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Title: Ghost Stories
Author: Arlen, Michael (1895-1956)
Date of first publication: 1932
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: Collins, [1932]
Date first posted: 28 December 2013
Date last updated: 28 December 2013
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1143

This ebook was produced by David Edwards,
Matthew D. Wheaton, Iona Vaughan, Mark Akrigg
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net






    GHOST STORIES


    _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

    THE LONDON VENTURE
    THE ROMANTIC LADY
    "PIRACY"
    THESE CHARMING PEOPLE
    THE GREEN HAT
    MAY FAIR




    GHOST STORIES

    _by_
    MICHAEL ARLEN


    LONDON: 48 PALL MALL
    W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD.
    GLASGOW SYDNEY AUCKLAND


    _Printed in Great Britain_




    CONTENTS


    THE PRINCE OF THE JEWS
    THE GENTLEMAN FROM AMERICA
    TO LAMOIR
    THE GHOUL OF GOLDERS GREEN
    THE ANCIENT SIN
    THE LOQUACIOUS LADY OF LANSDOWNE PASSAGE
    THE SMELL IN THE LIBRARY




_The Prince of the Jews_


I

This is the tale of the late Rear-Admiral Sir Charles Fasset-Faith,
K.C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O. This distinguished torpedo officer was advanced
to flag rank only last June, having previously been for two years
Commodore of the First Class commanding the ---- Fleet. Throughout the
war he was attached to the submarine service; and for the vigilance
and fearlessness of his command his name came to be much on men's
lips. His early death, at the age of forty-five, will be regretted by
all who knew him. He never married. This is also the tale of Julian
Raphael, the Jew, and of Manana Cohen, his paramour.

One summer evening a gentleman emerged from the Celibates Club in
Hamilton Place; and, not instantly descending the few broad steps to
the pavement, stood a while between the two ancient brown columns of
the portico. The half of a cigar was restlessly screwed into the
corner of his mouth in a manner that consorted quite oddly with his
uneager English eye; and that, with the gentleman's high carriage,
might have reminded a romantic observer of the President of the
Suicide Club. His silk hat, however (for he was habited for the
evening) was situated on his head with an exact sobriety which would
seem to rebuke the more familiar relations customary between desperate
gentlemen and their hats; and he appeared, at his idle station at the
head of the broad steps, to be lost in peaceful contemplation.

The Admiral made thus a notable mark for any passing stranger with a
nice eye for distinction: he stood so definitely for _something_, a
very column of significance, of conduct. Unusually tall for a sailor,
and of powerful build, his complexion was as though forged--it is the
exact word--in the very smithy of vengeful suns and violent winds: his
pale, dry eyes, which would, even in a maelstrom, always remain
decidedly the driest of created things, in their leisure assumed that
kindly, absent look which is the pleasant mark of Englishmen who walk
in iron upon the sea: while short brown side-whiskers mightily became
the authority of Sir Charles's looks.

The hour was about ten o'clock, and the traffic by the corner of
Hamilton Place and Piccadilly marched by without hindrance. The din of
horns and wheels and engines, as though charmed by the unusual
gentleness of the night, swept by inattentive ears as easily as the
echoes of falling water in a distant cavern. The omnibuses to Victoria
and to the Marble Arch trumpeted proudly round the corner where by
day they must pant for passage in a heavy block. Limousines and
landaulettes shone and passed silently. The very taxis, in the
exaltation of moderate speed, seemed almost to be forgetting their
humble places in the hierarchy of the road. Every now and then figures
scuttled across the road with anxious jerking movements. "A fine
night!" sighed the commissionaire of the Celibates Club. His face was
very lined and his old eyes clouded with the stress of countless days
of London fog and London rain.

"A taxi, Sir Charles?"

The Admiral cleared his throat and aimed the remnant of his cigar into
the gutter. "Thanks, Hunt, I think I'll walk. Yes, a fine night."

Omnibus after omnibus tore down the short broad slope from Park Lane
and galloped gaily across the sweep of Hyde Park Corner. There was
half a moon over St. George's Hospital, and the open place looked like
a park with the lamps for flowers.

"The buses _do_ speed up at night!" sighed the commissionaire.

"Don't they! But see there, Hunt!" Sir Charles, suddenly and sharply,
was waving his cane towards the opposite side of the road, towards the
corner by the massive Argentine Club. "See that man?"

The commissionaire with the lined face followed the direction of the
cane.

"That constable, Sir Charles?"

"No, no! That Jew!"

The commissionaire, mistrustful of his ancient eyes, peered through
the clear night. He sighed: "God knows, Sir Charles, there's Jews
enough in Mayfair, but I can't see one just there."

The Admiral thoughtfully took another cigar from his case. His eyes
were of iron, but his voice had lost all its sudden sharpness as he
said: "Never mind, Hunt. Just give me a light, will you?"

But, as he made to walk down Piccadilly, to join in a rubber at his
other club in St. James's Street, Sir Charles did not let the dark
lean man on the other side of the road pass out of the corner of his
eye. The young Jew crossed the road. That did not surprise our
gentleman. He walked on, and, once on Piccadilly, walked at a good
pace.

The Piccadilly scene was seldom crowded between ten and eleven:
cinema-theatres, music-halls, and play-houses held the world's
attention, while the night was not yet deep enough for the dim parade
of the world's wreckage. Sir Charles would always, at about this hour,
take a little exercise between his clubs in Hamilton Place and St.
James's.

He had passed the opening of Half Moon Street before the young Jew
caught up with his shoulder. Sir Charles walked on without concerning
himself to look round at the dark, handsome face. Handsome as a black
archangel was Julian Raphael the Jew. Sir Charles vaguely supposed
that the archangels had originally been Jewish, and it was as a black
archangel that the looks of Julian Raphael had first impressed him. It
was altogether a too fanciful business for the Admiral's taste; but he
had no one to blame for it but himself, since he had originally let
the thing, he'd had to admit often, run away with him.

"Well?" he suddenly smiled over his shoulder. There was, after all, a
good deal to smile about, if you took the thing properly. And it had
needed more than a handsome Jew to prevent Sir Charles taking a thing
properly. But Julian Raphael did not smile. He said gravely:--

"When I first saw you, Sir Charles, I thought you were only a fool.
But I am not sure now. You show a resignation towards fate unusual in
your sceptical countrymen. It is scepticism that makes men dull,
resignation that makes men interesting. It is a dull mind that
believes in nothing: it is an interesting mind that expects nothing
and awaits the worst. Your waiting shall be rewarded, Sir Charles."

The Admiral walked on with a grim smile. He was growing used to
this--even to this! They passed beneath the bitter walls of what was
once Devonshire House. The beautiful Jew said softly:--

"You have a broad back, Sir Charles. It is a fine mark for a
well-thrown knife. Have I not always said so!"

Our gentleman swung round on the lean young Jew. A few yards from them
a policeman was having a few words with the commissionaire of the
Berkeley Restaurant about a car that had been left standing too long
by the curb. It was Julian Raphael who was smiling now. Sir Charles
said sternly:--

"Am I to understand that you are trying to frighten me with this
ridiculous persecution? And what, Mr. Raphael, is to prevent me from
giving you in charge to that policeman? You are, I think, wanted for
murder!"

Julian Raphael's black eyes seemed to shine with mockery. "There's
nothing in the world to prevent you, Sir Charles, except that any
policeman would think you mad for asking him to arrest air. Not, as
you suggest, that he wouldn't, in the ordinary way, be pleased to
catch the Prince of the Jews. May I offer you a light for that cigar?"

And as Sir Charles lit his cigar from the match held out to him he was
not surprised to find himself looking into the ancient eyes of Hunt,
the commissionaire outside his club in Hamilton Place. His walk up
Piccadilly, his talk with the young Jew, had taken no longer than it
takes to light a cigar. This was the third time within a fortnight
that the Admiral had been privileged to see his old enemy, to walk
with him and talk with him; and his awakening had each time been to
find that not more than a couple of seconds had passed and that he had
never moved from his station.

Sir Charles abruptly re-entered the club and, in the smoking-room,
addressed himself to his old friend Hilary Townshend.

"Hilary," said he, "I have a tale to tell you. It is very fanciful,
and you will dislike it. I dislike it for the same reason. But I want
you, my oldest friend, to know certain facts in case anything happens
to me in the course of the next few days--or nights. In my life, as
you know, I have not had many dealings with the grotesque. But the
grotesque seems lately to be desiring the very closest connection with
me. It began two years ago when I officiously tried to be of some
service to a young Jewess called Manana Cohen. God help me, I thought
I was acting for the best."

There follows the tale told by Admiral Sir Charles Fasset-Faith to Mr.
Townshend.


THE ADMIRAL'S TALE

About two years ago (said Sir Charles), during one of my leaves in
London, young Mrs. Harpenden persuaded me to go down with her to a
club of some sort she was helping to run down in the East End.

There were then, and for all I know there are now, a number of pretty
and sound young women doing their best to placate God for the sins of
their Victorian fathers by making life in the East End as tolerable as
possible. Of course, only once a week. Venice's idea in landing me was
that I should give the young devils down there a rough lecture on the
Navy in general, and the Jutland fight in particular--that kind of
thing.

So there I stood yapping away, surrounded by a crowd of amiable and
attentive young men and women. In a room nearby poor Napier Harpenden
was trying to get away with only one black eye from a hefty young
navvy to whom he was supposed to be teaching boxing. Across a counter
in a far corner Venice was handing out cups of perfectly revolting
coffee. She had all the bloods at her call that night, had Venice. In
one corner Tarlyon was teaching a crowd Ju-jitsu, and in another Hugo
Cypress was playing draughts with a Boy Scout--it did one good to see
him. And there, in the middle of all that, was the old mug roaring
away about the silent Navy.

I was just getting settled down and raising laughs with the usual Jack
Tar stuff when--well, there they were, a pair of them, quite plainly
laughing at me. Not _with_ me, mark you. You'll understand that it put
me off my stroke. However, I did my level best to go on without
looking at them, but that wasn't so easy, as they were bang in front
of me, three or four rows back. I had spotted the young man first. He
was the one making the jokes and leading the laugh, while the girl
only followed suit. Both Jews, obviously, and as handsome as a couple
of new coins. Smart, too--the young man too smart by half.

You could tell at a glance that they had no right in the place, which
was for very poor folk, and that they had come in just to guy. At
least, that devilish young man had. He had a thin, dead-white face, a
nose that wouldn't have looked amiss on a prince of old Babylon, black
eyes the size of walnuts, and a smile--I'll tell you about that smile.
Hilary, I've never in my life so wanted to do anything as to put my
foot squarely down on that boy's smile. Call me a Dutchman if they
don't hate it even down in hell.

The girl wasn't any less beautiful, with her white face, black hair,
black eyes, fine slim Hebrew nose. Proud she looked too, and a proud
Jewess can--and does--look any two English beauties in the face. But
she was better, gentler, _nicer_. They were of the same stuff, those
two young Jews, the same ancient sensitive clever stuff, but one had
gone rotten and the other hadn't. You could easily see that from the
way, when she did meet my eyes, she did her level best to look serious
and not to hear what her companion was whispering into her ear. She
didn't particularly want to hurt my feelings, not she, no matter how
much her man might want to. Of course I could have stopped the lecture
then and there and chucked the young man out, but I didn't want to go
and have a roughhouse the first time I was asked down to young
Venice's potty old club.

It will puzzle me all my life (or what's left of it, let's say) to
know why that diabolically handsome, young Jew took such an instant
dislike to me; and why I took such a dislike to him! For that was
really at the bottom of all that followed--just good old black hatred,
Hilary, from the first moment our eyes met. But I want to give you all
the facts. Maybe the girl had something to do with it even then--the
girl and his own shocking smile. You simply couldn't help fancying
that those gentle eyes were in for a very bad time from that smile.
Decidedly not my business, of course. Nothing that interests one ever
is, is it? But, on the other hand, the young man went on whispering
and laughing so all through my confounded lecture that by the time I
had finished there was just one small spot of red floating about my
mind. I don't think I've ever before been so angry. There's one
particular thing about people who sneer that I can't bear, Hilary.
They simply insist on your disliking them, and I hate having to
dislike people more than I can tell you.

They began to clear out as soon as I had finished. The young Jew's
behaviour hadn't, naturally, made my effort go any better. He needed a
lesson, that bright young man. I collared him in the passage outside.
Of course he and his young lady were much too smart to hurry
themselves, and the rest of the lecturees had almost gone. Inside,
Venice had given up poisoning her club with coffee and was trying to
bring it round with shocking noises from a wireless-set.

I can see that passage now. A narrow stairway leading up to God knows
where. Just one gas-jet, yellow as a Chinaman. The front-door wide
open to a narrow street like a canal of mud, for it was pelting with
rain, you could see sheets of it falling between us and the lamp on
the opposite side of the road. A man outside somewhere whistling,
"Horsey, keep your tail up," and whistling it well. Radio inside.

Our young Jew-boy was tall. I simply didn't feel I was old enough to
be his father, although he couldn't have been more than three or
four-and-twenty. And he liked colours, that boy. He had on a nice
bright brown suit, a silk-shirt to match, and not a tartan in the
Highlands had anything on his tie. His young lady's eyes, in that sick
light, shone like black onyx. It struck me she was terrified, the way
she was staring at me. I was sorry for that, it wasn't her terror I
wanted. And where I did want it, not a sign. Then I realised she
wasn't terrified for him, but for me. Cheek.

I had the fancy youth by the shoulder. Tight. He was still laughing at
me. "This lout!" that laugh said. I can hear that laugh now. And,
confound it, there was a quite extraordinary authority to that boy's
eyes. He wasn't used to following any one, not he.

I said: "Young man, your manners are very bad. What are you going to
do about it?"

I was calm enough. But he was too calm by half. He didn't answer, but
he had given up smiling. He was looking sideways down at my hand on
his shoulder. I've never had a pretty hand, but it has been quite
useful to me one way and another and I've grown attached to it. I
can't attempt to describe the disgust and contempt in that boy's look.
It sort of said: "By the bosom of Abraham, what _is_ that filthy thing
on my shoulder?"

I said sharply: "I'm waiting."

The girl sighed: "Don't! Don't, Julian!"

As though, you know, he might hit me! Me!

Well, he might! I said: "Careful, young man!"

The girl whispered almost frantically: "Let him go, sir! Please! You
don't know----"

I comforted her. I said I could take care of myself. She wasn't, I
fancy, convinced. The way she looked at a man, with those scared black
eyes!

But our young friend wasn't taking any notice of either of us. He was
busy. All this, of course, happened in a few seconds. The Jew had
raised his hand, slowly, very slowly, and had caught the wrist of my
hand on his shoulder. I felt his fingers round my wrist. Tight.

"Steady, boy!" I said. I'd have to hit him, and I didn't want to do
that. At least, I told myself I didn't want to. That young Jew had
strong fingers. He simply hadn't spoken one word yet. His conversation
was limited to trying to break my wrist. _My_ wrist! Then he spoke. He
said: "You swine!" The girl suddenly pulled at my arm, hard. His back
was to the open doorway, the rain, the gutter. I caught him one on
the chin so that he was in it flat on his back. His tie looked fancier
than ever in the mud, too. The girl sort of screamed.

"All right," I said. "All right." Trying, you know, to comfort the
poor kid. She was rushing after her man, but I had my arm like a bar
across the door. She stared at me.

I said: "Listen to me, my child. You're in bad company."

"She is now," a voice said. The young Jew had picked himself up. He
looked a mess, fine clothes and all. I thought he would try to rush
me, but not he! He just smiled and said quite calmly: "I'll make a
note of that, Sir Charles Fasset-Faith. Come on, Manana."

But I wasn't letting "Manana" go just yet. The poor kid.

"What's his name?" I asked her.

She stared at me. I never knew what "white" really meant until I saw
that child's teeth.

"His name?" I repeated. Gently, you know.

She whispered: "Julian Raphael."

That young Jew's voice hit me on the back of the neck like a knife.
"You'll pay for that, Manana! See if you don't!"

By the way, it isn't just rhetoric about the knife. It was like a
knife. But I'll tell you more about knives later.

"Oh!" she sobbed.

"Look here," I said to the devilish boy, "if you so much as----"

He laughed. The girl bolted under my arm and joined him. He just
laughed. I said: "Good-night, Manana. Don't let him hurt you." She
didn't seem to dare look at me.

They went, up that muddy lane. He had her by the arm, and you could
see he had her tight. There aren't many lamps in that _beau quartier_,
and a few steps took them out of my sight. I heard a scream, and then
a sob.

That settled Julian Raphael so far as I was concerned. Then another
sob--from the back of that nasty darkness. I couldn't, of course, go
after them then. It would look too much as though I was bidding for
possession of the young Jew's love-lady. But at that moment I made up
my mind I'd land that pretty boy sometime soon. That scream had made
me feel just a trifle sick. That was personal. Then I was against
Julian Raphael impersonally because I've always been for law and
order. You have too, Hilary. I shouldn't wonder if that's not another
reason why women find men like us dull. But some of us must be, God
knows, in this world. And it was against all law and order that young
Mr. Julian Raphael--imagine any man actually _using_ a name like
that!--should be loose in the world. Crook was too simple a word for
Mr. Raphael. And he was worse for being so devilish handsome. One
imagined him with women--with this poor soul of a Manana. Of course,
Venice and Napier and the other people at their potty old club knew
nothing about either of them. They must have just drifted in, they
said. They had, into my life.

The very next morning I rang up our friend H---- at Scotland Yard and
asked him if he knew anything about a Julian Raphael. Oh, didn't he!
Had a _dossier_ of him as long as my arm. H---- said: "The Prince of
the Jews, that's Julian Raphael's pet name. Profession: counterfeiter.
But we've never yet caught him or his gang."

Oh, the cinema wasn't in it with our fancy young friend. The police
had been after him for about five years. Once they had almost got him
for knifing a Lascar. Murder right enough, but they'd had to release
him for lack of evidence. The Lascar, H---- said, had probably
threatened to give away a cocaine plant, and Julian Raphael had slit
his throat. Suspected of cocaine-smuggling, living on immoral earnings
of women, and known to be the finest existing counterfeiter of Bank of
England 5 notes. Charming man, Mr. Julian Raphael.

"I want to land him," I told H----.

"Thanks very much," said he. "So do we."

"Well, how about that girl of his--Manana something?"

"Manana Cohen? Catch her giving him away! She adores the beast, and so
do they all, those who aren't terrified of him."

I said: "Well, we'll see. I want to get that boy. I don't like him."

H----'s last words to me were: "Now look here, Charles, don't go
playing the fool down there. I know the East End is nowadays supposed
to be as respectable as Kensington and that the cinema has got it beat
hollow for pools of blood, but believe me a chap is still liable to be
punctured in the ribs by a clever boy like Julian Raphael. So be a
good fellow and go back to your nice old Navy and write a book, saying
which of your brother Admirals didn't win Jutland just to show you're
an Admiral as well."

H---- was right. I was a fool, certainly. But God drops the folly into
the world as well as the wisdom, and surely it's our job to pick up
bits of it. Besides, I've never been one for dinner-parties or the
artless prattle of young ladies, and so, thought I, could a man spend
his leave more profitably than in landing a snake like Julian Raphael?

I took myself off down to the East End with my oldest tweeds, a
toothbrush, and a growth on my chin. George Tarlyon came with me. He
had scented a row that night, and not the devil himself can keep
George from putting both his feet into the inside of a row. Besides,
he wanted to have a look at Miss Manana Cohen, saying he was a
connoisseur of Cohens and liked nothing so much as to watch them
turning into Curzons or Colquhouns. I wasn't sorry, for you can't have
a better man in a row than George Tarlyon, and with his damfool
remarks he'd make a miser forget he was at the Ritz. We took two rooms
in Canning Town, E., and very nice rooms they were, over a
ham-and-beef shop, and walked from pub to pub watching each other's
beards grow and listening for Julian Raphael. At least, I listened and
George talked.

You would naturally have thought that the likely place to find that
smart young man would be round about what journalists call the
"exclusive hotels and night-clubs of the West End." Not a bit of it.
We soon heard something of Julian Raphael's ways from one tough or
another. Tarlyon's idea of getting information delicately about a man
was to threaten to fight any one who wouldn't give it to him, and we
soon collected quite a bit that way.

Mr. Raphael was a Socialist, it appeared--remember, I'd guessed he was
clever?--and hated the rich. He hated the rich so bitterly that,
though he had a pretty fat bank-account of his own, he still clung to
his old quarters in the East End. But no one knew, or cared to give,
the address of his "old quarters," which were probably various.
Tarlyon threatened to fight any number of toughs who didn't "know" Mr.
Raphael's address, but they preferred to fight, and in the end George
got tired.

Oh, yes, Julian Raphael was certainly watched by the police, but he
was generally somewhere else while the police were watching him. And
Miss Manana Cohen was certainly his young lady-love, and she loved
him and lived with him, but he wouldn't marry her because of another
principle he had, that it was wrong for a man of independent spirit to
have a wife of his own. Nice boy, Mr. Julian Raphael. But it appeared
that he loved Miss Manana very decidedly and discouraged competition.
It also appeared that before he had taken to the downward path he had
been a juggler with knives on the music-halls. Knives again. Tarlyon
thought that a pretty good joke at the time, but he didn't enjoy it
nearly so much later on.

We had been pottering about down there several days and George was
just beginning to think of a nice shave and a bath, when we hit on our
first clue. The clue was walking up a grimy side-street by the East
India Docks.

"Oh, pretty!" says George. And she certainly was. She hadn't seen us.
She was in a hurry.

"We follow," I said.

"Naturally," says George. "A nice girl like that! What do you take me
for, a Y.M.C.A.?"

We followed. She walked fast, did Miss Manana. And it was queer, how
she lit up that grimy Godforsaken street. The way she was walking, you
might have taken her for a young gentlewoman "doing" the East End in a
hurry. Tall, lithe, quietly dressed--Julian Raphael's property! And
he'd made her scream with pain.

"Now what?" snapped George.

She had been about twenty yards ahead of us. Street darkish, deserted,
lined with warehouses, and all closed because it was a Saturday
afternoon. Suddenly, no Manana Cohen. We slipped after her quick as
you like. She had dived down a narrow passage between the warehouses.
We were just in time to see the tail of her skirt whisking through a
door in the wall a few yards up--and just in time to cut in after her.

"Oh!" she gasped. We must have looked a couple of cutthroats. And it
was dark in there. I was panting--nothing like a sailor's life for
keeping you thoroughly out of training, unless it's a soldier's. But
George was all there, being a good dancer.

"Miss Cohen, I believe?" he asks. All in whispers. She just stared at
us. George didn't want to scare her any more than I did. He was gay,
in that mood of his when he seems to be laughing more at himself than
at any one else. But she just stared at us. She was tall, as women go,
but we simply towered over the poor child. Then she recognised me and
went as red as a carnation. I couldn't think why. Tarlyon said
comfortingly: "There, there!"

Then she panted all in a jumble: "I'm sorry I was rude to you the
other night. Really I am. Please go away now, please!"

"I'm afraid we can't do that," I whispered. "We want----"

George, with his foot, gently shut the door behind us. We were in the
passage of the house or whatever it was. It was pitch-dark. I lit
another match.

"But what is it, what do you want?" the girl moaned.

"We just want to have a word with your young man," said George, the
idiot, in his ordinary voice.

"Oh!" she caught her breath. That gave the show away all right. Julian
Raphael was at home, whatever home was. Then the match went out. And
the lights went on, snap! Julian Raphael stood at the end of the
passage, pointing a revolver.

George said: "Don't be an ass!"

"Come here!" says Mr. Raphael to the girl.

"No, you don't!" said George, hauling her to him by the arm.

Julian Raphael smiled in that way he had. "If you don't let her go at
once," he says, "I shoot."

"You what!" I said.

Tarlyon laughed. You can hear him. He said: "Now don't be a fool all
your life, but stand at attention when you speak to my friend here,
because he's a knight. And put that comic gun away else I'll come and
hit you."

I couldn't help laughing. The young Jew looked so surprised. He'd
never been talked to just in that way, and it bothered him, he was
used to doing the laughing and being taken seriously. But I had
laughed too soon. There was a whizz by my ear, a thud on the door
behind me, and a knife an inch deep in the panel. The surprise had
given Manana a chance to slip away. She was by Mr. Raphael now at the
end of the passage. There wasn't light enough to make out what was
behind them, a stairway up or a stairway down. Down, I guessed, into
the bowels of the earth. Julian Raphael was smiling. I'll say it was
well thrown, that knife.

Tarlyon was livid. "By God," he whispered, "threw a knife at us! We
_are_ having a nice week-end!"

I held him back. What was the use? A little child could have led us at
knife-throwing. Julian Raphael said, with that infernal sneer of
his:--

"Gentlemen, I merely wanted to show you what to expect if you were to
advance another step. I wouldn't kill you--not yet. One of you, yes.
But it would cause comment, the disappearance of two fools. However I
might slice bits off your ears. Further, this is my house. Are you not
intruding? Gentlemen, you may go."

And, you know, we did. What the deuce else was there to do? If
Tarlyon with his infernal chuckling hadn't roused the man out of his
lair we might have taken him by surprise and learnt something of the
whereabouts of that counterfeiting business. But as it was, "go" was
us while the going was good. And the way Tarlyon swore when we were
outside made me glad it was a Saturday afternoon and the warehouses
were closed, else he might have corrupted the poor workmen.

"What do we do now?" he asked at last. "Lump it?"

"Well, at any rate, we know his address now."

"Address be blowed! That's not an address, Charles, but an exit. I'll
bet our smart friend doesn't press his trousers in that hole--and, by
Heaven, there you are!"

He made me jump. I hadn't, didn't, see anything. I thought it was
another knife.

"Never mind," snapped George. "Too late now. Come on, man, come on!"

He made me walk on. After reaching daylight from that passage between
the warehouses we had turned to the left, walked on a hundred
yards or so by the front of the warehouses, then to the left
again. This, running parallel to the passage, was a row of
quite respectable-looking houses all stuck together, as quite
respectable-looking houses should do in these times. There are streets
and streets of them down there, and I'm told white women sometimes
marry Chinamen just for the pleasure of living in them. But, as some
one has said, white women will do anything. We had come to the end of
a block when Tarlyon set up that howl and then shut me up.

"What the deuce!" I said again.

George said, walking on: "Jewboy has made one mistake. Naughty Jewboy.
Now have a look at that house we passed. Don't stare as though you
were an American looking at the Prince of Wales. Casually. The corner
one."

I turned and looked, casually. It was a house like another, and I said
so. George asked me how far I thought it was from the passage in which
I had nearly fielded Raphael's knife with my ear. I said it must be a
good way. Two hundred yards at least. There was a whole block of
warehouses and a row of houses in between.

"Quite," said George. We walked on. "Then how did Mr. Raphael get
there so quick? Not by the road. I just saw a piece of his delightful
face round the curtain of one of the windows. His one mistake, to have
let me see him. There must be an underground passage about two hundred
yards long between his warehouse address and his residence. You'll bet
the police have never spotted it yet, and I only spotted it because he
was so eager to see us well away. I don't think he likes us, Charles.
But I'd be pleased to know who is supposed to be living in that house.
And I'd take a bet that there's a nice counterfeiting _matine_ going
on this very moment somewhere between that house and that
warehouse-passage. Now you say something."

"The point is, George, do you think he saw you spot him?"

Tarlyon smiled. "There's always a catch. Trust the God of the Jews to
lay a snag for poor Gentiles. But I don't know. He mayn't have seen I
got him. But we will have to act as if he had. Get him quick, else
he'll be in the air. What's the time now? Nearly eight. We'll get back
to civilisation, try to catch H---- at his home address, come down
here to-night and surround the place. Fun. Hurray!"

I said: "Look here, George----"

He looked at me sharply. "I know what you are going to say, Charles.
Don't say it. You're old enough to know better."

But I stuck to my point. We must let H---- know at once, yes. Post men
at the warehouse entrance and the house entrance, certainly. Catch
Julian Raphael and his friend, decidedly. But we must give Manana
Cohen another chance. She was only a child--twenty-one or two at most.

George said: "Charles, don't be a silly old man. She is probably as
bad as any of them. You can't tell. Girls don't live a life like that
unless they want to."

I knew he was wrong. I just knew it. So I didn't argue, but stuck to
my point. The girl must be got out of the way before the place was
raided. If the police found her there, she would be jailed--perhaps
for years. I simply wouldn't have it. The girl was at the beginning of
her life. To jail her now would be to ruin her for all her life.

