The Knife Behind the Curtain

Roy Glashan's Library
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VALENTINE WILLIAMS

THE KNIFE BEHIND THE CURTAIN

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TALES OF CRIME AND THE SECRET SERVICE

First UK edition: Herbert Jenkins. London, 1930
First US edition: Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston & New York. 1930

This e-book edition: Roy Glashan's Library, 2023
Version Date: 2023-08-11
Produced by Gordon Hobley and Roy Glashan

All original content added by RGL is protected by copyright.

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"The Knife Behind the Curtain," Houghton Mifflin Co., 1930

01. The Green Garland
(Title in US edition: The Knife Behind the Curtain)
02. The Amateurs
03. The Pigeon Man
04. The Popinjay Knight
05. The Thumb of Fat'ma
06. Circumstantial Evidence
07. The Alibi
08. The Blonde in Blue
09. The Witness for the Defence
10. The Continuity Girl
11. Finale
12. The Pearl
13. At the Shrine of Sekhmet

THE GREEN GARLAND

EVERYBODY who is anybody in London knows Paula Virana. She is of the generation of Prince Kropotkin and Olga Novikoff, when the thought of the snows and salt-mines of Siberia yearning for the Russian Liberal Blade something of a social lion of the Russian political exile in London. Madame Paula, as her friends call her, is old now—her age is as great a mystery as the husband whose name she bears but whom nobody has ever seen—a little yellow-skinned, bright-eyed body in a grey transformation, black velvet and pearls; and though Comrade Stalin has long since taken the place of the Tsar as the symbol of blood-drenched tyranny, her house in Rutland Gate is still the meeting-place of every species of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary. She is in society and out of it too, so that at her big crushes Mayfair rubs shoulders thrillingly with White Guards and Trotskyites, anti-Fascists and Polish Radicals, Indian Nationalists and Chinese agitators.

This June evening, as she stood in the entrance of her big drawing-room to greet her guests, she was gently chaffing a plump and rubicund Englishman, very well groomed, who was paying his respects. "So you're still at the War Office?" she said. "How old-fashioned that sounds in these days of universal peace! They tell me that all you young men are leaving the Army and going into the City, and that one fine day they're going to shut the War House—isn't that what you call it?—altogether?"

"They're welcome to for all I care, Madame Paula," the young man laughed. "I'd like nothing better than to go back to my regiment. By the way, I took the liberty of bringing a friend of mine along, Kenneth Garth. I was to meet him here. I wonder if he's turned up?"

"Surely. I introduced him to a very brilliant Persian poetess. I told him that any friend of Captain Sloane is welcome in my house."

She gave him the kindly smile of old age, and turned to greet a stout Egyptian in a tarboosh. Jerry Sloane set off in quest of his friend. He found him in the adjoining room, listening with a forlorn air to an earnest monologue by a fat woman in a flowing green robe. Garth's eye lit up when he perceived his friend, and presently he joined Sloane in the doorway.

Sloane was contemplating the poetess through his monocle. "So I see!" he observed drily. "Well, there's plenty of her, isn't there?"

"Great Scott, man, that's not her. The girl I mean is divinely slim, dark, and lovely. A regular Greek goddess."

"She's in the drawing-room, talking to a bird with a carnation in his buttonhole. At least, she was just now. Come on, I'll show you...."

He dragged his friend out on the landing. Side by side they gazed across the seething throng. A string quartette was preparing to play, and people were drifting to the rows of chairs at the end of the room.

"There she is," said Garth, "beyond that woman in the spangly dress. A dark girl, with big eyes, in a black frock. Do you see the one I mean?"

"Then her father's a Russian, I swear. I heard her talking Russian quite fluently."

"It wasn't Russian. It was Serbian. Her father was Colonel Ilitch. He died a year or two ago. The mother's dead too. The girl's got a flat somewhere. Chelsea, I think. She's studying painting. Or is it sculpture?"

"Oh yes. I've met her here once or twice. I told you you'd be sure to see her here if anywhere. Paula knows more Slavs than anybody else in London. Come over, I'll introduce you."

"Yes, but..." He paused, reddening. "Look here, Jerry, you've got to do this my way, will you? I want to have a private talk with this girl. But one can't talk in all this mob. There's a sitting-out place on the landing below this. Take her down there when the music starts. Then I'll blow in and you can introduce me."

Sloane wrinkled up his forehead. "It's all one to me. But how do I know she'll go with me to this love-nest of yours?"

"You can wangle it. You've got to wangle it. And listen, Jerry, I'm going to say you're wanted on the telephone. You've got to jump up, just introduce me en passant, as it were, and beat it quick. You go away and stay away—understand?"

"You're devilish mysterious, old boy. I hope your intentions are honourable, at least...." Then he caught sight of the other's face and became serious. "I'm not trying to pump you, Kenny...."

"Don't waste time now, Jerry. Just do this for me. I'll tell you all about It later."

Sloane nodded, settled his tie, squared his shoulders, and strode across the drawing-room.

"We shan't be disturbed here," he remarked, "and we can cool off. My hat, did you ever see such a dogfight?"

From the drawing-room resounded the strains of a Brahms concerto above the distant murmur of voices at the buffet off the hall. Outside echoed the faint, hoarse cries of the linkmen calling up the cars. Sloane held the curtain, and, passing through, Maritza Fearon sat down on a sofa behind a screen of greenery.

"Isn't Paula a marvel?" she remarked, hunting through her bag for her mirror and lipstick. "She seems to know more and more people. That's what comes of never growing old."

"Like that Wandering Jew feller," remarked her companion eruditely, tapping out a cigarette. "Think of all the people he met in his time. He must have had a library full of address-books. My hat!"

"Rotten. I don't know what's the matter with me: I can't concentrate these days. My teacher says I probably want a holiday...."

A voice spoke through the screen of palms. "Jerry," it said, "you're wanted on the telephone."

"Lord!" exclaimed Sloane, "it's my father. He said he'd ring up. I'll have to go, I'm afraid. A trunk call, you know. Hey, Kenny!"

Garth appeared round the screen. On catching sight of him, Maritza Fearon shut her bag hurriedly and rose to her feet.

"Old boy," said Sloane, "my ancestor is clamouring for me. Sit down and talk to Miss Fearon while I'm gone. Mr. Garth... Miss Fearon. I shan't be two ticks."

"Captain Sloane..." the girl began hurriedly. But her companion had vanished. Garth was surveying her whimsically.

"Didn't I warn you?" he said. "By fair means or foul. It's fair, after all. Fortune loves a sticker. Oh, please, you mustn't go...."

"Why do you make it so difficult?" he pleaded. "You might at least hear what I've got to say."

"If Captain Sloane knew how you've pestered me for the past week," she continued angrily, "he'd turn you out of the house. Ever since that day at the Ritz when you had the impertinence to speak to me, you've given me no peace. Wherever I go, I find you...."

"I don't find it amusing. Do you deny you followed me here, as you've followed me to Ciro's, to the theatre?"

His eyes, which were blue, danced with mischief. "I'll let you into a secret. I'm the master gatecrasher, head of the gang that all the gossip hounds write about."

"Honestly," he said contritely, "I know Madame Virana. I was properly introduced to her to-night."

"But you don't know me," she flared back. "And as long as I'm free to choose my acquaintance you'll remain in the same state. And now, will you please let me pass?"

He shrugged his shoulders and stood aside, lifting the curtain for her. As she swept by him with her nose in the air he whispered a sentence. On the instant she stopped, turned round and looked at him. Her natural tint was a creamy pallor; but now she was deathly white.

"It's because I didn't catch what you said that I asked you to repeat it." Her tone was nervous.

He made the same careless movement of the boulders. "It's of no consequence...."

"Please tell me what you said." Her fingers plucked at the cabochon emerald on her left hand. "Please...."

Her eyes, luminous, intelligent, waited on his words. He scrutinized her face—his regard had a rapier quality, like blue steel. "All right," he remarked impassively. "I'll repeat it. I said '14 Winston Street.'"

Her pallid oval of her face was a mask. "This address, is it supposed to convey anything to me?"

With a stunned yet strangely watchful air she returned to her seat. She refused the cigarette he offered. He took a chair.

"I want to tell you," he began easily, "about a curious experience that befell me about five weeks ago—to be exact, on the night of the 20th of May, or rather the early morning of the 21st...."

The girl's hand made a sort of instinctive movement to her mouth, but her companion paid no heed.

"I was in a nursing home in Winston Street," he went on, "having been operated on two days before for appendicitis. If you've ever had an operation, you know what the first days after it are like, all burning, fierce pain, the nerves on the stretch, the brain madly, feverishly, awake. Well, this night I'm telling you about was warm and breathless, and I simply couldn't sleep. I'd made up my mind to stick it out without morphia, and the shot of aspirin the night nurse gave me was no earthly use. My bed stood by the open window, and I lay awake there, listening to the lorries thundering through the neighbouring square on their way to Covent Garden, and idly watching the strip of Winston Street and the house opposite which I could see from where I was.

"A light glowed in the window across the way from mine. It was a rounded bow-window, such as one finds in Early Victorian houses, with long doors opening upon a shallow balcony. One of these doors stood ajar, and behind it a fine of light appeared through the chinks of the curtains drawn across the window embrasure. It was late—I had heard Big Ben strike one o'clock—and I amused myself by weaving all kinds of imaginary stories round that lighted room, wondering who was there behind the curtains and why they stayed up so late.

"Presently I saw the curtains move. The next moment a girl appeared at the window. Immediately outside the house a street lamp stood, and its rays fell on her face. It was a young face and, well, beautiful. For quite a while the girl remained at the window, her head turned to one side as though she were listening. The street was absolutely quiet. She looked so forlorn, so friendless, standing there that I had a sort of mad feeling that I ought to spring across the width of Winston Street separating us and comfort her. I was a bit light-headed and all that, you know—one's temperature always shoots up at night in cases like this—and I believe I actually made a sort of move as I lay in bed. But my stitches promptly gave me a frightful jab and reminded me where I was. And then, when I looked up again, the girl had vanished from the window and I heard a car coming along the street, slowing down—I could tell that by the beat of its engine. The next thing I knew two men stood on the pavement staring up at the house.

"Once more I raised my eyes to the window. Now the room was dark. But the girl was there again. By the light of the street lamp I could see her, dimly outlined in the window recess. She seemed to have a finger pressed to her lips, and with the other hand she had looped back the curtain. Then a man materialized—I didn't notice him appear: he was just there, sort of skulking behind the curtain, a dark man with staring eyes and a livid face. Now the girl was gone again, and beyond the curtains the room was dark and quiet."

"You can give me a cigarette if you like," she said in a toneless voice, leaving his question unanswered.

He offered his open case, then held his lighter for her. In the flicker of the tiny flame her face was as graven marble. "Well?" she remarked.

"The man stayed there behind the curtains." Garth resumed his tale. "I couldn't see his face, but his whole attitude suggested fear—blind, unreasoning fear. The very pose of his body was distorted with sheer funk, if you know what I mean. Meanwhile, below, one of the two fellows on the pavement had opened the front door with a key, and he and his companion entered the house. I glanced across at the window. The man was still there—I tell you, it made my blood run cold just to look at him, he stood there so tensely, with his head poked forward listening. And then..." He hesitated. "Now I'm coming to the incredible part," he explained.

The girl was smoking her cigarette with rapid, nervous puffs. Again she uttered that toneless monosyllable.

Garth flaked the ash carefully from his cigarette. "Then, it might have been two or three minutes after the two men had entered the house, the curtains of the window opposite were violently plucked aside. Two figures stood there, just black shapes, their faces whitish patches, for the room behind them was all dark. But as I watched I caught sight of two long slivers of light that gleamed in the rays of the street lamp outside, and I saw two knives uplifted to strike...."

"It's...it's horrible," the girl burst out. "You're just trying to frighten me. You were light-headed, you said so yourself. You dreamt it."

"Let me finish," Garth returned. "At the sight of those menacing daggers the man behind the curtains drew himself erect, and it seemed to me that all the fear went out of him. He made a little bow right and left, and stepped out of the recess. But as he went forward one of the knives went up—I saw a ring glisten on the hand that held it—and was plunged into his back...."

The girl sprang to her feet. "It's not true. You don't know what you're saying," she ejaculated. But Garth passed over the interruption.

"Not a word was spoken," he went on impassively. "There was not even a cry. The silence was so absolute, in that quiet room above the dark street, that I heard the sound made by the dagger as it was driven home—it was, well, sickening. And that," he concluded, crushing out his cigarette in the ash-tray, "as far as I'm concerned, is the end of the story. After that I must have fainted. At any rate the next thing I remember is the night nurse fussing over me. She said she'd heard me scream out. To her, and to the doctor next day, I told my tale. They promised to have inquiries made, but it was obvious to me, even then, that they didn't believe me. They thought I'd dreamt it all—that it was just a nightmare."

He finished. But she said no word, staring before her, her cheeks cupped in her slim white hands.

"Thereafter," Garth said, "I could never get the doctor or any of them even to discuss it with me. But one day, when I was convalescent, the doctor chaffed me about what he called my 'battle dream,' told me I'd been reading too many shockers. All the same, I couldn't get that girl's face out of my mind. Her forlorn air, as she'd stood at the window, haunted me: I was always conscious of the desire to help her, if I could. You see," he added rather shyly, "I'm keeping nothing back. I'm telling you everything, just as it happened."

"The first day I was allowed out," he continued, "I went across the road. The house was No. 14. I rang the bell, wondering what I should say. An elderly woman, who said she was the proprietress, opened the door. Her English was fluent enough, but there was something foreign about her—her intonation or the way she did her hair—Russian, or something of the sort, I should say. I pretended I was looking for some friends of mine who lodged in the street, saying I'd forgotten the number of the house. And I described as best I could the girl and the man I'd seen. But the woman disclaimed all knowledge of them, saying she lived by herself with her maid, and never let rooms or had any one stopping in the house. She seemed truthful and convincing, and I had to let it go at that. I went away thinking that perhaps, after all, the doctor was right. And then a week ago I saw you, that day at the Ritz. And I knew it was no dream."

At that she gave a little sigh, and raising her head, looked at him. "Why have you told me this?" she asked.

She shook her head again. "Take my advice," she said, "and dismiss it as a dream. Believe me, it's better so."

"People are not so easily murdered in London. If this man were stabbed as you allege, the police would know."

"With you I knew I was making no mistake. One couldn't forget any one like you."

"It was good of you to come to me. I appreciate it very much. And you must forget the things I said. But let matters rest where they are. Believe me, it's best so—for you as well as for me." She stood up. "We shan't be seeing one another again. But before we separate I want to thank you for—for telling me."

"Then promise me this," he said. "If at any time I can help you, send for me." He opened his cigarette-case, extracted a visiting-card, and pencilled a line upon it. "That's where I'm to be found. And I've written down my telephone number." He gave her the card. "In the meantime, it's understood my hands are free? I shall act for the best."

At once she took alarm. "You mean you'll go to the police again? For God's sake, do as I say. Think what you like, but leave things as they are."

Before Garth could reply, Madame Paula thrust her wizened face through the dangling beads. "Maritza, my dear," she said, "the Pasha wants his bridge. Go and make a fourth like a good child."

Maritza Fearon paused only long enough to look appealingly at her companion. Then he held back the curtain for her, and she followed their hostess out.

III

A WEEK elapsed before Jerry Sloane's curiosity in the matter of his friend's strange behaviour was satisfied. By the time Garth's interview with the girl was over, Sloane had left Madame Virana's, and on ringing him up at the War Office next day, Garth learnt that his friend had departed suddenly for a League of Nations session at Geneva.

But the first evening he was back, in response to the urgent message left with his room-mate at the War Office, Sloane went round to his friend's chambers in the Albany. Over a cigar and a whisky-and-soda he listened impassively to Garth's story.

"What do you think I ought to do?" said that young man when the tale was done. "The girl won't help us. I've rung her up, I've written to her, but she declines to see me. And if I go direct to the police, I feel that I'm implicating her in a crime for which I'm positive she's in no way responsible. Because the average police intelligence would immediately jump to the conclusion that she was the decoy or something of the kind. And she's not that sort, Jerry, I swear she's not!"

There was a pause. Then Jerry said: "Kenny, old boy, have you any idea what my job is at the War House?"

"Novelists like to call it that. It sounds more dramatic. Will you leave this to me? I'm in a much better position to get at the bottom of it than you are...."

"Quite. I think she is too. The first thing we have to ascertain is whether any body has been found. Give me until to-morrow evening to report progress, will you?"

They arranged to dine together next day at Garth's. Over dinner the following evening Sloane reported the result of his inquiries. They were mainly of a negative order. No discovery of any corpse bearing knife wounds or in any way resembling the dark man seen by Garth had been reported to the police, and the house at Winston Street was shut up and in the agent's hands. The proprietress, a certain Madame Grabitch, was believed to have left the country. Sloane had put one of his investigators to work inquiring in the neighbourhood for any information about the dark man.

"This Madame Grabitch," said Jerry, "is a Serb, and registered with the police as such. Nothing whatever is known against her. But her nationality establishes a link with Maritza, who, as I told you, is a Serbian by birth. I've been hunting through our files for a line on her father, Colonel Ilitch. It seems he was a red-hot pan-Slav extremist, and is generally believed to have been mixed up in the conspiracy that led to the murder of Alexander and Draga. That, of course, was the work of the notorious secret society, the so-called Narodna Okhrana, or Black Hand, which is usually supposed to have engineered the assassination of the Archduke, and so brought about the World War. After the murder of King Alexander, Ilitch lived for years in exile in London, but he went back to Serbia on the outbreak of hostilities. After the War, apparently, he found the new Yugoslav State too hot to hold him, and he reappeared in London, where he ultimately died. His name is connected in my mind with something, but I can't for the life of me remember what it is. Anyway, for the moment it all boils down this..." He ticked off his points on his fingers.

"The house in Winston Street kept by a Serb; this girl's a Serb, daughter of a notorious political firebrand; as the instrument of the crime, that typically Balkan weapon, the knife. If that don't point to political assassination, I'll eat my hat. Which brings me back to the fair Maritza. She knows the truth. Old boy, she's got to talk...."

"If she speaks," Garth retorted briskly, "it'll have to be voluntarily. I'm not standing for any of your third degree stuff, Jerry. Give me another twenty-four hours. I'll have one more try with her tomorrow. If that fails, we'll see...."

They discovered that they were both engaged on the following evening. Garth, who was a chartered accountant, had a public dinner to attend, while Jerry was booked for a regimental reunion. Eventually, it was arranged that Jerry should drop in on his friend before going to bed, Garth, according to their custom on such occasions, promising to leave the latch-key under the mat.

But the girl remained invisible and unapproachable. First thing next morning Garth rang her up at her flat, but she refused to come to the telephone, and when he went round there, on his way to the City, the door bell remained unanswered. He telephoned Milenko's studio where she worked, only to be told she was busy and could not be disturbed. Ultimately he had to content himself with sending her a note to the studio, imploring her to see him if only for a minute. He instructed the District Messenger to wait for an answer, but the boy brought back the report that there was no reply.

It was close on eleven o'clock that night when Garth, who had dressed for his dinner at his office, returned to his chambers. The latch-key was still under the mat, showing that Jerry had not yet been. On the hall table a note in a District Messenger envelope was lying. By the time-stamp it had been delivered between seven and eight. The envelope contained a few fines scrawled on a sheet of common note-paper in a bold, very feminine hand. The young man's heart began to thump as he perceived the signature.

"If you really wish to render me a service," he read, "you will be at eleven o'clock to-night at the Hoplà Bar, which is in Marmott Street, off the Tottenham Court Road. Wear a sprig of green in your buttonhole or you will not be admitted. Come alone."

With a sickening feeling of disappointment Garth heard the clock in his dining-room strike eleven. He paused only long enough to snatch a few leaves from the vase of lilac in the hall, then flung out of the flat again and dashed for the Vigo Street entrance in quest of a cab.

THE Hoplà Bar was characteristic of the innumerable little foreign cafés to be encountered in the purlieus of the Tottenham Court Road. The exterior presented an inhospitable and rather sinister appearance, with no light showing behind the shutters which screened entrance and long window. But there was a glimmer over the fanlight of the side door, and when Garth plied the knocker, the door was opened a little way and a man's unshaven face peeped out. Garth pointed silently to the leaves in his buttonhole, and the door swung back. A man in a cloth cap and shirt-sleeves led him along a passage and, signing to him to wait, vanished up a flight of stairs.

The passage was dim and evil-smelling. While he waited Garth wondered what could possibly have brought such an exquisite creature as Maritza Fearon to that squalid dive. Jerry had suggested the possibility of a political conspiracy. Had he been wise to come alone? the young man asked himself. Should he not at least have brought a revolver?

Presently the man in shirt-sleeves reappeared. "A leetle moment, yes?" he said, and pattered away on slippered feet through a door at the end of the passage.

Garth lit a cigarette and composed himself to wait. It's no use crossing your bridges before you come to them, he reminded himself. Maritza had sent for him, and he was there. Anyway he was not too late.

His vigil had lasted for perhaps ten minutes when he heard a door open on the floor above. The next minute a voice that sent a delicious thrill through him spoke a phrase in some softly slurring tongue. Then, as he gazed up the stairs, straining his eyes in the dimness, he saw Maritza looking down upon him over the banisters.

"Come," she said in English. But no sooner had he reached her side than a man, squat and undersized, with an animal face, came out on the landing. A low murmur of voices followed him out of the room he had left. The short man muttered something in a harsh undertone to the girl, pushed open the door, and signed to Garth to go in.

Garth found himself confronting three men who sat at a table facing the door. The first thing he remarked about them was that each sported a tuft of green on his lapel. They were all foreigners of the Slav type, the central figure a man of Herculean proportions with stony features, jutting black eyebrows, and a great hawklike nose.

The stunted individual had closed the door and placed himself before it in a deliberate manner which struck Garth as faintly menacing. He too, Garth perceived, had decorated his buttonhole with a leafy sprig. Maritza had advanced to the table.

"Yes, Brother Dmitri," she answered. She turned to Garth. "These men," she said, indicating the trio at the table, "are political associates of my dead father's. They accuse me of decoying one of their number, the man you saw that night at Winston Street, to his death, of delivering him up to his fate. You know I tried to save him, that..."

"Wait," broke in the big man, "let the witness tell his own story." He smiled deferentially at Garth. "That is, if he is so disposed...." His English was excellent.

"By all means," Garth agreed. And without further preamble he repeated the account of what he had seen from the window of the nursing home.

"And now," said the big man, when Garth had done, "I must ask you to withdraw, my dear Maritza, while we question your witness more closely." And without looking up he called softly, "Mishitch!" Whereon the gnome at the door moved slowly up towards the table, his hands behind his back.

The girl reddened. "Since Mr. Garth is here by my invitation," she replied, "I should prefer to stay."

"That," returned the President smoothly, "is impossible." And, scarcely raising his voice, he called again, "Stefan!" A door behind the table opened. The man in shirt-sleeves was there. "Conduct Mademoiselle!" the President ordered softly.

"If you've any questions to ask Mr. Garth you can ask them in my presence," said Maritza obstinately. The big man shrugged his shoulders.

"Through an unhappy coincidence," he said to Garth, "you have been the witness of an act of private justice executed upon a traitor. We acquit the daughter of our old leader, the revered Colonel Ilitch, of any act of treachery. The scoundrel imposed on her, and she did her best to save him. His executioners, however, were not political enemies, as we gave her to believe, but members of the organization he betrayed...."

"You mean that Protitch was a traitor?" the girl broke in. "That it was our people who killed him?"

"Then why didn't you tell me the truth? Why accuse me of sacrificing Protitch? If I hadn't had to defend myself against this charge, Mr. Garth need not have been dragged into these private matters between us."

"Ah," said the President, "but the police have been inquiring. It became necessary to discover the source of their information. From something you said it was apparent that there had been a chance witness of what took place that night. This witness, Mr. Garth, was you. We had to discover how much you knew. Hence the subterfuge by which our dear Maritza was induced to bring you here."

"Well," Garth observed, "now that you've heard my story, I propose to retire and to take Miss Fearon with me."

"That is not so easy," the President rejoined. "The matter needs consideration. Your case is very awkward, Mr. Garth."

"It'll be a devilish sight awkwarder if you try to detain me," Garth riposted warmly. "Come on," he added, holding out his hand across the table to Maritza, "let's get out of this."

"One moment," the President broke in. Then, addressing the squat man behind Garth, he said softly, "Come closer, Mishitch, and let's discuss this!"

But at that moment Maritza screamed in a voice shrill with fear: "Look out! Look out behind you!"

Garth whipped round. The man at his back was in the very act of hurling at him what seemed to be a length of twisted rope with a wooden handle. The cord whipped through the air, but Garth had time to draw back before, weighted as it was, it would have folded itself about his throat. He snatched up a chair, for the gnome came resolutely at him. As the chair whirled upward a leg caught the electric light suspended from the ceiling as the room's sole illuminant.

Garth leapt forward to where Maritza was standing behind the table. As he sprang a pistol flared orange in the total darkness with a roar that shook the air. Dim figures grappled with him, but he flung them off. At one, which seemed by its bulk to be that of the President, he drove with his fist and heard a heavy weight thud upon the floor. And then he had reached Maritza's side. "Down!" he whispered, and put her between him and the wall. But at the same instant footsteps thundered on the stairs, and some one plucked open the door behind the table. By the diffused light that came in from the landing, Garth saw the five men tumbling out. Then the staircase door was flung wide, the beam of an electric torch cleft the gloom, and the cheerful voice of Jerry Sloane cried out, "Kenny, old boy, where are you?" Suddenly the room seemed to be full of police.

"I MISSED you at the Albany," Jerry said to Garth. "But the girl's note was lying on the hall table where you left it. Directly I saw it I remembered in what connection I'd heard old Ilitch's name. The sprig of green gave me the clue."

They were still in the upstairs room of the Hoplà Bar. The five men had escaped by the back door, and the police who had accompanied Sloane had dispersed in pursuit, leaving only an inspector to gather up the details of what had occurred. For the moment they forbore to question Maritza, who, with her eyes closed, sat at the table and sipped the glass of water Garth had brought her.

"I told you Ilitch was a member of the Black Hand," his friend explained. "Well, within the framework of this organization he formed a secret society of his own, a band of picked desperadoes who called themselves the Green Garland, from the tavern where they used to meet at Belgrade. When I read that note to-night I remembered and twigged at once, from the allusion to the sprig of green, that the Green Garland was at the back of this mysterious business. I rang up Vine Street, and came after you at once. I know something about these Balkan secret societies. A little more and you'd have gone the way of that other poor fellow. The Green Garland was always devilish efficient."

"Not all the story." Sloane's voice was stern. "I look to you to tell us the rest."

"I'll tell you everything now," she said. "I was only sixteen when my father died. I never knew exactly what the Green Garland signified except that, from time to time, strangers would call at our house in London, and if they showed a sprig of green my father would do anything for them, give them food and money, or sometimes even put them up. He often told me that any one who showed the badge had a special claim on our protection and our secrecy. The very last time I saw him alive, the day before his death, he made me promise that I would treat any one who asked for help in the name of the Green Garland as though he himself had sent him.

"About six weeks ago a man called at the studio. He sent in a note asking to see me, and when I opened it a sprig of green fell out. He told me he was a political refugee from Zagreb under sentence of death, and that the Yugoslav secret police were after him. He asked me to hide him. He said his name was Sava Protitch. I didn't care much about his looks, but I took him to an old friend of mine and my father's...."

"Yes. She agreed to take care of him. He wanted looking after, you know. He was half-demented with fear. He sat indoors all day smoking cigarettes. Then late one night—it was the 20th of May—when I came back from a dance I found a note from Protitch at the flat. He implored me to come to him no matter what the hour. It was already one o'clock, but I went. I found him like a madman. It seems he'd ventured out for a little air after dark, and had seen some man from Zagreb, a political enemy he said he was, in the neighbouring square. He entreated me to find him another hiding-place at once, that very night. While we were talking we heard a car coming along the sheet. I went to the window and saw the car stop before house and two men get out. Protitch knew they were coming for him—I think he guessed that Madame Grabitch had betrayed him. You see, she was a member of the Green Garland too. I had very little time in which to decide what to do. I thrust Protitch behind the curtains and went to the door. My idea was, if I were questioned, to pretend I lived there and was just going to bed. But the two men were already on the stairs. One of them caught hold of me and thrust me into the bedroom across the landing, locking me in. I heard them moving about, and, finally, the sound of the car going off. Then the man who had locked me in released me. I saw that he wore a sprig of green in his buttonhole. He told me to go home and say nothing about my adventure: I needn't worry about Protitch, he was all right. It never occurred to me that he could have been murdered, silently like that, without trace. Such things don't happen in London. It was not until Mr. Garth told me his story that I realized the awful truth..."

"These two men who came to Winston Street, had you ever seen them before?" asked Sloane.

"No," she said. Nor were they among the five who had been at the café that night. Of these she knew only Dmitri, the President, who had been a friend of her father's. He had suddenly appeared at the studio that afternoon and accused her of decoying Protitch to his death. He had ordered her to come to the Hoplà Bar that evening to justify herself. Then she had thought of Garth and written him her note.

"Well," said Sloane, when she had finished her story, "our friends seem to have got clean away, and there's nothing to be gained by stopping here. I'm going to telephone Madame Paula and ask her to take you in; you want nursing after all you've been through. To-morrow Garth and I and Scotland Yard will lay our heads together and decide what's to be done."

But it appeared in the upshot that there was nothing to be done. The members of the Green Garland seemed to have vanished into thin air, nor, despite exhaustive inquiries, was any further light shed upon the fate of Sava Protitch who, dead or alive, continued to be missing. There was no record of his entry or departure from any British port, nor was his body found.

All this Jerry Sloane set forth at length when, a week later, he accompanied his friend to tea at Rutland Gate. "Even if we lay hands on these birds," he pointed out, "we can't charge them with murder until Protitch's body is found, for, failing the production of the corpse, it is questionable whether, in English law, the capital charge can lie. In any case," he went on with a whimsical glance at Maritza, "you're well rid of the Green Garland, my dear. I wonder you don't make a clean job of all that connection."

"Well," said Sloane, "you look English, you think English, and you live in England. Why not get naturalized and cut the Balkans altogether?"

At this juncture Madame Paula called him away. Garth promptly stepped into the breach.

"It's quite simple. Marry an Englishman. Wait. I'll give you three good reasons why you should. I'm a humdrum man in a humdrum job—nothing adventurous about chartered accountants; I make roughly £3,000 a year; and, oh, my dear, I do love you so terribly." He broke a leaf from a vase on the tea-table. "Do I have to hand you this," he pleaded, "to make you say 'Yes'?"

THE AMATEURS

"I SHOULD be scared to death," said Brenda Vane as her companion snapped on the light in the hall and opened the sitting-room door, "to live all by myself on the top floor like this. Oh Lord, let me get my breath! Those stairs of yours..."

"It's a bit of a climb," Clive replied. "But if there ain't a lift, at least the house is quiet. That's one good thing about having a flat in Harley Street. Once my landlord and his partners in the consulting-rooms downstairs have cleared off, I have the place to myself. No pianolas, no wireless, no gramophones, no babies...."

"And you don't find it lonely? But I was forgetting. After the jungle, or wherever it is you live...."

Clive laughed. "I'm used to my own company in Malacca. I find myself pretty good company, really. But go in, won't you?"

They passed into the sitting-room. "How comfortable men make themselves," the woman sighed as she looked about her. "If you knew the foul holes lone females like myself have to live in. And how ripping, a fire!"

"The fellow who looks after me knows he has to make it up before he goes off duty," said Clive, switching on the candles over the sideboard. "I've been out East so long that I'm not used to your gentle English spring. As furnished flats go, it might be worse. But these places cramp me. Why, in my bungalow at Singapore the bathroom alone is bigger than this room! But don't you want to take off your hat? If you'd care to wash after your drive, you'll find the bathroom in there, leading out of the bedroom. The light switch is by the door. I'm going to make some coffee. Unless it keeps you awake?"

"I'd adore some coffee," Brenda agreed. "It was a bit nippy on the road, wasn't it?"

"You bet it was." The man was connecting the coffee-machine with a wall-plug. "By the time you've tidied up, the coffee will be ready. And I'm going to open up some champagne. I think you deserve it after acting as chauffeuse all the way down to Sunningdale and back. To say nothing of our thirty-six holes of golf...."

"You're completely debauching me," she protested. "If I'd let you, you'd have given me champagne for dinner at Ockham, although you know perfectly well that even sober I have the greatest difficulty in saying 'She sells seashells on the seesaw,' or whatever it is the police make drunken motorists repeat. And now you suggest champagne again. All right, have it your own way. I can't help liking the stuff. But you'll probably have to drive me home in my car, I warn you." She broke off. "I say, what topping prints! D'you always travel them around?"

With the interest which all women take in a bachelor's quarters she had been gazing about her. Now she stepped close up to the wall to scrutinize the delicate hues of the three Japanese prints that hung there.

"Always," he replied. "Incidentally, my dear Brenda, that's a highly intelligent remark."

"So I see. But I didn't mean that. Most people think that my precious Utamaros go with my seven guineas a week worth of furnished flat."

He laughed. He had an infectious laugh, deep and full-chested, the laugh of the big athletic type he was. "I said 'most people.'"

"But I assure you..." he began, at once on the defensive. She, however, laughingly clapped her hands over her ears. "No bachelor fairy tales, my dear Francis," she cried. "Anyhow, I'm going to wash. That blessed gear-change of mine has dripped oil all over my wrist."

With that she tugged off her small cloche, flung it on the big Chesterfield that stood in front of the fire, and shook out her crop of dark and shining hair. Then she disappeared into the bedroom. As the door closed the man raised his head from the coffee-machine. There was an enigmatic expression on his firm, rather rugged face. He paused, listening in the direction of the door through which the girl had disappeared, and then, laying down the spoon he held, moved softly across the carpet to the sideboard. At that moment a very faint buzzing sound was audible in the room.

Vague though it was, his ears caught the sound as though they had been on the alert for it. Two noiseless strides brought him to the sideboard, where he whipped open one of the doors to the lower part and waited. Once more the buzzer sounded, and this time the whirr plainly came from the interior of the sideboard. His hand vanished within the cupboard, there was a slight click and the buzzing ceased. On that he shut the sideboard and, quietly as before, returned to the coffee-machine on its tray on a little table by the Chesterfield. Within the glass container the coffee now was creaming and bubbling brownly.

He was intent upon his task when, presently, the bedroom door opened and the woman spoke from the threshold. "Gracious, is that the right time?" she demanded, pointing at the travelling clock on the mantelpiece.

Clive laughed. "Why worry? The night is yet young. Time was made for slaves, not for Christians."

He watched her as she sauntered in, hands in the pockets of her jaunty little sports suit, smoking a cigarette in the long green holder she affected. He reflected that modern fashions are age-defying. He knew that she was twenty-five or twenty-six, twenty-eight maybe, but in her natty suit of brown tweed, with a green silk handkerchief knotted about the neck, she looked like a young girl. She had run a comb through the deep wave of her luxuriant dark-brown hair, which clustered about the nape of her cleanly barbered neck, and touched up her lips with the lipstick.

Shifting her hat and driving-gloves, she sank down with a sigh among the cushions of the Chesterfield. "In a man's rooms at midnight, how perfectly thrilling!" she observed demurely. "But my hat, if my dear Mummy were alive, I believe she'd die all over again!"

"Only that your mother was a Slav. And Slavs are temperamentally unconventional. That's all."

She turned her head to stare at him curiously out of her grave grey eyes. "What makes you think my mother was a Slav?"

"But all my friends tell me I'm the regular English type. You must have looked very hard."

She smiled up in his face as he handed her her coffee. "Very pretty. But honestly, how did you guess?"

He braced his long legs in front of the fire while he contemplated her whimsically. "The arch of your eyebrows? A certain refinement of chiselling about the nostrils? The way your hair grows in at the temple?—how does one tell these things? You're a very lovely creature, my dear, but the type's not English, it's Russian. And so is your mind. It has an elusive, a daring, quality which is just as characteristic of your race as though you had come bounding in here in a fur cap and top-boots, kicking out your feet from under you and shouting 'Oi!'—How's the coffee?"

She broke into a gurgling little laugh. "You must be frightfully intuitive, although you talk like an absolute idiot. The coffee's delicious. Have you got any Turkish blood in you?"

"Then I'll open the champagne." He retired to the sideboard, and an exhilarating "pop" was immediately followed by his reappearance before her with the open bottle and two tumblers on a tray.

"When you said I had a daring quality of mind," she remarked presently when they had drunk to one another, "I suppose you were thinking of my coming back with you like this to your flat in the middle of the night. Were you?"

He dropped into the cushions by her side. "Is that so very daring? No one has got much use for convention nowadays, so they tell me."

She made a little face. "Now you're being cynical. I hate cynicism. It's cheap."

"It's a good shield too, sometimes." Her dark eyes shot a swift glance at his face. "Do you like me, Francis?"

She sighed and held out her silk-clad legs, ending in brown suede brogues, to the blaze. "What a queer person you are. Most men like me. You know that's not just conceit. If a woman isn't an absolute deformity, if she has any sort of physical attraction, she can't help being aware of it. I'm quite a success with men, I assure you. Most of them try to make love to me. You never have. I wonder why. And yet you're attracted, you know. We've seen each other almost every day since that morning, a week ago, soon after you'd arrived home on leave, when we met at lunch at the Savoy. If you hadn't cared for me rather specially, you'd have scarcely wanted to spend most of your spare time with me, would you?"

"You know jolly well that I'm in love with you like every other man you've ever met, my dear," he retorted cheerily. "Give us that glass of yours and I'll fill it up."

"I shouldn't be surprised if you were," she said composedly as she handed him her tumbler. "You know, I'm rather attracted by you myself."

"Not in the least. With quite charming manners you combine just enough of the brute to make you almost irresistible. If I'm not most fearfully careful I shall fall in love with you." She turned her head and looked at him alluringly out of the corners of her charming eyes. "Don't you believe me?"

He grinned and shook his head. "Not a bally word. But then I don't believe half of what I hear in London nowadays. I've lived too long in the East, I expect. Everybody I meet seems to rot from morning to night. There's no such thing as sincerity left."

"I wasn't speaking personally," was the impassive reply. "But you won't kid me that any one as beautiful as you could fall in love with me. I know better than that."

She gave her crooning laugh. "I wonder. You were joking just now when you said you were in love with me. But it's true, all the same."

Levelly he met her challenging glance, half jesting, half grave. "Oh," he remarked slowly, "what makes you think that?"

She laughed and sipped her champagne. "Prepare to be horrified, oh man from the jungle. I am a product of the modern Babylon. This is not the first time that my Russian blood has led me straying into unconventional situations. Most of you men are creatures of habit, and I am fairly familiar with the procedure on such occasions as this. But since I've been in your flat I've observed no disposition on your part to draw closer to me, or to make an excuse for touching my hair, or for putting your arm round my waist—in short, a total absence of the pawing preliminary which experience has led me to expect. Which proves to me, my dear man, that you are not indifferent to me. If you had not cared two hoots about me—really cared, I mean—I should probably have had to keep you at arm's length with the fire-irons, as has happened to me before."

He did not speak at once, but contemplated her gravely. "It's no good," he said at length. "I can never tell whether you're serious or ragging."

The sternness of his expression seemed to banish her frivolous mood. Impulsively she put her hand on his arm. "I don't know myself. A little of both, I expect. Women are like that, you know. But, seriously, I like you tremendously, Francis, and tonight more than ever before. I lead a pretty lonely existence, living on my own in London as I do, and I've never met a man who made me feel as you do that I could trust him. And now, because I don't want you to misunderstand me, I'm going to tell you something. I'm what they call an honest woman, my dear, though I do unconventional things. I'm telling you this because... well, because I want you to think well of me, to like me."

The bluntness of his question did not offend her: she was used to his uncompromising frankness.

On that he pitched his cigarette into the fire and, putting his hands on her shoulders, turned her round to face him. They looked into one another's eyes, his cobalt-blue and a shade austere, hers grey and very steadfast.

On the instant her face changed. She seemed to strive to avert her gaze; but his stern glance held her. And then, suddenly, he saw her throat contract, her small mouth, slashed in a cupid's bow of scarlet, twitch, her eyes fill. Brusquely she wrenched herself from his grasp, and springing to her feet, went to the fender, where she stood, her back turned upon him, staring down into the fire.

"My God," he burst out, "can't you understand? I want to know if you're being frank with me."

She swung about. "Why should you think I'm telling you lies?" she demanded hotly.

He had stood up now and was facing her. "Are you quite sure that you are what you pretend to be?" he questioned severely.

Her eyes were instantly watchful. "Why do you say that?" she asked rather breathlessly.

"I'm not aware of having pretended to be anything but what I am, what you know me for."

He gave a dry laugh. "Yet it didn't occur to you to inform me that you were connected with the Soviet Intelligence Service, Nathalie Ivanovna," he said quietly.

If he had expected her to be shaken by the charge, or to deny it vehemently, he was disappointed. She only contemplated him with grave eyes and answered rather soberly: "So you've been making inquiries about me, have you?"

His nod was curt, austere. "Don't you think we might sit down?" he observed easily. He fetched the champagne bottle from the table with the coffee things and replenished her glass. Sedately she moved to the Chesterfield and, opening her bag, took out a cigarette-case. With an abstracted air she fitted a cigarette into her long green holder. He sat down on the cushioned rim of the fender.

"In the normal way," he said, "I should have accepted you for what you appeared to be, a charming Englishwoman, moving in a decent set, living quietly in your Victoria flat, dividing your time between your bridge club, the shops, and a certain amount of entertaining. Every man home on leave from the East meets the type. Especially bachelors from the wilds like myself. Women like you make all the difference to a fellow's leave. We're not on the look-out for a passionate love affair, most of us—though that may develop later—but primarily for somebody who'll give us what we miss out there, the company of an attractive woman, up-to-date and nicely dressed, to do the theatres with, the restaurants, the dance clubs—all that sort of thing. But, my dear Nathalie—that is your name, I think...?"

"No, it isn't, and I'm sorry. As I was saying, you made a blunder to start with. Your psychology was at fault. If you'd really wanted to meet me so badly, you should have set to work differently. To have asked Peter Arbuthnot to arrange it diplomatically..."

At that she sat up. Her cheeks were fiery red. "So that was the way of it? Peter talked, eh?"

He laughed coolly. "Anybody who knows dear old Peter as well as I do could have told you that, as far as discretion goes, he's practically a half-wit. When Peter bustled up to my table that day at the Savoy, he was so full of diplomacy that I saw he'd burst if he weren't tapped. I, er, tapped him."

"He said you'd been badgering him for days to introduce us. I expected you to be some fluffy little dame who'd had good times before with planters home on leave with their pockets full of money. But when Peter introduced us..."

He broke off to take his glass from the mantelshelf at his back and drink. The woman's eyes stole a glance at the clock and her hand flashed to the handbag which lay under her hat. The movement was so quick as to be almost imperceptible.

"Now, listen to me," Clive resumed, facing her once more. "I'm just as conceited in my way as any other man. There's probably no end to the flattery I'd swallow, provided it were of the right sort. But when I run across a woman as... as beautiful, as chic, as... as intelligent, as you are, who, for no apparent reason, is dying to meet an insignificant oaf like myself from the wilds of Malacca..."

She raised her green cigarette-tube to check him. "One moment, please! Are you quite sure that you are what you pretend to be?"

He eyed her gravely. "You admit, then, that you had an ulterior motive in wanting to meet me?"

"It makes no odds," he declared rather sternly. "To go on with my story, my interest was aroused, not to use a less pleasant-sounding word, and I made some inquiries. I discovered that, although you were educated in England, you were born and spent many years of your life in Petrograd—or perhaps you would prefer me to call it Leningrad...?"

