IV

We got upstairs somehow, with Sir George breathing in gasps. I realised

then that Mr. Harcourt was still supporting me and I freed myself with a

jerk, on which he coolly took my hand and led the way along the musty

hall. Once or twice boards creaked and the two men stopped in alarm. But

no one heard. From below came a babel of high, excited voices and the

crash of an overturned chair. I backed against the wall and held my

hands out defensively in front of me.

"How dare you carry me off like this!" I demanded when I could speak. "I

am going back!"

But Mr. Harcourt blocked the passage with his broad shoulders and struck

a match cautiously. First he looked at the walls, then he glanced at me.

"My dear young lady," he said curtly, "we should be only too happy to

leave you--but you know too much." Then, to Sir George: "I must have

taken a wrong turn," he whispered ruefully. "There ought to be a

wainscoting here. Good Heavens! I believe they are coming up."

We could hear Daphne calling "Madge!" frantically from the lower stairs.

And suddenly I was ashamed of the whole affair: of myself, for lending

myself to it; of Violet, for thrusting the man beside me out of her life

and then stooping to borrow his house; of Poppy, for braining a man with

a chair and then being afraid of a bat. I turned to Mr. Harcourt as the

footsteps ran up the stairs.

"The door at the end of the corridor is partly open," I whispered. "We

may be able to lock it behind us."

With that _we_ I shifted my allegiance. From that moment my sole object

was to get the Prime Minister of Great Britain back to his family, his

friends and his Sovereign without injury.

We scurried down the hall and closed the door behind us. It did not

lock! But there was no time to go elsewhere. We stood just inside the

door, breathing hard, and listened. For a time the search confined

itself to the lower floor. Mr. Harcourt struck another match and looked

around him.

We were in a huge, old-fashioned bedroom with mullioned windows and

panelled walls. The furniture was carefully covered, and the carpet had

been folded and wrapped in the centre of the floor. I sat down on it in

a perfectly exhausted condition.

Mr. Harcourt stood with his back against the door and we all listened.

But the search had not penetrated to our wing. Sir George was breathing

heavily and mopping his head. The air was stifling.

"I'm awfully sorry," said Mr. Harcourt cautiously; "I could have sworn I

had taken the right turn. If I remember rightly there was a passage from

the Refuge Chamber down to the garden. How many women are downstairs?"

"Six," I whispered, "and I suppose Poppy Stafford would count as two.

She almost killed a man last year." When Sir George heard Poppy's name

he began to fumble with the window-lock. "And, of course," I went on,

"your--I mean--Violet knows the house perfectly."

"If we could get out of here," Mr. Harcourt reflected, "we could get

down to the lodge somehow. Then, when the motor comes back we could stop

it at the gates--have them closed, you know--and when the chauffeur gets

out to open them steal the car."

Sir George relaxed perceptibly. "A valuable suggestion," he said almost

cheerfully. But suddenly I had turned cold.

"Most valuable," I said from the darkness, "save for one thing: Mr.

Harcourt has forgotten, no doubt, but there are no gates at the lodge!"

He gave a quick movement in the darkness. "Then we will have to manage

without gates," he said quite calmly. "I had forgotten, for the moment,

that they had been taken down. What's the conundrum? When is a gate not

a gate?"

But his lightness did not reassure me. Why had he taken the wrong

turning in his own house? And what man in his senses would forget

whether his own lodge had gates or not! But there was no time to puzzle

it out. The search had abandoned the first floor and was coming up the

stairs. The Prime Minister threw open the window. From down the hall

came a babel of voices and Daphne's soap-box and monument voice. "I

think I had better tell you," she was saying "that Violet and I have

found traces of two men--muddy footprints that lead up the stairs.

Bagsby says he brought Sir George alone. I do not hazard a guess,

but--something unforeseen has happened. I only hope----" Here she broke

off, and there was a rattle of metallic objects that sounded like brass

fire-irons.

The search came our way slowly but certainly. I sat on my carpet and

shivered. Mr. Harcourt stood braced against the door, and Sir George had

got the window open and was testing the roof of a conservatory with his

foot. Footsteps came down the hall and we sat motionless. I remembered

suddenly that somebody always sneezed at crises like these, and then I

realised inevitably that I was going to be the person. Somewhere I had

heard that if you hold your breath and swallow at the psychological

moment you may sneeze silently. So I tried it in desperation and almost

strangled, and felt very queer about the ears for an hour after. And at

the best there was some sound, for the footsteps outside turned and ran

toward the stairs, where there was a hurried colloquy.