Tarlyon, of course, didn't need to be convinced. He was only leading
me on. Tarlyon wouldn't have put the police on a girl for trying to
boil him in oil. But I was right about Manana Cohen. Good God, don't I
know I was right! This had been her life, was her life, these dreary
streets, these foul alleys. Julian Raphael had found her, dazzled her,
seduced her, bullied her, broken her. What chance had the girl, ever?
She was timorous, you could see. A timid girl. No matter how kindly
you talked to her, she stared at you like a rabbit at a stoat. Life
was the stoat to Manana Cohen. Who knows what the girl hadn't already
suffered in her small life, what hell? Maybe she had loved Julian
Raphael, maybe she loved him now. That wasn't against her. Saints love
cads. It's the only way you can know a saint, mostly. Some of the
nicest women you and I know, Hilary, have been divorced for the love
of blackguards. Well, if Manana loved Raphael she would be punished
enough by seeing him go to prison for a long stretch. One might find
her a job on the stage, with her looks and figure. Good Lord, the way
that girl looked at you when you so much as opened your mouth, her
black eyes shivering as though her heart was hurt.

We found a taxi in the Whitechapel Road. To civilisation. Tarlyon was
quiet. I wondered if he thought I was in love with the girl. Me, at my
age! As we rattled through Cheapside--deserted on a Saturday
afternoon--Tarlyon said: "We will have to think of a way of getting
the girl out of the place beforehand. But how? If we warn her she will
naturally pass the glad news on to her man. Naturally."

Naturally, I agreed. She wouldn't be herself if she went back on her
man. I said I would think of a way as I bathed and dressed for dinner.
As George dropped me at my flat he said:--

"Let's say dinner in an hour's time at White's. Meanwhile I'll ring up
H----. Maybe he will dine with us. I suppose it will be about midnight
before we get down there with his men. I'll tell you one thing, I'm
not going to have knives chucked at me on an empty stomach--for I'll
not be left out of this, not for all the knives in Christendom and
Jewry. This is a real treasure-hunt as compared to chasing poppycock
with children round Regent's Park and chickenfood with flappers up
Piccadilly. I said midnight, Charles, to give you a chance of getting
Miss Manana Colquhoun clear away. Wish you luck!"

But fate wouldn't be bullied by George Almeric St. George Tarlyon.
Fate had ideas of her own. Or is fate a he? No, it would be a woman,
for she hates slim women. I've noticed that in the East, where no slim
woman ever comes to any good. I hadn't finished glancing at my
letters, while my bath was running, when my man announced a young
lady.

"A young what?" I said.

He was surprised too. I went into the sitting-room. Manana Cohen was
by the open door, as though she was afraid to come right in.

I said: "Thank Heaven you've come!" Extraordinary thing to say, but I
said it.

She tried to smile. All scared eyes. I thought she was going to faint,
tried to make her sit down, fussed about. Hilary, I'm trying to tell
you I was shy.

"I'm frightened," she said, as though that would be news for me. Then
it all came out in that jumbled way of hers. She had given Raphael the
slip, had found my address in the telephone-book, had come to me to
warn me.

"To warn me!" I gasped. The cheek of these young people! Here were we
and all Scotland Yard after them--and she had come to warn me!

"Yes. Listen." Then she stopped. Suddenly, she blushed crimson.

I said: "Now, Manana, what is it? What on earth is there to blush
about?"

She tried not to stammer as she said: "I can't help it. Julian's after
you. He's out to kill. He hates you once and he hates you twice
because he thinks I'm in love with you. I don't know why. He's just
mad jealous. I know Julian. And they'll never catch him. Never. The
fool police! I just thought I'd warn you. Go away, please go away--out
of London. I feel if you die it will be my fault. He'll throw you if
you don't go away. I know Julian. You'll be walking up Piccadilly one
evening, this evening, perhaps. Suddenly, swish, knife in your back.
No one will know who threw it in the crowd. He could throw it from the
top of a 'bus and no one notice. He never misses."

I said: "So, Manana, he thinks you love me. Why does he think that?"

She wasn't blushing now. She was quite calm now. She had never moved
from the open door. Her eyes wouldn't meet mine. They shone like
anything in that white face. She just said: "Now I've warned you, I
must go back. He will miss me. I'm glad I warned you. I think you must
be a good man. Good-bye. But go away, please go away at once!
Good-bye."

I couldn't stop her by touching her, else she would have got scared. I
just told her not to go back East. We were going to raid Julian
Raphael's place that night.

"You came to warn me," I said, "but I was just coming to warn you. My
friend and I don't want you to go to prison, Manana. You had better
stay away from there for the present. I can find you somewhere to stay
to-night, if you like. You can trust me."

She opened her eyes very wide, but all she said was: "I must go back
at once."

I began to protest, but she went on tonelessly: "You don't understand.
I came to warn you because you are a good man. You are, aren't you?
I'm sorry I was led into laughing at you that night. He pinched my arm
when I didn't laugh. But I must stand by Julian. He is my man, good or
bad. You see? He has been kind to me in his way. He loves me. I must
go back to him at once. If you make me promise not to tell him about
the police, I won't. I won't tell him anyway, I think. He must go to
prison. It is time, because he will do more murders. I hate murders.
But I will go with him to prison. And that will make it all right
between Julian and me. Good-bye."

It was good-bye. I knew it was no use arguing. With some women one
doesn't know when it's any good or not, with a few one does. They're
the ones who count. I could hold her by force, of course--for her own
good. Dear God, the lies we can tell ourselves! If I held her by force
from going back to Julian Raphael it would not have been so much for
her own good as for mine. I hated her going, I wanted her. But she
must do as she thought right. Every one must always, in spite of
everything. I'm glad I've never married, Hilary, I would have made a
mess of it just by always seeing my wife's point of view.

I saw Manana downstairs to the door. It was raining the deuce, and the
difference between twilight and night was about the same as that
between a man of colour and a nigger. Manana and I stood close
together in the open doorway. It was good-bye. I said: "Perhaps they
will let you off. I will do my best. Come to me for help later on.
Good-bye, Manana. Thank you."

She smiled. The first and last smile I ever saw light that face. "I
must never see you again," she said, and then the laughter of Julian
Raphael tore the smile from her face.

My rooms, as you know, are in Curzon Street: at the rather grubby end
where Curzon Street, as though finally realising that it is deprived
of the residential support of the noble family of that name, slopes
helplessly down to a slit in a grey wall called Lansdowne Passage. I
don't know if you ever have occasion to go through there. When it is
dark in London it is darker in Lansdowne Passage. It leads, between
Lansdowne House and the wreck of Devonshire House, to Berkeley Street.
There is a vertical iron bar up the middle of each opening, which I'm
told were originally put there to prevent highwaymen making a dash
through the Passage to the open country round Knightsbridge. Against
that vertical iron bar leant Julian Raphael. I remember he had a pink
shirt on. Our young dandy always showed a stretch of cuff. Between us
and him there was one of those very tall silver-grey lamp-posts. You
could see him round the edge of it, a black, lean, lounging shape. And
that pink shirt.

"Manana, I followed you!" he cried. And he laughed.

The girl whispered frantically to me: "Get in, get in, get in!"

I said "What?" like a fool. She tried to push me inside the doorway. I
was looking at her, not at Julian Raphael. I didn't understand. There
was a scream from the twilight: "Mind out, Manana!" Manana jumped in
front of me. That's all.

I held her as she fell backward. She just sighed.

"Manana!" the voice screamed again. Oh, in terror! The knife was up to
the hilt in her throat.

I think I lost my head completely for the first time in my life. I
made a dash towards the figure in the opening of Lansdowne Passage. He
didn't move, didn't even see me coming. He was sobbing like a baby.
Then I changed my mind and rushed back to Manana. Lay a flower on a
pavement in the rain, and you have Manana as I last saw her. Her
eyelids fluttered once or twice. The rain was washing the blood from
her throat into the gutter. My man had come down and was doing his
best. I looked through the twilight at the crumpled black figure
against the iron bar.

"She's dead, Raphael!" I called, whispering to my man: "Go, get him!"

He did his best, poor devil. Raphael yelled: "Yes, for you! And I'll
never throw but one more knife--but I'll do that if I have to come
back from hell to do it!" He was gone, through Lansdowne Passage. My
wretched man hadn't a chance. That night and for days there wasn't a
port in England that H---- left unwatched for Julian Raphael. But, as
in the storybooks, he has never been seen or heard of again. H---- has
an idea he is somewhere in the Americas.

But it's not quite true (the Admiral added) that Julian Raphael has
never been seen or heard of again. I have seen him and heard him,
quite lately--in a sort of way. Of course it can be no more than a
trick of the imagination. He has probably been more on my mind
recently than I had realised. But the illusion is quite definitely
vivid and unpleasant. And I can tell you it gets rather on a man's
nerves, this comic talk of knives on Piccadilly. Imagination, Hilary,
can play us queer, dark tricks sometimes. And it's no good trying to
explain them with spirit talk. The mind is a dark place and we don't
know what's in the sky, and that's all there is to it.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. Townshend had listened gravely. A grey man, of the type
conscientiously staid, Mr. Townshend found no aspect of this our life
on earth which was not a proper occasion for the exercise of gravity,
command of temper, and forbearance. He therefore forbore to make any
comment on his friend's tale, but merely remarked:

"You ought not to stay in London, Charles. An unhealthy place, at
best. Why not come down to Magralt with me to-morrow? Guy de Travest
is coming. There's some fishing. Not much, and that little is poor,
but you can always smoke in peace."

Sir Charles laughed. "You talk like Manana! But, anyhow, I am due at
Portsmouth the day after to-morrow. No, no, I'll see my time out in
London. I've been in most corners of the world, Hilary, and never
found romance but in London."

"Hm!" said Mr. Townshend thoughtfully. "You have an odd idea of
romance, Charles. Romance! And I don't, as a general rule, believe in
apparitions. Hm! Have you rung up H---- to tell him of the
reappearance of this remarkably unpleasant youth?"

"And he laughed me to scorn! Was ready, in fact, to lay a pony against
Raphael's being within a thousand miles of London or England."

"You never know," said Mr. Townshend thoughtfully.

"Never know what, Hilary?"

"Where you are," said Mr. Townshend thoughtfully. "With Jews."

It was on the night following this conversation that the Admiral, on
emerging from the Celibates Club, made an astonishing suggestion to
Hunt the commissionaire.

"Hunt," says Sir Charles, "do you mind walking with me down to the
Piccadilly corner? I will know then that I am actually moving and not
just standing here and thinking I'm moving. You see my point, Hunt?"

"Certainly, Sir Charles. I quite understand."

"I'm glad some one does!" sighed our gentleman.

The commissionaire with the lined face, whose own antipathy to wine in
his youth had not been insuperable, could sympathise with the
Admiral's probable condition, while admiring the correct address with
which, as became a gentleman of the sea, he bore his suffering.

"See any Jews about, Hunt?" the Admiral asked, as they came to the
Piccadilly corner.

"Not definitely, Sir Charles. But a couple of Rolls-Royces have just
passed. Good-night, Sir Charles."

"Good-night, Hunt."

Those were the last words the ancient commissionaire was ever to hear
from his good friend the Admiral. For as Sir Charles made to cross
Piccadilly from Albemarle Street to St. James's Street he heard that
"whizz" behind him. He had been expecting it, but it startled him. He
half-turned and jumped sideways, colliding with the bonnet of a
fast-moving car.

There was a terrific din about him as he raised himself to his hands
and knees. It deafened him, the din of engines and voices. Many voices
seemed to be arguing. Then, as he rose to his feet, the din happily
receded. There was silence, but the silence of a pleasant voice. He
walked on to St. James's Street, glad things had been no worse. Then
he saw the face of Julian Raphael. It was just in front of him,
smiling. He was holding out his hand to Sir Charles, smiling. He was
beautiful. Behind his shoulder was Manana. She was laughing at Sir
Charles's bewilderment. Then, as he stared at them, they pointed over
his shoulder. They were still laughing. Behind him, in the middle of
Piccadilly, there was a great crowd around a large motor-car and a
prostrate figure that looked oddly like a dingy travesty of himself.
That is how it was, but still he did not understand. Julian Raphael
and Manana laughed at him and each took him by an arm and walked with
him down the slope of St. James's Street. There was a valley at the
foot of St. James's Street, and over the valley a golden cloud as
large as a continent. Many people were walking about, looking calm and
clean and happy. Manana was still laughing happily.

"Julian died last night in Paris," she told Sir Charles. "He was just
coming over to London to kill you. Isn't it idiotic? I don't say he
loves you now, but he's willing to consider an intelligent friendship.
Aren't you, Julian? Death isn't at all what the Salvation Army thinks,
Charles. You'll be surprised. You're just yourself, that's all. Funny
you have to die before you're allowed to be yourself. Oh, look! Look,
Charles! Isn't it beautiful! Charles, let's walk and walk and walk!"

"Just look at those asses behind!" cried Julian Raphael, shouting with
laughter. But now the people at the head of St. James's Street were
very faint, the clear golden air of the sun triumphant was falling
between Sir Charles's eyes and the people grouped round the prostrate
figure that looked oddly like a dingy travesty of himself.

"If they only knew," said Manana gravely, "that living is worth while
just because one has to die! Come on, Charles, let's walk!"

"Here, and me!" cried Julian Raphael.

"Young man," said the Admiral severely, "you just stay where you are.
I have been waiting a long time for this walk with Manana."

"I'll follow you. Where are you going to walk to?"

"You can't follow us, Julian," laughed Manana. "They won't let you,
yet. Naturally, dear, considering how awful you've been. You can have
a drink while we're gone."

"A drink?" said Sir Charles. "But, good Lord, he can't have a drink
here, can he?"

"But why not?" Manana laughed. "There's only one hell, dear, and
that's on earth. Come on, come on! We'll walk towards that golden
cloud and back!"




_The Gentleman from America_


I

It is told by a decayed gentleman at the sign of _The Leather Butler_,
which is in Shepherd's Market, which is in Mayfair, how one night
three men behaved in a most peculiar way; and one of them was left for
dead.

Towards twelve o'clock on a night in the month of November some years
ago, three men were ascending the noble stairway of a mansion in
Grosvenor Square. The mansion, although appointed in every detail--to
suit, however, a severe taste--had yet a sour atmosphere, as of a
house long untenanted but by caretakers.

The first of the men, for they ascended in single file, held aloft a
kitchen candlestick, whilst his companions made the best progress they
could among the deep shadows that the faulty light cast on the oaken
stairway. He who went last, the youngest of the three, said gaily:--

"Mean old bird, my aunt! Cutting off the electric-light just because
she is away."

"Fur goodness' sake!" said the other.

The leader, whose face the candlelight revealed as thin almost to
asceticism, a face white and tired, finely moulded but soiled in
texture by the dissipations of a man of the world, contented himself
with a curt request to his young friend not to speak so loud.

It was, however, the gentleman in between the two whom it will
advantage the reader to consider. This was an unusually tall and
strongly-built man. Yet it was not his giant stature, but rather the
assurance of his bearing, which was remarkable. His very clothes sat
on his huge frame with an air of firmness, of finality, that, as even
a glance at his two companions would show, is deprecated by English
tailors, whose inflexible formula it is that the elegance of the
casual is the only possible elegance for gentlemen of the mode. While
his face had that weathered, yet untired and eager look which is the
enviable possession of many Americans, and is commonly considered to
denote, for reasons not very clearly defined, the quality known as
Poise. Not, however, that this untired and eager look is, as some have
supposed, the outward sign of a lack of interest in dissipation, but
rather of an enthusiastic and nave curiosity as to the varieties of
the same. The gentleman from America looked, in fine, to be a proper
man; and one who, in his early thirties, had established a philosophy
of which his comfort and his assurance of retaining it were the two
poles, his easy perception of humbug the pivot, and his fearlessness
the latitude and longitude.

It was on the second landing that the leader, whose name was Quillier,
and on whom the dignity of an ancient baronetcy seemed to have an
almost intolerably tiring effect, flung open a door. He did not pass
into the room, but held the candlestick towards the gentleman from
America. And his manner was so impersonal as to be almost rude, which
is a fault of breeding when it is bored.

"The terms of the bet," said Quillier, "are that this candle must
suffice you for the night. That is understood?"

"Sure, why not?" smiled the gentleman from America. "It's a bum bet,
and it looks to me like a bum candle. But do I care? No, sir!"

"Further," continued the impersonal, pleasant voice, "that you are
allowed no matches, and therefore cannot relight the candle when it
has gone out. That if you can pass the night in that room,
Kerr-Anderson and I pay you five hundred pounds. And _vice versa_."

"That's all right, Quillier. We've got all that." The gentleman from
America took the candle from Quillier's hand and looked into the room,
but with no more than faint interest. In that faulty light little
could be seen but the oak-panelling, the heavy hangings about the
great bed, and a steel engraving of a Meissonier duellist lunging at
them from a wall nearby.

"Seldom," said he, "have I seen a room look less haunted----"

"Ah," vaguely said Sir Cyril Quillier.

"But," said the gentleman from America, "since you and Kerr-Anderson
insist on presenting me with five hundred pounds for passing the night
in it, do I complain? No, sir!"

"Got your revolver?" queried young Kerr-Anderson, a chubby youth whose
profession was dining out.

"That is so," said the gentleman from America.

Quillier said: "Well, Puce, I don't mind telling you that I had just
as soon this silly business was over. I have been betting all my life,
but I have always had a preference for those bets which did not turn
on a man's life or death----"

"Say, listen, Quillier, you can't frighten me with that junk!" snapped
Mr. Puce.

"My aunt," said young Kerr-Anderson, "will be very annoyed if anything
happens and she gets to hear of it. She hates a corpse in her house
more than any one I know. You're sure you are going on with it, Puce?"

"Boy, if Abraham Lincoln was to come up this moment and tell me Queen
Anne was dead, I'd be as sure he was speaking the truth as that I'm
going to spend this night in this old haunted room of your aunt's.
Yes, sir! And now I'll give you good-night, boys. Warn your mothers to
be ready to give you five hundred pounds to hand on to Howard
Cornelius Puce."

"I like Americans," said Quillier vaguely. "They are so enthusiastic.
Good-night, Puce, and God bless you. I hope you have better luck than
the last man who spent a night in that room. He was strangled.
Good-night, my friend."

"Aw, have a heart!" growled Mr. Puce. "You get a guy so low with your
talk that I feel I could put on a tall-hat and crawl under a snake."


II

The gentleman from America, alone in the haunted room, lost none of
his composure. Indeed, if anything disturbed him at all, it was that,
irritated by Quillier's manner at a dinner-party a few nights before,
and knowing Quillier to be a bankrupt wastrel, he had allowed himself
to be dared into this silly adventure and had thus deprived himself
for one night of the amenities of his suite at Claridge's Hotel. Five
hundred pounds more or less did not matter very much to Mr. Puce:
although, to be sure, it was some consolation to know that five
hundred pounds more or less must matter quite a deal to _Sir_ Cyril
Quillier, for all his swank. Mr. Puce, like a good American, following
the Gospel according to Mr. Sinclair Lewis, always stressed the titles
of any of his acquaintance.

Now, he contented himself with a very cursory examination of the dim,
large room; he rapped, in an amateurish way, on the oak panels here
and there for any sign of any "secret passage junk," but succeeded
only in soiling his knuckles, and it was only when, fully clothed, he
had thrown himself on the great bed that it occurred to him that five
hundred pounds sterling was quite a pretty sum to have staked about a
damfool haunted room.

The conclusion that naturally leapt to one's mind, thought Mr. Puce,
was that the room must have something the matter with it, else would a
hawk like Quillier have bet money on its qualities of terror? Mr. Puce
had, indeed, suggested, when first the bet was put forward, that five
hundred pounds was perhaps an unnecessary sum to stake on so idiotic a
fancy; but Quillier had said in a very tired way that he never bet
less than five hundred on anything, but that if Mr. Puce preferred to
bet with poppycock and chickenfood, he, Quillier, would be pleased to
introduce him to some very jolly children of his acquaintance.

Such thoughts persuaded Mr. Puce to rise and examine more carefully
the walls and appointments of the room. But as the furniture was
limited to the barest necessities, and as the oak-panelled walls
appeared in the faint light to be much the same as any other walls,
the gentleman from America swore vaguely and again reclined on the
bed. It was a very comfortable bed.

He had made up his mind, however, that he would not sleep. He would
watch out, thought Mr. Puce, for any sign of this old ghost, and he
would listen with the ears of a coyote, thought Mr. Puce, for any hint
of those rapping noises, rude winds, musty odours, clanking of chains,
and the like, with which, so Mr. Puce had always understood, the
family ghosts of Britishers invariably heralded their foul appearance.

Mr. Puce, you can see, did not believe in ghosts. He could not but
think, however, that some low trick might be played on him, since on
the honour of _Sir_ Cyril Quillier, peer though he was--for Mr. Puce,
like a good American, could never get the cold dope on all this fancy
title stuff--he had not the smallest reliance. But as to the
supernatural, Mr. Puce's attitude was always a wholesome
scepticism--and a rather aggressive scepticism at that, as Quillier
had remarked with amusement when he had spoken of the ghost in, as he
had put it, the house of Kerr-Anderson's aunt. Quillier had said:--

"There are two sorts of men on whom ghosts have an effect: those who
are silly enough to believe in them, and those who are silly enough
not to believe in them."

Mr. Puce had been annoyed at that. He detested clever back-chat. "I'll
tell the world," Mr. Puce had said, "that a plain American has to go
to a drug-store after a conversation with you."

Mr. Puce, lying on the great bed, whose hangings depressed him,
examined his automatic and found it good. He had every intention of
standing no nonsense, and an automatic nine-shooter is, as Mr. Puce
remembered having read somewhere, an Argument. Indeed, Mr. Puce was
full of those dour witticisms about the effect of a "gun" on everyday
life which go to make the less pretentious "movies" so entertaining;
although, to be sure, he did not know more than a very little about
guns. Travellers have remarked, however, that the exciting traditions
behind a hundred-per-cent. American nationality have given birth in
even the most gentle citizens of that great republic to a feeling of
familiarity with "guns," as such homely phrases as "slick with the
steel mit," "doggone son of a gun," and the like, go to prove.

Mr. Puce placed the sleek little automatic on a small table by the
bed, on which stood the candle and, as he realised for the first time,
a book. One glance at the paper-jacket of the book was enough to
convince the gentleman from America that its presence there must be
due to one of Quillier's tired ideas. It showed a woman of striking,
if conventional, beauty, fighting for her life with a shape which
might or might not be the wraith of a bloodhound but was certainly
something quite outside a lovely woman's daily experience. Mr. Puce
laughed. The book was called, _Tales of Terror for Tiny Tots_, by
_Ivor Pelham Marlay_.

The gentleman from America was a healthy man, and needed his sleep;
and it was therefore with relief that he turned to Mr. Marlay's
absurd-looking book as a means of keeping himself awake. The tale at
which the book came open was called _The Phantom Footsteps_; and Mr.
Puce prepared himself to be entertained, for he was not of those who
read for instruction. He read:--


THE PHANTOM FOOTSTEPS

The tale of The Phantom Footsteps is still whispered with awe and
loathing among the people of that decayed but genteel district of
London known to those who live in it as Belgravia and to others as
Pimlico.

Julia and Geraldine Biggot-Baggot were twin sisters who lived with
their father, a widower, in a town in Lancashire called Wigan, or it
may have been called Bolton. The tale finds Julia and Geraldine in
their nineteenth year, and it also finds them in a very bad temper,
for they were yearning for a more spacious life than can be found in
Wigan, or it might be, Bolton. This yearning their neighbours found
all the more inexplicable since the parents of the girls were of
Lancashire stock, their mother having been a Biggot from Wigan and
their father a Baggot from Bolton.

The reader can imagine with what excess of gaiety Julia and Geraldine
heard one day from their father that he had inherited a considerable
property from a distant relation; and the reader can go on imagining
the exaltation of the girls when they heard that the property included
a mansion in Belgravia, since that for which they had always yearned
most was to enjoy, from a central situation, the glittering life of
the metropolis.

Their father preceded them from Wigan, or was it Bolton? He was a man
of a tidy disposition, and wished to see that everything in the
Belgravia house was ready against his daughters' arrival. When Julia
and Geraldine did arrive, however, they were admitted by a genial old
person of repellent aspect and disagreeable odour, who informed them
that she was doing a bit of charing about the house but would be gone
by the evening. Their father, she added, had gone into the country to
engage servants, but would be back the next day; and he had instructed
her to tell Julia and Geraldine not to be nervous of sleeping alone in
a strange house, that there was nothing to be afraid of, and that he
would, anyhow, be with them first thing in the morning.

Now Julia and Geraldine, though twins, were of vastly different
temperaments; for whereas Julia was a girl of gay and indomitable
spirit who knew not fear, Geraldine suffered from agonies of timidity
and knew nothing else. When, for instance, night fell and found them
alone in the house, Julia could scarcely contain her delight at the
adventure; while it was with difficulty that Geraldine could support
the tremors that shook her girlish frame.

Imagine, then, how differently they were affected when, as they lay in
bed in their room towards the top of the house, they distinctly heard
from far below a noise, as of some one moving. Julia sat up in bed,
intent, unafraid, curious. Geraldine swooned.

"It's only a cat," Julia whispered. "I'm going down to see."

"Don't!" sighed Geraldine. "For pity's _sake_ don't leave me, Julia!"

"Oh, don't be so childish!" snapped Julia. "Whenever there's the
chance of the least bit of fun you get shivers down your spine. But as
you are so frightened I will lock the door from the outside and take
the key with me, so that no one can get in when I am not looking. Oh,
I hope it's a burglar! I'll give him the fright of his life, see if I
don't."

And the indomitable girl went, feeling her way to the door in
darkness, for to have switched on the light would have been to warn
the intruder, if there was one, that the house was inhabited; whereas
it was the plucky girl's conceit to turn the tables on the burglar, if
there was one, by suddenly appearing to him as an avenging phantom;
for having done not a little district-visiting in Wigan, or, possibly,
Bolton, no one knew better than Julia of the depths of base
superstition among the vulgar.

A little calmed by her sister's nonchalance, Geraldine lay still as a
mouse in the darkness, with her pretty head beneath the bedclothes.
From without came not a sound, and the very stillness of the house had
impelled Geraldine to a new access of terror had she not concentrated
on the works of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, which tell of the grit of the
English people.

Then, as though to test the grit of the English people in the most
abominable way, came a dull noise from below. Geraldine restrained a
scream, lay breathless in the darkness. The dull noise, however, was
not repeated, and presently Geraldine grew a little calmer, thinking
that maybe her sister had dropped a slipper or something of the sort.
But the reader can imagine into what terror the poor girl had been
plunged had she been a student of the detective novels of the day, for
then she must instantly have recognised the dull noise as a dull thud,
and what can a dull thud mean but one thing?

It was as she was praying a prayer to Our Lady that her ears grew
aware of footsteps ascending the stairs. Her first feeling was one of
infinite relief. Of course Julia had been right, and there had been
nothing downstairs but a cat or, perhaps, a dog. And now Julia was
returning, and in a second they would have a good laugh together.
Indeed, it was all Geraldine could do to restrain herself from
jumping out of bed to meet her sister, when she was assailed by a
terrible doubt; and on the instant her mind grew so charged with fear
that she could no longer hold back her sobs. Suppose it was not Julia
ascending! Suppose ... "Oh, God!" sobbed Geraldine.

Transfixed with terror, yet hopeful of the best, the poor girl could
not even command herself to re-insert her head beneath the sheets. And
always the ascending steps came nearer. As they approached the door,
she thought she would die of uncertainty. But as the key was fitted
into the lock she drew a deep breath of relief--to be at once shaken
by the most acute agony of doubt, so that she had given anything in
the world to be back again in Wigan, or, even better, Bolton.

"Julia!" she sobbed. "Julia!"

For the door had opened, the footsteps were in the room, and Geraldine
thought she recognised her sister's maidenly tread. But why did Julia
not speak, why this intolerable silence? Geraldine, peer as hard as
she might, could make out nothing in the darkness. The footsteps
seemed to fumble in their direction, but came always nearer to the
bed, in which poor Geraldine lay more dead than alive. Oh, why did
Julia not speak, just to reassure her?

"Julia!" sobbed Geraldine. "Julia!"

The footsteps seemed to fumble about the floor with an indecision
maddening to Geraldine's distraught nerves. But at last they came
beside the bed--and there they stood! In the awful silence Geraldine
could hear her heart beating like a hammer on a bell.

"Oh!" the poor girl screamed. "What is it, Julia? Why don't you
speak?"

But never a sound nor a word gave back the livid silence, never a sigh
nor a breath, though Julia must be standing within a yard of the bed.

"Oh, she is only trying to frighten me, the beast!" poor Geraldine
thought; and, unable for another second to bear the cruel silence, she
timidly stretched out a hand to touch her sister--when, to her
infinite relief, her fingers touched the white rabbit-fur with which
Julia's dressing-gown was delicately trimmed.

