Title: The Mysterious Three
Author: Le Queux, William, 1864-1927
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.


*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Mysterious Three" ***


The Mysterious Three, by William Le Queux.

________________________________________________________________________



________________________________________________________________________
THE MYSTERIOUS THREE, BY WILLIAM LE QUEUX.

CHAPTER ONE.

CONCERNS A VISITOR.

"Do you know a Mr. Smithson, Gwen?"  Sir Charles Thorold asked his wife
abruptly as he stood astride before the big fire in the hall.

"Smithson?"  Lady Thorold answered as she poured out the tea.  "No.  Who
is he?"

"I have no idea.  Never heard of him."

Then, addressing the butler, Sir Charles asked anxiously--

"Did he leave a card, James?"

"No, Sir Charles.  He asked to see you--or her ladyship."

"Or me?"  Lady Thorold exclaimed.  "Why, how very mysterious.  What was
he like?"

"A tall, powerfully-built man, m'lady."

"A gentleman?"

"M'yes, m'lady.  He came in a car."

As James said this in his grave, solemn way, I saw Vera Thorold's eyes
twinkle with amusement.  For Sir Charles's only child possessed that
gift rare in a woman--a sense of humour.

"You are sure you have the name right?"  Thorold said, after a moment's
pause.

"Quite, Sir Charles.  I think he was not going to give his name, as you
were out.  I asked him what name, and he seemed to hesitate, then he
said: `Oh, say Mr. Smithson called, Sir Charles knows me,' and then he
seemed to smile, Sir Charles."

"He seemed to smile.  I wonder why?"

His master turned to Lady Thorold.

"What do you make of it, Gwen?"

"I make nothing of it," replied his wife.  "Is it some friend of yours,
Vera?"

"Mother, how ridiculous," the girl exclaimed; "as if I should have a
friend called `Smithson'!"

"Pardon me, Sir Charles, but--" broke in the butler.

"Well, what?"

"There is a portrait of him in the morning-room."

"A portrait?" gasped his master.  "A portrait of Smithson!  Then why the
deuce didn't you say so before!  Which is it?  I should really like to
know."

"There are so many portraits in the morning-room," Lady Thorold
interrupted, "we had better go in, and James will show us which it is.
He may have mistaken the name, after all."

We all got up from tea in the hall, made our way to the drawing-room,
and thence into the morning-room, which opened out of it.  There was
plenty of daylight still.  James came in after us, and went straight up
to a framed panel portrait which stood with others on a small table in a
remote corner.  It showed a tall handsome, clean-shaved man of three or
four and thirty, of fine physique, seated astride a chair, his arms
folded across the back of the chair as he faced the camera.

"This is the one, Sir Charles," the butler said, pointing to it.

I distinctly saw Lady Thorold give a start.  Sir Charles, tanned though
his face was by wind and sun, turned quite pale.  Vera, who was standing
by me at the moment, suddenly gripped my arm, I think unconsciously.  As
I glanced down at her I noticed that her eyes were set upon her mother.
They had in them an expression of deep anxiety, almost of terror.  Sir
Charles was the first to recover his composure.

"Oh--that one," he exclaimed slowly, with a forced laugh.  "Then there
is no mystery at all.  His giving the name `Smithson' was of course his
joke.  Now we know why he smiled.  Thank you, James.  You can go."

I confess that I was puzzled.  Indeed, I felt greatly mystified, and to
some extent perturbed.  I knew quite well by my host's tone and manner
and by the look in Lady Thorold's eyes, perhaps most of all by that
squeeze Vera had unconsciously given my arm, that all three had received
some very unpleasant, apparently some terrible shock.  But why?  And
what could have caused it?  Who was that big man whose portrait stood
framed there?  What was his name?  Why had he called himself "Smithson"?
What was the mystery concerning him in relation to my hosts, or the
mystery concerning my hosts in relation to him?  My curiosity was keenly
aroused.

I don't think I am likely ever to forget that date--Wednesday, February
5, 1911, for it marks the beginning of a train of events so remarkable,
I would call it amazing only I am not addicted to talking in
superlatives.  Yet I do assure you that I in no way exaggerate, and that
the story I am about to tell is but a record of bare facts.

That February morning was quite bright and balmy, I remember it because
it was the first day of the Waterloo Cup meeting.  Rather warm, indeed,
for hunting, and at the meet and the coverside the scraps of
conversation one overheard referred chiefly to a big ball at Oakham.

Hounds had not been thrown into Colly Weston Wood more than a quarter of
an hour when a piercing "View Holloa" echoed through the wood, and a
long, lean, yellow-bodied fox broke away not two hundred yards from the
spot where the majority of the field sat waiting on their impatient,
fidgety mounts, and with a single glance behind him at the mottled pack
streaming out of the cover in full cry, crossed a ploughed field, popped
through a hedge and disappeared.

A few moments later came the usual wild stampede, and in less than a
minute hounds and horses were fast disappearing in the distance, the
music of the flying pack growing rapidly fainter in the distance.

By a singular stroke of ill-luck--or so I thought it then--I had got
left.  I had set my horse at a treacherous stake-and-wattle fence,
hoping thus to steal a march on the rest of the field galloping wildly
for a couple of open gates.  My horse had blundered, I daresay partly
through my fault, and had staked himself, though only slightly.  To cut
a long story short, my day's amusement was over, for, after doing what I
could to staunch the bleeding, I had to lead the poor beast all the way
home to Houghton Park, a distance of at least eight miles.

Naturally I expected to be home long before my host, Sir Charles
Thorold, and his wife and daughter, for as I entered the Park gates,
with my lame animal crawling slowly after me, it was barely three
o'clock.  I was a good deal surprised, therefore to see Sir Charles and
the two coming along another of the Park roads, and not a hundred yards
away from me.  They had entered by another gate.

"Hello, Ashton!"  Thorold called out to me cheerily.  "Why, where have
you been, and what is amiss?"

I explained as soon as we were all together, and he sympathised.  So did
Miss Thorold.  She was genuinely sorry I had missed the really splendid
run.

"We all missed our second horses," she added, "and our animals were so
dead beat that we decided to come home, though hounds were, I believe,
going to draw again."

Her sympathy soothed me a good deal, for I think that even then I was in
love with the tall, graceful, fair-haired girl who, on horseback, looked
so perfectly bewitching.  The exercise, the fresh air and the excitement
of the morning's sport had combined to give a colour to her cheeks and
to impart a singular brightness to her eyes that together enhanced her
quite exceptional loveliness.

Though I could remember her as a child, I had not seen her for eleven
years until a fortnight previously, her father had invited me to
Houghton Park, in Rutland.  He had invited me the previous year, but on
that occasion Vera had been away in Switzerland.

We had got rid of our muddy hunting kit, indulged in hot baths, and,
feeling delightfully clean and comfortable and at peace with all the
world, were at tea in the great hall of Houghton, a fine, many-gabled
country mansion, with rows of twisted chimneys said to date back to a
period of Elizabeth, when James the butler, calm and stately--I can see
him still--had walked in his slow, dignified manner into the hall, to
tell Sir Charles that "a gentleman had called shortly before he
returned," a gentleman named Smithson.

We went back to the big oak-panelled hall to finish our tea, and though
Sir Charles and Lady Thorold made light of the incident, and quickly
changed the subject of conversation, the entire "atmosphere" seemed
somehow different.  Our relations appeared suddenly to have become quite
strained.

Half an hour later I found Vera in the library.  I had noticed that,
since our return downstairs, my presence had been distasteful to her--or
at least I thought so.

She was seated on a big settee, near the fire, pretending to read a
newspaper, but her fingers twitched nervously, and presently I saw one
hand squeeze the paper convulsively.

I tossed away my cigarette, and crossed over to her.

"Vera," I said in a low tone, "tell me what is amiss.  What has
happened? why do you look so worried?"

We were alone, and the door was closed.

She looked up, and her eyes met mine.  Her lips parted as if she were
about to speak, then they shut tightly.  Suddenly she bit her lip, and
her big, expressive eyes filled with tears.

"Vera," I said very gently, sinking down beside her, for I felt a
strange affinity between us--an affinity of soul, "What is it?  What's
the matter?  Tell me, dear.  I won't tell a soul."

I couldn't help it.  My arm stole round her waist and my lips touched
her cold forehead.  Had she sprung away from me, turned upon me with
flaming eyes and boxed my ears even, I should have been less surprised
than at what happened, for never before had I taken such a liberty.
Instead, she turned her pretty head, sank with a sigh upon my shoulder,
and an instant later her arms encircled my neck.  She was sobbing
bitterly, so terribly that I feared she was about to become hysterical.

"Oh, Mr. Ashton!" she burst out, "oh, if you only knew!"

"Knew what?"  I whispered.  "Tell me.  I won't breathe it to a single
living person."

"But that's it," she exclaimed as she still wept bitterly.  "I don't
know--but I suspect--I fear something so terribly, and yet I don't know
what it is!"

This was an enigma I had not looked for.

"What is going to happen?"  I asked, more to say something, anything,
than to sit there speechless and supine.

"If only I knew I would tell you," she answered between her sobs, "I
would tell you sooner than anybody because--oh, I love you so, I love
you so!"

I shall never forget how my heart seemed to spring within me at those
blessed words.

"Vera!  My darling!"

She was in my arms.  I was kissing her passionately.  Now I knew what I
had not before realised--I was desperately in love with Vera Thorold,
this beautiful girl with the wonderful, deep eyes and the glorious hair,
who when I had last seen her, had been still a child in short frocks,
though lovely then.

Footsteps were approaching.  Quickly we sprang apart as the door opened.

"Her ladyship wishes you to come at once, mademoiselle," said a voice in
the shadow in what struck me as being rather a disagreeable tone, with a
slightly foreign accent.  It was Judith, Lady Thorold's French maid.

Vera rose at once.  For a brief instant her eyes met mine.  Then she was
gone.

I sat there in the big book-lined room quite alone, smoking cigarette
after cigarette, wondering and wondering.  Who was "Smithson?"  What was
this strange, unexpected mystery?  Above all, what was this trouble that
Vera dreaded so, or was it merely some whim of her imagination?  I knew
her to be of a highly-strung, super-sensitive nature.

The big grandfather-clock away in a corner hissed and wheezed for some
moments, then slowly struck seven.  I waited for the dressing gong to
sound.  Usually James, or the footman, Henry, appeared as soon as the
clock had finished striking, and made an intolerable noise upon the
gong.  Five minutes passed, ten, fifteen.  Evidently the gong had been
forgotten, for Sir Charles dined punctually at the unfashionable hour of
half-past seven.  I rose and went upstairs to dress.

At the half-hour I came down and went towards the small drawing-room
where they always assemble before dinner.  To my surprise the room was
in darkness.

"Something seems to be amiss to-night," I remember saying mentally as I
switched on the light.  The domestic service at Houghton was habitually
like clockwork in its regularity.

A quarter to eight struck.  Eight o'clock!  I began to wonder if dinner
had been put off.  A quarter-past eight chimed out.

I went over to the fireplace and pressed the electric bell.  Nobody
came.  I pressed it again.  Finally I kept my finger pressed upon it.

This was ridiculous.  Thoroughly annoyed, I went into the dining-room.
It was in darkness.  Then I made my way out to the servants' quarters.
James was sitting in the pantry, in his shirt sleeves, smoking a cigar.
A brandy bottle stood upon the dresser, and a syphon, also a half-empty
tumbler.

"Is anything the matter, James?"  I asked, with difficulty concealing
the irritation I felt.

"Not as I know of," he answered in rather a rude tone.  I saw at once
that he had been drinking.

"At what time is dinner?"

"Dinner?"

He laughed outright.

"There ain't no dinner.  Why ain't you gone too?"

"Gone?  Where?"

"With Sir Charles and her ladyship and Miss Vera and Judith."

"I don't understand you.  What do you mean?"

"They went an hour ago, or more."

"Went where?"

"Oh, ask me another.  I don't know."

James in his cups was a very different person from sober, respectful,
deferential James.  And then it came back to me that, about an hour
before, I had heard a car going down the avenue, and wondered whose it
was.

The sound of loud, coarse laughter reached me from the kitchen.

"Well, all I says is it's a pretty state of things," a woman's high,
harsh voice exclaimed.  I think it was the cook's.  "Cleared and gone
with bags and baggage as if the devil hisself was after 'em."

"P'r'aps 'e is," a man's voice, that I recognised as Henry's, announced,
and again came peals of laughter.

This was a pleasant situation, certainly.  My hosts vanished.  The
butler drunk.  The servants apparently in rebellion!

Restlessly I paced the hall.  My thoughts always work quickly, and my
mind was soon made up.

First I went to the telephone, rang up the _Stag's Head Hotel_ in
Oakham, the nearest town--it was eight miles off--and asked the
proprietor, whom I knew personally, to send me out a car as quickly as
possible, also to reserve a room for me for the night.  Then I went into
the morning-room, tucked the big panel photograph, in its frame, under
my arm, took it up to my room, and deposited it in the bottom of my
valise.  As I finished packing my clothes and other belongings I heard
the car hooting as it came quickly up the long beech avenue leading from
the lodge-gates.

My valise was not heavy, and I am pretty strong.  Also I am not proud.
I lifted it on to my bed, crouched down, hoisted the valise on to my
back, as the railway porters do, carried it downstairs, and let the
driver have it.  He was a man I knew, and I noticed that he was
grinning.

"Taking physical exercise, sir?" he asked lightly.

"Yes," I answered, "it's better sport than foxhunting."

He laughed outright, then helped me into my overcoat.  A minute later we
were on the road to Oakham.

And all the while the sad face of the girl for whom I had that evening
declared my love--as I had last seen it, with her eyes set on mine as
though in mute appeal--kept rising before me like a vision.

CHAPTER TWO.

CONTAINS CERTAIN REVELATIONS.

Until lunch-time next day I remained in Oakham, not knowing what to do,
uncertain what steps to take.

I am a bachelor with a comfortable income, and, I am ashamed to say, an
idler.  Work never did really appeal to me.  I try to compensate for not
working by paying my taxes regularly and being as charitable as I can to
people I come across and like, and whom the world seems to treat
unjustly.

My father, Richard Ashton, was Colonel in the Blues.  I was his only
child, for my mother died in bringing me into the world to live at ease
and waste my time.  When my father died I found myself heir to a small
property in Rutland, which I promptly let, and One Hundred and Eighty
Thousand pounds safely invested--mostly in Consols.  Sport in general,
especially hunting and shooting, also reading, constitute my favourite
forms of recreation.  Generally I live in London, where I have a flat in
King Street, St. James's.

I don't remember what made me do it, but while lunching at the _Stag's
Head_ I decided that I would take the car out to Houghton Park again.  I
think I was curious to see if any fresh development had taken place
there.

Nobody answered my repeated rings at the front door, so I went round to
the back.  The door was locked.  I rang, and rang again, and knocked.
But nobody came.

I walked right round the house.  Every window was shut, and apparently
fastened.  The whole place was as still as death.  Then I went to the
stables.  I could hear the occasional rattle of a headstall chain, but
the horses were all locked in.

Having lit a cigar and told my driver to await my return, I sauntered
aimlessly up into the woods--Houghton Park is one of the most
beautifully wooded estates in Rutland, with a lake seven acres in extent
hidden away in a delightfully picturesque spot surrounded by pine-grown
hills.  Several times during the past fortnight I had rambled up into
these woods accompanied by Vera, and the association brought her back
into my thoughts with renewed vividness.  Where was she at that moment?
What was she doing?  Was she happy?  Had any evil befallen her?  When
should I hear of her again?  When should I see her?

These, and many other reflections, came crowding in confusion into my
brain.  What could be the meaning of this extraordinary mystery, so
suddenly created, so unexpected?  I had known Sir Charles and Lady
Thorold many years, in fact since I was a child.  For years they had
lived in London--in Belgravia.  Then, two years previously, they had
rented Houghton Park and come to live there.  The "County people" of
Rutland are perhaps as conservative as any in England, and, knowing
little about Sir Charles and Lady Thorold, who had received their title
through political influence before settling in that county, they had not
made haste to call.

As soon, however, as it had become known that the new arrivals were
extremely rich, also that Sir Charles meant to entertain largely, and
was going to hunt, and that the Houghton covers were to be well
preserved, the barriers of exclusiveness upon which the old families so
pride themselves, had been quickly swept away.

Somewhat out of breath after my slow climb up through the woods, I
rested at the top of the hill, from which a glorious view could be
obtained of the picturesque landscape of early spring, that unfolded
itself as far as sight could reach, a perfect panorama of our beautiful
English scenery that Americans so much admire, probably because it
affords so striking a contrast to their never-ending prairies and
gigantic mountains.  Upon the opposite side of the hill on which I
stood, deep down in a ravine thick with brambles and undergrowth, the
face of the placid lake glistened like a mirror between the budding
trees, sparkling here and there with a blinding brightness where the sun
shone straight upon it.

A pheasant springing into the air within a yard of me made me jump, and
brought my wandering thoughts quickly back to earth.  Why had I rambled
up here?  I could not say.  I had walked and climbed in a kind of dream,
so deeply was my mind engrossed with thoughts of what had happened and
with conjectures as to the future.  And now, unconsciously, my attention
gradually became centred upon the lake, or rather upon a
curious-looking, dark object among the weeds upon its surface, within a
stone's throw of the bank.

I glanced at my watch.  It was barely three o'clock.  I had nothing at
all to do, so decided to make my way down through the undergrowth and
find out what this strange object might be.

Yes, I had not been mistaken.  The first impression I had formed had
been the right one, though I had tried to persuade myself it could not
be.  I was standing on the bank now, not ten yards from the object, and
I could see distinctly what it was.  A human body, fully clothed, lay
there motionless--a man's body, face downward, the head almost
submerged.

My first thought was to plunge in and swim out to it and try to rescue
the drowning man.  But an instant's reflection caused me to refrain.
The man, whoever he was, must be dead.  He had been there a long time,
or the head would not have sunk, nor, indeed, would the body have
floated.

I made my way as quickly as I could along the footpath on the bank until
I reached the boathouse, a hundred yards away.  It was locked.  With a
big stone I shattered the padlock, and in a minute I was rowing towards
the body.

With some difficulty I succeeded in hitching the painter round the feet.
Having at last done so, I rowed back to the bank, towing the drowned
man.

And there I turned the body over.  It must have been in the water many
hours, probably all night, I saw at once.  And directly I saw the face I
recognised it, drawn and disfigured though it was.

The drowned man was Thorold's butler, James.

What had happened?  Had he fallen into the lake while under the
influence of drink?  Had he committed suicide?  Or had he--

Somehow this last reflection startled me.  Was it possible there had
been foul play?

I had to leave the body there, for I found it impossible to lift it on
to the bank without help.

"The great house," as the tenantry called it, was still locked when I
got back there.  Silence still reigned everywhere.  The driver of my
taxi was fast asleep on his seat.

When I prodded him with my stick he sat up with a start, and apologised.

"Get back to Oakham as quickly as you can," I said to him as I stepped
into the car and slammed the door.

He turned his starting handle without result.  He lifted the bonnet, and
for a long time examined the machinery.  Then, removing his coat, he
wormed himself underneath the car, lying flat upon his back.

When at last he emerged he was red in the face and perspiring freely.

"Oh, by the way, sir," he said suddenly, picking up his coat and
thrusting his hand into one of its pockets, "I think you dropped this."

As he stopped speaking he pulled his hand out and held out to me a
little silver flask about four inches square.

I took it, and examined it.

"This isn't mine," I said.  "Where did you find it?"

"Just there, sir," and he pointed to the ground beside the car.

When I looked at the flask again, I noticed that the tiny shield in the
middle was engraved.  The engraving was a cipher, which, on scrutinising
closely, I made out to be the letters "D.P." intertwined.

I unscrewed the stopper and smelt the contents.  The smell, though
peculiar, was not wholly unfamiliar.  Still, for the moment I could not
classify it.

"Didn't you drop it, sir?"

"No."

"Then perhaps I had better take it," and he held out his hand.

"No, I'll keep it--you needn't be anxious," I said.  "I have been
staying here, and probably it belongs to somebody in the house, or to
somebody who has called."

I fumbled in my pocket and produced two half-crowns, which at once
allayed any conscientious squeamishness afflicting the driver at the
thought of handing over his treasure-trove to a stranger.

But where was Vera?  Where, indeed, were the Thorolds?

The chauffeur continued to overhaul his engine and its complicated
mechanism.  While he was thus engaged I poured a little of the fluid out
of the flask, which was quite full.  The colour was a dark, transparent
brown, almost the shade of old brandy.  Somehow I could not help
thinking that this flask might--

And yet, why should it prove a clue?  What reason was there to suppose
it had been dropped by the strange visitor on the previous day, the
mysterious Smithson?

"Hullo, sir, this is curious!"

My driver was bending over the machinery he had been examining so
closely.  His hands, which had previously been in the gear-box resembled
a nigger's, only they looked more slimy.

"What is it?"  I asked, approaching him.

"The plugs have been tampered with.  No wonder she wouldn't start.
Look."

He was holding out a damaged sparking-plug.

I own a car and, being well acquainted with its intricacies, saw at once
that what he said was true.  Somebody--presumably while he was wandering
about the lawns and back premises--must have lifted the bonnet and
injured the plugs.  There was no other solution.  The car could not have
travelled out from Oakham, or travelled at all, had that damage been
done before.

We looked at each other, equally puzzled.

"You ain't been playing me a trick, sir?" he said suddenly, an
expression of mistrust coming into his eyes.

"Oh, don't be a fool!"  I answered irritably.

He turned sulky.

"Some one 'as, anyway," he grunted.  "And it's just a chance I've some
spare plugs with me."

He produced his tool-box, rummaged among its contents with his filthy
hands, discovered what he wanted, and adjusted them.  Then he shut down
the bonnet with a vicious bang and set his engine going.

He was about to step on to his seat, when simultaneously a sharp report
a good way off and the "zip" of a bullet close to us made us spring away
in alarm.

Together, without uttering a word, we gazed up towards the wood on the
hill, where the sound of the report had come from.

Another shot rang out.  This time the bullet shattered the car
headlight.

"Ah!  God!" the driver gasped.  "Help!  I--I--"

Poor fellow.  Those were his last words.  Almost as he uttered them
there came a third report, and the driver, shot through the head,
collapsed into a heap beside the car.

And then, what I saw as I turned sharply, sent a shiver through me.

I held my breath.  What further mystery was there?

Surely some great evil had fallen upon the house of the Thorolds.

CHAPTER THREE.

THE NAME OF "SMITHSON."

A man was kneeling, facing me, on the outskirts of the wood on the hill,
not a hundred yards away.  His face was in shadow, and partly hidden by
a slouch hat, so that I could hardly see it.  The rifle he held was
levelled at me--he was taking steady aim--his left arm extended far up
the barrel, so that his hand came near the muzzle--the style adopted by
all first-class shots, as it ensures deadly accuracy.

I am bound to confess that I completely lost my nerve.  I sprang to one
side almost as he fired.  I had just enough presence of mind left to
pick up the driver in my arms--even at the risk of my life I couldn't
leave him there--lift him into the car, and slam the door.  Then I
jumped on to the driving-seat, put in the clutch--in a perfect frenzy of
fear lest I myself should be shot at the next instant--and the car flew
down the avenue.

Twice I heard reports, and with the second one came the sound of a
whistling bullet.  But it went wide of the mark.

The lodge came quickly into view.  It was well out of sight of the wood
on the hill where the shots had been fired.  I uttered an exclamation as
I saw that the big white gate was shut.  It was hardly ever shut.

Slowing down, I brought the car to a standstill within a few yards of
the lodge, jumped out, and ran forward to open the gate.

It was fastened with a heavy chain, and the chain was securely
padlocked.

Shouting failed to bring any one out of the lodge, so I clambered over
the gate and knocked loudly at the door.  But nobody answered, and, when
I tried to open the door, I found it locked.

There seemed to be but one way out of the difficulty.  I have said that
I am strong, yet it needed all my strength to lift that heavy gate off
its hinges.  It fell with a crash back into the road, and I managed to
drag it away to one side.  Then starting the engine again, I set off
once more for Oakham "all out."

I went straight to the hospital, but a brief examination of the poor
fellow sufficed to assure the doctors that the man was already dead.
Then I went to the police-station and told them everything I knew--how a
man giving the name "Smithson" had called at Houghton Park to see Sir
Charles Thorold; how Thorold had repudiated all knowledge of the man;
how Sir Charles and Lady Thorold and their daughter, and Lady Thorold's
maid, Judith--I did not know her surname--had suddenly left Houghton,
and mysteriously disappeared; how I had, that afternoon, found the house
shut up, though I had seen a man disappear from one of the windows; how
I had discovered the butler's body in the lake; how my driver had been
shot dead by some one hidden in a wood upon a hill, and how other shots
had been fired at me by the assassin.

At first the police seemed inclined to detain me, but when I had
convinced them that I was what they quaintly termed "a bona fide
gentleman," and had produced what they called my "credentials,"--these
consisted of a visiting card, and of a letter addressed to me at
Houghton Park--and given them my London address and telephone number,
they let me go.  I found out afterwards that, while they kept me talking
at the station, they had telephoned to London, in order to verify my
statements that I had a flat in King Street and belonged to Brooks's
Club.

The coffee room of the _Stag's Head Hotel_ that night was crowded, for
it was the night of the Hunt Ball, and every available bed in the hotel
had been engaged some days in advance.  Those dining were all strangers
to me, most of them young people in very high spirits.

"I've kept this table for you, sir," the head waiter said, as he
conducted me across the room.  "It is the best I could do; the other
place at it is engaged."

"And by a beautiful lady, I hope," I answered lightly, for I knew this
waiter to be something of a wag.

"No, sir," he answered with a grin, "by a gentleman with a beard.  A
charming gentleman, sir.  You'll like him."

"Who is he?  What is he like?"

"Oh, quite a little man, sir, with a nervous, fidgetty manner, and a
falsetto voice.  Ah," he added, lowering his voice, "here he comes."

There was a twinkle of merriment in the waiter's eyes, as he turned and
hurried away to meet the giant who had just entered the room.  I don't
think I had ever before seen so tall and magnificent-looking a man.  He
must have stood quite six feet four, and was splendidly built.  His
dark, deep-set eyes peered out with singular power from beneath bushy
brows.  He had a high, broad forehead, and thick black hair.  His beard,
well-trimmed, reached just below his white tie, for of course he was in
evening clothes.

There was a noticeable lull in the buzz of conversation as the newcomer
appeared, and all eyes were set upon him as he strolled with an easy,
swinging gait across the room towards my table.  I saw dowagers raise
their lorgnettes and scrutinise him with great curiosity, mingled with
approval, as he went along.

Instinctively I rose as he approached.  I don't know why I did.  I
should not have risen had any ordinary stranger been brought over to my
table to occupy a vacant seat.  The man looked down at me, smiled--it
was a most friendly, captivating smile--nodded genially, and then seated
himself facing me.  I am a bit of a snob at heart--most of us are, only
we won't admit it--and I felt gratified at the reflected interest I knew
was now being taken in me, for many people were staring hard at us both,
evidently thinking that this remarkable-looking stranger must be
Somebody, and that, as we were apparently acquainted, I must be Somebody
too.

The waiter's eye caught mine, and I heard him give a low chuckle of
satisfaction at the practical joke he had played upon me.

"I suppose you are also going to the ball, sir," the big man said to me
in his great, deep voice, when he had told the waiter what to bring him.

"No, I'm not.  I rather wish I were," I answered.  "Unfortunately,
however, I have to return to town to-night.  Are you going?"

"To town?"

"No, to the ball."

He hesitated before answering.

"Yes--well, perhaps," he said, as he began his soup.  "I am not yet
certain.  I want to go, but there are reasons why I should not," and he
smiled.

"That sounds rather curious."

"It is very curious, but it is so."

"Do you mind explaining?"

"I do."

His eyes were set on mine.  They seemed somehow to hold my gaze in
fascination.  There was in them an expression that was half ironical,
half humorous.

"I believe this is the first time we have met," he said, after a pause.

"I'm quite sure it is," I answered.  "You will forgive my saying so, but
I don't think any one who had once met you could very well forget it."

He gave a great laugh.

"Perhaps you are right--ah! perhaps you are right," he said laughing,
wiping his moustache and mouth with his napkin.  "Certainly I shall
never forget you."

I began, for the first time, to feel rather uncomfortable.  He seemed to
talk in enigmas.  He was evidently what I believe is called "a
character."

"Do you know this part of the country well?"  I asked, anxious to change
the subject.

"Yes--and no," he answered slowly, thoughtfully.

This was getting tiresome.  I began to think he was trying to make fun
of me.  I began to wish the waiter had not put him to sit at my table.

Presently he looked again across at me, and said quite suddenly--

"Look here, Mr. Ashton, let us understand each other at once, shall we?"

His eyes looked into mine again, and I again felt quite uneasy.  He knew
my name.  I felt distinctly annoyed at the waiter having told him my
name without first asking my permission, as I concluded he must have
done.  It was a great liberty on his part, I considered--an
impertinence, more especially as he had not mentioned this stranger's
name to me.

"I shall not be at the ball--and yet I shall be there," the big man
continued, as I did not speak.  "Tell me, do you return to Houghton
after going to London?"

"You seem to know a good deal about me, Mr. --" I said, rather nettled,
but hoping to draw his name from him.

He did not take the hint.

"Sir Charles is well, I hope?  And Lady Thorold?" he went on.  "And how
is their charming daughter, Miss Vera?  I have not seen her for some
days.  She seems to be as fond as ever of hunting.  I think it a
cold-blooded, brutal sport.  In fact I don't call it `sport' at all--
twenty or so couples of hounds after one fox, and the chances all in
favour of the hounds.  I have told her so more than once, and I believe
that in her heart she agrees with me.  As a matter of fact, I'm here in
Oakham, on purpose to call on Sir Charles to-morrow, on a matter of
business."

I was astounded, also annoyed.  Who on earth was this big man, who
seemed to know so much, who spoke of Vera as though he knew her
intimately and met her every day, and who apparently was acquainted also
with Sir Charles and Lady Thorold, yet whom I had never before set eyes
on, though I was so very friendly with the Thorolds?

The stranger had spoken of my well-beloved!

"You will forgive my asking you, I am sure," I said, curiosity getting
the better of me, "but--well, I have not the pleasure of knowing your
name.  Do you mind telling me?"

"Mind telling you my name?" he exclaimed, with a look of surprise.
"Why, not in the least.  My name is--well--Smithson--if you like.  Any
name will do?"

He must have noticed my sudden change of expression, for he said at
once--

"You seem surprised?"

"I--well, I am rather surprised.  But you merely are not Smithson," I
answered awkwardly.  I was staring hard at him, scrutinising his face in
order to discover some resemblance to the portrait which at that moment
lay snugly at the bottom of my valise.  The portrait showed a
clean-shaven man, younger than this strange individual whom I had met,
as I believed, for the first time, barely a quarter of an hour before.
Age might have wrought changes, and the beard might have served as a
disguise, but the man in the picture was certainly over thirty-four, and
my companion here at dinner could not have been less than forty-five at
most.  Even the eyes, those betrayers of disguised faces, bore no
resemblance that I could see to the eyes of the man in the picture.  The
beard and moustache of the man facing me were certainly not artificial.
That I could see at a glance.

"Why are you surprised?" the man asked abruptly.

"It would take a long time to explain," I answered, equivocating, "but
it is a curious coincidence that only yesterday I almost met a man named
Smithson.  I was wondering if he could be some relation of yours.  He
was not like you in face."

"Oh, so you know Smithson?"

"No, I don't know him.  I have never met him.  I said I _almost_ met
him."

"Have you never seen him, then?"

"Never in my life."

"And yet you say he is `not like me in face.'  How do you know he is not
like me in face if you have never seen him?"

The sudden directness of his tone disconcerted me.  For an instant I
felt like a witness being cross-examined by a bullying Counsel.

"I've seen a portrait of him."

"Indeed?"

My companion raised his eyebrows.

"And where did you see a portrait of him?" he inquired pointedly.

This was embarrassing.  Why was he suddenly so interested, so
inquisitive?  I had no wish to make statements which I felt might lead
to my being dragged into saying all sorts of things I had no wish to
say, especially to a stranger who, though he had led me to believe that
he was acquainted with the Thorolds, apparently had no inkling of what
had just happened at Houghton Park.

No inkling!  I almost smiled as the thought occurred to me, and was
quickly followed by the thought of the sensation the affair would create
when the newspapers came to hear of what had happened, and began to
"spread themselves" upon the subject, as they certainly would do very
soon.

My companion's voice dispelled my wandering reflections.

"Where did you see the portrait of this other Smithson?" he asked,
looking at me oddly.

"In a friend's house."

"Was it at Houghton Park?"

"In point of fact, it was."

His eyes seemed to read my thoughts, and I didn't like it.  He was
silent for some moments.  Then suddenly he rose.

"Well, Mr. Ashton," he said quite genially, as he extended his hand, "I
am glad that we have met, and I trust we shall meet again.  `In point of
fact,' to use your own phrase, we shall, and very soon.  Until then--
good-bye.  I have enjoyed our little conversation.  It has been so--what
shall I say--informal, and it was so unexpected.  I did not expect to
meet you to-night, I can assure you."

He was gone, leaving me in a not wholly pleasant frame of mind.  The man
puzzled me.  Did I like him, or did I not?  His personality attracted
me, had done so from the moment I had set eyes on him framed in the
doorway, but I was bound to admit that some of his observations had
annoyed me.  In particular, that remark: "We shall meet again, and very
soon;" also his last words: "I did not expect to meet you to-night, I
can assure you," caused me some uneasiness in the face of all that had
happened.  Indeed all through dinner his remarks had somehow seemed to
bear some hidden meaning.

CHAPTER FOUR.

FURTHER MYSTERY.

I had to go up to London that night.  My lawyers had written some days
previously that they must see me personally at the earliest possible
moment on some matter to do with my investments, which they controlled
entirely, and the letter had been left lying at my flat in King Street
before being forwarded.  And as the Oakham police had impressed upon me
that my presence would be needed in Oakham within the next day or two, I
had decided to run up to London, see my lawyers and get my interview
with them over, and then return to Rutland as soon as possible.

Again and again, as the night express tore through the darkness towards
St. Pancras, Vera's fair face and appealing eyes floated like a vision
into my thoughts.  I must see her again, at once--but how could I find
her, and where?  Would the police try to find her, and her father and
mother?  But why should they?  After all, perhaps Sir Charles and Lady
Thorold's flight from Houghton did not mean that they intended to
conceal themselves.  What reason could they have for concealment?

Then, all at once, an idea occurred to me.  I smiled at my stupidity in
not thinking of it before.  There was the Thorolds' house in Belgrave
Street.  It had been shut up for a long time, but perhaps for some
reason they had suddenly decided to go back there.  On my arrival at St.
Pancras I would at once ring up that house and inquire if they were
there.

But I was doomed to disappointment.  While the porter was hailing a taxi
for me, I went to the station telephone.  There were plenty of Thorolds
in the telephone-directory that hung inside the glass door, but Sir
Charles' name was missing.

Determined not to be put off, I told the driver to go first to Belgrave
Street.  The number of the Thorolds' house was, I remembered, a hundred
and two.  By the time we got there it was past midnight.  The house bore
no sign of being occupied.  I was about to ring, when a friendly
constable with a bull's-eye lantern prevented me.

"It's empty, sir," he said; "has been for months and months, in fact as
long as I can remember."

"But surely there is a caretaker," I exclaimed.

"Oh, there's a caretaker, a very old man," he answered with a grin.
"But you won't get _him_ to come down at this time of night.  He's a
character, he is."

There had been nothing in the newspapers that day, but, on the morning
after, the bomb burst.

  AMAZING STORY
  WELL-KNOWN FAMILY VANISH
  BUTLER'S BODY IN THE LAKE

Those headlines, in what news-editors call "war type," met my eyes as I
unfolded the paper.

I was in bed, and my breakfast on the tray beside me grew cold while I
devoured the three columns of close-set print describing everything that
had occurred from the moment of Sir Charles' disappearance until the
paper had gone to press.

I caught my breath as I came to my own name.  My appearance was
described in detail, names of my relatives were given, and a brief
outline of my father's brilliant career--for he had been a great
soldier--and then all my movements during the past two days were
summarised.

I had last been seen, the account ran, dining at the _Stag's Head Hotel_
with a gentleman, a stranger, whom nobody seemed to know anything about.
He had come to the _Stag's Head_ on the evening of Monday, April 1,
engaged a bedroom and a sitting-room in the name of Davies, and he had
left on the night of Wednesday, April 3.  He had intended, according to
the newspaper, to sleep at the _Stag's Head_ that night, but between ten
and eleven o'clock he had changed his mind, packed his suit-case, paid
his bill, and left.  Where he had come from, none knew; where he had
gone, or why, none knew.  How he had spent his time from his arrival
until his departure, nobody had been able to discover.

"All that is known about him," ran the newspaper report, "is that he was
a personal friend of Mr. Richard Ashton, and that he dined at the
_Stag's Head Hotel_ with Mr. Ashton on the Wednesday evening, his last
meal in the hotel before his hurried departure."

This was horrible.  It seemed to convey indirectly the impression that I
knew why the Thorolds had disappeared, and where they had gone.  More, a
casual reader might easily have been led to suppose that I was
implicated in some dark plot, involving the death of the butler.  I
appeared in the light of a man of mystery, the friend of a man who
might, for aught I knew, be some criminal, but whose name--this
certainly interested me--he apparently intended should remain secret.

I turned over the page.  Good heavens--my portrait!  And the one
portrait of myself that of all others I detested.  Anybody looking at
that particular portrait would at once say: "What a villainous man; he
looks like a criminal!"

I remembered now, rather bitterly, making that very observation when the
proofs had been sent to me by the photographer, and how my friends had
laughed and said it was "quite true," and that it resembled a portrait
in a Sunday paper of "the accused in Court."

There were also portraits of Sir Charles and Lady Thorold, and a pretty
picture of Vera, the best that had ever been taken of her.  But the one
portrait that I felt ought to have been reproduced, though it was not,
was one of the bearded giant, who had given his name as Davies.

Thoroughly disgusted, I turned without appetite to my tepid breakfast.
I had hardly begun to eat, when the telephone at my bedside rang.

Was that Mr. Richard Ashton's flat? asked a voice.  Might the speaker
speak to him?

Mr. Ashton was speaking.

