very well without this latest. And especially at a time when he desired nothing so much as to be permitted to remain the footloose wanderer in a strange land, a bird of passage without ties or responsibilities. He thought it devilish hard that one may never do a service to another without incurring a burden of irksome obligations to the served; that bonds of interest forged in moments of unpremeditated and generous impulse are never readily to be broken. Now because Chance had seen fit to put him in the way of saving a hapless party of sightseers from robbery or worse, he found himself hopelessly committed to take a continuing interest in them. It appeared that their home was a château somewhere in the vicinity of Nant. Well, after their shocking experience, and with the wounded man on their hands--and especially if La Roque-Sainte-Marguerite told the story one confidently expected--Duchemin could hardly avoid offering to see them safely as far as Nant. And once there he would be definitely in the toils. He would have to stop in the town overnight; and in the morning he would be able neither in common decency to slip away without calling to enquire after the welfare of d'Aubrac and the tranquillity of the ladies, nor in discretion to take himself out of the way of the civil investigation which would inevitably follow the report of what had happened in Montpelier. No: having despatched a bandit to an end well-earned, it now devolved upon André Duchemin to satisfy Society and the State that he had done so only with the most amiable motives, on due provocation, to save his own life and possibly the lives of others. He had premonitions of endless delays while provincial authorities wondered, doubted, criticised, procrastinated, investigated, reported, and--repeated. And then there was every chance that the story, thanks to the prominence of the persons involved, for one made no doubt that the names of Sévénié and Montalais and d'Aubrac ranked high in that part of the world--the story would get into the newspapers of the larger towns in the department. And what then of the comfortable pseudonymity of André Duchemin? Posed in an inescapable glare of publicity, how long might he hope to escape recognition by some acquaintance, friend or enemy? Heaven knew he had enough of both sorts scattered widely over the face of Europe! It seemed hard, indeed.... But it was--of course! he assured himself grimly--all a matter of fatality with him. Never for him the slippered ease of middle age, the pursuit of bourgeois virtues, of which he had so fondly dreamed in Meyrueis. Adventures were his portion, as surely as humdrum and eventless days were many another's. Wars might come and wars might go: but his mere presence in its neighbourhood would prove enough to turn the Palace of Peace itself into Action Front. Or so it seemed to him, in the bitterness of his spirit. Nor would he for an instant grant that his lot was not without its own, peculiar compensations. At La Roque, a tiny hamlet huddled in the shadow of Montpellier and living almost exclusively upon the tourists that pass that way, it was as Duchemin had foreseen, remembering the American uniform and the face smudged with soot--that favourite device of the French criminal of the lower class fearing recognition. For there it appeared that, whereas the motor car was waiting safe and sound enough, its chauffeur had vanished into thin air. Not a soul could be found who recalled seeing the man after the barouche Tiad left the village. Whereupon Duchemin asked whether the chauffeur had been a stout man, and being informed that it was so, considered the case complete. Mesdames de Sévénié et de Montalais, he suggested, might as well then and there give up all hope of ever again seeing that particular chauffeur--unless by some mischance entirely out of the reckoning of the latter. The landlord of the auberge, a surly sot, who had supplied the barouche with the man to act as driver and guide in one, took with ill grace the charge that his employee had been in league with the bandits. But this was true on the word of Madame de Montalais; it was their guide, she said, whom Duchemin had driven over the cliff. And (as Duchemin had anticipated) her name alone proved enough to silence the landlord's virtuous protestations. One could not always avoid being deceived, he declared; he knew nothing of the dead man more than that he had come well recommended. With which he said no more, but lent an efficient if sullen hand to the task of transferring d'Aubrac to the motor car. D'Aubrac came to, while this was being accomplished, begged feebly for water, was given it with a little brandy to boot and, comfortably settled in the rear seat, between Louise de Montalais and her grandmother, relapsed once more into unconsciousness. Learning that Madame de Montalais would drive, Duchemin dissembled a sigh of relief and, standing beside the car, doffed his cap to say good-bye. He was only too happy to have been of such slight service as the circumstances had permitted; and if at any time he could do more, a line addressed to him at Nimes, poste restante .... "But if Monsieur Duchemin would be good enough," Madame de Sévénié interposed in a fretful quaver--"and if it would not be taking him too far out of his way--it is night, anything may happen, the car might break down, and I am an old woman, monsieur, with sorely tried nerves--" Looking down at him from her place at the wheel, Madame de Montalais added: "It would be an act of charity, I think, monsieur, if it does not inconvenience you too greatly." "On the contrary," he fabricated without blushing, "you will be obliging a weary man by putting him several miles on his way." He had no cause to regret his complaisance. Seated beside Madame de Montalais, he watched her operate the car with skilful hands, making the best of a highway none too good, if a city boulevard in comparison with that which they had covered in the barouche. Following the meandering Dourbie, it ran snakily from patches of staring moonlight to patches of inky shadows, now on narrow ledges high over the brawling stream, now dipping so low that the tyres were almost level with the plane of broken waters. The sweep of night air in his face was sweet and smooth, not cold--for a marvel in that altitude--and stroked his eyelids with touches as bland as caresses of a pretty woman's fingers. He was sensible of drowsiness, a surrender to fatigue, to which the motion of the motor car, swung seemingly on velvet springs, and the shifting, blending chiaroscuro of the magic night were likewise conducive. So that there came a lessening of the tension of resentment in his humour. It was true that Life would never let him rest in the quiet byways of his desire; but after all, unrest was Life; and it was good to be alive tonight, alive and weary and not ill-content with self, in a motor car swinging swiftly and silently along a river road in the hills of Southern France, with a woman lovely, soignée and mysterious at the wheel. Perhaps instinctively sensible of the regard that dwelt, warm with wonder, on the fair curve of her cheek, the perfect modelling of her nose and mouth, she looked swiftly askance, after a time, surprised his admiration, and as if not displeased smiled faintly as she returned attention to the road. Duchemin was conscious of something like a shock of emotion, a sudden surging of some hunger that had long lain dormant in his being, unsuspected, how long he could not surmise, gaining strength in latency, waiting to be awakened and set free by one careless, sidelong look and smile of a strange woman. "Eve," he whispered, unheard, "Eve de Montalais ..." Then of a sudden he caught himself up sharply. It was natural enough that one should be susceptible to gentler impulses, at such a time, under circumstances so strange, so unforeseen, so romantic; but he must not, dared not, would not yield. That way danger lay. Not that he feared danger; for like most of mankind he loved it well. But here the danger held potentialities if not the certainty of pain--pain, it might be, not for one alone. Besides, it was too absurd .... V PHINUIT & CO. In the upshot, however, the necessity of his dismal forebodings had nothing to do with the length of time devoted by Monsieur Duchemin to kicking idle heels in the town of Nant; where the civil authorities proved considerate in a degree that--even making allowance for the local prestige of the house of Montalais--gratified and surprised the confirmed Parisian. For that was just what the good man was at heart and would be till he died, the form in which environment of younger years had moulded him: less French than Parisian, sharing the almost insular ignorance of life in the provinces characteristic of the native boulevardier; to whom the sun is truly nothing more or less than a spotlight focussed exclusively on Paris, leaving the rest of France in a sort of crepuscular gloom, the world besides steeped in eternal night. The driver-guide of La Roque turned out to have been a thorough-paced scamp, well and ill-known to the gendarmerie; the wound sustained by Monsieur d'Aubrac bore testimony to the gravity of the affair, amply excusing Duchemin's interference and its fatal sequel; while the statements of Mesdames de Sévénié et de Montalais, duly becoming public property, bade fair to exalt the local reputation of André Duchemin to heroic stature. And, naturally, his papers were unimpeachable. So that he found himself, before his acquaintance with Nant was thirty-six hours of age, free once more to humour the dictates of his own sweet will, to go on to Nimes (his professed objective) or to the devil if he liked. A freedom which, consistent with the native inconsistency of man, he exercised by electing to stop over in Nant for another day or two, at least; assuring himself that he found the town altogether charming, more so even than Meyrueis--and sometimes believing this fiction for as much as twenty minutes at a stretch. Besides, the weather was unsettled .... The inn, which went by the unpretending style of the Grand Hôtel de l'Univers, he found clean, comfortable, and as to its cuisine praiseworthy. The windows of the cubicle in which he had been lodged--one of ten which sufficed for the demands of the itinerant Universe--not only overlooked the public square and its amusing life of a minor market town, but commanded as well a splendid vista of the valley of the Dourbie, with its piquant contrast of luxuriant alluvial verdure and grim scarps of rock that ran up, on either side the wanton, glimmering river, into two opposed and overshadowing pinnacles of crag, the Roc Nantais and the Roc de Saint Alban--peaks each a rendezvous just then for hosts of cloud that scowled forbiddingly down upon the peaceful, sun-drenched valley. Moreover, even from the terrasse of the café below, one needed only to lift one's eyes to see, afar, perched high upon a smiling slope of green, with the highway to Millau at its foot and a beetling cliff behind, the Château de Montalais. Seated on that terrasse, late in the afternoon of his second day in Nant, discussing a Picon and a villainous caporal cigarette of the Régie (to whose products a rugged constitution was growing slowly reconciled anew) Duchemin let his vision dwell upon the distant château almost as constantly as his thoughts. He was to dine there that very evening. Even taking into account the signal service Duchemin had rendered, this wasn't easy to believe when one remembered the tradition of social conservatism among French gentlefolk. Still, it was true: Duchemin of the open road was bidden to dine en famille at the Château de Montalais. In his pocket lay the invitation, penned in the crabbed antique hand of Madame de Sévénié and fetched to the hotel by a servitor quite as crabbed and antique: Monsieur Duchemin would confer a true pleasure by enabling the ladies of the château to testify, even so inadequately, to their sense of obligation, etc.; with a postscript to say that Monsieur d'Aubrac was resting easily, his wound mending as rapidly as heart could wish. Of course Duchemin was going, had in fact already despatched his acceptance by the hand of the same messenger. Equally of course he knew that he ought not to go. For a man of his years he was, as a matter of training and habit, amazingly honest with himself. He knew quite well what bent his inclination toward visiting the Château de Montalais just once before effecting, what he was resolved upon, a complete evanishment from the ken of its people. He had yet to hold one minute of private conversation with Eve de Montalais, he had of her no sign to warrant his thinking her anything but utterly indifferent to him; and yet.... No; he wasn't ass enough to dream that he was in love with the woman; to the contrary, he was wise enough, knew himself well enough, to know that he could be, easily, and would be, given half a chance to lose his head. His warning had been clear beyond mistake, in that hour in the motor car on the road from La Roque to Nant, when Nature, as she sometimes will, incautiously had shown her hand to one whom she herself had schooled to read shrewdly, letting him discern what was her will with him, the snare that was laid for his feet and in which he must soon find himself trapped beyond extrication ... always providing he lacked the wit and resolution to fly his peril, who knew through bitterest of learning that love was never for him. Now he had seen Madame de Montalais another time, and had found that she fitted to the sweetest detail of perfection his ideal of Woman. On the previous afternoon, meeting the ladies of the château by arrangement in the bureau of the maire, Duchemin had sat opposite and watched and listened to Eve de Montalais for upwards of two hours--as completely devoted to covert study of her as if she had been the one woman in the room, as if the girl Louise, Madame de Sévénié, and the officials and functionaries of Nant had not existed in the same world with her. And in that tedious and constrained time of formalities he had learned much about her, but first of all, thanks to the uncompromising light of day that filled the cheerless room, that moonlight had not enhanced but rather tempered the charms of person which had the night before so stirred his pulses. Posed with consummate grace in a comfortless chair, a figure of slender elegance in her half-mourning, she had narrated quietly her version of last night's misadventure, an occasional tremor of humour lightening the moving modulations of her voice. A deep and vibrant voice, contralto in quality, hinting at hidden treasures of strength in the woman whose superficial mind it expressed. A fair woman, slim but round, with brown eyes level and calm, a translucent skin of matchless texture, hair the hue of bronze laced with intimations of gold ... Her story told, and taken down in longhand by a withered clerk, she supplied without reluctance or trace of embarrassment such intimate personal information as was necessary in order that her signature to the document might be acceptable to the State. Her age, she said, was twenty-nine; her birthplace, the City of New York; her parents, Edmund Anstruther, once of Bath, England, but at the time of her birth a naturalised citizen of the United States, and Eve Marie Anstruther, née Legendre, of Paris. Both were dead. In June 1914 she had married, in Paris, Victor Maurice de Montalais, who had been killed in action at La Fère-Champenoise on the ninth of September following. Her home? The Château de Montalais. On the hand she stripped in order to sign her deposition Duchemin saw a blue diamond of such superb water that this amateur of precious stones caught his breath for sheer wonder at its beauty and excellence and worth. Such jewels, he knew, were few and far to seek outside the collections of princes. Out of these simple elements imagination reconstructed a tragedy, a tragedy of life singularly close to the truth as he later came to learn it, a story not at all calculated to lessen his interest in the woman. Such women, he knew, are the product of a cultivation seldom to be achieved by poverty. This one had been made before, and not by, her marriage. Her father, then, had commanded riches. And when one knew, as Duchemin knew, what delights New York has for young women of wealth and fashion, one perceived a radiant and many-coloured background for this drab life of a recluse, expatriate from the high world of her inheritance, which Eve de Montalais must lead, and for the six years of her premature widowhood must have led, in that lonely château, buried deep in the loneliest hills of all France, the sole companion and comfort of her husband's bereaved sister and grandmother, chained by sorrow to their sorrow, by an inexorable reluctance to give them pain by seeming to slight the memory of the husband, brother and grandson through turning her face toward the world of life and light and gaiety of which she was so essentially a part, isolate from which she was so inevitably a thing existing without purpose or effect. How often, Duchemin wondered, had she in hours of solitude and restlessness felt her spirit yearning toward Paris, the nearest gateway to her world, and had cried out: How long, O Lord! how long?... The mellow resonance of a two-toned automobile horn, disturbing the early evening hush and at the same time Duchemin's meditations, recalled him to Nant in time to see a touring car of majestic proportions and mien which, coming from the south, from the direction of the railroad and Nimes, was sweeping a fine curve round two sides of the public square. Arriving in front of the Hôtel de l'Univers it executed a full stop and stood curbed yet palpitant, purring heavily: an impressive brute of a car, all shining silver plate and lustrous green paint and gold, the newest model of the costliest and best automobile manufactured in France. Instantly, as the wheels ceased to turn, a young man in the smartest livery imaginable, green garnished with gold, leaped smartly from the driver's seat, with military precision opened the door of the tonneau and, holding it, immobilised himself into the semblance of a waxwork image with the dispassionate eye, the firm mouth, and the closely razored, square jowls of the model chauffeur. Rustics and townsfolk were already gathering, a gaping audience, when from the tonneau descended first a long and painfully emaciated gentleman, whose face was a cadaverous mask of settled melancholy and his chosen toilette for motoring (as might be seen through the open and flapping front of his ulster) a tightly tailored light grey cutaway coat and trousers, with a double-breasted white waistcoat, a black satin Ascot scarf transfixed by a single splendid pearl, and spotless white spats. His hand, as gaunt as a skeleton's, assisted to alight a young woman whose brilliant blonde beauty, viewed for the first time in evening shadows, was like a shaft of sunlight in a darkened room. A well-made creature, becomingly and modishly gowned for motoring, spirited yet dignified in carriage, she was like a vision of, as she was palpably a visitation from, the rue de la Paix. Following her, a third passenger presented the well-nourished, indeed rotund, person of a Frenchman of thirty devoted to "le Sport"; as witness his aggressively English tweeds and the single glass screwed into his right eye-socket. His face was chubby, pink and white, his look was merry, he was magnificently self-conscious and débonnaire. Like shapes from some superbly costumed pageant of High Life in the Twentieth Century this trio drifted, rather than merely walked like mortals, across the terrasse and into the Café de l'Univers (which seemed suddenly to shrink in proportion as if reminded of its comparative insignificance in the Scheme of Things) where an awed staff of waiters, led by the overpowered propriétaires, monsieur et madame themselves, welcomed these apparitions from Another and A Better World with bowings and scrapings and a vast bustle and movement of chairs and tables; while all Nant, all of it, that is, that was accustomed to foregather in the café at this the hour of the aperitif, looked on with awed and envious eyes. It was all very theatrical and inspiring--to Monsieur Duchemin, too; who, lost in the shuffle of Nant and content to be so, murmured to himself that serviceable and comforting word of the time, "Profiteers!" and contemplated with some satisfaction his personal superiority to such as these. But there was more and better to come. There remained in the car a mere average man, undistinguished but by a lack of especial distinction, sober of habit, economical of gesture, dressed in a simple lounge suit such as anybody might wear, beneath a rough and ready-made motorcoat. When the car stopped he had stood up in his place beside the chauffeur as if meaning to get out, but rather remained motionless, resting a hand on the windshield and thoughtfully gazing northwards along the road that, skirting the grounds of the Château de Montalais, disappeared from view round the sleek shoulder of a hill. Now as the pattern chauffeur shut the door to the tonneau with the properly arrogant slam, the man who lingered in the car nodded gravely to some private thought, unlatched the door, got down, and turned toward the café, but before following his companions of more brilliant plumage paused for a quiet word with the chauffeur. "We dine here, Jules," he announced in English. Settling into place behind the wheel Jules saluted with fine finish and deference. "Very good, Mr. Phinuit, sir," he said meekly, in the same tongue. To this he added, coolly, without the least flicker of a glance aside, without moving one muscle other than those involved by the act of speech, and in precisely the tone of respect that became his livery: "What's the awful idea, you big stiff?" Mr. Phinuit betrayed not the slightest sense of anything untoward in this mode of address, but looked round to the chauffeur with a slow, not unfriendly smile. "Why," he said pleasantly--"you misbegotten garage hound--why do you ask?" In the same manner Jules replied: "Can't you see it's going to rain?" Mr. Phinuit cocked a calm, observant eye heavenwards. Involuntarily but unobtrusively, under cover of the little tubbed trees that hedged the terrasse apart from the square, Duchemin did likewise, and so discovered, or for the first time appreciated, the cause of the uncommonly early dusk that loured over Nant. Between the sentinel peaks that towered above the valley black battalions of storm cloud were fraternising, joining forces, coalescing into a vast and formidable army of ominous aspect. "So it is," Mr. Phinuit commented amiably; indeed, not without a certain hint of satisfaction. "Blessed if you don't see everything!" "Well, then: what about it?" "Why, _I_ should say you'd better find a place to put the car under cover in case it comes on to storm before we're finished--and put up the top." "You don't mean to go on in the rain?" Jules protested--yet studiously in no tone of protest. "But naturally..." "How do you get that way? Do you want us all to get soaked to our skins?" "My dear Jules!" Mr. Phinuit returned with a winning smile--"I don't give a tupenny damn if we do." With that he went to join his company; while Jules, once the other's back was turned, permitted himself, for the sake of his own respect and the effect upon the assembled audience, the luxury of a shrug that outrivalled words in expression of his personal opinion of the madness that contemplated further travel on such a night as this promised to be. Then, like the well-trained servant that he was not, he meshed gears silently and swung the car away to seek shelter, taking with him the sympathy as well as the wonder of the one witness of this bit of by-play who had been able to understand the tongue in which it was couched; and who, knowing too well what rain in those hills could mean, was beginning to regret that his invitation to the château had not been for another night. As for the somewhat unusual tone of the passage to which he had just listened, his nimble wits could invent half a dozen plausible explanations. It was quite possible, indeed when one judged Mr. Phinuit by his sobriety in contrast with the gaiety of the others it seemed quite plausible, that he was equally with Jules a paid employee of those ostensible nouveaux riches: and that the two, the chauffeur and the courier (or whatever Mr. Phinuit was in his subordinate social rating) were accustomed to amuse themselves by indulging in reciprocal abuse. But what Duchemin could by no means fathom was the reason why Phinuit should choose, and how he should rule the choice of his party, in the face of such threatening weather, to stop in Nant for an early dinner--with Millau only an hour away and the chances fair that before the storm broke the automobile would reach the latter city with its superior hotel and restaurant accommodations. But it was after all none of the business of André Duchemin. He lighted another cigarette, observing the group of strangers in Nant with an open inquisitiveness wholly Gallic, therefore inconspicuous. The entire clientèle of the Café de l'Univers was doing the same; Mr. Phinuit's party was the focal point of between twenty and thirty pair of staring eyes, and was enduring this with much equanimity. Mr. Phinuit was conferring earnestly over the menu with madame la propriétaire. The others were ordering aperitifs of a waiter. Through the clatter of tongues that filled the café one caught the phrase "veeskysoda" uttered by the monsieur in tweeds. Then the tall man consulted the beautiful lady as to her preference, and Duchemin caught the words "madame la comtesse" spoken in the rasping nasal drawl of an American. Evidently a person of rich humour, the speaker: "madame la comtesse" was abruptly convulsed with laughter; the chubby gentleman roared; Mr. Phinuit looked up from the carte with an enquiring, receptive smile; the waiter grinned broadly. But the cause of all this merriment wore only an expression of slightly pained bewilderment on his death-mask of a face. At that moment arrived the calèche which Duchemin had commanded to drive him to the château; and with a ride of two miles before him and rain imminent, he had no more time to waste. VI VISITATION Dinner was served in a vast and sombre hall whose darkly panelled walls and high-beamed ceiling bred a multitude of shadows that danced about the table a weird, spasmodic saraband, without meaning or end, restlessly advancing and retreating as the candles flickered, failed and flared in the gusty draughts. There was (Duchemin learned) no other means of illumination but by candle-light in the entire château. The time-old structure had been thoroughly renovated and modernised in most respects, it was furnished with taste and reverence (one could guess whose the taste and purse) but Madame de Sévénié remained its undisputed chatelaine, a belated spirit of the ancien régime, stubbornly set against the conveniences of this degenerate age. Electric lighting she would never countenance. The telephone she esteemed a convenience for tradespeople and vulgarians in general, beneath the dignity of leisured quality. The motor car she disapproved yet tolerated because, for all her years, she was of a brisk and active turn and liked to get about, whereas since the War good horseflesh was difficult to find in France and men to care for it more scarce still. So much, and more besides, she communicated to Duchemin at intervals during the meal, comporting herself toward him with graciousness not altogether innocent of a certain faded coquetry. Having spoken of herself as one born too late for her time, she paused and eyed him keenly, a gleam of light malice in her bright old eyes. "And you, too, monsieur," she added suddenly. "But you, I think, belong to an even earlier day..." "I, madame? And why do you say that?" "I should have been guillotined under the Terror; but you, monsieur, you should have been hanged long before that--hanged for a buccaneer on the Spanish Main." "Madame may be right," said Duchemin, amused. "And quite possibly I was, you know." Then he wondered a little, and began to cultivate some respect for the shrewdness of her intuitions. He sat on her left, the place of honour going by custom immemorial to monsieur le curé of Nant. For all that, Duchemin declined to feel slighted. Was he not on the right of Eve de Montalais? The girl Louise was placed between the curé and her sister-in-law. Duchemia could not have been guilty of the offence of ignoring her; but the truth is that, save when courtesy demanded that he pay her some attention, he hardly saw her. She was pretty enough, but very quiet and self-absorbed, a slender, nervous creature with that pathetically eager look peculiar to her age and caste in France, starving for the life she might not live till marriage should set her free. A pale and ineffective wraith beside Eve, whose beauty, relieved in candleglow against the background of melting darkness, burned like some rare exotic flower set before a screen of lustreless black velvet. And like a flower to the sun she responded to the homage of his admiration --which he was none the less studious to preserve from the sin of obviousness. For he was well aware that her response was impersonal; it was not his but any admiration that she craved as a parched land wants rain. Less than three months a wife, more than five years a widow, still young and ardent, nearing the noontide of her womanhood, and immolated in this house of perennial mourning, making vain oblation of her youth, her beauty, the rich wine of life that coursed so lustily through her being, upon the altar of a memory whose high priestess was only an old, old woman.... He perceived that it would be quite possible for him, did he yield to the bent of his sympathies, to dislike Madame de Sévénié most intensely. Not that he was apt to have much opportunity to encourage such a gratuitous aversion: to-morrow would see him on the road again, his back forever turned to the Château de Montalais.... Or, if not to-morrow, then as soon as the storm abated. It was raging now as if it would never weaken and had the will to raze the château though it were the task of a thousand years. From time to time the shock of some great blast of air would seem to rock upon its foundations even that ancient pile, those heavy walls of hewn stone builded in times of honest workmanship by forgotten Sieurs de Montalais who had meant their home to outlast the ages. Rain in sheets sluiced the windows without rest. Round turrets and gables the wind raved and moaned like a famished wild thing denied its kill. Occasionally a venturesome gust with the spirit of a minor demon would find its way down the chimney to the drawing-room fire and send sparks in volleys against the screen, with thin puffs of wood smoke that lingered in the air like acrid ghosts. At such times the curé, sitting at piquet with Madame de Sévénié, after dinner, would cough distressingly and, reminded that he had a bed to reach somehow through all this welter, anathematise the elements, help himself to a pinch of snuff, and proceed with his play. Duchemin sat at a little distance, talking with Madame de Montalais over their cigarettes. To smoking, curiously enough, Madame de Sévénié offered no objection. Women had not smoked in her day, and she for her part would never. But Eve might: it was "done"; even in those circles of hidebound conservatism, the society of the Faubourg St. Germain, ladies of this day smoked unrebuked. Louise had excused herself--to sit, Duchemin had no doubt, by the bedside of d'Aubrac, under the duenna-like eye of an old nurse of the family. Being duly encouraged, Duchemin talked about himself, of his wanderings and adventures, all with discretion, with the neatest expurgations, and with an object, leading cunningly round to the subject of New York. At mention of it he saw a new light kindle in Eve's eyes. Her breath came more quickly, gentle emotion agitated her bosom. Monsieur knew New York? But well: he had been there as a boy, again as a young man; and then later, in the year when America entered the Great War; not since ... "It is my home," said Eve de Montalais softly, looking away. (One noted that she said "is"--not "was.") So Duchemin had understood. Madame had not visited her home recently? Not in many years; not in fact since nineteen-thirteen. She assumed the city must have changed greatly. Duchemin thought it was never the same, but forever changing itself overnight, so to speak; and yet always itself, always like no other city in the world, fascinating.... "Fascinating? But irresistible! How I long for it!" She was distrait for an instant. "My New York! Monsieur--would you believe?--I dream of it!" He had found a key to one chamber in the mansion of her confidence. As much to herself as to him, unconsciously dropping into English, she began to talk of her life "at home".... Her father had been a partner in a great jewellery house, Cottier's, of Paris, London, and New York. (So that explained it! She was wearing the blue diamond again tonight, with other jewels worth, in the judgment of a keen connoisseur, a king's ransom.) Schooled at an exclusive establishment for the daughters of people of fashion, Eve at an early age had made her début; but within the year her father died, and her mother, whose heart had always been in the city of her nativity, closed the house on East Fifty-seventh street and removed with her daughter to Paris. There Eve had met her future husband. Shortly after, her mother died. Eve returned to New York to attend to some business in connection with her estate, remaining only a few weeks, leaving almost reluctantly; but the new love was very sweet, she had looked forward joyfully to the final transplanting of her affections. And then the War, the short month of long, long days in the apartment on the avenue des Champs-Elysées, waiting, waiting, while the earth trembled to the tramp of armed men and the tireless rumbling of caissons and camions, and the air was vibrant with the savage dialogue of cannon, ever louder, daily more near.... She fell silent, sitting with bowed head and gaze remote. From the splendid jewels that adorned the fingers twisting together in her lap, the firelight struck coruscant gleams. "Now I hate Paris, I wish never to see it again." Duchemin uttered a sympathetic murmur. "But New York--?" "Ah, but sometimes I think I would give anything to be there once more!" The animation with which this confession was delivered proved transient. "Then I remind myself I have no one there--a few friends, yes, acquaintances; but no family ties, no one dear to me." "But--pardon--you stay here?" "It is beautiful here, monsieur." "But such solitude, such isolation--for you, madame!" "I know. Still, I am fond of the life here; it was here I found myself again, after my grief. And I am fond of my adopted mother and Louise, too, and they of me. Indeed, I am all they have left. Louise, of course, will marry before long, Georges"--she used d'Aubrac's given name--"will take her away, then Madame de Sévénié will have nobody but me. And at her age, it would be too sad..." Across the drawing-room that lady looked up from her cards and sharply interrogated a manservant who had silently presented himself to her attention. "What is it you want, Jean?" The servant mumbled his justification: An automobile had broken down on the highroad near the château, the chauffeur was unable to move the car or make any repairs in the storm, a gentleman had come to the door to ask.... He moved aside, indicating the doorway to the entrance hall, beyond which Mr. Phinuit was to be seen, standing with cap in hand, tiny rivulets running from the folds of his motor-coat and forming pools on the polished flooring. As in concerted movement Madame de Sévénié, Eve de Montalais, the curé and Duchemin approached, his cool, intelligent, good-humoured glance surveyed them swiftly, each in turn, and with unerring instinct settled on the first as the one to whom he must address himself. But the bow with which he also acknowledged the presence of Eve was hardly less profound; Duchemin himself, at his best, could hardly have bettered it. His manner, in fact, left nothing to be desired; and the French in which immediately he begged a thousand pardons for the intrusion was so admirable that it seemed hard to believe he was the same man who had, only a few hours earlier, composedly traded the slang of the States with a chauffeur in front of the Café de l'Univers. Mr. Phinuit was desolated to think he might be imposing on madame's good nature, but the accident was positive, the night truly inclement, madame la comtesse was already suffering from the cold, and if one might beg shelter for her and the gentlemen of the party while one telephoned or sent to Nant for another automobile.... But monsieur might feel very sure Madame de Sévénié would never forgive herself if the hospitality of the Château de Montalais failed at such a time. She would send servants to the car at once with lights, wraps, umbrellas.... There was no necessity for that. The remainder of the party had, it seemed, presumed upon her courtesy in anticipation, and was not far from the heels of its ambassador. Even while madame was speaking, Jean was opening the great front doors to those who proved--formal introductions being duly effect by Mr. Phinuit--to be Madame la Comtesse de Lorgnes, monsieur le comte, her husband (this was the well-fed body in tweeds) and Mr. Whitaker Monk, of New York. These personages were really not at all in a bad way. Their wraps were well peppered with rain, they were chilly, the footgear of madame la comtesse was wet and needed changing. But that was the worst of their plight. And when Mr. Phinuit, learning that there was no telephone, had accepted an offer of the Montalais motor car to tow the other under cover and so enable Jules to make repairs, and Eve de Montalais had carried madame la comtesse off to her own apartment to change her shoes and stockings, the gentlemen trooped to the drawing-room fire, at the instance of Madame de Sévénié, and grew quite cheerful under the combined influence of warmth and wine and biscuits; Duchemin standing by with a half-rejected doubt to preoccupy him, vaguely disturbed by the oddness of this rencontre considered in relation to that injudicious stop for dinner at Nant in the face of the impending storm, and with Mr. Phinuit's declaration that he didn't give a tupenny damn if they did all get soaked to their skins. It seemed far-fetched and ridiculous to imagine that people of their intelligence--and they were most of them unusually intelligent and alert, if demeanour and utterances might be taken as criterion--should adopt any such elaborate machinery of mystification and duplicity in order to gain an introduction to the Château de Montalais. With what possible motive...? But there was the devil of having a mind like Duchemin's: once it conceived a notion like that, it was all but impossible for him to dislodge it unless or until something happened to persuade him of his stupidity. Now to make his suspicions seem at all reasonable, a motive was lacking. And that worried the man hugely. He desired most earnestly to justify his captiousness; and to this end exercised a power of conscientious observation on his new acquaintances. Monsieur le Comte de Lorgnes he was disposed to pass at face value, as an innocuous being, good natured enough but none too brilliant, with much of the disposition of an overgrown boy and a rather boyish tendency to admire and imitate in others qualities which he did not himself possess. Mr. Phinuit had not returned, so there was no present opportunity to take further note of him; though Duchemin first inferred from Mr. Monk's manner, and later learned through a chance remark of his, that Phinuit was his secretary. Upon this Mr. Monk Duchemin concentrated close attention, satisfied that he had here to do with an extraordinary personality, if not one unique. Mr. Whitaker Monk might have been any age between thirty-five and fifty-five, so non-committal was that lantern-jawed countenance of a droll, with its heavy, black, eloquent eyebrows, its high and narrow forehead merging into an extensive bald spot fringed with greyish hair, its rather small, blue, illegible eyes, its high-bridged nose and prominent nostrils, its wide and thin-lipped mouth, its rather startling pallor. Taller by a head than anybody in the room except Duchemin, his figure was remarkably thin, yet not ill-proportioned. Neither was Mr. Monk ill at ease or ungraceful in his actions. Clothed in that extravagantly correct costume--correct, at least, for a drawing-room, if never for motoring--he had all the appearance of a comedian fresh from the hands of his dresser. One naturally expected of him mere grotesqueries--and found simply the courteous demeanour of a gentleman of the world. So much for externals. But what more? Nature herself had cast Mr. Monk in the very mould of a masquerader. What manner of man was hidden behind the mask? His words and deeds alone would tell; Duchemin could only weigh the one and await the other. In the meantime Mr. Monk was sketching rapidly for the benefit of Madame de Sévénié the excuse for his present plight. A chance meeting at Monte Carlo, he said, with his old friends, the Comte et Comtesse de Lorgnes, had resulted in their yielding to his insistence that they tour with him back to Paris by this roundabout way. "A whim of my age, madame." Somehow the nasal intonation of the American suited singularly well his fluent French; he seemed to have less trouble with his R's than most Anglo-Saxons. "As a young man--a younger man--ah, well, in Ninety-four, then--I explored this country on a walking tour, inspired by Stevenson. You know, perhaps, his diverting Travels with a Donkey? But I daresay its spirit would hardly have survived translation.... At all events, I had the whim to revisit some of those well-remembered scenes. I say some, for naturally it would be impossible, even with the vastly improved roads of to-day, for my automobile to penetrate everywhere I wandered afoot. Nor would I wish it to; a few disappointments, a few failures to recapture something of that first fine careless rapture, would instill a lyric melancholy; but too many would make one morbid.... Well, then: at Nant, in those old days, I once had a famous dinner; and naturally, returning, I must try to duplicate it, even though it meant going on to Millau in the rain. But alas! the Café de l'Univers is no more what it was--or I am grown over critical." What now of Duchemin's doubts? To tell the sad truth, they were just as strong as ever. The man was somehow prejudiced: he found Monk's story entirely too glib, and knew a mean sense of gratification when the curé interposed a gentle correction. "But in Ninety-four, monsieur, there was no Café de l'Univers in Nant." Astonished eyebrows climbed the forehead of Mr. Monk. "No, monsieur le curé? Truly not? Then it must have been another. How one's memory will play one false!" "How strange, then, is coincidence," Madame de Sévénié suggested. "You who made a walking tour of this country so long ago, monsieur, regard there that good Monsieur Duchemin, himself engaged upon just such an undertaking." Duchemin acknowledged with a humorous little nod Mr. Monk's look of moderate amazement at this so strange coincidence. "A whim of my age, monsieur," he said--"a project I have entertained since youth but always, till of late, lacked leisure to put into execution." "But is there anything more wonderful than the workings of the good God?" madame pursued. "Observe that, if Monsieur Duchemin had been suffered to indulge his inclination in youth, we should all, I, my daughter, my grand-daughter, even poor Georges d'Aubrac, would quite probably be lying dead at the bottom of a cirque at Montpellier-le-Vieux." Naturally the strangers required to know about that, and Madame de Sévénié would talk, in fact doted on telling the tale of that great adventure. Duchemin made a face of resignation, and heard himself extolled as a paladin for strength, address and valour; the truth being that he was not at all resigned and would infinitely liefer have been left out of the limelight. The more he was represented as a person of consequence, the less fair his chance to study these others at his leisure, in the comfortable obscurity of their indifference. Now the enigmatic eyes of Monk were boring into him, seeking to search his soul, with a question in their stare which he could not read and, quite likely, would have declined to answer if he could. Also the eyes of Monsieur le Comte de Lorgnes were very round and constant to him. And before Madame de Sévénié was finished, Phinuit strolled in and heard enough to make him subject Duchemin to a not unfriendly, steady and open inspection. And when the trumpets had been flourished finally for Duchemin, and he had dutifully assured madame that she was too generous and had acknowledged congratulations on his exploit, Phinuit strolled over and offered a hand. "Good work," he said in English. "Seen you before, haven't I, somewhere, Mr. Duchemin?" Under other circumstances Duchemin, not at all hoodwinked by this too obvious stratagem, would have taken mean pleasure in looking blank and begging monsieur to interpret himself in French. But, with or without cunning, Phinuit's question was well-timed: Eve de Montalais was at that moment entering the drawing-room with Madame la Comtesse de Lorgnes, and she knew very well that Duchemin's English was quite as good as his French. "At the Café de l'Univers, this afternoon," he replied frankly. "I remember. You drove away, just before the storm broke, in a ramshackle rig that must have come out of the Ark." "To come here, Mr. Phinuit." "Funny," said Phinuit, with hesitation, "your being there, and then our turning up here." Duchemin thought he knew what was on the other's mind. "I was immensely entertained--do you mind my saying so?--to hear the way your chauffeur talked to you, monsieur. Tell me: Is it the custom in your country--?" "Oh, Jules!" said Phinuit, and laughed. "Jules is my younger brother. When he was demobilised his job was gone, back home, and I wished him on Mr. Monk as a chauffeur. We're always kidding each other like that." Now what could be more reasonable? Duchemin wondered, and concluded that, if anything, it would be the truth. But he did not pretend to himself that he wasn't, quite illogically and with no provocation whatsoever, most vilely prejudiced against the lot of them. "But you must know America, to speak the language as well as you do." Duchemin nodded: "But very slightly, monsieur." "I was wondering ... Somehow I can't get it out of my head I've seen you somewhere before to-day." "It is quite possible: when one moves about the world, one is visible--n'est-ce pas, monsieur? But my home," Duchemin added, "is Paris." "I guess," said Phinuit in a tone of singular disappointment, "it must have been there I saw you." Duchemin's bow signified that he was content to let it go at that. Moreover, Monk was signalling to Phinuit with his expressive eyebrows. "What about the car, Phin?" Examining his wrist watch, Phinuit drew near his employer. "Jules should not need more than half an hour now, monsieur." Was there, in this employment of French to respond to a question couched in English, the suggestion of a subtle correction? From employé to employer? If not, why must Duchemin have thought so? If so, why did Monk, without betraying a sign of feeling the reproof, continue in French? "Did Jules say half an hour?" "Yes, monsieur." "My God!" Monk addressed the company: "If I were pressed for time, I would rather have one of Jules' half-hours than anybody else's hour and a half." "Let us hope, however," the Comtesse de Lorgnes interposed sweetly, "by that time this so dreadful tempest will have moderated." "One has that hope," her husband uttered in a sepulchral voice. "But, if the storm continue," Madame de Sévénié said, "you must not think of travelling farther--on such a night. The château is large, there is ample accommodation for all..." There was a negligible pause, during which Duchemin saw the long lashes of the Comtesse de Lorgnes curtain momentarily her disastrous violet eyes: it was a sign of assent. Immediately it was followed by the least of negative movements of her head. She was looking directly at Phinuit, who, so far as Duchemin could see, made no sign of any sort, who neither spoke nor acted on the signals which, indubitably, he had received. On the other hand, it was Monk who acknowledged the proffered courtesy. "Madame de Sévénié is too good, but we could not dream of imposing ... No, but truly, madame, I am obliged to ask my guests to proceed with me to Millau to-night regardless of the weather. Important despatches concerning my business await me there; I must consider them and reply by cable to-night without fail. It is really of the most pressing necessity. Otherwise we should be honoured..." Madame de Sévénié inclined her head. "It must be as monsieur thinks best." "But Monsieur Monk!" madame la comtesse exclaimed with vivacity: "do you know what I have just discovered? You and Madame de Montalais are compatriots. She is of your New York. You must know each other." "I have been wondering," Monk admitted, bowing to Eve, "if it were possible I could be misled by a strong resemblance." Eve turned to him with a look of surprise. "Yes, monsieur?" "It is many years ago, you were a young girl then, if it was truly you, madame; but I have a keen eye for beauty, I do not soon forget it ... I was in the private office of my friend, Edmund Anstruther, of Cottier's, one afternoon, selecting a trinket with his advice, and--" "That was my father, monsieur." "Then it was you, madame; I felt sure of it. You came in unannounced, to see your father. He made me known to you as a friend of his, and requested you to wait in an adjoining office. But that was not necessary, I had already made up my mind, I left almost immediately. Do you by any chance remember?" The effort of the memory knitted Eve's brows; but in the end she shook her head. "I am sorry, monsieur--" "But why should you be? Why should you have remembered me? You were a young girl, then, as I say, and I already a man of middle age. You saw me once, for perhaps two minutes. It would have been a miracle had I remained in your memory for as long as a single day. Nevertheless, _I_ remembered." "I am so glad to meet a friend of my father's, monsieur." "And I to recall myself to his daughter. I have often wondered ... Would you mind telling me something, Madame de Montalais?" "If I can..." "Your father and I entertained one passion in common, one which he was better able than I to gratify, for good diamonds and emeralds. I have often wondered what became of his collection. He had some superb stones." "I inherited them, monsieur." "They did not find their way into Cottier's stock, then?" The Comtesse de Lorgnes gave a gesture of excitement. "But what a fortunate woman! You truly have those magnificent emeralds, those almost matchless diamonds, of which one has heard--the Anstruther collection?" "I have them, Madame la Comtesse," said Eve with a smiling nod--"yes." "But, one presumes, in Paris, in some impregnable strong-box." "No, madame, here." "But not here, Madame de Montalais!" To this Eve gave another nod and smile. "But are you not afraid--?" "Of what, madame? That they will be stolen? No. They have been in my possession for years--indeed, I should be unhappy otherwise, for I have inherited my father's fondness for them--and nobody has ever even attempted to steal them." "But what of the affair at Montpellier the other night?" enquired the Comte de Lorgnes--"that terrible attack upon you of which Madame de Sévénié has just told us? Surely you would call that an attempt to steal." "Simple highway robbery, if you like, monsieur le comte. But even had it proved successful, I had very few jewels with me. All that mattered, all that I would have minded losing, were here, in a safe place." "Nevertheless," said Monk--"if you will permit me to offer a word of advice--I think you are very unwise." "It may be, monsieur." "Nonsense!" Madame de Sévénié declared. "Who would dare attempt to burglarise the Château de Montalais? Such a thing was never heard of." "There is always the first time for everything, Madame," Monk suggested gently. "I fancy it was your first experience of the sort, at Montpellier." "A rascally chauffeur from Paris, a few low characters of the department. Since the war things are not as they were." "That is the very reason why I suggest, madame--" "But, monsieur, I assure you all my life I have lived at Montalais. Monsieur le curé will tell you I know every face hereabouts. And I know that these poor country-folk, these good-natured dolts of peasants have not the imagination, much less the courage--" "But what of criminals from outside, from the great cities, from London and Paris and Berlin? They have the imagination, the courage, the skill; and if they ever get wind of the fortune Madame de Montalais keeps locked up here..." "What of the Lone Wolf?" the Comtesse de Lorgnes added. "I have heard that one is once more in France." Duchemin blinked incredulously at the speaker. "But when did you hear that, madame la comtesse?" "Quite recently, monsieur." "I had understood that the monsieur in question had long since retired." "Only for the duration of the war, monsieur, I am afraid." "It is true, according to all reports," the Comte de Lorgnes said: "Monsieur Lanyard--that was the name, was it not?" "If memory serves, monsieur le comte," Duchemin agreed. "Yes." The count screwed his chubby features into a laughable mask of gravity. "Now one remembers quite well. He passed as a collector of objets d'art, especially of fine paintings, in Paris, for years before the War--this Monsieur Michael Lanyard. Then he disappeared. It was rumoured that he was of good service to the Allies as a spy, acting independently; and after the Armistice, I have heard, he did well for England in the matter of a Bolshevist conspiracy over there. But not long ago, according to my information, Monsieur the Lone Wolf resigned from the British Secret Service and returned to France--doubtless to resume his old practices." "Perhaps not," Duchemin suggested. "Possibly his reformation was genuine and lasting." The Comtesse de Lorgnes laughed that laugh of light derision which is almost exclusively the laugh of the Parisienne of a certain class. Remarking this, Duchemin eyed her mildly. "Madame la Comtesse does not believe that. Well--who knows?--perhaps she is right. Possibly she knows more of the nature and habits of the criminal classes than we, sharing as she does, no doubt, the apparently accurate and precise sources of information of monsieur le comte." "At all events," Phinuit put in promptly, "I know what I would do if I possessed a little fortune in jewels, and learned that a thief of the ability of this Lone Wolf was at large in France: I would charter an armoured train to convey the loot to the strongest safe deposit vault in Paris." "Thereby advertising to the Lone Wolf the exact location of the jewels, monsieur, so that he might at his leisure make his plans perfect to burglarise the vaults?" "Is that likely?" Phinuit jeered. Duchemin gave a slight shrug. "One has heard that the fellow had real ability," he said. The servant Jean came in, caught the eye of Madame de Sévénié, and announced: "The chauffeur of Monsieur Monk wishes me to say he has completed repairs on the automobile, and the rain has ceased." VII TURN ABOUT Duchemin took back with him to Nant, that night, not only monsieur le curé in the hired calèche, but food in plenty for thought, together with a nebulous notion, which by the time he woke up next morning had taken shape as a fixed conviction, that he had better resign himself to stop on indefinitely at the Grand Hôtel de l'Univers and ... see what he should see. That fatality on which he had so bitterly reflected when; acting as emergency coachman en route from Montpellier-le-Vieux to La Roque-Sainte-Marguerite, had him now fairly by the heels, as it were his very shadow, something as tenacious, as inescapable. Or he had been given every excuse for believing that such was the case. Impossible--and the more so the longer he pondered it--to credit to mere coincidence the innuendoes uttered at the château by Mr. Monk and his party. No: there had been malice in that, Duchemin was satisfied, if not some darker purpose which perplexed the most patient scrutiny. Now malice without incentive is unthinkable. But Duchemin searched his memory in vain for anything he could have said or done to make anybody desire to discredit him in the sight of the ladies of the Château de Montalais. Still the attempt so to do had been unmistakable: the Lone Wolf had been lugged into the conversation literally by his legendary ears. Surely, one would think, that nocturnal prowler of pre-War Paris had been so long dead and buried even the most ghoulish gossip should respect his poor remains and not disinter them merely to demonstrate that the Past can never wholly die! Had he, then, some enemy of old hidden under one of those sleek surfaces? An excellent visual memory reviewed successively the physical characteristics of Messieurs Monk, Phinuit and de Lorgnes, and their chauffeur Jules; with the upshot that Duchemin could have sworn that he had never before known any of these. And Madame la Comtesse? In respect of that one memory again drew a blank, but remained unsatisfied. When one thought of her some remote, faint chord of reminiscence thrilled and hummed, but never recognisably. Not that there was anything remarkable in this: if one cared to look for them, the world was thronged with women such as she, handsome, spirited, well-groomed animals endued with some little distinction of manner, native or acquired, with every appeal to the senses and more or less, generally spurious, to the intelligence. They made the theatre possible in France, leavened the social life of the half-world, fluttered conspicuously and often disastrously through circles of more sedate society, had their portraits in every Salon, their photographs in every issue of the fashionable journals. Some made history, others fiction: either would be insufferably dull lacking their influence. But they were as much alike as so many peas, out of their several shells, and the man who saw one inevitably remembered all. Setting aside then the theory of positive personal animus, what other reason could there be for the effort to fasten upon Duchemin suspicion of identity with the late Lone Wolf? A sinister consideration, if any, and one, Duchemin suspected, not unconnected with the much-talked-about jewels of Madame de Montalais... But it was absurd to believe that persons fostering a design of such nature would so deliberately and obviously advertise their purpose! Cheerfully admitting that he was an imbecile to think of such a thing, Duchemin set his mental alarm for six the following morning, rose at that hour, and by eight had tramped the five miles between Nant and the nearest railway station, Combe-Redonde; where he despatched a code telegram to London, requesting any information it might have or be able to obtain concerning Mr. Whitaker Monk of New York and the several members of his party; the said information to be forwarded in code to await the arrival of Andre Duchemin at the Hôtel du Commerce, Millau. And then, partly to kill time, partly to get himself in trim for to-morrow's trip, which he meant to make strictly in character as the pedestrian tourist, he walked round three sides of a square in returning to Nant--by way, that is, of Sauclières and the upper valley of the Dourbie. In the rich sunshine that fell from a cloudless sky--even the twin peaks that stood sentinel over Nant had shamelessly put off their yashmaks for the day--the rain-fresh world was sweet to see; and Duchemin found himself consuming leagues with heels strangely light; or he thought their lightness strange until he discovered the buoyance of his heart, which wasn't strange at all. He knew too well the cause of that; and had given over fretting about the inevitable. The sum of his philosophy was now: _What must be, must_ .It would have been difficult to be unhappy in the knowledge that one retained still the capacity to love generously, honourably, expecting nothing, exacting nothing, regretting nothing, not even in anticipation of the ultimate, inevitable heartache. Toward mid-afternoon a solitary mischance threw a passing shadow upon his content. As he trudged along the river road, on the last lap of his journey--Nant almost in sight--he heard a curious, intermittent rumble on a steep hillside whose foot was skirted by the road, and sought its cause barely in time to leap for life out of the path of a great boulder that, dislodged from its bed, possibly by last night's deluge, was hurtling downhill with such momentum that it must have crushed Duchemin to a pulp had he been less alert. Striking the road with an impact that left a deep, saucer-shaped dent, with one final bound the huge stone, amid vast splashings, found its last resting place in the river. Duchemin moved out of the way of the miniature avalanche that followed, and for some minutes stood reviewing with a truculent eye the face of the hillside. But nothing moved thereon, it was quite bare of good cover, little more than a slant of naked earth and shale, dotted manywhere with boulders, cousins to that which sought his life--none, however, so large. If human agency had moved it, the stone had come from the high skyline of the hill; and by the time one could climb to this last, Duchemin was sure, there would be nobody there to find. The remainder of the afternoon was wasted utterly on the terrasse of the Café de l'Univers, with the château ever in view, wishing it were convenable to make one's duty call without more delay. But it wasn't; not to wait a decent interval would be self-betraying, since Duchemin had no longer any immediate intention of moving on from Nant; finally, he rather hoped to get news at Millau that would strengthen a prayer to Eve de Montalais to be sensible and remove her jewels to a place of safe-keeping before it was too late. Millau, however, disappointed. At the end of a twenty-mile walk on a day of suffocating heat, Duchemin plodded wearily into the Hôtel du Commerce, engaged a room for the night, and was given a telegram from London which rewarded decoding to some such effect as this: "MONK AMERICAN INDEPENDENT MEANS GOOD REPUTE NO INFORMATION AS TO OTHERS HAVE ASKED SURÉTÉ CONCERNING LORGNES WOULD GIVE SOMETHING TO KNOW WHAT MISCHIEF YOU ARE MEDDLING WITH THIS TRIP AND WHY THE DEUCE YOU MUST." Few things are better calculated to curdle the milk of human kindness than to find that one's fellow-man has meanly contrived to keep his reputation fair when one is satisfied it should be otherwise. Duchemin used bitter language in strict confidence with himself, disliked his dinner and, after conscientiously loathing the sights of Millau for an hour or two, sought his bed in the devil's own humour. Though he waited till eleven of the following forenoon, there was no supplementary telegram: London evidently meant him to understand that the Surété in Paris had communicated nothing to the discredit of Monsieur le Comte de Lorgnes and his consort. Enquiry of the administration of the Hôtel de Commerce elicited the information that the Monk party had stopped there on the night of the storm, doubled back in the morning to visit Montpellier-le-Vieux, returning for midday déjeuner, and had then proceeded for Paris, just like any other well-behaved company of tourists. There was nothing more to be done but go back to Nant and--what made it even more disgusting--nothing to be done there except ... wait... Thoroughly disgruntled, more than half persuaded he had staked a claim for a mare's-nest, he took the road in the heat of a day even more oppressive than its yesterday. In the valley of the Dourbie the air was stagnant, lifeless. After eight miles of it Duchemin was guilty of two mistakes of desperation. In the first instance he paused in La Roque-Sainte-Marguerite and, tormented by thirst, refreshed himself at the auberge where the barouche and guide had been hired to convey the party from Montalais on to Montpellier. The landlord remembered Duchemin and made believe he didn't, serving the wayfarer with a surly grace the only drink he would admit he had to sell, an atrociously acid cider fit to render the last stage of thirst worse than the first. Duchemin, however, thought it safer than the water of the place, when he had spied out the associations of the well. He drank sitting on a bench outside the door of the auberge. He could hear the voice of the landlord inside, grumbling and growling, to what purport he couldn't determine. But it wasn't difficult to guess; and before Duchemin was finished he had testimony to the rightness of his surmise, finding himself the cynosure of more than a few pair of eyes set in the ill-favoured faces of natives of La Roque. One gathered that the dead guide had enjoyed a fair amount of local popularity. While Duchemin drank and smoked and pored over a pocket-map of the department, a lout of a lad shambled out of the auberge wearing a fixed scowl in no degree mitigated by the sight of the customer. In the dooryard, which was also the stableyard, the boy caught and saddled a dreary animal, apparently a horse designed by a Gothic architect, mounted, and rode off in the direction of Nant. Then Duchemin committed his second error of judgment, which consisted in thinking to find better and cooler air on the heights of the Causse Larzac, across the river, together with a shorter way to Nant--indicated on the pocket-map as a by-road running in a tolerably direct line across the plateau--than that which followed the windings of the stream. Accordingly he crossed the Dourbie, toiled up a zig-zag path cut in the face of the frowning cliff, reached the top in a bath of sweat, and sat down to cool and breathe himself. The view was splendid, almost worth the climb. Duchemin could see for miles up and down the valley, a panorama wildly picturesque and limned like a rainbow. Across the way La Roque-Sainte-Marguerite stood out prominently and with such definition in that clear air that Duchemin identified the figure of the landlord, standing in the door of the auberge with arms raised and elbows thrust out on a level with his eyes: the pose of a man using field-glasses. Duchemin wondered if he ought to feel complimented. Then he looked up the valley and saw, far off, a tiny cloud of dust kicked up by the heels of the horse ridden by the boy from the auberge, making good time on the highway to Nant. And again Duchemin wondered... Having rested, he picked himself up, found his road, a mere trail of wagon tracks, and mindful of the cooling drinks to be had in the Café de l'Univers, put his best foot foremost. After a time something, call it instinct, impelled him to look back the way he had come. Half a mile distant he saw the figure of a peasant following the same road. Duchemin stopped and waited for the other to come up, thinking to get a better look at him, perhaps some definite information about the road and in particular as to his chances of finding drinkable water. But when he stopped the man stopped, sat him down upon a rock, filled a pipe, and conspicuously rested. Duchemin gave an impatient gesture and moved on. After another mile he glanced overshoulder again. The same peasant occupied the same relative distance from him. But if the fellow were following him with a purpose, he could readily lose himself in that wild land before Duchemin could run him down; and if, on the contrary, he proved to be only a peaceable wayfarer, he was bound to be a dull companion on the road, and an unsavory one to boot. So Duchemin did nothing to discourage his voluntary shadow; but looking back from time to time, never failed to see that squat, round-shouldered figure in the middle distance of the landscape, following him with the doggedness of Fate. Toward evening, however, of a sudden--between two glances--the fellow disappeared as completely and mysteriously as if he had fallen or dived into an aven. Thus definite mental irritation was added to the physical discomforts he suffered. For if anything it was hotter on the high causse than it had been in the valley. An intermittent breeze imitated to vicious perfection draughts from a furnace. And if this were a short cut to Nant, Duchemin's judgment was gravely at fault. Otherwise the journey was not unlike an exaggerated version of his walk from Meyrueis to Montpellier-le-Vieux, except that the road was clearly marked and he found less climbing to do. He saw neither hamlets nor farmsteads, and found no water. By the middle of the afternoon his thirst had become sheer torture. In dusk of evening he stumbled down into the valley again and struck the river road about midway between the Château de Montalais and Nant. At this junction several dwellings clustered, in that fading light dark masses on either side of the road. Duchemin noticed a few shadowy shapes loitering about, but was too far gone in fatigue and thirst to pay them any heed. He had no thought but to stop at the first house and beg a cup of water. As he lifted a hand to knuckle the door he was attacked. With no more warning than a cry, the signal for the onslaught, and the sudden scuffling noise of several pair of feet, he wheeled, found himself already closely pressed by a number of men, and struck out at random. His stick landed on somebody's head with a resounding thump followed by a yell of pain. Then three men were grappling with him, two more seeking to aid them, and another lay in the roadway clutching a fractured skull and spitting oaths and groans. His stick was seized and wrenched away, he was over-whelmed by numbers. The knot of struggling figures toppled and went to the dust, Duchemin underneath, so weighed down that he could not for the moment move a hand toward his pistol. Half-stifled by the reek of unwashed flesh, he heard broken phrases growled in voices hoarse with effort and excitement: "The knife!" ... "Hold him!" ... "Stand clear and let me--!" ... "The knife!" Struggling madly, he worked a leg free and kicked with all his might. One of his assailants howled aloud and fell back to nurse a broken shin. Two others scrambled out of the way, leaving one to pin him down with knees upon his chest, another to wield the knife. Staring eyes caught a warning gleam on descending steel. Duchemin squirmed frantically to one side, and felt cold metal kiss the skin over his ribs as the blade penetrated his clothing, close under the armpit. Before the man with the knife could strike again, Duchemin, roused to a mightier effort, threw off the ruffian on his chest, got on his knees and, raining blows right and left as the others closed in again, somehow managed to scramble to his feet. Fist-work told. For an instant he stood quite free, the centre of a circle of uncertain assassins whose cowardice gave him time to whip out his pistol. But before he could level it a man was on his back, his wrist was seized and the weapon twisted from his grasp. A cry of triumph was echoed by exclamations of alarm as, disarmed, Duchemin was again left free, the thugs standing back to let the pistol do its work. In that instant a broad sword of light swung round a nearby corner and smote the group: the twin, glaring eyes of a motor car flooded with blue-white radiance that tableau of one man at bay in the middle of the road, in a ring of merciless enemies. Duchemin's cry for help was uttered only an instant before his pistol exploded in alien hands. The headlights showed him distinctly the face of the man who fired, the same face of fat features black with soot that he had seen by moonlight at Montpellier-le-Vieux. But the bullet went wild, and the automobile did not stop, but drove directly at the group and so swiftly that the flash of the shot was still vivid in Duchemin's vision when the car swept between him and those others, scattering them like chickens. Simultaneously the brakes were set, the dark bulk began to slide with locked wheels to a stop, and a voice cried: "Quickly, monsieur, quickly!"--the voice of Eve de Montalais. In two bounds Duchemin overtook the car and before it had come to a standstill leaped upon the running-board and grasped the side. He had one glimpse of the set white face of Eve, en profile, as she bent forward, manipulating the gear-shift. Then the pistol spat again, its bullet struck him a blow of sickening agony in the side. Aware that he was dangerously wounded, he put all that he had left of strength and will into one final effort, throwing his body across the door. As he fell sprawling into the tonneau consciousness departed like a light withdrawn. VIII IN RE AMOR ET AL. In the course of two weeks or so Duchemin was able to navigate a wheeled chair, bask on the little balcony outside his bedchamber windows in the Château de Montalais, and even--strictly against orders--take experimental strolls. The wound in his side still hurt like the very deuce at every ill-considered movement; but Duchemin was ever the least patient of men unless the will that coerced him was his own; constraint to another's, however reasonable, irked him to exasperation; so that these falterings in forbidden ways were really (as he assured Eve de Montalais when, one day, she caught him creeping round his room, one hand pressed against the wall for support, the other to his side) in the nature of a sop to his self-respect. "You've only got to tell me not to do a thing often enough," he commented as she led him back to his chair, "to fill me with unholy desire to do it if I die in the attempt." "Isn't that a rather common human failing?" she asked, wheeling the invalid chair through one of the french windows to the balcony. "That's what makes it all seem so unfair." Smiling, the woman turned the back of the chair to the brightest glare of sunshine, draped a light rug over the invalid's knees, and seated herself in a wicker chair, facing him. "Makes all what seem so unfair?" "The indignity of being born human." He accepted a cigarette and waxed didactic: "The one thing that the ego can find to reconcile it with existence is belief in its own uniquity." "I don't think," she interrupted with a severe face belied by amused eyes, "that sounds quite nice." "Uniquity? Because it sounds like iniquity? They are not unrelated. What makes iniquity seem attractive is as a rule its departure from the commonplace." "But you were saying--?" "Merely it's our personal belief that our emotions and sensations and ways of thought are peculiar to ourselves, individually, that sometimes makes the game seem worth the scandal." "Yes: one presumes we all do think that..." "But no sooner does one get firmly established in that particular phase of self-complacence than along comes Life, grinning like a gamin, and kicks over our pretty house of cards--shows us up to ourselves by revealing our pet, exclusive idiosyncrasies as simple infirmities all mortal flesh is heir to." "Monsieur is cynic..." "Madame means obvious. Well: if I patter platitudes it is to conceal a sense of gratification." Eve arched her eyebrows. "I mean, you have shown me that I share at least one quality with you: instinctive resentment of the voice of reason." She pronounced a plaintive "Mon Dieu!" and appealing to Heaven for compassion declared: "He means again to wrestle spiritually with me about the proper disposition of my jewels." "No, madame: pardon. I am contemplating a long series of exhaustive arguments designed to prove it your duty to leave your jewels where they are, in all their noble insecurity. This in the firm belief that to plead with you long enough to adopt this course will result in your going and doing otherwise out of sheer..." "Perversity, monsieur?" "Humanity, madame!" Eve de Montalais laughed the charming, low-keyed laugh of a happily diverted woman. "But spare yourself, monsieur. I surrender at discretion: I will do as you wish." "Truly? Rather than listen to my discourse, you actually agree to remove your jewels to a safe place?" "Even so, monsieur. As soon as you are able to get about, and the Château de Montalais lacks a guest, I will leave Louise to take care of madame ma mère for a few days while I journey to Paris--" "Alone?" "But naturally." "Taking your jewels with you?" "Why else do I go?" "But, madame, you must not--" "And why?" "You, a woman! travel alone to Paris with a treasure in jewels? Ah, no! I should say not!" "Monsieur is emphatic," Eve suggested demurely. "Monsieur means to be. Rather than let you run such a risk I would steal the jewels myself, convey them to Paris, put them in safe keeping, and send you the receipt." "What a lot of trouble monsieur would save me, if he would only be so kind as to do as he threatens." "And how amusing if he were arrested en route," Duchemin supplemented with a wry smile. "I am quite confident of your ability to elude the police, monsieur." "Do I hear you compliment me?" "If you take it so..." "But suppose you were not confident of my good will?" "Impossible." "Madame is too flattering; one is sure she is too wise to put so great a temptation in the way of any man." "Monsieur is the reverse of flattering; he implies that one does not know where one can repose trust." "I must warn madame there are those in this world who would call her faith misplaced." "Doubtless. But what of that? Am I to distrust you because others might who do not know you so well?" "But--madame--you can hardly claim to know me well. "Listen, my friend." Eve de Montalais flicked away her cigarette and sat forward, elbows on knees, hands laced, her level gaze holding his. "It is true, our acquaintance is barely three weeks old; but you do injustice to my insight if you assume I have learned nothing about you in all that time. You have not been secretive with me. The mask you hold between yourself and the world, lest it pry into what does not concern it, has been lowered when you have talked with me; and I have had eyes to see what was revealed--" "Ah, madame!" "--the nature of a man of honour, monsieur, simple of heart and generous, as faithful as he is brave." Eve had spoken impulsively, with warmth of feeling unrealised until too late. Now slow colour mantled her cheeks. But her eyes remained steadfast, candid, unashamed. It was Duchemin who dropped his gaze, abashed. And though nothing had any sense in his understanding other than the words which he had just heard from the lips of the woman who held his love--as he had known now these many days--some freak of dual consciousness made him see, for the first time, in that moment, how oddly bleached and wasted seemed the powerful, nervous, brown hands that rested on his knees. And he thought: It will be long before I am strong again. With a troubled smile he said: "I would give much to be worthy of what you think of me, madame. And I would be a poor thing indeed if I failed to try to live up to your faith." "You will not fail," she replied. "What you are, you were before my faith was, and will be afterwards, when..." She did not finish, but of a sudden recollected herself, lounged back in her chair, and laughed quietly, with humorous appeal to his sympathy. "So, that is settled: I am not to be permitted to take my jewels to Paris alone. What then, monsieur?" "I would suggest you write your bankers," said Duchemin seriously, "and tell them that you contemplate bringing to Paris some valuables to entrust to their care. Say that you prefer not to travel without protection, and request them to send you two trusted men--detectives, they may call them--to guard you on the way. They will do so without hesitation, and you may then feel entirely at ease." "Not otherwise, you think?" "Not otherwise, I feel sure." "But why? You have been so persistent about this matter, monsieur. Ever since that night when those curious people stopped here in the rain.... Can it be that you suspect them of evil designs upon my trinkets?" Duchemin shrugged. "Who knows, madame, what they were? You call them 'curious'; for my part I find the adjective apt." "I fancy I know what you thought about them..." "And that is--?" "That they rather led the conversation to the subject of my jewels." "Such was my thought, indeed." "Perhaps you were right. If so, they learned all they needed to know." "Except possibly the precise location of your strong box." "They may have learned even that." "How, madame?" "I don't know; but if they were what you suspect they were, they were clever people, far more clever than poor provincials like us." She took a moment for thought. "But I am puzzled by their harping on the subject of--I think they called him the Lone Wolf. Now why should they do that?" Duchemin was constrained to take refuge in another shrug. "Who knows?" he iterated. "If they were as clever as we assume, doubtless they were clever enough to have a motive even for that." "He really existed, this Lone Wolf? He was more than a creature of fable?" "Assuredly, madame. For years he was the nightmare and the scourge of people of wealth in every capital of Europe." "Why did they call him the Lone Wolf, do you know?" "I believe some imaginative Parisian journalist fixed that sobriquet on him, in recognition of the theory upon which, apparently, he operated." "And that was--?" "That a criminal, at least a thief, to be successful must be absolutely anonymous and friendless; in which case nobody can betray him. As madame probably understands, criminals above a certain level of intelligence are seldom caught by the police except through the treachery of accomplices. The Lone Wolf seems to have exercised a fair amount of ingenuity and prudence in making his coups; and inasmuch as he had no confederates, not a living soul in his confidence, there was no one who could sell him to the authorities." "Still, in the end--?" "Oh, no, madame. He was never caught. He simply ceased to thieve." "I wonder why..." "I believe because he fell in love and considered good faith with the object of his affections incompatible with a career of crime." "So he gave up crime. How romantic! And the woman: did she appreciate the sacrifice?" "While she lived, yes, madame. Or so they say. Unfortunately, she died." "And then--?" "So far as is known the converted enemy to Society did not backslide; the Lone Wolf never prowled again." "An extraordinary story." "But is not every story that has to do with the workings of the human soul? What one of us has not buried in him a story quite as strange? Even you--" "Monsieur deceives himself. I am simply--what you see." "But what I see is not simple, but complex and intriguing beyond expression. A woman of your sort walling herself up in a wilderness, renouncing the world, renouncing life itself in its very heyday--!" "But hardly that, monsieur." "Then I am stupid..." "I will explain." The sleekly coiffured brown head bent low over hands that played absently with their jewels. "To a woman of my sort, monsieur, life is not life without love. I lived once for a little time, then love was taken out of my life. When my sorrow had spent itself, I knew that I must find love again if I were to go on living. What was I to do? I knew that love is not found through seeking. So I waited..." "Such philosophy is rare, madame." "Philosophy? No: I will not call it that. It was knowledge--the heart wise in its own wisdom, surpassing mine, telling me that if I would but be patient love would one day seek me out again, wherever I might wait, and give me once more--life." She rose and went to the window, paused there, turning back to Duchemin a face composed but fairer for a deepened flush. "But this is not writing to my bankers, monsieur," she said in a changed but steady voice. "I must do that at once if I am to get the letter in to-day's post." "If madame will accept the advice of one not without some experience..." "What else does monsieur imagine I am doing?" "Then you will write privately and burn your blotting paper; after which you will post the letter with your own hands, letting nobody see the address." "And when shall I say I will make the journey?" "As soon as your bankers can send their people to the Château de Montalais." "That will be in three days..." "Or less." "As soon as your bankers can send their people to the Château de Montalais." "That will be in three days..." "Or less." "But you will not be strong enough to leave us within another week." "What has that to do--?" "This: that I refuse positively to go away while you are our guest, monsieur. Somebody must watch over you and see that you come to no harm." "But madame--!" "No: I am quite resolved. Monsieur has too rare a genius for getting in the way of danger. I shall not leave the château before you do. So I shall set this day week for the date of my journey." IX BLIND MAN'S BUFF In short, Monsieur Duchemin considered convalescence at the Chateau de Montalais one of the most agreeable of human estates, and counted the cost of admission thereunto by no means dear; and with all his grousing (in respect of which he was conscientious, holding it at once a duty and a perquisite of his disability) he was at heart in no haste whatever to be discharged as whole and hale. The plain truth is, the man malingered shamelessly and even took a certain pride in the low cunning which enabled him to pose on as the impatient patient when he was so very well content to take his ease, be waited on and catered to, and listen for the footsteps of Eve de Montalais and the accents of her delightful voice. These last he heard not often enough by half. Still, he seldom lacked company in the long hours when Eve was busy with the petty duties of her days, and left him lorn. Madame de Sévénié had taken a flattering fancy to him, and frequently came to gossip beside his bed or chair. He found her tremendously entertaining, endowed as she was with an excellent and well-stored memory, a gift of caustic characterization and a pretty taste in the scandal of her bygone day and generation, as well as with a mind still active and better informed on the affairs of to-day than that of many a Parisienne of the haute monde and half her age. During the first bedridden week, Georges d'Aubrac visited Duchemin at least once each day to compare wounds and opinions concerning the inefficiency of the local gendarmerie. For that body accomplished nothing toward laying by the heels the authors of the attacks on d'Aubrac and Duchemin, but (for all Duchemin can say to the contrary) is still following "clues" with the fruitless diligence of so many American police detectives on the trail of a bank messenger accused of stealing bonds. A decent, likable chap, this d'Aubrac, as reticent as any Englishman concerning his part in the Great War. Duchemin had to talk round the subject for days before d'Aubrac confessed that his record in the French air service had won him the title of Ace; and this only when Duchemin found out that d'Aubrac was at present, in his civilian capacity, managing director of an establishment manufacturing airplanes. At the end of that week he left to go back to his business; and Louise de Montalais replaced him at Duchemin's side, where she would sit by the hour reading aloud to him in a voice as colourless as her unformed personality. Nevertheless Duchemin was grateful, and with the young girl as guide for the _nth_ time sailed with d'Artagnan to Newcastle and rode with him toward Belle Isle, with him frustrated the machinations of overweening Aramis and yawned over the insufferable virtues of that most precious prig of all Romance, Raoul, Vicomte de Bragelonne. But the third week found Duchemin mending all too rapidly; the time came too soon when the word "to-morrow" held for him all the dread significance, he assured himself, that it holds for a condemned man on the eve of execution. To-morrow the detectives commissioned by Madame de Montalais's bankers would arrive. To-morrow Eve would set out on her journey to Paris. To-morrow André Duchemin must walk forth from the Château de Montalais and turn his back on all that was most dear to him in life. On that last day he saw even less of Eve than usual. She was naturally busy with preparations for her trip, a trifle excited, too; it would be only the third time she had left the château for as long as overnight since returning to it after her husband's death. When Duchemin did see her, she seemed at once exhilarated and subdued, and he thought to detect in her attitude toward him a trace of apprehensiveness. She knew, of course; Duchemin at thirty-eight was too well versed in lore of women to dream he had succeeded in keeping his secret from the fine intuition of one of thirty. But--he told himself a bit bitterly--she ought to know him well enough by this time to know more, that she need not fear he would ever speak his heart to her. The social gulf that set their lives apart was all too wide to be spanned but by a miracle of love requited; and he had too much humility and naivété of soul to presume that such a thing could ever come to pass. And even if it should, there remained the insuperable barrier of her fortune, in the face of which the pretensions of a penniless adventurer could only seem silly.... He was permitted to be about the house in the afternoon and to dine with Eve and Louise in the draughty, shadow-haunted dining hall. Madame de Sévénié was indisposed and kept to her room; she suffered from time to time from an affection of the heart, nothing remarkable in one of her advanced age and so no excuse for unusual misgivings. But the presence of the young girl in some measure, and the emotions of the others in greater, lent the conversation a constraint against which Duchemin's attempts at levity could not prevail. The talk languished and revived fitfully only when some indifferent, impersonal topic offered itself. The weather, for example, enjoyed unwonted vogue. It happened to be drizzling; Eve was afraid of a rainy morrow. She confessed to a minor superstition, she did not really like to start a journey in the rain... She smoked only one cigarette with Duchemin in the drawing-room after dinner, then excused herself to wait on Madame de Sévénié and finish her packing. It was time, too, for Duchemin to remember he was still an invalid and subject to a régime prescribed by his surgeon: he must go early to his bed. "I am sorry, mon ami," the woman said, hesitating after she had left her chair before the fire; whose play of broken light was, perhaps, responsible for some of the softness of her eyes as she faced Duchemin and gave him her hand--"sorry our last evening together must be so brief. I am in the mood to sit and talk with you for hours to-night..." "If you could only manage even one, madame!" She shook her head gently, with a wistful smile. "There will never be another night..." "I know, I know; and the knowledge makes me very sad. I have enjoyed knowing you, monsieur, even under such distressing circumstances..." "My wound? You tempt me to seek another!" "Don't be absurd." He was still holding her hand, and she made no move to free it, but seeming forgetful of it altogether, lingered on. "I shall miss you, monsieur. The château will seem lonely when I return, I shall feel its loneliness more than I have ever felt it." "And the world, madame," said Duchemin--"the world into which I must go--it, too, will seem a lonely place,--a desert, haunted..." "You will soon forget ... Château de Montalais." "Forget! when all I shall have will be my memories--!" "Yes," she said, "we shall both have memories..." And suddenly the rich, deep voice quoted in English: "'Memories like almighty wine.'" She offered to disengage her hand, but Duchemin tightened gently the pressure of his fingers, bowing over it and, as he looked up for her answer, murmuring: "With permission?" She gave the slightest inclination of her head. His lips touched her hand for a moment; then he released it. She went swiftly to the door, faltered, turned. "We shall see each other in the morning--to say au revoir. With us, monsieur, it must never be adieu." She was gone; but she had left Duchemin with a singing heart that would not let him sleep when he had gone to bed, stared blankly at the last chapter of Bragelonne for an hour, and put out his candle. Till long after midnight he tossed restlessly, bedevilled alternately by melancholy and exhilaration, or lay staring blindly into the darkness, striving to focus his thoughts upon the abstract, a hopeless effort; trying to think where to go to-morrow, whither to turn his feet when the gates of Paradise had closed behind him, and knowing it did not matter, he did not care, that hereafter one place and another would be the same to him, so that they were not the place of her abode. The château was as still as any castle of enchantment; only an old clock in the drawing room, two floors below, tolled the slow hours; and through the open windows came the mournful murmur of the river, a voice of utter desolation in the night. He heard the clock strike two, and shortly after, in a fit of exasperation, thinking to discipline his mind with reading, lighted the candle on the bedside stand, found his book, and fumbled vainly in the little silver casket beside the candlestick for a cigarette. Now a sincere smoker can do without smoking for hours on end, as long as the deprivation is voluntary. But let him be without the wherewithal to smoke if he have the mind to, and he must procure it instantly though the heavens fall. It was so then with Duchemin. And what greater folly could there be than to want a cigarette and do without one when there were plenty in the drawing-room, to be had for the taking? He rose, girdled about him his dressing-gown, took up the candlestick, opened his door. The hallway was as empty and silent as he had expected to find it. He had no fear of disturbing the household, for his slippers were of felt and silent and the stairs were of stone and creakless. Shielding the candle flame with his hand, and somewhat dazzled by the light thus cast into his face, he passed the floor on which the three ladies of the château had each her separate suite of rooms, and gained the drawing-room as noiselessly as any ghost. The fire had died down till only embers glowed, faint under films of ash, like an old anger growing cold with age. The cigarettes were not where he had expected to find them, near one end of a certain table. Duchemin put down the candlestick and moved toward the other end, discovering the box he sought as soon as his back was turned to the light. In the same breath this last went out. He stood for a moment transfixed in astonishment. There were no windows open, no draughts that he could feel, nothing to account for the flame expiring as it had, suddenly, without one flicker of warning. An insane thing to happen to one, at such an hour, in such a place... Involuntarily memory harked back to the night of his first dinner in the château, when the shadows had danced so weirdly, and the strange notion had come to him that they were like famished spectres, greedy of the lights, yearning to spring and snatch and feed upon them, as wolves might snatch at chops. A mad fancy... When he turned hack to relight the candle, it was gone. At least he must have been mistaken as to the exact spot where he had placed it. Perplexed, he pawed over all that end of the table. But no candlestick was there. He straightened up sharply, and stood quite still, listening. No sound... His vision spent itself fruitlessly against the blackness, which the closed window draperies rendered absolute but for those dull, sardonic eyes of dying embers. In spite of himself he knew a moment when flesh crawled and the hair seemed to stir upon the scalp; for Duchemin knew he was not alone; there was something else in the room with him, something nameless, stealthy, silent, sinister; having knowledge of him, where he stood and what he was, while he knew nothing of it, only that it was there, keeping surveillance over him, itself unseen in its cloak of darkness. Then with a resolute effort of will he mastered his imagination, reminding himself that spirits gifted in the matter of moving material objects such as candlesticks, frequent only the booths of seance mediums. Without a sound he stepped back one pace, then two to one side, away from the table. They were long strides; when he paused he was well away from the spot where he had stood when the light was extinguished and where, consequently, a hostile move might be expected to develop. Otherwise his plight was little bettered; he did not quite know where he was in relation to the doors and the pieces which furnished the room. That old-time habit of memorising the arrangement of furniture in a room immediately on entering it had failed through disuse in course of years. He was acquainted with the plot of this drawing-room in a general way but by no means with such accuracy as was needed to serve him now. So he waited, straining to cheat that opaque pall of night of one little hint as to his whereabouts who had removed the light. Resurrecting another old trick, he measured time by pulse-beats, and stood unstirring and all but breathless for three full minutes. But perceptions stimulated to extra sensibility by apprehension of danger detected nothing. And his hearing was so keen, he told himself, no breath could have been drawn in that time without his having knowledge of it. Still, he knew he was not alone. Somewhere in that encompassing murk an alien and inimical intelligence skulked. Baffled by powers of patience and immobility that mocked his own, he moved again, edging toward the entrance-hall, a progress so gradual he could have sworn it must be imperceptible. Yet he had a feeling, a suspicion, perhaps merely a fear, that he did not stir a finger without the other's knowledge. A hand extended about a foot encountered the back of an upholstered chair, which he identified by touch. Assuming the chair to be occupying its usual position, he need only continue in a line parallel with the line of its back to find the entrance-hall in about six paces. Within three he stopped dead, as if paralysed by sudden instinctive perception of that other presence close by. Whether he had drawn near to it, inch by inch, or whether it, seeing him about to make good his escape, had crept up on him, he could not say. He only knew that it was there, within arm's-length, waiting, tense, prepared, and somehow deadly in its animosity. Digging the nails deep into the palms of his hands, until the pain relieved his nervous tension, he waited once more, one minute, two, three. But nothing ... Then very slowly he lifted an arm, and swept it before him right and left. At one point of the arc, a trifle to his left, his finger-tips brushed something. He thought he detected a stir in the darkness, a stifled sound, stepped forward quickly, clawing the air, and caught between his fingers a wisp of some material, like silk, sheer and glacé, a portion of some garment. Simultaneously he heard a smothered cry, of anger or alarm, and the night seemed to split and be rent into fragments by a thousand shooting needles of coloured flame. Smitten brutally on the point of the jaw, his head jerked back, he reeled and fell against a chair, which went to the floor with a muffled crash. X BUT AS A MUSTARD SEED... Duchemin woke up in his bed, glare of sunlight in his eyes. From the latter circumstance he reckoned, rather groggily, it must be about the middle of the forenoon; for not till about that time did the sun work round to the windows. Still heavy with lees of slumber, his wits occupied themselves sluggishly with questions concerning the enervation that oppressed him, the reason for his oversleeping, why he had not been called. Then, reminded that noon was the hour set for Eve's departure, fear lest she get away without his bon voyage brought him sharply up in a sitting position. He groaned aloud and with both hands clutched temples that promised to split with pain that crashed between them, stroke upon stroke, like blows of a mighty hammer. A neatly fastened bandage held in place, above one ear, a wad of cotton once saturated with arnica, now dry. Duchemin removed these and with gingerly fingers explored, discovering a noble swelling on the side of his head, where the cotton had been placed. Also, his jaw was stiff, and developed a protesting ache whenever he opened his mouth. Then Duchemin remembered ... That is to say, he recalled clearly all that had led up to that vicious blow from out of the darkness which had found his jaw with such surprising accuracy; and he was visited by one or two rather indefinite memories of subsequent events. He remembered labouring up the stairs, half walking, half supported by the strong arms of the footman, Jean, who was in shirt, trousers and slippers only, while in front of them moved the shape of Madame de Montalais en négligée, carrying a lighted candle and constantly looking back. Then he had an impression of being lifted into his bed by Jean, and of having his head and shoulders raised by the same arms some time later, so that he might drink a draught of some concoction with a pleasant aromatic taste and odour, in a glass held to his lips by Eve de Montalais. And then (Duchemin had a faint smile of appreciation for a mental parallel to the technique of the cinema) a singularly vivid and disturbing memory of her face of loveliness, exquisitely tender and compassionate, bended so near to his, faded away into a dense blank of sleep ... Somewhat to his surprise he found the watch on his wrist ticking away as callously as though its owner had not experienced a prolonged lapse of consciousness. It told him that Eve would leave the château within another hour. He got up hastily, grunting a bit--though his headache was no longer so acute; or else he was growing accustomed to it--and ringing for the valet-de-chambre ordered his petit déjeuner. Before this was served he spent several thrilling minutes under an icy shower and emerged feeling more on terms with himself and the world. The valet-de-chambre brought with his tray the announcement that Madame de Montalais presented her compliments and would be glad to see monsieur at his convenience in the grand salon. So Duchemin made short work of his dressing, his café-au-lait and half a roll, and hurried down to the drawing-room. Seated in an easy chair, in the tempered light of an awninged window which stood open on the terrasse, nothing in her pose--she was waiting quietly, hands folded in her lap--and nothing in her countenance, in the un-lined brow, the grave, serene eyes, lent any colour to his apprehensions. And yet in his heart he had known that he would find her thus, and alone, no matter what had happened.... Her profound reverie disturbed by his approach, she rose quickly, advancing to meet Duchemin with both hands offered in sympathy. "My dear friend! You are suffering--?" He met this with a smiling denial. "Not now; at first, yes; but since my bath and coffee, I'm as right as a trivet. And you, madame?" "A little weary, monsieur, otherwise quite well." She resumed her chair, signing to Duchemin to take one nearby. He drew it closer before sitting down. "But madame is not dressed for her journey!" "No, monsieur. I have postponed it--" a slight pause prefaced one more word--"indefinitely." At this confirmation of the fears which had been haunting him, Duchemin nodded slightly. "But the men sent here by your bankers--?" "They have not yet arrived; we may expect them at any moment now." "I see," said Duchemin thoughtfully; and then--"May I suggest that we continue our conversation in English. One never knows who may overhear..." Her eyebrows lifted a little, but she adopted the suggestion without other demur. "The servants?" He nodded: "Or anybody." "Then you have guessed--?" "Broadly speaking, everything, I fancy. Not in any detail, naturally. But one puts two and two together ... I may as well tell you to begin with: I was wakeful last night, and finding no cigarettes in my room, came down here to get some. I left my candle on the table--there. As soon as my back was turned, somebody took it away and put it out. A few minutes later, while I was trying to steal out of the room, I ran into a fist..." "Yes," she said thoughtfully; and with some hesitation added: "I, too, found it not easy to sleep. But I heard nothing till that chair crashed. Then I got up to investigate ... and found you lying there, senseless. In falling your head must have struck the leg of the table." "You came down here--alone?" "I listened first, heard no sound, saw no light; but I had to know what the noise meant..." "Still, you came downstairs alone!" "But naturally, monsieur." "I don't believe," said Duchemin sincerely, "the world holds a woman your peer for courage." "Or curiosity?" she laughed. "At all events, I found you, but could do nothing to rouse you. So I called Jean, and he helped me get you upstairs again." "Where does Jean sleep?" "In the servants' quarters, on the third floor, in the rear of the house." "It must have taken you some time..." "Several minutes, I fancy. Jean sleeps soundly." "When you came back with him--or at any time--did you see or hear--?" "Nothing out of the normal--nobody. Indeed, I at first believed you had somehow managed to overexert yourself and had fainted--or had tripped on something and, falling, hurt your head." "Later, then, you found reason to revise that theory?" "Not till early this morning." "Please tell me..." "Well, you see ... It all seemed so strange, I couldn't sleep when I went back to bed, I lay awake, puzzled, uneasy. It was broad daylight before I noticed that the screen which stands in front of my safe was out of place. The safe is built into the solid wall, you know. I got up then, and found the safe door an inch or so ajar. Whoever opened it last night, closed it hastily and neglected to shoot the bolts." "And your jewels, of course--?" She pronounced with unbroken composure: "They have left me nothing, monsieur." Duchemin groaned and hung his head. "I knew it!" he declared. "No credit to me, however. Naturally, whoever stole my candle and knocked me out didn't break into the house for the fun of it ... I imagine that, what with finding me insensible, waking Jean up, and getting me back in my room, you must have been away from yours fully half an hour." "Quite that long." "It couldn't have been better arranged for the thieves," he declared. "If only I had stayed in my room--!" "If you had, it might possibly have been worse--mightn't it? The burglar--or burglars--knew precisely the location of the safe. They were coming to my room, and if they had found me awake ... I think it quite possible, my friend, that your appetite for cigarettes may have saved my life." "There's consolation in that," he confessed--"if it's any to you, who have lost so much." "But perhaps I shall get my jewellery back." "What makes you think that?" "There's always the chance, isn't there? And I believe I have a clue, as they call it, an indefinite one but something to work from, perhaps." "What is that?" "It seems to me it must have been what the police at home call 'an inside job'; because whoever it was apparently knew the combination of the safe." "You mean it wasn't broken open. That signifies nothing. I've never seen yours, but I know something about safes, and I'll undertake to open it without the combination within ten minutes." "You, Monsieur Duchemin?" He nodded gloomily. "It's no great trick, once one knows it; with an ordinary safe, that is, such as you're apt to find in a private home. Have you looked for finger-prints?" "Not yet." "Have you any idea how the thieves broke in?" "Through this very window, I imagine. You see, I was up early and, in my agitation, dressed hurriedly and came downstairs hours before I usually do. The servants were already up, but hadn't opened the living rooms for the day. I myself found this window unlatched. The fastening is insecure, you see; it has been out of order for some time." Duchemin was on his feet, examining the latch. "True," he said; "but might not the wind--?" "There was no wind to speak of last night, monsieur, and what there was didn't blow from that quarter." She added as Duchemin stepped out through the window: "Where are you going?" "To look for footprints on the tiling. It was misting when I went to bed, and with the mud--" "But there was a heavy shower just before daybreak. If the thieves had left any tracks on the terrasse, the rain must have washed them clean away. I have already looked." With a baffled gesture, Duchemin turned back to her side. "You have communicated with the police, of course." She interrupted with an accent almost of impatience: "I have told nobody but you, monsieur, not even my mother and Louise." "But why?" "I wanted to consult you first, and..." She broke off sharply to ask: "Yes, Jean: what is it?" The footman had entered to bring her cards over which Eve de Montalais arched her brows. "Show the gentlemen in, please." The servant retired. "The men from Paris, madame?" "Yes. You will excuse me--?" Duchemin bowed. "But one word: You can hardly do better than put the case in the hands of these gentlemen. They are apt to be of a good order of intelligence when selected to serve bankers, you know." "I understand," she replied in her cool, sweet voice. She went to meet the men in the middle of the room. Duchemin turned back to the window, where, standing in the recess, with the light behind him, he could watch and reflect without his interest or emotions, becoming too apparent. And he was grateful for that moment of respite in which to compose and prepare himself. Within an hour, he knew, within a day or so at most, he must be under arrest, charged with the theft of the Montalais jewels, damned by his yesterday as much as by every turn of circumstantial evidence.... The men whom Jean ushered in proved to be, outwardly, what Duchemin had expected: of a class only too well-known to him, plain men of the people, unassuming, well-trained and informed, sceptical; not improbably shrewd hands in the game of thief-taking. Saluting Madame de Montalais with calculated ceremony, one acting as spokesman offered to present their credentials. Duchemin had a start of surprise to dissemble when he saw the woman wave these aside. "It is not necessary, messieurs," she said. "I regret very much to have inconvenienced you, although of course it will make no difference in your bill; but I have brought you here to no purpose. The necessity for my contemplated journey no longer exists." There were expressions of surprise to which she put an end with the words, accompanied by a charming smile: "Frankly, messieurs, I am afraid you will have to make allowances for the traditional inconsistency of my sex: I have simply changed my mind." There was nothing more to be said. Openly more than a little mystified, the men withdrew. The smile with which she dismissed them lingered, delightful and enigmatic, as Eve recognised the stupefaction with which Duchemin moved to remonstrate with her. "Madame!" he cried in a low voice of wonder and protest--"why did you do that? Why let them go without telling them--?" "I must have had a reason, don't you think, Monsieur Duchemin?" "I don't understand you, madame. You treat the loss of jewels as if it must be a secret private to ourselves, to you and to me!" "Possibly that is my wish, monsieur." He gave a gesture of bewilderment. "Perhaps," she continued, meeting his blank stare with eyes in which amusement gave place to a look almost apologetic yet utterly kind--"perhaps I have more faith in you..." Duchemin bowed his head over hands so tightly knitted that the knuckles were white with strain. "You would not have faith," he said in a low voice, "if you knew--" She interrupted in a gentle voice: "Are you sure?" "--What I must tell you!" "My friend," she said: "tell me nothing that would distress you." He did not immediately reply; the struggle going on within him was only too plainly betrayed by engorged veins upon his forehead and exceeding pallor of countenance. "If you had told those detectives," he said at length, without looking up, "you must have known very soon. They must have found me out without too much delay. And who in the world would ever believe anybody else guilty when they learned that André Duchemin, your guest for three weeks, was only an alias for Michael Lanyard, otherwise the Lone Wolf?" "But you are wrong, monsieur," she replied, without the long pause of surprise he had anticipated. "I should not have believed you guilty." Dumb with wonder, he showed her a haggard face. And she had for him, in the agony and the abasement of his soul, still quivering from the rack of emotion that alone could have extorted his confession--she had for him the half-smile, tender and compassionate, that it is given to most men to see but once in a lifetime on the lips and in the eyes of the woman beloved. "Then you knew--!" "I suspected." "How long--?" "Since the night those strange people were here and tried to make you unhappy with their stupid talk of the Lone Wolf. I suspected, then; and when I came to know you better, I felt quite sure..." "And now you _know_--yet hesitate to turn me over to the police!" "No such thought has ever entered my head. You see--I'm afraid you don't quite understand me--I have faith in you." "But why?" She shook her head. "You mustn't ask me that." At the end of a long moment he said in a broken voice: "Very well: I won't ... Not yet awhile ... But this great gift of faith in me--I can't accept that without trying to repay it." "If you accept, my friend, you repay." "No," said Michael Lanyard--"that's not enough. Your jewels must come back to you, if I go to the ends of the earth to find them. And"--man's undying vanity would out--"if there's anyone living who can find them for you, it is I." XI AU REVOIR Early in the afternoon Eve de Montalais made it possible for Lanyard to examine the safe in her boudoir without exciting comment in the household. He was nearly an hour thus engaged, but brought back to the drawing-room, in addition to the heavy magnifying glass which he had requisitioned to eke out his eyesight, only a face of disappointment. "Nothing," he retorted to Eve. "Evidently a gentleman of rigidly formal habits, our friend of last night--wouldn't dream of calling at any hour without his gloves on.... I've been over every inch of the safe, outside and in, and the frame of the screen too, but--nothing. However, I've been thinking a bit as well, I hope to some purpose." The woman nodded intently as he drew up his chair and sat down. "You have made a plan," she stated rather than enquired. "I won't call it that, not yet. We've got too little to go on. But one or two things seem fairly obvious, therefore must not be left out of consideration. Assuming for the sake of argument that Mr. Whitaker Monk and his lot had a hand in this--" "Ah! you think that?" "I admit I'm unfair. But first they quarrel with my sense of the normal by being too confoundedly picturesque, too rich and brilliant, too sharp and smart and glib, too--well!