At that, Sir George put the other foot over the windowsill, and in a

moment we were all in headlong flight. Luckily, the very top of the

conservatory was boarded on top of the glass, but it began to slope

sooner than I had expected, and I lost my hold on Sir George's hand and

slid without warning. I landed on the ground below, standing up to my

waist in shrubbery and very much jarred. Sir George was not so lucky. He

put a foot through a pane of glass with a terrible crash, and it took

all of Mr. Harcourt's strength to release him. Standing below, I could

see a flare of light in the room we had just left, and the silhouettes

of the two men struggling on the roof. Somebody came to the window just

as we were united on the soggy ground. I think it was Violet, but the

crash of the rain on the glass of the conservatory had covered the noise

of our escape. Mr. Harcourt picked me out of my bush and we darted into

the shrubbery.

V

I have only a sketchy recollection of what followed. The rain beat on my

face and my bare shoulders; the drive was a river. Once some one came to

the entry door of the Hall behind us and waved a lamp, which the wind

promptly extinguished. And on either side of me, in gloomy silence,

ploughed the Prime Minister and Mr. Harcourt. Once Sir George left the

drive, seeking better walking on the turf, and came back after a moment

with a brief statement that he had collided with a tree and had loosened

a tooth. And twice Mr. Harcourt touched my elbow to guide me and I shook

him off.

He got into the gatekeeper's house through a window and opened the door

for us. The interior was desolate enough, but it was at least dry. Mr.

Harcourt produced a candle from his pocket, evidently from the room we

had left, and it revealed two packing-cases, one small keg, and a

collection of straw and rubbish in a corner. It also showed that Sir

George had struck his nose and that it was bleeding profusely. I got a

glimpse, too, of the wreck of my gown, and that and the blood together

brought my responsibility for the whole thing home to me. I sat down on

the keg and buried my face in my hands.

When I looked up again a fire was crackling on the hearth and Sir

George's boots were steaming in front of it. Mr. Harcourt had taken off

his coat and was drying it. The smell of wet woollen cloth filled the

air. He smiled at me over his shoulder.

"This is for you," he said cheerfully. "Go into the back room and strip

off that draggled gown and put this on."

"I'm very well as I am," I said, and shivered.

"Nonsense!" He came over to me and held out the coat. "That white satin

is saturated. Don't be idiotic. This is certainly no time to stand on

propriety."

"I--I can't," I stammered.

"Now, look here," he persisted. "I've got sisters--lots of 'em, and Sir

George is a grandfather. Put this on over your petticoat."

Now, of course, anybody who knows anything about clothing to-day knows

that petticoats don't belong with it. And even if they did, there were

about eighty-seven hooks on the back of my gown, and only four that I

could reach.

"I am very comfortable as I am," I said stubbornly. "Please don't bother

about me. I sha'n't make any change."

He flung the coat angrily on to a box and turned his back squarely on

me. It was maddening to have him think me some prudish little schoolgirl

who would say limbs for legs, and who, after showing them for years in

very short frocks, suddenly puts on her first long gown and is for

denying she has any limbs--that is, legs. Sir George sneezed and drew a

long, shuddering breath.

"Terrible!" he said. "This is what comes of admitting women to the

universities. Would any man in his senses believe that such a situation

as this is real?"

Nobody answered. Sir George was inspecting the inner room. I had gone to

the window, and after a moment Mr. Harcourt joined me there. The

thunder, which had ceased, was commencing again, and a blue-white flash

threw out the landscape. It showed a long stretch of country road,

running with mad little streams of yellow water, the drive curving past

and flowing a dignified tributary into the lane, and it revealed

something else. _The lodge gates were there, opened back against the

shrubbery!_ Under cover of the noise I turned to my companion.

"Who are you?" I demanded under my breath. "You are not Basil Harcourt!

You had no more right to be in that house than I had."

"Save the right of sanctuary," he returned, looking at me oddly. "I got

in through the chapel. And what does it matter, anyhow? It is enough

for me just now that you are you and I am I."

"You are flippant," I retorted cautiously. "Why did you say you had had

the gates taken down when they are still there, opened against the

hedge?"

"Jove! That's a piece of luck," he exclaimed, without troubling to

explain. "Why in the world did you say there were no gates?"

He opened the door and ran out into the storm. A moment later I saw him

testing the hinges, and I flung away from the window. Before he came

back he had closed the outer shutters.