"Oh, this was the office of _The Morning_.  The editor would greatly
appreciate Mr. Ashton's courtesy if he would receive one of his
representatives.  He would not detain him long."

I gulped a mouthful of tea, then explained that I would sooner not be
interviewed.  I was extremely sorry, I said, that my name had been
dragged into this extraordinary affair.

The news-editor was persistent.  I was firm.  I always am firm when I am
at the end of a telephone, but rarely on other occasions.  Finally I
rang off.

A brief interval.  Then another ring.  Well, what?

"The editor of the--"

"No," I answered as politely as I could.  "I am extremely sorry.  You
see, I have just refused to be interviewed by _The Morning_, and it
would hardly be fair to that journal if...  Oh, _The Morning_ was a
paper of no consequence, was it?  That made a difference, of course, but
still... no... no...  I was really sorry...  I could not...  I..."

I hung up the receiver.  As I did so my man entered.  There were four
gentlemen downstairs, also a photographer.  They wanted to know if--

"Tell them," I interrupted, "that I cannot see them.  And, John--"

"Sir?"

"I am not at home to anybody--anybody at all.  You understand?"

"Quite, sir."

I noticed that his tone was not quite as deferential as usual.  I knew
the reason.  Of course he had seen this odious paper, or some paper more
odious still.  Probably he and the other servants in the building had
been discussing me, and hazarding all sorts of wildly improbable stories
about me.

The telephone bell rang again.  I forget what I said.  I think it was a
short prayer, or an invocation of some kind.  My first impulse was not
to answer the 'phone again at all, but to let the thing go on ringing.
It rang so persistently, however, that in desperation I pulled off the
receiver.

"Who the dickens is it?  What do you want?"  I shouted.

I gasped.

"What!  Vera?  Where are you?  I want to see you.  I must see you at
once!"

My love was in dire distress.  I could hear emotion in her voice.  My
heart beat quickly in my eagerness.

"Oh, come to me--do come to me!" she was saying hurriedly in a low tone,
as though fearful of some one overhearing her.  "I'm in such trouble,
and you alone can help me.  Tell me when you will come.  Tell me
quickly.  At any moment someone may catch me talking on the telephone."

"Where are you?  Give me your address, quickly," I answered, feverishly.
I was madly anxious to meet her again.

"We are in London--but we go to Brighton--to-day--this afternoon--"

"Your address in London, quick."

"Twenty-six Upper--"

There was a sudden clatter.  The receiver had been put back.  Some one
had interrupted her.

I tapped the little lever of the instrument repeatedly.

"Number, please," a monotonous voice asked.

"What number was I talking to this instant?"  I said, almost trembling
with anxiety.

"I'm sure I don't know.  What number do you want?"

"The number I've been talking to."

"I tell you I don't know it," replied the female operator.

"Can't you find it out?"

"I'll try.  Hold the line, please."

After a brief interval, the voice said--

"It may have been double-two two two Mayfair.  Shall I ring them for
you?"

"Please do."

I waited.

"You're through."

"Hello, what is it?" a beery voice asked.

"I want to speak to Miss Vera Thorold?"

"Vera 'oo?"

"Thorold."

"Theobald?  He's out."

"_Thorold_, Miss _Vera Thorold_," I shouted in despair.

"Oh, we ain't got no Veras here," the beery voice replied, and I could
picture the speaker's leer.  "This ain't a ladies' seminary; it's
Poulsen's Brewery Company, Limited.  You're on the wrong number.  Ring
off."

And again the instrument was silent.

Vera had been cut off just at the moment she was about to reveal her
whereabouts.

Almost beside myself with anxiety, I tried to collect my thoughts in
order to devise some means of discovering Vera's whereabouts and getting
into immediate communication with her.  I even went to the telephone
exchange, interviewed the manager, and told him the exact time, to the
fraction of a minute, when I had been rung up, but though he did his
best to help me, he could not trace the number.

I have a vivid imagination, and am of an exceptionally apprehensive
disposition, which has led some men to declare that I meet trouble
half-way, though that is a thing I am constantly warning my friends not
to do.  In this case, however, I found it impossible not to feel
anxious, desperately anxious, about the one woman I really cared for in
the whole world.  She had appealed to me urgently for help, and I was
impotent to help her.

Dejectedly I returned to my flat.  The lift-boy was standing in the
street, his hands in his pockets, the stump of a cheap cigarette between
his lips.  Without removing his hands from his pockets, or the
cigarette-end from his mouth, he looked up at me with an offensive grin,
and jerked out the sentence between his teeth--

"There's a lady here to see you--a Miss Thorold."

"Miss Thorold?  Where is she?  How long has she been here?"  I
exclaimed, quelling all outward appearance of excitement.

"About ten minutes.  She's up in your rooms, sir.  She said you knew
her, and she'd wait till you came back."

"Vera!"  I gasped involuntarily, and entered the lift, frantic with
impatience.

At last.  She was there--in my rooms, awaiting me with explanation!

CHAPTER FIVE.

PUTS CERTAIN QUESTIONS.

Rarely have I felt more put out, or more bitterly disappointed, than I
did when I hurried into my flat, expecting to come face to face with
Vera, my beloved, and longing to take her in my arms to kiss and comfort
her.

Instead, I was confronted by a spinster aunt of Vera's whom I had met
only three times before, and to whom I had, the first time I was
introduced to her--she insisted upon never remembering me either by name
or by sight, and each time needing a fresh introduction--taken an
ineradicable dislike.

"Ah, Mr. Ashton, I'm so glad you've come," she said without rising.  "I
have called to talk to you about a great many things--I daresay you can
guess what they are--about all this dreadful affair at Houghton."

Now the more annoyed I feel with anybody of my own social standing, the
more coldly polite I invariably become.  It was so on this occasion.

"I should love to stay and talk to you, Miss Thorold," I answered, after
an instant's pause, "but I have just been sitting at the bedside of a
sick friend.  To-day is the first day he has been allowed to see
anybody.  The doctor said he ought not to have allowed me in so soon,
and he warned me to go straight home, take off every stitch of clothing
I have on, and send them at once to be disinfected."

"Oh, indeed?" she said rather nervously.  "And what has been the matter
with your friend?"

It was the question I wanted.

"Didn't I tell you?"  I said.  "It was smallpox."

My ruse proved even more successful than I had anticipated.  Miss
Thorold literally sprang to her feet, gathered up her satchel and
umbrella, and with the hurried remark: "How perfectly monstrous--keep
well away from me!" she edged her way round the wall to the door, and,
calling to me from the little passage: "I will ring you on the
telephone," went out of the flat, slamming the door after her.

But where was Vera?  How could I discover her?  I was beside myself with
anxiety.

The Houghton affair created more than a nine days' wonder.  The people
of Rutland desperately resent anything in the nature of a scandal which
casts a disagreeable reflection upon their county.  I remember how some
years ago they talked for months about an unpleasant affair to do with
hunting.

"Even if it were true," some of the people who knew it to be true said
one to another, "it ought never to have been exposed in that way.  Think
of the discredit it brings upon our county, and what a handle the
Radicals and the Socialists will be able to make of it, if ever it is
discovered that it really did occur."

And so it came about that, when I was called back to Oakham two days
later, to attend the double inquest, many of the people there, with whom
I had been on quite friendly terms, looked at me more or less askance.
It is not well to make oneself notorious in a tiny county like Rutland,
I quickly discovered, or even to become notorious through no fault of
one's own.

Shall I ever forget how, at the inquest, questions put to me by all
sorts of uneducated people upon whom the duty devolved of inquiring into
the mysterious affair connected with Houghton Park?

I suppose it was because there was nobody else to question, that they
cross-examined me so closely and so foolishly.

Their inquiries were endless.  Had I known the Thorolds long?  Could I
name the date when I first became acquainted with them?  Was it a fact
that I rode Sir Charles' horses while I was a guest at Houghton?  About
how often did I ride them?  And on how many days did I hunt during the
fortnight I spent at Houghton?

All my replies were taken down in writing.  Then came questions
concerning my friendship with Miss Thorold, and these annoyed me
considerably.  Was the rumour that I was engaged to be married to her
true?  Was there any ground for the rumour?  Was I at all attached to
her?  Was she attached to me?  Had we ever corresponded by letter?  Was
it a fact that we called each other by our Christian names?  Was it not
true, that on one evening at least, we had smoked cigarettes together,
alone in her boudoir?

It was.  This admission seemed to gratify my cross-questioners
considerably.

"And may I ask, Mr. Ashton," asked a legal gentleman with a most
offensive manner, as he looked me up and down, "if this took place with
Sir Charles' knowledge?"

"Oh, yes it did.  With his full knowledge and consent!"

"Oh, really.  And you will pardon my asking, was Lady Thorold also aware
that you and her daughter sat alone together late at night, smoking
cigarettes and addressing each other by your Christian names?"

Now I am fairly even-tempered, but this local solicitor's objectionable
insinuations ended by stirring me up.  This, very likely, was what he
desired that they should do.

"My dear sir," I exclaimed, "will you tell me if these questions of
yours have any bearing at all upon the matter you are inquiring into,
and if your very offensive innuendoes are intended as veiled, or rather
as unveiled, insults to Miss Thorold or to myself?"

I heard some one near me murmur, "Hear, hear," at the back of the room.
The comment encouraged me.

"You will not address me in that fashion again, please," my interlocutor
answered hotly, reddening.

"In what fashion?"

"You will not call me `your dear sir.'  I object.  I strongly object."

A titter of amusement trickled through the room My adversary's fingers--
for he had become an adversary--twitched.

"I was under the impression," he remarked pompously, "that I was
addressing a gentleman."

I am not good at smart retorts, but I got one in when I answered him.

"A gentleman--I?"  I exclaimed blandly.  "I assure you, my dear sir,
that I don't pose as a gentleman.  I am quite a common man--just like
yourself."

Considerable laughter greeted this remark, but it was at once
suppressed.  Still, I knew that this single quick rejoinder had biased
"the gallery" in my favour.  Common people enjoy witnessing the
discomfiture of any individual in authority.

Two days later, I left Oakham and returned to London, feeling like a
schoolboy going home for Christmas.

The days went by.  On the following week I again went to Oakham to
attend the adjourned inquest.  In the case of the butler, an open
verdict was returned, but in the case of the driver, one of murder by
some person unknown.

Of Vera I had had no news.

"Twenty-six Upper..."  That might be in London, or in Brighton.  It
might even be in some other town.  I thought it probable, however, that
the address she had been about to give was a London address, so I had
spent the day before the inquest in trying the various London "Uppers"
contained in "Kelly's Directory."

Heavens, what an array!  When my eyes fell upon the list, my heart sank.
For there were no less than fifty-four "Uppers" scattered about the
Metropolis.  Some, obviously, might be ruled out at once, or so I
conjectured.  Upper Street, Islington, for instance, close to the
_Angel_, did not sound a likely "residential locality"--as the estate
agents say--for people of Sir Charles and Lady Thorold's position to be
staying in.  Nor did Upper Bland near the _Elephant and Castle_, nor
Upper Grange Road, off the Old Kent Road; nor Upper Chapman Street,
Shadwell.  On the other hand, Upper Brook Street; Upper George Street,
Sloane Square; Upper Grosvenor Street, Park Lane; even Upper Phillimore
Gardens, Kensington, seemed possible spots, and these and many other
"Uppers" I tried, spinning from one to another in a taxi, until the
driver began to look at me as though he had misgivings as to my sanity.

"Twenty-six don't seem to be your lucky number, sir," he said jocularly,
when he had driven me to thirty-seven different "Uppers" and called in
each at the house numbered twenty-six.  "It wouldn't be twenty-six in
some `Lower' Street, or Place, or Road, or Gardens, would it, sir?"

He spoke only half in jest, but I resented his familiarity, and I told
him so.  His only comment, muttered beneath his breath, but loud enough
for me to hear, was--

"Lummy! the cove's dotty in 'is own `upper,' that's what _'ee_ is."

On my return from Oakham I went to Brighton, wandering aimlessly about
the streets and on the esplanade, hoping against hope that some
fortunate turn in the wheel of Fate might bring me unexpectedly face to
face with my sweet-faced beloved, whose prolonged and mysterious absence
seemed to have made my heart grow fonder.  Alas! fate only grinned at me
ironically.

Vera had vanished with her family--entirely vanished.

But not wholly ironically.  I had been distressed to find that the
little silver flask picked up at Houghton had been mislaid.  For hours I
had hunted high and low for it in my flat.  John had turned out all my
clothes, and pulled the pockets inside out, and I had bullied him for
his carelessness in losing it, and almost accused him of stealing it.

It was while in the train on my way back to London, after my second
futile visit to Brighton, that I sat down on something hard.  Almost at
once I guessed what it was.  Briefly, there had been a hole in the
inside breast-pocket of my overcoat.  It had been mended by John's
wife--whose duty it was to keep all my clothes in order--before I knew
of its existence.  Therefore, when I had naturally enough suspected
there being a hole in one of my pockets, and sought one, I had found all
the pockets intact.  The woman had mended the hole without noticing that
the little flask, which had dropped through it, lay hidden in the bottom
of the lining.

I ripped open the lining at once, and pulled out the flask, delighted at
the discovery.  And, as soon as I reached town, I took the flask to a
chemist I knew and asked him to analyse its contents.  He would do so
without delay, he said, and let me know on the following morning the
result of his analysis.

"It's a mixture of gelsiminum and ether," he said, as soon as I entered
his shop next day.

"Poison, of course," I remarked.

He smiled.

"Well, I should rather think so," he answered drily.  "A few drops would
send a strong man to sleep for ever, and there is enough of the fluid
here to send fifty men to sleep--for ever.  Therefore one wouldn't
exactly take it for one's health."

So here was a clue--of a sort.  The first clue!  My spirits rose.  My
next step must be to discover the owner of the flask, presumably some
one with initials "D.P.," and the reason he--or she--had carried this
fluid about.

I lunched at Brooks's, feeling more than usually bored by the members I
met there.  Several men whom I had not seen for several weeks were
standing in front of the smoking-room fire, and as I entered, and they
caught sight of me, they all grinned broadly.

"`The accused then left the Court with his friends,'" one of them said
lightly, as I approached.  "`He was granted a free pardon, but bound
over in his own recognisances to keep the peace for six months.'"

"You _have_ been getting yourself into trouble, Dick, and no mistake,"
observed his neighbour--I am generally called Dick by my friends.

"Into trouble?  What do you mean?"  I retorted, nettled.

"Why--you know quite well," he answered.  "This Houghton affair, the
scandal about the Thorolds, of course.  How came you to get mixed up in
it?  We like you, old man, but you know it makes it a bit unpleasant for
some of us.  You know what people are.  They will talk."

"I suppose you mean that men are judged by the company they keep, and
that because I happened to be at Houghton at the time of that affair,
and was unwillingly dragged into prominence by the newspapers, therefore
that discredit reflects on me."

"Well, I should not have expressed it precisely in that way, but
still--"

"Still what?"

"As you ask me, I suppose I must answer.  I do think it rather
unfortunate you should have got yourself mixed up in the business, and
both Algie and Frank agree with me--don't you, Algie?" he ended, turning
to his friend.

"Awe--er--awe--quite so, quite so.  We were talking of you just as you
came in, my dear old Dick, and we all agreed it was, awe--er--was--awe--
a confounded pity you had anything to do with it.  Bad form, you know,
old Dick, all this notoriety.  Never does to be unusual, singular, or
different from other people--eh what?  One's friends don't like it--and
one don't like it oneself--what?"

Their shallow views and general mental vapidity, if I may put it so,
jarred upon me.  After spending ten minutes in their company, I went
into the dining-room and lunched alone.  Then I read the newspapers,
dozed in an armchair for half-an-hour, and finally, at about four
o'clock, returned to my flat in King Street.  John met me on the stairs.

"Ah! there you are, sir," he exclaimed.  "Did you meet them?"

"Meet whom?"

"Why, they haven't been gone not two minutes, so I thought you might
have met them in the street, sir.  They waited over half-an-hour."

"But who were they?  What were their names?"  I asked, irritated at John
for not telling me at once the names of the visitors.

"A young lady and a gentleman--there's a card on your table, sir; I
can't recall the names for the moment," he said, wrinkling his forehead
as he scratched his ear to stimulate his memory.  "The gentleman was
extremely tall, quite a giant, with a dark beard."

I hurried up the stairs, for the lift was out of order, and let myself
into my flat with my latch key.  On the table, in my sitting-room, was a
lady's card on a salver.

"Miss Thorold."

In Vera's handwriting were the words, scribbled in pencil across it--

"_So sorry we have missed you_."

CHAPTER SIX.

THE HOUSE IN THE SQUARE.

I admit that I was dumbfounded.

Vera and her mysterious friend were together, calling in the most
matter-of-fact way possible, and just as though nothing had happened!
It seemed incredible!

All at once a dreadful thought occurred to me that made me catch my
breath.  Was it possible that my love was an actress, in the sense that
she was acting a part?  Had she cruelly deceived me when she had
declared so earnestly that she loved me?  The reflection that, were she
practising deception, she would not have come to see me thus openly with
the man with the black beard, relieved my feelings only a little.  For
how came she to be with Davies at all?  And again, who was this man
Davies?  Also that telephone message a fortnight previously, how could I
account for it under the circumstances?

"Oh, come to me--do come to me!  I am in such trouble," my love had
cried so piteously, and then had added: "You alone can help me."

Some one else, apparently, must have helped her.  Could it have been
this big, dark man?

And was he, in consequence, supplanting me in her affection?  The
thought held me breathless.

At times I am something of a philosopher, though my relatives laugh when
I tell them so, and reply, "Not a philosopher, only a well-meaning
fellow, and extremely good-natured"--a description I detest.  Realising
now the uselessness of worrying over the matter, I decided to make no
further move, but to sit quiet and await developments.

"If you worry," I often tell my friends, "it won't in the least help to
avert impending disaster, while if what you worry about never comes to
pass, you have made yourself unhappy to no purpose."

A platitude?  Possibly.  But two-thirds of the words of wisdom uttered
by great men, and handed down as tradition to a worshipping posterity,
are platitudes of the most commonplace type, if you really come to
analyse them.

Time hung heavily.  It generally ends by hanging heavily upon a man
without occupation.  But put yourself for a moment in my place.  I had
lost my love, and those days of inactivity and longing were doubly
tedious because I ached to bestir myself somehow, anyhow, to clear up a
mystery which, though gradually fading from the mind of a public ever
athirst for fresh sensation, was actively alive in my own thoughts--the
one thought, indeed, ever present in my mind.  Why had the Thorolds so
suddenly and mysteriously disappeared?

Thus it occurred to me, two days after Davies and Vera had called at my
flat, to stroll down into Belgravia and interview the caretaker at 102,
Belgrave Street.  Possibly by this time, I reflected, he might have seen
Sir Charles Thorold, or heard from him.

When I had rung three times, the door slowly opened to the length of its
chain, and I think quite the queerest-looking little old man I had ever
set eyes on, peered out.  He gazed with his sharp, beady eyes up into my
face for a moment or two, then asked, in a broken quavering voice--

"Are you another newspaper gen'leman?"

"Oh, no," I answered, laughing, for I guessed at once how he must have
been harassed by reporters, and I could sympathise with him.  "I am not
a journalist--I'm only a gentleman."

Of course he was too old to note the satire, but the fact that I wore a
silk hat and a clean collar, seemed to satisfy him that I must be a
person of some consequence, and when I had assured him that I meant him
no ill, but that, on the contrary, I might have something to tell him
that he would like to hear, he shut the door, and I heard his trembling
old hands remove the chain.

"And how long is it since Sir Charles was last here?"  I said to him,
when he had shown me into his little room on the ground floor, where a
kettle purred on a gas-stove.  "I know him well, you know; I was staying
at Houghton Park when he disappeared."

He looked me up and down, surprised and apparently much interested.

"Were you indeed, sir?" he exclaimed.  "Well, now--well, well!"

"Why don't you sit down and make yourself comfortable, my old friend," I
went on affably.  I drew forward his armchair, and he sank into it with
a grunt of relief.

"You are a very kind gen'leman, you are, very kind indeed," he said, in
a tone that betrayed true gratitude.  "Ah!  I've known gen'lemen in my
time, and I know a gen'leman when I sees one, I do."

"What part of Norfolk do you come from?"  I asked, as I took a seat near
him, for I knew the Norfolk brogue quite well.

He looked at me and grinned.

"Well, now, that's strange you knowing I come from Norfolk!  But it's
true.  Oh, yes, it is right.  I'm a Norfolk man.  I was born in Diss.  I
mind the time my father--"

"Yes, yes," I interrupted, "we'll talk about that presently," for I
could see that, once allowed to start on the subject of his relatives
and his native county, he would talk on for an hour.  "What I have come
here this afternoon to talk to you about is Sir Charles Thorold.  When
was he last here?"

"It will be near two years come Michaelmas," he answered, without an
instant's hesitation.  "And since then I haven't set eyes on him--I
haven't."

"And has this house been shut up all the time?"

"Ay, all that time.  I mind the time my father used to tell me--"

I damned his father under my breath, and quickly stopped him by asking
who paid him his wages.

"My wages?  Oh, Sir Charles' lawyers, Messrs. Spink and Peters, of
Lincoln's Inn, pays me my wages.  But they are not going to pay me any
more.  No.  They are not going to pay me any more now."

"Not going to pay you any more?  What do you mean?"

"Give me notice to quit, they did, a week ago come Saturday."

"But why?"

"Orders from Sir Charles, they said.  Would you like to see their
letter, sir?"

"I should, if you have it by you."

It was brief, curt, and brutally frank--

"From Messrs. Spink and Peters, Solicitors, 582, Lincoln's Inn, W.C.

"To William Taylor, Caretaker,--

"102, Belgrave Street, S.W.

"Messrs. Spink and Peters are instructed by Sir Charles Thorold to
inform William Taylor that owing to his advanced age his services will
not be needed by Sir Charles Thorold after March 25.  William Taylor is
requested to acknowledge the receipt of this letter."

"They don't consider your feelings much," I said, as I refolded the
letter and handed it back to him.

He seemed puzzled.

"Feelings, sir?  What are those?" he asked.  "I don't somehow seem to
know."

"No matter.  Under the circumstances it is, perhaps, as well you
shouldn't know.  Now, I want to ask you a few questions, my old friend--
and look here, I am going, first of all, to make you a little present."

I slipped my fingers into my waistcoat pocket, produced a
half-sovereign, and pressed it into the palm of his wrinkled old hand.

"To buy tobacco with--no, don't thank me," I said quickly, as he began
to express gratitude.  "Now, answer a few questions I am going to put to
you.  In the first place, how long have you been in Sir Charles'
service?"

"Sixteen years, come Michaelmas," he answered promptly.  "I came from
Diss.  I mind the time my father--"

"How did Sir Charles, or Mr. Thorold as he was then, first hear of you?"

"He was in Downham Market.  I was caretaker for the Reverend George
Lattimer, and Sir Charles, I should say, Mr. Thorold, came to see the
house.  I think he thought of buying it, but he didn't buy it.  I showed
him into every room, I remember, and as he was leaving he put his hand
into his pocket, pulled out a sov'rin', and gave it to me, just as you
have done.  And then he said to me, he said: `Ole man,' he said, `would
you like a better job than this?'  Those were his very words, `Ole man,
would you like a better job than this?'"

He grinned and chuckled at the reflection, showing his toothless gums.

"And then he took you into his service.  Did you come to London at
once?"

"Ay, next week he brought me up, and I've been here ever since--in this
house ever since.  The Reverend George Lattimer wor vexed with Sir
Charles for a `stealing' me from his service, as he said.  I mind in
Diss, when--"

"Was there any reason why Mr. Thorold should engage you in such a hurry?
Did he give any reason?  It seems strange he should have engaged a man
of your age, living away in Norfolk, and brought you up to London at a
few days' notice."

"Oh, yes there was reason--there was a reason."

"And what was it?"

"Well, well, it was not p'raps 'xactly what you might call a `reason,'
it was what Sir Charles he calls a `stipilation.'  `I have a stipilation
to make, Taylor,' he said, when he engaged me.  `Yes, sir,' I said, `and
what might this, this stipilation be?'  I said.  `It's like this,
Taylor,' he said.  `I'll engage you and pay you well, and you will come
with me to Lundon to-morrow, and you shall have two comfortable rooms in
my house,' those were his very words, sir, `and you will have little
work to do, 'cept when I am out of Lundon, and you have to look after
the house and act as caretaker.  But there be a stipilation I must
make.'  `And what might that stipilation be, sir?'  I asked him.  `It's
like this,' he said, a looking rather hard at me.  `You must never see
or know anything that goes on in my Lundon 'ouse, when I am there, or
when I am not.  If you see or hear anything, you must forget it.  Do you
understand?  Do we understand each other?' he said.  And I have done
that, sir, ever since Sir Charles engaged me.  Never have I seen what
happened in this house, nor have I heard what happened in this house,
nor known what happened in this house.  I have kep' the stipilation, and
I've served the master well."

"And for serving your master well, and doing your duty, you are rewarded
by getting kicked out at a month's notice because of your `advanced
age.'"

The old man's eyes became suddenly moist as I said this, and I felt
sorry I had spoken.

"Did you see or hear much you ought to have forgotten?"  I hazarded,
after a brief pause.

He peered up at me with an odd expression, then slowly shook his head.

"Have you actually forgotten all you saw and heard?"  I inquired
carelessly, as I lit a cigarette, "or do you only pretend?"

"I dusn't say, sir," he answered.  "I dusn't say."

He looked to right and left, as it seemed to me instinctively, and as
though to assure himself that no one else was present, that no one
overheard him.  It was evident to me that there was somebody he feared.

Several times I tried tactfully to "draw" him, but to no purpose.

"I should like to look over the house again," I said at last.  "I know
it well, for I stayed here often in days gone by, though I don't
recollect ever seeing you here.  How long is it since Sir Charles stayed
here?"

"Three years come Lady Day," he answered.

"And has the house been empty ever since?  Has it never been sub-let?"

"Never.  Sir Charles never would sub-let it, though there were some who
wanted it."

"Well, I will look over it, I think," I said, moving to rise.  "I'm
inclined to rent it myself; that's really why I am here."

He may, or may not, have believed the lie.  Anyway, my suggestion filled
him with alarm.  He got up out of his chair.

"You can't, you can't," he exclaimed, greatly perturbed.  He pushed his
skinny hand into his jacket-pocket, and I heard him clutch his bunch of
keys.  "The doors are all locked--all locked."

"You have the keys; give them to me."

"I dusn't, I dusn't, indeed.  All, you are a gen'leman, sir, you won't
take the keys from an old man, sir, I know you won't."

"Sit down," I said, sharply.

Idle curiosity had prompted me to wish to go over the house.  The old
man's anxiety that I should not do so settled my determination.  My
thought travelled quickly.

"Have you a drop of anything to drink that you can give me?"  I asked
suddenly.  "I should like a little whisky--or anything else will do."

Again the expression of dismay came into his old eyes.

"Don't tempt me, sir, ah, don't tempt me!" he exclaimed.  "Sir Charles
made me promise as long as I was with him I wouldn't touch a drop.  I
did once.  Oh, I did once."

"And what happened?"

He hid his face in his hands, as if to shut out some horrid memory.

"Don't ask me what happened, sir, don't ask me.  And I swore I wouldn't
touch a drop again.  And I haven't got a drop--except a cup of tea."

The kettle on the gas-stove had been boiling for some time.  My
intention--an evil one--when I had asked for something alcoholic, had
been to induce the old man to drink with me until the effects of the
whisky should cause him to overcome his scruples and hand over his keys.
But tea!

At that moment my elbow rested on something hard in my pocket.  Almost
at the same moment an idea flashed into my brain.  I tried to dispel it,
but it wouldn't go.  I allowed my mind to dwell upon it, and quickly it
obsessed me.

Why, I don't know, but since the chemist had returned the little flask
to me, after analysing its contents, I had carried it in my pocket
constantly.  It was there now.  It was the flask that my elbow had
pressed, recalling it to my mind.

"Twenty drops will send a strong man to sleep--for ever," he had said.

The words came back to me now.  If it needed twenty drops to kill a
strong man, surely a small dose could with safety be administered to a
wiry little old man who, though decrepit, seemed still to possess
considerable vitality.  But would it be quite safe?  Did I dare risk it?

"A cup of tea will do just as well," I said carelessly, tossing aside my
cigarette.  "No, don't you move.  I see you have everything ready, and
there are cups up on the shelf.  Let me make the tea.  I like tea made
in one way only."

I felt quite guilty when he answered--

"You are very kind, sir; you are very kind; you are a gen'leman."

It was easily and quickly done.  I had my back to him.  I poured the tea
into the cups.  Then I let about five drops of the fluid in the flask
fall into a spoon.  I put the spoon into his cup, and stirred his tea
with it.

In a few moments I saw he was growing drowsy.  His bony chin dropped
several times on to his chest, though he tried to keep awake.  He
muttered some unintelligible words.  In a few minutes he was asleep.

I took his pulse.  Yes, it was still quite strong.  I waited a moment or
two.  Then, slipping my hand into his jacket-pocket, I took out the
bunch of keys noiselessly, turned out the gas-stove, and stepped quietly
out of the room, closing the door behind me.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

TREADING AMONG SHADOWS.

The house was found very dirty and neglected.  It contained but little
furniture.  Dust lay thickly upon everything.  The windows, I was almost
tempted to think, had not been opened since Sir Charles had last lived
there three years ago.  There was also a damp, earthy smell in the hall.

As I went slowly up the stairs, bare of carpet or any other covering,
they creaked and groaned in a way that was astonishing, for the houses
in Belgrave Street are not so very old.  The noises the stairs made
echoed higher up.

I had decided to enter the rooms on the ground floor last of all.  The
first floor looked strangely unfamiliar.  When last I had been here the
house had been luxuriously furnished, and somehow the landing, in its
naked state, seemed larger than when I remembered it.

Ah!  What fun we had had in that house long ago!

My friends the Thorolds had entertained largely, and their acquaintances
had all been bright, amusing people, so different, as I had sometimes
told my friends, from the colourless, stupid folk whose company one so
often has to endure when staying in the houses of acquaintances.  I
often think, when mixing with such people, of the story of the two women
discussing a certain "impossible" young man, of a type one meets
frequently.

"How deadly dull Bertie Fairbairn is," one of them said.  "He never
talks at all."

"Oh, he is better than his brother Reggie," the other answered.
"Whenever you speak to Bertie he says, `Right O!'"

The door of the apartment that had been the large drawing-room was
locked.  On the bunch of keys, I soon found the key that fitted, and I
entered.

Phew, what a musty smell!  Most oppressive.  The blinds were drawn
half-way down the windows and, by the look of them, had been so for some
considerable time.  The furniture that remained was all hidden under
holland sheets, and the pictures on the walls, draped in dust-proof
coverings, looked like the slabs of salted beef, and the sides of
smoke-cured pork one sees hung in some farmhouses.  The carpets were
dusty, moth-eaten and rotten.

Gingerly, with thumb and forefinger, I picked up the corners of some of
the furniture coverings.  There was nothing but the furniture
underneath, except in one instance, where I saw, upon an easy-chair, a
plate with some mouldy remnants of food upon it.  No wonder the
atmosphere was foetid.

I was about to leave the room, glad to get out of it, when I noticed in
a corner of the ceiling a dark, yellow-brown stain, about a yard in
circumference.  This struck me as curious, and I went over and stood
under it, and gazed up at it, endeavouring to discover its origin.  Then
I saw that it was moist.  I pulled up one of the blinds in order to see
better, but my scrutiny failed to give me any inkling as to the origin
of the stain.

I went out, shut and locked the door, and entered several other rooms,
the doors of all of which I found locked.  One room was very like
another, the only difference being that the smell in some was closer and
nastier than the smell in others, though all the smells had, what I may
call the same "flavour"--a "taste" of dry rot.  I wondered if Sir
Charles knew how his house was being neglected, how dirt and dust were
being allowed to accumulate.

This was Lady Thorold's boudoir, if I remembered aright.  The inside of
the lock was so rusty that I had difficulty in turning the key.
Everything shrouded, as elsewhere, but, judging from the odd projections
in the coverings, I concluded that ornaments and bric-a-brac had been
left upon the tables.

Nor was I mistaken.  As I lifted the cloths and dust sheets, objects
that I remembered seeing set about the room in the old days, became
revealed.  There were several beautiful statues, priceless pieces of
antique furniture from Naples and Florence, curious carved wooden
figures that Sir Charles had collected during his travels in the
Southern Pacific, cloisonne vases from Tokio and Osaka, a barely decent
sculpture bought by Sir Charles from a Japanese witch-doctor who lived a
hermit's life on an island in the Inland Sea--how well I remembered Lady
Thorold's emphatic disapproval of this figure, and her objection to her
husband's displaying it in the way he did--treasures from different
parts of China, from New Guinea, Burmah, the West Indies and elsewhere.

Another cloth I lifted.  Beneath it were a number of photographs in
frames, piled faces downward in heaps.  I picked up some of them, and
took them out to look at.  A picture of Vera in a short frock, with a
teddy-bear tucked under her arm, interested me; so did a portrait of
Lady Thorold dressed in a fashion long since past; and so did a portrait
of my old father in his Guards uniform.  The rest were portraits of
people I didn't know.  I looked at one or two more, and was about to
replace the frames where I had found them, when I turned up one that
startled me.

It was a cabinet, in a bog-oak frame, of the man whose likeness had
caused the commotion at Houghton, the man who had called himself
Smithson.  But it was not a portrait similar to the one I had taken
away.  The same man, undoubtedly, but in a different attitude, and
apparently many years younger.

Closely I scrutinised it.

The enigma presented was complete.  I am not a pilferer, but I
considered that I should be justified in putting the portrait into my
pocket, and I did so without another thought.  Then I replaced all the
frames where I had found them, and resumed my ramble over the house.

In the rest of the rooms on that floor, I found nothing further of
interest.  On the floor above, however, a surprise was in store for me.

The first two rooms were bedrooms, neglected-looking and very dusty.
There were fewer coverings here.  Dust was upon the floor, on the beds,
on the chairs and tables, on the window-sills, on the wash-stands, on
the chests of drawers, on the mantelpiece--everywhere.  In the next
room, the door of which I was surprised to find unlocked, just the same.
A table of dark mahogany was thickly coated with dust.

Hullo!  Why, what was this?  I thought at once of a detective friend of
mine, and wondered what he would have said, what opinion he would have
formed and what conclusion he would have come to, had he been in my
place at that moment.  For on the table, close to the edge of it, was
the clear outline of a hand.  Someone had quite recently--apparently
within the last few hours, and certainly since the previous day--put his
hand upon that dusty table.  I scanned the outline closely; then
suddenly I started.

There could be no doubt whatever--it was not the outline of Taylor's
hand.  The fingers that had rested there were long and tapering.  This
was not the impression of a man's hand, but of a woman's--of a woman's
left hand.

Evidently some one had been in this room recently.  From point to point
I walked, looking for further traces, but there were none that I could
see.  What woman could have been in here so lately?  And did the old man
asleep downstairs know of her entry?  He must have, for she could not
have entered the house, had he not admitted her.  I felt I was becoming
quite a clever detective, with an exceptional gift for deduction from
the obvious.  Another gleam of intelligence led me to conclude that this
woman's presence in the house probably accounted for Taylor's
determination not to let me go over the house.

I thought I heard a sound.  I held my breath and stood still, listening
intently, but the only sound that came to me was the distant shrill
whistle of some one summoning a taxi.  Outside in the passage, all was
still as death.  I walked to the end of the passage, peeped into other
bedrooms, then returned to the room with the table bearing the imprint
of the hand.

The windows overlooked Belgrave Street--double windows, which made the
sound of the traffic down below inaudible.  Carelessly I watched for
some moments the vehicles and passers-by, unconsciously striving to
puzzle out, meanwhile, the problem of the hand.  Suddenly, two figures
approaching along the pavement from the direction of Wilton Street,
arrested my attention.  They seemed familiar to me.  As they came
nearer, a strange feeling of excitement possessed me, for I recognised
the burly form of Davies, or "Smithson," and as he had called himself,
and, walking beside him, Sir Charles Thorold.  The two appeared to be
engaged in earnest conversation.

They disappeared where the street turned, and as I came away from the
window I noticed, for the first time, that the room had another door, a
door leading presumably into a dressing-room.  I went over to it.  It
was locked.

I tried a key on the bunch, but at once discovered that a key was in the
door.  The door was locked on the inside!

I knocked.  There was no answer.  And just then I distinctly heard a
sound inside the room.

"Who's there?"  I called out.  "Let me in!"

A sound, resembling a sob, reached me faintly.  I heard light footfalls.
The key turned slowly, and the lock clicked.

I turned the handle, and went in.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

MORE MYSTERY.

I halted on the threshold, wondering and aghast.

Vera, in her hat and jacket, stood facing me a few yards away.  She was
extremely pale.  There were dark shadows under her eyes, and I saw at
once she had been weeping.

For a moment neither of us spoke.  Then, pulling myself together--

"Why, darling, what are you doing here?"  I asked.

She did not answer.  Her big, blue, unfathomable eyes were set on mine.
There was in them an expression I had not seen there before--an odd,
unnatural look, which made me feel uncomfortable.

"What are you doing here?"  I repeated.  "Why did you call upon me with
Davies?"

Her lips moved, but no words came.  I went over and took her hand.  It
was quite cold.

Suddenly she spoke slowly, and hoarsely, but like some one in a trance.

"I cannot tell you," she said simply.  "I wanted to see you."

"Oh, but you _must_!"

Her eyes met mine, and I saw her arched brows contract slightly.

"Nobody says, `must' to me," she answered, in a tone that chilled me.

"Vera!  Vera!"  I exclaimed, dismayed at her strange manner, "what is
the matter?  What has happened to you, darling?  Why are you like this?
Don't you need my help now?  You told me on the telephone that you did."

"On the telephone?  When was that?"

"Why, not three weeks ago.  Surely you remember?  It was the last time
we spoke to each other.  You had begun to tell me your address, when
suddenly we were cut off."

I saw her knit her brows, as though trying to remember.  Then, all at
once, memory seemed to return.

"Ah, yes," she exclaimed, more in her ordinary voice.  "I recollect.  I
wanted your help then.  I needed it badly, but now--"

"Well, what?"  I said anxiously, as she checked herself.

"It's too late--now," she whispered.  My arm was about her thin waist,
and I felt that she shuddered.

