Chapter II (2)

"But I have a plan. Yes, I have a plan. I shall get on level terms with Mr. Channing again one of these fine days, and then I'll prove to him for a second time which of us two is the better man."

He made a sign to Glynn, and looked towards the door. It was already opening. He advanced to it as Linda came into the room.

"You have come back, Linda! I have been talking to Glynn at such a rate that he hasn't been able to get a word in edgeways," he said, with a swift change to a gaiety of voice and manner. "However, I'll show him a good day's sport to-morrow, Linda. We will shoot the bog, and perhaps you'll come out with the luncheon to the sand-hills?"

Linda Thresk smiled.

"Of course I will," she said. She showed to Glynn a face of gratitude. "It has done you good, Jim, to have a man to talk to," and she laid a hand upon her husband's arm and laughed quite happily. Glynn turned his back upon them and walked up to the window, leaving them standing side by side in the firelight. Outside, the moon shone from a clear sky upon the pools and the reeds of the marsh and the low white sand-hills, chequered with their tufts of grass. But upon the sea beyond, a white mist lay thick and low.

"There's a sea-fog," said Glynn; and Thresk, at the fire, suddenly lifted his head, and looked towards the window with a strange intensity. One might have thought that a sea-fog was a strange, unusual thing among the Outer Islands.

"Watch it!" he said, and there was a vibration in his voice which matched the intensity of his look. "You will see it suddenly creep through the gaps in the sand-hills and pass over the marsh like an army that obeys a command. I have watched it by the hour, time and time again. It gathers on the level of the sea and waits and waits until it seems that the word is given. Then it comes swirling through the gaps of the sand-hills and eats up the marsh in a minute."

Even as he spoke Glynn cried out:

"That's extraordinary!"

The fog had crept out through the gaps. Only the summits of the sand-hills rose in the moonlight like little peaks above clouds; and over the marsh the fog burst like cannon smoke and lay curling and writhing up to the very reeds twenty yards from the house. The sapling alone stood high above it, like the mast of a wreck in the sea.

"How high is it?" asked Thresk.

"Breast high," replied Glynn.

"Only breast high," said Thresk, and there seemed to be a note of disappointment in his voice. However, in the next moment he shook it off. "The fog will be gone before morning," he said. "I'll go and tell Donald to bring the dogs round at nine to-morrow, and have your guns ready. Nine is not too early for you, I suppose?"

"Not a bit," said Glynn; and Thresk, going up to the door which led from the house, opened it, went out, and closed it again behind him.

Glynn turned at once towards Linda Thresk. But she held up a warning hand, and waited for the outer door to slam. No sound, however, broke the silence. Glynn went to the inner door and opened it. A bank of white fog, upon which he saw his own shadow most brightly limned by the light behind him, filled the outer passage and crept by him into the room. Glynn closed the latch quickly.

"He has left the outer door open," he said, and, coming back into the room he stood beside the fire looking down into Linda's face.

"He has been talking to me," said Glynn.

Linda looked at him curiously.

"How much did he tell you?"

"There can be little he left unsaid. He told me of the dog, of Channing's death----"

"Yes?"

"Of Channing's return."

"Yes?"

"And of you."

With each sentence Glynn's embarrassment had increased. Linda, however, held him to his story.

"What did he say of me?"

"That but for Channing's death he would have held you. That since Channing died--and came back--he had lost you."

Linda nodded her head. Nothing in Glynn's words surprised her--that was clear. It was a story already familiar to her which he was repeating.

"Is that all?" she said.

"I think so. Yes," replied Glynn, glad to get the business over. Yet he had omitted the most important part of Thresk's confession--the one part which Linda did not already know. He omitted it because he had forgotten it. There was something else which he had in his mind to say.

"When Thresk told me that Channing had won you back, I ventured to say that no one watching you and Thresk, even with the most indifferent eyes, could doubt that it was always and only of him that you were thinking."

"Thank you," said Linda, quietly. "That is true."

"And now," said Glynn, "I want, in my turn, to ask you a question. I have been a little curious. I want, too, to do what I can. Therefore, I ask you, why did you send, for me? What is it that you think I can do? That other friends of yours can't?"

A slight colour came into Linda's cheeks; and for a moment she lowered her eyes. She spoke with an accent of apology.

"It is quite true that there are friends whom I see more constantly than you, Mr. Glynn, and upon whom I have, perhaps, greater claims."

"Oh, I did not mean you to think that I was reluctant to come," Glynn exclaimed, and Linda smiled, lifting her eyes to his.

"No," she said. "I remembered your kindness. It was that recollection which helped me to appeal to you," and she resumed her explanation as though he had never interrupted her.

"Nor was there any particular thing which I thought you could do. But--well, here's the truth--I have been living in terror. This house has become a house of terror. I am frightened, and I have come almost to believe----" and she looked about her with a shiver of her shoulders, sinking her voice to a whisper as she spoke--"that Jim was right--that _he is_ here after all."

And Glynn recoiled. Just for a moment the same fancy had occurred to him.

"You don't believe that--really!" he cried.

