On the Pinions of Doom

Chapter I. Dreams, And A Tragedy.
Chapter II. A Whiff Of Perfume.
Chapter III. Waiting For Death.
Chapter IV. Fortune Seeks A Bride.
Chapter V. The Mystery of the Vial.
Chapter VI. What Craigon Found.
Chapter VII. Two Women.
Chapter VIII. Agonies In Wait.
Chapter IX. Farewell!
Chapter X. Betrothed To Death.
Chapter XI. A Ghost At The Altar.
Chapter XII. In Prosper's Absence.
Chapter XIII. Death Sets Its Seal.
Chapter XIV. Hope.
Chapter XV. Science Seeks A Subject.
Chapter XVI. The Sacrifice Of Love.
Chapter XVII. Vengeance Of The Beast.
Chapter XVIII. "My Secret Is For Sale."
Chapter XIX. The Remedy.
Chapter XX. Who Is This Woman?
Chapter XXI. Married Strangers.
Chapter XXII. Love Or Death.

CHAPTER I.
DREAMS, AND A TRAGEDY.

THE surgery was full of afternoon sunlight. A queer scent of myrrh and iodine seemed to quicken the dead air, adding a much-needed pulse-beat to the heart-breaking moments.

Dr. Philip Brand looked at his watch with some anxiety. Then his glance went out to a newly shaved young man, yawning with dreadful insistence near the open surgery window.

Denis Craigon stretched his long legs and searched confusedly for his cigarette-case.

"Of all the rotten scientific fads," he grumbled, "this one of Prosper's beats everything! He'll kill himself before long! A Harley Street man, too—and one of the best in all London!"

From an adjoining room came a prolonged sigh, followed by the thump of feet on the carpeted floor. Brand stepped into the passage and tapped on the door. It was opened almost instantly.

Prosper Chard looked at Brand, his disarranged hair giving him the appearance of one in a state of mental confusion and uncertainty.

"Hello, Phil! What day is it?" His hand fumbled at the breastpocket of his dressing-gown, where a small gold watch hung from a chain.

Brand's fingers sought Prosper's wrist with professional promptitude, while his sympathetic eyes explored the strained young face before him.

"Got the helmet feeling where my ideas sometimes congregate. Then there's a singing noise you get after diving."

"Try a cup of coffee," Brand suggested. "It may lift your helmet. Craigon's been here for the last three hours. I'm afraid we've bored him to death with our—"

Prosper Chard was recognized as the most brilliant nerve-specialist of the day. His experiments in the treatment of neurasthenia had been productive of startling results, and promised unending relief to thousands of despairing men and women.

For a year after settling in Harley Street, London, his professional friends had chosen to regard him as another of the francs-tireurs of medicine, destined to a meteoric career. But Chard was too much centered in his work to heed their opinions. Each month revealed a growing list of wealthy patients as the results of his treatment became more and more widely circulated.

For a month or so he had been conducting a series of experiments with hytrophen, a newly discovered radium gas. The therapeutic value of hytrophen was a mystery even to the most advanced workers in medical science. But Chard had long ago regarded it as a miraculous force, capable of renewing a depleted nervous system.

Inhaled in gas form it was more potent as a nerve-rest than sleep. Under its influence new habits were created. Men who found pleasure in gambling and alcohol became strong and self-restrained—at least Chard held these theories in connection with his newfound hytrophen.

So far his experiments had been carried on without the help or advice of a single colleague. Brand, although inclined to skepticism, was determined to throw no obstacles in the way of the young enthusiast.

He had consented after many entreaties to be present when Chard emerged from the state of coma induced by prolonged inhalation of the new restorative.

Prosper's quiescent condition had lasted nearly forty-eight hours. Denis Craigon, a city solicitor, had been induced to attend the young physician's waking. Craigon regarded the whole business as a bit of medical humbug without a scrap of scientific data to commend it.

Prosper followed Brand into the high-windowed surgery as one striving to shake off the effects of his enforced sleep. Brand watched him narrowly.

It was impossible to view without interest a man who was risking life and reputation in the interests of science and human progress.

"Tell us about it," he said quietly. "Does your faith in this hytrophen still hold good?"

Chard dropped into a chair beside Craigon. The silence that followed his action was like a sword-stroke to the expectant Brand.

"I have experienced nothing except one or two nasty dreams," he confessed after a while. "Personally I do not feel better or worse for it."

Craigon broke into laughter as Chard lay back in the chair, breathing with difficulty.

"Look as if you'd been hit by a flying-machine!" he declared. "I thought this hytrophen stuff put muscle and brain into one!"

Chard wiped his face slowly. The effort seemed to fatigue and depress him. To the solicitor's almost scoffing remark he vouchsafed no reply.

Brand paced the surgery with occasional side glances in the solicitor's direction. He felt that Prosper wished to say something, but was deterred by Craigon's presence. He could only wait, therefore, until the man of law divined the cause of the young experimenter's silence.

They had not long to wait. Rising, after a few deprecatory remarks in connection with the hot afternoon and the closeness of the surgery, Craigon moved to the door, suppressing a yawn.

"Sorry you've discovered nothing important, Chard," he volunteered dryly. "Don't fall a victim to your own theories until you've got some fun out of life," he advised as an afterthought. "So-long!"

"It seems years instead of hours since I inhaled the hytrophen, Phil!" he exclaimed. "And I feel somehow that I've lost ten years of life."

"Nonsense! You'll be fit as a bird in a couple of days. Come to a theater to-night; I'll book seats."

Brand regarded Chard steadily. In the over-brilliant eyes and pallid lips he divined a temperature slightly below fever-point.

"Those dreams you experienced have unnerved you, my boy," he observed. "And, after all," he added with a forced laugh; "you know what they're composed of."

The laugh ended abruptly. A sudden change had come over Prosper. The young specialist had grown livid; his eyes seemed to flinch and quail. Brand put out a steadying hand.

"By Jove, Prosper, I'll have to send you to bed! Heart all right?" he inquired with sudden professional interest.

"Quite," Chard answered with an effort, his hand clutching his friend's shoulder. "My hytrophen is as nauseating as chloroform. Thanks, Phil; I'll try bed again."

Brand touched a button in the wall; in response came Mrs. Kenyon, Chard's housekeeper. A woman well past middle life, she had seen service in the Chard family for more than twenty years. Brand nodded to her.

"I am going home, Mrs. Kenyon. Prosper will return to bed for another day at least. To-morrow, probably, I shall look in."

With the sound of his departing steps Chard turned his blanched features toward the housekeeper. She was too old a servitor to have remained in ignorance of his recent experiment, and, womanlike, she viewed with suspicion and something of dread the late "test" which had confined him to his room for so long a period.

His anxiety for news was natural enough, since no tidings from the outside world had reached him for three days. It was his distraught appearance that worried the housekeeper.

"Dr. Brand ought to have stayed longer, sir," she hazarded with another furtive glance at his tense, drawn figure. "You —you are not quite yourself—if I may say so."

"Please don't worry over my appearance, Mrs. Kenyon. Brand would have stayed if it had been necessary. Now—those papers!"

She brought in a small bundle from the hall, where they had lain unread for three days. Dropping into a chair, he scanned them separately until an eye-arresting head-line focused his attention. He read it in fierce wonderment, and again with the slow, sick deliberation of one perusing a death-warrant.

Shortly after midnight on Tuesday the police were informed of a singular tragedy which occurred at the house of Mr. Renault Eames, a well-known city financier. Mr. Eames was discovered in his bedroom in an unconscious condition. He expired an hour later.

Near the unfortunate gentleman was a pink-colored vial with a gold top, bearing in monogram the letters P.C.

An examination of the vial revealed nothing of a suspicious nature. Indeed, after a long analysis it was found to contain only a few drops of almost pure water. An inquest will be held to-day.

When Mrs. Kenyon peeped in at the door, half an hour later, she found him sobbing violently, his face pressed over his outstretched arms.

CHAPTER II.
A WHIFF OF PERFUME.A WHIFF OF PERFUME.

PROSPER CHARD passed a night of feverish unrest, which left him in a state of nervous trepidation and alarm. Mrs. Kenyon attributed his condition to his ill-advised experiment with hytrophen gas. To her his experiment had seemed an act of wanton folly.

What would happen if it became known to his wealthy patients that Chard, the infallible, was a victim to his own disordered nervous system? she asked herself. For the last three days Brand had taken his place in the high-windowed consulting-room, but now that he had gone Prosper would have to meet the small crowd of fashionable invalids who usually presented themselves between eleven and four.

In his present state he was quite unpresentable, she told herself. Brand must continue to relieve him.

Chard scarcely touched breakfast. Once or twice he stared down the columns of the morning paper with a peculiar, latent fear in his eyes. A few gleams of sulfur-hued sunlight penetrated the white-paneled morning-room.

Outside he heard the endless symphony of sounds which followed the procession of auto-cars and city traffic. There was no break in the eternal movement. Sometimes a sharper note broke through the echoes, only to subside in the overwhelming mutter of London's distant voice.

The hall-page brought in a card, hurriedly placing it on the table before the brooding young specialist.

"Lady must see you, sir. A very urgent matter of business not connected with nerves, sir," the page informed him gravely.

Another time Chard might have smiled at the page's effort. Instead he stared bleakly at the card, which bore the name:

Prosper breathed uncertainly. He was hardly in a condition to interview business ladies. In the past his working hours had suffered endless interruptions from the insistent lady canvasser and agent who frequently invaded his privacy.

After a moment's hesitation he stepped into the hall and entered the waiting-room on the right. A young lady of twenty-three or four was seated with her back to the street window, her face sheltered from the light by her wide-leafed hat.

She looked up quickly at the young specialist; the movement revealed a depth of jaw and chin common enough in the lady canvassers he had met.

"I have to complain of your rather insolent page, Dr. Chard. Does he always try to stampede your visitors?"

"It is his duty to protect me at times from unscrupulous tradesmen and hawkers, Miss Vorne. May I ask the cause of your visit?"

"I've been wondering, Dr. Chard, whether the newspapers have interested you lately. Occasionally one finds them very dull."

Not once did the hard smile on her face relax. Her peculiar eyes seemed to explore the very channels of his nerves. He regarded her steadily.

"I'll show you a cutting," she volunteered blandly. "Nothing like print to assist a failing memory, Dr. Chard."

"I fancy you are referring to the death of Mr. Renault Eames. How, pray, can such an event concern you?"

He saw her fingers close on the purse, while his mind, alive with hastily formed ideas, sought to reason out the nature of her visit. A long-drawn sigh escaped her.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Vorne," he said quietly. "I do not understand. Fifty pounds—for what?"

Her answer struck him with its vulgar intonation. Her swift eyes followed his retreating figure to the door.

He glanced at his watch quickly. It was nearly eleven o'clock. Brand might arrive at any moment.

"You've got to listen, Dr. Chard! My dose of news may not be more unpleasant than some of the stuff you prescribe for the dope fiends who come here."

She laughed again at his forced manner, the trembling hands resting on his hips.

"I happened to be walking home the other night when you came out of Mr. Eames's house in Cardigan Place."

"Do you know that I have not left this house for three days, Miss Vorne? Furthermore"—his voice shook with each intake of breath—"my movements during the last week have been carefully watched by two professional men. How dare you originate such a statement?"

She yawned in the chair, once, twice, and then concluded her exhibition of studied indifference with a little shrug.

"You know the vial with the gold top belonged to you, Dr. Chard. At present the police are hunting for the owner. Besides"—she went on with a suggestion of weariness in her voice—"you are engaged to the daughter of Renault Eames."

All the anger vanished from Chard's face. Incredulity and amazement checked the torrent of explanation that fought for expression. An hour before Miss Vorne's entry he had believed that his engagement to the daughter of the dead Renault Eames was a profound secret.

Even Brand and Craigon had been unaware of the fact. Mr. Eames had many private reasons for keeping the affair as quiet as possible in view of his overwhelming position in the world of finance.

And, despite the fact that he had been in a deathlike stupor for three whole days, Miss Vorne declared that she had seen him leave Mr. Eames's house on the night of his death! It was preposterous—unthinkable!

Yet he was forced to the conclusion that some unknown influence might have drawn him into Eames's house—he dared not ask himself how. His recent experiments with the hytrophen gas had rendered him mentally inert for three whole days.

Was it possible that during that period he had gone from the house without the knowledge of his housekeeper?

Neither Brand nor Mrs. Kenyon had kept an all-night vigil at his bedroom door. His window was never locked or closed for hygienic reasons. So—

He turned to Miss Vorne, his face blanched, his eyes kindling with the fires from his fevered brain.

"What caused you to recognize me, Miss Vorne?" he asked hoarsely. "Dozens of men of my type leave houses in the vicinity of Cardigan Place about midnight. How was I dressed?"

"Overcoat and white muffler, soft hat pulled pretty low down—not at all like a gentleman in evening dress," she vouchsafed without heat. "I thought for a minute"—she paused to laugh under her breath—"that you might have been a safe-smasher, taking a look round until—"

"—until your face caught the light at the corner of the square. Then I knew you were Prosper Chard, the Harley Street specialist."

He stood swaying slightly in the doorway, his palms pressed to his throbbing temples. Her brief description of him on the night of Renault Eames's death burned into his brain.

She rose from her seat, and stood waiting for him to speak. Something of his mental torture held her silent for a space until the flying moments warned her not to play with her opportunity.

"Only for that chance look. Dr. Chard, I might have passed you. When I got home it occurred to me you'd been drinking," she hazarded bluntly. "You staggered more than a bit. Am I right?"

"Dope then. It's all the same, anyway. Some doctors like brandy; others"—she made a movement of the wrist suggestive of a hypodermic-needle—"like morphin blown into their arms. No offense to you."

He looked at his watch with half-seeing eyes, and then beckoned in her direction. Very softly she followed into the surgery, past the stiff-lipped page in the hall.

Closing the door behind her. Chard groped to a drawer under the window and glanced swiftly inside.

"I will give you the fifty pounds. Miss Vorne, conditionally that you refrain from coming here again."

"Oh, I won't come too often! Fifty pounds will last me a couple of months. By that time you'll have got used to me."

"You will find a detective in this surgery on your second visit," he declared with something of bitterness in his voice.

He could not find one in the drawer. Turning, he addressed her in a scarce audible voice.

"I have left my check-book in another room, probably. I must ask you to wait a few moments."

Miss Vorne found herself staring at her own reflection in a silver-backed mirror beside a richly upholstered operating-chair.

A sigh of ineffable content escaped her. This young nerve-specialist with the searching, gray eyes had proved an easier victim than she imagined. There was no doubt in her mind now concerning his complicity in the death of Renault Eames.

The merest chance in the world had set her on his trail; his semi intoxicated appearance, together with his ghostlike face and vacuous eyes, had keened her curiosity. To follow him home to Harley Street had been her next move. Her second had been to watch the morning papers, and follow the details of the Renault Eames inquest.

Miss Vorne was not concerned with any private scruples in the matter. If she placed her facts before the police she would get nothing. In all probability they would subject her to a strict cross-examination concerning her own antecedents, a circumstance to be avoided in this juncture, she argued.

Her reflection in the little silver-backed mirror appeared to afford her genuine satisfaction. Some mirrors were abominable, revealing only the ugly little lines and creases under the eyes or the livid dabs of powder on the cheeks.

Beside the mirror stood a curious small rubber cylinder with a gold-mouthed inhaler attached.

Her fingers were not to be denied. About the gold-mouthed cylinder she detected an exquisite perfume.

Miss Vorne had a weakness for rare bouquet and pomades. She found pleasure in entering a drug-store on the mere chance of breathing subtle airs or glutting her senses with a hurried survey of highly colored lotions and expensive soaps.

The gold-mouthed inhaler on the surgery table seized her with its delicate fragrance. Miss Vorne was far too careful a person to taste or handle with impunity unknown chemical substances. She had never enjoyed the privilege before of entering the surgery of a high-grade specialist.

She felt her position immensely as she drew in the subtle delights from the gold-mouthed rubber cylinder. Not a bit like patchouli, she urged. Attar of roses was as ditch-water in comparison.

The rich odor took on a more poignant efflorescence that caused a slightly delirious feeling in the head. It was gone in a moment, leaving her wonderfully reinvigorated and free from the depression which had seized her on entering the waiting-room.

Miss Vorne chuckled inwardly. She had acquired a nerve-tonic for nothing which, she felt certain, would have cost her many guineas under ordinary circumstances. She heard Chard's footsteps in the adjoining room; he was returning.

Raising the rubber cylinder she drew a last, long breath, and then with some reluctance placed it beside the silver-backed mirror.

She was conscious now of curious, singing noises in her head, of a nerve-tingling volley of sounds that seemed to flute and throb in her ears. It was like music, soft and ineffably beautiful.

Her hand grasped the arm of the operating-chair instinctively, while the surgery appeared to rotate and sink into an abyss of perfume and melodious sounds.

The door opened sharply behind her; Chard entered somewhat ruffled and out of breath, a check-book in his hand.

CHAPTER III.
WAITING FOR DEATH.

MISS VORNE was kneeling beside the operating-chair staring vacantly through the surgery window. Chard stooped over her swiftly, his fingers closing instinctively on her wrist.

"You have been tampering with that hytrophen?" he asked sternly. "Are you listening, Miss Vorne?"

Her breath came in labored expulsions. On her throat and brow he noted a faint perspiration. In that moment he wondered how much or how little of the gas had been inhaled.

With some difficulty he raised her into the chair, loosening with deft fingers the almost strangling collar about her throat. It soon became evident that Miss Vorne had inhaled greedily of the hytrophen.

There was little doubt in his mind concerning the after-effects of so powerful a gas. He had not experimented at the risk of his life without gaging something of its mysterious properties.

If Brand came he would have to explain the woman blackmailer's presence in his surgery. For an instant he looked into her half-closed eyes. Then he spoke in a voice that was scarcely above a whisper.

"You can't change your voice, Terry Nolan. So don't try to imitate Hackett. You know he's in jail!"

"The chap who dopes all the society people. Oh, I say, Nolan, you're too funny!"

She was laughing weakly in the operating chair. Prosper noted that her voice had grown flat and toneless, her hands limp, her body inert. Yet within a few hours she would revive and seek the open streets night after night until the effects of the hytrophen had worn off.

Not even the knowledge of her dastardly mission to his house could make him do that.

Stepping almost without sound across the room, he touched the housekeeper's bell. She came, palpitating visibly. Her matronly eyes wandered very slowly to the pallid figure of Miss Vorne in the operating-chair.

"This woman came here on business, Mrs. Kenyon. I left her alone for a little while, and in my absence she was tempted to inhale some of this hytrophen."

He held up the rubber cylinder with the gold-mouthed tube for the housekeeper's inspection.

"It is very awkward for me," he went on in a lowered voice; "because there is every probability that her present condition will last two or three days."

Mrs. Kenyon shot an inquiring glance at the huddled-up figure in the operating-chair. A look of mistrust and genuine dislike was visible on her matronly face.

"I think we had better put her in my room, sir." she ventured after a while. "A pretty close watch on her can be kept until she comes round."

Chard pondered her suggestion. The thought of this female blackmailer breathing under his roof was more than he could stand. Moreover, he was not certain what effect the hytrophen would have upon her.

While under its influence it had evidently set him wandering about the streets of London during the midnight hours. He dared not think of what had happened. Despite Miss Vorne's statement, he was morally certain that he had not entered the house of Renault Eames on the night in question. In any case, she could not remain under his roof.

Suddenly the address of a certain private nursing-home in South Kensington occurred to him. It was kept by a lady to whom he had recommended many patients. He could explain over the telephone what had happened, and he felt sure that Miss Vorne would be cared for until the effects of the hytrophen had become inert.

Mrs. Kenyon approved the idea instantly. So while Chard chatted over the telephone with the proprietress of the South Kensington nursing-home. Mrs. Kenyon called a taxi to the front door and stood ready with the hall-page to assist Miss Vorne inside.

Chard approached the operating-chair cautiously, and touched the half-bent shoulder gently.

"I think we had better say good-by." he vouchsafed in a whisper. "There is a very pretty car waiting outside."

"No, no; you are going to rest for a day or two. Afterward you may see Terry Nolan."

She stood up without assistance, but he noted that all the life had gone from her face. She resembled one of the wax figures he had seen at Mme. Tussaud's. He led her to the door of the surgery, his heart thundering in his ears at each sound from the street outside.

In the passage he paused to scrutinize her more closely and to assure himself of her stability and walking-powers. She favored him with a stare that held neither light nor reason.

A childish laugh escaped her—a querulous catch of the breath suggestive of hidden tears or pent-up emotion. Ignoring his question, she walked with almost frozen stiffness to the door. Here she paused, sighing, as the sounds from the street broke upon her.

He escorted her to the taxi, followed by the page, who had been instructed by Mrs. Kenyon to accompany Miss Vorne to South Kensington.

The car passed from the street without observation, and Chard, with Mrs. Kenyon breathing in his wake, returned to the surgery. It was nearly eleven o'clock, but His head throbbed and ached from the effects of his recent experience.

He heard voices in the passage—the sound of the waiting-room door opening and closing. The hall-attendant looked in suddenly.

Chard steadied himself against a chair. He knew that the day's work had begun, and that his patients would give him no rest for many hours. He felt himself mentally and physically unfit to go through a series of consultations with so many persons of varying temperaments.

The noise of a car outside sent him to the window. He saw Brand alight and enter the house quickly. A breath of relief escaped him as the nimble-footed physician walked into the consulting-room.

"You're shaken. Chard, my boy," he declared after a while. "You are hardly fit to look at people to-day."

"If I could get away into the country for a day or two." he hazarded and stopped.

"Take my car, Prosper, and go where you feel inclined. I'll do your work for another week; I've got St. Clair-Meril to look after mine. Buck up and go!"

Chard almost reeled from the consulting-room to pack up the few things necessary for his short trip into the country.

The rest of the morning Brand spent in consultation with the little côterie of wealthy neurasthenics who pinned their faith in Chard's system of nerve-rehabilitation.

An hour before lunch Craigon called. Brand invited the young solicitor into the surgery after the last morning visitor had departed. A silence seemed to leap between the two which even Brand's offer of a gold-tipped cigarette failed to dissipate. Mrs. Kenyon looked in at the door hastily and retired.

"Prosper's gone." Brand said, his shrewd eyes exploring the young solicitor carefully. "And I'm praying that he won't see a copy of this month's Medical Gazette."

A sudden interest was upon Craigon. Settling himself in a chair, his restless eyes took in the luxurious appointments of Chard's surgery.

"It doesn't pay for a rising specialist to run away from his patients too often," he said thoughtfully. "People talk."

Brand walked to the surgery door and closed it. Listening for a moment to the sounds near the housekeeper's room, he returned quietly to the center of the apartment.

"There's a nerve-specialist in Paris named Emile Rochart," he began abruptly; "who has for some time past experimented with hytrophen in precisely the same way as Chard."

"Did he filch Chard's formula?" Craigon questioned uneasily, his legal mind alive to the potentialities of the situation.

"He discovered it in much the same way as Chard—dropped on to curative effects of the radium gas and uranium vapor by mere accident."

"Then he's putting it on the medical market before Prosper," Craigon declared. "Going to take the credit of having discovered hytrophen."

"Rochart is dead, and hytrophen killed him!" Brand announced in an underbreath. "His experiences with the radium gas was precisely the same as Prosper's. After a heavy inhalation he lost his identity for three days, then recovered and—

Brand paced the surgery, his hands locked behind his back, the sharp lines of his face indicating the pain of his thoughts.

"Other men have gone the same way," he went on after a while. "Lieblitz was poisoned by X-rays, and suffered surgical mutilations in the hope of saving his life. Laban-Gangiers, of the Paris Institute, shot himself to escape the fearful agony caused by an experimental injection of radio-active toxin. So you see, Craigon, it's all in the game."

"The question is, what are we to do? If he sees the current number of the M.G. he'll read his own death-warrant in the turn of a page!"

"Send him out of the track of books and journals." Craigon volunteered desperately. "Get him on board an Australian steamer where the confounded medical tracts won't find him. Do something."

Brand stared bleakly through the open surgery window to the flowers under the ledge that struggled for existence in the smoky London atmosphere.

"He'll be back to-morrow," he said half aloud—"if he doesn't spot the account of Rochart's death."

"To a man of his understanding," Brand replied; "it would be awful Poor Prosper worked hard enough, risking brain and body in the interests of humanity."

"But—surely something might be attempted to save him. Think, Brand! He's not yet thirty!"

Brand felt his square chin a trifle desperately, as one confronted by a terrible problem. He loved Prosper Chard with the strength of his big, fighting heart, yet, in the present circumstance, he felt his inability to suggest anything that might save the daring young specialist from the dreadful after-effects of the hytrophen.

In Rochart's case the most eminent European pathologists and surgeons had vainly sought to avert the unspeakable sufferings which had ended only with his life. According to the facts printed in the Medical Gazette, Brand saw clearly that Prosper Chard's end would be similar to Rochart's.

There was no antidote, no palliative against the after-effects of hytrophen. Only a miracle could save the young specialist.

Rochart had not foreseen his own terrible end. But Prosper would read his own many days ahead if once a copy of the Gazette was shown to him.

The thought turned Brand cold. He blamed himself now for permitting Prosper to leave the house.

The atmosphere of the surgery appeared to depress Craigon. He saw in each labeled bottle and jar the hidden devils of hytrophen and other nerve-poisons.

"We were unwise to allow him a free hand with the gas." he said at last. "Why on earth didn't he try it on some one else?"

"That isn't Prosper's way. Craigon. Men of his kind do not ask others to face the music for them. He smelt his own torment and-will taste it accordingly. Have another cigarette?"

Craigon departed, sweat-drops visible on his brow. In the street a chill feeling seized him.

Denis Craigon rented an office in Chancery Lane. Distantly connected with Prosper, he handled whatever business the specialist cared to transact.

It occurred to Craigon as he entered the office that his young clerk, Ford, was in an unusual state of preoccupation. Then he remembered that it was the American mail day.

"Anything important?" he questioned, placing his hat and gloves in a small recess behind the office door.

"A copy of Miss Bellamy's will," he responded quickly. "Dixon & Lumley, her New York solicitors, forwarded it."

Craigon took the sheets, a sudden interest animating his strong, dark features. His glance moved with legal precision down the close-typed copy of Miss Bellamy's will, while his mouth tightened and then relaxed suddenly.

"Why—this is unusual! And a bit fresh!" he exclaimed. "We have received no intimation of Miss Bellamy's death!"

"The letter announcing her death may have been forwarded to Dr. Chard's Harley Street address, sir," he hazarded. "It is quite usual to notify the friends of the deceased."

Craigon snapped out an inaudible word as he continued reading the sheets. It was probable, he thought, that Mrs. Kenyon had collected all the letters while Prosper was under the influence of the hytrophen, and had put them in the little office where he usually conducted his correspondence. Prosper, in his agitated condition, had evidently not been disposed to go over them.

There was no doubt, however, concerning the genuineness of the document before him. Dixon & Lumley were not the people to manufacture bogus wills. Of its legality he was assured. It was the conditions of the will that disturbed him.

Briefly, Miss Gertrude Bellamy had left the whole of her fortune, including her art treasures and estates, to her nephew, Prosper Chard, on condition that he married within a year of her death the Hon. Marjory Hathaway, sister of Viscount Sturmiss of Lymington Hall, in the county of Hampshire.