"Vera, what has happened?  Tell me--oh, tell me, dearest!"

I took both her small hands in mine.  I was seriously alarmed, for there
was a strange light in her eyes.

"Why did you not come when I wanted you?" she asked, bitterly.

"I would have, but how could I without knowing where you were?"

She paused in indecision.

"I'm sorry.  You are too late, Dick," and she shook her head mournfully.

"Oh, don't say that," I cried, not knowing what to think.  "Has some
misfortune befallen you?  Tell me what it is.  You surely know that you
can trust me."

"Trust _you_!"

There was bitterness, nay mockery, in her voice.

"Good heavens, yes!  Why not?"  I cried.

"There is no one in whom I can trust.  I can trust you, Mr. Ashton,
least of all--now."

Evidently she was labouring under some terrible delusion.  Had some one
slandered me--poisoned her mind against me?

"How long have you been here?"  I asked suddenly, thinking it best to
change the subject for the moment.

"Since early this morning," she answered at once.

"Did you come here alone?"

"Alone?  No, he brought me."

"`He?'  Who is `he'?"

"Dago Paulton."

"Dago Paulton?"  I echoed.  "Is he the man Smithson?"  I asked shrewdly.

"Of course.  Who else did you suppose?"  Then, suddenly, her expression
changed to one of surprise.

"But you don't know him, surely," she exclaimed.  "You have never even
met him.  He told me so himself."

"No, but I know about him," I said, with recollection crowding upon me.

"You don't!  You cannot!  Who told you about him?  And what did they
tell you?  Oh, this is awful, it is worse than I feared," she exclaimed,
in great distress.  "And now it is all too late."

"Too late for what?  To do what?"

"To help me.  To save me from him."

"Does this man want to marry you?"

"He is going to.  He _must_ marry me.  Ah!  You don't know--you--"

My love shuddered, without completing her sentence.

"Why?  Is it to save your father?"  I hazarded again.

"To save my father--and my mother," she exclaimed.  And then, to my
surprise, she sank upon a chair, flung her arms out upon the table in
front of her, hid her face up on them, and began to sob hysterically.

"Vera, my dearest, don't--oh! don't," I said beseechingly, as I bent
down, put an arm tenderly about her, and kissed her upon the cheek.
"Don't cry like that, darling.  It's never too late, until a misfortune
has really happened.  You are not married to him.  There may be a way of
escape.  Trust me.  Treat me as a friend--we have been friends so long--
tell me everything, and I will try to help you out of all your trouble."

She started up.

"Trust you!" she burst forth, her face flushed.  "Can I trust any one?"

"I've done nothing; I don't know what you mean, or to what you refer!"
I exclaimed blankly.

"Can you look at me like that," she said slowly, after a pause, "and
tell me, upon your oath, that you did not reveal my father's secret;
that you have never revealed it to anybody--never in your life?"

"I give you my solemn oath, Vera, that I have never in my life revealed
it to anybody, or hinted at it, or said anything, either consciously or
unconsciously, that might have led any one to suspect," I answered
fervently, with my eyes fixed on hers.

Truth to tell, I had not the remotest idea what the secret was, nor,
until this instant, had it ever occurred to me to think that Sir Charles
possessed a secret.  I felt, however, that I had a part to play, and I
was determined to play it to the best of my ability.  Vera seemed to
take it quite for granted that I knew her father's secret, and I felt
instinctively that, were I to endeavour to assure her that I was in
complete ignorance of everything, she would not, under the
circumstances, believe a single word I said.

"Do you believe me now?"  I asked, as she did not speak.

"Yes--I do believe you," was her slow response.  And then she let me
take her in my ready arms again.

She seemed to have been suddenly relieved of a great weight, and now she
spoke in quite her ordinary way.

"Where is Paulton now?" was my next question.  At last there seemed to
be some remote possibility of the tangle of past events becoming
gradually unravelled.  I knew, however, that I was treading thin ice.  A
single careless word might lead her to suspect my duplicity.  In a
sense, I was still groping in the dark, pretending that I knew a great
deal, whereas I knew nothing.

"He is coming to-night to fetch me."

"At what time?"

"At ten o'clock."

"And you are to wait here until then?"

"Yes."

"What have you had to eat?"

"Some tea, and bread and butter," and she glanced towards a table, on
which stood a teapot and an empty plate.

"You can't subsist on that," I said quickly.

"More food is to be brought to me by old Taylor at five o'clock."

I glanced at my watch.  It was a quarter-past four.

"Why don't you go out and go away?"  I suggested.  "There is surely
nothing to prevent you.  Why do you remain here in helpless inactivity?"

"Where should I go?  I haven't any money.  I haven't a sou.  Besides--
besides--I dare not disobey.  If I did, he--he'd--he'd bring disaster--
terrible disaster, upon me!"

"I can lend you some money," I said.  Then a thought struck me.

"Why not come away with me?"  I exclaimed.  "I will get you a room at an
hotel, see to you, provide you with money, and take care that nobody
objectionable--neither this fellow Paulton, nor anybody else--molests
you."

"Ah, Dick, if only I dared!" she exclaimed fervently, with shining eyes.

"You love me, Vera--do you not?"

"You know that I do, Dick."

"Then leave here.  Who is to prevent you?  Where are your father and
mother?"

She turned sharply.

"How can you ask that?" she cried, with a quick glance.  I pulled myself
together on the instant.  I was forgetting to be cautious.

"Wouldn't it be safe for you to appeal to them for help?"  I asked
vaguely.

She paused, evidently reflecting, and I breathed more freely.

"Under the circumstances--no," she said at last, with decision.  "They
must await developments.  I must remain here.  Listen!  What was that?"
And she started in fear.

The door stood ajar.  The door of the room I had been in, which opened
on to the passage, was also open.  Both of us listened intently.  The
sound of men's voices, somewhere in the house, became audible.

I crept out into the passage on tiptoe, walked a little distance along
it, stopped, and listened again.  Yes, there were voices in the hall.
Two men were talking.  At once I recognised that Sir Charles Thorold,
and the man known as Davies, were engaged in earnest conversation in low
tones.  In the otherwise silent and deserted house, their words were
distinctly audible.

"We must get a doctor--we must," I heard the big fellow say deeply.  "I
thought at first the fellow was asleep, then that he was drunk.  The
pulse is hardly perceptible."

"But how can we?"  Thorold answered.  "It isn't safe.  There would be
inquiries, and if he should die there would surely be an inquest, and
then--"

He dropped his voice, and I could not catch the last words.  Then Davies
again spoke.

"I found this umbrella, and these gloves, on the table in his room," I
heard him say, "and there are two tea-cups on the table.  Both have been
used, used within the last half-hour, I should say.  The tea in them is
still warm, and the teapot is quite hot."  My heart stopped its beating.
I put out an arm to support myself.  A slight feeling of giddiness came
over me.  I broke out into a cold perspiration, for I had left my gloves
and umbrella in the old man's room!

My mouth turned suddenly dry, as I thought of the tea I had doctored
with the drops from the flask, of which only a little was needed to send
"a strong man to sleep--for ever."

But Davies and Sir Charles were talking again, so I pulled myself
together.

"How do you account for this umbrella and the gloves?"  I heard Davies
ask, and Thorold answered: "Let me have a look at them."

They were silent for some moments.

"He has had some one there, that's evident," Sir Charles said.  "Who on
earth can it have been?  This is an expensive umbrella, silk, and
gold-mounted, and these gloves, too, are good ones.  It's extraordinary
their owner should have forgotten to take them with him."

"He may be in the house still," answered Davies.  "I hope, for his own
sake, he isn't," Sir Charles said, in a hard voice.  "Let us come and
have a look at poor old Taylor.  We shall find the keys in his pocket,
anyway, and when we have attended to the other matter, we'll go up and
see Vera, and try to bring her to her senses with regard to Paulton.
She must do it--hang it--she _must_!  I hate the thought of it, but it's
my only chance of escape from this accursed parasite!"

Voices and footsteps died away.  Once more the house was silent as
death.

Truly, that deserted house was a house of mystery.

CHAPTER NINE.

THE GENTLEMAN NAMED PAULTON.

On creeping back to her room, I found Vera awaiting me anxiously.

She, too, had heard the men talking, she had recognised her father's and
his companion's voices, though unable to catch what was being said.  I
bent, and we exchanged kisses.  In a few words I told her what had
occurred, and explained the situation.  I wanted to ask her about the
man Davies; how she came to know him, and if she had known him long.
There were other matters, too, that I wished to talk to her about, but
there was no time to do so then.

Though I pride myself upon a rapidity of decision in moments of crises,
and have misled the more ingenuous among my friends into believing that
I really am a man of exceedingly strong character, who would never find
himself at a loss if brought suddenly face to face with a critical
problem, I don't mind admitting that I am an invertebrate, vacillating
creature at such times.  Oh, no, I never lose my head.  Don't think
that.  But when instant decision is needed, and there are several
decisions one might come to, I get quite "jumpy," half make up my mind
to take one course, half make up my mind to take the opposite course,
and finally take the third, or it may be the fourth or fifth.

"Well, you had better get away at once, dear," Vera urged quickly, when
I had told her what I had heard below.

"But what are you going to do?"  I asked.

"Oh, I know what I'm going to do," she replied at once, "but I want to
have your plan.  I know, dear, you are never at a loss when `up against
it,' to use your own phrase.  You have often told me so, or implied it."

Now I did not entirely like her tone.  There was a curious gleam in her
eyes, which I mistrusted.  I had noticed that gleam before, on occasions
when she had been drawing people on to make admissions that they did not
wish to make.  She was rather too fond, I had sometimes thought, of
indulging in a form of intellectual pastime that I have heard people who
talk slang--a thing that I detest--call "pulling you by the leg."  The
suspicion crossed my mind at that moment, that Vera was trying to "pull
my leg"--and I frankly didn't like it.

"This is no time for joking, Vera," I said, for the "gleam" in her eyes
had now become a twinkle.  "This is a time for action--and very prompt
action."

I wondered how she could jest at such a moment.  "That is why I want you
to act," she answered innocently, "and to act promptly.  However, as I
believe you have no idea what to do, Dick, I'm going to tell you what to
do, and you must do it--promptly.  Now, follow me.  I know my way about
this place."  She led me softly along the corridor, turned to the right,
then to the left, and then to the left again.  Presently we reached the
top of a flight of steep, and very narrow wooden stairs.

"Follow me," she whispered again, "and keep one hand on that rope,"
indicating a cord that served as a bannister.  "These stairs are
slippery, or they always used to be.  As a child, I used to fall down
them every Sunday."

We were on the first floor.  The stairs continued to the ground floor.
She turned suddenly.

"How about your gloves and umbrella?"

There was the curious look in her eyes again, so I paid no attention.

"Have you matches?" she asked, a moment later.

I struck one, and, stooping, we made our way along a narrow, dark
passage, with a low ceiling.  Five stone steps down into a damp, stone
tunnel, about twenty feet in length, then to the right, and we came to a
wooden door.

"Give me your keys," she said.

I did so, and she unlocked the door.  It led into a little stone-flagged
yard.  On three sides of it were high walls, walls of houses.  The wall
on the fourth side, only a few feet high, was surmounted by iron rails.
Stone steps led up to the gate at the end of the rails.  She opened the
gate, re-locking it when we had passed out, and we stood in a
stone-flagged cul-de-sac, about fifteen yards long, across the open end
of which, the traffic of the street could be seen passing to and fro.

"And now," she said, when we had reached the street, disobeying the
injunction of Paulton, "you are going to tell me what I must do next."

I hailed a taxi, and we drove off in it, discussing plans as we went
along.

Then I secured a room for her in a comfortable little hotel I knew of,
in a street off Russell Square.  The difficulty that now arose, was how
to get her luggage.

She told me all her things were packed, as she was to have left for
Paris that night, alone.  The order received from her father was, that
she should remain in an obscure lodging near Rue la Harpe, the address
of which, he had given her.  There she would receive further
instructions.  These instructions, she told me, were to come either from
her father, or from Paulton.  She had strict orders not to communicate
with Davies.  Her luggage was in Brighton.  Sir Charles and Lady Thorold
had been staying in Brighton, and she had come up that morning.  Paulton
had met her at Victoria, and taken her in a cab direct to her father's
empty house in Belgrave Street.  He had told her that if she dared go
out before he came to her at ten that night, he would go to the police.

"But who is this man Davies?"  I asked.

"A friend."

"But cannot you tell me something more concerning him?"  I demanded.

"At present, no.  I regret, Dick, that I am not allowed to say
anything--my lips are sealed."

"And Paulton.  Why obey him so subserviently?"

"Ah!" she sighed.  "Because I am compelled."

With these rebuffs, I was forced to be satisfied.

With regard to the plan for recovering her luggage, I rose to the
occasion.  After pondering the problem for a quarter of an hour, I
suggested that she should write a note to her mother in Brighton, saying
that Paulton had suddenly changed his plans, and that her luggage was
wanted at once.  It was to have been sent off at eight o'clock that
night, when Paulton would meet it at Victoria, she had told me.  The
bearer of the note we would now send to Brighton--a District Messenger--
would be instructed to bring the luggage back with him.  I looked up the
trains in the railway-guide, and found it would be just possible for the
messenger to do this in the time.  To avoid any mishap, I told the
messenger to alight, on his return journey, at Clapham Junction, and
bring the luggage from there, in a taxi, to the hotel near Russell
Square.

We dined together upstairs, at the _Trocadero_--ah! how I enjoyed that
evening!  How delightful it was to sit _tete-a-tete_ with her.  Before
we had finished dinner, word was brought to us that Vera's luggage had
arrived.

"I think I managed that rather well," I said.  "Don't you?"

"No," she answered, "I don't."

"No?"

"As you ask me, I may as well tell you that I think you could hardly
have `managed' it worse.  You have simply put Paulton on my track."

"But how?"

"How!  Really, my dear Dick, your intelligence resembles a child's.  You
send a messenger for my luggage.  Acting on your instructions, he brings
it from Brighton to Clapham Junction by train, then hails a taxi, and
brings the luggage on it direct to this hotel.  Paulton is told by my
mother in Brighton, that a messenger from London called for the luggage.
All he has to do, is to ring up the messenger offices, until he finds
the one where you engaged your messenger.  Having found that out, he
ascertains from the messenger the address to which he took the luggage
in the taxi, and at once he comes and finds me."

"But," I said quickly, "Paulton is not in Brighton."

"How can that matter?  He can easily find out who took my luggage.  I
tell you, dear, if Paulton finds me, worse still, if he finds me with
you, the result will be terrible for all of us.  You should yourself
have gone to Clapham, met the messenger-boy there, and yourself have
brought the luggage here."

I felt crushed.  I had believed my plan had been laid so cleverly.  At
the same time, my admiration for Vera's foresight increased, though I
did not tell her so.

We went back to the hotel at once, took away the luggage with us, and by
ten o'clock that night she was comfortably settled in another small
hotel, within a stone's throw of Hampstead Heath.

My sweet-faced, well-beloved told me many things I wanted to know, but
alas! not everything, and all the time we conversed, I had to bear in
mind the important fact that she believed me to be familiar with Sir
Charles' secret--the secret that had led to his sudden flight from
Houghton with her mother, herself and the French maid.  I mistrusted
that French maid--Judith.  I had disliked the tone in which she had
addressed Vera, when she had called her away from me that night at
Houghton, and told her that Lady Thorold wanted her.  I had noticed the
maid on one or two previous occasions, and from the first I had disliked
her.  Her voice was so smooth, her manner so artificially deferential,
and altogether she had seemed to me stealthy and cat-like.  I believed
her to be a hypocrite, if not a schemer.

The man who had called himself Davies, Vera told me, in the course of
our long conversation that evening, was not named Smithson at all.  That
was a name he had adopted for some motive which, she seemed to take it
for granted, I must be able to guess.  Mexican by birth, though of
British-Portuguese parentage, he had spoken to her, perhaps,
half-a-dozen times.  He appeared to be a friend of her father, she said,
though what interest they had in common she had never been able to
discover.

Speaking of Paulton, she said, her soft hand resting in mine, that he
had known her mother longer than her father, and he had, she believed,
been introduced by her mother to Sir Charles, since which time, the two
men's intimacy had steadily increased.

She gave no reason for the dismay the sight of the framed panel portrait
of "Smithson" had created, or for the sudden dismissal that night of all
the servants at Houghton, and the subsequent flight.  I could not quite
decide, in my mind, if she took it for granted that I, knowing Sir
Charles' secret--as she supposed--knew also why he had left Houghton
thus mysteriously, or whether she intentionally refrained from telling
me.  But certainly she seemed to think there was no reason to tell me
who had done poor James, the butler, to death, or who had fired the
rifle shots from the wood, and killed the chauffeur.  At the inquest on
the butler, the jury had returned an open verdict.

Could he have been drowned by Paulton, and drowned intentionally?  Or
was Davies responsible for his death?  That it must have been one of
those two men I now felt certain--supposing he had not committed
suicide, or been drowned by accident.

Another thing Vera clearly took for granted was, that I must have known
why the man hidden in the wood had fired those shots at me.  I had
guessed, of course, from the first, that the bullet that had killed the
driver had been meant for me; though why anybody should wish to do me
harm I had not the remotest idea.

Of some points, of course, my love was ignorant as myself.

On the subject of the flask with the gelsiminum--a very potent poison
distilled from the root of the yellow jasmine--that had been picked up
on the drive at Houghton, just outside the front door, Vera said
nothing.  Indeed, though I referred to it more than once, she each time
turned the conversation into a different channel, as though by accident.

"By the way, darling," I said, as our lips met again in a long,
lingering caress, when we had been talking a long time, "why did you
ring me up to tell me you were in trouble and needed my help, and why
did you call with Davies at my chambers?"

Several times during the evening I had been on the point of asking her
these questions, but on each occasion she had diverted my intention.  It
seemed odd, too, that though I had more than once asked her to tell me
Davies' true name, she had each time turned the conversation without
satisfying me.  And at last she had point-blank refused to tell me.

Why?  I wondered.

She looked at me steadily for some moments.

"It seems almost incredible, Dick," she said at last, speaking very
slowly, and drawing herself away, "that knowing my father's secret, you
should ask those questions.  Tell me, how did you come to make the
terrible discovery about my father?  How long have you known everything?
Who told you about it?"

CHAPTER TEN.

RELATES A STRANGE INCIDENT.

Vera's very direct questions took me aback, though I had expected them
sooner or later.  "Who told me?"  I said, echoing the words in order to
gain time for thought, my arms still about her.  "Oh, I'm sure I can't
remember.  I seem to have known it a long time."

"It can't have been such a _very_ long time," she answered, still
looking at me in that queer way that made me feel uncomfortable.
"Surely you must remember who told you.  It is hardly the sort of thing
one would be told every day--or even twice in one's life, is it?"

"Honestly," I said with quick decision, "I can't tell you how I came to
know it."

"Your `cannot' means `will not,'" she said, and her lip twitched in the
curious way that I knew meant she was nettled.

However, after that she dropped the subject, and I felt relieved.  I
hated deceiving her, yet I was compelled.  I am not an adept in the art
of what Lamb calls "walking round about a truth," at least, not for more
than a minute or two at a time, and my love had such quick intelligence
that it is no easy matter--as I had several times discovered, to my
discomfiture--to mislead her.

For the first time since we had met in the house in Belgrave Street, our
conversation became purely personal.

I had almost feared the events of the past weeks might have altered her
regard for me, and it afforded me intense relief to find I was mistaken.
For I was desperately in love with her, more so than I cared to admit
even to myself.  And now I found to my joy that my love for her was
apparently fully reciprocated.

And yet why should she care for me?  This puzzled me, I confess, though
I know as a thoroughgoing man of the world and as a cosmopolitan that
women do take most curious likes and dislikes.  I am neither clever,
good-looking nor amusing, nor, I believe, even particularly "good
company" as it is called.  There are scores upon scores of men just like
myself.  You meet them everywhere, in town and in the country.  Society
teems with them, and our clubs are full of them.  Men, young and middle
aged, who have been educated at the public schools and Universities, who
have comfortable incomes, are fond of sport, who travel up and down
Europe, who have never in their lives done a stroke of work--and don't
intend ever to do one if they can help it--who live solely for amusement
and for the pleasure of living.

What do women see in such men, women who have plenty of money and
therefore do not need to marry in order to secure a home or to better
themselves?  What did--what could Vera Thorold see in me to attract her,
least of all to tempt her to wish to marry me?

"Vera, my dearest," I said, when we had talked of each other's affairs
for a considerable time, "why not marry me now?  I can get a special
licence!  Then you will be free of all trouble, and nobody will be able
to molest you.  I shall have a right to protect you in every way
possible."

"Free of all trouble if I marry you, Richard?" she answered,
reflectively, evading my question, and looking at me queerly.

"And why not?"  I asked.  I felt rather hurt, for her words seemed to
imply some hidden meaning.  "Don't you think I shall be good to you and
treat you properly?"

"Oh, that would be all right," she answered, apparently amused at my
misconstruing her meaning.  "I am sure, Dick, that you would be good to
any girl.  I have already heard of your spoiling two or three girls, and
giving them presents they had no right to accept from you--eh?" she
asked mischievously.

I am afraid I turned rather red, for, to be candid, I am something of a
fool where women are concerned.  At the same time I was surprised at her
knowing the truth, and I suppose she guessed this, for, before I had
time to speak again, she went on--

"You must not forget that I am a modern girl, my dear old Dick.  I know
a great deal that I suppose I have no business to know, and when I hear
things I remember them.  Don't for a moment flatter yourself that I
think you perfect.  I don't.  My frank opinion of you is that you really
are an awfully good sort, kind, sympathetic, unselfish--singularly
unselfish for a man--generous to a fault, and extravagant.  In short, I
like you far, far better than any man I have ever met, and I love you
very much, you dear old boy--but there it ends."

"I should rather say it did!"  I answered.  "If you really think all
that of me, I am more than satisfied."

"On the other hand," she continued quickly, "I don't pretend to think--
and you needn't think I do--that you are not just like most other men in
some respects, in one respect in particular."

"What is the one respect?"

"You are dreadfully susceptible--oh, yes, Dick, you are!  There is no
need for any one to tell me that.  I can see it in your face.  Your eyes
betray you.  You have what I once heard a girl friend of mine call,
`affectionate eyes.'  She said to me: `Never trust a man who has
"affectionate eyes," and I never have trusted one--except you.'"

"I am flattered dear.  Then why not do what I suggest?"  I asked,
raising her soft hand to my lips.

"It wouldn't be safe, Dick, it really wouldn't.  We must wait until--
until Paulton is dead."

"Until Paulton--is--until he--is dead!"  I gasped.  "Good Heavens! that
may not be for years!"

She smiled oddly.

"He may live for years, of course," she answered drily.

"What do you mean?"  I asked, staring at her in amazement.

"I mean," she said, looking straight at me, and her voice suddenly grew
hard, "that when he is dead, the world will be rid of a creature who
ought never to have been born."

Her eyes blazed.

"Ah!  Dick--Ah!  Dick!" she went on with extraordinary force, sighing
heavily, "if you only knew the life that man has led--the misery he has
caused, the horrors that are traceable to his vile diabolical plots.  My
father and mother are only two of his many victims.  He is a man I
dread.  I am not a coward, no one can call me that, but--but I fear Dago
Paulton--I fear him terribly."  She was trembling in my arms, though
whether through fear, or only from emotion, I could not say.  Nor could
I think of any apt words which might soothe her, except to say--

"Leave him to me, dearest.  Yet from what you tell me," I said after a
pause, "I can only suppose that some one is--how shall I put it?--going
to encompass Paulton's death."

"Who knows?" she asked vaguely, looking up into my eyes.

I shrugged my shoulders, but said nothing.  There was nothing I could
say.  This much I had suspected at any rate--Paulton had been
responsible for the chauffeur's death--or Vera believed him to have
been.

When I left my beloved late that night, and returned to King Street, I
was not satisfied with my discoveries.  So many mysteries still remained
unsolved.  What was the danger that had threatened her when she had rung
me up at my flat, and begged me to help her?  Where had she been
staying?  What danger threatened her now?  What hold had the man Paulton
over her, and why did she fear to disobey him?  Most perplexing of all--
what was her father's secret, and why had he fled from Houghton?

There were many minor problems, too, which still needed solution.  Who
was Davies; what was his true name, and why was he so intimate with Sir
Charles?

Again I seemed to see that curious stain on the ceiling of the room in
Belgrave Street, and once more I wondered what had caused it.  It might
be, of course, merely a stain caused by some leaking pipe, and yet--

I thought of that remarkable conversation I had heard in the hall of the
unoccupied house.  What had they meant when they said they must "bring
Vera to her senses"?  Also, why had they seemed averse from calling in a
doctor to see the old man Taylor, and to--

Taylor!  I had been so much engrossed with Vera and her bondage of
terror for the past few hours that I had forgotten all about him.
Taylor.  Had he recovered consciousness, I wondered, or had he--

A cold shiver ran through me as this last thought occurred to me.

It must have been quite two o'clock in the morning before I fell asleep.
I am not an early riser, and my first feeling when I was awakened by
John shaking me rather roughly, was one of annoyance.  With difficulty I
roused myself thoroughly.  My servant was standing by the bedside,
looking very pale.

"There are two police-officers downstairs," he said huskily.  "They have
come--they say they have come, sir--"

"Well, out with it," I exclaimed wrathfully, as he checked himself
abruptly.  "What have they come for?  Do they want to see me?"

He braced himself with an effort--

"They say, sir," he answered, "that--that they've come to arrest you!
It is something to do, I think, with some old man who's been found dead
in an unoccupied 'ouse."

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

CONTAINS SOME STRANGE NEWS.

My heart seemed to stop beating.  Old Taylor, then, was dead, and I sat
up in bed, staring straight before me.

For nearly a minute I did not speak.  All the time I felt John's calm
gaze, puzzled, inquisitive, fixed upon me.  I had gone through enough
unhappiness during these past weeks to last me a lifetime, but all that
I had endured would be as nothing by comparison with this.  I could not
blind myself to one fact--I had poisoned old Taylor deliberately.  Had
I, by some hideous miscalculation, the result of ignorance, overdosed
him, and brought his poor old life to a premature end?  I might be
charged with manslaughter.  Or worse!

Why!  I might be convicted of murder.  I might even be hanged!  The grim
thought held me breathless.

And Vera--my thoughts fled to her at once--what would become of Vera?
Even if I were only imprisoned, and only for a short spell, Vera would
have none to look to for help, none to defend her.  She would be at the
mercy of her persecutors!  I think that thought appalled me even more
than the thought that I might be tried for manslaughter or murder.

"Oh," I said at last to John, "it's some mistake.  The police have made
some grotesque blunder.  You had better show them up, and I will talk to
them."

No blunder had been made, and I knew it.

I must say that I was surprised at the officers' extreme courtesy.
Seeing they were about to arrest me on suspicion of having caused a
man's death, their politeness, their consideration for my feelings, had
a touch of irony.

They waited while I had my bath and dressed.  Then we all drove together
to the police-station, chatting quite pleasantly on topics of passing
interest.  At the police-station my name and address and many other
particulars, were taken down in writing.  With the utmost gravity a
pompous inspector asked me "what birthmarks I possessed, if any," and
various other questions ending with "if any."  I wondered whether,
before he had done, he would ask me my sex--if any.

Nearly a month dragged on--days of anxiety, which seemed years, and I
had had no word from Vera!

I shall never forget that trial--never.

My opinion of legal procedure, never high, sank to zero before the trial
at the London Sessions ended.  The absurdity of some of the questions
asked by counsel; the impossible inferences drawn from quite ordinary
occurrences; the endless repetitions of the same questions, but in
different sets of words; the verbal quibbling and juggling; the
transposing of statements made in evidence and conveying a meaning
obvious to the lowest intelligence; the pathos indulged in when the old
man's end came to be described; the judge's weak attempts at being
witty; the red-tapeism; the unpardonable waste of time--and of public
money.  No, I shall never forget those days.

It lasted from Monday till Thursday, and during those four days I spent
eleven hours in the witness-box.  Ah! what a tragic farce.  I received
anonymous letters of encouragement, and, of course, some offensive
letters.  I even received a proposal of marriage from a forward minx,
who admitted that though still at school, in Blackheath, she had "read
every word of the trial," that she "kept a dear portrait" of me, cut out
of the _Daily Mirror_, under her pillow at night.  I felt I must indeed
have reached the depths of ignominy when my hand was sought in matrimony
by an emotional Blackheath flapper.  A pretty flapper, I admit.  She
sent me five cabinet portraits of herself, in addition to a miniature of
herself as a baby.  Phew!  What are our young people coming to?

Well, in the end I was acquitted, and told that I might leave the Court
without a stain upon my character.

Certainly that was in a sense gratifying.  In the face of acrobatic
verbal feats Counsel representing the Director of Public Prosecutions
had indulged in during the trial, I felt that anything might have
happened, and was fully prepared to be branded a felon for life.  The
drug, the jury decided, had been administered without any intention
whatever to do more than send the old man to sleep for an hour or so,
and an analysis of the tea left in the cup proved beyond a doubt, that
this tea could not possibly have caused death, which had been due to
heart-failure.  I had been traced, it seemed, by my gloves and umbrella
left in the old man's room.  Other details--long-winded ones--I need not
describe.

The problem now was, what to do next.  My name, Richard Ashton, had
become a sort of butt.  Everybody knew it, had seen it in print twenty
times during the past week.  Mentioned by the comedian in a music-hall,
it at once created laughter.  I laughed myself--not uproariously, I
admit--when a comedian at the Alhambra compared me to an albatross,
thereby causing the entire audience to shake with merriment, and a
stranger to turn to me with the remark--

"Richard Ashton!  What a Nut, eh?"

Now the vulgar term "Nut" was in its infancy then, and new to me.  I
pawed the air in a vain endeavour to grasp the point of comparing me
first to an albatross, and then to a nut.  Nuts don't grow on ash trees,
or I might have thought the "ash" of "Ashton" bore some kind of
relationship to a nut.  Finally I gave it up, convinced that I must be
deficient in a sense of humour.

Meanwhile, my beloved had disappeared.  To my chagrin I ascertained at
the hotel at Hampstead that a man had called on the day following my
arrest, and that she had gone away with him, taking all her luggage.

A description of the man failed to help me to identify him.  From it I
decided, however, that it was not Sir Charles who had called for Vera,
nor yet the mysterious Smithson.  My natural inference, therefore, was
that the fellow Paulton had discovered her hiding-place, and compelled
her to go away with him.

I tried hard to put into practice my theory that it is useless to worry
about anything, and for some days I remained passive, watching, however,
the advertisement columns in the principal daily newspapers, for during
our evening at the hotel, Vera had incidentally remarked that she had,
while at Brighton, advertised for a bracelet she had lost, and by that
means recovered it.  I advertised for news of her.  But there was no
response.

On the Sunday, having nothing particular to do, I looked in during the
afternoon at one of my usual haunts, Tattersall's sale yard.  I thought
it probable I should there run across somebody or other I knew, and I
was not mistaken.  At the entrance I overtook a little man whose figure
I could not mistake.  The little sporting parson from a village outside
Oakham was a great friend of mine, and he had told me that, whenever in
town for a week-end he invariably went to Tattersall's on the Sunday
afternoon to see what horses were to be sold there next day.

"Not that I can afford to buy a horse, oh dear no!"  I remembered him
saying to me in the drawing-room at Houghton.  "You know what parson's
families are.  Mine is no exception to the rule!"

I had upbraided him for his lack of forethought, and he had chuckled,
adding seriously that in his opinion the falling birth rate spelt the
downfall of the Nation, a point upon which I had differed from him more
than once.

"Hullo, Rowan!"  I exclaimed, as I overtook him, and quietly slipped my
arm into his from behind, making him start.  "I see you spoke the truth
that day."

He was frankly delighted to see me.  I knew he would be, for he is one
of the few Rutlanders I have met who are wholly devoid of what some
Americans term "frills."  I believe that if I were in rags and carrying
a sandwich-board and I met little Rowan in the streets of London
to-morrow, he would come up to me and grasp me by the hand.  There are
not many men of whom one can say that.  I don't suppose more than ten
per cent, of my acquaintances, if as many, would look at me again if
next week I became a pauper.

"What truth, and when?" he asked, in answer to my remark.

"Don't you remember telling me," I said, "I believe it was the last time
we hunted together, that when in London you always do two things?  You
said: `I always attend service on Sunday morning, and Tattersall's on
Sunday afternoon.'  How is the old cob?"

"Getting old, Dick, getting old, like his master," Rowan said with a
touch of pathos.  "I hear the Hunt talk of buying me another mount.  It
is good of them; very good.  I am not supposed to know, of course."

"And so you have come to find something up to your weight, eh?"  I went
on.  He does not, I suppose, ride more than eight stone twelve in his
hunting kit.  He is the wiriest little man I have ever seen.

"No," he answered.  "I have come to have a last look at Sir Charles
Thorold's stud.  It comes under the hammer to-morrow, as, of course, you
know."

"Thorold's horses to be sold!"  I exclaimed.  "I had no idea.  Then he
has said good-bye to Rutland for good and all.  I am sorry."

"So am I, very.  He is a man I have always liked.  Naturally his name is
in rather bad odour in the county just at present, but that does not in
the least affect my own regard for him."

"It wouldn't," I said to him.  "You are not that sort, Rowan.  It is a
pity there are not more like you about."

He changed the subject by asking if I had seen Sir Charles and Lady
Thorold lately.

"I have not seen Lady Thorold since the Houghton affair," I answered.
"I have seen Sir Charles, but not to speak to."

I recollected how I had caught a glimpse of him in that house in
Belgrave Street.

"You have heard the latest about Miss Thorold, of course?" he said, as
we passed into the Yard, which at this hour--about four o'clock--was
crowded with well-dressed men and women.

"The latest?  What do you mean?"

"Dear me," he exclaimed, smiling.  "Why, we country cousins know more
than you men about town after all, sometimes.  She's at Monte Carlo."

"At Monte?  Vera Thorold!"

"Yes."

"What is she doing there?  Who is with her?"

"I don't know who's with her, or if any one is with her.  She is pretty
independent, as you know, and well able to take care of herself--a
typical twentieth century girl."

"But who told you she was at Monte?"

"Several people.  Ah! there's Lord Logan!  He'll tell us.  He was
speaking of her yesterday.  He returned from the Riviera only a couple
of days ago."

CHAPTER TWELVE.

GOSSIP FROM THE SUNSHINE.

"Oh, yes, that's right enough," Lord Logan said, when we questioned him.
"I saw her the night before I left.  She was playing
trente-et-quarante--and winning a bit, too, by Gad!"

He was an ordinary type of the modern young peer--well-set-up,
unemotional, faultlessly groomed.  He produced a gold cigarette case as
he spoke, and held it out to me.  I noticed that the cigarettes it
contained bore his coat of arms.

"These cigarettes are not likely to be stolen from you," I said lightly,
indicating the coat of arms.

He smiled.

"You are right.  I was the first to start the fashion--get 'em from
Cairo every week--and now everybody's doin' it, haw, haw!  I've got my
cartridges done the same way.  At some places where one shoots the
beater fellers rob one right and left--the devils.  I said to one of my
hosts the other day, I said: `Your cartridge carriers are a lot of bally
rogues.'  `What do you mean?' he asked, bristlin' up like a well-bred
bull-dog.  `Well,' I said, `you make 'em all turn out their pockets, and
you'll see,' I said.  And he did!"

"And what was in them?"

"In them?  Damme, what wasn't in them?  My dear feller, every beater who
had carried cartridges had a dozen or two cartridges in his pockets
then--it's a fact.  And we'd done shootin', and the beaters were goin'
home, so they couldn't pretend they were just carryin' the bally
cartridges in their pockets to have 'em handy.  But there wasn't a
cartridge of mine missing among the lot.  They knew only too well they
wouldn't be able to sell to the local ironmonger cartridges with a coat
of arms on 'em--eh what?  And that's why I now have my cigarettes
tattooed in the same way.  I believe my servants used to rob them by the
hundred.  They don't now, except perhaps a handful to smoke themselves,
and of course that's only natural.  What was it you were askin' me just
now?  Ah, yes, about Vera Thorold.  She seems to be a flyer."

"Did you speak to her?"

"Oh, yes, I talked to her right enough.  She did look well.  Simply
lovely.  White cloth frock, you know.  She's all alone at Monte, stayin'
at the _Anglais_."

"Did she say how long she'd be there?"

"No.  I didn't ask her.  She was winnin' the night I saw her.  I never
saw such devil's luck--never.  I lost over a thousand on the week, so I
thought it time to pay my hotel bill--what?"

The three of us made the tour of Tattersall's together, admiring,
criticising, fault-finding.  Among Thorold's horses was the mare I had
ridden on that last day I had been at Houghton.  What a long time ago
that seemed!  I felt tempted to make a bid for her next day, she had
carried me so well.

Then I thought again of my well-beloved.  What an extraordinary girl she
was!  Ah! how I loved her.  Why had she not told me that she meant to go
to the Riviera?  Why--

An idea flashed in upon me.  I was getting bored with the mad hurry of
London.  This would be a good excuse for running out to the Cote d'Azur.
Indeed, my chief reason for remaining in town had been that I believed
Vera to be there still, either in hiding for some reason of her own, or,
what I had thought far more likely, forced against her will by that
blackguard Paulton to remain in concealment and keep me in ignorance of
her whereabouts.

Instead of that she was "on her own"--how I hate that slang phrase--at
Monte Carlo `winnin' a fortune,' as Lord Logan had put it.

"A strange world, my masters!"  Never were truer words spoken.  The
longer I live the more I realise its strangeness.  When I arrived at
Monte Carlo by the day rapide from Paris, rain was pelting down in
torrents, and a fierce storm was raging.  Wind shrieked along the
streets.  Out at sea, lightning flashed in the bay, while the thunder
rattled like artillery fire.  I was glad to find myself in the warm,
brilliantly-lit _Hotel de Paris_, and when, after dinner, I strolled
into the fumoir, it was so crowded that I had difficulty in finding any
place to sit.

Among the group of men close to whom I presently found myself,
conversation had turned upon the pigeon-shooting at Monte.  From their
remarks I gathered that an important event had been decided that day,
the Prix de--I forget what, but the prize appeared to be a much coveted
cup, with a considerable sum in added money.  This had been won, it
seemed, by a Belgian Count, who had killed twenty-seven pigeons without
a miss.