--theatrical; like characters from the cast of what your American theatre calls a crook melodrama. And then, if their intentions were so blessed pure and praiseworthy, what right had they to make so many ambiguous gestures?" "Leading the talk up to my jewels, you mean?" "I mean every move they made: all too suspiciously smooth, too well rehearsed in effect. That stop to dine in Nant with the storm coming on, when they could easily have made Millau before it broke: what else was that for but to stage a 'break-down' at your door at a time when it would be reasonable to beg the shelter and hospitality of your roof? Then Madame la Comtesse de Lorgnes--whoever _she_ is--must get her feet wet, an excellent excuse for asking to be introduced to your boudoir, so she may change her shoes and stockings and incidentally spy out the precise location of your safe. And when their ear is hauled into the garage, Mr. Phinuit must go to help, which gives him a chance to stroll at leisure through the lower part of the house and note every easy way of breaking in. Mr. Monk casually notes your likeness to the little girl he once met, _he_ says, in your father's office; something you tell me you don't recall at all. And that places you as the veritable owner of the Anstruther jewels, and no mistake. Then--Madame de Lorgnes guiding the conversation by secret signals which I intercept--somebody recognises me as the Lone Wolf, in spite of the work of years and a new-grown beard; and you are obliquely warned that, if your jewels should happen to disappear it's more than likely the Lone Wolf will prove to be the guilty party. At any rate, they will be ever so much obliged if you'll believe he is, it'll save so much trouble all around. Finally: when your ex-chauffeur--what's his name--?" "Albert Dupont." "A name as unique in France as John Smith is in England ... When Albert Dupont tries to take my life, as a simple and natural act of vendetta--" "You really think it was that?" "I recognised the beast when he let off that pistol at my head. I was in his way here, and he owed me one besides for my interference at Montpellier that night.... When Dupont half murders me and I'm laid up on your hands for nearly a month, our friends with designs on your jewels thoughtfully wait before they strike till I am able to be up and about, consequently in a position to be accused of a crime which no one would put past the Lone Wolf. Oh, I think we can fairly count Mr. Monk and his friends in on this coup!" "I am sure of it," said Eve de Montalais. "But Albert: is he one of them, their employee or confrère?" "Dupont? I fancy not. I may be wrong, but I believe he is entirely on his own--quite independent of the Monk party." "But his attack on us at Montpellier, and later on you here, coming at about the same time as their visit--" "Coincidence, if you ask me. The weight of probability is against any collusion between the two parties." "Please explain..." "Dupont is an Apache of Paris. The language he used to me when we fought in that carriage at Montpellier was the slang of the lowest order of Parisian criminal, used spontaneously, under stress of great excitement, with no intent to mislead. These other people were--if anything but poor misjudged lambs--swell mobsmen, the élite of the criminal world. The two castes never work together because they can't trust each other. The swell mobsman works with his head and only kills when cornered. The Apache kills first, as a matter of instinct, and then thinks--to the best of his ability. The Apache knows the swell mobsman can outwit him. The swell mobsman knows the Apache will assassinate him at the first hint of a suspicion of his good faith. So they rarely if ever make use of each other." "You say 'rarely.' But possibly in this instance?" "I think not. Dupont was employed as your chauffeur, you've told me, upwards of a month. He had ample opportunity to familiarise himself with the premises and pass the information on, if acting in connivance with those others. But we know he didn't, or they would never have shown themselves here in order to secure information they couldn't have got otherwise." "I see, monsieur," said the woman. "Then you think the thief may have been any one of the Monk party--" "Or several of them acting in concert," Lanyard interrupted, smiling. "Or Albert." "Not Dupont. Unless I underestimate him gravely he is incapable of such finesse. He is a thug first, a thief afterwards. He would have killed me out of hand if it had been he who had me at his mercy, down here, in the dark. Nor would he have been able to open the safe without using an explosive. That, indeed, is why, as I understand him, Dupont attacked you at Montpellier. If he could have disposed of you there, he would have returned here to work upon the safe and blow it at his leisure, fobbing the servants off with some yarn, or if they proved too troublesome intimidating them, killing one or two if necessary." "But why has he made no other attempt--?" "You forget the police have been making the neighbourhood fairly warm for him. Besides, he wanted me out of the way before he tried housebreaking. If he had succeeded in murdering me that night, I don't doubt he would have burglarised the château soon after. But he failed; the police were stirred up to renewed activity; and if Monsieur Dupont is not now safely back in Paris, hiding in some warren of Montmartre or Belleville, I am much mistaken in the man--a type I know well." "Eliminating Albert then--" "There remains the Monk lot." "You are satisfied that one or all of its members committed the theft last night?" "Not less than two, probably; say Phinuit, at a venture, and his alleged brother, Jules, the chauffeur, both Americans, adventurous, intelligent and resourceful. Yes; I believe that." "And your plan of campaign is based on this conclusion?" "That's a big name"--Lanyard's smile was diffident, a plea for suspended judgment on his lack of inventiveness--"for a lame idea. I believe our only course is to let them believe they have been successful in every way, and so lull them into carelessness with a false sense of security." A wrinkle appeared between the woman's eyebrows. "How do you propose to accomplish that?" she asked in a voice that betrayed ready antagonism to what her intuition foresaw. "Very simply. They hoped to shift suspicion on to my shoulders. Well, let them believe they have done so." The waiting hostility developed in a sharp negative: "Ah, no!" "But yes," Lanyard insisted. "It's so simple. Nobody here knows as yet that your jewels have been stolen, only you and I. Very well: you will not discover your loss and announce it till to-morrow morning. By that time André Duchemin will have disappeared mysteriously. The room to which he will retire to-night will be found vacant in the morning, his bed unslept in. Obviously the scoundrel would not fly the château between two suns without a motive. Inform the police of the fact and let them draw their own conclusions: before evening all France will know that André Duchemin is suspected of stealing the Montalais jewels, and is a fugitive from justice." "No, monsieur," the woman iterated decidedly. "You will observe," he continued, lightly persuasive, "it is André Duchemin who will be accused, madame, not Michael Lanyard, never the Lone Wolf! The heart of man is in truth a dark forest, and vanity the only light to guide us through its mazes. I confess I am jealous of my reputation as a reformed character. But André Duchemin is merely a name, a nom de guerre; you may saddle him with all the crimes in the calendar if you like, and welcome. For when I say he will disappear to-night, I mean it quite literally: André Duchemin will nevermore be heard of in this world." She had a smile quivering on her lips, yet shook her head. "Monsieur forgets I learned to know him under the name of Duchemin." "Ah, madame! do not make me think too kindly of the poor fellow; for whether we like it or not, he is doomed. And if madame, in her charity, means to continue to know me, it must be Michael Lanyard whom she suffers to claim a little portion of her friendship." Her smile grew wistful, with a tenderness he had the grace not to recognise. Abashed, incredulous, he turned aside his gaze. Then without warning he found her hand at rest in his. "More than a little, monsieur, more than a little friendship only!" He closed the hand in both his own. "Then be kind to me, madame, be still more kind; give me this chance to find and restore your jewels. It is the only way, this plan of mine. If we adopt it no one will suffer, only an old alias that is no longer useful. If we do not adopt it, I may not succeed, for the true authors of this crime may prove too wary for me; and the end will be that my best friends will believe the worst of me; even you, madame, even you will not be sure your faith was not misplaced." "Enough!" the woman begged in a stifled voice. "It shall be as you wish--if you will have it so." She sought to take away her hand; but Lanyard kissed it before he let it go. And immediately she rose with a murmured, half articulate excuse, and went from the room, leaving him to struggle with himself and that which was in him which was stronger than himself, his hunger for her love, to deny stubbornly the evidence of his senses and end by persuading himself against his will that he was nothing to her more than an object of common kindness such as she would extend to anyone in similar plight. Because he never could be more.... Those few last hours in the château passed swiftly enough, most of them in making plans for his "escape," something which demanded a deal of puzzling over maps and railway guides in the seclusion of his room. Since the next noon must find André Duchemin a criminal published and proscribed, he had need to utilise every shred of cunning at his command if he were to reach Paris without being arrested and without undue loss of time. To take a train at Millau would be simply to invite pursuit; for that was the likeliest point an escaping criminal would strike for, a stopping place for all trains north and southbound. Telegraphic advices would cause every such train to be searched to a certainty. Furthermore, Lanyard had no desire to enter Paris by the direct route from Millau. Not the police alone, but others, enemies even more dangerous, might be expecting him by that route. On the other hand, the nearest railway station, Combe-Redonde, was equally out of the question, since to gain it one must pass through Nant, where André Duchemin was known, and risk being seen, while at Combe-Redonde itself the station people would be apt to remember the monsieur who had recently created a sensation by despatching a code telegram to London. There was nothing for it, then, but a twenty-mile walk due west across the Causse Larzac by night to Tournemire, where one could get trains in any one of four directions. Constraint marked that last dinner with Eve de Montalais. They were alone. Louise was dining by the bedside of Madame de Sévénié, who remained indisposed, a shade more so than yesterday. The ill health of this poor lady, indeed, was the excuse Eve had given for putting off her trip to Paris. Their talk was framed in stilted phrases, inconsecutive. They dared not converse naturally, each fearing to say too little or too much. For the memory of that surge of emotion, transient though it had been, in which their discussion had culminated, that afternoon, stood between them like a warning ghost, an implacable finger sealing its lips and theirs with the sign of silence. But talk they must, for the benefit of the servants, and talk they did after an uneasy fashion, making specious arrangements for Lanyard's departure on the morrow, when Eve was to drive him to Millau to catch the afternoon rapide for Paris. Nor was it much better after dinner in the drawing-room. Consciousness of each other and consciousness of self, as each fought to master the emotions inspired by thoughts of their near parting, drove both into the refuge of a dry, insincere, cool impersonality. Lanyard communicated nothing of his plans, though aware his failure to do so might be misconstrued, instil an instinctive if possibly unconscious resentment to render the situation still more difficult. The truth was, he could barely trust himself to speak lest mere words work on his guard like tiny streams that sap the strength of the dike till it breaks and looses the pent and devastating seas. At half past nine, ending a long silence, Lanyard sat forward in his chair, hesitated, and covered his hesitation by lighting a cigarette. "I must go now," he said, puffing out the match. He was aware of her almost imperceptible start of surprise. "So soon?" she breathed. "The moon rises not long after ten, and I want to get away without being seen either by the servants or by--anybody who might happen to be passing. You understand." She nodded. He lingered, frowning at his cigarette. "With permission, I will write..." "Please." "When I have anything to report." She turned her head full face to him, letting him see her fluttering, indulgent smile. "You must wait for that?" "Perhaps," he faltered--"at least, I hope--it won't be long." "You must wait for that?" "Perhaps," he faltered--"at least, I hope--it won't be long." "I shall be waiting," she told him simply--"watching every post for word from you. I shan't worry, only for you." He got up slowly from his chair, and stood half choking with unutterable words. "I know no way to thank you," he managed to say at last. "For what?" "For everything--kindness, charity, sympathy--" "What are those things?" she demanded with a nervous little laugh. "Words! Just words that you and I use to hide behind, like timid children..." She rose suddenly and offered him her hand. "But I don't think it's any use, my friend, I'm quite sure that neither of us is deceived. No: say nothing more; the time is not yet and--we both can wait. Only know I understand ... Go now"--her fingers tightened round his--"but don't stay away any longer than you must, don't be influenced by silly traditions, false and foolish standards when you think of me. Go now"--she freed her hand and turned away--"but oh, come safely back to me, my dear!" XII TRAVELS WITH AN ASSASSIN Under a sky whose misty silver pulsed with waves of violet light and dim glimmerings of gold, Lanyard, grey with the dust and weariness of twenty leagues of heavy walking, trudged into the sleeping streets of the town of Tournemire. In the railway station--whose buvette served him such listless refreshment as one may find at railway lunch-counters and nowhere else the world over--a train was waiting with an apathetic crew and a sprinkling of sleepy passengers, for the most part farm and village folk of the department. There was nowhere in evidence any figure resembling that of an agent de police. Lanyard made enquiry, found that the train was destined for Le Vigan, on the eastern slope of the Cévennes, and purchased a ticket for that point. Making himself as comfortable as might be in a depressingly third-rate second-class compartment (there was no first class, and the third was far too richly flavoured for his stomach) he cultivated a doze as the train pulled out. But, driven as provincial trains habitually are, in a high spirit of devil-may-care, its first stop woke him up with a series of savage, back-breaking jolts which were translated into jerks when it started on again and fiendishly reiterated at every suspicion of a way-station on the course. So that he presently abandoned all hope of sleep and sought solace in tobacco and the shifting views afforded by the windows. Penetrating the upper valley of the Cernon, the railroad skirted the southern boundary of the Causse Larzac, then laboriously climbed up to the plateau itself; and Lanyard roused to the fact that he was approaching familiar ground from a new angle: the next stop would be Combe-Redonde. The day was still in its infancy when that halt was made. Aside from the station agent, not a soul waited upon the platform. But one or two passengers were set down and, as the engine began to snort anew, a man darted from behind the tiny structure that housed ticket-office and waiting-room, galloped heavily across the platform, and with nothing to spare threw himself into the compartment immediately behind that wherein Lanyard sat alone. This manoeuvre was performed so briskly and unexpectedly that Lanyard caught barely a glimpse of the fellow; but one glimpse was enough to convince him he had been wrong in assuming that Monsieur Albert Dupont had sneaked back to Paris to hide from the authorities after failing to assassinate André Duchemin more than three weeks ago. But why--assuming one were not misled by a chance likeness to that heavy but athletic figure so well-remembered--why had Dupont lingered so long in the neighbourhood, in hourly peril of arrest? And why this sudden departure in the chill break of dawn, a move so timed and executed that it wore every sign of haste and fear? No reasonable explanation offered in solution of either of these riddles; unless, indeed, it were reasonable to believe that lust for vengeance was the ruling passion in the Dupont nature, that the creature had hung about the château in hope of getting another chance at Duchemin, and had decided to give it up only on discovering --inexplicably, at this hour--that the latter had stolen away under cover of night. But Lanyard didn't believe that. Neither did he believe that Dupont had had any hand in the robbery of night before last, and was now in tardy flight. In truth, he didn't know what to think, and the wildest flights of an imagination provoked by this mystery were tame and timid in contrast with the truth as he was later to learn it. To an amateur in sensations there was true piquancy in the thought that one was travelling in company with a thug who had already had two tries for one's life and would not hesitate to essay a third; in the same coach, separated only by the thin partition between the compartments, safe only in the thug's unconsciousness of one's proximity! And this without the privilege of denouncing the man to the police; for to do so now would be to enmesh in the toils of the law not only Albert Dupont, would-be assassin, but André Duchemin, charged with stealing the Montalais jewels. Lanyard would have given something for a peep-hole in the partition, to be able to study the countenance of Dupont unaware that he was under scrutiny. But he had to content himself with keeping vigil at the windows, making sure that Dupont did not drop off at some one of those many way-stations which the train was so scrupulous never to slight. Monsieur Dupont, however, did not budge a foot out of his compartment before the end of the run; and then Lanyard, purposely delaying, saw Dupont get down from the compartment astern and make for the booking-office at Le Vigan without a glance to right or left--evidencing not the remotest interest in his late company on the train, but rather a complete indifference, an absolute assurance that he had nothing now to fear, and with this a preoccupation of mind so thoroughgoing that Lanyard was able to edge up behind him, when he paused at the guichet, and eavesdrop on his consultation with the clerk of the ticket bureau. Dupont desired ardently to proceed to Lyons with the least avoidable delay. Under such conditions, according to the Indicateur des Chemins de Fer, his best available route was via Nimes, where the next express from Le Vigan made close connection with a northbound train rapide, due to arrive in Lyons late in the afternoon. There was, however, this drawback; or so the clerk declared after a dubious summing up of the disreputable Dupont ensemble: whereas one might travel any class as far as Nimes, the rapide for Lyons carried only passengers of the first class. But, said Dupont, with other blasphemy, all the world knew that the sacred rapides had no sacred accommodations for sacred passengers of the second and third class. Was he not the peer of any sacred first-class pig that ever travelled by train in France? If not, he proved the contrary to his own satisfaction by paying for his ticket from an imposing accumulation of French bank-notes. Then, with half an hour to wait, he lumbered into the buvette and gorged, while Lanyard--having secured his own transportation for Lyons by the some route--skulked in the offing and kept a close eye on the gourmand. Having eaten ferociously, Dupont came out, slouched into a seat on a bench and, his thick limbs a-sprawl, consumed cigarette after cigarette in most absolute abstraction of mind. Observed thus, off his guard and at tolerably close range, with his face clean of soot, he projected a personality so forbidding that Lanyard marvelled at the guilelessness which must have influenced the ladies of Château de Montalais to accept the man at his own valuation and give him a place in their household. The face of fat features was of porcine cast; the forehead low and slanted sharply back into bristles of black hair, the snout long and blunt, the lips flabby, the chin retreating, the jowls pendulous; the eyes a pig's, little, cunning, and predaceous; the complexion sallow and pimply from unholy living, with an incongruous over-layer of sunburn. A type to inspire distrust, one would think, at sight; a nature as repellant as a snake's, and ten times as deadly; in every line and lineament, in every move and gesture, an Apache of the Apaches... As for the baleful reflections with which Dupont was patently concerned to the exclusion of all considerations of either surveillance or environment, Lanyard found himself so inquisitive that he had never a thought but to follow and study the fellow till he surprised his secret, if possible--at least so long as it might seem safe to do so. Moreover, nothing could have suited his own purpose better than to proceed to Paris by way of Lyons. Nothing hindered the carrying out of his design. Still lost in thought and inattentive, Dupont entrained for Nimes and at that station changed to the rapide for Lyons, where duly at four o'clock--with Lanyard still a discreet shadow--he alighted in the Gare de Perrache. Here again fortune favoured the voluntary sleuth. The station was well thronged, a circumstance which enabled him to keep inconspicuously close to his victim. Furthermore, Dupont was obviously looking for somebody, and so distracted. Presently a shabby, furtive little rat of a man nudged his elbow, and Dupont followed him to a corner, where they confabulated in undertones for many minutes; while Lanyard loitered just outside their normal range of vision. An unnecessary precaution: they were unafraid of observation, interested only in their private concerns. The little man did most of the talking; Dupont seeming content with a listening rôle, and gratified by what he heard. He nodded frequently, and once or twice a grim smile enhanced the ugliness of his mouth, a smile terrible in its contained savagery, fit to make one's blood run cold, that cruelly relished in anticipation the success of some evil scheme. Not to be able to hear a word was exasperating to a degree.... The smaller villain produced something--a slip of paper--from a waistcoat pocket, and handed it to Dupont, who examined it with disfavour, shaking his head repeatedly to the other's recommendations. Of a sudden he ended the argument by thrusting the slip back into the hands of the jackal, growled a few words of imperative instruction, jerked his thumb toward the ticket bureau, and without more ado turned and strode from the terminus. Alone, the little man rolled appealing eyes heavenward. Then he shrugged in resignation, and trotted over to the guichet. Lanyard, now with no fear of being recognised, ranged alongside and listened openly. It seemed that, booked for Paris on the rapide to leave at one-twelve in the morning, this lesser rascal had been assigned a certain sleeping-car berth. Business of displaying the ticket: identified by Lanyard as the object over which the conference had split. Now, however, it appeared that a friend was to journey to Paris by the same train, but in another sleeping-car. It was greatly desired by both that they be separated no farther than necessity might dictate, that this reservation might be exchanged for another in the same carriage with the friend. Thus far without interruption from the clerk of the ticket bureau. But here ensued inevitably the violent French altercation between the two human beings on either side of the guichet. Then, as suddenly as it had arisen, the squall blew over, an amicable settlement was arrived at, the exchange of reservation was effected, the small scoundrel, with ten thousand thanks and profuse assurances of deathless esteem, departed grinning. Lanyard secured the rejected berth and went about his business profoundly mystified, but not downhearted. Beyond shadow of fair doubt Dupont was up to some new devilment, but Lanyard would be surprised if its nature failed to develop on the train or at latest upon its arrival in Paris the next morning. For the present he was weary of the sight of the fat Apache, glad to believe he had seen the last of him for some hours; he had much to do on his own part, nothing less in fact than utterly to obliterate from human ken the personality of André Duchemin. This affair involved several purchases; for he was travelling light indeed, having left even his rucksack at the Château de Montalais. Nevertheless it was no later than seven in the evening when he left a room which he had engaged in a hotel so pretentious and heavily patronised that he was lost in its ebb and flow of life, an inconsiderable and unconsidered bit of flotsam--and left it a changed man. The pointed beard of Monsieur Duchemin was no more; and a little stain, artfully applied, had toned the newly exposed flesh to match the tan of the rest. The rough tweed walking-suit had been replaced by a modest and commonplace blue serge, the cap and heavy brown boots by a straw boater and plain black shoes, the loose-throated flannel shirt by one of plain linen with stiff cuffs and a fold collar and neat foulard tie. So easily was Madame de Sévénié's buccaneer metamorphosed into the semblance of a Government clerk! But this was by no means all. The papers of André Duchemin were crisp black ashes in the fireplace of the room which Lanyard had just quitted, all but the letter of credit; and this last was enclosed in an envelope, to be sent to London by registered post with a covering note to request that the unpaid balance be forwarded in French bank-notes to Monsieur Paul Martin, poste restante, Paris; Paul Martin being the name which appeared on an entirely new set of papers of identification which Lanyard had thoughtfully secreted in the lining of the tweed coat before leaving London. If Lanyard wanted better testimony than that supplied by his bedroom mirror to the thoroughness of the transformation in his looks, he had it unsought, and that twice within an hour. The first time was when, leaving the hotel to seek the post office and despatch his letter to London, he found himself suddenly face to face with Dupont, who was seated at a café table near the hotel entrance and narrowly scrutinising all who passed in and out; covering this occupation with affected interest in the gossip of his companion, the little rat man of the Gare de Perrache. At this rencontre Lanyard knew a momentary shock of doubt; perhaps he hadn't been so clever as he had thought himself in trailing Dupont all the way from Combe-Re-donde to Lyons. But the beady little eyes of a pig comprehended him in a glance, and rejected him as of positively no interest to Albert Dupont, a complete stranger and a cheap one at that. So he fared serenely on his way, and Dupont gave him never another thought. Returning, Lanyard was favoured with even less attention; an error in judgment which enabled him to remark that Dupont was in an ugly temper, sullen and snappy, it might be because of a disappointment of some sort, possibly in consequence of the liberal potations indicated by the tall stack of little saucers at his elbow. As for the lesser villain, he was already silly with drink. One would have been glad of a chance to eavesdrop again upon those two; but there was no vacant place within earshot of their table. Besides Lanyard wanted his dinner. So he re-entered the hotel and sought its restaurant, where the untiring Long Arm of Coincidence took him by the hand and led him to a table immediately adjoining one occupied exclusively by Monsieur le Comte de Lorgnes. And this one in turn looked Lanyard up and down but, detecting in him not the remotest flavour of reminiscence, returned divided attention to a soup and the door of the restaurant, which he was watching just as closely and impatiently as Dupont, outside, was watching the main entrance, and apparently with as little reward for his pains. But now, Lanyard told himself, one knew what had dragged Dupont in such hot haste to Lyons. Somehow word had reached him, probably by telegraph, that monsieur le comte was waiting there to keep a rendezvous. And if you asked him, Lanyard would confess his firm conviction that the other party to the rendezvous would prove to be the person (or persons) who had effected the burglary at Château de Montalais. So he settled to keep an eye on monsieur le comte, and promised himself an interesting evening. But as time passed it became evident that there had been a hitch somewhere; de Lorgnes was only human, he couldn't rendezvous all by himself alone, and nobody turned up to help him out. He was fretting when Lanyard first saw him; before his dinner was half served his nerve was giving way. Continually his distracted gaze sought the door only to turn back in disappointment to his plate. Everlastingly he consulted his watch. His appetite failed, the hand that too often carried a glass to his lips shook so that drops of wine spattered the cloth like blood; he could not even keep a cigarette alive, but burned more matches than tobacco. A heavy sweat bedewed his forehead; the ruddy colour of that plump countenance grew sadly faded, the good-natured features drawn and pinched with worry. By nine o'clock the man was hag-ridden by fear of the unknown, by terror of learning what fault had developed in the calculations of his confrères. Efforts to fix his mind on an evening newspaper failed miserably. And this was not for lack of interest in the news it published to the citizens of Lyons. For Lanyard had a copy of the same sheet, and knew that Eve had loyally kept her promise; a brief despatch from Millau told of the simultaneous disappearance of one André Duchemin and the jewels of Madame de Montalais, and added that the police were already active in the case. At length, unable longer to endure the growing tension of anxiety and keep up a pretence of eating, de Lorgnes called for his addition and fled the restaurant. Lanyard finished his own meal in haste, and arrived in the foyer of the hotel in time to see de Lorgnes settle his account at the bureau and hear him instruct a porter to have his luggage ready for the one-twelve rapide for Paris. In the meantime, anybody who might enquire for Monsieur le Comte de Lorgnes should be directed to seek him in the café. Thither Lanyard dutifully repaired; and wasted the rest of that evening, which he had thought would prove so amusing, watching Dupont and company watch de Lorgnes, to whom Dupont's barely dissembled interest plainly meant nothing at all, but whose mental anguish grew to be all but unbearable. Nor did the quantities of veeskysoda consumed by the unhappy nobleman help him bear it, though undoubtedly he assured himself it did. By midnight he was more than half-fuddled and wholly in despair. Half an hour later he finished his eighth veeskysoda and wove an unsteady but most dignified way back to the foyer of the hotel. Immediately Dupont and his fellow, both markedly the worse for wear, paid and left the café. Lanyard returned to his room to get a new-bought travelling bag, and started for the train afoot, a neat brown paper parcel under one arm. On the way he made occasion to cross the Saône by one of its dozen bridges, and paused in the middle of the span to meditate upon the witchery of the night. When he moved on the brown paper parcel was bearing merrily downstream the mortal remains of André Duchemin, that is to say his discarded clothing. In the Gare de Perrache Lanyard witnessed an affecting farewell scene between the little man and Dupont. Not much to his surprise he discovered that the former was not travelling to Paris that night, after all; it was on Dupont's account alone that he had taken so much trouble to secure the change of reservation. And when Monsieur le Comte de Lorgnes had wavered through the gateway in tow of a luggage-laden porter; and Dupont had torn himself away from his fond familiar and lurched after the count; and Lanyard, after a little wait, had followed in turn: he was able to see for himself that Dupont had contrived to be berthed in the same carriage with de Lorgnes; proving that he did not mean to let the count out of sight, day or night. Well weary, Lanyard proceeded to his own compartment, in the car ahead, and turned in. A busy day, and not altogether unprofitable; whatever expectations had been thwarted in this mild outcome, one had learned much; and to-morrow one would resume the chase anew and, one rather fancied, learn a deal more. But he was not of those who sleep well on trains. In spite of his extreme fatigue he woke up every time the rapide stopped. He was awake at Dijon, at four in the morning, and again at Laroche, about a quarter after six. There, peering out of the window to identify the station, he was startled to see the broad, round-shouldered back of Albert Dupont making away across the rails--leaving the train! It was not feasible to dress and pursue, even had it been wise. And Lanyard was vexed. Dupont, he felt, was hardly playing fair, after giving one every reason to believe he meant to go through to Paris. And what under heaven did the brute think to accomplish in Laroche? Was he still after the Comte de Lorgnes? Then the latter must likewise have fled the train! Or else ... Something sinister in the slant of the Dupont shoulders, as he vanished, something indescribably evil in his furtive yet heavy tread of a beast of prey, struck a thrill of horror into the mind of Lanyard. He shuddered, and warned himself he must learn to hold his imagination in better check. The newspapers of Paris, that day, had a sensation that crushed into insignificance the news from Château de Montalais: in a compartment which he had occupied alone on the night rapide from Lyons, a man had been found with his throat cut, his clothing ripped to rags, even his luggage slashed to ribbons. Whether through chance or intention, every possible clue to the victim's identity was missing. XIII ATHENAIS In London, about noon of that day, a gentleman whom Lanyard most often thought of by the name of Wertheimer deciphered a code message whose contempt for customary telegraphic brevity was quite characteristic of the sender, indeed a better voucher for his bona fides than the initials appended in place of a signature. With some editing in the way of punctuation, it follows: "Dear old bean:--Please advise Prefecture de Police without revealing your source of information, unidentified man found murdered on rapide arriving Gare de Lyon eight-thirty this morning stopped yesterday Hôtel Terminus, Lyons, under name of Comte de Lorgnes. During entire evening before entraining he was shadowed by two Apaches, one of whom, passing as Albert Dupont--probably recent and temporary alias--booked through to Paris occupying berth in same carriage with Lorgnes, but detrained Laroche six-fifteen, murder remaining undiscovered till arrival in Paris. [An admirably succinct sketch of the physical Dupont is here deleted.] 'In return for gift of this opportunity to place Préfecture under obligations, please do me a service. As stranger in Paris I crave passionately to review Night Life of Great City but am naturally timid about going about alone after dark. Only society of beautiful, accomplished, well-informed and agreeable lady of proved discretion can put me thoroughly at ease. If you can recommend one such to me by telegraph, stipulating her amiability must begin to function this evening, you may depend on my not hesitating to ask further favours as occasion may arise. Presume you have heard your old friend Duchemin, now missing, is suspected of looting jewels of Madame de Montalais, Château de Montalais, near Millau. He counts on your discretion to preserve secret of his innocence pending further advices. Paul Martin here stopping Hotel Chatham. Toodle-oo. "M. L." A telegram from London addressed to M. Paul Martin, Hotel Chatham, Paris, was delivered late in the afternoon: "Préfecture tipped off. Many thanks. Heartfelt regrets poor Duchemin's success keeping out of gaol. Uneasy about him as long as he remains at large. Fully appreciate you cannot trust yourself alone in the dark. Therefore cheerfully delegating preservation your virtue while in Paris to Mlle. Athenais Reneaux, maiden lady mature charms whom I beg you will respect as you would my sister. Wishing you enjoyable intellectual evening-- "W." It needed receipt of a petit-bleu, while he was dressing for dinner, to cure Lanyard of an attack of premonitory shivers brought on by recollection of the awful truth that one is never really safe in trifling with an Englishman's sense of humour. "Dear monsieur Martin:--It is too sweet of you to remember your promise to ask me to dine the first time you came to Paris. Since you leave it to me, shall we say the Ritz, at half past seven? In case your memory for faces is poor--it has been a long time since we met, hasn't it?--I shall be wearing the conventional fast black with my very best ingenue expression; and my feather fan will be flame-coloured. "Always to you-- "Athenais Reneaux." Now that sounded more like ... Only it was a bit debilitating to contemplate, as the mirror insisted one must, the shortcomings of machine-made evening clothes, whose obviously exorbitant cost as a post-War luxury did nothing to make amends for their utter want of personal feeling. For one needs sympathy in a dress-coat quite as much as cloth. Still, it was a tolerably personable figure that suffered Lanyard's critical inspection. And an emergency is an emergency. Those readily serviceable clothes were of more value than the most superbly tailored garments that could possibly have been made up for him in any reasonable length of time. For to-morrow night it might, and as Lanyard held surely would, be too late to accomplish what he hoped to accomplish to-night, and for whose accomplishment evening dress was indispensable. Since Wertheimer had passed the word on, the name of the Comte de Lorgnes would be published to the world in the morning papers, and by evening the birds, if they were wise, would be in full flight. Whereas to-night, while still that poor mutilated body lay nameless in the Morgue... Mademoiselle Athenais Reneaux lived up in most gratifying fashion to the tone of her note. In the very beginning she demonstrated excellent discretion by failing to be on hand and eager when Lanyard strolled into the Ritz on the minute of their appointment. To the contrary she was all of twenty-five minutes late; a circumstance so consistently feminine as to rob their meeting of any taint of the extraordinary; they might have been simple sweethearts meeting to dine remote from jealous or censorious eyes, rather than one of the most useful Parisian agents of the British Secret Service under orders to put her talents at the disposition of a man who was to her nothing more than an everyday name. She swept spiritedly into the lounge of the Ritz, a tall, fair girl, very good-looking indeed and brilliantly costumed, and placed Monsieur Paul Martin in one glance, on the instant of his calculated start of recognition. At once her face lighted up with a charming smile--few women could boast teeth as white and fine--and almost before Lanyard could extricate himself from his chair she was at pause before him, holding his hand. "Paul!" she cried in lilting accents. "I'm so glad! It's been simply ages.... And looking so well! I don't believe you've changed a bit." The nicely judged pitch of her voice, neither so high nor so low as to attract more than passing attention, won approval which Lanyard put into the pressure of his lips upon her hand and the bow, at once punctilious and intimate, that accompanied it. "And you, Athenais, always exquisite, but to-day...Truly one has never seen you looking better." "Flattery," she commented. "But I love it!" Meanwhile her gaze, that seemed so constant to his eyes, reviewed other people in the lounge in one swift, searching glance, and returned to Lanyard with a droop of the lashes, imperceptible to all but him, that signified there was no one present likely in her esteem to prove dangerous to their peace of mind. "Flattery? To you? But impossible!" He delighted her, and she showed it openly. But her lips said only: "Have I kept you waiting a frightfully long time, poor boy?" "Let your appetite accuse you, Athenais." "But I am starving!" "Then, as I take it, nothing on earth can prevent our going in to dinner." Lanyard had already consulted with the maître d'hôtel over the menu and the reservation. As the two settled down at a table on the side of the room, not conspicuously far from any other in use, and at the same time comfortably detached, their iced melon was waiting to be served. "Always the most thoughtful of men," Mademoiselle Reneaux declared. "No fussing with the carte, no thrusting it into one's hand and saying: 'See anything you'd like, my dear? I rather fancy the boeuf-à-la-mode for myself!' That's why I'd adore dining with you, Paul, even if I didn't adore you for yourself." "One is well repaid when one's modest efforts are so well appreciated." "Blague, my friend, sheer blague. You know you relish a good dinner of your own ordering far more than anybody's appreciation, even mine." The waiters had retired, leaving them alone in a momentary oasis of public isolation. "Mademoiselle," said Lanyard in more formal vein, "I am sure, underestimates my capacity for appreciation. May one venture to compliment mademoiselle, who is marvellous in so many bewitching ways?" "Why not, monsieur? Was ever music sweeter?" The girl laughed; then her eyes sobered while her features retained their appearance of complete amusement. "Monsieur received a telegram this afternoon?" "Yes, mademoiselle. And you?" "It is here--since I am. May I see yours?" With a gay gesture she handed over her telegram from London and took his in exchange. The ordinary cipher of the B. S. S. was as readily intelligible to both as if the messages had been couched in open French or English. Lanyard read: "Kindly place yourself beginning with dinner to-night and for duration his stay in Paris at the commands of Paul Martin, Hôtel Chatham, lunatic but harmless and of great value to us. He seems to be at present concerned with some affair outside our knowledge, but presumably desperate, else he would not be interested. Please exert best endeavours to get him out of France alive as soon as possible." The girl was laughing as she returned Lanyard's telegram and received her own. "'Mature charms'!" she pouted. "'Enjoyable intellectual evening'! Oh, how depressing! Poor Paul! but you must have felt discouraged." "I did--at first." "And afterwards--?" "Disappointed." "And are you going to obey that injunction to treat me as somebody's sister?" "Never in my life!" "How then?" "As anybody's wife." Perplexity knitted a little pucker in her delicately lined brows. "Paul! you couldn't speak French so well and be an Englishman!" "I assure you, Athenais, I am--mentally--a native of France." She sighed luxuriously. "What an amusing prospect! And this is the sort of man at whose commands I am required to place myself." "Not required, Athenais, requested--begged, besought!" "I like that better. And," she enquired demurely, "may one ask what are monsieur's commands?" "First: you will continue to flirt with me as at present--outrageously." "Even when you make it so difficult?" "And then, to waste an evening in my society." "Must it be wasted?" "That will be as it falls out." "And what do we do with this evening of such questionable value?" "We finish dinner here at our leisure; we smoke and chat a while in the lounge, if you like, or if nothing better offers we go to a play; and then you will take me by the hand, if you please, mademoiselle..." "In the maternal manner appropriate to mature charms, I presume?" "Precisely." "What then?" "You will--always remembering that my interest in such things is merely academic--you will then lead me hither and yon, as your whim lists, and show me how Paris amuses itself in these days of its nocturnal decadence. You will dutifully pretend to drink much more champagne than is good for you and to be enjoying yourself as you seldom have before. If I discover an interest in people I may chance to see, you will be good enough to tell me who they are and--other details concerning their ways of life." "If I know." "But I am sure you know everyone worth knowing in Paris, Athenais." "Then--if I am right in assuming you are looking for some person in particular--" "You have reason, mademoiselle." "I run the risk of losing an entertaining evening." "Not necessarily. Besides, there are many evenings. Are you not at my commands for the duration of my stay in Paris?" "True. So I will have to chance my perilous question.... I presume one can't help being true to the traditions of one's sex." "Inquisitive, you mean? But what else is every thinking creature, male or female? What are men of science? What--?" "But it was Eve who first--" "Ah! raking up old scandal, eh? But I'll wager something it was really Adam who--taking a purely scientific interest in the business--egged Eve on to try a bite of apple, asserting that the domestic menu lacked variety, telling himself if she died of it, it would only cost him another rib to replace her, and cheap at the price." "Paul: you are too gallant. Wait till I try to find out something about you, directly or indirectly, and see what you will then have to say about the curiosity of women." "But I shouldn't mind, it would be too flattering. So dig away." "I will. Who is it you're looking for in Paris after midnight?" "Anyone of several people." "Perhaps I know them. It might save time if you would give me their names." "Now it is you who ask me to risk losing an enjoyable evening. But so be it. Le Comte de Lorgnes?" Mademoiselle Reneaux looked blank. "Madame la Comtesse de Lorgnes?" The young woman shook her head. "Both of a class sure to be conspicuous in such places as Maxim's," Lanyard explained. "The names, then, are probably fictitious." "If you could describe them, perhaps--?" "Useless, I am afraid; neither is an uncommon type. Any word picture of either would probably fit anyone of a score of people of the same life. Are you then acquainted with a man named Phinuit--given name unknown--an American?" "No." "Mr. Whitaker Monk, of New York?" "The millionaire?" "That is quite possible." "He made his money in munitions, I believe," the girl reflected--"or perhaps it was oil." "Then you do know him?" "I met him one night, or rather one morning several weeks ago, with a gay party that joined ours at breakfast at Pré-Catelan." "And do we still drive out to Pré-Catelan to milk the cows after an adventurous night, mademoiselle?" She nodded; and Lanyard sighed: "It is true, then: man ages, his follies never." "A quaint little stupid," the girl mused. "Pardon, mademoiselle?" "I was thinking of Whitaker Monk." "Quaint, I grant you. But hardly little, or stupid. A tall man, as thin as a diet, with a face like a comic mask of tragedy..." "Paul dear," said Athenais Reneaux more in sorrow than in anger: "somebody has been taking advantage of your trusting nature. Whitaker Monk is short, hopelessly stout, and the most commonplace person imaginable." "Then it would appear," Lanyard commented ruefully, "one did wisely to telegraph London for a keeper. Let us get hence, if you don't mind, and endeavour to forget my shame in strong drink and the indecorous dances of an unregenerate generation." XIV DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND Lanyard and Athenais Reneaux had dawdled over dinner and coffee and cigarettes with so much tacit deliberation that, by the time Lanyard suggested they might move on, it was too late for a play and still a bit too early to begin the contemplated round of all-night restaurants. Also, it was too warm for a music-hall. So they killed another hour at the Ambassadeurs, where they were fortunate in getting good places and the entertainment imposed no strain upon the attention; where, too, the audience, though heterogeneous, was sufficiently well-dressed and well-mannered to impart to a beautiful lady and her squire a pleasant consciousness of being left very much to themselves in an amusing expression of a civilisation cynical and self-sufficient. But that was so wherever they went that night; and, in a sense, they went everywhere. In no city in the world is the doctrine of go-as-you-please-but-mind-your-own-business more studiously inculcated by example than in Paris, especially in its hours of relaxation. Lanyard had not been so long an exile as to have forgotten his way about entirely, and with what was new since his time Mademoiselle Reneaux was thoroughly acquainted. And if he felt himself rather a ghost revisiting glimpses of a forgotten moon, if all the odalisques were new to his vision and all the sultans strange, if never an eye that scanned his face turned back for a second look in uncertain reminiscence, he had to console him the company of a young woman whom everybody seemed to know and admire and like. In none of the resorts they visited did she fail to greet or be hailed by a handful of acquaintances. Yet they were generously let alone. As to that, Lanyard could not complain. The truth was that, despite the dark thread of sober purpose which ran through those tolerably purple hours, he was being excellently entertained. Not by this sad business of scampering from one place of dubious fame to another; not by any reckless sense of rejuvenation to be distilled from the practice of buying champagne at each stop--and leaving every bottle barely tasted; not by those colourful, dissolving tableaux, always much the same in composition if set against various backgrounds, of under-dressed women sitting with concupiscent men and swallowing cold poisons in quantities calculated to spur them into the frenzy of semi-orgiastic dances: by none of these, but simply by the society of a woman of a type perhaps not unique but novel in his experience and intriguing to his understanding. If there were anybody or thing a girl of her age--Athenais was about twenty-five--shouldn't know, she knew him, her or it; if there were any place she shouldn't go, she either went or had been there; if there were anything she shouldn't do or say or think or countenance, those things she--within limitations--did and said and thought and accepted or passed over as matters of fact and no consequence. And though she observed scrupulously certain self-imposed limitations she never made this obvious, she simply avoided what she chose to consider bad taste with a deftness and tact that would have seemed admirable in a woman of the great world twice her age. And with it all she preserved a sort of champagne effervescence of youthful spirits and an easy-going cameraderie incomprehensible when one took into consideration the disillusioning circumstances of her life, her vocation as a paid government spy, trusted with secrets and worthy of her trust, dedicated to days of adventure always dangerous, generally sordid, and like at any time to prove deadly. Young, beautiful, admirably poised, accomplished and intelligent, she should by rights have been wrapped up in love of some man her peer in all these attributes. But she wasn't; or she said she wasn't in one of those moments of gravity which served to throw into higher relief the light-heartedness of her badinage with Lanyard; asserting an entirely willing disposition to stand aside and play the pensive, amused, indulgent spectator in the masque of love danced by a world mad for it, grasping for love greedily even in its cheapest shapes and guises. "If it comes," she sighed, "it will find me waiting, and not unwilling. But it will have to come in another form than those I know about." "My dear," said Lanyard, "be unafraid: it always does." She called herself Athenais Reneaux, but she didn't pretend to Lanyard that she had no better title to another name. Her French was of the purest, a delight to listen to, yet she was in fact less French than English. Her paternal forebears to the third generation had lived in England and married Englishwomen, she said; and more than this much about herself, nothing; perhaps deriving some gratification from leaving such broad fields of conjecture open to the interest which an enigmatic personality never failed to excite. "But I think you're quite as much of a mystery as you pretend to see in me. It's rather nice, don't you think? At least, it gives us an interest in each other aside from sentiment. Some day, perhaps, we'll each know All." "Now God forbid!" "Are you so afraid of learning my girlish secrets then? I don't believe you. I don't believe you'd even care to hear--" "Athenais!" Lanyard protested in a hollow voice. "Non, mon ami." She judged him shrewdly with narrowed, smiling eyes. "You flirt with far too much finish, you know. It can't be done to such perfection when the heart's truly involved. But for one thing--and if only you'd be a little more tragic about your disappointments to-night; for you haven't yet asked me a single question about anybody we've met--" "No: thus far we've drawn every cover blank," he groaned; for it was after three in the morning. "Very well. But for this and that, I'd be tempted to think you were sleuthing on the trail of some female fair but faithless. But you're taking all with entirely too much resignation; there's a contented glow in the back of your eyes--" "I'm having a good time." "It's pretty of you to tell me so. But that's not the reason for your self-complacence." "See here," Lanyard interrupted, sitting up and signalling to the waiter for his bill: "if I let you run on the way you're heading, you'll presently be telling me something you've found out about me and I don't want to hear." "Oh, very well," she sighed. "I'm sure I don't wish to embarrass you. But I will say this: Men of your uncertain age don't go round with such contented eyes unless they're prosperously in love." "Oh, come along!" Lanyard growled, offering to rise. "You know too confounded much." He waited a moment, and then as she did nothing but sit and glimmer at him mischievously, he added: "Shall we go?" "Where now?" she enquired without stirring. He had a shrug of distaste. "Maxim's, I presume. Unless you can suggest some other place, more likely and less tedious." "No," she replied after taking thought; "I can't. We've covered Paris pretty thoroughly to-night; all except the tourist places." "No good wasting time on them." "Then let's stop on here till it's time to milk the cows." "Pré-Catelan? But there's Maxim's left--" "Only another tourist show nowadays. And frightfully rowdy." "Sounds like the lot I'm after. Come along." She shook her head vigorously. "Shan't!" His eyebrows rose in mute enquiry. "Because I don't want to," she explained with childlike candour. "I'm tired of being dragged around and plied with drink. Do you realise I've had as much as two and a half glasses of champagne to-night, out of the countless bottles you've ordered? Well, I have, and they're doing their work: I feel the spirit of independence surging in my midst. I mutiny and defy you!" A peal of laughter rewarded the instinctive glance with which he sought to judge how far he was justified in taking her seriously. "Not only that, but you're neglecting me. I want to dance, and you haven't asked me in fully half an hour; and you're a heavenly dancer--and so am I!" She thrust back her end of their wall table and rose. "If you please, monsieur." One could hardly resent such charming impertinence. Lanyard drew a long face of mock patience, sighed an heroic sigh, and followed her through the huddled tables to the dancing floor. A bewildering look rewarded him as they swung into the first movement of a tango. "Do you know you are a dangerous man, Monsieur Paul Martin?" "Oh, mademoiselle!" "Such fortitude, such forbearance--when I ought to be slapped--enchants, disarms, makes me remember I am a woman, foredoomed always to yield. I abjure my boasted independence, monsieur, I submit. It shall be as you wish: on to Maxim's--after this one dance. You know, it's the last really good music we'll have to dance to--our last dance together, perhaps--who knows?--forever!" She pretended to be overcome; the lithe body in his embrace sketched a fugitive seizure of sadness, drooping with a wistful languour well suited to the swooning measures to which they swayed and postured. His hand was pressed convulsively. She seemed momentarily about to become a burden in his grasp, yet ever to recover just on the instant of failing, buoyed up by the steely resilience of her lithe and slender body. Impossible to say how much was pretence, how much impulsive confession of true feeling! Perplexed, perturbed, Lanyard gazed down into that richly tinted face which, with eyes half-curtained and lips half-parted, seemed to betray so much, yet to his next glance was wholly illegible and provoking. Aware that with such women man's vanity misleads him woefully, and aware that she was equally awake to this masculine weakness, he wondered, afraid even to guess, telling himself he were an ass to believe, a fool to deny.... Then suddenly he saw her lashes sweep up to unveil eyes at once mirthful and admonitory; her hungry mouth murmured incongruously an edged warning. "Play up, Paul--play up to me! We dance too well together not to be watched; and if I'm not mistaken, someone you're interested in has just come in. No: don't look yet, just remember we're madly enamoured, you and I--and don't care a rap who sees it." Strung by her words into a spirit of emulation, Lanyard achieved an adequate seeming of response to the passion, feigned or real, with which the woman infused the patterned coquetry of their steps. Between lips that stirred so little their movement must have been indiscernible, he asked: "Who?" In the same manner, but in accents fraught with an emotion indecipherable but intense the reply came: "Don't talk! This is too divine ... Just dance!" He obeyed, deliberately shut out of his thoughts the warning she had given him, and let himself go, body and mind, so that, a sway to the sensuous strains of that most sensuous of dances, the girl and the man for a space seemed one with music that throbbed of love and longing, desire and denial, pursuit and retreat, surrender and conquest.... On a sonorous phrase it ceased. A flutter of applause ran round the tables. Lanyard mastered a sense of daze that he saw reflected in the opening eyes of the woman as she slipped from his arms. In an instant they were themselves once more, two completely self-contained children of sophistication, with superb insouciance making nothing of their public triumph in a rare and difficult performance. On the way to their table they were intercepted by a woman who, with two cavaliers, had since the moment of her entrance been standing near the door of the restaurant, apparently spellbound with admiration. Through a rising clatter of tongues her voice cut clearly but not at all unpleasantly. "Athenais! It is I--Liane." Inured as he was to the manners of an age which counts its women not dressed if they are not half undressed, and with his sensibilities further calloused by a night devoted to restaurants the entrée to which, for women, seemed to be conditioned on at least semi-nudity, Lanyard was none the less inclined to think he had never seen, this side of footlights, a gown quite so daring as that which revealed the admirably turned person of the lady who named herself Liane. There was so little of it that, he reflected, its cost must have been something enormous. But in vain that scantiness of drapery: the white body rose splendidly out of its ineffective wrappings only to be overwhelmed by an incredible incrustation of jewellery: only here and there did bare hand's-breadths of flesh unadorned succeed in making themselves visible. At the sound of her name Athenais turned with a perfectly indicated start of surprise which she promptly translated into a little, joyful cry. The living pillar of ivory, satin and precious stones ran into her arms, embraced her ardently, and kissed both her cheeks, then releasing her half-turned to Lanyard. Glints of trifling malice winked behind the open interest of troubling, rounded eyes of violet. Lanyard knew himself known. So he had sacrificed for nothing his beautiful beard! He uttered a private but heartfelt "Damn!" and bowed profoundly as the woman, tapping Athenais on the arm with a fan crusted with diamonds, demanded: "Present instantly, my dear, this gentleman who tangoes as I have never seen the tango danced before!" Forestalling Athenais, Lanyard replied with a whimsical grimace: "Is one, then, so unfortunate as to have been forgotten by Madame la Comtesse de Lorgnes?" With any other woman than Athenais Reneaux he would have hesitated to deal so bold an offensive stroke; but his confidence in her quickness of apprehension and her unshakable self-possession was both implicit and well-placed. For she received this overt notification of the success of his quest without one sign other than a look of dawning puzzlement. "Madame la comtesse...?" she murmured with a rising inflection. "But monsieur is mistaken," the other stammered, biting her lip. "Surely one cannot have been so stupid!" Lanyard apologised. "But this is Mademoiselle Delorme," Athenais said ... "Monsieur Paul Martin." Liane Delorme! Those syllables were like a spoken spell to break the power of dark enchantment which had hampered Lanyard's memory ever since first sight of this woman in the Café de l'Univers at Nant. A great light began to flood his understanding, but he was denied time to advantage himself immediately of its illumination: Liane Delorme was quick to parry and riposte. "How strange monsieur should think he had ever known me by a name ... What was it? But no matter! For now I look more closely, I myself cannot get over the impression that I have known Monsieur--Martin, did you say?--somewhere, sometime ... But Paul Martin? Not unless monsieur has more than one name." "Then it would seem that mademoiselle and I are both in error. The loss is mine." That gun spiked, Lanyard began to breathe more freely. "It is not too late to make up that loss, monsieur." Liane Delorme was actually chuckling in appreciation of his readiness, pleased with him even in the moment of her own discomfiture; her eyes twinkling merrily at him above the fan with which she hid a convulsed countenance. "Surely two people so possessed with regret at never having known each other should lose no time improving their acquaintance! Dear Athenais: do ask us to sit at your table." While the waiter fetched additional chairs, the woman made her escorts known: Messieurs Benouville et Le Brun, two extravagantly insignificant young men, exquisitely groomed and presumably wealthy, who were making the bravest efforts to seem unaware that to be seen with Liane Delorme conferred an unimpeachable cachet. Lanyard remarked, however, that neither ventured to assume proprietorial airs; while Liane's attitude toward them was generally indulgent, if occasionally patronising and sometimes impatient. Champagne frothed into fresh glasses. As soon as the band struck up another dance, Athenais drifted away in the arms of Monsieur Le Brun. Liane gazed round the room, acknowledged the salutations of several friends, signalled gaily to a pair of mercenaries on the far side of the dancing floor, and issued peremptory orders to Benouville. "Go, Chu-chu, and ask Angele to dance with you. She is being left to bore herself while Victor dances with Constance. Moreover, I desire to afflict Monsieur Martin with my confidences." With the utmost docility Benouville effaced himself. "Eh, bien, Monsieur Duchemin!" "Eh, bien, madame la comtesse?" Liane sipped at her champagne, making impudent eyes at Lanyard over the brim of her glass. "By what appears, you have at last torn yourself away from the charming society of the Château de Montalais." "As you see." "That was a long visit you made at the château, my old one?" "Madame la comtesse is well informed," Lanyard returned, phlegmatic. "One hears what one hears." "One had the misfortune to fall foul of an assassin," Lanyard took the trouble to explain. "An assassin!" "The same Apache who attacked--with others--the party from Montalais at Montpellier-le-Vieux." "And you were wounded?" Lanyard assented. The lady made a shocked face and uttered appropriate noises. "As you know," Lanyard added. Liane Delorme pretended not to hear that last. "And the ladies of the château," she enquired--"they were sympathetic, one feels sure?" "They were most kind." "It was not serious, this wound--no?" "Mademoiselle may judge when she knows I was unable to leave my bed for nearly three weeks." "But what atrocity! And this Apache--?" "Remains at large." "Ah, these police!" And the lady described a sign of contempt that was wholly unladylike. "Still, you are well recovered, by the way you dance." "One cannot complain." "What an experience! Still--" Liane again buried her nose in her glass and regarded Lanyard with a look of mysterious understanding. Re-emerging, she resumed: "Still, not without its compensations, eh, mon ami?" "That is as one regards it, mademoiselle." "Oh! oh!" There was any amount of deep significance in these exclamations. "One may regard that in more ways than one." "Indeed," Lanyard agreed with his most winning manner: "One may for instance remember that I recovered speedily enough to be in Paris to-night and meet mademoiselle without losing time." "Monsieur wishes me to flatter myself into thinking he did me the honour of desiring to find me to-night?" "Or any other. Do not depreciate the potency of your charms, mademoiselle. Who, having seen you once, could help hoping to see you again?" "My friend," said Liane, with a pursed, judgmatical mouth, "I think you are much too amiable." "But I assure you, never a day has passed, no, nor yet a night, that I have not dwelt upon the thought of you, since you made so effective an entrance to the château, a vision of radiant beauty, out of that night of tempest and fury." Liane drooped a coy head. "Monsieur compliments me too much." "Impossible!" "Is one, then, to understand that monsieur is making love to me?" Lanyard pronounced coolly: "No." That won another laugh of personal appreciation. "What then, mon ami?" "Figure to yourself that one may often dream of the unattainable without aspiring to possess it." "Unattainable?" Liane repeated in a liquid voice: "What a dismal word, monsieur!" "It means what it means, mademoiselle." "To the contrary, monsieur, it means what you wish it to mean. You should revise your lexicon." "Now it is mademoiselle who is too flattering. And where is that good Monsieur Monk to-night?" The woman overlooked the innuendo; or, rather, buried it under a landslide of emotional acting. "Ah, monsieur! but I am desolated, inconsolable. He has gone away!" "Monsieur Monk?" Lanyard opened his eyes wide. "Who else? He has left France, he has returned to his barbarous America, with his beautiful motor car, his kind heart, and all his millions!" "And the excellent Phinuit?" "That one as well." "How long ago?" "A week to-morrow they did sail from Cherbourg. It is a week since anyone has heard me laugh." Lanyard compassionately fished a bottle out of the cooler and refilled her glass. "Accept, mademoiselle, every assurance of my profound sympathy." "You have a heart, my friend," she said, and drank with the feverish passion of the disconsolate. "And one very truly at mademoiselle's service." Liane sniffed mournfully and dabbed at her nose with a ridiculous travesty of a handkerchief. "Be so kind," she said in a tearful voice, though her eyes were quite dry and, if one looked closely, calculating--"a cigarette." One inferred that the storm was over. Lanyard tendered his cigarette case, and then a match, wondering what next. What he had reason to anticipate was sure to come, the only question was when. Not that it mattered when; he was ready for it at any time. And there was no hurry: Athenais, finding herself paired with an un-commonly good dancer in Le Brun, was considerately making good use of this pretext for remaining on the floor--there were two bands to furnish practically continuous music--and leave Lanyard to finish uninterrupted what she perfectly understood to be a conversation of considerable moment. As for Benouville, he was much too well trained to dream of returning without being bidden by Liane Delorme. "But it is wonderful," murmured that one, pensive. And there was that in her tone to make Lanyard mentally prick forward his ears. He sketched a point of interrogation. "To encounter so much understanding in one who is a complete stranger." ("'Complete'?" Lanyard considered. "I think it's coming...") "Monsieur must not think me unappreciative." "Ah, mademoiselle!" he protested sadly--"but you forget so easily." "That we have met before, when I term you a complete stranger?" "Well... yes." "It is because I would not be in monsieur's debt!" "Pardon?" "I will repay sympathy with sympathy. I have already forgotten that I ever visited the Château de Montalais. So how should I remember I met monsieur there under the name of... but I forget." "The name of Duchemin?" "I never knew there was such a name--I swear!--before I saw it in type to-day." "In type?" "Monsieur does not read the papers?" "Not all of them, mademoiselle." "It appeared in Le Matin to-day, this quaint name Duchemin, in a despatch from Millau stating that a person of that name, a guest of the Château de Montalais, had disappeared without taking formal leave of his hosts." "One gathers that he took something else?" "Nothing less than the world-known Anstruther collection of jewels, the property of Madame de Montalais née Anstruther." "But I am recently from the Château de Montalais, and in a position to assure mademoiselle that this poor fellow, Duchemin, is unjustly accused." "Oh, ho, ho!" He heard again that laugh of broad derision which had seemed so out of character with a great lady when he had heard it first, that night now nearly a month old. "Mademoiselle does not believe?" "I think monsieur must be a good friend to this Monsieur Duchemin." "I confess I entertain a sneaking fondness for his memory." "You can hardly call yourself an impartial judge--" "It is nevertheless true he did not steal the jewels." "Then tell me who did take them." "Unfortunately for Duchemin, that remains a mystery." "Rather, I should say, fortunately for him." "You would wrong him, then." "But why, if innocent, did he run away?" "I imagine, because he knew he would surely be accused, in which case ancient history would be revived to prove him guilty beyond a question in the mind of any sane court." "Does one understand he had a history?" "I have heard it intimated such was the case." "But I remain in the dark. The theft presumably was not discovered till after his disappearance. Yet, according to your contention, he must have known of it in advance. How do you account for that?" "Mademoiselle would make a famous juge d'instruction." "That does not answer my argument." "How is one to answer it? Who knows how Duchemin discovered the theft before the ladies of the château did?" "Do you know what you make me think? That he was not as innocent as you assert." "Mademoiselle will explain?" "I have a suspicion that this Monsieur Duchemin was guilty in intention; but when it came to put his intention into execution, he found he had been anticipated." "Mademoiselle is too clever for me. Now I should never have thought of that." "He would have been wiser to stay and fight it out. The very fact of his flight confesses his guilt." "Perhaps he did not remember that until too late." "And now nothing can clear him. How sad for him! A chance meeting with one who is not his friend, a whispered word to the Préfecture, or the nearest agent de police, and within an hour he finds himself in the Santé." "Poor chap!" said Lanyard with a doleful shake of the head. "I, too, pity him," the woman declared. "Monsieur: against my prejudice, your faith in Duchemin has persuaded me. I am convinced that he is innocent." "How good you are!" "It makes me glad I have so well forgotten ever meeting him. I do not believe I should know him if I found him here, in this very restaurant, even seated by my side." "It is mademoiselle now whose heart is great and kind." "You may believe it well." "And does mademoiselle's forgetfulness, perhaps, extend even farther into the so dead past?" "But, monsieur, I was a mere child when I first came to Paris, before the War. How could anyone reasonably expect my memory of those innocent girlish days to be exact? Regard that, even then, I met people by hundreds, as a young girl studying for the stage must. Is it likely one face would stand out in my memory more than another?" "Quite, if you ask me," said Lanyard dryly--"quite likely, if any circumstance connected with that face were at all memorable." "But I assure you I was in those days much too self-absorbed to pay much attention to others. It is that way, you know, in maiden days." "Mademoiselle does injustice to her memory," Lanyard insisted in polite astonishment. "In some ways it is wonderful." The woman looked suddenly aside, so that he could not see her face; but he perceived, with an astonishment which he made no attempt to hide, that she was quaking bodily with some unconfessed emotion. And when she faced again his unbroken look of grave bewilderment, he discovered that she was really capable of tears. "Monsieur," she gasped, "believe it or not, never before have I met one with whom I was so completely en rapport. And instantaneously! It is priceless, this! We must see more of one another." "Much more," Lanyard assented gravely. "A great deal more," she supplemented with significance. "I am sure we shall get along together famously." "Mademoiselle offers me great honour--" "Nothing less than my friendship." "I would be indeed an ingrate to refuse it. But a question: Will not people talk?" "What!" Amusement shook her again. "How talk? What more can they say about Liane Delorme?" "Ah!" said Lanyard--"but about Madame la Comtesse de Lorgnes..." "My friend: that was a good joke once; but now you must forget that name as utterly as I have forgotten another." "Impossible." "What do you say?" She frowned a little. "Is it possible you misunderstood? De Lorgnes was nothing to me." "I never thought he was." "You had reason. Because we were thrown together, and our names were something alike in sound, it amused us--not the two of us alone, but all our party--to pretend I was madame la comtesse." "He was really a count?" "Who knows? It was the style by which he had always passed with us." "Alas!" sighed Lanyard, and bent a sombre gaze upon his glass. Without looking he was aware of a questioning gesture of the woman's head. He said no more, but shook his own. "What is this?" she asked sharply. "You know something about de Lorgnes?" "Had you not heard?" he countered, looking up in surprise. "Heard--?" He saw her eyes stabbed by fear, and knew himself justified of his surmises. All day she had been expecting de Lorgnes, or word from him, all day and all this night. One could imagine the hourly augmented strain of care and foreboding; indeed its evidence were only too clearly betrayed in her face and manner of that moment: she was on the rack. But there was no pity in Lanyard's heart. He knew her of old, what she was, what evil she had done; and in his hearing still sounded the echoes of those words with which, obliquely enough but without misunderstanding on the part of either, she had threatened to expose him to the police unless he consented to some sort of an alliance with her, a collaboration whose nature could not but be dishonourable if it were nothing more than a simple conspiracy of mutual silence. And purposely he delayed his answer till her patience gave way and she was clutching his arm with frantic hands. "What is the matter? Why do you look at me like that? Why don't you tell me--if there is anything to tell--?" "I was hesitating to shock you, Liane." "Never mind me. What has happened to de Lorgnes?" "It is in all the evening newspapers--the murder mystery of the Lyons rapide." "De Lorgnes--?" Lanyard inclined his head. The woman breathed an invocation to the Deity and sank back against the wall, her face ghastly beneath its paint. "You know this?" "I was a passenger aboard the rapide, and saw the body before it was removed." Liane Delorme made an effort to speak, but only her breath rustled harshly on her dry lips. She swallowed convulsively, turned to her glass, and found it empty. Lanyard hastened to refill it. She took the wine at a gulp, muttered a word of thanks, and offered the glass to be filled anew; but when this had been done sat unconscious of it, staring witlessly at nothing, so lost to her surroundings that all the muscles of her face relaxed and her years peered out through that mask of artifice which alone preserved for her the illusion and repute of beauty. Thus the face of an evil woman of middle-age, debauched beyond hope of redemption, was hideously revealed. Lanyard knew a qualm at seeing it, and looked hastily away. Beyond the rank of tables which stood between him and the dancing floor he saw Athenais Reneaux with Le Brun sweeping past in the suave movement of a waltz. The girl's face wore a startled expression, her gaze was direct to the woman at Lanyard's side; then it shifted enquiringly to him. With a look Lanyard warned her to compose herself, then lifted an eyebrow and glanced meaningly toward the doors. The least of nods answered him before Le Brun swung Athenais toward the middle of the floor and other couples intervened. Liane Delorme stirred abruptly. "The assassin?" she demanded--"is there any clue?" "I believe he is known by description, but missing." "But you, my friend--what do you know?" "As much as anybody, I fancy--except the author of the murder." "Tell me." Quietly, briefly, Lanyard told her of seeing the Comte de Lorgnes at dinner in Lyons; of the uneasiness he manifested, and the cumulative feeling of frustration and failure he so plainly betrayed as the last hours of his life wore on; of the Apaches who watched de Lorgnes in the café and the fact that one of them had contrived to secure a berth in the same carriage with his victim; of seeing the presumptive murderer slinking away from the train at Laroche; and of the discovery of the body, on the arrival of the rapide at the Gare de Lyon. Absorbed, with eyes abstracted and intent, and a mouth whose essential selfishness and cruelty was unconsciously stressed by the compression of her lips: the woman heard him as he might have been a disembodied voice. Now and again, however, she nodded intently and, when he finished, had a pertinent question ready. "You say a description of this assassin exists?" "Have I not communicated it to you?" "But to the police--?" "Is it likely?" The woman gave him a blank stare. "Pardon, mademoiselle: but is it likely that the late André Duchemin would have more to do with the police than he could avoid?" "You would see a cold-blooded crime go unavenged--?" "Rather than dedicate the remainder of my days to seeing the world through prison bars? I should say yes!--seeing that this assassination does not concern me, and I am guiltless of the crime with which I myself am charged. But you who were a friend to de Lorgnes know the facts, and nothing hinders your communicating them to the Préfecture.... Though I will confess it would be gracious of you to keep my name out of the affair." But Lanyard was not dicing with Chance when he made this suggestion: he knew very well Liane Delorme would not go to the police. "That for the Préfecture!" She clicked a finger-nail against her teeth. "What does it know? What does it do when it knows anything?" "I agree with mademoiselle entirely." "Ah!" she mused bitterly--"if only we knew the name of that sale cochon!" "We do." "We--monsieur?" "I, at least, know one of the many names doubtless employed by the assassin." "And you hesitate to tell me!" "Why should I? No, but an effort of memory..." Lanyard measured a silence, seeming lost in thought, in reality timing the blow and preparing to note its effect. Then, snapping his fingers as one who says: I have it!--"Albert Dupont," he announced abruptly. Unquestionably the name meant nothing to the woman. She curled a lip: "But that is any name!" Then thoughtfully: "You heard his companion of the café call him that?" "No, mademoiselle. But I recognised the animal as Albert Dupont when he boarded the train at Combe-Rendonde that morning and, unnoticed by him, travelled with him all the way to Lyons." "You recognised him?" "I believe it well." "When had you known him?" "First when I fought with him at Montpellier-le-Vieux, later when he sought to do me in on the outskirts of Nant. He was the fugitive chauffeur of the Château de Montalais." "But--name of a sacred name!--what had that one to do with de Lorgnes?" "If you will tell me that, there will be no more mystery in this sad affair." The woman brooded heavily for a moment. "But if it had been you he was after, I might understand..." He caught the sidelong glimmer of her eye upon him, dark with an unuttered question. But the waltz was at an end, Athenais and Le Brun were threading their way through the intervening tables. The interruption could not have been better timed; Lanyard was keen to get away. He had learned all that he could reasonably have hoped to learn from Liane Delorme in one night. He knew that she and de Lorgnes had been mutually interested in the business that took the latter to Lyons. He had the testimony of his own perceptions to prove that news of the murder had come as a great shock to her. On that same testimony he was prepared to swear that, whatever the part, if any, she had played in the robbery, she knew nothing of "Albert Dupont," at least by that name, and nothing of his activities as chauffeur at the Château de Montalais. Yet one thing more Lanyard knew: that Liane suspected him of knowing more than he had told her. But he wasn't sorry she should think that; it gave him a continuing claim upon her interest. Henceforth she might be wary of him, but she would never lose touch with him if she could help it. Now Athenais was pausing beside the table, and saying with a smile as weary as it was charming: "Come, Monsieur Paul, if you please, and take me home! I've danced till I'm ready to drop." Annoyed by the prospect of being obliged to let Lanyard out of her sight so soon, before she had time to mature her plans with respect to him, Liane Delorme pulled herself together. "Go home?" she protested with a vivacity so forced it drew a curious stare even from the empty Le Brun. "So early! My dear! what are you thinking of?" "I've been on the go all day long," Athenais explained sweetly; "and now I've got nothing left to keep up on." "Zut!" the Delorme insisted. "Have more champagne and--" "Thank you, no, dearest. My head is swimming with it already. I really must go. Surely you don't mind?" But Liane did mind, and the wine she had drunk had left her only a remnant of sobriety, not enough for good control of her temper. "Mind?" she echoed rudely. "Why should I mind whether you stay or go? It's your affair, not mine." She made a scornful mouth; and the look with which she coupled Lanyard and Athenais in innuendo was in itself almost actionable. "But me," she pursued with shrill vivacity--"I shan't go yet, I'm not drunk enough by half. Get more champagne, Fred"--this to Le Brun as she turned a gleaming shoulder to the others--"quantities of it--and tell Chu-chu to bring Angele over, and Constance and Victor, too. Thanks to the good God, they at least know they are still alive!" XV ADIEU Ever since the fall of evening, whose clear gloaming had seemed to promise a fair night of moonlight, the skies had been thickening slowly over Paris. While still at the Ambassadeurs Lanyard had noticed that the moon was being blotted out. By midnight its paling disk had become totally eclipsed, the clouds hung low over the city, a dense blanket imprisoning heat which was oppressive even in the open and stifling in the ill-ventilated restaurants. Now from the shelter of the café canopy Lanyard and Athenais Reneaux looked out upon a pave like a river of jet ribboned with gently glowing lights and running between the low banks of sidewalks no less black: both deserted but for a few belated prowlers lurching homeward through the drizzle, and a rank of private cars waiting near the entrance. The bedizened porter whistled fatuously at a passing taxicab, which though fareless held steadfast to its way, while the driver acknowledged the signal only with jeers and disgraceful gestures, after the manner of his kind. So that Lanyard, remembering how frequently similar experiences had befallen him in pre-War Paris, reflected sadly that the great conflict had, after all, worked little change in human hearts--charitably assuming the bosoms of French taxi-bandits to be so furnished. Presently, however, the persistent whistle conjured from round a corner a rakish hansom that--like the creature between its shafts and the driver on its lofty box, with his face in full bloom and his bleary eyes, his double-breasted box-coat and high hat of oilcloth--had doubtless been brisk with young ambition in the golden time of the Nineteen-Naughties. But unmistakably of the vintage of the Nineteen-Twenties was the avarice of the driver. For when he had been given the address of the Athenais' apartment, he announced with vinous truculence that his whim inclined to precisely the opposite direction, gathered up the reins, clucked in peremptory fashion to the nag (which sagely paid no attention to him whatsoever) and consented only to change his mind when promised a fabulous fare. Even then he grumbled profanely while Lanyard helped Athenais to climb in and took the place by her side. The rue Pigalle was as dark and still as any street in a deserted village. From its gloomy walls the halting clatter of hoofs struck empty echoes that rang in Lanyard's heart like a refrain from some old song. To that very tune had the gay world gone about its affaires in younger years, when the Lone Wolf was a living fact and not a fading memory in the minds of men... He sighed heavily. "Monsieur is sentimental," commented Athenais Reneaux lightly. "Beware! Sentimentalists come always to some sad end." "One has found that true ... But you are young to know it, Athenais." "A woman is never young--after a certain age--save when she loves, my friend." "That, too, is true. But still you are overyoung to have learned it." "One learns life's lessons not in any fixed and predetermined order, Paul, with no sort of sequence whatever, but as and when Life chooses to teach them." "Quel dommage!" Lanyard murmured, and subsided into another silence. The girl grew restive. "But tell me, my dear Don Juan," she protested: "Do all your conquests affect you in this morbid fashion?" "Conquests?" "You seemed to get on very well with Liane Delorme." "Pardon. If I am sentimental, it is because old memories have been awakened to-night, memories of forfeit days when one thought well of oneself, here in Paris." "Days in which, no doubt, Liane played a part?" "A very minor rôle, Athenais ... But are you doing me the honour to be jealous?" "Perhaps, petit Monsieur Paul..." In the broken light of passing lamps her quiet smile was as illegible as her shadowed eyes. After a moment Lanyard laughed a little, caught up her hand, patted it indulgently, and with gentle decision replaced it in her lap. "It isn't fair, my dear, to be putting foolish notions into elderly heads merely because you know you can do it. Show a little respect for my grey hairs, of which there are far too many." "They're most becoming," said Athenais Reneaux demurely. "But tell me about Liane, if it isn't a secret." "Oh! that was so long ago and such a trifling thing, one wonders at remembering it at all.... I happened, one night, to be where I had no right to be. That was rather a habit of mine, I'm afraid. And so I discovered, in another man's apartment, a young woman, hardly more than a child, trying to commit suicide. You may believe I put a stop to that.... Later, for in those days I had some little influence in certain quarters, I got her place in the chorus at the Variétés. She made up a name for the stage: Liane Delorme. And that is all. You see, it was very simple." "And she was grateful?" "Not oppressively. She was quite normal about it all." "Still, she has not forgotten." "But remind yourself that the chemistry of years is such that inevitably a sense of obligation in due course turns into a grudge. It is true, Liane has not forgotten, but I am by no means sure she has forgiven me for saving her to life." "There may be something in that, seeing what she has made of her life." "Now there is where you can instruct me. I have been long in exile." "But you know how Liane graduated from the chorus of the Variétés, became first a principal there, then the rage of all the music halls with her way of singing rhymed indecencies." "One has heard something of that." "On the peak of her success she retired, saying she had worked long enough, made enough money. That, too, knows itself. But Liane retired only from the stage... You understand?" "Perfectly." "She continued to make many dear friends, some of them among the greatest personages of Europe. So that gradually she became what she is to-day," Athenais Reneaux pronounced soberly: "as I think, the most dangerous woman on the Continent." "How--'dangerous'?" "Covetous, grasping, utterly unscrupulous and corrupt, and weirdly powerful. She has a strange influence in the highest places." "Blackmail?" "God knows! It was, at all events, strong enough to save her from being shot during the war. I was assigned to watch her then. There was a suspicion in England that she was in communication with the enemy. I found it to be quite true. She knew Bolo Pasha intimately, Caillaux, too. Other women, many of them, fled the country, or went to St. Lazare for the duration of the war, or faced firing squads at dawn for doing infinitely less than she did to betray France and her Allies; but Liane Delorme got off scot-free. I happen to know that England made the strongest representations to the French government about her. I know personally of two young French officers who had been on friendly terms with Liane, and who shot themselves, one dramatically on her very doorstep. And why did they do that, if not in remorse for betraying to her secrets which afterwards somehow found their way to the enemy?... But nothing was ever done about it, she was never in the least molested, and nightly you might see her at Maxim's or L'Abbaye, making love to officers, while at the Front men were being slaughtered by the hundreds, thanks to her treachery.... Ah, monsieur, I tell you I know that woman too well!" The girl's voice quavered with indignation. "So that was how you came to know her," Lanyard commented as if he had found nothing else of interest. "I wondered..." "Yes: we were bosom friends--almost--for a time. It wasn't nice, but the job had to be done. Then Liane grew suspicious, and our friendship cooled. One night I had a narrow escape from some Apaches. I recognised Liane's hand in that. She was afraid I knew something. So I did. But she didn't dream how much I knew. If she had there would have been a second attempt of that sort minus the escape. Then the armistice came to cool our passions, and Liane found other things to think about ... God knows what other mischief to do in time of peace!" "I think," Lanyard suggested, recalling that conversation in the grand salon of the Château de Montalais, "you had better look to yourself, Athenais, as far as Liane is concerned, after to-night. She only needed to see you with me to have confirmed any suspicions she may previously have had concerning your relations with the B. S. S." "I will remember that," the girl said calmly. "Many thanks, dear friend.... But what is it you are doing all the time? What is it you see?" As the hansom swung round the dark pile of the Trinité, Lanyard had for the third time twisted round in his seat, to peep back up the rue Pigalle through the little window in the rear. "As I thought!" He let the leather flap fall over the peep-hole and sat back. "Liane doesn't trust me," he sighed, disconsolate. "We are followed?" "By a motor-car of some sort, creeping along without lights, probably one of the private cars that were waiting when we came out." "I have a pistol, if you need one," Athenais offered, matter-of-fact. "Then you were more sensible than I." Lanyard held a thoughtful silence for some minutes, while the cab jogged sedately down the rue St. Lazare, then had another look back through the little window. "No mistake about that," he reported; and bending forward began to peer intently right and left into the dark throats of several minor streets they passed after leaving the Hôtel Terminus behind and heading down the rue de la Pépinière. "The deuce of it is," he complained, "this inhuman loneliness! If there were only something like a crowd in the streets as there must have been earlier in the evening..." "What are you thinking of, monsieur?" "But naturally of ridding you of an embarrassing and perhaps dangerous companion." "If you mean you're planning to jump down and run for it," Athenais replied, "you're a fool. You'll not get far with a motor car pursuing you and sergents de ville abnormally on the qui vive because the crime wave that followed demobilisation as yet shows no signs of subsiding." "But, mademoiselle, it makes me so unhappy to have any shadow but my own." "Then rest tranquil here with me. It isn't much farther to my apartment." "Possibly it would be better to drop you there first--" "Nothing of the sort; but positively the contrary." "My dear child! if I were to do as you wish they would think--" "My dear Paul, I don't give a damn what they think. Remember I am specially charged with the preservation of your life while in Paris. Besides, my apartment is the most discreet little rez-de-chaussée one could wish. There is more than one way in and out. And once they think you are placed for the night, it's more than likely they won't even set a watch, but will trot off to report. Then you can slip away when you will...." He stared, knowing a moment of doubt to which a hard little laugh put a period. "Oh, you needn't be so thoughtful of my reputation! If this were the worst that could be said of me--" Lanyard laughed in turn, quietly tolerant, and squeezed her hand again. "You are a dear," he said, "but you need to be a far better actress to deceive me about such matters." "Don't be stupid!" her sulky voice retorted. "I'm not." He bent forward again, folding his arms on the ledge of the apron, studying the streets and consulting an astonishingly accurate mental map of Paris which more than once had stood him in good stead in other times. After a little the girl's hand crept along his arm, took possession of his hand and used it as a lever to swing him back to face her. In the stronger lighting of the Boulevard Haussmann her face seemed oddly childlike, oddly luminous with appeal. "Please, petit Monsieur Paul! I ask it of you, I wish it.... To please me?" "O Lord!" Lanyard sighed--"how is one to resist when you plead so prettily to be compromised?" "Since that's settled"--of a sudden the imploring child was replaced by self-possessed Mademoiselle Athenais Reneaux--"you may have your hand back again. I assure you I have no more use for it." The hansom turned off the boulevard, affording Lanyard an opportunity to look back through the side window. "Still on the trail," he announced. "But they've got the lights on now." With a profound sigh from the heart the horse stopped in front of a corner apartment building and later, with a groan almost human, responded to the whip and jingled the hansom away, leaving Lanyard the poorer by the exorbitant fare he had promised and something more. Athenais was already at the main entrance, ringing for the concierge. Lanyard hastened to join her, but before he could cross the sidewalk a motor-car poked its nose round the corner of the Boulevard Haussmann, a short block away, and bore swiftly their way, seeming to search the street suspiciously with its blank, lidless eyes of glare. "Peste!" breathed the girl. "I have a private entrance and my own key. We could have used that had I imagined this sacred pig of a concierge--!" The latch clicked. She thrust the door open and slipped into dense darkness. Lanyard lingered another instant. The car was slowing down, and the street lamp on the corner revealed plainly a masculine arm resting on its window-sill; but the spying face above the arm was only a blur. "Come, monsieur!" Lanyard stepped in and shut the door. A hand with which he was beginning to feel fairly well acquainted found his and led him through the dead obscurity to another pause. A key grated in a lock, the hand drew him on again, a second door closed behind him. "We are chez moi," said a voice in the dark. "One could do with a light." "Wait. This way." The hand guided him across a room of moderate size, avoiding its furniture with almost uncanny ease, then again brought him to a halt. Brass rings clashed softly on a pole, a gap opened in heavy draperies curtaining a window, a shaft of street light threw the girl's profile into soft relief. She drew him to her till their shoulders touched. "You see..." He bent his head close to hers, conscious of a caressing tendril of hair that touched his cheek, and the sweet warmth and fragrance of her; and peering through the draperies saw their pursuing motor car at pause, not at the curb, but in the middle of the street before the house. The man's arm still rested on the sill of the window; the pale oval of the face above it was still vague. Abruptly both disappeared, a door slammed on the far side of the car, and the car itself, after a moment's wait, gathered way with whining gears and vanished, leaving nothing human visible in the quiet street. "What did that mean? Did they pick somebody up?" "But quite otherwise, mademoiselle." "Then what has become of him?" "In the shadow of the door across the way: don't you see the deeper shadow of his figure in the corner, to this side. And there ... Ah, dolt!" The man in the doorway had moved, cautiously thrusting one hand out of the shadow far enough for the street lights to shine upon the dial of his wrist-watch. Instantly it was withdrawn; but his betrayal was accomplished. "That's enough," said Lanyard, drawing the draperies close again. "No trouble to make a fool of that one, God has so nobly prepared the soil." The girl said nothing. They no longer touched, and she was for the time so still that he might almost have fancied himself alone. But in that quiet room he could hear her breathing close beside him, not heavily but with a rapid accent hinting at an agitation which her voice bore out when she answered his wondering: "Mademoiselle?" "J'y suis, petit Monsieur Paul." "Is anything the matter?" "No ... no: there is nothing the matter." "I'm afraid I have tired you out to-night." "I do not deny I am a little weary." "Forgive me." "There is nothing to forgive, not yet, petit Monsieur Paul." A trace of hard humour crept into her tone: "It is all in the night's work, as the saying should be in Paris." "Three favours more; then I will do you one in return." "Ask..." "Be so kind as to make a light and find me a pocket flash-lamp if you have one." "I can do the latter without the former. It is better that we show no light; one stray gleam through the curtains would tell too much. Wait." A noise of light footsteps muffled by a rug, high heels tapping on uncovered floor, the scrape of a drawer pulled out: and she returned to give him a little nickelled electric torch. "And then--?" "Liane's address, if you know it." The girl named a number on an avenue not far distant. Lanyard remarked this. "Yes; you can walk there in less than five minutes. And finally?" "Show me the way out." Again she made no response. He pursued in some constraint: "Thus you will enable me to make you my only inadequate return--leave you to your rest." Yet another space of silence; then a gusty little laugh. "That is a great favour, truly, petit Monsieur Paul! So give me your hand once more." But she no longer clung to it as before; the clasp of her fingers was light, cool, impersonal to the point of indifference. Vexed, resentful of her resentment, Lanyard suffered her guidance through the darkness of another room, a short corridor, and then a third room, where she left him for a moment. He heard again the clash of curtain rings. The dim violet rectangle of a window appeared in the darkness, the figure of the woman in vague silhouette against it. A sash was lifted noiselessly, rain-sweet air breathed into the apartment. Athenais returned to his side, pressed into his palm a key. "That window opens on a court. The drop from the sill is no more than four feet. In the wall immediately opposite you will find a door. This key opens it. Lock the door behind you, and at your first opportunity throw away the key: I have several copies. You will find yourself in a corridor leading to the entrance of the apartment house in the rear of this, facing on the next street. Demand the cordon of the concierge as if you were a late guest leaving one of the apartments. He will make no difficulty about opening.... I think that is all." "Not quite. There remains for me to attempt the impossible, to prove my gratitude, Athenais, in mere, unmeaning words." "Don't try, Paul." The voice was softened once more, its accents broken. "Words cannot serve us, you and me! There is one way only, and that, I know, is ... rue Barré!" Her sad laugh fluttered, she crept into his arms. "But still, petit Monsieur Paul, _she_ will not care if ... only once!" She clung to him for a long, long moment, then released his lips. "Men have kissed me, yes, not a few," she whispered, resting her face on his bosom, "but you alone have known my kiss. Go now, my dear, while I have strength to let you go, and ... make me one little promise..." "Whatever you ask, Athenais...." "Never come back, unless you need me; for I shall not have so much strength another time." Alone, she rested a burning forehead against the lifted window-sash, straining her vision to follow his shadow as it moved through the murk of the court below and lost itself in the deeper gloom of the opposing wall. XVI THE HOUSE OF LILITH It stood four-square and massive on a corner between the avenues de Friedland et des Champs-Elysées, near their junction at the Place de l'Etoile: a solid stone pile of a town-house in the most modern mode, without architectural beauty, boasting little attempt at exterior embellishment, but smelling aloud of Money; just such a maison de ville as a decent bourgeois banker might be expected to build him when he contemplates retiring after doing the Rothschilds a wicked one in the eye. It was like Liane's impudence, too. Lanyard smiled at the thought as he studied the mansion from the backwards of a dark doorway in the diagonally opposed block of dwellings. Her kind was always sure to seek, once its fortunes were on firm footing, to establish itself, as here, in the very heart of an exclusive residential district; as if thinking to absorb social sanctity through the simple act of rubbing shoulders with it; or else, as was more likely to be the case with a woman of Liane Delorme's temper, desiring more to affront a world from which she was outcast than to lay siege to its favour. It seemed, however, truly deplorable that Liane should have proved so conventional-minded in this particular respect. It rendered one's pet project much too difficult of execution. Earnestly as one desired to have a look at the inside of that house without the knowledge of its inmates, its aspect was forbidding and discouraging in the utmost extreme. Heavy gates of wrought bronze guarded the front doors. The single side or service-door was similarly protected if more simply. And stout grilles of bronze barred every window on the level of the street. Now none of these could have withstood the attack of a man of ingenuity with a little time at his disposal. But Lanyard could count on only the few remaining minutes of true night. Retarded though it might be by shrouded skies, dawn must come all too soon for his comfort. Yet he was conscious of no choice in the matter: he must and in spite of everything would know to-night what was going on behind that blank screen of stone. To-morrow night would be too late. Tonight, if there were any warrant for his suspicions, the jewels of Eve de Montalais lay in the dwelling of Liane Delorme; or if they were not there, the secret of their hiding was. But to-morrow both, and more than likely Liane as well, would be on the wing; or Lanyard had been sorely mistaken in seeing in her as badly frightened a woman as he had ever known, when she had learned of the assassination of de Lorgnes. It was possible, he thought it extremely probable, that Liane Delorme was as powerful as Athenais Reneaux had asserted; influential, that is, with the State, with the dealers in its laws and the dispensers of its protection. But now she had not to reckon with such as these, but with enemies of her own sort, with an antagonism as reckless of law and order as she herself. And she was afraid of that, infinitely more disturbed in mind and spirit than she would have been in the face of any threat on the part of the police. The Préfecture was a known and measured force, an engine that ran as it were on mapped lines of rail; its moves might be forecast, guarded against, watched, evaded. But this other force worked in the dark, this hostile power personified in the creature who had called himself Albert Dupont; the very composition of its being was cloaked in a secrecy impenetrable and terrifying, its intentions and its workings could not be surmised or opposed until it struck and the success or failure of the stroke revealed its origin and aim. Liane--or one misjudged her--would never sit still and wait for the blow to fall. She was too high-strung, too much in love with life. She must either strike first in self-defence--and, in such case, strike at what?--or remove beyond the range of the enemy's malice. Lanyard was confident she would choose the latter course. But confidence was not knowledge.... He transferred his attention from the formidable defences of the lower storey to the second. Here all the windows were of the type called french, and opened inward from shallow balconies with wrought bronze railings. Lanyard was acquainted with every form of fastening used for such windows; all were simple, none could resist his persuasions, provided he stood upon one of those balconies. Nor did he count it a difficult matter for a man of his activity and strength to scale the front of the house as far as the second storey; its walls were builded of heavy blocks of dressed stone with deep horizontal channels between each tier. These grooves would be greasy with rain; otherwise one could hardly ask for better footholds. A climb of some twelve or fifteen feet to the balcony: one should be able to make that within two minutes, granted freedom from interruption. The rub was there; the quarter seemed quite fast asleep; in the five minutes which had elapsed since Lanyard had ensconced himself in the doorway no motor car had passed, not a footfall had disturbed the stillness, never a sound of any sort had come to his attention other than one distant blare of a two-toned automobile horn from the neighbourhood of the Arc de Triomphe. But one dared not count on long continuance of such conditions. Already the sky showed a lighter shade above the profile of the roofs. And one wakeful watcher at a nearby window would spell ruin. Nevertheless he must adventure the consequences.... Poised to leave his shelter and dart across the street, with his point of attack already selected, his thoughts already busy with consideration of steps to follow--he checked and fell still farther back into the shadow. Something was happening in the house across the way. A man had opened the service-door and paused behind the bronze gate. There was no light behind him, and the gloom and intervening strips of metal rendered his figure indistinct. Lanyard's high-keyed perceptions had none the less been instant to remark that slight movement and the accompanying change in the texture of the darkness barred by the gate. Following a little wait, it swung slowly out, perhaps eighteen inches, the man advancing with it and again halting to peer up and down the street. Then quickly, as if alarmed, he withdrew, shut the gate, and disappeared, closing the service-door behind him. Listening intently, Lanyard heard no click of latch, such as should have been audible in that dead hour of hush. Evidently the fellow had neglected to make fast the gate. Possibly he had been similarly remiss about fastening the door. But what was he up to? Why this furtive appearance, why the retreat so abruptly executed? By way of answer came the soft drone of a high-powered motor; then the car itself rolled into view, a stately limousine coming from the direction of the avenue de Friedland. Before the corner house it stopped. A lackey alighted with an umbrella and ran to hold the door; but Liane Delorme would not wait for him. The car had not stopped when she threw the door open; on the instant when its wheels ceased to turn she jumped down and ran toward the house, heedless of the rain. At the same time one side of the great front doors swung inward, and a footman ran out to open the gates. The lackey with the umbrella, though he moved briskly, failed to catch up with Liane before she sped up the steps. So he closed the umbrella and trotted back to his place beside the chauffeur. The footman shut gates and door as the limousine moved away: it had not been sixty seconds at rest. In fifteen more street and house were both as they had been, save that a light now shone through the plate glass of the latter's great doors. And that was soon extinguished. Conceiving that the man who had appeared at the service entrance was the same who had admitted Liane, Lanyard told himself he understood: impatient for his bed, the fellow had gone to the service gate to spy out for signs of madame's return. Now if only it were true that he had failed to close it securely----! It proved so. The gate gave readily to Lanyard's pull. The knob of the small door turned silently. He stepped across the threshold, and shut himself into an unlighted hall, thoughtfully apeing the negligence of the servant and leaving the door barely on the latch by way of provision against a forced retreat. So far, good. He felt for his pocket torch, then sharply fell back into the nearest corner and made himself as inconspicuous as might be. Footsteps were sounding on the other side of an unseen wall. He waited, breathless, stirless. A latch rattled, and at about three yards' distance a narrow door opened, marked by a widening glow of light. A liveried footman--beyond a doubt he who admitted the mistress of the house--entered, carrying an electric candle, yawned with a superstitious hand before his mouth and, looking to neither right nor left, turned away from Lanyard and trudged wearily back to the household offices. At the far end of the long hallway a door closed behind him--and Lanyard moved swiftly. The door which had let the footman into the hall admitted to a spacious foyer which set apart the entrance and--as the play of the electric torch disclosed--a deep and richly furnished dining-room. To one side a broad flight of stairs ascended: Lanyard went up with the activity of a cat, making no more noise. The second floor proved to be devoted mainly to a drawing-room, a lounge, and a library, all furnished in a weird, inchoate sort of magnificence, with money rather than with taste, if one might judge fairly by the fitful and guarded beam of the torch. The taste may have been less questionable than Lanyard thought; but the evidences of luxurious tendencies and wealth recklessly wasted in their gratification were irrefutable. Lights were burning on the floor above, and a rumour of feminine voices drifted down, interrupted by an occasional sibilant rustle of silk, or a brief patter of high-heeled feet: noises which bore out the conjecture that madame's maid was undressing and putting her to bed; a ceremony apt to consume a considerable time with a woman of Liane's age and disposition, passionately bent on preserving to the grave a semblance of freshness in her charms. Lanyard reckoned on anything from fifteen minutes to an hour before her couching would be accomplished and the maid out of the way. Ten minutes more, and Liane ought to be asleep. If it turned out otherwise--well, one would have to deal with her awake. No need to be gravely concerned about that: to envisage the contingency was to be prepared against it. Believing he must possess his soul in patience for an indeterminable wait, he was casting about for a place to secrete himself, when a change in the tenor of the talk between mistress and maid was conveyed by a sudden lift of half an octave in the latter's voice, sounding a sharp note of protest, to be answered by Liane in accent of overbearing anger. One simply could not rest without knowing what that meant: Lanyard mounted the second flight of stairs as swiftly, surely, and soundlessly as he had the first. But just below a landing, where the staircase had an angle, he paused, crouching low, flat to the steps, his head lifted just enough to permit him to see, above the edge of the topmost, a section of glowing, rose-pink wall--it would be rose-pink! He could see nothing more; and Liane had already silenced the maid, or rather reduced her to responses feebly submissive, and, consonant with the nature of her kind, was rubbing it in. "And why should you not go with me to that America if I wish it?" Lanyard heard her say. "Is it likely I would leave you behind to spread scandal concerning me with that gabbling tongue in your head of an overgrown cabbage? It is some lover, then, who has inspired this folly in you? Tell him from me, if you please, the day you leave my service without my consent, it will be a sorry sweetheart that comes to him." "It is well, madame. I say no more. I will go." "I believe it well--you will go! You were mad ever to dream otherwise. Fetch my jewel-case--the large one, of steel, with the American lock." "Madame takes all her jewels, then?" the maid enquired, moving about the room. "But naturally. What do you think? That I leave them here for the scullery-maids to give their maquereaux? I shall pack them tonight, before I sleep." ("Damnation!"--from Lanyard, beneath his breath. More delay!) "And we leave to-morrow, madame, at what time?" "It matters not, so we are in Cherbourg by midnight. I may decide to make the trip by automobile." "And madame's packing?" "You know well what to pack, better than I. Get my boxes up the first thing in the morning and use your own judgment. If there are questions to be asked, save them until I wake up. I shall sleep till noon." "That is all, madame?" "That is all. You may go." "Good-night, madame." "Good-night, Marthe." The stairway was no place to stop. Lanyard slipped like a shadow to the floor below, and took shelter behind a jog in the wall of the grand salon where, standing in deep darkness, he commanded a view of the hall. The maid came down, carrying an electric candle like the footman's. Its rays illumined from below one of those faces of crude comeliness common to her class, the face of an animal not unintelligent but first and last an animal. With a hand on the lower newel-post she hesitated, looking up toward the room of her mistress, as if lost in thought. Poised thus, her lifted face partly turned away from Lanyard, its half-seen expression was hopelessly ambiguous. But some secret thought amused the woman, a shadow deepened in the visible corner of her full-lipped mouth. One fancied something sardonic in that covert smile. She went on down. A latch on the ground floor clicked as the door to the service hallway was gently closed. Lanyard came out of hiding with a fresh enterprise abrew. One must kill time somehow, Liane would be at least another half an hour busy with her jewellery, and the thought presented itself that the library, immediately beneath her room, should be worthy an investigation. In such establishments it is a tradition that the household safe shall be located somewhere in the library; and such strong-boxes are apt to be naïve contrivances. Lanyard did not hope to find the Montalais jewels stored away in such a place, Liane would surely take better care of them than that; assuming they were in her possession they would be under her hand, if not confused with her own treasures; still it could do no harm to make sure. Confident of being warned at need by his hearing, which was normally supersensitive and, when he was engaged as now, keyed to preterhuman acuteness, he went coolly about the business, and at his first step found a portable reading-lamp on a long cord and coolly switched on its hooded light. The library was furnished with bulky old Italian pieces of carved oak, not especially well selected, but suitable enough with one exception, a ponderous buffet, an exquisite bit of workmanship both in design and in detail but completely out of place in a room of that character. At least nine feet in length, it stood out four from the wall. Three heavy doors guarded by modern locks gave access to the body beneath its tier of drawers. But--this drew a frowning stare--there was a key in the lock of the middle door. "There's such a thing as too much luck," Lanyard communed. "First the service gate and door, and now this, ready to my hand----!" He swung sharply round and searched every shadow in the room with the glare of the portable lamp; but that was work of supererogation: he had already made sure he was alone on that floor. Placing the lamp on the floor and adjusting its hood so that it focussed squarely upon the middle section of the buffet, he turned the key and discovered, behind the door, a small safe. The run of luck did not hold in respect to this; there was no key; and the combination dial was smug with ill-grounded confidence in its own inviolable integrity. Still (Lanyard told it) it could hardly be expected to know, it had yet to be dealt with by the shade of the Lone Wolf. Amused by the conceit, Lanyard laid hold of the knob with steady, delicate fingertips that had not yet, in spite of years of honourable idleness, forgotten their cunning. Then he flattened an ear to the cold face of the safe. To his informed manipulation the dial whirled, paused, reversed, turned all but imperceptibly, while the hidden mechanism clicked, ground and thudded softly, speaking a living language to his hearing. In three minutes he sat back on his heels, grasped the T-handle, turned it, had the satisfaction of hearing the bolts slide back into their sockets, and opened the door wide. But the racked pigeonholes held nothing to interest him whose one aim was the recovery of the Montalais jewels. The safe was, in fact, dedicated simply to the storage of documents. "Love letters!" Lanyard mused with a grimace of weariness. "And each believed, no doubt, she cared too much for him to hold her power to compromise him. Good Lord! what vanity is man's!" Then the consideration offered that property of real value might be hidden behind those sheaves of papers. He selected a pigeonhole at hazard, and emptied it of several bundles of letters, all neatly bound with tape or faded ribbon and clearly docketed. It held nothing else whatever. But his eye was caught by a great name endorsed on the face of one of the packages; and reading what else was written there his brows rose high while his lips shaped a soundless whistle. If an inference were fair, Liane had kept not only such documents as gave her power over others. Lanyard wondered if it were possible he held in his hand an instrument to bend the woman to his will.... Suddenly he put out a hand and switched off the light, a gesture quite involuntary, simple reaction to the muffled thump of a chair overturned on the floor above. Sounds of scuffling followed, as if Liane were dancing to no music with a heavy-footed partner. Then a groan.... His hands moved so rapidly and deftly that, although he seemed to rise without a second's delay, the safe was closed and the combination locked when he did so, the buffet door was shut and its key in his pocket. This time Lanyard ascended the stairs without heeding what noise he made. Nevertheless his actions were never awkward or ill-timed; his approach was not heard, his arrival on the upper landing was unnoticed. In an instantaneous pause he looked into the rose-pink room and saw Liane Delorme, in a negligee like a cobweb over a nightdress even more sheer, kneeling and clawing at her throat, round which a heavy silk handkerchief was slowly tightening; her face already purple with strangulation, her eyes bulging from their sockets, her tongue protruding between swollen lips. A thick knee was planted between her shoulder-blades. The ends of the handkerchief were in the sinewy hands of Albert Dupont. XVII CHEZ LIANE Conceivably even a journeyman strangler may know the thrill of professional pride in a good job well done: Dupont was grinning at his work, and so intent upon it that his first intimation of any interference came when Lanyard took him from behind, broke his hold upon the woman (and lamentably failed to break his back at the same time) whirled him round with a jerk that all but unsocketed an arm and, before the thug could regain his balance, placed surely on the heel of his jaw, just below the ear, a blow that, coming straight from the shoulder and carrying all Lanyard had of weight and force and will to punish, in spite of Dupont's heaviness fairly lifted him from his feet and dropped him backwards across a chaise-longue, from which he slipped senseless to the floor. It was just like that, a crowded, breathless business.... With bruised and aching knuckles to prove that the blow had been one to stun an ox, Lanyard believed it safe to count Dupont hors de combat, for a time at least. In any event, the risk had to be chanced: Liane Delorme was in a plight demanding immediate relief. In all likelihood she had lost consciousness some moments before Lanyard's intervention. Released, she had fallen positively inert, and lay semi-prostrate on a shoulder, with limbs grotesquely slack and awry, as if in unpleasant mimicry of a broken doll. Only the whites of bloodshot eyes showed in her livid and distorted countenance. Arms and legs twitched spasmodically, the ample torso was violently shaken by labouring lungs. The twisted handkerchief round her throat had loosened, but not enough to give relief. Lanyard removed it, turned her over so that she lay supine, wedged silken pillows from the chaise-longue beneath her head and shoulders, then reached across her body, took from her dressing table a toilet-water flask of lovely Italian glass, and drenched her face and bosom with its pungent contents. She gasped, started convulsively, and began to breathe with less effort. That dreadful rattling in her throat was stilled. Heavy lids curtained her eyes. Lanyard continued to apply the scented water with a lavish hand. In time the woman shuddered, sighed profoundly, and looked up with a witless stare. Man is measurably a creature of gestures stereotyped when the world was young: Lanyard patted the woman's hand as one might comfort an abused child. "It is all right now, Liane," he said in a reassuring voice. "Rest tranquilly. You will soon be yourself again. But wait: I will find you a drink." She said nothing, her look continued cloudy; but the dazed eyes followed him as he got up and cast about for a glass of water. But then he remembered Dupont, and decided that Liane could wait another minute while he made it impossible for the Apache to do more mischief. He moved round the chaise-longue and paused, looking down thoughtfully. Since his fall Dupont had made neither moan nor stir. No crescent irides showed beneath the half-shut lids. He was so motionless, he seemed scarcely to breathe. Lanyard dug the toe of a boot into his ribs none too gently, but without satisfaction of any doubts. The fellow gave no sign of sensibility, but lay utterly relaxed, with the look of one dead. Lanyard frowned uneasily. He had seen men drop dead from blows less powerful than his, and though this one had well earned a death swift and merciless, Lanyard experienced a twinge of horror at the thought. Often enough it had been his lot in times of peace and war to be forced to fight for life, and more than once to kill in defence of it; but that had never happened, never could happen, without his suffering the bitterest regret. Even now, in the case of this bloody-handed butcher, this ruthless garroter.... Dropping to his knees, Lanyard bent over the body to search for symptoms of animation. He perceived them instantly. With inconceivable suddenness Dupont demonstrated that he was very much alive. An arm like the flexible limb of a tree wound itself affectionately round Lanyard's neck, clipped his head to Dupont's yearning bosom, ground his face into the flannel folds of a foul-scented shirt. Simultaneously the huge body heaved prodigiously, and after a brief interval of fantastic floppings, like a young mountain fell on top of Lanyard. But that was the full measure of Dupont's success in this stratagem. If hopelessly victimized and taken by surprise, Lanyard should have been better remembered by the man who had fought him at Montpellier-le-Vieux and again, with others assisting, on the road to Nant; though it is quite possible, of course, that Dupont failed to recognise his ancient enemy in clean-shaven Monsieur Paul Martin of the damp and bedraggled evening clothes. However that may have been, in the question of brute courage Dupont had yet to prove lacking. His every instinct was an Apache's: left to himself he would strike always from behind, and run like a cur to cover. But cornered, or exasperated by opposition to his vast powers--something which he seemed quite unable to understand--he could fight like a maniac. He was hardly better now, when he found himself thrown off and attacked in turn at a time when he believed his antagonist to be pinned down, helpless, at the mercy of the weapon for which he was fumbling. And the murderous fury which animated him then more than made up for want of science, cool-headedness and imagination. They fought for their most deeply-rooted passions, he to kill, Lanyard to live, Dupont to batter Lanyard into conceding a moment of respite in which a weapon might be used, Lanyard to prevent that very thing from happening. Even as animals in a pit they fought, now on their knees straining each to break the other's hold, now wallowing together on the floor, now on their feet, slogging like bruisers of the old school. Dupont took punishment in heroic doses, and asked for more. Shedding frightful blows with only an angry shake of his head, he would lower it and charge as a wild boar charges, while his huge arms flew like lunatic connecting-rods. The cleverest footwork could not always elude his tremendous rushes, the coolest ducking and dodging could not wholly escape that frantic shower of fists. Time and again Lanyard suffered blows that jarred him to his heels, time and again was fain to give ground to an onslaught that drove him back till his shoulders touched a wall. And more than once toward the end he felt his knees buckle beneath him and saw his shrewdest efforts fail for want of force. The sweat of his brows stung and dimmed his eyes, his dry tongue tasted its salt. He staggered in the drunkenness of fatigue, and suffered agonies of pain; for his exertions had strained the newly knitted tissues of the wound in his side, and the hurt of this was wholly hellish. But always he contrived somehow, strangely to him, to escape annihilation and find enough in reserve to fly back at Dupont's throat upon the first indication of desire on the part of the latter to yield the offensive. To do less were to permit him to find and use his weapon, whatever it might be--whether knife or pistol was besides the issue. Chairs, the chaise-longue, tables were overturned and kicked about. Priceless bits of porcelain and glass, lamps, vases, the fittings of the dressing-table were cast down in fragments to the floor. Constrained to look to herself or be trampled underfoot, and galvanized with terror, the woman struggled up and tottered hither and yon like a bewildered child, in the beginning too bemused to be able to keep out of the way of the combatants. If she crouched against a wall, battling bodies brushed her away from it. Did she take refuge in a corner she must abandon it else be crushed. Once she stumbled between the two, and before Lanyard could thrust her aside Dupont had fallen back half a dozen feet and worried a pistol out of his clothing. He fired first from the hip, and the shot shattered the mirror of the dressing-table. Trying for better aim, he lifted and levelled the weapon with a trembling arm which he sought to steady by cupping the elbow in his left hand. But the second bullet ploughed into the ceiling as Lanyard in desperation executed a coup de pied in la savate, and narrowly succeeded in kicking the pistol from Dupont's grasp. Bereft thus of his last hope--they were too evenly matched, and both too far spent for either to force a victory with his naked hands--the Apache swung round and ran, at the same time throwing a heavy chair over on its back in the path of pursuit. Unable to avoid it, Lanyard tried to hurdle it, caught a foot on one of its legs and, as Dupont threw himself headlong down the stairs, crashed to the floor with an impact that shook its beams. Main will-power lifted him to his knees before he collapsed, his last ounce of endurance wasted. Then the woman, with flying draperies, a figure like a fury, sped to the banister rail and leaning over emptied the several shots remaining in Dupont's automatic down the well of the staircase. It is doubtful if she saw anything to aim at or accomplished more than to wing the Apache's flight. Dupont had gained the second storey while Lanyard was still fighting up from his fall. The last report and the crash of the front door slammed behind Dupont were as one heartbeat to the next. Lanyard pillowed his head on a forearm and lay sobbing for breath. Liane Delorme turned and ran to the front of the house. Presently she came back drooping, sank into a chair and with lacklustre eyes regarded the man at her feet. "He got away," she said superfluously, in a faint voice. "I saw him in the street ... staggering like a sot..." At that moment Lanyard could not have mustered a show of interest had he been told Dupont was returning at the head of a horde. He closed his tired eyes and envied the lucky dead whose rest was independent of bruised flesh and aching bones. Neither, he supposed, were dreams poisoned by chagrin when what was mortal no longer mattered.... Three times had he come to grips with Dupont and, though he had been outnumbered on the road to Nant, in Lanyard's sight the honours were far from easy. Neither would they be while yet the other lived or was at large... The bitterness of failure and defeat had so rank a flavour in his thoughts that nothing else in life concerned him now. He had forgotten Liane Delorme for minutes when her arm passed beneath his shoulders and tried to lift them from the floor. He looked up then with listless eyes, and saw her on one knee by his side, giving him in his turn that confident and reassuring smile with which he had greeted her reviving senses ... a long, long time ago, it seemed. "Come!" she said--"sit up, monsieur, and take this drink. It will lend you strength. You need it." God knew he did! His throat was like a furnace flue, his mouth held the taste of leather. But for that thirst, indeed, he could hardly have found the energy to aid her efforts and lurch upon an elbow. A white-hot lancet pierced his wound, and though he locked his teeth against it a groan forced out between them. The woman cried out at the rapid ebb of colour from his face. "But you are suffering!" He forced a grey smile. "It is nothing," he whispered hoarsely--"it will pass. If you please--that drink----" She put a knee behind his shoulders for support, and he rested his head back upon it and drank deep from the glass which she held to his lips. Nectar of Olympus was never more divine than that deep draught of brandy and soda. He thought he quaffed Life itself in its distilled quintessence, its pure elixir. His look of gratitude had almost the spirit and the vigour of himself renewed. "My thanks, mademoiselle..." "Your thanks!"--she laughed with indulgent scorn--"your thanks to me!" He offered to rise, but was restrained by kindly hands. "No: rest there a little longer, give yourself a little time before you try to get up." "But I shall tire you..." "No. And if you did, what of that? It seems to me, my friend, I owe to you my life." "To me it seems you do," he agreed. "But such a debt is always the first to be forgotten, is it not?" "You reproach me?" "No, mademoiselle; not you, but the hearts of men... We are all very much alike, I think." "No," the woman insisted: "you do reproach me. In your heart you have said: 'She has forgotten that, but for me, she would have been dead long years ago. This service, too, she will presently forget.' But you are wrong, my friend. It is true, the years between had made that other time a little vague with old remoteness in my memory; but to-night has brought it all back and--a renewed memory never fades." "So one is told. But trust self-interest at need to black it out." "You have no faith in me!" she said bitterly. Lanyard gave her a weary smile. "Why should I not? And as for that: Why should I have faith in you, Liane? Our ways run leagues apart." "They can be one." She met his perplexed stare with an emphatic nod, with eyes that he could have sworn were abrim with tenderness. He shook his head as if to shake off a ridiculous plaguing notion, and grinned broadly. "That was a drink!" he declared. "I assure you, it was too much for my elderly head. Let me up." The cruel agony stabbed his side again and again as he--not unaided--got upon his feet; and though he managed to gulp down his groans, no grinding of his teeth could mitigate his recurrent pallor or the pained contractions of his eyes. Furthermore, he wavered when he tried to walk, and was glad to subside into a chair to which the woman guided him. Then she fetched him another brandy and soda, put a lighted cigarette between his lips, picked up a chair for herself, and sat down, so close to him that their elbows almost touched. "It is better, that pain, monsieur?" He replied with an uncertain nod, pressing a careful hand to his side. "... wound that animal gave me a month ago." "Which animal?" "Monsieur of the garotte, Liane; recently the assassin of de Lorgnes; before that the ex-chauffeur of the Château de Montalais." "Albert Dupont?" "As you say, it is not a name." "The same?" Her old terror revived. "My God! what have I ever done to that one that he should seek my life?" "What had de Lorgnes?" Her eyes turned away, she sat for a moment in silent thought, started suddenly to speak but checked the words before one passed her lips, and--as Lanyard saw quite plainly--hastened to substitute others. "No: I do not understand at all! What do you think?" Lanyard indicated a shrug with sufficient clearness, meaning to say, she probably knew as much as if not more than he. "But how did he get in? I had not one suspicion I was not alone until that handkerchief----" "Naturally." "And you, my friend?" "I saw him enter, and followed." This was strictly within the truth: Lanyard had now no doubt Dupont and the man who had reconnoitered from the service-door were one. But it was no part of his mind to tell the whole truth to Liane. She might be as grateful as she ought to be, but she was still ... Liane Delorme ... a woman to be tested rather than trusted. "I must tell you. But perhaps you knew there were agents de police in the restaurant to-night?" Liane's head described a negative; her violet eyes were limpid pools of candour. "I am so much a stranger in Paris," Lanyard pursued, "I would not know them. But I thought you, perhaps----" "No, no, my friend, I have nothing to do with the police, I know little about them. Not only that, but I was so interested in our talk, and then inexpressibly shocked, I paid attention to nothing else." "I understand. Otherwise you must have noticed who followed me." "You were followed?" And she had found the effrontery to chide him for lack of faith in her! He was in pain: for all that, the moment seemed amusing. "We are followed, I assure you," Lanyard replied gravely. "One man or two--I don't know how many--in a town-car." "But you are sure?" "All we could get was a hansom drawn by a snail. The automobile, running without lights, went no faster, kept a certain distance behind us all the way from the Place Pigalle to the apartment of Mademoiselle Reneaux. What have you to say to that? Furthermore, when Mademoiselle Reneaux had persuaded me to take refuge in her apartment--who knew what they designed?