E-text prepared by the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading
Team (http://www.fadedpage.net)



THE GREAT KEINPLATZ EXPERIMENT

And Other Tales of Twilight and the Unseen

by

A. CONAN DOYLE







New [Illustration] York
George H. Doran Company


Copyright, 1905, 1908, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1913, 1914, 1918, 1919,
by A. Conan Doyle

Copyright, 1910,
by Charles Scribner's Sons

Copyright, 1911,
by Associated Sunday Magazines, Inc.

Copyright, 1908,
by the McClure Company

Copyright, 1900, 1902,
by the S. S. McClure Company

Copyright, 1894,
D. Appleton & Company

[Illustration]

THE GREAT KEINPLATZ EXPERIMENT
AND OTHER TALES OF THE UNSEEN
----Q----
Printed in the United States of America




CONTENTS


                                                           PAGE

     I THE BROWN HAND                                         9

    II THE USHER OF LEA HOUSE SCHOOL                         30

   III B. 24                                                 51

    IV THE GREAT KEINPLATZ EXPERIMENT                        72

     V CYPRIAN OVERBECK WELLS                                95

    VI PLAYING WITH FIRE                                    120

   VII THE RING OF THOTH                                    139

  VIII THE LOS AMIGOS FIASCO                                163

    IX HOW IT HAPPENED                                      174

     X LOT NO. 249                                          179

    XI "DE PROFUNDIS"                                       225

   XII THE LIFT                                             239




THE GREAT KEINPLATZ EXPERIMENT

_and Other Tales of Twilight and the Unseen_




I

THE BROWN HAND


Every one knows that Sir Dominick Holden, the famous Indian surgeon,
made me his heir, and that his death changed me in an hour from a
hard-working and impecunious medical man to a well-to-do landed
proprietor. Many know also that there were at least five people between
the inheritance and me, and that Sir Dominick's selection appeared to be
altogether arbitrary and whimsical. I can assure them, however, that
they are quite mistaken, and that, although I only knew Sir Dominick in
the closing years of his life, there were none the less very real
reasons why he should show his goodwill towards me. As a matter of fact,
though I say it myself, no man ever did more for another than I did for
my Indian uncle. I cannot expect the story to be believed, but it is so
singular that I should feel that it was a breach of duty if I did not
put it upon record--so here it is, and your belief or incredulity is
your own affair.

Sir Dominick Holden, C.B., K.C.S.I., and I don't know what besides, was
the most distinguished Indian surgeon of his day. In the Army
originally, he afterwards settled down into civil practice in Bombay,
and visited as a consultant every part of India. His name is best
remembered in connection with the Oriental Hospital, which he founded
and supported. The time came, however, when his iron constitution began
to show signs of the long strain to which he had subjected it, and his
brother practitioners (who were not, perhaps, entirely disinterested
upon the point) were unanimous in recommending him to return to England.
He held on so long as he could, but at last he developed nervous
symptoms of a very pronounced character, and so came back, a broken man,
to his native county of Wiltshire. He bought a considerable estate with
an ancient manor-house upon the edge of Salisbury Plain, and devoted his
old age to the study of Comparative Pathology, which had been his
learned hobby all his life, and in which he was a foremost authority.

We of the family were, as may be imagined, much excited by the news of
the return of this rich and childless uncle to England. On his part,
although by no means exuberant in his hospitality, he showed some sense
of his duty to his relations, and each of us in turn had an invitation
to visit him. From the accounts of my cousins it appeared to be a
melancholy business, and it was with mixed feelings that I at last
received my own summons to appear at Rodenhurst. My wife was so
carefully excluded in the invitation that my first impulse was to refuse
it, but the interests of the children had to be considered, and so, with
her consent, I set out one October afternoon upon my visit to Wiltshire,
with little thought of what that visit was to entail.

My uncle's estate was situated where the arable land of the plains
begins to swell upwards into the rounded chalk hills which are
characteristic of the county. As I drove from Dinton Station in the
waning light of that autumn day, I was impressed by the weird nature of
the scenery. The few scattered cottages of the peasants were so dwarfed
by the huge evidences of prehistoric life, that the present appeared to
be a dream and the past to be the obtrusive and masterful reality. The
road wound through the valleys, formed by a succession of grassy hills,
and the summit of each was cut and carved into the most elaborate
fortifications, some circular, and some square, but all on a scale which
has defied the winds and the rains of many centuries. Some call them
Roman and some British, but their true origin and the reasons for this
particular tract of country being so interlaced with entrenchments have
never been finally made clear. Here and there on the long, smooth,
olive-coloured slopes there rose small rounded barrows or tumuli.
Beneath them lie the cremated ashes of the race which cut so deeply into
the hills, but their graves tell us nothing save that a jar full of dust
represents the man who once laboured under the sun.

It was through this weird country that I approached my uncle's residence
of Rodenhurst, and the house was, as I found, in due keeping with its
surroundings. Two broken and weather-stained pillars, each surmounted by
a mutilated heraldic emblem, flanked the entrance to a neglected drive.
A cold wind whistled through the elms which lined it, and the air was
full of the drifting leaves. At the far end, under the gloomy arch of
trees, a single yellow lamp burned steadily. In the dim half-light of
the coming night I saw a long, low building stretching out two irregular
wings, with deep eaves, a sloping gambrel roof, and walls which were
criss-crossed with timber balks in the fashion of the Tudors. The cheery
light of a fire flickered in the broad, latticed window to the left of
the low-porched door, and this, as it proved, marked the study of my
uncle, for it was thither that I was led by his butler in order to make
my host's acquaintance.

He was cowering over his fire, for the moist chill of an English autumn
had set him shivering. His lamp was unlit, and I only saw the red glow
of the embers beating upon a huge, craggy face, with a Red Indian nose
and cheek, and deep furrows and seams from eye to chin, the sinister
marks of hidden volcanic fires. He sprang up at my entrance with
something of an old-world courtesy and welcomed me warmly to Rodenhurst.
At the same time I was conscious, as the lamp was carried in, that it
was a very critical pair of light-blue eyes which looked out at me from
under shaggy eyebrows, like scouts beneath a bush, and that this
outlandish uncle of mine was carefully reading off my character with all
the ease of a practised observer and an experienced man of the world.

For my part I looked at him, and looked again, for I had never seen a
man whose appearance was more fitted to hold one's attention. His figure
was the framework of a giant, but he had fallen away until his coat
dangled straight down in a shocking fashion from a pair of broad and
bony shoulders. All his limbs were huge and yet emaciated, and I could
not take my gaze from his knobby wrists, and long, gnarled hands. But
his eyes--those peering light-blue eyes--they were the most arrestive
of any of his peculiarities. It was not their colour alone, nor was it
the ambush of hair in which they lurked; but it was the expression which
I read in them. For the appearance and bearing of the man were
masterful, and one expected a certain corresponding arrogance in his
eyes, but instead of that I read the look which tells of a spirit cowed
and crushed, the furtive, expectant look of the dog whose master has
taken the whip from the rack. I formed my own medical diagnosis upon one
glance at those critical and yet appealing eyes. I believed that he was
stricken with some mortal ailment, that he knew himself to be exposed to
sudden death, and that he lived in terror of it. Such was my judgment--a
false one, as the event showed; but I mention it that it may help you to
realise the look which I read in his eyes.

My uncle's welcome was, as I have said, a courteous one, and in an hour
or so I found myself seated between him and his wife at a comfortable
dinner, with curious pungent delicacies upon the table, and a stealthy,
quick-eyed Oriental waiter behind his chair. The old couple had come
round to that tragic imitation of the dawn of life when husband and
wife, having lost or scattered all those who were their intimates, find
themselves face to face and alone once more, their work done, and the
end nearing fast. Those who have reached that stage in sweetness and
love, who can change their winter into a gentle Indian summer, have come
as victors through the ordeal of life. Lady Holden was a small, alert
woman with a kindly eye, and her expression as she glanced at him was a
certificate of character to her husband. And yet, though I read a
mutual love in their glances, I read also mutual horror, and recognised
in her face some reflection of that stealthy fear which I had detected
in his. Their talk was sometimes merry and sometimes sad, but there was
a forced note in their merriment and a naturalness in their sadness
which told me that a heavy heart beat upon either side of me.

We were sitting over our first glass of wine, and the servants had left
the room, when the conversation took a turn which produced a remarkable
effect upon my host and hostess. I cannot recall what it was which
started the topic of the supernatural, but it ended in my showing them
that the abnormal in psychical experiences was a subject to which I had,
like many neurologists, devoted a great deal of attention. I concluded
by narrating my experiences when, as a member of the Psychical Research
Society, I had formed one of a committee of three who spent the night in
a haunted house. Our adventures were neither exciting nor convincing,
but, such as it was, the story appeared to interest my auditors in a
remarkable degree. They listened with an eager silence, and I caught a
look of intelligence between them which I could not understand. Lady
Holden immediately afterwards rose and left the room.

Sir Dominick pushed the cigar-box over to me, and we smoked for some
little time in silence. That huge bony hand of his was twitching as he
raised it with his cheroot to his lips, and I felt that the man's nerves
were vibrating like fiddle-strings. My instincts told me that he was on
the verge of some intimate confidence, and I feared to speak lest I
should interrupt it. At last he turned towards me with a spasmodic
gesture like a man who throws his last scruple to the winds.

"From the little that I have seen of you it appears to me, Dr.
Hardacre," said he, "that you are the very man I have wanted to meet."

"I am delighted to hear it, sir."

"Your head seems to be cool and steady. You will acquit me of any desire
to flatter you, for the circumstances are too serious to permit of
insincerities. You have some special knowledge upon these subjects, and
you evidently view them from that philosophical standpoint which robs
them of all vulgar terror. I presume that the sight of an apparition
would not seriously discompose you?"

"I think not, sir."

"Would even interest you, perhaps?"

"Most intensely."

"As a psychical observer, you would probably investigate it in as
impersonal a fashion as an astronomer investigates a wandering comet?"

"Precisely."

He gave a heavy sigh.

"Believe me, Dr. Hardacre, there was a time when I could have spoken as
you do now. My nerve was a by-word in India. Even the Mutiny never shook
it for an instant. And yet you see what I am reduced to--the most
timorous man, perhaps, in all this county of Wiltshire. Do not speak too
bravely upon this subject, or you may find yourself subjected to as
long-drawn a test as I am--a test which can only end in the madhouse or
the grave."

I waited patiently until he should see fit to go farther in his
confidence. His preamble had, I need not say, filled me with interest
and expectation.

"For some years, Dr. Hardacre," he continued, "my life and that of my
wife have been made miserable by a cause which is so grotesque that it
borders upon the ludicrous. And yet familiarity has never made it more
easy to bear--on the contrary, as time passes my nerves become more worn
and shattered by the constant attrition. If you have no physical fears,
Dr. Hardacre, I should very much value your opinion upon this phenomenon
which troubles us so."

"For what it is worth my opinion is entirely at your service. May I ask
the nature of the phenomenon?"

"I think that your experiences will have a higher evidential value if
you are not told in advance what you may expect to encounter. You are
yourself aware of the quibbles of unconscious cerebration and subjective
impressions with which a scientific sceptic may throw a doubt upon your
statement. It would be as well to guard against them in advance."

"What shall I do, then?"

"I will tell you. Would you mind following me this way?" He led me out
of the dining-room and down a long passage until we came to a terminal
door. Inside there was a large bare room fitted as a laboratory, with
numerous scientific instruments and bottles. A shelf ran along one side,
upon which there stood a long line of glass jars containing pathological
and anatomical specimens.

"You see that I still dabble in some of my old studies," said Sir
Dominick. "These jars are the remains of what was once a most excellent
collection, but unfortunately I lost the greater part of them when my
house was burned down in Bombay in '92. It was a most unfortunate affair
for me--in more ways than one. I had examples of many rare conditions,
and my splenic collection was probably unique. These are the survivors."

I glanced over them, and saw that they really were of a very great value
and rarity from a pathological point of view: bloated organs, gaping
cysts, distorted bones, odious parasites--a singular exhibition of the
products of India.

"There is, as you see, a small settee here," said my host. "It was far
from our intention to offer a guest so meagre an accommodation, but
since affairs have taken this turn, it would be a great kindness upon
your part if you would consent to spend the night in this apartment. I
beg that you will not hesitate to let me know if the idea should be at
all repugnant to you."

"On the contrary," I said, "it is most acceptable."

"My own room is the second on the left, so that if you should feel that
you are in need of company a call would always bring me to your side."

"I trust that I shall not be compelled to disturb you."

"It is unlikely that I shall be asleep. I do not sleep much. Do not
hesitate to summon me."

And so with this agreement we joined Lady Holden in the drawing-room and
talked of lighter things.

It was no affectation upon my part to say that the prospect of my
night's adventure was an agreeable one. I had no pretence to greater
physical courage than my neighbours, but familiarity with a subject robs
it of those vague and undefined terrors which are the most appalling to
the imaginative mind. The human brain is capable of only one strong
emotion at a time, and if it be filled with curiosity or scientific
enthusiasm, there is no room for fear. It is true that I had my uncle's
assurance that he had himself originally taken this point of view, but I
reflected that the breakdown of his nervous system might be due to his
forty years in India as much as to any psychical experiences which had
befallen him. I at least was sound in nerve and brain, and it was with
something of the pleasurable thrill of anticipation with which the
sportsman takes his position beside the haunt of his game that I shut
the laboratory door behind me, and partially undressing, lay down upon
the rug-covered settee.

It was not an ideal atmosphere for a bedroom. The air was heavy with
many chemical odours, that of methylated spirit predominating. Nor were
the decorations of my chamber very sedative. The odious line of glass
jars with their relics of disease and suffering stretched in front of my
very eyes. There was no blind to the window, and a three-quarter moon
streamed its white light into the room, tracing a silver square with
filigree lattices upon the opposite wall. When I had extinguished my
candle this one bright patch in the midst of the general gloom had
certainly an eerie and discomposing aspect. A rigid and absolute silence
reigned throughout the old house, so that the low swish of the branches
in the garden came softly and smoothly to my ears. It may have been the
hypnotic lullaby of this gentle susurrus, or it may have been the result
of my tiring day, but after many dozings and many efforts to regain my
clearness of perception, I fell at last into a deep and dreamless
sleep.

I was awakened by some sound in the room, and I instantly raised myself
upon my elbow on the couch. Some hours had passed, for the square patch
upon the wall had slid downwards and sideways until it lay obliquely at
the end of my bed. The rest of the room was in deep shadow. At first I
could see nothing, presently, as my eyes became accustomed to the faint
light, I was aware, with a thrill which all my scientific absorption
could not entirely prevent, that something was moving slowly along the
line of the wall. A gentle, shuffling sound, as of soft slippers, came
to my ears, and I dimly discerned a human figure walking stealthily from
the direction of the door. As it emerged into the patch of moonlight I
saw very clearly what it was and how it was employed. It was a man,
short and squat, dressed in some sort of dark-grey gown, which hung
straight from his shoulders to his feet. The moon shone upon the side of
his face, and I saw that it was chocolate-brown in colour, with a ball
of black hair like a woman's at the back of his head. He walked slowly,
and his eyes were cast upwards towards the line of bottles which
contained those gruesome remnants of humanity. He seemed to examine each
jar with attention, and then to pass on to the next. When he had come to
the end of the line, immediately opposite my bed, he stopped, faced me,
threw up his hands with a gesture of despair, and vanished from my
sight.

I have said that he threw up his hands, but I should have said his arms,
for as he assumed that attitude of despair I observed a singular
peculiarity about his appearance. He had only one hand! As the sleeves
drooped down from the upflung arms I saw the left plainly, but the right
ended in a knobby and unsightly stump. In every other way his appearance
was so natural, and I had both seen and heard him so clearly, that I
could easily have believed that he was an Indian servant of Sir
Dominick's who had come into my room in search of something. It was only
his sudden disappearance which suggested anything more sinister to me.
As it was I sprang from my couch, lit a candle, and examined the whole
room carefully. There were no signs of my visitor, and I was forced to
conclude that there had really been something outside the normal laws of
Nature in his appearance. I lay awake for the remainder of the night,
but nothing else occurred to disturb me.

I am an early riser, but my uncle was an even earlier one, for I found
him pacing up and down the lawn at the side of the house. He ran towards
me in his eagerness when he saw me come out from the door.

"Well, well!" he cried. "Did you see him?"

"An Indian with one hand?"

"Precisely."

"Yes, I saw him"--and I told him all that occurred. When I had finished,
he led the way into his study. "We have a little time before breakfast,"
said he. "It will suffice to give you an explanation of this
extraordinary affair--so far as I can explain that which is essentially
inexplicable. In the first place, when I tell you that for four years I
have never passed one single night, either in Bombay, aboard ship, or
here in England without my sleep being broken by this fellow, you will
understand why it is that I am a wreck of my former self. His programme
is always the same. He appears by my bedside, shakes me roughly by the
shoulder, passes from my room into the laboratory, walks slowly along
the line of my bottles, and then vanishes. For more than a thousand
times he has gone through the same routine."

"What does he want?"

"He wants his hand."

"His hand?"

"Yes, it came about in this way. I was summoned to Peshawur for a
consultation some ten years ago, and while there I was asked to look at
the hand of a native who was passing through with an Afghan caravan. The
fellow came from some mountain tribe living away at the back of beyond
somewhere on the other side of Kaffiristan. He talked a bastard Pushtoo,
and it was all I could do to understand him. He was suffering from a
soft sarcomatous swelling of one of the metacarpal joints, and I made
him realise that it was only by losing his hand that he could hope to
save his life. After much persuasion he consented to the operation, and
he asked me, when it was over, what fee I demanded. The poor fellow was
almost a beggar, so that the idea of a fee was absurd, but I answered in
jest that my fee should be his hand, and that I proposed to add it to my
pathological collection.

"To my surprise he demurred very much to the suggestion, and he
explained that according to his religion it was an all-important matter
that the body should be reunited after death, and so make a perfect
dwelling for the spirit. The belief is, of course, an old one, and the
mummies of the Egyptians arose from an analogous superstition. I
answered him that his hand was already off, and asked him how he
intended to preserve it. He replied that he would pickle it in salt and
carry it about with him. I suggested that it might be safer in my
keeping than his, and that I had better means than salt for preserving
it. On realising that I really intended to carefully keep it, his
opposition vanished instantly. 'But remember, sahib,' said he, 'I shall
want it back when I am dead.' I laughed at the remark, and so the matter
ended. I returned to my practice, and he no doubt in the course of time
was able to continue his journey to Afghanistan.

"Well, as I told you last night, I had a bad fire in my house at Bombay.
Half of it was burned down, and, among other things, my pathological
collection was largely destroyed. What you see are the poor remains of
it. The hand of the hillman went with the rest, but I gave the matter no
particular thought at the time. That was six years ago.

"Four years ago--two years after the fire--I was awakened one night by a
furious tugging at my sleeve. I sat up under the impression that my
favourite mastiff was trying to arouse me. Instead of this, I saw my
Indian patient of long ago, dressed in the long grey gown which was the
badge of his people. He was holding up his stump and looking
reproachfully at me. He then went over to my bottles, which at that time
I kept in my room, and he examined them carefully, after which he gave a
gesture of anger and vanished. I realised that he had just died, and
that he had come to claim my promise that I should keep his limb in
safety for him.

"Well, there you have it all, Dr. Hardacre. Every night at the same
hour for four years this performance has been repeated. It is a simple
thing in itself, but it has worn me out like water dropping on a stone.
It has brought a vile insomnia with it, for I cannot sleep now for the
expectation of his coming. It has poisoned my old age and that of my
wife, who has been the sharer in this great trouble. But there is the
breakfast gong, and she will be waiting impatiently to know how it fared
with you last night. We are both much indebted to you for your
gallantry, for it takes something from the weight of our misfortune when
we share it, even for a single night, with a friend, and it reassures us
as to our sanity, which we are sometimes driven to question."

This was the curious narrative which Sir Dominick confided to me--a
story which to many would have appeared to be a grotesque impossibility,
but which, after my experience of the night before, and my previous
knowledge of such things, I was prepared to accept as an absolute fact.
I thought deeply over the matter, and brought the whole range of my
reading and experience to bear upon it. After breakfast, I surprised my
host and hostess by announcing that I was returning to London by the
next train.

"My dear doctor," cried Sir Dominick in great distress, "you make me
feel that I have been guilty of a gross breach of hospitality in
intruding this unfortunate matter upon you. I should have borne my own
burden."

"It is, indeed, that matter which is taking me to London," I answered;
"but you are mistaken, I assure you, if you think that my experience of
last night was an unpleasant one to me. On the contrary, I am about to
ask your permission to return in the evening and spend one more night in
your laboratory. I am very eager to see this visitor once again."

My uncle was exceedingly anxious to know what I was about to do, but my
fears of raising false hopes prevented me from telling him. I was back
in my own consulting-room a little after luncheon, and was confirming my
memory of a passage in a recent book upon occultism which had arrested
my attention when I had read it.

"In the case of earth-bound spirits," said my authority, "some one
dominant idea obsessing them at the hour of death is sufficient to hold
them in this material world. They are the amphibia of this life and of
the next, capable of passing from one to the other as the turtle passes
from land to water. The causes which may bind a soul so strongly to a
life which its body has abandoned are any violent emotion. Avarice,
revenge, anxiety, love, and pity have all been known to have this
effect. As a rule it springs from some unfulfilled wish, and when the
wish has been fulfilled the material bond relaxes. There are many cases
upon record which show the singular persistence of these visitors, and
also their disappearance when their wishes have been fulfilled, or in
some cases when a reasonable compromise has been effected."

"_A reasonable compromise effected_"--those were the words which I had
brooded over all the morning, and which I now verified in the original.
No actual atonement could be made here--but a reasonable compromise! I
made my way as fast as a train could take me to the Shadwell Seamen's
Hospital, where my old friend Jack Hewett was house-surgeon. Without
explaining the situation I made him understand what it was that I
wanted.

"A brown man's hand!" said he, in amazement. "What in the world do you
want that for?"

"Never mind. I'll tell you some day. I know that your wards are full of
Indians."

"I should think so. But a hand----" He thought a little and then struck
a bell.

"Travers," said he to a student-dresser, "what became of the hands of
the Lascar which we took off yesterday? I mean the fellow from the East
India Dock who got caught in the steam winch."

"They are in the _post-mortem_ room, sir."

"Just pack one of them in antiseptics and give it to Dr. Hardacre."

And so I found myself back at Rodenhurst before dinner with this curious
outcome of my day in town. I still said nothing to Sir Dominick, but I
slept that night in the laboratory, and I placed the Lascar's hand in
one of the glass jars at the end of my couch.

So interested was I in the result of my experiment that sleep was out of
the question. I sat with a shaded lamp beside me and waited patiently
for my visitor. This time I saw him clearly from the first. He appeared
beside the door, nebulous for an instant, and then hardening into as
distinct an outline as any living man. The slippers beneath his grey
gown were red and heelless, which accounted for the low, shuffling sound
which he made as he walked. As on the previous night he passed slowly
along the line of bottles until he paused before that which contained
the hand. He reached up to it, his whole figure quivering with
expectation, took it down, examined it eagerly, and then, with a face
which was convulsed with disappointment, he hurled it down on the floor.
There was a crash which resounded through the house, and when I looked
up the mutilated Indian had disappeared. A moment later my door flew
open and Sir Dominick rushed in.

"You are not hurt?" he cried.

"No--but deeply disappointed."

He looked in astonishment at the splinters of glass, and the brown hand
lying upon the floor.

"Good God!" he cried. "What is this?"

I told him my idea and its wretched sequel. He listened intently, but
shook his head.

"It was well thought of," said he, "but I fear that there is no such
easy end to my sufferings. But one thing I now insist upon. It is that
you shall never again upon any pretext occupy this room. My fears that
something might have happened to you--when I heard that crash--have been
the most acute of all the agonies which I have undergone. I will not
expose myself to a repetition of it."

He allowed me, however, to spend the remainder of the night where I was,
and I lay there worrying over the problem and lamenting my own failure.
With the first light of morning there was the Lascar's hand still lying
upon the floor to remind me of my fiasco. I lay looking at it--and as I
lay suddenly an idea flew like a bullet through my head and brought me
quivering with excitement out of my couch. I raised the grim relic from
where it had fallen. Yes, it was indeed so. The hand was the _left_ hand
of the Lascar.

By the first train I was on my way to town, and hurried at once to the
Seamen's Hospital. I remembered that both hands of the Lascar had been
amputated, but I was terrified lest the precious organ which I was in
search of might have been already consumed in the crematory. My suspense
was soon ended. It had still been preserved in the _post-mortem_ room.
And so I returned to Rodenhurst in the evening with my mission
accomplished and the material for a fresh experiment.

But Sir Dominick Holden would not hear of my occupying the laboratory
again. To all my entreaties he turned a deaf ear. It offended his sense
of hospitality, and he could no longer permit it. I left the hand,
therefore, as I had done its fellow the night before, and I occupied a
comfortable bedroom in another portion of the house, some distance from
the scene of my adventures.

But in spite of that my sleep was not destined to be uninterrupted. In
the dead of night my host burst into my room, a lamp in his hand. His
huge gaunt figure was enveloped in a loose dressing-gown, and his whole
appearance might certainly have seemed more formidable to a weak-nerved
man than that of the Indian of the night before. But it was not his
entrance so much as his expression which amazed me. He had turned
suddenly younger by twenty years at the least. His eyes were shining,
his features radiant, and he waved one hand in triumph over his head. I
sat up astounded, staring sleepily at this extraordinary visitor. But
his words soon drove the sleep from my eyes.

"We have done it! We have succeeded!" he shouted. "My dear Hardacre, how
can I ever in this world repay you?"

"You don't mean to say that it is all right?"

"Indeed I do. I was sure that you would not mind being awakened to hear
such blessed news."

"Mind! I should think not indeed. But is it really certain?"

"I have no doubt whatever upon the point. I owe you such a debt, my dear
nephew, as I have never owed a man before, and never expected to. What
can I possibly do for you that is commensurate? Providence must have
sent you to my rescue. You have saved both my reason and my life, for
another six months of this must have seen me either in a cell or a
coffin. And my wife--it was wearing her out before my eyes. Never could
I have believed that any human being could have lifted this burden off
me." He seized my hand and wrung it in his bony grip.

"It was only an experiment--a forlorn hope--but I am delighted from my
heart that it has succeeded. But how do you know that it is all right?
Have you seen something?"

He seated himself at the foot of my bed.

"I have seen enough," said he. "It satisfies me that I shall be troubled
no more. What has passed is easily told. You know that at a certain hour
this creature always comes to me. To-night he arrived at the usual time,
and aroused me with even more violence than is his custom. I can only
surmise that his disappointment of last night increased the bitterness
of his anger against me. He looked angrily at me, and then went on his
usual round. But in a few minutes I saw him, for the first time since
this persecution began, return to my chamber. He was smiling. I saw the
gleam of his white teeth through the dim light. He stood facing me at
the end of my bed, and three times he made the low Eastern salaam which
is their solemn leave-taking. And the third time that he bowed he raised
his arms over his head, and I saw his _two_ hands outstretched in the
air. So he vanished, and, as I believe, for ever."

       *       *       *       *       *

So that is the curious experience which won me the affection and the
gratitude of my celebrated uncle, the famous Indian surgeon. His
anticipations were realised, and never again was he disturbed by the
visits of the restless hillman in search of his lost member. Sir
Dominick and Lady Holden spent a very happy old age, unclouded, so far
as I know, by any trouble, and they finally died during the great
influenza epidemic within a few weeks of each other. In his lifetime he
always turned to me for advice in everything which concerned that
English life of which he knew so little; and I aided him also in the
purchase and development of his estates. It was no great surprise to me,
therefore, that I found myself eventually promoted over the heads of
five exasperated cousins, and changed in a single day from a
hard-working country doctor into the head of an important Wiltshire
family. I at least have reason to bless the memory of the man with the
brown hand, and the day when I was fortunate enough to relieve
Rodenhurst of his unwelcome presence.




II

THE USHER OF LEA HOUSE SCHOOL


Mr. Lumsden, the senior partner of Lumsden and Westmacott, the
well-known scholastic and clerical agents, was a small, dapper man, with
a sharp, abrupt manner, a critical eye, and an incisive way of speaking.

"Your name, sir?" said he, sitting pen in hand with his long, red-lined
folio in front of him.

"Harold Weld."

"Oxford or Cambridge?"

"Cambridge."

"Honours?"

"No, sir."

"Athlete?"

"Nothing remarkable, I am afraid."

"Not a Blue?"

"Oh no."

Mr. Lumsden shook his head despondently and shrugged his shoulders in a
way which sent my hopes down to zero. "There is a very keen competition
for masterships, Mr. Weld," said he. "The vacancies are few and the
applicants innumerable. A first-class athlete, oar, or cricketer, or a
man who has passed very high in his examinations, can usually find a
vacancy--I might say always in the case of the cricketer. But the
average man--if you will excuse the description, Mr. Weld--has a very
great difficulty, almost an insurmountable difficulty. We have already
more than a hundred such names upon our lists, and if you think it
worth while our adding yours, I dare say that in the course of some
years we may possibly be able to find you some opening which----"

He paused on account of a knock at the door. It was a clerk with a note.
Mr. Lumsden broke the seal and read it.

"Why, Mr. Weld," said he, "this is really rather an interesting
coincidence. I understand you to say that Latin and English are your
subjects, and that you would prefer for a time to accept a place in an
elementary establishment, where you would have time for private study?"

"Quite so."

"This note contains a request from an old client of ours, Dr. Phelps
McCarthy, of Willow Lea House Academy, West Hampstead, that I should at
once send him a young man who should be qualified to teach Latin and
English to a small class of boys under fourteen years of age. His
vacancy appears to be the very one which you are looking for. The terms
are not munificent--sixty pounds, board, lodging, and washing--but the
work is not onerous, and you would have the evenings to yourself."

"That would do," I cried, with all the eagerness of the man who sees
work at last after weary months of seeking.

"I don't know that it is quite fair to these gentlemen whose names have
been so long upon our list," said Mr. Lumsden, glancing down at his open
ledger. "But the coincidence is so striking that I feel we must really
give you the refusal of it."

"Then I accept it, sir, and I am much obliged to you."

"There is one small provision in Dr. McCarthy's letter. He stipulates
that the applicant must be a man with an imperturbable good temper."

"I am the very man," said I, with conviction.

"Well," said Mr. Lumsden, with some hesitation, "I hope that your temper
is really as good as you say, for I rather fancy that you may need it."

"I presume that every elementary school-master does."

"Yes, sir, but it is only fair to you to warn you that there may be some
especially trying circumstances in this particular situation. Dr. Phelps
McCarthy does not make such a condition without some very good and
pressing reason."

There was a certain solemnity in his speech which struck a chill in the
delight with which I had welcomed this providential vacancy.

"May I ask the nature of these circumstances?" I asked.

"We endeavour to hold the balance equally between our clients, and to be
perfectly frank with all of them. If I knew of objections to you I
should certainly communicate them to Dr. McCarthy, and so I have no
hesitation in doing as much for you. I find," he continued, glancing
over the pages of his ledger, "that within the last twelve months we
have supplied no fewer than seven Latin masters to Willow Lea House
Academy, four of them having left so abruptly as to forfeit their
month's salary, and none of them having stayed more than eight weeks."

"And the other masters? Have they stayed?"

"There is only one other residential master, and he appears to be
unchanged. You can understand, Mr. Weld," continued the agent, closing
both the ledger and the interview, "that such rapid changes are not
desirable from a master's point of view, whatever may be said for them
by an agent working on commission. I have no idea why these gentlemen
have resigned their situations so early. I can only give you the facts,
and advise you to see Dr. McCarthy at once and to form your own
conclusions."

Great is the power of the man who has nothing to lose, and it was
therefore with perfect serenity, but with a good deal of curiosity, that
I rang early that afternoon the heavy wrought-iron bell of the Willow
Lea House Academy. The building was a massive pile, square and ugly,
standing in its own extensive grounds, with a broad carriage-sweep
curving up to it from the road. It stood high, and commanded a view on
the one side of the grey roofs and bristling spires of Northern London,
and on the other of the well-wooded and beautiful country which fringes
the great city. The door was opened by a boy in buttons, and I was shown
into a well-appointed study, where the principal of the academy
presently joined me.

The warnings and insinuations of the agent had prepared me to meet a
choleric and overbearing person--one whose manner was an insupportable
provocation to those who worked under him. Anything further from the
reality cannot be imagined. He was a frail, gentle creature,
clean-shaven and round-shouldered, with a bearing which was so courteous
that it became almost deprecating. His bushy hair was thickly shot with
grey, and his age I should imagine to verge upon sixty. His voice was
low and suave, and he walked with a certain mincing delicacy of manner.
His whole appearance was that of a kindly scholar, who was more at home
among his books than in the practical affairs of the world.

"I am sure that we shall be very happy to have your assistance, Mr.
Weld," said he, after a few professional questions. "Mr. Percival
Manners left me yesterday, and I should be glad if you could take over
his duties to-morrow."

"May I ask if that is Mr. Percival Manners of Selwyn?" I asked.

"Precisely. Did you know him?"

"Yes; he is a friend of mine."

"An excellent teacher, but a little hasty in his disposition. It was his
only fault. Now, in your case, Mr. Weld, is your own temper under good
control? Supposing for argument's sake that I were to so far forget
myself as to be rude to you or to speak roughly or to jar your feelings
in any way, could you rely upon yourself to control your emotions?"

I smiled at the idea of this courteous, little, mincing creature
ruffling my nerves.

"I think that I could answer for it, sir," said I.

"Quarrels are very painful to me," said he. "I wish every one to live in
harmony under my roof. I will not deny Mr. Percival Manners had
provocation, but I wish to find a man who can raise himself above
provocation, and sacrifice his own feelings for the sake of peace and
concord."

"I will do my best, sir."

"You cannot say more, Mr. Weld. In that case I shall expect you
to-night, if you can get your things ready so soon."

I not only succeeded in getting my things ready, but I found time to
call at the Benedict Club in Piccadilly, where I knew that I should find
Manners if he were still in town. There he was sure enough in the
smoking-room, and I questioned him, over a cigarette, as to his reasons
for throwing up his recent situation.

"You don't tell me that you are going to Dr. Phelps McCarthy's Academy?"
he cried, staring at me in surprise. "My dear chap, it's no use. You
can't possibly remain there."

"But I saw him, and he seemed the most courtly, inoffensive fellow. I
never met a man with more gentle manners."

"He! oh, he's all right. There's no vice in him. Have you seen
Theophilus St. James?"

"I have never heard the name. Who is he?"

"Your colleague. The other master."

"No, I have not seen him."

"_He's_ the terror. If you can stand him, you have either the spirit of
a perfect Christian or else you have no spirit at all. A more perfect
bounder never bounded."

"But why does McCarthy stand it?"

My friend looked at me significantly through his cigarette smoke, and
shrugged his shoulders.

"You will form your own conclusions about that. Mine were formed very
soon, and I never found occasion to alter them."

"It would help me very much if you would tell me them."

"When you see a man in his own house allowing his business to be ruined,
his comfort destroyed, and his authority defied by another man in a
subordinate position, and calmly submitting to it without so much as a
word of protest, what conclusion do you come to?"

"That the one has a hold over the other."

Percival Manners nodded his head.

"There you are! You've hit it first barrel. It seems to me that there's
no other explanation which will cover the facts. At some period in his
life the little Doctor has gone astray. _Humanum est errare._ I have
even done it myself. But this was something serious, and the other man
got a hold of it and has never let go. That's the truth. Blackmail is at
the bottom of it. But he had no hold over me, and there was no reason
why _I_ should stand his insolence, so I came away--and I very much
expect to see you do the same."

For some time he talked over the matter, but he always came to the same
conclusion--that I should not retain my new situation very long.

It was with no very pleasant feelings after this preparation that I
found myself face to face with the very man of whom I had received so
evil an account. Dr. McCarthy introduced us to each other in his study
on the evening of that same day immediately after my arrival at the
school.

"This is your new colleague, Mr. St. James," said he, in his genial,
courteous fashion. "I trust that you will mutually agree, and that I
shall find nothing but good feeling and sympathy beneath this roof."

I shared the good Doctor's hope, but my expectations of it were not
increased by the appearance of my _confrère_. He was a young,
bull-necked fellow about thirty years of age, dark-eyed and
black-haired, with an exceedingly vigorous physique. I have never seen
a more strongly built man, though he tended to run to fat in a way which
showed that he was in the worst of training. His face was coarse,
swollen, and brutal, with a pair of small black eyes deeply sunken in
his head. His heavy jowl, his projecting ears, and his thick bandy legs
all went to make up a personality which was as formidable as it was
repellent.

"I hear you've never been out before," said he, in a rude, brusque
fashion. "Well, it's a poor life: hard work and starvation pay, as
you'll find out for yourself."

"But it has some compensations," said the principal. "Surely you will
allow that, Mr. St. James?"

"Has it? I never could find them. What do you call compensations?"

"Even to be in the continual presence of youth is a privilege. It has
the effect of keeping youth in one's own soul, for one reflects
something of their high spirits and their keen enjoyment of life."

"Little beasts!" cried my colleague.

"Come, come, Mr. St. James, you are too hard upon them."

"I hate the sight of them! If I could put them and their blessed
copybooks and lexicons and slates into one bonfire I'd do it to-night."

"This is Mr. St. James's way of talking," said the principal, smiling
nervously as he glanced at me. "You must not take him too seriously.
Now, Mr. Weld, you know where your room is, and no doubt you have your
own little arrangements to make. The sooner you make them the sooner you
will feel yourself at home."

It seemed to me that he was only too anxious to remove me at once from
the influence of this extraordinary colleague, and I was glad to go, for
the conversation had become embarrassing.

And so began an epoch which always seems to me as I look back to it to
be the most singular in all my experience. The school was in many ways
an excellent one. Dr. Phelps McCarthy was an ideal principal. His
methods were modern and rational. The management was all that could be
desired. And yet in the middle of this well-ordered machine there
intruded the incongruous and impossible Mr. St. James, throwing
everything into confusion. His duties were to teach English and
mathematics, and how he acquitted himself of them I do not know, as our
classes were held in separate rooms. I can answer for it, however, that
the boys feared him and loathed him, and I know that they had good
reason to do so, for frequently my own teaching was interrupted by his
bellowing of anger, and even by the sound of his blows. Dr. McCarthy
spent most of his time in his class, but it was, I suspect, to watch
over the master rather than the boys, and to try to moderate his
ferocious temper when it threatened to become dangerous.