"No--no," she answered. "Once I think calmly. But it is so difficult to think calmly and reasonably here. Oh----" and she threw up her arms suddenly, and her whole face and eyes were alight with terror--"the very air is to me heavy with fear in this house. It is Jim's quiet certainty."

"Yes, that's it!" exclaimed Glynn, catching eagerly at that explanation because it absolved him to his own common sense for the inexplicable fear which he had felt invade himself. "Yes, Jim's quiet, certain, commonplace way in which he speaks of Channing's presence here. That's what makes his illusion so convincing."

"Well, I thought that if I could get you here, you who----" and she hesitated in order to make her description polite--"are not afflicted by fancies, who are pleasantly sensible"--thus did Linda express her faith that Mr. Glynn was of the earth, earthy--"I myself should lose my terror, and Jim, too, might lose his illusion. But now," she looked at him keenly, "I think that Jim is affecting you--that you, too--yes"--she sprang up suddenly and stood before him, with her dark, terror-haunted eyes fixed upon him--"that you, too, believe Mildmay Channing is here."

"No," he protested violently--too violently unless the accusation were true.

"Yes," she repeated, nodding her head quietly. "You, too, believe that Mildmay Channing is here."

And before her horror-stricken face the protest which was on the tip of his tongue remained unuttered. His eyes sought the floor. With a sudden movement of despair Linda turned aside. Even the earthliness of Mr. Glynn had brought her no comfort or security. He had fallen under the spell, as she had done. It seemed that they had no more words to speak to one another. They stood and waited helplessly until Thresk should return.

But that return was delayed.

"He has been a long time speaking to the keeper," said Linda listlessly, and rather to break a silence which was becoming intolerable, than with any intention in the words. But they struck a chord of terror in Glynn's thoughts. He walked quickly to the window, and hastily tore the curtain aside.

The flurry of his movements aroused Linda's attention. She followed him with her eyes. She saw him curve his hands about his forehead and press his face against the pane, even as Thresk had done an hour before. She started forward from the fireplace and Glynn swung round with his arms extended, barring the window. His face was white, his lips shook. The one important statement of Thresk's he now recalled.

"Don't look!" he cried, and as he spoke, Linda pushed past him. She flung up the window. Outside the fog curled and smoked upon the marsh breast high. The moonlight played upon it; above it the air was clear and pure, and in the sky stars shone faintly. Above the mist the bare sapling stood like a pointing finger, and halfway between the sapling and the house Thresk's head and shoulders showed plain to see. But they were turned away from the house.

"Jim! Jim!" cried Linda, shaking the window-frame with her hand. Her voice rang loudly out on the still air. But Thresk never so much as turned his head. He moved slowly towards the sapling, feeling the unstable ground beneath him with his feet.

"Jim! Jim!" again she cried. And behind her she heard a strange, unsteady whispering voice.

"'On equal terms!' That's what he said--I did not understand. He said, 'On equal terms.'"

And even as Glynn spoke, both Linda and he saw Thresk throw up his arms and sink suddenly beneath the bog. Linda ran to the door, stumbling as she ran, and with a queer, sobbing noise in her throat.

Glynn caught her by the arm.

"It is of no use. You know. Round the sapling--there is no chance of rescue. It is my fault, I should have understood. He had no fear of Channing--if only he could meet him on equal terms."

Linda stared at Glynn. For a little while the meaning of the words did not sink into her mind.

"He said that!" she cried. "And you did not tell me." She crept back to the fireplace and cowered in front of it, shivering.

"But he said he would come back to me," she said in the voice of a child who has been deceived. "Yes, Jim said he would come back to me."

Of course it was a chance, accident, coincidence, a breath of wind--call it what you will, except what Linda Thresk and Glynn called it. But even as she uttered her complaint, "He said he would come back to me," the latch of the door clicked loudly. There was a rush of cold air into the room. The door swung slowly inwards and stood wide open.

Linda sprang to her feet. Both she and Glynn turned to the open door. The white fog billowed into the room. Glynn felt the hair stir and move upon his scalp. He stood transfixed. Was it possible? he asked himself. Had Thresk indeed come back to fight for Linda once more, and to fight now as he had fought the first time--on equal terms? He stood expecting the white fog to shape itself into the likeness of a man. And then he heard a wild scream of laughter behind him. He turned in time to catch Linda as she fell.

THE BROWN BOOK

THE BROWN BOOK

A few friends of Murgatroyd, the physician, sat about his dinner-table, discussing that perplexing question, "How much of the truth should a doctor tell?" In the middle of the discussion a quiet voice spoke up from a corner, and all turned towards a middle-aged man of European reputation who sat fingering the stem of his wine-glass.

"It is dangerous to lay down a general rule," said Sir James Kelsey. "But I should say, if you want to keep a secret tell half the truth. People accept it and pass on to their own affairs." He hesitated for a moment and continued, rather slowly: "I am thinking of a tremendous secret which has been kept that way for a good number of years. I call it the story of the Brown Book."

At once the discussion ceased. It was so seldom that Kelsey indulged in anything like a confidence. Now on this one evening amongst his brethren it seemed that he was in the mood to talk.