Craigon almost fell into a chair, breathing and gasping by turns. "This—this marriage clause confounds me!" he declared. "I don't think Miss Bellamy ever met Lord Sturmiss or his sister."

The clerk shook his head. "You may depend on Dr. Chard having met them, sir. It's hard to predict, though, how he'll view the marriage clause. Miss Bellamy was an eccentric person, I imagine."

Craigon made no answer. His alert mind went back to the days when Prosper Chard spent most of his leisure time in the society of certain people whose names had long since passed from his mind. He could only dimly recall the names of Lord Sturmiss and his sister, Marjory Hathaway. Of Miss Bellamy's affairs he was well posted.

A dealer in antiques and works of art. Miss Bellamy had gone to America and had built up a unique enterprise controlled by women of her own type and experience. It was Gertrude Bellamy who had discovered Velasquez's "King Sancho" while hunting for art treasure in Madrid. The picture brought her a net profit of two hundred thousand dollars and had established her reputation as a genuine connoisseur of old Spanish paintings.

Miss Bellamy had followed the growing fame of her brilliant young nephew, Prosper, with something of pride and amused wonderment. His daring experiments in the field of mental therapeutics had tickled her latent sense of humor. . She remembered how, even as a boy, he used to feed and minister to the starving dogs and animals which invaded his father's back premises in old Chelsea. Science and love of humanity were strangely blended in the boy, she often told herself. For who but a born Samaritan would have attempted to rejuvenate every sick and street-battered cur that strayed into his keeping?

The text of Miss Bellamy's will appeared eminently sane, save for the marriage clause. Craigon blew hot and cold as he reread it. For once he felt that resource to his pipe or cigarettes would be a futile proceeding. All his skill and diplomacy would never straighten out the tangle of events which had followed during the last few days.

On the word of Dr. Philip Brand, Chard would die shortly from the effects of the hytrophen inhalation. It had killed Rochart because there was no known remedy for its terrible aftermath.

Craigon was immeasurably sorry for Prosper. He could have pleaded eloquently for Chard's life if it had been at the mercy of a judge or jury; but over the treacherous hytrophen effects he had no power—he could not by any act of self-sacrifice change the N inevitable course of events.

The question of Miss Bellamy's fortune, amounting as it did to more than a million pounds sterling, interested him vastly. If Prosper failed to comply with the conditions of the will it would be applied to other uses. Within a month, according to the latest testimony, Prosper would be dead. In the mean time he would have to be notified of his aunt's demise and the conditions of her will.

It would then be seen whether the young nerve specialist cared to seek out the sister of Viscount Sturmiss and acquaint her of what had happened. Prosper was not overfond of money, but even a science-ridden young physician might make an effort to secure so colossal a fortune by asking the Honorable Marjory Hathaway to be his wife. The grim side of the situation was not lost upon Craigon. At any moment Prosper might see in the Medical Gazette the evidence of Rochart's terrible end and with it the certainty of his own dissolution.

CHAPTER IV.
FORTUNE SEEKS A BRIDE.

DR. PHILIP BRAND had found Craigon in his office staring rather bleakly at some typewritten sheets. The young solicitor looked up in suppressed amazement.

Brand drew breath, checked the rising words on his lips. and then very slowly took a seat. Craigon swung round in his pivot chair, his strong fighting face to the light.

Brand sighed. "Do you know anything of a girl named Vorne? Have you ever met her with Prosper?"

Brand was silent while the young solicitor made pellets from the corner of his blotting-pad, casting them thoughtfully into the waste-basket at his elbow.

Brand moistened his lips. "This Vorne woman called on Prosper a few hours ago with intent to blackmail."

"Phew!" Craigon lay back in his chair like a pugilist resting between the rounds. "Pretty hot; that!"

"Hot enough for her, poor devil!" Brand went on in an undertone. "She waited in his surgery while he went out to get a check-book."

Craigon groaned as one who had received a blow between the eyes. Brand lit a cigarette, casting the match into the fireplace as he smoked.

"Yes; he left her for a few minutes and when he returned she was babbling about flowers and perfumes and a man named Terry Nolan."

"The hytrophen," he said softly. "You know Prosper keeps the stuff anywhere when he's working. Miss Vorne mistook it for some kind of a scent-spray. She's about twenty-three years of age," he added as an afterthought.

Brand tapped the floor with his boot. "The hall attendant told me there was a scene between her and Prosper a few minutes before the accident. Of course the inhalation was a pure accident."

Craigon paced the office floor, a peculiar light in his eyes. He stopped sharply beside the brooding physician, his lips tight-set.

"Prosper packed her off to a nursing-home t in South Kensington. There was nothing else to do. Nice fix for the nursing-home—and Pros-per."

Craigon looked annoyed. "Miss Vorne knows something. Prosper is hardly the man to give checks for the mere asking. What do you make of it?"

Brand bit his nails. "It hardly matters. Miss Vorne is in the same boat with Prosper. If the hytrophen took her properly her time is limited."

"She may never recover her senses," Brand confessed. "I cannot say how this new gas will affect one of her temperament. Anyway, I'm going up to see her."

The physician's glance wandered to the copy of Miss Bellamy's will lying on the desk. He yawned a trifle wearily.

"You get a lot of dry, uninteresting stuff to read from time to time?" he ventured like one at a loss to proceed further.

Craigon's hand went out to the document in sudden recollection. "We get our share of work," he responded thoughtfully. "Not enough to drive us to the hytrophen, though," he added, anxious to turn the subject.

Brand moved as if to go. Craigon followed to the door. "This Vorne girl may give trouble. It won't hurt Prosper, considering he's going Rochart's way, but it would be better to keep her quiet while there's time."

"I'll visit her this evening." Brand nodded. "Something of her secret may escape her. We'll see."

Craigon watched him pass into the street, then returned to his desk. Ford was standing in the doorway, apprehensive and inclined to speak. Craigon settled himself in the chair, his brows knit, an uncertain glow in his dark eyes.

"I'm going down to Hampshire by the 3.30 from Waterloo, Ford. I'd like to sound Lord Sturmiss in regard to the conditions of Miss Bellamy's will."

"I'm afraid he's not going to count, Ford. Poor beggar's been experimenting with dangerous narcotics. We'll have to act for him, and pretty quickly, too."

"It's a big slice of business, Mr. Craigon," the clerk volunteered deferentially, a pile of typewritten papers before him.

Craigon frowned as Ford assisted him into his light traveling coat. "While I'm at lunch I shall go to Voissey's in the Strand. You'd better find out something of Lord Sturmiss's financial standing. I've a notion he's a poor dog. You can ring me up at the club about .30."

In the street Craigon paused a moment to permit himself a lightning survey of the situation. If he could induce Lord Sturmiss to acquiesce to the conditions imposed in Miss Bellamy's will he would have gained half the fight. Prosper might be harder game. Temperamentally he was difficult to analyze. Money never appealed to him.

If he were opposed to a marriage with the Hon. Marjory Hathaway Miss Bellamy's millions would be no more than brickbats in the balance.

Failing with Lord Sturmiss and Prosper, the money would go to various charities and medical organizations in England and America. To Denis Craigon the thought was tragic. Also, his fees would never have a chance.

His first shock awaited him at the club. Here he was informed at the telephone by Ford that Lord Sturmiss had quite recently cleared off some big outstanding debts, sporting and financial, and that his credit in the city was good.

Craigon hung up the receiver and proceeded in a taxi to Waterloo Station. The game was beginning to interest him. His experience with the British aristocracy had been limited in the past. But he knew that there existed a fairly wide circle of titled men and women to whom money as offered in Miss Bellamy's will would have no attraction whatever.

Besides, the question of time imperiled his chance. In a month—less—Prosper Chard would be dead.

To bring his commission to a successful issue he must practically force a marriage within the next fortnight at least. The point that disturbed him most was whether the Hon. Marjory Hathaway had ever met Dr. Prosper Chard.

The train journey to Hampshire seemed incredibly short, for Craigon's mind was too deeply occupied to note the passing hours. At Milton Cheyne he inquired his way to Lymington Hall, preferring to walk rather than endure the martyrdom of a slow-moving conveyance.

Wide stretches of heath land, broken by the undulating green of the famous Cheyne golf-links, brought a sigh of pleasure from Craigon as he emerged from the station. The air was sweet—laden with the scent of innumerable flowers and new-mown hay.

At the end of a long, pine-sheltered road he came suddenly upon the old red-brick facade of Lymington Hall. It was shut in by a thousand acres of park land; a forest of beech sheltered its eastern boundary, while its south wing overlooked the blue waters of the Solent.

Craigon passed the little red-eaved lodge and walked briskly up the elm-skirted avenue where the smell of burning larch and the loud note of a thrush intensified the stillness of the coming dusk.

A footman carried his card down a wide hall, decorated after the manner of Fragonard, leaving the slow-breathing Craigon in an anteroom that adjoined a large, glass-roofed conservatory. The fact that he had found Lord Sturmiss at home appeared to suggest gout or some chronic ailment as the reason. In all his readings of titled folk Craigon had never known a real lord to be at home to a first caller.

The young solicitor had not failed to impress upon the gorgeous attendant the importance of his mission. It was a fine house, Craigon told himself during the interval of waiting; parquet floors of real oak; pictures on the old Georgian stairs suggestive of Constable and Jan Steen. Craigon had once picked up a Corot for fifty guineas—he sold it afterward for three hundred—and his bargain had caused him to study the old and young masters with a view to future traffickings in the world of art.

The footman came back with the stealth of his kind. Lord Sturmiss would see Mr. Craigon without delay. The young solicitor followed across the hall into a small study that overlooked a charming expanse of lawn and beechwood groves.

A small but rather well-knit man of forty was standing near an open bookcase, a morocco-bound volume in his right hand. In other circumstances one might easily have mistaken him for a tutor or librarian. If the face possessed any charm it was that of the scholar. Hair that narrowly escaped a foxy reddishness, eyes brown and kindly, Craigon thought. He did not speak until Lord Sturmiss addressed him; then with legal directness he launched into the cause of his visit.

"I am particularly anxious for your lordship to glance over a copy of the late Miss Bellamy's will," he began, with a touch of nervousness in his voice. "There is a clause in it which may or may not meet with your approval."

"Was there any need to present it personally, Mr. Craigon? We have a postal service."

"There are so many things to explain," the young solicitor responded. "I take it that your lordship is acquainted with Dr. Prosper Chard, of Harley Street?"

Lord Sturmiss's head was bent slightly over the morocco-bound book in his hand. He looked up with a quick, apprehensive stare at Craigon, his lips slightly parted.

"About a year. I may add that he is regarded as the most promising nerve specialist in England."

Lord Sturmiss glanced at the copy of Miss Bellamy's will which Craigon had placed with some deference before him. His brown eyes seemed to skim the closely typed lines with the celerity of a proof-reader. During the swift perusal his eyes lit and sparkled, then clouded when the final clause was reached.

Craigon followed each shade of expression with palpitating interest, for upon this aristocrat's yea or nay the retaining of a huge fortune depended. He watched the thin, almost ascetic hands tighten over Miss Bellamy's last testament.

Then, before his mind had seized the meaning of the cloud-mist in Lord Sturmiss's eye, the typewritten sheet was returned to him across the table.

"It occurs to me, Mr. Craigon, that Miss Bellamy was a well-meaning but ill-advised old lady."

"Your lordship is not inclined then to view the conditions of the will with favor?" Craigon asked.

"Most certainly not. My sister's future is not at the disposal of every American eccentric. To be frank with you, Mr. Craigon, I do not think my sister has ever met Dr. Chard."

"Your lordship has no intention of consulting the Hon. Marjory Hathaway in the matter?"

Lord Sturmiss turned one or two leaves of the morocco-bound book at random. The ghost of a smile haunted his face.

"Marjory, Hathaway has a sense of humor, Mr. Craigon. You may approach her by letter if you think fit. But I warn you that time and postage will be wasted."

Craigon caught his breath; a look of almost savage disappointment was in his eyes.

"The sum you mention is large enough to attract half the British peerage," Lord Sturmiss admitted. "I am afraid, however, that its forfeiture will not cause me or my sister any uneasiness."

CHAPTER V.
THE MYSTERY OF THE VIAL.

CRAIGON turned in the path and looked back at the hall, now indistinct in the growing dusk, its many windows flashing suddenly as the lights were switched on in the south rooms. A peculiar stillness hung about the elm-shadowed drive—a stillness made manifest by the sound of a near stream gushing and racing over a flint-strewn bed.

In spite of the incense-laden air and the nerve-resting calm which Jay over everything, Craigon experienced the cold inertia that follows defeat. He could not understand Lord Sturmiss's refusal of so splendid a bait. If a chance of retaining Miss Bellamy's millions existed it now lay with the Hon. Marjory Hathaway. The more he brooded over the matter, the more confident he felt that Lord Sturmiss was a stiff-necked aristocrat of the most difficult kind.

Five million dollars represented a million English sovereigns—money that would never cross the Atlantic, but would go to endow certain uninteresting philanthropies.

Craigon wondered as he walked slowly to the station whether Miss Bellamy was really insane when she drew up her will or whether she had conceived the difficult conditions in a spirit of malice or irony. On arriving at the station he found that he had a long wait for the train back to Waterloo.

In the mean time he could only speculate in a dejected way on the result of Dr. Brand's visit to Miss Vorne at the South Kensington nursing-home. Whatever information the doctor succeeded in extracting from the semiconscious blackmailer would be of small interest in the present state of affairs. Craigon could therefore only grit his teeth at the possible loss of Miss Bellamy's money.

Arriving at Waterloo, he reached his office late. Ford had gone, but had left a note calling his attention to a letter from Dr. Brand.

I saw Miss Vorne this afternoon. She has a temperature, and talks about Renault Eames, the financier, who was found dead in his bedroom quite recently. She mentions Chard, too, in connection with the affair.

Of course it is purely illusory, for how could Prosper have been near the house when he was under the influence of that poison gas.

Craigon put the letter in his pocket carefully; then, with a cigar between his teeth, he fell into a fit of brooding. Why had Prosper Chard attempted to meet Miss Vorne's demands for money? The circumstances looked queer. Or was it that Chard in his nerve-rattled condition had fallen an easy victim to her threats?

In any case the matter was hardly likely to affect Miss Bellamy's million pounds. Dead or alive Prosper was of little service, since Lord Sturmiss had proved unapproachable.

There was still Marjory Hathaway to be reckoned with, Craigon approached the typewriter thoughtfully. Slowly, very slowly, he began a long note to the sister of Lord Sturmiss. Craigon was not given to sentimental maunderings or literary effusions, but the document, when completed, contained all the passion and pathos of one who saw a four-figure commission vanishing into thin air.

The young lawyer appealed to the honorable Marjory in a spirit of Christian charity. He pointed out that Prosper was the one bright star of his profession. The cash side of the question was lightly touched upon. Five million dollars was neither here nor there to a lady of the honorable Marjory's standing. The sum would merely permit her to indulge her inherent philanthropic impulses, et cetera...

It was an epistle likely to appeal to a young lady inexperienced in the handling of millions. Craigon posted it on his way from the office to his flat in Bloomsbury.

That night he slept like the good lawyer he was, dreaming of colossal commissions likely to eventuate should the sister of Lord Sturmiss accept Prosper as a husband. He came down came down to a hearty breakfast next morning, anxious to see Prosper and sound the physician in regard to his feelings toward Marjory Hathaway. The more he pondered, the more certain he became that the pair were known to each other; or why had the eminently sane Miss Bellamy inserted the marriage clause in the will?

At the office he received a telephone call from Dr. Brand. Would Craigon come at once to Harley Street? An unforeseen incident had occurred in connection with Prosper's affairs.

Craigon took the first taxi that offered, wondering whether the incident referred to had any bearing on Miss Bellamy's will; for as yet no opportunity of informing Prosper of the peculiar conditions of the legacy had presented itself.

Dr. Brand met him in the reception-room. The physician's manner showed signs of overwork and mental strain. With some deliberation of manner he closed his door, after Craigon's entry. "A man whom I suspect to be a police agent called here this morning rather early and inquired for Prosper."

"Yes. He wanted to know where Chard was. He showed me a small gold-topped smelling-bottle bearing the initials P. C. in monogram. He asked me if I had ever seen it in Chard's possession."

"I evaded his question—rather clumsily, I fancy. Of course you know he referred to the smelling-bottle that was found beside Eames, the financier, who was found dead in his room quite recently."

"What do you make of the affair. Brand? How did the bottle get into Eames's hands?"

"He once underwent a course of Chard's treatment. Yet I never heard of Prosper presenting any of his patients with gold-topped smelling-bottles. Between ourselves, Craigon I have a suspicion that Prosper is secretly engaged to the old fellow's daughter—Nora Eames."

"Several times in the park and twice at the theater. I must confess," Brand laughed, "that his taste in girls is superior to his taste in gases. I don't think I ever saw a more beautiful creature."

Craigon saw his prospective commission vanishing into thin air. It seemed incredible to him that Prosper could have been associated in any way with Renault Eames's death. Yet within the last day or two Chard had been sought out by two different persons seeking to implicate him in the financier's mysterious end. If Prosper were drawn into the affair, even by the merest accident, Marjory Hathaway would repudiate any attempt at a union. On the other hand, if Prosper were really in love with Nora Eames. Craigon's plans would count for nothing.

Brand caught the solicitor's eye unawares. "It doesn't seem worth bothering about," he said with a slight flush. "Innocent or guilty. Prosper's days are short. He will die as Rochart died; science cannot save him."

At the sound of a motor-siren outside Craigon turned to the window. His face blanched suddenly; his half-frantic gesture brought Brand to his feet.

Before the physician could reply Prosper slipped from the electric car and gained the steps of the house. The hall attendant admitted him with magic suddenness.

Instinctively the young specialist swung into the waiting-room, his face flushed, his eyes kindling after his long ride. He hailed the two spellbound men with unusual gusto.

"Been for a run to Brighton; got quite an appetite!" he declared with a laugh. "My inner man is clamoring for beefsteak puddings. How's Mr. Denis Craigon?"

"Rotten!" the young lawyer responded fervently. "I feel as though I'd sniffed hytrophen," he added with the ghost of a grimace.

"I'm a new man since yesterday," he remarked. "Got rid of that helmet feeling last night." He thrust out a long, muscle-packed arm for Brand to feel.

"Nothing wrong with a grip like that!" he cried, squeezing his hand until the physician squirmed under the force of it.

The young solicitor fidgeted uneasily. He wanted to be alone with Brand, even for a few moments, to ascertain whether this sudden return to health on Prosper's part was real or were merely one of the delusive symptoms which assailed the victims of hytrophen poisoning.

Brand's face was almost sphinxlike in its immobility. No consulting specialist ever held himself so rigidly aloof from expressing a direct opinion on a patient's condition. He merely glanced at his watch and then at his car standing outside.

"I'd like to run into the country, too. Prosper, if you don't mind," he said after a while. "I've been rather busy the last day or so. Craigon will stay to lunch, I'm sure."

The young solicitor accepted the invitation as Brand, after briefly advising Prosper of the number of patients he had seen during his absence, took his leave somewhat hurriedly.

Craigon followed the exuberant Prosper into the dining-room, where a meal had been set out by Mrs. Kenyon. The young nerve specialist placed himself at the head of the table, affecting a sprightliness that startled Craigon. He was not sure, even yet, that Prosper was himself; he was certain only that Rochart had exhibited similar symptoms only a few weeks before dying.

"The air of Sussex agrees with most people," he ventured, helping himself to some claret at his elbow. "That hytrophen gas is getting in its good work, I suppose?"

Prosper laughed, his soup-plate drawn close in. "I'm a new man, Craigon! Fit to fight for my life!"

Craigon munched some bread slowly. "You might have to yet," he volunteered pensively, and was silent.

Prosper put down his spoon with a clatter. "What do you mean?" he asked, a sudden hoarseness manifesting itself in his voice.

"I'm referring to Miss Vorne. She has been babbling about the Renault Eames affair to Brand. The gas has not smothered her tongue. She knows something!" Craigon attacked some cold mutton in a desultory fashion, as one forcing himself to the task of eating.

Prosper pushed away his plate and drank feverishly from the wine-filled tumbler before him. Then, clearing his throat, he began to study the young solicitor.

"Why didn't you send for the police instead of rushing, for your checkbook?" Craigon retorted. "You can't play that game with impunity."

Prosper clenched his hands. "I was worried at the time, and the woman frightened me. I—I think she's a clairvoyant or something," he muttered.

"Buncombe! She's got hold of a story," the solicitor declared bluntly; "and she's going to make things squeal when she comes to her senses."

Prosper was silent. It was as if a blank had come over his mind. His fingers tapped the wine-glass, giving out a desultory ringing sound that seemed to irritate Craigon.

"If there's anything in Vorne's story, I think you ought to confide in me, Chard. You may rely upon me dealing with her if she's faking a yarn with a view to blackmail."

Prosper drew breath uncertainly. "She, swears to having seen me come out of Renault Eames's house about the time of his death." The young specialist spoke with visible effort. His cheeks had grown red under the stress of mental agitation.

Craigon sat like one apprehending a story. His eyes lit suddenly. "Her yarn is true, Prosper, or it isn't," he ventured. "We'll have to face her in a day or two."

Prosper sipped more wine. "My recent experiment with the hytrophen caused an unlooked-for break in my habits. It set me walking the streets at midnight."

Craigon almost collapsed in his chair. Prosper passed him some wine quickly. The sight of the solicitor's pallid lips appealed to him.

"I felt like you, Craigon, when I heard of my nocturnal wanderings. I've a notion, too," the young physician went on; "that there's a grain of truth in Miss Vorne's statement."

"But Eames's death!" the lawyer gasped. "Have you no recollection of being in his house? No recollection of leaving your own?"

"Not the slightest. Presumably I left by the front door. It's all dream-work to me."

Prosper met the solicitor's glance in half-amused wonder. "I cannot say how that bottle came into his possession. Some of my patients may have transferred it. You know how articles are sometimes missing from one's hall and waiting-rooms. People come to me who consider it their duty to take away surreptitiously some memento of their visit."

Prosper laughed somewhat mirthlessly. "Nothing is sacred—books, china ornaments, and even surgical instruments disappear. It puzzled me, though, how that smelling-bottle got into the hands of Renault Eames."

Craigon was now content to drop the subject. About Eames's death he cared little, so long as Prosper was not implicated. He leaned across the table, his fingers drawn tight about the stem of his wine-glass.

Prosper appeared interested. "Yes; but he's always so hard up on account of his sister's extravagances."

Craigon suppressed a whistle. "I rather fancied she was a sensible kind of a girl," he said lamely. "Fond of bazaars and assisting the village poor."

Prosper eyed him shrewdly, a curious smile hovering about his lips. "I think we had better let Sturmiss and his sister alone, Craigon. They're not in my set, thank Heaven!"

The young solicitor laughed, then attacked with a certain wolfish gusto the plate of chicken and ham before him.

"Sturmiss has come into a pot of money within the last few days," he declared. "He's paying off his debts at a great rate."

"The honorable Marjory spent fifty thousand pounds in the last two years." Chard said coldly. "Sturmiss must have acquired a gold-mine."

A sick taste came into the solicitor's mouth. He felt that Miss Bellamy's millions had no further interest for him. "Does Marjory Hathaway gamble?" he asked almost plaintively. "Surely there must be some mistake. Chard!"

"You don't care for her?" the solicitor hazarded, his head thrown back in wonderment. "A big, handsome woman, they say, good-hearted and—and passionately fond of children."

Craigon felt that he could add little more in praise of the woman he had never seen or heard of until a few hours before.

Prosper frowned and screwed round uneasily in his chair until his eyes were almost level with the other's.

"To be frank with you, Craigon, I am not a bit interested in Sturmiss or his sister. As a student of mental therapy I should say that you are suffering an obsession of—" He paused, his mouth twitching strangely.

Drawing a copy of Miss Bellamy's will from his pocket, he placed it deliberately before Chard.

CHAPTER VI.
WHAT CRAIGON FOUND.

IT seemed to Craigon as if a great fear had come into the young physician's face—the look of a man staring at an unfathomable tragedy.

Prosper put the document aside, while his eyes seemed to glow at the points, his lips contracting in dry, speechless amazement.

"It came yesterday," Craigon admitted. "After your recent nerve shocks with that hytrophen gas I thought the news ought to be broken gradually. It's a bit of a surprise, you'll admit."

Prosper sat very still in his chair, voiceless now, his hands resting stiffly on the table. In all his life he had never dreamed of riches. Wealth had always implied a certain state of crude affluence wherein certain people had power to exhibit their idiosyncrasies to envious mobs.

His one ambition in life had been healing the sick and the mentally deranged. Only recently he had attempted at the risk of his life and reputation to prove the therapeutic and hypnotic value of hytrophen. He saw in the gas qualities which promised relief to millions of nerve sufferers. His whole physical being was wrapped in his calling.

Even Aunt Bellamy had become to him an indefinite personage who wrote intermittently from New York. He had never imagined her in the light of a benefactress, had never permitted the thought of her vast wealth to interfere with his scheme of things.

Craigon watched him with an interest that was almost pathetic, his hands clenched before him.

"I never met your aunt. Chard," he said in a scarcely controlled voice; "but I know she was a good woman, a religious. God-fearing person incapable of an evil thought or deed."

The young physician stabbed him with his eyes. "Professional cant gets on my nerves, Craigon. Aunt Gertrude was all right. This thing"—he rapped the copy of her will with his knuckles—"is a piece of death-bed lunacy. It's impossible—criminal almost."

"Don't let the thing worry you now. Chard," he pleaded. "We'll talk it over to-morrow. Sleep on it and give the idea a chance."

The young physician laughed harshly. "I may tell you, Craigon, that Sturmiss is a mystery to me. There is hardly a club in London that would consider his nomination."

"My dear boy," Craigon broke in; "no one is asking you to marry Lord Sturmiss. It is merely requested that you—er—go through the ceremony of marriage with his sister," he almost blurted out.

"It's such an infernal lot of money to lose, Chard! Think of it, my dear fellow—five million dollars to be picked up for the merest little inconvenience in the world!"

Prosper's brow darkened. "You are not quite yourself to-day, Craigon," he intimated sternly. "How can you speak of the marriage sacrament in such terms?"

He rose from the table without a glance at the crestfallen solicitor. In the doorway he paused a moment to take breath.

"My affairs are in your hands, Craigon. I must therefore request you not to broach the subject of my aunt's will again. The terms are almost abhorrent to me."

Craigon saw the futility of further discussion. For once in his life he accepted defeat with a silent grin. Yet on his way back to his office anger almost swept aside his prudence and cunning.

Of course Prosper had a right to despise Lord Sturmiss if he chose. But why, in the name of reason, had Miss Bellamy drawn up such a soul-provoking will?

Then he remembered leaving the copy of the will in the dining-room at Harley Street. The thought caused him to swear softly. Retracing his steps, he touched the door-bell and was admitted almost instantly by the attendant.

In the hall Craigon's face flashed instinctively to Chard's letter-rack. It was empty.

On the table below was a copy of the Medical Gazette, which had evidently arrived by the midday post. His mind raced back to the story of Rochart's horrible death, which, according to Brand, was told in detail in the periodical before him.

Craigon turned to the attendant briefly. "Kindly mention to Dr. Chard that I left a typewritten statement on the dining-room table. I should be glad to have it again."