--one man left the automobile as it passed her door and stood on watch across the way. Could one require proof that one was followed?" "Then you think somebody of the Préfecture recognized Duchemin in you?" "Who knows? I know I was followed, watched. If you ask me, I think Paris is not a healthy place for me." "But all that," Liane objected, "does not bring you here!" "Patience: I am well on my way." Lanyard paused to sip his brandy and soda, and, under cover of that, summon ingenuity to the fore; here a little hand-made fabrication was indicated. "We waited till about half an hour ago. So did the spy. Mademoiselle Reneaux then let me out by a private way. I started to walk to my hotel, the Chatham. There wasn't a taxi to be had, you understand. Presently I looked back and saw I was being followed again. To make sure, I ran--and the spy ran after me. I twisted and doubled all through this quarter, and at last succeeded in shaking him off. Then I turned down this street, hoping to pick up a cab in the Champ-Élysées. Of a sudden I see Dupont. He is crossing the street toward this house. He does not know me, but quickens his pace, and hastily lets himself in at the service entrance.... Incidentally, if I were you, Liane, I would give my staff of servants a bad quarter of an hour in the morning. The door and gate were not locked; I am sure Dupont used no key. Some person of this establishment was careless or--worse." "Trust me to look into that." "Enfin! in his haste, Dupont leaves the door as he found it. I take a moment's thought; it is plain he is here for no good purpose. I follow him in... The state of this room tells the rest." "It is no matter." The woman reviewed the ruins of her boudoir with an apathetic glance which was, however, anything but apathetic when she turned it back to Lanyard's face. Bending forward, she closed a hand upon his arm. Emotion troubled her accents. "My friend, my dear friend: tell me what I can do to repay you?" "Help me," said Lanyard simply, holding her eyes. "How is that--help you?" "To make my honour clear." Speaking rapidly and with unfeigned feeling, he threw himself upon her generosity: "You know I am no more what I was once, in this Paris--when you first knew me. You know I have given up all that. For years I have fought an uphill fight to live down that evil fame in which I once rejoiced. Now I stand accused of two crimes." "Two!" "Two in one, I hardly know which is the greater: that of stealing, or that of violating the hospitality and confidence of those good ladies of the Château de Montalais. I cannot rest while they think me guilty... and not they alone, but all my friends, and I have made good friends, in France and England. So, if you think you owe me anything, Liane, help me to find and restore the Montalais jewels." Liane Delorme sat back, her hand lifted from his arm and fell with a helpless gesture. Her eyes mirrored no more guile than a child's. Yet her accent was that of one who remonstrates, but with forbearance, against unreasonable demands. "How can I do that?" And she had protested her gratitude to him! He knew that she was lying. Anger welled in Lanyard's heart, but he was able to hold it in leash and let no sign of it show in manner or expression. "You have much influence," he suggested, "here in Paris, with people of many classes. A word from you here, a question there, pressure exerted in certain quarters, will help me more than all the powers of Préfecture and Surété combined. You know that." "Let me think." She was staring at the floor. "You must give me time. I will do what I can, I promise you that. Perhaps"--she met his gaze again, but he saw something crafty in her smile--"I have a scheme already in mind. We will discuss that in the morning, when I have slept on it." "You give me new hope." Lanyard finished his drink and made as if to rise, but relapsed, a spasm of pain knotting his face. "Afraid I must have a cab," he said in a low voice. "And if you could lend me a coat of some sort to cover these rags...." And indeed his ready-made evening clothes had fared badly in their first social adventure. "But if you think I dream of letting you leave this house--in pain and perhaps to run into the arms of the police--you little know me, Monsieur Michael Lanyard!" "Paul Martin, if you don't mind." "The guest rooms are there." She waved a hand to indicate the front part of the house on that floor. "You will find everything you need to make you comfortable for to-night, and in the morning I will send to the Chatham for your things.... Or perhaps it would be wiser to wait till we are sure the police are not watching there for your return. But if they are, it will be a simple matter to find suitable clothing for you. Meanwhile we will have arrived at an understanding.... You comprehend, monsieur, I am resolved, this affair is now arranged?" "I am well content, Liane." And that was true enough; whatever she had in mind for him, she was only playing into his hands when she proposed to keep him near her. He managed to get out of the chair, and accepted the offer of her arm, but held back for a moment. "But your servants..." "Well, monsieur, what of them?" "For one thing, they sleep sincerely." "There are sound-proof walls between their part of the house and this. More than that, they are forbidden to intrude, no matter what may happen, unless I summon them." "But in the morning, Liane, when they regard this wreckage... I am afraid they will think me a tempestuous lover!" "They will find me a tempestuous mistress," promised Liane Delorme, "when I question them about that open door." XVIII BROTHER AND SISTER The storm had passed off, an ardent noonday sun was collaborating with a coquettish breeze to make gay the window awnings of the chamber where Lanyard, in borrowed pyjamas and dressing-gown of silk, lay luxuriously bedded, listening to the purr of wide-awake Paris and, with an excellent cigar to chew on, ruminating upon the problematic issue of his latest turn of fortune, and not in the least downhearted about it. Before turning in he had soaked and steamed most of the ache out of bone and muscle in the hottest water his flesh would suffer; and six hours unbroken slumber had done wonders toward lessening the distress his exertions last night had occasioned in the frail new tissues of his wound. Now, fresh from a cold shower following a second hot bath, and further comforted by a petit déjeuner served in bed, he felt measurably sane again, and sound in wind and limb as well, barring a few deep bruises whose soreness would need several days to heal. A pleasant languour, like a light opiate, infused his consciousness; yet he was by no means mentally inactive. The morning papers were scattered over the counterpane. Lanyard had diligently scanned all the stories that told of the identification of the murdered man of the Lyons rapide as the Comte de Lorgnes; and inasmuch as these were of one voice in praising the Préfecture for that famous feat of detective work, and not one line suggested that it did not deserve undivided credit, Lanyard had nothing to complain of there. As for the Montalais robbery it was not even mentioned. The restricted size imposed upon French newspapers by the paper shortage of those days crowded out of their columns everything but news in true sense, and there could be none of that in connection with the Montalais affair until either André Duchemin had been arrested or the jewels recovered from the real thief or thieves. And Lanyard was human enough to be almost as willing to have the first happen as the last, if it were not given to him to be the prime factor in their restoration. For the time being--if he must confess the truth--he was actually rather enjoying himself, rather exhilarated than otherwise by the swiftly shifting scenes and characters of his unfolding investigations and by the brisk sword-play of wits in which he was called upon constantly to engage; both essential ingredients of the wine of life according to the one recipe he knew. And then a review of recent events seemed to warrant the belief that, all things considered, he had thus far made fair progress toward his goal. While it was true he did not as yet know what had become of the Montalais jewels, he had gathered together an accumulation of evidence which, however circumstantial and hypothetical, established acceptably to his intelligence a number of interesting inferences, to wit: That Dupont had not left the neighbourhood of the Château de Montalais, after haunting it for upwards of a month, without definite knowledge that he would gain nothing by staying on, or without an equally definite objective, some motive more inspiring than such simple sensuousness as he might find in assassinating inoffensive folk indiscriminately. That his attempt upon the life of Liane Delorme within twenty-four hours of the murder of de Lorgnes indicated conviction on his part that the two were coupled in some enterprise inimical to his personal interests. That in spite of his mask of a stupid pig Dumont was proving himself mentally as well as physically an adversary worthy of all respect, and was--what was worse--still to be reckoned with. That, as Lanyard had suspected all along, the Monk party had been visited upon the Château de Montalais through no vagary of chance whatever but as part of a deliberate design whose ulterior motive had transpired only with the disappearance of the jewels--to Dupont's vast but understandable vexation of spirit. That the several members of the Monk party had been working in entire accord, as a close corporation; in which case the person whom the Comte de Lorgnes had expected to meet in Lyons must have been Monk Phinuit or Jules. Consequently that at least one of the three last named had been the actual perpetrator of the robbery; and by the same token, that Liane had lied in asserting that Monk and retinue had sailed for America nearly a week prior to its commission. That Liane herself had not so suddenly decided to leave France, where she was after a fashion somebody, and journey to America, where she would be nobody, except in stress of mortal fear lest the fate that had befallen de Lorgnes befall her in turn--as would surely have been the case last night but for Lanyard. That she must therefore have had a tolerably accurate knowledge either of Dupont's identity or of the opposition interests which that one so ably represented; and thus was better informed than poor de Lorgnes, to whom Dupont had been unknown; which argued that Liane's rôle in the intrigue was that of a principal, whereas de Lorgnes had figured only as a subordinate. That even if the woman did mean well toward Lanyard she was bound by stronger ties to others, whom she must consider first, and who were hardly likely to prove so well disposed; that her protestations of friendship and gratitude must be valued accordingly. Summing up, Lanyard told himself he could hardly be said to have let grass grow under his feet since leaving Château de Montalais. Now he found himself with a solitary care to nurse, the question: What had her pillow advised Liane Delorme? He was going to be exceedingly interested to learn what she, in the maturity of her judgement, had decided to do about this man who ingenuously suggested that she requite him for saving her life by helping him recover the Montalais jewels. On the other hand, since Lanyard had quite decided what he meant to do about Liane in any event, her decision really didn't matter much; and he refused to fret himself trying to forecast it. Whatever it might turn out to be, it would find him prepared, he couldn't be surprised. There Lanyard was wrong. Liane was amply able to surprise him, and did. Ultimately he felt constrained to concede a touch to genius in the woman; her methods were her own and never poor in boldness and imagination. It was without ceremony that she walked in on him at length, having kept him waiting so long that he had begun to wonder if she meant to try on anything as crude as abandoning him, and posting off to Cherbourg without a word to seek fancied immunity in New York, while he remained in an empty house without money, papers of identification, or even fit clothing for the street; for, on coming out of his bath, Lanyard had found all of these things missing, the valet de chambre presumably having made off with his evening clothes, to have them pressed and repaired. Liane was dressed for travelling, becomingly if with a sobriety that went oddly with her cultivated beauté du diable, and wore besides a habit of preoccupation which, one was left to assume, excused the informality of her unannounced entrance. "Well, my dear friend!" she said gravely, halting by the bedside. "It's about time," Lanyard retorted. "I was afraid you might be growing impatient," she confessed. "I have had so much to do..." "No doubt. But if you had neglected me much longer I should have come to look for you regardless of consequences." "How is that?" she enquired with knitted brows--"regardless of what consequences?" "Any damage one might do to the morale of your ménage by toddling about in the voluptuous déshabillé in which you behold me--my sole present apology for a wardrobe." She found only the shadow of a smile for such frivolity. "I have sent for clothing for you," she said absently. "It should be here any minute now. We only wait for that." "You mean you have sent to the Chatham for my things?" "But certainly not, monsieur!" Liane Delorme lied without perceptible effort. "That would have been too injudicious. It appears you were not mistaken in thinking you were recognized as André Duchemin last night. Agents of the Préfecture have been all day watching at the Chatham, awaiting your return." "How sad for them!" In as much as he had every reason to believe this to be outright falsehood, Lanyard didn't feel called upon to seem downcast. "But if my clothing there is unavailable, I hardly see..." "But naturally I have commissioned a person of good judgement to outfit you from the shops. Your dress clothes--which seemed to suit you very well last night--gave us your measurements. The rest is simplicity; my orders were to get you everything you could possibly require." "It's awfully sporting of you," Lanyard insisted. "Although it makes one feel--you know--not quite respectable. However, if you will be so gracious as to suggest that your valet de chambre return my pocketbook and passports..." "I have them here." The woman turned over the missing articles. "But," she demanded with an interest which was undissembled if tardy in finding expression, "how are you feeling to-day?" "Oh, quite fit, thank you." "In good spirits, I know. But that wound--?" Lanyard chose to make more of that than it deserved; one couldn't tell when an interesting disability might prove useful. "I have to be a bit careful," he confessed, covering the seat of injury with a tender hand, "but it's nothing like so troublesome as it was last night." "I am glad. You feel able to travel?" "Travel?" Lanyard made a face of dismay. "But one is so delightfully at ease here, and since the Prefecture cannot possibly suspect... Are you then in such haste to be rid of me, Liane?" "Not at all. It is my wish and intention to accompany you." "Well, let us trust the world will be broad-minded about it. And--pardon my not rising--won't you sit down and tell me what it is all about." "I have so little time, so many things to attend to." Nevertheless, Liane found herself a chair and accepted a cigarette. "Does one infer that we start on our travels to-day?" "Within the hour; in fact, as soon as you are decently clothed." "And where do we go, mademoiselle?" "To Cherbourg, there to take steamer for New York." Fortunately it was Lanyard's cue to register shock; it would have cost him something to have kept secret his stupefaction. He sank back upon his pillows and waggled feeble hands, while his respect for Liane grew by bounds. She had succeeded in startling and mystifying him beyond expression. What dodge was this that cloaked itself in such anomalous semblance of good faith? She had not known he was acquainted with her plan to leave France; he had discounted a hundred devices to keep it from his knowledge. And now she not only confessed it openly, but invited him to go with her! In the name of unreason--why? She knew, for he had owned, his possessing purpose. He did not for an instant believe Liane Delorme would fly France and leave behind the Montalais jewels. Did she think he did not suspect her of knowing more about them than she had chosen to admit? Did she imagine that he was one of those who can see only that which is in the distance? Did she do him the injustice to believe him incapable of actually smelling out the jewels if ever he got within range of them? But conjecture was too idle, Liane was too deep for him; her intent would declare itself when she willed it, not before, unless he could lull her into a false sense of faith in him, trick her into betraying herself by inadvertence. "But, my dear friend, why America?" "You recall asking me to help you last night? Did I not promise to do what I could? Well, I am not one to forget my promise. I know something, monsieur." "I believe you do!" "You gave me credit for having some little influence in this world of Paris. I have used it. What I have learned--I shall not tell you how, specifically--enables me to assure you that the Montalais jewels are on their way to America." "And I am to believe you make this journey to help me regain them?" "What do you think, then?" "I do not know what to think, mademoiselle. I am overwhelmed--abashed and humbled by contemplation of such generosity." "You see, you do not know me, monsieur. But you shall know me better before we are finished." "One does not question that." Nor did one! "But if I am to sail for America to-day--" "To-morrow, from Cherbourg, at eight in the morning." "Well, to-morrow, then: but how am I to get my passport vised?" "I have seen to that. If you will look over your papers, monsieur, you will see that you are no longer Paul Martin alias André Duchemin, but Paul Delorme, my invalid brother, still suffering from honourable wounds sustained in the Great War and ordered abroad for his health." To this Lanyard, hastily verifying her statement by running an eye through the passport, found nothing more appropriate than a wondering "Mon dieu!" "So you see, everything is arranged. What have you to say?" "Only that mademoiselle sweeps one off one's feet." "Do you complain about that? You no longer doubt my devotion, my gratitude?" "Do not believe me capable of such stupidity!" "That is very well, then. Now I must run." Liane Delorme threw away her cigarette and rose. "I have a thousand things to do.... And, you understand, we leave as soon as you are dressed?" "Perfectly. By what train?" "By no train. Don't you know there is a strike to-day? What have you been reading in those newspapers? It is necessary that we motor to Cherbourg." "That is no little journey, dear sister." "Three hundred and seventy kilometres?" Liane Delorme held this equivalent of two-hundred and thirty English miles in supreme contempt. "We shall make it in eight hours. We leave at four at latest, possibly earlier; at midnight we are in Cherbourg. You shall see." "If I survive..." "Have no fear. My chauffeur drives superbly." She was at the door when Lanyard stayed her with "One moment, Liane!" With fingers resting lightly on the knob she turned. "Speak English," he requested briefly. "What about Dupont?" Simple mention of the man was enough to make the woman wince and lose colour. Before she replied Lanyard saw the tip of her tongue furtively moisten her lips. "Well, and what of him?" "Do you imagine he has had enough?" "Who knows? I for one shall feel safe from him only when I knew he is in the Santé or his grave." "Suppose he tries to follow us to Cherbourg or to stop us on the way..." "How should he know?" "Tell me who left the doors open for him last night, and I will answer that question." The woman looked more than ever frightened, but shook her head. "You didn't fail to question the servants this morning, yet learned nothing?" "It was impossible to fix the blame..." "Have you used all your intelligence, I wonder?" "What do you mean?" "Have you reflected that, since Dupont got in after you came home, his accomplice in your household is most probably one of those who were up at that hour. Who were they?" "Only two. The footman, Leon..." "You trust him?" "Not altogether. Now you make me think, I shall discharge him when I leave, without notice." "Wait. Who else?" "Marthe, my maid." "You have confidence in her loyalty?" "Implicit. She has been with me for years." Lanyard said "Open that door!" in a tone sharp with such authority that Liane Delorme instinctively obeyed, and the woman whom Lanyard had seen that morning coming down the stairs with the lighted candle entered rather precipitately, carrying over one arm an evening wrap of gold brocade and fur. "Pardon, madame," she murmured, and paused. Aside from the awkwardness of her entrance, she betrayed no confusion. "I was about to knock and ask if madame wished me to pack this..." "You know very well I shall need it," Liane said ominously. A look from Lanyard checked a tirade, or more exactly compressed it into a single word: "Imbécile!" "Yes, madame." Marthe hinted at rather than executed a courtesy and withdrew. Liane shut the door behind her, and reapproached the bed, trembling with an anger that rendered her forgetful, so that she relapsed into French. "You think she was listening?" "English, please!" To this Lanyard added a slight shrug.. "It is hard to believe," Liane averred unhappily. "After all these years... I have been kind to that one, too!" "Ah, well! At least you know now she will bear watching. You mean to take her with you?" "I did, until this happened. We quarrelled about it, last night. I think she has a lover here in Paris and doesn't want to leave him." "And now will you tell me that Dupont knows nothing of your intention to motor to Cherbourg today?" "No..." Disconsolate, Liane sank down into the chair and, resting an elbow on the arm, clipped her chin in one hand. "Now I dare not go," she mused aloud. "Yet I must!... What am I to do?" "Courage, little sister! It is I who have an idea." Liane lifted a gaze of mute enquiry. "I think we are now agreed it rests between Marthe and the footman Leon, this treachery." She assented. "Very well. Then let them run the risks any further disloyalty may have prepared for us." "I do not understand..." "What automobile are you using for our trip this afternoon?" "My limousine for you and me." "And Marthe: how is she to make the journey?" "In the touring car, which follows us with our luggage." "It is fast, this touring car?" "The best money can buy." "Now tell me what you know about the chauffeur who drives the limousine?" "He is absolutely to be trusted." "You have had him long in your employ?" The woman hesitated, looked aside, bit her lip. "As a matter of fact, monsieur," she said hastily, trying to cover her loss of countenance with rapid speech--"it is the boy who drove us through the Cévennes. Monsieur Monk asked me to keep him pending his return to France, You understand, he is not to be away long--Monsieur Monk--only a few weeks; so it would have been extravagant to take Jules back to America for that little time. You see?" Lanyard had the grace to keep a straight face. He nodded gravely. "You make it all perfectly clear, little sister. And the driver of the touring car: are you sure of him?" "I think so. But you do not tell me what you have in mind." "Simply this: At the last moment you will decide to take Leon with you. Give him no more time than he needs to pack a handbag. Trump up some excuse and let him follow with Marthe..." "No difficulty about that. He is an excellent driver, Leon; he served me as chauffeur--and made a good one, too--for a year before I took him into the house, at his request; he said he was tired of driving. But if the man I had meant to use is indisposed--trust me to see that he is--I can call on Leon to take care of Marthe and our luggage in the touring car." "Excellent. Now presuming Dupont to be well informed, we may safely bank on his attempting nothing before nightfall. Road traps can be too easily perceived at a distance by daylight. Toward evening then, we will let the touring car catch up. You will express a desire to continue in it, because--because of any excuse that comes into your head. At all events, we will exchange cars with Marthe and Leon, leaving the latter to bring on the limousine while Jules drives for us. Whatever happens then, we may feel sure the touring car will get off lightly; for whether they're involved with Dupont or not, Leon and Marthe are small fry, not the fish he's angling for." "But will not Leon and Marthe suspect and refuse to follow?" "Perhaps they may suspect, but they will follow out of curiosity, to see how we fare, if for nothing else. You may lose a limousine, but you can afford to risk that as long as you are not in it--eh, little long-lost sister?" "My dear brother!" Liane cried, deeply moved. She leaned forward and caressed Lanyard's hand with sisterly warmth, in her admiration and gratification loosing upon him the full candle-power of the violet eyes in their most disastrous smile. "What a head to have in the family!" "Take care!" Lanyard admonished. "I admit it's not half bad at times, but if this battered old headpiece of mine is to be of any further service to us, Liane, you must be careful not to turn it!" XIX SIX BOTTLES OF CHAMPAGNE Once decided upon a course of action, Liane Delorme demonstrated that she could move with energy and decision uncommon in her kind. Under her masterly supervision, preparations accomplished themselves, as it were, by magic. It was, for example, nearer three than four o'clock when the expedition for Cherbourg left the door of her town-house and Paris by way of the Porte de Neuilly; the limousine leading with that polished pattern of a chauffeur, Jules, at its wheel, as spick and span, firm of jaw and imperturbable of eye as when Lanyard had first noticed him in Nant; the touring car trailing, with the footman Leon as driver, and not at all happy to find himself drafted in that capacity, if one might judge by a sullen sort of uneasiness in his look. Nothing was to be expected in the streets or suburbs, neither speed nor any indication of the intentions (if any) of Dupont. Lanyard spared himself the thankless trouble of watching to see if they were followed--having little doubt they were--and took his ease by the side of Liane Delorme. Chatting of old times, or sitting in grateful silence when Liane relapsed into abstraction--something which she did with a frequency which testified to the heavy pressure of her thoughts--he kept an appreciative eye on Jules, conceding at length that Liane's adjective, superb, had been fitly applied to his driving. So long as he remained at the wheel, they were not only in safe hands but might be sure of losing nothing on the road. It was in St. Germain-en-Laye that Lanyard first noticed the grey touring car. But for mental selection of St. Germain as the likeliest spot for Dupont to lay in waiting, and thanks also to an error of judgment on the part of that one, he must have missed it; for there was nothing strikingly sinister in the aspect of that long-bodied grey car with the capacious hood betokening a motor of great power. But it stood incongruously round the corner, in a mean side street, as if anxious to escape observation; its juxtaposition to the door of a wine shop of the lowest class was noticeable in a car of such high caste; and, what was finally damning, the rat-faced man of Lyons was lounging in the door of the wine shop, sucking at a cigarette and watching the traffic with an all too listless eye shaded by the visor of a shabby cap. Lanyard said nothing at the time, but later, when a long stretch of straight road gave him the chance, verified his suspicions by looking back to see the grey car lurking not less than a mile and a half astern; the Delorme touring car driven by Leon keeping a quarter of a mile in the rear of the limousine. These relative positions remained approximately unchanged during most of the light hours of that long evening, despite the terrific pace which Jules set in the open country. Lanyard, keeping an eye on the indicator, saw its hand register the equivalent of sixty English miles an hour more frequently than not. It seldom dropped below fifty except when passing through towns or villages. And more often than he liked Lanyard watched it creep up to and past the mark seventy. With such driving he was quite willing to believe that they would see Cherbourg or Heaven by midnight if not before; always, of course, providing... For the first three hours Leon stood the pace well. Then nerves or physical endurance began to fail, he dropped back, and the Delorme touring car was thereafter seldom visible. No more, for that matter, was the grey shadow. Lanyard's forecast seemed to be borne out by its conduct: Dupont was biding his time and would undoubtedly attempt nothing before nightfall. In the meantime he was making no effort to do more than keep step with the limousine, but at a decent distance. Only occasionally when, for this reason or that, Jules was obliged to run at reduced speed for several minutes on end, the grey car would draw into sight, always, however, about a mile behind the Delorme touring car. At about seven they dined on the wing, from the hamper which, with Liane's jewel case in its leather disguise of a simple travelling bag, constituted all the limousine's load of luggage. Lanyard passed sandwiches through the front window to Jules, who munched them while driving like a speed maniac, and with the same appalling nonchalance washed them down with a tumbler of champagne. Then he discovered some manner of sorcerous power over matches in the wind, lighted a cigarette, and signalised his sense of refreshment by smoothly edging the indicator needle up toward the eighty notch, where he held it stationary until Lanyard and Liane with one accord begged him to consider their appetites. At eight o'clock they were passing through Lisieux, one hundred and eighteen miles from Paris. Lanyard made mental calculations. "The light will hold till after nine," he informed Liane. "By that time we shall have left Caen behind." "I understand," she said coolly; "it will be, then, after Caen." "Presumably." "Another hour of peace of mind!" She yawned delicately. "I think--I am bored by this speed--I think I shall have a nap." Composedly she arranged pillows, put her pretty feet upon the jewel case and, turning her face from Lanyard, dozed. "I think," he reflected, "that the world is more rich in remarkable women than in remarkable men!" A luminous lilac twilight vied with the street lamps of Caen when the limousine rolled through the city at moderate speed. Lanyard utilized this occasion to confer with Jules through the window. "Beyond the town," he said, "you will stop just round the first suitable turning, so that we can't be seen before the corner is turned. Draw off to the side of the road and--I think it would be advisable to have a little engine trouble." "Very good, sir," said Jules without looking round. Then he added in a voice of complete respect: "Pardon, sir, but--madame's orders?" "If they are not"--Lanyard was nettled--"she will countermand them." "Quite so, sir. And--if you don't mind my asking--what's the idea?" "I presume you set some value on your skin?" "Plumb crazy about it." "Mademoiselle Delorme and I are afflicted with the same idiosyncrasy. We want to save our lives, and we don't mind saving yours at the same time." "That's more than fair with me. But is that all I'm to know?" "If the information is any comfort to you: in a grey car which has been following us ever since we left St. Germain, is the man who--I believe--murdered Monsieur le Comte de Lorgnes on the Lyons rapide, and who--I know--tried last night to murder Mademoiselle Delorme." "And I suppose that, in his big-hearted, wholesaler's way, he wouldn't mind making a bag of the lot of us tonight." "I'm afraid you have reason..." "If you're planning to put a crimp in his ambitions, sir, I've got a pistol I know how to use." "Better have it handy, though I don't think we'll need it yet. Our present plan is merely to change cars with Leon and Marthe; the grey car will pass and go on ahead before we make the shift; then you, mademoiselle and I follow in the touring car, the others in the limousine. If there's a trap, as we have every reason to anticipate there will, the touring car will get through--or we'll hope so." "Ah-h!" Jules used the tone of one who perceives enlightenment as a blinding flash. "Marthe and Leon are in on the dirty work too, eh?" "What makes you think that?" "Putting two and two together--what you've just told me with what I've been noticing and wondering about." "Then you think those two--" "Marthe and Leon," Jules pronounced with deliberation, "are two very bad eggs, if you ask me. I shan't shed a solitary tear if something sad happens to them in this 'bus to-night." There was no time then to delve into his reasons for this statement of feeling. The outskirts of Caen were dropping behind. Providentially, the first bend in the road to Bayeux afforded good cover on the side toward the town. Jules shut off the power as he made the turn, and braked to a dead stop in lee of a row of outhouses. Lanyard was on the ground as soon as the wheels ceased to turn, Jules almost as quickly. "Now for your engine trouble," Lanyard instructed. "Nothing serious, you understand--simply an adjustment to excuse a few minutes' delay and lend colour to our impatience." "Got you the first time," Jules replied, unlatching and raising one wing of the hood. Lanyard moved toward the middle of the road and flagged the Delorme touring car as it rounded the turn, a few seconds later, at such speed that Leon was put to it to stop the car fifty yards beyond the limousine. The man jumped down and, followed by the maid, ran back, but before he reached the limousine was obliged to jump aside to escape the grey car which, tooled by a crack racing hand, took the corner on two wheels, then straightened out and tore past in a smother of dust, with its muffler cut out and the exhaust bellowing like a machine-gun. Lanyard counted four figures, two on the front seat, two in the tonneau. More than this, the headlong speed and the failing light rendered it impossible to see--though had the one been less and the other stronger, he could have gained little more information from inspection of those four shapes shrouded in dust coats and masked with goggles. Watching its rear light dwindle, he fancied that the grey shadow was slowing down; but one could not be sure about that. "There is something wrong, monsieur?" The man Leon was at his elbow. Lanyard replied with the curt nod of a disgruntled motorist. "Something--Jules can tell you," he said shortly. "Meanwhile, Mademoiselle Delorme and I have decided not to wait. We've got no time to spare. We will take your car and go on." "But, monsieur, I--" Leon began to expostulate. The icy accents of Liane Delorme cut it: "Well, Leon: what is your objection?" "Objection, madame?" the fellow faltered. "Pardon--but it is not for me to object. I--I was merely startled." "Then get over that at once," he was advised; "and bring my jewelcase--Marthe will point it out to you--to the touring-car." "Yes, madame, immediately." "Also the lunch-hamper, if you please." "Assuredly, monsieur." Leon departed hastily for the limousine, where Marthe joined him, while Lanyard and Liane Delorme proceeded to the touring car. "But what on earth do you want with that hamper, monsieur?" "Hush, little sister, not so loud! Brother thinks he has another idea." "Then Heaven forbid that I should interfere!" Staggering under its weight, Leon shouldered the jewelcase and carried it to the touring car, where Liane superintended its disposal in the luggage-jammed tonneau. A second trip, less laborious, brought them the hamper. Liane uttered perfunctory thanks and called to Jules, who was still tinkering at the limousine engine with the aid of an electric torch. "Come, Jules! Leave Leon to attend to what is required there." "Very good, madame." Jules strolled over to the touring car and settled down at the wheel. Liane Delorme had the seat beside him. Lanyard had established himself in a debatable space in the tonneau to which his right was disputed by bags and boxes of every shape, size and description. "How long, Jules, will Leon need--?" "Five minutes, madame, if he takes his time about it." "Then let us hasten." They drew away from the limousine so quickly that in thirty seconds its headlights were all that marked its stand. Lanyard studied the phosphorescent dial of his wristwatch. From first to last the transaction had consumed little more than three minutes. Liane slewed round to talk over the back of the seat. "What time is it, monsieur?" "Ten after nine. In an hour precisely the moon will rise." "It will be in this hour of darkness, then..." A bend in the road blotted out the stationary lights of the limousine. There was no tail-light visible on the road before them. Lanyard touched Jules on the shoulder. "Switch off your lights," he said--"all of them. Then find a place where we can turn off and wait till Leon and Marthe pass us." In sudden blindness the car moved on slowly, groping its way for a few hundred yards. Then Jules picked out the mouth of a narrow lane, overshadowed by dense foliage, ran past, stopped, and backed into it. In four minutes by Lanyard's watch the pulse of the limousine began to beat upon the stillness of that sleepy countryside. A blue-white glare like naked and hungry steel leapt quivering past the bend, swept in a wide arc as the lamps themselves became visible, and lay horizontal with the road as the car bored past. "Evidently Leon feels quite lost without us," Lanyard commented. "Shoot, Jules--follow his rear lamp, and _don't_ cut out your muffler. Can you manage without headlights for a while?" "I drove an ambulance for four years, sir." The car swung out into the main highway. Far ahead the red sardonic eye in the rear of the limousine leered as if mocking their hopes of keeping it in sight. Jules, however, proved unresentful; and he was marvellously competent. "To anybody who's ever piloted a load of casualties through eighteen inches of mud, dodging shell holes and shells on their way to make new holes, in a black rainstorm at midnight--this sort of thing," Jules announced--"a hard, smooth road under a clear sky--is simple pie." So it may have seemed to him. But to Lanyard and Liane Delorme, hurled along a road they could not see at anywhere from forty to sixty miles an hour, with no manner of guidance other than an elusive tail-lamp which was forever whisking round corners and remaining invisible till Jules found his way round in turn, by instinct or second sight or intuition--whatever it was, it proved unfailing--it was a nervous time. And there was half an hour of it... They were swooping down a long grade with a sharp turn at the bottom, as they knew from the fact that the red eye had just winked out, somewhere on ahead, there sounded a grinding crash, the noise of a stout fabric rent and crushed with the clash and clatter of shivered glass. "Easy," Lanyard cautioned--"and ready with the lights!" Both warnings were superfluous. Jules had already disengaged the gears. Gravity carried the car round the curve, slowly, smoothly, silently; under constraint of its brakes it slid to a pause on a steep though brief descent, and hung there like an animal poised to spring, purring softly. Below, at the foot of the hill, the headlights of another car, standing at some distance and to the right of the road, furnished lurid illumination to the theatre of disaster. Something, its nature just then mysterious, had apparently caused Leon to lose control of the heavy car, so that it had skidded into a ditch and capsized. Four men, crude shapes of nightmare in enveloping dust-coats and disfiguring goggles, were swarming round the wreck. Two were helping the driver out, two others having their gallantry in performing like service for the maid rewarded by a torrent of vituperative denunciation, half hysterical and wholly infuriated. By the freedom of her gestures, which was rivalled only by that of her language, the dishevelled, storming figure of Marthe was manifestly uninjured. And in another moment it was seen, as Leon found his feet and limped toward the others, that he had suffered only slight damage at the worst. Lanyard drew attention to a dark serpentine line that lay like a dead snake upon the lighted surface of the road. Jules grunted in token of comprehension. Liane Delorme breathlessly demanded: "What is it?" "An old trick," Lanyard explained: "A wire cable stretched between trees diagonally across the road, about as high as the middle of the windshield. The impetus of the limousine broke it, but not before it had slewed the car off toward the ditch, wrenching the wheel out of the driver's hands." He fondled the pistol which Jules had handed him, slipped the safety catch, and said: "Now before they wake up, Jules--give her all she's got!" Jules released the brakes and, as the car gathered way, noiselessly slipped the gear shift into the fourth speed and bore heavily on the accelerator. They were making forty miles an hour when they struck the level and thundered past the group. A glimpse of startled faces, the scream of a man who had strayed incautiously into the roadway and stopped there, apparently petrified by the peril that bore down upon him without lights or any other warning, until one of the forward fenders struck and hurled him aside like a straw--and only the night of the open road lay before them. Jules touched the headlight switch and opened the exhaust. Above the roaring of the latter Lanyard fancied he could hear a faint rattling sound. He looked back and smiled grimly. Sharp, short flames of orange and scarlet were stabbing the darkness. Somebody had opened fire with an automatic pistol.... Sheer waste of ammunition! The pace waxed terrific on a road, like so many roads of France, apparently interminable and straight. On either hand endless ranks of poplars rattled like loose palings of some tremendous picket fence. And yet, long before the road turned, Lanyard, staring astern as he knelt on the rear seat with arms crossed on the folded top, saw the two white eyes of the grey car swing into view and start in pursuit. Quick work, he called it. He crawled forward and communicated his news, shouting to make himself heard. "Don't ease up unless you have to," he counselled; "don't think we dare give them an inch." Back at his post of observation, he watched, hoping against hope, while the car lunged and tore like a mad thing through the night, snoring up grades, screaming down them, drumming across the levels, clattering wildly through villages and hamlets; while the moon rose and gathered strength and made the road a streaming river of milk and ink; while his heart sank as minute succeeded minute, mile followed mile, and ever the lights of the pursuing car, lost to sight from time to time, reappeared with a brighter, fiercer glow, and conviction forced itself home that they were being gradually but surely overhauled. He took this intelligence to the ear of Jules. The chauffeur answered only with a worried shake of his head that said too plainly he was doing his best, extracting every ounce of power from the engine. Ill luck ambushed them in the streets of a sizable town, its name unknown to Lanyard, where another car, driven inexpertly, rolled out of a side street and stalled in their path. The emergency brake saved them a collision; but there were not six inches between the two when the touring car stopped dead; and minutes were lost before the other got under way and they were able to proceed. Less than three hundred yards separated pursued and pursuer as they raced out through open fields once more. And foot by foot this lead was being inexorably cut down. In the seat beside the driver of the grey car a man rose and, steadying himself by holding onto the windshield, poured out the contents of an automatic, presumably hoping to puncture the tires of the quarry. A bullet bored a neat hole through the windshield between the heads of Liane Delorme and Jules. The woman slipped down upon the floor and Jules crouched over the wheel. Lanyard fingered his automatic but held its fire against a moment when he could be more sure of his arm. Instead, he turned to the lunch hamper and opened it. Liane's provisioning had been ample for a party thrice their number. In the bottom of the basket lay six pint bottles of champagne, four of them unopened. Lanyard took them to the rear seat--and found the grey car had drawn up to within fifty yards of its prey. Making a pace better than seventy miles per hour, it would not dare swerve. The first empty bottle broke to one side, the second squarely between the front wheels. He grasped the first full bottle by the neck and felt that its weight promised more accuracy, but ducked before attempting to throw it as a volley of shots sought to discourage him. At the first lull he rose and cast the bottle with the overhand action employed in grenade throwing. It crashed fairly beneath the nearer forward wheel of the grey car, but without effect, other than to draw another volley in retaliation. This he risked; the emergency had grown too desperate for more paltering; the lead had been abridged to thirty yards; in two minutes more it would be nothing. The fourth bottle went wild, but the fifth exploded six inches in front of the offside wheel and its jagged fragments ripped out the heart of the tire. On the instant of the accompanying blow-out the grey car shied like a frightened horse and swerved off the road, hurtling headlong into a clump of trees. The subsequent crash was like the detonation of a great bomb. Deep shadows masked that tragedy beneath the trees. Lanyard saw the beam of the headlights lift and drill perpendicularly into the zenith before it was blacked out. He turned and yelled in the ear of Jules: "Slow down! Take your time! They've quit!" Liane Delorme rose from her cramped position on the floor, and stared incredulously back along the empty, moonlit road. "What has become of them?" Lanyard offered a vague gesture."... tried to climb a tree," he replied wearily, and dropping back on the rear seat began to worry the cork out of the last pint bottle of champagne. He reckoned he had earned a drink if anybody ever had. XX THE SYBARITES Without disclaiming any credit that was rightly his due for making the performance possible, Lanyard felt obliged to concede that Liane's Delorme's confidence had been well reposed in the ability of Jules to drive by the clock. For when the touring car made, on a quayside of Cherbourg's avant port, what was for its passengers its last stop of the night, the hour of eight bells was being sounded aboard the countless vessels that shouldered one another in the twin basins of the commercial harbour or rode at anchor between its granite jetties and the distant bulwark of the Digue. Nor was Jules disposed to deny himself well-earned applause. Receiving none immediately when he got down from his seat and indulged in one luxurious stretch, "I'll disseminate the information to the terrestrial universe," he volunteered, "that was travelling!" "And now that you have done so," Liane Delorme suggested, "perhaps you will be good enough to let the stewards know we are waiting." If the grin was impudent, the salute she got in acknowledgment was perfection; Jules faced about like a military automaton, strode off briskly, stopped at some distance to light a cigarette, and in effect faded out with the flame of the match. Lanyard didn't try to keep track of his going. Committed as he stood to follow the lead of Liane Delorme to the end of this chapter of intrigue (and with his mind at ease as to Monsieur Dupont, for the time being at least) he was largely indifferent to intervening developments. He had asked no questions of Liane, and his knowledge of Cherbourg was limited to a memory of passing through the place as a boy, with a case-hardened criminal as guide and police at their heels. But assuming that Liane had booked passages for New York by a Cunarder, a White Star or American Line Boat--all three touched regularly at Cherbourg, west bound from Southampton--he expected presently to go aboard a tender and be ferried out to one of the steamers whose riding lights were to be seen in the roadstead. Meanwhile he was lazily content.... Mellow voices of bell metal swelled and died on the midnight air while, lounging against the motor car--with Liane at his side registering more impatience than he thought the occasion called for--Lanyard listened, stared, wondered, the breath of the sea sweet in his nostrils, its flavour in his throat, his vision lost in the tangled web of masts and cordage and funnels that stencilled the moon-pale sky: the witching glamour of salt water binding all his senses with its time-old spell. It was quiet there upon the quay. Somewhere a winch rattled drowsily and weary tackle whined; more near at hand, funnels were snoring and pumps chugging with a constant, monotonous noise of splashing. On the landward side, from wine shops across the way, came blurred gusts of laughter and the wailing of an accordeon. The footfalls of a watchman, or perhaps a sergent de ville, had lonely echoes. The high electric arcs were motionless, and the shadows cast by their steel-blue glare lay on the pave as if painted in lampblack. Dupont, the road to Paris, seemed figments of some dream dreamed long ago... The tip of a pretty slipper, tapping restlessly, continued to betray Liane's temper. But she said nothing. Privately Lanyard yawned. Then Jules, tagged by three men with the fair white jackets and shuffling gait of stewards, sauntered into view from behind two mountains of freight, and announced: "All ready, madame." Liane nodded curtly, lingered to watch the stewards attack the jumble of luggage, saw her jewel case shouldered, and followed the bearer, Lanyard at her elbow, Jules remaining with the car. The steward trotted through winding aisles of bales and crates, turned a corner, darted up a gangplank to the main-deck of a small steam vessel, so excessively neat and smart with shining brightwork that Lanyard thought it one uncommon tender indeed, and surmised a martinet in command. It seemed curious that there were not more passengers on the tender's deck; but perhaps he and Liane were among the first to come aboard; after all, they were not to sail before morning, according to the women. He apprehended a tedious time of waiting before he gained his berth. He noticed, too, a life ring lettered SYBARITE, and thought this an odd name for a vessel of commercial utility. Then he found himself descending a wide companionway to one of the handsomest saloons he had ever entered, a living room that, aside from its concessions to marine architecture, might have graced a residence on Park Lane or on Fifth avenue in the Sixties. Lanyard stopped short with his hand on the mahogany handrail. "I say, Liane! haven't we stumbled into the wrong pew?" "Wrong pew?" The woman subsided gracefully into a cushioned arm-chair, crossed her knees, and smiled at his perplexity. "But I do not know what is that 'wrong pew.'" "I mean to say... this is no tender, and it unquestionably isn't an Atlantic liner." "I should hope not. Did I promise you a--what do you say?--tender or Atlantic liner? But no: I do not think I told you what sort of vessel we would sail upon for that America. You did not ask." "True, little sister. But you might have prepared me. This is a private yacht." "Are you disappointed?" "I won't say that..." "It is the little ship of a dear friend, monsieur, who generously permits... But patience! very soon you shall know." To himself Lanyard commented: "I believe it well!" A door had opened in the after partition, two men had entered. Above a lank, well-poised body clothed in the white tunic and trousers of a ship's officer, he recognised the tragicomic mask of the soi-disant Mr. Whitaker Monk. At his shoulder shone the bland, intelligent countenance of Mr. Phinuit, who seemed much at home in the blue serge and white flannels of the average amateur yachtsman. From this last Lanyard received a good-natured nod, while Monk, with a great deal of empressement, proceeded directly to Liane Delorme and bowed low over the hand which she languidly lifted to be saluted. "My dear friend!" he said in his sonorous voice. "In another hour I should have begun to grow anxious about you." "You would have had good reason, monsieur. It is not two hours since one has escaped death--and that for the second time in a single day--by the slenderest margin, and thanks solely to this gentleman here." Monk consented to see Lanyard, and immediately offered him a profound salute, which was punctiliously returned. His eyebrows mounted to the roots of his hair. "Ah! that good Monsieur Duchemin." "But no!" Liane laughed. "It is true, the resemblance is striking; I do not say that, if Paul would consent to grow a beard, it would not be extraordinary. But--permit me, Captain Monk, to present my brother, Paul Delorme." "Your brother, mademoiselle?" The educated eyebrows expressed any number of emotions. Monk's hand was cordially extended. "But I am enchanted, Monsieur Delorme, to welcome on board the Sybarite the brother of your charming sister." Lanyard resigned limp fingers to his clasp. "And most public-spirited of you, I'm sure, Captain Monk... I believe I understood Liane to say Captain Monk?" The captain bowed. "Captain Whitaker Monk?" Another bow. Lanyard looked to Liane: "Forgive me if I seem confused, but I thought you told me Mister Whitaker Monk had sailed for America a week ago." "And so he did," the captain agreed blandly, while Liane confirmed his statement with many rapid and emphatic nods. "Mr. Monk, the owner, is my first cousin. Fortune has been less kind to me in a worldly way; consequently you see in me merely the skipper of my wealthy kinsman's yacht." "And your two names are the same--yours and your cousin's? You're both Whitaker Monks?" "It is a favourite name in our family, monsieur." Lanyard wagged his head in solemn admiration. Phinuit had come to his side, and was offering his hand in turn. "It's all gospel, Mr. Lanyard," he declared, with a cheerful informality which Lanyard found more engaging than Monk's sometimes laboured mannerisms. "He's sure-enough Captain Whitaker Monk, skipper of the good ship Sybarite, Mister Whitaker Monk, owner. And my name is really Phinuit, and I'm honest-to-goodness secretary to Mr. Monk. You see, the owner got a hurry call from New York, last week, and sailed from Southampton, leaving us to bring his pretty ship safely home." "That makes it all so clear!" "Well, anyway, I'm glad to meet you to your bare face. I've heard a lot about you, and--if it matters to you--thought a lot more." "If it comes to that, Mr. Phinuit, I have devoted some thought to you." "Oh, daresay. And now--if mademoiselle is agreeable--suppose we adjourn to the skipper's quarters, where we can improve one another's acquaintance without some snooping steward getting an unwelcome earful. We need to know many things you alone can tell us--and I'll wager you could do with a drink. What?" "But I assure you, monsieur, I find your reception sufficiently refreshing." "Well," said Phinuit, momentarily but very slightly discountenanced--"you've been uncommon' damn' useful, you know... I mean, according to mademoiselle." "Useful?" Lanyard enquired politely. "He calls it that," Liane Delorme exclaimed, "when I tell him you have saved my life!" She swept indignantly through the door by which Monk and Phinuit had come to greet them. Two ceremonious bows induced Lanyard to follow her. Monk and Phinuit brought up the rear. "Yes," the woman pursued--"twice he has saved it!" "In the same place?" Phinuit enquired innocently, shutting the door. "But no! Once in my home in Paris, this morning, and again to-night on the road to Cherbourg. The last time he saved his life, too, and Jules's." "It was nothing," said the modest hero. "It was nothing!" Liane echoed tragically. "You save my life twice, and he calls it 'useful,' and you call it 'nothing!' My God! I tell you, I find this English a funny language!" "But if you will tell us about it..." Monk suggested, placing a chair for her at one end of a small table on which was spread an appetising cold supper. Lanyard remarked that there were places laid for four. He had been expected, then. Or had the fourth place been meant for Jules? One inclined to credit the first theory. It seemed highly probable that Liane should have telegraphed her intentions before leaving Paris. Indeed, there was every evidence that she had. Neither Monk nor Phinuit had betrayed the least surprise on seeing Lanyard; and Phinuit had not even troubled to recognise the fiction which Liane had uttered in accounting for him. It was very much as if he had said: That long-lost brother stuff is all very well for the authorities, for entry in the ship's papers if necessary; but it's wasted between ourselves, we understand one another; so let's get down to brass tacks... An encouraging symptom; though one had already used the better word, refreshing.... Spacious, furnished in a way of rich sobriety, tasteful in every appointment, the captain's quarters were quite as sybaritic as the saloon of the Sybarite. A bedroom and private bath adjoined, and the open door enabled one to perceive that this rude old sea dog slept in a real bed of massive brass. His sitting-room, or private office, had a studious atmosphere. Its built-in-bookcases were stocked with handsome bindings. The panels were, like those in the saloon, sea-scapes from the hands of modern masters: Lanyard knew good painting when he saw it. The captain's desk was a substantial affair in mahogany. Most of the chairs were of the overstuffed lounge sort. The rug was a Persian of rare lustre. Monk was following with a twinkle the journeys of Lanyard's observant eye. "Do myself pretty well, don't you think?" he observed quietly, in a break in Liane's dramatic narrative; perforce the lady must now and again pause for breath. Lanyard smiled in return. "I can't see you've much to complain of." The captain nodded, but permitted a shade of gravity to become visible in his expression. He sighed a philosophic sigh: "But man is never satisfied..." Liane had got her second wind and was playing variations on the theme of the famous six bottles of champagne. Lanyard lounged in his easy chair and let his bored thoughts wander. He was weary of being talked about, wanted one thing only, fulfillment of the promise that had been implicit in Phinuit's manner. He was aware of Phinuit's sympathetic eye. The woman sent the grey car crashing again into the tree, repeated Lanyard's quaint report of the business, and launched into a vein of panegyric. "Regard him, then, sitting there, making nothing of it all--!" "Sheer swank," Phinuit commented. "He's just letting on; privately he thinks he's a heluva fellow. Don't you, Lanyard?" "But naturally," Lanyard gave Phinuit a grateful look. "That is understood. But what really interests me, at present, is the question: Who is Dupont, and why?" "If you're asking me," Monk replied, "I'll say--going on mademoiselle's story--Monsieur Dupont is by now a ghost." "One would be glad to be sure of that," Lanyard murmured. "By all accounts," said Phinuit, "he takes a deal of killing." "But all this begs my question," Lanyard objected. "Who is Dupont, and why?" "I think I can answer that question, monsieur." This was Liane Delorme. "But first, I would ask Captain Monk to set guards to see that nobody comes aboard this ship before she sails." "Pity you didn't think of that sooner," Phinuit observed in friendly sarcasm. "Better late than never, of course, but still--!" The woman appealed to Monk directly, since he did not move. "But I assure you, monsieur, I am afraid, I am terrified of that one! I shall not sleep until I am sure he has not succeeded in smuggling himself on board--" "Be tranquil, mademoiselle," Monk begged. "What you ask is already done. I gave the orders you ask as soon as I received your telegram, this morning. You need not fear that even a rat has found his way aboard since then, or can before we sail, without my knowledge." "Thank God!" Liane breathed--and instantly found a new question to fret about. "But your men, Captain Monk--your officers and crew--can you be sure of them?" "Absolutely." "You haven't signed on any new men here in Cherbourg?" Lanyard asked. Monk worked his eyebrows to signify that the question was ridiculous. "No such fool, thanks," he added. "Yet they may have been corrupted while here in port," Liane insisted. "No fear." "That is what I would have said of my maid and footman, twenty-four hours ago. Yet I now know better." "I tell you only what I know, mademoiselle. If any of my officers and crew have been tampered with, I don't know anything about it, and can't and won't until the truth comes out." "And you sit there calmly to tell me that!" Liane rolled her lovely eyes in appeal to the deck beams overhead. "But you are impossible!" "But, my dear lady," Monk protested, "I am perfectly willing to go into hysterics if you think it will do any good. As it happens, I don't. I haven't been idle or fatuous in that matter, I have taken every possible precaution against miscarriage of our plans. If anything goes wrong now, it can't be charged to my discredit." "It will be an act of God," Phinuit declared: "one of the unavoidable risks of the business." "The business!" Liane echoed with scorn. "I assure you I wish I were well out of 'the business'!" "And so say we all of us," Phinuit assured her patiently; and Monk intoned a fervent "Amen!" "But who is Dupont?" Lanyard reiterated stubbornly. "An Apache, monsieur," Liane responded sulkily--"a leader of Apaches." "Thank you for nothing." "Patience: I am telling you all I know. I recognised him this morning, when you were struggling with him. His name is Popinot." "Ah!" "Why do you say 'Ah!' monsieur?" "There was a Popinot in Paris in my day; they nicknamed him the Prince of the Apaches. But he was an older man, and died by the guillotine. This Popinot who calls himself Dupont, then, must be his son." "That is true, monsieur." "Well, then, if he has inherited his father's power--!" "It is not so bad as all that. I have heard that the elder Popinot was a true prince, in his way, I mean as to his power with the Apaches. His son is hardly that; he has a following, but new powers were established with his father's death, and they remain stronger than he." "All of which brings us to the second part of my question, Liane: Why Dupont?" Liane shrugged and studied her bedizened fingers. The heavy black brows circumflexed Monk's eyes, and he drew down the corners of his wide mouth. Phinuit fixed an amused gaze on a distant corner of the room and chewed his cigar. "Why did Dupont--or Popinot," Lanyard persisted--"murder de Lorgnes? Why did he try to murder Mademoiselle Delorme? Why did he seek to prevent our reaching Cherbourg?" "Give you three guesses," Phinuit offered amiably. "But I warn you if you use more than one you'll forfeit my respect forever. And just to show what a good sport I am, I'll ask you a few leading questions. Why did Popinot pull off that little affair at Montpellier-le-Vieux? Why did he try to put you out of his way a few days later?" "Because he wanted to steal the jewels of Madame de Montalais, naturally." "I knew you'd guess it." "You admit, then, you have the jewels?" "Why not?" Phinuit enquired coolly. "We took trouble enough to get them, don't you think? You're taking trouble enough to get them away from us, aren't you? You don't want us to think you so stupid as to be wasting your time, do you?" His imperturbable effrontery was so amusing that Lanyard laughed outright. Then, turning to Liane, he offered her a grateful inclination of the head. "Mademoiselle, you have kept your promise. Many thanks." "Hello!" cried Phinuit. "What promise?" "Monsieur Lanyard desired a favour of me," Liane explained, her good humour restored; "in return for saving me from assassination by Popinot this morning, he begged me to help him find the jewels of Madame de Montalais. It appears that he--or Andre Duchemin--is accused of having stolen those jewels; so it becomes a point of honour with him to find and restore them to Madame de Montalais." "He told you that?" Monk queried, studiously eliminating from his tone the jeer implied by the words alone. "But surely. And what could I do? He spoke so earnestly, I was touched. Regard, moreover, how deeply I am indebted to him. So I promised I would do my best. Et voila! I have brought him to the jewels; the rest is--how do you say--up to him. Are you satisfied with the way I keep my word, monsieur?" "It's hard to see how he can have any kick coming," Phinuit commented with some acidity. Lanyard addressed himself to Liane: "Do I understand the jewels are on this vessel?" "In this room." Lanyard sat up and took intelligent notice of the room. Phinuit chuckled, and consulted Monk in the tone of one reasonable man to his peer. "I say, skipper: don't you think we ought to be liberal with Monsieur Lanyard? He's an awfully good sort--and look't all the services he has done us." Monk set the eyebrows to consider the proposition. "I am emphatically of your mind, Phin," he pronounced at length, oracular. "It's plain to be seen he wants those jewels--means to have 'em. Do you know any way we can keep them from him?" Monk moved his head slowly from side to side: "None." "Then you agree with me, it would save us all a heap of trouble to let him have them without any more stalling?" By way of answer Monk bent over and quietly opened a false door, made to resemble the fronts of three drawers, in a pedestal of his desk. Lanyard couldn't see the face of the built-in safe, but he could hear the spinning of the combination manipulated by Monk's long and bony fingers. And presently he saw Monk straighten up with a sizable steel dispatch-box in his hands, place this upon the desk, and unlock it with a key on his pocket ring. "There," he announced with an easy gesture. Lanyard rose and stood over the desk, investigating the contents of the dispatch-box. The collection of magnificent stones seemed to tally accurately with his mental memoranda of the descriptions furnished by Eve de Montalais. "This seems to be right," he said quietly, and closed the box. The automatic lock snapped fast. "Now what do you say, brother dear?" "Your debt to me is fully discharged, Liane. But, messieurs, one question: Knowing I am determined to restore these jewels to their owner, why this open handedness?" "Cards on the table," said Phinuit. "It's the only way to deal with the likes of you." "In other words," Monk interpreted: "you have under your hand proof of our bona fides." "And what is to prevent me from going ashore with these at once?" "Nothing," said Phinuit. "But this is too much!" "Nothing," Phinuit elaborated, "but your own good sense." "Ah!" said Lanyard--"ah!"--and looked from face to face. Monk adjusted his eyebrows to an angle of earnestness and sincerity. "The difficulty is, Mr. Lanyard," he said persuasively, "they have cost us so much, those jewels, in time and money and exertion, we can hardly be expected to sit still and see you walk off with them and say never a word in protection of our own interests. Therefore I must warn you, in the most friendly spirit: if you succeed in making your escape from the Sybarite with the jewels, as you quite possibly may, it will be my duty as a law-abiding man to inform the police that André Duchemin is at large with his loot from the Château de Montalais. And I don't think you'd get very far, then, or that your fantastic story about meaning to return them would gain much credence. D'ye see?" "But distinctly! If, however, I leave the jewels and lay an information against you with the police----?" "To do that you would have to go ashore...." "Do I understand I am to consider myself your prisoner?" "Oh, dear, no!" said Captain Monk, inexpressibly pained by such crudity. "But I do wish you'd consider favourably an invitation to be our honoured guest on the voyage to New York. You won't? It would be so agreeable of you." "Sorry I must decline. A prior engagement...." "But you see, Lanyard," Phinuit urged earnestly, "we've taken no end of a fancy to you. We like you, really, for yourself alone. And with that feeling the outgrowth of our very abbreviated acquaintance--think what a friendship might come of a real opportunity to get to know one another well." "Some other time, messieurs...." "But please!" Phinuit persisted--"just think for one moment--and do forget that pistol I know you've got in a handy pocket. We're all unarmed here, Mademoiselle Delorme, the skipper and I. We can't stop your going, if you insist, and we know too much to try. But there are those aboard who might. Jules, for instance: if he saw you making a getaway and knew it might mean a term in a French prison for him.... And if I do say it as shouldn't of my kid brother, Jules is a dead shot. Then there are others. There'd surely be a scrimmage on the decks; and how could we explain that to the police, who, I am able to assure you from personal observation, are within hail? Why, that you had been caught trying to stow away with your loot, which you dropped in making your escape. D'ye see how bad it would look for you?" To this there was no immediate response. Sitting with bowed head and sombre eyes, Lanyard thought the matter over a little, indifferent to the looks of triumph being exchanged above his head. "Obviously, it would seem, you have not gone to all this trouble--lured me aboard this yacht--merely to amuse yourselves at my expense and then knock me on the head." "Absurd!" Liane declared indignantly. "As if I would permit such a thing, who owe you so much!" "Or look at it this way, monsieur," Monk put in with a courtly gesture: "When one has an adversary whom one respects, one wisely prefers to have him where one can watch him." "That's just it," Phinuit amended: "Out of our sight, you'd be on our nerves, forever pulling the Popinot stunt, springing some dirty surprise on us. But here, as our guest--!" "More than that," said Liane with her most killing glance for Lanyard: "a dear friend." But Lanyard was not to be put off by fair words and flattery. "No," he said gravely: "but there is some deeper motive..." He sought Phinuit's eyes, and Phinuit unexpectedly gave him an open-faced return. "There is," he stated frankly. "Then why not tell me--?" "All in good time. And there'll be plenty of that; the Sybarite is no Mauretania. When you know us better and have learned to like us..." "I make no promises." "We ask none. Only your pistol..." "Well, monsieur: my pistol?" "It makes our association seem so formal--don't you think?--so constrained. Come, Mr. Lanyard! be reasonable. What is a pistol between friends?" Lanyard shrugged, sighed, and produced the weapon. "Really!" he said, handing it over to Monk--"how could anyone resist such disarming expressions?" The captain thanked him solemnly and put the weapon away in his safe, together with the steel despatch-box and Liane Delorme's personal treasure of precious stones. XXI SOUNDINGS With characteristic abruptness Liane Delorme announced that she was sleepy, it had been for her a most fatiguing day. Captain Monk rang for the stewardess and gallantly escorted the lady to her door. Lanyard got up with Phinuit to bow her out, but instead of following her suit helped himself to a long whiskey and soda, with loving deliberation selected, trimmed and lighted a cigar, and settled down into his chair as one prepared to make a night of it. "You never sleep, no?" Phinuit enquired in a spirit of civil solicitude. "Desolated if I discommode you, monsieur," Lanyard replied with entire amiability--"but not to-night, not at least until I know those jewels have no more chance to go ashore without me." He tasted his drink with open relish. "Prime Scotch," he judged. "One grows momentarily more reconciled to the prospect of a long voyage." "Make the most of it," Phinuit counselled. "Remember our next port of call is the Great American Desert. After all, the despised camel seems to have had the right idea all along." He gaped enormously behind a superstitious hand. Monk, returning, published an elaborate if silent superciliary comment on the tableau. "He has no faith at all in our good intentions," Phinuit explained, eyeing Lanyard with mild reproach. "It's most discouraging." "Monsieur suffers from insomnia?" Monk asked in his turn. "Under certain circumstances." "Ever take anything for it?" "To-night it would require nothing less than possession of the Montalais jewels to put me to sleep." "Well, if you manage to lay hands on them without our consent," Phinuit promised genially, "you'll be put to sleep all right." "But don't let me keep you up, messieurs." Captain Monk consulted the chronometer. "It's not worth while turning in," he said: "we sail soon after day-break." "Far be it from me to play the giddy crab, then." Phinuit busied himself with the decanter, glasses and siphon. "Let's make it a regular party; we'll have all to-morrow to sleep it off in. If I try to hop on your shoulder and sing, call a steward and have him lead me to my innocent white cot; but take a fool's advice, Lanyard, and don't try to drink the skipper under the table. On the word of one who's tried and repented, it can not be done." "But it is I who would go under the table," Lanyard said. "I have a poor head for whiskey." "Thanks for the tip." "Pardon?" "I mean to say," Phinuit explained, "I'm glad to have another weakness of yours to bear in mind." "You are interested in the weaknesses of others, monsieur?" "They're my hobby." "Knowledge," Monk quoted, sententious, "is power." "May I ask what other entries you have made in my dossier, Mr. Phinuit?" "You won't get shirty?" "But surely not." "Well ... can't be positive till I know you better.... I'm afraid you've got a tendency to overestimate the gullibility of people in general. It's either that, or.... No: I don't believe you're intentionally hypocritical, or self-deceived, either." "But I don't understand...." "Remember your promise.... But you seem to think it easy to put it over on us, mademoiselle, the skipper and me." "But I assure you I have never had any such thought." "Then why this funny story of yours--told with a straight face, too!--about wanting to get hold of the Montalais loot simply to slip it back to its owner?" Lanyard felt with a spasm of anger constrict his throat; and knew that the restraint he imposed upon his temper was betrayed in a reddened face. Nevertheless his courteous smile persisted, his polite conversational tone was unchanged. "Now you remind me of something. I presume, Captain Monk, it's not too late to send a note ashore to be posted?" "Oh!" Monk's eyebrows protested violently--"a note!" "On plain paper, in a plain envelope--and I don't in the least mind your reading it." The eyebrows appealed to Phinuit, and that worthy ruled: "Under those conditions, I don't see we can possibly object." Monk shrugged his brows back into place, found paper of the sort desired, even went so far as to dip the pen for Lanyard. "You will sit at my desk, monsieur?" "Many thanks." Under no more heading than the date, Lanyard wrote: "Dear Madame de Montalais:" "I have not forgotten my promise, but my days have been full since I left the château. And even now I must be brief: within an hour I sail for America, within a fortnight you may look for telegraphic advices from me, stating that your jewels are in my possession, and when I hope to be able to restore them to you." "Believe me, dear madame," "Devotedly your servant, "Michael Lanyard." Monk read and in silence passed this communication over to Phinuit, while Lanyard addressed the envelope. "Quite in order," was Phinuit's verdict, accompanied by a yawn. Lanyard folded the note, sealed it in the envelope, and affixed a stamp supplied by Monk, who meanwhile rang for a steward. "Take this ashore and post it at once," he told the man who answered his summons. "But seriously, Lanyard!" Phinuit protested with a pained expression.... "No: I don't get you at all. What's the use?" "I have not deceived you, then?" "Not so's you'd notice it." "Alas!"--Lanyard affected a sigh--"for misspent effort!" "Oh, all's fair outside the law. We don't blame you for trying it on. Only we value your respect too much to let you go on thinking we have fallen for that hokum." "You see," Monk expounded--solemn ass that he was beneath his thin veneer of pretentiousness--"when we know how the British Government kicked you out of its Secret Service as soon as it had no further use for you, we can understand and sympathise with your natural reaction to such treatment at the hands of Society." "But one didn't know you knew so much, monsieur le capitaine." "And then," said Phinuit, "when we know you steered a direct course from London for the Château de Montalais, and made yourself persona grata there--Oh, persona very much grata, if I'm any judge!--you can hardly ask us to believe you didn't mean to do it, it all just happened so." "Monsieur sees too clearly...." "Why, if it comes to that--what were you up to that night, pussyfooting about the château at two in the morning?" "But this is positively uncanny! Monsieur knows everything." "Why shouldn't I know about that?" Vanity rang in Phinuit's self-conscious chuckle. "Who'd you think laid you out that night?" "Monsieur is not telling me----!" "I guess I owe you an apology," Phinuit admitted. "But you'll admit that in our situation there was nothing else for it. I'd have given anything if we'd been able to get by any other way; but you're such an unexpected customer.... Well! when I felt you catch hold of my shirt sleeve, that night, I thought we were done for and struck out blindly. It was a lucky blow, no credit to me. Hope I didn't jar you too much." "No," said Lanyard, reflective--"no, I was quite all right in the morning. But I think I owe you one." "Afraid you do; and it's going to be my duty and pleasure to cheat you out of your revenge if fast footwork will do it." "But where was Captain Monk all the while?" "Right here," Monk answered for himself; "sitting tight and saying nothing, and duly grateful that the blue prints and specifications of the Great Architect didn't design me for second-storey work." "Then it was Jules----?" "No; Jules doesn't know enough. It was de Lorgnes, of course. I thought you'd guess that." "How should I?" "Didn't you know he was the premier cracksman of France? That is, going on Mademoiselle Delorme's account of him; she says there was never anybody like that poor devil for putting the comether on a safe--barring yourself, Monsieur le Loup Seul, in your palmy days. And she ought to know; those two have been working together since the Lord knows when. A sound, conservative bird, de Lorgnes; very discreet, tight-mouthed even when drunk--which was too often." "But--this is most interesting--how did you get separated, you and de Lorgnes?" "Bad luck, a black night, and--I guess there's no more question about this--your friend, Popinot-Dupont. I'll say this for that blighter: as a self-made spoil-sport, he sure did give service!" Phinuit gave his whiskey and soda a reminiscent grin. "And we thought we were being bright, at that! We'd figured every move to the third decimal point. The only uncertain factor in our calculations, as we thought, was you. But with you disposed of, dead to the world, and Madame de Montalais off in another part of the château calling the servants to help, leaving her rooms wide open to us--the job didn't take five minutes. The way de Lorgnes made that safe give up all its secrets, you'd have thought he had raised it by hand! We stuffed the loot into a grip I'd brought for the purpose, and beat it--slipped out through the drawing-room window one second before Madame de Montalais came back with that doddering footman of hers. But they never even looked our way. I bet they never knew there'd been a robbery till the next morning. Do I lose?" "No, monsieur; you are quite right." "Well, then: We had left our machine--we had driven over from Millau--just over the brow of the hill, standing on the down-grade, headed for Nant, with the gears meshed in third, so she would start without a sound as soon as we released the emergency brake. But when we got there, it wasn't. The frantic way we looked for it made me think of you pawing that table for your candle, after de Lorgnes had lifted it behind your back. And then of a sudden they jumped us, Popinot and his crew; though we didn't know who in hell; it might have been the château people. In fact, at first I thought it was.... "I lost de Lorgnes in the shuffle immediately, never did know what had become of him till we got Liane's wire this morning. I was having all I could do to take care of myself, thank you. I happened to be carrying the grip, and that helped a bit. Somebody's head got in the way of its swings, and I guess the guy hasn't forgotten it yet. Then I slipped through their fingers--I'll never tell you how; it was black as pitch, that night--and beat it blind. I'd lost my flashlamp and had no more idea where I was heading than an owl at noon of a sunny day. But they--the Popinot outfit--seemed to be able to see in the dark all right; or else I was looney with fright. Every once in a while somebody or something would make a pass at me in the night, and I'd duck and double and run another way. "After a while I found myself climbing a steep, rocky slope, and guessed it must be the cliff behind the château. It was a sort of zig-zag path, which I couldn't see, only guess at. I was scared stiff; but they were still after me, or I thought they were, so I floundered on. The path, if it was a path, was slimy with mud, and about every third step I'd slip and go sprawling. I can't tell you how many times I felt my legs shoot out into nothing, and dug my fingers into the muck, or broke my nails on rocks and caught clumps of grass with my teeth, to keep from going over ... and all the while that all-gone feeling in the pit of my stomach.... "However, I got to the top in the end, and crawled into a hollow and lay down behind some bushes, and panted as if my heart would break, and hoped I'd die and get over with it. But nobody came to bother me, so I got up when the first streak of light showed in the sky--there'd been a young cloud-burst just before that, and I was soaked to my skin--and struck off across the cause for God-knew-where. De Lorgnes and I had fixed that, if anything did happen to separate us, we'd each strike for Lyons and the one who got there first would wait for the other at the Hôtel Terminus. But before I could do that, I had to find a railroad, and I didn't dare go Millau-way, I thought, because the chances were the gendarmes would be waiting there to nab the first bird that blew in all covered with mud and carrying a bag full of diamonds. "I'd managed to hold onto the grip through it all, you see; but before that day was done I wished I'd lost it. The damned thing got heavier and heavier till it must have weighed a gross ton. It galled my hands and rubbed my legs till they were sore.... I was sore all over, anyway, inside and out.... "Sometime during the morning I climbed one of those bum mounds they call couronnes to see if I could sight any place to get food and drink, preferably drink. The sun had dried my clothes on my back and then gone on to make it a good job by soaking up all the moisture in my system. I figured I was losing eleven pounds an hour by evaporation alone, and expected to arrive wherever I did arrive, if I ever arrived anywhere looking like an Early Egyptian prune.... "The view from the couronne didn't show me anything I wanted to see, only a number of men in the distance, spread out over the face of the causse and quartering it like beagles. I reckoned I knew what sort of game they were hunting, and slid down from that couronne and travelled. But they'd seen me, and somebody sounded the view-halloo. It was grand exercise for me and great sport for them. When I couldn't totter another yard I fell into a hole into the ground--one of those avens--and crawled into a sort of little cave, and lay there listening, to the suck and gurgle of millions of gallons of nice cool water running to waste under my feet, and me dying the death of a dog with thirst. "After a while I couldn't stand it any longer. I crawled out, prepared to surrender, give up the plunder, and lick the boots of any man who'd slip me a cup of water. But for some reason they'd given up the chase. I saw no more of them, whoever they were. And a little later I found a peasant's hut, and watered myself till I swelled up like a poisoned pup. They gave me a brush-down, there, and something to eat besides, and put me on my way to Millau. It seemed that I was a hundred miles from anywhere else, so it was Millau for mine if it meant a life sentence in a French prison. "I sneaked into the town after dark, and took the first train north. Nobody took any notice of me. I couldn't see the use of going all round Robin Hood's barn, as I'd have had to in order to make Lyons. By the time I'd got there, de Lorgnes would have given up and gone on to Paris." Phinuit finished his drink. "I'll say it was a gay young party. The next time I feel the call to crime, believe me! I'm going out and snatch nursing bottles from kids asleep in their prams.... But they _must_ be asleep." Monk lifted himself by sections from his chair. "It was a good yarn first time I heard it," he mused aloud. "But now, I notice, even the Sybarite is getting restless." In the course of Phinuit's narrative the black disks of night framed by the polished brass circles of the stern ports had faded out into dusky violet, then into a lighter lilac, finally into a warm yet tender blue. Now the main deck overhead was a sounding-board for thumps and rustle of many hurried feet. "Pilot come aboard, you think?" Phinuit enquired; and added, as Monk nodded and cast about for the visored white cap of his office: "Didn't know pilots were such early birds." "They're not, as a rule. But if you treat 'em right, they'll listen to reason." The captain graphically rubbed a thumb over two fingers, donned his cap, buttoned up his tunic, and strode forth with an impressive gait. "Still wakeful?" Phinuit hinted hopefully. "And shall be till we drop the pilot, thanks." "If I hadn't seen de Lorgnes make that safe sit up and speak, and didn't know you were his master, I'd be tempted to bat an eye or two. However...." Phinuit sighed despondently. "What can I do now to entertain you, dear sir?" "You might have pity on my benighted curiosity...." "Meaning this outfit?" Lanyard assented, and Phinuit deliberated over the question. "I don't know as I ought in the absence of my esteemed associates.... But what's bothering you most?" "I have seen something of the world, monsieur, and as you are aware not a little of the underside of it; but never have I met with a combination of such peculiar elements as this possesses. Regard it, if you will, from my view-point, that of an outsider, for one moment." Phinuit grinned. "It must give you furiously to think--as you'd say." "But assuredly! Take, for example, yourself, a man of unusual intelligence, such as one is not accustomed to find lending himself to the schemes of ordinary criminals." "But you have just admitted that we're anything but ordinary." "Then Mademoiselle Delorme. One knows what the world knows of her, that she has for many years meddled with high affairs, that she had been for many years more a sort of queen of the demi-monde of Paris; but now you tell me she has stopped to profit by association with a professional burglar." "Profit? I'll say she did. According to my information, it was she who mapped out the campaigns for de Lorgnes; she was G.H.Q. and he merely the high private in the front line trenches; with this difference, that in this instance G.H.Q. was perfectly willing to let the man at the front cop all the glory.... She took the cash and let the credit go, nor heeded rumblings of the distant drum!" "Then your picturesque confrère, Captain Monk; and the singular circumstance that he owns a wealthy cousin of the same name; and this beautiful little yacht which you seem so free to utilize for the furtherance of your purposes. Is it strange, then, that one's curiosity is provoked, one's imagination alternately stimulated and baffled?" "No; I suppose not," Phinuit conceded thoughtfully. "Still, it's far simpler than you'd think." "One has found that true of most mysteries, monsieur." "I don't mind telling you all I feel at liberty to.... You seem to have a pretty good line on mademoiselle, and I've told you what I know about de Lorgnes. As for the skipper, he's the black sheep of a good old New England family. Ran away to sea as a boy, and was disowned, and grew up in a rough school. It would take all night to name half the jobs he's had a hand in, mostly of a shady nature, in every quarter of the seven seas: gun running, pearl poaching, what not--even a little slaving, I suspect, in his early days. He's a pompous old bluff in repose, but nobody's fool, and a bad actor when his mad is up. He tells me he fell in with the Delorme a long time ago, while acting as personal escort for a fugitive South American potentate who crossed the borders of his native land with the national treasury in one hand and his other in Monk's, and of course--they all do--made a bee line for Paris. That's how we came to make her acquaintance, my revered employer, Mister Monk, and I--through the skipper, I mean." Phinuit paused to consider, and ended with a whimsical grimace. "I'm talking too much; but it doesn't matter, seein's it's you. Strictly between ourselves, the said revered employer is an annointed fraud. Publicly he's the pillar of the respectable house of Monk. Privately, he's not above profiteering, foreclosing the mortgage on the old homestead, and swearing to an odoriferous income-tax return. And when he thinks he's far enough away from home--my land, how that little man do carry on! "The War made him more money than he ever thought there was; so he bought this yacht ready-made and started on the grand tour, but never got any farther than Paris--naturally his first stop. News from home to the effect that somebody was threatening to do him out of a few nickels sent him hightailing back to put a stop to it. But before that happened, he wanted to see life with a large L; and Cousin Whitaker gave him a good start by introducing him to little ingénue Liane. And then she put the smuggling bee in his bonnet." "Smuggling!" Lanyard began to experience glimpses.... "Champagne. If ever all the truth comes out, I fancy it will transpire that Liane's getting a rake-off from some vintner. You see, Friend Employer was displaying a cultivated taste in vintage champagnes, but he'd been culpably negligent in not laying down a large stock for private consumption before the Great Drought set in. The Delorme found that out, then that his ancestral acres bordered on Long Island Sound, and finally that the Sybarite was loafing its head off. What could be more simple, she suggested, than that monsieur should ballast his private yacht with champagne on the homeward voyage, make his landfall some night in the dark of the moon, and put the stuff ashore on his own property before morning. Did he fall for it? Well, I just guess he did!" "This is all most interesting, monsieur, but...." "Where do Monk and I come in? Oh, like master, like men. Liane was too wise to crab her act by proposing anything really wicked to the Owner, and wise enough to know nothing could shock the skipper. And I was wise enough not to let him get away with anything unless I sat in on the deal. "Mademoiselle played all her cards face upwards with us. She and de Lorgnes, she said, were losing money by disposing of their loot this side, especially with European currency at its present stage of depreciation. And so long as the owner was doing a little dirty work, why shouldn't we get together and do something for ourselves on the side? If champagne could be so easily smuggled into the States, why not diamonds? We formed a joint-stock company on the spot." "And made your first coup at the Château de Montalais!" "Not the first, but the biggest. De Lorgnes' mouth had been watering for the Montalais stuff for a long time, it seems. My boss had private business of a nature we won't enter into, in London, and gave me a week off and the use of his car. We made up the party, toured down the Rhone valley, and then back by way of the Cévennes, just to get the lay of the land. I don't think there can be much more you need to know." "Monsieur is too modest." "Oh, about me? Why, I guess I'm not an uncommon phenomenon of the times. I was a good citizen before the War, law-abiding and everything. If you'd told me then I'd be in this galley to-day, I'd probably have knocked you for a goal. I had a flourishing young business of my own and was engaged to be married... When I got back from hell over here, I found my girl married to another man, my business wrecked, what was left of it crippled by extortionate taxation to support a government that was wasting money like a drunken sailor and too cynical to keep its solemn promises to the men who had fought for it. I had to take a job as secretary to a man I couldn't respect, and now... Well, if I can get a bit of my own back by defrauding the government or classing myself with the unorganised leeches on Society, nothing I know is going to stop my doing it!" Phinuit knocked the ashes out of a cold pipe at which he had been sucking for some time, rose, and stretched. "The worst of it is," he said in a serious turn--"I mean, looking at the thing from my bourgeois viewpoint of 1914--the War, but more particularly the antics of the various governments after the War, turned out several million of men in my frame of mind the world over. We went into the thing deluded by patriotic bunk and the promise that it was a war to end war; we came out to find the old men more firmly entrenched in the seats of the mighty than ever and stubbornly bent on perpetuating precisely the same rotten conditions that make wars inevitable. What Germany did to the treaty that guaranteed Belgium's neutrality was child's-play compared to what the governments of the warring nations have done to their covenants with their own people. And if anybody should ask you, you can safely promise them that several million soreheads like myself are what the politicians call 'a menace to the established social order'." Clear daylight filled the ports. The traffic on deck nearly deserved the name of din. Commands and calls were being bawled in English, French, and polyglot profanity. A donkey-engine was rumbling, a winch clattering, a capstan-pawl clanking. Alongside a tug was panting hoarsely. The engine room telegraph jangled furiously, the fabric of the Sybarite shuddered and gathered way. "We're off," yawned Phinuit. "Now will you be reasonable and go to bed?" "You may, monsieur," said Lanyard, getting up. "For my part, I shall go on deck, if you don't mind, and stop there till the pilot leaves us." "Fair enough!" "But one moment more. You have been extraordinarily frank, but you have forgotten one element, to me of some importance: you have not told me what my part is in this insane adventure." "That's not my business to tell you," Phinuit replied promptly. "When anything as important as that comes out, it won't be through my babbling. Anyhow, Liane may have changed her mind since last reports. And so, as far as I'm concerned, your present status is simply that of her pet protégé. What it is to be hereafter you'll learn from her, I suppose, soon enough.... Le's go!" XXII OUT OF SOUNDINGS When finally Lanyard did consent to seek his stateroom--with the pilot dropped and the Sybarite footing it featly over Channel waters to airs piped by a freshening breeze--it was to sleep once round the clock and something more; for it was nearly six in the afternoon when he came on deck again. The quarterdeck, a place of Epicurean ease for idle passengers, was deserted but for a couple of deckhands engaged in furling the awning. Lanyard lounged on the rail, revelling in a sense of perfect physical refreshment intensified by the gracious motion of the vessel, the friendly, rhythmic chant of her engines, the sweeping ocean air and the song it sang in the rigging, the vision of blue seas snow-plumed and mirroring in a myriad facets the red gold of the westering sun, and the lift and dip of a far horizon whose banks of violet mist were the fading shores of France. In these circumstances of the sea he loved so well there was certain anodyne for those twinges of chagrin which he must suffer when reminded of the sorry figure he had cut overnight. Still there were compensations--of a more material nature, too, than this delight which he had of being once again at sea. To have cheapened himself in the estimation of Liane Delorme and Phinuit and Monk was really to his advantage; for to persuade an adversary to under-estimate one is to make him almost an ally. Also, Lanyard now had no more need to question the fate of the Montalais jewels, no more blank spaces remained to be filled in his hypothetical explanation of the intrigues which had enmeshed the Château de Montalais, its lady and his honour. He knew now all he needed to know, he could put his hand on the jewels when he would; and he had a fair fortnight (the probable duration of their voyage, according to Monk) in which to revolve plans for making away with them at minimum cost to himself in exertion and exposure to reprisals. Plans? He had none as yet, he would begin to formulate and ponder them only when he had better acquaintance with the ship and her company and had learned more about that ambiguous landfall which she was to make (as Phinuit had put it) "in the dark of the moon." Not that he made the mistake of despising those two social malcontents, Phinuit and Jules, that rogue adventurer Monk, that grasping courtesan Liane Delorme. Individually and collectively Lanyard accounted that quartet uncommonly clever, resourceful, audacious, unscrupulous, and potentially ruthless, utterly callous to compunctions when their interests were jeopardised. But it was inconceivable that he should fail to outwit and frustrate them, who had the love and faith of Eve de Montalais to honour, cherish, and requite. Growing insight into the idiosyncrasies of the men left him undismayed. He perceived the steel of inflexible purpose beneath the windy egotism of Phinuit. The pompous histrionism of Monk, he knew, was merely a shell for the cold, calculating, undeviating selfishness that too frequently comes with advancing years. Nevertheless these two were factors whose functionings might be predicted. It was Liane Delorme who provided the erratic equation. Her woman's mind was not only the directing intelligence, it was as eccentric as quicksilver, infinitely supple and corrupt, Oriental in its trickishness and impenetrability. Already it had conceived some project involving him which he could by no means divine or even guess at without a sense of wasting time. Trying to put himself in her place, Lanyard believed that he would never have neglected the opportunity that, so far as she knew, had been hers, to steal away from Paris while he slept and leave an enemy in his way quite as dangerous as "Dupont" to gnaw his nails in the mortification of defeat. Why she had not done so, why she had permitted Monk and Phinuit to play their comedy of offering him the jewels, passed understanding. But of one thing Lanyard felt reasonably assured: now that she had him to all intents and purposes her foiled and harmless captive aboard the Sybarite, Liane would not keep him waiting long for enlightenment as to her intentions. He had to wait, however, that night and the next three before the woman showed herself. She was reported ill with mal-de-mer. Lanyard thought it quite likely that she was; before she was out of the Channel the Sybarite was contesting a moderate gale from the Southwest. On the other hand, he imagined that Liane might sensibly be making seasickness an excuse to get thoroughly rested and settled in her mind as to her course with him. So he schooled himself to be patient, and put in his time to good profit taking the measures of his shipmates and learning his way about ship. The Sybarite seemed unnecessarily large for a pleasure boat. Captain Monk had designated her a ship of nine hundred tons. Certainly she had room and to spare on deck as well as below for the accommodation of many guests in addition to the crew of thirty required for her navigation and their comfort. A good all-weather boat, very steady in a seaway, her lines were nevertheless fine, nothing in her appearance in the least suggested a vessel of commercial character--"all yacht" was what Monk called her. The first mate, a Mr. Swain, was a sturdy Britisher with a very red face and cool blue eyes, not easily impressed; if Lanyard were not in error, Mr. Swain entertained a private opinion of the lot of them, Captain Monk included, decidedly uncomplimentary. But he was a civil sort, though deficient in sense of humour and inclined to be a bit abrupt in a preoccupied fashion. Mr. Collison, the second mate, was another kind entirely, an American with the drawl of the South in his voice, a dark, slender man with eyes quick and shrewd. His manners were excellent, his reserve notable, though he seemed to derive considerable amusement from what he saw of the passengers, going on his habit of indulging quiet smiles as he listened to their communications. He talked very little and played an excellent game of poker. The chief engineer was a Mr. Mussey, stout, affable, and cynic, a heavy drinker, untidy about his person and exacting about his engine-room, a veteran of his trade and--it was said--an ancient croney of Monk's. There was, at all events, a complete understanding evident between these two, though now and again, especially at table, when Monk was putting on something more than his customary amount of side, Lanyard would observe Mussey's eyes fixed in contemplation upon his superior officer, with a look in them that wanted reading. He was nobody's fool, certainly not Monk's, and at such times Lanyard would have given more than a penny for Mussey's thoughts. Existing in daily contact, more or less close, with these gentlemen, observing them as they went to and fro upon their lawful occasions, Lanyard often speculated as to their attitude toward this lawless errand of the Sybarite's, of which they could hardly be unsuspicious even if they were not intimate with its true nature. And remembering what penalties attach to apprehension in the act of smuggling, even though it be only a few cases of champagne, he thought it a wild risk for them to run for the sake of their daily wage. Something to this effect he intimated to Phinuit. "Don't worry about this lot," that one replied. "They're wise birds, tough as they make 'em, ready for anything; hand-picked down to the last coal-passer. The skipper isn't a man to take fool chances, and when he recruited this crew, he took nobody he couldn't answer for. They're more than well paid, and they'll do as they're told and keep their traps as tight as clams'." "But, I take it, they were signed on before this present voyage was thought of; while you seem to imply that Captain Monk anticipated having to depend upon these good fellows in unlawful enterprises." "Maybe he did, at that," Phinuit promptly surmised, with a bland eye. "I wouldn't put it past him. The skipper's deep, and I'll never tell you what he had in the back of his mind when he let Friend Boss persuade him to take command of a pleasure yacht. Because I don't know. If it comes to that, the owner himself never confided in me just what the large idea was in buying this ark for a plaything. Yachting for fun is one thing; running a young floating hotel is something else again." "Then you don't believe the grandiose illusions due to sudden wealth were alone responsible?" "I don't know. That little man has a mind of his own, and even if I do figure on his payroll as confidential secretary, he doesn't tell me everything he knows." "Still," said Lanyard drily, "one cannot think you can complain that he has hesitated to repose his trust in you." To this Phinuit made no reply other than a non-committal grunt; and presently Lanyard added: "It is hardly possible--eh?--that the officers and crew know nothing of what is intended with all the champagne you have recently taken aboard." "They're no fools. They know there's enough of the stuff on board to do a Cunarder for the next ten years, and they know, too, there's no lawful way of getting it into the States." "So, then! They know that. How much more may they not know?" Phinuit turned a startled face to him. "What's that?" he demanded sharply. "May they not have exercised their wits as well on the subject of your secret project, my friend?" "What are you getting at?" "One is wondering what these 'wise birds, as tough as they make them' would do if they thought you were--as you say--getting away with something at their expense as well as the owner's." "What have you seen or heard?" "Positively nothing. This is merely idle speculation." "Well!" Phinuit sighed sibilantly and relaxed. "Let's hope they never find out." By dawn of the fourth day the gale had spent its greatest strength; what was left of it subsided steadily till, as the seafaring phrase has it, the wind went down with the sun. Calm ensued. Lanyard woke up the next morning to view from his stateroom deadlights vistas illimitable of flat blue flawed by hardly a wrinkle; only by watching the horizon was one aware of the slow swell of the sea, its sole perceptible motion. And all day long the Sybarite trudged on an even keel with only the wind of her way to flutter the gay awnings of the quarterdeck, while the waters sheared by her stem ran down her sides hissing resentment of this violation of their absolute tranquillity. Also, the sun made itself felt, electric fans buzzed everywhere, and perspiring in utter indolence beneath the awnings, one thought in sympathy of those damned souls below, in the hell of the stoke-hole. At luncheon Liane Delorme appeared in a summery toilette that would have made its mark on the beach of Deauville. Voluntary or enforced, her period of retreat had done her good. Making every allowance for the aid of art, the woman looked years younger than when Lanyard had last seen her. Nobody would ever have believed her a day older than twenty-five, no one, that is to say, who had not watched youth ebb from her face and leave it grey and waste with premature winter, as Lanyard had that morning when he told her of the death of de Lorgnes in the restaurant of the Buttes Montmartre. Liane herself had long since put quite out of mind that mauvais quart d'heure. Her present serenity was as flawless as the sea's, though, unlike the sea, she sparkled. She was as gay as any school-girl--though any school-girl guilty, or even capable, of a scintilla of the amusing impropriety of her badinage would have merited and won instant expulsion. She inaugurated without any delay a campaign of conquest extremely diverting to observe. To Lanyard it seemed that her methods were crude and obvious enough; but it did something toward mitigating the long-drawn boredom of the cruise to watch them work out, as they seemed to invariably, with entire success; and then remark the insouciance with which, another raw scalp dangling from her belt, Liane would address herself to the next victim. Mr. Swain was the first to fall, mainly because he happened to be present at luncheon, it being Mr. Collison's watch on the bridge. Under the warmth of violet eyes which sought his constantly, drawn by what one was left to infer was an irresistible attraction, his reserve melted rapidly, his remote blue stare grew infinitely less distant; and though he blushed furiously at some of the more audacious of Liane's sallies, he was quick to take his cue when she expressed curiosity concerning the duties of the officer of the watch. And coming up at about two bells for a turn round the deck and a few breaths of fresh air before dressing for dinner, Lanyard saw them on the bridge, their heads together over the binnacle--to the open disgust of the man at the wheel. Liane hailed him, with vivacious gestures commanded his attendance. As a brother in good standing, one could hardly do less than humour her gracefully; so Lanyard trotted up to the companion ladder, and Liane, resting a hand of sisterly affection upon his arm, besought him to make clear to her feminine stupidity Swain's hopelessly technical explanation of the compass and binnacle. Obligingly Mr. Swain repeated his lecture, and Lanyard, learning for himself with considerable surprise what a highly complicated instrument of precision is the modern compass, and that the binnacle has essential functions entirely aside from supporting the compass and housing it from the weather, could hardly blame his sister for being confused. Indeed, he grew so interested in Swain's exposition of deviation and variation and magnetic attraction and the various devices employed to counteract these influences, the Flinders bars, the soft-iron spheres, and the system of adjustable magnets located in the pedestal of the binnacle, that he had to be reminded by a mild exhibition of sisterly temper that she hadn't summoned him to the bridge for his private edification. "So then!" he said after due show of contrition--"it is like this: the magnetic needle is susceptible to many attractions aside from that of the pole; it is influenced by juxtaposition to other pieces or masses of magnetized metal. The iron ship itself, for example, is one great magnet. Then there are dissociated masses of iron within the ship, each possessing an individual power of magnetism sufficient to drag the needle far from its normal fidelity to the pole. So the scientific mariner, when he installs a compass on board his ship, measures these several forces, their influence upon the needle, and installs others to correct them--on the principle of like cures like. "Let us put it in a figure: The compass is the husband, the pole the wife. Now it is well known that husbands are for all that human beings, able to perceive attractions in persons other than those to whom they are married. The wise wife, then, studies the charms of mind or person which in others appeal to her husband, and makes them her own; or if that is impossible cultivates other qualities quite as potent to distract him. It results from this, that the wise wife becomes, as they say 'all women to one man.' Now here the binnacle represents the arts by which that wise wife, the pole, keeps her husband true by surrounding him with charms and qualities--these magnets--sufficiently powerful to counteract the attractions of others. Do I make myself clear?" "But perfectly!" Liane nodded emphatically. "What a mind to have in the family!" she appealed to Mr. Swain. "Do you know, monsieur, it happens often to me to wonder how I should have so clever a brother?" "It is like that with me, too," Lanyard insisted warmly. He made an early excuse to get away, having something new to think about. Mr. Mussey put up a stiffer fight than Mr. Swain, since an avowed cynic is necessarily a Man Who Knows About Women. He gave Liane flatly to understand that he saw through her and couldn't be taken in by all her blandishments. At the end of twenty-four hours, however, the conviction seemed somehow to have insidiously penetrated that only a man of his ripe wisdom and disillusionment could possibly have any appeal to a woman like Liane Delorme. It wasn't long after that the engine room was illuminated by Liane's pretty ankles and Mr. Mussey was beginning to comprehend that there was in this world one woman at least who could take an intelligent interest in machinery. Mr. Collison succumbed without a struggle. True to the tradition of Southern chivalry, he ambled up to the block, laid his head upon it, and asked for the axe. Nor was he kept long waiting... On the seventh day the course pricked on the chart placed the Sybarite's position at noon as approximately in mid-Atlantic. Contemplating a prospect of seven days more of such emptiness, Lanyard's very soul yawned. And nothing could induce Captain Monk to hasten the passage. Mr. Mussey asserted that his engines could at a pinch deliver twenty knots an hour; yet day in and day out the Sybarite poked along at little better than half that speed. It was no secret that Liane Delorme's panic flight from Popinot had hurried the yacht out of Cherbourg harbour four days earlier than her proposed sailing date, whereas the Sybarite had a rendezvous to keep with her owner at a certain hour of a certain night, an appointment carefully calculated with consideration for the phase of the moon and the height of the tide, therefore not readily to be altered. After dinner on that seventh day, a meal much too long drawn out for Lanyard's liking, and marked to boot by the consumption of much too much champagne, he left the main saloon the arena of an impromptu poker party, repaired to the quarterdeck, and finding a wicker lounge chair by the taffrail subsided into it with a sigh of gratitude for this fragrant solitude of night, so soothing and serene. The Sybarite, making easy way through a slight sea, with what wind there was--not much--on the port bow, rolled but slightly, and her deliberate and graceful fore-and-aft motion, as she swung from crest to crest of the endless head-on swells, caused the stars to stream above her mast-heads, a boundless river of broken light. The pulsing of the engines, unhasting, unresting, ran through her fabric in ceaseless succession of gentle tremors, while the rumble of their revolutions resembled the refrain of an old, quiet song. The mechanism of the patent log hummed and clicked more obtrusively. Directly underfoot the screw churned a softly clashing wake. From the saloon companionway drifted intermittently a confusion of voices, Liane's light laughter, muted clatter of chips, now and then the sound of a popping cork. Forward the ship's bell sounded two double strokes, then a single, followed by a wail in minor key: "Five bells and all's well!" ... And of a sudden Lanyard suffered the melancholy oppression of knowing his littleness of body and soul, the relative insignificance even of the ship, that impertinent atom of human organization which traversed with unabashed effrontery the waters of the ages, beneath the shining constellations of eternity. In profound psychical enervation he perceived with bitterness and despair the enormous futility of all things mortal, the hopelessness of effort, the certain black defeat that waits upon even what men term success. He felt crushed, spiritually invertebrate, destitute of object in existence, bereft of all hope. What mattered it whether he won or lost in this stupid contest whose prize was possession of a few trinkets set with bits of glittering stone? If he won, of what avail? What could it profit his soul to make good a vain boast to Eve de Montalais? Would it matter to her what success or failure meant to him? Lanyard doubted it, he doubted her, himself, all things within the compass of his understanding, and knew appalling glimpses of that everlasting truth, too passionless to be cynical, that the hopes of man and his fears, his loves and hates, his strivings and passivity, are all one in the measured and immutable processes of Time.... The pressure of a hand upon his own roused him to discover the Liane Delorme had seated herself beside him, in a chair that looked the other way, so that her face was not far from his; and he could scarcely be unaware of its hinted beauty, now wan and glimmering in starlight, enigmatic with soft, close shadows. "I must have been dreaming," he said, apologetic. "You startled me." "One could see that, my friend." The woman spoke in quiet accents and let her hand linger upon his with its insistent reminder of the warm, living presence whose rich colouring was disguised by the gloom that encompassed both. Four strokes in duplicate on the ship's bell, then the call: "_Eight bells and a-a-all's well_!" Lanyard muttered: "No idea it was so late." A slender white shape, Mr. Collison emerged from his quarters in the deck-house beneath the bridge and ran up the ladder to relieve Mr. Swain. At the same time a seaman came from forward and ascended by the other ladder. Later Mr. Swain and the man whose trick at the wheel was ended left the bridge, the latter to go forward to his rest, Mr. Swain to turn into his room in the deck-house. The hot glow of the saloon skylights became a dim refulgence, aside from which, and its glimmer in the mouth of the companionway, no lights were visible in the whole length of the ship except the shuttered window of Mr. Swain's room, which presently was darkened, and odd glimpses of the binnacle light to be had when the helmsman shifted his stand. A profound hush closed down upon the ship, whose progress across the face of the waters seemed to acquire a new significance of stealth, so that the two seated by the taffrail, above the throbbing screws and rushing torrent of the wake, talked in lowered accents without thinking why. "It is that one grows bored, eh, cher ami?" "Perhaps, Liane." "Or perhaps that one's thought are constantly with one's heart, elsewhere?" "You think so?" "At the Château de Montalais, conceivably." "It amuses you, then, to shoot arrows into the air?" "But naturally, I seek the reason, when I see you distrait and am conscious of your neglect." "I think it is for me to complain of that!" "How can you say such things?" "One has seen what one has seen, these last few days. I think you are what that original Phinuit would call 'a fast worker,' Liane." "What stupidity! If I seek to make myself liked, you know well it is with a purpose." "One hardly questions that." "You judge harshly ... Michael." Lanyard spent a look of astonishment on the darkness. He could not remember that Liane had ever before called him by that name. "Do I? Sorry...." His tone was listless. "But does it matter?" "You know that to me nothing else matters." Lanyard checked off on his fingers: "Swain, Collison, Mussey. Who next? Why not I, as well as another?" "Do you imagine for an instant that I class you with such riffraff?" "Why, if you really want to know what I think, Liane: it seems to me that all men in your sight are much the same, good for one thing only, to be used to serve your ends. And who am I that you should hold me in higher rating than any other man?" "You should know I do," the woman breathed, so low he barely caught the words and uttered an involuntary "Pardon?" before he knew he had understood. So that she iterated in a clearer tone of protest: "You should know I do--that I do esteem you as something more than other men. Think what I owe to you, Michael; and then consider this, that of all men whom I have known you alone have never asked for love." He gave a quiet laugh. "There is too much humility in my heart." "No," she said in a dull voice--"but you despise me. Do not deny it!" She shifted impatiently in her chair. "I know what I know. I am no fool, whatever you think of me.... No," she went on with emotion under restraint: "I am a creature of fatality, me--I cannot hope to escape my fate!" He was silent a little in perplexed consideration of this. What did she wish him to believe? "But one imagines nobody can escape his fate." "Men can, some of them; men such as you, rare as you are, know how to cheat destiny; but women never. It is the fate of all women that each shall some time love some man to desperation, and be despised. It is my fate to have learned too late to love you, Michael----" "Ah, Liane, Liane!" "But you hold me in too much contempt to be willing to recognise the truth." "On the contrary, I admire you extremely, I think you are an incomparable actress." "You see!" She offered a despairing gesture to the stars. "It is not true what I say? I lay bare my heart to him, and he tells me that I act!" "But my dear girl! surely you do not expect me to think otherwise?" "I was a fool to expect anything from you," she returned bitterly--"you know too much about me. I cannot find it in my heart to blame you, since I am what I am, what the life you saved me to so long ago has made me. Why should you believe in me? Why should you credit the sincerity of this confession, which costs me so much humiliation? That would be too good for me, too much to ask of life!" "I think you cannot fairly complain of life, Liane. What have you asked of it that you have failed to get? Success, money, power, adulation----" "Never love." "The world would find it difficult to believe that." "Ah, love of a sort, yes: the love that is the desire to possess and that possession satisfies." "Have you asked for any other sort?" "I ask it now. I know what the love is that longs to give, to give and give again, asking no return but kindness, understanding, even toleration merely. It is such love as this I bear you, Michael. But you do not believe...." Divided between annoyance and distaste, he was silent. And all at once she threw herself half across the joined arms of their chairs, catching his shoulders with her hands, so that her half-clothed body rested on his bosom, and its scented warmth assailed his senses with the seduction whose power she knew so well. "Ah, Michael, my Michael!" she cried--"if you but knew, if only you could believe! It is so real to me, so true, so overwhelming, the greatest thing of all! How can it be otherwise to you?... No: do not think I complain, do not think I blame you or have room in my heart for any resentment. But, oh my dear! were I only able to make you understand, think what life could be to us, to you and me. What could it withhold that we desired? You with your wit, your strength, your skill, your poise--I with my great love to inspire and sustain you--what a pair we should make! what happiness would be ours! Think, Michael--think!" "I have thought, Liane," he returned in accents as kind as the hands that held her. "I have thought well..." "Yes?" She lifted her face so near that their breaths mingled, and he was conscious of the allure of tremulous and parted lips. "You have thought and.... Tell me your thought, my Michael." "Why, I think two things," said Lanyard: "First, that you deserve to be soundly kissed." He kissed her, but with discretion, and firmly put her from him. "Then"--his tone took on a note of earnestness--"that if what you have said is true, it is a pity, and I am sorry, Liane, very sorry. And, if it is not true, that the comedy was well played. Shall we let it rest at that, my dear?" Half lifting her, he helped her back into her chair, and as she turned her face away, struggling for mastery of her emotion, true or feigned, he sat back, found his cigarette case, and clipping a cigarette between his lips, cast about for a match. He had none in his pockets, but knew that there was a stand on one of the wicker tables nearby. Rising, he found it, and as he struck the light heard a sudden, soft swish of draperies as the woman rose. Moving toward the saloon companionway, she passed him swiftly, without a word, her head bended, a hand pressing a handkerchief to her lips. Forgetful, he followed her swaying figure with puzzled gaze till admonished by the flame that crept toward his fingertips. Then dropping the match he struck another and put it to his cigarette. At the second puff he heard a choking gasp, and looked up again. The woman stood alone, en silhouette against the glow of the companionway, her arms thrust out as if to ward off some threatened danger. A second cry broke from her lips, shrill with terror, she tottered and fell as, dropping his cigarette, Lanyard ran to her. His vision dazzled by the flame of the match, he sought in vain for any cause for her apparent fright. For all he could see, the deck was as empty as he had presumed it to be all through their conversation. He found her in a faint unmistakably unaffected. Footfalls sounded on the deck as he knelt, making superficial examination. Collison had heard her cries and witnessed her fall from the bridge and was coming to investigate. "What in blazes----!" Lanyard replied with a gesture of bewilderment: "She was just going below. I'd stopped to light a cigarette, saw nothing to account for this. Wait: I'll fetch water." He darted down the companionway, filled a glass from a silver thermos carafe, and hurried back. As he arrived at the top of steps, Collison announced: "It's all right. She's coming to." Supported in the arms of the second mate, Liane was beginning to breathe deeply and looking round with dazed eyes. Lanyard dropped on a knee and set the glass to her lips. She gulped twice, mechanically, her gaze fixed to his face. Then suddenly memory cleared, and she uttered a bubbling gasp of returning dread. "Popinot!" she cried, as Lanyard hastily took the glass away. "Popinot--he was there--I saw him--standing there!" A trembling arm indicated the starboard deck just forward of the companion housing. But of course, when Lanyard looked, there was no one there ... if there had ever been.... XXIII THE CIGARETTE Lanyard found himself exchanging looks of mystification with Collison, and heard his own voice make the flat statement: "But there is nobody...." Collison muttered words which he took to be: No, and never was. "But you must have seen him from the bridge," Lanyard insisted blankly, "if...." "I looked around as soon as I heard her call out," Collison replied; "but I didn't see anybody, only mademoiselle here--and you, of course, with that match." "Please help me up," Liane Delorme asked in a faint voice. Collison lent a hand. In the support and shelter of Lanyard's arm the woman's body quivered like that of a frightened child. "I must go to my stateroom," she sighed uncertainly. "But I am afraid..." "Do not be. Remember Mr. Collison and I... Besides, you know, there was nobody..." The assertion seemed to exasperate her; her voice discovered new strength and violence. "But I am telling you I saw ... that assassin!"--she shuddered again--"standing there, in the shadow, glaring at me as if I had surprised him and he did not know what next to do. I think he must have been spying down through the skylight; it was the glow from it that showed me his red, dirty face of a pig." "You came aft on the port side, didn't you?" Lanyard enquired of the second mate. Collison nodded. "Running," he said--"couldn't imagine what was up." "It is easy not to see what one is not looking for," Lanyard mused, staring forward along the starboard side. "If a man had dropped flat and squirmed along until in the shelter of the engine-room ventilators, he could have run forward--bending low, you know--without your seeing him." "But you were standing here, to starboard!" "I tell you, that match was blinding me," Lanyard affirmed irritably. "Besides, I wasn't looking--except at my sister--wondering what was the matter." Collison started. "Excuse me," he said, reminded--"if mademoiselle's all right, I ought to get back to the bridge." "Take me below," Liane begged. "I must speak with Captain Monk." Monk and Phinuit were taking their ease plus nightcaps in the captain's sitting-room. A knock brought a prompt invitation to "Come in!" Lanyard thrust the door open and curtly addressed Monk: "Mademoiselle Delorme wishes to see you." The eloquent eyebrows indicated surprise and resignation, and Monk got up and inserted himself into his white linen tunic. Phinuit, more sensitive to the accent of something amiss, hurried out in unceremonious shirt sleeves. "What's up?" he demanded, looking from Lanyard's grave face to Liane's face of pallor and distress. Lanyard informed him in a few words. "Impossible!" Phinuit commented. "Nonsense," Monk added, speaking directly to Liane. "You imagined it all." She had recovered much of her composure, enough to enable her to shrug her disdain of such stupidity. "I tell you only what my two eyes saw." "To be sure," Monk agreed with a specious air of being wide open to conviction. "What became of him, then?" "You ask me that, knowing that in stress of terror I fainted!" The eyebrows achieved an effect of studied weariness. "And you saw nobody, monsieur? And Collison didn't, either?" Lanyard shook his head to each question. "Still, it is possible----." Monk cut him short impatiently. "All gammon--all in her eye! No man bigger than a cockroach could have smuggled himself aboard this yacht without my being told. I know my ship, I know my men, I know what I'm talking about." "Presently," Liane prophesied darkly, "you may be talking about nothing." At a loss, Monk muttered: "Don't get you...." "When you find yourself, some fine morning, with your throat cut in your sleep, like poor de Lorgnes--or garroted, as I might have been." "I'm not going to lose any sleep....." Monk began. "Lose none before you have the vessel searched," Liane pleaded, with a change of tone. "You know, messieurs, I am not a woman given to hallucinations. I _saw_ ... And I tell you, while that assassin is at liberty aboard this yacht, not one of our lives is worth a sou--no, not one!" "Oh, you shall have your search." Monk gave in as one who indulges a childish whim. "But I can tell you now what we'll find--or won't." "Then Heaven help us all!" Liane went swiftly to the door of her room, but there hesitated, looking back in appeal to Lanyard. "I am afraid...." "Let me have a look round first." And when Lanyard had satisfied himself there was nobody concealed in any part of Liane's suite, and had been rewarded with a glance of gratitude--"I shall lock myself in, of course," the woman said from the threshold--"and I have my pistol, too." "But I assure you," Monk commented in heavy sarcasm, "our intentions are those of honourable men." The door slammed, and the sound of the key turning in the lock followed. Monk trained the eyebrows into a look of long-suffering patience. "A glass too much... Seein' things!" "No," Lanyard voiced shortly his belief; "you are wrong. Liane saw something." "Nobody questions that," Phinuit yawned. "What one does question is whether she saw a man or a figment of her imagination--some effect of the shadows that momentarily suggested a man." "Shadows do play queer tricks at night, at sea," Monk agreed. "I remember once--" "Then let us look the ground over and see if we can make that explanation acceptable to our own intelligences," Lanyard cut in. "No harm in that." Phinuit fetched a pocket flash-lamp, and the three reconnoitred exhaustively the quarters of the deck in which the apparition had manifested itself to the woman. By no strain of credulity could the imagination be made to accept the effect of shadows at the designated spot as the shape of somebody standing there. On the other hand, when Phinuit obligingly posed himself between the mouth of the companionway and the skylight, it had to be admitted that the glow from either side provided fairly good cover for one who might wish to linger there, observing and unobserved. "Still, I don't believe she saw anything," Monk persisted--"a phantom Popinot, if anything." "But wait. What is it we have here?" Lanyard, scrutinising the deck with the flashlamp, stooped, picked up something, and offered it on an outspread palm upon which he trained the clear electric beam. "Cigarette stub?" Monk said, and sniffed. "That's a famous find!" "A cigarette manufactured by the French Régie." "And well stepped on, too," Phinuit observed. "Well, what about it?" "Who that uses this part of the deck would be apt to insult his palate with such a cigarette? No one of us--hardly any one of the officers or stewards." "Some deck-hand might have sneaked aft for a look-see, expecting to find the quarterdeck deserted at this hour." "Even ordinary seamen avoid, when they can, what the Régie sells under the name of tobacco. Nor is it likely such a one would risk the consequences of defying Captain Monk's celebrated discipline." "Then you believe it was Popinot, too?" "I believe you would do well to make the search you have promised thorough and immediate." "Plenty of time," Monk replied wearily. "I'll turn this old tub inside out, if you insist, in the morning." "But why, monsieur, do you remain so obstinately incredulous?" "Well," Monk drawled, "I've known the pretty lady a number of years, and if you ask me she's quite up to playing little games all her own." "Pretending, you mean--for private ends?" The eyebrows offered a gesture urbane and sceptical. Whether or not sleep brought Monk better counsel, the morning's ransacking of the vessel and the examination of her crew proved more painstaking than Lanyard had expected. And the upshot was precisely as Monk had foretold, precisely negative. He reported drily to this effect at an informal conference in his quarters after luncheon. He himself had supervised the entire search and had made a good part of it in person, he said. No nook or cranny of the yacht had been overlooked. "I trust mademoiselle is satisfied," he concluded with a mockingly civil movement of eyebrows toward Liane. His reply was the slightest of shrugs executed by perfect shoulders beneath a gown of cynical transparency. Lanyard was aware that the violet eyes, large with apprehension, flashed transiently his way, as if in hope that he might submit some helpful suggestion. But he had none to offer. If the manner in which the search had been conducted were open to criticism, that would have to be made by a mind better informed than his in respect of things maritime. And he avoided acknowledging that glance by even so much as seeming aware of it. And in point of fact, coldly reviewed in dispassionate daylight, the thing seemed preposterous to him, to be asked to believe that Popinot had contrived to secrete himself beyond finding on board the Sybarite. Without his participation the discussion continued. He heard Phinuit's voice utter in accents of malicious amusement: "Barring, of course, the possibility of connivance on the part of officers or crew." "Don't be an ass!" Monk snapped. "Don't be unreasonable: I am simply as God made me." "Well, it was a nasty job of work." "Now, listen." Phinuit rose to leave, as one considering the conference at an end. "If you persist in picking on me, skipper, I'll ravish you of those magnificent eyebrows with a safety razor, some time when you're asleep, and leave you as dumb as a Wop peddler who's lost both arms." Liane followed him out in silence, but her carriage was that of a queen of tragedy. Lanyard got up in turn, and to his amazement found the eyebrows signalling confidentially to him. "What the devil!" he exclaimed, in an open stare. Immediately the eyebrows became conciliatory. "Well, monsieur, and what is your opinion?" "Why, to me it would seem there might be something in the suggestion of Monsieur Phinuit." "Ridiculous!" Monk dismissed it finally. "Do you know, I rather fancy my own.... Liane's up to something," he added, explanatory; and then, as Lanyard said nothing--"You haven't told me yet what she was talking to you about last night just before her--alleged fright." Lanyard contrived a successful offensive with his own eyebrows. "Oh?" he said, "haven't I?" and walked out. Here was a new angle to consider. Monk's attitude hinted at a possible rift in the entente cordiale of the conspirators. Why else should he mistrust Liane's sincerity in asserting that she had seen Popinot? Aside from the question of what he imagined she could possibly gain by making a scene out of nothing--a riddle unreadable--one wondered consumedly what had happened to render Monk suspicious of her good faith. The explanation, when it was finally revealed to Lanyard by the most trivial of incidents, made even his own blindness seem laughable. For three more days the life of the ship followed in unruffled tranquillity its ordered course. Liane Delorme was afflicted with no more visions, as the captain would have called them; though by common consent the subject had been dropped upon the failure of the search, and to all seeming was rapidly fading from the minds of everybody but Liane herself and Lanyard. This last continued to plague himself with the mystery and, maintaining always an open mind, was prepared at any time to be shockingly enlightened; that is, to discover that Liane had not cried wolf without substantial reason. For he had learned this much at least of life, that everything is always possible. As for Liane, she made no secret of her unabated timidity, yet suffered it with such fortitude as could not fail to win admiration. If she was a bit more subdued, a trifle less high-spirited than was her habit, if she refused positively to sit with her back to any door or to retire for the night until her quarters had been examined, if (as Lanyard suspected) she was never unarmed for a moment, day or night, she permitted no signs of mental strain to mar the serenity of her countenance or betray the studied graciousness of her gestures. Toward Lanyard she bore herself precisely as though nothing had happened to disturb the even adjustment of their personal relations; or, perhaps, as if she considered everything had happened, so that their rapport had become absolute; at all events, with a pleasing absence of constraint. He really couldn't make her out. Sometimes he thought she wished him to believe she was not as other women and could make rational allowance for his poor response to her naïve overtures. But that seemed so abnormal, he felt forced to fall back on the theory that her declaration had been nothing more than a minor gambit in whatever game she was playing, and that consequently she bore no malice because of its failure. No matter which explanation was the true one, no matter which keyed her temper toward him, Lanyard found himself liking the woman better, not as a woman but as another human being, than he had ever thought to. Say what you liked, in this humour she was charming. But he never for an instant imagined she was meekly accepting defeat at his hands instead of biding her time to resume the attack from a new quarter. So he wasn't at all surprised when, one evening, quite early after dinner, she contrived another tête-à-tête, and with good conversational generalship led their talk presently into a channel of amiable personalities. "And have you been thinking about what we said--or what I said, my friend--that night--so long ago it seems!