"You beast, Julia!" she sobbed and laughed. Never a word, however,
came from the still shape. Geraldine, impatient of the continuation of
a joke which seemed to her in the worst of taste, raised her hand from
the fur, that she might touch her sister's face; but her fingers had
risen no farther than Julia's throat when they touched something wet
and warm, and with a scream of indiscribable terror Geraldine fainted
away.

When Mr. Biggot-Baggot admitted himself into the house early the next
morning, his eyes were assailed by a dreadful sight. At the foot of
the stairs was a pool of blood, from which, in a loathsome trail,
drops of blood wound up the stairway.

Mr. Biggot-Baggot, fearful lest something out of the way had happened
to his beloved daughters, rushed frantically up the stairs. The trail
of blood led to his daughters' room; and there, in the doorway, the
poor gentleman stood appalled, so foul was the sight that met his
eyes. His beloved Geraldine lay on the bed, her hair snow-white, her
lips raving with the shrill fancies of a maniac. While on the floor
beside the bed lay stretched, in a pool of blood, his beloved Julia,
her head half-severed from her trunk.

The tragic story unfolded only when the police arrived. It then became
clear that Julia, her head half-severed from her body, and therefore a
corpse, had yet, with indomitable purpose, come upstairs to warn her
timid sister against the homicidal lunatic who, just escaped from an
asylum near by, had penetrated into the house. However, the police
consoled the distracted father not a little by pointing out that the
escape of the homicidal lunatic from the asylum had done some good,
insomuch as there would now be room in an asylum near her home for
Geraldine.


III

When the gentleman from America had read the last line of _The Phantom
Footsteps_ he closed the book with a slam, and, in his bitter
impatience with the impossible work, was making to hurl it across the
room, when, unfortunately, his circling arm overturned the candle. The
candle, of course, went out.

"Aw, hell!" said Mr. Puce bitterly, and he thought: "Another good mark
to _Sir_ Cyril Quillier! Won't I Sir him one some day! For only a
lousy guy with a face like a drummer's overdraft would have bought a
damfool book like that."

The tale of _The Phantom Footsteps_ had annoyed him very much; but
what annoyed him even more was the candle's extinction, for the
gentleman from America knew himself too well to bet a nickel on his
chances of remaining awake in a dark room.

He did, however, manage to keep awake for some time merely by
concentrating on wicked words: on Quillier's face, and how its tired,
mocking expression would change for the better were his, Puce's, foot
to be firmly pressed down on its surface, and on Julia and Geraldine.
For the luckless twins, by the almost criminal idiocy with which they
were presented, kept walking about Mr. Puce's mind; and as he began to
nod to the demands of a healthy and tired body he could not resist
wondering if their home-town had been Wigan or Bolton and if Julia's
head had been severed from ear to ear or only half-way....

When he awoke, it was the stillness of the room that impressed his
sharply-awakened senses. The room was very still.

"Who's there!" snapped Mr. Puce. Then, really awake, laughed at
himself. "Say, what would plucky little Julia have done?" he thought,
chuckling. "Why, got up and looked!"

But the gentleman from America discovered in himself a reluctance to
move from the bed. He was very comfortable on the bed. Besides, he had
no light and could see nothing if he did move. Besides, he had heard
nothing at all, not the faintest noise. He had merely awoken rather
more sharply than usual....

Suddenly, he sat up on the bed, his back against the oak head.
Something had moved in the room. He was certain something had moved.
Somewhere by the foot of the bed.

"Aw, drop that!" laughed Mr. Puce.

His eyes peering into the darkness, Mr. Puce stretched his right hand
to the table on which stood the automatic. The gesture reminded him of
Geraldine's when she had touched the white rabbit-fur. Aw, Geraldine
nothing! These idiotic twins kept chasing about a man's mind. The
gentleman from America grasped the automatic firmly in his hand. His
hand felt as though it had been born grasping an automatic.

"I want to tell you," said Mr. Puce into the darkness, "that some one
is now going to have something coming to him, her, or it."

It was quite delicious, the feeling that he was not frightened. He had
always known he was a helluva fellow. But he had never been quite
certain. Now he was certain. He was the regular.

But, if anything had moved, it moved no more. Maybe, though, nothing
had moved at all, ever. Maybe it was only his half-awakened senses
that had played him a trick. He was rather sorry, if that was so. He
was just beginning to enjoy the evening.

The room was very still. The gentleman from America could only hear
himself breathing.

Something moved again, distinctly.

"What the hell!" snapped Mr. Puce.

He levelled the automatic towards the foot of the bed.

"I will now," said Mr. Puce grimly, "shoot."

The room was very still. The gentleman from America wished, forcibly,
that he had a light. It was no good leaving the bed without a light.
He'd only fall over the infernal thing, whatever it was. What would
plucky little Julia have done? Aw, Julia nothing! He strained his ears
to catch another movement, but he could only hear himself
breathing--in short, sharp gasps! The gentleman from America pulled
himself together.

"Say, listen!" he snapped into the darkness. "I am going to count ten.
I am then going to shoot. In the meanwhile you can make up your mind
whether or not you are going to stay right here to watch the
explosion. One. Two. Three. Four ..."

Then Mr. Puce interrupted himself. He had to. It was so funny. He
laughed. He heard himself laugh, and again it was quite delicious, the
feeling that he was not frightened. And wouldn't they laugh, the boys
at the Booster Club back home, when he sprung this yarn on them! He
could hear them. Oh, Boy! Say, listen, trying to scare him, Howard
Cornelius Puce, with a ghost like that! Aw, it was like shooting craps
with a guy that couldn't count. Poor old Quillier! Never bet less than
five hundred on anything, didn't he, the poor boob! Well, there wasn't
a ghost made, with or without a head on him, that could put the wind
up Howard Puce. No, sir!

For, as his eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, and helped by
the mockery of light that the clouded, moonless night just managed to
thrust through the distant window, the gentleman from America had been
able to make out a form at the foot of the bed. He could only see its
upper half, and that appeared to end above the throat. The phantom had
no head. Whereas, Julia's head had been only half-severed from--aw,
what the hell!

"A family like the Kerr-Andersons," began Mr. Puce, chuckling--but
suddenly found, to his astonishment, that he was shouting at the top
of his voice; anyhow, it sounded so. However, he began again, much
lower, but still chuckling:--

"Say, listen, Mr. Ghost, a family like the Kerr-Andersons might have
afforded a head and a suit of clothes for their family ghost. Sir, you
are one big bum phantom!" Again, unaccountably, Mr. Puce found himself
shouting at the top of his voice. "I am going on counting," he added
grimly.

And, his automatic levelled at the thing's heart, the gentleman from
America went on counting. His voice was steady.

"Five ... six ..."

He sat crouched at the head of the bed, his eyes never off the thing's
breast. Phantom nothing! He didn't believe in that no-head bunk. What
the hell! He thought of getting a little nearer the foot of the bed
and catching the thing a whack on that invisible head of his, but
decided to stay where he was.

"Seven ... eight ..."

He hadn't seen the hands before. Gee, some hands! And arms! Holy
Moses, he'd got long arms to him, he had....

"Nine!" said the gentleman from America.

Christopher and Columbus, but this would make some tale back home!
Yes, sir! Not a bad idea of Quillier's, that, though! Those arms. Long
as old glory ... long as the bed! Not bad for _Sir_ Cyril Quillier,
that idea....

"Ten, you swine!" yelled the gentleman from America, and fired.

Some one laughed. Mr. Puce quite distinctly heard himself laughing,
and that made him laugh again. Fur goodness' sake, what a shot! Missed
from that distance!

His eyes, as he made to take aim again, were bothered by the drops of
sweat from his forehead. "Aw, what the hell!" said Mr. Puce, and fired
again.

The silence after the second shot was like a black cloud on the
darkness. Mr. Puce thought out the wickedest word he knew, and said
it. Well, he wasn't going to miss again. No, sir! His hand was steady
as iron, too. Iron was his second name. And again the gentleman from
America found it quite delicious, the feeling that he was not
frightened. Attaboy! The drops of sweat from his forehead bothered
him, though. Aw, what the hell, that was only excitement.

He raised his arm for the third shot. Jupiter and Jane, but he'd learn
that ghost to stop ghosting! He was certainly sorry for that ghost. He
wished, though, that he could concentrate more on the actual body of
the headless thing. There it was, darn it, at the foot of the bed,
staring at him--well, it would have been staring at him if it had a
head. Aw, of course it had a head! It was only Quillier with his lousy
face in a black wrap. _Sir_ Cyril Quillier'd get one piece of lead in
him this time, though. His own fault, the bastard.

"Say, listen, Quillier," said the gentleman from America, "I want to
tell you that unless you quit, you are a corpse. Now I mean it, sure
as my name is Howard Cornelius Puce. I have been shooting to miss so
far. Yes, sir. But I am now _an_noyed."

If only, though, he could concentrate more on the body of the thing,
His eyes kept wandering to the hands and arms. Gee, but they sure were
long, those arms! As long as the bed, no less. Just long enough for
the hands to get at him from the foot of the bed. And that's what they
were at, what's more! Coming nearer. What the hell! They were moving,
those doggone arms, nearer and nearer....

Mr. Puce fired again.

That was no miss. He knew that was no miss. Right through the heart,
that little boy must have gone. In that darkness he couldn't see more
than just the shape of the thing. But it was still now. The arms were
still. They weren't moving any more. The gentleman from America
chuckled. That one had shown him that it's a wise little ghost that
stops ghosting. Yes, sir! It would fall in a moment, dead as Argentine
mutton.

Mr. Puce then swore. Those arms were moving again. The hands weren't a
yard from him now. What the hell! They were for his throat,
God-dammit.

"You swine!" sobbed the gentleman from America, and fired again. But
he wouldn't wait this time. No, sir! He'd let that ghost have a ton of
lead. Mr. Puce fired again. Those hands weren't half a yard from his
throat now. No good shooting at the hands though. Thing was to get the
Thing through the heart. Mr. Puce fired the sixth bullet. Right into
the thing's chest. The sweat bothered his eyes. "Aw, hell!" said Mr.
Puce. He wished the bed was a bit longer. He couldn't get back any
more. Those arms ... Holy Moses, long as hell, weren't they! Mr. Puce
fired the seventh, eighth ... ninth. Right into the thing. The
revolver fell from Mr. Puce's shaking fingers. Mr. Puce heard himself
screaming.


IV

Towards noon on a summer's day several years later two men were
sitting before an inn some miles from the ancient town of Lincoln.
Drawn up in the shade of a towering ash was a large grey touring-car,
covered with dust. On the worn table stood two tankards of ale. The
travellers rested in silence and content, smoking.

The road by which the inn stood was really no more than a lane, and
the peace of the motorists was not disturbed by the traffic of a main
road. Indeed, the only human being visible was a distant speck on the
dust, coming towards them. He seemed, however, to be making a good
pace, for he soon drew near.

"If," said the elder of the two men, in a low, tired voice, "if we
take the short cut through Carmion Wood, we will be at Malmanor for
lunch."

"Then you'll go short-cutting alone," said the other firmly. "I've
heard enough tales about Carmion Wood to last me a life-time without
my adding one more to them. And as for spooks, one is enough for this
child in one lifetime, thanks very much."

The two men, for lack of any other distraction, watched the pedestrian
draw near. He turned out to be a giant of a man; and had, apparently,
no intention of resting at the inn. The very air of the tall
pedestrian was a challenge to the lazy content of the sunlit noon. He
was walking at a great pace, his felt hat swinging from his hand. A
giant he was: his hair greying, his massive face set with assurance.

"By all that's holy!" gasped the elder of the two observers. A little
lean gentleman that was, with a lined face which had been handsome in
a striking way but for the haggard marks of the dissipations of a man
of the world. He had only one arm, and that added a curiously flippant
air of devilry to his little, lean, sardonic person.

"Puce!" yelled the other, a young man with a chubby, good-humoured
face. "Puce, you silly old ass! Come here at once!"

The giant swung round at the good-natured cry, stared at the two
smiling men. Then the massive face broke into the old, genial smile by
which his friends had always known and loved the gentleman from
America, and he came towards them with hand outstretched.

"Well, boys!" laughed Mr. Puce. "This is one big surprise. But it's
good to see you again, I'll say that."

"The years have rolled on, Puce, the years have rolled on," sighed
Quillier in his tired way, but warmly enough he shook the gentleman
from America with his one hand.

"They certainly have!" said Mr. Puce, mopping his brow and smiling
down on the two. "And by the look of that arm, Quillier, I'll say
you're no stranger to war."

"Sit down, old Puce, and have a drink," laughed Kerr-Anderson. Always
gay, was Kerr-Anderson.

But the gentleman from America seemed, as he stood there, uncertain.
He glanced down the way he had come. Quillier, watching him, saw that
he was fagged out. Eleven years had made a great difference to Mr.
Puce. He looked old, worn, a wreck of the hearty giant who was once
Howard Cornelius Puce.

"Come, sit down, Puce," he said kindly, and quite briskly, for him.
"Do you realise, man, that it's eleven years since that idiotic night?
What are you doing? Taking a walking-tour?"

Mr. Puce sat down on the stained bench beside them. His massive
presence, his massive smile, seemed to fill the whole air about the
two men.

"Walking-tour? That is so, more or less," smiled Mr. Puce; and, with a
flash of his old humour: "I want to tell you boys that I am the
daughter of the King of Egypt, but I am dressed as a man because I am
travelling _incognita_. Eleven years is it, since we met? A whale of a
time, eleven years!"

"Why, there's been quite a war since then," chuckled Kerr-Anderson.
"But still that night seems like last night. I _am_ glad to see you
again, old Puce! But, by Heaven, we owe you one for giving us the
scare of our lives! Don't we, Quillier?"

"That's right, Puce," smiled Quillier. "We owe you one all right. But
I am heartily glad that it was only a shock you had, and that you were
quite yourself after all. And so here we are gathered together again
by blind chance, eleven years older, eleven years wiser. Have a drink,
Puce?"

The gentleman from America was looking from one to the other of the
two. The smile on the massive face seemed one of utter bewilderment.
Quillier was shocked at the ravages of a mere eleven years on the
man's face.

"I gave you two a scare!" echoed Mr. Puce. "Aw, put it to music, boys!
What the hell! How the blazes did I give you two a scare?"

Kerr-Anderson was quite delighted to explain. The scare of eleven
years ago was part of the fun of to-day. Many a time he had told the
tale to while away the boredom of Flanders and Mesopotamia, and had
often wanted to let old Puce in on it to enjoy the joke on Quillier
and himself, but had never had the chance to get hold of him.

They had thought, that night, that Puce was dead. Quillier, naked
from the waist up, had rushed down to Kerr-Anderson, waiting in the
dark porch, and had told him that Puce had kicked the bucket. Quillier
had sworn like nothing on earth as he dashed on his clothes. Awkward,
Puce's corpse, for Quillier and Kerr-Anderson. Quillier, thank Heaven,
had had the sense not to leave the empty revolver on the bed. They
shoved back all the ghost properties into a bag. And as, of course,
the house wasn't Kerr-Anderson's aunt's house at all, but Johnny
Paramour's, who was away, they couldn't so easily be traced. Still,
awkward for them, very. They cleared the country that night. Quillier
swearing all the way about the weak hearts of giants. And it wasn't
until the Orient Express had pitched them out at Vienna that they saw
in the Continental _Daily Mail_ that an American of the name of Puce
had been found by the caretaker in the bedroom of a house in Grosvenor
Square, suffering from shock and nervous breakdown. Poor old Puce!
Good old Puce! But he'd had the laugh on them all right....

And heartily enough the gentleman from America appeared to enjoy the
joke on Quillier and Kerr-Anderson.

"That's good!" he laughed. "That's very good!"

"Of course," said Quillier in his tired, deprecating way, "we took the
stake, this boy and I. For if you hadn't collapsed you would certainly
have run out of that room like a Mussulman from a ham-sandwich."

"That's all right," laughed Mr. Puce. "But what I want to know,
Quillier, is how you got me so scared?"

Kerr-Anderson says now that Puce was looking at Quillier quite
amiably. Full in the face, and very close to him, but quite amiably.
Quillier smiled, in his deprecating way.

"Oh, an old trick, Puce! A black rag over the head, a couple of yards
of stuffed cloth for arms----"

"Aw, steady!" said Mr. Puce. But quite amiably. "Say, listen, I shot
at you! Nine times. How about that?"

"Dear, oh dear!" laughed Kerr-Anderson. But that was the last time he
laughed that day.

"My dear Puce," said Quillier gently, slightly waving his one arm.
"That is the oldest trick of all. I was in a panic all the time that
you would think of it and chuck the gun at my head. Those bullets in
your automatic were blanks."

Kerr-Anderson isn't at all sure what exactly happened then. All he
remembers is that Puce's huge face had suddenly gone crimson, which
made his hair stand out shockingly white; and that Puce had Quillier's
fragile throat between his hands; and that Puce was roaring and
spitting into Quillier's blackening face.

"Say, listen, you Quillier! You'd scare me like that, would you! You'd
scare me with a chicken's trick like that, would you! And you'd
strangle me, eh? You swine, you _Sir_ Cyril Quillier, you, right
here's where the strangling comes in, and it's me that's going to do
it----"

Kerr-Anderson hit out and yelled. Quillier was helpless with his one
arm, the giant's grip on his throat. The woman who kept the inn had
hysterics. Puce roared blasphemies. Quillier was doubled back over the
small table, Puce on top of him, tightening his death-hold.
Kerr-Anderson hit, kicked, bit, yelled.

Suddenly there were shouts from all around.

"For God's sake, quick!" sobbed Kerr-Anderson. "He's almost killed
him."

"Aw, what the hell!" roared Puce.

The men in dark uniforms had all they could do to drag him away from
that little, lean, blackened, unconscious thing. Then they manacled
Puce. Puce looked sheepish, and grinned at Kerr-Anderson.

Two of the six men in dark uniforms helped to revive Quillier.

"Drinks," gasped Kerr-Anderson to the woman who kept the inn.

"Say, give me one," begged the gentleman from America. Huge, helpless,
manacled, he stood sheepishly among his uniformed captors.
Kerr-Anderson stared at them. Quillier was reviving.

"Get's like that," said the head-warder indifferently. "Gave us the
slip this morning. Certain death for some one. Homicidal maniac,
that's 'im. And he's the devil to hold. Been like that eleven years.
Got a shock, I fancy. Keeps on talking about a sister of his called
Julia who was murdered and how he'll be revenged for it...."

Kerr-Anderson had turned away. Quillier suddenly sobbed: "God have
mercy on us!" The gentleman from America suddenly roared with
laughter.

"Can't be helped," said the head-warder. "Sorry you were put to
trouble, sir. Good-day, gentlemen. Glad it was no worse."




_To Lamoir_


I

Alas, it is a pity I know so little of trees and flowers, and how I
shall tell this tale without their help I cannot imagine, for it is a
tale that demands a profound knowledge of still, gentle things. But I
dare say it will get itself written somehow, and saying that leads us
to quite another question, for serious men will have it that that is
the pity of nearly all the writing of our time, it just gets itself
written somehow.

Now it is difficult not to think a little of my own life in telling of
Hugh and Lamoir, for they helped me when I was very young, for a long
time they were my only friends in London, and ever since they have
remained the dearest. But it was only the other day that Hugh told me
about the tree. I suppose he must have had a sort of idea of what
might happen and wanted to tell some one about it while he could. But
it's odd that I had known him all those years, him and Lamoir, and he
had never so much as mentioned the tree--when out he suddenly comes
with it!

Of course there will be those to say that he hadn't concealed anything
worth concealing, that it's an impossible story anyhow, and who could
believe it? But I do believe it decidedly, for how could Hugh have
made it up? Hugh wasn't an imaginative man, not a bit. That, in point
of fact, is what the story is about. Of course, he had a passion for
fine things, a passion for touching fine things, but your collector or
your connoisseur isn't generally anything of an imaginative man.
Lamoir, now, she was quite different, and she might easily have
thought of the garden and the tree and the whole business, but so far
as I can make out Hugh and Lamoir never once breathed a word to each
other about it.

I have never been able to think of Lamoir quite steadily, I liked her
too much. I know a writer is supposed to be impersonal, but that can't
be helped. She knew the very hearts of trees and flowers, Lamoir did,
and she was always so still and quiet, like a flower herself, that you
never knew what she was thinking of. And that is more or less how the
trouble between them began, so Hugh told me the other day. He never
knew what she was thinking of, but he hoped for the best, and then one
day he found that she had been thinking away from him all the time.
That is what Hugh said. But I feel that the truth of it was that he
never thought Lamoir was thinking of anything at all, except maybe
about what a good husband he was, and then one day he got a shock.
Many men seem to be like that, they have happy natures, for when their
wives are quiet and thoughtful they never dream that those thoughts
might be out of accord with their own, and when they do at last
realise that something has been wrong all the time they are surprised
and hurt and want to know why they were not told sooner. As though,
you know, some things can be told sooner, as though some things _can_
be told until it is too late!

Now Hugh and Lamoir was a difficult pair to know, together or singly.
Hugh wasn't at all your democratic sort, there was nothing at all
easy-going about him. I remember once seeing him in a crowded room and
thinking he was like an island of nerves in an ocean of grins. Lamoir
said he was proud. He simply didn't seem to concern himself at all
with other people's opinions, it was as though he just hadn't the time
to go about dealing in the slack forms of geniality which pass for
manners in this century. That is Hugh's phrase, not mine. Lamoir left
him about nine years ago.

They say that people made a great fuss over Lamoir when she first came
from India, because she was so lovely. That must have been about
twenty-five years ago, and about nine years ago she packed up a lot of
trunks and went to Algeria. People were very surprised at that, for
Lamoir was beloved of every one, and she seemed to be liking her life
in England--as much, anyhow, as any one ever does seem to like his or
her life in England, for there seems to be a feeling in people that
one shouldn't like living in England. I like it very much myself, but
then I am not English. People said vaguely that she was going away
because her heart was weak, quite all right but weak, and that she
must have quiet. She never came back.

I went to see her in Algeria two winters ago. I wanted very much just
to see how she was in that solitary new life. Naturally I didn't tell
Hugh the main reason why I was going to Algeria, and I think he had an
idea I was going there to try to write a book about it, one of those
marvellous books about Sheiks and sand and suburban Englishwomen with
love flaming in their eyes to such a degree that none of their friends
at home would ever recognise them. As Hugh never used to speak of his
wife one had nothing to go on as to what his feelings about her were,
and so, of course, one said nothing about her either.

Just the same, that is how I found Lamoir. She had the grace of
silence, of reflection, to a rare degree. Some people found her
frightfully dull, but then imagine what "some people" are, it can be
said that their disapproval is a distinction that no fairly admirable
person should ever be without. The house she was living in had been
the palace of the last of the Admirals of the Dey's fleet, Lamoir
said, and one could well believe it. There were dungeons below, deep,
dark, crooked, with chains and iron clamps on the walls where the poor
devils of Christian slaves used to be kept, and on the morning Lamoir
was showing me round there was a vampire-bat hanging asleep from the
black broken walls. From the dungeons there was a secret passage,
Lamoir said, down to the bay two miles away at the foot of the hill,
and through this passage the old Admiral scoundrel had tried to escape
when the French stormed the town about eighty years ago--or maybe it
was more or less than eighty years ago, I don't know when it was, and
Lamoir didn't know either.

One morning we were walking about on the pink tiles of the flat,
uneven roof, not talking much, while below the sea slept. Lamoir
asked after Hugh, just how he was, and I said he was quite well.
"Lonely," I added.

We sat on the parapet of the roof, looking down the hill at the white,
untidy town. There was an American liner in the bay, like a smudge. At
last Lamoir said: "Yes, he was always lonely. Lonely and proud. Hugh
is very proud. Don't you think so?"

I said: "And you, Lamoir, aren't you proud too?"

You see, I knew nothing of the difficulty between Hugh and Lamoir. All
I knew was that two dear friends of mine had parted from each other
nine years before. Lamoir was looking towards the sea, she was
smiling. Then she shook her head suddenly. Her hair was quite grey,
and short, and curly--you can see how attractive Lamoir was, an
autumnal flower.

"Oh, no!" she said. "_I'm_ not proud, not a bit. And I don't like
proud people."

"I do!" I said.

She said gravely: "_You_ do, of course. But you are young, and it's
quite right that you should like proud people and should try to be
proud yourself, though I should think your sense of humour would
bother you a little while you were trying. I think young people should
be proud, because if they are not they will put up with makeshifts and
get dirty; but elderly people and old people should not be proud,
because it prevents them from understanding anything."

"But elderly people," I said, "don't they get dirty too, if they're
not proud?"

She laughed at me, and all she said was: "I was talking about nice
elderly people." And there the conversation ended, just nowhere. I
think it very silly in a man to go generalising about women, but if I
were to start generalising I might say that most abstract
conversations between men end nowhere, but you have a feeling that at
least something interesting has passed, while with a woman an abstract
conversation ends nowhere and you have a feeling that she has only
been talking about whatever it was just out of politeness.

I remember that what struck me most about Lamoir at that time was how
happy she was, happy and feeling safe in her happiness. That puzzled
me then, for I knew she loved Hugh.


II

I would see a good deal of Hugh, sometimes going to stay with him at
Langton Weaver, and often, in London, dining with him at his house in
Charles Street, just he and I alone. It was very pleasant to know of a
quiet house in which I might now and then pass an evening talking, as
one always did with Hugh if one talked at all, of books and tapestries
and fine things. I never knew a man who had such a passion for the
touch of fine things as Hugh, and seeing him thoughtfully holding a
little old ivory figure in his hand one might almost think his skin
was in love with it.

But a few weeks ago, the last time I was over to dine with my friend,
it instantly struck me that he was in quite a different mood. And
presently he told me about the garden and the tree. He didn't preface
it with anything in particular, he was thoughtfully twisting the stem
of his port-glass when he said: "Nearly nine years since I have seen
Lamoir...."

I said vaguely: "Yes...." Never once, you see, in all those nine
years, had he so much as mentioned the name of Lamoir, and so I felt
rather stunned at first.

Hugh went on thoughtfully, not particularly to me: "And the first time
I saw her I was nine years old. She must have been seven."

I said: "But I always understood that Lamoir passed her childhood in
India and never came to England until she was twenty or so! I'd no
idea you too were in India when you were little."

"I wasn't," he said, and he smiled, I think out of shyness just
because he was talking about himself. "I wasn't. That's why, you see,
it was so funny...."

I was trying to imagine Lamoir seven years old. It was easy, of
course, as it always is easy with people one likes. Her curly grey
hair would be golden then, and maybe her grey eyes would be more blue
than grey, and they would look enormous in a tiny face. And she would
be walking, very still, making no noise at all, with two thin brown
sticks for legs and two blue pools for eyes, very thoughtful indeed,
and all this would be happening in a garden of red and yellow flowers
with a long, low, white house nearby. That was how Hugh first saw
Lamoir, in a garden, and nearby a long, low, white house with a broad
flight of steps up to the open doorway and tall, shining windows.

Dazzling white the house seemed to him, Hugh said, but that must have
been because there was a very brilliant sun that afternoon. There was
no noise, except just summer noises, and although he didn't remember
actually seeing any birds there must have been a lot of birds about,
because he heard them. And simply masses of flowers there were in that
garden, red and yellow flowers, and over a grey wall somewhere there
was hung a thick curtain of flowers that may have been blue roses. And
they may very well have been blue roses, Hugh said. And bang in the
middle of all those flowers was Lamoir, staring at him as he came
into the garden. Hugh was so surprised, he said, that he didn't know
what to say or do.

He hadn't, you see, intended coming into that garden at all. He
hadn't, a moment before, known anything at all about that garden or
whose garden it was or even that there was a garden there at all. That
is the funny part about the whole thing, the way it just sprung out at
him, garden, Lamoir, blue roses and all, out of the summer afternoon.
But there it was, and there Lamoir was, staring at Hugh. Not that she
looked a bit surprised, Hugh said, although she was such a kid. She
just stuck her finger into her mouth and came towards him.

Hugh's father's place, Langton Weaver, lay on the slope of a low hill
not far from Hungerford, looking over the plain towards where the old
red Elizabethan pile of Littlecote lies embowered in trees. Hugh, that
bright afternoon, was kicking his heels about in the lane outside his
father's gates, which was, of course, against all rules. But Hugh was
lonely that afternoon, he never had any brothers or sisters, and he
was wondering what he would do next, and he was hoping that some one
would come along to do something with--when, bang, there he was in
that garden and a little kid advancing on him with a finger stuck in
her mouth. It was very odd, Hugh said.

"Hallo!" she said. All eyes, that's what she was.

"Hallo!" Hugh said. She was only a kid, after all. Hugh was nine.

"You're a boy," she said.

