'I have seen so little of you these last_Uneasy Money

ago we were always together, having such interesting talks. But

lately it has seemed to me that you have been avoiding me.'

A feeling of helplessness swept over Mr Pickering. He was vaguely

conscious of a sense of being treated unjustly, of there being a

flaw in Claire's words somewhere if he could only find it, but the

sudden attack had deprived him of the free and unfettered use of

his powers of reasoning. He gurgled wordlessly, and Claire went

on, her low, sad voice mingling with the moonlight in a manner

that caused thrills to run up and down his spine. He felt

paralyzed. Caution urged him to make some excuse and follow it

with a bolt to the drawing-room, but he was physically incapable

of taking the excellent advice. Sometimes when you are out in your

Pickering Gem or your Pickering Giant the car hesitates, falters,

and stops dead, and your chauffeur, having examined the carburettor,

turns to you and explains the phenomenon in these words: 'The

mixture is too rich.' So was it with Mr Pickering now. The moonlight

alone might not have held him; Claire's voice alone might not have

held him; but against the two combined he was powerless. The

mixture was too rich. He sat and breathed a little stertorously,

and there came to him that conviction that comes to all of us now

and then, that we are at a crisis of our careers and that the

moment through which we are living is a moment big with fate.

The voice in the drawing-room stopped. Having sung songs of Araby

and tales of far Cashmere, Mr Roscoe Sherriff was refreshing

himself with a comic paper. But Lady Wetherby, seated at the

piano, still touched the keys softly, and the sound increased the

richness of the mixture which choked Dudley Pickering's spiritual

carburettor. It is not fair that a rather stout manufacturer

should be called upon to sit in the moonlight while a beautiful

girl, to the accompaniment of soft music, reproaches him with

having avoided her.

'I should be so sorry, Mr Pickering, if I had done anything to

make a difference between us--'

'Eh?' said Mr Pickering.

'I have so few real friends over here.'

Claire's voice trembled.

'I--I get a little lonely, a little homesick sometimes--'

She paused, musing, and a spasm of pity rent the bosom beneath

Dudley Pickering's ample shirt. There was a buzzing in his ears

and a lump choked his throat.

'Of course, I am loving the life here. I think America's

wonderful, and nobody could be kinder than Lady Wetherby. But--I

miss my home. It's the first time I have been away for so long. I

feel very far away sometimes. There are only three of us at home:

my mother, myself, and my little brother--little Percy.'

Her voice trembled again as she spoke the last two words, and it

was possibly this that caused Mr Pickering to visualize Percy as a

sort of little Lord Fauntleroy, his favourite character in English

literature. He had a vision of a small, delicate, wistful child

pining away for his absent sister. Consumptive probably. Or

curvature of the spine.

He found Claire's hand in his. He supposed dully he must have

reached out for it. Soft and warm it lay there, while the universe

paused breathlessly. And then from the semi-darkness beside him

there came the sound of a stifled sob, and his fingers closed as

if someone had touched a button.

'We have always been such chums. He is only ten--such a dear boy!

He must be missing me--'

She stopped, and simultaneously Dudley Pickering began to speak.

There is this to be said for your shy, cautious man, that on the

rare occasions when he does tap the vein of eloquence that vein

becomes a geyser. It was as if after years of silence and

monosyllables Dudley Pickering was endeavouring to restore the

average.

He began by touching on his alleged neglect and avoidance of

Claire. He called himself names and more names. He plumbed the

depth of repentance and remorse. Proceeding from this, he

eulogized her courage, the pluck with which she presented a

smiling face to the world while tortured inwardly by separation

from her little brother Percy. He then turned to his own feelings.

But there are some things which the historian should hold sacred,

some things which he should look on as proscribed material for his

pen, and the actual words of a stout manufacturer of automobiles

proposing marriage in the moonlight fall into this class. It is

enough to say that Dudley Pickering was definite. He left no room

for doubt as to his meaning.

'Dudley!'

She was in his arms. He was embracing her. She was his--the latest

model, self-starting, with limousine body and all the newest. No,

no, his mind was wandering. She was his, this divine girl, this

queen among women, this--

From the drawing-room Roscoe Sherriff's voice floated out in

unconscious comment--

Good-bye, boys!

I'm going to be married to-morrow.

Good-bye, boys!

I'm going from sunshine to sorrow.

No more sitting up till broad daylight.

Did a momentary chill cool the intensity of Dudley Pickering's

ardour? If so he overcame it instantly. He despised Roscoe

Sherriff. He flattered himself that he had shown Roscoe Sherriff

pretty well who was who and what was what.

They would have a wonderful wedding--dozens of clergymen, scores

of organs playing 'The Voice that Breathed o'er Eden,' platoons of

bridesmaids, wagonloads of cake. And then they would go back to

Detroit and live happy ever after. And it might be that in time to

come there would be given to them little runabouts.

I'm going to a life

Of misery and strife,

So good-bye, boys!

Hang Roscoe Sherriff! What did he know about it! Confound him!

Dudley Pickering turned a deaf ear to the song and wallowed in his

happiness.

Claire walked slowly down the moonlit drive. She had removed

herself from her Dudley's embraces, for she wished to be alone, to

think. The engagement had been announced. All that part of it was

over--Dudley's stammering speech, the unrestrained delight of

Polly Wetherby, the facetious rendering of 'The Wedding Glide' on

the piano by Roscoe Sherriff, and it now remained for her to try

to discover a way of conveying the news to Bill.

It had just struck her that, though she knew that Bill was in

America, she had not his address.

What was she to do? She must tell him. Otherwise it might quite

easily happen that they might meet in New York when she returned

there. She pictured the scene. She saw herself walking with Dudley

Pickering. Along came Bill. 'Claire, darling!' ... Heavens, what

would Dudley think? It would be too awful! She couldn't explain.

No, somehow or other, even if she put detectives on his trail, she

must find him, and be off with the old love now that she was on

with the new.

She reached the gate and leaned over it. And as she did so someone

in the shadow of a tall tree spoke her name. A man came into the

light, and she saw that it was Lord Dawlish.

Lord Dawlish had gone for a moonlight walk that night because,

like Claire, he wished to be alone to think. He had fallen with a

pleasant ease and smoothness into the rather curious life lived at

Elizabeth Boyd's bee-farm. A liking for picnics had lingered in

him from boyhood, and existence at Flack's was one prolonged

picnic. He found that he had a natural aptitude for the more

muscular domestic duties, and his energy in this direction

enchanted Nutty, who before his advent had had a monopoly of these

tasks.

Nor was this the only aspect of the situation that pleased Nutty.

When he had invited Bill to the farm he had had a vague hope that

good might come of it, but he had never dreamed that things would

turn out as well as they promised to do, or that such a warm and

immediate friendship would spring up between his sister and the

man who had diverted the family fortune into his own pocket. Bill

and Elizabeth were getting on splendidly. They were together all

the time--walking, golfing, attending to the numerous needs of the

bees, or sitting on the porch. Nutty's imagination began to run

away with him. He seemed to smell the scent of orange-blossoms, to

hear the joyous pealing of church bells--in fact, with the

difference that it was not his own wedding that he was anticipating,

he had begun to take very much the same view of the future that was

about to come to Dudley Pickering.

Elizabeth would have been startled and embarrassed if she could

have read his thoughts, for they might have suggested to her that

she was becoming a great deal fonder of Bill than the shortness of

their acquaintance warranted. But though she did not fail to

observe the strangeness of her brother's manner, she traced it to

another source than the real one. Nutty had a habit of starting

back and removing himself when, entering the porch, he perceived

that Bill and his sister were already seated there. His own

impression on such occasions was that he was behaving with

consummate tact. Elizabeth supposed that he had had some sort of a

spasm.

Lord Dawlish, if he had been able to diagnose correctly the almost

paternal attitude which had become his host's normal manner these

days, would have been equally embarrassed but less startled, for

conscience had already suggested to him from time to time that he

had been guilty of a feeling toward Elizabeth warmer than any

feeling that should come to an engaged man. Lying in bed at the

end of his first week at the farm, he reviewed the progress of his

friendship with her, and was amazed at the rapidity with which it

had grown.

He could not conceal it from himself--Elizabeth appealed to him.

Being built on a large scale himself, he had always been attracted

by small women. There was a smallness, a daintiness, a liveliness

about Elizabeth that was almost irresistible. She was so capable,

so cheerful in spite of the fact that she was having a hard time.

And then their minds seemed to blend so remarkably. There were no

odd corners to be smoothed away. Never in his life had he felt so

supremely at his ease with one of the opposite sex. He loved

Claire--he drove that fact home almost angrily to himself--but he

was forced to admit that he had always been aware of something in

the nature of a barrier between them. Claire was querulous at

times, and always a little too apt to take offence. He had never

been able to talk to her with that easy freedom that Elizabeth

invited. Talking to Elizabeth was like talking to an attractive

version of oneself. It was a thing to be done with perfect

confidence, without any of that apprehension which Claire inspired

lest the next remark might prove the spark to cause an explosion.

But Claire was the girl he loved--there must be no mistake about

that.

He came to the conclusion that the key to the situation was the

fact that Elizabeth was American. He had read so much of the

American girl, her unaffectedness, her genius for easy comradeship.

Well, this must be what the writer fellows meant. He had happened

upon one of those delightful friendships without any suspicion of

sex in them of which the American girl had the monopoly. Yes, that

must be it. It was a comforting explanation. It accounted for his

feeling at a loose end whenever he was away from Elizabeth for as

much as half an hour. It accounted for the fact that they understood

each other so well. It accounted for everything so satisfactorily

that he was able to get to sleep that night after all.

But next morning--for his conscience was one of those persistent

consciences--he began to have doubts again. Nothing clings like a

suspicion in the mind of a conscientious young man that he has

been allowing his heart to stray from its proper anchorage.

Could it be that he was behaving badly toward Claire? The thought

was unpleasant, but he could not get rid of it. He extracted

Claire's photograph from his suit-case and gazed solemnly upon it.

At first he was shocked to find that it only succeeded in

convincing him that Elizabeth was quite the most attractive girl

he ever had met. The photographer had given Claire rather a severe

look. He had told her to moisten the lips with the tip of the

tongue and assume a pleasant smile, with the result that she

seemed to glare. She had a rather markedly aggressive look,

queenly perhaps, but not very comfortable.

But there is no species of self-hypnotism equal to that of a man

who gazes persistently at a photograph with the preconceived idea

that he is in love with the original of it. Little by little Bill

found that the old feeling began to return. He persevered. By the

end of a quarter of an hour he had almost succeeded in capturing

anew that first fine careless rapture which, six months ago, had

caused him to propose to Claire and walk on air when she accepted

him.

He continued the treatment throughout the day, and by dinner-time

had arranged everything with his conscience in the most satisfactory

manner possible. He loved Claire with a passionate fervour; he

liked Elizabeth very much indeed. He submitted this diagnosis to

conscience, and conscience graciously approved and accepted it.

It was Sunday that day. That helped. There is nothing like Sunday

in a foreign country for helping a man to sentimental thoughts of

the girl he has left behind him elsewhere. And the fact that there

was a full moon clinched it. Bill was enabled to go for an

after-dinner stroll in a condition of almost painful loyalty to Claire.

From time to time, as he walked along the road, he took out the

photograph and did some more gazing. The last occasion on which he

did this was just as he emerged from the shadow of a large tree

that stood by the roadside, and a gush of rich emotion rewarded

him.

'Claire!' he murmured.

An exclamation at his elbow caused him to look up. There, leaning

over a gate, the light of the moon falling on her beautiful face,

stood Claire herself!

In trying interviews, as in sprint races, the start is everything.

It was the fact that she recovered more quickly from her

astonishment that enabled Claire to dominate her scene with Bill.

She had the advantage of having a less complicated astonishment to

recover from, for, though it was a shock to see him there when she

had imagined that he was in New York, it was not nearly such a

shock as it was to him to see her here when he had imagined that

she was in England. She had adjusted her brain to the situation

while he was still gaping.

'Well, Bill?'

This speech in itself should have been enough to warn Lord Dawlish

of impending doom. As far as love, affection, and tenderness are

concerned, a girl might just as well hit a man with an axe as say

'Well, Bill?' to him when they have met unexpectedly in the

moonlight after long separation. But Lord Dawlish was too shattered

by surprise to be capable of observing _nuances_. If his love had

ever waned or faltered, as conscience had suggested earlier in the

day, it was at full blast now.