--three nights ago?" "But inevitably, Liane." "You have not forgotten my stupidity, then." "I have forgotten nothing." She made a pretty mouth of doubt. "Would it not have been more kind to forget?" "Such compliments are not easily forgotten." "You are sure, quite sure it was a compliment?" "No-o; by no means sure. Still, I am a man, and I am giving you the full benefit of every doubt." She laughed, not ill-pleased. "But what a man! how blessed of the gods to be able to laugh at yourself as well as at me." "Undeceive yourself: I could never laugh at you, Liane. Even if one did not believe you to be a great natural comedienne at will, one would always wonder what your purpose was--oh yes! with deep respect one would wonder about that." "And you have been wondering these last three days? Well, tell me what you think my purpose was in abandoning all maidenly reserve and throwing myself at your head." "Why," said Lanyard with a look of childlike candour, "you might, you know, have been uncontrollably swayed by some passionate impulses of the heart." "But otherwise--?" she prompted, hugely amused. "Oh, if you had a low motive in trying to make a fool of me, you know too well how to hide your motive from such a fool." In a fugitive seizure of thoughtfulness the violet eyes lost all their impishness. She sighed, the bright head drooped a little toward the gleaming bosom, a hand stole out to rest lightly upon his once again. "It was not acting, Michael--I tell you that frankly--at least, not all acting." "Meaning, I take it, you know love too well to make it artlessly." "I'm afraid so, my dear," said Liane Delorme with another sigh. "You know: I am afraid of you. You see everything so clearly..." "It's a vast pity. I wish I could outgrow it. One misses so many amusing emotions when one sees too clearly." During another brief pause, Lanyard saw Monk come on deck, pause, and search them out, in the chairs they occupied near the taffrail, much as on that other historic night. Not that he experienced any difficulty in locating them; for this time the decklights were burning clearly. Nevertheless, Captain Monk confessed emotion at sight of those two in a quite perceptible start; and Lanyard saw the eyebrows tremendously agitated as their manipulator moved aft. Unconscious of all this, Liane ended her pensive moment by leaning toward Lanyard and making demoralizing eyes, while the hand left his and stole with a caressing gesture up his forearm. "Is love, then, distasteful to you unless it be truly artless, Michael?" "There's so much to be said about that, Liane," he evaded. Monk was standing over them, a towering figure in white with the most forbidding eyebrows Lanyard had ever seen. "Might one suggest," he did suggest in iced accents, "that the quarter-deck is a fairly conspicuous place for this exhibition of family affection?" Liane Delorme turned up an enquiring look, tinged slightly with an impatience which all at once proved too much for her. "Oh, go to the devil!" she snapped in that harsh voice of the sidewalks which she was able to use and discard at will. For a moment Monk made no reply; and Lanyard remarked a curious quivering of that excessively tall, excessively attenuated body, a real trembling, and suddenly understood that the absurd creature was being shaken by jealousy, by an enormous passion of jealousy, quite beyond his control, that shook him very much as a cat might shake a mouse. It was too funny to be laughable, it was comic in a way to make one want to weep. So that Lanyard, who refused to weep in public, could merely gape in speechless and transfixed rapture. And perhaps this was fortunate; otherwise Monk must have seen that his idiotic secret was out, the sport of ribald mirth, and the situation must have been precipitated with a vengeance and an outcome impossible to predict. As it was, absorbed in his inner torment, Monk was insensible to the peril that threatened his stilted but precious dignity, which he proceeded to parade, as it were underlining it with the eyebrows, to lend emphasis to his words. "So long as this entertaining fiction of brother-and-sister is thought worth while," he said with infuriated condescension, "it might be judicious not to indulge in inconsistent and unseemly demonstrations of affection within view of my officers and crew. Suppose we..." He choked a little. "In short, I came to invite you to a little conference in my rooms, with Mr. Phinuit." "Conference?" Liane enquired coolly, without stirring. "I know nothing of this conference." "Mr. Phinuit and I are agreed that Monsieur Lanyard is entitled to know more about our intentions while he has time to weigh them carefully. We have only four more days at sea..." Unable longer to contain himself, Lanyard left his chair with alacrity. "But this is so delightful! You've no idea, really, monsieur, how I have looked forward to this moment." And to Liane: "Do come, and see how I take it, this revelation of my preordained fate. It will be, I trust sincerely, like a man." With momentary hesitation, and in a temper precluding any sympathy, with his humour, the woman rose and silently followed with him that long-legged figure whose stalk held so much dramatic significance as he led to the companionway. After that it was refreshing to find unromantic Mr. Phinuit lounging beside the captain's desk with crossed feet overhanging one corner of it and mind intent on the prosaic business of paring his fingernails. Lanyard nodded to him with great good temper and--while Phinuit lowered his feet and put away his penknife--considerately placed a chair for Liane in the position in which she preferred to sit, with her face turned a little from the light. Nor would his appreciation of the formality which seemed demanded by Monk's solemn manner, permit him to sit before the captain had taken his own chair behind the desk. Then, however, he discovered the engaging spontaneity of a schoolboy at a pantomime, and drawing up a chair sat on the edge of it and addressed himself with unaffected eagerness to the most portentous eyebrows in captivity. "Now," he announced with a little bow, "for what, one imagines, Mr. Phinuit would term the Elaborate Idea!" XXIV HISTORIC REPETITION Phinuit grinned, then smothered a little yawn. Liane Delorme gave a small, disdainful movement of shoulders, and posed herself becomingly, resting an elbow on the arm of her chair and inclining her cheek upon two fingers of a jewelled hand. Thus she sat somewhat turned from Monk and Phinuit, but facing Lanyard, to whom her grave but friendly eyes gave undivided heed, for all the world as if there were no others present: she seemed to wait to hear him speak again rather than to care in the least what Monk would find to say. Captain Monk filled in that pause with an impressive arrangement of eyebrows. Then, fixing his gaze, not upon Lanyard, but upon the point of a pencil with which his incredibly thin fingers traced elaborate but empty designs upon the blotter, he opened his lips, hemmed in warning that he was about to speak, and seemed tremendously upset to find that Liane was inconsiderately forestalling him. Her voice was at its most musical pitch, rather low for her, fluting, infinitely disarming and seductive. "Let me say to you, mon ami, that--naturally I know what is coming--I disapprove absolutely of this method of treating with you." "But it is such an honour to be considered important enough to be treated with at all!" "You have the true gift for sarcasm: a pity to waste it on an audience two-thirds incapable of appreciation." "Oh, you're wrong!" Phinuit declared earnestly. "I'm appreciative, I think the dear man's immense." "Might I suggest"--the unctuous tones of Captain Monk issued from under mildly wounded eyebrows--"if any one of us were unappreciative of Monsieur Lanyard's undoubted talents, he would not be with us tonight." "You might suggest it," Phinuit assented, "but that wouldn't make it so, it is to mademoiselle's appreciation that you and I owe this treat, and you know it. Now quit cocking those automatic eyebrows at me; you've been doing that ever since we met, and they haven't gone off yet, not once." Irrepressible, Liane's laughter pealed; and though he couldn't help smiling, Lanyard hastened to offer up himself on the altar of peace. "But--messieurs!--you interest me so much. Won't you tell me quickly what possible value my poor talents can have found in your sight?" "You tell him, Monk," Phinuit said irreverently--"I'm no tale-bearer." Monk elevated his eyebrows above recognition of the impertinence, and offered Lanyard a bow of formidable courtesy. "They are such, monsieur," he said with that deliberation which becomes a diplomatic personage--"your talents are such that you can, if you will, become invaluable to us." Phinuit chuckled outright at Lanyard's look of polite obtuseness. "Never sail a straight course--can you skipper?--when you can get there by tacking. Here: I'm a plain-spoken guy, let me act as an interpreter. Mr. Lanyard: this giddy association of malefactors here present has the honour to invite you to become a full-fledged working member and stockholder of equal interest with the rest of us, participating in all benefits of the organization, including police protection. And as added inducement we're willing to waive initiation fee and dues. Do I make myself clear?" "But perfectly." "It's like this: I've told you how we came together, the five of us, including Jules and Monsieur le Comte de Lorgnes. Now we expect this venture, our first, to pan out handsomely. There'll be a juicy melon cut when we get to New York. There's a lot more--I think you understand--than the Montalais plunder to whack up on. We'll make the average get-rich-quick scheme look like playing store in the back-yard with two pins the top price for anything on the shelves. And there isn't any sane reason why we need stop at that. In fact, we don't mean to. The Sybarite will make more voyages, and if anything should happen to stop it, there are other means of making the U. S. Customs look foolish. Each of us contributes valuable and essential services, mademoiselle, the skipper, my kid-brother, even I--and I pull a strong oar with the New York Police Department into the bargain. But there's a vacancy in our ranks, the opening left by the death of de Lorgnes, an opening that nobody could hope to fill so well as you. So we put it up to you squarely: If you'll sign on and work with us, we'll turn over to you a round fifth share of the profits of this voyage as well as everything that comes after. That's fair enough, isn't it?" "But more than fair, monsieur." "Well, it's true you've done nothing to earn a fifth interest in the first division..." "Then, too, I am here, quite helpless in your hands." "Oh, we don't look at it that way----" "Which," Liane sweetly interrupted, "is the one rational gesture you have yet offered in this conference, Monsieur Phinuit." "Meaning, I suppose, Mr. Lanyard is far from being what he says, helpless in our hands." "Nor ever will be, my poor friend, while he breathes and thinks." "But, Liane!" Lanyard deprecated, modestly casting down his eyes--"you overwhelm me." "I don't believe you," Liane retorted coolly. For some moments Lanyard continued to stare reflectively at his feet. Nothing whatever of his thought was to be gathered from his countenance, though eyes more shrewd to read than those of Phinuit or Monk were watching it intently. "Well, Mr. Lanyard, what do you say?" Lanyard lifted his meditative gaze to the face of Phinuit. "But surely there is more...." he suggested in a puzzled way. "More what?" "I find something lacking.... You have shown me but one side of the coin. What is the reverse? I appreciate the honour you do me, I comprehend fully the strong inducements I am offered. But you have neglected--an odd oversight on the part of the plain-spoken man you profess to be--you have forgotten to name the penalty which would attach to a possible refusal." "I guess it's safe to leave that to your imagination." "There would be a penalty, however?" "Well, naturally, if you're not with us, you're against us. And to take that stand would oblige us, as a simple matter of self-preservation, to defend ourselves with every means at our command." "Means which," Lanyard murmured, "you prefer not to name." "Well, one doesn't like to be crude." "I have my answer, monsieur--and many thanks. The parallel is complete." With a dim smile playing in his eyes and twitching at the corners of his lips, Lanyard leaned back and studied the deck beams. Liane Delorme sat up with a movement of sharp uneasiness. "Of what, my friend, are you thinking?" "I am marvelling at something everybody knows--that history does repeat itself." The woman made a sudden hissing sound, of breath drawn shortly between closed teeth. "I hope not!" she sighed. Lanyard opened his eyes wide at her. "You hope not, Liane?" "I hope this time history will not altogether repeat itself. You see, my friend, I think I know what is in your mind, memories of old times...." "True: I am thinking of those days when the Pack hunted the Lone Wolf in Paris, ran him to earth at last, and made him much the same offer as you have made to-night.... The Pack, you should know, messieurs, was the name assumed by an association of Parisian criminals, ambitious like you, who had grown envious of the Lone Wolf's success, and wished to persuade him to run with them." "And what happened?" Phinuit enquired. "Why it so happened that they chose the time when I had made up my mind to be good for the rest of my days. It was all most unfortunate." "What answer did you give them, then?" "As memory serves, I told them they could all go plumb to hell." "So I hope history will not repeat, this time," Liane interjected. "And did they go?" Monk asked. "Presently, some of them, ultimately all; for some lingered a few years in French prisons, like that great Popinot, the father of monsieur who has caused us so much trouble." "And you----?" "Why," Lanyard laughed, "I have managed to keep out of jail, so I presume I must have kept my vow to be good." "And no backsliding?" Phinuit suggested with a leer. "Ah! you must not ask me to tell you everything. That is a matter between me and my conscience." "Well," Phinuit hazarded with a good show of confidence, "I guess you won't tell us to go plumb to hell, will you?" "No; I promise to be more original than that." "Then you refuse!" Liane breathed tensely. "Oh, I haven't said that! You must give me time to think this over." "I knew that would be his answer," Monk proclaimed, pride in his perspicuity shaping the set of his eyebrows. "That is why I was firm that we should wait no longer. You have four days in which to make up your mind, monsieur." "I shall need them." "I don't see why," Phinuit argued: "it's an open and shut proposition, if ever there was one." "But you are asking me to renounce something upon which I have set much store for many years, monsieur. I can't be expected to do that in an hour or even a day." You shall have your answer, I promise you, by the time we make our landfall--perhaps before." "The sooner, the better." "Are you sure, monsieur? But one thought it was the tortoise who won the famous race." "Take all the time you need," Captain Monk conceded generously, "to come to a sensible decision." "But how good you are to me, monsieur!" XXV THE MALCONTENT Singular though the statement may seem, when one remembers the conditions that circumscribed his freedom of action on board the Sybarite, that he stood utterly alone in that company of conspirators and their creatures, alone and unarmed, with never a friend to guard his back or even to whisper him one word of counsel, warning or encouragement, with only his naked wits and hands to fortify and sustain his heart: it is still no exaggeration to say that Lanyard got an extraordinary amount of private diversion out of those last few days. From the hour when Liane Delorme, Phinuit and Captain Monk, in conclave solemnly assembled at the instance of the one last-named, communicated their collective mind in respect of his interesting self, the man was conscious of implicit confidence in a happy outcome of the business, with a conscientiousness less rational than simply felt, a sort of bubbling exhilaration in his mood that found its most intelligible expression in the phrase, which he was wont often to iterate to himself: Ça va bien--that goes well! That--the progressive involution of this insane imbroglio--went very well indeed, in Lanyard's reckoning; he could hardy wish, he could not reasonably demand that it should go better. He knew now with what design Liane Delorme had made him a party to this sea adventure and intimate with every detail of the conspiracy; and he knew to boot why she had offered him the free gift of her love; doubt as to the one, scruples inspired by the other--that reluctance which man cannot but feel to do a hurt to a heart that holds him dear, however scanty his response to its passion--could no longer influence him to palter in dealing with the woman. The revelation had in effect stricken shackles from Lanyard's wrists, now when he struck it would be with neither hesitation nor compunction. As to that stroke alone, its hour and place and fashion, he remained without decision. He had made a hundred plans for its delivery, and one of them, that seemed the wildest, he thought of seriously, as something really feasible. But single-handed! That made it difficult. If only one could devise some way to be in two places at one time and the same! An impossibility? He wouldn't deny that. But Lanyard had never been one to be discouraged by the grim, hard face of an impossibility. He had known too many such to dissipate utterly, vanish into empty air, when subjected to a bold and resolute assault. He wouldn't say die. Never that while he could lift hand or invent stratagem, never that so long as fools played their game into his hands, as this lot wished to and did. What imbecility! What an escape had been his when, in that time long since, he had made up his mind to have done with crime once and for all time! But for that moment of clear vision and high resolve he might be to-day even as these who had won such clear title to his contempt, who stultified themselves with vain imaginings and the everlasting concoction of schemes whose sheer intrinsic puerility foredoomed them to farcical failure. Lanyard trod the decks for hours at a time, searching the stars for an answer to the question: What made the Law by whose decree man may garner only punishment and disaster where he has husbanded in iniquity? That Law implacable, inexorable in its ordained and methodic workings, through which invariably it comes to pass that failure and remorse shall canker in the heart even of success ill-gained.... But if he moralized it was with a cheerful countenance, and his sermons were for himself alone. He kept his counsel and spoke all men fairly, giving nowhere any manner of offense: for could he tell in what unlikely guise might wait the instrument he needed wherewith to work out his unfaltering purpose? And all the while they were watching him and wondering what was in his mind. Well, he gave no sign. Let them watch and wonder to their heart's content; they must wait until the time he had appointed for the rendering of his decision, when the Sybarite made her landfall. Winds blew and fell, the sea rose and subsided, the Sybarite trudged on into dull weather. The sky grew overcast; and Lanyard, daily scanning the very heavens for a sign, accepted this for one, and prayed it might hold. Nothing could be more calculated to nullify his efforts than to have the landfall happen on a clear, calm night of stars. He went to bed, the last night out, leaving a noisy gathering in the saloon, and read himself drowsy. Then turning out his light he slept. Sometime later he found himself instantaneously awake, and alert, with a clear head and every faculty on the qui vive--much as a man might grope for a time in a dark strange room, then find a door and step out into broad daylight. Only there was no light other than in the luminous clarity of his mind. Even the illumination in the saloon had been dimmed down for the night, as he could tell by the tarnished gleam beneath his stateroom door. Still, not everyone had gone to bed. The very manner of his waking informed him that he was not alone; for the life Lanyard had led had taught him to need no better alarm than the entrance of another person into the place where he lay sleeping. All animals are like that, whose lives hang on their vigilance. Able to see nothing, he still felt a presence, and knew that it waited, stirless, within arm's-length of his head. Without much concern, he thought of Popinot, that "phantom Popinot" of Monk's derisive naming. Well, if the vision Liane had seen on deck had taken material form here in his stateroom, Lanyard presumed it meant another fight, and the last, to a finish, that is to say, to a death. Without making a sound, he gathered himself together, ready for a trap, and as noiselessly lifted a hand toward the switch for the electric light, set in the wall near the head of the bed. But in the same breath he heard a whisper, or rather a mutter, a voice he could not place in its present pitch. "Awake, Monsieur Delorme?" it said. "Hush! Don't make a row, and never mind the light." His astonishment was so overpowering that instinctively his tensed muscles relaxed and his hand fell back upon the bedding. "Who the deuce----?" "Not so loud. It's me--Mussey." Lanyard echoed witlessly: "Mussey?" "Yes. I don't wonder you're surprised, but if you'll be easy you'll understand pretty soon why I had to have a bit of a talk with you without anybody's catching on." "Well," Lanyard said, "I'm damned!" "I say!" The subdued mutter took on a note of anxiety. "It's all right, isn't it? I mean, you aren't going to kick up a rumpus and spill the beans? I guess you must think I've got a hell of a gall, coming in on you like this, and I don't know as I blame you, but... Well, time's getting short, only two more days at sea, and I couldn't wait any longer for a chance to have a few minutes' chin with you." The mutter ceased and held an expectant pause. Lanyard said nothing. But he was conscious that the speaker occupied a chair by the bed, and knew that he was bending near to catch his answer; for the air was tainted with vinous breath. Yes: one required no stronger identification, it was beyond any doubt the chief engineer of the Sybarite. "Say it's all right, won't you?" the mutter pleaded. "I am listening," Lanyard replied--"as you perceive." "I'll say it's decent of you--damned decent. Blowed if I'd take it as calm as you, if I waked up to find somebody in my room." "I believe," said Lanyard pointedly, "you stipulated for a few minutes' chin with me. Time passes, Mr. Mussey. Get to your business, or let me go to sleep again." "Sharp, you are," commented the mutter. "I've noticed it in you. You'd be surprised if you knew how much notice I've been taking of you." "And flattered, I'm sure." "Look here..." The mutter stumbled. "I want to ask a personal question. Daresay you'll think it impertinent." "If I do, be sure I shan't answer it." "Well... it's this: Is or isn't your right name Lanyard, Michael Lanyard?" This time it was Lanyard who, thinking rapidly, held the pause so long that his querist's uneasiness could not contain itself. "Is that my answer? I mean, does your silence--?" "That's an unusual name, Michael Lanyard," cautiously replied its proprietor. "How did you get hold of it?" "They say it's the right name of the Lone Wolf. Guess I don't have to tell you who the Lone Wolf is." "'They say'? Who, please, are 'they'?" "Oh, there's a lot of talk going around the ship. You know how it is, a crew will gossip. And God knows they've got enough excuse this cruise." This was constructively evasive. Lanyard wondered who had betrayed him. Phinuit? The tongue of that plain-spoken man was hinged in the middle; but one couldn't feel certain. Liane Delorme had made much of the chief engineer; though she seemed less likely to talk too much than anyone of the ship's company but Lanyard himself. But then (one remembered of a sudden) Monk and Mussey were by reputation old cronies; it wasn't inconceivable that Monk might have let something slip... "And what, Mr. Mussey, if I should admit I am Michael Lanyard?" "Then I'll have something to say to you, something I think'll interest you." "Why not run the risk of interesting me, whoever I may be?" Mussey breathed heavily in the stillness: the breathing of a cautious man loath to commit himself. "No," he said at length, in the clearest enunciation he had thus far used. "No. If you're not Lanyard, I'd rather say nothing more--I'll just ask you to pardon me for intruding and clear out." "But you say there is some gossip. And where there is smoke, there must be fire. It would seem safe to assume I am the man gossip says I am." "Michael Lanyard?" the mutter persisted--"the Lone Wolf?" "Yes, yes! What then?" "I suppose the best way's to put it to you straight..." "I warn you, you'll gain nothing if you don't." "Then... to begin at the beginning... I've known Whit Monk a good long time. Years I've known him. We've sailed together off and on ever since we took to the sea; we've gone through some nasty scrapes together, and done things that don't bear telling, and always shared the thick and the thin of everything. Before this, if anybody had ever told me Whit Monk would do a pal dirt, I'd've punched his head and thought no more about it. But now..." The mutter faltered. Lanyard preserved a sympathetic silence--a silence, at least, which he hoped would pass as sympathetic. In reality, he was struggling to suppress any betrayal of the exultation that was beginning to take hold of him. Premature this might prove to be, but it seemed impossible to misunderstand the emotion under which the chief engineer was labouring or to underestimate its potential value to Lanyard. Surely it would seem that his faith in his star had been well-placed: was it not now--or all signs failed--delivering into his hand the forged tool he had so desperately needed, for which he had so earnestly prayed? A heavy sigh issued upon the stillness, freighted with a deep and desolating melancholy. For, it appeared, like all cynics, Mr. Mussey was a sentimentalist at heart. And in the darkness that disembodied voice took up its tale anew. "I don't have to tell you what's going on between Whit and that lot he's so thick with nowadays. You know, or you wouldn't be here." "Isn't that conclusion what you Americans would call a little previous?" "Previous?" The mutter took a moment to con the full significance of that adjective. "No: I wouldn't call it that. You see, on a voyage like this--well, talk goes on, things get about, things are said aloud that shouldn't be and get overheard and passed along; and the man who sits back and listens and sifts what he hears is pretty likely to get a tolerably good line on what's what. Of course there's never been any secret about what the owner means to do with all this wine he's shipped. We all know we're playing a risky game, but we're for the owner--he isn't a bad sort, when you get to know him--and we'll go through with it and take what's coming to us win or lose. Partly, of course, because it'll mean something handsome for every man if we make it without getting caught. But if you want to know what I think... I'll tell you something..." "But truly I am all attention." "I think Whit Monk and Phinuit and mam'selle have framed the owner between them." "Can't say I quite follow..." "I think they cooked up this smuggling business and kidded him into it just to get the use of his yacht for their own purposes and at the same time get him where he can't put up a howl if he finds out the truth. Suppose he does..." The mutter became momentarily a deep-throated chuckle of malice. "He's in so deep on the booze smuggling side he dassent say a word, and that puts him in worse yet, makes him accessory before the fact of criminal practices that'd made his hair stand on end. Then, suppose they want to go on with the game, looting in Europe and sneaking the goods into America with the use of his yacht: what's he going to say, how's he going to stop them?" Accepting these questions as purely rhetorical, Lanyard offered no comment. After a moment the mutter resumed: "Well, what do you think? Am I right or am I wrong?" "Who knows, Mr. Mussey? One can only say, you seem to know something." "I'll say I know something! A sight more than Whit Monk dreams I know--as he'll find out to his sorrow before he's finished with Tom Mussey." "But"--obliquely Lanyard struck again at the heart of the mystery which he found so baffling--"you seem so well satisfied with the bona fides of your informant?" There was a sound of stertorous breathing as the intelligence behind the mutter grappled with this utterance. Then, as if the hint had proved too fine--"I'm playing my hand face up with you, Mr. Lanyard. I guess you can tell I know what I'm talking about." "But what I cannot see is why you should talk about it to me, monsieur." "Why, because I and you are both in the same boat, in a manner of speaking. We're both on the outside--shut out--looking in." In a sort of mental aside, Lanyard reflected that mixed bathing for metaphors was apparently countenanced under the code of cynics. "Does one gather that you feel aggrieved with Captain Monk for not making you a partner in his new associations?" "For trying to put one over on me, an old pal... stood by him through thick and thin... would've gone through fire for Whit Monk, and in my way I have, many's the time. And now he hooks up with Phinuit and this Delorme woman, and leaves me to shuffle my feet on the doormat... and thinks I'll let him get away with it." The voice in the dark gave a grunt of infinite contempt: "Like hell..." "I understand your feelings, monsieur; and I ask you to believe in my sympathy. But you said--if I remember--that we were in the same boat, you and I; whereas I assure you Captain Monk has not abused my friendship, since he has never had it." "I know that well enough," said the mutter. "I don't mean you've got my reasons for feeling sore; but I do mean you've got reason enough of your own--" "On what grounds do you say that?" Another deliberate pause prefaced the reply: "You said a while ago I knew something. Well--you said it. I and you've both been frozen out of this deal and we're both meaning to take a hand whether they like it or not. If that don't put us in the same boat I don't know..." Perceiving he would get no more satisfaction, Lanyard schooled himself to be politic for the time being. "Say it is so, then... But I think you have something to propose." "It's simple enough: When two people find themselves in the same boat they've got to pull together if they want to get anywhere." "You propose, then, an alliance?" "That's the answer. Without you I can't do anything but kick over the applecart for Whit Monk; and that sort of revenge is mighty unsatisfactory. Without me--well: what can you do? I know you can get that tin safe of Whit's open, when you feel like it, get the jewels and all; but what show do you stand to get away with them? That is, unless you've got somebody working in with you on board the ship. See here..." The mutter sank into a husky whisper, and in order to be heard the speaker bent so low over Lanyard that fumes of whiskey almost suffocated the poor man in his bed. "You've got a head, you've had experience, you know how... Well, go to it: make your plans, consult with me, get everything fixed, lift the loot; I'll stand by, fix up everything so's your work will go through slick, see that you don't get hurt, stow the jewels where they won't be found; and when it's all over, we'll split fifty-fifty. What d'you say?" "Extremely ingenious, monsieur, but unfortunately impracticable." "That's the last thing," stated the disappointed whisper, "I ever thought a man like you would say." "But it is obvious. We do not know each other." "You mean, you can't trust me?" "For that matter: how can you be sure you can trust me?" "Oh, I guess I can size up a square guy when I see him." "Many thanks. But why should I trust you, when you will not even be quite frank with me?" "How's that? Haven't I----" "One moment: you refuse to name the source of your astonishingly detailed information concerning this affair--myself included. You wish me to believe you simply assume I am at odds with Captain Monk and his friends. I admit it is true. But how should you know it? Ah, no, my friend! either you will tell me how you learned this secret, or I must beg you to let me get my sleep." "That's easy. I heard Whit and Phinuit talking about you the other night, on deck, when they didn't think anybody was listening." Lanyard smiled into the darkness: no need to fret about fair play toward this one! The truth was not in him, and by the same token the traditional honour that obtains among thieves could not be. He said, as if content, in the manner of a practical man dismissing all immaterial considerations: "As you say, the time is brief..." "It'll have to be pulled off to-morrow night or not at all," the mutter urged with an eager accent. "My thought, precisely. For then we come to land, do we not?" "Yes, and it'll have to be not long after dark. We ought to drop the hook at midnight. Then"--the mutter was broken with hopeful anxiety--"then you've decided you'll stand in with me, Mr. Lanyard?" "But of course! What else can one do? As you have so fairly pointed out: what is either of us without the other?" "And it's understood: you're to lift the stuff, I'm to take care of it till we can slip ashore, we're to make our getaway together--and the split's to be fifty-fifty, fair and square?" "I ask nothing better." "Where's your hand?" Two hands found each other blindly and exchanged a firm and inspiring clasp--while Lanyard gave thanks for the night that saved his face from betraying his mind. Another deep sigh sounded a note of apprehensions at an end. A gruff chuckle followed. "Whit Monk! He'll learn something about the way to treat old friends." And all at once the mutter merged into a vindictive hiss: "Him with his airs and graces, his fine clothes and greasy manners, putting on the lah-de-dah over them that's stood by him when he hadn't a red and was glad to cadge drinks off spiggoties in hells like the Colonel's at Colon--him!" But Lanyard had been listening only with his ears; he hadn't the slightest interest in Mr. Mussey's resentment of the affectations of Captain Monk. For now his mad scheme had suddenly assumed a complexion of comparative simplicity; given the co-operation of the chief engineer, all Lanyard would need to contribute would be a little headwork, a little physical exertion, a little daring--and complete indifference, which was both well warranted and already his, to abusing the confidence of Mr. Mussey. "But about this affair to-morrow night," he interrupted impatiently: "attend to me a little, if you please, my friend. Can you give me any idea where we are, or will, approximately, at midnight to-night?" "What's that go to do----?" "Perhaps I ask only for my own information. But it may be that I have a plan. If we are to work together harmoniously, Mr. Mussey, you must learn to have a little confidence in me." "Beg your pardon," said an humble mutter. "We ought to be somewhere off Nantucket Shoals Lightship." "And the weather: have you sufficient acquaintance with these latitudes to foretell it, even roughly?" "Born and brought up in Edgartown, made my first voyage on a tramp out of New Bedford: guess I know something about the weather in these latitudes! The wind's been hauling round from sou'west to south all day. If it goes on to sou'east, it'll likely be thick to-morrow, with little wind, no sea to speak of, and either rain or fog." "So! Now to do what I will have to do, I must have ten minutes of absolute darkness. Can that be arranged?" "Absolute darkness?" The mutter had a rising inflexion of dubiety. "How d'you mean?" "Complete extinguishing of every light on the ship." "My God!" the mutter protested. "Do you know what that means? No lights at night, under way, in main-travelled waters! Why, by nightfall we ought to be off Block Island, in traffic as heavy as on Fifth Avenue! No: that's too much." "Too bad," Lanyard uttered, philosophic. "And the thing could have been done." "Isn't there some other way?" "Not with lights to hamper my operations. But if some temporary accident were to put the dynamoes out of commission--figure to yourself what would happen." "There'd be hell to pay." "Ah! but what else?" "The engines would have to be slowed down so as to give no more than steerage-way until oil lamps could be substituted for the binnacle, masthead, and side-lights, also for the engine room." "And there would be excitement and confusion, eh? Everybody would make for the deck, even the captain would leave his cabin unguarded long enough..." "I get you"--with a sigh. "It's wrong, all wrong, but--well, I suppose it's got to be done." Lanyard treated himself to a smile of triumph, there in the darkness. XXVI THE BINNACLE It would have been ungrateful (Lanyard reflected over his breakfast) to complain of a life so replete with experiences of piquant contrast. It happened to one to lie for hours in a cubicle of blinding night, hearkening to a voice like that of some nightmare weirdly become articulate, a ghostly mutter that rose and fell and droned, broken by sighs, grunts, stifled oaths, mean chuckles, with intervals of husky whispering and lapses filled with a noise of wheezing respiration, all wheedling and cajoling, lying, intimating and evading, complaining, snarling, rambling, threatening, protesting, promising, and in the end proposing an unholy compact for treachery and evil-doing--a voice that might have issued out of some damned soul escaped for a little space of time from the Pits of Torment, so utterly inhuman it sounded, so completely discarnate and divorced from all relationship to any mortal personality that even that reek of whiskey in the air, even that one contact with a hard, hot hand, could not make it seem real. And then it ceased and was no more but as a thing of dream that had passed. And one came awake to a light and wholesome world furnished with such solidly comforting facts as soaps and razors and hot and cold saltwater taps; and subsequently one left one's stateroom to see, at the breakfast table, leaden-eyed and flushed of countenance, an amorphous lump of humid flesh in shapeless garments of soiled white duck, the author of that mutter in the dark; who, lounging over a plate of broken food and lifting a coffee cup in the tremulous hand of an alcoholic, looked up with lacklustre gaze, gave a surly nod, and mumbled the customary matutinal greeting: "'Morning, Monseer Delorme." It was all too weird.... To add to this, the chief engineer paid Lanyard no further heed at all, though they were alone at table, and having noisily consumed his coffee, rubbed his stubbled lips and chin with an egg-stained napkin, rose, and without word or glance rolled heavily up the companionway. The conduct of a careful man, accustomed to mind his eye. And indisputably correct. One never knew who might be watching, what slightest sign of secret understanding might not be seized upon and read. Furthermore, Mr. Mussey had not stilled his mutter in the night until their joint and individual lines of action had been elaborately mapped out and agreed upon down to the smallest detail. It now remained only for Lanyard to fill in somehow the waste time that lay between breakfast and the hour appointed, then take due advantage of the opportunity promised him. He found the day making good Mr. Mussey's forecast. Under a dull, thick sky the sea ran in heavy swells, greasy and grey. The wind was in the south, and light and shifty. The horizon was vague. Captain Monk, encountered on the quarterdeck, had an uneasy eye, and cursed the weather roundly when Lanyard made civil enquiry as to the outlook. Ça va bien! Lanyard killed an hour or two in the chartroom, acquainting himself with the coast they were approaching and tracing the Sybarite's probable course toward the spot selected from the smuggling transaction. His notion of the precise location of the owner's estate was rather indefinite; he had gathered from gossip that it was on the Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound, between New London and New Haven, where a group of small islands--also the property of Mister Whitaker Monk--provided fair anchorage between Sound and shore as well as a good screen from offshore observation. It was not vital to know more: Lanyard had neither hope nor fear of ever seeing that harbour. It was the approach alone that interested him; and when he had puzzled out that there were only two practicable courses for the Sybarite to take--both bearing in a general north-westerly direction from Nantucket Shoals Light Vessel, one entering Block Island Sound from the east, between Point Judith and Block Island, the other entering the same body of water from the south, between Block Island and Montauk Point--and had satisfied himself that manifold perils to navigation hedged about both courses, more especially their prolongation into Long Island Sound by way of The Race: Lanyard told himself it would be strange indeed if his plans miscarried ... always providing that Mr. Mussey could be trusted to hold to his overnight agreement. But as to that, one entertained few fears. One felt quite sure that Mr. Mussey would perform duly to the letter of his covenant. It had required only an hour of weighing and analysing with a clear head his overtures and utterances as a whole, to persuade Lanyard that he himself, no less than the chief engineer, in the phrase of the latter's boast, "knew something." It seemed unbelievably stupid and childish, what he imagined was behind the gratuitous intermeddling of Mr. Mussey; but then, he reminded himself, if there is anything more stupid than to plot a criminal act, it is to permit oneself to be influenced by that criminal stupidity whose other name is jealousy. Well, whether he were right or wrong, the night would declare it; and in any event there was no excuse whatever for refusing to profit by the stupidity of men whose minds are bent on vicious mischief.... The weather thickened as the day grew older. Towards noon the wind, as if weary and discouraged with vain endeavour to make up its mind to blow from this quarter or that, died away altogether. At the same time the horizon appeared to close in perceptibly; what little definition it had had in earlier hours was erased; and the Sybarite, shearing the oily and lifeless waters of a dead calm, seemed less to make progress than to struggle sullenly in a pool of quicksilver at the bottom of a slowly revolving sphere of clouded glass, mutinously aware that all her labouring wrought no sort of gain. After an hour of this, Captain Monk, on the bridge with Mr. Swain, arrived at a decision of exasperation. Through the engine-room ventilators a long jingle of the telegraph was heard; and directly the Sybarite's pulses began to beat in quicker tempo, while darker volutes of smoke rolled in dense volume from her funnel and streamed away astern, resting low and preserving their individuality as long as visible, like a streak of oxidization on a field of frosted silver. For the first time since she had left the harbour of Cherbourg the yacht was doing herself something like justice in the matter of speed--and this contrary to all ethics of seamanship, on such a day. At the luncheon table, Phinuit ventured a light-headed comment on this dangerous procedure; whereupon Monk turned on him in a cold fury. "As long as I'm master of this vessel, sir, I'll sail her according to the counsels of my own discretion--and thank you to keep your animadversions to yourself!" "Animadversions!" Phinuit echoed, and made round, shocked eyes. "Oh, I never! At least, I didn't mean anything naughty, skipper dear." Monk snorted, and grumbled over his food throughout the remainder of the meal; but later, coming upon a group composed of Liane Delorme, Lanyard and Phinuit, in the saloon, he paused, looked this way and that to make sure none of the stewards was within eavesdropping distance, and graciously unbent a little. "I'm making the best time we can while we can see at all," he volunteered. "No telling when this misbegotten fog will close in and force us to slow down to half-speed or less--in crowded waters, too!" "And very sensible, I'm sure," Phinuit agreed heartily. "Whatever happens, we musn't be late for our date with Friend Boss, must we?" "We'll keep it," Monk promised grimly, "if we have to feel every inch of our way in with the lead. I don't mind telling you, this fog may save our skins at that. Wireless has been picking up chatter all morning between a regular school of revenue cutters patrolling this coast on the lookout for just such idiots as we are. So we'll carry on and trust to luck till we make Monk Harbour or break our fool necks." Liane Delorme gave a start of dismay. "There is danger, then?" "Only if we run afoul of a cutter, Liane." Monk tried to speak reassuringly. "And that's not likely in this weather. As for the fog, it's a dirty nuisance to any navigator but, as I said, may quite possibly prove our salvation. I know these waters like a book, I've sailed them ever since I was old enough to tell a tiller from a mainsheet. I can smell my way in, if it comes to that, through the blindest fog the Atlantic ever brewed." "Then you do things with your nostrils, too?" Phinuit enquired innocently. "I've often wondered if all the intellect was located in the eyebrows." Monk glared, growled, and hastily sought the air of the deck. Liane Delorme eyed Phinuit with amused reproach. "Really, my young friend!" "I can't help it, mademoiselle," Phinuit asserted sulkily. "Too much is enough. I've watched him making faces with the top of his head so long I dream of geometrical diagrams laid out in eyebrows--and wake up screaming. And they call this a pleasure craft!" With an aggrieved air he sucked at his pipe for a few minutes. "Besides," he added suddenly, "somebody's got to be comic relief, and I don't notice anybody else in a sweat to be the Life and Soul of the ship." He favoured Lanyard with a morose stare. "Why don't you ever put your shoulder to the wheel, Lanyard? Why leave it all to me? Come on; be a sport, cut a caper, crack a wheeze, do something to get a giggle!" "But I am by no means sure you do not laugh at me too much, as it is." "Rot!... Tell you what." Phinuit sat up with a gleaming eye of inspiration. "You can entertain mademoiselle and me no end, if you like. Spill the glad tidings." "Glad tidings?" "Now don't monkey with the eyebrows--_please!_ It gives me the willies... I merely mean to point out, to-day's the day you promised to come through with the awful decision. And there's no use waiting for Monk to join us; he's too much worried about his nice little ship. Tell mademoiselle and me now." Lanyard shook his head, smiling. "But the time I set was when we made our landfall." "Well, what's the matter with Martha's Vineyard over there? You could see if it was a clear day." "But it is not a clear day." "Suppose it gets thicker, a sure-enough fog? We may not see land before midnight." "Then till midnight we must wait. No, Monsieur Phinuit, I will not be hurried. I have been thinking, I am still thinking, and there is still much to be said before I can come to any decision that will be fair to you, mademoiselle, the captain on the one hand, myself on the other." "But at midnight, if the skipper's promise holds good, we'll be going ashore." "The objection is well taken. My answer will be communicated when we see land or at eleven o'clock to-night, whichever is the earlier event." Some further effort at either persuasion or impudence--nobody but Phinuit ever knew which--was drowned out by the first heart-broken bellow of the whistle sounding the fog signal. Liane Delorme bounded out of her chair, clapping hands to ears, and uttered an unheard cry of protest; and when, the noise suspending temporarily, she learned that it was to be repeated at intervals of two minutes as long as the fog lasted and the yacht was under way, she flung up piteous hands to an uncompassionate heaven and fled to her stateroom, slamming the door as if she thought thereby to shut out the offending din. One fancied something inhumanly derisive in the prolonged hoot which replied. Rather than languish under the burden of Mr. Phinuit's spirited conversation for the rest of the afternoon, Lanyard imitated Liane's example, and wasted the next hour and a half flat on his bed, with eyes closed but mind very much alive. Now and again he consulted his watch, as one might with an important appointment to keep. At two minutes to four he left his stateroom, and as the first stroke of eight bells rang out--in one of the measured intervals between blasts of the whistle--ending the afternoon watch, he stepped out on deck, and paused for a survey of the weather conditions. There was no perceptible motion in the air, witnessing that the wind had come in from astern, that is to say approximately from the southeast, and was blowing at about the speed made by the yacht itself. The fog clung about the vessel, Lanyard thought, like dull grey cotton wool. Yet, if the shuddering of her fabric were fair criterion, the pace of the Sybarite was unabated, she was ploughing headlong through that dense obscurity using the utmost power of her engines. From time to time, when the whistle was still, the calls of seamen operating the sounding machine could be heard; but their reports were monotonously uniform, the waters were not yet shoal enough for the lead to find bottom at that pace. The watch was being changed as Lanyard started forward, with the tail of an eye on the bridge. Mr. Collison relieved Mr. Swain, and the latter came down the companion-ladder just in time to save Lanyard a nasty spill as his feet slipped on planking greasy with globules of fog. There's no telling how bad a fall he might not have suffered had not Mr. Swain been there for him to catch at; and for a moment or two Lanyard was, as Mr. Swain put it with great good-nature, all over him, clinging to the first officer in a most demonstrative manner; and it was with some difficulty that he at length recovered his equilibrium. Then, however, he laid hold of the rail for insurance against further mishaps, thanked Mr. Swain heartily, added his apologies, and the two parted with expressions of mutual esteem. The incident seemed to have dampened Lanyard's ardour for exercise. He made a rather gingerly way back to the quarterdeck, loafed restlessly in a deck-chair for a little while, then went below once more. Some time after, supine again upon his bed, he heard Mr. Swain in the saloon querulously interrogating one of the stewards. It appeared that Mr. Swain had unaccountably mislaid his keys, and he wanted to know if the steward had seen anything of them. The steward hadn't, he said; and Lanyard for one knew that he spake sooth, since at that moment the missing keys were resting on the bottom of the sea several miles astern--all but one. There was no dressing for dinner that night. Liane Delorme, her nerves rasped almost beyond endurance by the relentless fog signal, preferred the seclusion of her stateroom. Lanyard wasn't really sorry; the bosom of a white shirt is calculated to make some impression upon the human retina even on the darkest night; whereas his plain lounge suit of blue serge was sure to prove entirely inconspicuous. So, if he missed the feminine influence at table, he bore up with good fortitude. And after dinner he segregated himself as usual in his favourite chair near the taffrail. The fog, if anything denser than before, manufactured an early dusk of a peculiarly depressing violet shade. Nevertheless, evenings are long in that season of the year, and to Lanyard it seemed that the twilight would never quite fade out completely, true night would never come. Long before it did, speed was slackened: the yacht was at last in soundings; the calls of the leadsmen were as monotonous as the whistle blasts, and almost as frequent. Lanyard could have done without both, if the ship could not. He remarked a steadily intensified exacerbation of nerves, and told himself he was growing old and no mistake. He could remember the time when he could have endured a strain of waiting comparable to that which he must suffer now, and have turned never a hair. How long ago it seemed!... Another sign that the Sybarite had entered what are technically classified as inland waters, where special rules of the road apply, was to be remarked in the fact that the fog signal was now roaring once each minute, whereas Lanyard had grown accustomed to timing the intervals between the sounding of the ship's bell, upon which all his interest hung, at the rate of fifteen blasts to the half hour. If you asked him, once a minute seemed rather too much of a good thing, even in busy lanes of sea traffic. Still, it was better perhaps than unpremeditated disaster; one was not keen about having the Sybarite ground on a sandbank, pile up on a rock, or dash her brains out against the bulk of another vessel--before eleven o'clock at earliest. In retrospect he counted those two hours between dinner and ten-thirty longer than the fortnight which had prefaced them. So is the heart of man ever impatient when the journey's-end draws near, though that end be but the beginning, as well, of that longer journey which men call Death. Lest he betray his impatience by keeping the tips of his cigarette too bright (one never knows when one is not watched) he smoked sparingly. But on the twenty-eighth blare of the whistle after the ringing of four bells, he drew out his cigarette case and, as the thirtieth raved out, synchronous with two double strokes and a single on brazen metal, he placed a cigarette between his lips. At the same time he saw Captain Monk, who had been on the bridge with the officer of the watch for several hours, come aft with weary shoulders sagging, and go below by the saloon companionway. And Lanyard smiled knowingly and assured himself that went well--ça va bien!--his star held still in the ascendant. There remained on the bridge only Mr. Collison and the man at the wheel. At the fourth blast after five bells Lanyard put a match to his cigarette. But he did not puff more than to get the tobacco well alight. He even held his breath, and felt his body shaken by the pulsations of his anxious heart precisely as the body of the Sybarite was shaken by the pulsations of her engines. With the next succeeding fog signal darkness absolute descended upon the vessel, shrouding it from stem to stern like a vast blanket of blackness. Mr. Mussey had not failed to keep his pact of treachery. Lanyard was out of his chair before the first call of excited remonstrance rang out on deck--to be echoed in clamour. His cigarette stopped behind, on the taffrail, carefully placed at precisely the height of his head, its little glowing tip the only spot of light on the decks. No matter whether or not it were noted; no precaution is too insignificant to be important when life and death are at issue. There was nothing of that afternoon's unsureness of foot in the way Lanyard moved forward. Passing the engine-room ventilators he heard the telegraph give a single stroke; Mr. Collison had only then recovered from, his astonishment sufficiently to signal to slow down. A squeal of the speaking-tube whistle followed instantly; and Lanyard set foot upon the bridge in time to hear Mr. Collison demanding to know what the sanguinary hades had happened down there. Whatever reply he got seemed to exasperate him into incoherence. He stuttered with rage, gasped, and addressed the man at the wheel. "I've got a flash-lamp in my cabin. That'll show us the compass card at least. Stand by while I run down and get it." The man mumbled an "Aye, aye, sir." Retreating footsteps were just audible. Neither speaker had been visible to Lanyard. By putting out a hand he could have touched the helmsman, but his body made not even the shadow of a silhouette against the sky. The fog was rendering the night the simple and unqualified negation of light. And in that time of Stygian gloom violence was done swiftly, surely, and without mercy; with pity, yes, and with regret. Lanyard was sorry for the man at the wheel. But what was to be done could not be done in any other way. The surprise aided him, for the fellow offered barely a show of opposition. His astounded faculties had no more than recognised the call for resistance when he was powerless in Lanyard's hands. Swung bodily away from the wheel, he went over the rail to the forward deck like a bag of sugar. Immediately Lanyard turned to the binnacle. Sensitive fingers located the key-hole in the pedestal, the one key saved from the ring which Mr. Swain had so unfortunately and unaccountably lost opened the door--the key, of course, that Mr. Swain had used under Lanyard's eyes when demonstrating the functions of the binnacle to Liane Delorme. Thrusting a hand into the opening, Lanyard groped for the adjustable magnets in their racks, and one by one removed and dropped them to the grating at the foot of the binnacle. He worked with hands amazingly nimble and sure, and was closing and relocking the door when Mr. Collison tumbled up the ladder with his flash-light. So when the second mate arrived upon the bridge, Lanyard was waiting for him; and in consequence of a second act of deplorable violence, Mr. Collison returned to the deck backwards and lay quite still while Lanyard returned to the wheel. Collecting the abstracted magnets he carried them to the rail, cast them into the sea and threw in the key to the little door to keep them company. Then, back at the binnacle, he unscrewed the brass caps of the cylindrical brass tube which housed the Flinders bar, removed that also, replaced the caps, and consigned the bar to the sea in its turn. By choice he would have made a good job of it and abolished the quadrantal correctors as well; but he judged he had done mischief enough to secure his ends, as it was. The compass ought now to be just as constant to the magnetic pole as a humming-bird to one especial rose. Guiding himself by a hand that lightly touched the rail, Lanyard regained his chair, carefully composing himself in the position in which he had been resting when the lights went out. His cigarette was still aglow; good Turkish has this virtue among many others, that left to itself it will burn on to the end of its roll. The next instant, however, he was on his feet again. A beam of light had swept across the saloon skylight, coming from below, the beam of a portable electric torch. It might have been the signal for the first piercing scream of Liane Delorme. A pistol shot with a vicious accent cut short the scream. After a brief pause several more shots rippled in the saloon. A man shouted angrily. Then the torch-light found and steadied upon the mouth of the companionway. Against that glare, a burly figure was instantaneously relieved, running up to the deck. As it gained the topmost step a final report sounded in the saloon, and the figure checked, revolved slowly on a heel, tottered, and plunged headforemost down the steps again. A moment later (incredible that the stipulated ten minutes should have passed so swiftly!) the lights came on, and with a still-fuming stump of cigarette between his fingers Lanyard went below. His bewildered gaze discovered first Liane Delorme, drawn up rigidly--she seemed for some reason to be standing tiptoe--against the starboard partition, near her stateroom door. Her fingers were clawing her cheeks, her eyes widely dilate with horror and fright, her mouth was agape, and from it issued, as by some mechanical impulse, shriek upon hollow shriek--cries wholly flat and meaningless, having no character of any sort, mere automatic reflexes of hysteria. On the opposite side of the saloon, not far from the door to his own quarters, Monk lay semi-prone with a purple face and protruding eyeballs, far gone toward death through strangulation. Phinuit, on his knees, was removing a silk handkerchief that had been twisted about that scrawney throat. At the foot of the companionway steps, Popinot, no phantom but the veritable Apache himself, was writhing and heaving convulsively; and even as Lanyard looked, the huge body of the creature lifted from the floor in one last, heroic spasm, then collapsed, and moved no more. Viewing this hideous tableau, appreciating what it meant--that Popinot, forearmed with advice from a trusted quarter, had stationed himself outside the door to Monk's stateroom, to waylay and garotte the man whom he expected to emerge therefrom laden with the plunder of Monk's safe--Lanyard appreciated further that he had done Mr. Mussey a great wrong. For he had all the time believed that the chief engineer was laying a trap for him on behalf of his ancient shipmate, that unhappy victim of groundless jealousy, Captain Whitaker Monk. XXVII ÇA VA BIEN! Fearful lest, left to herself, Liane Delorme would do an injury to his eardrums as well as to her own vocal chords, Lanyard stepped across the dead bulk of the Apache and planted himself squarely in front of the woman. Seizing her forearms with his two hands, he used force to drag them down to the level of her waist, and purposely made his grasp so strong that his fingers sank deep into the soft flesh. At the same time, staring fixedly into her vacant eyes, he smiled his most winning smile, but with the muscles of his mouth alone, and said quietly: "Shut up, Liane! Stop making a fool of yourself! Shut up--do you hear?" The incongruity of his brutal grasp with his smile, added to the incongruity of an ordinary conversational tone with his peremptory and savage phrases had the expected effect. Sanity began to inform the violet eyes, a shrill, empty scream was cut sharply in two, the woman stared for an instant with a look of confusion; then her lashes drooped, her body relaxed, she fell limply against the partition and was quiet save for fits of trembling that shook her body from head to foot; still, each successive seizure was sensibly less severe. Lanyard let go her wrists. "There!" he said--"that's over, Liane. The beast is done for--no more to fear from him. Now forget him--brace up, and realise the debt you owe good Monsieur Phinuit." With a grin, that gentleman looked up from his efforts to revive Captain Monk. "I'm a shy, retiring violet," he stated somewhat superfluously, "but if the world will kindly lend its ears, I'll inform it coyly that was _some_ shootin'. Have a look, will you, Lanyard, like a good fellow, and make sure our little friend over there isn't playing 'possum on us. Seems to me I've heard of his doing something like that before--maybe you remember. And, mademoiselle, if you'll be kind enough to fetch me that carafe of ice water, I'll see if we can't bring the skipper to his senses, such as they are." His tone was sufficiently urgent to rouse Liane out of the lassitude into which reaction from terror had let her slip. She passed a hand over still dazed eyes, looked uncertainly about, then with perceptible exertion of will power collected herself, stood away from the partition and picked up the carafe. Lanyard adopted the sensible suggestion of Phinuit, dropping on a knee to rest his hand above the heart of Popinot. To his complete satisfaction, if not at all to his surprise, no least flutter of life was to be detected in that barrel-like chest. A moment longer he lingered, looking the corpse over with inquisitive eyes. No sign that he could see suggested that Popinot had suffered hardship during his two weeks of close sequestration; he seemed to have fared well as to food and drink, and his clothing, if nothing to boast of in respect of cut or cloth, and though wrinkled and stretched with constant wear, was tolerably clean--unstained by bilge, grease, or coal smuts, as it must have been had the man been hiding in the hold or bunkers, those traditional refuges of your simon-pure stowaway. No: Monsieur Popinot had been well taken care of--and Lanyard could name an officer of prestige ponderable enough to secure his quarters, wherein presumably Popinot had lain perdu, against search when the yacht has been "turned inside out," according to its commander. So this was the source of Mr. Mussey's exact understanding of the business! As to the question of how the Apache had been smuggled aboard, and when, Lanyard never learned the truth. Circumstances were to prevent his interrogating Mr. Mussey, and he could only assume that--since Popinot could hardly have been in the motor car wrecked on the road from Paris--he must have left that pursuit to trusted confrères, and, anticipating their possible failure, have hurried on to Cherbourg by another route to make precautionary arrangements with Mr. Mussey. Ah, well! no fault could be found with the fellow for lack of determination and tenacity. On the point of rising, Lanyard reconsidered and, bending over the body, ran clever hands rapidly through the clothing, turning out every pocket and heaping the miscellany of rubbish thus brought to light upon the floor--with a single exception; Popinot had possessed a pistol, an excellent automatic. Why he hadn't used it to protect himself, Heaven only knew. Presumably he had been too thoroughly engrossed in the exercise of his favourite sport to think of the weapon up to the time when Phinuit had opened fire on him; and then, thrown into panic, he had been able to entertain one thought only, that of escape. Lanyard entertained for a moment a vivid imaginary picture of the scene in the saloon when Phinuit had surprised the Apache in the act of strangling Monk; a picture that Phinuit subsequently confirmed substantially in every detail.... One saw the garroter creeping through the blackness of the saloon from his hiding place, forward in the cabin of the chief engineer; stationing himself at the door to Monk's quarters, with his chosen weapon, that deadly handkerchief of his trade, ready for the throat of the Lone Wolf when he should emerge, in accordance with his agreement with Mr. Mussey, the spoils of the captain's safe in his hands. Then one saw Monk, alarmed by the sudden failure of the lights, hurrying out to return to the bridge, the pantherish spring upon the victim's back, the swift, dextrous noosing of the handkerchief about his windpipe, the merciless tightening of it--all abruptly illuminated by the white glare of Phinuit's electric torch. And then the truncated crimson of the first pistol flash, the frantic effort to escape, the hunting of that gross shape of flesh by the beam of light and the bullets as Popinot doubled and twisted round the saloon like a rat in a pit, the last mad plunge for the companionway, the flight up its steps that had by the narrowest margin failed to save him... Phinuit and Liane Delorme were too busy to heed; quietly Lanyard slipped the pistol into a pocket and got to his feet. Then Swain came charging down the steps to find out what all the row was about, and to report--which he did as soon as Monk was sufficiently recovered to understand--those outrageous and darkly mysterious assaults upon the helmsman and Mr. Collison. Both men, he stated, were unfit for further duty that night, though neither (Lanyard was happy to learn) had suffered any permanent injury. But what--in the name of insanity!--could have inspired such a meaningless atrocity? What could its perpetrator have hoped to gain? What--! Monk, stretched out upon a leather couch in his sitting-room, levelled eyebrows of suspicion at Lanyard, who countered with a guilelessness so perfect as to make it appear that he did not even comprehend the insinuation. "If I may offer a suggestion..." he said with becoming diffidence. "Well?" Monk demanded with a snap, despite his languors. "What's on your mind?" "It would seem to a benevolent neutral like myself... You understand I was in my deck-chair by the taffrail throughout all this affair. The men at the sounding machine nearby can tell you I did not move before the shots in the saloon----" "How the devil could they know that in the dark?" "I was smoking, monsieur; they must, if they looked, have seen the fire of my cigarette... As I was about to suggest: It would seem to me that there must be some obscure but not necessarily unfathomable connection between the three events; else how should they synchronise so perfectly? How did Popinot know the lights would go out a few minutes after five bells? He was prepared, he lost no time. How did the other miscreant, whoever he was, know it would be safe to commit that wickedness, whatever its purpose, upon the bridge at precisely that time? For plainly he, too, was prepared to act upon the instant--that is, if I understand Mr. Swain's report correctly. And how did it happen that the dynamo went out of commission just then? What _did_ happen in the engine-room? Does anybody know? I think, messieurs, if you find out the answer to that last question you will have gone some way toward solving your mystery." Captain Monk addressed Mr. Swain curtly: "It's the chief's watch in the engine-room?" "Yes, sir." "I'll have a talk with him presently, and go further into this affair. In the meantime, how does she stand?" "Under steerage way only"--Mr. Swain consulted the tell-tale compass affixed to the deck-beam overhead--"sou'west-by-south, sir." "Must've swung off during that cursed dark spell. When I came below, two or three minutes before, we were heading into The Race, west-nor'west, having left Cerberus Shoal whistling buoy to port about fifteen minutes earlier. Get her back on that course, if you please, Mr. Swain, and proceed at half-speed. Don't neglect your soundings. I'll join you as soon as I feel fit." "Very good, sir." Mr. Swain withdrew. Captain Monk let his head sink back on its pillows and shut his eyes. Liane Delorme solicitously stroked his forehead. The captain opened his eyes long enough to register adoration with the able assistance of the eyebrows. Liane smiled down upon him divinely. Lanyard thought that affection was a beautiful thing, but preserved a duly concerned countenance. "I could do with a whiskey and soda," Monk confessed feebly. "No, not you, please"--as Liane offered to withdraw the compassionate hand--"Phin isn't busy." Mr. Phinuit hastened to make himself useful. A muted echo of the engine-room telegraph was audible then, and the engines took up again their tireless chant. Lanyard cocked a sly eye at the tell-tale; it designated their course as west-by-north a quarter west. He was cheered to think that his labours at the binnacle were bearing fruit, and grateful that Monk was so busy being an invalid waited upon and pitied by a beautiful volunteer nurse that he was willing to trust the navigation to Mr. Swain and had no time to observe by the tell-tale whether or not the course he had prescribed was being followed. Liane's exquisite and tender arm supported the suffering head of Captain Monk as he absorbed the nourishment served by Phinuit. The eyebrows made an affectingly faint try at a gesture of gratitude. The eyes closed, once more Monk's head reposed upon the pillow. He sighed like a weary child. From the saloon came sounds of shuffling feet and mumbling voices as seamen carried away all that was mortal of Monsieur Popinot. Between roars of the fog signal, six bells vibrated on the air. Phinuit cocked his head intelligently to one side, ransacked his memory, and looked brightly to Lanyard. "Ar-har!" he murmured--"the fatal hour!" Lanyard gave him a gracious smile. In attenuated accents Captain Monk, without opening his eyes or stirring under the caresses of that lovely hand, enquired: "What say, Phin?" "I was just reminding Monsieur Lanyard the fatal hour has struck, old thing." The eyebrows knitted in painful effort to understand. When one has narrowly escaped death by strangulation one may be pardoned some slight mental haziness. Besides, it makes to retain sympathy, not to be too confoundedly clear-headed. "Fatal hour?" "The dear man promised to turn in his answer to our unselfish little proposition at six bells to-night and not later." "Really?" The voice was interested, and so were the eyebrows; but Monk was at pains not to move. "And has he?" "Not yet, old egg." Monk opened expectant eyes and fixed them upon Lanyard's face, the eyebrows acquiring a slant of amiable enquiry. "There is much to be said," Lanyard temporised. "That is, if you feel strong enough..." "Oh, quite," Monk assured him in tones barely audible. "Must it be a blow to the poor dear?" Phinuit enquired. "I hope not, very truly." (The tell-tale now betrayed a course northwest-by-north. Had the binnacle compass, then, gone out of its head altogether, on finding itself bereft of its accustomed court of counter-attractions?) "Well, here we all are, sitting forward on the edges of our chairs, holding onto the seats with both hands, ears pricked forward, eyes shining... The suspense," Phinuit avowed, "is something fierce!" "I am sorry." "What d'you mean, you're sorry? You're not going to back out?" "Having never walked into the arrangement you propose, it would be difficult to back out--would it not?" Monk forgot that he was suffering acutely, forgot even the beautiful and precious hand that was soothing his fevered brow, and rudely shaking it off, sat up suddenly. The eyebrows were distinctly minatory above eyes that loosed ugly gleams. "You refuse?" Lanyard slowly inclined his head: "I regret I must beg to be excused." "You damned fool!" "Pardon, monsieur?" A look of fury convulsed Liane's face. Phinuit, too, was glaring, no longer a humourist. Monk's mouth was working, and his eyebrows had got out of hand altogether. "I said you were a damned fool--" "But is not that a matter of personal viewpoint? At least, the question would seem to be open to debate." "If you think arguments will satisfy us--!" "But, my dear Captain Monk, I am really not at all concerned to satisfy you. However, if you wish to know my reasons for declining the honour you would thrust upon me, they are at your service." "I'll be glad to hear them," said Monk grimly. "One, I fancy, will do as well as a dozen. It is, then, my considered judgment that, were I in the least inclined to resume the evil ways of my past--as I am not--I would be, as you so vividly put it, a damned fool to associate myself with people of a low grade of intelligence, wanting even enough to hold fast that which they have thieved!" "By God!" Monk brought down a thumping fist. "What are you getting at?" "Your hopeless inefficiency, monsieur.... Forgive my bluntness." "Come through," Phinuit advised in a dangerous voice. "Just what do you mean?" "I mean that you, knowing I have but one object in submitting to association with you in any way, to wit, the recovery of the jewels of Madame de Montalais and their restoration to that lady, have not had sufficient wit to prevent my securing those jewels under your very noses." "You mean to say you've stolen them?" Lanyard nodded. "They are at present in my possession--if that confesses an act of theft." Monk laughed discordantly. "Then I say you're a liar, Monsieur the Lone Wolf, as well as a fool!" His fist smote the desk again. "The Montalais jewels are here." Lanyard shrugged. "When did you lift them?" Phinuit demanded with sarcasm. "Tell us that!" Lanyard smiled an exasperating smile, lounged low in his chair, and looked at the deck beams--taking occasion to note that the tell-tale had swung to true northwest. Ça va bien! "Why, you insane impostor!" Monk stormed--"I had that box in my own hands no later than this afternoon." Without moving, Lanyard directed his voice toward the ceiling. "Did you by any chance open it and see what was inside?" There was no answer, and though he was careful not to betray any interest by watching them, he was well aware that looks of alarm and suspicion were being exchanged by those three. So much for enjoying the prestige of a stupendously successful criminal past! A single thought was in the mind of Liane Delorme, Captain Monk, and Mr. Phinuit: With the Lone Wolf, nothing was impossible. Liane Delorme said abruptly, in a choking voice: "Open the safe, please, Captain Monk." "I'll do nothing of the sort." "Go on," Phinuit advised--"make sure. If it's true, we get them back, don't we? If it isn't, we show him up for a pitiful bluff." "It's a dodge," Monk declared, "to get the jewels where he can lay hands on them. The safe stays shut." "Open it, I beg you!" Liane implored in tremulous accents. "No--" "Why not?" Phinuit argued. "What can he do? I've got him covered." "And I," Lanyard interjected softly, "as you all know, am unarmed." "Please!" Liane insisted. There was a pause which ended in a sullen grunt from Monk. Lanyard smiled cheerfully and sat up in his chair, watching the captain while he unlocked the door in the pedestal and with shaking fingers manipulated the combination dial. Liane Delorme left her chair to stand nearby, in undissembled anxiety. Only Phinuit remained as he had been, lounging back and watching Lanyard narrowly, his automatic pistol dangling between his knees. Lanyard offered him a pleasant smile. Phinuit scowled forbiddingly in response. Monk swung open the safe-door, seized the metal despatch-box by the handle, and set it upon the desk with a bang. Then, extracting his pocket key-ring, he selected the proper key and made several attempts to insert it in the slot of the lock. But his confidence was so shaken, his morale so impaired by Lanyard's sublime effrontery added to his recent shocking experience, that the gaunt hands trembled beyond his control, and it was several seconds before he succeeded. Lanyard gave no sign, but his heart sank. He had exhausted his last resource to gain time, he was now at his wits' ends. Only his star could save him now.... Monk turned the keys, but all at once forgot his purpose, and with hands stayed upon the lid of the box paused and cocked his ears attentively to rumours of excitement and confusion on the deck. The instinct of the seafaring man uppermost, Monk stiffened, grew rigid from head to foot. One heard hurried feet, outcries, a sudden jangle of the engine-room telegraph... "Monsieur! monsieur!" Liane implored. "Open that box!" The words were on her lips when she was thrown off her feet by a frightful shock which stopped the Sybarite dead in full career, before the screw, reversed in obedience to the telegraph, could grip the water and lessen her momentum. The woman cannoned against Monk, shouldering him bodily aside. Instinctively snatching at the box, Monk succeeded only in dragging it to the edge of the desk before a second shock, accompanied by a grinding crash of steel and timbers, seemed to make the yacht leap like a live thing stricken mortally. She heeled heavily to starboard, the despatch-box went to the floor with a thump lost in the greater din, Liane Delorme was propelled headlong into a corner, Monk thrown to his knees, Phinuit lifted out of his chair and flung sprawling into the arms of Lanyard, who, pinned down by the other's weight in his own chair, felt this last slide backwards to starboard and bring up against a partition with a bang that drove the breath out of him in one enormous gust. He retained, however, sufficient presence of mind neatly to disarm Phinuit before that one guessed what he was about. After that second blow, the Sybarite remained at a standstill, but the continued beating of her engines caused her to quiver painfully from trucks to keelson, as if in agonies of death such as those which had marked the end of Popinot. Of a sudden the engines ceased, and there was no more movement of any sort, only an appalling repose with silence more dreadful still. Lanyard had no means to measure how long that dumb suspense lasted which was imposed by the stunned faculties of all on board. It seemed interminable. Eventually he saw Monk pick himself up and, making strange moaning noises, like a wounded animal, throw himself upon the door, jerk it open, and dash out. As if he had only needed that vision of action to animate him, Lanyard threw Phinuit off, so that he staggered across the slanting floor toward the door. When he brought himself up by catching hold of its frame, he was under the threat of his own pistol in Lanyard's hands. He lingered for a moment, showing Lanyard a distraught and vacant face, then apparently realising his danger faded away into the saloon. With a roughness dictated by the desperate extremity, Lanyard strode over to Liane Delorme, where she still crouched in her corner, staring witlessly, caught her by one arm, fairly jerked her to her feet, and thrust her stumbling out into the saloon. Closing the door behind her, he shot its bolts. He went to work swiftly then, in a fever of haste. In his ears the clamour of the shipwrecked men upon the decks was only a distant droning, hardly recognised for what it was by him who had not one thought other than to make all possible advantage of every precious instant; and so with the roar of steam from the escape-valves. Stripping off coat and waistcoat, he took from the pocket of the latter the wallet that held his papers, then ripped open his shirt and unbuckled the money belt round his waist. Its pockets were ample and fitted with trustworthy fastenings; and all but one, that held a few English sovereigns, were empty. The jewels of Madame de Montalais went into them as rapidly as his fingers could move. Thus engaged, he heard a pistol explode in the saloon, and saw the polished writing-bed of the captain's desk scored by a bullet. His gaze shifting to the door, he discovered a neat round hole in one of its rosewood panels. At the same time, to the tune of another report, a second hole appeared, and the bullet, winging above the desk, buried itself in the after-bulkhead, between the dead-lights. A stream of bullets followed, one after another boring the stout panels as if their consistency had been that of cheese. Lanyard stepped out of their path and hugged the partition while he finished stuffing the jewels into the belt and, placing the thin wallet beneath it, strapped it tightly round him once more.... That would be Phinuit out there, no doubt, disdaining to waste time breaking in the door, or perhaps fearing his reception once it was down. An innocent and harmless amusement, if he enjoyed it, that it seemed a pity to interrupt. At the same time it grew annoying. The door was taking on the look of a sieve, and the neighbourhood of the deadlights, Lanyard's sole avenue of escape, was being well peppered. Something would have to be done about it... Lanyard completed his preparations by kicking off his shoes and taking up another notch in the belt that supported his trousers. If the swim before him proved a long one, he could get rid of his garments in the water readily enough; if on the other hand the shore proved to be close at hand, it would be more convenable to land at least half clothed. Then--the fusillade continuing without intermission save when the man outside stopped long enough to extract an empty clip and replace it with one loaded--Lanyard edged along the partition to the door, calculated the stand of the lunatic in the saloon from the angle at which the bullets were coming through, and emptied the pistol he had taken from Phinuit at the panels as fast as he could pull trigger. There was no more firing... He tossed aside the empty weapon, made sure of Popinot's on his hip, approached one of the deadlights, placed a chair, climbed upon it, and with infinite pains managed to wriggle and squirm head and shoulders through the opening. It was very fortunate for him indeed that the Sybarite happened to have been built for pleasure yachting, with deadlights uncommonly large for the sake of air and light, else he would have been obliged to run the risk of opening the door to the saloon and fighting his way out and up to the deck. As it was, the business was difficult enough. He had to work one of his arms out after his shoulders and then, twisting round, strain and claw at the smooth overhang of the stern until able to catch the outer lip of the scuppers above. After that he had to lift and drag the rest of him out through the deadlight and, hanging by fingertips, work his way round, inch by inch, until it seemed possible to drop into the sea and escape hitting the screw. In point of fact, he barely missed splitting himself in two on the thing, and on coming to the surface clung to it while taking such observations as one might in that befogged blackness. Impossible to guess which way to strike out: the fog hung low upon the water, greying its smooth, gently heaving black surface, he could see nothing on either beam. At length, however, he heard through the hissing uproar of escaping steam a mournful bell somewhere off to port, which he at first took for a buoy, then perceived to be tolling with a regularity inconsistent with the eccentric action of waves. Timed by pulsebeats, it struck once every fifteen seconds or thereabouts: undoubtedly the fog signal of some minor light-house. In confirmation of this conclusion, Lanyard heard, from the deck above, the resonant accents of Captain Monk, clearly articulate in that riot of voices, apparently storming at hapless Mr. Swain. "Don't you hear that bell, you ass? Doesn't that tell you what you've done? You've piled us on the rocks off the eastern end of Plum Island. And God in Heaven only knows how you managed to get so far off the course!" Breathing to the night air thanks which would have driven Captain Monk mad could he have heard them, Lanyard let go the bronze blade and struck out for the melancholy bell. Ten minutes later the fingers of one hand--he was swimming on his side--at the bottom of its stroke touched pebbles. He lowered his feet and waded through extensive shallows to a wide and sandy beach. XXVIII FINALE The window of the living-room in his suite at the Walpole, set high in cliff-like walls, commanded a southward vista of Fifth Avenue whose enchantment, clothed in ever changing guises of light and shade, was so potent that Lanyard, on the first day of his tenancy, thought it could never tire. Yet by noon of the third he was viewing it with the eyes of soul-destroying ennui, though the disfavour it had so quickly won in his sight was, he knew, due less to cloying familiarity than to the uncertainty and discontent that were eating out his heart. Three days before, immediately on arriving in New York and installing himself in this hotel, to whose management he was well known from other days, he had cabled Eve de Montalais and Wertheimer. The response to the latter--a cheerful request that credit be arranged for him by cable--was as prompt and satisfactory as he had expected it to be. But from Madame de Montalais he heard nothing. "Mission successful," he had wired--"returning France by La Savoie in five days having arranged safe transportation your property--please advise if you can meet me in Paris to receive same or your commands otherwise." And to this, silence only!--silence to him to whom words of her dictation, however few and terse and filtered through no matter how many indifferent mediums of intelligence, would have been precious beyond expression. So it was that, as hour followed hour and the tale of them lengthened into days, he fell into a temper of morbid brooding that was little like the man, and instead of faring abroad and seeking what amusement he might find in the most carefree city of the post-War world, shut himself up in his rooms and moped, indifferent to all things but the knocks at his door, the stridulation of the telephone bell that might announce the arrival of the desired message. And so it was that, when the telephone did ring--at last!--towards noon of that third day, he fairly stumbled over himself in his haste to reach the instrument. But the animation with which he answered the professional voice at the other end of the wire faded very quickly, the look of weariness returned, his accents voiced an indifference fairly desolating. "Yes?...Oh, yes...Very well...Yes, at once." He returned to his view from the window, and was hating it with all his heart when a stout knuckling on his door announced his callers. They filed into the room with a cheerfulness of mien in striking contrast to the weary courtesy with which Lanyard received them: Liane Delorme first, then Monk, then Phinuit, rather bleached of colour and wearing one arm in a sling; all very smart in clothes conspicuously new and as costly as the Avenue afforded, striking figures of contentment in prosperity. "It is a pleasure indeed," Lanyard gravely acknowledged their several salutations--"not, I must confess, altogether unexpected, but a pleasure none the less." "So you didn't think we'd be long spotting you in the good little old town?" Phinuit enquired. "Had a notion you thought the best way to lose us would be to put up at this well-known home of the highest prices." "No," Lanyard replied. "I never thought to be rid of you without one more meeting--" "Then there's good in the old bean yet," Phinuit interrupted in wasted irony. "One cherishes that hope, monsieur....But the trail I left for you to follow! I would be an ass indeed if I thought you would fail to find it. When one borrows a rowboat at Plum Island Light without asking permission--government property, too--and leaves it moored to a dock on the Greenport waterfront; when one arrives in Greenport clothed in shirt and trousers only, and has to bribe its pardonably suspicious inhabitants with handfuls of British gold--which they are the more loath to accept in view of its present depreciation--in order to secure a slopchest coat and shoes and transportation by railway to New York; when a taxicab chauffeur refuses a sovereign for his fare from the Pennsylvania Station to this hotel, and one is constrained to borrow from the management--why, I should say the trail was fairly broad and well blazed, mes amis." "Be that as it may," said Phinuit--"here in a manner of speaking we all are, at least, the happy family reunited and ready to talk business." "And no hard feelings, Monsieur Phinuit?" "There will be none"--Monk's eyebrows were at once sardonic and self-satisfied; which speaks volumes for their versatility--"at least, none on our side--when we are finished." "That makes me more happy still. And you, Liane?" The woman gave a negligent movement of pretty shoulders. "One begins to see how very right you are, Michael," she said wearily--"and always were, for that matter. If one wishes to do wrong, one should do it all alone... and escape being bored to death by the... Oh! the unpardonable stupidity of associates. "But no, messieurs!" she insisted with temper as Monk and Phinuit simultaneously flew signals of resentment. "I mean what I say. I wish I had never seen any of you, I am sick of you all! What did I tell you when you insisted on coming here to see Monsieur Lanyard? That you would gain nothing and perhaps lose much. But you would not listen to me, you found it impossible to believe there could be in all the world a man who keeps his word, not only to others but to himself. You are so lost in admiration of your own cleverness in backing that poor little ship off the rocks and letting her fill and sink, so that there could be no evidence of wrong-doing against you, that you must try to prove your wits once more where they have always failed"--she illustrated with a dramatic gesture--"against his! You say to yourselves: Since we are wrong, he must be wrong; and since that is now clearly proved, that he is as wrong in every way as we, then it follows naturally that he will heed our threats and surrender to us those jewels...Those jewels!" she declared bitterly, "which we would have been fortunate never to have heard of!" She threw herself back in her chair and showed them a scornful shoulder, compressing indignant lips to a straight, unlovely line, and beating out the devil's tattoo with her slipper. Lanyard watched her with a puzzled smile. How much of this was acting? How much, if anything, an expression of true feeling? Was she actually persuaded it was waste of time to contend against him? Or was she shrewdly playing upon his not unfriendly disposition toward her in the hope that it would spare her in the hour of the grand débâcle? He could be sure of one thing only: since she was a woman, he would never know... Monk had been making ominous motions with the eyebrows, but Phinuit made haste to be beforehand with him. "You said one thing, mademoiselle, one thing anyway that meant something: that Monsieur Lanyard would give up those jewels to us. That's all arranged." Lanyard turned to him with genuine amusement. "Indeed, monsieur?" "Indeed and everything! We don't want to pull any rough stuff on you, Lanyard, and we won't unless you force us to--" "Rough stuff, monsieur? You mean, physical force?" "Not exactly. But I think you'll recall my telling you I stand in well with the Police Department in the old home town. Maybe you thought that was swank. Likely you did. But it wasn't. I've got a couple of friends of mine from Headquarters waiting downstairs this very minute, ready and willing to cop out the honour of putting the Lone Wolf under arrest for stealing the Montalais jewels." "But is it possible," Lanyard protested, "you still do not understand me? Is it possible you still believe I am a thief at heart and interested in those jewels only to turn them to my own profit?" He stared unbelievingly at the frosty eyes of Monk beneath their fatuously stubborn brows, at the hard, unyielding eyes of Phinuit. "You said it," this last replied with brevity. "It was a good bluff while it lasted, Monsieur Lanyard," Monk added; "but it couldn't last forever. You can't get away with it. Why not give in gracefully, admit you're licked for once, be a good fellow?" "My God!" Lanyard pronounced in comic despair--"it passes understanding! It is true, then--and true especially of such as you are to-day, as I was in my yesterday--that 'Whom Fortune wishes to destroy she first makes mad'! For, I give you my word of honour, you seem to me quite mad, messieurs, too mad to be allowed at large. And in proof of my sincerity, I propose that you shall not longer remain at large." "What's that?" Monk demanded, startled. "Why, you have not hesitated to threaten me with the police. So now I, in my turn, have the honour to inform you that, anticipating this call, I have had relays of detectives waiting in this hotel day and night, with instructions to guard the doors as soon as you were shown up to my rooms. Be advised, Mr. Phinuit, and forget your pistol. Even to show it in this city would make matters infinitely worse for you than they are." "He's lying," Monk insisted, putting a restraining hand on Phinuit's arm as that one started from his chair in rage and panic. "He wouldn't dare." "Would I not? Then, since you believe nothing till it is proved to you, messieurs, permit me..." Lanyard crossed rapidly to the hall door and flung it open--and fell back a pace with a cry of amazement. At the threshold stood, not the detective whom he had expected to see, but a woman with a cable message form in one hand, the other lifted to knock. "Madame!" Lanyard gasped--"Madame de Montalais!" The cable-form fluttered to the floor as she entered with a gladness in her face that was carried out by the impulsive gesture with which she gave him her hands. "My dear friend!" she cried happily--"I am so glad! And to think we have been guests of the same hotel for three livelong days and never knew it. I arrived by La Touraine Saturday, but your message, telegraphed back from Combe-Redonde, reached me not five minutes ago. I telephoned the desk, they told me the number of your room and--here I am!" "But I cannot believe my senses!" With unanimous consent Jules, Phinuit and Monk uprose and made for the door, only to find it blocked by the substantial form of a plain citizen with his hands in his pockets and understanding in his eyes. "Steady, gents!" he counselled coolly. "Orders are to let everybody in and nobody out without Mr. Lanyard says so." For a moment they hung in doubt and consternation, consulting one another with dismayed stares. Then Phinuit made as if to shoulder the man aside. But for the sake of the moral effect the latter casually exhibited a pistol; and the moral effect of that was stupendous. Mr. Phinuit disconsolately slouched back into the room. Grasping the situation, Eve de Montalais turned to the quartet eyes that glimmered in a face otherwise quite composed. "But how surprising!" she declared. "Madame la Comtesse de Lorgnes--Monsieur Monk--Mr. Phinuit--how delightful to see you all again!" The civility met with inadequate appreciation. "Nothing could be more opportune," Lanyard declared; "for it is to this lady, Madame de Montalais, and to these gentlemen that you owe the recovery of your jewels." "Truly?" "As I am telling you. But for them, their charming hospitality in inviting me to cruise aboard their yacht, but for the assistance they lent me, though sometimes unconsciously, I admit--I should never have been able to say to you to-day: Your jewels are in a safe place, madame, immediately at your disposal." "But how can I thank them?" "Well," said Lanyard, "if you ask me, I think we have detained them long enough, I believe they would be most grateful to be permitted to leave and keep their numerous and pressing appointments elsewhere." "I am entirely of your mind, monsieur." Lanyard nodded to the man in the doorway--"All right, Mr. Murray"--and he stood indifferently aside. In silence the three men moved to the door and out, Phinuit with a brazen swagger, Jules without emotion visible, Monk with eyebrows adroop and flapping. But Lanyard interposed when Liane Delorme would have followed. "A moment, Liane, if you will be so good." She paused, regarding him with a sombre and inscrutable face while he produced from his coat-pocket a fat envelope without endorsement. "This is yours." The woman murmured blankly: "Mine?" He said in a guarded voice: "Papers I found in the safe in your library, that night. I had to take them for use in event of need. Now...they are useless. But you are unwise to keep such papers, Liane. Good-bye." The envelope was unsealed. Lifting the flap, the woman half withdrew the enclosure, recognised it at a glance, and crushed it in a convulsive grasp, while the blood, ebbing swiftly from her face, threw her rouge into livid relief. For an instant she seemed about to speak, then bowed her head in dumb acknowledgment, and left the room. Lanyard nodded to Mr. Murray, who amiably closed the door, keeping himself on the outside of it. Eve de Montalais was eyeing him with an indulgent and amused glance. As he turned to her, she shook her head slowly in mockery of reproof. "That woman loves you, monsieur," she stated quietly. He succeeded admirably in looking as if the thought was strange to him. "One is sure madame must be mistaken." "Ah, but I am not!" said Eve de Montalais. "Who should know better the signs that tell of woman's love for you, my dear?" THE END 
9779	----	Distributed Proofreading. THE BLACK BAG By LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY THOMAS FOGARTY 1908 TO MY MOTHER CONTENTS CHAPTER I. DIVERSIONS OF A RUINED GENTLEMAN II. "AND SOME THERE BE WHO HAVE ADVENTURES THRUST UPON THEM" III. CALENDAR'S DAUGHTER IV. 9 FROGNALL STREET, W. C. V. THE MYSTERY OF A FOUR-WHEELER VI. "BELOW BRIDGE" VII. DIVERSIONS OF A RUINED GENTLEMAN--RESUMED VIII. MADAME L'INTRIGANTE IX. AGAIN "BELOW BRIDGE"; AND BEYOND X. DESPERATE MEASURES XI. OFF THE NORE XII. PICARESQUE PASSAGES XIII. A PRIMER OF PROGRESSIVE CRIME XIV. STRATAGEMS AND SPOILS XV. REFUGEES XVI. TRAVELS WITH A CHAPERON XVII. ROGUES AND VAGABONDS XVIII. ADVENTURERS' LUCK XIX. i--THE UXBRIDGE ROAD ii--THE CROWN AND MITRE iii--THE JOURNEY'S END THE BLACK BAG I DIVERSIONS OF A RUINED GENTLEMAN Upon a certain dreary April afternoon in the year of grace, 1906, the apprehensions of Philip Kirkwood, Esquire, _Artist-peintre_, were enlivened by the discovery that he was occupying that singularly distressing social position, which may be summed up succinctly in a phrase through long usage grown proverbial: "Alone in London." These three words have come to connote in our understanding so much of human misery, that to Mr. Kirkwood they seemed to epitomize absolutely, if not happily, the various circumstances attendant upon the predicament wherein he found himself. Inevitably an extremist, because of his youth, (he had just turned twenty-five), he took no count of mitigating matters, and would hotly have resented the suggestion that his case was anything but altogether deplorable and forlorn. That he was not actually at the end of his resources went for nothing; he held the distinction a quibble, mockingly immaterial,--like the store of guineas in his pocket, too insignificant for mention when contrasted with his needs. And his base of supplies, the American city of his nativity, whence--and not without a glow of pride in his secret heart--he was wont to register at foreign hostelries, had been arbitrarily cut off from him by one of those accidents sardonically classified by insurance and express corporations as Acts of God. Now to one who has lived all his days serenely in accord with the dictates of his own sweet will, taking no thought for the morrow, such a situation naturally seems both appalling and intolerable, at the first blush. It must be confessed that, to begin with, Kirkwood drew a long and disconsolate face over his fix. And in that black hour, primitive of its kind in his brief span, he became conscious of a sinister apparition taking shape at his elbow--a shade of darkness which, clouting him on the back with a skeleton hand, croaked hollow salutations in his ear. "Come, Mr. Kirkwood, come!" its mirthless accents rallied him. "Have you no welcome for me?--you, who have been permitted to live the quarter of a century without making my acquaintance? Surely, now, it's high time we were learning something of one another, you and I!" "But I don't understand," returned Kirkwood blankly. "I don't know you--" "True! But you shall: I am the Shade of Care--" "Dull Care!" murmured Kirkwood, bewildered and dismayed; for the visitation had come upon him with little presage and no invitation whatever. "Dull Care," the Shade assured him. "Dull Care am I--and Care that's anything but dull, into the bargain: Care that's like a keen pain in your body, Care that lives a horror in your mind, Care that darkens your days and flavors with bitter poison all your nights, Care that--" But Kirkwood would not listen further. Courageously submissive to his destiny, knowing in his heart that the Shade had come to stay, he yet found spirit to shake himself with a dogged air, to lift his chin, set the strong muscles of his jaw, and smile that homely wholesome smile which was his peculiarly. "Very well," he accepted the irremediable with grim humor; "what must be, must. I don't pretend to be glad to see you, but--you're free to stay as long as you find the climate agreeable. I warn you I shan't whine. Lots of men, hundreds and hundreds of 'em, have slept tight o' nights with you for bedfellow; if they could grin and bear you, I believe I can." Now Care mocked him with a sardonic laugh, and sought to tighten upon his shoulders its bony grasp; but Kirkwood resolutely shrugged it off and went in search of man's most faithful dumb friend, to wit, his pipe; the which, when found and filled, he lighted with a spill twisted from the envelope of a cable message which had been vicariously responsible for his introduction to the Shade of Care. "It's about time," he announced, watching the paper blacken and burn in the grate fire, "that I was doing something to prove my title to a living." And this was all his valedictory to a vanished competence. "Anyway," he added hastily, as if fearful lest Care, overhearing, might have read into his tone a trace of vain repining, "anyway, I'm a sight better off than those poor devils over there! I really have a great deal to be thankful for, now that my attention's drawn to it." For the ensuing few minutes he thought it all over, soberly but with a stout heart; standing at a window of his bedroom in the Hotel Pless, hands deep in trouser pockets, pipe fuming voluminously, his gaze wandering out over a blurred infinitude of wet shining roofs and sooty chimney-pots: all of London that a lowering drizzle would let him see, and withal by no means a cheering prospect, nor yet one calculated to offset the disheartening influence of the indomitable Shade of Care. But the truth is that Kirkwood's brain comprehended little that his eyes perceived; his thoughts were with his heart, and that was half a world away and sick with pity for another and a fairer city, stricken in the flower of her loveliness, writhing in Promethean agony upon her storied hills. There came a rapping at the door. Kirkwood removed the pipe from between his teeth long enough to say "Come in!" pleasantly. The knob was turned, the door opened. Kirkwood, swinging on one heel, beheld hesitant upon the threshold a diminutive figure in the livery of the Pless pages. "Mister Kirkwood?" Kirkwood nodded. "Gentleman to see you, sir." Kirkwood nodded again, smiling. "Show him up, please," he said. But before the words were fairly out of his mouth a footfall sounded in the corridor, a hand was placed upon the shoulder of the page, gently but with decision swinging him out of the way, and a man stepped into the room. "Mr. Brentwick!" Kirkwood almost shouted, jumping forward to seize his visitor's hand. "My dear boy!" replied the latter. "I'm delighted to see you. 