“No,” he said proudly, “not on my honour. When I talk to a person as I

am talking to you, if I say a thing is so, it is so. I decline to back

my assertions with my honour.”

“I believe you,” she whispered softly, and her eyes fell.

“Thanks!” he said. “Will you shake hands?”

And she gave him her hand loyally. And he thought it was a very slim and

thrilling hand to shake.

“Do you know,” he said, “it was exceedingly naughty of you to go and

credit me with being such a monster.”

“Well,” she replied, “perhaps I never did really believe it.” She smiled

at him courageously. “But I was angry with you for objecting to the

match. I suppose you won’t deny that you have objected to the match.”

“No,” he said, “I shan’t deny that.”

“And your reasons?”

“I could not disclose them to Mr. Ilam’s cousin,” he answered. “And

perhaps they are not as strong as they were. I am beginning to think

that just as you accused me wrongly, so I have accused your cousin

wrongly. But I can assure you I had better reason than you. Ah, Miss

Dartmouth,” he added, “it may well occur that you will infinitely regret

ever having come into the City.”

“Never!” she said positively.

“That’s very polite,” he commented.

“We are getting away from the point,” she remarked in a new tone. “I

have left your sister in a pitiable state. If you have not had anything

to do with the disappearance of Cousin Ilam, who has?”

“He may have disappeared voluntarily,” said Carpentaria.

“Impossible!” she replied.

“I think so too.” Carpentaria agreed. “At first I was capable of

believing that he had played an enormous comedy in order to disappear in

the most effective manner. But really the comedy grows too enormous to

be any longer a comedy. It may be a tragedy by this time.”

“And whom do you suspect?” queried Pauline impatiently.

“If I were you,” was Carpentaria’s strange response, “I should ask your

sister, Miss Rosie.”

“Rosie!”

“Rosie.”

“Mr. Carpentaria, what on earth do you mean?”

“I mean that your sister probably knows something of the affair. Where

is she at the present moment?”

“She is watching Mrs. Ilam, in place of the nurse.”

“I gravely doubt it,” said Carpentaria with firmness.

“But I have seen her there.”

“It is conceivable,” said Carpentaria. “But I gravely doubt if she is

still there.”

“I shall be compelled to think that after all you are a little mad,”

Pauline observed coldly.

“We are all more or less mad,” said Carpentaria. “Otherwise your sister,

for instance, would not hold long conversations with a highly suspicious

character every night from the window of her room.”

Pauline, in the light of her knowledge of what had taken place in and

about the Ilam bungalow on the first night of her residence there, could

scarcely affect not to understand, at any rate partially, Carpentaria’s

allusion.

“I don’t quite----” she began, lamely.

“Do you mean to say,” he interrupted her at once, “do you mean to say,

dear lady, that you are entirely unaware of the surreptitious visits of

a certain mysterious person to Mr. Ilam’s house?”

“I am not entirely unaware of them,” she said frankly! “I saw the man

myself one night. I spoke to him. My sister also--also spoke to him. But

I have not seen nor heard of him since. Nor has Rosie.”

“Of that you are sure?”

“Yes, I think I may say I am sure.”

“Then I must undeceive you,” Carpentaria spoke firmly. “I also have

acquired a certain curiosity as to that strange individual. And to

satisfy my curiosity I have kept a considerable number of vigils. And

I am in a position to state that, not only on the first night of your

arrival, but every night your sister has had speech with that person

from the window of her room.”

“Who is he? What can he want?” demanded Pauline, nervously.

“That is a question that I meant to put to you,” said Carpentaria in

reply.

“As for me, I know nothing.”

“When you spoke to him, as you admit you did, did he not ask you to do

something?”

“Yes, and I refused his request.”

“But your sister? What did she do?”

“Oh! Mr. Carpentaria,” murmured Pauline, “can I trust you?”

“You know that you can.”

She related to him all the details of the episode of the black box.

“And after that,” Carpentaria commented, “your sister continues to have

stolen interviews with this man.”

“I can’t help thinking you are mistaken. Rosie would never keep such a

secret from me.”

“It will be very easy to throw some light on the matter,” said

Carpentaria. “Let us go to your house and see whether Miss Rosie is in

Mrs. Ilam’s room as you imagine her to be, and as I imagine her not

to be. I may tell you quite openly my opinion that Miss Rosie has had

something to do with the disappearance of Mr. Ilam. I am convinced,

indeed I know, that he has been spirited away, together with a trifling

amount of money, by our mysterious visitor, and since our mysterious

visitor talks to Miss Rosie each night, she on her balcony and he

beneath it--well, I leave the inference to yourself.”

Pauline started back.

“Yes,” she said, in a low voice, “let us go and see.”

And they went, walking side by side in silence across the gardens.

“I will wait here,” said Carpentaria, when they arrived at the side-door

of the Ilam bungalow. “You can ascertain whether anything unusual has

occurred in the house, and particularly if your sister is still at her

post, and then you will be kind enough to come back and report to me. I

will watch here.” Without replying Pauline passed into the house. In a

few minutes she returned. Tears stood in her eyes.

“Well?” queried Carpentaria.

“Rosie is not in the house,” she answered. “Mrs. Ilam is alone. Happily

she is asleep. Everything is quiet. But Rosie----!”

A sob escaped her.

PART III--JETSAM

CHAPTER XXIV--The Boat

Carpentaria and Pauline continued to stand motionless outside the

house, both of them hesitant, recoiling before the circumstances which

faced them. The night remained clear, almost brilliant.

“The entire situation is changed,” said Carpentaria at length. “A new

factor has entered into it.”

“What factor?” Pauline demanded.

“Why, your sister, of course!” he replied, with a slight smile that

disclosed momentarily the quizzical male person in him. “Consider how

it complicates the affair. If I had to deal only with the mysterious

individual with grey hair and a blue suit--perhaps you do not know

that he calls himself Jetsam?--I could go to work in a simple masculine

fashion, and in the end one of us would suffer, probably he. But with a

woman in the case----”

“How can you be sure,” Pauline interrupted him, “that Rosie is in the

case?”

“Can you doubt it?”

“I cannot understand why she should behave so!”

“Perhaps she knew him before,” Carpentaria hazarded.

“Never,” said Pauline positively--“never.”

“Then he has certainly been able to exercise a most remarkable influence

over her.”

“Not a hypnotic influence, or anything of that kind?”

“Perhaps an influence of quite another kind--quite another kind.”

“But Rosie is scarcely half his age.”

“Do these things depend on age?” cried Carpentaria. “They depend on

glances, sympathies, and trifles even more subtle than sympathies.

Besides, she is more than half his age.”

“Oh,” murmured Pauline, with a sudden wistful appeal in her voice, “I

shall trust you to help me, Mr. Carpentaria. Rosie may be in danger; she

may be doing something very foolish, mixing herself up like this in the

kidnapping of poor Cousin Ilam. What is to be done?”

“She is decidedly doing something very foolish,” said Carpentaria,

“foolish, that is, from a mere ordinary common-sense point of view. But

I don’t think she is in any danger. I don’t think that either she or you

are the sort of woman that gets into danger without very good cause.

As to what is to be done, I have an idea. Mrs. Ilam will be all right

alone?”

“Yes; for a few hours, at any rate.”

“Then will you come with me to the river? I have some investigations to

make.”

“Certainly,” said Pauline.

And as they crossed the Oriental Gardens for the second time that night,

he told her what he knew about the use, or rather the abuse, of the

automobile.

The marble parapet of the immense terrace of the gardens stood a dozen

feet above the level of high tide. The terrace was continuous from end

to end, but in several places it formed a viaduct over paths that ran

from the gardens at a steep slope down to the bed of the river. It was

one of these paths, a specially clayey one, at the point where it ran

under the terrace, that Carpentaria suspected the automobile of having

taken. Assuming his suspicion to be correct, the automobile could only

have descended to the Thames, and then, if the tide gave room, turned

round and returned; or, if the tide did not give room, backed out

without turning.

“Its sole purpose,” said Carpentaria, as they talked the matter over,

“could have been to pass something to a boat. Don’t you think so?”

“Yes,” Pauline agreed, and then she added, “unless they merely wanted to

throw something into the river.”

“What!” He cried; “a corpse?”

“No,” she said calmly. “I was thinking of the two thousand five hundred

pounds in gold that you told me had been stolen.”

He paused.

“This is really very clever of you,” he said. “But why should they throw

it into the river.”

“Well,” she said, “it’s high tide, or rather it was, about an hour and

a half ago. They might have sunk the money, intending to recover it at

their leisure during the night when the tide sank.”

“Yes, I must repeat,” he said; “this is really very clever of you.”

They were already beginning to descend the broadest of the three paths

which led from the level of the gardens to the level of the river,

and the wheelmarks of an automobile were clearly visible thereon, when

Carpentaria halted.

“Suppose,” he whispered, “they are there now?”

“Who? Mr. Jetsam and my sister?”

“No, not your sister. Mr. Jetsam and his--other accomplices--whoever

they may be. I do not imagine that your sister has been concerned in the

actual--er--affair. Indeed, she was at home with you at the time. But

if Jetsam, for instance, should be down there now, alone or with others,

there might be a row on my appearance. I will therefore ask you to stay

where you are, Miss Dartmouth.”

She shook her head.

“I have begun,” she said, “and I will go through with it. Besides,

what danger could there be? People don’t go shooting and killing

promiscuously like that.”

“Oh, don’t they!” Carpentaria exclaimed.

“Moreover, I have no fancy to be left alone here now,” she added. “And

most likely there isn’t anyone there at all.”

“Hush!” said Carpentaria. “Can’t you hear the splash of an oar? Listen!”

They listened.

“Yes,” she murmured. “And is not that the noise of a boat crunching on

the beach?”

The path disappeared mysteriously before them under the terrace; they

could not see the end of it. But the sound-waves came clearly enough

through the little tunnel.

“We will go back,” said Carpentaria, “and slip on to the terrace. Behind

the parapet we can see anything that may happen to be going on. But

quietly, quietly, dear lady.”

In a few moments they were creeping across the broad terrace.

Simultaneously they bent down, side by side, under the parapet and

looked between its squat, rounded pillars at the water below.

Pauline gave a slight smothered cry, which Carpentaria, with an

imperious gesture, bade her check.

“Not a word,” he whispered in her ear.

Rosie--Rosie and no other--was manoeuvring a boat off the shore. Her

face, her dress, her hat, were plainly visible in the moonlight. She

stood up in the boat, and by means of a boat-hook hooked to a large

oblong stone, drew the boat to the shore. She then seized the painter

and jumped lightly out.

The curious thing was that she went directly to the large oblong stone,

and with a great effort, lifted it up in her arms, tottered with it to

the boat, and deposited it therein. Carpentaria perceived then that the

stone was not a stone, but one of the coffers in which was kept the gold

of the City of Pleasure. He perceived also that, attached to the coffer,

was a dozen feet or so of rope with a cork float at the end. Rosie

followed the coffer into the boat, pushed off, and then, at a distance

of a few yards from the shore, pitched the coffer into the river. This

done, she landed, made fast the painter of the boat to an iron ring

in the wall of the embankment and departed; and she did it all rather

neatly.

Immediately she had disappeared under the terrace, Pauline cried,

starting up:

“I must go to her--I must ask her what she means by doing such things.”

“Pardon me,” said Carpentaria; “you must do nothing of the kind. I most

seriously beg you to do nothing of the kind. By interfering now you may

spoil the coup which we may ultimately make.”