Sir George had taken off his mackintosh and cap and, with a candle and a

deck of cards, was preparing for solitaire on the top of the keg. The

candle-light struck full on his face and showed his sandy moustache

hanging limp and dejected, while little beads of moisture showed between

the thin hair brushed across the top of his head. He was more nervous

than he would have had us know, and the hands--very fine, long-fingered

hands they were--that laid out the cards were trembling noticeably. At

every sound he raised his head and stared at the door, and his arched,

patrician nose would have been pinched if it had not been so swollen. I

shuddered with remorse every time I looked at him. His right trouser was

torn to ribbons from the knee down, and soon after our arrival he had

disappeared into the rear room and emerged, bandaged with his spare

handkerchiefs, and limping.

_We sat there for two hours_, Sir George pretending to play, I huddled

on a box by the fire, and The Unknown across the hearth from me,

stretched on the floor, and leaning on his elbows and whistling softly.

Sometimes he looked at me and sometimes at the fire, and once or twice I

found him watching Sir George with a curiously meditative gaze. I could

not help wondering if he was thinking what a chance for ransom there

would be if he could hold the two of us prisoner for a time.

(For story purposes, it is a pity he did not. What a novel it would have

made! The whole House of Lords out searching for us, and the Premier and

myself living in a cave, with our captor sitting at the entrance with a

gun across his knees!)

After two hours of cards and steaming before the fire Sir George became

drowsy. He yawned prodigiously, apologised to me thickly, and when the

candle finally burned out he put his head on top of the keg and was

asleep immediately. Not a sound had come from the Hall; everything was

quiet except for a drip from the leaking roof, that splashed in a

corner.

Then:

"If you please," I said in a small voice, "may I have my necklace now?"

The Unknown turned quickly and glanced at Sir George, but he was

noisily asleep. Then he edged over along the hearth until he was almost

at my feet.

"I was going to advertise them," he said in an undertone. "Possibly you

recall my fair offer. Some poor woman is probably having a serious

illness at this minute because her pearls have been--er--appropriated."

"I don't feel a particle ill," I said stubbornly, "but I want them back.

They belong to me. What are you going to do with them?"

"'Melt them down and sell them,'" he quoted easily. "Or dissolve them in

vinegar and swallow them. That's historic, anyhow."

"There is a better Biblical precedent," I said and stopped, furious at

myself. He was an ordinary highwayman masquerading as a gentleman, and

for all I knew he might at that very minute have had the stolen Romney

sewed around him like a cuirass. (He _did_ hold himself very erect, now

I thought of it.) And I had allowed his debonair manner to carry me

away.

But he did not give me a chance to snub him, for the next moment he was

speaking gravely in an undertone and looking directly in my eyes. I will

say he had a most misleadingly frank expression.

"I will give them to you when you are safely back at Ivry," he said,

"and not one moment before. I am sure Sir George would agree with me

that they are too valuable for a young girl to wear under the

circumstances. I will give you my word, if it is worth anything to you."

"And if I will not take it?"

"It would make no difference," he replied imperturbably, and leaned over

to replenish the fire.

Sir George slept on noisily; the drip in the corner had become a splash;

my white satin slippers before the fire were drying into limp

shapelessness. The man in tweeds on the floor raised himself into a

sitting position and listened, his hands clasped about his knees.

(Knickers with a man are like _décolletage_ with a woman, only to be

worn by the elect. Mother wishes me to cut this out, because she says

this story is to be read by young persons. But the modern young person

is really awfully sophisticated. Sometimes I feel as though mother is a

mere child, compared to me.)

After a time the man in knickers who was one of the elect dropped on his

elbow and began to talk again, looking into the fire.

"Rum affair altogether, isn't it?" he said chattily. "Nature having a

spasm outside, half a dozen lady votaries of the vote having spasms up

at the house, the--er--Premier of Great Britain, on whose possessions

the sun never sets, having apoplexy on a packing-case. And out of all

this chaos a moment like this: you and I alone here, where I could reach

out my hand and touch you--if I dared----" he supplemented as I

straightened. "You see, you have gone to my head. You are the most

beautiful person I have ever seen."

One could tell that, however low he had fallen, he had been properly

raised--although I think firelight is always becoming, especially with a

white gown.

Here Sir George began to rouse. He coughed huskily, sat up and looked

around him in a daze, and then stretched out his legs and groaned.

