Glen Aline is probably the loneliest place in the lone moorlands of
Western Galloway. The country is entirely pastoral, and I fancy that the
very pasture is bad enough. Stretches of deer-grass and ling, rolling
endlessly to the feet of Cairnsmure and the circle of the eastern hills,
cannot be good feeding for the least Epicurean of sheep, and sheep do not
care for the lank and sour herbage by the sides of the "lanes," as the
half-stagnant, black, deep, and weedy burns are called in this part of
the country. The scenery is not unattractive, but tourists never wander
to these wastes where no inns are, and even the angler seldom visits
them. Indeed, the fishing is not to be called good, and the "lanes,"
which "seep," as the Scotch say, through marshes and beneath low
hillsides, are not such excellent company as the garrulous and brawling
brooks of the Border or of the Highlands. As the lanes flow, however,
from far-away lochs, it happens that large trout make their way into
them--trout which, if hooked, offer a gallant resistance before they can
be hauled over the weeds that usually line the watercourses.
Partly for the sake of trying this kind of angling, partly from a
temporary distaste for the presence of men and women, partly for the
purpose of finishing a work styled "A History of the Unexplained," I once
spent a month in the solitudes of Glen Aline. I stayed at the house of a
shepherd who, though not an unintelligent man was by no means possessed
of the modern spirit. He and his brother swains had sturdily and
successfully resisted an attempt made by the schoolmaster at a village
some seven miles off to get a postal service in the glen more frequently
than once a week. A post once a week was often enough for lucky people
who did not get letters twice a year. It was not my shepherd, but
another, who once came with his wife to the village, after a twelve
miles' walk across the hills, to ask "what the day of the week was?" They
had lost count, and the man had attended to his work on a day which the
dame averred to be the Sabbath. He denied that it _was_ the Sabbath, and
I believe that it turned out to be a Tuesday. This little incident gives
some idea of the delightful absence of population in Glen Aline. But no
words can paint the utter loneliness, which could actually be felt--the
empty moors, the empty sky. The heaps of stones by a burnside, here and
there, showed that a cottage had once existed where now was no
habitation. One such spot was rather to be shunned by the superstitious,
for here, about 1698, a cottar family had been evicted by endless
unaccountable disturbances in the house. Stones were thrown by invisible
hands--though occasionally, by the way, a white hand, with no apparent
body attached to it, _was_ viewed by the curious who came to the spot.
Heavy objects of all sorts floated in the air; rappings and voices were
heard; the end wall was pulled down by an unknown agency. The story is
extant in a pious old pamphlet called "Sadducees Defeated," and a great
deal more to the same effect--a masterpiece by the parish minister,
signed and attested by the other ministers of the Glen Kens. The
Edinburgh edition of the pamphlet is rare; the London edition may be
procured without much difficulty.
The site of this ruined cottage, however, had no terrors for the
neighbours, or rather for the neighbour, my shepherd. In fact, he seemed
to have forgotten the legend till I reminded him of it, for I had come
across the tale in my researches into the Unexplained. The shepherd and
his family, indeed, were quite devoid of superstition, and in this
respect very unlike the northern Highlanders. However, the fallen
cottage had nothing to do with my own little adventure in Glen Aline, and
I mention it merely as the most notable of the tiny ruins which attest
the presence, in the past, of a larger population. One cannot marvel
that the people "flitted" from the moors and morasses of Glen Aline into
less melancholy neighbourhoods. The very sheep seemed scarcer here than
elsewhere; grouse-disease had devastated the moors, sportsmen
consequently did not visit them; and only a few barren pairs, with crow-
picked skeletons of dead birds in the heather now and then, showed that
the shootings had once perhaps been marketable. My shepherd's cottage
was four miles from the little-travelled road to Dalmellington; long bad
miles they were, across bog and heather. Consequently I seldom saw any
face of man, except in or about the cottage. My work went on rapidly
enough in such an undisturbed life. Empires might fall, parties might
break like bursting shells, and banks might break also: I plodded on with
my labour, and went a-fishing when the day promised well. There was a
hill loch (Loch Nan) about five miles away, which I favoured a good deal.
The trout were large and fair of flesh, and in proper weather they rose
pretty freely, and could be taken by an angler wading from the shore.