The attendant departed, leaving the solicitor standing in the hall. In a flash Craigon had seized the Medical Gazette, cramming it hurriedly into his inner coat-pocket.

He wondered why Brand had not prevented the posting of the Gazette to Prosper. A note to the publisher would have been enough. Nothing would be gained by allowing Chard to read his own death-warrant.

To the waiting Craigon the hall-page appeared to be unduly slow in conveying his message. Voices came from the dining-room—Prosper's and the page's—as if some knotty point concerning the solicitor's visit were in question.

The young specialist appeared suddenly in the hall, followed by the somber-visaged page. In the shift of an eye Craigon scented trouble. Something had happened.

The young physician stood regarding him with strangely twinkling eyes. But Craigon noticed that the mouth was tightly shut.

"I have a complaint to make," Prosper began quietly. "I mentioned to you, Craigon, some little time ago, how my house suffers from the friendly depredations of visitors and patients. Books, papers, pamphlets are taken without permission," he went on grimly. "I am determined that the depredations shall cease!"

Chard spoke without anger or haste, but Craigon felt that the physician's eyes were riveted on the telltale bulge in his coat-pocket.

"You have just appropriated the current issue of the Medical Gazette," Prosper insisted good-humoredly. "I wonder what you would say if I entered your office and decamped with some of your legal works of reference!"

"I really had no intention of keeping the Gazette," he said with a forced smile; "until you asked for it. Now —I intend to read and return it at leisure. Good-by, Chard, old boy!"

He was out of the house before the astonished physician or attendant could bar his exit. With the slamming of the street door Prosper broke into laughter.

"He's a bit touched over something that happened at dinner," he explained to the open-mouthed hall attendant. "It isn't often a lawyer steals things of so little value to himself or others."

In a blinding fit of anger and mortification Craigon hurried to his office. He had not yet recovered the copy of Miss Bellamy's will, so his return visit to Harley Street had not been entirely successful.

Henceforth Chard would regard him as a cheap book-thief. He could never hope to explain his conduct. The question that now troubled him was whether Chard would send for a fresh copy of the Gazette or in his pique allow it to pass from his mind altogether.

Arriving at the office, he encountered Ford in the doorway. The clerk placed a telegram before him. "Came about ten minutes ago, sir. I assume that it's from the Hon. Marjory Hathaway."

Craigon nervously tore open the envelope; then his eyes raced over the contents:

AM PREPARED TO AGREE WITH CONDITIONS OF MISS BELLAMY'S WILL. EXPECT TO BE IN TOWN TO-DAY. WILL CALL. MARJORY HATHAWAY.

Craigon dropped into a seat, a lunatic desire to laugh catching him by the throat.

"There's going to be war. Ford!" he gasped after he had recovered slightly. "And I'm going to force the fighting."

The clerk palpitated behind his employer's chair, scarcely daring to breathe. Something in his silence struck on Craigon. Turning sharply, he met Ford's shifting glance.

Craigon looked puzzled. "Her name was mentioned at the inquest," he said after a while. "Has she been here?"

"No, sir. It's known now that she and Dr. Chard had seen a great deal of each other up till her father's death. I merely suggest the fact, sir," Ford added pensively. "One never knows how it may bear upon the present situation."

"It proves, anyway, that Miss Bellamy was staring mad when she drew up that confounded will! What on earth was Lord Sturmiss and his people to her?"

The elevator-boy's head appeared in the doorway suddenly. In his right hand was a gilt-edged visiting-card. Craigon took it with a blind gesture of impatience, his eyes scanning the inscription:

"She's in the waiting-room, sir," the boy informed him. "And in a bit of a hurry, too. Got to catch a train at 4.50."

CHAPTER VII.
TWO WOMEN.

A BIG, blond woman with wheat-red hair and a flashing smile! She entered with the stride of a huntress bringing an undeniable atmosphere of racing-paddocks and the field.

Some men would have voted her a modern Diana. Her skin was certainly beautiful, her eyes suffused with the healthy brilliance which comes from an outdoor life.

Despite the fact that she was hardly in her twenty-third year, the Hon. Marjory Hathaway impressed Craigon as a business woman with no false scruples concerning her mission.

"I must apologize for my brother's peremptory manner, Mr. Craigon," she began. "I think it would have been better had you seen me instead."

She approached the subject unblushingly enough, her big, brilliant eyes exploring the narrow, stuffy office and document-littered table. "Is Dr. Chard here?" she asked. She moved to the seat indicated by the blushing Craigon and drew off her gloves with the air of one about to sign a treaty.

Craigon straightened his shoulders, his mind racing at the double in his feverish desire to bring the situation into line. Even with Marjory Hathaway in favor of the marriage, he saw no hope of inducing Prosper to become a willing party.

"I have not yet had time to acquaint Dr. Chard of your intentions," he told her blandly. "Your telegram only reached us about an hour ago."

"I'll bet anything he'll come if you manipulate that telephone of yours, Mr. Craigon," she assured him smilingly. "I don't think he's got a bigger iron in the fire than Miss Bellamy's. Shall I ring him up?"

Her assurance belonged exclusively to the sporting world. Her whole manner spoke of the business in hand as a mere gamble wherein she and a certain medical man named Prosper Chard stood to win one million pounds sterling. The stakes were too large for ordinary mortals to ignore. Her ungloved hand pointed to the receiver.

Craigon protested mildly. "If you will trust me in the matter I will arrange a meeting between you and Dr. Chard within forty-eight hours," he promised.

Again she smiled. "Really there's no hurry, Mr. Craigon. I am merely anxious to hear a few things about Dr. Chard."

"At a bazaar somewhere in the East End when I was slumming with Lady Mary Tolliver. His specialty, if I may use the word, Mr. Craigon, is nerves: eh?"

"Chard's the only man to-day." the solicitor assured her. "He brings the dead to life and makes the aged feel young."

"I wish"—she contemplated Craigon thoughtfully—"he could have galvanized to life three of the horses I backed yesterday. Is he fond of horses?"

"Passionately," Craigon assured her. "He was almost buying one the other day, only a friend persuaded him to get a car instead."

The Hon. Marjory Hathaway drew on her gloves slowly, deliberately flicked a speck from her skirt, and then looked suddenly at the young solicitor.

"I have heard of another young lady in connection with Dr. Chard," she said coldly. "Nora Eames. Am I right?"

"I became aware of the rumor only a few hours ago. I don't think Nora Eames need worry us much."

"The only things I worry about. Mr. Craigon, are my bets." She sighed and rose to go. "I suppose"—again her eyes darted over him—"you're attending to this Bellamy affair on a commission basis?"

Her question came like the stroke of a whip to Craigon. He suppressed himself with difficulty. "Your ladyship may depend upon my integrity." he assured her in grim tones. "The question of commission may rest until we have earned it."

The honorable Marjory explored him carefully. "Miss Bellamy," she hazarded; "was a rather curious person. Mr. Craigon?"

A silence followed in which the astute young lawyer had ample leisure to study anew the gray-eyed sister of Lord Sturmiss. He had no desire to press for further information concerning her relationship with Prosper's aunt. Neither did she betray the slightest curiosity concerning Prosper's affairs in Harley Street.

Craigon felt that it would be superfluous to enlighten her. Two people engaged in rescuing a huge fortune from other legatees were hardly likely to display an unwarranted interest in each other—for a while at least, Craigon thought.

He merely intimated at the end of his swift cogitations his willingness to bring Prosper to his office at the same hour to-morrow. Would she come?

She laughed lightly. "You may depend on me, Mr. Craigon. At the present moment I'm rather busy with my horse, Malvolio."

"Yes, and we've got a sprained foot already through overwork, Mr. Craigon. Let me give you a tip; don't back Malvolio."

She paused in the doorway, her eyes kindling with health and good humor. "Chard, at this time to-morrow, then, shall we say?"

He assured her that Prosper would be there at all costs. She passed out almost as swiftly as she had entered. Craigon touched the bell. Ford entered, a scared look in his eyes.

"A fine wife for a medical man, eh. Ford?" he said grimly. "How long do you think Miss Bellamy's share will last her?"

"Of course," Craigon went on, pacing the office floor; "it's no affair of mine whether she puts the money on horses or flying-machines."

Craigon's features became almost blood-red. His hands clenched instinctively. "Marjory Hathaway is willing to accept the conditions of the will. If I can get Prosper here to-morrow he's going to sign an agreement to marry her this day week."

Craigon looked at his watch. "I shall see her at once. She knows something about Prosper's visit to her house the night her father died."

Ford displayed further evidence of a judicial mind by refraining from questioning his slightly excited employer. He assisted Craigon into his frock coat and stood by the door almost subserviently as the solicitor passed out into the street.

A taxi took Craigon to Eames's house in Cardigan Place. Craigon had often halted near its gorgeous entrance to speculate upon the happy genius of the great financier. Mrs. Renault Eames had died some years before, leaving her only child, Nora, to the care of her husband.

The sudden death of Eames, coming like a bolt from the blue, had threatened the existence of certain industrial organizations. Wild rumors were afloat regarding his exact financial position. At a late hour it had been discovered that his affairs were in a singularly precarious condition.

Craigon was not concerned with Renault Eames's lost fortune; his one idea, as he sent in his card to Miss Eames, was to ascertain if possible her exact relations with Prosper Chard and to find out the nature of the young physician's visit on the night of her father's death.

A few minutes passed before the servant returned with the intimation mat Miss Eames was at home.

Craigon followed into a reception-room designed and furnished after the manner of scores of West End residences. The acrid flavor of leather and dried flowers seemed to penetrate the apartment with some unforgettable story of the past. Craigon had never been able to look upon feminine beauty without some warmth and excitement. Nora Eames was standing near the open window, her head bent slightly forward. And in that moment the almost world-weary young solicitor told himself that she was the most beautiful girl he had ever beheld.

The murky glow of London sunlight fell on her like an invisible, soft hand, touching her throat and face, gleaming covertly in the dark masses of her hair.

"I left Prosper about an hour ago," he began with the easy familiarity of his kind. "I ought to tell you first, perhaps, that I am his legal representative and—friend."

Nora Eames put out her hand and allowed him to hold it for a moment. Then her face seemed to harden slightly, although he detected a subconscious trembling of the lip as she spoke.

"I have not heard from Prosper for a whole week, Mr. Craigon; not since—" She paused as if reluctant to go on.

He nodded sympathetically. "It has been a very tragic business all round. Miss Eames; not only in your case, but in Prosper's also."

"Is he ill. Mr. Craigon? Why has he not written or called. I have waited so long." There was a note of repression in her voice—a sense of unspoken calamity and terror.

Craigon drew himself together as one about to plunge into uncertain depths. "Prosper's trouble hinges mainly on his rather surreptitious visit to this house on the night of your father's sad death. Miss Eames."

A crimson stain leaped to her cheek. To the watchful solicitor it was as if a draft of wind had suffused her. "His coming here at that hour was my fault entirely, Mr. Craigon. I was almost beside myself with fear."

"You said nothing of his visit here at the inquiry, Miss Eames." Then noting the quick glance of fear in her eyes he hastened to reassure her. "I am in Prosper's confidence. No doubt you have heard him mention my name?"

"Very often, Mr. Craigon. I know he has implicit faith in you," she said hastily.

"Thank you. But now"—he paused with a sudden intake of breath as if concentrating his mind in a certain direction—"we come to the cause of your sending for Prosper. It was on your father's account, no doubt?"

"Yes. I had entered his room, having just returned from a theater-party, and found him lying on the floor quite unconscious."

"Yes. I recognized his voice distinctly. You are aware that he has a small telephone in his bedroom."

"No!" Craigon almost burst out. "I was not aware of the fact, Miss Eames. Please go on."

Nora Eames pressed her hands tightly together. The glow had gone from her cheek.

"Fraser, the butler, insisted on sending for the police. I begged him to be silent until Prosper came He promised and went down-stairs the moment Prosper entered the house.

"I explained my father's condition as we passed into his room. Then"—Nora walked to the window, her hand pressed to her side—"the strangest thing happened, Mr. Craigon! I pointed to my father's unconscious figure on the floor and begged him to make an examination to see if he were still alive."

A little stifled sob came from her as she leaned toward the wide embrasured window, her left hand covering her temple as if to shield her eyes from the instraying light.

"Instead of granting my request, Prosper took a book from a shelf and sat very quietly in a chair. His manner frightened me. Not once did he look into my eyes or answer my questions direct, but continued turning the leaves of the book and smiling softly to himself.

"I knelt beside his chair and again pointed to my father's insensible figure. I implored him to do something ¦ without delay."

Nora pushed wide the window overlooking a narrow strip of lawn, her breath coming in sharp expulsions. "I begged by all the names that were dear to me for him to administer a restorative—anything that might hold the spark of life which I still fancied might burn."

She covered her face in the deep shadow of the window drapings. In the tense silence he heard the loud sobs that seemed to stifle her.

"Not by a word or sign," she went on after the paroxysm of grief had subsided; "did he acknowledge my presence or the presence of my father lying before me. Was this the Prosper, I asked myself, in whom the love cf science and healing was more than life itself? Was this the man who was prepared to sacrifice everything in the interests of his profession?"

A more impulsive man than Craigon would have poured out the story of Chard's peculiar condition at the time of her father's death. Whatever explanation he might have offered on Prosper's behalf was checked by the knowledge of the young physician's attitude to Miss Bellamy's will. Nothing would be gained now by telling Nora Eames that on the night of her father's death Prosper was in a highly hypnotic condition induced by the experimental inhalation of a new-found gas.

He could not tell her that for three days the young nerve specialist had remained almost mentally inert under its influence. She would understand instantly and would seek him out to offer her sympathy and further pledges of love.

Such a prospect did not win Craigon's instant approval. He must think well before committing himself to any statement. The situation was fraught with terrible consequences to himself and others.

Brand had declared that within a month Prosper would die from the after-effects of the hytrophen, just as Rochart had died. Better, he told himself, that Nora Eames should re--main estranged from Chard. The end would not be so terrible if he kept them apart now.

Nora appeared determined to impart to Prosper's friend and legal adviser the last of the strange drama enacted in her father's house. Craigon merely bent his head as she proceeded.

"In the midst of my pleadings Prosper rose suddenly and without a word left the house. Just before going he left—why, I don't know—a vial on the table.

"Then I sent for Dr. Hermiston, another Harley Street physician, who came almost instantly. But in the mean time, thinking that Prosper had left the medicine for me to administer, I gave my father several inhalations from the vial. When Dr. Hermiston came he could do nothing. Father was dead."

Craigon looked up quickly. "Did you confide in Dr. Hermiston the story of Prosper's visit. Miss Eames?" he asked.

"No, no! How could I reveal his conduct to any one? I have kept the story from every living creature. At the police inquiry I was silent about his visit. Yet—I think he might have saved my father."

"You did well. Miss Eames. Nothing was to be gained by repeating the story to any one. Something was wrong, no doubt, with Prosper. We had better not inquire too closely." he added vaguely. "We may attribute his strange condition to an extra glass of wine or stimulants."

"But he is so temperate," Nora pleaded. "Alcohol or spirits he very rarely touches. The thought of his face comes back to me—the ghostly look in his eyes frightens me even now."

Craigon refrained from further comment. He had seen Prosper returning to his senses after the hytrophen experiment, and the look in the young physician's face had made an unforgettable impression on his mind.

CHAPTER VIII.
AGONIES IN WAIT.

CRAIGON'S sympathy counted for little in the present crisis, since Prosper's life would end within a few weeks at least. As the solicitor walked back to his office his mind was occupied by the almost Dantesque picture which Nora had drawn of the hytrophen-hypnotized Prosper entering the room where Renault Eames lay dying.

The thought of the young physician sitting immovable in his chair while Nora begged and entreated him to attend her father struck into his imagination with live force. Nora Eames would never realize the true cause of Prosper's mental and physical inertia during that eventful period. Dr. Brand might tell her some day, perhaps, if good or ill fortune carried him into Nora's confidence; she never would learn it from Denis Craigon.

The young solicitor preferred to avert tragedies rather than create them. If the certainty of a long life had been vouchsafed Prosper Chard he would have acted differently in regard to Miss Bellamy's money. Nothing could be gained now by telling Nora the truth about the young physician's conduct.

Chard could not hope to escape the fate which had overtaken Rochart. Prosper and the French savant had experimented with the same deadly radium gas. Rochart, like Chard, had exhibited signs of physical well-being after the inhalation. But as the days passed a change came and he had succumbed after almost unendurable agonies.

Brand had admitted that Prosper must go the same way. The effect of the gas was slow but none the less fatal. Craigon had read the article in the Medical Gazette dealing with Rochart's end. Every line interested him because in the Frenchman's sufferings he saw something of what must happen to Prosper as the days advanced.

He arrived in Harley Street tired and somewhat disconsolate after his interview with Nora Eames. He had intended returning to his office, but at the last moment felt that Prosper must be made to observe the clause in his aunt's will. There should be no further misunderstandings.

The hall attendant had not forgotten the purloined Medical Gazette. He admitted the young solicitor with the deference reserved for thieves and pronounced kleptomaniacs.

Prosper had just returned from an important consultation with Sir Malcolm Lewn, a distinguished general practitioner and nerve specialist. Craigon stepped lightly into the reception room, turned thoughtfully for a moment to see that the attendant had closed the door, and then seated himself opposite Chard.

A smile lit up the corners of the young physician's mouth. He regarded Craigon good-humoredly.

"Now that I am feeling better, I intend calling on her myself this evening," he said lightly. . "You found her well?"

Craigon pulled his under lip thoughtfully. "I don't know that young ladies feel particularly bright after attending their fathers' funerals," he vouchsafed.

His hand trembled slightly as it rested on the chair-back. Imperceptibly, almost, his face took on a grayish pallor that changed swiftly to its normal hue.

"Do you know, Craigon, I feel a white mist rise up before me at times. It seizes the heart and clouds the mind temporarily." He paused, steadying himself against the chair. "You were talking about Miss Eames," he went on after a while.

"There was a very simple funeral, Chard, and you were not there. I rather fancy you were expected to attend."

Prosper stood rigid beside the chair now, as one in the grip of some terrible uneasiness. His lips quivered slightly.

"The whole thing slipped me somehow, Craigon. Of course I ought to have been there. It is too late now for apologies—too late!"

Craigon leaned back in his chair, flicking the tip of his cigarette. "I think that big dose of hytrophen you took played up with you, Chard," said he sympathetically. "You know what happened the night you went to Eames's house?"

Prosper's eyes took on a luminous quality that resembled reflected fire. Then his brow cleared suddenly.

The solicitor nodded quietly. "I don't think you'd lie to save your life, Prosper, although you might to give another fellow a chance."

The young physician waived the point impatiently. "Did Nora mention anything," he asked; "in connection with—with—"

"Your visit?" Craigon put in. "Oh, yes; we got at the bottom of the whole business, my boy. You were in Renault's room at the moment of his death—and really one cannot congratulate you on your behavior."

Something between a groan and a cry broke from Chard. He turned to the half-open window as if about to swoon.

Craigon was beside Prosper instantly, his hand resting on the physician's stooping shoulder. "Steady, Chard! It's a nasty affair. We shall see our way out of it shortly. Steady does it!"

The young physician sought the chair that Craigon placed before him, a ghostly smile on his lips.

"What does Nora think of my conduct?" he asked hoarsely. "Did you tell her I was under the influence of hytrophen at the time, or did you leave her to think me quite mad?"

"My dear boy, she understands perfectly," Craigon half stammered. "She is really the sweetest girl in the world—sees the thing in its proper light. In a day or two you may explain the affair more thoroughly. In the mean time "—he paused to regard the white-lipped Chard beside him—"I must beg you to reconsider your attitude toward Marjory Hathaway, Prosper. A million pounds is going to waste!"

Prosper clenched his hands. "I gave you my answer. Good Heavens! Can't you let things alone?" he almost sobbed.

Craigon straightened his shoulders suddenly, took a few paces toward the open window, and sat down again. "You know that Nora Eames has been left practically penniless, Chard. Her father's affairs are in a hopeless state. She stands now to face the world alone. Her creditors, I may tell you, are yelping like wolves about the house!"

The young physician interrupted almost fiercely. "I have money; send the creditors to me. I can at least help her out of her present difficulties."

Craigon shook his head. "You couldn't meet the creditors of Renault Eames if you poured the gross earnings of Harley Street into their maws. It's a matter of many thousands. Besides." he added with a touch of pity in his voice, "your own physical condition bids fair to keep you out of harness for some time. And you're not financially strong, as things go."

Chard turned wearily in the chair as the reception-room door opened suddenly. The hall attendant appeared and placed a copy of the Medical Gazette on the table. Before Craigon could stay him Prosper's fingers had closed over it.

"Your anxiety to keep this thing cut of my way has sharpened my curiosity," he declared slowly. "For the last day or two Brand has also been playing the fool in the same respect. Now—we'll see!"

Craigon had seen sentence of death passed on criminals in the dock; had often studied the facial tremors, the lightning flash of despair which lit their eyes. Chard's face as he ran on through the Medical Gazette revealed scarcely a shadow of emotion until the article on Rochart's fatal experiment with radium gas was reached. Then his features became transfigured by a dreadful smile. Craigon was conscious of an after-silence in which the set, white face of the young physician seemed to recede and grow dim. The ticking of the surgery clock came upon them like sword-strokes.

Slowly and with deliberation Prosper closed the Gazette. "You read it, too!" he declared, turning toward the solicitor.

Craigon held his breath like a man who perceives the naked sword flashing near. "I—I read some of it!" he admitted huskily. "Brand explained the rest. Bit too technical for my understanding," he added with a desperate attempt at evasion.

Prosper's continued silence almost scared him. The young physician's face held a bleak, grayish look which Craigon had seen in half-drowned men. It was not an expression of fear or revolt against impending death, but merely the dumb acquiescence to an inescapable doom.

"It's a thing medical men are used to above all others." Craigon felt that he must say something or choke. He wanted to hammer away the intolerable silence with words—meaningless words, if necessary. Anything was better than Chard's speechless immobility. "A doctor knows what it means," he added in desperation.

Prosper regarded him with a slow, fixed stare that was without pain or curiosity.

"I'm not going to cry against the inevitable, Craigon. Only—you must admit Rochart's end was not nice!"

"Is—is it certain," the lawyer questioned; "that because Rochart died from the effects of hytrophen you must too?"

The ghost of a grin stayed on the young physician's lips. "If two men take a certain poison their end will be the same, Craigon. All the livid agonies Rochart endured are lying in wait for me."

Prosper Chard was not given to passionate outbursts of self-pity, but he could not control instantly the fear of the death-trap into which his experiment had led him. Others had given their lives to the cause of science and medicine. And if a man took up a cross in the interests of suffering humanity he must carry it through all pains and torment to the end.

Life had been very sweet to him. In his twenty-sixth year he had tasted something of fame—had known at least one woman's love. He thought of Nora Eames and the double tragedy of his own life and hers.

Of his entry into her father's house on the night she had sent for him not a glimmer remained in his memory. No one could blame him for what had happened. His hytrophenized faculties had not responded to Nora's instant cry for help. It was tragic, but irremediable—and his own life was to pay the penalty.

And what would become of her after he had gone? Nurtured amid luxurious surroundings, she was unfitted for the stern struggle which awaited women of her kind. The little money he possessed would scarcely help her above the grim abyss of poverty.

Craigon moved in his chair as if following intuitively each phase of the young physician's thoughts.

"I know how this business hurts. Prosper," he broke out suddenly. "It's of some one else you're thinking."

The young physician threw up his hands in voiceless protest, then shrank back in his chair with a scarce suppressed cry.

"What can we do, Craigon? My affairs are in a bad state. This"—he indicated the Gazette on the table with a passionate gesture—"is the first intimation. You see—I am not prepared to help any one."

Craigon sat rigid. He felt that his chance had come. Like an expert duelist he had awaited his opportunity. Now his first thrust was clean and well delivered.

"Only for that unhappy clause in your aunt's will you would have been in a position to help Miss Eames. As things go we are in the mud unless—" He paused with a sigh, then shook his head dolefully.

Prosper stirred impatiently. "What do you mean?" he asked. "You have a proposition to make. Say on!"

The solicitor sighed. "I fancied you would make some sacrifice for Nora Eames, Chard. I was about to suggest that you should go through the ceremony of marriage with the Hon. Marjory Hathaway. And then, having fulfilled the conditions of Miss Bellamy's will, you would be in a position to make provision for Nora's future."

The young physician stared in white-lipped amaze at Craigon. "You are the deuce and all for seeing through things!" he almost gasped. "But your scheme is too iniquitous. And—what do you mean by 'going through the ceremony of marriage with Marjory Hathaway'? It would be a marriage or no marriage!"

Craigon snapped his fingers. "My dear boy, it can be anything you choose. Two good women will benefit by the arrangement. I am sure Lord Sturmiss's sister will make no objections, providing her share of the money's forthcoming. Nora Eames, who at present may regard you as the cause of your tragic misfortune, will live to bless your name."

Prosper flinched as if Craigon had struck him. His face seemed to shrink and whiten.

"You are wrong," he said at last. "Nothing would induce Nora to touch the money."

"My dear Prosper, there are a hundred ways of providing for those we love. Leave that part to me. On the other hand, if you reject my advice," he went on persuasively; "your aunt's millions will stay in America while Nora Eames will be slaving body and soul to earn a livelihood."

Prosper walked unsteadily to the window, gasping for breath. The sudden chiming of the white timepiece on the mantel-shelf seemed to suggest the flight of the precious hours.

"You—you have seen Lord Sturmiss's sister? You have shown her a copy of the will?"

A shadow of curiosity came into Prosper's boyish face. "And her opinion?" he questioned.

"The young lady is quite willing to comply with the conditions of the will," Craigon declared. "The women of to-day are not all mad, my dear boy!"

Prosper straightened his head like a steed under the lash, his eyes staring and on fire as he met the lawyer's swift scrutiny.

"I am ready to obey my aunt's last wishes," he said with an effort, "if Marjory Hathaway recognizes the marriage as one of convenience. She must understand that part fully and completely, Craigon."

"Trust me, my boy! Marjory Hathaway is a woman of the world. Allow her a clear half-million and she won't trouble you much in this life."

Prosper had dropped into a chair, his face buried in his arms. His loud sobbing was the only response to Craigon's cheerful declaration. But the young lawyer was too much engrossed in the colossal issues at stake to heed the passing emotion of one whose career had come to a more or less inglorious end.

CHAPTER IX.
FAREWELL!

A HAPPY air of finality surrounded the marriage arrangement between Prosper Chard and the sister of Lord Sturmiss—an air that appealed strongly to Craigon's legal instincts. There was to be no fuss or ceremony. Everything would be carried out as quietly as possible. And then a four-figure commission for Mr. Denis Craigon, the man who had prevented a million pounds from being converted into philanthropic enterprises in some outlandish part of the United States.

Yet on the midst of his pleasant cogitations Craigon was troubled by the knowledge of the tragedy that he was helping to create. The forthcoming marriage was to be one where the figure of death would stand beside the bridegroom at the altar.

Hitherto sentiment had played no part in the business which Craigon controlled. If ambitious young nerve specialists chose to experiment with soul-blighting gases it was no concern of his.

To serve humanity was all very well. He could understand Prosper's eager desire to be first in the field with a new nerve hypnotic, a remedy that would bring ease and gladness to thousands of sufferers. The rewards of such enterprises were large. In experimenting Prosper had inhaled a life-destroying force, a force which had killed Emile Rochart, the French savant, and would continue to kill all rash investigators.

