not leave the house, and all through my indisposition the spectre of
that white dog dominated not only my dreams but every waking thought. I
could see it looking out at me from under the furniture, sitting with
patient eyes on my every movement, in corners of the house, barring my
way to the door, if I wished to enter or leave a room. It haunted me,
kept me at an excruciating point of mental anguish.
“This morning, however, I felt better, and my business imperatively
claiming my attention after a week of absence, I decided to go to town.
“I left the house with the feeling of a man who goes out to execution.
Nevertheless, human nature revolted at the prospect of dying without
resistance, and I went armed. In my pocket was a revolver which had
belonged to my father. He had fought in the Indian Mutiny. I was born
in India myself. Some of his fighting instincts arose in me as I walked
down to the station fingering the weapon in my pocket.
“Dread oppressed me as I entered the train and journeyed cityward.
I felt that I was going to meet my fate. None the less I went about
my business, and all day nothing occurred, save moments of fear, to
alarm me. I made up my mind to return by a midday train--would that
I had done so!--though perhaps it would have made no difference. So
great a press of work awaited me, however, that it was impossible. One
hindrance after another stood in my way, and with rapidly rising fears
I was forced to remain and see the time slip away until the only train
that remained to me was the seven-thirty.
“My office is a little room at the top of a large building. I keep no
clerk. Most or all the other workers in the building had left while I
was still writing letters, and the solitude which broods over the city
in the evening weighed more and more oppressively on me every minute.
My nerves were already at stretch when I heard something thrust into
the letter-box. I jumped to my feet, trembling with premonitions. I
heard no footfall along the passage. After a moment, when my heart
seemed to stop, I went to the box, and to my horror--drew out a piece
of paper identical with the one pushed into my hand a week before. It
bore the same solemn words: ‘Prepare to meet thy Judge,’ and nothing
more. I believe I reeled and staggered. I know that in a flash of
frenzy I flung the door wide and rushed into the passage. I could have
sworn--I could swear it now--that I saw the white dog slink round the
corner a few yards along the corridor.
“Trembling in every limb, my head on fire, I hastily locked up the
office and made my way to the station. The building seemed quite
deserted as I left it. I saw no sign of the white dog. Choosing the
most frequented thoroughfares, I soon reached the terminus without any
cause for alarm. I remember that my heart beat so violently as to make
me feel faint as I passed the barrier. I scarcely dared look for the
dog, but with an effort of will I did so and assured myself it was not
there.
“I chose an unoccupied carriage and settled myself in it--waiting,
with throbbing anxiety, for the few remaining minutes to slip away
before the train was due to start. Those minutes seemed vast spaces of
time in which the movement of the world had stopped, waiting for some
catastrophe. At last I heard the bell ring. For one wild, exultant
moment I thought that I was safe.
“Then, just as the train commenced to move, I saw a man running along
the platform, holding a dog in leash. The animal strained powerfully at
the lead, his nose to the ground. On the instant, I recognized it--the
white dog! The door of my compartment was thrown open, and man and dog
leaped in. A porter slammed the door after them, and we were moving
fast out of the station. Short of throwing myself on the rails there
was no escape possible.
“The man was dressed in the garb of a clergyman. He was a large,
powerfully built fellow, strength of mind and body marked all over him.
He nodded and smiled at me as he drew a long breath to recover his wind
and sat down. The dog slunk under the seat, where it lay watching me
with steady eyes.
“I cowered in my corner in terror. Had I wished to speak, I could not
have done so. The sight of one of my all-powerful foes, visible for
the first time, fascinated me. I could not take my eyes from him.
Occasionally he looked up at me from his newspaper with a slow, quiet
smile which seemed to say: ‘All right, my friend. I’ll deal with you
presently.’
“The train clanged and banged over the switches and gathered speed for
its rush into the dark night and the loneliness of the countryside.
Minute after minute I sat there in panic, watching him, agonized every
now and then by that terrible sure smile with which he glanced at me.
The silence in the carriage was the oppressive silence which awaits a
tragedy to break it with a lightning-flash.
“Mile after mile the train raced on, and nothing happened. The suspense
was maddening me. My lips were dry. My tongue stuck to the roof of my
mouth. I could feel a cold sweat beading my forehead. I took out my
handkerchief to wipe it, and a piece of paper fluttered to the ground,
close to his feet. I recognized it. It was the second warning. Before
I could move, the man bent to pick it up. He handed it to me with that
meaning smile and said, with awful quietness: ‘Are you prepared?’
