The Loot of Cities

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The Loot of Cities

  THE
  LOOT OF CITIES

  BEING THE ADVENTURES OF A
  MILLIONAIRE IN SEARCH OF JOY
  (A FANTASIA); AND OTHER STORIES

  BY
  ARNOLD BENNETT
  AUTHOR OF “THE OLD WIVES’ TALE”

  [Illustration: ·1798·

  EDINBURGH]

  THOMAS NELSON AND SONS, LTD.
  LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK


  _Pensa, lettor, se quel che qui s’inizia
  non procedesse, come tu avresti
  di più sapere angosciosa carizia._

                                    DANTE.




CONTENTS.


  THE LOOT OF CITIES                      7

  MR. PENFOUND’S TWO BURGLARS           157

  MIDNIGHT AT THE GRAND BABYLON         173

  THE POLICE STATION                    193

  THE ADVENTURE OF THE PRIMA DONNA      214

  THE EPISODE IN ROOM 222               225

  SATURDAY TO MONDAY                    235

  A DINNER AT THE LOUVRE                244




THE LOOT OF CITIES.


CHAPTER I.

THE FIRE OF LONDON.

“You’re wanted on the telephone, sir.”

Mr. Bruce Bowring, managing director of the Consolidated Mining and
Investment Corporation, Limited (capital two millions, in one-pound
shares, which stood at twenty-seven-and-six), turned and gazed
querulously across the electric-lit spaces of his superb private
office at the confidential clerk who addressed him. Mr. Bowring, in
shirt-sleeves before a Florentine mirror, was brushing his hair with
the solicitude of a mother who has failed to rear most of a large
family.

“Who is it?” he asked, as if that demand for him were the last straw
but one. “Nearly seven on Friday evening!” he added, martyrised.

“I think a friend, sir.”

The middle-aged financier dropped his gold-mounted brush and,
wading through the deep pile of the Oriental carpet, passed into the
telephone-cabinet and shut the door.

“Hallo!” he accosted the transmitter, resolved not to be angry with it.
“Hal_lo_! Are you there? Yes, I’m Bowring. Who are you?”

“_Nrrrr_,” the faint, unhuman voice of the receiver whispered in his
ear. “_Nrrrr. Cluck._ I’m a friend.”

“What name?”

“No name. I thought you might like to know that a determined robbery
is going to be attempted to-night at your house in Lowndes Square, a
robbery of cash--and before nine o’clock. _Nrrrr._ I thought you might
like to know.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Bowring to the transmitter.

The feeble exclamation was all he could achieve at first. In the
confined, hot silence of the telephone-cabinet this message, coming to
him mysteriously out of the vast unknown of London, struck him with a
sudden sick fear that perhaps his wondrously organised scheme might yet
mis-carry, even at the final moment. Why that night of all nights? And
why before nine o’clock? Could it be that the secret was out, then?

“Any further interesting details?” he inquired, bracing himself to an
assumption of imperturbable and gay coolness.

But there was no answer. And when after some difficulty he got the
exchange-girl to disclose the number which had rung him up, he found
that his interlocutor had been using a public call-office in Oxford
Street. He returned to his room, donned his frock-coat, took a large
envelope from a locked drawer and put it in his pocket, and sat down to
think a little.

At that time Mr. Bruce Bowring was one of the most famous conjurers in
the City. He had begun, ten years earlier, with nothing but a silk hat;
and out of that empty hat had been produced, first the Hoop-La Limited,
a South African gold-mine of numerous stamps and frequent dividends,
then the Hoop-La No. 2 Limited, a mine with as many reincarnations as
Buddha, and then a dazzling succession of mines and combination of
mines. The more the hat emptied itself, the more it was full; and the
emerging objects (which now included the house in Lowndes Square and
a perfect dream of a place in Hampshire) grew constantly larger, and
the conjurer more impressive and persuasive, and the audience more
enthusiastic in its applause. At last, with a unique flourish, and a
new turning-up of sleeves to prove that there was no deception, had
come out of the hat the C.M.I.C., a sort of incredibly enormous Union
Jack, which enwrapped all the other objects in its splendid folds.
The shares of the C.M.I.C. were affectionately known in the Kaffir
circus as “Solids”; they yielded handsome though irregular dividends,
earned chiefly by flotation and speculation; the circus believed in
them. And in view of the annual meeting of shareholders to be held on
the following Tuesday afternoon (the conjurer in the chair and his hat
on the table), the market price, after a period of depression, had
stiffened.

Mr. Bowring’s meditations were soon interrupted by a telegram. He
opened it and read: “_Cook drunk again. Will dine with you Devonshire,
seven-thirty. Impossible here. Have arranged about luggage.--Marie._”
Marie was Mr. Bowring’s wife. He told himself that he felt greatly
relieved by that telegram; he clutched at it; and his spirits seemed
to rise. At any rate, since he would not now go near Lowndes Square,
he could certainly laugh at the threatened robbery. He thought what a
wonderful thing Providence was, after all.

“Just look at that,” he said to his clerk, showing the telegram with a
humorous affectation of dismay.

“Tut, tut,” said the clerk, discreetly sympathetic towards his employer
thus victimised by debauched cooks. “I suppose you’re going down to
Hampshire to-night as usual, sir?”

Mr. Bowring replied that he was, and that everything appeared to be in
order for the meeting, and that he should be back on Monday afternoon
or at the latest very early on Tuesday.

Then, with a few parting instructions, and with that eagle glance
round his own room and into circumjacent rooms which a truly efficient
head of affairs never omits on leaving business for the week-end, Mr.
Bowring sedately, yet magnificently, departed from the noble registered
offices of the C.M.I.C.

“Why didn’t Marie telephone instead of wiring?” he mused, as his pair
of greys whirled him and his coachman and his footman off to the
Devonshire.


II.

The Devonshire Mansion, a bright edifice of eleven storeys in the
Foster and Dicksee style, constructional ironwork by Homan, lifts
by Waygood, decorations by Waring, and terra-cotta by the rood, is
situate on the edge of Hyde Park. It is a composite building. Its
foundations are firmly fixed in the Tube railway; above that comes
the wine cellarage, then the vast laundry, and then (a row of windows
scarcely level with the street) a sporting club, a billiard-room, a
grill-room, and a cigarette-merchant whose name ends in “opoulos.”
On the first floor is the renowned Devonshire Mansion Restaurant.
Always, in London, there is just one restaurant where, if you are
an entirely correct person, “you can get a decent meal.” The place
changes from season to season, but there is never more than one of
it at a time. That season it happened to be the Devonshire. (The
_chef_ of the Devonshire had invented tripe suppers, _tripes à la
mode de Caen_, and these suppers--seven-and-six--had been the rage.)
Consequently all entirely correct people fed as a matter of course at
the Devonshire, since there was no other place fit to go to. The vogue
of the restaurant favourably affected the vogue of the nine floors of
furnished suites above the restaurant; they were always full; and the
heavenward attics, where the servants took off their smart liveries
and became human, held much wealth. The vogue of the restaurant also
exercised a beneficial influence over the status of the Kitcat Club,
which was a cock-and-hen club of the latest pattern and had its “house”
on the third floor.

It was a little after half-past seven when Mr. Bruce Bowring
haughtily ascended the grand staircase of this resort of opulence,
and paused for an instant near the immense fireplace at the summit
(September was inclement, and a fire burned nicely) to inquire from
the head-waiter whether Mrs. Bowring had secured a table. But Marie
had not arrived--Marie, who was never late! Uneasy and chagrined,
he proceeded, under the escort of the head-waiter, to the glittering
Salle Louis Quatorze and selected, because of his morning attire, a
table half-hidden behind an onyx pillar. The great room was moderately
full of fair women and possessive men, despite the month. Immediately
afterwards a youngish couple (the man handsomer and better dressed
than the woman) took the table on the other side of the pillar. Mr.
Bowring waited five minutes, then he ordered Sole Mornay and a bottle
of Romanée-Conti, and then he waited another five minutes. He went
somewhat in fear of his wife, and did not care to begin without her.

“Can’t you read?” It was the youngish man at the next table
speaking in a raised voice to a squinting lackey with a
telegraph form in his hand. “‘Solids! Solids,’ my friend.
‘Sell--Solids--to--any--amount--to-morrow--and--Monday.’ Got it? Well,
send it off at once.”

“Quite clear, my lord,” said the lackey, and fled. The youngish man
gazed fixedly but absently at Mr. Bowring and seemed to see through
him to the tapestry behind. Mr. Bowring, to his own keen annoyance,
reddened. Partly to conceal the blush, and partly because it was a
quarter to eight and there was the train to catch, he lowered his face,
and began upon the sole. A few minutes later the lackey returned,
gave some change to the youngish man, and surprised Mr. Bowring
by advancing towards him and handing him an envelope--an envelope
which bore on its flap the legend “Kitcat Club.” The note within was
scribbled in pencil in his wife’s handwriting, and ran: “_Just arrived.
Delayed by luggage. I’m too nervous to face the restaurant, and am
eating a chop here alone. The place is fortunately empty. Come and
fetch me as soon as you’re ready._”

Mr. Bowring sighed angrily. He hated his wife’s club, and this
succession of messages telephonic, telegraphic, and caligraphic was
exasperating him.

“No answer!” he ejaculated, and then he beckoned the lackey closer.
“Who’s that gentleman at the next table with the lady?” he murmured.

“I’m not rightly sure, sir,” was the whispered reply. “Some authorities
say he’s the strong man at the Hippodrome, while others affirm he’s a
sort of American millionaire.”

“But you addressed him as ‘my lord.’”

“Just then I thought he was the strong man, sir,” said the lackey,
retiring.

“My bill!” Mr. Bowring demanded fiercely of the waiter, and at the same
time the youngish gentleman and his companion rose and departed.

At the lift Mr. Bowring found the squinting lackey in charge.

“You’re the liftman, too?”

“To-night, sir, I am many things. The fact is, the regular liftman has
got a couple of hours off--being the recent father of twins.”

“Well--Kitcat Club.”

The lift seemed to shoot far upwards, and Mr. Bowring thought the
lackey had mistaken the floor, but on gaining the corridor he saw
across the portals in front of him the remembered gold sign, “Kitcat
Club. Members only.” He pushed the door open and went in.


III.

Instead of the familiar vestibule of his wife’s club, Mr. Bowring
discovered a small antechamber, and beyond, through a doorway
half-screened by a _portière_, he had glimpses of a rich, rose-lit
drawing-room. In the doorway, with one hand raised to the _portière_,
stood the youngish man who had forced him to blush in the restaurant.

“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Bowring, stiffly--“is this the Kitcat
Club?”

The other man advanced to the outer door, his brilliant eyes fixed on
Mr. Bowring’s; his arm crept round the cheek of the door and came back
bearing the gold sign; then he shut the door and locked it. “No, this
isn’t the Kitcat Club at all,” he replied. “It is my flat. Come and
sit down. I was expecting you.”

“I shall do nothing of the kind,” said Mr. Bowring disdainfully.

“But when I tell you that I know you are going to decamp to-night, Mr.
Bowring----”

The youngish man smiled affably.

“Decamp?” The spine of the financier suddenly grew flaccid.

“I used the word.”

“Who the devil are you?” snapped the financier, forcing his spine to
rigidity.

“I am the ‘friend’ on the telephone. I specially wanted you at the
Devonshire to-night, and I thought that the fear of a robbery at
Lowndes Square might make your arrival here more certain. I am he
who devised the story of the inebriated cook and favoured you with a
telegram signed ‘Marie.’ I am the humorist who pretended in a loud
voice to send off telegraphic instructions to sell ‘Solids,’ in order
to watch your demeanour under the test. I am the expert who forged your
wife’s handwriting in a note from the Kitcat. I am the patron of the
cross-eyed menial who gave you the note and who afterwards raised you
too high in the lift. I am the artificer of this gold sign, an exact
duplicate of the genuine one two floors below, which induced you to
visit me. The sign alone cost me nine-and-six; the servant’s livery
came to two pounds fifteen. But I never consider expense when, by dint
of a generous outlay, I can avoid violence. I hate violence.” He gently
waved the sign to and fro.

“Then my wife----” Mr. Bowring stammered in a panic rage.

“Is probably at Lowndes Square, wondering what on earth has happened to
you.”

Mr. Bowring took breath, remembered that he was a great man, and
steadied himself.

“You must be mad,” he remarked quietly. “Open this door at once.”

“Perhaps,” the stranger judicially admitted. “Perhaps a sort of
madness. But do come and sit down. We have no time to lose.”

Mr. Bowring gazed at that handsome face, with the fine nostrils, large
mouth, and square clean chin, and the dark eyes, the black hair, and
long, black moustache; and he noticed the long, thin hands. “Decadent!”
he decided. Nevertheless, and though it was with the air of indulging
the caprice of a lunatic, he did in fact obey the stranger’s request.

It was a beautiful Chippendale drawing-room that he entered. Near
the hearth, to which a morsel of fire gave cheerfulness, were two
easy-chairs, and between them a small table. Behind was extended a
fourfold draught-screen.

“I can give you just five minutes,” said Mr. Bowring, magisterially
sitting down.

“They will suffice,” the stranger responded, sitting down also. “You
have in your pocket, Mr. Bowring--probably your breast-pocket--fifty
Bank of England notes for a thousand pounds each, and a number of
smaller notes amounting to another ten thousand.”

“Well?”

“I must demand from you the first-named fifty.”

Mr. Bowring, in the silence of the rose-lit drawing-room, thought of
all the Devonshire Mansion, with its endless corridors and innumerable
rooms, its acres of carpets, its forests of furniture, its gold and
silver, and its jewels and its wines, its pretty women and possessive
men--the whole humming microcosm founded on a unanimous pretence that
the sacredness of property was a natural law. And he thought how
disconcerting it was that he should be trapped there, helpless, in
the very middle of the vast pretence, and forced to admit that the
sacredness of property was a purely artificial convention.

“By what right do you make this demand?” he inquired, bravely sarcastic.

“By the right of my unique knowledge,” said the stranger, with a
bright smile. “Listen to what you and I alone know. You are at the
end of the tether. The Consolidated is at the same spot. You have a
past consisting chiefly of nineteen fraudulent flotations. You have
paid dividends out of capital till there is no capital left. You have
speculated and lost. You have cooked balance-sheets to a turn and
ruined the eyesight of auditors with dust. You have lived like ten
lords. Your houses are mortgaged. You own an unrivalled collection of
unreceipted bills. You are worse than a common thief. (Excuse these
personalities.)”

“My dear, good sir----” Mr. Bowring interrupted, grandly.

“Permit me. What is more serious, your self-confidence has been
gradually deserting you. At last, perceiving that some blundering
person was bound soon to put his foot through the brittle shell of
your ostentation and tread on nothing, and foreseeing for yourself an
immediate future consisting chiefly of Holloway, you have by a supreme
effort of your genius, borrowed £60,000 from a bank on C.M.I.C. scrip,
for a week (eh?), and you have arranged, you and your wife, to--melt
into thin air. You will affect to set out as usual for your country
place in Hampshire, but it is Southampton that will see you to-night,
and Havre will see you to-morrow. You may run over to Paris to change
some notes, but by Monday you will be on your way to----frankly, I
don’t know where; perhaps Monte Video. Of course you take the risk of
extradition, but the risk is preferable to the certainty that awaits
you in England. I think you will elude extradition. If I thought
otherwise, I should not have had you here to-night, because, once
extradited, you might begin to amuse yourself by talking about me.”

“So it’s blackmail,” said Mr. Bowring, grim.

The dark eyes opposite to him sparkled gaily.

“It desolates me,” the youngish man observed, “to have to commit you
to the deep with only ten thousand. But, really, not less than fifty
thousand will requite me for the brain-tissue which I have expended in
the study of your interesting situation.”

Mr. Bowring consulted his watch.

“Come, now,” he said, huskily; “I’ll give you ten thousand. I flatter
myself I can look facts in the face, and so I’ll give you ten thousand.”

“My friend,” answered the spider, “you are a judge of character. Do
you honestly think I don’t mean precisely what I say--to sixpence? It
is eight-thirty. You are, if I may be allowed the remark, running it
rather fine.”

“And suppose I refuse to part?” said Mr. Bowring, after reflection.
“What then?”

“I have confessed to you that I hate violence. You would therefore
leave this room unmolested, but you wouldn’t step off the island.”

Mr. Bowring scanned the agreeable features of the stranger. Then, while
the lifts were ascending and descending, and the wine was sparkling,
and the jewels flashing, and the gold chinking, and the pretty women
being pretty, in all the four quarters of the Devonshire, Mr. Bruce
Bowring in the silent parlour counted out fifty notes on to the table.
After all, it was a fortune, that little pile of white on the crimson
polished wood.

“_Bon voyage!_” said the stranger. “Don’t imagine that I am not full of
sympathy for you. I am. You have only been unfortunate. _Bon voyage!_”

“No! By Heaven!” Mr. Bowring almost shouted, rushing back from the
door, and drawing a revolver from his hip pocket. “It’s too much! I
didn’t mean to--but confound it! what’s a revolver for?”

The youngish man jumped up quickly and put his hands on the notes.

“Violence is always foolish, Mr. Bowring,” he murmured.

“Will you give them up, or won’t you?”

“I won’t.”

The stranger’s fine eyes seemed to glint with joy in the drama.

“Then----”

The revolver was raised, but in the same instant a tiny hand snatched
it from the hand of Mr. Bowring, who turned and beheld by his side a
woman. The huge screen sank slowly and noiselessly to the floor in the
surprising manner peculiar to screens that have been overset.

Mr. Bowring cursed. “An accomplice! I might have guessed!” he grumbled
in final disgust.

He ran to the door, unlocked it, and was no more seen.


IV.

The lady was aged twenty-seven or so; of medium height, and slim, with
a plain, very intelligent and expressive face, lighted by courageous,
grey eyes and crowned with loose, abundant, fluffy hair. Perhaps it was
the fluffy hair, perhaps it was the mouth that twitched as she dropped
the revolver--who can say?--but the whole atmosphere of the rose-lit
chamber was suddenly changed. The incalculable had invaded it.

“You seem surprised, Miss Fincastle,” said the possessor of the
bank-notes, laughing gaily.

“Surprised!” echoed the lady, controlling that mouth. “My dear Mr.
Thorold, when, strictly as a journalist, I accepted your invitation, I
did not anticipate this sequel; frankly I did not.”

She tried to speak coldly and evenly, on the assumption that a
journalist has no sex during business hours. But just then she happened
to be neither less nor more a woman than a woman always is.

“If I have had the misfortune to annoy you----!” Thorold threw up his
arms in gallant despair.

“Annoy is not the word,” said Miss Fincastle, nervously smiling.
“May I sit down? Thanks. Let us recount. You arrive in England, from
somewhere, as the son and heir of the late Ahasuerus Thorold, the New
York operator, who died worth six million dollars. It becomes known
that while in Algiers in the spring you stayed at the Hôtel St. James,
famous as the scene of what is called the ‘Algiers Mystery,’ familiar
to English newspaper-readers since last April. The editor of my journal
therefore instructs me to obtain an interview with you. I do so.
The first thing I discover is that, though an American, you have no
American accent. You explain this by saying that since infancy you have
always lived in Europe with your mother.”

“But surely you do not doubt that I am Cecil Thorold!” said the man.
Their faces were approximate over the table.

“Of course not. I merely recount. To continue. I interview you as to
the Algerian mystery, and get some new items concerning it. Then
you regale me with tea and your opinions, and my questions grow more
personal. So it comes about that, strictly on behalf of my paper, I
inquire what your recreations are. And suddenly you answer: ‘Ah! My
recreations! Come to dinner to-night, quite informally, and I will show
you how I amuse myself!’ I come. I dine. I am stuck behind that screen
and told to listen. And--and--the millionaire proves to be nothing but
a blackmailer.”

“You must understand, my dear lady----”

“I understand everything, Mr. Thorold, except your object in admitting
me to the scene.”

“A whim!” cried Thorold vivaciously, “a freak of mine! Possibly due to
the eternal and universal desire of man to show off before woman!”

The journalist tried to smile, but something in her face caused Thorold
to run to a chiffonier.

“Drink this,” he said, returning with a glass.

“I need nothing.” The voice was a whisper.

“Oblige me.”

Miss Fincastle drank and coughed.

“Why did you do it?” she asked sadly, looking at the notes.

“You don’t mean to say,” Thorold burst out, “that you are feeling sorry
for Mr. Bruce Bowring? He has merely parted with what he stole. And
the people from whom he stole, stole. All the activities which centre
about the Stock Exchange are simply various manifestations of one
primeval instinct. Suppose I had not--had not interfered. No one would
have been a penny the better off except Mr. Bruce Bowring. Whereas----”

“You intend to restore this money to the Consolidated?” said Miss
Fincastle eagerly.

“Not quite! The Consolidated doesn’t deserve it. You must not regard
its shareholders as a set of innocent shorn lambs. They knew the game.
They went in for what they could get. Besides, how could I restore the
money without giving myself away? I want the money myself.”

“But you are a millionaire.”

“It is precisely because I am a millionaire that I want more. All
millionaires are like that.”

“I am sorry to find you a thief, Mr. Thorold.”

“A thief! No. I am only direct, I only avoid the middleman. At dinner,
Miss Fincastle, you displayed somewhat advanced views about property,
marriage, and the aristocracy of brains. You said that labels were
for the stupid majority, and that the wise minority examined the
ideas behind the labels. You label me a thief, but examine the idea,
and you will perceive that you might as well call yourself a thief.
Your newspaper every day suppresses the truth about the City, and it
does so in order to live. In other words, it touches the pitch, it
participates in the game. To-day it has a fifty-line advertisement of a
false balance-sheet of the Consolidated, at two shillings a line. That
five pounds, part of the loot of a great city, will help to pay for
your account of our interview this afternoon.”

“Our interview to-night,” Miss Fincastle corrected him stiffly, “and
all that I have seen and heard.”

At these words she stood up, and as Cecil Thorold gazed at her his face
changed.

“I shall begin to wish,” he said slowly, “that I had deprived myself of
the pleasure of your company this evening.”

“You might have been a dead man had you done so,” Miss Fincastle
retorted, and observing his blank countenance she touched the revolver.
“Have you forgotten already?” she asked tartly.

“Of course it wasn’t loaded,” he remarked. “Of course I had seen to
that earlier in the day. I am not such a bungler----”

“Then I didn’t save your life?”

“You force me to say that you did not, and to remind you that you gave
me your word not to emerge from behind the screen. However, seeing
the motive, I can only thank you for that lapse. The pity is that it
hopelessly compromises you.”

“Me?” exclaimed Miss Fincastle.

“You. Can’t you see that you are in it, in this robbery, to give the
thing a label. You were alone with the robber. You succoured the robber
at a critical moment.... ‘Accomplice,’ Mr. Bowring himself said. My
dear journalist, the episode of the revolver, empty though the revolver
was, seals your lips.”

Miss Fincastle laughed rather hysterically, leaning over the table with
her hands on it.

“My dear millionaire,” she said rapidly, “you don’t know the new
journalism to which I have the honour to belong. You would know it
better had you lived more in New York. All I have to announce is that,
compromised or not, a full account of this affair will appear in my
paper to-morrow morning. No, I shall not inform the police. I am a
journalist simply, but a journalist I _am_.”

“And your promise, which you gave me before going behind the screen,
your solemn promise that you would reveal nothing? I was loth to
mention it.”

“Some promises, Mr. Thorold, it is a duty to break, and it is my duty
to break this one. I should never have given it had I had the slightest
idea of the nature of your recreations.”

Thorold still smiled, though faintly.

“Really, you know,” he murmured, “this is getting just a little
serious.”

“It is very serious,” she stammered.

And then Thorold noticed that the new journalist was softly weeping.


V.

The door opened.

“Miss Kitty Sartorius,” said the erstwhile liftman, who was now in
plain clothes and had mysteriously ceased to squint.

A beautiful girl, a girl who had remarkable loveliness and was aware of
it (one of the prettiest women of the Devonshire), ran impulsively into
the room and caught Miss Fincastle by the hand.

“My dearest Eve, you’re crying. What’s the matter?”

“Lecky,” said Thorold aside to the servant. “I told you to admit no
one.”

The beautiful blonde turned sharply to Thorold.

“I told him I wished to enter,” she said imperiously, half closing her
eyes.

“Yes, sir,” said Lecky. “That was it. The lady wished to enter.”

Thorold bowed.

“It was sufficient,” he said. “That will do, Lecky.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But I say, Lecky, when next you address me publicly, try to remember
that I am not in the peerage.”

The servant squinted.

“Certainly, sir.” And he retired.

“Now we are alone,” said Miss Sartorius. “Introduce us, Eve, and
explain.”

Miss Fincastle, having regained self-control, introduced her dear
friend the radiant star of the Regency Theatre, and her acquaintance
the millionaire.

“Eve didn’t feel _quite_ sure of you,” the actress stated; “and so we
arranged that if she wasn’t up at my flat by nine o’clock, I was to
come down and reconnoitre. What have you been doing to make Eve cry?”

“Unintentional, I assure you----” Thorold began.

“There’s something between you two,” said Kitty Sartorius sagaciously,
in significant accents. “What is it?”

She sat down, touched her picture hat, smoothed her white gown, and
tapped her foot. “What is it, now? Mr. Thorold, I think _you_ had
better tell me.”

Thorold raised his eyebrows and obediently commenced the narration,
standing with his back to the fire.

“How perfectly splendid!” Kitty exclaimed. “I’m so glad you cornered
Mr. Bowring. I met him one night and I thought he was horrid. And
these are the notes? Well, of all the----!”

Thorold proceeded with his story.

“Oh, but you can’t do _that_, Eve!” said Kitty, suddenly serious. “You
can’t go and split! It would mean all sorts of bother; your wretched
newspaper would be sure to keep you hanging about in London, and we
shouldn’t be able to start on our holiday to-morrow. Eve and I are
starting on quite a long tour to-morrow, Mr. Thorold; we begin with
Ostend.”

“Indeed!” said Thorold. “I, too, am going in that direction soon.
Perhaps we may meet.”

“I hope so,” Kitty smiled, and then she looked at Eve Fincastle. “You
really mustn’t do _that_, Eve,” she said.

“I must, I must!” Miss Fincastle insisted, clenching her hands.

“And she will,” said Kitty tragically, after considering her friend’s
face. “She will, and our holiday’s ruined. I see it--I see it plainly.
She’s in one of her stupid conscientious moods. She’s fearfully
advanced and careless and unconventional in theory, Eve is; but when it
comes to practice----! Mr. Thorold, you have just got everything into a
dreadful knot. Why did you want those notes so very particularly?”

“I don’t want them so very particularly.”

“Well, anyhow, it’s a most peculiar predicament. Mr. Bowring doesn’t
count, and this Consolidated thingummy isn’t any the worse off. Nobody
suffers who oughtn’t to suffer. It’s your unlawful gain that’s wrong.
Why not pitch the wretched notes in the fire?” Kitty laughed at her own
playful humour.

“Certainly,” said Thorold. And with a quick movement he put the fifty
trifles in the grate, where they made a bluish yellow flame.

Both the women screamed and sprang up.

“_Mr._ Thorold!”

“Mr. _Thorold_!” (“He’s adorable!” Kitty breathed.)

“The incident, I venture to hope, is now closed,” said Thorold calmly,
but with his dark eyes sparkling. “I must thank you both for a very
enjoyable evening. Some day, perhaps, I may have an opportunity of
further explaining my philosophy to you.”


CHAPTER II.

A COMEDY ON THE GOLD COAST.

It was five o’clock on an afternoon in mid-September, and a couple of
American millionaires (they abounded that year, did millionaires) sat
chatting together on the wide terrace which separates the entrance to
the Kursaal from the promenade. Some yards away, against the balustrade
of the terrace, in the natural, unconsidered attitude of one to whom
short frocks are a matter of history, certainly, but very recent
history, stood a charming and imperious girl; you could see that she
was eating chocolate while meditating upon the riddle of life. The
elder millionaire glanced at every pretty woman within view, excepting
only the girl; but his companion seemed to be intent on counting the
chocolates.

The immense crystal dome of the Kursaal dominated the gold coast, and
on either side of the great building were stretched out in a straight
line the hotels, the restaurants, the _cafés_, the shops, the theatres,
the concert-halls, and the pawnbrokers of the City of Pleasure--Ostend.
At one extremity of that long array of ornate white architecture
(which resembled the icing on a bride-cake more than the roofs of men)
was the palace of a king; at the other were the lighthouse and the
railway signals which guided into the city the continuously arriving
cargoes of wealth, beauty, and desire. In front, the ocean, grey and
lethargic, idly beat up a little genteel foam under the promenade for
the wetting of pink feet and stylish bathing-costumes. And after a hard
day’s work, the sun, by arrangement with the authorities during August
and September, was setting over the sea exactly opposite the superb
portals of the Kursaal.

The younger of the millionaires was Cecil Thorold. The other, a man
fifty-five or so, was Simeon Rainshore, father of the girl at the
balustrade, and president of the famous Dry Goods Trust, of exciting
memory. The contrast between the two men, alike only in extreme riches,
was remarkable: Cecil still youthful, slim, dark, languid of movement,
with delicate features, eyes almost Spanish, and an accent of purest
English; and Rainshore with his nasal twang, his stout frame, his
rounded, bluish-red chin, his little eyes, and that demeanour of false
briskness by means of which ageing men seek to prove to themselves
that they are as young as ever they were. Simeon had been a friend and
opponent of Cecil’s father; in former days those twain had victimised
each other for colossal sums. Consequently Simeon had been glad to
meet the son of his dead antagonist, and, in less than a week of
Ostend repose, despite a fundamental disparity of temperament, the
formidable president and the Europeanised wanderer had achieved a sort
of intimacy, an intimacy which was about to be intensified.

“The difference between you and me is this,” Cecil was saying. “You
exhaust yourself by making money among men who are all bent on making
money, in a place specially set apart for the purpose. I amuse myself
by making money among men who, having made or inherited money, are bent
on spending it, in places specially set apart for the purpose. I take
people off their guard. They don’t precisely see me coming. I don’t
rent an office and put up a sign which is equivalent to announcing that
the rest of the world had better look out for itself. Our codes are the
same, but is not my way more original and more diverting? Look at this
place. Half the wealth of Europe is collected here; the other half is
at Trouville. The entire coast reeks of money; the sands are golden
with it. You’ve only to put out your hand--so!”

“So?” ejaculated Rainshore, quizzical. “How? Show me?”

“Ah! That would be telling.”

“I guess you wouldn’t get much out of Simeon--not as much as your
father did.”

“Do you imagine I should try?” said Cecil gravely. “My amusements are
always discreet.”

“But you confess you are often bored. Now, on Wall Street we are never
bored.”

“Yes,” Cecil admitted. “I embarked on these--these enterprises mainly
to escape boredom.”

“You ought to marry,” said Rainshore pointedly. “You ought to marry, my
friend.”

“I have my yacht.”

“No doubt. And she’s a beauty, and feminine too; but not feminine
enough. You ought to marry. Now, I’ll----”

Mr. Rainshore paused. His daughter had suddenly ceased to eat
chocolates and was leaning over the balustrade in order to converse
with a tall, young man whose fair, tanned face and white hat overtopped
the carved masonry and were thus visible to the millionaires. The
latter glanced at one another and then glanced away, each slightly
self-conscious.

“I thought Mr. Vaux-Lowry had left?” said Cecil.

“He came back last night,” Rainshore replied curtly. “And he leaves
again to-night.”

“Then--then it’s a match after all!” Cecil ventured.

“Who says that?” was Simeon’s sharp inquiry.

“The birds of the air whisper it. One heard it at every corner three
days ago.”

Rainshore turned his chair a little towards Cecil’s. “You’ll allow I
ought to know something about it,” he said. “Well, I tell you it’s a
lie.”

“I’m sorry I mentioned it,” Cecil apologised.