There was no boat. The wading, however, was difficult and dangerous,
owing to the boggy nature of the bottom, which quaked like a quicksand in
some places. The black water, never stirred by duck or moorhen, the dry
rustling reeds, the noisome smell of decaying vegetable-matter when you
stirred it up in wading, the occasional presence of a dead sheep by the
sullen margin of the tarn, were all opposed to cheerfulness. Still, the
fish were there, and the "lane," which sulkily glided from the loch
towards the distant river, contained some monsters, which took worm after
a flood. One misty morning, as I had just topped the low ridge from
which the loch became visible, I saw a man fishing from my favourite
bench. Never had I noticed a human being there before, and I was not
well pleased to think that some emissary of Mr. Watson Lyall was making
experiments in Loch Nan, and would describe it in "The Sportsman's
Guide." The mist blew white and thick for a minute or two over the loch-
side, as it often does at Loch Skene; so white and thick and sudden that
the bewildered angler there is apt to lose his way, and fall over the
precipice of the Grey Mare's Tail. When the curtain of cloud rose again,
the loch was lonely: the angler had disappeared. I went on rejoicing,
and made a pretty good basket, as the weather improved and grew warmer--a
change which gives an appetite to trout in some hill lochs. Among the
sands between the stones on the farther bank I found traces of the
angler's footsteps; he was not a phantom, at all events, for phantoms do
not wear heavily nailed boots, as he evidently did. The traces, which
were soon lost, of course, inclined me to think that he had retreated up
a narrow green burnside, with rather high banks, through which, in rainy
weather, a small feeder fell into the loch. I guessed that he had been
frightened away by the descent of the mist, which usually "puts down" the
trout and prevents them from feeding. In that case his alarm was
premature. I marched homewards, happy with the unaccustomed weight of my
basket, the contents of which were a welcome change from the usual
porridge and potatoes, tea (without milk), jam, and scones of the
shepherd's table. But, as I reached the height above the loch on my
westward path, and looked back to see if rising fish were dimpling the
still waters, all flushed as they were with sunset, behold, there was the
Other Man at work again!
I should have thought no more about him had I not twice afterwards seen
him at a distance, fishing up a "lane" ahead of me, in the loneliest
regions, and thereby, of course, spoiling my sport. I knew him by his
peculiar stoop, which seemed not unfamiliar to me, and by his hat, which
was of the clerical pattern once known, perhaps still known, as "a Bible-
reader's"--a low, soft, slouched black felt. The second time that I
found him thus anticipating me, I left off fishing and walked rather
briskly towards him, to satisfy my curiosity, and ask the usual
questions, "What sport?" and "What flies?" But as soon as he observed me
coming he strode off across the heather. Uncourteous as it seems, I felt
so inquisitive that I followed him. But he walked so rapidly, and was so
manifestly anxious to shake me off, that I gave up the pursuit. Even if
he were a poacher whose conscience smote him for using salmon-roe, I was
not "my brother's keeper," nor anybody's keeper. He might "otter" the
loch, but how could I prevent him?
It was no affair of mine, and yet--where had I seen him before? His
gait, his stoop, the carriage of his head, all seemed familiar--but a
short-sighted man is accustomed to this kind of puzzle: he is always
recognising the wrong person, when he does not fail to recognise the
right one.
I am rather short-sighted, but science has its resources. Two or three
days after my encounter with this very shy sportsman, I went again to
Loch Nan. But this time I took with me a strong field-glass. As I
neared the crest of the low heathery slope immediately above the loch,
whence the water first comes into view, I lay down on the ground and
crawled like a deer-stalker to the skyline.
Then I got out the glass and reconnoitred. There was my friend, sure
enough; moreover, he was playing a very respectable trout. But he was
fishing on the near side of the loch, and though I had quite a distinct
view of his back, and indeed of all his attenuated form, I was as far as
ever from recognising him, or guessing where, if anywhere, I had seen him
before. I now determined to stalk him; but this was not too easy, as
there is literally no cover on the hillside except a long march dyke of
the usual loose stones, which ran down to the loch-side, and indeed three
or four feet into the loch, reaching it at a short distance to the right
of the angler. Behind this I skulked, in an eagerly undignified manner,
and was just about to climb the wall unobserved, when two grouse got up,
with their wild "cluck cluck" of alarm, and flew down past the angler and
over the loch. He did not even look round, but jerked his line out of
the water, reeled it up, and set off walking along the loch-side. He was
making, no doubt, for the little glen up which I fancied that he must
have retreated on the first occasion when saw him. I set off walking
round the tarn on my own side--the left side--expecting to anticipate
him, and that he must pass me on his way up the little burnside. But I
had miscalculated the distance, or the pace. He was first at the
burnside; and now I cast courtesy and everything but curiosity to the
winds, and deliberately followed him. He was a few score of yards ahead
of me, walking rapidly, when he suddenly climbed the burnside to the
left, and was lost to my eyes for a few moments. I reached the place,
ascended the steep green declivity and found myself on the open
undulating moor, with no human being in sight!