“I don’t quite comprehend you,” Pauline observed. “Miss Dartmouth,” he

addressed her excitedly, “there can be no doubt in your mind now that

your sister is concerned in this plot, whatever it is. I am perfectly

convinced that her motives are good, honourable, kind-hearted. But she

is concerned in it. We must, therefore, so far as we can, treat her as

one of the conspirators----”

“But surely----”

“Always with profound respect,” said Carpentaria. “Had the person in the

boat been any other than your sister, should we have revealed ourselves?

Certainly not! We should have followed the plot to its next development,

with this advantage--that we knew something which the conspirators

imagined to be a secret. The fact that the person in the boat was your

sister must not alter our course of conduct. And permit me to add, Miss

Dartmouth, that you first approached me on behalf of _my_ sister. We owe

something to her, do we not?”

“Yes,” said Pauline in a low voice. “Then what do you mean to do next?”

“I suggest that we go back to your house, to see whether your sister has

returned. May I ask whether, when you last spoke to her, she gave you to

understand that she meant to stay with Mrs. Ilam?”

Pauline breathed a reluctant affirmative.

“No hint that she was going out?”

“None. And----”

“And what?”

“Oh, dear!” Pauline sighed. “Must I tell you? Yes, I must! I’m sure

Rosie is acting for the best, but really it was not her turn to watch

Mrs. Ilam to-night.”

“Whose turn was it?”

“The nurse’s.”

“And your sister changed the rotation?”

“Yes. She said the nurse needed a holiday, and told her she could go

away for twenty-four hours, and that she would take her place.”

“What time was that?”

“About six o’clock this evening, I think.”

“And where has the nurse gone?”

“The nurse has gone to a concert at Queen’s Hall, and will sleep at the

house of some friends at Islington.”

“And does your sister imagine you to be in bed?”

“I expect so,” said Pauline.

They slowly returned to the neighbourhood of the bungalows. Carpentaria

wanted to hurry, but it seemed as though Pauline was being held back by

some occult force. As a matter of fact, she dreaded the moment when she

should re-enter the house. But at length, they stood once again by the

doorstep of Josephus Ilam.

“What am I to do?” Pauline demanded sadly. “What do you think will be

the best thing to do?”

“We have not seen your sister in the gardens,” said Carpentaria. “She

has most probably returned. She would not be likely to leave Mrs. Ilam

for very long, would she? Go and see if she has returned, if she is in

Mrs. Ham’s room. And if she is, question her.”

“But how? What am I to say? Am I to ask her if she has been out?”

“By no means!” said Carpentaria promptly. “You are to pretend that you

know nothing. You must approach her diplomatically. Either she will tell

the truth or she will----”

“Lie! Lie!” cried Pauline. “Say it openly! Say the word! Admit that you

are persuading me to behave despicably to the creature who is dearest to

me in all the world.”

“If there is duplicity,” Carpentaria answered, “you, at any rate, did

not begin it. We are convinced of your sister’s good intentions. What

else matters? In a few days, perhaps to-morrow, all will be explained.

Let me entreat you to go at once. I will await your report.”

She shook her head sadly, opened the door with her latchkey, and was

just about to shut it when Carpentaria stopped her.

“One moment,” he said. “You have told me your sister believes you to be

in bed.”

“I say ‘probably.’”

“It is important that she should not be undeceived. I need not insist.

You can easily make it appear that, having been awakened by some noise,

you have got up. Eh?” And he smiled.

She tried to smile in return, and disappeared from his view. Within the

house, she crept upstairs, and into her bedroom, feeling like a

thief. When she emerged therefrom she had put on a _peignoir_, and her

_coiffure_ was disarranged. She went to the door of Mrs. Ham’s room, and

listened intently. There was not a sound. If she was to obey Carpentaria

she must enter, and she must wear a false mask: to that sister to whom

she had all her life been as sincere as it is possible for one human

being to be to another. Well, she could not enter--she could not enter!

Her legs would not carry her through the doorway. And so, instead of

going in, she called:

“Rosie!”

But her voice was so weak that she scarcely even heard it herself.

No reply came from the interior. And she called again, this time quite

loudly:

“Rosie, dear!”

Then she opened the door an inch or two. There was a rush of skirts

across the room, and Rosie appeared. She was evidently in a state of

extreme excitement.

“What’s the matter? Are you ill?” asked Rosie.

“I--I was wakened by some noise or other,” said Pauline painfully, and

it appeared to her that Carpentaria was whispering in her ear the words

that she must say. “And--and--I--I thought perhaps something had gone

wrong here.”

“No,” was Rosie’s reply. “But how queer you look, darling! You must have

had a nightmare. You have quite startled me.”

Pauline did not answer at once.

“You aren’t undressed! You haven’t lain down,” she said at length. “I

thought you could always sleep very well on that sofa.”

“So I can,” said Rosie. “But I’ve been reading. And besides--it’s rather

upsetting about Cousin Ilam. I wonder where he can be.”

“Oh!” Pauline remarked summarily, “he’s pretty certain to turn up

to-morrow. I expect he’s gone into town.”

Rosie yawned.

“Yes,” she agreed.

“Well, good-night, darling,” said Pauline, and took Rosie’s hand. .

“Good-night.”

“How cold your hand is!” Pauline observed, with an inward tremor. “Have

you been out?”

“Been out? What do you mean?”

“Outside on to the balcony?”

“No. I haven’t stirred from my chair, darling. Bye-bye.”

They stared at each other for an instant, each full of dissimulation,

and yet also of love, and then they kissed one another passionately, and

Pauline departed. They were women.

CHAPTER XXV---A Wholesale Departure

Having retired to her bedroom and divested herself of the deceitful

_peignoir_, Pauline made her way, with all the precautions of secrecy,

downstairs again, and so to the door which gave on the avenue.

Carpentaria was not in view when she timorously put her head out of

the door, and she was in a mind to rush back to her sister in order

to confide in her absolutely, and to demand in return her entire

confidence. She allowed herself to suspect for a brief instant that,

after all, Carpentaria had not been behaving openly with her; but just

then the musician arrived--he had evidently been watching the other side

of the house.

“You were right,” she whispered, before he had time to ask a question.

“Your sister denies that she has been out?”

Pauline nodded.

“Does this help us?” she inquired, as it were, bitterly. “Are we any

better off, now that I have lied to Rosie, and forced Rosie to lie to

me?”

“I think so,” he said.

“I don’t,” Pauline retorted. “And I have passed the most dreadful five

minutes of all my life.”

She seemed to be desolated, to be filled with grief.

“I’m so sorry, so very sorry,” he murmured.

“No, no,” she said quickly. “You have been quite right. We find

ourselves in the centre of a mystery, and I have no excuse for being

sentimental. My trust in Rosie remains what it always was. Still, facts

are facts, and I am ready to do whatever you instruct me to do.”

“Well,” he said, “your sister must have had some reason for insisting

on watching Mrs. Ilam out of her turn; and that reason is not connected

with the little matter of the boat. If she had merely wished to go

unobserved to the boat she would have gone to bed as usual and said

nothing, wouldn’t she?”

Pauline nodded.

“It is obvious, therefore, that there is something else to be done, or

to occur--probably in Mrs. Ilam’s bedroom. For if it is not to happen

in Mrs. Ilam’s bedroom, why should your sister have voluntarily tied

herself up there?”

“But what could possibly happen in Mrs. Ilam’s bedroom?” demanded

Pauline, with a nervous start of apprehension.

“How do I know?” Carpentaria replied. “I can only point to certain

indications, which lead to certain conclusions. You will oblige me by

watching, Miss Dartmouth.”

“Where?”

“The landing and the stairs of your house. Is there a view of the stairs

from your room?”

“Yes,” said Pauline.

“Then you can watch from there. Do not burn a light.”

“And if anything strange does occur?”

“Go to your balcony, and tie a white handkerchief to the railings.”

“And you?” queried Pauline.

At that moment there was the sound of a window opening in Carpentaria’s

bungalow across the avenue, and a voice called plaintively:

“Carlos, is that you?”

“It is I,” he answered, as low as he could.

“Go to her. Comfort her,” Pauline enjoined him.

“I am coming to you,” he obediently called in the direction of the

window.

Both of them could see the vague figure of Juliette, framed in the

window.

“Poor thing!” murmured Pauline.

“Afterwards,” said Carpentaria hurriedly, “I shall come out again and

watch the outside of your house. With you inside and me outside, it will

be very difficult for anything peculiar to occur without our knowledge.”

And he left her, impressed by her common sense and her self-control, and

withal her utter womanliness.

The hall of his own house was dark, and all the rooms of the

ground-floor deserted. He mounted to the upper story. Juliette, hearing

his footsteps, had come to the door of the study, from whose window she

had hailed him, and she stared at him with a fixed and almost stony gaze

as he approached. Her figure was silhouetted against the electric light

in the study.

“Turn that light out instantly,” he said, with involuntary sternness.

She did not move, and, obsessed by the importance of giving to anyone

who might be spying the impression that all the occupants of the house

had retired for the night, he pushed past her and turned off the switch.

“Oh, Carlos,” Juliette sighed, “how cruel you are?”

He now saw her indistinctly in the deep gloom of the chamber, and her

form seemed pathetic to him, and her sad, despairing voice even more

pathetic. He went up to her impulsively and took her hand.

“Juliette,” he said, “can you believe it of me?”

“Miss Dartmouth has spoken to you?” she asked, a glimmer of hope in her

tone.

“Yes,” he said. “Can you believe that I have--have caused anything to be

done to Ilam?”

“Have you not?” she demanded eagerly.

And he told her what he had previously told Pauline.

She thanked him with an affectionate kiss.

“Carlos,” she said, and the words fell in a little torrent from her

mouth, “I told you a falsehood this morning. I acted a part. He was in

my sitting-room all the time. Can you forgive me?”

“I was sure of it,” said Carpentaria calmly, “and I can forgive you,” he

added.

“You do not know what it is to love,” she said. “You have never cared

for anyone--in that way. I hadn’t--until I met----”

“Who says I don’t know what it is to love!” he stopped her. “Perhaps I

am learning. But tell me, when did you last see Ilam? Have you seen him

since this morning?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Where?”

“At his offices this evening.”

“He gave no hint that he was in any danger?”

“No immediate danger. Oh, Carlos, he is not what you think him to be.

He is an honest man, and I am so sorry for him, and I love him. Where is

he? What has happened to him?”

“I can’t tell you now,” was Carpentaria’s reply, “but before morning we

shall know more, or I am mistaken.”

“It is for the crimes of others that he is suffering,” said Juliette.

“He told you so?”

“No, but I guess; I am sure. I know all his faults--all of them. I do

not hide one of them from myself. Why should I, since he loves me and I

love him?”

“My child,” said Carpentaria abruptly, “you might have trusted me more.”

“I should have trusted you absolutely,” answered Juliette, “but he is

afraid of you. He would not let me. I could not disobey him. Sometime,

somehow, you must have said something to frighten him and, though he is

so big and strong, he is timid; he has timid eyes. It was because of his

eyes that I first began to like him. Carlos, what are you going to do?”

“I am going to watch,” was the response.

“A man came to the back-door not long since, and asked whether you were

at home.”

“A man came to the back-door?” repeated Carpentaria sharply, every nerve

suddenly on the strain. “Who was it? What did you say to him?”