"Of course I'm a boy," Hugh said, and he was going to add, "just as
you're a girl," but a fellow couldn't stand there arguing all day with
a slip of a thing like that. Then he suddenly remembered he didn't
know where he was.

"I say," he said, "I don't know how I got here. What's this place?"

She twisted her finger out of her mouth and stared at the wet thing.
Hugh remembered that it shone in the sun. And her hair shone in the
sun, too. Hugh said her hair shone even when they were in the shade.
But of course he didn't attach any importance to that kind of thing.

"I say, where am I?" Hugh asked again. He must have sounded pathetic,
in spite of himself.

"You're here," she said. "What's your name?"

"Hugh," he said. "But, I say, where's here? I've never seen that house
before. My father's got the biggest house round here, Langton Weaver.
My father's Lord of the Manor, and when he's dead I'm Lord of the
Manor."

"Oo!" she said, staring.

Hugh said he felt frightfully let down. Any other kid would have
exalted the merits of her own house, but she just swallowed everything
and stared at you. Hugh said he felt as though he had been boasting.

"Our house doesn't look so jolly clean as this," he said. "Rather live
here, any day."

And he suddenly realised he was speaking the truth. That was the
amazing part of it, Hugh said, suddenly to feel that he would much
rather live here than in his father's house. With this kid. And from
that moment, somehow, he forgot every particle of his surprise at
being in that garden.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Not got a name," the kid said. "No name." All legs and eyes, that's
what she was.

"But you must have a name?" Hugh cried. "Every one's got names, even
dogs and cats. We've got seven dogs and they're all called after every
day in the week except one, because you can't call a dog Sunday,
father says."

"No name," she said breathlessly. "I'm me."

"But look here, how do they call you when they want you?" He thought
he'd got her there all right, Hugh said.

She giggled. "I just come," she giggled. "I don't need to be called.
Oo! Just come when I'm wanted. Did you want me? You did, didn't you?"

He stared at her, he was so dumbfounded. Jiminy, hadn't he wanted her!
Anyhow, hadn't he wanted something to happen! But how had this kid
known that?

"Look here, no rotting!" he warned her.

"Not rotting," she said, sucking her finger. "What's rotting?"

"But what's this place?" he asked almost frantically. "Hasn't it got a
name either?"

"Oo, yes! Playmate Place."

"It's not!" Hugh cried. "Not Playmate Place! _You're_ rotting now."

Hugh says she took her finger out of her mouth, stamped her foot and
screamed at one and the same time: "It _is_ called Playmate Place and
Playmate Place and Playmate Place! So there!"

"Oh, all right!" Hugh said, and he didn't let on any further about his
opinion of a house called Playmate Place. Hugh says a boy of nine
would rather die than live in a house called Playmate Place. It
sounded so soft. But she was only a kid, after all, and she couldn't
_know_ anything.

"I'm going to run now" the kid said, standing on one leg and staring
at the other.

That was too much, Hugh said. She was going to run! As though she
_could_ run! "Beat you blindfolded" he just said.

"Oo, you try!" she giggled, and she turned, and she flew. She just
flew, Hugh said. All brown legs and golden hair. He hadn't a chance.
But he must have been quite a nice boy really, Hugh said, because he
began laughing at himself. He beat this kid!

She stopped, miles away, just under a tree. Hugh panted on. And they
must have run some distance, for the house and the blue roses were no
longer visible. Hugh couldn't remember any of the particulars of where
they were now. There was a sense of flowers, he said, clean flowers, a
lot of flowers. And that tree, under which Lamoir was waiting for him.
Of course he didn't know she was Lamoir then. That tree seemed to him
a big tree. Hugh said that when you touched it it smelt like a sort of
echo of all the good smells you had ever smelt.

But he hadn't come quite up to her when she turned and, before you
could say "knife," shinned up that tree!

"I say!" cried Hugh.

"Can't catch me!" panted a little voice from among the leaves.

"Can if I want to," said Hugh, looking up. All he could see between
the leaves was something white.

"Like you to want to," piped the something white, and Hugh fell in
love for the first and last time in his life.

When he caught up with her, on a branch high up, she said "Oo!" and
gave him a damp kiss on his cheek. She didn't giggle or anything, she
was as serious as a man playing cricket. Hugh felt rather ashamed.

"Look here," he said, to say something, "what's this tree called?
Never seen a tree like this before."

"It's a lovely tree," she said, staring. "It's called Playmate Tree,
of course."

"That's a soft word, playmate," Hugh rashly said.

She stared at him with those big grey eyes, Hugh said, so that he
began to feel weak, just weak with meanness. And then she said "Yow!"
and wept. Well! She wept. Hugh didn't know what to do, stuck up there
on a branch of a tree and this kid crying fit to break her kid's
heart. He kept muttering, "I say, I'm sorry," and things like that,
and then he found she was somehow in his arms, and he kissing her and
kissing her hair. Her hair smelt like the tree, Hugh said, so it must
have been a funny sort of tree.

"Kiss the tree now," the small voice said. "You've hurt it."

"Oh, I say!" said Hugh, but he did as he was told, and then they
climbed down the magic tree in silence, he trying to help her and
almost breaking his neck. They walked slowly back, hand in hand,
towards where the house was, through the sweet lush grass. There was
music somewhere, Hugh said. Or maybe there wasn't and he only thought
there was. And Hugh said that he was happier at that moment than he
had ever been since in his whole life.

"Mustn't laugh at words like playmate," said the wise kid. "You'll get
hurt if you do."

"I say, I'd like to see you again," Hugh said shyly, and he found
himself walking on the dusty lane towards Nasyngton! He was almost in
Nasyngton, he could see, down the slope, the thick old bridge over the
Kennet. He must have walked two miles or more while he thought he was
in that garden. Playmate Place. He stopped to wipe his face, wondering
passionately. He was simply streaming with perspiration. But what had
happened to that old garden, that's what puzzled him. And that kid!
That jolly little kid. He rubbed his cheek, but he couldn't be certain
if there still was a damp patch where she had kissed him. Anyhow, it
would have dried by then, and, anyhow again, he'd got so hot since.

When he got home Hugh told Hugh's father the outline of his adventure,
and Hugh's father told Hugh he had broken rules by being outside the
gates at all, and that he must have been dreaming, but Hugh said
passionately that he was sorry he had broken rules, but he hadn't been
anything like dreaming, and Hugh's father told Hugh not to be an ass,
and two years later Hugh's father died.

Hugh did not see the garden of the white house again. Playmate Place.
Hugh, as he grew up, blushed to think of Playmate Place. He had
blushed at the time, and later on he blushed at the very thought of
it. He wouldn't have dared let any of his friends at school even dream
of his ever having swallowed such a soft yarn as the Playmate Place
one. But, despite himself, the face of the kid whose name was to be
Lamoir stayed with him, and her silver voice, and her enormous eyes.
And now and then in his dreams, Hugh said, he would seem to hear the
faint echo of an "Oo!"


III

It was almost twenty years to a day after the adventure of Playmate
Place that Hugh met Lamoir at a party at Mace, Guy de Travest's place.
Miss Cavell her name was. He recognised her, he said, at once, at very
first sight. She had been seven then, and she was twenty-seven now,
but he knew her on sight. And when she spoke, he was quite certain. Of
course she didn't suck her finger and say "Oo!" any longer, but
without a doubt Lamoir Cavell was the grown-up of the kid of Playmate
Place. And he actually found himself wondering, as he talked to her
that first time at Mace, if she recognised him--and then he almost
laughed aloud at his childishness, for of course the whole thing had
been a boy's dream. But it was very odd, his dreaming about some one
he was actually to meet twenty years later. And once he fancied, as he
turned to her suddenly, that she was looking at him a little
strangely, in a puzzled sort of way maybe, with that small slanting
smile of hers as though she was smiling at something she just hadn't
said. Oh, Lamoir must have been very beautiful then!

She was born in India, where old man Cavell was something in the Civil
Service, and she had lived in India until recently, when her father
died. Hugh, that first time, asked her if she had ever been in England
as a child, and she said, staring at him in a way that seemed so
familiar to him that his heart gave a throb: "Only in dreams." But he
didn't tell her about the Playmate Place then. Then was the time to
tell her, then or never. He never told her.

They walked in enchantment, those two, for the next few days. Guy de
Travest has told me since that the whole house-party went about on
tiptoe, so as not to disturb Hugh and Lamoir in their exquisite
contemplation of their triumph over the law of life, which is, of
course, unknowable, but must be pretty depressing, seeing what life
is.

They were married in the little village church at Mace, and Hilary
Townshend was Hugh's best man, and Hilary has told me since that he
almost wept to see them going away--knowing as he did so certainly,
Hilary said, that Hugh and Lamoir had taken the one step in life which
will wake any couple up from any dream.

Hugh continually pulled at the stiff grey affair on his upper-lip as
he told me of his marriage. "It's Playmate Place," he said, "that is
important in the story: much more important than my married life.
Lamoir and I never quite reached Playmate Place in actual life. We
were in sight of it sometimes--when I let Lamoir have her head. But I
only see that now, I didn't realise it then."

He said that about the importance of Playmate Place quite seriously.
And, you know, I took it quite as seriously. A dream or vision or
whatever it was, that has lasted fresh in a man's mind from the age of
nine to the age of forty-nine is, after all, a thing to be taken
seriously. I haven't, as a rule, much patience with dreams; and
there's a deal too much talk of dreams in the novels of the day, for
it's so easy to write "dream," but Hugh's, as they say, rather "got"
me.

He never spoke about it to Lamoir. "I began to, several times," he
said, "but somehow I never went on. You see, there was such a
difference between our life together and the way we had been together
in that garden. I mean, such a tremendous difference in spirit. She
was the same, but I--well, I was the same too, but only that 'same'
which had jeered at the word 'playmate.' It's difficult to explain. I
knew, you see, as I said things that might hurt her, that I was in the
wrong--and I didn't want to say them, either--but somehow it was in me
to say them, and so I said them. It's somehow the impulses you can't
put into words that are the strongest."

The marriage of Hugh and Lamoir appeared to have gone much the same
way as most marriages. At first they were very happy, and they were
quite certain that they were going to be even happier. Then they
thought that perhaps they were not so happy as they had been, and then
they were quite certain that they were not so happy as they had been.
Hugh said it was more or less like that.

Hugh, at the time, had thought privately that this was because Lamoir
did not take very much interest in his collections of fine things. Not
that he wasn't quite contented with his marriage. Good Lord,
contented! I wonder what Lamoir thought about that. Contented! But she
never confided, that quiet Lamoir.

It was a great unhappiness to her, Hugh said, that there were no
children. A very great unhappiness. He hadn't, he admitted, minded so
much, because year by year he was growing more absorbed in his
collections. Throughout his married life he would go off searching
Europe for pieces. Italy, Greece, Spain. At first he used to take
Lamoir with him, but later on she would stay at home. She preferred
that, Hugh said. She wouldn't stay in the London house, but at Langton
Weaver, the house which was larger but not so clean-looking as
Playmate Place. Lamoir lived in the garden and the park. I met Hugh
and Lamoir in the last years of their life together, and whenever I
went to stay at Langton Weaver I would find Lamoir in the park. She
would generally be standing just off a path, quite still, wearing
gardening-gloves, and looking thoughtfully down at the flowers. Then
she would touch one here and there. She was gardening.

So, Hugh said, ten years passed; and he, when he thought of it at all,
would think theirs a happy enough marriage, as marriages go. Reality,
after all, couldn't be so good as dreams, ever. That is what he
thought. And he loved Lamoir. He was a collector of fine things, and
so it was bred in his bone to love Lamoir. She loved him, too.
Sometimes in quite a strange, abandoned way, for a woman who had been
married so long. In quite an un-English way, when you came to think of
it--although it can't be in the least "un-English" to be passionate,
but one gets into the habit of saying the idiotic things that English
novelists say. Lamoir would say things unmentionable and beautiful,
in the rare moments. But, somehow, those rarest moments, would never
be of Hugh's contriving, not after the first year or so. They would
come suddenly, out of the night of ordinary marriage, they would come
like angels with silent wings. And Lamoir would be the voice of the
angel with silent wings, and Lamoir in those rarest moments would be
the very body and soul of love. But Hugh couldn't woo those moments.
Perhaps no man ever can. It may be, Hugh said, that there's a frontier
to any woman's love for any man, and beyond that frontier is the
unknowable darkness and unknowable light, and from that secret place
can leap a passion that no man in the world is worthy to woo. It just
comes or it doesn't come.

These moments did not come when he thought they would, when he
expected them. She would somehow be passive then, somehow there yet
not there. Then suddenly, when he had got used to the hurt of her
"coldness," out of the night of ordinary marriage would sweep the
angel with the silent wings in the body and the voice of Lamoir. Hugh
said that sometimes the song of the sirens was in Lamoir's voice, but
if Hugh was right about that Ulysses must have been just a silly old
man and the sirens darlings.


IV

For Hugh, his pleasure in travelling was given an exquisite point by
returning to Lamoir. That was when he seemed to love her most, as he
returned to her. One gets out of the habit of being desirous if one
stays in the home all the time. And Lamoir would be waiting for him,
sweet and still. He thought of her all the time, as he returned
towards her.

Once, nine years ago, he returned to her by night. He had been away
from England for four or five months, and, arriving that evening in
London, he had dined quickly and taken the first train down to Langton
Weaver. It was a cool July night, loaded with stars. He had walked the
two miles from the railway station.

Hugh was happy as he walked. He was conscious of his happiness, of his
health, of his strength. Hugh was forty then, a dry, taut forty. And
the idea of Lamoir, white and supple, was like a temptation that
exalted and ennobled. The sky was almost Italian, Hugh said, the stars
were so unusually clear and bright. He walked, not up the drive
towards the door, but across the lawn towards the three french-windows
of the drawing-room. They showed a faint bronze light. Lamoir was
there. She was sitting in a Dorothy chair of old blue velvet, reading.
A lamp in a bowl of yellow amber lit the book, but her face was only a
frail whiteness, and her hair was as though veiled. He pushed open a
window which was unlatched. He called: "Lamoir!"

She made that gesture he knew so well, loved so well. Lamoir would not
be Lamoir without that gesture. Always, at first sight of him
returning to her, she would make that gesture. It was delicious with a
lure which he never could explain. It was as though she was afraid of
her love for him. Towards her heart, the gesture was; but faint, not
definite--a hand, like a white bird fluttering, fluttering vainly,
fluttering out of stillness, fluttering back into stillness--all in a
second. Lamoir, you see, had a weak heart, and that was why, maybe,
she was born so still, to balance the weakness of her heart.

And it was always the same with him when he saw her after an absence.
The world stood still, no living thing moved but Lamoir's hand and his
infinite desire. The pleasure of seeing her was exquisite, like a
pain. In all his life Hugh had known no woman but Lamoir. Seeing her
now, the earth and sky held only himself and her and the thing that
was between them. That vivid thing with eyes of fire which can be
beautiful or beastly. She troubled him and exalted him, and somehow
his love for her would be stabbed by a queer sense of terror, which he
never could explain. And she was so still, so passive, unknowable. But
her eyes, as he made to touch her, adored him.

She lay beside him a long time in the delicious silence of love before
she spoke and said: "Good-bye, Hugh."

He thought she must have gone mad. He stared at her, through the
darkness. "Good-bye?" he echoed.

"Yes," she said, and that was all she said.

He had put out the light in the bowl of yellow amber. He lay in the
darkness, understanding nothing. Then his mind grew darker than the
room, and he just managed to say:--

"But, Lamoir, are you mad? Good-bye! What do you mean?"

She did not answer for what seemed a long time. She was a soft
darkness in the dark room, beside him. The night was a blue curtain
over the windows hung with stars like toys. He touched her, as though
to prove to himself that he was not dreaming. He must be dreaming. But
she was there, beside him, soft, warm: Lamoir, his wife. And the stars
on the windows were as though at his finger-tips, but Lamoir was
untouchable. She was untouchable, suddenly. She was most untouchable
when he touched her. It seemed wrong to touch her. That made him
angry. He laughed.

"I'm damned," he said, "if I understand what all this is about! I come
home after months away, and you say good-bye!"

"I don't think," she said, "that I can explain. Not now...."

He laughed. She was going away, and she didn't trouble to explain why!

He wanted her to say: "Don't be bitter, please!" But she was silent.
She was beside him, yet her breath came from across the universe. And
what on earth was it all about?

"But do you mean you want to leave me?" he asked, astounded, angry.

She said: "Yes."

"Lamoir!"

She said: "I can't bear it any longer, Hugh. I love you too much."

He repeated idiotically: "You love me too much?"

Now she was standing, a shadow in the darkness, away from him, a
million miles away from him. He was silent. All the inside of him went
silent. Suddenly there were no words, no need for words, no Lamoir, no
Hugh. Nothing but the primal nothingness before Adam. He would not
hold her for a moment if she wished to leave him.

"You will understand," she said. "You see, I want to be free to love
you, and you won't let me. You will understand that, too. God has
given me no children, Hugh. He has given me only my love for you. That
is all I have, and I have been sacrificing it to you for ten years;
but now I am growing afraid for it, it's become such a poor, beaten,
wretched bit of a thing, and so I must leave you. I owe that to
myself, dear--and to the you inside you."

And he said, despite himself, that he loved her. What was so strange
was that, suddenly, he had ceased to feel like her husband, suddenly
it seemed to him inconceivable that he had possessed her countless
times. Inconceivable that he and she had been one, when now they were
so apart! It had seemed so easy then to touch her--now, not a lifetime
would surmount the barriers she had raised between them. He suddenly
thought: "Good Lord, how lucky I've been in the past--and I never knew
it!"

He was going to touch her, when like a blow on the face he realised
that to touch her would be indecent. She was not his wife. Suddenly,
absurdly, he thought of Soames Forsyte, of John Galsworthy. Hugh had
always disliked Galsworthy for his creation of Forsyte, a man who
could rape his wife.

Lamoir said suddenly: "There will be another chance later on----"

He leapt at that. "Later on? Lamoir, you mean you will come back?"

"No," she said. "I didn't mean that. I shall never come back."

"You will," he said between his teeth, and with a great effort of will
he took her in his arms.

But afterwards she went away, and she never came back.


V

We were silent for a long time after Hugh had spoken of the way Lamoir
had left him. And then he said: "Of course she was right. I did
understand, later on. That is why I have made no attempt to see her
these last nine years. Love, you see, has many masks. We slip on one
or other of them, and we say, 'This is love,' but really it's only a
fraction of love. And a fraction of love can be the negation of love.
Love is enormous and difficult. We must learn how to love, as we must
learn how to play music. I did not know how. But I shall see Lamoir
soon. I am going to Algeria next week. I have been wanting to go for a
long time, but I must just wait another few days----"

"But, Hugh, why do you wait even one day?" I protested. "Lamoir is
longing to see you; I know she is."

"Yes. But I must wait four or five days or so. For a sort of
anniversary. My idea, if you won't laugh at me too much, is to see
Playmate Place again, and then that will give me a clue as to how to
deal with Lamoir when I see her in the flesh. I'm sure it will give me
a clue. And I'm sure I shall see it again, in three or four days from
to-day. I'd like to, immensely. Of course it won't have changed one
bit, but I wonder if Lamoir and I will have grown up. If we have, it
will be rather a feat to climb that tree, won't it? Or maybe the tree
will have grown too, though it seemed huge enough at the time. You
see, the thing seems to go in cycles of twenty years, more or less. I
saw the garden for the first time on a June day in my ninth year. I
met Lamoir for the first time on a June day, perhaps the same one, in
my twenty-ninth year. And now I'm forty-nine, and the day falls in
three or four or five days' time. Either, I'm quite sure, I see that
garden again on that day, or I see Lamoir herself, or----"

"Or?" I said. "Or what?"

"Well, God knows!" Hugh smiled, pulling at that stiff grey thing on
his upper lip, and on the dawn of the fourth day from that night Hugh
was found by one of the keepers of Hyde Park lying at the foot of a
great tree near the Albert Gate, dead of a broken neck. At the
inquest there was read out a letter from his wife's lawyers, which had
been delivered at Hugh's house on the morning after his death and
which he couldn't, therefore, have read, saying that they had heard by
wire from Algeria that his wife had died of heart-failure the day
before.




_The Ghoul of Golders Green_


I

It is fortunate that the affair should have happened to Mr. Ralph
Wyndham Trevor and be told by him, for Mr. Trevor is a scholar of some
authority. It is in a spirit of almost ominous premonition that he
begins the tale, telling how he was walking slowly up Davies Street
one night when he caught a cab. It need scarcely be said that Davies
Street owes its name to that Mary Davies, the heiress, who married
into the noble house of Grosvenor. That was years and years ago, of
course, and is of no importance whatsoever now, but it may be of
interest to students.

It was very late on a winter's night, and Mr. Trevor was depressed,
for he had that evening lost a great deal more than he could afford at
the card-game of auction-bridge. Davies Street was deserted; and the
moon and Mr. Trevor walked alone towards Berkeley Square. It was not
the sort of moon that Mr. Trevor remembered having seen before. It
was, indeed, the sort of moon one usually meets only in books or wine.
Mr. Trevor was sober.

Nothing happened, Mr. Trevor affirms, for quite a while; he just
walked, and, at that corner where Davies Street and Mount Street join
together the better to become Berkeley Square, stayed his walking,
with the idea that he would soothe his depression with the fumes of a
cigarette. His cigarette-case, however, was empty. All London, says
Mr. Trevor, appeared to be empty that night. Berkeley Square lay
pallid and desolate: looking clear, not as though with moonlight, but
with dead daylight; and never a voice to put life into the still
streets, never a breeze to play with the bits of paper in the gutters
or to sing among the dry boughs of the trees. Berkeley Square looked
like nothing so much as an old stage-property that no one had any use
for. Mr. Trevor had no use at all for it; and became definitely
antagonistic to it when a taxi-cab crawled wretchedly across the waste
white expanse, and the driver, a man in a Homburg hat of green plush,
looked into his face with a beseeching look.

"Taxi, sir?" he said.

Mr. Trevor says that, not wanting to hurt the man's feelings he just
looked another way.

"Nice night, sir," said the driver miserably, "for a drive in an
'ackney-carriage."

"I live," said Mr. Trevor with restraint, "only a few doors off. So
hackney-carriage to you."

"No luck!" sighed the driver and accelerated madly away even as Mr.
Trevor changed his mind, for would it not be an idea to drive to the
nearest coffee-stall and buy some cigarettes? This, however, he was
not to do, for there was no other reply to his repeated calls of
"Taxi!" but certain heavy blows on the silence of Davies Street behind
him.

"Wanting a taxi, sir?" said a voice which could only belong to a
policeman.

"Certainly not," said Mr. Trevor bitterly. "I never want a taxi. But
now and then a taxi-driver thrusts himself on me and pays me to be
seen in his cab, just to give it a tone. Next question."

"Ho!" said the policeman thoughtfully.

"I beg your pardon?" said Mr. Trevor.

"Ho!" said the policeman thoughtfully.

"The extent of your vocabulary," said Mr. Trevor gloomily, "leads me
to conclude that you must have been born a gentleman. Have you, in
that case, a cigarette you could spare?"

"Gaspers," said the policeman.

"Thank you," said Mr. Trevor, rejecting them. "I am no stranger to
ptomaine-poisoning."

"That's funny," said the policeman, "your saying that. I was just
thinking of death."

"Death?" said Mr. Trevor.

"You've said it," said the policeman.

"I've said what?" said Mr. Trevor.

"Death," said the policeman.

"Oh, death!" said Mr. Trevor. "I always say 'death,' constable. It's
my favourite word."

"Ghoulish, I calls it, sir. Ghoulish, no less."

"That entirely depends," said Mr. Trevor, "on what you are talking
about. In some things, ghoulish is as ghoulish does. In others, no."

"You've said it," said the policeman. "But ghoulish goes, in this 'ere
affair. One after the other lying in their own blood, and not a sign
as to who's done it, not a sign!"

"Oh, come, constable! Tut-tut! Not even a thumb-mark in the blood?"

"I'm telling you," said the policeman severely. "Corpses slit to
ribbons all the way from 'Ampstead 'Eath to this 'ere Burkley Square.
And why? That's what I asks myself. And why?"

"Of course," said Mr. Trevor gaily, "there certainly have been a lot
of murders lately. Ha-ha! But not, surely, as many as all that!"

"I'm coming to that," said the policeman severely. "We don't allow of
the Press reporting more'n a quarter of them. No, sir. That's wot it
'as come to, these larst few days. A more painful situation 'as rarely
arisen in the hannals of British crime. The un'eard-of bestiality of
the criminal may well baffle ordinary minds like yours and mine."

"I don't believe a word of it!" snapped Mr. Trevor.

"Ho, _you_ don't!" said the policeman. "_You_ don't!"

"That's right," said Mr. Trevor, "I don't. Do you mean to stand there
and tell me that I wouldn't 'ave 'eard--I mean, have heard of this
criminal if he had really existed?"

"You're a gent," said the policeman.

"You've said it," said Mr. Trevor.

"And gents," said the policeman, "know nothing. And what they do know
is mouldy. Ever 'eard of Jack the Ripper?"

"Yes, I 'ave," said Mr. Trevor bitterly.

"_H_ave is right, sir, if you'll excuse me. Well, Jack's death was
never rightly proved, not it! So it might well be 'im at 'is old
tricks again, even though 'e has been retired, in a manner of
speaking, these forty years. Remorseless and hindiscriminate murder,
swift and sure, was Jack's line, if you remember, sir."

"Before my time," said Mr. Trevor gloomily.

"Well, Jack's method was just to slit 'em up with a razor, frontwise
and from south to north, and not a blessed word spoken. No one's
touched 'im yet, not for efficiency, but this new chap, 'e looks like
catching Jack up. _And_ at Jack's own game, razor and all. Makes a man
fair sick, sir, to see the completed work. Just slits 'em up as clean
as you or me might slit up a vealanam-pie. We was laying bets on 'im
over at Vine Street only to-night, curious like to see whether 'e'd
beat Jack's record. But it'll take some beating, I give you my word.
Up to date this chap 'as only done in twelve in three weeks--not that
that's 'alf bad, seeing as how 'e's new to the game, more or less."

"Oh rather, more or less!" said Mr. Trevor faintly. "Twelve! Good
God--only twelve! But why--why don't you catch the ghastly man?"

"Ho, why don't we!" said the policeman. "Becos we don't know 'ow,
that's why. Not us! It's the little one-corpse men we're good for, not
these 'ere big artists. Look at Jack the Ripper--did we catch 'im? Did
we? And look at Julian Raphael--did we catch 'im? I'm asking you."

"I know you are," said Mr. Trevor gratefully. "Thank you."

"I don't want your thanks," said the policeman. "I'm just warning
you."

Mr. Trevor gasped: "Warning _me_!"

"You've said it," said the policeman. "You don't ought to be out alone
at this time of night, an 'earty young chap like you. These twelve
'e's already done in were all 'earty young chaps. 'E's partial to 'em
'earty, I do believe. And social gents some of 'em was, too, with
top-'ats to hand, just like you might be now, sir, coming 'ome from a
smoking-concert. Jack the Ripper all over again, that's wot I say.
Except that this 'ere new corpse-fancier, 'e don't seem to fancy women
at all.

"A chaps' murderer, what!" said Mr. Trevor faintly. "Ha-ha! What!"

"You've said it," said the policeman. "But you never know your luck,
sir. And maybe as 'ow thirteen's your lucky number."

Mr. Trevor lays emphasis on the fact that throughout he treated the
constable with the courtesy due from a gentleman to the law. He merely
said: "Constable, I am now going home. I do not like you very much.
You are an alarmist. And I hope that when you go to sleep to-night
your ears swell so that when you wake up in the morning you will be
able to fly straight to Heaven and never be seen or heard of again.
You and your razors and your thirteens!"

"Ho, they ain't mine, far from it!" said the policeman, and even as he
spoke a voice crashed upon the silence from the direction of Mount
Street. The voice belonged to a tall figure in black and white, and on
his head was a top-hat that shone under the pallid moon like a
monstrous black jewel.

"That there," said the policeman, "is a Noise."

"He's singing," said Mr. Trevor.

"I'll teach 'im singing!" said the policeman.

Sang the voice:--

    "_With an host of furious fancies,_
     _Whereof I am commander,_
         _With a burning spear_
         _And a horse of air_
     _To the wilderness I wander._"

"You will," said the policeman. "Oh, you will!"

    "_By a knight of ghosts and shadows_
     _I summoned am to tourney_
         _Ten leagues beyond_
         _The wide world's end--_
     _Methinks it is no journey!_"

"Not to Vine Street, it isn't," said the policeman.

"Ho there!" cried the approaching voice. "Who dares interrupt my
song!"

"Beau Maturin!" cried Mr. Trevor gladly. "It's not you! Bravo, Beau
Maturin! Sing, bless you, sing! For I am depressed."