The grass and heather were short. I saw no bush, no hollow, where he
could by any possibility have hidden himself. Had he met a Boojum he
could not have more "softly and suddenly vanished away."
I make no pretence of being more courageous than my neighbours, and, in
this juncture, perhaps I was less so. The long days of loneliness in
waste Glen Aline, and too many solitary cigarettes, had probably injured
my nerve. So, when I suddenly heard a sigh and the half-smothered sound
of a convulsive cough-hollow, if ever a cough was hollow--hard by me, at
my side as it were, and yet could behold no man, nor any place where a
man might conceal himself--nothing but moor and sky and tufts of
rushes--then I turned away, and walked down the glen: not slowly. I
shall not deny that I often looked over my shoulder as I went, and that,
when I reached the loch, I did not angle without many a backward glance.
Such an appearance and disappearance as this, I remembered, were in the
experience of Sir Walter Scott. Lockhart does not tell the anecdote,
which is in a little anonymous volume, "Recollections of Sir Walter
Scott," published before Lockhart's book. Sir Walter reports that he was
once riding across the moor to Ashiesteil, in the clear brown summer
twilight, after sunset. He saw a man a little way ahead of him, but,
just before he reached the spot, the man disappeared. Scott rode about
and about, searching the low heather as I had done, but to no purpose. He
rode on, and, glancing back, saw the same man at the same place. He
turned his horse, galloped to the spot, and again--nothing! "Then," says
Sir Walter, "neither the mare nor I cared to wait any longer." Neither
had I cared to wait, and if there is any shame in the confession, on my
head be it!
There came a week of blazing summer weather; tramping over moors to lochs
like sheets of burnished steel was out of the question, and I worked at
my book, which now was all but finished. At length I wrote THE END, and
"o le bon ouff! que je poussais," as Flaubert says about one of his own
laborious conclusions. The weather broke, we had a deluge, and then came
a soft cloudy day, with a warm southern wind suggesting a final march on
Loch Nan. I packed some scones and marmalade into my creel, filled my
flask with whiskey, my cigarette-case with cigarettes, and started on the
familiar track with the happiest anticipations. The Lone Fisher was
quite out of my mind; the day was exhilarating--one of those true fishing-
days when you feel the presence of the sun without seeing him. Still, I
looked rather cautiously over the edge of the slope above the loch, and,
by Jove! there he was, fishing the near side, and wading deep among the
reeds! I did not stalk him this time, but set off running down the
hillside behind him, as quickly as my basket, with its load of waders and
boots, would permit. I was within forty yards of him, when he gave a
wild stagger, tried to recover himself, failed, and, this time,
disappeared in a perfectly legitimate and accountable manner. The
treacherous peaty bottom had given way, and his floating hat, with a
splash on the surface, and a few black bubbles, were all that testified
to his existence. There was a broken old paling hard by; I tore off a
long plank, waded in as near as I dared, and, by help of the plank, after
a good deal of slipping, which involved an exemplary drenching, I
succeeded in getting him on to dry land. He was a distressing
spectacle--his body and face all blackened with the slimy peat-mud; and
he fell half-fainting on the grass, convulsed by a terrible cough. My
first care was to give him whiskey, by perhaps a mistaken impulse of
humanity; my next, as he lay, exhausted, was to bring water in my hat,
and remove the black mud from his face.
Then I saw Percy Allen--Allen of St. Jude's! His face was wasted, his
thin long beard (he had not worn a beard of old), clogged as it was with
peat-stains, showed flecks of grey.
"Allen--Percy!" I said; "what wind blew _you_ here?"