"All of you will remember the name of John Rymer, and some of you his meteoric career and the tragic circumstances of his death. There was no doubt that he was a master of surgery. Yet at the age of thirty-seven, at eleven o'clock on a July morning, after performing three operations with all his accustomed skill, he walked into his consulting-room and blew his brains out."

Here and there a voice was raised.

"Yes, I remember."

"It was overwork, I think."

Sir James Kelsey smiled.

"Exactly," he said. "That's the half-truth. Overwork there was. I am familiar with the details of the inquest, for I married John Rymer's niece. It was proved, for instance, that during the last week of his life he had been curtailing his operations and spending more time over his dressings--a definite policy of his when the strain became too heavy. Moreover, there was some mention made of a sudden reasonless fear which had attacked him, a fear that his practice was dropping away, and that he would be left with a wife and young family to support, and no means to do it with. Well, we all know round this table that that particular terror is one of the commonest results of overwork. So overwork there undoubtedly was. A spell of tropical heat no doubt, too, had its effect. Anyway, here was enough for a quite acceptable verdict, and so the world thought. The usual platitudes about the tension of modern life made their appearance. The public read, accepted, and passed on to its own affairs. But behind John Rymer's death there lay a tremendous secret."

Once more he hesitated. Then he took a cigar from the box which his host held out to him, and said, in a kind of rush: "No one could make any use of it now. For there's no longer any evidence but my word, and I should deny it. It's overwork John Rymer died of. Let us not forget it."

And then he told the story of the Brown Book. At the end of it his cigar was still alight, for he smoked while he talked. But it was the only cigar alight in that room.

I was twenty-five, and I had bought a practice at Chailsey, a village deep amongst tall, dark trees in the very heart of the Berkshire Downs. You'll hardly find a place more pastoral and remote in all that country of remote villages. But a couple of training stables were established there, and, what with kicks and jumping accidents, there was a good deal of work at times. I quite liked the spot, and I liked it still more when Bradley Rymer and his daughter took the big house on the slope of the Down above the village.

John Rymer, the surgeon, had then been dead eight months, and Bradley Rymer was his brother, a shortish, broad man of forty-five with a big, pleasant face. Gossip had it that he had been very poor, so poor, indeed, that his daughter had made her living at a typewriting machine. There was no doubt, however, that he was rich now. "Canada's the country," he used to say. "I made my money out of Canadian land," and when he fell into conversation of a morning with any of the stable-boys on the gallops he was always urging them to better themselves in that country.

His daughter Violet--a good many of you know her as my wife--had little of his fore-gathering disposition. She was an extremely pretty girl of nineteen, with eyes which matched her name. But she held herself apart. She seldom came down into the village, and even when one met her in her own house there was a constraint in her manner and a look upon her face which I was at a loss to understand. It wasn't merely trouble. It was a kind of perplexity, as though she did not know where to turn. For the rest, the couple did not entertain.

"We have had hard lives," Bradley Rymer said to me one rare evening when I dined there, "and a year or two of quiet is what we want beyond everything." And never did man speak a truer word.

Bradley Rymer had lived for three months at Chailsey when Queen Victoria died, and all the great kings and the little kings flocked from Europe to her funeral. We at Chailsey--like the rest of Great Britain--determined to set up a memorial, and a committee of five was appointed to determine the form it was to take.

"It must be a drinking-fountain," said I.

"No; a stained-glass window," the vicar interrupted; and there we were, Grayly the trainer and I on one side, the vicar and Hollams the grocer on the other. The fifth member of the committee was absent.

"Well, I shall go up and see Mr. Bradley Rymer this afternoon," I said. "He has the casting vote."

"You may do just as you please," said the vicar, with some acerbity--Bradley Rymer did not go to church; "but until Mr. Bradley Rymer condescends to be present at our committee meetings, I shall pay not the slightest attention to his opinion."

Thereupon the committee broke up. I had a good many visits to pay to patients, and it was close upon eight o'clock when I set out upon my walk, and darker than it usually is at that time of the year. Bradley Rymer, I knew, did not dine until late, and I hoped to catch him just before he and Violet sat down.

The house stood a good half-mile from the village, even by the short cut which I took up the side of the Down. It was a big, square Georgian house with rows of high, flat windows; a large garden of lawns and flowers and beech trees surrounded it; and the whole property was enclosed in high red-brick walls. I was kept for a little while at the great wrought-iron gates. That always happened. You rang the big bell, the corner of a white curtain was cautiously lifted in the window of the lodge, you were inspected, and at last the gates swung open. Berkshire people were slow in those days, and, like most country-folk, curious. I walked up the drive to the house. The front door stood open. I rang the bell. A big mastiff came out from the hall and sniffed at me. But we were good friends, and he retired again to the corner. Finally a maid-servant appeared. It was perhaps a curious fact that Bradley Rymer had no man-servant living in the house.

"A butler is a spy you set upon yourself," he once said to me. Another case of the half-truth, you see. I accepted it, and passed on to my own affairs. So when only a maid answered the bell I was not surprised.