    "_From Heaven's Gate to Hampstead Heath_
        _Young Bacchus and his crew_
     _Came tumbling down, and o'er the town_
        _Their bursting trumpets blew._"

"Fine big gent, your friend," said the policeman thoughtfully.

    "_And when they heard that happy word_
        _Policemen leapt and ambled:_
     _The busmen pranced, the maidens danced,_
        _The men in bowlers gambolled._"

"Big!" said Mr. Trevor. "Big? Let me tell you, constable, that the
last time Mr. Maturin hit Jack Dempsey, Dempsey bounced back from the
floor so quick that he knocked Mr. Maturin out on the rebound."

Mr. Trevor says that Beau Maturin came on through the night like an
avenger through a wilderness, so little did he reck of cruel moons and
rude policemen. Said he: "Good-evening, Ralph. Good-evening,
constable. Lo, I am in wine!"

"You've said it," said the policeman.

"Gently, my dear! Or," said Mr. Maturin cordially, "I will dot you
one, and look at it which way you like it is a far far better thing to
be in wine than in a hospital. Now, are there any good murders going
to-night?"

"Going?" said the constable. "I'm 'ere to see there ain't any coming.
But I've just been telling this gent about some recent crises. Corpses
slit to ribbons just as you or me might slit up a vealanam----"

"Don't say that again!" snapped Mr. Trevor.

"By Heaven, what's that?" sighed Mr. Maturin; and, following his
intent eyes, they saw, a yard or so behind them on the pavement, a
something that glittered in the moonlight. Mr. Trevor says that,
without a thought for his own safety, he instantly took a step towards
the thing, but that the policeman restrained him. It was Mr. Maturin
who picked the thing up. The policeman whistled thoughtfully.

"A razor, let's face it!" whispered Beau Maturin.

"_And_ sharp!" said the policeman, thoughtfully testing the glittering
blade with the ball of his thumb.

Mr. Trevor says that he was never in his life less conscious of any
feeling of excitement. He merely pointed out that he could swear there
had been no razor there when he had come round the corner, and that,
while he had stood there, no one had passed behind him.

"The chap that owns this razor," said the policeman, emphasising each
word with a gesture of the blade, "must 'ave slunk behind you and me
as we stood 'ere talking and dropped it, maybe not finding it sharp
enough for 'is purpose. What do you think, Mr. Maturin?"

But Mr. Maturin begged to be excused from thinking, protesting that
men are in the hands of God, and God is in the hands of women and so
what the devil is there to think about?

Mr. Trevor says that the motive behind his remark at that moment,
which was to the effect that he simply must have a drink, was merely
that he was thirsty. A clock struck two.

"After hours," said the policeman; and he seemed, Mr. Trevor thought,
to grin evilly.

"What do they know of hours," sighed Mr. Maturin, "who only Ciro's
know? Come, Ralph. My love, she jilted me but the other night.
Therefore I will swim in wine, and thrice will I call upon her name
when I am drowning. Constable, good-night to you."

"Now I've warned you!" the policeman called after them. "Don't go into
any alleys or passages like Lansdowne Passage, else you'll be finding
yourselves slit up like vealanam-pies."

Maybe it was only the treacherous light of the moon, but Mr. Trevor
fancied as he looked back that the policeman, where he stood
thoughtfully fingering the shining blade, seemed to be grinning evilly
at them.


II

They walked in silence, their steps ringing sharp on the bitter-chill
air. The night in the sky was pale at the white disdain of the moon.
It was Mr. Maturin who spoke at last, saying: "There's too much talk
of murder to-night. A man cannot go to bed on such crude talk. You
know me, kid. Shall we go to _The Garden of My Grandmother_?"

At that moment a taxi-cab crawled across the moonlight; and the
driver, a man in a Homburg hat of green plush, did not attempt to hide
his pleasure at being able to satisfy the gentlemen's request to take
them to _The Garden of My Grandmother_.

Mr. Trevor says that he has rarely chanced upon a more unsatisfactory
taxi-cab than that driven by the man in the Homburg hat of green
plush. By closing one's eyes one might perhaps have created an
illusion of movement by reason of certain internal shrieks and
commotions, but when one saw the slow procession of shops by the
windows and the lamp-posts loitering by the curb, one was, as Beau
Maturin pointed out, justified in believing that the hackney-cab in
question was not going fast enough to outstrip a retired
Czecho-Slovakian Admiral in an egg-and-spoon race. Nor were they
altogether surprised when the taxi-cab died on them in Conduit Street.
The man in the Homburg hat of green plush jumped out and tried to
re-start the engine. He failed. The gentlemen within awaited the issue
in silence. The silence, says Mr. Trevor, grew terrible. But the
taxi-cab moved not, and the man in the Homburg hat of green plush
began, in his agitation, thumping the carburettor with his clenched
fist.

"No petrol," he pleaded. "No petrol."

Said Mr. Trevor to Mr. Maturin: "Let us go. Let us leave this man."

"'Ere, my fare!" said the fellow.

"Your fare?" said Mr. Maturin, with contracted brows. "What do you
mean, 'your fare'?"

"Bob on the meter," said the wretch.

"My friend will pay," said Mr. Maturin, and stalked away. Mr. Trevor
says that, while retaining throughout the course of that miserable
night his undoubted _flair_ for generosity, he could not but hold Beau
Maturin's high-handed disavowal of his responsibilities against him;
and he was hurrying after him up Conduit Street, turning over such
phrases as might best point the occasion and make Mr. Maturin ashamed
of himself, when that pretty gentleman swung round sharply and said:
"Ssh!"

But Mr. Trevor was disinclined to Ssh, maintaining that Mr. Maturin
owed him ninepence.

"Ssh, you fool!" snapped Mr. Maturin; and Mr. Trevor had not obliged
him for long before he discerned in the quietness of Conduit Street a
small discordant noise, or rather, says Mr. Trevor, a series of small
discordant noises.

"She's crying, let's face it," whispered Mr. Maturin.

"She! Who?"

"Ssh!" snapped Mr. Maturin.

They were at that point in Conduit Street where a turn to the right
will bring one into a fat little street which looks blind but isn't,
insomuch as close by the entrance to the Alpine Club Galleries there
is a narrow passage or alley leading into Savile Row. Mr. Trevor says
that the repugnance with which he at that moment looked towards the
darkness of that passage or alley had less than nothing to do with the
blood-thirsty policeman's last words, but was due merely to an
antipathy he had entertained towards all passages or alleys ever since
George Tarlyon had seen a ghost in one. Mr. Maturin and he stood for
some minutes in the full light of the moon while, as though from the
very heart of the opposite darkness, the lacerating tremors of weeping
echoed about their ears.

"I can't bear it!" said Beau Maturin. "Come along." And he advanced
towards the darkness, but Mr. Trevor said he would not, pleading
foot-trouble.

"Come," said Beau Maturin, but Mr. Trevor said: "To-morrow, yes. But
not to-night."

Then did Beau Maturin advance alone into the darkness towards the
passage or alley, and with one pounce the darkness stole his top-hat
from the moon. Beau Maturin was invisible. The noise of weeping
abated.

"Oi!" called Mr. Trevor. "Come back, you fool!"

"Ssh!" whispered the voice of Mr. Maturin.

Mr. Trevor said bitterly: "You're swanking, that's all!"

"It's a girl!" whispered the voice of Mr. Maturin, whereupon Mr.
Trevor, who yielded to no man in the chivalry of his address towards
women, at once advanced, caught up Mr. Maturin, and, without a thought
for his own safety, was about to pass ahead of him, when Beau Maturin
had the bad taste to whisper, "'Ware razors!" and thus again held the
lead.

She who wept, now almost inaudibly, was a dark shape just within the
passage. Her face, says Mr. Trevor, was not visible, yet her shadow
had not those rather surprising contours which one generally
associates with women who weep in the night.

"Madam," began Mr. Maturin.

"Oh!" sobbed the gentle voice. "He is insulting me!"

Mr. Trevor lays some emphasis on the fact that throughout the course
of that miserable night his manners were a pattern of courtliness.
Thinking, however, that a young lady in a situation so lachrymose
would react more favourably to a fatherly tone, he said:--

"My child, we hope----"

"Ah," sobbed the gentle voice. "Please go away, please! I am _not_
that sort!"

"Come, come!" said Mr. Maturin. "It is us whom you insult with a
suspicion so disagreeable. My friend and I are not of the sort to
commit ourselves to so low a process as that which is called, I
believe, 'picking up.'"

"We have, as a matter of fact, friends of our own," said Mr. Trevor
haughtily.

"Speaking generally," said Mr. Maturin, "women like us. Time over
again I have had to sacrifice my friendship with a man in order to
retain his wife's respect."

"Ah, you are a man of honour!" sobbed the young lady.

"We are two men of honour," said Mr. Trevor.

"And far," said Mr. Maturin warmly, "from intending you any mischief,
we merely thought, on hearing you weeping----"

"You _heard_ me, sir!"

"From Conduit Street," said Mr. Trevor severely, whereupon Mr. Maturin
lifted up his voice and sang:--

    "_From Conduit Street, from Conduit Street,_
        _The street of ties and tailors:_
     _From Conduit Street, from Conduit Street,_
        _A shocking street for trousers._"

"Oh!" sobbed the young lady. "Is this chivalry?"

"Trousers," said Mr. Maturin, "are closely connected with chivalry,
insomuch as he who commits chivalry without them is to be considered a
rude fellow. But, child," Mr. Maturin protested sincerely, "we
addressed you only in the hope that we might be of some service in the
extremity of your grief. I assure you that you can trust us, for since
we are no longer soldiers, rape and crime have ceased to attract us.
However, you do not need us. We were wrong. We will go."

"It was I who was wrong!" came the low voice; and Mr. Trevor says that
only then did the young lady raise her face, when it was instantly as
though the beauty of that small face sent the surrounding darkness
scurrying away. Not, however, that Mr. Trevor was impressed
altogether in the young lady's favour. Her eyes, which were large,
dark, and charming, appeared to rest on handsome Beau Maturin with an
intentness which Mr. Trevor can only describe as bold; while her
disregard of his own presence might have hurt him had he, says Mr.
Trevor, cared two pins for that kind of thing.

"You see, I have not eaten to-day," the young lady told Beau Maturin,
who cried: "But, then, we _can_ help you!"

"Ah, how do I know! Please," the young lady began weeping again, and
Mr. Trevor says that had he not hardened his heart he could not say
what he might not have done. "Please, sirs, I simply do not know what
to do! I am so unhappy, so alone--oh, but you cannot imagine! You are
gentlemen?"

"Speaking for my friend," said Mr. Maturin warmly, "he has been asked
to resign from Buck's Club only after repeated bankruptcies."

"Mr. Maturin," said Mr. Trevor, "has in his time been cashiered from
no less a regiment than the Coldsteam Guards."

The young lady did not, however, favour Mr. Trevor with so much as a
glance, never once taking her beautiful eyes from the handsome face of
Beau Maturin. Indeed, throughout the course of that miserable night
she admirably controlled any interest Mr. Trevor might have aroused in
her, which Mr. Trevor can only account for by the supposition that she
must have been warned against him. Beau Maturin, meanwhile, had taken
the young lady's arm, a familiarity with which Mr. Trevor cannot too
strongly dissociate himself, and was saying:--

"Child, you may come with us, if not with honour, at least with
safety. And while you refresh yourself with food and drink you can
tell us, if you please, the tale of your troubles. Can't she, Ralph?"

"I don't see," said Mr. Trevor, "what good we can do."

"Your friend," said the young lady sadly to Beau Maturin, "does not
like me. Perhaps you had better leave me alone to my misery."

"My friend," said Beau Maturin, guiding her steps down the fat little
street towards Conduit Street, "likes you only too well, but is
restraining himself for fear of your displeasure. Moreover, he cannot
quickly adapt himself to the company of ingenuous young ladies, for he
goes a good deal into society, where somewhat cruder methods obtain."

"But oh, where are you taking me to?" suddenly cried the young lady.

"To _The Garden of My Grandmother_," said Mr. Trevor bitterly, and
presently they found a taxi-cab on Regent Street which quickly
delivered them at the place in Leicester Square. Mr. Trevor cannot
help priding himself on the agility with which he leapt out of that
taxi-cab, saying to the driver: "My friend will pay."

But Mr. Maturin, engrossed in paying those little attentions to the
young lady which really attractive men, says Mr. Trevor, can afford to
neglect, told the driver to wait, and when the driver said he did not
want to wait, to go and boil his head.


III

Mr. Trevor describes _The Garden of My Grandmother_ in some detail,
but that would be of interest only to the specialist. The place was
lately raided, and is now closed; and remained open so long as it did
only with the help of such devices as commend themselves to those
aliens who know the laws of the land only to circumvent them. For some
time, indeed, the police did not even know of its existence as a
night-club, for the entrance to the place was through two mean-looking
doors several yards apart, on one of which was boldly inscribed the
word "Gentlemen" and on the other "Ladies."

Within, all was gaiety and _chic_. From the respectable night-clubs
and restaurants, all closed by this hour, would come the _jeunesse_ of
England; and an appetising smell of kippers brought new life to the
jaded senses of young ladies, while young gentlemen cleverly contrived
to give the appearance of drinking ginger-ale by taking their
champagne through straws. Mr. Trevor says, however, that there was not
the smallest chance of the place being raided on the night in
question, for among the company was a Prince of the Blood; and it is
an unwritten law in the Metropolitan Police Force that no night-club
shall be raided while a Prince of the Blood is pulling a party
therein.

The young lady and our two gentlemen were presently refreshing
themselves at a table in a secluded corner; and when at last only the
wine was left before them Mr. Maturin assumed his courtliest manner to
beg the young lady to tell her tale, and in detail, if she thought its
relation would relieve her at all. She thought, with all the pensive
beauty of her dark eyes, that it would, and immediately began on the
following tale:--


THE TALE OF THE BULGARIAN GIRL

I am (she said) twenty-three years old, and although I once spent two
years in England at a boarding-school in Croydon, my life hitherto has
been lived entirely in Bulgaria. My father was a Bulgar of the name
of Samson Samsonovitch Samsonoff, my mother an Englishwoman of the
Lancashire branch of the race of Jones, and for her tragic death in a
railway accident just over a year ago I shall grieve all my life:
which, I cannot help praying, may be a short one, for I weary of the
insensate cruelties that every new day opens out for me.

I must tell you that my mother was an unusual woman, of rigid
principles, lofty ideals, and a profound feeling for the grace and
dignity of the English tongue, in which, in spite of my father's
opposition, for the Samsonoffs are a bitter proud race, she made me
proficient at an early age. Never had this admirable woman a thought
in her life that was not directed towards furthering her husband's
welfare and to obtaining the happiness of her only child; and I am
convinced that my father had not met his cruel death two months ago
had she been spared to counsel him.

My father came of an ancient Macedonian house. For hundreds of years a
bearer of the name of Samson Samsonovitch Samsonoff has trod the stark
hillsides of the Balkans and raided the sweet, rich valleys about
Philippopolis. As brigands, the Samsonoffs had never a rival; as
_comitadjis_, in war or peace, their name was a name for heroism and
of terror; while as assassins--for the domestic economy of Bulgaria
has ever demanded the occasional services of a hawk's eye and a
ruthless hand--a Samsonoff has been honourably associated with some of
the most memorable _coups_ in Balkan history. I am well aware that
pride of family has exercised a base dominion over the minds of many
good men and women; yet I do not hesitate to confess that it is with
almost unbearable regret that I look upon the fact that I, a wretched
girl, am the last and only remnant of our once proud house.

Such a man it was whom my mother, while accompanying her father, a
civil engineer, through Bulgaria, married. Nor did it need anything
less than the ardour of her love and the strength of her character to
seduce a Samson Samsonovitch from the dour dominion of the hills to
the conventional life of the valleys. I loved my father, but cannot be
blind to the grave flaws in his character. A tall, hairy man, with a
beard such as would have appalled your English description of Beaver,
he was subject to ungovernable tempers and, occasionally, to
regrettable lapses from that moral code which is such an attractive
feature of English domestic life. Ah, you who live in the content and
plenty of so civilised a land, how can you even imagine the horrors of
lawlessness that obtain among primitive peoples! Had not that good
woman my mother always willed him to loving-kindness, Samsonovitch
Samsonoff had more than once spilled the blood of his dearest friends
in the heat of some petty tavern brawl.

We lived in a farmhouse in what is surely the loveliest valley in the
world, that which is called the Valley of the Roses, and whence is
given to the world that exquisite essence known as _attar_ of roses.
Our little household in that valley was a happy and united one; more
and more infrequent became my father's demoniac tempers; and, but for
his intolerance of fools and cravens, you had taken the last of the
Samsonoffs to be a part of the life of the valley-men, of whose
industry, the cultivation of roses, he rapidly became a master.

Thus we come to the time which I now think of as two months before my
mother's death. My father had attained to a certain degree of wealth,
and was ever enticing my mother with dreams of a prolonged visit to
her beloved birthplace, Southport, which is, I believe, a pretty town
on the seaboard of Lancashire, and which I look forward with delight
to visiting. While enticing her, however, with such visions, he did
not hesitate to warn her that she must wait on the issue of his
fanciful hobby, which daily grew on him; for the last of the
Samsonoffs had become an inventor of flowers!

You may well look bewildered. But had you known my father you would in
some measure have understood how a man, of an extreme audacity of
temperament, might be driven into any fanciful pursuit that might lend
a spice to a life of intolerable gentility. Nor was that pursuit so
fanciful as might at first appear to those of conventionally studious
minds: my father had a profound knowledge of the anatomy of flowers;
and was in the habit of saying that he could not but think that the
mind of man had hitherto neglected the invention and cultivation of
the most agreeable variations. In fine, the tempestuous but simple
mind of Samsonovitch Samsonoff had been captivated by the possibility
of growing green carnations.

My mother and I were, naturally enough, not at all averse from his
practising so gentle a hobby as the invention and cultivation of
improbable flowers. And it was long before we even dreamt of the evil
consequences that might attend so inoffensive an ambition. But my poor
mother was soon to be rid of the anxieties of this life.

One day she and I were sitting in the garden discussing the English
fashion-journals, when, silently as a cloud, my father came out of the
house and looked towards us in the half-frowning, half-smiling way of
his best mood. Tall and patriarchal, he came towards us--and in his
hand we saw a flower with a long slender stem, and we stared at it as
though we could not believe our eyes, for it was a green carnation!

"You have painted it!" we cried, my mother and I, for his success had
seemed to us as remote as the stars.

"I have _made_ it!" said my father, and he smiled into his beard,
which was ever his one confidential friend. "Women, I have made it in
my laboratory. And as I have made this I can make thousands, millions,
and thousands of millions!"

He waved a closely-covered piece of paper towards me. "My daughter,"
he said, "here is your dower, your heritage. I am too old to burden
myself with the cares of great riches, but by the help of this paper,
you, my beloved child, will become an heiress who may condescend to an
Emperor or an American. We will not lose a minute before going to
England, the land of honest men, to put the matter of the patent in
train. For on this paper is written the formula by which green
carnations, as well as all previously known varieties of carnations,
can be _made_ instead of grown. _Made_, I say, instead of grown!
Women, do you understand what it is that I have achieved? I have
stolen something of the secret of the sun!"

"Samson, boast not!" cried my mother, but he laughed at her and
fondled me, while I stared in great wonder at the slip of paper that
fluttered in his hand and dreamed the fair dreams of wealth and
happiness in a civilised country. Ah, me, ah me, the ill-fated
excellence of dreams! For here I am in the most civilised country in
the world, a pauper, and more wretched than a pauper!

Our preparations for removal to England were not far advanced before
that happened which brought the first cruel turn to our fortunes. On
an evil day my mother set out to Varna to buy some trivial thing,
and--but I cannot speak of that, how she was returned to us a mangled
corpse, her dear features mutilated beyond recognition by the fury of
the railway accident.

My father took his sudden loss strangely: it was as though he was
deprived at one blow of all the balance, the restraint, with which so
many years of my mother's influence had softened the dangerous temper
of the Samsonoff; and the brooding silence he put upon his
surroundings clamoured with black thoughts. Worst of all, he began
again to frequent the taverns in the valley, wherein he seemed to find
solace in goading to fury the craven-hearted lowlanders among whom he
had lived in peace for so long. The Samsonoff, in short, seemed
rapidly to be reverting to type; and I, his daughter, must stand by
and do nothing, for my influence over him was never but of the
pettiest sort.

The weeks passed, and our preparations for departure to England
proceeded at the soberest pace. In England we were going to stay with
my mother's brother, a saintly man of some little property who lived a
retired life in London, and whose heir I would in due course be, since
he was himself without wife or children.

My father, never notable for the agreeable qualities of discretion and
reticence, soon spread about the report of his discovery of the green
carnation. He could not resist boasting of it in his cups, of the
formula with which he could always make them, of the fortune he must
inevitably make. Nor did he hesitate to taunt the men of the valley,
they who came of generations of flower-growers, with his own success
in an occupation which, he said, he had never undertaken but at a
woman's persuasion, since it could be regarded as manly only by those
who would describe as manly the painted face of a Circassian eunuch.
Thus he would taunt them, laughing me to scorn when I ventured to
point out that even worms will turn and cravens conspire. Woe and woe
to the dour and high-handed in a world of polity, for their fate shall
surely find them out!

One day, having been to the village to procure some yeast for the
making of a _yaourt_ or _yawort_, which is that same Bulgarian "sour
milk" so strongly recommended to Anglo-Saxon digestions, I was
startled, as I walked up the path to the door, by the bruit of loud,
rough voices. Only too soon was my fear turned to horror. One of the
voices was my father's, arrogant and harsh as only his could be, with
a sneer like a snake running through it. The other I could not
recognise, but could hear only too well that it had not the soft
accents of the men of the valley; and when, afraid to enter, I peered
in through the window, I saw my father in violent altercation with a
man his equal in stature and demeanour--another bearded giant, as fair
as my father was dark, and with the livid eyes of a wolf.

What was my horror on recognising him as Michaelis the _comitadji_,
the notorious and brutal Michaelis of the hills. The Michaelis and the
Samsonovitch Samsonoffs had always been the equal kings of the
_banditti_, and, in many a fight between Christian and Turk, the equal
champions of the Cross against the Crescent. And now, as I could hear
through the window, the last of the Michaelis was asking of the last
of the Samsonoffs some of his great wealth, that he might arm and
munition his troop to the latest mode.

My father threw back his head and laughed. But his laugh had cost him
dear had I not screamed a warning, for the Michaelis with the wolfish
eyes had raised a broad knife. My father leapt to one side, and taking
up the first thing that came to hand, a heavy bottle of _mastic_,
crashed it down like an axe on the fair giant's head; and then,
without so much as a glance at the unconscious man, and massive though
the Michaelis was, slung him over his shoulder, strode out of the
house and garden, and flung him into the middle of the roadway, where
he lay for long moaning savagely with the pain of his broken head. I
had gone to the aid of the wretch, but my father would not let me,
saying that no Michaelis ever yet died of a slap on the crown and that
a little blood-letting would clear the man's mind of his boyish
fancies. Ah, if it had!

It was at a late hour of the very next night--for since my mother's
death my father would loiter in the taverns until all hours--that his
hoarse voice roused me from my sleep; and on descending I found him
raging about the kitchen like a wounded tiger, his clothes in disorder
and showing grim dark stains that, as I clung to him, foully wetted my
hands. I prayed him, in an access of terror, to tell me he was not
hurt, for what other protection than him had I in that murderous land?

"I am not hurt, child," he growled impatiently. "But I have been
driven to hurt some so that they can never again feel pain."

They had ambushed him, the cowards, as he came home through the
wood--as though a hundred of those maggots of the valley could slay a
Samsonovitch Samsonoff! My father had caught the last of them by the
throat, and the trembling coward had saved himself by confessing the
plot. It appeared that it was they who had persuaded the Michaelis to
visit us the day before, inflaming his fancy with tales of the
discovery of the carnation and of the great riches the Samsonoff had
concealed about the house. And the Michaelis had come to our house not
for part of my father's wealth but for all he could find, as also for
the secret of the carnation, which he might sell at a great price to
some Jew in Sofia--he had come to kill my father!

"And I, like a fool," cried my father, "only broke the skin of his
wolfish head! Girl, we must be off at once! I have not lived in
unwilling peace all these years to die like a rat; and now that these
weak idiots have failed to kill me Michaelis and his troop will
surround the house, and who shall escape the wolves of the hills? Now
linger not for your clothes and fineries. Grigory Eshekovitch has
horses for us at the edge of the wood, and we can make Philippopolis
by the morning. Here is all our money in notes. Take them, so that you
will be provided for should these scum get me. And the formula--take
care of the formula, child, for that is your fortune! Should I have to
stay behind, your mother's brother in England is a good man and will
probably not rob you of more than half the profits of it."

And so we came to leave our beloved home, stealing like thieves
through the darkness of a moonless night. How shall I ever forget
those desperate moments! Our farm lay far from any other habitation,
and a long sloping lane joined our pastures to the extensive Karaloff
Wood, a wood always evoked by Bulgarian poets of past centuries as the
home of vampires and the kennel of the hounds of hell.

There, at its borders, Grigory Eshekovitch, a homely man devoted to
our interests, awaited us with two horses; and, although I could not
see his face in the darkness, I could imagine by the tremor of his
never very assured voice how pallid, indeed green, it must have been;
for poor Grigory Eshekovitch suffered from some internal affection,
which had the effect of establishing his complexion very uncertainly.

"Have you seen any one in the wood?" my father asked him.

"No, but I have heard noises," Grigory Eshekovitch trembled.

"Bah!" growled my father. "That was the chattering of your own
miserable teeth."

I wonder what has happened to poor Grigory Eshekovitch, whether he
survived that hideous night. We left him there, a trembling figure on
the borders of the wood, while we put our horses into the heart of
that darkness; and I tried to find solace in our desperate situation
by looking forward to the safety and comfort of our approaching life
in England. Little I knew that I was to suffer such agonies of fear in
this huge city that I would wish myself back in the land of wolves!

My dreams were shattered by a low growl from my father, and we pulled
up our horses, listening intently. By this time we were about half-way
through the wood; and had we not known the place by heart we had long
since lost our way, for the curtain of leaves between us and the faint
light of the stars made the place so black that we could not even see
the faintest glimmer of each other. At last my father whispered that
it was all right, and we were in the act of spurring our tired horses
for the last dash through the wood when torches flamed on all sides,
and we stood as in the tortured light of a crypt in moonlight.

"Samson Samsonovitch," cried a hoarse voice, and like a stab at my
heart I knew it for the voice of the Michaelis, "we hope your sins are
not too heavy, for your time has come."

It ill becomes a girl to boast of her parent; but shall I neglect to
mention the stern fortitude, the patriarchal resignation, the
monumental bravery, of my father, how he sat his horse still as a rock
in a tempest and only his lips moved in a gentle whisper to me.
"Child, save yourself," said he, and that was his farewell. "I command
you to go--to save yourself and my secret from these hounds. Maybe I
too will get through. God is as good to us as we deserve. Head right
through them. Their aim, between you and me, will be so unsure that
we might both escape. Go, and God go with you!"

Can you ask me to remember the details of the awful moment? The
darkness, the flaming torches, the hoarse cries of the bandits as they
rode in on us, my father's great courage--all these combined to
produce in me a state for which the word "terror" seems altogether too
homely. Perhaps I should not have left my father. Perhaps I should
have died with him. I did not know what I was doing. Blindly as in a
nightmare I spurred my horse midway between two moving torches. The
horse, startled already, flew madly as the wind. Cries, curses, shots
seemed to sweep about me, envelop me, but terror lent wings to my
horse, and the shots and shouts faded behind me as phantoms might fade
in a furious wind. Last of all came a fearful fusillade of shots, then
a silence broken only by the harsh rustle of the bracken under my
horse, which with the livid intelligence of fear, did not stop before
we reached Philippopolis in the dawn.

I was never to see my father again. Until noon of the next day I sat
anxiously in the only decent inn of the ancient town, praying that
some act of Providence had come to his aid and that he might at any
moment appear; when, from a loquacious person, who did not know my
name, I heard that the last of the Samsonoffs had that morning been
found in Karaloff Wood nailed to a tree-trunk with eighteen bullet
wounds in his body.

I will spare you my reflections on the pass in which I then found
myself. No young girl was ever so completely alone as she who sat the
day through in the parlour of the Bulgarian inn, trying to summon the
energy with which to arrange for her long journey on the Orient
Express to England.

Arrived in London, I at once set out to my uncle's house in Golgotha
Road, Golders Green. I was a little surprised that he had not met me
at the station, for I had warned him of my arrival by telegram; but,
knowing he was a gentleman of particular though agreeable habits, it
was with a sufficiently good heart that I rang the bell of his tall,
gloomy house, which stood at the end of a genteel street of exactly
similar houses.