“I started with terror and felt something hurt the hand which all the
time had been gripping the revolver in my pocket. It was the tense
pressure of my finger on the weapon.
“The man nodded and smiled at me again. I gasped, feeling certain
that my hour had come. With the fascination of a man trapped and
bound, I saw him bend sideways and put his hand into his hip pocket.
Instantly--I know not how--there was a deafening report in the
carriage, and a film of smoke floated between me and him. He sank to
the floor. He rolled slightly with his last gasp, his arm outflung.
I had killed him! I stood fixed with horror. In his hand was--not a
revolver, but a tobacco-pipe.
“For a moment my senses left me. I knew nothing. I was brought to
consciousness by a sharp pain in my leg. The white dog held me in a
savage grip, growling in a manner frightful to hear. Frenzy overcame
me; I kicked and fought in vain. Then, suddenly recollecting the
revolver in my hand, I pressed it to his head and fired. I was free.
Free? No, trapped in the swaying carriage splashed with blood, its
floor heaped with the large body of the man I had killed. The train
was racing along at top speed. In five or ten minutes more we should
stop and the crime would be discovered. Mad with horror, I rushed to
the door, opened it, flung myself into the black night. I remember
the roar of the train passing me as I rolled down the embankment,
have an impression of a bright light whisked away, and then I lost
consciousness.
“When my senses returned, I saw the light in your house. Clambering
over a wall, I made my way to it, fainting, scarce able to walk, but
frantic, it seemed to me, for help. You kindly took me in. For the
moment I have respite, but ‘they’ have triumphed. By their cunning
manipulation of the forces behind Life, I have been tricked into
murdering one who to all outward semblance was an innocent man. In a
day or two I shall be standing in the dock, and finally my life will be
violently cut short by my fellow-men, accompanied by every circumstance
of ignominy. Fully, indeed, are they revenged!
“Now, sir, you know my story; and if, after hearing it, you care to
call in the local police----”
* * * * * *
At that moment there was a sound of carriage-wheels on the road. They
stopped just in front of the house. The stranger sprang to his feet.
His eyes swept round the room in a swift, panic-stricken quest for
concealment. Then, crying: “No! They shall not take me! They shall not
take me!” he rushed from the room.
Mr. Gilchrist, still spellbound by the story to which he had been
so intently listening, stood for a moment as though paralyzed,
staring at the open door. A familiar whistle from outside, a cheery
call--“Gilchrist! Gilchrist!”--gave him back his faculties. It was
Williamson--thank God!
Mr. Gilchrist ran out into the hall, found the front door still open
from the stranger’s abrupt departure, peered out into the dark night
intensified by the two staring eyes of Williamson’s gig-lamps.
“Come in, Williamson!” he called. His voice was joyous with relief. As
he spoke, he heard swift feet upon the gravel! The words had barely
left his mouth when a violent collision knocked him breathless against
the doorpost. It was the stranger, back again!
“The white dog! The white dog!” he gasped in terror.
Mr. Gilchrist clutched at him and fought for breath to speak.
“But, my dear sir----” he began, irritably. This was absurd! Of course
there was a dog--the harmless old white bull which was Williamson’s
invariable companion. He tried to explain, but the stranger, tugging
frantically to get free, would listen to nothing. With the strength of
a madman he wrenched himself from Gilchrist’s detaining grasp and fled
into the house.
Williamson, preceded by his old dog, came up the gravel path.
“All alone?” he asked, cheerily.
Mr. Gilchrist hesitated, and then, obeying an obscure impulse, lied.
“Er--yes,” he replied. “Come in.”
The absurdity of the falsehood occurred to him at once. Cursing his
folly, he tried to think of some plausible explanation as he led his
friend to the dining-room, where, of course, the stranger’s presence
would stultify his ridiculous statement. He glanced round the room as
he entered. It was empty! Where, then? His eyes rested on a suspicious
bulging of the window-curtain.
He waved his friend to a chair.
“Sit down,” he said, with an assumption of normality. “What’s the
news?”
“There’s news, right enough,” said Williamson, dropping into the
proffered seat. “Terrible business on the seven-thirty to-night.
Poor old Hepplewhite--shot dead--he and his dog. Ghastly struggle,
evidently--blood over everything!”
“Good God!” ejaculated Gilchrist, chilled with a sudden horror. He had
given no real credence to his visitor’s fantastic story. This brutal
contact with the reality paralyzed him in an awful terror at his own
false position. What was to be done? He strove to think--played for
time. “And the murderer?” he asked thickly.