"Can I see Mr. Rymer?" I asked.

"He is in the library, I think, sir," she answered.

"Very well. I know my way." And, putting down my hat, I climbed the stairs.

The library was a long, comfortably-furnished room upon the first floor, lighted by a row of windows upon one side and lined to the ceiling with bookshelves upon the other. Rymer had a wonderful collection of books bound in vellum and calf, but he had bought the lot at a sale, and I don't think he ever read one of them. However, he liked the room, and it was the one which he usually used.

I opened the door and went into the library. But the servant had been mistaken. The library was empty. I waited, however, and while I waited a noise in the next room attracted my attention. I don't think that I was conscious of it at first, for when I did notice it, It seemed to me that the room had perceptibly darkened. It was so familiar a noise, too, that one wouldn't notice it unless there were some special unsuitability of time and place to provoke one's curiosity. For a busy man walks through life to the sound of it. It was the sharp tack-tack-tack of a typewriting machine, with the little clang and break when the end of a line is reached. I listened to it first of all surprised at the relentless rapidity with which the machine was worked, and then, wondering why at this hour, in this house of leisure and wealth, so tremendous an assiduity was being employed. Then in a rush the gossip of the village came back to me. Violet Rymer, in the days of her father's poverty, had made her living in a typewriting office. Yes; but why should she continue so monotonous a practice now? I couldn't think that she, if it were she, was keeping up her proficiency for amusement. You can always tell whether the typist is interested or whether she is working against time from the sound of the machine. In the former case it becomes alive, one is conscious of a personality; in the latter one thinks of an absent-minded clergyman gabbling through the Lessons in church.

Well, it was just that last note which was being struck. The machine was racing to the end of a wearisome task, and, since already Violet Rymer was very much to me, I thought with a real discomfort of her bending over the keys. Moreover, I seemed to be stumbling upon a secret which I was not meant to know. Was this tack-tack-tacking the explanation of why Chailsey saw so little of her?

While I was asking myself this question a door opened and shut violently. It was the door into that next room, and as it was banged the typewriting ceased altogether. There was a moment's pause, and then a voice was raised in passion. It was Bradley Rymer's voice, but I hardly recognised it.

"What is it now?" he cried, bitterly. "A novel, a volume of sermons, a pamphlet? Am I never to see you, Violet? You remain hidden in this room, breaking your back for sixpence an hour. Why, I bought this house for you. My one aim was to get rich for you." And the girl interrupted him with an agonised cry.

"Oh, don't say that, father!"

"But I do say it." And suddenly his voice softened. "It's true, Vi. You know it's true. The one thing I hated was that you should lose all the fun of your youth at that grinding work. And now you're still at it. Why? Why?"

And through the door came her voice, in a passionate, broken reply:

"Because--because--I feel--that not even the clothes I am wearing really belong to me."

The dispute suddenly ceased. A third voice spoke so low that I could not hear the words, but I heard Bradley Rymer's startled reply:

"In the library?"

I had just time to get away into the farthest window before he entered the room. It was almost dark now, and he peered about in search of me. I moved from the window towards him.

"Oh, you are there, Kelsey," he said, suavely. "We'll have a light. It's so confoundedly dark that I can hardly see you."

He rang a bell and a lamp was brought, which he took from the hands of the servant and set down on the corner of his writing-table between us.

"How long have you been here?" he asked, and--I can't account for it--he stood facing me in his dinner-jacket, with his usual pleasant, friendly smile; but I suddenly became quite sure that he was dangerous. Yes, that's the word--dangerous.

"Just a minute or so," I answered, as indifferently as I could, and then, with a strangely swift movement, he crossed the room again to the fireplace and rang the bell. "Will you tell Miss Violet that Dr. Kelsey is here?" he said to the parlourmaid, as soon as she appeared. "You will find her in the next room."

He came softly back and seated himself at the writing-table.

"And why do you want to see me?" he asked, in a queer voice.

I spoke about the memorial, and he answered at random. He was listening, but he was not listening to me. In a sort of abstraction he drew open a drawer in his writing-table on a level with his hand, and every now and then he shut it, and every now and then he drew it open again.

I cannot hope to make you realise the uncanny feeling of discomfort which crept over me. Most of us at this table, I imagine, have some knowledge of photography and its processes. We have placed a gaslight paper in the developing-dish, and seen the face of our portrait flash out in a second on the white surface. I can never get accustomed to it. I can never quite look upon it as not a miracle. Well, just that miracle seemed to me to be happening now. Bradley Rymer suddenly became visible to me, a rogue, a murderous rogue, and I watched with an increasing fear that drawer in his table. I waited for his hand to slip into it.

But while I waited the door of the next room was opened, and Rymer and I both ceased to talk. We pretended no more. We listened, and, _although we heard voices, we could not distinguish words_. Both Violet and the servant were speaking in their ordinary tones, and Rymer and I were now on the far side of the room. An expression of immense relief shone upon Bradley Rymer's face for a moment, and he rose up with the smile and the friendliness I knew.