It was in his bearing to the head master, however, that my colleague's
conduct was most outrageous. The first conversation which I have
recorded proved to be typical of their intercourse. He domineered over
him openly and brutally. I have heard him contradict him roughly before
the whole school. At no time would he show him any mark of respect, and
my temper often rose within me when I saw the quiet acquiescence of the
old Doctor, and his patient tolerance of this monstrous treatment. And
yet the sight of it surrounded the principal also with a certain vague
horror in my mind, for supposing my friend's theory to be correct--and I
could devise no better one--how black must have been the story which
could be held over his head by this man and, by fear of its publicity,
force him to undergo such humiliations. This quiet, gentle Doctor might
be a profound hypocrite, a criminal, a forger possibly, or a poisoner.
Only such a secret as this could account for the complete power which
the younger man held over him. Why else should he admit so hateful a
presence into his house and so harmful an influence into his school? Why
should he submit to degradations which could not be witnessed, far less
endured, without indignation?

And yet, if it were so, I was forced to confess that my principal
carried it off with extraordinary duplicity. Never by word or sign did
he show that the young man's presence was distasteful to him. I have
seen him look pained, it is true, after some peculiarly outrageous
exhibition, but he gave me the impression that it was always on account
of the scholars or of me, never on account of himself. He spoke to and
of St. James in an indulgent fashion, smiling gently at what made my
blood boil within me. In his way of looking at him and addressing him,
one could see no trace of resentment, but rather a sort of timid and
deprecating good will. His company he certainly courted, and they spent
many hours together in the study and the garden.

As to my own relations with Theophilus St. James, I made up my mind from
the beginning that I should keep my temper with him, and to that
resolution I steadfastly adhered. If Dr. McCarthy chose to permit this
disrespect, and to condone these outrages, it was his affair and not
mine. It was evident that his one wish was that there should be peace
between us, and I felt that I could help him best by respecting this
desire. My easiest way to do so was to avoid my colleague, and this I
did to the best of my ability. When we were thrown together I was quiet,
polite, and reserved. He, on his part, showed me no ill-will, but met me
rather with a coarse joviality, and a rough familiarity which he meant
to be ingratiating. He was insistent in his attempts to get me into his
room at night, for the purpose of playing euchre and of drinking.

"Old McCarthy doesn't mind," said he. "Don't you be afraid of him. We'll
do what we like, and I'll answer for it that he won't object." Once only
I went, and when I left, after a dull and gross evening, my host was
stretched dead drunk upon the sofa. After that I gave the excuse of a
course of study, and spent my spare hours alone in my own room.

One point upon which I was anxious to gain information was as to how
long these proceedings had been going on. When did St. James assert his
hold over Dr. McCarthy? From neither of them could I learn how long my
colleague had been in his present situation. One or two leading
questions upon my part were eluded or ignored in a manner so marked that
it was easy to see that they were both of them as eager to conceal the
point as I was to know it. But at last one evening I had the chance of a
chat with Mrs. Carter, the matron--for the Doctor was a widower--and
from her I got the information which I wanted. It needed no questioning
to get at her knowledge, for she was so full of indignation that she
shook with passion as she spoke of it, and raised her hands into the air
in the earnestness of her denunciation, as she described the grievances
which she had against my colleague.

"It was three years ago, Mr. Weld, that he first darkened this
doorstep," she cried. "Three bitter years they have been to me. The
school had fifty boys then. Now it has twenty-two. That's what he has
done for us in three years. In another three there won't be one. And the
Doctor, that angel of patience, you see how he treats him, though he is
not fit to lace his boots for him. If it wasn't for the Doctor, you may
be sure that I wouldn't stay an hour under the same roof with such a
man, and so I told him to his own face, Mr. Weld. If the Doctor would
only pack him about his business--but I know that I am saying more than
I should!" She stopped herself with an effort, and spoke no more upon
the subject. She had remembered that I was almost a stranger in the
school, and she feared that she had been indiscreet.

There were one or two very singular points about my colleague. The chief
one was that he rarely took any exercise. There was a playing-field
within the college grounds, and that was his farthest point. If the boys
went out, it was I or Dr. McCarthy who accompanied them. St. James gave
as a reason for this that he had injured his knee some years before, and
that walking was painful to him. For my own part I put it down to pure
laziness upon his part, for he was of an obese, heavy temperament.
Twice, however, I saw him from my window stealing out of the grounds
late at night, and the second time I watched him return in the grey of
the morning and slink in through an open window. These furtive
excursions were never alluded to, but they exposed the hollowness of his
story about his knee, and they increased the dislike and distrust which
I had of the man. His nature seemed to be vicious to the core.

Another point, small but suggestive, was that he hardly ever during the
months that I was at Willow Lea House received any letters, and on those
few occasions they were obviously tradesmen's bills. I am an early
riser, and used every morning to pick my own correspondence out of the
bundle upon the hall table. I could judge therefore how few were ever
there for Mr. Theophilus St. James. There seemed to me to be something
peculiarly ominous in this. What sort of a man could he be who during
thirty years of his life had never made a single friend, high or low,
who cared to continue to keep in touch with him? And yet the sinister
fact remained that the head master not only tolerated, but was even
intimate with him. More than once on entering a room I had found them
talking confidentially together, and they would walk arm in arm in deep
conversation up and down the garden paths. So curious did I become to
know what the tie was which bound them, that I found it gradually push
out my other interests and become the main purpose of my life. In school
and out of school, at meals and at play, I was perpetually engaged in
watching Dr. Phelps McCarthy and Mr. Theophilus St. James, and in
endeavouring to solve the mystery which surrounded them.

But, unfortunately, my curiosity was a little too open. I had not the
art to conceal the suspicions which I felt about the relations which
existed between these two men and the nature of the hold which the one
appeared to have over the other. It may have been my manner of watching
them, it may have been some indiscreet question, but it is certain that
I showed too clearly what I felt. One night I was conscious that the
eyes of Theophilus St. James were fixed upon me in a surly and menacing
stare. I had a foreboding of evil, and I was not surprised when Dr.
McCarthy called me next morning into his study.

"I am very sorry, Mr. Weld," said he, "but I am afraid that I shall be
compelled to dispense with your services."

"Perhaps you would give me some reason for dismissing me," I answered,
for I was conscious of having done my duties to the best of my power,
and knew well that only one reason could be given.

"I have no fault to find with you," said he, and the colour came to his
cheeks.

"You send me away at the suggestion of my colleague."

His eyes turned away from mine.

"We will not discuss the question, Mr. Weld. It is impossible for me to
discuss it. In justice to you, I will give you the strongest
recommendation for your next situation. I can say no more. I hope that
you will continue your duties here until you have found a place
elsewhere."

My whole soul rose against the injustice of it, and yet I had no appeal
and no redress. I could only bow and leave the room, with a bitter sense
of ill-usage at my heart.

My first instinct was to pack my boxes and leave the house. But the
head master had given me permission to remain until I had found another
situation. I was sure that St. James desired me to go, and that was a
strong reason why I should stay. If my presence annoyed him, I should
give him as much of it as I could. I had begun to hate him and to long
to have my revenge upon him. If he had a hold over our principal, might
not I in turn obtain one over him? It was a sign of weakness that he
should be so afraid of my curiosity. He would not resent it so much if
he had not something to fear from it. I entered my name once more upon
the books of the agents, but meanwhile I continued to fulfil my duties
at Willow Lea House, and so it came about that I was present at the
_dénouement_ of this singular situation.

During that week--for it was only a week before the crisis came--I was
in the habit of going down each evening, after the work of the day was
done, to inquire about my new arrangements. One night, it was a cold and
windy evening in March, I had just stepped out from the hall door when a
strange sight met my eyes. A man was crouching before one of the windows
of the house. His knees were bent and his eyes were fixed upon the small
line of light between the curtain and the sash. The window threw a
square of brightness in front of it, and in the middle of this the dark
shadow of this ominous visitor showed clear and hard. It was but for an
instant that I saw him, for he glanced up and was off in a moment
through the shrubbery. I could hear the patter of his feet as he ran
down the road, until it died away in the distance.

It was evidently my duty to turn back and to tell Dr. McCarthy what I
had seen. I found him in his study. I had expected him to be disturbed
at such an incident, but I was not prepared for the state of panic into
which he fell. He leaned back in his chair, white and gasping, like one
who has received a mortal blow.

"Which window, Mr. Weld?" he asked, wiping his forehead. "Which window
was it?"

"The next to the dining-room--Mr. St. James's window."

"Dear me! Dear me! This is, indeed, unfortunate! A man looking through
Mr. St. James's window!" He wrung his hands like a man who is at his
wits' end what to do.

"I shall be passing the police-station, sir. Would you wish me to
mention the matter?"

"No, no," he cried, suddenly, mastering his extreme agitation; "I have
no doubt that it was some poor tramp who intended to beg. I attach no
importance to the incident--none at all. Don't let me detain you, Mr.
Weld, if you wish to go out."

I left him sitting in his study with reassuring words upon his lips, but
with horror upon his face. My heart was heavy for my little employer as
I started off once more for town. As I looked back from the gate at the
square of light which marked the window of my colleague, I suddenly saw
the black outline of Dr. McCarthy's figure passing against the lamp. He
had hastened from his study then to tell St. James what he had heard.
What was the meaning of it all, this atmosphere of mystery, this
inexplicable terror, these confidences between two such dissimilar men?
I thought and thought as I walked, but do what I would I could not hit
upon any adequate conclusion. I little knew how near I was to the
solution of the problem.

It was very late--nearly twelve o'clock--when I returned, and the lights
were all out save one in the Doctor's study. The black, gloomy house
loomed before me as I walked up the drive, its sombre bulk broken only
by the one glimmering point of brightness. I let myself in with my
latch-key, and was about to enter my own room when my attention was
arrested by a short, sharp cry like that of a man in pain. I stood and
listened, my hand upon the handle of my door.

All was silent in the house save for a distant murmur of voices which
came, I knew, from the Doctor's room. I stole quietly down the corridor
in that direction. The sound resolved itself now into two voices, the
rough bullying tones of St. James and the lower tone of the Doctor, the
one apparently insisting and the other arguing and pleading. Four thin
lines of light in the blackness showed me the door of the Doctor's room,
and step by step I drew nearer to it in the darkness. St. James's voice
within rose louder and louder, and his words came plainly to my ear.

"I'll have every pound of it. If you won't give it me I'll take it. Do
you hear?"

Dr. McCarthy's reply was inaudible, but the angry voice broke in again.

"Leave you destitute! I leave you this little goldmine of a school, and
that's enough for one old man, is it not? How am I to set up in
Australia without money? Answer me that!"

Again the Doctor said something in a soothing voice, but his answer only
roused his companion to a higher pitch of fury.

"Done for me! What have you ever done for me except what you couldn't
help doing? It was for your good name, not for my safety, that you
cared. But enough cackle! I must get on my way before morning. Will you
open your safe or will you not?"

"Oh, James, how can you use me so?" cried a wailing voice, and then
there came a sudden little scream of pain. At the sound of that helpless
appeal from brutal violence I lost for once that temper upon which I had
prided myself. Every bit of manhood in me cried out against any further
neutrality. With my walking cane in my hand I rushed into the study. As
I did so I was conscious that the hall-door bell was violently ringing.

"You villain!" I cried, "let him go!"

The two men were standing in front of a small safe, which stood against
one wall of the Doctor's room. St. James held the old man by the wrist,
and he had twisted his arm round in order to force him to produce the
key. My little head master, white but resolute, was struggling furiously
in the grip of the burly athlete. The bully glared over his shoulder at
me with a mixture of fury and terror upon his brutal features. Then,
realising that I was alone, he dropped his victim and made for me with a
horrible curse.

"You infernal spy!" he cried. "I'll do for you anyhow before I leave."

I am not a very strong man, and I realised that I was helpless if once
at close quarters. Twice I cut at him with my stick, but he rushed in at
me with a murderous growl, and seized me by the throat with both his
muscular hands. I fell backwards and he on the top of me, with a grip
which was squeezing the life from me. I was conscious of his malignant
yellow-tinged eyes within a few inches of my own, and then with a
beating of pulses in my head and a singing in my ears, my senses slipped
away from me. But even in that supreme moment I was aware that the
door-bell was still violently ringing.

When I came to myself, I was lying upon the sofa in Dr. McCarthy's
study, and the Doctor himself was seated beside me. He appeared to be
watching me intently and anxiously, for as I opened my eyes and looked
about me he gave a great cry of relief. "Thank God!" he cried. "Thank
God!"

"Where is he?" I asked, looking round the room. As I did so, I became
aware that the furniture was scattered in every direction, and that
there were traces of an even more violent struggle than that in which I
had been engaged.

The Doctor sank his face between his hands.

"They have him," he groaned. "After these years of trial they have him
again. But how thankful I am that he has not for a second time stained
his hands in blood."

As the Doctor spoke I became aware that a man in the braided jacket of
an inspector of police was standing in the doorway.

"Yes, sir," he remarked, "you have had a pretty narrow escape. If we had
not got in when we did, you would not be here to tell the tale. I don't
know that I ever saw any one much nearer to the undertaker."

I sat up with my hands to my throbbing head.

"Dr. McCarthy," said I, "this is all a mystery to me. I should be glad
if you could explain to me who this man is, and why you have tolerated
him so long in your house."

"I owe you an explanation, Mr. Weld--and the more so since you have, in
so chivalrous a fashion, almost sacrificed your life in my defence.
There is no reason now for secrecy. In a word, Mr. Weld, this unhappy
man's real name is James McCarthy, and he is my only son."

"Your son?"

"Alas, yes. What sin have I ever committed that I should have such a
punishment? He has made my whole life a misery from the first years of
his boyhood. Violent, headstrong, selfish, unprincipled, he has always
been the same. At eighteen he was a criminal. At twenty, in a paroxysm
of passion, he took the life of a boon companion and was tried for
murder. He only just escaped the gallows, and he was condemned to penal
servitude. Three years ago he succeeded in escaping, and managed, in
face of a thousand obstacles, to reach my house in London. My wife's
heart had been broken by his condemnation, and as he had succeeded in
getting a suit of ordinary clothes, there was no one here to recognise
him. For months he lay concealed in the attics until the first search of
the police should be over. Then I gave him employment here, as you have
seen, though by his rough and overbearing manners he made my own life
miserable, and that of his fellow-masters unbearable. You have been with
us for four months, Mr. Weld, but no other master endured him so long. I
apologise now for all you have had to submit to, but I ask you what else
could I do? For his dead mother's sake I could not let harm come to him
as long as it was in my power to fend it off. Only under my roof could
he find a refuge--the only spot in all the world--and how could I keep
him here without it exciting remark unless I gave him some occupation? I
made him English master therefore, and in that capacity I have protected
him here for three years. You have no doubt observed that he never
during the daytime went beyond the college grounds. You now understand
the reason. But when to-night you came to me with your report of a man
who was looking through his window, I understood that his retreat was at
last discovered. I besought him to fly at once, but he had been
drinking, the unhappy fellow, and my words fell upon deaf ears. When at
last he made up his mind to go he wished to take from me in his flight
every shilling which I possessed. It was your entrance which saved me
from him, while the police in turn arrived only just in time to rescue
you. I have made myself amenable to the law by harbouring an escaped
prisoner, and remain here in the custody of the inspector, but a prison
has no terrors for me after what I have endured in this house during the
last three years."

"It seems to me, Doctor," said the inspector, "that, if you have broken
the law, you have had quite enough punishment already."

"God knows I have!" cried Dr. McCarthy, and sank his haggard face upon
his hands.




III

B. 24


I told my story when I was taken, and no one would listen to me. Then I
told it again at the trial--the whole thing absolutely as it happened,
without so much as a word added. I set it all out truly, so help me God,
all that Lady Mannering said and did, and then all that I had said and
done, just as it occurred. And what did I get for it? "The prisoner put
forward a rambling and inconsequential statement, incredible in its
details, and unsupported by any shred of corroborative evidence." That
was what one of the London papers said, and others let it pass as if I
had made no defence at all. And yet, with my own eyes I saw Lord
Mannering murdered, and I am as guiltless of it as any man on the jury
that tried me.

Now, sir, you are there to receive the petitions of prisoners. It all
lies with you. All I ask is that you read it--just read it--and then
that you make an inquiry or two about the private character of this
"lady" Mannering, if she still keeps the name that she had three years
ago, when to my sorrow and ruin I came to meet her. You could use a
private inquiry agent or a good lawyer, and you would soon learn enough
to show you that my story is the true one. Think of the glory it would
be to you to have all the papers saying that there would have been a
shocking miscarriage of justice if it had not been for your perseverance
and intelligence! That must be your reward, since I am a poor man and
can offer you nothing. But if you don't do it, may you never lie easy in
your bed again! May no night pass that you are not haunted by the
thought of the man who rots in gaol because you have not done the duty
which you are paid to do! But you will do it, sir, I know. Just make one
or two inquiries, and you will soon find which way the wind blows.
Remember, also, that the only person who profited by the crime was
herself, since it changed her from an unhappy wife to a rich young
widow. There's the end of the string in your hand, and you only have to
follow it up and see where it leads to.

Mind you, sir, I make no complaint as far as the burglary goes. I don't
whine about what I have deserved, and so far I have had no more than I
have deserved. Burglary it was, right enough, and my three years have
gone to pay for it. It was shown at the trial that I had had a hand in
the Merton Cross business, and did a year for that, so my story had the
less attention on that account. A man with a previous conviction never
gets a really fair trial. I own to the burglary, but when it comes to
the murder which brought me a lifer--any judge but Sir James might have
given me the gallows--then I tell you that I had nothing to do with it,
and that I am an innocent man. And now I'll take that night, the 13th of
September, 1894, and I'll give you just exactly what occurred, and may
God's hand strike me down if I go one inch over the truth.

I had been at Bristol in the summer looking for work, and then I had a
notion that I might get something at Portsmouth, for I was trained as a
skilled mechanic, so I came tramping my way across the south of
England, and doing odd jobs as I went. I was trying all I knew to keep
off the cross, for I had done a year in Exeter Gaol, and I had had
enough of visiting Queen Victoria. But it's cruel hard to get work when
once the black mark is against your name, and it was all I could do to
keep soul and body together. At last, after ten days of wood-cutting and
stone-breaking on starvation pay, I found myself near Salisbury with a
couple of shillings in my pocket, and my boots and my patience clean
wore out. There's an alehouse called "The Willing Mind," which stands
on the road between Blandford and Salisbury, and it was there that night
I engaged a bed. I was sitting alone in the taproom just about closing
time, when the inn-keeper--Allen his name was--came beside me and began
yarning about the neighbours. He was a man that liked to talk and to
have some one to listen to his talk, so I sat there smoking and drinking
a mug of ale which he had stood me; and I took no great interest in what
he said until he began to talk (as the devil would have it) about the
riches of Mannering Hall.

"Meaning the large house on the right before I came to the village?"
said I. "The one that stands in its own park?"

"Exactly," said he--and I am giving all our talk so that you may know
that I am telling you the truth and hiding nothing. "The long white
house with the pillars," said he. "At the side of the Blandford Road."

Now I had looked at it as I passed, and it had crossed my mind, as such
thoughts will, that it was a very easy house to get into with that
great row of grand windows and glass doors. I had put the thought away
from me, and now here was this landlord bringing it back with his talk
about the riches within. I said nothing, but I listened, and as luck
would have it, he would always come back to this one subject.

"He was a miser young, so you can think what he is now in his age," said
he. "Well, he's had some good out of his money."

"What good can he have had if he does not spend it?" said I.

"Well, it bought him the prettiest wife in England, and that was some
good that he got out of it. She thought she would have the spending of
it, but she knows the difference now."

"Who was she then?" I asked, just for the sake of something to say.

"She was nobody at all until the old Lord made her his Lady," said he.
"She came from up London way, and some said that she had been on the
stage there, but nobody knew. The old Lord was away for a year, and when
he came home he brought a young wife back with him, and there she has
been ever since. Stephens, the butler, did tell me once that she was the
light of the house when fust she came, but what with her husband's mean
and aggravatin' way, and what with her loneliness--for he hates to see a
visitor within his doors; and what with his bitter words--for he has a
tongue like a hornet's sting, her life all went out of her, and she
became a white, silent creature, moping about the country lanes. Some
say that she loved another man, and that it was just the riches of the
old Lord which tempted her to be false to her lover, and that now she
is eating her heart out because she has lost the one without being any
nearer to the other, for she might be the poorest woman in the parish
for all the money that she has the handling of."

Well, sir, you can imagine that it did not interest me very much to hear
about the quarrels between a Lord and a Lady. What did it matter to me
if she hated the sound of his voice, or if he put every indignity upon
her in the hope of breaking her spirit, and spoke to her as he would
never have dared to speak to one of his servants? The landlord told me
of these things, and of many more like them, but they passed out of my
mind, for they were no concern of mine. But what I did want to hear was
the form in which Lord Mannering kept his riches. Title-deeds and stock
certificates are but paper, and more danger than profit to the man who
takes them. But metal and stones are worth a risk. And then, as if he
were answering my very thoughts, the landlord told me of Lord
Mannering's great collection of gold medals, that it was the most
valuable in the world, and that it was reckoned that if they were put
into a sack the strongest man in the parish would not be able to raise
them. Then his wife called him, and he and I went to our beds.

I am not arguing to make out a case for myself, but I beg you, sir, to
bear all the facts in your mind, and to ask yourself whether a man could
be more sorely tempted than I was. I make bold to say that there are few
who could have held out against it. There I lay on my bed that night, a
desperate man without hope or work, and with my last shilling in my
pocket. I had tried to be honest, and honest folk had turned their backs
upon me. They taunted me for theft; and yet they pushed me towards it. I
was caught in the stream and could not get out. And then it was such a
chance: the great house all lined with windows, the golden medals which
could so easily be melted down. It was like putting a loaf before a
starving man and expecting him not to eat it. I fought against it for a
time, but it was no use. At last I sat up on the side of my bed, and I
swore that that night I should either be a rich man and able to give up
crime for ever, or that the irons should be on my wrists once more. Then
I slipped on my clothes, and, having put a shilling on the table--for
the landlord had treated me well, and I did not wish to cheat him--I
passed out through the window into the garden of the inn.

There was a high wall round this garden, and I had a job to get over it,
but once on the other side it was all plain sailing. I did not meet a
soul upon the road, and the iron gate of the avenue was open. No one was
moving at the lodge. The moon was shining, and I could see the great
house glimmering white through an archway of trees. I walked up it for a
quarter of a mile or so, until I was at the edge of the drive, where it
ended in a broad, gravelled space before the main door. There I stood in
the shadow and looked at the long building, with a full moon shining in
every window and silvering the high stone front. I crouched there for
some time, and I wondered where I should find the easiest entrance. The
corner window of the side seemed to be the one which was least
overlooked, and a screen of ivy hung heavily over it. My best chance
was evidently there. I worked my way under the trees to the back of the
house, and then crept along in the black shadow of the building. A dog
barked and rattled his chain, but I stood waiting until he was quiet,
and then I stole on once more until I came to the window which I had
chosen.

It is astonishing how careless they are in the country, in places far
removed from large towns, where the thought of burglars never enters
their heads. I call it setting temptation in a poor man's way when he
puts his hand, meaning no harm, upon a door, and finds it swing open
before him. In this case it was not so bad as that, but the window was
merely fastened with the ordinary catch, which I opened with a push from
the blade of my knife. I pulled up the window as quickly as possible,
then I thrust the knife through the slit in the shutter and prized it
open. They were folding shutters, and I shoved them before me and walked
into the room.

"Good evening, sir! You are very welcome!" said a voice.

I've had some starts in my life, but never one to come up to that one.
There, in the opening of the shutters, within reach of my arm, was
standing a woman with a small coil of wax taper burning in her hand. She
was tall and straight and slender, with a beautiful white face that
might have been cut out of clear marble, but her hair and eyes were as
black as night. She was dressed in some sort of white dressing-gown
which flowed down to her feet, and what with this robe and what with her
face, it seemed as if a spirit from above was standing in front of me.
My knees knocked together, and I held on to the shutter with one hand
to give me support. I should have turned and run away if I had had the
strength, but I could only just stand and stare at her.

She soon brought me back to myself once more.

"Don't be frightened!" said she, and they were strange words for the
mistress of a house to have to use to a burglar. "I saw you out of my
bedroom window when you were hiding under those trees, so I slipped
downstairs, and then I heard you at the window. I should have opened it
for you if you had waited, but you managed it yourself just as I came
up."

I still held in my hand the long clasp-knife with which I had opened the
shutter. I was unshaven and grimed from a week on the roads. Altogether,
there are few people who would have cared to face me alone at one in the
morning; but this woman, if I had been her lover meeting her by
appointment, could not have looked upon me with a more welcoming eye.
She laid her hand upon my sleeve and drew me into the room.

"What's the meaning of this, ma'am? Don't get trying any little games
upon me," said I, in my roughest way--and I can put it on rough when I
like. "It'll be the worse for you if you play me any trick," I added,
showing her my knife.

"I will play you no trick," said she. "On the contrary, I am your
friend, and I wish to help you."

"Excuse me, ma'am, but I find it hard to believe that," said I. "Why
should you wish to help me?"

"I have my own reasons," said she; and then suddenly, with those black
eyes blazing out of her white face: "It's because I hate him, hate him,
hate him! Now you understand."

I remembered what the landlord had told me, and I did understand. I
looked at her Ladyship's face, and I knew that I could trust her. She
wanted to revenge herself upon her husband. She wanted to hit him where
it would hurt him most--upon the pocket. She hated him so that she would
even lower her pride to take such a man as me into her confidence if she
could gain her end by doing so. I've hated some folk in my time, but I
don't think I ever understood what hate was until I saw that woman's
face in the light of the taper.

"You'll trust me now?" said she, with another coaxing touch upon my
sleeve.

"Yes, your Ladyship."

"You know me, then?"

"I can guess who you are."

"I dare say my wrongs are the talk of the county. But what does he care
for that? He only cares for one thing in the whole world, and that you
can take from him this night. Have you a bag?"

"No, your Ladyship."

"Shut the shutter behind you. Then no one can see the light. You are
quite safe. The servants all sleep in the other wing. I can show you
where all the most valuable things are. You cannot carry them all, so we
must pick the best."

The room in which I found myself was long and low, with many rugs and
skins scattered about on a polished wood floor. Small cases stood here
and there, and the walls were decorated with spears and swords and
paddles, and other things which find their way into museums. There were
some queer clothes, too, which had been brought from savage countries,
and the lady took down a large leather sack-bag from among them.

"This sleeping-sack will do," said she. "Now come with me and I will
show you where the medals are."

It was like a dream to me to think that this tall, white woman was the
lady of the house, and that she was lending me a hand to rob her own
home. I could have burst out laughing at the thought of it, and yet
there was something in that pale face of hers which stopped my laughter
and turned me cold and serious. She swept on in front of me like a
spirit, with the green taper in her hand, and I walked behind with my
sack until we came to a door at the end of this museum. It was locked,
but the key was in it, and she led me through.

The room beyond was a small one, hung all round with curtains which had
pictures on them. It was the hunting of a deer that was painted on it,
as I remember, and in the flicker of that light you'd have sworn that
the dogs and the horses were streaming round the walls. The only other
thing in the room was a row of cases made of walnut, with brass
ornaments. They had glass tops, and beneath this glass I saw the long
lines of those gold medals, some of them as big as a plate and half an
inch thick, all resting upon red velvet and glowing and gleaming in the
darkness. My fingers were just itching to be at them, and I slipped my
knife under the lock of one of the cases to wrench it open.

"Wait a moment," said she, laying her hand upon my arm. "You might do
better than this."

"I am very well satisfied, ma'am," said I, "and much obliged to your
Ladyship for kind assistance."

"You can do better," she repeated. "Would not golden sovereigns be worth
more to you than these things?"

"Why, yes," said I. "That's best of all."

"Well," said she. "He sleeps just above our head. It is but one short
staircase. There is a tin box with money enough to fill this bag under
his bed."

"How can I get it without waking him?"

"What matter if he does wake?" She looked very hard at me as she spoke.
"You could keep him from calling out."

"No, no, ma'am, I'll have none of that."

"Just as you like," said she. "I thought that you were a stout-hearted
sort of man by your appearance, but I see that I made a mistake. If you
are afraid to run the risk of one old man, then of course you cannot
have the gold which is under his bed. You are the best judge of your own
business, but I should think that you would do better at some other
trade."

"I'll not have murder on my conscience."

"You could overpower him without harming him. I never said anything
about murder. The money lies under the bed. But if you are
faint-hearted, it is better that you should not attempt it."

She worked upon me so, partly with her scorn and partly with this money
that she held before my eyes, that I believe I should have yielded and
taken my chances upstairs, had it not been that I saw her eyes following
the struggle within me in such a crafty, malignant fashion, that it was
evident she was bent upon making me the tool of her revenge, and that
she would leave me no choice but to do the old man an injury or to be
captured by him. She felt suddenly that she was giving herself away, and
she changed her face to a kindly, friendly smile, but it was too late,
for I had had my warning.

"I will not go upstairs," said I. "I have all I want here."

She looked her contempt at me, and there never was a face which could
look it plainer.

"Very good. You can take these medals. I should be glad if you would
begin at this end. I suppose they will all be the same value when melted
down, but these are the ones which are the rarest, and therefore, the
most precious to him. It is not necessary to break the locks. If you
press that brass knob you will find that there is a secret spring. So!
Take that small one first--it is the very apple of his eye."

She had opened one of the cases, and the beautiful things all lay
exposed before me. I had my hand upon the one which she had pointed out,
when suddenly a change came over her face, and she held up one finger as
a warning. "Hist!" she whispered. "What is that?"

Far away in the silence of the house we heard a low, dragging, shuffling
sound, and the distant tread of feet. She closed and fastened the case
in an instant.

"It's my husband!" she whispered. "All right. Don't be alarmed. I'll
arrange it. Here! Quick, behind the tapestry!"

She pushed me behind the painted curtains upon the wall, my empty
leather bag still in my hand. Then she took her taper and walked quickly
into the room from which we had come. From where I stood I could see
her through the open door.

"Is that you, Robert?" she cried.

The light of a candle shone through the door of the museum, and the
shuffling steps came nearer. Then I saw a face in the doorway, a great,
heavy face, all lines and creases, with a huge curving nose, and a pair
of gold glasses fixed across it. He had to throw his head back to see
through the glasses, and that great nose thrust out in front of him like
the beak of some sort of fowl. He was a big man, very tall and burly, so
that in his loose dressing-gown his figure seemed to fill up the whole
doorway. He had a pile of grey, curling hair all round his head, but his
face was clean-shaven. His mouth was thin and small and prim, hidden
away under his long, masterful nose. He stood there, holding the candle
in front of him, and looking at his wife with a queer, malicious gleam
in his eyes. It only needed that one look to tell me that he was as fond
of her as she was of him.

"How's this?" he asked. "Some new tantrum? What do you mean by wandering
about the house? Why don't you go to bed?"

"I could not sleep," she answered. She spoke languidly and wearily. If
she was an actress once, she had not forgotten her calling.

"Might I suggest," said he, in the same mocking kind of voice, "that a
good conscience is an excellent aid to sleep?"

"That cannot be true," she answered, "for you sleep very well."

"I have only one thing in my life to be ashamed of," said he, and his
hair bristled up with anger until he looked like an old cockatoo. "You
know best what that is. It is a mistake which has brought its own
punishment with it."

"To me as well as to you. Remember that!"

"You have very little to whine about. It was I who stooped and you who
rose."

"Rose!"

"Yes, rose. I suppose you do not deny that it is a promotion to exchange
the music-hall for Mannering Hall. Fool that I was ever to take you out
of your true sphere!"

"If you think so, why do you not separate?"

"Because private misery is better than public humiliation. Because it is
easier to suffer for a mistake than to own to it. Because also I like to
keep you in my sight, and to know that you cannot go back to him."

"You villain! You cowardly villain!"

"Yes, yes, my lady. I know your secret ambition, but it shall never be
while I live, and if it happens after my death I will at least take care
that you go to him as a beggar. You and dear Edward will never have the
satisfaction of squandering my savings, and you may make up your mind to
that, my lady. Why are those shutters and the window open?"

"I found the night very close."

"It is not safe. How do you know that some tramp may not be outside? Are
you aware that my collection of medals is worth more than any similar
collection in the world? You have left the door open also. What is there
to prevent any one from rifling the cases?"

"I was here."

"I know you were. I heard you moving about in the medal room, and that
was why I came down. What were you doing?"

"Looking at the medals. What else should I be doing?"

"This curiosity is something new." He looked suspiciously at her and
moved on towards the inner room, she walking beside him.

It was at this moment that I saw something which startled. I had laid my
clasp-knife open upon the top of one of the cases, and there it lay in
full view. She saw it before he did, and with a woman's cunning she held
her taper out so that the light of it came between Lord Mannering's eyes
and the knife. Then she took it with her left hand and held it against
her gown out of his sight. He looked about from case to case--I could
have put my hand at one time upon his long nose--but there was nothing
to show that the medals had been tampered with, and so, still snarling
and grumbling, he shuffled off into the other room once more.

And now I have to speak of what I heard rather than of what I saw, but I
swear to you, as I shall stand some day before my Maker, that what I say
is the truth.

When they passed into the outer room I saw him lay his candle upon the
corner of one of the tables, and he sat himself down, but in such a
position that he was just out of my sight. She moved behind him, as I
could tell from the fact that the light of her taper threw his long,
lumpy shadow upon the floor in front of him. Then he began talking about
this man whom he called Edward, and every word that he said was like a
blistering drop of vitriol. He spoke low, so that I could not hear it
all, but from what I heard I should guess that she would as soon have
been lashed with a whip. At first she said some hot words in reply, but
then she was silent, and he went on and on in that cold, mocking voice
of his, nagging and insulting and tormenting, until I wondered that she
could bear to stand there in silence and listen to it. Then suddenly I
heard him say in a sharp voice, "Come from behind me! Leave go of my
collar! What! would you dare to strike me?" There was a sound like a
blow, just a soft sort of thud, and then I heard him cry out, "My God,
it's blood!" He shuffled with his feet as if he was getting up, and then
I heard another blow, and he cried out, "Oh, you she-devil!" and was
quiet, except for a dripping and splashing upon the floor.

I ran out from behind my curtain at that, and rushed into the other
room, shaking all over with the horror of it. The old man had slipped
down in the chair, and his dressing-gown had rucked up until he looked
as if he had a monstrous hump to his back. His head, with the gold
glasses still fixed on his nose, was lolling over upon one side, and his
little mouth was open just like a dead fish. I could not see where the
blood was coming from, but I could still hear it drumming upon the
floor. She stood behind him with the candle shining full upon her face.
Her lips were pressed together and her eyes shining, and a touch of
colour had come into each of her cheeks. It just wanted that to make her
the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life.

"You've done it now!" said I.

"Yes," said she, in her quiet way, "I've done it now."

"What are you going to do?" I asked. "They'll have you for murder as
sure as fate."

"Never fear about me. I have nothing to live for, and it does not
matter. Give me a hand to set him straight in the chair. It is horrible
to see him like this!"

I did so, though it turned me cold all over to touch him. Some of his
blood came on my hand and sickened me.

"Now," said she, "you may as well have the medals as any one else. Take
them and go."

"I don't want them. I only want to get away. I was never mixed up with a
business like this before."

"Nonsense!" said she. "You came for the medals, and here they are at
your mercy. Why should you not have them? There is no one to prevent
you."

I held the bag still in my hand. She opened the case, and between us we
threw a hundred or so of the medals into it. They were all from the one
case, but I could not bring myself to wait for any more. Then I made for
the window, for the very air of this house seemed to poison me after
what I had seen and heard. As I looked back, I saw her standing there,
tall and graceful, with the light in her hand just as I had seen her
first. She waved good-bye, and I waved back at her and sprang out into
the gravel drive.

I thank God that I can lay my hand upon my heart and say that I have
never done a murder, but perhaps it would be different if I had been
able to read that woman's mind and thoughts. There might have been two
bodies in the room instead of one if I could have seen behind that last
smile of hers. But I thought of nothing but of getting safely away, and
it never entered my head how she might be fixing the rope round my neck.
I had not taken five steps out from the window skirting down the shadow
of the house in the way that I had come, when I heard a scream that
might have raised the parish, and then another and another.

"Murder!" she cried. "Murder! Murder! Help!" and her voice rang out in
the quiet of the night-time and sounded over the whole country-side. It
went through my head, that dreadful cry. In an instant lights began to
move and windows to fly up, not only in the house behind me, but at the
lodge and in the stables in front. Like a frightened rabbit I bolted
down the drive, but I heard the clang of the gate being shut before I
could reach it. Then I hid my bag of medals under some dry fagots, and I
tried to get away across the park, but some one saw me in the moonlight,
and presently I had half a dozen of them with dogs upon my heels. I
crouched down among the brambles, but those dogs were too many for me,
and I was glad enough when the men came up and prevented me from being
torn into pieces. They seized me, and dragged me back to the room from
which I had come.

"Is this the man, your Ladyship?" asked the oldest of them--the same
whom I found out afterwards to be the butler.

She had been bending over the body, with her handkerchief to her eyes,
and now she turned upon me with the face of a fury. Oh, what an actress
that woman was!

"Yes, yes, it is the very man," she cried. "Oh, you villain, you cruel
villain, to treat an old man so!"

There was a man there who seemed to be a village constable. He laid his
hand upon my shoulder.

"What do you say to that?" said he.

"It was she who did it," I cried, pointing at the woman, whose eyes
never flinched before mine.

"Come! come! Try another!" said the constable, and one of the
men-servants struck at me with his fist.

"I tell you that I saw her do it. She stabbed him twice with a knife.
She first helped me to rob him, and then she murdered him."

The footman tried to strike me again, but she held up her hand.

"Do not hurt him," said she. "I think that his punishment may safely be
left to the law."

"I'll see to that, your Ladyship," said the constable. "Your Ladyship
actually saw the crime committed, did you not?"

"Yes, yes, I saw it with my own eyes. It was horrible. We heard the
noise and we came down. My poor husband was in front. The man had one of
the cases open, and was filling a black leather bag which he held in his
hand. He rushed past us, and my husband seized him. There was a
struggle, and he stabbed him twice. There you can see the blood upon his
hands. If I am not mistaken, his knife is still in Lord Mannering's
body."

"Look at the blood upon her hands!" I cried.

"She has been holding up his Lordship's head, you lying rascal," said
the butler.