'Claire!' he cried.

He was moving to take her in his arms, but she drew back.

'No, really, Bill!' she said; and this time it did filter through

into his disordered mind that all was not well. A man who is a

good deal dazed at the moment may fail to appreciate a remark like

'Well, Bill?' but for a girl to draw back and say, 'No, really,

Bill!' in a tone not exactly of loathing, but certainly of pained

aversion, is a deliberately unfriendly act. The three short words,

taken in conjunction with the movement, brought him up with as

sharp a turn as if she had punched him in the eye.

'Claire! What's the matter?'

She looked at him steadily. She looked at him with a sort of

queenly woodenness, as if he were behind a camera with a velvet

bag over his head and had just told her to moisten the lips with

the tip of the tongue. Her aspect staggered Lord Dawlish. A

cursory inspection of his conscience showed nothing but purity and

whiteness, but he must have done something, or she would not be

staring at him like this.

'I don't understand!' was the only remark that occurred to him.

'Are you sure?'

'What do you mean?'

'I was at Reigelheimer's Restaurant--Ah!'

The sudden start which Lord Dawlish had given at the opening words

of her sentence justified the concluding word. Innocent as his

behaviour had been that night at Reigelheimer's, he had been glad

at the time that he had not been observed. It now appeared that he

had been observed, and it seemed to him that Long Island suddenly

flung itself into a whirling dance. He heard Claire speaking a

long way off: 'I was there with Lady Wetherby. It was she who

invited me to come to America. I went to the restaurant to see her

dance--and I saw you!'

With a supreme effort Bill succeeded in calming down the excited

landscape. He willed the trees to stop dancing, and they came

reluctantly to a standstill. The world ceased to swim and flicker.

'Let me explain,' he said.

The moment he had said the words he wished he could recall them.

Their substance was right enough; it was the sound of them that

was wrong. They sounded like a line from a farce, where the erring

husband has been caught by the masterful wife. They were

ridiculous. Worse than being merely ridiculous, they created an

atmosphere of guilt and evasion.

'Explain! How can you explain? It is impossible to explain. I saw

you with my own eyes making an exhibition of yourself with a

horrible creature in salmon-pink. I'm not asking you who she is.

I'm not questioning you about your relations with her at all. I

don't care who she was. The mere fact that you were at a public

restaurant with a person of that kind is enough. No doubt you

think I am making a great deal of fuss about a very ordinary

thing. You consider that it is a man's privilege to do these

things, if he can do them without being found out. But it ended

everything so far as I am concerned. Am I unreasonable? I don't

think so. You steal off to America, thinking I am in England, and

behave like this. How could you do that if you really loved me?

It's the deceit of it that hurts me.'

Lord Dawlish drew in a few breaths of pure Long Island air, but he

did not speak. He felt helpless. If he were to be allowed to

withdraw into the privacy of the study and wrap a cold, wet towel

about his forehead and buckle down to it, he knew that he could

draft an excellent and satisfactory explanation of his presence at

Reigelheimer's with the Good Sport. But to do it on the spur of

the moment like this was beyond him.

Claire was speaking again. She had paused for a while after her

recent speech, in order to think of something else to say; and

during this pause had come to her mind certain excerpts from one

of those admirable articles on love, by Luella Delia Philpotts,

which do so much to boost the reading public of the United States

into the higher planes. She had read it that afternoon in the

Sunday paper, and it came back to her now.

'I may be hypersensitive,' she said, dropping her voice from the

accusatory register to the lower tones of pathos, 'but I have such

high ideals of love. There can be no true love where there is not

perfect trust. Trust is to love what--'

She paused again. She could not remember just what Luella Delia

Philpotts had said trust was to love. It was something extremely

neat, but it had slipped her memory.

'A woman has the right to expect the man she is about to marry to

regard their troth as a sacred obligation that shall keep him as

pure as a young knight who has dedicated himself to the quest of

the Holy Grail. And I find you in a public restaurant, dancing

with a creature with yellow hair, upsetting waiters, and

staggering about with pats of butter all over you.'

Here a sense of injustice stung Lord Dawlish. It was true that

after his regrettable collision with Heinrich, the waiter, he had

discovered butter upon his person, but it was only one pat. Claire

had spoken as if he had been festooned with butter.

'I am not angry with you, only disappointed. What has happened has

shown me that you do not really love me, not as I think of love.

Oh, I know that when we are together you think you do, but absence

is the test. Absence is the acid-test of love that separates the

base metal from the true. After what has happened, we can't go on

with our engagement. It would be farcical. I could never feel that

way toward you again. We shall always be friends, I hope. But as

for love--love is not a machine. It cannot be shattered and put

together again.'

She turned and began to walk up the drive. Hanging over the top of

the gate like a wet sock, Lord Dawlish watched her go. The

interview was over, and he could not think of one single thing to

say. Her white dress made a patch of light in the shadows. She

moved slowly, as if weighed down by sad thoughts, like one who, as

Luella Delia Philpotts beautifully puts it, paces with measured

step behind the coffin of a murdered heart. The bend of the drive

hid her from his sight.

About twenty minutes later Dudley Pickering, smoking sentimentally

in the darkness hard by the porch, received a shock. He was musing

tenderly on his Claire, who was assisting him in the process by

singing in the drawing-room, when he was aware of a figure, the

sinister figure of a man who, pressed against the netting of the

porch, stared into the lighted room beyond.

Dudley Pickering's first impulse was to stride briskly up to the

intruder, tap him on the shoulder, and ask him what the devil he

wanted; but a second look showed him that the other was built on

too ample a scale to make this advisable. He was a large,

fit-looking intruder.

Mr Pickering was alarmed. There had been the usual epidemic of

burglaries that season. Houses had been broken into, valuable

possessions removed. In one case a negro butler had been struck

over the head with a gas-pipe and given a headache. In these

circumstances, it was unpleasant to find burly strangers looking

in at windows.

'Hi!' cried Mr Pickering.

The intruder leaped a foot. It had not occurred to Lord Dawlish,

when in an access of wistful yearning he had decided to sneak up

to the house in order to increase his anguish by one last glimpse

of Claire, that other members of the household might be out in the

grounds. He was just thinking sorrowfully, as he listened to the

music, how like his own position was to that of the hero of

Tennyson's _Maud_--a poem to which he was greatly addicted,

when Mr Pickering's 'Hi!' came out of nowhere and hit him like a

torpedo.

He turned in agitation. Mr Pickering having prudently elected to

stay in the shadows, there was no one to be seen. It was as if the

voice of conscience had shouted 'Hi!' at him. He was just

wondering if he had imagined the whole thing, when he perceived

the red glow of a cigar and beyond it a shadowy form.

It was not the fact that he was in an equivocal position, staring

into a house which did not belong to him, with his feet on

somebody else's private soil, that caused Bill to act as he did.

It was the fact that at that moment he was not feeling equal to

conversation with anybody on any subject whatsoever. It did not

occur to him that his behaviour might strike a nervous stranger as

suspicious. All he aimed at was the swift removal of himself from

a spot infested by others of his species. He ran, and Mr

Pickering, having followed him with the eye of fear, went rather

shakily into the house, his brain whirling with professional

cracksmen and gas pipes and assaulted butlers, to relate his

adventure.

'A great, hulking, ruffianly sort of fellow glaring in at the

window,' said Mr Pickering. 'I shouted at him and he ran like a

rabbit.'

'Gee! Must have been one of the gang that's been working down

here,' said Roscoe Sherriff. 'There might be a quarter of a column

in that, properly worked, but I guess I'd better wait until he

actually does bust the place.'

'We must notify the police!'

'Notify the police, and have them butt in and stop the thing and

kill a good story!' There was honest amazement in the Press-agent's

voice. 'Let me tell you, it isn't so easy to get publicity

these days that you want to go out of your way to stop it!'

Mr Pickering was appalled. A dislike of this man, which had grown

less vivid since his scene with Claire, returned to him with

redoubled force.

'Why, we may all be murdered in our beds!' he cried.

'Front-page stuff!' said Roscoe Sherriff, with gleaming eyes. 'And

three columns at least. Fine!'

It might have consoled Lord Dawlish somewhat, as he lay awake

that night, to have known that the man who had taken Claire from

him--though at present he was not aware of such a man's

existence--also slept ill.

Lady Wetherby sat in her room, writing letters. The rest of the

household were variously employed. Roscoe Sherriff was prowling

about the house, brooding on campaigns of publicity. Dudley

Pickering was walking in the grounds with Claire. In a little

shack in the woods that adjoined the high-road, which he had

converted into a temporary studio, Lord Wetherby was working on a

picture which he proposed to call 'Innocence', a study of a small

Italian child he had discovered in Washington Square. Lady

Wetherby, who had been taken to see the picture, had suggested

'The Black Hand's Newest Recruit' as a better title than the one

selected by the artist.

It is a fact to be noted that of the entire household only Lady

Wetherby could fairly be described as happy. It took very little to

make Lady Wetherby happy. Fine weather, good food, and a complete

abstention from classical dancing--give her these and she asked no

more. She was, moreover, delighted at Claire's engagement. It

seemed to her, for she had no knowledge of the existence of Lord

Dawlish, a genuine manifestation of Love's Young Dream. She liked

Dudley Pickering and she was devoted to Claire. It made her happy

to think that it was she who had brought them together.

But of the other members of the party, Dudley Pickering was

unhappy because he feared that burglars were about to raid the

house; Roscoe Sherriff because he feared they were not; Claire

because, now that the news of the engagement was out, it seemed to

be everybody's aim to leave her alone with Mr Pickering, whose

undiluted society tended to pall. And Lord Wetherby was unhappy

because he found Eustace, the monkey, a perpetual strain upon his

artistic nerves. It was Eustace who had driven him to his shack in

the woods. He could have painted far more comfortably in the

house, but Eustace had developed a habit of stealing up to him and

plucking the leg of his trousers; and an artist simply cannot give

of his best with that sort of thing going on.

Lady Wetherby wrote on. She was not fond of letter-writing and she

had allowed her correspondence to accumulate; but she was

disposing of it in an energetic and conscientious way, when the

entrance of Wrench, the butler, interrupted her.

Wrench had been imported from England at the request of Lord

Wetherby, who had said that it soothed him and kept him from

feeling home-sick to see a butler about the place. Since then he

had been hanging to the establishment as it were by a hair. He

gave the impression of being always on the point of giving notice.

There were so many things connected with his position of which he

disapproved. He had made no official pronouncement of the matter,

but Lady Wetherby knew that he disapproved of her classical

dancing. His last position had been with the Dowager Duchess of

Waveney, the well-known political hostess, who--even had the

somewhat generous lines on which she was built not prevented the

possibility of such a thing--would have perished rather than dance

barefooted in a public restaurant. Wrench also disapproved of

America. That fact had been made plain immediately upon his

arrival in the country. He had given America one look, and then

his mind was made up--he disapproved of it.

'If you please, m'lady!'

Lady Wetherby turned. The butler was looking even more than

usually disapproving, and his disapproval had, so to speak,

crystallized, as if it had found some more concrete and definite

objective than either barefoot dancing or the United States.

'If you please, m'lady--the hape!'

It was Wrench's custom to speak of Eustace in a tone of restrained

disgust. He disapproved of Eustace. The Dowager Duchess of

Waveney, though she kept open house for members of Parliament,

would have drawn the line at monkeys.

'The hape is behaving very strange, m'lady,' said Wrench,

frostily.

It has been well said that in this world there is always

something. A moment before, Lady Wetherby had been feeling

completely contented, without a care on her horizon. It was

foolish of her to have expected such a state of things to last,

for what is life but a series of sharp corners, round each of

which Fate lies in wait for us with a stuffed eel-skin? Something

in the butler's manner, a sort of gloating gloom which he

radiated, told her that she had arrived at one of these corners

now.

'The hape is seated on the kitchen-sink, m'lady, throwing new-laid

eggs at the scullery-maid, and cook desired me to step up and ask

for instructions.'

'What!' Lady Wetherby rose in agitation. 'What's he doing that

for?' she asked, weakly.

A slight, dignified gesture was Wrench's only reply. It was not

his place to analyse the motives of monkeys.

'Throwing eggs!'

The sight of Lady Wetherby's distress melted the butler's stern

reserve. He unbent so far as to supply a clue.