"Will you stay to dinner?" he asked. "Do!" But I dared not. I should have betrayed the trouble I was in. I made a lame excuse and left the house.

It was now quite dark, and in the cool night air I began, before I had reached the lodge, to wonder whether I had not been misled altogether by some hallucination. Bradley Rymer brought to my memory the tragic case of his brother, and I asked myself for a moment if the long and late hours of a country practice were unbalancing me. But I looked back towards the house as I took the track over the turf, and the scene through which I had passed returned too vividly to leave me in any doubt. I could see Bradley Rymer clearly as he opened and shut the drawer of his writing-table. I could hear his voice raised in bitter reproach to Violet and the click of the typewriting machine. No, I had not been dreaming.

I had walked about a hundred yards down the slope when a sharp whistle of two notes sounded a little way off upon my right, and almost before I had stopped a man sprang from the grass at my very feet with a guttural cry like a man awakened from a doze. Had I taken another step I should have trodden upon him. The next moment the light from an electric torch flashed upon my face, blinding me. I stepped back and put up my hand to my eyes. But even while I raised my hand the button of the torch was released and the light went out. I stood for a moment in utter blackness, then dimly I became aware of some one moving away from in front of me.

"What do you want?" I cried.

"Nothing," was the word spoken in answer.

I should have put the fellow down for one of the gipsies who infest those Downs in the summer, and thought no more about him, but for one reason. He had spoken with a pronounced German accent. Besides, there was the warning whistle, the flash of the torch. I could not resist the conviction that Bradley Rymer's house was being watched.

I walked on without quickening my pace, for perhaps a hundred yards. Then I ran, and as fast as I could, down to the village. I did not stop to reason things out. I was in a panic. Violet was in that house, and it was being watched by strangers. We had one policeman in the village, and he not the brainiest of men. I got out my bicycle and rode fourteen miles, walking up the hills and coasting down them until I reached the town of Reading. I rode to the house of the Chief Constable, whom I happened to know.

"Is Captain Bowyer in?" I asked of the servant.

"No, sir; he's dining out to-night."

"In the town?"

"Yes, sir."

I was white with dust and wet through with sweat. The girl looked me over and said:

"I have orders to telephone for him if he is wanted."

"He is," I replied, and she went off to the telephone at once.

I began to cool down in more ways than one while I waited. It seemed to me very likely that I had come upon a fool's errand. After all, what had I got to go upon but a German accent, a low, sharp whistle, and an electric torch? I waited about half an hour before Bowyer came in. He was a big man, with a strong face and a fair moustache, capable, but not imaginative; and I began my story with a good deal of diffidence. But I had not got far before his face became serious, though he said not a word until I had done.

"Bradley Rymer's house," he then remarked. "I know it." He went out into the passage, and I heard his voice at the telephone. He came back in a moment.

"I have sent for some men," he said, "and a car. Will you wait here while I change?"

"Yes."

I glanced at the clock. For now that he took the affair seriously all my fears had returned.

"What time did you leave the house?" he asked.

"Nine."

"And it's now eleven. Yes, we must hurry. Bradley Rymer's house! So that's where they are."

He hurried away. But before he had changed his clothes a great touring motor-car whirred and stopped in front of the door. When we went out on to the steps of the house there were four constables waiting. We climbed into the car, and the hilly road to Streatley, which had taken me so long and painful a time to traverse, now rose and fell beneath the broad wheels like the waves of a sea. At Streatley we turned uphill along the Aldworth Road, and felt the fresh wind of the downland upon our faces. Then for the first time upon the journey I spoke.

"You know these men?" I asked of Captain Bowyer.

"I know of them," he answered, and he bent forwards to me. "With all these kings and emperors in London for the funeral, of course a great many precautions were taken on the Continent. All the known Anarchists were marked down; most of them on some excuse or another were arrested. But three slipped through the net and reached England."

"But they would be in London," I urged.

"So you would think. We were warned to-day, however, that they had been traced into Berkshire and there lost sight of."

A hundred questions rose to my lips, but I did not put them. We were all in the dark together.

"That's the house," I said at length, and Captain Bowyer touched the chauffeur on the shoulder.

"We'll stop, then, by the road."

Very quietly we got out of the car and crept up the hill. The night was dark; only here and there in a chink of the clouds a star shone feebly. Down in the village a dog barked and the wind whistled amongst the grasses under our feet. We met no one. The lodge at the gates was dark; we could not see the house itself, but a glare striking upon the higher branches of the trees in the garden showed that a room was brightly lit.

"Do you know which room that is?" Bowyer asked of me in a whisper.

"The library."

We spread out then and made a circuit of the garden wall. There was no one any longer watching, and we heard no whistle.

"They have gone," I said to Bowyer.

"Or they are inside," he replied, and as he spoke we heard feet brushing upon the grass and a constable loomed up in front of us.

"This way, sir," he whispered. "They are inside."