"_Mais c'est epatant--vraiment epatant_!" declared an excitable little
Frenchman, as he pulled forward his chair.  He went on to explain, with
great volubility and much gesticulation, the difficulties that some of
the shots had presented.  This Frenchman, I gathered further, had backed
the Belgian Count every time from his first shot to the last, and had in
consequence won a lot of money.

Time was when trap-shooting appealed to me.  I have shot pigeons at
Monte, at Ostend, and here in England at Hurlingham at the Gun Club,
also at Hendon, but it has always struck me as being a cold-blooded form
of amusement--its warmest supporters can hardly call it sport.  Not that
there is more cruelty connected with pigeon-shooting than with
game-shooting, as some would have us believe.  Indeed, I have always
contended that trap-shooting is less cruel than game-shooting, for
pigeon-shooters are one and all first-rate shots--if they were not they
would lose heavily and soon give up the game--with the result that the
greater proportion of the birds shot at are killed outright, a thing
that cannot be said of game, where one's tailor sometimes takes out a
licence.

But why is it, I wonder, that pigeon-shooters, considered collectively,
are such dreadful-looking men?  I have often wondered, and I am by no
means the only man who has noticed this feature of pigeon-shooters.
Glancing carelessly at the crowd seated near me now, it struck me
forcibly that I had rarely set eyes on such a dissipated-looking set.
Men of middle age, most of them, obese, fat-faced, with puffy eyes and
sagging skin, they looked capable of any villainy, and might well have
been addicted to every known vice.

One man in particular arrested my attention.  His age was difficult to
place.  Lying, rather than sitting, back in a softly-padded leather
chair, with crossed legs, and with one arm hanging loosely over the arm
of the chair, he talked in a singularly ugly voice between his yellow
teeth, which clenched a long cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth.

"Another twist, and he would have cleared the boundary," he was saying
to his companion, a good-looking English lad of five-or-six-and-twenty.
"The second barrel cut him to pieces; it's extraordinary what a lot of
shot a blue-rock can carry away.  How did you come out on the day?"

"Badly--shocking," answered the young man.  "I backed the guns to start
with, and you know how badly the whole lot of you shot.  Then I started
backing the bird, and you began to kill every time.  My luck was out
to-day--dead out."

I saw his friend smile.

"Dago was the one lucky man this afternoon, I should say," the first
speaker remarked presently.  "But there--he's always lucky."

Instantly my interest was aroused.  "Dago!"  Could it be--surely--?

"Yes, he's lucky enough," the other answered.  Then, after a pause he
added: "That's a man I can't stand."

"Can't stand?  Why?"

"Oh, I don't know.  The fellow gets on my nerves.  How does he live?
Have you any idea?"

"You mean, what is his source of income?  I'm sure I can't tell you.
But for that matter, how do half the men we meet here at Monte manage to
live?  It would not be well to ask.  They have money, and that is the
main thing.  All we require is to transfer to our own pockets as much of
it as we can."

The young man looked at him thoughtfully for some moments, then said--

"Yes, I suppose so."

The tone in which he spoke was ironical, but his companion didn't notice
it.

"Do you know Paulton well?" the elder man asked himself.

"As well as I care to.  Why do you ask?"

"Only just out of curiosity.  Many people form an unfavourable
impression of him when they meet him first, and afterwards they come to
like him."

"That's the reverse of my case," answered the young man quickly.  "The
first time I met him I rather liked him, I remember.  But after I had
met him several times--well, I changed about him.  He may be all right!
I dare say he is.  I suppose our personalities are not akin, as I have
heard some one put it."

"He's a fine shot."

"You are right.  He is.  I thought he would win the cup to-day."

"The bird that knocked him out was badly hit.  If he had killed it, he
would have won second money."

The young Englishman lay back, stretched himself, and yawned.  "I'm
getting fed up with this place," he said at last.  "I shall get back to
England in a day or two.  How long shall you remain here?"

"It depends--partly on Dago.  We're running a sort of syndicate
together, you know--or probably you don't know.  He has to see one or
two men here about it before we leave."

"What sort of syndicate?"

"I am afraid I'm not at liberty to tell you--yet.  I can tell you this--
though, we have a lady interested in it, a very pretty girl.  That ought
to appeal to you," and he laughed.

"Have I seen her?" the young man asked, looking at him curiously.

His companion pondered.  Then suddenly he exclaimed--

"Why, yes--of course you have.  She was playing trente-et-quarante the
other night, and nothing could stop her winning.  She won a maximum and
went on and on, simply raking in the money.  You and I were there
together.  I am sure you must remember."

"_That_ girl!"

The tone in which he uttered these words surprised me.  Could it be Vera
of whom they had been speaking?  According to Lord Logan she had won
heavily at trente-et-quarante.  And if so, who was this man, this
partner and friend of Dago Paulton's?  And what could the secret
syndicate be in which both were interested?

I had my back to the door, and the middle-aged man who spoke between his
teeth and was lying back in the lounge chair was almost facing me.
Suddenly, a look of recognition came into his eyes--he had seen some one
behind me enter, whom he knew.

"Ah, here is good old Dago," he exclaimed.  He held up his hand and
signalled to him.

I had fitted a cigarette into my holder, struck a match, and lit up
slowly, while I composed my thoughts.  Now I half-turned to gaze upon
this man of whom I had heard so much, and was now to see for the first
time.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

IN THE WEB.

I held my breath.

I should have recognised him at once from the panel portrait, though he
looked some years older than when that photograph had been taken.

Of medium height, and rather broadly built, he had all the appearance of
a gentleman.  His hair was very short, with dark grey, rather deep-set
eyes, and thick dark eyebrows.  The hair was parted in the middle, and
plastered down, but he was not in evening clothes, as were the men to
whose conversation I had been listening.

He shook hands cordially with his friend, nodded to the good-looking
young man, and called to the waiter to bring him a chair, those near by
being all occupied.  While waiting for the chair to be brought, he
suddenly caught sight of me, evidently in recognition, for he turned
quickly and spoke in a low tone to his friend, who at once glanced in my
direction.

All this! "felt" rather than saw, for I was not looking directly at the
two men.

Where had Paulton seen me before?  That was the first thought that
occurred to me, and of course I could not answer it.  I had no
recollection of having ever seen him previously.  Suddenly, he crossed
over to me.

"Mr. Richard Ashton, I think?" he said in a genial tone, and with a
smile.

"Yes," I answered rather stiffly, none too pleased at his addressing me.
I certainly had no wish to know him.

"My name's Paulton," he said, ignoring my coldness.  "I've seen you
before.  You were pointed out to me one night at the Savoy.  I want to
introduce my friend.  Henderson, let me present you to Mr. Richard
Ashton.  Mr. Ashton--Mr. Henderson."

It was done before I could say anything--before I could avoid it.  There
was nothing for it, therefore, but to pretend to appear pleased.

He asked me what I would drink, and I had to say something--though I
hated drinking with the fellow.  Put yourself in my place--drinking with
a man who had tried in cold blood to kill me, and who had shot an
innocent man dead!  I felt it had been weak of me not to ignore his
greeting and meet his look of recognition with a stony stare.  But
regret for a mistake was useless now.  I had made a false step when I
spoke to him, and I couldn't suddenly, apparently for no reason, turn my
back upon him.

A sudden terrific gust of wind shook the heavy windows, and a sheet of
rain splashed against the panes like a great wave, distracting, for the
moment, every one's attention.  A storm on the Riviera is always heavy
and blustering.

"I have just come in," Paulton said.  "In all my life I don't recollect
such an awful storm as this, except once in the Jura, when I was out
boar-shooting.  How fortunate it didn't start while the pigeon-shooting
was on to-day."

He turned to me suddenly.

"By the way, Ashton," he said familiarly, "we have a mutual friend, I
think."

"Indeed?"  I answered drily.  "Who is that?"

"Sir Charles Thorold's daughter, Miss Vera."

I was astonished at this effrontery--so astounded that my surprise
outweighed my feeling of indignation at the tone of familiarity in which
he spoke of Vera.  He might have been referring to some barmaid we both
knew.

I think he detected my annoyance, but he said nothing.  After a pause I
replied, keeping myself in check--

"Is Miss Thorold a friend of yours?"

"A friend of mine?  Rather.  I should say so!"

He glanced across at Henderson, and they both smiled significantly.
This was intolerable.

"I do know Miss Thorold," I remarked, emphasising the "Miss Thorold,"
"but I don't remember that she has ever mentioned your name to me."

"No, probably she wouldn't mention it.  Vera is discreet, if she is
nothing else."

The impertinence of this reply was so obvious, so pointed, that I knew
it must have been intentional.

"Really, I don't follow you," I said icily.  "What, pray, has Miss
Thorold to say to you, and what have you to say to her?"

"Oh, a very great deal, I can assure you."

"Indeed?  How intensely interesting!"

"It is, very.  Her flight from Houghton that night must have astonished
you."

I could bear the fellow's company no longer.  Emptying my tumbler, I
rose with deliberation, and, excusing myself with frigid politeness,
strode out of the fumoir.

In the vestibule I met the good-looking young Englishman.  He had left
the room soon after Paulton had entered.  Now he came up and spoke to
me.

"I hope you'll forgive my addressing you," he said in well-bred accents,
raising his hat, "but I heard your name mentioned when Paulton
introduced Henderson to you.  May I ask if you are _the_ Mr. Richard
Ashton?"

"It depends what you mean by `the' Richard Ashton," I answered.  This
young man attracted me; he had done so from the first.

"Do you happen to live in King Street, St. James's?" he inquired
abruptly.

"Yes, I do."

"Then you're the man I have for weeks past been wanting to meet.  I
believe you know Miss Thorold--Miss Vera Thorold."

"I do."

"She wants particularly to see you."

"How do you know that?"

"Because she told me, or rather a friend of hers--to whom I am engaged
to be married--did.  They are together at the _Alexandra Hotel_, in
Mentone.  My friend is staying there with an aunt of mine."

"Surely if Miss Thorold wished to meet me she could have written to me,
or telegraphed," I said rather frigidly.

"No.  I think I ought to tell you that the man who introduced himself to
you some minutes ago--the man Dago Paulton--has entire control over
her--she goes in fear of him!  She did not dare write to you, or even
send you a wire.  She knew that if she did he would find out.  The lady
to whom I am engaged told me this some days ago, and told me a great
deal about you that had been told to her by Miss Thorold."

"Do you mind telling me your name?"  I said, looking at him squarely.

"Faulkner--Frank Faulkner.  Paulton is a man of whom you ought to be
very careful.  He is really a scoundrel, that I don't mind telling you.
I have just been told by a man who really knows, that he has forced Miss
Thorold to take an active interest in a rascally scheme of some kind
that he and Henderson have devised.  I am told by my lady friend--her
name is Gladys Deroxe--that Miss Thorold tried her utmost to have
nothing to do with it, but Paulton threatened to reveal something he
knows concerning her father, so in the end she consented.  Paulton has
no longer a card for the Rooms; he was shut out last year for some
reason, and he has lately been compelling Miss Thorold to go and play
there in his place.  Her luck at trente-et-quarante has been phenomenal,
but all the money she has won he has of course at once taken from her,
she is his factotum.  I am very glad for her sake that you have come
out.  I suppose it was by accident you came?  You didn't expect to find
her here--eh?"

"On the contrary," I said, "I chanced to hear only last Sunday that Miss
Thorold was staying on the Riviera--so I decided to come over at once,"
I said.

"She knows that you are here, you know."

"She knows?  Why, who on earth can have told her?"

"I have just been telephoning to Miss Deroxe over at the _Bristol_ at
Beaulieu.  Miss Thorold is there with her.  I told them that a man named
Ashton was here, and I described your appearance.  Miss Thorold said at
once it must be you.  Unfortunately she leaves to-night for Paris, and
Miss Deroxe goes with her."

"But why is she going to Paris?"  I exclaimed eagerly.

"Who?  Miss Thorold?  She's acting on Paulton's orders.  Her visit has
some mysterious bearing upon the scheme I have just spoken about."

The door of the fumoir opened at that moment, and Paulton and Henderson
came out into the vestibule.  At once they must have seen Faulkner and
myself conversing, and for an instant a look of anger flashed into
Paulton's eyes.  The expression subsided quickly, and he and Henderson
approached smiling calmly.

"I'm prepared to bet that I know what you two were talking about,"
Paulton said lightly, addressing Faulkner.  "You were talking of Vera.
Ah!  Am I wrong?  No, I see I'm not.  You have told our friend Ashton
that she goes to Paris to-night.  Well, you are mistaken.  Information
has reached me that there has been a landslip on the line beyond
Beaulieu, and it is blocked in consequence."

Then he turned to me.

"Would you like to come over to Beaulieu, Ashton?" he said, as though
making some quite ordinary request.  "My car will be here presently.  I
can take you too, Faulkner, if you wish to see Miss Deroxe.  I am going
straight to the _Bristol_."

I was about to refuse, when Faulkner spoke.

"I should like to go, and Mr. Ashton will of course come."

"Good.  My car should be here in a quarter of an hour."

He strolled over to the bureau, and I heard him inquire for letters.
There were several.  He took them from the gold-laced porter, sank on to
a settee, and began to tear them open.

"Why did you accept his offer?"  I inquired of Faulkner, in an
undertone, as I lit a cigarette.

"Never mind," he answered quickly.  "I know what I'm doing.  Leave
everything to me now."  At that moment the large glazed double doors
leading into the Place in front of the Casino revolved slowly and a
tall, imposing-looking woman of thirty-five or so, in rich black furs,
which had all the appearance of being valuable, sailed in, followed by
her maid carrying a small bag.  Paulton, glancing up from his letters,
noticed her, and at once sprang to his feet.

"Ah, Baronne, how pleasant to meet you again!" he exclaimed, as he
approached her.  "I expected you here sooner."

"I should have been here an hour ago," she exclaimed, "but the train was
delayed.  This storm is awful!"

She had a rich, deep contralto voice, one of those speaking voices that
at once arouse interest and curiosity.  It aroused interest now, for the
guests seated in the hall simultaneously interrupted their conversation
in order to look at the new arrival, so striking was her appearance.

"I went to the station quite a while ago," Paulton said.  "They told me
the train could not arrive."

"It has not arrived yet, I believe," she answered.  "I got off at a
wayside station, drove the two miles into Beaulieu, and then hired the
car which has just brought me on here."

She was indeed a handsome woman, obviously a woman of singular
personality.  Exceedingly dark, with great coils of blue-black hair that
her travelling-veil only partly concealed, she was very handsome still.
When I had watched her for nearly a minute, wondering whom she might be,
my gaze unconsciously drifted to the quietly-dressed maid who stood
respectfully and demurely a few feet behind her mistress, bearing a
large leather dressing-case in her hand.  Her appearance somehow seemed
familiar.  Suddenly she turned her face rather more towards me, and I
recognised her at once.

It was Judith, the French girl who had been Lady Thorold's maid.  Her
beady little black eyes rested on me for an instant, then were quietly
lowered.  But instinctively I knew that in that single, swift glance she
had recognised me--and I certainly held her in suspicion.

"The rooms have been retained for you Baronne," I heard Paulton say,
"the rooms you had last year.  Shall I order supper?"

"Certainly.  Please do," the deep voice answered.  "Tell Gustave to send
it to my rooms in a quarter of an hour.  Ma foi!  I am famished."

For the first time I noticed that she spoke with a foreign accent.  But
it was not very marked.

"Then I shall see you later," Paulton said, as the new arrival moved
towards the lift.  "_A tantot_, Baronne."

"_A bientot_."

Paulton bent over her hand, and when the doors of the lift had shut he
came across to us.

"You'd better get into your coats," he said.  "My car is just coming
round!"

"Who is the lady?"  Faulkner asked carelessly.

"Who?"  Paulton exclaimed.  "You don't mean to say you don't know
Baronne de Coudron?  I thought everybody in Monte knew the Baronne--by
sight.  She's one of my best friends."

As the big grey Rolls-Royce sped through the darkness, the storm still
raged.  None of us spoke.  Three glowing cigars alone indicated our
whereabouts.

Whether or not it was the stiff brandy-and-soda I had had in the
smoking-room, I know not, but I suddenly realised that I was becoming
curiously drowsy.  I tried to keep awake.  My eyelids felt like lead.
They were smarting, too.  Presently I was aware that something glowing
red had fallen to the ground.  Afterwards I came to know it had been
Faulkner's cigar.

I do not know what happened immediately afterwards.  My mind suddenly
became a complete blank.

At last, hours afterwards, I suppose, I slowly struggled back to
consciousness.

Where was I?

The room, and all in it, was strange to me.  All was utterly unfamiliar.
My head ached very badly.  My back and limbs were stiff.  I got off the
sofa where I had lain asleep, scrambled to my feet, and looked about me.
At once I saw Faulkner.  He was asleep still, in a most uncomfortable
attitude, in a big leather armchair.  His mouth was wide open.

A glance out of the window showed me that the house we were in was in
the open country.  Already it was broad daylight, and a perfect calm had
succeeded the storm of the previous night.  But had it been the previous
night?  I supposed so.  Signs of the storm were still visible
everywhere--trees blown down and lying on their sides, branches and
great limbs lying about.  The country all around was densely wooded.
Look in what direction I would, only trees, grass fields and mountains
were visible.  There was not a house in sight; not a cottage; not a hut.

I went over to Faulkner, and shook him roughly.  He was still sleeping
soundly, and it took me some minutes to arouse him into consciousness.

His first observation when at last fully awake, was characteristic of
the young man--

"Where, in Heaven's name, am I?"

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

THE PERFUME.

I dashed across to the door.  It was locked.  "Now tell me, what do you
make of it?"  Faulkner asked, when he had looked about the unfamiliar
room and stared blankly out of the window.

"The solution seems pretty obvious," I said.  "We've been drugged, or in
some way made unconscious last night in Paulton's car, and driven here.
I distinctly remember trying to keep awake.  You gave me that cigar I
smoked.  Was it one of your own?"

He paused, then said--

"Now I come to think of it, Ashton, I remember noticing I had three
cigars in the case I left in the pocket of my overcoat when I hung it in
the cloakroom.  There were only two when I pulled the case out in the
car.  I wondered then if the cloakroom attendant had helped himself.
Paulton was the first to light up, you may remember, and he offered us
cigars, whereupon I said I had some, and I gave you one of mine--one of
the two.  It struck me that my cigar had rather a peculiar flavour, but
after a while it got all right.  I believe those weeds must have been
slipped into my case by Paulton and my own cigars removed.  The ones we
smoked last night were drugged, that I will swear."

I pulled out my watch.

"What time do you make it?"  I asked.  "My watch has stopped."

He produced his own and glanced at it.

"So has mine," he said.  "It stopped at five minutes to four."

We both sat in silence for some moments.  Obviously there was nothing to
be done but to wait for somebody to come.  The door was locked, there
was no bell in the room, and the room was on an upper floor.

Over an hour must have passed, and we had endeavoured to take our
bearings.

From what we could see of the place from the high up window, it was a
huge rambling old chateau with round turrets, and slated roofs,
overlooking a large sloping park in the midst of picturesque mountains,
many of which were still tipped with snow.  The situation was perfect,
but it was in a remote, lonely spot, without another house in sight.

In the front was a long double colonnade with a terrace which commanded
a fine vista down the valley.  The style was that of Louis XV, as indeed
was the furniture of the room, and there were several old paintings and
works of art in the apartment.

It was a huge grim place, which seemed to be half a prison, half a
fortress--a place wherein dwelt the ghosts of a glorious long-forgotten
past.  There was an air of neglect and decay about its time-mellowed
court-yard, some of the walls of which were half-hidden by ivy.  One of
the round towers indeed was roofless, while what had once been an
Italian flower-bed was now but a wilderness of weeds.

Outside the sun shone brightly, and, from its position, we concluded the
hour must be nearly noon.  Then, all at once we simultaneously caught
the sound of footsteps.  Some one was coming very softly apparently,
along a carpeted passage outside the door.  I went across to the sofa,
lay down, and pretended to be asleep, Faulkner following my example,
lying back in the big chair.  At the door the footsteps stopped.  There
was a pause.  Then a key was inserted into the lock almost noiselessly,
the lock clicked, the handle turned, and the door was pushed open a
little way.

Somebody bent over me.  I breathed heavily, in pretence of sleep.  The
footsteps moved away, and, as I parted my eyelids slightly, I saw a
woman--quite a young girl.  She had her back to me and was bending over
Faulkner apparently to ascertain if he too, were asleep.  Acting upon a
sudden impulse I sprang from the sofa, ran to the door, slammed it, and
stood with my back to it.

To my surprise the girl looked at me quite calmly.

"I knew you would do that m'sieur," she said, and her voice, though she
spoke with a marked French accent, was very pleasant.  "Did you think
that I supposed you both were asleep?  Ah, non, your friend here is wide
awake, though he too keeps his eyes shut and his mouth open."

The girl was quite pretty, about eighteen I judged, refined in
appearance, with large, innocent brown eyes, dark eyelashes and
eyebrows, and auburn hair that turned to shining gold as the sun's rays,
entering at the window, touched it.

As she stopped speaking, Faulkner opened his eyes, sat up, and stared at
her with undisguised admiration.  Then, as the absurdity of the
situation struck us, we both laughed.

"Whoever you are," I said, trying to speak seriously, though, under the
circumstances, and with a pretty girl staring into my face, with an
expression in her eyes that was partly of amusement and partly mockery,
I found it hard to do so.  "Whoever you are, I should really like an
explanation."

"Explanation of what?"

"I want to know why we have been brought here--what place this is, and
who had the cool impertinence to lock us in here."

"Oh, _I_ had the cool impertinence to lock you in," she answered,
smiling.

"You!  And who are you?  And whose house is this?"

"This is the Chateau d'Uzerche.  It belongs to the Baronne de Coudron.
I am the Baronne's niece."

"The Chateau d'Uzerche--eh?"

I could not for the moment, think of anything else to say.  The girl
spoke quite naturally, as though nothing unusual had occurred.

"I am going to bring your dejeuner in a minute," she said, drawing down
the blinds to keep out the sun.  "Will you both give me your word you
won't leave this room if I leave the door unlocked?  Please do--for my
sake."

She looked so captivating as she said this, her voice was so soft, and
altogether she seemed so charming, that Faulkner at once answered that
he had not the least desire to leave the room if she would promise to
come back as quickly as possible, and to stay a little while.

"Then you will promise?" she asked, her big eyes set on his.

"How foolish!  Why?"  I asked, interrupting.  "Well," she replied.  "If
you will remain here I will bring you a visitor."

"A visitor?"

"Yes," she laughed.  "Somebody you know."

"Who?"

"A great friend of yours."

I looked at her puzzled.

"A friend--man or woman?"

"Female," she assured us with a charming accent.  "Your friend
Mademoiselle Thorold."

"Vera!"  I gasped.  "Is she here?"

"Yes," was her reply.  "She is here."

How well Vera knew my character when she told me that day I was
"susceptible."  I think I am dreadfully so.  The look in those great
brown eyes gazing into mine seemed to weaken my will until I had to
answer almost sulkily--

"I suppose I must.  Yes, I--well, I'll promise for the present anyhow,"
I said.

"Not to leave this room before my return?" she said.

"Not to leave this room before you return," I repeated.

Then she left us, and we sat looking at each other like a pair of fools.

"Well," Faulkner said.  "If you can be rude to a pretty girl like that,
Ashton, I can't, and I don't intend to be.  Besides, if Vera is here,
Gladys may be here also!"

"I thought you said you are engaged to be married?"

"I did.  And I am.  But I don't see why, for that reason, you need call
me a fool for being ordinarily polite to another woman, or to any woman,
especially if we are to meet Vera."

"You quite mistake my meaning," I said.  "I say we are a pair of fools--
I am more to blame perhaps than you--for being coerced by a chit of a
girl into promising to stay here, as though we were a pair of schoolboys
put `on their honour.'  It is downright silly, to say the least.  Yet we
must not break our _parole_--eh?"

I liked Faulkner.  His spirit, and his way of saying what he thought
amused me.  One meets so few men nowadays with pluck enough to say what
they really think and mean.

The young girl, whose name was Violet--Violet de Coudron--spread the
white cloth, laid the table, and herself brought in our dejeuner.  What
position did she occupy in the house, we both wondered.  Surely there
must be servants, and yet... where was Vera?

"You have to stay here until to-morrow," she said, when we had begun our
meal--the cooking was excellent, and the wine was above reproach.

"And, until then, you are under my supervision.  Those are my orders."

"Your orders, received from whom--eh?"  I asked.

"Mademoiselle Thorold wishes it."

"Were we brought here yesterday, or when?"  Faulkner asked presently.

"About two o'clock this morning."

"And what was this grim joke?"

"That I may not tell you, m'sieur," she replied.  "Indeed, I couldn't
tell you--for I don't know.  Miss Thorold knows."

"Who lives here usually?"  I asked.  "The Baronne?"

"She is rarely here.  But that is enough.  I cannot answer more
questions.  Is there anything else that I can get you?"

Nothing else we needed, except tobacco, and she brought us that.  Very
good tobacco it was, too.

Wearily the day passed, for though the room we were in was
well-furnished, there were few books in it.  We could, of course, have
gone out of the room, out of the house probably, but our pretty little
wardress had placed us on _parole_.

Whether or not the house was occupied, even whether there were servants
in it, we could not tell.  And the matter did not interest us much.
What we should have liked to know was, why we had been brought there,
still more, how Vera Thorold and Gladys Deroxe were faring in our
absence.  During the past weeks my life seemed to have been made up of a
series of mysteries, each more puzzling than the last.  I was
distracted.

During the afternoon, while sitting together, very dejected, we suddenly
caught the faint sound of a female voice singing.

Both of us listened.  It was Vera's voice, a sweet contralto, and she
was singing, as though to herself, Verlaine's "Manoline," that sweet
harmonious song--

  "Les donneurs de serenades,
  Et les belles ecouteuses,
  Echangent des propos fades
  Sous les ramures chanteuses.

  "C'est Tircis et c'est Aminte
  Et c'est l'eternel Clitandre
  Et c'est Damis qui pour mainte cruelle
  Fait maint vers tendre."

The girl brought us tea presently, and, late in the evening, a plain
dinner.  The room was lit by petrol-gas.  Each time she stayed with us a
little while, and we were glad to have her company.  She was, however,
exceedingly discreet, refusing to make any statement which might throw
light upon the reason of our confinement.

How strange it all was.  Vera did not appear.  We laughed at our own
weakness and our own chivalry.

She showed us the bedroom where we were to sleep.  Beautifully and
expensively-furnished, it had two comfortable-looking beds, while a
log-fire burnt cheerily in the grate--for the evening after the sunshine
was singularly chilly in the mountains.

"If Vera does not come by mid-day to-morrow," Faulkner said, as we
prepared to get into bed, "I shall break my _parole_ and set out to
discover where she is.  Our pretty friend is all very well, but my
patience is exhausted.  I'm not in need of a rest cure just at present."

We had both been asleep, I suppose, for a couple of hours, when I
suddenly awoke.  The room was in total darkness, but somehow I "felt"
the presence of some stranger in the room.  At that instant it flashed
in upon me that we had left the door unlocked.  Straining my ears to
catch the least sound, I held my breath.

Suddenly a noise came to me, not from the room, but from somewhere in
the house.  It was a cry--A cry for help!  Sitting bolt upright in the
bed, I remained motionless, listening intently.  I heard it again.  It
was a woman's cry--but this time fainter--

"Help!  _Help_!" sounded in a long drawn-out gasp--a gasp of despair.

Something moved in the darkness.  Again I "felt," rather than heard it.
My mouth grew dry, and fear, a deadly fear of the unknown, possessed me.

"Who is there?"  I called out loudly.

There was no answer, but the sound of my voice gave me courage.  I
stretched my arm out in the darkness, meaning to reach over to
Faulkner's bed and prod him into wakefulness, when by chance I touched
something alive.

Instantly a cold, damp hand gripped my own, holding it like a vice, and
a moment later I was flung down on my back on the bed, and held there
firmly by a silent, unseen foe.

In vain I struggled to get free, but the speechless, invisible Thing
pressing me down in the darkness, kept me pinned to the bed!  I was
about to cry out, when a third hand closed about my throat, preventing
me.  It was a soft hand--a woman's hand.  Also, as it gripped me, a
faint perfume struck my nostrils, a perfume familiar to me, curious,
rich, pungent.

And then, almost as I stopped struggling, the room was suddenly flooded
with light.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

WITHIN AN ACE.

Slowly I realised that Paulton was bending over me, holding me down.

The Baronne de Coudron, upon the opposite side of the bed, had her thin,
strong sinewy hands upon my throat.  Beside the gas-jet a yard or two
away, Faulkner stood with his hand still holding the little chain he had
pulled in order to turn on the light.

Nobody spoke.

The Baronne, removing her hands from me, stood upright, big and strong,
gazing down upon me still.  She wore an elaborate kimono made of some
soft pink Eastern material.  Paulton was in evening clothes, one
shirt-cuff was turned back.

"You should have taken my advice, m'sieur," the Baronne said in her deep
voice, addressing Dago Paulton.  She spoke quite calmly.

Instead of answering, and without loosening hold, he half-turned,
apparently undecided what to do, until his eyes rested upon Faulkner.
Then suddenly, to my surprise, he released me.  I got up.

"Faulkner, come here," he said sharply.

The young man--he was in the blue pyjamas he had found laid out upon the
bed when Violet de Coudron had shown us into the bedroom--looked quietly
at the speaker for a moment or two, then answered with the utmost
sang-froid--

"I'm not your servant, hang you!  Don't speak to me like that."

"You may not be my servant, but I now control your movements," Paulton
retorted quickly.  "Therefore you will please do what I order.  I take
it that you know that I brought you and Ashton over here."

"Naturally."

"Have you any idea why?"

"None."

"Then I will tell you.  Listen."

He was standing beside the bed.  The Baronne, near him, looked with
interest at Faulkner and myself as we now stood together a yard or two
away from them.

"For some months past," Paulton said, watching me with an unpleasant
expression, "you have been on intimate terms with the Thorolds."

"Really," I answered, shortly, "I can't see what concern that is of
yours.  I have known the Thorolds intimately for a good many years.
Perhaps you will tell me your reason for the extraordinary liberty you
took last night in bringing us here.  I consider it a gross
impertinence."

"Impertinence!" he laughed.  "Let me tell you both," he said, "that you
have to thank this lady," he turned slightly to indicate the Baronne,
"for being alive to-day.  When I brought you here I intended that
neither of you should ever again be heard of.  Your disappearance would
have made a stir, no doubt, but the stir would not have lasted; you
would soon have been forgotten here.  Dead men tell no tales.  But the
Baronne interfered."

"I'm sure we feel deeply grateful," I answered ironically.  "One would
think we were conspirators, or criminals, by the way you talk.  So far
as I'm aware, I never set eyes on you until last night in the _Hotel de
Paris_."

"Quite likely," he replied, "but that is beside the point.  You possess
information you have no right to possess.  You know the Thorolds'
secret, and until your lips are closed I shall not feel safe."  Ah! that
remarkable secret again!  What on earth could it be?  That was the
thought that flashed across my mind, but I merely answered--"You can't
suppose I shall reveal it?"

He smiled coldly.

"Not reveal it, man, when you know what is at stake!  You must think me
very confiding if you suppose I shall trust your bare assurance.  As I
have said, I intended to--to--well, to close both your mouths."

"Why Faulkner's," I asked.

"Because he is to marry Gladys Deroxe, who is so friendly with Vera
Thorold, who is to be my wife.  Vera knows too much, and may have told
her little friend what she knows.  I mistrust Vera's friends--even her
friends' friends.  You understand?"

"At that rate," I answered, growing reckless, "you will need to `remove'
a good many people."

"That is possible.  It is for that reason--"

"Oh, why talk so much!" the Baronne interrupted impatiently.  "Tell him
everything in a few words, and have done with it!"

"I will."  He said fiercely, "You both stand in my way.  I brought you
here last night to get rid of you.  I came into this room some minutes
ago to carry out my plan.  I was going to kill you both with an
anaesthetic.  Then the Baronne came in, threatening to wake you if I
tried to do what I had said I should.  I felt you touch me in the dark,
I knew we had awakened you, and at once seized you--the Baronne held
your throat to prevent your calling out.  Then Faulkner sprang up and
turned on the light and--"

He paused, listening.  There had been another cry for help, barely
audible even in the stillness of the night.  He glanced at his
companion.  She too had heard it.

They looked meaningly at each other, but neither moved to leave the
room.  The cry had sounded so piteous that I should myself have rushed
out to ascertain whence it came.  Was it Vera's voice?  Paulton was near
the door, and to have passed him would have been impossible.

Was it my Vera?  The thought held me in a frenzy.

"There is only one way," he went on, as though nothing had happened,
"for you to regain your liberty.  I should not offer even this, had not
the Baronne persuaded me to against my better judgment."

"What is the way?"

"You must never attempt to see Vera again.  And you, Faulkner, must
write at once to Gladys Deroxe and break off your engagement.  It is the
only alternative.  Do you both agree?"

Neither of us answered.  The suggestion was a childlike one.

"Is there no other way?"  I asked at last in order to gain time.

"None."

"Then I refuse absolutely," Faulkner exclaimed hotly.

"Your proposal is ridiculous," I declared with a grin.

Paulton turned furiously on the Baronne.

"I said what it would be!" he broke out with a curse.  "Get out of my
way!"

She had sprung in front of him, but he pushed her aside.  Again she
rushed forward to stop his doing something--we had not guessed what it
was--and this time he struck her a blow in the face with his open hand,
and with a cry she fell forward on to the bed.

Beside myself, I leapt forward, but Faulkner was nearer to him and I saw
his fist fly out.  I did not know then that Faulkner had won "friendly
bouts" against professional light-weight boxers at the National Sporting
Club.  It was a stunning blow, Faulkner's fist hit him on the mouth, at
what boxers call the "crucial moment," that is, just before the arm
straightens.  Paulton reeled backward, his lower lip rent almost to the
chin.

His hand disappeared.  Now it flashed out with a Browning pistol, but as
the shot rang out the woman leapt to her feet and struck his arm away.
An instant later Faulkner was behind him deftly twisting his left arm so
that he bent backward with a scream of pain.

I had wrested the weapon from him ere he could shoot again, and as I
helped Faulkner to hold him down I realised the man's colossal strength.
Mad with fury, and with blood pouring from his mouth, he struggled to
get free.  But the twisted arm that Faulkner still clutched tightly by
the wrist with both hands, kept him down.  Suddenly he changed his
tactics.  He had wormed himself half round on the floor, his teeth
closed tightly upon Faulkner's right shoulder.

"Twist his right arm--quick!"  Faulkner shouted at me.

I did so, and the man lay flat upon his back, his two arms screwed so
tightly that I marvelled they did not break.

The strange, warm smell that I had noticed in the room for the first
time some minutes previously, and that had gradually grown stronger, was
now so oppressive that it almost stifled us.  Still holding down our
man, we both glanced about the room to find out whence it came, and now
we noticed that the atmosphere was foggy, or so it seemed.  The Baronne
was standing by us, staring down at Paulton, but not attempting in any
way to help him.  Her gaze was dull, almost vacant.  She seemed
stupefied.

An odd noise, as of distant roaring, sounded somewhere in the house.  It
was growing louder.  All at once I saw the Baronne move quickly to the
door.  She listened for a moment, then turned the handle slowly.

As the door opened a little way, a cloud of dense, yellow smoke swept
into the room, choking and nearly blinding us.  She slammed the door and
locked it.

"_Dieu_!" she gasped, pale as death.

And then, simultaneously, we knew the awful truth, that the chateau was
on fire; that our only way of escape was made impassable by smoke.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

THE HARVEST OF FIRE.

In face of Death human antagonism becomes suddenly absorbed in the mad
craving for Life.

The bitter hatred, the fearful rage, the furious struggle of the past
few minutes were, in that instant, forgotten as though they had never
been.  Speechless with terror we gazed hopelessly at each other.  Ah!  I
can see that picture still.  Am I ever likely to forget it?

The Baronne, deathly white, stood there a handsome figure, trembling in
her wonderfully embroidered pink kimono, her eyes fixed and starting as
though madness were stealing into her brain.  Paulton stood with his
lips badly cut.  Young Faulkner was erect and calm, with set teeth,
blood spattered about his pyjamas, and an angry red wound showing at the
spot where Paulton in his frenzy had bitten into his shoulder.

Truly, it was a weird and terrible scene.  I stood aghast.

The fierce devouring roar in the house increased.  It sounded like a
furnace heard at night in the Black Country.  Quickly the air grew
thicker.  Through the door, dark yellow, choking smoke percolated, then
rolled upward in spirals that became merged in the general atmosphere.

We both slipped into our clothes hurriedly.  Then Faulkner was the first
to act.

Crossing quickly to the window, he pulled aside the curtains, thrust
down the handle, and pushed open both frames.  A red, quivering glow
flickered in the blackness of the night, revealing for an instant the
level meadow far below, the trees silhouetted upon it, the outlines of a
distant wood.

Now he was kneeling on the broad window-sill of the long casement
window, his body thrust far out.  I saw him glance to right and left,
then look down towards the earth.  Slowly he drew back.  Once more he
stood amongst us.

"We are pretty high up," he said, without any sign of emotion.  "Thirty
feet I should say."

He looked about him.  Then he went over to the beds, and pulled off all
the clothes.

"Six blankets and six sheets--but I wouldn't trust the sheets, and the
blankets are too short," he observed as though nothing unusual were
happening.

A washstand, a couple of antique wardrobes, four chairs with high carved
backs, a dressing-table and a smaller table, was all that the room
contained besides the beds.  He glanced up at the ceiling.  It was
solid.  He tore up the carpet.  Beneath it was a loose board, hinged.
He lifted it by the ring.  Smoke rolled up into his face, and he slammed
the board down again, stamping his foot upon it.  And at that instant
the gas suddenly went out.

In the sky, the lurid light still rose and fell over the meadows and
hills.  The fierce roaring in the house grew louder.  From a cover
beyond the lawn came the echo of crackling wood and cracking timber, but
nowhere was a human voice audible.

At this juncture, to my amazement, Faulkner calmly produced his
cigarette case, lit a cigarette, topped it and offered me one.  I took
it without knowing what I did--I, who had so often pretended that in a
moment of crisis I should never lose my head!