Craigon had written to Marjory Hathaway telling her of Prosper's willingness to fulfil the conditions of his aunt's will. He did not lay too much stress on the young physician's intention of setting apart his share of Miss Bellamy's bequest for Nora Eames's sole use. That part of the transaction might easily be arranged on the day of the wedding.

He was in doubt concerning his duty toward Nora. Ought he to tell her the whole story of Prosper's tragic position, he asked himself, or allow events to shape themselves?

That Marjory Hathaway would hardly concern herself with the fate of the man with whom she was about to ally herself he felt certain. Nora was different. Prosper's marriage with the sister of Lord Sturmiss would crush and spoil her young life, coming as it would so soon after her father's death.

Craigon hesitated as he walked slowly from his club in the direction of his office. In spite of Prosper's conduct on the night Nora had called him in, her heart was with the young Harley Street physician. At present she was too grief-stricken at her father's unexpected end to seek out Chard. Under ordinary circumstances nothing would have prevented a reconciliation.

But now it seemed probable that they would never meet again. Prosper's sudden marriage would destroy the last thread of affection that bound her to him.

The day seemed insufferably hot to Craigon as he entered Chancery Lane. His clothes felt heavy, his brain fagged and tired after his recent experiences with Prosper and Marjory Hathaway.

Inside the office he paused and drew back at sight of Nora Eames seated in a chair beside his desk. Ford in an outer room was busy with a pile of typewritten documents; he merely glanced up as his employer passed the door.

Clients were always coming and going, and Ford had grown accustomed to the people who insisted on awaiting his employer's return. Their reasons were always more or less pathetically urgent.

A glance at Nora showed Craigon a face slightly flushed and agitated. She looked up quickly at his entry, her eyes filled with a luminous quality suggestive of pain or undue excitement. Her voice, although sweet, was inclined to break as she addressed him.

"I called on Prosper an hour ago," she began; "only to learn that he was absent from town."

Craigon breathed easier at the intelligence. The fates were playing into his hands in keeping them apart. He coughed with professional solemnity, then with a smile intimated his willingness to hear what she might have to say.

"I received a visit from a woman named Vorne," she went on quickly. "Have you ever met her, Mr. Craigon?"

The lawyer's face lost its professional smile; it appeared to congest into a state of epileptic agony. He controlled his furious surprise with an effort.

"I heard of a Miss Vorne who—who was sent to a nursing-home in South Kensington a few days ago," he admitted with a touch of indignation. "Surely you are mistaken, Miss Eames!" he declared after a nerve-breaking pause. "The woman was in a rather precarious state."

Nora flushed slightly. "I have not mistaken her threats and her story, Mr. Craigon. She is the most definite woman I ever have met."

Craigon had overlooked the woman blackmailer. He had not even been notified of her departure from the nursing-home. Brand ought to have told him.

He stared doubtfully at Nora. "I wish she had come here!" he said bitterly. "Where is she now?"

"Gone to her lawyer. She told me"—Nora paused as if to force the words from her trembling lips—"that Prosper had drugged and sent her to the home in South Kensington. Is that true, Mr. Craigon?" Nora's face was deathly white now. AH the brightness had gone from her eyes.

The lawyer grimaced wickedly. "If Prosper had used a horsewhip, Miss Eames, instead of a drug, he would have rendered the community a service!"

Nora appeared mystified by his words and begged him to explain. Craigon shuffled some papers, looked askance at her pain-stricken eyes, and then threw himself back in his chair.

"This woman who calls herself Vorne is a professional blackmailer, Miss Eames. She went to Prosper demanding money because she saw him come from your house on the night of your father's death."

"The creature found herself alone for a little while in Prosper's surgery and inhaled some radium gas from a cylinder. It was her own fault."

"Can the law hurt Prosper?" Nora inquired anxiously. "If she goes with her story to the police concerning Prosper's visit to your house on the night of the 15th it may cause a fresh inquiry into the cause of your father's death." Nora spoke with difficulty. "I don't want her to hurt Prosper. Can you suggest anything, Mr. Craigon?"

The lawyer shook his head. "Only bribery and corruption, Miss Eames. We must either placate her or allow her statements to be made public. Still"—he paused as if weighing his words carefully—"if you will give me her address I will call on her to-day and find out what she intends doing. All her talk about lawyers was mere tarradiddle," he added quietly. "She wants money."

As Nora was penciling the address which Miss Vorne had given her, Craigon's clerk put his head in at the door suddenly and made an imperceptible gesture in his employer's direction. "Dr. Chard!" His lips only shaped the words.

Craigon almost leaped from his seat, then turned with a queer glance toward Nora. Nothing would be gained by allowing them to meet, he told himself in a flash. There must be no scenes or reconciliations at the eleventh hour.

In his present nerve-broken state the young physician was capable of any folly where Nora was concerned. He must keep them apart until after the marriage.

He motioned swiftly to his clerk. "Show the gentleman into another room," he commanded; "until I am disengaged."

Prosper's voice reached them clearly and distinctly from the passage before the door had closed. "All right," he said. "I'll wait until Mr. Craigon has a minute to spare."

"Why—it's Prosper!" she said. And then with a little cry she rose and was about to pass from the room.

Craigon put out his hand. "Let me beg you, Miss Eames. to avoid seeing Dr. Chard for a little while—a week say. He has been suffering from the effects of—of an experiment!" he almost blurted out.

Nora stared wide-eyed at the red-cheeked solicitor. If Prosper were suffering, why should they be kept apart? The proposition was absurd—inhuman.

"If Dr. Chard thinks I have no right to see him, Mr. Craigon, I will gladly keep away. But I cannot go from here knowing him to be in this office."

The solicitor crushed some unoffending papers in his hand before responding, then turned with a suppressed exclamation at sight of the suddenly opened door. Prosper, with the clerk at his heels, was standing inside.

The young physician seemed to sway forward slightly; then, steadying himself with difficulty, he closed the door on the protesting clerk.

"I did not know you were here, Nora." he said apologetically. "I came to see Mr. Craigon on urgent business."

He paused, his palm pressed against his throbbing temple, his feet braced between a desk corner and the door to steady himself. Nora was beside him in a flash, her gloved hands on his shoulder until his face was drawn close to her own.

"What is it, dear? Something terrible has happened, I feel sure! You—you are holding something from me—you and Mr. Craigon. Tell me. Prosper. After what has occurred I can bear anything!"

The young physician held her for a moment, until the fires from his heart seemed to burn and whiten his brain. In the lightning passage of a single thought he saw how tragedy had encompassed their lives.

He stared almost blindly at Craigon, hoping that the solicitor would speak and shatter the horrible nerve-destroying silence.

Apprehending the wild look of entreaty, the solicitor gathered himself for the final stroke, which he knew must be delivered sooner or later. He made no effort to separate them. Nora's wild kisses mattered little, and would do no harm.

Only he must not allow her to excite Prosper beyond his strength. Certain arrangements had been made which could not be canceled, and Nora must bear her pain like a woman.

He addressed her from the shadow of a big bookcase. He felt that he could not meet her eyes.

"I feel that I am to blame for not having been more direct, Miss Eames," he began steadily. "I ought to have cleared up with more certainty the cause of Prosper's strange behavior the night he went to your house."

"Perhaps we had better say no more about it, Mr. Craigon," she re? marked. "I know that Prosper was not himself at the time."

Chard allowed her hand to fall from his shoulder. Like a man under the lash, he could only clench his teeth and wait for the falling strokes. Nora held his arms now, her woman's instincts aroused, while her body seemed to crouch from some invisible peril.

Craigon watched them both with something of pity in his manner. At another time he might have compelled Chard to tell his own story. In the present case, however, he was impelled by the seriousness of the situation to speak for the young physician.

"I may assume, Miss Eames, that you know nothing of Prosper's recent experiments with a hypnotic known as hytrophen? Dr. Brand and I were the only persons, to my knowledge, acquainted with the nature of the experiment."

Nora shivered, looked with bleak, unseeing eyes into the young physician's face, and was silent.

"The result of that experiment. Miss Eames," Craigon continued; "is likely to cost Prosper his life. So, you see, it is better to know beforehand," he added brokenly. "I ought to tell you also that on the night he answered your call at the telephone he was under the influence of hytrophen, and in no way responsible for the mental apathy which prevented him from examining your father."

Craigon did not know whether she was laughing or crying in Prosper's arms. He was only aware that he had delivered the painful truth.

Under no circumstances must she be allowed to think that Prosper had a chance of surviving the after effects of the hytrophen. It was a case where the physician could not save himself.

"But you are not hopelessly ill, dear. Dying men do not walk the streets. And I—I do not understand why you must die."

In her tones there was a woman's resentment—the anguish of one who feels subconsciously that a terrible truth has been stated simply and nakedly. Prosper was the very soul of honor, a man who hated prevarications and hypocrisies.

Slowly Nora groped to the little desk where she had placed her gloves, pausing half-way across the office to look at the young physician.

"May I return to Harley Street with you, dear? I will promise not to worry or broach the subject again."

Very gently Prosper took Nora's hands and kissed them. Then, drawing her to him, he held her for a period that ached like eternity. He had seen men and little children die uncomplainingly in fever hospitals and wards, and the ending of his own life disturbed him no more now than the passing of a shadow.

But Nora's grief he could not bear. Her blind entreaties hurt more than a sword.

He knew this was their last meeting—that here in this lawyer's stuffy office they must say good-by for ay. And as he held her, almost swooning, in his arms, his mind went out to the days when they had been as boy and girl lovers and to their swift passage from happiness to despair.

Yet he felt a strange glow of pleasure at the thought of the provision he was making for her future. She would be beyond the reach of creditors and poverty. With the money safely invested she would become one of the wealthiest women in England.

"Nora," he whispered, "it is better for us to part here. Nothing will be gained by our meeting again. Mr. Craigon will call a car."

"You understand, dear," she went on brokenly; "there is nothing certain, nothing final in other men's judgments. There may be some mistake. Think, dear! You are well now. Your eyes are bright—your hands warm as mine."

Prosper could almost have cried out at her words. She would never understand how inexorable were the laws of science. He felt that his only refuge lay in silence, or in mere acquiescence to her wishes and hopes.

Craigon had called a taxi, to which Prosper now led her. To the last Nora insisted that it was not a final good-by. They must meet again and again, and she would laugh away the dread ogre of death which threatened him. And, even as he kissed and promised, the young physician experienced the ache of coming dissolution in his heart and brain. When she had gone he felt glad that Craigon had mercifully omitted all reference to his coming marriage with the sister of Lord Sturmiss.

CHAPTER X.
BETROTHED TO DEATH.

WHEN Nora Eames had gone and Prosper's affairs were put in order, Craigon felt that the moment for dealing finally with Miss Vorne had arrived. She must not be allowed to carry her criminal story from place to place.

A carelessly spoken word in the wrong quarter would cause the reopening of the inquiry into the cause of Renault Eames's death, with the inevitable result that Prosper would be subjected to a harassing police examination.

A taxi took him to Miss Vorne's address, which was near Victoria Station. Craigon soon found himself standing in the passage of a rather dirty house, wherein several children thrust their unwashed faces in his direction as he waited for the woman blackmailer to appear.

An air of criminality and vice invested the stuffy little rooms. From up-stairs came the squalling voices of more children, mingling with the unsavory odors of a midday repast.

A coal-begrimed servant preceded Miss Vorne down the stairs, pausing a moment to jerk her head in the solicitor's direction before vanishing into the basement of the house.

Craigon studied swiftly the woman who had entered Chard's surgery in Harley Street. The pain-drawn lines about her mouth and eyes were suggestive of the hytrophen's terrible after-effects.

She wore a woolen wrapper about her shoulders, and despite the almost fetid warmth of the house he saw her shiver as she led him into a dingy living-room on the right.

"I hope you haven't come here to explain things," she began in a breathless voice. "You're from Dr. Chard, I suppose?"

"I came upon my own initiative, Miss Vorne. I trust you will not allow any ill feeling to interfere with your better judgment," he ventured with a bland smile.

Miss Vorne drew the woolen wrapper about her while her sick eyes explored Craigon's figure.

"I don't think any one's going to prevent me telling the truth!" she cried querulously. "I'll speak out if I die for it."

"I should like to test your case by asking what took you to Dr. Chard's house, Miss Vorne. It is a very simple question," he added persuasively.

"I went to consult him," she declared defiantly; "and got drugged for my pains!"

"It was your own curiosity that led you to inhale the radium-gas from the rubber cylinder, Miss Vorne. Come, let us be frank with each other," he said. "Life is too short to argue on trifles."

"It's going to be a long and pleasant life for me, Mr. Craigon. My lawyer's been looking into the report of Mr. Eames's inquest.

"Funny, isn't it," she went on viciously; "that Miss Nora left out all mention of Dr. Chard's visit? What do you think of it, Mr. Craigon—a girl like that perjuring herself to keep her lover's name out of the papers?"

She struck her fist at each word, while the pupils of her eyes seemed to contract into pin-points of light.

"If it was really Dr. Chard you saw coming from the house of Mr. Renault Eames on the night you mention," said Craigon; "it was your duty to notify the police at once. Instead"—he paused deliberately to light a cigarette—"you tried your hand at bargaining with a man you assumed to be a criminal."

"A woman in your position consult a Harley Street specialist?" he drawled. "Come, come, Miss Vorne."

A fit of coughing seized her for several moments. Holding the table for support, she flung the words at Craigon:

"When I asked him about his visit to Mr. Eames he offered me money to be silent. I refused.

"And then you know what happened. I was drugged and packed off to that rotten nursing-home in South Kensington."

"I got away in the night after the effects of that beastly drug wore off. And here I am. Mr. Craigon, all my money gone and not able to afford a doctor."

"You shall have a doctor. Miss Vorne, and assistance from your present dilemma," he assured her.

"Enough to starve on," she responded, drawing her wrapper more tightly about her shoulders. "First payment to-day, I suppose, Mr. Craigon—and no free sniffs from a gas-ball," she added caustically.

Craigon drew some sovereigns from a leather bag in his pocket, methodically counted twenty, and placed them before her.

"I ask for no receipt, Miss Vorne. I merely trust to your good judgment in the affair. Go to the police if you will, but they will not pay you twenty pounds a month for your story.

Craigon felt that he had paid Miss Vorne her first and last instalment of hush-money; he had seen the shadow of death in her eyes.

Something of pity for her fate came upon him as he returned to the office. His experiences of the last few days revealed to him the fact that he was the chief figure in a stirring drama in which the least deserving woman would gain the most.

Marjory Hathaway would receive half a million pounds as the result of her marriage with Prosper Chard; Nora Eames would probably end her life in a convent or die of a broken heart, as some women really do. The fate of Miss Vorne would affect no one.

Even to the law-hardened Craigon the picture as presented to his mind was depressing, and gave momentary pause to his swift operations. Yet whichever way he looked he was confronted by the black certainty of Prosper's death.

Marriage or celibacy would make no difference. So, in the twist of a thought, he decided to hold to all contracts and reap his well-earned commission.

Arriving at his office he found his clerk in a state of suppressed excitement. Lord Sturmiss and his sister had been waiting some time. Ford told him. Craigon pushed past and went to the telephone in the passage.

Ringing up Chard, he received a reply after what seemed to him a heartbreaking delay.

"Lord Sturmiss is here," he called out to Prosper. "Will you come now and meet Lady Marjory?"

"People don't marry without seeing each other!" he declared. "His lordship won't detain you more than ten minutes."

Prosper acquiesced in a strange, weary tone. Craigon, relieved of a dread lest the young physician would balk the final negotiations, hurried to meet his distinguished visitors.

Lord Sturmiss appeared to be a blanched and rather negative figure, seated beside his straight-shouldered and more ample sister. He regarded Craigon's entry with a frozen immobility which might have been disconcerting to any but a shrewd, legal man of affairs.

"I have been talking over the matter of Miss Bellamy's will with my sister, Mr. Craigon. The marriage-contract, viewed from Dr. Chard's standpoint, appears a rather callous and—shall I say—humiliating proposition."

"It seems the most convenient way out of a difficulty, my lord. I need not again mention the amount at stake."

Lord Sturmiss folded two thin, white hands over his knees, rocking himself slightly to and fro in the bland air of Craigon's presence.

"I am quite seized of the opportunity Miss Bellamy's will presents, sir. At the same time I consider the division of so much wealth as quite inequitable."

"Do I understand that your lordship considers a five-hundred-thousand-pounds' share an insufficient sum for Lady Marjory?"

"I am in a position to refuse Dr. Chard's terms. To put it more plainly. Mr. Craigon, I consider seven hundred thousand pounds only a reasonable sum to offer Marjory for her share in the transaction!"

Craigon stared in round-eyed amaze at the small, foxy-haired man whose suave manners merely intensified his colossal greed.

"I imagine that three hundred thousand pounds would be very acceptable to Dr. Chard. He is more in need of the money than my sister."

Craigon controlled himself with an effort. At the last moment he was being subjected to a diplomatic strangle-hold by an experienced wrestler in financial affairs.

"You are misinformed, my lord, if you imagine that Dr. Chard is in need of money. No man in England," Craigon averred with passion; "values it less than he.

"I must also beg you to consider the fact that the whole of Miss Bellamy's fortune is Chard's by right. The terms imposed in the will are unfair to my client.

"I cannot, therefore, agree to or suggest to Dr. Chard your request for him to surrender a further two hundred thousand pounds."

He sat tight-fisted and alert in his chair, a peculiar, hawk-like quality in his eyes.

"Not a shilling beyond the stipulated half million, my lord. I am bound to protect my client's interests."

The office door opened softly; the clerk, his face showing signs of embarrassment, announced Dr. Chard. Craigon looked inquiringly at Lord Sturmiss and his sister.

"I cannot submit your fresh terms to my client," he declared in a scarce audible voice. "I may also assure you that he will not discuss them under any circumstances."

Lord Sturmiss threw up his hands. Craigon had observed the gesture before in men who accepted defeat under protest. Marjory laughed outright.

"A very pretty duel, Mr. Craigon. You fight well for your client. When I build my new racing-stable and house at Goodwood you shall take charge of my affairs."

"Be good enough to show me to another room, Mr. Craigon; my sister would prefer to interview Dr. Chard alone."

After he had withdrawn the clerk ushered in Prosper. Craigon was moved in spite of his efforts at self-control. The little scene impressed him more than he cared to admit.

Marjory sat smiling in her chair. A handsome figure she appeared to Craigon, alive to her finger-tips, pulsating with youth and the joy of being.

Very slowly she raised her eyes to the young physician, a smile which seemed half mocking, on her lips.

"I have just been thinking when and where I first met' your aunt. Miss Bellamy, Dr. Chard," she observed.

"My brother says it was at Lord Dumferloyne's about seven years ago. You were with her if I remember rightly."

Prosper recalled her instantly as a tall, hoydenish girl who talked rather brightly of hunting and sport. The visit to Dumferloyne's was the occasion of his aunt's second flying trip to England, at which time he had endured a round of never-to-be-forgotten calls.

Marjory Hathaway had changed. To him she appeared now as a big tawny lily with soft, pansy eyes. She brought with her into the lawyer's office a scent of heather and Hampshire pines.

She talked quickly, earnestly, as if anxious at the last moment to avoid the main object of her visit. Pausing almost dramatically in the middle of her conversation, she glanced steadily at the brooding Prosper.

"I came across some letters to-day, Mr. Chard, signed by your aunt. They were written in America to my mother about fifteen years ago.

"It may interest you to know," Marjory went on, "that it was my mother who helped Miss Bellamy to New York and provided her with sufficient capital to found the business which afterward proved so successful."

Prosper evinced a sudden show of interest. All along he had failed to understand why his business-headed aunt should have desired a union with the Sturmiss family. The secret was out at last.

"That part of my aunt's life has always been a mystery to me," Prosper confessed.

The manner in which Miss Bellamy had chosen to exhibit her gratitude made small appeal to him. The gift to Lady Marjory of a hundred thousand pounds would have sufficed, he told himself, without the inclusion of a tyranically insane marriage clause in the will.

As he listened to Marjory's talk of her mother's past friendship with his aunt his mind, like Craigon's, went out to the bereaved Nora, sitting alone in the big house in Cardigan Square.

He felt that he could never atone for the irremediable tragedy which had come into her life. Everything that belonged to him should be hers. The shadow of want should never cross her.

Some day Craigon would explain to her the reason why he had bound himself in marriage to the sister of Lord Sturmiss. And if he could forgive himself he prayed that Nora would in time forgive him also.

CHAPTER XI.
A GHOST AT THE ALTAR.

IN the breakfast-room of the King's Arms at Chalfont St. Martin, in the county of Bucks, Lord Sturmiss sat waiting with his sister for Prosper's arrival. Outside the autumn • sun wrapped the still beech-woods in a mist of gold.

A wide, sunburnt valley separated the inn from the incessant traffic of London-bound cars. Within a stone's throw stood the little chapel of Saint Magdalen, where Lord Sturmiss had decided that his sister should be quietly married to Prosper.

From time to time he stared uneasily at his watch, his ear roused to catch some sound of the bridegroom's arrival. The time fixed for the ceremony was eleven o'clock, and the noble viscount's watch indicated a full twenty minutes past the hour.

Inside the church the clergyman waited, casting nervous glances in the direction of the road as each fresh sound suggested the bridegroom's appearance.

During the long period of waiting Lord Sturmiss could only admire his sister's patience. His own pretended opposition to the union had been a mere cloak under which he had sought to wring an extra hundred thousand pounds from Craigon.

But now that the contract was fairly settled, he trembled secretly lest some accident might prevent Prosper from fulfilling his pledge.

"I hope nothing has happened to delay Chard," he half whispered. "We can't afford accidents at this hour."

"That lawyer, Craigon, is out for a big commission. There will be no accidents."

The hoot of a motor-horn came from the highroad. A moment later Prosper's car slowed up outside the church. Lord Sturmiss from his coign of vantage at the open window motioned to his sister, and the pair hurried to their own automobile outside.

Prosper, accompanied by Denis Craigon, entered the church and walked slowly down the narrow aisle to where the clergyman stood waiting near the altar-rail.

Marjory, leaning on her brother's arm, joined the little group. The cause of Prosper's delay was explained in a few whispered words.

While passing through the village of Teddington a woman rushed from a cottage and begged him to send a doctor when they reached High Wycherly, three miles distant. The woman's little girl, aged five, had fallen down a flight of steep stairs, dislocating her arm and shoulder.

Outside the church the air was full of mellow autumn sounds. Faint odors drifted in from the valley—the scent of burning wood, while the insistent droning of bees invaded the sunlit spaces of nave and chancel.

After Craigon's explanation Marjory regarded the young physician with new interest. Her flying glance over the pale, handsome face served to sharpen her curiosity about the man she was to marry.

His type was new to her. Hitherto she had associated with people of her own class, men and women who saw life in its crude, noisy way—the life of the betting-ring and the hunting-field.

Prosper was not of these. His profession had carried him among the sick and dejected, a circumstance which had developed in him the kindliest human traits. His touch and gestures were tender as a woman's; his face was alive and purged of the grosser elements inevitable in men of coarser intellect.

For the first time in her life Marjory Hathaway experienced a genuine religious emotion as she accompanied her brother and Chard to the altar. Her face had lost something of its roselike bloom.

Her breath came sharply, as if she were riding a stiff fence at breakneck speed. All thought of Miss Bellamy's fortune left her now.

The clear-spoken voice of the clergyman filled her with a new sense of pain and joy.

The touch of Prosper's fingers unsteadied her. Her voice, as she answered the clergyman, was scarce audible and almost full of tears.

To the shrewd-eyed Lord Sturmiss, alert and expectant of. interruption, his sister's lack of firmness was positively unaccountable.

Prosper's quiet dignity and restraint served only to intensify the tragic side of the ceremony. Surely, Craigon thought, no man had ever sacrificed himself under similar conditions for the love of a woman!

Yet the more he pondered over the ceremony the less barren the tragedy appeared. If one living creature profited in the end, the means justified it.

The ceremony ended in a silence that left Lord Sturmiss in a fidget to be off. The birds and the trees called outside. He took Prosper's arm with a familiarity unusual in him, and spoke of the glorious London season to come.

Prosper ought to see more of society, he advised. Life was a great thing when one knew how to enjoy it.

With the signing of the register the little party found itself outside the old church. Lord Sturmiss leading in a buoyant, hilarious manner. As he lit a cigar he stopped in the porch to scrutinize the date of the ancient pile.

"Rather good of the old masons to leave some kind of a date," he bubbled. "One thousand three hundred and forty-seven. A dashed long time ago, eh. Chard? Predates antiseptic surgery and all that kind of thing."

Craigon was in a hurry to reach town. It was a lovely day, he said in his non-committal way, and the ride home through the beech-forest road was something that even a lawyer might appreciate.

Then, as if to clear up the brooding anxiety which lay upon the party. Lord Sturmiss broke into a forced laugh, his hand on Prosper's shoulder.

There was no help for it. Prosper would gladly have avoided the ceremony, but escape seemed impossible. It meant another hour or two of his life being wasted in useless chatter and barren formalities.

The inn had been decorated for the occasion. Festoons of flowers overhung the oak-paneled breakfast-room, where the host and his wife stood ready to receive their visitors.

Lord Sturmiss proposed the health of his sister, a toast which he followed by calling for Prosper's glass and pressing Craigon to join in wishing a long life to the young physician.

It was all very' stereotyped and forced. And behind the clinking wine-glasses Craigon felt the tragedy and pain.

Marjory ate sparingly. Her usual robust appetite seemed to have deserted her. Sturmiss alone seemed the one spark of life at the table.

The meal over, Prosper found himself staring rather bleakly through the big, oak-framed window at the distant beech woods.

Marjory had gone to the door to say good-by to her brother. Craigon had taken the earliest chance to escape.

When Prosper turned from his contemplation of the sun-browned woods he found Marjory regarding him very quietly from the door.

"A sordid business from your point of view, eh, Prosper Chard?" she observed. "Are we to repent at leisure or be good friends for life?"

If she had laid a sword before him his amazement could not have been more profound. There was something irresistibly quaint in her attitude. Her handsome, blond figure was wrapped in the instreaming sun-rays.

In poise and carriage he had seen few women to outclass her. Her beauty was of the healthy, vivid type—a type of tawny hair and exquisite hands and feet. It was her bluntness that piqued and almost startled him.

"I suppose we are both rich enough now to go our ways. Prosper," she went on. "That, I imagine, is part of the scheme you have in mind already?"

Prosper sat on the window-edge, his face showing white and set in the full light of the room.

"Craigon made a statement of my affairs to you," he said without moving. "I hope he told you everything, so that we may part without misunderstandings or regrets?"

She entered the room; he noted the strong, white hand on the door as it closed very softly and firmly behind her.

"I'm fond of hunting and comedies. Prosper. As a girl I was given to clowning and tomfoolery. But the joke we've just perpetrated has a rather foolish ending, don't you think?" He was silent.

"Won't you shake hands. Prosper? To-day I have seen things in a different light I know you are not of my set. But I do feel that you're better than all the sportsmen and women I ever met!"

She came near and stood before him until he felt the perfume of her hair and clothes.

"To-day I was joined to you in marriage, Prosper, under false pretenses. And you think," she added with scarcely an inflection of her voice; "it was the money that brought me here?"