“At first I thought it was one of the night-staff, and then the man’s

face made me suspicious; I imagined it might be a thief--you know what a

state I am in, Carlos--and so I told him you had just gone to bed, and

I shut the door in his face. I didn’t want him to think there were

only women in the house. But, of course, it couldn’t have been a

burglar--here----”

“That is the wisest thing you have done this day, Juliette,” Carpentaria

remarked; and then he questioned her as to the appearance of the

mysterious inquirer.

“Are you going to leave me?” cried Juliette, when Carpentaria picked up

his hat, which had fallen from a chair to the floor.

“Yes,” he said; “you must try to rest.”

And then they were both startled by a strange noise on the window-pane.

They listened. The noise was repeated.

“Is it rain?” asked Juliette.

“No,” said Carpentaria, “it’s gravel.”

He went out on to the balcony. A form was discernible in the avenue

below.

“Is that you, Miss Dartmouth?” he whispered.

“Yes,” came the reply. “I----”

“Hush!” he warned her. “I’ll be with you in a second.”

With a brief explanation to Juliette, he hastened downstairs and let

himself out of the house. Pauline was already standing at the door.

“Anything happened?” he questioned her.

“Nothing has happened,” said Pauline, “but there is something extremely

curious, all the same, in our house. It is a most singular thing that

the housemaid, who never forgets anything, forgot just to-night to leave

some milk in my room--a thing which I had specially reminded her to

remember, so I rang the bell for her. There is a bell that communicates

direct with her room--it used to be in Mrs. Ilam’s bedroom, but we have

had it changed--there was no answer. I rang again. No answer. You

know, I’m the sort of person that can’t stand that sort of thing from

servants, so I went upstairs to her. She was not in her room. There

are two beds in that room, the second one for the cook. Both beds were

empty; they had neither of them been slept in. I went into the rooms of

the other servants. They are all empty. Rosie and I and Mrs. Ilam are

alone in the house.”

Carpentaria paused.

“Did you tell your sister?”

“No, I came straight here.”

“That was very discreet of you,” said Carpentaria.

“I am beginning to get frightened,” Pauline added. “What can it mean?

All the servants gone----”

CHAPTER XXVI--The Empty Bedroom

Within the bungalow of the Ilams there remained only two persons who

were legally entitled to be there, and those persons were Mrs.

Ilam, motionless for ever, but with her bright, tragic eyes staring

continually at the same point in the ceiling, and Rosie Dartmouth. These

two women, however, were decidedly not alone in the house. It was a

large house, a bungalow more by the character of its architecture and

its many balconies, than by its size and shape. Most bungalows are long

and low; this one was long without being low. On the ground floor were

the reception rooms and kitchen offices; on the first floor were the

principal bedrooms; and above these was a low-ceiled floor of servants’

bedrooms. Nor was that all; for the steeply-sloping roof had been

utilized by an architect who hated to waste space as a miser hates to

waste money, and hence, above even the servants’ floor was a vast attic,

serviceable for storage. The attic was reached by a little flight of

stairs of its own, and it was lighted by two panes of glass let into the

roof, one on either side.

The ground-floor and the servants’ floor were now dark and uninhabited.

On the first floor the only occupied room was the bedchamber of Mrs.

Ilam, where Rosie stood nervously by the mantelpiece in an attitude

of uneasy expectation. The sole illumination was given by the small

rose-shaded lamp, which threw a circle of light on the white cloth of

the invalid’s night-table; all else, including Rosie, was in gloom.

Rosie was evidently listening--the door was ajar--and after a few

moments she stepped hastily outside on to the landing, and glanced up

the well of the staircase. At the summit of the staircase she saw the

door of the great attic open, and a figure emerge; the figure, which

was carrying a small electric lantern, carefully locked the door of the

attic behind it, and then, with some deliberation, descended the narrow

attic stairs, and, more quietly, the stairs from the servants’ floor to

the first floor.

The figure was that of Mr. Jetsam, clothed in his eternal suit of blue

serge.

The stairs and landing were quite dark, save for his lantern and the

faint glimmer that came from Mrs. Ilam’s bedroom. Mr. Jetsam had moved

without a sound, for he was wearing thick felt slippers. He did not

immediately notice Rosie on the landing, and when the light of his

lantern caught and showed her dress, he started back slightly. Rosie

made no move.

“I did not expect you to be there,” he whispered.

She regarded him with steady eyes, and then, without a word, motioned

him to proceed further downstairs to the ground-floor.

“You want to talk to me?” he whispered again.

He had a voice which was curiously capable of being almost inaudible,

and yet at the same time distinct.

She nodded.

He pointed to the open door of Mrs. Ilam’s room, but Rosie shook her

head.

“Why not?” he demanded.

She shook her head once more, and they went downstairs to the

dining-room, both silently creeping. With infinite precautions he opened

the dining-room door, and shut it when they had entered.

“It would have been better to remain upstairs,” he said mildly. “The

least possible movement is dangerous enough. At this stage a creaking

stair might spoil the whole business.”

“I cannot talk there,” she said.

“But, since Mrs. Ilam is utterly helpless,” he protested, “what can it

matter what she hears? She cannot talk.”

“The fact that she hears is more than enough to upset me,” said Rosie.

“I am like that, you see. I know it is silly, but I can’t help it. I

wanted to tell you that I have just had a dreadful scene with Pauline.”

“A dreadful scene! You’ve not quarrelled?” he demanded anxiously.

“Oh, no! But I’ve lied to her--I’ve lied to her in the most shocking

way, and, what is worse, I fancy she didn’t quite believe me.”

“She suspects something?”

His tone sounded apprehensive in the gloom.

“I don’t know; I hope not. In any case, what can she suspect? She’s been

in bed all the time.”

“True,” said Mr. Jetsam reflectively. “True! You have behaved

magnificently, Miss Rosie. Never, never, in this world, shall I be able

to thank you. I had not thought that such a woman as you existed.

You have given me the first sympathy I have ever had. Yes, the

first!--without you I could never have succeeded. I could scarcely have

begun. And now I shall succeed. Listen to me--I shall succeed! A

wrong will be righted. Justice will be done. If it isn’t, I shall kill

myself.”

He finished grimly, as it were, ferociously.

“Don’t say that,” pleaded Rosie.

He laughed. Then he lifted the little lantern and threw its ray on her

face. She did not flinch. “You are very pale,” he remarked softly.

“What do you expect?” she answered. “You have gone much further--very

much further than I ever dreamt of. You have led me on.”

“No,” he said, “it is your own kindness of heart, your sympathy with the

unfortunate that has led you on. I assure you I was never so bold before

I met you, before I appealed to you that night when you stood on your

balcony. Do you regret? If you tell me to stop, to abandon my plans and

depart--well, I will depart.”

She smiled sadly.

“I do not want you to do that,” she said. “Nevertheless, I tremble for

what you have done.”

“Do not tremble,” he said coaxingly. “If I am not safe here, where am I

safe? Is not this the very last place where anyone would expect to find

me and my--my booty?”

“But, then, sending the servants away,” she exclaimed.

“Nothing simpler,” he commented.

“I don’t know how I did it,” she mused, as if aghast at the memory of

what she had achieved; “and as for to-morrow, how I shall explain it to

Pauline I really can’t imagine!”

“To-morrow,” he said, “everything will be over one way or the other; you

will be able to resume your habit of speaking the truth. By the way,” he

went on, in a tone carefully careless, “you managed to do what I asked

you with the boat?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“Did you meet anyone?”

“Not a soul.”

“And you pulled the plug out and cut the boat: adrift?”

“Pulled the plug out and cut the boat adrift!” she repeated after him,

amazed. “No; you never told me to do that!”

“Pardon me,” he said, “that was the most important thing of all. It is

essential that there should be no trace of the boat.”

“I didn’t understand,” she faltered. “I’m so sorry. I never heard----”

“I regret I didn’t make myself more clear,” he remarked. “You see, at

intervals during the night the watchmen do their patrols, and I know

there is a regular inspection of the terrace. Supposing the boat is

seen?”

“I really don’t remember, that you asked me to do that,” she persisted.

“Anyhow,” he said politely, “what you have done deserves all my praise

and gratitude. But----”

“You would like me to go and sink the boat, wouldn’t you?”

“I hesitate to ask you. It is really too much----”

“Yes, yes,” she said passionately. “I will go and do it--alone.” Then

she paused. “But suppose I meet the patrol?”

“You are you,” was Jetsam’s response. “You are the President’s cousin.

You have the right to amuse yourself with a boat, at no matter what hour

of the day or night.”

“Just so,” she admitted. “I will go now. I shall be back quite soon.

Shall you be ready by the time I return?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Everything is all right?” She seemed to question him anxiously.

“Quite all right,” he said; “Let me thank you again.”

With an impulsive movement he took her hand and kissed it. She blushed

and trembled. Then he opened the door and they passed out into the hall.

“I will unfasten the front-door for you,” he whispered. “I think I can

do it more quietly than you. It may be left on the latch till you come

back;” and he unfastened the front-door. Through its panes a faint light

entered the hall.

“I must get my hat,” she said.

They went upstairs.

“I’ll leave you,” he whispered. “You can manage?”

She nodded. He put the light on a bracket on the landing and ascended to

the upper parts of the house. Rosie went into her bedroom. When she

came out, wearing a hat, she noticed for the first time that the door of

Pauline’s bedroom was not shut. She pushed it open very carefully,

and peered in. A feeble reflection of the moonlight redeemed it from

absolute obscurity, and Rosie perceived that the bed was unoccupied,

that it had not even been slept in. Instantly her mind became full of

suspicions. Had Pauline lied to her as she had lied to Pauline? Was her

part in the plot of Mr. Jetsam discovered? No, impossible! And yet--Then

she recollected having heard, or having thought that she had heard,

the distant ringing of one of the service-bells in the house some time

before Mr. Jetsam came downstairs. She had forgotten to mention this

disturbing fact to Mr. Jetsam. Evidently he had not heard the ringing,

or he would have questioned her about it. Supposing they were being

watched, after all? And in any case where was Pauline? Pauline had given

her to understand that she had retired to rest, and lo! the bed had not

been touched! Full of tremors, she silently shut the door on the empty

room.

She remembered Jetsam’s threat of what he should do if his plans failed,

and she hesitated.

CHAPTER XXVII--The Photograph

Mr. Jetsam, having with an attentive ear heard the vague sound of the

shutting of a door, came out a second time from the mysterious attic

and descended the stairs. He was a man to omit no precautions, and every

door that he passed he locked on the outside, not only on the servants’

floor, but on the first floor. He penetrated then to the ground-floor,

and fastened not merely every door, but every window. At last he arrived

at the front door.

“It’s a pity to lock her out,” he murmured to himself; “but what can

I do? It would be madness to let her assist at the scene I have to go

through. She expects to, but I must disappoint her.”

And he noiselessly bolted and locked the front door.

The fact was that Mr. Jetsam’s plans had been slightly deranged. He had

hoped to get through his great scene--the scene to which all his efforts

had tended--during Rosie’s first absence on the river. He relied on

Rosie; he had been amazed at her goodness and her fortitude; he had been

still more amazed at his singular influence over her; and he naturally

told her a great deal. But he did not tell her quite everything. He

feared to frighten her. Hence proceeded one of his reasons for sending

her to the boat, with the object of sinking the coffer further in the

river as the tide fell. But she had dispatched the business with such

extraordinary celerity, and he, on his part, had been so hindered by

such an unexpected contretemps, that she was back again before even he

had begun.