“Not at all,” said Simeon, stroking his chin. “I’m glad you did.
Because now you can just tell all the birds of the air direct from me
that in this particular case there isn’t going to be the usual alliance
between the beauty and dollars of America and the aristocratic blood of
Great Britain. Listen right here,” he continued confidentially, like
a man whose secret feelings have been inconveniencing him for several
hours. “This young spark--mind, I’ve nothing against him!--asks me to
consent to his engagement with Geraldine. I tell him that I intend to
settle half a million dollars on my daughter, and that the man she
marries must cover that half-million with another. He says he has a
thousand a year of his own, pounds--just nice for Geraldine’s gloves
and candy!--and that he is the heir of his uncle, Lord Lowry; and that
there is an entail; and that Lord Lowry is very rich, very old, and
very unmarried; but that, being also very peculiar, he won’t come down
with any money. It occurs to me to remark: ‘Suppose Lord Lowry marries
and develops into the father of a man-child, where do _you_ come in,
Mr. Vaux-Lowry?’ ‘Oho! Lord Lowry marry! Impossible! Laughable!’ Then
Geraldine begins to worry at me, and her mother too. And so I kind of
issue an ultimatum--namely, I will consent to an engagement without a
settlement if, on the marriage, Lord Lowry will give a note of hand
for half a million dollars to Geraldine, payable on _his_ marriage.
See? My lord’s nephew goes off to persuade my lord, and returns with
my lord’s answer in an envelope sealed with the great seal. I open
it and I read--this is what I read: ‘To Mr. S. Rainshore, American
draper. Sir--As a humorist you rank high. Accept the admiration of Your
obedient servant, Lowry.’”

The millionaire laughed.

“Oh! It’s clever enough!” said Rainshore. “It’s very English and
grand. Dashed if I don’t admire it! All the same, I’ve requested Mr.
Vaux-Lowry, under the circumstances, to quit this town. I didn’t show
him the letter--no. I spared his delicate feelings. I merely told him
Lord Lowry had refused, and that I would be ready to consider his
application favourably any time when he happened to have half a million
dollars in his pocket.”

“And Miss Geraldine?”

“She’s flying the red flag, but she knows when my back’s against
the wall. She knows her father. She’ll recover. Great Scott! She’s
eighteen, he’s twenty-one; the whole affair is a high farce. And,
moreover, I guess I want Geraldine to marry an American, after all.”

“And if she elopes?” Cecil murmured as if to himself, gazing at the set
features of the girl, who was now alone once more.

“_Elopes?_”

Rainshore’s face reddened as his mood shifted suddenly from indulgent
cynicism to profound anger. Cecil was amazed at the transformation,
until he remembered to have heard long ago that Simeon himself had
eloped.

“It was just a fancy that flashed into my mind,” Cecil smiled
diplomatically.

“I should let it flash out again if I were you,” said Rainshore, with
a certain grimness. And Cecil perceived the truth of the maxim that a
parent can never forgive his own fault in his child.


II.

“You’ve come to sympathise with me,” said Geraldine Rainshore calmly,
as Cecil, leaving the father for a few moments, strolled across the
terrace towards the daughter.

“It’s my honest, kindly face that gives me away,” he responded lightly.
“But what am I to sympathise with you about?”

“You know what,” the girl said briefly.

They stood together near the balustrade, looking out over the sea into
the crimson eye of the sun; and all the afternoon activities of Ostend
were surging round them--the muffled sound of musical instruments
from within the Kursaal, the shrill cries of late bathers from the
shore, the toot of a tramway-horn to the left, the roar of a siren to
the right, and everywhere the ceaseless hum of an existence at once
gay, feverish, and futile; but Cecil was conscious of nothing but the
individuality by his side. Some women, he reflected, are older at
eighteen than they are at thirty-eight, and Geraldine was one of those.
She happened to be very young and very old at the same time. She might
be immature, crude, even gawky in her girlishness; but she was just
then in the first flush of mentally realising the absolute independence
of the human spirit. She had force, and she had also the enterprise to
act on it.

As Cecil glanced at her intelligent, expressive face, he thought of her
playing with life as a child plays with a razor.

“You mean----?” he inquired.

“I mean that father has been talking about me to you. I could tell by
his eyes. Well?”

“Your directness unnerves me,” he smiled.

“Pull yourself together, then, Mr. Thorold. Be a man.”

“Will you let me treat you as a friend?”

“Why, yes,” she said, “if you’ll promise not to tell me I’m only
eighteen.”

“I am incapable of such rudeness,” Cecil replied. “A woman is as old as
she feels. You feel at least thirty; therefore you are at least thirty.
This being understood, I am going to suggest, as a friend, that if you
and Mr. Vaux-Lowry are--perhaps pardonably--contemplating any extreme
step----”

“Extreme step, Mr. Thorold?”

“Anything rash.”

“And suppose we are?” Geraldine demanded, raising her chin scornfully
and defiantly and dangling her parasol.

“I should respectfully and confidentially advise you to refrain. Be
content to wait, my dear middle-aged woman. Your father may relent. And
also, I have a notion that I may be able to--to----”

“Help us?”

“Possibly.”

“You are real good,” said Geraldine coldly. “But what gave you the idea
that Harry and I were meaning to----?”

“Something in your eyes--your fine, daring eyes. I read you as you
read your father, you see?”

“Well, then, Mr. Thorold, there’s something wrong with my fine, daring
eyes. I’m just the last girl in all America to do anything--rash. Why!
if I did anything rash, I’m sure I should feel ever afterwards as if I
wanted to be excused off the very face of the earth. I’m that sort of
girl. Do you think I don’t know that father will give way? I guess he’s
just got to. With time and hammering, you can knock sense into the head
of any parent.”

“I apologise,” said Cecil, both startled and convinced. “And I
congratulate Mr. Vaux-Lowry.”

“Say. You like Harry, don’t you?”

“Very much. He’s the ideal type of Englishman.”

Geraldine nodded sweetly. “And so obedient! He does everything I tell
him. He is leaving for England to-night, not because father asked him
to, but because I did. I’m going to take mother to Brussels for a few
days’ shopping--lace, you know. That will give father an opportunity to
meditate in solitude on his own greatness. Tell me, Mr. Thorold, do you
consider that Harry and I would be justified in corresponding secretly?”

Cecil assumed a pose of judicial gravity.

“I think you would,” he decided. “But don’t tell anyone I said so.”

“Not even Harry?”

She ran off into the Kursaal, saying she must seek her mother. But
instead of seeking her mother, Geraldine passed straight through the
concert-hall, where a thousand and one wondrously attired women were
doing fancy needle-work to the accompaniment of a band of music,
into the maze of corridors beyond, and so to the rear entrance of
the Kursaal on the Boulevard van Isoghem. Here she met Mr. Harry
Vaux-Lowry, who was most obviously waiting for her. They crossed the
road to the empty tramway waiting-room and entered it and sat down;
and by the mere act of looking into each other’s eyes, these two--the
stiff, simple, honest-faced young Englishman with “Oxford” written all
over him, and the charming child of a civilisation equally proud, but
with fewer conventions, suddenly transformed the little bureau into a
Cupid’s bower.

“It’s just as I thought, you darling boy,” Geraldine began to talk
rapidly. “Father’s the least bit in the world scared; and when he’s
scared, he’s bound to confide in someone; and he’s confided in that
sweet Mr. Thorold. And Mr. Thorold has been requested to reason with
me and advise me to be a good girl and wait. I know what _that_ means.
It means that father thinks we shall soon forget each other, my poor
Harry. And I do believe it means that father wants me to marry Mr.
Thorold.”

“What did you say to him, dear?” the lover demanded, pale.

“Trust me to fool him, Harry. I simply walked round him. He thinks we
are going to be very good and wait patiently. As if father ever _would_
give way until he was forced!”

She laughed disdainfully. “So we’re perfectly safe so long as we act
with discretion. Now let’s clearly understand. To-day’s Monday. You
return to England to-night.”

“Yes. And I’ll arrange about the licence and things.”

“Your cousin Mary is just as important as the licence, Harry,” said
Geraldine primly.

“She will come. You may rely on her being at Ostend with me on
Thursday.”

“Very well. In the meantime, I behave as if life were a blank. Brussels
will put them off the scent. Mother and I will return from there on
Thursday afternoon. That night there is a _soirée dansante_ at the
Kursaal. Mother will say she is too tired to go to it, but she will
have to go all the same. I will dance before all men till a quarter
to ten--I will even dance with Mr. Thorold. What a pity I can’t dance
before father, but he’s certain to be in the gambling-rooms then,
winning money; he always is at that hour! At a quarter to ten I will
slip out, and you’ll be here at this back door with a carriage. We
drive to the quay and just catch the 11.5 steamer, and I meet your
cousin Mary. On Friday morning we are married; and then, then we shall
be in a position to talk to father. He’ll pretend to be furious, but he
can’t say much, because he eloped himself. Didn’t you know?”

“I didn’t,” said Harry, with a certain dryness.

“Oh, yes! It’s in the family! But you needn’t look so starched,
my English lord.” He took her hand. “You’re sure your uncle won’t
disinherit you, or anything horrid of that kind?”

“He can’t,” said Harry.

“What a perfectly lovely country England is!” Geraldine exclaimed.
“Fancy the poor old thing not being _able_ to disinherit you! Why, it’s
just too delicious for words!”

And for some reason or other he kissed her violently.

Then an official entered the bureau and asked them if they wanted
to go to Blankenburghe; because, if so, the tram was awaiting their
distinguished pleasure. They looked at each other foolishly and sidled
out, and the bureau ceased to be Cupid’s bower.


III.

By Simeon’s request, Cecil dined with the Rainshores that night at the
Continental. After dinner they all sat out on the balcony and sustained
themselves with coffee while watching the gay traffic of the Digue,
the brilliant illumination of the Kursaal, and the distant lights on
the invisible but murmuring sea. Geraldine was in one of her moods of
philosophic pessimism, and would persist in dwelling on the uncertainty
of riches and the vicissitudes of millionaires. She found a text in the
famous Bowring case, of which the newspaper contained many interesting
details.

“I wonder if he’ll be caught?” she remarked.

“I wonder,” said Cecil.

“What do you think, father?”

“I think you had better go to bed,” Simeon replied.

The chit rose and kissed him duteously.

“Good night,” she said. “Aren’t you glad the sea keeps so calm?”

“Why?”

“Can you ask? Mr. Vaux-Lowry crosses to-night, and he’s a dreadfully
bad sailor. Come along, mother. Mr. Thorold, when mother and I return
from Brussels, we shall expect to be taken for a cruise in the
_Claribel_.”

Simeon sighed with relief upon the departure of his family and began a
fresh cigar. On the whole, his day had been rather too domestic. He was
quite pleased when Cecil, having apparently by accident broached the
subject of the Dry Goods Trust, proceeded to exhibit a minute curiosity
concerning the past, the present, and the future of the greatest of all
the Rainshore enterprises.

“Are you thinking of coming in?” Simeon demanded at length, pricking up
his ears.

“No,” said Cecil, “I’m thinking of going out. The fact is, I haven’t
mentioned it before, but I’m ready to sell a very large block of
shares.”

“The deuce you are!” Simeon exclaimed. “And what do you call a very
large block?”

“Well,” said Cecil, “it would cost me nearly half a million to take
them up now.”

“Dollars?”

“Pounds sterling. Twenty-five thousand shares, at 95-3/8.”

Rainshore whistled two bars of “Follow me!” from “The Belle of New
York.”

“Is this how you amuse yourself at Ostend?” he inquired.

Cecil smiled: “This is quite an exceptional transaction. And not too
profitable, either.”

“But you can’t dump that lot on the market,” Simeon protested.

“Yes, I can,” said Cecil. “I must, and I will. There are reasons. You
yourself wouldn’t care to handle it, I suppose?”

The president of the Trust pondered.

“I’d handle it at 93-3/8,” he answered quietly.

“Oh, come! That’s dropping two points!” said Cecil, shocked. “A minute
ago you were prophesying a further rise.”

Rainshore’s face gleamed out momentarily in the darkness as he puffed
at his cigar.

“If you must unload,” he remarked, as if addressing the red end of the
cigar, “I’m your man at 93-3/8.”

Cecil argued: but Simeon Rainshore never argued--it was not his
method. In a quarter of an hour the younger man had contracted to
sell twenty-five thousand shares of a hundred dollars each in the
United States Dry Goods Trust at two points below the current market
quotation, and six and five-eighths points below par.

The hoot of an outgoing steamer sounded across the city.

“I must go,” said Cecil.

“You’re in a mighty hurry,” Simeon complained.


IV.

Five minutes later Cecil was in his own rooms at the Hôtel de la Plage.
Soon there was a discreet knock at the door.

“Come in, Lecky,” he said.

It was his servant who entered, the small, thin man with very mobile
eyes and of no particular age, who, in various capacities and
incarnations--now as liftman, now as financial agent, now as no matter
what--assisted Cecil in his diversions.

“Mr. Vaux-Lowry really did go by the boat, sir.”

“Good. And you have given directions about the yacht?”

“The affair is in order.”

“And you’ve procured one of Mr. Rainshore’s Homburg hats?”

“It is in your dressing-room. There was no mark of identification
on it. So, in order to smooth the difficulties of the police when
they find it on the beach, I have taken the liberty of writing Mr.
Rainshore’s name on the lining.”

“A kindly thought,” said Cecil. “You’ll catch the special G.S.N.
steamer direct for London at 1 a.m. That will get you into town before
two o’clock to-morrow afternoon. Things have turned out as I expected,
and I’ve nothing else to say to you; but, before leaving me, perhaps
you had better repeat your instructions.”

“With pleasure, sir,” said Lecky. “Tuesday afternoon.--I call at
Cloak Lane and intimate that we want to sell Dry Goods shares. I
ineffectually try to conceal a secret cause for alarm, and I gradually
disclose the fact that we are very anxious indeed to sell really a
lot of Dry Goods shares, in a hurry. I permit myself to be pumped,
and the information is wormed out of me that Mr. Simeon Rainshore has
disappeared, has possibly committed suicide; but that, at present,
no one is aware of this except ourselves. I express doubts as to the
soundness of the Trust, and I remark on the unfortunateness of this
disappearance so soon after the lamentable panic connected with the
lately vanished Bruce Bowring and his companies. I send our friends on
’Change with orders to see what they can do and to report. I then go
to Birchin Lane and repeat the performance there without variation.
Then I call at the City office of the _Evening Messenger_ and talk
privily in a despondent vein with the financial editor concerning the
Trust, but I breathe not a word as to Mr. Rainshore’s disappearance.
Wednesday morning.--The rot in Dry Goods has set in sharply, but I am
now, very foolishly, disposed to haggle about the selling price. Our
friends urge me to accept what I can get, and I leave them, saying that
I must telegraph to you. Wednesday afternoon.--I see a reporter of the
_Morning Journal_ and let out that Simeon Rainshore has disappeared.
The _Journal_ will wire to Ostend for confirmation, which confirmation
it will receive. Thursday morning.--The bottom is knocked out of the
price of Dry Goods shares. Then I am to call on our other friends in
Throgmorton Street and tell them to buy, buy, buy, in London, New York,
Paris, everywhere.”

“Go in peace,” said Cecil. “If we are lucky, the price will drop to
seventy.”


V.

“I see, Mr. Thorold,” said Geraldine Rainshore, “that you are about to
ask me for the next dance. It is yours.”

“You are the queen of diviners,” Cecil replied, bowing.

It was precisely half-past nine on Thursday evening, and they had
met in a corner of the pillared and balconied _salle de danse_, in
the Kursaal behind the concert-hall. The slippery, glittering floor
was crowded with dancers--the men in ordinary evening dress, the
women very variously attired, save that nearly all wore picture-hats.
Geraldine was in a white frock, high at the neck, with a large hat of
black velvet; and amidst that brilliant, multicoloured, light-hearted
throng, lit by the blaze of the electric chandeliers and swayed by the
irresistible melody of the “Doctrinen” waltz, the young girl, simply
dressed as she was, easily held her own.

“So you’ve come back from Brussels?” Cecil said, taking her arm and
waist.

“Yes. We arrived just on time for dinner. But what have you been doing
with father? We’ve seen nothing of him.”

“Ah!” said Cecil mysteriously. “We’ve been on a little voyage, and,
like you, we’ve only just returned.”

“In the _Claribel_?”

He nodded.

“You might have waited,” she pouted.

“Perhaps you wouldn’t have liked it. Things happened, you know.”

“Why, what? Do tell me.”

“Well, you left your poor father alone, and he was moping all day on
Tuesday. So on Tuesday night I had the happy idea of going out in the
yacht to witness a sham night attack by the French Channel Squadron on
Calais. I caught your honoured parent just as he was retiring to bed,
and we went. He was only too glad. But we hadn’t left the harbour much
more than an hour and a half when our engines broke down.”

“What fun! And at night, too!”

“Yes. Wasn’t it? The shaft was broken. So we didn’t see much of any
night attack on Calais. Fortunately the weather was all that the
weather ought to be when a ship’s engines break down. Still, it took
us over forty hours to repair--over forty hours! I’m proud we were able
to do the thing without being ignominiously towed into port. But I fear
your father may have grown a little impatient, though we had excellent
views of Ostend and Dunkirk, and the passing vessels were a constant
diversion.”

“Was there plenty to eat?” Geraldine asked simply.

“Ample.”

“Then father wouldn’t really mind. When did you land?”

“About an hour ago. Your father did not expect you to-night, I fancy.
He dressed and went straight to the tables. He has to make up for a
night lost, you see.”

They danced in silence for a few moments, and then suddenly Geraldine
said--

“Will you excuse me? I feel tired. Good night.”

The clock under the orchestra showed seventeen minutes to ten.

“Instantly?” Cecil queried.

“Instantly.” And the girl added, with a hint of mischief in her voice,
as she shook hands: “I look on you as quite a friend since our last
little talk; so you will excuse this abruptness, won’t you?”

He was about to answer when a sort of commotion arose near behind
them. Still holding her hand he turned to look.

“Why!” he said. “It’s your mother! She must be unwell!”

Mrs. Rainshore, stout, and robed, as always, in tight, sumptuous black,
sat among a little bevy of chaperons. She held a newspaper in trembling
hands, and she was uttering a succession of staccato “Oh-oh’s,” while
everyone in the vicinity gazed at her with alarm. Then she dropped the
paper, and, murmuring, “Simeon’s dead!” sank gently to the polished
floor just as Cecil and Geraldine approached.

Geraldine’s first instinctive move was to seize the newspaper, which
was that day’s Paris edition of the _New York Herald_. She read the
headlines in a flash: “Strange disappearance of Simeon Rainshore.
Suicide feared. Takes advantage of his family’s absence. Heavy drop in
Dry Goods. Shares at 72 and still falling.”


VI.

“My good Rebecca, I assure you that I am alive.”

This was Mr. Rainshore’s attempt to calm the hysteric sobbing of his
wife, who had recovered from her short swoon in the little retreat of
the person who sold Tauchnitzes, picture-postcards, and French novels,
between the main corridor and the reading-rooms. Geraldine and Cecil
were also in the tiny chamber.

“As for this,” Simeon continued, kicking the newspaper, “it’s a
singular thing that a man can’t take a couple of days off without
upsetting the entire universe. What should you do in my place, Thorold?
This is the fault of your shaft.”

“I should buy Dry Goods shares,” said Cecil.

“And I will.”

There was an imperative knock at the door. An official of police
entered.

“Monsieur Ryneshor?”

“The same.”

“We have received telegraphs from New York and Londres to demand if you
are dead.”

“I am not. I still live.”

“But Monsieur’s hat has been found on the beach.”

“My hat?”

“It carries Monsieur’s name.”

“Then it isn’t mine, sir.”

“_Mais comment donc----?_”

“I tell you it isn’t mine, sir.”

“Don’t be angry, Simeon,” his wife pleaded between her sobs.

The exit of the official was immediately followed by another summons
for admission, even more imperative. A lady entered and handed to
Simeon a card: “Miss Eve Fincastle. _The Morning Journal._”

“My paper----” she began.

“You wish to know if I exist, madam!” said Simeon.

“I----” Miss Fincastle caught sight of Cecil Thorold, paused, and bowed
stiffly. Cecil bowed; he also blushed.

“I continue to exist, madam,” Simeon proceeded. “I have not killed
myself. But homicide of some sort is not improbable if---- In short,
madam, good night!”

Miss Fincastle, with a long, searching, silent look at Cecil, departed.

“Bolt that door,” said Simeon to his daughter.

Then there was a third knock, followed by a hammering.

“Go away!” Simeon commanded.

“Open the door!” pleaded a muffled voice.

“It’s Harry!” Geraldine whispered solemnly in Cecil’s ear. “Please go
and calm him. Tell him I say it’s too late to-night.”

Cecil went, astounded.

“What’s happened to Geraldine?” cried the boy, extremely excited, in
the corridor. “There are all sorts of rumours. Is she ill?”

Cecil gave an explanation, and in his turn asked for another one. “You
look unnerved,” he said. “What are you doing here? What is it? Come
and have a drink. And tell me all, my young friend.” And when, over
cognac, he had learnt the details of a scheme which had no connection
with his own, he exclaimed, with the utmost sincerity: “The minx! The
minx!”

“What do you mean?” inquired Harry Vaux-Lowry.

“I mean that you and the minx have had the nearest possible shave of
ruining your united careers. Listen to me. Give it up, my boy. I’ll
try to arrange things. You delivered a letter to the father-in-law of
your desire a few days ago. I’ll give you another one to deliver, and I
fancy the result will be, different.”

The letter which Cecil wrote ran thus:--

  “DEAR RAINSHORE,--I enclose cheque for £100,000. It represents parts
  of the gold that can be picked up on the gold coast by putting out
  one’s hand--so! You will observe that it is dated the day after the
  next settling-day of the London Stock Exchange. I contracted on
  Monday last to sell you 25,000 shares of a certain Trust at 93-3/8,
  I did not possess the shares then, but my agents have to-day bought
  them for me at an average price of 72. I stand to realise, therefore,
  rather more than half a million dollars. The round half-million Mr.
  Vaux-Lowry happens to bring you in his pocket; you will not forget
  your promise to him that when he did so you would consider his
  application favourably. I wish to make no profit out of the little
  transaction, but I will venture to keep the balance for out-of-pocket
  expenses, such as mending the _Claribel’s_ shaft. (How convenient it
  is to have a yacht that will break down when required!) The shares
  will doubtless recover in due course, and I hope the reputation of
  the Trust may not suffer, and that for the sake of old times with my
  father you will regard the episode in its proper light and bear me no
  ill-will.--Yours sincerely,

                                                           “C. THOROLD.”

The next day the engagement of Mr. Harry Nigel Selincourt Vaux-Lowry
and Miss Geraldine Rainshore was announced to two continents.


CHAPTER III.

A BRACELET AT BRUGES.

The bracelet had fallen into the canal.

And the fact that the canal was the most picturesque canal in the old
Flemish city of Bruges, and that the ripples caused by the splash of
the bracelet had disturbed reflections of wondrous belfries, towers,
steeples, and other unique examples of Gothic architecture, did nothing
whatever to assuage the sudden agony of that disappearance. For the
bracelet had been given to Kitty Sartorius by her grateful and lordly
manager, Lionel Belmont (U.S.A.), upon the completion of the unexampled
run of “The Delmonico Doll,” at the Regency Theatre, London. And its
diamonds were worth five hundred pounds, to say nothing of the gold.

The beautiful Kitty, and her friend Eve Fincastle, the journalist,
having exhausted Ostend, had duly arrived at Bruges in the course of
their holiday tour. The question of Kitty’s jewellery had arisen at the
start. Kitty had insisted that she must travel with all her jewels,
according to the custom of the theatrical stars of great magnitude. Eve
had equally insisted that Kitty must travel without jewels, and had
exhorted her to remember the days of her simplicity. They compromised.
Kitty was allowed to bring the bracelet, but nothing else save the
usual half-dozen rings. The ravishing creature could not have persuaded
herself to leave the bracelet behind, because it was so recent a gift
and still new and strange and heavenly to her. But, since prudence
forbade even Kitty to let the trifle lie about in hotel bedrooms, she
was obliged always to wear it. And she had been wearing it this bright
afternoon in early October, when the girls, during a stroll, had met
one of their new friends, Madame Lawrence, on the world-famous Quai du
Rosaire, just at the back of the Hôtel de Ville and the Halles.

Madame Lawrence resided permanently in Bruges. She was between
twenty-five and forty-five, dark, with the air of continually
subduing a natural instinct to dash, and well dressed in black.
Equally interested in the peerage and in the poor, she had made the
acquaintance of Eve and Kitty at the Hôtel de la Grande Place, where
she called from time to time to induce English travellers to buy
genuine Bruges lace, wrought under her own supervision by her own
paupers. She was Belgian by birth, and when complimented on her fluent
and correct English, she gave all the praise to her deceased husband,
an English barrister. She had settled in Bruges like many people settle
there, because Bruges is inexpensive, picturesque, and inordinately
respectable. Besides an English church and chaplain, it has two
cathedrals and an episcopal palace, with a real bishop in it.

“What an exquisite bracelet! May I look at it?”

It was these simple but ecstatic words, spoken with Madame Lawrence’s
charming foreign accent, which had begun the tragedy. The three women
had stopped to admire the always admirable view from the little quay,
and they were leaning over the rails when Kitty unclasped the bracelet
for the inspection of the widow. The next instant there was a _plop_,
an affrighted exclamation from Madame Lawrence in her native tongue,
and the bracelet was engulfed before the very eyes of all three.

The three looked at each other non-plussed. Then they looked around,
but not a single person was in sight. Then, for some reason which,
doubtless, psychology can explain, they stared hard at the water,
though the water there was just as black and foul as it is everywhere
else in the canal system of Bruges.

“Surely you’ve not dropped it!” Eve Fincastle exclaimed in a voice of
horror. Yet she knew positively that Madame Lawrence had.

The delinquent took a handkerchief from her muff and sobbed into it.
And between her sobs she murmured: “We must inform the police.”

“Yes, of course,” said Kitty, with the lightness of one to whom a
five-hundred-pound bracelet is a bagatelle. “They’ll fish it up in no
time.”

“Well,” Eve decided, “you go to the police at once, Kitty; and Madame
Lawrence will go with you, because she speaks French, and I’ll stay
here to mark the exact spot.”

The other two started, but Madame Lawrence, after a few steps, put
her hand to her side. “I can’t,” she sighed, pale. “I am too upset. I
cannot walk. You go with Miss Sartorius,” she said to Eve, “and I will
stay,” and she leaned heavily against the railings.

Eve and Kitty ran off, just as if it was an affair of seconds, and the
bracelet had to be saved from drowning. But they had scarcely turned
the corner, thirty yards away, when they reappeared in company with a
high official of police, whom, by the most lucky chance in the world,
they had encountered in the covered passage leading to the Place du
Bourg. This official, instantly enslaved by Kitty’s beauty, proved to
be the very mirror of politeness and optimism. He took their names
and addresses, and a full description of the bracelet, and informed
them that at that place the canal was nine feet deep. He said that the
bracelet should undoubtedly be recovered on the morrow, but that, as
dusk was imminent, it would be futile to commence angling that night.
In the meantime the loss should be kept secret; and to make all sure, a
succession of gendarmes should guard the spot during the night.

Kitty grew radiant, and rewarded the gallant officer with smiles; Eve
was satisfied, and the face of Madame Lawrence wore a less mournful hue.

“And now,” said Kitty to Madame, when everything had been arranged, and
the first of the gendarmes was duly installed at the exact spot against
the railings, “you must come and take tea with us in our winter garden;
and be gay! Smile: I insist. And I insist that you don’t worry.”

Madame Lawrence tried feebly to smile.

“You are very good-natured,” she stammered.

Which was decidedly true.


II.

The winter-garden of the Hôtel de la Grande Place, referred to in all
the hotel’s advertisements, was merely the inner court of the hotel,
roofed in by glass at the height of the first storey. Cane flourished
there, in the shape of lounge-chairs, but no other plant. One of the
lounge-chairs was occupied when, just as the carillon in the belfry
at the other end of the Place began to play Gounod’s “Nazareth,”
indicating the hour of five o’clock, the three ladies entered the
winter-garden. Apparently the toilettes of two of them had been
adjusted and embellished as for a somewhat ceremonious occasion.

“Lo!” cried Kitty Sartorius, when she perceived the occupant of the
chair, “the millionaire! Mr. Thorold, how charming of you to reappear
like this! I invite you to tea.”

Cecil Thorold rose with appropriate eagerness.

“Delighted!” he said, smiling, and then explained that he had arrived
from Ostend about two hours before and had taken rooms in the hotel.

“You knew we were staying here?” Eve asked as he shook hands with her.

“No,” he replied; “but I am very glad to find you again.”

“Are you?” She spoke languidly, but her colour heightened and those
eyes of hers sparkled.

“Madame Lawrence,” Kitty chirruped, “let me present Mr. Cecil Thorold.
He is appallingly rich, but we mustn’t let that frighten us.”

From a mouth less adorable than the mouth of Miss Sartorius such an
introduction might have been judged lacking in the elements of good
form, but for more than two years now Kitty had known that whatever
she did or said was perfectly correct because she did or said it. The
new acquaintances laughed amiably, and a certain intimacy was at once
established.

“Shall I order tea, dear?” Eve suggested.

“No, dear,” said Kitty quietly. “We will wait for the Count.”

“The Count?” demanded Cecil Thorold.

“The Comte d’Avrec,” Kitty explained. “He is staying here.”

“A French nobleman, doubtless?”

“Yes,” said Kitty; and she added, “you will like him. He is an
archæologist, and a musician--oh, and lots of things!”

“If I am one minute late, I entreat pardon,” said a fine tenor voice at
the door.

It was the Count. After he had been introduced to Madame Lawrence, and
Cecil Thorold had been introduced to him, tea was served.

Now, the Comte d’Avrec was everything that a French count ought to
be. As dark as Cecil Thorold, and even handsomer, he was a little
older and a little taller than the millionaire, and a short, pointed,
black beard, exquisitely trimmed, gave him an appearance of staid
reliability which Cecil lacked. His bow was a vertebrate poem, his
smile a consolation for all misfortunes, and he managed his hat, stick,
gloves, and cup with the dazzling assurance of a conjurer. To observe
him at afternoon tea was to be convinced that he had been specially
created to shine gloriously in drawing-rooms, winter-gardens, and
_tables d’hôte_. He was one of those men who always do the right thing
at the right moment, who are capable of speaking an indefinite number
of languages with absolute purity of accent (he spoke English much
better than Madame Lawrence), and who can and do discourse with _verve_
and accuracy on all sciences, arts, sports, and religions. In short,
he was a phœnix of a count; and this was certainly the opinion of Miss
Kitty Sartorius and of Miss Eve Fincastle, both of whom reckoned that
what they did not know about men might be ignored. Kitty and the Count,
it soon became evident, were mutually attracted; their souls were
approaching each other with a velocity which increased inversely as the
square of the lessening distance between them. And Eve was watching
this approximation with undisguised interest and relish.

Nothing of the least importance occurred, save the Count’s marvellous
exhibition of how to behave at afternoon tea, until the refection was
nearly over; and then, during a brief pause in the talk, Cecil, who was
sitting to the left of Madame Lawrence, looked sharply round at the
right shoulder of his tweed coat; he repeated the gesture a second and
yet a third time.

“What is the matter with the man?” asked Eve Fincastle. Both she and
Kitty were extremely bright, animated, and even excited.

“Nothing. I thought I saw something on my shoulder, that’s all,”
said Cecil. “Ah! It’s only a bit of thread.” And he picked off the
thread with his left hand and held it before Madame Lawrence. “See!
It’s a piece of thin black silk, knotted. At first I took it for an
insect--you know how queer things look out of the corner of your eye.
Pardon!” He had dropped the fragment on to Madame Lawrence’s black silk
dress. “Now it’s lost.”

“If you will excuse me, kind friends,” said Madame Lawrence, “I will
go.” She spoke hurriedly, and as though in mental distress.

“Poor thing!” Kitty Sartorius exclaimed when the widow had gone. “She’s
still dreadfully upset”; and Kitty and Eve proceeded jointly to relate
the story of the diamond bracelet, upon which hitherto they had kept
silence (though with difficulty), out of regard for Madame Lawrence’s
feelings.

Cecil made almost no comment.

The Count, with the sympathetic excitability of his race, walked up and
down the winter-garden, asseverating earnestly that such clumsiness
amounted to a crime; then he grew calm and confessed that he shared the
optimism of the police as to the recovery of the bracelet; lastly he
complimented Kitty on her equable demeanour under this affliction.

“Do you know, Count,” said Cecil Thorold, later, after they had all
four ascended to the drawing-room overlooking the Grande Place, “I was
quite surprised when I saw at tea that you had to be introduced to
Madame Lawrence.”