We followed him round to the back of the garden. Just about the middle of that back wall the men stood in a cluster. We joined them, and saw that an upright ladder rose to the parapet. On the other side of the wall a thick coppice of trees grew, dark and high. Without a word, one after another we mounted the ladder and let ourselves down by the trees into the garden. A few paces took us to the edge of the coppice, and the house stood in the open before us. Standing in the shadow of the branches, we looked up. The house was in complete darkness but for the long row of library windows upon the first floor. In these, however, the curtains were not drawn, and the light blazed out upon the green foliage. There was no sound, no sign of any disorder. Once more I began to think that I had brought Bowyer and his men here upon a fool's errand. I said as much to him in a whisper.

"But the ladder?" he answered, "my men found it there." And even while he spoke there appeared at one of these windows a stranger. It was as much as I could do in that awful moment to withhold a cry, I gripped Bowyer's arm with so much violence that he could show me the bruises of my fingers a week afterwards. But he stood like a rock now.

"Is that Rymer?"

"No. I have never seen him in my life before."

He was a dark man, and his hair and moustache were turning grey. He had the look of a foreigner, and he lounged at the window with as much assurance as if he owned the place. Then he turned his face towards the room with a smile, and, as if in obedience to an order, carelessly drew down the blinds.

They were in the house, then--these men who had slipped through the net of the Continental police; more, they were masters in the house; and there was no sound. They were in peaceful possession. My heart sank within me when I thought of Violet Rymer and her father. What had become of them? In what plight were they?

Bowyer made a sign, and, stepping carefully on the turf border and keeping within the shadow of the trees, we crept round to the back of the house. One of the party ran swiftly and silently across a gravel path to the house-wall and followed it for a little way. Then as swiftly he came back.

"Yes, there's a window open," he said. We crossed to it. It yawned upon black emptiness. We listened; not a sound reached us.

"What does it give on to?" asked Bowyer.

"A passage. At the end of the passage there's a swing door. Beyond the swing door the hall."

We climbed in through the window.

"There should be a mastiff in the hall," I said.

"Oh!" and Bowyer came to a stop. "Do you think Rymer expected these men?" he asked. I had begun to ask myself that question already. It was clear the dog had not given any alarm. But we found out the reason when we crept into the hall. He was lying dead upon the stone floor, with a piece of meat at his side.

"Quick!" whispered Bowyer, and I led the way up the great staircase. At the head of it at last we heard voices, and stopped, holding our breath. A few words spoken in a foreign accent detached themselves from the general murmur.

"Where is it? You won't say! Very well, then!" A muffled groan followed the words, and once more the voice spoke. "Wait, Adolf! He gives in. We shall know now," and as the voice continued, some one, it was clear, between each question asked, answered with a sign, a shake of the head, or a nod. "It is in the bookcase? Yes. Behind the books? Good. There? No. To the right? Yes. Higher? Yes. On that shelf? Good. Search well, Adolf!" And with that Bowyer burst into the room with his men behind him. He held a revolver in his hand.

"I shall shoot the first man who moves," he said; and no one did move. They stood like wax figures moulded in an attitude for ever. Imagine, if you can, the scene which confronted me! On the library ladder, with a hand thrust behind the books on one of the highest shelves, was mounted one of the three foreigners. A second--he whom we had seen at the window--stood over a chair into which Bradley Rymer was strapped with a gag over his mouth. The third supported Violet. She was standing in the middle of the room, with her hands tied behind her and a rope in a noose about her neck. The end of the rope had been passed through a big ring in the ceiling which had once carried a lamp. I sprang towards her, cast off the noose, and she fainted there and then in my arms.

At the back of the bookshelf we found a slim little book of brown morocco with a broken lock.

At this point in Sir James Kelsey's story Dr. Murgatroyd leaned forward and interrupted.

"John Rymer's private case-book," he said.

"Exactly," replied Kelsey, "and also Bradley Rymer's boom in Canadian land."

There was a quick stir about that table, and then a moment of uncomfortable silence. At last one spoke the thought in the minds of all.

"Blackmail!"

"Yes."

There was hardly a man in the room who had not some record of a case locked away in a private drawer which was worth a fortune of gold, and each one began to think of the security of his locks.

"But where do your foreign revolutionaries come in?" asked Murgatroyd, and Kelsey took up his tale again.

"Bowyer and I went through that brown book together in my house, after the prisoners had been sent off. For a long time we could find no explanation. But right at the end of the book there was a case which puzzled me. A Mr. Johnson had entered Rymer's nursing-home on June 17th of the year before at five o'clock in the morning, a strange time to arrive. But there it was, noted down with every other particular of his case. Three days later Mr. Johnson was operated on for cancer of the throat. The operation was remarkably successful, and the patient left the home cured seven weeks later. I think it was the unusual time of Mr. Johnson's arrival which first directed my suspicions; and the more I thought of them the more credible they became. I had lighted a fire in the sitting-room, for the morning had come, and it was chilly. I said to Bowyer:

"'Just wait a moment here. I keep a file of _The Times_,' and I went upstairs, blessing the methodical instinct which had made me for so long keep in due order this record of events. I brought down the file of June of the year before, and, turning over the pages, I found under the date of June 14th the official paragraph of which I was in search. I put it under Bowyer's eyes. He read it through and sprang to his feet with a cry. The paragraph ran like this. I can remember every word of it. I am inventing a name for the country, that's all, instead of giving you the real one:

"'The Crown Prince of Galicia left the capital yesterday for his annual visit to his shooting-box in the Tyrol, where he will remain for two months. This news effectually dispels the rumours that His Royal Highness's recent indisposition was due to a malignant growth in the throat.'