"What's to be done?"  I gasped, beside myself.  "Where is Vera?"  I knew
that in another moment I should be upon my knees, praying as I had only
once in my life prayed before.  It is, alas, only at such times that
many of us think of our Maker and invoke His aid.  In the ordinary
course of life prayers weary so many of us and we feel we do not need
them.  I remember still, a typhoon off Japan, and how everybody prayed
fervently.  Yet when the seas subsided, and we felt safe once more, we
all pretended we forgot how frightened we had been, and especially how
we had implored forgiveness for our sins and promised never to sin
again.  We humans are, after all, but abject cowards.

"There is nothing to be done, that I can see," Faulkner answered.  He
glanced again at the beds, now naked of coverings, then up at the
curtain-pole over the window.  He pulled over the smaller table, climbed
on to it, then proceeded, leisurely as it seemed to me, to examine the
rings of the curtain-pole with the help of the bedroom candle he held
above his head.  Every second brought us nearer a terrible fate.

"These are good stout hooks," he said, puffing smoke out of his nose.
"They ought to hold all right.  What do you think, Ashton?"

"Oh, for the love of Heaven do something--_anything_!"  I exclaimed, for
already the room was stifling, and down the passage the fire could be
heard crackling as it ate its way towards us.  "I don't know what to
think.  I don't know what you mean, or what you ask me."

"Why," he answered, "we can easily get the steel cross-pieces off those
bedsteads, and, hooked one to another with these stout brass
curtain-hooks they will reach to the ground easily.  The question is--
how shall we be able to secure the top one, and, when it is secured,
shall we be able to let ourselves down the steel bands without cutting
our hands to pieces?  These flat bedstead bands are very sharp, you
know."

He remained fiddling with the hooks with one hand, while with the other
he still held the candle above his head.  The heat was becoming
intolerable.  Now we could hardly see across the room, and the smoke
hurt our eyes.

All this had happened quickly, though in my dread the seconds seemed
hours.

A wild cry in the room made us start.  The Baronne had apparently gone
suddenly mad.  Dashing towards the door, she unlocked it and flung it
wide open.  An instant later she had disappeared--rushed out into the
blinding smoke.

I ran at the door to slam it.  As I did so I stumbled over something on
the floor, and fell heavily.

I had stumbled over Paulton.  In a paroxysm of terror he knelt there,
motionless.  He was praying!  At any other time I should have felt
nothing but unutterable contempt for him--a man I believed to be a
murderer, driven through sheer mental torture to mumble prayers to his
Creator whose name I had several times heard him blasphemously invoke.
Now I felt only pity--intense pity.  But I had no time to think.
Clambering to my feet I managed to reach the door through the smoke that
choked me, and to shut it securely.  The Baronne de Coudron had, I knew,
rushed to her death in her sudden access of madness--madness induced by
terror.

Faulkner had removed all the hooks from which the heavy curtain-rings
had hung.  Now he was at work wrenching the steel bedstead binders from
their sockets and hooking them together.  Mechanically I helped him.
And all the time I could hear Paulton, hidden in the darkness,
beseeching the Almighty to save him from a terrible death.

Louder and louder grew the roar of the approaching fire, and with it the
crackling of the woodwork and the falling of scorched walls.  From afar
came the sound of a mighty crash, the glare in the sky brightened, a
thousand sparks were swept across the window.  Instinctively we knew
that in one of the west wings a roof had fallen in.

Hark!  What was that?  A voice was calling--a girl's shrill voice, it
sounded almost like a child's.  Whence did the cry come?  It was nowhere
in the house.  Yet it could hardly be outside.

"Help!  Quick!  _Quick!  My God!  Help_!"  The door of the room creaked
ominously.  Phew!  The heat in the passage was scorching it.  In a
minute it would burst into flame.  Where was that voice?  I rushed to
the window--

"_Hello!  Hello_!"  I shouted at the top of my voice.

The cry came from above.  Tightly clutching the window frame I leapt
forward and peered up in the darkness.  As I did so, a coil of stout
rope fell past me and disappeared.  Now a rope was hanging down across
the window from above.  I stretched out an arm, and was just able to
clutch it.

"Is it fast?"  I shouted.

"Yes--fast to an iron staple that supports the chimney.  Get out, quick!
Quick!"

"Go down first--go down!"  I shouted up.

"_I tell you to get out_!" the girl's voice cried.  This was no time for
courtesies.  The girl said we must go, and so...

I was pulled back violently from the window and flung on to the floor.
A man was clutching at the rope.  It was Paulton.  At the same instant a
shout of laughter sounded in the room.  Scrambling to my feet, I saw
Faulkner laughing.  Had the man any nerves at all?  Did he know what
fear meant?

"Paulton did that," he exclaimed.  "I think he's the limit.  Look at him
sliding down--the cur!  Who is the girl above?"

"I don't know, and don't care!"  I cried.  "Do for the love of Heaven,
follow down.  I'm suffocating.  The fire will be on us in an instant."

"And leave the girl!" he said in a tone of reproach and surprise.  "You
can't mean it, Ashton."

"She won't go first--she said so."

"Won't she?"

He went over to the window, leaned out as I had done, and looked up as
best he could.

"Go down at once," he shouted in a tone of extraordinary firmness.  "We
don't move until you do."

I suppose his commanding tone made her realise he really meant to wait.
Anyway, a moment later a girl's figure appeared, swinging above the
window.  She rested her feet upon the window-sill, and looked at us.

"Don't be frightened," she said.  "It is tied very firmly, and the
staple can't give way."

"Don't be frightened!"  And this from the "chit of a girl," as I had
called her the night before when she had so cleverly induced us to stay
in the room.  She was just visible now in the blackness beneath, as she
slid down the rope with remarkable agility.

"Go ahead, Ashton," Faulkner said, as the rope slackened.  "I'll steady
the rope while you go down.  Don't get excited!  There's lots of time."

Smoke was floating up from the window now as though the window were a
chimney.  My smarting eyes met Faulkner's as I clutched the rope with
both hands and prepared to swing out.  His eyes were bloodshot, red and
swollen.  Yet he was actually smiling.  And he had lit another
cigarette!

It was with a feeling of intense relief, that as I looked up from the
ground, I saw Faulkner swing out on the rope from the fourth storey
window, twisting round and round like a joint upon a roasting jack.  It
is said that in moments of acute crisis thoughts, absurd in their
triviality, sometimes take prominence.  It was so now.  As I watched,
with halting breath, Faulkner's hunched-up figure slowly sliding down
like a monkey on a string, only one thought was in my mind.

Would he, when he reached the ground, have that cigarette between his
lips?

He reached the ground, and I went up to him.  In an access of emotion I
grasped him by the hand.

"You are a hero, old chap!"  I exclaimed.  "A perfect hero!"

"Don't be foolish, Ashton," he answered.  "Instead, hand out that box of
matches.  I do think," he added, "it might have occurred to you to hang
on to the rope to prevent my spinning round in that absurd fashion.  I
hate being made to look ridiculous."

He struck a match.  Yes, the cigarette was still between his lips!

I had never before seen a blazing house at close quarters, and the sight
impressed though it appalled me.  Together we walked out into the weedy
Italian garden, a hundred yards or more, and there stood watching the
spectacle.  Truly, it was superb.  One after another immense sheets of
flame shot up high into the sky, parted into fifty tongues which
quivered for an instant, then vanished.

Where was Vera?  What of her?  Was she still alive, or had she died in
that awful furnace?

A breeze was at our backs, and thus the smoke was swept away, revealing
the conflagration in all its awful grandeur.

And now the window we had just left began suddenly to turn red.  The
redness grew brighter.  As I watched it, panting with excitement, a red
and yellow ribbon licked the window frame that a few minutes previously
we had clutched.  The ribbon broadened, lengthened, swept out into the
night, lapping the grey wall of the old chateau until it floated high
above the roof, shrivelling the ivy and burning it to ashes.

That was the last window in the main building.  There was nothing more
to burn.  For some moments the flames seemed slightly to subside.  Then,
all at once, with a great crash which must surely have been heard a mile
or more away, the entire roof broke inward, opening up to the sky an
inferno from which blazing fragments in their thousands and myriad
sparks shooting up into the sky illuminated fields and woods for several
miles around.

"What a gorgeous sight!"

It was the middle of the night, and the place being far removed from any
habitation save the little village two miles off behind the hill, the
alarm had not yet been raised.

I turned.  Faulkner's eyes, wide open, were rivetted on the scene.  For
the first time in his life, as I believe, he had given way to his
emotion.  "Ah!" he added in an undertone, "how this makes one think!"

"Think?"  I said.  "Of what?"  My only thought was of my loved one.

He turned his head and looked at me.

"Oh," he answered cynically, "of what we shall have for lunch to-morrow.
Good Heavens!" he exclaimed, and in the light cast down upon us by the
blood-red canopy flickering in the sky above I could see his eyes
shining strangely, "Have you no sense at all of grandeur?  Can't you
realise and appreciate the overpowering magnificence of all this?  Have
you no sentiment, romance or poetry at all in your conception?  Don't
you feel the hand of Providence?  Doesn't this bring home to you the
majesty of eternity better than any religion that has been tried or
thought of?  Really, Ashton, really..."

I was amazed at his sudden outburst of pent-up feeling--I had imagined
him cold, undemonstrative, unemotional, a being without nerves and
devoid of temperament.  So his self-control and apparent calmness had
been nothing but a mask.  I think I liked him all the better for it.

We heard voices--women's shrill, terrified voices.  We were unable to
locate them.  Suddenly I started.  Surely that was Vera's voice!  Yes, I
recognised it.

Attentively we both listened.  Then, as the flames shot up again,
lighting up the meadows away to the woods, we both distinctly saw in
silhouette a man and a woman struggling in the distance.

The man had her by the wrists.  He was overpowering her.  At that same
moment the red glare sank, and both were hidden in the darkness.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

FOUND IN THE DEBRIS.

We were on the alert in a moment.

Though we searched in the darkness for a distance of a hundred yards or
more, we failed to come upon either the man or the woman of whom we had
caught a brief glimpse as they struggled desperately.

Nor did we again hear the sound of voices.  That I had heard Vera's
voice, I felt convinced.  We wondered if there was a lodge, and how far
it was away.  Perhaps the servants had taken shelter there.

"The whole place seems to be deserted," Faulkner said when, after a
futile search, we again found ourselves near the burning chateau, where
the fire had by this time subsided considerably.  "And yet there must
have been people in the house--at any rate, servants."

We walked right round the chateau.  What a huge old place it had been!
No wonder the fire had taken a long time to reach us, if it had broken
out, as it presumably had done, in a wing remote from the room where we
had been.  Judging by the architecture of the outer walls I concluded
that the chateau must have been built towards the end of the fourteenth
century, and afterwards added to.

There was a sharp nip in the air, and we felt chilly enough.  Already
the streaks of dawn were striving to pierce the belt of leaden clouds,
against which the black pinewoods could be seen distinctly outlined.

Faulkner turned to me.

"Have you any money?" he asked.

"Plenty," I answered.  "Why?"

"When it is daylight we must make for the nearest village and get a
conveyance to the railway-station.  We must be miles from everywhere, or
fire-escapes would have come along before now.  I suppose the Baronne is
dead."

"She can have escaped only by a miracle," I said.  "We shall probably
know soon."

"And that cur--Paulton.  What can have become of him?"

"I can't help thinking it was Paulton we saw struggling.  But who can
the woman have been?  I hope it wasn't Vera.  I am certain I heard her
voice.  What do you think?"

"It may have been Mademoiselle de Coudron," Faulkner said.  "She seems
to have disappeared.  What a brave girl!  She must have climbed along
the roofs to save us, with the fire just behind her.  I wonder who the
woman was who called for help first of all--I mean before we knew that
fire had broken out."

"The whole thing is most mysterious, but the biggest mystery is the
disappearance of everybody.  We heard at least three voices in the
darkness!"

Happening to glance down the long carriage drive which, after winding
for a hundred yards across the broad, level lawns, disappeared into the
wood, I noticed two men on horseback approaching at a walk.  They had
just emerged from the wood, and, so far as I could see in the
half-light, were officials of some kind.

They broke into a jog-trot as they caught sight of us, and took a short
cut across the grass.  As they came near us we saw that they were two
gendarmes.

"What are you doing here?" one of them asked sharply in French.

I didn't like his tone, and I saw Faulkner's lip twitch with annoyance.
Instead of answering, we looked the two men up and down.

"What are you doing here--tell me at once," the speaker repeated, in a
bullying tone.

I suppose we did look disreputable, standing there without collars, with
unlaced boots, and with our coat collars turned up.  Also a day's growth
of beard is hardly conducive to a smart appearance, and in most
civilised countries but America a man is judged by his appearance and by
the clothes he wears.

"Who set fire to the chateau?" demanded the gendarme, quickly losing his
temper as we refused to speak.

"Oh, we did, of course," I exclaimed in French, meaning to be cynical.
"We burnt it down on purpose."

The man raised his black eyebrows, and glanced at his companion.

"You hear that?" he said meaningly.

The man who had remained silent produced a notebook and scribbled in it.

Faulkner turned to me.

"A few more of your `witticisms' Ashton," he said, "and we shall get
penal servitude.  Don't you know you are talking to State officials, and
have you ever known a State official to be other than matter-of-fact?
For Heaven's sake, don't make more statements that may be used in
evidence against us."

"My friend was joking," Faulkner said in his perfect French to the man
who had addressed us; but the official seemed not to understand what the
word _plaisanterie_ meant.

At this juncture the men exchanged one or two remarks in a rapid
undertone.  Then, while one of them remained, apparently to keep guard
over us, the other cantered away across the turf, struck the road close
to the wood, and disappeared.

In the absence of his companion, who apparently was his superior in
authority, the gendarme thawed to some extent.  We gathered that the
Chateau d'Uzerche was about eighty miles by road from Monte Carlo, and
twelve or so miles from Digne, in the Bedeone Valley, also that no
village lay within a radius of two miles of it.  Small wonder,
therefore, that no fire-escape had come.

"Where is la Baronne de Coudron?" the man asked suddenly.

We explained that we feared she had been either burnt or suffocated.  At
this he looked grave.

"And her companion, the Englishman Monsieur Paulton, where is he?"

Again we explained.  He had escaped from the fire, but, since his
escape, we had not seen him.

"Why do you want to know?"  Faulkner asked, in his politest tones.

"Because," the man answered, taken off his guard, "we have a warrant for
the arrest of both Madame la Baronne and the Englishman."

"Arrest!  For what?"  Faulkner asked.

"On several charges.  The most recent is a charge of obtaining money by
fraud--a large sum.  There is also a charge of blackmail."

"Against both?"

"Against both."

I was silent.  Here was a new phase of the affair.  By degrees we
gathered from him that Paulton was known to be interested in various
undertakings of, to say the least, a dubious nature, also that he
promoted wild-cat companies in England, on the Continent, and in
America.  Information that especially interested us was that all who had
escaped from the fire had made their way to the lodge at the entrance to
the drive.

It was at this juncture that the other gendarme reappeared.  He was
still on horseback, and, as he came towards us slowly, our attention
became centred upon the man who walked beside him, with one hand on his
stirrup.  In the distance it looked very like Paulton.

He seemed quite composed.  His mouth was bound up, partly concealing his
face.

When a few yards from us the gendarme reined up.  As he did so, Paulton
raised his arm, pointed at me, and said in French--

"That's the man you came to arrest.  That is Dago Paulton."

"And his companion?" the gendarme asked.

"Is his valet."

"And your name, monsieur?"

"Ferrari--Paoli Ferrari.  My father was Italian, my mother English.  I
have been in Mr. Paulton's service as butler for the last three years.
Previous to that I was butler to Count Pinto"--the Portuguese diplomat
who had won the cup for shooting.

"Thank you, monsieur, I am exceedingly indebted to you," the gendarme
said blandly.  Then, producing an official-looking document, he said to
me--

"We have to take you into custody, you and Madame la Baronne."

For some moments, indignation prevented my speaking.  Was it possible
these outrageous statements of Paulton's would be taken without
question?  Such a thing seemed monstrous and grotesque, but knowing, as
I did, how intensely stupid some police officials are, no matter to what
country they may belong, I thought it likely that I should presently be
marched off and placed under lock and key.

Faulkner, to my annoyance, seemed amused.

"They will march you twelve miles to Digne," he said, "and when you get
there and prove your identity they will apologise in the most humble
fashion for the mistake that has been made.  Meanwhile, you will have
had your twelve-mile walk, and Paulton have been allowed to escape.  Had
we looked less disreputable than we do, our statements might have been
believed in preference to his."

In my indignation I at first became sarcastic, and thinking that liberty
at that moment would be far better than being held up upon a false
charge, I made a sudden bolt for it, cutting swiftly across a meadow and
leaping a stream.  I am a good runner, but, of course, the mounted
gendarmes were quickly upon me, and cut me off, so I soon found myself
in their hands.

Faulkner elected to come with me, but we were not marched to Digne.
Instead, we were allowed to walk leisurely alongside the horses as far
as the village, a distance of two miles or so, and there were shown into
a comfortable room in the tiny police bureau, and given breakfast.  The
garde-champetre spoke English fluently.  He had lived in England several
years.  Consequently in a short time we succeeded in convincing him of
the blunder the gendarme had made, and in proving who we were.

By this time the village was beginning to awaken, and crowds were on
their way to the chateau.  We soon found a tradesman willing to let out
a horse and trap in return for a louis paid in advance.  In this we also
started back for the chateau, anxious to get news of Vera, and of
Violet.

On our way by the road, we found the lodge of the chateau, it had not
been in sight more than a minute, when a large red car passed out
through the gateway into the high road we were on, turned, and sped away
from us along the long white ribbon of road at terrific speed.  It must,
we calculated as it dwindled into a distant speck, have been travelling
at a speed of quite sixty miles an hour.  Faulkner looked at me
significantly.  Our surmise had been correct, the servants had sought
shelter at the lodge and had now left.

By the time we reached the smouldering ruins, a score of people, all of
them peasants, stood staring at it.  The good French farmers had each
some platitude to make: "It must have been an enormous fire;" "It must
have burned very quickly;" "Some one must have set it alight," and so
on.  They were all people of the bovine type, as we found when we tried
to obtain information from them.

The Baronne and her niece lived there.  That was about all that they
could tell us.  Apparently they knew nothing of Paulton--had never seen
or heard of him.

How many servants had there been in the Chateau they knew not.  But a
man and several women had just left the lodge in a motor-car.

"We can do no good by staying here," Faulkner said at last.  "We had
better make for Digne.  What puzzles me is, where can the servants be?
There must have been servants, and they could have told us something.
They are not at the lodge.  Perhaps Paulton had taken them with him in
the car we had seen.  The only soul at the lodge is an old woman who is
stone deaf, and she is crying so that she cannot speak at all."

We stood gazing thoughtfully at the still smouldering fire, when
Faulkner said suddenly--

"What is that big, square thing down among the twisted girders?" and he
pointed to it.

We could not make out what it was.  Then, all at once I realised.

"Why," I said, "it's a safe--one of those big American safes.  I expect
its contents are uninjured."

But where was Vera?  Ah!  I felt beside myself in anxiety--a breathless,
burning longing, to know how fared the one woman in all the world who
held me in her hands for life, or for death.

She loved me, truly and well--of that I was convinced.  And yet she
existed in that mysterious hateful bondage--a bondage which, alas! she
dared not attempt to break.

What could be the truth?  Why were her lips closed?--Ay, why indeed?  I
dreaded to think.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

IN WHICH THE MASK IS RAISED.

Three days had passed.

Two curious things happened while we were sitting in the atrium of the
Casino in Monte Carlo during the interval.

In the first place Paulton's friend, Henderson, whom I had met only on
that one occasion in the fumoir of the hotel, happened to saunter in.
He looked hard at both of us, but either did not recognise us--a thing
that I think hardly possible--or else deliberately cut us.

Later, I went over to the buffet with Faulkner, for the play was not
interesting, and we had decided to leave.  A dozen men stood there,
talking, and suddenly I caught the word "D'Uzerche."

They were talking of the fire three days previously.  Anxious to hear
all I could about Chateau d'Uzerche, I moved a little nearer.

"They've not discovered the Baronne's body," I heard the young Frenchman
say, "and apparently no one else was burnt.  I wonder if those old
rumours one heard about the Baronne were really true?"

"What rumours?" his companion, a bald-headed gambler, asked.  "I don't
seem to remember hearing any."

"You mean to say you have never heard the stories that everybody knows?"
the first speaker exclaimed.  "My dear fellow, where do you live?"

"In Paris as a rule," his friend answered drily.  "I returned here last
week."

"Ah, pardon me, I had forgotten.  Well, it has long been common talk--"

He lowered his voice and spoke into his companion's ear.  I approached
as near as I dared, but I could not catch a word.

"You can't mean it!" his friend exclaimed.  "Surely it isn't possible!"

"Everything is possible, _mon cher ami_," the first speaker said.  "The
less possible things seem, generally the more possible they are.  I
shall be anxious to hear what is found inside the safe that the
newspapers say has been discovered amongst the debris.  If it is not
claimed it will, I take it, be the duty of the police to open it."

"But surely it will be claimed."

"I doubt it under the circumstances.  I believe the rumours to be true."

An electric bell rang arrogantly, in warning that the curtain was about
to rise, and some moments later the atrium was half deserted.

I told Faulkner what I had heard.  He seemed in no way surprised.

"I thought it inadvisable to tell you this before," he said after a
pause, "but now that you have got wind of it I may as well tell you the
rumours--or rather the chief one.  The rest don't matter.  The Baronne
de Coudron was known to be extremely rich, yet a few years ago she was
quite poor.  She bought the Chateau d'Uzerche recently.  How and where
she suddenly got the money is a mystery that has puzzled everybody, and
rumours have been afloat that she obtained it by means which could lead
her to penal servitude.  But of course nobody knows anything definite--
so nobody dares do more than insinuate."

"The gendarmes seemed to know something definite," I said.

"Yes, and much use they made of it!  Paulton is most likely safely back
in England by now."

"They can arrest him there of course."

"They can--but will they?  Do you think officials capable of being
hoodwinked as these gendarmes were, will have acumen enough to catch a
clever man like Paulton?  We must admit that he is clever."

The more I saw of Faulkner, the more I grew to like him.  Singularly
undemonstrative in ordinary conversation, he recalled to my mind a
blacksmith's forge that is covered and banked up with cold, wet coal,
but that burns so fiercely within.  What had first attracted me to the
lad had been his amazing coolness in the face of death, a coolness that
amounted to indifference.  I could picture him under fire, calmly
rolling a cigarette and telling others what to do.  Yet he was not a
soldier.  Like myself he was merely an idler.  Leaving out the Houghton
Park incident, I have myself only once been under fire.  It was not on a
battlefield, though not far from one--the field of Tewkesbury.  It was
during a big rabbit shoot, when two of the guns fired straight at me
simultaneously, and the rabbit they killed rolled over on to my feet,
dead.

My conduct was not heroic on that occasion I am afraid.  With one bound
I sprang behind a big elm, and, from that position of safety, hurled
vituperation at my unintentional assailants, ordering them to desist.
It took me some moments to convince myself I had not been hit, but the
shock to my system was, I confess, considerable.

From the theatre we strolled through the big doors into the Salles de
jeux.  I tossed a hundred-franc note on the rouge and left it there.
Red came up six times, and I gathered up my winnings.

The ball clicked again the seventh time, and black came up!

An old man with fingers like claws, and horribly long and dirty nails,
introduced himself, engaged me in conversation, and ended by trying to
induce me to partake in his infallible system for winning at roulette!

What a lot of rubbish has been written about the Rooms at Monte!  The
first time I went there--when I was quite a youth--I expected to find a
sort of Aladdin's palace, myriad glittering lights everywhere,
gorgeously-dressed women sparkling with diadems and precious stones.

Instead, I sauntered into a series of large, lofty, heavily-gilded rooms
with an atmosphere one could cut with a knife, in which were several
long tables with people sitting round them, quite common-looking people,
and anything but smart; the majority of the women were bloused and
skirted tourists.  One might have mistaken the scene for a number of
board-meetings in progress simultaneously, but for the fact that in the
centre of each table sat men in funereal black who, at intervals, droned
monotonously through their noses--

"_Messieurs, faites vos jeux_."

And then a little later--

"_Rien n'va plus_!"

Then the click of the ball, and the jingle of money lost and won.

It was one of the greatest disillusionments I have ever experienced.
There was nothing in the least exciting, nothing sensational.  There was
a rustle of notes, and the whole scene was sordid, debasing.  I can
remember only one other disillusionment that has given me so great a
shock.  I experienced that the first time I visited Niagara Falls.  I
had seen pictures in plenty of the Falls, and had based thereon my idea
of what the Falls would look like when I got there.

I arrived at noon, eager to gaze upon "Nature's Marvellous Phenomenon,"
as the booklet of the Railway Company described it.  The first thing I
saw was a truly gigantic hoarding-board advertising somebody's
lung-tonic, alongside it one recommending some one else's Blood
Capsules, and then, whichever way I looked, the landscape, which should
have been gorgeous, was disfigured by similar announcements.  Even the
water was spoilt, for some of the falls being harnessed to dye-works,
ran in shades of dirty greens and reds and yellows, and when I wanted to
go under the main Falls I found I must buy a ticket at a box-office and
go down in a lift.  Never, I remember thinking, have the words, "Where
only man is vile," been more applicable than at Niagara.

But this is an aside.  Elated at my success at roulette, a game which
generally bores me, for I generally lose, I suggested to Faulkner that
we should go together to some haunt of amusement more exhilarating than
the Casino.

"What about the ball down in La Condamine to-night?" he asked, looking
at me oddly.

"Ball?"  I said.  "What ball?  I didn't know there was one."

"Oh, yes there is.  It isn't an aristocratic ball, you know.  Far from
it.  I've lived out here a good deal, and got to know my way about.  It
is rather an expensive form of amusement, but as you have made two
hundred and fifty-six pounds in ten minutes, you may as well spend a
pound or two that way as any other.  I think you wall afterwards admit
it has been an `experience'."

I did admit it--and a great deal besides.  It was the most
"unconventional" ball I had ever attended, or have attended since.  We
picked up a number of acquaintances, eight or ten in all, and went
boisterously down to La Condamine.  The gay supper was most enjoyable.
Most of the women's dresses were suitable for warm climates, being
conspicuous by their scantiness, rather than by their beauty.  Some wore
the black _loup_ over their eyes.  At supper I sat beside a girl whose
identity was thus concealed.  She had a wonderful figure, and her thick
dark hair hung in two long plaits down below her waist.  About her
movements there was something that seemed familiar to me, and in vain I
tried to recollect when I had met her before, and where.  At last my
curiosity outran my discretion.

"Take off your mask," I said to her in French.  "I'll give you two
louis."

"Give them to me," she said, also in French, the only language she had
talked, "and I will take it off."

I did so.

"Don't be too surprised," she exclaimed in broken English with a ripple
of laughter.  She pulled up the mask, then twisted it off, and I found
myself seated beside Lady Thorold's maid, Judith, whom I had last seen
at the hotel on the night the Baronne de Coudron had arrived.

I confess that I was considerably annoyed.

I am not, I am thankful to think, one of those men who like to behave
absurdly with domestic servants, especially with other people's
servants.

I had never liked this girl, she had always struck me as being
hypocritical and designing, and though now she looked extremely pretty,
judged by a certain standard, I could not dispel from my thoughts the
picture of the demure maid with downcast eyes, whom a casual observer
probably would not have looked at twice.

Her manner was the reverse of demure, nor were her eyes downcast.  They
struck me as being the most brazen eyes I had seen for a long time as
they gazed unflinchingly up into my own.  Much as I knew, I disliked
her, I could not, at that moment, help noticing those strangely dark
eyes of hers, now so full of laughter and wickedness; also the singular
evenness of the small white teeth; the natural redness of the full lips;
the clear, olive complexion, and the thick mantle of long, blue-black
hair.  Yet I did not admire her in the least.  Oh, no.  If her
appearance struck me as remarkable and not wholly unpleasing, it was
only for a brief instant.

"Have you left Lady Thorold's service?"  I asked, loud enough for others
to hear.  I thought that, at any rate, would be a nasty snub.  Instead,
she laughed immoderately.  So, to my surprise, did her friends who had
overheard my question.

"Ah, monsieur, but you are too _drole_!" she exclaimed, as she stopped
laughing.  "I was not in Lady Thorold's service, or in la Baronne de
Coudron's or in anybody else's.  I have never been in service.  I--in
service?  _I_?  Pah!"

She made a gesture of contempt.

"I don't understand," I said.

"I was Lady Thorold's friend, her very intimate friend, and la Baronne
de Coudron's too, and--and other people's.  I am no _servant_, I assure
you! m'sieur."

I stared at her.

"You little impostor!"  I said after a pause.

She laughed, and took my arm confidingly.

"I have always liked you, I have really," she said in a coaxing
undertone.  "You are not like other men.  You are not always trying to
make love to everybody.  _Ma foi_!  How I detest some of your
countrymen, they make themselves too ridiculous when they come to
France."

"You seem to know a lot about them," I answered, for want of something
better to say.

"_Bien_!  I can assure you!" she replied, to my surprise, quite
bitterly.  Then she said quickly, in her broken English as though
anxious to change the subject--

"You want Mademoiselle Vera--eh?"

"What do you mean?"  I gasped, amazed.

"What I say.  You want her.  Well, she is quite near here."

"Near here!"

"_Mais oui_.  Pay me enough, and I will take you to her--now."

I was panting with excitement.  With an effort I controlled myself.  It
was clear to me that this woman knew a great deal.  She might indeed be
able to clear up the whole mystery of Houghton Park if she were paid
enough, perhaps also the mystery connected with Chateau d'Uzerche.

Yes, I would humour her.  If it became necessary, I would pay her the
highest sum she might ask for, that I was in a position to pay.  But
first to meet my darling again.  How I longed to see her once more,
after all those mysterious happenings!

"How much do you want?"  I asked abruptly.

She named an absurdly large sum.  Eventually we came to terms, and I
paid her in French notes.

"_Tres bien_!" she said, as she stuffed the money into some queer corner
in her brief skirt.  "You are a gentilhomme, not like ze others.  _Mais
oui_."

Then she rose, signalled to me with her eyes, and I followed her out of
the room.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

MORE REVELATIONS.

Eagerly I strode out after her.

We went a short distance along the road to the left, then turned again
to the left and halted before a large white house.  Up two flights of
stairs she led me, along a short corridor, and through two rooms.  She
opened the door at the further end of the second room, and then motioned
to me to enter.

Seated at a table, playing cards, were Paulton, Violet de Coudron, Vera
Thorold and the Baronne.  Violet and Vera were in evening gowns--Vera in
turquoise blue.  The sight of the Baronne sitting there, alive and
uninjured, so astounded me that I remained speechless.  Paulton sprang
fiercely to his feet.

"Who brought you up here?" he exclaimed furiously.  "Who?"

The door had remained open.  A ripple of laughter behind me made me cast
a hurried glance that way, and I saw Judith convulsed with amusement.
She recovered her composure in a few moments, and came in.

"I have carried out my threat," she said in French quickly, addressing
Paulton.  "You brought it entirely upon yourself by your niggardliness.
Mr. Ashton is generous--and a gentilhomme."

Paulton clenched his fist.

"Yes," the French girl went on, looking at him fearlessly, "you are
quite right to restrain yourself.  It would be a bad night's work if a
tragedy were to happen _here_.  At the chateau it was different.  You
had it your own way there--up to a point."

The man became blasphemous, and I saw Vera wince.  Her eyes were set
upon mine, in mute appeal.

The truth flashed in upon me.  Paulton ran this private gaming
establishment.  The Baronne presumably was his partner.  Judith was an
accomplice.  But the two girls?  What part did they play?  It was
horrible finding Vera here, yet my faith in her never wavered.  I knew
she must be there against her will, that eventually she would explain
all.  And seeing what I had seen of Violet, I felt equally sure that
circumstances which she too could not prevent were responsible for her
presence.

I suppose most men who self-complacently term themselves "men of the
world," would have laughed outright at what they would have called my
"blind belief in innocence," had the circumstances been related to them.
For here were two young girls mixing with the lost souls of Monte
Carlo, and apparently enjoying themselves.  On the face of it, my
confidence seemed quixotic, I admit, but there are times when I trust my
instinct rather than even circumstantial evidence.  And up to now my
instinct has generally proved correct.

This was no time for deliberate thought, however.  I knew I must act
quickly, and for once I was able to come to a decision with remarkable
promptitude.  Obviously Paulton and the Baronne were there in hiding.
They knew they were liable at any moment to be arrested.  And, thanks to
Judith, I had discovered their place of concealment.

"You know there is a warrant out for the arrest of you both," I said,
facing them fearlessly.  "I can at once inform the police of your
whereabouts--or I can say nothing.  It is for you to decide which I
shall do."

The Baronne looked at me, as I thought, imploringly.

"If Vera Thorold comes away with me at once, and you undertake never
again to molest her, your secret will remain safe, so far as I am
concerned.  If you refuse to let her come, then you will be arrested at
once."

The tables were, indeed, strangely turned.  A few days previously these
two adventurers had held me at their mercy, and Faulkner too.  Now I
could dictate to them what terms I chose.

I saw a look of dismay enter Violet de Coudron's eyes, and I guessed the
reason of it.  She and Vera had become close friends, and now Vera was
to go from her.  It seemed dreadful to leave a young, beautiful, refined
girl like Violet in the control of these ghouls, yet I could not suggest
their surrendering her too, for was she not the Baronne's niece?  And
was the Baronne actually a Baronne--or was she merely an adventuress?  I
had looked up her name and family in the "Almanack de Gotha," and she
seemed to be all right, but still--

Then an idea came to me.  I would, with Vera's help, and Faulkner's, try
to steal the girl away if she should express a wish to leave those
unhealthy and unholy surroundings.  It would be almost like repaying
Paulton and the Baronne in their own coin.  These and other thoughts
sped through my mind with great rapidity.

"Well," I said quickly, addressing Paulton again, "what is your answer?
Am I to betray your whereabouts, or not?"

He still hesitated, still loth to decide.  Then suddenly he exclaimed
abruptly--

"Take her.  I shall be even with you soon, never fear.  I shall be even
with you in a way you don't expect."

I smiled, thinking his words were but a hollow taunt.  Later, however, I
also realised to the full that his had been no empty boast.

The two girls left the room, and both returned wearing hats and sealskin
coats over their evening gowns.  Then, linking my arm in that of my
beloved, we descended the stairs together.

At last she was saved from that scoundrelly gang who seemed to hold her
so completely in their clutches, she was still mine--mine!

At Judith's suggestion we walked back to where the ball was in progress.
As a matter-of-fact I was undecided how next to act.  Besides, I wanted
to see Faulkner, who was awaiting me.

So we went back, and seated with Vera and Judith, I had a long chat with
the latter, about many things.  She told me much that interested me.
Paulton and the Baronne ran this establishment, as I had guessed, and
often made it their headquarters.  They had several assumed names.  They
had run similar secret gaming-houses in Paris, Ostend, Aix and
elsewhere.  In this particular house they lived in a big, well-furnished
flat overlooking the harbour of Monaco.  Vera and Violet had each a
bedroom, and shared a sitting-room.  Since they had met for the first
time, some weeks previously, they had become great friends--in fact
almost inseparable.  Both had been staying at the Chateau d'Uzerche when
the fire had broken out, and she, Judith, had been there too.  It had
been Vera's voice we had heard calling for help before we suspected the
alarming truth.  She had been overcome by smoke in her own room--it was
just before that she had called for help--and almost stifled.  No lives
had been lost.  There had been only five servants at D'Uzerche that
night, and they had all escaped.  The Baronne had, it seemed, escaped by
turning sharp to the right into a lumber-room, almost directly she had
rushed out of the room.  From the lumber-room she had scrambled through
a skylight on to the roof, entered another skylight immediately above a
rusty iron fire staircase, the existence of which everybody else had
forgotten, and so made her way out of the building in safety.

I inquired about the man and woman struggling in the dark.

She smiled when I referred to this, and, pulling up her short sleeve--it
reached barely to her elbow--displayed several horizontal streaks of a
deep purple which looked like bruises.

"I was that woman," exclaimed Judith quietly.  "The man was Dago, and
these are the marks his fingers left upon me when he gripped me and
fought with me.  Are you surprised I have to-night so readily betrayed
his hiding-place?"

"Not so very readily," I said, thinking of the sum of which she had
mulcted me before she would speak at all.

Guessing my thoughts, she laughed.

"Still, m'sieur," she said, "you will admit that you have received full
value for your money, _n'est-ce-pas_?"

During this conversation, carried on in one of the ante-rooms within
earshot of the music in the ballroom, Vera sat almost in silence.  I
grew to understand the woman Judith better, indeed almost to like her.
She said little about herself, though I questioned her frequently
concerning her own life.  She seemed more inclined to talk of other
people, and their doings.  One thing I did gather was that she belonged
to a gang of male and female adventurers, who probably stood at nothing
when they had an end to gain.  To this gang belonged also the Baronne,
Paulton and Henderson.  Whether Sir Charles Thorold was, or was not, in
some way mixed up in this gang's schemes I could not ascertain for
certain, though several times I tried to.  For about Sir Charles and
Lady Thorold, Judith seemed unwilling to speak.

I had a long and confidential chat with Vera.  Ah! that hour was perhaps
full of the sweetest happiness of my life.  She was mine--mine!  It was
past three in the morning when we paused for a few moments in our
animated conversation.  "Ah, here comes your friend," exclaimed my sweet
beloved.

Faulkner, passing the open door, had caught sight of us and strolled in.
Violet de Coudron was with him.  She looked dreadfully tired, I
thought, though this did not greatly detract from her very exceptional
beauty.

Briefly, I told Faulkner all that had happened.

"It is fortunate we are not conventional," he said lightly, when I had
outlined my plan.  "What food for scandal some people would find in all
this.  I think, after all, that our visit here to-night has not been
wholly unprofitable--eh?  You may be surprised to hear that this new
friend of mine"--and he indicated Violet de Coudron, seated beside
him--"has arranged to leave the Baronne for good and all.  She tells me
she leads an awful life here, and that when Vera is gone--"

"But you have known Vera only a few weeks," I interrupted, addressing
Violet.

"Yes," she answered sadly, with her pretty accent, "and those are the
only weeks of comparative happiness I have had.  I couldn't stay here
with these people without her.  I couldn't.  I really couldn't.  Oh, if
you only knew all I have been through--all I have been forced to endure
since the Baronne adopted me!"  And she hid her face in her hands.