“Why so, my dear Mr. Thorold?” the Count inquired suavely.

“I thought I had seen you together in Ostend a few days ago.”

The Count shook his wonderful head.

“Perhaps you have a brother----?” Cecil paused.

“No,” said the Count. “But it is a favourite theory of mine that
everyone has his double somewhere in the world.” Previously the Count
had been discussing Planchette--he was a great authority on the
supernatural, the sub-conscious, and the subliminal. He now deviated
gracefully to the discussion of the theory of doubles.

“I suppose you aren’t going out for a walk, dear, before dinner?” said
Eve to Kitty.

“No, dear,” said Kitty, positively.

“I think I shall,” said Eve.

And her glance at Cecil Thorold intimated in the plainest possible
manner that she wished not only to have a companion for a stroll, but
to leave Kitty and the Count in dual solitude.

“I shouldn’t, if I were you, Miss Fincastle,” Cecil remarked, with calm
and studied blindness. “It’s risky here in the evenings--with these
canals exhaling miasma and mosquitoes and bracelets and all sorts of
things.”

“I will take the risk, thank you,” said Eve, in an icy tone, and she
haughtily departed; she would not cower before Cecil’s millions. As for
Cecil, he joined in the discussion of the theory of doubles.


III.

On the next afternoon but one, policemen were still fishing, without
success, for the bracelet, and raising from the ancient duct
long-buried odours which threatened to destroy the inhabitants of the
quay. (When Kitty Sartorius had hinted that perhaps the authorities
might see their way to drawing off the water from the canal, the
authorities had intimated that the death-rate of Bruges was already as
high as convenient.) Nevertheless, though nothing had happened, the
situation had somehow developed, and in such a manner that the bracelet
itself was in danger of being partially forgotten; and of all places
in Bruges, the situation had developed on the top of the renowned
Belfry which dominates the Grande Place in particular and the city in
general.

The summit of the Belfry is three hundred and fifty feet high, and it
is reached by four hundred and two winding stone steps, each a separate
menace to life and limb. Eve Fincastle had climbed those steps alone,
perhaps in quest of the view at the top, perhaps in quest of spiritual
calm. She had not been leaning over the parapet more than a minute
before Cecil Thorold had appeared, his field-glasses slung over his
shoulder. They had begun to talk a little, but nervously and only in
snatches. The wind blew free up there among the forty-eight bells, but
the social atmosphere was oppressive.

“The Count is a most charming man,” Eve was saying, as if in defence of
the Count.

“He is,” said Cecil; “I agree with you.”

“Oh, no, you don’t, Mr. Thorold! Oh, no, you don’t!”

Then there was a pause, and the twain looked down upon Bruges, with
its venerable streets, its grass-grown squares, its waterways, and
its innumerable monuments, spread out maplike beneath them in the
mellow October sunshine. Citizens passed along the thoroughfare in the
semblance of tiny dwarfs.

“If you didn’t hate him,” said Eve, “you wouldn’t behave as you do.”

“How do I behave, then?”

Eve schooled her voice to an imitation of jocularity--

“All Tuesday evening, and all day yesterday, you couldn’t leave them
alone. You know you couldn’t.”

Five minutes later the conversation had shifted.

“You actually saw the bracelet fall into the canal?” said Cecil.

“I actually saw the bracelet fall into the canal. And no one could have
got it out while Kitty and I were away, because we weren’t away half a
minute.”

But they could not dismiss the subject of the Count, and presently he
was again the topic.

“Naturally it would be a good match for the Count--for _any_ man,” said
Eve; “but then it would also be a good match for Kitty. Of course, he
is not so rich as some people, but he is rich.”

Cecil examined the horizon with his glasses, and then the streets near
the Grande Place.

“Rich, is he? I’m glad of it. By the by, he’s gone to Ghent for the
day, hasn’t he?”

“Yes, he went by the 9.27, and returns by the 4.38.”

Another pause.

“Well,” said Cecil at length, handing the glasses to Eve Fincastle,
“kindly glance down there. Follow the line of the Rue St. Nicolas. You
see the cream-coloured house with the enclosed courtyard? Now, do you
see two figures standing together near a door--a man and a woman, the
woman on the steps? Who are they?”

“I can’t see very well,” said Eve.

“Oh, yes, my dear lady, you can,” said Cecil. “These glasses are the
very best. Try again.”

“They look like the Comte d’Avrec and Madame Lawrence,” Eve murmured.

“But the Count is on his way from Ghent! I see the steam of the 4.38
over there. The curious thing is that the Count entered the house of
Madame Lawrence, to whom he was introduced for the first time the day
before yesterday, at ten o’clock this morning. Yes, it would be a very
good match for the Count. When one comes to think of it, it usually is
that sort of man that contrives to marry a brilliant and successful
actress. There! He’s just leaving, isn’t he? Now let us descend and
listen to the recital of his day’s doings in Ghent--shall we?”

“You mean to insinuate,” Eve burst out in sudden wrath, “that the Count
is an--an _adventurer_, and that Madame Lawrence---- Oh! Mr. Thorold!”
She laughed condescendingly. “This jealousy is too absurd. Do you
suppose I haven’t noticed how impressed you were with Kitty at the
Devonshire Mansion that night, and again at Ostend, and again here?
You’re simply carried away by jealousy; and you think because you are a
millionaire you must have all you want. I haven’t the slightest doubt
that the Count----”

“Anyhow,” said Cecil, “let us go down and hear about Ghent.”

His eyes made a number of remarks (indulgent, angry, amused,
protective, admiring, perspicacious, puzzled), too subtle for the
medium of words.

They groped their way down to earth in silence, and it was in silence
that they crossed the Grande Place. The Count was seated on the
_terrasse_ in front of the hotel, with a liqueur glass before him, and
he was making graceful and expressive signs to Kitty Sartorius, who
leaned her marvellous beauty out of a first-storey window. He greeted
Cecil Thorold and Eve with an equal grace.

“And how is Ghent?” Cecil inquired.

“Did you go to Ghent, after all, Count?” Eve put in. The Comte d’Avrec
looked from one to another, and then, instead of replying, he sipped
at his glass. “No,” he said, “I didn’t go. The rather curious fact is
that I happened to meet Madame Lawrence, who offered to show me her
collection of lace. I have been an amateur of lace for some years, and
really Madame Lawrence’s collection is amazing. You have seen it? No?
You should do so. I’m afraid I have spent most of the day there.”

When the Count had gone to join Kitty in the drawing-room, Eve
Fincastle looked victoriously at Cecil, as if to demand of him: “Will
you apologise?”

“My dear journalist,” Cecil remarked simply, “you gave the show away.”

That evening the continued obstinacy of the bracelet, which still
refused to be caught, began at last to disturb the birdlike mind of
Kitty Sartorius. Moreover, the secret was out, and the whole town of
Bruges was discussing the episode and the chances of success.

“Let us consult Planchette,” said the Count. The proposal was received
with enthusiasm by Kitty. Eve had disappeared.

Planchette was produced; and when asked if the bracelet would be
recovered, it wrote, under the hands of Kitty and the Count, a
trembling “Yes.” When asked: “By whom?” it wrote a word which faintly
resembled “Avrec.”

The Count stated that he should personally commence dragging operations
at sunrise. “You will see,” he said, “I shall succeed.”

“Let me try this toy, may I?” Cecil asked blandly, and, upon Kitty
agreeing, he addressed Planchette in a clear voice: “Now, Planchette,
who will restore the bracelet to its owner?”

And Planchette wrote “Thorold,” but in characters as firm and regular
as those of a copy-book.

“Mr. Thorold is laughing at us,” observed the Count, imperturbably
bland.

“How horrid you are, Mr. Thorold!” Kitty exclaimed.


IV.

Of the four persons more or less interested in the affair, three
were secretly active that night, in and out of the hotel. Only Kitty
Sartorius, chief mourner for the bracelet, slept placidly in her bed.
It was towards three o’clock in the morning that a sort of preliminary
crisis was reached.

From the multiplicity of doors which ventilate its rooms, one would
imagine that the average foreign hotel must have been designed
immediately after its architect had been to see a Palais Royal farce,
in which every room opens into every other room in every act. The Hôtel
de la Grande Place was not peculiar in this respect; it abounded in
doors. All the chambers on the second storey, over the public rooms,
fronting the Place, communicated one with the next, but naturally most
of the communicating doors were locked. Cecil Thorold and the Comte
d’Avrec had each a bedroom and a sitting-room on that floor. The
Count’s sitting-room adjoined Cecil’s; and the door between was locked,
and the key in the possession of the landlord.

Nevertheless, at three a.m. this particular door opened noiselessly
from Cecil’s side, and Cecil entered the domain of the Count. The
moon shone, and Cecil could plainly see not only the silhouette of
the Belfry across the Place, but also the principal objects within
the room. He noticed the table in the middle, the large easy-chair
turned towards the hearth, the old-fashioned sofa; but not a single
article did he perceive which might have been the personal property of
the Count. He cautiously passed across the room through the moonlight
to the door of the Count’s bedroom, which apparently, to his immense
surprise, was not only shut, but locked, and the key in the lock on the
sitting-room side. Silently unlocking it, he entered the bedroom and
disappeared....

In less than five minutes he crept back into the Count’s sitting-room,
closed the door and locked it.

“Odd!” he murmured reflectively; but he seemed quite happy.

There was a sudden movement in the region of the hearth, and a form
rose from the armchair. Cecil rushed to the switch and turned on the
electric light. Eve Fincastle stood before him. They faced each other.

“What are you doing here at this time, Miss Fincastle?” he asked,
sternly. “You can talk freely; the Count will not waken.”

“I may ask you the same question,” Eve replied, with cold bitterness.

“Excuse me. You may not. You are a woman. This is the Count’s room----”

“You are in error,” she interrupted him. “It is not the Count’s room.
It is mine. Last night I told the Count I had some important writing
to do, and I asked him as a favour to relinquish this room to me for
twenty-four hours. He very kindly consented. He removed his belongings,
handed me the key of that door, and the transfer was made in the hotel
books. And now,” she added, “may I inquire, Mr. Thorold, what you are
doing in my room?”

“I--I thought it was the Count’s,” Cecil faltered, decidedly at a loss
for a moment. “In offering my humblest apologies, permit me to say that
I admire you, Miss Fincastle.”

“I wish I could return the compliment,” Eve exclaimed, and she repeated
with almost plaintive sincerity: “I do wish I could.”

Cecil raised his arms and let them fall to his side.

“You meant to catch me,” he said. “You suspected something, then? The
‘important writing’ was an invention.” And he added, with a faint
smile: “You really ought not to have fallen asleep. Suppose I had not
wakened you?”

“Please don’t laugh, Mr. Thorold. Yes, I did suspect. There was
something in the demeanour of your servant Lecky that gave me the
idea... I did mean to catch you. Why you, a millionaire, should be a
burglar, I cannot understand. I never understood that incident at the
Devonshire Mansion; it was beyond me. I am by no means sure that you
didn’t have a great deal to do with the Rainshore affair at Ostend.
But that you should have stooped to slander is the worst. I confess
you are a mystery. I confess that I can make no guess at the nature of
your present scheme. And what I shall do, now that I have caught you,
I don’t know. I can’t decide; I must think. If, however, anything is
missing to-morrow morning, I shall be bound in any case to denounce
you. You grasp that?”

“I grasp it perfectly, my dear journalist,” Cecil replied. “And
something will not improbably be missing. But take the advice of a
burglar and a mystery, and go to bed, it is half-past three.”

And Eve went. And Cecil bowed her out and then retired to his own
rooms. And the Count’s apartment was left to the moonlight.


V.

“Planchette is a very safe prophet,” said Cecil to Kitty Sartorius the
next morning, “provided it has firm guidance.”

They were at breakfast.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that Planchette prophesied last night that I should restore to
you your bracelet. I do.”

He took the lovely gewgaw from his pocket and handed it to Kitty.

“Ho-ow did you find it, you dear thing?” Kitty stammered, trembling
under the shock of joy.

“I fished it up out--out of the mire by a contrivance of my own.”

“But when?”

“Oh! Very early. At three o’clock a.m. You see, I was determined to be
first.”

“In the dark, then?”

“I had a light. Don’t you think I’m rather clever?”

Kitty’s scene of ecstatic gratitude does not come into the story.
Suffice it to say that not until the moment of its restoration did she
realise how precious the bracelet was to her.

It was ten o’clock before Eve descended. She had breakfasted in her
room, and Kitty had already exhibited to her the prodigal bracelet.

“I particularly want you to go up the Belfry with me, Miss Fincastle,”
Cecil greeted her; and his tone was so serious and so urgent that
she consented. They left Kitty playing waltzes on the piano in the
drawing-room.

“And now, O man of mystery?” Eve questioned, when they had toiled to
the summit, and saw the city and its dwarfs beneath them.

“We are in no danger of being disturbed here,” Cecil began; “but I
will make my explanation--the explanation which I certainly owe you--as
brief as possible. Your Comte d’Avrec is an adventurer (please don’t
be angry), and your Madame Lawrence is an adventuress. I knew that I
had seen them together. They work in concert, and for the most part
make a living on the gaming-tables of Europe. Madame Lawrence was
expelled from Monte Carlo last year for being too intimate with a
croupier. You may be aware that at a roulette-table one can do a great
deal with the aid of the croupier. Madame Lawrence appropriated the
bracelet ‘on her own,’ as it were. The Count (he may be a real Count,
for anything I know) heard first of that enterprise from the lips of
Miss Sartorius. He was annoyed, angry--because he was really a little
in love with your friend, and he saw golden prospects. It is just this
fact--the Count’s genuine passion for Miss Sartorius--that renders
the case psychologically interesting. To proceed, Madame Lawrence
became jealous. The Count spent six hours yesterday in trying to get
the bracelet from her, and failed. He tried again last night, and
succeeded, but not too easily, for he did not re-enter the hotel till
after one o’clock. At first I thought he had succeeded in the daytime,
and I had arranged accordingly, for I did not see why he should have
the honour and glory of restoring the bracelet to its owner. Lecky and
I fixed up a sleeping-draught for him. The minor details were simple.
When you caught me this morning, the bracelet was in my pocket, and in
its stead I had left a brief note for the perusal of the Count, which
has had the singular effect of inducing him to decamp; probably he has
not gone alone. But isn’t it amusing that, since you so elaborately
took his sitting-room, he will be convinced that you are a party to his
undoing--you, his staunchest defender?”

Eve’s face gradually broke into an embarrassed smile.

“You haven’t explained,” she said, “how Madame Lawrence got the
bracelet.”

“Come over here,” Cecil answered. “Take these glasses and look down at
the Quai du Rosaire. You see everything plainly?” Eve could, in fact,
see on the quay the little mounds of mud which had been extracted
from the canal in the quest of the bracelet. Cecil continued: “On
my arrival in Bruges on Monday, I had a fancy to climb the Belfry
at once. I witnessed the whole scene between you and Miss Sartorius
and Madame Lawrence, through my glasses. Immediately your backs were
turned, Madame Lawrence, her hands behind her, and her back against
the railing, began to make a sort of rapid, drawing up motion with her
forearms. Then I saw a momentary glitter.... Considerably mystified, I
visited the spot after you had left it, chatted with the gendarme on
duty and got round him, and then it dawned on me that a robbery had
been planned, prepared, and executed with extraordinary originality and
ingenuity. A long, thin thread of black silk must have been ready tied
to the railing, with perhaps a hook at the other end. As soon as Madame
Lawrence held the bracelet she attached the hook to it and dropped it.
The silk, especially as it was the last thing in the world you would
look for, would be as good as invisible. When you went for the police,
Madame retrieved the bracelet, hid it in her muff, and broke off the
silk. Only, in her haste, she left a bit of silk tied to the railing.
That fragment I carried to the hotel. All along she must have been a
little uneasy about me.... And that’s all. Except that I wonder you
thought I was jealous of the Count’s attentions to your friend.” He
gazed at her admiringly.

“I’m glad you are not a thief, Mr. Thorold,” said Eve.

“Well,” Cecil smiled, “as for that, I left him a couple of louis for
fares, and I shall pay his hotel bill.”

“Why?”

“There were notes for nearly ten thousand francs with the bracelet.
Ill-gotten gains, I am sure. A trifle, but the only reward I shall have
for my trouble. I shall put them to good use.” He laughed, serenely
gay.


CHAPTER IV.

A SOLUTION OF THE ALGIERS MYSTERY.

“And the launch?”

“I am unaware of the precise technical term, sir, but the launch awaits
you. Perhaps I should have said it is alongside.”

The reliable Lecky hated the sea; and when his master’s excursions
became marine, he always squinted more formidably and suddenly than
usual, and added to his reliability a certain quality of ironic
bitterness.

“My overcoat, please,” said Cecil Thorold, who was in evening dress.

The apartment, large and low, was panelled with bird’s-eye maple;
divans ran along the walls, and above the divans orange curtains were
drawn; the floor was hidden by the skins of wild African animals; in
one corner was a Steinway piano, with the score of “The Orchid” open on
the music-stand; in another lay a large, flat bowl filled with blossoms
that do not bloom in England; the illumination, soft and yellow,
came from behind the cornice of the room, being reflected therefrom
downwards by the cream-coloured ceiling. Only by a faintly-heard tremor
of some gigantic but repressed force, and by a very slight unsteadiness
on the part of the floor, could you have guessed that you were aboard a
steam-yacht and not in a large, luxurious house.

Lecky, having arrayed the millionaire in overcoat, muffler, crush-hat,
and white gloves, drew aside a _portière_ and followed him up a flight
of stairs. They stood on deck, surrounded by the mild but treacherous
Algerian night. From the white double funnels a thin smoke oozed. On
the white bridge, the second mate, a spectral figure, was testing
the engine-room signals, and the sharp noise of the bell seemed to
desecrate the mysterious silence of the bay; but there was no other
sign of life; the waiting launch was completely hidden under the high
bows of the _Claribel_. In distant regions of the deck, glimmering
beams came oddly up from below, throwing into relief some part of a
boat on its davits or a section of a mast.

Cecil looked about him, at the serried lights of the Boulevard Carnot,
and the riding lanterns of the vessels in the harbour. Away to the left
on the hill, a few gleams showed Mustapha Supérieure, where the great
English hotels are; and ten miles further east, the lighthouse on Cape
Matifou flashed its eternal message to the Mediterranean. He was on the
verge of feeling poetic.

“Suppose anything happens while you are at this dance, sir?”

Lecky jerked his thumb in the direction of a small steamer which
lay moored scarcely a cable’s-length away, under the eastern jetty.
“Suppose----?” He jerked his thumb again in exactly the same direction.
His tone was still pessimistic and cynical.

“You had better fire our beautiful brass cannon,” Cecil replied. “Have
it fired three times. I shall hear it well enough up at Mustapha.”

He descended carefully into the launch, and was whisked puffingly over
the dark surface of the bay to the landing-stage, where he summoned a
fiacre.

“Hôtel St. James,” he instructed the driver.

And the driver smiled joyously; everyone who went to the Hôtel St.
James was rich and lordly, and paid well, because the hill was long and
steep and so hard on the poor Algerian horses.


II.

Every hotel up at Mustapha Supérieure has the finest view, the finest
hygienic installation, and the finest cooking in Algeria; in other
words, each is better than all the others. Hence the Hôtel St. James
could not be called “first among equals,” since there are no equals,
and one must be content to describe it as first among the unequalled.
First it undoubtedly was--and perhaps will be again. Although it was
new, it had what one visitor termed “that indefinable thing--_cachet_.”
It was frequented by the best people--namely, the richest people,
the idlest people, the most arrogant people, the most bored people,
the most titled people--that came to the southern shores of the
Mediterranean in search of what they would never find--an escape from
themselves. It was a vast building, planned on a scale of spaciousness
only possible in a district where commercial crises have depressed the
value of land, and it stood in the midst of a vast garden of oranges,
lemons, and medlars. Every room--and there were three storeys and two
hundred rooms--faced south: this was charged for in the bill. The
public rooms, Oriental in character, were immense and complete. They
included a dining-room, a drawing-room, a reading-room, a smoking-room,
a billiard-room, a bridge-room, a ping-pong-room, a concert-room (with
resident orchestra), and a room where Aissouias, negroes, and other
curiosities from the native town might perform before select parties.
Thus it was entirely self-sufficient, and lacked nothing which is
necessary to the proper existence of the best people. On Thursday
nights, throughout the season, there was a five-franc dance in the
concert-hall. You paid five francs, and ate and drank as much as you
could while standing up at the supper-tables arrayed in the dining-room.

On a certain Thursday night in early January, this Anglo-Saxon
microcosm, set so haughtily in a French colony between the
Mediterranean and the Djujura Mountains (with the Sahara behind), was
at its most brilliant. The hotel was crammed, the prices were high, and
everybody was supremely conscious of doing the correct thing. The dance
had begun somewhat earlier than usual, because the eagerness of the
younger guests could not be restrained. And the orchestra seemed gayer,
and the electric lights brighter, and the toilettes more resplendent
that night. Of course, guests came in from the other hotels. Indeed,
they came in to such an extent that to dance in the ballroom was an
affair of compromise and ingenuity. And the other rooms were occupied,
too. The bridge players recked not of Terpsichore, the cheerful sound
of ping-pong came regularly from the ping-pong-room; the retired Indian
judge was giving points as usual in the billiard-room; and in the
reading-room the steadfast intellectuals were studying the _World_ and
the Paris _New York Herald_.

And all was English and American, pure Anglo-Saxon in thought and
speech and gesture--save the manager of the hotel, who was Italian,
the waiters, who were anything, and the wonderful concierge, who was
everything.

As Cecil passed through the imposing suite of public rooms, he saw in
the reading-room--posted so that no arrival could escape her eye--the
elegant form of Mrs. Macalister, and, by way of a wild, impulsive
freak, he stopped and talked to her, and ultimately sat down by her
side.

Mrs. Macalister was one of those English-women that are to be found
only in large and fashionable hotels. Everything about her was
mysterious, except the fact that she was in search of a second husband.
She was tall, pretty, dashing, daring, well-dressed, well-informed,
and, perhaps thirty-four. But no one had known her husband or her
family, and no one knew her county, or the origin of her income, or
how she got herself into the best cliques in the hotel. She had the
air of being the merriest person in Algiers; really, she was one of
the saddest, for the reason that every day left her older, and harder,
and less likely to hook--well, to hook a millionaire. She had met
Cecil Thorold at the dance of the previous week, and had clung to him
so artfully that the coteries talked of it for three days, as Cecil
well knew. And to-night he thought he might, as well as not, give Mrs.
Macalister an hour’s excitement of the chase, and the coteries another
three days’ employment.

So he sat down beside her, and they talked.

First she asked him whether he slept on his yacht or in the hotel; and
he replied, sometimes in the hotel and sometimes on the yacht. Then
she asked him where his bedroom was, and he said it was on the second
floor, and she settled that it must be three doors from her own. Then
they discussed bridge, the Fiscal Inquiry, the weather, dancing, food,
the responsibilities of great wealth, Algerian railway-travelling,
Cannes, gambling, Mr. Morley’s “Life of Gladstone,” and the
extraordinary success of the hotel. Thus, quite inevitably, they
reached the subject of the Algiers Mystery. During the season, at any
rate, no two guests in the hotel ever talked small-talk for more than
ten minutes without reaching the subject of the Algiers Mystery.

For the hotel had itself been the scene of the Algiers Mystery, and the
Algiers Mystery was at once the simplest, the most charming, and the
most perplexing mystery in the world. One morning, the first of April
in the previous year, an honest John Bull of a guest had come down to
the hotel-office, and laying a five-pound note before the head clerk,
had exclaimed: “I found that lying on my dressing-table. It isn’t
mine. It looks good enough, but I expect it’s someone’s joke.” Seven
other people that day confessed that they had found five-pound notes
in their rooms, or pieces of paper that resembled five-pound notes.
They compared these notes, and then the eight went off in a body down
to an agency in the Boulevard de la République, and without the least
demur the notes were changed for gold. On the second of April, twelve
more people found five-pound notes in their rooms, now prominent on the
bed, now secreted--as, for instance, under a candlestick. Cecil himself
had been a recipient. Watches were set, but with no result whatever.
In a week nearly seven hundred pounds had been distributed amongst the
guests by the generous, invisible ghosts. It was magnificent, and it
was very soon in every newspaper in England and America. Some of the
guests did not “care” for it; thought it “queer,” and “uncanny,” and
not “nice,” and these left. But the majority cared for it very much
indeed, and remained till the utmost limit of the season.

The rainfall of notes had not recommenced so far, in the present
season. Nevertheless, the hotel had been thoroughly well patronised
from November onwards, and there was scarcely a guest but who went to
sleep at night hoping to descry a fiver in the morning.

“Advertisement!” said some perspicacious individuals. Of course, the
explanation was an obvious one. But the manager had indignantly and
honestly denied all knowledge of the business, and, moreover, not a
single guest had caught a single note in the act of settling down.
Further, the hotel changed hands and that manager left. The mystery,
therefore, remained, a delightful topic always at hand for discussion.

After having chatted, Cecil Thorold and Mrs. Macalister danced--two
dances. And the hotel began audibly to wonder that Cecil could be
such a fool. When, at midnight, he retired to bed, many mothers of
daughters and daughters of mothers were justifiably angry, and consoled
themselves by saying that he had disappeared in order to hide the shame
which must have suddenly overtaken him. As for Mrs. Macalister, she was
radiant.

Safely in his room, Cecil locked and wedged the door, and opened the
window and looked out from the balcony at the starry night. He could
hear cats playing on the roof. He smiled when he thought of the things
Mrs. Macalister had said, and of the ardour of her glances. Then
he felt sorry for her. Perhaps it was the whisky-and-soda which he
had just drunk that momentarily warmed his heart towards the lonely
creature. Only one item of her artless gossip had interested him--a
statement that the new Italian manager had been ill in bed all day.

He emptied his pockets, and, standing on a chair, he put his
pocket-book on the top of the wardrobe, where no Algerian marauder
would think of looking for it; his revolver he tucked under his pillow.
In three minutes he was asleep.


III.

He was awakened by a vigorous pulling and shaking of his arm; and he,
who usually woke wide at the least noise, came to his senses with
difficulty. He looked up. The electric light had been turned on.

“There’s a ghost in my room, Mr. Thorold! You’ll forgive me--but I’m
so----”

It was Mrs. Macalister, dishevelled and in white, who stood over him.

“This is really a bit too thick,” he thought vaguely and sleepily,
regretting his impulsive flirtation of the previous evening. Then he
collected himself and said sternly, severely, that if Mrs. Macalister
would retire to the corridor, he would follow in a moment; he added
that she might leave the door open if she felt afraid. Mrs. Macalister
retired, sobbing, and Cecil arose. He went first to consult his watch;
it was gone--a chronometer worth a couple of hundred pounds. He
whistled, climbed on to a chair, and discovered that his pocket-book
was no longer in a place of safety on the top of the wardrobe; it had
contained something over five hundred pounds in a highly negotiable
form. Picking up his overcoat, which lay on the floor, he found that
the fur lining--a millionaire’s fancy, which had cost him nearly a
hundred and fifty pounds--had been cut away, and was no more to be
seen. Even the revolver had departed from under his pillow!

“Well!” he murmured, “this is decidedly the grand manner.”

Quite suddenly it occurred to him, as he noticed a peculiar taste
in his mouth, that the whisky-and-soda had contained more than
whisky-and-soda--he had been drugged! He tried to recall the face of
the waiter who had served him. Eyeing the window and the door, he
argued that the thief had entered by the former and departed by the
latter. “But the pocket-book!” he mused. “I must have been watched!”

Mrs. Macalister, stripped now of all dash and all daring, could be
heard in the corridor.

“Can she----?” He speculated for a moment, and then decided positively
in the negative. Mrs. Macalister could have no design on anything but a
bachelor’s freedom.

He assumed his dressing-gown and slippers and went to her. The corridor
was in darkness, but she stood in the light of his doorway.

“Now,” he said, “this ghost of yours, dear lady!”

“You must go first,” she whimpered. “I daren’t. It was white ... but
with a black face. It was at the window.”

Cecil, getting a candle, obeyed. And having penetrated alone into the
lady’s chamber, he perceived, to begin with, that a pane had been
pushed out of the window by the old, noiseless device of a sheet of
treacled paper, and then, examining the window more closely, he saw
that, outside, a silk ladder depended from the roof and trailed in the
balcony.

“Come in without fear,” he said to the trembling widow. “It must have
been someone with more appetite than a ghost that you saw. Perhaps an
Arab.”

She came in, femininely trusting to him; and between them they
ascertained that she had lost a watch, sixteen rings, an opal necklace,
and some money. Mrs. Macalister would not say how much money. “My
resources are slight,” she remarked. “I was expecting remittances.”

Cecil thought: “This is not merely in the grand manner. If it fulfils
its promise, it will prove to be one of the greatest things of the age.”

He asked her to keep cool, not to be afraid, and to dress herself. Then
he returned to his room and dressed as quickly as he could. The hotel
was absolutely quiet, but out of the depths below came the sound of a
clock striking four. When, adequately but not æsthetically attired, he
opened his door again, another door near by also opened, and Cecil saw
a man’s head.

“I say,” drawled the man’s head, “excuse me, but have _you_ noticed
anything?”

“Why? What?”

“Well, I’ve been robbed!”

The Englishman laughed awkwardly, apologetically, as though ashamed to
have to confess that he had been victimised.

“Much?” Cecil inquired.

“Two hundred or so. No joke, you know.”

“So have I been robbed,” said Cecil. “Let us go downstairs. Got a
candle? These corridors are usually lighted all night.”

“Perhaps our thief has been at the switches,” said the Englishman.

“Say our thieves,” Cecil corrected.

“You think there was more than one?”

“I think there were more than half a dozen,” Cecil replied.

The Englishman was dressed, and the two descended together, candles in
hand, forgetting the lone lady. But the lone lady had no intention of
being forgotten, and she came after them, almost screaming. They had
not reached the ground floor before three other doors had opened and
three other victims proclaimed themselves.

Cecil led the way through the splendid saloons, now so ghostly in
their elegance, which only three hours before had been the illuminated
scene of such polite revelry. Ere he reached the entrance-hall, where
a solitary jet was burning, the assistant-concierge (one of those
officials who seem never to sleep) advanced towards him, demanding in
his broken English what was the matter.

“There have been thieves in the hotel,” said Cecil. “Waken the
concierge.”

From that point, events succeeded each other in a sort of complex
rapidity. Mrs. Macalister fainted at the door of the billiard-room
and was laid out on a billiard-table, with a white ball between her
shoulders. The head concierge was not in his narrow bed in the alcove
by the main entrance, and he could not be found. Nor could the Italian
manager be found (though he was supposed to be ill in bed), nor the
Italian manager’s wife. Two stablemen were searched out from somewhere;
also a cook. And then the Englishman who had lost two hundred or so
went forth into the Algerian night to bring a gendarme from the post in
the Rue d’Isly.

Cecil Thorold contented himself with talking to people as, in ones
and twos, and in various stages of incorrectness, they came into the
public rooms, now brilliantly lighted. All who came had been robbed.
What surprised him was the slowness of the hotel to wake up. There were
two hundred and twenty guests in the place. Of these, in a quarter
of an hour, perhaps fifteen had risen. The remainder were apparently
oblivious of the fact that something very extraordinary, and something
probably very interesting to them personally, had occurred and was
occurring.

“Why! It’s a conspiracy, sir. It’s a conspiracy, that’s what it is!”
decided the Indian judge.

“Gang is a shorter word,” Cecil observed, and a young girl in a
macintosh giggled.

Sleepy _employés_ now began to appear, and the rumour ran that six
waiters and a chambermaid were missing. Mrs. Macalister rallied from
the billiard table and came into the drawing-room, where most of the
company had gathered. Cecil yawned (the influence of the drug was still
upon him) as she approached him and weakly spoke. He answered absently;
he was engaged in watching the demeanour of these idlers on the face of
the earth--how incapable they seemed of any initiative, and yet with
what magnificent Britannic phlegm they endured the strange situation!
The talking was neither loud nor impassioned.

Then the low, distant sound of a cannon was heard. Once, twice, thrice.

Silence ensued.

“Heavens!” sighed Mrs. Macalister, swaying towards Cecil. “What can
that be?”