"Underneath this paragraph there was an editorial note:

"'The importance of this news cannot be overrated. For by the constitution of Galicia no one suffering from or tainted by any malignant disease can ascend the throne.'

"Identify now Rymer's Mr. Johnson with the Crown Prince of Galicia, and not only Bradley Rymer's fortune but the attack upon his house by the revolutionaries was explained, for whether they meant to use the Brown Book for blackmail as Bradley Rymer had done, or to upset a monarchy, it would be of an inestimable value to them.

"'What are we to do?' asked Bowyer.

"'What John Rymer's executors would have done if the book had not been stolen,' I answered, balancing it above the fire.

"He hesitated. The official mind said 'No.' Then he realised the stupendous character of the secret. He burst through forms and rules.

"'Yes, by Heaven,' he cried, 'destroy it!' And we sat there till the last sheet blackened and curled up in the flames.

"I had not a doubt as to what had happened. I took the half-truth which the public knew and it fitted like a piece of a Chinese puzzle with our discovery. John Rymer, assailed with a causeless fear of penury, had consented for a huge fee to take the Crown Prince into his home under the false name. Bradley Rymer had got wind of the operation, had stolen the record of the case, and had the Galician Crown and Government at his mercy. John Rymer's suicide followed logically. Accused of bad faith, and already unbalanced, aware that a deadly secret which he should have guarded with his life had escaped, he had put the muzzle of a revolver into his mouth and blown his brains out."

"What became of the foreigners?" asked one of the guests, as Kelsey finished.

"They were kept under lock and key until the funeral was over. Then they were sent out of the country."

Kelsey rose from his chair. The hands of the clock pointed to eleven. But before anyone else got up Dr. Murgatroyd asked a final question:

"And what of Mr. Johnson?"

Kelsey laughed.

"I told you Rymer was a great surgeon. Mr. Johnson has been King of Galicia, as we are calling it, for the past ten years."

THE REFUGE

THE REFUGE

The basket of _petits fours_ had been removed; cigars and cigarettes had been passed round; one or two of the half-dozen people gathered about the small round table, rashly careless of a sleepless night, were drinking coffee with their liqueurs; the conversation was sprightly, at all events, if it was not witty, and laughter ran easily in ripples; the little supper-party, in a word, was at its gayest when Harry Caston suddenly pushed back his chair. Though the movement was abrupt, it was not conspicuous; it did not interrupt the light interchange of chaff and pleasantries for a moment. It was probably not noticed, and certainly not understood by more than one in that small company. The one, however, was a woman to whom Harry Gaston's movements were a matter of much greater interest than he knew. Mrs. Wordingham was sitting next to him, and she remarked quietly:

"So you are not going on to the Mirlitons' dance, after all?"

Harry Caston turned to her in surprise.

"You're a witch," he replied. "I have only just made up my mind to go home instead."

"I know," said Mrs. Wordingham.

"Then you oughtn't to," retorted Harry Caston carelessly. Mrs. Wordingham flushed.

"I wish I didn't," she answered in a low, submissive voice. She was not naturally a submissive woman, and it was only in his ears that this particular note was sounded.

"I meant that you had no right to be able to estimate so accurately the hidden feelings of your brother-man," he answered awkwardly, and wrapping up his awkwardness in an elaboration of words.

Harry Caston looked about the supper-room, with its walls of white and gold, its clusters of bright faces, its flash of silver, its running noise of merriment. His fingers twitched restlessly.

"Yes, I am going," he said. "I shall leave London to-morrow. I have a house."

"I know that too--in the Isle of Wight."

"Not so very far, after all, is it?" he said.

"As far as Timbuctoo when you are there," replied Mrs. Wordingham. Her great dark eyes rested wistfully upon his face; she leaned the least little bit towards him. Harry Caston was silent for a moment. Then he turned to her with a smile of apology.

"You know me----"

"Oh, don't I!" she cried in a low voice. "We shall see you no more for--how many months?"

Harry Caston did not answer. His memories were busy with an afternoon of early summer in that same year, when, as his motor-car slid down a long straight slope into a village of red-brick cottages, he had seen, on the opposite incline, a row of tall stone-pines, and glowing beneath their shade the warm brown roof of a small and ancient house.

"Tell me about it," said Mrs. Wordingham, once more interpreting his silence.