“Escaped--for the moment,” replied Williamson in a tone that suggested
confidence in the police. “Here, Tiger! Come here!” He addressed the
dog, which was sniffing uneasily about the room.
The dog came up to him obediently, wagging his stump of tail. He
carried in his mouth a piece of folded paper which he had picked up
and now presented to his master. Gilchrist recognized it with a little
shock as his friend opened it.
“_Prepare to meet thy Judge!_” Williamson read out with mock solemnity,
and smiled in superior tolerance of the evangelist enthusiasm which had
printed the leaflet.
Gilchrist shuddered and thought suddenly of the terrified man behind
the curtain, dimly realizing the significance to that overwrought brain
of these fatal words. He glanced at the betraying bulge, saw it move
slightly.
Williamson smiled down into the intelligent eyes of his old dog.
“Tiger, old fellow,” he said jocularly, “you’ve made a mistake--you’ve
brought this message to the wrong man. It is evidently meant for the
person who shot poor old Hepplewhite. Here”--he held it out to the
dog--“take it to him. _Find him!_”
The dog took the paper in his jaws, wagged his tail with a
comprehending look up at his master, and ran, following the scent which
was on the paper, across the room. He stopped, pawing at the bulged
curtain.
Williamson stared after him in amusement.
“Is he there, Tiger?” he said, humouring the intelligent animal. “Have
you found him?”
Gilchrist stood speechless. What was coming next?
The curtain was flung suddenly aside. The old gentleman stood revealed,
stepped forward into the room. His bulbous eyes were unwholesomely
bright.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I surrender. You have won. I might, of course,
shoot you”--he took a revolver from his pocket--“as I shot your
confederate in the train to-night. But I recognize that it would be
useless. Your Society would raise up yet other avengers----”
Both Gilchrist and Williamson had shrunk back in alarm from that
brandished revolver--were unable, in their astonishment, to utter a
word. They could only stare, bewildered.
The old gentleman looked down at the dog which still offered him the
paper.
“I understand--perfectly,” he said, with a grim appreciation of some
subtlety which eluded them. “In a better cause, I should admire the
ingenuity with which you have utilized means which are apparently of
the simplest. I do homage to your powers, gentlemen. Or perhaps you
yourselves are only half-conscious tools of that occult force you
think you control--that occult force which has, with such singular
completeness, worked my ruin.” There was a sneer in his voice. He
turned to Gilchrist. “As for you, sir, I congratulate you on your
faculty of dissimulation. You gulled me excellently well. I can only
bow in acknowledgment of the supreme irony with which you beguiled me
into telling you the miserable story which, of course, you already knew
far better than I. I do not grudge you your triumph. It was superbly
well planned. You held me without suspicion whilst you awaited the
arrival--for the last time--of the symbol of my doom--_the white dog_!”
His smile was an illumination of savage sarcasm.
There was a pause of silence in which Williamson glanced inquiringly at
his friend.
The old gentleman laughed in a mirthless mockery which was hideous to
hear.
“But now, face to face at last with you whose monstrous plot I was at
least able to detect, if I could not baffle it--I yet cheat you!” he
cried. “I cheat you of your complete vengeance! You thought to condemn
me to the ignominy of a murderer’s trial!” He laughed again. “I elude
you--thus!”
With a quick movement he raised the revolver and fired.
The two friends, after the moment in which they recovered from the
shock, bent over his body.
“I don’t understand!” said Williamson, horror-stricken and mystified.
“Who and what was he?”
Gilchrist answered him in one terse word.
“Mad,” he replied, pushing away the white dog, which sniffed innocently
at the body.
A POINT OF ETHICS
He leaned forward across the flower-decked dinner-table and raised his
glass.
“To many happy anniversaries, darling!”
The pretty woman he addressed raised her glass also. Gowned in a simple
evening robe whose discreet _décolletage_ revealed shoulders still
youthfully rounded, she was the incarnation of that delicate refinement
which lifts beauty into charm with one deft touch. The single dark rose
at her breast was its present symbol. It was also, indubitably, the
deliberate symbol of something more. The large, emotional eyes which
smiled upon him were radiant with happiness.
“_Many_ anniversaries, Jack!” she echoed, shaking her head slowly in
emphasis, her gaze in his. “All as happy as this--all of us together!”