Thus, he had been obliged to invent a new errand for her, and he

flattered himself that he had invented the errand, and dispatched her on

it, with a certain histrionic skill--and he had the right so to flatter

himself. It desolated him to deceive her, to hoodwink her; but he saw no

alternative.

Having secured the house, he ascended again, this time taking less care

to maintain an absolute silence, to the first floor. The affair was

fully launched now, and no one could interrupt him. If Pauline awoke

in her locked bedroom and heard things, so much the worse for her, he

reflected. She could not go out on to her balcony because he had seen

long ago to the fastening of the window. Therefore she might cry as much

as she liked. He laughed as he thought of this, not having the least

idea that he had so elaborately fastened the door and the window of an

empty room.

He went into Mrs. Ilam’s bedroom with a slight swagger, and shut the

door. A fire was burning in the grate. He cast a single glance at the

bed and its mute and helpless occupant, and putting his little lantern

on the mantelpiece, he walked round the room, inspecting its arrangement

and its corners. Then, suddenly remembering his own burglarious exploit

of forcing an entrance into the room by the window, he approached the

window, flung it wide open and stepped outside on to the balcony.

Far across the expanse of the Oriental Gardens, in the moonlight, he

discerned a figure vaguely moving in the direction of the river. It was

a woman’s figure.

“There she is,” he murmured. “Admirable creature! Why did I not meet

such a woman when I was younger?”

Then he came in again, shut and fastened the window, and drew the heavy

curtains across it, taking care that no chink was left through which

light could be seen. Then he began to whistle softly, and he turned on

all the electricity in the apartment; there were a cluster of lamps

in the ceiling, and two lights over’ the dressing-table, besides the

table-lamps, and his own trifling gleam of a lantern. The room was

brilliantly, almost blindingly, lit, and every object stood revealed.

He stepped towards the bed, and deliberately gazed into the eyes of

the stricken old woman. Mrs. Ilam’s burning orbs blinked at intervals.

Otherwise she gave no sign of volition or of life. Jetsam placed

his eyes in the fixed line of her gaze, so that they were obliged to

exchange a glance. She appeared to be unconscious of it. Only a scarcely

perceptible trémulation ran along her arms, which lay stretched, as

usual, outside the coverlet, like the arms of a corpse.

“Well,” said Jetsam, “here I am at last, you see. Do you recognize me?

I’ve changed, haven’t I, old hag? But you can’t be mistaken in me.”

The pent-up bitterness of a lifetime escaped from him in the tones of

his voice. But the old woman showed no symptom that the terrible past

was thus revisiting her in its most awful form.

“You thought I was dead, didn’t you?” Jetsam continued. “For over forty

years you have been sure that I was dead, and that your crime was one of

the thousands of crimes which go unpunished. And look here,” he went on;

“if you have any doubt, murderess, as to my identity, look at this. I’ll

make you look at it, by heaven!”

He bent down, drew up the trouser of his left leg to the knee, and

pushed the sock into his boot, so that the calf of the leg was

exposed. On the fleshy part of the calf could be plainly seen a large

birth-stain. With the movement of an acrobat he raised that leg over

the bed, over the eyes of Mrs. Ilam, and held it there during several

seconds. Then he dropped it.

“There!” he exclaimed. “That’s to show you who it is you have to deal

with.”

His voice was cruel, icy, and inexorable. He had no pity, no trace

of mercy, for the woman who, whatever the enormity of her sins, was

entitled to some respect by reason of her extreme age, her absolutely

defenceless condition, and her suffering.

“They tell me you can answer ‘yes’ or ‘no,’” he said, “by your eyelids.

Blinking means ‘yes,’ and no movement means ‘no.’ I am going to put some

questions to you. Did you take the photograph out of the box? Answer.”

Mrs. Ilam closed her eyes and kept them closed.

“What does that mean?” Jetsam grumbled. “Open your eyes again,

murderess.”

But Mrs. Ilam did not open her eyes again. She obstinately kept them

closed; and she might have been asleep, except that now and then a tear

exuded from under the lids.

“I’ll make you open them,” cried Jetsam.

His hand approached the old woman’s eyes, but even his implacable and

cruel bitterness recoiled from the coward villainy of touching that

stricken and helpless organism. He drew back his hand, and some

glimmering sense of the dreadfulness of the scene which he was acting

reached his heart. The thought ran through his brain that it was a good

thing Rosie had not been present.

“Very well,” he said, “as you like. Only I know that you, or one of you,

must have taken that photograph out of the box, and I have every reason

to believe that it is in this room. In any case I mean to know very

shortly whether it is or not.”

So saying, he went abruptly out of the room, shutting the door, and

climbed once more to the attic.

“Jakel” he called quietly.

And a Soudanese, the brother of Ilam’s protector, “Spats,” obediently

appeared.

“I am ready,” said Jetsam. “Come, pass in front of me. I will lock the

door myself.”

They went together to Mrs. Ilam’s bedroom.

“You know how to search, Jake?” Jetsam instructed him. “Everything in

this room has to be searched to find a photograph--a photograph, you

know--the same sort of thing as this.” And he pointed to a portrait of

Josephus Ilam that stood on the mantelpiece.

The Soudanese nodded.

“Begin with the chest of drawers,” he said.

In a quarter of an hour the room was in such a state of havoc as might

have resulted from the passage through it of a cyclone. Every drawer in

every piece of furniture had been ransacked and emptied. The Soudanese

had even climbed on a chair in order to inspect the top of the wardrobe,

and had dislodged therefrom a pile of cardboard boxes. Every book had

been torn to pieces. Piles of letters lay scattered about. The floor was

heaped up with Mrs. Ilam’s private possessions. Chairs were overturned.

One or two vases with narrow necks and wide bases had been smashed in

order the better to search their interiors. The place was wrecked. But

the mysterious photograph which Jetsam wanted had not been discovered.

The Soudanese had found dozens of photographs, but not the right one.

The bed of the invalid was alone undisturbed. Among all the ruins of the

chamber it remained untouched, white, apparently inviolate, and the

old woman’s arms lay ever in the same position, and her eyes, open and

blazing now, gazed ever at the same spot in the ceiling.

“I have it!” exclaimed Jetsam suddenly. “The bed--the bed! The box was

hidden under the bed, but I got it. The photograph is hidden under the

bed, and I will get it.”

He hesitated. Dare he search the bed? Dare he disturb its helpless

burden? He wondered. He was ready for anything. He was capable of

slaughter, but he wavered and retreated before the idea of searching for

the photograph in the place where the box had been.

Then he suddenly decided.

“Take firm hold of the bed itself, not the mattress,” he ordered the

Soudanese, “and I will take hold on this side. Be very gentle. Do not

disarrange the clothes. We will lift it over the foot of the bedstead

and place it on the floor. Carefully now--carefully!”

And with the utmost delicacy the two men lifted the bed bodily and laid

it very gently on the floor, and Mrs. Ilam’s gaze was directed to a new

point: of the ceiling.

“That will be a change for you,” said Jetsam, with a touch of

compunction in his voice. “I was obliged to do it. We’ll put you back

presently.”

And he searched thoroughly the mattress and the bedstead, but there was

no photograph.

He paused and wiped, his brow. The Soudanese stood at attention by the

side of the bed. Jetsam looked at Jake.

“Go and fetch him down,” he said peremptorily to the Soudanese.

And Jake vanished.

“One way or another this shall end,” he murmured, gazing at the old

woman in her lowly position among the heaped confusion of the floor; and

he waited, eyeing at intervals the door.

At length the door opened, and the Soudanese came in, and he was leading

by the hand Josephus Ilam. Jetsam stepped quickly behind them and shut

and locked the door.

“Now then, Ilam,” said he, “sit down. Make him sit down, Jake.”

And quite obediently Ilam sat down on a chair, near the night-table.

He made no remark; he scarcely looked round; his senses seemed to be

dulled; it was as though his mind had retired to some fastness from

which it refused to emerge.

“What do you want?” Ilam demanded gloomily. “What have you been doing?”

“I’m going to make one last appeal to you, Ilam,” said Jetsam. “I

kidnapped you for this, I may tell you. I was determined to confront the

mother and the son if necessity should arise. But you nearly did for me

by swallowing too much of that blessed opiate. You are clumsy, even

when you are a victim. However, you’ve got over it nicely, haven’t you?

Pretty notion, wasn’t it,” he continued, “to conceal you in your own

attic, where no one would ever think of looking for you? But it wanted

doing, my weighty friend--it wanted doing.”

“What are you after?” Ilam asked again, as if in the grip of one fixed

idea. “You’ve got the money--what else do you want?”

“You know perfectly well what I want,” said Jetsam. “My case is complete

except for that photograph, and I’ve secured as much money as will keep

me on my pins till I’ve forced you to see reason. But the photograph is

lacking; you are aware of that. It’s certainly rather hard lines on you

that you should be forced to give up the very thing whose possession by

me will ruin you. But what would you have? I am desperate, and no one

knows better than you and this sad creature here that my cause is just.

Tell me where the photograph is.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Ilam doggedly.

Jetsam turned to Mrs. Ilam.

“Listen, murderess,” he said, and Ilam shuddered at that word: “if you

do not answer my questions I will kill your son before your eyes. Does

Ilam know where the photograph is?”

Once again the old woman obstinately shut her eyes and refused to give

any indication.

Ilam, who seemed mentally to be quickly regaining his normal state,

stood up and moved to the fireplace.

“Stand!” said Jetsam angrily, and he drew his revolver from his pocket.

“I will know where that photograph is or I will hang for you. I shall

not be the first man who has died in a good cause. Now, where is that

photograph? Did you or your mother take it out of the box?”

He lifted the revolver.

“I took it out of the box,” snarled Ilam--“I--I--I--and my mother knew

nothing.”

“And where is it?” asked Jetsam, smiling triumphantly.

“It is here,” Ilam cried, and he took a faded photograph from his breast

pocket. “You never thought of searching me, eh? Ass!”

“Give it me,” said Jetsam quietly.

“No,” said Ilam; and with a sudden movement he stuck it in the fire.

The flame destroyed it in an instant.

Jetsam sprang towards him, and then fell back as if stunned. Jetsam was

beaten, after all. He gave a sort of groan and walked to the other side

of the room, as if in a dream. He had failed, and he meant to commit

suicide. All his trouble, all his risks, had gone for nothing. He raised

the revolver again, and no one in the room quite guessed the tragedy

that was preparing for them. His finger was on the trigger.

Immediately behind him was a draught-screen, and the draught-screen

began mysteriously to sink forward. It lodged lightly on his shoulders.

He turned, the revolver at his temple; and round the screen, from behind

it, appeared Rosie.

“Don’t do that,” she said calmly, and she took the revolver out of his

unresisting hand.

Jetsam turned round, saw that the person who had so mysteriously

interfered was Rosie herself, and sank down on a chair.

“You have done me an evil turn,” he breathed, at the same time with a

gesture ordering the Soudanese to leave the room.

“I have saved your life,” she said simply.

“Yes,” he replied, with a trace of bitterness. “That is what I mean. You

are not the first who has saved my life. And if the first saviour had

refrained we should all have been happier now.”

“Do not say that,” she whispered. “I----”

“You--you would never have met me,” he said curtly.

“I am glad I have met you,” she retorted, bravely facing him.

“Ah!” he sighed. “And yet you play tricks on me! Yet you make promises

to me and break them!”

“No, no,” she cried. “I only promised to go to the boat, and I would

have gone to the boat afterwards.”

“Why did you not go at once?”