"And here's the very sack her Ladyship spoke of," said the constable, as
a groom came in with the one which I had dropped in my flight. "And here
are the medals inside it. That's good enough for me. We will keep him
safe here to-night, and to-morrow the inspector and I can take him into
Salisbury."

"Poor creature," said the woman. "For my own part, I forgive him any
injury which he has done me. Who knows what temptation may have driven
him to crime? His conscience and the law will give him punishment enough
without any reproach of mine rendering it more bitter."

I could not answer--I tell you, sir, I could not answer, so taken aback
was I by the assurance of the woman. And so, seeming by my silence to
agree to all that she had said, I was dragged away by the butler and the
constable into the cellar, in which they locked me for the night.

There, sir, I have told you the whole story of the events which led up
to the murder of Lord Mannering by his wife upon the night of September
the 14th, in the year 1894. Perhaps you will put my statement on one
side as the constable did at Mannering Towers, or the judge afterwards
at the county assizes. Or perhaps you will see that there is the ring of
truth in what I say, and you will follow it up, and so make your name
for ever as a man who does not grudge personal trouble where justice is
to be done. I have only you to look to, sir, and if you will clear my
name of this false accusation, then I will worship you as one man never
yet worshipped another. But if you fail me, then I give you my solemn
promise that I will rope myself up, this day month, to the bar of my
window, and from that time on I will come to plague you in your dreams
if ever yet one man was able to come back and to haunt another. What I
ask you to do is very simple. Make inquiries about this woman, watch
her, learn her past history, find out what she is making of the money
which has come to her, and whether there is not a man Edward as I have
stated. If from all this you learn anything which shows you her real
character, or which seems to you to corroborate the story which I have
told you, then I am sure that I can rely upon your goodness of heart to
come to the rescue of an innocent man.




IV

THE GREAT KEINPLATZ EXPERIMENT


Of all the sciences which have puzzled the sons of men, none had such an
attraction for the learned Professor von Baumgarten as those which
relate to psychology and the ill-defined relations between mind and
matter. A celebrated anatomist, a profound chemist, and one of the first
physiologists in Europe, it was a relief for him to turn from these
subjects and to bring his varied knowledge to bear upon the study of the
soul and the mysterious relationship of spirits. At first, when as a
young man he began to dip into the secrets of mesmerism, his mind seemed
to be wandering in a strange land where all was chaos and darkness, save
that here and there some great unexplainable and disconnected fact
loomed out in front of him. As the years passed, however, and as the
worthy Professor's stock of knowledge increased, for knowledge begets
knowledge as money bears interest, much which had seemed strange and
unaccountable began to take another shape in his eyes. New trains of
reasoning became familiar to him, and he perceived connecting links
where all had been incomprehensible and startling. By experiments which
extended over twenty years, he obtained a basis of facts upon which it
was his ambition to build up a new exact science which should embrace
mesmerism, spiritualism, and all cognate subjects. In this he was much
helped by his intimate knowledge of the more intricate parts of animal
physiology which treat of nerve currents and the working of the brain;
for Alexis von Baumgarten was Regius Professor of Physiology at the
University of Keinplatz, and had all the resources of the laboratory to
aid him in his profound researches.

Professor von Baumgarten was tall and thin, with a hatchet face and
steel-grey eyes, which were singularly bright and penetrating. Much
thought had furrowed his forehead and contracted his heavy eyebrows, so
that he appeared to wear a perpetual frown, which often misled people as
to his character, for though austere he was tender-hearted. He was
popular among the students, who would gather round him after his
lectures and listen eagerly to his strange theories. Often he would call
for volunteers from amongst them in order to conduct some experiment, so
that eventually there was hardly a lad in the class who had not, at one
time or another, been thrown into a mesmeric trance by his Professor.

Of all these young devotees of science there was none who equalled in
enthusiasm Fritz von Hartmann. It had often seemed strange to his
fellow-students that wild, reckless Fritz, as dashing a young fellow as
ever hailed from the Rhinelands, should devote the time and trouble
which he did in reading up abstruse works and in assisting the Professor
in his strange experiments. The fact was, however, that Fritz was a
knowing and long-headed fellow. Months before he had lost his heart to
young Elise, the blue-eyed, yellow-haired daughter of the lecturer.
Although he had succeeded in learning from her lips that she was not
indifferent to his suit, he had never dared to announce himself to her
family as a formal suitor. Hence he would have found it a difficult
matter to see his young lady had he not adopted the expedient of making
himself useful to the Professor. By this means he frequently was asked
to the old man's house, where he willingly submitted to be experimented
upon in any way as long as there was a chance of his receiving one
bright glance from the eyes of Elise or one touch of her little hand.

Young Fritz von Hartmann was a handsome lad enough. There were broad
acres, too, which would descend to him when his father died. To many he
would have seemed an eligible suitor; but Madame frowned upon his
presence in the house, and lectured the Professor at times on his
allowing such a wolf to prowl around their lamb. To tell the truth,
Fritz had an evil name in Keinplatz. Never was there a riot or a duel,
or any other mischief afoot, but the young Rhinelander figured as a
ringleader in it. No one used more free and violent language, no one
drank more, no one played cards more habitually, no one was more idle,
save in the one solitary subject. No wonder, then, that the good Frau
Professorin gathered her Fräulein under her wing, and resented the
attentions of such a _mauvais sujet_. As to the worthy lecturer, he was
too much engrossed by his strange studies to form an opinion upon the
subject one way or the other.

For many years there was one question which had continually obtruded
itself upon his thoughts. All his experiments and his theories turned
upon a single point. A hundred times a day the Professor asked himself
whether it was possible for the human spirit to exist apart from the
body for a time and then to return to it once again. When the
possibility first suggested itself to him his scientific mind had
revolted from it. It clashed too violently with preconceived ideas and
the prejudices of his early training. Gradually, however, as he
proceeded farther and farther along the pathway of original research,
his mind shook off its old fetters and became ready to face any
conclusion which could reconcile the facts. There were many things which
made him believe that it was possible for mind to exist apart from
matter. At last it occurred to him that by a daring and original
experiment the question might be definitely decided.

"It is evident," he remarked in his celebrated article upon invisible
entities, which appeared in the _Keinplatz wochentliche Medicalschrift_
about this time, and which surprised the whole scientific world--"it is
evident that under certain conditions the soul or mind does separate
itself from the body. In the case of a mesmerised person, the body lies
in a cataleptic condition, but the spirit has left it. Perhaps you reply
that the soul is there, but in a dormant condition. I answer that this
is not so, otherwise how can one account for the condition of
clairvoyance, which has fallen into disrepute through the knavery of
certain scoundrels, but which can easily be shown to be an undoubted
fact. I have been able myself, with a sensitive subject, to obtain an
accurate description of what was going on in another room or another
house. How can such knowledge be accounted for on any hypothesis save
that the soul of the subject has left the body and is wandering through
space? For a moment it is recalled by the voice of the operator and says
what it has seen, and then wings its way once more through the air.
Since the spirit is by its very nature invisible, we cannot see these
comings and goings, but we see their effect in the body of the subject,
now rigid and inert, now struggling to narrate impressions which could
never have come to it by natural means. There is only one way which I
can see by which the fact can be demonstrated. Although we in the flesh
are unable to see these spirits, yet our own spirits, could we separate
them from the body, would be conscious of the presence of others. It is
my intention, therefore, shortly to mesmerise one of my pupils. I shall
then mesmerise myself in a manner which has become easy to me. After
that, if my theory holds good, my spirit will have no difficulty in
meeting and communing with the spirit of my pupil, both being separated
from the body. I hope to be able to communicate the result of this
interesting experiment in an early number of the _Keinplatz wochenliche
Medicalschrift_."

When the good Professor finally fulfilled his promise, and published an
account of what occurred, the narrative was so extraordinary that it was
received with general incredulity. The tone of some of the papers was so
offensive in their comments upon the matter that the angry savant
declared that he would never open his mouth again, or refer to the
subject in any way--a promise which he has faithfully kept. This
narrative has been compiled, however, from the most authentic sources,
and the events cited in it may be relied upon as substantially correct.

It happened, then, that shortly after the time when Professor von
Baumgarten conceived the idea of the above-mentioned experiment, he was
walking thoughtfully homewards after a long day in the laboratory, when
he met a crowd of roystering students who had just streamed out from a
beer-house. At the head of them, half-intoxicated and very noisy, was
young Fritz von Hartmann. The Professor would have passed them, but his
pupil ran across and intercepted him.

"Heh! my worthy master," he said, taking the old man by the sleeve, and
leading him down the road with him. "There is something that I have to
say to you, and it is easier for me to say it now, when the good beer is
humming in my head, than at another time."

"What is it, then, Fritz?" the physiologist asked, looking at him in
mild surprise.

"I hear, mein Herr, that you are about to do some wondrous experiment in
which you hope to take a man's soul out of his body, and then to put it
back again. Is it not so?"

"It is true, Fritz."

"And have you considered, my dear sir, that you may have some difficulty
in finding some one on whom to try this? Potztausend! Suppose that the
soul went out and would not come back. That would be a bad business. Who
is to take the risk?"

"But, Fritz," the Professor cried, very much startled by this view of
the matter, "I had relied upon your assistance in the attempt. Surely
you will not desert me. Consider the honour and glory."

"Consider the fiddlesticks!" the student cried angrily. "Am I to be paid
always thus? Did I not stand two hours upon a glass insulator while you
poured electricity into my body? Have you not stimulated my phrenic
nerves, besides ruining my digestion with a galvanic current round my
stomach? Four-and-thirty times you have mesmerised me, and what have I
got from all this? Nothing. And now you wish to take my soul out, as you
would take the works from a watch. It is more than flesh and blood can
stand."

"Dear, dear!" the Professor cried in great distress. "That is very true,
Fritz. I never thought of it before. If you can but suggest how I can
compensate you, you will find me ready and willing."

"Then listen," said Fritz solemnly. "If you will pledge your word that
after this experiment I may have the hand of your daughter, then I am
willing to assist you; but if not, I shall have nothing to do with it.
These are my only terms."

"And what would my daughter say to this?" the Professor exclaimed, after
a pause of astonishment.

"Elise would welcome it," the young man replied. "We have loved each
other long."

"Then she shall be yours," the physiologist said with decision, "for you
are a good-hearted young man, and one of the best neurotic subjects that
I have ever known--that is when you are not under the influence of
alcohol. My experiment is to be performed upon the fourth of next month.
You will attend at the physiological laboratory at twelve o'clock. It
will be a great occasion, Fritz. Von Gruben is coming from Jena, and
Hinterstein from Basle. The chief men of science of all South Germany
will be there."

"I shall be punctual," the student said briefly; and so the two parted.
The Professor plodded homeward, thinking of the great coming event,
while the young man staggered along after his noisy companions, with
his mind full of the blue-eyed Elise, and of the bargain which he had
concluded with her father.

The Professor did not exaggerate when he spoke of the widespread
interest excited by his novel psychological experiment. Long before the
hour had arrived the room was filled by a galaxy of talent. Besides the
celebrities whom he had mentioned, there had come from London the great
Professor Lurcher, who had just established his reputation by a
remarkable treatise upon cerebral centres. Several great lights of the
Spiritualistic body had also come a long distance to be present, as had
a Swedenborgian minister, who considered that the proceedings might
throw some light upon the doctrines of the Rosy Cross.

There was considerable applause from this eminent assembly upon the
appearance of Professor von Baumgarten and his subject upon the
platform. The lecturer, in a few well-chosen words, explained what his
views were, and how he proposed to test them. "I hold," he said, "that
when a person is under the influence of mesmerism, his spirit is for the
time released from his body, and I challenge any one to put forward any
other hypothesis which will account for the fact of clairvoyance. I
therefore hope that upon mesmerising my young friend here, and then
putting myself into a trance, our spirits may be able to commune
together, though our bodies lie still and inert. After a time nature
will resume her sway, our spirits will return into our respective
bodies, and all will be as before. With your kind permission, we shall
now proceed to attempt the experiment."

The applause was renewed at this speech, and the audience settled down
in expectant silence. With a few rapid passes the Professor mesmerised
the young man, who sank back in his chair, pale and rigid. He then took
a bright globe of glass from his pocket, and by concentrating his gaze
upon it and making a strong mental effort, he succeeded in throwing
himself into the same condition. It was a strange and impressive sight
to see the old man and the young sitting together in the same cataleptic
condition. Whither, then, had their souls fled? That was the question
which presented itself to each and every one of the spectators.

Five minutes passed, and then ten, and then fifteen, and then fifteen
more, while the Professor and his pupil sat stiff and stark upon the
platform. During that time not a sound was heard from the assembled
savants, but every eye was bent upon the two pale faces, in search of
the first signs of returning consciousness. Nearly an hour had elapsed
before the patient watchers were rewarded. A faint flush came back to
the cheeks of Professor von Baumgarten. The soul was coming back once
more to its earthly tenement. Suddenly he stretched out his long thin
arms, as one awaking from sleep, and rubbing his eyes, stood up from his
chair and gazed about him as though he hardly realised where he was.
"Tausend Teufel!" he exclaimed, rapping out a tremendous South German
oath, to the great astonishment of his audience and to the disgust of
the Swedenborgian. "Where the Henker am I then, and what in thunder has
occurred? Oh yes, I remember now. One of these nonsensical mesmeric
experiments. There is no result this time, for I remember nothing at all
since I became unconscious; so you have had all your long journeys for
nothing, my learned friends, and a very good joke too"; at which the
Regius Professor of Physiology burst into a roar of laughter and slapped
his thigh in a highly indecorous fashion. The audience were so enraged
at this unseemly behaviour on the part of their host, that there might
have been a considerable disturbance, had it not been for the judicious
interference of young Fritz von Hartmann, who had now recovered from his
lethargy. Stepping to the front of the platform, the young man
apologised for the conduct of his companion. "I am sorry to say," he
said, "that he is a harum-scarum sort of fellow, although he appeared so
grave at the commencement of this experiment. He is still suffering from
mesmeric reaction, and is hardly accountable for his words. As to the
experiment itself, I do not consider it to be a failure. It is very
possible that our spirits may have been communing in space during this
hour; but, unfortunately, our gross bodily memory is distinct from our
spirit, and we cannot recall what has occurred. My energies shall now be
devoted to devising some means by which spirits may be able to recollect
what occurs to them in their free state, and I trust that when I have
worked this out, I may have the pleasure of meeting you all once again
in this hall, and demonstrating to you the result." This address, coming
from so young a student, caused considerable astonishment among the
audience, and some were inclined to be offended, thinking that he
assumed rather too much importance. The majority, however, looked upon
him as a young man of great promise, and many comparisons were made as
they left the hall between his dignified conduct and the levity of his
professor, who during the above remarks was laughing heartily in a
corner, by no means abashed at the failure of the experiment.

Now although all these learned men were filing out of the lecture-room
under the impression that they had seen nothing of note, as a matter of
fact one of the most wonderful things in the whole history of the world
had just occurred before their very eyes. Professor von Baumgarten had
been so far correct in his theory that both his spirit and that of his
pupil had been for a time absent from the body. But here a strange and
unforeseen complication had occurred. In their return the spirit of
Fritz von Hartmann had entered into the body of Alexis von Baumgarten,
and that of Alexis von Baumgarten had taken up its abode in the frame of
Fritz von Hartmann. Hence the slang and scurrility which issued from the
lips of the serious Professor, and hence also the weighty words and
grave statements which fell from the careless student. It was an
unprecedented event, yet no one knew of it, least of all those whom it
concerned.

The body of the Professor, feeling conscious suddenly of a great dryness
about the back of the throat, sallied out into the street, still
chuckling to himself over the result of the experiment, for the soul of
Fritz within was reckless at the thought of the bride whom he had won so
easily. His first impulse was to go up to the house and see her, but on
second thought he came to the conclusion that it would be best to stay
away until Madame Baumgarten should be informed by her husband of the
agreement which had been made. He therefore made his way down to the
Grüner Mann, which was one of the favourite trysting-places of the
wilder students, and ran, boisterously waving his cane in the air, into
the little parlour, where sat Spiegle and Müller and half a dozen other
boon companions.

"Ha, ha! my boys," he shouted. "I knew I should find you here. Drink up,
every one of you, and call for what you like, for I'm going to stand
treat to-day."

Had the green man who is depicted upon the signpost of that well-known
inn suddenly marched into the room and called for a bottle of wine, the
students could not have been more amazed than they were by this
unexpected entry of their revered professor. They were so astonished
that for a minute or two they glared at him in utter bewilderment
without being able to make any reply to his hearty invitation.

"Donner und Blitzen!" shouted the Professor angrily. "What the deuce is
the matter with you, then? You sit there like a set of stuck pigs
staring at me. What is it then?"

"It is the unexpected honour," stammered Spiegel, who was in the chair.

"Honour--rubbish!" said the Professor testily. "Do you think that just
because I happen to have been exhibiting mesmerism to a parcel of old
fossils, I am therefore too proud to associate with dear old friends
like you? Come out of that chair, Spiegel, my boy, for I shall preside
now. Beer, or wine, or schnapps, my lads--call for what you like, and
put it all down to me."

Never was there such an afternoon in the Grüner Mann. The foaming
flagons of lager and the green-necked bottles of Rhenish circulated
merrily. By degrees the students lost their shyness in the presence of
their Professor. As for him, he shouted, he sang, he roared, he balanced
a long tobacco-pipe upon his nose, and offered to run a hundred yards
against any member of the company. The Kellner and the barmaid whispered
to each other outside the door their astonishment at such proceedings on
the part of a Regius Professor of the ancient university of Keinplatz.
They had still more to whisper about afterwards, for the learned man
cracked the Kellner's crown, and kissed the barmaid behind the kitchen
door.

"Gentlemen," said the Professor, standing up, albeit somewhat
totteringly, at the end of the table, and balancing his high
old-fashioned wine glass in his bony hand, "I must now explain to you
what is the cause of this festivity."

"Hear! hear!" roared the students, hammering their beer glasses against
the table; "a speech, a speech!--silence for a speech!"

"The fact is, my friends," said the Professor, beaming through his
spectacles, "I hope very soon to be married."

"Married!" cried a student, bolder than the others. "Is Madame dead,
then?"

"Madame who?"

"Why, Madame von Baumgarten, of course."

"Ha, ha!" laughed the Professor; "I can see, then, that you know all
about my former difficulties. No, she is not dead, but I have reason to
believe that she will not oppose my marriage."

"That is very accommodating of her," remarked one of the company.

"In fact," said the Professor, "I hope that she will now be induced to
aid me in getting a wife. She and I never took to each other very much;
but now I hope all that may be ended, and when I marry she will come and
stay with me."

"What a happy family!" exclaimed some wag.

"Yes, indeed; and I hope you will come to my wedding, all of you. I
won't mention names, but here is to my little bride!" and the Professor
waved his glass in the air.

"Here's to his little bride!" roared the roysterers, with shouts of
laughter. "Here's her health. Sie soll leben--Hoch!" And so the fun
waxed still more fast and furious, while each young fellow followed the
Professor's example, and drank a toast to the girl of his heart.

While all this festivity had been going on at the Grüner Mann, a very
different scene had been enacted elsewhere. Young Fritz von Hartmann,
with a solemn face and a reserved manner, had, after the experiment,
consulted and adjusted some mathematical instruments; after which, with
a few peremptory words to the janitor, he had walked out into the street
and wended his way slowly in the direction of the house of the
Professor. As he walked he saw Von Althaus, the professor of anatomy, in
front of him, and quickening his pace he overtook him.

"I say, Von Althaus," he exclaimed, tapping him on the sleeve, "you were
asking me for some information the other day concerning the middle coat
of the cerebral arteries. Now I find----"

"Donnerwetter!" shouted Von Althaus, who was a peppery old fellow. "What
the deuce do you mean by your impertinence! I'll have you up before the
Academical Senate for this, sir"; with which threat he turned on his
heel and hurried away. Von Hartmann was much surprised at this
reception. "It's on account of this failure of my experiment," he said
to himself, and continued moodily on his way.

Fresh surprises were in store for him, however. He was hurrying along
when he was overtaken by two students. These youths, instead of raising
their caps or showing any other sign of respect, gave a wild whoop of
delight the instant that they saw him, and rushing at him, seized him by
each arm and commenced dragging him along with them.

"Gott in Himmel!" roared Von Hartmann. "What is the meaning of this
unparalleled insult? Where are you taking me?"

"To crack a bottle of wine with us," said the two students. "Come along!
That is an invitation which you have never refused."

"I never heard of such insolence in my life!" cried Von Hartmann. "Let
go my arms! I shall certainly have you rusticated for this. Let me go, I
say!" and he kicked furiously at his captors.

"Oh, if you choose to turn ill-tempered, you may go where you like," the
students said, releasing him. "We can do very well without you."

"I know you. I'll pay you out," said Von Hartmann furiously, and
continued in the direction which he imagined to be his own home, much
incensed at the two episodes which had occurred to him on the way.

Now, Madame von Baumgarten, who was looking out of the window and
wondering why her husband was late for dinner, was considerably
astonished to see the young student come stalking down the road. As
already remarked, she had a great antipathy to him, and if ever he
ventured into the house it was on sufferance, and under the protection
of the Professor. Still more astonished was she, therefore, when she
beheld him undo the wicket-gate and stride up the garden path with the
air of one who is master of the situation. She could hardly believe her
eyes, and hastened to the door with all her maternal instincts up in
arms. From the upper windows the fair Elise had also observed this
daring move upon the part of her lover, and her heart beat quick with
mingled pride and consternation.

"Good day, sir," Madame von Baumgarten remarked to the intruder, as she
stood in gloomy majesty in the open doorway.

"A very fine day indeed, Martha," returned the other. "Now, don't stand
there like a statue of Juno, but bustle about and get the dinner ready,
for I am well-nigh starved."

"Martha! Dinner!" ejaculated the lady, falling back in astonishment.

"Yes, dinner, Martha, dinner!" howled Von Hartmann, who was becoming
irritable. "Is there anything wonderful in that request when a man has
been out all day? I'll wait in the dining-room. Anything will do.
Schinken, and sausage, and prunes--any little thing that happens to be
about. There you are, standing staring again. Woman, will you or will
you not stir your legs?"

This last address, delivered with a perfect shriek of rage, had the
effect of sending good Madame von Baumgarten flying along the passage
and through the kitchen, where she locked herself up in the scullery and
went into violent hysterics. In the meantime Von Hartmann strode into
the room and threw himself down upon the sofa in the worst of tempers.

"Elise!" he shouted. "Confound the girl! Elise!"

Thus roughly summoned, the young lady came timidly downstairs and into
the presence of her lover. "Dearest!" she cried, throwing her arms round
him, "I know this is all done for my sake. It is a _ruse_ in order to
see me."

Von Hartmann's indignation at this fresh attack upon him was so great
that he became speechless for a minute from rage, and could only glare
and shake his fists, while he struggled in her embrace. When he at last
regained his utterance, he indulged in such a bellow of passion that the
young lady dropped back, petrified with fear, into an arm-chair.

"Never have I passed such a day in my life," Von Hartmann cried,
stamping upon the floor. "My experiment has failed. Von Althaus has
insulted me. Two students have dragged me along the public road. My wife
nearly faints when I ask her for dinner, and my daughter flies at me and
hugs me like a grizzly bear."

"You are ill, dear," the young lady cried. "Your mind is wandering. You
have not even kissed me once."

"No, and I don't intend to either," Von Hartmann said with decision.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Why don't you go and fetch my
slippers, and help your mother to dish the dinner?"

"And is it for this," Elise cried, burying her face in her
handkerchief--"is it for this that I have loved you passionately for
upwards of ten months? Is it for this that I have braved my mother's
wrath? Oh, you have broken my heart; I am sure you have!" and she sobbed
hysterically.

"I can't stand much more of this," roared Von Hartmann furiously. "What
the deuce does the girl mean? What did I do ten months ago which
inspired you with such a particular affection for me? If you are really
so very fond, you would do better to run away down and find the Schinken
and some bread, instead of talking all this nonsense."

"Oh, my darling!" cried the unhappy maiden, throwing herself into the
arms of what she imagined to be her lover, "you do but joke in order to
frighten your little Elise."

Now it chanced that at the moment of this unexpected embrace Von
Hartmann was still leaning back against the end of the sofa, which, like
much German furniture, was in a somewhat rickety condition. It also
chanced that beneath this end of the sofa there stood a tank full of
water in which the physiologist was conducting certain experiments upon
the ova of fish, and which he kept in his drawing-room in order to
ensure an equable temperature. The additional weight of the maiden,
combined with the impetus with which she hurled herself upon him, caused
the precarious piece of furniture to give way, and the body of the
unfortunate student was hurled backwards into the tank, in which his
head and shoulders were firmly wedged, while his lower extremities
flapped helplessly about in the air. This was the last straw.
Extricating himself with some difficulty from his unpleasant position,
Von Hartmann gave an inarticulate yell of fury, and dashing out of the
room, in spite of the entreaties of Elise, he seized his hat and rushed
off into the town, all dripping and dishevelled, with the intention of
seeking in some inn the food and comfort which he could not find at
home.

As the spirit of Von Baumgarten encased in the body of Von Hartmann
strode down the winding pathway which led down to the little town,
brooding angrily over his many wrongs, he became aware that an elderly
man was approaching him who appeared to be in an advanced state of
intoxication. Von Hartmann waited by the side of the road and watched
this individual, who came stumbling along, reeling from one side of the
road to the other, and singing a student song in a very husky and
drunken voice. At first his interest was merely excited by the fact of
seeing a man of so venerable an appearance in such a disgraceful
condition, but as he approached nearer, he became convinced that he knew
the other well, though he could not recall when or where he had met him.
This impression became so strong with him, that when the stranger came
abreast of him he stepped in front of him and took a good look at his
features.

"Well, sonny," said the drunken man, surveying Von Hartmann and swaying
about in front of him, "where the Henker have I seen you before? I know
you as well as I know myself. Who the deuce are you?"

"I am Professor von Baumgarten," said the student. "May I ask who you
are? I am strangely familiar with your features."

"You should never tell lies, young man," said the other. "You're
certainly not the Professor, for he is an ugly snuffy old chap, and you
are a big broad-shouldered young fellow. As to myself, I am Fritz von
Hartmann at your service."

"That you certainly are not," exclaimed the body of Von Hartmann. "You
might very well be his father. But hullo, sir, are you aware that you
are wearing my studs and my watch-chain?"

"Donnerwetter!" hiccoughed the other. "If those are not the trousers for
which my tailor is about to sue me, may I never taste beer again."

Now as Von Hartmann, overwhelmed by the many strange things which had
occurred to him that day, passed his hand over his forehead and cast his
eyes downwards, he chanced to catch the reflection of his own face in a
pool which the rain had left upon the road. To his utter astonishment he
perceived that his face was that of a youth, that his dress was that of
a fashionable young student, and that in every way he was the antithesis
of the grave and scholarly figure in which his mind was wont to dwell.
In an instant his active brain ran over the series of events which had
occurred and sprang to the conclusion. He fairly reeled under the blow.

"Himmel!" he cried, "I see it all. Our souls are in the wrong bodies. I
am you and you are I. My theory is proved--but at what an expense! Is
the most scholarly mind in Europe to go about with this frivolous
exterior? Oh the labours of a lifetime are ruined!" and he smote his
breast in his despair.

"I say," remarked the real Von Hartmann from the body of the Professor,
"I quite see the force of your remarks, but don't go knocking my body
about like that. You received it in an excellent condition, but I
perceive that you have wet it and bruised it, and spilled snuff over my
ruffled shirt-front."

"It matters little," the other said moodily. "Such as we are so must we
stay. My theory is triumphantly proved, but the cost is terrible."

"If I thought so," said the spirit of the student, "it would be hard
indeed. What could I do with these stiff old limbs, and how could I woo
Elise and persuade her that I was not her father? No, thank Heaven, in
spite of the beer which has upset me more than ever it could upset my
real self, I can see a way out of it."

"How?" gasped the Professor.

"Why, by repeating the experiment. Liberate our souls once more, and the
chances are that they will find their way back into their respective
bodies."

No drowning man could clutch more eagerly at a straw than did Von
Baumgarten's spirit at this suggestion. In feverish haste he dragged his
own frame to the side of the road and threw it into a mesmeric trance;
he then extracted the crystal ball from the pocket, and managed to bring
himself into the same condition.

Some students and peasants who chanced to pass during the next hour were
much astonished to see the worthy Professor of Physiology and his
favourite student both sitting upon a very muddy bank and both
completely insensible. Before the hour was up quite a crowd had
assembled, and they were discussing the advisability of sending for an
ambulance to convey the pair to hospital, when the learned savant
opened his eyes and gazed vacantly around him. For an instant he seemed
to forget how he had come there, but next moment he astonished his
audience by waving his skinny arms above his head and crying out in a
voice of rapture, "Gott sei gedanket! I am myself again. I feel I am!"
Nor was the amazement lessened when the student, springing to his feet,
burst into the same cry, and the two performed a sort of _pas de joie_
in the middle of the road.

For some time after that people had some suspicion of the sanity of both
the actors in this strange episode. When the Professor published his
experiences in the _Medicalschrift_ as he had promised, he was met by an
intimation, even from his colleagues, that he would do well to have his
mind cared for, and that another such publication would certainly
consign him to a madhouse. The student also found by experience that it
was wisest to be silent about the matter.

When the worthy lecturer returned home that night he did not receive the
cordial welcome which he might have looked for after his strange
adventures. On the contrary, he was roundly upbraided by both his female
relatives for smelling of drink and tobacco, and also for being absent
while a young scapegrace invaded the house and insulted its occupants.
It was long before the domestic atmosphere of the lecturer's house
resumed its normal quiet, and longer still before the genial face of Von
Hartmann was seen beneath its roof. Perseverance, however, conquers
every obstacle, and the student eventually succeeded in pacifying the
enraged ladies and in establishing himself upon the old footing. He has
now no longer any cause to fear the enmity of Madame, for he is
Hauptmann von Hartmann of the Emperor's own Uhlans, and his loving wife
Elise has already presented him with two little Uhlans as a visible sign
and token of her affection.




V

CYPRIAN OVERBECK WELLS

A LITERARY MOSAIC


From my boyhood I have had an intense and overwhelming conviction that
my real vocation lay in the direction of literature. I have, however,
had a most unaccountable difficulty in getting any responsible person to
share my views. It is true that private friends have sometimes, after
listening to my effusions, gone the length of remarking, "Really, Smith,
that's not half bad!" or, "You take my advice, old boy, and send that to
some magazine!" but I have never on these occasions had the moral
courage to inform my adviser that the article in question had been sent
to well-nigh every publisher in London, and had come back again with a
rapidity and precision which spoke well for the efficiency of our postal
arrangements.

Had my manuscripts been paper boomerangs they could not have returned
with greater accuracy to their unhappy despatcher. Oh, the vileness and
utter degradation of the moment when the stale little cylinder of
closely written pages, which seemed so fresh and full of promise a few
days ago, is handed in by a remorseless postman! And what moral
depravity shines through the editor's ridiculous plea of "want of
space!" But the subject is a painful one, and a digression from the
plain statement of facts which I originally contemplated.

From the age of seventeen to that of three-and-twenty I was a literary
volcano in a constant state of eruption. Poems and tales, articles and
reviews, nothing came amiss to my pen. From the great sea-serpent to
the nebular hypothesis, I was ready to write on anything or everything,
and I can safely say that I seldom handled a subject without throwing
new lights upon it. Poetry and romance, however, had always the greatest
attractions for me. How I have wept over the pathos of my heroines, and
laughed at the comicalities of my buffoons! Alas! I could find no one to
join me in my appreciation, and solitary admiration for one's self,
however genuine, becomes satiating after a time. My father remonstrated
with me too on the score of expense and loss of time, so that I was
finally compelled to relinquish my dreams of literary independence and
to become a clerk in a wholesale mercantile firm connected with the West
African trade.

Even when condemned to the prosaic duties which fell to my lot in the
office, I continued faithful to my first love. I have introduced pieces
of word-painting into the most commonplace business letters which have,
I am told, considerably astonished the recipients. My refined sarcasm
has made defaulting creditors writhe and wince. Occasionally, like the
great Silas Wegg, I would drop into poetry, and so raise the whole tone
of the correspondence. Thus what could be more elegant than my rendering
of the firm's instructions to the captain of one of their vessels. It
ran in this way:--

  "From England, Captain, you must steer a
  Course directly to Madeira,
  Land the casks of salted beef,
  Then away to Teneriffe.
  Pray be careful, cool, and wary
  With the merchants of Canary.
  When you leave them make the most
  Of the trade winds to the coast.
  Down it you shall sail as far
  As the land of Calabar,
  And from there you'll onward go
  To Bonny and Fernando Po"----

and so on for four pages. The captain, instead of treasuring up this
little gem, called at the office next day, and demanded with quite
unnecessary warmth what the thing meant, and I was compelled to
translate it all back into prose. On this, as on other similar
occasions, my employer took me severely to task--for he was, you see, a
man entirely devoid of all pretensions to literary taste!

All this, however, is a mere preamble, and leads up to the fact that
after ten years or so of drudgery I inherited a legacy which, though
small, was sufficient to satisfy my simple wants. Finding myself
independent, I rented a quiet house removed from the uproar and bustle
of London, and there I settled down with the intention of producing some
great work which should single me out from the family of the Smiths, and
render my name immortal. To this end I laid in several quires of
foolscap, a box of quill pens, and a sixpenny bottle of ink, and having
given my housekeeper injunctions to deny me to all visitors, I proceeded
to look round for a suitable subject.

I was looking round for some weeks. At the end of that time I found that
I had by constant nibbling devoured a large number of the quills, and
had spread the ink out to such advantage, what with blots, spills, and
abortive commencements, that there appeared to be some everywhere
except in the bottle. As to the story itself, however, the facility of
my youth had deserted me completely, and my mind remained a complete
blank; nor could I, do what I would, excite my sterile imagination to
conjure up a single incident or character.

In this strait I determined to devote my leisure to running rapidly
through the works of the leading English novelists, from Daniel Defoe to
the present day, in the hope of stimulating my latent ideas and of
getting a good grasp of the general tendency of literature. For some
time past I had avoided opening any work of fiction because one of the
greatest faults of my youth had been that I invariably and unconsciously
mimicked the style of the last author whom I had happened to read. Now,
however, I made up my mind to seek safety in a multitude, and by
consulting _all_ the English classics to avoid the danger of imitating
any one too closely. I had just accomplished the task of reading through
the majority of the standard novels at the time when my narrative
commences.

It was, then, about twenty minutes to ten on the night of the fourth of
June, eighteen hundred and eighty-six, that, after disposing of a pint
of beer and a Welsh rarebit for my supper, I seated myself in my
arm-chair, cocked my feet upon a stool, and lit my pipe, as was my
custom. Both my pulse and my temperature were, as far as I know, normal
at the time. I would give the state of the barometer, but that unlucky
instrument had experienced an unprecedented fall of forty-two
inches--from a nail to the ground--and was not in a reliable condition.
We live in a scientific age, and I flatter myself that I move with the
times.

Whilst in that comfortable lethargic condition which accompanies both
digestion and poisoning by nicotine, I suddenly became aware of the
extraordinary fact that my little drawing-room had elongated into a
great _salon_, and that my humble table had increased in proportion.
Round this colossal mahogany were seated a great number of people who
were talking earnestly together, and the surface in front of them was
strewn with books and pamphlets. I could not help observing that these
persons were dressed in a most extraordinary mixture of costumes, for
those at the end nearest to me wore peruke wigs, swords, and all the
fashions of two centuries back; those about the centre had tight
knee-breeches, high cravats, and heavy bunches of seals; while among
those at the far side the majority were dressed in the most modern
style, and among them I saw, to my surprise, several eminent men of
letters whom I had the honour of knowing. There were two or three women
in the company. I should have risen to my feet to greet these unexpected
guests, but all power of motion appeared to have deserted me, and I
could only lie still and listen to their conversation, which I soon
perceived to be all about myself.

"Egad!" exclaimed a rough, weather-beaten man, who was smoking a long
church-warden pipe at my end of the table, "my heart softens for him.
Why, gossips, we've been in the same straits ourselves. Gadzooks, never
did mother feel more concern for her eldest born than I when Rory Random
went out to make his own way in the world."

"Right, Tobias, right!" cried another man, seated at my very elbow. "By
my troth, I lost more flesh over poor Robin on his island, than had I
the sweating sickness twice told. The tale was well-nigh done when in
swaggers my Lord of Rochester--a merry gallant, and one whose word in
matters literary might make or mar. 'How now, Defoe,' quoth he, 'hast a
tale on hand?' 'Even so, your lordship,' I returned. 'A right merry one,
I trust,' quoth he. 'Discourse unto me concerning thy heroine, a comely
lass, Dan, or I mistake.' 'Nay,' I replied, 'there is no heroine in the
matter.' 'Split not your phrases,' quoth he; 'thou weighest every word
like a scald attorney. Speak to me of thy principal female character, be
she heroine or no.' 'My lord,' I answered, 'there is no female
character.' 'Then out upon thyself and thy book too!' he cried. 'Thou
hadst best burn it!'--and so out in great dudgeon, whilst I fell to
mourning over my poor romance, which was thus, as it were, sentenced to
death before its birth. Yet there are a thousand now who have heard of
Robin and his man Friday, to one who has heard of my Lord of Rochester."

"Very true, Defoe," said a genial-looking man in a red waistcoat, who
was sitting at the modern end of the table. "But all this won't help our
good friend Smith in making a start at his story, which, I believe, was
the reason why we assembled."

"The Dickens it is!" stammered a little man beside him, and everybody
laughed, especially the genial man, who cried out, "Charley Lamb,
Charley Lamb, you'll never alter. You would make a pun if you were
hanged for it."

"That would be a case of haltering," returned the other, on which
everybody laughed again.

By this time I had begun to dimly realise in my confused brain the
enormous honour which had been done me. The greatest masters of fiction
in every age of English letters had apparently made a rendezvous beneath
my roof, in order to assist me in my difficulties. There were many faces
at the table whom I was unable to identify; but when I looked hard at
others I often found them to be very familiar to me, whether from
paintings or from mere description. Thus between the first two speakers,
who had betrayed themselves as Defoe and Smollett, there sat a dark,
saturnine, corpulent old man, with harsh prominent features, who I was
sure could be none other than the famous author of Gulliver. There were
several others of whom I was not so sure, sitting at the other side of
the table, but I conjecture that both Fielding and Richardson were among
them, and I could swear to the lantern-jaws and cadaverous visage of
Lawrence Sterne. Higher up I could see among the crowd the high forehead
of Sir Walter Scott, the masculine features of George Eliot, and the
flattened nose of Thackeray; while amongst the living I recognised James
Payn, Walter Besant, the lady known as "Ouida," Robert Louis Stevenson,
and several of lesser note. Never before, probably, had such an
assemblage of choice spirits gathered under one roof.