'Got your note not an hour ago, and came at once--you see!" "It was mighty good of you. Sit down, please. Here are cigars.... Why, a moment ago I was the most miserable and lonely mortal on the footstool!" "I can fancy." The elder man looked up, smiling at Kirkwood from the depths of his arm-chair, as the latter stood above him, resting an elbow on the mantel. "The management knows me," he offered explanation of his unceremonious appearance; "so I took the liberty of following on the heels of the bellhop, dear boy. And how are you? Why are you in London, enjoying our abominable spring weather? And why the anxious undertone I detected in your note?" He continued to stare curiously into Kirkwood's face. At a glance, this Mr. Brentwick was a man of tallish figure and rather slender; with a countenance thin and flushed a sensitive pink, out of which his eyes shone, keen, alert, humorous, and a trace wistful behind his glasses. His years were indeterminate; with the aspect of fifty, the spirit and the verve of thirty assorted oddly. But his hands were old, delicate, fine and fragile; and the lips beneath the drooping white mustache at times trembled, almost imperceptibly, with the generous sentiments that come with mellow age. He held his back straight and his head with an air--an air that was not a swagger but the sign-token of seasoned experience in the world. The most carping could have found no flaw in the quiet taste of his attire. To sum up, Kirkwood's very good friend--and his only one then in London--Mr. Brentwick looked and was an English gentleman. "Why?" he persisted, as the younger man hesitated. "I am here to find out. To-night I leave for the Continent. In the meantime ..." "And at midnight I sail for the States," added Kirkwood. "That is mainly why I wished to see you--to say good-by, for the time." "You're going home--" A shadow clouded Brentwick's clear eyes. "To fight it out, shoulder to shoulder with my brethren in adversity." The cloud lifted. "That is the spirit!" declared the elder man. "For the moment I did you the injustice to believe that you were running away. But now I understand. Forgive me.... Pardon, too, the stupidity which I must lay at the door of my advancing years; to me the thought of you as a Parisian fixture has become such a commonplace, Philip, that the news of the disaster hardly stirred me. Now I remember that you are a Californian!" "I was born in San Francisco," affirmed Kirkwood a bit sadly. "My father and mother were buried there ..." "And your fortune--?" "I inherited my father's interest in the firm of Kirkwood & Vanderlip; when I came over to study painting, I left everything in Vanderlip's hands. The business afforded me a handsome living." "You have heard from Mr. Vanderlip?" "Fifteen minutes ago." Kirkwood took a cable-form, still damp, from his pocket, and handed it to his guest. Unfolding it, the latter read: "_Kirkwood, Pless, London. Stay where you are no good coming back everything gone no insurance letter follows vanderlip_." "When I got the news in Paris," Kirkwood volunteered, "I tried the banks; they refused to honor my drafts. I had a little money in hand,--enough to see me home,--so closed the studio and came across. I'm booked on the _Minneapolis_, sailing from Tilbury at daybreak; the boat-train leaves at eleven-thirty. I had hoped you might be able to dine with me and see me off." In silence Brentwick returned the cable message. Then, with a thoughtful look, "You are sure this is wise?" he queried. "It's the only thing I can see." "But your partner says--" "Naturally he thinks that by this time I should have learned to paint well enough to support myself for a few months, until he can get things running again. Perhaps I might." Brentwick supported the presumption with a decided gesture. "But have I a right to leave Vanderlip to fight it out alone? For Vanderlip has a wife and kiddies to support; I--" "Your genius!" "My ability, such as it is--and that only. It can wait.... No; this means simply that I must come down from the clouds, plant my feet on solid earth, and get to work." "The sentiment is sound," admitted Brentwick, "the practice of it, folly. Have you stopped to think what part a rising young portrait-painter can contribute toward the rebuilding of a devastated city?" "The painting can wait," reiterated Kirkwood. "I can work like other men." "You can do yourself and your genius grave injustice. And I fear me you will, dear boy. It's in keeping with your heritage of American obstinacy. Now if it were a question of money--" "Mr. Brentwick!" Kirkwood protested vehemently. "I've ample for my present needs," he added. "Of course," conceded Brentwick with a sigh. "I didn't really hope you would avail yourself of our friendship. Now there's my home in Aspen Villas.... You have seen it?" "In your absence this afternoon your estimable butler, with commendable discretion, kept me without the doors," laughed the young man. "It's a comfortable home. You would not consent to share it with me until--?" "You are more than good; but honestly, I must sail to-night. I wanted only this chance to see you before I left. You'll dine with me, won't you?" "If you would stay in London, Philip, we would dine together not once but many times; as it is, I myself am booked for Munich, to be gone a week, on business. I have many affairs needing attention between now and the nine-ten train from Victoria. If you will be my guest at Aspen Villas--" "Please!" begged Kirkwood, with a little laugh of pleasure because of the other's insistence. "I only wish I could. Another day--" "Oh, you will make your million in a year, and return scandalously independent. It's in your American blood." Frail white fingers tapped an arm of the chair as their owner stared gravely into the fire. "I confess I envy you," he observed. "The opportunity to make a million in a year?" chuckled Kirkwood. "No. I envy you your Romance." "The Romance of a Poor Young Man went out of fashion years ago.... No, my dear friend; my Romance died a natural death half an hour since." "There spoke Youth--blind, enviable Youth!... On the contrary, you are but turning the leaves of the first chapter of your Romance, Philip." "Romance is dead," contended the young man stubbornly. "Long live the King!" Brentwick laughed quietly, still attentive to the fire. "Myself when young," he said softly, "did seek Romance, but never knew it till its day was done. I'm quite sure that is a poor paraphrase of something I have read. In age, one's sight is sharpened--to see Romance in another's life, at least. I say I envy you. You have Youth, unconquerable Youth, and the world before you.... I must go." He rose stiffly, as though suddenly made conscious of his age. The old eyes peered more than a trifle wistfully, now, into Kirkwood's. "You will not fail to call on me by cable, dear boy, if you need--anything? I ask it as a favor.... I'm glad you wished to see me before going out of my life. One learns to value the friendship of Youth, Philip. Good-by, and good luck attend you." Alone once more, Kirkwood returned to his window. The disappointment he felt at being robbed of his anticipated pleasure in Brentwick's company at dinner, colored his mood unpleasantly. His musings merged into vacuity, into a dull gray mist of hopelessness comparable only to the dismal skies then lowering over London-town. Brentwick was good, but Brentwick was mistaken. There was really nothing for Kirkwood to do but to go ahead. But one steamer-trunk remained to be packed; the boat-train would leave before midnight, the steamer with the morning tide; by the morrow's noon he would be upon the high seas, within ten days in New York and among friends; and then ... The problem of that afterwards perplexed Kirkwood more than he cared to own. Brentwick had opened his eyes to the fact that he would be practically useless in San Francisco; he could not harbor the thought of going back, only to become a charge upon Vanderlip. No; he was resolved that thenceforward he must rely upon himself, carve out his own destiny. But--would the art that he had cultivated with such assiduity, yield him a livelihood if sincerely practised with that end in view? Would the mental and physical equipment of a painter, heretofore dilettante, enable him to become self-supporting? Knotting his brows in concentration of effort to divine the future, he doubted himself, darkly questioning alike his abilities and his temper under trial; neither ere now had ever been put to the test. His eyes became somberly wistful, his heart sore with regret of Yesterday--his Yesterday of care-free youth and courage, gilded with the ineffable, evanescent glamour of Romance--of such Romance, thrice refined of dross, as only he knows who has wooed his Art with passion passing the love of woman. Far away, above the acres of huddled roofs and chimney-pots, the storm-mists thinned, lifting transiently; through them, gray, fairy-like, the towers of Westminster and the Houses of Parliament bulked monstrous and unreal, fading when again the fugitive dun vapors closed down upon the city. Nearer at hand the Shade of Care nudged Kirkwood's elbow, whispering subtly. Romance was indeed dead; the world was cold and cruel. The gloom deepened. In the cant of modern metaphysics, the moment was psychological. There came a rapping at the door. Kirkwood removed the pipe from between his teeth long enough to say "Come in!" pleasantly. The knob was turned, the door opened. Kirkwood, turning on one heel, beheld hesitant upon the threshold a diminutive figure in the livery of the Pless pages. "Mr. Kirkwood?" Kirkwood nodded. "Gentleman to see you, sir." Kirkwood nodded again, smiling if somewhat perplexed. Encouraged, the child advanced, proffering a silver card-tray at the end of an unnaturally rigid forearm. Kirkwood took the card dubiously between thumb and forefinger and inspected it without prejudice. "'George B. Calendar,'" he read. "'George B. Calendar!' But I know no such person. Sure there's no mistake, young man?" The close-cropped, bullet-shaped, British head was agitated in vigorous negation, and "Card for Mister Kirkwood!" was mumbled in dispassionate accents appropriate to a recitation by rote. "Very well. But before you show him up, ask this Mr. Calendar if he is quite sure he wants to see Philip Kirkwood." "Yessir." The child marched out, punctiliously closing the door. Kirkwood tamped down the tobacco in his pipe and puffed energetically, dismissing the interruption to his reverie as a matter of no consequence--an obvious mistake to be rectified by two words with this Mr. Calendar whom he did not know. At the knock he had almost hoped it might be Brentwick, returning with a changed mind about the bid to dinner. He regretted Brentwick sincerely. Theirs was a curious sort of friendship--extraordinarily close in view of the meagerness of either's information about the other, to say nothing of the disparity between their ages. Concerning the elder man Kirkwood knew little more than that they had met on shipboard, "coming over"; that Brentwick had spent some years in America; that he was an Englishman by birth, a cosmopolitan by habit, by profession a gentleman (employing that term in its most uncompromisingly British significance), and by inclination a collector of "articles of virtue and bigotry," in pursuit of which he made frequent excursions to the Continent from his residence in a quaint quiet street of Old Brompton. It had been during his not infrequent, but ordinarily abbreviated, sojourns in Paris that their steamer acquaintance had ripened into an affection almost filial on the one hand, almost paternal on the other.... There came a rapping at the door. Kirkwood removed the pipe from between his teeth long enough to say "Come in!" pleasantly. The knob was turned, the door opened. Kirkwood, swinging on one heel, beheld hesitant upon the threshold a rather rotund figure of medium height, clad in an expressionless gray lounge suit, with a brown "bowler" hat held tentatively in one hand, an umbrella weeping in the other. A voice, which was unctuous and insinuative, emanated from the figure. "Mr. Kirkwood?" Kirkwood nodded, with some effort recalling the name, so detached had been his thoughts since the disappearance of the page. "Yes, Mr. Calendar--?" "Are you--ah--busy, Mr. Kirkwood?" "Are you, Mr. Calendar?" Kirkwood's smile robbed the retort of any flavor of incivility. Encouraged, the man entered, premising that he would detain his host but a moment, and readily surrendering hat and umbrella. Kirkwood, putting the latter aside, invited his caller to the easy chair which Brentwick had occupied by the fireplace. "It takes the edge off the dampness," Kirkwood explained in deference to the other's look of pleased surprise at the cheerful bed of coals. "I'm afraid I could never get acclimated to life in a cold, damp room--or a damp cold room--such as you Britishers prefer." "It is grateful," Mr. Calendar agreed, spreading plump and well cared-for hands to the warmth. "But you are mistaken; I am as much an American as yourself." "Yes?" Kirkwood looked the man over with more interest, less matter-of-course courtesy. He proved not unprepossessing, this unclassifiable Mr. Calendar; he was dressed with some care, his complexion was good, and the fullness of his girth, emphasized as it was by a notable lack of inches, bespoke a nature genial, easy-going and sybaritic. His dark eyes, heavy-lidded, were active--curiously, at times, with a subdued glitter--in a face large, round, pink, of which the other most remarkable features were a mustache, close-trimmed and showing streaks of gray, a chubby nose, and duplicate chins. Mr. Calendar was furthermore possessed of a polished bald spot, girdled with a tonsure of silvered hair--circumstances which lent some factitious distinction to a personality otherwise commonplace. His manner might be best described as uneasy with assurance; as though he frequently found it necessary to make up for his unimpressive stature by assuming an unnatural habit of authority. And there you have him; beyond these points, Kirkwood was conscious of no impressions; the man was apparently neutral-tinted of mind as well as of body. "So you knew I was an American, Mr. Calendar?" suggested Kirkwood. "'Saw your name on the register; we both hail from the same neck of the woods, you know." "I didn't know it, and--" "Yes; I'm from Frisco, too." "And I'm sorry." Mr. Calendar passed five fat fingers nervously over his mustache, glanced alertly up at Kirkwood, as if momentarily inclined to question his tone, then again stared glumly into the fire; for Kirkwood had maintained an attitude purposefully colorless. Not to put too fine a point upon it, he believed that his caller was lying; the man's appearance, his mannerisms, his voice and enunciation, while they might have been American, seemed all un-Californian. To one born and bred in that state, as Kirkwood had been, her sons are unmistakably hall-marked. Now no man lies without motive. This one chose to reaffirm, with a show of deep feeling: "Yes; I'm from Frisco, too. We're companions in misfortune." "I hope not altogether," said Kirkwood politely. Mr. Calendar drew his own inferences from the response and mustered up a show of cheerfulness. "Then you're not completely wiped out?" "To the contrary, I was hoping you were less unhappy." "Oh! Then you are--?" Kirkwood lifted the cable message from the mantel. "I have just heard from my partner at home," he said with a faint smile; and quoted: "'Everything gone; no insurance.'" Mr. Calendar pursed his plump lips, whistling inaudibly. "Too bad, too bad!" he murmured sympathetically. "We're all hard hit, more or less." He lapsed into dejected apathy, from which Kirkwood, growing at length impatient, found it necessary to rouse him. "You wished to see me about something else, I'm sure?" Mr. Calendar started from his reverie. "Eh? ... I was dreaming. I beg pardon. It seems hard to realize, Mr. Kirkwood, that this awful catastrophe has overtaken our beloved metropolis--" The canting phrases wearied Kirkwood; abruptly he cut in. "Would a sovereign help you out, Mr. Calendar? I don't mind telling you that's about the limit of my present resources." "Pardon _me_." Mr. Calendar's moon-like countenance darkened; he assumed a transparent dignity. "You misconstrue my motive, sir." "Then I'm sorry." "I am not here to borrow. On the other hand, quite by accident I discovered your name upon the register, down-stairs; a good old Frisco name, if you will permit me to say so. I thought to myself that here was a chance to help a fellow-countryman." Calendar paused, interrogative; Kirkwood remained interested but silent. "If a passage across would help you, I--I think it might be arranged," stammered Calendar, ill at ease. "It might," admitted Kirkwood, speculative. "I could fix it so that you could go over--first-class, of course--and pay your way, so to speak, by, rendering us, me and my partner, a trifling service." "Ah?" "In fact," continued Calendar, warming up to his theme, "there might be something more in it for you than the passage, if--if you're the right man, the man I'm looking for." "That, of course, is the question." "Eh?" Calendar pulled up suddenly in a full-winged flight of enthusiasm. Kirkwood eyed him steadily. "I said that it is a question, Mr. Calendar, whether or not I am the man you're looking for. Between you and me and the fire-dogs, I don't believe I am. Now if you wish to name your _quid pro quo_, this trifling service I'm to render in recognition of your benevolence, you may." "Ye-es," slowly. But the speaker delayed his reply until he had surveyed his host from head to foot, with a glance both critical and appreciative. He saw a man in height rather less than the stock size six-feet so much in demand by the manufacturers of modern heroes of fiction; a man a bit round-shouldered, too, but otherwise sturdily built, self-contained, well-groomed. Kirkwood wears a boy's honest face; no one has ever called him handsome. A few prejudiced persons have decided that he has an interesting countenance; the propounders of this verdict have been, for the most part, feminine. Kirkwood himself has been heard to declare that his features do not fit; in its essence the statement is true, but there is a very real, if undefinable, engaging quality in their very irregularity. His eyes are brown, pleasant, set wide apart, straightforward of expression. Now it appeared that, whatever his motive, Mr. Calendar had acted upon impulse in sending his card up to Kirkwood. Possibly he had anticipated a very different sort of reception from a very different sort of man. Even in the light of subsequent events it remains difficult to fathom the mystery of his choice. Perhaps Fate directed it; stranger things have happened at the dictates of a man's Destiny. At all events, this Calendar proved not lacking in penetration; men of his stamp are commonly endowed with that quality to an eminent degree. Not slow to reckon the caliber of the man before him, the leaven of intuition began to work in his adipose intelligence. He owned himself baffled. "Thanks," he concluded pensively; "I reckon you're right. You won't do, after all. I've wasted your time. Mine, too." "Don't mention it." Calendar got heavily out of his chair, reaching for his hat and umbrella. "Permit me to apologize for an unwarrantable intrusion, Mr. Kirkwood." He faltered; a worried and calculating look shadowed his small eyes. "I _was_ looking for some one to serve me in a certain capacity--" "Certain or questionable?" propounded Kirkwood blandly, opening the door. Pointedly Mr. Calendar ignored the imputation. "Sorry I disturbed you. G'dafternoon, Mr. Kirkwood." "Good-by, Mr. Calendar." A smile twitched the corners of Kirkwood's too-wide mouth. Calendar stepped hastily out into the hall. As he strode--or rather, rolled--away, Kirkwood maliciously feathered a Parthian arrow. "By the way, Mr. Calendar--?" The sound of retreating footsteps was stilled and "Yes?" came from the gloom of the corridor. "Were you ever in San Francisco? Really and truly? Honest Injun, Mr. Calendar?" For a space the quiet was disturbed by harsh breathing; then, in a strained voice, "Good day, Mr. Kirkwood"; and again the sound of departing footfalls. Kirkwood closed the door and the incident simultaneously, with a smart bang of finality. Laughing quietly he went back to the window with its dreary outlook, now the drearier for lengthening evening shadows. "I wonder what his game is, anyway. An adventurer, of course; the woods are full of 'em. A queer fish, even of his kind! And with a trick up his sleeve as queer and fishy as himself, no doubt!" II "AND SOME THERE BE WHO HAVE ADVENTURES THRUST UPON THEM" The assumption seems not unwarrantable, that Mr. Calendar figuratively washed his hands of Mr. Kirkwood. Unquestionably Mr. Kirkwood considered himself well rid of Mr. Calendar. When the latter had gone his way, Kirkwood, mindful of the fact that his boat-train would leave St. Pancras at half-after eleven, set about his packing and dismissed from his thoughts the incident created by the fat _chevalier d'industrie_; and at six o'clock, or thereabouts, let himself out of his room, dressed for the evening, a light rain-coat over one arm, in the other hand a cane,--the drizzle having ceased. A stolid British lift lifted him down to the ground floor of the establishment in something short of five minutes. Pausing in the office long enough to settle his bill and leave instructions to have his luggage conveyed to the boat-train, he received with entire equanimity the affable benediction of the clerk, in whose eyes he still figured as that radiant creature, an American millionaire; and passed on to the lobby, where he surrendered hat, coat and stick to the cloak-room attendant, ere entering the dining-room. The hour was a trifle early for a London dinner, the handsome room but moderately filled with patrons. Kirkwood absorbed the fact unconsciously and without displeasure; the earlier, the better: he was determined to consume his last civilized meal (as he chose to consider it) at his serene leisure, to live fully his ebbing moments in the world to which he was born, to drink to its cloying dregs one ultimate draught of luxury. A benignant waiter bowed him into a chair by a corner table in juxtaposition with an open window, through which, swaying imperceptibly the closed hangings, were wafted gentle gusts of the London evening's sweet, damp breath. Kirkwood settled himself with an inaudible sigh of pleasure. He was dining, for the last time in Heaven knew how long, in a first-class restaurant. With a deferential flourish the waiter brought him the menu-card. He had served in his time many an "American, millionaire"; he had also served this Mr. Kirkwood, and respected him as one exalted above the run of his kind, in that he comprehended the art of dining. Fifteen minutes later the waiter departed rejoicing, his order complete. To distract a conscience whispering of extravagance, Kirkwood lighted a cigarette. The room was gradually filling with later arrivals; it was the most favored restaurant in London, and, despite the radiant costumes of the women, its atmosphere remained sedate and restful. A cab clattered down the side street on which the window opened. At a near-by table a woman laughed, quietly happy. Incuriously Kirkwood glanced her way. She was bending forward, smiling, flattering her escort with the adoration of her eyes. They were lovers alone in the wilderness of the crowded restaurant. They seemed very happy. Kirkwood was conscious of a strange pang of emotion. It took him some time to comprehend that it was envy. He was alone and lonely. For the first time he realized that no woman had ever looked upon him as the woman at the adjoining table looked upon her lover. He had found time to worship but one mistress--his art. And he was renouncing her. He was painfully conscious of what he had missed, had lost--or had not yet found: the love of woman. The sensation was curious--new, unique in his experience. His cigarette burned down to his fingers as he sat pondering. Abstractedly, he ground its fire out in an ash-tray. The waiter set before him a silver tureen, covered. He sat up and began to consume his soup, scarce doing it justice. His dream troubled him--his dream of the love of woman. From a little distance his waiter regarded him, with an air of disappointment. In the course of an hour and a half he awoke, to discover the attendant in the act of pouring very hot and black coffee from a bright silver pot into a demi-tasse of fragile porcelain. Kirkwood slipped a single lump of sugar into the cup, gave over his cigar-case to be filled, then leaned back, deliberately lighting a long and slender panetela as a preliminary to a last lingering appreciation of the scene of which he was a part. He reviewed it through narrowed eyelids, lazily; yet with some slight surprise, seeming to see it with new vision, with eyes from which scales of ignorance had dropped. This long and brilliant dining-hall, with its quiet perfection of proportion and appointment, had always gratified his love of the beautiful; to-night it pleased him to an unusual degree. Yet it was the same as ever; its walls tinted a deep rose, with their hangings of dull cloth-of-gold, its lights discriminatingly clustered and discreetly shaded, redoubled in half a hundred mirrors, its subdued shimmer of plate and glass, its soberly festive assemblage of circumspect men and women splendidly gowned, its decorously muted murmur of voices penetrated and interwoven by the strains of a hidden string orchestra--caressed his senses as always, yet with a difference. To-night he saw it a room populous with lovers, lovers insensibly paired, man unto woman attentive, woman of man regardful. He had never understood this before. This much he had missed in life. It seemed hard to realize that one must forego it all for ever. Presently he found himself acutely self-conscious. The sensation puzzled him; and without appearing to do so, he traced it from effect to cause; and found the cause in a woman--a girl, rather, seated at a table the third removed from him, near the farther wall of the room. Too considerate, and too embarrassed, to return her scrutiny openly, look for look, he yet felt sure that, however temporarily, he was become the object of her intent interest. Idly employed with his cigar, he sipped his coffee. In time aware that she had turned her attention elsewhere, he looked up. At first he was conscious of an effect of disappointment. She was nobody that he knew, even by reputation. She was simply a young girl, barely out of her teens--if as old as that phrase would signify. He wondered what she had found in him to make her think him worth so long a study; and looked again, more keenly curious. With this second glance, appreciation stirred the artistic side of his nature, that was already grown impatient of his fretted mood. The slender and girlish figure, posed with such absolute lack of intrusion against a screen of rose and gilt, moved him to critical admiration. The tinted glow of shaded candles caught glistening on the spun gold of her fair hair, and enhanced the fine pallor of her young shoulders. He saw promise, and something more than promise, in her face, its oval something dimmed by warm shadows that unavailingly sought to blend youth and beauty alike into the dull, rich background. In the sheer youth of her (he realized) more than in aught else, lay her chiefest charm. She could be little more than a child, indeed, if he were to judge her by the purity of her shadowed eyes and the absence of emotion in the calm and direct look which presently she turned upon him who sat wondering at the level, penciled darkness of her brows. At length aware that she had surprised his interest, Kirkwood glanced aside--coolly deliberate, lest she should detect in his attitude anything more than impersonal approval. A slow color burned his cheeks. In his temples there rose a curious pulsing. After a while she drew his gaze again, imperiously--herself all unaware of the havoc she was wreaking on his temperament. He could have fancied her distraught, cloaking an unhappy heart with placid brow and gracious demeanor; but such a conception matched strangely her glowing youth and spirit. What had she to do with Care? What concern had Black Care, whose gaunt shape in sable shrouds had lurked at his shoulder all the evening, despite his rigid preoccupation, with a being as charmingly flushed with budding womanhood as this girl? "Eighteen?" he hazarded. "Eighteen, or possibly nineteen, dining at the Pless in a ravishing dinner-gown, and--unhappy? Oh, hardly--not she!" Yet the impression haunted him, and ere long he was fain to seek confirmation or denial of it in the manner of her escort. The latter sat with back to Kirkwood, cutting a figure as negative as his snug evening clothes. One could surmise little from a fleshy thick neck, a round, glazed bald spot, a fringe of grizzled hair, and two bright red ears. Calendar? Somehow the fellow did suggest Kirkwood's caller of the afternoon. The young man could not have said precisely how, for he was unfamiliar with the aspect of that gentleman's back. None the less the suggestion persisted. By now, a few of the guests, theater-bound, for the most part, were leaving. Here and there a table stood vacant, that had been filled, cloth tarnished, chairs disarranged: in another moment to be transformed into its pristine brilliance under the deft attentions of the servitors. Down an aisle, past the table at which the girl was sitting, came two, making toward the lobby; the man, a slight and meager young personality, in the lead. Their party had attracted Kirkwood's notice as they entered; why, he did not remember; but it was in his mind that then they had been three. Instinctively he looked at the table they had left--one placed at some distance from the girl, and hidden from her by an angle in the wall. It appeared that the third member had chosen to dally a few moments over his tobacco and a liqueur-brandy. Kirkwood could see him plainly, lounging in his chair and fumbling the stem of a glass: a heavy man, of somber habit, his black and sullen brows lowering and thoughtful above a face boldly handsome. The woman of the trio was worthy of closer attention. Some paces in the wake of her lack-luster esquire, she was making a leisurely progress, trailing the skirts of a gown magnificent beyond dispute, half concealed though it was by the opera cloak whose soft folds draped her shoulders. Slowly, carrying her head high, she approached, insolent eyes reviewing the room from beneath their heavy lids; a metallic and mature type of dark beauty, supremely self-confident and self-possessed. Men turned involuntarily to look after her, not altogether in undiluted admiration. In the act of passing behind the putative Calendar, she paused momentarily, bending as if to gather up her train. Presumably the action disturbed her balance; she swayed a little, and in the effort to recover, rested the tips of her gloved fingers upon the edge of the table. Simultaneously (Kirkwood could have sworn) a single word left her lips, a word evidently pitched for the ear of the hypothetical Calendar alone. Then she swept on, imperturbable, assured. To the perplexed observer it was indubitably evident that some communication had passed from the woman to the man. Kirkwood saw the fat shoulders of the girl's companion stiffen suddenly as the woman's hand rested at his elbow; as she moved away, a little rippling shiver was plainly visible in the muscles of his back, beneath his coat--mute token of relaxing tension. An instant later one plump and mottled hand was carelessly placed where the woman's had been; and was at once removed with fingers closed. To the girl, watching her face covertly, Kirkwood turned for clue to the incident. He made no doubt that she had observed the passage; proof of that one found in her sudden startling pallor (of indignation?) and in her eyes, briefly alight with some inscrutable emotion, though quickly veiled by lowered lashes. Slowly enough she regained color and composure, while her _vis-à-vis_ sat motionless, head inclined as if in thought. Abruptly the man turned in his chair to summon a waiter, and exposed his profile. Kirkwood was in no wise amazed to recognize Calendar--a badly frightened Calendar now, however, and hardly to be identified with the sleek, glib fellow who had interviewed Kirkwood in the afternoon. His flabby cheeks were ashen and trembling, and upon the back of his chair the fat white fingers were drumming incessantly an inaudible tattoo of shattered nerves. "Scared silly!" commented Kirkwood. "Why?" Having spoken to his waiter, Calendar for some seconds raked the room with quick glances, as if seeking an acquaintance. Presumably disappointed, he swung back to face the girl, bending forward to reach her ears with accents low-pitched and confidential. She, on her part, fell at once attentive, grave and responsive. Perhaps a dozen sentences passed between them. At the outset her brows contracted and she shook her head in gentle dissent; whereupon Calendar's manner became more imperative. Gradually, unwillingly, she seemed to yield consent. Once she caught her breath sharply, and, infected by her companion's agitation, sat back, color fading again in the round young cheeks. Kirkwood's waiter put in an inopportune appearance with the bill. The young man paid it. When he looked up again Calendar had swung squarely about in his chair. His eye encountered Kirkwood's. He nodded pleasantly. Temporarily confused, Kirkwood returned the nod. In a twinkling he had repented; Calendar had left his chair and was wending his way through the tables toward Kirkwood's. Reaching it, he paused, offering the hand of genial fellowship. Kirkwood accepted it half-heartedly (what else was he to do?) remarking at the same time that Calendar had recovered much of his composure. There was now a normal coloring in the heavily jowled countenance, with less glint of fear in the quick, dark eyes; and Calendar's hand, even if moist and cold, no longer trembled. Furthermore it was immediately demonstrated that his impudence had not deserted him. "Why, Kirkwood, my dear fellow!" he crowed--not so loudly as to attract attention, but in a tone assumed to divert suspicion, should he be overheard. "This is great luck, you know--to find you here." "Is it?" returned Kirkwood coolly. He disengaged his fingers. The pink plump face was contorted in a furtive grimace of deprecation. Without waiting for permission Calendar dropped into the vacant chair. "My dear sir," he proceeded, unabashed, "I throw myself upon your mercy." "The devil you do!" "I must. I'm in the deuce of a hole, and there's no one I know here besides yourself. I--I--" Kirkwood saw fit to lead him on; partly because, out of the corner of his eye, he was aware of the girl's unconcealed suspense. "Go on, please, Mr. Calendar. You throw yourself on a total stranger's mercy because you're in the deuce of a hole; and--?" "It's this way; I'm called away on urgent business imperative business. I must go at once. My daughter is with me. My daughter! Think of my embarrassment; I can not leave her here, alone, nor can I permit her to go home unprotected." Calendar paused in anxiety. "That's easily remedied, then," suggested Kirkwood. "How?" "Put her in a cab at the door." "I ... No. The devil! I couldn't think of it. You won't understand. I--" "I do not understand,--" amended the younger man politely. Calendar compressed his lips nervously. It was plain that the man was quivering with impatience and half-mad with excitement. He held quiet only long enough to regain his self-control and take counsel with his prudence. "It is impossible, Mr. Kirkwood. I must ask you to be generous and believe me." "Very well; for the sake of the argument, I do believe you, Mr. Calendar." "Hell!" exploded the elder man in an undertone. Then swiftly, stammering in his haste: "I can't let Dorothy accompany me to the door," he declared. "She--I--I throw myself upon your mercy!" "What--again?" "The truth--the truth is, if you will have it, that I am in danger of arrest the moment I leave here. If my daughter is with me, she will have to endure the shame and humiliation--" "Then why place her in such a position?" Kirkwood demanded sharply. Calendar's eyes burned, incandescent with resentment. Offended, he offered to rise and go, but changed his mind and sat tight in hope. "I beg of you, sir--" "One moment, Mr. Calendar." Abruptly Kirkwood's weathercock humor shifted--amusement yielding to intrigued interest. After all, why not oblige the fellow? What did anything matter, now? What harm could visit him if he yielded to this corpulent adventurer's insistence? Both from experience and observation he knew this for a world plentifully peopled by soldiers of fortune, contrivers of snares and pitfalls for the feet of the unwary. On the other hand, it is axiomatic that a penniless man is perfectly safe anywhere. Besides, there was the girl to be considered. Kirkwood considered her, forthwith. In the process thereof, his eyes sought her, perturbed. Their glances clashed. She looked away hastily, crimson to her temples. Instantly the conflict between curiosity and caution, inclination and distrust, was at an end. With sudden compliance, the young man rose. "I shall be most happy to be of service to your daughter, Mr. Calendar," he said, placing the emphasis with becoming gravity. And then, the fat adventurer leading the way, Kirkwood strode across the room--wondering somewhat at himself, if the whole truth is to be disclosed. III CALENDAR'S DAUGHTER All but purring with satisfaction and relief, Calendar halted. "Dorothy, my dear, permit me to introduce an old friend--Mr. Kirkwood. Kirkwood, this is my daughter." "Miss Calendar," acknowledged Kirkwood. The girl bowed, her eyes steady upon his own. "Mr. Kirkwood is very kind," she said gravely. "That's right!" Calendar exclaimed blandly. "He's promised to see you home. Now both of you will pardon my running away, I know." "Yes," assented Kirkwood agreeably. The elder man turned and hurried toward the main entrance. Kirkwood took the chair he had vacated. To his disgust he found himself temporarily dumb. No flicker of thought illuminated the darkness of his confusion. How was he to open a diverting conversation with a young woman whom he had met under auspices so extraordinary? Any attempt to gloze the situation, he felt, would be futile. And, somehow, he did not care to render himself ridiculous in her eyes, little as he knew her. Inanely dumb, he sat watching her, smiling fatuously until it was borne in on him that he was staring like a boor and grinning like an idiot. Convinced, he blushed for himself; something which served to make him more tongue-tied than ever. As for his involuntary protégée, she exhibited such sweet composure that he caught himself wondering if she really appreciated the seriousness of her parent's predicament; if, for that matter, its true nature were known to her at all. Calendar, he believed, was capable of prevarication, polite and impolite. Had he lied to his daughter? or to Kirkwood? To both, possibly; to the former alone, not improbably. That the adventurer had told him the desperate truth, Kirkwood was quite convinced; but he now began to believe that the girl had been put off with some fictitious explanation. Her tranquillity and self-control were remarkable, otherwise; she seemed very young to possess those qualities in such eminent degree. She was looking wearily past him, her gaze probing some unguessed abyss of thought. Kirkwood felt himself privileged to stare in wonder. Her naïve aloofness of poise gripped his imagination powerfully,--the more so, perhaps, since it seemed eloquent of her intention to remain enigmatic,--but by no means more powerfully than the unaided appeal of her loveliness. Presently the girl herself relieved the tension of the situation, fairly startling the young man by going straight to the heart of things. Without preface or warning, lifting her gaze to his, "My name is really Dorothy Calendar," she observed. And then, noting his astonishment, "You would be privileged to doubt, under the circumstances," she added. "Please let us be frank." "Well," he stammered, "if I didn't doubt, let's say I was unprejudiced." His awkward, well-meant pleasantry, perhaps not conceived in the best of taste, sounded in his own ears wretchedly flat and vapid. He regretted it spontaneously; the girl ignored it. "You are very kind," she iterated the first words he had heard from her lips. "I wish you to understand that I, for one, appreciate it." "Not kind; I have done nothing. I am glad.... One is apt to become interested when Romance is injected into a prosaic existence." Kirkwood allowed himself a keen but cheerful glance. She nodded, with a shadowy smile. He continued, purposefully, to distract her, holding her with his honest, friendly eyes. "Since it is to be confidences" (this she questioned with an all but imperceptible lifting of the eyebrows), "I don't mind telling you my own name is really Philip Kirkwood." "And you are an old friend of my father's?" He opened his lips, but only to close them without speaking. The girl moved her shoulders with a shiver of disdain. "I knew it wasn't so." "You know it would be hard for a young man like myself to be a very old friend," he countered lamely. "How long, then, have you known each other?" "Must I answer?" "Please." "Between three and four hours." "I thought as much." She stared past him, troubled. Abruptly she said: "Please smoke." "Shall I? If you wish it, of course...." She repeated: "Please." "We were to wait ten minutes or so," she continued. He produced his cigarette-case. "If you care to smoke it will seem an excuse." He lighted his cigarette. "And then, you may talk to me," she concluded calmly. "I would, gladly, if I could guess what would interest you." "Yourself. Tell me about yourself," she commanded. "It would bore you," he responded tritely, confused. "No; you interest me very much." She made the statement quietly, contemptuous of coquetry. "Very well, then; I am Philip Kirkwood, an American." "Nothing more?" "Little worth retailing." "I'm sorry." "Why?" he demanded, piqued. "Because you have merely indicated that you are a wealthy American." "Why wealthy?" "If not, you would have some aim in life--a calling or profession." "And you think I have none?" "Unless you consider it your vocation to be a wealthy American." "I don't. Besides, I'm not wealthy. In point of fact, I ..." He pulled up short, on the verge of declaring himself a pauper. "I am a painter." Her eyes lightened with interest. "An artist?" "I hope so. I don't paint signs--or houses," he remarked. Amused, she laughed softly. "I suspected it," she declared. "Not really?" "It was your way of looking at--things, that made me guess it: the painter's way. I have often noticed it." "As if mentally blending colors all the time?" "Yes; that and--seeing flaws." "I have discovered none," he told her brazenly. But again her secret cares were claiming her thoughts, and the gay, inconsequential banter died upon her scarlet lips as a second time her glance ranged away, sounding mysterious depths of anxiety. Provoked, he would have continued the chatter. "I have confessed," he persisted. "You know everything of material interest about me. And yourself?" "I am merely Dorothy Calendar," she answered. "Nothing more?" He laughed. "That is all, if you please, for the present." "I am to content myself with the promise of the future?" "The future," she told him seriously, "is to-morrow; and to-morrow ..." She moved restlessly in her chair, eyes and lips pathetic in their distress. "Please, we will go now, if you are ready." "I am quite ready, Miss Calendar." He rose. A waiter brought the girl's cloak and put it in Kirkwood's hands. He held it until, smoothing the wrists of her long white gloves, she stood up, then placed the garment upon her white young shoulders, troubled by the indefinable sense of intimacy imparted by the privilege. She permitted him this personal service! He felt that she trusted him, that out of her gratitude had grown a simple and almost childish faith in his generosity and considerateness. As she turned to go her eyes thanked him with an unfathomable glance. He was again conscious of that esoteric disturbance in his temples. Puzzled, hazily analyzing the sensation, he followed her to the lobby. A page brought him his top-coat, hat and stick; tipping the child from sheer force of habit, he desired a gigantic porter, impressively ornate in hotel livery, to call a hansom. Together they passed out into the night, he and the girl. Beneath a permanent awning of steel and glass she waited patiently, slender, erect, heedless of the attention she attracted from wayfarers. The night was young, the air mild. Upon the sidewalk, muddied by a million feet, two streams of wayfarers flowed incessantly, bound west from Green Park or east toward Piccadilly Circus; a well-dressed throng for the most part, with here and there a man in evening dress. Between the carriages at the curb and the hotel doors moved others, escorting fluttering butterfly women in elaborate toilets, heads bare, skirts daintily gathered above their perishable slippers. Here and there meaner shapes slipped silently through the crowd, sinister shadows of the city's proletariat, blotting ominously the brilliance of the scene. A cab drew in at the block. The porter clapped an arc of wickerwork over its wheel to protect the girl's skirts. She ascended to the seat. Kirkwood, dropping sixpence in the porter's palm, prepared to follow; but a hand fell upon his arm, peremptory, inexorable. He faced about, frowning, to confront a slight, hatchet-faced man, somewhat under medium height, dressed in a sack suit and wearing a derby well forward over eyes that were hard and bright. "Mr. Calendar?" said the man tensely. "I presume I needn't name my business. I'm from the Yard--" "My name is not Calendar." The detective smiled wearily. "Don't be a fool, Calendar," he began. But the porter's hand fell upon his shoulder and the giant bent low to bring his mouth close to the other's ear. Kirkwood heard indistinctly his own name followed by Calendar's, and the words: "Never fear. I'll point him out." "But the woman?" argued the detective, unconvinced, staring into the cab. "Am I not at liberty to have a lady dine with me in a public restaurant?" interposed Kirkwood, without raising his voice. The hard eyes looked him up and down without favor. Then: "Beg pardon, sir. I see my mistake," said the detective brusquely. "I am glad you do," returned Kirkwood grimly. "I fancy it will bear investigation." He mounted the step. "Imperial Theater," he told the driver, giving the first address that occurred to him; it could be changed. For the moment the main issue was to get the girl out of the range of the detective's interest. He slipped into his place as the hansom wheeled into the turgid tide of west-bound traffic. So Calendar had escaped, after all! Moreover, he had told the truth to Kirkwood. By his side the girl moved uneasily. "Who was that man?" she inquired. Kirkwood sought her eyes, and found them wholly ingenuous. It seemed that Calendar had not taken her into his confidence, after all. She was, therefore, in no way implicated in her father's affairs. Inexplicably the young man's heart felt lighter. "A mistake; the fellow took me for some one he knew," he told her carelessly. The assurance satisfied her. She rested quietly, wrapped up in personal concerns. Her companion pensively contemplated an infinity of arid and hansom-less to-morrows. About them the city throbbed in a web of misty twilight, the humid farewell of a dismal day. In the air a faint haze swam, rendering the distances opalescent. Athwart the western sky the after-glow of a drenched sunset lay like a wash of rose-madder. Piccadilly's asphalt shone like watered silk, black and lustrous, reflecting a myriad lights in vibrant ribbons of party-colored radiance. On every hand cab-lamps danced like fire-flies; the rumble of wheels blended with the hollow pounding of uncounted hoofs, merging insensibly into the deep and solemn roar of London-town. Suddenly Kirkwood was recalled to a sense of duty by a glimpse of Hyde Park Corner. He turned to the girl. "I didn't know where you wished to go--?" She seemed to realize his meaning with surprise, as one, whose thoughts have strayed afar, recalled to an imperative world. "Oh, did I forget? Tell him please to drive to Number Nine, Frognall Street, Bloomsbury." Kirkwood poked his cane through the trap, repeating the address. The cab wheeled smartly across Piccadilly, swung into Half Moon Street, and thereafter made better time, darting briskly down abrupt vistas of shining pavement, walled in by blank-visaged houses, or round two sides of one of London's innumerable private parks, wherein spring foliage glowed a tender green in artificial light; now and again it crossed brilliant main arteries of travel, and eventually emerged from a maze of backways into Oxford Street, to hammer eastwards to Tottenham Court Road. Constraint hung like a curtain between the two; a silence which the young man forbore to moderate, finding more delight that he had cared (or dared) confess to, in contemplation of the pure girlish profile so close to him. She seemed quite unaware of him, lost in thought, large eyes sober, lips serious that were fashioned for laughter, round little chin firm with some occult resolution. It was not hard to fancy her nerves keyed to a high pitch of courage and determination, nor easy to guess for what reason. Watching always, keenly sensitive to the beauty of each salient line betrayed by the flying lights, Kirkwood's own consciousness lost itself in a profitless, even a perilous labyrinth of conjecture. The cab stopped. Both occupants came to their senses with a little start. The girl leaned out over; the apron, recognized the house she sought in one swift glance, testified to the recognition with a hushed exclamation, and began to arrange her skirts. Kirkwood, unheeding her faint-hearted protests, jumped out, interposing his cane between her skirts and the wheel. Simultaneously he received a vivid mental photograph of the locality. Frognall Street proved to be one of those by-ways, a short block in length, which, hemmed in on all sides by a meaner purlieu, has (even in Bloomsbury!) escaped the sordid commercial eye of the keeper of furnished lodgings, retaining jealously something of the old-time dignity and reserve that were its pride in the days before Society swarmed upon Mayfair and Belgravia. Its houses loomed tall, with many windows, mostly lightless--materially aggravating that air of isolate, cold dignity which distinguishes the Englishman's castle. Here and there stood one less bedraggled than its neighbors, though all, without exception, spoke assertively of respectability down-at-the-heel but fighting tenaciously for existence. Some, vanguards of that imminent day when the boarding-house should reign supreme, wore with shamefaced air placards of estate-agents, advertising their susceptibility to sale or lease. In the company of the latter was Number 9. The American noted the circumstance subconsciously, at a moment when Miss Calendar's hand, small as a child's, warm and compact in its white glove, lay in his own. And then she was on the sidewalk, her face, upturned to his, vivacious with excitement. "You have been so kind," she told him warmly, "that one hardly knows how to thank you, Mr. Kirkwood." "I have done nothing--nothing at all," he mumbled, disturbed by a sudden, unreasoning alarm for her. She passed quickly to the shelter of the pillared portico. He followed clumsily. On the door-step she turned, offering her hand. He took and retained it. "Good night," she said. "I'm to understand that I'm dismissed, then?" he stammered ruefully. She evaded his eyes. "I--thank you--I have no further need--" "You are quite sure? Won't you believe me at your service?" She laughed uneasily. "I'm all right now." "I can do nothing more? Sure?" "Nothing. But you--you make me almost sorry I can't impose still further upon your good nature." "Please don't hesitate ..." "Aren't you very persistent, Mr. Kirkwood?" Her fingers moved in his; burning with the reproof, he released them, and turned to her so woebegone a countenance that she repented of her severity. "Don't worry about me, please. I am truly safe now. Some day I hope to be able to thank you adequately. Good night!" Her pass-key grated in the lock. Opening, the door disclosed a dark and uninviting entry-hall, through which there breathed an air heavy with the dank and dusty odor of untenanted rooms. Hesitating on the threshold, over her shoulder the girl smiled kindly upon her commandeered esquire; and stepped within. He lifted his hat automatically. The door closed with an echoing slam. He turned to the waiting cab, fumbling for change. "I'll walk," he told the cabby, paying him off. The hansom swept away to a tune of hammering hoofs; and quiet rested upon the street as Kirkwood turned the nearest corner, in an unpleasant temper, puzzled and discontented. It seemed hardly fair that he should have been dragged into so promising an adventure, by his ears (so to put it), only to be thus summarily called upon to write "Finis" beneath the incident. He rounded the corner and walked half-way to the next street, coming to an abrupt and rebellious pause by the entrance to a covered alleyway, of two minds as to his proper course of action. In the background of his thoughts Number 9, Frognall Street, reared its five-story façade, sinister and forbidding. He reminded himself of its unlighted windows; of its sign, "To be let"; of the effluvia of desolation that had saluted him when the door swung wide. A deserted house; and the girl alone in it!--was it right for him to leave her so? IV 9 FROGNALL STREET, W. C. The covered alleyway gave upon Quadrant Mews; or so declared a notice painted on the dead wall of the passage. Overhead, complaining as it swayed in the wind, hung the smirched and weather-worn sign-board of the Hog-in-the-Pound public house; wherefrom escaped sounds of such revelry by night as is indulged in by the British working-man in hours of ease. At the curb in front of the house of entertainment, dejected animals drooping between their shafts, two hansoms stood in waiting, until such time as the lords of their destinies should see fit to sally forth and inflict themselves upon a cab-hungry populace. As Kirkwood turned, a third vehicle rumbled up out of the mews. Kirkwood can close his eyes, even at this late day, and both see and hear it all again--even as he can see the unbroken row of dingy dwellings that lined his way back from Quadrant Mews to Frognall Street corner: all drab and unkempt, all sporting in their fan-lights the legend and lure, "Furnished Apartments." For, between his curiosity about and his concern for the girl, he was being led back to Number 9, by the nose, as it were,--hardly willingly, at best. Profoundly stupefied by the contemplation of his own temerity, he yet returned unfaltering. He who had for so long plumed himself upon his strict supervision of his personal affairs and equally steadfast unconsciousness of his neighbor's businesses, now found himself in the very act of pushing in where he was not wanted: as he had been advised in well-nigh as many words. He experienced an effect of standing to one side, a witness of his own folly, with rising wonder, unable to credit the strength of the infatuation which was placing him so conspicuously in the way of a snubbing. If perchance he were to meet the girl again as she was leaving Number 9,--what then? The contingency dismayed him incredibly, in view of the fact that it did not avail to make him pause. To the contrary he disregarded it resolutely; mad, impertinent, justified of his unnamed apprehensions, or simply addled,--he held on his way. He turned up Frognall Street with the manner of one out for a leisurely evening stroll. Simultaneously, from the farther corner, another pedestrian debouched, into the thoroughfare--a mere moving shadow at that distance, brother to blacker shadows that skulked in the fenced areas and unlively entries of that poorly lighted block. The hush was something beyond belief, when one remembered the nearness of blatant Tottenham Court Road. Kirkwood conceived a wholly senseless curiosity about the other wayfarer. The man was walking rapidly, heels ringing with uncouth loudness, cane tapping the flagging at brief intervals. Both sounds ceased abruptly as their cause turned in beneath one of the porticos. In the emphatic and unnatural quiet that followed, Kirkwood, stepping more lightly, fancied that another shadow followed the first, noiselessly and with furtive stealth. Could it be Number 9 into which they had passed? The American's heart beat a livelier tempo at the suggestion. If it had not been Number 9--he was still too far away to tell--it was certainly one of the dwellings adjacent thereunto. The improbable possibility (But why improbable?) that the girl was being joined by her father, or by friends, annoyed him with illogical intensity. He mended his own pace, designing to pass whichever house it might be before the door should be closed; thought better of this, and slowed up again, anathematizing himself with much excuse for being the inquisitive dolt that he was. Approaching Number 9 with laggard feet, he manufactured a desire to light a cigarette, as a cover for his design, were he spied upon by unsuspected eyes. Cane under arm, hands cupped to shield a vesta's flame, he stopped directly before the portico, turning his eyes askance to the shadowed doorway; and made a discovery sufficiently startling to hold him spellbound and, incidentally, to scorch his gloves before he thought to drop the match. The door of Number 9 stood ajar, a black interval an inch or so in width showing between its edge and the jamb. Suspicion and alarm set his wits a-tingle. More distinctly he recalled the jarring bang, accompanied by the metallic click of the latch, when the girl had shut herself in--and him out. Now, some person or persons had followed her, neglecting the most obvious precaution of a householder. And why? Why but because the intruders did not wish the sound of closing to be audible to her--or those--within? He reminded himself that it was all none of his affair, decided to pass on and go his ways in peace, and impulsively, swinging about, marched straight away for the unclosed door. "'Old'ard, guvner!" Kirkwood halted on the cry, faltering in indecision. Should he take the plunge, or withdraw? Synchronously he was conscious that a man's figure had detached itself from the shadows beneath the nearest portico and was drawing nearer, with every indication of haste, to intercept him. "'Ere now, guvner, yer mykin' a mistyke. You don't live 'ere." "How do you know?" demanded Kirkwood crisply, tightening his grip on his stick. Was this the second shadow he had seemed to see--the confederate of him who had entered Number 9; a sentry to forestall interruption? If so, the fellow lacked discretion, though his determination that the American should not interfere was undeniable. It was with an ugly and truculent manner, if more warily, that the man closed in. "I knows. You clear hout, or--" He flung out a hand with the plausible design of grasping Kirkwood by the collar. The latter lifted his stick, deflecting the arm, and incontinently landed his other fist forcibly on the fellow's chest. The man reeled back, cursing. Before he could recover Kirkwood calmly crossed the threshold, closed the door and put his shoulder to it. In another instant, fumbling in the darkness, he found the bolts and drove them home. And it was done, the transformation accomplished; his inability to refrain from interfering had encompassed his downfall, had changed a peaceable and law-abiding alien within British shores into a busybody, a trespasser, a misdemeanant, a--yes, for all he knew to the contrary, in the estimation of the Law, a burglar, prime candidate for a convict's stripes! Breathing hard with excitement he turned and laid his back against the panels, trembling in every muscle, terrified by the result of his impulsive audacity, thunder-struck by a lightning-like foreglimpse of its possible consequences. Of what colossal imprudence had he not been guilty? "The devil!" he whispered. "What an ass, what an utter ass I am!" Behind him the knob was rattled urgently, to an accompaniment of feet shuffling on the stone; and immediately--if he were to make a logical deduction from the rasping and scraping sound within the door-casing--the bell-pull was violently agitated, without, however, educing any response from the bell itself, wherever that might be situate. After which, as if in despair, the outsider again rattled and jerked the knob. Be his status what it might, whether servant of the household, its caretaker, or a night watchman, the man was palpably determined both to get himself in and Kirkwood out, and yet (curious to consider) determined to gain his end without attracting undue attention. Kirkwood had expected to hear the knocker's thunder, as soon as the bell failed to give tongue; but it did not sound although there _was_ a knocker,--Kirkwood himself had remarked that antiquated and rusty bit of ironmongery affixed to the middle panel of the door. And it made him feel sure that something surreptitious and lawless was in process within those walls, that the confederate without, having failed to prevent a stranger from entering, left unemployed a means so certain-sure to rouse the occupants. But his inferential analysis of this phase of the proceedings was summarily abrupted by that identical alarm. In a trice the house was filled with flying echoes, wakened to sonorous riot by the crash and clamor of the knocker; and Kirkwood stood fully two yards away, his heart hammering wildly, his nerves a-jingle, much as if the resounding blows had landed upon his own person rather than on stout oaken planking. Ere he had time to wonder, the racket ceased, and from the street filtered voices in altercation. Listening, Kirkwood's pulses quickened, and he laughed uncertainly for pure relief, retreating to the door and putting an ear to a crack. The accents of one speaker were new in his hearing, stern, crisp, quick with the spirit of authority which animates that most austere and dignified limb of the law to be encountered the world over, a London bobby. "Now then, my man, what do you want there? Come now, speak up, and step out into the light, where I can see you." The response came in the sniffling snarl of the London ne'er-do-well, the unemployable rogue whose chiefest occupation seems to be to march in the ranks of The Unemployed on the occasion of its annual demonstrations. "Le' me alone, carntcher? Ah'm doin' no 'arm, officer,--" "Didn't you hear me? Step out here. Ah, that's better.... No harm, eh? Perhaps you'll explain how there's no harm breakin' into unoccupied 'ouses?" "Gorblimy, 'ow was I to know? 'Ere's a toff 'ands me sixpence fer hopenin' 'is cab door to-dye, an', sezee, 'My man,' 'e sez, 'yer've got a 'onest fyce. W'y don'cher work?' sezee. ''Ow can I?' sez I. ''Ere'm I hout of a job these six months, lookin' fer work every dye an' carn't find it.' Sezee, 'Come an' see me this hevenin' at me home, Noine, Frognall Stryte,' 'e sez, an'--" "That'll do for now. You borrow a pencil and paper and write it down and I'll read it when I've got more time; I never heard the like of it. This 'ouse hasn't been lived in these two years. Move on, and don't let me find you round 'ere again. March, I say!" There was more of it--more whining explanations artfully tinctured with abuse, more terse commands to depart, the whole concluding with scraping footsteps, diminuendo, and another perfunctory, rattle of the knob as the bobby, having shoo'd the putative evil-doer off, assured himself that no damage had actually been done. Then he, too, departed, satisfied and self-righteous, leaving a badly frightened but very grateful amateur criminal to pursue his self-appointed career of crime. He had no choice other than to continue; in point of fact, it had been insanity just then to back out, and run the risk of apprehension at the hands of that ubiquitous bobby, who (for all he knew) might be lurking not a dozen yards distant, watchful for just such a sequel. Still, Kirkwood hesitated with the best of excuses. Reassuring as he had found the sentinel's extemporized yarn,--proof positive that the fellow had had no more right to prohibit a trespass than Kirkwood to commit one,--at the same time he found himself pardonably a prey to emotions of the utmost consternation and alarm. If he feared to leave the house he had no warrant whatever to assume that he would be permitted to remain many minutes unharmed within its walls of mystery. The silence of it discomfited him beyond measure; it was, in a word, uncanny. Before him, as he lingered at the door, vaguely disclosed by a wan illumination penetrating a dusty and begrimed fan-light, a broad hall stretched indefinitely towards the rear of the building, losing itself in blackness beyond the foot of a flight of stairs. Save for a few articles of furniture,--a hall table, an umbrella-stand, a tall dumb clock flanked by high-backed chairs,--it was empty. Other than Kirkwood's own restrained respiration not a sound throughout the house advertised its inhabitation; not a board creaked beneath the pressure of a foot, not a mouse rustled in the wainscoting or beneath the floors, not a breath of air stirred sighing in the stillness. And yet, a tremendous racket had been raised at the front door, within the sixty seconds past! And yet, within twenty minutes two persons, at least, had preceded Kirkwood into the building! Had they not heard? The speculation seemed ridiculous. Or had they heard and, alarmed, been too effectually hobbled by the coils of their nefarious designs to dare reveal themselves, to investigate the cause of that thunderous summons? Or were they, perhaps, aware of Kirkwood's entrance, and lying _perdui_, in some dark corner, to ambush him as he passed? True, that were hardly like the girl. True, on the other hand, it were possible that she had stolen away while Kirkwood was hanging in irresolution by the passage to Quadrant Mews. Again, the space of time between Kirkwood's dismissal and his return had been exceedingly brief; whatever her errand, she could hardly have fulfilled it and escaped. At that moment she might be in the power and at the mercy of him who had followed her; providing he were not friendly. And in that case, what torment and what peril might not be hers? Spurred by solicitude, the young man put personal apprehensions in his pocket and forgot them, cautiously picking his way through the gloom to the foot of the stairs. There, by the newel-post, he paused. Darkness walled him about. Overhead the steps vanished in a well of blackness; he could not even see the ceiling; his eyes ached with futile effort to fathom the unknown; his ears rang with unrewarded strain of listening. The silence hung inviolate, profound. Slowly he began to ascend, a hand following the balusters, the other with his cane exploring the obscurity before him. On the steps, a carpet, thick and heavy, muffled his footfalls. He moved noiselessly. Towards the top the staircase curved, and presently a foot that groped for a higher level failed to find it. Again he halted, acutely distrustful. Nothing happened. He went on, guided by the balustrade, passing three doors, all open, through which the undefined proportions of a drawing-room and boudoir were barely suggested in a ghostly dusk. By each he paused, listening, hearing nothing. His foot struck with a deadened thud against the bottom step of the second flight, and his pulses fluttered wildly for a moment. Two minutes--three--he waited in suspense. From above came no sound. He went on, as before, save that twice a step yielded, complaining, to his weight. Toward the top the close air, like the darkness, seemed to weigh more heavily upon his consciousness; little drops of perspiration started out on his forehead, his scalp tingled, his mouth was hot and dry, he felt as if stifled. Again the raised foot found no level higher than its fellows. He stopped and held his breath, oppressed by a conviction that some one was near him. Confirmation of this came startlingly--an eerie whisper in the night, so close to him that he fancied he could feel the disturbed air fanning his face. "_Is it you, Eccles_?" He had no answer ready. The voice was masculine, if he analyzed it correctly. Dumb and stupid he stood poised upon the point of panic. "_Eccles, is it you_?" The whisper was both shrill and shaky. As it ceased Kirkwood was half blinded by a flash of light, striking him squarely in the eyes. Involuntarily he shrank back a pace, to the first step from the top. Instantaneously the light was eclipsed. "_Halt or--or I fire_!" By now he realized that he had been scrutinized by the aid of an electric hand-lamp. The tremulous whisper told him something else--that the speaker suffered from nerves as high-strung as his own. The knowledge gave him inspiration. He cried at a venture, in a guarded voice, "_Hands up_!"--and struck out smartly with his stick. Its ferrule impinged upon something soft but heavy. Simultaneously he heard a low, frightened cry, the cane was swept aside, a blow landed glancingly on his shoulder, and he was carried fairly off his feet by the weight of a man hurled bodily upon him with staggering force and passion. Reeling, he was borne back and down a step or two, and then,--choking on an oath,--dropped his cane and with one hand caught the balusters, while the other tore ineffectually at wrists of hands that clutched his throat. So, for a space, the two hung, panting and struggling. Then endeavoring to swing his shoulders over against the wall, Kirkwood released his grip on the hand-rail and stumbled on the stairs, throwing his antagonist out of balance. The latter plunged downward, dragging Kirkwood with him. Clawing, kicking, grappling, they went to the bottom, jolted violently by each step; but long before the last was reached, Kirkwood's throat was free. Throwing himself off, he got to his feet and grasped the railing for support; then waited, panting, trying to get his bearings. Himself painfully shaken and bruised, he shrewdly surmised that his assailant had fared as ill, if not worse. And, in point of fact, the man lay with neither move nor moan, still as death at the American's feet. And once more silence had folded its wings over Number 9, Frognall Street. More conscious of that terrifying, motionless presence beneath him, than able to distinguish it by power of vision, he endured interminable minutes of trembling horror, in a witless daze, before he thought of his match-box. Immediately he found it and struck a light. As the wood caught and the bright small flame leaped in the pent air, he leaned forward, over the body, breathlessly dreading what he must discover. The man lay quiet, head upon the floor, legs and hips on the stairs. One arm had fallen over his face, hiding the upper half. The hand gleamed white and delicate as a woman's. His chin was smooth and round, his lips thin and petulant. Beneath his top-coat, evening dress clothed a short and slender figure. Nothing whatever of his appearance suggested the burly ruffian, the midnight marauder; he seemed little more than a boy old enough to dress for dinner. In his attitude there was something pitifully suggestive of a beaten child, thrown into a corner. Conscience-smitten and amazed Kirkwood stared on until, without warning, the match flickered and went out. Then, straightening up with an exclamation at once of annoyance and concern, he rattled the box; it made no sound,--was empty. In disgust he swore it was the devil's own luck, that he should run out of vestas at a time so critical. He could not even say whether the fellow was dead, unconscious, or simply shamming. He had little idea of his looks; and to be able to identify him might save a deal of trouble at some future time,--since he, Kirkwood, seemed so little able to disengage himself from the clutches of this insane adventure! And the girl--. what had become of her? How could he continue to search for her, without lights or guide, through all those silent rooms, whose walls might inclose a hundred hidden dangers in that house of mystery? But he debated only briefly. His blood was young, and it was hot; it was quite plain to him that he could not withdraw and retain his self-respect. If the girl was there to be found, most assuredly, he must find her. The hand-lamp that had dazzled him at the head of the stairs should be his aid, now that he thought of it,--and providing he was able to find it. In the scramble on the stairs he had lost his hat, but he remembered that the vesta's short-lived light had discovered this on the floor beyond the man's body. Carefully stepping across the latter he recovered his head-gear, and then, kneeling, listened with an ear close to the fellow's face. A softly regular beat of breathing reassured him. Half rising, he caught the body beneath the armpits, lifting and dragging it off the staircase; and knelt again, to feel of each pocket in the man's clothing, partly as an obvious precaution, to relieve him of his advertised revolver against an untimely wakening, partly to see if he had the lamp about him. The search proved fruitless. Kirkwood suspected that the weapon, like his own, had existed only in his victim's ready imagination. As for the lamp, in the act of rising he struck it with his foot, and picked it up. It felt like a metal tube a couple of inches in diameter, a foot or so in length, passably heavy. He fumbled with it impatiently. "However the dickens," he wondered audibly, "does the infernal machine work?" As it happened, the thing worked with disconcerting abruptness as his untrained fingers fell hapchance on the spring. A sudden glare again smote him in the face, and at the same instant, from a point not a yard away, apparently, an inarticulate cry rang out upon the stillness. Heart in his mouth, he stepped back, lowering the lamp (which impishly went out) and lifting a protecting forearm. "Who's that?" he demanded harshly. A strangled sob of terror answered him, blurred by a swift rush of skirts, and in a breath his shattered nerves quieted and a glimmer of common sense penetrated the murk anger and fear had bred in his brain. He understood, and stepped forward, catching blindly at the darkness with eager hands. "Miss Calendar!" he cried guardedly. "Miss Calendar, it is I--Philip Kirkwood!" There was a second sob, of another caliber than the first; timid fingers brushed his, and a hand, warm and fragile, closed upon his own in a passion of relief and gratitude. "Oh, I am so g-glad!" It was Dorothy Calendar's voice, beyond mistake. "I--I didn't know what t-to t-think.... When the light struck your face I was sure it was you, but when I called, you answered in a voice so strange,--not like yours at all! ... Tell me," she pleaded, with palpable effort to steady herself; "what has happened?" "I think, perhaps," said Kirkwood uneasily, again troubled by his racing pulses, "perhaps you can do that better than I." "Oh!" said the voice guiltily; her fingers trembled on his, and were gently withdrawn. "I was so frightened," she confessed after a little pause, "so frightened that I hardly understand ... But you? How did you--?" "I worried about you," he replied, in a tone absurdly apologetic. "Somehow it didn't seem right. It was none of my business, of course, but ... I couldn't help coming back. This fellow, whoever he is--don't worry; he's unconscious--slipped into the house in a manner that seemed to me suspicious. I hardly know why I followed, except that he left the door an open invitation to interference ..." "I can't be thankful enough," she told him warmly, "that you did interfere. You have indeed saved me from ..." "Yes?" "I don't know what. If I knew the man--" "You don't _know_ him?" "I can't even guess. The light--?" She paused inquiringly. Kirkwood fumbled with the lamp, but, whether its rude handling had impaired some vital part of the mechanism, or whether the batteries through much use were worn out, he was able to elicit only one feeble glow, which was instantly smothered by the darkness. "It's no use," he confessed. "The thing's gone wrong." "Have you a match?" "I used my last before I got hold of this." "Oh," she commented, discouraged. "Have you any notion what he looks like?" Kirkwood thought briefly. "Raffles," he replied with a chuckle. "He looks like an amateurish and very callow Raffles. He's in dress clothes, you know." "I wonder!" There was a nuance of profound bewilderment in her exclamation. Then: "He knocked against something in the hall--a chair, I presume; at all events, I heard that and put out the light. I was ... in the room above the drawing-room, you see. I stole down to this floor--was there, in the corner by the stairs when he passed within six inches, and never guessed it. Then, when he got on the next floor, I started on; but you came in. I slipped into the drawing-room and crouched behind a chair. You went on, but I dared not move until ... And then I heard some one cry out, and you fell down the stairs together. I hope you were not hurt--?" "Nothing worth mention; but _he_ must have got a pretty stiff knock, to lay him out so completely." Kirkwood stirred the body with his toe, but the man made no sign. "Dead to the world ... And now, Miss Calendar?" If she answered, he did not hear; for on the heels of his query banged the knocker down below; and thereafter crash followed crash, brewing a deep and sullen thundering to rouse the echoes and send them rolling, like voices of enraged ghosts, through the lonely rooms. V THE MYSTERY OF A FOUR-WHEELER "What's that?" At the first alarm the girl had caught convulsively at Kirkwood's arm. Now, when a pause came in the growling of the knocker, she made him hear her voice; and it was broken and vibrant with a threat of hysteria. "Oh, what can it mean?" "I don't know." He laid a hand reassuringly over that which trembled on his forearm. "The police, possibly." "Police!" she iterated, aghast. "What makes you think--?" "A man tried to stop me at the door," he answered quickly. "I got in before he could. When he tried the knocker, a bobby came along and stopped him. The latter may have been watching the house since then,--it'd be only his duty to keep an eye on it; and Heaven knows we raised a racket, coming head-first down those stairs! Now we are up against it," he added brightly. But the girl was tugging at his hand. "Come!" she begged breathlessly. "Come! There is a way! Before they break in--" "But this man--?" Kirkwood hung back, troubled. "They--the police are sure to find and care for him." "So they will." He chuckled, "And serve him right! He'd have choked me to death, with all the good will in the world!" "Oh, do hurry!" Turning, she sped light-footed down the staircase to the lower hall, he at her elbow. Here the uproar was loudest--deep enough to drown whatever sounds might have been made by two pairs of flying feet. For all that they fled on tiptoe, stealthily, guilty shadows in the night; and at the newel-post swung back into the unbroken blackness which shrouded the fastnesses backward of the dwelling. A sudden access of fury on the part of the alarmist at the knocker, spurred them on with quaking hearts. In half a dozen strides, Kirkwood, guided only by instinct and the _frou-frou_ of the girl's skirts as she ran invisible before him, stumbled on the uppermost steps of a steep staircase; only a hand-rail saved him, and that at the last moment. He stopped short, shocked into caution. From below came a contrite whisper: "I'm so sorry! I should have warned you." He pulled himself together, glaring wildly at nothing. "It's all right--" "You're not hurt, truly? Oh, do come quickly." She waited for him at the bottom of the flight;--happily for him, for he was all at sea. "Here--your hand--let me guide you. This darkness is dreadful ..." He found her hand, somehow, and tucked his into it, confidingly, and not without an uncertain thrill of satisfaction. "Come!" she panted. "Come! If they break in--" Stifled by apprehension, her voice failed her. They went forward, now less impetuously, for it was very black; and the knocker had fallen still. "No fear of that," he remarked after a time. "They wouldn't dare break in." A fluttering whisper answered him: "I don't know. We dare risk nothing." They seemed to explore, to penetrate acres of labyrinthine chambers and passages, delving deep into the bowels of the earth, like rabbits burrowing in a warren, hounded by beagles. Above stairs the hush continued unbroken; as if the dumb Genius of the Place had cast a spell of silence on the knocker, or else, outraged, had smitten the noisy disturber with a palsy. The girl seemed to know her way; whether guided by familiarity or by intuition, she led on without hesitation, Kirkwood blundering in her wake, between confusion of impression, and dawning dismay conscious of but one tangible thing, to which he clung as to his hope of salvation: those firm, friendly fingers that clasped his own. It was as if they wandered on for an hour; probably from start to finish their flight took up three minutes, no more. Eventually the girl stopped, releasing his hand. He could hear her syncopated breathing before him, and gathered that something was wrong. He took a step forward. "What is it?" Her full voice broke out of the obscurity startlingly close, in his very ear. "The door--the bolts--I can't budge them." "Let me ..." He pressed forward, brushing her shoulder. She did not draw away, but willingly yielded place to his hands at the fastenings; and what had proved impossible to her, to his strong fingers was a matter of comparative ease. Yet, not entirely consciously, he was not quick. As he tugged at the bolts he was poignantly sensitive to the subtle warmth of her at his side; he could hear her soft dry sobs of excitement and suspense, punctuating the quiet; and was frightened, absolutely, by an impulse, too strong for ridicule, to take her in his arms and comfort her with the assurance that, whatever her trouble, he would stand by her and protect her.... It were futile to try to laugh it off; he gave over the endeavor. Even at this critical moment he found himself repeating over and over to his heart the question: "Can this be love? Can this be love? ..." Could it be love at an hour's acquaintance? Absurd! But he could not laugh--nor render himself insensible to the suggestion. He found that he had drawn the bolts. The girl tugged and rattled at the knob. Reluctantly the door opened inwards. Beyond its threshold stretched ten feet or more of covered passageway, whose entrance framed an oblong glimmering with light. A draught of fresh air smote their faces. Behind them a door banged. "Where does this open?" "On the mews," she informed him. "The mews!" He stared in consternation at the pallid oval that stood for her face. "The mews! But you, in your evening gown, and I--" "There's no other way. We must chance it. Are you afraid?" Afraid? ... He stepped aside. She slipped by him and on. He closed the door, carefully removing the key and locking it on the outside; then joined the girl at the entrance to the mews, where they paused perforce, she as much disconcerted as he, his primary objection momentarily waxing in force as they surveyed the conditions circumscribing their escape. Quadrant Mews was busily engaged in enjoying itself. Night had fallen sultry and humid, and the walls and doorsteps were well fringed and clustered with representatives of that class of London's population which infests mews through habit, taste, or force of circumstance. On the stoops men sprawled at easy length, discussing short, foul cutties loaded with that rank and odoriferous compound which, under the name and in the fame of tobacco, is widely retailed at tuppence the ounce. Their women-folk more commonly squatted on the thresholds, cheerfully squabbling; from opposing second-story windows, two leaned perilously forth, slanging one another across the square briskly in the purest billingsgate; and were impartially applauded from below by an audience whose appreciation seemed faintly tinged with envy. Squawking and yelling children swarmed over the flags and rude cobblestones that paved the ways. Like incense, heavy and pungent, the rich effluvia of stable-yards swirled in air made visible by its faint burden of mist. Over against the entrance wherein Kirkwood and the girl lurked, confounded by the problem of escaping undetected through this vivacious scene, a stable-door stood wide, exposing a dimly illumined interior. Before it waited a four-wheeler, horse already hitched in between the shafts, while its driver, a man of leisurely turn of mind, made lingering inspection of straps and buckles, and, while Kirkwood watched him, turned attention to the carriage lamps. The match which he raked spiritedly down his thigh, flared ruddily; the succeeding paler glow of the lamp threw into relief a heavy beefy mask, with shining bosses for cheeks and nose and chin; through narrow slits two cunning eyes glittered like dull gems. Kirkwood appraised him with attention, as one in whose gross carcass was embodied their only hope of unannoyed return to the streets and normal surroundings of their world. The difficulty lay in attracting the man's attention and engaging him without arousing his suspicions or bringing the population about their ears. Though he hesitated long, no favorable opportunity presented itself; and in time the Jehu approached the box with the ostensible purpose of mounting and driving off. In this critical situation the American, forced to recognize that boldness must mark his course, took the girl's fate and his own in his hands, and with a quick word to his companion, stepped out of hiding. The cabby had a foot upon the step when Kirkwood tapped his shoulder. "My man--" "Lor, lumme!" cried the fellow in amaze, pivoting on his heel. Cupidity and quick understanding enlivened the eyes which in two glances looked Kirkwood up and down, comprehending at once both his badly rumpled hat and patent-leather shoes. "S'help me,"--thickly,--"where'd you drop from, guvner?" "That's my affair," said Kirkwood briskly. "Are you engaged?" "If you mykes yerself my fare," returned the cabby shrewdly, "I _ham_." "Ten shillings, then, if you get us out of here in one minute and to--say--Hyde Park Corner in fifteen." "Us?" demanded the fellow aggressively. Kirkwood motioned toward the passageway. "There's a lady with me--there. Quick now!" Still the man did not move. "Ten bob," he bargained; "an' you runnin' awye with th' stuffy ol' gent's fair darter? Come now, guvner, is it gen'rous? Myke it a quid an'--" "A pound then. _Will_ you hurry?" By way of answer the fellow scrambled hastily up to the box and snatched at the reins. "_Ck_! Gee-e hup!" he cried sonorously. By now the mews had wakened to the fact of the presence of a "toff" in its midst. His light topcoat and silk hat-rendered him as conspicuous as a red Indian in war-paint would have been on Rotten Row. A cry of surprise was raised, and drowned in a volley of ribald inquiry and chaff. Fortunately, the cabby was instant to rein in skilfully before the passageway, and Kirkwood had the door open before the four-wheeler stopped. The girl, hugging her cloak about her, broke cover (whereat the hue and cry redoubled), and sprang into the body of the vehicle. Kirkwood followed, shutting the door. As the cab lurched forward he leaned over and drew down the window-shade, shielding the girl from half a hundred prying eyes. At the same time they gathered momentum, banging swiftly, if loudly out of the mews. An urchin, leaping on the step to spy in Kirkwood's window, fell off, yelping, as the driver's whiplash curled about his shanks. The gloom of the tunnel inclosed them briefly ere the lights of the Hog-in-the-Pound flashed by and the wheels began to roll more easily. Kirkwood drew back with a sigh of relief. "Thank God!" he said softly. The girl had no words. Worried by her silence, solicitous lest, the strain ended, she might be on the point of fainting, he let up the shade and lowered the window at her side. She seemed to have collapsed in her corner. Against the dark upholstery her hair shone like pale gold in the half-light; her eyes were closed and she held a handkerchief to her lips; the other hand lay limp. "Miss Calendar?" She started, and something bulky fell from the seat and thumped heavily on the floor. Kirkwood bent to pick it up, and so for the first time was made aware that she had brought with her a small black gladstone bag of considerable weight. As he placed it on the forward seat their eyes met. "I didn't know--" he began. "It was to get that," she hastened to explain, "that my father sent me ..." "Yes," he assented in a tone indicating his complete comprehension. "I trust ..." he added vaguely, and neglected to complete the observation, losing himself in a maze of conjecture not wholly agreeable. This was a new phase of the adventure. He eyed the bag uneasily. What did it contain? How did he know ...? Hastily he abandoned that line of thought. He had no right to infer anything whatever, who had thrust himself uninvited into her concerns--uninvited, that was to say, in the second instance, having been once definitely given his congé. Inevitably, however, a thousand unanswerable questions pestered him; just as, at each fresh facet of mystery disclosed by the sequence of the adventure, his bewilderment deepened. The girl stirred restlessly. "I have been thinking," she volunteered in a troubled tone, "that there is absolutely no way I know of, to thank you properly." "It is enough if I've been useful," he rose in gallantry to the emergency. "That," she commented, "was very prettily said. But then I have never known any one more kind and courteous and--and considerate, than you." There was no savor of flattery in the simple and direct statement; indeed, she was looking away from him, out of the window, and her face was serious with thought; she seemed to be speaking of, rather than to, Kirkwood. "And I have been wondering," she continued with unaffected candor, "what you must be thinking of me." "I? ... What should I think of you, Miss Calendar?" With the air of a weary child she laid her head against the cushions again, face to him, and watched him through lowered lashes, unsmiling. "You might be thinking that an explanation is due you. Even the way we were brought together was extraordinary, Mr. Kirkwood. You must be very generous, as generous as you have shown yourself brave, not to require some sort of an explanation of me." "I don't see it that way." "I do ... You have made me like you very much, Mr. Kirkwood." He shot her a covert glance--causelessly, for her _naiveté_ was flawless. With a feeling of some slight awe he understood this--a sensation of sincere reverence for the unspoiled, candid, child's heart and mind that were hers. "I'm glad," he said simply; "very glad, if that's the case, and presupposing I deserve it. Personally," he laughed, "I seem to myself to have been rather forward." "No; only kind and a gentleman." "But--please!" he protested. "Oh, but I mean it, every word! Why shouldn't I? In a little while, ten minutes, half an hour, we shall have seen the last of each other. Why should I not tell you how I appreciate all that you have unselfishly done for me?" "If you put it that way,--I'm sure I don't know; beyond that it embarrasses me horribly to have you overestimate me so. If any courage has been shown this night, it is yours ... But I'm forgetting again." He thought to divert her. "Where shall I tell the cabby to go this time, Miss Calendar?" "Craven Street, please," said the girl, and added a house number. "I am to meet my father there, with this,"--indicating the gladstone bag. Kirkwood thrust head and shoulders out the window and instructed the cabby accordingly; but his ruse had been ineffectual, as he found when he sat back again. Quite composedly the girl took up the thread of conversation where it had been broken off. "It's rather hard to keep silence, when you've been so good. I don't want you to think me less generous than yourself, but, truly, I can tell you nothing." She sighed a trace resentfully; or so he thought. "There is little enough in this--this wretched affair, that I understand myself; and that little, I may not tell ... I want you to know that." "I understand, Miss Calendar." "There's one thing I may say, however. I have done nothing wrong to-night, I believe," she added quickly. "I've never for an instant questioned that," he returned with a qualm of shame; for what he said was not true. "Thank you ..." The four-wheeler swung out of Oxford Street into Charing Cross Road. Kirkwood noted the fact with a feeling of some relief that their ride was to be so short; like many of his fellow-sufferers from "the artistic temperament," he was acutely disconcerted by spoken words of praise and gratitude; Miss Calendar, unintentionally enough, had succeeded only in rendering him self-conscious and ill at ease. Nor had she fully relieved her mind, nor voiced all that perturbed her. "There's one thing more," she said presently: "my father. I--I hope you will think charitably of him." "Indeed, I've no reason or right to think otherwise." "I was afraid--afraid his actions might have seemed peculiar, to-night ..." "There are lots of things I don't understand, Miss Calendar. Some day, perhaps, it will all clear up,--this trouble of yours. At least, one supposes it is trouble, of some sort. And then you will tell me the whole story.... Won't you?" Kirkwood insisted. "I'm afraid not," she said, with a smile of shadowed sadness. "We are to say good night in a moment or two, and--it will be good-by as well. It's unlikely that we shall ever meet again." "I refuse positively to take such a gloomy view of the case!" She shook her head, laughing with him, but with shy regret. "It's so, none the less. We are leaving London this very night, my father and I--leaving England, for that matter." "Leaving England?" he echoed. "You're not by any chance bound for America, are you?" "I ... can't tell you." "But you can tell me this: are you booked on the _Minneapolis_?" "No--o; it is a--quite another boat." "Of course!" he commented savagely. "It wouldn't be me to have _any_ sort of luck!" She made no reply beyond a low laugh. He stared gloomily out of his window, noting indifferently that they were passing the National Gallery. On their left Trafalgar Square stretched, broad and bare, a wilderness of sooty stone with an air of mutely tolerating its incongruous fountains. Through Charing Cross roared a tide-rip of motor-busses and hackney carriages. Glumly the young man foresaw the passing of his abbreviated romance; their destination was near at hand. Brentwick had been right, to some extent, at least; it was quite true that the curtain had been rung up that very night, upon Kirkwood's Romance; unhappily, as Brentwick had not foreseen, it was immediately to be rung down. The cab rolled soberly into the Strand. "Since we are to say good-by so very soon," suggested Kirkwood, "may I ask a parting favor, Miss Calendar?" She regarded him with friendly eyes. "You have every right," she affirmed gently. "Then please to tell me frankly: are you going into any further danger?" "And is that the only boon you crave at my hands, Mr. Kirkwood?" "Without impertinence ..." For a little time, waiting for him to conclude his vague phrase, she watched him in an expectant silence. But the man was diffident to a degree--At length, somewhat unconsciously, "I think not," she answered. "No; there will be no danger awaiting me at Mrs. Hallam's. You need not fear for me any more--Thank you." He lifted his brows at the unfamiliar name. "Mrs. Hallam--?" "I am going to her house in Craven Street." "Your father is to meet you there?"--persistently. "He promised to." "But if he shouldn't?" "Why--" Her eyes clouded; she pursed her lips over the conjectural annoyance. "Why, in that event, I suppose--It would be very embarrassing. You see, I don't know Mrs. Hallam; I don't know that she expects me, unless my father is already there. They are old friends--I could drive round for a while and come back, I suppose." But she made it plain that the prospect did not please her. "Won't you let me ask if Mr. Calender is there, before you get out, then? I don't like to be dismissed," he laughed; "and, you know, you shouldn't go wandering round all alone." The cab drew up. Kirkwood put a hand on the door and awaited her will. "It--it would be very kind ... I hate to impose upon you." He turned the knob and got out. "If you'll wait one moment," he said superfluously, as he closed the door. Pausing only to verify the number, he sprang up the steps and found the bell-button. It was a modest little residence, in nothing more remarkable than its neighbors, unless it was for a certain air of extra grooming: the area railing was sleek with fresh black paint; the doorstep looked the better for vigorous stoning; the door itself was immaculate, its brasses shining lustrous against red-lacquered woodwork. A soft glow filled the fanlight. Overhead the drawing-room windows shone with a cozy, warm radiance. The door opened, framing the figure of a maid sketched broadly in masses of somber black and dead white. "Can you tell me, is Mr. Calendar here?" The servant's eyes left his face, looked past him at the waiting cab, and returned. "I'm not sure, sir. If you will please step in." Kirkwood hesitated briefly, then acceded. The maid closed the door. "What name shall I say, sir?" "Mr. Kirkwood." "If you will please to wait one moment, sir--" He was left in the entry hall, the servant hurrying to the staircase and up. Three minutes elapsed; he was on the point of returning to the girl, when the maid reappeared. "Mrs. Hallam says, will you kindly step up-stairs, sir." Disgruntled, he followed her; at the head of the stairs she bowed him into the drawing-room and again left him to his own resources. Nervous, annoyed, he paced the floor from wall to wall, his footfalls silenced by heavy rugs. As the delay was prolonged he began to fume with impatience, wondering, half regretting that he had left the girl outside, definitely sorry that he had failed to name his errand more explicitly to the maid. At another time, in another mood, he might have accorded more appreciation to the charm of the apartment, which, betraying the feminine touch in every detail of arrangement and furnishing, was very handsome in an unconventional way. But he was quite heedless of externals. Wearied, he deposited himself sulkily in an armchair by the hearth. From a boudoir on the same floor there came murmurs of two voices, a man's and a woman's. The latter laughed prettily. "Oh, any time!" snorted the American. "Any time you're through with your confounded flirtation, Mr. George B. Calendar!" The voices rose, approaching. "Good night," said the woman gaily; "farewell and--good luck go with you!" "Thank you. Good night," replied the man more conservatively. Kirkwood rose, expectant. There was a swish of draperies, and a moment later he was acknowledging the totally unlooked-for entrance of the mistress of the house. He had thought to see Calendar, presuming him to be the man closeted with Mrs. Hallam; but, whoever that had been, he did not accompany the woman. Indeed, as she advanced from the doorway, Kirkwood could hear the man's footsteps on the stairs. "This is Mr. Kirkwood?" The note of inquiry in the well-trained voice--a very alluring voice and one pleasant to listen to, he thought--made it seem as though she had asked, point-blank, "Who is Mr. Kirkwood?" He bowed, discovering himself in the presence of an extraordinarily handsome and interesting woman; a woman of years which as yet had not told upon her, of experience that had not availed to harden her, at least in so far as her exterior charm of personality was involved; a woman, in brief, who bore close inspection well, despite an elusive effect of maturity, not without its attraction for men. Kirkwood was impressed that it would be very easy to learn to like Mrs. Hallam more than well--with her approval. Although he had not anticipated it, he was not at all surprised to recognize in her the woman who, if he were not mistaken, had slipped to Calendar that warning in the dining-room of the Pless. Kirkwood's state of mind had come to be such, through his experiences of the past few hours, that he would have accepted anything, however preposterous, as a commonplace happening. But for that matter there was nothing particularly astonishing in this _rencontre_. "I am Mrs. Hallam. You were asking for Mr. Calendar?" "He was to have been here at this hour, I believe," said Kirkwood. "Yes?" There was just the right inflection of surprise in her carefully controlled tone. He became aware of an undercurrent of feeling; that the woman was estimating him shrewdly with her fine direct eyes. He returned her regard with admiring interest; they were gray-green eyes, deep-set but large, a little shallow, a little changeable, calling to mind the sea on a windy, cloudy day. Below stairs a door slammed. "I am not a detective, Mrs. Hallam," announced the young man suddenly. "Mr. Calendar required a service of me this evening; I am here in natural consequence. If it was Mr. Calendar who left this house just now, I am wasting time." "It was not Mr. Calendar." The fine-lined brows arched in surprise, real or pretended, at his first blurted words, and relaxed; amused, the woman laughed deliciously. "But I am expecting him any moment; he was to have been here half an hour since.... Won't you wait?" She indicated, with a gracious gesture, a chair, and took for herself one end of a davenport. "I'm sure he won't be long, now." "Thank you, I will return, if I may." Kirkwood moved toward the door. "But there's no necessity--" She seemed insistent on detaining him, possibly because she questioned his motive, possibly for her own divertisement. Kirkwood deprecated his refusal with a smile. "The truth is, Miss Calendar is waiting in a cab, outside. I--" "Dorothy Calendar!" Mrs. Hallam rose alertly. "But why should she wait there? To be sure, we've never met; but I have known her father for many years." Her eyes held steadfast to his face; shallow, flawed by her every thought, like the sea by a cat's-paw he found them altogether inscrutable; yet received an impression that their owner was now unable to account for him. She swung about quickly, preceding him to the door and down the stairs. "I am sure Dorothy will come in to wait, if I ask her," she told Kirkwood in a high sweet voice. "I'm so anxious to know her. It's quite absurd, really, of her--to stand on ceremony with me, when her father made an appointment here. I'll run out and ask--" Mrs. Hallam's slim white fingers turned latch and knob, opening the street door, and her voice died away as she stepped out into the night. For a moment, to Kirkwood, tagging after her with an uncomfortable sense of having somehow done the wrong thing, her figure--full fair shoulders and arms rising out of the glittering dinner gown--cut a gorgeous silhouette against the darkness. Then, with a sudden, imperative gesture, she half turned towards him. "But," she exclaimed, perplexed, gazing to right and left, "but the cab, Mr. Kirkwood?" He was on the stoop a second later. Standing beside her, he stared blankly. To the left the Strand roared, the stream of its night-life in high spate; on the right lay the Embankment, comparatively silent and deserted, if brilliant with its high-swung lights. Between the two, quiet Craven Street ran, short and narrow, and wholly innocent of any form of equipage. VI "BELOW BRIDGE" In silence Mrs. Hallam turned to Kirkwood, her pose in itself a question and a peremptory one. Her eyes had narrowed; between their lashes the green showed, a thin edge like jade, cold and calculating. The firm lines of her mouth and chin had hardened. Temporarily dumb with consternation, he returned her stare as silently. "_Well_, Mr.--Kirkwood?" "Mrs. Hallam," he stammered, "I--" She lifted her shoulders impatiently and with a quick movement stepped back across the threshold, where she paused, a rounded arm barring the entrance, one hand grasping the door-knob, as if to shut him out at any moment. "I'm awaiting your explanation," she said coldly. [Illustration: "I'm waiting your explanation," she said coldly.] He grinned with nervousness, striving to penetrate the mental processes of this handsome Mrs. Hallam. She seemed to regard him with a suspicion which he thought inexcusable. Did she suppose he had spirited Dorothy Calendar away and then called to apprise her of the fact? Or that he was some sort of an adventurer, who had manufactured a plausible yarn to gain him access to her home? Or--harking back to her original theory--that he was an emissary from Scotland Yard? ... Probably she distrusted him on the latter hypothesis. The reflection left him more at ease. "I am quite as mystified as you, Mrs. Hallam," he began. "Miss Calendar was here, at this door, in a four-wheeler, not ten minutes ago, and--" "Then where is she now?" "Tell me where Calendar is," he retorted, inspired, "and I'll try to answer you!" But her eyes were blank. "You mean--?" "That Calendar was in this house when I came; that he left, found his daughter in the cab, and drove off with her. It's clear enough." "You are quite mistaken," she said thoughtfully. "George Calendar has not been here this night." He wondered that she did not seem to resent his imputation. "I think not--" "Listen!" she cried, raising a warning hand; and relaxing her vigilant attitude, moved forward once more, to peer down toward the Embankment. A cab had cut in from that direction and was bearing down upon them with a brisk rumble of hoofs. As it approached, Kirkwood's heart, that had lightened, was weighed upon again by disappointment. It was no four-wheeler, but a hansom, and the open wings of the apron, disclosing a white triangle of linen surmounted by a glowing spot of fire, betrayed the sex of the fare too plainly to allow of further hope that it might be the girl returning. At the door, the cab pulled up sharply and a man tumbled hastily out upon the sidewalk. "Here!" he cried throatily, tossing the cabby his fare, and turned toward the pair upon the doorstep, evidently surmising that something was amiss. For he was Calendar in proper person, and a sight to upset in a twinkling Kirkwood's ingeniously builded castle of suspicion. "Mrs. Hallam!" he cried, out of breath. "'S my daughter here?" And then, catching sight of Kirkwood's countenance: "Why, hello, Kirkwood!" he saluted him with a dubious air. The woman interrupted hastily. "Please come in, Mr. Calendar. This gentleman has been inquiring for you, with an astonishing tale about your daughter." "Dorothy!" Calendar's moon-like visage was momentarily divested of any trace of color. "What of her?" "You had better come in," advised Mrs. Hallam brusquely. The fat adventurer hopped hurriedly across the threshold, Kirkwood following. The woman shut the door, and turned with back to it, nodding significantly at Kirkwood as her eyes met Calendar's. "Well, well?" snapped the latter impatiently, turning to the young man. But Kirkwood was thinking quickly. For the present he contented himself with a deliberate statement of fact: "Miss Calendar has disappeared." It gave him an instant's time ... "There's something damned fishy!" he told himself. "These two are playing at cross-purposes. Calendar's no fool; he's evidently a crook, to boot. As for the woman, she's had her eyes open for a number of years. The main thing's Dorothy. She didn't vanish of her own initiative. And Mrs. Hallam knows, or suspects, more than she's going to tell. I don't think she wants Dorothy found. Calendar does. So do I. Ergo: I'm for Calendar." "Disappeared?" Calendar was barking at him. "How? When? Where?" "Within ten minutes," said Kirkwood. "Here, let's get it straight.... With her permission I brought her here in a four-wheeler." He was carefully suppressing all mention of Frognall Street, and in Calendar's glance read approval of the elision. "She didn't want to get out, unless you were here. I asked for you. The maid showed me up-stairs. I left your daughter in the cab--and by the way, I hadn't paid the driver. That's funny, too! Perhaps six or seven minutes after I came in Mrs. Hallam found out that Miss Calendar was with me and wanted to ask her in. When we got to the door--no cab. There you have it all." "Thanks--it's plenty," said Calendar dryly. He bent his head in thought for an instant, then looked up and fixed Mrs. Hallam with an unprejudiced eye, "I say!" he demanded explosively. "There wasn't any one here that knew--eh?" Her fine eyes wavered and fell before his; and Kirkwood remarked that her under lip was curiously drawn in. "I heard a man leave as Mrs. Hallam joined me," he volunteered helpfully, and with a suspicion of malice. "And after that--I paid no attention at the time--it seems to me I did hear a cab in the street--" "Ow?" interjected Calendar, eying the woman steadfastly and employing an exclamation of combined illumination and inquiry more typically British than anything Kirkwood had yet heard from the man. For her part, the look she gave Kirkwood was sharp with fury. It was more; it was a mistake, a flaw in her diplomacy; for Calendar intercepted it. Unceremoniously he grasped her bare arm with his fat hand. "Tell me who it was," he demanded in an ugly tone. She freed herself with a twist, and stepped back, a higher color in her cheeks, a flash of anger in her eyes. "Mr. Mulready," she retorted defiantly. "What of that?" "I wish I was sure," declared the fat adventurer, exasperated. "As it is, I bet a dollar you've put your foot in it, my lady. I warned you of that blackguard.... There! The mischief's done; we won't row over it. One moment." He begged it with a wave of his hand; stood pondering briefly, fumbled for his watch, found and consulted it. "It's the barest chance," he muttered. "Perhaps we can make it." "What are you going to do?" asked the woman. "Give _Mister_ Mulready a run for his money. Come along, Kirkwood; we haven't a minute. Mrs. Hallam, permit us...." She stepped aside and he brushed past her to the door. "Come, Kirkwood!" He seemed to take Kirkwood's company for granted; and the young man was not inclined to argue the point. Meekly enough he fell in with Calendar on the sidewalk. Mrs. Hallam followed them out. "You won't forget?" she called tentatively. "I'll 'phone you if we find out anything." Calendar jerked the words unceremoniously over his shoulder as, linking arms with Kirkwood, he drew him swiftly along. They heard her shut the door; instantly Calendar stopped. "Look here, did Dorothy have a--a small parcel with her?" "She had a gladstone bag." "Oh, the devil, the devil!" Calendar started on again, muttering distractedly. As they reached the corner he disengaged his arm. "We've a minute and a half to reach Charing Cross Pier; and I think it's the last boat. You set the pace, will you? But remember I'm an oldish man and--and fat." They began to run, the one easily, the other lumbering after like an old-fashioned square-rigged ship paced by a liner. Beneath the railway bridge, in front of the Underground station, the cab-rank cried them on with sardonic view-halloos; and a bobby remarked them with suspicion, turning to watch as they plunged round the corner and across the wide Embankment. The Thames appeared before them, a river of ink on whose burnished surface lights swam in long winding streaks and oily blobs. By the floating pier a County Council steamboat strained its hawsers, snoring huskily. Bells were jingling in her engine-room as the two gained the head of the sloping gangway. Kirkwood slapped a shilling down on the ticket-window ledge. "Where to?" he cried back to Calendar. "Cherry Gardens Pier," rasped the winded man. He stumbled after Kirkwood, groaning with exhaustion. Only the tolerance of the pier employees gained them their end; the steamer was held some seconds for them; as Calendar staggered to its deck, the gangway was jerked in, the last hawser cast off. The boat sheered wide out on the river, then shot in, arrow-like, to the pier beneath Waterloo Bridge. The deck was crowded and additional passengers embarked at every stop. In the circumstances conversation, save on the most impersonal topics, was impossible; and even had it been necessary or advisable to discuss the affair which occupied their minds, where so many ears could hear, Calendar had breath enough neither to answer nor to catechize Kirkwood. They found seats on the forward deck and rested there in grim silence, both fretting under the enforced restraint, while the boat darted, like some illuminated and exceptionally active water insect, from pier to pier. As it snorted beneath London Bridge, Calendar's impatience drove him from his seat back to the gangway. "Next stop," he told Kirkwood curtly; and rested his heavy bulk against the paddle-box, brooding morosely, until, after an uninterrupted run of more than a mile, the steamer swept in, side-wheels backing water furiously against the ebbing tide, to Cherry Gardens landing. Sweet name for a locality unsavory beyond credence! ... As they emerged on the street level and turned west on Bermondsey Wall, Kirkwood was fain to tug his top-coat over his chest and button it tight, to hide his linen. In a guarded tone he counseled his companion to do likewise; and Calendar, after a moment's blank, uncomprehending stare, acknowledged the wisdom of the advice with a grunt. The very air they breathed was rank with fetid odors bred of the gaunt dark warehouses that lined their way; the lights were few; beneath the looming buildings the shadows were many and dense. Here and there dreary and cheerless public houses appeared, with lighted windows conspicuous in a lightless waste. From time to time, as they hurried on, they encountered, and made wide detours to escape contact with knots of wayfarers--men debased and begrimed, with dreary and slatternly women, arm in arm, zigzaging widely across the sidewalks, chorusing with sodden voices the burden of some popularized ballad. The cheapened, sentimental refrains echoed sadly between benighted walls.... Kirkwood shuddered, sticking close to Calendar's side. Life's naked brutalities had theretofore been largely out of his ken. He had heard of slums, had even ventured to mouth politely moral platitudes on the subject of overcrowding in great centers of population, but in the darkest flights of imagination had never pictured to himself anything so unspeakably foul and hopeless as this.... And they were come hither seeking--Dorothy Calendar! He was unable to conceive what manner of villainy could be directed against her, that she must be looked for in such surroundings. After some ten minutes' steady walking, Calendar turned aside with a muttered word, and dived down a covered, dark and evil-smelling passageway that seemed to lead toward the river. Mastering his involuntary qualms, Kirkwood followed. Some ten or twelve paces from its entrance the passageway swerved at a right angle, continuing three yards or so to end in a blank wall, wherefrom a flickering, inadequate gas-lamp jutted. At this point a stone platform, perhaps four feet square, was discovered, from the edge of which a flight of worn and slimy stone steps led down to a permanent boat-landing, where another gas-light flared gustily despite the protection of its frame of begrimed glass. "Good Lord!" exclaimed the young man. "What, in Heaven's name, Calendar--?" "Bermondsey Old Stairs. Come on." They descended to the landing-stage. Beneath them the Pool slept, a sheet of polished ebony, whispering to itself, lapping with small stealthy gurgles angles of masonry and ancient piles. On the farther bank tall warehouses reared square old-time heads, their uncompromising, rugged profile relieved here and there by tapering mastheads. A few, scattering, feeble lights were visible. Nothing moved save the river and the wind. The landing itself they found quite deserted; something which the adventurer comprehended with a nod which, like its accompanying, inarticulate ejaculation, might have been taken to indicate either satisfaction or disgust. He ignored Kirkwood altogether, for the time being, and presently produced a small, bright object, which, applied to his lips, proved to be a boatswain's whistle. He sounded two blasts, one long, one brief. There fell a lull, Kirkwood watching the other and wondering what next would happen. Calendar paced restlessly to and fro upon the narrow landing, now stopping to incline an ear to catch some anticipated sound, now searching with sweeping glances the black reaches of the Pool. Finally, consulting his watch, "Almost ten," he announced. "We're in time?" "Can't say.... Damn! ... If that infernal boat would only show up--" He was lifting the whistle to sound a second summons when a rowboat rounded a projecting angle formed by the next warehouse down stream, and with clanking oar-locks swung in toward the landing. On her thwarts two figures, dipping and rising, labored with the sweeps. As they drew in, the man forward shipped his blades, and rising, scrambled to the bows in order to grasp an iron mooring-ring set in the wall. The other awkwardly took in his oars and, as the current swung the stern downstream, placed a hand palm downward upon the bottom step to hold the boat steady. Calendar waddled to the brink of the stage, grunting with relief. "The other man?" he asked brusquely. "Has he gone aboard? Or is this the first trip to-night?" One of the watermen nodded assent to the latter question, adding gruffly: "Seen nawthin' of 'im, sir." "Very good," said Calendar, as if he doubted whether it were very good or bad. "We'll wait a bit." "Right-o!" agreed the waterman civilly. Calendar turned back, his small eyes glimmering with satisfaction. Fumbling in one coat pocket he brought to light a cigar-case. "Have a smoke?" he suggested with a show of friendliness. "By Heaven, I was beginnin' to get worried!" "As to what?" inquired Kirkwood pointedly, selecting a cigar. He got no immediate reply, but felt Calendar's sharp eyes upon him while he manoeuvered with matches for a light. "That's so," it came at length. "You don't know. I kind of forgot for a minute; somehow you seemed on the inside." Kirkwood laughed lightly. "I've experienced something of the same sensation in the past few hours." "Don't doubt it." Calendar was watching him narrowly. "I suppose," he put it to him abruptly, "you haven't changed your mind?" "Changed my mind?" "About coming in with me." "My dear sir, I can have no mind to change until a plain proposition is laid before me." "Hmm!" Calendar puffed vigorously until it occurred to him to change the subject. "You won't mind telling me what happened to you and Dorothy?" "Certainly not." Calendar drew nearer and Kirkwood, lowering his voice, narrated briefly the events since he had left the Pless in Dorothy's company. Her father followed him intently, interrupting now and again with exclamation or pertinent question; as, Had Kirkwood been able to see the face of the man in No. 9, Frognall Street? The negative answer seemed to disconcert him. "Youngster, you say? Blam' if I can lay my mind to _him_! Now if that Mulready--" "It would have been impossible for Mulready--whoever he is--to recover and get to Craven Street before we did," Kirkwood pointed out. "Well--go on." But when the tale was told, "It's that scoundrel, Mulready!" the man affirmed with heat. "It's his hand--I know him. I might have had sense enough to see he'd take the first chance to hand me the double-cross. Well, this does for _him_, all right!" Calendar lowered viciously at the river. "You've been blame' useful," he told Kirkwood assertively. "If it hadn't been for you, I don't know where _I'd_ be now,--nor Dorothy, either,"--an obvious afterthought. "There's no particular way I can show my appreciation, I suppose? Money--?" "I've got enough to last me till I reach New York, thank you." "Well, if the time ever comes, just shout for George B. I won't be wanting.... I only wish you were with us; but that's out of the question." "Doubtless ..." "No two ways about it. I bet anything you've got a conscience concealed about your person. What? You're an honest man, eh?" "I don't want to sound immodest," returned Kirkwood, amused. "You don't need to worry about that.... But an honest man's got no business in _my_ line." He glanced again at his watch. "Damn that Mulready! I wonder if he was 'cute enough to take another way? Or did he think ... The fool!" He cut off abruptly, seeming depressed by the thought that he might have been outwitted; and, clasping hands behind his back, chewed savagely on his cigar, watching the river. Kirkwood found himself somewhat wearied; the uselessness of his presence there struck him with added force. He bethought him of his boat-train, scheduled to leave a station miles distant, in an hour and a half. If he missed it, he would be stranded in a foreign land, penniless and practically without friends--Brentwick being away and all the rest of his circle of acquaintances on the other side of the Channel. Yet he lingered, in poor company, daring fate that he might see the end of the affair. Why? There was only one honest answer to that question. He stayed on because of his interest in a girl whom he had known for a matter of three hours, at most. It was insensate folly on his part, ridiculous from any point of view. But he made no move to go. The slow minutes lengthened monotonously. There came a sound from the street level. Calendar held up a hand of warning. "Here they come! Steady!" he said tensely. Kirkwood, listening intently, interpreted the noise as a clash of hoofs upon cobbles. Calendar turned to the boat. "Sheer off," he ordered. "Drop out of sight. I'll whistle when I want you." "Aye, aye, sir." The boat slipped noiselessly away with the current and in an instant was lost to sight. Calendar plucked at Kirkwood's sleeve, drawing him into the shadow of the steps. "E-easy," he whispered; "and, I say, lend me a hand, will you, if Mulready turns ugly?" "Oh, yes," assented Kirkwood, with a nonchalance not entirely unassumed. The racket drew nearer and ceased; the hush that fell thereafter seemed only accentuated by the purling of the river. It was ended by footsteps echoing in the covered passageway. Calendar craned his thick neck round the shoulder of stone, reconnoitering the landing and stairway. "Thank God!" he said under his breath. "I was right, after all!" A man's deep tones broke out above. "This way. Mind the steps; they're a bit slippery, Miss Dorothy." "But my father--?" came the girl's voice, attuned to doubt. "Oh, he'll be along--if he isn't waiting now, in the boat." They descended, the man leading. At the foot, without a glance to right or left, he advanced to the edge of the stage, leaning out over the rail as if endeavoring to locate the rowboat. At once the girl appeared, moving to his side. "But, Mr. Mulready--" The girl's words were drowned by a prolonged blast on the boatswain's whistle at her companion's lips; the shorter one followed in due course. Calendar edged forward from Kirkwood's side. "But what shall we do if my father isn't here? Wait?" "No; best not to; best to get on the _Alethea_ as soon as possible, Miss Calendar. We can send the boat back." "'Once aboard the lugger the girl is mine'--eh, Mulready?--to say nothing of the loot!" If Calendar's words were jocular, his tone conveyed a different impression entirely. Both man and girl wheeled right about to face him, the one with a strangled oath, the other with a low cry. "The devil!" exclaimed this Mr. Mulready. "Oh! My father!" the girl voiced her recognition of him. "Not precisely one and the same person," commented Calendar suavely. "But--er--thanks, just as much.... You see, Mulready, when I make an appointment, I keep it." "We'd begun to get a bit anxious about you--" Mulready began defensively. "So I surmised, from what Mrs. Hallam and Mr. Kirkwood told me.... Well?" The man found no ready answer. He fell back a pace to the railing, his features working with his deep chagrin. The murky flare of the gas-lamp overhead fell across a face handsome beyond the ordinary but marred by a sullen humor and seamed with indulgence: a face that seemed hauntingly familiar until Kirkwood in a flash of visual memory reconstructed the portrait of a man who lingered over a dining-table, with two empty chairs for company. This, then, was he whom Mrs. Hallam had left at the Pless; a tall, strong man, very heavy about the chest and shoulders.... "Why, my dear friend," Calendar was taunting him, "you don't seem overjoyed to see me, for all your wild anxiety! 'Pon my word, you act as if you hadn't expected me--and our engagement so clearly understood, at that! ... Why, you fool!"--here the mask of irony was cast. "Did you think for a moment I'd let myself be nabbed by that yap from Scotland Yard? Were you banking on that? I give you my faith I ambled out under his very nose! ... Dorothy, my dear," turning impatiently from Mulready, "where's that bag?" The girl withdrew a puzzled gaze from Mulready's face, (it was apparent to Kirkwood that this phase of the affair was no more enigmatic to him than to her), and drew aside a corner of her cloak, disclosing the gladstone bag, securely grasped in one gloved hand. "I have it, thanks to Mr. Kirkwood," she said quietly. Kirkwood chose that moment to advance from the shadow. Mulready started and fixed him with a troubled and unfriendly stare. The girl greeted him with a note of sincere pleasure in her surprise. "Why, Mr. Kirkwood! ... But I left you at Mrs. Hallam's!" Kirkwood bowed, smiling openly at Mulready's discomfiture. "By your father's grace, I came with him," he said. "You ran away without saying good night, you know, and I'm a jealous creditor." She laughed excitedly, turning to Calendar. "But _you_ were to meet me at Mrs. Hallam's?" "Mulready was good enough to try to save me the trouble, my dear. He's an unselfish soul, Mulready. Fortunately it happened that I came along not five minutes after he'd carried you off. How was that, Dorothy?" Her glance wavered uneasily between the two, Mulready and her father. The former, shrugging to declare his indifference, turned his back squarely upon them. She frowned. "He came out of Mrs. Hallam's and got into the four-wheeler, saying you had sent him to take your place, and would join us on the _Alethea_." "So-o! How about it, Mulready?" The man swung back slowly. "What you choose to think," he said after a deliberate pause. "Well, never mind! We'll go over the matter at our leisure on the _Alethea_." There was in the adventurer's tone a menace, bitter and not to be ignored; which Mulready saw fit to challenge. "I think not," he declared; "I think not. I'm weary of your addle-pated suspicions. It'd be plain to any one but a fool that I acted for the best interests of all concerned in this matter. If you're not content to see it in that light, I'm done." "Oh, if you want to put it that way, I'm _not_ content, Mr. Mulready," retorted Calendar dangerously. "Please yourself. I bid you good evening and--good-by." The man took a step toward the stairs. Calendar dropped his right hand into his top-coat pocket. "Just a minute," he said sweetly, and Mulready stopped. Abruptly the fat adventurer's smoldering resentment leaped in flame. "That'll be about all, Mr. Mulready! 'Bout face, you hound, and get into that boat! D'you think I'll temporize with you till Doomsday? Then forget it. You're wrong, dead wrong. Your bluff's called, and"--with an evil chuckle--"I hold a full house, Mulready,--every chamber taken." He lifted meaningly the hand in the coat pocket. "Now, in with you." With a grin and a swagger of pure bravado Mulready turned and obeyed. Unnoticed of any, save perhaps Calendar himself, the boat had drawn in at the stage a moment earlier. Mulready dropped into it and threw himself sullenly upon the midships thwart. "Now, Dorothy, in you go, my dear," continued Calendar, with a self-satisfied wag of his head. Half dazed, to all seeming, she moved toward the boat. With clumsy and assertive gallantry her father stepped before her, offering his hand,--his hand which she did not touch; for, in the act of descending, she remembered and swung impulsively back to Kirkwood. "Good night, Mr. Kirkwood; good night,--I shan't forget." He took her hand and bowed above it; but when his head was lifted, he still retained her fingers in a lingering clasp. "Good night," he said reluctantly. The crass incongruity of her in that setting smote him with renewed force. Young, beautiful, dainty, brilliant and graceful in her pretty evening gown, she figured strangely against the gloomy background of the river, in those dull and mean surroundings of dank stone and rusted iron. She was like (he thought extravagantly) a whiff of flower-fragrance lost in the miasmatic vapors of a slough. The innocent appeal and allure of her face, upturned to his beneath the gas-light, wrought compassionately upon his sensitive and generous heart. He was aware of a little surge of blind rage against the conditions that had brought her to that spot, and against those whom he held responsible for those conditions. In a sudden flush of daring he turned and nodded coolly to Calendar. "With your permission," he said negligently; and drew the girl aside to the angle of the stairway. "Miss Calendar--" he began; but was interrupted. "Here--I say!" Calendar had started toward him angrily. Kirkwood calmly waved him back. "I want a word in private with your daughter, Mr. Calendar," he announced with quiet dignity. "I don't think you'll deny me? I've saved you some slight trouble to-night." Disgruntled, the adventurer paused. "Oh--_all_ right," he grumbled. "I don't see what ..." He returned to the boat. "Forgive me, Miss Calendar," continued Kirkwood nervously. "I know I've no right to interfere, but--" "Yes, Mr. Kirkwood?" "--but hasn't this gone far enough?" he floundered unhappily. "I can't like the look of things. Are you sure--sure that it's all right--with you, I mean?" She did not answer at once; but her eyes were kind and sympathetic. He plucked heart of their tolerance. "It isn't too late, yet," he argued. "Let me take you to your friends,--you must have friends in the city. But this--this midnight flight down the Thames, this atmosphere of stealth and suspicion, this--" "But my place is with my father, Mr. Kirkwood," she interposed. "I daren't doubt him--dare I?" "I ... suppose not." "So I must go with him.... I'm glad--thank you for caring, dear Mr. Kirkwood. And again, good night." "Good luck attend you," he muttered, following her to the boat. Calendar helped her in and turned back to Kirkwood with a look of arch triumph; Kirkwood wondered if he had overheard. Whether or no, he could afford to be magnanimous. Seizing Kirkwood's hand, he pumped it vigorously. "My dear boy, you've been an angel in disguise! And I guess you think me the devil in masquerade." He chuckled, in high conceit with himself over the turn of affairs. "Good night and--and fare thee well!" He dropped into the boat, seating himself to face the recalcitrant Mulready. "Cast off, there!" The boat dropped away, the oars lifting and falling. With a weariful sense of loneliness and disappointment, Kirkwood hung over the rail to watch them out of sight. A dozen feet of water lay between the stage and the boat. The girl's dress remained a spot of cheerful color; her face was a blur. As the watermen swung the bows down-stream, she looked back, lifting an arm spectral in its white sheath. Kirkwood raised his hat. The boat gathered impetus, momentarily diminishing in the night's illusory perspective; presently it was little more than a fugitive blot, gliding swiftly in midstream. And then, it was gone entirely, engulfed by the obliterating darkness. [Illustration: The boat gathered impetus.] Somewhat wearily the young man released the railing and ascended the stairs. "And that is the end!" he told himself, struggling with an acute sense of personal injury. He had been hardly used. For a few hours his life had been lightened by the ineffable glamor of Romance; mystery and adventure had engaged him, exorcising for the time the Shade of Care; he had served a fair woman and been associated with men whose ways, however questionable, were the ways of courage, hedged thickly about with perils. All that was at an end. Prosaic and workaday to-morrows confronted him in endless and dreary perspective; and he felt again upon his shoulder the bony hand of his familiar, Care.... He sighed: "Ah, well!" Disconsolate and aggrieved, he gained the street. He was miles from St. Pancras, foot-weary, to all intents and purposes lost. In this extremity, Chance smiled upon him. The cabby who, at his initial instance, had traveled this weary way from Quadrant Mews, after the manner of his kind, ere turning back, had sought surcease of fatigue at the nearest public; from afar Kirkwood saw the four-wheeler at the curb, and made all haste toward it. Entering the gin-mill he found the cabby, soothed him with bitter, and, instructing him for St. Pancras with all speed, dropped, limp and listless with fatigue, into the conveyance. As it moved, he closed his eyes; the face of Dorothy Calendar shone out from the blank wall of his consciousness, like an illuminated picture cast upon a screen. She smiled upon him, her head high, her eyes tender and trustful. And he thought that her scarlet lips were sweet with promise and her glance a-brim with such a light as he had never dreamed to know. And now that he knew it and desired it, it was too late; an hour gone he might, by a nod of his head, have cast his fortunes with hers for weal or woe. But now ... Alas and alackaday, that Romance was no more! VII DIVERSIONS OF A RUINED GENTLEMAN--RESUMED From the commanding elevation of the box, "Three 'n' six," enunciated the cabby, his tone that of a man prepared for trouble, acquainted with trouble, inclined to give trouble a welcome. His bloodshot eyes blinked truculently at his alighted fare. "Three 'n' six," he iterated aggressively. An adjacent but theretofore abstracted policeman pricked up his ears and assumed an intelligent expression. "Bermondsey Ol' Stairs to Sain' Pancras," argued the cabby assertively; "seven mile by th' radius; three 'n' six!" Kirkwood stood on the outer station platform, near the entrance to third-class waiting-rooms. Continuing to fumble through his pockets for an elusive sovereign purse, he looked up mildly at the man. "All right, cabby," he said, with pacific purpose; "you'll get your fare in half a shake." "Three 'n' six!" croaked the cabby, like a blowsy and vindictive parrot. The bobby strolled nearer. "Yes?" said Kirkwood, mildly diverted. "Why not sing it, cabby?" "Lor' lumme!" The cabby exploded with indignation, continuing to give a lifelike imitation of a rumpled parrot. "I 'ad trouble enough wif you at Bermondsey Ol' Stairs, hover that quid you promised, didn't I? Sing it! My heye!" "Quid, cabby?" And then, remembering that he had promised the fellow a sovereign for fast driving from Quadrant Mews, Kirkwood grinned broadly, eyes twinkling; for Mulready must have fallen heir to that covenant. "But you got the sovereign? You got it, didn't you, cabby?" The driver affirmed the fact with unnecessary heat and profanity and an amendment to the effect that he would have spoiled his fare's sanguinary conk had the outcome been less satisfactory. The information proved so amusing that Kirkwood, chuckling, forbore to resent the manner of its delivery, and, abandoning until a more favorable time the chase of the coy sovereign purse, extracted from one trouser pocket half a handful of large English small change. "Three shillings, six-pence," he counted the coins into the cabby's grimy and bloated paw; and added quietly: "The exact distance is rather less than, four miles, my man; your fare, precisely two shillings. You may keep the extra eighteen pence, for being such a conscientious blackguard,--or talk it over with the officer here. Please yourself." He nodded to the bobby, who, favorably impressed by the silk hat which Kirkwood, by diligent application of his sleeve during the cross-town ride, had managed to restore to a state somewhat approximating its erstwhile luster, smiled at the cabby a cold, hard smile. Whereupon the latter, smirking in unabashed triumph, spat on the pavement at Kirkwood's feet, gathered up the reins, and wheeled out. "A 'ard lot, sir," commented the policeman, jerking his helmeted head towards the vanishing four-wheeler. "Right you are," agreed Kirkwood amiably, still tickled by the knowledge that Mulready had been obliged to pay three times over for the ride that ended in his utter discomfiture. Somehow, Kirkwood had conceived no liking whatever for the man; Calendar he could, at a pinch, tolerate for his sense of humor, but Mulready--! "A surly dog," he thought him. Acknowledging the policeman's salute and restoring two shillings and a few fat copper pennies to his pocket, he entered the vast and echoing train-shed. In the act, his attention was attracted and immediately riveted by the spectacle of a burly luggage navvy in a blue jumper in the act of making off with a large, folding sign-board, of which the surface was lettered expansively with the advice, in red against a white background: BOAT-TRAIN LEAVES ON TRACK 3 Incredulous yet aghast the young man gave instant chase to the navvy, overhauling him with no great difficulty. For your horny-handed British working-man is apparently born with two golden aphorisms in his mouth: "Look before you leap," and "Haste makes waste." He looks continually, seldom, if ever, leaps, and never is prodigal of his leisure. Excitedly Kirkwood touched the man's arm with a detaining hand. "Boat-train?" he gasped, pointing at the board. "Left ten minutes ago, thank you, sir." "Wel-l, but...! Of course I can get another train at Tilbury?" "For yer boat? No, sir, thank you, sir. Won't be another tryne till mornin', sir." "Oh-h!..." Aimlessly Kirkwood drifted away, his mind a blank. Sometime later he found himself on the steps outside the station, trying to stare out of countenance a glaring electric mineral-water advertisement on the farther side of the Euston Road. He was stranded.... Beyond the spiked iron fence that enhedges the incurving drive, the roar of traffic, human, wheel and hoof, rose high for all the lateness of the hour: sidewalks groaning with the restless contact of hundreds of ill-shod feet; the roadway thundering--hansoms, four-wheelers, motor-cars, dwarfed coster-mongers' donkey-carts and ponderous, rumbling, C.-P. motor-vans, struggling for place and progress. For St. Pancras never sleeps. The misty air swam luminous with the light of electric signs as with the radiance of some lurid and sinister moon. The voice of London sounded in Kirkwood's ears, like the ominous purring of a somnolent brute beast, resting, gorged and satiated, ere rising again to devour. To devour-- Stranded!... Distracted, he searched pocket after pocket, locating his watch, cigar- and cigarette-cases, match-box, penknife--all the minutiae of pocket-hardware affected by civilized man; with old letters, a card-case, a square envelope containing his steamer ticket; but no sovereign purse. His small-change pocket held less than three shillings--two and eight, to be exact--and a brass key, which he failed to recognize as one of his belongings. And that was all. At sometime during the night he had lost (or been cunningly bereft of?) that little purse of chamois-skin containing the three golden sovereigns which he had been husbanding to pay his steamer expenses, and which, if only he had them now, would stand between him and starvation and a night in the streets. And, searching his heart, he found it brimming with gratitude to Mulready, for having relieved him of the necessity of settling with the cabby. "Vagabond?" said Kirkwood musingly. "Vagabond?" He repeated the word softly a number of times, to get the exact flavor of it, and found it little to his taste. And yet... He thrust both hands deep in his trouser pockets and stared purposelessly into space, twisting his eyebrows out of alignment and crookedly protruding his lower lip. If Brentwick were only in town--But he wasn't, and wouldn't be, within the week. "No good waiting here," he concluded. Composing his face, he reëntered the station. There were his trunks, of course. He couldn't leave them standing on the station platform for ever. He found the luggage-room and interviewed a mechanically courteous attendant, who, as the result of profound deliberation, advised him to try his luck at the lost-luggage room, across the station. He accepted the advice; it was a foregone conclusion that his effects had not been conveyed to the Tilbury dock; they could not have been loaded into the luggage van without his personal supervision. Still, anything was liable to happen when his unlucky star was in the ascendant. He found them in the lost-luggage room. A clerk helped him identify the articles and ultimately clucked with a perfunctory note: "Sixpence each, please." "I--ah--pardon?" "Sixpence each, the fixed charge, sir. For every twenty-four hours or fraction thereof, sixpence per parcel." "Oh, thank you so much," said Kirkwood sweetly. "I will call to-morrow." "Very good, sir. Thank you, sir." "Five times sixpence is two-and-six," Kirkwood computed, making his way hastily out of the station, lest a worse thing befall him. "No, bless your heart!--not while two and eight represents the sum total of my fortune." He wandered out into the night; he could not linger round the station till dawn; and what profit to him if he did? Even were he to ransom his trunks, one can scarcely change one's clothing in a public waiting-room. Somewhere in the distance a great clock chimed a single stroke, freighted sore with melancholy. It knelled the passing of the half-hour after midnight; a witching hour, when every public shuts up tight, and gentlemen in top-hats and evening dress are doomed to pace the pave till day (barring they have homes or visible means of support)--till day, when pawnshops open and such personal effects as watches and hammered silver cigar-cases may be hypothecated. Sable garments fluttering, Care fell into step with Philip Kirkwood; Care the inexorable slipped a skeleton arm through his and would not be denied; Care the jade clung affectionately to his side, refusing to be jilted. "Ah, you thought you would forget me?" chuckled the fleshless lips by his ear. "But no, my boy; I'm with you now, for ever and a day. 'Misery loves company,' and it wouldn't be pretty of me to desert you in this extremity, would it? Come, let us beguile the hours till dawn with conversation. Here's a sprightly subject: What are you going to do, Mr. Kirkwood? _What are you going to do?