But he did not answer; and, as he coughed, it was too plain that the
shock of his accident had broken some vessel in the lungs. I tended him
as well as I knew how to do it. I sat beside him, giving him what
comfort I might, and all the time my memory flew back to college days,
and to our strange and most unhappy last meeting, and his subsequent
inevitable disgrace. Far away from here--Loch Nan and the vacant
moors--my memory wandered.
It was at Blocksby's auction-room, in a street near the Strand, on the
eve of a great book-sale three years before, that we had met, for almost
the last time, as I believed, though it is true that we had not spoken on
that occasion. It is necessary that I should explain what occurred, or
what I and three other credible witnesses believed to have occurred; for,
upon my word, the more I see and hear of human evidence of any event, the
less do I regard it as establishing anything better than an excessively
probable hypothesis.
To make a long story as short as may be, I should say that Allen and I
had been acquainted when we were undergraduates; that, when fellows of
our respective colleges, our acquaintance had become intimate; that we
had once shared a little bit of fishing on the Test; and that we were
both book-collectors. I was a comparatively sane bibliomaniac, but to
Allen the time came when he grudged every penny that he did not spend on
rare books, and when he actually gave up his share of the water we used
to take together, that his contribution to the rent might go for rare
editions and bindings. After this deplorable change of character we
naturally saw each other less, but we were still friendly. I went up to
town to scribble; Allen stayed on at Oxford. One day I chanced to go
into Blocksby's rooms; it was a Friday, I remember--there was to be a
great sale on the Monday. There I met Allen in ecstasies over one of the
books displayed in the little side room on the right hand of the sale-
room. He had taken out of a glass case and was gloating over a book
which, it seems, had long been the Blue Rose of his fancy as a collector.
He was crazed about Longepierre, the old French amateur, whose volumes,
you may remember, were always bound in blue morocco, and tooled, on the
centre and at the corners, with his badge, the Golden Fleece. Now the
tome which so fascinated Allen was a Theocritus, published at Rome by
Caliergus--a Theocritus on blue paper, if you please, bound in
Longepierre's morocco livery, _double_ with red morocco, and, oh ecstasy!
with a copy of Longepierre's version of one Idyll on the flyleaf, signed
with the translator's initials, and headed "_a Mon Roy_." It is known to
the curious that Louis XIV. particularly admired and praised this little
poem, calling it "a model of honourable gallantry." Clearly the grateful
author had presented his own copy to the king; and here it was, when king
and crown had gone down into dust.
Allen showed me the book; he could hardly let it leave his hands.
"Here is a pearl," he had said, "a gem beyond price!"
"I'm afraid you'll find it so," I said; "that is for a Paillet or
Rothschild, not for you, my boy."
"I fear so," he had answered; "if I were to sell my whole library
to-morrow, I could hardly raise the money;" for he was poor, and it was
rumoured that his mania had already made him acquainted with the Jews.
We parted. I went home to chambers; Allen stayed adoring the unexampled
Longepierre. That night I dined out, and happened to sit next a young
lady who possessed a great deal of taste, though that was the least of
her charms. The fashion for book-collecting was among her innocent
pleasures; she had seen Allen's books at Oxford, and I told her of his
longings for the Theocritus. Miss Breton at once was eager to see the
book, and the other books, and I obtained leave to go with her and Mrs.
Breton to the auction-rooms next day. The little side-room where the
treasures were displayed was empty, except for an attendant, when we went
in; we looked at the things and made learned remarks, but I admit that I
was more concerned to look at Miss Breton than at any work in leather by
Derome or Bauzonnet. We were thus a good deal occupied, perhaps, with
each other; people came and went, while our heads were bent over a case
of volumes under the window. When we _did_ leave, on the appeal of Mrs.
Breton, we both--both I and Kate--Miss Breton, I mean--saw Allen--at
least I saw him, and believed _she_ did--absorbed in gazing at the
Longepierre Theocritus. He held it rather near his face; the gas, which
had been lit, fell on the shining Golden Fleeces of the cover, on his
long thin hands and eager studious features. It would have been a pity
to disturb him in his ecstasy. I looked at Miss Breton; we both smiled,
and, of course, I presumed we smiled for the same reason.
I happen to know, and unluckily did it happen, the very minute of the
hour when we left Blocksby's. It was a quarter to four o'clock--a church-
tower was chiming the three-quarters in the Strand, and I looked half
mechanically at my own watch, which was five minutes fast. On Sunday I
went down to Oxford, and happened to walk into Allen's rooms. He was
lying on a sofa reading the "Spectator." After chatting a little, I
said, "You took no notice of me, nor of the Bretons yesterday, Allen, at
Blocksby's."