"Well," said Sir Walter Scott, speaking with a very pronounced accent,
"ye ken the auld proverb, sirs, 'Ower mony cooks,' or as the Border
minstrel sang--

  'Black Johnstone wi' his troopers ten
    Might mak' the heart turn cauld,
  But Johnstone when he's a' alane
    Is waur ten thoosand fauld.'

The Johnstones were one of the Redesdale families, second cousins of the
Armstrongs, and connected by marriage to----"

"Perhaps, Sir Walter," interrupted Thackeray, "you would take the
responsibility off our hands by yourself dictating the commencement of a
story to this young literary aspirant."

"Na, na!" cried Sir Walter; "I'll do my share, but there's Chairlie over
there as full o' wut as a Radical's full o' treason. He's the laddie to
give a cheery opening to it."

Dickens was shaking his head, and apparently about to refuse the honour,
when a voice from among the moderns--I could not see who it was for the
crowd--said:

"Suppose we begin at the end of the table and work round, any one
contributing a little as the fancy seizes him?"

"Agreed! agreed!" cried the whole company; and every eye was turned on
Defoe, who seemed very uneasy, and filled his pipe from a great
tobacco-box in front of him.

"Nay, gossips," he said, "there are others more worthy----" But he was
interrupted by loud cries of "No! no!" from the whole table; and
Smollett shouted out, "Stand to it, Dan--stand to it! You and I and the
Dean here will make three short tacks just to fetch her out of harbour,
and then she may drift where she pleases." Thus encouraged, Defoe
cleared his throat, and began in this way, talking between the puffs of
his pipe:--

"My father was a well-to-do yeoman of Cheshire, named Cyprian Overbeck,
but, marrying about the year 1617, he assumed the name of his wife's
family, which was Wells; and thus I, their eldest son, was named Cyprian
Overbeck Wells. The farm was a very fertile one, and contained some of
the best grazing land in those parts, so that my father was enabled to
lay by money to the extent of a thousand crowns, which he laid out in an
adventure to the Indies with such surprising success that in less than
three years it had increased fourfold. Thus encouraged, he bought a part
share of the trader, and, fitting her out once more with such
commodities as were most in demand (viz. old muskets, hangers and axes,
besides glasses, needles, and the like), he placed me on board as
supercargo to look after his interests, and despatched us upon our
voyage.

"We had a fair wind as far as Cape de Verde, and there, getting into the
north-west trade-winds, made good progress down the African coast.
Beyond sighting a Barbary rover once, whereat our mariners were in sad
distress, counting themselves already as little better than slaves, we
had good luck until we had come within a hundred leagues of the Cape of
Good Hope, when the wind veered round to the southward and blew
exceeding hard, while the sea rose to such a height that the end of the
mainyard dipped into the water, and I heard the master say that though
he had been at sea for five-and-thirty years he had never seen the like
of it, and that he had little expectation of riding through it. On this
I fell to wringing my hands and bewailing myself, until the mast going
by the board with a crash, I thought that the ship had struck, and
swooned with terror, falling into the scuppers and lying like one dead,
which was the saving of me, as will appear in the sequel. For the
mariners, giving up all hope of saving the ship, and being in momentary
expectation that she would founder, pushed off in the long-boat, whereby
I fear that they met the fate which they hoped to avoid, since I have
never from that day heard anything of them. For my own part, on
recovering from the swoon into which I had fallen, I found that, by the
mercy of Providence, the sea had gone down, and that I was alone in the
vessel. At which last discovery I was so terror-struck that I could but
stand wringing my hands and bewailing my sad fate, until at last taking
heart, I fell to comparing my lot with that of my unhappy camerados, on
which I became more cheerful, and descending to the cabin, made a meal
off such dainties as were in the captain's locker."

Having got so far, Defoe remarked that he thought he had given them a
fair start, and handed over the story to Dean Swift, who, after
premising that he feared he would find himself as much at sea as Master
Cyprian Overbeck Wells, continued in this way:--

"For two days I drifted about in great distress, fearing that there
should be a return of the gale, and keeping an eager look-out for my
late companions. Upon the third day, towards evening, I observed to my
extreme surprise that the ship was under the influence of a very
powerful current, which ran to the north-east with such violence that
she was carried, now bows on, now stern on, and occasionally drifting
sideways like a crab, at a rate which I cannot compute at less than
twelve or fifteen knots an hour. For several weeks I was borne away in
this manner, until one morning, to my inexpressible joy, I sighted an
island upon the starboard quarter. The current would, however, have
carried me past it had I not made shift, though single-handed, to set
the flying-jib so as to turn her bows, and then clapping on the
sprit-sail, studding-sail, and fore-sail, I clewed up the halliards upon
the port side, and put the wheel down hard a-starboard, the wind being
at the time north-east-half-east."

At the description of this nautical manoeuvre I observed that Smollett
grinned, and a gentleman who was sitting higher up the table in the
uniform of the Royal Navy, and who I guessed to be Captain Marryat,
became very uneasy and fidgeted in his seat.

"By this means I got clear of the current and was able to steer within a
quarter of a mile of the beach, which indeed I might have approached
still nearer by making another tack, but being an excellent swimmer, I
deemed it best to leave the vessel, which was almost waterlogged, and to
make the best of my way to the shore.

"I had had my doubts hitherto as to whether this new-found country was
inhabited or no, but as I approached nearer to it, being on the summit
of a great wave, I perceived a number of figures on the beach, engaged
apparently in watching me and my vessel. My joy, however, was
considerably lessened when on reaching the land I found that the figures
consisted of a vast concourse of animals of various sorts who were
standing about in groups, and who hurried down to the water's edge to
meet me. I had scarce put my foot upon the sand before I was surrounded
by an eager crowd of deer, dogs, wild boars, buffaloes, and other
creatures, none of whom showed the least fear either of me or of each
other, but, on the contrary, were animated by a common feeling of
curiosity, as well as, it would appear, by some degree of disgust."

"A second edition," whispered Lawrence Sterne to his neighbour;
"Gulliver served up cold."

"Did you speak, sir?" asked the Dean very sternly, having evidently
overheard the remark.

"My words were not addressed to you, sir," answered Sterne, looking
rather frightened.

"They were none the less insolent," roared the Dean. "Your reverence
would fain make a Sentimental Journey of the narrative, I doubt not, and
find pathos in a dead donkey--though faith, no man can blame thee for
mourning over thy own kith and kin."

"Better that than to wallow in all the filth of Yahooland," returned
Sterne warmly, and a quarrel would certainly have ensued but for the
interposition of the remainder of the company. As it was, the Dean
refused indignantly to have any further hand in the story, and Sterne
also stood out of it, remarking with a sneer that he was loth to fit a
good blade on to a poor handle. Under these circumstances some further
unpleasantness might have occurred had not Smollett rapidly taken up the
narrative, continuing it in the third person instead of the first:--

"Our hero, being considerably alarmed at this strange reception, lost
little time in plunging into the sea again and regaining his vessel,
being convinced that the worst which might befall him from the elements
would be as nothing compared to the dangers of this mysterious island.
It was as well that he took this course, for before nightfall his ship
was overhauled and he himself picked up by a British man-of-war, the
_Lightning_ (74), then returning from the West Indies, where it had
formed part of the fleet under the command of Admiral Benbow. Young
Wells, being a likely lad enough, well-spoken and high-spirited, was at
once entered on the books as officer's servant, in which capacity he
both gained great popularity on account of the freedom of his manners,
and found an opportunity for indulging in those practical pleasantries
for which he had all his life been famous.

"Among the quartermasters of the _Lightning_ there was one named
Jedediah Anchorstock, whose appearance was so remarkable that it quickly
attracted the attention of our hero. He was a man of about fifty, dark
with exposure to the weather, and so tall that as he came along the
'tween decks he had to bend himself nearly double. The most striking
peculiarity of this individual was, however, that in his boyhood some
evil-minded person had tattooed eyes all over his countenance with such
marvellous skill that it was difficult at a short distance to pick out
his real ones among so many counterfeits. On this strange personage
Master Cyprian determined to exercise his talents for mischief, the more
so as he learned that he was extremely superstitious, and also that he
had left behind him in Portsmouth a strong-minded spouse of whom he
stood in mortal terror. With this object he secured one of the sheep
which were kept on board for the officers' table, and pouring a can of
rumbo down its throat, reduced it to a state of utter intoxication. He
then conveyed it to Anchorstock's berth, and with the assistance of some
other imps, as mischievous as himself, dressed it up in a high nightcap
and gown, and covered it over with the bedclothes.

"When the quartermaster came down from his watch our hero met him at the
door of his berth with an agitated face. 'Mr. Anchorstock,' said he,
'can it be that your wife is on board?' 'Wife!' roared the astonished
sailor. 'Ye white-faced swab, what d'ye mean?' 'If she's not here in the
ship it must be her ghost,' said Cyprian, shaking his head gloomily. 'In
the ship! How in thunder could she get into the ship? Why, master, I
believe as how you're weak in the upper works, d'ye see? to as much as
think o' such a thing. My Poll is moored head and starn, behind the
point at Portsmouth, more'n two thousand mile away.' 'Upon my word,'
said our hero, very earnestly, 'I saw a female look out of your cabin
not five minutes ago.' 'Ay, ay, Mr. Anchorstock,' joined in several of
the conspirators. 'We all saw her--a spanking-looking craft with a
dead-light mounted on one side.' 'Sure enough,' said Anchorstock,
staggered by this accumulation of evidence, 'my Polly's starboard eye
was doused for ever by long Sue Williams of the Hard. But if so be as
she be there I must see her, be she ghost or quick'; with which the
honest sailor, in much perturbation and trembling in every limb, began
to shuffle forward into the cabin, holding the light well in front of
him. It chanced, however, that the unhappy sheep, which was quietly
engaged in sleeping off the effects of its unusual potations, was
awakened by the noise of his approach, and finding herself in such an
unusual position, sprang out of bed and rushed furiously for the door,
bleating wildly, and rolling about like a brig in a tornado, partly from
intoxication and partly from the night-dress which impeded her
movements. As Anchorstock saw this extraordinary apparition bearing down
upon him, he uttered a yell and fell flat upon his face, convinced that
he had to do with a supernatural visitor, the more so as the
confederates heightened the effect by a chorus of most ghastly groans
and cries. The joke had nearly gone beyond what was originally intended,
for the quartermaster lay as one dead, and it was only with the greatest
difficulty that he could be brought to his senses. To the end of the
voyage he stoutly asserted that he had seen the distant Mrs.
Anchorstock, remarking with many oaths that though he was too woundily
scared to take much note of the features, there was no mistaking the
strong smell of rum which was characteristic of his better half.

"It chanced shortly after this to be the king's birthday, an event which
was signalised aboard the _Lightning_ by the death of the commander
under singular circumstances. This officer, who was a real fairweather
Jack, hardly knowing the ship's keel from her ensign, had obtained his
position through parliamentary interest, and used it with such tyranny
and cruelty that he was universally execrated. So unpopular was he that
when a plot was entered into by the whole crew to punish his misdeeds
with death, he had not a single friend among six hundred souls to warn
him of his danger. It was the custom on board the king's ships that upon
his birthday the entire ship's company should be drawn up upon deck, and
that at a signal they should discharge their muskets into the air in
honour of his Majesty. On this occasion word had been secretly passed
round for every man to slip a slug into his firelock, instead of the
blank cartridge provided. On the boatswain blowing his whistle the men
mustered upon deck and formed line, whilst the captain, standing well in
front of them, delivered a few words to them. 'When I give the word,' he
concluded, 'you shall discharge your pieces, and by thunder, if any man
is a second before or a second after his fellows I shall trice him up to
the weather rigging!' With these words he roared 'Fire!' on which every
man levelled his musket straight at his head and pulled the trigger. So
accurate was the aim and so short the distance, that more than five
hundred bullets struck him simultaneously, blowing away his head and a
large portion of his body. There were so many concerned in this matter,
and it was so hopeless to trace it to any individual, that the officers
were unable to punish any one for the affair--the more readily as the
captain's haughty ways and heartless conduct had made him quite as
hateful to them as to the men whom he commanded.

"By his pleasantries and the natural charm of his manners our hero so
far won the good wishes of the ship's company that they parted with
infinite regret upon their arrival in England. Filial duty, however,
urged him to return home and report himself to his father, with which
object he posted from Portsmouth to London, intending to proceed thence
to Shropshire. As it chanced, however, one of the horses sprained his
off foreleg while passing through Chichester, and as no change could be
obtained, Cyprian found himself compelled to put up at the Crown and
Bull for the night.

"Ods bodikins!" continued Smollett, laughing, "I never could pass a
comfortable hostel without stopping and so, with your permission, I'll
e'en stop here, and whoever wills may lead friend Cyprian to his further
adventures. Do you, Sir Walter, give us a touch of the Wizard of the
North."

With these words Smollett produced a pipe, and filling it at Defoe's
tobacco-pot, waited patiently for the continuation of the story.

"If I must, I must," remarked the illustrious Scotchman, taking a pinch
of snuff; "but I must beg leave to put Mr. Wells back a few hundred
years, for of all things I love the true mediæval smack. To proceed
then:--

"Our hero, being anxious to continue his journey, and learning that it
would be some time before any conveyance would be ready, determined to
push on alone mounted on his gallant grey steed. Travelling was
particularly dangerous at that time, for besides the usual perils which
beset wayfarers, the southern parts of England were in a lawless and
disturbed state which bordered on insurrection. The young man, however,
having loosened his sword in his sheath, so as to be ready for every
eventuality, galloped cheerily upon his way, guiding himself to the best
of his ability by the light of the rising moon.

"He had not gone far before he realised that the cautions which had been
impressed upon him by the landlord, and which he had been inclined to
look upon as self-interested advice, were only too well justified. At a
spot where the road was particularly rough, and ran across some marsh
land, he perceived a short distance from him a dark shadow, which his
practised eye detected at once as a body of crouching men. Reining up
his horse within a few yards of the ambuscade, he wrapped his cloak
round his bridle-arm and summoned the party to stand forth.

"'What ho, my masters!' he cried. 'Are beds so scarce, then, that ye
must hamper the high road of the king with your bodies? Now, by St.
Ursula of Alpuxerra, there be those who might think that birds who fly
o' nights were after higher game than the moorhen or the woodcock!'

"'Blades and targets, comrades!' exclaimed a tall powerful man,
springing into the centre of the road with several companions, and
standing in front of the frightened horse. 'Who is this swashbuckler who
summons his Majesty's lieges from their repose? A very soldado, o'
truth. Hark ye, sir, or my lord, or thy grace, or whatsoever title your
honour's honour may be pleased to approve, thou must curb thy tongue
play, or by the seven witches of Gambleside thou may find thyself in but
a sorry plight.'

"'I prythee, then, that thou wilt expound to me who and what ye are,'
quoth our hero, 'and whether your purpose be such as an honest man may
approve of. As to your threats, they turn from my mind as your caitiffly
weapons would shiver upon my hauberk from Milan.'

"'Nay, Allen,' interrupted one of the party, addressing him who seemed
to be their leader; 'this is a lad of mettle, and such a one as our
honest Jack longs for. But we lure not hawks with empty hands. Look ye,
sir, there is game afoot which it may need such bold hunters as thyself
to follow. Come with us and take a firkin of canary, and we will find
better work for that glaive of thine than getting its owner into broil
and bloodshed; for, by my troth! Milan or no Milan, if my curtel axe do
but ring against that morion of thine it will be an ill day for thy
father's son.'

"For a moment our hero hesitated as to whether it would best become his
knightly traditions to hurl himself against his enemies, or whether it
might not be better to obey their requests. Prudence, mingled with a
large share of curiosity, eventually carried the day, and dismounting
from his horse, he intimated that he was ready to follow his captors.

"'Spoken like a man!' cried he whom they addressed as Allen. 'Jack Cade
will be right glad of such a recruit. Blood and carrion! but thou hast
the thews of a young ox; and I swear, by the haft of my sword, that it
might have gone ill with some of us hadst thou not listened to reason!'

"'Nay, not so, good Allen--not so,' squeaked a very small man, who had
remained in the background while there was any prospect of a fray, but
who now came pushing to the front. 'Hadst thou been alone it might
indeed have been so, perchance, but an expert swordsman can disarm at
pleasure such a one as this young knight. Well I remember in the
Palatinate how I clove to the chine even such another--the Baron von
Slogstaff. He struck at me, look ye, so; but I, with buckler and blade,
did, as one might say, deflect it; and then, countering in carte, I
returned in tierce, and so--St. Agnes save us! who comes here?'

"The apparition which frightened the loquacious little man was
sufficiently strange to cause a qualm even in the bosom of the knight.
Through the darkness there loomed a figure which appeared to be of
gigantic size, and a hoarse voice, issuing apparently some distance
above the heads of the party, broke roughly on the silence of the night.

"'Now, out upon thee, Thomas Allen, and foul be thy fate if thou hast
abandoned thy post without good and sufficient cause. By St. Anselm of
the Holy Grove, thou hadst best have never been born than rouse my
spleen this night. Wherefore is it that you and your men are trailing
over the moor like a flock of geese when Michaelmas is near?'

"'Good captain,' said Allen, doffing his bonnet, an example followed by
others of the band, 'we have captured a goodly youth who was pricking it
along the London road. Methought that some word of thanks were meet
reward for such service, rather than taunt or threat.'

"'Nay, take it not to heart, bold Allen,' exclaimed their leader, who
was none other than the great Jack Cade himself. 'Thou knowest of old
that my temper is somewhat choleric, and my tongue not greased with that
unguent which oils the mouths of the lip-serving lords of the land. And
you,' he continued, turning suddenly upon our hero, 'are you ready to
join the great cause which will make England what it was when the
learned Alfred reigned in the land? Zounds, man, speak out, and pick not
your phrases.'

"'I am ready to do aught which may become a knight and a gentleman,'
said the soldier stoutly.

"'Taxes shall be swept away!' cried Cade excitedly--'the impost and the
anpost--the tithe and the hundred-tax. The poor man's salt-box and
flour-bin shall be as free as the nobleman's cellar. Ha! what sayest
thou?'

"'It is but just,' said our hero.

"'Ay, but they give us such justice as the falcon gives the leveret!'
roared the orator. 'Down with them, I say--down with every man of them!
Noble and judge, priest and king, down with them all!'

"'Nay,' said Sir Overbeck Wells, drawing himself up to his full height,
and laying his hand upon the hilt of his sword, 'there I cannot follow
thee, but must rather defy thee as traitor and faineant, seeing that
thou art no true man, but one who would usurp the rights of our master
the king, whom may the Virgin protect!'

"At these bold words, and the defiance which they conveyed, the rebels
seemed for a moment utterly bewildered; but, encouraged by the hoarse
shout of their leader, they brandished their weapons and prepared to
fall upon the knight, who placed himself in a posture for defence and
awaited their attack.

"There now!" cried Sir Walter, rubbing his hands and chuckling, "I've
put the chiel in a pretty warm corner, and we'll see which of you
moderns can take him oot o't. Ne'er a word more will ye get frae me to
help him one way or the other."

"You try your hand, James," cried several voices, and the author in
question had got so far as to make an allusion to a solitary horseman
who was approaching, when he was interrupted by a tall gentleman a
little farther down with a slight stutter and a very nervous manner.

"Excuse me," he said, "but I fancy that I may be able to do something
here. Some of my humble productions have been said to excel Sir Walter
at his best, and I was undoubtedly stronger all round. I could picture
modern society as well as ancient; and as to my plays, why Shakespeare
never came near _The Lady of Lyons_ for popularity. There is this little
thing----" (Here he rummaged among a great pile of papers in front of
him.) "Ah! that's a report of mine, when I was in India. Here it is. No,
this is one of my speeches in the House, and this is my criticism on
Tennyson. Didn't I warm him up? I can't find what I wanted, but of
course you have read them all--_Rienzi_ and _Harold_, and _The Last of
the Barons_. Every schoolboy knows them by heart, as poor Macaulay would
have said. Allow me to give you a sample:--

"In spite of the gallant knight's valiant resistance the combat was too
unequal to be sustained. His sword was broken by a slash from a brown
bill, and he was borne to the ground. He expected immediate death, but
such did not seem to be the intention of the ruffians who had captured
him. He was placed upon the back of his own charger and borne, bound
hand and foot, over the trackless moor, in the fastnesses of which the
rebels secreted themselves.

"In the depths of these wilds there stood a stone building which had
once been a farmhouse, but having been for some reason abandoned had
fallen into ruin, and had now become the headquarters of Cade and his
men. A large cowhouse near the farm had been utilised as sleeping
quarters, and some rough attempts had been made to shield the principal
room of the main building from the weather by stopping up the gaping
apertures in the walls. In this apartment was spread out a rough meal
for the returning rebels, and our hero was thrown, still bound, into an
empty outhouse, there to await his fate."

Sir Walter had been listening with the greatest impatience to Bulwer
Lytton's narrative, but when it had reached this point he broke in
impatiently.

"We want a touch of your own style, man," he said. "The
animal-magnetico-electro-hysterical-biological-mysterious sort of story
is all your own, but at present you are just a poor copy of myself, and
nothing more."

There was a murmur of assent from the company, and Defoe remarked,
"Truly, Master Lytton, there is a plaguey resemblance in the style,
which may indeed be but a chance, and yet methinks it is sufficiently
marked to warrant such words as our friend hath used."

"Perhaps you will think that this is an imitation also," said Lytton
bitterly, and leaning back in his chair with a morose countenance, he
continued the narrative in this way:--

"Our unfortunate hero had hardly stretched himself upon the straw with
which his dungeon was littered, when a secret door opened in the wall
and a venerable old man swept majestically into the apartment. The
prisoner gazed upon him with astonishment not unmixed with awe, for on
his broad brow was printed the seal of much knowledge--such knowledge as
it is not granted to a son of man to know. He was clad in a long white
robe, crossed and chequered with mystic devices in the Arabic character,
while a high scarlet tiara marked with the square and circle enhanced
his venerable appearance. 'My son,' he said, turning his piercing and
yet dreamy gaze upon Sir Overbeck, 'all things lead to nothing, and
nothing is the foundation of all things. Cosmos is impenetrable. Why
then should we exist?'

"Astounded at this weighty query, and at the philosophic demeanour of
his visitor, our hero made shift to bid him welcome and to demand his
name and quality. As the old man answered him his voice rose and fell in
musical cadences, like the sighing of the east wind, while an ethereal
and aromatic vapour pervaded the apartment.

"'I am the eternal non-ego,' he answered. 'I am the concentrated
negative--the everlasting essence of nothing. You see in me that which
existed before the beginning of matter many years before the
commencement of time. I am the algebraic _x_ which represents the
infinite divisibility of a finite particle.'

"Sir Overbeck felt a shudder as though an ice-cold hand had been placed
upon his brow. 'What is your message?' he whispered, falling prostrate
before his mysterious visitor.

"'To tell you that the eternities beget chaos, and that the immensities
are at the mercy of the divine ananke. Infinitude crouches before a
personality. The mercurial essence is the prime mover in spirituality,
and the thinker is powerless before the pulsating inanity. The cosmical
procession is terminated only by the unknowable and unpronounceable'----

"May I ask, Mr. Smollett, what you find to laugh at?"

"Gadzooks, master," cried Smollett, who had been sniggering for some
time back. "It seems to me that there is little danger of any one
venturing to dispute that style with you."

"It's all your own," murmured Sir Walter.

"And very pretty, too," quoth Lawrence Sterne, with a malignant grin.
"Pray sir, what language do you call it?"

Lytton was so enraged at these remarks, and at the favour with which
they appeared to be received, that he endeavoured to stutter out some
reply, and then, losing control of himself completely, picked up all his
loose papers and strode out of the room, dropping pamphlets and speeches
at every step. This incident amused the company so much that they
laughed for several minutes without cessation. Gradually the sound of
their laughter sounded more and more harshly in my ears, the lights on
the table grew dim and the company more misty, until they and their
symposium vanished away altogether. I was sitting before the embers of
what had been a roaring fire, but was now little more than a heap of
grey ashes, and the merry laughter of the august company had changed to
the recriminations of my wife, who was shaking me violently by the
shoulder and exhorting me to choose some more seasonable spot for my
slumbers. So ended the wondrous adventures of Master Cyprian Overbeck
Wells, but I still live in the hopes that in some future dream the great
masters may themselves finish that which they have begun.




VI

PLAYING WITH FIRE


I cannot pretend to say what occurred on the 14th of April last at No.
17, Badderly Gardens. Put down in black and white, my surmise might seem
too crude, too grotesque, for serious consideration. And yet that
something did occur, and that it was of a nature which will leave its
mark upon every one of us for the rest of our lives, is as certain as
the unanimous testimony of five witnesses can make it. I will not enter
into any argument or speculation. I will only give a plain statement,
which will be submitted to John Moir, Harvey Deacon, and Mrs. Delamere,
and withheld from publication unless they are prepared to corroborate
every detail. I cannot obtain the sanction of Paul Le Duc, for he
appears to have left the country.

It was John Moir (the well-known senior partner of Moir, Moir, and
Sanderson) who had originally turned our attention to occult subjects.
He had, like many very hard and practical men of business, a mystic side
to his nature, which had led him to the examination, and eventually to
the acceptance, of those elusive phenomena which are grouped together
with much that is foolish, and much that is fraudulent, under the common
heading of spiritualism. His researches, which had begun with an open
mind, ended unhappily in dogma, and he became as positive and fanatical
as any other bigot. He represented in our little group the body of men
who have turned these singular phenomena into a new religion.

Mrs. Delamere, our medium, was his sister, the wife of Delamere, the
rising sculptor. Our experience had shown us that to work on these
subjects without a medium was as futile as for an astronomer to make
observations without a telescope. On the other hand, the introduction of
a paid medium was hateful to all of us. Was it not obvious that he or
she would feel bound to return some result for money received, and that
the temptation to fraud would be an overpowering one? No phenomena could
be relied upon which were produced at a guinea an hour. But,
fortunately, Moir had discovered that his sister was mediumistic--in
other words, that she was a battery of that animal magnetic force which
is the only form of energy which is subtle enough to be acted upon from
the spiritual plane as well as from our own material one. Of course,
when I say this, I do not mean to beg the question; but I am simply
indicating the theories upon which we were ourselves, rightly or
wrongly, explaining what we saw. The lady came, not altogether with the
approval of her husband, and though she never gave indications of any
very great psychic force, we were able, at least, to obtain those usual
phenomena of message-tilting which are at the same time so puerile and
so inexplicable. Every Sunday evening we met in Harvey Deacon's studio
at Badderly Gardens, the next house to the corner of Merton Park Road.

Harvey Deacon's imaginative work in art would prepare any one to find
that he was an ardent lover of everything which was _outré_ and
sensational. A certain picturesqueness in the study of the occult had
been the quality which had originally attracted him to it, but his
attention was speedily arrested by some of those phenomena to which I
have referred, and he was coming rapidly to the conclusion that what he
had looked upon as an amusing romance and an after-dinner entertainment
was really a very formidable reality. He is a man with a remarkably
clear and logical brain--a true descendant of his ancestor, the
well-known Scotch professor--and he represented in our small circle the
critical element, the man who has no prejudices, is prepared to follow
facts as far as he can see them, and refuses to theorise in advance of
his data. His caution annoyed Moir as much as the latter's robust faith
amused Deacon, but each in his own way was equally keen upon the matter.

And I? What am I to say that I represented? I was not the devotee. I was
not the scientific critic. Perhaps the best that I can claim for myself
is that I was the dilettante man about town, anxious to be in the swim
of every fresh movement, thankful for any new sensation which would take
me out of myself and open up fresh possibilities of existence. I am not
an enthusiast myself, but I like the company of those who are. Moir's
talk, which made me feel as if we had a private pass-key through the
door of death, filled me with a vague contentment. The soothing
atmosphere of the séance with the darkened lights was delightful to me.
In a word, the thing amused me, and so I was there.

It was, as I have said, upon the 14th of April last that the very
singular event which I am about to put upon record took place. I was the
first of the men to arrive at the studio, but Mrs. Delamere was already
there, having had afternoon tea with Mrs. Harvey Deacon. The two ladies
and Deacon himself were standing in front of an unfinished picture of
his upon the easel. I am not an expert in art, and I have never
professed to understand what Harvey Deacon meant by his pictures; but I
could see in this instance that it was all very clever and imaginative,
fairies and animals and allegorical figures of all sorts. The ladies
were loud in their praises, and indeed the colour effect was a
remarkable one.

"What do you think of it, Markham?" he asked.

"Well, it's above me," said I. "These beasts--what are they?"

"Mythical monsters, imaginary creatures, heraldic emblems--a sort of
weird, bizarre procession of them."

"With a white horse in front!"

"It's not a horse," said he, rather testily--which was surprising, for
he was a very good-humoured fellow as a rule, and hardly ever took
himself seriously.

"What is it, then?"

"Can't you see the horn in front? It's a unicorn. I told you they were
heraldic beasts. Can't you recognise one?"

"Very sorry, Deacon," said I, for he really seemed to be annoyed.

He laughed at his own irritation.

"Excuse me, Markham!" said he; "the fact is that I have had an awful job
over the beast. All day I have been painting him in and painting him
out, and trying to imagine what a real live, ramping unicorn would look
like. At last I got him, as I hoped; so when you failed to recognise it,
it took me on the raw."

"Why, of course it's a unicorn," said I, for he was evidently depressed
at my obtuseness. "I can see the horn quite plainly, but I never saw a
unicorn except beside the Royal Arms, and so I never thought of the
creature. And these others are griffins and cockatrices, and dragons of
sorts?"

"Yes, I had no difficulty with them. It was the unicorn which bothered
me. However, there's an end of it until to-morrow." He turned the
picture round upon the easel, and we all chatted about other subjects.

Moir was late that evening, and when he did arrive he brought with him,
rather to our surprise, a small, stout Frenchman, whom he introduced as
Monsieur Paul Le Duc. I say to our surprise, for we held a theory that
any intrusion into our spiritual circle deranged the conditions, and
introduced an element of suspicion. We knew that we could trust each
other, but all our results were vitiated by the presence of an outsider.
However, Moir soon reconciled us to the innovation. Monsieur Paul Le Duc
was a famous student of occultism, a seer, a medium, and a mystic. He
was travelling in England with a letter of introduction to Moir from the
President of the Parisian brothers of the Rosy Cross. What more natural
than that he should bring him to our little séance, or that we should
feel honoured by his presence?

He was, as I have said, a small, stout man, undistinguished in
appearance, with a broad, smooth, clean-shaven face, remarkable only
for a pair of large, brown, velvety eyes, staring vaguely out in front
of him. He was well dressed, with the manners of a gentleman, and his
curious little turns of English speech set the ladies smiling. Mrs.
Deacon had a prejudice against our researches and left the room, upon
which we lowered the lights, as was our custom, and drew up our chairs
to the square mahogany table which stood in the centre of the studio.
The light was subdued, but sufficient to allow us to see each other
quite plainly. I remember that I could even observe the curious, podgy
little square-topped hands which the Frenchman laid upon the table.

"What a fun!" said he. "It is many years since I have sat in this
fashion, and it is to me amusing. Madame is medium. Does madame make the
trance?"

"Well, hardly that," said Mrs. Delamere. "But I am always conscious of
extreme sleepiness."

"It is the first stage. Then you encourage it, and there comes the
trance. When the trance comes, then out jumps your little spirit and in
jumps another little spirit, and so you have direct talking or writing.
You leave your machine to be worked by another. _Hein?_ But what have
unicorns to do with it?"

Harvey Deacon started in his chair. The Frenchman was moving his head
slowly round and staring into the shadows which draped the walls.

"What a fun!" said he. "Always unicorns. Who has been thinking so hard
upon a subject so bizarre?"

"This is wonderful!" cried Deacon. "I have been trying to paint one all
day. But how could you know it?"

"You have been thinking of them in this room."

"Certainly."

"But thoughts are things, my friend. When you imagine a thing you make a
thing. You did not know it, _hein_? But I can see your unicorns because
it is not only with my eye that I can see."

"Do you mean to say that I create a thing which has never existed by
merely thinking of it?"

"But certainly. It is the fact which lies under all other facts. That is
why an evil thought is also a danger."

"They are, I suppose, upon the astral plane?" said Moir.

"Ah, well, these are but words, my friends. They are
there--somewhere--everywhere--I cannot tell myself. I see them. I could
touch them."

"You could not make _us_ see them."

"It is to materialise them. Hold! It is an experiment. But the power is
wanting. Let us see what power we have, and then arrange what we shall
do. May I place you as I wish?"

"You evidently know a great deal more about it than we do," said Harvey
Deacon; "I wish that you would take complete control."

"It may be that the conditions are not good. But we will try what we can
do. Madame will sit where she is, I next, and this gentleman beside me.
Meester Moir will sit next to madame, because it is well to have blacks
and blondes in turn. So! And now with your permission I will turn the
lights all out."

"What is the advantage of the dark?" I asked.

"Because the force with which we deal is a vibration of ether and so
also is light. We have the wires all for ourselves now--_hein_? You will
not be frightened in the darkness, madame? What a fun is such a séance!"

At first the darkness appeared to be absolutely pitchy, but in a few
minutes our eyes became so far accustomed to it that we could just make
out each other's presence--very dimly and vaguely, it is true. I could
see nothing else in the room--only the black loom of the motionless
figures. We were all taking the matter much more seriously than we had
ever done before.

"You will place your hands in front. It is hopeless that we touch, since
we are so few round so large a table. You will compose yourself, madame,
and if sleep should come to you you will not fight against it. And now
we sit in silence and we expect--_hein_?"

So we sat in silence and expected, staring out into the blackness in
front of us. A clock ticked in the passage. A dog barked intermittently
far away. Once or twice a cab rattled past in the street, and the gleam
of its lamps through the chink in the curtains was a cheerful break in
that gloomy vigil. I felt those physical symptoms with which previous
séances had made me familiar--the coldness of the feet, the tingling in
the hands, the glow of the palms, the feeling of a cold wind upon the
back. Strange little shooting pains came in my forearms, especially as
it seemed to me in my left one, which was nearest to our visitor--due no
doubt to disturbance of the vascular system, but worthy of some
attention all the same. At the same time I was conscious of a strained
feeling of expectancy which was almost painful. From the rigid, absolute
silence of my companions I gathered that their nerves were as tense as
my own.

And then suddenly a sound came out of the darkness--a low, sibilant
sound, the quick, thin breathing of a woman. Quicker and thinner yet it
came, as between clenched teeth, to end in a loud gasp with a dull
rustle of cloth.

"What's that? Is all right?" some one asked in the darkness.

"Yes, all is right," said the Frenchman. "It is madame. She is in her
trance. Now, gentlemen, if you will wait quiet you will see something, I
think, which will interest you much."

Still the ticking in the hall. Still the breathing, deeper and fuller
now, from the medium. Still the occasional flash, more welcome than
ever, of the passing lights of the hansoms. What a gap we were bridging,
the half-raised veil of the eternal on the one side and the cabs of
London on the other. The table was throbbing with a mighty pulse. It
swayed steadily, rhythmically, with an easy swooping, scooping motion
under our fingers. Sharp little raps and cracks came from its substance,
file-firing, volley-firing, the sounds of a fagot burning briskly on a
frosty night.

"There is much power," said the Frenchman. "See it on the table!"

I had thought it was some delusion of my own, but all could see it now.
There was a greenish-yellow phosphorescent light--or I should say a
luminous vapour rather than a light--which lay over the surface of the
table. It rolled and wreathed and undulated in dim glimmering folds,
turning and swirling like clouds of smoke. I could see the white,
square-ended hands of the French medium in this baleful light.

"What a fun!" he cried. "It is splendid!"

"Shall we call the alphabet?" asked Moir.

"But no--for we can do much better," said our visitor. "It is but a
clumsy thing to tilt the table for every letter of the alphabet, and
with such a medium as madame we should do better than that."

"Yes, you will do better," said a voice.

"Who was that? Who spoke? Was that you, Markham?"

"No, I did not speak."

"It was madame who spoke."

"But it was not her voice."

"Is that you, Mrs. Delamere?"

"It is not the medium, but it is the power which uses the organs of the
medium," said the strange, deep voice.

"Where is Mrs. Delamere? It will not hurt her, I trust."

"The medium is happy in another plane of existence. She has taken my
place, as I have taken hers."

"Who are you?"

"It cannot matter to you who I am. I am one who has lived as you are
living, and who has died as you will die."

We heard the creak and grate of a cab pulling up next door. There was an
argument about the fare, and the cabman grumbled hoarsely down the
street. The green-yellow cloud still swirled faintly over the table,
dull elsewhere, but glowing into a dim luminosity in the direction of
the medium. It seemed to be piling itself up in front of her. A sense of
fear and cold struck into my heart. It seemed to me that lightly and
flippantly we had approached the most real and august of sacraments,
that communion with the dead of which the fathers of the Church had
spoken.

"Don't you think we are going too far? Should we not break up this
séance?" I cried.

But the others were all earnest to see the end of it. They laughed at my
scruples.

"All the powers are made for use," said Harvey Deacon. "If we _can_ do
this, we _should_ do this. Every new departure of knowledge has been
called unlawful in its inception. It is right and proper that we should
inquire into the nature of death."

"It is right and proper," said the voice.

"There, what more could you ask?" cried Moir, who was much excited. "Let
us have a test. Will you give us a test that you are really there?"

"What test do you demand?"

"Well, now--I have some coins in my pocket. Will you tell me how many?"

"We come back in the hope of teaching and of elevating, and not to guess
childish riddles."

"Ha, ha, Meester Moir, you catch it that time," cried the Frenchman.
"But surely this is very good sense what the Control is saying."

"It is a religion, not a game," said the cold, hard voice.

"Exactly--the very view I take of it," cried Moir. "I am sure I am very
sorry if I have asked a foolish question. You will not tell me who you
are?"

"What does it matter?"

"Have you been a spirit long?"

"Yes."

"How long?"

"We cannot reckon time as you do. Our conditions are different."

"Are you happy?"

"Yes."

"You would not wish to come back to life?"

"No--certainly not."

"Are you busy?"