"Gad!" he said with a deep breath, "I hoped I had dreamed it." He looked

at us both as if to establish our reality, and, reaching over, began to

struggle into his shrunken boots.

"If the storm has subsided," he said, stamping his foot in an endeavour

to get his heel down where it belonged, "I think I shall be going on.

This place is damp."

"Not half so damp as the road," objected the other man. "It's a matter

of miles, you know; and besides, I imagine we are going to have another

storm. Listen!"

The distant rumble of thunder had been coming closer to us. The rain had

almost stopped, but, as Sir George opened the door, over the ominous

stillness flashed a terrific fork of lightning, followed instantly by a

crash near at hand. A blue-white streak ran down the bole of a tree

across the road. The thunder that followed echoed and re-echoed above

our heads as we faced each other in the firelight. Sir George had closed

the door precipitately, but, as the noise died away, he jammed his cap

over his ears and resolutely prepared for flight.

Argument had no effect on him. Whatever had caused his sudden change of

mind, he was determined to leave at once. I was panic-stricken. He had

been my patent of respectability so far in what was, to say the least,

an unconventional situation. But to have him go like that and leave me

there with an ordinary thief, even if he did look like a Greek god

except his nose, which was modern--(I do not like those old Greek noses,

anyhow; they begin so far up on the forehead)--to have him leave me like

that was dreadful.

However, there came an interruption just then, a splashing of horses'

feet along the road and the sound of men's voices. They halted just

outside the gates and we caught a word here and there: "Gresham Place,"

and "Automobile," and one sentence that stuck in my mind and brought me

a picture of myself in a hideous prison cap, sewing bags. It was: "Half

a dozen are watching Ivry Manor House!"

I think Sir George realised when I did that it was a searching party for

him; he had been leaning against the door, listening. Suddenly he bolted

for the keg where he had left his mackintosh, and picked it up. But The

Unknown was before him. He quickly locked the outer door and stood with

his back against it.

"I cannot allow you to go out, sir," he said very politely. "Whether

those men are searching for you or are hunting for--for some one else,

you and I have a duty to perform: we must protect this young lady. In

fact, and however strongly you may feel against it, I hope, sir, you

will see the wisdom of shielding all the women concerned from publicity.

And in this case it is not chivalry; it is self-protection." Sir George

wavered. "You can see what the papers will make of it, sir. That the

plot has failed would not check the general excitement; the situation is

ludicrous instead of serious. That is the difference."

Sir George sat down heavily and groaned. Perhaps I imagined it, but he

looked older, leaner, paler than he had done earlier in the evening.

"I have this plan to offer," pursued The Unknown. "We will get the

machine from Bagsby in an hour"--he consulted a handsome watch; I

wondered whose it had been--"and I will take you wherever you wish; to

Gresham Place, or, if you will feel safer back in town, to the express

for London. You can get it at East Newbury. If--if the young lady

wishes, we will drop her at Ivry on the way."

Sir George considered and decided to go back to town. He would not feel

safe, after this, in the country, and he could wire ahead and be met

by--I think he said he intended to call out the reserves. I may be wrong

about this, but he gave me the impression that he would never walk out

again without a detachment of the Royal Guard.

And so we settled down again to wait for Bagsby--that is, we settled

down apparently; actually, I was busy devising a method to get rid of

our highwayman and to secure my necklace again. For any one could tell

that he only meant to get Daphne's motor to escape in and that he would

probably dump Sir George and me in a ditch, or cut our throats, or

sandbag us, and make his escape with everything valuable on us,

including my slipper buckles which were platinum and had my monogram on

in diamonds.

If I could only have warned Sir George! But there The Unknown sat

between us, with his eyes on both of us at once (if this is possible in

anything but a fish), asking me how I liked England and what I thought

of wealthy American girls marrying impoverished foreigners; and did I

know that in the Canadian Northwest Mounted Police the word "home" was

practically taboo! And I said I abominated England and that I couldn't

understand any kind of an American girl marrying any Englishman, and

where was Canada? He gave up at that and, producing a gold

cigarette-case with somebody's initials on it, smoked moodily for some

time.

Then I had my second inspiration of the evening. I began to get hungry,

and by stages I grew weak, dizzy and, finally, almost fainting. Sir

George was very mildly interested, but The Unknown was flatteringly so.

However, when I said faintly that I had had no dinner, and that I was

sure I should swoon if I did not have the hamper brought from the Hall

at once, he cooled somewhat.