'As I understand from cook, m'lady, the animal appears to have

taken umbrage at a lack of cordiality on the part of the cat. It

seems that the hape attempted to fondle the cat, but the latter

scratched him; being suspicious,' said Wrench, 'of his _bona

fides_.' He scrutinized the ceiling with a dull eye. 'Whereupon,'

he continued, 'he seized her tail and threw her with considerable

force. He then removed himself to the sink and began to hurl eggs

at the scullery-maid.'

Lady Wetherby's mental eye attempted to produce a picture of the

scene, but failed.

'I suppose I had better go down and see about it,' she said.

Wrench withdrew his gaze from the ceiling.

'I think it would be advisable, m'lady. The scullery-maid is

already in hysterics.'

Lady Wetherby led the way to the kitchen. She was wroth with

Eustace. This was just the sort of thing out of which Algie would

be able to make unlimited capital. It weakened her position with

Algie. There was only one thing to do--she must hush it up.

Her first glance, however, at the actual theatre of war gave her

the impression that matters had advanced beyond the hushing-up

stage. A yellow desolation brooded over the kitchen. It was not so

much a kitchen as an omelette. There were eggs everywhere, from

floor to ceiling. She crunched her way in on a carpet of oozing

shells.

Her entry was a signal for a renewal on a more impressive scale of

the uproar that she had heard while opening the door. The air was

full of voices. The cook was expressing herself in Norwegian, the

parlour-maid in what appeared to be Erse. On a chair in a corner

the scullery-maid sobbed and whooped. The odd-job man, who was a

baseball enthusiast, was speaking in terms of high praise of

Eustace's combined speed and control.

The only calm occupant of the room was Eustace himself, who,

either through a shortage of ammunition or through weariness of

the pitching-arm, had suspended active hostilities, and was now

looking down on the scene from a high shelf. There was a brooding

expression in his deep-set eyes. He massaged his right ear with

the sole of his left foot in a somewhat _distrait_ manner.

'Eustace!' cried Lady Wetherby, severely.

Eustace lowered his foot and gazed at her meditatively, then at

the odd-job man, then at the scullery-maid, whose voice rose high

above the din.

'I rather fancy, m'lady,' said Wrench, dispassionately, 'that the

animal is about to hurl a plate.'

It had escaped the notice of those present that the shelf on which

the rioter had taken refuge was within comfortable reach of the

dresser, but Eustace himself had not overlooked this important

strategic point. As the butler spoke, Eustace picked up a plate

and threw it at the scullery-maid, whom he seemed definitely to

have picked out as the most hostile of the allies. It was a fast

inshoot, and hit the wall just above her head.

''At-a-boy!' said the odd-job man, reverently.

Lady Wetherby turned on him with some violence. His detached

attitude was the most irritating of the many irritating aspects of

the situation. She paid this man a weekly wage to do odd jobs. The

capture of Eustace was essentially an odd job. Yet, instead of

doing it, he hung about with the air of one who has paid his

half-dollar and bought his bag of peanuts and has now nothing to

do but look on and enjoy himself.

'Why don't you catch him?' she cried.

The odd-job man came out of his trance. A sudden realization came

upon him that life was real and life was earnest, and that if he

did not wish to jeopardize a good situation he must bestir

himself. Everybody was looking at him expectantly. It seemed to be

definitely up to him. It was imperative that, whatever he did, he

should do it quickly. There was an apron hanging over the back of

a chair. More with the idea of doing something than because he

thought he would achieve anything definite thereby, he picked up

the apron and flung it at Eustace. Luck was with him. The apron

enveloped Eustace just as he was winding up for another inshoot

and was off his balance. He tripped and fell, clutched at the

apron to save himself, and came to the ground swathed in it,

giving the effect of an apron mysteriously endowed with life. The

triumphant odd-job man, pressing his advantage like a good

general, gathered up the ends, converted it into a rude bag, and

one more was added to the long list of the victories of the human

over the brute intelligence.

Everybody had a suggestion now. The cook advocated drowning. The

parlour-maid favoured the idea of hitting the prisoner with a

broom-handle. Wrench, eyeing the struggling apron disapprovingly,

mentioned that Mr Pickering had bought a revolver that morning.

'Put him in the coal-cellar,' said Lady Wetherby.

Wrench was more far-seeing.

'If I might offer the warning, m'lady,' said Wrench, 'not the

cellar. It is full of coal. It would be placing temptation in the

animal's way.'

The odd-job man endorsed this.

'Put him in the garage, then,' said Lady Wetherby.

The odd-job man departed, bearing his heaving bag at arm's length.

The cook and the parlour-maid addressed themselves to comforting

and healing the scullery-maid. Wrench went off to polish silver,

Lady Wetherby to resume her letters. The cat was the last of the

party to return to the normal. She came down from the chimney an

hour later covered with soot, demanding restoratives.

Lady Wetherby finished her letters. She cut them short, for

Eustace's insurgence had interfered with her flow of ideas. She

went into the drawing-room, where she found Roscoe Sherriff

strumming on the piano.

'Eustace has been raising Cain,' she said.

The Press-agent looked up hopefully. He had been wearing a rather

preoccupied air.

'How's that?' he asked.

'Throwing eggs and plates in the kitchen.'

The gleam of interest which had come into Roscoe Sherriff's face

died out.

'You couldn't get more than a fill-in at the bottom of a column on

that,' he said, regretfully. 'I'm a little disappointed in that

monk. I hoped he would pan out bigger. Well, I guess we've just

got to give him time. I have an idea that he'll set the house on

fire or do something with a punch like that one of these days. You

mustn't get discouraged. Why, that puma I made Valerie Devenish

keep looked like a perfect failure for four whole months. A child

could have played with it. Miss Devenish called me up on the

phone, I remember, and said she was darned if she was going to

spend the rest of her life maintaining an animal that might as

well be stuffed for all the liveliness it showed, and that she was

going right out to buy a white mouse instead. Fortunately, I

talked her round.

'A few weeks later she came round and thanked me with tears in her

eyes. The puma had suddenly struck real mid-season form. It clawed

the elevator-boy, bit a postman, held up the traffic for miles,

and was finally shot by a policeman. Why, for the next few days

there was nothing in the papers at all but Miss Devenish and her

puma. There was a war on at the time in Mexico or somewhere, and

we had it backed off the front page so far that it was over before

it could get back. So, you see, there's always hope. I've been

nursing the papers with bits about Eustace, so as to be ready for

the grand-stand play when it comes--and all we can do is to wait.

It's something if he's been throwing eggs. It shows he's waking

up.'

The door opened and Lord Wetherby entered. He looked fatigued. He

sank into a chair and sighed.

'I cannot get it,' he said. 'It eludes me.'

He lapsed into a sombre silence.

'What can't you get?' said Lady Wetherby, cautiously.

'The expression--the expression I want to get into the child's

eyes in my picture, "Innocence".'

'But you have got it.'

Lord Wetherby shook his head.

'Well, you had when I saw the picture,' persisted Lady Wetherby.

'This child you're painting has just joined the Black Hand. He

has been rushed in young over the heads of the waiting list

because his father had a pull. Naturally the kid wants to do

something to justify his election, and he wants to do it quick.

You have caught him at the moment when he sees an old gentleman

coming down the street and realizes that he has only got to sneak

up and stick his little knife--'

'My dear Polly, I welcome criticism, but this is more--'

Lady Wetherby stroked his coat-sleeve fondly.

'Never mind, Algie, I was only joking, precious. I thought the

picture was coming along fine when you showed it to me. I'll come

and take another look at it.'

Lord Wetherby shook his head.

'I should have a model. An artist cannot mirror Nature properly

without a model. I wish you would invite that child down here.'

'No, Algie, there are limits. I wouldn't have him within a mile

of the place.'

'Yet you keep Eustace.'

'Well, you made me engage Wrench. It's fifty-fifty. I wish you

wouldn't keep picking on Eustace, Algie dear. He does no harm. Mr

Sherriff and I were just saying how peaceable he is. He wouldn't

hurt--'

Claire came in.

'Polly,' she said, 'did you put that monkey of yours in the

garage? He's just bitten Dudley in the leg.'

Lord Wetherby uttered an exclamation.

'Now perhaps--'

'We went in just now to have a look at the car,' continued

Claire. 'Dudley wanted to show me the commutator on the exhaust-box

or the windscreen, or something, and he was just bending over

when Eustace jumped out from nowhere and pinned him. I'm afraid he

has taken it to heart rather.'

Roscoe Sherriff pondered.

'Is this worth half a column?' He shook his head. 'No, I'm afraid

not. The public doesn't know Pickering. If it had been Charlie

Chaplin or William J. Bryan, or someone on those lines, we could

have had the papers bringing out extras. You can visualize William

J. Bryan being bitten in the leg by a monkey. It hits you. But

Pickering! Eustace might just as well have bitten the leg of the

table!'

Lord Wetherby reasserted himself.

'Now that the animal has become a public menace--'

'He's nothing of the kind,' said Lady Wetherby. 'He's only a

little upset to-day.'

'Do you mean, Pauline, that even after this you will not get rid

of him?'

'Certainly not--poor dear!'

'Very well,' said Lord Wetherby, calmly. 'I give you warning that

if he attacks me I shall defend myself.'

He brooded. Lady Wetherby turned to Claire.

'What happened then? Did you shut the door of the garage?'

'Yes, but not until Eustace had got away. He slipped out like a

streak and disappeared. It was too dark to see which way he went.'

Dudley Pickering limped heavily into the room.

'I was just telling them about you and Eustace, Dudley.'

Mr Pickering nodded moodily. He was too full for words.

'I think Eustace must be mad,' said Claire.

Roscoe Sherriff uttered a cry of rapture.

'You've said it!' he exclaimed. 'I knew we should get action

sooner or later. It's the puma over again. Now we are all right.

Now I have something to work on. "Monkey Menaces Countryside."

"Long Island Summer Colony in Panic." "Mad Monkey Bites One--"'

A convulsive shudder galvanized Mr Pickering's portly frame.

'"Mad Monkey Terrorizes Long Island. One Dead!"' murmured Roscoe

Sherriff, wistfully. 'Do you feel a sort of shooting, Pickering--a

kind of burning sensation under the skin? Lady Wetherby, I guess

I'll be getting some of the papers on the phone. We've got a big

story.'

He hurried to the telephone, but it was some little time before he

could use it. Dudley Pickering was in possession, talking

earnestly to the local doctor.

It was Nutty Boyd's habit to retire immediately after dinner to

his bedroom. What he did there Elizabeth did not know. Sometimes

she pictured him reading, sometimes thinking. Neither supposition

was correct. Nutty never read. Newspapers bored him and books made

his head ache. And as for thinking, he had the wrong shape of

forehead. The nearest he ever got to meditation was a sort of

trance-like state, a kind of suspended animation in which his mind

drifted sluggishly like a log in a backwater. Nutty, it is

regrettable to say, went to his room after dinner for the purpose

of imbibing two or three surreptitious whiskies-and-sodas.

He behaved in this way, he told himself, purely in order to spare

Elizabeth anxiety. There had been in the past a fool of a doctor

who had prescribed total abstinence for Nutty, and Elizabeth knew

this. Therefore, Nutty held, to take the mildest of drinks with

her knowledge would have been to fill her with fears for his

safety. So he went to considerable inconvenience to keep the

matter from her notice, and thought rather highly of himself for

doing so.

It certainly was inconvenient--there was no doubt of that. It made

him feel like a cross between a hunted fawn and a burglar. But he

had to some extent diminished the possibility of surprise by

leaving his door open; and to-night he approached the cupboard

where he kept the materials for refreshment with a certain

confidence. He had left Elizabeth on the porch in a hammock,

apparently anchored for some time. Lord Dawlish was out in the

grounds somewhere. Presently he would come in and join Elizabeth

on the porch. The risk of interruption was negligible.

Nutty mixed himself a drink and settled down to brood bitterly, as

he often did, on the doctor who had made that disastrous

statement. Doctors were always saying things like that--sweeping

things which nervous people took too literally. It was true that

he had been in pretty bad shape at the moment when the words had

been spoken. It was just at the end of his Broadway career, when,

as he handsomely admitted, there was a certain amount of truth in

the opinion that his interior needed a vacation. But since then he

had been living in the country, breathing good air, taking things

easy. In these altered conditions and after this lapse of time it

was absurd to imagine that a moderate amount of alcohol could do

him any harm.