"We could not be happy if we were not busy."

"What do you do?"

"I have said that the conditions are entirely different."

"Can you give us no idea of your work?"

"We labour for our own improvement and for the advancement of others."

"Do you like coming here to-night?"

"I am glad to come if I can do any good by coming."

"Then to do good is your object?"

"It is the object of all life on every plane."

"You see, Markham, that should answer your scruples."

It did, for my doubts had passed and only interest remained.

"Have you pain in your life?" I asked.

"No; pain is a thing of the body."

"Have you mental pain?"

"Yes; one may always be sad or anxious."

"Do you meet the friends whom you have known on earth?"

"Some of them."

"Why only some of them?"

"Only those who are sympathetic."

"Do husbands meet wives?"

"Those who have truly loved."

"And the others?"

"They are nothing to each other."

"There must be a spiritual connection?"

"Of course."

"Is what we are doing right?"

"If done in the right spirit."

"What is the wrong spirit?"

"Curiosity and levity."

"May harm come of that?"

"Very serious harm."

"What sort of harm?"

"You may call up forces over which you have no control."

"Evil forces?"

"Undeveloped forces."

"You say they are dangerous. Dangerous to body or mind?"

"Sometimes to both."

There was a pause, and the blackness seemed to grow blacker still, while
the yellow-green fog swirled and smoked upon the table.

"Any questions you would like to ask, Moir?" said Harvey Deacon.

"Only this--do you pray in your world?"

"One should pray in every world."

"Why?"

"Because it is the acknowledgment of forces outside ourselves."

"What religion do you hold over there?"

"We differ exactly as you do."

"You have no certain knowledge?"

"We have only faith."

"These questions of religion," said the Frenchman, "they are of interest
to you serious English people, but they are not so much fun. It seems to
me that with this power here we might be able to have some great
experience--_hein_? Something of which we could talk."

"But nothing could be more interesting than this," said Moir.

"Well, if you think so, that is very well," the Frenchman answered,
peevishly. "For my part, it seems to me that I have heard all this
before, and that to-night I should weesh to try some experiment with all
this force which is given to us. But if you have other questions, then
ask them, and when you are finish we can try something more."

But the spell was broken. We asked and asked, but the medium sat silent
in her chair. Only her deep, regular breathing showed that she was
there. The mist still whirled upon the table.

"You have disturbed the harmony. She will not answer."

"But we have learned already all that she can tell--_hein_? For my part
I wish to see something I have never seen before."

"What then?"

"You will let me try?"

"What would you do?"

"I have said to you that thoughts are things. Now I wish to _prove_ it
to you, and to show you that which is only a thought. Yes, yes, I can do
it and you will see. Now I ask you only to sit still and say nothing,
and keep ever your hands quiet upon the table."

The room was blacker and more silent than ever. The same feeling of
apprehension which had lain heavily upon me at the beginning of the
séance was back at my heart once more. The roots of my hair were
tingling.

"It is working! It is working!" cried the Frenchman, and there was a
crack in his voice as he spoke which told me that he also was strung to
his tightest.

The luminous fog drifted slowly off the table, and wavered and flickered
across the room. There in the farther and darkest corner it gathered and
glowed, hardening down into a shining core--a strange, shifty, luminous,
and yet non-illuminating patch of radiance, bright itself, but throwing
no rays into the darkness. It had changed from a greenish-yellow to a
dusky sullen red. Then round this centre there coiled a dark, smoky
substance, thickening, hardening, growing denser and blacker. And then
the light went out, smothered in that which had grown round it.

"It has gone."

"Hush--there's something in the room."

We heard it in the corner where the light had been, something which
breathed deeply and fidgeted in the darkness.

"What is it? Le Duc, what have you done?"

"It is all right. No harm will come." The Frenchman's voice was treble
with agitation.

"Good heavens, Moir, there's a large animal in the room. Here it is,
close by my chair! Go away! Go away!"

It was Harvey Deacon's voice, and then came the sound of a blow upon
some hard object. And then ... And then ... how can I tell you what
happened then?

Some huge thing hurtled against us in the darkness, rearing, stamping,
smashing, springing, snorting. The table was splintered. We were
scattered in every direction. It clattered and scrambled amongst us,
rushing with horrible energy from one corner of the room to another. We
were all screaming with fear, grovelling upon our hands and knees to get
away from it. Something trod upon my left hand, and I felt the bones
splinter under the weight.

"A light! A light!" some one yelled.

"Moir, you have matches, matches!"

"No, I have none. Deacon, where are the matches? For God's sake, the
matches!"

"I can't find them. Here, you Frenchman, stop it!"

"It is beyond me. Oh, _mon Dieu_, I cannot stop it. The door! Where is
the door?"

My hand, by good luck, lit upon the handle as I groped about in the
darkness. The hard-breathing, snorting, rushing creature tore past me
and butted with a fearful crash against the oaken partition. The instant
that it had passed I turned the handle, and next moment we were all
outside, and the door shut behind us. From within came a horrible
crashing and rending and stamping.

"What is it? In Heaven's name, what is it?"

"A horse. I saw it when the door opened. But Mrs. Delamere----?"

"We must fetch her out. Come on, Markham; the longer we wait the less we
shall like it."

He flung open the door and we rushed in. She was there on the ground
amidst the splinters of her chair. We seized her and dragged her swiftly
out, and as we gained the door I looked over my shoulder into the
darkness. There were two strange eyes glowing at us, a rattle of hoofs,
and I had just time to slam the door when there came a crash upon it
which split it from top to bottom.

"It's coming through! It's coming!"

"Run, run for your lives!" cried the Frenchman.

Another crash, and something shot through the riven door. It was a long
white spike, gleaming in the lamplight. For a moment it shone before us,
and then with a snap it disappeared again.

"Quick! Quick! This way!" Harvey Deacon shouted. "Carry her in! Here!
Quick!"

We had taken refuge in the dining-room, and shut the heavy oak door. We
laid the senseless woman upon the sofa, and as we did so, Moir, the hard
man of business, drooped and fainted across the hearth-rug. Harvey
Deacon was as white as a corpse, jerking and twitching like an
epileptic. With a crash we heard the studio door fly to pieces, and the
snorting and stamping were in the passage, up and down, shaking the
house with their fury. The Frenchman had sunk his face on his hands, and
sobbed like a frightened child.

"What shall we do?" I shook him roughly by the shoulder. "Is a gun any
use?"

"No, no. The power will pass. Then it will end."

"You might have killed us all--you unspeakable fool--with your infernal
experiments."

"I did not know. How could I tell that it would be frightened? It is mad
with terror. It was his fault. He struck it."

Harvey Deacon sprang up. "Good heavens!" he cried.

A terrible scream sounded through the house.

"It's my wife! Here, I'm going out. If it's the Evil One himself I am
going out!"

He had thrown open the door and rushed out into the passage. At the end
of it, at the foot of the stairs, Mrs. Deacon was lying senseless,
struck down by the sight which she had seen. But there was nothing else.

With eyes of horror we looked about us, but all was perfectly quiet and
still. I approached the black square of the studio door, expecting with
every slow step that some atrocious shape would hurl itself out of it.
But nothing came, and all was silent inside the room. Peeping and
peering, our hearts in our mouths, we came to the very threshold, and
stared into the darkness. There was still no sound, but in one direction
there was also no darkness. A luminous, glowing cloud, with an
incandescent centre, hovered in the corner of the room. Slowly it dimmed
and faded, growing thinner and fainter, until at last the same dense,
velvety blackness filled the whole studio. And with the last flickering
gleam of that baleful light the Frenchman broke into a shout of joy.

"What a fun!" he cried. "No one is hurt, and only the door broken, and
the ladies frightened. But, my friends, we have done what has never been
done before."

"And as far as I can help," said Harvey Deacon, "it will certainly never
be done again."

And that was what befell on the 14th of April last at No. 17 Badderly
Gardens. I began by saying that it would seem too grotesque to dogmatise
as to what it was which actually did occur; but I give my impressions,
_our_ impressions (since they are corroborated by Harvey Deacon and John
Moir), for what they are worth. You may, if it pleases you, imagine
that we were the victims of an elaborate and extraordinary hoax. Or you
may think with us that we underwent a very real and a very terrible
experience. Or perhaps you may know more than we do of such occult
matters, and can inform us of some similar occurrence. In this latter
case a letter to William Markham, 146M, the Albany, would help to throw
a light upon that which is very dark to us.




VII

THE RING OF THOTH


Mr. John Vansittart Smith, F.R.S., of 147-A Gower Street, was a man
whose energy of purpose and clearness of thought might have placed him
in the very first rank of scientific observers. He was the victim,
however, of a universal ambition which prompted him to aim at
distinction in many subjects rather than pre-eminence in one. In his
early days he had shown an aptitude for zoology and for botany which
caused his friends to look upon him as a second Darwin, but when a
professorship was almost within his reach he had suddenly discontinued
his studies and turned his whole attention to chemistry. Here his
researches upon the spectra of the metals had won him his fellowship in
the Royal Society; but again he played the coquette with his subject,
and after a year's absence from the laboratory he joined the Oriental
Society, and delivered a paper on the Hieroglyphic and Demotic
inscriptions of El Kab, thus giving a crowning example both of the
versatility and of the inconstancy of his talents.

The most fickle of wooers, however, is apt to be caught at last, and so
it was with John Vansittart Smith. The more he burrowed his way into
Egyptology the more impressed he became by the vast field which it
opened to the inquirer, and by the extreme importance of a subject which
promised to throw a light upon the first germs of human civilisation
and the origin of the greater part of our arts and sciences. So struck
was Mr. Smith that he straightway married an Egyptological young lady
who had written upon the sixth dynasty, and having thus secured a sound
base of operations he set himself to collect materials for a work which
should unite the research of Lepsius and the ingenuity of Champollion.
The preparation of this _magnum opus_ entailed many hurried visits to
the magnificent Egyptian collections of the Louvre, upon the last of
which, no longer ago than the middle of last October, he became involved
in a most strange and noteworthy adventure.

The trains had been slow and the Channel had been rough, so that the
student arrived in Paris in a somewhat befogged and feverish condition.
On reaching the Hôtel de France, in the Rue Laffitte, he had thrown
himself upon a sofa for a couple of hours, but finding that he was
unable to sleep, he determined, in spite of his fatigue, to make his way
to the Louvre, settle the point which he had come to decide, and take
the evening train back to Dieppe. Having come to this conclusion, he
donned his greatcoat, for it was a raw rainy day, and made his way
across the Boulevard des Italiens and down the Avenue de l'Opéra. Once
in the Louvre he was on familiar ground, and he speedily made his way to
the collection of papyri which it was his intention to consult.

The warmest admirers of John Vansittart Smith could hardly claim for him
that he was a handsome man. His high-beaked nose and prominent chin had
something of the same acute and incisive character which distinguished
his intellect. He held his head in a birdlike fashion, and birdlike,
too, was the pecking motion with which, in conversation, he threw out
his objections and retorts. As he stood, with the high collar of his
greatcoat raised to his ears, he might have seen from the reflection in
the glass-case before him that his appearance was a singular one. Yet it
came upon him as a sudden jar when an English voice behind him exclaimed
in very audible tones, "What a queer-looking mortal!"

The student had a large amount of petty vanity in his composition which
manifested itself by an ostentatious and overdone disregard of all
personal considerations. He straightened his lips and looked rigidly at
the roll of papyrus, while his heart filled with bitterness against the
whole race of travelling Britons.

"Yes," said another voice, "he really is an extraordinary fellow."

"Do you know," said the first speaker, "one could almost believe that by
the continual contemplation of mummies the chap has become half a mummy
himself?"

"He has certainly an Egyptian cast of countenance," said the other.

John Vansittart Smith spun round upon his heel with the intention of
shaming his countrymen by a corrosive remark or two. To his surprise and
relief, the two young fellows who had been conversing had their
shoulders turned towards him, and were gazing at one of the Louvre
attendants who was polishing some brass-work at the other side of the
room.

"Carter will be waiting for us at the Palais Royal," said one tourist to
the other, glancing at his watch, and they clattered away, leaving the
student to his labours.

"I wonder what these chatterers call an Egyptian cast of countenance,"
thought John Vansittart Smith, and he moved his position slightly in
order to catch a glimpse of the man's face. He started as his eyes fell
upon it. It was indeed the very face with which his studies had made him
familiar. The regular statuesque features, broad brow, well-rounded
chin, and dusky complexion were the exact counterpart of the innumerable
statues, mummy-cases, and pictures which adorned the walls of the
apartment. The thing was beyond all coincidence. The man must be an
Egyptian. The national angularity of the shoulders and narrowness of the
hips were alone sufficient to identify him.

John Vansittart Smith shuffled towards the attendant with some intention
of addressing him. He was not light of touch in conversation, and found
it difficult to strike the happy mean between the brusqueness of the
superior and the geniality of the equal. As he came nearer, the man
presented his side face to him, but kept his gaze still bent upon his
work. Vansittart Smith, fixing his eyes upon the fellow's skin, was
conscious of a sudden impression that there was something inhuman and
preternatural about its appearance. Over the temple and cheek-bone it
was as glazed and as shiny as varnished parchment. There was no
suggestion of pores. One could not fancy a drop of moisture upon that
arid surface. From brow to chin, however, it was cross-hatched by a
million delicate wrinkles, which shot and interlaced as though Nature in
some Maori mood had tried how wild and intricate a pattern she could
devise.

"Où est la collection de Memphis?" asked the student with the awkward
air of a man who is devising a question merely for the purpose of
opening a conversation.

"C'est là," replied the man brusquely, nodding his head at the other
side of the room.

"Vous êtes un Egyptien, n'est-ce pas?" asked the Englishman.

The attendant looked up and turned his strange dark eyes upon his
questioner. They were vitreous, with a misty dry shininess, such as
Smith had never seen in a human head before. As he gazed into them he
saw some strong emotion gather in their depths, which rose and deepened
until it broke into a look of something akin both to horror and to
hatred.

"Non, monsieur; je suis français." The man turned abruptly and bent low
over his polishing. The student gazed at him for a moment in
astonishment, and then turning to a chair in a retired corner behind one
of the doors he proceeded to make notes of his researches among the
papyri. His thoughts, however, refused to return into their natural
groove. They would run upon the enigmatical attendant with the
sphinx-like face and the parchment skin.

"Where have I seen such eyes?" said Vansittart Smith to himself. "There
is something saurian about them, something reptilian. There's the
membrana nictitans of the snakes," he mused, bethinking himself of his
zoological studies. "It gives a shiny effect. But there was something
more here. There was a sense of power, of wisdom--so I read them--and of
weariness, utter weariness, and ineffable despair. It may be all
imagination, but I never had so strong an impression. By Jove, I must
have another look at them!" He rose and paced round the Egyptian rooms,
but the man who had excited his curiosity had disappeared.

The student sat down again in his quiet corner, and continued to work at
his notes. He had gained the information which he required from the
papyri, and it only remained to write it down while it was still fresh
in his memory. For a time his pencil travelled rapidly over the paper,
but soon the lines became less level, the words more blurred, and
finally the pencil tinkled down upon the floor, and the head of the
student dropped heavily forward upon his chest. Tired out by his
journey, he slept so soundly in his lonely post behind the door that
neither the clanking civil guard, nor the footsteps of sightseers, nor
even the loud hoarse bell which gives the signal for closing, were
sufficient to arouse him.

Twilight deepened into darkness, the bustle from the Rue de Rivoli waxed
and then waned, distant Notre Dame clanged out the hour of midnight, and
still the dark and lonely figure sat silently in the shadow. It was not
until close upon one in the morning that, with a sudden gasp and an
intaking of the breath, Vansittart Smith returned to consciousness. For
a moment it flashed upon him that he had dropped asleep in his
study-chair at home. The moon was shining fitfully through the
unshuttered window, however, and as his eye ran along the lines of
mummies and the endless array of polished cases, he remembered clearly
where he was and how he came there. The student was not a nervous man.
He possessed that love of a novel situation which is peculiar to his
race. Stretching out his cramped limbs, he looked at his watch, and
burst into a chuckle as he observed the hour. The episode would make an
admirable anecdote to be introduced into his next paper as a relief to
the graver and heavier speculations. He was a little cold, but wide
awake and much refreshed. It was no wonder that the guardians had
overlooked him, for the door threw its heavy black shadow right across
him.

The complete silence was impressive. Neither outside nor inside was
there a creak or a murmur. He was alone with the dead men of a dead
civilisation. What though the outer city reeked of the garish nineteenth
century! In all this chamber there was scarce an article, from the
shrivelled ear of wheat to the pigment-box of the painter, which had not
held its own against four thousand years. Here was the flotsam and
jetsam washed up by the great ocean of time from that far-off empire.
From stately Thebes, from lordly Luxor, from the great temples of
Heliopolis, from a hundred rifled tombs, these relics had been brought.
The student glanced round at the long silent figures who flickered
vaguely up through the gloom, at the busy toilers who were now so
restful, and he fell into a reverent and thoughtful mood. An unwonted
sense of his own youth and insignificance came over him. Leaning back in
his chair, he gazed dreamily down the long vista of rooms, all silvery
with the moonshine, which extend through the whole wing of the
widespread building. His eyes fell upon the yellow glare of a distant
lamp.

John Vansittart Smith sat up on his chair with his nerves all on edge.
The light was advancing slowly towards him, pausing from time to time,
and then coming jerkily onwards. The bearer moved noiselessly. In the
utter silence there was no suspicion of the pat of a footfall. An idea
of robbers entered the Englishman's head. He snuggled up further into
the corner. The light was two rooms off. Now it was in the next chamber,
and still there was no sound. With something approaching to a thrill of
fear the student observed a face, floating in the air as it were, behind
the flare of the lamp. The figure was wrapped in shadow, but the light
fell full upon the strange eager face. There was no mistaking the
metallic glistening eyes and the cadaverous skin. It was the attendant
with whom he had conversed.

Vansittart Smith's first impulse was to come forward and address him. A
few words of explanation would set the matter clear, and lead doubtless
to his being conducted to some side door from which he might make his
way to his hotel. As the man entered the chamber, however, there was
something so stealthy in his movements, and so furtive in his
expression, that the Englishman altered his intention. This was clearly
no ordinary official walking the rounds. The fellow wore felt-soled
slippers, stepped with a rising chest, and glanced quickly from left to
right, while his hurried gasping breathing thrilled the flame of his
lamp. Vansittart Smith crouched silently back into the corner and
watched him keenly, convinced that his errand was one of secret and
probably sinister import.

There was no hesitation in the other's movements. He stepped lightly and
swiftly across to one of the great cases, and, drawing a key from his
pocket, he unlocked it. From the upper shelf he pulled down a mummy,
which he bore away with him, and laid it with much care and solicitude
upon the ground. By it he placed his lamp, and then squatting down
beside it in Eastern fashion he began with long quivering fingers to
undo the cerecloths and bandages which girt it round. As the crackling
rolls of linen peeled off one after the other, a strong aromatic odour
filled the chamber, and fragments of scented wood and of spices pattered
down upon the marble floor.

It was clear to John Vansittart Smith that this mummy had never been
unswathed before. The operation interested him keenly. He thrilled all
over with curiosity, and his birdlike head protruded further and further
from behind the door. When, however, the last roll had been removed from
the four-thousand-year-old head, it was all that he could do to stifle
an outcry of amazement. First, a cascade of long, black, glossy tresses
poured over the workman's hands and arms. A second turn of the bandage
revealed a low, white forehead, with a pair of delicately arched
eyebrows. A third uncovered a pair of bright, deeply fringed eyes, and a
straight, well-cut nose, while a fourth and last showed a sweet, full,
sensitive mouth, and a beautifully curved chin. The whole face was one
of extraordinary loveliness, save for the one blemish that in the centre
of the forehead there was a single irregular, coffee-coloured splotch.
It was a triumph of the embalmer's art. Vansittart Smith's eyes grew
larger and larger as he gazed upon it, and he chirruped in his throat
with satisfaction.

Its effect upon the Egyptologist was as nothing, however, compared with
that which it produced upon the strange attendant. He threw his hands up
into the air, burst into a harsh clatter of words, and then, hurling
himself down upon the ground beside the mummy, he threw his arms round
her, and kissed her repeatedly upon the lips and brow. "Ma petite!" he
groaned in French. "Ma pauvre petite!" His voice broke with emotion, and
his innumerable wrinkles quivered and writhed, but the student observed
in the lamplight that his shining eyes were still dry and tearless as
two beads of steel. For some minutes he lay, with a twitching face,
crooning and moaning over the beautiful head. Then he broke into a
sudden smile, said some words in an unknown tongue, and sprang to his
feet with the vigorous air of one who has braced himself for an effort.

In the centre of the room there was a large circular case which
contained, as the student had frequently remarked, a magnificent
collection of early Egyptian rings and precious stones. To this the
attendant strode, and, unlocking it, threw it open. On the edge at the
side he placed his lamp, and beside it a small earthenware jar which he
had drawn from his pocket. He then took a handful of rings from the
case, and with the most serious and anxious face he proceeded to smear
each in turn with some liquid substance from the earthen pot, holding
them to the light as he did so. He was clearly disappointed with the
first lot, for he threw them petulantly back into the case and drew out
some more. One of these, a massive ring with a large crystal set in it,
he seized and eagerly tested with the contents of the jar. Instantly he
uttered a cry of joy, and threw out his arms in a wild gesture which
upset the pot and sent the liquid streaming across the floor to the very
feet of the Englishman. The attendant drew a red handkerchief from his
bosom, and, mopping up the mess, he followed it into the corner, where
in a moment he found himself face to face with his observer.

"Excuse me," said John Vansittart Smith, with all imaginable politeness;
"I have been unfortunate enough to fall asleep behind this door."

"And you have been watching me?" the other asked in English, with a most
venomous look on his corpse-like face.

The student was a man of veracity. "I confess," said he, "that I have
noticed your movements, and that they have aroused my curiosity and
interest in the highest degree."

The man drew a long flamboyant-bladed knife from his bosom. "You have
had a very narrow escape," he said; "had I seen you ten minutes ago, I
should have driven this through your heart. As it is, if you touch me or
interfere with me in any way you are a dead man."

"I have no wish to interfere with you," the student answered. "My
presence here is entirely accidental. All I ask is that you will have
the extreme kindness to show me out through some side door." He spoke
with great suavity, for the man was still pressing the tip of his dagger
against the palm of his left hand, as though to assure himself of its
sharpness, while his face preserved its malignant expression.

"If I thought----" said he. "But no, perhaps it is as well. What is your
name?"

The Englishman gave it.

"Vansittart Smith," the other repeated. "Are you the same Vansittart
Smith who gave a paper in London upon El Kab? I saw a report of it. Your
knowledge of the subject is contemptible."

"Sir!" cried the Egyptologist.

"Yet it is superior to that of many who make even greater pretensions.
The whole keystone of our old life in Egypt was not the inscriptions or
monuments of which you make so much, but was our hermetic philosophy and
mystic knowledge of which you say little or nothing."

"Our old life!" repeated the scholar, wide-eyed; and then suddenly,
"Good God, look at the mummy's face!"

The strange man turned and flashed his light upon the dead woman,
uttering a long doleful cry as he did so. The action of the air had
already undone all the art of the embalmer. The skin had fallen away,
the eyes had sunk inwards, the discoloured lips had writhed away from
the yellow teeth, and the brown mark upon the forehead alone showed that
it was indeed the same face which had shown such youth and beauty a few
short minutes before.

The man flapped his hands together in grief and horror. Then mastering
himself by a strong effort he turned his hard eyes once more upon the
Englishman.

"It does not matter," he said, in a shaking voice. "It does not really
matter. I came here to-night with the fixed determination to do
something. It is now done. All else is as nothing. I have found my
quest. The old curse is broken. I can rejoin her. What matter about her
inanimate shell so long as her spirit is awaiting me at the other side
of the veil!"

"These are wild words," said Vansittart Smith. He was becoming more and
more convinced that he had to do with a madman.

"Time presses, and I must go," continued the other. "The moment is at
hand for which I have waited this weary time. But I must show you out
first. Come with me."

Taking up the lamp, he turned from the disordered chamber, and led the
student swiftly through the long series of the Egyptian, Assyrian, and
Persian apartments. At the end of the latter he pushed open a small door
let into the wall and descended a winding stone stair. The Englishman
felt the cold fresh air of the night upon his brow. There was a door
opposite him which appeared to communicate with the street. To the right
of this another door stood ajar, throwing a spurt of yellow light across
the passage. "Come in here!" said the attendant shortly.

Vansittart Smith hesitated. He had hoped that he had come to the end of
his adventure. Yet his curiosity was strong within him. He could not
leave the matter unsolved, so he followed his strange companion into the
lighted chamber.

It was a small room, such as is devoted to a _concierge_. A wood fire
sparkled in the grate. At one side stood a truckle bed, and at the other
a coarse wooden chair, with a round table in the centre, which bore the
remains of a meal. As the visitor's eye glanced round he could not but
remark with an ever-recurring thrill that all the small details of the
room were of the most quaint design and antique workmanship. The
candlesticks, the vases upon the chimneypiece, the fire-irons, the
ornaments upon the walls, were all such as he had been wont to associate
with the remote past. The gnarled heavy-eyed man sat himself down upon
the edge of the bed, and motioned his guest into the chair.

"There may be design in this," he said, still speaking excellent
English. "It may be decreed that I should leave some account behind as a
warning to all rash mortals who would set their wits up against workings
of Nature. I leave it with you. Make such use as you will of it. I speak
to you now with my feet upon the threshold of the other world.

"I am, as you surmised, an Egyptian--not one of the down-trodden race of
slaves who now inhabit the Delta of the Nile, but a survivor of that
fiercer and harder people who tamed the Hebrew, drove the Ethiopian back
into the southern deserts, and built those mighty works which have been
the envy and the wonder of all after generations. It was in the reign of
Tuthmosis, sixteen hundred years before the birth of Christ, that I
first saw the light. You shrink away from me. Wait, and you will see
that I am more to be pitied than to be feared.

"My name was Sosra. My father had been the chief priest of Osiris in the
great temple of Abaris, which stood in those days upon the Bubastic
branch of the Nile. I was brought up in the temple and was trained in
all those mystic arts which are spoken of in your own Bible. I was an
apt pupil. Before I was sixteen I had learned all which the wisest
priest could teach me. From that time on I studied Nature's secrets for
myself, and shared my knowledge with no man.

"Of all the questions which attracted me there were none over which I
laboured so long as over those which concern themselves with the nature
of life. I probed deeply into the vital principle. The aim of medicine
had been to drive away disease when it appeared. It seemed to me that a
method might be devised which should so fortify the body as to prevent
weakness or death from ever taking hold of it. It is useless that I
should recount my researches. You would scarce comprehend them if I did.
They were carried out partly upon animals, partly upon slaves, and
partly on myself. Suffice it that their result was to furnish me with a
substance which, when injected into the blood, would endow the body with
strength to resist the effects of time, of violence, or of disease. It
would not indeed confer immortality, but its potency would endure for
many thousands of years. I used it upon a cat, and afterwards drugged
the creature with the most deadly poisons. That cat is alive in Lower
Egypt at the present moment. There was nothing of mystery or magic in
the matter. It was simply a chemical discovery, which may well be made
again.

"Love of life runs high in the young. It seemed to me that I had broken
away from all human care now that I had abolished pain and driven death
to such a distance. With a light heart I poured the accursed stuff into
my veins. Then I looked round for some one whom I could benefit. There
was a young priest of Thoth, Parmes by name, who had won my goodwill by
his earnest nature and his devotion to his studies. To him I whispered
my secret, and at his request I injected him with my elixir. I should
now, I reflected, never be without a companion of the same age as
myself.

"After this grand discovery I relaxed my studies to some extent, but
Parmes continued his with redoubled energy. Every day I could see him
working with his flasks and his distiller in the Temple of Thoth, but he
said little to me as to the result of his labours. For my own part, I
used to walk through the city and look around me with exultation as I
reflected that all this was destined to pass away, and that only I
should remain. The people would bow to me as they passed me, for the
fame of my knowledge had gone abroad.

"There was war at this time, and the Great King had sent down his
soldiers to the eastern boundary to drive away the Hyksos. A Governor,
too, was sent to Abaris, that he might hold it for the King. I had heard
much of the beauty of the daughter of this Governor, but one day as I
walked out with Parmes we met her, borne upon the shoulders of her
slaves. I was struck with love as with lightning. My heart went out from
me. I could have thrown myself beneath the feet of her bearers. This was
my woman. Life without her was impossible. I swore by the head of Horus
that she should be mine. I swore it to the Priest of Thoth. He turned
away from me with a brow which was as black as midnight.

"There is no need to tell you of our wooing. She came to love me even as
I loved her. I learned that Parmes had seen her before I did, and had
shown her that he too loved her, but I could smile at his passion, for I
knew that her heart was mine. The white plague had come upon the city
and many were stricken, but I laid my hands upon the sick and nursed
them without fear or scathe. She marvelled at my daring. Then I told her
my secret, and begged her that she would let me use my art upon her.

"'Your flower shall then be unwithered, Atma,' I said. 'Other things may
pass away, but you and I, and our great love for each other, shall
outlive the tomb of King Chefru.'

"But she was full of timid, maidenly objections. 'Was it right?' she
asked, 'was it not a thwarting of the will of the gods? If the great
Osiris had wished that our years should be so long, would he not himself
have brought it about?'

"With fond and loving words I overcame her doubts, and yet she
hesitated. It was a great question, she said. She would think it over
for this one night. In the morning I should know of her resolution.
Surely one night was not too much to ask. She wished to pray to Isis for
help in her decision.

"With a sinking heart and a sad foreboding of evil I left her with her
tirewomen. In the morning, when the early sacrifice was over, I hurried
to her house. A frightened slave met me upon the steps. Her mistress was
ill, she said, very ill. In a frenzy I broke my way through the
attendants, and rushed through hall and corridor to my Atma's chamber.
She lay upon her couch, her head high upon the pillow, with a pallid
face and a glazed eye. On her forehead there blazed a single angry
purple patch. I knew that hell-mark of old. It was the scar of the white
plague, the sign-manual of death.

"Why should I speak of that terrible time? For months I was mad,
fevered, delirious, and yet I could not die. Never did an Arab thirst
after the sweet wells as I longed after death. Could poison or steel
have shortened the thread of my existence, I should soon have rejoined
my love in the land with the narrow portal. I tried, but it was of no
avail. The accursed influence was too strong upon me. One night as I lay
upon my couch, weak and weary, Parmes, the priest of Thoth, came to my
chamber. He stood in the circle of the lamplight, and he looked down
upon me with eyes which were bright with a mad joy.

"'Why did you let the maiden die?' he asked; 'why did you not strengthen
her as you strengthened me?'

"'I was too late,' I answered. 'But I had forgot. You also loved her.
You are my fellow in misfortune. Is it not terrible to think of the
centuries which must pass ere we look upon her again? Fools, fools, that
we were to take death to be our enemy!'

"'You may say that,' he cried with a wild laugh; 'the words come well
from your lips. For me they have no meaning.'

"'What mean you?' I cried, raising myself upon my elbow. 'Surely,
friend, this grief has turned your brain.' His face was aflame with joy,
and he writhed and shook like one who hath a devil.

"'Do you know whither I go?' he asked.

"'Nay,' I answered, 'I cannot tell.'

"'I go to her,' said he. 'She lies embalmed in the further tomb by the
double palm-tree beyond the city wall.'

"'Why do you go there?' I asked.

"'To die!' he shrieked, 'to die! I am not bound by earthen fetters.'

"'But the elixir is in your blood,' I cried.

"'I can defy it,' said he; 'I have found a stronger principle which will
destroy it. It is working in my veins at this moment, and in an hour I
shall be a dead man. I shall join her, and you shall remain behind.'

"As I looked upon him I could see that he spoke words of truth. The
light in his eye told me that he was indeed beyond the power of the
elixir.

"'You will teach me!' I cried.

"'Never!' he answered.

"'I implore you, by the wisdom of Thoth, by the majesty of Anubis!'

"'It is useless,? he said coldly.

"'Then I will find it out,' I cried.

"'You cannot,' he answered; 'it came to me by chance. There is one
ingredient which you can never get. Save that which is in the ring of
Thoth, none will ever more be made.'

"'In the ring of Thoth!' I repeated, 'where then is the ring of Thoth?'

"'That also you shall never know,' he answered. 'You won her love. Who
has won in the end? I leave you to your sordid earth life. My chains are
broken. I must go!' He turned upon his heel and fled from the chamber.
In the morning came the news that the Priest of Thoth was dead.

"My days after that were spent in study. I must find this subtle poison
which was strong enough to undo the elixir. From early dawn to midnight
I bent over the test-tube and the furnace. Above all, I collected the
papyri and the chemical flasks of the Priest of Thoth. Alas! they taught
me little. Here and there some hint or stray expression would raise hope
in my bosom, but no good ever came of it. Still, month after month, I
struggled on. When my heart grew faint I would make my way to the tomb
by the palm-trees. There, standing by the dead casket from which the
jewel had been rifled, I would feel her sweet presence, and would
whisper to her that I would rejoin her if mortal wit could solve the
riddle.

"Parmes had said that his discovery was connected with the ring of
Thoth. I had some remembrance of the trinket. It was a large and
weighty circlet, made, not of gold, but of a rarer and heavier metal
brought from the mines of Mount Harbal. Platinum, you call it. The ring
had, I remembered, a hollow crystal set in it, in which some few drops
of liquid might be stored. Now, the secret of Parmes could not have to
do with the metal alone, for there were many rings of that metal in the
Temple. Was it not more likely that he had stored his precious poison
within the cavity of the crystal? I had scarce come to this conclusion
before, in hunting through his papers, I came upon one which told me
that it was indeed so, and that there was still some of the liquid
unused.

"But how to find the ring? It was not upon him when he was stripped for
the embalmer. Of that I made sure. Neither was it among his private
effects. In vain I searched every room that he had entered, every box
and vase and chattel that he had owned. I sifted the very sand of the
desert in the place where he had been wont to walk; but, do what I
would, I could come upon no traces of the ring of Thoth. Yet it may be
that my labours would have overcome all obstacles had it not been for a
new and unlooked-for misfortune.

"A great war had been waged against the Hyksos, and the Captains of the
Great King had been cut off in the desert, with all their bowmen and
horsemen. The shepherd tribes were upon us like the locusts in a dry
year. From the wilderness of Shur to the great bitter lake there was
blood by day and fire by night. Abaris was the bulwark of Egypt, but we
could not keep the savages back. The city fell. The Governor and the
soldiers were put to the sword, and I, with many more, was led away into
captivity.

"For years and years I tended cattle in the great plains by the
Euphrates. My master died, and his son grew old, but I was still as far
from death as ever. At last I escaped upon a swift camel, and made my
way back to Egypt. The Hyksos had settled in the land which they had
conquered, and their own King ruled over the country. Abaris had been
torn down, the city had been burned, and of the great Temple there was
nothing left save an unsightly mound. Everywhere the tombs had been
rifled and the monuments destroyed. Of my Atma's grave no sign was left.
It was buried in the sands of the desert, and the palm-trees which
marked the spot had long disappeared. The papers of Parmes and the
remains of the Temple of Thoth were either destroyed or scattered far
and wide over the deserts of Syria. All search after them was vain.

"From that time I gave up all hope of ever finding the ring or
discovering the subtle drug. I set myself to live as patiently as might
be until the effect of the elixir should wear away. How can you
understand how terrible a thing time is, you who have experience only of
the narrow course which lies between the cradle and the grave! I know it
to my cost, I who have floated down the whole stream of history. I was
old when Ilium fell. I was very old when Herodotus came to Memphis. I
was bowed down with years when the new gospel came upon earth. Yet you
see me much as other men are, with the cursed elixir still sweetening my
blood, and guarding me against that which I would court. Now at last, at
last I have come to the end of it!

"I have travelled in all lands and I have dwelt with all nations. Every
tongue is the same to me. I learned them all to help pass the weary
time. I need not tell you how slowly they drifted by, the long dawn of
modern civilisation, the dreary middle years, the dark times of
barbarism. They are all behind me now. I have never looked with the eyes
of love upon another woman. Atma knows that I have been constant to her.

"It was my custom to read all that the scholars had to say upon Ancient
Egypt. I have been in many positions, sometimes affluent, sometimes
poor, but I have always found enough to enable me to buy the journals
which deal with such matters. Some nine months ago I was in San
Francisco, when I read an account of some discoveries made in the
neighbourhood of Abaris. My heart leapt into my mouth as I read it. It
said that the excavator had busied himself in exploring some tombs
recently unearthed. In one there had been found an unopened mummy with
an inscription upon the outer case setting forth that it contained the
body of the daughter of the Governor of the city in the days of
Tuthmosis. It added that on removing the outer case there had been
exposed a large platinum ring set with a crystal, which had been laid
upon the breast of the embalmed woman. This, then, was where Parmes had
hid the ring of Thoth. He might well say that it was safe, for no
Egyptian would ever stain his soul by moving even the outer case of a
buried friend.

"That very night I set off from San Francisco, and in a few weeks I
found myself once more at Abaris, if a few sand-heaps and crumbling
walls may retain the name of the great city. I hurried to the Frenchmen
who were digging there and asked them for the ring. They replied that
both the ring and the mummy had been sent to the Boulak Museum at Cairo.
To Boulak I went, but only to be told that Mariette Bey had claimed them
and had shipped them to the Louvre. I followed them, and there at last,
in the Egyptian chamber, I came, after close upon four thousand years,
upon the remains of my Atma, and upon the ring for which I had sought so
long.

"But how was I to lay hands upon them? How was I to have them for my
very own? It chanced that the office of attendant was vacant. I went to
the Director. I convinced him that I knew much about Egypt. In my
eagerness I said too much. He remarked that a Professor's chair would
suit me better than a seat in the conciergerie. I knew more, he said,
than he did. It was only by blundering, and letting him think that he
had over-estimated my knowledge, that I prevailed upon him to let me
move the few effects which I have retained into this chamber. It is my
first and my last night here.

"Such is my story, Mr. Vansittart Smith. I need not say more to a man of
your perception. By a strange chance you have this night looked upon the
face of the woman whom I loved in those far-off days. There were many
rings with crystals in the case, and I had to test for the platinum to
be sure of the one which I wanted. A glance at the crystal has shown me
that the liquid is indeed within it, and that I shall at last be able to
shake off that accursed health which has been worse to me than the
foulest disease. I have nothing more to say to you. I have unburdened
myself. You may tell my story or you may withhold it at your pleasure.
The choice rests with you. I owe you some amends, for you have had a
narrow escape of your life this night. I was a desperate man, and not to
be baulked in my purpose. Had I seen you before the thing was done, I
might have put it beyond your power to oppose me or to raise an alarm.
This is the door. It leads into the Rue de Rivoli. Good-night."