The question beat quick upon his answer. Prosper's face hardened suddenly; it was as if she had cut him with a whip.

"There has been a misunderstanding. Craigon has not made this affair clear to you!"

She looked at him now, her eyes level with his own, and he saw that the blood had gone from her face.

"Your solicitor told me everything and nothing. Yesterday I did not know myself. I was ready to laugh at things sacred and profane."

"Do you know what you said to that clergyman. Prosper? Do you know the answer I gave?"

She turned to a chair beside the table and sat with her face resting on her hands. He felt that he must cry out or escape her searching eyes.

In an hour she had changed from a soulless sportswoman with a mere gambler's interest in life to something more profound and conscientious. Prosper was hardly prepared for the change.

Now that his contract had been fulfilled, he desired to go away and pass his few remaining days in peace.

Her searching eyes seemed to take in his swift, penetrating thoughts. Her ungloved hand sought his arm.

"Your mind is not at rest, Prosper," she said. "After what has happened you may confide in me. You will not find me too harsh a judge.

"Craigon made my reasons clear to you." he repeated stonily. "There is nothing further to be said between us."

"Mr. Craigon was just as mysterious as you. Certainly I signed a typewritten paper, which I am sure you have not seen or read," she declared.

"Do women read legal documents. Prosper? A single look told me that it was an agreement concerning our marriage, with something else added about Miss Bellamy's money, and how we were to divide it in equal parts after we had become man and wife. That was all.

"Mr. Craigon is a very busy man," she concluded thoughtfully. "He appeared rather gun-shy when pressed for further details."

Prosper was conscious of a sick taste in his mouth. He almost felt that Craigon had betrayed him.

The ceremony of marriage had wrought an influence upon Marjory Hathaway. He was no longer dealing with a frivolous sportswoman, but with one who regarded the recent contract as solemn and binding.

It was Craigon's fault. There had been too much haste to safeguard his aunt's money. And now that the fortune was theirs, Marjory was evincing a desire to hold him to the marriage bond. Prosper experienced a burning ache in his temples, a desire to rush madly from the inn and cast himself somewhere in the dark, woods and end his life. His car was outside. From his place in the window he could see the driver seated in the tonneau reading the morning paper.

Then he remembered the child at Teddington whom he had attended on his way to the church.

He looked at Marjory, his eyes grown almost steady with the pain of his despair.

"I promised to look in at my little patient before lunch. What do you advise?" he asked steadily. "Her shoulder was rather badly hurt. And there were indications of fever."

"The child may be in pain. Go—but "—she stopped him on the threshold and he felt her quick breath on his cheek—"you will come back afterward?"

CHAPTER XII.
IN PROSPER'S ABSENCE.

MARJORY CHARD sat near the window watching the car slide down the hill toward Teddington village until the beech-woods shut it from view.

The landlord of the King's Arms peered into the oak-paneled room, wondering what matter of business could separate a newly married pair so soon after the ceremony.

Marjory's big car, which bore the arms of Viscount Sturmiss on its dark panels, awoke the landlord's curiosity. It stood in the road a few yards from the inn entrance, the two liveried chauffeurs in the high-screened tonneau.

She knew that Prosper would return and decide whether they were to stay together or go their separate ways. Her watch told her that it was nearly twelve o'clock. He would not be away more than an hour. The child patient at Teddington would detain him hardly more than twenty minutes.

She passed from the breakfast-room by a side door, which gave her a view of valley and stream where the brown beech-woods stretched to the edge of the far Chiltern Hills. The sky held the blaze of midday heat. Tiny white clouds drifted languorously over the valley; a brown hawk sailed high in mid heaven, poising above the woods in quest of prey, and then swept away beyond the smoke-line of the near village.

How suddenly hot and oppressive it had become! Marjory passed to where some lime-trees cast a circle of shade across the garden path.

The bees made grumbling noises among the juniper-bushes and dahlia-plants. She watched them pensively as they gorged among the heavy clover while the high-climbing roses wound an invisible garment of perfume around her.

She could not turn her thoughts from the young Harley Street physician whose destiny had so suddenly merged into her own. At first she had viewed the whole business as an excellent speculation, to be abandoned the moment Miss Bellamy's fortune became hers.

Her brother had secretly urged her into the contract, pointing out that the marriage with Prosper might be set aside after the money was in their hands. There was no need, Sturmiss said, to waste her life with a Harley Street doctor. They might live apart quite comfortably without incurring risks from society scandalmongers.

Marjory had known some of the most brilliant and popular men of her time. She had ridden and hunted with equally fascinating people of her own class. Yet here among the bees and the clover of a third-rate country inn she confessed to an overwhelming sudden regard for the nephew of Miss Bellamy.

The sound of a motor struggling up-hill awoke her from her brooding. The car swung into the white road toward the King's Arms, and stopped with a series of nerve-destroying sounds and concussions outside.

She became aware of the landlord's voice in high communication with some one who appeared quite inaudible from where she sat. Later—minutes; hours it seemed—the landlady's portly figure appeared in the garden-path bowing ludicrously and curveting in her direction.

"Some one inquiring for Dr. Chard, your ladyship. I told her that he had gone to Teddington."

Marjory came from the shadow of the lime-tree and felt the hot sun strike on her cheeks and eyes. The landlady moved toward the gate.

"Miss Nora Eames," she added with a sudden flash of memory. "I really forgot to take her card, your ladyship."

The sister of Lord Sturmiss appeared interested. It was evident that Miss Eames had not passed Prosper's car on the road. There would be no harm in seeing-her.

Following the landlady she entered the little back-parlor of the King's Arms and found a young lady in heavy mourning standing near the open window. Something in the visitor's quick, apprehensive glance sent a tremor through Marjory.

"Dr. Chard has gone to Teddington," she began doubtfully. "Do you wish to consult him?"

Nora drew breath sharply. Intuitively it came upon her that this strange lady was in some way connected with Prosper. In her simple, childlike way Nora had felt certain that all his lady friends were known to her.

Marjory's big, blond figure seemed to be invested with a peculiar spirit of ownership. Her very voice and gestures conveyed a spirit of possession.

"I heard in town this morning that Prosper had driven out to Chalfont St. Martin. Of course "—she paused while her eyes drifted over Marjory's face and erect figure—"he has a right to come and go without my knowledge."

Marjory remained immovable in the center of the room, her hands resting lightly on her hips.

"You are Prosper's sweetheart!" she declared in the voice of a teacher admonishing an impulsive girl pupil. "What sent you here to-day?"

Nora almost shrank from the big, kindly eyes, the strong, white hands that seemed capable of holding a refractory horse in check. A cold feeling of terror seized her unexpectedly. She was like one being held up to torment by a good-natured teacher or friend.

"I asked you that question. Miss Eames, because I am Prosper's wife. We were married this morning in that little chapel you passed on your way here."

Nora's slim shoulders straightened involuntarily as if resenting a savage thrust. Then a blind, sick feeling sent her almost reeling against the window. Very slowly she turned to the woman who had delivered the thrust.

"I thought Prosper was a gentleman!" she said faintly. "And—and I beg your pardon, Mrs. Chard, for having come here so soon after the wedding. I—I did not mean—intend to steal upon you like this!"

In the fierce struggle to hold herself together Nora staggered to the door. She wanted to go outside, to breathe clean air away from this big, handsome creature with the gray eyes.

How carefully every one had lied to her! The story of Prosper's impending death was a silly fabrication to throw her off the scent and to allow him to marry this woman.

To have come upon Prosper's wife an hour after the marriage was a merciless piece of ill-fortune.

Marjory Chard was standing in a leisurely attitude, her big shoulders against the shut door. With all her bland indifference of manner and speech there had come upon her a sudden uneasiness that began to flow like a nerve-shaking fluid through her strong limbs. Her fingers touched Nora's wrist, then closed tightly.

"I am not angry, Miss Eames, because you were Prosper's sweetheart," she avowed steadily—"although I think he ought to have told you.

"I beg your pardon for my apparent rudeness, Miss Eames. You see "—she paused while the smile came back with an effort—"I have only known him a few days."

"Good Heavens!" Nora breathed and turned from the other with a fainting cry. Marjory put out her hand as if to save Nora from falling.

"We shall get over it presently," she said kindly. "But—you must not be too hard on Prosper. There are one or two things he or his solicitor neglected to explain."

Nora was stunned and frightened. Her sane mind almost refused to credit what the other had told her. She had come to console Prosper, to offer him again the love and devotion which had always been his.

Craigon had assured her that the young physician's days were numbered. Prosper himself had confirmed the solicitor's statement. With a heart torn by despair and grief at his impending fate, she had found no peace with her own thoughts.

To be near her lover was her natural impulse. Therefore she had followed in all haste—to discover a woman who claimed to have become his wife only a hour before!

Above all things, then, Prosper was sane. His treachery and deceit were not the result of a mind unhinged.

Marjory Chard patted Nora's hand very gently. Her big. robust nature was not proof against the bleak, white face that shrank from her own.

She felt that Nora had a right to hear the truth. It was wrong of Prosper and his lawyer to keep her in ignorance of the facts.

For her part she had not bothered to inquire whether her young husband had ever won the affection of another woman. It was one of the things she had deemed advisable to leave alone.

But within an hour of her marriage she had hardly expected to confront the woman who had been cast aside. In justice to herself she must explain something of her position.

"You know he had an aunt in New York—Miss Bellamy. She died recently, and in her will she left her whole fortune to Prosper, conditionally that he married me, Marjory Hathaway, sister of Lord Sturmiss.

"Let me assure you. Miss Eames, that I knew very little of Miss Bellamy in the past. She was my mother's friend.

"To save her huge fortune from reverting to various organizations Prosper and my brother deemed it advisable that the terms of the will should be complied with.

"A million pounds is a great deal of money. Miss Eames; it may seem to most people worth any sacrifice.

"For my part I am neither glad nor sorry. I agreed to the compact merely to rescue my brother's house and estates from his creditors."

Nora's eyes held a listening blindness as Marjory Hathaway finished her statement—a statement which failed to dispel the air of deceit and treachery that enshrouded the whole affair.

Was there any need for a dying man to sell his name and honor for wealth which he could never enjoy?

Then slowly a thought came that set the blood leaping from her heart. Marjory's confident bearing was hardly that of a woman who was in full knowledge of her husband's terrible position.

Not a shadow of malice attended the thought. Love for Prosper Chard burned and throbbed within her; it was crying now in her heart with the voice of a terror-stricken child. Through the films of her distraught fancy she discerned that this woman was not indifferent to Prosper.

Instinct, strong as life itself, pointed something of the truth, urging her again to question whether Prosper or Craigon had revealed to his newly wedded wife everything in connection with the deadly hytrophen experiment.

The moment her visitor evinced a desire to leave the room Marjory had drawn away from the door. A thrush was singing madly in a near beech-copse, the pain of each note struck with a new torment upon Nora's senses.

Steadying herself in the doorway, Nora looked back at the tall, shapely figure standing beside the flower-covered table. Marjory's right hand rested near a bowl of Japanese lilies which an hour before had set the seal of beauty on her rather lonely wedding-breakfast.

The perfume of the flowers brought a maddening sense of shame and desolation to Nora. It awoke the crying in her heart until it seemed to drown her voice in tears.

Another step would have carried her into the passage away from the soul-shaking perfume of the wedding-flowers. Her hand went out to steady her limbs; then the shadow of Marjory seemed to cross her.

You were going to make a statement a few minutes ago, Miss Eames; I saw it in your eyes. You must speak out.

In the passage Marjory's strong hands fell upon Nora's shoulders. The strength of a live fury was in her clenched fingers. Nora quailed in the fierce embrace—shrank from the big, blond visage that almost shouted in her ear.

"I have nothing to say," she gasped. "Only Prosper—ought to have told you that he has not long to live.

Suddenly Marjory's hands relaxed. If was as if Nora had pierced her with a stiletto. Then she laughed softly, although her lips had grown ashen:

"You mean that he is going to die," she said with an effort, "or is it just a silly invention of your own?"

Nora's amazement overcame her pain; for a moment it beat back the terror of the shade which had leaped between her and Prosper. She could only stare wide-eyed at this glowing creature who had stolen her lover in vain.

It gave a feeling of joy to the tragic movement before her—the joy of knowing that some one else would share her misery.

"Ask him yourself when he returns. He will not hesitate, since you know so much.

"I must beg of you now to let me go," she almost pleaded. "I—I don't want him to find me here. It would only make matters worse."

Marjory Chard abandoned her desire to force the truth from the terror-stricken Nora Eames. She must wait patiently until Prosper returned—only the thought of sitting alone among the wedding-flowers and symbols of her recent marriage almost frightened her.

A sense of eeriness crept over everything; mystery seemed to enshroud the passing minutes.

Very still she sat in the oak-paneled breakfast-room where the bees swarmed under the ivy-girt windows. She looked up once and found Nora still standing in the doorway. It seemed hours since they had spoken.

"You had better go, Miss Eames," she said at last. "I would—rather—see—him alone."

Nora moved forward with something of the priestess in her gesture. She was like one approaching the grave of a beloved child.

All trace of tears had left her. It was as if her spirit had risen from its garment of pain, leaving her immune from the assaults of grief and despair.

IN In the valley beyond the winding road the sun had lit the many-thatched eaves and roofs of the farm-buildings. The voice of noon was in the fluttering of each bird and thing that moved across the meadows.

Almost unnoticed Nora's car slipped from the inn-front, leaving a thin screen of dust above the distant hedgerows.

Alone in the big breakfast-room Marjory Chard sat very still, listening for the sound of Prosper's return.

CHAPTER XIII.
DEATH SETS ITS SEAL.

MARJORY CHARD sat very still among the relics of her wedding-feast, listening for some sound that would indicate Prosper's coming.

The landlord of the King's Arms had never, in his wide experience of marriage festivals, observed so hasty and silent a break-up of the parties concerned. Of the four people who had sat at breakfast only the bride remained.

It was an unusual and disturbing fact, he told himself, to see a fine, well-bred woman like Marjory sitting alone within a few short hours of her marriage.

The mystery of it threatened to interfere with his work in the bar, where he dispensed foaming ale to half a dozen thirsty cyclists and farm-laborers.

The luncheon-hour passed without a sign of Prosper. Once or twice Marjory had ventured into the garden to peer over the hedge and down the white, motor-rifled road to Teddington.

Her chauffeur had taken his midday meal with the air of one playing a part in a silent tragedy. Marjory's healthy appetite seemed to suffer through the stress of waiting. She could not eat until Prosper sat with her.

A sudden terror of seeing herself a specter at her own feast drove her again to the garden to watch the bees at work among the flowers. .

It was near three o'clock when the sound of a fast-traveling car sent her to the garden-gate, peering eagerly across the valley. It was Prosper's blue-paneled landaulet, stroking at a good pace up the incline and down the narrow road which led to the inn.

The chauffeur drew up opposite the inn and alighted quickly. A glance showed her that Prosper was not in the car. The man touched his cap respectfully, and stood waiting for her to speak. His hesitation struck her as unusual.

"Where is Dr. Chard?" she asked after a breath-giving pause. "Why have you returned alone?"

"Dr. Chard requested me to come without him, your ladyship. He preferred to return on foot."

"That was a long time ago," she hazarded. "Where nave you been in the mean time?"

"I drove to Sharrow to get some cotton-wool for the patient he attended. When I came back he had left the cottage. Dr. Chard's orders were that I should come back to the King's Arms."

"I think you had better return to Harley Street," instructed Marjory impatiently. "You have evidently passed your master on the road."

The chauffeur retired crestfallen, and drove his car with bad grace in the direction of the city. Marjory signaled to her own driver.

"We can get petrol at Teddington, Sweeney," she said, stepping quickly into the car. "I want to pick up my husband on the road. He's probably resting on a stile in one of those pretty lanes."

Sweeney was secretly amused at the notion of a Harley Street specialist resting on a stile in a country lane. He was sufficiently master of his emotions, however, not to betray his mirth to the lightning-eyed Marjory, seated beside him in the tonneau.

Sweeney had his own opinion of the wedding breakfast and the unostentatious marriage he had witnessed in the village church.

Very slowly the car traveled in the direction of Teddington, Marjory's eyes wandering swiftly down the side lanes and field paths as they slid past.

Here and there they passed little parties of farm laborers, who grinned vacantly or shook their heads when questioned concerning the young specialist's whereabouts.

Teddington was reached soon enough without the slightest trace of Prosper Chard. The woman whose child he had attended could give no clue to his whereabouts since leaving the cottage. The child, Marjory was glad to learn, was completely out of pain during the last few hours.

The mother, her face showing traces of her recent fears and distress, was pathetically fluent in her praises of the young doctor who had so swiftly dispelled her little one's sufferings.

There seemed nothing to do but continue her search. Nora's mysterious reference to his dangerous condition urged her forward.

On the way to London a boy informed them that he had seen a well-dressed young gentleman staggering across some fields in the vicinity of a small beech-copse. A farmhouse stood on the right—a heavily thatched, redbrick structure with hay-ricks and outbuildings adjoining.

The car could not cross the plowed fields. Marjory alighted and climbed the five-railed gate with the skill of a born huntswoman, while her chauffeur grinned and followed her with his eyes.

What had moved Prosper, she asked herself, to desert his car and take to the fields?

Was he assailed by a desire to die alone in the woods away from loving hands and sympathy?

It seemed incredible to her that a young man possessed of his intelligence and physique should be near death.

It was dusk now. The sun had gone down beyond the near woods, leaving a strange twilight spell over the meadows and fields. Crossing a ditch, she reached an open gate leading to the rear of the farmhouse.

Two servant-girls were standing in the house-porch; a man in his shirtsleeves came hurriedly to the door, making quick signs to them both.

Marjory advanced in haste, her keen senses alive to the fact that something unusual was happening within. The servants stepped aside as she approached, while the man stared at her fashionable attire.

"I want to ask if you have seen a gentleman crossing the fields recently," she began quickly. "I was told that he had come this way."

The man made a sudden gesture with his hands as if begging her silence. Then, beckoning her into the porch, he lowered his voice to a whisper:

"The ge'man you're after is inside, ma'am. He's got a touch of fever or somethin'. We seed him wanderin' about the fields, holdin' his temples like a man in pain.

Marjory followed the man inside to a small side room where the light from the fields scarcely penetrated. A woman with snow-white hair and cap was sitting beside a bed in the far corner. Prosper, his hands thrown back over his head, was lying between the sheets.

He made no movement as Marjory entered, his tight-closed eyes and lips suggesting some fierce pain or mental preoccupation.

The white-haired woman rose at her entry, nodding in a motherly fashion at the unconscious Prosper. Marjory sat very quietly in the vacated chair, placing her gloves and hat on the small table beside her.

"He is your brother then?" the woman whispered, her hand on the bed-rail. "A bit too fine in the hands and feet to be let wander about them wet fields at this hour, lady."

"He is my husband," Marjory told her. "I think we had better telephone to London for a specialist."

Very quietly the sister of Viscount Sturmiss wrote out the message to Sir Elgar North, the famous brain-specialist, and passed it to the man waiting silently in the doorway.

The nearest telephone station was three miles away. Her car would take him there in a few minutes, and the chauffeur would send the message through.

After the man had gone she turned to Prosper and took his fevered hand. In the half light his features appeared to her almost beatific in their absolute repose.

The nature of his profession had invested him with a certain superiority of bearing she had not seen in other men. Yet the mystery of his condition came near to overwhelming her.

The sounds about the farmhouse failed to distract her from her contemplation of the man she had begun to love, but who had never breathed a single word of affection in her ear.

It was too late now to regret what had happened. She had wedded herself to a practically dying man with the sole object of acquiring a fortune. Therefore, she must bear her punishment unflinchingly.

It seemed hours before the doctor arrived. A lamp had been lit beside the bed, and a few flowers placed near the window niche overlooking the small garden.

The entry of the Harley Street specialist was almost dramatic. Sir Elgar North was in his fiftieth year. He had known Marjory since childhood, and had attended Viscount Sturmiss and her father upon many occasions in the past.

He greeted Marjory with a silent shake of the hand, then turned with a puzzled look to Prosper. His amazement was profound.

Marjory explained swiftly their early morning marriage, together with an account of Prosper's sudden departure from the inn and her search and discovery of him in his present condition.

Sir Elgar appeared loath to express an opinion of the affair; he was concerned mainly with the welfare of his brother physician. His examination of Prosper occupied nearly fifteen minutes.

Marjory followed his movements as one awaiting sentence of death. Yet her mind retained a gleam of hope.

Whatever science could do to restore her husband would be done. She experienced a quick sense of peril, however, when Sir Elgar concluded his examination.

It was as if the great physician had suddenly put on a mask. There was a professional tightness about his mouth that sent the blood in swift gusts from her heart.

"You think he will regain consciousness?" she asked steadily. "I—I really want you to be frank with me. Sir Elgar!"

He stood rigid and pensive before her as one calculating an abstract problem in mental therapeutics.

"I have heard something of Chard's recent experiment from Dr. Brand." he said half aloud. "And—I am afraid. Lady Marjory, that I have little or no hope to offer. It is very regrettable!"

His meaning was clear enough to Marjory; it divested her instantly of the last faint spark of hope. Sir Elgar explained very lucidly what he had learned from Brand in regard to Prosper's experiments with the hytrophen, together with its fatal effects on the •distinguished French scientist, Rochart.

Marjory listened in silence, her thoughts centering upon the weird, deadly effects of the hytrophen. There was no antidote to its slowly destroying breath. Her suddenly acquired wealth could do nothing to avert Chard's doom.

Sir Elgar promised to send nurses from the city the moment he reached a telephone. In the mean time his presence in the farmhouse was not necessary.

His manner was kind and sympathetic, but not once did he convey by word or suggestion the possibility of the patient's recovery. With the intimation that he would call early next day, he departed.

Marjory decided to stay on at the farmhouse, knowing that Prosper could not be removed. There was rough but wholesome accommodation within the wide-gabled old structure; after a consultation with Mrs. Naylor, the owner of the farm, a room was speedily prepared for her use.

The car was housed in one of the big sheds, while the chauffeur found comfortable quarters with Mrs. Naylor's sons.

Marjory felt that all her strength would be needed during the next few days She was not inclined to waste herself in useless regrets. To play the wife to the man she had just married was her task.

That he had cared nothing for her was obvious enough. His love had gone out to Nora Eames.

Even as she watched beside the bed she heard the half-spoken name struggling on his lips.

Once during his delirium she held a glass of water to his lips. After drinking he stared at her vacantly.

"I think Craigon ought to come." he said after a protracted silence. "My head is full of noises and pains."

Some rain fell during the night; little gusts of wind came in from the fields, bringing a scent of newly plowed earth and roots. Heavy masses of cloud drifted up from the west, and through the open window Marjory detected the light of a motor-lamp winding slowly through the lanes.

It stopped at the farm-gate. A few minutes later she heard footsteps in the paved entrance, followed by Mrs. Naylor's voice in the porch.

It seemed an unconscionable time before Mrs. Naylor entered to announce Dr. Philip Brand. Marjory did not remember having heard the name before, but divined at once that he must be a friend of Prosper.

She found herself regarding a man of medium height, with sun-browned face and speaking eyes.

He looked quickly at the sister of Lord Sturmiss and then at the unconscious Prosper. His manner was restrained, but behind his studied reserve she detected an undercurrent of suppressed eagerness and emotion.

"I met Mr. Craigon in town today," he began. "He was good enough to tell me of the marriage. It was from Sir Elgar North I heard of Prosper's condition."

He stood beside the bed, his breath laboring slightly as he viewed this strange woman who had come so dramatically into his friend's life. Nora Eames represented the beautiful type of city-bred woman—the woman of taste and inbred culture. Marjory stood for all that was generous in an English gentlewoman.

While he guessed that her marriage with Prosper had been one of convenience, he could not conceal from himself the thought that she was more deeply affected by Prosper's condition than scores of women who had known their husbands half a lifetime would have been.

"I felt that it was no use coming," he went on; "unless I had something to tell you."

"I am concerned only with the chances of my husband's recovery," was all she volunteered.

"I heard only this afternoon of a Frenchman named Guinot who has discovered a palliative for the after-effects of hytrophen."

"I have his address," Brand told her. "An hour ago I telephoned to Craigon to bring him here at once."

"Positively—unless the unforeseen happens. I have been following Guinot's experiments for some time. He is a struggling scientist badly in need of funds to assist in the development of his theories. I have promised him a large fee if he will attend Prosper at once."

The rain broke with a slashing sound against the open window. Brand put out a hand to close it, but refrained after a moment's reflection.

"It appears now," he went on quietly, "that dozens of young men have been experimenting with this new radium gas. Not one of them so far has escaped its terrible after-effects."

"Of what use is it?" she asked in a whisper. "Why did Prosper risk his life in such an experiment?"

Brand explained that the new radium gas had therapeutic value as a nerve-healer, but that its uncertain medicinal properties and effects were a mystery which surgeons and scientists were striving to investigate.

It was always the same, he declared, when a new healing force was discovered. Specialists of Prosper's type surrendered their lives in the hope of advancing the cause of medicine and science.

Instinctively his fingers strayed toward Prosper's pulse, while his practised eye examined closely the lips and tongue of the unconscious patient.

Marjory watched eagerly, but his action, being merely the result of long habit, implied little. He turned from the bed, his eyes wandering around the room uncertainly.

He spoke as if to ease the strain of the passing moments, for upon Craigon's efforts to induce Guinot to come Prosper's life depended.

Brand paced the room, his face betraying his pent-up anxiety. Occasionally he halted near the open window and stared across the silent fields.

Beyond a little printed information concerning Guinot's success in scientific research, he knew nothing of the man's temperament.

After all, he might not come. And each hour carried Prosper nearer the final stage of his brief, brilliant career.

CHAPTER XIV.
HOPE.

WHEN Denis Craigon arrived in town it was to discover that many of the leading journals had appropriated the story of Marjory's marriage with Prosper Chard.

One or two journals had copied the facts relating to Miss Bellamy's will from an American newspaper. But now that his commission for bringing about the alliance was assured, Craigon was not inclined to worry over the journalistic aspects of the case. Nora Eames was well provided for.

At Prosper's death the sum of five hundred thousand pounds would pass to her.

Craigon's position in the legal world was hardly that of a leader. He wanted money and friends to bring his great talents into notice. There had been times when the demands of his creditors had threatened to overwhelm him.

As a lawyer it is easy to be dishonest with other people's money, but Denis Craigon was not that sort of man. Of late he had begun to think in thousands. Mere association with the figures contained in Miss Bellamy's will had whetted his appetite for increasing commissions.

He dined alone at a little restaurant in Soho. As he sipped his claret he permitted his thoughts to return to the lovely Nora Eames. Even without money he considered her the most beautiful woman he had ever met—Craigon's judgment of female charms always swung in favor of the woman with the largest bank-account.

He knew that Prosper's death would unsettle her for months. She would drape herself in black and shut herself up in a convent, probably.

Of the effect on her of Prosper's marriage with Lady Marjory he could not guess. Viewed from the male standpoint he was sure that time would soften the sting, especially when she realized that the marriage was merely Prosper's last effort to save her from poverty and humiliation.

In a mirror opposite the table at which he sat, Denis saw himself as a rather handsome man of thirty with soft. Irish eyes and a beguiling personality. As the wine moved his thoughts he recalled his first meeting with Nora, her almost childish inexperience in worldly affairs, together with her quick submission to his point of view whenever he put it forward.