It hadn't done him any harm, that was the point. He had tested the

doctor's statement and found it incorrect. He had spent three

hectic days and nights in New York, and--after a reasonable

interval--had felt much the same as usual. And since then he had

imbibed each night, and nothing had happened. What it came to was

that the doctor was a chump and a blighter. Simply that and

nothing more.

Having come to this decision, Nutty mixed another drink. He went

to the head of the stairs and listened. He heard nothing. He

returned to his room.

Yes, that was it, the doctor was a chump. So far from doing him

any harm, these nightly potations brightened Nutty up, gave him

heart, and enabled him to endure life in this hole of a place. He

felt a certain scornful amusement. Doctors, he supposed, had to

get off that sort of talk to earn their money.

He reached out for the bottle, and as he grasped it his eye was

caught by something on the floor. A brown monkey with a long, grey

tail was sitting there staring at him.

There was one of those painful pauses. Nutty looked at the monkey

rather like an elongated Macbeth inspecting the ghost of Banquo.

The monkey looked at Nutty. The pause continued. Nutty shut his

eyes, counted ten slowly, and opened them.

The monkey was still there.

'Boo!' said Nutty, in an apprehensive undertone.

The monkey looked at him.

Nutty shut his eyes again. He would count sixty this time. A cold

fear had laid its clammy fingers on his heart. This was what that

doctor--not such a chump after all--must have meant!

Nutty began to count. There seemed to be a heavy lump inside him,

and his mouth was dry; but otherwise he felt all right. That was

the gruesome part of it--this dreadful thing had come upon him at

a moment when he could have sworn that he was sound as a bell. If

this had happened in the days when he ranged the Great White Way,

sucking up deleterious moisture like a cloud, it would have been

intelligible. But it had sneaked upon him like a thief in the

night; it had stolen unheralded into his life when he had

practically reformed. What was the good of practically reforming

if this sort of thing was going to happen to one?

'... Fifty-nine ... sixty.'

He opened his eyes. The monkey was still there, in precisely the

same attitude, as if it was sitting for its portrait. Panic surged

upon Nutty. He lost his head completely. He uttered a wild yell

and threw the bottle at the apparition.

Life had not been treating Eustace well that evening. He seemed to

have happened upon one of those days when everything goes wrong.

The cat had scratched him, the odd-job man had swathed him in an

apron, and now this stranger, in whom he had found at first a

pleasant restfulness, soothing after the recent scenes of violence

in which he had participated, did this to him. He dodged the

missile and clambered on to the top of the wardrobe. It was his

instinct in times of stress to seek the high spots. And then

Elizabeth hurried into the room.

Elizabeth had been lying in the hammock on the porch when her

brother's yell had broken forth. It was a lovely, calm, moonlight

night, and she had been revelling in the peace of it, when

suddenly this outcry from above had shot her out of her hammock

like an explosion. She ran upstairs, fearing she knew not what.

She found Nutty sitting on the bed, looking like an overwrought

giraffe.

'Whatever is the--?' she began; and then things began to impress

themselves on her senses.

The bottle which Nutty had thrown at Eustace had missed the

latter, but it had hit the wall, and was now lying in many pieces

on the floor, and the air was heavy with the scent of it. The

remains seemed to leer at her with a kind of furtive swagger,

after the manner of broken bottles. A quick thrill of anger ran

through Elizabeth. She had always felt more like a mother to Nutty

than a sister, and now she would have liked to exercise the

maternal privilege of slapping him.

'Nutty!'

'I saw a monkey!' said her brother, hollowly. 'I was standing over

there and I saw a monkey! Of course, it wasn't there really. I

flung the bottle at it, and it seemed to climb on to that

wardrobe.'

'This wardrobe?'

'Yes.'

Elizabeth struck it a resounding blow with the palm of her hand,

and Eustace's face popped over the edge, peering down anxiously.

'I can see it now,' said Nutty. A sudden, faint hope came to him.

'Can you see it?' he asked.

Elizabeth did not speak for a moment. This was an unusual

situation, and she was wondering how to treat it. She was sorry

for Nutty, but Providence had sent this thing and it would be

foolish to reject it. She must look on herself in the light of a

doctor. It would be kinder to Nutty in the end. She had the

feminine aversion from the lie deliberate. Her ethics on the

_suggestio falsi_ were weak. She looked at Nutty questioningly.

'See it?' she said.

'Don't you see a monkey on the top of the wardrobe?' said Nutty,

becoming more definite.

'There's a sort of bit of wood sticking out--'

Nutty sighed.

'No, not that. You didn't see it. I don't think you would.'

He spoke so dejectedly that for a moment Elizabeth weakened, but

only for an instant.

'Tell me all about this, Nutty,' she said.

Nutty was beyond the desire for evasion and concealment. His one

wish was to tell. He told all.

'But, Nutty, how silly of you!'

'Yes.'

'After what the doctor said.'

'I know.'

'You remember his telling you--'

'I know. Never again!'

'What do you mean?'

'I quit. I'm going to give it up.'

Elizabeth embraced him maternally.

'That's a good child!' she said. 'You really promise?'

'I don't have to promise, I'm just going to do it.'

Elizabeth compromised with her conscience by becoming soothing.

'You know, this isn't so very serious, Nutty, darling. I mean,

it's just a warning.'

'It's warned me all right.'

'You will be perfectly all right if--'

Nutty interrupted her.

'You're sure you can't see anything?'

'See what?'

Nutty's voice became almost apologetic.

'I know it's just imagination, but the monkey seems to me to be

climbing down from the wardrobe.'

'I can't see anything climbing down the wardrobe,' said Elizabeth,

as Eustace touched the floor.

'It's come down now. It's crossing the carpet.'

'Where?'

'It's gone now. It went out of the door.'

'Oh!'

'I say, Elizabeth, what do you think I ought to do?'

'I should go to bed and have a nice long sleep, and you'll feel--'

'Somehow I don't feel much like going to bed. This sort of thing

upsets a chap, you know.'

'Poor dear!'

'I think I'll go for a long walk.'

'That's a splendid idea.'

'I think I'd better do a good lot of walking from now on. Didn't

Chalmers bring down some Indian clubs with him? I think I'll

borrow them. I ought to keep out in the open a lot, I think. I

wonder if there's any special diet I ought to have. Well, anyway,

I'll be going for that walk.'

At the foot of the stairs Nutty stopped. He looked quickly into

the porch, then looked away again.

'What's the matter?' asked Elizabeth.

'I thought for a moment I saw the monkey sitting on the hammock.'

He went out of the house and disappeared from view down the drive,

walking with long, rapid strides.

Elizabeth's first act, when he had gone, was to fetch a banana

from the ice-box. Her knowledge of monkeys was slight, but she

fancied they looked with favour on bananas. It was her intention

to conciliate Eustace.

She had placed Eustace by now. Unlike Nutty, she read the papers,

and she knew all about Lady Wetherby and her pets. The fact that

Lady Wetherby, as she had been informed by the grocer in friendly

talk, had rented a summer house in the neighbourhood made

Eustace's identity positive.

She had no very clear plans as to what she intended to do with

Eustace, beyond being quite resolved that she was going to board

and lodge him for a few days. Nutty had had the jolt he needed,

but it might be that the first freshness of it would wear away, in

which event it would be convenient to have Eustace on the

premises. She regarded Eustace as a sort of medicine. A second

dose might not be necessary, but it was as well to have the

mixture handy. She took another banana, in case the first might

not be sufficient. She then returned to the porch.

Eustace was sitting on the hammock, brooding. The complexities of

life were weighing him down a good deal. He was not aware of

Elizabeth's presence until he found her standing by him. He had

just braced himself for flight, when he perceived that she bore

rich gifts.

Eustace was always ready for a light snack--readier now than

usual, for air and exercise had sharpened his appetite. He took

the banana in a detached manner, as it to convey the idea that it

did not commit him to any particular course of conduct. It was a

good banana, and he stretched out a hand for the other. Elizabeth

sat down beside him, but he did not move. He was convinced now of

her good intentions. It was thus that Lord Dawlish found them when

he came in from the garden.

'Where has your brother gone to?' he asked. 'He passed me just now

at eight miles an hour. Great Scot! What's that?'

'It's a monkey. Don't frighten him; he's rather nervous.'

She tickled Eustace under the ear, for their relations were now

friendly.

'Nutty went for a walk because he thought he saw it.'

'Thought he saw it?'

'Thought he saw it,' repeated Elizabeth, firmly. 'Will you

remember, Mr Chalmers, that, as far as he is concerned, this

monkey has no existence?'

'I don't understand.'

Elizabeth explained.

'You see now?'

'I see. But how long are you going to keep the animal?'

'Just a day or two--in case.'

'Where are you going to keep it?'

'In the outhouse. Nutty never goes there, it's too near the

bee-hives.'

'I suppose you don't know who the owner is?'

'Yes, I do; it must be Lady Wetherby.'

'Lady Wetherby!'

'She's a woman who dances at one of the restaurants. I read in a

Sunday paper about her monkey. She has just taken a house near

here. I don't see who else the animal could belong to. Monkeys are

rarities on Long Island.'

Bill was silent. 'Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose,

flushing his brow.' For days he had been trying to find an excuse

for calling on Lady Wetherby as a first step toward meeting Claire

again. Here it was. There would be no need to interfere with

Elizabeth's plans. He would be vague. He would say he had just

seen the runaway, but would not add where. He would create an

atmosphere of helpful sympathy. Perhaps, later on, Elizabeth would

let him take the monkey back.

'What are you thinking about?' asked Elizabeth.

'Oh, nothing,' said Bill.

'Perhaps we had better stow away our visitor for the night.'

'Yes.'

Elizabeth got up.

'Poor, dear Nutty may be coming back at any moment now,' she said.

But poor, dear Nutty did not return for a full two hours. When he

did he was dusty and tired, but almost cheerful.

'I didn't see the brute once all the time I was out,' he told

Elizabeth. 'Not once!'

Elizabeth kissed him fondly and offered to heat water for a bath;

but Nutty said he would take it cold. From now on, he vowed,

nothing but cold baths. He conveyed the impression of being a

blend of repentant sinner and hardy Norseman. Before he went to

bed he approached Bill on the subject of Indian clubs.

'I want to get myself into shape, old top,' he said.

'Yes?'

'I've got to cut it out--to-night I thought I saw a monkey.'

'Really?'

'As plain as I see you now.' Nutty gave the clubs a tentative

swing. 'What do you do with these darned things? Swing them about

and all that? All right, I see the idea. Good night.'

But Bill did not pass a good night. He lay awake long, thinking

over his plans for the morrow.

Lady Wetherby was feeling battered. She had not realized how

seriously Roscoe Sherriff took the art of publicity, nor what

would be the result of the half-hour he had spent at the telephone

on the night of the departure of Eustace.

Roscoe Sherriff's eloquence had fired the imagination of editors.

There had been a notable lack of interesting happenings this

summer. Nobody seemed to be striking or murdering or having

violent accidents. The universe was torpid. In these circumstances,

the escape of Eustace seemed to present possibilities. Reporters

had been sent down. There were three of them living in the house

now, and Wrench's air of disapproval was deepening every hour.

It was their strenuousness which had given Lady Wetherby that

battered feeling. There was strenuousness in the air, and she

resented it on her vacation. She had come to Long Island to

vegetate, and with all this going on round her vegetation was

impossible. She was not long alone. Wrench entered.

'A gentleman to see you, m'lady.'

In the good old days, when she had been plain Polly Davis, of the

personnel of the chorus of various musical comedies, Lady Wetherby

would have suggested a short way of disposing of this untimely

visitor; but she had a position to keep up now.

'From some darned paper?' she asked, wearily.

'No, m'lady. I fancy he is not connected with the Press.'

There was something in Wrench's manner that perplexed Lady

Wetherby, something almost human, as if Wrench were on the point

of coming alive. She did not guess it, but the explanation was

that Bill, quite unwittingly, had impressed Wrench. There was that

about Bill that reminded the butler of London and dignified

receptions at the house of the Dowager Duchess of Waveney. It was

deep calling unto deep.

'Where is he?'

'I have shown him into the drawing-room, m'lady.'

Lady Wetherby went downstairs and found a large young man awaiting

her, looking nervous.