But he ignored her outburst. "...where your father, married to a Russian, was in business. We'll pass over the War—you can't have been very old when it broke out—but until the Bolshevik Revolution you were in Petrograd. Next you were heard of in Siberia with Koltchak's Army."

"Later you turned up in Shanghai," he persisted, disregarding the interruption. "Constantinople next, then Berlin, and afterwards Paris. You always moved in Bolshevik circles. Two years ago you reached London. You have a niceish apartment, you dress well, and all without any visible means of subsistence. Am I right?"

"And you came here to-night for the purpose of extracting a certain buff envelope from the dressing-case in the bedroom there?"

At that her eyes narrowed. Her gaze shifted from under his scrutiny. He thought she was restless under his relentless scrutiny, but her glance travelled to the clock on the mantelpiece behind him. She threw back her head and laughed softly.

"Why," she cried, "you're a real sleuth, and they told me you were an amateur. I knew that anybody who, like you, has been engaged for the past six months on making a survey for the Singapore fortifications is not quite the insignificant—what was the word you used? oh yes, 'oaf'—the insignificant oaf you made yourself out to be. But you're not a regular Secret Service man, and so I feel that I ought to congratulate you. You played me very skilfully, I must say. But women are an easy mark, don't you think so? We're so vain. Wasn't it a frightful bore pretending you were in love with me?"

The sunburn deepened in his cheeks. "You're not going to reproach me with insincerity, I hope?" he said bitterly.

"More than I can swallow," he countered savagely. "What were you doing at my dressing-case when you went in to wash?"

The question took her off her guard. She looked bewildered. "The door was shut," she said in a dazed fashion. "How on earth..."

He laughed drily. "When one entertains ladies of your exciting calling, one takes precautions," he riposted. "Might I ask you to hand over that buff envelope, please?"

Her hand stole inside her coat. But then she paused. The expression on her face puzzled him. He seemed to catch the glint of humour in her eyes. "What are you going to do with me?" she asked humbly.

His features hardened: of a sudden they seemed to have grown haggard. "Nothing," he said. "Give up that envelope and go. I don't want to harm you."

"A woman like you can't live without money. I know what you Russian refugees went through..."

"Is that the only reason?" With lips parted, she was gazing up at him intently. "Won't you tell me the truth... Francis?"

He frowned. The line of his mouth was bitter. "You're right," he answered sombrely. "There's another reason...."

"Tell me!" Tucking her feet under her, she sat up expectantly on the big settee.

He stood up abruptly. His eyes lowered: his fists were clenched. "You're as frivolous as the rest," he exclaimed. "As far as I could, I gave you a square deal. Couldn't you have done as much for me?"

"Yes," he retorted harshly. "Until to-night, at any rate, I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I connected up a secret signal with the bedroom there just in case... Yet all the time I hoped I was wrong. But you were playing a game from the start. I suppose it amused you to see me floundering deeper, as it flatters your vanity to find that even now I'm not going to hand you over to the police as you deserve. But as you say, I'm an amateur. I'm a trained engineer, and the Government out there roped me in for this specific job. I'm not in the game and I make my own rules. Thank the Lord I'm through with it now. I can go back to the jungle where the air's clean. Give me that envelope and go!"

She had turned half round to glance back at the sitting-room door. Her eyes were rather bright as she faced him. "Sorry, my dear," she said calmly, "but I can't do that."

"Don't play the fool," he ordered roughly. "Hand it over!" So saying, he took a step forward.

Her small hand moved swiftly from under her hat as it lay in her lap. "Stay where you are!" she said. Then he saw that her hand, as it rested on her thigh, grasped a small automatic.

He bent his brows at her. "Gun-play, eh?" he said, with a short laugh. "Well, my dear, gun or no gun, you're not going out of here with any property of mine. If you think you are, forget it!"

With that he advanced another step. But at that moment the sitting-room door opened quietly and a man slipped into the room. He was a slightly-built, yellow-skinned individual, in a black felt hat and black overcoat. The most noticeable thing about him was the heavy Browning pistol he held in his right hand. "Hands up, you!" he snarled at Clive. "All right, Nathalie?" he said to the woman.

She seemed to have been expecting him, for she did not move her head. "All right, Boris," she remarked easily. "I've got what you wanted. Keep him covered a minute, will you?"

In two bounds the man was at her side. "Listen, you," he barked at Clive. "The house, she is empty. You keep quiet, hein, or I blow you the head off. Put op the hands dam queek!"

With a perfectly impassive face Clive raised his arms above his head. He did not even look at the man who addressed him. His eyes were fixed on the woman. She had thrust her hand down the front of her woollen jumper and now drew up a large buff envelope which she handed to the man at her side. At the sight of it his face lit up.

She said something in Russian at which her companion nodded understandingly. Thereon she covered Clive with her pistol and the man stowed his Browning in one pocket and the envelope in another. He made some jesting remark in Russian, patting her encouragingly on the back. Then he slid to the door and departed as noiselessly as he had come.

An odd sound broke the silence of the room. Francis Clive, who had been glaring blankly at the door, dropped his eyes to the woman's face. She was laughing. "Oh, my dear," she said softly, "I can hardly believe it. But I think we've pulled it off. Go into the bedroom. You'll find your survey notes where you left them in the secret compartment of your dressing-case. I had to have a peep to see that they were all right, but I didn't take them. Go on, I'm not going to shoot you." And she flung her pistol down on the settee beside her.

One bewildered look he gave her, then sprang for the bedroom door. In a moment he was back, a buff envelope with the seal broken and a sheaf of papers in his hands. "You're right," he murmured confusedly, "but what does it mean? That other envelope... I don't understand."

With her arms stretched out along the back of the Chesterfield the woman gazed up mischievously into his face. "A dud. A plant. It was touch and go, but he swallowed it."

"A complete set of false notes prepared by the Committee of Imperial Defence for the especial benefit of the cloud of nosy gentlemen who have been trailing you ever since you landed, my dear!"

She paused and scrutinized her pink finger-tips. "Ah," she replied, "besides me, there's only one person in this country who could tell you that. He wouldn't say, and I'm not supposed to. But I'm quitting the game, so I'll tell you. I'm C.E.!"

"But why did they put you on to me? I'm not a spy. Didn't they trust me, or what?"

She laughed. "Don't look so cross, Francis. Your good faith was never questioned. Only your discretion. I found out that certain of my little friends were displaying considerable interest in you, so my Chief attached me to you as watch-dog. You didn't know that you were being shadowed, did you?"

"I should," she said gravely. "I'm carried on the books of the Soviet Secret Service, you see. One of your Intelligence officers in China put me in touch with them after poor Koltchak was killed. I've worked for your counter-espionage ever since. So, you see, it was easy for me to arrange this hold-up with Boris. We had to do something to head them off, for they were talking of burgling the flat. That wouldn't have been difficult seeing how isolated this flat is on the top floor of the house. Your Chief and mine prepared the fake envelope between them, and I arranged with Boris to be here at one o'clock to-night. I put up the catch on the street door and your front door here when we arrived so that he could get in."

"You might have easily spoiled everything. You're too honest, my dear. And a most incompetent liar."

There was a moment's silence between them. Then he said, "Come here!" Slowly, with head bent, she went to him. "Do you still believe that?"

She moved her head shyly, her eyes on the ground. "I don't know. Tell me another lie, and I'll see."

On that she raised her head and looked him in the eyes. "It was the truth I wanted to hear," she rejoined softly, her hands on the lapels of his coat.

"This is a game for professionals, not amateurs," he told her. "You're just as much of an amateur as I am, for all your experience. I don't profess to know much about it, but I'm quite sure a spy has no business to fall in love...."

"Once this report of mine is finished," he put in, "I quit and go back East. You'd better do the same."

"Go East?" she began demurely. "Oh, you've dropped your precious plans!" she cried as he caught her to him. The buff envelope and the papers slid to the floor.

THE PIGEON MAN

FLANDERS in '18, and March coming in like a lion. With a purr that, nearer the front, might have been confused with the thudding of distant drum-fire the icy rain beat against the panes. At the streaming window of a dingy bedroom of the Hôtel du Commerce a girl stood gazing listlessly into the street below. Outside, over the gleaming cobbles of the little Belgian town, the great grey lorries, splashed hood-high with Flanders mud, slithered along in an endless train, swerving from the road's greasy crown only to make way for the snorting Staff cars that, freighted with begoggled officers in field-grey, from time to time came roaring down the street. In and out of the traffic, despatch-riders on motor-cycles whirled and rattled, staying their progress with trailing, gaitered leg to inquire the location of Operations or Intelligence offices of the Corps established there. In the hotel bedroom the crockery on the washstand jingled to the din of the street.

Without turning round from her observation post, the girl flung a question across her shoulder. She was tall, and the black frock she wore emphasized her slimness. Her shining red hair, loosely coiled about her well-shaped head, was the only blur of positive colour among the neutral shades of the room.

"Am I to wait the convenience of the Corps Intelligence office all day?" she demanded sullenly. At a table against the wall an officer in field-grey sat reading the Kölnische Zeitung. He did not lift his eyes from his newspaper at the girl's question.

She stamped her foot and faced the speaker. "This room stifles me, do you hear?" she exclaimed tensely. "I don't mind the rain: I'm going out!"

The officer shrugged his shoulders as, stretching forth his arms, he folded back the paper. "You're of the Service, Fräulein Sylvia," he rejoined placidly. "You've got to obey orders like the rest of us!"

The officer shrugged his shoulders again. "Doubtless the Colonel had his reasons for not wishing civilians to roam about Corps Headquarters...."

"Bah!" she broke in contemptuously. "Do you think I'm blind? Do you really imagine, Captain Pracht, that I don't know"—she waved a slim hand towards the window and the sounding street beyond—"what all this movement means? Every railhead from the North Sea to the Vosges is pouring forth men and guns; your troops released by the Russian Revolution are gathering to deal the Allies the final—"

Pracht sprang to his feet. "Um Gottes Willen, mind what you're saying! You speak of things that are known to but a handful of us—"

"Quite so, my friend. But will you please remember that I am of that handful? My sources in Brussels are excellent—" She broke off and contemplated her companion's face. "Why has Colonel von Trompeter sent for me?"

She let her eyes rest meltingly on his face. They were strange eyes, madder-brown under dark lashes. "Have you ever been in love, Captain Pracht?"

The officer's face set doggedly, so that two small vertical lines appeared on either side of his thin lips under the clipped brown moustache. "Never on duty, gnädiges Fräulein—that is—" he paused, then added—"unless commanded."

"Why, then," she put in merrily, "I might have spared myself the trouble of locking my door last night."

Captain Pracht flushed darkly, and a little pulse began to beat at his temple. She looked at him fixedly and laughed. "You have a charming métier, Herr Hauptmann!"

A patch of colour crept into her pale cheeks. "Not quite!" Her voice vibrated a little. "Men know how to protect themselves. They go into these things with their eyes open. But almost every woman, even in the Secret Service, is blinded by love... once...." she sighed and added, "the first time...."

"The gracious lady speaks from personal experience, no doubt," the officer hazarded. His manner was unpleasant. With calm disdain she looked him up and down.

"I have always said," the Captain announced ponderously, "that women were too emotional for Secret Service work. Especially foreigners."

"I was not speaking personally," retorted the officer huffily. "If we must have women spies, then why not Germans? Our German women have an ingrained sense of discipline, a respect for orders...."

The girl's gurgling laugh pealed through the room. "But their taste in nighties is dreadful," she broke in. "You must remember, my dear Captain Pracht, that our battlefield is the boudoir—"

At that moment the door was flung back. An orderly, in a streaming cape, stood there. "Colonel von Trompeter's compliments," he bawled out of a wooden face, saluting with a stamp that shook the floor, "and will the Herr Hauptmann bring Fräulein Averescu to the office immediately."

"THE trouble about this job of ours, young Horst," said Colonel von Trompeter, "is to recognize the truth when you find it!"

A heavy man, the Herr Oberst, but handsome still with his fearless eyes of the brightest blue, straight nose, and trim white moustache. The blue and silver Hussar cap which, in defiance of all clothing regulations, he insisted on wearing with his Staff uniform, was the only evidence that he had started his army career in the light cavalry, for advancing years had endowed him with the body of a heavy dragoon. His big form, muscular yet under its swelling curves, was moulded in his well-fitting service dress of grey, frogged with the brandenbourgs of the Hussars, and the broad pink stripe of the Great General Staff, together with the glossy brown field-boot into which it disappeared, set off admirably his length of leg.

A fine blade, the Herr Oberst, with a naturally intuitive mind sharpened by the intensive training of War School and Great General Staff, a gift of lightning decision and a notable aptitude for languages. But, more than this, he was a man of rugged character, of unflinching moral courage, and as such ranged head and shoulders above the swarm of silver-laced sycophants at Headquarters who assiduously lick-spittled to His Excellency Lieutenant-General Baron Haase von dem Hasenberg, the Corps Commander. For His Excellency, a choleric old party with the brains of a louse and the self-control of a gorilla, was His Majesty's friend who with supple spine had genuflected his way up the rough road of promotion under the approving eye of the All-Highest War Lord.

His Excellency detested his Chief of Intelligence. He might have forgiven Colonel von Trompeter his outstanding ability, for brains are an asset on the staff of a Corps Commander when awkward incidents have to be covered up; and Baron Haase had not been a lucky leader. But His Excellency was enraged by the Colonel's habit of invariably speaking his mind. It infuriated him that Colonel von Trompeter should have made his career in spite of his brutal candour. When only a Major, acting as assistant umpire at Kaiser manoeuvres, had he not curtly replied to the Emperor himself, enthusiastically seeking praise for a cavalry charge led in the All-Highest Person against a nest of machine-guns: "All dead to the last horse, your Majesty!" and been promptly exiled to an East Prussian frontier garrison for his pains?

Yet, although the victim of the All-Highest displeasure had lived the incident down, he had learned nothing by experience. To the Corps Commander's resentful fury, he flatly refused to curry favour with his immediate Chief by lending himself to the great conspiracy of eyewash by means of which, in war as in peace, the War Lord was justified of his appointments to the high commands.

And so a state of open warfare existed between His Excellency—and that signified the bulk of the Headquarters Staff—and his Chief of Intelligence. Only the Intelligence Staff, who worshipped Trompeter to a man, less for his brilliant ability than for his sturdy championship of his subordinates even in the face of the epileptic ravings of His Excellency, stood by their Chief. For the rest, every imaginable form of chicane and sabotage was employed in the attempt to drive Colonel von Trompeter into seeking a transfer. In almost every branch of Corps Headquarters, save only the Intelligence, it became as important to defeat Colonel von Trompeter and his assistants as to beat the English who held the line in this part of Flanders. And His Excellency proclaimed at least thrice a day to all who would bear him that Trompeter was "ein taktloser Kerl."

When, therefore, on this wet March morning, "the old man," as his staff called Trompeter, delivered himself of the apothegm set forth above, Lieutenant Horst, his youngest officer, who was examining a sheaf of aeroplane photographs at his desk in a corner of the office, glanced up with troubled eyes. It was rare, indeed, that "the old man" allowed the daily dose of pinpricks to get under his skin. But to-day the Chief was restless. Ever since breakfast he had been pacing like a caged lion up and down the wet track left by the boots of visitors on the strip of matting between the door and his desk.

"Operations are making trouble about the shelling of the 176th divisional area last night," the Colonel continued.

"With permission, Herr Oberst," Horst put in diffidently, "these fresh troops carry on as though they were still in Russia. Their march discipline is deplorable. They were probably spotted by aircraft—"

The Herr Oberst shook his grizzled poll. "Won't wash, my boy. They went in after dark. That explanation we put up to Operations when the 58th Division had their dumps shelled last week. Operations won't swallow it again. Humph—"

He grunted and turned to stare out into the rain. A battalion was passing up the street, rank on rank of soaked and weary men. Their feet hammered out a melancholy tattoo on the cobbles. There was no brave blare of music to help them on their way. The band marched in front with instruments wrapped up against the wet. "Fed—up," "Fed—up," the crunching feet seemed to say.

The Colonel's voice suddenly cut across the rhythmic tramping. "What time is Ehrhardt arriving with that prisoner from the 91st Division?" he asked.

The Colonel made no reply. His fingers drummed on the window-pane. Then he said: "Our English cousins are concentrating on the Corps area, young Horst. They've got a pigeon man out. That much was clear when that basket of pigeons was picked up in Fleury Wood last week."

"I was forgetting; you're new to the game. So you don't know what a pigeon man is, young Horst?"

"Then let me tell you something: if you ever meet a pigeon man, you can safely take your hat off to him, for you're meeting a hero. It's a job that means almost certain death. A pigeon man is a Secret Service officer who's landed by an aeroplane at some quiet spot in the enemy lines with a supply of carrier-pigeons. His job is to collect the reports which spies have already left for him at agreed hiding-places. He fastens these messages to the legs of his birds and releases them to fly back to their loft...."

The Colonel laughed shortly. "I wo! The pigeon man has to make his way home the best he can. They usually head for the Dutch frontier...."

"Of course. That's why I say the job means almost certain death. Even we Huns, as they call us, are justified in shooting an officer caught in plain clothes behind our lines."

The young man pursed up his lips in a silent whistle. "Brave fellows! Do we send out pigeon men too, Herr Oberst?"

His Chief shook his head. "They wouldn't stand an earthly. The pigeon man can only operate successfully among a friendly civilian population. Well?"

An orderly had bounced into the office, and, stiff as a ramrod, now fronted the Colonel. "Hauptmann Ehrhardt is here to report to the Herr Oberst."

The clear blue eyes snapped into alertness. "Has he brought a prisoner with him, Reinhold?"

"Send him in! Prisoner and escort remain outside." He turned to Horst as the orderly withdrew. "Herr Leutnant, a certain lady is waiting at the Hôtel du Commerce in charge of Captain Pracht, of the Brussels command. I may ask you to send for her presently. You will not say anything to her about this prisoner, and you will be responsible to me that no one approaches him in the meantime. And see that I'm not disturbed."

III

"AS the Herr Oberst will see for himself," said Ehrhardt, rocking slightly as he stood stiffly at attention before his Chief—he was a secondary-school teacher in civil life and the military still overawed him—"the prisoner is practically a half-wit. If you speak to him, he only grins idiotically and dribbles. He looks half-starved, and as for his body—well, with respect, he's fairly crawling. God knows how long he's been wandering about the Bois des Corbeaux, where the fatigue party ran across him in the early hours of this morning. According to the Herr Oberst's orders, I had advised all units that any civilian caught in our lines was to be brought straightway to me at the Divisional Intelligence office. When this man was sent in I rang the Herr Oberst up at once. I haven't overlooked the possibility that the fellow may be acting a part; but I'm bound to say that he seems to me to be what he looks like—a half-witted Flemish peasant. Speaking ethnologically—"

A brusque gesture cut short the imminent deadly treatise on the psychology of the Flemings. The Colonel pointed to a chair beside the desk and pushed across a box of cigars.

"Ehrhardt," said he, "information of the most exact description is being sent back regularly. Our troop movements are known. The 176th Division had two hundred casualties getting into their billeting area last night. These are no haphazard notes of regimental numbers jotted down at railway stations, or of movements of isolated units strung together by ignorant peasants. They are accurate reports prepared with intelligence by some one with a thorough grasp of the miliary situation. The English have a star man operating on this front. Who he is or what he looks like we don't know; but what we do know is that correspondence of a very secret nature which fell into the hands of one of our agents at The Hague speaks with enthusiasm of the accuracy of the reports sent by an unnamed agent concerning our present troop movements in Belgium. You are aware of my belief that an English pigeon man has been at work here"—he bent his white-tufted brows at his companion, who was gazing intently at him through gold-rimmed spectacles.

Very positively Captain Ehrhardt shook his head. "Of course," he said in his pedantic fashion, "I must bow to the Herr Oberst's experience in these matters. But for me the hypothesis is out of the question. This fellow may be a spy; but in that case he's an agent of the lowest order, a brutish Belgian peasant—not a man of the calibre you mention, an educated individual, possibly a regular officer."

"Ausgeschlossen, Herr Oberst! The thing's impossible, as you'll realize the moment you see him!"

"Wait, my friend! The English have an extraordinary fellow, with whom we of the Great General Staff are well acquainted, at least by repute from pre-war days. We never managed to ascertain his name or get his photograph; but we know him for a man who is a marvellous linguist, with a most amazing knowledge of the Continent and Continental peoples. Dialect is one of his specialities. What is more to the point, he is a magnificent actor, and his skill in disguises is legendary. Again and again we were within an ace of catching him, but he always contrived to slip through our fingers. We used to call him 'N,' the Unknown Quantity. Do you see what I'm driving at?"

"Gewiss, gewiss, Herr Oberst!" Ehrhardt wagged his head dubiously. "But this lout is no English officer."

"Well," said the Colonel, "let's look at him, anyway." He pressed a button on the desk, and presently, between two stolid figures in field-grey, a woebegone and miserable-looking tramp shambled in.

His clothes were a mass of rags. On his head a torn and shapeless cloth cap was stuck askew, and from beneath its tattered peak a pair of hot, dark eyes stared stupidly out of a face that was clotted with grime and darkened, as to the lower part, with a stiff growth of beard. A straggling moustache trembled above a pendulous underlip that gleamed redly through bubbles that frothed at the mouth and dripped down the chin. His skin glinted yellowly through great rents in jacket and trousers, and his bare feet were thrust into clumsy, broken boots, one of which was swathed round with a piece of filthy rag. As he stood framed between the fixed bayonets of the escort, long shudders shook him continually.

Without looking up, the Colonel scribbled something on a writing-pad, tore off the slip and gave it to Horst.

"Let the escort remain outside," he ordered. Horst and the guards clumped out. Then only did Trompeter, screwing his monocle in his eye, favour the prisoner with a long and challenging stare. The man did not budge. He continued to gaze into space, with head rocking slightly to and fro and the saliva running down his chin.

The Colonel spoke in an aside to Ehrhardt. "You say you found nothing on him when you searched him?"

The Colonel addressed the prisoner in French. "Who are you and where do you come from?" he demanded.

Very slowly the man turned his vacuous gaze towards the speaker. He smiled feebly and dribbled, but did not speak.

"It struck me that he might be dumb," Ehrhardt whispered across the desk, "although he seems to hear all right."

"Any civilian found wandering in the military zone without proper papers is liable to be shot," he said sternly. "Do you realize that?"

The tramp grinned feebly and made a gurgling noise like an infant. The Colonel repeated his warning in Flemish.

Trompeter went round the desk and looked the man in the eye. "See his hands, Herr Oberst," said Ehrhardt in an undertone. The tramp's hands were coarse and horny, with blackened and broken nails. "Are those the hands of an officer?"

There was a smart rap at the door. Reinhold, the orderly, appeared with a tray. On it were set out a pot of coffee, a jug of milk, sugar, a plate of ham, and a hunk of greyish war bread. The Colonel signed to the man to put the tray down on a side-table. Then he turned to the prisoner. "Eat!" he bade him.

The idiot grinned broadly and broke into a cackling laugh. Then, while the two officers watched him from a distance, he fell upon the victuals. It was horrible to see him wolf the food. He tore the ham with his hands and thrust great fragments into his mouth; he literally buried his face in the bread, wrenching off great lumps with his teeth; he emptied the milk-pot at a draught, spilling a good deal of the milk down his jacket in the process. He made animal noises as he ate and drank, stuffing himself until he gasped for breath.

"Could an officer eat like that?" Ehrhardt whispered in his Chief's ear. But again the Colonel proffered no remark. When the last of the food had disappeared he said to his subordinate: "Take the prisoner outside now, and when I ring three times send him in—alone. Alone, do you understand?"

Left alone, Colonel von Trompeter strode across to the window and stood for an instant looking out. In the street a gang of British prisoners of war, their threadbare khaki sodden with the rain, scraped away at the mud with broom and spade. A voice at the door brought the Colonel about. Horst was there.

As Horst went away he moved to the desk and turned the chair which Ehrhardt had vacated so that it faced the door. He himself remained standing, his hands resting on the desk at his back. With his long fingers he made sure that the bell-push in its wooden bulb was within his reach.

IT was commonly said of Colonel von Trompeter that he had a card-index mind. He forgot no name, no face, no date, that came into his day's work, and he had an uncanny facility at need of opening, as it were, a drawer in his brain and drawing forth a file of data.

As he helped Sylvia Averescu out of her wrap and invited her to be seated he was mentally glancing over her record. Nineteen hundred and twelve it had been when Steuben had brought her away from the Russians at Bucharest and installed her at Brussels, that clearinghouse of international espionage. For a woman, the Colonel condescendingly reflected, she had proved her worth. That affair of the signalling-book of H.M.S. Queen had been her doing; and it was she who had laid the information which had led to the arrest of the English spy, Barton, at Wilhelmshaven.

"Madame," was Trompeter's opening when he had given her a cigarette, "I have ventured to bring you out from Brussels in this terrible weather because I need your help."

Sylvia Averescu looked at him coldly. Her wait in a freezing cubby-hole full of damp and strongly flavoured orderlies had not improved her temper. She had entered the room resolved to give this Colonel von Trompeter a piece of her mind. Yet, somehow, his personality cowed her. Against her will she was favourably impressed by his direct gaze, good looks, and charming manners. She saw at once that he was a regular officer of the old school, a man of breeding, not a commercial traveller stuffed into uniform, like Pracht. She was flattered by the way he handed her to a chair and assisted her out of her furs as though she were a Duchess. And the Latin in her, which had always squirmed at the "Frau" and "Fräulein" of her German associates, was grateful for "Madame" as a form of address.

Still, the recollection of that icy vigil yet grated on her, and she replied rather tartly, "I don't know in what way I can be of any assistance to you, Herr Oberst."

The Colonel's blue eyes rested for an instant on her handsome, rather discontented face. Then, brushing the ash from the end of his cigarette, he said: "When you were in Brussels before the War, you knew the British Secret Service people pretty well, I believe?"

"You were acquainted with some of their principal agents, I take it: the star turns, I mean—men like Francis Okewood or Philip Brewster, or"—he paused—"even our friend 'N,' the mysterious Unknown Quantity?"

She laughed on a hard note. "If you'll tell me who 'N' was—or is," she returned, "I'll tell you if I knew him. I've met the other two you mentioned." She leaned back in her chair and blew out luxuriantly a cloud of smoke. "'The Unknown Quantity,' eh? What a dance he led you, Colonel! I've often wondered which of the boys he was."

The Colonel's hand groped behind him until he found the bell. Thrice his thumb pushed the button. His eyes were on the woman as she reclined gracefully in her chair staring musingly at the ceiling. His watchful gaze did not quit her face even when the door was suddenly thrust open and a tatterdemalion figure hobbled into the room.

Trompeter, his face a mask of steel, saw how, at the sound of the door closing, the woman at his side looked up—saw, too, the little furrow of perplexity that suddenly appeared between her narrow, arching eyebrows. But the swift, suspicious glance she shot at her companion found him apparently intent on studying the end of his cigarette, yet even as her gaze switched back to the outcast, cowering in forlorn abandonment in the centre of the floor, the Colonel's bright blue eyes were quick to note the expression of horror-struck amazement which for one fleeting instant flickered across her regular features.

But the next moment she was bored and listless as before. So swift was her reaction that it was as though her face had never lost its wonted air of rather sulky indifference. She darted an amused glance at the impassive visage gazing down upon her and laughed.

"You have some queer visitors, Herr Oberst," she said. "Tell me"—she indicated the tramp with a comic movement of the head—"is he one of us?"

She stared at him for a moment, then suddenly broke into a peal of merry laughter.

"And yet," observed Trompeter quietly, "he's one of their star men." His eyes were on the prisoner as he spoke. But the tramp, leering idiotically, stared into space and dribbled feebly.

Sylvia Averescu laughed incredulously. "Then they've changed their methods. All the British Secret Service aces I've known were serving officers, or ex-officers. You're not going to claim that this miserable creature is an English gentleman, Colonel. Why, his hands alone give you the lie!"

But the Colonel left the question unanswered. "The English are devilish thorough," he added. "I'll grant them that!"

The woman left her chair and went boldly up to the idiot. With a pointing finger she indicated a "V" of yellow skin that appeared below his uncollared neck between the lapels of his jacket.

"Look," she vociferated in disgust, "the man's filthy. He hasn't had a bath for years!" She turned about to face Trompeter, who had followed her. "If this man is what you say, he would have a white skin, a properly tended body, under his rags. But this creature is disgusting!"

Trompeter stepped swiftly up to the prisoner and with brutal hands ripped the ragged jacket apart. The man wore no shirt; his coat was buttoned across his naked body. The Colonel recoiled a pace and clapped his handkerchief to his nose. "Pfui Deibel!" he muttered.

Something had rattled smartly on the floor. Trompeter stooped quickly with groping fingers; then, drawing himself erect, stared fixedly at the prisoner. The outside pocket of the idiot's jacket had been almost ripped away in the vigour of the Colonel's action and hung lamentably down. Trompeter's hand darted into the torn pocket and explored the lining. His fingers dredged up some tiny invisible thing which he transferred to the palm of his other hand.

With an air of triumph he swung round to the woman. "Well," he remarked roughly, "he's for it, anyway. If he were a friend of yours, I should tell you to kiss him good-bye."

At that she faltered ever so slightly. "What do you mean?" Her voice was rather hoarse.

"What I mean," Trompeter gave her back brutally, "is that he's the pigeon man we've been looking for. He'll go before the court in the morning, and by noon he'll be snugly under the sod!"

So saying, he unfolded his clenched hand and thrust it close under her face. Two little shining yellow grains reposed in the open palm. "Maize," he announced grimly. "Food for the birds. Pigeon men always carry it."

With that, he shut his hand and joined it to its fellow behind his back, while he dropped his square chin on his breast and sternly surveyed her.

"And do you mean to say," she questioned unsteadily, "that the military court would send him to his death on no other evidence than that?"

"Certainly. There was an identical case last month. Two English flying officers. They shot them in the riding school at Charleroi. Game lads they were, too!"

"But this poor devil may have picked up some maize somewhere and kept it for food. He looks half-starved, anyway."

Trompeter shrugged his shoulders. "That's his look-out. We're not taking any chances on pigeon men. They're too dangerous, my dear. Not that I want the poor devil shot. I'd rather have him identified."

The woman raised her head and gazed curiously at the Colonel. "Why?" she asked, almost in a whisper.

Trompeter drew her to the window, out of earshot of the prisoner. Outside, the whole town seemed to reverberate to the passage of heavy guns, monsters, snouting under their tarpaulins, that thundered by in the wake of their tractors.

"Because," he said in an undertone, "I can use him to mislead the enemy. Our dear English cousins will get their pigeon service all right, but after this the birds will carry my reports instead of our friend's. For this I must have the fellow's name." He paused and bent his bushy eyebrows at her. "You know this man?"

"Wait," she bade him, rather breathless. "Let us get this clear. If this man were identified, you would spare his life?"

She cast a timorous glance across the room to where the prisoner was standing, his head lolling on his shoulder. He had not changed his position. His eyes were half-closed and his tongue hung out under the ragged moustache. The reek of him was pungent in the room.

Silently she held out her hand to Trompeter. Without hesitation he dropped the two grains of maize into the slender palm. She ran to the stove and dropped them in. Impassively the Colonel watched her from the window. The maps on the walls trembled in the din of gun-wheels in the street.

Slowly the woman returned to the Colonel's side, He noticed how pale her face appeared against the flame of her hair. She looked at him intently, then said, in a sort of breathless whisper, "You're right, I know him."

She made a little movement of the shoulders. "I can't tell you. He never attempted to disguise himself with me."

The Colonel grunted assent. "Yes, that was the way they did it before the War." He flashed her a scrutinizing glance. "Did you know him well? You're sure you're not making a mistake?"

She shook her head, and there was something wistful in the gesture. "He was my lover...."

Trompeter smiled broadly. "Ah," he murmured, "Steuben always managed that sort of thing so cleverly...."

"Steuben had nothing to do with it," came back her hot whisper. "No one knew him for a secret agent—at least, not until I found him out. He told me he was an English engineer who came to Brussels on business; I was jealous of him, and one day I discovered he was visiting another woman, a Belgian. Then—then I followed things up and found out the rest. He was frank enough when I confronted him—the English are, you know. He told me he had only been carrying out his orders. And I"—she faltered—"I was part of those orders too...."

"My feelings have nothing to do with the business between you and me, Colonel," she told him glacially over her shoulder.

He bowed. "I beg your pardon. And you have told me all you know? What is his full name?"

"Because I made it my business to find out...afterwards!" she answered passionately, and was silent.

"Of the Royal Engineers." She turned to the Colonel. "And now, if you don't mind, I should like to go back to my hotel. I—I don't feel very well. I expect I must have caught a chill. This awful weather...."

Like a fury she rounded on him. "God!" she burst forth, "am I never to be left alone again? Can't I go back to the hotel by myself?"

Trompeter bowed. "Certainly, if you promise to go straight there. It's in your own interest I say it. The P.M. is very strict about civilians just now."

"I'll go straight back," she retorted impatiently. "And you'll keep to our bargain, Colonel?" The officer inclined his head.

She said no more, but moved slowly towards the door. There she paused and let her eyes rest for an instant on the scarecrow shape that mowed and gibbered between them. The Colonel saw her put forth one little hand towards the pigeon man and stand thus as though she hoped that he might turn and greet her. But the tramp with his melancholy imbecile stare paid no heed. She seemed to droop as she turned and passed out.

Then Trompeter went up to the prisoner and clapped him encouragingly on the shoulder. "It's a wonderful disguise, Dunlop," he said pleasantly and in flawless English, "and I don't mind telling you that you nearly took me in. But the game's up, my friend! You're spotted. Let's have a friendly talk. I don't expect you to give anything away, but I'm anxious for news of Colonel Ross, my esteemed opposite number on the other side of No Man's Land. I heard he'd been down with this damnable grippe...."

"Goo...!" mumbled the tramp, and the bubbles frothed at his mouth. The telephone on the desk rang. The Colonel left the prisoner to answer it. A well-bred voice said: "His Excellency desires to speak with Colonel von Trompeter." The next instant a high-pitched, furious voice came ringing over the wire.

"Is that Trompeter? So, Herr Oberst, a new division can't come into the corps area without being shelled to ribbons! What the devil are your people doing? What's that you say? You're investigating. Investigating be damned! I want action—action, do you understand? The whole Corps knows that there's a spy in the area sending information back, and when I ask you what you propose to do about it you tell me you're investigating! Verdammt nochmal! what I expect you to do is to catch the lousy fellow and shoot him, and by God if you don't, I'll have the collar off your back, and don't you forget it! Himmelkreuzsakrament! I'll show you who's in command here, you and your investigation! You'll report to me in person at six o'clock this afternoon, and I shall expect to hear then that you've laid hands on this spy. If you fail me this time, Herr Oberst, I give you fair warning that I'll get somebody I can rely upon to carry out my wishes. And you are to understand that the General is extremely dissatisfied with you. Is that clear?"

"Zu Befehl, Exzellenz!" replied the Colonel stiffly, then hung up the receiver. He lit a cigarette and sat at his disk for a full minute, contemplating through a cloud of blue smoke the wretched-looking outcast before him.

"Sorry, Dunlop," he said at last. "I'd have saved you if I could, but charity begins at home. My general demands a victim, and my head is the price. I'm a poor man, my friend, with no private means and a family to support. I've got powerful enemies, and if I lose this job my career's over. As God is my judge, Dunlop, I can't afford to keep my pledged word." He paused and pressed his handkerchief to his lips. "If there's anything I can do about letting your people know...."

He broke off expectantly, but the pigeon man made no sign. With his head cocked in the air his whole attention appeared to be directed to a fly buzzing round the wire of the electric light.

"You'll at least give me the honour," Trompeter went on rather tremulously, "of shaking hands with a brave man?"

But the pigeon man did not even look at him. His grimy right hand stole furtively under his tattered jacket and he writhed beneath his verminous rags. His gaze remained immutably distant, as though he were peering down some long vista. Slowly the grizzled head at the desk drooped and there was a moment's pregnant hush in the room.

Then the Colonel stood up, a stalwart figure, and moved resolutely to a press in the wall. He opened the door and disclosed, neatly hung on pegs, his steel helmet, revolver, Thermos flask, map-case, and saddle-bags. He unstrapped one of the saddlebags, and, dipping in his hand, brought away in his fingers a few shining orange grains. Then he rang and told the orderly to send in Captain Ehrhardt. The officer recoiled at the grim severity of his Chief's expression.

"Also, Herr Hauptmann," was the Colonel's greeting, "you searched the prisoner, did you?"

The stern voice interrupted him. "Would it surprise you to learn that I discovered maize in the man's pocket when I searched him? See!" The Colonel's hand opened and spilled a few grains of maize on the blotter. "It appears to me, Herr Hauptmann, that you have grossly neglected your duty. You've got to wake yourself up, or one of these mornings you'll find yourself back in the trenches with your regiment. Now pay attention to me! The prisoner goes before the tribunal to-morrow. You will have him washed and disinfected and issued with clean clothes immediately, and hand him over to the Provost Marshal. Horst will warn the P.M. The prisoner can have anything he likes in the way of food or drink or smokes. Your evidence will be required at the trial, so you'll have to stay the night. See Horst about a bed. March the prisoner out!"

The door shut and the escort's ringing tramp died away. Grimly the Colonel shook his balled fist at the telephone.

"Break me, would you, you old sheepshead!" he muttered through his teeth. "But my pigeon man will spike your guns, my boy! Verdammt, though, the price is high!"

Then, drawing himself up to his full height, he brought his heels together with a jingle of spurs and gravely saluted the door through which the pigeon man had disappeared between the fixed bayonets of the guards.

A WEEK later, in an unobtrusive office off Whitehall, high above the panorama of London threaded by the silver Thames, a large, quiet man sat at his desk and frowned down at a typewritten sheet he held in his hand.

"Well," he said, addressing an officer in khaki who stood in an expectant attitude before him, "they've nabbed Tony, Carruthers!"

"'Fraid so. I knew they'd pinched him when Corps forwarded those Dunlop messages that kept reachin' 'em by pigeon. Prendergast, of Rotterdam, says here he has word from a trustworthy source in Belgium that at Roulers on the 6th the Boches shot a half-witted tramp on a charge of espionage. The trial, of course, was held in secret, but the rumour in the town is that the tramp was a British officer. That'd be Tony, all right. God bless my soul, what an actor the fellow was! I'd never have lent him for this job, only G.H.Q. were so insistent. Well, he had a good run for his money, anyway. Our friends on the other side used to call him 'N,' the Unknown Quantity. They never managed to identify him, you see. My hat! old Tony must be smilin' to think that he managed to take his incognito down to the grave with him."

"Obviously, otherwise the old Boches would have signed his real name to those pigeon messages of theirs which so much amused Ross and his young men at Corps Headquarters."

The large man smiled enigmatically. "Ah," he remarked, "you weren't in the Service before the War, Carruthers, or you'd have known that 'Dunlop' was one of our accommodation names in the office. Most of us were Captain Dunlop at one time or another. I've been Captain Dunlop myself. We run up against some rum coves in this business, and it ain't a bad plan to have a sort of general alias. It prevents identification, and all manner of awkwardness, when the double-crossin' begins." He broke off to chuckle audibly. "Let's see, it's old Trompeter on that front, ain't it? I wonder where he got hold of the office alias, the foxy old devil. He's probably put up another Iron Cross over this. He'd be kickin' himself if he knew the truth. That's the catch about this job of ours, my boy, to recognize the truth when you find it!"

So saying, the huge man unlocked his desk and, taking out a book, turned to a list of names. With the red pencil he scored out, slowly and methodically, a name that stood there.

THE POPINJAY KNIGHT

I DON'T suppose you would have found anywhere on the British front in France a handsomer or better turned-out officer than my friend Lucius. Tall, blonde and blue-eyed, with a fair wisp of moustache, so beautifully trained that we used to call it the Flappers' Dream, he was always, in all circumstances, faultlessly dressed from head to foot. He used his captain's prerogative of wearing field-boots and spurs, and his boots, well fitting his shapely leg and as bright as a mirror, were a perpetual testimonial to the taste of their wearer and the excellence of his servant. His uniform was always spotless: his buttons were never dull; and never did I see him dirty or jaded or discomposed. For his temperament was as sprightly as the rest of him. Every time I saw him I used to think of that popinjay knight who excited the wrath of Harry Hotspur in Henry IV.

Lucius was my friend, but when one had paid this tribute to his outer man, I sometimes thought there was really nothing more to be said for him. For of all the decorative shirkers in khaki at the front, from the extra A.D.C.'s down to the O.C.'s God knows what at remote bases, we used to think him the most glaring example. And the worst of it was that he was so shamelessly and blatantly frank about it. He had some vague job (carrying with it the sole disposition of a magnificent Vauxhall car) in the Corps Intelligence, and when my battalion was in rest he would often motor over from Corps Headquarters and look me up.

I shall never forget the occasion on which he openly proclaimed at our mess his satisfaction at not being a combatant. Now at the front, fellows were very broad-minded. A man kept himself to himself, as the saying is, and seldom inquired about any one else as long as the fellow did his job all right. This is by way of showing you that old Lucius was asking for it when he started bucking in our mess about being a shirker.

We were having tea in some filthy estaminet or other when Lucius blew in, impeccably attired as usual. He started in right away.

"Hullo, my brave foot-slogger," he said to me, "I've been meaning to come and look you up for ages, but I wasn't keen on coming as long as you were near the line. There's a damn sight too much shell-fire about this sector for my liking."

You could kind of feel a frost stealing over our fellows round the tea-table, but nobody said anything. I sat him down beside me, and got him a mugful of tea, pushed the condensed milk over, and the loaf and the butter and jam. I didn't have to introduce him round, for he had been over to our mess often enough before.

"Well, what kind of a time have you been having?" he asked as he helped himself.

"Pretty thin," I replied. "We had a lot of shelling during our tour in the trenches and a lot more when we went into support."

"How perfectly horrible!" said Lucius, with his mouth full of bread and jam. "And to think that if I hadn't had a lively imagination I might have gone into the infantry too. I should be terrified if a shell came near me; I'm sure I should run away. I'm devilish glad I had the sense to pick a nice, safe job like mine, with decent quarters, and... why, damn it, I don't suppose you've slept in a bed for days, some of you fellows... have you?"

Now Blinkers, our second-in-command, a regular officer, out since Mons and all the rest, was having tea with us that afternoon, and I knew that to him this kind of talk was as a red rag to a bull. Out of the corner of my eye I could see him bristling up. I kicked Lucius under the table, but he took no notice and went babbling on.

"I've always been able to imagine exactly what being shelled is like," he continued, "and I was resolved that I should have a jolly good try to get a job that would keep me clear of it. So I reserved the infantry as my last string... to go into if all else failed."

Blinkers had been swelling and swelling and clearing his throat in a way that we all knew portended trouble.

"... I knew I could always have come to you," Lucius went on, "you'd have got me a commission in your lot, wouldn't you, Billie?"

He turned to me with that winning smile of his, so that he did not see that Blinkers was on the point of bursting. So he positively jumped when Blinkers slapped the table with his hand and cried: "And do you really suppose that this regiment that was complimented by the great Duke for the part it played at Waterloo, that fought alongside the Guards at Inkerman, that... that... that was one of the last to come off Spion Kop, that... that... has gained two V.C.'s and four D.S.O.'s in this war, would give a commission to a cowardly jackanapes like you? Do you really imagine that a... a... that an Officer who glories in a soft job is a fit companion for gentlemen of England who have answered their country's call and are doing their bit? Allow me to tell you, sir, that it would be more becoming in you to hide your satisfaction at your immunity from... er... discomfort and... er... er... danger, and not discredit yourself as well as the officer who has seen fit to introduce you here!"