He avoided her, hurried out of the room, and snatched somebody else’s
hat from the hat-racks in the hall. But just as he was turning the
handle of the main door of the hotel, the Englishman who had lost two
hundred or so returned out of the Algerian night with an inspector
of police. The latter courteously requested Cecil not to leave the
building, as he must open the inquiry (_ouvrir l’enquête_) at once.
Cecil was obliged, regretfully, to comply.

The inspector of police then commenced his labours. He telephoned
(no one had thought of the telephone) for assistance and asked the
Central Bureau to watch the railway station, the port, and the stage
coaches. He acquired the names and addresses of _tout le monde_.
He made catalogues of articles. He locked all the servants in the
ping-pong-room. He took down narratives, beginning with Cecil’s. And
while the functionary was engaged with Mrs. Macalister, Cecil quietly
but firmly disappeared.

After his departure, the affair loomed larger and larger in mere
magnitude, but nothing that came to light altered its leading
characteristics. A wholesale robbery had been planned with the most
minute care and knowledge, and executed with the most daring skill.
Some ten persons--the manager and his wife, a chambermaid, six waiters,
and the concierge--seemed to have been concerned in the enterprise,
excluding Mrs. Macalister’s Arab and no doubt other assistants. (The
guests suddenly remembered how superior the concierge and the waiters
had been to the ordinary concierge and waiter!) At a quarter-past
five o’clock the police had ascertained that a hundred rooms had been
entered, and horrified guests were still descending! The occupants of
many rooms, however, made no response to a summons to awake. These, it
was discovered afterwards, had either, like Cecil, received a sedative
unawares, or they had been neatly gagged and bound. In the result,
the list of missing valuables comprised nearly two hundred watches,
eight hundred rings, a hundred and fifty other articles of jewellery,
several thousand pounds’ worth of furs, three thousand pounds in
coin, and twenty-one thousand pounds in bank-notes and other forms of
currency. One lady, a doctor’s wife, said she had been robbed of eight
hundred pounds in Bank of England notes, but her story obtained little
credit; other tales of enormous loss, chiefly by women, were also taken
with salt. When the dawn began, at about six o’clock, an official
examination of the façade of the hotel indicated that nearly every room
had been invaded by the balconied window, either from the roof or from
the ground. But the stone flags of the terrace, and the beautifully
asphalted pathways of the garden disclosed no trace of the plunderers.

“I guess your British habit of sleeping with the window open don’t cut
much ice to-day, anyhow!” said an American from Indianapolis to the
company.

That morning no omnibus from the hotel arrived at the station to catch
the six-thirty train which takes two days to ramble to Tunis and
to Biskra. And all the liveried porters talked together in excited
Swiss-German.


IV.

“My compliments to Captain Black,” said Cecil Thorold, “and repeat
to him that all I want him to do is to keep her in sight. He needn’t
overhaul her too much.”

“Precisely, sir.” Lecky bowed; he was pale.

“And you had better lie down.”

“I thank you, sir, but I find a recumbent position inconvenient.
Perpetual motion seems more agreeable.”

Cecil was back in the large, low room panelled with bird’s-eye maple.
Below him the power of two thousand horses drove through the nocturnal
Mediterranean swell his _Claribel_ of a thousand tons. Thirty men were
awake and active on board her, and twenty slept in the vast, clean
forecastle, with electric lights blazing six inches above their noses.
He lit a cigarette, and going to the piano, struck a few chords from
“The Orchid”; but since the music would not remain on the stand, he
abandoned that attempt and lay down on a divan to think.

He had reached the harbour, from the hotel, in twenty minutes, partly
on foot at racing speed, and partly in an Arab cart, also at racing
speed. The _Claribel’s_ launch awaited him, and in another five minutes
the launch was slung to her davits, and the _Claribel_ under way. He
learnt that the small and sinister vessel, the _Perroquet Vert_ (of
Oran), which he and his men had been watching for several days, had
slipped unostentatiously between the southern and eastern jetties, had
stopped for a few minutes to hold converse with a boat that had put
off from the neighbourhood of Lower Mustapha, and had then pointed her
head north-west, as though for some port in the province of Oran or in
Morocco.

And in the rings of cigarette smoke which he made, Cecil seemed now
to see clearly the whole business. He had never relaxed his interest
in the affair of the five-pound notes. He had vaguely suspected it to
be part of some large scheme; he had presumed, on slight grounds, a
connection between the _Perroquet Vert_ and the Italian manager of the
hotel. Nay, more, he had felt sure that some great stroke was about
to be accomplished. But of precise knowledge, of satisfactory theory,
of definite expectation, he had had none--until Mrs. Macalister,
that unconscious and man-hunting agent of Destiny, had fortunately
wakened him in the nick of time. Had it not been for his flirtation
of the previous evening, he might still be asleep in his bed at the
hotel.... He perceived the entire plan. The five-pound notes had been
mysteriously scattered, certainly to advertise the hotel, but only
to advertise it for a particular and colossal end, to fill it full
and overflowing with fat victims. The situation had been thoroughly
studied in all its details, and the task had been divided and allotted
to various brains. Every room must have been examined, watched, and
separately plotted against; the habits and idiosyncrasy of every
victim must have been individually weighed and considered. Nothing, no
trifle, could have been forgotten. And then some supreme intelligence
had drawn the threads together and woven them swiftly into the pattern
of a single night, almost a single hour!... And the loot (Cecil could
estimate it pretty accurately) had been transported down the hill to
Mustapha Inférieure, tossed into a boat, and so to the _Perroquet
Vert_. And the _Perroquet Vert_, with loot and looters on board,
was bound, probably, for one of those obscure and infamous ports of
Oran or Morocco--Tenez, Mostaganem, Beni Sar, Melilla, or the city of
Oran, or Tangier itself! He knew something of the Spanish and Maltese
dens of Oran and Tangier, the clearing-houses for stolen goods of two
continents, and the impregnable refuge of scores of ingenious villains.

And when he reflected upon the grandeur and immensity of the scheme,
so simple in its essence, and so leisurely in its achievement, like
most grand schemes; when he reflected upon the imagination which had
been necessary even to conceive it, and the generalship which had been
necessary to its successful conclusion, he murmured admiringly--

“The man who thought of that and did it may be a scoundrel; but he is
also an artist, and a great one!”

And just because he, Cecil Thorold, was a millionaire, and possessed
a hundred-thousand-pound toy, which could do nineteen knots an hour,
and cost fifteen hundred pounds a month to run, he was about to defeat
that great artist and nullify that great scheme, and incidentally to
retrieve his watch, his revolver, his fur, and his five hundred pounds.
He had only to follow, and to warn one of the French torpedo-boats
which are always patrolling the coast between Algiers and Oran, and the
bubble would burst!

He sighed for the doomed artist; and he wondered what that victimised
crowd of European loungers, who lounged sadly round the Mediterranean
in winter, and sadly round northern Europe in summer, had done in their
languid and luxurious lives that they should be saved, after all, from
the pillage to which the great artist in theft had subjected them!

Then Lecky re-entered the state room.

“We shall have a difficulty in keeping the _Perroquet Vert_ in sight,
sir.”

“What!” exclaimed Cecil. “That tub! That coffin! You don’t mean she can
do twenty knots?”

“Exactly, sir. Coffin! It--I mean she--is sinking.”

Cecil ran on deck. Dawn was breaking over Matifou, and a faint, cold,
grey light touched here and there the heaving sea. His captain spoke
and pointed. Ahead, right ahead, less than a mile away, the _Perroquet
Vert_ was sinking by the stern, and even as they gazed at her, a little
boat detached itself from her side in the haze of the morning mist; and
she sank, disappeared, vanished amid a cloud of escaping steam. They
were four miles north-east of Cape Caxine. Two miles further westward,
a big Dominion liner, bound direct for Algiers from the New World, was
approaching and had observed the catastrophe--for she altered her
course. In a few minutes, the _Claribel_ picked up the boat of the
_Perroquet Vert_. It contained three Arabs.


V.

The tale told by the Arabs (two of them were brothers, and all
three came from Oran) fully sustained Cecil Thorold’s theory of the
spoliation of the hotel. Naturally they pretended at first to an
entire innocence concerning the schemes of those who had charge of the
_Perroquet Vert_. The two brothers, who were black with coal-dust when
rescued, swore that they had been physically forced to work in the
stokehold; but ultimately all three had to admit a knowledge of things
which was decidedly incriminating, and all three got three years’
imprisonment. The only part of the Algiers Mystery which remained a
mystery was the cause of the sinking of the _Perroquet Vert_. Whether
she was thoroughly unseaworthy (she had been picked up cheap at
Melilla), or whether someone (not on board) had deliberately arranged
her destruction, perhaps to satisfy a Moorish vengeance, was not
ascertained. The three Arabs could only be persuaded to say that there
had been eleven Europeans and seven natives on the ship, and that they
alone, by the mercy of Allah, had escaped from the swift catastrophe.

The hotel underwent an acute crisis, from which, however, it is
emerging. For over a week a number of the pillaged guests discussed
a diving enterprise of salvage. But the estimates were too high, and
it came to nothing. So they all, Cecil included, began to get used to
the idea of possessing irrecoverable property to the value of forty
thousand pounds in the Mediterranean. A superb business in telegraphed
remittances was done for several days. The fifteen beings who had
accompanied the _Perroquet Vert_ to the bottom were scarcely thought
of, for it was almost universally agreed that the way of transgressors
is, and ought to be, hard.

As for Cecil Thorold, the adventure, at first so full of the promise
of joy, left him melancholy, until an unexpected sequel diverted the
channel of his thoughts.


CHAPTER V.

IN THE CAPITAL OF THE SAHARA.

Mrs. Macalister turned with sudden eagerness and alarm towards Cecil
Thorold--the crowd on the lawn in front of the railings was so dense
that only heads could be moved--and she said excitedly--

“I’m sure I can see my ghost across there!”

She indicated with her agreeable snub nose the opposite side of the
course.

“Your ghost?” Cecil questioned, puzzled for a moment by this
extraordinary remark.

Then the Arab horsemen swept by in a cloud of dust and of thunder, and
monopolised the attention of the lawn and the grand stand, and the
_élite_ of Biskra crammed thereon and therein. They had one more lap to
accomplish for the Prix de la Ville.

Biskra is an oasis in the desert, and the capital of the Algerian
Sahara. Two days’ journey by train from Algiers, over the Djujura
Ranges, it is the last outpost of the Algerian State Railways. It has a
hundred and sixty thousand palm trees; but the first symptom of Biskra
to be observed from the approaching first-class carriage is the chimney
of the electric light plant. Besides the hundred and sixty thousand
palm trees, it possesses half a dozen large hotels, five native
villages, a fort, a huge barracks, a very ornamental town hall, shops
for photographic materials, a whole street of dancing-girls, the finest
winter climate in all Africa, and a gambling Casino. It is a unique
thing in oases. It completely upsets the conventional idea of an oasis
as a pool of water bordered with a few date palms, and the limitless
desert all round! Nevertheless, though Biskra as much resembles Paris
as it resembles the conventional idea of an oasis, it is genuine
enough, and the limitless desert is, in fact, all around. You may walk
out into the desert--and meet a motor-car manœuvring in the sand; but
the sand remains the sand, and the desert remains the desert, and the
Sahara, more majestic than the sea itself, refuses to be cheapened by
the pneumatic tyres of a Mercedes, or the blue rays of the electric
light, or the feet of English, French, and Germans wandering in search
of novelty--it persists in being august.

Once a year, in February, Biskra becomes really and excessively
excited, and the occasion is its annual two-day race-meeting. Then the
tribes and their chieftains and their horses and their camels arrive
magically out of the four corners of the desert and fill the oasis.
And the English, French, and Germans arrive from the Mediterranean
coast, with their trunks and their civilisation, and crowd the
hotels till beds in Biskra are precious beyond rubies. And under the
tropical sun, East and West meet magnificently in the afternoon on the
racecourse to the north of the European reserve. And the tribesmen,
their scraggy steeds trailing superb horsecloths, are arranged in
hundreds behind the motor-cars and landaus, with the _pari-mutuel_
in full swing twenty yards away. And the dancing-girls, the renowned
Ouled-Nails, covered with gold coins and with muslin in high, crude,
violent purples, greens, vermilions, shriek and whinny on their benches
just opposite the grand stand, where the Western women, arrayed in
the toilettes of Worth, Doucet, and Redfern, quiz them through their
glasses. And, fringing all, is a crowd of the adventurers and rascals
of two continents, the dark and the light. And in the background
the palms wave eternally in the breeze. And to the east the Aurès
mountains, snow-capped, rise in hues of saffron and pale rose, like
stage mountains, against the sapphire sky. And to the south a line of
telegraph poles lessens and disappears over the verge into the inmost
heart of the mysterious and unchangeable Sahara.

It was amid this singular scene that Mrs. Macalister made to Cecil
Thorold her bizarre remark about a ghost.

“What ghost?” the millionaire repeated, when the horsemen had passed.

Then he remembered that on the famous night, now nearly a month
ago, when the Hôtel St. James at Algiers was literally sacked by an
organised band of depredators, and valuables to the tune of forty
thousand pounds disappeared, Mrs. Macalister had given the first alarm
by crying out that there was a ghost in her room.

“Ah!” He smiled easily, condescendingly, to this pertinacious widow,
who had been pursuing him, so fruitlessly, for four mortal weeks, from
Algiers to Tunis, from Tunis back to Constantine, and from Constantine
here to Biskra. “All Arabs look more or less alike, you know.”

“But----”

“Yes,” he said again. “They all look alike, to us, like Chinamen.”

Considering that he himself, from his own yacht, had witnessed the
total loss in the Mediterranean of the vessel which contained the
plunder and the fleeing band of thieves; considering that his own yacht
had rescued the only three survivors of that shipwreck, and that these
survivors had made a full confession, and had, only two days since,
been duly sentenced by the criminal court at Algiers--he did not feel
inclined to minister to Mrs. Macalister’s feminine fancies.

“Did you ever see an Arab with a mole on his chin?” asked Mrs.
Macalister.

“No, I never did.”

“Well, my Arab had a mole on his chin, and that is why I am sure it was
he that I saw a minute ago--over there. No, he’s gone now!”

The competing horsemen appeared round the bend for the last time, the
dancing-girls whinnied in their high treble, the crowd roared, and the
Prix de la Ville was won and lost. It was the final race on the card,
and in the _mêlée_ which followed, Cecil became separated from his
adorer. She was to depart on the morrow by the six a.m. train. “Urgent
business,” she said. She had given up the chase of the millionaire.
“Perhaps she’s out of funds, poor thing!” he reflected. “Anyhow, I hope
I may never see her again.” As a matter of fact he never did see her
again. She passed out of his life as casually as she had come into it.

He strolled slowly towards the hotel through the perturbed crowd of
Arabs, Europeans, carriages, camels, horses and motor-cars. The mounted
tribesmen were in a state of intense excitement, and were continually
burning powder in that mad fashion which seems to afford a peculiar joy
to the Arab soul. From time to time a tribesman would break out of the
ranks of his clan, and, spurring his horse and dropping the reins on
the animal’s neck, would fire revolvers from both hands as he flew over
the rough ground. It was unrivalled horsemanship, and Cecil admired
immensely the manner in which, at the end of the frenzied performance,
these men, drunk with powder, would wheel their horses sharply while at
full gallop, and stop dead.

And then, as one man, who had passed him like a hurricane, turned,
paused, and jogged back to his tribe, Cecil saw that he had a mole on
his chin. He stood still to watch the splendid fellow, and he noticed
something far more important than the mole--he perceived that the
revolver in the man’s right hand had a chased butt.

“I can’t swear to it,” Cecil mused. “But if that isn’t my revolver,
stolen from under my pillow at the Hôtel St. James, Algiers, on the
tenth of January last, my name is Norval, and not Thorold.”

And the whole edifice of his ideas concerning the robbery at the Hôtel
de Paris began to shake.

“That revolver ought to be at the bottom of the Mediterranean,” he
said to himself; “and so ought Mrs. Macalister’s man with the mole,
according to the accepted theory of the crime and the story of the
survivors of the shipwreck of the _Perroquet Vert_.”

He walked on, keeping the man in sight.

“Suppose,” he murmured--“suppose all that stuff isn’t at the bottom of
the Mediterranean after all?”

A hundred yards further on, he happened to meet one of the white-clad
native guides attached to the Royal Hotel where he had lunched. The
guide saluted and offered service, as all the Biskra guides do on all
occasions. Cecil’s reply was to point out the man with the mole.

“You see him, Mahomet,” said Cecil. “Make no mistake. Find out what
tribe he belongs to, where he comes from, and where he sleeps in
Biskra, and I will give you a sovereign. Meet me at the Casino to-night
at ten.”

Mahomet grinned an honest grin and promised to earn the sovereign.

Cecil stopped an empty landau and drove hurriedly to the station
to meet the afternoon train from civilisation. He had arrived in
Biskra that morning by road from El Kantara, and Lecky was coming by
the afternoon train with the luggage. On seeing him, he gave that
invaluable factotum some surprising orders.

In addition to Lecky, the millionaire observed among the passengers
descending from the train two other people who were known to him; but
he carefully hid himself from these ladies. In three minutes he had
disappeared into the nocturnal whirl and uproar of Biskra, solely bent
on proving or disproving the truth of a brand-new theory concerning the
historic sack of the Hôtel St. James.

But that night he waited in vain for Mahomet at the packed Casino,
where the Arab chieftains and the English gentlemen, alike in their
tremendous calm, were losing money at _petits chevaux_ with all the
imperturbability of stone statues.


II.

Nor did Cecil see anything of Mahomet during the next day, and he had
reasons for not making inquiries about him at the Royal Hotel. But at
night, as he was crossing the deserted market, Mahomet came up to him
suddenly out of nowhere, and, grinning the eternal, honest, foolish
grin, said in his odd English--

“I have found--him.”

“Where?”

“Come,” said Mahomet, mysteriously. The Eastern guide loves to be
mysterious.

Cecil followed him far down the carnivalesque street of the
Ouled-Nails, where tom-toms and nameless instruments of music sounded
from every other house, and the _premières danseuses_ of the Sahara
showed themselves gorgeously behind grilles, like beautiful animals
in cages. Then Mahomet entered a crowded _café_, passed through it,
and pushing aside a suspended mat at the other end, bade Cecil proceed
further. Cecil touched his revolver (his new revolver), to make sure of
its company, and proceeded further. He found himself in a low Oriental
room, lighted by an odorous English lamp with a circular wick, and
furnished with a fine carpet and two bedroom chairs certainly made
in Curtain Road, Shoreditch--a room characteristic of Biskra. On one
chair sat a man. But this person was not Mrs. Macalister’s man with
a mole. He was obviously a Frenchman, by his dress, gestures, and
speech. He greeted the millionaire in French and then dropped into
English--excellently grammatical and often idiomatic English, spoken
with a strong French accent. He was rather a little man, thin, grey,
and vivacious.

“Give yourself the pain of sitting down,” said the Frenchman. “I am
glad to see you. You may be able to help us.”

“You have the advantage of me,” Cecil replied, smiling.

“Perhaps,” said the Frenchman. “You came to Biskra yesterday, Mr.
Thorold, with the intention of staying at the Royal Hotel, where rooms
were engaged for you. But yesterday afternoon you went to the station
to meet your servant, and you ordered him to return to Constantine
with your luggage and to await your instructions there. You then took
a handbag and went to the Casino Hotel, and you managed, by means
of diplomacy and of money, to get a bed in the _salle à manger_. It
was all they could do for you. You gave the name of Collins. Biskra,
therefore, is not officially aware of the presence of Mr. Cecil
Thorold, the millionaire; while Mr. Collins is free to carry on his
researches, to appear and to disappear as it pleases him.”

“Yes,” Cecil remarked. “You have got that fairly right. But may I
ask----”

“Let us come to business at once,” said the Frenchman, politely
interrupting him. “Is this your watch?”

He dramatically pulled a watch and chain from his pocket.

“It is,” said Cecil quietly. He refrained from embroidering the
affirmative with exclamations. “It was stolen from my bedroom at the
Hôtel St. James, with my revolver, some fur, and a quantity of money,
on the tenth of January.”

“You are surprised to find it is not sunk in the Mediterranean?”

“Thirty hours ago I should have been surprised,” said Cecil. “Now I am
not.”

“And why not now?”

“Because I have formed a new theory. But have the goodness to give me
the watch.”

“I cannot,” said the Frenchman, graciously. “Not at present.”

There was a pause. The sound of music was heard from the _café_.

“But, my dear sir, I insist.” Cecil spoke positively.

The Frenchman laughed. “I will be perfectly frank with you, Mr.
Thorold. Your cleverness in forming a new theory of the great robbery
merits all my candour. My name is Sylvain, and I am head of the
detective force of Algiers, _chef de la sureté_. You will perceive
that I cannot part with the watch without proper formalities. Mr.
Thorold, the robbery at the Hôtel St. James was a work of the highest
criminal art. Possibly I had better tell you the nature of our recent
discoveries.”

“I always thought well of the robbery,” Cecil observed, “and my opinion
of it is rising. Pray continue.”

“According to your new theory, Mr. Thorold, how many persons were on
board the _Perroquet Vert_ when she began to sink?”

“Three,” said Cecil promptly, as though answering a conundrum.

The Frenchman beamed. “You are admirable,” he exclaimed. “Yes, instead
of eighteen, there were three. The wreck of the _Perroquet Vert_
carefully pre-arranged; the visit of the boat to the _Perroquet Vert_
off Mustapha Inférieure was what you call, I believe, a ‘plant.’
The stolen goods never left dry land. There were three Arabs only
on the _Perroquet Vert_--one to steer her, and the other two in the
engine-room. And these three were very careful to get themselves saved.
They scuttled their ship in sight of your yacht and of another vessel.
There is no doubt, Mr. Thorold,” the Frenchman smiled with a hint of
irony, “that the thieves were fully _au courant_ of your doings on the
_Claribel_. The shipwreck was done deliberately, with you and your
yacht for an audience. It was a masterly stroke,” he proceeded, almost
enthusiastically, “for it had the effect, not merely of drawing away
suspicion from the true direction, but of putting an end to all further
inquiries. Were not the goods at the bottom of the sea, and the thieves
drowned? What motive could the police have for further activity? In six
months--nay, three months--all the notes and securities could be safely
negotiated, because no measures would have to be taken to stop them.
Why take measures to stop notes that are at the bottom of the sea?”

“But the three survivors who are now in prison,” Cecil said. “Their
behaviour, their lying, needs some accounting for.”

“Quite simple,” the Frenchman went on. “They are in prison for three
years. What is that to an Arab? He will suffer it with stoicism.
Say that ten thousand francs are deposited with each of their
families. When they come out, they are rich for life. At a cost of
thirty thousand francs and the price of the ship--say another thirty
thousand--the thieves reasonably expected to obtain absolute security.”

“It was a heroic idea!” said Cecil.

“It was,” said the Frenchman. “But it has failed.”

“Evidently. But why?”

“Can you ask? You know as well as I do! It has failed, partly because
there were too many persons in the secret, partly because of the Arab
love of display on great occasions, and partly because of a mole on a
man’s chin.”

“By the way, that was the man I came here to see,” Cecil remarked.

“He is arrested,” said the Frenchman curtly, and then he sighed. “The
booty was not guarded with sufficient restrictions. It was not kept in
bulk. One thief probably said: ‘I cannot do without this lovely watch.’
And another said: ‘What a revolver! I must have it.’ Ah! The Arab, the
Arab! The Europeans ought to have provided for that. That is where they
were foolish--the idiots! The idiots!” he repeated angrily.

“You seem annoyed.”

“Mr. Thorold, I am a poet in these things. It annoys me to see a fine
composition ruined by bad construction in the fifth act.... However, as
chief of the surety, I rejoice.”

“You have located the thieves and the plunder?”

“I think I have. Certainly I have captured two of the thieves and
several articles. The bulk lies at----” He stopped and looked round.
“Mr. Thorold, may I rely on you? I know, perhaps more than you think,
of your powers. May I rely on you?”

“You may,” said Cecil.

“You will hold yourself at my disposition during to-morrow, to assist
me?”

“With pleasure.”

“Then let us take coffee. In the morning, I shall have acquired certain
precise information which at the moment I lack. Let us take coffee.”


III.

On the following morning, somewhat early, while walking near Mecid, one
of the tiny outlying villages of the oasis, Cecil met Eve Fincastle
and Kitty Sartorius, whom he had not spoken with since the affair of
the bracelet at Bruges, though he had heard from them and had, indeed,
seen them at the station two days before. Eve Fincastle had fallen
rather seriously ill at Mentone, and the holiday of the two girls,
which should have finished before the end of the year, was prolonged.
Financially, the enforced leisure was a matter of trifling importance
to Kitty Sartorius, who had insisted on remaining with her friend, much
to the disgust of her London manager. But the journalist’s resources
were less royal, and Eve considered herself fortunate that she had
obtained from her newspaper some special descriptive correspondence in
Algeria. It was this commission which had brought her, and Kitty with
her, in the natural course of an Algerian tour, to Biskra.

Cecil was charmed to see his acquaintances; for Eve interested him,
and Kitty’s beauty (it goes without saying) dazzled him. Nevertheless,
he had been, as it were, hiding himself, and, in his character as an
amateur of the loot of cities, he would have preferred to have met them
on some morning other than that particular morning.

“You will go with us to Sidi Okba, won’t you, to-day?” said Kitty,
after they had talked a while. “We’ve secured a carriage, and I’m dying
for a drive in the real, true desert.”

“Sorry I can’t,” said Cecil.

“Oh, but----” Eve Fincastle began, and stopped.

“Of course you can,” said Kitty imperiously. “You must. We leave
to-morrow--we’re only here for two days--for Algiers and France.
Another two days in Paris, and then London, my darling London, and
work! So it’s understood?”

“It desolates me,” said Cecil. “But I can’t go with you to Sidi Okba
to-day.”

They both saw that he meant to refuse them.

“That settles it, then,” Eve agreed quietly.

“You’re horrid, Mr. Thorold,” said the bewitching actress. “And if you
imagine for a single moment we haven’t seen that you’ve been keeping
out of our way, you’re mistaken. You must have noticed us at the
station. Eve thinks you’ve got another of your----”

“No, I don’t, Kitty,” said Eve quickly.

“If Miss Fincastle suspects that I’ve got another of my----” he paused
humorously, “Miss Fincastle is right. I _have_ got another of my---- I
throw myself on your magnanimity. I am staying in Biskra under the name
of Collins, and my time, like my name, is not my own.”

“In that case,” Eve remarked, “we will pass on.”

And they shook hands, with a certain frigidity on the part of the two
girls.

During the morning, M. Sylvain made no sign, and Cecil lunched in
solitude at the Dar Eef, adjoining the Casino. The races being over,
streams of natives, with their tents and their quadrupeds, were
leaving Biskra for the desert; they made an interminable procession
which could be seen from the window of the Dar Eef coffee room. Cecil
was idly watching this procession, when a hand touched his shoulder. He
turned and saw a gendarme.

“Monsieur Collang?” questioned the gendarme.

Cecil assented.

“_Voulez-vous avoir l’obligeance de me suivre, monsieur?_”

Cecil obediently followed, and found in the street M. Sylvain well
wrapped up, and seated in an open carriage.

“I have need of you,” said M. Sylvain. “Can you come at once?”

“Certainly.”

In two minutes they were driving away together into the desert.

“Our destination is Sidi Okba,” said M. Sylvain. “A curious place.”

The road (so called) led across the Biskra River (so called), and then
in a straight line eastwards. The river had about the depth of a dinner
plate. As for the road, in some parts it not only merely failed to be
a road--it was nothing but virgin desert, intact; at its best it was
a heaving and treacherous mixture of sand and pebbles, through which,
and not over which, the two unhappy horses had to drag M. Sylvain’s
unfortunate open carriage.

M. Sylvain himself drove.

“I am well acquainted with this part of the desert,” he said. “We have
strange cases sometimes. And when I am on important business, I never
trust an Arab. By the way, you have a revolver? I do not anticipate
danger, but----”

“I have one,” said Cecil.

“And it is loaded?”

Cecil took the weapon from his hip pocket and examined it.

“It is loaded,” he said.

“Good!” exclaimed the Frenchman, and then he turned to the gendarme,
who was sitting as impassively as the leaps and bounds of the carriage
would allow, on a small seat immediately behind the other two, and
demanded of him in French whether his revolver also was loaded. The
man gave a respectful affirmative. “Good!” exclaimed M. Sylvain again,
and launched into a description of the wondrous gardens of the Comte
Landon, whose walls, on the confines of the oasis, they were just
passing.

Straight in front could be seen a short line of palm trees, waving in
the desert breeze under the desert sun, and Cecil asked what they were.

“Sidi Okba,” replied M. Sylvain. “The hundred and eighty thousand palms
of the desert city of Sidi Okba. They seem near to you, no doubt, but
we shall travel twenty kilometres before we reach them. The effect of
nearness is due to the singular quality of the atmosphere. It is a two
hours’ journey.”

“Then do we return in the dark?” Cecil inquired.

“If we are lucky, we may return at once, and arrive in Biskra at dusk.
If not--well, we shall spend the night in Sidi Okba. You object?”

“Not at all.”

“A curious place,” observed M. Sylvain.

Soon they had left behind all trace of the oasis, and were in the
“real, true desert.” They met and passed native equipages and strings
of camels, and from time to time on either hand at short distances
from the road could be seen the encampments of wandering tribes. And
after interminable joltings, in which M. Sylvain, his guest, and his
gendarme were frequently hurled at each other’s heads with excessive
violence, the short line of palm trees began to seem a little nearer
and to occupy a little more of the horizon. And then they could descry
the wall of the city. And at last they reached its gate and the beggars
squatting within its gate.

“Descend!” M. Sylvain ordered his subordinate.

The man disappeared, and M. Sylvain and Cecil drove into the city;
they met several carriages of Biskra visitors just setting forth on
their return journey.

In insisting that Sidi Okba was a curious place, M. Sylvain did not
exaggerate. It is an Eastern town of the most antique sort, built
solely of mud, with the simplicity, the foulness, the smells, and the
avowed and the secret horrors which might be expected in a community
which has not altered its habits in any particular for a thousand
years. During several months of each year it is visited daily by
Europeans (its mosque is the oldest Mohammedan building in Africa,
therefore no respectable tourist dares to miss it), and yet it remains
absolutely uninfluenced by European notions. The European person must
take his food with him; he is allowed to eat it in the garden of a
_café_ which is European as far as its sign and its counter, but no
further; he could not eat it in the _café_ itself. This _café_ is the
mark which civilisation has succeeded in making on Sidi Okba in ten
centuries.

As Cecil drove with M. Sylvain through the narrow, winding street,
he acutely felt the East closing in upon him; and, since the sun was
getting low over the palm trees, he was glad to have the detective by
his side.

They arrived at the wretched _café_. A pair-horse vehicle, with the
horses’ heads towards Biskra, was waiting at the door. Unspeakable
lanes, fetid, winding, sinister, and strangely peopled, led away in
several directions.

M. Sylvain glanced about him.

“We shall succeed,” he murmured cheerfully. “Follow me.”

And they went into the mark of civilisation, and saw the counter, and a
female creature behind the bar, and, through another door, a glimpse of
the garden beyond.

“Follow me,” murmured M. Sylvain again, opening another door to the
left into a dark passage. “Straight on. There is a room at the other
end.”

They vanished.

In a few seconds M. Sylvain returned into the _café_.


IV.

Now, in the garden were Eve Fincastle and Kitty Sartorius, tying up
some wraps preparatory to their departure for Biskra. They caught sight
of Cecil Thorold and his companion entering the _café_, and they were
surprised to find the millionaire in Sidi Okba after his refusal to
accompany them.

Through the back door of the _café_ they saw Cecil’s companion reappear
out of the passage. They saw the creature behind the counter stoop and
produce a revolver and then offer it to the Frenchman with a furtive
movement. They saw that the Frenchman declined it, and drew another
revolver from his own pocket and winked. And the character of the wink
given by the Frenchman to the woman made them turn pale under the
sudden, knife-like thrust of an awful suspicion.

The Frenchman looked up and perceived the girls in the garden, and one
glance at Kitty’s beauty was not enough for him.

“Can you keep him here a minute while I warn Mr. Thorold?” said Eve
quickly.