Both turned, as with a common thought, to the demure little
five-year-old girl who watched them with grave eyes from her place at
the dinner-table. She smiled at their smiles, confidently.
“I’m as fond of her as you are, Evelyn,” he said, with evident
sincerity. “Never fear! I couldn’t love her more if she were my own
daughter.”
“You couldn’t be kinder to her, Jack,” said the young woman, in
affectionate agreement. “Oh, my dear, we are very fortunate, both of
us, Dorothy and I! Without you!” she sighed. “A whole year! A whole
year of perfect happiness! I thought I was happy before--but I did not
know what happiness was--until it began a year ago to-day!”
He smiled.
“Nor I, Evelyn. Looking back, it seems that I only began to live on
the day I married you.” He glanced around him. “A year ago!--You were
right, dear, to have our little dinner here to-night, and not at River
Lawn. You were right to keep this place going--it reminds us both of
our starting-point.” His tone warmed with affection. “But then, you are
always right!”
She beamed with gratitude.
“I wanted to keep it because it was _my_ home--it was what I brought to
you. You gave me our home at River Lawn, Jack--and you know how I love
it. But this--this is where you came to me, and it’s all sacred to me.
I couldn’t bear to change a thing in it. Besides,” she added, smilingly
lifting her argument out of sentimentality, “it is really an economy,
isn’t it? With your work we must have a city home as well. Why change
this flat for another which would perhaps be less convenient, and which
we should have to refurnish?”
“Quite,” he agreed. “I gave into you about it long ago. But I didn’t
like it at first, I’ll admit.”
“You are too big a man, Jack, dear, to be jealous of the past. And I
am sure Harry would not mind, if he could know.” Her eyes looked past
him, dreamily reminiscent. “Poor old Harry!” she said, after a little
silence.
“I should like to have met him,” he said, conversationally, getting on
with his fish. “He must have been a good chap.”
“Oh, he was! I wish I could have got some news of him--of how he was
killed. No one in the regiment seemed to know anything. It is dreadful
to go out like that--no one knowing how!” She shuddered. Then, with
an instinctive movement to break the spell of unwanted memories, she
pressed the bell for the maid to clear the course from the table.
The conversation resumed on the everyday matters of his profession.
She thoroughly identified herself with her husband’s interests and
discussed them, as was her wont, with intelligent sympathy. She was one
of those women who stimulate all the latent potentialities of their
men. He--it was obvious from the clear-cut features--was both resolute
and clever; a man who would go far. Already Satterthwaite was a name in
the Courts for which clients would pay big fees.
They were discussing the important case of the day when suddenly she
looked round, startled.
“Jack! Someone has come in--or gone out. I heard the hall door slam!”
“Imagination, my dear,” he replied, smiling sceptically. “The maids are
busy--they would not go out. We should have heard the bell if there
were a visitor. No one has a key except ourselves----”
The words were scarcely uttered when the door behind them opened. The
child, who sat facing it, stared in amazement for a second, and then
slipped off her chair and ran toward the intruder with a wild shout of
joy.
“_Daddie!_”
Mr. and Mrs. Satterthwaite sprang up from their seats, turned to see
a youngish man, clad in an ill-fitting lounge suit, standing in the
doorway. The young woman clutched at the back of her chair, her eyes
wide in terror.
“Harry!” She breathed the cry almost voicelessly in her stupefaction.
“_Harry’s ghost!_”
Satterthwaite snatched back the child, who had recoiled from the
flaming anger in the stranger’s face.
“What does this mean?” asked the intruder, fiercely, ignoring the
little one. “Evelyn!” The summons was uttered with outraged but
confident authority.
She shrank back, covering her face.
“No!” She spoke as to herself. “No!--It can’t be! He’s dead--he’s dead!”
Satterthwaite intervened, his jaw setting hard, the level tone of his
voice evidently sternly controlled.
“May I ask who you are?” he enquired, coldly.
The stranger faced him. Anger met anger in their eyes.
“Certainly. I am Harry Tremaine. And perhaps you will be good enough
to tell me who the devil you are--and what you are doing with my wife
in my flat?” The man’s voice trembled with fury. His face worked with
passion. He took a step toward the young woman.
She drew quickly away from him, sheltered herself behind her companion,
whence she stared at him with fascinated eyes.
“My name is Satterthwaite--and I am dining with my wife!”