_" But Kirkwood merely shook a stubborn head and gazed straight before him, walking fast through ways he did not recognize, and pretending not to hear. None the less the sense of Care's solicitous query struck like a pain into his consciousness. What was he to do? An hour passed. Denied the opportunity to satisfy its beast hunger and thirst, humanity goes off to its beds. In that hour London quieted wonderfully; the streets achieved an effect of deeper darkness, the skies, lowering, looked down with a blush less livid for the shamelessness of man; cab ranks lengthened; solitary footsteps added unto themselves loud, alarming, offensive echoes; policemen, strolling with lamps blazing on their breasts, became as lightships in a trackless sea; each new-found street unfolded its perspective like a canyon of mystery, and yet teeming with a hundred masked hazards; the air acquired a smell more clear and clean, an effect more volatile; and the night-mist thickened until it studded one's attire with myriads of tiny buttons, bright as diamond dust. Through this long hour Kirkwood walked without a pause. Another clock, somewhere, clanged resonantly twice. The world was very still.... And so, wandering foot-loose in a wilderness of ways, turning aimlessly, now right, now left, he found himself in a street he knew, yet seemed not to know: a silent, black street one brief block in length, walled with dead and lightless dwellings, haunted by his errant memory; a street whose atmosphere was heavy with impalpable essence of desuetude; in two words, Frognall Street. Kirkwood identified it with a start and a guilty tremor. He stopped stock-still, in an unreasoning state of semi-panic, arrested by a silly impulse to turn and fly; as if the bobby, whom he descried approaching him with measured stride, pausing now and again to try a door or flash his bull's-eye down an area, were to be expected to identify the man responsible for that damnable racket raised ere midnight in vacant Number 9! Oddly enough, the shock of recognition brought him to his senses,--temporarily. He was even able to indulge himself in a quiet, sobering grin at his own folly. He passed the policeman with a nod and a cool word in response to the man's good-natured, "Good-night, sir." Number 9 was on the other side of the street; and he favored its blank and dreary elevation with a prolonged and frank stare--that profited him nothing, by the way. For a crazy notion popped incontinently into his head, and would not be cast forth. At the corner he swerved and crossed, still possessed of his devil of inspiration. It would be unfair to him to say that he did not struggle to resist it, for he did, because it was fairly and egregiously asinine; yet struggling, his feet trod the path to which it tempted him. "Why," he expostulated feebly, "I might's well turn back and beat that bobby over the head with my cane!..." But at the moment his hand was in his change pocket, feeling over that same brass door-key which earlier he had been unable to account for, and he was informing himself how very easy it would have been for the sovereign purse to have dropped from his waistcoat pocket while he was sliding on his ear down the dark staircase. To recover it meant, at the least, shelter for the night, followed by a decent, comfortable and sustaining morning meal. Fortified by both he could redeem his luggage, change to clothing more suitable for daylight traveling, pawn his valuables, and enter into negotiations with the steamship company for permission to exchange his passage, with a sum to boot, for transportation on another liner. A most feasible project! A temptation all but irresistible! But then--the risk.... Supposing (for the sake of argument) the customary night-watchman to have taken up a transient residence in Number 9; supposing the police to have entered with him and found the stunned man on the second floor: would the watchman not be vigilant for another nocturnal marauder? would not the police now, more than ever, be keeping a wary eye on that house of suspicious happenings? Decidedly, to reënter it would be to incur a deadly risk. And yet, undoubtedly, beyond question! his sovereign purse was waiting for him somewhere on the second flight of stairs; while as his means of clandestine entry lay warm in his fingers--the key to the dark entry, which he had by force of habit pocketed after locking the door. He came to the Hog-in-the-Pound. Its windows were dim with low-turned gas-lights. Down the covered alleyway, Quadrant Mews slept in a dusk but fitfully relieved by a lamp or two round which the friendly mist clung close and thick. There would be none to see.... Skulking, throat swollen with fear, heart beating like a snare-drum, Kirkwood took his chance. Buttoning his overcoat collar up to his chin and cursing the fact that his hat must stand out like a chimney-pot on a detached house, he sped on tiptoe down the cobbled way and close beneath the house-walls of Quadrant Mews. But, half-way in, he stopped, confounded by an unforeseen difficulty. How was he to identify the narrow entry of Number 9, whose counterparts doubtless communicated with the mews from every residence on four sides of the city block? The low inner tenements were yet high enough to hide the rear elevations of Frognall Street houses, and the mist was heavy besides; otherwise he had made shift to locate Number 9 by ticking off the dwellings from the corner. If he went on, hit or miss, the odds were anything-you-please to one that he would blunder into the servant's quarters of some inhabited house, and--be promptly and righteously sat upon by the service-staff, while the bobby was summoned. Be that as it might--he almost lost his head when he realized this--escape was already cut off by the way he had come. Some one, or, rather, some two men were entering the alley. He could hear the tramping and shuffle of clumsy feet, and voices that muttered indistinctly. One seemed to trip over something, and cursed. The other laughed; the voices grew more loud. They were coming his way. He dared no longer vacillate. But--which passage should he choose? He moved on with more haste than discretion. One heel slipped on a cobble time-worn to glassy smoothness; he lurched, caught himself up in time to save a fall, lost his hat, recovered it, and was discovered. A voice, maudlin with drink, hailed and called upon him to stand and give an account of himself, "like a goo' feller." Another tempted him with offers of drink and sociable confabulation. He yielded not; adamantine to the seductive lure, he picked up his heels and ran. Those behind him, remarking with resentment the amazing fact that an intimate of the mews should run away from liquor, cursed and made after him, veering, staggering, howling like ravening animals. For all their burden of intoxication, they knew the ground by instinct and from long association. They gained on him. Across the way a window-sash went up with a bang, and a woman screamed. Through the only other entrance to the mews a belated cab was homing; its driver, getting wind of the unusual, pulled up, blocking the way, and added his advice to the uproar. Caught thus between two fires, and with his persecutors hard upon him, Kirkwood dived into the nearest black hole of a passageway and in sheer desperation flung himself, key in hand, against the door at the end. Mark how his luck served him who had forsworn her! He found a keyhole and inserted the key. It turned. So did the knob. The door gave inward. He fell in with it, slammed it, shot the bolts, and, panting, leaned against its panels, in a pit of everlasting night but--saved!--for the time being, at all events. Outside somebody brushed against one wall, cannoned to the other, brought up with a crash against the door, and, perforce at a standstill, swore from his heart. "Gorblimy!" he declared feelingly. "I'd 'a' took my oath I sore'm run in 'ere!" And then, in answer to an inaudible question: "No, 'e ain't. Gorn an' let the fool go to 'ell. 'Oo wants 'im to share goo' liker? Not I!..." Joining his companion he departed, leaving behind him a trail of sulphur-tainted air. The mews quieted gradually. Indoors Kirkwood faced unhappily the enigma of fortuity, wondering: Was this by any possibility Number 9? The key had fitted; the bolts had been drawn on the inside; and while the key had been one of ordinary pattern and would no doubt have proven effectual with any one of a hundred common locks, the finger of probability seemed to indicate that his luck had brought him back to Number 9. In spite of all this, he was sensible of little confidence; though this were truly Number 9, his freedom still lay on the knees of the gods, his very life, belike, was poised, tottering, on a pinnacle of chance. In the end, taking heart of desperation, he stooped and removed his shoes; a precaution which later appealed to his sense of the ridiculous, in view of the racket he had raised in entering, but which at the moment seemed most natural and in accordance with common sense. Then rising, he held his breath, staring and listening. About him the pitch darkness was punctuated with fading points of fire, and in his ears was a noise of strange whisperings, very creepy--until, gritting his teeth, he controlled his nerves and gradually realized that he was alone, the silence undisturbed. He went forward gingerly, feeling his way like a blind man on strange ground. Ere long he stumbled over a door-sill and found that the walls of the passage had fallen away; he had entered a room, a black cavern of indeterminate dimensions. Across this he struck at random, walked himself flat against a wall, felt his way along to an open door, and passed through to another apartment as dark as the first. Here, endeavoring to make a circuit of the walls, he succeeded in throwing himself bodily across a bed, which creaked horribly; and for a full minute lay as he had fallen, scarce daring to think. But nothing followed, and he got up and found a shut door which let him into yet a third room, wherein he barked both shins on a chair; and escaped to a fourth whose atmosphere was highly flavored with reluctant odors of bygone cookery, stale water and damp plumbing--probably the kitchen. Thence progressing over complaining floors through what may have been the servants' hall, a large room with a table in the middle and a number of promiscuous chairs (witness his tortured shins!), he finally blundered into the basement hallway. By now a little calmer, he felt assured that this was really Number 9, Frognall Street, and a little happier about it all, though not even momentarily forgetful of the potential police and night-watchman. However, he mounted the steps to the ground floor without adventure and found himself at last in the same dim and ghostly hall which he had entered some six hours before; the mockery of dusk admitted by the fan-light was just strong enough to enable him to identify the general lay of the land and arrangement of furniture. More confidently with each uncontested step, he continued his quest. Elation was stirring his spirit when he gained the first floor and moved toward the foot of the second flight, approaching the spot whereat he was to begin the search for the missing purse. The knowledge that he lacked means of obtaining illumination deterred him nothing; he had some hope of finding matches in one of the adjacent rooms, but, failing that, was prepared to ascend the stairs on all fours, feeling every inch of their surface, if it took hours. Ever an optimistic soul, instinctively inclined to father faith with a hope, he felt supremely confident that his search would not prove fruitless, that he would win early release from his temporary straits. And thus it fell out that, at the instant he was thinking it time to begin to crawl and hunt, his stockinged feet came into contact with something heavy, yielding, warm--something that moved, moaned, and caused his hair to bristle and his flesh to creep. We will make allowances for him; all along he had gone on the assumption that his antagonist of the dark stairway would have recovered and made off with all expedition, in the course of ten or twenty minutes, at most, from the time of his accident. To find him still there was something entirely outside of Kirkwood's reckoning: he would as soon have thought to encounter say, Calendar,--would have preferred the latter, indeed. But this fellow whose disability was due to his own interference, who was reasonably to be counted upon to raise the very deuce and all of a row! The initial shock, however shattering to his equanimity, soon, lost effect. The man evidently remained unconscious, in fact had barely moved; while the moan that Kirkwood heard, had been distressingly faint. "Poor devil!" murmured the young man. "He must be in a pretty bad way, for sure!" He knelt, compassion gentling his heart, and put one hand to the insentient face. A warm sweat moistened his fingers; his palm was fanned by steady respiration. Immeasurably perplexed, the American rose, slipped on his shoes and buttoned them, thinking hard the while. What ought he to do? Obviously flight suggested itself,--incontinent flight, anticipating the man's recovery. On the other hand, indubitably the latter had sustained such injury that consciousness, when it came to him, would hardly be reinforced by much aggressive power. Moreover, it was to be remembered that the one was in that house with quite as much warrant as the other, unless Kirkwood had drawn a rash inference from the incident of the ragged sentry. The two of them were mutual, if antagonistic, trespassers; neither would dare bring about the arrest of the other. And then--and this was not the least consideration to influence Kirkwood--perhaps the fellow would die if he got no attention. Kirkwood shut his teeth grimly. "I'm no assassin," he informed himself, "to strike and run. If I've maimed this poor devil and there are consequences, I'll stand 'em. The Lord knows it doesn't matter a damn to anybody, not even to me, what happens to me; while _he_ may be valuable." Light upon the subject, actual as well as figurative, seemed to be the first essential; his mind composed, Kirkwood set himself in search of it. The floor he was on, however, afforded him no assistance; the mantels were guiltless of candles and he discovered no matches, either in the wide and silent drawing-room, with its ghastly furniture, like mummies in their linen swathings, or in the small boudoir at the back. He was to look either above or below, it seemed. After some momentary hesitation, he went up-stairs, his ascent marked by a single and grateful accident; half-way to the top he trod on an object that clinked underfoot, and, stooping, retrieved the lost purse. Thus was he justified of his temerity; the day was saved--that is, to-morrow was. The rooms of the second-floor were bedchambers, broad, deep, stately, inhabited by seven devils of loneliness. In one, on a dresser, Kirkwood found a stump of candle in a china candlestick; the two charred ends of matches at its base were only an irritating discovery, however--evidence that real matches had been the mode in Number 9, at some remote date. Disgusted and oppressed by cumulative inquisitiveness, he took the candle-end back to the hall; he would have given much for the time and means to make a more detailed investigation into the secret of the house. Perhaps it was mostly his hope of chancing on some clue to the mystery of Dorothy Calender--bewitching riddle that she was!--that fascinated his imagination so completely. Aside from her altogether, the great house that stood untenanted, yet in such complete order, so self-contained in its darkened quiet, intrigued him equally with the train of inexplicable events that had brought him within its walls. Now--since his latest entrance--his vision had adjusted itself to cope with the obscurity to some extent; and the street lights, meagerly reflected through the windows from the bosom of a sullen pall of cloud, low-swung above the city, had helped him to piece together many a detail of decoration and furnishing, alike somber and richly dignified. Kirkwood told himself that the owner, whoever he might be, was a man of wealth and taste inherited from another age; he had found little of meretricious to-day in the dwelling, much that was solid and sedate and homely, and--Victorian.... He could have wished for more; a box of early Victorian vestas had been highly acceptable. Making his way down-stairs to the stricken man--who was quite as he had been--Kirkwood bent over and thrust rifling fingers into his pockets, regardless of the wretched sense of guilt and sneakishness imparted by the action, stubbornly heedless of the possibility of the man's awakening to find himself being searched and robbed. In the last place he sought, which should (he realized) have been the first, to wit, the fob pocket of the white waistcoat, he found a small gold matchbox, packed tight with wax vestas; and, berating himself for crass stupidity--he had saved a deal of time and trouble by thinking of this before--lighted the candle. As its golden flame shot up with scarce a tremor, preyed upon by a perfectly excusable concern, he bent to examine the man's countenance.... The arm which had partly hidden it had fallen back into a natural position. It was a young face that gleamed pallid in the candlelight--a face unlined, a little vapid and insignificant, with features regular and neat, betraying few characteristics other than the purely negative attributes of a character as yet unformed, possibly unformable; much the sort of a face that he might have expected to see, remembering those thin and pouting lips that before had impressed him. Its owner was probably little more than twenty. In his attire there was a suspicion of a fop's preciseness, aside from its accidental disarray; the cut of his waistcoat was the extreme of the then fashion, the white tie (twisted beneath one ear) an exaggerated "butterfly," his collar nearly an inch too tall; and he was shod with pumps suitable only for the dancing-floor,--a whim of the young-bloods of London of that year. "I can't make him out at all!" declared Kirkwood. "The son of a gentleman too weak to believe that cubs need licking into shape? Reared to man's estate, so sheltered from the wicked world that he never grew a bark?... The sort that never had a quarrel in his life, 'cept with his tailor?... Now what the devil is _this_ thing doing in this midnight mischief?... Damn!" It was most exasperating, the incongruity of the boy's appearance assorted with his double rôle of persecutor of distressed damsels and nocturnal house-breaker! Kirkwood bent closer above the motionless head, with puzzled eyes striving to pin down some elusive resemblance that he thought to trace in those vacuous features--a resemblance to some one he had seen, or known, at some past time, somewhere, somehow. "I give it up. Guess I'm mistaken. Anyhow, five young Englishmen out of every ten of his class are just as blond and foolish. Now let's see how bad he's hurt." With hands strong and gentle, he turned the round, light head. Then, "Ah!" he commented in the accent of comprehension. For there was an angry looking bump at the base of the skull; and, the skin having been broken, possibly in collision with the sharp-edged newel-post, a little blood had stained and matted the straw-colored hair. Kirkwood let the head down and took thought. Recalling a bath-room on the floor above, thither he went, unselfishly forgetful of his predicament if discovered, and, turning on the water, sopped his handkerchief until it dripped. Then, returning, he took the boy's head on his knees, washed the wound, purloined another handkerchief (of silk, with a giddy border) from the other's pocket, and of this manufactured a rude but serviceable bandage. Toward the conclusion of his attentions, the sufferer began to show signs of returning animation. He stirred restlessly, whimpered a little, and sighed. And Kirkwood, in consternation, got up. "So!" he commented ruefully. "I guess I am an ass, all right--taking all that trouble for you, my friend. If I've got a grain of sense left, this is my cue to leave you alone in your glory." He was lingering only to restore to the boy's pockets such articles as he had removed in the search for matches,--the match-box, a few silver coins, a bulky sovereign purse, a handsome, plain gold watch, and so forth. But ere he concluded he was aware that the boy was conscious, that his eyes, open and blinking in the candlelight, were upon him. They were blue eyes, blue and shallow as a doll's, and edged with long, fine lashes. Intelligence, of a certain degree, was rapidly informing them. Kirkwood returned their questioning glance, transfixed in indecision, his primal impulse to cut-and-run for it was gone; he had nothing to fear from this child who could not prevent his going whenever he chose to go; while by remaining he might perchance worm from him something about the girl. "You're feeling better?" He was almost surprised to hear his own voice put the query. "I--I think so. Ow, my head!... I say, you chap, whoever you are, what's happened?... I want to get up." The boy added peevishly: "Help a fellow, can't you?" "You've had a nasty fall," Kirkwood observed evenly, passing an arm beneath the boy's shoulder and helping him to a sitting position. "Do you remember?" The other snuffled childishly and scrubbed across the floor to rest his back against the wall. "Why-y ... I remember fallin'; and then ... I woke up and it was all dark and my head achin' fit to split. I presume I went to sleep again ... I say, what're you, doing here?" Instead of replying, Kirkwood lifted a warning finger. "Hush!" he said tensely, alarmed by noises in the street. "You don't suppose--?" He had been conscious of a carriage rolling up from the corner, as well as that it had drawn up (presumably) before a near-by dwelling. Now the rattle of a key in the hall-door was startlingly audible. Before he could move, the door itself opened with a slam. Kirkwood moved toward the stair-head, and drew back with a cry of disgust. "Too late!" he told himself bitterly; his escape was cut off. He could run up-stairs and hide, of course, but the boy would inform against him and.... He buttoned up his coat, settled his hat on his head, and moved near the candle, where it rested on the floor. One glimpse would suffice to show him the force of the intruders, and one move of his foot put out the light; then--_perhaps_--he might be able to rush them. Below, a brief pause had followed the noise of the door, as if those entering were standing, irresolute, undecided which way to turn; but abruptly enough the glimmer of candlelight must have been noticed. Kirkwood heard a hushed exclamation, a quick clatter of high heels on the parquetry, pattering feet on the stairs, all but drowned by swish and ripple of silken skirts; and a woman stood at the head of the flight--to the American an apparition profoundly amazing as she paused, the light from the floor casting odd, theatric shadows beneath her eyes and over her brows, edging her eyes themselves with brilliant light beneath their dark lashes, showing her lips straight and drawn, and shimmering upon the spangles of an evening gown, visible beneath the dark cloak which had fallen back from her white, beautiful shoulders. VIII MADAME L'INTRIGANTE "Mrs. Hallam!" cried Kirkwood, beneath his breath. The woman ignored his existence. Moving swiftly forward, she dropped on both knees by the side of the boy, and caught up one of his hands, clasping it passionately in her own. "Fred!" she cried, a curious break in her tone. "My little Freddie! Oh, what has happened, dearie?" "Oh, hello, Mamma," grunted that young man, submitting listlessly to her caresses and betraying no overwhelming surprise at her appearance there. Indeed he seemed more concerned as to what Kirkwood, an older man, would be thinking, to see him so endeared and fondled, than moved by any other emotion. Kirkwood could see his shamefaced, sidelong glances; and despised him properly for them. But without attending to his response, Mrs. Hallam rattled on in the uneven accents of excitement. "I waited until I couldn't wait any longer, Freddie dear. I had to know--had to come. Eccles came home about nine and said that you had told him to wait outside, that some one had followed you in here, and that a bobby had told him to move on. I didn't know what--" "What's o'clock now?" her son interrupted. "It's about three, I think ... Have you hurt yourself, dear? Oh, why _didn't_ you come home? You must've known I was dying of anxiety!" "Oh, I say! Can't you see I'm hurt? 'Had a nasty fall and must've been asleep ever since." "My precious one! How--?" "Can't say, hardly ... I say, don't paw a chap so, Mamma ... I brought Eccles along and told him to wait because--well, because I didn't feel so much like shuttin' myself up in this beastly old tomb. So I left the door ajar, and told him not to let anybody come in. Then I came up-stairs. There must've been somebody already in the house; I know I _thought_ there was. It made me feel creepy, rather. At any rate, I heard voices down below, and the door banged, and somebody began hammerin' like fun on the knocker." The boy paused, rolling an embarrassed eye up at the stranger. "Yes, yes, dear!" Mrs. Hallam urged him on. "Why, I--I made up my mind to cut my stick--let whoever it was pass me on the stairs, you know. But he followed me and struck me, and then I jumped at him, and we both fell down the whole flight. And that's all. Besides, my head's achin' like everything." "But this man--?" Mrs. Hallam looked up at Kirkwood, who bowed silently, struggling to hide both his amusement and perplexity. More than ever, now, the case presented a front inscrutable to his wits; try as he might, he failed to fit an explanation to any incident in which he had figured, while this last development--that his antagonist of the dark stairway had been Mrs. Hallam's son!--seemed the most astounding of all, baffling elucidation completely. He had abandoned all thought of flight and escape. It was too late; in the brisk idiom of his mother-tongue, he was "caught with the goods on." "May as well face the music," he counseled himself, in resignation. From what he had seen and surmised of Mrs. Hallam, he shrewdly suspected that the tune would prove an exceedingly lively one; she seemed a woman of imagination, originality, and an able-bodied temper. "_You_, Mr. Kirkwood!" Again he bowed, grinning awry. She rose suddenly. "You will be good enough to explain your presence here," she informed him with dangerous serenity. "To be frank with you--" "I advise that course, Mr. Kirkwood." "Thanks, awf'ly.... I came here, half an hour ago, looking for a lost purse full--well, not _quite_ full of sovereigns. It was my purse, by the way." Suspicion glinted like foxfire in the cold green eyes beneath her puckered brows. "I do not understand," she said slowly and in level tones. "I didn't expect you to," returned Kirkwood; "no more do I.... But, anyway, it must be clear to you that I've done my best for this gentleman here." He paused with an interrogative lift of his eyebrows. "'This gentleman' is my son, Frederick Hallam.... But you will explain--" "Pardon me, Mrs. Hallam; I shall explain nothing, at present. Permit me to point out that your position here--like mine--is, to say the least, anomalous." The random stroke told, as he could tell by the instant contraction of her eyes of a cat. "It would be best to defer explanations till a more convenient time--don't you think? Then, if you like, we can chant confidences in an antiphonal chorus. Just now your--er--son is not enjoying himself apparently, and ... the attention of the police had best not be called to this house too often in one night." His levity seemed to displease and perturb the woman; she turned from him with an impatient movement of her shoulders. "Freddie, dear, do you feel able to walk?" "Eh? Oh, I dare say--I don't know. Wonder would your friend--ah--Mr. Kirkwood, lend me an arm?" "Charmed," Kirkwood declared suavely. "If you'll take the candle, Mrs. Hallam--" He helped the boy to his feet and, while the latter hung upon him and complained querulously, stood waiting for the woman to lead the way with the light; something which, however, she seemed in no haste to do. The pause at length puzzled Kirkwood, and he turned, to find Mrs. Hallam holding the candlestick and regarding him steadily, with much the same expression of furtive mistrust as that with which she had favored him on her own door-stoop. [Illustration: He helped the boy to his feet, and stood waiting.] "One moment," she interposed in confusion; "I won't keep you waiting...;" and, passing with an averted face, ran quickly up-stairs to the second floor, taking the light with her. Its glow faded from the walls above and Kirkwood surmised that she had entered the front bedchamber. For some moments he could hear her moving about; once, something scraped and bumped on the floor, as if a heavy bit of furniture had been moved; again there was a resounding thud that defied speculation; and this was presently followed by a dull clang of metal. His fugitive speculations afforded him little enlightenment; and, meantime, young Hallam, leaning partly against the wall and quite heavily on Kirkwood's arm, filled his ears with puerile oaths and lamentations; so that, but for the excuse of his really severe shaking-up, Kirkwood had been strongly tempted to take the youngster by the shoulders and kick him heartily, for the health of his soul. But eventually--it was not really long--there came the quick rush of Mrs. Hallam's feet along the upper hall, and the woman reappeared, one hand holding her skirts clear of her pretty feet as she descended in a rush that caused the candle's flame to flicker perilously. Half-way down, "Mr. Kirkwood!" she called tempestuously. "Didn't you find it?" he countered blandly. She stopped jerkily at the bottom, and, after a moment of confusion. "Find what, sir?" she asked. "What you sought, Mrs. Hallam." Smiling, he bore unflinching the prolonged inspection of her eyes, at once somber with doubt of him and flashing with indignation because of his impudence. "You knew I wouldn't find it, then!... Didn't you?" "I may have suspected you wouldn't." Now he was sure that she had been searching for the gladstone bag. That, evidently, was the bone of contention. Calendar had sent his daughter for it, Mrs. Hallam her son; Dorothy had been successful ... But, on the other hand, Calendar and Mrs. Hallam were unquestionably allies. Why, then--? "Where is it, Mr. Kirkwood?" "Madam, have you the right to know?" Through another lengthening pause, while they faced each other, he marked again the curious contraction of her under lip. "I have the right," she declared steadily. "Where is it?" "How can I be sure?" "Then you don't know--!" "Indeed," he interrupted, "I would be glad to feel that I ought to tell you what I know." "_What_ you know!" The exclamation, low-spoken, more an echo of her thoughts than intended for Kirkwood, was accompanied by a little shake of the woman's head, mute evidence to the fact that she was bewildered by his finesse. And this delighted the young man beyond measure, making him feel himself master of a difficult situation. Mysteries had been woven before his eyes so persistently, of late, that it was a real pleasure to be able to do a little mystifying on his own account. By adopting this reticent and non-committal attitude, he was forcing the hand of a woman old enough to be his mother and most evidently a past-mistress in the art of misleading. All of which seemed very fascinating to the amateur in adventure. The woman would have led again, but young Hallam cut in, none too courteously. "I say, Mamma, it's no good standing here, palaverin' like a lot of flats. Besides, I'm awf'ly knocked up. Let's get home and have it out there." Instantly his mother softened. "My poor boy!... Of course we'll go." Without further demur she swept past and down the stairway before them--slowly, for their progress was of necessity slow, and the light most needed. Once they were in the main hall, however, she extinguished the candle, placed it on a side table, and passed out through the door. It had been left open, as before; and Kirkwood was not at all surprised to see a man waiting on the threshold,--the versatile Eccles, if he erred not. He had little chance to identify him, as it happened, for at a word from Mrs. Hallam the man bowed and, following her across the sidewalk, opened the door of a four-wheeler which, with lamps alight and liveried driver on the box, had been waiting at the carriage-block. As they passed out, Kirkwood shut the door; and at the same moment the little party was brought up standing by a gruff and authoritative summons. "Just a minute, please, you there!" "Aha!" said Kirkwood to himself. "I thought so." And he halted, in unfeigned respect for the burly and impressive figure, garbed in blue and brass, helmeted and truncheoned, bull's-eye shining on breast like the Law's unblinking and sleepless eye, barring the way to the carriage. Mrs. Hallam showed less deference for the obstructionist. The assumed hauteur and impatience of her pose was artfully reflected in her voice as she rounded upon the bobby, with an indignant demand: "What is the meaning of this, officer?" "Precisely what I wants to know, ma'am," returned the man, unyielding beneath his respectful attitude. "I'm obliged to ask you to tell me what you were doing in that 'ouse.... And what's the matter with this 'ere gentleman?" he added, with a dubious stare at young Hallam's bandaged head and rumpled clothing. "Perhaps you don't understand," admitted Mrs. Hallam sweetly. "Of course--I see--it's perfectly natural. The house has been shut up for some time and--" "Thank you, ma'am; that's just it. There was something wrong going on early in the evening, and I was told to keep an eye on the premises. It's duty, ma'am; I've got my report to make." "The house," said Mrs. Hallam, with the long-suffering patience of one elucidating a perfectly plain proposition to a being of a lower order of intelligence, "is the property of my son, Arthur Frederick Burgoyne Hallam, of Cornwall. This is--" "Beg pardon, ma'am, but I was told Colonel George Burgoyne, of Cornwall--" "Colonel Burgoyne died some time ago. My son is his heir. This is my son. He came to the house this evening to get some property he desired, and--it seems--tripped on the stairs and fell unconscious. I became worried about him and drove over, accompanied by my friend, Mr. Kirkwood." The policeman looked his troubled state of mind, and wagged a doubtful head over the case. There was his duty, and there was, opposed to it, the fact that all three were garbed in the livery of the well-to-do. At length, turning to the driver, he demanded, received, and noted in his memorandum-book, the license number of the equipage. "It's a very unusual case, ma'am," he apologized; "I hopes you won't 'old it against me. I'm only trying to do my duty--" "And safeguard our property. You are perfectly justified, officer." "Thank you, ma'am. And would you mind giving me your cards, please, all of you?" "Certainly not." Without hesitation the woman took a little hand-bag from the seat of the carriage and produced a card; her son likewise found his case and handed the officer an oblong slip. "I've no cards with me," the American told the policeman; "my name, however, is Philip Kirkwood, and I'm staying at the Pless." "Very good, sir; thank you." The man penciled the information in his little book. "Thank you, ma'am, and Mr. Hallam, sir. Sorry to have detained you. Good morning." Kirkwood helped young Hallam into the carriage, gave Mrs. Hallam his hand, and followed her. The man Eccles shut the door, mounting the box beside the driver. Immediately they were in motion. The American got a final glimpse of the bobby, standing in front of Number 9, Frognall Street, and watching them with an air of profound uncertainty. He had Kirkwood's sympathy, therein; but he had little time to feel with him, for Mrs. Hallam turned upon him very suddenly. "Mr. Kirkwood, will you be good enough to tell me who and what you are?" The young man smiled his homely, candid smile. "I'll be only too glad, Mrs. Hallam, when I feel sure you'll do as much for yourself." She gave him no answer; it, was as if she were choosing words. Kirkwood braced himself to meet the storm; but none ensued. There was rather a lull, which strung itself out indefinitely, to the monotonous music of hoofs and rubber tires. Young Hallam was resting his empty blond head against the cushions, and had closed his eyes. He seemed to doze; but, as the carriage rolled past the frequent street-lights, Kirkwood could see that the eyes of Mrs. Hallam were steadily directed to his face. His outward composure was tempered by some amusement, by more admiration; the woman's eyes were very handsome, even when hardest and most cold. It was not easy to conceive of her as being the mother of a son so immaturely mature. Why, she must have been at least thirty-eight or -nine! One wondered; she did not look it.... The carriage stopped before a house with lighted windows. Eccles jumped down from the box and scurried to open the front door. The radiance of a hall-lamp was streaming out into the misty night when he returned to release his employers. They were returned to Craven Street! "One more lap round the track!" mused Kirkwood. "Wonder will the next take me back to Bermondsey Old Stairs." At Mrs. Hallam's direction, Eccles ushered him into the smoking-room, on the ground floor in the rear of the dwelling, there to wait while she helped her son up-stairs and to bed. He sighed with pleasure at first glimpse of its luxurious but informal comforts, and threw himself carelessly into a heavily padded lounging-chair, dropping one knee over the other and lighting the last of his expensive cigars, with a sensation of undiluted gratitude; as one coming to rest in the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. Over his shoulder a home-like illumination was cast by an electric reading-lamp shaded with red silk. At his feet brass fire-dogs winked sleepily in the fluttering blaze of a well-tended stove. The walls were hung with deep red, the doors and divans upholstered in the same restful shade. In one corner an old clock ticked soberly. The atmosphere would have proved a potent invitation to reverie, if not to sleep--he was very sleepy--but for the confusion in the house. In its chambers, through the halls, on the stairs, there were hurryings and scurryings of feet and skirts, confused with murmuring voices. Presently, in an adjoining room, Philip Kirkwood heard a maid-servant wrestling hopefully with that most exasperating of modern time-saving devices, the telephone as countenanced by our English cousins. Her patience and determination won his approval, but availed nothing for her purpose; in the outcome the telephone triumphed and the maid gave up the unequal contest. Later, a butler entered the room; a short and sturdy fellow, extremely ill at ease. Drawing a small taboret to the side of Kirkwood's chair, he placed thereon a tray, deferentially imparting the information that "Missis 'Allam 'ad thought 'ow as Mister Kirkwood might care for a bit of supper." "Please thank Mrs. Hallam for me." Kirkwood's gratified eyes ranged the laden tray. There were sandwiches, biscuit, cheese, and a pot of black coffee, with sugar and cream. "It was very kindly thought of," he added. "Very good, sir, thank you, sir." The man turned to go, shuffling soundlessly. Kirkwood was suddenly impressed with his evasiveness; ever since he had entered the room, his countenance had seemed turned from the guest. "Eccles!" he called sharply, at a venture. The butler halted, thunderstruck. "Ye-es, s-sir?" [Illustration: Eccles] "Turn round, Eccles; I want a look at you." Eccles faced him unwillingly, with a stolid front but shifty eyes. Kirkwood glanced him up and down, grinning. "Thank you, Eccles; I'll remember you now. You'll remember me, too, won't you? You're a bad actor, aren't you, Eccles?" "Yes, sir; thank you, sir," mumbled the man unhappily; and took instant advantage of the implied permission to go. Intensely diverted by the recollection of Eccles' abortive attempt to stop him at the door of Number 9, and wondering--now that he came to think of it--why, precisely, young Hallam had deemed it necessary to travel with a body-guard and adopt such furtive methods to enter into as well as to obtain what was asserted to be his own property, Kirkwood turned active attention to the lunch. Thoughtfully he poured himself a cup of coffee, swallowing it hot and black as it came from the silver pot; then munched the sandwiches. It _was_ kindly thought of, this early morning repast; Mrs. Hallam seemed more and more a remarkable woman with each phase of her character that she chose to disclose. At odds with him, she yet took time to think of his creature needs! What could be her motive,--not in feeding him, but in involving her name and fortune in an affair so strangely flavored?... This opened up a desert waste of barren speculation. "What's anybody's motive, who figures in this thundering dime-novel?" demanded the American, almost contemptuously. And--for the hundredth time--gave it up; the day should declare it, if so hap he lived to see that day: a distant one, he made no doubt. The only clear fact in his befogged and bemused mentality was that he was at once "broke" and in this business up to his ears. Well, he'd see it through; he'd nothing better to do, and--there was the girl: Dorothy, whose eyes and lips he had but to close his own eyes to see again as vividly as though she stood before him; Dorothy, whose unspoiled sweetness stood out in vivid relief against this moil and toil of conspiracy, like a star of evening shining clear in a stormy sky. "Poetic simile: I'm going fast," conceded Kirkwood; but he did not smile. It was becoming quite too serious a matter for laughter. For her sake, he was in the game "for keeps"; especially in view of the fact that everything--his own heart's inclination included--seemed to conspire to keep him in it. Of course he hoped for nothing in return; a pauper who turns squire-of-dames with matrimonial intent is open to the designation, "penniless adventurer." No; whatever service he might be to the girl would be ample recompense to him for his labors. And afterwards, he'd go his way in peace; she'd soon forget him--if she hadn't already. Women (he propounded gravely) are queer: there's no telling anything about them! One of the most unreadable specimens of the sex on which he pronounced this highly original dictum, entered the room just then; and he found himself at once out of his chair and his dream, bowing. "Mrs. Hallam." The woman nodded and smiled graciously. "Eccles has attended to your needs, I hope? Please don't stop smoking." She sank into an arm-chair on the other side of the hearth and, probably by accident, out of the radius of illumination from the lamp; sitting sidewise, one knee above the other, her white arms immaculate against the somber background of shadowed crimson. She was very handsome indeed, just then; though a keener light might have proved less flattering. "Now, Mr. Kirkwood?" she opened briskly, with a second intimate and friendly nod; and paused, her pose receptive. Kirkwood sat down again, smiling good-natured appreciation of her unprejudiced attitude. "Your son, Mrs. Hallam--?" "Oh, Freddie's doing well enough.... Freddie," she explained, "has a delicate constitution and has seen little of the world. Such melodrama as to-night's is apt to shock him severely. We must make allowances, Mr. Kirkwood." Kirkwood grinned again, a trace unsympathetically; he was unable to simulate any enthusiasm on the subject of poor Freddie, whom he had sized up with passable acumen as a spoiled and coddled child completely under the thumb of an extremely clever mother. "Yes," he responded vaguely; "he'll be quite fit after a night's sleep, I dare say." The woman was watching him keenly, beneath her lowered lashes. "I think," she said deliberately, "that it is time we came to an understanding." Kirkwood agreed--"Yes?" affably. "I purpose being perfectly straightforward. To begin with, I don't place you, Mr. Kirkwood. You are an unknown quantity, a new factor. Won't you please tell me what you are and.... Are you a friend of Mr. Calendar's?" "I think I may lay claim to that honor, though"--to Kirkwood's way of seeing things some little frankness on his own part would be essential if they were to get on--"I hardly know him, Mrs. Hallam. I had the pleasure of meeting him only this afternoon." She knitted her brows over this statement. "That, I assure you, is the truth," he laughed. "But ... I really don't understand." "Nor I, Mrs. Hallam. Calendar aside, I am Philip Kirkwood, American, resident abroad for some years, a native of San Francisco, of a certain age, unmarried, by profession a poor painter." "And--?" "Beyond that? I presume I must tell you, though I confess I'm in doubt...." He hesitated, weighing candor in the balance with discretion. "But who are you for? Are you in George Calendar's pay?" "Heaven forfend!"--piously. "My sole interest at the present moment is to unravel a most entrancing mystery--" "Entitled 'Dorothy Calendar'! Of course. You've known her long?" "Eight hours, I believe," he admitted gravely; "less than that, in fact." "Miss Calendar's interests will not suffer through anything you may tell me." "Whether they will or no, I see I must swing a looser tongue, or you'll be showing me the door." The woman shook her head, amused, "Not until," she told him significantly. "Very well, then." And he launched into an abridged narrative of the night's events, as he understood them, touching lightly on his own circumstances, the real poverty which had brought him back to Craven Street by way of Frognall. "And there you have it all, Mrs. Hallam." She sat in silent musing. Now and again he caught the glint of her eyes and knew that he was being appraised with such trained acumen as only long knowledge of men can give to women. He wondered if he were found wanting.... Her dark head bended, elbow on knee, chin resting lightly in the cradle of her slender, parted fingers, the woman thought profoundly, her reverie ending with a brief, curt laugh, musical and mirthless as the sound of breaking glass. "It is so like Calendar!" she exclaimed: "so like him that one sees how foolish it was to trust--no, not to trust, but to believe that he could ever be thrown off the scent, once he got nose to ground. So, if we suffer, my son and I, I shall have only myself to thank!" Kirkwood waited in patient attention till she chose to continue. When she did "Now for my side of the case!" cried Mrs. Hallam; and rising, began to pace the room, her slender and rounded figure swaying gracefully, the while she talked. "George Calendar is a scoundrel," she said: "a swindler, gambler,--what I believe you Americans call a confidence-man. He is also my late husband's first cousin. Some years since he found it convenient to leave England, likewise his wife and daughter. Mrs. Calendar, a country-woman of yours, by the bye, died shortly afterwards. Dorothy, by the merest accident, obtained a situation as private secretary in the household of the late Colonel Burgoyne, of The Cliffs, Cornwall. You follow me?" "Yes, perfectly." "Colonel Burgoyne died, leaving his estates to my son, some time ago. Shortly afterwards Dorothy Calendar disappeared. We know now that her father took her away, but then the disappearance seemed inexplicable, especially since with her vanished a great deal of valuable information. She alone knew of the location of certain of the old colonel's personal effects." "He was an eccentric. One of his peculiarities involved the secreting of valuables in odd places; he had no faith in banks. Among these valuables were the Burgoyne family jewels--quite a treasure, believe me, Mr. Kirkwood. We found no note of them among the colonel's papers, and without Dorothy were powerless to pursue a search for them. We advertised and employed detectives, with no result. It seems that father and daughter were at Monte Carlo at the time." "Beautifully circumstantial, my dear lady," commented Kirkwood--to his inner consciousness. Outwardly he maintained consistently a pose of impassive gullibility. "This afternoon, for the first time, we received news of the Calendars. Calendar himself called upon me, to beg a loan. I explained our difficulty and he promised that Dorothy should send us the information by the morning's post. When I insisted, he agreed to bring it himself, after dinner, this evening.... I make it quite clear?" she interrupted, a little anxious. "Quite clear, I assure you," he assented encouragingly. "Strangely enough, he had not been gone ten minutes when my son came in from a conference with our solicitors, informing me that at last a memorandum had turned up, indicating that the heirlooms would be found in a safe secreted behind a dresser in Colonel Burgoyne's bedroom." "At Number 9, Frognall Street." "Yes.... I proposed going there at once, but it was late and we were dining at the Pless with an acquaintance, a Mr. Mulready, whom I now recall as a former intimate of George Calendar. To our surprise we saw Calendar and his daughter at a table not far from ours. Mr. Mulready betrayed some agitation at the sight of Calendar, and told me that Scotland Yard had a man out with a warrant for Calendar's arrest, on old charges. For old sake's sake, Mr. Mulready begged me to give Calendar a word of warning. I did so--foolishly, it seems: Calendar was at that moment planning to rob us, Mulready aiding and abetting him." The woman paused before Kirkwood, looking down upon him. "And so," she concluded, "we have been tricked and swindled. I can scarcely believe it of Dorothy Calendar." "I, for one, don't believe it." Kirkwood spoke quietly, rising. "Whatever the culpability of Calendar and Mulready, Dorothy was only their hoodwinked tool." "But, Mr. Kirkwood, she must have known the jewels were not hers." "Yes," he assented passively, but wholly unconvinced. "And what," she demanded with a gesture of exasperation, "what would you advise?" "Scotland Yard," he told her bluntly. "But it's a family secret! It must not appear in the papers. Don't you understand--George Calendar is my husband's cousin!" "I can think of nothing else, unless you pursue them in person." "But--whither?" "That remains to be discovered; I can tell you nothing more than I have.... May I thank you for your hospitality, express my regrets that I should unwittingly have been made the agent of this disaster, and wish you good night--or, rather, good morning, Mrs. Hallam?" For a moment she held him under a calculating glance which he withstood with graceless fortitude. Then, realizing that he was determined not by any means to be won to her cause, she gave him her hand, with a commonplace wish that he might find his affairs in better order than seemed probable; and rang for Eccles. The butler showed him out. He took away with him two strong impressions; the one visual, of a strikingly handsome woman in a wonderful gown, standing under the red glow of a reading-lamp, in an attitude of intense mental concentration, her expression plainly indicative of a train of thought not guiltless of vindictiveness; the other, more mental but as real, he presently voiced to the huge bronze lions brooding over desolate Trafalgar Square. "Well," appreciated Mr. Kirkwood with gusto, "_she's_ got Ananias and Sapphira talked to a standstill, all right!" He ruminated over this for a moment. "Calendar can lie some, too; but hardly with her picturesque touch.... Uncommon ingenious, _I_ call it. All the same, there were only about a dozen bits of tiling that didn't fit into her mosaic a little bit.... I think they're all tarred with the same stick--all but the girl. And there's something afoot a long sight more devilish and crafty than that shilling-shocker of madam's.... Dorothy Calendar's got about as much active part in it as I have. I'm only from California, but they've got to show me, before I'll believe a word against her. Those infernal scoundrels!...Somebody's got to be on the girl's side and I seem to have drawn the lucky straw.... Good Heavens! is it possible for a grown man to fall heels over head in love in two short hours? I don't believe it. It's just interest--nothing more.... And I'll have to have a change of clothes before I can do anything further." He bowed gratefully to the lions, in view of their tolerant interest in his soliloquy, and set off very suddenly round the square and up St. Martin's Lane, striking across town as directly as might be for St. Pancras Station. It would undoubtedly be a long walk, but cabs were prohibited by his straitened means, and the busses were all abed and wouldn't be astir for hours. He strode along rapidly, finding his way more through intuition than by observation or familiarity with London's geography--indeed, was scarce aware of his surroundings; for his brain was big with fine imagery, rapt in a glowing dream of knighterrantry and chivalric deeds. Thus is it ever and alway with those who in the purity of young hearts rush in where angels fear to tread; if these, Kirkwood and his ilk, be fools, thank God for them, for with such foolishness is life savored and made sweet and sound! To Kirkwood the warp of the world and the woof of it was Romance, and it wrapped him round, a magic mantle to set him apart from all things mean and sordid and render him impregnable and invisible to the haunting Shade of Care. Which, by the same token, presently lost track of him entirely, and wandered off to find and bedevil some other poor devil. And Kirkwood, his eyes like his spirit elevated, saw that the clouds of night were breaking, the skies clearing, that the East pulsed ever more strongly with the dim golden promise of the day to come. And this he chose to take for an omen--prematurely, it may be. IX AGAIN "BELOW BRIDGE"; AND BEYOND Kirkwood wasted little time, who had not much to waste, were he to do that upon whose doing he had set his heart. It irked him sore to have to lose the invaluable moments demanded by certain imperative arrangements, but his haste was such that all was consummated within an hour. Within the period of a single hour, then, he had ransomed his luggage at St. Pancras, caused it to be loaded upon a four-wheeler and transferred to a neighboring hotel of evil flavor but moderate tariff, where he engaged a room for a week, ordered an immediate breakfast, and retired with his belongings to his room; he had shaved and changed his clothes, selecting a serviceable suit of heavy tweeds, stout shoes, a fore-and-aft cap and a negligée shirt of a deep shade calculated at least to seem clean for a long time; finally, he had devoured his bacon and eggs, gulped down his coffee and burned his mouth, and, armed with a stout stick, set off hotfoot in the still dim glimmering of early day. By this time his cash capital had dwindled to the sum of two pounds, ten shillings, eight-pence, and would have been much less had he paid for his lodging in advance. But he considered his trunks ample security for the bill, and dared not wait the hour when shopkeepers begin to take down shutters and it becomes possible to realize upon one's jewelry. Besides which, he had never before been called upon to consider the advisability of raising money by pledging personal property, and was in considerable doubt as to the right course of procedure in such emergency. At King's Cross Station on the Underground an acute disappointment awaited him; there, likewise, he learned something about London. A sympathetic bobby informed him that no trains would be running until after five-thirty, and that, furthermore, no busses would begin to ply until half after seven. "It's tramp it or cab it, then," mused the young man mournfully, his longing gaze seeking a nearby cab-rank--just then occupied by a solitary hansom, driver somnolent on the box. "Officer," he again addressed the policeman, mindful of the English axiom: "When in doubt, ask a bobby."--"Officer, when's high-tide this morning?" The bobby produced a well-worn pocket-almanac, moistened a massive thumb, and rippled the pages. "London Bridge, 'igh tide twenty minutes arfter six, sir," he announced with a glow of satisfaction wholly pardonable in one who combines the functions of perambulating almanac, guide-book, encyclopedia, and conserver of the peace. Kirkwood said something beneath his breath--a word in itself a comfortable mouthful and wholesome and emphatic. He glanced again at the cab and groaned: "O Lord, I just dassent!" With which, thanking the bureau of information, he set off at a quick step down Grey's Inn Road. The day had closed down in brilliance upon the city--and the voice of the milkman was to be heard in the land--when he trudged, still briskly if a trifle wearily, into Holborn, and held on eastward across the Viaduct and down Newgate Street; the while addling his weary wits with heart-sickening computations of minutes, all going hopelessly to prove that he would be late, far too late even presupposing the unlikely. The unlikely, be it known, was that the _Alethea_ would not attempt to sail before the turn of the tide. For this was his mission, to find the _Alethea_ before she sailed. Incredible as it may appear, at five o'clock, or maybe earlier, on the morning of the twenty-second of April, 1906, A.D., Philip Kirkwood, normally a commonplace but likable young American in full possession of his senses, might have been seen (and by some was seen) plodding manfully through Cheapside, London, England, engaged upon a quest as mad, forlorn, and gallant as any whose chronicle ever inspired the pen of a Malory or a Froissart. In brief he proposed to lend his arm and courage to be the shield and buckler of one who might or might not be a damsel in distress; according as to whether Mrs. Hallam had spoken soothly of Dorothy Calendar, or Kirkwood's own admirable faith in the girl were justified of itself. Proceeding upon the working hypothesis that Mrs. Hallam was a polished liar in most respects, but had told the truth, so far as concerned her statement to the effect that the gladstone bag contained valuable real property (whose ownership remained a moot question, though Kirkwood was definitely committed to the belief that it was none of Mrs. Hallam's or her son's): he reasoned that the two adventurers, with Dorothy and their booty, would attempt to leave London by a water route, in the ship, _Alethea_, whose name had fallen from their lips at Bermondsey Old Stairs. Kirkwood's initial task, then, would be to find the needle in the haystack--the metaphor is poor: more properly, to sort out from the hundreds of vessels, of all descriptions, at anchor in midstream, moored to the wharves of 'long-shore warehouses, or in the gigantic docks that line the Thames, that one called _Alethea_; of which he was so deeply mired in ignorance that he could not say whether she were tramp-steamer, coastwise passenger boat, one of the liners that ply between Tilbury and all the world, Channel ferry-boat, private yacht (steam or sail), schooner, four-master, square-rigger, barque or brigantine. A task to stagger the optimism of any but one equipped with the sublime impudence of Youth! Even Kirkwood was disturbed by some little awe when he contemplated the vast proportions of his undertaking. None the less doggedly he plugged ahead, and tried to keep his mind from vain surmises as to what would be his portion when eventually he should find himself a passenger, uninvited and unwelcome, upon the _Alethea_.... London had turned over once or twice, and was pulling the bedclothes over its head and grumbling about getting up, but the city was still sound asleep when at length he paused for a minute's rest in front of the Mansion House, and realized with a pang of despair that he was completely tuckered out. There was a dull, vague throbbing in his head; weights pressed upon his eyeballs until they ached; his mouth was hot and tasted of yesterday's tobacco; his feet were numb and heavy; his joints were stiff; he yawned frequently. With a sigh he surrendered to the flesh's frailty. An early cabby, cruising up from Cannon Street station on the off-chance of finding some one astir in the city, aside from the doves and sparrows, suffered the surprise of his life when Kirkwood hailed him. His face was blank with amazement when he reined in, and his eyes bulged when the prospective fare, on impulse, explained his urgent needs. Happily he turned out a fair representative of his class, an intelligent and unfuddled cabby. "Jump in, sir," he told Kirkwood cheerfully, as soon as he had assimilated the latter's demands. "I knows precisely wotcher wants. Leave it all to me." The admonition was all but superfluous; Kirkwood was unable, for the time being, to do aught else than resign his fate into another's guidance. Once in the cab he slipped insensibly into a nap, and slept soundly on, as reckless of the cab's swift pace and continuous jouncing as of the sunlight glaring full in his tired young face. He may have slept twenty minutes; he awoke faint with drowsiness, tingling from head to toe from fatigue, and in distress of a queer qualm in the pit of his stomach, to find the hansom at rest and the driver on the step, shaking his fare with kindly determination. "Oh, a' right," he assented surlily, and by sheer force of will made himself climb out to the sidewalk; where, having rubbed his eyes, stretched enormously and yawned discourteously in the face of the East End, he was once more himself and a hundred times refreshed into the bargain. Contentedly he counted three shillings into the cabby's palm--the fare named being one-and-six. "The shilling over and above the tip's for finding me the waterman and boat," he stipulated. "Right-o. You'll mind the 'orse a minute, sir?" Kirkwood nodded. The man touched his hat and disappeared inexplicably. Kirkwood, needlessly attaching himself to the reins near the animal's head, pried his sense of observation open and became alive to the fact that he stood in a quarter of London as strange to him as had been Bermondsey Wall. To this day he can not put a name to it; he surmises that it was Wapping. Ramshackle tenements with sharp gable roofs lined either side of the way. Frowsy women draped themselves over the window-sills. Pallid and wasted parodies on childhood contested the middle of the street with great, slow drays, drawn by enormous horses. On the sidewalks twin streams of masculine humanity flowed without rest, both bound in the same direction: dock laborers going to their day's work. Men of every nationality known to the world (he thought) passed him in his short five-minute wait by the horse's head; Britons, brown East Indians, blacks from Jamaica, swart Italians, Polaks, Russian Jews, wire-drawn Yankees, Spaniards, Portuguese, Greeks, even a Nubian or two: uniform in these things only, that their backs were bent with toil, bowed beyond mending, and their faces stamped with the blurred type-stamp of the dumb laboring brute. A strangely hideous procession, they shambled on, for the most part silent, all uncouth and unreal in the clear morning glow. The outlander was sensible of some relief when his cabby popped hurriedly out of the entrance to a tenement, a dull-visaged, broad-shouldered waterman ambling more slowly after. "Nevvy of mine, sir," announced the cabby; "and a fust-ryte waterman; knows the river like a book, he do." The nephew touched his forelock sheepishly. "Thank you," said Kirkwood; and, turning to the man, "Your boat?" he asked with the brevity of weariness. "This wye, sir." At his guide's heels Kirkwood threaded the crowd and, entering the tenement, stumbled through a gloomy and unsavory passage, to come out at last upon a scanty, unrailed veranda overlooking the river. Ten feet below, perhaps, foul waters purred and eddied round the piles supporting the rear of the building. On one hand a ladder-like flight of rickety steps descended to a floating stage to which a heavy rowboat lay moored. In the latter a second waterman was seated bailing out bilge with a rusty can. "'Ere we are, sir," said the cabman's nephew, pausing at the head of the steps. "Now, where's it to be?" The American explained tersely that he had a message to deliver a friend, who had shipped aboard a vessel known as the _Alethea_, scheduled to sail at floodtide; further than which deponent averred naught. The waterman scratched his head. "A 'ard job, sir; not knowin' wot kind of a boat she are mykes it 'arder." He waited hopefully. "Ten shillings," volunteered Kirkwood promptly; "ten shillings if you get me aboard her before she weighs anchor; fifteen if I keep you out more than an hour, and still you put me aboard. After that we'll make other terms." The man promptly turned his back to hail his mate. "'Arf a quid, Bob, if we puts this gent aboard a wessel name o' _Allytheer_ afore she syles at turn o' tide." In the boat the man with the bailing can turned up an impassive countenance. "Coom down," he clenched the bargain; and set about shipping the sweeps. Kirkwood crept down the shaky ladder and deposited himself in the stern of the boat; the younger boatman settled himself on the midship thwart. "Ready?" "Ready," assented old Bob from the bows. He cast off the painter, placed one sweep against the edge of the stage, and with a vigorous thrust pushed off; then took his seat. Bows swinging down-stream, the boat shot out from the shore. "How's the tide?" demanded Kirkwood, his impatience growing. "On th' turn, sir," he was told. For a long moment broadside to the current, the boat responded to the sturdy pulling of the port sweeps. Another moment, and it was in full swing, the watermen bending lustily to their task. Under their unceasing urge, the broad-beamed, heavy craft, aided by the ebbing tide, surged more and more rapidly through the water; the banks, grim and unsightly with their towering, impassive warehouses broken by toppling wooden tenements, slipped swiftly up-stream. Ship after ship was passed, sailing vessels in the majority, swinging sluggishly at anchor, drifting slowly with the river, or made fast to the goods-stages of the shore; and in keen anxiety lest he should overlook the right one, Kirkwood searched their bows and sterns for names, which in more than one case proved hardly legible. The _Alethea_ was not of their number. In the course of some ten minutes, the watermen drove the boat sharply inshore, bringing her up alongside another floating stage, in the shadow of another tenement.--both so like those from which they had embarked that Kirkwood would have been unable to distinguish one from another. In the bows old Bob lifted up a stentorian voice, summoning one William. Recognizing that there was some design in this, the passenger subdued his disapproval of the delay, and sat quiet. In answer to the third ear-racking hail, a man, clothed simply in dirty shirt and disreputable trousers, showed himself in the doorway above, rubbing the sleep out of a red, bloated countenance with a mighty and grimy fist. "'Ello," he said surlily. "Wot's th' row?" "'Oo," interrogated old Bob, holding the boat steady by grasping the stage, "was th' party wot engyged yer larst night, Bill?" "Party name o' _Allytheer_," growled the drowsy one. "W'y?" "Party 'ere's lookin' for 'im. Where'll I find this _Allytheer?_" "Best look sharp 'r yer won't find 'im," retorted the one above. "'E _was_ at anchor off Bow Creek larst night." Kirkwood's heart leaped in hope. "What sort of a vessel was she?" he asked, half rising in his eagerness. "Brigantine, sir." "_Thank--you!_" replied Kirkwood explosively, resuming his seat with uncalculated haste as old Bob, deaf to the amenities of social intercourse in an emergency involving as much as ten-bob, shoved off again. And again the boat was flying down in midstream, the leaden waters, shot with gold of the morning sun, parting sullenly beneath its bows. The air was still, heavy and tepid; the least exertion brought out beaded moisture on face and hands. In the east hung a turgid sky, dull with haze, through which the mounting sun swam like a plaque of brass; overhead it was clear and cloudless, but besmirched as if the polished mirror of the heavens had been fouled by the breath of departing night. On the right, ahead, Greenwich Naval College loomed up, the great gray-stone buildings beyond the embankment impressively dominating the scene, in happy relief against the wearisome monotony of the river-banks; it came abreast; and ebbed into the backwards of the scene. The watermen straining at the sweeps, the boat sped into Blackwall Reach, Bugsby Marshes a splash of lurid green to port, dreary Cubitt Town and the West India Docks to starboard. Here the river ran thick with shipping. "Are we near?" Kirkwood would know; and by way of reply had a grunt of the younger waterman. Again, "Will we make it?" he asked. The identical grunt answered him; he was free to interpret it as he would; young William--as old Bob named him--had no breath for idle words. Kirkwood subsided, controlling his impatience to the best of his ability; the men, he told himself again and again, were earning their pay, whether or not they gained the goal of his desire.... Their labors were titanic; on their temples and foreheads the knotted veins stood out like discolored whip-cord; their faces were the shade of raw beef, steaming with sweat; their eyes protruded with the strain that set their jaws like vises; their chests heaved and shrank like bellows; their backs curved, straightened, and bent again in rhythmic unison as tiring to the eye as the swinging of a pendulum. Hugging the marshy shore, they rounded the Blackwall Point. Young William looked to Kirkwood, caught his eye, and nodded. "Here?" Kirkwood rose, balancing himself against the leap and sway of the boat. "Sumwhere's ... 'long ... o' 'ere." From right to left his eager glance swept the river's widening reach. Vessels were there in abundance, odd, unwieldy, blunt-bowed craft with huge, rakish, tawny sails; long strings of flat barges, pyramidal mounds of coal on each, lashed to another and convoyed by panting tugs; steam cargo boats, battered, worn, rusted sore through their age-old paint; a steel leviathan of the deep seas, half cargo, half passenger boat, warping reluctantly into the mouth of the Victoria Dock tidal basin,--but no brigantine, no sailing vessel of any type. The young man's lips checked a cry that was half a sob of bitter disappointment. He had entered into the spirit of the chase heart and soul, with an enthusiasm that was strange to him, when he came to look back upon the time; and to fail, even though failure had been discounted a hundredfold since the inception of his mad adventure, seemed hard, very hard. He sat down suddenly. "She's gone!" he cried in a hollow gasp. The boatmen eased upon their oars, and old Bob stood up in the bows, scanning the river-scape with keen eyes shielded by a level palm. Young William drooped forward suddenly, head upon knees, and breathed convulsively. The boat drifted listlessly with the current. Old Bob panted: "'Dawn't--see--nawthin'--o' 'er." He resumed his seat. "There's no hope, I suppose?" The elder waterman shook his head. "'Carn't sye.... Might be round--nex' bend--might be--passin' Purfleet.... 'Point is--me an' young Wilyum 'ere--carn't do no more--'n we 'as. We be wore out." "Yes," Kirkwood assented, disconsolate, "You've certainly earned your pay." Then hope revived; he was very young in heart, you know. "Can't you suggest something? I've _got_ to catch that ship!" Old Bob wagged his head in slow negation; young William lifted his. "There's a rylewye runs by Woolwich," he ventured. "Yer might tyke tryne an' go to Sheerness, sir. Yer'd be positive o' passin' 'er if she didn't syle afore 'igh-tide. 'Ire a boat at Sheerness an' put out an' look for 'er." "How far's Woolwich?" Kirkwood demanded instantly. "Mile," said the elder man. "Tyke yer for five-bob extry." "Done!" Young William dashed the sweat from his eyes, wiped his palms on his hips, and fitted the sweeps again to the wooden tholes. Old Bob was as ready. With an inarticulate cry they gave way. X DESPERATE MEASURES Old Bob seemed something inclined toward optimism, when the boat lay alongside a landing-stage at Woolwich, and Kirkwood had clambered ashore. "Yer'll mebbe myke it," the waterman told him with a weatherwise survey of the skies. "Wind's freshenin' from the east'rds, an' that'll 'old 'er back a bit, sir." "Arsk th' wye to th' Dorkyard Styshun," young William volunteered. "'Tis th' shortest walk, sir. I 'opes yer catches 'er.... Thanky, sir." He caught dextrously the sovereign which Kirkwood, in ungrudging liberality, spared them of his store of two. The American nodded acknowledgments and adieux, with a faded smile deprecating his chances of winning the race, sorely handicapped as he was. He was very, very tired, and in his heart suspected that he would fail. But, if he did, he would at least be able to comfort himself that it was not for lack of trying. He set his teeth on that covenant, in grim determination; either there was a strain of the bulldog latent in the Kirkwood breed or else his infatuation gripped him more strongly than he guessed. Yet he suspected something of its power; he knew that this was altogether an insane proceeding, and that the lure that led him on was Dorothy Calendar. A strange dull light glowed in his weary eyes, on the thought of her. He'd go through fire and water in her service. She was costing him dear, perhaps was to cost him dearer still; and perhaps there'd be for his guerdon no more than a "Thank you, Mr. Kirkwood!" at the end of the passage. But that would be no less than his deserts; he was not to forget that he was interfering unwarrantably; the girl was in her father's hands, surely safe enough there--to the casual mind. If her partnership in her parent's fortunes were distasteful, she endured it passively, without complaint. He decided that it was his duty to remind himself, from time to time, that his main interest must be in the game itself, in the solution of the riddle; whatever should befall, he must look for no reward for his gratuitous and self-appointed part. Indeed he was all but successful in persuading himself that it was the fascination of adventure alone that drew him on. Whatever the lure, it was inexorable; instead of doing as a sensible person would have done--returning to London for a long rest in his hotel room, ere striving to retrieve his shattered fortunes--Philip Kirkwood turned up the village street, intent only to find the railway station and catch the first available train for Sheerness, were that an early one or a late. A hapchance native whom he presently encountered, furnished minute directions for reaching the Dockyard Station of the Southeastern and Chatham Rail-way, adding comfortable information to the effect that the next east-bound train would pass through in ten minutes; if Kirkwood would mend his pace he could make it easily, with time to spare. Kirkwood mended his pace accordingly, but, contrary to the prediction, had no time to spare at all. Even as he stormed the ticket-grating, the train was thundering in at the platform. Therefore a nervous ticket agent passed him out a first-class ticket instead of the third-class he had asked for; and there was no time wherein to have the mistake rectified. Kirkwood planked down the fare, swore, and sprinted for the carriages. The first compartment whose door he jerked violently open, proved to be occupied, and was, moreover, not a smoking-car. He received a fleeting impression of a woman's startled eyes, staring into his own through a thin mesh of veiling, fell off the running-board, slammed the door, and hurled himself to-wards the next compartment. Here happier fortune attended upon his desire; the box-like section was untenanted, and a notice blown upon the window-glass announced that it was "2nd Class Smoking." Kirkwood promptly tumbled in; and when he turned to shut the door the coaches were moving. A pipe helped him to bear up while the train was making its two other stops in the Borough of Woolwich: a circumstance so maddening to a man in a hurry, that it set Kirkwood's teeth on edge with sheer impatience, and made him long fervently for the land of his birth, where they do things differently--where the Board of Directors of a railway company doesn't erect three substantial passenger depôts in the course of a mile and a half of overgrown village. It consoled him little that none disputed with him his lonely possession of the compartment, that he _had_ caught the Sheerness train, or that he was really losing no time; a sense of deep dejection had settled down upon his consciousness, with a realization of how completely a fool's errand was this of his. He felt foredoomed to failure; he was never to see Dorothy Calendar again; and his brain seemed numb with disappointment. Rattling and swaying, the train left the town behind. Presently he put aside his pipe and stared blankly out at a reeling landscape, the pleasant, homely, smiling countryside of Kent. A deeper melancholy tinted his mind: Dorothy Calendar was for ever lost to him. The trucks drummed it out persistently--he thought, vindictively: "_Lost!... Lost!... For ever lost!..._" And he had made--was then making--a damned fool of himself. The trucks had no need to din _that_ into his thick skull by their ceaseless iteration; he knew it, would not deny it.... And it was all his own fault. He'd had his chance, Calendar had offered him it. If only he had closed with the fat adventurer!... Before his eyes field and coppice, hedge and homestead, stream and flowing highway, all blurred and ran streakily into one another, like a highly impressionistic water-color. He could make neither head nor tail of the flying views, and so far as coherent thought was concerned, he could not put two ideas together. Without understanding distinctly, he presently did a more wise and wholesome thing: which was to topple limply over on the cushions and fall fast asleep. * * * * * After a long time he seemed to realize rather hazily that the carriage-door had been opened to admit somebody. Its smart closing _bang_ shocked him awake. He sat up, blinking in confusion, hardly conscious of more, to begin with, than that the train had paused and was again in full flight. Then, his senses clearing, he became aware that his solitary companion, just entered, was a woman. She was seated over across from him, her back to the engine, in an attitude which somehow suggested a highly nonchalant frame of mind. She laughed, and immediately her speaking voice was high and sweet in his hearing. "Really, you know, Mr. Kirkwood, I simply couldn't contain my impatience another instant." Kirkwood gasped and tried to re-collect his wits. "Beg pardon--I've been asleep," he said stupidly. "Yes. I'm sorry to have disturbed you, but, you know, you must make allowances for a woman's nerves." Beneath his breath the bewildered man said: "The deuce!" and above it, in a stupefied tone: "Mrs. Hallam!" She nodded in a not unfriendly fashion, smiling brightly. "Myself, Mr. Kirkwood! Really, our predestined paths are badly tangled, just now; aren't they? Were you surprised to find me in here, with you? Come now, confess you were!" He remarked the smooth, girlish freshness of her cheeks, the sense and humor of her mouth, the veiled gleam of excitement in her eyes of the changing sea; and saw, as well, that she was dressed for traveling, sensibly but with an air, and had brought a small hand-bag with her. "Surprised and delighted," he replied, recovering, with mendacity so intentional and obvious that the woman laughed aloud. "I knew you'd be!... You see, I had the carriage ahead, the one you didn't take. I was so disappointed when you flung up to the door and away again! You didn't see me hanging half out the window, to watch where you went, did you? That's how I discovered that your discourtesy was unintentional, that you hadn't recognized me,--by the fact that you took this compartment, right behind my own." She paused invitingly, but Kirkwood, grown wary, contented himself with picking up his pipe and carefully knocking out the dottle on the window-ledge. "I was glad to see _you_," she affirmed; "but only partly because you were you, Mr. Kirkwood. The other and major part was because sight of you confirmed my own secret intuition. You see, I'm quite old enough and wise enough to question even my own intuitions." "A woman wise enough for that is an adult prodigy," he ventured cautiously. "It's experience and age. I insist upon the age; I the mother of a grown-up boy! So I deliberately ran after you, changing when we stopped at Newington. You might've escaped me if I had waited until We got to Queensborough." Again she paused in open expectancy. Kirkwood, perplexed, put the pipe in his pocket, and assumed a factitious look of resignation, regarding her askance with that whimsical twist of his eyebrows. "For you are going to Queensborough, aren't you, Mr. Kirkwood?" "Queensborough?" he echoed blankly; and, in fact, he was at a loss to follow her drift. "No, Mrs. Hallam; I'm not bound there." Her surprise was apparent; she made no effort to conceal it. "But," she faltered, "if not there--" "'Give you my word, Mrs. Hallam, I have no intention whatever of going to Queensborough," Kirkwood protested. "I don't understand." The nervous drumming of a patent-leather covered toe, visible beneath the hem of her dress, alone betrayed a rising tide of impatience. "Then my intuition _was_ at fault!" "In this instance, if it was at all concerned with my insignificant affairs, yes--most decidedly at fault." She shook her head, regarding him with grave suspicion. "I hardly know: whether to believe you. I think...." Kirkwood's countenance displayed an added shade of red. After a moment, "I mean no discourtesy," he began stiffly, "but--" "But you don't care a farthing whether I believe you or not?" He caught her laughing eye, and smiled, the flush subsiding. "Very well, then! Now let us see: Where _are_ you bound?" Kirkwood looked out of the window. "I'm convinced it's a rendezvous...?" Kirkwood smiled patiently at the landscape. "Is Dorothy Calendar so very, very beautiful, Mr. Kirkwood?"--with a trace of malice. Ostentatiously Kirkwood read the South Eastern and Chatham's framed card of warning, posted just above Mrs. Hallam's head, to all such incurable lunatics as are possessed of a desire to travel on the running-boards of railway carriages. "You are going to meet her, aren't you?" He gracefully concealed a yawn. The woman's plan of attack took another form. "Last night, when you told me your story, I believed you." He devoted himself to suppressing the temptingly obvious retort, and succeeded; but though he left it unspoken, the humor of it twitched the corners of his mouth; and Mrs. Hallam was observant. So that her next attempt to draw him out was edged with temper. "I believed you an American but a gentleman; it appears that, if you ever were the latter, you've fallen so low that you willingly cast your lot with thieves." Having exhausted his repertoire of rudenesses, Kirkwood took to twiddling his thumbs. "I want to ask you if you think it fair to me or my son, to leave us in ignorance of the place where you are to meet the thieves who stole our--my son's jewels?" "Mrs. Hallam," he said soberly, "if I am going to meet Mr. Calendar or Mr. Mulready, I have no assurance of that fact." There was only the briefest of pauses, during which she analyzed this; then, quickly, "But you hope to?" she snapped. He felt that the only adequate retort to this would be a shrug of his shoulders; doubted his ability to carry one off; and again took refuge in silence. The woman abandoned a second plan of siege, with a readiness that did credit to her knowledge of mankind. She thought out the next very carefully, before opening with a masked battery. "Mr. Kirkwood, can't we be friends--this aside?" "Nothing could please me more, Mrs. Hallam!" "I'm sorry if I've annoyed you--" "And I, too, have been rude." "Last night, when you cut away so suddenly, you prevented my making you a proposal, a sort of a business proposition...." "Yes--?" "To come over to our side--" "I thought so. That was why I went." "Yes; I understood. But this morning, when you've had time to think it over--?" "I have no choice in the matter, Mrs. Hallam." The green eyes darkened ominously. "You mean--I am to understand, then, that you're against us, that you prefer to side with swindlers and scoundrels, all because of a--" She discovered him eying her with a smile of such inscrutable and sardonic intelligence, that the words died on her lips, and she crimsoned, treasonably to herself. For he saw it; and the belief he had conceived while attending to her tissue of fabrication, earlier that morning, was strengthened to the point of conviction that, if anything had been stolen by anybody, Mrs. Hallam and her son owned it as little as Calendar. As for the woman, she felt she had steadily lost, rather than gained, ground; and the flash of anger that had colored her cheeks, lit twin beacons in her eyes, which she resolutely fought down until they faded to mere gleams of resentment and determination. But she forgot to control her lips; and they are the truest indices to a woman's character and temperament; and Kirkwood did not overlook the circumstance that their specious sweetness had vanished, leaving them straight, set and hard, quite the reverse of attractive. "So," she said slowly, after a silent time, "you are not for Queensborough! The corollary of that _admission_, Mr. Kirkwood, is that you are for Sheerness." "I believe," he replied wearily, "that there are no other stations on this line, after Newington." "It follows, then, that--that I follow." And in answer to his perturbed glance, she added: "Oh, I'll grant that intuition is sometimes a poor guide. But if you meet George Calendar, so shall I. Nothing can prevent that. You can't hinder me." Considerably amused, he chuckled. "Let us talk of other things, Mrs. Hallam," he suggested pleasantly. "How is your son?" At this juncture the brakes began to shriek and grind upon the wheels. The train slowed; it stopped; and the voice of a guard could be heard admonishing passengers for Queensborough Pier to alight and take the branch line. In the noise the woman's response was drowned, and Kirkwood was hardly enough concerned for poor Freddie to repeat his question. When, after a little, the train pulled out of the junction, neither found reason to resume the conversation. During the brief balance of the journey Mrs. Hallam presumably had food for thought; she frowned, pursed her lips, and with one daintily gloved forefinger followed a seam of her tailored skirt; while Kirkwood sat watching and wondering how to rid himself of her, if she proved really as troublesome as she threatened to be. Also, he wondered continually what it was all about. Why did Mrs. Hallam suspect him of designing to meet Calendar at Queensborough? Had she any tangible ground for believing that Calendar could be found in Queensborough? Presumably she had, since she was avowedly in pursuit of that gentleman, and, Kirkwood inferred, had booked for Queensborough. Was he, then, running away from Calendar and his daughter to chase a will-o'-the-wisp of his credulous fancy, off Sheerness shore? Disturbing reflection. He scowled over it, then considered the other side of the face. Presuming Mrs. Hallam to have had reasonably dependable assurance that Calendar would stop in Queensborough, would she so readily have abandoned her design to catch him there, on the mere supposition that Kirkwood might be looking for him in Sheerness? That did not seem likely to one who esteemed Mrs. Hallam's acumen as highly as Kirkwood did. He brightened up, forgot that his was a fool's errand, and began again to project strategic plans into a problematic future. A sudden jolt interrupted this pastime, and the warning screech of the brakes informed that he had no time to scheme, but had best continue on the plan of action that had brought him thus far--that is, trust to his star and accept what should befall without repining. He rose, opened the door, and holding it so, turned. "I regret, Mrs. Hallam," he announced, smiling his crooked smile, "that a pressing engagement is about to prohibit my 'squiring you through the ticket-gates. You understand, I'm sure." His irrepressible humor proved infectious; and Mrs. Hallam's spirit ran as high as his own. She was smiling cheerfully when she, too, rose. "I also am in some haste," she averred demurely, gathering up her hand-bag and umbrella. A raised platform shot in beside the carriage, and the speed was so sensibly moderated that the train seemed to be creeping rather than running. Kirkwood flung the door wide open and lowered himself to the running-board. The end of the track was in sight and--a man who has been trained to board San Francisco cable-cars fears to alight from no moving vehicle. He swung off, got his balance, and ran swiftly down the platform. A cry from a bystander caused him to glance over his shoulder; Mrs. Hallam was then in the act of alighting. As he looked the flurry of skirts subsided and she fell into stride, pursuing. Sleepy Sheerness must have been scandalized, that day, and its gossips have acquired ground for many, an uncharitable surmise. Kirkwood, however, was so fortunate as to gain the wicket before the employee there awoke to the situation. Otherwise, such is the temper of British petty officialdom, he might have detained the fugitive. As it was, Kirkwood surrendered his ticket and ran out into the street with his luck still a dominant factor in the race. For, looking back, he saw that Mrs. Hallam had been held up at the gate, another victim of British red-tape; her ticket read for Queensborough, she was attempting to alight one station farther down the line, and while undoubtedly she was anxious to pay the excess fare, Heaven alone knew when she would succeed in allaying the suspicions and resentment of the ticket-taker. "That's good for ten minutes' start!" Kirkwood crowed. "And it never occurred to me--!" Before the station he found two hacks in waiting, with little to choose between them; neither was of a type that did not seem to advertise its pre-Victorian fashioning, and to neither was harnessed an animal that deserved anything but the epithet of screw. Kirkwood took the nearest for no other reason than because it was the nearest, and all but startled the driver off his box by offering double-fare for a brisk pace and a simple service at the end of the ride. Succinctly he set forth his wants, jumped into the antiquated four-wheeler, and threw himself down upon musty, dusty cushions to hug himself over the joke and bless whatever English board of railway, directors it was that first ordained that tickets should be taken up at the end instead of the outset of a journey. It was promptly made manifest that he had further cause for gratulation. The cabby, recovering from his amazement, was plying an indefatigable whip and thereby eliciting a degree of speed from his superannuated nag, that his fare had by no means hoped for, much less anticipated. The cab rocked and racketed through Sheerness' streets at a pace which is believed to be unprecedented and unrivaled; its passenger, dashed from side to side, had all he could do to keep from battering the vehicle to pieces with his head; while it was entirely out of the question to attempt to determine whether or not he was being pursued. He enjoyed it all hugely. In a period of time surprisingly short, he saw, from fleeting glimpses of the scenery to be obtained through the reeling windows, that they were threading the outskirts of the town; synchronously, whether by design or through actual inability to maintain it, the speed was moderated. And in the course of a few more minutes the cab stopped definitely. Kirkwood clambered painfully out, shook himself together and the bruises out of his bones, and looked fearfully back. Aside from a slowly settling cloud of dust, the road ran clear as far as he could see--to the point, in fact, where the town closed in about it. He had won; at all events in so much as to win meant eluding the persevering Mrs. Hallam. But to what end? Abstractedly he tendered his lonely sovereign to the driver, and without even looking at it, crammed the heavy weight of change into his pocket; an oversight which not only won him the awe-struck admiration of the cabby, but entailed consequences (it may be) he little apprehended. It was with an absentminded nod that he acquiesced in the man's announcement that he might arrange about the boat for him. Accordingly the cabby disappeared; and Kirkwood continued to stare about him, eagerly, hopefully. He stood on the brink of the Thames estuary, there a possible five miles from shore to shore; from his feet, almost, a broad shingle beach sloped gently to the water. On one hand a dilapidated picket-fence enclosed the door-yard of a fisherman's cottage, or, better, hovel,--if it need be accurately described--at the door of which the cabby was knocking. The morning was now well-advanced. The sun rode high, a sphere of tarnished flame in a void of silver-gray, its thin cold radiance striking pallid sparks from the leaping crests of wind-whipped waves. In the east a wall of vapor, dull and lusterless, had taken body since the dawn, masking the skies and shutting down upon the sea like some vast curtain; and out of the heart of this a bitter and vicious wind played like a sword. To the north, Shoeburyness loomed vaguely, like a low-drifted bank of cloud. Off to the right the Nore Lightship danced, a tiny fleck of warm crimson in a wilderness of slatey-blue waters, plumed with a myriad of vanishing white-caps. Up the shelving shore, small, puny wavelets dashed in impotent fury, and the shingle sang unceasingly its dreary, syncopated monotone. High and dry, a few dingy boats lay canted wearily upon their broad, swelling sides,--a couple of dories, apparently in daily use; a small sloop yacht, dismantled and plainly beyond repair; and an oyster-smack also out of commission. About them the beach was strewn with a litter of miscellany,--nets, oars, cork buoys, bits of wreckage and driftwood, a few fish too long forgotten and (one assumed) responsible in part for the foreign wealth of the atmosphere. Some little distance offshore a fishing-boat, catrigged and not more than twenty-feet over all, swung bobbing at her mooring, keen nose searching into the wind; at sight of which Kirkwood gave thanks, for his adventitious guide had served him well, if that boat were to be hired by any manner of persuasion. But it was to the farther reaches of the estuary that he gave more prolonged and most anxious heed, scanning narrowly what shipping was there to be seen. Far beyond the lightship a liner was riding the waves with serene contempt, making for the river's mouth and Tilbury Dock. Nearer in, a cargo boat was standing out upon the long trail, the white of riven waters showing clearly against her unclean freeboard. Out to east a little covey of fishing-smacks, red sails well reefed, were scudding before the wind like strange affrighted water-fowl, and bearing down past a heavy-laden river barge. The latter, with tarpaulin battened snugly down over the cockpit and the seas dashing over her wash-board until she seemed under water half the time, was forging stodgily Londonwards, her bargee at the tiller smoking a placid pipe. But a single sailing vessel of any notable tonnage was in sight; and when he saw her Kirkwood's heart became buoyant with hope, and he began to tremble with nervous eagerness. For he believed her to be the _Alethea_. There's no mistaking a ship brigantine-rigged for any other style of craft that sails the seas. From her position when first he saw her, Kirkwood could have fancied she was tacking out of the mouth of the Medway; but he judged that, leaving the Thames' mouth, she had tacked to starboard until well-nigh within hail of Sheerness. Now, having presumably, gone about, she was standing out toward the Nore, boring doggedly into the wind. He would have given a deal for glasses wherewith to read the name upon her bows, but was sensible of no hampering doubts; nor, had he harbored any, would they have deterred him. He had set his heart upon the winning of his venture, had come too far, risked far too much, to suffer anything now to stay his hand and stand between him and Dorothy Calendar. Whatever the further risks and hazards, though he should take his life in his hands to win to her side, he would struggle on. He recked nothing of personal danger; a less selfish passion ran molten in his veins, moving him to madness. Fascinated, he fixed his gaze upon the reeling brigantine, and for a space it was as if by longing he had projected his spirit to her slanting deck, and were there, pleading his case with the mistress of his heart.... Voices approaching brought him back to shore. He turned, resuming his mask of sanity, the better to confer with the owner of the cottage and boats--a heavy, keen-eyed fellow, ungracious and truculent of habit, and chary of his words; as he promptly demonstrated. "I'll hire your boat," Kirkwood told him, "to put me aboard that brigantine, off to leeward. We ought to start at once." The fisherman shifted his quid of tobacco from cheek to cheek, grunted inarticulately, and swung deliberately on his heel, displaying a bull neck above a pair of heavy shoulders. "Dirty weather," he croaked, facing back from his survey of the eastern skies before the American found out whether or not he should resent his insolence. "How much?" Kirkwood demanded curtly, annoyed. The man hesitated, scowling blackly at the heeling vessel, momentarily increasing her distance from shore. Then with a crafty smile, "Two pound'," he declared. The American nodded. "Very well," he agreed simply. "Get out your boat." The fisherman turned away to shamble noisily over the shingle, huge booted heels crunching, toward one of the dories. To this he set his shoulder, shoving it steadily down the beach until only the stern was dry. Kirkwood looked back, for the last time, up the road to Sheerness. Nothing moved upon it. He was rid of Mrs. Hallam, if face to face with a sterner problem. He had a few pence over ten shillings in his pocket, and had promised to pay the man four times as much. He would have agreed to ten times the sum demanded; for the boat he must and would have. But he had neglected to conclude his bargain, to come to an understanding as to the method of payment; and he felt more than a little dubious as to the reception the fisherman would give his proposition, sound as he, Kirkwood, knew it to be. In the background the cabby loitered, gnawed by insatiable curiosity. The fisherman turned, calling over his shoulder: "If ye'd catch yon vessel, come!" With one final twinge of doubt--the task of placating this surly dog was anything but inviting--the American strode to the boat and climbed in, taking the stern seat. The fisherman shoved off, wading out thigh-deep in the spiteful waves, then threw himself in over the gunwales and shipped the oars. Bows swinging offshore, rocking and dancing, the dory began to forge slowly toward the anchored boat. In their faces the wind beat gustily, and small, slapping waves, breaking against the sides, showered them with fine spray.... In time the dory lay alongside the cat-boat, the fisherman with a gnarled hand grasping the latter's gunwale to hold the two together. With some difficulty Kirkwood transhipped himself, landing asprawl in the cockpit, amid a tangle of cordage slippery with scales. The skipper followed, with clumsy expertness bringing the dory's painter with him and hitching it to a ring-bolt abaft the rudder-head. Then, pausing an instant to stare into the East with somber eyes, he shipped the tiller and bent to the halyards. As the sail rattled up, flapping wildly, Kirkwood marked with relief--for it meant so much time saved--that it was already close reefed. But when at least the boom was thrashing overhead and the halyards had been made fast to their cleats, the fisherman again stood erect, peering distrustfully at the distant wall of cloud. Then, in two breaths: "Can't do it," he decided; "not at the price." "Why?" Kirkwood stared despairingly after the brigantine, that was already drawn far ahead. "Danger," growled the fellow, "--wind." At a loss completely, Kirkwood found no words. He dropped his head, considering. "Not at the price," the sullen voice iterated; and he looked up to find the cunning gaze upon him. "How much, then?" "Five poun' I'll have--no less, for riskin' my life this day." "Impossible. I haven't got it." In silence the man unshipped the tiller and moved toward the cleats. "Hold on a minute." Kirkwood unbuttoned his coat and, freeing the chain from his waistcoat buttonholes, removed his watch.... As well abandon them altogether; he had designed to leave them as security for the two pounds, and had delayed stating the terms only for fear lest they be refused. Now, too late as ever, he recognized his error. But surely, he thought, it should be apparent even to that low intelligence that the timepiece alone was worth more than the boat itself. "Will you take these?" he offered. "Take and keep them--only set me aboard that ship!" Deliberately the fisherman weighed the watch and chain in his broad, hard palm, eyes narrowing to mere slits in his bronzed mask. "How much?" he asked slowly. "Eighty pounds, together; the chain alone cost me twenty." The shifty, covetous eyes ranged from the treasure in his hand to the threatening east. A puff of wind caught the sail and sent the boom athwartships, like a mighty flail. Both men ducked instinctively, to escape a braining. "How do I know?" objected the skipper. "I'm telling you. If you've got eyes, you can see," retorted Kirkwood savagely, seeing that he had erred in telling the truth; the amount he had named was too great to be grasped at once by this crude, cupidous brain. "How do I know?" the man repeated. Nevertheless he dropped watch and chain into his pocket, then with a meaning grimace extended again his horny, greedy palm. "What...?" "Hand over th' two pound' and we'll go." "I'll see you damned first!" A flush of rage blinded the young man. The knowledge that the _Alethea_ was minute by minute slipping beyond his reach seemed to madden him. White-lipped and ominously quiet he rose from his seat on the combing, as, without answer, the fisherman, crawling out on the overhand, began to haul in the dory. "Ashore ye go," he pronounced his ultimatum, motioning Kirkwood to enter the boat. The American turned, looking for the _Alethea_, or for the vessel that he believed bore that name. She was nearing the light-ship when he found her, and as he looked a squall blurred the air between them, blotting the brigantine out with a smudge of rain. The effect was as if she had vanished, as if she were for ever snatched from his grasp; and with Dorothy aboard her--Heaven alone knew in what need of him! Mute and blind with despair and wrath, he turned upon the man and caught him by the collar, forcing him out over the lip of the overhang. They were unevenly matched, Kirkwood far the slighter, but strength came to him in the crisis, physical strength and address such as he had not dreamed was at his command. And the surprise of his onslaught proved an ally of unguessed potency. Before he himself knew it he was standing on the overhang and had shifted his hold to seize the fellow about the waist; then, lifting him clear of the deck, and aided by a lurch of the cat-boat, he cast him bodily into the dory. The man, falling, struck his head against one of the thwarts, a glancing blow that stunned him temporarily. Kirkwood himself dropped as if shot, a trailing reef-point slapping his cheek until it stung as the boom thrashed overhead. It was as close a call as he had known; the knowledge sickened him a little. Without rising he worked the painter loose and cast the dory adrift; then crawled back into the cockpit. No pang of compassion disturbed him as he abandoned the fisherman to the mercy of the sea; though the fellow lay still, uncouthly distorted, in the bottom of the dory, he was in no danger; the wind and waves together would carry the boat ashore.... For that matter, the man was even then recovering, struggling to sit up. Crouching to avoid the boom, Kirkwood went forward to the bows, and, grasping the mooring cable, drew it in, slipping back into the cockpit to get a stronger purchase with his feet. It was a struggle; the boat pulled sluggishly against the wind, the cable inching in jealously. And behind him he could hear a voice bellowing inarticulate menaces, and knew that in another moment the fisherman would be at his oars. Frantically he tugged and tore at the slimy rope, hauling with a will and a prayer. It gave more readily, towards the end, but he seemed to have fought with it for ages when at last the anchor tripped and he got it in. Immediately he leaped back to the stern, fitted in the tiller, and seizing the mainsheet, drew the boom in till the wind should catch in the canvas. In the dory the skipper, bending at his oars, was not two yards astern. He was hard aboard when, the sail filling with a bang, Kirkwood pulled the tiller up; and the cat-boat slid away, a dozen feet separating them in a breath. A yell of rage boomed down the wind, but he paid no heed. Careless alike of the dangers he had passed and those that yawned before him, he trimmed the sheet and stood away on the port tack, heading directly for the Nore Lightship. XI OFF THE NORE Kirkwood's anger cooled apace; at worst it had been a flare of passion--incandescent. It was seldom more. His brain clearing, the temperature of his judgment quickly regained its mean, and he saw his chances without distortion, weighed them without exaggeration. Leaning against the combing, feet braced upon the slippery and treacherous deck, he clung to tiller and mainsheet and peered ahead with anxious eyes, a pucker of daring graven deep between his brows. A mile to westward, three or more ahead, he could see the brigantine standing close in under the Essex shore. At times she was invisible; again he could catch merely the glint of her canvas, white against the dark loom of the littoral, toned by a mist of flying spindrift. He strained his eyes, watching for the chance which would take place in the rake of her masts and sails, when she should come about. For the longer that manoeuver was deferred, the better was his chance of attaining his object. It was a forlorn hope. But in time the brigantine, to escape Maplin Sands, would be forced to tack and stand out past the lightship, the wind off her port bows. Then their courses would intersect. It remained to be demonstrated whether the cat-boat was speedy enough to arrive at this point of contact in advance of, or simultaneously with, the larger vessel. Every minute that the putative _Alethea_ put off coming about brought the cat-boat nearer that goal, but Kirkwood could do no more than hope and try to trust in the fisherman's implied admission that it could be done. It was all in the boat and the way she handled. He watched her anxiously, quick to approve her merits as she displayed them. He had sailed small craft before--frail center-board cat-boats, handy and swift, built to serve in summer winds and protected waters: never such an one as this. Yet he liked her. Deep bosomed she was, with no center-board, dependent on her draught and heavy keel to hold her on the wind; stanch and seaworthy, sheathed with stout plank and ribbed with seasoned timber, designed to keep afloat in the wickedest weather brewed by the foul-tempered German Ocean. Withal her lines were fine and clean; for all her beam she was calculated to nose narrowly into the wind and make a pretty pace as well. A good boat: he had the grace to give the credit to his luck. Her disposition was more fully disclosed as they drew away from the beach. Inshore with shoaling water, the waves had been choppy and spiteful but lacking force of weight. Farther out, as the bottom fell away, the rollers became more uniform and powerful; heavy sweeping seas met the cat-boat, from their hollows looming mountainous to the man in the tiny cockpit; who was nevertheless aware that to a steamer they would be negligible. His boat breasted them gallantly, toiling sturdily up the steep acclivities, poising breathlessly on foam-crested summits for dizzy instants, then plunging headlong down the deep green swales; and left a boiling wake behind her,--urging ever onward, hugging the wind in her wisp of blood-red sail, and boring into it, pulling at the tiller with the mettle of a race-horse slugging at the bit. Offshore, too, the wind stormed with added strength, or, possibly, had freshened. For minutes on end the leeward gunwales would run green, and now and again the screaming, pelting squalls that scoured the estuary would heel her over until the water cascaded in over the lee combing, and the rudder, lifted clear, would hang idle until, smitten by some racing billow, the tiller would be all but torn from Kirkwood's hands. Again and again this happened; and those were times of trembling. But always the cat-boat righted, shaking the clinging waters from her and swinging her stem into the wind again; and there would follow an abbreviated breathing spell, during which Kirkwood was at liberty to dash the salt spray from his eyes and search the wind-harried waste for the brigantine. Sometimes he found her, sometimes not. Long after he had expected her to, she went about and they began to close in upon each other. He could see that even with shortened canvas she was staggering drunkenly under the fierce impacts of the wind. For himself, it was nip-and-tuck, now, and no man in his normal sense would have risked a sixpence on the boat's chance to live until she crossed the brigantine's bows. Time out of reckoning he was forced to kneel in the swimming cockpit, steering with one hand, using the bailing-dish with the other, and keeping his eyes religiously turned to the bellying patch of sail. It was heartbreaking toil; he began reluctantly to concede that it could not last much longer. And if he missed the brigantine he would be lost; mortal strength was not enough to stand the unending strain upon every bone, muscle and sinew, required to keep the boat upon her course; though for a time it might cope with and solve the problems presented by each new, malignant billow and each furious, howling squall, the end inevitably must be failure. To struggle on would be but to postpone the certain end ... save and except the possibility of his gaining the brigantine within the period of time strictly and briefly limited by his powers of endurance. Long since he had become numb with cold from incessant drenchings of icy spray, that piled in over the windward counter, keeping the bottom ankle-deep regardless of his laborious but intermittent efforts with the bailing dish. And the two, brigantine and cockle-shell, were drawing together with appalling deliberation. A dozen times he was on the point of surrender, as often plucked up hope; as the minutes wore on and he kept above water, he began to believe that if he could stick it out his judgment and seamanship would be justified ... though human ingenuity backed by generosity could by no means contrive adequate excuse for his foolhardiness. But that was aside, something irreparable. Wan and grim, he fought it out. But that his voice stuck in his parched throat, he could have shouted in his elation, when eventually he gained the point of intersection an eighth of a mile ahead of the brigantine and got sight of her windward freeboard as, most slowly, the cat-boat forged across her course. For all that, the moment of his actual triumph was not yet; he had still to carry off successfully a scheme that for sheer audacity of conception and contempt for danger, transcended all that had gone before. Holding the cat-boat on for a time, he brought her about handsomely a little way beyond the brigantine's course, and hung in the eye of the wind, the leach flapping and tightening with reports like rifle-shots, and the water sloshing about his calves--bailing-dish now altogether out of mind--while he watched the oncoming vessel, his eyes glistening with anticipation. She was footing it smartly, the brigantine--lying down to it and snoring into the wind. Beneath her stem waves broke in snow-white showers, whiter than the canvas of her bulging jib--broke and, gnashing their teeth in impotent fury, swirled and eddied down her sleek dark flanks. Bobbing, courtesying, she plunged onward, shortening the interval with mighty, leaping bounds. On her bows, with each instant, the golden letters of her name grew larger and more legible until--_Alethea_!--he could read it plain beyond dispute. Joy welled in his heart. He forgot all that he had undergone in the prospect of what he proposed still to do in the name of the only woman the world held for him. Unquestioning he had come thus far in her service; unquestioning, by her side, he was prepared to go still farther, though all humanity should single her out with accusing fingers.... They were watching him, aboard the brigantine; he could see a line of heads above her windward rail. Perhaps _she_ was of their number. He waved an audacious hand. Some one replied, a great shout shattering itself unintelligibly against the gale. He neither understood nor attempted to reply; his every faculty was concentrated on the supreme moment now at hand. Calculating the instant to a nicety, he paid off the sheet and pulled up the tiller. The cat-boat pivoted on her heel; with a crack her sail flapped full and rigid; then, with the untempered might of the wind behind her, she shot like an arrow under the brigantine's bows, so close that the bowsprit of the latter first threatened to impale the sail, next, the bows plunging, crashed down a bare two feet behind the cat-boat's stern. Working in a frenzy of haste, Kirkwood jammed the tiller hard alee, bringing the cat about, and, trimming the mainsheet as best he might, found himself racing under the brigantine's leeward quarter,--water pouring in generously over the cat's. Luffing, he edged nearer, handling his craft as though intending to ram the larger vessel, foot by foot shortening the little interval. When it was four feet, he would risk the jump; he crawled out on the overhang, crouching on his toes, one hand light upon the tiller, the other touching the deck, ready ... ready.... Abruptly the _Alethea_ shut off the wind; the sail flattened and the cat dropped back. In a second the distance had doubled. In anguish Kirkwood uttered an exceeding bitter cry. Already he was falling far off her counter.... A shout reached him. He was dimly conscious of a dark object hurtling through the air. Into the cockpit, splashing, something dropped--a coil of rope. He fell forward upon it, into water eighteen inches deep; and for the first time realized that, but for that line, he had gone to his drowning in another minute. The cat was sinking. As he scrambled to his feet, clutching the life-line, a heavy wave washed over the water-logged craft and left it all but submerged; and a smart tug on the rope added point to the advice which, reaching his ears in a bellow like a bull's, penetrated the panic of his wits. "Jump! _Jump, you fool_!" In an instant of coherence he saw that the brigantine was luffing; none the less much of the line had already been paid out, and there was no reckoning when the end would be reached. Without time to make it fast, he hitched it twice round his waist and chest, once round an arm, and, grasping it above his head to ease its constriction when the tug should come, leaped on the combing and overboard. A green roaring avalanche swept down upon him and the luckless cat-boat, overwhelming both simultaneously. The agony that was his during the next few minutes can by no means be exaggerated. With such crises the human mind is not fitted adequately to cope; it retains no record of the supreme moment beyond a vague and incoherent impression of poignant, soul-racking suffering. Kirkwood underwent a prolonged interval of semi-sentience, his mind dominated and oppressed by a deathly fear of drowning and a deadening sense of suffocation, with attendant tortures as of being broken on the wheel--limb rending from limb; of compression of his ribs that threatened momentarily to crush in his chest; of a world a-welter with dim swirling green half-lights alternating with flashes of blinding white; of thunderings in his ears like salvoes from a thousand cannon.... And his senses were blotted out in blackness.... Then he was breathing once more, the keen clean air stabbing his lungs, the while he swam unsupported in an ethereal void of brilliance. His mouth was full of something that burned, a liquid hot, acrid, and stinging. He gulped, swallowed, slobbered, choked, coughed, attempted to sit up, was aware that he was the focal center of a ring of glaring, burning eyes, like eyes of ravening beasts; and fainted. His next conscious impression was of standing up, supported by friendly arms on either side, while somebody was asking him if he could walk a step or two. He lifted his head and let it fall in token of assent, mumbling a yes; and looked round him with eyes wherein the light of intelligence burned more clear with every second. By degrees he catalogued and comprehended his weirdly altered circumstances and surroundings. He was partly seated, partly held up, on the edge of the cabin sky-light, an object of interest to some half-dozen men, seafaring fellows all, by their habit, clustered round between him and the windward rail. Of their number one stood directly before him, dwarfing his companions as much by his air of command as by his uncommon height: tall, thin-faced and sallow, with hollow weather-worn cheeks, a mouth like a crooked gash from ear to ear, and eyes like dying coals, with which he looked the rescued up and down in one grim, semi-humorous, semi-speculative glance. In hands both huge and red he fondled tenderly a squat brandy flask whose contents had apparently been employed as a first aid to the drowning. As Kirkwood's gaze encountered his, the man smiled sourly, jerking his head to one side with a singularly derisive air. "Hi, matey!" he blustered. "'Ow goes it now? Feelin' 'appier, eigh?" [Illustration: "Hi, matey!" he blustered. "'Ow goes it now?"] "Some, thank you ... more like a drowned rat." Kirkwood eyed him sheepishly. "I suppose you're the man who threw me that line? I'll have to wait till my head clears up before I can thank you properly." "Don't mention it." He of the lantern jaws stowed the bottle away with jealous care in one of his immense coat pockets, and seized Kirkwood's hand in a grasp that made the young man wince. "You're syfe enough now. My nyme's Stryker, Capt'n Wilyum Stryker.... Wot's the row? Lookin' for a friend?" he demanded suddenly, as Kirkwood's attention wandered. For the memory of the errand that had brought him into the hands of Captain William Stryker had come to the young man very suddenly; and his eager eyes were swiftly roving not along the decks but the wide world besides, for sight or sign of his heart's desire. After luffing to pick him up, the brigantine had been again pulled off on the port tack. The fury of the gale seemed rather to have waxed than waned, and the _Alethea_ was bending low under the relentless fury of its blasts, driving hard, with leeward channels awash. Under her port counter, a mile away, the crimson light-ship wallowed in a riot of breaking combers. Sheerness lay abeam, five miles or more. Ahead the northeast headland of the Isle of Sheppey was bulking large and near. The cat-boat had vanished.... More important still, no one aboard the brigantine resembled in the remotest degree either of the Calendars, father or daughter, or even Mulready, the black-avised. "I sye, 're you lookin' for some one you know?" "Yes--your passengers. I presume they're below--?" "Passengers!" A hush fell upon the group, during which Kirkwood sought Stryker's eye in pitiful pleading; and Stryker looked round him blankly. "Where's Miss Calendar?" the young man demanded sharply. "I must see her at once!" The keen and deep-set eyes of the skipper clouded as they returned to Kirkwood's perturbed countenance. "Wot're you talking about?" he demanded brusquely. "I must see Miss Calendar, or Calendar himself, or Mulready." Kirkwood paused, and, getting no reply, grew restive under Stryker's inscrutable regard. "That's why I came aboard," he amended, blind to the absurdity of the statement; "to see--er--Calendar." "Well ... I'm damned!" Stryker managed to infuse into his tone a deal of suspicious contempt. "Why?" insisted Kirkwood, nettled but still uncomprehending. "D'you mean to tell me you came off from--wherever in 'ell you did come from--intendin' to board this wessel and find a party nymed Calendar?" "Certainly I did. Why--?" "Well!" cried Mr. Stryker, rubbing his hands together with an air oppressively obsequious, "I'm sorry to _hin_-form you you've come to the wrong shop, sir; we don't stock no Calendars. We're in the 'ardware line, we are. You might try next door, or I dessay you'll find what you want at the stytioner's, round the corner." A giggle from his audience stimulated him. "If," he continued acidly, "I'd a-guessed you was such a damn' fool, blimmy if I wouldn't've let you drownd!" Staggered, Kirkwood bore his sarcastic truculence without resentment. "Calendar," he stammered, trying to explain, "Calendar _said_--" "I carn't 'elp wot Calendar said. Mebbe 'e _did_ myke an engygement with you, an' you've gone and went an' forgot the dyte. Mebbe it's larst year's calendar you're thinkin' of. You Johnny" (to a lout of a boy in the group of seamen), "you run an' fetch this gentleman Whitaker's for Nineteen-six. Look sharp, now!" "But--!" With an effort Kirkwood mustered up a show of dignity. "Am I to understand," he said, as calmly as he could, "that you deny knowing George B. Calendar and his daughter Dorothy and--" "I don't 'ave to. Listen to me, young man." For the time the fellow discarded his clumsy facetiousness. "I'm Wilyum Stryker, Capt'n Stryker, marster and 'arf-owner of this wessel, and wot I says 'ere is law. We don't carry no passengers. D'ye understand me?"--aggressively. "There ain't no pusson nymed Calendar aboard the _Allytheer_, an' never was, an' never will be!" "What name did you say?" Kirkwood inquired. "This ship? The _Allytheer_; registered from Liverpool; bound from London to Hantwerp, in cargo. Anythink else?" Kirkwood shook his head, turning to scan the seascape with a gloomy gaze. As he did so, and remarked how close upon the Sheppey headland the brigantine had drawn, the order was given to go about. For the moment he was left alone, wretchedly wet, shivering, wan and shrunken visibly with the knowledge that he had dared greatly for nothing. But for the necessity of keeping up before Stryker and his crew, the young man felt that he could gladly have broken down and wept for sheer vexation and disappointment. Smartly the brigantine luffed and wore about, heeling deep as she spun away on the starboard tack. Kirkwood staggered round the skylight to the windward rail. From this position, looking forward, he could see that they were heading for the open sea, Foulness low over the port quarter, naught before them but a brawling waste of leaden-green and dirty white. Far out one of the sidewheel boats of the Queensborough-Antwerp line was heading directly into the wind and making heavy weather of it. Some little while later, Stryker again approached him, perhaps swayed by an unaccustomed impulse of compassion; which, however, he artfully concealed. Blandly ironic, returning to his impersonation of the shopkeeper, "Nothink else we can show you, sir?" he inquired. "I presume you couldn't put me ashore?" Kirkwood replied ingenuously. In supreme disgust the captain showed him his back. "'Ere, you!" he called to one of the crew. "Tyke this awye--tyke 'im below and put 'im to bed; give 'im a drink and dry 'is clo's. Mebbe 'e'll be better when 'e wykes up. 'E don't talk sense now, that's sure. If you arsk me, I sye 'e's balmy and no 'ope for 'im." XII PICARESQUE PASSAGES Contradictory to the hopeful prognosis of Captain Stryker, his unaccredited passenger was not "better" when, after a period of oblivious rest indefinite in duration, he awoke. His subsequent assumption of listless resignation, of pacific acquiescence in the dictates of his destiny, was purely deceptive--thin ice of despair over profound depths of exasperated rebellion. Blank darkness enveloped him when first he opened eyes to wonder. Then gradually as he stared, piecing together unassorted memories and striving to quicken drowsy wits, he became aware of a glimmer that waxed and waned, a bar of pale bluish light striking across the gloom above his couch; and by dint of puzzling divined that this had access by a port. Turning his head upon a stiff and unyielding pillow, he could discern a streak of saffron light lining the sill of a doorway, near by his side. The one phenomenon taken with the other confirmed a theretofore somewhat hazy impression that his dreams were dignified by a foundation of fact; that, in brief, he was occupying a cabin-bunk aboard the good ship _Alethea_. Overhead, on the deck, a heavy thumping of hurrying feet awoke him to keener perceptiveness. Judging from the incessant rolling and pitching of the brigantine, the crashing thunder of seas upon her sides, the eldrich shrieking of the gale, as well as from the chorused groans and plaints of each individual bolt and timber in the frail fabric that housed his fortunes, the wind had strengthened materially during his hours of forgetfulness--however many the latter might have been. He believed, however, that he had slept long, deeply and exhaustively. He felt now a little emaciated mentally and somewhat absent-bodied--so he put it to himself. A numb languor, not unpleasant, held him passively supine, the while he gave himself over to speculative thought. A wild night, certainly; probably, by that time, the little vessel was in the middle of the North Sea ... _bound for Antwerp_! "Oh-h," said Kirkwood vindictively, "_hell_!" So he was bound for Antwerp! The first color of resentment ebbing from his thoughts left him rather interested than excited by the prospect. He found that he was neither pleased nor displeased. He presumed that it would be no more difficult to raise money on personal belongings in Antwerp than anywhere else; it has been observed that the first flower of civilization is the rum-blossom, the next, the conventionalized fleur-de-lis of the money-lender. There would be pawnshops, then, in Antwerp; and Kirkwood was confident that the sale or pledge of his signet-ring, scarf-pin, match-box and cigar-case, would provide him with money enough for a return to London, by third-class, at the worst. There ... well, all events were on the knees of the gods; he'd squirm out of his troubles, somehow. As for the other matter, the Calendar affair, he presumed he was well rid of it,--with a sigh of regret. It had been a most enticing mystery, you know; and the woman in the case was extraordinary, to say the least. The memory of Dorothy Calendar made him sigh again, this time more violently: a sigh that was own brother to (or at any rate descended in a direct line from) the furnace sigh of the lover described by, the melancholy Jaques. And he sat up, bumped his head, groped round until his hand fell upon a doorknob, opened the door, and looked out into the blowsy emptiness of the ship's cabin proper, whose gloomy confines were made visible only by the rays of a dingy and smoky lamp swinging violently in gimbals from a deck-beam. Kirkwood's clothing, now rough-dried and warped wretchedly out of shape, had been thrown carelessly on a transom near the door. He got up, collected them, and returning to his berth, dressed at leisure, thinking heavily, disgruntled--in a humor as evil as the after-taste of bad brandy in his mouth. When dressed he went out into the cabin, closing the door upon his berth, and for lack of anything better to do, seated himself on the thwartships transom, against the forward bulkhead, behind the table. Above his head a chronometer ticked steadily and loudly, and, being consulted, told him that the time of day was twenty minutes to four; which meant that he had slept away some eighteen or twenty hours. That was a solid spell of a rest, when he came to think of it, even allowing that he had been unusually and pardonably fatigued when conducted to his berth. He felt stronger now, and bright enough--and enormously hungry into the bargain. Abstractedly, heedless of the fact that his tobacco would be water-soaked and ruined, he fumbled in his pockets for pipe and pouch, thinking to soothe the pangs of hunger against breakfast-time; which was probably two hours and a quarter ahead. But his pockets were empty--every one of them. He assimilated this discovery in patience and cast an eye about the room, to locate, if possible, the missing property. But naught of his was visible. So he rose and began a more painstaking search. The cabin was at once tiny, low-ceiled, and depressingly gloomy. Its furniture consisted entirely in a chair or two, supplementing the transoms and lockers as resting-places, and a center-table covered with a cloth of turkey-red, whose original aggressiveness had been darkly moderated by libations of liquids, principally black coffee, and burnt offerings of grease and tobacco-ash. Aside from the companion-way to the deck, four doors opened into the room, two probably giving upon the captain's and the mate's quarters, the others on pseudo state-rooms--one of which he had just vacated--closets large enough to contain a small bunk and naught beside. The bulkheads and partitions were badly broken out with a rash of pictures from illustrated papers, mostly offensive. Kirkwood was interested to read a half-column clipping from a New York yellow journal, descriptive of the antics of a drunken British sailor who had somehow found his way to the bar-room of the Fifth Avenue Hotel; the paragraph exploiting the fact that it had required four policemen in addition to the corps of porters to subdue him, was strongly underscored in red ink; and the news-story wound up with the information that in police court the man had given his name as William Stranger and cheerfully had paid a fine of ten dollars, alleging his entertainment to have been cheap at the price. While Kirkwood was employed in perusing this illuminating anecdote, eight bells sounded, and, from the commotion overhead, the watch changed. A little later the companion-way door slammed open and shut, and Captain Stryker--or Stranger; whichever you please--fell down, rather than descended, the steps. Without attention to the American he rolled into the mate's room and roused that personage. Kirkwood heard that the name of the second-in-command was 'Obbs, as well as that he occupied the starboard state-room aft. After a brief exchange of comment and instruction, Mr. 