Such a woman required a strong man of his type to pilot her through the shoals of life, he told himself. In a month or two, when the memory of Prosper had taken its proper place in the scheme of things, he might make himself indispensable to her. The thing was easy, now that he knew Nora and had some control of her affairs.

Strolling back to his office, he discovered Ford in a state of unusual agitation. Brand's message over the telephone asking that Guinot, the French chemist, be brought to Prosper's bedside at the farmhouse near Teddington had disconcerted him.

Ford delivered Brand's instructions, which emphasized Prosper's perilous condition and the life-saving remedy that Guinot had hit upon.

Guinot's address was No. 9 Merivale Street, Chelsea. Brand's instructions included the promise of a large fee if the Frenchman succeeded in saving Prosper's life.

Craigon bit his lips as he pondered the message. Every moment wasted weighed in the balance of life or death to the brilliant young specialist. At last, however, he determined to do the manly thing.

In the street Craigon hailed a passing taxi with the intimation that a swift run to Merivale Street would mean an extra half-crown. The lawyer settled himself back in the car to study the new turn of affairs.

Who was this Guinot? he asked himself.

Was he a pliant man easily persuaded to act humanely in a crisis, or just a sulky scientist who might not feel disposed to set forth at midnight into the country?

The saving of Prosper's life would be a splendid thing, he told himself, although he did not quite see how the young specialist would face the after-consequences of his marriage with the sister of Lord Sturmiss. In any case Prosper's recovery or demise could hardly affect the future of Nora Eames; in one way or another. Chard would be pretty sure to turn over to her his share of the million-pound legacy.

Merivale Street, Chelsea, was an out-of-the-way thoroughfare, having one or two uninviting shops and an array of squalid tenement-houses. No. 9 was difficult of location. -After an almost futile search it proved to be a detached house shut in by a seven-foot wall at rear and sides.

Entering the outer gate, which led to the house-door, Craigon knocked loudly and waited. In one of the upper windows he saw a feeble light burning. It was nearly eleven o'clock.

The light in the upper window swayed uncertainly. Looking up, Craigon was conscious of a face staring in his direction. The nose and eyes must be Guinot's, he told himself, for he could not remember any English type in his acquaintance who possessed so unprepossessing an exterior.

The light receded from the room; footsteps sounded in the passage.

When the door opened Craigon breathed a gust of sickening air from within. It was an odor of animals in confinement—of birds and beasts kept in unsuitable surroundings. A sobbing whine came from the back regions, followed by the tremulous crying of an animal in pain.

Jacques Guinot explored Craigon through a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles. The nose of the scientist was flat beyond human semblance.

The leather-hued brow and smoke-grimed face spoke of one who breathed incessantly the fumes of laboratory fires.

"Who are you?" he demanded abruptly. "It is not possible to get much sleep with people hammering one's door!"

Craigon assumed an apologetic air, but in the shift of an eye he detected in Guinot the vivisectionist and man of unthinkable experiments.

Guinot's head was bound tight with a red kerchief; his face, in the candle-glow, had the look of burned metal. It was furrowed and flattened as to the cheek-bones as if an enraged fury had tried to hammer it into shape.

Craigon receded half a pace, his guard-arm moving instinctively into place.

"I—I am sorry for having interrupted you, m'sieur," he began hurriedly. "I came at the instigation of Dr. Brand, who is at present attending Dr. Chard, of Harley Street—himself a well-known nerve-specialist."

"I have heard of Chard," nodded Guinot. "He put argon into radium gas and made a noise in the papers; eh? Ace! What is the matter now?"

Craigon explained briefly the perilous condition of Prosper, begging at the same time some help for the unfortunate young experimenter.

Guinot listened, a faint interest in his spectacled eyes, his big shoulders twitching impatiently from time to time. At the word "hytrophen" he emitted a hoarse laugh.

"Smoke of Gehenna!" he grimaced. "The devil breathes it upon every scientist."

"So! Chard is dying, eh? What do you expect of me, sir?"

"Your immediate help," Craigon urged. "Money shall not stand in the way, monsieur. Will you come—now?"

"You or your friends have been impressed by the newspaper reports of me," Guinot glowered. "Let me tell you frankly that I can do little or nothing for Chard. It will be better for him to die. It will be a warning to other fools!"

Craigon was not so easily dismissed.

"England will remember your action, monsieur, if Prosper Chard is allowed to die.

"There are people in this country who love him for his past work, his sacrifices in the interests of his profession," he declared with vehemence.

"Come, monsieur!" he went on persuasively. "A check for one thousand pounds will be paid you the moment you leave here to see him."

Guinot pondered sullenly, while from within the house came the nerve-stirring cries of animals and birds in pain. Once or twice as Craigon fidgeted on the flagstones the Frenchman's big head twisted in the direction of the cries, a low growl of resentment on his lips.

"My assistant never goes to bed," he said huskily. "He is trying for an effect in nerve-shock on—"

He paused to sneeze violently in the doorway.

"On what?" Craigon asked, a cold sweat breaking over him.

"On a puppy and a muffled eagle," Guinot said grimly. "Those confounded birds make more noise than babies."

He stood for a moment brooding, listening to the cries in the back regions of the house, until Craigon again broke in upon his thoughts with an appeal for help.

Guinot made swift calculations in an underbreath, stepped back in the dark passage to call to his assistant in French, and then beckoned the young lawyer inside.

"I cannot save your friend's life," he said when Craigon had followed him into a small room on the right. "I can only prolong it a few short days. Now, may I inquire, is it worth while?"

His head wagged and nodded emphatically while his black fingers trimmed the spluttering wick of candle. Craigon caught his breath sharply.

"Give Chard a few more days to live!" he begged. "In the mean time something may happen. One never can tell."

"It is possible that your friend Chard will die before the dawn," Guinot grinned. "I will give you a cylinder of prepared oxygen that will extend his life by fifty hours—after the first symptoms of dissolution become manifest."

Turning into the dark passage, he called to his assistant loudly, and then with a shrug faced the young lawyer.

"I have been investigating this radium gas which Chard calls hytrophen, and"—he paused, his black fingers searching over his scrubby, smoke-grimed chin abstractedly—"I have come near to discovering a neutralizing effect."

"How near?" Craigon questioned.

Guinot lowered his candle.

"I cannot say yet. My experiments are hampered through want of subjects. You see—"

He made a quick gesture, almost of despair, while his eyes seemed to flame for an instant behind his steel spectacles.

"It is so difficult to obtain subjects," he went on. "I can eliminate the effects of radium gas in a patient, but there is an uncertainty about the effects upon the heart.

"I have tried it unsuccessfully on certain animals, but they die quickly. Now—I am trying for a human subject-"

In a flash Craigon divined his meaning. Being an unqualified medical practitioner, Guinot was unable to procure the human subject without whose aid all scientific tests were therapeutically incomplete.

Neither was Guinot anxious to try his new remedy on Chard, since that young specialist was not in a condition to consent to the experiment.

In a hoarse underbreath Guinot explained, while his assistant stood in the doorway with the cylinder of ether-oxygen, the necessity of one or two subjects before he could hope to administer his antidote to Chard. If within the space of three days they were available he would do his best to attend Prosper.

With the cylinder under his arm Craigon hurried to his car, his mind in a strange whirl after his brief interview with the somber scientist.

The life-giving cylinder would be in Brand's possession within an hour. A fast car would reach the farmhouse shortly after midnight.

Brand ought to be apprised of Guinot's difficulties in the matter of perfecting the cure. Something might be done at once to help the old scientist.

Surely, Craigon argued, it was possible to induce certain men and women to undergo these tests. Money would buy anything, even life itself.

There were people in London quite willing to submit to any medical experiment, providing the future of their families was assured. A thousand pounds would tempt hundreds of men to -Guinot's operating theater.

Three days was a valuable space of time wherein to hunt down a promising subject.

If the subject were willing Guinot might decide its value and turn his attention to Prosper.

Arriving at the office in a taxi, he found his clerk asleep on the camp-bed which was utilized in emergency. Ford was soon roused, and after a cup of strong coffee, which Craigon made on r. small gas-ring, the clerk declared himself willing to deliver the life-giving oxygen at the farmhouse where Prosper lay.

Ford hurried from the office to the taxi waiting outside. Craigon listened as the car sped from the street, his eye upon the vacant camp-bed. It seemed hardly worth while returning to his apartments in Bloomsbury. In the mean time Brand was likely to telephone at any hour.

Lighting a final cigarette, the young lawyer placed his coat on the hanger and turned with a sigh to the bed. The sound of a light footstep hesitating on the pavement below startled him slightly.

The door leading from the street to the passage was softly opened. Craigon waited while the footsteps advanced, and the quick tap-tap at the outer door made certain the fact that some midnight visitor had sought him out.

Drawing on his coat hurriedly, he opened the door so that the light flooded the dark' passage.

Nora Eames was standing white-lipped before him.

CHAPTER XV.
SCIENCE SEEKS A SUBJECT.

CRAIGON'S drowsiness vanished at sight of her. There was no need to ask why she had come at so late an hour.

After her meeting with Marjory she had returned to London for a brief interview with Brand at her city address. She had merely wished him to confirm the truth of Marjory's statement concerning the early morning marriage at the church of Chalfont St. Martin.

It was while Brand was explaining the text of Miss Bellamy's will that a message came from Sir Elgar North, apprising them of Prosper's hopeless condition. On hearing the news Brand had departed instantly to the farmhouse where Marjory kept watch over the bedside of her newly wedded husband.

So Nora had been left alone to fight through the bitter hours which separated Prosper from the end. She had no longer the right to be with him, even while the mists of death clouded his eyes.

She found herself wandering along the Embankment, where half-seen shapes of destitute men and women flitted from the shadows or paused with inquisitive eyes to follow her movements.

Lights flared down the river. The mutter of distant traffic still lingered in her ears; Big Ben chimed the last stroke of twelve as she turned rather hopelessly in the direction of Chancery Lane. A hope seized her that Craigon or his clerk might be standing guard at the telephone to catch some final news of Prosper.

Craigon greeted her with unusual courtesy, for he saw that her spirit was broken. Between them was no thought of the hour's lateness. The tragedy of her life obscured the unconventional manner of her visit.

Craigon, with his usual promptness, made more coffee in the little earthenware vessel always near him, and without apologies insisted upon her tasting a little.

At the first mention of her visit to Guinot the blood came with a rush to her cheeks.

All along she had held out a hope that there existed at least one scientist capable of fighting the terrible effects of the hytrophen.

Craigon was full of the incident now, for he felt he was earning her gratitude in his efforts to serve the man she had once loved.

"Guinot is the man!" he declared when Nora had somewhat recovered her self-possession. "To-morrow I shall hunt round for some one willing to undergo his final test. He's just a bit uncertain of the effects on the heart."

"It's this way." Craigon went on. "Guinot wants a man or woman who will submit to an injection of his new-found antidote for hytrophen poisoning."

"There is a risk of death, then?" She spoke so quietly that Craigon almost missed her query.

"I think there is an element of danger," he confessed. "or Guinot would not hesitate to experiment on Prosper immediately."

"And unless this subject is found at once," Nora asked in the same unemotional tone. "Guinot will not attempt to treat Prosper?"

"I'm afraid not. Miss Eames. But"—his face brightened suddenly—"we need not fear any difficulty in finding a man or woman ready to chance the experiment, providing we make it worth their while. London is full of people ready to risk life or limb for a twenty-pound note!"

Nora Eames scarcely heard him. Now that a chance for Prosper existed, her mind grew clearer, saner.

Near daybreak Craigon received a call over the telephone. It was from his clerk, Ford, who announced that Brand had administered Guinot's bracer to Chard with excellent effects. The fever had ceased almost instantly, giving way to a refreshing sleep.

Craigon went to bed with the knowledge that the coming day would see him on a peculiar life-and-death hunt among the poor of London.

Rising much later than usual, he hurried out to breakfast. As he sipped his strong coffee his mind raced over the problem of Guinot's subject. It had been left to him to produce one.

The city surely held one man or woman at least willing to risk life in the interests of science! A hundred pounds would be the sum paid for the service rendered.

But the more he pondered, the more difficult the mission appeared. At a first glance it was easy to assume that there were people anxious to risk their lives for money. But—where was he to begin his quest?

His thoughts ran to the hospital wards only to be put aside when he remembered that it was a healthy subject Guinot required. A taxi took him from the Strand into Waterloo Road, and thence to Lambeth amid dingy dwellings and byways that reeked of suffering and dirt.

While the suffering was not so apparent as the dirt. Craigon knew that each murky window-blind and door concealed some creature in pain or physical distress. Leaving the car at the end of a lane, he walked alone into the heart of the grime and dejection.

At one of the street corners he came upon a sailor standing in an irresolute attitude outside a gin-shop. Craigon felt that he must begin at once or spend the day in futile wanderings about the city.

"Not quite so fresh here as off the Lizard!" he began genially. "How long does your spell ashore last, my lad?"

The sailor, a young man scarcely in his twentieth year, turned slowly, his hand raised instinctively to the salute.

"Just come to have a look at the old place, sir," he responded quickly. "It seems to have got a lot uglier since I joined the navy."

"Five," the sailor admitted glumly. "I'm just wishin' I could stop home to help. It's a big struggle for the old woman, even with most of my pay to help things."

Craigon was unusually sympathetic and inclined to blame the government for the prevailing distress among the poor of London. Then he launched into the heart of the business in hand.

Did his friend with the sick father and mother know of any one desirous of earning a hundred pounds at some slight risk to his life?

The nature of Guinot's requirements was touched upon in a cheerful spirit, while the hundred sovereigns were held up with alluring insistence as the price of the service to be rendered.

Craigon was not inclined to conceal anything from the listener. He felt it his duty to put the matter in a straight and honest manner, leaving no doubt in the other's mind concerning the life-hazard of Guinot's experiment.

The sailor listened, but the lawyer observed no responding flash in his deep-set eyes.

"You must admit, my lad," Craigon said in conclusion; "that a hundred pounds is a small fortune to one in your position. It would purchase your freedom and give you an opportunity to be near your suffering people."

"A hundred pounds isn't much, sir, if a chap's got to chance his life for it," said the sailor.

"You risk your life every day in the year," Craigon reminded him; "at gun-practise, at sea, and in scores of ways while on duty. If you were asked to-morrow to go down in a submarine of doubtful class you would not hesitate—and," he added with zest; "there would be no hundred pounds to console you."

The sailor shook his head. "I've been through one operation, sir, and I'm not lookin' for another. Sittin' in a chair and havin' some kind of poison dropped into you is a nastier job than gun-practice. No, sir; it don't appeal to me!"

Craigon wished him a hasty good morning and proceeded in the direction of a brass plate which bore the name of a local medical practitioner. The lawyer felt it imperative now to consult such a man. The hours were passing too quickly.

Admitted to the doctor's house, he was soon in the presence of a short, stumpy little man, wearing a rather negligée shirt and untrimmed beard. To Craigon's searching eyes the Lambeth doctor appeared worried and suffering from overwork.

He listened to the lawyer's story with a certain bored expression inevitable in men whose lot is cast among the hopeless poor and diseased of London.

"What do you think of my chance?" Craigon asked, pressing a sovereign into the other's hand as a preliminary fee for advice sought. "Do you know of any person likely to undergo Guinot's experiment?"

Even the touch of Craigon's gold failed to lift the insupportable weight which seemed to bear upon the Lambeth doctor's brain and heart.

"You will accomplish nothing in this district," he predicted thoughtfully. "No one but a medical man knows how these wretched slum-dwellers value their skins. Theoretically they are willing to quit this life for a pint of beer. Try them and see," he concluded grimly. "Most of them are members of some sick society, and they come here clamoring like hurt monkeys if a tooth aches."

"You give them medicine?" Craigon inquired good-humoredly. He was beginning to be vastly interested in his quest and the new view of life it afforded.

The doctor stroked his eyes with his finger-points as one who had not known sleep for many nights. "To be frank with you," he admitted with a wry mouth; "I keep my society medicine in a tank outside the surgery—a little burned sugar and some coloring mixture. But touching this business of yours, I'm really afraid I can't help you. There's Bart Hospital; try it. Probably they'll put you on the track of a good subject. I'd chance it myself, only for my family."

So Craigon found himself once more in the street with half the morning gone and his mission still unfulfilled. At Bart's Hospital he was told that a subject might be forthcoming within a few days at least. At present they could not help him.

The fact that Craigon was unconnected with the medical world appeared to operate against his chances of success. He discovered this after an energetic canvass of the adjacent suburbs.

At five that evening he found himself returning to Chancery Lane, utterly disappointed with the day's work. Entering the office, he discovered Nora seated near his table, a look of resignation on her face.

"Seven hours wasted and nothing done," he confessed at once. "Funny how scared people are of scientific experiments!"

"I saw two at Guy's Hospital. They had children dependent on them, so I did not press my offer. Poor wretches! They would die for certain if they saw Guinot!"

"He's something between a Cyclops and a Paris executioner—a big, leather-faced dissector with eyes and tentacles.

"Quite human, of course," Craigon supplemented with a smile; "but distinctly horrible to touch."

Nora suppressed a shudder at his brief description of Guinot, the scientist. A silence fell upon the office while Craigon fumbled at some papers in his drawer.

Outside she heard the insistent mutter of traffic, and as she listened there came the consciousness that with each passing sound another minute of Prosper's life was being burned away.

"We-shall fight on to the last, of course," he added reassuringly. "Only it is sometimes difficult persuading strange people to risk their lives for another."

He scanned her again swiftly. The flush on her cheek startled him. He thought she was going to cry.

"You are aware," he broke out; "that he has bequeathed his whole fortune to you!"

"It was his desire, Miss Eames. And for that reason he married Marjory Hathaway."

She stared, white-lipped, at Craigon, while the sullen noises in her head seemed to stun and confuse her.

"I have no right to tell you so much," he went on. "But my anxiety to prove myself Prosper's willing servant urges me.

"You see, he has never quite forgiven himself for—that night-adventure when your father so suddenly expired. He thought it only fitting that your future should be amply provided for."

"The conditions were inescapable," he told her. "If Prosper had refused to marry Marjory Hathaway, the money would have stayed in America. It was the weirdest thing that could have happened.

"Prosper was doomed the moment he experimented with the hytrophen. The day he consented to marry Marjory was the very day he learned that he had only a little while to live.

"But since the marriage provided him with an opportunity to pass his fortune to you, he felt he could meet his end with a better heart and conscience."

Nora's head was bent between her hands. To the waiting Craigon she appeared to be stifling the tears and cries that welled from the depths of her womanhood.

Yet—how could she judge him since he had gone to the altar knowing that death waited almost at the end of the day?

Craigon saw how deep was her wound. He almost blamed himself for his impulsiveness in telling her so much. If she had only wept a little, or behaved as other women, his fears would have been allayed.

Her silence, the crouched pose in the chair, set him to thinking of a picture he had once seen of a young girl sitting crushed and beaten at the end of a deserted pier—nothing before her but the naked sea and the memory of one who had gone forever.

"I am going to the farmhouse tonight where Prosper is," he murmured. "Perhaps you would like to send a message?"

"Thank you; no, Mr. Craigon," she said after a pause. "You have been very kind, and—I must wish you good-by."

She was gone before he could detain her. Outside she approached a waiting car at the street-corner and requested the driver to take her to No. 9 Merivale Street, Chelsea—the address of Guinot, the scientist.

CHAPTER XVI.
THE SACRIFICE OF LOVE.

CRAIGON'S car took him to Teddington in less than an hour. He found Dr. Brand pacing the strip of garden in front of Prosper's window.

A look of dejection had come upon that much-worried practitioner; a nervous expectancy as of some impending calamity was in his eyes. The sound of the lawyer's car startled him from his unpleasant cogitations.

Craigon was brief. He outlined the result of his meeting with the French scientist, together with the story of his hopeless search for some one willing to undergo Guinot's hytrophen experiment.

"Guinot's ether is losing its effects on Prosper," he announced. "He will die at daybreak unless we can smash down the wall of inertia set up by that infernal radium gas. We must obtain a subject for Guinot at once!"

A shadow moved from the farmhouse portals to the open path. Almost noiselessly Marjory appeared before them. It was evident to both that their conversation had reached her. She was beside Craigon instantly.

"You think Prosper will die at daybreak?" she said with an effort. "Had we better not see Guinot?"

"He will not come," Brand responded. "Neither will he allow me to adminster his antidote to Prosper until he is assured of its effect on the heart A subject is wanted!"

"I will see Guinot at once. Tell me. Dr. Brand, do you think I would make a good subject for his hytrophen test?"

Marjory walked some distance toward her chauffeur's quarters, then paused in the path as Brand and Craigon followed undecidedly.

"I shall submit myself to Guinot," she repeated. "We cannot expect other people to sacrifice themselves for our pleasure. My husband's life is threatened. And you. Dr. Brand," she added with a touch of vehemence; "know how valuable that life is to humanity!"

"I only know that Guinot's antidote may prove fatal, Mrs. Chard. There is no need to risk your life.-Mr. Craigon will make another attempt to find a subject immediately. Here in Teddington it may be possible to induce some one to undergo the test."

The futility of his words was apparent even to Craigon. All the money contained in Miss Bellamy's will would not induce a single farm-hand to undergo voluntarily Guinot's dangerous heart-test. The hours were passing quickly—and each moment Prosper's chance of life was diminishing.

Marjory walked to the rear of the farmhouse, where her chauffeur sat playing cards with Mrs. Naylor's two sons. At her signal the chauffeur threw in his cards and followed silently to the bam where the big car had been housed.

"I want to go to Merivale Street, Chelsea, at once," she said. "How long will it take?"

"About forty minutes if I chance everything," the driver answered. "We've enough petrol to last us thirty miles."

The car throbbed from the barn and down to the gate. Brand followed at a run and held out his hand to Marjory. Neither spoke, but Brand felt that she was going to an ordeal that would try the courage of many a soldier hero. And he had always heard of the sister of Lord Sturmiss as a person devoid of sentiment or kindly regard for others!

Only a woman who was moved by pity and love would have committed herself to such an act.

It was no midsummer madness, this rushing off to the operating-chair. There had been no hysterics or dramatic effect. Marjory was not that kind of woman. And now that she was gone Brand felt himself bound to protect her against her own generous impulses.

Returning to the house, he begged Craigon to accompany him to the post-office at Teddington. The lawyer's taxi was ready at the gate, and they were soon racing up the wooded hill in the direction of the village.

It was nearly eight o'clock. Brand judged that Marjory would reach the scientist's house in Chelsea within forty minutes. After that anything might happen, for he knew that she would compel Guinot to experiment at once.

Guinot's telephone number was written on the hack of his own card. Arriving at the post-office. Brand's eyes wandered to the little clock above the receiver.' The run to Teddington had taken only seven minutes. His first call was soon answered, and in a few minutes he was listening for the hoarse, responding voice, of the French scientist.

A far-off spluttering followed his call, then a little gasping noise, accompanied by the Frenchman's unmistakable answer in the affirmative.

"She will insist upon undergoing your rather risky heart-test. She is very impulsive, m'sieur; I must therefore beg you not to take her request seriously."

"Sacré! But Chard's condition is serious. She will make a very good subject. You know—there is not a moment to lose."

"I must insist, m'sieur," Brand replied. "What would be said if both lost their lives. We must spare one at least. Do what you think best when she arrives. Use ordinary ether or chloroform to allay her suspicions, but I warn you not to administer that very risky sublimate you are experimenting with."

A guttural cough followed, then a sullen promise from Guinot that he would not comply with Marjory's request when she arrived at his house. Brand returned to the car and explained to the waiting Craigon the nature of his conversation with the Frenchman.

"You are right," he said after a while. "We cannot allow a double tragedy. It is just possible," he added quickly; "that a woman of Marjory's type would die in the chair."

Brand sighed and was about to address the taxi-driver. The loud ringing of the telephone bell sent him back to the post-office, a thought in his mind that Guinot had left something unsaid.

The postmistress beckoned him from the doorway. "Another message, sir," she informed him and returned to her work behind the counter.

Brand took the receiver from the assistant and placed it to his ear. Guinot's voice was clear and emphatic.

"A lady has called here," he said. "She has given the name of Eames and ees willing to submit herself to my test. Do you know her?"

"Miss Eames is a friend of ours," he said with difficulty. "I really wish you could persuade her to abandon her idea."

"'Cré nom! What do you wish!" Guinot's voice had in it a suggestion of disgust and anger. "Let your Chard die then; I wash my hands of the whole business, Dr. Brand! I cannot pick and choose my subjects," he went on passionately. "This young lady who has just arrived does not appear to value her life. Why should you oppose her voluntary act?"

Brand hung up the receiver, feeling that he could no longer control the trend of affairs. Craigon viewed his return to the car with unaffected curiosity.

"Something will certainly happen when Marjory meets Nora Eames in Guinot's house!" Brand exclaimed. "Nora has just presented herself. She is anxious to undergo the test."

Craigon almost leaped from the car, a wild feeling in his head that his own future was now at stake.

"We must stop her at once!" he broke out. "Prosper would never sanction such an act. It's unthinkable?"

Brand put out a restraining hand as the solicitor stepped toward the post-office.

"Nora Eames knows her own mind best," he said without heat. "I feel that we have interfered with Guinot enough already."

Craigon was at his wit's end. He could not openly oppose Brand. Yet his affection for Nora Eames cried out at that moment. He believed that in time she would forget Prosper, and that with care and diplomacy he might win her love and the huge fortune which would go to her eventually. It seemed monstrous, therefore, that she should risk her life even to save the man she loved.

"We must not interfere with Guinot again," he insisted. "It is impossible to foretell what may happen."

"You rule here, Brand," he declared huskily. "But—I go now to act for myself, to do what I consider right and proper."

Without inviting Brand to reenter the car he spoke a word to the chauffeur and slammed the door. It occurred to him that Brand would prevent him from communicating with Guinot by the post-office telephone, so he decided in the millionth fraction of time to rush the car to Chelsea at racing speed. They would arrive at the scientist's within half an hour.

And if the police did not stop them for furious driving he would surely be in time to prevent Nora from risking her life in the operating-chair.

CHAPTER XVII.
VENGEANCE OF THE BEAST.

CRAIGON felt that his hour had come. After a desperate run against time, the car reached Chelsea, bringing him without mishap to the gate of Guinot's house.

It was nearly nine o'clock; the street-lamps cast goblin-like shadows where a big tree slanted over the Frenchman's ill-kept garden.

Above the ordinary sounds of street traffic, Craigon was conscious of a loud, scuffling noise within the house as he opened the outer gate. 'Savage oaths, followed by an unmistakable noise 01 scrambling feet, sent a cold thrill of fear through the young solicitor.

The cry of a dog was heard amid the din, accompanied by a heavy slamming of doors and the audible beating of some invisible force against the inner walls.

Craigon waited, his walking-stick gripped tightly in his right hand. Then he banged the door impatiently.

Was this a place, he asked himself, where an English lady could obtain temporary sanctuary and medical treatment?

There was no response to his summons. Through the mysterious clamor of pursuing feet and banging doors he detected the voice of Guinot calling in desperate fright for help.

Craigon, unable to control himself further, walked quickly to a side-door that faced the front garden and tried it hurriedly. It was unlocked.

Entering cautiously, he found himself in a badly lit passage that exuded an odor of stale tobacco and sour food.

The slamming noises came from a room at the passage-end. The voice of Guinot seemed to subside into a series of choking sobs.