"I didn't see you," he said; and as he was speaking there came a knock at
the door.
"Come in!" cried Allen, and a man entered who was a stranger to me. You
would not have called him a gentleman perhaps. However, I admit that I
am possibly no great judge of a gentleman.
Allen looked up.
"Hullo, Mr. Thomas," he said, "have you come up to see Mr. Mortby?"
mentioning a well-known Oxford bibliophile. "Wharton," he went on,
addressing me, "this is Mr. Thomas from Blocksby's." I bowed. Mr.
Thomas seemed embarrassed. "Can I have a word alone with you, sir?" he
murmured to Allen.
"Certainly," answered Allen, looking rather surprised. "You'll excuse me
a moment, Wharton," he said to me. "Stop and lunch, won't you? There's
the old 'Spectator' for you;" and he led Mr. Thomas into a small den
where he used to hear his pupils read their essays, and so forth.
In a few minutes he came out, looking rather pale, and took an
embarrassed farewell of Mr. Thomas.
"Look here, Wharton," he said to me, "here is a curious business. That
fellow from Blocksby's tells me that the Longepierre Theocritus
disappeared yesterday afternoon; that I was the last person in whose hand
it was seen, and that not only the man who always attends in the room but
Lord Tarras and Mr. Wentworth, saw it in _my_ hands just before it was
missed."
"What a nuisance!" I answered. "You were looking at it when Miss Breton
and I saw you, and you didn't notice us; Does Thomas know _when_--I mean
about what o'clock--the book was first missed?"
"That's the lucky part of the whole worry," said Allen. "I left the
rooms at three exactly, and it was missed about ten minutes to four;
dozens of people must have handled it in that interval of time. So
interesting a book!"
"But," I said, and paused--"are you sure your watch was right?"
"Quite certain; besides, I looked at a church clock. Why on earth do you
ask?"
"Because--I am awfully sorry--there is some unlucky muddle; but it was
exactly a quarter, or perhaps seventeen minutes, to four when both Miss
Breton and I saw you absorbed in the Longepierre."
"Oh, it's quite _impossible_," Allen answered; "I was far enough away
from Blocksby's at a quarter to four."
"That's all right," I said. "Of course you can prove that; if it is
necessary; though I dare say the book has fallen behind a row of others,
and has been found by this time. Where were you at a quarter to four?"
"I really don't feel obliged to stand a cross-examination before my
time," answered Allen, flushing a little. Then I remembered that I was
engaged to lunch at All Souls', which was true enough; convenient too,
for I do not quite see how the conversation could have been carried on
pleasantly much further. For I _had_ seen him--not a doubt about it. But
there was one curious thing. Next time I met Miss Breton I told her the
story, and said, "You remember how we saw Allen, at Blocksby's, just as
we were going away?"
"No," she said, "I did not see him; where was he?"
"Then why did you smile--don't you remember? I looked at him and at you,
and I thought you smiled!"
"Because--well, I suppose because _you_ smiled," she said. And the
subject of the conversation was changed.
It was an excessively awkward affair. It did not come "before the
public," except, of course, in the agreeably mythical gossip of an
evening paper. There was no more public scandal than that. Allen was
merely ruined. The matter was introduced to the notice of the Wardens
and the other Fellows of St. Jude's. What Lord Tarras saw, what Mr.
Wentworth saw, what I saw, clearly proved that Allen was in the auction-
rooms, and had the confounded book in his hand, at an hour when, as _he_
asserted, he had left the place for some time. It was admitted by one of
the people employed at the sale-rooms that Allen had been noticed (he was
well known there) leaving the house at three. But he must have come back
again, of course, as at least four people could have sworn to his
presence in the show-room at a quarter to four o'clock. When he was
asked in a private interview, by the Head of his College, to say where he
went after leaving Blocksby's Allen refused to answer. He merely said
that he could not prove the facts; that his own word would not be taken
against that of so many unprejudiced and even friendly witnesses. He
simply threw up the game. He resigned his fellowship; he took his name
off the books; he disappeared.