The Englishman glanced back. For a moment the lean figure of Sosra the
Egyptian stood framed in the narrow doorway. The next the door had
slammed, and the heavy rasping of a bolt broke on the silent night.

It was on the second day after his return to London that Mr. John
Vansittart Smith saw the following concise narrative in the Paris
correspondence of the _Times_:--

"_Curious Occurrence in the Louvre._--Yesterday morning a strange
discovery was made in the principal Eastern chamber. The _ouvriers_ who
are employed to clean out the rooms in the morning found one of the
attendants lying dead upon the floor with his arms round one of the
mummies. So close was his embrace that it was only with the utmost
difficulty that they were separated. One of the cases containing
valuable rings had been opened and rifled. The authorities are of
opinion that the man was bearing away the mummy with some idea of
selling it to a private collector, but that he was struck down in the
very act by long-standing disease of the heart. It is said that he was a
man of uncertain age and eccentric habits, without any living relations
to mourn over his dramatic and untimely end."




VIII

THE LOS AMIGOS FIASCO


I used to be the leading practitioner of Los Amigos. Of course, every
one has heard of the great electrical generating gear there. The town is
wide spread, and there are dozens of little townlets and villages all
around, which receive their supply from the same centre, so that the
works are on a very large scale. The Los Amigos folk say that they are
the largest upon earth, but then we claim that for everything in Los
Amigos except the gaol and the death-rate. Those are said to be the
smallest.

Now, with so fine an electrical supply, it seemed to be a sinful waste
of hemp that the Los Amigos criminals should perish in the old-fashioned
manner. And then came the news of the electrocutions in the East, and
how the results had not after all been so instantaneous as had been
hoped. The Western engineers raised their eyebrows when they read of the
puny shocks by which these men had perished, and they vowed in Los
Amigos that when an irreclaimable came their way he should be dealt
handsomely by, and have the run of all the big dynamos. There should be
no reserve, said the engineers, but he should have all that they had
got. And what the result of that would be none could predict, save that
it must be absolutely blasting and deadly. Never before had a man been
so charged with electricity as they would charge him. He was to be
smitten by the essence of ten thunderbolts. Some prophesied combustion,
and some disintegration and disappearance. They were waiting eagerly to
settle the question by actual demonstration, and it was just at that
moment that Duncan Warner came that way.

Warner had been wanted by the law, and by nobody else, for many years.
Desperado, murderer, train robber, and road agent, he was a man beyond
the pale of human pity. He had deserved a dozen deaths, and the Los
Amigos folk grudged him so gaudy a one as that. He seemed to feel
himself to be unworthy of it, for he made two frenzied attempts at
escape. He was a powerful, muscular man, with a lion heart, tangled
black locks, and a sweeping beard which covered his broad chest. When he
was tried, there was no finer head in all the crowded court. It's no new
thing to find the best face looking from the dock. But his good looks
could not balance his bad deeds. His advocate did all he knew, but the
cards lay against him, and Duncan Warner was handed over to the mercy of
the big Los Amigos dynamos.

I was there at the committee meeting when the matter was discussed. The
town council had chosen four experts to look after the arrangements.
Three of them were admirable. There was Joseph M'Connor, the very man
who had designed the dynamos, and there was Joshua Westmacott, the
chairman of the Los Amigos Electrical Supply Company, Limited. Then
there was myself as the chief medical man, and lastly an old German of
the name of Peter Stulpnagel. The Germans were a strong body at Los
Amigos, and they all voted for their man. That was how he got on the
committee. It was said that he had been a wonderful electrician at
home, and he was eternally working with wires and insulators and Leyden
jars; but, as he never seemed to get any further, or to have any results
worth publishing, he came at last to be regarded as a harmless crank,
who had made science his hobby. We three practical men smiled when we
heard that he had been elected as our colleague, and at the meeting we
fixed it all up very nicely among ourselves without much thought of the
old fellow who sat with his ears scooped forward in his hands, for he
was a trifle hard of hearing, taking no more part in the proceedings
than the gentlemen of the press who scribbled their notes on the back
benches.

We did not take long to settle it all. In New York a strength of some
two thousand volts had been used, and death had not been instantaneous.
Evidently their shock had been too weak. Los Amigos should not fall into
that error. The charge should be six times greater, and therefore, of
course, it would be six times more effective. Nothing could possibly be
more logical. The whole concentrated force of the great dynamos should
be employed on Duncan Warner.

So we three settled it, and had already risen to break up the meeting,
when our silent companion opened his mouth for the first time.

"Gentlemen," said he, "you appear to me to show an extraordinary
ignorance upon the subject of electricity. You have not mastered the
first principles of its actions upon a human being."

The committee was about to break into an angry reply to this brusque
comment, but the chairman of the Electrical Company tapped his forehead
to claim its indulgence for the crankiness of the speaker.

"Pray tell us, sir," said he, with an ironical smile, "what is there in
our conclusions with which you find fault?"

"With your assumption that a large dose of electricity will merely
increase the effect of a small dose. Do you not think it possible that
it might have an entirely different result? Do you know anything, by
actual experiment, of the effect of such powerful shocks?"

"We know it by analogy," said the chairman pompously. "All drugs
increase their effect when they increase their dose; for example--for
example----"

"Whisky," said Joseph M'Connor.

"Quite so. Whisky. You see it there."

Peter Stulpnagel smiled and shook his head.

"Your argument is not very good," said he. "When I used to take whisky,
I used to find that one glass would excite me, but that six would send
me to sleep, which is just the opposite. Now, suppose that electricity
were to act in just the opposite way also, what then?"

We three practical men burst out laughing. We had known that our
colleague was queer, but we never had thought that he would be as queer
as this.

"What then?" repeated Peter Stulpnagel.

"We'll take our chances," said the chairman.

"Pray consider," said Peter, "that workmen who have touched the wires,
and who have received shocks of only a few hundred volts, have died
instantly. The fact is well known. And yet when a much greater force was
used upon a criminal at New York, the man struggled for some little
time. Do you not clearly see that the smaller dose is the more deadly?"

"I think, gentlemen, that this discussion has been carried on quite long
enough," said the chairman, rising again. "The point, I take it, has
already been decided by the majority of the committee, and Duncan Warner
shall be electrocuted on Tuesday by the full strength of the Los Amigos
dynamos. Is it not so?"

"I agree," said Joseph M'Connor.

"I agree," said I.

"And I protest," said Peter Stulpnagel.

"Then the motion is carried, and your protest will be duly entered in
the minutes," said the chairman, and so the sitting was dissolved.

The attendance at the electrocution was a very small one. We four
members of the committee were, of course, present with the executioner,
who was to act under their orders. The others were the United States
Marshal, the governor of the gaol, the chaplain, and three members of
the press. The room was a small brick chamber, forming an out-house to
the Central Electrical station. It had been used as a laundry, and had
an oven and copper at one side, but no other furniture save a single
chair for the condemned man. A metal plate for his feet was placed in
front of it, to which ran a thick insulated wire. Above, another wire
depended from the ceiling, which could be connected with a small
metallic rod projecting from a cap which was to be placed upon his head.
When this connection was established Duncan Warner's hour was come.

There was a solemn hush as we waited for the coming of the prisoner. The
practical engineers looked a little pale, and fidgeted nervously with
the wires. Even the hardened Marshal was ill at ease, for a mere hanging
was one thing, and this blasting of flesh and blood a very different
one. As to the pressmen, their faces were whiter than the sheets which
lay before them. The only man who appeared to feel none of the influence
of these preparations was the little German crank, who strolled from one
to the other with a smile on his lips and mischief in his eyes. More
than once he even went so far as to burst into a shout of laughter,
until the chaplain sternly rebuked him for his ill-timed levity.

"How can you so far forget yourself, Mr. Stulpnagel," said he, "as to
jest in the presence of death?"

But the German was quite unabashed.

"If I were in the presence of death I should not jest," said he, "but
since I am not I may do what I choose."

This flippant reply was about to draw another and a sterner reproof from
the chaplain, when the door was swung open and two warders entered
leading Duncan Warner between them. He glanced round him with a set
face, stepped resolutely forward, and seated himself upon the chair.

"Touch her off!" said he.

It was barbarous to keep him in suspense. The chaplain murmured a few
words in his ear, the attendant placed the cap upon his head, and then,
while we all held our breath, the wire and the metal were brought in
contact.

"Great Scott!" shouted Duncan Warner.

He had bounded in his chair as the frightful shock crashed through his
system. But he was not dead. On the contrary, his eyes gleamed far more
brightly than they had done before. There was only one change, but it
was a singular one. The black had passed from his hair and beard as the
shadow passes from a landscape. They were both as white as snow. And yet
there was no other sign of decay. His skin was smooth and plump and
lustrous as a child's.

The Marshal looked at the committee with a reproachful eye.

"There seems to be some hitch here, gentlemen," said he.

We three practical men looked at each other.

Peter Stulpnagel smiled pensively.

"I think that another one should do it," said I.

Again the connection was made, and again Duncan Warner sprang in his
chair and shouted, but, indeed, were it not that he still remained in
the chair none of us would have recognised him. His hair and his beard
had shredded off in an instant, and the room looked like a barber's shop
on a Saturday night. There he sat, his eyes still shining, his skin
radiant with the glow of perfect health, but with a scalp as bald as a
Dutch cheese, and a chin without so much as a trace of down. He began to
revolve one of his arms, slowly and doubtfully at first, but with more
confidence as he went on.

"That joint," said he, "has puzzled half the doctors on the Pacific
slope. It's as good as new, and as limber as a hickory twig."

"You are feeling pretty well?" asked the old German.

"Never better in my life," said Duncan Warner cheerily.

The situation was a painful one. The Marshal glared at the committee.
Peter Stulpnagel grinned and rubbed his hands. The engineers scratched
their heads. The bald-headed prisoner revolved his arm and looked
pleased.

"I think that one more shock----" began the chairman.

"No, sir," said the Marshal; "we've had foolery enough for one morning.
We are here for an execution, and an execution we'll have."

"What do you propose?"

"There's a hook handy upon the ceiling. Fetch a rope, and we'll soon set
this matter straight."

There was another awkward delay while the warders departed for the cord.
Peter Stulpnagel bent over Duncan Warner, and whispered something in his
ear. The desperado stared in surprise.

"You don't say?" he asked.

The German nodded.

"What! No ways?"

Peter shook his head, and the two began to laugh as though they shared
some huge joke between them.

The rope was brought, and the Marshal himself slipped the noose over the
criminal's neck. Then the two warders, the assistant and he swung their
victim into the air. For half an hour he hung--a dreadful sight--from
the ceiling. Then in solemn silence they lowered him down, and one of
the warders went out to order the shell to be brought round. But as he
touched ground again what was our amazement when Duncan Warner put his
hands up to his neck, loosened the noose, and took a long, deep breath.

"Paul Jefferson's sale is goin' well," he remarked, "I could see the
crowd from up yonder," and he nodded at the hook in the ceiling.

"Up with him again!" shouted the Marshal, "we'll get the life out of him
somehow."

In an instant the victim was up at the hook once more.

They kept him there for an hour, but when he came down he was perfectly
garrulous.

"Old man Plunket goes too much to the Arcady Saloon," said he. "Three
times he's been there in an hour; and him with a family. Old man Plunket
would do well to swear off."

It was monstrous and incredible, but there it was. There was no getting
round it. The man was there talking when he ought to have been dead. We
all sat staring in amazement, but United States Marshal Carpenter was
not a man to be euchred so easily. He motioned the others to one side,
so that the prisoner was left standing alone.

"Duncan Warner," said he slowly, "you are here to play your part, and I
am here to play mine. Your game is to live if you can, and my game is to
carry out the sentence of the law. You've beat us on electricity, I'll
give you one there. And you've beat us on hanging, for you seem to
thrive on it. But it's my turn to beat you now, for my duty has to be
done."

He pulled a six-shooter from his coat as he spoke, and fired all the
shots through the body of the prisoner. The room was so filled with
smoke that we could see nothing, but when it cleared the prisoner was
still standing there, looking down in disgust at the front of his coat.

"Coats must be cheap where you come from," said he. "Thirty dollars it
cost me, and look at it now. The six holes in front are bad enough, but
four of the balls have passed out, and a pretty fine state the back must
be in."

The Marshal's revolver fell from his hand, and he dropped his arms to
his sides, a beaten man.

"Maybe some of you gentlemen can tell me what this means," said he,
looking helplessly at the committee.

Peter Stulpnagel took a step forward.

"I'll tell you all about it," said he.

"You seem to be the only person who knows anything."

"I _am_ the only person who knows anything. I should have warned these
gentlemen; but, as they would not listen to me, I have allowed them to
learn by experience. What you have done with your electricity is that
you have increased the man's vitality until he can deny death for
centuries."

"Centuries!"

"Yes, it will take the wear of hundreds of years to exhaust the enormous
nervous energy with which you have drenched him. Electricity is life,
and you have charged him with it to the utmost. Perhaps in fifty years
you might execute him, but I am not sanguine about it."

"Great Scott! What shall I do with him?" cried the unhappy Marshal.

Peter Stulpnagel shrugged his shoulders.

"It seems to me that it does not much matter what you do with him now,"
said he.

"Maybe we could drain the electricity out of him again. Suppose we hang
him up by the heels?"

"No, no, it's out of the question."

"Well, well, he shall do no more mischief in Los Amigos, anyhow," said
the Marshal, with decision. "He shall go into the new gaol. The prison
will wear him out."

"On the contrary," said Peter Stulpnagel, "I think that it is much more
probable that he will wear out the prison."

It was rather a fiasco, and for years we didn't talk more about it than
we could help, but it's no secret now, and I thought you might like to
jot down the facts in your case-book.




IX

HOW IT HAPPENED


She was a writing medium. This is what she wrote:--

I can remember some things upon that evening most distinctly, and others
are like some vague, broken dreams. That is what makes it so difficult
to tell a connected story. I have no idea now what it was that had taken
me to London and brought me back so late. It just merges into all my
other visits to London. But from the time that I got out at the little
country station everything is extraordinarily clear. I can live it
again--every instant of it.

I remember so well walking down the platform and looking at the
illuminated clock at the end which told me that it was half-past eleven.
I remember also my wondering whether I could get home before midnight.
Then I remember the big motor, with its glaring headlights and glitter
of polished brass, waiting for me outside. It was my new
thirty-horse-power Robur, which had only been delivered that day. I
remember also asking Perkins, my chauffeur, how she had gone, and his
saying that he thought she was excellent.

"I'll try her myself," said I, and I climbed into the driver's seat.

"The gears are not the same," said he. "Perhaps, sir, I had better
drive."

"No; I should like to try her," said I.

And so we started on the five-mile drive for home.

My old car had the gears as they used always to be in notches on a bar.
In this car you passed the gear-lever through a gate to get on the
higher ones. It was not difficult to master, and soon I thought that I
understood it. It was foolish, no doubt, to begin to learn a new system
in the dark, but one often does foolish things, and one has not always
to pay the full price for them. I got along very well until I came to
Claystall Hill. It is one of the worst hills in England, a mile and a
half long and one in six in places, with three fairly sharp curves. My
park gates stand at the very foot of it upon the main London road.

We were just over the brow of this hill, where the grade is steepest,
when the trouble began. I had been on the top speed, and wanted to get
her on the free; but she stuck between gears, and I had to get her back
on the top again. By this time she was going at a great rate, so I
clapped on both brakes, and one after the other they gave way. I didn't
mind so much when I felt my footbrake snap, but when I put all my weight
on my side-brake, and the lever clanged to its full limit without a
catch, it brought a cold sweat out of me. By this time we were fairly
tearing down the slope. The lights were brilliant, and I brought her
round the first curve all right. Then we did the second one, though it
was a close shave for the ditch. There was a mile of straight then with
the third curve beneath it, and after that the gate of the park. If I
could shoot into that harbour all would be well, for the slope up to the
house would bring her to a stand.

Perkins behaved splendidly. I should like that to be known. He was
perfectly cool and alert. I had thought at the very beginning of taking
the bank, and he read my intention.

"I wouldn't do it, sir," said he. "At this pace it must go over and we
should have it on the top of us."

Of course he was right. He got to the electric switch and had it off, so
we were in the free; but we were still running at a fearful pace. He
laid his hands on the wheel.

"I'll keep her steady," said he, "if you care to jump and chance it. We
can never get round that curve. Better jump, sir."

"No," said I; "I'll stick it out. You can jump if you like."

"I'll stick it with you, sir," said he.

If it had been the old car I should have jammed the gear-lever into the
reverse, and seen what would happen. I expect she would have stripped
her gears or smashed up somehow, but it would have been a chance. As it
was, I was helpless. Perkins tried to climb across, but you couldn't do
it going at that pace. The wheels were whirring like a high wind and the
big body creaking and groaning with the strain. But the lights were
brilliant, and one could steer to an inch. I remember thinking what an
awful and yet majestic sight we should appear to any one who met us. It
was a narrow road, and we were just a great, roaring, golden death to
any one who came in our path.

We got round the corner with one wheel three feet high upon the bank. I
thought we were surely over, but after staggering for a moment she
righted darted onwards. That was the third corner and the last one.
There was only the park gate now. It was facing us, but, as luck would
have it, not facing us directly. It was about twenty yards to the left
up the main road into which we ran. Perhaps I could have done it, but I
expect that the steering-gear had been jarred when we ran on the bank.
The wheel did not turn easily. We shot out of the lane. I saw the open
gate on the left. I whirled round my wheel with all the strength of my
wrists. Perkins and I threw our bodies across, and then the next
instant, going at fifty miles an hour, my right front wheel struck full
on the right-hand pillar of my own gate. I heard the crash. I was
conscious of flying through the air, and then--and then----!

       *       *       *       *       *

When I became aware of my own existence once more I was among some
brushwood in the shadow of the oaks upon the lodge side of the drive. A
man was standing beside me. I imagined at first that it was Perkins, but
when I looked again I saw that it was Stanley, a man whom I had known at
college some years before, and for whom I had a really genuine
affection. There was always something peculiarly sympathetic to me in
Stanley's personality; and I was proud to think that I had some similar
influence upon him. At the present moment I was surprised to see him,
but I was like a man in a dream, giddy and shaken and quite prepared to
take things as I found them without questioning them.

"What a smash!" I said. "Good Lord, what an awful smash!"

He nodded his head, and even in the gloom I could see that he was
smiling the gentle, wistful smile which I connected with him.

I was quite unable to move. Indeed, I had not any desire to try to move.
But my senses were exceedingly alert. I saw the wreck of the motor lit
up by the moving lanterns. I saw the little group of people and heard
the hushed voices. There were the lodge-keeper and his wife, and one or
two more. They were taking no notice of me, but were very busy round the
car. Then suddenly I heard a cry of pain.

"The weight is on him. Lift it easy," cried a voice.

"It's only my leg!" said another one, which I recognised as Perkins's.
"Where's master?" he cried.

"Here I am," I answered, but they did not seem to hear me. They were all
bending over something which lay in front of the car.

Stanley laid his hand upon my shoulder, and his touch was inexpressibly
soothing. I felt light and happy, in spite of all.

"No pain, of course?" said he.

"None," said I.

"There never is," said he.

And then suddenly a wave of amazement passed over me. Stanley! Stanley!
Why, Stanley had surely died of enteric at Bloemfontein in the Boer War!

"Stanley!" I cried, and the words seemed to choke my throat--"Stanley,
you are dead."

He looked at me with the same old gentle, wistful smile.

"So are you," he answered.




X

LOT NO. 249


Of the dealings of Edward Bellingham with William Monkhouse Lee, and of
the cause of the great terror of Abercrombie Smith, it may be that no
absolute and final judgment will ever be delivered. It is true that we
have the full and clear narrative of Smith himself, and such
corroboration as he could look for from Thomas Styles the servant, from
the Reverend Plumptree Peterson, Fellow of Old's, and from such other
people as chanced to gain some passing glance at this or that incident
in a singular chain of events. Yet, in the main, the story must rest
upon Smith alone, and the most will think that it is more likely that
one brain, however outwardly sane, has some subtle warp in its texture,
some strange flaw in its workings, than that the path of Nature has been
overstepped in open day in so famed a centre of learning and light as
the University of Oxford. Yet when we think how narrow and how devious
this path of Nature is, how dimly we can trace it, for all our lamps of
science, and how from the darkness which girds it round great and
terrible possibilities loom ever shadowly upwards, it is a bold and
confident man who will put a limit to the strange by-paths into which
the human spirit may wander.

In a certain wing of what we will call Old College in Oxford there is a
corner turret of an exceeding great age. The heavy arch which spans the
open door has bent downwards in the centre under the weight of its
years, and the grey, lichen-blotched blocks of stone are bound and
knitted together with withes and strand of ivy, as though the old mother
had set herself to brace them up against wind and weather. From a door a
stone stair curves upwards spirally, passing two landings, and
terminating in a third one, its steps all shapeless and hollowed by the
tread of so many generations of the seekers after knowledge. Life has
flowed like water down this winding stair, and, waterlike, has left
these smooth-worn grooves behind it. From the long-gowned, pedantic
scholars of Plantagenet days down to the young bloods of a later age,
how full and strong had been that tide of young English life. And what
was left now of all those hopes, those strivings, those fiery energies,
save here and there in some old-world churchyard a few scratches upon a
stone, and perchance a handful of dust in a mouldering coffin? Yet here
were the silent stair and the grey old wall, with bend and saltire and
many another heraldic device still to be read upon its surface, like
grotesque shadows thrown back from the days that had passed.

In the month of May, in the year 1884, three young men occupied the sets
of rooms which opened on to the separate landings of the old stair. Each
set consisted simply of a sitting-room and a bedroom, while the two
corresponding rooms upon the ground-floor were used, the one as a
coal-cellar, and the other as the living-room of the servant, or scout,
Thomas Styles, whose duty it was to wait upon the three men above him.
To right and to left was a line of lecture-rooms and of offices, so that
the dwellers in the old turret enjoyed a certain seclusion, which made
the chambers popular among the more studious undergraduates. Such were
the three who occupied them now--Abercrombie Smith above, Edward
Bellingham beneath him, and William Monkhouse Lee upon the lowest story.

It was ten o'clock on a bright spring night, and Abercrombie Smith lay
back in his armchair, his feet upon the fender, and his briar-root pipe
between his lips. In a similar chair, and equally at his ease, there
lounged on the other side of the fireplace his old school friend Jephro
Hastie. Both men were in flannels, for they had spent their evening upon
the river, but apart from their dress no one could look at their
hard-cut, alert faces without seeing that they were open-air men--men
whose minds and tastes turned naturally to all that was manly and
robust. Hastie, indeed, was stroke of his college boat, and Smith was an
even better oar, but a coming examination had already cast its shadow
over him and held him to his work, save for the few hours a week which
health demanded. A litter of medical books upon the table, with
scattered bones, models, and anatomical plates, pointed to the extent as
well as the nature of his studies, while a couple of single-sticks and a
set of boxing-gloves above the mantelpiece hinted at the means by which,
with Hastie's help, he might take his exercise in its most compressed
and least distant form. They knew each other very well--so well that
they could sit now in that soothing silence which is the very highest
development of companionship.

"Have some whisky," said Abercrombie Smith at last between two
cloudbursts. "Scotch in the jug and Irish in the bottle."

"No, thanks. I'm in for the sculls. I don't liquor when I'm training.
How about you?"

"I'm reading hard. I think it best to leave it alone."

Hastie nodded, and they relapsed into a contented silence.

"By the way, Smith," asked Hastie, presently, "have you made the
acquaintance of either of the fellows on your stair yet?"

"Just a nod when we pass. Nothing more."

"Hum! I should be inclined to let it stand at that. I know something of
them both. Not much, but as much as I want. I don't think I should take
them to my bosom if I were you. Not that there's much amiss with
Monkhouse Lee."

"Meaning the thin one?"

"Precisely. He is a gentlemanly little fellow. I don't think there is
any vice in him. But then you can't know him without knowing
Bellingham."

"Meaning the fat one?"

"Yes, the fat one. And he's a man whom I, for one, would rather not
know."

Abercrombie Smith raised his eyebrows and glanced across at his
companion.

"What's up, then?" he asked. "Drink? Cards? Cad? You used not to be
censorious."

"Ah! you evidently don't know the man, or you wouldn't ask. There's
something damnable about him--something reptilian. My gorge always rises
at him. I should put him down as a man with secret vices--an evil liver.
He's no fool, though. They say that he is one of the best men in his
line that they have ever had in the college."

"Medicine or classics?"

"Eastern languages. He's a demon at them. Chillingworth met him
somewhere above the second cataract last long, and he told me that he
just prattled to the Arabs as if he had been born and nursed and weaned
among them. He talked Coptic to the Copts, and Hebrew to the Jews, and
Arabic to the Bedouins, and they were all ready to kiss the hem of his
frock-coat. There are some old hermit Johnnies up in those parts who
sit on rocks and scowl and spit at the casual stranger. Well, when they
saw this chap Bellingham, before he had said five words they just lay
down on their bellies and wriggled. Chillingworth said that he never saw
anything like it. Bellingham seemed to take it as his right, too, and
strutted about among them and talked down to them like a Dutch uncle.
Pretty good for an undergrad. of Old's, wasn't it?"

"Why do you say you can't know Lee without knowing Bellingham?"

"Because Bellingham is engaged to his sister Eveline. Such a bright
little girl, Smith! I know the whole family well. It's disgusting to see
that brute with her. A toad and a dove, that's what they always remind
me of."

Abercrombie Smith grinned and knocked his ashes out against the side of
the grate.

"You show every card in your hand, old chap," said he. "What a
prejudiced, green-eyed, evil-thinking old man it is! You have really
nothing against the fellow except that."

"Well, I've known her ever since she was as long as that cherry-wood
pipe, and I don't like to see her taking risks. And it is a risk. He
looks beastly. And he has a beastly temper, a venomous temper. You
remember his row with Long Norton?"

"No; you always forget that I am a freshman."

"Ah, it was last winter. Of course. Well, you know the towpath along by
the river. There were several fellows going along it, Bellingham in
front, when they came on an old market-woman coming the other way. It
had been raining--you know what those fields are like when it has
rained--and the path ran between the river and a great puddle that was
nearly as broad. Well, what does this swine do but keep the path, and
push the old girl into the mud, where she and her marketings came to
terrible grief. It was a blackguard thing to do, and Long Norton, who is
as gentle a fellow as ever stepped, told him what he thought of it. One
word led to another, and it ended in Norton laying his stick across the
fellow's shoulders. There was the deuce of a fuss about it, and it's a
treat to see the way in which Bellingham looks at Norton when they meet
now. By Jove, Smith, it's nearly eleven o'clock!"

"No hurry. Light your pipe again."

"Not I. I'm supposed to be in training. Here I've been sitting gossiping
when I ought to have been safely tucked up. I'll borrow your skull, if
you can share it. Williams has had mine for a month. I'll take the
little bones of your ear, too, if you are sure you won't need them.
Thanks very much. Never mind a bag, I can carry them very well under my
arm. Good-night, my son, and take my tip as to your neighbour."

When Hastie, bearing his anatomical plunder, had clattered off down the
winding stair, Abercrombie Smith hurled his pipe into the wastepaper
basket, and drawing his chair nearer to the lamp, plunged into a
formidable green-covered volume, adorned with great coloured maps of
that strange internal kingdom of which we are the hapless and helpless
monarchs. Though a freshman at Oxford, the student was not so in
medicine, for he had worked for four years at Glasgow and at Berlin, and
this coming examination would place him finally as a member of his
profession. With his firm mouth, broad forehead, and clear-cut, somewhat
hard-featured face, he was a man who, if he had no brilliant talent, was
yet so dogged, so patient, and so strong that he might in the end
overtop a more showy genius. A man who can hold his own among Scotchmen
and North Germans is not a man to be easily set back. Smith had left a
name at Glasgow and at Berlin, and he was bent now upon doing as much at
Oxford, if hard work and devotion could accomplish it.

He had sat reading for about an hour, and the hands of the noisy
carriage clock upon the side table were rapidly closing together upon
the twelve, when a sudden sound fell upon the student's ear--a sharp,
rather shrill sound, like the hissing intake of a man's breath who gasps
under some strong emotion. Smith laid down his book and slanted his ear
to listen. There was no one on either side or above him, so that the
interruption came certainly from the neighbour beneath--the same
neighbour of whom Hastie had given so unsavory an account. Smith knew
him only as a flabby, pale-faced man of silent and studious habits, a
man whose lamp threw a golden bar from the old turret even after he had
extinguished his own. This community in lateness had formed a certain
silent bond between them. It was soothing to Smith when the hours stole
on towards dawning to feel that there was another so close who set as
small a value upon his sleep as he did. Even now, as his thoughts turned
towards him, Smith's feelings were kindly. Hastie was a good fellow, but
he was rough, strong-fibred, with no imagination or sympathy. He could
not tolerate departures from what he looked upon as the model type of
manliness. If a man could not be measured by a public-school standard,
then he was beyond the pale with Hastie. Like so many who are themselves
robust, he was apt to confuse the constitution with the character, to
ascribe to want of principle what was really a want of circulation.
Smith, with his stronger mind, knew his friend's habit, and made
allowance for it now as his thoughts turned towards the man beneath him.

There was no return of the singular sound, and Smith was about to turn
to his work once more, when suddenly there broke out in the silence of
the night a hoarse cry, a positive scream--the call of a man who is
moved and shaken beyond all control. Smith sprang out of his chair and
dropped his book. He was a man of fairly firm fibre, but there was
something in this sudden, uncontrollable shriek of horror which chilled
his blood and pringled in his skin. Coming in such a place and at such
an hour, it brought a thousand fantastic possibilities into his head.
Should he rush down, or was it better to wait? He had all the national
hatred of making a scene, and he knew so little of his neighbour that he
would not lightly intrude upon his affairs. For a moment he stood in
doubt and even as he balanced the matter there was a quick rattle of
footsteps upon the stairs, and young Monkhouse Lee, half dressed and as
white as ashes, burst into his room.

"Come down!" he gasped. "Bellingham's ill."

Abercrombie Smith followed him closely downstairs into the sitting-room
which was beneath his own, and intent as he was upon the matter in hand,
he could not but take an amazed glance around him as he crossed the
threshold. It was such a chamber as he had never seen before--a museum
rather than a study. Walls and ceiling were thickly covered with a
thousand strange relics from Egypt and the East. Tall, angular figures
bearing burdens or weapons stalked in an uncouth frieze round the
apartments. Above were bull-headed, stork-headed, cat-headed, owl-headed
statues, with viper-crowned, almond-eyed monarchs, and strange,
beetle-like deities cut out of the blue Egyptian lapis lazuli. Horus and
Isis and Osiris peeped down from every niche and shelf, while across the
ceiling a true son of Old Nile, a great, hanging-jawed crocodile, was
slung in a double noose.

In the centre of this singular chamber was a large, square table,
littered with papers, bottles, and the dried leaves of some graceful,
palm-like plant. These varied objects had all been heaped together in
order to make room for a mummy case, which had been conveyed from the
wall, as was evident from the gap there, and laid across the front of
the table. The mummy itself, a horrid, black, withered thing, like a
charred head on a gnarled bush, was lying half out of the case, with its
clawlike hand and bony forearm resting upon the table. Propped up
against the sarcophagus was an old yellow scroll of papyrus, and in
front of it, in a wooden armchair, sat the owner of the room, his head
thrown back, his widely-opened eyes directed in a horrified stare to the
crocodile above him, and his blue, thick lips puffing loudly with every
expiration.

"My God! he's dying!" cried Monkhouse Lee distractedly.

He was a slim, handsome young fellow, olive-skinned and dark-eyed, of a
Spanish rather than of an English type, with a Celtic intensity of
manner which contrasted with the Saxon phlegm of Abercrombie Smith.

"Only a faint, I think," said the medical student. "Just give me a hand
with him. You take his feet. Now on to the sofa. Can you kick all those
little wooden devils off? What a litter it is! Now he will be all right
if we undo his collar and give him some water. What has he been up to at
all?"

"I don't know. I heard him cry out. I ran up. I know him pretty well,
you know. It is very good of you to come down."

"His heart is going like a pair of castanets," said Smith, laying his
hand on the breast of the unconscious man. "He seems to me to be
frightened all to pieces. Chuck the water over him! What a face he has
got on him!"

It was indeed a strange and most repellent face, for colour and outline
were equally unnatural. It was white, not with the ordinary pallor of
fear, but with an absolutely bloodless white, like the under side of a
sole. He was very fat, but gave the impression of having at some time
been considerably fatter, for his skin hung loosely in creases and
folds, and was shot with a meshwork of wrinkles. Short, stubbly brown
hair bristled up from his scalp, with a pair of thick, wrinkled ears
protruding at the sides. His light grey eyes were still open, the pupils
dilated and the balls projecting in a fixed and horrid stare. It seemed
to Smith as he looked down upon him that he had never seen Nature's
danger signals flying so plainly upon a man's countenance, and his
thoughts turned more seriously to the warning which Hastie had given him
an hour before.

"What the deuce can have frightened him so?" he asked.

"It's the mummy."

"The mummy? How, then?"

"I don't know. It's beastly and morbid. I wish he would drop it. It's
the second fright he has given me. It was the same last winter. I found
him just like this, with that horrid thing in front of him."

"What does he want with the mummy, then?"

"Oh, he's a crank, you know. It's his hobby. He knows more about these
things than any man in England. But I wish he wouldn't! Ah, he's
beginning to come to."

A faint tinge of colour had begun to steal back into Bellingham's
ghastly cheeks, and his eyelids shivered like a sail after a calm. He
clasped and unclasped his hands, drew a long, thin breath between his
teeth, and suddenly jerking up his head, threw a glance of recognition
around him. As his eyes fell upon the mummy, he sprang off the sofa,
seized the roll of papyrus, thrust it into a drawer, turned the key, and
then staggered back on to the sofa.

"What's up?" he asked. "What do you chaps want?"

"You've been shrieking out and making no end of a fuss," said Monkhouse
Lee. "If our neighbour here from above hadn't come down, I'm sure I
don't know what I should have done with you."

"Ah, it's Abercrombie Smith," said Bellingham, glancing up at him. "How
very good of you to come in! What a fool I am! Oh, my God, what a fool I
am!"

He sunk his head on to his hands, and burst into peal after peal of
hysterical laughter.

"Look here! Drop it!" cried Smith, shaking him roughly by the shoulder.

"Your nerves are all in a jangle. You must drop these little midnight
games with mummies, or you'll be going off your chump. You're all on
wires now."

"I wonder," said Bellingham, "whether you would be as cool as I am if
you had seen----"

"What then?"

"Oh, nothing. I meant that I wonder if you could sit up at night with a
mummy without trying your nerves. I have no doubt that you are quite
right. I dare say that I have been taking it out of myself too much
lately. But I am all right now. Please don't go, though. Just wait for a
few minutes until I am quite myself."

"The room is very close," remarked Lee, throwing open the window and
letting in the cool night air.

"It's balsamic resin," said Bellingham. He lifted up one of the dried
palmate leaves from the table and frizzled it over the chimney of the
lamp. It broke away into heavy smoke wreaths, and a pungent, biting
odour filled the chamber. "It's the sacred plant--the plant of the
priests," he remarked. "Do you know anything of Eastern languages,
Smith?"

"Nothing at all. Not a word."

The answer seemed to lift a weight from the Egyptologist's mind.

"By the way," he continued, "how long was it from the time that you ran
down, until I came to my senses?"

"Not long. Some four or five minutes."

"I thought it could not be very long," said he, drawing a long breath.
"But what a strange thing unconsciousness is! There is no measurement to
it. I could not tell from my own sensations if it were seconds or weeks.
Now that gentleman on the table was packed up in the days of the
eleventh dynasty, some forty centuries ago, and yet if he could find his
tongue, he would tell us that this lapse of time has been but a closing
of the eyes and a reopening of them. He is a singularly fine mummy,
Smith."

Smith stepped over to the table and looked down with a professional eye
at the black and twisted form in front of him. The features, though
horribly discoloured, were perfect, and two little nut-like eyes still
lurked in the depths of the black, hollow sockets. The blotched skin was
drawn tightly from bone to bone, and a tangled wrap of black coarse hair
fell over the ears. Two thin teeth, like those of a rat, overlay the
shrivelled lower lip. In its crouching position, with bent joints and
craned head, there was a suggestion of energy about the horrid thing
which made Smith's gorge rise. The gaunt ribs, with their parchment-like
covering, were exposed, and the sunken, leaden-hued abdomen, with the
long slit where the embalmer had left his mark; but the lower limbs were
wrapped round with coarse yellow bandages. A number of little
clove-like pieces of myrrh and of cassia were sprinkled over the body,
and lay scattered on the inside of the case.

"I don't know his name," said Bellingham, passing his hand over the
shrivelled head. "You see the outer sarcophagus with the inscriptions is
missing. Lot 249 is all the title he has now. You see it printed on his
case. That was his number in the auction at which I picked him up."

"He has been a very pretty sort of fellow in his day," remarked
Abercrombie Smith.

"He has been a giant. His mummy is six feet seven in length, and that
would be a giant over there, for they were never a very robust race.
Feel these great knotted bones, too. He would be a nasty fellow to
tackle."

"Perhaps these very hands helped to build the stones into the pyramids,"
suggested Monkhouse Lee, looking down with disgust in his eyes at the
crooked, unclean talons.

"No fear. This fellow has been pickled in natron, and looked after in
the most approved style. They did not serve hodsmen in that fashion.
Salt or bitumen was enough for them. It has been calculated that this
sort of thing cost about seven hundred and thirty pounds in our money.
Our friend was a noble at the least. What do you make of that small
inscription near his feet, Smith?"

"I told you that I know no Eastern tongue."

"Ah, so you did. It is the name of the embalmer, I take it. A very
conscientious worker he must have been. I wonder how many modern works
will survive four thousand years?"

He kept on speaking lightly and rapidly, but it was evident to
Abercrombie Smith that he was still palpitating with fear. His hands
shook, his lower lip trembled, and look where he would, his eye always
came sliding round to his gruesome companion. Through all his fear,
however, there was a suspicion of triumph in his tone and manner. His
eyes shone, and his footstep, as he paced the room, was brisk and
jaunty. He gave the impression of a man who has gone through an ordeal,
the marks of which he still bears upon him, but which has helped him to
his end.