She told him how she had gone by accident into Pauline’s bedroom and

found it empty, and how thus all her suspicions were aroused.

“I was afraid your plans might fail,” she said; “and you had threatened

to kill yourself if they failed; and I thought something dreadful

might happen during my absence. And so--so--I hid myself here--without

thinking. I’m so sorry.”

And tears came to her eyes.

“A few minutes ago I might have been seriously perturbed by what you

have told me,” said Jetsam. “But what does it matter now? If your

sister is against me, if the house is surrounded by spies, it makes no

difference. I wanted to kill this man here. I should have killed him;

but I thought of the annoyance it would give you. Yes,” he smiled, “I

did really. Not to mention the futile trouble it would cause me. And on

the whole I regarded it as simpler and neater to kill myself. But you

have stopped that. Will you oblige me by putting down that revolver? It

is at full cock.”

“You will not touch it?” she demanded.

“I will not touch it,” he replied.

She laid it at the foot of the bed, and then bent down inquiringly to

old Mrs. Ilam, who rested with closed eyes.

“She is asleep,” murmured Rosie.

“Through all this?”

“Yes, thank heaven! She sleeps very heavily sometimes. Will you not put

the bed back in its place? I do not like to see it here. It is painful,

very painful, in spite of all you have told me about her, to see this.

She is very old and very helpless.” During the conversation Ilam had

remained in a sort of stupor. It was as though the effort of putting the

photograph in the fire, and then the shock of Rosie’s sudden appearance,

had exhausted the energies which he had managed with difficulty to

collect as the results of the narcotic passed away; it was as though

the narcotic had resumed its sway over him for a time. But now he came

brusquely forward, taking two long steps across the room, and stood

between Rosie and Jetsam, and he put his face quite close to Rosie’s

face, as an actor does to an actress on the stage.

“Are you this scoundrel’s accomplice?” he asked hoarsely.

“Cousin,” said Rosie, “Mr. Jetsam is not a scoundrel, and I am nobody’s

accomplice.”

“He has nearly killed me, and he has robbed me of two thousand five

hundred pounds,” pursued Ilam. “If that is not being a scoundrel, what

is? Tell me that. You are his accomplice. You came into this house to

serve his ends.”

“Indeed, I did not,” protested Rosie, “I came into this house with my

sister at your urgent request.”

“Yes,” sneered Ilam. “That is what you made me believe, you chit! You

worked it very well; but I know different now.”

“Until I came here I had never seen Mr. Jetsam,” said Rosie.

“You have come to understand each other remarkably well in quite a few

days.”

“Perhaps we have,” admitted the girl. “But if you object you have a

simple remedy.”

“What is that?”

“You say he is a thief and almost a murderer. You say that I am his

accomplice; we are criminals therefore. Bring us to justice. Have the

entire affair thrashed out, Cousin Ilam.”

“You know that I cannot do that,” said Ilam.

“I am well aware that you dare not,” said Rosie. “The scandal would be

intolerable. Think of Pauline’s feelings.”

“But suppose Pauline, too, is in the conspiracy?”

“There would always be the scandal. It would ruin the City.”

“It is neither the scandal nor the City that you are thinking of, Cousin

Ilam,” said Rosie. “It is merely yourself or your mother. If it is your

mother, well and good.”

Ilam retired a couple of paces, uncertain what to say in reply, and

possibly fearing some attack from Mr. Jetsam, who stood behind him.

There was a silence, and then Ilam murmured:

“Ah! my poor mother, sleeping there in the midst of all this!”

It was a cry from the strange man’s heart, and another silence ensued.

The situation had reached such a point as baffled all the parties to it

to discover a solution.

It was Jetsam who broke the silence.

“I will leave you,” he said in a low voice.

“Good-bye,” he said, as no one replied.

“Where are you going to?” asked Rosie.

“I am merely going,” answered Jetsam.

“But you will tell me where?” she insisted.

“It is vague,” he replied. “Out of your life--that is all I can say. It

was too much to hope that at the end of a career which has been one long

and uninterrupted misfortune the sun of happiness should shine on me.

I was destined to failure from the beginning. You do not know all

my story; but you know some of it--enough to enable you, perhaps, to

forgive me. Good-bye!”

He moved to the door.

“You will not leave me like that,” said Rosie. “You dare not leave me

like that. You are going to kill yourself.”

“No,” he said. “I have got over that caprice, I think. I shall drag out

my existence to its natural end.”

“Give me your address,” Rosie said doggedly.

He shook his head.

“You are cruel,” she whimpered. “After----”

She was interrupted by Ilam himself, who said:

“Rosie, go downstairs. I have two words to speak to this fellow. Go

downstairs. Leave us.” His tone was cold and acid.

“Yes,” Jetsam agreed after a moment. “Leave us; we have to speak to each

other.”

“You will not go without seeing me?” asked Rosie.

“I will not,” replied Jetsam, and the next instant the two men were

alone together in the room, save for the unconscious form of Mrs. Ilam.

The door had been locked again, this time by Ilam.

“She is in love with you,” Ilam shouted fiercely. “You have imposed on

her; you have taken advantage of her ignorance of life, and she is in

love with you! It is infamous. I am stronger than you, and unless you

promise me----”

“Idiot!” Jetsam stopped him. “What are you raving about? You must be

mad. You must have forgotten--as your mother forgets. As for this poor

girl being in love with me-----” He stopped with a hard laugh. “What has

that to do with you?”

“It has everything to do with me,” cried Ilam, and, as if transported

by fury, he suddenly sprang on Jetsam, who was all unprepared, and,

clasping him in a murderous embrace, threw him to the ground. “I’ve had

enough of you,” he ground out the words through his teeth. “And if I

finish you, I can easily show that it was in self-defence.”

And he had scarcely spoken when his hands fell lax in astonishment

and alarm, for immediately outside the window, or so it seemed, there

sounded four notes of a trombone, brazen, clear, and imposing in the

night. No one who has heard Beethoven’s greatest symphony will ever

forget the four notes--commonly called the notes of fate--with which the

most tremendous of musical compositions opens. It was these notes which

the trombone had given forth. There was a silence, and the instrument

repeated them, and in the next pause that followed, the two men who an

instant before had been joined in a dreadful struggle, lay moveless,

listening to their own breathing; and a third time the trombone sounded.

CHAPTER XXVIII--The Dead March

When Pauline, standing outside Carpentaria’s bungalow, had communicated

to Carpentaria the fateful fact that all Ilam’s servants had disappeared

from their rooms, and had given expression to the vague and terrible

fear that was beginning to take possession of her, the musician said in

reply:

“You have every reason to be afraid, and yet I shall ask you to try to

calm your apprehensions. Whether the servants are there or not, nobody

can get into your house without our knowing it, and when anybody starts

to attempt to get in, there will be plenty of time for you to alarm

yourself then.”

“But Rosie alone there with poor Mrs. Ilam!” sighed Pauline.

“Mrs. Ilam can’t do her any harm, at any rate,” said Carpentaria

comfortingly.

And with that he commenced a cautious perambulation of the exterior of

Ilam’s house, Pauline following him.

“I wish you would go to my sister until I have something to report,”

he murmured. “You will take cold, and you will work yourself up into a

fever, and do no good to anybody.”

“I shall not work myself up into a fever,” replied Pauline firmly. “I

am capable of being just as calm as you are yourself. Let us go at once

into the house--let us go to Rosie.”

“What!” expostulated Carpentaria, “and spoil whatever scheme is going

on? No, my dear young lady, we have gone so far that we must go a

little further. We must catch the schemers red-handed. If we do not, our

night’s work will have been wasted.”

The idea of weakly and pusillanimously changing a course of conduct

at the very moment when that course promised the most interesting

adventures shocked all the artist in him.

They stared blankly at the house, whose form was clearly revealed in the

misty moonlight, but none of whose windows showed the slightest glimmer

of light. It was an extremely modern tenement, and its architecture was

in no way startlingly original; nevertheless, in those moments it

seemed to both of them the strangest, the most mysterious, the most

insubstantial house that the hand of man had ever raised.

Suddenly Pauline clutched his arm.

“I hear some one walking somewhere in the grounds,” she said.

They both listened. In the stillness of the night regular steps sounded

plainly from a distance.

“It is the patrol on the terrace,” said Carpentaria.

“It is assuredly on the terrace--the sound of heavy boots on stone

flags, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Pauline agreed, loosing his arm.

They were twenty or thirty yards from the house.

“I want you to be brave and to do something for me.”

Carpentaria turned to her.

“What is it?”

“Go to the patrol, and tell him I have sent you, and that he is to

remain within sight of the boat there, until further orders, keeping as

much in the background as possible. Will you go?”

“Alone?”

“Alone. There is no danger. Besides, one of us must remain here, and one

person can more easily keep out of sight than two. My fear is that the

boat may be used again. The patrol is not to prevent the boat

being used. He is not to show himself; he is merely to observe. You

understand?”

“Then you insist on my going?”

“No, I entreat you to go.”

And without more words she went. It was her figure, and not the figure

of Rosie, that Mr. Jetsam had seen in the gardens when he peeped out of

the window of Mrs. Ilam’s bedroom.

Carpentaria, now alone, recommenced from a fresh spot his vigil over

the closed house. He argued with himself with much ingenuity as to

what point the persons who wished to enter it would choose for their

appearance, but he could decide nothing. They might, he thought, come by

the avenue, or round by the back from the other side of the buildings of

the Central Way, or even through the gardens. He was growing impatient

of a delay apparently interminable, and then his glance happened to

wander upwards to the roof of the house. He could not see the roof

itself, because he was now too near the wall, but it appeared to him

that he detected a phenomenon above the roof which was somewhat unusual.

He walked carefully away from the house until the expanse of roof became

visible; and, indeed, he had not been mistaken. There was a radiance

there. The small square pane of the attic, flat with the surface of the

roof itself, was illuminated, and sent up a faint shaft of light into

the sky.

Instantly he saw his own shortcomings as a counter-schemer against

schemers. He had assumed that the schemers were not already in the

house, whereas he had had no grounds for such an assumption. The

schemers were most obviously in the house, and they had most obviously

been there for a considerable time, since no one could have recently

entered it without his knowledge. He was angry with the schemers, and he

was more angry with himself, and one of those wild ideas seized him--one

of those ideas which could only occur to a Carpentaria. He would

catch these schemers himself, by his own devices, and he would do it

leisurely, dramatically, and effectively. He would make such a capture

as never had been made before. He did not know precisely who the

schemers were, nor their numbers, nor their nefarious occupations in

the house; and he did not care. When once he was in the toils of a

grand romantic idea he cared for nothing except the execution of it. He

laughed with joy.

“Why do you laugh?” said a voice behind him.

It was Pauline, who had returned. She had given the instructions to the

patrol.

“An idea,” he replied--“a notion that appealed to me.” And then

he perceived that he must at all costs get rid of Pauline, and he

continued: “My sister is extremely disturbed,” he said. “Will you not,

as a last favour, go and stay with her? Do not refuse me this. I will

find some one to assist me in my work here--one of my trombone-players

on whom I can rely. I--I really do not care for you to be out here like

this. The strain is too much for you.”

“But Rosie----” she objected again.

“Rosie is all right,” he reassured her. “I will answer for Rosie’s

safety with my life; and when I say that, I mean it.”

“I will do as you wish,” said Pauline at length.

“Let me see you into the house,” he murmured, enchanted.

He unlocked his front-door for her, and called out softly, “Juliette!”