Allow me, if you please, to hurry over the relation of my further
misfortunes. My uncle had died of a clot of blood on the heart a week
before my arrival. His property he had, of course, left to me; and I
could instantly take possession of his house in Golgotha Road. I was
utterly alone.

That was four weeks ago. Though entirely without friends or
acquaintance--for my uncle's lawyer, Mr. Tarbold, was a man who bore
his own lack of easy conversation and human sympathy with a resigned
fortitude worthy of more wretched sorrows--I passed the first two
weeks pleasantly enough in arranging the house to my taste, in
engaging a housekeeper and training her to my ways, and in wondering
how I must proceed as regards the patenting and exploiting of the
carnation, the formula for which I kept locked in a secret drawer of
my toilet-table.

At the end of three weeks--one week ago--my housekeeper gave me notice
of her instant departure, saying that no consideration would persuade
her to spend another night in the house. She was, it seemed, psychic,
and the atmosphere of the house, which was certainly oppressive,
weighed heavily on her mind. She had heard noises in the night, she
affirmed, and also spoke indignantly of an unpleasant smell in the
basement of the house, a musty smell which she for one made no bones
of recognising as of a graveyard consistency; and if she did not know
a graveyard smell, she asked, from one of decent origins, who did,
for she had buried three husbands?

Of course I laughed at her tremors, for I am not naturally of a
nervous temper, and when she insisted on leaving that very day I was
not at all disturbed. Nor did I instantly make inquiries for another
woman, for I could very well manage by myself, and the work of the
house, I thought, must help to fill in the awful spaces made by the
utter lack of companionship. As to any nervousness at being left
entirely alone in a house, surrounded as it was by the amenities of
Golders Green, I never gave a thought to it, for I had been inured to
a reasonable solitude all my life. And, putting up a notice of
"Apartments to Let," in one of the ground-floor windows, I set about
the business of the house in something of a spirit of adventure
natural, if I may say so, to one of my years.

That, as I have said, was one week ago; and the very next day but one
after my housekeeper had left me was to see my hardly-won peace
shattered at one blow. I do not know if you gentlemen are aware of the
mode of life that obtains in Golders Green; but I must tell you that
the natives of that quarter do not discourage the activities of
barrel-organs--a somewhat surprising exercise of restraint to one who
has been accustomed to the dolorous and beautiful songs of the Balkan
_cziganes_. It is true, however, that these barrel-organs are played
mostly by foreigners, and I have been given to understand that
foreigners are one of the most sacred institutions of this great
country.

The very next morning after my housekeeper had left me I was
distracted from my work by a particularly disagreeable combination of
sounds, which, I had no doubt, could come only from a barrel-organ not
of the first order and the untrained voice of its owner. A little
amused, I looked out of the window--and with a heart how still leapt
back into the room, for the face of the organ-grinder was the face of
the Michaelis!

I spent an hour of agony in wondering if he had seen me for how could
I doubt but that he had followed me to England in quest of the formula
of the carnation? At last, however, I decided that he could not have
seen me, and I was in some degree calmed by the decreasing noise of
the barrel-organ as it inflicted itself on more distant streets.
London, I told myself, was a very large city; it was not possible that
the Michaelis could have the faintest idea in what part of it I
lodged; and it could only have been by the most unfortunate
combination of chances that he had brought his wretched organ into
Golgotha Road. Nevertheless I took the precaution to withdraw the
notice of Apartments to Let from the window, lest yet another
unfortunate combination of chances should lead him or his minions to
search for lodging in my house.

The next day passed quietly enough. I went out shopping with a veil
over my face, for reasons you can well understand. And little did I
dream that the approaching terror was to come from a quarter which
would only be known to the Michaelis when he was dead.

That evening in my bedroom, in a curious moment of forgetfulness, I
chanced to pull the bell-rope. I wanted some hot water, had for the
moment forgotten that the silly woman had left me, and only remembered
it with a smile when, far down in the basement, I heard the thin
clatter of the bell. The bathroom was some way down the passage, and I
had reached the door, empty jug in hand, when I was arrested by the
sound of approaching steps! They were very faint, they seemed to be
coming up from the basement, as though in answer to the bell! I
pressed my hand to my forehead in a frantic attempt to collect my
wits, and I have no hesitation in saying that for those few moments I
was near insane. The accumulation of terrors in my recent life had, I
thought, unhinged my mind; and I must that day have engaged a servant
and forgotten it.

Meantime the steps ascended, slowly, steadily, exactly as an elderly
servant might ascend in answer to the bell; and as they ascended I was
driven, I cannot tell you how, somehow past fear. Maybe it was the
blood of the Samsonoffs at last raging in me: I was not afraid, and,
without locking the door, I withdrew to a far corner of the room,
awaiting the moment when the steps must reach the door. I must not
forget to add that the empty jug was still in my hand.

Steadily, but with a shuffling as of carpet-slippers, the steps came
up the passage: slowly the door was opened, and a gaunt, grey-haired
woman in musty black stood there, eyeing me with strange contempt.
Fear returned, enveloped me, shook me, and I sobbed, I screamed. The
woman did not move, did not speak, but stood there, gaunt and grey and
dry, eyeing me with a strange contempt; and on her lined face there
was such an undreamt-of expression of evil. Yet I recognised her.

I must tell you that my mother had often, in telling me of her
brother, spoken of his confidential housekeeper. My mother was a
plain-spoken woman, and I had gathered from her that the woman had
exercised some vulgar art to enthral my poor uncle and had dominated
him, to his hurt, in all things. At the news of this woman's death
just before my mother's tragic end, she had been unable to resist an
expression of relief; and I, on having taken possession of the house a
few weeks before, had examined with great interest, as girls will, the
various photographs of her that stood about the rooms.

It was from these that I recognised the woman who stood in the
doorway. But she was dead, surely she had died more than a year ago!
Yet there she now stood, eyeing me with that strange contempt--with
such contempt, indeed, that I, reacting from fear to anger, sternly
demanded of her what she did there and what she wanted.

She was silent. That was perhaps the most awful moment of all--but no,
no, there was worse to come! For, sobbing with terror, I hurled the
empty jug at her vile face with a precision of aim which now
astonishes me: but she did not waver so much as the fraction of an
inch as the jug came straight at her--and, passing through her head,
smashed into pieces against the wall of the passage outside. I must
have swooned where I stood, for when I was again conscious of my
surroundings she was gone: I was alone; but, far down in the house, I
could hear the shuffling steps, retreating, descending, to the foul
shades whence she had come.

Now I am one who cannot bear any imposition; and unable, despite the
witness of my own eyes, to believe in the psychic character of the
intruder, I ran out of the room and in hot pursuit down the stairs.
The gaunt woman must have descended with a swiftness surprising in one
of her years, for I could only see her shadow far below, on the last
flight of stairs that would take her to the basement. Into that lower
darkness, I must confess, I had not the courage to follow her; and
still less so when, on peering down the pitch-dark stairs into the
kitchen, I was assailed by that musty smell which my housekeeper had
spoken of with such indignant conviction as of a graveyard
consistency.

I locked the door of my room and slept, I need scarcely say, but ill
that night. However, in the cheerful light of the following morning, I
was inclined, as who would not, to pooh-pooh the incredible events of
the previous night; and again pulled the bell-rope, just to see the
event, if any. There was; and, unable to await the ascent of the
shuffling steps, I crammed on a hat and ran down the stairs.

The woman was coming upstairs, steadily, inevitably. As she heard me
descending she stopped and looked up, and I cannot describe the effect
that the diabolical wickedness of her face had on me in the clear
daylight. I stopped, was rooted there, could not move. To get to the
front door I must pass the foul thing, and that I could not summon the
courage to do. And then she raised an arm, as though to show me
something, and I saw the blade of a razor shining in her hand. You may
well shudder, gentlemen!

When I came to, it was to find myself lying at the foot of the stairs,
whither I must have fallen, and the foul thing gone. Why she did not
kill me, I do not know. God will pardon me for saying that maybe it
had been better if she had, for what miseries are not still in store
for me! Trembling and weak, I reached the door and impelled myself
into the clear air of morning. Nor could the fact that I had forgotten
my veil, and the consequent fear of the Michaelis, persuade me to
re-enter that house until I had regained some degree of calmness.

All day long I wandered about, knowing neither what to do nor where to
go. I am not without some worldly sense, and I knew what little
assistance the police could give me in such a dilemma, even had they
believed me; while as for the lawyer, Mr. Tarbold, how could I face a
man of so little sympathy in ordinary things with such an
extraordinary tale?

Towards ten o'clock that night, I determined to return and risk
another night in that house; I was desperate with weariness and
hunger; and could not buy food nor lodging for the night, for in my
flight I had forgotten my purse; while I argued to myself that if,
after all, she had intended to murder me, she could without any
difficulty have done so that morning when I lay unconscious on the
stairs.

My bravery, however, did not help me to ascend the stairs to my
bedroom with any resolution. I stole upstairs, myself verily like a
phantom. But, hearing no sound in the house, I plucked up the courage
to switch on the light on my bedroom landing. My bedroom-door stood
open, but I could not remember whether or not I had left it so that
morning. It was probable, in my hasty descent. I tiptoed to it and
peered in--and I take the liberty to wonder whether any man, was he
never such a lion-heart, had been less disturbed than I at the sight
which the light of the moon revealed to my eyes.

The Michaelis lay full length on the floor, his great fair beard
darkened with his blood, which came, I saw, from a great gash behind
his ear. Across him, with her back to me, sat straddled the gaunt,
foul thing, as silent as the grave. Yet even my terror could not
overcome my curiosity as to her actions, for she kept on lowering and
raising her left hand to and from the Michaelis's beard, while with
her right, in which shone the bloody razor, she sawed the air from
side to side. I could not realise what that vile shape was doing--I
could, and could not admit the realisation. For with her left hand she
was plucking out one by one the long hairs of the Michaelis's beard,
while with the razor in her right she was slicing them to the floor!

I must have gasped, made some noise, for she heard me; and, turning on
me and brandishing the dripping razor, she snarled like an animal and
leapt towards me. But I am young and quick, and managed just in time
to reach the street door and slam it against her enraged pursuit.

That was last night. Since then, gentlemen, I have wandered about the
streets of London, resting a little among the poor people in the
parks. I have had no food, for what money I have is in that house,
together with the formula for the green carnation; but nothing, not
death by exposure nor death by starvation, would induce me to return
to the house in Golders Green while it is haunted by that foul
presence. Is she a homicidal lunatic or a phantom from hell? I do not
know, I am too tired to care. I have told you two gentlemen my story
because you seem kind and capable, and I can only pray that I have not
wearied you overmuch. But I do beg you to believe that nothing is
further from my mind than to ask, and indeed nothing would induce me
to accept anything from you but the generous sympathy of your
understanding and the advice of your chivalrous intelligence. My tale
is finished, gentlemen. And, alas, am not I?


IV

Mr. Trevor is somewhat confused in his relation of the course of
events immediately subsequent to Miss Samsonoff's narrative. During
its course he had time, he says, to study the young lady's beauty,
which, though of a very superior order, was a little too innocent and
insipid for his taste. His judgment, however, cannot be entirely fair,
for such was the direction of the young lady's eyes that Mr. Trevor
could judge her by her features only. As to the story itself, Mr.
Trevor says that, while yielding to no one in his liking for a good
story, he could not see his way to considering Miss Samsonoff's
notable either for interest, entertainment, or that human note of
stark realism which makes for conviction; and while, in the ordinary
way, a murderer was to him like a magnet, he could not rouse himself
to feel irresistibly attracted towards the ghoul of Golders Green. It
was therefore with surprise not unmixed with pain that he heard Mr.
Maturin saying:--

"Ralph, we are in luck!"

"To what," Mr. Trevor could not entirely cleanse his voice from the
impurity of sarcasm, "to what do you refer?" But it was not without
some compunction that he heard the young lady sigh miserably to Beau
Maturin:--

"I am afraid I have wearied your friend. Forgive me."

"My friend," said Beau Maturin gently, "is an ass. In point of fact,
Miss Samsonoff, far from wearying us, you have put us under a great
obligation----"

"Ah, you are kind!" the young lady was moved to sob.

"On the contrary," Mr. Maturin warmly protested, "I am selfish. I
gather you have not been reading the newspapers lately? Had you done
so, you would have read of a murderer who has recently been loose in
London and has so far evaded not only capture but even identification.
So far as the public know through the newspapers, this criminal has
been responsible for only two or three murders; but this very night my
friend and I have had private information to the effect that within
the last few weeks twelve mutilated corpses have been found in various
parts of London; to which we must now, no doubt, add a thirteenth, the
remains of your late enemy, Mr. Michaelis. But where _your_
information," said Mr. Maturin gallantly, "is especially valuable, is
that the police do not dream that the criminal is of your sex. To my
friend and me it is this original point that invests the pursuit----"

"Pursuit?" Mr. Trevor could not help starting.

"----with," said Mr. Maturin coldly, "an added charm. And now with
your permission, Miss Samsonoff, we will not only return to you your
formula, as to the financial worth of which I cannot entirely share
your late parent's optimism, but also----"

"Also," Mr. Trevor said with restraint, "we will first of all call at
Vine Street and borrow a few policemen."

"Oh, yes!" the young lady said eagerly. "We will be sure to need some
policemen. Please get some policemen. They will listen to you."

"I do not find an audience so difficult to find as all that," said Mr.
Maturin coldly. "The London police, Miss Samsonoff, are delightful,
but rather on the dull side. They are much given to standing in the
middle of crowded roads and dreaming, and in even your short stay in
London you must have observed what a serious, nay intolerable,
obstruction they are to the traffic. No, no, my friend and I will get
this murderer ourselves. Come, Miss Samsonoff."

"But I dare not come with you!" cried the young lady. "I simply dare
not approach that house again! May I not await your return here?"

"The attacks of ten murderers," said Mr. Maturin indignantly, "cannot
disfigure your person more violently than being left alone in a
night-club will disfigure your reputation. Bulgarians may be violent,
Miss Samsonoff. But lounge-lizards are low dogs."

Mr. Trevor says that he was so plunged in thought that he did not
arise from the table with his usual agility; and the first notice he
had that Mr. Maturin had risen and was nearly at the door was on
hearing him waive aside a pursuing waiter with the damnable words: "My
friend will pay."

Without, the taxi-cab was still waiting. Its driver, says Mr. Trevor,
was one of those stout men of little speech and impatient demeanour:
on which at this moment was plainly written the fact that he had been
disagreeably affected by waiting in the cold for nearly two hours; and
on Mr. Maturin's sternly giving him a Golders Green direction he just
looked at our two gentlemen and appeared to struggle with an
impediment in his throat.

Golgotha Road was, as the young lady had described it, a genteel
street of tall, gloomy houses. Mr. Trevor says that he cannot remember
when he liked the look of a street less. The taxi-cab had not
penetrated far therein when Miss Samsonoff timidly begged Mr. Maturin
to stop its further progress, pointing out that she could not bear to
wait immediately opposite the house and would indeed have preferred to
await her brave cavaliers in an altogether different part of London.
Mr. Maturin, however, soothed her fears; and, gay as a schoolboy, took
the key of the house from her reluctant fingers and was jumping from
the cab when Miss Samsonof cried:--

"But surely you have weapons!"

Mr. Trevor says that, while yielding to no one in deploring the use of
weapons in daily life, in this particular instance the young lady's
words struck him as full of a practical grasp of the situation.

"Of course," said Mr. Trevor nonchalantly, "we must have weapons. How
stupid of us to have forgotten! I will go back to my flat and get
some. I won't be gone a moment."

"That's right," Mr. Maturin agreed, "because you won't be gone at all.
My dear Miss Samsonoff, my friend and I do not need weapons. We put
our trust in God and St. George. Come along, Ralph. Miss Samsonoff, we
will be back in a few moments."

"And wot do I do?" asked the taxi-driver.

"Nothing," cried Mr. Maturin gaily. "Nothing at all. Aren't you
lucky!"

The house which the young lady had pointed out to them had an air of
even gloomier gentility than the others, and Mr. Trevor says he cannot
remember when he liked the look of a house less, particularly when the
ancient brown door gave to Beau Maturin's hand before he had put the
key into the lock. Mr. Trevor could not resist a natural exclamation
of surprise. Mr. Maturin begged him not to shout. Mr. Trevor said that
he was not shouting, and, without a thought for his own safety, was
rushing headlong into the house to meet the terror single-handed when
he found that his shoe-lace was untied.

He found Beau Maturin in what, he supposed, would be called a hall
when it was not a pit of darkness. A stealthily lit match revealed
that it was a hall, a narrow one, and it also revealed a closed door
to the right, by Mr. Trevor's elbow, which he removed. The match went
out.

"Quietly," said Mr. Maturin quite unnecessarily, for Mr. Trevor says
he cannot remember when he felt less noisy. He heard the door to his
right open, softly, softly.

"Is it you opening that door?" he asked, merely from curiosity.

"Ssh!" snapped Beau Maturin. "Hang on to my shoulder-blades."

Mr. Trevor thought it better to calm Beau Maturin's fears by acceding
to his whim, and clung close behind him as they entered the room. The
moon, which Mr. Trevor already had reason to dislike, was hanging at a
moderate elevation over Golders Green as though on purpose to reveal
the darkness of that room. Mr. Trevor's foot then struck a shape on
the floor. The shape was soft and long. Mr. Trevor was surprised. Mr.
Maturin whispered:--

"Found anything?"

Mr. Trevor said briefly that his foot had.

"So's mine," said Beau Maturin. "What's yours like? Mine's rather soft
to the touch."

"And mine," said Mr. Trevor.

"They're corpses, let's face it," sighed Mr. Maturin. "Making fifteen
in all. With us, seventeen. Just give yours a kick, Ralph, to see if
it's alive. I've kicked mine."

"I don't kick corpses," Mr. Trevor was muttering when he felt a hard
round thing shoved into the small of his back.

"Ow!" said Mr. Trevor.

"Found anything?" said Mr. Maturin.

Mr. Trevor said briefly that there was something against his back.

"And mine," sighed Mr. Maturin. "What's yours like? Mine's rather hard
on the back."

"So is mine," said Mr. Trevor.

"They're revolvers, let's face it," sighed Beau Maturin.

"They are," said a harsh voice behind them. "So don't move."

"I've got some sense, thank you," snapped Beau Maturin.

"Sir," said the harsh voice, and it was a woman's voice, "I want none
of your lip. I have you each covered with a revolver----"

"Waste," said Beau Maturin. "One revolver would have been quite
enough. Besides, my friend and I were distinctly given to understand
that you were partial to a razor. Or do you use that for shaving?"

"I use a razor," said the harsh voice, "only when I want to kill. But
I have a use for you two."

The light was suddenly switched on, a light so venomous, says Mr.
Trevor, that they had to blink furiously. And that must have been a
very large room, for they could not see into its far corners. The
light came from what must have been a very high-powered lamp directly
above a table in the middle of the room; and it was concentrated by a
shade in such a way as to fall, like a searchlight, exactly on the two
helpless gentlemen. Mr. Trevor says that Beau Maturin's handsome face
looked white and ghastly, so the Lord knows what Mr. Trevor's must
have looked like. Meanwhile their captor leapt from her station behind
them, and they were privileged to see her for the first time. She was,
says Mr. Trevor, exactly as Miss Samsonoff had described her, grey and
gaunt and dry, and her expression was strangely contemptuous and evil
as sin. And never for a moment did she change the direction of her
revolvers, which was towards our gentlemen's hearts. Mr. Trevor says
he cannot remember when he saw a woman look less afraid that a
revolver might go off in her hand.

"Look down," she commanded.

"It's all right," said Beau Maturin peaceably; "we've already guessed
what they are. Corpses. Nice cold night for them, too. Keep for days
in weather like this."

Mr. Trevor could not resist looking down to his feet. The corpses were
of two youngish men in dress-clothes.

"They're cut badly," said Mr. Maturin.

"They're not cut at all," said the woman harshly. "I shot these two
for a change."

"I meant their clothes," Mr. Maturin explained. "Death was too good
for them with dress-clothes like that."

"Well, I can't stop here all night talking about clothes," snapped the
woman. "Now then, to business. These bodies have to be buried in the
back-garden. You will each take one. There are spades just behind you.
I shall not have the slightest hesitation in killing you as I have
killed these two, but it will be more convenient for me if you do as
you are told. I may kill you later, and I may not. Now be quick!"

"Lord, what's that!" cried Mr. Trevor sharply. He had that moment
realised a strange muffled, ticking noise which must, he thought, come
either from somewhere in the room or from a room nearby. And, while he
was never in his life less conscious of feeling fear he could not help
but be startled by that ticking noise for he had heard it before, when
timing a dynamite-bomb.

"That is why," the woman explained with what, Mr. Trevor supposed, was
meant to be a smile, "you will be safer in the garden. Women are but
weak creatures, and so I take the precaution of having a rather large
size in dynamite-bombs so timed that I have but to press a button to
send us all to blazes. It will not be comfortable for the police when,
if ever, they catch me. But pick up those spades and get busy."

"Now don't be rude," begged Beau Maturin. "I can stand anything from
plain women but discourtesy. Ralph, you take the bigger corpse, as you
are smaller than I am, while I take this little fellow on my
shoulder--which will probably be the nearest he will ever get to
Heaven, with clothes cut as badly as that."

"You can come back for the bodies when you've dug the graves," snapped
the woman. "Take the spades and go along that passage. No tricks! I am
just behind you."

There was a lot of rubbish in that garden. It had never been treated
as a garden, it did not look like a garden, it looked even less like a
garden than did The Garden of My Grandmother. High walls enclosed it.
And over it that deplorable moon threw a sheet of dead daylight.

"Dig," said the woman with the revolvers, and they dug.

"Do you mind if we take our coats off?" asked Beau Maturin. Mr. Trevor
says that he was being sarcastic.

"I don't mind what you take off," snapped the woman.

"Now don't say naughty things!" said Mr. Maturin. "Nothing is more
revolting than the naughtiness of plain women."

"Dig," said the woman with the revolvers, and they dug.

They dug, says Mr. Trevor, for a long time, for a very long time. Not,
however, that it was difficult digging once one had got into the swing
of it, for that garden was mostly dug-up soil. Suddenly Beau Maturin
said:--

"Bet you a fiver I dig a grave for my fellow before you."

"Right!" said Mr. Trevor.

"Dig," said the woman with the revolvers, and they dug.

"_And_," said the women, "I don't allow any betting in this house. So
call that bet off."

"What?" said Mr. Maturin.

"Dig," said the woman with the revolvers.

Mr. Maturin threw down his spade.

"Dig," said the woman with the revolvers.

Mr. Trevor dug.

Mr. Maturin said: "Dig yourself!"

"Dig," said the woman with the revolvers.

Mr. Trevor brandished his spade from a distance. He noticed for the
first time that they had been digging in the light of the dawn and not
of the moon.

"And who the deuce," said Mr. Maturin dangerously, "do you think you
are, not to allow any betting? I have stood a lot from you, but I
won't stand that."

"Dig," said the woman with the revolvers, but Mr. Maturin advanced
upon the revolvers like a punitive expedition. Mr. Trevor brandished
his spade.

"Another step, and I fire!" cried the woman harshly.

"Go ahead," said Mr. Maturin. "I'll teach you to stop me betting! And
I hate your face."

"Oh dear, oh dear!" the woman suddenly cried with a face of fear, and,
lowering her revolvers, fled into the house.

Mr. Trevor was so surprised that he could scarcely speak. Mr. Maturin
laughed so much that he could not speak.

"What's there to laugh about?" Mr. Trevor asked at last.

"It's funny. They've had us, let's face it. Come on, let's follow her
in."

"She may shoot," Mr. Trevor cautioned.

"Shoot my eye!" sighed Beau Maturin.

Once in the house, Mr. Trevor stopped spellbound. There were voices,
there was laughter--from the room of the two corpses!

"They're laughing at us!" said Mr. Trevor.

"Who wouldn't!" laughed Beau Maturin, and, opening the door said:
"Good-morning."

"You've said it," said the policeman. "Haw-haw!"

"You'll have some breakfast?" asked the woman with the revolvers.

"Please do!" said Miss Samsonoff.

"You _ought_ to be hungry," said the taxi-driver with the Homburg hat
of green plush.

"Look here!" gasped Mr. Trevor. "What the blazes----"

"Haw-haw!" laughed the policeman. "'Ave a bit of vealanam-pie?"

"Now, Ted, don't be rude to the gentlemen!" said the woman with the
revolvers.

"Quite right, mother," said Miss Samsonoff. "We owe these gentlemen an
explanation and an apology----"

"And if they don't take it we _are_ in the soup!" miserably said the
man in the Homburg hat of green plush.

"Now, you two, go and get cups and plates for the two gentlemen," said
the woman with the revolvers to the two corpses in dress-clothes.

"Listen, please," Miss Samsonoff gravely addressed Mr. Maturin, "my
name isn't Samsonoff at all but Kettlewell, and that's my mother and
these are my four brothers----"

"How do you do?" said Mr. Maturin, absently drinking the policeman's
coffee, but Mr. Trevor is glad that no one heard what he said.

"You see," said Miss Kettlewell, and she was shy and beautiful, "we
are The Kettlewell Film Company, just us, but of course we haven't got
a lot of money----"

"A 'lot' is good!" said the policeman.

"My brother there," and Miss Kettlewell pointed to the wretched man
with the Homburg hat of green plush, "was the director of an American
company in Los Angeles, but he got the sack lately and so we thought
we would make some films on our own. You see, we are such a large
family! And the recent murders gave us a really brilliant idea for a
film called 'The Ghoul of Golders Green,'[1] which, thanks to you two
gentlemen, we have completed to-night. Oh, I do hope it will be a
success, especially as you have been kind enough to help us in our
predicament, for we hadn't any money to engage actors--and we did so
need two gentlemen, just like you, who really looked the part, didn't
we, mother?"

"But, my dear child," cried Beau Maturin, "I'm afraid your film can't
have come out very well. Trevor and I will look perfectly ghastly, as
we neither of us had any make-up on."

"But it's that kind of film!" smiled Miss Kettlewell. "You see, you
and your friend are supposed to be corpses who, by some powerful
psychic agency are digging your own graves--Heavens, what's that?"

There, at the open door, stood an apparition with a dreadful face. He
appeared, says Mr. Trevor, to have some difficulty in choosing among
the words that his state of mind was suggesting to him.

"And me?" gasped the taxi-driver hoarsely. "Wot abaht me?
'Angingabahtallnight! 'Oo's going to pay me, that's wot I want to
know? There' four quid and more on that clock----"

Mr. Maturin swept his empty coffee-cup round to indicate the family
Kettlewell.

"My friends will pay," sighed Mr. Maturin.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] _When the film was released by the Kettlewell Film Corporation,
evidences of public favour were so notably lacking that it was offered
to the Society for Presenting Nature Films to the blind._

_Surely, after the above exposure of the methods adopted, no further
reasons should be sought for the so much deplored inferiority of
British films._




_The Ancient Sin_


I

George Tarlyon and I were engaged to stay the week-end with Aubrey
Carlyle at Malmanor Hall, which is four hours by car from Hyde Park
Corner, though that, of course, rather depends on the kind of car.
George Tarlyon's--as that Armenian fellow had noticed--was a good car,
long and low, a chaps' car, and we had run four-fifths of our distance
very well: we had flashed through a town, whose name is of no
interest, and had plunged into the peculiar wood of Carmion, which
shrouds the southern border of the domain of Malmanor. We were
therefore on the last lap, and the fact that this lay through Carmion
Wood lent a certain interest to it; for although Tarlyon and I had
very often stayed with Aubrey Carlyle at Malmanor, we had never,
somehow, really penetrated into Carmion. I don't know why, but it just
hadn't happened; and George Tarlyon was now running his car along the
broad sweep of its central and only road because of a vague idea that
it was a short cut as compared to the main road. It was a rotten idea,
that of George Tarlyon's.

One of the many silly legends about Carmion Wood is that only
foreigners may hear the singing of the birds therein, while for
Englishmen there is no sound but the rustling of the leaves and the
sighing of the boughs. How that sort of nonsense ever gets hold of a
countryside, I don't know. And the fact that, as George Tarlyon rushed
the car along the twilight road--for although it was a bright summer's
day, the leaves are very thick on Carmion trees--we could hear no
birds singing was, without a doubt, simply because they were singing
somewhere else that afternoon. "Obviously," I said to Tarlyon, who had
suggested that had I had a Spanish mother I could now be enjoying the
sweet trilling of rooks and the back-chat of blackbirds, "obviously
they can't always be singing in one place."