"Sorry, old boy, I seem to have bracketed you with myself in the Major's bad books. I really think the most graceful thing I can now do is to withdraw with humble apologies for having been the innocent instrument of this disagreeable scene..."

Nobody moved to stop him, and I went out with him to see him off. When we were clear of the estaminet In said, chuckling:

"My dear Billie, what a priceless type! He talked exactly like a recruiting poster! Did you see him wag his finger at me? 'Are you doing your bit?' Oh dear, I do so enjoy the army!"

"Lucius," I said, "I've always defended you when you've put people's backs up by the way you buck about your soft job. But I'm hanged if I'll stand for you doing it in my own mess."

"I don't know so much about that," I replied—I was pretty annoyed with him for drawing old Blinkers like that: Blinkers, for all his old-womanish ways, was a devilish good officer and as brave as a lion. "If you've got a cushy billet, that's your affair. But if you really are a funk you might keep your opinions to yourself instead of airing them in front of fellows who've just come out of the line. I can tell you this: next time they start crabbing you I'm damned if I stick up for you any more!"

It was pretty straight talk, wasn't it? And I meant it to wither him. But he never turned a hair.

"Poor old Billie," he said, smiling at me. "You know you'd always stick up for Mary's brother."

"The fact that I'm engaged to your sister has nothing to do with it. It certainly won't prevent me from going straight off to Blinkers and apologizing for having brought you in...."

"Dear old chap!" He patted me on the back. "So you think I'm a funk, too, do you?"

"It's all very well to pretend to misunderstand me. I know, we all know, there are lots of fellows in jobs behind the line because they have special qualifications. But what special qualifications have you got, apart from the fact that you're good at languages, to spend the whole of your time mucking about at the back in a car, a job that any old buffer like a modern languages master or a college don could do every bit us well? Listen, Lucius, you needn't worry to come and see me any more. I'm fed up!"

He grinned quite cheerfully. "All right, old boy. Sorry I made things awkward for you with the Major, but I simply can't resist pulling people's legs. As for my job...."

He laughed. "Mucking about in a car at the back. But we all have our uses, old son. Ta-ta, William, try and cultivate a sense of humour—it's no end of a help in life!"

Then he got into his Vauxhall. But I turned my back on him and walked into the mess.

NOW that the War is history, we fellows who were in it are a lot of blinking heroes. We bore the young generation a good deal, I always suspect, with our reminiscences of the battles we took part in. But to us at the time those battles, whose names are now gloriously inscribed on regimental colours and war memorials throughout the Empire, were just shows, as we used to call them, and we went into them and out the other side—some of us—without ever realizing that we were making history. The weather, the weight of one's equipment, the difficulty of keeping direction in the waste of shell-holes, the heavy going—in a word, the petty discomforts of the business, not heroics, were what engrossed us. That's war.

And so the first time I went over the bags in the Battle of the Somme my principal concern was a really agonizing corn. It was in an interval between pushes, and our battalion was in the front line. Opposite us the German front bulged in a small salient protected by a strong point known as the Rhomboid on the right. Before the advance was resumed, it was considered necessary to pinch out the salient and mop up the strong point. The first of these tasks was entrusted to our Division, while the Division on our right was to deal with the Rhomboid. Our battalion and the battalion on our left were to send over a company apiece after a short preliminary bombardment. In our case the job was entrusted to "D" company, of which I was second-in-command.

The Staff had the bright idea of arranging for this jolly picnic to take place in broad daylight. We went over at four o'clock of a summer afternoon. My corn was hurting me so much that actually the physical pain of walking rendered me almost oblivious of the mixed lot of stuff that promptly came down on us. I know we caught it pretty hot in the open, and I was not surprised to find myself in command of the company as the only surviving officer by the time we reached our objective. Jerry hadn't stopped to argue, and the trench was empty.

Our orders were to consolidate and hold on until night, when we were to be relieved. Accordingly I lost no time in setting the men to dig themselves in. A lot of machine-gun stuff kept coming over from the Rhomboid, suggesting to me that the attack on the right had been held up. We had a good many casualties. I sent out patrols to link up with our left and right. Then the German barrage started.

Those gunners had the range to a T. Up and down in salvos whizzbangs and five-nines came plumping, while a screen of shells shut us off from the trench from which we had started out. My corn was giving me gyp, and I had sat down on the firestep to nurse my aching foot when the company sergeant-major, usually the most imperturbable of men, breezed up quivering with excitement.

"Our people on the left have fallen back, sir," he reported. "I've just been that fur along the trench, and barrin' a lot of dead and two or three wounded there's nobody left."

"What about the right?" I asked. "The Rhomboid seems to be popping off as merrily as before."

"I'll come with you, Sergeant-Major," I said. Fifty yards along the trench the sergeant of No. 16 platoon met us.

"They're away on the right, sir," he said. "Every man jack of them has hooked it."

Then a man appeared struggling along the press of men in the trench. It was a runner from Battalion Headquarters. He had come through the barrage and was badly scared. I had just taken the message from his hand when, without warning, two men loomed up on what had been the parados of the German trench. They wore hideous coal-scuttle helmets and leather equipment over grey uniform.

One of them was a big, fat man with a purple face running with moisture. He was wheezing like a grampus. The instant he saw me he yelled with a strong German accent: "Ach, blody Englishman!"

I cried out a warning, and snatching up my revolver, which dangled from a lanyard about my neck, fired point-blank at him. He threw up his hands and crashed backwards with a curiously shrill exclamation of surprise. Then everybody seemed to shout together, there were two or three loud detonations, a louder explosion, and something hit me hard on the back of the head. I saw a shower of stars, then the ground slipped away....

III

OF all the sensations of war, I herewith coldly and with deliberation proclaim, that of being made a prisoner is infinitely the worst. A German had got round behind me, and, using a stick-bomb like a club, had put me down for the count. When I came to, the trench was full of grey-green uniforms, and a party of us was being rounded up to go down to the rear.

What with my aching head and raging corn and the utter sense of humiliation that overcame me, I have very little recollection of our march. I know that we traversed a perfectly diabolical barrage of British shells, and I am still amazed to think that we all, prisoners and escort, came through alive.

They ran us into a barbed-wire compound, putting me in a corner wired off from the men. There were no other British officers there. A German captain, who was pretty civil, asked me my name and regiment, and started to cross-examine me in very fair English about our next attack. When he found that I would not talk he left me to my own devices.

A little later all my fellow-prisoners were marched away. The sergeant-major, who had got a flesh wound in the thigh from a German bayonet, waved his hand as he hobbled by and cried "Good luck, sir!" I felt pretty forlorn as I saw them go.

Gosh, I shall never forget that afternoon. The sun blazed down hotly, and there was no cover. My head was splitting from the clout I had received; I was faint with hunger, for I had had nothing since a very early lunch; and my corn was throbbing abominably. But the thirst was the worst. Some kind of a main road ran close to the edge of the compound. All through the late afternoon the road was choked with traffic going in a dense stream towards the firing-line, sending up choking clouds of red dust that were simply stifling. And all the time the very air seemed to quiver to the throb of the guns.

I felt broken in spirit, absolutely abased to the ground. The hopelessness of the position was the awful thing—to count for nothing any more, to be just a captured piece tossed to the side of the chess-board until the game was done! It was not until a deep-throated hum in the sky and the angry barking of the archies made me look aloft that I got the whip-hand of myself again. For there, very high in the bright blue sky and all ringed round with shrapnel bursts, was a covey of British planes, swift and proud and indomitable, soaring over the enemy lines. I could have stood up and cheered at the sight. It was the stimulus I required, of all others, in my sorry pass.

After that, nothing more happened. It was almost dark when an N.C.O. brought me a couple of pieces of rather nasty-looking black bread and a mess-tin of weak coffee. I ate and drank and then laid me down to sleep on the grass of the compound.

I awoke to the freshness of a pellucid, dewy morning. The officer I had seen before was standing at the gate of the cage talking to a slim young German officer with a white-and-black sash slung across his tunic. When they saw me on my feet they pushed open the gate and came in.

The young officer bowed stiffly. "Von Scheidemann of the Staff of the 161st Infantry Regiment," he introduced himself. "My Colonel has seen the bravery of your attack and invites you to breakfast with him. I have an automobile here." His English was stiff but reasonably fluent.

"So I am to be pumped," was my first thought. But I accepted the invitation. The prospect of a hot meal attracted me; besides, I reflected, a peep at German Headquarters would be distinctly interesting.

"You shall have that at Headquarters," von Scheidmann answered, and led the way to where, on the road outside the compound, a grey motor-car was throbbing gently. An orderly with a rifle, standing by the door, stiffened to attention as we approached.

"You forgive that I mention it," he said pleasantly enough, "but both of us are armed," and he jerked his head towards the orderly, "just to prevent misunderstandings, yes?" The next minute we were off along that road at a good forty miles an hour.

In truth, we wanted all the speed the very skilful driver could whack out of that car. The first thing I had heard on waking had been the whirl and crash of bursting shells. As soon as we had turned off the main road—in a north-westerly direction, as far as I could make out by the position of the sun, for I had entirely lost my bearings—we seemed to come right into a zone swept by the British artillery. We had a hundred hairbreadth escapes. Again and again coal-boxes pitched with vast spouts of brown earth in the fields alongside us as we sped along, and twice crashed on to the road itself behind us. The road was all torn and pocketed by shell-craters, and the going was terribly rough.

We had travelled for barely ten minutes when the car slowed down and stopped at the entrance to a village. Here the road was screened with sacking against observation from the higher ground to the west where I knew the British trenches lay. Von Scheidemann jumped out and beckoned me to follow him. Hardly had my foot touched the ground than the car was in motion again, backing to turn, and in a second it was off once more, speeding back the way it had come. A great pall of smoke and dust hung over the village, and from the tangle of red roofs and white walls in the centre, where the houses clustered thick about a wrecked fragment of church tower, the iron slamming of bursting shells re-echoed deafeningly.

"Your compatriots are hard at it again!" said my companion; "this is a bad spot. Quick!" He gripped my arm and ran me to where, above the entrance of a dug-out, a black-and-white flag flapped from a blasted tree-trunk. He raised a blanket curtain, and there I saw a very steep flight of stairs, lit by electric light, leading as it seemed into the very bowels of the earth. We went down together.

The entrance led into a very maze of subterranean chambers, cut in past centuries out of the solid chalk and extended and modernized by the invader. The place was a veritable underground fortress, nay, a camp. Here were barrack-rooms and dormitories and baths and stores, a guard-room, offices... accommodation, apparently, for a whole Brigade.

Von Scheidemann led me swiftly along a main corridor, down one side-turning after another, until we came to a corridor bearing a notice-board inscribed: STAB 161 INF. REG. Here we ran into a burly Prussian officer who had a pair of tortoise-shell spectacles on his nose. He seemed irritable and rather excited. Von Scheidemann said to him in German:

My companion entered the corridor and pushed open a wooden door with his name painted on it. He showed me into a small, rather stuffy room, plainly furnished, where an orderly was making the bed.

"Franz is the man for you, then," he said. "He used to work at a barber's in Portsmouth. Franz, you rascal," he went on, addressing the orderly who had come in with a big can of hot water, "tell the gentleman about the time you used to shave the naval officers at Portsmouth!"

"Tree year haf I vork at Portsmouse," he chuckled. "Dere ain't many Bridish admirals wot ain't got shafed by Franz som taime or anoder. Gut monney I haf made dere, jawohl ... a naice down, Portsmouse, and loafly girls!"

But I sat in silence and let Franz shave me: I was thinking how far away it seemed to the Hard.

WAR is a series of surprises, but I never anticipated sitting down to breakfast with a German Colonel and his regimental staff. Yet here I was, in a long, low-roofed room, lit with electric light, ventilated by long, slanting air-shafts driven up through the tons of chalk and earth above us, eating cold tongue and drinking coffee cheek by jowl with the O.C. 161st Prussian Infantry. The Colonel was a small, thick-set man with beady eyes, a red neck and a grizzled moustache. Beside him was the bespectacled officer I had already seen, who turned out to be the First Adjutant: there was also a black-bearded Stabsarzt, wearing the velvet collar and badges of the German Army Medical Corps, and a young Captain whom I took to be the Signalling Officer.

They were all excessively polite. The Colonel, addressing me in very bad French, expressed his regret at having no English, but I told him I could manage to get along with French. I saw no necessity for telling him that, while I was no German scholar, I could understand the general drift of a conversation in German.

I could not help noticing the general air of restlessness hanging over the company. All the officers at that breakfast-table looked absolutely worn out, oppressed by the shadow of some threatening danger. Messages kept on coming in by orderly to the Adjutant, and with each fresh arrival the Colonel cocked his eye in that officer's direction, while not interrupting his conversation with me.

The Colonel congratulated me on coming through the previous day's fighting alive.

"It was a good attack," he said. "I watched it from my observation station. The creeping barrage was excellently handled: a remarkable man, your General Horne... I should like to meet him!"

"But you hadn't a chance once you came up against our incomparable infantry," the Colonel went on. "Your troops are brave... they sacrifice themselves willingly... but they avail nothing against our years of training!"

Still I remained silent. This "artillery preparation" for a direct pumping attack was too childish for words.

And how they did try to pump me! The Colonel, the Adjutant, von Scheidemann, even the Doctor, they all took a hand and started discussions about infantry tactics, artillery preparation, Stokes mortars, Lewis guns, and heaven knows what else, flattering me, contradicting me, agreeing with me, praising and condemning British generalship, British initiative, even British pluck. I dodged and slithered and scraped through it all, never committing myself to a direct answer if possible, and keeping a tight hand on my temper lest I should be tempted to say a word more I intended. For I realized that at the bottom of all this desultory discussion lay the desire to obtain from me some light on the big push which I knew to be impending in this sector of the Somme front.

All the time I kept my ears open for any asides. I might be able to pick up. Once the Adjutant silently laid a message brought in by an orderly beside the Colonel's plate. The Colonel read it, then crashed his fist down on the table.

"And high time too!" he cried. "Scheidemann is my Staff Captain—he's not an interpreter. I told the Major-General himself that if prisoners were to be interrogated on the spot, the Corps would have to detail special officers.... What's the fellow's name?"

"It's not in the message, Herr Oberst... but the Corps telephoned just now. Rittmeister von dem Holzweg is the name!"

"Well, he'll be welcome whoever he is!" grunted the Colonel, and started talking to me about the tanks. He was particularly anxious to know whether our people were satisfied with their results.

"If you are willing to admit, mon Colonel," I answered, "that you are dissatisfied with our tanks, I should be better able to judge."

An orderly came in and spoke to the Adjutant, who, muttering an apology, got up and went out.

"Well answered!" cried the Colonel. "I must tell the Doctor that." And he translated question and answer for the benefit of the Stabsarzt, who, it appeared, was inordinately interested in the tanks. The Doctor burst into a hurricane of laughter (as, doubtless, he was expected to do), and the Colonel roared with him until the room fairly shook with noise.

In the middle of the din the door opened suddenly. Lucius stood there looking into the room.

HE was dressed in the service uniform of a captain of Uhlans, grey-green tunic buttoned across the chest, grey-green breeches with the broad crimson stripe of the Great General Staff down the leg, chapka (the Uhlan helmet), strings and all. An eyeglass was firmly screwed in his left eye, and through it he calmly surveyed he room, whilst bowing stiffly, his right hand raised in salute to his helmet.

He was the Prussian officer to the life, impassive of feature, angular of movement. By some trick of the actor's art he actually seemed to have added that touch of woodenness to the face which is the hall-mark of the Prussian officer.

His eye rested on me for the fraction of a second as his gaze travelled round the room. But his face remained immobile. As for me, I felt the blood rush to my head and I literally felt my heart thumping in jerks. The room seemed to swim and I grasped with twitching hand at my empty coffee cup and took a long draught of nothing... anything, anything, I felt, to cover my bewilderment. The nerve of the man! The cheek of it all!

"Captain von dem Holzweg, 23rd Uhlan Regiment, sent by the Corps, Herr Oberst... they telephoned...."

It was Lucius who was speaking in German. Behind him I saw the rotund form of the Adjutant.

"Then," the Colonel went on, looking at the Adjutant, "it's high time that you and I, Gelbhammer, went up to the headquarters of the 390th. If they are coming out to-night, I must see Colonel Krome. In the meantime," he added, waving his hand towards me, "since you are here, we have an excellent specimen for you to practise your arts on. You speak English, of course?"

"A-oh yes, sir," said Lucius in English, with a nicely graduated shade of German accent.

On that, after many deep bows and much saluting, the Colonel picked up his steel helmet and riding-crop from a chair and stumped out, the Adjutant at his heels. The rest of the party, with the exception of von Scheidemann and Lucius, followed suit. These two last were conferring in an undertone in a corner.

"We can use the Colonel's room," von Scheidemann said presently, "he won't be back before two or three o'clock this afternoon...it's the second door on the left... perhaps you'll take our friend in there. I'll just go along to the office and get the forms; I shan't be a minute."

He led the way out into the corridor, and pushing a door open, showed us a small room with the usual long, slanting air-shaft, with plain deal walls covered with maps, and plain, roughly carpentered deal table and chairs. On the wall was a telephone. As we went into the room I noticed a sentry just turning a bend in the corridor. I wondered if he was always on duty outside the C.O.'s room or whether he was posted for my benefit.

Von Scheidemann clanked off down the corridor, leaving us alone. I observed that he left the door open and that Lucius made no attempt to shut it.

"Don't ask questions: don't be surprised at anything. Just sit down at the table there and listen to me. When I stop talking answer... anything... anything banal and unsuspicious."

He walked back to the door and, with his back to me and is face towards the door, began studying a map hanging on the wall. Then he spoke in a rapid undertone:

"Billie, old man, I'm right plumb up against it this time. It's eight o'clock now and I've got just one hour and a quarter before the man I am impersonating can turn up. I bagged his car and he can't possibly get here before 9.15, I think. If he turns up before that time, then I'm dished. Look out!"

"...it entirely depends on the visibility prevailing at the time," I said quite irrelevantly, as the sentry hove into view in the opening of the door.

"Himmel Sakrament!" swore Lucius in German, "did one ever hear such lies?" Then he went into English and his voice was loud and clear:

"You must know that weather conditions have nothing to do with the use of tanks! Esel!" he added in German.

"I should have got clear of the German lines last night, only I was held up. By a miraculous chance I stumbled upon this man Holzweg's special mission to these headquarters, so I made for this point. It's my only chance to get clear away, but a slender one at that. Billie, do you know where you are?"

I shook my head. Then, hearing the sentry again, I took up the thread of my imaginary interrogation until the man had passed the door once more.

"In front of this village," Lucius went on, "is the Stettiner Redoubt. I dare say you know it!"

Know it? I should say I did. The toughest nut to crack on the whole of this part of the enemy line, a fortress bristling with machine-guns that had hitherto defied all attempts at capture.

"Our fellows are attacking it at eight... no preliminary bombardment but full orchestra when they pop. Hark! They're off!"

I listened for the roar of guns, but heard nothing. Only I suddenly noticed that the atmosphere was vibrating and that the timber of the air-shafts, of floors and walls and ceilings, was oscillating as leaves shaken by the wind.

"The village where we are now is the final objective: our lads are due to be here about five minutes after nine. If they take the Stettiner Redoubt, they should get here all right: if they're held up, well, I shall be properly for it, for no power on earth can prevent my being unmasked!"

"That's the whole bag of tricks," Lucius concluded, "and you and I must make it our business to prolong our sitting with Scheidemann here until 9.5 at all costs. After that, it doesn't matter much what happens!"

"But Holzweg?" I queried in a whisper; "won't he wire through and have you laid by the heels?"

"I left him tied up in a barn in a fairly desolate region at least three miles from the nearest unit. There is always the chance that he might be able to attract the notice of a passing car, but I'm risking that: one must hazard something in this game!"

Then there was a step in the corridor, and von Scheidemann came in. He looked very harassed. As he entered, Lucius very swiftly and almost imperceptibly got between him and the door.

"Can we start the examination of this officer?" Lucius said in an annoyed kind of voice. "I seem to have been kept waiting for a very long time."

"You will not be able to examine this officer, Herr Rittmeister," von Scheidemann answered coldly; "there has been a telephone message about you."

"About me?" said Lucius, who was standing, legs apart, hands behind his back, in front of the door.

The Staff Captain stepped towards the door and Lucius stood aside to let him pass. As von Scheidemann drew level with him, however, Lucius raised his right arm like a flash, something descended heavily on the Prussian's head, and he crashed backwards into me.

We laid him down on the floor. I looked inquiringly at Lucius. He appeared to be listening intently. From without now reverberated distinctly the rumble and thud of artillery, but blended with it the trample of feet echoing along the subterranean passages, hoarse cries and commands. Then flying footsteps came along the corridor.

Lucius sprang forward and put his weight against the door. Some one rattled the handle.

"Herr Hauptmann! Herr Hauptmann!" a voice cried, raucous with excitement, "they're all retreating. Zurück, zurück!"

The door-handle was twisted vainly for a second or two. We could hear the unseen messenger breathing heavily on the other side of the door. Peering over Lucius's shoulder, I looked at his watch. It pointed to eight o'clock.

Hardly had he uttered the words when a loud detonation rang out quite close at hand, followed by another and another.

The heavy breathing at the keyhole stopped. I heard a sharp cry of astonishment, a shout, a loud report, a heavy thud. And then the whole of that vast rabbit-warren seemed to break out into long reverberations of noise. Bombs crashed, shots pinged through the echoing spaces, voices shouted in a medley of languages, and there was a great blowing of whistles... then I heard a voice say at the very door of our door—and the voice was the voice of Lancashire:

"'Ere be another of 'em, laads!" and a rifle-butt smashed through the panels of the door.

Lucius turned to me with a smile. "You see I have my uses, Billie Boy!" he said.

The next moment the little tomb-like place was full with a jostling, steel-helmeted, blood-stained, begrimed mass of British soldiers....

LUCIUS wanted a lot of explaining. I met a fellow I knew in the little crowd that had squeezed out this nest and he went bail for me. But nothing I could say availed to get permission for old Lucius to accompany me down to the rear. So I left him in charge of a corporal's guard, waiting for some Divisional Brass Hat to come and interrogate him. In the midst of all that khaki, I must say old Lucius looked his part.

I was sorely tempted to disobey him when, six weeks later, he came to see me. Our Division was again in rest, and one afternoon Lucius turned up in his Vauxhall, spruce and immaculate as ever. I ran into him at the door of the mess, where he was inquiring for me.

Whilst we stood and chatted, old Blinkers passed along the village street. He recognized Lucius at once, and there was the unspoken reproach of "Shirker" in every line of the cold scrutiny of his glance. I was about to speak when Lucius squeezed my arm.

THE THUMB OF FAT'MA

WHEN, at the age of twenty-four, Betty March, only child of Rutherford March, the ironmaster, and sole heiress of his millions, became bored with Europe, she went on a trip to Egypt. A summer which started in town and wound up, via Deauville and the Lido, at Biarritz, had left her with nothing but a rich brown tan and a feeling of unutterable ennui. As she could rid herself of neither of these acquisitions she took them Eastward with her.

There were other inevitable accompaniments of her journeyings, too, such as Miss Hobbs, her companion, Germaine, her maid, and Mr. Harris, her bulldog; but these, from long usage, were but the imponderabilia of Betty's young life and not to be counted.

In Cairo, which she reached at the end of October, she found sunlight more radiant and all-pervading than any her summer had bestowed, and a drowsy air which recalled the atmosphere of the English provincial town where she had been brought up.

For Cairo was but gently stirring from its long summer sleep. The hotels were just opening; Gezira, where the British officials live, was a deserted village; the Sporting Club a howling wilderness. Not that, for a week or two, Betty noticed it. Deliberately she had sought no letters of introduction, craving not society but rest.

And so, after the manner of twentieth-century maidenhood, she proceeded to achieve this by undertaking, in the heat and dust of the Cairo autumn, a campaign of intensive sightseeing. Accompanied by a reluctant "Hobbsy," as she called her companion, who hated sunshine, and a cheerful highwayman in a bright pink bath-robe, who answered to the name of Makhmoud and had appointed himself her dragoman, she ranged over the whole span of the arc between death and life comprised in the sights of Cairo.

From the funeral splendours of Tut-ankh-Amen and the Museum's serried ranks of Royal mummies, from those crumbling cities of the dead, the Tombs of the Caliphs and the Tombs of the Mamelukes, from the Pyramids, honey-coloured against the turquoise sky, and below them, in a desert fold, the Sphinx, battered and brooding, she passed to the vast, echoing mosques, the Citadel with its cockney sentries peering perkily down upon the majesty of this city of minarets and cupolas, the teeming lanes of the Muski.

In the dim and perfumed bazaars she bought amber and attar of roses, a string of amethysts which were genuine and a Queen Hatshepsut scarab which was not, a shawl of beaten silver, some Indian silks, a rug. This was before she encountered Claud Herrick and while she yet had time to occupy herself with such trifles.

Then with characteristic perverseness Hobbsy fell ill of that unpleasant ailment indelicately named "Gyppie tummy," leaving an outwardly sympathetic but inwardly indignant Betty to her own devices.

That these, for the most part, had for their theatre the terrace at Shepheard's, where Betty was staying, goes without saying. No need to go a-roving when from a wicker chair on Shepheard's verandah you may see the whole of Africa drift by. Here, when she was not at Hobbsy's sick-bed, Betty would install herself in a Micawber-like frame of mind. Her sightseeing dutifully accomplished, her future plans for the Upper Nile trip deranged by Hobbsy's illness, she felt that old dark cloud of ennui threatening to descend upon her once more.

Surely, she would tell herself as she watched that vivid pageant of the East sounding along the boulevard between the great white hotel and the arcaded shops across the way, surely this mysterious city might hold for her some strange adventure!

When, by means of the time-honoured device of admiring Mr. Harris, the bull-pup, Count Damia scraped acquaintance with her, she thought she had found it. The Count, a swarthy, sleek, and monocled Italian, lived at the hotel. He seemed to speak Italian, English, French, and Arabic with equal fluency, and possessed an enormous circle of acquaintances, from portly effendis who ceremoniously laid hand to tarboosh at is passage, to grubby Syrian newspaper reporters who buttonholed him in the vestibule. He was always very well dressed and drove himself about in an ernomous blue Isetta car.

But before he had spoken a dozen words to her, Betty had placed him. There were Damias by the peck on the plank-walk at the Lido, like him, all flashing eyes and teeth and mille-fleurs. But he was amusing and interesting when he did not wax sentimental, and so, for the sake of his company, she tolerated him; but she held him at arm's length.

Then, one evening at the cocktail hour, he introduced Herrick, and Betty sat up and forgot her boredom.

A tall, quiet young man, this Captain Herrick, with a very straight nose, a clean-cut, sunburnt face, and rather keen grey eyes. He had a reserved air about him which manifested itself mostly in a sort of shy reluctance in speaking. Yet when he did speak his manner was perfectly easy and his features, though impassive, were neither haughty nor sullen. He gave the impression of being continually on his guard as though fearing, by word or look, to betray himself. He was blonde and athletic and carefully groomed, and, like most fair men, looked well in evening clothes.

Herrick was in the Intelligence, Damia informed her after the young man had departed, and had only recently come out to Egypt. At present he was attached to the Public Security. What was that? Betty wanted to know: it sounded like a Safe Deposit.

Damia laughed. "Safe Deposit? Good Lord, no," he retorted idiomatically. "The Public Security Department in Egypt corresponds with the Special Branch of your Criminal Investigation Department at home, the branch that hunts down anarchists and those sort of people. Herrick's job is to keep track of the terrorists, like the fellows who assassinated the Sirdar, you know!"

"It was," the Count corrected. "But things are quiet since they broke up the gang that shot Stack!"

Betty fell silent. She was thinking that this Captain Herrick had brave eyes....

Any one, except servants and so forth, entering or leaving Shepheard's must cross the terrace, which is, in consequence, an excellent look-out place. And presently Betty found herself keeping watch for this taciturn, self-contained young man. He lived at the hotel too, but took his meals, as he told her, at the Mohammed Ali Club. He was always out of the hotel before she was down, and she saw him, therefore, only in the afternoons, or more usually in the evenings, when he came in to dress, or sometimes later, when he returned to go to bed.

She liked him for a number of different reasons, some of which she admitted to herself. He was quite presentable; and though he treated her with a sort of courteous indifference, she was sure she detected behind those calm grey eyes of his an interest that belied his attitude.

Young women as pretty as Betty March, especially if they pay in income tax the equivalent of the salary of several Cabinet Ministers, are usually attractive to the common run of men. Bored and, to tell the truth, not a little spoilt, Betty was quite willing to become interested in Herrick as the only possible male on the horizon. That was, at any rate, as much as she confessed to herself. In reality, his deliberate impassiveness, which never relented save at rare moments when he thought she was not looking at him, piqued her curiosity and aroused the Diana in her.

He was very stand-offish. Several times he gave her tea, and he would often stop and chat with her on the terrace. A sort of intimacy grew up between them, comradely but never sentimental. The resources of Cairo afford plenty of opportunities for tête-à-tête; and, albeit with all maidenly reserve, the girl was not backward in suggesting them. She questioned him about the golf; and he told her that the Gezira course, though sandy, was not at all bad. But he never proposed a game. She said she adored riding; and he immediately offered to send round his groom with a horse for her. But he did not suggest taking her himself. Yet he was friendly and unaffected and seemed to enjoy being with her. But whenever their talks shifted to a sentimental plane his impenetrable reserve dropped like a steel curtain between them....

"Life is very tiresome, isn't it?" Betty confided to Mr. Harris. "It's always the wrong man who wants sitting on. But perhaps I shouldn't care about the Herrick person if he talked to me like the Damia man. What do you think, Mr. Harris darling?"

Mr. Harris wriggled in her soft embrace and bared his teeth with a fierce grunt.

Which may have been his doggish fashion of expressing his opinion either of the Count or of the sex in general.

The night, white-lit by an enormous moon, was breathless and warm and, in this teeming Eastern city, vaguely malodorous. From time to time the clattering hoofs of a belated arabieh fell across the stillness. Close at hand a busy cicada sent its strident whirr through the velvety dark. Save for the dusky Nubian waiter, white-clad with scarlet sash, who stood like an image in the shadow of a palm, Betty and Count Damia had the terrace to themselves.

Thoughtfully the Count sliced the ash from his cigar. The fine pearls in his shirt-front glistened dimly as he moved.

"With the moon full like this, the night's a dream of beauty out there. To appreciate the Sphinx you must see her under the moon. And there's an old chap who tells your fortune in the sand. Very amusing. You'd better come."

"My car's outside. We'd be back within the hour. Your companion will never know...."

Betty March shrugged her shoulders and gazed over the balustrade, purple-splashed with the trailing bougainvillea.

His teeth flashed white in the moonlight as he gave a forced laugh. "I must say I never realized before what a misfortune it could be to be born an Italian. Are Italians so dangerous?"

With a gleam of bare shoulders Betty turned and faced him. "I think that you might be," she observed laughingly.

"The truth is sometimes agreeable," he returned jestingly. "But, dear Miss Betty, you needn't be afraid of me."

"Then why not take this little drive? It's so hot to-night. You'll sleep all the better for getting a breath of air before you go to bed."

"Because you and I don't think the same about these things. Already, I dare say, you've got an entirely false impression of me just because I, an unmarried girl, sit up night after night talking to you like this...."

"Admit you'd never dream of inviting an Italian girl to drive out with you to the Pyramids by moonlight!"

He made an impatient gesture. "That's quite different. In my country, girls are brought up like nuns...."

"And in mine we are given complete liberty. So we learn to look after ourselves. And that's why, my dear thing, I'm not taking any moonlight drives with you...."

The throb of a motor-car, the rasp of Arabic from the street below the terrace, and Herrick came up the steps. He was in evening dress, bare-headed, with his overcoat slung from his shoulders.

"Hullo there," he said at the sight of Betty in her silver frock, with the Count, dark, imperturbable, at her side, and stopped. Betty gave no sign. A little incident of the afternoon did not predispose her to make advances.

Herrick slipped off his overcoat. "Not for me, thanks. I've been dining at the Residency and, really, they do you so uncommonly well that I've had all the drink that's good for me." He turned to Betty. "How's Miss Hobbs this evening?"

"She's better since they've been giving her emitin. Hut she won't be allowed up yet. We shall probably have to stay in Cairo for another week at least...."

"Too bad," said Herrick absently, for he was looking at Betty, who with her milk-white skin and shining robe was like a beam of the great moon that bathed the terrace in silver. Betty sat up rather stiffly.

"Come on, man," Damia put in and clapped his hands for the waiter; "a peg won't hurt you...."

The statuesque Nubian glided forward like a spectre. Merrick glanced at Betty; but she was contemplating the point of her silver shoe and made no sign.

"We mustn't keep Captain Herrick," the girl suggested sweetly. "He's a busy man...."

Smilingly the Count drew on his cigar. "Nobody's busy in Cairo," was his placid remark.

"I am," said Herrick. "With all these fellows away on leave we are short-handed at the office. This afternoon again I had to go back after lunch"—he looked at Betty and, addressing her, added, "as I told you...."

Betty turned to Damia. "Isn't it romantic," she said, "to think that, but for Captain Herrick, we might all be murdered in our beds?"

But the Count did not appear to hear her. He was staring straight in front of him and puffing at his cigar.

Herrick laughed good-humouredly at the girl's sally. "It's not quite so bad as that!" he protested. He fidgeted with his overcoat. "Well," he said, embarrassed by the sudden pause in the conversation, "I believe I'll turn in. Good night, Miss March; good night, Damia!"

The waiter brought the Count the whisky he had ordered, and the hiss of the siphon filled the silence that followed on Herrick's departure. Damia settled back in his chair, his dark face turned upward to the jewelled night sky.

"Good chap, Herrick," he remarked, "but soulless. No imagination. He's not a man at all. He's a machine. Typical Englishman...."

"Because Englishmen are reserved you mustn't think they've got no imagination," she declared. "In any case, you're wrong about Captain Herrick. I believe he's got a great deal in him."

The Count laughed drily. "I think it's you who've got the imagination, my dear. But forgive me. I didn't realize that Herrick was such a friend of yours...."

Damia laughed again. "I see. Just a case of womanly intuition. Well, he's luckier than me. I suppose"—his warm eyes flashed an inquiring glance at her&mdash"I suppose you'd let Herrick drive you out to the Pyramids at night?"

The Count's firm teeth bit hard on his cigar. He smiled; and his smile was rather unpleasant. "It's all right," he said, "he won't ask you...."

Rather scornfully she laughed. "Oh! Young men are always making stupid generalizations like that."

On that she was suddenly silent, and Damia went on: "You see, I said you'd be angry...."

"What rubbish you talk!" she retorted quickly. "I never pay any attention to what people think of me. But I confess you've made me curious. You'll really have to tell me just what the young man said."

"Well," Damia began slowly, "it was the other evening in the bar before dinner. Herrick was there and they were ragging him about you. Somebody had seen you having tea together...."

"Some one said chaffingly he supposed the next thing would be that Herrick would be taking you out to the Pyramids by moonlight. Herrick got rather annoyed and said...." He broke off. "But really, I'd rather not tell you. It sounds so, well, so caddish...."

"Well,"—Damia's eyes were on her face—"Herrick said, money or no money, you'd wait a jolly long time before he'd take you for moonlight drives. He said he'd no use for women anyway, that he'd a job of work to do." He paused, and taking a match from the stand on the table rekindled his cigar. "And so, my dear, if you were thinking of Herrick...."

"What, earthly reason have you for making such, a remark?" she interrupted furiously. "Will you kindly understand that I've no desire to go on moonlight excursions with anybody? And let me tell you this too: if I wanted Captain Herrick to take me to the Pyramids, he'd take me!"

Pushing back her chair, she began to gather up nervously her belongings—her bag, her cigarette-case, her handkerchief.

The Count was quite unmoved. With a quiet chuckle he shook his head. "Don't you make any mistake, he wouldn't!"

"Herrick isn't either. To you or any woman. That young man wants a lesson." He glanced at the girl from eyes half-closed. "You ought to take him in hand...."

"You don't mean to say you really believe I couldn't make this fatuous person drive me out to the Pyramids if I wanted to?" she demanded tensely.

"You're beautiful and extraordinarily attractive," was the evasive rejoinder. "But remember: Napoleon met his Waterloo at last."

"Suppose I prove you wrong? Suppose Captain Herrick drives me out to the Pyramids to-morrow night?"

Her companion appeared to reflect for a moment. "This promises to be distinctly amusing," he said at last. "Listen, I'll tell you what I'll do. There's an old Manila shawl at Chelleram's, the Indian silk merchants up the road there, a real beauty; they were showing it to me yesterday. I'll bet you this shawl against a box of cigarettes that you don't get Herrick to drive you out to the Pyramids to-morrow night. Oh, and he'll have to take you out to supper afterwards...."

"Ah, but it's got to be a real tête-à-tête. If he takes you out to supper that will be definite proof that you're right and I'm wrong. I have to be convinced, you know...."

"Not in the least. Most of the Opera orchestra are Italians and some of them usually drop in there for a bite after the performance. It's quite an unpretentious little place but perfectly proper. All the taximen know it, Herrick may not, as he's new to Cairo; but if you ask your taxi-driver where to get something to eat he'll drive you straight to Bosio's. Then I'll drop in on you casually and we'll all have supper together." He laughed. "Lord, old Herrick will be sick when he sees me! What do you say? Is it a bet?"

Damia stiffened. "Sorry. I didn't realize that you were a conventional person...."

"You know I'm not. I was thinking of Captain Herrick. It's hardly fair on him, is it?"

Her features hardened and her eyes sparkled with resentment. So this self-assured young man was going round announcing to all and sundry that she could not even bribe him with her money to take her about! Her face was suddenly hot with the recollection of a little incident that had lain rankling in her mind all the evening.

That very afternoon, meeting Herrick on the terrace after lunch, she had proposed that they should drive out to Heliopolis for tea. And he had refused, bluntly at first, explaining afterwards, on seeing that he had offended her—what a fool she was thus to wear her heart on her sleeve!—that he had to go to the office, as if everybody didn't know that the Cairo ministries are shut in the afternoons....

"Oh, all right," she said at length, "I'll take you. But this isn't to go any further than us, is it?"

"Of course not. It'll be just a private joke between you and me. Oh, it's going to be a tremendous rag... if it comes off. But I have my doubts. I'd love you to have that shawl too; it would go marvellously with your soft colouring. You'll have to accept it from me as a consolation prize!"

She moved her shoulders in a listless gesture and stood up. "You smoke Simon Arzt, don't you?" she said, and gave him her hand. He pressed his lips to it devotedly.

"À demain," he murmured. "Expect me at Bosio's about one o'clock. If you wait for the rise of the moon you'll scarcely get there earlier... if you do get there!"

"À demain!" she responded, and gathering her ermine cloak about her, passed, bright-eyed and wistful, into the hotel.

Count Damia followed her with his gaze; then, picking up his hat and overcoat from the chair where he had flung them, went quietly down the terrace steps and set off down the Sharia Kamel. Immediately there was the flicker of white between the palms of the verandah, and the Nubian waiter, noiseless in his scarlet slippers, slid out of the gloom and moved to the balustrade. He raised his arm, and at the signal a shape detached itself from the darkness under the arcades across the way and shambled briskly off along the silent boulevard in the wake of the Italian.

"I often come out here alone," said Herrick. "The Pyramids are wonderfully soothing at night when all the tourists have gone. There's nothing like it if one is worried or depressed. This place is so... so levelling. A fellow can't get much of a thrill about himself and his achievements when he looks at the Pyramids. These old tombs dwarf so many modern ideals. Things that matter terribly in life don't seem to matter out here under the moon, things like success or money, I mean...."

"Oh no," he answered gravely, "not love. Love is like the Pyramids. It's of yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow. It endures when all else perishes. You'd know that if you'd ever been in love...."

It had proved much simpler than she had anticipated. That morning, the morning after her conversation with Count Damia, Herrick had telephoned and, with rather a contrite air, as it seemed to her, had asked her to dine with him that evening in Shepheard's grill-room. She took all her meals with Hobbsy, she told him; but he might, if he cared to, drive her out to the Pyramids later on. She detected the momentary hesitation in his voice; but this time he did not refuse. They made an appointment for half-past eleven, and at that hour he called for her in a taxi.

Now they stood together in the fine grey sand, their faces turned to the Great Pyramid and the barren isolation of the desert beyond. Behind their backs a beam of light from Mena House marked the arrow-straight highway leading back to Cairo and twentieth-century civilization. That night there were no other no other visitors, and under the lash of Herrick's vigorous, if halting, Arabic the last of the touting Bedouins had slunk away. Man and girl stood alone in the tremendous presence of the oldest things in the world: the moon, the Pyramids, and the desert.

The moon, an immense golden disc, clambering between the listless palm fronds, transfigured everything. It blackened the stupendous triangular mass of old King Cheops' sepulchre; it licked with molten silver the patches of flood that gleamed between the lebbak trees bordering the Cairo road; it veiled with a bluish haze the emptiness of the Libyan desert melting into the unseen horizon. The radiant silence steeped their minds in peace.

Already Betty had repented of her bet. Perhaps it was because she was reluctant to talk, brooding resentfully over the slight he had put upon her; perhaps it was the magic of the night; but the fact remained that, for the first time in their acquaintance, her companion seemed to expand. He talked to her, as young men will do, of himself and his life in Cairo, of his father, killed at the head of his battalion in Mesopotamia, of his widowed mother who wrote her only child such jolly letters from her cottage outside Canterbury.

Disparagingly, as is the English way, he told her about his work, the patient matching of brains against brains in the substrata of Egyptian political life, those dark cellars where honest patriots, self-seeking politicians, Moslem fanatics, and Bolshevik agents take their turn to stir the pot of murder and anarchy....

Despite her wounded feelings, she felt herself soften to the glimpse he gave her of a proud and lonely nature, warmly affectionate, as such natures often are, and for that shrinkingly sensitive. Now that she was with him she found it hard to believe he could have spoken publicly of her in the way that Count Damia had reported; yet why had he so steadfastly rebuffed her when she so clearly liked him and wanted to be friends?

All the way out from Cairo, as the car sped in the bright light along the chaussée that Ismail built for the Empress of the French; whilst they followed the stony track down to where the Sphinx frowned in inscrutable majesty under the moon; when they stood before the Great Pyramid to drink in the awesome splendour of the night, this question tormented her....

"Love?" said she, in answer to the question in the calm grey eyes, for he had turned half round and was looking at her. "Dear me, you speak as though you were an authority on the subject. I should have thought an important person like yourself would have little use for women...."

"Don't use that beastly expression," he answered. "I heard a man say that the other day and I felt like knocking him down."

She shrugged her shoulders daintily. "I abominate sentimentality... even under the moon."

Involuntarily she had let her eyes rest on his, drawn to his face by the change she saw there. At last he had dropped his mask. He was aflame with eagerness for her. He caught her hand in his. "Betty," he began huskily. "I want you to listen. There's something I have to explain...."

But very firmly she drew her hand away. His allusion to Damia infuriated her. How could he imagine that she would stoop to a creature like this oily Italian! Now she would go through with her bet to the end. Confronted with Damia, he should hear the truth... and she would not spare him.

"I think I'm feeling chilly," she said nonchalantly. "We'd better be getting back, hadn't we?"

She let the taxi, an open Fiat, get under way before she broached her proposal. "Do you know," she said, "I'm rather hungry. Wouldn't it be fun to go and have supper somewhere?"