“Is that you, Carlos?” said a voice in the darkness at the top of the

stairs.

“Yes,” he said. “Here is Miss Dartmouth come to keep you company. Do not

use a light--at least, use as little light as possible, until you hear

some music.”

“Hear some music? What music?”

“Never mind what music. If you should hear some music you will know that

you are at liberty to turn on all the lights you like. Miss Dartmouth

will tell you why I want darkness at present. Here are the stairs, Miss

Dartmouth. Cling to the rail. _Au revoir._”

“But----” faltered Pauline.

“_Au revoir_, I said,” he whispered insistently.

Before leaving the house he rushed into the kitchen, found a long

clothes-line, of which he seemed to know exactly the whereabouts, and

appropriated it.

The next minute he was tying the handle of Ilam’s front-door firmly to

the railing, so that it would be impossible to open the door from the

inside. He secured in the same manner the side-door and also the gate

in the wall of the kitchen yard. He then fixed pieces of rope under

windows, in such a manner that a person endeavouring to leap from a

window to the ground would almost certainly be caught in the rope, and

break a leg or an arm, if not a neck or so.

“Cheerful for them!” he murmured maliciously. “I only hope it won’t be

Miss Rosie who tries to make her exit by the window. I have answered for

her. However, I must take the risks.”

He glanced finally round the house, throwing away some short unused

pieces of rope, but keeping two long pieces. He surveyed the house with

satisfaction.

“I think I can safely leave it for five minutes or so now,” he said to

himself; and he shut his penknife with a vicious snap and put it in his

pocket.

Then he ran off at a great speed in the direction of the Central Way.

At the southern end of the Central Way, nearly opposite to the general

offices of the City, was an elegant building known as the band-house.

Here dwelt the majority of the members of Carpentaria’s world-renowned

orchestra. Some members, being married to women instead of married to

their art, had permission to possess domestic hearths in London and the

suburbs, but these were few. The edifice was a very large one, as it.

had need to be. A peculiar feature of it was the rehearsal-room on the

top floor, constructed, like the finest flats in New York, in such a

manner as to be absolutely sound-proof.

Carpentaria rang the electric bell at the portals of the band-house, and

the portals were presently opened by a sleepy person whose duty it was

to admit bandsmen returning after late leave.

“Look ’ere,” said the porter, “this is a bit thick, this is. Do you

know as the hour is exactly----”

“Hold your tongue, you fool!” Carpentaria stopped him briefly, “and go

and bring Mr. Bruno to me at once; it’s very important. Let’s have some

light.”

“I beg pardon, sir,” said the porter, astounded by this nocturnal

apparition of the autocrat of the band. “Mr. Bruno is asleep, sir. He

had two whiskies to make him sleep, and went to bed afore midnight,

sir.”

“I know he’s asleep. Do you suppose I thought he was standing on his

head waiting for the dawn? Go and waken him--and quicker than that!

Here, I’ll go with you.”

The two men went upstairs together, and Mr. Bruno, principal

trombone-player of the band, was soon sitting up in bed, awaking to the

presence of his chief.

“Bruno, my lad,” said Carpentaria, “give me your trombone.”

“My trombone, sir?”

“Yes,” said Carpentaria. “Mendelssohn once remarked that the trombone

was an instrument too sacred to use often, but I think the supreme

occasion has arrived for me to use it to-night.”

“It’s there, in the corner, sir,” said Bruno, wondering vaguely what was

this latest caprice of Carpentaria’s.

Carpentaria rushed to the thing, took it out of its case, and put it to

his mouth.

“H’m!” he murmured, after he had sounded a note gently. “I can do it,

I think. Listen, Bruno! The occasion is not only supreme; it is

unique. You are to rouse all the men; you are to dress, and take your

instruments; and you are to go out quietly and surround the bungalow of

our honoured President, Mr. Josephus Ilam. You are to make no noise of

any kind until you hear me give the first bars of a tune, either with my

mouth or with this instrument. You are then to join in that tune.”

“What tune, sir?”

“You will hear.”

“Where shall you be, sir?”

“You will see. Get up, now; don’t lose a second.” Carpentaria was off

again. He returned to Ilam’s house, and climbed to the balcony of the

window of Mrs. Ilam’s bedroom. It was fortunate that he had preserved

the rope, for he could not have climbed with the trombone in his arms.

His method was to leave the trombone on the ground, the rope tied to

it; he kept the other end of the rope in his hand, and drew the trombone

after him.

Then it was that he sounded on the trombone the terrible phrase of

Beethoven’s, which put a period to the struggle between Ilam and Jetsam.

He felt for the handle of the French window, and, finding the window

fastened on the inside, adopted the simple device of leaning with his

full weight against the window-frame. The whole thing gave way, and

through a crashing of glass, a splintering of wood, and the tearing of

curtains he backed into the room, the trombone held precariously in one

hand and his revolver very firmly in the other.

The scene that confronted him was sufficiently surprising. Amid the

extraordinary disorder of the chamber he found its three occupants all

stretched on the floor. The old woman was apparently oblivious, but the

two men, releasing each other, gazed at him for all the world like two

schoolboys caught in an act contrary to discipline.

“Did I startle you? I hope so,” said Carpentaria, when he had found his

bearings. “I meant to.”

Jetsam was the first to rise.

“You with the red hair!” cried Jetsam. “You are trying to save my life

again!”

“Never mind my red hair,” said Carpentaria, ruffled. “I am not trying

to save anybody’s life. I’m here on a mission of inquiry. No one leaves

this room until I have had a full explanation of everything. I have

stood just about as much as I can stand of the mystery that has been

hanging over this City for a week past. Ilam, let me beg you to get up

and take a seat over there in that corner. Thanks!”

He relinquished the musical instrument as Ilam clumsily resumed his feet

and obeyed.

“As for you, Mr. Jetsam,” continued Carpentaria, “you know, from

accounts which have reached me, the precise moral effect of a loaded

revolver such as I am now pointing at you. Go into the other corner.”

“I won’t,” said Jetsam. “You can fire if you like. As a matter of fact,

you daren’t.”

“You propose to leave the room and defy me?”

“I propose to leave the room.”

“Listen,” said Carpentaria.

He took the trombone and blew on it loudly a few notes which neither

Jetsam nor Ilam immediately recognized. But the musicians, who had

by this time surrounded the house, recognized them. And at once there

entered by the smashed window the solemn and moving strains of the Dead

March in “Saul.” The house seemed to be ringed in a circle of awful

melody.

Jetsam shuddered.

“Now kindly stay where you are,” said Carpentaria.

And Jetsam stayed where he was, at the foot of the bed, his back to Mrs.

Ilam’s prone figure.

The playing continued.

“What foolery is this?” demanded Ilam slowly.

“It is part of a larger piece of foolery that has rescued you, Ilam,”

Carpentaria replied, and he was crossing the room to approach Ilam,

when he saw something in the looking-glass over the mantelpiece, and he

started back.

Mrs. Ilam, the paralytic, roused in some strange way, either by the

violence of the scenes at which she had assisted, or by the inexplicable

influence of the music, was almost erect in her bed, and her trembling

parchment hands had seized the revolver which Rosie had left on the

floor, and she was endeavouring to point it between Jetsam’s shoulders.

The other two men turned and saw the fatal and appalling movement of

the aged creature, who was evidently in the grip of some tremendously

powerful instinct--the kind of instinct that only dies with death.

Carpentaria alone retained his self-possession. With a swift and yet

gentle movement he disarmed the terrible old woman, and she sank back,

with streaming eyes, helpless and moveless as before. The incident was

over in a few seconds.

“And now,” said Carpentaria, “I will hear your story, Mr. Jetsam. But

first, we must lift this bed back to its proper-position.”

“Very well,” replied Jetsam, trembling in spite of himself. “You shall

hear my story.”

The music ceased.

CHAPTER XXIX--Mr. Jetsam’s Recital

We will go downstairs,” said Carpentaria, when a certain amount of

order had been restored to the room. “We shall be more at ease there.”

“No,” cried Jetsam, and there was a note of passion in his voice. “This

old woman shall hear my tale. I tell it in her presence, or I tell

it not at all.” Carpentaria gazed at Mrs. Ilam’s eyes, which made no

response. Her bed was now replaced in its proper position, and those

strange burning eyes perused their old spot in the ceiling. After the

brief and terrible return of activity to that stricken body, it seemed

to have sunk back into a condition of helplessness more absolute even

than before. The eyes burned, but not quite with their former disturbing

brilliance.

“Very well,” Carpentaria agreed.

Ilam was already seated, apparently half-comatose. The other two men

each seized a chair. And then there was a timid but insistent knocking.

“What is that?” demanded Carpentaria of Jetsam. “You ought to know; you

have been master here for some hours.”

“It is Miss Rosie, I imagine,” Jetsam answered. “Your singular music has

startled her.”

Carpentaria walked rapidly to the door, unlocked it, and opened it.

Rosie it indeed was who stood there.

“Ah, my dear young lady,” he said lightly, without giving her an

opportunity even to express her astonishment. “I would like you to go to

your sister, who is in my house over the way. But I fear you cannot

open any of the doors. Won’t you retire and rest a little, after your

complicated labours?” He smiled a little grimly. “Everything is all

right here, and should your aged relative need your ministrations you

may rely on me to call you. In the meantime, your cousin and I, and your

particular friend Mr. Jetsam, must have a chat on business matters.”

He bowed, covering the aperture of the door with his body so that Rosie

could not see inside the room. As for Rosie, she hesitated.

“I entreat you,” he insisted, “go and rest, and don’t have anything more

to do with boats; you might drown yourself. And believe me when I say

that nothing further will be done in secret. The moment I am free I will

endeavour to free the doors.”

Rosie moved reluctantly away down the landing. She had not spoken a

word. Carpentaria closed the portal softly and retired to his chair.

“You have my attention,” he remarked significantly to Mr. Jetsam.

“Well,” said Jetsam, after a moment’s pause. “It goes back a very long

time, this affair does, Mr. Carpentaria. It certainly began before you

were born--down at Torquay. Torquay, according to what they tell me, was

not the place then that it is now, not by a considerable distance; but

it was fashionable. It had got a bit of a name as a good place to go and

get fat in. Perhaps that was why a certain soda-water manufacturer went

there to spend a year or so. He was a very wealthy man, and he rented

a villa there. It’s one of those villas on the top of the hill between

Union Street and the sea, and it still exists. His age was about fifty,

and he was supposed to be worth half a million or so--all made out of

gas and splutter, you see. Being supposed to be worth half a million

or so, of course he soon had the entire population of Torquay knocking

at his door and throwing cards into his card-basket. He made a wide

circle of friends in rather less than no time, and being a simple,

decent creature, though not faultless, he was pretty well pleased with

himself. Now among the friends that he made was a certain widow,

age uncertain--but in the neighbourhood of thirty, and her name was

Kilmarnock.”

At this time Mr. Jetsam stood up, and bending over Mrs. Ham’s bed with

his smile so ruthlessly cruel, he repeated, staring at the invalid:

“Her name was Kilmarnock, wasn’t it?”

Mrs. Ilam made no sign. Mr. Jetsam resumed his chair.