Bill was feeling nervous. A sense of the ridiculousness of his

mission had come upon him. After all, he asked himself, what on

earth had he got to say? A presentiment had come upon him that he

was about to look a perfect ass. At the sight of Lady Wetherby his

nervousness began to diminish. Lady Wetherby was not a formidable

person. In spite of her momentary peevishness, she brought with

her an atmosphere of geniality and camaraderie.

'It's about your monkey,' he said, coming to the point at once.

Lady Wetherby brightened.

'Oh! Have you seen it?'

He was glad that she put it like that.

'Yes. It came round our way last night.'

'Where is that?'

'I am staying at a farm near here, a place they call Flack's. The

monkey got into one of the rooms.'

'Yes?'

'And then--er--then it got out again, don't you know.'

Lady Wetherby looked disappointed.

'So it may be anywhere now?' she said.

In the interests of truth, Bill thought it best to leave this

question unanswered.

'Well, it's very good of you to have bothered to come out and tell

me,' said Lady Wetherby. 'It gives us a clue, at any rate. Thank

you. At least, we know now in which direction it went.'

There was a pause. Bill gathered that the other was looking on the

interview as terminated, and that she was expecting him to go, and

he had not begun to say what he wanted to say. He tried to think

of a way of introducing the subject of Claire that should not seem

too abrupt.

'Er--' he said.

'Well?' said Lady Wetherby, simultaneously.

'I beg your pardon.'

'You have the floor,' said Lady Wetherby. 'Shoot!'

It was not what she had intended to say. For months she had been

trying to get out of the habit of saying that sort of thing, but

she still suffered relapses. Only the other day she had told

Wrench to check some domestic problem or other with his hat, and

he had nearly given notice. But if she had been intending to put

Bill at his ease she could not have said anything better.

'You have a Miss Fenwick staying with you, haven't you?' he said.

Lady Wetherby beamed.

'Do you know Claire?'

'Yes, rather!'

'She's my best friend. We used to be in the same company when I

was in England.'

'So she has told me.'

'She was my bridesmaid when I married Lord Wetherby.'

'Yes.'

Lady Wetherby was feeling perfectly happy now, and when Lady

Wetherby felt happy she always became garrulous. She was one of

those people who are incapable of looking on anybody as a stranger

after five minutes' acquaintance. Already she had begun to regard

Bill as an old friend.

'Those were great days,' she said, cheerfully. 'None of us had a

bean, and Algie was the hardest up of the whole bunch. After we

were married we went to the Savoy for the wedding-breakfast, and

when it was over and the waiter came with the check, Algie said he

was sorry, but he had had a bad week at Lincoln and hadn't the

price on him. He tried to touch me, but I passed. Then he had a go

at the best man, but the best man had nothing in the world but one

suit of clothes and a spare collar. Claire was broke, too, so the

end of it was that the best man had to sneak out and pawn my watch

and the wedding-ring.'

The room rang with her reminiscent laughter, Bill supplying a bass

accompaniment. Bill was delighted. He had never hoped that it

would be granted to him to become so rapidly intimate with

Claire's hostess. Why, he had only to keep the conversation in

this chummy vein for a little while longer and she would give him

the run of the house.

'Miss Fenwick isn't in now, I suppose?' he asked.

'No, Claire's out with Dudley Pickering. You don't know him, do

you?'

'No.'

'She's engaged to him.'

It is an ironical fact that Lady Wetherby was by nature one of the

firmest believers in existence in the policy of breaking things

gently to people. She had a big, soft heart, and she hated hurting

her fellows. As a rule, when she had bad news to impart to any one

she administered the blow so gradually and with such mystery as to

the actual facts that the victim, having passed through the

various stages of imagined horrors, was genuinely relieved, when

she actually came to the point, to find that all that had happened

was that he had lost all his money. But now in perfect innocence,

thinking only to pass along an interesting bit of information, she

had crushed Bill as effectively as if she had used a club for that

purpose.

'I'm tickled to death about it,' she went on, as it were over her

hearer's prostrate body. It was I who brought them together, you

know. I wrote telling Claire to come out here on the _Atlantic,_

knowing that Dudley was sailing on that boat. I had an idea they

would hit it off together. Dudley fell for her right away, and she

must have fallen for him, for they had only known each other

for a few weeks when they came and told me they were engaged.

It happened last Sunday.'

'Last Sunday!'

It had seemed to Bill a moment before that he would never again be

capable of speech, but this statement dragged the words out of

him. Last Sunday! Why, it was last Sunday that Claire had broken

off her engagement with him!

'Last Sunday at nine o'clock in the evening, with a full moon

shining and soft music going on off-stage. Real third-act stuff.'

Bill felt positively dizzy. He groped back in his memory for

facts. He had gone out for his walk after dinner. They had dined

at eight. He had been walking some time. Why, in Heaven's name,

this was the quickest thing in the amatory annals of civilization!

His brain was too numbed to work out a perfectly accurate

schedule, but it looked as if she must have got engaged to this

Pickering person before she met him, Bill, in the road that night.

'It's a wonderful match for dear old Claire,' resumed Lady

Wetherby, twisting the knife in the wound with a happy unconsciousness.

'Dudley's not only a corking good fellow, but he has thirty million

dollars stuffed away in the stocking and a business that brings him

in a perfectly awful mess of money every year. He's the Pickering of

the Pickering automobiles, you know.'

Bill got up. He stood for a moment holding to the back of his

chair before speaking. It was almost exactly thus that he had felt

in the days when he had gone in for boxing and had stopped

forceful swings with the more sensitive portions of his person.

'That--that's splendid!' he said. 'I--I think I'll be going.'

'I heard the car outside just now,' said Lady Wetherby. 'I think

it's probably Claire and Dudley come back. Won't you wait and see

her?'

Bill shook his head.

'Well, good-bye for the present, then. You must come round again.

Any friend of Claire's--and it was bully of you to bother about

looking in to tell of Eustace.'

Bill had reached the door. He was about to turn the handle when

someone turned it on the other side.

'Why, here is Dudley,' said Lady Wetherby. 'Dudley, this is a

friend of Claire's.'

Dudley Pickering was one of those men who take the ceremony of

introduction with a measured solemnity. It was his practice to

grasp the party of the second part firmly by the hand, hold it,

look into his eyes in a reverent manner, and get off some little

speech of appreciation, short but full of feeling. The opening

part of this ceremony he performed now. He grasped Bill's hand

firmly, held it, and looked into his eyes. And then, having

performed his business, he fell down on his lines. Not a word

proceeded from him. He dropped the hand and stared at Bill

amazedly and--more than that--with fear.

Bill, too, uttered no word. It was not one of those chatty

meetings.

But if they were short on words, both Bill and Mr Pickering were

long on looks. Bill stared at Mr Pickering. Mr Pickering stared at

Bill.

Bill was drinking in Mr Pickering. The stoutness of Mr Pickering--the

orderliness of Mr Pickering--the dullness of Mr Pickering--all these

things he perceived. And illumination broke upon him.

Mr Pickering was drinking in Bill. The largeness of Bill--the

embarrassment of Bill--the obvious villainy of Bill--none of these

things escaped his notice. And illumination broke upon him also.

For Dudley Pickering, in the first moment of their meeting, had

recognized Bill as the man who had been lurking in the grounds and

peering in at the window, the man at whom on the night when he had

become engaged to Claire he had shouted 'Hi!'

'Where's Claire, Dudley?' asked Lady Wetherby.

Mr Pickering withdrew his gaze reluctantly from Bill.

'Gone upstairs.'

I'll go and tell her that you're here, Mr--You never told me your

name.'

Bill came to life with an almost acrobatic abruptness. There were

many things of which at that moment he felt absolutely incapable,

and meeting Claire was one of them.

'No; I must be going,' he said, hurriedly. 'Good-bye.'

He came very near running out of the room. Lady Wetherby regarded

the practically slammed door with wide eyes.

'Quick exit of Nut Comedian!' she said. 'Whatever was the matter

with the man? He's scorched a trail in the carpet.'

Mr Pickering was trembling violently.

'Do you know who that was? He was the man!' said Mr Pickering.

'What man?'

'The man I caught looking in at the window that night!'

'What nonsense! You must be mistaken. He said he knew Claire quite

well.'

'But when you suggested that he should meet her he ran.'

This aspect of the matter had not occurred to Lady Wetherby.

'So he did!'

'What did he tell you that showed he knew Claire?'

'Well, now that I come to think of it, he didn't tell me anything.

I did the talking. He just sat there.'

Mr Pickering quivered with combined fear and excitement and

inductive reasoning.

'It was a trick!' he cried. 'Remember what Sherriff said that

night when I told you about finding the man looking in at the

window? He said that the fellow was spying round as a preliminary

move. To-day he trumps up an obviously false excuse for getting

into the house. Was he left alone in the rooms at all?'

'Yes. Wrench loosed him in here and then came up to tell me.'

'For several minutes, then, he was alone in the house. Why, he had

time to do all he wanted to do!'

'Calm down!'

'I am perfectly calm. But--'

'You've been seeing too many crook plays, Dudley. A man isn't

necessarily a burglar because he wears a decent suit of clothes.'

'Why was he lurking in the grounds that night?'

'You're just imagining that it was the same man.'

'I am absolutely positive it was the same man.'

'Well, we can easily settle one thing about him, at any rate. Here

comes Claire. Claire, old girl,' she said, as the door opened, 'do

you know a man named--Darn it! I never got his name, but he's--'

Claire stood in the doorway, looking from one to the other.

'What's the matter, Dudley?' she said.

'Dudley's gone clean up in the air,' explained Lady Wetherby,

tolerantly. 'A friend of yours called to tell me he had seen

Eustace--'

'So that was his excuse, was it?' said Dudley Pickering. 'Did he

say where Eustace was?'

'No; he said he had seen him; that was all.'

'An obviously trumped-up story. He had heard of Eustace's escape

and he knew that any story connected with him would be a passport

into the house.'

Lady Wetherby turned to Claire.

'You haven't told us yet if you know the man. He was a big, tall,

broad gazook,' said Lady Wetherby. 'Very English.'

'He faked the English,' said Dudley Pickering. 'That man was no

more an Englishman than I am.'

'Be patient with him, Claire,' urged Lady Wetherby. 'He's been

going to the movies too much, and thinks every man who has had his

trousers pressed is a social gangster. This man was the most

English thing I've ever seen--talked like this.'

She gave a passable reproduction of Bill's speech. Claire started.

'I don't know him!' she cried.

Her mind was in a whirl of agitation. Why had Bill come to the

house? What had he said? Had he told Dudley anything?

'I don't recognize the description,' she said, quickly. 'I don't

know anything about him.'

'There!' said Dudley Pickering, triumphantly.

'It's queer,' said Lady Wetherby. 'You're sure you don't know him,

Claire?'

'Absolutely sure.'

'He said he was living at a place near here, called Flack's.'

'I know the place,' said Dudley Pickering. 'A sinister, tumbledown

sort of place. Just where a bunch of crooks would be living.'

'I thought it was a bee-farm,' said Lady Wetherby. 'One of the

tradesmen told me about it. I saw a most corkingly pretty girl

bicycling down to the village one morning, and they told me she

was named Boyd and kept a bee-farm at Flack's.'

'A blind!' said Mr Pickering, stoutly. 'The girl's the man's

accomplice. It's quite easy to see the way they work. The girl

comes and settles in the place so that everybody knows her. That's

to lull suspicion. Then the man comes down for a visit and goes

about cleaning up the neighbouring houses. You can't get away from

the fact that this summer there have been half a dozen burglaries

down here, and nobody has found out who did them.'

Lady Wetherby looked at him indulgently.

'And now,' she said, 'having got us scared stiff, what are you

going to do about it?'

'I am going,' he said, with determination, 'to take steps.'

He went out quickly, the keen, tense man of affairs.

'Bless him!' said Lady Wetherby. 'I'd no idea your Dudley had so

much imagination, Claire. He's a perfect bomb-shell.'

Claire laughed shakily.

'It is odd, though,' said Lady Wetherby, meditatively, 'that this

man should have said that he knew you, when you don't--'

Claire turned impulsively.

'Polly, I want to tell you something. Promise you won't tell

Dudley. I wasn't telling the truth just now. I do know this man. I

was engaged to him once.'

'What!'

'For goodness' sake don't tell Dudley!'