"Adopted you!"  I exclaimed.  "You said you were the Baronne's niece."

"I said so--yes.  I always said so, because she made me, and I passed
always as her niece.  But I am not.  I can scarcely remember my parents.
All I can recollect is that they were very poor--but oh, so kind to me!
I remember their kissing me passionately one day, with tears streaming
down their cheeks--it was evening, and nearly dark--and telling me that
they had to go away from me, that probably we should never meet again in
this world."

"How old were you then?"  I asked, much interested.

"I could not have been more than six, possibly seven.  It was in Rouen.
They took me to a big, fashionable street I did not remember having ever
been in before, kissed me again and again once more, stood me by the
_porte-cochere_, and rang the bell.  Then they went hurriedly away.  By
the time the bell was answered, they had disappeared.  I was questioned
by a tall man-servant--after that, I don't exactly recollect what
happened, except that the Baronne adopted me.  She lived in the big
house."

"And it was in Rouen, you say?"

"Yes, in Rouen."

"Do you think you would recognise it if you saw the outside of it
again?"  I asked quickly.

She paused.

"I think I should," she said thoughtfully, "though we did not stay there
long--not more than a few months.  Why do you ask?"

"Only," I answered, "because I have an idea.  But now let us leave this
place.  It is nearly four o'clock."

Yes, we were a truly unconventional quartette.

The hotel people were surprised, on the following morning, to find one
of our two rooms occupied by two fair visitors, while in the other
Faulkner and I slept, tucked up together.  But in gay, reckless Monte
nobody is surprised at anything.

That an attempt would at once be made to discover Violet's whereabouts
and get her back, we knew.  For that reason we had arranged to leave for
Paris by the mid-day _rapide_.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

CONCERNS A MYSTERIOUS LIGHT.

London--the dear, dirty old city of delight--looked gloomy enough as we
passed out of Charing Cross yard, and made our way around the corner to
the _Grand Hotel_.  It was a damp, raw evening, and after the crisp
atmosphere and bright sunshine of the Riviera, seemed to us more than
ordinarily depressing.

By wire we had engaged rooms at the _Grand_ for Vera and Violet,
overlooking Trafalgar Square, and we now began to wonder what our next
step ought to be.  I wanted, if possible, to get into communication with
Sir Charles and Lady Thorold, for I was anxious not to delay my marriage
any longer, and Vera, though she had promised to become my wife as soon
as possible, refused to do so until she had seen her parents.

But where were her parents?

She had no idea, neither had I.  We had telegraphed to the address in
Brighton where they had been staying, but an intimation had come from
the Post Office that the message had not been delivered, the addressee
having left.

As for Faulkner, he was distrait.  Something seemed to be on his mind,
and I thought I knew what it was.  He was engaged to be married to
Gladys Deroxe, of whom Vera had, during the past day or two, let drop
certain things.

Gladys Deroxe, she had confided to me among other things, was one of the
most jealous women she had ever met.  Her jealousy amounted almost to an
obsession.  When I heard this I breathed a fervent hope that Faulkner
might never marry her, for I have seen something of jealous wives among
my friends.  What was weighing upon Faulkner's mind, of course, was that
he had brought Violet to London with him, and that, as Miss Deroxe lived
in Mayfair, she might at any moment get to hear of this, and then?

Another thought occurred to me now, for the first time.  Had my
unemotional, phlegmatic friend fallen in love with Violet de Coudron,
the foundling?

She was pretty and fascinating enough for any one to fall in love with.
Personally, I thought Faulkner would do well to marry her in preference
to Gladys, who I gathered to be something of a schemer, with an eye to
the main chance.  Vera had come to know Miss Deroxe quite by accident.
At first she had liked her, but soon she had begun to discover her true
character.  Violet on the contrary, she liked immensely.  Yet girls form
strange prejudices.

Thus a week of anxiety passed.  The two girls remained at the _Grand_,
while I stayed at my rooms, and Faulkner slept at his club.  Though he
did not tell me, I knew he had not informed Gladys of his return to
town.  Therefore he must have felt somewhat perturbed, though, as was
his wont, he completely hid his feelings, when one morning as I was
walking with him up Hamilton Place a taxi swept up behind us, stopped
beside the kerb, and a rather florid-looking girl, leaning out of the
cab window, called in a loud, querulous voice--

"Frank!  _Frank_!"

Before he presented me to her I had guessed her identity, and I saw at a
glance that she was none too well pleased at his being in London without
her knowing it.

"I was calling upon my uncle Henry," she said presently, "and chanced to
look out of the window, when I saw you go by.  I was amazed.  I thought
you were on the Riviera still.  So I hurried out, hailed a taxi, and
pursued you.  Why didn't you tell me you were back?"

He invented on the spot some excellent reason--I forget what it was--and
it seemed to satisfy her.  And then, feeling that my presence was not
needed, I made an excuse, raised my hat, and left them.

"I am only glad," I remembered saying mentally and ungrammatically, "it
is Faulkner, and not I, who is to marry that girl."

Next day, I took my well-beloved in the car down to Virginia Water,
where we lunched, and returned in the afternoon.  That evening I, as
usual, scanned the personal columns of the _Morning Post_.  I have a
habit of doing this, as some of the announcements one sees there are not
devoid of humour.

That day the personal columns were singularly dull.  The advertisements
of money-lenders masquerading as private gentlemen, and as ladies
anxious to be philanthropic, occupied a good deal of the space.  There
was the widow of twenty-three who implored "some kind-hearted gentleman"
(sic) "to lend her twenty pounds to save her from the bailiffs;" a "lady
of high social standing, closely related to an Earl," who touted for the
chaperonage of debutantes, willing to pay for the privilege of being
surreptitiously smuggled into Society; a crack-brained inventor
advertising for some one to finance a new torpedo for destroying German
bands, or something of the kind, and so on.  There was nothing at all
exciting.  Why, I can't say, but quite a commonplace line at the foot of
the second column interested me.  It ran--

"_Meet me_ 2."

That was all--no name, no address, no date.  Why I had noticed it at
all, I could not imagine.  I concluded it must be the extreme brevity of
the advertisement that had caught my fancy.

Next morning, it being dry and fine, I called at the _Grand Hotel_, and
took Vera for a run in the car to Hatfield, returning by St. Albans.  We
lunched at Pagani's--one gets so tired of the sameness of the ordinary
restaurants--and after that I left Vera at the hotel, and sent my car to
the garage.

Somehow I felt in a restless mood, and the atmosphere of well-bred
respectability pervading the club oppressed me, as it so often does.  I
am afraid that the older I grow the more Bohemian I become, and the less
willing to bend to convention.  It seems to me farcical, for instance,
that in this twentieth century of ours, a rule made fifty years ago to
the effect that "pipes shall not be smoked in this club," should still
be enforced.  Plenty of the younger members of the clubs where this rule
obtains have endeavoured to rebel, but in vain.  The Committee have
solemnly pointed out to such free-thinking and independent spirits that
their fathers and grandfathers got on quite well without smoking pipes
in the club, and that if their fathers and their grandfathers did
without pipes, they ought to be able to do without pipes too--in the
club.  Oh, yes, they were at liberty, if they liked, to smoke cigarettes
at five a penny all over the house, but never tobacco in a pipe, even if
they paid half-a-crown an ounce for it.

The conversation of the only two occupants of the smoking-room--try as I
would, I could not help listening to it--wearied me so intensely that I
got up at last and went out.  I strolled aimlessly up the street to
Piccadilly, then turned to the left.  Many thoughts filled my mind as I
rambled along, and when, presently, I found myself at Hyde Park Corner,
I decided I would stroll down into Belgravia and see if a new caretaker
had been installed at the house in Belgrave Street in place of poor old
Taylor.

To my surprise the house was boarded up.  Nearly every window was
boarded, even the top-floor windows.  It looked like a house in which
people have died of some plague.

I found the policeman on the beat, and questioned him.  Inclined at
first to be sullen and uncommunicative, he became cordial and
confidential soon after my fingers had slipped a coin into his hand.

"So you haven't heard anything about number a hundred and two," he said
some moments later.  "About here it's causin' a bit o' talk."

"Indeed?  In what way?"

He paused, as though reflecting whether he ought to tell me.

"Well, sir, it's like this," he said at last.  "The 'ouse is, as you've
seen, boarded up, and there's nobody living there but--"

"Yes?  But what?"

"Well, for the last eight nights there's been a light in a window on the
first floor."

"A light?  But how could you see a light if there were one, with the
windows boarded up?"

"Oh, it can be seen right enough, through the chinks between the
boards."

"Who has seen it?"

"I have--and others also."

"Is it always in the same window?"

"Not always in the same window, but always on the same floor.  Ah, no!
On two nights there was a light on the second floor too."

"And at what time is it seen?"

"Very late--not before two in the morning, as a rule."

"And how long does it remain?"

"Sometimes for five or ten minutes, sometimes as much as half-an-hour,
or more.  Three nights ago two windows were lit up at one-twenty and
remained lit until two-fifty-five."

"And do you mean to say nobody goes into the house or comes out of it?"

"Nobody.  Nobody at all.  It's being watched front and back.  Twice
we've been in and hunted the place all over--we got leave to do this--
but there was nothing, nor no one nowhere."

"Oh," I exclaimed incredulously, "that is a ridiculous thing to say.  If
a light really appears and disappears, there must be somebody in the
house.  Probably there's a secret entrance of which you know nothing
about."

"There are only three entrances," he answered quickly, "and one of 'em
can't rightly be called an entrance.  There's the front door, and the
back door for the tradesmen, and then there's a queer little way out
into Crane's alley--we can't think why that entrance was ever made."

The "queer little way out" I at once guessed to be the dark,
underground, narrow little stone cellar-passage through which Vera had
led me when we had escaped together on the day I had discovered her
hidden in the house.

"And are the entrances all locked?"  I asked.  "Oh, you may take that
from me," he replied.  "They are locked right enough, and nobody don't
get the keys, neither."

At that moment, oddly enough, the thought of the curious-looking brown
stain in the corner of the ceiling on the first floor, that I had
noticed on the day I had explored the unoccupied house, came suddenly
back into my mind.

I must have talked to the policeman for fully fifteen minutes, and had
asked him many questions.  Before the end of that time I had, however,
discovered that he was of a superstitious nature, and that he did not at
all like what was happening.

I pondered for a little while, then I said--

"Look here, officer"--if you want to please a policeman always call him
"officer"--"I am going to peep into that room, and you must help me."

"Me, sir?"

"Yes, you.  What are policemen for, except to help people?  Now listen.
I can't, of course, get into the house, but I am going to arrange for a
ladder to be brought here to-night that will reach to the first-floor
windows.  This street is, I'm sure, quite deserted in the small hours of
the morning.  The ladder will be hoisted up by the men who bring it, you
will keep an eye up and down the street to see that nobody comes along
to interrupt us.  Then I shall crawl up the ladder and peer in at the
window.  If there is space between the boards wide enough to admit
light, the space must be wide enough to enable me to peep into the
room."

"It's a bit risky, sir."

"Risky?  Not the slightest.  I'll make it worth your while to undertake
what risk there is.  So that is understood.  You are on duty here
to-night at two o'clock?"

"Oh, yes, sir, but--"

"There is no `but.'  I shall see you later, then."

I returned to King Street.  My man John had a friend who worked for a
builder, he told me.  This friend of his would, he said, arrange
everything, and be delighted to.  Oh, yes, he had a ladder.  He had
several ladders.  He could bring along single-handed, a ladder the
length I wanted, and set it in position.

This was satisfactory.  I went to a theatre in order to kill time, for I
felt excited and terribly impatient.  I had not told Vera of my plan, or
Faulkner, or indeed anybody but the policeman.

The builder's man was punctual to the minute.  He had concealed the
ladder in Crane's Court before dark, thinking suspicion might be aroused
were he to be seen carrying a ladder through the streets of London in
the middle of the night.  Two o'clock had just struck, when he crept
stealthily into Belgrave Square with the ladder over his shoulder.
Acting upon my instructions, he laid it flat upon the pavement.
Impatiently I waited.  A quarter-past two chimed on some far-distant
clock.  Still the windows remained in darkness.

Twenty minutes passed...  Twenty-five...  I began to feel anxious.
Would this mysterious visitor not come to-night?  That would indeed be a
bitter disappointment.  Ah!

The light had appeared.  It was on the first floor.  Now it percolated
feebly between the boards covering two windows.

At a signal from me the man picked up the ladder, raised it to a
vertical position, then let it rest, without a sound, against the
window-sill.

"All right, sir," he whispered to me.

Restraining my excitement, I began slowly, cautiously, to creep up the
rungs.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

CONTAINS A FURTHER SURPRISE.

The boards covering the windows were about an inch thick, but, with the
slovenliness unfortunately too common among British workmen, they had
been nailed up "anyhow," and between the two boards immediately facing
me was a space an inch or more.  Through that, I saw the weak light, as
of a candle.

Two rungs higher up I climbed, leant forward, and endeavoured to glue my
eye to this crack, in order to peer into the room.

It was by no means easy to see more than a narrow strip of the room, and
that strip was empty.  Guessing, however, that something I should be
able to see must soon happen in the room, I decided to wait.  I suppose
I must have waited about five minutes--it seemed like a quarter of an
hour--my eye was beginning to ache, and I had a crick in my neck, when
of a sudden a shadow fell across the bare boards--the strip of floor
that I could see--and then a second shadow.  A moment later a man stood
in the room, his back to the window, a light in his hand.  At once I
recognised the man by his colossal stature.

It was the dark giant I knew as Davies.

What was he doing?  I could not see.  Some one was beside him, also with
his back turned.  I started.  This second man was Sir Charles Thorold,
undoubtedly.  They were conversing, but I could not, of course, catch
their words.

Sir Charles was bending down.  He seemed to be on all fours.  Now Davies
was on all fours too.  They were both crawling on all fours about the
floor, as though searching for something.

With breathless interest I watched them.  They had passed out of my
range of vision, though a pair of feet were still visible.  The feet
remained in sight for quite a long time, ten minutes or more.  Then they
too disappeared.

"What on earth are they about?" was my mental comment.  "What can they
be seeking?"

It had seemed obvious that they had been trying to find something.

Still on the ladder I waited, hoping that something more might happen,
but I saw nothing more, and presently the light was extinguished.  I
judged that some one had carried the candle into another room.
Apparently there was no object in waiting longer on the ladder, so I
cautiously descended to the ground again.

I felt satisfied, and yet dissatisfied, with the result of my
observation.

It was satisfactory to know who the people were who visited the house in
this mysterious way in the small hours.  But it was unsatisfactory not
to have found out why they went there at that time of night, and thus
secretively--or why they went there at all.

Just as I reached the ground, thought of the advertisement I had noticed
in the _Morning Post_ floated back into my mind--

"_Meet me_ 2."

Could there be any connexion between that advertisement and these
mysterious visits at two in the morning?  It seemed unlikely, and yet it
was somewhat curious.

I did not tell the expectant constable more than I deemed it good that
he should know.  I told him I thought I had discovered the presence of
two men in the house, but I did not say they were men I knew and could
identify.

He was pleased with the half-sovereign I gave him, and hinted clearly
that he would always be glad to render me any service in his power.  It
always interests me to observe how readily the milk of human kindness
comes oozing out where one least expects it, provided the "source"
whence it springs is "handled" in the right way.

As he had said this, I determined to take him at his word.  I had seen
enough to excite my curiosity and to stimulate in me a keen desire
actually to enter the house.  But how could this be arranged?

Everything is possible of accomplishment, I find, if you set about it in
the right way.  I had obtained from the policeman his private address in
Rodney Street, Walworth Road, and, on the following evening, when he was
off duty, I looked in to see him.

Rarely have I been more welcomed by anybody than I was by that policeman
and his wife, or more hospitably entertained.  Plenty of men of about my
own social standing would, I know, think me quite mad if I told them I
had hobnobbed with "a common policeman."  The club would have been
shocked.  "My dear fellah," I can hear them saying, "you really should
draw the line somewhere, don't you know.  A gentleman is a gentleman,
and a policeman is--well, is a policeman--eh, what?  He may be an
exceedingly good and honest fellah, and all that sort of thing, don't
you know, but, after all, we must keep to people in our own station of
life, or we shall be dining with each other's valets next, and one's
friend's butler will be asking one to lunch with him at his club.  I'm
cosmopolitan myself, up to a point, but really one must keep the classes
distinct, we must keep ourselves aloof from the common people, or where
will it end, don't you know?  As I say, a gentleman is a gentleman, and
a man who isn't a gentleman, well, he isn't a gentleman--you can't get
away from that."

To which my only reply would be that, to my knowledge, there are plenty
of "gentlemen" who are not gentlemen, and quite a sensible proportion of
the men we do self-complacently term "bounders" who are men of high
ideals and of great refinement.

During supper, to which he had asked me half-apologetically, the
constable entertained me with many good stories, for he had been
seventeen years in the Metropolitan Police, and had seen much of life in
London during that time.  I waited until we had finished supper, and his
wife had retired, before submitting for his approval the proposal I had
come to make.

Mine was quite a simple proposal, though not devoid of risk, yet the
plan could not well be carried out without his help.  Briefly, I was
determined to force an entrance to the house in Belgrave Street on the
following night, and the way I had decided to get in was through the
dark cellar-passage which opened on to Crane's Alley.

During the afternoon I had visited the Alley, and examined the lock of
the gate at the end of the iron railings which topped the wall of the
little yard, also the lock of the small door that led into the black
cellar-passage which ultimately led into the house.  Both, I saw, could
easily be forced.  Indeed, there would be no need to force the lock of
the iron gate.  I could climb over the gate, as I had done that day.
All this I told the constable, and he calmly nodded.

"And you want me to abet you in this crime," he said at last, with a
grin, as he loaded his pipe anew.

"I do," I said.  "And--I'll make it worth your while."

"Well, it's house-breaking, you know," he observed drily, filling the
room with clouds of smoke.  "And you know what the sentence for breaking
into a house at night is?"

"Never mind about the sentence," I answered quickly.  "I shall have to
serve that--and not you!  But there won't be any sentence, because there
won't be any capture--if you help me.  And you are going to help me.
Oh, yes, you are."

We both laughed.

"You are a one, sir--an' no mistake!" he exclaimed.  "Well, yes, I'll do
me best and charnce it.  I'm a bit of a sport meself when they gives me
arf a charnce."

And so it was settled.  It was this policeman's duty to keep an eye on
Crane's Alley, which was included in his beat.  Well, he would for once
forget to keep an eye on it, while the sergeant was out of the way.
More, he would lend a hand when the time came to force the lock of the
door in the little yard.  After that he would be at liberty to slip back
to Belgrave Street and resume his monotonous tramp.

And all this would happen on the following night, or rather, about two
o'clock next morning.

When I left him it was nine o'clock, and, feeling in high spirits, I
drove to the _Grand_ to tell Vera my plan, for I felt I must tell
somebody.  She was alone in the private sitting-room overlooking the
thousand lights of Trafalgar Square, and I sat with my arm about her.

"It is madness--sheer madness," she exclaimed, when I had outlined my
scheme, "and if you will take my advice--you know my advice is generally
sound--you will at once abandon the idea, Dick.  It is very well for you
to say that my father is your friend, but you don't know my father--you
don't know him as I know him.  There are two sides to his character.
Indeed, I would say he is really two men in one.  The man you know is
very different from the other man--my father as you have never seen him,
and as I hope you never will see him.  He can become perfectly savage.
He has a temper that is altogether unmanageable when once it gets the
better of him.  It doesn't often, but when it does--

"No, don't do it, dear, don't, I beg of you.  I ask you not to.  I beg
you not to if you really love me."

"I must," I answered, with a firmness that surprised her.  "I have gone
too far now to draw back, even if I wanted to, which I don't.  I am
going to see this thing through.  I'm going to discover the mystery of
that house.  I don't care what risks I take, or what happens, but I am
going to see for myself what all this secret business means."

To my surprise she began to laugh.

"Dick," she said, "I sometimes wonder if you are quite `all there.'  Why
on earth can't you let people alone, and mind your own business?
Supposing Whichelo should turn upon you--good Heavens, he could squeeze
the life out of you with one hand."

"Whichelo?"  I asked, puzzled, still holding her soft hand in mine.

"Yes.  You said when you looked in at the window you saw Whichelo with
my father."

Instantly I put two and two together.  So the big, dark giant whom I had
known only as Davies was called Whichelo!

At last I had found out!

"And why should this man with the funny name, this Whichelo, want to
`squeeze the life out of me' as you so picturesquely put it?"  I
inquired carelessly, rising and crossing to the window, the blinds of
which were not drawn.

"For the simple reason," she answered, "that of course he won't allow
you to reveal the secret that has been kept so well, and so long.  He
and my father would stick at nothing to prevent that--believe me.  I
tell you again, I know my father."

Somehow, though she spoke calmly, I felt she had some very strong
incentive for not wanting me to enter the house and see what was
happening there.  She seemed to dread my carrying out my plan.  Yet
apparently she was not anxious on my account.  But my mind was now made
up.  Nothing, I was determined, should stop me.  I believed that I was
on the eve of making discoveries which would lead to the unravelling of
the mystery of Houghton Park, and the mysteries which had followed.

"Good-night, darling," I said, going back to her.  I took her in my arms
and kissed her.  As I did so, I thought I felt her sob.

"Why, Vera, what is the matter?"  I exclaimed, releasing her.

"The matter?" she said, forcing a smile.  "Nothing.  Oh! nothing at all,
dear.  Why?"

"You--you seemed worried."

"Oh, you're mistaken.  Why should I be?"  She gave vent to a little
hysterical laugh.  I kissed her again, and told her to "cheer up."  Then
I left her.  I did not dare trust myself longer in her presence, lest
she should, after all, persuade me to change my mind.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

A SECRET IS DISCLOSED.

The night was still--clear and starlit.

Between two and three in the morning is the one hour when, in London,
the very houses seem to slumber, save in a few districts, such as Fleet
Street, Covent Garden and its purlieus, where night and day are alike--
equally active, equally feverish--those streets which never sleep.

I wore an old suit, a golf cap, shoes with rubber soles, and in my
jacket-pocket carried an electric torch.  I had decided not to take a
pistol.  After all, I was not bent on mischief.  Also I was going, as I
supposed, among friends.  Even if Sir Charles were to turn upon me I
could not believe he would do me an injury, in spite of my beloved's
warning.  He and I had known each other such a long time.

Vera, finding that nothing would dissuade me, had ended by giving me the
bunch of keys which I had forgotten she still possessed--the keys I had
taken from old Taylor's pocket.  "If you are determined to do this mad
thing, Dick," she had said to me, kissing me fondly, "you may as well
get in with the key, instead of house-breaking."  On the bunch were the
key which would unlock the iron gate, and the one of the little door.
This greatly simplified matters, for there were no bolts on the little
door, as there were upon the front door and on the tradesmen's door.

The light appeared in the same window on the first floor at exactly
twenty minutes past two.  Standing in Belgrave Street with my constable
friend, who was now on duty, I saw it flicker suddenly.  Without further
delay we both went round Crane's Alley.  Nobody was about.  Not a sound
anywhere.  Noiselessly I unlocked the iron gate, then the little door...

"Good luck, sir," the policeman whispered, as I crept into the dark,
low-roofed passage.  "And if you want any help, remember you've got the
whistle."

There were two little stone-walled cellar-passages, and I took the one
to the right.  Before I had gone a yard I uttered an exclamation.  I was
up against a great veil of grey cobwebs which hung from everywhere and
was stretched right across the stone passage.  So thick were they that I
had to push into them to make my way along.  How I regretted I had not
brought a stick!  Suddenly something damp creepy, large, horrible, ran
across my face, then another, and another.

Ugh!  My blood ran cold at their touch, for I hate spiders.

I pulled out my electric torch.  Its sudden glare sent scores of spiders
scurrying in all directions.  I could actually hear them--nay, I could
smell them, and, wherever I looked, I could see them.  The sight made me
shudder, for they were not, apparently, house-spiders of the usual
variety--but large, fat, oval-bodied things, with curved legs, and with
protruding heads that seemed to look at me.  Indeed, I don't think that
in the whole of my life I have ever spent moments that I less like to
dwell upon than the two minutes it took me to push my way through that
loathsome tangle of evil-smelling cobwebs alive with spiders.  I would
not go through such an experience again for any sum.

At last I got through them, and I recollect thinking, as I emerged, how
foolish I had been to take the wrong turning.

Of course, when Vera had led me out we must have come by the other
passage, as there had been no cobwebs then.  And that led me further to
wonder whether at that time the passage had not been in regular use by
some person or persons.  I did not for a moment believe that old Taylor
had been so conscientious as to keep either passage free of cobwebs,
seeing how utterly neglected had been the rest of the house.

In the servants' quarters, where I presently found myself, I recognised
at once that same acrid smell of dry rot I had noticed when last in the
house, only now it was more "pronounced."  Noiselessly I crept along, in
my rubber shoes, to the hall.  Everywhere the deathly stillness was so
intense that one seemed almost to feel it.  Cautiously I crept up the
front stairs, keeping close to the wall in order to prevent their
creaking.  My electric torch proved most useful.

I was outside the door of the drawing-room that overlooked Belgrave
Street--the first room I had entered on that previous occasion--the room
into which I had peered the night before, as I stood upon the ladder.  A
tiny ray of faint light percolated through the keyhole.  I listened,
hardly breathing, but could hear no sound at all, except my own
heart-beats.

Should I turn the handle gently, slowly push the door ajar, and peep in?
It might squeak.  Should I fling open the door and rush in?  Faced with
a problem, I was undecided.  I admit that at that moment I felt inclined
to run away.  Instead, I stood motionless, hesitating, frightened at my
own temerity.  Had I, after all, been wise in disregarding Vera's good
advice?

I thought of that curious brown stain I remembered so distinctly upon
the ceiling in this very room.  It had been in the right hand corner--
the corner farthest from me.  What was above that corner?  Ah, I knew
just where that spot would be in the room above.

Suddenly an idea struck me.  I would creep up to the next floor and
enter the room above.  I had taken from the bunch about eight keys I
thought might prove of use.  Vera had told me which they were.  All were
loose in different pockets, each with a tag tied to it, bearing the name
of the room it belonged to.

The room upstairs was in darkness, but the door of it was not locked.
Cautiously I entered, pushed to the door behind me, and then pressed the
button of my electric torch.

Everything was in disorder.  Most of the dusty furniture had been pushed
into a corner.  Some of it was still covered with sheets, but much of it
was not.  Clearly people had been in here a good deal of late.  I picked
my way between various pieces of furniture across to the corner I
sought.  On arriving there I started, and at once switched off my light.

In the floor at that corner, was a big hole, a very big hole indeed,
several feet across.

The carpet had been rolled back.  The boards had all been ripped up.
Two of the beams below them had been sawed across, and about three feet
of each of these beams removed.  The ceiling of the room below had been
smashed away--this I judged to be the exact spot where the brown stain
had been--and, as I cautiously bent forward, and craned my neck, I could
see right down into the drawing-room.

Voices were murmuring--men's voices.  The sight upon which my gaze
rested made me recoil.

Stretched out on the floor, right below me, was a human body--
shrivelled, dry, quite brown, but undoubtedly a body.  It looked exactly
like a mummy, a mummy five feet or more in length.  Beside it knelt two
figures.  As I looked, I saw them slowly lift the body from the floor,
one man holding either end of it.  In a moment or two they had carried
it out of sight.  And the men who had taken it away were Sir Charles
Thorold and the man I had known as Davies, but whose name I now knew to
be Whichelo.

This was more, a great deal more than I had expected or even dreamt I
should see when I entered the house of mystery.

What could it all mean?  Had there been foul play?  And if so, had
Thorold had a hand in it?  I could not think this possible.  And yet
what other construction could I possibly place upon what I had just
witnessed?

I did not know what to think, much less had I any idea of what I ought
now to do.  And then, all at once, an inspiration came to me.

I took several long breaths.  Then, setting my voice at a low, unnatural
pitch, I gave vent to a deep, long-drawn-out wail, gradually raising my
voice until it ended in a weird shriek.

The stillness below became intense.  I paused for perhaps half-a-minute.
Then I slowly repeated the wail, ending this time in a kind of
unearthly yell.

I knew I had achieved my purpose--knew that the men below were
terrified, panic-stricken.  I could picture them kneeling beside the
shrivelled corpse, literally petrified by horror, their eyes starting
from their sockets, their faces bloodless.

Then I walked with measured tread about the floor, the dull "plunk
plunk" of my rubber soles sounding, in the depth of the night, and in
the stillness of that unoccupied house--ghostly even to me.  Next I
began to push the furniture about, and a moment later I slammed the
door.

There was a wild, a frantic stampede.  Both men had sprung to their feet
and were dashing headlong down the stairs.  I pursued them in the
darkness!  They heard the quick patter of my rubber shoes upon the
stairs behind them, and it seemed to give them wings.  Furniture was
knocked spinning in the darkness.  A terrific crash echoed through the
house as, in their blind rush, they hurled on to the stone floor of the
hall a big china vase the height of a man which had stood upon a
pedestal.  A door slammed.  Then another, more faintly, a long way down
some corridor.

Then once more all was still.

Chuckling at the grim humour of the situation, I went slowly up the
stairs again.  There was still a light in the first-floor room.  I
pushed the door open and walked boldly in.

I halted, surprise had petrified me.

The sight that my eyes rested upon I shall not forget as long as ever I
live!

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

CONTAINS ANOTHER REVELATION.

I stood still in horror, my eyes riveted upon the shrivelled human body.
It was stretched out upon several chairs placed side by side.  The
sight was most gruesome.

Near it, upon the floor, was an ordinary packing-case, in the bottom of
which a quantity of wood shavings had been pressed down, to form a sort
of bed.  At once I realised that this box had been prepared for the
reception of the body.

It was about to be smuggled out of the house!

But how did it come to be there?  Whose body was it?  How long had it
been dead?  And how had the man--for I saw it was the body of a man,
apparently a man of middle-age--come by his death?

It was not the sight of the Thing that had startled me, however, for I
had expected to see it there.

What had taken my breath away had been the sight of great heaps of coin
upon the floor, gold coin which had evidently just been emptied out of
the little sacks close by.  Near by were some glass bottles containing
powdered metal, some bottles of coloured fluid, and various implements--
a couple of metal moulds, a ladle, a miniature hand-lathe, several
files, and some curiously-fashioned tools which I judged must be
finishing tools used in the manufacture of coin.

The truth was plain--a ghastly unexpected truth.

Thorold and Whichelo were, or had been, in some way concerned in issuing
base coin, though to me it seemed hardly possible that Sir Charles could
actually be implicated.  I picked up a handful of the shining coins, and
let them fall between my fingers in a golden stream.  If they were not
golden French louis they were certainly fine imitations.  All the coins
were French twenty and ten-franc pieces, I noticed.  There were no
British coins among them, nor were there coins of any other nation.  In
all, there must have been several thousands of them.

When I had recovered from my surprise, I began to examine the body more
closely.  With my electric torch I ran a flash all along it and to and
fro.  It was the body of a man about thirty, I definitely decided, and
it was swathed in brown rags.  I had seen bodies in the catacombs in
Rome and in Paris that looked like this, and also in South America I had
seen some.

South America!  My thought of that continent set up a fresh train of
thought in my mind.  It made me think of Mexico, and the thought of
Mexico, though not in South America, brought the tall, dark man,
Whichelo, back to me vividly.  He had been in Mexico a great deal at one
time, Vera had told me.  And this mummified body lying in front of me--
yes, it singularly resembled the mummified bodies I had seen in Mexico
when on my travels about the world.

What had caused death?  Critical inspection with my electric torch
showed distinctly a fracture at the base of the skull, as though it had
been struck with some blunt implement, such as a hammer.

Yes, there could be no doubt that the skull had been severely fractured.
I should have held the theory that the poor fellow had been attacked
from behind, felled to the ground with some iron weapon.  I wondered
greatly how long the man had been dead.  No expert knowledge was needed
to decide that he must have been dead a number of years.  And where had
the body been hidden all this time?

Instinctively I glanced at the ceiling--at the gaping hole in it--and
instantly I knew.  This mummified body had been hidden away, buried
between the ceiling and floor!  It had been in that corner, where the
hole now was.  And the brown stain I had noticed in the corner of the
ceiling...

But the money?  Why, of course, the money must have been there, too.  A
thought struck me.  I picked up some of the coins again, and glanced at
the dates.  Twenty-five or thirty years ago they were dated, yet they
looked quite new.  Clearly, then, they had not been in circulation.
Paulton's significant remark returned to me--the remark he had made that
night in the room in Chateau d'Uzerche, when I had said something about
not revealing Sir Charles Thorold's secret.

Could there be some hidden connexion between this discovery I had made,
Thorold's secret, and the charge upon which Paulton was "wanted?"

I spent some time in examining the room and its contents.  Then I
explored other parts of the house.

Was I now gradually approaching the solution of Sir Charles Thorold's
secret?

I believed it more than likely that I might now at last be well on my
way to solving the mystery of Houghton Park and the Thorolds' sudden
flight.  That Sir Charles and his big friend would not return that night
I fully believed.  They might, or might not, be superstitious, but there
could be no doubt I had terrified them thoroughly.  If they returned at
all it would be in the daytime, I conjectured.

What was to be done?  How should I act?

I decided that the only thing to do would be to go out into the street
and inform the constable of all that had happened.  I had told him I
would not stay long in the house in any case, and my prolonged absence
might be making him feel uneasy.

I left by the front door--which I found securely bolted and chained on
the inside--and there found the constable flashing his bull's-eye
lantern upon the door, and with his truncheon ready drawn.

"Hush!"  I whispered, and he smiled upon seeing me, and at once replaced
his truncheon.

"I was beginning to feel very anxious on your account, sir," he said.
"I 'arf wondered who might be a-comin' out.  Well, sir, did you see
anything?"

"I should say so," I answered, and then, as briefly as I could, I told
him nearly everything.

I persuaded him to come in then and there.

"Well, look at that, now!" he said, as I showed him first the mummified
body, then the sacks of gold, and pointed out to him the great hole cut
in the ceiling.  "Well, look at that, now!" he repeated.

"The awkward part of the affair is this," I said at last.  "Who is going
to lodge information?  I don't care to, for, if I do, inquiries will be
made as to how I came to be on the premises at all, and how I managed to
get in, and it won't look well if I am proved, on my own showing, to
have entered the place secretly in the middle of the night.  Again, I
don't want to lodge information against Sir Charles Thorold.  Why should
I?  He has always been my friend.  Nor, for that matter, do I want to
prefer any sort of charge against Whichelo.  So far as the body is
concerned, we may be quite wrong in conjecturing that there has been
foul play.  Indeed, there is no actual proof that the mummy was hidden
in the ceiling of the room, though personally I think it must have been.
Everything points to it.  And you, Bennett, can't very well give
information either without compromising yourself as well as me.  Your
inspector would want to know how you managed to get into the house, and
what right you had to enter it."

I paused, considering, while he removed his helmet and scratched his
head.

"I'll tell you what I think we had better do," I said at last.

"Well, sir, what?" he inquired eagerly.

"Nothing.  Nothing at all.  Go back to your beat.  I'll bolt and chain
the front door when you're gone.  Then I'll put out the light in this
room, and make my way out of the house by the way I entered it."

"But the two men," the policeman said quickly.  "Where can they have got
to?  They can't have left the premises."

"You may depend upon it they have," I answered.  "I feel pretty sure
there must be some secret entrance to this house, that they alone know.
The back door, too, is bolted and chained on the inside, and they can
hardly have entered the way I did--ugh!" and I shuddered again at the
thought of those horrible, hairy-legged spiders scampering over my bare
flesh.

"_Meet me_ 2."

Again that odd little advertisement arose in my thoughts.  I would watch
the front page of the _Morning Post_ for a day or two.  Perhaps another
advertisement might appear that would help me.

Early next day I went and told Vera everything.  I found her seated in
the lounge on the right of the hall.

She listened eagerly, and I saw at once that the news excited her a good
deal, yet to my surprise she made no comment, but changed the subject of
conversation by remarking--

"Violet brought Frank Faulkner here yesterday evening.  He is engaged to
be married to her.  He has broken off his engagement to Gladys Deroxe,
and I am very glad he has," she declared.

"Really," I exclaimed.  "Well, frankly I'm not surprised, for I believe
he has been in love with Violet from the moment he first met her.  But
how did Miss Deroxe take it?  Was there a dreadful scene?"

"Scene?  There was no scene at all, it appears.  What happened was
simply this.  Gladys discovered that Frank had brought Violet over from
the Riviera, that she was staying here at his expense, and that he
seemed to be extremely attentive to her.  Now, a sensible girl would
have asked her future husband, in a case of that sort, to come to see
her and explain everything.  That, certainly, is what I should have
done."

"And what did Miss Deroxe do?"

"Do?  Good Heavens, she sat down then and there and wrote him a letter--
oh! such a letter!  He showed it to me.  I have never in my life read
anything so insulting.  She ended by telling him in writing that she had
never really cared for him, and that she hoped she would never see him
again.  In one place she wrote: `I might have guessed the kind of man
you are by the kind of company you keep.  I know all about your friend,
Richard Ashton.  He associates with dreadful people.  I am only glad I
have found you out before it was too late!'  Those were her words.  So
you see the kind of reputation you have acquired, my dear Dick."

I laughed--laughed uproariously.  I, "the associate of dreadful people,"
I, a member of that hot-bed of conventions and of respectability,
Brooks's Club.  The whole thing was delicious.

"When will Frank and Violet be here again?"

I asked presently, after we had ascended together to the private
sitting-room.

"I've invited Frank to lunch.  I told them you were coming.  Frank has
something important to tell you, he said."

"Did he tell you what?"

"No.  At least it had reference, he said, to the Chateau d'Uzerche, or
to something that has been found there.  To tell the truth, I was
thinking of something else when he told me."

"Dearest," I said, some minutes later, my arm about her waist, "you
remember my telling you I had taken a few of the coins I found in your
father's house.  Well, yesterday I had them tested.  They are not
counterfeits.  They are genuine."

She looked at me curiously.  Then, after a pause, she said--

"What made you think they might be counterfeit?"

"What made me think so?  Seeing that I discovered with them a number of
implements, etc, used apparently in the manufacture of base coin, my
inference naturally was that the coins must have been false."