"There was a bridge at the bottom of the hill--a bridge across the neck of a creek, with an old flour mill and a tiny roof at one side of it. Inland of the bridge was a reach of quiet water running back towards the downs through woods and meadows. Already I seemed to have dropped from the crest of the hill into another century. Beyond the bridge the road curved upwards. I went up on my second speed between the hedge of a field which sloped down to the creek upon the one side, and a low brick wall topped by a bank of grass upon the other. The incline of the hill brought my head suddenly above the bank, and I looked straight across a smooth lawn broken by great trees on to the front of a house. And I stopped my car, believe me, almost with a gasp. There was no fence or hedge to impede my view. I had come at last across the perfect house, and I sat in the car and stared and stared at it, not at first with any conscious desire to possess it, but simply taken by the sheer beauty of the thing, just as one may gaze at a jewel."

The lights went suddenly out in the supper-room, as a gentle warning that time was up, and then were raised again. Harry Caston, however, seemed unaware of any change. He was at the moment neither of that party nor of that room.

"It was a small house of the E shape, raised upon a low parapet and clothed in ivy. The middle part, set back a few feet behind flowers, had big flat windows; the gabled ends had smaller ones and more of them. Oh, I can't describe to you what I saw! The house in detail? Yes. But that would not give you an idea of it. The woodwork of the windows was painted white, and, where they stood open to the sunlight and the air, they showed you deep embrasures of black oak within."

He stumbled on awkwardly, impelled to describe the house, yet aware that his description left all unsaid. The tiles of the roof were mellowed by centuries, so that shade ran into shade; and here they were almost purple, and there brown with a glint of gold. Two great chimney stacks stood high, not rising from the roof, but from the sides of the house, flanking it like sentinels, and over these, too, the ivy climbed.

But what had taken Caston by the throat was the glamour of repose on that old house. Birds flickered about the lawn, and though the windows stood open, and the grass was emerald green and smooth, no smoke rose from any of the chimney-tops.

"I ran on for a few yards," he went on, "until I saw a road which branched off to the right. I drove up it, and came to a gate with a notice that the house was to be sold. I went in, and at the back of the house, in a second queer little grass garden, screened by big trees upon three sides and a low red-brick wall upon the fourth, over which you could see the upper reach of the estuary and the woods on the further hill, I found a garrulous old gardener."

Mrs. Wordingham leaned forward.

"And what story had he to tell?"

"Oh, none!" answered Caston with a laugh. "There's no tragic or romantic history connected with the house. Of course, it's haunted--that goes without saying. There's hardly a bedroom window where the ivy does not tap upon the panes. But for history! Four old ladies took it for a summer, and remained in it for forty years. The last one of them died two years ago. That's all the history the gardener knew. But he showed me over the house, the quaintest place you ever dreamed of--a small stone-flagged hall, little staircases rising straight and enclosed in the walls, great polished oak beams, rooms larger than you would expect, and a great one on the first floor, occupying the middle of the house and looking out upon the grass garden at the back, and over the sunk road to the creek in front. Anyway"--and he broke off abruptly--"I bought the house, and I've furnished it, and now----"

"Now you are going to shut yourself up in it," said Mrs. Wordingham.

The lights were turned out now for the last time. The party sat almost in darkness. Caston turned towards his companion. He could just see the soft gleam of her dark eyes.

"For a little," he replied. "I have to, you know. I can't help it. I enjoy all this. I like running about London as much as any man; I--I am fond of my friends." The lady smiled with a little bitterness, and Caston went on: "But the time comes when everything suddenly jars on me--noise, company, everything--when I must get away with my books into some refuge of my own, when I must take my bath of solitude without anyone having a lien upon a single minute of my time. The need has come on me to-night. The house is ready--waiting. I shall go to-morrow."

Mrs. Wordingham glanced at him with a quick anxiety. There was a trifle of exasperation in his voice. He was suddenly on wires.

"Yes, you look tired," she said. The head waiter approached the table, and the party broke up and mounted the steps into the hall. Caston handed Mrs. Wordingham into her carriage.

"I shall see you when I come back?" said he, and Mrs. Wordingham answered with a well-assumed carelessness:

"I shall be in London in the autumn. Perhaps you will have some story to tell me of your old house. Has it a name?"

"Oh, yes--Hawk Hill," replied Caston. "But there's no story about that house," he repeated, and the carriage rolled away. Later on, however, he was inclined to doubt the accuracy of his statement, confidently though he had made it. And a little later still he became again aware of its truth.

Here, at all events, is what occurred. Harry Caston idled through his mornings over his books, sailed his sloop down the creek and out past the black booms into the Solent in the afternoon, and came back to a solitary dinner in the cool of the evening. Thus he passed a month. He was not at all tired with his own company. The inevitable demand for comrades and a trifle of gaiety had not yet been whispered to his soul. The fret of his nerves ceased; London sank away into the mists. Even the noise of the motor-horns in the hidden road beneath his lawn merely reminded him pleasantly that he was free of that whirlpool and of all who whirled in it. If he needed conversation, there were the boatmen on the creek, with their interest in tides and shoals, or the homely politics of the village. But Caston needed very little. He drifted back, as it seemed to him, into the reposeful, lavender-scented life of a century and a half ago. For though the house was of the true E shape, and had its origin in Tudor times, it was with that later period that Caston linked it in his thoughts. Tudor times were stirring, and the recollection of them uncongenial to Caston's mood.