There was a good deal of talk; people spoke about the unscrupulousness of
collectors, and repeated old anecdotes on that subject. Then the
business was forgotten. Next, in a year's time or so, the book--the
confounded Longepierre's Theocritus--was found in a pawnbroker's shop.
The history of its adventures was traced beyond a shadow of doubt. It
had been very adroitly stolen, and disposed of, by a notorious
book-thief, a gentleman by birth--now dead, but well remembered. Ask Mr.
Quaritch!
Allen's absolute innocence was thus demonstrated beyond cavil, though
nobody paid any particular attention to the demonstration. As for Allen,
he had vanished; he was heard of no more.
He was _here_; dying here, beside the black wave of lone Loch Nan.
All this, so long in the telling, I had time enough to think over, as I
sat and watched him, and wiped his lips with water from the burn, clearer
and sweeter than the water of the loch.
At last his fit of coughing ceased, and a kind of peace came into his
face.
"Allen, my dear old boy," I said--I don't often use the language of
affection--"did you never hear that all that stupid story was cleared up;
that everyone knows you are innocent?"
He only shook his head; he did not dare to speak, but he looked happier,
and he put his hand in mine.
I sat holding his hand, stroking it. I don't know how long I sat there;
I had put my coat and waterproof under him. He was "wet through," of
course; there was little use in what I did. What could I do with him?
how bring him to a warm and dry place?
The idea seemed to strike him, for he half rose and pointed to the little
burnside, across the loch. A plan occurred to me; I tore a leaf from my
sketch-book, put the paper with pencil in his hand, and said, "Where do
you live? Don't speak. Write."
He wrote in a faint scrawl, "Help me to that burnside. Then I can guide
you."
I hardly know how I got him there, for, light as he was, I am no
Hercules. However, with many a rest, we reached the little dell; and
then I carried him up its green side, and laid him on the heather of the
moor.
He wrote again:
"Go to that clump of rushes--the third from the little hillock. Then
look, but be careful. Then lift the big grass tussock."
The spot which Allen indicated was on the side of a rather steep grassy
slope. I approached it, dragged at the tussock of grass, which came away
easily enough, and revealed the entrance to no more romantic hiding-place
than an old secret whiskey "still." Private stills, not uncommon in
Sutherland and some other northern shires, are extinct in Galloway. Allen
had probably found this one by accident in his wanderings, and in his
half-insane bitterness against mankind had made it, for some time at
least, his home. The smoke-blackened walls, the recesses where the worm-
tub and the still now stood, all plainly enough betrayed the original
user of the hiding-place. There was a low bedstead, a shelf or two,
whereon lay a few books--a Shakespeare, a Homer, a Walton, Plutarch's
"Lives"; very little else out of a library once so rich. There was a tub
of oatmeal, a heap of dry peat, two or three eggs in a plate, some
bottles, a keg of whiskey, some sardine-tins, a box with clothes--that
was nearly all the "plenishing" of this hermitage. It was never likely
to be discovered, except by the smoke, when the inmate lit a fire. The
local shepherd knew it, of course, but Allen had bought his silence, not
that there were many neighbours for the shepherd to tattle with.
Allen had recovered strength enough by this time to reach his den with
little assistance. He made me beat up the white of one of the eggs with
a little turpentine, which was probably, under the circumstances, the
best styptic for his malady within his reach. I lit his fire of peats,
undressed him, put him to bed, and made him as comfortable as might be in
the den which he had chosen. Then I went back to the shepherd's, sent a
messenger to the nearest doctor, and procured a kind of sledge, generally
used for dragging peat home, wherein, with abundance of blankets for
covering, I hoped to bring Allen back to the shepherd's cottage.
Not to delay over details, this was managed at last, and the unhappy
fellow was under a substantial roof. But he was very ill; he became
delirious and raved of many things--talked of old college adventures, bid
recklessly for imaginary books, and practised other eccentricities of
fever.
When his fever left him he was able to converse in a way--I talking, and
he scrawling faintly with a pencil on paper. I told him how his
character had been cleared, how he had been hunted for, advertised for,
vainly enough. To the shepherds' cottages where he had lived till the
beginning of that summer, newspapers rarely came; to his den in the old
secret still, of course they never came at all.