"Listen," said George Tarlyon, and when you listened it really was
rather curious, the silence of Carmion Wood. "Quiet we call silence,
the merest word of all," some one has written, Poe, I think; but that
word applied very fully to Carmion, it was so silent! If only there
had been a wind, just to give the leaves a little fun! But there
wasn't a breath, it was a close day in August, and the wood was a
crypt, that's what it was. I said so to Tarlyon, but all he said was
that he was hungry. Later on he grunted: "You and your crypts!"

"It's a pity," I said reasonably, "that the sun doesn't get a bit
further into this place...."

"Dolorous is the word for it," murmured Tarlyon; and he was quite
right, amazingly right. "Dolorous" was certainly the word for it.

"Open your cut-out, man!" I said at last, for that car was really too
well-bred. And with a twist of his foot he opened the cut-out. What a
cut-out! But it did make things seem more homely.


II

The car rushed on.... The straight road under the thick tapestry of
leaves would take us directly to the parkland of Malmanor; through the
opening at the end, for Carmion Wood ends sharply, we could see in the
far distance, lying in the hollow of the county like an ancient pink
jewel in a green bowl, the vast Elizabethan pile of Malmanor Hall.

The car rushed on ...

"Bang!" said the car, but Tarlyon said worse than that as he pulled
up.

"This," I said, as we looked at the flattened back tyre, "this comes
of taking short cuts."

The matter with Tarlyon was that he had no luncheon and was hungry.
Now George Tarlyon is my greatest friend, but this I had against him,
that he swore too much. Like many other men, decent men, he swore too
much and too often. I can say "damn" with any man, I have said
"bloody," and will again when it is organic to the occasion, but what
humorous writers in the magazines call scientific swearing does not
amuse me. I do not wish to seem superior, but it just does not amuse
me. In the Middle Ages men swore mightily on the names of the Trinity
and the Saints, but then they believed mightily in the Trinity and the
Saints. Now men swear and curse on the names of everything and believe
in nothing. It is the habit of the modern world; it is the habit of
being in a hurry; it is the habit of unholiness. And it had grown on
my friend, George Almeric St. George Tarlyon, who was otherwise a
reasonable sort of man.

To put on the spare tyre was only the work of a few minutes; and again
the car rushed on ... and from behind us came a cry. I looked back,
and there, twenty yards behind us, stood and screamed a woman by the
roadway.

Tarlyon was really remarkably fluent as he reversed. He was hungry,
you see.

"We must have dropped something," I suggested.

We drew abreast of the gesticulating woman on the coarse grass by the
road. She was just a slip of an aged woman, and her hair was made of
bits of gray string, and her eyes leapt hysterically out of a little,
lined face. "Come, come!" she was screaming. "Come, come quick!" She
smelt old, that woman.

The car had scarcely stopped abreast of her when she turned and
scampered away along a little lane between the tall, still trees. It
was extraordinary, the way she ran, that little old woman! "Come, come
quick!"

Well, there was nothing to do but to follow.

"The girl's mad," snarled Tarlyon, as he strode after the little old
woman. But striding was no use, it was a running job, and it was a hot
day.

It was an untidy, tangled path up which she was leading us--and how
quickly she ran, that little old woman, stumbling over her uncertain
feet and frantic gestures, while we ploughed on behind her through the
lush of the wood in July. It was an amazingly hot day; the Press for
the last week or so had been full of surprise and congratulation as to
the amazingly hot days we were having, and we had now an unrivalled
opportunity of testing the veracity of the Press, but we would much
rather have forgone it. At that moment, following that little old
woman up that tangled path in Carmion Wood, George Tarlyon and I were
probably the wettest men in England outside of a swimming-bath.

"What the devil is it all about?" muttered Tarlyon, and was not
soothed by my suggesting that I thought it was all part of his idea of
a short cut to Malmanor--while the little old woman still screamed at
us to come quick, quick.

"Quick, quick ..." And at her heels we burst out on to a clearing in
the wood. The sun lay on that clearing like a carpet of gold.


III

Tarlyon and I stopped dead, and stared. We stared hard. But the little
old woman, still screaming to us to follow, ran on ahead to the house.
Yes, there was a house in that clearing, a little farmhouse. And the
sun lay on it all like a carpet of gold: that is how I saw it....

"Not our business," muttered Tarlyon, and I heartily agreed that it
wasn't. We stood where we were, with our eyes glued on what we saw;
and George Tarlyon dug his hands deep in his pockets. George Tarlyon
always dug his hands deep in his pockets when he wanted frightfully to
take them out.

A man was thrashing his son. I cannot explain why, but we were somehow
quite certain that the thing the man was thrashing was flesh of his
flesh and blood of his blood. He was a huge man, with a mane of gray
hair and a long gray beard, and he had on a bright red shirt. If I
close my eyes now I can see the blood-red of that huge bearded man's
shirt, I can see the curve of his great shoulders and the muscles that
stood out like lumps of rubber on his half-bare arm as he beat his son
with a stout stick. And I can see his little old wife trying to stay
his hand, begging, praying, moaning. We heard her moaning, like an
old, old bird in pain. And at that Tarlyon started forward a step....

"Steady there!" cried Tarlyon sharply. "Steady, Beaver!" The cry cut
across the sunlit place, the clear cry that has lit for England the
darkest corners of the world, and the huge man in the red shirt stayed
his cudgel and looked at us. But the little old woman still moaned,
and it was quite dreadful to hear that in the summer silence. Ten
yards separated us from that domestic scene, but they were yards of
bright sunlight, and we could see every line on that patriarch's face.
For he was a patriarch. He was the most magnificent man I have ever
seen; and Tarlyon and I, not small men, felt withered under his
straight look. We stood rooted.

"Friends," said the old man, and his was the voice of authority, "you
must leave me in peace to drive the sin out of this my son. His mother
is a woman, and will pardon everything in those she loves, but you are
men and know the one sin that is unpardonable by all men. Go your ways
in peace, and fear not to put your own houses in order...."

And still he looked at us, that remarkable old lecturer, his cudgel
stayed in the air, his son at his feet; and his voice was the voice of
a man who has drunk the vinegar of life, and his eyes were the eyes of
a man who has seen Christ crucified. That is why we knew for certain,
Tarlyon and I, that whatever that ancient man said was true, and
whatever he did was right. "Come away," I whispered "You are right.
It is your business," cried Tarlyon across the sunlight--and, dear
God, it was! For the thing happened then. We hadn't noticed that the
son had crawled from his father's feet. And what we saw was a spade
raised high in the sunlight, a spade crashing down and cleaving the
patriarch's head like an axe, so that the blood came out of it like
the sap of a tight orange. Without a cry the old man fell, and red as
his shirt were the stones of the yard beneath his head. The little old
woman screamed. The son and his spade lay where Tarlyon's right hand
felled him, and Tarlyon knelt by the slaughtered old man. I couldn't
move. I took up the gored spade and held it, a silly gesture. My heart
beat like a bell in my ears, and I remember there rose to my lips
prayers that I thought I had forgotten.

"Quiet, for one moment," I heard Tarlyon's voice to the screaming old
woman. I stared and wondered at my friend, kneeling there on the dyed
stones and listening to the heart under the red shirt. I could not
have done that. I hate a lot of blood.

Then he rose and came towards me. I hated the dark damp patches on his
trouser-knees.

"Quite dead," he said. "We must fetch the police."

Of course, I thought. And together we looked down at the son on the
ground. He was gibbering. He had gone mad. "Drat the boy!" said
Tarlyon thoughtfully.

"I wonder," I heard myself whisper, "what was the one sin the old man
said was unpardonable?"

Tarlyon looked from the prostrate thing to me, and I saw that those
slightly frozen blue eyes of his were as miserable as the eyes of a
hurt girl. You see, that old man was a very remarkable old man, and he
was dead....

"I don't know," he whispered back. "You and I, Ralph, and our friends,
have become so civilised that we don't know what the unpardonable sins
are. We simply don't _know_, old man! We are the world's soft people,
Ralph. We are so civilised that we pardon too much--both in ourselves
and other people; and we call that being broad minded, but it's really
being flabby. But that old man, I'm sure, was not 'broad-minded,' he
was as little 'broad-minded' as Jehovah, and there was one sin he
simply would not pardon. And we, who are civilised people, do not even
know what it was...."

We stared silently at the poor gibbering thing at our feet.

"Better tie him up before leaving," I suggested.

"Don't you think," said Tarlyon, "that one of us should stay here
while----"

"I won't stay here alone," I said abruptly--and I meant it. Nothing
would have induced me to stay alone in that ghastly sunlit spot, alone
with that lunatic boy and the little old woman and the butchered
patriarch. How she moaned, that little old woman kneeling on the
blooded stones....

With a silk handkerchief for his ankles and one for his wrists, we
trussed the poor boy against the kitchen door. He could not have been
more than seventeen or so, and his young face was hideous with fear.

We left the place quickly; but I looked back just once at the scene,
for it seemed to me very strange of the sun still to lie on it all
like a carpet of gold. That is how I felt about it.


IV

Swiftly Tarlyon put the bonnet of his car to the direction from which
we had come, where lay the town whose name is of no interest.

"How far is it, d'you think, Ralph?"

"About four miles," I ventured; and Tarlyon proceeded to eat up those
four miles as a conjuror eats up yards of ribbon. It perished beneath
us, that road, and the roaring cut-out tore the silence of Carmion
Wood into a million bits, and may it never have found them again!
Neither of us spoke. I was feeling sick.

We reached the outskirts of the town, and a piece of luck saved us
from inquiring for the police station; for, approaching us on a
bicycle, we saw a blue, helmeted figure, and by the stripes on his
arm we knew him for a sergeant of police. Tarlyon pulled up.

"Better leave the bicycle and come with us to Carmion Wood," he said.
"Explain as we go. Urgent."

The sergeant looked closely into Tarlyon's face.

"Right, sir," said he, and quickly gave the custody of his bicycle to
a gnarled-looking woman in the open doorway of a labourer's dwelling.

"What's oop over ut Carmion?" asked she.

"You may well ask," said Tarlyon.

No laggard was that sergeant of police. A grizzled man, with a
reticent face. I sat behind and heard Tarlyon explain. The sergeant
said nothing, listening intently, until the end.

"Where did you say the house was, sir?" he asked then.

"I've just been telling you, man! In a little clearing in the wood."

"Very good, sir," said the sergeant of police.

Silently we sped into Carmion Wood.

"You see, sir," said the sergeant, "it's a powerful long time since
I've been here. Folk roundabout mislike the wood."

"Don't feel very attached to it myself," grunted Tarlyon. "Ah, here we
are!"

But it was not going to be as easy as that. For when we left the car,
at the identical spot where, we were certain, the little old woman had
stopped us, we somehow lost our way. We wandered about for some time,
up little twisting lanes, down tangled untidy lanes, up no lanes at
all: we ploughed through the growth and lush of the wood, like angry
flies beating about a crypt to which the sun filtered in tortured
patches of light. We perspired enormously--and Tarlyon lost his
temper. He had had no luncheon, you understand, and it was now past
five; and so he was fluent in the forbidden language. But the sergeant
of police was a tough and silent man, he neither sweated nor spoke.

"Where did you say the house was, sir?" asked the sergeant at last:
and very amiably, I thought, considering....

"Oh," says Tarlyon. "So you've heard me mention a house, have you!"

We stood very still, the three of us, and Tarlyon glared.

"Look here, sergeant," he snarled, "if you ask me again where that
house is I shall get cross ... I've told you, man! Body of God,
if----"

"_Please_, sir!" said the sergeant quickly.

"What d'you mean by 'Please, sir?'" Tarlyon was well away. It was a
very warm day, you understand.

"I mean, sir," said the sergeant of police, "please don't swear on the
name or the body of God."


V

Well, we went on ... and, at last, unmistakably hit the path up which
we had followed the little old woman. We followed the path, Tarlyon
first, then me, then the sergeant. And then we came upon the clearing,
and the sun lay on it like a carpet of gold. We stared. Like idiots,
we stared. For, except the sun, there was nothing in that clearing but
the rust and bones of a long-ruined house.

You had, of course, suspected as much. You had known that all along.
You know all about those silent woods and slaughtered men. You have
been let in before, by better men. But it was curious, all the same....

"Is this where you said the house was, sir?" the sergeant's voice came
gently.

We turned and looked at him.

"Because," he went on, "there's been no house here for more than
thirty year...."

"Ah!" said Tarlyon; that was about as much as any one _could_ say. And
our eyes wandered over the clearing, and we saw, bright against the
mouldy stones of the ruin, two silk handkerchiefs....

Even the law was at last affected by the heat, for he raised his
helmet and passed a hand over his almost bald head.

"Yes," said the sergeant of police. "There was a house here thirty
year ago, but it was burnt down by the men of the neighbourhood
because of a great crime that was done there. Parricide it was, but
the boy was pardoned, being judged mad, and mad he must have been to
kill the best and most God-fearing man in the county. Good-day, sirs.
I'll walk my way back. Yours was just an illusion, I make no doubt.
The sun, maybe. But it's always had a bad name, has Carmion ...
Good-day, sirs." And the sergeant of police went his way.

"Did you see him, did you see his face?" I gasped frantically. For the
face of the sergeant of police was the grown face of the lunatic boy
we had trussed up an hour before with our two silk handkerchiefs, and
they lying where we must have dropped them, drooping over the ruins...

"And he has learnt his lesson," said Tarlyon, and his face was as
still as the gray water of a rock-pool. "He has learnt his lesson,
Ralph--and has taught me one. For the one sin that the old man said
was unpardonable by all men is blasphemy...."




_The Loquacious Lady of Lansdowne Passage_


This is a story about my friend George Tarlyon, who is a brave man and
no bigger liar than most. Of course, George Tarlyon ought to know
better than to be afraid of walking through Lansdowne Passage at
night. But you can tell him that until you are blue in the face and he
will smile at you and agree with you, but still he will not walk
through Lansdowne Passage at night, saying that he is afraid. And when
you ask him of what he is afraid, he will smile a shameless smile and
reply that he gives Lansdowne Passage a miss because he is afraid of
meeting a woman in it. At that you will at once express impatience,
disbelief, and disgust, for on no female occasion whatsoever will you
have noticed upon George Tarlyon's brow that cold sweat which denotes
a decent bashfulness in a man. And then, maybe, you will jeer at
George Tarlyon, forgetting for a moment that he is a head taller than
any quick-tempered man should be, and thinking to goad him into
revelation of the reason or reasons why he, a noted warrior on many
fields from Ranelagh to Vimy Ridge, should be afraid of meeting a
woman in Lansdowne Passage. And maybe George Tarlyon will tell you,
and maybe he will not.

In these days of easy travelling and tourist facilities it need
scarcely be explained that Lansdowne Passage is a narrow path between
two high walls; and that this path is carved between the princely
domains of Devonshire House and Lansdowne House. Men speak of a time
when, midway through the passage, they had every now and then to pass
under a light wooden bridge which had overnight been thrown from the
top of one high wall to the other, and how it seemed to them pleasant
to think that perhaps the Marquess of Lansdowne was going to step
across to visit the Duke of Devonshire that day. But nothing like that
happens nowadays, for Devonshire House emptily awaits its destiny and
Lansdowne House is held in fief by a distinguished stranger. But there
is still something feudal about Lansdowne Passage, for it is a private
right-of-way, and on one day every year Lord Lansdowne sends his men
to lock and bolt the doors at each end of the passage, as it is his
right to do, for the only way a man has of showing that a passage is
his passage is by keeping every one else out of it for one day every
year, the date to be left to his discretion. Through Lansdowne
Passage, on 364 days of the year, the pedestrian (or two pedestrians
abreast, but not more than two, for you can't have everything) can
walk direct from Curzon Street to Berkeley Street, and thus save
himself an endless amount of walking round by Piccadilly or Berkeley
Square. Mention must also be made of an old man who, on 364 days of
the year, wanders about the passage with a broom, or sometimes leans
the broom against the wall and sits down on the upturned end of a
narrow wooden box, which he brings with him every morning for that
purpose; but he doesn't really have very much time for sitting on his
box, for all autumn he sweeps away at the leaves, happily without
effect, and for the rest of the year you cannot drop a piece of paper,
orange-peel, or cigarette-end without having it swept away at once;
and all the year round he gives you greeting as you pass, in a
friendly way.

Now, one night in May, a year after the world was said to be at peace,
George Tarlyon had reason to be walking in a westerly direction from
Dover Street; down Hay Hill he went, and down the covered stairway
from Berkeley Street into Lansdowne Passage. The hour was very late,
the night pleasantly dark and cool, and the stillness of a sleeping
city broken only by the cameo noises of the narrow hours. His steps
rang gaily between the high walls of the passage, echoes carelessly
tossing themselves from one wall to the other, round and about and
every way, and he was almost half-way through before he realised that
he was sharing the passage with another: a woman just ahead of him,
walking slowly in his direction, but scarcely walking, loitering
against the wall, a self-effacing woman of the night. George Tarlyon
passed her, and about her face he was not at all curious. A word
followed him, a shy word, but he strode on, two steps, three
steps--and then another word followed him, louder, and he swung round,
not very amiably.

Now the words which women of the night cast into the night as a lure
for passing men are few, and their expression limited; and many had
been cast to George Tarlyon in passing but never had he chosen one,
for that kind of thing did not amuse him, and he was quite popular
enough in his own circle. But "My dear!" this woman had cried at his
back, softly, not at all insinuatingly: a ladylike voice, without
glitter or suggestion, just appealing; and it somehow caught the drum
of George Tarlyon's ear, the gentle "my dear," and he swung round to
it.

"Well?" asked George Tarlyon, not very amiably. But he made a gesture
towards his hat, which is more than most men do on the casual
occasion.

She softly came towards him, and stood a long way below him, for she
was a short, slight woman: of about middle years, and of the middle
sort, plain featured and dressed unnoticeably: very quiet and ladylike
she was. From one hand hung a bag, just a little larger than those
called hand-bags, and full-looking, as might be that of a sempstress
or governess who is absent from her home all day. The little lady
smiled, without lure....

"Well?" asked George Tarlyon again, not very amiably.

"It's only," said the little lady, "that I am afraid to walk alone
through this passage, and would be very grateful if you would allow me
to walk with you as far as the Curzon Street end." Very quiet and
ladylike she was.

"Why, of course," said George Tarlyon, politely enough, and more or
less dismissed the thing with a swing round. But the little lady
walked as slowly with him as she had without him, and he had to
accommodate his step to hers.

"But if you're afraid," George Tarlyon just thought to ask, "aren't
you even more afraid of addressing a stranger, who might do a little
lady some harm in a lonely place like this?"

The little lady smiled gently.

"I saw your face as you passed," she said. "You might be dangerous to
a lady in a drawing-room but not in Lansdowne Passage. Unlike some men
I know...."

They were walking very slowly, and still had almost half of the
passage to go, but George Tarlyon did not say "Hurry up, little lady,"
thinking she was a pathetic little thing, more than usually pathetic
of her kind. But he was not interested in her, and it was only out of
politeness that he asked.

"Have you had trouble with one or two, then?"

"With one," she told him softly. She was so small, and he so tall,
that her voice seemed to float up to him from somewhere about his
knees. He scarcely listened to it. To tell the truth, he was rather
tired. "With one," she repeated. "That is why I am afraid of walking
through here by myself at night. It happened many years ago, but every
detail is still very clear to me."

"He must have frightened you a good deal," said George Tarlyon. Not
that he was interested.

"I wouldn't say that," said the little lady gently. "But it was
certainly the most important thing that has ever happened in my life.
You see, sir, I had to get three pounds that night. I had already made
two pounds, for that is all I have ever dared to ask, though sometimes
the kinder gentlemen have given me more, but that night I had to make
three pounds more, for five pounds a week was the rent of my rooms and
already overdue sometime...." The gentle voice ran on, floating up to
him from somewhere about his knee, and he scarcely listened. They were
quite near the Curzon Street end now, and the words floated upwards
quicker....

"Just about where you passed me, I spoke to him--in the passage here.
He was a short man, and not a gentleman, but I needed three pounds
badly and nowadays you never know who has money and who hasn't, do
you? But as soon as he answered and looked at me I knew I had made a
mistake, but there's no use being rude, and so I walked on with him.
He said something about the coolness of the weather, but although I
kept my eyes in front of me, not liking the look of him, you see, I
knew very well that he was taking me in sideways. There's no use being
silly, I told myself, but I did wish I hadn't got my two pounds in my
bag or that some one else would come into the passage, though there's
generally little chance of that at this hour of night, unless it's a
policeman to smoke a cigarette. And so I hurried on as quick as I
could to get to Curzon Street, and we weren't more than half-way
through this passage then, but he got hold of my arm and stopped me
quick enough. I didn't look at his eyes, for I'd seen them once, you
see, but I heard him asking for money, as I knew he would. And then he
got hold of my bag by the strap, but I held on tight, saying there was
naught in it but powder and a handkerchief, but still not looking at
his eyes for I knew their kind well enough. But he held on, and said
he would give me some cocaine, 'snow' he called it, if I let him have
money, and with his other hand he fumbled in his pocket. 'I'll
scream,' I said, and at that he let go of my bag quick enough, so I
could hurry on to Curzon Street. He dropped back then, but I was in
such a state to get to Curzon Street that I couldn't hear him behind
me for the beating of my heart. But behind me he must have been, for
I'd just got to within a yard--why, we're at the spot now, I _have_
been slow in telling!--when from behind his hand clapped me over the
mouth, and I heard his breathing very hoarse at my neck, and then a
sharp funny pain in the shoulder-blade took me. As sharp as a knife,
they say, but this was a knife, and ever so sharp in the
shoulder-blade it was--but it didn't hurt so much as feel funny, if
you understand, and everything was so mixed up--his breathing, and the
funny feeling in the shoulder-blade, and somewhere a clock striking
once, but I went off before it struck again, for it must have been on
three o'clock. I never thought death would be like that."

And George Tarlyon looked for the little lady and he saw only the
wall, and George Tarlyon ran headlong out of Lansdowne Passage, and as
he ran he heard a clock strike the last two notes of three o'clock.




_The Smell in the Library_


I

One night we were at a party, George Tarlyon and I, and there were
also present some other people. It was not, however, a good party, and
we left it before eleven o'clock. I cannot remember now how it was
that one had gone there so early, but anyway it is of no significance.
As we passed out, a misguided fellow said it would get better later
on, but I extracted him from Tarlyon's teeth, and so out into the
street. A long string of cars stretched from the door towards Park
Lane, and here and there chauffeurs stood in sombre groups, and we
wondered if they thought they were missing anything. The heat of the
crowded rooms had put us in a fever, the night air penetrated our
flimsy evening-coats, and we shivered and murmured. From the open
windows of the house we had left there followed us down the length of
Green Street that asinine blare which is the punishment of England for
having lost America; and George Tarlyon muttered that there ought to
be a law to prevent people from giving fat-headed parties full of
crashing bores and plain women, the joints of whose knees cracked in
trying any dance which their mothers had not danced before them. I
tried to soothe him and myself by saying that parties were not what
they were and there it was; but he would not be soothed, for he had
been given a glass of cider-cup in mistake for champagne, and he who
touches cider-cup in the watches of the night may neither forget nor
forgive.

We walked up Park Lane aimlessly, for we knew not what to do nor
whither to go. We were further elated by the fact that we could sum up
only one cigarette between us.

I suggested that one might do worse than go to bed, but Tarlyon said
it was too early for that. "It is never too early," I said morosely,
"to go to bed."

"Pah!" said Tarlyon, and so we walked down Park Lane.

Now it is frequently said that Park Lane is full of Jews, but very few
met our eyes, and they might quite well have been Gentiles. There are
many illusions prevalent in the provinces about life in the great
metropolis of London: such as (_a_) that it is gay: (_b_) that it is
wicked: (_c_) that boys will be boys: (_d_) that there is plenty to do
when it rains: (_e_) that you have only to go for a walk to see many
"well-dressed women in costly furs"; but the one which has even less
foundation in fact than any of these is that, life in a great city
being what it is, there is never an hour of the twenty-four when the
great streets are not, to a student of life, full of matter for
observation. But, as George Tarlyon said, you might be a student of
life until you burst and still find no matter for observation--though
here we were in Park Lane and the hour not yet eleven!

"The whole thing is a ramp," we said. "Now take this matter about the
Jews. We have been distinctly given to understand that this Lane is
full of Jews--but what do we see? Two 'buses and a policeman. But that
leads us to an interesting speculation: can a policeman be a Jew? Has
such a thing as a Jewish policeman ever been seen or heard of? And if
not, what is it that prevents a policeman from being a Jew? Is the
religious feeling among policemen stronger than that among Privy
Councillors?"

"Let's ask him," I suggested. The policeman was decorating the corner
of Upper Brook Street. Tarlyon asked him, and the policeman said that
Vine Street was not so far off as all that, while as for Marlborough
Street, it was even nearer. He wasn't there to be accosted, he wasn't,
said the policeman wickedly.

"Ho!" said Tarlyon. "And have you been arresting any more respectable
old clergymen in Hyde Park for talking to women without an
introduction from a bishop? Blast me but I wouldn't dream of entering
Hyde Park nowadays, not at night anyway, without a battalion of chaps
fringed with torpedo-netting."

"Good-night, constable," I said hurriedly.

"Good-night, sir," said he--a discreet man.

"Pah!" said Tarlyon.

We walked up Park Lane.

And suddenly Tarlyon gripped my arm, and waved his stick and
whispered--

"Look at that! Ralph, just look at that!"

Ten yards or so ahead of us loomed the back of a giant. He was
striding on with huge steps, a black cloak was flung about him, and he
wore no hat. Maybe it was the cloak, swaying this way and that, and
one end flapping over a shoulder, that made the man seem taller than
he really was--but it was a colossal back.

"It's reminiscent," Tarlyon murmured. "I can't help a feeling about
that back--it's reminiscent."

"It's reminiscent," I whispered, "of a back I once lent money to. One
hundred pounds it was...."

We quickened our pace. The huge figure passed under the light of a
lamp, and the light fell on his bare head, and his hair flamed up like
fire.

The huge figure, the arrogant walk, the flaming ginger hair....

"Red Antony!" I murmured.

"And we thought he was dead!" muttered Tarlyon--as though Red Antony
could have died without the noise of his death-rattle confounding the
thunder of the guns that killed many better men! Could a man who
lived so noisily die as other men? And yet, because the lean years of
peace had passed without sight or sign of him, we had believed the
rumour that had had it that Sir Antony Poole had risen to be sergeant
in a Canadian storm battalion and had then died; which had seemed
natural in a kind of way, for the worst German shot couldn't, one
thought, have consistently missed six-foot-four under a crown of
flaming hair.

If there was a man who did not know, or know of, Antony Poole in the
careless years before the war, then there must have been something the
matter with his eyes or ears. For Red Antony was a famous sight in
every crowded place in London, and achieved considerable nonentity as
the noisiest and worst-tempered rascal since Fighting Fitzgerald of
the Regency. He crashed, did Antony, in furious idiocy from row to row
and roguery to roguery, so that the day inevitably came when no decent
man or woman would be seen speaking to the man. Oh, a calamitous pair,
the brothers Poole! For one night his brother, the great Sir Roger,
brilliant and sardonic Roger, dark and successful Roger, good
sportsman and lovable fellow--one night our Roger put a bullet through
his head, and at the inquest the amazed world heard that he had done
this unbelievable thing because the police were hammering at the door
with a warrant for his arrest on a charge of fraud. This we, his
friends, did not believe. The police may have been hammering at the
door, we said, but the police are notoriously promiscuous about the
doors they hammer at. "Fraud be damned in connection with Roger
Poole!"--that is what we said. Why, he was fine, that Roger--_fine_!
Thus we mourned him, once the wealthiest and wittiest of our company,
and we defended his memory against the few who dared impugn it. But
the disappearance of the red giant who was now Sir Antony Poole we did
not mourn, for from the day of the inquest, at which he broke down and
wept like a stricken child, he had not been seen in London until this
night in Park Lane.


II

"Go quietly," Tarlyon restrained me. "We'll learn Red Antony to walk
up Park Lane without a hat."

Gently we approached, one on each side of the colossal back.

"Oi!" we cried.

A wrench, and he faced us. We are tall, but we were as children
beneath him.

"Oi to you!" snarled Antony. "Who the blazes are you, anyway?" And the
great red expanse which was given to Antony for a face surveyed us
intolerantly. Never what you might call an easy-tempered man, Red
Antony.

"We be friends," said Tarlyon sombrely.

"That's uncommonly original of you," drawled Antony. "I didn't know I
had any." And he pretended not to recognise us--for Antony must always
act, always play cussed.

"You haven't," Tarlyon grinned. "But mine was just a manner of
speaking." He knew his man; and there passed over Red Antony's face
that earthquake and tornado which was given him for a smile and a
laugh.

"Hell! Always the same Tarlyon! How are you, George?"