Craigon deliberated swiftly. That Guinot was fighting for his life with some unknown antagonist he felt certain.

Craigon was not anxious to participate unarmed in a conflict with unknown forces. But his nerves leaped at the thought of what might happen if he left without ascertaining the cause of the struggle.

She must have arrived long before, and be waiting, no doubt, in one of the adjoining rooms for an interview with Guinot.

Slipping along the passage, he came to a half open door where the sound of the Frenchman's subdued cries were plainly audible. To Craigon it seemed as if the scientist were striving to remove a weight from his chest and body.

The room was quite dark; the solicitor hesitated in the doorway as one gaging his chances of a sudden rush inside.

A peculiar sobbing snarl halted Craigon and sent him to the passage, his mind recalling a series of similar sounds which he had heard on his first visit to Guinot's house.

It occurred to him in a flash that one of the various animals used for experimental purposes had got loose and had turned upon its operator.

A mastiff, or hound of some kind, suggested itself to Craigon as being the cause of the trouble.. Very carefully he again approached the door, holding the knob so that he could close it in the animal's face if it attempted to spring in his direction.

With some difficulty he drew a match from his pocket and struck it on the wainscoting. Peering round the edge of the door, he made out dimly a litter of wrecked furniture and broken crockery scattered about.

Vases and mirrors lay in shattered heaps where they had been torn from the walls and shelves.

In the passing of a thought, Craigon dismissed the mastiff theory as he held the match forward to gain a fleeting view of the apartment. Guinot was lying face down on the floor, his clothes shredded to ribbons, his body trembling convulsively.

In the final glow of the match Craigon saw a black, apelike head and shoulders reflected in the mirror. With the extinction of the match, he heard the heavy thump of feet as the shape bounded to the floor.

Craigon closed the door with a snap, gripped the handle tight, and waited. The thump-thump of feet reached him; then hands searched the door swiftly.

He felt the knob shake and rattle as the beast struggled to tear the door from its fastenings.

The door itself was practically an affair of pasteboard, an emblem of the modern jerry-builder's art. Craigon saw the black-pointed claws rend and protrude through the panel as if it were paper.

Then the whole framework seemed to shiver and rattle as the beast forced its great forearm through the aperture and sought to catch him.

It occurred to Craigon that he must abandon his post instantly. To release the door and dash into the adjoining room seemed the only way of escape.

At that moment he heard a soft footfall on the stairs overhead, and then the voice of Nora Eames calling softly.

With the black, hairy arms clutching at his breast, he saw Nora descend the stairs and halt midway.

The door-panel was rent; the sound of tearing woodwork reached the spellbound Nora on the stairs. There was no mistaking the almost human face that now appeared in the broken panel space—the short ears and red eyes of a full-grown anthropoid ape.

Craigon bounded from the door to the stairs, catching Nora by the hand and calling her to follow. Nora flew by his side, a single backward glance revealing the terror of her position.

Craigon fairly leaped into the nearest room, pulling Nora in after him and slamming the door.

Together they stood breathing side by side, straining to catch some hint of the beast's approach.

It was apparent to Craigon that the animal had been brought to Guinot's house with numbers of others for purposes of vivisection and surgical experiments.

He did not ask himself how the beast had escaped. He knew enough of the dark side of experimental surgery to feel certain that Guinot's carelessness was responsible for what had happened.

The loud wrenchings below, followed by a sudden crash, told them that the powerful brute had forced its way bodily through the door. Its next move Was hard to guess.

There was no doubt in Craigon's mind concerning the beast's ferocity and strength.

Goaded, no doubt, by pain inflicted by Guinot's merciless instruments, it had broken loose and attacked its tormentor. For once in his life Craigon's sympathies went out to the half-human creature struggling to avenge its wrongs.

That the Frenchman was seriously hurt he felt certain. It was even probable that he had breathed his last the moment the match had been lit in the doorway. Viewed from every point, the position was lamentable, Craigon thought.

Guinot, as a factor in Prosper's recovery, was now out of the question. The animal with the claws and the half-human face had dealt with him finally.

The next move was to get Nora from the house and inform the police of what had happened.

The sound of a car entering the street took Craigon to a window that overlooked the garden and road. The lamp at the street-corner showed him Marjory's car as it stopped almost directly below.

He watched her alight and cross the foot-path leading to the garden-gate. Opening the window with a jerk, he called in a voice that instantly checked her approach.

Marjory halted undecidedly. Craigon's words and gestures conveyed something of the unlooked-for in the situation. The lawyer returned to the window after satisfying himself that Guinot's strange assailant had not followed them to the up-stairs apartment.

"If you will take Miss Eames in your car," he said quickly; "I may, with your driver's help, lower her from the window."

Craigon felt that he had attempted the almost superhuman in his efforts to help Prosper Chard. The last chance had gone with Guinot. And he must get Nora from the house at once.

He dared not open the door leading to the passage outside. Any moment might bring the escaped anthropoid tearing and clawing at the door-panels.

Nora saw with a woman's insight that a beast from the jungle had destroyed Prosper's chance of recovery. Regrets would avail her nothing.

Very quietly she submitted to the lowering from the open window—a feat accomplished by some linen sheets fastened together and held by Craigon. Marjory's driver stood below to assist her from the loop the moment her feet touched the ground.

Craigon descended after her. His next business was to invoke police aid and attend Guinot—if the scientist still lived.

The meeting between Nora and Marjory held some points of interest for the young solicitor. It was not his business to explain to Marjory the cause of Nora's visit to the scientist's house. That would explain itself later as the two women drove away together.

Whether Nora's attempt at self-sacrifice would commend itself to Marjory Chard, he was not certain. But of the fact that an end had been made of the strange drama in which he had been a principal actor, there seemed to be no doubt whatever.

Nora entered Marjory's car while Craigon stood by the door, relating as briefly as possible what had happened inside the house. At sight of the sheets suspended from the window of Guinot's house one or two passers had halted, but their idle speculations as to the cause had in no way interfered with the lawyer's swift operations.

Marjory felt now that her immediate return to Prosper was necessary. She decided to take Nora to her new home in Sloane Square»and then drive back to the farmhouse at Teddington, where Brand awaited her. The last shred of hope had gone with Guinot. Craigon hurried to a near-by telephone-station, bidding her await his return. They must see the Frenchman, he declared, before she left Chelsea.

He came back a few minutes later accompanied by a couple of police constables whom he had met on his way to the telephone. Informed of the affair which had happened within the scientist's house, they decided to make an entry at once. By this time a small crowd had collected outside.

Three other constables appeared on the scene in response to Craigon's message over the telephone. Several revolvers were instantly forthcoming, and the leading constable, with three men at heel, made a preliminary detour of the house.

To Marjory the waiting moments seemed pregnant with disaster and further misfortunes. Yet if Guinot still lived there was a hope that he might do something for Prosper.

Nora lay back in the car listening to Craigon's voice as he guided the police to the side entrance. She recalled the way he had almost carried her from the track of the infuriated anthropoid, while a growing sense of her indebtedness to the young solicitor came upon her almost with a feeling of shame.

She knew it was to prevent her risking her life that he had entered Guinot's house. The thought stirred her a little, leaving her cold and half weary of her own futile strivings. Marjory touched her arm very gently.

"I am trying not to be angry with you. Nora," she said with an effort. "You had no right in Guinot's house."

Nora was silent, although her heart cried to tell the sister of Lord Sturmiss how sick and weary she had become of existence.

Marjory listened for a moment to the sound of the police entering the house. Then her hand went out again to the white-lipped girl beside her.

"I know you loved Prosper, little one; I know I had no right to steal him from you. Yet—to-day I learned something which has come near to breaking my heart. Shall I tell you, little one?"

"No, no!" Nora implored. And then, with Marjory's hands held tight in her own, she sobbed quietly over the tragedy which had enveloped them both.

"It was to help you that he married me." Marjory went on steadily. "He knew in the beginning that this horrible death awaited him. To-day, as he lay with Brand's fingers on his temple, I felt—Heaven forgive me!—how near I was to hating him!"

"I am brave enough to bear my pain when it comes, little one!" She paused to contemplate Nora's pretty, soft, white fingers, the small diamond ring which she knew Prosper had given her.

"I began the affair," she continued in a voice scarcely audible, with a feeling of contempt for Prosper. You know what these young society doctors are like. I put him in their class and felt that our marriage would be one of convenience only.

"I do not say that the clause in Miss Bellamy's will overwhelmed me. I was fascinated, of course, by the prospect of so much wealth. And as a sportswoman I saw plenty of fun ahead."

"The anger you feel against me, little one, will go. Some day you may really understand how much Prosper loved you and how little he thought of me when I stood beside him at the altar-rail. Have I said enough?"

She stooped over the sobbing Nora and kissed her softly on the cheek. The sound of a gunshot came, starting her to her feet.

"He was dead when we entered the room. We can do no more, Mrs. Chard, for your husband!"

CHAPTER XVIII.
"MY SECRET IS FOR SALE."

DENIS CRAIGON found himself contemplating the photograph of Nora Eames with unaffected delight and interest. He had in his casual way appropriated the picture and frame from Chard's dressing-table in Harley Street. A dying man who also happened to be married to another lady had no further right to Nora's likeness, he told himself.

Replacing the photo in his drawer, Craigon proceeded to shave himself with more than usual care.

His arms and fingers showed signs of his recent adventure in the house of Jacques Guinot. A cut here and there emphasized his narrow escape from the claws of the infuriated anthropoid.

Brand had telephoned an hour before that Prosper was slowly succumbing to the effects of the hytrophen. The coming night would see the end. Brand intimated. It was only Guinot's temporary specific which had kept him alive so long.

Craigon was sorry for his friend and for Marjory, who had been confronted so early after her marriage with a tragedy unparalleled in the history of medical science. He was glad that Nora had become friendly with Marjory. Nora could not openly grieve at the fate of Prosper, for no proper woman, he told himself, could publicly lament the death of another's husband.

Breakfasting leisurely, his morning paper supported by the toast-rack and cream-jug, Craigon realized that his part in the Chard-Hathaway drama had been played to a not unsuccessful issue.

He had worked and canvassed the slums of London in the hope of finding a subject for Guinot; he had driven at all hours in motor-cars through country lanes and ditches to help his old friend Prosper.

He had also risked much in entering Guinot's house when the nerve-maddened anthropoid was squeezing the life out of the French scientist.

After these exploits Denis looked forward to a period of repose and freedom from worry. He would attend Prosper's funeral and console Nora on the return journey to her new home in Sloane Square.

A week or two later, when the memory of the funeral had receded into its proper perspective, he might ask her to accompany him to one of the West End theaters.

The prospect of escorting Miss Eames to the various places of entertainment induced the lawyer to a fifth slice of toast and another soft-boiled egg.

Denis had coquetted with fortune in his day—had divined the power of money long before other youths had started to shave. He had studied law in an East End attic, had denied himself almost the necessities of life that his chances in life might not be impaired.

As a lawyer's clerk at a pound a week he had acquired the money-saving habit. Every ten pounds was a step to fortune. Poverty frightened him.

He had seen men of his own profession wandering along the Embankment by night, through the financial follies of youth condemned to eternal privation and suffering. By degrees he had worked himself into a steady business. He had men like Brand and Chard for clients, with the result that he was now in the way of making an impression on Nora Eames, the sole heiress to Chard's half million of money.

The beautiful morning carried him to the park, where he permitted himself an hour's leisure before proceeding to his dingy office in Chancery Lane.

His mind at that moment ran counter to work. He was thinking of the vast fortune which would go to Nora at Prosper's death. He looked at his watch and found it too early to call at her address.

If he were to win this shy, beautiful girl he must live in her shadow, become her slave until she found him indispensable.

But of the things that hurt most was the thought of the long weeks of secret grief she must pass through before his suit could be urged.

In the park there were many children accompanied by nurse-maids and parents. He watched them idly for some time until his vision was obstructed by a stylishly dressed woman.

His glance would not have stayed a moment in her direction if she had not halted opposite his seat and favored him with a smile of recognition.

Craigon regarded somewhat doubtfully the pretty face and well-set figure. Then at her second smile he almost leaped to his feet.

Miss Vorne approached the seat with the nimble step of one in the full possession of health and spirits. Indeed, as he looked at her he was compelled to admit that her buoyancy and spirits were equal to his own.

"You gave me twenty pounds the other day, Mr. Craigon." she began, placing her sunshade beside her on the seat, "to keep me from talking to the police about your friend Chard."

The very act of breathing Prospers name appeared to change her spirits. The color in her checks gave way to a paler hue. Her hands tightened about the pearl mounting of her sunshade.

"I see by the papers." she went on with some acerbity. "that his end is expected at any moment."

Craigon's thoughts were lightning-flashes. Only a few days ago he had seen Miss Vorne staggering about her room in the throes of the deadly inertia brought about by her accidental inhalation of radium gas in Chard's surgery.

Her case had appeared to him hopeless; yet within a short space she had by some mysterious means thrown off the effects of the hytrophen and was in better health than ever!

The ghost of a grimace was visible on Miss Vorne's lips. She contemplated the lawyer's perplexed face.

"Chard is dying!" she volunteered with a smile. "What have you been doing to save him?"

Craigon felt the hidden malice in her question. He knew now that she had shadowed him from his lodgings with a set purpose in view.

And as his glance wandered over her, his dislike of her presence became increasingly manifest.

"You confess you're beat." she continued dryly. "A week ago I was in the same boat with Chard. We were both entered for the cemetery stakes, with a chance of a let-off in Chard's favor.

"He had all the money and influence and the best advice from his own set in Harley Street, while I was abandoned in that dirty little lodging-house in Tanner Street!"

"I gave you twenty pounds during the first week of your illness." Craigon retorted. "I was not commissioned to do it. either."

"I'm speaking of Dr. Chard." she flung back. "We were all mixed up in Chard's experiment. You got business out of it. while I came close to ending a rather virtuous career."

The mixture of malice and irony in her words put the solicitor on edge. Yet with alt his skill as a wrangler he found that silence was the most effective weapon in meeting her attack.

He knew that she must speak what was in her mind. Afterward he could test his trained intelligence against her crude deliveries.

What miracle had saved this woman from the fate which had overtaken Rochart and other experimenters of his kind?

It was evident that with all her buoyancy and good spirits she had passed through a terrible ordeal, but that something had intervened to save her.

She was thrusting at the gravel walk with her sunshade, while her glance went out to some swans floating across the reed-grown pond directly in front. Half a dozen nurses and children were throwing pieces of cake and bread into the tree-shadowed depths.

"I used to dream of swans and boats when I was lying in that rotten house in Tanner Street!"

The words left her unexpectedly. It was as if the memory of her recent experience stirred her to anger and defiance.

"Nobody ever came near me." she went on; "unless I promised 'em money in advance. Some of those London lodging-house keepers are kinder to dogs than women!"

"At present you are in perfect health. Miss Vorne. It is amazing to think of your escape from the effects of that horrible radium gas. You know that it has killed half a dozen scientists within the last few months."

His manner was persuasive and sympathetic to a degree. Miss Vorne sighed, but did not relax her attitude of veiled hostility.

"I've been laughing over the whole business day and night," she answered dryly. "Here's Chard, one of your famous Harley Street specialists, dying of the same trouble that nearly took me.

"Both of us had a dose of hytrophen poison. I was left alone with twenty pounds to cure myself. He had all London at his call—and still he's dying!"

"But—you did something?" Craigon broke out. "It was no ordinary doctor who saved you!" An unconscious gleam of humor was visible in Miss Vorne's glance. She played with her suede gloves, while the corners of her mouth quivered strangely.

"Was it medicine?" he hazarded, ignoring her remark. "Or just an accidental remedy of your own finding?"

"Call it accident if you like, Mr. Craigon; it pulled me out of Chard's boat. And"—she paused to stroke her gloves—"I'm going to have a good time for the rest of my days."

"Bravo!" he exclaimed without meeting her swift side glance. "You are entitled to the good things of life after your recent narrow escape."

Miss Vorne nodded and drew on her right glove with the air of one about to depart. He watched her, a queer feeling in his throat, his brain aflare with the problem which had so suddenly presented itself.

A word from her now would save Prosper Chard. Most women he had met were anxious to talk of their self-discovered cures. Her silence appeared part of a premeditated plan.

For an instant they confronted each other with the air of duelists. He had never met a woman so completely on her guard. He found himself in the position of one compelled to force his point.

Craigon felt that it would be better if she would walk beside him and converse; talk always flowed more easily that way. But Miss Vorne remained immovable in the path, evincing not the slightest wish to accompany him through the park.

"Your help and advice only, Miss Vorne. Surely you will not leave England without putting your recent experience in poor Chard's way! It is a duty we owe to each other, Miss Vorne. You surely do not bear him any ill will."

He could but admire the artistic elevation of her eyebrows at his request. She laughed softly.

"You want me to give the benefit of my experience to a Harley Street specialist! Oh my! That's good—coming from a lawyer, too!"

"A word from you, Miss Vorne, will give Chard his final chance. Plainly and honestly, then, what was it that delivered you from the effects of the hytrophen?"

At his deliberate question her face grew almost sinister in its passionless immobility. A tiny smile in the corners of her mouth reminded him of Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa." There was no mistaking her answer.

"I've gone out of the life-saving business, Mr. Craigon. Your friend Chard doesn't interest me. Doctors who inhale their own poison should take the consequences!"

He controlled himself with an effort, feeling that it would be madness to quarrel with her. There must surely be a way to her sympathies.

"I thought you knew that Chard conducted his risky experiment in the interests of suffering humanity, Miss Vorne. To me his conduct has always appeared noble and praiseworthy. Society is bound to help such men. It is our duty!"

Miss Vorne opened her crimson sunshade and twirled it with her gloved fingers for a few moments, while Craigon wondered whether his words had awakened some generous impulse in her. Then she looked at him between the eyes.

"It may be a lot to some people." she countered maliciously. "I always fix my own price on these little things!"

"Name it, I beg. Miss Vorne. Dr. Brand declared this morning that Chard would not see another dawn. We must not play with our last chance!"

For the first time since their meeting she appeared to deliberate with some outward show of mental agitation. When she spoke he realized the cause.

"Chard has come into a fortune. Mr. Craigon. He's not the struggling philanthropist you try to make out. The papers say his aunt left him over a million pounds in hard cash!"

It was only after he had spoken that the lawyer divined the unwisdom of his words. Miss Vorne raised her head almost sharply.

"That wedding of his with Lady Marjory Hathaway was a put-up affair to save his aunt's money! I read it in last Sunday's paper."

Very slowly she returned to the seat, and with Craigon beside her, sat down with the air of one prepared to clinch a bargain.

In his legal capacity, Craigon had met many types of professional blackmailers and money-hawks. In dealing with the former he often found that women abated their demands more readily than men.

He sometimes confessed to himself and others that the most exaggerated type of female blackmailer generally exhibited some quality of mercy when forcing her demands upon her unfortunate victims.

Miss Vorne's manner puzzled him. Of her past he knew little, save that she had once made her appearance in Chard's surgery to demand money.

"I told you just now that I was off to Paris." she went on suddenly. "Suppose I stay in London and give you the benefit of my experience; how much will you pay?"

"A check for a hundred pounds the moment Chard's doctor approves of your advice."

"Is that all you'll pay to drag a millionaire from the grave, Mr. Craigon? Mind, I'm asking what you consider fair value for a life-and-death service!"

There was no mistaking the woman with the "Mona Lisa" smile. In his time Craigon had torn the arguments of the average blackmailer to shreds. It was his business to expose the criminal fallacy of their propositions. .

But in the present instance Miss Vorne had only to remain inactive 10 force any claim she chose.

"A hundred pounds in a large sum," he said after a while. "Very few London specialists would dream of charging such a fee!"

He perceived a certain bloodless quality creep into her face; it was as if some unknown force were squeezing her brain and heart. She leaned forward from her seat, her lips tight set.

"Chard or his wife is going to pro? vide for my future, Mr. Craigon. I want ten thousand pounds guaranteed before I speak another word!"

"Come, come. Miss Vorne; we must be serious! Even at this juncture I cannot allow my client to be fleeced so mercilessly!"

"Then save Chard your own way, Mr. Craigon. Lady Marjory will thank you, no doubt, for letting this chance go by!"

Craigon swore under his breath, but his anger did not prevent him following her to the park gates. She walked quickly; it was with difficulty he overtook her.

"I will give you a guarantee that the ten thousand pounds will be paid within seven days," he said breathlessly.

"Give me a postdated check for the amount. If the remedy doesn't act, you can stop payment. Is that fair?"

"Besides, I'm feeling rather faint after our argument; you must give me a cup of coffee."

Craigon spoke to the chauffeur, and then followed Miss Vorne into the car, his thoughts flaming round a single question in his mind.

What miracle of science had this woman discovered to save herself from the death to which Chard was quickly passing?

CHAPTER XIX.
THE REMEDY.

THE car passed through the Strand into Chancery Lane, past gray-faced buildings and rain-whitened gargoyles staring down from medieval turrets and window-copings.

The phenomena of death and life moved with the car. The keys of life were in Miss Vorne's keeping.

It had been granted her to peer into the black void of eternal sleep and then draw back to life.

Craigon was impelled by an overwhelming curiosity. For the moment he forgot Miss Eames and Miss Bellamy's millions.

Had this obscure woman sounded the depths which baffled even that tough old scientist, Guinot?

It seemed incredible! Every moment he expected to hear his telephone bell, and to start out of his sleep.

Miss Vorne entered the office in Chancery Lane with something of the priestess in her movements. She had a mystery to unfold, a life to save—at a price.

Craigon lost not a moment in making some strong black coffee. To loosen her tongue, he would have brewed witch-hazel or poppy-juice.

And as she sipped in half famished little gulps from the blue-china cup, he made some display of filling in a check for ten thousand pounds.

She scanned it with the eye of a bank-teller, and then placed it negligently beside the empty coffee-cup.

"When you gave me the twenty pounds in Tanner Street, Mr. Craigon, I had only a few short hours to straighten my affairs. A doctor told me I should die before midnight.

"You know the rat-trap of a house I was in? There wasn't enough clean air in it to keep a dog alive!

"It was a stifling day. I could not breathe in my room, and as the minutes went by I began to feel a terrible desire for air. I wanted to lie in an open field—in a wood—any place where I could die with the sky over me.

"My strength had not quite left me. I could walk easily enough, so I decided, all at once, to get into a taxi and go into the country.

"I remember," she went on thoughtfully; "getting into the car, and being taken out of town among trees and small country houses. The car traveled at a great rate, and in less than an hour we pulled up at an old village inn about twenty miles from London.

"I gave the driver a sovereign and told him to go back. Then I started off down a lane that seemed to lead into the heart of some hills in the south."

In a flash Craigon recalled how Prosper had wandered from the inn at Teddington across the fields, and how he had been found by the Naylor family in a highly feverish condition. It was evident to him that the effects of the hytrophen were invariably the same.

Miss Vorne sat back suddenly in the chair, grimacing at the memory of some incident recalled in her strange adventure.

"I don't know how far I walked. My head was in a whirl; my eyes burned like bits of shot-metal.

"Turning into another lane, I found myself stopped by a low fence. Something—it might have been the pains in my head—sent me on.

"Placing my foot on the lower rail of the fence, I scrambled on top. Then my strength gave out, and I pitched over into a lot of beehives on the other side."

"Before I could turn or protect myself, the bees were over me in hundreds. I seemed to be fighting millions of the little beggars!

"They were in my hair and clothes, looking for soft places to sting. I thought I was past screaming, but the noise I made brought the men and women clattering from the farmhouse.

"They drove off the bees, and took me into a big. stone-flagged house close by. A woman rubbed my hands and face with a lotion, but the more she rubbed the sleepier I grew.

"The pain of the stings seemed to leave me all at once. I remember being placed on a couch and falling into a sleep that was like death itself.

"It seemed like death to me," she declared with a sigh. "I slept for sixteen hours, and when I awoke an old doctor with billy-goat whiskers was standing by the couch.

"I heard him tell them that the fever had gone, and that I was in no danger whatever from the effects of the bee-stings."

"Then your grand secret revolves into a matter of bees'-stings!" he exclaimed. "Surely that is not all you have to tell?"

Miss Vorne helped herself to another cup of coffee with an air of conviction in each movement.

"Perhaps you expected an earthquake, Mr. Craigon. I'm sorry I've only a plentiful supply of bee-stings to recommend as an antidote for your hytrophen gas. I was in a dying condition when I bumped those hives.

"Is there any other cause that will explain my sudden recovery?" she demanded with a grimace.

Craigon was on his feet instantly. It was not for him to cast doubts on her story. He knew only that she had been in the same condition as Chard through inhaling too freely of the deadly hytrophen.

The next moment he was speaking into the little mouthpiece of the telephone beside him. Miss Vorne drew nearer instinctively as his voice vibrated and called alternately. He had called up the postmistress at Teddington, asking her to tell Dr. Brand to come to the receiver.

Craigon waited, his brow clouded and anxious. It would be some minutes before Brand could reach the post-office from the farmhouse where Chard and Marjory were. His eyes turned instinctively to Miss Vorne.

"I don't know whether Brand will approve of your story," he ventured, doubtfully. "He knows a good deal about medical science and—humbug!"

Silence fell between the two—and silence broken only by the occasional tramping of feet in the passage outside.

His clerk, Ford, peeped in at the door once or twice, but withdrew stealthily upon receiving no sign from his employer.

Then sharp upon the brooding silence came the note of the telephone. Brand was speaking.

Craigon bent over the receiver, but from the corner of his eye he watched Miss Vorne.

A sharp silence followed his declaration. Ten—twenty seconds went by before Brand's voice was again audible.

"Chard is sinking fast," he said in a clear voice. "For Heaven's sake. Craigon, don't play on our feelings! We're fighting like fiends to keep the boy alive!

"Miss Vorne was in the last stages of delirium when she fell—are you listening, Chard?—when she fell into a colony of bees and was stung by hundreds of them.

"She was rescued by some farmhouse people and taken home. A long stupor followed, out of which she emerged fit and well."

"Bee-stings are mostly formic acid. Strange! I understand that it was one of the principal ingredients in Guinot's remedy."

"We can't throw Prosper into a colony of bees, my dear fellow. Marjory won't consent to that.

"I can get the same effect, though, by injecting the acid plentifully into his system. It's worth risking."

"If Prosper Chard recovers within a week am I at liberty to cash this paper, Mr. Craigon?"

"I will add another hundred pounds, Miss Vorne, if your bee-theory gives Chard a fresh lease of life. Good-by, and thank you!"

She departed. Craigon returned to his seat at the table, wondering whether Brand could now save the man who had bequeathed half a million pounds to Nora Eames.

CHAPTER XX.
WHO IS THIS WOMAN?

PROSPER CHARD sat up on his couch and took a glass of water from Brand. It was past midday.

A hum of voices came in from the fields, with the jingle of harness as the big plow-horses swung round at the furrow-end to resume their tireless task of upturning the sweet earth.

Every breath from the wide meadows brought a keen sense of life to the young specialist who had just emerged from the shadow of death. Brand's efforts had been crowned with success. Within a week of Craigon's interview with Miss Vorne the miracle had been accomplished and the white specter, hytrophen, completely annihilated.

Marjory had stayed with Brand in his fight to save her husband. There had been a time after the injections of formic acid when Prosper seemed to sink into a death-torpor. But the change came swiftly and surely even as Marjory watched beside the bed.