Kitty Sartorius nodded and began to smile on the Frenchman; she then
lifted her finger beckoningly. If millions had depended on his refusal,
it is doubtful whether he would have resisted that charming gesture.
(Not for nothing did Kitty Sartorius receive a hundred a week at the
Regency Theatre.) In a moment the Frenchman was talking to her, and she
had enveloped him in a golden mist of enchantment.

Guided by a profound instinct, Eve ran up the passage and into the room
where Cecil was awaiting the return of his M. Sylvain.

“Come out,” she whispered passionately, as if between violent anger and
dreadful alarm. “You are trapped--you--with your schemes!”

“Trapped!” he exclaimed, smiling. “Not at all. I have my revolver!” His
hand touched his pocket. “By Jove! I haven’t! It’s gone!”

The miraculous change in his face was of the highest interest.

“Come out!” she cried. “Our carriage is waiting!”

In the _café_, Kitty Sartorius was talking to the Frenchman. She
stroked his sleeve with her gloved hand, and he, the Frenchman, still
held the revolver which he had displayed to the woman of the counter.

Inspired by the consummate and swiftly aroused emotion of that moment,
Cecil snatched at the revolver. The three friends walked hastily to
the street, jumped into the carriage, and drove away. Already as they
approached the city gate, they could see the white tower of the Royal
Hotel at Biskra shining across the desert like a promise of security....

The whole episode had lasted perhaps two minutes, but they were minutes
of such intense and blinding revelation as Cecil had never before
experienced. He sighed with relief as he lay back in the carriage.

“And that’s the man,” he meditated, astounded, “who must have planned
the robbery of the Hôtel St. James! And I never suspected it! I never
suspected that his gendarme was a sham! I wonder whether his murder of
me would have been as leisurely and artistic as his method of trapping
me! I wonder!... Well, this time I have certainly enjoyed myself.”

Then he gazed at Eve Fincastle.

The women said nothing for a long time, and even then the talk was of
trifles.


V.

Eve Fincastle had gone up on to the vast, flat roof of the Royal Hotel,
and Cecil, knowing that she was there, followed. The sun had just
set, and Biskra lay spread out below them in the rich evening light
which already, eastwards, had turned to sapphire. They could still see
the line of the palm trees of Sidi Okba, and in another direction,
the long, lonely road to Figuig, stretching across the desert like a
rope which had been flung from heaven on the waste of sand. The Aurès
mountains were black and jagged. Nearer, immediately under them, was
the various life of the great oasis, and the sounds of that life--human
speech, the rattle of carriages, the grunts of camels in the camel
enclosure, the whistling of an engine at the station, the melancholy
wails of hawkers--ascended softly in the twilight of the Sahara.

Cecil approached her, but she did not turn towards him.

“I want to thank you,” he started.

She made no movement, and then suddenly she burst out. “Why do you
continue with these shameful plots and schemes?” she demanded, looking
always steadily away from him. “Why do you disgrace yourself? Was
this another theft, another blackmailing, another affair like that
at Ostend? Why----” She stopped, deeply disturbed, unable to control
herself.

“My dear journalist,” he said quietly, “you don’t understand. Let me
tell you.”

He gave her his history from the night summons by Mrs. Macalister to
that same afternoon.

She faced him.

“I’m so glad,” she murmured. “You can’t imagine----”

“I want to thank you for saving my life,” he said again.

She began to cry; her body shook; she hid her face.

“But----” he stammered awkwardly.

“It wasn’t I who saved your life,” she said, sobbing passionately.
“I wasn’t beautiful enough. Only Kitty could have done it. Only a
beautiful woman could have kept that man----”

“I know all about it, my dear girl,” Cecil silenced her disavowal.
Something moved him to take her hand. She smiled sadly, not resisting.
“You must excuse me,” she murmured. “I’m not myself to-night.... It’s
because of the excitement.... Anyhow, I’m glad you haven’t taken any
‘loot’ this time.”

“But I have,” he protested. (He was surprised to find his voice
trembling.)

“What?”

“This.” He pressed her hand tenderly.

“That?” She looked at her hand, lying in his, as though she had never
seen it before.

“Eve,” he whispered.

       *       *       *       *       *

About two-thirds of the loot of the Hôtel St. James was ultimately
recovered; not at Sidi Okba, but in the cellars of the Hôtel St. James
itself. From first to last that robbery was a masterpiece of audacity.
Its originator, the _soi-disant_ M. Sylvain, head of the Algiers
detective force, is still at large.


CHAPTER VI.

“LO! ’TWAS A GALA NIGHT!”

Paris. And not merely Paris, but Paris _en fête_, Paris decorated,
Paris idle, Paris determined to enjoy itself, and succeeding
brilliantly. Venetian masts of red and gold lined the gay pavements
of the _grand boulevard_ and the Avenue de l’Opéra; and suspended
from these in every direction, transverse and lateral, hung garlands
of flowers whose petals were of coloured paper, and whose hearts were
electric globes that in the evening would burst into flame. The effect
of the city’s toilette reached the extreme of opulence, for no expense
had been spared. Paris was welcoming monarchs, and had spent two
million francs in obedience to the maxim that what is worth doing at
all is worth doing well.

The Grand Hotel, with its eight hundred rooms full of English and
Americans, at the upper end of the Avenue de l’Opéra, looked down at
the Grand Hôtel du Louvre, with its four hundred rooms full of English
and Americans, at the lower end of the Avenue de l’Opéra. These two
establishments had the best views in the whole city; and perhaps the
finest view of all was that obtainable from a certain second floor
window of the Grand Hotel, precisely at the corner of the Boulevard
des Capucines and the Rue Auber. From this window one could see the
boulevards in both directions, the Opéra, the Place de l’Opéra, the
Avenue de l’Opéra, the Rue du Quatre Septembre, and the multitudinous
life of the vivid thoroughfares--the glittering _cafés_, the dazzling
shops, the painted kiosks, the lumbering omnibuses, the gliding trams,
the hooting automobiles, the swift and careless cabs, the private
carriages, the suicidal bicycles, the newsmen, the toy sellers, the
touts, the beggars, and all the holiday crowd, sombre men and radiant
women, chattering, laughing, bustling, staring, drinking, under the
innumerable tricolours and garlands of paper flowers.

That particular view was a millionaire’s view, and it happened to be
the temporary property of Cecil Thorold, who was enjoying it and the
afternoon sun at the open window, with three companions. Eve Fincastle
looked at it with the analytic eye of the journalist, while Kitty
Sartorius, as was quite proper for an actress, deemed it a sort of
frame for herself, as she leaned over the balcony like a Juliet on the
stage. The third guest in Cecil’s sitting-room was Lionel Belmont, the
Napoleonic Anglo-American theatrical manager, in whose crown Kitty
herself was the chief star. Mr. Belmont, a big, burly, good-humoured,
shrewd man of something over forty, said he had come to Paris on
business. But for two days the business had been solely to look after
Kitty Sartorius and minister to her caprices. At the present moment his
share of the view consisted mainly of Kitty; in the same way Cecil’s
share of the view consisted mainly of Eve Fincastle; but this at least
was right and decorous, for the betrothal of the millionaire and the
journalist had been definitely announced. Otherwise Eve would have been
back at work in Fleet Street a week ago.

“The gala performance is to-night, isn’t it?” said Eve, gazing at the
vast and superbly ornamented Opera House.

“Yes,” said Cecil.

“What a pity we can’t be there! I should so have liked to see the young
Queen in evening dress. And they say the interior decorations----”

“Nothing simpler,” said Cecil. “If you want to go, dear, let us go.”

Kitty Sartorius looked round quickly. “Mr. Belmont has tried to get
seats, and can’t. Haven’t you, Bel? You know the whole audience is
invited. The invitations are issued by the Minister of Fine Arts.”

“Still, in Paris, anything can be got by paying for it,” Cecil insisted.

“My dear young friend,” said Lionel Belmont, “I guess if seats were to
be had, I should have struck one or two yesterday. I put no limit on
the price, and I reckon I ought to know what theatre prices run to.
Over at the Metropolitan in New York I’ve seen a box change hands at
two thousand dollars, for one night.”

“Nevertheless----” Cecil began again.

“And the performance starting in six hours from now!” Lionel Belmont
exclaimed. “Not much!”

But Cecil persisted.

“Seen the _Herald_ to-day?” Belmont questioned. “No? Well, listen. This
will interest you.” He drew a paper from his pocket and read: “Seats
for the Opéra Gala. The traffic in seats for the gala performance at
the Opéra during the last Royal Visit to Paris aroused considerable
comment and not a little dissatisfaction. Nothing, however, was
done, and the traffic in seats for to-night’s spectacle, at which
the President and their Imperial Majesties will be present, has, it
is said, amounted to a scandal. Of course, the offer so suddenly
made, five days ago, by Madame Félise and Mademoiselle Malva, the two
greatest living dramatic sopranos, to take part in the performance,
immediately and enormously intensified interest in the affair, for
never yet have these two supreme artists appeared in the same theatre
on the same night. No theatre could afford the luxury. Our readers may
remember that in our columns and in the columns of the _Figaro_ there
appeared four days ago an advertisement to the following effect: ‘_A
box, also two orchestra stalls, for the Opéra Gala, to be disposed
of, owing to illness. Apply, 155, Rue de la Paix._’ We sent four
several reporters to answer that advertisement. The first was offered
a stage-box for seven thousand five hundred francs, and two orchestra
stalls in the second row for twelve hundred and fifty francs. The
second was offered a box opposite the stage on the second tier, and
two stalls in the seventh row. The third had the chance of four stalls
in the back row and a small box just behind them; the fourth was
offered something else. The thing was obviously, therefore, a regular
agency. Everybody is asking: ‘How were these seats obtained? From the
Ministry of Fine Arts, or from the _invités_?’ Echo answers ‘How?’
The authorities, however, are stated to have interfered at last, and
to have put an end to this buying and selling of what should be an
honourable distinction.”

“Bravo!” said Cecil.

“And that’s so!” Belmont remarked, dropping the paper. “I went to 155,
Rue de la Paix myself yesterday, and was told that nothing whatever
was to be had, not at any price.”

“Perhaps you didn’t offer enough,” said Cecil.

“Moreover, I notice the advertisement does not appear to-day. I guess
the authorities have crumpled it up.”

“Still----” Cecil went on monotonously.

“Look here,” said Belmont, grim and a little nettled. “Just to cut it
short, I’ll bet you a two-hundred-dollar dinner at Paillard’s that you
can’t get seats for to-night--not even two, let alone four.”

“You really want to bet?”

“Well,” drawled Belmont, with a certain irony, slightly imitating
Cecil’s manner, “it means something to eat for these ladies.”

“I accept,” said Cecil. And he rang the bell.


II.

“Lecky,” Cecil said to his valet, who had entered the room, “I want you
to go to No. 155, Rue de la Paix, and find out on which floor they are
disposing of seats for the Opéra to-night. When you have found out, I
want you to get me four seats--preferably a box. Understand?”

The servant stared at his master, squinting violently for a few
seconds. Then he replied suddenly, as though light had just dawned on
him. “Exactly, sir. You intend to be present at the gala performance?”

“You have successfully grasped my intention,” said Cecil. “Present my
card.” He scribbled a word or two on a card and gave it to the man.

“And the price, sir?”

“You still have that blank cheque on the Crédit Lyonnais that I gave
you yesterday morning. Use that.”

“Yes, sir. Then there is the question of my French, sir, my feeble
French--a delicate plant.”

“My friend,” Belmont put in. “I will accompany you as interpreter. I
should like to see this thing through.”

Lecky bowed and gave up squinting.

In three minutes (for they had only to go round the corner), Lionel
Belmont and Lecky were in a room on the fourth floor of 155, Rue de la
Paix. It had the appearance of an ordinary drawing-room, save that it
contained an office table; at this table sat a young man, French.

“You wish, messieurs?” said the young man.

“Have the goodness to interpret for me,” said Lecky to the Napoleon of
Anglo-Saxon theatres. “Mr. Cecil Thorold, of the Devonshire Mansion,
London, the Grand Hotel, Paris, the Hôtel Continental, Rome, and the
Ghezireh Palace Hotel, Cairo, presents his compliments, and wishes a
box for the gala performance at the Opéra to-night.”

Belmont translated, while Lecky handed the card.

“Owing to the unfortunate indisposition of a Minister and his wife,”
replied the young man gravely, having perused the card, “it happens
that I have a stage-box on the second tier.”

“You told me yesterday----” Belmont began.

“I will take it,” said Lecky in a sort of French, interrupting his
interpreter. “The price? And a pen.”

“The price is twenty-five thousand francs.”

“Gemini!” Belmont exclaimed in American. “This is Paris, and no
mistake!”

“Yes,” said Lecky, as he filled up the blank cheque, “Paris still
succeeds in being Paris. I have noticed it before, Mr. Belmont, if you
will pardon the liberty.”

The young man opened a drawer and handed to Lecky a magnificent gilt
card, signed by the Minister of Fine Arts, which Lecky hid within his
breast.

“That signature of the Minister is genuine, eh?” Belmont asked the
young man.

“I answer for it,” said the young man, smiling imperturbably.

“The deuce you do!” Belmont murmured.

So the four friends dined at Paillard’s at the rate of about a dollar
and a-half a mouthful, and the mystified Belmont, who was not in the
habit of being mystified, and so felt it, had the ecstasy of paying
the bill.


III.

It was nine o’clock when they entered the magnificent precincts of the
Opéra House. Like everybody else, they went very early--the performance
was not to commence until nine-thirty--in order to see and be seen to
the fullest possible extent. A week had elapsed since the two girls
had arrived from Algiers in Paris, under the escort of Cecil Thorold,
and in that time they had not been idle. Kitty Sartorius had spent
tolerable sums at the best _modistes_, in the Rue de la Paix and the
establishments in the Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin, while Eve had bought
one frock (a dream, needless to say), and had also been nearly covered
with jewellery by her betrothed. That afternoon, between the bet and
the dinner, Cecil had made more than one mysterious disappearance. He
finally came back with a diamond tiara for his dear journalist. “You
ridiculous thing!” exclaimed the dear journalist, kissing him. It thus
occurred that Eve, usually so severe of aspect, had more jewels than
she could wear, while Kitty, accustomed to display, had practically
nothing but her famous bracelet. Eve insisted on pooling the lot, and
dividing equally, for the gala.

Consequently, the party presented a very pretty appearance as it
ascended the celebrated grand staircase of the Opéra, wreathed to-night
in flowers. Lionel Belmont, with Kitty on his arm, was in high spirits,
uplifted, joyous; but Cecil himself seemed to be a little nervous, and
this nervousness communicated itself to Eve Fincastle--or perhaps Eve
was rather overpowered by her tiara. At the head of the staircase was a
notice requesting everyone to be seated at nine-twenty-five, previous
to the arrival of the President and the Imperial guests of the Republic.

The row of officials at the _controle_ took the expensive gilt card
from Cecil, examined it, returned it, and bowed low with an intimation
that he should turn to the right and climb two floors; and the party
proceeded further into the interior of the great building. The immense
corridors and _foyers_ and stairs were crowded with a collection of the
best-known people in Paris. It was a gathering of all the renowns. The
garish, gorgeous Opéra seemed to be changed that night into something
new and strange. Even those shabby old harridans, the box-openers, the
_ouvreuses_, wore bows of red, white and blue, and smiled effusively in
expectation of tips inconceivably large.

“_Tiens!_” exclaimed the box-opener who had taken charge of Cecil’s
party, as she unlocked the door of the box.

And well might she exclaim, for the box (No. 74--no possible error)
was already occupied by a lady and two gentlemen, who were talking
rather loudly in French! Cecil undoubtedly turned pale, while Lionel
Belmont laughed within his moustache.

“These people have made a mistake,” Cecil was saying to the _ouvreuse_,
when a male official in evening dress approached him with an air of
importance.

“Pardon, monsieur. You are Monsieur Cecil Thorold?”

“I am,” said Cecil.

“Will you kindly follow me? Monsieur the Directeur wishes to see you.”

“You are expected, evidently,” said Lionel Belmont. The girls kept
apart, as girls should in these crises between men.

“I have a ticket for this box,” Cecil remarked to the official. “And I
wish first to take possession of it.”

“It is precisely that point which Monsieur the Directeur wishes to
discuss with Monsieur,” rejoined the official, ineffably suave.
He turned with a wonderful bow to the girls, and added with that
politeness of which the French alone have the secret: “Perhaps, in the
meantime, these ladies would like to see the view of the Avenue de
l’Opéra from the balcony? The illuminations have begun, and the effect
is certainly charming.”

Cecil bit his lip.

“Yes,” he said. “Belmont, take them.”

So, while Lionel Belmont escorted the girls to the balcony, there to
discuss the startling situation and to watch the Imperial party drive
up the resplendent, fairy-like, and unique avenue, Cecil followed the
official.

He was guided along various passages and round unnumbered corners to
the rear part of the colossal building. There, in a sumptuous bureau,
the official introduced him to a still higher official, the Directeur,
who had a decoration and a long, white moustache.

“Monsieur,” said this latter, “I am desolated to have to inform you
that the Minister of Fine Arts has withdrawn his original invitation
for Box No. 74 to-night.”

“I have received no intimation of the withdrawal,” Cecil replied.

“No. Because the original invitation was not issued to you,” said the
Directeur, excited and nervous. “The Minister of Fine Arts instructs
me to inform you that his invitation to meet the President and their
Imperial Majesties cannot be bought and sold.”

“But is it not notorious that many such invitations have been bought
and sold?”

“It is, unfortunately, too notorious.”

Here the Directeur looked at his watch and rang a bell impatiently.

“Then why am I singled out?”

The Directeur gazed blandly at Cecil. “The reason, perhaps, is best
known to yourself,” said he, and he rang the bell again.

“I appear to incommode you,” Cecil remarked. “Permit me to retire.”

“Not at all, I assure you,” said the Directeur. “On the contrary. I am
a little agitated on account of the non-arrival of Mademoiselle Malva.”

A minor functionary entered.

“She has come?”

“No, Monsieur the Directeur.”

“And it is nine-fifteen. _Sapristi!_”

The functionary departed.

“The invitation to Box No. 74,” proceeded the Directeur, commanding
himself, “was sold for two thousand francs. Allow me to hand you notes
for the amount, dear monsieur.”

“But I paid twenty-five thousand,” said Cecil, smiling.

“It is conceivable. But the Minister can only concern himself with the
original figure. You refuse the notes?”

“By no means,” said Cecil, accepting them. “But I have brought here
to-night three guests, including two ladies. Imagine my position.”

“I imagine it,” the Directeur responded. “But you will not deny that
the Minister has always the right to cancel an invitation. Seats ought
to be sold subject to the contingency of that right being exercised.”

At that moment still another official plunged into the room.

“She is not here yet!” he sighed, as if in extremity.

“It is unfortunate,” Cecil sympathetically put in.

“It is more than unfortunate, dear monsieur,” said the Directeur,
gesticulating. “It is unthinkable. The performance _must_ begin at
nine-thirty, and it _must_ begin with the garden scene from ‘Faust,’ in
which Mademoiselle Malva takes _Marguerite_.”

“Why not change the order?” Cecil suggested.

“Impossible. There are only two other items. The first act of
‘Lohengrin,’ with Madame Félise, and the ballet ‘Sylvia.’ We cannot
commence with the ballet. No one ever heard of such a thing. And do you
suppose that Félise will sing before Malva? Not for millions. Not for
a throne. The etiquette of sopranos is stricter than that of Courts.
Besides, to-night we cannot have a German opera preceding a French one.”

“Then the President and their Majesties will have to wait a little,
till Malva arrives,” Cecil said.

“Their Majesties wait! Impossible!”

“Impossible!” echoed the other official, aghast.

Two more officials entered. And the atmosphere of alarm, of being
scotched, of being up a tree of incredible height, the atmosphere which
at that moment permeated the whole of the vast region behind the scenes
of the Paris Opéra, seemed to rush with them into the bureau of the
Directeur and to concentrate itself there.

“Nine-twenty! And she couldn’t dress in less than fifteen minutes.”

“You have sent to the Hôtel du Louvre?” the Directeur questioned
despairingly.

“Yes, Monsieur the Directeur. She left there two hours ago.”

Cecil coughed.

“I could have told you as much,” he remarked, very distinctly.

“What!” cried the Directeur. “You know Mademoiselle Malva?”

“She is among my intimate friends,” said Cecil smoothly.

“Perhaps you know where she is?”

“I have a most accurate idea,” said Cecil.

“Where?”

“I will tell you when I am seated in my box with my friends,” Cecil
answered.

“Dear monsieur,” panted the Directeur, “tell us at once! I give you my
word of honour that you shall have your box.”

Cecil bowed.

“Certainly,” he said. “I may remark that I had gathered information
which led me to anticipate this difficulty with the Minister of Fine
Arts----”

“But Malva, Malva--where is she?”

“Be at ease. It is only nine-twenty-three, and Mademoiselle Malva is
less than three minutes away, and ready dressed. I was observing that
I had gathered information which led me to anticipate this difficulty
with the Minister of Fine Arts, and accordingly I took measures to
protect myself. There is no such thing as absolute arbitrary power,
dear Directeur, even in a Republic, and I have proved it. Mademoiselle
Malva is in room No. 429 at the Grand Hotel, across the road.... Stay,
she will not come without this note.”

He handed out a small, folded letter from his waistcoat pocket.

Then he added: “Adieu, Monsieur the Directeur. You have just time to
reach the State entrance in order to welcome the Presidential and
Imperial party.”

At nine-thirty, Cecil and his friends were ushered by a trinity of
subservient officials into their box, which had been mysteriously
emptied of its previous occupants. And at the same moment the monarchs,
with monarchical punctuality, accompanied by the President, entered
the Presidential box in the middle of the grand tier of the superb
auditorium. The distinguished and dazzling audience rose to its feet,
and the band played the National Anthem.

“You fixed it up then?” Belmont whispered under cover of the National
Anthem. He was beaten, after all.

“Oh, yes!” said Cecil lightly. “A trivial misconception, nothing more.
And I have made a little out of it, too.”

“Indeed! Much?”

“No, not much! Two thousand francs. But you must remember that I have
been less than half an hour in making them.”

The curtain rose on the garden scene from “Faust.”


IV.


“My dear,” said Eve.

When a woman has been definitely linked with a man, either by betrothal
or by marriage, there are moments, especially at the commencement,
when she assumes an air and a tone of absolute exclusive possession of
him. It is a wonderful trick, which no male can successfully imitate,
try how he will. One of these moments had arrived in the history of
Eve Fincastle and her millionaire lover. They sat in a large, deserted
public room, all gold, of the Grand Hotel. It was midnight less a
quarter, and they had just returned, somewhat excited and flushed,
from the glories of the gala performances. During the latter part of
the evening, Eve had been absent from Cecil’s box for nearly half an
hour.

Kitty Sartorius and Lionel Belmont were conversing in an adjoining
_salon_.

“Yes,” said Cecil.

“Are you quite, quite sure that you love me?”

Only one answer is possible to such a question. Cecil gave it.

“That is all very well,” Eve pursued with equal gravity and charm. “But
it was really tremendously sudden, wasn’t it? I can’t think what you
see in me, dearest.”

“My dear Eve,” Cecil observed, holding her hand, “the best things, the
most enduring things, very often occur suddenly.”

“Say you love me,” she persisted.

So he said it, this time. Then her gravity deepened, though she smiled.

“You’ve given up all those--those schemes and things of yours, haven’t
you?” she questioned.

“Absolutely,” he replied.

“My dear, I’m so glad. I never could understand why----”

“Listen,” he said. “What was I to do? I was rich. I was bored. I had
no great attainments. I was interested in life and in the arts, but
not desperately, not vitally. You may, perhaps, say I should have taken
up philanthropy. Well, I’m not built that way. I can’t help it, but
I’m not a born philanthropist, and the philanthropist without a gift
for philanthropy usually does vastly more harm than good. I might have
gone into business. Well, I should only have doubled my millions, while
boring myself all the time. Yet the instinct which I inherited from my
father, the great American instinct to be a little cleverer and smarter
than someone else, drove me to action. It was part of my character, and
one can’t get away from one’s character. So finally I took to these
rather original ‘schemes,’ as you call them. They had the advantage
of being exciting and sometimes dangerous, and though they were often
profitable, they were not too profitable. In short, they amused me and
gave me joy. They also gave me _you_.”

Eve smiled again, but without committing herself.

“But you have abandoned them now completely?” she said.

“Oh, yes,” he answered.

“Then what about this Opéra affair to-night?” She sprang the question
on him sharply. She did her best to look severe, but the endeavour
ended with a laugh.

“I meant to tell you,” he said. “But how--how did you know? How did
you guess?”

“You forget that I am still a journalist,” she replied, “and still on
the staff of my paper. I wished to interview Malva to-night for the
_Journal_, and I did so. It was she who let out things. She thought
I knew all about it; and when she saw that I didn’t she stopped and
advised me mysteriously to consult you for details.”

“It was the scandal at the gala performance last autumn that gave
me an action for making a corner in seats at the very next gala
performance that should ever occur at the Paris Opéra,” Cecil began his
confession. “I knew that seats could be got direct from more or less
minor officials at the Ministry of Fine Arts, and also that a large
proportion of the people invited to these performances were prepared
to sell their seats. You can’t imagine how venal certain circles are
in Paris. It just happened that the details and date of to-night’s
performance were announced on the day we arrived here. I could not
resist the chance. Now you comprehend sundry strange absences of mine
during the week. I went to a reporter on the _Echo de Paris_ whom I
knew, and who knows everybody. And we got out a list of the people
likely to be invited and likely to be willing to sell their seats. We
also opened negotiations at the Ministry.”

“How on earth do these ideas occur to you?” asked Eve.

“How can I tell?” Cecil answered. “It is because they occur to me that
I am I--you see. Well, in twenty-four hours my reporter and two of
his friends had interviewed half the interviewable people in Paris,
and the Minister of Fine Arts had sent out his invitations, and I had
obtained the refusal of over three hundred seats, at a total cost of
about seventy-five thousand francs. Then I saw that my friend the
incomparable Malva was staying at the Ritz, and the keystone idea of
the entire affair presented itself to me. I got her to offer to sing.
Of course, her rival Félise could not be behind her in a patriotic
desire to cement the friendliness of two great nations. The gala
performance blossomed into a terrific boom. We took a kind of office in
the Rue de la Paix. We advertised very discreetly. Every evening, after
bidding you ‘Good-night,’ I saw my reporter and Lecky, and arranged the
development of the campaign. In three days we had sold all our seats,
except one box, which I kept, for something like two hundred thousand
francs.”

“Then this afternoon you merely bought the box from yourself?”

“Exactly, my love. I had meant the surprise of getting a box to come a
little later than it did--say at dinner; but you and Belmont, between
you, forced it on.”

“And that is all?”

“Not quite. The minions of the Minister of Fine Arts were extremely
cross. And they meant to revenge themselves on me by depriving me
of my box at the last moment. However, I got wind of that, and by
the simplest possible arrangement with Malva I protected myself. The
scheme--my last bachelor fling, Eve--has been a great success, and the
official world of Paris has been taught a lesson which may lead to
excellent results.”

“And you have cleared a hundred and twenty-five thousand francs?”

“By no means. The profits of these undertakings are the least part of
them. The expenses are heavy. I reckon the expenses will be nearly
forty thousand francs. Then I must give Malva a necklace, and that
necklace must cost twenty-five thousand francs.”

“That leaves sixty thousand clear?” said Eve.

“Say sixty-two thousand.”

“Why?”

“I was forgetting an extra two thousand made this evening.”

“And your other ‘schemes’?” Eve continued her cross-examination. “How
much have they yielded?”

“The Devonshire House scheme was a dead loss. My dear, why did you
lead me to destroy that fifty thousand pounds? Waste not, want not.
There may come a day when we shall need that fifty thousand pounds, and
then----”

“Don’t be funny,” said Eve. “I am serious--very serious.”

“Well, Ostend and Mr. Rainshore yielded twenty-one thousand pounds net.
Bruges and the bracelet yielded nine thousand five hundred francs.
Algiers and Biskra resulted in a loss of----”

“Never mind the losses,” Eve interrupted. “Are there any more gains?”

“Yes, a few. At Rome last year I somehow managed to clear fifty
thousand francs. Then there was an episode at the Chancellory at
Berlin. And----”

“Tell me the total gains, my love,” said Eve--“the gross gains.”

Cecil consulted a pocket-book.

“A trifle,” he answered. “Between thirty-eight and forty thousand
pounds.”

“My dear Cecil,” the girl said, “call it forty thousand--a million
francs--and give me a cheque. Do you mind?”

“I shall be charmed, my darling.”

“And when we get to London,” Eve finished, “I will hand it over to the
hospitals anonymously.”

He paused, gazed at her, and kissed her.

Then Kitty Sartorius entered, a marvellous vision, with Belmont in
her wake. Kitty glanced hesitatingly at the massive and good-humoured
Lionel.

“The fact is----” said Kitty, and paused.

“We are engaged,” said Lionel. “You aren’t surprised?”

“Our warmest congratulations!” Cecil observed. “No. We can’t truthfully
say that we are staggered. It is in the secret nature of things that a
leading lady must marry her manager--a universal law that may not be
transgressed.”

“Moreover,” said Eve later, in Cecil’s private ear, as they were
separating for the night, “we might have guessed much earlier.
Theatrical managers don’t go scattering five-hundred-pound bracelets
all over the place merely for business reasons.”

“But he only scattered one, my dear,” Cecil murmured.

“Yes, well. That’s what I mean.”




MR. PENFOUND’S TWO BURGLARS.

THE STORY OF HIS WALK WITH THEM.


The chain of circumstances leading to the sudden and unexpected return
of Mr. and Mrs. Penfound from their Continental holiday was in itself
curious and even remarkable, but it has nothing to do with the present
narrative, which begins with the actual arrival of Mr. and Mrs.
Penfound before the portal of their suburban residence, No. 7, Munster
Gardens, at a quarter before midnight on the 30th of August.

It was a detached house with a spacious triangular garden at the back;
it had an air of comfort, of sobriety, of good form, of success; one
divined by looking at it that the rent ran to about £80, and that the
tenant was not a man who had to save up for quarter days. It was a
credit to the street, which upon the whole, with its noble trees and
its pretty curve, is distinctly the best street in Fulham. And, in
fact, No. 7 in every way justified the innocent pride of the Penfounds.

“I can feel cobwebs all over me,” said Mrs. Penfound, crossly, as they
entered the porch and Mr. Penfound took out his latchkey. She was
hungry, hot, and tired, and she exhibited a certain pettishness--a
pettishness which Mr. Penfound, whenever it occurred, found a
particular pleasure in soothing. Mr. Penfound himself was seldom
ruffled.

Most men would have been preoccupied with the discomforts of the
arrival, but not George Penfound. Mr. Penfound was not, and had never
been, of those who go daily into the city by a particular train, and
think the world is coming to an end if the newsagent fails to put the
newspaper on the doorstep before 8 a.m.

Mr. Penfound had lived. He had lived adventurously and he had lived
everywhere. He had slept under the stars and over the throbbing screws
of ocean steamers. He knew the harbours of the British Empire, and the
waste places of the unpeopled West, and the mysterious environs of
foreign cities. He had been first mate of a tramp steamer, wood sawyer
in Ontario, ganger on the Canadian Pacific Railway, clerk at a Rand
mine, and land agent in California.

It was the last occupation that had happened to yield the eighty
thousand dollars which rendered him independent and established him so
splendidly, at the age of forty, in Fulham, the place of his birth.
Thin, shrewd, clear, and kindly, his face was the face of a man who has
learnt the true philosophy of life. He took the world as he found it,
and he found it good.

To such a man an unexpected journey, even though it ended at a deserted
and unprepared home, whose larder proved as empty as his stomach, was
really nothing.

By the time Mr. Penfound had locked up the house, turned out the light
in the hall, and arrived in the bedroom, Mrs. Penfound was fast asleep.
He sat down in the armchair by the window, charmed by the gentle
radiance of the night, and unwilling to go to bed. Like most men who
have seen the world, he had developed the instincts of a poet, and was
something of a dreamer. Half an hour--or it might have been an hour:
poets are oblivious of time--had passed, when into Mr. Penfound’s
visions there entered a sinister element. He straightened himself
stiffly in the chair and listened, smiling.

“By Jove!” he whispered. “I do believe it’s a burglar. I’ll give the
beggar time to get fairly in, and then we’ll have some fun.”

It seemed to him that he heard a few clicking noises at the back of the
house, and then a sound as if something was being shoved hard.