"I'd love it, but..."—he glanced at his wrist— "it's one o'clock. There's nothing open now. Jimmie's and Groppi's and all those places close down at midnight. We can probably get a sandwich at the hotel...."

"I'm sick of the hotel. Isn't there a night club or something? Perhaps the driver knows of a place...."

Herrick leaned forward to the muffled form in the front seat. Presently he turned round to the girl again. "He says there's an Italian restaurant near the Opera; it's shut, but he thinks they'll let us in." He paused. "I've never heard of this restaurant and it's sure to be pretty dirty. I think we'd better see what they can do for us at Shepheard's."

"Oh no," she protested, "the Italian place sounds much more amusing. Tell him to drive us there. We needn't stay if we don't like it."

At the mouth of a dim and narrow lane, wedged between the public buildings that neighbour the Cairo Opera House, a grimy lamp glimmered over a shuttered door. Above door a painted board, affixed to the front, displayed the name BOSIO above a spirited representation of a rather lop-sided Vesuvius gushing a stream of vivid vermilion into a bright blue Bay of Naples.

The front door, opening streetward, Oriental-wise, to the chauffeur's cautious rapping, disclosed a man standing at the foot of a small and dirty staircase. A strong odour of garlic was wafted down the flight. The taxidriver whispered, pointing over his shoulder to his fares, whereon the man within the house, who wore a tarboosh and a suit of dirty khaki drill, turned and called upstairs: "Ya, padrone!" On this, an electric light, feeble, yellow, suddenly gleaming above, a pudgy individual was disclosed, coatless and collarless, with a napkin tied about his throat, who stood at the head of the flight, peering down.

Herrick was speaking to the taxi-driver. "He says he won't wait," he explained to Betty. "We can get another easily at the Opera." He signed to the man in khaki to take the girl upstairs. "Go on up," he bade her. "I'll pay this fellow off and fetch my coat out of the car...."

Bosio's seemed to be deserted that night. At the top of the stairs the landing opened into a dingy hall which ran off to the left with a number of doors on either side. Such doors as were open revealed rooms dark and empty. The room into which the proprietor ushered Betty was small but passably clean. A couple of tables, covered with shabby white oilcloth, and some chairs comprised the furniture; and from one of the whitewashed walls a very shiny oleograph of Victor Emmanuel, all whiskers and plumes, glared ferociously at a faded portrait of Cavour, bespectacled and chin-fringed, on the opposite side.

Betty seated herself at one of the tables while the padrone gave the cloth a perfunctory wipe with the napkin which he unslung from his damp and grimy neck. He was an unprepossessing-looking individual, with a bullet head and eyes like black-currants set in suet. The girl was conscious of his covert scrutiny as he laid the table and brought a flat loaf of native bread and a flask of Chianti, and it gave her an uncomfortable sensation.

"Spaghetti is ready," he announced in broken English. "Mebbe you lika spaghetti, no?"

He nodded dourly; and his slippered feet padded softly away. She remarked that he closed the door behind him, and it made her feel nervous, she could not tell why.

Left alone, she glanced at her watch. Nearly half-past one; she wondered what had become of Damia. And what was Herrick doing all this time? She could hear the distant clatter of pots from the kitchen; but otherwise the house was still as the dead.

She opened the door and peered out. The next moment she started back, for she had come face to face with a tall and swarthy man in a tarboosh and a dark suit who was standing motionless on the landing outside. On seeing her he turned abruptly on his heel and, crossing the landing, vanished through a door on the far side. Rather mystified and vaguely uneasy, she returned to her table. She had not mentioned her evening jaunt to Hobbsy or her maid; and it had just occurred to her that in this obscure eating-house, situated in a street of which she did not even know the name, she might disappear without a soul being any the wiser. If Herrick didn't come back...?

The thought disquieted her and brought her to her feet, irresolute. She went to the door again. As she crossed the floor the low murmur of voices struck upon her ear. The sounds seemed to proceed from one of the adjoining rooms. Perhaps Damia was here after all, waiting, and did not know that she had arrived. If it were Damia, she would get him to take her home at once. The sooner she was out of this creepy house the better....

Once more she peeped out upon the landing. A light burned in one of the rooms across the hall. The padrone's solid bulk almost filled the doorway, his back turned to her—she recognized his steer's neck. With hands upraised in deprecation he was talking in a hurried, excitable undertone to three men in tarbooshes grouped under the pendant electric light. One was the swarthy individual she had seen already; the second was a paunchy, thickset fellow with a livid face thatched with black stubble, and gross pendulous lips; the third was obscured by his companions.

A brisk step rang on the stair. Instantly the padrone drew back into the hall and closed the door. As he turned he saw Betty.

"Your gentleman he comma now," he announced; "I serva the spaghetti!" He slipped through a swing door at the end of the hall as Herrick appeared at the top of the stairs.

"I'm tremendously sorry for keeping you waiting like this," he declared, "but I hadn't got any change. I had to send old Ali Baba below out to fetch it. How's supper coming along?"

The entry of the padrone bearing an enormous dish of spaghetti, steaming through a deep crust of tomato and grated parmesan, answered the question. Betty declared she wanted nothing to follow, and the proprietor departed, closing the door behind him.

No sooner were they alone than Herrick turned to Betty, who had sat down and was helping him.

She glanced down and drew from her bosom a little strip of cambric which she handed to him silently. Herrick spread the handkerchief out upon the table and with great deliberation, proceeded to undo the two plain gold studs fastening his shirt-front.

She stared at him in amazement. "Do you always undress when you eat spaghetti, Captain Herrick?" she demanded sarcastically.

"Invariably," he grinned. He tiptoed swiftly across the room and stooped, listening, at the door. Greatly mystified, she watched him and saw him draw from under hid vest a silver chain from which a small, flat key was suspended. Returning to the table, he placed the key in the handkerchief, tied the handkerchief twice, and handed it back to the girl. "Will you keep that for me, please?" he said.

As she received the little package she became aware of a subtle change in his demeanour. He was gayer and more alert than she had ever seen him, with a masterful air, too, which was new and not unattractive. As she tucked the handkerchief into her bosom again, Herrick gave a gurgling laugh. "Oh dear," he remarked weakly, "I wonder what my chief would say if he knew...."

"Do you know," she said, "I have the impression that you're being slightly indecorous, aren't you?"

"Probably," he told her, laughing afresh. "But if you only knew old Norris, the primmest of prim old bachelors...."

The coolness that had been between them seemed to melt away before his high spirits. She was smiling at him indulgently now. "Sit down and eat your supper," she said, handing him a plate of spaghetti. "And while you eat, you can tell me why I have to keep the key of your..."

He raised his hand to silence her, for there was a knock at the door. The padrone put his head in. "A man he aska for the English gentleman," he announced.

Herrick looked up and frowned. "Tell him to wait," he said curtly. "I'll be down in a minute...." The door closed softly.

She smiled sweetly at him. "I think," she replied, "that he's come to have supper with me and the young man who announced that, money or no money, I might wait a long time before he'd take me out for moonlight drives; the young man who has no use for women, Captain Herrick...."

"The other evening"—her voice shook a little—"to a lot of men at Shepheard's Bar."

Dumbly she shook her head. "What have you done to show it?" she asked in a low voice.

"Because I'm a poor man, my dear, that's why. I haven't the right to love any one as rich as you are. I've never been alone with you for a single moment without having to fight down the wish to take you in my arms. I've loved you since the first minute I set may eyes on you; and I've tried to avoid you because I didn't dare trust myself not to tell you. If you only knew the hell I've been through..."

"Yes. The man who made that remark was Crankshott, one of those ghastly creatures who believes that every woman's in love with him. As a matter of fact," he added slowly, "I told him I'd wring his neck if I heard him speaking like that again about a friend of mine."

"Count Damia made a bet with me," she went on. "He said I couldn't make you drive me out to the Pyramids and give me supper afterwards. He was going to come in here and surprise us...."

She broke off, dismayed by the change in Herrick's expression. He seemed aghast.

"Do you mean to say it was Damia who suggested that you should bring me here to-night?" he exclaimed tensely. He clapped his hand to his hip-pocket. "Gad, and I haven't got my gun...."

Scarcely had he spoken when the door of the room was flung back violently. The three tarbooshed men whom Betty had seen were grouped in the doorway. The paunchy man with the pendulous lips was in front. His fat brown hand clutched a big automatic, which he had levelled at Herrick. He was chattering like an ape with excitement.

"We want you, Cap-it-ain Herrick," he squeaked in a hysterical falsetto. "You stand away from that girl damn quick, you hear me?"

"It's our old friend, Shamy, isn't it?" he remarked brightly. "What have you done with Damia? Come in and have a drink, man; I'm not armed." His hand dropped casually to the Chianti flask.

"Raise your arms above your head and keep them there!" the Egyptian gibbered shrilly. Betty, shrinking hack against the wall, saw that each of his companions also held a revolver. The swarthy man covered her over Shamy's shoulder.

Then, like a flash, Herrick's hand, grasping the wine-bottle, went up, describing a high curve, and with a tinkle of glass the flask shivered the electric light set in the ceiling, plunging the room into darkness.

A firm grasp dragged Betty to her knees. "Down!" Herrick whispered as three bursts of orange flame cleaved the obscurity with deafening roar. The table went over with a crash and a whistle shrilled piercingly through the room. Below, a thunderous clamour had broken out. Blows were rained on the door; there was the smash of falling glass; a pistol-shot; the thunder of feet on the stairs.

Betty, her ears singing, her nostrils pricking with the stench of cordite fumes, saw the group in the doorway, outlined by the dim light in the hall, spring apart in alarm and dash away. Running figures poured past the door.

Then Herrick's arm went about her and raised her to her feet. "Are you all right?" he asked solicitously. His face was white and anxious in the half-light.

"Wait for me there a moment...!" Before she could ask him about himself he was out of the room.

Heavy feet trampled through the house. Excited voices gabbled, high-pitched. Betty felt suddenly weak. She picked up a chair and sat down. The room was in a wild disorder; by the light from the hall she could see the table at which they had supped, sprawling in a pile of broken crockery.

At last Herrick came back, a lighted candle in his hand. He was jubilant. "Got 'em all three as they were bolting out by the back," he announced. "Bosio too. And we'll have our friend Damia inside of the next ten minutes...."

Herrick put down the candle and leaned against the wall beside her. "It was that key they were after. Damia knew I was in charge—he heard me tell you; and he assumed I would have the key about me. I think they meant to do me in as well. That story about a man asking for me was just a plan to get me outside where I could have been conveniently and quietly knifed. I thought it was one of my fellows with a message...."

"Ah," said Herrick with a shrewd wag of the head. "I imagine he was after The Hand of Fat'ma dossier...."

"The Hand of Fat'ma?" she repeated. "That's a sort of charm, isn't it? An Egyptian mascot...?"

"Ordinarily, yes. But in this case it's the name of a Terrorist gang that has been mixed up in most of the political assassinations in Egypt. There are five heads, four section leaders who called themselves The Fingers, and a supreme chief known as The Thumb. The Fingers we've accounted for; the last of them is under sentence of death at present; but The Thumb has always eluded us... until to-night!"

His nod was brief and grim. "We've had him under surveillance for weeks. We were looking for some one like him, you see, able and unscrupulous and amply supplied with money. Early this morning my people shadowed him to a café in the Fish Market, if you know what that is"—her eyes told him that, like every other visitor to Egypt, she had heard of Cairo's red-light quarter—"where he had an interview with the fellow, Shamy, who opened the ball to-night. We knew all about Shamy, although we've never had enough evidence before to arrest him. He's one of the gunmen of The Hand of Fat'ma, a ruffian with at least four murders to his score...."

She shuddered. "It's... horrible! Tell me, when you came here to-night, did you suspect anything of this?"

"Not until we were actually at the door. As I was paying off the cab I caught sight of that dark, lanky fellow who was with Shamy just now, peering over the staircase. I happened to know him as a suspicious character, so I took the precaution of sending a note by the taxi-driver to the Esbekieh police station, asking them to have a few men on hand in case of trouble. That's why I gave you the key to look after. I didn't expect," he glanced round the room—"a rough-house like his. Not until you told me about your bet with Damia, at any rate. By the way, he's not a Count, or an Italian either, for that matter. He's some kind of Levantine, a Greek probably. And he's The Thumb of Fat'ma. Shamy admitted as much to me just now. They've gone off to Shepheard's now to get him. I'm expecting word every minute that he's safe in the cells at the Esbekieh."

"I'd nothing definite against the fellow except the fact that his title was bogus. So are half the titles on the Continent to-day. And he may be a naturalized Italian for all I know. Besides, you wouldn't have believed me. A woman is always apt to misunderstand the motive of a warning like that. And," he added whimsically, "you never struck me as a person who much cared for advice, either...."

She laughed softly. "That's true, certainly." She raised her eyes and looked up in his face. "But you can give me some advice now, if you like."

"What's a person to do who's fallen in love with a man who's too dense to see it?"

There was a sudden hush between them. She saw the wonder in the brave grey eyes.

Yet even as he spoke he dropped to his knees and his arm went about her. His sleeve was wet where it brushed her cheek. In sudden alarm she drew back and laid her hand upon the cloth. Her fingers were red when she brought them away.

He began to laugh. "That's not blood, it's Chianti," he told her. "When I shied the flask at the light the blinking cork came out of the bottle and I took about two pints of red wine down my sleeve. And I've got yards of spaghetti wound all round my ankles, too. I think we may call it a day, don't you?"

On that he cried her name and gathered her up in his arms. Desperately they clung to one another. So presently they were surprised by the embarrassed English detective who arrived to announce that the leafy seclusion of the Esbekieh merkaz safely harboured The Thumb of Fat'ma....

Captain Herrick is now head of the Eastern department of John March Ltd. On the occasion of his marriage, the wedding presents to the bride included a beautiful Old Manila shawl, forwarded by Maître Peretti, of the Cairo Bar, "on behalf of my client." To the shawl was pinned a card inscribed:

To the exquisite and adorable Betty. From her broken-hearted friend, Count Damia.

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE

First published in The Illustrated London News,
Christmas Number, 1923

Collected in
The Knife Behind the Curtain:
Tales of Crime and the Secret Service,
Hodder & Stoughton, London, and

Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston & New York, 1930

Reprinted in Mystery and Detection, September 1935

MR. ALBERT EDWARD BIRKINSHAW, a rather prim figure in his alpaca coat, black tie, and well-worn dark-grey trousers, handed the card back to the office-boy.

"Mr. Salsbrigg is engaged," he said. "Anyway, he doesn't see people except by appointment; you know that as well as I do, Percy. Tell him to write in."

"'Sjes' wot I told 'im, Mr. Birkinshaw, but 'e sez: 'You tell the boss it's Mr. Claud Merritone,' 'e sez, 'an' 'e'll see me quick enough,' 'e sez."

"I can't help what he says, Percy," rejoined Mr. Birkinshaw, in the mild tone that was familiar to him. "A rule is a rule. He'll have to write for an appointment!"

Mr. Birkinshaw looked up from the high desk which, during the working days of sixteen years, he had occupied in the clerks' office at Mr. Salsbrigg's. Mr. Salsbrigg liked to call it the clerks' office, though, in reality, it was the principal of the three rooms which Mr. Salsbrigg rented in Casino House, E.C.2, for his many enterprises.

A tall man, wearing a waisted overcoat, white doeskin gloves, and a top-hat that shone with some extraneous lubricant rather than its own innate effulgence, stood in the doorway. He had a sallow face, a small black moustache, and a pair of dark and restless eyes.

And he dropped into the chair at the typewriter which Miss Ruby Pattinson, the typist—"my secretary," Mr. Salsbrigg was fond of calling her—had vacated for the purpose of clearing away the office tea.

"It's no good waiting," said Mr. Birkinshaw, peering at the stranger over his pince-nez. "Mr. Salsbrigg won't see you without you have an appointment. That's an inflexible rule, and..."

But voices resounded from the other side of the door in the glass partition separating the clerks' room from Mr. Salsbrigg's sanctum.

Mr. Goldstein appeared at the door, as black and sleek and squat as the other, who was ushering him out, was rubicund and fat and burly.

"Good-day to you," said Salsbrigg, in velvety, throaty tones, "and glad I am that everything is satisfactorily settled. It has been a pleasure to do business with you, Mr. Goldstein."

"A terrible hard man, you are," he sighed. "We're all mugs when we're up against a tough proposition like you, Salsbrigg!"

Mr. Salsbrigg's florid face was wreathed in a gratified smile that sent the wrinkles sagging across the features from the narrow blue eyes down to the receding chin that sloped into the folds of the pink throat.

"Very good, ha-ha! Oh, very good!" he exclaimed, rubbing his hands. "You're a deep one, Goldstein. I'd have to get up very early in the morning to make money out of a hot case like you. Good-evening, friend Goldstein, good-evening! Going to be wet again, I fear! Percy, Mr. Goldstein's hat!"

All smiles, he waved a fat hand as the Jew stumped his way across the office. But when the plump bowed back had disappeared, the friendliness fled from the pink face.

"Mr. Birkinshaw, I want you," Mr. Salsbrigg snapped, and went back into his room. As the clerk, blinking mildly, followed him across the threshold, the tornado struck him full.

"Are you mad, Mr. Birkinshaw?" shouted the throaty voice, now grown fiercely irate. "Have you taken to drink? Miss Pattinson says you're the dam' fool that gave Goldstein an appointment after banking hours. You know he's the crookedest little reptile in the trade: you know that I take nothing but hard cash from the likes of him; and yet, just because I'm up in Manchester, you let him come here and saddle me with a matter of eighteen hundred pound and the bank shut. Don't you answer me back, Mr. Birkinshaw! I've only got to go out on Finsbury Pavement and whistle on my fingers, and I can get twenty, two hundred clerks as good as you. As good? By God, a dam' sight better! Here I sit sweating my guts out day after day, trying to make both ends meet, with trade as flat as flat, and the City that rotten you couldn't float a cork, and there's not a man in the office I can depend on! Has it occurred to you, may I know, that there will be a matter of eighteen hundred pound in that safe from now until to-morrow morning?

"I'm shore I'm very sorry, Mr. Salsbrigg," faltered the clerk, "but I didn't realise that Mr. Goldstein would settle in cash..."

"Didn't realise? My God!" A fist crashed heavily down on the desk, "you're no more use than a sick headache!

The pale face of the stranger suddenly appeared round the glass door. As abruptly as it had broken out, the tornado ceased to rage. A rather stiff smile brightened Mr. Salsbrigg's red face.

"Come in, Claud," he said feebly, and, addressing the clerk, he added: "You want to smarten yourself up, Mr. Birkinshaw; dull, that's what you are—and half asleep!"

The door shut with a bang, and Mr. Birkinshaw returned to his desk, his head in a whirl. Inwardly he reproached himself bitterly. Why did he a always let old Salsbrigg take him unawares? Why did those calm, unanswerable retorts to his employer's insulting gibes only occur to him after the storm was past and Salsbrigg, having vented his ill-humour on his three-pound-ten a week employee, had returned to his wonted air of Olympic condescension in his treatment of him?

"Old man got his rag out again?" said Cradock, the other clerk, who was brushing his long fair hair before the office glass.

"Yes," said Birkinshaw. "It's more than flesh and blood will stand, Crad, as some day he'll find out, the—the devil!"

"My word, Mr. Birkinshaw," said Miss Pattinson, a chemical blonde with bobbed hair and skirt, "what lengwidge!"

"Humph!" grunted the clerk. "How'd you like to be talked to the way he talks to me? Swearing—and that. But I'll get even with the old beast. You see if I don't!"

"Good gracious!" exclaimed Miss Pattinson. "How fierce you are! I declare you quayte fraighten me, Mr. Birkinshaw!"

"Keep your hair on, Birkie," said Cradock. "Percy, you young devil, what have you done with my soap? Birkie..."

"I've got a couple of seats for the Coliseum. I was going to take Cissie—you know, the girl I told you about—but the dirty dog 'phoned me up just now to say she can't come. You care to come along?"

"Sorry, old man," mumbled Birkinshaw, his head in his desk, "'fraid it's quite impossible!"

There was a slight pause. Cradock repeated his question. "You staying on, old man?"

"Ye-es. There are those papers for the Patent Office to finish. I—I believe I'll stick on a bit and polish 'em off."

"But you can do 'em to-morrow night just as well. And there's a ripping good bill at the Coliseum."

"Thanks awfully, old man, but I don't think I'll go with you this evening. There's the half-yearly statement coming on, y'know, and I want to get clear for it in good time."

"That's all ri', Birkie. Only it's a pity to waste the other ticket. I'll have to try some of the people at my boarding-house, though they're a dull lot, the Lord knows!"

The door in the glass partition opened again, and Mr. Merritone reappeared. The door closed rather forcibly behind him.

"Whatever have you bin an' done to our Alfred?" remarked the stranger affably to Mr. Birkinshaw. "He is in a sweet temper this evening, I don't think!"

Mr. Birkinshaw glared indignantly at the intruder, who, quite unperturbed, kissed a white-gloved hand gracefully to Miss Pattinson and vanished into the outer office where Percy was stamping the letters for the post.

"He's got a nerve!" said Miss Pattinson, voicing so effectually the general feeling of the clerks' room that neither Birkinshaw nor Cradock felt impelled to add their own comments. The light in Mr. Salsbrigg's office went out abruptly, and a door slammed.

Mr. Cradock, who, in his grass-green overcoat, was practising golf-shots with his walking-stick, looked up.

"Old man's leaving early," he observed. He glanced out of the window. "Hell! It's going to rain. You'll want the Dreadnought going home to-night, old man!"

He jerked his head in the direction of the hat-stand, where Birkinshaw's umbrella, inexhaustible fount of office witticism, stood in its appointed place. It derived its nickname from its crutch handle of solid ash, a regular club of a handle, as thick as two fingers round. Birkinshaw, who had all the Englishman's love of solid belongings, had bought it at a sale. Three days a week, on the average, it accompanied him to the office.

"Nothing like a good umbrella in this filthy climate!" he remarked stolidly, an observation, like the jest, of the sealed pattern variety.

"Umbrella? I should call it a niblick or a baffy myself!" rejoined Cradock, who contrived to play golf on his infinitesimal income. "Well, I must be toddling. Good ni', old man!"

Miss Pattinson had already sailed Tubewards on a cloud of patchouli, and after Cradock, presently Percy, three instalments of "Deadwood Dick" buttoned up beneath his shabby jacket, clattered noisily off to the lift, making the welkin ring with the syncopated protest of the New York fruit-seller. And Birkinshaw was left alone in the office, the green-shaded lamp pulled down low over his desk the only light in the big room.

He sighed and ran his fingers over his thinning sandy hair. It was close on six o'clock, and the voice of the City droned on a deeper note as thousands of tired workers flocked towards their homes in the suburbs. The clerk got out his papers and settled himself down to work. He liked the quiet of the office after the others had gone home. He could concentrate better without Salsbrigg's strident nagging and Cradock's robust breeziness, and Miss Pattinson's indefatigable parade of her feminine arts. In the reposeful, spacious room, with London's lurid night-sky framed in the uncurtained window, he could indulge in those dreams that come even to a city clerk at three-pound-ten a week, more freely than in his cheerless bed-sitting-room in the Fulham Road.

And he could smoke, content in the knowledge that Mr. Salsbrigg's ban against smoking in office hours expired with the termination of the working day at half-past five. From a battered leather cigarette-case he drew one of his famous Bolivian cigarettes, another office joke—unappetising-looking smokes of coarse black tobacco, with frayed ends protruding from the thin-grained paper stamped with an eagle in blue. Eager for experiment as he always was, he had picked out a packet in a vague tobacconist's near the office, allured by its proud boast: "Pure as the Pampas Air; Grateful to the Palate; Caressing to the Throat." Though secretly he preferred Gold Flake, he had gallantly stuck to his Bolivians. "An acquired taste, old man," he used to tell Cradock; "a bit pungent at first, but pure; at any rate, a fellow knows what he's smoking!"

As he slipped his cigarette-case back into his pocket, his fingers touched something, and he withdrew a letter sealed and stamped ready for the post. He laid down his cigarette unlit upon the desk and smote his brow. Then, with a hasty glance at the clock, he paused for an instant irresolute, gazing at the papers spread out before him, and presently, with a sudden gesture, began to shovel them together.

Outside in the street the shrill note of a fire-gong rang out suddenly above the dull diapason of the traffic, a fierce, noisy clanging accompanied by the thunder of wheels. Again and again the engines swept by with furious gonging and a headlong rush that made the building tremble. Birkinshaw acted very swiftly. He swept all his papers back into his desk, locked it, changed his office-coat for the jacket of his well-worn suit, grabbed his hat and overcoat, and darted for the door of the outer office, that clicked behind him with a spring-lock. He did not wait for the lift, but descended by the staircase to the ground-floor lobby with its huge shields of the tenants' names. As he reached the swing-doors another fire-engine flashed past. The night porter's box was empty. The sight of passers-by hurrying along the street in the direction taken by the engines told him where the porter had gone.

But Birkinshaw did not bend his steps in the direction of the fire. He hastened to the bloated scarlet pillar-box at the opposite corner of Finsbury Pavement. There he consulted the plate on the front setting out the times of collection, and finally, without posting his letter, turned away and boarded a 'bus going west. He travelled as far as the General Post Office, where he consigned his envelope to one of the huge maws under the pillared portico, and then, after a moment's hesitation, went out into Newgate Street and smartly hopped on a westward-bound bus.

He took a ticket to Piccadilly, and, alighting at the foot of Bond Street, strolled along towards the Park, a look of happy contentment on his face, gazing at the brightly illuminated shop-fronts or, as they halted in the press of traffic, peering in at the windows of the glittering limousines bearing elegant, well-fed folk to the restaurants.

At the corner of Dover Street an idea seemed to strike him. He stopped and looked about him, then addressed a passing District Messenger boy.

"Up Dover Street 'ere on the left," piped the urchin. "But you'll want to be nippy, mate. They closes at seven!"

By the clock above Hatchett's it was five minutes to seven. Birkinshaw hurried up Dover Street and reached the office in time to scribble a telegram under the severe and disapproving gaze of the damsel behind the wire screen, who, dressed for the street, was watching the clock with ill-concealed impatience. As he emerged from the post-office a few drops of rain pattered briskly on his face. He stopped and smote the palm of his hand with his fist. "Well, I'm jiggered!" he said, addressing the night. Then he shrugged his shoulders, and set off slowly towards Piccadilly again.

When, at a quarter of an hour before midnight, he opened with his latch-key the front door of the house where he lodged in the Fulham Road, two dim figures rose up from chairs in the hall to greet him. In the background bobbed the pale and anxious face of his landlady.

"Are you Albert Edward Birkinshaw?" asked one of the two strangers. On the clerk's affirmative reply, the man informed him that he would be arrested for the murder of Alfred Salsbrigg.

WITHOUT leaving the box the Coroner's jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against Albert Edward Birkinshaw. The prisoner reserved his defence, but the statement which he made voluntarily to the police, read out in court, did little or nothing to rebut the overwhelming volume of evidence against him.

Detective-Inspector Coleburn of the City Police, who had arrested the prisoner, gave the substance of the case against him. Shortly after seven o'clock on the evening of the murder, Bertram Batts, night porter at Casino House, when engaged in his duties on the third floor of the building, heard the telephone ringing in Mr. Salsbrigg's office. There was a light visible through the glass door, but as no one answered the telephone, thinking that Mr. Salsbrigg had gone away and forgotten to turn off the light, Batts opened the door of Mr. Salsbrigg's room with his pass-key and found Mr. Salsbrigg dead in his chair.

The officer submitted a plan of the office—a long narrow room, showing that Mr. Salsbrigg's seat at the desk was placed so that it faced the window and had its back to the door. Mr. Salsbrigg lay prone across the desk with arms hanging down, the top of his head practically smashed in by two, or possibly three, blows from some blunt instrument which the medical evidence would show beyond doubt was the crutch-handled umbrella found lying on the floor beside the desk. This umbrella the prisoner admitted to be his.

A murmur ran round the court as the Inspector held up the Dreadnought. The ribs had torn jagged holes in the cover, for the solid ash stick that ran through it from the handle had snapped with the force of those terrible blows, and the whole frame had collapsed. The handle itself was thickly encrusted with matted blood and hair.

"Robbery was evidently the motive of the crime," the Inspector went on, "robbery, and perhaps revenge as well. The pockets of the deceased had been ransacked for his bunch of keys, which was found hanging in the lock of the safe in the wall beside the dead body. In that safe the sum of eighteen hundred pounds in Bank of England notes was deposited on the afternoon of the crime. When the body was found the safe stood open and the money had disappeared.

"I shall call evidence to show that the prisoner was aware that this money was in the safe, that ill-will existed between him and his employer, and that, only a few hours before the murder, he had uttered threats against the deceased. Witnesses will depose that the accused man was alone in the office, all the other employees having gone home, when, about an hour before the crime, Mr. Salsbrigg returned. Finally, still smouldering in the ash-tray on the desk of the deceased, was found one of the prisoner's cigarettes, a brand of Bolivian cigarettes peculiar to him, which, taken with the circumstances that the body was yet quite warm, shows that the crime was committed—and this is supported by the medical evidence—not more than ten minutes before the discovery of the body."

The first witness was Bertram Batts, night porter at Casino House. On the evening of the murder he came on duty at 6 p.m. By that hour most of the offices would be closed. About five minutes past six, Mr. Salsbrigg came in, and Batts took him up in the lift, as the lift-man went off duty at six. He confirmed in more detail the Inspector's account of the finding of the body. In reply to a question by the Coroner he said he heard no sounds of any struggle, as he must have been on the second floor, the floor below, when the crime was actually committed, collecting the rubbish. From the second floor he mounted by the stairs to the third and, hearing the telephone ringing repeatedly in Mr. Salsbrigg's office, went straight there.

Cross-examined by Mr. Harley Brewster, representing the accused, the witness gave the hour of his finding the body as ten minutes past seven. He had remembered that this might be an important detail, and had looked at the clock in Mr. Salsbrigg's room as he rang up the police. In reply to a further question he stated that after he had taken Mr. Salsbrigg up in the lift, he returned to his box and remained there till 7 p.m., when, as usual, he went to the upper storeys to clear away the litter.

"Then you were not absent from your post for a second after you returned from the lift?"

"Then if Birkinshaw left the building between the hours of six and seven you must have seen him?"

"Then we may take it that no one entered or left the building between Mr. Salsbrigg's arrival and seven o'clock?"

The man hesitated, and eventually mumbled something about he "might have popped out to get a mouthful of fresh air."

The question took the porter off his guard. Rather abashed he admitted that he did "pop round the corner for a minute or two." With a significant look at the Coroner, Harley Brewster left it at that and sat down.

Followed the medical evidence, very gruesome, with much pawing of the blood-soaked umbrella, and holding up of ghastly exhibits in jars. Then Cradock, pale and reluctant, told how at five minutes past seven he had telephoned the office to try and persuade Birkinshaw to change his mind and accompany him to the theatre; and how, after a long interval, the night-porter had answered the telephone. Under severe questioning by the Coroner he had to admit that Birkinshaw knew that the money was to be locked in the safe for the night, and that the accused had appeared to resent greatly the "ticking-off" he had received from Mr. Salsbrigg.

Cradock flicked a quick, despairing glance at the table where his friend, blinking, bewildered, insignificant, sat between two uniformed constables.

"What do you suppose he meant by that?" asked Harley Brewster, rising to cross-examine.

"No, no, Mr. Brewster," the Coroner expostulated; and Miss Ruby Pattinson was called. A less unwilling witness was the typist, in deep and fashionable mourning; "a pretty, girlish figure" one of the newspapers called her, with (inset) "Ruby Pattinson Leaving the Court."

She was not hostile to the accused, but she was more concerned with the impression she was producing upon the crowded court than with the exact effect of her deposition. When, after stating that she could not "quayte" recall the exact words used by the prisoner, but he had said he would "do the old devil in," or something like that, for which she had felt impelled to reprove him, she stood down, it was apparent that her evidence had considerably strengthened the case against the prisoner.

"Call Mr. Claud Merritone," ordered the Coroner, and Salsbrigg's affable caller was sworn. His manner was an admirable blend of deference for the court, sorrow for his dead friend, and sympathy with the accused. Mr. Salsbrigg, he was bound to admit, had spoken harshly to the prisoner. He had gone so far as to describe him to the witness as a something fool—he would leave the adjective to the imagination of the court (laughter). He had known Alf Salsbrigg for the matter of a dozen years; he was one of the very best; a thorough good fellow, without an enemy in the world. He had left him about half-past five busy at his desk, and Salsbrigg had said nothing to him then about leaving or returning later to the office. Yes, he had been a witness of the scene between the deceased and the prisoner, and thought, if he might say so with all respect for the dead, that Salsbrigg's tone had been very provoking. Mr. Brewster had no questions to ask, and Mr. Merritone, nursing his oleaginous topper in his white-gloved hands, stood down.

Detective-Inspector Coleburn was recalled by the Coroner to speak as to the cigarette. The Inspector's theory was that the deceased, and not the murderer, had been smoking it, for he had detected particles of the coarse black tobacco of which the cigarette was made upon the dead man's lower lip. A leather case filled with these same cigarettes was found in the possession of the accused, and figured with the other exhibits.

The Coroner then read the prisoner's statement voluntarily made at Cloak Lane Police Station, after he had received the customary warning. According to this he had left the office shortly after six and passed unnoticed out of the building, the night-porter being absent from his box. He had taken a bus to Piccadilly, alighted at the foot of Bond Street, and thereafter walked about the West End. Being a vegetarian, he had dined off some apples and bananas, which he had bought at a stall in the street market off Shaftesbury Avenue. Mr Salsbrigg had not returned to the office when he left it. He had intended, as he told Cradock, to stay on late and work; but he found he was unsettled and so had changed his plans and gone for a walk up West instead. About ten minutes past eleven he took the Hammersmith Tube from Piccadilly to Baron's Court, and reached his rooms in the Fulham Road shortly before midnight, when he was arrested. He protested he knew nothing whatsoever of the murder.

When the reading of the statement was finished, the prisoner asked if he might be allowed to speak. The Coroner told him he would be better advised to reserve his defence.

"I only wanted to say this," said Mr Birkinshaw, "and that is I forgot my umbrella when I left the office that evening. As for the cigarette, I remember leaving one out on my desk. I took it from my case intending to light it, and forgot it. I can only suppose that Mr. Salsbrigg found it when he came back and smoked it."

"Is that all?" asked the Coroner bluntly. "Very good." He turned to the jury, "Now, gentlemen...."

"Well," said young Cradock to Harley Brewster as they left the court together. "What do you think?"

"Think?" replied the solicitor disgustedly. "I think that in the whole of my professional career I never saw a man more completely enmeshed in the toils of circumstantial evidence than your pal Birkinshaw. He don't want a lawyer to save his neck; he needs a wonder-worker, by Gad!"

III

ON a soft December morning, with a smooth sea gently lapping the shore below and the bells of St. Peter's calling to church from the cliffs above, Harley Brewster and young Cradock sat on the jetty at Broadstairs and discussed the case.

"Nothing but a good strong alibi will save him," the lawyer announced. "One creditable witness who will depose that at the hour of seven p.m. on that evening your little pal was anywhere but at Casino House will do the trick. But Birkinshaw can produce nothing. He's scarcely able to remember where he wandered during all those hours on the night of the murder. He says nothing but 'It's hopeless! I'm trapped!' Even that fruit he got don't give us an alibi, for, on his own showing, he didn't buy it till nine o'clock or thereabouts, two hours or so after the murder."

"I'm sure he's keeping something back. And, as between solicitor and client, that don't go, young man!"

"Look here," said Cradock, "just suppose we're outsiders and know nothing about him. How do the facts strike us? Here's old Birkie, according to the police account, determined to kill Salsbrigg and get away with the boodle. In the first place, we must wash out premeditation, for not only did he kill him with his umbrella, which all of us know, but he goes and leaves it on the scene of the crime. We'll call it a sudden impulse, then. Right! Well, having brained old S., Birkie thinks he'll grab the oof. Now listen to me! Every one of us in the office knows that old Salsbrigg kept his bunch of keys on a steel chain running from the back of his braces to his left-hand trousers pocket. Whoever killed old S. didn't know that, for his pockets were ransacked. The two lower pockets of his waistcoat were turned inside out, and his watch was dangling down from its chain when they found him."

"By George!" commented Brewster, taking his pipe out of his mouth and sitting up. "Go on, young fellow! You're beginning to interest me."

"Another point. Birkie and I both know the key of the safe. Salsbrigg has given it to us scores of times when he's been away. Do you realise that the man who killed Salsbrigg didn't know which was the key of the safe?"

"The paint, man, the paint! The green paint round the lock shows one scratch, and on the bronze of the lock itself there are other little scratches showing where he must have tried key after key before he hit on the right one."

"You've seen the mess that old Birkie's gamp is in. Isn't it rather strange that there was no blood on Birkie's clothes? I don't know anything about these things, but I've always heard that blood is rather hard to wash off. And where can a man, wandering about London at night, wash his clothes clean?"

"I'll grant you that, though I don't believe Birkie has a single friend in London apart from me. But there's this further point. You made that lying porter admit that he did not see Birkie go out, didn't you?"

"Then,"—triumphantly—"if he didn't see Birkie go out, why shouldn't the murderer have come in and out again unobserved? How about that, old man—how about that?"

"I had some idea of this in my mind when I cross-examined Batts at the inquest. But now, my young Sherlock Holmes, we come to the question—if your little friend didn't kill Salsbrigg, who did?"

"I'll tell you. Someone who knew that old S. was staying late at the office, someone who knew that eighteen hundred pounds was in the safe! We all knew the money was there, but none of us had any idea that the old man was coming back after hours. It very seldom happens."

"That's all very well. But who did know, then, that Salsbrigg had come back and that this money was in the safe?"

"That's him. Now, listen! Old Salsbrigg was a pretty warm proposition; he had some dam' funny friends calling round to see him at the office. That is why he was so particular about never seeing people except by appointment. On the afternoon of the murder this fellow rolls up. Well, you've seen him: you know what he looks like. He butted in without an appointment and was in the clerks' room when the old man was telling off Birkie for giving Goldstein, the man that brought the eighteen hundred pounds, an appointment after banking hours. As soon as Salsbrigg was finished with Birkie, this Merritone chap, cool as a cucumber, walks into the old man's private office, and Salsbrigg, who had a pretty rough tongue when he liked, never said a word. They weren't long together, and the door slammed pretty fiercely when Merritone came out. Do you know what I think? I believe Merritone had some sort of a hold over the old man, and had come round to raise the wind. Salsbrigg looked at him pretty old-fashioned when Merritone first came into the office."

"But what do you know to prove that Merritone knew that Salsbrigg was coming back?"

"Nothing positive. But as Merritone was leaving the office, the light in the old man's room went out, and we heard his private door leading into the corridor slam. That means they must have quitted the building practically at the same time. I can guess where the old man went—to the Bodega. He generally went out and had a couple if anything upset him. Merritone might have shadowed him. If he had only meant to rob the safe, he would have wanted to see old Salsbrigg out of the way first."

"If you will apply your gifts of deduction for the next ten minutes to divining what the wild waves are saying," he remarked, "I will step up to the telegraph-office and send a wire. We will then go up to the North Foreland and see if the air on the links will blow some of the cobwebs out of our minds."

THREE days later, Detective-Inspector Coleburn sat opposite Mr. Harley Brewster in the latter's office in Southampton Street.

"I hold no brief for Merritone, Mr. Brewster," the detective was saying; "but because a man's a crook, it doesn't follow he's a murderer. And to be perfectly frank with you, it'll take a great deal more than Merritone's record—he's done an aggregate of fifteen years' penal servitude and shorter sentences, they tell me at the Yard—to shake the evidence against Birkinshaw. I grant you Merritone probably came to squeeze Salsbrigg for a bit; they were old friends, you know—in fact, Merritone was jugged for the first time over one of Salsbrigg's swindles; but, dearie me, there's not a particle of evidence to connect him with the murder."

"Not yet," said Brewster bluntly, "but I believe there will be, Inspector, if we get word quickly of any of the notes being cashed. As you got the numbers from Goldstein we should hear at once. We know that Merritone is broke to the wide, that he skipped from his boarding-house in Kilburn without paying the bill. I do sincerely hope that you're hot after him."

"As hot as we should be after any other old lag who falls back upon his old tricks, Mr. Brewster. But I fear very much you're drawing a red herring across the trail, sir."

"Then," said the solicitor, opening a drawer in the desk, "take a look at this!"

And he flung on the blotter a stained and crumpled doeskin glove. Once it had been white, but now it was grimy and sodden as though it had been left out in the rain for days. Palm and fingers were tinged a dull terracotta.

"Blood," said Brewster, and pointed at the stain. "They brought me that this morning, Inspector. It was picked up in the air shaft between Casino House and the building backing on to it, overlooked by the window on the landing outside Salsbrigg's office. Perhaps you remarked the gloves that Mr. Claud Merritone was wearing at the inquest. A gentleman of settled habits, it would seem."

"By all means," Brewster acquiesced smilingly. "That's why I asked you to call upon me this morning. Come in!"

His clerk entered with a card, which he laid silently before the lawyer. Brewster's hand went up and eased his collar. He turned and exchanged a silent glance with his clerk.

"I'll leave you, Mr. Brewster," said the detective, rising and buttoning up his overcoat. "Good-day to you, sir."

It was a woman very simply dressed in black, pale of face, and prematurely grey.

"Mrs. Salsbrigg?" said Brewster, looking at the card. "Won't you sit down? You wished to speak to me about my client, Mr. Birkinshaw?"

"To help him, Mr. Brewster. He will need money for his defence. I was in Sicily, at Palermo, when I heard the news. My husband and I have lived apart for many years, and I don't see the English newspapers regularly. It was only four days ago that I heard of the terrible disaster that has overtaken my old friend. I was at my wits' end to know what to do, for I had no address to which to write, so I came myself to say that any money that is required for his defence is at your disposal."

"That was not the sole object of my visit," the woman rejoined. "Before you hear my story, Mr. Brewster, let me say that, in spite of all appearances, I am convinced that Mr. Birkinshaw is incapable of this terrible crime. Five years ago I had to leave my husband. I invested my savings in a small hat-shop in Manchester. It did not prosper; I borrowed money; my forewoman robbed me; and finally I was left absolutely penniless with two children to support. To avoid my creditors I fled in a moment of panic to France. Thence I wrote to Albert Birkinshaw, whom I had known in happier days, for I would not appeal to my husband, God rest his soul!

"Albert Birkinshaw was a true friend. Not only did he send me money to tide over the crisis, but he undertook the whole settlement of my affairs and began himself to pay off the money due under the arrangement he had made. Only this year, since the boarding-house I started at Palermo began to do well, has he consented to let me start repayment of the three hundred pounds or more I owe him. The tragedy of it is that he paid the last instalment of the debt on the very day of the murder through which I inherit the money due to me under my marriage settlement."

"You say that Mr. Birkinshaw made this last payment on the day of the murder?" he said. "You realise, I suppose, that this makes things look blacker than ever for him. You see, a sum of eighteen hundred pounds is missing. It will be said that part of this sum went to make this payment."

"That is not all," she said, and lowered her voice. "May I speak freely, Mr. Brewster?"

"Nothing you say will pass these four walls, Mrs. Salsbrigg, without your consent," he assured her.

"Have they found out about this telegram that Mr. Birkinshaw sent me on the evening of the murder?" she asked.

She hesitated. "We must keep it from the police at all costs," she faltered. "It would be fatal if it came out."

The solicitor whistled and cast his eyes up. Then, with a harassed air, he clawed the back of his head.

"This is the de-vil!" he remarked. "Sent off on the evening of the murder, you said? Let's see now—' de Londres 8 '—that's the date, Dec. 8—' 18.58.S.'—that's the time. Eighteen hours by Continental reckoning is 6 p.m.—that's 6.58 p.m...."