'Obbs appeared in the shape of a walking pillar of oil-skins capped by a sou'wester, and went on deck; Stryker, following him out of the state-room, shed his own oilers in a clammy heap upon the floor, opened a locker from which he brought forth a bottle and a dirty glass, and, turning toward the table, for the first time became sensible of Kirkwood's presence. "Ow, there you are, eigh, little bright-eyes!" he exclaimed with surprised animation. "Good morning, Captain Stryker," said Kirkwood, rising. "I want to tell you--" But Stryker waved one great red paw impatiently, with the effect of sweeping aside and casting into the discard Kirkwood's intended speech of thanks; nor would he hear him further. "Did you 'ave a nice little nap?" he interrupted. "Come up bright and smilin', eigh? Now I guess"--the emphasis made it clear that the captain believed himself to be employing an Americanism; and so successful was he in his own esteem that he could not resist the temptation to improve upon the imitation--"Na-ow I guess yeou're abaout right ready, ben't ye, to hev a drink, sonny?" "No, thank you," said Kirkwood, smiling tolerantly. "I've got any amount of appetite..." "'Ave you, now?" Stryker dropped his mimicry and glanced at the clock. "Breakfast," he announced, "will be served in the myne dinin' saloon at eyght a. m. Passingers is requested not to be lyte at tyble." Depositing the bottle on the said table, the captain searched until he found another glass for Kirkwood, and sat down. "Do you good," he insinuated, pushing the bottle gently over. "No, thank you," reiterated Kirkwood shortly, a little annoyed. Stryker seized his own glass, poured out a strong man's dose of the fiery concoction, gulped it down, and sighed. Then, with a glance at the American's woebegone countenance (Kirkwood was contemplating a four-hour wait for breakfast, and, consequently, looking as if he had lost his last friend), the captain bent over, placing both hands palm down before him and wagging his head earnestly. "Please," he implored,--"Please don't let me hinterrupt;" and filled his pipe, pretending a pensive detachment from his company. The fumes of burning shag sharpened the tooth of desire. Kirkwood stood it as long as he could, then surrendered with an: "If you've got any more of that tobacco, Captain, I'd be glad of a pipe." An intensely contemplative expression crept into the captain's small blue eyes. "I only got one other pyper of this 'ere 'baccy," he announced at length, "and I carn't get no more till I gets 'ome. I simply couldn't part with it hunder 'arf a quid." Kirkwood settled back with a hopeless lift of his shoulders. Abstractedly Stryker puffed the smoke his way until he could endure the deprivation no longer. "I had about ten shillings in my pocket when I came aboard, captain, and ... a few other articles." "Ow, yes; so you 'ad, now you mention it." Stryker rose, ambled into his room, and returned with Kirkwood's possessions and a fresh paper of shag. While the young man was hastily filling, lighting, and inhaling the first strangling but delectable whiff, the captain solemnly counted into his own palm all the loose change except three large pennies. The latter he shoved over to Kirkwood in company with a miscellaneous assortment of articles, which the American picked up piece by piece and began to bestow about his clothing. When through, he sat back, troubled and disgusted. Stryker met his regard blandly. "Anything I can do?" he inquired, in suave concern. "Why ... there _was_ a black pearl scarfpin--" "W'y, don't you remember? You gave that to me, 'count of me 'avin syved yer life. 'Twas me throwed you that line, you know." "Oh," commented Kirkwood briefly. The pin had been among the most valuable and cherished of his belongings. "Yes," nodded the captain in reminiscence. "You don't remember? Likely 'twas the brandy singing in yer 'ead. You pushes it into my 'ands,--almost weepin', you was,--and sez, sez you, 'Stryker,' you sez, 'tyke this in triflin' toking of my gratichood; I wouldn't hinsult you,' you sez, 'by hofferin' you money, but this I can insist on yer acceptin', and no refusal,' says you." "Oh," repeated Kirkwood. "If I for a ninstant thought you wasn't sober when you done it.... But no; you're a gent if there ever was one, and I'm not the man to offend you." "Oh, indeed." The captain let the implication pass, perhaps on the consideration that he could afford to ignore it; and said no more. The pause held for several minutes, Kirkwood having fallen into a mood of grave distraction. Finally Captain Stryker thoughtfully measured out a second drink, limited only by the capacity of the tumbler, engulfed it noisily, and got up. "Guess I'll be turnin' in," he volunteered affably, yawning and stretching. "I was about to ask you to do me a service...." began Kirkwood. "Yes?"--with the rising inflection of mockery. Kirkwood quietly produced his cigar-case, a gold match-box, gold card-case, and slipped a signet ring from his finger. "Will you buy these?" he asked. "Or will you lend me five pounds and hold them as security?" Stryker examined the collection with exaggerated interest strongly tinctured with mistrust. "I'll buy 'em," he offered eventually, looking up. "That's kind of you--" "Ow, they ain't much use to me, but Bill Stryker's allus willin' to accommodate a friend.... Four quid, you said?" "Five...." "They ain't wuth over four to me." "Very well; make it four," Kirkwood assented contemptuously. The captain swept the articles into one capacious fist, pivoted on one heel at the peril of his neck, and lumbered unsteadily off to his room. Pausing at the door he turned back in inquiry. "I sye, 'ow did you come to get the impression there was a party named Almanack aboard this wessel?" "Calendar--" "'Ave it yer own wye," Stryker conceded gracefully. "There isn't, is there?" "You 'eard me." "Then," said Kirkwood sweetly, "I'm sure you wouldn't be interested." The captain pondered this at leisure. "You seemed pretty keen abaht seein' 'im," he remarked conclusively. "I was." "Seems to me I did 'ear the nyme sumw'eres afore." The captain appeared to wrestle with an obdurate memory. "Ow!" he triumphed. "I know. 'E was a chap up Manchester wye. Keeper in a loonatic asylum, 'e was. 'That yer party?" "No," said Kirkwood wearily. "I didn't know but mebbe 'twas. Excuse me. 'Thought as 'ow mebbe you'd escyped from 'is tender care, but, findin' the world cold, chynged yer mind and wanted to gow back." Without waiting for a reply he lurched into his room and banged the door to. Kirkwood, divided between amusement and irritation, heard him stumbling about for some time; and then a hush fell, grateful enough while it lasted; which was not long. For no sooner did the captain sleep than a penetrating snore added itself unto the cacophony of waves and wind and tortured ship. Kirkwood, comforted at first by the blessed tobacco, lapsed insensibly into dreary meditations. Coming after the swift movement and sustained excitement of the eighteen hours preceding his long sleep, the monotony of shipboard confinement seemed irksome to a maddening degree. There was absolutely nothing he could discover to occupy his mind. If there were books aboard, none was in evidence; beyond the report of Mr. Stranger's Manhattan night's entertainment the walls were devoid of reading matter; and a round of the picture gallery proved a diversion weariful enough when not purely revolting. Wherefore Mr. Kirkwood stretched himself out on the transom and smoked and reviewed his adventures in detail and seriatim, and was by turns indignant, sore, anxious on his own account as well as on Dorothy's, and out of all patience with himself. Mystified he remained throughout, and the edge of his curiosity held as keen as ever, you may believe. Consistently the affair presented itself to his fancy in the guise of a puzzle-picture, which, though you study it never so diligently, remains incomprehensible, until by chance you view it from an unexpected angle, when it reveals itself intelligibly. It had not yet been his good fortune to see it from the right viewpoint. To hold the metaphor, he walked endless circles round it, patiently seeking, but ever failing to find the proper perspective.... Each incident, however insignificant, in connection with it, he handled over and over, examining its every facet, bright or dull, as an expert might inspect a clever imitation of a diamond; and like a perfect imitation it defied analysis. Of one or two things he was convinced; for one, that Stryker was a liar worthy of classification with Calendar and Mrs. Hallam. Kirkwood had not only the testimony of his sense to assure him that the ship's name, _Alethea_ (not a common one, by the bye), had been mentioned by both Calendar and Mulready during their altercation on Bermondsey Old Stairs, but he had the confirmatory testimony of the sleepy waterman, William, who had directed Old Bob and Young William to the anchorage off Bow Creek. That there should have been two vessels of the same unusual name at one and the same time in the Port of London, was a coincidence too preposterous altogether to find place in his calculations. His second impregnable conclusion was that those whom he sought had boarded the _Alethea_, but had left her before she tripped her anchor. That they were not stowed away aboard her seemed unquestionable. The brigantine was hardly large enough for the presence of three persons aboard her to be long kept a secret from an inquisitive fourth,--unless, indeed, they lay in hiding in the hold; for which, once the ship got under way, there could be scant excuse. And Kirkwood did not believe himself a person of sufficient importance in Calendar's eyes, to make that worthy endure the discomforts of a'tween-decks imprisonment throughout the voyage, even to escape recognition. With every second, then, he was traveling farther from her to whose aid he had rushed, impelled by motives so hot-headed, so innately, chivalric, so unthinkingly gallant, so exceptionally idiotic! Idiot! Kirkwood groaned with despair of his inability to fathom the abyss of his self-contempt. There seemed to be positively no excuse for _him_. Stryker had befriended him indeed, had he permitted him to drown. Yet he had acted for the best, as he saw it. The fault lay in himself: an admirable fault, that of harboring and nurturing generous and compassionate instincts. But, of course, Kirkwood couldn't see it that way. "What else could I do?" he defended himself against the indictment of common sense. "I couldn't leave her to the mercies of that set of rogues!... And Heaven knows I was given every reason to believe she would be aboard this ship! Why, she herself told me that she was sailing ...!" Heaven knew, too, that this folly of his had cost him a pretty penny, first and last. His watch was gone beyond recovery, his homeward passage forfeited; he no longer harbored illusions as to the steamship company presenting him with another berth in lieu of that called for by that water-soaked slip of paper then in his pocket--courtesy of Stryker. He had sold for a pittance, a tithe of its value, his personal jewelry, and had spent every penny he could call his own. With the money Stryker was to give him he would be able to get back to London and his third-rate hostelry, but not with enough over to pay that one week's room-rent, or ... "Oh, the devil!" he groaned, head in hands. The future loomed wrapped in unspeakable darkness, lightened by no least ray of hope. It had been bad enough to lose a comfortable living through a gigantic convulsion of Nature; but to think that he had lost all else through his own egregious folly, to find himself reduced to the kennels--! So Care found him again in those weary hours,--came and sat by his side, slipping a grisly hand in his and tightening its grip until he could have cried out with the torment of it; the while whispering insidiously subtile, evil things in his ear. And he had not even Hope to comfort him; at any previous stage he had been able to distil a sort of bitter-sweet satisfaction from the thought that he was suffering for the love of his life. But now--now Dorothy was lost, gone like the glamour of Romance in the searching light of day. Stryker, emerging from his room for breakfast, found the passenger with a hostile look in his eye and a jaw set in ugly fashion. His eyes, too, were the abiding-place of smoldering devils; and the captain, recognizing them, considerately forbore to stir them up with any untimely pleasantries. To be sure, he was autocrat in his own ship, and Kirkwood's standing aboard was _nil_; but then there was just enough yellow in the complexion of Stryker's soul to incline him to sidestep trouble whenever feasible. And besides, he entertained dark suspicions of his guest--suspicions he scarce dared voice even to his inmost heart. The morning meal, therefore, passed off in constrained silence. The captain ate voraciously and vociferously, pushed back his chair, and went on deck to relieve the mate. The latter, a stunted little Cockney with a wizened countenance and a mind as foul as his tongue, got small change of his attempts to engage the passenger in conversation on topics that he considered fit for discussion. After the sixth or eighth snubbing he rose in dudgeon, discharged a poisonous bit of insolence, and retired to his berth, leaving Kirkwood to finish his breakfast in peace; which the latter did literally, to the last visible scrap of food and the ultimate drop of coffee, poor as both were in quality. To the tune of a moderating wind, the morning wearied away. Kirkwood went on deck once, for distraction from the intolerable monotony of it all, got a sound drenching of spray, with a glimpse of a dark line on the eastern horizon, which he understood to be the low littoral of Holland, and was glad to dodge below once more and dry himself. He had the pleasure of the mate's company at dinner, the captain remaining on deck until Hobbs had finished and gone up to relieve him; and by that time Kirkwood likewise was through. Stryker blew down with a blustery show of cheer. "Well, well, my little man!" (It happened that he topped Kirkwood's stature by at least five inches.) "Enj'yin' yer sea trip?" "About as much as you'd expect," snapped Kirkwood. "Ow?" The captain began to shovel food into his face. (The author regrets he has at his command no more delicate expression that is literal and illustrative.) Kirkwood watched him, fascinated with suspense; it seemed impossible that the man could continue so to employ his knife without cutting his throat from the inside. But years of such manipulation had made him expert, and his guest, keenly disappointed, at length ceased to hope. Between gobbles Stryker eyed him furtively. "'Treat you all right?" he demanded abruptly. Kirkwood started out of a brown study. "What? Who? Why, I suppose I ought to be--indeed, I _am_ grateful," he asserted. "Certainly you saved my life, and--" "Ow, I don't mean that." Stryker gathered the imputation into his paw and flung it disdainfully to the four winds of Heaven. "Bless yer 'art, you're welcome; I wouldn't let no dorg drownd, 'f I could 'elp it. No," he declared, "nor a loonatic, neither." He thrust his plate away and shifted sidewise in his chair. "I 'uz just wonderin'," he pursued, picking his teeth meditatively with a pen-knife, "'ow they feeds you in them _as_-ylums. 'Avin' never been inside one, myself, it's on'y natural I'd be cur'us.... There was one of them institootions near where I was borned--Birming'am, that is. I used to see the loonies playin' in the grounds. I remember _just_ as well!... One of 'em and me struck up quite an acquaintance--" "Naturally he'd take to you on sight." "Ow? Strynge 'ow _we_ 'it it off, eigh?... You myke me think of 'im. Young chap, 'e was, the livin' spi't-'n-himage of you. It don't happen, does it, you're the same man?" "Oh, go to the devil!" "Naughty!" said the captain serenely, wagging a reproving forefinger. "Bad, naughty word. You'll be sorry when you find out wot it means.... Only 'e was allus plannin' to run awye and drownd 'is-self."... He wore the joke threadbare, even to his own taste, and in the end got heavily to his feet, starting for the companionway. "Land you this arternoon," he remarked casually, "come three o'clock or thereabahts. Per'aps later. I don't know, though, as I 'ad ought to let you loose." Kirkwood made no answer. Chuckling, Stryker went on deck. In the course of an hour the American followed him. Wind and sea alike had gone down wonderfully since daybreak--a circumstance undoubtedly in great part due to the fact that they had won in under the lee of the mainland and were traversing shallower waters. On either hand, like mist upon the horizon, lay a streak of gray, a shade darker than the gray of the waters. The _Alethea_ was within the wide jaws of the Western Scheldt. As for the wind, it had shifted several points to the northwards; the brigantine had it abeam and was lying down to it and racing to port with slanting deck and singing cordage. Kirkwood approached the captain, who, acting as his own pilot, was standing by the wheel and barking sharp orders to the helmsman. "Have you a Bradshaw on board?" asked the young man. "Steady!" This to the man at the wheel; then to Kirkwood: "Wot's that, me lud?" Kirkwood repeated his question. Stryker eyed him suspiciously for a thought. "Wot d'you want it for?" "I want to see when I can get a boat back to England." "Hmm.... Yes, you'll find a Bradshaw in the port-locker, near the for'ard bulk'ead. Run along now and pl'y--and mind you don't go tearin' out the pyges to myke pyper boatses to go sylin' in." Kirkwood went below. Like its adjacent rooms, the cabin was untenanted; the watch was the mate's, and Stryker a martinet. Kirkwood found the designated locker and, opening it, saw first to his hand the familiar bulky red volume with its red garter. Taking it out he carried it to a chair near the companionway, for a better reading light: the skylight being still battened down. The strap removed, the book opened easily, as if by force of habit, at the precise table he had wished to consult; some previous client had left a marker between the pages,--and not an ordinary book-mark, by any manner of means. Kirkwood gave utterance to a little gasp of amazement, and instinctively glanced up at the companionway, to see if he were observed. He was not, but for safety's sake he moved farther back into the cabin and out of the range of vision of any one on deck; a precaution which was almost immediately justified by the clumping of heavy feet upon the steps as Stryker descended in pursuit of the ever-essential drink. "'Find it?" he demanded, staring blindly--with eyes not yet focused to the change from light to gloom--at the young man, who was sitting with the guide open on his knees, a tightly clenched fist resting on the transom at either side of him. In reply he received a monosyllabic affirmative; Kirkwood did not look up. "You must be a howl," commented the captain, making for the seductive locker. "A--what?" "A howl, readin' that fine print there in the dark. W'y don't you go over to the light?... I'll 'ave to 'ave them shutters tyken off the winders." This was Stryker's amiable figure of speech, frequently employed to indicate the coverings of the skylight. "I'm all right." Kirkwood went on studying the book. Stryker swigged off his rum and wiped his lips with the back of a red paw, hesitating a moment to watch his guest. "Mykes it seem more 'ome-like for you, I expect," he observed. "What do you mean?" "W'y, Bradshaw's first-cousin to a halmanack, ain't 'e? Can't get one, take t'other--next best thing. Sorry I didn't think of it sooner; like my passengers to feel comfy.... Now don't you go trapsein' off to gay Paree and squanderin' wot money you got left. You 'ear?" "By the way, Captain!" Kirkwood looked up at this, but Stryker was already half-way up the companion. Cautiously the American opened his right fist and held to the light that which had been concealed, close wadded in his grasp,--a square of sheer linen edged with lace, crumpled but spotless, and diffusing in the unwholesome den a faint, intangible fragrance, the veriest wraith of that elusive perfume which he would never again inhale without instantly recalling that night ride through London in the intimacy of a cab. He closed his eyes and saw her again, as clearly as though she stood before him,--hair of gold massed above the forehead of snow, curling in adorable tendrils at the nape of her neck, lips like scarlet splashed upon the immaculate whiteness of her skin, head poised audaciously in its spirited, youthful allure, dark eyes smiling the least trace sadly beneath the level brows. Unquestionably the handkerchief was hers; if proof other than the assurance of his heart were requisite, he had it in the initial delicately embroidered in one corner: a D, for Dorothy!... He looked again, to make sure; then hastily folded up the treasure-trove and slipped it into a breast pocket of his coat. No; I am not sure that it was not the left-hand pocket. Quivering with excitement he bent again over the book and studied it intently. After all, he had not been wrong! He could assert now, without fear of refutation, that Stryker had lied. Some one had wielded an industrious pencil on the page. It was, taken as a whole, fruitful of clues. Its very heading was illuminating: LONDON to VLISSINGEN (FLUSHING) AND BREDA; which happened to be the quickest and most direct route between London and Antwerp. Beneath it, in the second column from the right, the pencil had put a check-mark against: QUEENSBOROUGH ... DEP ... 11A10. And now he saw it clearly--dolt that he had been not to have divined it ere this! The _Alethea_ had run in to Queensborough, landing her passengers there, that they might make connection with the eleven-ten morning boat for Flushing,--the very side-wheel steamer, doubtless, which he had noticed beating out in the teeth of the gale just after the brigantine had picked him up. Had he not received the passing impression that the _Alethea_, when first he caught sight of her, might have been coming out of the Medway, on whose eastern shore is situate Queensborough Pier? Had not Mrs. Hallam, going upon he knew not what information or belief, been bound for Queensborough, with design there to intercept the fugitives? Kirkwood chuckled to recall how, all unwittingly, he had been the means of diverting from her chosen course that acute and resourceful lady; then again turned his attention to the tables. A third check had been placed against the train for Amsterdam scheduled to leave Antwerp at 6:32 p. m. Momentarily his heart misgave him, when he saw this, in fear lest Calendar and Dorothy should have gone on from Antwerp the previous evening; but then he rallied, discovering that the boat-train from Flushing did not arrive at Antwerp till after ten at night; and there was no later train thence for Amsterdam. Were the latter truly their purposed destination, they would have stayed overnight and be leaving that very evening on the 6:32. On the other hand, why should they wait for the latest train, rather than proceed by the first available in the morning? Why but because Calendar and Mulready were to wait for Stryker to join them on the _Alethea_? Very well, then; if the wind held and Stryker knew his business, there would be another passenger on that train, in addition to the Calendar party. Making mental note of the fact that the boat-train for Flushing and London was scheduled to leave Antwerp daily at 8:21 p. m., Kirkwood rustled the leaves to find out whether or not other tours had been planned, found evidences of none, and carefully restored the guide to the locker, lest inadvertently the captain should pick it up and see what Kirkwood had seen. An hour later he went on deck. The skies had blown clear and the brigantine was well in land-bound waters and still footing a rattling pace. The river-banks had narrowed until, beyond the dikes to right and left, the country-side stretched wide and flat, a plain of living green embroidered with winding roads and quaint Old-World hamlets whose red roofs shone like dull fire between the dark green foliage of dwarfed firs. Down with the Scheldt's gray shimmering flood were drifting little companies of barges, sturdy and snug both fore and aft, tough tanned sails burning in the afternoon sunlight. A long string of canal-boats, potted plants flowering saucily in their neatly curtained windows, proprietors expansively smoking on deck, in the bosoms of their very large families, was being mothered up-stream by two funny, clucking tugs. Behind the brigantine a travel-worn Atlantic liner was scolding itself hoarse about the right of way. Outward bound, empty cattle boats, rough and rusty, were swaggering down to the sea, with the careless, independent thumbs-in-armholes air of so many navvies off the job. And then lifting suddenly above the level far-off sky-line, there appeared a very miracle of beauty; the delicate tracery of the great Cathedral's spire of frozen lace, glowing like a thing of spun gold, set against the sapphire velvet of the horizon. Antwerp was in sight. A troublesome care stirring in his mind, Kirkwood looked round the deck; but Stryker was very busy, entirely too preoccupied with the handling of his ship to be interrupted with impunity. Besides, there was plenty of time. More slowly now, the wind falling, the brigantine crept up the river, her crew alert with sheets and halyards as the devious windings of the stream rendered it necessary to trim the canvas at varying angles to catch the wind. Slowly, too, in the shadow of that Mechlin spire, the horizon grew rough and elevated, taking shape in the serrated profile of a thousand gables and a hundred towers and cross-crowned steeples. Once or twice, more and more annoyed as the time of their association seemed to grow more brief, Kirkwood approached the captain; but Stryker continued to be exhaustively absorbed in the performance of his duties. Up past the dockyards, where spidery masts stood in dense groves about painted funnels, and men swarmed over huge wharves like ants over a crust of bread; up and round the final, great sweeping bend of the river, the _Alethea_ made her sober way, ever with greater slowness; until at length, in the rose glow of a flawless evening, her windlass began to clank like a mad thing and her anchor bit the riverbed, near the left bank, between old Forts Isabelle and Tête de Flandre, frowned upon from the right by the grim pile of the age-old Steen castle. And again Kirkwood sought Stryker, his carking query ready on his lips. But the captain impatiently waved him aside. "Don't you bother me now, me lud juke! Wyte until I gets done with the custom hofficer." Kirkwood acceded, perforce; and bided his time with what tolerance he could muster. A pluttering customs launch bustled up to the _Alethea's_ side, discharged a fussy inspector on the brigantine's deck, and panted impatiently until he, the examination concluded without delay, was again aboard. Stryker, smirking benignly and massaging his lips with the back of his hand, followed the official on deck, nodded to Kirkwood an intimation that he was prepared to accord him an audience, and strolled forward to the waist. The American, mastering his resentment, meekly followed; one can not well afford to be haughty when one is asking favors. Advancing to the rail, the captain whistled in one of the river-boats; then, while the waterman waited, faced his passenger. "Now, yer r'yal 'ighness, wot can I do for you afore you goes ashore?" "I think you must have forgotten," said Kirkwood quietly. "I hate to trouble you, but--there's that matter of four pounds." Stryker's face was expressive only of mystified vacuity. "Four quid? I dunno _as_ I know just wot you means." "You agreed to advance me four pounds on those things of mine...." "Ow-w!" Illumination overspread the hollow-jowled countenance. Stryker smiled cheerfully. "Garn with you!" he chuckled. "You will 'ave yer little joke, won't you now? I declare I never see a loony with such affecsh'nit, pl'yful wyes!" Kirkwood's eyes narrowed. "Stryker," he said steadily, "give me the four pounds and let's have no more nonsense; or else hand over my things at once." "Daffy," Stryker told vacancy, with conviction. "Lor' luv me if I sees 'ow he ever 'ad sense enough to escype. W'y, yer majesty!" and he bowed, ironic. "I '_ave_ given you yer quid." "Just about as much as I gave you that pearl pin," retorted Kirkwood hotly. "What the devil do you mean--" "W'y, yer ludship, four pounds jus pyes yer passyge; I thought you understood." "My passage! But I can come across by steamer for thirty shillings, first-class--" "Aw, but them steamers! Tricky, they is, and unsyfe ... No, yer gryce, the W. Stryker Packet Line Lim'ted, London to Antwerp, charges four pounds per passyge and no reduction for return fare." Stunned by his effrontery, Kirkwood stared in silence. "Any complynts," continued the captain, looking over Kirkwood's head, "must be lyde afore the Board of Directors in writin' not more'n thirty dyes arfter--" "You damned scoundrel!" interpolated Kirkwood thoughtfully. Stryker's mouth closed with a snap; his features froze in a cast of wrath; cold rage glinted in his small blue eyes. "W'y," he bellowed, "you bloomin' loonatic, d'ye think you can sye that to Bill Stryker on 'is own wessel!" He hesitated a moment, then launched a heavy fist at Kirkwood's face. Unsurprised, the young man side-stepped, caught the hard, bony wrist as the captain lurched by, following his wasted blow, and with a dexterous twist laid him flat on his back, with a sounding thump upon the deck. And as the infuriated scamp rose--which he did with a bound that placed him on his feet and in defensive posture; as though the deck had been a spring-board--Kirkwood leaped back, seized a capstan-bar, and faced him with a challenge. "Stand clear, Stryker!" he warned the man tensely, himself livid with rage. "If you move a step closer I swear I'll knock the head off your shoulders! Not another inch, you contemptible whelp, or I'll brain you!... That's better," he continued as the captain, caving, dropped his fists and moved uneasily back. "Now give that boatman money for taking me ashore. Yes, I'm going--and if we ever meet again, take the other side of the way, Stryker!" Without response, a grim smile wreathing his thin, hard lips, Stryker thrust one hand into his pocket, and withdrawing a coin, tossed it to the waiting waterman. Whereupon Kirkwood backed warily to the rail, abandoned the capstan-bar and dropped over the side. Nodding to the boatman, "The Steen landing--quickly," he said in French. Stryker, recovering, advanced to the rail and waved him a derisive _bon voyage_. "By-by, yer hexcellency. I 'opes it may soon be my pleasure to meet you again. You've been a real privilege to know; I've henjoyed yer comp'ny somethin' immense. Don't know as I ever met such a rippin', Ay Number One, all-round, entertynin' ass, afore!" He fumbled nervously about his clothing, brought to light a rag of cotton, much the worse for service, and ostentatiously wiped from the corner of each eye tears of grief at parting. Then, as the boat swung toward the farther shore, Kirkwood's back was to the brigantine, and he was little tempted to turn and invite fresh shafts of ridicule. Rapidly, as he was ferried across the busy Scheldt, the white blaze of his passion cooled; but the biting irony of his estate ate, corrosive, into his soul. Hollow-eyed he glared vacantly into space, pale lips unmoving, his features wasted with despair. They came to the landing-stage and swung broad-side on. Mechanically the American got up and disembarked. As heedless of time and place he moved up the Quai to the gangway and so gained the esplanade; where pausing he thrust a trembling hand into his trouser pocket. The hand reappeared, displaying in its outspread palm three big, round, brown, British pennies. Staring down at them, Kirkwood's lips moved. "Bed rock!" he whispered huskily. XIII A PRIMER OF PROGRESSIVE CRIME Without warning or presage the still evening air was smitten and made softly musical by the pealing of a distant chime, calling vespers to its brothers in Antwerp's hundred belfries; and one by one, far and near, the responses broke out, until it seemed as if the world must be vibrant with silver and brazen melody; until at the last the great bells in the Cathedral spire stirred and grumbled drowsily, then woke to such ringing resonance as dwarfed all the rest and made it seem as nothing. Like the beating of a mighty heart heard through the rushing clamor of the pulses, a single deep-throated bell boomed solemnly six heavy, rumbling strokes. Six o'clock! Kirkwood roused out of his dour brooding. The Amsterdam express would leave at 6:32, and he knew not from what station. Striding swiftly across the promenade, he entered a small tobacco shop and made inquiry of the proprietress. His command of French was tolerable; he experienced no difficulty in comprehending the good woman's instructions. Trains for Amsterdam, she said, left from the Gare Centrale, a mile or so across the city. M'sieur had plenty of time, and to spare. There was the tram line, if m'sieur did not care to take a fiacre. If he would go by way of the Vielle Bourse he would discover the tram cars of the Rue Kipdorp. M'sieur was most welcome.... Monsieur departed with the more haste since he was unable to repay this courtesy with the most trifling purchase; such slight matters annoyed Kirkwood intensely. Perhaps it was well for him that he had the long walk to help him work off the fit of nervous exasperation into which he was plunged every time his thoughts harked back to that jovial black-guard, Stryker.... He was quite calm when, after a brisk walk of some fifteen minutes, he reached the station. A public clock reassured him with the information that he had the quarter of an hour's leeway; it was only seventeen minutes past eighteen o'clock (Belgian railway time, always confusing). Inquiring his way to the Amsterdam train, which was already waiting at the platform, he paced its length, peering brazenly in at the coach windows, now warm with hope, now shivering with disappointment, realizing as he could not but realize that, all else aside, his only chance of rehabilitation lay in meeting Calendar. But in none of the coaches or carriages did he discover any one even remotely resembling the fat adventurer, his daughter, or Mulready. Satisfied that they had not yet boarded the train, he stood aside, tortured with forebodings, while anxiously scrutinizing each individual of the throng of intending travelers.... Perhaps they had been delayed--by the _Alethea's_ lateness in making port very likely; perhaps they purposed taking not this but a later train; perhaps they had already left the city by an earlier, or had returned to England. On time, the bell clanged its warning; the guards bawled theirs; doors were hastily opened and slammed; the trucks began to groan, couplings jolting as the engine chafed in constraint. The train and Kirkwood moved simultaneously out of opposite ends of the station, the one to rattle and hammer round the eastern boundaries of the city and straighten out at top speed on the northern route for the Belgian line, the other to stroll moodily away, idle hands in empty pockets, bound aimlessly anywhere--it didn't matter! Nothing whatever mattered in the smallest degree. Ere now the outlook had been dark; but this he felt to be the absolute nadir of his misfortunes. Presently--after a while--as soon as he could bring himself to it--he would ask the way and go to the American Consulate. But just now, low as the tide of chance had ebbed, leaving him stranded on the flats of vagabondage, low as showed the measure of his self-esteem, he could not tolerate the prospect of begging for assistance--help which would in all likelihood be refused, since his story was quite too preposterous to gain credence in official ears that daily are filled with the lamentations of those whose motives do not bear investigation. And if he chose to eliminate the strange chain of events which had landed him in Antwerp, to base his plea solely on the fact that he was a victim of the San Francisco disaster ... he himself was able to smile, if sourly, anticipating the incredulous consular smile with which he would be shown the door. No; that he would reserve as a last resort. True, he had already come to the Jumping-off Place; to the Court of the Last Resort alone could he now appeal. But ... not yet; after a while he could make his petition, after he had made a familiar of the thought that he must armor himself with callous indifference to rebuff, to say naught of the waves of burning shame that would overwhelm him when he came to the point of asking charity. He found himself, neither knowing nor caring how he had won thither, in the Place Verte, the vast venerable pile of the Cathedral rising on his right, hotels and quaint Old-World dwellings with peaked roofs and gables and dormer windows, inclosing the other sides of the square. The chimes (he could hear none but those of the Cathedral) were heralding the hour of seven. Listless and preoccupied in contemplation of his wretched case he wandered purposelessly half round the square, then dropped into a bench on its outskirts. It was some time later that he noticed, with a casual, indifferent eye, a porter running out of the Hôtel de Flandre, directly opposite, and calling a fiacre in to the carriage block. As languidly he watched a woman, very becomingly dressed, follow the porter down to the curb. The fiacre swung in, and the woman dismissed the porter before entering the vehicle; a proceeding so unusual that it fixed the onlooker's interest. He sat rigid with attention; the woman seemed to be giving explicit and lengthy directions to the driver, who nodded and gesticulated his comprehension. The woman was Mrs. Hallam. The first blush of recognition passed, leaving Kirkwood without any amazement. It was an easy matter to account for her being where she was. Thrown off the scent by Kirkwood at Sheerness, the previous morning, she had missed the day boat, the same which had ferried over those whom she pursued. Returning from Sheerness to Queensborough, however, she had taken the night boat for Flushing and Antwerp,--and not without her plan, who was not a woman to waste her strength aimlessly; Kirkwood believed that she had had from the first a very definite campaign in view. In that campaign Queensborough Pier had been the first strategic move; the journey to Antwerp, apparently, the second; and the American was impressed that he was witnessing the inception of the third decided step.... The conclusion of this process of reasoning was inevitable: Madam would bear watching. Thus was a magical transformation brought about. Instantaneously lassitude and vain repinings were replaced by hopefulness and energy. In a twinkling the young man was on his feet, every nerve a-thrill with excitement. Mrs. Hallam, blissfully ignorant of this surveillance over her movements, took her place in the fiacre. The driver clucked to his horse, cracked his whip, and started off at a slow trot: a pace which Kirkwood imitated, keeping himself at a discreet distance to the rear of the cab, but prepared to break into a run whenever it should prove necessary. Such exertion, however, was not required of him. Evidently Mrs. Hallam was in no great haste to reach her destination; the speed of the fiacre remained extremely moderate; Kirkwood found a long, brisk stride fast enough to keep it well in sight. Round the green square, under the beautiful walls of Notre Dame d'Anvers, through Grande Place and past the Hôtel de Ville, the cab proceeded, dogged by what might plausibly be asserted the most persistent and infatuated soul that ever crossed the water; and so on into the Quai Van Dyck, turning to the left at the old Steen dungeon and, slowing to a walk, moving soberly up the drive. Beyond the lip of the embankment, the Scheldt flowed, its broad shining surface oily, smooth and dark, a mirror for the incandescent glory of the skies. Over on the western bank old Tête de Flandre lifted up its grim curtains and bastions, sable against the crimson, rampart and parapet edged with fire. Busy little side-wheeled ferry steamers spanked the waters noisily and smudged the sunset with dark drifting trails of smoke; and ever and anon a rowboat would slip out of shadow to glide languidly with the current. Otherwise the life of the river was gone; and at their moorings the ships swung in great quietness, riding lights glimmering like low wan stars. In the company of the latter the young man marked down the _Alethea_; a sight which made him unconsciously clench both fists and teeth, reminding him of that rare wag, Stryker.... To his way of thinking the behavior of the fiacre was quite unaccountable. Hardly had the horse paced off the length of two blocks on the Quai ere it was guided to the edge of the promenade and brought to a stop. And the driver twisted the reins round his whip, thrust the latter in its socket, turned sidewise on the box, and began to smoke and swing his heels, surveying the panorama of river and sunset with complacency--a cabby, one would venture, without a care in the world and serene in the assurance of a generous _pour-boire_ when he lost his fare. But as for the latter, she made no move; the door of the cab remained closed,--like its occupant's mind, a mystery to the watcher. Twilight shadows lengthened, darkling, over the land; street-lights flashed up in long, radiant ranks. Across the promenade hotels and shops were lighted up; people began to gather round the tables beneath the awnings of an open-air café. In the distance, somewhere, a band swung into the dreamy rhythm of a haunting waltz. Scattered couples moved slowly, arm in arm, along the riverside walk, drinking in the fragrance of the night. Overhead stars popped out in brilliance and dropped their reflections to swim lazily on spellbound waters.... And still the fiacre lingered in inaction, still the driver lorded it aloft, in care-free abandon. In the course of time this inertia, where he had looked for action, this dull suspense when he had forecast interesting developments, wore upon the watcher's nerves and made him at once impatient and suspicious. Now that he had begun to doubt, he conceived it as quite possible that Mrs. Hallam (who was capable of anything) should have stolen out of the cab by the other and, to him, invisible door. To resolve the matter, finally, he took advantage of the darkness, turned up his coat collar, hunched up his shoulders, hid his hands in pockets, pulled the visor of his cap well forward over his eyes, and slouched past the fiacre. Mrs. Hallam sat within. He could see her profile clearly silhouetted against the light; she was bending forward and staring fixedly out of the window, across the driveway. Mentally he calculated the direction of her gaze, then, moved away and followed it with his own eyes; and found himself staring at the façade of a third-rate hotel. Above its roof the gilded letters of a sign, catching the illumination from below, spelled out the title of "Hôtel du Commerce." Mrs. Hallam was interested in the Hôtel du Commerce? Thoughtfully Kirkwood fell back to his former point of observation, now the richer by another object of suspicion, the hostelry. Mrs. Hallam was waiting and watching for some one to enter or to leave that establishment. It seemed a reasonable inference to draw. Well, then, so was Kirkwood, no less than the lady; he deemed it quite conceivable that their objects were identical. He started to beguile the time by wondering what she would do, if... Of a sudden he abandoned this line of speculation, and catching his breath, held it, almost afraid to credit the truth that for once his anticipations were being realized under his very eyes. Against the lighted doorway of the Hôtel du Commerce, the figures of two men were momentarily sketched, as they came hurriedly forth; and of the two, one was short and stout, and even at a distance seemed to bear himself with an accent of assertiveness, while the other was tall and heavy of shoulder. Side by side they marched in step across the embankment to the head of the Quai gangway, descending without pause to the landing-stage. Kirkwood, hanging breathlessly over the guard-rail, could hear their footfalls ringing in hollow rhythm on the planks of the inclined way,--could even discern Calendar's unlovely profile in dim relief beneath one of the waterside lights; and he recognized unmistakably Mulready's deep voice, grumbling inarticulately. At the outset he had set after them, with intent to accost Calendar; but their pace had been swift and his irresolute. He hung fire on the issue, dreading to reveal himself, unable to decide which were the better course, to pursue the men, or to wait and discover what Mrs. Hallam was about. In the end he waited; and had his disappointment for recompense. For Mrs. Hallam did nothing intelligible. Had she driven over to the hotel, hard upon the departure of the men, he would have believed that she was seeking Dorothy, and would, furthermore, have elected to crowd their interview, if she succeeded in obtaining one with the girl. But she did nothing of the sort. For a time the fiacre remained as it had been ever since stopping; then, evidently admonished by his fare, the driver straightened up, knocked out his pipe, disentangled reins and whip, and wheeled the equipage back on the way it had come, disappearing in a dark side street leading eastward from the embankment. Kirkwood was, then, to believe that Mrs. Hallam, having taken all that trouble and having waited for the two adventurers to appear, had been content with sight of them? He could hardly believe that of the woman; it wasn't like her. He started across the driveway, after the fiacre, but it was lost in a tangle of side streets before he could make up his mind whether it was worth while chasing or not; and, pondering the woman's singular action, he retraced his steps to the promenade rail. Presently he told himself he understood. Dorothy was no longer of her father's party; he had a suspicion that Mulready's attitude had made it seem advisable to Calendar either to leave the girl behind, in England, or to segregate her from his associates in Antwerp. If not lodged in another quarter of the city, or left behind, she was probably traveling on ahead, to a destination which he could by no means guess. And Mrs. Hallam was looking for the girl; if there were really jewels in that gladstone bag, Calendar would naturally have had no hesitation about intrusting them to his daughter's care; and Mrs. Hallam avowedly sought nothing else. How the woman had found out that such was the case, Kirkwood did not stop to reckon; unless he explained it on the proposition that she was a person of remarkable address. It made no matter, one way or the other; he had lost Mrs. Hallam; but Calendar and Mulready he could put his finger on; they had undoubtedly gone off to the _Alethea_ to confer again with Stryker,--that was, unless they proposed sailing on the brigantine, possibly at turn of tide that night. Panic gripped his soul and shook it, as a terrier shakes a rat, when he conceived this frightful proposition. In his confusion of mind he evolved spontaneously an entirely new hypothesis: Dorothy had already been spirited aboard the vessel; Calendar and his confederate, delaying to join her from enigmatic motives, were now aboard; and presently the word would be, Up-anchor and away! Were they again to elude him? Not, he swore, if he had to swim for it. And he had no wish to swim. The clothes he stood in, with what was left of his self-respect, were all that he could call his own on that side of the North Sea. Not a boatman on the Scheldt would so much as consider accepting three English pennies in exchange for boat-hire. In brief, it began to look as if he were either to swim or ... to steal a boat. Upon such slender threads of circumstance depends our boasted moral health. In one fleeting minute Kirkwood's conception of the law of _meum et tuum_, its foundations already insidiously undermined by a series of cumulative misfortunes, toppled crashing to its fall; and was not. He was wholly unconscious of the change. Beneath him, in a space between the quays bridged by the gangway, a number of rowboats, a putative score, lay moored for the night and gently rubbing against each other with the soundless lift and fall of the river. For all that Kirkwood could determine to the contrary, the lot lay at the mercy of the public; nowhere about was he able to discern a figure in anything resembling a watchman. Without a quiver of hesitation--moments were invaluable, if what he feared were true--he strode to the gangway, passed down, and with absolute nonchalance dropped into the nearest boat, stepping from one to another until he had gained the outermost. To his joy he found a pair of oars stowed beneath the thwarts. If he had paused to moralize--which he didn't--upon the discovery, he would have laid it all at the door of his lucky star; and would have been wrong. We who have never stooped to petty larceny know that the oars had been placed there at the direction of his evil genius bent upon facilitating his descent into the avernus of crime. Let us, then, pity the poor young man without condoning his offense. Unhitching the painter he set one oar against the gunwale of the next boat, and with a powerful thrust sent his own (let us so call it for convenience) stern-first out upon the river; then sat him composedly down, fitted the oars to their locks, and began to pull straight across-stream, trusting to the current to carry him down to the _Alethea_. He had already marked down that vessel's riding-light; and that not without a glow of gratitude to see it still aloft and in proper juxtaposition to the river-bank; proof that it had not moved. He pulled a good oar, reckoned his distance prettily, and shipping the blades at just the right moment, brought the little boat in under the brigantine's counter with scarce a jar. An element of surprise he held essential to the success of his plan, whatever that might turn out to be. Standing up, he caught the brigantine's after-rail with both hands, one of which held the painter of the purloined boat, and lifted his head above the deck line. A short survey of the deserted after-deck gave him further assurance. The anchor-watch was not in sight; he may have been keeping well forward by Stryker's instructions, or he may have crept off for forty winks. Whatever the reason for his absence from the post of duty, Kirkwood was relieved not to have him to deal with; and drawing himself gently in over the rail, made the painter fast, and stepped noiselessly over toward the lighted oblong of the companionway. A murmur of voices from below comforted him with the knowledge that he had not miscalculated, this time; at last he stood within striking distance of his quarry. The syllables of his surname ringing clearly in his ears and followed by Stryker's fleeting laugh, brought him to a pause. He flushed hotly in the darkness; the captain was retailing with relish some of his most successful witticisms at Kirkwood's expense.... "You'd ought to've seed the wye'e looked at me!" concluded the _raconteur_ in a gale of mirth. Mulready laughed with him, if a little uncertainly. Calendar's chuckle was not audible, but he broke the pause that followed. "I don't know," he said with doubting emphasis. "You say you landed him without a penny in his pocket? I don't call that a good plan at all. Of course, he ain't a factor, but ... Well, it might've been as well to give him his fare home. He might make trouble for us, somehow.... I don't mind telling you, Cap'n, that you're an ass." The tensity of certain situations numbs the sensibilities. Kirkwood had never in his weirdest dreams thought of himself as an eavesdropper; he did not think of himself as such in the present instance; he merely listened, edging nearer the skylight, of which the wings were slightly raised, and keeping as far as possible in shadow. "Ow, I sye!" the captain was remonstrating, aggrieved. "'Ow was I to know 'e didn't 'ave it in for you? First off, when 'e comes on board (I'll sye this for 'im, 'e's as plucky as they myke 'em), I thought 'e was from the Yard. Then, when I see wot a bally hinnocent 'e was, I mykes up my mind 'e's just some one you've been ply in' one of your little gymes on, and 'oo was lookin' to square 'is account. So I did 'im proper." "Evidently," assented Calendar dryly. "You're a bit of a heavy-handed brute, Stryker. Personally I'm kind of sorry for the boy; he wasn't a bad sort, as his kind runs, and he was no fool, from what little I saw of him.... I wonder what he wanted." "Possibly," Mulready chimed in suavely, "you can explain what you wanted of him, in the first place. How did you come to drag him into _this_ business?" "Oh, that!" Calendar laughed shortly. "That was partly accident, partly inspiration. I happened to see his name on the Pless register; he'd put himself down as from 'Frisco. I figured it out that he would be next door to broke and getting desperate, ready to do anything to get home; and thought we might utilize him; to smuggle some of the stuff into the States. Once before, if you'll remember--no; that was before we got together, Mulready--I picked up a fellow-countryman on the Strand. He was down and out, jumped at the job, and we made a neat little wad on it." "The more fool you, to take outsiders into your confidence," grumbled Mulready. "Ow?" interrogated Calendar, mimicking Stryker's accent inimitably. "Well, you've got a heap to learn about this game, Mul; about the first thing is that you must trust Old Man Know-it-all, which is me. I've run more diamonds into the States, in one way or another, in my time, than you ever pinched out of the shirt-front of a toff on the Empire Prom., before they made the graft too hot for you and you came to take lessons from me in the gentle art of living easy." "Oh, cut that, cawn't you?" "Delighted, dear boy.... One of the first principles, next to profiting by the admirable example I set you, is to make the fellows in your own line trust you. Now, if this boy had taken on with me, I could have got a bunch of the sparklers on my mere say-so, from old Morganthau up on Finsbury Pavement. He does a steady business hoodwinking the Customs for the benefit of his American clients--and himself. And I'd've made a neat little profit besides: something to fall back on, if this fell through. I don't mind having two strings to my bow." "Yes," argued Mulready; "but suppose this Kirkwood had taken on with you and then peached?" "That's another secret; you've got to know your man, be able to size him up. I called on this chap for that very purpose; but I saw at a glance he wasn't our man. He smelt a nigger in the woodpile and most politely told me to go to the devil. But if he _had_ come in, he'd've died before he squealed. I know the breed; there's honor among gentlemen that knocks the honor of thieves higher'n a kite, the old saw to the contrary--nothing doing.... You understand me, I'm sure, Mulready?" he concluded with envenomed sweetness. "I don't see yet how Kirkwood got anything to do with Dorothy." "Miss Calendar to you, _Mister_ Mulready!" snapped Calendar. "There, there, now! Don't get excited.... It was when the Hallam passed me word that a man from the Yard was waiting on the altar steps for me, that Kirkwood came in. He was dining close by; I went over and worked on his feelings until he agreed to take Dorothy off my hands. If I had attempted to leave the place with her, they'd've spotted me for sure.... My compliments to you, Dick Mulready." There came the noise of chair legs scraped harshly on the cabin deck. Apparently Mulready had leaped to his feet in a rage. "I've told you--" he began in a voice thick with passion. "Oh, sit down!" Calendar cut in contemptuously. "Sit down, d'you hear? That's all over and done with. We understand each other now, and you won't try any more monkey-shines. It's a square deal and a square divide, so far's I'm concerned; if we stick together there'll be profit enough for all concerned. Sit down, Mul, and have another slug of the captain's bum rum." Although Mulready consented to be pacified, Kirkwood got the impression that the man was far gone in drink. A moment later he heard him growl "Chin-chin!" antiphonal to the captain's "Cheer-o!" "Now, then," Calendar proposed, "Mr. Kirkwood aside--peace be with him!--let's get down to cases." "Wot's the row?" asked the captain. "The row, Cap'n, is the Hallam female, who has unexpectedly shown up in Antwerp, we have reason to believe with malicious intent and a private detective to add to the gaiety of nations." "Wot's the odds? She carn't 'urt us without lyin' up trouble for 'erself." "Damn little consolation to us when we're working it out in Dartmoor." "Speak for yourself," grunted Mulready surlily. "I do," returned Calendar easily; "we're both in the shadow of Dartmoor, Mul, my boy; since you choose to take the reference as personal. Sing Sing, however, yawns for me alone; it's going to keep on yawning, too, unless I miss my guess. I love my native land most to death, _but_ ..." "Ow, blow that!" interrupted the captain irritably. "Let's 'ear about the 'Allam. Wot're you afryd of?" "'Fraid she'll set up a yell when she finds out we're planting the loot, Cap'n. She's just that vindictive; you'd think she'd be satisfied with her end of the stick, but you don't know the Hallam. That milk-and-water offspring of hers is the apple of her eye, and Freddie's going to collar the whole shooting-match or madam will kick over the traces." "Well?" "Well, she's queered us here. We can't do anything if my lady is going to camp on our trail and tell everybody we're shady customers, can we? The question now before the board is: Where now,--and how?" "Amsterdam," Mulready chimed in. "I told you that in the beginning." "But how?" argued Calendar. "The Lord knows I'm willing but ... we can't go by rail, thanks to the Hallam. We've got to lose her first of all." "But wot I'm arskin' is, wot's the matter with--" "The _Alethea_, Cap'n? Nothing, so far as Dick and I are concerned. But my dutiful daughter is prejudiced; she's been so long without proper paternal discipline," Calendar laughed, "that she's rather high-spirited. Of course I might overcome her objections, but the girl's no fool, and every ounce of pressure I bring to bear just now only helps make her more restless and suspicious." "You leave her to me," Mulready interposed, with a brutal laugh. "I'll guarantee to get her aboard, or..." "Drop it, Dick!" Calendar advised quietly. "And go a bit easy with that bottle for five minutes, can't you?" "Well, then," Stryker resumed, apparently concurring in Calendar's attitude, "w'y don't one of you tyke the stuff, go off quiet and dispose of it to a proper fence, and come back to divide. I don't see w'y that--" "Naturally you wouldn't," chuckled Calendar. "Few people besides the two of us understand the depth of affection existing between Dick, here, and me. We just can't bear to get out of sight of each other. We're sure inseparable--since night before last. Odd, isn't it?" "You drop it!" snarled Mulready, in accents so ugly that the listener was startled. "Enough's enough and--" "There, there, Dick! All right; I'll behave," Calendar soothed him. "We'll forget and say no more about it." "Well, see you don't." "But 'as either of you a plan?" persisted Stryker. "I have," replied Mulready; "and it's the simplest and best, if you could only make this long-lost parent here see it." "Wot is it?" Mulready seemed to ignore Calendar and address himself to the captain. He articulated with some difficulty, slurring his words to the point of indistinctness at times. "Simple enough," he propounded solemnly. "We've got the gladstone bag here; Miss Dolly's at the hotel--that's her papa's bright notion; he thinks she's to be trusted ... Now then, what's the matter with weighing anchor and slipping quietly out to sea?" "Leavin' the dootiful darter?" "Cert'n'y. She's only a drag any way. 'Better off without her.... Then we can wait our time and get highest market prices--" "You forget, Dick," Calendar put it, "that there's a thousand in it for each of us if she's kept out of England for six weeks. A thousand's five thousand in the land I hail from; I can use five thousand in my business." "Why can't you be content with what you've got?" demanded Mulready wrathfully. "Because I'm a seventh son of a seventh son; I can see an inch or two beyond my nose. If Dorothy ever finds her way back to England she'll spoil one of the finest fields of legitimate graft I ever licked my lips to look at. The trouble with you, Mul, is you're too high-toned. You want to play the swell mobs-man from post to finish. A quick touch and a clean getaway for yours. Now, that's all right; that has its good points, but you don't want to underestimate the advantages of a good blackmailing connection.... If I can keep Dorothy quiet long enough, I look to the Hallam and precious Freddie to be a great comfort to me in my old age." "Then, for God's sake," cried Mulready, "go to the hotel, get your brat by the scruif of her pretty neck and drag her aboard. Let's get out of this." "I won't," returned Calendar inflexibly. The dispute continued, but the listener had heard enough. He had to get away and think, could no longer listen; indeed, the voices of the three blackguards below came but indistinctly to his ears, as if from a distance. He was sick at heart and ablaze with indignation by turns. Unconsciously he was trembling violently in every limb; swept by alternate waves of heat and cold, feverish one minute, shivering the next. All of which phenomena were due solely to the rage that welled inside his heart. Stealthily he crept away to the rail, to stand grasping it and staring across the water with unseeing eyes at the gay old city twinkling back with her thousand eyes of light. The cool night breeze, sweeping down unhindered over the level Netherlands from the bleak North Sea, was comforting to his throbbing temples. By degrees his head cleared, his rioting pulses subsided, he could think; and he did. Over there, across the water, in the dingy and disreputable Hôtel du Commerce, Dorothy waited in her room, doubtless the prey of unnumbered nameless terrors, while aboard the brigantine her fate was being decided by a council of three unspeakable scoundrels, one of whom, professing himself her father, openly declared his intention of using her to further his selfish and criminal ends. His first and natural thought, to steal away to her and induce her to accompany him back to England, Kirkwood perforce discarded. He could have wept over the realization of his unqualified impotency. He had no money,--not even cab-fare from the hotel to the railway station. Something subtler, more crafty, had to be contrived to meet the emergency. And there was one way, one only; he could see none other. Temporarily he must make himself one of the company of her enemies, force himself upon them, ingratiate himself into their good graces, gain their confidence, then, when opportunity offered, betray them. And the power to make them tolerate him, if not receive him as a fellow, the knowledge of them and their plans that they had unwittingly given him, was his. And Dorothy, was waiting.... He swung round and without attempting to muffle his footfalls strode toward the companionway. He must pretend he had just come aboard. Subconsciously he had been aware, during his time of pondering, that the voices in the cabin had been steadily gaining in volume, rising louder and yet more loud, Mulready's ominous, drink-blurred accents dominating the others. There was a quarrel afoot; as soon as he gave it heed, Kirkwood understood that Mulready, in the madness of his inflamed brain, was forcing the issue while Calendar sought vainly to calm and soothe him. The American arrived at the head of the companionway at a critical juncture. As he moved to descend some low, cool-toned retort of Calendar's seemed to enrage his confederate beyond reason. He yelped aloud with wrath, sprang to his feet, knocking over a chair, and leaping back toward the foot of the steps, flashed an adroit hand behind him and found his revolver. "I've stood enough from you!" he screamed, his voice oddly clear in that moment of insanity. "You've played with me as long as you will, you hulking American hog! And now I'm going to show--" As he held his fire to permit his denunciation to bite home, Kirkwood, appalled to find himself standing on the threshold of a tragedy, gathered himself together and launched through the air, straight for the madman's shoulders. As they went down together, sprawling, Mulready's head struck against a transom and the revolver fell from his limp fingers. XIV STRATAGEMS AND SPOILS Prepared as he had been for the shock, Kirkwood was able to pick himself up quickly, uninjured, Mulready's revolver in his grasp. On his feet, straddling Mulready's insentient body, he confronted Calendar and Stryker. The face of the latter was a sickly green, the gift of his fright. The former seemed coldly composed, already recovering from his surprise and bringing his wits to bear upon the new factor which had been so unceremoniously injected into the situation. [Illustration: Straddling Mulready's body, he confronted Calendar and Stryker.] Standing, but leaning heavily upon a hand that rested flat on the table, in the other he likewise held a revolver, which he had apparently drawn in self-defense, at the crisis of Mulready's frenzy. Its muzzle was deflected. He looked Kirkwood over with a cool gray eye, the color gradually returning to his fat, clean-shaven cheeks, replacing the pardonable pallor which had momentarily rested thereon. As for Kirkwood, he had covered the fat adventurer before he knew it. Stryker, who had been standing immediately in the rear of Calendar, immediately cowered and cringed to find himself in the line of fire. Of the three conscious men in the brigantine's cabin, Calendar was probably the least confused or excited. Stryker was palpably unmanned. Kirkwood was tingling with a sense of mastery, but collected and rapidly revolving the combinations for the reversed conditions which had been brought about by Mulready's drunken folly. His elation was apparent in his shining, boyish eyes, as well as in the bright color that glowed in his cheeks. When he decided to speak it was with rapid enunciation, but clearly and concisely. "Calendar," he began, "if a single shot is fired about this vessel the river police will be buzzing round your ears in a brace of shakes." The fat adventurer nodded assent, his eyes contracting. "Very well!" continued Kirkwood brusquely. "You must know that I have personally nothing to fear from the police; if arrested, I wouldn't be detained a day. On the other hand, you ... Hand me that pistol, Calendar, butt first, please. Look sharp, my man! If you don't..." He left the ellipsis to be filled in by the corpulent blackguard's intelligence. The latter, gray eyes still intent on the younger man's face, wavered, plainly impressed, but still wondering. "Quick! I'm not patient to-night..." No longer was Calendar of two minds. In the face of Kirkwood's attitude there was but one course to be followed: that of obedience. Calendar surrendered an untenable position as gracefully as could be wished. "I guess you know what you mean by this," he said, tendering the weapon as per instructions; "I'm doggoned if I do.... You'll allow a certain latitude in consideration of my relief; I can't say we were anticipating this--ah--Heaven-sent visitation." Accepting the revolver with his left hand and settling his forefinger on the trigger, Kirkwood beamed with pure enjoyment. He found the deference of the older man, tempered though it was by his indomitable swagger, refreshing in the extreme. "A little appreciation isn't exactly out of place, come to think of it," he commented, adding, with an eye for the captain: "Stryker, you bold, bad butterfly, have you got a gun concealed about your unclean person?" The captain shook visibly with contrition. "No, Mr. Kirkwood," he managed to reply in a voice singularly lacking in his wonted bluster. "Say 'sir'!" suggested Kirkwood. "No, Mr. Kirkwood, sir," amended Stryker eagerly. "Now come round here and let's have a look at you. Please stay where you are, Calendar.... Why, Captain, you're shivering from head to foot! Not ill are you, you wag? Step over to the table there, Stryker, and turn out your pockets; turn 'em inside out and let's see what you carry in the way of offensive artillery. And, Stryker, don't be rash; don't do anything you'd be sorry for afterwards." "No fear of that," mumbled the captain, meekly shambling toward the table, and, in his anxiety to give no cause for unpleasantness, beginning to empty his pockets on the way. "Don't forget the 'sir,' Stryker. And, Stryker, if you happen to think of anything in the line of one of your merry quips or jests, don't strain yourself holding in; get it right off your chest, and you'll feel better." Kirkwood chuckled, in high conceit with himself, watching Calendar out of the corner of his eye, but with his attention centered on the infinitely diverting spectacle afforded by Stryker, whose predacious hands were trembling violently as, one by one, they brought to light the articles of which he had despoiled his erstwhile victim. "Come, come, Stryker! Surely you can think of something witty, surely you haven't exhausted the possibilities of that almanac joke! Couldn't you ring another variation on the lunatic wheeze? Don't hesitate out of consideration for me, Captain; I'm joke proof--perhaps you've noticed?" Stryker turned upon him an expression at once ludicrous, piteous and hateful. "That's all, sir," he snarled, displaying his empty palms in token of his absolute tractability. "Good enough. Now right about face--quick! Your back's prettier than your face, and besides, I want to know whether your hip-pockets are empty. I've heard it's the habit of you gentry to pack guns in your clothes.... None? That's all right, then. Now roost on the transom, over there in the corner, Stryker, and don't move. Don't let me hear a word from you. Understand?" Submissively the captain retired to the indicated spot. Kirkwood turned to Calendar; of whose attitude, however, he had not been for an instant unmindful. "Won't you sit down, Mr. Calendar?" he suggested pleasantly. "Forgive me for keeping you waiting." For his own part, as the adventurer dropped passively into his chair, Kirkwood stepped over Mulready and advanced to the middle of the cabin, at the same time thrusting Calendar's revolver into his own coat pocket. The other, Mulready's, he nursed significantly with both hands, while he stood temporarily quiet, surveying the fleshy face of the prime factor in the intrigue. A quaint, grim smile played about the American's lips, a smile a little contemptuous, more than a little inscrutable. In its light Calendar grew restive and lost something of his assurance. His feet shifted uneasily beneath the table and his dark eyes wavered, evading Kirkwood's. At length he seemed to find the suspense unendurable. "Well?" he demanded testily. "What d'you want of me?" "I was just wondering at you, Calendar. In the last few days you've given me enough cause to wonder, as you'll admit." The adventurer plucked up spirit, deluded by Kirkwood's pacific tone. "I wonder at you, Mr. Kirkwood," he retorted. "It was good of you to save my life and--" "I'm not so sure of that! Perhaps it had been more humane--" Calendar owned the touch with a wry grimace. "But I'm damned if I understand this high-handed attitude of yours!" he concluded heatedly. "Don't you?" Kirkwood's humor became less apparent, the smile sobering. "You will," he told the man, adding abruptly: "Calendar, where's your daughter?" The restless eyes sought the companionway. "Dorothy," the man lied spontaneously, without a tremor, "is with friends in England. Why? Did you want to see her?" "I rather expected to." "Well, I thought it best to leave her home, after all." "I'm glad to hear she's in safe hands," commented Kirkwood. The adventurer's glance analyzed his face. "Ah," he said slowly, "I see. You followed me on Dorothy's account, Mr. Kirkwood?" "Partly; partly on my own. Let me put it to you fairly. When you forced yourself upon me, back there in London, you offered me some sort of employment; when I rejected it, you used me to your advantage for the furtherance of your purposes (which I confess I don't understand), and made me miss my steamer. Naturally, when I found myself penniless and friendless in a strange country, I thought again of your offer; and tried to find you, to accept it." "Despite the fact that you're an honest man, Kirkwood?" The fat lips twitched with premature enjoyment. "I'm a desperate man to-night, whatever I may have been yesterday." The young man's tone was both earnest and convincing. "I think I've shown that by my pertinacity in hunting you down." "Well--yes." Calendar's thick fingers caressed his lips, trying to hide the dawning smile. "Is that offer still open?" His nonchalance completely restored by the very naïveté of the proposition, Calendar laughed openly and with a trace of irony. The episode seemed to be turning out better than he had anticipated. Gently his mottled fat fingers played about his mouth and chins as he looked Kirkwood up and down. "I'm sorry," he replied, "that it isn't--now. You're too late, Kirkwood; I've made other arrangements." "Too bad." Kirkwood's eyes narrowed. "You force me to harsher measures, Calendar." Genuinely diverted, the adventurer laughed a second time, tipping back in his chair, his huge frame shaking with ponderous enjoyment. "Don't do anything you'd be sorry for," he parroted, sarcastical, the young man's recent admonition to the captain. "No fear, Calendar. I'm just going to use my advantage, which you won't dispute,"--the pistol described an eloquent circle, gleaming in the lamplight--"to levy on you a little legitimate blackmail. Don't be alarmed; I shan't hit you any harder than I have to." "What?" stammered Calendar, astonished. "What in hell _are_ you driving at?" "Recompense for my time and trouble. You've cost me a pretty penny, first and last, with your nasty little conspiracy--whatever it's all about. Now, needing the money, I purpose getting some of it back. I shan't precisely rob you, but this is a hold-up, all right.... Stryker," reproachfully, "I don't see my pearl pin." "I got it 'ere," responded the sailor hastily, fumbling with his tie. "Give it me, then." Kirkwood held out his hand and received the trinket. Then, moving over to the table, the young man, while abating nothing of his watchfulness, sorted out his belongings from the mass of odds and ends Stryker had disgorged. The tale of them was complete; the captain had obeyed him faithfully. Kirkwood looked up, pleased. "Now see here, Calendar; this collection of truck that I was robbed of by this resurrected Joe Miller here, cost me upwards of a hundred and fifty. I'm going to sell it to you at a bargain--say fifty dollars, two hundred and fifty francs." "The juice you are!" Calendar's eyes opened wide, partly in admiration. "D'you realize that this is next door to highway robbery, my young friend?" "High-seas piracy, if you prefer," assented Kirkwood with entire equanimity. "I'm going to have the money, and you're going to give it up. The transaction by any name would smell no sweeter, Calendar. Come--fork over!" "And if I refuse?" "I wouldn't refuse, if I were you." "Why not?" "The consequences would be too painful." "You mean you'd puncture me with that gun?" "Not unless you attack or attempt to follow me. I mean to say that the Belgian police are notoriously a most efficient body, and that I'll make it my duty and pleasure to introduce 'em to you, if you refuse. But you won't," Kirkwood added soothingly, "will you, Calendar?" "No." The adventurer had become suddenly thoughtful. "No, I won't. 'Glad to oblige you." He tilted his chair still farther back, straightening out his elephantine legs, inserted one fat hand into his trouser pocket and with some difficulty extracted a combined bill-fold and coin-purse, at once heavy with gold and bulky with notes. Moistening thumb and forefinger, "How'll you have it?" he inquired with a lift of his cunning eyes; and when Kirkwood had advised him, slowly counted out four fifty-franc notes, placed them near the edge of the table, and weighted them with five ten-franc pieces. And, "'That all?" he asked, replacing the pocket-book. "That will be about all. I leave you presently to your unholy devices, you and that gay dog, over there." The captain squirmed, reddening. "Just by way of precaution, however, I'll ask you to wait in here till I'm off." Kirkwood stepped backwards to the door of the captain's room, opened it and removed the key from the inside. "Please take Mulready in with you," he continued. "By the time you get out, I'll be clear of Antwerp. Please don't think of refusing me,--I really mean it!" The latter clause came sharply as Calendar seemed to hesitate, his weary, wary eyes glimmering with doubt. Kirkwood, watching him as a cat her prey, intercepted a lightning-swift sidelong glance that shifted from his face to the port lockers, forward. But the fat adventurer was evidently to a considerable degree deluded by the very child-like simplicity of Kirkwood's attitude. If the possibility that his altercation with Mulready had been overheard, crossed his mind, Calendar had little choice other than to accept the chance. Either way he moved, the risk was great; if he refused to be locked in the captain's room, there was the danger of the police, to which Kirkwood had convincingly drawn attention; if he accepted the temporary imprisonment, he took a risk with the gladstone bag. On the other hand, he had estimated Kirkwood's honesty as thorough-going, from their first interview; he had appraised him as a gentleman and a man of honor. And he did not believe the young man knew, after all ... Perplexed, at length he chose the smoother way, and with an indulgent lifting of eyebrows and fat shoulders, rose and waddled over to Mulready. "Oh, all right," he conceded with deep toleration in his tone for the idiosyncrasies of youth. "It's all the same to me, beau." He laughed a nervous laugh. "Come along and lend us a hand, Stryker." The latter glanced timidly at Kirkwood, his eyes pleading for leave to move; which Kirkwood accorded with an imperative nod and a fine flourish of the revolver. Promptly the captain, sprang to Calendar's assistance; and between the two of them, the one taking Mulready's head, the other his feet, they lugged him quickly into the stuffy little state-room. Kirkwood, watching and following to the threshold, inserted the key. "One word more," he counseled, a hand on the knob. "Don't forget I've warned you what'll happen if you try to break even with me." "Never fear, little one!" Calendar's laugh was nervously cheerful. "The Lord knows you're welcome." "Thank you 'most to death," responded Kirkwood politely. "Good-by--and good-by to you, Stryker. 'Glad to have humored your desire to meet me soon again." Kirkwood, turning the key in the lock, withdrew it and dropped it on the cabin table; at the same time he swept into his pocket the money he had extorted of Calendar. Then he paused an instant, listening; from the captain's room came a sound of murmurs and scuffling. He debated what they were about in there--but time pressed. Not improbably they, were crowding for place at the keyhole, he reflected, as he crossed to the port locker forward. He had its lid up in a twinkling, and in another had lifted out the well-remembered black gladstone bag. This seems to have been his first compound larceny. As if stimulated by some such reflection he sprang for the companionway, dropping the lid of the locker with a bang which must have been excruciatingly edifying to the men in the captain's room. Whatever their emotions, the bang was mocked by a mighty kick, shaking the door; which, Kirkwood reflected, opened outward and was held only by the frailest kind of a lock: it would not hold long. Spurred onward by a storm of curses, Stryker's voice chanting infuriated cacophony with Calendar's, Kirkwood leapt up the companionway even as the second tremendous kick threatened to shatter the panels. Heart in mouth, a chill shiver of guilt running up and down his spine, he gained the deck, cast loose the painter, drew in his rowboat, and dropped over the side; then, the gladstone bag nestling between his feet, sat down and bent to the oars. And doubts assailed him, pressing close upon the ebb of his excitement--doubts and fears innumerable. There was no longer a distinction to be drawn between himself and Calendar; no more could he esteem himself a better and more honest man than that accomplished swindler. He was not advised as to the Belgian code, but English law, he understood, made no allowance for the good intent of those caught in possession of stolen property; though he was acting with the most honorable motives in the world, the law, if he came within its cognizance, would undoubtedly place him on Calendar's plane and judge him by the same standard. To all intents and purposes he was a thief, and thief he would remain until the gladstone bag with its contents should be restored to its rightful owner. Voluntarily, then, he had stepped from the ranks of the hunters to those of the hunted. He now feared police interference as abjectly as did Calendar and his set of rogues; and Kirkwood felt wholly warranted in assuming that the adventurer, with his keen intelligence, would not handicap himself by ignoring this point. Indeed, if he were to be judged by what Kirkwood had inferred of his character, Calendar would let nothing whatever hinder him, neither fear of bodily hurt nor danger of apprehension at the hands of the police, from making a determined and savage play to regain possession of his booty. Well! (Kirkwood set his mouth savagely) Calendar should have a run for his money! For the present he could compliment himself with the knowledge that he had outwitted the rogues, had lifted the jewels and probably two-thirds of their armament; he had also the start, the knowledge of their criminal guilt and intent, and his own plans, to comfort him. As for the latter, he did not believe that Calendar would immediately fathom them; so he took heart of grace and tugged at the oars with a will, pulling directly for the city and permitting the current to drift him down-stream at its pleasure. There could be no more inexcusable folly than to return to the _Quai Steen_ landing and (possibly) the arms of the despoiled boat-owner. At first he could hear crash after splintering crash sounding dully muffled from the cabin of the _Alethea_: a veritable devil's tattoo beaten out by the feet of the prisoners. Evidently the fastening was serving him better than he had dared hope. But as the black rushing waters widened between boat and brigantine, the clamor aboard the latter subsided, indicating that Calendar and Stryker had broken out or been released by the crew. In ignorance as to whether he were seen or being pursued, Kirkwood pulled on, winning in under the shadow of the quais and permitting the boat to drift down to a lonely landing on the edge of the dockyard quarter of Antwerp. Here alighting, he made the boat fast and, soothing his conscience with a surmise that its owner would find it there in the morning, strode swiftly over to the train line that runs along the embankment, swung aboard an adventitious car and broke his first ten-franc piece in order to pay his fare. The car made a leisurely progress up past the old Steen castle and the Quai landing, Kirkwood sitting quietly, the gladstone bag under his hand, a searching gaze sweeping the waterside. No sign of the adventurers rewarded him, but it was now all chance, all hazard. He had no more heart for confidence. They passed the Hôtel du Commerce. Kirkwood stared up at its windows, wondering.... A little farther on, a disengaged fiacre, its driver alert for possible fares, turned a corner into the esplanade. At sight of it Kirkwood, inspired, hopped nimbly off the tram-car and signaled the cabby. The latter pulled up and Kirkwood started to charge him with instructions; something which he did haltingly, hampered by a slight haziness of purpose. While thus engaged, and at rest in the stark glare of the street-lamps, with no chance of concealing himself, he was aware of a rising tumult in the direction of the landing, and glancing round, discovered a number of people running toward him. With no time to wonder whether or no he was really the object of the hue-and-cry, he tossed the driver three silver francs. "Gare Centrale!" he cried. "And drive like the devil!" Diving into the fiacre he shut the door and stuck his head out of the window, taking observations. A ragged fringe of silly rabble was bearing down upon them, with one or two gendarmes in the forefront, and a giant, who might or might not be Stryker, a close second. Furthermore, another cab seemed to have been requisitioned for the chase. His heart misgave him momentarily; but his driver had taken him at his word and generosity, and in a breath the fiacre had turned the corner on two wheels, and the glittering reaches of the embankment, drive and promenade, were blotted out, as if smudged with lamp-black, by the obscurity of a narrow and tortuous side street. He drew in his head the better to preserve his brains against further emergencies. After a block or two Kirkwood picked up the gladstone bag, gently opened the door, and put a foot on the step, pausing to look back. The other cab was pelting after him with all the enthusiasm of a hound on a fresh trail. He reflected that this mad progress through the thoroughfares of a civilized city would not long endure without police intervention. So he waited, watching his opportunity. The fiacre hurtled onward, the driver leaning forward from his box to urge the horse with lash of whip and tongue, entirely unconscious of his fare's intentions. Between two streets the mouth of a narrow and darksome byway flashed into view. Kirkwood threw wide the door, and leaped, trusting to the night to hide his stratagem, to luck to save his limbs. Neither failed him; in a twinkling he was on all fours in the mouth of the alley, and as he picked himself up, the second fiacre passed, Calendar himself poking a round bald poll out of the window to incite his driver's cupidity with promises of redoubled fare. Kirkwood mopped his dripping forehead and whistled low with dismay; it seemed that from that instant on it was to be a vendetta with a vengeance. Calendar, as he had foreseen, was stopping at nothing. At a dog trot he sped down the alley to the next street, on which he turned back--more sedately--toward the river, debouching on the esplanade just one block from the Hôtel du Commerce. As he swung past the serried tables of a café, whatever fears he had harbored were banished by the discovery that the excitement occasioned by the chase had already subsided. Beneath the garish awnings the crowd was laughing and chattering, eating and sipping its bock with complete unconcern, heedless altogether of the haggard and shabby young man carrying a black hand-bag, with the black Shade of Care for company and a blacker threat of disaster dogging his footsteps. Without attracting any attention whatever, indeed, he mingled with the strolling crowds, making his way toward the Hôtel du Commerce. Yet he was not at all at ease; his uneasy conscience invested the gladstone bag with a magnetic attraction for the public eye. To carry it unconcealed in his hand furnished him with a sensation as disturbing as though its worn black sides had been stenciled STOLEN! in letters of flame. He felt it rendered him a cynosure of public interest, an object of suspicion to the wide cold world, that the gaze which lit upon the bag traveled to his face only to espy thereon the brand of guilt. For ease of mind, presently, he turned into a convenient shop and spent ten invaluable francs for a hand satchel big enough to hold the gladstone bag. With more courage, now that he had the hateful thing under cover, he found and entered the Hôtel du Commerce. In the little closet which served for an office, over a desk visibly groaning with the weight of an enormous and grimy registry book, a sleepy, fat, bland and good-natured woman of the Belgian _bourgeoisie_ presided, a benign and drowsy divinity of even-tempered courtesy. To his misleading inquiry for Monsieur Calendar she returned a cheerful permission to seek that gentleman for himself. "Three flights, M'sieu', in the front; suite seventeen it is. M'sieu' does not mind walking up?" she inquired. M'sieu' did not in the least, though by no strain of the imagination could it, be truthfully said that he walked up those steep and redolent stairways of the Hôtel du Commerce d'Anvers. More literally, he flew with winged feet, spurning each third padded step with a force that raised a tiny cloud of fine white dust from the carpeting. Breathless, at last he paused at the top of the third flight. His heart was hammering, his pulses drumming like wild things; there was a queer constriction in his throat, a fire of hope in his heart alternating with the ice of doubt. Suppose she were not there! What if he were mistaken, what if he had misunderstood, what if Mulready and Calendar had referred to another lodging-house? Pausing, he gripped the balustrade fiercely, forcing his self-control, forcing himself to reflect that the girl (presuming, for the sake of argument, he were presently to find her) could not be expected to understand how ardently he had discounted this moment of meeting, or how strangely it affected him. Indeed, he himself was more than a little disturbed by the latter phenomenon, though he was no longer blind to its cause. But he was not to let her see the evidences of his agitation, lest she be frightened. Slowly schooling himself to assume a masque of illuding self-possession and composure, he passed down the corridor to the door whose panels wore the painted legend, 17; and there knocked. Believing that he overheard from within a sudden startled exclamation, he smiled patiently, tolerant of her surprise. Burning with impatience as with a fever, he endured a long minute's wait. Misgivings were prompting him to knock again and summon her by name, when he heard footfalls on the other side of the door, followed by a click of the lock. The door was opened grudgingly, a bare six inches. Of the alarmed expression in the eyes that stared into his, he took no account. His face lengthened a little as he stood there, dumb, panting, staring; and his heart sank, down, deep down into a gulf of disappointment, weighted sorely with chagrin. Then, of the two the first to recover countenance, he doffed his cap and bowed. "Good evening, Mrs. Hallam," he said with a rueful smile. XV REFUGEES Now, if Kirkwood's emotion was poignant, Mrs. Hallam's astonishment paralleled, and her relief transcended it. In order to understand this it must be remembered that while Mr. Kirkwood was aware of the lady's presence in Antwerp, on her part she had known nothing of him since he had so ungallantly fled her company in Sheerness. She seemed to anticipate that either Calendar or one of his fellows would be discovered at the door,--to have surmised it without any excessive degree of pleasure. Only briefly she hesitated, while her surprise swayed her; then with a hardening of the eyes and a curt little nod, "I'm sorry," she said with decision, "but I am busy and can't see you now, Mr. Kirkwood"; and attempted to shut the door in his face. Deftly Kirkwood forestalled her intention by inserting both a foot and a corner of the newly purchased hand-bag between the door and the jamb. He had dared too greatly to be thus dismissed. "Pardon me," he countered, unabashed, "but I wish to speak with Miss Calendar." "Dorothy," returned the lady with spirit, "is engaged...." She compressed her lips, knitted her brows, and with disconcerting suddenness thrust one knee against the obstructing hand-bag; Kirkwood, happily, anticipated the movement just in time to reinforce the bag with his own knee; it remained in place, the door standing open. The woman flushed angrily; their glances crossed, her eyes flashing with indignation; but Kirkwood's held them with a level and unyielding stare. "I intend," he told her quietly, "to see Miss Calendar. It's useless your trying to hinder me. We may as well understand each other, Madam, and I'll tell you now that if you wish to avoid a scene--" "Dorothy!" the woman called over her shoulder; "ring for the porter." "By all means," assented Kirkwood agreeably. "I'll send him for a gendarme." "You insolent puppy!" "Madam, your wit disarms me--" "What is the matter, Mrs. Hallam?" interrupted a voice from the other side of the door. "Who is it?" "Miss Calendar!" cried Kirkwood hastily, raising his voice. "Mr. Kirkwood!" the reply came on the instant. She knew his voice! "Please, Mrs. Hallam, I will see Mr. Kirkwood." "You have no time to waste with him, Dorothy," said the woman coldly. "I must insist--" "But you don't seem to understand; it is Mr. Kirkwood!" argued the girl,--as if he were ample excuse for any imprudence! Kirkwood's scant store of patience was by this time rapidly becoming exhausted. "I should advise you not to interfere any further, Mrs. Hallam," he told her in a tone low, but charged with meaning. How much did he know? She eyed him an instant longer, in sullen suspicion, then swung open the door, yielding with what grace she could. "Won't you come in, Mr. Kirkwood?" she inquired with acidulated courtesy. "If you press me," he returned winningly, "how can I refuse? You are too good!" His impertinence disconcerted even himself; he wondered that she did not slap him as he passed her, entering the room; and felt that he deserved it, despite her attitude. But such thoughts could not long trouble one whose eyes were enchanted by the sight of Dorothy, confronting him in the middle of the dingy room, her hands, bristling dangerously with hat pins, busy with the adjustment of a small gray toque atop the wonder that was her hair. So vivacious and charming she seemed, so spirited and bright her welcoming smile, so foreign was she altogether to the picture of her, worn and distraught, that he had mentally conjured up, that he stopped in an extreme of disconcertion; and dropped the hand-bag, smiling sheepishly enough under her ready laugh--mirth irresistibly incited by the plainly-read play of expression on his mobile countenance. "You must forgive the unconventionally, Mr. Kirkwood," she apologized, needlessly enough, but to cover his embarrassment. "I am on the point of going out with Mrs. Hallam--and of course you are the last person on earth I expected to meet here!" "It's good to see you, Miss Calendar," he said simply, remarking with much satisfaction that her trim walking costume bore witness to her statement that she was prepared for the street. The girl glanced into a mirror, patted the small, bewitching hat an infinitesimal fraction of an inch to one side, and turned to him again, her hands free. One of them, small but cordial, rested in his grasp for an instant all too brief, the while he gazed earnestly into her face, noting with concern what the first glance had not shown him,--the almost imperceptible shadows beneath her eyes and cheek-bones, pathetic records of the hours the girl had spent, since last he had seen her, in company with his own grim familiar, Care. Not a little of care and distress of mind had seasoned her portion in those two weary days. He saw and knew it; and his throat tightened inexplicably, again, as it had out there in the corridor. Possibly the change in her had passed unchallenged by any eyes other than his, but even in the little time that he had spent in her society, the image of her had become fixed so indelibly on his memory, that he could not now be deceived. She was changed--a little, but changed; she had suffered, and was suffering and, forced by suffering, her nascent womanhood was stirring in the bud. The child that he had met in London, in Antwerp he found grown to woman's stature and slowly coming to comprehension of the nature of the change in herself,--the wonder of it glowing softly in her eyes.... The clear understanding of mankind that is an appanage of woman's estate, was now added to the intuitions of a girl's untroubled heart. She could not be blind to the mute adoration of his gaze; nor could she resent it. Beneath it she colored and lowered her lashes. "I was about to go out," she repeated in confusion. "I--it's pleasant to see you, too." "Thank you," he stammered ineptly; "I--I--" "If Mr. Kirkwood will excuse us, Dorothy," Mrs. Hallam's sharp tones struck in discordantly, "we shall be glad to see him when we return to London." "I am infinitely complimented, Mrs. Hallam," Kirkwood assured her; and of the girl quickly: "You're going back home?" he asked. She nodded, with a faint, puzzled smile that included the woman. "After a little--not immediately. Mrs. Hallam is so kind--" "Pardon me," he interrupted; "but tell me one thing, please: have you any one in England to whom you can go without invitation and be welcomed and cared for--any friends or relations?" "Dorothy will be with me," Mrs. Hallam answered for her, with cold defiance. Deliberately insolent, Kirkwood turned his back to the woman. "Miss Calendar, will you answer my question for yourself?" he asked the girl pointedly. "Why--yes; several friends; none in London, but--" "Dorothy--" "One moment, Mrs. Hallam," Kirkwood flung crisply over his shoulder. "I'm going to ask you something rather odd, Miss Calendar," he continued, seeking the girl's eyes. "I hope--" "Dorothy, I--" "If you please, Mrs. Hallam," suggested the girl, with just the right shade of independence. "I wish to listen to Mr. Kirkwood. He has been very kind to me and has every right...." She turned to him again, leaving the woman breathless and speechless with anger. "You told me once," Kirkwood continued quickly, and, he felt, brazenly, "that you considered me kind, thoughtful and considerate. You know me no better to-day than you did then, but I want to beg you to trust me a little. Can you trust yourself to my protection until we reach your friends in England?" "Why, I--" the girl faltered, taken by surprise. "Mr. Kirkwood!" cried Mrs. Hallam angrily, finding her voice. Kirkwood turned to meet her onslaught with a mien grave, determined, unflinching. "Please do not interfere, Madam," he said quietly. "You are impertinent, sir! Dorothy, I forbid you to listen to this person!" The girl flushed, lifting her chin a trifle. "Forbid?" she repeated wonderingly. Kirkwood was quick to take advantage of her resentment. "Mrs. Hallam is not fitted to advise you," he insisted, "nor can she control your actions. It must already have occurred to you that you're rather out of place in the present circumstances. The men who have brought you hither, I believe you already see through, to some extent. Forgive my speaking plainly ... But that is why you have accepted Mrs. Hallam's offer of protection. Will you take my word for it, when I tell you she has not your right interests at heart, but the reverse? I happen to know, Miss Calendar, and I--" "How dare you, sir?" Flaming with rage, Mrs. Hallam put herself bodily between them, confronting Kirkwood in white-lipped desperation, her small, gloved hands clenched and quivering at her sides, her green eyes dangerous. But Kirkwood could silence her; and he did. "Do you wish me to speak frankly, Madam? Do you wish me to tell what I know--and all I know--," with rising emphasis,--"of your social status and your relations with Calendar and Mulready? I promise you that if you wish it, or force me to it...." But he had need to say nothing further; the woman's eyes wavered before his and a little sob of terror forced itself between her shut teeth. Kirkwood smiled grimly, with a face of brass, impenetrable, inflexible. And suddenly she turned from him with indifferent bravado. "As Mr. Kirkwood says, Dorothy," she said in her high, metallic voice, "I have no authority over you. But if you're silly enough to consider for a moment this fellow's insulting suggestion, if you're fool enough to go with him, unchaperoned through Europe and imperil your--" "Mrs. Hallam!" Kirkwood cut her short with a menacing tone. "Why, then, I wash my hands of you," concluded the woman defiantly. "Make your choice, my child," she added with a meaning laugh and moved away, humming a snatch from a French _chanson_ which brought the hot blood to Kirkwood's face. But the girl did not understand; and he was glad of that. "You may judge between us," he appealed to her directly, once more. "I can only offer you my word of honor as an American gentleman that you shall be landed in England, safe and sound, by the first available steamer--" "There's no need to say more, Mr. Kirkwood," Dorothy informed him quietly. "I have already decided. I think I begin to understand some things clearly, now.... If you're ready, we will go." From the window, where she stood, holding the curtains back and staring out, Mrs. Hallam turned with a curling lip. [Illustration: From the window, Mrs. Hallam turned with a curling lip.] "'The honor of an American gentleman,'" she quoted with a stinging sneer; "I'm sure I wish you comfort of it, child!" "We must make haste, Miss Calendar," said Kirkwood, ignoring the implication. "Have you a traveling-bag?" She silently indicated a small valise, closed and strapped, on a table by the bed, and immediately passed out into the hall. Kirkwood took the case containing the gladstone bag in one hand, the girl's valise in the other, and followed. As he turned the head of the stairs he looked back. Mrs. Hallam was still at the window, her back turned. From her very passiveness he received an impression of something ominous and forbidding; if she had lost a trick or two of the game she played, she still held cards, was not at the end of her resources. She stuck in his imagination for many an hour as a force to be reckoned with. For the present he understood that she was waiting to apprise Calendar and Mulready of their flight. With the more haste, then, he followed Dorothy down the three flights, through the tiny office, where Madam sat sound asleep at her over-burdened desk, and out. Opposite the door they were fortunate enough to find a fiacre drawn up in waiting at the curb. Kirkwood opened the door for the girl to enter. "Gare du Sud," he directed the driver. "Drive your fastest--double fare for quick time!" The driver awoke with a start from profound reverie, looked Kirkwood over, and bowed with gesticulative palms. "M'sieu', I am desolated, but engaged!" he protested. "Precisely." Kirkwood deposited the two bags on the forward seat of the conveyance, and stood back to convince the man. "Precisely," said he, undismayed. "The lady who engaged you is remaining for a time; I will settle her bill." "Very well, M'sieu'!" The driver disclaimed responsibility and accepted the favor of the gods with a speaking shrug. "M'sieu' said the Gare du Sud? _En voiture_!" Kirkwood jumped in and shut the door; the vehicle drew slowly away from the curb, then with gratifying speed hammered up-stream on the embankment. Bending forward, elbows on knees, Kirkwood watched the sidewalks narrowly, partly to cover the girl's constraint, due to Mrs. Hallam's attitude, partly on the lookout for Calendar and his confederates. In a few moments they passed a public clock. "We've missed the Flushing boat," he announced. "I'm making a try for the Hoek van Holland line. We may possibly make it. I know that it leaves by the Sud Quai, and that's all I do know," he concluded with an apologetic laugh. "And if we miss that?" asked the girl, breaking silence for the first time since they had left the hotel. "We'll take the first train out of Antwerp." "Where to?" "Wherever the first train goes, Miss Calendar.... The main point is to get away to-night. That we must do, no matter where we land, or how we get there. To-morrow we can plan with more certainty." "Yes..." Her assent was more a sigh than a word. The cab, dashing down the Rue Leopold de Wael, swung into the Place du Sud, before the station. Kirkwood, acutely watchful, suddenly thrust head and shoulders out of his window (fortunately it was the one away from the depot), and called up to the driver. "Don't stop! Gare Centrale now--and treble fare!" "_Oui, M'sieu'! Allons!_" The whip cracked and the horse swerved sharply round the corner into the Avenue du Sud. The young man, with a hushed exclamation, turned in his seat, lifting the flap over the little peephole in the back of the carriage. He had not been mistaken. Calendar was standing in front of the station; and it was plain to be seen, from his pose, that the madly careering fiacre interested him more than slightly. Irresolute, perturbed, the man took a step or two after it, changed his mind, and returned to his post of observation. Kirkwood dropped the flap and turned back to find the girl's wide eyes searching his face. He said nothing. "What was that?" she asked after a patient moment. "Your father, Miss Calendar," he returned uncomfortably. There fell a short pause; then: "Why--will you tell me--is it necessary to run away from my father, Mr. Kirkwood?" she demanded, with a moving little break in her voice. Kirkwood hesitated. It were unfeeling to tell her why; yet it was essential that she should know, however painful the knowledge might prove to her. And she was insistent; he might not dodge the issue. "Why?" she repeated as he paused. "I wish you wouldn't press me for an answer just now, Miss Calendar." "Don't you think I had better know?" Instinctively he inclined his head in assent. "Then why--?" Kirkwood bent forward and patted the flank of the satchel that held the gladstone bag. "What does that mean, Mr. Kirkwood?" "That I have the jewels," he told her tersely, looking straight ahead. At his shoulder he heard a low gasp of amazement and incredulity commingled. "But--! How did you get them? My father deposited them in bank this morning?" "He must have taken them out again.... I got them on board the Alethea, where your father was conferring with Mulready and Captain Stryker." "The Alethea!" "Yes." "You took them from those men?--you!... But didn't my father--?" "I had to persuade him," said Kirkwood simply. "But there were three of them against you!" "Mulready wasn't--ah--feeling very well, and Stryker's a coward. They gave me no trouble. I locked them in Stryker's room, lifted the bag of jewels, and came away.... I ought to tell you that they were discussing the advisability of sailing away without you--leaving you here, friendless and without means. That's why I considered it my duty to take a hand.... I don't like to tell you this so brutally, but you ought to know, and I can't see how to tone it down," he concluded awkwardly. "I understand...." But for some moments she did not speak. He avoided looking at her. The fiacre, rolling at top speed but smoothly on the broad avenues that encircle the ancient city, turned into the Avenue de Keyser, bringing into sight the Gare Centrale. "You don't--k-know--" began the girl without warning, in a voice gusty with sobs. "Steady on!" said Kirkwood gently. "I do know, but don't let's talk about it now. We'll be at the station in a minute, and I'll get out and see what's to be done about a train, if neither Mulready or Stryker are about. You stay in the carriage.... No!" He changed his mind suddenly. "I'll not risk losing you again. It's a risk we'll have to run in company." "Please!" she agreed brokenly. The fiacre slowed up and stopped. "Are you all right, Miss Calendar?" Kirkwood asked. The girl sat up, lifting her head proudly. "I am quite ready," she said, steadying her voice. Kirkwood reconnoitered through the window, while the driver was descending. "Gare Centrale, M'sieu'," he said, opening the door. "No one in sight," Kirkwood told the girl. "Come, please." He got out and gave her his hand, then paid the driver, picked up the two bags, and hurried with Dorothy into the station, to find in waiting a string of cars into which people were moving at leisurely rate. His inquiries at the ticket-window developed the fact that it was the 22:26 for Brussels, the last train leaving the Gare Centrale that night, and due to start in ten minutes. The information settled their plans for once and all; Kirkwood promptly secured through tickets, also purchasing "Reserve" supplementary tickets which entitled them to the use of those modern corridor coaches which take the place of first-class compartments on the Belgian state railways. "It's a pleasure," said Kirkwood lightly, as he followed the girl into one of these, "to find one's self in a common-sense sort of a train again. 'Feels like home." He put their luggage in one of the racks and sat down beside her, chattering with simulated cheerfulness in a vain endeavor to lighten her evident depression of spirit. "I always feel like a traveling anachronism in one of your English trains," he said. "You can't appreciate--" The girl smiled bravely.... "And after Brussels?" she inquired. "First train for the coast," he said promptly. "Dover, Ostend, Boulogne,--whichever proves handiest, no matter which, so long as it gets us on English soil without undue delay." She said "Yes" abstractedly, resting an elbow on the window-sill and her chin in her palm, to stare with serious, sweet brown eyes out into the arc-smitten night that hung beneath the echoing roof. Kirkwood fidgeted in despite of the constraint he placed himself under, to be still and not disturb her needlessly. Impatience and apprehension of misfortune obsessed his mental processes in equal degree. The ten minutes seemed interminable that elapsed ere the grinding couplings advertised the imminence of their start. The guards began to bawl, the doors to slam, belated travelers to dash madly for the coaches. The train gave a preliminary lurch ere settling down to its league-long inland dash. Kirkwood, in a fever of hope and an ague of fear, saw a man sprint furiously across the platform and throw himself on the forward steps of their coach, on the very instant of the start. Presently he entered by the forward door and walked slowly through, narrowly inspecting the various passengers. As he approached the seats occupied by Kirkwood and Dorothy Calendar, his eyes encountered the young man's, and he leered evilly. Kirkwood met the look with one that was like a kick, and the fellow passed with some haste into the car behind. "Who was that?" demanded the girl, without moving her head. "How did you know?" he asked, astonished. "You didn't look--" "I saw your knuckles whiten beneath the skin.... Who was it?" "Hobbs," he acknowledged bitterly; "the mate of the _Alethea_." "I know.... And you think--?" "Yes. He must have been ashore when I was on board the brigantine; he certainly wasn't in the cabin. Evidently they hunted him up, or ran across him, and pressed him into service.... You see, they're watching every outlet.... But we'll win through, never fear!" XVI TRAVELS WITH A CHAPERON The train, escaping the outskirts of the city, remarked the event with an exultant shriek, then settled down, droning steadily, to night-devouring flight. In the corridor-car the few passengers disposed themselves to drowse away the coming hour--the short hour's ride that, in these piping days of frantic traveling, separates Antwerp from the capital city of Belgium. A guard, slamming gustily in through the front door, reeled unsteadily down the aisle. Kirkwood, rousing from a profound reverie, detained him with a gesture and began to interrogate him in French. When he departed presently it transpired that the girl was unaquainted with that tongue. "I didn't understand, you know," she told him with a slow, shy smile. "I was merely questioning him about the trains from Brussels to-night. We daren't stop, you see; we must go on,--keep Hobbs on the jump and lose him, if possible. There's where our advantage lies--in having only Hobbs to deal with. He's not particularly intellectual; and we've two heads to his one, besides. If we can prevent him from guessing our destination and wiring back to Antwerp, we may win away. You understand?" "Perfectly," she said, brightening. "And what do you purpose doing now?" "I can't tell yet. The guard's gone to get me some information about the night trains on other lines. In the meantime, don't fret about Hobbs; I'll answer for Hobbs." "I shan't be worried," she said simply, "with you here...." Whatever answer he would have made he was obliged to postpone because of the return of the guard, with a handful of time-tables; and when, rewarded with a modest gratuity, the man had gone his way, and Kirkwood turned again to the girl, she had withdrawn her attention for the time. Unconscious of his bold regard, she was dreaming, her thoughts at loose-ends, her eyes studying the incalculable depths of blue-black night that swirled and eddied beyond the window-glass. The most shadowy of smiles touched her lips, the faintest shade of deepened color rested on her cheeks.... She was thinking of--him? As long as he dared, the young man, his heart in his own eyes, watched her greedily, taking a miser's joy of her youthful beauty, striving with all his soul to analyze the enigma of that most inscrutable smile. It baffled him. He could not say of what she thought; and told himself bitterly that it was not for him, a pauper, to presume a place in her meditations. He must not forget his circumstances, nor let her tolerance render him oblivious to his place, which must be a servant's, not a lover's. The better to convince himself of this, he plunged desperately into a forlorn attempt to make head or tail of Belgian railway schedule, complicated as these of necessity are by the alternation from normal time notation to the abnormal system sanctioned by the government, and _vice-versa_, with every train that crosses a boundary line of the state. So preoccupied did he become in this pursuit that he was subconsciously impressed that the girl had spoken twice, ere he could detach his interest from the exasperatingly inconclusive and incoherent cohorts of ranked figures. "Can't you find out anything?" Dorothy was asking. "Precious little," he grumbled. "I'd give my head for a Bradshaw! Only it wouldn't be a fair exchange.... There seems to be an express for Bruges leaving the Gare du Nord, Brussels, at fifty-five minutes after twenty-three o'clock; and if I'm not mistaken, that's the latest train out of Brussels and the earliest we can catch,... if we _can_ catch it. I've never been in Brussels, and Heaven only knows how long it would take us to cab it from the Gare du Midi to the Nord." In this statement, however, Mr. Kirkwood was fortunately mistaken; not only Heaven, it appeared, had cognizance of the distance between the two stations. While Kirkwood was still debating the question, with pessimistic tendencies, the friendly guard had occasion to pass through the coach; and, being tapped, yielded the desired information with entire tractability. It would be a cab-ride of perhaps ten minutes. Monsieur, however, would serve himself well if he offered the driver an advance tip as an incentive to speedy driving. Why? Why because (here the guard consulted his watch; and Kirkwood very keenly regretted the loss of his own)--because this train, announced to arrive in Brussels some twenty minutes prior to the departure of that other, was already late. But yes--a matter of some ten minutes. Could that not be made up? Ah, Monsieur, but who should say? The guard departed, doubtless with private views as to the madness of all English-speaking travelers. "And there we are!" commented Kirkwood in factitious resignation. "If we're obliged to stop overnight in Brussels, our friends will be on our back before we can get out in the morning, if they have to come by motor-car." He reflected bitterly on the fact that with but a little more money at his disposal, he too could hire a motor-car and cry defiance to their persecutors. "However," he amended, with rising spirits, "so much the better our chance of losing Mr. Hobbs. We must be ready to drop off the instant the train stops." He began to unfold another time-table, threatening again to lose himself completely; and was thrown into the utmost confusion by the touch of the girl's hand, in appeal placed lightly on his own. And had she been observant, she might have seen a second time his knuckles whiten beneath the skin as he asserted his self-control--though this time not over his temper. His eyes, dumbly eloquent, turned to meet hers. She was smiling. "Please!" she iterated, with the least imperative pressure on his hand, pushing the folder aside. "I beg pardon?" he muttered blankly. "Is it quite necessary, now, to study those schedules? Haven't you decided to try for the Bruges express?" "Why yes, but--" "Then please don't leave me to my thoughts all the time, Mr. Kirkwood." There was a tremor of laughter in her voice, but her eyes were grave and earnest. "I'm very weary of thinking round in a circle--and that," she concluded, with a nervous little laugh, "is all I've had to do for days!" "I'm afraid I'm very stupid," he humored her. "This is the second time, you know, in the course of a very brief acquaintance, that you have found it necessary to remind me to talk to you." "Oh-h!" She brightened. "That night, at the Pless? But that was _ages_ ago!" "It seems so," he admitted. "So much has happened!" "Yes," he assented vaguely. She watched him, a little piqued by his absent-minded mood, for a moment; then, and not without a trace of malice: "Must I tell you again what to talk about?" she asked. "Forgive me. I was thinking about, if not talking to, you.... I've been wondering just why it was that you left the _Alethea_ at Queensborough, to go on by steamer." And immediately he was sorry that his tactless query had swung the conversation to bear upon her father, the thought of whom could not but prove painful to her. But it was too late to mend matters; already her evanescent flush of amusement had given place to remembrance. "It was on my father's account," she told him in a steady voice, but with averted eyes; "he is a very poor sailor, and the promise of a rough passage terrified him. I believe there was a difference of opinion about it, he disputing with Mr. Mulready and Captain Stryker. That was just after we had left the anchorage. They both insisted that it was safer to continue by the _Alethea_, but he wouldn't listen to them, and in the end had his way. Captain Stryker ran the brigantine into the mouth of the Medway and put us ashore just in time to catch the steamer." "Were you sorry for the change?" "I?" She shuddered slightly. "Hardly! I think I hated the ship from the moment I set foot on board her. It was a dreadful place; it was all night-marish, that night, but it seemed most terrible on the _Alethea_ with Captain Stryker and that abominable Mr. Hobbs. I think that my unhappiness had as much to do with my father's insistence on the change, as anything. He ... he was very thoughtful, most of the time." Kirkwood shut his teeth on what he knew of the blackguard. "I don't know why," she continued, wholly without affectation, "but I was wretched from the moment you left me in the cab, to wait while you went in to see Mrs. Hallam. And when we left you, at Bermondsey Old Stairs, after what you had said to me, I felt--I hardly know what to say--abandoned, in a way." "But you were with your father, in his care--" "I know, but I was getting confused. Until then the excitement had kept me from thinking. But you made me think. I began to wonder, to question ... But what could I do?" She signified her helplessness with a quick and dainty movement of her hands. "He is my father; and I'm not yet of age, you know." "I thought so," he confessed, troubled. "It's very inconsiderate of you, you must admit." "I don't understand..." "Because of the legal complication. I've no doubt your father can 'have the law on me'"--Kirkwood laughed uneasily--"for taking you from his protection." "Protection!" she echoed warmly. "If you call it that!" "Kidnapping," he said thoughtfully: "I presume that'd be the charge." "Oh!" She laughed the notion to scorn. "Besides, they must catch us first, mustn't they?" "Of course; and"--with a simulation of confidence sadly deceitful--"they shan't, Mr. Hobbs to the contrary notwithstanding." "You make me share your confidence, against my better judgment." "I wish your better judgment would counsel you to share your confidence with me," he caught her up. "If you would only tell me what it's all about, as far as you know, I'd be better able to figure out what we ought to do." Briefly the girl sat silent, staring before her with sweet somber eyes. Then, "In the very beginning," she told him with a conscious laugh,--"this sounds very story-bookish, I know--in the very beginning, George Burgoyne Calendar, an American, married his cousin a dozen times removed, and an Englishwoman, Alice Burgoyne Hallam." "Hallam!" "Wait, please." She sat up, bending forward and frowning down upon her interlacing, gloved fingers; she was finding it difficult to say what she must. Kirkwood, watching hungrily the fair drooping head, the flawless profile clear and radiant against the night-blackened window, saw hot signals of shame burning on her cheek and throat and forehead. "But never mind," he began awkwardly. "No," she told him with decision. "Please let me go on...." She continued, stumbling, trusting to his sympathy to bridge the gaps in her narrative. "My father ... There was trouble of some sort.... At all events, he disappeared when I was a baby. My mother ... died. I was brought up in the home of my great-uncle, Colonel George Burgoyne, of the Indian Army--retired. My mother had been his favorite niece, they say; I presume that was why he cared for me. I grew up in his home in Cornwall; it was my home, just as he was my father in everything but fact. "A year ago he died, leaving me everything,--the town house in Frognall Street, his estate in Cornwall: everything was willed to me on condition that I must never live with my father, nor in any way contribute to his support. If I disobeyed, the entire estate without reserve was to go to his nearest of kin.... Colonel Burgoyne was unmarried and had no children." The girl paused, lifting to Kirkwood's face her eyes, clear, fearless, truthful. "I never was given to understand that there was anybody who might have inherited, other than myself," she declared. "I see..." "Last week I received a letter, signed with my father's name, begging me to appoint an interview with him in London. I did so,--guess how gladly! I was alone in the world, and he, my father, whom I had never thought to see.... We met at his hotel, the Pless. He wanted me to come and live with him,--said that he was growing old and lonely and needed a daughter's love and care. He told me that he had made a fortune in America and was amply able to provide for us both. As for my inheritance, he persuaded me that it was by rights the property of Frederick Hallam, Mrs. Hallam's son." "I have met the young gentleman," interpolated Kirkwood. "His name was new to me, but my father assured me that he was the next of kin mentioned in Colonel Burgoyne's will, and convinced me that I had no real right to the property.... After all, he was my father; I agreed; I could not bear the thought of wronging anybody. I was to give up everything but my mother's jewels. It seems,--my father said,--I don't--I can't believe it now--" She choked on a little, dry sob. It was some time before she seemed able to continue. "I was told that my great-uncle's collection of jewels had been my mother's property. He had in life a passion for collecting jewels, and it had been his whim to carry them with him, wherever he went. When he died in Frognall Street, they were in the safe by the head of his bed. I, in my grief, at first forgot them, and then afterwards carelessly put off removing them. "To come back to my father: Night before last we were to call on Mrs. Hallam. It was to be our last night in England; we were to sail for the Continent on the private yacht of a friend of my father's, the next morning.... This is what I was told--and believed, you understand. "That night Mrs. Hallam was dining at another table at the Pless, it seems. I did not then know her. When leaving, she put a note on our table, by my father's elbow. I was astonished beyond words.... He seemed much agitated, told me that he was called away on urgent business, a matter of life and death, and begged me to go alone to Frognall Street, get the jewels and meet him at Mrs. Hallam's later.... I wasn't altogether a fool, for I began dimly to suspect, then, that something was wrong; but I was a fool, for I consented to do as he desired. You understand--you know--?" "I do, indeed," replied Kirkwood grimly. "I understand a lot of things now that I didn't five minutes ago. Please let me think..." But the time he took for deliberation was short. He had hoped to find a way to spare her, by sparing Calendar; but momentarily he was becoming more impressed with the futility of dealing with her save in terms of candor, merciful though they might seem harsh. "I must tell you," he said, "that you have been outrageously misled, swindled and deceived. I have heard from your father's own lips that Mrs. Hallam was to pay him two thousand pounds for keeping you out of England and losing you your inheritance. I'm inclined to question, furthermore, the assertion that these jewels were your mother's. Frederick Hallam was the man who followed you into the Frognall Street house and attacked me on the stairs; Mrs. Hallam admits that he went there to get the jewels. But he didn't want anybody to know it." "But that doesn't prove--" "Just a minute." Rapidly and concisely Kirkwood recounted the events wherein he had played a part, subsequent to the adventure of Bermondsey Old Stairs. He was guilty of but one evasion; on one point only did he slur the truth: he conceived it his honorable duty to keep the girl in ignorance of his straitened circumstances; she was not to be distressed by knowledge of his distress, nor could he tolerate the suggestion of seeming to play for her sympathy. It was necessary, then, to invent a motive to excuse his return to 9, Frognall Street. I believe he chose to exaggerate the inquisitiveness of his nature and threw in for good measure a desire to recover a prized trinket of no particular moment, esteemed for its associations, and so forth. But whatever the fabrication, it passed muster; to the girl his motives seemed less important than the discoveries that resulted from them. "I am afraid," he concluded the summary of the confabulation he had overheard at the skylight of the Alethea's cabin, "you'd best make up your mind that your father--" "Yes," whispered the girl huskily; and turned her face to the window, a quivering muscle in the firm young throat alone betraying her emotion. "It's a bad business," he pursued relentlessly: "bad all round. Mulready, in your father's pay, tries to have him arrested, the better to rob him. Mrs. Hallam, to secure your property for that precious pet, Freddie, connives at, if she doesn't instigate, a kidnapping. Your father takes her money to deprive you of yours,--which could profit him nothing so long as you remained in lawful possession of it; and at the same time he conspires to rob, through you, the rightful owners--if they are rightful owners. And if they are, why does Freddie Hallam go like a thief in the night to secure property that's his beyond dispute?... I don't really think you owe your father any further consideration." He waited patiently. Eventually, "No-o," the girl sobbed assent. "It's this way: Calendar, counting on your sparing him in the end, is going to hound us. He's doing it now: there's Hobbs in the next car, for proof. Until these jewels are returned, whether to Frognall Street or to young Hallam, we're both in danger, both thieves in the sight of the law. And your father knows that, too. There's no profit to be had by discounting the temper of these people; they're as desperate a gang of swindlers as ever lived. They'll have those jewels if they have to go as far as murder--" "Mr. Kirkwood!" she deprecated, in horror. He wagged his head stubbornly, ominously. "I've