'But--'

'It's all over now; but I used to be engaged to him.'

'Not when I was in England?'

'No, after that.'

'Then he didn't know you are engaged to Dudley now?'

'N-no. I--I haven't seen him for a long time.'

Lady Wetherby looked remorseful.

'Poor man! I must have given him a jolt! But why didn't you tell

me about him before?'

'Oh, I don't know.'

'Oh, well, I'm not inquisitive. There's no rubber in my

composition. It's your affair.'

'You won't tell Dudley?'

'Of course not. But why not? You've nothing to be ashamed of.'

'No; but--'

'Well, I won't tell him, anyway. But I'm glad you told me about

him. Dudley was so eloquent about burglars that he almost had me

going. I wonder where he rushed off to?'

Dudley Pickering had rushed off to his bedroom, and was examining

a revolver there. He examined it carefully, keenly. Preparedness

was Dudley Pickering's slogan. He looked rather like a stout

sheriff in a film drama.

In the interesting land of India, where snakes abound and

scorpions are common objects of the wayside, a native who has had

the misfortune to be bitten by one of the latter pursues an

admirably common-sense plan. He does not stop to lament, nor does

he hang about analysing his emotions. He runs and runs and runs,

and keeps on running until he has worked the poison out of his

system. Not until then does he attempt introspection.

Lord Dawlish, though ignorant of this fact, pursued almost

identically the same policy. He did not run on leaving Lady

Wetherby's house, but he took a very long and very rapid walk,

than which in times of stress there are few things of greater

medicinal value to the human mind. To increase the similarity, he

was conscious of a curious sense of being poisoned. He felt

stifled--in want of air.

Bill was a simple young man, and he had a simple code of ethics.

Above all things he prized and admired and demanded from his

friends the quality of straightness. It was his one demand. He had

never actually had a criminal friend, but he was quite capable of

intimacy with even a criminal, provided only that there was

something spacious about his brand of crime and that it did not

involve anything mean or underhand. It was the fact that Mr

Breitstein whom Claire had wished him to insinuate into his club,

though acquitted of actual crime, had been proved guilty of

meanness and treachery, that had so prejudiced Bill against him.

The worst accusation that he could bring against a man was that he

was not square, that he had not played the game.

Claire had not been square. It was that, more than the shock of

surprise of Lady Wetherby's news, that had sent him striding along

the State Road at the rate of five miles an hour, staring before

him with unseeing eyes. A sudden recollection of their last

interview brought a dull flush to Bill's face and accelerated his

speed. He felt physically ill.

It was not immediately that he had arrived at even this sketchy

outline of his feelings. For perhaps a mile he walked as the

scorpion-stung natives run--blindly, wildly, with nothing in his

mind but a desire to walk faster and faster, to walk as no man had

ever walked before. And then--one does not wish to be unduly

realistic, but the fact is too important to be ignored--he began

to perspire. And hard upon that unrefined but wonder-working flow

came a certain healing of spirit. Dimly at first but every moment

more clearly, he found it possible to think.

In a man of Bill's temperament there are so many qualities wounded

by a blow such as he had received, that it is hardly surprising

that his emotions, when he began to examine them, were mixed. Now

one, now another, of his wounds presented itself to his notice.

And then individual wounds would become difficult to distinguish

in the mass of injuries. Spiritually, he was in the position of a

man who has been hit simultaneously in a number of sensitive spots

by a variety of hard and hurtful things. He was as little able,

during the early stages of his meditations, to say where he was

hurt most as a man who had been stabbed in the back, bitten in the

ankle, hit in the eye, smitten with a blackjack, and kicked on the

shin in the same moment of time. All that such a man would be able

to say with certainty would be that unpleasant things had happened

to him; and that was all that Bill was able to say.

Little by little, walking swiftly the while, he began to make a

rough inventory. He sorted out his injuries, catalogued them. It

was perhaps his self-esteem that had suffered least of all, for he

was by nature modest. He had a savage humility, valuable in a

crisis of this sort.

But he looked up to Claire. He had thought her straight. And all

the time that she had been saying those things to him that night

of their last meeting she had been engaged to another man, a fat,

bald, doddering, senile fool, whose only merit was his money.

Scarcely a fair description of Mr Pickering, but in a man in

Bill's position a little bias is excusable.

Bill walked on. He felt as if he could walk for ever. Automobiles

whirred past, hooting peevishly, but he heeded them not. Dogs

trotted out to exchange civilities, but he ignored them. The

poison in his blood drove him on.

And then quite suddenly and unexpectedly the fever passed. Almost

in mid-stride he became another man, a healed, sane man, keenly

aware of a very vivid thirst and a desire to sit down and rest

before attempting the ten miles of cement road that lay between

him and home. Half an hour at a wayside inn completed the cure. It

was a weary but clear-headed Bill who trudged back through the

gathering dusk.

He found himself thinking of Claire as of someone he had known

long ago, someone who had never touched his life. She seemed so

far away that he wondered how she could ever have affected him for

pain or pleasure. He looked at her across a chasm. This is the

real difference between love and infatuation, that infatuation

can be slain cleanly with a single blow. In the hour of clear

vision which had come to him, Bill saw that he had never loved

Claire. It was her beauty that had held him, that and the appeal

which her circumstances had made to his pity. Their minds had not

run smoothly together. Always there had been something that

jarred, a subtle antagonism. And she was crooked.

Almost unconsciously his mind began to build up an image of the

ideal girl, the girl he would have liked Claire to be, the girl

who would conform to all that he demanded of woman. She would be

brave. He realized now that, even though it had moved his pity,

Claire's querulousness had offended something in him.

He had made allowances for her, but the ideal girl would have had

no need of allowances. The ideal girl would be plucky, cheerfully

valiant, a fighter. She would not admit the existence of hard

luck.

She would be honest. Here, too, she would have no need of allowances.

No temptation would be strong enough to make her do a mean act or

think a mean thought, for her courage would give her strength, and

her strength would make her proof against temptation. She would be

kind. That was because she would also be extremely intelligent,

and, being extremely intelligent, would have need of kindness to

enable her to bear with a not very intelligent man like himself.

For the rest, she would be small and alert and pretty, and fair

haired--and brown-eyed--and she would keep a bee farm and her name

would be Elizabeth Boyd.

Having arrived with a sense of mild astonishment at this

conclusion, Bill found, also to his surprise, that he had walked

ten miles without knowing it and that he was turning in at the

farm gate. Somebody came down the drive, and he saw that it was

Elizabeth.

She hurried to meet him, small and shadowy in the uncertain light.

James, the cat, stalked rheumatically at her side. She came up to

Bill, and he saw that her face wore an anxious look. He gazed at

her with a curious feeling that it was a very long time since he

had seen her last.

'Where have you been?' she said, her voice troubled. 'I couldn't

think what had become of you.'

'I went for a walk.'

'But you've been gone hours and hours.'

'I went to a place called Morrisville.'

'Morrisville!' Elizabeth's eyes opened wide. 'Have you walked

twenty miles?'

'Why, I--I believe I have.'

It was the first time he had been really conscious of it.

Elizabeth looked at him in consternation. Perhaps it was the

association in her mind of unexpected walks with the newly-born

activities of the repentant Nutty that gave her the feeling that

there must be some mental upheaval on a large scale at the back of

this sudden ebullition of long-distance pedestrianism. She

remembered that the thought had come to her once or twice during

the past week that all was not well with her visitor, and that he

had seemed downcast and out of spirits.

She hesitated.

'Is anything the matter, Mr Chalmers?'

'No,' said Bill, decidedly. He would have found a difficulty in

making that answer with any ring of conviction earlier in the day,

but now it was different. There was nothing whatever the matter

with him now. He had never felt happier.

'You're sure?'

'Absolutely. I feel fine.'

'I thought--I've been thinking for some days--that you might be in

trouble of some sort.'

Bill swiftly added another to that list of qualities which he had

been framing on his homeward journey. That girl of his would be

angelically sympathetic.

'It's awfully good of you,' he said, 'but honestly I feel like--I

feel great.'

The little troubled look passed from Elizabeth's face. Her eyes

twinkled.

'You're really feeling happy?'

'Tremendously.'

'Then let me damp you. We're in an awful fix!'

'What! In what way?'

'About the monkey.'

'Has he escaped?'

'That's the trouble--he hasn't.'

'I don't understand.'

'Come and sit down and I'll tell you. It's a shame to keep you

standing after your walk.'

They made their way to the massive stone seat which Mr Flack, the

landlord, had bought at a sale and dumped in a moment of

exuberance on the farm grounds.

'This is the most hideous thing on earth,' said Elizabeth

casually, 'but it will do to sit on. Now tell me: why did you go

to Lady Wetherby's this afternoon?'

It was all so remote, it seemed so long ago that he had wanted to

find an excuse for meeting Claire again, that for a moment Bill

hesitated in actual perplexity, and before he could speak Elizabeth

had answered the question for him.

'I suppose you went out of kindness of heart to relieve the poor

lady's mind,' she said. 'But you certainly did the wrong thing.

You started something!'

'I didn't tell her the animal was here.'

'What did you tell her?'

'I said I had seen it, don't you know.'

'That was enough.'

'I'm awfully sorry.'

'Oh, we shall pull through all right, but we must act at once. We

must be swift and resolute. We must saddle our chargers and up and

away, and all that sort of thing. Show a flash of speed,' she

explained kindly, at the sight of Bill's bewildered face.

'But what has happened?'

'The press is on our trail. I've been interviewing reporters all

the afternoon.'

'Reporters!'

'Millions of them. The place is alive with them. Keen, hatchet-faced

young men, and every one of them was the man who really unravelled

some murder mystery or other, though the police got the credit for

it. They told me so.'

'But, I say, how on earth--'

'--did they get here? I suppose Lady Wetherby invited them.'

'But why?'

'She wants the advertisement, of course. I know it doesn't sound

sensational--a lost monkey; but when it's a celebrity's lost

monkey it makes a difference. Suppose King George had lost a

monkey; wouldn't your London newspapers give it a good deal of

space? Especially if it had thrown eggs at one of the ladies and

bitten the Duke of Norfolk in the leg? That's what our visitor has

been doing apparently. At least, he threw eggs at the scullery-maid

and bit a millionaire. It's practically the same thing. At any

rate, there it is. The newspaper men are here, and they seem

to regard this farm as their centre of operations. I had the

greatest difficulty in inducing them to go home to their well-earned

dinners. They wanted to camp out on the place. As it is, there may

still be some of them round, hiding in the grass with notebooks,

and telling one another in whispers that they were the men who

really solved the murder mystery. What shall we do?'

Bill had no suggestions.

'You realize our position? I wonder if we could be arrested for

kidnapping. The monkey is far more human than most of the

millionaire children who get kidnapped. It's an awful fix. Did you

know that Lady Wetherby is going to offer a reward for the

animal?'

'No, really?'

'Five hundred dollars!'

'Surely not!'

'She is. I suppose she feels she can charge it up to necessary

expenses for publicity and still be ahead of the game, taking into

account the advertising she's going to get.'

'She said nothing about that when I saw her.'

'No, because it won't be offered until to-morrow or the day after.

One of the newspaper men told me that. The idea is, of course, to

make the thing exciting just when it would otherwise be dying as a

news item. Cumulative interest. It's a good scheme, too, but it

makes it very awkward for me. I don't want to be in the position

of keeping a monkey locked up with the idea of waiting until

somebody starts a bull market in monkeys. I consider that that

sort of thing would stain the spotless escutcheon of the Boyds. It

would be a low trick for that old-established family to play. Not

but what poor, dear Nutty would do it like a shot,' she concluded

meditatively.

Bill was impressed.

'It does make it awkward, what?'

'It makes it more than awkward, what! Take another aspect of the

situation. The night before last my precious Nutty, while ruining

his constitution with the demon rum, thought he saw a monkey that

wasn't there, and instantly resolved to lead a new and better

life. He hates walking, but he has now begun to do his five miles

a day. He loathes cold baths, but he now wallows in them. I don't

know his views on Indian clubs, but I should think that he has a

strong prejudice against them, too, but now you can't go near him

without taking a chance of being brained. Are all these good

things to stop as quickly as they began? If I know Nutty, he would

drop them exactly one minute after he heard that it was a real

monkey he saw that night. And how are we to prevent his hearing?