"Mean?" roared Brewster, grabbing his hat. "Good God, Madam, don't you understand? Look at the time of despatch on this telegram—6.58! Your husband was murdered at seven o'clock, or perhaps a few-minutes sooner or later. If Birkinshaw can prove that he handed this message in personally at any telegraph-office that is more than, say, five minutes' distance from Casino House, he has established an unshakable alibi. Why the devil they don't put the office of despatch on foreign telegrams beats me!"

* * * * *

BY three o'clock that afternoon the good creditable witness for which Mr. Harley Brewster's soul had hungered had been found. On Birkinshaw's indications, the solicitor tracked down the damsel whose severe regard had so flustered the clerk as he had scribbled out his telegram within two minutes of the closing hour of the Dover Street post-office. To Brewster's enraptured gaze she appeared like a being from another sphere as, when the original yellow form was laid before her, with becoming hauteur she immediately described the "little fellow with pince-nez and a sandy moustache" who had handed it in. And so, on the very day on which Detective-Inspector Coleburn left for Ostend to take charge of a smartly dressed Englishman, tall and dark and sallow, detained by the Belgian police for attempting to change one of the hundred-pound notes stolen from Salsbrigg's safe, Albert Birkinshaw found himself a free man.

Harley Brewster entertained his client, Mrs. Salsbrigg, and Cradock at lunch to celebrate the occasion.

"What beats me, Birkinshaw," the solicitor remarked, "is why you should have withheld from your solicitor the one vital piece of information that would have secured your immediate release."

"Eh, what?" said the little man, who had been gazing intently at the lady. Brewster repeated his question. Birkinshaw coloured up.

"I was afraid they'd bring Em'ly—I mean, Mrs. Salsbrigg—into it," he replied dreamily. "The wording of that wire was a bit compromising, y'know. They'd have said Em'ly—Mrs. Salsbrigg—and I had arranged to get rid of Mr. Salsbrigg."

One of Mr. Birkinshaw's hands disappeared beneath the table-cloth. An expression of seraphic contentment dawned on his face.

"A bit dull, your friend," whispered Brewster behind the menu to Cradock. "Half-asleep he seems to me sometimes." Cradock grinned.

"That's what old Salsbrigg told him," he rejoined. "But we mustn't say things like that about him now. He's to be the new boss, y'know, old man!"

He nodded significantly and drew Mr. Brewster's attention to his two guests facing him across the table. They were holding hands beneath the cloth.

THE ALIBI

BOISTEROUSLY the March wind drove the rain across the desolation of the square. The plane trees, waiting naked, like beggars, at the gates of spring, shivered above the head of King Walters as he loitered by the iron railings in the centre and, under cover of the cars parked along the kerb, watched the policeman saunter past the doorway into which old Corling had just disappeared.

How slowly it moved, the stalwart figure, waterproof cape reflecting the yellow blur of the street lamps! He must have a tranquil mind, the policeman, King told himself, a tranquil mind, not a brain which was like a dart of steel sharpened in the white-hot furnace of resolve. Even when one has waited six years, six seconds can seem an eternity; and King Walters, peering from behind the cars at the white beam of the constable's lamp rising and falling on door and window of the old Georgian houses, felt as though his vigil would never end.

This was the third night now since his arrival in London that he had spied upon that door, waiting for old Corling to come home. Robert, the old man's servant, King had seen; but Corling himself not at all. That is, not until that breathless, exhilarating, triumphant moment, a bare three minutes since, when he had descried the well-known figure breasting the spring gale that howled round the corner of the square.

The old man, of course, had been lying low. No doubt he felt safe in spending a week-end in town. Maybe, though, it was only that he had a pressing business engagement in London on the Sunday; old Corling would always be too mean to go to an hotel.

Suddenly the door under the wooden portico groaned protestingly, opened, then shut with a slam that seemed to echo down the roaring corridor of the wind. King's heart went sick with disappointment. But the next instant it began to thud noisily in his ears. Not Corling but his man emerged from the house, old Robert, as gnarled and as crabbed as his master, an umbrella in one hand, a small bag in the other. He put up the umbrella and, bowing to the storm, paddled away. King had a sudden thrill of exultation. Old Robert—over the vista of six gaunt years memory rushed back—old Robert was in the habit of going home to his wife for week-ends.

Under the shabby raincoat the watcher was shaking with eagerness. How wise he had been to wait! On catching sight a few instants before of this man who had betrayed him, his impulse had been to spring forward and bar his passage, crying aloud in that aged, brutal face: "Hullo, Corling! Here's King Walters back from the dead!"

How wise to have waited! The watcher forgot his weary vigil, forgot the damp chill that pierced him through and through under his suit of shoddy, forgot the time, the place. He knew only that he was master of the hour.

Upstairs in his lonely flat, isolated on the top of this office building which none would visit before Monday morning, was Corling, alone, unable to escape!

The policeman had passed on; the square was very quiet. King Walters darted across the road. At the house door his hand fumbled in his pocket, there was a slight "click," and then a funnel of stuffy blackness swallowed him up. Noiselessly the door swung to and the wind was left to rage round the square alone.

Upward in the dark, landing after landing, the man mounted with sure and silent strides, nor halted till the staircase ended before a door. Lightly his gloved fingers sought out the protuberance of the lock, there was a little scratching sound such as a mouse might make behind the wainscot. King Walters found himself gazing along the obscurity of a narrow hall at a fine of yellow fight beneath a door.

He stood still; and there fell upon his ears the pompous ticking of a clock. No other sound. But it was not to listen that he had paused, or yet to rest after his rapid climb; men were in the pink of physical fitness where King Walters had come from. It was to taste to the full the savour of this moment for which during six endless twelvemonths he had hungered that he paused, paused as will pause in ecstasy a lover before the offering of his mistress's red lips.

He was alone in that flat, old Corling's flat, with his ravenous appetite for revenge, and at the end of the passage, behind that closed door, in that room with the solemn clock, was his quarry....

Until he had lost all sense of time King Walters stood there in the cold, dark lobby, thinking of the wasted years, of Queenie torn from his arms, of this old Corling who had smashed to bits a young man's life but was now going to pay. "At last! At last!" the clock seemed to be repeating; "At last! At last!" thumped King Walters's heart in his ears. Yes, Corling was going to pay. He was good for a steady income, if not...

With money, King told himself, he could look up Queenie again and resume the old life. Not that she, good sort that she was, would mind if he were penniless and shabby. But he had his pride; and he had made up his mind not to see her until he had had this reckoning with Corling.

And now Corling was there, separated from his raving, red imagination only by a door. King felt that his luck was in. The night would bring him money; that meant soft linen, decent clothes, a gold watch, cigars, all these half-forgotten luxuries...and Queenie. The blood hammered at his temples as his memory brought back to him all manner of little things about her, the softness of her arms entwined about his neck, the warm and subtle fragrance of her welling masses of hair...He caught his breath and began to creep along the dim hall-way.

Now he was at the door. Noiselessly he turned the handle. Of a sudden the ticking of the clock was portentously loud, and with it the sound of gentle breathing. Within the room a reading-lamp on the desk spilled from under its green shade a pool of fight that dimly illuminated the familiar setting: the old man's study as King had seen it on the night before the great betrayal of six years ago, with scarce a dusty document moved, one might believe, from its place on the littered desk, with the same shabby furniture, the same battered safe, the same fly-blown engravings on the walls, the same smug marble clock on the mantelpiece, and yes, by God! Corling himself asleep in his chair before the fire.

He slept the death-like slumber of the old, his head fallen forward on his chest as though he had collapsed and died in the deep armchair. His toothless mouth was open and the high ridge of his beak-like nose glistened white in the firelight. "He's aged!" was King's thought as he gazed down upon his sleeping enemy. Then he caught sight of himself in the dingy glass above the fireplace, dark hair flecked with grey, crow's-feet at the eyes, bitter lines from nose to jaw and grim folds about the mouth. Anger flamed up within him. "Corling!" he cried, and walked sharply up to the hearth. His heavy tread set the old-fashioned chandelier a-jangling.

The old man awoke gently as though he had but closed his eyes. Bolt upright he sat and peered at the clock. "A quarter past ten!" he mumbled. "I must a' dropped off...."

Then in the dim mirror behind the clock his eye fell upon the reflection of his visitor. King Walters's heart leaped high within him as he saw the terror distort that yellowing, wrinkled countenance. Gripping the arms of his chair the old man hauled himself into a standing posture and remained thus, one skinny hand picking irresolutely at his mouth, his rheumy eyes fixed on the grim visage that confronted him icily out of the looking-glass. Very slowly, at last, old Corling swung round.

"'Ow did yer... 'oo let yer in?" he demanded in a voice that quavered peevishly.

"Love laughs at locksmiths, Corling," he rejoined. "Well, so does hate! Don't worry about how I got in. The essential fact is that I'm here!"

Gradually he leaned forward until his hard and bony jaw all but grazed the old man's chin.

King's massive fingers, gnarled and blackened with rough labour, were pressed against his palms until the knuckles stood out whitely in front of his balled fists.

"What I want I know I can't get," he retorted in a voice made hoarse by resentment, "and that would be to have you as a young man with all your life before you, and pluck you out of the sunshine and flowers and the busy hum of life, away from the woman you love, and stuff you into a cold, grey hell of silence and watching eyes, of clanging bolts and stone walls, and there let you rot, damn you, damn you...."

From head to foot he trembled, his eyes darkly hot, his stern face livid with passion. Inch by inch the old man shrank back until he had to stem himself by one claw-like hand thrust behind him into the seat of his chair. In the breathless silence that fell between the two men the voice of the clock was heard, ticking the inexorable seconds away.

It was King Walters who broke the hush. He drew a deep breath, opened and shut his hands, laughed shortly.

"Dreams," he murmured, "the idle dreams of a prison cell. Stand up, Corling, and listen to me!" Unceremoniously he laid hold of the other's necktie and dragged him erect.

"When I lifted those jewels for you in Chesterfield Street," he said, "and things suddenly looked ugly, you sold me to the police for the insurance reward...."

"It's a lie!" the old man piped wildly. "S'welp me, King, you ain't got it right...."

"What I know is good enough for me," was the stern rejoinder. "Five hundred pounds you got from the insurance, wasn't it? I'll have that now to be going on with!" And he pointed at the safe.

A little colour was creeping into the ivory cheeks. Nervously old Corling rubbed his palms together.

"You're...you're a good lad, King," he wheezed, "one o' the very best, as always I 'ave maintained. But you don't want to be 'ot-'eaded, boy. No young feller never gained nothin' by being 'ot-'eaded. I ain't a-denyin' as 'ow you was treated rough. But it worn't no fault o' mine. The p'lice was one too many fer us that time. I never see nothin' of the reward, and if any one says the contrairey he's a liar. I must 'ave bin a tenner out o' pocket on that job." He wagged his head deprecatingly, then, catching King's eye, rather hastily added: "Still, me an' a few friends 'as got it all planned out to do the right thing by you, boy. Now that you're back in London I'll 'ave to see wot the others is willin' to put up, but if the loan of..."—the lizard eyes shot a shrewdly mustering glance at the other—"of a couple o' thick 'uns, say..."

"Five hundred, I said," he now interrupted. "Get a move on, will you? I'm in a hurry...."

"Five 'undred quid?" he cackled. "Oh dear, oh dear, you'll be the death o' me! Why do yer talk so silly? W'ere in 'ell d' yer think I'd get all that money from, boy?"

"I don't want any more of your play-acting," said King. "You've got thousands stored away in that safe of yours, you old screw. Are you going to fetch the money out or am I?" Menacingly he took a pace forward.

"If I 'ave a few 'undreds in the safe," croaked Corling, drawing back in alarm, "it ain't mine, King. Trust funds, that's wot they are, money deposited for safe-keeping by good friends o' mine, like yerself. You wouldn't 'ave me go back on me pals, boy? Lemme see now if I can't lay me 'ands on me note-case. I might 'ave a fiver 'andy...." Tremblingly he began to pat his pockets.

"I 'aven't the key!" squealed the old man suddenly. "I left it in me other soot. Strike me blind if that ain't the truth...."

The convict stood before him. His right hand now grasped a long, black, pear-shaped object, with a strap slung about his muscular wrist.

Out of his lashless eyes old Corling darted a quick look to right and left. He affected not to see the life-preserver in the other's hand but turned to the desk and began pitching the papers about.

And then his hand found the pistol for which he had been groping, and in a flash he had swung round, pointing the weapon at the intruder and screaming, in a voice made fluty by rage and fear: "Put up your hands!"

But King Walters was too quick for him. With a lightning sweep of the arm he brushed the lamp from the desk, and as with a tinkle of broken glass the room was plunged into darkness, leaped at the old man's throat.

There was one horrid, unnatural cry that began on a scream and ended on a whistling gurgle; some heavy weight crashed into the fender with a thud that shook the floor; and thereafter the only sounds were the slither of two forms, tightly locked together, that heaved and swayed before the reddish glow of the fire, and the hiss of laboured breathing....

It was King Walters who at length raised himself erect and scratched a match. He found and lit a candle which stood in a tray smeared with sealing-wax. Holding the light aloft, he seemed to seek for something on the carpet. Then he stooped and picked up the pistol which had fallen to the ground. "Unloaded!" he muttered to himself. "I thought as much!"

He laid the pistol down upon the table and, raising his head, listened. The silence in the house was profound. Some sixth sense, developed in his convict's cell maybe, seemed to tell him that the quietness of the room was abnormal, the silence incomplete; for his eyes sought at once the mantelpiece.

The clock had ceased its ticking, as though it had breathed its last when the old man died. There was a vacant space, marked out in dust, on the chimney-piece, and the clock lay face upward in the fender, cheek by jowl with old Corling stretched out on the hearth-rug. Walters, remembering the reverberating crash he had heard, realized that, as he sprang forward, his elbow must have caught the massive clock and knocked it to the ground. The marble was cracked across; but, miraculously, glass and dial were intact.

Stupidly the man stared at the clock, rubbing his thighs, mechanically, irresolutely, with his gloved bands. Suddenly he appeared to become aware of the discoloured face which, with mouth awry and wide-open eyes, grinned up at him from the floor.

He stumbled blindly from the room, leaving the candle to gutter on the desk, shedding its trembling ray upon the two blank faces on the hearth....

TIME stands still at Dartmoor, and King Walters knew nothing of the rejuvenating magic of modern fashions. The woman who, in answer to his ring, opened the front door of the quiet house in Mayfair had a slim, girlish figure, close-cropped auburn hair, and a pale green evening frock that scarcely covered her knees. On seeing the gaunt stranger standing under the dripping porch she gave a little gasping cry and flung herself into his arms.

"At last!" she murmured. "Oh, why did you make me wait? All the six years put together did not seem so long as these last three days and nights I've watched for you, knowing you were free, and you never came! I was afraid there 'd been some mistake, that you'd had to go back. Darling, why ever didn't you come before? It was cruel of you not to let me meet you, and then to send no word, to leave me in suspense!" She snuggled her face to his, straining him to her. "Oh, honey, it's good to have you back...."

With crooning words of endearment she drew him into the warm and well-lit hall and closed the door. But when the light fell upon his face she gave a little moaning sob and buried her face against his coat. "Your poor suffering eyes," she exclaimed brokenly, "I can't bear to see them!"

"Gosh!" she declared. "I declare you're sopping! Where have you come from, King? Did you walk here? On a night like this?"

With a hunted air he was gazing about him. Hats and coats were stacked about the dainty hall; and from the staircase drifted down the murmur of voices, the aroma of cigars.

"I've been walking about for hours," he answered gruffly. "Have you got a party on, Queenie?"

"Only some of the boys sitting in on a poker game. Jack Meldon's here, and Benny Isaacs. They'll sure be glad to see you, King...."

He scowled. "I've got to talk to you, Queenie. And I'm dying for a drink. Do you still keep the whisky in here?"

He pushed open a door and switched on a light which gleamed on the nude mahogany of a small dining-room. The woman ran to the sideboard and measured the man a drink from the decanter which stood there on a tray, flanked by siphon and glasses. As he drank she turned to a lacquer mirror that hung on the wall and began patting her shining crop to rights.

"You haven't noticed that I've shingled my hair," she observed coquettishly over her shoulder. "It was brown when you went away. Masses of it I had, do you remember? coiled in two long plaits round my head. How do you think red suits me? And do you like me bobbed...?"

"Dead?" she repeated. "It was sudden, wasn't it? Why, Benny Isaacs saw him on the street only yesterday. He was telling us upstairs just now...."

She showed no dismay. Her grey eyes grew thoughtful and a little pucker fended her smooth forehead between the delicately pencilled half-moons of her eyebrows. As he looked at her, he recognized at last the Queenie he had left behind. Grit all through was Mayfair Queenie, as they called her. She was never "faized," as she called it in her native idiom, never lost her nerve, never made mistakes.

"It was he that sold you, then?" was her only comment. King nodded grimly. "Bully for you!" she told him and grasped his hand. She drew him to her. "Tell me!" she bade him.

"I didn't mean to kill him. I went to get money out of him. He pulled a gun on me and I saw red. When I took my hands away from his throat he was dead...." A long shudder shook his powerful frame.

"I'm not the man I was, kid," he muttered with a dry sob. "They break your spirit in clink...."

"That's all right, boy," she soothed him. "You leave this to Mum." Briskly she looked at her wrist-watch. "At what time did it happen?"

He nodded. "We knocked the clock over in the mix-up and it stopped. I let it lie. I'd have set it going again if I hadn't lost my head...."

"Those wax-marks look fresh," she observed. She pointed at the gloves. "Take 'em off!" He peeled them from his hands and gave them to her. From the plate-basket on the sideboard she took a knife and sawed off the buttons, which she slipped into her bag. The gloves she flung on the fire. Then:

He stared at her weakly. "I don't know what I did. I seem to have been wandering about in the rain for ages. Suddenly I found myself in Berkeley Square and so I thought I'd come to you...."

"Poor old boy! If you'd stopped to think, you'd have made a bee-line for your old Queenie. Still," she went on, with another look at her wrist, "you haven't been so long. It's only five past eleven now." Thoughtfully she pinched her chin. "It'll have to be an alibi," she announced at length. "Listen here, honey! If you'll sit tight and do as Queenie says, every thing's going to be as right as right. When the busies come round here after you, as come they surely will directly the body's found, you're going to hand them an ab-so-loote-ly unbustable alibi. Now don't ask questions but cut along upstairs to your old room and clean up. You'll find a new suit laid out on the bed—oh, and all the fixings that go with it; that was my little surprise for my boy. But, say, you want to make it snappy, honey: I can only allow you five minutes. As soon as you're ready you come down to the drawing-room and leave the rest to me! Now beat it!"

She kissed him on the forehead and shooed him out of the room. "Kids," she murmured, addressing her pleasing vision in the mirror, "kids, that's all they are. But Gosh! like kids, they surely do get a hold of your heart-strings!"

A dense cloud of tobacco smoke, shaded lights, a knot of men in their shirt-sleeves, ties and collars loosened or laid aside, seated about a table where, amid glasses and brimming ash-trays, the high lights of playing-cards gleamed on the green cloth, and in the background the chaste elegance of Queenie's Pompadour drawing-room:—the scene plunged King Walters headlong back into that world of his which he thought he had forgotten. The new clothes seemed to have given him back his self-assurance, and the neat blue suit, though it hung a trifle loosely on him, contrived to lend him the quiet and distinguished air familiar to his old associates.

Of these he found but two in the party round the poker-table: Benny Isaacs, who in his excitable Jewish way gave him clamorous greeting, and old Jack Meldon, who through teeth clenched on cigar growled out, affably enough: "Glad to see you back, son!" The rest were strangers: a sunburnt Colonial addressed as "Mac "; a red-faced, fat man with a Lancashire burr; a sleek youth who was not quite sober; two or three others. Queenie, who did the honours, rolled out a string of names. Then she summarily propelled King towards the end of the room where a cold buffet was laid out.

"You must be ravenous," she said. "What ever time is it, for pity's sake?" Before King could explain that he had no watch, she had called out down the long room: "Hey, you, Gerry Lomax, you can see the clock, what's the time?"

It was the red-faced, fat man whom she thus addressed. King's appearance had momentarily suspended the game. Mr. Lomax was standing in front of the fire, thoughtfully picking his teeth. On hearing Queenie's question he raised his eyes to the dainty Louis Quinze clock that faced him on the mantelpiece.

"Five minutes past ten, me dear!" he answered. Then, turning round to the table, he said, addressing the others: "Eh, chaps, ain't we ever going t' eat again?"

King Walters had moved forward instinctively until he could see the clock's face.

"Well, I should say so," cried Queenie gaily from the end of the room. "There are sandwiches and lobster mayonnaise and I don't know what else back here on the table. Why don't you make a break and eat?"

"A' could do wi' a snack," observed Mr. Lomax, easing his collar. "Ten o'clock, eh, an' a' 'ad me dinner at won!"

"Well, I declare," cried Queenie, "if it isn't a shame! It's ten o'clock and none of you have had any dinner. And when poor old Gerry says he's hungry you won't stop for five minutes to let him have a snack...."

"Aw, pshaw, Queenie," grunted Jack Meldon, who was dealing, "what's the matter with shooting the eats along over hero?"

"That's the ticket," ejaculated Mr. Lomax with a brightening eye. "Bring t' groob over 'ere, lass, bring t' groob over 'ere!"

With the delicate air with which she did everything the woman carried two plates of sandwiches across the room and dumped them down among the ash-trays and the matches masquerading as chips. Then she drew King Walters away towards the buffet. "Come over here and talk to me, King," she said. "Wait! You must have a glass of champagne...."

They halted at the side-table, outside the circle of light and the murmur of voices round the cards. As she poured out the wine King said under his breath: "You're a wonder, Queenie!" She reddened with pleasure and smiled happily at him across the creaming wine.

He wrinkled up his forehead. "Wouldn't it be safer to let Jack and Benny in on this? We can trust them anyway, and maybe they could fix the others. If one of those chaps over there happens to look at his watch we're busted, Queenie. D'you realize that?"

She made a little disdainful grimace. "I should worry. Those guys sat down to play at four this afternoon, and they'll keep it up the round of the clock I shouldn't wonder. You know how it is. Once they get going they lose all sense of time. I don't have to tell you that, King. Many a night I was the poker widow before you went away...."

"Risky...nothing! I'm not afraid of their remembering the time. What scares me stiff is that they won't remember it. I started out by telling myself that one of the bunch has got to be dead sure of the time at which you are supposed to have turned up. I went out after that. I chose my man and concentrated on him...."

She smiled teasingly. "Isn't he the bright boy! Yes, honey, Lomax is my strong suit. He's sober, which is more than you can say of young Pilchard or of Mac; and, so far as I know, he's never been in trouble. He's a hick from Wigan, or some ghastly place in the north, having a whirl in town. Jack picked him up in a bar down the Strand somewheres. The police will have nothing on him. He's good, respectable evidence, that bird...."

She laughed rather contemptuously. "I impressed it on his mind through his stomach. That's the kind of bozo this is. He may forget your name, but he's not likely to forget that he missed his dinner and didn't eat until ten o'clock when you came in and I produced the sandwiches. That's psychology, son! You leave it all to Queenie and psychology, and there's not a split in this old burg who'll bust the alibi!" She leaned forward and touched her glass to his. "Welcome home, honey...."

King had joined the game and was at the table with the others when the challenge came. The close-curtained windows were rimmed in hodden grey, and in the weeping dawn outside the Sabbath morning was reluctantly breaking. On that hushed room, beneath its canopy of fragrant tobacco smoke, the strident summons of the front-door bell broke like the crash of a pistol-shot.

Queenie was crouched on the divan at the end of the room, her knees drawn up to her chin, listening to the fuddled inanities of young Mr. Pilchard, who had been finding his finishing course of poker, conducted by those eminent professors, Messrs. Meldon and Isaacs, somewhat expensive, and was denouncing his wretched luck. As the loud pealing of the bell rang through the house, King checked an impulse to turn and see if Queenie had the same presentiment as himself. He kept his eyes on the table, aware that the game had come to a standstill amid desultory chaff about Queenie's early morning visitor, aware also, without intercepting it, of the swift glance which Jack and Benny interchanged; of the men present only they knew where King Walters had spent the last six years of his life.

Together he and Queenie had concocted the tale he was to tell, should occasion arise, of the way he had spent the previous evening. Now as, to steady his nerves, he made an elaborate business of choosing a fresh cigar from the box at his elbow, he went over the story, link by link, in his mind. Yes, it rang sound and convincing; and Queenie—once more he raised his eyes to the chimney-piece to make sure—had put the clock forward again to the right time. She had waited a good hour, and then, under cover of powdering her face before the mirror over the fireplace, had moved the hands on. So surely, so swiftly had she acted that nobody detected the operation; nor, in the upshot, had any one remarked the change. Now there was the buzz of voices, the sound of feet, upon the stairs. King was conscious that Queenie had left the room. "I'll count ten," he promised himself as he pinched the end of his cigar, "and then I'll look towards the door." But he had not reached five when the door was plucked open and a voice cried fiercely: "You stay out of this, my girl!"

King knew that voice, deep and hard and subtly menacing, a voice which seemed to set rejangling in the very depths of his being strings that once the hand of bitter experience had swept. As in a dream he heard Benny Isaacs's sarcastically polite "Why, if it isn't Mr. Manderton! Good morning, Inspector!"

Very deliberately King Walters blew out the match with which he had just lit his cigar and looked up. It was six years since he had heard that stern voice or seen that burly, self-contained figure. Manderton hadn't changed an atom; down to his very tie he looked the same stolid individual who, in the stuffy hush of the Old Bailey, at the end of a long day's trial, had given the red-robed judge, waiting to pass sentence, the plain blunt facts of King Walters's criminal career.

King stood up at once and went to the door. Below in the hall he heard Queenie's voice, shrill and angry: "Keep your filthy hands off me, blast you!" Then a door slammed and he was left on the landing face to face with the inspector.

At Dartmoor they teach you to keep your eyes on the ground when speaking to those in authority. It gave the convict a sort of thrill of defiance to be able to raise his head and boldly meet the detective's long and searching glance.

"Can't the police ever let a man be?" he demanded. "What are you hounding me for? Why do you come butting into a quiet poker party with all these questions?"

"Richard Corling was found murdered in his flat last night, that's why," was the impassive answer.

King had wanted to deny all acquaintanceship with Corling. But Queenie had said no; he mustn't give the police the chance of catching him out in a lie. So King, facing the detective calmly, rejoined:

"Where did you spend last evening?" Unimpressed by the denial, the inspector repeated his previous question.

With an assumption of indifference King told his story. He had left his room in Bayswater at six, had a cup of coffee at the Corner House and gone to a cinema in Leicester Square. Because he was hard up, he had fought shy of calling on Queenie, but on coming out of the cinema he felt he couldn't face his shabby bedroom and so had walked through the rain to Mayfair. From time to time during the recital Manderton scratched a note in his book.

"Am I to take it that you've no proof other than your own word as to where you were from six until ten?" presently asked the detective.

"You don't have to give your name and address to get a cup of coffee," the other retorted, "or to buy a seat at the pictures!"

"Perhaps you can tell me the name of the picture you saw?" demanded Manderton evenly.

"I don't remember the name," was the candid reply. "But Alice Joyce was in it. And there was a comic thing of Harold Lloyd's..."

With warm gratitude his heart thrilled to the recognition of Queenie's uncanny prevision. Foreseeing the question, she had primed him with details of a picture-show she had visited in Leicester Square on the evening before the murder.

Mr. Manderton gave him a sharp glance, then called a name over the stairs. A plain-clothes man came up.

"There's to be no communication between him and the woman below," he snapped. Then he went into the drawing-room and shut the door behind him. King sat down on the stairs to finish his cigar.

The inspector was not long away. When he came out of the drawing-room he walked downstairs without taking any notice of the convict. The plain-clothes man, at a nod from his Chief, followed after. From the hall King heard Queenie's furious protest: "Say, what d'you think you're doing, shutting me up here alone with this man-ape? What are my guests going to think of me? You've gotta nerve, busting into a private party. If you're coming to call on King Walters every time a guy gets bumped off under your noses you'd better have a latch-key, hadn't you?"

There was a rumble of deep laughter, then Manderton's voice: "Keep your hair on, Queenie! We're not going to take King away this time...."

The front door slammed, a motor-engine roared outside in the street. Queenie came flying upstairs.

"You're safe," she whispered as King caught her to him. "I made that boob downstairs spill me the whole story while Manderton was talking to you. Old Robert found the body. When he went home last night he carried off by mistake the letters that came by the night mail. He brought them back and must have reached the house soon after you left. Manderton, who's one of those scientific busies, has taken the evidence of the clock as proof of the time at which the murder was committed. Old Robert's dithering and they can't get a word out of him, this plain-clothes bird told me, but Corling's clerk says the clock was going and the old man was always fussy about keeping it right. The alibi's solid, honey! Didn't I tell you to leave it to Queenie?"

He crushed her in his arms. "You're a wonderful kid!" Then he sought her lips. "Get rid of the boys!" he bade her presently. She nodded happily and he went upstairs.

Noon was past, and the Sunday bells had ceased to ring out across the mild and spring-like morning as King Walters sat at breakfast with Queenie in the little dining-room over the coffee and scrambled eggs which Queenie herself had prepared. With inimitable humour she was describing the detective's interview with Mr. Lomax as she had gathered it from the lips of her guest. In vain the inspector had sought to shake the other's recollection of the time of King's arrival.

"'I don't often 'ave to go wi'out ma sooper,'" Queenie proclaimed in a fantastic imitation of Mr. Lomax's sing-song burr, "'but w'en it dus 'aappen, ba goom! I remember it. Five minutes passt ten it wor, w'en t'chaap arrived and t'lass produced t' groob....'"

A shadow darkened the window as, engine throbbing, a car drew up outside the house. The next instant the front-door bell pealed. The man and woman exchanged a silent glance. Queenie went softly to the window and peered through the curtains.

"It's Manderton come back," she said. Again the bell trilled. "We must let him in," she added, and, drawing her white and gold kimono about her, she passed out into the hall.

King Walters faced the detective across the breakfast table. Three large and stolid men in dark suits bulked in the background.

"I want you, Walters, for the wilful murder of Richard Coiling," said Manderton. "Put out your hands!"

With a sort of automatic gesture the convict extended his wrists and the detective snapped the handcuffs on them.

"You're plumb crazy, aren't you?" she cried shrilly. "King's not in this. Why, you poor fish, he was here with me when the old man was croaked!"

"Do you know at what time Corling was killed?" demanded Manderton with deadly emphasis.

"Just before ten. You know that as well as I do. Lomax, an independent witness, confirmed it...."

"Lomax is going to send your boy friend to the gallows, Queenie, my dear," retorted the detective drily. "Summer time started at midnight, and before old Robert went home last night Corling made him put the clock on. Corling was killed at nine-twenty, not ten-twenty. Come on, Walters!"

THE BLONDE IN BLUE

"MR. GRAYLE," said the sharp and incisive voice of Uncle Edward, "did you not breakfast before coming to business, may I ask?"

Colin Grayle, junior assistant at Nash and Nesbitt's, that old-established firm of Bond Street jewellers, but privileged as nephew and prospective heir of Mr. Edward Nesbitt, the head and active partner of the concern, swung about like a shot rabbit.

"I inquire," rejoined the older man with elaborate politeness, "because you appeared to be eating."

"Nothing. You startled me, that's all, and nervous shock invariably stimulates the saliva glands. It's a medical fact...."

"Medical stuff and nonsense," Mr. Nesbitt broke in. "Once and for all, you've got to understand that decorum, de-cor-um, sir, is the trade-mark of a respectably conducted business such as this is. Will you kindly get it into your head that in working hours you must not swallow, or eat, or smoke, or hum, or whistle, or practise dance steps as Mr. Penny saw you doing last evening? And while I think of it, I must request you likewise to refrain from entertaining your lady friends at adjacent dance clubs during the luncheon interval. You can't afford it, for one thing, and it does the business no good...."

"I swear, sir..." Colin Grayle began. But he was saved from perjury by the brisk entry of a customer into the shop.

Mr. Nesbitt snapped his fingers smartly. "Mr. Penny..." The slightly cringing figure of the chief assistant advanced to receive the new-comer, a large, prosperous-looking gentleman in a smart blue overcoat and yellow gloves.

Colin Grayle heaved a sigh as his colleague's stock form of greeting reached his ears. "What cad I show you this bordig?" said Mr. Penny, who suffered from adenoids, in the reverent, slightly booming voice he reserved for clients who, like this one, had the appearance of wealth.

The matter of the new-comer's business escaped the younger man, who, draping himself in a picturesque attitude against the counter, promptly fell into a sombre reverie. He did not reflect, as did Miss Hack, the elderly virgin who sat stringing pearls at her little desk in the corner, that he was an almost preposterously good-looking young fellow; that the crinkle in his fair hair made women's glances melt; that his eyes were of a blue to put Mr. Nesbitt's finest Persian turquoises to the blush; or that his black morning-coat and striped gent's trouserings, the inescapable livery of working hours at Nash and Nesbitt's, fitted him perfectly and lent him what Miss Hack described to herself as "a distinguished air." Just then Mr. Grayle was not concerned with his personal appearance. He was telling himself for the hundredth time that he was all sizes of a fool ever to have let his mother (who was Edward Nesbitt's sister) bully him, on leaving Oxford two months before, into taking on a job as deathly dull as this.

Gloomily he suffered his jaundiced eye to rove over the familiar scene. It rested for an instant on the customer. Bah, how he loathed customers! This one, with his fat, smooth-shaven face and horn-rimmed spectacles, seemed to be an American, for, in addition to sundry other small indications, Colin could see the jaws in steady movement as the stranger's head was bent over the tray of uncut stones which Mr. Penny was showing. The rhythmic rise and fall of those mandibles renewed in Colin the desperate craving for a cigarette.

Ugh, how the deliberate staidness of this environment bored him! The severe, oak-wainscoted walls; the beige carpet; the two small dark counters, the one sacred to Mr. Penny, the other to Mr. Flan, the second assistant, commonplace-looking nests of drawers whose tops, bare save for the black velvet squares for the display of the wares, gave no hint of the richness they enshrined; the array of grave cupboards behind with their shelves of pompous silver and Sheffield trophies handed down from the past—monstrous épergnes, Gargantuan loving-cups, pot-bellied teapots. He decided that Mr. Flan, poring over his order-book across the shop, with his shining bald pate and swelling waistcoat, had more than a hint of Queen Anne style in his ample curves. It would be great fun, Colin decided, to stand Mr. Flan on his head and look for the hall-mark. The thought of "Mr. Edward," as they called him in the shop, led him to suppress the smile to which this pleasing fancy gave rise, and he turned it into a yawn which he as quickly stifled. G-rr, what a dead-and-alive hole! Did nothing ever happen at Nash and Nesbitt's?

He consulted his watch. Twenty minutes to one. Thank heaven, soon time for lunch. The customer was buttoning up his overcoat preparatory to leaving. A curious note in Mr. Penny's voice suddenly struck upon Colin Grayle's hearing.

"But the diamodd I was showig you, sir," Mr. Penny was wheezing with great earnestness, "the stode with the bluish tidge "—the assistant's hands fluttered nervously about the counter, "it isd't here. There were twelve stodes in the tray, and dow there are odly eleved." He cast a despairing glance about him.

"Well, I haven't got it," returned the customer evenly. "I told you that stone wouldn't suit, and put it back on the tray. Have a look on the floor: you've probably dropped it."

Pulling on his yellow gloves, he turned to go. Colin, lounging forward, saw Mr. Penny's hand vanish adroitly below the counter and knew that the assistant had rung the secret buzzer to warn the commissionaire on the door. Sure enough, the next moment Sergeant Ryan's cheese-cutter cap was visible through the plate-glass.

"You'll pardod be, I'b sure, sir," ejaculated Mr. Penny tremulously, "but this is a serious batter. That stode is priced at four huddred poudds. If it fell, it bay have lodged itself somewhere in your clotbig."

The customer laughed good-humouredly. He opened his overcoat and shook it, explored his pockets, examined even the turn-ups of his trousers. He was a plump man with quick, humorous eyes and a most expansive smile.

"Well," he remarked at length, "that little old diamond hasn't found a home with me, boys!"

"Bister Colid," said Mr. Penny, "perhaps you would be kide edough to ask Bister Edward to step this way." And he handed Colin the visitor's card. "A fred of Bister Leo Bortimer's," he whispered confidentially.

Mr. Edward appeared with alacrity. Politely, but with great firmness, he took charge of the situation. "Mr. Hemlock," said he, consulting the visitor's card, "you are recommended to us by Mr. Leo Mortimer, an old and valued client. You will understand, however, that we are bound to take our precautions. In the circumstances, I'm sure you won't mind stepping into my private office and allowing me to make a through examination of your clothes."

Mr. Hemlock stared at him. "Well, I'll be..." he gasped. "Look here, you're not suggesting that I stole that darned diamond, are you?"

"I suggest nothing," Mr. Edward returned with dignity. "But I hope," he added suavely, "that you'll be reasonable."

The customer chuckled. "Gee, this is funny. You want to search me, eh? All right. Go ahead. I don't mind. Which is the way to the cells?"

"Mr. Penny, have the goodness to show the gentleman into my office," Mr. Edward bade his assistant gravely, then drew Colin aside. "Go upstairs to the stock-room and ring up Inspector Manderton at Scotland Yard. You may mention my name. Ask him if he knows anything of this man. The name is J. Harvey Hemlock, of New York. Be quick...."

Providentially, Inspector Manderton was at headquarters. The gentleman in question, at any rate under that name, was, he remarked, a new one on him. "Tell Mr. Nesbitt," he said, "that I'll run up in one of the office cars and look the party over. Try and hold him till I get there—hide his trousers, or something. In the meantime, they'll look up the records here and give me a ring at your place."

But the detective failed to place Mr. Nesbitt's visitor, nor did the Rogues' Gallery at Scotland Yard vouchsafe any information about him. Inspector Manderton arrived in time to supervise the very drastic search to which the American was subjected without bringing to light, however, the missing stone. In the meantime Mr. Mortimer, whom Mr. Edward had telephoned, had corroborated Mr. Hemlock's reference. The American, he explained, was a steamer acquaintance who had entertained him in New York, and whom he, in return, had invited to dinner in London. His guest having mentioned on that occasion that he was looking for some diamonds to add to a necklace in his possession, Mr. Mortimer had sent him to Nash and Nesbitt's. Mr. Mortimer gave Mr. Hemlock the highest possible character.

In these circumstances there was nothing for it but to let Mr. Hemlock depart. His imperturbable cheerfulness under his disagreeable ordeal went far to disarm suspicion against him. "That's all right, fellers," he remarked genially in reply to Mr. Edward's rather stiff apology. "With a stranger like me you can't be too careful, and that's a fact. But I'd sure like to know what's become of that li'l ole diamond. I'll be at the Sav-voy for another week, and I'd be glad to know if the stone turns up."

But that is exactly what the stone did not do. Mr. Penny, whom the adventure had reduced to a state bordering on idiocy, clad only in his pince-nez, shivered in Mr. Edward's office while Inspector Manderton and Colin shook out his suit and banged his Jaegers. "I dow dow what to thig!" he kept on repeating, varying, his lament by suggestions as to the possible fate of the diamond, each more futile than the other. The shop was ransacked in vain. There was no corner where the stone might have rolled unseen, for counters and cupboards rested flush with the ground, and the parquet floor, laid afresh but a twelvemonth since, was whole and without a crack.

Neither by cross-examination nor by the private inquiries they instituted were the insurance assessors able to discredit the extreme respectability of each individual member of Mr. Nesbitt's staff. They were unable to discover that Mr. Penny speculated, for instance, or that Mr. Flan "followed the dogs," or that the dissipations of Sergeant Ryan's private life extended beyond an evening pot of beer at "The Running Footman," that placid Mayfair hostelry, on his way home from work. It cannot be denied that, in these circumstances, Mr. Hemlock remained under suspicion. But it was a suspicion which nobody could prove, especially as the Detective Division of the New York Police, duly furnished by Inspector Manderton with a full description by cable of Nash and Nesbitt's customer, wired back that the American authorities had nothing against Mr. J. Harvey Hemlock.

Mr. Edward had the vague impression that there was a moral lurking somewhere in the incident, only it escaped him. He therefore displayed extreme irritability whenever Colin indulged in his presence in speculation about the disappearance of the diamond, which he did, for the first week, some twenty times a day. But presently the young man's delight in this temporary departure from the sameness of life at Nash and Nesbitt's was overshadowed by the dawning of a fresh and exhilarating adventure.

SHE was a peerless blonde dressed in a walking suit of that bright shade of blue which goes so ravishingly with a milk-white skin, eyes that are like the reflection of Sicilian skies, and gleaming golden hair. Colin met her outside the shop in Bond Street as he was hastening back from a lengthy lunch at the Embassy with Rita Roe, the Original Charleston Babe. Unusually for him, at that particular juncture, for various reasons, he was little minded for feminine company. For one thing, he was late and mentally occupied in improvising a suitable story to appease Mr. Edward, whom he knew he would encounter, watch in hand, on his return to the shop; for another, the lovely Rita, his guest, in addition to being three-quarters of an hour late for lunch, had begun to evince gold-digging propensities which vaguely disquieted him.

But as he leapt from his taxi the girl in blue stood between him and the shop door. Her handbag was open, and she was staring into it with a distressed air. As Colin confronted her she raised her cerulean eyes to his face. They were clouded with trouble.

At that appealing glance the young man faltered. The blonde stranger's extreme comeliness left him a little breathless. And she was impeccably chic from the crown of her little blue hat to the soles of her ridiculous sandal-shoes. Bond Street, brimful in the early afternoon, seemed to swim about him as he lifted his hat and sought to pass her. And then, oh miracle of miracles, she addressed him.

"Oh, please," she said in musical tones, "can you tell me the way to the Victoria and Albert Museum?"

What a marvellous figure, he was telling himself. Why, her hair's like the pale yellow links in that gold and platinum chain bag we have in the window. And her suit's the exact shade of her eyes. A rhapsody in blue! Delicious.

"I asked you," spoke a voice that rang in his ears like the strains of celestial choirs, a voice that was slightly tinged with severity, "whether it is far to walk?"

He started from his rapt contemplation of her charms, then turned upon her his most engaging smile.

But her face remained decorously demure. "Oh, but you couldn't possibly walk," he protested. "It's miles from here...." He stopped, and his eye fell upon the gaping handbag. "I say, have you lost your purse or something? Won't you let me help you?"

With a defiant snap she closed the bag. "If you wouldn't mind telling me how I get to the Museum," she answered coldly.

She bit her scarlet lip: her teeth were dazzling. "Oh dear!" she sighed, with such allurement of gesture and voice that Colin's heart seemed to miss a beat. Then she turned to go. The youth sprang forward. "I'm sure you're in trouble," he exclaimed desperately. "Can't I lend you the fare?"

From head to foot she scanned him slowly. She said no word, but her look spoke volumes.

Colin's mind flashed back to Uncle Edward. Even now, he reflected, that inexorable taskmaster would be peering round the door of his sanctum, consulting his watch and making exasperating noises with tongue and teeth. No matter, the young man grimly resolved, he was late already. As well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.

"It was the Victoria and Albert Museum you wanted?" he asked the stranger. "That's right...."

Colin, a Londoner born and bred, affected to think. "I'm not absolutely sure where it is," he remarked. "I've got to go out to... to Earl's Court. I'm rather pressed for time, but perhaps I could drop you...."

He glanced anxiously at the girl's face. With enormous relief he noted that she swallowed the bait. "Oh," she said, "I wouldn't trouble you..."