“The dining-room window,” he said.

In a few minutes it became perfectly evident to his trained and acute
ear that a burglar occupied the dining-room, and accordingly he
proceeded to carry out other arrangements.

Removing his boots, he assumed a pair of soft, woollen house slippers
which lay under the bed. Then he went to a chest of drawers, and took
out two revolvers. Handling these lovingly, he glanced once at his
sleeping wife, and, shod in the silent woollen, passed noiselessly out
of the room. By stepping very close to the wall, so as to put as slight
a strain as possible upon the woodwork, he contrived to descend to the
half-landing without causing a sound, but on the half-landing itself
there occurred an awful creak--a creak that seemed to reverberate into
infinite space. Mr. Penfound stopped a second, but, perceiving the
unwisdom of a halt, immediately proceeded.

In that second of consternation he had remembered that only two
chambers of one revolver and one chamber of the other were loaded.
It was an unfortunate mischance. Should he return and load fully?
Preposterous! He remembered with pride the sensation which he had
caused one night ten years before in a private shooting-saloon in
Paris. Three shots to cripple one burglar--for _him_; it was a positive
extravagance of means. And he continued down the stairs, cautiously but
rapidly feeling his way.

The next occurrence brought him up standing at the dining-room door,
which was open. He heard voices in the dining-room. There were, then,
two burglars. Three shots for two burglars? Pooh! Ample! This was what
he heard:--

“Did you drink out of this glass, Jack?”

“Not I. I took a pull out of the bottle.”

“So did I.”

“Well?”

There was a pause. Mr. Penfound discovered that by putting an eye to
the crack at the hinges he could see the burglars, who had lighted one
gas jet, and were sitting at the table. They were his first burglars,
and they rather shocked his preconceived notions of the type. They
hadn’t the look of burglars--no bluish chins, no lowering eyes, no
corduroy, no knotted red handkerchiefs.

One, the younger, dressed in blue serge, with linen collar and a soiled
pink necktie, might have been a city clerk of the lower grade; he had
light, bushy hair and a yellow moustache, his eyes were large and pale
blue, his chin weak; altogether Mr. Penfound decided that had he seen
the young man elsewhere than in that dining-room he would never have
suspected him to be a burglar. The other was of middle age, neatly
dressed in dark grey, but with a ruffian’s face, and black hair, cut
extremely close; he wore a soft felt hat at a negligent poise, and
was smoking a cigarette. He was examining the glass out of which Mr.
Penfound had but recently drunk whisky.

“Look here, Jack,” the man in grey said to his companion. “You haven’t
drunk out of this glass, and I haven’t; but someone’s drunk out of it.
It’s wet.”

The young man paled, and with an oath snatched up the glass to look
at it. Mr. Penfound noticed how suddenly his features writhed into a
complicated expression of cowardice, cunning, and vice. He no longer
doubted that the youth was an authentic burglar. The older man remained
calm.

“This house isn’t so empty as we thought, my boy. There’s someone here.”

“Yes, gentlemen, there is,” remarked Mr. Penfound, quietly stepping
into the room with a revolver upraised in each hand.

The young man dropped the glass, and, after rolling along the table, it
fell on the floor and broke, making a marvellous noise in the silence.

“Well, I’m blowed!” exclaimed the burglar in grey, and turned to the
window.

“Don’t stir; put your hands up, and look slippy--I mean business,” said
Mr. Penfound steadily.

The burglar in grey made two hasty steps to the window. Mr. Penfound’s
revolver spoke--it was the one in his left hand, containing two
shots--and with a muffled howl the burglar suddenly halted, cursing
with pain and anger.

“Hands up, both of you!” repeated Mr. Penfound imperturbably.

A few drops of blood appeared on the left wrist of the older burglar,
showing where he had been hit. With evident pain he raised both hands
to the level of his shoulders; the left hand clearly was useless;
it hung sideways in a peculiar fashion. The youthful criminal was
trembling like a spray of maidenhair, and had his hands high up over
his head.

Mr. Penfound joyfully reflected that no London burglar had ever before
found himself in such a ridiculous position as these two, and he took a
genuine, artistic pleasure in the spectacle.

But what to do next.

The youth began to speak with a whine like that of a beggar.

“Silence!” said Mr. Penfound impressively, and proceeded with his
cogitations, a revolver firm and steady in each hand. The shot
had evidently not wakened his wife, and to disturb her now from a
refreshing and long-needed sleep in order to send her for the police
would not only be unchivalrous, it would disclose a lack of resource, a
certain clumsiness of management, in an affair which Mr. Penfound felt
sure he ought to be able to carry neatly to an effective conclusion.

Besides, if a revolver-shot in the house had not wakened his wife, what
could wake her? He could not go upstairs to her and leave the burglars
to await his return.

Then an idea occurred to Mr. Penfound.

“Now, my men,” he said cheerfully, “I think you understand that I am
not joking, and that I can shoot a bit, and that, whatever the laws of
this country, I _do_ shoot.” He waved the muzzle of one revolver in the
direction of the grey man’s injured wrist.

“Look here, governor,” the owner of the wrist pleaded, “it hurts
dreadful. I shall faint.”

“Faint, then. I know it hurts.”

The man’s face was white with pain, but Mr. Penfound had seen too many
strange sights in his life to be greatly moved by the sight of a rascal
with a bullet in his anatomy.

“To proceed. You will stand side by side and turn round. The young
gentleman will open the window, and you will pass out into the garden.
March! Slower, slower, I say. Halt!”

The burglars were now outside, while Mr. Penfound was still within
the room. He followed them, and in doing so stumbled over a black bag
which lay on the floor. Fortunately he recovered himself instantly. He
noticed lying on the top of the bag a small bunch of skeleton keys,
some putty, and what looked like a thong of raw hide. He also observed
that three small panes of the French window had been forced inwards.

“Turn to your left, go down the pathway, and halt when you come to the
side gate. And don’t hurry, mind you.”

They obeyed, without speaking even to each other. Mr. Penfound had no
fear of their disobedience. He was within two yards of their heels, and
he said to himself that his hands were superbly steady.

It was at this point that Mr. Penfound began to feel hungry, really
hungry. The whisky had appeased the cravings of his stomach for a short
time, but now its demands were imperious. Owing to the exigencies of
the day’s journey he had not had a satisfying meal for thirty hours;
and Mr. Penfound since settling down had developed a liking for regular
meals. However, there was nothing to be done at present.

He therefore proceeded with and safely accomplished his plan of driving
the burglars before him into the street.

“Here,” he thought, “we shall soon be seeing a policeman, or some late
bird who will fetch a policeman.” And he drove his curious team up
Munster Park Gardens towards Fulham Road, that interminable highway,
once rural but rural no longer.

The thoroughfares seemed to be absolutely deserted. Mr. Penfound could
scarcely believe that London, even in the dead of night, could be so
lonely. The gas-lamps shone steady in the still, warm air, and above
them the star-studded sky, with a thin sickle moon, at which, however,
beautiful as it was, Mr. Penfound could not look. His gaze was fixed
on the burglars. As he inspected their backs he wondered what their
thoughts were.

He felt that in their place he should have been somewhat amused by the
humour of the predicament. But their backs showed no sign of feeling,
unless it were that of resignation. The older man had dropped his
injured arm, with Mr. Penfound’s tacit consent, and it now hung loose
by his side.

The procession moved slowly eastward along Fulham Road, the two
burglars first, silent, glum, and disgusted, and Mr. Penfound with his
revolvers close behind.

Still no policeman, no wayfarer. Mr. Penfound began to feel a little
anxious. And his hunger was insufferable. This little procession of his
could not move for ever. Something must occur, and Mr. Penfound said
that something must occur quickly. He looked up at the houses with a
swift glance, but these dark faces of brick, all with closed eyelids,
gave him no sign of encouragement. He thought of firing his revolver
in order to attract attention, but remembered in time that if he did
so he would have only one shot left for his burglars, an insufficient
allowance in case of contingencies.

But presently, as the clock of Fulham parish church struck three, Mr.
Penfound beheld an oasis of waving palms and cool water in this desert;
that is to say, he saw in the distance one of those coffee-stalls which
just before midnight mysteriously dot themselves about London, only
to disappear again at breakfast time. The burglars also saw it, and
stopped almost involuntarily.

“Get on now,” said Mr. Penfound gruffly, “and stop five paces _past_
the coffee-stall. D’ye hear?”

“Yes, sir,” whined the young burglar.

“Ay,” remarked the old burglar coolly.

As Mr. Penfound approached the coffee-stall, he observed that it was no
ordinary coffee-stall. It belonged to the aristocracy of coffee-stalls.
It was painted a lovely deep crimson, and on this crimson, amid
flowers and scrolls, had been inscribed the names of the delicacies
within:--Tea, coffee, cocoa, rolls, sandwiches, toast, sausages, even
bacon and eggs. Mr. Penfound’s stomach called aloud within him at the
rumour of these good things.

When the trio arrived, the stallkeeper happened to be bending over a
tea-urn, and he did not notice the halt of the procession until Mr.
Penfound spoke.

“I say,” Mr. Penfound began, holding the revolvers about the level of
his top waistcoat button, and with his eyes fixed on the burglars--“I
say!”

“Tea or coffee?” asked the stallkeeper shortly, looking up.

“Neither--that is, at present,” replied Mr. Penfound sweetly. “The fact
is, I’ve got two burglars here.”

“Two _what_--where?”

Mr. Penfound then explained the whole circumstances. “And I want you to
fetch a couple of policemen.”

The stallkeeper paused a moment. He was a grim fellow, so Mr. Penfound
gathered from the corner of his eye.

“Well, that’s about the best story as I ever ’eard,” the stallkeeper
said. “And you want me to fetch a policeman?”

“Yes; and I hope you’ll hurry up. I’m tired of holding these revolvers.”

“And I’m to leave my stall, am I?”

“Certainly.”

The stallkeeper placed the first finger of his left hand upright
against his nose.

“Well, I just ain’t then. What d’ye take me for? A bloomin’ owl? Look
’ere, mister: no kid! Nigh every night some jokers tries to get me away
from my stall, so as they can empty it and run off. But I ain’t been in
this line nineteen year for nuthin’. No, you go and take yer tale and
yer pistols and yer bloomin’ burglars somewhere else. ’Ear?”

“As you please,” said Mr. Penfound, with dignity. “Only I’ll wait here
till a policeman comes, or someone. You will then learn that I have
told you the truth. How soon will a policeman be along?”

“Might be a ’our, might be more. There ain’t likely to be no other
people till four-thirty or thereabouts; that’s when my trade begins.”

Mr. Penfound was annoyed. His hunger, exasperated by the exquisite
odours of the stall, increased every second, and the prospect of
waiting an hour, even half an hour, was appalling.

Another idea occurred to him.

“Will you,” he said to the stallkeeper, “kindly put one of those
sausages into my mouth? I daren’t loose these revolvers.”

“Not till I sees yer money.”

Hunger made Mr. Penfound humble, and he continued--

“Will you come round and take the money out of my pocket?”

“No, I won’t. I don’t leave this ’ere counter. I know yer dodges.”

“Very well, I will wait.”

“Steady on, governor. You aren’t the only chap that’s hungry.”

Mr. Penfound turned sharply at the voice. It was the elder burglar
who spoke, and the elder burglar had faced him and was approaching
the stall, regardless of revolvers. Mr. Penfound noticed a twinkle in
the man’s eye, a faint appreciation of the fact that the situation
was funny, and Mr. Penfound gave way to a slight smile. He was being
disobeyed flatly, but for the life of him he could not shoot. Besides,
there was no occasion to shoot, as the burglar was certainly making no
attempt to escape. The fellow was brave enough, after all.

“Two slabs and a pint o’ thick,” he said to the stallkeeper, and
was immediately served with a jug of coffee and two huge pieces of
bread-and-butter, for which he flung down twopence.

Mr. Penfound was astounded--he was too astounded to speak--by the
coolness of this criminal.

“Look here,” the elder burglar continued, quietly handing one of the
pieces of bread-and-butter to his companion in sin, who by this time
had also crept up, “you can put down them revolvers and tuck in till
the peeler comes along. We know when we’re copped, and we aren’t going
to skip. You tuck in, governor.”

“Give it a name,” said the stallkeeper, with an eye to business.

Mr. Penfound, scarcely knowing what he did or why he did it, put down
one revolver and then the other, fished a shilling from his pocket, and
presently was engaged in the consumption of a ham sandwich and coffee.

“You’re a cool one,” he said at length, rather admiringly, to the elder
burglar.

“So are you,” said the elder burglar; and he and Mr. Penfound both
glanced somewhat scornfully at the other burglar, undersized, cringing,
pale.

“Ever been caught before?” asked Mr. Penfound pleasantly.

“What’s that got to do with you?”

The retort was gruff, final--a snub, and Mr. Penfound felt it as such.
He had the curious sensation that he was in the presence of a superior
spirit, a stronger personality than his own.

“Here’s a policeman,” remarked the stallkeeper casually, and they all
listened, and heard the noise of regular footfalls away round a distant
corner.

Mr. Penfound struggled inwardly with a sudden overmastering impulse,
and then yielded.

“You can go,” he said quietly to the elder burglar, “so clear off
before the policeman sees you.”

“Straight?” the man said, looking him in the eyes to make sure there
was no joking.

“Straight, my friend.... Here, shake.”

So it happened that Mr. Penfound and the elder burglar shook hands. The
next instant Mr. Penfound was alone with the stallkeeper; the other
two, with the celerity born of practice, had vanished into the night.

“Did you ever see such a man?” said Mr. Penfound to the stallkeeper,
putting the revolvers in his pocket, and feeling strangely happy, as
one who has done a good action.

“Yer don’t kid me,” was the curt reply. “It was all a plant. Want
anythink else? Because if not, ye’d best go.”

“Yes, I do,” said Mr. Penfound, for he had thought of his wife. He
spent sevenpence in various good things, and was just gathering his
purchases together when the policeman appeared.

“Good night, officer,” he called out blithely, and set off to run home,
as though for his life.

As he re-entered the bedroom at No. 7 his wife sat up in bed, a
beautiful but accusing figure.

“George,” she said, “where have you been?”

“My love,” he answered, “I’ve been out into the night to get you this
sausage, and this cake, and this sandwich. Eat them. They will do you
good.”




MIDNIGHT AT THE GRAND BABYLON.


I.

Well, said the doctor, you say I’ve been very secretive lately. Perhaps
I have. However, I don’t mind telling you--just you fellows--the whole
history of the affair that has preoccupied me. I shan’t assert that
it’s the most curious case in all my experience. My experience has been
pretty varied, and pretty lively, as you know, and cases are curious
in such different ways. Still, a poisoning business is always a bit
curious, and this one was extremely so. It isn’t often that a person
who means to commit murder by poison calls in a physician to assist him
and deliberately uses the unconscious medico as his tool. Yet that is
exactly what happened. It isn’t often that a poisoner contrives to hit
on a poison which is at once original, almost untraceable, and to be
obtained from any chemist without a doctor’s prescription. Yet that,
too, is exactly what happened. I can assure you that the entire episode
was a lesson to me. It opened my eyes to the possibilities which lie
ready to the hand of a really intelligent murderer in this twentieth
century. People talk about the masterpieces of poisoning in the middle
ages. Pooh! Second-rate! They didn’t know enough in the middle ages
to achieve anything which a modern poisoner with genius would deem
first-rate; they simply didn’t know enough. Another point in the matter
which forcibly struck me was the singular usefulness of a big London
hotel to a talented criminal. You can do precisely what you please in a
big hotel, and nobody takes the least notice. You wander in, you wander
out, and who cares? You are only an item in a crowd. And when you have
reached the upper corridors you are as lost to pursuit and observation
as a needle in a haystack. You may take two rooms, one after the other,
in different names, and in different parts of the hotel; the servants
and officials will be none the wiser, because the second floor knows
not the third, nor the third the fourth; you may oscillate between
those two rooms in a manner to puzzle Inspector Anderson himself. And
you are just as secure in your apartments as a mediæval baron in his
castle--yes, and more! On that night there were over a thousand guests
in the Grand Babylon Hotel (there was a ball in the Gold Rooms, and a
couple of banquets); and in the midst of all that diverse humanity,
unperceived, unsuspected, a poignant and terrible drama was going on,
and things so occurred that I tumbled right into it. Well, I’ll tell
you.


II.

I was called in to the Grand Babylon about nine p.m.; suite No. 63,
second floor, name of Russell. The outer door of the suite was opened
for me by a well-dressed woman of thirty or so, slim, with a face
expressive and intelligent rather than handsome. I liked her face--I
was attracted by its look of honesty and alert good-nature.

“Good evening, doctor,” she said. She had a charming low voice, as she
led me into a highly-luxurious drawing-room. “My name is Russell, and I
wish you to see a young friend of mine who is not well.” She hesitated
and turned to an old bald-headed man, who stood looking out of the
window at the twilight panorama of the Thames. “My friend’s solicitor,
Mr. Dancer,” she explained. We bowed, Mr. Dancer and I.

“Nothing serious, I hope,” I remarked.

“No, no!” said Miss Russell.

Nevertheless, she seemed to me to be extremely nervous and anxious, as
she preceded me into the bedroom, a chamber quite as magnificent as the
drawing-room.

On the bed lay a beautiful young girl. Yes, you may laugh, you fellows,
but she was genuinely beautiful. She smiled faintly as we entered. Her
features had an ashy tint, and tiny drops of cold perspiration stood on
the forehead. However, she certainly wasn’t very ill--I could see that
in a moment, and I fixed my conversational tone accordingly.

“Do you feel as if you could breathe freely, but that if you did it
would kill you?” I inquired, after I had examined her. And she nodded,
smiling again. Miss Russell also smiled, evidently pleased that I had
diagnosed the case so quickly.

My patient was suffering from a mild attack of pseudo-angina, nothing
worse. Not angina pectoris, you know--that’s usually associated with
old age. Pseudo-angina is a different thing. With a weak heart, it
may be caused by indigestion. The symptoms are cardiac spasms, acute
pain in the chest, a strong disinclination to make even the smallest
movement, and a state of mental depression, together with that queer
fancy about breathing. The girl had these symptoms, and she also had a
headache and a dicrotism of the pulse--two pulsations instead of one,
not unusual. I found that she had been eating a too hearty dinner, and
that she had suffered from several similar attacks in the immediate
past.

“You had a doctor in before?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Miss Russell. “But he was unable to come to-night, and as
your house is so near we sent for you.”

“There is no danger whatever--no real cause for anxiety,” I summed up.
“I will have some medicine made up instantly.”

“Trinitrin?” demanded Miss Russell.

“Yes,” I answered, a little astonished at this readiness. “Your regular
physician prescribed it?”

(I should explain to you that trinitrin is nothing but nitro-glycerine
in a non-explosive form.)

“I think it was trinitrin,” Miss Russell replied, with an appearance
of doubtfulness. “Perhaps you will write the prescription and I will
despatch a messenger at once. I should be obliged, doctor, if you would
remain with us until--if you would remain with us.”

“Decidedly!” I said. “I will remain with pleasure. But do accept my
assurance,” I added, gazing at her face, so anxious and apprehensive,
“that there is no cause for alarm.”

She smiled and concurred. But I could see that I had not convinced her.
And I began to suspect that she was not after all so intelligent as I
had imagined. My patient, who was not now in any pain, lay calmly, with
closed eyes.


III.

Do not forget the old bald-headed lawyer in the drawing-room.

“I suppose you are often summoned to the Grand Babylon, sir, living,
as you do, just round the corner,” he remarked to me somewhat
pompously. He had a big nose and a habit of staring at you over his
eye-glasses with his mouth wide-open, after having spoken. We were
alone together in the drawing-room. I was waiting for the arrival of
the medicine, and he was waiting for--I didn’t know what he was waiting
for.

“Occasionally. Not often,” I responded. “I am called more frequently to
the Majestic, over the way.”

“Ah, just so, just so,” he murmured.

I could see that he meant to be polite in his high and dry antique
legal style; and I could see also that he was very bored in that
hotel drawing-room. So I proceeded to explain the case to him, and to
question him discreetly about my patient and Miss Russell.

“You are, of course, aware, sir, that the young lady is Miss Spanton,
Miss Adelaide Spanton?” he said.

“What? Not ‘the’ Spanton?”

“Precisely, sir. The daughter of Edgar Spanton, my late client, the
great newspaper proprietor.”

“And this Miss Russell?”

“Miss Russell was formerly Miss Adelaide’s governess. She is now her
friend, and profoundly attached to the young lady; a disinterested
attachment, so far as I can judge, though naturally many people
will think otherwise. Miss Adelaide is of a very shy and retiring
disposition; she has no other friends, and she has no near relatives.
Save for Miss Russell she is, sir, if I may so phrase it, alone in the
world.”

“But Miss Spanton is surely very wealthy?”

“You come to the point, sir. If my young client reaches her
twenty-first birthday she will be the absolute mistress of the whole of
her father’s fortune. You may have noticed in the public press that I
swore his estate at more than three millions.”

“And how far is Miss Spanton from her twenty-first birthday?” I
demanded.

The old lawyer glanced at his watch.

“Something less than three hours. At midnight she will have legally
entered on her 22nd year.”

“I see,” I said. “Now I can understand Miss Russell’s anxiety, which
refuses to be relieved even by my positive assurance. No doubt Miss
Russell has worked herself up into a highly nervous condition. And may
I inquire what will happen--I mean, what would have happened, if Miss
Spanton had not reached her majority?”

“The entire estate would have passed to a cousin, a Mr. Samuel Grist,
of Melbourne. I daresay you know the name. Mr. Grist is understood
to be the leading theatrical manager in Australia. Speaking as one
professional man to another, sir, I may venture to remark that Mr.
Grist’s reputation is more than a little doubtful--you may have
heard--many transactions and adventures. Ha, ha! Still, he is my late
client’s sole surviving relative, except Miss Adelaide. I have never
had the pleasure of meeting him; he confines himself exclusively to
Australia.”

“This night then,” I laughed, “will see the end of any hopes which Mr.
Grist may have entertained.”

“Exactly, sir,” the lawyer agreed. “It will also see the end of Miss
Russell’s immediate anxieties. Upon my word, since Mr. Spanton’s
regrettable death, she has been both father and mother to my
lonely young client. A practical woman, sir, Miss Russell! And the
excessiveness of her apprehensions, if I may so phrase it, must be
excused. She has begged me to remain here till midnight, in order
that I may witness to Miss Spanton’s--er--vitality, and also in order
to obtain Miss Spanton’s signature to certain necessary documents. I
should not be surprised, sir, if she requested you also to remain. She
is not a woman to omit precautions.”

“I’m afraid I can’t stop till twelve,” I said. The conversation ceased,
and I fell into meditation.

I do not mind admitting that I was deeply impressed by what I will call
the romantic quality of the situation. I thought of old Spanton, who
had begun with something less than nothing and died virtually the owner
of three daily papers and twenty-five weeklies and monthlies. I thought
of Spantons, Ltd., and their colossal offices spreading half round
Salisbury Square. Why, I even had a copy of the extra special edition
of the _Evening Gazette_ in my pocket! Do any of you fellows remember
Spanton starting the _Evening Gazette_? He sold three hundred thousand
the first day. And now old Spanton was dead--you know he died of drink,
and there was nothing left of the Spanton blood except this girl
lying there on the bed, and the man in Australia. And all the Spanton
editors, and the Spanton sub-editors, and the Spanton artists, and the
Spanton reporters and compositors, and the Spanton rotary presses, and
the Spanton paper mills, and the Spanton cyclists, were slaving and
toiling to put eighty thousand a year into this girl’s purse. And there
she was, feeble and depressed, and solitary, except for Miss Russell,
and the man in Australia perhaps hoping she would die; and there was
Miss Russell, worrying and fussing and apprehending and fearing. And
the entire hotel oblivious of the romantic, I could almost say the
pathetic, situation. And then I thought of Miss Spanton’s future,
burdened with those three millions, and I wondered if those three
millions would buy her happiness.

“Here is the medicine, doctor,” said Miss Russell, entering the
drawing-room hurriedly, and handing me the bottle with the chemist’s
label on it. I went with her into the bedroom. The beautiful
Adelaide Spanton was already better, and she admitted as much when
I administered the medicine--two minims of a one per cent. solution
of trinitrin, otherwise nitro-glycerine, the usual remedy for
pseudo-angina.

Miss Russell took the bottle from my hand, corked it and placed it on
the dressing-table. Shortly afterwards I left the hotel. The lawyer had
been right in supposing that Miss Russell would ask me to stay, but I
was unable to do so. I promised, however, to return in an hour, all the
while insisting that there was not the slightest danger for the patient.


IV.

It was 10.30 when I came back.

“Second floor!” I said carelessly to the lift boy, and he whirled me
upwards; the Grand Babylon lifts travel very fast.

“Here you are, sir,” he murmured respectfully, and I stepped out.

“Is this the second floor?” I asked suddenly.

“Beg pardon! I thought you said seventh, sir.”

“It’s time you were in bed, my lad!” was my retort, and I was just
re-entering the lift when I caught sight of Miss Russell in the
corridor. I called to her, thinking she would perhaps descend with
me, but she did not hear, and so I followed her down the corridor,
wondering what was her business on the seventh floor. She opened a door
and disappeared into a room.

“Well?” I heard a sinister voice exclaim within the room, and then the
door was pushed to; it was not latched.

“I did say the seventh!” I called to the lift-boy, and he vanished with
his machine.

The voice within the room startled me. It gave me furiously to think,
as the French say. With a sort of instinctive unpremeditated action I
pressed gently against the door till it stood ajar about an inch. And I
listened.

“It’s a confounded mysterious case to me!” the voice was saying, “that
that dose the other day didn’t finish her. We’re running it a dashed
sight too close! Here, take this--it’s all ready, label and everything.
Substitute the bottles. I’ll run no risks this time. One dose will do
the trick inside half an hour, and on that I’ll bet my boots!”

“Very well,” said Miss Russell, quite calmly. “It’s pure trinitrin, is
it?”

“You’re the coolest customer that I ever struck!” the voice exclaimed,
in an admiring tone. “Yes, it’s pure trinitrin--beautiful, convenient
stuff! Looks like water, no taste, very little smell, and so volatile
that all the doctors on the Medical Council couldn’t trace it at a
post-mortem. Besides the doctor prescribed a solution of trinitrin, and
you got it from the chemist, and in case there’s a rumpus we can shove
the mistake on to the chemist’s dispenser, and a fine old row he’ll get
into. By the way, what’s the new doctor like?”

“Oh! So-so!” said Miss Russell, in her even tones.

“It’s a good thing on the whole, perhaps, that I arranged that carriage
accident for the first one!” the hard, sinister voice remarked. “One
never knows. Get along now at once, and don’t look so anxious. Your
face belies your voice. Give us a kiss!”

“To-morrow!” said Miss Russell.

I hurried away, as it were drunk, overwhelmed with horror and
amazement, and turning a corner so as to avoid discovery, reached the
second floor by the staircase. I did not wish to meet Miss Russell in
the lift.

My first thought was not one of alarm for Adelaide Spanton--of course,
I knew I could prevent the murder--but of profound sorrow that Miss
Russell should have proved to be a woman so unspeakably wicked. I swore
never to trust a woman’s face again. I had liked her face. Then I dwelt
on the chance, the mere chance, my careless pronunciation, a lift-boy’s
error, which had saved the life of the poor millionaire girl. And
lastly I marvelled at the combined simplicity and ingenuity of the
plot. The scoundrel upstairs--possibly Samuel Grist himself--had taken
the cleverest advantage of Miss Spanton’s tendency to pseudo-angina.
What could be more clever than to poison with the physician’s own
medicine? Very probably the girl’s present attack had been induced
by an artful appeal to her appetite; young women afflicted as she
was are frequently just a little greedy. And I perceived that the
villain was correct in assuming that nitro-glycerine would never be
traced at a post-mortem save in the smallest possible quantity--just
such a quantity as I had myself prescribed. He was also right in his
assumption that the pure drug would infallibly kill in half an hour.

I pulled myself together, and having surreptitiously watched Miss
Russell into Suite No. 63, I followed her. When I arrived at the
bedroom she was pouring medicine from a bottle; a maid stood at the
foot of the bed.

“I am just giving the second dose,” said Miss Russell easily to me.

“What a nerve!” I said to myself, and aloud: “By all means.”

She measured the dose, and approached the bed without a tremor.
Adelaide Spanton opened her mouth.

“Stop!” I cried firmly. “We’ll delay that dose for half an hour. Kindly
give me the glass!” I took the glass from Miss Russell’s passive
fingers. “And I would like to have a word with you now, Miss Russell!”
I added.

The maid went swiftly from the room.


V.

The old bald-headed lawyer had gone down to the hotel smoking-saloon
for a little diversion, and we faced each other in the
drawing-room--Miss Russell and I. The glass was still in my hand.

“And the new doctor is so-so, eh?” I remarked.

“What do you mean?” she faltered.

“I think you know what I mean,” I retorted. “I need only tell you that
by a sheer chance I stumbled upon your atrocious plot--the plot of that
scoundrel upstairs. All you had to do was to exchange the bottles, and
administer pure trinitrin instead of my prescribed solution of it,
and Miss Spanton would be dead in half an hour. The three millions
would go to the Australian cousin, and you would doubtless have your
reward--say, a cool hundred thousand, or perhaps marriage. And you were
about to give the poison when I stopped you.”

“I was not!” she cried. And she fell into a chair, and hid her face in
her hands, and then looked, as it were longingly, towards the bedroom.

“Miss Spanton is in no danger,” I said sneeringly. “She will be quite
well to-morrow. So you were not going to give the poison, after all?” I
laughed.

“I beg you to listen, doctor,” she said at length, standing up. “I am
in a most invidious position. Nevertheless, I think I can convince you
that your suspicions against me are unfounded.”

I laughed again. But secretly I admired her for acting the part so well.

“Doubtless!” I interjected sarcastically, in the pause.

“The man upstairs is Samuel Grist, supposed to be in Australia. It
is four months ago since I, who am Adelaide Spanton’s sole friend,
discovered that he was scheming her death. The skill of his methods
appalled me. There was nothing to put before the police, and yet
I had a horrible fear of the worst. I felt that he would stop at
nothing--absolutely at nothing. I felt that, if we ran away, he would
follow us. I had a presentiment that he would infallibly succeed, and I
was haunted by it day and night. Then an idea occurred to me--I would
pretend to be his accomplice. And I saw suddenly that that was the
surest way--the sole way, of defeating him. I approached him and he
accepted the bait. I carried out all his instructions, except the fatal
instructions. It is by his orders, and for his purposes, that we are
staying in this hotel. Heavens! To make certain of saving my darling
Adelaide, I have even gone through the farce of promising to marry him!”

“And do you seriously expect me to believe this?” I asked coldly.

“Should I have had the solicitor here?” she demanded, “if I had really
meant--meant to----”

She sobbed momentarily, and then regained control of herself.

“I don’t know,” I said, “but it occurs to me that the brain that
was capable of deliberately arranging a murder to take place in the
presence of the doctor might have some hidden purpose in securing also
the presence of the solicitor at the performance.”

“Mr. Grist is unaware that the solicitor is here. He has been informed
that Mr. Dancer is my uncle, and favourable to the--to the----” she
stopped, apparently overcome.

“Oh, indeed!” I ejaculated, adding: “And after all you did not mean to
administer this poison! I suppose you meant to withdraw the glass at
the last instant?”

“It is not poison,” she replied.

“Not poison?”

“No. I did not exchange the bottles. I only pretended to.”

“There seems to have been a good deal of pretending,” I observed. “By
the way, may I ask why you were giving this stuff, whether it is poison
or not, to my patient? I do not recollect that I ordered a second dose.”

“For the same reason that I pretended to change the bottle. For the
benefit of the maid whom we saw just now in the bedroom.”

“And why for the benefit of the maid?”

“Because I found out this morning that she is in the pay of Grist.
That discovery accounts for my nervousness to-night about Adelaide. By
this time the maid has probably told Mr. Grist what has taken place,
and, and--I shall rely on your help if anything should happen, doctor.
Surely, surely, you believe me?”

“I regret to say, madam,” I answered, “that I find myself unable to
believe you at present. But there is a simple way of giving credence
to your story. You state that you did not exchange the bottles. This
liquid, then, is the medicine prescribed by me, and it is harmless.
Oblige me by drinking it.”