"You're not going yet?" he cried, as Smith rose from the sofa.

At the prospect of solitude, his fears seemed to crowd back upon him,
and he stretched out a hand to detain him.

"Yes, I must go. I have my work to do. You are all right now. I think
that with your nervous system you should take up some less morbid
study."

"Oh, I am not nervous as a rule; and I have unwrapped mummies before."

"You fainted last time," observed Monkhouse Lee.

"Ah, yes, so I did. Well, I must have a nerve tonic or a course of
electricity. You are not going, Lee?"

"I'll do whatever you wish, Ned."

"Then I'll come down with you and have a shakedown on your sofa.
Good-night, Smith. I am so sorry to have disturbed you with my
foolishness."

They shook hands, and as the medical student stumbled up the spiral and
irregular stair he heard a key turn in a door, and the steps of his two
new acquaintances as they descended to the lower floor.

       *       *       *       *       *

In this strange way began the acquaintance between Edward Bellingham
and Abercrombie Smith, an acquaintance which the latter, at least, had
no desire to push forward. Bellingham, however, appeared to have taken a
fancy to his rough-spoken neighbour, and made his advances in such a way
that he could hardly be repulsed without absolute brutality. Twice he
called to thank Smith for his assistance, and many times afterwards he
looked in with books, papers and such other civilities as two bachelor
neighbours can offer each other. He was, as Smith soon found, a man of
wide reading, with catholic tastes and an extraordinary memory. His
manner, too, was so pleasing and suave that one came, after a time, to
overlook his repellent appearance. For a jaded and wearied man he was no
unpleasant companion, and Smith found himself, after a time, looking
forward to his visits, and even returning them.

Clever as he undoubtedly was, however, the medical student seemed to
detect a dash of insanity in the man. He broke out at times into a high,
inflated style of talk which was in contrast with the simplicity of his
life.

"It is a wonderful thing," he cried, "to feel that one can command
powers of good and of evil--a ministering angel or a demon of
vengeance." And again, of Monkhouse Lee, he said,--"Lee is a good
fellow, an honest fellow, but he is without strength or ambition. He
would not make a fit partner for a man with a great enterprise. He would
not make a fit partner for me."

At such hints and innuendoes stolid Smith, puffing solemnly at his pipe,
would simply raise his eyebrows and shake his head, with little
interjections of medical wisdom as to earlier hours and fresher air.

One habit Bellingham had developed of late which Smith knew to be a
frequent herald of a weakening mind. He appeared to be for ever talking
to himself. At late hours of the night, when there could be no visitor
with him, Smith could still hear his voice beneath him in a low, muffled
monologue, sunk almost to a whisper, and yet very audible in the
silence. This solitary babbling annoyed and distracted the student, so
that he spoke more than once to his neighbour about it. Bellingham,
however, flushed up at the charge, and denied curtly that he had uttered
a sound; indeed, he showed more annoyance over the matter than the
occasion seemed to demand.

Had Abercrombie Smith had any doubt as to his own ears he had not to go
far to find corroboration. Tom Styles, the little wrinkled man-servant
who had attended to the wants of the lodgers in the turret for a longer
time than any man's memory could carry him, was sorely put to it over
the same matter.

"If you please, sir," said he, as he tidied down the top chamber one
morning, "do you think Mr. Bellingham is all right, sir?"

"All right, Styles?"

"Yes, sir. Right in his head, sir."

"Why should he not be, then?"

"Well, I don't know, sir. His habits has changed of late. He's not the
same man he used to be, though I make free to say that he was never
quite one of my gentlemen, like Mr. Hastie or yourself, sir. He's took
to talkin' to himself something awful. I wonder it don't disturb you. I
don't know what to make of him, sir."

"I don't know what business it is of yours, Styles."

"Well, I takes an interest, Mr. Smith. It may be forward of me, but I
can't help it. I feel sometimes as if I was mother and father to my
young gentlemen. It all falls on me when things go wrong and the
relations come. But Mr. Bellingham, sir. I want to know what it is that
walks about his room sometimes when he's out and when the door's locked
on the outside."

"Eh? you're talking nonsense, Styles."

"Maybe so, sir; but I heard it more'n once with my own ears."

"Rubbish, Styles."

"Very good, sir. You'll ring the bell if you want me."

Abercrombie Smith gave little heed to the gossip of the old man-servant,
but a small incident occurred a few days later which left an unpleasant
effect upon his mind, and brought the words of Styles forcibly to his
memory.

Bellingham had come up to see him late one night, and was entertaining
him with an interesting account of the rock tombs of Beni Hassan in
Upper Egypt, when Smith, whose hearing was remarkably acute, distinctly
heard the sound of a door opening on the landing below.

"There's some fellow gone in or out of your room," he remarked.

Bellingham sprang up and stood helpless for a moment, with the
expression of a man who is half incredulous and half afraid.

"I surely locked it. I am almost positive that I locked it," he
stammered. "No one could have opened it."

"Why, I hear some one coming up the steps now," said Smith.

Bellingham rushed out through the door, slammed it loudly behind him,
and hurried down the stairs. About half-way down Smith heard him stop,
and thought he caught the sound of whispering. A moment later the door
beneath him shut, a key creaked in a lock, and Bellingham, with beads of
moisture upon his pale face, ascended the stairs once more, and
re-entered the room.

"It's all right," he said, throwing himself down in a chair. "It was
that fool of a dog. He had pushed the door open. I don't know how I came
to forget to lock it."

"I didn't know you kept a dog," said Smith, looking very thoughtfully at
the disturbed face of his companion.

"Yes, I haven't had him long. I must get rid of him. He's a great
nuisance."

"He must be, if you find it so hard to shut him up. I should have
thought that shutting the door would have been enough, without locking
it."

"I want to prevent old Styles from letting him out. He's of some value,
you know, and it would be awkward to lose him."

"I am a bit of a dog-fancier myself," said Smith, still gazing hard at
his companion from the corner of his eyes. "Perhaps you'll let me have a
look at it."

"Certainly. But I am afraid it cannot be to-night; I have an
appointment. Is that clock right? Then I am a quarter of an hour late
already. You'll excuse me, I am sure."

He picked up his cap and hurried from the room. In spite of his
appointment, Smith heard him re-enter his own chamber and lock his door
upon the inside.

This interview left a disagreeable impression upon the medical student's
mind. Bellingham had lied to him, and lied so clumsily that it looked as
if he had desperate reasons for concealing the truth. Smith knew that
his neighbour had no dog. He knew, also, that the step which he had
heard upon the stairs was not the step of an animal. But if it were not,
then what could it be? There was old Styles's statement about the
something which used to pace the room at times when the owner was
absent. Could it be a woman? Smith rather inclined to the view. If so,
it would mean disgrace and expulsion to Bellingham if it were discovered
by the authorities, so that his anxiety and falsehoods might be
accounted for. And yet it was inconceivable that an undergraduate could
keep a woman in his rooms without being instantly detected. Be the
explanation what it might, there was something ugly about it, and Smith
determined, as he turned to his books, to discourage all further
attempts at intimacy on the part of his soft-spoken and ill-favoured
neighbour.

But his work was destined to interruption that night. He had hardly
caught up the broken threads when a firm, heavy footfall came three
steps at a time from below, and Hastie, in blazer and flannels, burst
into the room.

"Still at it!" said he, plumping down into his wonted arm-chair. "What a
chap you are to stew! I believe an earthquake might come and knock
Oxford into a cocked hat, and you would sit perfectly placid with your
books among the ruins. However, I won't bore you long. Three whiffs of
baccy, and I am off."

"What's the news, then?" asked Smith, cramming a plug of bird's-eye into
his briar with his forefinger.

"Nothing very much. Wilson made 70 for the freshmen against the eleven.
They say that they will play him instead of Buddicomb, for Buddicomb is
clean off colour. He used to be able to bowl a little, but it's nothing
but half-volleys and long hops now."

"Medium right," suggested Smith, with the intense gravity which comes
upon a 'varsity man when he speaks of athletics.

"Inclining to fast, with a work from leg. Comes with the arm about three
inches or so. He used to be nasty on a wet wicket. Oh, by-the-way, have
you heard about Long Norton?"

"What's that?"

"He's been attacked."

"Attacked?"

"Yes, just as he was turning out of the High Street, and within a
hundred yards of the gate of Old's."

"But who----"

"Ah, that's the rub! If you said 'what,' you would be more grammatical.
Norton swears that it was not human, and, indeed, from the scratches on
his throat, I should be inclined to agree with him."

"What, then? Have we come down to spooks?"

Abercrombie Smith puffed his scientific contempt.

"Well, no; I don't think that is quite the idea, either. I am inclined
to think that if any showman has lost a great ape lately, and the brute
is in these parts, a jury would find a true bill against it. Norton
passes that way every night, you know, about the same hour. There's a
tree that hangs low over the path--the big elm from Rainy's garden.
Norton thinks the thing dropped on him out of the tree. Anyhow, he was
nearly strangled by two arms, which, he says, were as strong and as thin
as steel bands. He saw nothing; only those beastly arms that tightened
and tightened on him. He yelled his head nearly off, and a couple of
chaps came running, and the thing went over the wall like a cat. He
never got a fair sight of it the whole time. It gave Norton a shake up,
I can tell you. I tell him it has been as good as a change at the
seaside for him."

"A garrotter, most likely," said Smith.

"Very possible. Norton says not; but we don't mind what he says. The
garrotter had long nails, and was pretty smart at swinging himself over
walls. By-the-way, your beautiful neighbour would be pleased if he heard
about it. He had a grudge against Norton, and he's not a man, from what
I know of him, to forget his little debts. But hallo, old chap, what
have you got in your noddle?"

"Nothing," Smith answered curtly.

He had started in his chair, and the look had flashed over his face
which comes upon a man who is struck suddenly by some unpleasant idea.

"You looked as if something I had said had taken you on the raw.
By-the-way, you have made the acquaintance of Master B. since I looked
in last, have you not? Young Monkhouse Lee told me something to that
effect."

"Yes; I know him slightly. He has been up here once or twice."

"Well, you're big enough and ugly enough to take care of yourself. He's
not what I should call exactly a healthy sort of Johnny, though, no
doubt, he's very clever, and all that. But you'll soon find out for
yourself. Lee is all right; he's a very decent little fellow. Well, so
long, old chap! I row Mullins for the Vice-Chancellor's pot on Wednesday
week, so mind you come down, in case I don't see you before."

Bovine Smith laid down his pipe and turned stolidly to his books once
more. But with all the will in the world, he found it very hard to keep
his mind upon his work. It would slip away to brood upon the man beneath
him, and upon the little mystery which hung round his chambers. Then his
thoughts turned to this singular attack of which Hastie had spoken, and
to the grudge which Bellingham was said to owe the object of it. The two
ideas would persist in rising together in his mind, as though there were
some close and intimate connection between them. And yet the suspicion
was so dim and vague that it could not be put down in words.

"Confound the chap!" cried Smith, as he shied his book on pathology
across the room. "He has spoiled my night's reading, and that's reason
enough, if there were no other, why I should steer clear of him in the
future."

For ten days the medical student confined himself so closely to his
studies that he neither saw nor heard anything of either of the men
beneath him. At the hours when Bellingham had been accustomed to visit
him, he took care to sport his oak, and though he more than once heard a
knocking at his outer door, he resolutely refused to answer it. One
afternoon, however, he was descending the stairs when, just as he was
passing it, Bellingham's door flew open, and young Monkhouse Lee came
out with his eyes sparkling and a dark flush of anger upon his olive
cheeks. Close at his heels followed Bellingham, his fat, unhealthy face
all quivering with malignant passion.

"You fool!" he hissed. "You'll be sorry."

"Very likely," cried the other. "Mind what I say. It's off! I won't hear
of it!"

"You've promised, anyhow."

"Oh, I'll keep that! I won't speak. But I'd rather little Eva was in her
grave. Once for all, it's off. She'll do what I say. We don't want to
see you again."

So much Smith could not avoid hearing, but he hurried on, for he had no
wish to be involved in their dispute. There had been a serious breach
between them, that was clear enough, and Lee was going to cause the
engagement with his sister to be broken off. Smith thought of Hastie's
comparison of the toad and the dove, and was glad to think that the
matter was at an end. Bellingham's face when he was in a passion was not
pleasant to look upon. He was not a man to whom an innocent girl could
be trusted for life. As he walked, Smith wondered languidly what could
have caused the quarrel, and what the promise might be which Bellingham
had been so anxious that Monkhouse Lee should keep.

It was the day of the sculling match between Hastie and Mullins, and a
stream of men were making their way down to the banks of the Isis. A May
sun was shining brightly, and the yellow path was barred with the black
shadows of the tall elm-trees. On either side the grey colleges lay
back from the road, the hoary old mothers of minds looking out from
their high, mullioned windows at the tide of young life which swept so
merrily past them. Black-clad tutors, prim officials, pale reading men,
brown-faced, straw-hatted young athletes in white sweaters or
many-coloured blazers, all were hurrying towards the blue winding river
which curves through the Oxford meadows.

Abercrombie Smith, with the intuition of an old oarsman, chose his
position at the point where he knew that the struggle, if there were a
struggle, would come. Far off he heard the hum which announced the
start, the gathering roar of the approach, the thunder of running feet,
and the shouts of the men in the boats beneath him. A spray of
half-clad, deep-breathing runners shot past him, and craning over their
shoulders, he saw Hastie pulling a steady thirty-six, while his
opponent, with a jerky forty, was a good boat's length behind him. Smith
gave a cheer for his friend, and pulling out his watch, was starting off
again for his chambers, when he felt a touch upon his shoulder, and
found that young Monkhouse Lee was beside him.

"I saw you there," he said, in a timid, deprecating way. "I wanted to
speak to you, if you could spare me a half-hour. This cottage is mine. I
share it with Harrington of King's. Come in and have a cup of tea."

"I must be back presently," said Smith. "I am hard on the grind at
present. But I'll come in for a few minutes with pleasure. I wouldn't
have come out only Hastie is a friend of mine."

"So he is of mine. Hasn't he a beautiful style? Mullins wasn't in it.
But come into the cottage. It's a little den of a place, but it is
pleasant to work in during the summer months."

It was a small, square, white building, with green doors and shutters,
and a rustic trellis-work porch, standing back some fifty yards from the
river's bank. Inside, the main room was roughly fitted up as a
study--deal table, unpainted shelves with books, and a few cheap
oleographs upon the wall. A kettle sang upon a spirit-stove, and there
were tea things upon a tray on the table.

"Try that chair and have a cigarette," said Lee. "Let me pour you out a
cup of tea. It's so good of you to come in, for I know that your time is
a good deal taken up. I wanted to say to you that, if I were you, I
should change my rooms at once."

"Eh?"

Smith sat staring with a lighted match in one hand and his unlit
cigarette in the other.

"Yes; it must seem very extraordinary, and the worst of it is that I
cannot give my reasons, for I am under a solemn promise--a very solemn
promise. But I may go so far as to say that I don't think Bellingham is
a very safe man to live near. I intend to camp out here as much as I can
for a time."

"Not safe! What do you mean?"

"Ah, that's what I mustn't say. But do take my advice, and move your
rooms. We had a grand row to-day. You must have heard us, for you came
down the stairs."

"I saw that you had fallen out."

"He's a horrible chap, Smith. That is the only word for him. I have had
doubts about him ever since that night when he fainted--you remember,
when you came down. I taxed him to-day, and he told me things that made
my hair rise, and wanted me to stand in with him. I'm not strait-laced,
but I am a clergyman's son, you know, and I think there are some things
which are quite beyond the pale. I only thank God that I found him out
before it was too late, for he was to have married into my family."

"This is all very fine, Lee," said Abercrombie Smith curtly. "But either
you are saying a great deal too much or a great deal too little."

"I give you a warning."

"If there is real reason for warning, no promise can bind you. If I see
a rascal about to blow a place up with dynamite no pledge will stand in
my way of preventing him."

"Ah, but I cannot prevent him, and I can do nothing but warn you."

"Without saying what you warn me against."

"Against Bellingham."

"But that is childish. Why should I fear him, or any man?"

"I can't tell you. I can only entreat you to change your rooms. You are
in danger where you are. I don't even say that Bellingham would wish to
injure you. But it might happen, for he is a dangerous neighbour just
now."

"Perhaps I know more than you think," said Smith, looking keenly at the
young man's boyish, earnest face. "Suppose I tell you that some one else
shares Bellingham's rooms."

Monkhouse Lee sprang from his chair in uncontrollable excitement.

"You know, then?" he gasped.

"A woman."

Lee dropped back again with a groan.

"My lips are sealed," he said. "I must not speak."

"Well, anyhow," said Smith, rising, "it is not likely that I should
allow myself to be frightened out of rooms which suit me very nicely. It
would be a little too feeble for me to move out all my goods and
chattels because you say that Bellingham might in some unexplained way
do me an injury. I think that I'll just take my chance, and stay where I
am, and as I see that it's nearly five o'clock, I must ask you to excuse
me."

He bade the young student adieu in a few curt words, and made his way
homeward through the sweet spring evening, feeling half-ruffled,
half-amused, as any other strong, unimaginative man might who has been
menaced by a vague and shadowy danger.

There was one little indulgence which Abercrombie Smith always allowed
himself, however closely his work might press upon him. Twice a week, on
the Tuesday and the Friday, it was his invariable custom to walk over to
Farlingford, the residence of Doctor Plumptree Peterson, situated about
a mile and a half out of Oxford. Peterson had been a close friend of
Smith's elder brother Francis, and as he was a bachelor, fairly
well-to-do, with a good cellar and a better library, his house was a
pleasant goal for a man who was in need of a brisk walk. Twice a week,
then, the medical student would swing out there along the dark country
roads, and spend a pleasant hour in Peterson's comfortable study,
discussing, over a glass of old port, the gossip of the 'varsity or the
latest developments of medicine or of surgery.

On the day which followed his interview with Monkhouse Lee, Smith shut
up his books at a quarter past eight, the hour when he usually started
for his friend's house. As he was leaving his room, however, his eyes
chanced to fall upon one of the books which Bellingham had lent him, and
his conscience pricked him for not having returned it. However repellent
the man might be, he should not be treated with discourtesy. Taking the
book, he walked downstairs and knocked at his neighbour's door. There
was no answer; but on turning the handle he found that it was unlocked.
Pleased at the thought of avoiding an interview, he stepped inside, and
placed the book with his card upon the table.

The lamp was turned half down, but Smith could see the details of the
room plainly enough. It was all much as he had seen it before--the
frieze, the animal-headed gods, the hanging crocodile, and the table
littered over with papers and dried leaves. The mummy case stood upright
against the wall, but the mummy itself was missing. There was no sign of
any second occupant of the room, and he felt as he withdrew that he had
probably done Bellingham an injustice. Had he a guilty secret to
preserve, he would hardly leave his door open so that all the world
might enter.

The spiral stair was as black as pitch, and Smith was slowly making his
way down its irregular steps, when he was suddenly conscious that
something had passed him in the darkness. There was a faint sound, a
whiff of air, a light brushing past his elbow, but so slight that he
could scarcely be certain of it. He stopped and listened, but the wind
was rustling among the ivy outside, and he could hear nothing else.

"Is that you, Styles?" he shouted.

There was no answer, and all was still behind him. It must have been a
sudden gust of air, for there were crannies and cracks in the old
turret. And yet he could almost have sworn that he heard a footfall by
his very side. He had emerged into the quadrangle, still turning the
matter over in his head, when a man came running swiftly across the
smooth-cropped lawn.

"Is that you, Smith?"

"Hullo, Hastie!"

"For God's sake come at once! Young Lee is drowned! Here's Harrington of
King's with the news. The doctor is out. You'll do, but come along at
once. There may be life in him."

"Have you brandy?"

"No."

"I'll bring some. There's a flask on my table."

Smith bounded up the stairs, taking three at a time, seized the flask,
and was rushing down with it, when, as he passed Bellingham's room, his
eyes fell upon something which left him gasping and staring upon the
landing.

The door, which he had closed behind him, was now open, and right in
front of him, with the lamp-light shining upon it, was the mummy case.
Three minutes ago it had been empty. He could swear to that. Now it
framed the lank body of its horrible occupant, who stood, grim and
stark, with his black shrivelled face towards the door. The form was
lifeless and inert, but it seemed to Smith as he gazed that there still
lingered a lurid spark of vitality, some faint sign of consciousness in
the little eyes which lurked in the depths of the hollow sockets. So
astounded and shaken was he that he had forgotten his errand, and was
still staring at the lean, sunken figure when the voice of his friend
below recalled him to himself.

"Come on, Smith!" he shouted. "It's life and death, you know. Hurry up!
Now, then," he added, as the medical student reappeared, "let us do a
sprint. It is well under a mile, and we should do it in five minutes. A
human life is better worth running for than a pot."

Neck and neck they dashed through the darkness, and did not pull up
until panting and spent, they had reached the little cottage by the
river. Young Lee, limp and dripping like a broken water-plant, was
stretched upon the sofa, the green scum of the river upon his black
hair, and a fringe of white foam upon his leaden-hued lips. Beside him
knelt his fellow student, Harrington, endeavouring to chafe some warmth
back into his rigid limbs.

"I think there's life in him," said Smith, with his hand to the lad's
side. "Put your watch glass to his lips. Yes, there's dimming on it. You
take one arm, Hastie. Now work it as I do, and we'll soon pull him
round."

For ten minutes they worked in silence, inflating and depressing the
chest of the unconscious man. At the end of that time a shiver ran
through his body, his lips trembled, and he opened his eyes. The three
students burst out into an irrepressible cheer.

"Wake up, old chap. You've frightened us quite enough."

"Have some brandy. Take a sip from the flask."

"He's all right now," said his companion Harrington. "Heavens, what a
fright I got! I was reading here, and had gone out for a stroll as far
as the river, when I heard a scream and a splash. Out I ran, and by the
time I could find him and fish him out, all life seemed to have gone.
Then Simpson couldn't get a doctor, for he has a game-leg, and I had to
run, and I don't know what I'd have done without you fellows. That's
right, old chap. Sit up."

Monkhouse Lee had raised himself on his hands, and looked wildly about
him.

"What's up?" he asked. "I've been in the water. Ah, yes; I remember."

A look of fear came into his eyes, and he sank his face into his hands.

"How did you fall in?"

"I didn't fall in."

"How then?"

"I was thrown in. I was standing by the bank, and something from behind
picked me up like a feather and hurled me in. I heard nothing, and I saw
nothing. But I know what it was, for all that."

"And so do I," whispered Smith.

Lee looked up with a quick glance of surprise.

"You've learned, then?" he said. "You remember the advice I gave you?"

"Yes, and I begin to think that I shall take it."

"I don't know what the deuce you fellows are talking about," said
Hastie, "but I think, if I were you, Harrington, I should get Lee to bed
at once. It will be time enough to discuss the why and the wherefore
when he is a little stronger. I think, Smith, you and I can leave him
alone now. I am walking back to college; if you are coming in that
direction, we can have a chat."

But it was little chat that they had upon their homeward path. Smith's
mind was too full of the incidents of the evening, the absence of the
mummy from his neighbour's rooms, the step that passed him on the stair,
the reappearance--the extraordinary, inexplicable reappearance of the
grisly thing--and then this attack upon Lee, corresponding so closely to
the previous outrage upon another man against whom Bellingham bore a
grudge. All this settled in his thoughts, together with the many little
incidents which had previously turned him against his neighbour, and the
singular circumstances under which he was first called in to him. What
had been a dim suspicion, a vague, fantastic conjecture, had suddenly
taken form, and stood out in his mind as a grim fact, a thing not to be
denied. And yet, how monstrous it was! how unheard of! how entirely
beyond all bounds of human experience. An impartial judge, or even the
friend who walked by his side, would simply tell him that his eyes had
deceived him, that the mummy had been there all the time, that young Lee
had tumbled into the river as any other man tumbles into a river, and
that blue pill was the best thing for a disordered liver. He felt that
he would have said as much if the positions had been reversed. And yet
he could swear that Bellingham was a murderer at heart, and that he
wielded a weapon such as no man had ever used in all the grim history of
crime.

Hastie had branched off to his rooms with a few crisp and emphatic
comments upon his friend's unsociability, and Abercrombie Smith crossed
the quadrangle to his corner turret with a strong feeling of repulsion
for his chambers and their associations. He would take Lee's advice,
and move his quarters as soon as possible, for how could a man study
when his ear was ever straining for every murmur or footstep in the room
below? He observed, as he crossed over the lawn, that the light was
still shining in Bellingham's window, and as he passed up the staircase
the door opened, and the man himself looked out at him. With his fat,
evil face he was like some bloated spider fresh from the weaving of his
poisonous web.

"Good-evening," said he. "Won't you come in?"

"No," cried Smith fiercely.

"No? You are busy as ever? I wanted to ask you about Lee. I was sorry to
hear that there was a rumour that something was amiss with him."

His features were grave, but there was the gleam of a hidden laugh in
his eyes as he spoke. Smith saw it, and he could have knocked him down
for it.

"You'll be sorrier still to hear that Monkhouse Lee is doing very well,
and is out of all danger," he answered. "Your hellish tricks have not
come off this time. Oh, you needn't try to brazen it out. I know all
about it."

Bellingham took a step back from the angry student, and half-closed the
door as if to protect himself.

"You are mad," he said. "What do you mean? Do you assert that I had
anything to do with Lee's accident?"

"Yes," thundered Smith. "You and that bag of bones behind you; you
worked it between you. I tell you what it is, Master B., they have given
up burning folk like you, but we still keep a hangman, and, by George!
if any man in this college meets his death while you are here, I'll have
you up, and if you don't swing for it, it won't be my fault. You'll
find that your filthy Egyptian tricks won't answer in England."

"You're a raving lunatic," said Bellingham.

"All right. You just remember what I say, for you'll find that I'll be
better than my word."

The door slammed, and Smith went fuming up to his chamber, where he
locked the door upon the inside, and spent half the night in smoking his
old briar and brooding over the strange events of the evening.

Next morning Abercrombie Smith heard nothing of his neighbour, but
Harrington called upon him in the afternoon to say that Lee was almost
himself again. All day Smith stuck fast to his work, but in the evening
he determined to pay the visit to his friend Doctor Peterson upon which
he had started the night before. A good walk and a friendly chat would
be welcome to his jangled nerves.

Bellingham's door was shut as he passed, but glancing back when he was
some distance from the turret, he saw his neighbour's head at the window
outlined against the lamp-light, his face pressed apparently against the
glass as he gazed out into the darkness. It was a blessing to be away
from all contact with him, if but for a few hours, and Smith stepped out
briskly, and breathed the soft spring air into his lungs. The half-moon
lay in the west between two Gothic pinnacles, and threw upon the
silvered street a dark tracery from the stone-work above. There was a
brisk breeze, and light, fleecy clouds drifted swiftly across the sky.
Old's was on the very border of the town, and in five minutes Smith
found himself beyond the houses and between the hedges of a May-scented
Oxfordshire lane.

It was a lonely and little frequented road which led to his friend's
house. Early as it was, Smith did not meet a single soul upon his way.
He walked briskly along until he came to the avenue gate, which opened
into the long gravel drive leading up to Farlingford. In front of him he
could see the cosy red light of the windows glimmering through the
foliage. He stood with his hand upon the iron latch of the swinging
gate, and he glanced back at the road along which he had come. Something
was coming swiftly down it.

It moved in the shadow of the hedge, silently and furtively, a dark,
crouching figure, dimly visible against the black background. Even as he
gazed back at it, it had lessened its distance by twenty paces, and was
fast closing upon him. Out of the darkness he had a glimpse of a scraggy
neck, and of two eyes that will ever haunt him in his dreams. He turned,
and with a cry of terror he ran for his life up the avenue. There were
the red lights, the signals of safety, almost within a stone's-throw of
him. He was a famous runner, but never had he run as he ran that night.

The heavy gate had swung into place behind him, but he heard it dash
open again before his pursuer. As he rushed madly and wildly through the
night, he could hear a swift, dry patter behind him, and could see, as
he threw back a glance, that this horror was bounding like a tiger at
his heels, with blazing eyes and one stringy arm out-thrown. Thank God,
the door was ajar. He could see the thin bar of light which shot from
the lamp in the hall. Nearer yet sounded the clatter from behind. He
heard a hoarse gurgling at his very shoulder. With a shriek he flung
himself against the door, slammed and bolted it behind him, and sank
half-fainting on to the hall chair.

"My goodness, Smith, what's the matter?" asked Peterson, appearing at
the door of his study.

"Give me some brandy."

Peterson disappeared, and came rushing out again with a glass and a
decanter.

"You need it," he said, as his visitor drank off what he poured out for
him. "Why, man, you are as white as a cheese."

Smith laid down his glass, rose up, and took a deep breath.

"I am my own man again now," said he. "I was never so unmanned before.
But, with your leave, Peterson, I will sleep here to-night, for I don't
think I could face that road again except by daylight. It's weak, I
know, but I can't help it."

Peterson looked at his visitor with a very questioning eye.

"Of course you shall sleep here if you wish. I'll tell Mrs. Burney to
make up the spare bed. Where are you off to now?"

"Come up with me to the window that overlooks the door. I want you to
see what I have seen."

They went up to the window of the upper hall whence they could look down
upon the approach to the house. The drive and the fields on either side
lay quiet and still, bathed in the peaceful moonlight.

"Well, really, Smith," remarked Peterson, "it is well that I know you to
be an abstemious man. What in the world can have frightened you?"

"I'll tell you presently. But where can it have gone? Ah, now, look,
look! See the curve of the road just beyond your gate."

"Yes, I see; you needn't pinch my arm off. I saw some one pass. I should
say a man, rather thin, apparently, and tall, very tall. But what of
him? And what of yourself? You are still shaking like an aspen leaf."

"I have been within hand-grip of the devil, that's all. But come down to
your study, and I shall tell you the whole story."

He did so. Under the cheery lamp-light, with a glass of wine on the
table beside him, and the portly form and florid face of his friend in
front, he narrated, in their order, all the events, great and small,
which had formed so singular a chain, from the night on which he had
found Bellingham fainting in front of the mummy case until this horrid
experience of an hour ago.

"There now," he said as he concluded, "that's the whole black business.
It is monstrous and incredible, but it is true."

Doctor Plumptree Peterson sat for some time in silence with a very
puzzled expression upon his face.

"I never heard of such a thing in my life, never!" he said at last. "You
have told me the facts. Now tell me your inferences."

"You can draw your own."

"But I should like to hear yours. You have thought over the matter, and
I have not."

"Well, it must be a little vague in detail, but the main points seem to
me to be clear enough. This fellow Bellingham, in his Eastern studies,
has got hold of some infernal secret by which a mummy--or possibly only
this particular mummy--can be temporarily brought to life. He was trying
this disgusting business on the night when he fainted. No doubt the
sight of the creature moving had shaken his nerve, even though he had
expected it. You remember that almost the first words he said were to
call out upon himself as a fool. Well, he got more hardened afterwards,
and carried the matter through without fainting. The vitality which he
could put into it was evidently only a passing thing, for I have seen it
continually in its case as dead as this table. He has some elaborate
process, I fancy, by which he brings the thing to pass. Having done it,
he naturally bethought him that he might use the creature as an agent.
It has intelligence and it has strength. For some purpose he took Lee
into his confidence; but Lee, like a decent Christian, would have
nothing to do with such a business. Then they had a row, and Lee vowed
that he would tell his sister of Bellingham's true character.
Bellingham's game was to prevent him, and he nearly managed it, by
setting this creature of his on his track. He had already tried its
powers upon another man--Norton--towards whom he had a grudge. It is the
merest chance that he has not two murders upon his soul. Then, when I
taxed him with the matter, he had the strongest reasons for wishing me
out of the way, before I could convey my knowledge to any one else. He
got his chance when I went out, for he knew my habits and where I was
bound for. I have had a narrow shave, Peterson, and it is mere luck you
didn't find me on your doorstep in the morning. I'm not a nervous man as
a rule, and I never thought to have the fear of death put upon me as it
was to-night."

"My dear boy, you take the matter too seriously," said his companion.
"Your nerves are out of order with your work, and you make too much of
it. How could such a thing as this stride about the streets of Oxford,
even at night, without being seen?"

"It has been seen. There is quite a scare in the town about an escaped
ape, as they imagine the creature to be. It is the talk of the place."

"Well, it's a striking chain of events. And yet, my dear fellow, you
must allow that each incident in itself is capable of a more natural
explanation."

"What! even my adventure of to-night?"

"Certainly. You come out with your nerves all unstrung, and your head
full of this theory of yours. Some gaunt, half-famished tramp steals
after you, and seeing you run, is emboldened to pursue you. Your fears
and imagination do the rest."

"It won't do, Peterson; it won't do."

"And again, in the instance of your finding the mummy case empty, and
then a few moments later with an occupant, you know that it was
lamp-light, that the lamp was half turned down, and that you had no
special reason to look hard at the case. It is quite possible that you
may have overlooked the creature in the first instance."

"No, no; it is out of the question."

"And then Lee may have fallen into the river, and Norton been garrotted.
It is certainly a formidable indictment that you have against
Bellingham; but if you were to place it before a police magistrate, he
would simply laugh in your face."

"I know he would. That is why I mean to take the matter into my own
hands."

"Eh?"

"Yes; I feel that a public duty rests upon me, and, besides, I must do
it for my own safety, unless I choose to allow myself to be hunted by
this beast out of the college, and that would be a little too feeble. I
have quite made up my mind what I shall do. And first of all, may I use
your paper and pens for an hour?"

"Most certainly. You will find all that you want upon that side-table."

Abercrombie Smith sat down before a sheet of foolscap, and for an hour,
and then for a second hour his pen travelled swiftly over it. Page after
page was finished and tossed aside while his friend leaned back in his
arm-chair, looking across at him with patient curiosity. At last, with
an exclamation of satisfaction, Smith sprang to his feet, gathered his
papers up into order, and laid the last one upon Peterson's desk.

"Kindly sign this as a witness," he said.

"A witness? Of what?"

"Of my signature, and of the date. The date is the most important. Why,
Peterson, my life might hang upon it."

"My dear Smith, you are talking wildly. Let me beg you to go to bed."

"On the contrary, I never spoke so deliberately in my life. And I will
promise to go to bed the moment you have signed it."

"But what is it?"

"It is a statement of all that I have been telling you to-night. I wish
you to witness it."

"Certainly," said Peterson, signing his name under that of his
companion. "There you are! But what is the idea?"

"You will kindly retain it, and produce it in case I am arrested."

"Arrested? For what?"

"For murder. It is quite on the cards. I wish to be ready for every
event. There is only one course open to me, and I am determined to take
it."

"For Heaven's sake, don't do anything rash!"

"Believe me, it would be far more rash to adopt any other course. I hope
that we won't need to bother you, but it will ease my mind to know that
you have this statement of my motives. And now I am ready to take your
advice and to go to roost, for I want to be at my best in the morning."

       *       *       *       *       *

Abercrombie Smith was not an entirely pleasant man to have as an enemy.
Slow and easy-tempered, he was formidable when driven to action. He
brought to every purpose in life the same deliberate resoluteness which
had distinguished him as a scientific student. He had laid his studies
aside for a day, but he intended that the day should not be wasted. Not
a word did he say to his host as to his plans, but by nine o'clock he
was well on his way to Oxford.

In the High Street he stopped at Clifford's the gunmaker's, and bought
a heavy revolver, with a box of central-fire cartridges. Six of them he
slipped into the chambers, and half-cocking the weapon, placed it in the
pocket of his coat. He then made his way to Hastie's rooms, where the
big oarsman was lounging over his breakfast, with the _Sporting Times_
propped up against the coffee-pot.

"Hullo! What's up?" he asked. "Have some coffee?"

"No, thank you. I want you to come with me, Hastie, and do what I ask
you."

"Certainly, my boy."

"And bring a heavy stick with you."

"Hullo!" Hastie stared. "Here's a hunting crop that would fell an ox."

"One other thing. You have a box of amputating knives. Give me the
longest of them."

"There you are. You seem to be fairly on the war trail. Anything else?"

"No; that will do." Smith placed the knife inside his coat, and led the
way to the quadrangle. "We are neither of us chickens, Hastie," said he.
"I think I can do this job alone, but I take you as a precaution. I am
going to have a little talk with Bellingham. If I have only him to deal
with, I won't, of course, need you. If I shout, however, up you come,
and lam out with your whip as hard as you can lick. Do you understand?"

"All right. I'll come if I hear you bellow."

"Stay here, then. I may be a little time, but don't budge until I come
down."

"I'm a fixture."

Smith ascended the stairs, opened Bellingham's door and stepped in.
Bellingham was seated behind his table, writing. Beside him, among his
litter of strange possessions, towered the mummy case, with its sale
number 249 still stuck upon its front, and its hideous occupant stiff
and stark within it. Smith looked very deliberately round him, closed
the door, and then stepping across to the fire-place, struck a match and
set the fire alight. Bellingham sat staring, with amazement and rage
upon his bloated face.

"Well, really now, you make yourself at home," he gasped.

Smith sat himself deliberately down, placing his watch upon the table,
drew out his pistol, cocked it, and laid it in his lap. Then he took the
long amputating knife from his bosom, and threw it down in front of
Bellingham.

"Now, then," said he, "just get to work and cut up that mummy."

"Oh, is that it?" said Bellingham with a sneer.

"Yes, that is it. They tell me that the law can't touch you. But I have
a law that will set matters straight. If in five minutes you have not
set to work, I swear by the God who made me that I will put a bullet
through your brain!"

"You would murder me?"

Bellingham had half risen, and his face was the colour of putty.

"Yes."

"And for what?"

"To stop your mischief. One minute has gone."

"But what have I done?"

"I know and you know."

"This is mere bullying."

"Two minutes are gone."

"But you must give reasons. You are a madman--a dangerous madman. Why
should I destroy my own property? It is a valuable mummy."

"You must cut it up, and you must burn it."

"I will do no such thing."

"Four minutes are gone."

Smith took up the pistol and he looked towards Bellingham with an
inexorable face. As the secondhand stole round, he raised his hand, and
the finger twitched upon the trigger.

"There! there! I'll do it!" screamed Bellingham.

In frantic haste he caught up the knife and hacked at the figure of the
mummy, ever glancing round to see the eye and the weapon of his terrible
visitor bent upon him. The creature crackled and snapped under every
stab of the keen blade. A thick yellow dust rose up from it. Spices and
dried essences rained down upon the floor. Suddenly, with a rending
crack, its backbone snapped asunder, and it fell, a brown heap of
sprawling limbs, upon the floor.