"Wait," the young man interposed, "we'll see just exactly where this Museum of yours is...." He hailed a taxi.

"Victoria an' Nalbert," said the cabman in reply to Colin's question, "that's Crummle Road, that is."

"Is it anywhere near Earl's Court, do you know?" asked Colin, assuming a provincial air.

"Right alongside, in a manner o' speakin'," replied the cabby. "The Crummle Road, as you might say, runs into the Earl's Court Road, see?"

"There you are," said Colin, turning to his companion and opening the cab door. "I shall be very happy to drop you."

Still the lady hesitated. "My mother is meeting me there at three, and it's that now. Like a perfect idiot I came out without my purse. But really, I don't know whether..."

But for all that he told the cabman to drive them to Kensington by way of Regent's Park. "And take it easy! I'm nervous," he enjoined him.

Outside Nash and Nesbitt's the winter darkness had dropped down upon Bond Street. Within the shop, under the green-shaded lights, the afternoon atmosphere was somnolent. Mr. Edward was drowsing in his office; Mr. Penny was away with influenza; Miss Hack had "popped up," as she put it, to Hatton Garden on an errand, and Mr. Flan and Colin had the place to themselves. If Mr. Flan had been less shortsighted he would have noticed that his young colleague was oddly restless. The fact of the matter was that Colin was expecting a visit from the lady in blue.

Her name was Amber Bain. This fact, together with permission to call upon her and her mother at the quiet hotel in St. James's where they were staying, Colin had extracted from the entrancing blonde on their way out, via a considerable section of the north-western suburbs, to the Cromwell Road. This invitation had come about in the most natural manner imaginable. Colin having mentioned that he was in the jewel business, the exquisite Amber remarked that she guessed she would have to bring mother around as that lady possessed a treasured brooch in need of repair. On this the dazzled youth volunteered to call upon Mrs. Bain and, as a preliminary, give her the benefit of his expert advice. On the following evening he went round to their hotel, and while chatting over coffee in their sitting-room, had a really brilliant inspiration. Mrs Bain, a placid Middle Westerner, wanted him to take the brooch with him. But Colin, pointing out that they knew nothing about him, refused and nonchalantly suggested that Amber should bring the brooch round next day herself.

From this practical suggestion to the proposal that Miss Bain should lunch with him on the same occasion was but a step which, as it seemed to Colin, he took in his stride. At any rate she accepted, and her mamma made no objection. Since no really attractive female can be lunched under two hours, even at premises so contiguous to Nash and Nesbitt's as the Embassy Club, Colin had to bring out his special excuse, reserved only for the most important events, for Uncle Edward's benefit, an appointment with the dentist.

On this delirious occasion he made sundry thrilling discoveries concerning his alluring guest, to wit that, unlike the metallurgical Charleston Babe, she detested caviare and never drank wine; that she lived in New York, in an old brownstone mansion off Washington Square; that she thought London marvellous and the policemen perfect lambs; that she considered bobbed hair to be somewhat "ordinary "; and that she preferred Willa Cather (of whom Colin had never heard) to Ethel M. Dell. Various other facts about her he likewise ascertained: for instance, that she looked even prettier in shiny black than in blue, and that she had a way of gazing pensively at him out of her azure eyes that positively made his head swim. At 3.25 they parted, and Amber, who by this time was answering very prettily to her first name, undertook to call in at the shop in three days' time—on the following Friday afternoon, to be precise—and collect her mother's brooch.

Atkinson's chimes were celebrating the hour of five when Colin, fussing aimlessly about Mr. Penny's vacant place at the counter, heard the door go. Radiant and golden, Amber stood there, diffusing a faint fragrance of violets over the stale afternoon air. The nip of the Bond Street brume had tinged her cheeks with red. Her eyes sparkled. Gosh, thought Colin, what a girl!

Mr. Flan laid down his order-book and advanced to meet her. But Colin outdistanced him. "Am I terribly late?" she said penitently. "I was asked to lunch at the Carlton, a big party, some duchess mother met in New York last fall. I sat next to a terribly nice man, Lord Something-or-other it said on the place card, and after lunch he drove me to his mother's home, on Grosvenor Square I think it was, to look at the family pictures, you know, ancestors and that. My, but it was interesting! I simply couldn't get away. We had tea, too...."

The thought of this abominable ruffian who had had the effrontery to entertain the lovely Amber gave Colin a positive sense of nausea. However, he mastered his feelings sufficiently to present Mr. Flan. That gentleman bowed and adjusted his pince-nez to muster the new-comer. When he did so, he started perceptibly and glanced at Colin. But he and the girl had already turned away.

Colin had moved to Mr. Penny's counter and, opening a drawer, produced Mrs. Bain's brooch. He showed the girl where the setting had been refashioned. He did not wish her to pay, having privately resolved to meet the cost himself, but she insisted. He changed the pound-note she tendered, and she dropped the two half-crowns he gave her back into her handbag, which remained open on the desk.

"So this is where you work!" she remarked, gazing about her. "Kind of sober, isn't it? Don't you keep any jewels here?"

Ecstatically she clasped her hands together. "Oh, show me," she cried. "I'd just love to handle real diamonds, to drip them through my fingers."

"That's easy," Colin rejoined, and pulled out a tray. "These are uncut stones." He placed the tray on the counter.

Rather timidly her small hand went out and gently stroked a large octagonal diamond. Then, "May I?" she asked shyly. Colin gathered up a handful of the gems and placed them in her palm. Holding her hand over the tray, she let the glittering stones trickle through her fingers. "Oh," she exclaimed rapturously, "if that isn't too marvellous!" She sighed prettily as the last diamond dropped back upon its velvet bed.

She looked beyond the young man at the glass-fronted press behind him. "You keep silver too, I see," she said, leaning forward. "That salver's

Colin turned about. "Quite right. It's George the Second. Would you care to see it?"

"Don't trouble," she replied. "I must be off now. We're going to the theatre to-night." She closed her bag.

Seeing that Mr. Flan had come forward and was rearranging the diamonds previous to restoring the tray to its place, Colin went round the counter to Amber. At that moment the solid form of Sergeant Ryan appeared on the threshold of the street door.

"Mr. Nesbitt would loike a wurrd with ye, madam," he announced, touching his cap.

Colin flushed up to his eyes. "It's my uncle," he explained lamely. "I expect he wants to meet you." After all, he reflected, the girl had a perfect right to be there: she was a customer. "Come on," he said defiantly, "I'll introduce you!" And he led the way to Mr. Edward's office.

It was Mr. Flan who opened the door in answer to his knock. Colin wondered vaguely how Mr. Flan had got there. "Uncle Edward," the young man began, "this is a friend of mine, Miss Bain. I want you to..."

He broke off, for Mr. Edward's rather pudgy hand had motioned him aside. It was then that Colin perceived that the atmosphere of the office was un-wontedly tense.

"Madam," said Mr. Edward, icily polite, "my assistant here "—he indicated Mr. Flan, who stood, flushed and perceptibly trembling, beside the desk—"saw you an instant ago transfer something secretly to your bag. I am going to ask you to be good enough to empty your bag here in my presence."

The girl receded a pace in amazement. "Well..." was all she could gasp. She looked helplessly at Colin. The young man's face blazed up in anger. "Uncle Edward..." he ejaculated.

"If you can't keep quiet you'd better leave the room," retorted Mr. Edward sternly. Then, addressing the American, he went on: "Some weeks ago a valuable diamond disappeared while a customer was being served in this shop. That customer, a Mr. Hemlock, is a friend of yours, I believe."

"I think you're plumb crazy," the girl flashed back hotly. "I've never heard of the man in my life."

"That's impossible," Colin broke in. "Miss Bain was at a large luncheon party at the Carlton."

"Miss Bain will scarcely deny it," Mr. Edward interposed suavely. "Mr. Flan here saw her. He was lunching at the next table." Colin remembered that Mr. Flan had gone out to lunch with a Dutch business acquaintance from Amsterdam.

"It seems to me you've all taken leave of your senses," cried the blonde lady. "How dare you accuse me of stealing?"

"I make no accusation," Mr. Edward returned evenly. "I only ask you to show me the contents of that bag."

"Mr. Flan," said Mr. Edward quietly, "ask the Sergeant to step into Bond Street and fetch a policeman."

"This is monstrous," stormed Amber; "can't I put my handkerchief away without being called a thief?"

Mr. Edward made a sign to stay Mr. Flan. "If that is the case," he observed, and laid a hand on the lady's bag, "the contents of your bag will prove it."

"You've no right to treat me like this," she said tearfully. "You'll hear more of it, I promise you." But she let Mr. Edward take the bag and spill its contents out upon his blotter.

It was quite a small bag, just large enough to hold an hotel key, a cheque-book, a pencil of lipstick, a handkerchief, and a tiny leather purse. The lipstick was too diminutive to conceal anything, the handkerchief harboured merely a wee puff, and the purse yielded up nothing but a couple of ten-dollar bills, three one-pound notes, and some small change. As the search proceeded, Mr. Edward's face hardened. It was grimly non-committal when, as a last measure, he upended the now empty bag and shook it while his fingers explored the chamois lining. And then something dropped out with a smart tap upon the blotter. It was a flattened pellet of chewing-gum.

Its putty tint, combined with a certain hard and glossy aspect, announced to the connoisseur in such matters that it had reached its ultimate stage of useful succulence some time before. Colin Grayle, who was looking over his uncle's shoulder at this rather grisly souvenir, became suddenly aware of the almost painful anxiety wherewith the blonde lady scrutinized it. Stretching forth his hand, he picked up the dry pellet and broke it in his fingers. He looked up in time to perceive a look of utter consternation fade from that lovely face.

"Gum," said Miss Amber briefly, but her voice had become oddly raucous. "An American habit. There's no law in this country against chewing-gum, is there?"

But at that moment Colin Grayle, whooping "Great Jumping Jehoshaphat!" in stentorian tones, dashed wildly out of Mr. Edward's office.

His uncle bundled after him. His bewildered eyes perceived his nephew, arrived in the shop, lay hands on Mr. Penny's counter and ruthlessly turn it over on its side. The bemused jeweller caught the young man's arm. "Are you mad, sir?" But Colin, chattering with excitement, was pointing to the under edge of the counter. "Clever," he jabbered, "oh, devilish clever!"

"Clever?" boomed Mr. Edward ragingly, then broke off. "Here, what's the meaning of this disgusting mess?"

"Chews," said Colin briefly. He was carefully scrutinizing and fingering each individual unit of the unappetizing array.

"Choose?" reiterated his uncle furiously. "Are you out of your mind? What d'you mean 'Choose!'?"

"Gum. You won't let a fellow smoke, so I chew. This is where I park the stuff...."

Mr. Edward choked. "D'you have the audacity to tell me it was you who deposited this partly masticated filth under my counter?"

But at that very moment his nephew shouted, "Hey, stop her!" There was a little scuffle at the door, and Mr. Flan and Sergeant Ryan appeared, escorting a very lachrymose and flustered blonde.

He opened his hand. In the palm reposed a little ball of greyish-brown chewing-gum with something white and sparkling in the centre. "There's your diamond, uncle," the young man explained. "I remember now that our fat friend, Hemlock, was chewing when he came into the shop. He pinched the stone, palmed it into a dab of gum, and slapped it under the counter. Then he sent this lady to collect it. She made use of me to do the trick. Isn't that right, my dear?"

But she could only sob: "I don't know anything about it, I swear I don't. Oh, what will mother say? Oh, please, do let me go back to the hotel. I'm innocent, I swear I am!" She made such a ravishing picture in her grief that Colin began to wonder whether they had not made a mistake after all, while as for Mr. Flan, who was a vegetarian and soft-hearted, he was compelled to turn away and walk up and down the floor, with his hand thrust in the front of his coat like Napoleon.

But when Inspector Manderton, summoned by telephone, walked into the office, where the lady was put to wait, a subtle change came over the beautiful Miss Amber Bain.

"Why, hullo, Maggie!" was the detective's breezy greeting. To which the damsel replied casually, "Hullo there, George!"

It seemed to Colin as he studied her in silence that she had suddenly become less ladylike. "A fair cop!" grinned Manderton at her when he had heard the story, and the lady returned crisply, "You won't trouble the oculists any, little Brighteyes!"

"Who's your side-kick, sister?" asked Manderton, who fancied his command of the American idiom.

"Ah, get out, Maggie," chuckled Manderton, "you never had the brains to think up this one. What have you done with J. Harvey Hemlock, Esquire? I don't know him, do I?"

"Yes, you do not," was the instant rejoinder. "Nor do the bulls back home. If you've ever heard of a crime boss, that's Harvey, and how?" With the greatest self-possession she started to powder her peachlike cheeks. Colin, watching her, thought he had never seen anything so supremely lovely.

"He sits pretty and you get pinched, eh, my lass?" the detective put in archly. Going to the door, he told the commissionaire to fetch a taxi.

"Like hell I do," said Amber daintily. "You treat mr right, George, and I'll tell you where you can pull that big slob." She looked up and encountered Colin's inraptured gaze. "They have the loveliest-looking men in this town, I'll tell the world. No, brother," she added over her shoulder to Manderton, "I don't mean you. Say, George, is it real, or do they just hire it to stay around and look beautiful?"

The inspector chuckled. "You should worry, Maggie. He had the brains anyway to fix you!"

"If there's one thing that gives me the heeby-jeebies," declared Miss Bain, putting up her powder-puff and lipstick, "it's an amateur. If you love me, George, take me away out of this to where you keep the real cops." She drew herself up and extended a small hand to Colin, lips fixed in a seraphic smile, eye-brows daintily arched. For the moment she was once more Miss Amber Bain, with a family mansion off Washington Square. "Bye-bye, Colin boy. I'm going down to the country for a time. We must try and do something amusing when I come out... I mean, back." Then suddenly she leaned forward and kissed him full on the lips. "There, I've been wanting to do that ever since I met you. You're a nice kid, but you're much too pretty to be left lying loose round a jewel store. Come on, George! Where the hell's my Rolls?"

In a sort of daze Colin watched them depart. The voice of Mr. Flan summoned him from his dream. "Mr. Edward wishes to speak to you in his office," Mr. Flan announced.

Mr. J. Harvey Hemlock, a notorious crime promoter, who had hitherto contrived to keep out of trouble, received three years' penal servitude, while his lovely accomplice, whose favourite name, out of a string of aliases, appeared to be Maggie Schwarz, escaped with a paltry six months. Of her mother, if she was her mother, nothing more was heard.

Colin Grayle is now working with a firm of turf accountants in Burlington Street.

THE WITNESS FOR THE DEFENCE

The distinguished K.C. who was prosecuting for the Crown shook his large head—lugubriously, as was his fashion in everything—and an attendant shepherded the last of Maurice Marshall's witnesses out of the box. As that young man, with hands groping among his papers, rose in his seat to open his speech for the defence, Mr. Justice Ebury cast a rather anxious glance across the crowded court-room at the clock upon the wall. 4.20—that meant he couldn't catch the 5.10 from Waterloo. And he had promised his wife to be home in good time. She had people coming in for bridge, and they were to dine early.

He composed himself to listen. But before he settled down his hand stole out to assure himself that a certain small square of black cloth was upon the desk. It was there, compassionately concealed beneath a sheaf of foolscap. The Judge thrust his hands into the ample sleeves of his scarlet robe and leaned back in his tall chair.

The boy would be long, he reflected—young men always were with their first brief. Pity young Marshall didn't have a better case to fight. The lad had his way to make, though he would have money when his mother died. Old Marshall had had a fine practice at the Bar....

God bless it, how the lad's voice brought back the dead father! He was like him too: the poise of the tawny head, the handling of his gown! The very spit of dear old Bertie Marshall as he remembered him defending in that arsenic case at York Assizes when they were on circuit together in '91. Or was it '92? They used to play golf together on Sundays....

What was the name of that new mashie Blenkinsop had shown him at Sunningdale on Saturday? Some famous Englishman's name it had been: ah, Raleigh, that was it. He must remind Blenkinsop of his promise to get him one....

"The night of the 20th, Mr. Marshall, not the 19th...." Mr. Justice Ebury's pleasant voice cut across counsel's rather breathless utterance. The tone was mildly reproving. The young man broke off, confused and blushing. "Thank you, m'Lud. I should have said the 20th."

Not a bad thing to let counsel see that you are listening even if your eyes are closed. Good for young Marshall too, cocksure like all of his generation. Funny to find old Bertie come back like that in his son! It seemed only yesterday that he had been best man at the wedding. He never could make out what Bertie saw in that Harland girl. Yet they had been happy together....

"La coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point"... now what had brought that old French tag—Pascal, wasn't it?—into his head? It must have been the subconscious effect on his mind of the prisoner in the dock, this Yves Montel, some obscure Frenchman from the foreign quarter at the back of the Tottenham Court Road, standing his trial for wife-murder. These two days past, at the Old Bailey, the minds of them all had been running in French grooves. The prisoner professed to know English, but they had had to have the interpreter in for some of the witnesses. More than once His Lordship (who prided himself upon in his careful French) had intervened between a floundering witness and that literal-minded and gabbling polyglot, as, for instance, when he helped out Paqueau, the frightened French kitchen-lad who roomed above the Montels and had heard the wife screaming as Montel beat her to death, or urbanely elucidated the ripe argot in which a certain Madame Binet, a hard-faced pavement prowler from Leicester Square, had testified to the cat-and-dog life the Montels led.

Mr. Justice Ebury deflected his heavily lidded eyes, rather sombrely as was his instinct when he looked at the dock, upon the prisoner. A little, vague man of vague age in a vague suit, with a flowing moustache of the type Englishmen no longer wear, and large eyes, watchful behind the pince-nez. He sat between his guards as he had sat all through the two days' trial, with arms folded, head cocked a little on one side. Not a bad head, His Lordship told himself as he contemplated the man in the dock. No doubt young Marshall had his own reasons for not putting his client into the witness-box.

Not unkindly-looking, either. Odd, this typical, small French bourgeois doing a thing like that! The medical evidence was shocking; the fellow had killed with the utmost ferocity. Made one think of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue."...

A sordid tragedy! The observant eyes dropped to the large oaken table below the Bench. It was littered with lettered exhibits so that the well of the court suggested an auction-room: a brass-handled poker, banal and vulgar; a faded blue wrapper smeared with dark stains; a man's collar, grimy with much handling, with one button-hole ripped out by the hand of a woman fighting for her life; a broken chair; and sundry grisly glass jars upon which the expert witnesses, slightly gloating, had gravely held forth.

An old story, unrelieved by the slightest touch of romance...the Judge sighed within himself as he thought of his train. The husband, struggling, unsuccessful, trying to make a living selling a patent corkscrew on commission about the West End; the woman a brazen trull, slatternly and extravagant, a drunkard, and perhaps worse, with or without the husband's connivance. Daily quarrels; money owing for rent, as the landlady, who lent an oddly modern air to this welter of medieval savagery, with her Eton crop and Russian boots, had volubly explained; no money for food, or, what was more important from the murdered woman's standpoint, for drink: reproaches from the man, taunts from the wife, and then the crisis: blind rage, violence, murder....

Young Marshall was doing his best. "Extenuating circumstances he'll go for, of course," was Mr. Justice Ebury's mental comment as he shut his eyes again. Above the distant bourdon of the buses thundering down Newgate Street the voice of his dead friend fell quietly upon the stale hush of the overheated court. The electric light had been turned on against the fog that clung outside the windows and spread itself in a little haze about the ceiling. All over the court people were coughing: the Judge could distinguish the harsh laryngeal bark of the prosecuting counsel. After painting his picture of the squalid Montel ménage, young Marshall was now dramatizing for the jury's benefit the bald summary of the prisoner's military career which an official from the French Consulate-General in London had unemotionally presented. The Public School voice was shy and a little self-conscious, but it grew less halting as the boy warmed to his theme. "This soldier of France...one of the glorious band of Verdun's defenders who obeyed the immortal summons 'They Shall Not Pass'...left wounded for five days in a shell-hole...months of hospital in enemy hands and then the rude hardships of a prison camp...."

That's all very well, was Mr. Justice Ebury's unspoken rebuttal, but the War's old history. They've brought forward no evidence of shell-shock, and a man's wounds don't justify him in bashing his wife to death twelve years after....

"I will be frank with you, Members of the Jury," young Marshall was saying. "My client has given me little or no assistance in preparing his defence. From the moment when the witness, young Paqueau, found the prisoner in a state of uncontrollable frenzy in the presence of the murdered woman, Yves Montel has resolutely declined to divulge the cause of the quarrel. Some unreasoning instinct of loyalty to one who, after all, bore his name, some motive implicating his personal honour maybe, has sealed his lips. Now, Members of the Jury, you know, and I know, and the prisoner at the bar knows, that the Almighty has laid upon every one of us His dread commandment 'Thou Shalt Not Kill,' and my client must abide by the consequences of his admitted act. In considering your verdict I am confident that you will take into account, in mitigation of those consequences, the extreme provocation to which this unfortunate man, by reason of the dead woman's character and wanton habit of life, was constantly exposed. But over and above this I would ask you, nay, I would entreat of you, not to be unmindful of the fact that in the solemn relationship between man and woman which we call the institution of marriage there are acts of treason which..."

Hullo, said His Lordship to himself, opening his eyes and glancing severely at the advocate, this won't do. He's going to plead the Unwritten Law. If Frenchmen want to murder their wives, they'd better not come to England to do it. Let them stay in their own country where the wife-murderer stands every chance of acquittal amid the plaudits of the mob. We'll have no crimes passionnels here. And he scribbled an indignant note on the writing-pad whereon, in his neat hand, certain heads of his summing-up were set out.

He glanced across at the clock again. 4.55. Young Marshall must be nearing his peroration now. Five minutes for the Crown, ten minutes for the summing-up, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour at the outside, for the jury's deliberations—with luck he might get the 5.50 train. Then he noticed that counsel had broken off his speech and was holding a whispered consultation with his clerk. Now young Marshall was addressing the Bench.

"May it please Your Ludship," he was saying—bless the boy, it was old Bertie to the life!—"a clerical gentleman is here who urgently asks to be heard by the court."

"No, m'Lud. The communication handed to me merely says that this gentleman wishes to produce a witness whose testimony is of vital importance to the defence."

The open letter was in the Judge's hands. He read it through in silence, then turned to the prosecutor.

The K C. bobbed and blinked his small bright eyes like a lizard. "As Your Ludship pleases...."

Mr. Justice Ebury expended a wistful glance upon the clock and gave an order to an usher. There was a slight commotion in the press-box. Impassive reporters were edging their way out to catch the last editions of the evening newspapers. A little buzz of excitement rippled round the gallery as a somewhat portly figure in clerical dress entered by the witnesses' door and halted irresolute by the table of exhibits.

"Well, sir," began the Judge sternly, "what is this statement you wish to make?"

The priest's healthy pink face trembled and his gold spectacles caught the light as he turned his head from one side to the other.

"My Lord," he faltered, "I should like...that's to say, I 'd hoped... to be able to speak to Your Lordship privately."

"If you have anything to say of a nature to affect the present proceedings, it must be said in open court," rejoined the Judge testily. "What's the nature of this evidence you purport to produce?"

Father Carfax hesitated, then, with a little shrug of his shoulders, he said: "My Lord, I'm chaplain to a convent near Victoria which conducts a rescue home for girls. The Reverend Mother rang me up this afternoon to say that a...that a "—he stumbled for the word—"that a certain person, a woman, who claims to be in a position to give evidence of vital importance in the prisoner's favour, had sought her advice. This lady arrived in London only this morning..."

The Judge's clear, cold voice broke in upon the priest's rather halting accents. "Where is this person?"

Mr. Justice Ebury looked at the jury, eleven men and one woman. The foreman, a massive individual, was putting up his watch with a harassed air. Ha, thought the Judge, he's got a train to catch too....

"I expect you'd prefer to finish to-day," he observed in the honeyed tone he employed with juries. A low murmur of assent rose from the jury-box. "If it's agreeable to you, Mr. Rosse "—he turned to counsel's table—"I propose to take this evidence now."

Counsel for the defence was conferring in whispers with the priest. He now glanced up and said: "I call Louise Montel...."

The prisoner was on his feet, his two hands grasping the rail, his dark eyes blazing. "Monsieur le President, I protest. I will not 'ave this woman brought 'ere. Condemn me and let me go...."

"You must not interrupt the proceedings," the Judge admonished him sternly. "You must leave your defence in counsel's hands."

The prisoner burst into a torrent of rapid French. The guards sought in vain to pacify him. One proffered a glass of water, the law's balm for all emotional stress. His Lordship fiddled with his papers.

"Il faut vous calmer," he said in his slow, deliberate French. "Sinon, je vous ferai expulser...." And wondered if he had phrased it as the President of a French Assize Court I would have done. Young Marshall and the interpreter were below the dock with faces earnestly upraised, remonstrating with the prisoner. Then a silence fell on them all, for a pallid woman had come in by the witnesses' entrance. From head to foot she was dressed in the sort of dateless rusty black that country folk wear at funerals, a jacket, a long and sweeping skirt of black serge that hung upon her thin and emaciated form as lifelessly as though they were still in their press, a black hat with a bird's wing. She was plainly affrighted, almost to fainting point, by her surroundings, the lights, the staring eyes, the robes, scarlet and black, the wigs, all the archaic trappings of English justice. She stood there, a figure of tragedy, in her funereal clothes, her face a bloodless mask, her eyes, jet black and lustrous, as fearful as a startled doe's, until Father Carfax laid a soothing hand upon her arm and spoke in her ear to appease her.

WELL, was His Lordship's unspoken thought, prompted by the witness's first replies, this isn't going to do the fellow much good. He turned to his notes. Yes, there it was: married to Germaine Meynier at the register office in Henrietta Street in 1923. Yet here was the legal wife, not divorced, with all the necessary documents to show that she and Montel were married in Cairo, at the church of La Vierge du Carmel, in 1913. Why, the scoundrel was a bigamist as well as a murderer....

Mr. Justice Ebury examined the witness himself. As the priest had said, her English was excellent, though she gave her answers so inaudibly that, rather sharply, His Lordship had to bid her speak up. To testify on the prisoner's behalf she had come from Palma, in the island of Majorca—the names rolled softly on her tongue with a sound that conjured up visions of pink and white houses, stepped one above the other in dazzling sunlight above an azure ocean. The judge glanced at the winter brume blanketing the court windows and sighed. He looked towards the witness-box again. He had asked Louise Montel what light she could throw upon the case, and she was answering.

"Monsieur," she was saying, "my husband was a kindly man, a just man. His chiefs spoke of him most highly in the office where he was employed. He always treated me with the utmost affection...."

"We have had evidence of character, madam. The prisoner's military record shows that he was a brave soldier, and his acquaintances in London have spoken well of him. If you were happy together, why did you separate?"

"Monsieur, it was the War. The War took him away from me. At the beginning of August 1914 he was called up to join his regiment and I remained behind in Cairo. Then one day word came from the Ministry of War in Paris that he was dead."

"We know that too," the Judge interposed briskly. "He was at first reported killed. In reality he was a prisoner in German hands. Why did he not return to you after the peace?"

The woman was silent for an instant. Then she said in an almost inaudible voice: "There were reasons..."

"You must speak louder," the Judge reproved her crisply. "The jury can't hear you. There were reasons, you say. What reasons?"

The witness twisted her hands together. Fearfully her dark eyes sought the priest, who sat with his chin buried on his chest, his face an unrevealing mask.

"We're wasting time, madam," Mr. Justice Ebury warned her sharply—damn it, at this rate he'd miss the 6.15. "Did you understand my question? What reason prevented your husband from getting into touch with you after the War?"

She raised her haggard eyes to his face. He felt his irritation wilt before the despairing anguish he saw written there.

"Monsieur," she pleaded, "if you knew all, you would have patience with me." She broke off and pressed her handkerchief to her lips. "When my husband went to the War I had only a very little money. The soldiers were paid so little, he could give me nothing. And there was a baby to keep. As long as I thought my husband was alive I did my best to keep our home together. But I could not leave the child and I could only do sewing at home. But the War killed the luxury trade—fine needlework was all I knew—and I earned very little. Then the child died of dysentery, and soon after came the news of my husband's death. After that I gave up the struggle. I was young and Cairo was full of English soldiers. There was no need for any woman to go hungry...." She bowed her head and was silent.

His Lordship leaned forward. "I must really ask you to be brief," he said, firmly but not unkindly. "Do I understand that the prisoner refused to return to you on account of the life you adopted after you believed him to be dead?"

"On the contrary, monsieur, he wanted me to go back to him. He understood: Yves always understood. But we decided to remain apart."

Mr. Justice Ebury threw himself back in his chair and gazed blankly at counsel for the defence. "Really I fail to see where all this is taking us. Have you any questions to put to the witness, Mr. Marshall?"

The prisoner made an instinctive movement as though he would rise to his feet. But with a gesture of the hand young Marshall stayed him and stood up.

"About a month ago," he said to the witness, "you received a certain letter from the prisoner."

The sheet of cheap note-paper was passed up to the Bench. There was an instant of stillness, broken by the distant clamour of the street. Then the Judge read out:

"Louise,—If I break the vow we imposed upon ourselves ten years ago and write to you, it is to warn you of a great treachery which threatens. Six years ago I went through the form of marriage according to English civil law with a woman who shared my life, not that I had any great affection for her but because she left me no peace. This woman—her name is Germaine—has found your letter, the letter so full of resignation and the true spirit of religion you wrote me when, on my return from Germany, after those weary months of search, I located you at Palma. She now holds the false marriage I contracted with her over me as a threat and says she will denounce me to the English police as a bigamist, not so much to harm me as to disgrace you. You know that I would defend our secret to the death; but in case this miserable creature carries out her intention, I send you this explanation.

Mr. Justice Ebury cleared his throat and looked inquiringly at young Marshall. The witness for the defence stood rigid as a marble statue, and with face as white, staring down at her thin hands folded on the edge of the witness-box. The prisoner had buried his face in his hands. His counsel cleared his throat. "That's all, m'Lud," he said in a toneless voice and sat down.

The woman in the box had turned round and the usher had put out his hand to help her descend when a harsh summons bade her stop. The leader for the Crown was on his feet, brushing back the flowing sleeve of his rusty gown from the plump hand which held his pince-nez. "A moment, if you please...."

"In the letter which His Ludship has just read out," said counsel in the raucous tones he used in cross-examination, "there is mention of a secret between you and the prisoner. Would you mind telling the jury what that secret was?"

"Obviously, the fact of this previous marriage, Mr. Rosse," the Judge interjected mildly.

"I was leading up to that when Your Ludship intervened," the K.C. retorted rather huffily. "Since clearly the revelation of her husband's bigamous marriage could not disgrace her, I inferred, with all respect to Your Ludship, that the disgrace referred to was in some way or other connected with this secret."

"I will word my question differently," counsel resumed. He bent his bushy eyebrows at the witness. "Perhaps you'd begin by telling the court exactly what position you hold at...hr-rm... at Palma?"

Mr. Justice Ebury leaned forward, cupping his ear to his hand. "What did she say?" he demanded irritably.

"Those are the Sisters of Charity, I think?" said the prisoner's counsel, turning to the priest at his side. Father Carfax nodded briefly and continued the contemplation of his brightly burnished boot.

Mr. Justice Ebury looked down at his notes. He had forgotten about the clock. What were those lines that went dancing through his head, a passage in Les Miserables, a book he hadn't read these twenty years? "They shall have for convent the hospital, for cell a hired room, for chapel the parish church, for cloister the street or the hospital ward, for enclosure obedience, for grill the fear of God, for veil modesty." He settled his hornrimmed spectacles on his nose and peered with interest at the woman in black.

"Are we to infer that you abandoned the life you were leading in Egypt and retired to this convent at Palma?"

"But you were not to blame for your husband's second and bigamous marriage. Even if the prisoner had been denounced to the English police, there was only the remotest likelihood of your story coming out. And if it had, what chance was there of the disclosure reaching Palma, an obscure Italian island...?"

"Of course, m'Lud, a slip of the tongue. I should have said Spanish." He turned back to the witness-box. "Do you really wish the jury to believe that you might have been sent away from your convent if your husband had stood his trial for bigamy?"

The woman raised her mournful eyes to the speaker. "It would have made no difference. The Reverend Mother knew my story...."

Scrutinizing the witness, Mr. Justice Ebury became aware of the gentle sweetness of her expression, the low and pleasing timbre of her voice. She reminded him of a sister he had once spoken with in a convent in the hills of Fiesole: she had the same serenity of regard. In his memory arose a picture of the high-walled garden, screened by cypresses; the whitewashed waiting-room with its holy pictures; the dim chapel with its mysterious grill; and he remembered the perfect atmosphere of peace that had rested over all. Strange to think that this woman had come from a place like that, this Magdalen who had sought atonement in this distant isle, only to be dragged back into the pitiless glare of a court of justice, to lay bare to the sensation-mongers, whispering and craning their necks in the public seats, the hidden places of her heart. Counsel's strident voice shattered his meditations.

An anguished voice from the dock cried out: "C'est assez!": a great murmur arose from the spectators: an usher thundered for silence. The Judge frowned at the dock. "You must not interrupt," he said sternly to the prisoner. Yves Montel stifled a groan and buried his face in his hands again. But no one paid any attention to him now: the witness was speaking.

"I had to atone for a great sin," she said. "For him and for myself. When I first met my husband I was a professed nun. I left my convent to follow him to Egypt. When I believed that he had been taken from me and that I was alone in the world, I lost the last remnant of my faith in the God against whom I had so grievously sinned. For two years I led the life I have told you of, and then, towards the end of the War, when I was in Barcelona, it was given to me to repent. I took the boat to Palma and sought admission to the Order of St. Vincent de Paul. I was there, a Sister of Charity, when in 1919, ten years ago, I received a letter from my husband. He had written to me repeatedly from Germany without receiving any answer, for I had left our old address in Cairo. On his release from the prison camp he set out to find me and at length traced me to Majorca. He wanted me to return to him, even after I had told him the whole truth. But I begged him to leave me to my work among the sick and suffering in order that I might make reparation for the life I had led and for our common sin. I told him I would pray that he might find the peace I had found; but that it would be better if we did not write. That was ten years ago. We exchanged no word during all that time until a month ago, when I received the letter which Monsieur le President has read. I showed it to the Reverend Mother. By her advice I replied saying that Yves must do nothing to hinder this woman from doing what she believed to be right, and that if it were the will of God that this old story should become known, this would be part of my penance...." She broke off to brush her pale lips with her handkerchief. The court-room was deathly still and the clock ticked unheeded on the wall.

"My husband did not write again," she resumed. "And then one day, in a newspaper which an English tourist had left, I read of my husband's arrest, of his refusal to divulge the cause of the quarrel which cost this poor woman her life. I know that the English law is pitiless for the taker of human life; but I realized at once that Yves was not the inhuman killer he was represented to be, and that the cause of his silence was his desire to shield me and the Church from scandal. But that that newspaper was a fortnight old when it fell into my hands, I should have been here sooner. As it was, with the Reverend Mother's permission, I came at once...." Her voice faltered, and she went on tremulously: "I do not attempt to excuse his crime, Monsieur le Juge. But at least I have explained it. Maybe I am in part to blame. In my self-righteousness I felt it would be a mortal sin to return to the man for whose sake I had violated my vows. But it seems to me now I might have served God better had I left the security of my convent in Palma and helped my fellow-sinner to atone for the past by a Christian life. The God whom we all offend every day is merciful, Monsieur le Juge, and I ask you to show pity...pity...."

She covered her face with her hands and was silent. Young Marshall looked at his opponent inquiringly. The KC shook his head and loudly blew his nose. The judge was wiping his glasses. "With Your Ludship's permission," young Marshall announced, "I will now put my client in the box."

III

IN the 7.15 for Ascot Mr. Justice Ebury unfolded the evening newspaper. He had the first-class compartment to himself and his pipe was drawing well. But he was unable to focus his attention upon the day's happenings. Not that his conscience was uneasy. Even in the light of the jury's verdict: "Manslaughter under circumstances of extreme provocation," he could not find that the sentence he had passed on Yves Montel of two years' imprisonment was unduly severe. The fellow had made a good impression in the box, telling his story simply and without bitterness. For weeks the woman had taunted him with the letter she had found, reviling his "nun wife," threatening to cover her and the Church with ignominy. On the evening of the murder, in the course of one of their habitual quarrels, she had flaunted in Montel's face a letter from a solicitor giving her an appointment for the next day. She was going to get advice, she declared maliciously, as to how, in denouncing her husband to the authorities, she might best ensure the wife's letter of confession being publicly blazoned forth. The dead woman was a Gascon, and, according to the prisoner, her every allusion to her husband's legal wife was interspersed with such lewd and blasphemous expressions as may be garnered in the purlieus of the Old Port of Marseilles, her native town. When, exasperated beyond endurance, Montel had put his hand upon her mouth to stop her, she had called Louise Montel by a foul name—so objectionable that Montel in his evidence had left it in the original French and His Lordship had paraphrased it in his address to the jury—at the same time striking him in the face. On this Montel, in a paroxysm of rage, had snatched up the poker and brought it blindly down upon his tormentor, continuing to strike until he was interrupted by the entry of the witness, Paqueau....

Well, reflected His Lordship, puffing at his pipe, the majesty of the law must be upheld. Save in the case of justifiable homicide, no man may slay in England with impunity. And he turned to his newspaper once more.

But the letters were a blur before his eyes. He was conscious of a subconscious worry fretting his mind, distracting his attention, like a mouse scratching behind the wainscot. For twenty-one months or so Yves Montel would be taken care of. But what of the woman?

As the train went speeding into Surrey he could see her clearly in his mind's eye, in her pitiable mufti, donned, no doubt, in a pious desire to shield the livery of religion from scandal. The woman who had so dramatically appeared in his court that afternoon was a ghost of the past. In her island convent, where she had taken refuge from the great world, no doubt she was Sister Teresa, or Sister John of God, like the nun in that Spanish fellow's play, and at this very moment, perhaps, there were sick and dying who waited in vain for her footfall along the ward and little children who missed her gentle, pallid face. This personality she had assumed for her atonement she had now, of her own tree will, stripped off to be born again as Louise Montel, the ex-nun, the fallen woman, bound in marriage to this poor devil who would presently emerge from the prison gates, forlorn, hopeless, to take up life again.

Justice is Mine, saith the Lord, and I will repay! Retribution had been exacted for the murder of Germaine Meynier, and thereby "Finis" set to the last chapter of that wasted life. But what of these two poor survivors, inextricably entangled in the consequences of an act of human frailty? When could the books be balanced and that account closed? And where did poor Louise Montel's duty lie: with the religious life she had forsaken and returned to, or with this weak, unhappy man who so sorely needed succour?

Life never ended. There was no finite answer to its problems. Bridge was simpler. Mr. Justice Ebury opened his paper at the bridge problem, and at last his interest was seized.

THE CONTINUITY GIRL

SOME automobiles are handily fitted with a reserve tank. The careless motorist who runs out of petrol has but to turn a tap to find at his hand a hidden store to bring him home.

Miss Janson was as a reserve tank to Crookshank. A sort of spare brain-lobe. Crookshank, brilliant, masterful, with a temper reputed to be a foot shorter than the temper of any director between New York and the coast: Crookshank, red-headed, raw-nerved, ruthless, who when things went wrong behaved like a lunatic, always listened to Miss Janson.

Deliberately he left all detail to her. When the soft unhurried voice spoke in his ear as, side by side, they sat at the director's table on the set, Crookshank would stop whatever he was doing. The leaping spate of his most furious objurgative would be stemmed on the instant, his frantic appeals to high heaven, his lurid allusions to the torments of the underworld, die away when Miss Janson coughed the little cough that was her invariable preface to speech.

She had the courage of her job. Never would she compound with error. A thing could be only right or wrong; and, did it seem wrong to her, she said so. Said so, with that little apologetic air of hers, though the cameras were whirring and the lights sizzling:

Clang! The gong would boom, the cameras cease their patter, the lights click off with a brusqueness that stabbed strained eyes. No matter if a few hundred feet of film were wasted, no matter if David Heathfield, of the impeccable profile, were at last warming up to the new picture, or Roma Fane, stupidest of beautiful stupidities, beginning to register a dim reflection of what was in the director's mind; no matter if the director himself, his great red fists planted on the table before him, his shade askew over his eyes, were roaring: "That's good, that's good! Come on now, Roma, let it go! Spill some of that sob-stuff! He's your lover, ain't he? Stand still that extra, blast you!" and the house orchestra softly playing "Simple Aveu "—when Miss Janson spoke, action died down on the set, and Crookshank's flaming poll bent to the sleek brown head at his side. To the players, their yellow faces bathed in the ghastly radiance of the lights, the voice of the continuity girl was like a beam of bright daylight streaming in upon their world of make-believe.

Miss Janson was the continuity girl at Eckstein's. For the benefit of the uninitiated be it explained—but lord, is there anything to-day that people don't understand about the general technique of motion-picture making? Everybody knows that most scenes are "shot" without reference to their chronological sequence in the story. Obviously, then, somebody in the studio has to see that, throughout a picture, the details tally.

Well, that's where the continuity girl comes in. This was Miss Janson's job. If, for example, in an outdoor scene Dave Heathfield came on with the corner of a handkerchief fashionably protruding from his breast-pocket, down would go a note in Miss Janson's fat notebook. When, perhaps three days later, Dave appeared in the same clothes in an indoor scene immediately precedent in the story to the exterior in question, Miss Janson's rapid glance would instantly flash to that outside pocket, looking for that same handkerchief to emerge at the same angle.

That riding-boots, after a dash through the storm, should be muddy, and muddied in the right places; that a calendar in an office set should not, by a false date, contradict the season of the year; the etiquette of a London club; the proper angle at which to wear a cap; details such as these crowded the pages of Miss Janson's book. Fashion expert, period connoisseur, social authority, property man all in one, she kept an eye on backgrounds, on accessories of every kind. She was a hound for howlers; the eye of the critic in prospect, as one might say.

In the unreal atmosphere of filmdom she was the unchanging element of reality. Stable in her activity like a gyroscope, like a gyroscope she stabilized. In and out of the slices of life which were built up in the studio to throb awhile and then be pulled down she passed, Envoy from the Kingdom of Things As they Are, Ambassadress of Real Life at the Court of Shadowland.

She was small and obscure and self-effacing, with features undistinguished save for dark, intelligent eyes. Impersonal as a cash-register, in the close-knit activities of the little world about her she played no more part than a cash-register plays in the broader humanities of a busy store. In that realm of easy friendships she had no intimates. She was always first on the set; but, the day's work done, she stayed no longer than she needed to don her outdoor clothes to catch her train home, slipping herself out of sight as unostentatiously as she slipped her bulging notebook under its broad elastic band.

Young she might be; old she was not; nobody paused to consider the point. Nor did anybody know her first name. To the studio she was just Miss Janson. It was not that she was deliberately aloof or unfriendly. Hers was a nature that invited or extended no confidences. If she appeared purposely to ignore the men, who would nod her good-morning as they nodded good-morning to the porter in the draughty entrance-hall, she was continually performing small services for the women, especially the younger girls, among the rank and file of the studio. The humblest "extra" seemed to know that for smelling-salts, an aspirin tablet, car fare, one went to Miss Janson. Only towards the little children who sometimes came on the set did her dark eyes soften. For these there were always sweets in that plain leather bag of hers.

David Heathfield, Eckstein's latest star acquisition, whose romantic face and immaculate clothes were devastating feminine hearts from one end to the other of the American Continent, did not even remark Miss Janson when he started work on his first contract picture at the studio. He was raw to New York's motion-picture industry, for his rapid climb to fame had been staged in the golden sunshine and crystalline air of the Pacific Coast. His brand-new celebrity was as yet unrubbed enough, for him to be pleasurably thrilled by the little stir which his daily arrival created at the gaunt grey building across the bridges from Manhattan.