And I held the glass towards her.

She took it.

“Fool!” I said to myself, as soon as her fingers had grasped it. “She
will drop it on the floor, and an invaluable piece of evidence will be
destroyed.”

But she did not drop it on the floor. She drank it at one gulp, and
looked me in the eyes, and murmured, “Now do you believe me?”

“Yes,” I said. And I did.

At the same moment her face changed colour, and she sank to the ground.
“What have I drunk?” she moaned. The glass rolled on the carpet,
unbroken.

Miss Russell had in fact drunk a full dose of pure trinitrin. I
recognised all the symptoms at once. I rang for assistance. I got
a stomach pump. I got ice, and sent for ergot and for atropine. I
injected six minims of the Injectis Ergotini Hypodermica. I despaired
of saving her; but I saved her, after four injections. I need not
describe to you all the details. Let it suffice that she recovered.

“Then you did exchange the bottles?” I could not help putting this
question to her as soon as she was in a fit state to hear it.

“I swear to you that I had not meant to,” she whispered. “In my
nervousness I must have confused them. You have saved Adelaide’s life.”

“I have saved yours, anyway,” I said.

“But you believe me?”

“Yes,” I said; and the curious thing is that I did believe her. I was
convinced, and I am convinced, that she did not mean to exchange the
bottles.

“Listen!” she exclaimed. We could hear Big Ben striking twelve.

“Midnight,” I said.

She clutched my hand with a swift movement. “Go and see that my
Adelaide lives,” she cried almost hysterically.

I opened the door between the two rooms and went into the sleeping
chamber.

“Miss Spanton is dozing quietly,” I said, on my return.

“Thank God!” Miss Russell murmured. And then old bald-headed Mr. Dancer
came into the room, blandly unconscious of all that had passed during
his sojourn in the smoking saloon.

When I left the precincts of the Grand Babylon at one o’clock, the
guests were beginning to leave the Gold Rooms, and the great courtyard
was a scene of flashing lights, and champing horses, and pretty
laughing women.

“What a queer place a hotel is!” I thought.

Neither Mr. Grist nor the mysterious maid was seen again in
London. Possibly they consoled each other. The beautiful Adelaide
Spanton--under my care, ahem!--is completely restored to health.

Yes, I am going to marry her. No, not the beautiful Adelaide, you
duffers--besides she is too young for my middle age--but Miss Russell.
Her Christian name is Ethel. Do you not like it? As for the beautiful
Adelaide, there is now a viscount in the case.




THE POLICE STATION.


Lord Trent has several times remarked to me that I am a philosopher.
And I am one. I have guided my life by four rules: To keep my place,
to make others keep theirs, to save half my income, and to beware of
women. The strict observance of these rules has made me (in my station)
a successful and respected man. Once, and only once, I was lax in my
observance, and that single laxity resulted in a most curious and
annoying adventure, which I will relate.

It was the fourth rule that I transgressed. I did not beware of a
woman. The woman was Miss Susan Berry, lady’s maid to the Marchioness
of Cockfosters.

The Cockfosters family is a very old one. To my mind its traditions are
superior to anything in the peerage of Great Britain; but then I may
be prejudiced. I was brought up in the Cockfosters household, first
at Cockfosters Castle in Devon, and afterwards at the well-known town
house at the south-east corner of Eaton Square.

My father was valet to the old Marquis for thirty years; my mother
rose from the position of fifth housemaid to be housekeeper at the
Castle. Without ever having been definitely assigned to the situation,
I became, as it were by gradual attachment, valet to Lord Trent--eldest
son of the Marquis, and as gay and good-natured a gentleman as ever
drank brandy-and-soda before breakfast.

When Lord Trent married Miss Edna Stuyvesant, the American heiress,
and with some of her money bought and furnished in a superb manner a
mansion near the north-west corner of Eaton Square, I quite naturally
followed him across the Square, and soon found myself, after his
lordship and my lady, the most considerable personage at No. 441. Even
the butler had to mind his “p’s” and “q’s” with me.

Perhaps it was this pre-eminence of mine which led to my being selected
for a duty which I never cared for, and which ultimately I asked his
lordship to allow me to relinquish--of course he did so. That duty
related to the celebrated Cockfosters emeralds. Lady Trent had money
(over a million sterling, as his lordship himself told me), but money
could not buy the Cockfosters emeralds, and having seen these she
desired nothing less fine. With her ladyship, to desire was to obtain.
I have always admired her for that trait in her character. Being an
American she had faults, but she knew her own mind, which is a great
thing; and I must admit that, on the whole, she carried herself well
and committed few blunders. She must have been accustomed to good
servants.

In the matter of the emeralds, I certainly took her side. Strictly
speaking, they belonged to the old Marchioness, but the Marchioness
never went into society; she was always engaged with temperance
propaganda, militant Protestantism, and that sort of thing, and
consequently never wore the emeralds. There was no valid reason,
therefore, why Lady Trent should not have the gratification of wearing
them. But the Marchioness, I say it with respect, was a woman of
peculiar and decided views. She had, in fact, fads; and one of her fads
was the emeralds. She could not bear to part with them. She said she
was afraid something might happen to the precious heirlooms.

A prolonged war ensued between the Marchioness and my lady, and
ultimately a compromise was effected. My lady won permission to wear
the emeralds whenever she chose, but they were always to be brought
to her and taken back again by Susan Berry, in whom the Marchioness
had more confidence than in anyone else in the world. Consequently,
whenever my lady required the emeralds, word was sent across the Square
in the afternoon; Susan Berry brought them over, and Susan Berry
removed them at night when my lady returned from her ball or reception.

The arrangement was highly inconvenient for Susan Berry, for sometimes
it would be very late when my lady came home; but the Marchioness
insisted, and since Susan Berry was one of those persons who seem to
take a positive joy in martyrising themselves, she had none of my pity.
The nuisance was that someone from our house had to accompany her
across the Square. Eaton Square is very large (probably the largest
in London, but I may be mistaken on such a trivial point); its main
avenue is shut in by trees; and at 2 a.m. it is distinctly not the
place for an unprotected female in charge of valuable property. Now
the Marchioness had been good enough to suggest that she would prefer
me to escort her maid on this brief nocturnal journey. I accepted the
responsibility, but I did not hide my dislike for it. Knowing something
of Miss Berry’s disposition, I knew that our household would inevitably
begin, sooner or later, to couple our names together, and I was not
deceived.

Such was the situation when one night--it was a Whit-Monday, I
remember, and about a quarter past one--Lord and Lady Trent returned
from an entertainment at a well-known mansion near St. James’s Palace.
I got his lordship some whisky in the library, and he then told me
that I might go to bed, as he should not retire for an hour or so. I
withdrew to the little office off the hall, and engaged in conversation
with the second footman, who was on duty. Presently his lordship came
down into the hall and began to pace about--it was a strange habit of
his--smoking a cigarette. He caught sight of me.

“Saunders,” he said, “I told you you could go to bed.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Why don’t you go?”

“Your lordship forgets the emeralds.”

“Ah, yes, of course.” He laughed. I motioned to the footman to clear
out.

“You don’t seem to care for that job, Saunders,” his lordship resumed,
quizzing me. “Surely Berry is a charming companion. In your place I
should regard it as excellent fun. But I have often told you that you
have no sense of humour.”

“Not all men laugh at the same jokes, my lord,” I observed.

As a matter of fact, in earlier and wilder days, his lordship had
sometimes thrown a book or a boot at me for smiling too openly in the
wrong place.

The conversation might have continued further, for his lordship would
often talk with me, but at that moment Susan Berry appeared with the
bag containing the case in which were the emeralds. Lady Trent’s own
maid was with her, and the two stood talking for an instant at the foot
of the stairs, while Lady Trent’s maid locked the bag and handed the
key to Berry. Heaven knows how long that simple business would have
occupied had not the voice of my lady resounded from the first floor,
somewhat excitedly calling for her maid, who vanished with a hurried
good-night. His lordship had already departed from the hall.

“May I relieve you of the bag, Miss Berry?” I asked.

“Thank you, Mr. Saunders,” she replied, “but the Marchioness prefers
that I myself should carry it.”

That little dialogue passed between us every time the emeralds had to
be returned.

We started on our short walk, Miss Berry and I, proceeding towards
the main avenue which runs through the centre of the Square east and
west. It was a beautiful moonlight night. Talking of moonlight nights,
I may as well make my confession at once. The fact is that Miss
Berry had indeed a certain influence over me. In her presence I was
always conscious of feeling a pleasurable elation--an excitement, a
perturbation, which another man might have guessed to be the beginning
of love.

I, however, knew that it was not love. It was merely a fancy. It only
affected me when I was in her company. When she was absent I could
regard her in my mind’s eye as she actually was--namely, a somewhat
designing young woman, with dark eyes and too much will of her own.
Nevertheless, she had, as I say, a certain influence over me, and I
have already remarked that it was a moonlight night.

Need I say more? In spite of what I had implied to Lord Trent I did
enjoy the walk with Susan Berry. Susan Berry took care that I should.
She laid herself out to fascinate me; turning her brunette face up to
mine with an air of deference, and flashing upon me the glance of those
dark lustrous eyes.

She started by sympathising with me in the matter of the butler. This
was, I now recognise, very clever of her, for the butler has always
been a sore point with me. I began to think (be good enough to remember
the moonlight and the trees) that life with Susan Berry might have its
advantages.

Then she turned to the topic of her invalid sister, Jane Mary, who was
lame and lived in lodgings near Sloane Street, and kept herself, with a
little aid from Susan, by manufacturing artificial flowers. For a month
past Miss Berry had referred regularly to this sister, who appeared to
be the apple of her eye. I had no objection to the topic, though it
did not specially interest me; but on the previous evening Miss Berry
had told me, with a peculiar emphasis, that her poor dear sister often
expressed a longing to see the famous Cockfosters emeralds, and that
she resided quite close too. I did not like that.

To-night Miss Berry made a proposition which alarmed me. “Mr.
Saunders,” she said insinuatingly, “you are so good-natured that I have
almost a mind to ask you a favour. Would you object to walking round
with me to my sister’s--it is only a few minutes away--so that I could
just give her a peep at these emeralds. She is dying to see them, and
I’m sure the Marchioness wouldn’t object. We should not be a quarter of
an hour away.”

My discretion was aroused. I ought to have given a decided negative at
once; but somehow I couldn’t, while Susan was looking at me.

“But surely your sister will be in bed,” I suggested.

“Oh, no!” with a sigh. “She has to work very late--very late indeed.
And besides, if she is, I could take them up to her room. It would do
her good to see them, and she has few pleasures.”

“The Marchioness might not like it,” I said, driven back to the second
line of fortification. “You know your mistress is very particular about
these emeralds.”

“The Marchioness need never know,” Susan Berry whispered, putting her
face close up to mine. “No one need know, except just us two.”

The accent which she put on those three words “just us two,” was
extremely tender.

I hesitated. We were already at the end of the Square, and should have
turned down to the left towards Cockfosters House.

“Come along,” she entreated, placing her hand on my shoulder.

“Well, you know----” I muttered, but I went along with her towards
Sloane Street. We passed Eaton Place.

“Really, Miss Berry----” I began again, collecting my courage.

Then there was a step behind us, and another hand was placed on my
shoulder. I turned round sharply. It was a policeman. His buttons shone
in the moonlight.

“Your name is Charles Saunders,” he said to me; “and yours Susan
Berry,” to my companion.

“True,” I replied, for both of us.

“I have a warrant for your arrest.”

“Our arrest!”

“Yes, on a charge of attempting to steal some emeralds, the property of
the Marquis of Cockfosters.”

“Impossible,” I exclaimed.

“Yes,” he sneered, “that’s what they all say.”

“But the emeralds are here in this bag.”

“I know they are,” he said. “I’ve just copped you in time. But you’ve
been suspected for days.”

“The thing is ridiculous,” I said, striving to keep calm. “We are
taking the emeralds back to Lady Cockfosters, and----”

Then I stopped. If we were merely taking the emeralds back to Lady
Cockfosters, that is, from one house in Eaton Square to another house
in Eaton Square, what were we doing out of the Square?

I glanced at Susan Berry. She was as white as a sheet. The solution
of the puzzle occurred to me at once. Susan’s sister was an ingenious
fiction. Susan was a jewel thief, working with a gang of jewel thieves,
and her request that I would accompany her to this mythical sister was
part of a plan for stealing the emeralds.

“At whose instance has the warrant been issued?” I asked.

“The Marquis of Cockfosters.”

My suspicions were only too well confirmed.

I did not speak a word to Susan Berry. I could not. I merely looked at
her.

“You’ll come quietly to the station?” the policeman said.

“Certainly,” I replied. “As for us, the matter can soon be cleared up.
I am Lord Trent’s valet, No. 441, Eaton Square, and he must be sent
for.”

“Oh, must he!” the constable jeered. “Come on. Perhaps you’d prefer a
cab.”

A four-wheeler was passing. I myself hailed the sleepy cabman, and we
all three got in. The policeman prudently took the bag from Susan’s
nerveless hands. None of us spoke. I was too depressed, Susan was
probably too ashamed, and the constable was no doubt too bored.

After a brief drive we drew up. Another policeman opened the door of
the cab, and over the open portal of the building in front of us I saw
the familiar blue lamp, with the legend “Metropolitan Police” in white
letters. The two policemen carefully watched us as we alighted, and
escorted us up the steps into the station. Happily, there was no one
about; my humiliation was abject enough without that.

Charles Saunders a prisoner in a police station! I could scarcely
credit my senses. One becomes used to a police station--in the
newspapers; but to be inside one--that is different, widely different.

The two policemen took us into a bare room, innocent of any furniture
save a wooden form, a desk, a chair, some printed notices of rewards
offered, and an array of handcuffs and revolvers on the mantelpiece.
In the chair, with a big book in front of him on the desk, sat the
inspector in charge. He was in his shirt-sleeves.

“A hot night,” he said, smiling, to the policeman.

I silently agreed.

It appeared that we were expected.

They took our full names, our addresses and occupations, and then the
inspector read the warrant to us. Of course, it didn’t explain things
in the least. I began to speak.

“Let me warn you,” said the inspector, “that anything you say now may
be used against you at your trial.”

My trial!

“Can I write a note to Lord Trent?” I asked, nettled.

“Yes, if you will pay for a cab to take it.”

I threw down half-a-crown, and scribbled a line to my master, begging
him to come at once.

“The constable must search you,” the inspector said, when this was done
and the first policeman had disappeared with the note.

“I will save him the trouble,” I said proudly, and I emptied my pockets
of a gold watch and chain, a handkerchief, two sovereigns, a sixpence,
two halfpennies, a bunch of keys, my master’s linen book, and a new
necktie which I had bought that very evening; of which articles the
inspector made an inventory.

“Which is the key of the bag?” asked the inspector. The bag was on the
desk in front of him, and he had been trying to open it.

“I know nothing of that,” I said.

“Now you, Susan Berry, give up the key,” the inspector said, sternly,
turning to her.

For answer Susan burst into sobs, and flung herself against my breast.
The situation was excessively embarrassing for me. Heaven knows I had
sufficient reason to hate the woman, but though a thief, she was in
distress, and I must own that I felt for her.

The constable stepped towards Susan.

“Surely,” I said, “you have a female searcher?”

“A female searcher! Ah, yes!” smiled the inspector, suddenly suave. “Is
she here, constable?”

“Not now, sir; she’s gone.”

“That must wait, then. Take them to the cells.”

“Sorry, sir, all the cells are full. Bank Holiday drunks.”

The inspector thought a moment.

“Lock ’em up in the back room,” he said. “That’ll do for the present.
Perhaps the male prisoner may be getting an answer to his note soon.
After that they’ll have to go to Vine Street or Marlborough.”

The constable touched his helmet, and marched us out. In another moment
we were ensconced in a small room, absolutely bare of any furniture,
except a short wooden form. The constable was locking the door when
Susan Berry screamed out: “You aren’t going to lock us up here together
in the dark?”

“Why, what do you want? Didn’t you hear the cells are full?”

I was profoundly thankful they were full. I did not fancy a night in a
cell.

“I want a candle,” she said, fiercely.

He brought one, or rather half of one, stuck in a bottle, and placed it
on the mantelpiece. Then he left us.

Again I say the situation was excessively embarrassing. For myself, I
said nothing. Susan Berry dropped on the form, and hiding her face in
her hands, gave way to tears without any manner of restraint. I pitied
her a little, but that influence which previously she had exercised
over me was gone. “Oh, Mr. Saunders,” she sobbed, “what shall we do?”
And as she spoke she suddenly looked up at me with a glance of feminine
appeal. I withstood it.

“Miss Berry,” I said severely, “I wonder that you can look me in the
face. I trusted you as a woman, and you have outraged that trust. I
never dreamed that you were--that you were an adventuress. It was
certainly a clever plot, and but for the smartness of the police I
should, in my innocence, have fallen a victim to your designs. For
myself, I am grateful to the police. I can understand and excuse their
mistake in regarding me as your accomplice. That will soon be set
right, for Lord Trent will be here. In the meantime, of course, I have
been put to considerable humiliation. Nevertheless, even this is better
than having followed you to your ‘sister’s.’ In your ‘sister’s’ lodging
I might have been knocked senseless, or even murdered. Moreover, the
emeralds are safe.”

She put on an innocent expression, playing the injured maiden.

“Mr. Saunders, you surely do not imagine----”

“Miss Berry, no protestations, I beg. Let me say now that I have always
detected in your character something underhand, something crafty.”

“I swear----” she began again.

“Don’t trouble,” I interrupted her icily, “for I shall not believe you.
This night will certainly be a warning to me.”

With that I leaned my back against the mantelpiece, and abandoned
myself to gloomy thought. It was a moment for me of self-abasement. I
searched my heart, and I sorrowfully admitted that my predicament was
primarily due to disobeying that golden rule--beware of women. I saw
now that it was only my absurd fancy for this wicked creature which had
led me to accept the office of guarding those emeralds during their
night-passage across Eaton Square. I ought to have refused in the first
place, for the job was entirely outside my functions; strictly, the
butler should have done it.

And this woman in front of me--this Susan Berry, in whom the old
Marchioness had such unbounded trust! So she belonged to the
con-fraternity of jewel thieves--a genus of which I had often read, but
which I had never before met with. What audacity such people must need
in order to execute their schemes!

But then the game was high. The Cockfosters emeralds were worth, at
a moderate estimate, twelve thousand pounds. There are emeralds and
emeralds, the value depends on the colour; these were the finest
Colombian stones, of a marvellous tint, and many of them were
absolutely without a flaw. There were five stones of seven carats each,
and these alone must have been worth at least six thousand pounds. Yes,
it would have been a great haul, a colossal haul.

Time passed, the candle was burning low, and there was no sign of Lord
Trent. I went to the door and knocked, first gently, then more loudly,
but I could get no answer. Then I walked about the room, keeping an
eye on Susan Berry, who had, I freely admit, the decency to avoid my
gaze. I was beginning to get extremely tired. I wished to sit down,
but there was only one form; Susan Berry was already upon it, and, as
I said before, it was a very short form. At last I could hold out no
longer. Taking my courage in both hands, I sat down boldly at one end
of the form. It was a relief to me. Miss Berry sighed. There were not
six inches between us.

The candle was low in the socket, we both watched it. Without a
second’s warning the flame leapt up and then expired. We were in the
dark. Miss Berry screamed, and afterwards I heard her crying. I myself
made no sign. Fortunately the dawn broke almost immediately.

By this time I was getting seriously annoyed with Lord Trent. I had
served him faithfully, and yet at the moment of my genuine need he had
not come to my succour. I went again to the door and knocked with my
knuckles. No answer. Then I kicked it. No answer. Then I seized the
handle and violently shook it. To my astonishment the door opened. The
policeman had forgotten to lock it.

I crept out into the passage, softly closing the door behind me. It was
now quite light. The door leading to the street was open, and I could
see neither constables nor inspector. I went into the charge room; it
was empty. Then I proceeded into the street. On the pavement a piece of
paper was lying. I picked it up; it was the note which I had written to
Lord Trent.

A workman happened to be loitering along a road which crossed this
street at right angles. I called out and ran to him.

“Can you tell me,” I asked, “why all the officers have left the police
station?”

“Look ’ere, matey,” he says, “you get on ’ome; you’ve been making a
night of it, that’s wot you ’ave.”

“But, seriously,” I said.

Then I saw a policeman at a distant corner. The workman whistled, and
the policeman was obliging enough to come to us.

“’Ere’s a cove wants to know why all the police ’as left the police
station,” the workman said.

“What police station?” the constable said sharply.

“Why, this one down here in this side-street,” I said, pointing to the
building. As I looked at it I saw that the lamp which I had observed on
the previous night no longer hung over the doorway.

The constable laughed good-humouredly.

“Get away home,” he said.

I began to tell him my story.

“Get away home,” he repeated--gruffly this time, “or I’ll run you in.”

“All right,” I said huffily, and I made as if to walk down the other
road. The constable and the workman grinned to each other and departed.
As soon as they were out of sight, I returned to my police station.

It was not a police station! It was merely a rather large and
plain-fronted empty house, which had been transformed into a police
station, for one night only, by means of a lamp, a desk, two forms, a
few handcuffs, and some unparalleled cheek. Jewel thieves they were,
but Susan Berry was not among them. After all Susan Berry probably had
an invalid sister named Jane Mary.

The first policeman, the cabman, the second policeman, the
inspector--these were the jewel thieves, and Susan Berry and I (and
of course the Marchioness) had been the victims of as audacious and
brilliant a robbery as was ever planned. We had been robbed openly,
quietly, deliberately, with the aid of a sham police station. Our
movements must have been watched for weeks. I gave my meed of
admiration to the imagination, the skill, and the _sangfroid_ which
must have gone to the carrying out of this coup.

Going back into the room where Susan Berry and I had spent the night
hours, I found that wronged woman sweetly asleep on the form, with her
back against the wall. I dared not wake her. And so I left her for
the present to enjoy some much-needed repose. I directed my steps
in search of Eaton Square, having closed the great door of my police
station.

At length I found my whereabouts, and I arrived at No. 441 at five
o’clock precisely. The morning was lovely. After some trouble I roused
a housemaid, who let me in. She seemed surprised, but I ignored her. I
went straight upstairs and knocked at my master’s door. To wake him had
always been a difficult matter, and this morning the task seemed more
difficult than ever. At last he replied sleepily to my summons.

“It is I--Saunders--your lordship.”

“Go to the devil, then.”

“I must see your lordship instantly. Very seriously.”

“Eh, what? I’ll come in a minute,” and I heard him stirring, and the
voice of Lady Trent.

How should I break the news to him? What would the Marchioness say
when she knew? Twelve thousand pounds’ worth of jewels is no trifle.
Not to mention my gold watch, my two sovereigns, my sixpence, and my
two halfpennies. And also the half-crown which I had given to have
the message despatched to his lordship. It was the half-crown that
specially rankled.

Lord Trent appeared at the door of his room, arrayed in his crimson
dressing-gown.

“Well, Saunders, what in the name of----”

“My lord,” I stammered, and then I told him the whole story.

He smiled, he laughed, he roared.

“I daresay it sounds very funny, my lord,” I said, “but it wasn’t funny
at the time, and Lady Cockfosters won’t think it very funny.”

“Oh, won’t she! She will. No one will enjoy it more. She might have
taken it seriously if the emeralds had been in the bag, but they
weren’t.”

“Not in the bag, my lord!”

“No. Lady Trent’s maid ran off with the bag, thinking that your
mistress had put the jewels in it. But she had not. Lady Trent came to
the top of the stairs to call her back, as soon as she found the bag
gone, but you and Berry were out of the house. So the emeralds stayed
here for one night. They are on Lady Trent’s dressing-table at the
present moment. Go and get a stiff whisky, Saunders. You need it. And
then may I suggest that you should return for the sleeping Berry? By
the way, the least you can do is to marry her, Saunders.”

“Never, my lord!” I said with decision. “I have meddled sufficiently
with women.”




THE ADVENTURE OF THE PRIMA DONNA.


Many years ago the fear of dynamite stalked through the land. An
immense organisation of anarchists whose headquarters were in the
United States had arranged for a number of simultaneous displays in
London, Glasgow, and Quebec. As is well known now, the Parliament House
at Quebec and the gasworks at Glasgow were to be blown up, while the
programme for London included Scotland Yard, most of Whitehall, the
House of Commons, the Tower, and four great railway stations thrown in.

This plot was laid bare, stopped, and made public, and--except a number
of people who happened quite innocently to carry black bags--no one was
put to the slightest inconvenience.

The dynamite scare was deemed to be at an end. But the dread
organisation was in fact still active, as the sixty policemen who
were injured in what is called the “Haymarket Massacre” explosion at
Chicago, on May 4, 1886, have dire occasion to know.

Everyone who reads the papers is familiar with the details of the
Haymarket Massacre. Few people, however, are aware that a far more
dastardly outrage had been planned to intimidate London a few days
later. Through the agency of a courageous woman this affair too was
unmasked in its turn, but for commercial and other reasons it was kept
from the general public.

The scheme was to blow up the Opera House at Covent Garden on the first
night of the season. Had the facts got abroad, the audience would
probably have been somewhat sparse on that occasion; but the facts did
not get abroad, and the house was crowded in every part; for the famous
prima donna Louise Vesea (since retired) was singing “Marguerite,” in
“Faust,” and enthusiasm about her was such that though the popular
tenor had unaccountably thrown up his engagement, the price of stalls
rose to thirty-three shillings. The police were sure of themselves,
and the evening passed off with nothing more explosive than applause.
Nevertheless, that night, after the curtain had fallen and Louise Vesea
had gathered up all the wreaths and other tributes of admiration which
had been showered upon her, there happened the singular incident which
it is our purpose to record.

Vesea, wrapped in rich furs--it was midnight, and our usual wintry
May--was just leaving the stage door for her carriage, when a
gentleman respectfully accosted her. He was an English detective on
special service, and Vesea appeared to know him.

“It will be desirable for you to run no risks, Madame,” he said. “So
far as we know all the principals have left the country in alarm, but
there are always others.”

Vesea smiled. She was then over thirty, in the full flower of her fame
and beauty. Tall, dark, calm, mysterious, she had the firm yet gentle
look of one who keeps a kind heart under the regal manner induced by
universal adoration.

“What have I to fear?” she said.

“Vengeance,” the detective answered simply. “I have arranged to have
you shadowed, in case----”

“You will do nothing of the kind,” she said. “The idea is intolerable
to me. I am not afraid.”

The detective argued, but in vain.

“It shall be as you wish, Madame,” he said, ultimately.

Vesea got into her carriage, and was driven away. The pair of chestnuts
travelled at a brisk trot through the dark deserted streets of Soho
towards the West End. The carriage had crossed Regent Street and was
just entering Berkeley Square when a hansom, coming at a gallop along
Struton Street on the wrong side of the road, collided violently with
Vesea’s horses at the corner. At the same moment another carriage, a
brougham, came up and stopped. A gentleman jumped out, and assisted in
disengaging Vesea’s coachman and footman from the medley of harness and
horse-flesh. This done, he spoke to Vesea, who, uninjured, was standing
on the footpath.

“One of your chestnuts will have to be shot,” he said, raising his hat.
“May I place my own carriage at your disposal?”

Vesea thankfully accepted his offer.

“Where to?” he inquired.

“Upper Brook Street,” she answered. “But you are sure I do not
inconvenience you?”

“Curiously enough,” he said, “I live in Upper Brook Street myself, and
if I may accompany you----”

“You are more than kind,” she said, and they both entered the brougham,
the gentleman having first thoughtfully taken the number of the peccant
cabby, and given some valuable advice to Vesea’s coachman.

The brougham disappeared at a terrific pace. But it never went within
half a mile of Upper Brook Street. It turned abruptly to the north,
crossed Oxford Street, and stopped in front of a large house in a
remote street near Paddington Station. At the same instant the door
of the house opened, and a man ran down to the carriage. In a moment
Vesea, with a cloth wrapped round her head, was carried struggling
into the house, and the brougham departed. The thing was done as
quickly and silently as in a dream.

The cloth was removed at length, and Vesea found herself in a long bare
room, furnished only with chairs and a table. She realised that the
carriage accident was merely part of a plot to capture her without fuss
and violence. She was incapable of fear, but she was extremely annoyed
and indignant. She looked round for the man who enticed her into his
brougham. He was not to be seen; his share of the matter was over. Two
other men sat at the table. Vesea stared at them in speechless anger.
As to them, they seemed to ignore her.

“Where is the Chief?” said one to the other.

“He will be here in three minutes. We are to proceed with the
examination; time is short.”

Then the two men turned to Vesea, and the elder spoke.

“You will be anxious to know why you are here,” he said.

She gazed at him scornfully, and he continued:

“You are here because you have betrayed the anarchist cause.”

“I am not an anarchist,” she said coldly.

“Admitted. But a week ago a member of our society gave you a warning
to keep away from the Opera House to-night. In so warning you he was
false to his oath----”

“Do you refer to Salti, the tenor?” she asked.

“I do. You perceive we have adherents in high places. Salti, then,
warned you--and you instantly told the police. That was your idea of
gratitude. Did Salti love you?”

“I decline to be cross-examined.”

“It is immaterial. We know that he loved you. Now it is perilous for an
anarchist to love.”

“I do not believe that Salti is one of you,” she broke in.

“He is not,” the man said quietly. “He is dead. He was in the way.”

In spite of herself she started, and both men smiled cynically.

“The point is this,” the elder man proceeded. “We do not know how much
Salti told you. It is possible that he may have blurted out other and
more important--er--schemes than this of the Opera House which has
failed. Have you anything to say?”

“Nothing,” she answered.

“Ah! We expected that. Now, let me point out that you are dangerous to
us, that there is only one possible course open to you. You must join
us.”

“Join you?” she exclaimed, and then laughed.

“Yes,” the man said. “I repeat there is no alternative--none whatever.
You must take the oaths.”

“And if I refuse?”

The man shrugged his shoulders, and after a suggestive pause murmured:

“Well--think of Salti.”

“I do refuse,” she said.

A door opened at the other end of the room, and a third man entered.

“The Chief!” said the younger of the men at the table. “He will
continue the examination.”

The new-comer was comparatively youthful--under thirty--and had the
look of a well-born Italian. He gave a glance at Vesea, stood still,
and then approached the table and sat down.

“This is Louise Vesea,” the first speaker said, and rapidly indicated
how far he had gone. There was a long silence.

“Thanks, brothers,” the Chief said. “By a strange coincidence I know
this lady--this woman, and I feel convinced that it will be better, in
the interests of our cause, if--if I examine her alone.” He spoke with
authority, and yet with a certain queer hesitation.

The two men silently, but with obvious reluctance, rose and left the
room.

When they were alone, the great singer and the Chief fronted each other
in silence.

“Well?” said Vesea.

“Madame,” the Chief began slowly and thoughtfully. “Do you remember
singing in Milan ten years ago? You were at the beginning of your
career then, but already famous.”

His voice was rich and curiously persuasive.

Without wishing to do so, Vesea nodded an affirmative.

“One night you were driving home from the opera, and there was a
riot going on in the streets. The police were everywhere. People
whispered of a secret revolutionary society among the students of
the University. As for the students, after a pitched battle near the
Cathedral, they were flying. Suddenly, looking from your carriage, you
saw a very youthful student, who had been struck on the head, fall
down in the gutter and then get up again and struggle on. You stopped
your carriage. ‘Save me,’ the youth cried, ‘Save me, Signorina. If
the police catch me I shall get ten years’ imprisonment!’ You opened
the door of your carriage, and the youth jumped in. ‘Quick, under the
rug,’ you said quietly. You did not ask me any questions. You didn’t
stay to consider whether the youth might be a dangerous person. You
merely said, ‘Quick, under the rug!’ The youth crept under the rug. The
carriage moved on slowly, and the police, who shortly appeared, never
thought of looking within it for a fugitive young anarchist. The youth
was saved. For two days you had him in your lodging, and then he got
safely away to the coast, and so by ship to another country. Do you
remember that incident, Madame?”

“I remember it well,” she answered. “What happened to the youth?”

“I am he,” the Chief said.

“You?” she exclaimed. “I should scarcely have guessed but for your
voice. You are changed.”

“In our profession one changes quickly.”

“Why do you remind me of that incident?” she asked.

“You saved my life then. I shall save yours now.”

“Is my life really in danger?”