"You would better try to stick it out," he urged. "You haven't had any

dinner: I haven't had food for--well, for some time. There's a tap in

the back room: let me bring you a drink of water. You have no idea,

until you have to, how long you can go on water."

"I am not a boat," I said scornfully. And after a time, when he proved

shockingly distrustful of me and most unchivalrous, he agreed grudgingly

to try to steal the hamper from the house.

"But remember," he said, turning up his coat collar, "if anything goes

wrong you will have the whole shooting-match down on us here." (Item:

was he American, after all? An Englishman would have said "the whole

bally crowd.")

I think he wanted to say something to me before he left, but having

gained my point I turned my back on him. He went, finally, but he stood

for a moment on the lodge porch, looking back at me. I pretended not to

know it.

When I heard him splashing up the drive I turned on Sir George like a

hurricane. It took him some time to understand; I had to go over the

part about the pearls several times, and when he finally made out that

they were very valuable he still could not understand how I came to

throw them at the other man. Then I told him about the theft of the

picture, and that we had the thief in our grasp if we could get him. Sir

George's face was very queer. When he got it all finally, however, he

wakened up at once. He asked me what the collar was worth, and said

young English girls did not wear such costly jewels, but that he would

see that they were recovered. And the plan was simple enough. The

greatest things in life are simple. I said to him that I could easily

see how he became Premier.

The shutters of the inner room were bolted on the outside. We would coax

our gentleman in there and lock the door. He would be there, as I said

with enthusiasm to Sir George, like a ripe apple on a tree, ready for

picking at any time.

It worked to a charm, although the result was not what we had expected.

Very far from it, indeed. The Unknown, which is shorter than saying "The

Man in Tweeds" or "The Sociable Highwayman," came back in about half an

hour, with his cap missing and mud up to his knees.

"Jove," he said, shaking himself, "this is Paradise compared to that up

there. The lower floor is a wreck: two of them are asleep, three of them

are standing on chairs and talking at once, and a tall, fair woman in

green satin is having ladylike hysterics by herself in a corner."

"The tall, fair woman in green," I said coldly, "is Mrs.

Harcourt-Standish. It is strange you did not know her."

He whistled and then looked at me with one of his slow, boyish smiles.

"Well, as to that," he observed, opening the hamper, "I--you see, I

never saw her in hysterics. It's supposed to make a great difference."

"We need a box from the other room," I said, inwardly trembling. "We

have used one for firewood." We had, purposely, and it threatened to

fire the chimney. I don't mind saying that I had a horrid guilty feeling

when I said it, like Delilah cutting Samson's hair, or the place where

Blanche Bates took the card out of her stocking in The Girl of the

Golden West. The Unknown glanced at the box on the hearth, at the Prime

Minister, who was getting out the salad, and at me, feeling as I have

just said. Then he turned on his heel, whistling softly, and went into

the inner room.

Sir George dropped the salad on the instant, with a crash, and had the

door slammed and locked immediately. His sandy moustache stood out quite

straight, and he looked very military (or is it militant?). There was

silence from the inner room, and then my gentleman found the door and

rattled the crazy latch.

"The lock has sprung in some way," he said politely from the other side.

"I will have to trouble you to open it."

The band around my throat began to loosen, and, anyhow, if he had been

little and ugly I would not have cared. Why should I condone a crime

because Nature had given him a handsome body to hold an ignoble spirit?

I went over to the door and called through it triumphantly:

"We are not going to unlock the door, and when Bagsby comes we are going

to send for the police."

(That was the Premier's plan. He would waylay Bagsby at the point of his

revolver--Sir George's--and make him take him to the nearest constable.

Then Sir George would get a conveyance and make his escape after sending

me on to Ivry. I would not stay in the lodge alone with a desperate

criminal, and I did not wish to face Daphne and the rest in their

present condition.)

I was not hungry, after all. Everything I ate stuck somewhere in my

throat and brought tears to my eyes, and Sir George was not hungry,

either. He kept walking around the room and eying the door, and once he

got out his revolver and put it on the box. Finally, he went to the

doorway.

"If you will pass this young woman's jewelry out under the door," he

said, "we will see that you are not molested by the police."

"On our honour!" I called eagerly. For, after all, he had been gentle

with me when he thought I was stealing the forks. (Although, after all,

why should he not have been? They were not his.)

"I'll see you in perdition first!" came the sulky answer. I hoped it was

meant for Sir George. And after that there was nothing to do but wait

for Bagsby.