His own story of what he had been doing at the fatal hour when so many
people saw him at the auction-rooms was brief. He had left the rooms, as
he said, at three o'clock, pondering how he might raise money for the
book on which his heart was set. His feet had taken him, half
unconsciously, to
a dismal court,
Place of Israelite resort,
where dwelt and dealt one Isaacs, from whom he had, at various times,
borrowed money on usury. The name of Isaacs was over a bell, one of many
at the door, and, when the bell was rung, the street door "opened of his
own accord," like that of the little tobacco-and-talk club which used to
exist in an alley off Pall Mall. Allen rang the bell, the outer door
opened, and, as he was standing at the door of Isaacs' chambers, before
he had knocked, _that_ portal also opened, and the office-boy, a young
Jew, slunk cautiously out. On seeing Allen, he had seemed at once
surprised and alarmed. Allen asked if his master was in; the lad
answered "No" in a hesitating way; but on second thoughts, averred that
Isaacs "would be back immediately," and requested Allen to go in and
wait. He did so, but Isaacs never came, and Allen fell asleep. He had a
very distinct and singular dream, he said, of being in Messrs. Blocksy's
rooms, of handling the Longepierre, and of seeing Wentworth there, and
Lord Tarras. When he wakened he was very cold, and, of course, it was
pitch dark. He did not remember where he was; he lit a match and a
candle on the chimney-piece. Then slowly his memory came back to him,
and not only his memory, but his consciousness of what he had wholly
forgotten--namely, that this was Saturday, the Sabbath of the Jews, and
that there was not the faintest chance of Isaacs' arrival at his place of
business. In the same moment the embarrassment and confusion of the
young Israelite flashed vividly across his mind, and he saw that he was
in a very awkward position. If that fair Hebrew boy had been robbing, or
trying to rob, the till, then Allen's position was serious indeed, as
here he was, alone, at an untimely hour, in the office. So he blew the
candle out, and went down the dingy stairs as quietly as possible, took
the first cab he met, drove to Paddington, and went up to Oxford.
It is probable that the young child of Israel, if he had been attempting
any mischief, did not succeed in it. Had there been any trouble, it is
likely enough that he would have involved Allen in the grief. Then Allen
would have been in a, perhaps, unprecedented position. He could have
established an alibi, as far as the Jew's affairs went, by proving that
he had been at Blocksby's at the hour when the boy would truthfully have
sworn that he had let him into Isaacs' chambers. And, as far as the
charge against him at Blocksby's went, the evidence of the young Jew
would have gone to prove that he was at Isaacs', where he had no business
to be, when we saw him at Blocksby's. But, unhappily, each alibi would
have been almost equally compromising. The difficulty never arose, but
the reason why Allen refused to give any account of what he had been
doing, and where he had been, at four o'clock on that Saturday
afternoon--a refusal that told so heavily against him--is now
sufficiently clear. His statement would, we may believe, never have been
corroborated by the youthful Hebrew, who certainly had his own excellent
reasons for silence, and who probably had carefully established an
_alibi_ of his own elsewhere.
The true account of Allen's appearance, or apparition, at Blocksby's,
when I and Tarras, Wentworth and the attendant recognised him, and Miss
Breton did _not_, is thus part of the History of the Unexplained. Allen
might have appealed to precedents in the annals of the Psychical Society,
where they exist in scores, and are technically styled "collective
hallucinations." But neither a jury, nor a judge, perhaps, would accept
the testimony of experts in Psychical Research if offered in a criminal
trial, nor acquit a wraith.
Possibly this scepticism has never yet injured the cause of an innocent
man. Yet I know, in my own personal experience, and have heard from
others, from men of age, sagacity, and acquaintance with the greatest
affairs, instances in which people have been distinctly seen by sane,
healthy, and honourable witnesses, in places and circumstances where it
was (as we say) "physically impossible" that they should have been, and
where they certainly were not themselves aware of having been. That is
why human testimony seems to me to establish no more, in certain
circumstances, than a highly probable working hypothesis--a hypothesis on
which, of course, we are bound to act.
There is little more to tell. By dint of careful nursing, poor Allen was
enabled to travel; he reached Mentone, and there the mistral ended him.
He was a lonely man, with no kinsfolk; his character was cleared among
the people who knew him best; the others have forgotten him. Nobody can
be injured by this explanation of his silence when called on to prove his
innocence, and of his unusually successful vanishing from a society which
had never tried very hard to discover him in his retreat. He has lived
and suffered and died, and left behind him little but an incident in the
History of the Unexplained.