By a merciful miracle he was out taking his walk when the

newspaper men began to infest the place to-day, but that might not

happen another time. What conclusion does all this suggest to you,

Mr Chalmers?'

'We ought to get rid of the animal.'

'This very minute. But don't you bother to come. You must be tired

out, poor thing.'

'I never felt less tired,' said Bill stoutly.

Elizabeth looked at him in silence for a moment.

'You're rather splendid, you know, Mr Chalmers. You make a great

partner for an adventure of this kind. You're nice and solid.'

The outhouse lay in the neighbourhood of the hives, a gaunt,

wooden structure surrounded by bushes. Elizabeth glanced over her

shoulder as she drew the key from her pocket.

'You can't think how nervous I was this afternoon,' she said. 'I

thought every moment one of those newspaper men would look in

here. I--James! James! I thought I heard James in those bushes--I

kept heading them away. Once I thought it was all up.' She

unlocked the door. 'One of them was about a yard from the window,

just going to look in. Thank goodness, a bee stung him at the

psychological moment, and--Oh!'

'What's the matter?'

'Come and get a banana.'

They walked to the house. On the way Elizabeth stopped.

'Why, you haven't had any dinner either!' she said.

'Never mind me,' said Bill, 'I can wait. Let's get this thing

finished first.'

'You really are a sport, Mr Chalmers,' said Elizabeth gratefully.

'It would kill me to wait a minute. I shan't feel happy until I've

got it over. Will you stay here while I go up and see that Nutty's

safe in his room?' she added as they entered the house.

She stopped abruptly. A feline howl had broken the stillness of

the night, followed instantly by a sharp report.

'What was that?'

'It sounded like a car backfiring.'

'No, it was a shot. One of the neighbours, I expect. You can hear

miles away on a night like this. I suppose a cat was after his

chickens. Thank goodness, James isn't a pirate cat. Wait while I

go up and see Nutty.'

She was gone only a moment.

'It's all right,' she said. 'I peeped in. He's doing deep

breathing exercises at his window which looks out the other way.

Come along.'

When they reached the outhouse they found the door open.

'Did you do that?' said Elizabeth. 'Did you leave it open?'

'No.'

'I don't remember doing it myself. It must have swung open. Well,

this saves us a walk. He'll have gone.'

'Better take a look round, what?'

'Yes, I suppose so; but he's sure not to be there. Have you a

match?'

Bill struck one and held it up.

'Good Lord!'

The match went out.

'What is it? What has happened?'

Bill was fumbling for another match.

'There's something on the floor. It looks like--I thought for a

minute--' The small flame shot out of the gloom, flickered, then

burned with a steady glow. Bill stooped, bending over something on

the ground. The match burned down.

Bill's voice came out of the darkness:

'I say, you were right about that noise. It was a shot. The poor

little chap's down there on the floor with a hole in him the size

of my fist.'

Boyhood, like measles, is one of those complaints which a man

should catch young and have done with, for when it comes in

middle life it is apt to be serious. Dudley Pickering had escaped

boyhood at the time when his contemporaries were contracting it.

It is true that for a few years after leaving the cradle he had

exhibited a certain immatureness, but as soon as he put on

knickerbockers and began to go about a little he outgrew all that.

He avoided altogether the chaotic period which usually lies

between the years of ten and fourteen. At ten he was a thoughtful

and sober-minded young man, at fourteen almost an old fogy.

And now--thirty-odd years overdue--boyhood had come upon him. As

he examined the revolver in his bedroom, wild and unfamiliar

emotions seethed within him. He did not realize it, but they were

the emotions which should have come to him thirty years before and

driven him out to hunt Indians in the garden. An imagination which

might well have become atrophied through disuse had him as

thoroughly in its control as ever he had had his Pickering Giant.

He believed almost with devoutness in the plot which he had

detected for the spoliation of Lord Wetherby's summer-house, that

plot of which he held Lord Dawlish to be the mainspring. And it

must be admitted that circumstances had combined to help his

belief. If the atmosphere in which he was moving was not sinister

then there was no meaning in the word.

Summer homes had been burgled, there was no getting away from

that--half a dozen at least in the past two months. He was a

stranger in the locality, so had no means of knowing that summer

homes were always burgled on Long Island every year, as regularly

as the coming of the mosquito and the advent of the jelly-fish. It

was one of the local industries. People left summer homes lying

about loose in lonely spots, and you just naturally got in through

the cellar window. Such was the Long Islander's simple creed.

This created in Mr Pickering's mind an atmosphere of burglary, a

receptiveness, as it were, toward burglars as phenomena, and the

extremely peculiar behaviour of the person whom in his thoughts he

always referred to as The Man crystallized it. He had seen The Man

hanging about, peering in at windows. He had shouted 'Hi!' and The

Man had run. The Man had got into the house under the pretence of

being a friend of Claire's. At the suggestion that he should meet

Claire he had dashed away in a panic. And Claire, both then and

later, had denied absolutely any knowledge of him.

As for the apparently blameless beekeeping that was going on at

the place where he lived, that was easily discounted. Mr Pickering

had heard somewhere or read somewhere--he rather thought that it

was in those interesting but disturbing chronicles of Raffles--that

the first thing an intelligent burglar did was to assume some

open and innocent occupation to avert possible inquiry into his

real mode of life. Mr Pickering did not put it so to himself, for

he was rarely slangy even in thought, but what he felt was that he

had caught The Man and his confederate with the goods.

If Mr Pickering had had his boyhood at the proper time and

finished with it, he would no doubt have acted otherwise than he

did. He would have contented himself with conducting a war of

defence. He would have notified the police, and considered that

all that remained for him personally to do was to stay in his room

at night with his revolver. But boys will be boys. The only course

that seemed to him in any way satisfactory in this his hour of

rejuvenation was to visit the bee farm, the hotbed of crime, and

keep an eye on it. He wanted to go there and prowl.

He did not anticipate any definite outcome of his visit. In his

boyish, elemental way he just wanted to take a revolver and a

pocketful of cartridges, and prowl.

It was a great night for prowling. A moon so little less than full

that the eye could barely detect its slight tendency to become

concave, shone serenely, creating a desirable combination of black

shadows where the prowler might hide and great stretches of light

in which the prowler might reveal his wickedness without disguise.

Mr Pickering walked briskly along the road, then less briskly as

he drew nearer the farm. An opportune belt of shrubs that ran from

the gate adjoining the road to a point not far from the house gave

him just the cover he needed. He slipped into this belt of shrubs

and began to work his way through them.

Like generals, authors, artists, and others who, after planning

broad effects, have to get down to the detail work, he found that

this was where his troubles began. He had conceived the journey

through the shrubbery in rather an airy mood. He thought he would

just go through the shrubbery. He had not taken into account the

branches, the thorns, the occasional unexpected holes, and he was

both warm and dishevelled when he reached the end of it and found

himself out in the open within a short distance of what he

recognized as beehives. It was not for some time that he was able

to give that selfless attention to exterior objects which is the

prowler's chief asset. For quite a while the only thought of which

he was conscious was that what he needed most was a cold drink and

a cold bath. Then, with a return to clear-headedness, he realized

that he was standing out in the open, visible from three sides to

anyone who might be in the vicinity, and he withdrew into the

shrubbery. He was not fond of the shrubbery, but it was a splendid

place to withdraw into. It swallowed you up.

This was the last move of the first part of Mr Pickering's active

campaign. He stayed where he was, in the middle of a bush, and

waited for the enemy to do something. What he expected him to do

he did not know. The subconscious thought that animated him was

that on a night like this something was bound to happen sooner or

later. Just such a thought on similarly stimulating nights had

animated men of his acquaintance thirty years ago, men who were

as elderly and stolid and unadventurous now as Mr Pickering had

been then. He would have resented the suggestion profoundly, but

the truth of the matter was that Dudley Pickering, after a late

start, had begun to play Indians.

Nothing had happened for a long time--for such a long time that,

in spite of the ferment within him, Mr Pickering almost began to

believe that nothing would happen. The moon shone with unutterable

calm. The crickets and the tree frogs performed their interminable

duet, apparently unconscious that they were attacking it in

different keys--a fact that, after a while, began to infuriate

Mr Pickering. Mosquitoes added their reedy tenor to the concert.

A twig on which he was standing snapped with a report like a pistol.

The moon went on shining.

Away in the distance a dog began to howl. An automobile passed in

the road. For a few moments Mr Pickering was able to occupy

himself pleasantly with speculations as to its make; and then he

became aware that something was walking down the back of his neck

just beyond the point where his fingers could reach it. Discomfort

enveloped Mr Pickering. At various times by day he had seen

long-winged black creatures with slim waists and unpleasant faces.

Could it be one of these? Or a caterpillar? Or--and the maddening

thing was that he did not dare to slap at it, for who knew what

desperate characters the sound might not attract?

Well, it wasn't stinging him; that was something.

A second howling dog joined the first one. A wave of sadness was

apparently afflicting the canine population of the district to-night.

Mr Pickering's vitality began to ebb. He was ageing, and

imagination slackened its grip. And then, just as he had begun to

contemplate the possibility of abandoning the whole adventure and

returning home, he was jerked back to boyhood again by the sound

of voices.

He shrank farther back into the bushes. A man--The Man--was

approaching, accompanied by his female associate. They passed so

close to him that he could have stretched out a hand and touched

them.

The female associate was speaking, and her first words set all Mr

Pickering's suspicions dancing a dance of triumph. The girl gave

herself away with her opening sentence.

'You can't think how nervous I was this afternoon,' he heard her

say. She had a soft pleasant voice; but soft, pleasant voices may

be the vehicles for conveying criminal thoughts. 'I thought every

moment one of those newspaper men would look in here.'

Where was here? Ah, that outhouse! Mr Pickering had had his

suspicions of that outhouse already. It was one of those

structures that look at you furtively as if something were hiding

in them.

'James! James! I thought I heard James in those bushes.'

The girl was looking straight at the spot occupied by Mr

Pickering, and it had been the start caused by her first words and

the resultant rustle of branches that had directed her attention

to him. He froze. The danger passed. She went on speaking. Mr

Pickering pondered on James. Who was James? Another of the gang,

of course. How many of them were there?

'Once I thought it was all up. One of them was about a yard from

the window, just going to look in.'

Mr Pickering thrilled. There was something hidden in the outhouse,

then! Swag?

'Thank goodness, a bee stung him at the psychological moment,

and--oh!'

She stopped, and The Man spoke:

'What's the matter?'

It interested Mr Pickering that The Man retained his English

accent even when talking privately with his associates. For

practice, no doubt.

'Come and get a banana,' said the girl. And they went off together

in the direction of the house, leaving Mr Pickering bewildered.

Why a banana? Was it a slang term of the underworld for a pistol?

It must be that.

But he had no time for speculation. Now was his chance, the only

chance he would ever get of looking into that outhouse and finding

out its mysterious contents. He had seen the girl unlock the door.

A few steps would take him there. All it needed was nerve. With a

strong effort Mr Pickering succeeded in obtaining the nerve. He

burst from his bush and trotted to the outhouse door, opened it,

and looked in. And at that moment something touched his leg.

At the right time and in the right frame of mind man is capable of

stoic endurances that excite wonder and admiration. Mr Pickering

was no weakling. He had once upset his automobile in a ditch, and

had waited for twenty minutes until help came to relieve a broken

arm, and he had done it without a murmur. But on the present

occasion there was a difference. His mind was not adjusted for the

occurrence. There are times when it is unseasonable to touch a man

on the leg. This was a moment when it was unseasonable in the case

of Mr Pickering. He bounded silently into the air, his whole being

rent asunder as by a cataclysm.

He had been holding his revolver in his hand as a protection

against nameless terrors, and as he leaped he pulled the trigger.

Then with the automatic instinct for self-preservation, he sprang

back into the bushes, and began to push his way through them until

he had reached a safe distance from the danger zone.

James, the cat, meanwhile, hurt at the manner in which his

friendly move had been received, had taken refuge on the outhouse

roof. He mewed complainingly, a puzzled note in his voice. Mr

Pickering's behaviour had been one of those things that no fellow

can understand. The whole thing seemed inexplicable to James.

Lord Dawlish stood in the doorway of the outhouse, holding the

body of Eustace gingerly by the tail. It was a solemn moment.

There was no room for doubt as to the completeness of the

extinction of Lady Wetherby's pet.

Dudley Pickering's bullet had done its lethal work. Eustace's

adventurous career was over. He was through.