Still she looked at me.  Gradually her expression hardened.

"Dick," she said at last, "you are deceiving me.  You have deceived me
all along.  You told me you knew my father's secret.  Now you don't know
it--do you?"

"Indeed you are mistaken, quite mistaken, dearest," I exclaimed quickly.
"I know it well enough, but I don't, I admit, know that part of it
which bears upon these coins.  I never pretended to know that part."

It was a wild shot, but I felt I must say something in my defence.

I hated deceiving Vera in this way, as, indeed, I should have hated to
deceive her in any way, but, playing a part still, I was driven to
subterfuge.  After all, I had never said I knew her father's secret.
She had jumped to the conclusion that I knew it, that day I had found
her locked in the upper room in the house in Belgrave Street, and I had
not disillusioned her.  That was all.

The door of the sitting-room opened at that moment, we sprang apart as
Faulkner and Violet entered.  The pretty girl, in a blue serge coat and
skirt, looked radiantly happy, and the happiness she felt seemed to
increase her great beauty.  I confess I had not before fully realised
what a lovely girl she was.

"Ah, Dick, my dear fellow," Faulkner exclaimed, grasping me by the hand,
"I want you to congratulate me, old chap."

"Oh, I do, of course," I said at once.  "I congratulate you doubly--on
becoming engaged, and on breaking off your engagement."

He made a quick little gesture of impatience.

"Oh, I don't mean congratulations of that kind," he said quickly.  "I
shouldn't ask you to waste your time in congratulating me upon anything
so commonplace as an engagement of marriage.  I want you to congratulate
me upon something you don't yet know."

"Well, what is it?"  I said impatiently.  "Have you come into a
fortune?"

"Right the very first time!" he exclaimed.  "Yes, I have.  I've
inherited, quite unexpectedly, a very large fortune.  But the odd thing
is this.  My benefactor is, or rather was, unknown to me.  Until
yesterday I had never even heard his name."

"How wonderful!  But how splendid!"  I cried out.  "Do tell me more
about it.  Tell me everything."

"I will.  And now prepare to receive a shock.  The will leaving me this
fortune was found in the safe discovered among the debris of Chateau
d'Uzerche, after the fire?"

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

A FURTHER TANGLE.

Certainly, this was a most remarkable development.  I listened without
comment.

Yet when Faulkner had given me, at the luncheon table, all the details
by way of "explanation," as he put it, the tangle seemed even greater
than before he had begun.

The will, dated three years previously, had been drawn up by a
well-known firm of London lawyers.  It was quite in order, and the
testator's name was Whichelo, Samuel Whichelo, formerly of Mexico City,
merchant, but then resident at Wimbledon Common.  The testator, who had
been unmarried, left a few legacies to friends and servants, but
practically the whole of his fortune he bequeathed entirely to Frank
Faulkner, "in return for the considerable service he once rendered me."

Faulkner had handed me a copy of the will--it was quite a short will.
When I came to this sentence I naturally looked up.

"Ah!"  I said, "then there is a method in the testator's madness.  But I
thought you told me you had never even heard his name."

"Until yesterday I never had heard it."

"Then what was this `considerable service' he says you rendered him?"

"Well, I'll tell you," he said.  "Years ago, when I was knocking about
the world--I was then about twenty--I chanced to find myself, one night,
in the China Town of San Francisco.  I had a friend with me, about my
own age.  Foolishly, we were exploring at night, alone--that is, without
an interpreter or guide of any sort, which is about as risky a thing as
any ordinary unarmed European can do in San Francisco, where you may
still, I believe, find the scum of all the nations.  Suddenly we heard a
cry.  A man was calling, `_Au secours!  Au secours_!'  Without stopping
to think, I rushed in the direction whence the cry came.  It was
repeated.  It was in a house which I recognised, at a glance, as an
establishment of doubtful repute.  I must tell you that when I was
twenty I was considered a first-rate boxer, and it may have been the
confidence I felt in my ability to defend myself that made me rush,
without hesitation, into that Chinese den.  Cards and chits were
scattered about the tables and on the floor, and nine or ten Chinamen
were in the room, struggling furiously with a tall, dark man of powerful
build, who was being rapidly overcome owing to the number of his
assailants.  Chinese oaths were flying about freely, and I saw a
knife-blade flash suddenly into the air."

He paused for a second, then continued--

"My blood was up.  I felt as I feel sometimes now, that I didn't care
for anything or any one or what might happen to me.  I rushed at the
nearest Chinaman like a maniac--I believe he thought I was one.  My
first blow knocked him silly.  Then, right and left I hit out.  I was in
perfect condition at that time.  Down went the Chinamen one after
another, as my blows caught them on the chin--I used to be famous for
that chin-blow, I `specialised' in it, so to speak.  I detest boasting.
I tell this only to you, because I think it may amuse you and explain my
windfall.  In less than two minutes I had stretched five of the Chinamen
senseless with that chin-blow, and the remaining three or four, seized
with panic, fled."

"What then?"  I asked.

"At once I led the man who had called for help out into the street.  I
saw he was pretty badly hurt, so with the help of my friend, who had now
joined me again, I got him out of China Town, expecting to be set upon
at any moment by friends of those Chinamen, thirsting for revenge.
Though he had called `_Au secours_!' he was not French, it seemed.  He
was British Portuguese, though he lived in Mexico, he told me later.  We
got him to the hospital.  `I must have your name--I must have your
name,' he exclaimed quite excitedly, as I was leaving, I remember.  `You
have rendered me a service I shall never forget--never.  You must come
and see me to-morrow.'  I told him I could not do that, as I was leaving
early next morning for Raymund, on my way to the Yosemite Valley.  But I
said I hoped we might meet again some day, and, as he insisted upon my
doing so, I gave him a card with my address--my London club address.  It
was at the club that I found, yesterday morning, the communication from
his lawyers."

"And by Gad!"  I exclaimed enthusiastically, "you deserve this `bit of
luck,' as you call it, Frank.  I think you acted splendidly!"

"Oh, for Heaven's sake don't become emotional, old chap," he said
hurriedly.  "If you knew how I hate gush, you wouldn't."

"It isn't gush," I answered.  "What wouldn't I have given to see you
buckling up those Chinamen one after another.  Splendid!"

I turned to Violet.

"I congratulate you," I said, taking her hand, "on marrying a real man.
I think the two of you are the pluckiest pair I have ever met.  It will
be long before I forget that incident on the roof of Chateau d'Uzerche.
But for you, neither Frank nor I would be alive to-day."

"Nor the Baronne, nor Dago Paulton," she added mischievously.  "Oh, yes,
I am a heroine!  A heroine to save such very precious lives!"

"Are you not grateful to the Baronne?"  I asked quickly.  "After all,
she did adopt you, and bring you up."

"Yes," the girl answered, with a swift, reproachful glance, "she adopted
me and brought me up, but only that I might help to further her own
ends.  She didn't adopt me out of affection, I can assure you."

I saw that I had again trodden upon thin ice, so I quickly changed the
topic.

"But the great mystery," I said, addressing Faulkner, "is not yet
solved.  How on earth did Whichelo's will, leaving you this fortune,
come to be in the safe in Chateau d'Uzerche, in the Basses Alpes?  When
did Whichelo die?"

"Four months ago.  The lawyers distinctly remember him making a will,
but he had never returned it to them, and, since his death, they had
been trying to find it.  They even advertised for it."

"To whom would his fortune have gone, had he died intestate?"  I
inquired suddenly.

"To his younger brother, Henry.  From what the lawyers tell me, this
brother of his must be a peculiar man.  His life appears to be a
mystery.  He is, however, known to be intimate with your friend, Sir
Charles Thorold.  Sir Charles and he were in Mexico together ten years
ago, the lawyers tell me, and were there again about three years ago."

"Who are the lawyers who wrote to you?" something prompted me to ask.

"You mean about the will?  Oh, a firm in Lincoln's Inn, Spink and
Peters."

Instantly I thought of old Taylor.

"Ah," I said, "I have heard of them.  Thorold has had some business
dealings with them.  By the way--who opened the safe?"

"The French police.  It seems, that since the fire, neither Dago Paulton
nor the Baronne de Coudron have shown any signs of life.  Even the
insurance people have not been written to by them."

"Paulton and the Baronne are probably afraid of being arrested," I said
at once.

We talked a little longer, but Faulkner seemed unable to throw any
further light on the mystery of the will being found in the safe, and
the lawyers were equally in the dark.  Probably they would never have
heard of the will had the French police not communicated with them.

"Oh, I have another bit of news for you," Faulkner said suddenly.  "Sir
Charles Thorold is to return to Houghton."

"My father going back to Houghton!"  Vera exclaimed, amazed.  "Why, who
told you that?  I've heard nothing of it."

"Read it in the newspaper this morning," Faulkner answered.  "I have the
paper here--in my pocket."

He tugged out of his coat-pocket a copy of a morning paper, unfolded it,
and presently found the announcement.

"There it is," he said, passing the paper to her, with his finger on the
paragraph.

The announcement ran as follows--

"We are able to state that Sir Charles and Lady Thorold have decided to
return to their country residence, Houghton Park, in Rutland, which has
been vacant since the mysterious affair when the body of Sir Charles'
butler was discovered in the lake at Houghton, and the chauffeur from
Oakham was shot dead by an unknown assassin.  The news is creating
considerable interest throughout the county."

"What an astonishing thing!"  I exclaimed.  "Really, one may cease being
surprised at anything.  I wonder how `the county' will receive them.  I
prophecy that the majority of Rutland society will cut them dead, after
what has happened."

"Why should they?"  Faulkner asked, in surprise.  "There's no reason why
they should," I answered "I only say they will.  You don't know Rutland
county people--or you wouldn't ask."

Vera's lunch-party had proved a great success.  The four of us had been
in the best of spirits.  And yet, once, at least, during the meal,
Paulton's face, dark, threatening, floated into my imagination, and
again I heard that ominous threat he had uttered in Paris that night,
the last words I had heard him speak--

"I shall be even with you soon, in a way you don't expect."

Where was he at this moment?  What plot was he hatching?  Had he left
Paris?  Was he in London?  Would he and the Baronne try to get Violet
away from Faulkner by force?

Though now we were all so light-hearted, I could not help thinking of
Paulton and the Baronne, and wondering what their next clever move would
be.  It was not to be supposed they would remain dormant.  They were
probably lying "doggo," in order to spring with greater force.

During the same week I looked in again at Rodney Street on my policeman,
who expressed himself delighted to see me.  Some days had now passed
since I had forced my way into the house in Belgrave Street during the
night.  I was wondering what had happened there since; whether lights
had been seen again; whether anybody else had been into the place; or if
the body and the gold had been removed.

When he had pushed forward his most comfortable chair, and I had seated
myself in it, the constable said: "I have some news for you to-day,
sir."

"News?"  I exclaimed.  "What kind of news?"

"Well, simply this, sir.  All them sacks of money has been removed, but
the mummy has been left just where it was.  The police have possession
of it now."

"When did they take possession of it?"  I asked quickly, starting up.

"Yesterday.  Mr. Spink, in whose hands the house is during Sir Charles
Thorold's absence, went there.  I see him when he comes out, and I never
in my life see a man look so white and scared.  He found the body lying
there, of course, also all the furniture pushed about, and the great
hole cut in the ceiling.  When he came out he was as terrible pale, and
shivering with excitement.  It was about three in the afternoon.  He
called me at once, and I went in with the man on point-duty.  Everything
was much as when you and me saw it, sir, only there wasn't no money."

"Then of course Whichelo and Sir Charles have taken it away.  I wonder
at their leaving the body, though.  Such a give-away, isn't it?  Did the
police find out how the men entered and left the house?"

"I found that out, sir--quite by charnce.  There's a way into a cellar
we didn't know of, and that cellar leads into the cellar of the house
adjoining, which is empty.  That's the way they went in and out.  It was
easy to see as how somebody had been to and fro that way."

"Do the police know anything of the money?"  I asked.  "Didn't they see
any sign of it at all?"

"No, sir.  Nor Mr. Spink didn't neither."

"Do they suspect who has been into the house?"

"No, sir, they ain't got no idea.  And about the body and how it got
there, they are quite at sea."  Sauntering along Victoria Street,
Westminster, half-an-hour later, the thought occurred to me to look in
on my doctor, David Agnew, who was also my old personal friend.

For some days I had not been well.  A feeling of lassitude had come over
me, also loss of appetite.  Agnew was generally able to prescribe for my
simple ailments.

He was a bright, genial fellow, and merely to meet him seemed to do one
good.  None would have taken him for the celebrated bacteriologist he
was, for I--and I think most people--usually picture a bacteriologist as
a cadaverous, ascetic, preternaturally solemn individual, with a bald
head, wrinkled brow, and large, gold-rimmed spectacles.  It was Thorold
who had introduced me to Agnew many years before, and many and many a
time had the three of us dined together.

At first I was told that the doctor was "not at home," but upon sending
in my card, I was immediately admitted.

The shock I received upon entering Agnew's consulting-room, I am not
likely to forget.  Instead of the hearty greeting I had expected, I was
faced by a man whose staring eyes spoke terror.  It was Agnew, but I saw
at once that something terrible must have happened.

He was pacing the room with his handkerchief to his mouth when I
entered.  He turned at once, and came over to me.

"Ashton," he said abruptly, taking my hand in both his own, and gripping
it so that I almost cried out, "I have an awful thing to tell you--you
are the one man in whom I can confide in this crisis, and I am truly
glad you've come.  I feel I must tell some one.  I shall go mad if I
don't."

His expression appalled me.

"What is it?  What?"  I exclaimed.  "For Heaven's sake don't look at me
like this!"

"I must tell you, I must," he gasped.  "Our mutual, our dear friend,
Charles Thorold, was in here an hour ago.  I had been called out for
five minutes, but he said he would wait.  As I had a patient in here,
Gregory, my man, showed Thorold into the room upstairs--my laboratory.
In an open box on the table were several little glass tubes containing
bacilli--different sorts of bacilli that I've been cultivating.  It
seems that Charles, with fatal curiosity, picked up one of these tubes
to examine it.  The glass of the tube is very thin.  One of them broke
in his hand--ah!  What catastrophe could be more complete?  It's
terrible... horrible!"  He stopped abruptly, unable to go on.

"Well?  Why so terrible!  Tell me!"  I exclaimed.

He pulled himself together with an effort.

"That tube contained a cultivation of pneumonic plague," he exclaimed
huskily, "one of the deadliest microbes known.  The blood-serum in which
I had grown the germs fell upon his hands.  Not suspecting the danger,
he actually wiped it off with his handkerchief!  I did not return until
a quarter of an hour afterwards.  The evil was then beyond remedy.  He
became infected!"

"Phew!  What will happen now?"

"Happen?  In a few days at most he will be dead!  There are no
recoveries from pneumonic plague--that most terrible contagious disease
so well-known in Eastern Siberia and Japan.  There is no hope for him.
None.  You hear--none!"

"By Gad!"  I gasped, horrified.  "You can't mean it.  Where is Thorold
now?"

"In isolation at St. George's hospital.  I sent him there at once.  Oh!
Heaven, it is too terrible to think of--and my fault, all my fault for
leaving the tube there!"

I tried to calm him, but he was quite beside himself.

I halted, astounded at the gravity of the situation.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.

TOWARDS THE TRUTH.

Though I hated to cause pain to Vera, I realised that I must immediately
tell her.  The thought of breaking the terrible news to her upset me,
yet the thing had to be faced.

Never shall I forget those awful moments.  I had tried to break the news
gently, but how can such tragic news be broken "gently"?  That
conventional word is surely a mockery when used in such a connexion.

She was devoted to her parents.  What seemed to trouble her now more
than anything else, was the fact that we did not know her mother's
whereabouts, and so could not inform her of the frightful _contretemps_.

"Try not to worry, dearest," I said, placing my hand tenderly upon her
shoulder, and kissing her upon the lips in an endeavour to soothe her.
"We are bound very soon to find out where she is."

"Yes," she retorted bitterly, "and by that time--by that time poor
father may be dead!"

She was silent for a few moments, then she said--

"The only thought that comforts me, dear, a little, is that, if he
should die, the living lie will die with him.  He is so good, so kind,
so self-sacrificing, that I think he would be quite ready to die if he
thought his death would relieve us of the fearful tension of these last
horrible years.  My dear, dear father!  Ah, how stormy has his life
been!  Does he know what you have just told me--I mean, that he cannot
live?"

"No," I replied.

She began to weep bitterly again, and I did my best to calm her, and
kissed her again.  I told her he did not know the danger, which was the
truth.  Agnew had only told him the germs would probably make him very
ill for awhile.

The house-physician at the hospital had not broken the actual truth to
him--the truth that, infected with such deadly germs he was doomed to
death.  Perhaps I ought not to have told Vera the whole ghastly truth.
Yet, upon carefully considering the matter, I had decided that frankness
would be better.

"I will telephone to St. George's," I said, a little later, "and ask for
the latest news.  You'd better not go to see him until the
house-physician gives you leave.  He asked me to tell you that."

The reply was satisfactory.  Sir Charles was not in pain, the
hall-porter said.  He was slightly feverish.  That was all.  What grim
consolation!

Two eager days passed.  Still Lady Thorold showed no sign of life.  I
had telephoned to Messrs. Spink and Peters.  Also I had telegraphed to
Houghton Park, as it was said Lady Thorold intended to return there.
But to no purpose.  One thing that surprised me was that Whichelo had
not been to the hospital.  Where was he during these days?  Had he, too,
not heard of the calamity?

"You have not heard the exciting news," I said to Faulkner, when I met
him outside the Devonshire on the way to his club.

"What exciting news?" he inquired, in his cool phlegmatic way.  "You get
excited so easily, Dick, if you will forgive my saying so."

He listened with interest to the news, and when I had done talking, he
said quite calmly--

"Curious to relate, I saw the Baroness, Paulton and Henderson not ten
minutes ago."

"Saw them!"  I gasped.  "Where?"

"In Piccadilly, not thirty yards from here.  They turned up Dover
Street, and went down in the tube lift."

"Are you positive?"

"Quite.  I couldn't well forget them.  They were walking together,
laughing and chatting as though nothing were amiss.  I admire that kind
of nerve."

Meanwhile, the newspapers were full of the remarkable discovery of the
mummified man in Sir Charles Thorold's house in Belgrave Street.  The
hole cut in the ceiling gave rise to all sorts of wild surmises.

It did not, however, occur to any of the reporters that the body might
have been hidden between the ceiling and the floor.

What the newspapers worried about most was the mummy's age.  Experts put
their heads together, and put on their spectacles.  Some were of the
opinion that it must be centuries old.  Sir Charles, the one man who
might have thrown some light upon it could not, of course, be
questioned.  Only one medical expert, an old professor, differed from
his _confreres_.  A wizened little man, himself not unlike a mummy, he
maintained, in the face of scientific ridicule, that the mummy found in
Belgrave Street had been dead "less than twenty years."  Further, he
pronounced that the method of embalming was a process uncommon in this
country or in Egypt, but still in vogue in China and in Mexico.  He
believed the body to be, he said, that of a man of middle-age, a
Spaniard, or possibly a Mexican.

The news of Sir Charles' condition was more satisfactory that evening,
inasmuch as the sister at the hospital told me, when I called, that he
was still no worse.  Perhaps, after all, Dr. Agnew had been mistaken.
Oh, how I hoped he had been, for my own sake, almost as much as for my
darling's.

"I think," I said to Vera, whose spirits rose a little when she heard my
report, "that to-morrow morning I will run down to Oakham, to have
another look at Houghton."

"What on earth for?" she exclaimed, in a tone of surprise.  "I intended
asking father to-day, when I saw him at the hospital, if the report that
he intended returning to Houghton were true.  He seemed so hot and
restless however, that I decided not to ask him until to-morrow.  I do
believe he is going to get better, don't you?  But now, tell me what
good do you think you will do by going out to Houghton?"

"Good?"  I answered.  "I don't expect or intend to do good.  No, it is
merely that something--I can't tell you what--prompts me to go again to
see the place."

"How silly!"  Vera declared, as I thought rather rudely.  Modern girls
are so dreadfully outspoken.  I do sometimes wish we were back in the
days when a matron would raise her hands in dismay and exclaim: "Oh,
fie!" or "Oh, la!" when a young girl did aught that seemed to her
"unladylike."

Yet, in spite of Vera's remonstrance, I caught a train to Oakham early
next morning.  Sir Charles had had a restless night, the hospital porter
told me on the telephone, before I started, but his condition was
surprisingly satisfactory.

Then I rang up Dr. Agnew.

"Don't you think he may, after all, recover?"  I inquired eagerly.

In reply the doctor said he "only hoped and trusted that he might."
More than that, he would not tell me.  I gathered, therefore, that he
still had serious fears.

I arrived at the _Stag's Head_, in Oakham, in time for lunch.  Directly
after lunch I started out for Houghton in a hired car.

What a lot had happened, I reflected, as in the same car in which the
chauffeur had been shot, we purred down the main street, since I had
last set out along that road.  What a number of stirring incidents had
occurred--incidents crowded into the space of a few weeks.  But at last
they seemed to be coming to an end.  That thought relieved me a good
deal.  Ah, if only--if only Thorold would recover!

The drive to Houghton from Oakham was a pretty one, past woods and rich
grazing pastures until suddenly, turning into the great lodge-gates, we
went for nearly a quarter of a mile up the old beech avenue to where
stood the old Elizabethan house, a large, rambling pile of stone, so
full of historic associations.

On pulling up at the ancient portico, I found to my surprise, the front
door ajar.  I pushed it open and entered.  There was nobody in the big
stone hall--how well I remembered the last day when we had all had tea
there after hunting, and that fateful message from the butler that "Mr.
Smithson" had called to see Sir Charles.  I made my way into the
drawing-rooms, then into the morning-room, and afterwards into the
dining-room.  The doors were all unlocked, but the rooms were empty.  It
was while making my way towards the kitchen quarters that I heard
footsteps somewhere in the house.

They were coming down the back stairs.

I waited at the foot of the stairs, just out of sight.  They were firm,
heavy footfalls.  A moment later, a tall man stood facing me.

It was the dark giant I had first met at dinner at the _Stag's Head_,
when we had shared a table on the night of the Hunt Ball--the man whom I
now knew to be Henry Whichelo.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.

MR. SMITHSON AGAIN.

He gave a hardly perceptible start or seeing me.  Then he extended his
big hand and grasped mine in the most friendly way.

"Well, this is a real surprise--a very pleasant surprise, Mr. Ashton,"
he said, looking me full in the eyes.  "I have often thought of you
since the evening we met and had that pleasant meal together, and I told
you my name was Smithson, because I knew the name would puzzle you.  And
what are you doing here?  Making an ocular survey--as I am?"

The ready lie rose to my lips.  It is very well for moralists to tell us
we should always speak the truth.  There are occasions when an aptitude
for wandering into paths of falsehood may prove extremely useful.  It
did so now.

"No," I answered, "I'm not.  I am on my way to my little place about
twenty miles from here--it is let now, but I think of returning to live
there--and it occurred to me to look in at Houghton again.  I saw it
mentioned, in some paper the other day, that the Thorolds are
returning."

"Yes, that is so," Whichelo answered.  "Sir Charles has instructed me to
see to everything, and make all arrangements.  I have only to-day heard
that he is very ill at the hospital.  Have you seen him?"

I told him the latest bulletin.  Then I asked him if he had any idea of
Lady Thorold's whereabouts.

"All I know," he answered, "is that she was abroad when last I heard of
her."

"Abroad?  Was that lately?"

"About a week ago.  She was then somewhere in the Basses Alpes.  Has she
not been to see Sir Charles?"

"No.  We don't know where she is."

"Who do you mean by `we'?"

"Vera Thorold and myself."

"That's strange," he said thoughtfully.  "Oh, of course Lady Thorold
can't have heard of his illness.  She would have come at once, or at any
rate have telegraphed, if she had."

We talked a little longer--we had strolled into the morning-room, and
sat down there--when Whichelo said suddenly--

"That discovery of a mummy in Sir Charles' town house is curious, eh?
How would you account for that, Ashton?  And for the hole in the
ceiling?"

"I don't account for it at all," I replied quickly, trying to look
unconcerned beneath his narrow, scrutinising gaze.  "What is your theory
with regard to it?"

"Oh, I never theorise in cases of that kind," he replied.  "What is the
use of theorising?  One is almost certain to be wrong."

"You must, however," I said with some emphasis, "have some view or other
as to the mummy's age.  Do you think it is an ancient mummy, or a modern
one?"

He smiled, showing his wonderfully white teeth, which contrasted
strangely with his crisp, black beard.

"I am not a `mummy expert,' so I won't venture an opinion," he replied.
"I should say the best thing they can do is to bury it, or give it to
some museum.  I'm sure Thorold won't want it."

"Don't you think," I said, speaking rather slowly, "Thorold may know how
it came to be concealed there?"

"What a ridiculous idea, if you will pardon my saying so," Whichelo
answered quite sharply.  "What on earth can he know about it?"

"After all," I said, in the same even tone, "it was found in his house.
Now, I have a theory.  Shall I tell you what it is?"

He could not well say "no," though I noticed he was not anxious to
listen to the expression of my views or theories on the subject.

"Well," I continued, looking at him steadily, "I have a theory regarding
that strange hole in the ceiling.  Can you guess what it is?"

"I'm sure I can't," he said, rather uneasily.  "What is it?"

"My belief is that the mummy has been for a long time hidden in that
ceiling--between the ceiling and the floor above.  They lifted the
boards of the upper room to get the mummy out, when the ceiling, rotted
by decay, fell down.  That's my belief.  You will, I think, find in the
end that I'm right, though the idea does not seem, as yet, to have
occurred to anybody else."

Whichelo laughed.  It was obviously a forced laugh.

"By Jove! you have a vivid imagination, Ashton," he said, "only I fear
you won't find many, if any, to agree with your theory.  Why should the
mummy have been hidden in the ceiling?  Who would have hidden it?
People usually have some reason for doing things," he ended, with a
touch of malice.

"They have," I answered significantly.  Then, unable to resist the
impulse, I added with affected carelessness: "I suppose, if a man hid a
bag of gold, he would have some reason for hiding it, especially if he
hid it in a ceiling.  What do you think?"

The man's countenance blanched to the lips.  His mouth twitched.  He
seemed unable to utter a word.

"What do you know?" he suddenly exclaimed hoarsely, clutching the arm of
his chair with trembling fingers.  Then he added, in a threatening tone:
"Tell me!"

I remembered that I was alone with him in there, miles from everywhere.
When standing, he towered high above me, a veritable giant, and I knew
that, if he chose to attack me, he must overcome me with the greatest
ease.  At all costs I must pacify him.

"Perhaps now," I said calmly, "you think there is more in my theory than
at first appeared.  Listen to me, Mr. Whichelo," I went on, forcing my
courage, "from what I have said, and hinted, you probably guess that I
know--well--something.  It remains for you to decide whether we are to
be friends--or not.  Personally, I am willing to be friendly with you.
Thorold and I are friends, and have been for years.  In addition, I am
to marry Vera, so, naturally, I should prefer to remain friendly with
her friends.  Why not take me into your confidence, and tell me all you
know?  I'm not a man to talk, I assure you."

I knew I had done right to take him in that way, and to be quite frank
with him.  Had I shown the white feather at all, even by implication, he
would have pounced down upon me.  That I felt instinctively.

Our eyes met sharply.  During those brief moments something passed
between us that revealed our true characters to each other.  I had never
really mistrusted Whichelo, though on that night we had dined together
at the _Stag's Head_ in Oakham, his manner and his mode of speech had
puzzled me a good deal.  Now I instinctively knew him to be a man upon
whom I could rely.

"Tell me all you know," he said, in a low tone, glancing about him to
make sure we were alone.

At once I came to the point.

"First, I know," I said slowly, "that the body was hidden in the
ceiling.  Secondly, I believe the old professor's theory which you have
probably read in the newspapers, that the mummy has not really been dead
very many years.  Thirdly, I know that you and Thorold entered that
house by way of the cellar of the house adjoining--and I don't mind
telling you that it was I who frightened you and Thorold out of your
lives by giving vent to that screech in the room above."

"You!" he gasped, surprised.

"Yes, but don't interrupt me," I said.  "You and he brought the body to
light and intended to smuggle it out of the house in a packing-case."

I stopped.  Then, with my eyes still set on his, I said--

"I saw those implements for coining, which afterwards disappeared.  More
than that--_I saw the bags of gold_!"  Then I paused.  "What has become
of them?"  I added meaningly.

Whichelo held his breath.

"By Heaven!" he exclaimed suddenly.  "Then you know everything!  How did
you find this out?"

I made a random shot.

"If you will boldly advertise," I said, "what else can you expect?
`_Meet me two_.'"

My shot hit its mark.  At once I saw that the advertisement really had
reference to the affair.

"Surely," I said, "there was no need to advertise?  You could have
communicated by post, telegram or telephone!"

"Ah! you are mistaken," he answered quickly.  "We had reasons for
advertising--but I cannot explain them now.  Tell me, knowing all that
you know--how you discovered it I don't attempt to guess--but what are
you going to do?"

"Do?--Nothing.  It's no concern of mine."

"But--but--"

"There is no `but,'" I interrupted, "except that, having told you what I
know, Mr. Whichelo, I expect your full confidence in return."

"And you shall have it, Ashton," he exclaimed at once.  "Oh, I can
assure you, you shall have it."

"Then perhaps you'll tell me first," I said abruptly, "how that will of
your brother's came to be found in the safe among the ruins of Chateau
d'Uzerche after the fire.  Had it not been found, you would, I
understand, have been sole heir to the fortune your brother left to
Frank Faulkner."

"Yes, you are quite right," he answered, with a quiet laugh.  "I should
have been.  That will was stolen from my brother."

"So I guessed.  But by whom?"

"By Paulton and the Baronne, his companion."

"Stolen by Paulton and the Baronne!"  I echoed.  "But in what way could
they benefit by stealing it, as the money would have come to you had the
will not been found?  Why did they not destroy it?"

"Well--to tell the truth, they have a hold over me," he went on quickly,
"just as they have over Thorold.  Probably they refrained from
destroying it, intending to get Faulkner into their clutches."

"I don't follow you," I said.  "Even if they have a hold over you, as
you say, they could not have benefited by you inheriting this money."

"Ah!  You are mistaken," he answered.  "They would have benefited
considerably.  Had I inherited that fortune, it must all have gone to
them.  I can't say more than that."

"Blackmail?"  I asked.

He nodded.

"And do they blackmail Thorold in the same way?"

Again he nodded in the affirmative.

At last I seemed to be really on the verge of unravelling the mystery
which had puzzled me so long--also on the way to discovering the
closely-guarded secret of the Thorolds.

After a brief pause, I put another question to him.

"Is all that French gold I have seen, genuine?"  I asked.  "I know some
of it is, because I had some tested."

"How many?" he inquired, in a tone of surprise.

"Three.  They were all good."

"Most of them are base coin," he said.  "A small proportion only are
coin from the French mint."

"Then Thorold--and you, also, I take it--have had to do with uttering
base coin."

"You are wrong--in a sense.  It may appear so to you.  It would seem so
to most people, most likely.  In point of fact we are both innocent.  We
have been made a catspaw--how I cannot explain.  You see, I am wholly
frank with you.  That is because I trust you, Ashton--and I don't trust
many men, I can assure you."

This was getting interesting.

Whichelo, finding how much I knew, had unreservedly thrown off all
pretence.  I suppose he thought it his safest plan, as indeed it was.  I
had given him my word I would hold my peace if he dealt with me openly,
and evidently he believed me.

From the morning-room we had strolled towards the back premises, and
this conversation had taken place in the butler's pantry, quite a big
room.  The only door was immediately behind us.  All the time we had
been conversing--and we must now have talked for over an hour--the door
had stood half-open.  Now, happening, for some reason, to turn round, I
noticed that it was shut.

"Hullo!"  I exclaimed, starting up surprised.  "Why, I thought that door
was open!"

At once we dashed over to it.  I turned the handle to the right and
tugged at it; then to the left and again tugged.  It had been locked
from the outside--shut and locked so carefully, that we had not heard a
sound.

I bent down to examine the lock.

The key was still in it--on the outside!

I drew back, and held my breath.  What did it mean?

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

IN THE SHADOW.

Whichelo was at once practical.

He turned, and glanced quickly at the long window.  It was securely
barred, horizontally, as well as vertically.  Then he pushed a table
forward, clambered upon it, and exerting all his strength, endeavoured
to wrench one, then another, of the bars from its socket.

A silly action.  He could not stir one of them.

"Paulton has locked us in," he said, as he stood again beside me.

"Paulton!"  I echoed.

"Yes--or Henderson.  They and the Baroness--for whom I believe the
police are seeking--are in hiding somewhere here.  I thought it likely
they would end by coming, as this is about the last place the police
will be likely to search.  They arrived yesterday, little knowing that I
was in the vicinity.  They're hiding in here.  I happen to know this,
though they don't know that I know it."

"But why can they have locked us in?"

"I can't say.  Probably they're up to some of their old rascality.  They
are full of ingenuity, and defy the police at every turn.  The first
thing we have to do is to get out."

He looked about the long, narrow pantry.  Soon his gaze fell upon a
long-handled American fire-axe, suspended in a corner against the wall,
beside a portable fire-extinguisher.  He smiled, and crossed the room.

"When I lived abroad," he remarked, as he took down the axe and felt its
balance, "I was rather a good tree-feller.  Now, this I call a really
beautiful axe."

Drawing himself to his full height as he spoke, he held the axe out at
arm's length, admiring it.

"Its balance is perfect, and there's not an ounce of useless weight
anywhere, either in the head, or in the stem.  That is where American
axes outclass our British axes entirely.  Your axe of British
manufacture is a clump of block steel stuck on the end of a heavy,
clumsy stem.  `Sound British stuff,' it is, so the ironmonger will tell
you.  `Last a lifetime.  Last for ever.'  And that is just what you
don't want, Mr. Ashton.  In these days we don't need axes, or
agricultural implements, or machinery, or anything else made to `last
for ever.'  We want things made to last just long enough to give
something better, time to be invented, and some improvements to be made,
and no longer.  That practice of the British nation of making things to
`last for ever,' has been the curse of our declining country for the
past fifty years."

"But what do you want the axe for?"  I asked, anxious to stop his sudden
flow of oratory.

"What do I want it for?" he exclaimed.  "Stand back, and I'll show you."

He stepped towards the door, and measured his distance from it with the
axe-stem.  Then, without removing his coat, or even rolling up his
sleeves, he gripped the stem by its extreme end with both hands.  With a
"whizz" the axe described a complete circle over his head, then
descended.  The blade, striking the lock in the very middle, wrecked it
completely.  Another "whizz," another blow, and the lock fell in
fragments on to the floor, with a metallic clatter.  A third blow, and
the door flew open.

I was about to go out into the passage, when Whichelo caught me by the
shoulder and pulled me back.

"Scatter-brained Englishman!" he exclaimed, half in jest.  "Doesn't it
occur to you that Paulton may be, and probably is, waiting with a gun?"

I confess it had not occurred to me.

"Then how can we get out?"  I asked quickly.

"Just wait," he answered, "and I'll show you."

At this moment we heard voices in the house, apparently in the large
entrance-hall--men's gruff voices.  Also there was a tramp of many
footfalls.  The murmur approached.  A door opened and shut.  Some of the
men were coming along the passage in our direction.

They stopped abruptly, as they reached the pantry where we now stood.
At once we saw they were policemen--plain-clothes men, in golf-caps and
overcoats, yet by their cut, unmistakably policemen.  They looked us up
and down suspiciously.  Then one of them spoke.

"Where are Paulton and his accomplices?" was the sharp inquiry.

"Somewhere in this house," Whichelo answered.  "I haven't seen them
yet."

"Not seen 'em!  Then why are you here?"

Whichelo produced a card, and handed it to the speaker.  Then he
unfolded a letter he had withdrawn from his breast-pocket, and handed
him that too.  This letter was from Thorold, dated some days previously.
It contained a request that Whichelo should go to Houghton and begin to
make arrangements for his return there.

Satisfied with our bona fides, the police-officers looked inquiringly at
the smashed lock.

"Well--and whose work is this?" one of the rural constables asked.

"Mine," Whichelo answered.  "Some one, probably the men you want, locked
us in.  The only way to get out was to smash the lock.  And so I smashed
it.  I advise you to be careful in your search.  Most likely they are
armed, and probably they will be desperate at finding themselves
entrapped.  How did you find out they were here, officer?"

"Two men and a woman, all answering the circulated description of
Paulton, Henderson and the woman Coudron, were seen to alight at Oakham
station from the last down express last night.  They were followed.
They hired a conveyance.  Its driver was cross-questioned.  And so we
soon discovered their whereabouts."

Whichelo had, indeed, done well to warn the police-officers to exercise
caution in their search--as it afterwards proved.  For a quarter of an
hour no trace could be found of the "wanted" men and woman, though the
cellars, as well as all the rooms on the ground floor, on the first
floor, and the second floor were searched.

In all, there were seven policemen.  Whichelo and I accompanied them on
their search, and I began to feel excited.

"What about the attics?"  Whichelo suggested at last.

"I don't think they'll be there," the police-inspector answered.  "I
expect they've got off into the woods.  Still, we may as well go up and
see."

The attics, which constituted the servants' sleeping-rooms at Houghton,
were very large and airy.  A long, narrow corridor ran between the rows
of rooms.  Facing the end of this corridor was a door.  This was the
door of the largest room of all.

Some of the doors were locked--some not.  Whichelo had keys belonging to
all the rooms.  The door at the end of the corridor the searchers
approached last.

Whichelo eagerly tried two or three keys, but none of them fitted.  He
was forcing in a fourth key, when suddenly, with a deafening roar, an
explosion took place within that room.

At the same instant something crashed through the upper panel of the
door, leaving a torn ragged hole in the wood, and riddling the wall at
the further end of the passage.  Everybody sprang back with a cry.
Then, to our amazement, we realised that nobody had been hit by the
charge of shot, which had travelled straight along the passage.  It
seemed a miraculous escape.  The charge must have grazed Whichelo's
shoulder-blade as he bent down to fit the key.

Scarce had we recovered from our fright, when the barrel of a gun was
pushed through that hole.  Those inside meant business.  The barrel
pointed swiftly to the right.  There came a blinding flash, another
deafening report.  It turned quickly to the left, and a third shot
echoed through the house.  Wildly we had thrown ourselves flat upon the
floor.  The charges had swept over us, cutting great furrows in the wall
on either side.