“A pretty woman, I believe she was, with magnificent black eyes; the

most wonderful eyes in the West Country, people said,” Mr. Jetsam

proceeded. “Husband dead some little time. Anyhow, she had gone out of

mourning, and her dresses were the amazement of the town. They’d look

pretty queer nowadays, I reckon, because that was before 1860. However,

her dresses have got nothing to do with it, especially as the

soda-water manufacturer--have I happened to mention that his name was

Ilam?--especially as Mr. Ilam couldn’t see them very well. Mr. Ilam was

beginning to suffer from a cataract; both his eyes were affected, and

the disease was making progress rapidly. You must remember that oculists

didn’t know as much about cataract then as they do now. Well, Mr. Ilam

was himself a widower--a widower with one child, aged three years. He

had been a widower for two years when he first met Mrs. Kilmarnock. He

liked Mrs. Kilmarnock. She seemed to have in her the makings of a good

nurse, and one of the things that Mr. Ilam wanted was a faithful, loving

nurse. He was certainly in an awkward predicament. He also wanted a

mother for his child; and Mrs. Kilmarnock took a tremendous fancy to the

child--a simply tremendous fancy. He was a man who talked pretty freely

and openly, Mr. Ilam was, and he made no secret of the fact that, though

he preferred to marry a widow, he would never permit himself to marry

a widow who had children of her own. And one day he said to Mrs.

Kilmarnock that, since he had never heard her mention a child, he

assumed that she had no children.

“She replied that his assumption was correct, and that she continually

regretted being childless, as she adored children, and felt very

severely the need of something to give her a real interest in life.

A month later Mr. Ilam asked Mrs. Kilmarnock to marry him, and she

consented like a bird. Three months later they were married. Everybody

said kind things; for you must know that Mrs. Kilmarnock was not

penniless herself. Oh, no! She lived in very good style in Torquay, and

gave dinners that Torquay liked. And Torquay is a good judge of dinners.

Her husband had been a Scottish writer to the Signet, she said. So the

marriage was celebrated amid universal plaudits, and there was quite

three-quarters of a column about it in the _Western Morning News_.”

At this juncture Carpentaria ventured to interrupt the speaker.

“You appear,” he said, “to be remarkably well informed about matters

which occurred long before you were of an age to take an intelligent

interest in them. At the time of this marriage you surely were not in

the habit of reading newspapers?”

“I was not,” answered Jetsam drily. “I had attained the mature age

of three years. If I am well informed it is because I have taken the

trouble to inform myself. You see, I was interested, and I have spared

no pains during this last year or two to acquire all the circumstantial

details of the case.”

“I perceive,” said Carpentaria. “But how were you interested?”

“You will understand presently,” said Jetsam. “To continue. This Mrs.

Kilmarnock, whom we must now call Mrs. Ilam, used, both before and after

her second marriage, to pay visits to the town of Teignmouth, and these

visits were, not to put too fine a point on it, of an extremely discreet

nature; they were, in fact, strictly secret. Mrs. Ilam fell into the

habit of telling her husband that she was going to Exeter to shop, but

instead of going to Exeter she went only as far as Teignmouth. She was

always dressed very simply indeed for these Teignmouth visits. She used

to walk through the town from the station, and, having taken the ferry

across the Teign, she walked up the right bank of the river till she

came to a cottage that stood by itself in the marshy land thereabouts.

At the cottage an old man and woman and a little boy would meet her. And

the strange thing was that the old man spoke French; he could not speak

English. You may possibly not be aware that onion-boats from the coast

of Brittany are constantly arriving at the smaller Devonshire ports,

such as Torquay and Teignmouth. The old man was a Breton peasant,

with all the characteristics of a Breton peasant, who had arrived at

Teignmouth once in an onion-boat, and forgotten to go back again because

he fell in love with an Englishwoman--a Devonshire lass with a soft

drawling accent. So Mrs. Ilam used to talk to the Breton peasant in

French, and to his wife in English, and to the boy in baby language. She

would cover the boy with kisses; she would call him by pet names, and

she saw him at least once a week.”

“He was her son?” Carpentaria put in interrogatively.

“You have naturally guessed it,” Jetsam responded. “He was her son.”

“But if she was really a widow, and this was really her son, why did

she----”

“Oh,” cried Jetsam, “I think she was really a widow, and there is not

the slightest shadow of doubt that this was really her son. Perhaps she

kept him a secret from Torquay because she felt that he might prove an

obstacle to the achievement of her desires in Torquay. Anyhow, she loved

him passionately. Her son was, beyond question, the greatest passion of

her life.” He turned abruptly again to the old woman, “Wasn’t he?” he

demanded.

And the aged creature’s burning eyes were filled with tears.

“I think perhaps it might be as well to leave Mrs. Ilam out of the

conversation,” suggested Carpentaria.

“Impossible to leave her out of the conversation,” said Jetsam quickly,

“because the conversation is almost exclusively about her. However, I

will not trouble her any more for confirmation of what I say. Well, for

nearly a year after her second marriage these clandestine visits of Mrs.

Ilam to the cottage on the banks of the Teign continued with the most

perfect regularity, and then something extremely remarkable happened.”

“What was that?”

“First, I must tell you that soon after the marriage Mr. Ilam’s cataract

got rapidly worse. In six months he could only distinguish objects

vaguely. He could not read anything except shop signs. In Mrs. Ilam

he found an admirable nurse and companion. Except for her shopping

excursions to Exeter she never left his side. She was a model wife,

and all Torquay admitted the fact. Even when Mr. Ilam’s impaired vision

rendered him captious, querulous, and indeed unbearable, she remained

sweetness itself; and Mr. Ilam would not admit anyone but her to his

presence. He even took a dislike to his child, his only son, and the

infant was left in the charge of servants and governesses, except that

Mrs. Ilam saw him as frequently as she could.”

“But this is not very remarkable,” said Carpentaria, “such things are

constantly happening.”

“I am coming to the remarkable part,” replied Jetsam, with a certain

solemnity of manner. “One day the old Breton fisherman told Mrs. Ilam

that a relative had left him property in his native district, and that

he had persuaded his wife to go with him to France so that they might

end their days there. Mrs. Ilam was extremely disturbed by this piece

of news, because she did not know what to do with the boy. She asked the

Frenchman how soon he proposed to leave, and the Frenchman said in about

three weeks. She left and said she would come back again in a few

days. It is at this point that the remarkable begins. Within a week all

Torquay was made aware that Mr. Ilam, at the solicitation of his wife,

had decided to go to Paris to consult a great specialist there.”

“I see,” breathed Carpentaria, while Ilam’s face wore at length a look

of interest.

“I doubt if you do see,” said Jetsam. “You think that Mrs. Ilam was

arranging to go to Paris in order to be nearer her son. Well, she was,

but not at all in the way you imagine. They departed from Torquay almost

at once, and in a somewhat remarkable manner, for Mrs. Ilam dismissed

every servant, even her own maid and Mr. Ilam’s man, and the child’s

nurse--all were dismissed in Torquay itself--and Mr. Ilam and his wife

and child left Torquay railway station entirely unaided, except by

porters and the domestics of a hotel. Mrs. Ilam would certainly have all

her work cut out to conduct the expedition, for you must remember that

at this period Mr. Ilam was practically blind. Well, they had to change

at Exeter and catch the Plymouth express, and at Exeter the old French

peasant was waiting on the platform, evidently by arrangement, and he

held Mrs. Ilam’s own little boy by the hand, and Mrs. Ilam and the

peasant had a long talk by themselves, and then the express came in, and

the Ilams got into it, and the express started off again for London, and

the French peasant was left standing on the platform holding the little

boy by the hand. You see?”

“No,” said Carpentaria bluntly.

“Well,” proceeded Jetsam. “It was not the same little boy that the

peasant held by the hand. Mrs. Ilam had taken her own child with her,

and left behind her step-child.”

“Great heavens!” murmured Carpentaria. “Exactly,” said Jetsam. “Only

the heavens didn’t happen to interfere. This was no common case of

substitution at birth, it was a monstrously ingenious change which

Mrs. Ilam, out of her passionate love for her own son, had planned and

carried out in a manner suggested to her by the facts of the situation.

Consider. The two boys were the same age--about three years--and they

were dressed alike, Mrs. Ilam had seen to that. Mr. Ilam is nearly

blind, certainly he could not distinguish one child of three from

another child of three, even if they had been dressed differently.

Moreover, Mr. Ilam is not interested in the child. He is wrapped up in

his own complaint, a ferocious egotist, like most sufferers. Probably

the child sleeps during the journey to London--probably Mrs. Ilam gives

him something to make him sleep. The party arrive at Paddington, and

are met by a new set of servants whom Mrs. Ilam has engaged. She left

Torquay with a child; she arrived at Paddington with a child. Who,

except the old French peasant, is to know that there has been a change

_en route?_ The new child is kept entirely out of Mr. Ilam’s presence.

He is taught his new name; he is taught to forget his past on the banks

of the Teign; and he readily succeeds in doing so. His new nurse is

suitably discreet. During their brief stay in London the Ilams stop at

a hotel. They do not visit friends, on the plea of Mr. Ilam’s complaint.

Then they leave London for Paris.”

“The thing was perfect,” observed Carpentaria, astounded.

“It was fatally perfect,” Jetsam agreed. “Even had Mr. Ilam been cured

at once, the danger would have been but slight, because he had never

seen his own child clearly. However, Mr. Ilam was not cured at once, for

it happened that the famous oculist whom they meant to consult died on

the very day they entered Paris. It was seven years before Mr. Ilam got

himself cured; but in the end he was cured almost completely. The boy

was then aged ten years. What possible chance was there of a discovery

of the fraud? Even had Mr. Ilam ever seen his child clearly, what

resemblance is there between an infant of three and a boy of ten? None;

none whatever. Mrs. Ilam had triumphed: she had deposed the authentic

heir of Mr. Ilam and had put her own son on the throne in his stead.”

“And the other boy?” Carpentaria queried.

Jetsam paused, his eyes bent downwards.

“Do you know the Breton peasantry?” he demanded suddenly, at length.

“Not in the least,” said Carpentaria.

“Ah, well; that doesn’t matter! When you hear the sequel of the story

you will be able to imagine what a Breton peasant is capable of. He is

the equal of the Norman peasant, and no French novelist has ever yet

dared to write down the actual! truth about the Norman peasant. I told

you that Mrs. Ilam and the old Frenchman had a chat on Exeter platform.

She told him that she was giving him a new charge, preferring to take

the other boy herself. It was arranged that the new charge should

accompany the Breton to France, and live with him as his foster-child.

Terms were fixed up, no doubt to the entire satisfaction of the peasant.

Then Mrs. Ilam ventured to play her great card. She informed the

Frenchman that his new charge was a very delicate plant, frequently ill,

and not apparently destined to long life. This, by the way, was grossly

untrue. ‘Of course, if he were to die,’ she said in effect to the

peasant, ‘you would lose the income which I shall pay to you for looking

after the child, and to compensate you for that loss I will promise

to give you, if he dies, the sum of five hundred pounds.’ I expect she

managed to put a peculiar and sinister emphasis on these words. Anyhow,

the Frenchman understood. That was just the kind of thing that you might

rely on a Breton peasant to comprehend without too much explanation.

Five hundred pounds is five hundred pounds; it is over twelve thousand

francs, and twelve thousand francs to a Breton peasant is worth

anything--it is worth eternal torture.”

“And so, in due course, Mrs. Ilam received news of her stepson’s death?”

“In due course she received news of her stepson’s death,” said

Jetsam. “It took a considerable time--six years, in fact--‘but it was

accompanied by legal proof, and when she received it Mrs. Ilam must have

been as happy as the day is long, especially as her own boy was growing

up strong and well, and Mr. Ilam had taken quite a fancy to him. So

all trace of the crime--would you call it a crime, or only a pleasing

manifestation of a mother’s love?--all trace of the crime was lost,

for the French peasant died; the English wife of the French peasant had

expired a long time before.”