"Now into the fire!" said Smith.

The flames leaped and roared as the dried and tinder-like debris was
piled upon it. The little room was like the stoke-hole of a steamer and
the sweat ran down the faces of the two men; but still the one stooped
and worked, while the other sat watching him with a set face. A thick,
fat smoke oozed out from the fire, and a heavy smell of burned rosin and
singed hair filled the air. In a quarter of an hour a few charred and
brittle sticks were all that was left of Lot No. 249.

"Perhaps that will satisfy you," snarled Bellingham, with hate and fear
in his little grey eyes as he glanced back at his tormentor.

"No; I must make a clean sweep of all your materials. We must have no
more devil's tricks. In with all these leaves! They may have something
to do with it."

"And what now?" asked Bellingham, when the leaves also had been added to
the blaze.

"Now the roll of papyrus which you had on the table that night. It is in
that drawer, I think."

"No, no," shouted Bellingham. "Don't burn that! Why, man, you don't know
what you do. It is unique; it contains wisdom which is nowhere else to
be found."

"Out with it!"

"But look here, Smith, you can't really mean it. I'll share the
knowledge with you. I'll teach you all that is in it. Or, stay, let me
only copy it before you burn it!"

Smith stepped forward and turned the key in the drawer. Taking out the
yellow, curled roll of paper, he threw it into the fire, and pressed it
down with his heel. Bellingham screamed, and grabbed at it; but Smith
pushed him back and stood over it until it was reduced to a formless
grey ash.

"Now, Master B.," said he, "I think I have pretty well drawn your teeth.
You'll hear from me again, if you return to your old tricks. And now
good-morning, for I must go back to my studies."

And such is the narrative of Abercrombie Smith as to the singular events
which occurred in Old College, Oxford, in the spring of '84. As
Bellingham left the university immediately afterwards, and was last
heard of in the Soudan, there is no one who can contradict his
statement. But the wisdom of men is small, and the ways of Nature are
strange, and who shall put a bound to the dark things which may be found
by those who seek for them?




XI

"DE PROFUNDIS"


So long as the oceans are the ligaments which bind together the great
broadcast British Empire, so long will there be a dash of romance in our
minds. For the soul is swayed by the waters, as the waters are by the
moon, and when the great highways of an empire are along such roads as
these, so full of strange sights and sounds, with danger ever running
like a hedge on either side of the course, it is a dull mind indeed
which does not bear away with it some trace of such a passage. And now,
Britain lies far beyond herself, for the three-mile limit of every
seaboard is her frontier, which has been won by hammer and loom and pick
rather than by arts of war. For it is written in history that neither
king nor army can bar the path to the man who having twopence in his
strong box, and knowing well where he can turn it to threepence, sets
his mind to that one end. And as the frontier has broadened the mind of
Britain has broadened too, spreading out until all men can see that the
ways of the island are continental, even as those of the Continent are
insular.

But for this a price must be paid, and the price is a grievous one. As
the beast of old must have one young human life as a tribute every year,
so to our Empire we throw from day to day the pick and flower of our
youth. The engine is world-wide and strong, but the only fuel that will
drive it is the lives of British men. Thus it is that in the grey old
cathedrals, as we look round upon the brasses on the walls, we see
strange names, such names as they who reared those walls had never
heard, for it is in Peshawur, and Umballah, and Korti, and Fort Pearson
that the youngsters die, leaving only a precedent and a brass behind
them. But if every man had his obelisk, even where he lay, then no
frontier line need be drawn, for a cordon of British graves would ever
show how high the Anglo-Celtic tide had lapped.

This, then, as well as the waters which join us to the world, has done
something to tinge us with romance. For when so many have their loved
ones over the seas, walking amid hillmen's bullets, or swamp malaria,
where death is sudden and distance great, then mind communes with mind,
and strange stories arise of dream, presentiment, or vision, where the
mother sees her dying son, and is past the first bitterness of her grief
ere the message comes which should have broken the news. The learned
have of late looked into the matter and have even labelled it with a
name; but what can we know more of it save that a poor stricken soul,
when hard-pressed and driven, can shoot across the earth some
ten-thousand-mile-distant picture of its trouble to the mind which is
most akin to it. Far be it from me to say that there lies no such power
within us, for of all things which the brain will grasp the last will be
itself; but yet it is well to be very cautious over such matters, for
once at least I have known that which was within the laws of Nature seem
to be far upon the further side of them.

John Vansittart was the younger partner of the firm of Hudson and
Vansittart, coffee exporters of the Island of Ceylon, three-quarters
Dutchman by descent, but wholly English in his sympathies. For years I
had been his agent in London, and when in '72 he came over to England
for a three months' holiday, he turned to me for the introductions which
would enable him to see something of town and country life. Armed with
seven letters he left my offices, and for many weeks scrappy notes from
different parts of the country let me know that he had found favour in
the eyes of my friends. Then came word of his engagement to Emily
Lawson, of a cadet branch of the Hereford Lawsons, and at the very tail
of the first flying rumour the news of his absolute marriage, for the
wooing of a wanderer must be short, and the days were already crowding
on towards the date when he must be upon his homeward journey. They were
to return together to Colombo in one of the firm's own thousand-ton
barque-rigged sailing ships, and this was to be their princely
honeymoon, at once a necessity and a delight.

Those were the royal days of coffee-planting in Ceylon, before a single
season and a rotting fungus drove a whole community through years of
despair to one of the greatest commercial victories which pluck and
ingenuity ever won. Not often is it that men have the heart when their
one great industry is withered to rear up in a few years another as rich
to take its place, and the tea-fields of Ceylon are as true a monument
to courage as is the lion at Waterloo. But in '72 there was no cloud yet
above the skyline, and the hopes of the planters were as high and as
bright as the hill-sides on which they reared their crops. Vansittart
came down to London with his young and beautiful wife. I was introduced,
dined with them, and it was finally arranged that I, since business
called me also to Ceylon, should be a fellow-passenger with them on the
_Eastern Star_, which was timed to sail on the following Monday.

It was on the Sunday evening that I saw him again. He was shown up into
my rooms about nine o'clock at night, with the air of a man who is
bothered and out of sorts. His hand, as I shook it, was hot and dry.

"I wish, Atkinson," said he, "that you could give me a little lime-juice
and water. I have a beastly thirst upon me, and the more I take the more
I seem to want."

I rang and ordered a caraffe and glasses. "You are flushed," said I.
"You don't look the thing."

"No, I'm clean off colour. Got a touch of rheumatism in my back, and
don't seem to taste my food. It is this vile London that is choking me.
I'm not used to breathing air which has been used up by four million
lungs all sucking away on every side of you." He flapped his crooked
hands before his face, like a man who really struggles for his breath.

"A touch of the sea will soon set you right."

"Yes, I'm of one mind with you there. That's the thing for me. I want no
other doctor. If I don't get to sea to-morrow I'll have an illness.
There are no two ways about it." He drank off the tumbler of lime-juice,
and clapped his two hands with his knuckles doubled up into the small of
his back.

"That seems to ease me," said he, looking at me with a filmy eye. "Now
I want your help, Atkinson, for I am rather awkwardly placed."

"As how?"

"This way. My wife's mother got ill and wired for her. I couldn't
go--you know best yourself how tied I have been--so she had to go alone.
Now I've had another wire to say that she can't come to-morrow, but that
she will pick up the ship at Falmouth on Wednesday. We put in there, you
know, though I count it hard, Atkinson, that a man should be asked to
believe in a mystery, and cursed if he can't do it. Cursed, mind you, no
less." He leaned forward and began to draw a catchy breath like a man
who is poised on the very edge of a sob.

Then first it came into my mind that I had heard much of the
hard-drinking life of the island, and that from brandy came these wild
words and fevered hands. The flushed cheek and the glazing eye were
those of one whose drink is strong upon him. Sad it was to see so noble
a young man in the grip of that most bestial of all the devils.

"You should lie down," I said, with some severity.

He screwed up his eyes like a man who is striving to wake himself, and
looked up with an air of surprise.

"So I shall presently," said he, quite rationally. "I felt quite swimmy
just now, but I am my own man again now. Let me see, what was I talking
about? Oh, ah, of course, about the wife. She joins the ship at
Falmouth. Now I want to go round by water. I believe my health depends
upon it. I just want a little clean first-lung air to set me on my feet
again. I ask you, like a good fellow, to go to Falmouth by rail, so that
in case we should be late you may be there to look after the wife. Put
up at the Royal Hotel, and I will wire her that you are there. Her
sister will bring her down, so that it will be all plain sailing."

"I'll do it with pleasure," said I. "In fact, I would rather go by rail,
for we shall have enough and to spare of the sea before we reach
Colombo. I believe too that you badly need a change. Now, I should go
and turn in, if I were you."

"Yes, I will. I sleep aboard to-night. You know," he continued, as the
film settled down again over his eyes, "I've not slept well the last few
nights. I've been troubled with theolololog--that is to say,
theolological--hang it," with a desperate effort, "with the doubts of
theolologicians. Wondering why the Almighty made us, you know, and why
He made our heads swimmy, and fixed little pains into the small of our
backs. Maybe I'll do better to-night." He rose and steadied himself with
an effort against the corner of the chair back.

"Look here, Vansittart," said I gravely, stepping up to him, and laying
my hand upon his sleeve, "I can give you a shakedown here. You are not
fit to go out. You are all over the place. You've been mixing your
drinks."

"Drinks!" He stared at me stupidly.

"You used to carry your liquor better than this."

"I give you my word, Atkinson, that I have not had a drain for two days.
It's not drink. I don't know what it is. I suppose you think this is
drink." He took up my hand in his burning grasp, and passed it over his
own forehead.

"Great Lord!" said I.

His skin felt like a thin sheet of velvet beneath which lies a
close-packed layer of small shot. It was smooth to the touch at any one
place, but to a finger passed along it, rough as a nutmeg-grater.

"It's all right," said he, smiling at my startled face. "I've had the
prickly heat nearly as bad."

"But this is never prickly heat."

"No, it's London. It's breathing bad air. But to-morrow it'll be all
right. There's a surgeon aboard, so I shall be in safe hands. I must be
off now."

"Not you," said I, pushing him back into a chair. "This is past a joke.
You don't move from here until a doctor sees you. Just stay where you
are."

I caught up my hat and rushing round to the house of a neighbouring
physician, I brought him back with me. The room was empty and Vansittart
gone. I rang the bell. The servant said that the gentleman had ordered a
cab the instant that I had left, and had gone off in it. He had told the
cabman to drive to the docks.

"Did the gentleman seem ill?" I asked.

"Ill!" The man smiled. "No, sir, he was singin' his 'ardest all the
time."

The information was not as reassuring as my servant seemed to think, but
I reflected that he was going straight back to the _Eastern Star_, and
that there was a doctor aboard of her, so that there was nothing which I
could do in the matter. None the less, when I thought of his thirst, his
burning hands, his heavy eye, his tripping speech, and lastly, of that
leprous forehead, I carried with me to bed an unpleasant memory of my
visitor and his visit.

At eleven o'clock next day I was at the docks, but the _Eastern Star_
had already moved down the river, and was nearly at Gravesend. To
Gravesend I went by train, but only to see her topmasts far off, with a
plume of smoke from a tug in front of her. I would hear no more of my
friend until I rejoined him at Falmouth. When I got back to my offices,
a telegram was awaiting me from Mrs. Vansittart, asking me to meet her;
and next evening found us both at the Royal Hotel, Falmouth, where we
were to wait for the _Eastern Star_. Ten days passed, and there came no
news of her.

They were ten days which I am not likely to forget. On the very day that
the _Eastern Star_ had cleared from the Thames, a furious easterly gale
had sprung up, and blew on from day to day for the greater part of a
week without the sign of a lull. Such a screaming, raving, long-drawn
storm has never been known on the southern coast. From our hotel windows
the sea view was all banked in haze, with a little rain-swept
half-circle under our very eyes, churned and lashed into one tossing
stretch of foam. So heavy was the wind upon the waves that little sea
could rise, for the crest of each billow was torn shrieking from it, and
lashed broadcast over the bay. Clouds, wind, sea, all were rushing to
the west, and there, looking down at this mad jumble of elements, I
waited on day after day, my sole companion a white, silent woman, with
terror in her eyes, her forehead pressed ever against the window, her
gaze from early morning to the fall of night fixed upon that wall of
grey haze through which the loom of a vessel might come. She said
nothing, but that face of hers was one long wail of fear.

On the fifth day I took counsel with an old seaman.

I should have preferred to have done so alone, but she saw me speak with
him, and was at our side in an instant, with parted lips and a prayer in
her eyes.

"Seven days out from London," said he, "and five in the gale. Well, the
Channel's swept clear by this wind. There's three things for it. She may
have popped into port on the French side. That's like enough."

"No, no; he knew we were here. He would have telegraphed."

"Ah, yes, so he would. Well, then, he might have run for it, and if he
did that he won't be very far from Madeira by now. That'll be it, marm,
you may depend."

"Or else? You said there was a third chance."

"Did I, marm? No, only two, I think. I don't think I said anything of a
third. Your ship's out there, depend upon it, away out in the Atlantic,
and you'll hear of it time enough, for the weather is breaking. Now
don't you fret, marm, and wait quiet, and you'll find a real blue
Cornish sky to-morrow."

The old seaman was right in his surmise, for the next day broke calm and
bright, with only a low dwindling cloud in the west to mark the last
trailing wreaths of the storm-wrack. But still there came no word from
the sea, and no sign of the ship. Three more weary days had passed, the
weariest that I have ever spent, when there came a seafaring man to the
hotel with a letter. I gave a shout of joy. It was from the captain of
the _Eastern Star_. As I read the first lines of it I whisked my hand
over it, but she laid her own upon it and drew it away. "I have seen
it," said she, in a cold, quiet voice. "I may as well see the rest,
too."

     "DEAR SIR," said the letter,

     "Mr. Vansittart is down with the smallpox, and we are blown so far
     on our course that we don't know what to do, he being off his head
     and unfit to tell us. By dead reckoning we are but three hundred
     miles from Funchal, so I take it that it is best that we should
     push on there, get Mr. V. into hospital, and wait in the Bay until
     you come. There's a sailing-ship due from Falmouth to Funchal in a
     few days' time, as I understand. This goes by the brig _Marian_ of
     Falmouth, and five pounds is due to the master,

     "Yours respectfully,

     "JNO. HINES."

She was a wonderful woman that, only a chit of a girl fresh from school,
but as quiet and strong as a man. She said nothing--only pressed her
lips together tight, and put on her bonnet.

"You are going out?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Can I be of use?"

"No; I am going to the doctor's."

"To the doctor's?"

"Yes. To learn how to nurse a small-pox case."

She was busy at that all the evening, and next morning we were off with
a fine ten-knot breeze in the barque _Rose of Sharon_ for Madeira. For
five days we made good time, and were no great way from the island; but
on the sixth there fell a calm, and we lay without motion on a sea of
oil, heaving slowly, but making not a foot of way.

At ten o'clock that night Emily Vansittart and I stood leaning on the
starboard railing of the poop, with a full moon shining at our backs,
and casting a black shadow of the barque, and of our own two heads, upon
the shining water. From the shadow a broadening path of moonshine
stretched away to the lonely skyline, flickering and shimmering in the
gentle heave of the swell. We were talking with bent heads, chatting of
the calm, of the chances of wind, of the look of the sky, when there
came a sudden plop, like a rising salmon, and there, in the clear light,
John Vansittart sprang out of the water and looked up at us.

I never saw anything clearer in my life than I saw that man. The moon
shone full upon him, and he was but three oars' length away. His face
was more puffed than when I had seen him last, mottled here and there
with dark scabs, his mouth and eyes open as one who is struck with some
overpowering surprise. He had some white stuff streaming from his
shoulders, and one hand was raised to his ear, the other crooked across
his breast. I saw him leap from the water into the air, and in the dead
calm the waves of his coming lapped up against the sides of the vessel.
Then his figure sank back into the water again, and I heard a rending,
crackling sound like a bundle of brushwood snapping in the fire on a
frosty night. There were no signs of him when I looked again, but a
swift swirl and eddy on the still sea still marked the spot where he had
been. How long I stood there, tingling to my finger-tips, holding up an
unconscious woman with one hand, clutching at the rail of the vessel
with the other, was more than I could afterwards tell. I had been noted
as a man of slow and unresponsive emotions, but this time at least I was
shaken to the core. Once and twice I struck my foot upon the deck to be
certain that I was indeed the master of my own senses, and that this was
not some mad prank of an unruly brain. As I stood, still marvelling, the
woman shivered, opened her eyes, gasped, and then standing erect with
her hands upon the rail, looked out over the moonlit sea with a face
which had aged ten years in a summer night.

"You saw his vision?" she murmured.

"I saw something."

"It was he! It was John! He is dead!"

I muttered some lame words of doubt.

"Doubtless he died at this hour," she whispered. "In hospital at
Madeira. I have read of such things. His thoughts were with me. His
vision came to me. Oh, my John, my dear, dear, lost John!"

She broke out suddenly into a storm of weeping, and I led her down into
her cabin, where I left her with her sorrow. That night a brisk breeze
blew up from the east, and in the evening of the next day we passed the
two islets of Los Desertos, and dropped anchor at sundown in the Bay of
Funchal. The _Eastern Star_ lay no great distance from us, with the
quarantine flag flying from her main, and her Jack half-way up her peak.

"You see," said Mrs. Vansittart quickly. She was dry-eyed now, for she
had known how it would be.

That night we received permission from the authorities to move on board
the _Eastern Star_. The captain, Hines, was waiting upon deck with
confusion and grief contending upon his bluff face as he sought for
words with which to break this heavy tidings, but she took the story
from his lips.

"I know that my husband is dead," she said. "He died yesterday night,
about ten o'clock, in hospital at Madeira, did he not?"

The seaman stared aghast. "No, marm, he died eight days ago at sea, and
we had to bury him out there, for we lay in a belt of calm, and could
not say when we might make the land."

Well, those are the main facts about the death of John Vansittart, and
his appearance to his wife somewhere about lat. 35 N. and long. 15 W. A
clearer case of a wraith has seldom been made out, and since then it has
been told as such, and put into print as such, and endorsed by a learned
society as such, and so floated off with many others to support the
recent theory of telepathy. For myself, I hold telepathy to be proved,
but I would snatch this one case from amid the evidence, and say that I
do not think that it was the wraith of John Vansittart, but John
Vansittart himself whom we saw that night leaping into the moonlight out
of the depths of the Atlantic. It has ever been my belief that some
strange chance--one of those chances which seem so improbable and yet so
constantly occur--had becalmed us over the very spot where the man had
been buried a week before. For the rest, the surgeon tells me that the
leaden weight was not too firmly fixed, and that seven days bring about
changes which fetch a body to the surface. Coming from the depth to
which the weight would have sunk it, he explains that it might well
attain such a velocity as to carry it clear of the water. Such is my own
explanation of the matter, and if you ask me what then became of the
body, I must recall to you that snapping, crackling sound, with the
swirl in the water. The shark is a surface feeder and is plentiful in
those parts.




XII

THE LIFT


Flight-Commander Stangate should have been happy. He had come safely
through the war without a hurt, and with a good name in the most heroic
of services. He had only just turned thirty, and a great career seemed
to lie ahead of him. Above all, beautiful Mary MacLean was walking by
his side, and he had her promise that she was there for life. What could
a young man ask for more? And yet there was a heavy load upon his heart.

He could not explain it himself, and endeavoured to reason himself out
of it. There was the blue sky above him, the blue sea in front, the
beautiful gardens with their throngs of happy pleasure-seekers around.
Above all, there was that sweet face turned upon him with questioning
concern. Why could he not raise himself to so joyful an environment? He
made effort after effort, but they were not convincing enough to deceive
the quick instinct of a loving woman.

"What is it, Tom?" she asked anxiously. "I can see that something is
clouding you. Do tell me if I can help you in any way."

He laughed in shame-faced fashion.

"It is such a sin to spoil our little outing," he said. "I could kick
myself round these gardens when I think of it. Don't worry, my darling,
for I know the cloud will roll off. I suppose I am a creature of nerves,
though I should have got past that by now. The Flying Service is
supposed either to break you or to warrant you for life."

"It is nothing definite, then?"

"No, it is nothing definite. That's the worst of it. You could fight it
more easily if it was. It's just a dead, heavy depression here in my
chest and across my forehead. But do forgive me, dear girl! What a brute
I am to shadow you like this."

"But I love to share even the smallest trouble."

"Well, it's gone--vamosed--vanished. We will talk about it no more."

She gave him a swift, penetrating glance.

"No, no, Tom; your brow shows, as well as feels. Tell me, dear, have you
often felt like this? You really look very ill. Sit here, dear, in the
shade and tell me of it."

They sat together in the shadow of the great latticed Tower which reared
itself six hundred feet high beside them.

"I have an absurd faculty," said he; "I don't know that I have ever
mentioned it to any one before. But when imminent danger is threatening
me I get these strange forebodings. Of course it is absurd to-day in
these peaceful surroundings. It only shows how queerly these things
work. But it is the first time that it has deceived me."

"When had you it before?"

"When I was a lad it seized me one morning. I was nearly drowned that
afternoon. I had it when the burglar came to Morton Hall and I got a
bullet through my coat. Then twice in the war when I was overmatched and
escaped by a miracle, I had this strange feeling before ever I climbed
into my machine. Then it lifts quite suddenly, like a mist in the
sunshine. Why, it is lifting now. Look at me! Can't you see that it is
so?"

She could indeed. He had turned in a minute from a haggard man to a
laughing boy. She found herself laughing in sympathy. A rush of high
spirits and energy had swept away his strange foreboding and filled his
whole soul with the vivid, dancing joy of youth.

"Thank goodness!" he cried. "I think it is your dear eyes that have done
it. I could not stand that wistful look in them. What a silly, foolish
nightmare it all has been! There's an end for ever in my belief in
presentiments. Now, dear girl, we have just time for one good turn
before luncheon. After that the gardens get so crowded that it is
hopeless to do anything. Shall we have a side show, or the great wheel,
or the flying boat, or what?"

"What about the Tower?" she asked, glancing upwards. "Surely that
glorious air and the view from the top would drive the last wisps of
cloud out of your mind."

He looked at his watch.

"Well, it's past twelve, but I suppose we could do it all in an hour.
But it doesn't seem to be working. What about it, conductor?"

The man shook his head and pointed to a little knot of people who were
assembled at the entrance.

"They've all been waiting, sir. It's hung up, but the gear is being
overhauled, and I expect the signal every minute. If you join the others
I promise it won't be long."

They had hardly reached the group when the steel face of the lift
rolled aside--a sign that there was hope in the future. The motley crowd
drifted through the opening and waited expectantly upon the wooden
platform. They were not numerous, for the gardens are not crowded until
the afternoon, but they were fair samples of the kindly, good-humoured
north-country folk who take their annual holiday at Northam. Their faces
were all upturned now, and they were watching with keen interest a man
who was descending the steel framework. It seemed a dangerous,
precarious business, but he came as swiftly as an ordinary mortal upon a
staircase.

"My word!" said the conductor, glancing up. "Jim has got a move on this
morning."

"Who is he?" asked Commander Stangate.

"That's Jim Barnes, sir, the best workman that ever went on a scaffold.
He fair lives up there. Every bolt and rivet are under his care. He's a
wonder, is Jim."

"But don't argue religion with him," said one of the group.

The attendant laughed.

"Ah, you know him, then," said he. "No, don't argue religion with him."

"Why not?" asked the officer.

"Well, he takes it very hard, he does. He's the shining light of his
sect."

"It ain't hard to be that," said the knowing one. "I've heard there are
only six folk in the fold. He's one of those who picture heaven as the
exact size of their own back street conventicle and every one else left
outside it."

"Better not tell him so while he's got that hammer in his hand," said
the conductor, in a hurried whisper. "Hallo, Jim, how goes it this
morning?"

The man slid swiftly down the last thirty feet, and then balanced
himself on a cross-bar while he looked at the little group in the lift.
As he stood there, clad in a leather suit, with his pliers and other
tools dangling from his brown belt, he was a figure to please the eye of
an artist. The man was very tall and gaunt, with great straggling limbs
and every appearance of giant strength. His face was a remarkable one,
noble and yet sinister, with dark eyes and hair, a prominent hooked
nose, and a beard which flowed over his chest. He steadied himself with
one knotted hand, while the other held a steel hammer dangling by his
knee.

"It's all ready aloft," said he. "I'll go up with you if I may." He
sprang down from his perch and joined the others in the lift.

"I suppose you are always watching it," said the young lady.

"That is what I am engaged for, miss. From morning to night, and often
from night to morning, I am up here. There are times when I feel as if I
were not a man at all, but a fowl of the air. They fly round me, the
creatures, as I lie out on the girders, and they cry to me until I find
myself crying back to the poor soulless things."

"It's a great charge," said the Commander, glancing up at the wonderful
tracery of steel outlined against the deep blue sky.

"Aye, sir, and there is not a nut nor a screw that is riot in my
keeping. Here's my hammer to ring them true and my spanner to wrench
them tight. As the Lord over the earth, so am I--even I--over the
Tower, with power of life and power of death, aye of death and of life."

The hydraulic machinery had begun to work and the lift very slowly
ascended. As it mounted, the glorious panorama of the coast and bay
gradually unfolded itself. So engrossing was the view that the
passengers hardly noticed it when the platform stopped abruptly between
stages at the five hundred foot level. Barnes, the workman, muttered
that something must be amiss, and springing like a cat across the gap
which separated them from the trellis-work of metal he clambered out of
sight. The motley little party, suspended in mid-air, lost something of
their British shyness under such unwonted conditions and began to
compare notes with each other. One couple, who addressed each other as
Dolly and Billy, announced to the company that they were the particular
stars of the Hippodrome bill, and kept their neighbours tittering with
their rather obvious wit. A buxom mother, her precocious son, and two
married couples upon holiday formed an appreciative audience.

"You'd like to be a sailor, would you?" said Billy the comedian, in
answer to some remark of the boy. "Look 'ere, my nipper, you'll end up
as a blooming corpse if you ain't careful. See 'im standin' at the edge.
At this hour of the morning I can't bear to watch it."

"What's the hour got to do with it?" asked a stout commercial traveller.

"My nerves are worth nothin' before midday. Why, lookin' down there, and
seem' those folks like dots, puts me all in a twitter. My family is all
alike in the mornin'."

"I expect," said Dolly, a high-coloured young woman, "that they're all
alike the evening before."

There was a general laugh, which was led by the comedian.

"You got it across that time, Dolly. It's K.O. for Battling Billy--still
senseless when last heard of. If my family is laughed at I'll leave the
room."

"It's about time we did," said the commercial traveller, who was a
red-faced, choleric person. "It's a disgrace the way they hold us up.
I'll write to the company."

"Where's the bell-push?" said Billy. "I'm goin' to ring."

"What for--the waiter?" asked the lady.

"For the conductor, the chauffeur, whoever it is that drives the old bus
up and down. Have they run out of petrol, or broke the mainspring, or
what?"

"We have a fine view, anyhow," said the Commander.

"Well, I've had that," remarked Billy. "I'm done with it, and I'm for
getting on."

"I'm getting nervous," cried the stout mother. "I do hope there is
nothing wrong with the lift."

"I say, hold on to the slack of my coat, Dolly. I'm going to look over
and chance it. Oh, Lord, it makes me sick and giddy! There's a horse
down under, and it ain't bigger than a mouse. I don't see any one
lookin' after us. Where's old Isaiah the prophet who came up with us?"

"He shinned out of it mighty quick when he thought trouble was coming."

"Look here," said Dolly, looking very perturbed, "this is a nice thing,
I don't think. Here we are five hundred foot up, and stuck for the day
as like as not. I'm due for the _matinée_ at the Hippodrome. I'm sorry
for the company if they don't get me down in time for that. I'm billed
all over the town for a new song."

"A new one! What's that, Dolly?"

"A real pot o' ginger, I tell you. It's called 'On the Road to Ascot.'
I've got a hat four foot across to sing it in."

"Come on, Dolly, let's have a rehearsal while we wait."

"No, no; the young lady here wouldn't understand."

"I'd be very glad to hear it," cried Mary MacLean. "Please don't let me
prevent you."

"The words were written to the hat. I couldn't sing the verses without
the hat. But there's a nailin' good chorus to it:

  "'If you want a little mascot
  When you're on the way to Ascot,
  Try the lady with the cartwheel hat.'"

She had a tuneful voice and a sense of rhythm which set every one
nodding. "Try it now all together," she cried; and the strange little
haphazard company sang it with all their lungs.

"I say," said Billy, "that ought to wake somebody up. What? Let's try a
shout all together."

It was a fine effort, but there was no response. It was clear that the
management down below was quite ignorant or impotent. No sound came back
to them.

The passengers became alarmed. The commercial traveller was rather less
rubicund. Billy still tried to joke, but his efforts were not well
received. The officer in his blue uniform at once took his place as
rightful leader in a crisis. They all looked to him and appealed to him.

"What would you advise, sir? You don't think there's any danger of it
coming down, do you?"

"Not the least. But it's awkward to be stuck here all the same. I think
I could jump across on to that girder. Then perhaps I could see what is
wrong."

"No, no, Tom; for goodness' sake, don't leave us!"

"Some people have a nerve," said Billy. "Fancy jumping across a
five-hundred-foot drop!"

"I dare say the gentleman did worse things in the war."

"Well, I wouldn't do it myself--not if they starred me in the bills.
It's all very well for old Isaiah. It's his job, and I wouldn't do him
out of it."

Three sides of the lift were shut in with wooden partitions, pierced
with windows for the view. The fourth side, facing the sea, was clear.
Stangate leaned as far as he could and looked upwards. As he did so
there came from above him a peculiar sonorous metallic twang, as if a
mighty harp-string had been struck. Some distance up--a hundred feet,
perhaps--he could see a long brown corded arm, which was working
furiously among the wire cordage above. The form was beyond his view,
but he was fascinated by this bare sinewy arm which tugged and pulled
and sagged and stabbed.

"It's all right," he said, and a general sigh of relief broke from his
strange comrades at his words. "There is some one above us setting
things right."

"It's old Isaiah," said Billy, stretching his neck round the corner. "I
can't see him, but it's his arm for a dollar. What's he got in his
hand? Looks like a screwdriver or something. No, by George, it's a
file."

As he spoke there came another sonorous twang from above. There was a
troubled frown upon the officer's brow.

"I say, dash it all, that's the very sound our steel hawser made when it
parted, strand by strand, at Dix-mude. What the deuce is the fellow
about? Hey, there! what are you trying to do?"

The man had ceased his work and was now slowly descending the iron
trellis.

"All right, he's coming," said Stangate to his startled companions.
"It's all right, Mary. Don't be frightened, any of you. It's absurd to
suppose he would really weaken the cord that holds us."

A pair of high boots appeared from above. Then came the leathern
breeches, the belt with its dangling tools, the muscular form, and,
finally, the fierce, swarthy, eagle face of the workman. His coat was
off and his shirt open, showing the hairy chest. As he appeared there
came another sharp snapping vibration from above. The man made his way
down in leisurely fashion, and then, balancing himself upon the
cross-girder and leaning against the side piece, he stood with folded
arms, looking from under his heavy black brows at the huddled passengers
upon the platform.

"Hallo!" said Stangate. "What's the matter?"

The man stood impassive and silent, with something indescribably
menacing in his fixed, unwinking stare.

The flying officer grew angry.

"Hallo! Are you deaf?" he cried. "How long do you mean to have us stuck
here?"

The man stood silent. There was something devilish in his appearance.

"I'll complain of you, my lad," said Billy, in a quivering voice. "This
won't stop here, I can promise you."

"Look here!" cried the officer. "We have ladies here and you are
alarming them. Why are we stuck here? Has the machinery gone wrong?"

"You are here," said the man, "because I have put a wedge against the
hawser above you."

"You fouled the line! How dared you do such a thing! What right have you
to frighten the women and put us all to this inconvenience? Take that
wedge out this instant, or it will be the worse for you."

The man was silent.

"Do you hear what I say? Why the devil don't you answer? Is this a joke
or what? We've had about enough of it, I tell you."

Mary MacLean had gripped her lover by the arm in agony of sudden panic.

"Oh, Tom!" she cried. "Look at his eyes--look at his horrible eyes! The
man is a maniac."

The workman stirred suddenly into sinister life. His dark face broke
into writhing lines of passion, and his fierce eyes glowed like embers,
while he shook one long arm in the air.

"Behold," he cried, "those who are mad to the children of this world are
in very truth the Lord's anointed and the dwellers in the inner temple.
Lo, I am one who is prepared to testify even to the uttermost, for of a
verity the day has now come when the humble will be exalted and the
wicked will be cut off in their sins!"

"Mother! Mother!" cried the little boy, in terror.

"There, there! It's all right, Jack," said the buxom woman, and then, in
a burst of womanly wrath, "What d'you want to make the child cry for?
You're a pretty man, you are!"

"Better he should cry now than in the outer darkness. Let him seek
safety while there is yet time."

The officer measured the gap with a practised eye. It was a good eight
feet across, and the fellow could push him over before he could steady
himself. It would be a desperate thing to attempt. He tried soothing
words once more.

"See here, my lad, you've carried this joke too far. Why should you wish
to injure us? Just shin up and get that wedge out, and we will agree to
say no more about it."

Another rending snap came from above.

"By George, the hawser is going!" cried Stangate. "Here! Stand aside!
I'm coming over to see to it."

The workman had plucked the hammer from his belt, and waved it furiously
in the air.

"Stand back, young man! Stand back! Or come--if you would hasten your
end."

"Tom, Tom, for God's sake, don't spring! Help! Help!"

The passengers all joined in the cry for aid. The man smiled malignantly
as he watched them.

"There is no one to help. They could not come if they would. You would
be wiser to turn to your own souls that ye be not cast to the burning.
Lo, strand by strand the cable snaps which holds you. There is yet
another, and with each that goes there is more strain upon the rest.
Five minutes of time, and all eternity beyond."

A moan of fear rose from the prisoners in the lift. Stangate felt a cold
sweat upon his brow as he passed his arm round the shrinking girl. If
this vindictive devil could only be coaxed away for an instant he would
spring across and take his chance in a hand-to-hand fight.

"Look here, my friend! We give you best!" he cried. "We can do nothing.
Go up and cut the cable if you wish. Go on--do it now, and get it over!"

"That you may come across unharmed. Having set my hand to the work, I
will not draw back from it."

Fury seized the young officer.

"You devil!" he cried. "What do you stand there grinning for? I'll give
you something to grin about. Give me a stick, one of you."

The man waved his hammer.

"Come, then! Come to judgment!" he howled.

"He'll murder you, Tom! Oh, for God's sake, don't! If we must die, let
us die together."

"I wouldn't try it, sir," cried Billy. "He'll strike you down before you
get a footing. Hold up, Dolly, my dear! Faintin' won't 'elp us. You
speak to him, miss. Maybe he'll listen to you."

"Why should you wish to hurt us?" said Mary. "What have we ever done to
you? Surely you will be sorry afterwards if we are injured. Now do be
kind and reasonable and help us to get back to the ground."

For a moment there may have been some softening in the man's fierce eyes
as he looked at the sweet face which was upturned to him. Then his
features set once more into their grim lines of malice.

"My hand is set to the work, woman. It is not for the servant to look
back from his task."

"But why should this be your task?"

"Because there is a voice within me which tells me so. In the night-time
I have heard it, and in the daytime too, when I have lain out alone upon
the girders and seen the wicked dotting the streets beneath me, each
busy on his own evil intent. 'John Barnes, John Barnes,' said the voice.
'You are here that you may give a sign to a sinful generation--such a
sign as shall show them that the Lord liveth and that there is a
judgment upon sin.' Who am I that I should disobey the voice of the
Lord?"

"The voice of the devil," said Stangate. "What is the sin of this lady,
or of these others, that you should seek their lives?"

"You are as the others, neither better nor worse. All day they pass me,
load by load, with foolish cries and empty songs and vain babble of
voices. Their thoughts are set upon the things of the flesh. Too long
have I stood aside and watched and refused to testify. But now the day
of wrath is come and the sacrifice is ready. Think not that a woman's
tongue can turn me from my task."

"It is useless!" Mary cried. "Useless! I read death in his eyes."

Another cord had snapped.

"Repent! Repent!" cried the madman. "One more, and it is over!"

Commander Stangate felt as if it were all some extraordinary dream--some
monstrous nightmare. Could it be possible that he, after all his
escapes of death in warfare, was now, in the heart of peaceful England,
at the mercy of a homicidal lunatic, and that his dear girl, the one
being whom he would shield from the very shadow of danger, was helpless
before this horrible man? All his energy and manhood rose up in him for
one last effort.

"Here, we won't be killed like sheep in the shambles!" he cried,
throwing himself against the wooden wall of the lift and kicking with
all his force. "Come on, boys! Kick it! Beat it! It's only
matchboarding, and it is giving. Smash it down! Well done! Once more all
together! There she goes! Now for the side! Out with it! Splendid!"

First the back and then the side of the little compartment had been
knocked out, and the splinters dropped down into the abyss. Barnes
danced upon his girder, his hammer in the air.

"Strive not!" he shrieked. "It avails not. The day is surely come."

"It's not two feet from the side girder," cried the officer. "Get
across! Quick! Quick! All of you. I'll hold this devil off!" He had
seized a stout stick from the commercial traveller and faced the madman,
daring him to spring across.

"Your turn now, my friend!" he hissed. "Come on, hammer and all! I'm
ready for you."

Above him he heard another snap, and the frail platform began to rock.
Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that his companions were all safe
upon the side girder. A strange line of terrified castaways they
appeared as they clung in an ungainly row to the trellis-work of steel.
But their feet were on the iron support. With two quick steps and a
spring he was at their side. At the same instant the murderer, hammer in
hand, jumped the gap. They had one vision of him there--a vision which
will haunt their dreams--the convulsed face, the blazing eyes, the
wind-tossed raven locks. For a moment he balanced himself upon the
swaying platform. The next, with a rending crash, he and it were gone.
There was a long silence and then, far down, the thud and clatter of a
mighty fall.

       *       *       *       *       *

With white faces, the forlorn group clung to the cold steel bars and
gazed down into the terrible abyss. It was the Commander who broke the
silence.

"They'll send for us now. It's all safe," he cried, wiping his brow.
"But, by Jove, it was a close call!"