“Your--wife----!” He repeated the words slowly as though scarcely
crediting such audacious impudence of assertion. Then he laughed in
harsh mockery. “Don’t talk nonsense!” He looked down at the child at
Satterthwaite’s side. “Dorothy!--come here!”
Satterthwaite restrained the child’s movement of obedience with a firm
grip. “Excuse me,” he said quietly, “I think the youngster is better
absent from this discussion.” He led the bewildered little girl to
the door, opened it, and called for the nurse. “Put Miss Dorothy to
bed!” he ordered. “And then all of you go out for the evening. Go to
the movies. Here!” He held out a note. “Have a good time--and get out
at once! Mrs. Satterthwaite and I want to be alone in the flat this
evening.”
He closed the door and returned to the others. The stranger, dominated
for the moment by his quiet, masterful manner, had made no movement to
interfere, stood, as he had left him, by the doorway. But his eyes were
fixed still wrathfully upon the young woman who stared back at him,
fascinated, clutching at the table for support. Her lips were ashen,
parted in a soundless terror.
Satterthwaite turned to her.
“Do you know this man, Evelyn?”
She made an effort, answered.
“It--it is Harry--or his ghost!”
The stranger laughed in bitter scorn.
“What foolery!--Don’t pretend I died since yesterday!”
Amazement came into both their faces.
“Since yesterday?” they repeated in one bewildered echo.
The stranger frowned.
“What is there strange about that?” he asked, irritably, impressed,
nevertheless, by their evidently genuine astonishment.
“Where--where were you yesterday, Harry?” asked the young woman
unsteadily, as though scarcely daring to probe some awful mystery.
He laughed shortly in impatience.
“Why, of course----” he began in confident tones. He stopped, a baffled
look suddenly in his eyes. “Of course----” he began again, less
confidently. Then he gave it up. “I--I can’t remember--it’s funny!--I
can’t remember where I was yesterday----” He bit his lower lip, looked
around him slowly with bent and puzzled brows, plainly uneasy at this
unexpected forgetfulness. “But of course I must have been here!” He put
an end to his embarrassment by dogmatic assertion.
Satterthwaite contemplated him for a moment with eyes that searched him
to the depths.
“H’m!” he said, meditatively. “There’s something extraordinary about
this!--Won’t you sit down, Mr. Tremaine?” He pointed to a chair. “Let
us discuss this matter amicably--it’s not so simple as you think, and
hostility won’t help us.”
Tremaine hesitated a moment, a flicker of angry revolt in his eyes. But
there was a note in Satterthwaite’s quiet tones which more than invited
compliance, and he seated himself in the chair with a shrug of the
shoulders which justified him in himself.
“This is my flat--and my wife,” he said, “anyway!” The assertion
sounded curiously weak.
The young woman watched him speechlessly.
Satterthwaite caressed his chin with that little gesture which was
habitual to him when commencing the cross-examination of a witness. He
began in the suave, deliberate tones familiar to the Courts.
“What is the last thing you can remember, Mr. Tremaine?” he asked.
Tremaine stared at him.
“I--I think----” he began, hesitatingly, almost automatically
responsive to Satterthwaite’s seductive voice. Then he stopped, the
baffled look again in his eyes. “What the devil has it got to do with
you?” he demanded, in exasperation.
Satterthwaite was unruffled.
“It has a great deal to do with me, Mr. Tremaine,” he said, “and with
all of us here. So please try to answer my questions.”
Tremaine’s eyes blazed at him.
“What right have you to question me?--What are you doing here at all,
that’s what I want to know?”
Satterthwaite soothed him with a gesture.
“We’re coming to that presently. Answer my questions now--and afterward
you can put any questions to me that you like. Now--try and remember!”
Tremaine relapsed sullenly. It was evident that he was secretly
conscious of the inferiority in which his absence of memory placed him.
His eyes sought the young woman as though to elicit some key-point of
remembrance, came back empty.
“Well?” he said, with suspicious ill-humour.
Satterthwaite was courtesy itself.
“Now, think! Carry your mind back! You were in the Army, weren’t you?”
“Of course!”
“You remember that--perfectly?”
“Yes--of course I do!” His tone was impatient.
“Good! You remember being in France?”
“I should think so!”
“In what part of France were you last?”
“In the Argonne.”
“Right! Now--when did you leave France?”
Tremaine hesitated, bit his lip. The eyes went blank again.
“I--I can’t remember.”
“Do you remember leaving France at all?--Do you remember the voyage?”
There was a silence whilst Tremaine evidently made an effort of memory.