If he had eyes for anything it was certainly not for the prim figure perched on the high chair at the director's table. His first glance went inevitably to his own pleasing reflection in the long mirror by the principals' chairs, where he was wont to smooth down his hair and touch his lips with red before going on the set. Thereafter, his roving eye might swing round the circle of bright faces which, with varying degrees of affected nonchalance, so devoutly watched their idol's every movement.

It was the incident of the dressing-gown which first made him aware of Miss Janson's existence. On this morning they were going to shoot a breakfast scene at an English country house. Lavish set: dark oak panelling, sporting prints, round table gay with silver and flowers, long line of entrée-dishes smoking on hot plates on the sideboard in rear. Heathfield, playing an English earl, was to be depicted at breakfast with his young and temperamental American wife (Roma Fane). For this scene he had chosen to wear a peculiarly becoming flowered silk dressing-gown which had cost him a hundred and twenty dollars on Fifth Avenue a week before.

Miss Janson objected to the dressing-gown. She was absent when Heathfield, gorgeous as the lilies of the field, went on the set; but the latter did not fail to notice, when she appeared, her brisk aside to Crookshank, and the quick frown it brought to the director's eager face.

They were all on the set, going over the scene together: Roma in écru linen, her ropes of pearls showing dead-white against the saffron of her make-up; Crookshank in his shirt-sleeves, brimful with the vigour of a new working day; Wilson, his assistant, with his grey actor's face; Meyerling, the chief camera-man, who chewed gum as another man breathes, jaws moving steadily.

On Miss Janson's whisper Crookshank broke off, listened as usual, then took Heathfield apart. For all his irritability the director could be tactful. Twenty years of the stage had taught him something of the temperament of stars.

"Seems to me, Dave," he observed, taking off his eye-shade, "that just a plain business suit, riding-kit if you like, would fit better into the atmosphere of this shot. That robe o' yours certainly is a ringer, but don't you think it's a bit too—well, luxurious?"

Heathfield stiffened. He prided himself on his taste in dress. "The arbiter of elegance," one of the film weeklies had called him. He gave a little, cold laugh.

"I'm playing an English earl, I believe," he answered, without cordiality. "Surely luxury is in the picture?"

Crookshank, who was an autocrat, hated argument. A little more red crept into his florid cheeks.

"Yes, but look here, Dave, you're supposed to be English, see? You want to be very careful not to overdo things. I'll take Roma through her scene while you run up and change."

"I guess I don't want anybody to advise me about my clothes, Mr. Crookshank," he retorted, with some asperity. "This is a tête-á-tête breakfast with my wife, isn't it, with no servants present? I believe I can wear what I like. And this silk"—he mirrored the light on his sheening arm—"will photograph well, too...."

"Oh, Mr. Heathfield, what Mr. Crookshank means is that, as Miss Fane is fully dressed for breakfast, it would be more in your part as a gallant husband and lover to appear fully dressed as well. Don't you think your public would expect you to show the utmost respect towards your wife, the countess? If you were breakfasting in her boudoir, now, a dressing-gown would be quite in order. But Mr. Eckstein particularly wants this breakfast-room set, so you see..."

Miss Janson paused. David Heathfield regarded her. His face in repose was extremely good-looking; but, he noticed with a twinge of annoyance, Miss Janson was not impressed. Calmly she met his gaze. She knew that she had gained her point; and he knew that she knew it. But he was loth to let her see that so gross an appeal to his vanity could succeed.

"I guess I didn't realize that this dump was supposed to be a breakfast-room," he grumbled, looking about him sullenly, and seeking by +his adroit slur on a New York production to cover up his retreat. "I'll change into my riding-things."

He stalked off the set. Narrowly he scanned the faces of the motley crowd watching from behind the barrier, small-part folk, extras, and hangers-on. As he surveyed them through the jaundiced eyes of his wounded self-importance, it seemed to him that the spectators were gloating over his discomfiture.

Then Babette caught his eye. Hardly more than a kid she was; but a very sweet kid, Heathfield had told himself when, the day before, with a sort of breathless bashfulness, she had reached her turn in the line of girls bringing him their autograph books to sign. The smooth round face was set off by a clinging crop of shining dark-brown curls; the ocean-blue eyes, long-fringed, sparkled with temperamental youth; the body was slim and young and beautifully shaped. Hers was a tiny part, one of the exhibition dancers in the inevitable cabaret scene. Because she was so freshly pretty; because, too, she made not the slightest effort to banish from her eyes the brimming-over adoration that gazed from their depths, the star who, in book after book, had been scrawling simply, "Sincerely, David Heathfield," paused as he took her pen, paused and asked this dainty creature her name. And, after a moment's pause, he had written:

And now, as with a ruffled expression on his splendidly regular features he strode off towards the dressing-rooms, he saw her gazing at him from behind the wooden railing. As their eyes met she gave him a little smile, wistful, half afraid. And because the idolatry of women was to him as oxygen to other men, the little dancer's smile at once restored his self-assurance.

As he reached the barrier he slowed down purposely, gave her back her smile with a flash of his beautiful teeth. His sleeve brushed her bare arm.

"Don't tell me you're going to take off that marvellous dressing-gown, Mr. Heathfield?" she ventured, and blushed for her daring pinkly as any rose-leaf.

He let his eyes rest on hers in a sort of dreamy inquiry. (It was one of his most effective screen glances.)

"The colours are just exquisite," she declared with enthusiasm. "And it suits you."

As though at a loss for words, she moved her head lightly to and fro, at the same time glancing upwards, her little hands a-flutter, a charming gesture.

"I simply adore it. That's the only thing I've got against the movies. I wish I could have seen you on the stage, Mr. Heathfield!"

"I believe I've read everything that's ever been printed about you. I could pass an exam in your film parts, I guess."

The breakfast scene ultimately disposed of, he approached Miss Janson. There was a momentary lull on the set. Crookshank was raging about the lighting; his sulphuric language rang to the very studio roof. At the director's table the continuity girl was immersed in her notebook. She looked up to find Heathfield at her side. His snowy stock and light riding-coat went well with his sleek hair and clear blue eyes; the drab Bedford cord breeches and gleaming brown top-boots splendidly set off his clean-cut length of limb.

"Quite an authority on fashions for men, aren't you?" he said, then strove with a laugh to blunt the point of his sarcasm.

"It did," she said. "But it was wrong. I should have thought you'd have known better than I how an Englishman dresses."

He would have liked to have taken it as a compliment to his authority in such matters. But something beneath the surface of her voice implied a hidden meaning. Of a sudden he felt uncomfortable. And looked it.

"Why do you say that?" he demanded bluntly. "Because you are English, aren't you?" He laughed.

"Not any more. I took out my naturalization papers ages ago. As a matter of fact, I was born in England, though very few people know it. How did you discover it?"

"It's my job to know everything," she told him. "To keep the continuity right one has to know what goes before and what comes after." Her face grew sombre. "What goes before," she reiterated, as though speaking to herself, "and what comes after...."

"I'm an American citizen," he resumed, "and I've been so long on this side that I guess I feel more American than English. I wouldn't know how to act if I went back to England now. It's more than ten years since I left."

"Ah," he said rather hastily, "the American Army wouldn't have me. I did my bit with the war loan, though."

He spoke hurriedly, as though to forestall a further question from her. With a quick gust of irritation he realized that he was explaining, nay, excusing, himself to this drab, homely person. He turned away. Babette was cruising about in the background, waiting for a chance to renew their conversation. He approached her; and Miss Janson reverted to her book.

Thereafter David Heathfield steered clear of Miss Janson. A day later they started work on a big scene for which he was not required, and he was given three days' holiday. When he returned to the studio, so completely did the insignificant little figure at Crookshank's side blend into the background that soon Heathfield ceased even to notice the continuity girl. He had almost forgotten her existence when, a week after their first conversation, she accosted him.

It was evening. Work was over for the day and Heathfield was leaving his dressing-room to go to his car. As he hurried along the ill-lit corridor he stood back to let a woman pass. But she stopped before him. It was Miss Janson. He had not recognized her in her street clothes. Under the small black felt hat and in the long black cloth coat with the black fur collar she looked sedate and well-bred, albeit rather severe. She gave her little cough.

He took off his hat and nodded perfunctorily, at the same time glancing at his wrist-watch. Rather crossly he asked himself what she wanted. Money? A favour from Eckstein? She was nervous, he noticed. The hand that rested on her meagre breast was rising and falling quickly and her face was discomposed.

"If you don't make it too long," he replied. "I'm late for an appointment as it is."

He turned back, pushed open the star-emblazoned door, switched on the light. When they were both in the room she turned to him, her hands clasped nervously in front of her. He took out his pipe and began to fill it with quick, methodical gestures.

"Oh, Mr. Heathfield," she began, and the repetition of her former opening vaguely irritated him, "there's—there's a young girl here in whom I take an interest..."

His pipe was lit now. Miss Janson's eyes were on his face as he puffed once, twice, blew out the match, dropped it with an elegant gesture. "What about Babette?" His voice was deep, deep and hard. "I—I wanted to tell you," Miss Janson went on rather awkwardly, "that Babette is only a child. Barely seventeen. She's a good girl, Mr. Heathfield, and—and I don't want her made unhappy...."

Miss Janson was looking away now, her gaze roaming over the litter of the dressing-table: sticks of grease paint, a silver powder-box, some ties hung over the mirror, a stray collar. She was looking away, for she felt the man's eyes on her face.

But Heathfield said nothing. Emboldened by his silence, the woman warmed to her appeal.

"You're very attractive to women, and I don't suppose you understand what it means for a young girl like Babette to be taken notice of by a man like you. This is her first engagement in pictures, Mr. Heathfield, and for the star to single her out as you're doing—well, it's turning her head. It's not as if she had any restraining influence at home. I've spoken to her..."

"Yes, indeed I have, but the child's head is turned already. She won't listen to me. And so I made up my mind to appeal to you, Mr. Heathfield. This girl means nothing to you. Won't you leave her alone—before she becomes hopelessly infatuated?"

She broke off, her dark eyes glistening with emotion, her sallow, homely face brightened almost to beauty by the fervour of her plea. He puffed at his pipe comfortably. Then he said:

"Would you like me to tell you how I've risen to the top, back in that dog-fight on the Coast, Miss Janson?"

Restlessly she had been smoothing down the fingers of her glove. Quickly now she was still and looked up at him.

"By minding my own business. I mind my business and I expect other folk to mind theirs. Is that plain enough?"

Arrogant and splendid in the full glory of his masculine beauty, he gazed down upon the plain little figure in black. A spot of red appeared in Miss Janson's pale cheeks. The Adam's apple in her lean throat moved up and down. For a while she remained silent, twisting and untwisting her fingers. At length, with an effort, she said:

"Be merciful! You can afford to. You're at the top. If you want amusement there are plenty of girls here, in this studio, to whom a flirtation is a passing adventure, just an adventure and nothing more. Don't spoil little Babette, Mr. Heathfield!"

"I can't stop here all night listening to this sob-stuff," he cut in brutally. "I guess New York girls can look after themselves all right, and anyway"—his handsome face flushed up in sudden anger—"you've got a nerve, let me tell you, butting into my private affairs."

By way of answer he picked up his hat, crammed it on his head, and started to push past her to the door. She stepped in his path.

"How did you get hold of my name?" he challenged in a puzzled voice, and peered into her face. "Now that I look at you, I begin to think I've seen you before, somewhere. Was it in England?"

She shrugged her shoulders. Her foot was beating a soft tattoo upon the stone floor.

"Well," Heathfield remarked unconcernedly, "you have the advantage of me, as they say. Arthur Bragge wasn't romantic enough for them on the Coast, so I changed it. David Heathfield is now my name. My name by law. Will you please remember that?"

"You've got to let this girl be. Do you understand me?" Miss Janson cried out suddenly. "You've got to let her be!"

Her voice shrilled to break on a sob, and she beat the knuckles of her clenched hands together in a sort of frenzy. Heathfield smiled contemptuously, and adroitly slipped by her into the corridor.

Outside on the wind-swept boulevard, as he opened the door of his limousine, a faint squeak of delight resounded from the snug, dark depths of the car.

A pregnant silence ensued, then Heathfield's pleasant countenance appeared at the window.

"Drive us to the Lido Restaurant on Fifty-fifth Street," he said, addressing the chauffeur's stolid back.

He put in the "us" for the benefit of a prim figure in black that watched them from the kerb.

AFTER three weeks' intensive work the picture was approaching conclusion. The climax of the highly dramatic story had been reached. All through the grey wintry morning the three of them had been rehearsing the dénouement: Heathfield, Roma Fane, and Antonio Carreras, who played the part of Alvaro, tango dancer and blackmailer.

The scene was the library of the earl's London house. Annabel, his beautiful American countess, estranged from her husband and driven desperate by blackmail, takes a pistol from the drawer of the desk to shoot herself. Philip, the earl, arrives in the nick of time and wrests the weapon from her. He insists on taking her place at the impending interview with Alvaro; and, when the blackmailer presents himself, pretends to have known all along of the countess's indiscretion.

Infuriated by the ruin of his schemes, Alvaro snatches up the pistol, which has been left lying on the desk, and fires at Philip, who falls back, apparently lifeless, upon the divan as Alvaro dashes away. Annabel bursts in, and, believing her husband to be dead, sobs out over his body the love she has been too proud to confess. But Philip is only wounded. He regains consciousness, and hears his wife's admission; fade-out with the couple locked in one another's arms.

That morning Roma Fane was at her dullest. Crookshank stormed. His bitter tongue seared her, seared them all, like a white-hot flame. Like many stupid people, Roma was obstinate, and, as Crookshank lashed her with the whip of his sarcasm, grew sulky. For hours they went over and over the swift sequence of scenes until the nerves of them all were rubbed raw. With the exception, that is, of Miss Janson. Perched upon her high chair, her thin fingers fluttering the leaves of her notebook, she let the waves of emotion surge round her like the tides beating against a jetty, and made no sign.

At last came a change. Slowly the dramatic fire of this uncouth, irascible redhead began to send out long flames that played about the touchwood of the inflammable temperaments on the set. Driven to the verge of tears, Roma Fane, looking as lovely as an American Beauty rose, became emotional, forgot her sulks. This friction overcome, suddenly the machine worked smoothly. Twice they ran through the scene without a hitch.

Then Crookshank grunted, and everybody, up to the stolid hands crouched at their lights above the set, sighed in satisfaction at this recognized signal of approval. The director raised his eye-shade, glanced at his watch. They would break off for lunch, he told them, and immediately after the interval they would start shooting.

On the instant all the studio was astir. Footsteps clattered beneath the sounding vastness of the lofty roof and rang the echoing length of the corridor leading to the lunch-room. It was half-past two; everybody was famished.

Notebook in hand, with the precision of an automaton she made her customary review of the properties required for the scenes about to be shot—Alvaro's menacing letter which Annabel was to find on entering the library; the tray with whisky decanter, siphon, and glasses; the pistol. The automatic had been left lying on the desk, and, before she placed it in readiness in the drawer, Miss Janson dexterously pulled back the slide to make sure that the blank cartridge was in the breech.

Pistol in hand, she paused for an instant, then laid the weapon down on the desk and opened her large leather bag. From it she drew a second automatic. At that same moment a waggish voice cried: "I'll come quiet!" and Wilson, Crookshank's assistant, peered out from the back of the set, his hands above his head, his face twisted into a comic semblance of fright.

"One's mine." She smiled. "I happened to notice that it's the same model as the other."

"You're right," Wilson agreed. "Don't get 'em mixed up, that's all. Coming to eat?"

He clumped away. The continuity girl laid the property pistol back in the drawer and finished her careful survey. Then, with her brisk step, she walked to the iron door which shut off the studio from the toilet-rooms and the administrative offices.

The door stood ajar. As Miss Janson reached it she heard a man's voice on the other side:

Miss Janson plucked open the door. David Heathfield stood there at the foot of the stairs, his back to her, his arms enfolding a slim young form that clung to him in mute surrender. As the door groaned, Babette's startled face looked up over the man's shoulder. When she saw Miss Janson she uttered a little cry, broke away and darted up the steps.

Heathfield swung round quickly. On recognizing Miss Janson he nodded coolly and made as though to pass her. But Miss Janson did not budge.

"I haven't the faintest idea," he rejoined insolently. "Do you mind letting me pass?"

"This is my business," she answered. "Do you know who I am, Arthur Bragge? I'm Margaret Lambert's sister!"

The revelation staggered him, as his face plainly showed. But his brazen self-assurance did not forsake him.

"Is that so? Then you're English? I thought I'd seen you before. Dear little Maggie! How is she?"

"That's terrible," he ejaculated hastily. "Poor little Maggie! I was frightfully upset at having to leave her suddenly like that. But I was out of a shop; I'd been resting for months, and I got the chance of an engagement in New York. I purposely didn't tell her I was going because I knew she'd try and stop me. And I had to have the money. But I wrote; she must have had my letters..."

"Don't lie to me! You didn't write; you sent her no money. You abandoned her, your lawful wife..."

Staring sombrely before her she broke off. Her dark eyes, her face with its livid tones and pinched features, were terrible in the intensity of their expression.

The man tried to pacify her. His make-up, yellow, grotesque, made of his deliberately genial smile something sardonic, evil.

"What you've told me about dear little Maggie is a fearful shock," he began hastily—"a fearful shock. If you'd only let me know..."

"What address had I to write to? Besides, you knew before you went away. Did that move you? Did you help her out with money even? I was as poor as she, touring with a wretched company in the Midlands, and I left my job to be with her. I had to pawn my only decent dress to buy her food." Her hands began to tremble. "Do you really think I'm going to stand by and let you do a thing like that again and get away with it? No, I tell you! No! No! No!"

The familiarity of the gesture seemed to enrage her. In a white fury she shook off his hand.

"Don't you think you're dramatizing things a bit?" His nonchalance was studied; he meant it to wound. "You're not a scenario writer, you know. You're the continuity girl. I should stick to the continuity if I were you, Miss Janson."

"Continuity?" she flamed back at him. "Men like you see life as an endless circle round which you may travel with impunity, strewing in your path heartbreak, misery, death! But continuity implies a beginning and an end, the bringing of the things that come after into sequence with the things that go before. Don't you talk to me of continuity. For you continuity means retribution—punishment!" He laughed arrogantly.

"I'm warning you "—her voice grew hoarsely shrill—"I'm warning you to do the decent thing while there's yet time!"

"Aw, go to blazes!" he cried. Roughly he pushed her on one side and swung through the door.

Quiet on the set in the heat and glare of the limes, the quiet of slow, deliberate movement, of lips that move and bring forth no sound. The hissing arcs flung down their barrage of blinding light; drowsily purred the cameras.

At his table Crookshank, posed like a tiger ready to spring, watched, barking out staccato sentences as he acted, mimed, lived every gesture of the players.

Banned to a discreet distance from the set, the house orchestra was playing Saint-Saens' Danse Macabre. The haunting melody of the "Dance of Death," with its merciless quickening rhythm, beat out across the spacious hush of the studio to where David Heathfield, alone on the set before the lenses of the whirring cameras, awaited the coming of the blackmailer.

"Come on there, that butler! 'A gentleman to see you, my lord!' 'Show him in here, Parker!' Slowly now, Parker, slowly now, confound you! Now for it, Philip, to crush this blackmailer tea-hound! Up to the whisky decanter to help you over the ordeal. Now, Parker! Where in thunder's that butler? Make it snappy, Alvaro! You want to get your money and beat it quick, see? 'What!' you say, 'Annabel not here?' That's good, that's good. Dave, slowly round. 'In future, my friend, your dealings will be with me!' Not too fast, Alvaro! 'That may be awkward for you, Lord Wellminster. Or should I say, for Lady Wellminster?' Hold yourself back, Philip; you're fighting for your wife's honour, remember! 'In what way? '—that's right, very cool. You're too quick, Alvaro; easy now! You're deciding in your mind that the time has come to spill the beans. Now you can warm up; you're telling him about that episode at Cannes. 'And what do you propose to do about it, Lord Wellminster?' Now then, Philip, let it go! 'To give you the hiding of your life, you scum!' At him across the desk! Back, Alvaro: the pistol as you go! Fine, fine..."

Above the wild hammering of the music the shot crashed out. "Philip" reeled backwards, and "Alvaro," casting down the weapon, fled away. A thin blue haze hung leisurely in the livid glare against the background of tall bookshelves. Crookshank was roaring like a bull:

Roma Fane was reeling against the door by which she had made her entry. Her violet eyes, wide with horror, were staring at the long crimson smear that, from elbow to wrist, besmirched the creamy whiteness of her bare arm where it had touched Heathfield.

In two strides Crookshank was in the circle of blinding light, bending over the broad divan. The whirring of the cameras was stilled, but under the vaulted studio roof the muted measure of the "Dance of Death" beat on like the stamp of skeleton feet.

Some one plucked his sleeve. It was Wilson, his assistant, his grey actor's face haggard with fear. In one hand he held the pistol which he had picked up from the floor, in the other the loaded charger. He whispered in Crookshank's ear, signing with his head towards the director's table, where Miss Janson sat impassive. She had closed her notebook and slipped it beneath its stout elastic band, as was her habit when her day's work was done.

FINALE

THE performance was at an end. Tosca had flung herself from the battlements of the Fortress of Sant'-Angelo, the curtain had fallen to the dirge-like closing chords of the orchestra, there had been many recalls and masses of flowers. Now the last car had driven off, the iron grill was drawn and the tall facade of the Opera Comique was in darkness as we sat, my old friend Sforza and I, and sipped our beer on the terrace of the little café across the way.

"Congratulations on your pupil, Maestro," said I. "This Blanchard girl was wonderful. One does not often find a Tosca who can act as well as sing!"

"A difficult role for a debut," the old man agreed. "Yes, she has talent, this little one. She had her moments to-night. And when Giovanni Sforza tells you that, my friend, he knows of what he speaks. More than five hundred evenings, before I abandoned the stage for voice production, have I sung the part of the Sacristan in the first act, the comic role that this animal of a Tronchet so cruelly massacred to-night. The Toscas of opera, per bacco, I have heard them all. And yet the finest performance I ever saw was one that was never finished...."

This is the story which, between two bocks, old Giovanni Sforza told me at the café across the way from the Opera Comique.

"You know, perhaps, the Irish bass, Francis O'Driscoll? You have heard him sing? Benissimo! Ah, my friend, there's an artiste for you, tall, superb, with his lean, stern face and a voice like the great bell of Notre-Dame. His Mephisto was a chef d'oeuvre, of a force to give you the nightmare, arrogant and mocking and bitter and...and...despairing: eh bien, you have seen him for yourself. Now the Americans have captured him with their dollars and Europe will never again be able to afford to pay his cachet.

But in the days that I speak of, O'Driscoll and his wife, Gilda Martel, were engaged here, at the Opera Comique. It was a great season, caro mio, for the Peace Conference was sitting and Paris was full of strangers. The little Martel was a dainty, fragrant creature, a true Parisienne, nerves to her finger-tips, impregnated with the sense of the stage, an artiste through and through. Voice not extraordinary in volume but pleasing in timbre, well trained and dramatic. Her Tosca was, as this part always is, what the Scarpia chooses to make it; and her Tosca was very satisfying, for the Scarpia was O'Driscoll. And she was afraid of her husband.

Ah ça, oui! He was jealous, and the gossip was that he was jealous with cause. She lived the life of a baton de chaise, the little Madame, luncheons and suppers and dances, a round of the devil. You know how it is with some women: they draw the men like the flies round honey. Not that she gave her husband much grounds for jealousy in the theatre, though he watched us all.

She sought her amusement in society, in all this international potpourri of the Peace Conference. Always her dressing-room was filled with flowers, and every night it was a different automobile de luxe that waited at the entrance of the artistes to take her to some party given in her honour. And this poor O'Driscoll, who could have made a meal of her in two bites, stood by and did nothing, for he was in love with her, do you see, my friend, and fearful of losing her altogether.

Not that he was a complacent husband, mark you. He realized that she was young and beautiful and that he must give her her head a little, voilà tout! And she never drove him too far: ah no! for she knew that always he was watching her. Sometimes to please him she would snub one of her admirers or send back their presents: often she would take him with her to one of her parties and deliberately play the part of the loving wife before them all. O'Driscoll was not difficult to manage, allez! When the little Gilda would dash into the theatre five minutes before the rise of the curtain, from the polo or the tennis or a thé dansant, to find the director tearing his hair on the stage and her husband pacing her dressing-room, she would stroke this poor O'Driscoll's face in her coaxing way and in one, two! his anger would melt.

Nevertheless, something fermented within him, and when they played together in Tosca it seemed to me, as I watched them from the wings, all his bitterness would come out and he would take a sheer delight in the diabolic cruelty of Scarpia's rôle. You have seen the opera to-night, my friend, but, that you may the better follow this old history of mine, permit me to recall to you the bare outline of plot, for I am quite sure that you, like the rest of the audience, gave more attention to the music than to the story.

E bene I The painter, Mario Cavaradossi, lover of Floria Tosca, the opera singer, hides a prisoner who has escaped from the Fortress of Sant'-Angelo and is himself arrested by Baron Scarpia, the dreaded Chief of Police of Rome. Scarpia has Tosca brought to his apartments in the Farnese Palace and, by having Cavaradossi tortured in the adjoining room, forces her to reveal the hiding-place of the fugitive. Scarpia makes love to Tosca and offers her her lover's life as the price of her dishonour. Cavaradossi is to be shot and there must be the semblance of an execution; but Scarpia will order the muskets of the firing-platoon to be loaded with blank. Tosca, feigning to consent, obtains from Scarpia a permit for herself and her lover to leave the territory of Rome and then kills Scarpia with a dagger, only to discover in the end that he has played her false. Cavaradossi fails to rise after the volley of the soldiers, and Tosca, perceiving that he is dead, flings herself from the battlements.

As Scarpia, my friend, O'Driscoll was magnificent, terrifying. There is a morose savagery about the part which was of this man's very soul. Watching these two on the stage I used to feel like an eavesdropper, so strongly had I the sensation that they were enacting a scene that must often have been played between them in the intimacy of their cat-and-mouse life, the man irritable and suspicious, the woman evasive, timorous, a little defiant. When Cavaradossi's voice, in the extremity of the torture, wells out over that dramatic pause in the music of the second act and Scarpia stands over Tosca, half swooning in horror on the couch, with hand uplifted ready to startle that voice into anguished protest once more, O'Driscoll—on the head of my mother I swear it, my friend—was fiendishly exultant. It was as though all the lovers, fancied or real, of his wife were writhing in the ante-chamber under the pincers and irons of Spoletta and his aides.

And the little Martel realized it too, I believe. Wrongdoing seems to give some women an immense moral courage; but if it led Gilda to defy her husband outside the theatre, in Tosca she was terrified of him. She seemed to divine what was passing through O'Driscoll's mind. In her scenes with Scarpia there was a sort of desperate fear about her acting, of fear mixed with hate, that held me spell-bound, me, the old basso buffo who has his fifty operas by heart; and, whenever Tosca was in the bill, though my evening's work finished with the first act, I was in the wings to watch her. More than once, when I caught the look in her eyes as she stabbed Scarpia, I thought that she, too, in this moment exulted in her role.

You divine that I approach my climax? My friend, you are right. Evidently, the situation between these two could not endure. It was the appearance of the English aviator that brought things to a head. His family name I have forgotten, but his little name was Leslie. Let that suffice for us as it sufficed for Gilda Martel. A handsome sunny young man with a breastful of medals and a racing automobile, he was pilot of one of the aeroplanes that carried despatches between Paris and London for the English Peace Delegation.

Where they met or of what were their relations I have no certain idea. All I know is that, from one day to the next, the Martel was arriving and being fetched at the theatre in a great red car, that one night on the stage she wore in diamonds a brooch of two eagle's wings spread out which they told me was the badge of the English flying men, and that O'Driscoll's pale face was grimmer and sterner and his playing as Scarpia more sardonic than ever.

One afternoon, after the matinée, I went to the Martel's dressing-room to arrange about a rehearsal which she wished to have with me and her accompanist. The door stood open and I walked in—on what a scene of violence, my friend, on what a scene! O'Driscoll was there in his street clothes, and at his feet Gilda in her kimono. He had her by the throat and he was shaking her and hoarsely muttering: 'He's your lover, isn't he? Tell me the truth! He's your lover...your lover....'

One does not brutalize a woman, and, though he was an immense man, I pulled him off. 'You forget yourself,' I told him. He let me separate them and stood aside sullenly. Gilda got up, her hands clutching her neck. She was not afraid, this time. She was angry, furiously angry, and her eyes were flames of rage and hate.

'Savage!' she cried. 'Savage! Savage! You and your stupid jealousies! Why, you poor fool, even if I were unfaithful to you, do you think I should tell you?'

She began to laugh mockingly at him, while he clenched his fists and glared at her.

But now I intervened again:—in fifty years of opera one has some experience of these quarrels of artistes, pas vrai? and I dragged O'Driscoll away. I suppose they made it up, for after Faust, a couple of nights later, they went out to supper at Viel's together.

And then one hot June evening as I hurried into the theatre—I was late and we were giving Tosca, in which, as you know, I open the play—old Victor, the stage-door keeper, stopped me. He held an evening newspaper in his hands.

'Have you heard the news, Monsieur Sforza?' he asked me. But I brushed him aside. 'Mon vieux, I have no time now,' I told him.

But he detained me, and taking his pipe from his mouth, with the stem pointed to a paragraph under the heading "Dernière Heure." There I read that an English aeroplane flying to London with despatches for the English government had dropped into the sea off Boulogne that afternoon and that the pilot and his passenger had been killed. And the name of the pilot was the name of Gilda's English captain.

'Does she know?' I asked old Victor—you will realize that the love affairs of an artiste are no secret for the stage-door keeper.

He nodded. 'She's in a terrible way, her dresser says. There's no understudy, and if she doesn't go on they can't ring up. The director's with her now.'

I went through to my room. I had no time to lose if I didn't want to keep the stage waiting. The Martel would play, of course. It is the debt that the actor owes to the public, the law of the stage, quoi? Many years ago, I remember, when my baby died... but that is an old story now.

The Martel played. As I came off the stage in my surplice and cassock of the Sacristan it went to my heart to see her waiting for her cue in her high-waisted frock of blue satin and her brown curls piled beneath the black lace mantilla, with her face as white as a playbill and her dark eyes heavy with tragedy. My thoughts flew back for a moment to the debonair Englishman whom, only a few nights before, I had seen so devotedly helping the little Madame into his great automobile. It was tragic to think of him lying somewhere in his sodden uniform, those laughing blue eyes of his glazed for ever in death.

As she caught sight of me Gilda tried to smile and made some casual remark about the warmth of the evening. Startled, I looked at her for an instant; for it somewhat shocked me to find her taking thus philosophically the death of one who had been her friend, her intimate, if not her lover.

It was rather a wan smile and her voice was not very steady. As she spoke there was something almost appealing in the glance she gave me. In a flash I understood. Of course, she had to play; of course, she had to appear her normal self if she wished to keep in abeyance the furious jealousy of her husband which already, as I myself had witnessed, had broken out so violently.

My friend, as I gazed at her I felt a little chill of fear. If that was it. Dio mio! before the evening was over her self-control was going to be put to the test! Suppose, indeed, she loved this Englishman and was now destined, before even he lay in his grave, to play the Tosca, the most tragic, the most fiercely emotional, role in the whole range of opera! As I stood there and watched her take her cue, superbly, without a tremor, I believe that, out of sheer pity, I prayed that O'Driscoll's, my suspicions, the suspicions of us all, were unfounded.

Dujour was the Cavaradossi. You must know the fat pig without doubt, caro mio, this over-estimated, over-boomed machine-made tenor with a voice of three sous, the soul of a tailor's dummy, and the dramatic intelligence of a sergent de ville. Doubtless his utter woodenness helped to steel the Martel to her ordeal; and then the stage itself, that pool of hushed, warm radiance, focusing the gaze and riveting the minds of that rustling invisible mass of humanity packed in tiers from footlights to gallery, never fails of its galvanizing effect on the artiste. However that may be, Gilda sang without flinching her opening scene in the church with Cavaradossi whom, if you remember, she finds on his scaffolding painting the face of the Madonna on the wall.

As their duet was swelling to its grand crescendo I suddenly saw O'Driscoll at my side. Neither for Mephisto nor for Scarpia did he need any make-up, that one, with his long, livid face and arched eyebrows. He always carried himself with a little air of the grand seigneur, and I must say that in his powdered wig under the black cocked hat, his black court dress with breeches and stockings of black silk, his buckle shoes, and his caped cloak, with his wand and lace handkerchief, he looked the picture of elegance and distinction. But his face was a mask of evil. 'Tis in the role, you will object: I know it; but on that evening, in his clothes of raven black, the whole man seemed to diffuse an ineffably sinister influence.

He stood at my elbow in the most profound silence, and it oppressed me. I felt I must speak. 'Gilda is in splendid voice to-night,' I remarked to him under cover of the rising volume of the music. He shot me a quick glance from under his heavy black eyebrows. 'She has herself well in hand,' he gave me back, and then, as though to soften the sneer in his voice, for I dare say my face betrayed my feelings, he added: 'But restraint is the soul of good acting, my dear Giovanni!' On that he left me to go round to the other side of the stage in readiness for his entrance.

Gilda played her love scene with exquisite tenderness and fire. Even this animal of a Dujour, who, let me tell you, caro mio, has never lost an opportunity of speaking slightingly of me and my talent so immeasurably superior to his, even Dujour perceived it and it seemed to inspire him. Good looks of a certain flashy order I have never denied him, and I am prepared to admit that he possesses sundry notes of quality in the upper register. Sure it is, however, that never before, or, I will make bold to wager, since, has he sung and acted the role of Mario Cavaradossi as he did that evening. I know that he astonished me. When he was coming off on his exit he whispered to me as I stood waiting for my cue:

'The Martel puzzles me to-night. She is of an intensity that you would not credit. This is not acting, bon Dieu! it is life. Did you remark it, Giovanni? The little one was making love to me. Playing together as we do, I knew it was bound to happen!'

There is a degree of fatuousness, my friend, that deprives one of the power of speech. I left this fop to his illusion and pushed my way through my waiting rabble of choristers to make my entry.

In the whole of my career I have never seen a more powerful study than O'Driscoll's Scarpia as he played the part that night. He was tremendous. In magnificent voice, superbly restrained, he was menace personified. This indeed was the man who made Rome tremble.' There was an elemental ferocity about his demeanour that held the house spell-bound. We quailed before it, Gilda most of all. The atmosphere of the stage was tense and it was as though an electric fluid ran in eddies up and down the auditorium. Even old Palaccio, the conductor, with his 'cellos and his oboes and all the rest of them to think about, felt it. I could see him at his high desk blinking his eyes behind his glasses as he always did when anything surprised him.

As I was coming off the stage at the close of the act a telegram was thrust into my hand. How the mistake occurred I don't know, but I had broken the seal and read the message through before I realized that it was for the Martel.

It had been sent off from Amiens. Its exact wording I no longer remember, but it said, in effect, that he had just heard that he was reported killed, that there had been a confusion of identity for he had not flown that day, and that this was to let her know that he was all right and she need not worry.

Dio! said I to myself, but this will bring back the sunshine to the face of pretty Gilda! I felt rather embarrassed, however, at the thought of having opened her telegram, and I tried to stick down the seal, meaning to send the message up to her, as, making her exit before the end of the act, she had already gone to her room. Suddenly I caught sight of her dresser, and beckoning her over, was in the act of handing her the telegram when O'Driscoll stepped between us.

'Give it to me,' he commanded, and, seeing that I hesitated, snatched it from me. His eyes rested suspiciously on the broken, seal. He read the telegram through. Then he turned on me.

'You will keep this to yourself, do you understand me, Giovanni? If you breathe a word of it to my wife, by the living God, I'll choke the life out of you!'

What was I to do? It was no business of mine to interfere between husband and wife, and if the little Martel was willing for her husband to take charge of her affairs that was her concern, I reflected. I supposed that O'Driscoll meant to choose his own method of relieving her mind with the news that the telegram brought. I must have been dull that evening, but at that time, I swear, I never realized the diabolical intention that had formed in this man's brain.

I didn't see Gilda during the entr'acte, but as I was changing into my street clothes my dresser, whom I sent out in quest of news, returned and told me that she had fainted in her dressing-room. I supposed it was the reaction.

A tiresome journalist organizing a press matinée delayed me, and by the time I got down to the stage Scarpia, Tosca, and Cavaradossi were on together. Gilda had just made her entrance. They were taking Cavaradossi off to the torture. You remember that, in the play, Tosca has at first no idea of what is going forward in the adjoining room. She seeks to conceal her fears for her lover under a mask of indifference before Scarpia's persistent questioning as to the hiding-place of the fugitive at Cavaradossi's villa, and only gradually she realizes the terrible truth.

I was shocked by the change in Gilda's appearance. In the dim lighting of the stage her face was ghastly, and, as she stood erect close to where I was watching from the side, I could see that long convulsive shudders were tearing her as though her whole frame were shaken by silent sobs. This was not in the play: the woman was on the verge of collapse. Then I knew that O'Driscoll had kept the telegram to himself and that he meant to use the nerve-racking intensity of the Tosca's role to force, if he could, his wife to an involuntary betrayal of herself. It was to be her strength against the play, her force against his.

La povera! With a sort of unwilling fascination I watched them, to my very soul revolted by this man's cruelty. It was in the pauses, when the action passed to Scarpia, that the Martel was on the rack. Again and again I could see how the action of the play, the mechanism of her role, intervened to snatch her from utter collapse. Standing so close to her that I could have laid my hand on the ivory satin of her evening gown, it seemed to me sometimes that she was about to faint. Her eyes were glassy and wide with horror, her movements dreadfully deliberate as though she were walking in her sleep. You can imagine what an effect her acting produced upon the audience as she watched Scarpia playing with her, Scarpia with his yellow face and narrow eyes that followed her round the stage. But her singing was unmatched. Never had she been in better voice; and she never missed a note.

O'Driscoll was incomparable. His savagery as he described to the shrinking woman the horrors that were being perpetrated in the ante-chamber, his vindictiveness against his victim as though the English captain and not Cavaradossi were wearing that band of steel points tightened about the head, his delight in torturing the woman he covets, were portrayed with a realism that kept the nerves on the stretch. His 'Roberti, reprenons!': his glee in checking and restarting the torture: his almost frantic eagerness to get at the secret, bending over his wife as she cowered on the sofa, as though he would pluck it from her throat... ah, caro mio, these are things that one does not forget!

They brought in Cavaradossi from the torture. It is in the role that Tosca runs to meet him, but, at the sight of the blood on his face, stops short and covers her eyes with her hands. When Gilda saw Dujour with his forehead splashed with red she checked, as the stage directions ordain, but she reeled, and had it not been for a chair that she grasped, she would, I believe, have fallen to the ground.

She had her back to the audience. The spectators could not perceive, as I did, the great tears that welled up in her eyes and rolled down over the grease-paint on her face, or notice how her trembling lips framed broken words. I knew that, in that moment, it was not Dujour prone on the sofa that she saw but the dead body of her lover.

It was her cue and she did not fail. I could almost see her taking a fresh grip on her nerves to carry her through her frightful ordeal to the end. She went blindly through the scenes that ensue... it is pure melodrama, a matter of routine: and the action seemed to steady her. By the time her famous aria was reached she had control of herself again.

If ever a woman prayed on the stage, caro mio, it was Gilda Martel that night in Tosca's Prayer. The melody, it is almost of the street; for every orchestra, every gipsy band, has scraped it out for years. I have heard all the great prime donne render it, each with her little mannerisms, her little tricks, this one with her hands pressed to her opulent bosom and a fixed smile on her face, that one mumbling her words into the sofa cushions. But Gilda made it what the composer meant it to be, a tranquil spell of exquisite melody, a little oasis of calm, set in the midst of the horrors and violence of this tremendous second act. Her hands joined before her, she sat upright on the sofa and sang the aria with a purity of tone, a simplicity of expression and a sort of despairing ecstasy that I have never heard equalled. It touched the artiste in the soul of O'Driscoll, coldly regarding her from the table, and by the time she had ended his eyes were glittering in the candle-light. As for your old Sforza, amico mio, I was holding on to a batten and blubbering like a baby as the tremendous wave of applause swept across the theatre.

O'Driscoll saved her from the encore that the audience tried to force. He gave a sign to old Palaccio and went on with the action of the play. His great voice dominated the clamour of the spectators and the house grew silent again. Tosca's appeal for mercy for her lover, the rapping at the door and the arrival of Spoletta with the news of the suicide of the fugitive, the order for Cavaradossi's execution and Scarpia's bargain with Tosca:—the plot worked steadily up to its climax.

A sort of nervous exaltation seemed to have taken possession of Gilda. It made my blood run cold to watch her. She was like a broad white flame of passion.

Now, his terms accepted, Scarpia was at his desk writing out the permit for Tosca and her lover. Gilda was at the table, and as her hand went out to take the glass of wine that Scarpia had poured for her, her eyes fell on the knife. As she secreted it behind her back, Scarpia rose, permit in hand, arms apart to clasp her to his breast and claim his reward, and husband and wife were face to face.

My friend, if you could have seen the loathing in the Martel's eyes! O'Driscoll read its purport and he was afraid. But there was no danger, for the knife was one of those stage daggers of which the blade sinks into the hilt when one stabs. Yet with such fury did the Martel strike that the man staggered backward against the desk and I saw the blood spurt on her hand where she tore it on one of his steel buttons. Her cry, savage, exultant yet despairing, yet rings in my ears: 'C'est le baiser de la Tosca!'

At the fall of the curtain O'Driscoll and her dresser had practically to carry her to her dressing-room.

I followed them there. I was outraged by O'Driscoll's wanton cruelty. I was determined either to force him to tell his wife the truth or to take matters into my own hands.

He met me at the door of the Martel's loge. He read my intention in my face, for he took me by the arm and tried to lead me down the stairs. But I resisted him.

'It is all right,' he said. 'I've told her. I waited until the second act was over because I was afraid that the reaction might upset her and she might be unable to appear....'

'I know, I know,' he replied. 'But the second act is the heaviest. However, everything's all right now.'

'You can't,' he answered. 'The doctor's given her some bromide and she's resting. She mustn't be disturbed. I tell you it's all right. Come....!'

Well, as I've said before, he was her husband and it was no affair of mine. We went downstairs together.

Usually after the second act O'Driscoll mounted to his dressing-room to change, as his evening's work was finished. But to-night he remained below in the wings in his black court dress and watched them set the scene for the last act, the battlements of the Fortress of Sant'-Angelo.

The curtain rose for the last time on the panorama of Rome under the stars, in the foreground the casemate set with chair and table for Cavaradossi's final scene of leave-taking with Tosca. Of course, anybody with a shred of voice can make himself effective in Cavaradossi's famous aria, and the darkness of the stage helped to cover up poor Dujour's lamentable lack of the elements of acting. So the audience in their ignorance applauded him and he had to sing the aria through again. The delay was fortunate, for the Martel was not ready for her entrance behind the Sergeant of the Guard and Spoletta, and the stage-manager had to send up to her dressing-room.

At last she appeared. The Sergeant and Spoletta had not waited for her and she had to make her entry alone. Directly I saw her I knew that O'Driscoll had lied to me. She was deathly pale and her eyes were swollen with weeping. She stopped for an instant before she passed into view of the audience and I saw her little hands clench. Her gesture made me want to cry out to her that her lover was alive.

O'Driscoll stood impassive at my side. 'You blackguard,' I whispered, 'you never told her!' But I don't think he heard me. He was watching his wife.