In the long hours before dawn she had ample leisure to study the drama which had woven itself so unsuspectingly about her life. Prosper had married her in the full belief that his death was certain within a few weeks at least.

What would he think of the compact, now that life and strength had been restored?

Once or twice in his raging delirium she had caught Nora's name on his lips. Sometimes her own was uttered, but with less frequency.

Even her strength and splendid health threatened to give way under the strain of watching. But—Prosper had come back to life.

She could not rid herself of the thought that she had stolen Nora's lover. Day and night it troubled her until she almost cried out to be released from her intolerable position.

Yet in those nights of watching there had come upon her a fierce desire to cling to this brilliant young husband. He had been hers in the long hours when hovering between life and death; he should be wholly hers in the life to come!

Nevertheless, this great love born of pain and tragedy threatened to break her fierce determination. With each day of his convalescence came a spirit of resignation, a desire to surrender her own future for his and Nora's sake.

It was not enough to nurse him to life; she must contrive that his future be free 'from further irritations and regrets.

Yet how was this to be accomplished? Her mere desire to undo her marriage would avail nothing in the eyes of the law; neither would it contribute anything to Prosper's or Nora's happiness.

She could allow Prosper to go his own way unquestioned. They need never meet again. She would not be the millstone in his career.

Brand looked up quickly as she entered the room. With a physician's promptitude he noted the tired eyes and uncertain step. A week ago she had appeared to him the least likely woman in England to exhibit signs of depression or breakdown.

"We shall leave here to-morrow," he said in a half whisper. "I should advise a short stay in the south of England before returning to London. What do you think?"

Marjory sat very quietly beside the bed, wondering a little at Prosper's rapidly changing appearance, the new glow in his cheeks, the half-closed eyes that seemed to be listening to the sounds in the fields' beyond.

"I will go anywhere you advise," she responded. "Do you think he will be able to leave at once?"

At sound of her voice Prosper stirred. Then for the first time in many days his eyes met hers. There was no avoidance nor uncertainty in his glance; it was the look he had given her when first they were left alone in the breakfast-room at the King's Arms on the morning of their marriage.

Prosper was exploring her dispassionately, as if he had noted the utter weariness of her pose and gestures.

"I forget how long," she answered steadily. "The nights run into the days until it seems like the end of life."

"Your devotion has carried you too far," he observed. "In the rush and hurry of things I had almost overlooked your superhuman efforts to be about and doing."

Prosper's sharp breathing was heard in the silence. He seemed like one struggling to recall something in the near past. Then with a perceptible effort he struggled to his elbow, while his face remained half buried in the shadow of the heavy curtains.

"You—you are Lord Sturmiss's sister!" he said with a slow deliberation that held her transfixed. "What are you doing here?"

For a moment she looked at Brand as if expecting him to answer. The physician's silence merely accentuated the need of an instant reply.

"I am here because you have been ill, and because it is my right to be near you."

"What right? I do not remember sending for any one. I have only met you once before in my life.

"Of course—it was very good of you to attend. I shall never forget your kindness."

"This illness has mixed up my ideas horribly, Brand," he said with a quick glance at the tense-mouthed physician.

"You are coming along famously, Prosper." Brand assured him. Then under his breath he said; "Good Heavens!" and looked away from the white-faced Marjory seated beside him.

All along Brand had been assailed by a conviction that Prosper's nerve-centers were undergoing a rapid change. The events of the last few weeks were now entirely obliterated from Chard's mind.

Brand's experience in London hospital-work had often shown him men and women who returned to consciousness after illness with no power of recalling the near past.

Prosper was a case in point. His marriage with Marjory, his coming to the farmhouse at Teddington had happened while he was still under the influence of hytrophen.

And his supersensitive brain might never recall the incidents which had occurred from the time he had inhaled the deadly gas to the present moment!

It was evident that the hytrophen had acted differently on Miss Vorne. Or was it that she had inhaled lightly, whereas Prosper had drawn deep of the poisonous vapor?

Brand looked askance at Marjory, but found no answer in her eyes. She was sitting very still in her chair, a curious, listening blindness in her face, as of one who heard a far-away voice echoing in the distant past.

Prosper was regarding her with a new-found interest. Something in her spellbound attitude awoke him to a sense of her inexplicable presence in the room.

"I had the pleasure of meeting your brother, Lord Sturmiss, a long time ago," he declared with an effort. "Are you living in this neighborhood?"

She looked up and discovered that his stare had become fixed. For a moment she found refuge from his piercing scrutiny in the contemplation of a dark-winged moth fluttering in the folds of the curtains.

She spoke firmly now, while her fingers sought to release the moth from a scarcely visible tangle of spider-web in the window-corner.

Prosper lay back among the pillows, his eyes tight-shut, his brain afire with the sudden flow of ideas. He was aware that he had been ill, and that at certain lucid intervals he had seen Brand and the sister of Lord Sturmiss moving quickly about the room.

There came to him a faint recollection of his experiment with the treacherous radium gas which scientists called hytrophen. Now he remembered having inhaled a certain quantity for purely experimental reasons in the presence of Craigon and Brand.

But everything that had happened since the inhalation was blank in his memory. He knew only that he had emerged from a state wherein his brain had been abnormally active, and yet had retained no impressions since the experiment.

It might have been a month or a year ago. Brand had volunteered nothing in the way of explanation. It was not the physician's duty to explain things to a recovering patient.

But Prosper Chard could not understand why Lady Marjory was now nursing him back to health, or why Brand had permitted her to enter the house at all. Also he was annoyed at his friend for practically ordering her only a few minutes before to accompany him to the South of England.

It was well meant, no doubt, but in such matters he. Prosper Chard, preferred to chose his own traveling-companions.

Brand drew his seat nearer the bed, for he had begun to detect an almost hysterical note in Marjory's labored breathing. The situation had become almost intolerable.

"It is nearly a month now. Prosper, since Craigon read Miss Bellamy's will to you," he volunteered steadily. "Can you remember?"

Prosper knit his brows as one striving with heart and brain to recall the event.

"I didn't know she was dead." he confessed in genuine surprise. "Dear, kindly Gertrude!"

"She died nearly two months ago," Brand went on, determined to end the situation. "The whole of her fortune, over a million sterling, was left to you conditionally that you marry Lady Marjory Hathaway."

"You had every need." Brand told him. "Nora Eames was ruined by the unexpected death of her father, occurring as it did when you were in the house—under the influence of that hytrophen vapor!"

"All this time I have been practically dead!" he said with difficulty. "Let me think. Brand, or I shall sink again into that white abyss of inertia."

"There is no need for you to sink into anything, my dear boy," Brand went on with decision. "We must float you back into the realities of your position and the position of the lady seated beside' me."

Prosper's face softened strangely. It became boyishly wistful in its intense eagerness and absence of self-pity. Almost appealingly he turned to Marjory.

"I feel that I have been guilty of some horrible blunder. Let me ask you," he continued almost passionately; "whether you suspected my true condition during the last few weeks?"

"I know that you have been a victim of your own scientific experiments," Marjory answered slowly. "I know, too, that you risked your life with that hytrophen in the interests of humanity?"

He breathed sharply, his chin resting in his palm. "Thank you," he said hoarsely, and then, raising himself with difficulty, he addressed Brand:

"We are all to blame. Prosper. Your conduct deceived me utterly during the days when Craigon was arranging your marriage with—"

"With your consent," Brand replied. "You appeared to be in a condition of unusual mental alertness. I may say with Lady Marjory that your whole attitude was that of a man in complete possession of every faculty."

"Then—in that condition—I was—married!" he said hoarsely. "And for a mere question of money!"

"My dear boy, don't judge yourself and others too harshly," said Brand. "At the time of the marriage contract you appeared to act with your usual unselfish spirit. Knowing Miss Eames to be in great difficulties through her father's sudden end, you arranged that half your aunt's money should go to her at your death.

"All that has happily been nullified by your unexpected recovery," he added with a smile.

Marjory's sight. But she knew by his trembling shoulders that he was sobbing like a wounded child.

CHAPTER XXI.
MARRIED STRANGERS.

THE newspapers were full of Marjory Chard's return to health. They attributed the event to the bracing atmosphere of St. Denis-on-Sea. A certain evening journal stated that the sister of Viscount Sturmiss was fortunate in having beside her Dr. Prosper Chard, the most distinguished of present-day specialists and devoted of husbands.

Marjory did not read the papers, nor heed the society gossip which turned unerringly upon the doings of herself and Prosper. Within a week after leaving the farmhouse at Teddington her health had collapsed under the terrible strain endured patiently at Prosper's bedside.

They had gone straight to Chine Villa at St. Denis-on-Sea, a delightful modern residence overlooking the blue waters of the Solent. Here was fought out another titanic struggle between youth and death, with Prosper Chard wielding all the known weapons of science on behalf of the woman who bore his name.

Previous to her illness there had been no word of confidence between them. She could regard him only as one who had been trapped into marriage with her. Her thoughts never went further.

And it was this dreadful memory that drove her to her last redoubt. In the days which had preceded her marriage she had laughed at the contract in Craigon's presence. The laughter had been echoed in the night when Prosper sat near, watching the advances and retreats of death.

But life and youth prevailed in that silent struggle. There were people who hinted that only a medical genius such as Prosper could have saved her.

During those weeks of watching and suspense Brand had come often. And never once did he find Prosper absent from the quiet little villa where the most silent of all tragedies was in the acting.

Surely. Brand argued silently, no two people had ever been married under stranger conditions. Often during the days of her convalescence he watched them together, seated on the sunlit lawns where the late autumn roses leaned and beckoned over the hedgerows.

There had once been a certain large-modeled charm about Lady Marjory. Brand told himself. Her beauty was of the vivid, robust kind. ¦

She was taller and stronger than sweet-voiced Nora Eames; more impulsive, quicker to see and feel. She had divined the tragedy of Prosper's existence and hers.

And it was not Miss Bellamy's money which had wrought the ruin in their lives. The cause of medicine and humanity had somehow lent a hand, for if Prosper had refrained from his experiments there would not have been the stupor and brain-fag which had caused his temporary loss of self-control.

One afternoon Brand entered the drawing-room after the manner of a privileged member of the household. Marjory was seated at the piano, her strong, white fingers preluding Gounod's "Ave Maria." Prosper was reclining in the wide-embrasured window, a copy of the Medical Gazette before him.

Brand sat beside the piano, his hand stretched out to turn the leaves as the beautiful prelude neared its close. Until that moment he had never conceived Lady Marjory as being capable of rendering the master's famous setting. The beautiful words seemed to float from her lips until they throbbed and beat with the fire of her wounded heart and soul.

Prosper did not look up from his paper, although each word of the song flayed and stung with merciless strength. After all, it was very natural that she should sing well, he told himself. Hundreds of society women achieved a certain mastery over their voices and various musical instruments.

Yet he could recall no woman, professional or otherwise, whose voice conveyed with almost fluid passion such a sense of pain and despair.

Brand spoke quietly at the end of the song, his hand resting on the side of the instrument.

"A long, long time ago I gave up music for horses," she added with a peculiar tightening of the mouth. "Are you fond of horses. Dr. Brand?"

"Ye-e-s. They're jolly good company and all that," he answered with a swift glance in Prosper's direction. "I prefer a good car, though."

Marjory's fingers closed over the book of music before her. Then, as if by sudden change of thought, she rose and crossed the room, but not in Prosper's direction. An oval window faced the blue waters of the channel; here she paused, her eyes wandering rather aimlessly from the sea to the wide heathlands that bounded the cliff-road.

"I have been invited to join the local hunt-club," she announced to Brand with a sudden laugh. "Do you think I shall be strong enough to ride this week?"

Prosper looked up sharply from his book, a scarcely perceptible flush on his cheek. But Marjory's face was in Brand's direction, and his half-uttered words were drowned by the older man's high-toned voice.

"I regard hunting as the most health-giving sport, Mrs. Chard. At the same time we must observe a little caution in our exercises until we are quite strong again."

She contemplated her hands thoughtfully, and then almost accidentally looked back at Prosper. He did not appear to notice her movement, but remained deep in the article before him.

"I commissioned an agent to buy me a. famous hunter yesterday," she said to Brand. "Are you interested in hunters and pedigrees?"

"Immensely!" he declared, feeling that it was his duty to humor his hostess. "I rode with Lord Wilberry's hounds for a couple of seasons. Splendid sport!"

Marjory inclined slightly, her face toward the sunlit palm that stood in the window.

"My agent," she continued; "paid two thousand guineas for Wild Boy, a very well-known hunter."

"Belonged to Sir Graham Cadenby, if I remember rightly, Mrs. Chard. Wasn't it Wild Boy that killed Captain Chatterton last season?

"I recollect the affair quite well," he went on with increasing earnestness. "The horse has two or three killings to its record. The sporting papers commented on the matter only quite recently."

"The horse has been badly ridden, no doubt," said she. "Anyhow, I fancy Wild Boy will suit me very well. He jumps like no other horse in England."

She lingered a moment near the window, then, with a smile, passed out of the room.

Brand remained standing rather pensively in the center of the room, his lips twitching strangely. Prosper looked up and closed the Gazette with some deliberation.

"So Wild Boy's a man-killer." he began flatly. "I wonder that the authorities permit the sale of such brutes!"

Brand walked to the window and then returned to his chair. His face was set and almost white. His silence struck Prosper as unusual.

"You are thinking about that infernal Wild Boy, Phil!" Chard exclaimed. "You—you don't care for her to ride it, eh?"

Prosper flinched at the question. It had brought him face to face with the problem of his life. He must remain silent while Marjory flung herself into the most dangerous sports and adventures, or forbid her to jeopardize her life by riding vicious animals in the field.

"I do object to my wife courting unnecessary danger," he said at last. "I would like also to lance the neck of the man who advised her to acquire Wild Boy," he added with a smile.

"Nothing will stop your wife attending the meet at the earliest opportunity, Prosper. Moreover, I fear—"

"She will not spare herself," Brand told him. "She has the look of one bent on a sudden finish, as the racing-men say."

Prosper flung round his face, tense-drawn, his eyes alight with subconscious fear.

"That Wild Boy will come down with her at the first jump," Brand declared, unmoved. "You may postpone a domestic tragedy by shooting the horse, but there are other ways of slipping out of life when it becomes unendurable, my boy!"

"You are asking me to save her, Phil—as though it were in my power," Prosper said under his breath. "Where shall I begin?"

"Begin by loving her, for without love Marjory will perish! It may seem out of place for me to say it. Prosper, but there is no need for you to both end miserably when a word may save you both."

"So—you assume that I shall end miserably if Marjory goes her way?" the young physician broke out. "What has come over you, Brand?"

"A desire to see my dearest friend reconciled to his fate; a desire to save him from the result of a mistaken dream."

"Of the woman who has promised to marry Denis Craigon!" Brand announced. "I'm afraid, Prosper, there's no preventing the match," he added with a touch of malice.

Very slowly Prosper turned from his contemplation of a white enameled screen at his elbow and smiled strangely.

Prosper considered a moment; then with an odd look in his eyes he put out his hand. Brand passed a typewritten letter in his direction. Prosper read it in some amazement.

You will learn with surprise that Miss Eames has decided to marry me within a month from to-day. We were both delighted to hear of Mrs. Chard's recovery.

And I have done my best to prove to Nora that it was not my energies that saved Prosper's life. It was a pure accident.

But Nora views it differently. She insists that I worked like a hero to avert a domestic tragedy.

Between ourselves, though, I fancy that Nora was more in love with Marjory than Prosper.

If it were possible to write a real history of love-matches it would be seen that women frequently sacrificed themselves at the altar to save others from despair and ruin.

"Now, what does Craigon mean?" he asked hoarsely. "And how has Nora proved her devotion to me or Marjory by marrying him?"

"It may have occurred to Miss Eames that her marriage with Craigon would destroy all regrets in your or Marjory's mind concerning her future.

"Craigon is a good fellow," he went on enthusiastically. "He really saved your life, my boy, and we owe him something. And when you come to think of it, Nora is penniless, while Craigon has only his office in Chancery Lane."

"Marjory approached me only yesterday with a scheme to place thirty thousand pounds to Nora's credit in our bank," he confided. "You know-she is all impulse and generosity where money is concerned."

"Some men acquire merely good wives. Prosper, others are blessed with perfect women," said Brand with a sly laugh.

CHAPTER XXII.
LOVE OR DEATH.

IT is hard to win a man whose love has gone to another. Marjory had realized this since the day of her marriage. She blamed herself for the mad contract she had entered into and the ruin she had wrought in the lives of Prosper and Nora Eames.

Only once since then had she seen her brother, Lord Sturmiss. He had driven down from Lymington Hall, but not for a moment did his exploring glance discern any cause for uneasiness on Marjory's part.

She was a fortunate woman, he told her, to have linked herself to the most promising of modern surgeons and the bulk of Miss Bellamy's fortune. She might have done worse by marrying some poverty-stricken man of her own choice—some fellow who would have made his, Sturmiss's, life a misery by repeated attacks on his purse.

There was young Rodney, of the Guards, who had written her bundles of letters. A clever rider and good sort, no doubt, but a man whose income, when his father died, would hardly afford her a change of cars in a year.

Sturmiss returned home, feeling that his sister had done him and herself a service by marrying Prosper Chard.

The name of the young Harley Street specialist had a way of cropping up in the morning papers in connection with international medical conferences and research work. Chard was a born experimenter, and eventually would accomplish big things.

It was the eve of the Harrimore meet. She had said nothing to Sturmiss about Wild Boy. The animal was at that moment in the stables, where Marsden, the groom, was busy getting a finish on its rather neglected coat.

A faint odor of the sea lingered in the autumn air. Everywhere she saw evidence of the sea-wind's work across the petal-strewn beds of flowers. There had been a storm overnight.

Prosper had gone to London in response to an urgent call. She did not know when he would return. It might be a week or a month. Perhaps it mattered little.

Marjory Chard was not oppressed by a sense of her loneliness. Self-pity never entered her consciousness. She was thinking of Nora and of the man whose life she had darkened.

In these black moments of self-analysis she divined something of the futility of earthly riches and pleasures. The futility was further stressed by her own helpless condition.

If she killed herself deliberately it would scarcely mend matters. Her act of self-destruction would focus the public eye in Prosper's direction.

A scandal would be created that might drag him down forever. People would declare that his conduct had driven her to her desperate deed. The purchase of Wild Boy had offered a loophole of escape. In the past she had been a rather daring rider. And no one would dream of a suicide in the hunting-field. It was too improbable.

Men and women did not follow the hounds in a spirit of depression, or with thoughts of self-destruction in their minds. If she fell with Wild Boy her death would appear quite natural.

The scent of wind-blown flowers came to her as she walked slowly up and down the path between the little red-eaved summer-house and the sea wall. Love of the open downs and heathland would stay with her to the last.

It was a great thing not to grow old, she told herself. She had seen age come upon men and women, crippling and petrifying them by degrees.

Her end would be in the open, with the smell of her loved trees and earth about her, the shouts of the huntsmen, and the baying of hounds as a send-off.

No death-bed scenes for Marjory Chard! She had seen her Aunt Clarinda die and had watched the last moments of her uncle, Viscount Valays, at Eppingham House only three years before. And the memory of the hot sick-room stayed with her always.

Very quietly she walked to the stable and opened the door. Marsden was not inside. He had evidently gone to the village for some of the patent food he intended giving Wild Boy.

The horse, a big, fiddle-headed bay, turned its sly face to her over the rail, its ears twitching a trifle wickedly.

She stretched out her hand caressingly. With a sudden twist of the head the big hunter showed its teeth.

Marjory did not flinch from the snapping, half-playful, but thoroughly wicked head. She had never in her life permitted an animal to master her.

But something in the big hunter's cruel eyes almost frightened her, and sent her back from the division-rail.

She had seen horses of the same nature kick and worry a stable-boy to death. Yet—to-morrow at daybreak she would be riding this creature over some of the stiffest jumps in England.

She strove for a moment to look into the horse's eyes, to read something of the savage nature which had already accounted for two lives in the hunting-field.

Wild Boy sidled away, nosing the fresh corn in the manger and striking the floor impatiently with its iron-shod forefoot.

At the sound of a footstep on the gravel outside Marjory turned from the stable. It was Marsden surely, returning from the village.

She hesitated suddenly, her hand on the stable-door, wondering whether she had better return to the house. In the brief glance along the path she saw Prosper coming toward her.

His face was slightly flushed, as if he had walked from the station. As usual, he carried neither gloves nor walking-stick.

"I imagined you would stay in town." The sound of her voice seemed to agitate and unnerve him. He halted near the stable-door, his whole manner betraying his pent-up anxiety.

"I saw Craigon and Miss Eames before leaving town," he began almost breathlessly. "They are to be married within a month."

In her illumined eyes there was neither joy nor sorrow at the unexpected intelligence. It was as if some one had merely flashed a colored signal before her.

"Then Miss Eames will live through her tragedy. There seems to have been some haste," she added after a pause.

"I loved Nora because I felt that her whole life had been yours, Prosper. You may not quite understand," she said slowly, "how these violent changes of affection strike women of my temperament."

"You wanted to pity and be kind to her as faithful Nora Eames, but as Mrs. Craigon she will earn only your scorn."

Marjory laughed somewhat thoughtfully as she plucked a few tiny, white violets from the flower-border.

"You are a very clever surgeon. Prosper, but your science cleaves no nearer the human heart than these violets."

He took them from her outstretched hand with some humility, for he began to detect a deeper note in her conversation than he had deemed possible. Slowly but surely it came to him that her love for him was greater than he deserved. He had never been more utterly sure of Nora's affection, although he felt that her marriage with Craigon was a matter of pique or the result of wounded vanity.

Marjory seemed to follow the trend of his swift cogitations. Her face showed the crimson signals from her own heart as she broke the almost unbearable silence.

"We are both wrong if we think that Nora is fickle or impetuous," said she. "The poor child fancied her early marriage might—"

"Soothe our conscience; that is all. Prosper. She has taken away all the trappings and scenery that were to have been part of our little tragedy."

Prosper flushed. "In any case," he insisted; "she did not provide herself with a mad horse for her final curtain!"

Marjory whitened and then broke into strained laughter. "Thank you," she said. "You will find that I am quite as able to get rid of my dramatic accessories as Nora."

Prosper restrained himself with an effort as he placed his hand on the stable-door.

"Shall I shoot the brute," he asked quietly; "or have it sent back to its former owner?"

"The love of a common-sense man, dear. Why should husband and wife pursue illusions that may end in misery and despair?"

It seemed as if a far-off voice were calling them home. It was a voice that needed no answer now, for its echo was in the loud beatings of Marjory's heart.

ALBERT DORRINGTON

ON THE PINIONS OF DOOM

First published in The Argosy, August 1913

First e-book edition: Roy Glashan's Library, 2024
Version Date: 2024-05-30

Produced by Matthias Kaether and Roy Glashan

All original content added by RGL is protected by copyright.

Click here for more books by this author

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.
DREAMS, AND A TRAGEDY.

CHAPTER II.
A WHIFF OF PERFUME.A WHIFF OF PERFUME.

CHAPTER III.
WAITING FOR DEATH.

CHAPTER IV.
FORTUNE SEEKS A BRIDE.

CHAPTER V.
THE MYSTERY OF THE VIAL.

CHAPTER VI.
WHAT CRAIGON FOUND.

CHAPTER VII.
TWO WOMEN.

CHAPTER VIII.
AGONIES IN WAIT.

CHAPTER IX.
FAREWELL!

CHAPTER X.
BETROTHED TO DEATH.

CHAPTER XI.
A GHOST AT THE ALTAR.

CHAPTER XII.
IN PROSPER'S ABSENCE.

CHAPTER XIII.
DEATH SETS ITS SEAL.

CHAPTER XV.
SCIENCE SEEKS A SUBJECT.

CHAPTER XVI.
THE SACRIFICE OF LOVE.

CHAPTER XVII.
VENGEANCE OF THE BEAST.

CHAPTER XVIII.
"MY SECRET IS FOR SALE."

CHAPTER XIX.
THE REMEDY.

CHAPTER XX.
WHO IS THIS WOMAN?

CHAPTER XXI.
MARRIED STRANGERS.

CHAPTER XXII.
LOVE OR DEATH.

THE END

ALBERT DORRINGTON

ON THE PINIONS OF DOOM

First published in The Argosy, August 1913 First e-book edition: Roy Glashan's Library, 2024 Version Date: 2024-05-30 Produced by Matthias Kaether and Roy Glashan All original content added by RGL is protected by copyright. Click here for more books by this author

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. DREAMS, AND A TRAGEDY.

CHAPTER II. A WHIFF OF PERFUME.A WHIFF OF PERFUME.

CHAPTER III. WAITING FOR DEATH.

CHAPTER IV. FORTUNE SEEKS A BRIDE.

CHAPTER V. THE MYSTERY OF THE VIAL.

CHAPTER VI. WHAT CRAIGON FOUND.

CHAPTER VII. TWO WOMEN.

CHAPTER VIII. AGONIES IN WAIT.

CHAPTER IX. FAREWELL!

CHAPTER X. BETROTHED TO DEATH.

CHAPTER XI. A GHOST AT THE ALTAR.

CHAPTER XII. IN PROSPER'S ABSENCE.

CHAPTER XIII. DEATH SETS ITS SEAL.

CHAPTER XV. SCIENCE SEEKS A SUBJECT.

CHAPTER XVI. THE SACRIFICE OF LOVE.

CHAPTER XVII. VENGEANCE OF THE BEAST.

CHAPTER XVIII. "MY SECRET IS FOR SALE."

CHAPTER XIX. THE REMEDY.

CHAPTER XX. WHO IS THIS WOMAN?

CHAPTER XXI. MARRIED STRANGERS.

CHAPTER XXII. LOVE OR DEATH.

THE END

First published in The Argosy, August 1913

First e-book edition: Roy Glashan's Library, 2024
Version Date: 2024-05-30

Produced by Matthias Kaether and Roy Glashan

All original content added by RGL is protected by copyright.

Click here for more books by this author

CHAPTER I.
DREAMS, AND A TRAGEDY.

CHAPTER II.
A WHIFF OF PERFUME.A WHIFF OF PERFUME.

CHAPTER III.
WAITING FOR DEATH.

CHAPTER IV.
FORTUNE SEEKS A BRIDE.

CHAPTER V.
THE MYSTERY OF THE VIAL.

CHAPTER VI.
WHAT CRAIGON FOUND.

CHAPTER VII.
TWO WOMEN.

CHAPTER VIII.
AGONIES IN WAIT.

CHAPTER IX.
FAREWELL!

CHAPTER X.
BETROTHED TO DEATH.

CHAPTER XI.
A GHOST AT THE ALTAR.

CHAPTER XII.
IN PROSPER'S ABSENCE.

CHAPTER XIII.
DEATH SETS ITS SEAL.

CHAPTER XV.
SCIENCE SEEKS A SUBJECT.

CHAPTER XVI.
THE SACRIFICE OF LOVE.

CHAPTER XVII.
VENGEANCE OF THE BEAST.

CHAPTER XVIII.
"MY SECRET IS FOR SALE."

CHAPTER XIX.
THE REMEDY.

CHAPTER XX.
WHO IS THIS WOMAN?

CHAPTER XXI.
MARRIED STRANGERS.

CHAPTER XXII.
LOVE OR DEATH.