"Monstrous," says George.

"But there is no sensation in matter," boomed Red Antony, crushing his
hand.

"And this," said Tarlyon, waving his other towards me, "and this, Sir
Antony, is your old friend Ralph Wyndham Trevor, whom you may quite
well have forgotten, since you owe him a hundred pounds."

Another earthquake across that vast red expanse, so that I feared for
the sleep of those mythical Jews....

"Dear old Trevor--fancy having kept you waiting all this time! Here
you are, man, here you are." And from somewhere inside his cloak he
jerked a pocket-book into my hand and crushed it against my palm. "You
can keep the change, old boy, as you're younger than I am and look as
though you need it. Always take vegetables with your meat, Trevor."

"I hate to take money from an impoverished baronet," I got in, just to
goad him.

"Impoverished nothing!" he boomed, and swung on Tarlyon, who backed a
step. "D'you remember, George, that Roger always said I had a _flair_
for making money----"

"But he added," Tarlyon said, "that you hadn't got the brain of a
louse to back that _flair_ up with."

Boomed Antony: "I have studied the ways of lice for five years on end
and must inform you, George, that my brain, though moth-eaten, is
certainly superior. I have made mints of money. I am fat with money. I
roll in money...." He was working himself up into that state of
chronic excitement in which he might twist the lamp-post. Breakable or
twistable things had always a fascination for Red Antony.

"There, there!" I soothed him. "And we thought the little man was
dead!"

"There, there!" said George. "Did he make money, now! And we thought
he was lying in some forgotten foreign field with a German bullet in
his heart."

Bother the man! He simply had to make a noise each time he opened his
mouth. The policeman who had talked Vine Street to us approached.

"Dead! Me dead!" And the sweep of his arm flung wide his cloak, and
indeed he looked a mighty man of wrath. "As though a Prooshian bullet
could kill me!"

"You are no doubt reserved for a more terrible end," said Tarlyon.

Blessed if the man didn't wilt! That roaring red giant--he wilted.

"Don't say that, George," he begged hoarsely. "It's a fool remark to
make, that. You didn't mean it, did you?" And he put the question
seriously! We gaped at him.

"He was only being funny," I explained. "He tries his best...."

"I wish you well, Antony," said Tarlyon, out of his surprise.

"God, I need it!" Antony growled surprisingly.

And then I laughed--remembering Red Antony's old way of acting cussed,
just to surprise and annoy. He'd do anything to make a fool of some
one, that man, even if he had to make a fool of himself in doing it.
But as I laughed, Antony looked at me with furious, haggard eyes, and
I stopped laughing.

I saw Tarlyon looking at him queerly. He knew Antony much better than
I did, for many and many a year ago he was a junior subaltern in the
mess when Antony threw a bottle at the head of an extremely superior
officer. The bottle was full, the aim was true, and Antony was
cashiered with all due pomp and dishonour. But, through all his
subsequent follies, Tarlyon had liked him. One couldn't, of course,
defend Antony; but the very few who had once liked Red Antony always,
somehow, went on liking him. There was something about the man, a
sort of tremendous gallantry, an air of shameless bravado, a thunder
of individuality, which might have made him a simple and lovable
giant--but for a grain of rotten subtlety somewhere in him. Fine
timber worm-eaten, Tarlyon said. Not, of course, said Tarlyon, that
himself was anything to write home about.

"What's the matter, old Antony?" Tarlyon asked kindly. "You've changed
enormously...."

Now I had noticed no particular change, except, perhaps, that handsome
Antony looked his forty years and more; but Tarlyon knew him better.

"How have I changed?" snapped Antony. He hated kindness; he thought he
was being pitied.

"You look a bit worn, old boy, that's all," said George lightly.

"If it comes to that, you aren't the man you were, what with war,
wine, and women!"

"Talking of wine," I thought to say, "one always understood that you'd
die of drink, Antony. That's probably what George meant when he said
you looked worn."

I wished I had kept my mouth shut. His eyes blazed over me.... but he
restrained himself; and Antony's "restraint" was a portentous
business--it made a noise like a fast car with the brakes jammed on.

"Drink!" he said sharply. "I drink nothing to speak of nowadays.
There's an end to all things...." Now the lion's bedside manner is a
significant thing, and even more significant is it when the lion in
the fullness of his strength sways a little, just a little; and what
would make Red Antony sway just a little would be enough to put
another man under the table, and no dishonour to the strength of his
head, either.

"I do not wish," said Antony reasonably, "that you should think me
irresponsible through excess of stimulant. The things that are
happening to me are not happening through drink, and you must bear
that in mind. I am saner than a sane man, though I can hear and see
and smell things that a sane man would die of...."

Tarlyon looked at me meaningly. Antony seemed to have forgotten us.
Tarlyon took his arm.

"We can't stay here all night," he said. "Let us now leave Park Lane
in a body and go to my house...."

Antony woke up; he threw back his head and howled: "Taxi!"

"All right, sir, all right," said the policeman gently. "You don't
need to shout like that." That was a brave policeman.

"I insist on shouting," boomed Antony. "Taxi!"

And, thankfully, a taxi appeared from Mount Street, for Red Antony and
the police never did mix well. He once arrested two policemen for
loitering and took them to Vine Street....

Antony flung open the door. A clock began the lengthy job of striking
eleven o'clock.

"We will go to _my_ house," said Antony. "I have a charming house, and
an appointment to keep in it. Jump in." We jumped in, and we heard him
give the driver the address of a house in Regent's Park. How often had
we not directed taxis to that house! Tarlyon whistled.

"So you've got Roger's old house!" he murmured.

Antony did not answer. The taxi staggered northwards as best it could.

"I don't see," snapped Antony at last, "why you should gape about it.
Getting back to England four months ago, I found the house empty, and
took it. It seems natural enough."

"I never said it wasn't," Tarlyon murmured. But he thought it wasn't,
and so did I. A brother, on coming back to civilisation after many
years' absence, does not immediately leap into the house in which his
elder brother blew his brains out--anyway, I wouldn't.

The taxi twisted through the gates, round the little drive, and to the
great door. An odd feeling it was, to stand again in front of that
door after nine years--but now we faced a house black and still where
once had been a house of shining windows, gay with music and the
laughter of the most brilliant company in London. Oh, the Georgians,
the magnificent young Georgians--mostly dead!

We told the driver to wait, and followed Antony in. We stood still in
the pitch-black hall until he should switch on the light, and in the
blaze of light in which the cloaked figure faced us I instantly
understood what Tarlyon had meant when he said that Antony had
"changed." I can only describe the change by saying that the structure
of his face seemed to have fallen into disrepair; its brick-red
complexion of old had dwindled to a faint pink, so that one had an
idea that any ordinary face would have been a ghastly white; and he
looked worn with more than the usual wear of passing years. But the
wild eyes were still wild, and uncommonly fine he looked as he faced
us in the sombre hall, the huge dandy in the black cloak with the head
of flaming hair brushed immaculately back.

He smiled at us with that sudden charm for which women had forgiven
him much--too much; he flung out an arm in the grand manner.

"Welcome to the old house," he said. "And for heaven's sake try to
look as though you didn't miss Roger."

But the magic of Roger Poole was not, I thought, in the place; the
house was now but a shell for a noisy man.


III

"Champagne is indicated," said Antony; and that indication led us to
the dining-room--a long, oak-panelled room at the back of the house.
The curtains were not drawn across the two French windows, which gave
out to a lawn sloping carelessly down to the water of Regent's Park;
and in the second in which Antony fumbled for the electric switch the
dark shapes of the trees looked like the van of an impenetrable
forest. But dark shapes of trees always look more or less like that.

"Didn't you say something about an appointment?" Tarlyon asked
vaguely, as Antony ravished the wire off a bottle.

"Did I?" He looked up at us from his business, very thoughtfully. "Oh,
did I?"

"Pop!" said the champagne cork.

We drank, and Antony looked at his wrist-watch.

"Damn!" he said. "It's stopped."

"The time being just 11.25," I helped him.

"Thanks," said Antony, very mild, very thoughtful. "Excuse me a
moment, will you?" And he strode across the room to the folding doors
which led to Roger's old library and card-room. He closed the door
behind him, but it did not catch, swung open a few inches. No light
filled the dark vertical space.

"Never known him so polite before," I muttered.

"He's absent-minded," said Tarlyon, looking thoughtfully at the dark
space.

"What I want to know," he whispered, "is what he's doing in there in
the dark?"

"Keeping his appointment," I suggested facetiously.

Tarlyon looked from the door to me.

"Poor devil!" he said softly. I thought he was pitying me for my wit,
of which I was never very proud.

He put down his empty glass, dug his hands into his pockets, and
lounged to the folding-doors. I never knew a man who could walk so
casually as Tarlyon; you never expected him to get anywhere, but he
always got there before you expected him to.

He kicked the slightly open door a little wider with the tip of his
shoe. I was just behind his shoulder.

"Antony!" he called softly.

From the light in which we stood the library was a pit of darkness.
Nothing moved in the pit. There was no sound.

"He's not there," I whispered; and I wondered why I whispered.

"Can you smell anything?" a hoarse voice suddenly asked from the
darkness.

Tarlyon lounged into the black room. But, somehow, I did not feel
called upon to follow. I leant against the door.

Deeply set in the darkness I could at last make out the faintly white
patch which must be Antony's shirt-front; and I wondered what
tomfoolery he was up to now, asking stupid questions in a startling
voice out of a poisonously dark room. I could smell nothing at all,
and didn't expect to.

"What kind of a smell?" Tarlyon asked--in a reasonable tone! He stood
just within the door, his back to me.

"Can you smell _nothing_ at all?" the hoarse, subdued voice asked
again. "But, of course, it's very faint now."

Tarlyon put up his nose and sniffed. I sniffed. More than faint it
was, I thought.

"Been smoking?" Tarlyon asked, and he sniffed again.

"No," came a whisper.

"Oh," said Tarlyon. This was lunatic talk, and I was just about to say
so when Antony asked sharply:

"Why did you ask?"

"I thought I smelt smoke," said Tarlyon. "Might be cigarette smoke."

"It is," I snapped, for I was smoking a Turkish cigarette just behind
his ear.

"You blasted fool!" said Antony--and with such contempt behind it that
from being bored I got annoyed. I stretched out my hand on the inside
of the library door and switched on the light.

"Turn that out, you fool!" came a frantic roar, and I had a vision of
a red giant murdering the distance between us. I've never thanked God
for anything so much as for having directed the body of George Tarlyon
to be standing between Red Antony and myself. I turned off the light
quick enough.

"Steady, Antony, steady!" said Tarlyon.

"Oh, go to hell!" growled Antony.

I thought to myself that we couldn't be very far from it at the
moment. But the spell, or smell, it seemed, was broken. I was thankful
for that, anyway.

Back in the lighted dining-room Antony emptied his glass; and grinned
at me rather shamefacedly.

"Sorry, old boy," he said. I grinned back, as though I had enjoyed it.

Tarlyon asked suddenly!

"Have you got a spare bedroom for me, Antony?"

I stared, Antony stared. Then Antony smiled, and never before had I
seen him smile quite like that.

"Thank you, George," he said, almost softly. "Now that's really a
friendly action. But I'll be all right--you needn't worry."

Then he addressed me as well; I had never seen Antony so reasonable.

"Come to dinner here to-morrow night," he begged. "Both of you. I can
give you quite a good dinner." He seemed very earnest, looking from
one to the other of us. I was going to say I was engaged, but Tarlyon
answered quickly:

"Right, Antony." And because he looked at me in a certain way, I let
it be.


IV

In the taxi, at last, Tarlyon said:

"Ralph, you risked your life by turning on that light, but you did a
great service."

"What do you mean?"

"Didn't you see anything?"

I then lost my temper.

"No," I shouted. "I neither smelt anything in the dark nor saw
anything in the light, except that red lunatic charging at me."

"He was only preserving his illusion," Tarlyon said mildly. "Didn't
you see, in that second of light, the open desk just by us, beside the
door?"

"I saw nothing but Antony, but quite enough of him."

"Pity. If you had seen the desk, you would have seen a telephone
overturned on it, the receiver hanging down, and a revolver on the
floor."

This was getting serious. I struck a match and examined Tarlyon's
face. He was not smiling.

"Fact," he assured me. "You would have seen the desk just as it was
after Roger Poole had shot himself at it."

"You don't mean----"

"I mean, old boy, that Antony has gone and put everything back exactly
as he last saw it in Roger's library. Roger, Roger's wife, Antony and
another fellow were in the dining-room. The telephone-bell rang in
the library and Roger went to answer it, telling Antony to come with
him. He didn't turn on the light in the library. The telephone told
Roger that the police were after him. And the two in the dining-room
heard Roger telling Antony what he thought of him as a man and
brother, then they heard a shot; and when they got to the door and
switched on the light, they saw Roger dead at the desk and Antony
standing where he was standing to-night. Antony went out by the window
into the garden--and he has reconstructed the scene exactly as he last
saw it, even to a dummy telephone and a revolver! In fact, everything
is there except Roger. Silly, isn't it?"

Silly was not the word. "But why, why?"

"That's what I want to find out," said Tarlyon. "Antony is playing
some sort of a game with himself, and he's frightening himself to
death in doing it. He always was a superstitious ass. Giants usually
are, somehow--perhaps because, having nothing physical to fear, they
fear the psychic. I'll bet he goes into that library every night at
the same time--Roger shot himself at about twenty-five past eleven, by
the way. Poor old Antony!"

"But what was all that nonsense about the smell?" I asked.

Tarlyon did not answer. At last he said:

"Did you ever hear, Ralph, the theory that if Judas Iscariot had not
come after Jesus he might have done all that Jesus did? But as he
found he could not because he was too late, he was doomed to crime.
In a sort of far-fetched way it was the same with Roger and Antony.
The tragedy of those two brothers has something absurdly,
fantastically reasonable about it. You see, Roger was a year older and
did all that Antony wanted to do, the fine and brilliant things, while
poor Antony could do nothing but make a fool of himself, which he did
only too well. Antony would have been a man of many accomplishments,
for he's no fool, but for the fact that Roger was before him--so
Antony thought. And Roger loved Antony, while Antony hated and admired
and feared Roger. And at last, somehow or another, he managed to
betray Roger. No one knows what that last moment held for those
two--no one knows what lay behind the insults that Roger heaped on
Antony at that final moment. For they were overheard, you know, by
Roger's wife and the man who was dining there. But something seems to
have stuck in Antony's mind and grown very big with years. I'm rather
concerned for the poor devil, Ralph. He's still afraid of his elder
brother. Or perhaps he feels that Roger left something unsaid which he
must hear, and so he wants to recreate him."

It was as the taxi stopped at my door that Tarlyon cried out as though
he had made a discovery: "Good God, of course!"

"Of course what?"

"Smoke, you fool! It _was_ smoke!"


V

What was our surprise, on entering the dining-room some minutes after
nine o'clock the next evening--for Antony dined late--to see the table
laid for four! And then a lady came in--a tall, dark young lady, a
strange and unusual lady with a flash of very white teeth for a smile
and a gardenia alight on the wing of her sleek black hair! I am afraid
Tarlyon and I must have seemed very rude, for we were so surprised
that we stared. The white teeth flashed at us. We bowed.

"My wife," said Antony. We bowed again. She was the sort of woman one
bowed to. Antony's wife!

"Diavalen," said Antony abruptly, "this is Lord Tarlyon and Mr.
Trevor."

Diavalen--Lady Poole!--said nothing. With that wonderful trick of
flashing those wonderful teeth she didn't need to say anything.

"She's a Creole," said Antony, as we sat at the table. He said it as
he might have said that she was an orange. Those white teeth flashed
at me, and I smiled back, feeling an ass. There didn't seem much to
say about her being a Creole....

I don't know how Tarlyon felt about it, but it took me some time to
get my wind. "My wife," says Antony! Never a word nor a sign about
being married--to that glorious, dark, alien creature with the
flashing teeth and sleek black hair! Diavalen the Creole! Just like
Red Antony to marry a Creole called Diavalen and then spring her on to
you with a "my wife." I remembered Antony once saying, years and years
ago: "Never give away gratuitous information, old boy." But there are
limits. And one of them is to have a wife with flashing teeth, a
gardenia in her hair, and a name like Diavalen, and then throw her in
with the soup.

Red Antony was never what you might call a good host: not,
particularly, at the beginning of dinner. To-night he was morose. But
Tarlyon talked--to Lady Poole. It would take more than a lovely Creole
to baffle Tarlyon. He seemed to have inside information as to what
were the subjects best calculated to excite interest in a Creole
married to a morose English baronet with ginger hair. Diavalen did not
talk. But one did not realise that she wasn't talking, for she was
wonderfully expressive with her smiling, flashing, teeth. She seemed
to have discovered the art of using teeth for something besides
eating.

As Tarlyon talked to her she turned her face towards him, and of this
I took advantage to stare at her face bit by bit. The perfection of
that face was a challenge to a right-thinking man. "It is too small,"
I thought. But it was not too small. "It is too white," I thought. But
it was not too white. For quite a long time I could not wrench my
eyes away from those flashing teeth and scarlet curling lips--they
fascinated me. Her face was white, the gardenia in her hair looked
almost yellow beside the whiteness of Diavalen's face; and I thought
to myself that that white complexion was a considerable achievement,
for I was sure her skin underneath was faintly, deliriously brown. It
was a small face. It was a decoration, enchanting and unreal. And in
the decoration were painted in luminous paint two large black eyes;
the eyelashes swept over them, often she half closed them--they were
very lazy black eyes; and deep in them there was a sheen, as of a
reflection of distant fire. I did not like the lady's eyes very much,
I don't know why. But as to that sleek black hair in which lay a
gardenia like a light in silken darkness--you felt that you simply
must run your hand over that hair to see if it was as beautifully
sleek and silky as it looked, and you wouldn't have minded betting
that it was. She was the most strangely lovely woman I have ever seen.
And she was the most silent.

Even Tarlyon was at last baffled by the silence of Diavalen. A silence
fell. The teeth flashed at me, and I was just about to say something
to her when Antony's voice hit the drum of my ear and I dropped my
fork.

"I shouldn't trouble," said Antony. "She's dumb."

That is why I dropped my fork. The servant picked it up and gave me
another. I made a considerable business of it, and then I ate
furiously. Red Antony, vile Antony! I didn't look at Tarlyon. He was
furious, I knew. He was a man who did not take a very liberal view of
jokes like that. But the worst of Antony was that he didn't care what
view any one took; he just said the first thing that came into his
great red head.

If the dinner (which was excellent as to food and wine) had been a
frost before, it was, naturally, not a howling success after that. The
only thing to do was to pretend that Antony had not spoken. It seemed
too silly to say to the lovely Creole: "Oh, I'm _so_ sorry!" Poor
Diavalen! But I couldn't pretend, I simply could not find anything to
say which didn't need an answer. Just try being suddenly planted with
a dumb woman and see if conversation flows naturally from you.

Tarlyon and Antony talked about English heavyweight boxers. Antony was
himself a super-heavyweight, and seemed to have a poor opinion of
English heavyweights. He wanted to know whether their weight was
calculated by the noise they made on being smitten to the ground in
the first round. He said that he was tired of opening a newspaper only
to read of the domestic history of Famous British Boxers and of seeing
photographs of the wives, mothers and children of Famous British
Boxers. He said that the whole idea of the press was to impress on the
public how gentle, amiable and loving Famous British Boxers were in
the home. He pointed out that the whole trouble lay in the fact that
Famous British Boxers were too damned gentle, amiable, and loving in
the ring. In fact, Antony, having put the lid on his wife, had woken
up.

Then, at last, Diavalen rose, and we rose. I rushed to the door and
held it open. Her teeth flashed at Tarlyon, and he bowed like a
courtier. As she passed Antony, he said, "Good-night, Diavalen," but
he said it as though he didn't care whether her night was good or bad.
As she passed Antony she gave him a look out of her large, black eyes.
I was glad I did not know what that look said, but I was sure that
Antony deserved it. "Good-night, Lady Poole," I said; teeth flashed at
me, a touch of pleasant scent hovered faintly, and Diavalen was gone.

"Heavens, she's lovely!" I whispered, as I joined them at the table.

Tarlyon's fingers played with the stem of his port-glass.

"Would you mind explaining, Antony," he asked dangerously, "why you
chose that infamous way of telling us that your wife was--well, not
quite like the rest of us?" There was, I agreed, something blasphemous
about the ghastly word "dumb" in relation to that lovely creature.

Red Antony leant back in his chair and dug his hands deep in his
pockets, so that his white shirt-front stuck out like the
breast-plate of a warrior. He looked bored.

"Favourite trick of hers," he explained morosely. "Always tries to act
as though she wasn't dumb. If you had to live with that silly pretence
it would get on your nerves, I can tell you. She does it very well, I
admit. Takes a pride in it--making a fool of other people, I call it.
On board ship from New York she put it over quite a number of people
for a day or two. Lord, it would have got on any one's nerves, the way
she grinned and grinned and showed her teeth! Why not be honest and
say one's dumb and be done with it? Or let me say it! There's no crime
in being dumb, especially with a beautiful face like that. But she
won't see it, she must smile and flash her teeth--she's got a
repertoire of grins that would astonish a movie star; and she's so
proud of them that even if she could speak she wouldn't. And sometimes
all that grinning and toothwork gets me so raw that I could put back
my head and howl--and she knows it. Sorry I offended you, George. But
I'm nervy these days. I'm raw--_raw_!" He shouted that last word at us
with a thump on the table; and raw he looked, with the eyes blazing
out of him, and his once huge, once red, once jolly face shrunk to a
mockery of itself, with the skin drawn tight across his jaws and
hollow in the cheeks.

Tarlyon picked up a liqueur-glass which the thump had upset. "Sorry
about your unhappy marriage, Antony," he said, "But, you know, it
takes a Napoleon to marry a beautiful Creole. How did it happen?"

"How?" And Antony laughed; at least he made a noise which was perhaps
intended to sound like laughter. "How? Because she made it happen--how
else? D'you think because she's dumb that she hasn't got more
fascination than a thousand women rolled together? Those eyes? Met
eyes like that before, George? If hell has a face its eyes will be
like that. I _had_ to marry her ... In Mexico where I went to after
the Armistice. I suppose you fellows remember that I went to Mexico
three years before the war. I was in love with the girl who became
Roger's wife--inevitable, wasn't it, that the only woman I ever loved
should fall to Roger? He didn't do it on purpose, of course--it just
happened. So I went to Mexico, to try to do something which Roger
could not do before me. Last chance kind of thing, you know----" The
rain of words faded out of him. He had moved considerably from the
subject of Diavalen, but who could hold a haunted face like that to a
subject? I wished I could, for I didn't want him to run amok about
Roger. There was something--well, indecent, in talking about a man
dead nine years or more as though he were alive and still wanting to
"put it across" Antony at every turn. I wished Tarlyon would say
something, but he was silent, his fingers fiddling with the stem of
his port-glass. Antony was drinking next to nothing; round about his
coffee-cup were at least six quarter-smoked cigarettes, and now he
began to maul a cigar. I never saw him smoke that cigar.

"In Mexico," Antony said softly, "I found oil. It was very good oil,
as Roger said later, but there wasn't much of it. My luck again! But I
made Roger share it this time. You remember how I reappeared in
England? Through that window over there, while Roger was giving a big
dinner-party, sitting where I'm sitting now. You were here, George.
Roger and I made it up before the lot of you--after a silence of
years. Entirely on my side, the quarrel--Roger always loved me. We
made it up, you remember, George? I wanted, you see, to plant Roger
with that oil. Cascan Oil--it sounded like a big thing at the time.
That was the last big dinner-party Roger ever gave. He was unhappy at
home--some love misunderstanding--and he took to me, Roger did. He
went head over heels into that bucket-shop. Of course he soon saw
through me and my oil--the man wasn't born who could take Roger
in--but he let the company go on. He wanted to see how far _I_'d go.
Giving me my head, you know. He had packets of money in reserve, and
thought he could put the thing right any moment. But he got
reckless--watching me and wondering how far I'd go. Roger had always
loved me ever since we were children--he never thought of me but as a
naughty baby with a bee in my red head about him. I could see all the
time he was wondering how far I _dared_ go. And he was unhappy at
home, poor Roger; he and his wife somehow couldn't get their
particular ways of loving each other to work well together. So he had
nothing to do but get reckless and chuckle over the naughty baby. I
went the limit. The bucket-shop crashed on Roger's head. He tried to
pull up, chucked his money in, and other people's, but it wouldn't
save it. Clear case of dirty work. A greasy bubble, Cascan Oil. Left a
nasty mess when it burst. And all the papers signed in Roger's name.
Telephone rang in the next room while we were in here. I was sitting
where you are, Trevor. Roger looks at me with a kind of crooked smile.
'Come with me,' he says, and I went. Into that room, the library.
Roger didn't trouble to switch on the light; the telephone was on the
desk beside the door. The police were after him, said the man on the
telephone--the police after Sir Roger Poole, Bart., M.P., and all the
rest of it! 'Listen,' says Roger. And I listened while he told me a
few things about myself. 'A poor husk of a man,' he called me. 'A
graveyard of a brother you are,' he said. 'And the epitaph on your
grave will be _Dolor Ira_,' he said, for Roger was a great Latin
scholar and could lash out bits of Tacitus as easily as a parson might
give you the Bible. I thought he was going to shoot me, I was ready
for it--but he'd shot himself. Roger loved me, you know----"

"Then why the hell," Tarlyon blazed out, "did you take this cursed
house?"

Antony mauled his cigar.

"Because," he said with a grin, "it just happened that way. It was
fate to find it empty--a fine, large house like this at a low rent
while all England was yelling for houses. But I might not have taken
it if Diavalen had been against it----"

"Oh," said Tarlyon to that.

Antony looked at his wrist-watch, and jumped up in a mighty hurry.
"God, the time's gone! Excuse me a moment."

"We will not!" cried Tarlyon, and had his back against the library
door almost before you saw him leave the table.

But Antony walked his way to the library door without a word.

"Don't, old Antony, don't!" Tarlyon begged.

"Out of my way!" said Antony. He said it as though he was thinking of
something else, which was Antony's most dangerous way of saying
anything.

Now Red Antony was a giant, and irresponsible at that. The two of us
couldn't have held him from that library door. Tarlyon let him pass
with a wicked word, and has regretted it ever since. Antony slammed
the door behind him, and we heard the twist of the key.

Without a word to me Tarlyon was at the French window; opened it, and
disappeared. I stayed. I was extremely uncomfortable in that
mad-house, you understand. Perhaps two minutes passed, perhaps ten.
Where the devil was Tarlyon? And then I heard through the library door
the thud of something falling. And then in there a window smashed, a
sharp smash. I measured my distance from that door and crashed my
shoulder at it, and fell into the library on top of the panel.

"Light," said Tarlyon's voice. I switched it on. On the floor between
us was a heap of a man face downwards, with the back of a red head
halfscrewed under an outstretched arm. And there was red on the back
of Tarlyon's hand where he had put it through the window.

We knelt each side of Red Antony, and turned him over.

"Dead," I said.

"Not he!" said Tarlyon. "He's fainted--from fright." But he knew as
well as I did that Antony was dead--from fright. The huge bulk was as
limp as a half-filled sack as we lifted it a little. Antony's eyes
were wide open, and they were like the eyes of a child that has just
been thrashed.

"He's been shot," I said suddenly.

"There was no noise," said Tarlyon, but he looked at me. There had
been no noise, but there was the faint, acrid taste of pistol-smoke in
the air. It's unmistakable, that faint, acrid smell of a revolver just
spent. But Antony had not been shot.

"It wasn't an illusion, then!" Tarlyon whispered softly. "That
smell ... of Roger's revolver! And it's killed Antony in the end!"

I stared down at the poor haunted face. And then I heard Tarlyon
whisper: "My God!" And again: "My God--look at that!" But I did not
look. I knew he was staring over my shoulder, and I was afraid to
look. I was afraid of what I would see. And then I twisted my head
over my shoulder, towards the far end of the room, where there was a
little door from the hall. And I saw the thing sitting squat in the
corner, the black thing with white teeth flashing in a white face and
a gardenia in her hair. In the palm of one hand was a little golden
bowl, and from this bowl floated up a wisp of smoke, just a wisp of
smoke against the blackness of her dress, and this was the faint,
acrid smell of a spent bullet. And Diavalen was laughing--the dumb
woman was laughing with all the glory of ivory teeth and scarlet
lips.... We left the thing to its joke. We went out by the window,
and did not remember our hats and sticks.


LONDON AND GLASGOW: COLLINS' CLEAR-TYPE PRESS.




Transcriber's Notes:


Archaic and inconsistent spelling retained.

Minor punctuation errors corrected without notice.






[End of Ghost Stories, by Michael Arlen]