Elizabeth's mouth was trembling, and she looked very white in the

moonlight. Being naturally soft-hearted, she deplored the tragedy

for its own sake; and she was also, though not lacking in courage,

decidedly upset by the discovery that some person unknown had been

roaming her premises with a firearm.

'Oh, Bill!' she said. Then: 'Poor little chap!' And then: 'Who

could have done it?'

Lord Dawlish did not answer. His whole mind was occupied at the

moment with the contemplation of the fact that she had called him

Bill. Then he realized that she had spoken three times and

expected a reply.

'Who could have done it?'

Bill pondered. Never a quick thinker, the question found him

unprepared.

'Some fellow, I expect,' he said at last brightly. 'Got in, don't

you know, and then his pistol went off by accident.'

'But what was he doing with a pistol?'

Bill looked a little puzzled at this.

'Why, he would have a pistol, wouldn't he? I thought everybody

had over here.'

Except for what he had been able to observe during the brief

period of his present visit, Lord Dawlish's knowledge of the

United States had been derived from the American plays which he

had seen in London, and in these chappies were producing revolvers

all the time. He had got the impression that a revolver was as

much a part of the ordinary well-dressed man's equipment in the

United States as a collar.

'I think it was a burglar,' said Elizabeth. 'There have been a lot

of burglaries down here this summer.'

'Would a burglar burgle the outhouse? Rummy idea, rather, what?

Not much sense in it. I think it must have been a tramp. I expect

tramps are always popping about and nosing into all sorts of

extraordinary places, you know.'

'He must have been standing quite close to us while we were

talking,' said Elizabeth, with a shiver.

Bill looked about him. Everywhere was peace. No sinister sounds

competed with the croaking of the tree frogs. No alien figures

infested the landscape. The only alien figure, that of Mr

Pickering, was wedged into a bush, invisible to the naked eye.

'He's gone now, at any rate,' he said. 'What are we going to do?'

Elizabeth gave another shiver as she glanced hurriedly at the

deceased. After life's fitful fever Eustace slept well, but he was

not looking his best.

'With--it?' she said.

'I say,' advised Bill, 'I shouldn't call him "it," don't you know.

It sort of rubs it in. Why not "him"? I suppose we had better bury

him. Have you a spade anywhere handy?'

'There isn't a spade on the place.'

Bill looked thoughtful.

'It takes weeks to make a hole with anything else, you know,' he

said. 'When I was a kid a friend of mine bet me I wouldn't dig my

way through to China with a pocket knife. It was an awful frost. I

tried for a couple of days, and broke the knife and didn't get

anywhere near China.' He laid the remains on the grass and

surveyed them meditatively. 'This is what fellows always run up

against in the detective novels--What to Do With the Body. They

manage the murder part of it all right, and then stub their toes

on the body problem.'

'I wish you wouldn't talk as if we had done a murder.'

'I feel as if we had, don't you?'

'Exactly.'

'I read a story once where a fellow slugged somebody and melted

the corpse down in a bath tub with sulphuric--'

'Stop! You're making me sick!'

'Only a suggestion, don't you know,' said Bill apologetically.

'Well, suggest something else, then.'

'How about leaving him on Lady Wetherby's doorstep? See what I

mean--let them take him in with the morning milk? Or, if you would

rather ring the bell and go away, and--you don't think much of

it?'

'I simply haven't the nerve to do anything so risky.'

'Oh, I would do it. There would be no need for you to come.'

'I wouldn't dream of deserting you.'

'That's awfully good of you.'

'Besides, I'm not going to be left alone to-night until I can jump

into my little white bed and pull the clothes over my head. I'm

scared, I'm just boneless with fright. And I wouldn't go anywhere

near Lady Wetherby's doorstep with it.'

'Him.'

'It's no use, I can't think of it as "him." It's no good asking me

to.'

Bill frowned thoughtfully.

'I read a story once where two chappies wanted to get rid of a

body. They put it inside a fellow's piano.'

'You do seem to have read the most horrible sort of books.'

'I rather like a bit of blood with my fiction,' said Bill. 'What

about this piano scheme I read about?'

'People only have talking machines in these parts.'

'I read a story--'

'Let's try to forget the stories you've read. Suggest something of

your own.'

'Well, could we dissect the little chap?'

'Dissect him?'

'And bury him in the cellar, you know. Fellows do it to their

wives.'

Elizabeth shuddered.

'Try again,' she said.

'Well, the only other thing I can think of is to take him into the

woods and leave him there. It's a pity we can't let Lady Wetherby

know where he is; she seems rather keen on him. But I suppose the

main point is to get rid of him.'

'I know how we can do both. That's a good idea of yours about the

woods. They are part of Lady Wetherby's property. I used to wander

about there in the spring when the house was empty. There's a sort

of shack in the middle of them. I shouldn't think anybody ever

went there--it's a deserted sort of place. We could leave him

there, and then--well, we might write Lady Wetherby a letter or

something. We could think out that part afterward.'

'It's the best thing we've thought of. You really want to come?'

'If you attempt to leave here without me I shall scream. Let's be

starting.'

Bill picked Eustace up by his convenient tail.

'I read a story once,' he said, 'where a fellow was lugging a

corpse through a wood, when suddenly--'

'Stop right there,' said Elizabeth firmly.

During the conversation just recorded Dudley Pickering had been

keeping a watchful eye on Bill and Elizabeth from the interior of

a bush. His was not the ideal position for espionage, for he was

too far off to hear what they said, and the light was too dim to

enable him to see what it was that Bill was holding. It looked to

Mr Pickering like a sack or bag of some sort. As time went by he

became convinced that it was a sack, limp and empty at present,

but destined later to receive and bulge with what he believed was

technically known as the swag. When the two objects of vigilance

concluded their lengthy consultation, and moved off in the

direction of Lady Wetherby's woods, any doubts he may have had as

to whether they were the criminals he had suspected them of being

were dispersed. The whole thing worked out logically.

The Man, having spied out the land in his two visits to Lady

Wetherby's house, was now about to break in. His accomplice would

stand by with the sack. With a beating heart Mr Pickering gripped

his revolver and moved round in the shadow of the shrubbery till

he came to the gate, when he was just in time to see the guilty

couple disappear into the woods. He followed them. He was glad to

get on the move again. While he had been wedged into the bush,

quite a lot of the bush had been wedged into him. Something sharp

had pressed against the calf of his leg, and he had been pinched

in a number of tender places. And he was convinced that one more

of God's unpleasant creatures had got down the back of his neck.

Dudley Pickering moved through the wood as snakily as he could.

Nature had shaped him more for stability than for snakiness, but

he did his best. He tingled with the excitement of the chase, and

endeavoured to creep through the undergrowth like one of those

intelligent Indians of whom he had read so many years before in

the pages of Mr Fenimore Cooper. In those days Dudley Pickering

had not thought very highly of Fenimore Cooper, holding his work

deficient in serious and scientific interest; but now it seemed to

him that there had been something in the man after all, and he

resolved to get some of his books and go over them again. He

wished he had read them more carefully at the time, for they

doubtless contained much information and many hints which would

have come in handy just now. He seemed, for example, to recall

characters in them who had the knack of going through forests

without letting a single twig crack beneath their feet. Probably

the author had told how this was done. In his unenlightened state

it was beyond Mr Pickering. The wood seemed carpeted with twigs.

Whenever he stepped he trod on one, and whenever he trod on one it

cracked beneath his feet. There were moments when he felt gloomily

that he might just as well be firing a machine-gun.

Bill, meanwhile, Elizabeth following close behind him, was

ploughing his way onward. From time to time he would turn to

administer some encouraging remark, for it had come home to him by

now that encouraging remarks were what she needed very much in the

present crisis of her affairs. She was showing him a new and

hitherto unsuspected side of her character. The Elizabeth whom he

had known--the valiant, self-reliant Elizabeth--had gone, leaving

in her stead someone softer, more appealing, more approachable. It

was this that was filling him with strange emotions as he led the

way to their destination.

He was becoming more and more conscious of a sense of being drawn

very near to Elizabeth, of a desire to soothe, comfort, and protect

her. It was as if to-night he had discovered the missing key to a

puzzle or the missing element in some chemical combination. Like

most big men, his mind was essentially a protective mind; weakness

drew out the best that was in him. And it was only to-night that

Elizabeth had given any sign of having any weakness in her

composition. That clear vision which had come to him on his long

walk came again now, that vivid conviction that she was the only

girl in the world for him.

He was debating within himself the advisability of trying to find

words to express this sentiment, when Mr Pickering, the modern

Chingachgook, trod on another twig in the background and Elizabeth

stopped abruptly with a little cry.

'What was that?' she demanded.

Bill had heard a noise too. It was impossible to be within a dozen

yards of Mr Pickering, when on the trail, and not hear a noise.

The suspicion that someone was following them did not come to him,

for he was a man rather of common sense than of imagination, and

common sense was asking him bluntly why the deuce anybody should

want to tramp after them through a wood at that time of night. He

caught the note of panic in Elizabeth's voice, and was soothing

her.

'It was just a branch breaking. You hear all sorts of rum noises

in a wood.'

'I believe it's the man with the pistol following us!'

'Nonsense. Why should he? Silly thing to do!' He spoke almost

severely.

'Look!' cried Elizabeth.

'What?'

'I saw someone dodge behind that tree.'

'You mustn't let yourself imagine things. Buck up!'

'I can't buck up. I'm scared.'

'Which tree did you think you saw someone dodge behind?'

'That big one there.'

'Well, listen: I'll go back and--'

'If you leave me for an instant I shall die in agonies.' She

gulped. 'I never knew I was such a coward before. I'm just a

worm.'

'Nonsense. This sort of thing might frighten anyone. I read a

story once--'

'Don't!'

Bill found that his heart had suddenly begun to beat with

unaccustomed rapidity. The desire to soothe, comfort, and protect

Elizabeth became the immediate ambition of his life. It was very

dark where they stood. The moonlight, which fell in little patches

round them, did not penetrate the thicket which they had entered.

He could hardly see her. He was merely aware of her as a presence.

An excellent idea occurred to him.

'Hold my hand,' he said.

It was what he would have said to a frightened child, and there was

much of the frightened child about Elizabeth then. The Eustace mystery

had given her a shock which subsequent events had done nothing to

dispel, and she had lost that jauntiness and self-confidence which was

her natural armour against the more ordinary happenings of life.

Something small and soft slid gratefully into his palm, and there

was silence for a space. Bill said nothing. Elizabeth said

nothing. And Mr Pickering had stopped treading on twigs. The

faintest of night breezes ruffled the tree-tops above them. The

moonbeams filtered through the branches. He held her hand tightly.

'Better?'

'Much.'

The breeze died away. Not a leaf stirred. The wood was very still.

Somewhere on a bough a bird moved drowsily 'All right?'

'Yes.'

And then something happened--something shattering, disintegrating.

It was only a pheasant, but it sounded like the end of the world.

It rose at their feet with a rattle that filled the universe, and

for a moment all was black confusion. And when that moment had

passed it became apparent to Bill that his arm was round

Elizabeth, that she was sobbing helplessly, and that he was

kissing her. Somebody was talking very rapidly in a low voice.

He found that it was himself.

'Elizabeth!'

There was something wonderful about the name, a sort of music.

This was odd, because the name, as a name, was far from being a

favourite of his. Until that moment childish associations had

prejudiced him against it. It had been inextricably involved in

his mind with an atmosphere of stuffy schoolrooms and general

misery, for it had been his misfortune that his budding mind was

constitutionally incapable of remembering who had been Queen of

England at the time of the Spanish Armada--a fact that had caused

a good deal of friction with a rather sharp-tempered governess.

But now it seemed the only possible name for a girl to have, the

only label that could even remotely suggest those feminine charms

which he found in this girl beside him. There was poetry in every

syllable of it. It was like one of those deep chords which fill

the hearer with vague yearnings for strange and beautiful things.

He asked for nothing better than to stand here repeating it.

'Elizabeth!'

'Bill, dear!'

That sounded good too. There was music in 'Bill' when properly

spoken. The reason why all the other Bills in the world had got

the impression that it was a prosaic sort of name was that there

was only one girl in existence capable of speaking it properly,

and she was not for them.

'Bill, are you really fond of me?'

'Fond of you!'

'I have seen so little of you these last few days. A little while