seen them in the raw. They're hot on our trail now; ten to one, they'll be on our backs before we can get across the Channel. Once in England we will be comparatively safe. Until then ... But I'm a brute--I'm frightening you!" "You are, dreadfully," she confessed in a tremulous voice. "Forgive me. If you look at the dark side first, the other seems all the brighter. Please don't worry; we'll pull through with flying colors, or my name's not Philip Kirkwood!" "I have every faith in you," she informed him, flawlessly sincere. "When I think of all you've done and dared for me, on the mere suspicion that I needed your help--" "We'd best be getting ready," he interrupted hastily. "Here's Brussels." It was so. Lights, in little clusters and long, wheeling lines, were leaping out of the darkness and flashing back as the train rumbled through the suburbs of the little Paris of the North. Already the other passengers were bestirring themselves, gathering together wraps and hand luggage, and preparing for the journey's end. Rising, Kirkwood took down their two satchels from the overhead rack, and waited, in grim abstraction planning and counterplanning against the machinations in whose wiles they two had become so perilously entangled. Primarily, there was Hobbs to be dealt with; no easy task, for Kirkwood dared not resort to violence nor in any way invite the attention of the authorities; and threats would be an idle waste of breath, in the case of that corrupt and malignant, little cockney, himself as keen as any needle, adept in all the artful resources of the underworld whence he had sprung, and further primed for action by that master rogue, Calendar. The train was pulling slowly into the station when he reluctantly abandoned his latest unfeasible scheme for shaking off the little Englishman, and concluded that their salvation was only to be worked out through everlasting vigilance, incessant movement, and the favor of the blind goddess, Fortune. There was comfort of a sort in the reflection that the divinity of chance is at least blind; her favors are impartially distributed; the swing of the wheel of the world is not always to the advantage of the wrongdoer and the scamp. He saw nothing of Hobbs as they alighted and hastened from the station, and hardly had time to waste looking for him, since their train had failed to make up the precious ten minutes. Consequently he dismissed the fellow from his thoughts until--with Brussels lingering in their memories a garish vision of brilliant streets and glowing cafés, glimpsed furtively from their cab windows during its wild dash over the broad mid-city, boulevards--at midnight they settled themselves in a carriage of the Bruges express. They were speeding along through the open country with a noisy clatter; then a minute's investigation sufficed to discover the mate of the _Alethea_ serenely ensconced in the coach behind. The little man seemed rarely complacent, and impudently greeted Kirkwood's scowling visage, as the latter peered through the window in the coach-door, with a smirk and a waggish wave of his hand. The American by main strength of will-power mastered an impulse to enter and wring his neck, and returned to the girl, more disturbed than he cared to let her know. There resulted from his review of the case but one plan for outwitting Mr. Hobbs, and that lay in trusting to his confidence that Kirkwood and Dorothy Calendar would proceed as far toward Ostend as the train would take them--namely, to the limit of the run, Bruges. Thus inspired, Kirkwood took counsel with the girl, and when the train paused at Ghent, they made an unostentatious exit from their coach, finding themselves, when the express had rolled on into the west, upon a station platform in a foreign city at nine minutes past one o'clock in the morning--but at length without their shadow. Mr. Hobbs had gone on to Bruges. Kirkwood sped his journeyings with an unspoken malediction, and collected himself to cope with a situation which was to prove hardly more happy for them than the espionage they had just eluded. The primal flush of triumph which had saturated the American's humor on this signal success, proved but fictive and transitory when inquiry of the station attendants educed the information that the two earliest trains to be obtained were the 5:09 for Dunkerque and the 5:37 for Ostend. A minimum delay of four hours was to be endured in the face of many contingent features singularly unpleasant to contemplate. The station waiting-room was on the point of closing for the night, and Kirkwood, already alarmed by the rapid ebb of the money he had had of Calendar, dared not subject his finances to the strain of a night's lodging at one of Ghent's hotels. He found himself forced to be cruel to be kind to the girl, and Dorothy's cheerful acquiescence to their sole alternative of tramping the street until daybreak did nothing to alleviate Kirkwood's exasperation. It was permitted them to occupy a bench outside the station. There the girl, her head pillowed on the treasure bag, napped uneasily, while Kirkwood plodded restlessly to and fro, up and down the platform, communing with the Shade of Care and addling his poor, weary wits with the problem of the future,--not so much his own as the future of the unhappy child for whose welfare he had assumed responsibility. Dark for both of them, in his understanding To-morrow loomed darkest for her. Not until the gray, formless light of the dawn-dusk was wavering over the land, did he cease his perambulations. Then a gradual stir of life in the city streets, together with the appearance of a station porter or two, opening the waiting-rooms and preparing them against the traffic of the day, warned him that he must rouse his charge. He paused and stood over her, reluctant to disturb her rest, such as it was, his heart torn with compassion for her, his soul embittered by the cruel irony of their estate. If what he understood were true, a king's ransom was secreted within the cheap, imitation-leather satchel which served her for a pillow. But it availed her nothing for her comfort. If what he believed were true, she was absolute mistress of that treasure of jewels; yet that night she had been forced to sleep on a hard, uncushioned bench, in the open air, and this morning he must waken her to the life of a hunted thing. A week ago she had had at her command every luxury known to the civilized world; to-day she was friendless, but for his inefficient, worthless self, and in a strange land. A week ago,--had he known her then,--he had been free to tell her of his love, to offer her the protection of his name as well as his devotion; to-day he was an all but penniless vagabond, and there could be no dishonor deeper than to let her know the nature of his heart's desire. Was ever lover hedged from a declaration to his mistress by circumstances so hateful, so untoward! He could have raged and railed against his fate like any madman. For he desired her greatly, and she was very lovely in his sight. If her night's rest had been broken and but a mockery, she showed few signs of it; the faint, wan complexion of fatigue seemed only to enhance the beauty of her maidenhood; her lips were as fresh and desirous as the dewy petals of a crimson rose; beneath her eyes soft shadows lurked where her lashes lay tremulous upon her cheeks of satin.... She was to him of all created things the most wonderful, the most desirable. The temptation of his longing seemed more than he could long withstand. But resist he must, or part for ever with any title to her consideration--or his own. He shut his teeth and knotted his brows in a transport of desire to touch, if only with his finger-tips, the woven wonder of her hair. And thus she saw him, when, without warning, she awoke. Bewilderment at first informed the wide brown eyes; then, as their drowsiness vanished, a little laughter, a little tender mirth. "Good morning, Sir Knight of the Somber Countenance!" she cried, standing up. "Am I so utterly disreputable that you find it necessary to frown on me so darkly?" He shook his head, smiling. "I know I'm a fright," she asserted vigorously, shaking out the folds of her pleated skirt. "And as for my hat, it will never be on straight--but then _you_ wouldn't know." "It seems all right," he replied vacantly. "Then please to try to look a little happier, since you find me quite presentable." "I do..." Without lifting her bended head, she looked up, laughing, not ill-pleased. "_You'd_ say so... really?" Commonplace enough, this banter, this pitiful endeavor to be oblivious of their common misery; but like the look she gave him, her words rang in his head like potent fumes of wine. He turned away, utterly disconcerted for the time, knowing only that he must overcome his weakness. Far down the railway tracks there rose a murmuring, that waxed to a rumbling roar. A passing porter answered Kirkwood's inquiry: it was the night boat-train from Ostend. He picked up their bags and drew the girl into the waiting-room, troubled by a sickening foreboding. Through the window they watched the train roll in and stop. Among others, alighted, smirking, the unspeakable Hobbs. He lifted his hat and bowed jauntily to the waiting-room window, making it plain that his keen eyes had discovered them instantly. Kirkwood's heart sank with the hopelessness of it all. If the railway directorates of Europe conspired against them, what chance had they? If the night boat-train from Ostend had only had the decency to be twenty-five minutes late, instead of arriving promptly on the minute of 4:45 they two might have escaped by the 5:09 for Dunkerque and Calais. There remained but a single untried ruse in his bag of tricks; mercifully it might suffice. "Miss Calendar," said Kirkwood from his heart, "just as soon as I get you home, safe and sound, I am going to take a day off, hunt up that little villain, and flay him alive. In the meantime, I forgot to dine last night, and am reminded that we had better forage for breakfast." Hobbs dogged them at a safe distance while they sallied forth and in a neighboring street discovered an early-bird bakery. Here they were able to purchase rolls steaming from the oven, fresh pats of golden butter wrapped in clean lettuce leaves, and milk in twin bottles; all of which they prosaically carried with them back to the station, lacking leisure as they did to partake of the food before train-time. Without attempting concealment (Hobbs, he knew, was eavesdropping round the corner of the door) Kirkwood purchased at the ticket-window passages on the Dunkerque train. Mr. Hobbs promptly flattered him by imitation; and so jealous of his luck was Kirkwood by this time grown, through continual disappointment, that he did not even let the girl into his plans until they were aboard the 5:09, in a compartment all to themselves. Then, having with his own eyes seen Mr. Hobbs dodge into the third compartment in the rear of the same carriage, Kirkwood astonished the girl by requesting her to follow him; and together they left by the door opposite that by which they had entered. The engine was running up and down a scale of staccato snorts, in preparation for the race, and the cars were on the edge of moving, couplings clanking, wheels a-groan, ere Mr. Hobbs condescended to join them between the tracks. Wearily, disheartened, Kirkwood reopened the door, flung the bags in, and helped the girl back into their despised compartment; the quicker route to England via Ostend was now out of the question. As for himself, he waited for a brace of seconds, eying wickedly the ubiquitous Hobbs, who had popped back into his compartment, but stood ready to pop out again on the least encouragement. In the meantime he was pleased to shake a friendly foot at Mr. Kirkwood, thrusting that member out through the half-open door. Only the timely departure of the train, compelling him to rejoin Dorothy at once, if at all, prevented the American from adding murder to the already noteworthy catalogue of his high crimes and misdemeanors. Their simple meal, consumed to the ultimate drop and crumb while the Dunkerque train meandered serenely through a sunny, smiling Flemish countryside, somewhat revived their jaded spirits. After all, they were young, enviably dowered with youth's exuberant elasticity of mood; the world was bright in the dawning, the night had fled leaving naught but an evil memory; best of all things, they were together: tacitly they were agreed that somehow the future would take care of itself and all be well with them. For a time they laughed and chattered, pretending that the present held no cares or troubles; but soon the girl, nestling her head in a corner of the dingy cushions, was smiling ever more drowsily on Kirkwood; and presently she slept in good earnest, the warm blood ebbing and flowing beneath the exquisite texture of her cheeks, the ghost of an unconscious smile quivering about the sensitive scarlet mouth, the breeze through the open window at her side wantoning at will in the sunlit witchery of her hair. And Kirkwood, worn with sleepless watching, dwelt in longing upon the dear innocent allure of her until the ache in his heart had grown well-nigh insupportable; then instinctively turned his gaze upwards, searching his heart, reading the faith and desire of it, so that at length knowledge and understanding came to him, of his weakness and strength and the clean love that he bore for her, and gladdened he sat dreaming in waking the same clear dreams that modeled her unconscious lips secretly for laughter and the joy of living. When Dunkerque halted their progress, they were obliged to alight and change cars,--Hobbs a discreetly sinister shadow at the end of the platform. By schedule they were to arrive in Calais about the middle of the forenoon, with a wait of three hours to be bridged before the departure of the Dover packet. That would be an anxious time; the prospect of it rendered both Dorothy and Kirkwood doubly anxious throughout this final stage of their flight. In three hours anything could happen, or be brought about. Neither could forget that it was quite within the bounds of possibilities for Calendar to be awaiting them in Calais. Presuming that Hobbs had been acute enough to guess their plans and advise his employer by telegraph, the latter could readily have anticipated their arrival, whether by sea in the brigantine, or by land, taking the direct route via Brussels and Lille. If such proved to be the case, it were scarcely sensible to count upon the arch-adventurer contenting himself with a waiting rôle like Hobbs'. With such unhappy apprehensions for a stimulant, between them the man and the girl contrived a make-shift counter-stratagem; or it were more accurate to say that Kirkwood proposed it, while Dorothy rejected, disputed, and at length accepted it, albeit with sad misgivings. For it involved a separation that might not prove temporary. Together they could never escape the surveillance of Mr. Hobbs; parted, he would be obliged to follow one or the other. The task of misleading the _Alethea's_ mate, Kirkwood undertook, delegating to the girl the duty of escaping when he could provide her the opportunity, of keeping under cover until the hour of sailing, and then proceeding to England, with the gladstone bag, alone if Kirkwood was unable, or thought it inadvisable, to join her on the boat. In furtherance of this design, a majority of the girl's belongings were transferred from her traveling bag to Kirkwood's, the gladstone taking their place; and the young man provided her with voluminous instructions, a revolver which she did not know how to handle and declared she would never use for any consideration, and enough money to pay for her accommodation at the Terminus Hôtel, near the pier, and for two passages to London. It was agreed that she should secure the steamer booking, lest Kirkwood be delayed until the last moment. These arrangements concluded, the pair of blessed idiots sat steeped in melancholy silence, avoiding each other's eyes, until the train drew in at the Gare Centrale, Calais. In profound silence, too, they left their compartment and passed through the station, into the quiet, sun-drenched streets of the seaport,--Hobbs hovering solicitously in the offing. Without comment or visible relief of mind they were aware that their fears had been without apparent foundation; they saw no sign of Calendar, Stryker or Mulready. The circumstance, however, counted for nothing; one or all of the adventurers might arrive in Calais at any minute. Momentarily more miserable as the time of parting drew nearer, dumb with unhappiness, they turned aside from the main thoroughfares of the city, leaving the business section, and gained the sleepier side streets, bordered by the residences of the proletariat, where for blocks none but children were to be seen, and of them but few--quaint, sober little bodies playing almost noiselessly in their dooryards. At length Kirkwood spoke. "Let's make it the corner," he said, without looking at the girl. "It's a short block to the next street. You hurry to the Terminus and lock yourself in your room. Have the management book both passages; don't run the risk of going to the pier yourself. I'll make things interesting for Mr. Hobbs, and join you as soon as I can, _if_ I can." "You must," replied the girl. "I shan't go without you." "But, Dor--Miss Calendar!" he exclaimed, aghast. "I don't care--I know I agreed," she declared mutinously. "But I won't--I can't. Remember I shall wait for you." "But--but perhaps--" "If you have to stay, it will be because there's danger--won't it? And what would you think of me if I deserted you then, af-after all y-you've done?... Please don't waste time arguing. Whether you come at one to-day, to-morrow, or a week from to-morrow, I shall be waiting.... You may be sure. Good-by." They had turned the corner, walking slowly, side by side; Hobbs, for the first time caught off his guard, had dropped behind more than half a long block. But now Kirkwood's quick sidelong glance discovered the mate in the act of taking alarm and quickening his pace. None the less the American was at the time barely conscious of anything other than a wholly unexpected furtive pressure of the girl's gloved fingers on his own. "Good-by," she whispered. He caught at her hand, protesting. "Dorothy--!" "Good-by," she repeated breathlessly, with a queer little catch in her voice. "God be with you, Philip, and--and send you safely back to me...." And she was running away. Dumfounded with dismay, seeing in a flash how all his plans might be set at naught by this her unforeseen insubordination, he took a step or two after her; but she was fleet of foot, and, remembering Hobbs, he halted. By this time the mate, too, was running; Kirkwood could hear the heavy pounding of his clumsy feet. Already Dorothy had almost gained the farther corner; as she whisked round it with a flutter of skirts, Kirkwood dodged hastily behind a gate-post. A thought later, Hobbs appeared, head down, chest out, eyes straining for sight of his quarry, pelting along for dear life. As, rounding the corner, he stretched out in swifter stride, Kirkwood was inspired to put a spoke in his wheel; and a foot thrust suddenly out from behind the gate-post accomplished his purpose with more success than he had dared anticipate. Stumbling, the mate plunged headlong, arms and legs a-sprawl; and the momentum of his pace, though checked, carried him along the sidewalk, face downwards, a full yard ere he could stay himself. Kirkwood stepped out of the gateway and sheered off as Hobbs picked himself up; something which he did rather slowly, as if in a daze, without comprehension of the cause of his misfortune. And for a moment he stood pulling his wits together and swaying as though on the point of resuming his rudely interrupted chase; when the noise of Kirkwood's heels brought him about face in a twinkling. "Ow, it's you, eh!" he snarled in a temper as vicious as his countenance; and both of these were much the worse for wear and tear. "Myself," admitted Kirkwood fairly; and then, in a gleam of humor: "Weren't you looking for me?" His rage seemed to take the little Cockney and shake him by the throat; he trembled from head to foot, his face shockingly congested, and spat out dust and fragments of lurid blasphemy like an infuriated cat. Of a sudden, "W'ere's the gel?" he sputtered thickly as his quick shifting eyes for the first time noted Dorothy's absence. "Miss Calendar has other business--none with you. I've taken the liberty of stopping you because I have a word or two--" "Ow, you 'ave, 'ave you? Gawd strike me blind, but I've a word for you, too!... 'And over that bag--and look nippy, or I'll myke you pye for w'at you've done to me ... I'll myke you pye!" he iterated hoarsely, edging closer. "'And it over or--" "You've got another guess--" Kirkwood began, but saved his breath in deference to an imperative demand on him for instant defensive action. To some extent he had underestimated the brute courage of the fellow, the violent, desperate courage that is distilled of anger in men of his kind. Despising him, deeming him incapable of any overt act of villainy, Kirkwood had been a little less wary than he would have been with Calendar or Mulready. Hobbs had seemed more of the craven type which Stryker graced so conspicuously. But now the American was to be taught discrimination, to learn that if Stryker's nature was like a snake's for low cunning and deviousness, Hobbs' soul was the soul of a viper. Almost imperceptibly he had advanced upon Kirkwood; almost insensibly his right hand had moved toward his chest; now, with a movement marvelously deft, it had slipped in and out of his breast pocket. And a six-inch blade of tarnished steel was winging toward Kirkwood's throat with the speed of light. Instinctively he stepped back; as instinctively he guarded with his right forearm, lifting the hand that held the satchel. The knife, catching in his sleeve, scratched the arm beneath painfully, and simultaneously was twisted from the mate's grasp, while in his surprise Kirkwood's grip on the bag-handle relaxed. It was torn forcibly from his fingers just as he received a heavy blow on his chest from the mate's fist. He staggered back. By the time he had recovered from the shock, Hobbs was a score of feet away, the satchel tucked under his arm, his body bent almost double, running like a jack-rabbit. Ere Kirkwood could get under way, in pursuit, the mate had dodged out of sight round the corner. When the American caught sight of him again, he was far down the block, and bettering his pace with every jump. He was approaching, also, some six or eight good citizens of Calais, men of the laboring class, at a guess. Their attention attracted by his frantic flight, they stopped to wonder. One or two moved as though to intercept him, and he doubled out into the middle of the street with the quickness of thought; an instant later he shot round another corner and disappeared, the natives streaming after in hot chase, electrified by the inspiring strains of "Stop, thief!"--or its French equivalent. Kirkwood, cheering them on with the same wild cry, followed to the farther street; and there paused, so winded and weak with laughter that he was fain to catch at a fence picket for support. Standing thus he saw other denizens of Calais spring as if from the ground miraculously to swell the hue and cry; and a dumpling of a gendarme materialized from nowhere at all, to fall in behind the rabble, waving his sword above his head and screaming at the top of his lungs, the while his fat legs twinkled for all the world like thick sausage links marvelously animated. The mob straggled round yet another corner and was gone; its clamor diminished on the still Spring air; and Kirkwood, recovering, abandoned Mr. Hobbs to the justice of the high gods and the French system of jurisprudence (at least, he hoped the latter would take an interest in the case, if haply Hobbs were laid by the heels), and went his way rejoicing. As for the scratch on his arm, it was nothing, as he presently demonstrated to his complete satisfaction in the seclusion of a chance-sent fiacre. Kirkwood, commissioning it to drive him to the American Consulate, made his diagnosis _en route_; wound a handkerchief round the negligible wound, rolled down his sleeve, and forgot it altogether in the joys of picturing to himself Hobbs in the act of opening the satchel in expectation of finding therein the gladstone bag. At the consulate door he paid off the driver and dismissed him; the fiacre had served his purpose, and he could find his way to the Terminus Hôtel at infinitely less expense. He had a considerably harder task before him as he ascended the steps to the consular doorway, knocked and made known the nature of his errand. No malicious destiny could have timed the hour of his call more appositely; the consul was at home and at the disposal of his fellow-citizens--within bounds. In the course of thirty minutes or so Kirkwood emerged with dignity from the consulate, his face crimson to the hair, his soul smarting with shame and humiliation; and left an amused official representative of his country's government with the impression of having been entertained to the point of ennui by an exceptionally clumsy but pertinacious liar. For the better part of the succeeding hour Kirkwood circumnavigated the neighborhood of the steamer pier and the Terminus Hôtel, striving to render himself as inconspicuous as he felt insignificant, and keenly on the alert for any sign or news of Hobbs. In this pursuit he was pleasantly disappointed. At noon precisely, his suspense grown too onerous for his strength of will, throwing caution and their understanding to the winds, he walked boldly into the Terminus, and inquired for Miss Calendar. The assurance he received that she was in safety under its roof did not deter him from sending up his name and asking her to receive him in the public lounge; he required the testimony of his senses to convince him that no harm had come to her in the long hour and a half that had elapsed since their separation. Woman-like, she kept him waiting. Alone in the public rooms of the hotel, he suffered excruciating torments. How was he to know that Calendar had not arrived and found his way to her? When at length she appeared on the threshold of the apartment, bringing with her the traveling bag and looking wonderfully the better for her ninety minutes of complete repose and privacy, the relief he experienced was so intense that he remained transfixed in the middle of the floor, momentarily able neither to speak nor to move. On her part, so fagged and distraught did he seem, that at sight of his care-worn countenance she hurried to him with outstretched, compassionate hands and a low pitiful cry of concern, forgetful entirely of that which he himself had forgotten--the emotion she had betrayed on parting. "Oh, nothing wrong," he hastened to reassure her, with a sorry ghost of his familiar grin; "only I have lost Hobbs and the satchel with your things; and there's no sign yet of Mr. Calendar. We can feel pretty comfortable now, and--and I thought it time we had something like a meal." The narrative of his adventure which he delivered over their _déjeuner à la fourchette_ contained no mention either of his rebuff at the American Consulate or the scratch he had sustained during Hobbs' murderous assault; the one could not concern her, the other would seem but a bid for her sympathy. He counted it a fortunate thing that the mate's knife had been keen enough to penetrate the cloth of his sleeve without tearing it; the slit it had left was barely noticeable. And he purposely diverted the girl with flashes of humorous description, so that they discussed both meal and episode in a mood of wholesome merriment. It was concluded, all too soon for the taste of either, by the waiter's announcement that the steamer was on the point of sailing. Outwardly composed, inwardly quaking, they boarded the packet, meeting with no misadventure whatever--if we are to except the circumstance that, when the restaurant bill was settled and the girl had punctiliously surrendered his change with the tickets, Kirkwood found himself in possession of precisely one franc and twenty centimes. He groaned in spirit to think how differently he might have been fixed, had he not in his infatuated spirit of honesty been so anxious to give Calendar more than ample value for his money! An inexorable anxiety held them both near the gangway until it was cast off and the boat began to draw away from the pier. Then, and not till then, did an unimpressive, small figure of a man detach itself from the shield of a pile of luggage and advance to the pier-head. No second glance was needed to identify Mr. Hobbs; and until the perspective dwarfed him indistinguishably, he was to be seen, alternately waving Kirkwood ironic farewell and blowing violent kisses to Miss Calendar from the tips of his soiled fingers. So he had escaped arrest.... At first by turns indignant and relieved to realize that thereafter they were to move in scenes in which his hateful shadow would not form an essentially component part, subsequently Kirkwood fell a prey to prophetic terrors. It was not alone fear of retribution that had induced Hobbs to relinquish his persecution--or so Kirkwood became convinced; if the mate's calculation had allowed for them the least fraction of a chance to escape apprehension on the farther shores of the Channel, nor fears nor threats would have prevented him from sailing with the fugitives.... Far from having left danger behind them on the Continent, Kirkwood believed in his secret heart that they were but flying to encounter it beneath the smoky pall of London. XVII ROGUES AND VAGABONDS A westering sun striking down through the drab exhalations of ten-thousand sooty chimney-pots, tinted the atmosphere with the hue of copper. The glance that wandered purposelessly out through the carriage windows, recoiled, repelled by the endless dreary vista of the Surrey Side's unnumbered roofs; or, probing instantaneously the hopeless depths of some grim narrow thoroughfare fleetingly disclosed, as the evening boat-train from Dover swung on toward Charing Cross, its trucks level with the eaves of Southwark's dwellings, was saddened by the thought that in all the world squalor such as this should obtain and flourish unrelieved. For perhaps the tenth time in the course of the journey Kirkwood withdrew his gaze from the window and turned to the girl, a question ready framed upon his lips. "Are you quite sure--" he began; and then, alive to the clear and penetrating perception in the brown eyes that smiled into his from under their level brows, he stammered and left the query uncompleted. Continuing to regard him steadily and smilingly, Dorothy shook her head in playful denial and protest. "Do you know," she commented, "that this is about the fifth repetition of that identical question within the last quarter-hour?" "How do you know what I meant to say?" he demanded, staring. "I can see it in your eyes. Besides, you've talked and thought of nothing else since we left the boat. Won't you believe me, please, when I say there's absolutely not a soul in London to whom I could go and ask for shelter? I don't think it's very nice of you to be so openly anxious to get rid of me." This latter was so essentially undeserved and so artlessly insincere, that he must needs, of course, treat it with all seriousness. "That isn't fair, Miss Calendar. Really it's not." "What am I to think? I've told you any number of times that it's only an hour's ride on to Chiltern, where the Pyrfords will be glad to take me in. You may depend upon it,--by eight to-night, at the latest, you'll have me off your hands,--the drag and worry that I've been ever since--" "Don't!" he pleaded vehemently. "Please!... You _know_ it isn't that. I _don't_ want you off my hands, ever.... That is to say, I--ah--" Here he was smitten with a dumbness, and sat, aghast at the enormity of his blunder, entreating her forgiveness with eyes that, very likely, pleaded his cause more eloquently than he guessed. "I mean," he floundered on presently, in the fatuous belief that he would this time be able to control both mind and tongue, "_what_ I mean is I'd be glad to go on serving you in any way I might, to the end of time, if you'd give me...." He left the declaration inconclusive--a stroke of diplomacy that would have graced an infinitely more adept wooer. But he used it all unconsciously. "O Lord!" he groaned in spirit. "Worse and more of it! Why in thunder can't I say the right thing _right_?" Egotistically absorbed by the problem thus formulated, he was heedless of her failure to respond, and remained pensively preoccupied until roused by the grinding and jolting of the train, as it slowed to a halt preparatory to crossing the bridge. Then he sought to read his answer in the eyes of Dorothy. But she was looking away, staring thoughtfully out over the billowing sea of roofs that merged illusively into the haze long ere it reached the horizon; and Kirkwood could see the pulsing of the warm blood in her throat and cheeks; and the glamorous light that leaped and waned in her eyes, as the ruddy evening sunlight warmed them, was something any man might be glad to live for and die for.... And he saw that she had understood, had grasped the thread of meaning that ran through the clumsy fabric of his halting speech and his sudden silences. She had understood without resentment! While, incredulous, he wrestled with the wonder of this fond discovery, she grew conscious of his gaze, and turned her head to meet it with one fearless and sweet, if troubled. "Dear Mr. Kirkwood," she said gently, bending forward as if to read between the lines anxiety had graven on his countenance, "won't you tell me, please, what it can be that so worries you? Is it possible that you still have a fear of my father? But don't you know that he can do nothing now--now that we're safe? We have only to take a cab to Paddington Station, and then--" "You mustn't underestimate the resource and ability of Mr. Calendar," he told her gloomily; "we've got a chance--no more. It wasn't...." He shut his teeth on his unruly tongue--too late. Woman-quick she caught him up. "It wasn't that? Then what was it that worried you? If it's something that affects me, is it kind and right of you not to tell me?" "It--it affects us both," he conceded drearily. "I--I don't--" The wretched embarrassment of the confession befogged his wits; he felt unable to frame the words. He appealed speechlessly for tolerance, with a face utterly woebegone and eyes piteous. The train began to move slowly across the Thames to Charing Cross. Mercilessly the girl persisted. "We've only a minute more. Surely you can trust me...." In exasperation he interrupted almost rudely. "It's only this: I--I'm strapped." "Strapped?" She knitted her brows over this fresh specimen of American slang. "Flat strapped--busted--broke--on my uppers--down and out," he reeled off synonyms without a smile. "I haven't enough money to pay cab-fare across the town--" "Oh!" she interpolated, enlightened. "--to say nothing of taking us to Chiltern. I couldn't buy you a glass of water if you were thirsty. There isn't a soul on earth, within hail, who would trust me with a quarter--I mean a shilling--across London Bridge. I'm the original Luckless Wonder and the only genuine Jonah extant." With a face the hue of fire, he cocked his eyebrows askew and attempted to laugh unconcernedly to hide his bitter shame. "I've led you out of the fryingpan into the fire, and I don't know what to do! Please call me names." And in a single instant all that he had consistently tried to avoid doing, had been irretrievably done; if, with dawning comprehension, dismay flickered in her eyes--such dismay as such a confession can rouse only in one who, like Dorothy Calendar, has never known the want of a penny--it was swiftly driven out to make place for the truest and most gracious and unselfish solicitude. "Oh, poor Mr. Kirkwood! And it's all because of me! You've beggared yourself--" "Not precisely; I was beggared to begin with." He hastened to disclaim the extravagant generosity of which she accused him. "I had only three or four pounds to my name that night we met.... I haven't told you--I--" "You've told me nothing, nothing whatever about yourself," she said reproachfully. "I didn't want to bother you with my troubles; I tried not to talk about myself.... You knew I was an American, but I'm worse than that; I'm a Californian--from San Francisco." He tried unsuccessfully to make light of it. "I told you I was the Luckless Wonder; if I'd ever had any luck I would have stored a little money away. As it was, I lived on my income, left my principal in 'Frisco; and when the earthquake came, it wiped me out completely." "And you were going home that night we made you miss your steamer!" "It was my own fault, and I'm glad this blessed minute that I did miss it. Nice sort I'd have been, to go off and leave you at the mercy--" "Please! I want to think, I'm trying to remember how much you've gone through--" "Precisely what I don't want you to do. Anyway, I did nothing more than any other fellow would've! Please don't give me credit that I don't deserve." But she was not listening; and a pause fell, while the train crawled warily over the trestle, as if in fear of the foul, muddy flood below. "And there's no way I can repay you...." "There's nothing to be repaid," he contended stoutly. She clasped her hands and let them fall gently in her lap. "I've not a farthing in the world!... I never dreamed.... I'm so sorry, Mr. Kirkwood--terribly, terribly sorry!... But what can we do? I can't consent to be a burden--" "But you're not! You're the one thing that ..." He swerved sharply, at an abrupt tangent. "There's one thing we can do, of course." She looked up inquiringly. "Craven Street is just round the corner." "Yes?"--wonderingly. "I mean we must go to Mrs. Hallam's house, first off.... It's too late now,--after five, else we could deposit the jewels in some bank. Since--since they are no longer yours, the only thing, and the proper thing to do is to place them in safety or in the hands of their owner. If you take them directly to young Hallam, your hands will be clear.... And--I never did such a thing in my life, Miss Calendar; but if he's got a spark of gratitude in his make-up, I ought to be able to--er--to borrow a pound or so of him." "Do you think so?" She shook her head in doubt. "I don't know; I know so little of such things.... You are right; we must take him the jewels, but..." Her voice trailed off into a sigh of profound perturbation. He dared not meet her look. Beneath his wandering gaze a County Council steam-boat darted swiftly down-stream from Charing Cross pier, in the shadow of the railway bridge. It seemed curious to reflect that from that very floating pier he had started first upon his quest of the girl beside him, only--he had to count--three nights ago! Three days and three nights! Altogether incredible seemed the transformation they had wrought in the complexion of the world. Yet nothing material was changed.... He lifted his eyes. Beyond the river rose the Embankment, crawling with traffic, backed by the green of the gardens and the shimmering walls of glass and stone of the great hotels, their windows glowing weirdly golden in the late sunlight. A little down-stream Cleopatra's Needle rose, sadly the worse for London smoke, flanked by its couchant sphinxes, wearing a nimbus of circling, sweeping, swooping, wheeling gulls. Farther down, from the foot of that magnificent pile, Somerset House, Waterloo Bridge sprang over-stream in its graceful arch.... All as of yesterday; yet all changed. Why? Because a woman had entered into his life; because he had learned the lesson of love and had looked into the bright face of Romance.... With a jar the train started and began to move more swiftly. Kirkwood lifted the traveling bag to his knees. "Don't forget," he said with some difficulty, "you're to stick by me, whatever happens. You mustn't desert me." "You _know_," the girl reproved him. "I know; but there must be no misunderstanding.... Don't worry; we'll win out yet, I've a plan." _Splendide mendax_! He had not the glimmering of a plan. The engine panting, the train drew in beneath the vast sounding dome of the station, to an accompaniment of dull thunderings; and stopped finally. Kirkwood got out, not without a qualm of regret at leaving the compartment; therein, at least, they had some title to consideration, by virtue of their tickets; now they were utterly vagabondish, penniless adventurers. The girl joined him. Slowly, elbow to elbow, the treasure bag between them, they made their way down toward the gates, atoms in a tide-rip of humanity,--two streams of passengers meeting on the narrow strip of platform, the one making for the streets, the other for the suburbs. Hurried and jostled, the girl clinging tightly to his arm lest they be separated in the crush, they came to the ticket-wicket; beyond the barrier surged a sea of hats--shining "toppers," dignified and upstanding, the outward and visible manifestation of the sturdy, stodgy British spirit of respectability; "bowlers" round and sleek and humble; shapeless caps with cloth visors, manufactured of outrageous plaids; flower-like miracles of millinery from Bond Street; strangely plumed monstrosities from Petticoat Lane and Mile End Road. Beneath any one of these might lurk the maleficent brain, the spying eyes of Calendar or one of his creatures; beneath all of them that he encountered, Kirkwood peered in fearful inquiry. Yet, when they had passed unhindered the ordeal of the wickets, had run the gantlet of those thousand eyes without lighting in any pair a spark of recognition, he began to bear himself with more assurance, to be sensible to a grateful glow of hope. Perhaps Hobbs' telegram had not reached its destination, for unquestionably the mate would have wired his chief; perhaps some accident had befallen the conspirators; perhaps the police had apprehended them.... No matter how, one hoped against hope that they had been thrown off the trail. And indeed it seemed as if they must have been misguided in some providential manner. On the other hand, it would be the crassest of indiscretions to linger about the place an instant longer than absolutely necessary. Outside the building, however, they paused perforce, undergoing the cross-fire of the congregated cabbies. It being the first time that he had ever felt called upon to leave the station afoot, Kirkwood cast about irresolutely, seeking the sidewalk leading to the Strand. Abruptly he caught the girl by the arm and unceremoniously hurried her toward a waiting hansom. "Quick!" he begged her. "Jump right in--not an instant to spare.--" She nodded brightly, lips firm with courage, eyes shining. "My father?" "Yes." Kirkwood glanced back over his shoulder. "He hasn't seen us yet. They've just driven up. Stryker's with him. They're getting down." And to himself, "Oh, the devil!" cried the panic-stricken young man. He drew back to let the girl precede him into the cab; at the same time he kept an eye on Calendar, whose conveyance stood half the length of the station-front away. The fat adventurer had finished paying off the driver, standing on the deck of the hansom. Stryker was already out, towering above the mass of people, and glaring about him with his hawk-keen vision. Calendar had started to alight, his foot was leaving the step when Stryker's glance singled out their quarry. Instantly he turned and spoke to his confederate. Calendar wheeled like a flash, peering eagerly in the direction indicated by the captain's index finger, then, snapping instructions to his driver, threw himself heavily back on the seat. Stryker, awkward on his land-legs, stumbled and fell in an ill-calculated attempt to hoist himself hastily back into the vehicle. To the delay thus occasioned alone Kirkwood and Dorothy owed a respite of freedom. Their hansom was already swinging down toward the great gates of the yard, the American standing to make the driver comprehend the necessity for using the utmost speed in reaching the Craven Street address. The man proved both intelligent and obliging; Kirkwood had barely time to drop down beside the girl, ere the cab was swinging out into the Strand, to the peril of the toes belonging to a number of righteously indignant pedestrians. "Good boy!" commented Kirkwood cheerfully. "That's the greatest comfort of all London, the surprising intellectual strength the average cabby displays when you promise him a tip.... Great Heavens!" he cried, reading the girl's dismayed expression. "A tip! I never thought--!" His face lengthened dismally, his eyebrows working awry. "Now we are in for it!" Dorothy said nothing. He turned in the seat, twisting his neck to peep through the small rear window. "I don't see their cab," he announced. "But of course they're after us. However, Craven Street's just round the corner; if we get there first, I don't fancy Freddie Hallam will have a cordial reception for our pursuers. They must've been on watch at Cannon Street, and finding we were not coming in that way--of course they were expecting us because of Hobbs' wire--they took cab for Charing Cross. Lucky for us.... Or is it lucky?" he added doubtfully, to himself. The hansom whipped round the corner into Craven Street. Kirkwood sprang up, grasping the treasure bag, ready to jump the instant they pulled in toward Mrs. Hallam's dwelling. But as they drew near upon the address he drew back with an exclamation of amazement. The house was closed, showing a blank face to the street--blinds drawn close down in the windows, area gate padlocked, an estate-agent's board projecting from above the doorway, advertising the property "To be let, furnished." Kirkwood looked back, craning his neck round the side of the cab. At the moment another hansom was breaking through the rank of humanity on the Strand crossing. He saw one or two figures leap desperately from beneath the horse's hoofs. Then the cab shot out swiftly down the street. The American stood up again, catching the cabby's eye. "Drive on!" he cried excitedly. "Don't stop--drive as fast as you dare!" "W'ere to, sir?" "See that cab behind? Don't let it catch us--shake it off, lose it somehow, but for the love of Heaven don't let it catch us! I'll make it worth your while. Do you understand?" "Yes, sir!" The driver looked briefly over his shoulder and lifted his whip. "Don't worry, sir," he cried, entering into the spirit of the game with gratifying zest. "Shan't let 'em over'aul you, sir. Mind your 'ead!" And as Kirkwood ducked, the whip-lash shot out over the roof with a crack like the report of a pistol. Startled, the horse leaped indignantly forward. Momentarily the cab seemed to leave the ground, then settled down to a pace that carried them round the Avenue Theatre and across Northumberland Avenue into Whitehall Place apparently on a single wheel. A glance behind showed Kirkwood that already they had gained, the pursuing hansom having lost ground through greater caution in crossing the main-traveled thoroughfare. "Good little horse!" he applauded. A moment later he was indorsing without reserve the generalship of their cabby; the quick westward turn that took them into Whitehall, over across from the Horse Guards, likewise placed them in a pocket of traffic; a practically impregnable press of vehicles closed in behind them ere Calendar's conveyance could follow out of the side street. That the same conditions, but slightly modified, hemmed them in ahead, went for nothing in Kirkwood's estimation. "Good driver!" he approved heartily. "He's got a head on his shoulders!" The girl found her voice. "How," she demanded in a breath, face blank with consternation, "how did you dare?" "Dare?" he echoed exultantly; and in his veins excitement was running like liquid fire. "What wouldn't I dare for you, Dorothy?" "What have you not?" she amended softly, adding with a shade of timidity: "Philip..." The long lashes swept up from her cheeks, like clouds revealing stars, unmasking eyes radiant and brave to meet his own; then they fell, even as her lips drooped with disappointment. And she sighed.... For he was not looking. Man-like, hot with the ardor of the chase, he was deaf and blind to all else. She saw that he had not even heard. Twice within the day she had forgotten herself, had overstepped the rigid bounds of her breeding in using his Christian name. And twice he had been oblivious to that token of their maturing understanding. So she sighed, and sighing, smiled again; resting an elbow on the window-sill and flattening one small gloved hand against the frame for a brace against the jouncing of the hansom. It swept on with unabated speed, up-stream beside the tawny reaches of the river; and for a time there was no speech between them, the while the girl lost consciousness of self and her most imminent peril, surrendering her being to the lingering sweetness of her long, dear thoughts.... "I've got a scheme!" Kirkwood declared so explosively that she caught her breath with the surprise of it. "There's the Pless; they know me there, and my credit's good. When we shake them off, we can have the cabby take us to the hotel. I'll register and borrow from the management enough to pay our way to Chiltern and the tolls for a cable to New York. I've a friend or two over home who wouldn't let me want for a few miserable pounds.... So you see," he explained boyishly, "we're at the end of our troubles already!" She said something inaudible, holding her face averted. He bent nearer to her, wondering. "I didn't understand," he suggested. Still looking from him, "I said you were very good to me," she said in a quavering whisper. "Dorothy!" Without his knowledge or intention before the fact, as instinctively as he made use of her given name, intimately, his strong fingers dropped and closed upon the little hand that lay beside him. "What _is_ the matter, dear?" He leaned still farther forward to peer into her face, till glance met glance in the ending and his racing pulses tightened with sheer delight of the humid happiness in her glistening eyes. "Dorothy, child, don't worry so. No harm shall come to you. It's all working out--all working out _right_. Only have a little faith in me, and I'll _make_ everything work out right, Dorothy." Gently she freed her fingers. "I wasn't," she told him in a voice that quivered between laughter and tears, "I wasn't worrying. I was ... You wouldn't understand. Don't be afraid I shall break down or--or anything." "I shan't," he reassured her; "I know you're not that sort. Besides, you'd have no excuse. We're moving along famously. That cabby knows his business." In fact that gentleman was minute by minute demonstrating his peculiar fitness for the task he had so cheerfully undertaken. The superior horsemanship of the London hackney cabman needs no exploitation, and he in whose hands rested the fate of the Calendar treasure was peer of his compeers. He was instant to advantage himself of every opening to forward his pliant craft, quick to foresee the fortunes of the way and govern himself accordingly. Estimating with practised eye the precise moment when the police supervisor of traffic at the junction of Parliament and Bridge Streets, would see fit to declare a temporary blockade, he so managed that his was the last vehicle to pass ere the official wand, to ignore which involves a forfeited license, was lifted; and indeed, so close was his calculation that he escaped only with a scowl and word of warning from the bobby. A matter of no importance whatever, since his end was gained and the pursuing cab had been shut off by the blockade. In Calendar's driver, however, he had an adversary of abilities by no means to be despised. Precisely how the man contrived it, is a question; that he made a detour by way of Derby Street is not improbable, unpleasant as it may have been for Stryker and Calendar to find themselves in such close proximity to "the Yard." At all events, he evaded the block, and hardly had the chase swung across Bridge Street, than the pursuer was nimbly clattering in its wake. Past the Houses of Parliament, through Old Palace Yard, with the Abbey on their left, they swung away into Abingdon Street, whence suddenly they dived into the maze of backways, great and mean, which lies to the south of Victoria. Doubling and twisting, now this way, now that, the driver tooled them through the intricate heart of this labyrinth, leading the pursuers a dance that Kirkwood thought calculated to dishearten and shake off the pursuit in the first five minutes. Yet always, peering back through the little peephole, he saw Calendar's cab pelting doggedly in their rear--a hundred yards behind, no more, no less, hanging on with indomitable grit and determination. By degrees they drew westwards, threading Pimlico, into Chelsea--once dashing briefly down the Grosvenor Road, the Thames a tawny flood beyond the river wall. Children cheered them on, and policemen turned to stare, doubting whether they should interfere. Minutes rolled into tens, measuring out an hour; and still they hammered on, hunted and hunters, playing their game of hare-and-hounds through the highways and byways of those staid and aged quarters. In the leading cab there were few words spoken. Kirkwood and Dorothy alike sat spellbound with the fascination of the game; if it is conceivable that the fox enjoys his part in the day's sport, then they were enjoying themselves. Now one spoke, now another--chiefly in the clipped phraseology, of excitement. As-- "We're gaining?" "Yes--think so." Or, "We'll tire them out?" "Sure-ly." "They can't catch us, can they, Philip?" "Never in the world." But he spoke with a confidence that he himself did not feel, for hope as he would he could never see that the distance between the two had been materially lessened or increased. Their horses seemed most evenly matched. The sun was very low behind the houses of the Surrey Side when Kirkwood became aware that their horse was flagging, though (as comparison determined) no more so than the one behind. In grave concern the young man raised his hand, thrusting open the trap in the roof. Immediately the square of darkling sky was eclipsed by the cabby's face. "Yessir?" "You had better drive as directly as you can to the Hotel Pless," Kirkwood called up. "I'm afraid it's no use pushing your horse like this." "I'm sure of it, sir. 'E's a good 'oss, 'e is, but 'e carn't keep goin' for hever, you know, sir." "I know. You've done very well; you've done your best." "Very good, sir. The Pless, you said, sir? Right." The trap closed. Two blocks farther, and their pace had so sensibly moderated that Kirkwood was genuinely alarmed. The pursuing cabby was lashing his animal without mercy, while, "It aren't no use my w'ippin' 'im, sir," dropped through the trap. "'E's doing orl 'e can." "I understand." Despondent recklessness tightened Kirkwood's lips and kindled an unpleasant light in his eyes. He touched his side pocket; Calendar's revolver was still there.... Dorothy should win away clear, if--if he swung for it. He bent forward with the traveling bag in his hands. "What are you going to do?" The girl's voice was very tremulous. "Stand a chance, take a losing hazard. Can you run? You're not too tired?" "I can run--perhaps not far--a little way, at least." "And will you do as I say?" Her eyes met his, unwavering, bespeaking her implicit faith. "Promise!" "I promise." "We'll have to drop off in a minute. The horse won't last.... They're in the same box. Well, I undertake to stand 'em off for a bit; you take the bag and run for it. Just as soon as I can convince them, I'll follow, but if there's any delay, you call the first cab you see and drive to the Pless. I'll join you there." He stood up, surveying the neighborhood. Behind him the girl lifted her voice in protest. "No, Philip, no!" "You've promised," he said sternly, eyes ranging the street. "I don't care; I won't leave you." He shook his head in silent contradiction, frowning; but not frowning because of the girl's mutiny. He was a little puzzled by a vague impression, and was striving to pin it down for recognition; but was so thoroughly bemused with fatigue and despair that only with great difficulty could he force his faculties to logical reasoning, his memory to respond to his call upon it. The hansom was traversing a street in Old Brompton--a quaint, prim by-way lined with dwellings singularly Old-Worldish, even for London. He seemed to know it subjectively, to have retained a memory of it from another existence: as the stage setting of a vivid dream, all forgotten, will sometimes recur with peculiar and exasperating intensity, in broad daylight. The houses, with their sloping, red-tiled roofs, unexpected gables, spontaneous dormer windows, glass panes set in leaded frames, red brick façades trimmed with green shutters and doorsteps of white stone, each sitting back, sedate and self-sufficient, in its trim dooryard fenced off from the public thoroughfare: all wore an aspect hauntingly familiar, and yet strange. A corner sign, remarked in passing, had named the spot "Aspen Villas"; though he felt he knew the sound of those syllables as well as he did the name of the Pless, strive as he might he failed to make them convey anything tangible to his intelligence. When had he heard of it? At what time had his errant footsteps taken him through this curious survival of Eighteenth Century London? Not that it mattered when. It could have no possible bearing on the emergency. He really gave it little thought; the mental processes recounted were mostly subconscious, if none the less real. His objective attention was wholly preoccupied with the knowledge that Calendar's cab was drawing perilously near. And he was debating whether or not they should alight at once and try to make a better pace afoot, when the decision was taken wholly out of his hands. Blindly staggering on, wilted with weariness, the horse stumbled in the shafts and plunged forward on its knees. Quick as the driver was to pull it up, with a cruel jerk of the bits, Kirkwood was caught unprepared; lurching against the dashboard, he lost his footing, grasped frantically at the unstable air, and went over, bringing up in a sitting position in the gutter, with a solid shock that jarred his very teeth. For a moment dazed he sat there blinking; by the time he got to his feet, the girl stood beside him, questioning him with keen solicitude. "No," he gasped; "not hurt--only surprised. Wait...." Their cab had come to a complete standstill; Calendar's was no more than twenty yards behind, and as Kirkwood caught sight of him the fat adventurer was in the act of lifting himself ponderously out of the seat. Incontinently the young man turned to the girl and forced the traveling-bag into her hands. "Run for it!" he begged her. "Don't stop to argue. You promised--run! I'll come...." "Philip!" she pleaded. "Dorothy!" he cried in torment. Perhaps it was his unquestionable distress that weakened her. Suddenly she yielded--with whatever reason. He was only hazily aware of the swish of her skirts behind him; he had no time to look round and see that she got away safely. He had only eyes and thoughts for Calendar and Stryker. They were both afoot, now, and running toward him, the one as awkward as the other, but neither yielding a jot of their malignant purpose. He held the picture of it oddly graphic in his memory for many a day thereafter: Calendar making directly, for him, his heavy-featured face a dull red with the exertion, his fat head dropped forward as if too heavy for his neck of a bull, his small eyes bright with anger; Stryker shying off at a discreet angle, evidently with the intention of devoting himself to the capture of the girl; the two cabs with their dejected screws, at rest in the middle of the quiet, twilit street. He seemed even to see himself, standing stockily prepared, hands in his coat pockets, his own head inclined with a suggestion of pugnacity. To this mental photograph another succeeds, of the same scene an instant later; all as it had been before, their relative positions unchanged, save that Stryker and Calendar had come to a dead stop, and that Kirkwood's right arm was lifted and extended, pointing at the captain. So forgetful of self was he, that it required a moment's thought to convince him that he was really responsible for the abrupt transformation. Incredulously he realized that he had drawn Calendar's revolver and pulled Stryker up short, in mid-stride, by the mute menace of it, as much as by his hoarse cry of warning: "Stryker--not another foot--" With this there chimed in Dorothy's voice, ringing bell-clear from a little distance: "Philip!" Like a flash he wheeled, to add yet another picture to his mental gallery. Perhaps two-score feet up the sidewalk a gate stood open; just outside it a man of tall and slender figure, rigged out in a bizarre costume consisting mainly of a flowered dressing-gown and slippers, was waiting in an attitude of singular impassivity; within it, pausing with a foot lifted to the doorstep, bag in hand, her head turned as she looked back, was Dorothy. [Illustration: A costume consisting mainly of a flowered dressing-gown and slippers.] As he comprehended these essential details of the composition, the man in the flowered dressing-gown raised a hand, beckoning to him in a manner as imperative as his accompanying words. "Kirkwood!" he saluted the young man in a clear and vibrant voice, "put up that revolver and stop this foolishness." And, with a jerk of his head towards the doorway, in which Dorothy now waited, hesitant: "Come, sir--quickly!" Kirkwood choked on a laugh that was half a sob. "Brentwick!" he cried, restoring the weapon to his pocket and running toward his friend. "Of all happy accidents!" "You may call it that," retorted the elder man with a fleeting smile as Kirkwood slipped inside the dooryard. "Come," he said; "let's get into the house." "But you said--I thought you went to Munich," stammered Kirkwood; and so thoroughly impregnated was his mind with this understanding that it was hard for him to adjust his perceptions to the truth. "I was detained--by business," responded Brentwick briefly. His gaze, weary and wistful behind his glasses, rested on the face of the girl on the threshold of his home; and the faint, sensitive flush of her face deepened. He stopped and honored her with a bow that, for all his fantastical attire, would have graced a beau of an earlier decade. "Will you be pleased to enter?" he suggested punctiliously. "My house, such as it is, is quite at your disposal. And," he added, with a glance over his shoulder, "I fancy that a word or two may presently be passed which you would hardly care to hear." Dorothy's hesitation was but transitory; Kirkwood was reassuring her with a smile more like his wonted boyish grin than anything he had succeeded in conjuring up throughout the day. Her own smile answered it, and with a murmured word of gratitude and a little, half timid, half distant bow for Brentwick, she passed on into the hallway. Kirkwood lingered with his friend upon the door-stoop. Calendar, recovered from his temporary consternation, was already at the gate, bending over it, fat fingers fumbling with the latch, his round red face, lifted to the house, darkly working with chagrin. From his threshold, watching him with a slight contraction of the eyes, Brentwick hailed him in tones of cloying courtesy. "Do you wish to see me, sir?" The fat adventurer faltered just within the gateway; then, with a truculent swagger, "I want my daughter," he declared vociferously. Brentwick peered mildly over his glasses, first at Calendar, then at Kirkwood. His glance lingered a moment on the young man's honest eyes, and swung back to Calendar. "My good man," he said with sublime tolerance, "will you be pleased to take yourself off--to the devil if you like? Or shall I take the trouble to interest the police?" He removed one fine and fragile hand from a pocket of the flowered dressing-gown, long enough to jerk it significantly toward the nearer street-corner. Thunderstruck, Calendar glanced hastily in the indicated direction. A blue-coated bobby was to be seen approaching with measured stride, diffusing upon the still evening air an impression of ineffably capable self-contentment. Calendar's fleshy lips parted and closed without a sound. They quivered. Beneath them quivered his assortment of graduated chins. His heavy and pendulous cheeks quivered, slowly empurpling with the dark tide of his apoplectic wrath. The close-clipped thatch of his iron gray mustache, even, seemed to bristle like hairs upon the neck of a maddened dog. Beneath him his fat legs trembled, and indeed his whole huge carcass shook visibly, in the stress of his restrained wrath. Suddenly, overwhelmed, he banged the gate behind him and waddled off to join the captain; who already, with praiseworthy native prudence, had fallen back upon their cab. From his coign of strategic advantage, the comfortable elevation of his box, Kirkwood's cabby, whose huge enjoyment of the adventurers' discomfiture had throughout been noisily demonstrative, entreated Calendar with lifted forefinger, bland affability, and expressions of heartfelt sympathy. "Kebsir? 'Ave a kebsir, do! Try a ride be'ind a real 'orse, sir; don't you go on wastin' time on 'im." A jerk of a derisive thumb singled out the other cabman. "'E aren't pl'yin' you fair, sir; I knows 'im,--'e's a hartful g'y deceiver, 'e is. Look at 'is 'orse,--w'ich it aren't; it's a snyle, that's w'at it is. Tyke a father's hadvice, sir, and next time yer fairest darter runs awye with the dook in disguise, chyse 'em in a real kebsir, not a cheap imitashin.... Kebsir?... Garn, you 'ard-'arted--" Here he swooped upwards in a dizzy flight of vituperation best unrecorded. Calendar, beyond an absent-minded flirt of one hand by his ear, as who should shoo away a buzzing insect, ignored him utterly. Sullenly extracting money from his pocket, he paid off his driver, and in company with Stryker, trudged in morose silence down the street. Brentwick touched Kirkwood's arm and drew him into the house. XVIII ADVENTURERS' LUCK As the door closed, Kirkwood swung impulsively to Brentwick, with the brief, uneven laugh of fine-drawn nerves. "Good God, sir!" he cried. "You don't know--" "I can surmise," interrupted the elder man shrewdly. "You turned up in the nick of time, for all the world like--" "Harlequin popping through a stage trap?" "No!--an incarnation of the Providence that watches over children and fools." Brentwick dropped a calming hand upon his shoulder. "Your simile seems singularly happy, Philip. Permit me to suggest that you join the child in my study." He laughed quietly, with a slight nod toward an open door at the end of the hallway. "For myself, I'll be with you in one moment." A faint, indulgent smile lurking in the shadow of his white mustache, he watched the young man wheel and dart through the doorway. "Young hearts!" he commented inaudibly--and a trace sadly. "Youth!..." Beyond the threshold of the study, Kirkwood paused, eager eyes searching its somber shadows for a sign of Dorothy. A long room and deep, it was lighted only by the circumscribed disk of illumination thrown on the central desk by a shaded reading-lamp, and the flickering glow of a grate-fire set beneath the mantel of a side-wall. At the back, heavy velvet portières cloaked the recesses of two long windows, closed jealously even against the twilight. Aside from the windows, doors and chimney-piece, every foot of wall space was occupied by towering bookcases or by shelves crowded to the limit of their capacity with an amazing miscellany of objects of art, the fruit of years of patient and discriminating collecting. An exotic and heady atmosphere, compounded of the faint and intangible exhalations of these insentient things, fragrance of sandalwood, myrrh and musk, reminiscent whiffs of half-forgotten incense, seemed to intensify the impression of gloomy richness and repose... By the fireplace, a little to one side, stood Dorothy, one small foot resting on the brass fender, her figure merging into the dusky background, her delicate beauty gaining an effect of elusive and ethereal mystery in the waning and waxing ruddy glow upflung from the bedded coals. "Oh, Philip!" She turned swiftly to Kirkwood with extended hands and a low, broken cry. "I'm _so_ glad...." A trace of hysteria in her manner warned him, and he checked himself upon the verge of a too dangerous tenderness. "There!" he said soothingly, letting her hands rest gently in his palms while he led her to a chair. "We can make ourselves easy now." She sat down and he released her hands with a reluctance less evident than actual. "If ever I say another word against my luck--" "Who," inquired the girl, lowering her voice, "who is the gentleman in the flowered dressing-gown?" "Brentwick--George Silvester Brentwick: an old friend. I've known him for years,--ever since I came abroad. Curiously enough, however, this is the first time I've ever been here. I called once, but he wasn't in,--a few days ago,--the day we met. I thought the place looked familiar. Stupid of me!" "Philip," said the girl with a grave face but a shaking voice, "it was." She laughed provokingly.... "It was so funny, Philip. I don't know why I ran, when you told me to, but I did; and while I ran, I was conscious of the front door, here, opening, and this tall man in the flowered dressing-gown coming down to the gate as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world for him to stroll out, dressed that way, in the evening. And he opened the gate, and bowed, and said, ever so pleasantly, 'Won't you come in, Miss Calendar?'--" "He did!" exclaimed Kirkwood. "But how--?" "How can I say?" she expostulated. "At all events, he seemed to know me; and when he added something about calling you in, too--he said 'Mr. Kirkwood '--I didn't hesitate." "It's strange enough, surely--and fortunate. Bless his heart!" said Kirkwood. And, "Hum!" said Mr. Brentwick considerately, entering the study. He had discarded the dressing-gown and was now in evening dress. The girl rose. Kirkwood turned. "Mr. Brentwick--" he began. But Brentwick begged his patience with an eloquent gesture. "Sir," he said, somewhat austerely, "permit me to put a single question: Have you by any chance paid your cabby?" "Why--" faltered the younger man, with a flaming face. "I--why, no--that is--" The other quietly put his hand upon a bell-pull. A faint jingling sound was at once audible, emanating from the basement. "How much should you say you owe him?" "I--I haven't a penny in the world!" The shrewd eyes flashed their amusement into Kirkwood's. "Tut, tut!" Brentwick chuckled. "Between gentlemen, my dear boy! Dear me! you are slow to learn." "I'll never be contented to sponge on my friends," explained Kirkwood in deepest misery. "I can't tell when--" "Tut, tut! How much did you say?" "Ten shillings--or say twelve, would be about right," stammered the American, swayed by conflicting emotions of gratitude and profound embarrassment. A soft-footed butler, impassive as Fate, materialized mysteriously in the doorway. "You rang, sir?" he interrupted frigidly. "I rang, Wotton." His master selected a sovereign from his purse and handed it to the servant. "For the cabby, Wotton." "Yes sir." The butler swung automatically, on one heel. "And Wotton!" "Sir?" "If any one should ask for me, I'm not at home." "Very good, sir." "And if you should see a pair of disreputable scoundrels skulking, in the neighborhood, one short and stout, the other tall and evidently a seafaring man, let me know." "Thank you, sir." A moment later the front door was heard to close. Brentwick turned with a little bow to the girl. "My dear Miss Calendar," he said, rubbing his thin, fine hands,--"I am old enough, I trust, to call you such without offense,--please be seated." Complying, the girl rewarded him with a radiant smile. Whereupon, striding to the fireplace, their host turned his back to it, clasped his hands behind him, and glowered benignly upon the two. "Ah!" he observed in accents of extreme personal satisfaction. "Romance! Romance!" "Would you mind telling us how you knew--" began Kirkwood anxiously. "Not in the least, my dear Philip. It is simple enough: I possess an imagination. From my bedroom window, on the floor above, I happen to behold two cabs racing down the street, the one doggedly pursuing the other. The foremost stops, perforce of a fagged horse. There alights a young gentleman looking, if you'll pardon me, uncommonly seedy; he is followed by a young lady, if she will pardon me," with another little bow, "uncommonly pretty. With these two old eyes I observe that the gentleman does not pay his cabby. Ergo--I intelligently deduce--he is short of money. Eh?" "You were right," affirmed Kirkwood, with a rueful and crooked smile. "But--" "So! so!" pursued Brentwick, rising on his toes and dropping back again; "so this world of ours wags on to the old, old tune!... And I, who in my younger days pursued adventure without success, in dotage find myself dragged into a romance by my two ears, whether I will or no! Eh? And now you are going to tell me all about it, Philip. There is a chair.... Well, Wotton?" The butler had again appeared noiselessly in the doorway. "Beg pardon, sir; they're waiting, sir." "The caitiffs, Wotton?" "Yessir." "Where waiting?" "One at each end of the street, sir." "Thank you. You may bring us sherry and biscuit, Wotton." "Thank you, sir." The servant vanished. Brentwick removed his glasses, rubbed them, and blinked thoughtfully at the girl. "My dear," he said suddenly, with a peculiar tremor in his voice, "you resemble your mother remarkably. Tut--I should know! Time was when I was one of her most ardent admirers." "You--y-you knew my mother?" cried Dorothy, profoundly moved. "Did I not know you at sight? My dear, you are your mother reincarnate, for the good of an unworthy world. She was a very beautiful woman, my dear." Wotton entered with a silver serving tray, offering it in turn to Dorothy, Kirkwood and his employer. While he was present the three held silent--the girl trembling slightly, but with her face aglow; Kirkwood half stupefied between his ease from care and his growing astonishment, as Brentwick continued to reveal unexpected phases of his personality; Brentwick himself outwardly imperturbable and complacent, for all that his hand shook as he lifted his wine glass. "You may go, Wotton--or, wait. Don't you feel the need of a breath of fresh air, Wotton?" "Yessir, thank you, sir." "Then change your coat, Wotton, light your pipe, and stroll out for half an hour. You need not leave the street, but if either the tall thin blackguard with the seafaring habit, or the short stout rascal with the air of mystery should accost you, treat them with all courtesy, Wotton. You will be careful not to tell either of them anything in particular, although I don't mind your telling them that Mr. Brentwick lives here, if they ask. I am mostly concerned to discover if they purpose becoming fixtures on the street-corners, Wotton." "Quite so, sir." "Now you may go.... Wotton," continued his employer as the butler took himself off as softly as a cat, "grows daily a more valuable mechanism. He is by no means human in any respect, but I find him extremely handy to have round the house.... And now, my dear," turning to Dorothy, "with your permission I desire to drink to the memory of your beautiful mother and to the happiness of her beautiful daughter." "But you will tell me--" "A number of interesting things, Miss Calendar, if you'll be good enough to let me choose the time. I beg you to be patient with the idiosyncrasies of an old man, who means no harm, who has a reputation as an eccentric to sustain before his servants.... And now," said Brentwick, setting aside his glass, "now, my dear boy, for the adventure." Kirkwood chuckled, infected by his host's genial humor. "How do you know--" "How can it be otherwise?" countered Brentwick with a trace of asperity. "Am I to be denied my adventure? Sir, I refuse without equivocation. Your very bearing breathes of Romance. There must be an adventure forthcoming, Philip; otherwise my disappointment will be so acute that I shall be regretfully obliged seriously to consider my right, as a householder, to show you the door." "But Mr. Brentwick--!" "Sit down, sir!" commanded Brentwick with such a peremptory note that the young man, who had risen, obeyed out of sheer surprise. Upon which his host advanced, indicting him with a long white forefinger. "Would you, sir," he demanded, "again expose this little lady to the machinations of that corpulent scoundrel, whom I have just had the pleasure of shooing off my premises, because you choose to resent an old man's raillery?" "I apologize," Kirkwood humored him. "I accept the apology in the spirit in which it is offered.... I repeat, now for the adventure, Philip. If the story's long, epitomize. We can consider details more at our leisure." Kirkwood's eyes consulted the girl's face; almost imperceptibly she nodded him permission to proceed. "Briefly, then," he began haltingly, "the man who followed us to the door here, is Miss Calendar's father." "Oh? His name, please?" "George Burgoyne Calendar." "Ah! An American; I remember, now. Continue, please." "He is hounding us, sir, with the intention of stealing some property, which he caused to be stolen, which we--to put it bluntly--stole from him, to which he has no shadow of a title, and which, finally, we're endeavoring to return to its owners." "My dear!" interpolated Brentwick gently, looking down at the girl's flushed face and drooping head. "He ran us to the last ditch," Kirkwood continued; "I've spent my last farthing trying to lose him." "But why have you not caused his arrest?" Brentwick inquired. Kirkwood nodded meaningly toward the girl. Brentwick made a sound indicating comprehension, a click of the tongue behind closed teeth. "We came to your door by the merest accident--it might as well have been another. I understood you were in Munich, and it never entered my head that we'd find you home." "A communication from my solicitors detained me," explained Brentwick. "And now, what do you intend to do?" "Trespass as far on your kindness as you'll permit. In the first place, I--I want the use of a few pounds with which to cable some friends in New York, for money; on receipt of which I can repay you." "Philip," observed Brentwood, "you are a most irritating child. But I forgive you the faults of youth. You may proceed, bearing in mind, if you please, that I am your friend equally with any you may own in America." "You're one of the best men in the world," said Kirkwood. "Tut, tut! Will you get on?" "Secondly, I want you to help us to escape Calendar to-night. It is necessary that Miss Calendar should go to Chiltern this evening, where she has friends who will receive and protect her." "Mm-mm," grumbled their host, meditative. "My faith!" he commented, with brightening eyes. "It sounds almost too good to be true! And I've been growing afraid that the world was getting to be a most humdrum and uninteresting planet!... Miss Calendar, I am a widower of so many years standing that I had almost forgotten I had ever been anything but a bachelor. I fear my house contains little that will be of service to a young lady. Yet a room is at your disposal; the parlor-maid shall show you the way. And Philip, between you and me, I venture to remark that hot water and cold steel would add to the attractiveness of your personal appearance; my valet will attend you in my room. Dinner," concluded Brentwick with anticipative relish, "will be served in precisely thirty minutes. I shall expect you to entertain me with a full and itemized account of every phase of your astonishing adventure. Later, we will find a way to Chiltern." Again he put a hand upon the bell-pull. Simultaneously Dorothy and Kirkwood rose. "Mr. Brentwick," said the girl, her eyes starred with tears of gratitude, "I don't, I really don't know how--" "My dear," said the old gentleman, "you will thank me most appropriately by continuing, to the best of your ability, to resemble your mother more remarkably every minute." "But I," began Kirkwood----. "You, my dear Philip, can thank me best by permitting me to enjoy myself; which I am doing thoroughly at the present moment. My pleasure in being invited to interfere in your young affairs is more keen than you can well surmise. Moreover," said Mr. Brentwick, "so long have I been an amateur adventurer that I esteem it the rarest privilege to find myself thus on the point of graduating into professional ranks." He rubbed his hands, beaming upon them. "And," he added, as a maid appeared at the door, "I have already schemed me a scheme for the discomfiture of our friends the enemy: a scheme which we will discuss with our dinner, while the heathen rage and imagine a vain thing, in the outer darkness." Kirkwood would have lingered, but of such inflexible temper was his host that he bowed him into the hands of a man servant without permitting him another word. "Not a syllable," he insisted. "I protest I am devoured with curiosity, my dear boy, but I have also bowels of compassion. When we are well on with our meal, when you are strengthened with food and drink, then you may begin. But now--Dickie," to the valet, "do your duty!" Kirkwood, laughing with exasperation, retired at discretion, leaving Brentwick the master of the situation: a charming gentleman with a will of his own and a way that went with it. He heard the young man's footsteps diminish on the stairway; and again he smiled the indulgent, melancholy smile of mellow years. "Youth!" he whispered softly. "Romance!... And now," with a brisk change of tone as he closed the study door, "now we are ready for this interesting Mr. Calendar." Sitting down at his desk, he found and consulted a telephone directory; but its leaves, at first rustling briskly at the touch of the slender and delicate fingers, were presently permitted to lie unturned,--the book resting open on his knees the while he stared wistfully into the fire. A suspicion of moisture glimmered in his eyes. "Dorothy!" he whispered huskily. And a little later, rising, he proceeded to the telephone.... An hour and a half later Kirkwood, his self-respect something restored by a bath, a shave, and a resumption of clothes which had been hastily but thoroughly cleansed and pressed by Brentwick's valet; his confidence and courage mounting high under the combined influence of generous wine, substantial food, the presence of his heart's mistress and the admiration--which was unconcealed--of his friend, concluded at the dinner-table, his narration. "And that," he said, looking up from his savory, "is about all." "Bravo!" applauded Brentwick; eyes shining with delight. "All," interposed Dorothy in warm reproach, "but what he hasn't told--" "Which, my dear, is to be accounted for wholly by a very creditable modesty, rarely encountered in the young men of the present day. It was, of course, altogether different with those of my younger years. Yes, Wotton?" Brentwick sat back in his chair, inclining an attentive ear to a communication murmured by the butler. Kirkwood's gaze met Dorothy's across the expanse of shining cloth; he deprecated her interruption with a whimsical twist of his eyebrows. "Really, you shouldn't," he assured her in an undertone. "I've done nothing to deserve..." But under the spell of her serious sweet eyes, he fell silent, and presently looked down, strangely abashed; and contemplated the vast enormity of his unworthiness. Coffee was set before them by Wotton, the impassive, Brentwick refusing it with a little sigh. "It is one of the things, as Philip knows," he explained to the girl, "denied me by the physician who makes his life happy by making mine a waste. I am allowed but three luxuries; cigars, travel in moderation, and the privilege of imposing on my friends. The first I propose presently, to enjoy, by your indulgence; and the second I shall this evening undertake by virtue of the third, of which I have just availed myself." Smiling at the involution, he rested his head against the back of the chair, eyes roving from the girl's face to Kirkwood's. "Inspiration to do which," he proceeded gravely, "came to me from the seafaring picaroon (Stryker did you name him?) via the excellent Wotton. While you were preparing for dinner, Wotton returned from his constitutional with the news that, leaving the corpulent person on watch at the corner, Captain Stryker had temporarily, made himself scarce. However, we need feel no anxiety concerning his whereabouts, for he reappeared in good time and a motor-car. From which it becomes evident that you have not overrated their pertinacity; the fiasco of the cab-chase is not to be reënacted." Resolutely the girl repressed a gasp of dismay. Kirkwood stared moodily into his cup. "These men bore me fearfully," he commented at last. "And so," continued Brentwick, "I bethought me of a counter-stroke. It is my good fortune to have a friend whose whim it is to support a touring-car, chiefly in innocuous idleness. Accordingly I have telephoned him and commandeered the use of this machine--mechanician, too.... Though not a betting man, I am willing to risk recklessly a few pence in support of my contention, that of the two, Captain Stryker's car and ours, the latter will prove considerably the most speedy.... "In short, I suggest," he concluded, thoughtfully lacing his long white fingers, "that, avoiding the hazards of cab and railway carriage, we motor to Chiltern: the night being fine and the road, I am told, exceptionally good. Miss Dorothy, what do you think?" Instinctively the girl looked to Kirkwood; then shifted her glance to their host. "I think you are wonderfully thoughtful and kind," she said simply. "And you, Philip?" "It's an inspiration," the younger man declared. "I can't think of anything better calculated to throw them off, than to distance them by motor-car. It would be always possible to trace our journey by rail." "Then," announced Brentwick, making as if to rise, "we had best go. If neither my hearing nor Captain Stryker's car deceives me, our fiery chariot is panting at the door." A little sobered from the confident spirit of quiet gaiety in which they had dined, they left the table. Not that, in their hearts, either greatly questioned their ultimate triumph; but they were allowing for the element of error so apt to set at naught human calculations. Calendar himself had already been proved fallible. Within the bounds of possibility, their turn to stumble might now be imminent. When he let himself dwell upon it, their utter helplessness to give Calendar pause by commonplace methods, maddened Kirkwood. With another scoundrel it had been so simple a matter to put a period to his activities by a word to the police. But he was her father; for that reason he must continually be spared ... Even though, in desperate extremity, she should give consent to the arrest of the adventurers, retaliation would follow, swift and sure. For they might not overlook nor gloze the fact that hers had been the hands responsible for the theft of the jewels; innocent though she had been in committing that larceny, a cat's-paw guided by an intelligence unscrupulous and malign, the law would not hold her guiltless were she once brought within its cognizance. Nor, possibly, would the Hallams, mother and son. Upon their knowledge and their fear of this, undoubtedly Calendar was reckoning: witness the barefaced effrontery with which he operated against them. His fear of the police might be genuine enough, but he was never for an instant disturbed by any doubt lest his daughter should turn against him. She would never dare that. Before they left the house, while Dorothy was above stairs resuming her hat and coat, Kirkwood and Brentwick reconnoitered from the drawing-room windows, themselves screened from observation by the absence of light in the room behind. Before the door a motor-car waited, engines humming impatiently, mechanician ready in his seat, an uncouth shape in goggles and leather garments that shone like oilskins under the street lights. At one corner another and a smaller car stood in waiting, its lamps like baleful eyes glaring through the night. In the shadows across the way, a lengthy shadow lurked: Stryker, beyond reasonable question. Otherwise the street was deserted. Not even that adventitous bobby of the early evening was now in evidence. Dorothy presently joining them, Brentwick led the way to the door. Wotton, apparently nerveless beneath his absolute immobility, let them out--and slammed the door behind them with such promptitude as to give cause for the suspicion that he was a fraud, a sham, beneath his icy exterior desperately afraid lest the house be stormed by the adventurers. Kirkwood to the right, Brentwick to the left of Dorothy, the former carrying the treasure bag, they hastened down the walk and through the gate to the car. The watcher across the way was moved to whistle shrilly; the other car lunged forward nervously. Brentwick taking the front seat, beside the mechanician, left the tonneau to Kirkwood and Dorothy. As the American slammed the door, the car swept smoothly out into the middle of the way, while the pursuing car swerved in to the other curb, slowing down to let Stryker jump aboard. Kirkwood put himself in the seat by the girl's side and for a few moments was occupied with the arrangement of the robes. Then, sitting back, he found her eyes fixed upon him, pools of inscrutable night in the shadow of her hat. "You aren't afraid, Dorothy?" She answered quietly: "I am with you, Philip." Beneath the robe their hands met... Exalted, excited, he turned and looked back. A hundred yards to the rear four unwinking eyes trailed them, like some modern Nemesis in monstrous guise. XIX I----THE UXBRIDGE ROAD At a steady gait, now and again checked in deference to the street traffic, Brentwick's motor-car rolled, with resonant humming of the engine, down the Cromwell Road, swerved into Warwick Road and swung northward through Kensington to Shepherd's Bush. Behind it Calendar's car clung as if towed by an invisible cable, never gaining, never losing, mutely testifying to the adventurer's unrelenting, grim determination to leave them no instant's freedom from surveillance, to keep for ever at their shoulders, watching his chance, biding his time with sinister patience until the moment when, wearied, their vigilance should relax.... To some extent he reckoned without his motor-car. As long as they traveled within the metropolitan limits, constrained to observe a decorous pace in view of the prejudices of the County Council, it was a matter of no difficulty whatever to maintain his distance. But once they had won through Shepherd's Bush and, paced by huge doubledeck trolley trams, were flying through Hammersmith on the Uxbridge Road; once they had run through Acton, and knew beyond dispute that now they were without the city boundaries, then the complexion of the business was suddenly changed. Not too soon for honest sport; Calendar was to have (Kirkwood would have said in lurid American idiom) a run for his money. The scattered lights of Southall were winking out behind them before Brentwick chose to give the word to the mechanician. Quietly the latter threw in the clutch for the third speed--and the fourth. The car leaped forward like a startled race-horse. The motor lilted merrily into its deep-throated song of the open road, its contented, silken humming passing into a sonorous and sustained purr. Kirkwood and the girl were first jarred violently forward, then thrown together. She caught his arm to steady herself; it seemed the most natural thing imaginable that he should take her hand and pass it beneath his arm, holding her so, his fingers closed above her own. Before they had recovered, or had time to catch their breath, a mile of Middlesex had dropped to the rear. Not quite so far had they distanced Calendar's trailing Nemesis of the four glaring eyes; the pursuers put forth a gallant effort to hold their place. At intervals during the first few minutes a heavy roaring and crashing could be heard behind them; gradually it subsided, dying on the wings of the free rushing wind that buffeted their faces as mile after mile was reeled off and the wide, darkling English countryside opened out before them, sweet and wonderful. Once Kirkwood looked back; in the winking of an eye he saw four faded disks of light, pallid with despair, top a distant rise and glide down into darkness. When he turned, Dorothy was interrogating him with eyes whose melting, shadowed loveliness, revealed to him in the light of the far, still stars, seemed to incite him to that madness which he had bade himself resist with all his strength. He shook his head, as if to say: They can not catch us. His hour was not yet; time enough to think of love and marriage (as if he were capable of consecutive thought on any other subject!)--time enough to think of them when he had gone back to his place, or rather when he should have found it, in the ranks of bread-winners, and so have proved his right to mortal happiness; time enough then to lay whatever he might have to offer at her feet. Now he could conceive of no baser treachery to his soul's-desire than to advantage himself of her gratitude. Resolutely he turned his face forward, striving with all his will and might to forget the temptation of her lips, weary as they were and petulant with waiting; and so sat rigid in his time of trial, clinging with what strength he could to the standards of his honor, and trying to lose his dream in dreaming of the bitter struggle that seemed likely to be his future portion. Perhaps she guessed a little of the fortunes of the battle that was being waged within him. Perhaps not. Whatever the trend of her thoughts, she did not draw away from him.... Perhaps the breath of night, fresh and clean and fragrant with the odor of the fields and hedges, sweeping into her face with velvety caress, rendered her drowsy. Presently the silken lashes drooped, fluttering upon her cheeks, the tired and happy smile hovered about her lips.... In something less than half an hour of this wild driving, Kirkwood roused out of his reverie sufficiently to become sensible that the speed was slackening. Incoherent snatches of sentences, fragments of words and phrases spoken by Brentwick and the mechanician, were flung back past his ears by the rushing wind. Shielding his eyes he could see dimly that the mechanician was tinkering (apparently) with the driving gear. Then, their pace continuing steadily to abate, he heard Brentwick fling at the man a sharp-toned and querulously impatient question: What was the trouble? His reply came in a single word, not distinguishable. The girl sat up, opening her eyes, disengaging her arm. Kirkwood bent forward and touched Brentwick on the shoulder; the latter turned to him a face lined with deep concern. "Trouble," he announced superfluously. "I fear we have blundered." "What is it?" asked Dorothy in a troubled voice. "Petrol seems to be running low. Charles here" (he referred to the mechanician) "says the tank must be leaking. We'll go on as best we can and try to find an inn. Fortunately, most of the inns nowadays keep supplies of petrol for just such emergencies." "Are we--? Do you think--?" "Oh, no; not a bit of danger of that," returned Brentwick hastily. "They'll not catch up with us this night. That is a very inferior car they have,--so Charles says, at least; nothing to compare with this. If I'm not in error, there's the Crown and Mitre just ahead; we'll make it, fill our tanks, and be off again before they can make up half their loss." Dorothy looked anxiously to Kirkwood, her lips forming an unuttered query: What did he think? "Don't worry; we'll have no trouble," he assured her stoutly; "the chauffeur knows, undoubtedly." None the less he was moved to stand up in the tonneau, conscious of the presence of the traveling bag, snug between his feet, as well as of the weight of Calendar's revolver in his pocket, while he stared back along the road. There was nothing to be seen of their persecutors. The car continued to crawl. Five minutes dragged out tediously. Gradually they, drew abreast a tavern standing back a distance from the road, embowered in a grove of trees between whose ancient boles the tap-room windows shone enticingly, aglow with comfortable light. A creaking sign-board, much worn by weather and age, swinging from a roadside post, confirmed the accuracy of Brentwick's surmise, announcing that here stood the Crown and Mitre, house of entertainment for man and beast. Sluggishly the car rolled up before it and came to a dead and silent halt. Charles, the mechanician, jumping out, ran hastily up the path towards the inn. In the car Brentwick turned again, his eyes curiously bright in the starlight, his forehead quaintly furrowed, his voice apologetic. "It may take a few minutes," he said undecidedly, plainly endeavoring to cover up his own dark doubts. "My dear," to the girl, "if I have brought trouble upon you in this wise, I shall never earn my own forgiveness." Kirkwood stood up again, watchful, attentive to the sounds of night; but the voice of the pursuing motor-car was not of their company. "I hear nothing," he announced. "You will forgive me,--won't you, my dear?--for causing you these few moments of needless anxiety?" pleaded the old gentleman, his tone tremulous. "As if you could be blamed!" protested the girl. "You mustn't think of it that way. Fancy, what should we have done without you!" "I'm afraid I have been very clumsy," sighed Brentwick, "clumsy and impulsive ... Kirkwood, do you hear anything?" "Not yet, sir." "Perhaps," suggested Brentwick a little later, "perhaps we had better alight and go up to the inn. It would be more cosy there, especially if the petrol proves hard to obtain, and we have long to wait." "I should like that," assented the girl decidedly. Kirkwood nodded his approval, opened the door and jumped out to assist her; then picked up the bag and followed the pair,--Brentwick leading the way with Dorothy on his arm. At the doorway of the Crown and Mitre, Charles met them evidently seriously disturbed. "No petrol to be had here, sir," he announced reluctantly; "but the landlord will send to the next inn, a mile up the road, for some. You will have to be patient, I'm afraid, sir." "Very well. Get some one to help you push the car in from the road," ordered Brentwick; "we will be waiting in one of the private parlors." "Yes, sir; thank you, sir." The mechanician touched the visor of his cap and hurried off. "Come, Kirkwood." Gently Brentwick drew the girl in with him. Kirkwood lingered momentarily on the doorstep, to listen acutely. But the wind was blowing into that quarter whence they had come, and he could hear naught save the soughing in the trees, together with an occasional burst of rude rustic laughter from the tap-room. Lifting his shoulders in dumb dismay, and endeavoring to compose his features, he entered the tavern. II----THE CROWN AND MITRE A rosy-cheeked and beaming landlady met him in the corridor and, all bows and smiles, ushered him into a private parlor reserved for the party, immediately bustling off in a desperate flurry, to secure refreshments desired by Brentwick. The girl had seated herself on one end of an extremely comfortless lounge and was making a palpable effort to seem at ease. Brentwick stood at one of the windows, shoulders rounded and head bent, hands clasped behind his back as he peered out into the night. Kirkwood dropped the traveling bag beneath a chair the farthest removed from the doorway, and took to pacing the floor. In a corner of the room a tall grandfather's clock ticked off ten interminable minutes. For some reason unconscionably delaying, the landlady did not reappear. Brentwick, abruptly turning from the window, remarked the fact querulously, then drew a chair up to a marble-topped table in the middle of the floor. "My dear," he requested the girl, "will you oblige me by sitting over here? And Philip, bring up a chair, if you will. We must not permit ourselves to worry, and I have something here which may, perhaps, engage your interest for a while." To humor him and alleviate his evident distress of mind, they acceded. Kirkwood found himself seated opposite Dorothy, Brentwick between them. After some hesitation, made the more notable by an air of uneasiness which sat oddly on his shoulders, whose composure and confident mien had theretofore been so complete and so reassuring, the elder gentleman fumbled in an inner coat-pocket and brought to light a small black leather wallet. He seemed to be on the point of opening it when hurried footfalls sounded in the hallway. Brentwick placed the wallet, still with its secret intact, on the table before him, as Charles burst unceremoniously in, leaving the door wide open. "Mr. Brentwick, sir!" he cried gustily. "That other car--" With a smothered ejaculation Kirkwood leaped to his feet, tugging at the weapon in his pocket. In another instant he had the revolver exposed. The girl's cry of alarm, interrupting the machinist, fixed Brentwick's attention on the young man. He, too, stood up, reaching over very quickly, to clamp strong supple fingers round Kirkwood's wrist, while with the other hand he laid hold of the revolver and by a single twist wrenched it away. Kirkwood turned upon him in fury. "So!" he cried, shaking with passion. "This is what your hospitality meant! You're going to--" "My dear young friend," interrupted Brentwick with a flash of impatience, "remember that if I had designed to betray you, I could have asked no better opportunity than when you were my guest under my own roof." "But--hang it all, Brentwick!" expostulated Kirkwood, ashamed and contrite, but worked upon by desperate apprehension; "I didn't mean that, but--" "Would you have bullets flying when she is near?" demanded Brentwick scathingly. Hastily he slipped the revolver upon a little shelf beneath the table-top. "Sir!" he informed Kirkwood with some heat, "I love you as my own son, but you're a young fool!... as I have been, in my time ... and as I would to Heaven I might be again! Be advised, Philip,--be calm. Can't you see it's the only way to save your treasure?" "Hang the jewels!" retorted Kirkwood warmly. "What--" "Sir, who said anything about the jewels?" As Brentwick spoke, Calendar's corpulent figure filled the doorway; Stryker's weather-worn features loomed over his shoulder, distorted in a cheerful leer. "As to the jewels," announced the fat adventurer, "I've got a word to say, if you put it to me that way." He paused on the threshold, partly for dramatic effect, partly for his own satisfaction, his quick eyes darting from face to face of the four people whom he had caught so unexpectedly. A shade of complacency colored his expression, and he smiled evilly beneath the coarse short thatch of his gray mustache. In his hand a revolver appeared, poised for immediate use if there were need. There was none. Brentwick, at his primal appearance, had dropped a peremptory hand on Kirkwood's shoulder, forcing the young man back to his seat; at the same time he resumed his own. The girl had not stirred from hers since the first alarm; she sat as if transfixed with terror, leaning forward with her elbows on the table, her hands tightly clasped, her face, a little blanched, turned to the door. But her scarlet lips were set and firm with inflexible purpose, and her brown eyes met Calendar's with a look level and unflinching. Beyond this she gave no sign of recognition. Nearest of the four to the adventurers was Charles, the mechanician, paused in affrighted astonishment at sight of the revolver. Calendar, choosing to advance suddenly, poked the muzzle of the weapon jocularly in the man's ribs. "Beat it, Four-eyes!" he snapped. "This is your cue to duck! Get out of my way." The mechanician jumped as if shot, then hastily, retreated to the table, his sallow features working beneath the goggle-mask which had excited the fat adventurer's scorn. "Come right in, Cap'n," Calendar threw over one shoulder; "come in, shut the door and lock it. Let's all be sociable, and have a nice quiet time." Stryker obeyed, with a derisive grimace for Kirkwood. Calendar, advancing jauntily to a point within a yard of the table, stopped, smiling affably down upon his prospective victims, and airily twirling his revolver. "_Good_ evening, all!" he saluted them blandly. "Dorothy, my child," with assumed concern, "you're looking a trifle upset; I'm afraid you've been keeping late hours. Little girls must be careful, you know, or they lose the bloom of roses in their cheeks.... Mr. Kirkwood, it's a pleasure to meet you again! Permit me to paraphrase your most sound advice, and remind you that pistol-shots are apt to attract undesirable attention. It wouldn't be wise for _you_ to bring the police about our ears. I believe that in substance such was your sapient counsel to me in the cabin of the _Alethea_; was it not?... And you, sir!"--fixing Brentwick with a cold unfriendly eye. "You animated fossil, what d'you mean by telling me to go to the devil?... But let that pass; I hold no grudge. What might your name be?" [Illustration: "_Good_ evening, all!" he saluted them blandly.] "It might be Brentwick," said that gentleman placidly. "Brentwick, eh? Well, I like a man of spirit. But permit me to advise you--" "Gladly," nodded Brentwick. "Eh?... Don't come a second time between father and daughter; another man might not be as patient as I, Mister Brentwick. There's a law in the land, if you don't happen to know it." "I congratulate you on your success in evading it," observed Brentwick, undisturbed. "And it was considerate of you not to employ it in this instance." Then, with a sharp change of tone, "Come, sir!" he demanded. "You have unwarrantably intruded in this room, which I have engaged for my private use. Get through with your business and be off with you." "All in my good time, my antediluvian friend. When I've wound up my business here I'll go--not before. But, just to oblige you, we'll get down to it.... Kirkwood, you have a revolver of mine. Be good enough to return it." "I have it here,--under the table," interrupted Brentwick suavely. "Shall I hand it to you?" "By the muzzle, if you please. Be very careful; this one's loaded, too--apt to explode any minute." To Kirkwood's intense disgust Brentwick quietly slipped one hand beneath the table and, placing the revolver on its top, delicately with his finger-tips shoved it toward the farther edge. With a grunt of approval, Calendar swept the weapon up and into his pocket. "Any more ordnance?" he inquired briskly, eyes moving alertly from face to face. "No matter; you wouldn't dare use 'em anyway. And I'm about done. Dorothy, my dear, it's high time you returned to your father's protection. Where's that gladstone bag?" "In my traveling bag," the girl told him in a toneless voice. "Then you may bring it along. You may also say good night to the kind gentlemen." Dorothy did not move; her pallor grew more intense and Kirkwood saw her knuckles tighten beneath the gloves. Otherwise her mouth seemed to grow more straight and hard. "Dorothy!" cried the adventurer with a touch of displeasure. "You heard me?" "I heard you," she replied a little wearily, more than a little contemptuously. "Don't mind him, please, Mr. Kirkwood!"--with an appealing gesture, as Kirkwood, unable to contain himself, moved restlessly in his chair, threatening to rise. "Don't say anything. I have no intention whatever of going with this man." Calendar's features twitched nervously; he chewed a corner of his mustache, fixing the girl with a black stare. "I presume," he remarked after a moment, with slow deliberation, "you're aware that, as your father, I am in a position to compel you to accompany me." "I shall not go with you," iterated Dorothy in a level tone. "You may threaten me, but--I shall not go. Mr. Brentwick and Mr. Kirkwood are taking me to--friends, who will give me a home until I can find a way to take care of myself. That is all I have to say to you." "Bravo, my dear!" cried Brentwick encouragingly. "Mind your business, sir!" thundered Calendar, his face darkening. Then, to Dorothy, "You understand, I trust, what this means?" he demanded. "I offer you a home--and a good one. Refuse, and you work for your living, my girl! You've forfeited your legacy--" "I know, I know," she told him in cold disdain. "I am content. Won't you be kind enough to leave me alone?" For a breath, Calendar glowered over her; then, "I presume," he observed, "that all these heroics are inspired by that whipper-snapper, Kirkwood. Do you know that he hasn't a brass farthing to bless himself with?" "What has that--?" cried the girl indignantly. "Why, it has everything to do with me, my child. As your doting parent, I can't consent to your marrying nothing-a-year.... For I surmise you intend to marry this Mr. Kirkwood, don't you?" There followed a little interval of silence, while the warm blood flamed in the girl's face and the red lips trembled as she faced her tormentor. Then, with a quaver that escaped her control, "If Mr. Kirkwood asks me, I shall," she stated very simply. "That," interposed Kirkwood, "is completely understood." His gaze sought her eyes, but she looked away. "You forget that I am your father," sneered Calendar; "and that you are a minor. I can refuse my consent." "But you won't," Kirkwood told him with assurance. The adventurer stared. "No," he agreed, after slight hesitation; "no, I shan't interfere. Take her, my boy, if you want her--and a father's blessing into the bargain. The Lord knows I've troubles enough; a parent's lot is not what it's cracked up to be." He paused, leering, ironic. "But,"--deliberately, "there's still this other matter of the gladstone bag. I don't mind abandoning my parental authority, when my child's happiness is concerned, but as for my property--" "It is not your property," interrupted the girl. "It was your mother's, dear child. It's now mine." "I dispute that assertion," Kirkwood put in. "You may dispute it till the cows come home, my boy: the fact will remain that I intend to take my property with me when I leave this room, whether you like it or not. Now are you disposed to continue the argument, or may I count on your being sensible?" "You may put away your revolver, if that's what you mean," said Kirkwood. "We certainly shan't oppose you with violence, but I warn you that Scotland Yard--" "Oh, that be blowed!" the adventurer snorted in disgust. "I can sail circles round any tec. that ever blew out of Scotland Yard! Give me an hour's start, and you're free to do all the funny business you've a mind to, with--Scotland Yard!" "Then you admit," queried Brentwick civilly, "that you've no legal title to the jewels in dispute?" "Look here, my friend," chuckled Calendar, "when you catch me admitting anything, you write it down in your little book and tell the bobby on the corner. Just at present I've got other business than to stand round admitting anything about anything.... Cap'n, let's have that bag of my dutiful daughter's." "'Ere you are." Stryker spoke for the first time since entering the room, taking the valise from beneath the chair and depositing it on the table. "Well, we shan't take anything that doesn't belong to us," laughed Calendar, fumbling with the catch; "not even so small a matter as my own child's traveling bag. A small--heavy--gladstone bag," he grunted, opening the valise and plunging in one greedy hand, "will--just--about--do for mine!" With which he produced the article mentioned. "This for the discard, Cap'n," he laughed contentedly, pushing the girl's valise aside; and, rumbling with stentorian mirth, stood beaming benignantly over the assembled company. "Why," he exclaimed, "this moment is worth all it cost me! My children, I forgive you freely. Mr. Kirkwood, I felicitate you cordially on having secured a most expensive wife. Really--d'you know?--I feel as if I ought to do a little something for you both." Gurgling with delight he smote his fat palms together. "I just tell you what," he resumed, "no one yet ever called Georgie Calendar a tight-wad. I just believe I'm going to make you kids a handsome wedding present.... The good Lord knows there's enough of this for a fellow to be a little generous and never miss it!" The thick mottled fingers tore nervously at the catch; eventually he got the bag open. Those about the table bent forward, all quickened by the prospect of for the first time beholding the treasure over which they had fought, for which they had suffered, so long.... A heady and luscious fragrance pervaded the atmosphere, exhaling from the open mouth of the bag. A silence, indefinitely sustained, impressed itself upon the little audience,--a breathless pause ended eventually by a sharp snap of Calendar's teeth. "_Mmm_!" grunted the adventurer in bewilderment. He began to pant. Abruptly his heavy hands delved into the contents of the bag, like the paws of a terrier digging in earth. To Kirkwood the air seemed temporarily thick with flying objects. Beneath his astonished eyes a towel fell upon the table--a crumpled, soiled towel, bearing on its dingy hem the inscription in indelible ink: "_Hôtel du Commerce, Anvers_." A tooth-mug of substantial earthenware dropped to the floor with a crash. A slimy soap-dish of the same manufacture slid across the table and into Brentwick's lap. A battered alarm clock with never a tick left in its abused carcass rang vacuously as it fell by the open bag.... The remainder was--oranges: a dozen or more small, round, golden globes of ripe fruit, perhaps a shade overripe, therefore the more aromatic. The adventurer ripped out an oath. "Mulready, by the living God!" he raged in fury. "Done up, I swear! Done by that infernal sneak--me, blind as a bat!" He fell suddenly silent, the blood congesting in his face; as suddenly broke forth again, haranguing the company. "That's why he went out and bought those damned oranges, is it? Think of it--me sitting in the hotel in Antwerp and him lugging in oranges by the bagful because he was fond of fruit! When did he do it? How do I know? If I knew, would I be here and him the devil knows where, this minute? When my back was turned, of course, the damned snake! That's why he was so hot about picking a fight on the boat, hey? Wanted to get thrown off and take to the woods--leaving me with _this_! And that's why he felt so awful done up he wouldn't take a hand at hunting you two down, hey? Well--by--the--Eternal! I'll camp on his trail for the rest of his natural-born days! I'll have his eye-teeth for this, I'll--" He swayed, gibbering with rage, his countenance frightfully contorted, his fat hands shaking as he struggled for expression. And then, while yet their own astonishment held Dorothy, Kirkwood, Brentwick and Stryker speechless, Charles, the mechanician, moved suddenly upon the adventurer. There followed two metallic clicks. Calendar's ravings were abrupted as if his tongue had been paralyzed. He fell back a pace, flabby jowls pale and shaking, ponderous jaw dropping on his breast, mouth wide and eyes crazed as he shook violently before him his thick fleshy wrists--securely handcuffed. Simultaneously the mechanician whirled about, bounded eagerly across the floor, and caught Stryker at the door, his dexterous fingers twisting in the captain's collar as he jerked him back and tripped him. "Mr. Kirkwood!" he cried. "Here, please--one moment. Take this man's gun, from him, will you?" Kirkwood sprang to his assistance, and without encountering much trouble, succeeded in wresting a Webley from Stryker's limp, flaccid fingers. Roughly the mechanician shook the man, dragging him to his feet. "Now," he ordered sternly, "you march to that corner, stick your nose in it, and be good! You can't get away if you try. I've got other men outside, waiting for you to come out. Understand?" Trembling like a whipped cur, Stryker meekly obeyed his instructions to the letter. The mechanician, with a contemptuous laugh leaving him, strode back to Calendar, meanwhile whipping off his goggles; and clapped a hearty hand upon the adventurer's quaking shoulders. "Well!" he cried. "And are you still sailing circles round the men from Scotland Yard, Simmons, or Bellows, or Sanderson, or Calendar, or Crumbstone, or whatever name you prefer to sail under?" Calendar glared at him aghast; then heaved a profound sigh, shrugged his fat shoulders, and bent his head in thought. An instant later he looked up. "You can't do it," he informed the detective vehemently; "you haven't got a shred of evidence against me! What's there? A pile of oranges and a peck of trash! What of it?... Besides," he threatened, "if you pinch me, you'll have to take the girl in, too. I swear that whatever stealing was done, she did it. I'll not be trapped this way by her and let her off without a squeal. Take me--take her; d'you hear?" "I think," put in the clear, bland accents of Brentwick, "we can consider that matter settled. I have here, my man,"--nodding to the adventurer as he took up the black leather wallet,--"I have here a little matter which may clear up any lingering doubts as to your standing, which you may be disposed at present to entertain." He extracted a slip of cardboard and, at arm's length, laid it on the table-edge beneath the adventurer's eyes. The latter, bewildered, bent over it for a moment, breathing heavily; then straightened back, shook himself, laughed shortly with a mirthless note, and faced the detective. "It's come with you now, I guess?" he suggested very quietly. "The Bannister warrant is still out for you," returned the man. "That'll be enough to hold you on till extradition papers arrive from the States." "Oh, I'll waive those; and I won't give you any trouble, either.... I reckon," mused the adventurer, jingling his manacles thoughtfully, "I'm a back-number, anyway. When a half-grown girl, a half-baked boy, a flub like Mulready--damn his eyes!--and a club-footed snipe from Scotland Yard can put it all over me this way,... why, I guess it's up to me to go home and retire to my country-place up the Hudson." He sighed wearily. "Yep; time to cut it out. But I would like to be free long enough to get in one good lick at that mutt, Mulready. My friend, you get your hands on him, and I'll squeal on him till I'm blue in the face. That's a promise." "You'll have the chance before long," replied the detective. "We received a telegram from the Amsterdam police late this afternoon, saying they'd picked up Mr. Mulready with a woman named Hallam, and were holding them on suspicion. It seems,"--turning to Brentwick,--"they were opening negotiations for the sale of a lot of stones, and seemed in such a precious hurry that the diamond merchant's suspicions were roused. We're sending over for them, Miss Calendar, so you can make your mind easy about your jewels; you'll have them back in a few days." "Thank you," said the girl with an effort. "Well," the adventurer delivered his peroration, "I certainly am blame' glad to hear it. 'Twouldn't 've been a square deal, any other way." He paused, looking his erstwhile dupes over with a melancholy eye; then, with an uncertain nod comprehending the girl, Kirkwood and Brentwick, "So long!" he said thickly; and turned, with the detective's hand under his arm and, accompanied by the thoroughly cowed Stryker, waddled out of the room. III----THE JOURNEY'S END Kirkwood, following the exodus, closed the door with elaborate care and slowly, deep in thought, returned to the table. Dorothy seemed not to have moved, save to place her elbows on the marble slab, and rest her cheeks between hands that remained clenched, as they had been in the greatest stress of her emotion. The color had returned to her face, with a slightly enhanced depth of hue to the credit of her excitement. Her cheeks were hot, her eyes starlike beneath the woven, massy sunlight of her hair. Temporarily unconscious of her surroundings she stared steadfastly before her, thoughts astray in the irridescent glamour of the dreams that were to come.... Brentwick had slipped down in his chair, resting his silvered head upon its back, and was smiling serenely up at the low yellow ceiling. Before him on the table his long white fingers were drumming an inaudible tune. Presently rousing, he caught Kirkwood's eye and smiled sheepishly, like a child caught in innocent mischief. The younger man grinned broadly. "And you were responsible for all that!" he commented, infinitely amused. Brentwick nodded, twinkling self-satisfaction. "I contrived it all," he said; "neat, I call it, too." His old eyes brightened with reminiscent enjoyment. "Inspiration!" he crowed softly. "Inspiration, pure and simple. I'd been worrying my wits for fully five minutes before Wotton settled the matter by telling me about the captain's hiring of the motor-car. Then, in a flash, I had it.... I talked with Charles by telephone,--his name is really Charles, by, the bye,--overcame his conscientious scruples about playing his fish when they were already all but landed, and settled the artistic details." He chuckled delightedly. "It's the instinct," he declared emphatically, "the instinct for adventure. I knew it was in me, latent somewhere, but never till this day did it get the opportunity to assert itself. A born adventurer--that's what I am!... You see, it was essential that they should believe we were frightened and running from them; that way, they would be sure to run after us. Why, we might have baited a dozen traps and failed to lure them into my house, after that stout scoundrel knew you'd had the chance to tell me the whole yarn... Odd!" "Weren't you taking chances, you and Charles?" asked Kirkwood curiously. "Precious few. There was another motor from Scotland Yard trailing Captain Stryker's. If they had run past, or turned aside, they would have been overhauled in short order." He relapsed into his whimsical reverie; the wistful look returned to his eyes, replacing the glow of triumph and pleasure. And he sighed a little regretfully. "What I don't understand," contended Kirkwood, "is how you convinced Calendar that he couldn't get revenge by pressing his charge against Miss Calendar--Dorothy." "Oh-h?" Mr. Brentwick elevated his fine white eyebrows and sat up briskly. "My dear boy, that was the most delectable dish on the entire menu. I have been reserving it, I don't mind owning, that I might better enjoy the full relish of it.... I may answer you best, perhaps, by asking you to scan what I offered to the fat scoundrel's respectful consideration, my dear sir." He leveled a forefinger at the card. At first glance it conveyed nothing to the younger man's benighted intelligence. He puzzled over it, twisting his brows out of alignment. An ordinary oblong slip of thin white cardboard, it was engraved in fine script as follows: MR. GEORGE BURGOYNE CALENDAR 81, ASPEN VILLAS, S. W. "Oh!" exclaimed Kirkwood at length, standing up, his face bright with understanding. "_You_--!" "I," laconically assented the elder man. Impulsively Kirkwood leaned across the table. "Dorothy," he said tenderly; and when the girl's happy eyes met his, quietly drew her attention to the card. Then he rose hastily, and went over to stand by the window, staring mistily into the blank face of night beyond its unseen panes. Behind him there was a confusion of little noises; the sound of a chair pushed hurriedly aside, a rustle of skirts, a happy sob or two, low voices intermingling; sighs.... Out of it finally came the father's accents. "There, there, my dear! My dearest dear!" protested the old gentleman. "Positively I don't deserve a tithe of this. I--" The young old voice quavered and broke, in a happy laugh.... "You must understand," he continued more soberly, "that no consideration of any sort is due me. When we married, I was too old for your mother, child; we both knew it, both believed it would never matter. But it did. By her wish, I went back to America; we were to see what separation would do to heal the wounds dissension had caused. It was a very foolish experiment. Your mother died before I could return...." There fell a silence, again broken by the father. "After that I was in no haste to return. But some years ago, I came to London to live. I communicated with the old colonel, asking permission to see you. It was refused in a manner which precluded the subject being reopened by me: I was informed that if I persisted in attempting to see you, you would be disinherited.... He was very angry with me--justly, I admit.... One must grow old before one can see how unforgivably one was wrong in youth.... So I settled down to a quiet old age, determined not to disturb you in your happiness.... Ah--Kirkwood!" The old gentleman was standing, his arm around his daughter's shoulders, when Kirkwood turned. "Come here, Philip; I'm explaining to Dorothy, but you should hear.... The evening I called on you, dear boy, at the Pless, returning home I received a message from my solicitors, whom I had instructed to keep an eye on Dorothy's welfare. They informed me that she had disappeared. Naturally I canceled my plans to go to Munich, and stayed, employing detectives. One of the first things they discovered was that Dorothy had run off with an elderly person calling himself George Burgoyne Calendar--the name I had discarded when I found that to acknowledge me would imperil my daughter's fortune.... The investigations went deeper; Charles--let us continue to call him--had been to see me only this afternoon, to inform me of the plot they had discovered. This Hallam woman and her son--it seems that they were legitimately in the line of inheritance, Dorothy out of the way. But the woman was--ah--a bad lot. Somehow she got into communication with this fat rogue and together they plotted it out. Charles doesn't believe that the Hallam woman expected to enjoy the Burgoyne estates for very many days. Her plan was to step in when Dorothy stepped out, gather up what she could, realize on it, and decamp. That is why there was so much excitement about the jewels: naturally the most valuable item on her list, the most easy to convert into cash.... The man Mulready we do not place; he seems to have been a shady character the fat rogue picked up somewhere. The latter's ordinary line of business was diamond smuggling, though he would condescend to almost anything in order to turn a dishonest penny.... "That seems to exhaust the subject. But one word more.... Dorothy, I am old enough and have suffered enough to know the wisdom of seizing one's happiness when one may. My dear, a little while ago, you did a very brave deed. Under fire you said a most courageous, womanly, creditable thing. And Philip's rejoinder was only second in nobility to yours.... I do hope to goodness that you two blessed youngsters won't let any addlepated scruples stand between yourselves and--the prize of Romance, your inalienable inheritance!" Abruptly Brentwick, who was no longer Brentwick, but the actual Calendar, released the girl from his embrace and hopped nimbly toward the door. "Really, I must see about that petrol!" he cried. "While it's perfectly true that Charles lied about it's running out, we must be getting on. I'll call you when we're ready to start." And the door crashed to behind him.... Between them was the table. Beyond it the girl stood with head erect, dim tears glimmering on the lashes of those eyes with which she met Philip's steady gaze so fearlessly. Singing about them, the silence deepened. Fascinated, though his heart was faint with longing, Kirkwood faltered on the threshold of his kingdom. "Dorothy!... You did mean it, dear?" She laughed, a little, low, sobbing laugh that had its source deep in the hidden sanctuary of her heart of a child. "I meant it, my dearest.... If you'll have a girl so bold and forward, who can't wait till she's asked but throws herself into the arms of the man she loves--Philip, I meant it, every word!..." And as he went to her swiftly, round the table, she turned to meet him, arms uplifted, her scarlet lips a-tremble, the brown and bewitching lashes drooping over her wondrously lighted eyes.... After a time Philip Kirkwood laughed aloud. And there was that quality in the ring of his laughter that caused the Shade of Care, which had for the past ten minutes been uneasily luffing and filling in the offing and, on the whole, steadily diminishing and becoming more pale and wan and emaciated and indistinct--there was that in the laughter of Philip Kirkwood, I say, which caused the Shade of Care to utter a hollow croak of despair as, incontinently, it vanished out of his life.