"Look out!  It's a repeater!"  I shouted, as I noticed the magazine
beneath the barrel.  "Keep back!  Keep well away, all of you!"

The barrel swept from left to right, and right to left.  It was resting
on the smashed panel, and I guessed that whoever held it, had the butt
pressed to his shoulder, and was endeavouring to discover our
whereabouts before firing again.  The fact that we might all be lying
flat upon the ground, close to the door, apparently had not occurred to
the man handling the gun.

Truly, that was a most exciting moment.  Suddenly Whichelo moved.  He
was whispering into the ear of the constable crouching beside him.
Swiftly the latter produced his truncheon, and Whichelo took it.
Cautiously, noiselessly, he scrambled on all fours, then up to his feet.
Now he stood upright, the truncheon firmly clenched in his right hand.
Then, suddenly, grasping the protruding gun-barrel with his left hand,
he dealt it a terrific blow close to the muzzle with the long, heavy,
wooden truncheon.

And that single blow did it.  The barrel, badly bent, was useless.

Quickly we all sprang to our feet and ran pell-mell down the passage.
Though an ignominious retreat, it was the only move possible.  Nor were
we too soon.  Hardly had we reached safety, round the corner of the
passage, when another shot rang forth, and the wall facing the door was
again riddled with pellets.

"They seem to have a battery," the inspector said, when we were once
more in the hall.  "We shall need to starve them out," he observed
later.  "There's no other alternative that I see.  I've never seen such
a thing as this before in all my years in the Rutland constabulary."

"Starve them!"  I exclaimed.  "And how long will that take?  For aught
we know, they may be well-provisioned."

"It's the only thing to do, sir," he repeated doggedly.  "We can't smoke
them out; and we can't very well burn them out; and I doubt if the law
will let us shoot them, though they shoot at us."

"That may be so," Whichelo cut in quietly.  "But I tell you this now--
I'm going to take the law into my own hands."

The officer looked alarmed.

"You can't," the inspector exclaimed, as if unable to believe his ears.
To your average police-officer the thought of a man's audacity to "take
the law into his own hands," seems incredible.  "You can't, sir," he
repeated.  "You can't, indeed!"

"You think not?"  Whichelo said, coolly, gazing down upon them all from
his great height.  "Come along, Ashton," he called to me.  "I'm going to
teach a lesson to those vermin upstairs."

I followed him out to the back premises, and thence along a passage to
the gun-room, the door of which stood open.  As we entered, Whichelo
uttered an exclamation.

And no wonder, for the room had been ransacked.  The glass front of the
gun-rack had been smashed, several shot-guns had been removed--I
remembered there had always been three or four guns in this
baize-covered rack, now there was only one--and about the floor were
empty cartridge-boxes, their covers lying in splinters, as though the
boxes had been hurriedly ripped open.  The repeating-gun that had been
fired at us was probably the Browning which Sir Charles used for
duck-shooting, for this was among the missing weapons.

"They intend to hold a siege," Whichelo said, after a pause.  "They've
provided themselves with a stack of ammunition.  This is going to be a
big affair, Ashton, a much bigger affair than even we anticipated."

Carefully he took down the only gun left in the rack.

"This is of no use," he said, looking at it contemptuously.  "It's a
twenty-eight bore."

The outlook certainly was very black.  True, there were nine of us.  Had
we been twenty, however, the situation would hardly have been better.
For there, up in that attic, in a position commanding the full length of
the corridor, were two desperate men, armed with guns, and provided with
hundreds of rounds of ammunition, which, as we knew, they would not
hesitate to use.  The question which occurred to us, of course, was: how
were they provisioned?  Given food and drink to last a week, and who
could say what damage they might do?

I went with Whichelo out into the Park.  The woods were looking
glorious.  It was a perfect evening, too, soft and balmy, with that
delightful smell of freshness peculiar to the English countryside and
impossible, adequately, to describe in print.

We were perhaps ninety yards from the house, with our backs to it, as we
strolled towards the copse.  All at once a double shot rang out behind
us on the still, evening air.  At the same instant I felt sharp points
of burning pain all over my back and legs.  Whipping round, I saw a
figure on the roof, outlined against the moonlit sky, just disappearing.

Whichelo too, had been badly peppered.  Fortunately we wore thick
country tweeds, and these had, to some extent, protected us.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

THE UNKNOWN TO-MORROW.

Take it from me.  It is not pleasant to be wounded, even in a good
cause.

To be shot in the back by a man standing upon a roof, with a
scatter-gun, is not merely physically painful; it is, in addition,
humiliating, because it also wounds one's _amour propre_.

At once I decided not to tell Vera what had happened.  She was kind,
sympathetic, and for many other things I loved her, but instinctively I
knew that she would laugh if I told her the truth, and I was in no fit
state then to be laughed at.

Indeed, merely to laugh gave me pain--a great deal of pain.  It seemed
to drive a lot of little sharp spikes into the holes made by the
pellets.

Doctor Agnew--for I had returned to town that night, being extremely
anxious to see Thorold again--to whom I exposed my lacerated back, made
far too light of the matter, I thought--far too light of it.  He said
the pellets were "just under the skin"--I think he murmured something
about "an abrasion of the cuticle," whatever that may mean--and that he
would "pick them all out in half a jiffy."  I hate doctors who talk
slang, and I hinted that I thought an anaesthetic might be advisable.

"Anaesthetic!" he echoed, with a laugh.  "Oh, come, Mr. Ashton," Agnew
added, "you must be joking.  Yes--I see that you are joking."

I had not intended to "joke."

"Joking" had been the thought furthest from my mind when I suggested the
anaesthetic.  But, as he took it like that, and spoke in that tone,
naturally I had to pretend I really had been joking.

Agnew picked out all the pellets, as he had said he would, "in half a
jiffy," and I must admit that the pain of the "operation" was very
slight.  I should, in truth, have been a milksop had I insisted upon
being made unconscious in order to avoid the "pain" of a few sharp
pin-pricks.

Next day I went to see my love, and found her in tears.

Her father was, alas, worse, His temperature had risen.  At the hospital
they feared the worst.  All the previous night he had been delirious.
The sister had told her that he had "said the strangest things," while
in that condition.

I tried to comfort her, but I fear my efforts had but little avail.

"Did they tell you what he said while he was delirious?"  I asked
quickly.

"They told me some of the things he said.  He kept on, they declared,
talking of some crime.  He seemed to see things floating up before him,
and to be trying to keep them from him.  And he talked about gold, too,
they said.  He kept rambling on about gold--gold.  The nurses didn't
like it.  One of them, I saw, had been really frightened by his wild
talk."

This was serious.  That a crime had been committed, in which Sir Charles
Thorold had, in some way, been concerned, I had felt sure ever since
that discovery in the house in Belgrave Street.  It would be too
dreadful if, while delirious, he should inadvertently make statements
that might arouse grave suspicion.

Statements uttered by a man in delirium, could not, of course, be used
as evidence in a Court of Law, but they might excite the curiosity of
the hospital staff--they had, indeed, already done that--and though I am
no believer in the foolish saying that women cannot keep a secret, I do
know that a good many nurses are strangely addicted to gossip.

"We must, at any cost, stop his talking," Vera declared very earnestly.
"What can we do, Dick?  What do you suggest?"

What could I suggest?  How deeply I felt for her.  It would, of course,
be possible to keep him quiet by administering drugs, to deaden the
activity of his brain, but the doctors would never agree to such a
proposal.  Besides, such a suggestion would arouse their curiosity; it
might make them wonder why we so earnestly wished to prevent the patient
talking.

They might jump at all sorts of wrong conclusions, especially as they
knew Sir Charles to be the man whose name had recently figured so
prominently in the newspapers on two occasions.

No, the idea of drugging him, to keep his tongue quiet, must be at once
abandoned.

We had just come to that conclusion, when somebody knocked.  A page-boy
entered with a telegram, which Vera opened.

"No answer," she said, and handed it to me.

The messenger retired.  Scanning the telegram, I saw it ran as follows--

"Just heard terrible news.  Also where you are.  Returning at once.
Engage rooms for me your hotel.--Mother."

The telegram had been handed in at Mentone.

Vera seemed a good deal relieved at the thought of seeing her mother
again.  At this I was not surprised, for, in a sense, she had felt
herself responsible for Lady Thorold's evident ignorance of her
husband's mishap and illness.  She had felt all along, she told me, that
she should have kept in touch with her mother.

"If my father dies, without my mother having heard of his illness, I
shall never forgive myself," she had said to me once.

Lady Thorold arrived at the _Grand Hotel_ next evening.  She had
travelled by the Mediterranean express without stopping, and had hardly
slept at all.  Nevertheless, she insisted upon going at once to the
hospital, to see her husband.

He was a little better, the doctor told her.  He had recovered
consciousness for a short time that evening, and his brain seemed
calmer.  Several times, while conscious, he had asked why Lady Thorold
did not come to him, and where she was.  Her absence evidently disturbed
him a good deal.

On leaving the hospital, I looked in at Faulkner's club.  He was in the
hall, talking to the porter, and just about to come out.

"Ah, my dear Dick," he exclaimed, "you're the very man I want to see.
How is Sir Charles?"

"A very little better," I answered.  "I have just come from the
hospital.  Lady Thorold is with him now."

"Good.  By the way, have you seen the tape news just in?"

"What news?"

He led me across to the machine at the further end of the hall, picked
up the tape, and held it out at arm's length.  The startling words I
read were as follows--

"The men whom the police are trying to arrest at Houghton Park to-day,
shot three policemen dead, and seriously injured a fourth.  A
reinforcement of police has been summoned.  Thousands of people have
assembled in the Park, which surrounds the house, and hundreds are
arriving hourly on foot, on bicycles, in carriages, and in cars."

While we stood there, the machine again ticked.  This was the message
that came up--

"Houghton Park.  Later: A number of bags of gold coin, mostly French
louis, have just been found at Houghton Park.  They were discovered by
the police, concealed between the rafters and the roof.  There are said
to be several thousand pounds worth of these coins."

So the mystery was slowly leaking out.  I felt that everything must soon
be known.  How did those sacks of gold come to be hidden in the roof at
Houghton?  Who had concealed them there?  Could it be the same gold I
had seen in the house in Belgrave Street?  And if so, had Whichelo...

I felt bewildered.  What chiefly occupied my thoughts was the news of
those policemen.  Poor fellows!  How monstrous they should not have been
allowed to fire upon the murderers.

Too furious to speak, I left the club with Faulkner, and together we
walked along Piccadilly, towards Bond Street.  As we sauntered past the
Burlington, a pair of laughing, dark eyes met mine, and at once I
recognised--Judith!

"_Ah, mon cher ami_!" she cried, revealing her white teeth as she
extended her well-gloved hand.  She was gorgeously and expensively
dressed, in the height of Paris fashion, and I noticed that all who
passed us by--men and women alike--stared hard at her.

"Did you come back with Lady Thorold?"  I asked--why, I hardly knew--
when we had talked for some moments.

"_Mais, oui_," she exclaimed.  "We were together in Mentone, when I read
in a newspaper about this dreadful affair.  I had just heard from a
friend here that Mademoiselle Vera was staying at the _Grand Hotel_, so
I told Lady Thorold.  She was _desolee_ at the news about Sir
Charles--_pauvre homme_--and said she must return at once to see him,
and asked me if I would come with her.  So I said, `Oh, yes.'  And here
I am.  Do you remember our evening together at the ball in Monte Carlo?"
she ended, with a rippling, silvery laugh.

"Where are you staying?"  Faulkner asked.

"I?  At the _Piccadilly Hotel_.  You must come to supper with me there.
What night will you come?"

We made some excuse for not arranging definitely what night we would
have supper with her, and I laughed as I thought of the two louis I had
given the girl as a bribe to remove her mask, and of the sum I had
afterwards paid her to take me to Vera.  And now she was staying at the
_Piccadilly Hotel_, and giving supper parties--the girl whom I had once
believed to be Lady Thorold's maid!

How strangely wags the world to-day!

As we all three emerged into Burlington Gardens, boys came rushing past
with the latest edition of an evening paper.

"_Ah, gran' Dieu_!" she cried, as she caught sight of the contents
bills.  For this was what we read on them--

HOUGHTON PARK.

SACKS OF GOLD DISCOVERED.

AMAZING STORY.

She snatched a paper from the nearest boy, but it contained only the
news we had just read on the club tape.

Judith seemed more upset at the news of Sir Charles' condition, I
thought, than about the "Houghton Siege," as the papers called it.  She
said she must go at once to Lady Thorold, and, hailing a passing taxi,
left us.

As I looked at the pictures of Houghton Park, in that paper we had
bought, I could not help wondering what the Rutland people must be
saying.

Only a month or two ago, the sudden flight of the Thorolds from
Houghton, and the events that had followed, had brought that exclusive
county notoriety, which I knew it hated.

Then there had been the mystery of old Taylor's death in the house in
Belgrave Street, and quite recently the mystery of the mummified
remains, both of which events had again brought Rutland indirectly into
the limelight of publicity, the Thorolds and myself being Rutland
people.

Now, to cap everything, came this "Siege of Houghton Park," to which the
newspapers, one and all, accorded the place of honour in their columns.
It was the "story of the day."  This final ignominy would give Rutland's
smug respectability its deathblow.  Never again, would its county
families be able to rear their proud heads and look contemptuously down
upon the families of other counties and mentally ejaculate--"We thank
thee, O Lord, that we are not as these publicans."  Henceforth, proud
and exclusive Rutland would bear the brand of Cain, or what "the county"
deemed just as bad--the brand of Public Notoriety.  Yes, there is
amazing snobbishness, even yet, in our rural districts.  Yet there is
also still some sterling British broad-mindedness--the old English
gentleman, happily, still survives.

Faulkner had asked me to go to a theatre with him.  He knew, he said, he
could not ask Vera, with her father so ill, but Violet de Coudron would
be there.  He would try to get a fourth, as he had a box.  There was no
good in moping, he ended, sensibly enough.

I returned to King Street to dress, intending to telephone first, to the
hospital, to inquire for Sir Charles.  On the table, in my sitting-room,
a telegram awaited me.  Somehow I guessed it must be from Vera in her
distress, and hurriedly tore it open--

"Father sinking fast," it ran, "and beseeching for you to come to him.
Come at once.  Most urgent--Vera."

I rang for my man.  The telegram had been awaiting me about
half-an-hour, he said.

Telling him to telephone to the hospital, to say I was on my way, and
also to Faulkner, to tell him I couldn't go to the theatre, I hurried
down the stairs, dashed out into the street, and hailed the first taxi I
met.

Was the actual truth at last to be revealed?

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.

A STRANGE TRUTH IS TOLD.

I went straight up to the side-ward in the hospital where Thorold lay,
the hall-porter, in his glass-box, having nodded me within.  At the door
of the ward I met the sister, in her blue gown.

"I am so glad you have come, Mr. Ashton!" she exclaimed.  "He wants so
much to see you, and I fear he has not long to live."

The dark-eyed woman, with the medal on her breast, seemed genuinely
distressed.  Thorold, for some reason, had always attracted women.  I
think it was his sympathetic nature that drew women to him.

I waited in the corridor.  Suddenly Vera came out, a handkerchief
saturated with antiseptic before her mouth, to avoid infection.

Her face was pale and drawn, her eyes red from weeping.  On seeing me,
she began to sob bitterly; then she buried her face in her hands.

I did my best to comfort her, though it was a hard task.  At last she
spoke--"Go in to him--go in to him now, dear," she exclaimed
broken-heartedly.  "He wants you alone--quite alone."

The invalid was quite conscious when I entered, a handkerchief similar
to Vera's having been given me by a nurse.  He was propped up with
pillows into almost a sitting posture.  The other bed in the side-ward
was unoccupied, for it was being used for isolation.  After what I had
been told, I was surprised at his appearance, for he struck me as
looking better than when I had last seen him.  A faint smile of welcome
flickered upon his lips as he recognised me.  Then he grew serious.

Without speaking, he indicated a chair beside the bed.  I drew it near,
and seated myself.

"We are quite alone?" he whispered, looking slowly about the room.
"Nobody is listening--eh?  Nobody can hear us?"

"Nobody," I answered quickly.  A lump rose in my throat.  It was
dreadful to see him like that.  Yet, even then, I could hardly realise I
was so soon to lose my valued and dearest friend, who had been such a
striking figure in the hunting-field.

He put out his thin hand--oh, how his arm had shrunk in those few
days!--and let it rest on mine.  It felt damp and cold.  It chilled me.
The moisture of death seemed already to be upon it.

"Listen, Dick, my boy," he said very feebly.  "I have much to tell you,
and--and very little time to tell it in.  But you are going to marry
Vera, so it--so it's only right that you should know.  Ah, yes, I can
trust you," he said, guessing the words I had been about to utter.  "I
know--oh, yes, I know that what I say to _you_ won't make any difference
to our long friendship.  But even if it should," he said, grimly, "it
wouldn't matter--now we are so very soon to part."

I felt the wasted hand grip more firmly upon my wrist.

"I have known you for half your life, my boy," he said, after a pause,
"and I'll tell you this.  There is no man I know, whom I would sooner
Vera married, than yourself.  You have your faults, but--but you will be
good to her, always good to her.  Ah!  I know you will, and that is as
much as any woman should expect.  And Gwen is glad, too, that you are
going to marry Vera.  But now, Dick, there is this thing I must tell
you.  I--I should not rest after death, if I died without your knowing."

Again he paused, and, in silent expectation, I waited for the old
sportsman to speak.

"You have lately come to know," he said at last, "that there is to do
with me, and with my family, a mystery of some kind.  Part of my secret,
kept so well for all these years, I believe you have recently
discovered.  The rest you don't know.  Well--I'll tell it--to--you--
now."

With an effort, he shifted his body into a more comfortable position.
Then, after coughing violently, he went on--

"Dick, prepare yourself for a shock," he said, staring straight at me
with his fevered eyes.  "I have--I have been a forger, and--and worse--a
murderer!"

I started.  What he said seemed impossible.  He must suddenly be raving
again.  I refused to believe either statement, and I frankly told him
so.

"I am not surprised at your refusing to believe me," he said, calmly.
"I don't look like a criminal, perhaps--least of all like a forger, or a
murderer.  Yet I am both.  It all occurred years ago.  Ah! it's a
nightmare--a horrible dream, which has lived with me all my life since."

He paused, then continued.

"It happened in the house I had then just bought--my house in Belgrave
Street.  The governor had left me money, but I was ambitious--
avaricious, if you like.  I wanted more money--much more.  And I wanted
it at once.  I could not brook delay.  I had travelled a good deal, even
then, and I was still a bachelor.  During my wanderings, I had become
acquainted with all sorts and conditions of people.  In Mexico I had met
Henry Whichelo, and on our way home to England on the same ship, we
became very intimate.  Another man on board, with whom I had also grown
intimate, was Dan Paulton--or Dago, as his friends called him.  A man of
energy and dash, and of big ideas, he somehow fascinated and appealed to
me.  Well--he--he discovered my ambition to grow rich quickly and
without trouble.  He was a plausible and most convincing talker--he is
that still, though less than he was--and by degrees he broke it to me
that he was interested in, and in some way associated with, a group of
`continental financiers,' as he called them.  Later, I discovered, when
too late, that really they were bank-note forgers!  He talked to me in
such a way that gradually, against my will, and quite against my better
nature, I became interested in the operations of these men.  And, as he
had thus ensnared me by his insidious talk, so, in the same way, he had
ensnared our companion, Whichelo."

And he paused, because of his difficulty in breathing.

"It was about this time that I married.  Within a year after my
marriage, I found that blackguard Paulton was doing his best to steal
Gwen from me," he went on, in a half-whisper.  "He was talking her right
round, I found, as he seemed able to talk anybody round.  By this time,
I had discovered him to be a far greater scoundrel than I had ever
before suspected.  Then came a revulsion in my feelings.  I had come
suddenly to hate him.  My mind became set upon revenge.  Already I had
become actively interested in Paulton's continental schemes for making
money, the forgery of French bank-notes, and by manufacturing coin.  My
fortune was already more than doubled.  Alas!  It was too late to draw
back.  Some of the base coin had actually been moulded and finished in
my house in Belgrave Street.  The rest was made abroad.  The coins,
perfectly made by an ingenious process, were nearly all French louis and
ten-franc pieces, these being the coins most easy to circulate at the
time.  Paulton's plan for issuing the coin we made, was ingenious and
most successful.  It seemed impossible--of--of--discovery.  And--"

Once again he was compelled to pause, drawing a long and difficult
breath.  Then he continued--

"It was the year before I met you that the tragedy occurred.  Paulton,
Whichelo, Henderson, and also a half-brother of Paulton's named Sutton,
who was nearly always with him, and myself, were gathered in the room on
the second floor, in my house in Belgrave Street, the room that was
found recently with a hole cut in the floor.  It was late at night, and
the place was dimly lit.  We worked in silence.  The work we were
engaged upon I need not trouble to explain to you--I expect you can
guess it.  My mind was in a whirl.  I was thinking all the time of my
wife, wondering how far her intrigue with Paulton had already gone.
Then and there I would have assaulted Paulton, turned him out of the
house, but I had so far compromised myself that I confess, I dare not.
I could not do anything that might incur his enmity--he had the
whip-hand of me completely--I, who had recently bought a knighthood,
just as easily as I could have bought a new hat.

"Suddenly, some one knocked.  Ah!  How we all started!  I was the first
to spring to my feet.  In a few moments all tools and implements we had
been using, had been spirited away.  They had disappeared into
receptacles in the floor and in the walls, made specially for their
concealment.  Then I unlocked the door.  Gwen entered.  She had been
dining out with friends, and had returned much earlier than she had
expected.  Her bedroom was far removed from the room in which we were at
work, but she had noticed a faint light between a chink in the shutters,
and so, on entering the house, she had come up to that room."

And he was seized by another fit of coughing, and pointed to a glass
half-filled with liquid, which I placed to his lips.

"How surprised and startled she looked, at finding us all there,
apparently reading newspapers and smoking!" he went on.  "That was the
first time she began to suspect--something.  The glance she exchanged
with Paulton, brought the fire of jealousy to my brain.  I believe at
that moment I went mad, for I loved her.  I have a furious, a most awful
temper.  You have never, in all these years we have known each other, my
boy, discovered that--and yet I say the truth.  Yes--it--it got the
better of me that night.  Without an instant's forethought, I sprang
across the room, crazed, beside myself with jealousy.  I slammed the
door and locked it.  Then rushing at my wife--God forgive my having done
it--I seized her by the arms, and flung her to the ground, charging her
with infidelity, vilifying her most horribly, hurling blasphemy upon
Paulton who, pale as death, glared at me.  Then--ah, shall I ever forget
that moment!" he cried, in agony of mind.  "Then he sprang at me.  I
dodged him, and he slipped and fell.  Instantly recovering himself, he
made a second rush.  This time his half-brother, Sutton, came at me,
too, with a drawn knife.  In my frenzy I picked up the nearest thing
handy, with which to defend myself.  It was a short iron bar, used for
opening boxes, the only tool we had, in our haste, overlooked when
hiding the implements.  With one bound, Paulton was upon me, his
half-brother just behind.  As I aimed a terrific blow at him with the
iron rod, he ducked.  The blow meant for him struck Sutton just below
the ear.  The man collapsed in a heap upon the floor.  He never spoke
again.  He died without a cry!"

The dying man moaned again in mental agony, and moved feverishly upon
his pillow.

"Don't--don't tell me any more," I urged in distress, seeing how it
upset him to recall what had happened.

"I must.  By Heaven, I must!" he exclaimed hoarsely.  "You must know
everything before I die.  I shall never rest unless you do.  _Never_!"

He breathed with increasing difficulty, then went on--

"And--and seeing what had happened, Paulton, I truly believe, went mad,"
said the prostrate man.  "It took Whichelo, and Henderson and myself,
all our strength to hold him down.  Gwen was on the sofa, in hysterics.
What surprised me was that nobody in the street outside was attracted by
the uproar.  I suppose they couldn't hear it through the double windows.
I won't go into further details of that awful night.  I can't bear to
think of them, even now.  But from that night onward, Paulton had me in
his power.  It was Whichelo who suggested embalming Sutton's body and
hiding it in the house.  He would himself perform the embalming.  He had
embalmed bodies in Mexico, and understood the process."

He remained silent for some seconds.

"And so that was done," he continued.  "Paulton and Henderson had left
the house, the former satisfied at the thought that he could now use me
as his cat's-paw--and by Heaven! he has done so!  The coin we had in the
house, some genuine, but most of it base, we hid away with the body
between the ceiling and the floor.  None knew our secret but my wife,
Gwen--who almost revealed it during an attack of brain fever, which
resulted from the shock she had received--Paulton, Henderson and myself.
Vera was not old enough to know, but when she reached her seventeenth
year, we decided to tell her the whole story, deeming it wiser, for
various reasons, to do so.  And now you understand."

"And during all the years I have known you," I said, "where has Paulton
been?  What became of Whichelo, and of Henderson?  I met Whichelo for
the first time in my life, just after you had left Houghton so
mysteriously.  Yet you say you have known him all these years."

"Whichelo joined his brother in Mexico City, and remained there for many
years," he replied.  "Paulton and Henderson continued their clever work
of money-making, though mostly in Rome, and in Barcelona, where they had
a number of accomplices.  And I was bled--blackmailed by Paulton to the
extent of nearly all my fortune--month after month, year after year.  My
wife, as you know, has her own fortune, and there were reasons why he
could not touch that without incriminating himself, so for years I have
had to live almost entirely on her means.  Some years ago, Paulton and
Henderson were both arrested in Paris on a charge of forgery of Russian
bank-notes.  They were tried, and sentenced to ten years' penal
servitude.  At the end of seven years, they were released.  Paulton
returned to England, and began once more to blackmail me.  Worse, he had
seen Vera, and at once told me he should marry her.  If I refused my
consent he would, he declared--"

The poor fellow who had once bought a knighthood, stopped, gasping for
breath.  I laid my hand upon his arm, as I thought to soothe him, but he
pushed it off quite roughly.

"Some months ago he sent me an ultimatum.  If I still refused to let my
girl marry him, he--would call before the last day of--March--and--"

"Yes?  Yes?"  I exclaimed, unable now to restrain my curiosity.

"He declared he would disclose all he knew, take Vera from me by a plan
that he explained, and that I saw I could not frustrate, and encompass
the death of any persons to whom he thought I might have revealed the
secret concerning him.  Also he would tell the police the truth about
the murder of his half-brother.  He believed that you and I being such
intimate friends, I had told you about him.  Also he believed, for some
reason, that my butler, James, knew something.  He said he would kill
you both.  One of his accomplices was Judith, whom, a year ago, Gwen
unsuspectingly engaged as maid.  She, it seems, had kept Paulton posted
in all that was happening in Houghton.  I was driven to my wits' ends--
entirely desperate--though--you--you never suspected it."

"But the photograph," I exclaimed, as I noticed a curious change
suddenly come over him, "that photograph of Paulton--why was it at
Houghton?"

"We always kept it there, that Vera might never fail to identify
Paulton, should she ever meet him.  When we told Vera, in her
seventeenth year, all that had happened years ago, we showed her that
portrait for the first time.  It was my idea to set it in the
morning-room recently, so that my poor girl might never forget what the
man looked like who had sworn to take her from me."

"Could you not have removed the--that hidden body?"  I exclaimed,
anxious to get from him as many facts as possible, in the short time he
had still to live.  "What proof could he then have had--?"

"Don't--ah! don't!" he interrupted.  "There were reasons--of--of course,
had it been possible, I--a water-pipe had burst in my house--it had
caused the body to stain the ceiling--and--also there were--" and his
thin, bony fingers clutched at the air in frantic gesture.

His sentences were now disjointed, their meaning could not be followed.
Now he was straining terribly his mouth gaped, his dry throat emitted a
strange, rasping sound.  I seized his wasted wrist.  His pulse was
almost still.  Now his face was growing ashen, his eyes were staring
into space--their intelligence was fading.

The nurse entered, and glanced at me significantly.

I sprang to my feet, and ran to the door.

"Vera!  Vera!  Lady Thorold!"  I called.  "Come--ah! come quickly, he is
dying... _dying_!"

They rushed in from the corridor, where they had been awaiting me.  In
an access of despair, Lady Thorold threw herself upon her knees beside
the bed, moaning aloud in a grief terrible to witness.  My love stood
beside her, gazing down upon her father--dazed--motionless.  Grief had
paralysed her senses.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Suddenly, his thin, white lips moved, but no words were audible.
Quickly Vera bent over him.  The shrunken lips moved again.  He was
murmuring.  For an instant, his filmy eyes showed a gleam of
intelligence once again.

"Dick--be good--to her--you--you will be good--_to her_!"

The voice was now, so faint, that I could barely catch his words.  His
dull gaze rested upon my eyes.  I stooped down.  My hand was upon his.
Ah!  How cold he was!

"Always," I said aloud, with an effort, a great lump rising in my
throat.  "I promise that--I promise I will do all possible to make Vera
happy--always--_always_!"

By the expression, that for an instant came into his dull, filmy eyes, I
saw that he had heard and understood.  Slowly the eyelids closed.  He
was turning paler still.  The light died from his face.

A few seconds later his countenance was ashen, and I knew that he had
breathed his last.

Speechless, motionless, I still stood there.

My hand was still upon his, as it lay upon the coverlet, slowly
stiffening.  The only sound audible was the bitter wailing of his
widow--and of Vera.  I made no attempt to comfort them.  Better, I knew,
let the passion of their sorrow read! its flood-tide, and allow the fury
of their misery to exhaust itself.  Words of sympathy, at such a time,
would only be a mockery.

Later, I would do all possible to help them to recover from the awful
blow which had so suddenly fallen upon them.

CHAPTER THIRTY.

CONTAINS THE END.

For a quarter of an hour we remained there in the presence of the dead.

The grey light in the side-ward faded into darkness.  The electric light
had not been switched on.  The sobs and lamentations of Lady Thorold and
her daughter, locked in each other's arms, began slowly to subside.

Gradually my thoughts drifted to the past, and all that had happened in
those years I had known Thorold so intimately, and had loved him almost
as a father.  One thought afforded me most intense happiness.  At last
the time had come when I should be able to prove to Vera the intense
love I bore her.

"Be good to her--you will be good to her--Dick--always," had been her
father's dying request.  Ah, how well I would obey my dear friend's last
request!  Never again should unhappiness of any kind cross his child's
path, if I could prevent it.  I would show her how, in my opinion, a
husband should treat a wife.

My thoughts drifted to Houghton.  What had happened there, I wondered.
What was happening now?

Ah!  What was happening!  Had I known what was happening in those
moments I should not, perhaps, have felt as restful as I did.

Next day the newspapers were full of it.

The "Siege," as they had termed it, had in truth become a real and
desperate siege.  All attempts to dislodge Paulton, Henderson, and the
woman with them, had proved of no avail.  Several policemen had since
been severely wounded.  This was due to the fact that the police, under
the impression that the besieged men were armed only with shot-guns, had
approached, as they believed with impunity, rather close to the house.
All at once, a murderous fusillade had been opened upon them from a
shuttered window--only by chance, indeed, had the result not proved
again fatal.  The wounds the police had received had been dreadful, far
worse than bullet wounds, for the assailants had, by cutting the paper
cases of the shot-cartridges round the middle with a knife, caused the
charge of shot to travel like a bullet, which burst open when it struck.

"It was late in the afternoon," ran one newspaper account of the
conclusion of the siege, "when a big body of police arrived from Oakham,
armed with revolvers and rifles, to fire upon the besieged men, and in a
few minutes the rattle of musketry rang out, the reports echoing and
reverberating in the woods around Houghton Park, and among the distant
hills.  In return, came shots in quick succession, fired now from one
window, then from another.  The men hidden in the house seemed to have
plenty of ammunition."

The reporter then indulged in half a column of descriptive writing.
After that, he came again to the point--

"Finally, finding that all efforts to dislodge the besieged proved
futile, and fearing they might, in their mad fury of revenge, set the
house alight, the order was given to renew the attack.  This was at once
done.  The combined fire played havoc upon the house for doors, windows,
and shutters were quickly riddled, and even some of the chimney-pots
were shattered.  At last the return fire ceased entirely, and the order
was given to rush the house.  This was done, and only just in time.  In
one of the lower rooms straw, paper, wood shavings and other inflammable
material had been piled up, and two paraffin-cans lay upon the floor,
both being empty.  Evidently it had been the intention of the besieged
men to pour paraffin over the inflammable material, but they had found
only empty cans.  The material had been set on fire, but, not being well
alight, was soon extinguished.  At once a search was made for the
besieged men--a risky undertaking, seeing that they might still be
provided with ammunition and lying in concealment to open fire on the
besieging party.

"It was in a shuttered room on the first floor that the bodies were at
last found.  The shutters had been riddled with rifle bullets.  The two
men and the woman were lying upon the floor, all three had been shot
dead.  Paulton had received no fewer than three bullet wounds."

There was much more, but I had read enough.  I let the newspaper drop
from my nerveless fingers.

Somehow, in spite of these terrible happenings, I felt happy--strangely
happy.

At the moment, I had no time to analyse my feelings and discover a
reason for the sense of restfulness that had come over me at last, after
those weeks of hot, feverish excitement.  Later, I knew it was the
knowledge that all who could harm my well-beloved had mercifully been
removed.

Lady Thorold, Whichelo and Vera were the only people living, besides
myself, who knew the grim secret of Sir Charles' past life.  No more
would Lady Thorold, kind, gentle, sympathetic woman that she was, be
haunted by the fear of blackmail, or terrorised by those human vultures
who had so often threatened to reveal what had happened in the house in
Belgrave Street in the dead of night years before.  And, blessed
thought, no more would my darling be harassed, bullied, or made to go
almost in fear of her life.

And the gold--those bags of base coin found hidden so carefully at
Houghton Hall, hidden there by Whichelo after their removal from
Belgrave Street?  And the mysterious body discovered in the house in
Belgrave Street?  Both had been pounced upon by the police.

But my only thought, my only care was of Vera--Vera, my beloved.

No doubt expert men from Scotland Yard were at that moment using all
their intelligence, evolving endless abstruse theories, straining every
nerve to pierce the mystery surrounding these remarkable discoveries.

I smiled maliciously, as these thoughts occurred to me, and I realised
how fruitless all the well-meant endeavours must prove.  For never,
never now would any one find the true solution.  The whole of the
strange affair would be written down as a mystery.

Not until three months after poor Sir Charles had been laid to rest at
Highgate, did our wedding take place, in Brompton Parish Church.  And in
the same week, at the same church, another wedding was solemnised.
Frank Faulkner and Violet were married on the Tuesday, and I was present
in the church beside Vera, who looked so sweet and smart in a pretty
afternoon gown.

"Dick, dear, how happy they both are," she whispered, as Faulkner and
his handsome bride passed down the aisle after the service, while the
great organ pealed forth the strains of the old, yet ever new and never
hackneyed, wedding march of Mendelssohn.

"And how perfectly lovely Violet looks," I answered.

Whichelo, who was beside us, and whose immense height had occasioned
considerable comment among the invited guests, as well as some laughter
amongst the crowd gathered together in the street, overhearing my
remark, laughed aloud.

"A few more outbursts of unrestrained admiration of that kind," he
growled, in his deep voice, "and I may hear from Thursday's prospective
bride that my services as best man will not be needed!"

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well--what more is there to tell?

We were married two days later, at the same church as Faulkner and
Violet--and spent a delightful honeymoon in Denmark and in Norway.  Then
we returned to dear old London, Lady Thorold having taken up her abode
in a small house in Upper Brook Street.

Our most devoted friend to-day is Henry Whichelo--Harry, as he likes us
both to call him.  He knows everything of the past, yet no syllable of
our secret will ever pass his lips.  Not a week goes by but he dines at
our table, full of his quiet humour, yet sometimes as we sit smoking
together in the evening, the subject of those strange happenings--how
fresh they still are in the memory of both of us--comes uppermost in our
conversation.

"Ah, my dear old Dick," Harry said to me the other night, as we talked
incidentally of the fire at Chateau d'Uzerche, "how I should have loved
to see you sliding down that rope!  Young Faulkner has often told me of
your really wonderful sang-froid!"

My "sang-froid in moments of crisis" is now a standing joke against me!
Vera, it was, who first started it, I believe.  Well--I forgive her.  I
brought it on myself entirely, and must bear the consequences of my
overweening conceit in the past!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

A warm evening in August.  The end of a stifling day.

As I sit writing the final lines of this strange narrative in my cosy
little study in our new home--no, our home is not in tiny Rutland, but
overlooking Hampstead Heath, a part of London that my wife loves--the
crimson sun sinks slowly in the grey haze lying over the great city
below.  Vera is here with me, in her pale pink dinner-gown, and her fair
hair brushes my cheek as she bends over me.  Now her soft cheek is
pressed to mine.

The blood-red afterglow burns and dies.  The summer light is fading.
The only sound is the whirr of a car going towards the Spaniards.  The
air outside is breathless, for the day has been terribly oppressive.

I raise my smiling face to her sweet countenance, and now, all at once,
she stoops lower still, until on a sudden access of emotion, she
passionately kisses my lips.

"Vera, my love!"  I exclaim, looking up into her great blue eyes.
"Why--why, what's the matter, my darling?"

Her eyes are brimming with tears.  Her red lips move, but no words
escape them.  The corners of her mouth are twitching.

"My darling--my own darling, what is it?"  I cry, rising to my feet, and
folding my arms tenderly about her.  Her head is upon my shoulder.  She
is weeping bitterly.

"Dick," she exclaims, hardly above a whisper.  "Oh, Dick--my darling, my
own darling boy, I have been sitting here thinking--dreaming of the
past, of all we have been through--of those awful days and nights of
anxiety and of dread terror.  And now," the words came with a sob, "oh!
I am so completely happy with you, my dearest--so absolutely happy.  I
can't describe it.  I hardly know--"

The twilight deepens.  I hold her closely in my arms, but I cannot trust
myself to speak.  Our hearts beat in unison.

Dusk grows into darkness.  Still no word passes between us.  We are too
full of our own reflections, of our own thoughts, of our perfect
happiness, now rid as we are for ever, of the grim shadow of evil once
placed upon us by "The Mysterious Three."

The End.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Mysterious Three" ***

Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.