“Unless you joined us--yes.”

She laughed incredulously.

“In London! Impossible!”

He made a gesture with his hands.

“Do not let us argue on that point,” he said gravely. “Go through that
door,” he pointed to the door by which he himself had entered. “You
will find yourself in a small garden. The garden gate leads to a narrow
passage past some stables and so into the street. Go quickly, and take
a cab. Don’t return to your own house. Go somewhere else--anywhere
else. And leave London early to-morrow morning.”

He silently opened the door for her.

“Thank you,” she said. His seriousness had affected her. “How shall you
explain my departure to your--your friends?”

“In my own way,” he replied calmly. “When a man has deliberately
betrayed his cause, there is only one explanation.”

“Betrayed his cause!” She repeated the phrase wonderingly.

“Madame,” he said, “do you suppose they will call it anything else? Go
at once. I will wait half an hour before summoning my comrades. By that
time they will have become impatient. Then you will be safe, and I will
give them my explanation.”

“And that will be----?”

He put her right hand to his lip and then stopped.

“Good-bye, Madame,” he said without replying to the question. “We are
quits. I kiss your hand.”

Almost reluctantly Louise Vesea went forth. And as she reached the
street she felt for the first time that it was indeed a fatal danger
from which she had escaped. She reflected that the Chief had imposed no
secrecy upon her, made no conditions; and she could not help but admire
such a method of repaying a debt. She wondered what his explanation to
his comrades would be.

Half an hour later, when Vesea was far away, there was the sound of a
revolver shot. The other two plotters rushed into the room which the
prima donna had left, and found all the explanation which the Chief had
vouchsafed.




THE EPISODE IN ROOM 222.


The date was the fifth of November, a date easy to remember; not that I
could ever fail to recall it, even without the aid of the associations
which cluster round Guy Fawkes. It was a Friday--and yet there are
people who affect to believe that Friday is not a day singled out from
its six companions for mystery, strangeness, and disaster! The number
of the room was 222, as easy to remember as the date; not that I could
ever fail to recall the number also. Every circumstance in the affair
is fixed in my mind immovably and for ever. The hotel I shall call by
the name of the Grand Junction Terminus Hotel. If this tale were not a
simple and undecorated record of fact, I might with impunity choose for
its scene any one of the big London hotels in order by such a detail
to give a semblance of veracity to my invention; but the story happens
to be absolutely true, and I must therefore, for obvious reasons,
disguise the identity of the place where it occurred. I would only
say that the Grand Junction Railway is one of the largest and one of
the best-managed systems in England, or in the world: and that these
qualities of vastness and of good management extend also to its immense
Terminus Hotel in the North of Central London. The caravanserai (I have
observed that professional writers invariably refer to a hotel as a
caravanserai) is full every night in the week except Friday, Saturday,
and Sunday; and every commercial traveller knows that, except on
these nights, if he wishes to secure a room at the Grand Junction he
must write or telegraph for it in advance. And there are four hundred
bedrooms.

It was somewhat late in the evening when I arrived in London. I had
meant to sleep at a large new hotel in the Strand, but I felt tired,
and I suddenly, on the spur of the moment, decided to stay at the Grand
Junction, if there was space for me. It is thus that Fate works.

I walked into the hall, followed by a platform porter with my bag. The
place seemed just as usual, the perfection of the commonplace, the
business-like, and the unspiritual.

“Have you a room?” I asked the young lady in black, whose yellow hair
shone gaily at the office window under the electric light.

She glanced at her ledgers in the impassive and detached manner which
hotel young ladies with yellow hair invariably affect, and ejaculated:

“No. 221.”

“Pity you couldn’t make it all twos,” I ventured, with timid
jocularity. (How could I guess the import of what I was saying?)

She smiled very slightly, with a distant condescension. It is
astonishing the skill with which a feminine hotel clerk can make a
masculine guest feel small and self-conscious.

“Name?” she demanded.

“Edge.”

“Fourth floor,” she said, writing out the room-ticket and handing it to
me.

In another moment I was in the lift.

No. 221 was the last door but one at the end of the eastern corridor
of the fourth floor. It proved to be a double-bedded room, large,
exquisitely ugly, but perfectly appointed in all matters of comfort; in
short, it was characteristic of the hotel. I knew that every bedroom in
that corridor, and every bedroom in every corridor, presented exactly
the same aspect. One instinctively felt the impossibility of anything
weird, anything bizarre, anything terrible, entering the precincts of
an abode so solid, cheerful, orderly, and middle-class. And yet--but I
shall come to that presently.

It will be well for me to relate all that I did that evening. I washed,
and then took some valuables out of my bag and put them in my pocket.
Then I glanced round the chamber, and amongst other satisfactory
details noticed that the electric lights were so fixed that I could
read in bed without distressing my eyes. I then went downstairs, by
the lift, and into the smoke-room. I had dined on board the express,
and so I ordered nothing but a _café noir_ and a packet of Virginian
cigarettes. After finishing the coffee I passed into the billiard-room,
and played a hundred up with the marker. To show that my nerves were at
least as steady as usual that night, I may mention that, although the
marker gave me fifty and beat me, I made a break of twenty odd which
won his generous approval. The game concluded, I went into the hall
and asked the porter if there were any telegrams for me. There were
not. I noticed that the porter--it was the night-porter, and he had
just come on duty--seemed to have a peculiarly honest and attractive
face. Wishing him good-night, I retired to bed. It was something after
eleven. I read a chapter of Mr. Walter Crane’s “The Bases of Design,”
and having turned off the light, sank into the righteous slumber of a
man who has made a pretty break of 20 odd and drunk nothing but coffee.
At three o’clock I awoke--not with a start, but rather gradually. I
know it was exactly three o’clock because the striking of a notoriously
noisy church clock in the neighbourhood was the first thing I heard.
But the clock had not wakened me. I felt sure that something else,
something far more sinister than a church clock, had been the origin of
disturbance.

I listened. Then I heard it again--It. It was the sound of a groan in
the next room.

“Someone indisposed, either in body or mind,” I thought lightly,
and I tried to go to sleep again. But I could not sleep. The groans
continued, and grew more poignant, more fearsome. At last I jumped out
of bed and turned on the light--I felt easier when I had turned on the
light.

“That man, whoever he is, is dying.” The idea, as it were, sprang at my
throat. “He is dying. Only a dying man, only a man who saw Death by his
side and trembled before the apparition, could groan like that.”

I put on some clothes, and went into the corridor. The corridor seemed
to stretch away into illimitable distance; and far off, miles off, a
solitary electric light glimmered. My end of the corridor was a haunt
of gloomy shadows, except where the open door allowed the light from
my bedroom to illuminate the long monotonous pattern of the carpet.
I proceeded to the door next my own--the door of No. 222, and put my
ear against the panel. The sound of groans was now much more distinct
and more terrifying. Yes. I admit that I was frightened. I called. No
answer. “What’s the matter?” I inquired. No answer. “Are you ill,
or are you doing this for your own amusement?” It was with a sort of
bravado that I threw this last query at the unknown occupant of the
room. No answer. Then I tried to open the door, but it was fast.

“Yes,” I said to myself; “either he’s dying or he’s committed a murder
and is feeling sorry for it. I must fetch the night-porter.”

Now, hotel lifts are not in the habit of working at three a.m., and so
I was compelled to find my way along endless corridors and down flights
of stairs apparently innumerable. Here and there an electric light
sought with its yellow eye to pierce the gloom. At length I reached the
hall, and I well recollect that the tiled floor struck cold into my
slippered but sockless feet.

“There’s a man either dying or very ill in No. 222,” I said to the
night-porter. He was reading _The Evening News_, and appeared to be
very snug in his basket chair.

“Is that so, sir?” he replied.

“Yes,” I insisted. “I think he’s dying. Hadn’t you better do something?”

“I’ll come upstairs with you,” he answered readily, and without further
parley we began the ascent. At the first floor landing the night-porter
stopped and faced me. He was a man about forty-five--every hall-porter
seems to be that age--and he looked like the father of a family.

“If you think he’s dying, sir, I’ll call up the manager, Mr. Thom.”

“Do,” I said.

The manager slept on the first floor, and he soon appeared--a youngish
man in a terra-cotta Jaeger dressing-gown, his eyes full of sleep, yet
alert and anxious to do his duty. I had seen him previously in the
billiard-room. We all three continued our progress to the fourth floor.
Arrived in front of No. 222 we listened intently, but we could only
hear a faint occasional groan.

“He’s nearly dead,” I said. The manager called aloud, but there was
no answer. Then he vainly tried to open the door. The night-porter
departed, and returned with a stout pair of steel tongs. With these,
and the natural ingenuity peculiar to hotel-porters, he forced open the
door, and we entered No. 222.

A stout, middle-aged man lay on the bed fully dressed in black. On the
floor near the bed was a silk hat. As we approached the great body
seemed to flutter, and then it lay profoundly and terribly still. The
manager put his hand on the man’s head, and held the glass of his watch
to the man’s parted grey lips.

“He is dead,” said the manager.

“H’m!” I said.

“I’m sorry you’ve been put to any inconvenience,” said the manager,
“and I’m much obliged to you.”

The cold but polite tone was a request to me to re-enter my own
chamber, and leave the corpse to the manager and the night-porter. I
obeyed.

       *       *       *       *       *

“What about that man?” I asked the hall-porter early the next, or
rather the same, morning. I had not slept a wink since three o’clock,
nor had I heard a sound in the corridor.

“What man, sir?” the porter said.

“You know,” I returned, rather angrily. “The man who died in the
night--No. 222.”

“I assure you, sir,” he said, “I haven’t the least notion what you
mean.”

Yet his face seemed as honest and open as ever.

I inquired at the office for the manager, and after some difficulty saw
him in his private room.

“I thought I’d just see about that man,” I began.

“What man?” the manager asked, exactly as the porter had asked.

“Look here,” I said, as I was now really annoyed, “it’s all very well
giving instructions to the hall-porter, and I can quite understand you
want the thing kept as quiet as possible. Of course I know that hotels
have a violent objection to corpses. But as I saw the corpse, and was
of some assistance to you----”

“Excuse me,” said the manager. “Either you or I must be completely mad.
And,” he added, “I don’t think it is myself.”

“Do you mean to say,” I remarked with frosty sarcasm, “that you didn’t
enter Room 222 with me this morning at three a.m. and find a dead man
there?”

“I mean to say just that,” he answered.

“Well----.” I got no further. I paid my bill and left. But before
leaving, I went and carefully examined the door of No. 222. The door
plainly showed marks of some iron instrument.

“Here,” I said to the porter as I departed. “Accept this half-crown
from me. I admire you.”

       *       *       *       *       *

I had a serious illness extending over three months. I was frequently
delirious, and nearly every day I saw the scene in Room No. 222. In the
course of my subsequent travels, I once more found myself, late one
night, at the Grand Junction Terminus Hotel.

“Mr. Edge,” said the night-porter, “I’ve been looking out for you for
weeks and weeks. The manager’s compliments, and he would like to see
you in his room.”

Again I saw the youngish, alert manager.

“Mr. Edge,” he began at once, “it is probable that I owe you an
apology. At any rate, I think it right to inform you that on the night
of the fifth of November, the year before last, exactly twelve months
before your last visit here, a stout man died in Room No. 222, at three
a.m. I forgot the circumstance when you last came to see me in this
room.”

“It seems queer,” I said coldly, “that you should have forgotten such a
circumstance.”

“The fact is,” he replied, “I was not the manager at that time. My
predecessor died two days after the discovery of the corpse in Room
222.”

“And the night-porter--is he, too, a new man?”

“Yes,” said the manager. “The porter who, with the late manager, found
the corpse in Room 222, is now in Hanwell Lunatic Asylum.”

I paused, perhaps in awe.

“Then you think,” I said, “that I was the victim of a hallucination
on my previous visit here? You think I had a glimpse of the world of
spirits?”

“On these matters,” said the manager, “I prefer to think nothing.”




SATURDAY TO MONDAY.


So at length I yielded to repeated invitations, and made up my mind to
visit the Vernons again. And it was in June. I had not been for nearly
two years. The last visit was in the month of August: I remembered it
too well--that year, that month, that day!

Under the most favourable circumstances, it needs enterprise and energy
for a Londoner to pay a week-end visit to a friend’s house in the
country. No matter how intimate the friend--and the Vernons, though
charming and full of good nature, were not really very intimate friends
of mine--there is always an element of risk in the affair; I will go
further and say an element of preliminary unpleasantness. It means
the disarrangement of regular habits; it means packing one’s bag and
lugging it into a hansom; it means a train-journey; it often means a
drive at the other end; it means sleeping in a strange bed and finding
a suitable hook for one’s razor strop the next morning; it means
accommodating oneself to a new social atmosphere, and the expenditure
of much formal politeness. And suppose some hitch occurs--some trifling
contretemps to ruffle the smoothness of the hours--where are you then?
You are bound to sit tight and smile till Monday, and at parting to
enlarge on your sorrow that the visit is over, all the while feeling
intensely relieved; and you have got nothing in exchange for your
discomfort and inconvenience save the satisfaction of duty done--a
poor return, I venture to add. You know you have wasted a week-end, an
irrecoverable week-end of eternity.

However, I boarded the train at St. Pancras in a fairly cheerful
mood, and I tried to look on the bright side of life. The afternoon
was certainly beautiful, and the train not too crowded, and I derived
some pleasure, too, from the contemplation of a new pair of American
boots which I had recently purchased. I remembered that Mrs. Vernon
used to accuse me of a slight foppishness in the matter of boots, at
the same time wishing audibly (in his hearing) that Jack would give
a little more attention to the lower portions of his toilet; Jack
was a sportsman, and her husband. And I thought of their roomy and
comfortable house on the side of the long slope to Bedbury, and of
their orchard and the hammocks under the trees in the orchard, and of
tea and cakes being brought out to those hammocks, and of the sunsets
over the Delectable Mountains (we always called them the Delectable
Mountains because they are the identical hills which Bunyan had in mind
when he wrote “The Pilgrim’s Progress”), and of Jack’s easy drawl and
Mrs. Vernon’s chatter, and the barking of the dogs, and the stamping
of the horses in the stable. And I actually thought: This will be a
pleasant change after London.

“I do hope they won’t be awkward and self-conscious,” I said to myself.
“And I also must try not to be.”

You see I was thinking of that last visit and what occurred during
it. I was engaged to be married then, to a girl named Lucy Wren. Just
as I had arrived at the Vernons’ house in their dog-cart the highly
rural postman came up in his cart, and after delivering some letters
produced still another letter and asked if anyone of the name of
Bostock was staying there. I took the letter: the address was in Lucy’s
handwriting (I had seen her only on the previous night, and of course
she knew of my visit). I read the letter, standing there in the garden
near the front door, and having read it I laughed loudly and handed
it to Mrs. Vernon, saying: “What do you think of that for a letter?”
In the letter Lucy said that she had decided to jilt me (she didn’t
use those words--oh no!), and that on the following day she was going
to be married to another man. Yes, that was a cheerful visit I paid
to the Vernons, that August! At first I didn’t know what I was doing.
They soothed me, calmed me. They did their best. It wasn’t their fault
after all. They suggested I should run back to town and see Lucy; Jack
offered to go with me. (Jack!) I declined. I declined to do anything. I
ate hearty meals. I insisted on our usual excursions. I talked a lot. I
forced them to pretend that nothing had happened. And on Monday morning
I went off with a cold smile. But it was awful. It stood between me
and the Vernons for a long time, a terrible memory. And when next Mrs.
Vernon encountered me, in London, there were tears in her eyes and she
was speechless.

Now you will understand better why I said to myself, with much
sincerity: “I do hope they won’t be awkward and self-conscious. And I
also must try not to be.”

As the train approached Bedbury I had qualms. I had qualms about the
advisability of this visit to the Vernons. How could it possibly
succeed, with that memory stalking like a ghost in the garden near the
front door of their delightful and hospitable house? How could----?
Then we rumbled over the familiar bridge, and I saw the familiar
station yard, and the familiar dog-cart, and the familiar Dalmatian
dog, and the familiar white mare that was rather young and skittish
when Lucy jilted me. “That mare must be rising seven now,” I thought,
“and settled down in life.”

I descried Mrs. Vernon waiting on the platform to welcome me, with
the twins. Alas! I had forgotten the twins, those charming and frail
little girls always dressed alike. Invariably, on my previous visits, I
had brought something for the twins--a toy, a box of sweets, a couple
of bead necklaces. Never once had I omitted to lay my tribute on the
altar of their adorable infancy. And now I had forgotten, and my
forgetfulness saddened me, because I knew that it would sadden them;
they would expect, and they would be disappointed; they would taste the
bitterness of life. “My poor little dears!” I thought, as they smiled
and shouted, to see my head out of the carriage window, “I feel for you
deeply.”

This beginning was a bad one. Like all men who have suffered without
having deserved to suffer, I was superstitious, and I felt that the
beginning augured ill. I resigned myself, even before the train had
quite stopped, to a constrained and bored week-end with the Vernons.

“Well?” I exclaimed, with an affectation of jollity, descending from
the carriage.

“Well?” responded Mrs. Vernon, with the same affectation.

It was lamentable, simply lamentable, the way in which that tragic
memory stood between us and prevented either of us from showing a
true, natural, simple self to the other. Mrs. Vernon could say little;
I could say little; and what we did say was said stiffly, clumsily.
Perhaps it was fortunate, on the whole, that the twins were present.
They at any rate were natural and self-possessed.

“And how old are you now?” I asked them.

“We are seven,” they answered politely in their high, thin voices.

“Then you are like the little girl’s family in Wordsworth’s poem,” I
remarked.

It was astonishing how this really rather good joke fell flat. Of
course the twins did not see it. But Mrs. Vernon herself did not see
it, and I too thought it, at the moment, inexpressibly feeble. As for
the twins they could not hide their disappointment. Always before, I
had handed them a little parcel, immediately, either at the station
if they came to meet me, or at the house-door, if they did not. And
to-day I had no little parcel. I could perceive that they were hoping
against hope, even yet. I could perceive that they were saying to each
other with their large, expressive eyes: “Perhaps he has put it in his
portmanteau this time. He can’t have forgotten us.”

I could have wept for them. (I was in that state.) But I could not for
the life of me tell them outright that I had forgotten the customary
gift, and that I should send it by post on my return. No, I could not
do that. I was too constrained, too ill at ease. So we all climbed up
into the dog-cart. Mrs. Vernon and I in front, and the twins behind
with the portmanteau to make weight; and the white mare set off with a
bound, and the Dalmatian barked joyously, and we all pretended to be as
joyous as the dog.

“Where’s Jack?” I inquired.

“Oh!” said Mrs. Vernon, as though I had startled her. “He had to go to
Bedbury Sands to look at a couple of greyhounds--it would have been too
late on Monday. I’m afraid he won’t be back for tea.”

I guessed instantly that, with the average man’s cowardice, he had run
away in order to escape meeting me as I entered the house. He had left
that to his wife. No doubt he hoped that by the time he returned I
should have settled down and the first awkwardness and constraint would
be past.

We said scarcely anything else, Mrs. Vernon and I, during the
three-mile drive. And it was in silence that we crossed the portal
of the house. Instead of having tea in the orchard we had it in the
drawing-room, the twins being present. And the tea might have been a
funeral feast.

“Well,” I thought, “I anticipated a certain mutual diffidence, but
nothing so bad as this. If they couldn’t be brighter than this, why in
heaven’s name did they force me to come down?”

Mrs. Vernon was decidedly in a pitiable condition. She felt for me so
much that I felt for her.

“Come along, dears,” she said to the twins, after tea was over, and the
tea-things cleared away. And she took the children out of the room. But
before leaving she handed me a note, in silence. I opened it and read:
“Be as kind to her as you can; she has suffered a great deal.”

Then, ere I had time to think, the door, which Mrs. Vernon had softly
closed, was softly opened, and a woman entered. It was Lucy, once Lucy
Wren. She was as beautiful as ever, and no older. But her face was the
face of one who had learnt the meaning of life. Till that moment I had
sought everywhere for reasons to condemn her conduct towards me, to
intensify its wickedness. Now, suddenly, I began to seek everywhere
for reasons to excuse her. She had been so young, so guileless, so
ignorant. I had been too stern for her. I had frightened her. How
could she be expected to know that the man who had supplanted me was
worthless? She had acted as she did partly from youthful foolishness
and partly from timidity. She had been in a quandary. She had lost her
head. And so it had occurred that one night, that night in August, she
had kissed me falsely, with a lie on her lips, knowing that her jilting
letter was already in the post. What pangs she must have experienced
then! Yes, as she entered the room and gazed at me with her blue eyes,
my heart overflowed with genuine sorrow for her.

“Lucy!” I murmured, “you are in mourning!”

“Yes,” she said. “Didn’t you know? Has Mrs. Vernon said nothing? He is
dead.”

And she sank down by the side of my chair and hid her face, and I could
only see her honey-coloured hair. I stroked it. I knew all her history,
in that supreme moment, without a word of explanation. I knew that she
had been self-deceived, that she had been through many an agony, that
she had always loved me.... And she was so young, so young.

I kissed her hair.

       *       *       *       *       *

“How thankful I am!” breathed Mrs. Vernon afterwards. “Suppose it had
not turned out well!”

Jack Vernon had calculated with some skill. When he came back, the
constraint, the diffidence, was at an end.




A DINNER AT THE LOUVRE.


The real name of this renowned West-End restaurant is not the Louvre.
I have christened it so because the title seems to me to suit it very
nicely, and because a certain disguise is essential. The proprietors of
the Louvre--it belongs to an esteemed firm of caterers--would decidedly
object to the coupling of the name of their principal establishment
with an affair so curious and disconcerting as that which I am about
to relate. And their objection would be perfectly justifiable.
Nevertheless, the following story is a true one, and the details of it
are familiar to at least half a dozen persons whose business it is,
for one reason or another, to keep an eye upon that world of crime and
pleasure, which is bounded on the east by Bow Street and on the left by
Hyde Park Corner.

It was on an evening in the last week of May that I asked Rosie Mardon
to dine with me at the Louvre. I selected the Louvre, well knowing that
from some mysterious cause all popular actresses prefer the Louvre
to other restaurants, although the quality of the food there is not
always impeccable. I am not in the habit of inviting the favourites
of the stage to dinner, especially favourites who enjoy a salary of
seventy-five pounds a week, as Rosie Mardon did and does. But in the
present case I had a particular object in view. Rosie Mardon was
taking the chief feminine rôle in my new light comedy, then in active
rehearsal at the Alcazar Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue. We had almost
quarrelled over her interpretation of the big scene in the second act,
which differed materially from my own idea of how the scene ought
to go. Diplomacy was necessary. I prided myself on my powers as a
diplomatist: I knew that if I could chat with Miss Rosie in the privacy
of a table for two at a public restaurant (there is no privacy more
discreet), I could convert her to my opinions on that second act.

“Have you engaged a table upstairs?” was her first inquiry, as with the
assistance of a stout and gorgeous official I helped her to alight from
her brougham at the portico of the house. (She looked lovely, and half
the street was envying me; but unfortunately Rosie’s looks have nothing
to do with the tale; let me therefore dismiss them as a dangerous
topic.)

“No,” I said; “but I expect there’ll be plenty of room.”

“Plenty of room!” she exclaimed, with a charming scorn and a glance
which said: “This young man really has a great deal to learn about the
art of entertaining ladies at the Louvre.” I admit that I had.

“Oh, yes!” I insisted with bravado. “Plenty!”

“Ask the booking-clerk,” she commanded, and with all her inimitable
grace she sank like a fatigued sylph into one of the easy-chairs that
furnished the entrance-hall, and drew her cloak round her shoulders.

The booking-clerk, in faultless evening-dress, with a formidable silver
chain encircling his neck, stood at the foot of the grand staircase,
which was very grand. The booking-clerk politely but coldly informed
me that he had not a table upstairs; he said that every table had been
booked since a quarter to seven.

“Well, I suppose we must be content with downstairs, but I much prefer
the balcony,” said Rosie when I told her. And Rosie was obviously
cross. My dinner was beginning ominously.

I returned to the booking-clerk, who was then good enough to tell me
that he had no table downstairs either. I felt rather an ass, but I
never permit my asininity to go too far. I assumed an attitude of
martial decision, and ordered one of the pages to get me a hansom.

“We will dine at the Savoy,” I said, very loud. Every official in the
neighbourhood heard me. Rosie smiled, whether at the prospect of the
Savoy or at my superb indignation I know not.

Just as we were emerging into the street the booking-clerk, his silver
chain clinking, touched me on the shoulder.

“I can let you have a table upstairs now, sir,” said he. “A party that
engaged one has not arrived.”

“I thought they wouldn’t let us run away to the Savoy,” I remarked to
Rosie _sotto voce_ and with satisfaction. I had triumphed, and the
pretty creature was a witness of my triumph.

“What name, sir?” asked the clerk.

“John Delf,” I replied.

His gesture showed that he recognised that name, and this pleased me
too. Had not my first farcical comedy run a hundred and sixty nights at
the Alcazar? It was only proper that my reputation should have reached
even the clerks of restaurants. Another official recognised Miss
Rosie’s much-photographed face, and we passed up the staircase with
considerable éclat.

“You managed that rather well,” said Miss Rosie, dimpling with
satisfaction, as we sat down in the balcony of the Grand Hall of the
Louvre. The dinner was not beginning so ominously after all.

I narrate these preliminary incidents to show how large a part is
played by pure chance in the gravest events of our lives.

I ordered the ten-and-sixpenny dinner. Who could offer to the unique
Rosie Mardon a five-shilling or a seven-and-sixpenny repast when one
at half-a-guinea was to be obtained? Not I! The meal started with
anchovies, which Rosie said she adored. (She also adored nougat,
_crême de menthe_, and other pagan gods.) As Rosie put the first bit
of anchovy into her adorable mouth, the Yellow Hungarian Band at the
other end of the crowded hall struck up the Rakocsy March, and the
whole place was filled with clamour. Why people insist on deafening
music as an accompaniment to the business of eating I cannot imagine.
Personally, I like to eat in peace and quietude. But I fear I am an
exception. Rosie’s eyes sparkled with pleasure at the sound of the
band, and I judged the moment opportune to ascertain her wishes on
the subject of wine. She stated them in her own imperious way, and I
signalled to the waiter.

Now I had precisely noticed, or I fancied I noticed, an extraordinary
obsequiousness in this waiter--an obsequiousness surpassing the
usual obsequiousness of waiters. I object to it, and my attitude of
antagonism naturally served to intensify it.

“What’s the matter with the fellow?” I said to Rosie after I had
ordered the wine.

“He’s very good-looking, isn’t he?” was her only reply, as she gazed
absently at the floor below us crowded with elegant diners.

And the waiter was indeed somewhat handsome. A light-haired man, and,
like all the waiters at the Louvre, a foreigner with a deficient
knowledge of English.

“I expect he’s lost on his bets to-day,” Rosie added. “They all bet,
you know, and he’s after a rousing tip to make up.”

“Oh, is that it?” I said, wondering at the pretty creature’s knowledge
of the world. And then I began to talk about my play in my best
diplomatic manner, inwardly chafing at the interruption of that weird
Yellow Hungarian orchestra, which with bitter irony had hung over the
railings of its stand a placard bearing the words, “By desire.”

The meal proceeded brilliantly. My diplomacy was a success. The
champagne was a success. We arrived at the sorbet, that icy and sweet
product which in these days of enormous repasts is placed half-way
through the meal in order to renew one’s appetite for the second half.
Your modern chef is the cruel tyrant of the stomach, and shows no mercy.

The fair-haired waiter’s hand distinctly trembled as he served the
sorbets. I looked at mine for some moments, hesitating whether or not
to venture upon it. I am a martyr to indigestion.

“It’s delicious,” said Rosie. “More delicious than the second act of
your ‘Partners.’”

“Then I must risk it,” I replied, and plunged the spoon into the
half-frozen greenish mass. As I did so I caught sight of our waiter,
who was leaning against the service table at the corner of the balcony.
His face was as white as a sheet. I thought he must be ill, and I felt
sorry for him. However, I began to swallow the sorbet, and the sorbet
was in truth rather choice. Presently our waiter clutched at the sleeve
of another waiter who was passing, and whispered a few words in his
ear. The second waiter turned to look at me, and replied. Then our
waiter almost ran towards our table.

“Excuse me, sirr,” he murmured indistinctly, rolling the “r.” “Are you
not Count Vandernoff?”

“I am not,” I replied briefly.

He hesitated; his hand wavered towards the sorbet, but he withdrew it
and departed.

“Mon Dieu!” I heard him exclaim weakly under his breath.

“Possibly he’s been taking me for an aristocratic compatriot of his
own,” I said to Rosie, “and that explains the obsequiousness. You were
wrong about the betting.”

I laughed, but I felt ill at ease, and to cover my self-consciousness I
went on eating the sorbet very slowly.

I must have consumed nearly a third of it when I became conscious of a
movement behind me; a mysterious hand shot out and snatched away the
sorbet.

“Sir!” I protested, looking round. A tall, youngish man in evening
dress, but wearing his hat, stood on my left. “Sir! what in the name
of----?”

“Your pardon!” answered the man in a low hurried voice. I could not
guess his nationality. “Let me beg you to leave here at once, and come
with me.”

“I shall do no such thing,” I replied. “Waiter--call the manager.” But
our waiter had disappeared.

“It is a matter of life and death,” said the man.

“To whom?”

“To you.”

The man removed his hat and looked appealingly at Miss Rosie.

“Don’t let’s have a scene in here,” said Rosie, with her worldly
wisdom. And, impelled by the utter seriousness of the man, we went out.
I forgot the bill, and no one presented it.

“I solemnly ask you to take a little drive with me,” said the man, when
we had reached the foyer. “I have a carriage at the door.”

“Again, why?” I demanded.

He whispered: “You are poisoned. I am saving your life. I rely on your
discretion.”

My spine turned chilly, and I glanced at Miss Rosie. “I will come with
you,” she said.

In five minutes we had driven to a large house in Golden Square. We
were ushered into a lavishly-furnished drawing-room, and we sat down.
Rosie’s lips were set. I admired her demeanour during those moments.

The man who said he was saving my life poured some liquid from a phial
into a glass, and handed it to me.

“Emetics are useless. Drink this. In an hour you will feel the first
symptoms of illness. They may be severe, though that is improbable,
since you ate only a portion of the stuff. In any event, they will not
last. To-morrow you will be perfectly well. Let me advise you to go to
bed at once. My carriage is at your service and the service of this
lady.” He bowed.

I drank the antidote.

“Thanks for all these surprises,” I said coldly. “But does it not occur
to you that some explanation is due to me?”

He pondered a minute.

“I will explain,” he replied. “It is your right. I will explain in two
words. You have heard of Count Vandernoff, attached to the Russian
Embassy in London? You may have seen in the papers that the Count has
been appointed by the Tsar to be the new governor of Helsingfors, the
Finnish capital?”

I nodded.

“You are aware,” he continued suavely, “of the widespread persecutions
in Finland, the taking away of the Constitution, the Russianising
of all offices, the censorship of the Press? This persecution has
given rise to a secret society, which I will call the Friends of
Finnish Freedom. Its methods are drastic. Count Vandernoff was known
to be violently antagonistic to Finnish freedom. He dines often
at the Louvre. He had engaged a table for to-night. The waiter in
charge of that table was, like myself, a member of the society, but,
unfortunately, rather a raw hand. The Count, quite unexpectedly, did
not arrive at the Louvre to-night. The waiter, however, took you for
the Count. The sorbet which I snatched out of your hand was---- Need I
say more?”

“Poisoned?”

“Poisoned. The affair was carefully arranged, and only a pure accident
could have upset it. That accident occurred.”

“What was it?”

“The Count’s coupé was knocked over by an omnibus in Piccadilly two
hours ago, and the Count was killed.”

There was a pause.

“Then he will never be governor of Helsingfors,” I said.

“Heaven helps the right!” the man answered. “You English love freedom.
You cannot guess what we in Finland have suffered. Let me repeat that I
rely on your discretion.”

We left, Miss Rosie and I; and the kind-hearted girl delivered me
safely into the hands of my housekeeper. I was ill, but I soon
recovered.

A few days later I met Miss Rosie at rehearsal.

“Did you notice?” she said to me, with an awed air, “our table was No.
13 that night.”


THE END.


PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN.




  ESTABLISHED 1798

  [Illustration]

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

***