While the lighting slowly changed to simulate the coming of dawn Tosca and her lover sang their farewell duo. As I watched them I could understand how she had managed to turn Dujour's head, for Gilda clung to him with a sort of desperate abandon. I knew that the arms she clasped so passionately about Cavaradossi were clasped in spirit about her English lover.

The sky lightened and the soldiers in their tall shakos tramped on. Tosca whispered her last warning to her lover to lie still after the volley and await her summons to rise. At the back two stage-hands with the spring-mattress took up their positions to catch the Martel when, in the finale, Tosca flings herself over the battlements. The preparations for the execution went forward, Tosca, expectant, timorous, watching from the casemate.

The fight was on her face. It was profoundly tragic. I could see her bosom swiftly rise and fall as she stood and waited for the report of the muskets. The officer raised his sword.

For the first time in the evening her voice broke and at my side I felt O'Driscoll start eagerly. But the report of the volley drowned for all ears save those on the stage the sob that burst from her lips.

The soldiers marched off. The supreme moment of the opera had arrived. Tosca crept out and watched the guard file down the staircase, softly breathing over her shoulder her injunctions to Cavaradossi lying immobile in the centre of the great dim stage.

Now she turned—ah, my friend, she was a graceful creature in her high-waisted frock!—and stooped to her lover.

Something made me turn and look at O'Driscoll. He was leaning forward and breathing hard, his face sinister, horrible.

The music was swelling majestically in long and solemn chords. Now Tosca laid a little hand prettily on her lover's coat.

She shook him. Then she screamed. But, dio mio! what was she saying? 'Mario, Mario!' it is written in the libretto. But the Martel, with a voice strangled with sobs, with the tears bursting from her eyes, was rocking herself to and fro over the body crying despairingly, 'Leslie! Leslie! Leslie!'

There was Spoletta and the soldiers waiting for their cue to rush on with the news of the discovery of Scarpia dead, there were the stage-hands at their station to break the Martel's fall, there was the orchestra sweeping forward to the finale and already the spectators were stirring restlessly in their seats. And in the centre of the stage the Martel had fallen fainting across the body of her stage-lover.

Of course they had to ring the curtain down, and that is why the finest performance of Tosca that I ever saw was never finished."

"But what happened afterwards?" I asked. "Did O'Driscoll shoot the English captain?"

"O là là! The Martel found some explanation that satisfied her husband. He was in love with her, per bacco! But his happiness was not long-lived, allez! She ran away from him a month later!"

THE PEARL

THE engine of my car was running like nothing on earth this particular Saturday evening on which I motored down from London to spend the week-end with the Cartwrights. The result was that dinner was over by the time I reached the Clock House. Accordingly I expected to catch it properly from Paul Cartwright, who, in the matter of punctuality, as in everything else, is the most tiresome fellow imaginable. What ever possessed a creature so wholly perfect, externally at any rate, as Vera to marry such a preposterous bore, I have never been able to understand. He is neither very rich nor very clever, neither young nor in the least good-looking: if it were not for Vera, whom I used to think one of the greatest darlings in the world, I don't suppose a soul would have taken the trouble to go to one of old Paul's mouldy week-end parties.

There were no servants about when, having put the car away, I entered the house. Dinner had been cleared away and the dining-room was dark, so I just breezed into the morning-room where I guessed I should find them all playing bridge. But when I appeared at the door, instead of old Paul prancing at me watch in hand, all set for the inquest, as I fully expected to see him, no one paid the faintest attention to me. The whole party were on all fours in different parts of the room.

You know, it's rather fun identifying people from this rather unusual angle. I didn't do too badly: I spotted the Hillingdons, and the Fairfax girl, and young Leslie, who is Vera's cousin, and one or two more. Then I fell over the feet of a rum-looking bird, with a brace of enormous pearls in his shirt, who emerged from beneath the sofa. I brought up pretty hard against the Fairfax girl, who appeared to be trying to get under the hearth-rug.

"Sorry," I said, "but if you're playing 'Sardines' you oughtn't to have the light on. I'll switch it off!" But just at that moment old Paul bobbed up from behind the Chesterfield. His face was positively purple and he was breathing hard: old Paul has not got the figure for parlour callisthenics.

"This haphazard way of doing things is all wrong," he panted. "There are nine of us here: we'll divide the room into eight sections or divisions and each will take one. I will be general supervisor. Line up everybody and I'll tell you off to your respective stations...."

As his unfortunate guests scrambled to their feet he caught sight of me. "Hullo, George," he exclaimed, "you're just in time to help. You take Division One: that includes the fireplace. Get down to it, there's a good chap, and make a thorough search!"

I was about to explain to him that all I was in search of at that particular moment, having had no dinner, was a snack of something to eat: a cold partridge, say, and a whisky-and-soda. But then Vera, who looked a perfect dream of loveliness in black chiffon velvet, put out her head from under the bridge-table. I gave her my hand and pulled her up.

"Sorry to be so late, my dear," I told her. "I wonder if I could dig up a spot of dinner...."

But she would not let me finish. Positively, that girl ignored the first and most elementary law of hospitality. I always told her that Paul would spoil her and end by making her as grossly selfish as he is himself.

"Oh, George," she gasped, "the most shattering thing has happened. I've broken my string of pearls."

Of course, Vera's pearls are niceish and cost a bit, I should imagine, even if they were a wedding present from Paul. So I said something sympathetic and told her that, as soon as I'd rustled up a bit to eat, I'd help her look for them.

Would you believe it, she turned away from me to speak to young Leslie and the Fairfax girl, who had each retrieved a fistful of pearls? They dribbled them out on an ash-tray, and some of the other people in the room followed suit. Then Vera's dreary husband took charge again.

"I know exactly how many pearls there should be," he announced. "One hundred and sixty-five"—exactly as though he were giving out the hymn. "Am I right, Vera?"

"Let's count them, then, and see if any are missing. Come on, Hillingdon, you check me to see that I don't make a mistake."

And leaving me dinnerless and travel-stained (if one does get travel-stained in a Buick saloon) he and Vera and Hillingdon positively fell upon the tray and started counting for dear life.

Hillingdon, who is in the Treasury and eminently unreliable in all matters appertaining to figures, made the score 171 and was promptly relieved of his post. The Fairfax girl thereon took a hand and counted 164, while Paul, working from the other side, with his usual cocksureness pronounced the number complete with 165. Vera agreed with him and, to my intense delight, turned to me and said: "You poor thing, you must be famished!" But once more her infernal husband intervened. To make quite sure that all the pearls had been picked up, he announced, George should make an independent count. Vera protested that the number was complete; but Paul was insistent. The simplest method of getting anything to eat seemed to be to let him have his way. So I counted those infernal pearls—and made the number 164.

This was enough for Paul. Simply for the purpose of proving that he was right and that I was wrong, he started raking the pearls over again. But this time his total tallied with mine, and though Vera told him almost tearfully that she had counted them and that none was missing, he insisted on bringing in a fresh judge in the person of a Major Something-or-other, who, I am bound to say, reached the same result as I had. The string was one pearl short. This started Paul off all over again. But now Vera insisted on carrying me off to the dining-room. We left Paul, perfectly happy, dividing the morning-room into what he called "search zones" to locate the missing pearl.

We flushed up Byles, the butler, from the evening wireless programme in the servants' hall, and he produced some cold chicken and ham and the tantalus. I may be a trifle captious, but it seems to me that a perfect hostess would have fussed over a hungry guest such as I was, and having seen that his bodily needs were in process of satisfaction, would have drawn him out to explain the reason for his late arrival. Not Vera. She allowed Byles, who was only too palpably bored at being torn away from the rapture of the evening weather report or some such bilge, to shoot the victuals at me——I can use no other expression—while she walked up and down the room smoking a cigarette out of a ridiculous holder about a foot long. I had started to tell her about the old trouble with that No. 1 plug of mine and was explaining, rather interestingly, if I may say so, the difference in firing between the long and the short type on six-cylinder cars, when it became quite obvious to me that she was not listening. So I broke off and told her so.

On that she stopped her pacing and stared at me absently. Then I noticed that she looked sort of worried. "What's the matter, old girl?" I said. "It's Paul," she answered. "He fusses so. Judging by all the bother he's making, you'd think my pearls were a priceless heirloom or something. After all, the whole lot are only insured for five hundred pounds. And the one that's missing, even though it is one of the bigger central ones, is not worth more than fifty or sixty pounds. It's not as if it were lost, either—it's somewhere in the morning-room. Paul makes us look such fools before strangers, with his search zones and all the rest of it. After all, we don't know the Hillingdons very well, and Mr. Fair has never been to the house before. With those enormous pearls of his in his shirt-front, I don't know what he thinks of all this hullabaloo about my poor little string."

"That's the bird who was under the sofa, isn't it?" I observed. "What did you say his name was?"

But Vera did not even smile:—old Paul is slowly killing her sense of humour. "You oughtn't to laugh much, George," she said in a nasty sort of way. "People will think you really are an idiot. Now, for heaven's sake, stop eating, and come and persuade Paul to let us go on with our bridge."

I am a pretty good-natured chap, though I say it, and I can make allowances for women's nerves, especially in the case of an unfortunate creature who has rashly undertaken to love, honour, and obey such a boob as Paul Cartwright. So I abandoned without a word an extremely attractive-looking piece of ham and followed Vera back to the morning-room.

Believe me or believe me not, the search party was in full swing. I seemed to perceive, however, a certain flagging of enthusiasm on the part of some of its members. The Major man, looking extremely fed up, was sitting on the floor going through the contents of the waste-paper basket; Hillingdon, who is a middle-aged party with a bald head, seemed, by the state of his shirt-front, to have been raking over the coal-box; and Mr. Julius Fair was slowly pacing the room, head down, like a golfer looking for a lost ball. The others had abandoned the search. Mrs. Hillingdon was fiddling with the cards at the bridge-table, while young Leslie and the Fairfax girl were giggling over by the window. At the desk Paul Cartwright was holding forth as usual and waving a long document about. "Before our marriage," he was saying, "I insisted upon Vera insuring everything, her jewellery, her wardrobe, and, of course, the contents of the house. It was fortunate that I did so, for in this way I have only to notify the insurance company of the loss, and according to this policy they will compensate us or replace the missing pearl, as they did," he went on, turning to Vera, "when you lost your gold chain purse, my dear."

"Nonsense, Paul," Vera interposed hastily, "there's no question of going to the insurance people about this. The pearl must be here somewhere. Beatrice is sure to find it when she turns out the room in the morning."

"I hope so, I'm sure. But in the circumstances I think it would be better if we left the room exactly as it is. It's getting on for midnight. What about bed?"

If there's one thing I like it's my rubber the last thing at night. But do you think one of those weaklings supported me? Not they. They all seemed delighted at the prospect of getting away from old Paul and his search zones.

IT was raining next morning when, about tennish, I crawled down to breakfast—breakfast in bed is sternly discouraged at the Clock House: if old Paul had his way, he'd have all his guests out at crack of dawn, I believe, doing physical jerks on the lawn. One glance at the morning-room as I passed convinced me that, rain or no rain, the golf links would be the only peaceful spot that Sabbath morn for little me. Byles, looking as sick as mud, and a couple of miserable, cowed maids were there, being slave-driven by our genial host. The carpet was rolled back, the furniture stacked up—the place looked like "Selling up the old Home," if you know what I mean. It made me think of a horrible picture I once saw as a kid of the police searching under the flooring for the dead bodies of a lot of women murdered by a cheerful customer called Deeming, and I couldn't help calling out to Paul as I passed: "Aren't you going to dig up the hearth, old man?" But Paul, the poor boob, replied perfectly seriously: "That won't be necessary. It was only laid last year."

The Hillingdons and the Major man had gone to church. Vera, who was already at breakfast, fairly jumped at my suggestion that we should have a round of golf and lunch at the club-house. On this Leslie and the Fairfax girl offered to take us on in a two-ball match. I said I would drive them all over in my car. But then Vera got scruples. She said she couldn't leave the Hillingdons and Major Scott.

"Oh, rot," I told her. "Paul's here, isn't he? What's he for if he can't give 'em lunch for once in a way? We'll be back for tea."

Vera seemed to think that this would be all right, when suddenly Fair piped up from the sideboard where he was helping himself to porridge. None of us had seen him come in. "Then you won't be able to show me the gardens this morning as you promised?" he said. (Oxley Hall, which is only a few minutes from the Clock House, is a show place and Vera's guests are usually taken to see the gardens.)

"Yet it was the reason why you invited me down for the week-end, I believe," said Fair.

It suddenly struck me that his tone was oddly possessive, and glancing across the table at him, I perceived that his eyes, dark and hot, were fixed on Vera's face in an angry gleam. No one can know Vera Cartwright for long without falling in love with her—I'm in love with her myself, or was, until her extraordinary behaviour to me over this episode I am attempting to describe; but I found it hard to imagine that she should give a thought to this ugly little runt of a man with the big, vulture beak and yellow face. I had the sudden impression that he had been counting on this visit to Oxley Hall to give him a tête-à-tête with her. The notion tickled me and I gave Vera a humorous glance. But to my surprise she remained perfectly grave: in fact, she looked quite disturbed.

Now, until young Leslie had chipped in, I had intended my game of golf with Vera to furnish me with the opportunity for one of those delightful, confidential chats with Vera which had become increasingly rare between us since her marriage. But if I was to be baulked, I saw no reason why anybody else should be favoured, so I stepped quickly into the breach.

"I'll tell you what," I suggested. "We'll call in at Oxley on the way to golf. Mr. Fair can walk round the course with us."

"Yes, of course," Vera agreed at once. "That'll be all right, won't it, Julius?"

He gave her a sour nod. "My dear Vera," he answered shortly, "of course, I'm entirely in your hands."

Christian names, I ask you! There and then I made up my mind that there should be no tête-à-tête for Master Julius Fair if I could prevent it. What a repulsive gnome the fellow was, to be sure! But darling Vera never did have any discrimination in her choice of men. If she had...but there, that's another story! I think she realizes now—sometimes, I fear, rather bitterly—that she would have done better to have allowed the tender love of a good man to ripen slowly to a declaration rather than to have let herself be swept off her feet by the vulgar advances of a gross materialist like Paul Cartwright. Well, well, I bear her no ill-will, not even now when I look back upon the abominable way in which, at the instigation of her insufferable husband, she treated me on the present occasion.

We did not get off to our golf without a protest from that gentleman. I only heard the tail end of the scene when I came in to let them know that the car was waiting. Paul was telling Vera that she had no business to neglect her guests. "Your place as hostess is at the head of the luncheon table," was one of his more priceless remarks. But he got no change out of Vera. She came out of the ravaged morning-room with a pink spot on either of her cheeks and her eyes shining.

"I in sick of being preached at," she remarked tensely as she got into the driving-seat beside me.

"Poor old Paul!" I remarked, as we turned out of the gate. "He's got Sister Aimée's gift for dramatizing the obvious, hasn't he?"

Vera simmered gently at my side. "You know, George, sometimes you say quite clever things. I must keep that for Paul. Of course, the only reason he wants me to stay behind is to look for that pearl."

"No." And with a sort of burst of feeling she added: "I wish to heaven I'd never seen the damned things."

I knew, of course, that her wretched husband had got on her nerves. I have rather a soothing way with women. I just took my hand off the wheel and placed it over her ungloved one as it rested on the seat. Also I wanted to show her goblin friend that I had a prior claim. I suspected he was having a fairly mouldy time on the back seat with young Leslie and the Fairfax girl to show him just how much company three can be.

If Mr. Julius Fair had had his tète-à-tête with Vera at Oxley, which he did not, I doubt if he would have found her very amusing company. She was restless and distraite, and her golf, upon which, as a rule, she prides herself, a disgrace. In the circumstances our defeat by two up and one to play reflected very creditably upon my performance. It was not until after our afternoon round, when I had to go off and settle for the caddies and the two children were trying out their putts all over again on the last green, that she and Fair were left alone.

You know what these small club-houses are, with wooden walls as thin as paper. I was in the dressing-room changing my shoes when I heard Vera's voice through the partition. She was in the adjoining card-room and Fair was with her: I recognized his grating laugh.

"I certainly shan't answer any such question," she was saying. "I've paid you what I owe, haven't I? If you don't mind, we'll leave it at that."

"I'm not going into it all over again, I tell you...." Suddenly her voice broke off on a short gasp. "You...you found it, then?"

"Why didn't you hand it over the same as the others did?" I heard Vera ask tensely. "You saw what a state my husband was in. If it's a joke, I don't think it's a very good one."

"Ah, but it isn't a joke, my dear Vera. You see, I know something about pearls..."

"Nothing. Only I really believe one will have to tell our good Paul what one thinks of a man who palms off a string of fake pearls on his wife as a wedding present and pretends they're real."

"You'll say nothing to my husband, do you hear? What's it got to do with you if I care to let him think the pearls are real? It's only for a little time anyway. Come on, Julius, don't play the fool! Give me that pearl. You're not to put it back in your pocket, do you hear? Oh!"

There was a sound like a sob through the match-boarding. Then I heard Fair's voice again, this time very sleek: "You be reasonable and I'll be reasonable. You're quite right. There's no reason why Paul should know anything about it. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'm always asking you up to my flat but you always refuse. Come and have tea with me at Mount Street to-morrow afternoon and you shall have the pearl back. And we'll see if we can't get the real string back as well, eh, little woman?"

I crawled to the bar. I am exceedingly moderate in my use of alcohol as a rule, but I don't mind admitting that I had two gin and Its in rapid succession. That's the trouble with me. I'm too soft-hearted: I'm always prone to let other people's troubles affect me.

III

I DROVE the party home in an exceedingly disturbed frame of mind. I believe I am a just man, and, look at it as I would, I could not see that the affair was any concern of mine. After all, since Vera had chosen to marry Paul, her proper counsellor was her husband; it would be a quite uncalled-for proceeding on my part to interfere. It was clear to me what had happened. I knew that Vera sometimes indulged in a small flutter on the Stock Exchange—I remembered she and Paul having a bit of a row about it once when they were dining with me in town. Obviously she had got in deep, had not dared to tell her husband—my hat, and no wonder!—had borrowed the ready from her friend, Fair, and popped her pearls to pay him back. If I were to mention the matter to Vera, I was well aware what would follow. With her usual directness she would instantly propose that I should advance her the money to redeem the necklace. Now, although I don't do too badly at the Chancery Bar, I couldn't for the life of me see why I should let myself in for a considerable outlay—a question of several hundred pounds, I dare say—merely for the pleasure of extricating Paul Cartwright from his difficulties—for that was what it really amounted to. All the way back to the Clock House I cursed my folly in not having shut my ears to that infernal conversation from the start.

At tea, after tea, and all through dinner Paul talked incessantly about the missing pearl. With his usual naïveté, it didn't seem to have occurred to him to suspect any one of appropriating it. His pet theory, to which he kept reverting, was that it had slipped through a crack in the flooring, and he asked each of us in turn whether we thought the insurance company would insist on tearing the boards up. I kept an eye on Fair and Vera while all this was going on. Fair never budged a muscle, and Vera played up devilish well too, I must say. But when we sat down to bridge after dinner she said she had a headache and went off to bed. I couldn't help feeling sorry for her, she looked sort of lonely and wistful, but there, I felt I had not the right to share with her a secret she was keeping from her husband. Our bridge was not a great success. Hillingdon, who is insufferably conceited about his game, took upon himself to lecture me upon a lead of mine, and we had quite a breeze about it, while Paul, having exhausted the subject of the missing pearl, was unusually glum; it occurred to me that he and Vera had not made up their tiff about her staying out for lunch.

Anyway, we separated early and went upstairs in a body. Paul and I and Fair had rooms on the same corridor, Paul in the room next to his wife, then myself, while Fair was on the other side of the landing. The others were on the next floor. As the three of us separated on our floor, Julius Fair held out his hand to me to say good-night. In friendship for Vera I felt bound to ignore it.

I like to be honest with myself and I have set down quite frankly the grounds which decided me to refrain from offering Vera advice in her dilemma. But, while it is easy to put these things down in black and white, it is deuced difficult to live up to them, especially when one is naturally soft-hearted. Positively, the thought of the mess into which poor old Vera had landed herself prevented me from sleeping. The worried look in her eyes when we had said good-night a few hours before haunted me, and I actually began to wonder whether I should be justified in tackling Fair myself and demanding the unconditional surrender of the pearl.

I cannot say how long I had been trying to get off to sleep—the house, at any rate, seemed sunk in slumber—when I heard a loud crash. It was a heavy bump and a loudish smash as though some one had collided with a wash-stand. In a moment I was out of bed, and snatching up my dressing-gown, opened the door and peered out. At the same moment the door next to mine opened and Paul popped his head out.

"Did you hear a noise?" he demanded. "Burglars, what? Wait, I've got a revolver in my dressing-case. I'll...."

He broke off, for at that moment the door across the landing opened and Vera came out. On catching sight of Paul, who stood out in the middle of the corridor staring at her, she faltered and stopped. Then she glanced over her shoulder, and I saw that Fair, in a simply fearful silk dressing-gown, had followed her.

Paul said: "Good God, Vera, what do you think you're doing? What's happened, anyway?"

Vera did not speak, but her eyes were piteous. She was wearing a white kimono sort of thing, and her face was as pale as her wrap.

"But what were you doing in old Julius's room?" Paul demanded. "Is he ill or something?" His eye fell upon Fair, who, you can believe me or not, looked like something out of Scheherazade in that positively ear-splitting robe de chambre of his. "Has the ceiling fallen in in your room, or what?" Then, seeing that Fair remained as dumb as Vera, he pushed past the two of them and glanced into the room.

"The water-jug has been knocked over," said Paul, coming back. "That was obviously the crash we heard." He turned to Fair. "Would you mind telling me what's happened?"

A single electric bulb burned above our heads. Fair's yellow face was singularly unpleasant in its dim ray. "You'd better ask Mrs. Cartwright," he retorted insolently.

On that he glanced round quickly to where Vera stood. It seemed as if only now he perceived that she was deathly white and trembling. I never had much opinion of Paul Cartwright's intelligence; but I must say I was staggered to find how extraordinarily slow his brain was to remark anything suspicious in his wife being discovered in another man's bedroom in the middle of the night.

But now, of a sudden, his face grew troubled. And I felt that the time had come for me to speak. "Paul," I said, "I think I can explain this. Come in here for a moment!" And I pushed open the first door handy to my touch—it was the door of Paul's bedroom. Vera followed us in.

"Paul," I began, soothingly, you know—I wanted to break it gently to him—"you mustn't think that Fair is Vera's lover. I can tell you why she went to his room to-night." I turned to Vera, who was watching my face wide-eyed. "Open your hand, Vera." As she did not obey I drew forth her left hand, which she held clenched behind her, and opened her unresisting fingers. Something white and shining lay in the palm. "There's the missing pearl. Fair found it and refused to give it back, so Vera went to his room to-night to fetch it. Isn't that it, Vera?"

"Yes," she said rather breathlessly. "I got the pearl all right: it was in the pocket of his dress waistcoat. But then in the dark the sleeve of my kimono caught the handle of the water-jug and pulled it over, and Julius woke up and, oh, Paul darling, I've been such an utter little fool."

Even that failed to shake the simpleton out of his imbecile calm. He only put his arm about his wife's shoulder and patted it while he said to me: "But why on earth should Julius want to stick to one of her pearls?"

It was Vera who answered him, Vera, looking particularly lovely, with the tears streaming down her face as she clung to his neck. "The string I broke last night was false," she sobbed. "I pawned the others for £200 to pay back a loan I had from Julius. The bulls or bears or some one in the City did something to some gramophone shares I had and they went down and down and the brokers pressed me for this money, so I borrowed it from Julius. Then he kept pestering me, and to shut him up I pledged my pearls and paid him. When the false string broke last night he kept back one of the pearls and threatened to tell you what I'd done if I didn't go to his fiat in town to-morrow...."

Paul heard her in silence to the end, then said, very quietly, "Wait!" and disentangled himself from her embrace. "I just want a word with Fair." He left the room.

When he had gone I gave Vera a kindly look: I expected her to thank me for my intervention. But I saw her with her eyes shining and her face, still wet with tears, rather pink as it is when she is angry. "You overheard our conversation at the golf club, wasn't that it? And you call yourself a friend of mine!"

"My dear Vera," I answered with quiet dignity, "I had no choice. I had to tell Paul. Otherwise, God knows what he might not have thought."

"You always had a nasty mind, George," she had the nerve to retort. "I won't attempt to make you understand that Paul is incapable of suspecting me of what you mean. I wouldn't have minded if you'd gone to Paul and told him about the pearls: sooner or later I'd have made a clean breast of the whole thing to him myself. What I can't get over is that you knew that this horrible little rat was trying to blackmail me and you did nothing."

Paul spared me the trouble of rebutting this most intemperate and unjust attack by reappearing. "Our friend Fair seems to keep his ear very close to the ground," he remarked. "He's gone!" He looked me up and down with a truculent air: I had an uneasy feeling that he might have overheard Vera's last words to me. "I hate to detain you, George," he went on. "But it'll be light in an hour, and at this time of the morning you'll have a nice clear run back to town."

I give you my solemn oath, I am quoting his exact words. Without boasting, I think I may say I carried off a difficult situation very well. "Am I to understand that you have so far forgotten the common courtesies of life as to request me to leave your house?" I asked.

On that he pulled open the bedroom door. "Now," he said. And with a cheap attempt at humour he added: "Don't dawdle over your dressing. The corridor window is open and there's a privet hedge immediately underneath."

Of course, I could not let it go at that. I was mentally framing a cutting rejoinder when Vera broke in. Vera, whom I had known since she was a schoolgirl, the woman to whom that very night I had rendered such a signal service, did not scruple to associate herself with this oaf's vulgar demonstration.

"Paul," she cried, "he was my friend. I made you have him here. Before he goes I want to apologize to you for introducing him. Ever since I married you he has done everything in his power to belittle you to me, to humiliate you in my eyes, because he's mean, and petty, and spiteful, just a blob of selfishness. I hate myself for being such a rotten little coward about the pearls, but I hate myself a hundred times worse for compelling you to associate with a wretched worm who isn't fit to black your boots."

To such a disgraceful onslaught withdrawal is the only effective rejoinder. Without a word I walked to the door. But those two could not even wait to be alone before falling into one another's arms: I verily believe they had forgotten all about me. As I passed out of the bedroom he was murmuring: "Dear heart, what do any pearls matter compared with you? You're the only pearl of price that means anything to me. I only want you to be happy, don't you know that by this time?" and she was repeating, over and over again, "Darling, darling!" and kissing him. Ugh! Anyway, I filled up the car on old Paul's petrol.

AT THE SHRINE OF SEKHMET

"THE power of the gods of old Egypt?" said my friend Finucane, his dreamy blue eyes puckered up beneath his sun-helmet against the fierce glare of the Theban valley. "I wouldn't be sneezin' at it meself!"

Squatting back on my hunkers on the precipitate slope overlooking the terraced temple of Queen Hatshepsut, I laughed in his face.

"Man alive," I scoffed, "you aren't going to tell me that, with twenty years of Egyptian excavation behind you, you believe in the power of hawk-headed Horus and cow-headed Hathor and jackal-headed Anubis and all the mumbo-jumbo menagerie of ancient Egyptian pantheism?"

"Kindly gods," said he, "who derived their image from the familiar beasts of the thousands of years of the isolated civilization of the Nile valley. And why wouldn't these simple-minded children of the sun worship the cow that gave them milk or the beautiful little sparrow-hawk—there was one over us but a minute since, did ye see him?—because they knew and loved them, or the alligator or the lioness because they feared them. Ya, Abdul Hussein!" he roared, and suddenly struggled to his legs, six feet of burly, bronzed, and grizzled humanity in a khaki shirt and riding-breeches.

Below us on the hillside hung a dense whirling cloud of dust. In and out of it, to a chant intoned in the high quavering falsetto that is Arabic singing and taken up with a crashing choir of voices in unison, a never-ending chain of little white-clad figures passed. In the foreground, up to their waists in the broken limestone rubble, three brawny men, the sweat glistening on their swarthy faces, scrabbled furiously with short-handled hoes in the ground, one digging, the remaining two filling the little wicker baskets which the chain of natives dumped empty at their feet and whisked away as soon as they were filled.

A burly, mustachioed figure, barefoot like the rest, stood over against the diggers watching with hawklike eye the debris that rattled into the baskets. Now and then he would stoop and pick out a fragment of coloured plaster, a scrap of crumbling timber, or maybe a mummified hand or foot, and lay it on one side. In his hairy fist he grasped a piece of wood to which a leather flap was nailed, and from time to time he would bring this improvised scourge down with a resounding whack upon the fluttering garments of the basket boys. Then would the endless chain move faster and the dust-cloud whirl higher, its edges gilded by the burning Egyptian sun, and all the way down the slope the childish voices rang in accord.

"In the heat of the day I grieve"—the nasal tremolo of the cantor rose clear above the perpetual shuffle of naked feet upon the stones. "My sweetheart has left me!" the chain volleyed back, their voices echoing far and wide across the broad brown valley swimming in the haze at the foot of the beetling, round-topped cliffs. "With heavy heart I toil at the water-hoist," whined the soloist. "My sweetheart has left me!" the chain replied.

"Make 'em dig in, not down," shouted Finucane in guttural Arabic, with an imperious gesture of the hand.

"Every five minutes, Lord, I do so command them," the headman replied, "but, behold, they dig as though their fathers were buried below!"

"Oh, children of the house-dog, whose mothers were shamed in the market-place..."

From my friend's lips poured a stream of invective, one of those objurgations in Arabic in which every word is a burning insult, coined and tested and put into circulation through centuries of blood-feuds and brawling, phrases that drive the blood to the temples and a man's hand to his cudgel or knife. Beneath their white flowing robes I saw the diggers' shoulders move uneasily as the torrent of abuse struck them, half-growled, half-barked with those coughing aspirates that in Arabic come from the chest. At last, with a flash of white teeth, they turned and grinned their slow admiration at Finucane, delight in his rich and rare vocabulary, pride in a master who could talk down any effendi from Luxor to Al Masr. "Etta! (Get on with it!") Finucane concluded, and dropped once more to the ground at my side.

"But you haven't answered my question," I said, leaning back lazily and surveying the kites that hung almost motionless in the azure sky high above the rugged valley. "What makes you believe in the power of Egypt's ancient gods?"

"When first I came out to Egypt," he began, "—'twould be a matter of nineteen years ago now—to dig with Professor Vandeleur over at the tombs of the Nobles, there was a fellow I met at th' hotel at Luxor—his name is neither here nor there but, if ye like, I'll call him Donald Stewart. My old Professor caught the diphtheria journeyin' out through Italy the way I was left kickin' my heels down at Luxor for the best part of a month. I made friends with this same Stewart, d'ye see? and 'twas he gave me the story I'm tellin' ye now.

He was a chap no better than the rest of us, a big fellow and in good trim, with a bit of a way with the women, I should say, and burnt as brown as a berry with the sun. Stayin' in th' hotel—in those days there was no Winter Palace with terraces and lifts and the Lord knows what else, but we were all mighty happy in th' old Karnak Hotel—stayin' in th' hotel, I'm sayin', there was a little lady, the sweetest, prettiest little woman ever. If I tell you I've forgotten her name, it's God's own truth, but we'll call her Mary Barton an' no harm done.

She was married; but her husband was back home—a stockbroker he was, I think she told us, a wealthy man he would have been, for she dressed exquisitely, and of an evenin' she'd be wearin' the matter of four thousand pounds' worth of pearls round her white neck. She was not what ye'd call a woman of fashion, ye understand me? for ye'd never hardly notice what she'd got on. But everything she wore suited her, an' sweet as a bride she always looked.

Nineteen years is a good slice out of a man's life, my friend, but now as I sit here I can see Mary Barton as clearly as I see you. She was one of the quiet sort, not flirtatious, very content to be alone, happy with the sunshine and the flowers and all the life of the Nile spread out in front of the pergola where she liked to sit under the orange trees in th' hotel garden. She had beautiful soft thick brown hair which she wore braided very simply close to her head—the women hadn't yet thought of clippin' their hair to their scalps to look like boys—and there was a kind of gentle restfulness in her eyes that would always put me in mind of the sun risin' over Killarney. She would sit with me sometimes of an afternoon and tell me of her life back home. She'd had pneumonia, it seemed, and, her lungs bein' left weak, the doctors had sent her away to spend the winter out of England.

Everybody in th' hotel liked her; but Donald Stewart most of all. She had got a whole collection of books on Egyptology, and every day Stewart—he was a student of Egyptology, did I tell ye? the same as meself—would take her across the river in th' hotel felucca and away they'd hack on donkeys to the Ramesseum or Medinet Habu or the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. He was a knowledgeable chap was Stewart, and what woman wouldn't rather have as a guide a fine upstandin' young fellow who knows his subject than one of your damned dragomans with half a dozen words of broken English and a permanent itch in the palm?

'Twas old Lazenby, him that published the Papyrus of the High Priest Senubbeb—ye don't know him? well, he was out copyin' inscriptions in the rock-tombs of Qurna at the time—'twas old Jack Lazenby, I say, that first drew my attention to what was goin' on. We were sittin' out in th' hotel garden at sundown one evenin', Mrs. Barton and Jack and I, talkin' about the very subject that brought down this yarn of mine upon you—the power of the old gods of Egypt.

'They must have been a very religious people, the ancient Egyptians,' says little Mrs. Barton, 'with these magnificent temples to Amon-Ra and Hathor and all the rest of their gods.'

'Religious be damned!' old Jack tells her. 'They were the lads for satisfyin' the outward form all right. But the gods they feared were not the big official fellows but the evil ones like Sekhmet, the lioness-headed goddess of war and violence, or the tortoise god, or one of those deities of the underworld. You may believe it or not, but to this very day the women of the fellahin take their troubles to the goddess Sekhmet. Back there at Karnak, in the recesses of the temple of Ptah, who, ye may know, was husband to this same Sekhmet, there's a little small shrine with a grim grey image of the goddess in granite, a black an' ghostly place with ne'er a ray of light save only when the moon is full and its rays fall through one of the four narrow funnels cut in the roof. To this same shrine the peasant women of Egypt still come in pilgrimage to pray the goddess to give them a son or to ask for a love-spell to win back their husband's heart. Faith,' says Jack, 'there's something eerie about the place. I went there one night with a woman friend o' mine when I was a good piece younger than I am to-day, and what with the moonlight and the face of that cruel image peerin' at us out of the dark, bedam! the girl got quite hysterical!'

That set little Mrs. Barton off at once. Ye know the way women are, always plumb crazy for a fresh sensation.

'Oh, but how thrilling!' she says. An' she would have nothin' but that old Jack should take her out to Karnak to the shrine of Sekhmet. 'In two days 'tis the full moon,' says she. ''Twill be so romantic! Promise you'll take me, Mr. Lazenby!'

'I'll do nothin' of the kind,' growled old Jack. 'For all I know you'd pray the goddess to put a charm on me and I'd be fallin' in love with you the same as iv'ry other man in th' hotel!'

While he was speakin' I was watchin' Mary Barton, and suddenly her face changed. It was as though her features were flooded with light. Her lips parted, her eyes brightened and the very breath in her body seemed to quicken. I looked up and saw Stewart standin' behind my chair.

'Mrs. Barton,' says he, I've found what I think is a genuine scarab of Queen Hatshepsut. Old Mohasseb is keepin' it for you. Will you come along to the shop an' see it?'

The light was fallin' fast, but in the after-glow of the settin' sun I saw the look she gave him and so did Jack. They went away together, her with her white frock flashin' in and out the palms, and before they were fairly out of our sight she had her arm in his.

'That's Egypt!'—and old Jack, who'd known the country for the best part of thirty years, gave his white poll a shake. 'There's witchery in the air. That nice woman's in love. He's a friend of yours, Finucane. Best tell him to go easy!'

As things turned out I had no need to tell him, for that night, as we walked out along the river-bank in front of the Luxor temple, Stewart gave me his confidence. I had just said I would turn in, for midnight was long past, and I asked Stewart was he comin' along?

'And what use is my bed to me?' he bursts out as though the words were chokin' him, 'when I hardly close my eyes all night. Finucane,' he says, 'I've not known you long but I like you and I've got to give somebody my confidence. Tell me, what is a man to do that falls in love with a married woman?'

Bedad, if he'd asked me that twenty years later I could have told him. But I was young then and raw.

'She's happily married,' says he. 'For ever she's tellin' me about her husband and her babies. She likes me as a friend, she's said so, but my God! what good is that to me? Night and day,' says he, 'I get no rest for the love that is in me for her. Her face haunts me; but it's her sweetness won't let me be. There's about her a fragrance that fills me with delight like the freshness of the forest after the rain,' says he. 'And to think that every day, every minute that we stand here and talk, is bringin' us nearer to the day that we must part, to the day that she must go back to the arms of her husband, while I...'

He broke off short and stared out across the river and the hills beyond all black under the stars.

'Have you told her any of this?' I asked, thinkin' of that look I had seen her give him.

But you know how 'tis with good advice, my friend, and two evenin's later I was not in the least surprised to see Stewart and the little lady pass me in a carriage goin' down the Karnak road."

A gust of hot wind came swooping across the valley, driving before it a tall pillar of dust. The hanging cloud enveloping the diggers swelled and grew denser; but out of the greyness the voices still resounded.

"And then?" I asked, for Finucane had grown silent, staring out of his blue eyes at the narrow blue riband of river winding its way through the verdant belt at our feet.

"Stewart meant to follow my advice," he resumed. "He told me so. But look what tricks that old devil Fate plays us poor mortals! The next day Mrs. Barton came to him and begged him to take her out to Karnak by moonlight to visit the shrine of Sekhmet. He told her he couldn't, that he had to go to Cairo; but she said he must postpone his departure for twenty-four hours, for she'd rather visit Karnak by moonlight with him than with anybody else.

Stewart stood firm and for a whole day they didn't meet. But he didn't go away. And then the next evenin' she came to him in the garden before dinner as he was smokin' his pipe alone under the stars and asked him what had she done that he was avoidin' her. And Stewart forgot everything but that he wanted to make her happy, and he caught her hands and told her that, if she wanted, he would take her to Karnak that very night. And she left her hands just long enough in his to show him that he was forgiven, and with that he was away to the maître d'hôtel orderin' a cold supper and a bottle of bubbley in an ice-pail to be put into a carriage at once.

Off they went with the risin' of the moon to sup together atop of the Great Pylon with the moon castin' great black shadows athwart the columns of the Hippostyle Hall below and in the distance the jackals howlin' on the banks of the Sacred Lake. She was tender and kind to him that night. She never talked about her husband or her babies, but made him tell her about himself and the women he had loved; and they discussed life and love and where real happiness lies and—and all the damned nonsense that a couple of young fools whose world is not thirty years old find to tell one another under a great yellow lamp of a moon hangin' in a night as soft and warm as a June day at home.

They had a snug little supper together there on the Pylon, Stewart said, chattin' away like old friends; for he had made up his mind, d'ye see? to hide his heart from her. When their meal was done he took her arm to lead her down the broken stair, for it was dark in the shadow of the great gate. The moon was so bright and the columns loomed so huge that they felt quite awed, and made their way in silence through the pillared hall with the sky like a spangled canopy above their heads.

Maybe that was why she left her arm in his as they walked slowly through the Temple of Amon, and him with the blood poundin' at his temples and his heart burstin' with his love for her. He could not speak and he dared not look at her; for the warmness of her arm in her thin muslin dress against his sleeve sent the nerves tinglin' up and down the body of him, and for nothin' at all he'd have taken her in his arms and crushed her to his heart.

And so they came to the shrine of Sekhmet. Ye know it perhaps? across a little court it lies next to the sanctuary of Ptah. One of the temple watchmen with a lantern appeared as they came up, but Stewart gave him a five-piastre piece and ordered him to stay back. The fellow was swallowed up in the black shadows cast by the columns, and alone the pair of them entered the shrine.

Jack Lazenby was right; 'tis an awful eerie place, a small little room as black as be damned, very plain, with walls of stone blocks and a high roof. There against the end wall, facin' you as you come in, is the statue of the goddess. Four funnels there are, set in a square in the roof, as it might be so many traps to catch the moonbeams, and on this night, bedad, a single shaft of brilliant white light fell full on the face of the goddess. There she was standin' with her lioness's head crowned with the sun-disc and the royal cobra rearin' its head between the pointed ears, with her small relentless eyes and blunt broad nose and whiskered mouth fleshin' her cruel teeth. Taller than Stewart she stood, and he six foot three in his socks, with the ends of her royal head-dress restin' on the points of her small tight breasts, long-limbed beneath her close-fittin' tunic, the left foot advanced, her left hand graspin' the lotus-headed sceptre, her right the key of life. She was all grey with the greyness of granite, grey and—and threatenin' with the moon-rays wakin' the wicked stony eyes of her into life.

As she caught sight of the image across the room Mary Barton gasped once. Then she dropped Donald Stewart's arm and walked up to the image and laid her hand on the cold grey hand that held the sceptre. She bent forward until the shaft of light that poured through the openin' in the roof fell upon her face.

Stewart, who stood just behind her, saw her eyes glitter in the moon-ray. She shivered a little and drew back, then turnin', she looked at Stewart and their eyes met.

'I'm...I'm frightened...' she began, and stretched out her hand. Roughly he grasped it, and the next moment she was in his arms.

'Mary, my love,' he cried, and 'Donald, my dear, my dear,' she gave him back, and there in the shadow, just clear of the moonbeam that bathed the face of the goddess with its radiance, they kissed.

But as she lay in his arms suddenly she felt his grasp go limp. Brusquely he whipped one hand away, and as in hurt surprise she gazed up into his face she saw pain and—and terror deepen in his eyes. He was starin' fixedly at the face of the goddess behind her, pointin' with the hand that he had torn away. She swung round in time to see a long black form writhin' back into the shadows behind the image.

'A cobra,' he said, and extended his left hand. There on the edge of the palm just below the little finger two ruby drops of blood stood out. 'One would say,' he added drowsily, 'that Sekhmet had sent him along to save you, Mary.' With that he would have collapsed but she ran him out into the air, screamin', screamin', while th' inscrutable eyes of Sekhmet gazed after them across the darkness of the shrine."

Finucane stopped. His pipe had gone out, so he tapped it against a stone and thrust it into the pocket of his dusty jacket.

"I've heard that there were snakes in the temple," I remarked, "but I never knew of one attacking a man before. And Stewart, did he die?" for I knew something of the swift and deadly effect of cobra-bite.

"He did not," my friend replied. "Suppin' in the ruins not far away was a party of Americans with a bottle of whisky. They made Stewart drink the three-quarters of it, then rushed him back to th' hotel, where the doctor operated at once. 'Twas a closeish call; but he was a healthy young fellow and he got over it."

"Bedad, she did what I advised Stewart to do—she up and ran for it. As soon as Stewart was out of danger, and that was the next day—ye know, it's quick kill or cure in these cases—she left th' hotel without seein' him and, as far as I know, he never set eyes on her again."

"Poor devil!" he remarked musingly, in his gentle Irish sing-song. "He took it damned hard!"

He fell into a reminiscent silence. From the slope below the chant of the diggers rose to our ears.

"My heart, it is dead within me: never more shall I gaze into the burning eyes of my beloved!"—high-pitched and nasal, dwelling vibratingly on each note, the canticle of the coryphaeus floated up to us on the hillside.

"My sweetheart has left me!" the scurrying chain sent its eternal answer back.

"Damn it!" he cried irascibly, "how this dust makes the eyes smart!" He put down his big brown hand beside me to raise himself up. On the edge of the palm, just below the little finger, I saw two violet punctures with a long white cicatrice running between.

THE END