And Jetsam paused again.

“I am accepting all that you say as gospel,” said Carpentaria. “Because

somehow it impresses me vividly as being true.” Here he looked at

Josephus Ilam, who avoided his glance. “But how does this matter concern

yourself, and in what way did you come upon the traces of the crime?”

“I’ll tell you,” Jetsam recommenced. “It was like this. The boy was not

dead.”

“Not dead?”

“No. He had run away. He had had a pretty hard time before the death of

the peasant’s wife. Afterwards, his existence was a trifle more exciting

than he could bear. He was starved and he was beaten. But that was not

all. On board fishing boats he was forced to accept dangers and risks of

such a nature that the continuance of his life was nothing less than a

daily miracle. So he ran away. He was aged nine, and he had a perfect

knowledge of two languages as his stock-in-trade.”

“But the legal proof of his death?”

“Nothing simpler. The foster-father was a great friend of the village

schoolmaster, and the schoolmaster, as you may know, is always the

secretary of the mayor in a French village. He it is who makes out

all certificates, and transacts every bit of the routine business of

population-recording. The foster-father suggested to the schoolmaster

that in exchange for a certificate of the boy’s death, the schoolmaster

should receive a note of the Bank of France for a thousand francs. This

was more than half a year’s salary to the schoolmaster, and the result

was that the foster-father got the certificate. No fear of discovery!

None knew of the issue of the certificate except these two men. And the

lady for whose benefit the certificate was issued would be extremely

unlikely to visit a remote French fishing village.”

“And what occurred to the boy?”

“The principal thing that occurred to the boy is that he is now sitting

here and telling you his story,” said Jetsam, calmly.

“I guessed it,” said Carpentaria, with equal calmness, “as soon as you

mentioned that the boy was not dead.”

Josephus Ilam maintained a stony silence.

“I knocked about for nine or ten years,” continued Jetsam, “both in

England and France, chiefly fishing. Then I suddenly became respectable.

I got a place in a house-agency in Cannes, chiefly on the strength of my

knowledge of French and English. Of course, that only lasted during the

winter season. But my employer had a similar agency in Ostend during

the summer. It was in Ostend that I became gay. I joined a theatrical

troupe. I travelled a great deal. I did everything except make money.

And after ten years of that I settled down again as a house-agency

clerk. I really was rather good at that, much better than as a

music-hall performer with revolvers, for instance. And in various

‘pleasure cities’ of Europe I acted as a clerk for over twenty years.

Think of it--twenty years! And me growing older and narrower and more

gloomy every year in the service of ‘pleasure.’ I never saved any money

to speak of, even though I remained single, perhaps because I remained

single. And then one day, finding myself at St. Malo, I thought I would

go and have a look at that fishing village which I had fled from over

thirty years before. My delightful foster-father was, of course, dead;

so was the schoolmaster; but one or two people remembered me, and among

them was an old woman who had been a charming young girl when I left. It

appeared that my old foster-father had fallen deeply in love with her

in a senile way, and at her parents’ instigation she had married him for

his money. He had confided to her, once when he thought he was dying,

the secret of the substitution on Exeter platform. And now she told me.

She had always liked me. You should have heard her pronounce ‘Exeter.’

It was the funniest thing.”

Mr. Jetsam laughed hardly.

“So that was how you got on the track?” said Carpentaria.

“Yes. I then pursued my inquiries in Torquay, and I found my old

nurse. She told me that the real child of Mr. Ilam had a large crimson

birthmark on the calf of his left leg. I had that mark. She also told me

that there existed a photograph--one of the old daguerreotypes--of me as

a child in the arms of my step-mother, my father standing close by, and

that the mark on my leg was most clearly visible on this photograph.

And that was the only real solid piece of information that I obtained,

except that the photograph used to be kept in an old lacquered box.

I had an instinct that the photograph had been preserved. And it was

preserved--until to-night! I relied on the photograph. I could dimly

recollect Torquay and Exeter platforms, but of what use would my

assertions be without some proof, some tangible proof? When I thought of

my wasted and spoiled and miserable life--and of what it might have been

had I not been hated by a woman, I was filled with hatred and with--with

such sorrow as you can’t understand.”

A sob escaped from Mr. Jetsam, and Carpentaria got up and took his hand.

“It is not too late for justice,” said Carpentaria.

“That woman has always hated me,” Jetsam murmured. “And even to-night

her hatred still burned so fiercely that she tried to kill me. Even if

she could speak, would she admit the truth? And she cannot speak.”

“I think I can cause her to communicate with us,” said Carpentaria. “You

will see in a moment.”

CHAPTER XXX--The Words of Mrs. Ilam

Carpentaria bent over the old woman, as if to search ‘her eyes and find

some kindness there.

And it seemed to him, indeed, that the character of her gaze had

somewhat changed, though those brilliant orbs, famous in Torquay fifty

years ago for their splendour, showed no trace of humidity.

Carpentaria himself was moved. It would have been impossible for anyone,

least of all an artist of romantic instincts such as he, to listen

to Jetsam’s recital without emotion. And now, when the narrative was

finished, Jetsam sat silent and preoccupied, the figure of grief and of

failure. One felt, in observing him, the immense tragedy of his life--a

life which would not have been a tragedy, but merely a little slice of

the commonplace, had he not by chance learned the sinister secret of his

origin. One understood how the discovery of that secret had completely

changed his view of existence, how it had filled him with ideas of

frantic hope, frantic revenge, and frantic regret at the long drab

irrecoverable years which the past had swallowed up. One penetrated, as

it were, into his brain, and watched how he was continually contrasting

what his career actually had been with what it might have been--with

what it would have been but for the ruthless action of the woman on the

bed.

And then there was the burly, smitten figure of Josephus Ilam, too,

equally pathetic in its way. For love of this strong, heavy man, who

once had been a little boy in a sailor suit standing on Exeter platform,

the woman on the bed had committed a crime which was certainly worse

than murder. She had made one life and she had marred another. And now

she herself was stricken, withered, about to appear before the ultimate

tribunal. It was incontrovertible that, if she had sinned, she had

sinned magnificently, in the grand manner.

Carpentaria glanced at the two men, and then back again at the aged

mother.

“I understand, Mrs. Ilam,” he began in a voice strangely soft and

persuasive, “that you can indicate ‘yes’ or ‘no’ by a slight movement.

Miss Dartmouth told me the other day. Is this so? I entreat you to

answer me.”

With a sudden jerk Josephus Ilam rose from his chair and rushed to the

bedside.

“Answer him, mother.”

Mother and son exchanged a long gaze, and then Mrs. Ilam’s eyelids

blinked. It was the affirmative sign.

“Thank you,” said Carpentaria simply. “Now it seems to me, if you are

not too tired, that we can quite easily carry on a conversation upon

this basis. It will be slow, but it will be none the less sure. By

successively choosing letters out of the alphabet you can make up words,

and so form sentences. You can choose the letters thus: I will run

through the alphabet, and when I come to the letter you want, you will

blink. Do you comprehend my scheme?”

The eyes blinked.

“And are you willing to try it?”

There was a considerable pause, but in the end the eyes blinked.

“Very good,” said Carpentaria. “Now, quite probably you will want to

begin with the letter ‘I,’ eh?”

The eyes blinked.

“Excellent! Your first word is ‘I.’ Let us go to the next word. A, B, C,

D--------”

At “D” the eyes blinked again.

With infinite patience, Carpentaria continued to help Mrs. Ilam to

express herself, and though that mouth was incapable of speech and those

hands would never write again, the woman transmitted her first thought

to the outer world, and it went thus:

“_I do not regret_.”

There was something terrible, something majestic, in that unrepentant

enunciation. It illustrated the remorseless character of the aged

creature, whose spirit nothing apparently could conquer. Josephus

Ilam moved away from the bed and hovered uncertainly between the

dressing-table and the window. Jetsam got up from his chair and, taking

Ilam’s place, examined the features of the woman who had ruined his

life and cheated him out of all that was his. And even Jetsam could not

forbear an admiring exclamation.

“You are tremendous,” he murmured. “I could almost like you.”

Carpentaria waved him aside.

“Has Mr. Jetsam told us the truth, dear madam?” he interrogated her.

And the eyes blinked. It was as though they blinked joyously, defiantly.

“Do you agree that restitution should be made, so far as restitution is

possible?” Carpentaria asked.

There was no movement of the eyelids.

“You object to restitution, even now?”

Still there was no movement of the eyelids. But Josephus Ilam’s legs

could be heard shuffling on the floor.

“You wish to speak, then? A, B, C, D----------”

Carpentaria went on to “W” before Mrs. Ilam signified that the sentence

was to commence. The words ran:

“Why named Jetsam?”

The woman’s mind was evidently exploring, in a sort of indifferent

curiosity, the side-issues, the minor scenes, of the terrific drama

which she had started and of which she now witnessed the climax.

She appeared to have no sense at all of her own responsibility.

“It was a name I gave myself when I first found out who I was,” said

Jetsam bitterly. “Something chucked overboard and forgotten, you see.”

A slight smile seemed to illuminate the woman’s face.

“Do you agree that restitution should be made?” Carpentaria repeated

patiently.

The eyes of the paralytic made no sign until Carpentaria began again to

go through the alphabet. Then, letter by letter, the message came:

“If my son wishes.”

“Mother,” Ilam murmured, averting his face from the bed, “of course I

wish. I nearly killed him myself the other day. You thought I had been

dreaming--till you saw him yourself, and, and----”

He stopped; he broke down.

And then Mrs. Ilam proceeded, with Carpentaria’s help:

“My son must tell me about that.”

“No,” Jetsam put in authoritatively; “I will tell you about that.

Ilam--or rather I should say Kilmarnock--is in no condition to make

speeches. When I first came to this place to begin my struggle for what

was mine, I really had not got much of a plan in my head. It was so

difficult to make a start. It may seem to you quite a simple thing”--he

turned away from Mrs. Ilam and addressed Carpentaria--“to go up to a

person and say to him, ‘Look here, you are standing in my shoes, and

your mother has committed an act foully criminal!’ But in practice it

isn’t quite as easy as it seems. You want a gigantic nerve to make a

statement like that as if you meant it--although you do mean it. It

sounds rather wild, you see. And then I met my supplanter rather before

I was ready for him. The truth is that he came into that little place

where I was hiding in just the same way as you came in, Mr. Carpentaria.

He caught me like you did--a trespasser; and, of course, I was at a

disadvantage. He spoke to me very roughly, and then angered me----”

“How could I know who you were?” demanded Ilam.

“Exactly. You couldn’t know. But the effect on me was the same. Put

yourself in my place, Mr. Kilmarnock. I had been cheated out of my whole

career. You were in unlawful possession of it; and on the top of that

you came along, and behaved to me as if I were a dog. Well”--here Jetsam

addressed his stepmother again--“I told him who I was, and pretty quick

too, and I could see from his manner that he knew the history of our

origin, and the substitution on Exeter platform.”

“I knew,” Ilam admitted with a certain sadness. “My mother had once told

me--I came across traces of a mystery, and she told me.”

“And you did nothing?” queried Jetsam. “It was not on your conscience?”

“You must recollect that we had the legal proof of your death. What was

there to be done? I could not have made restitution to the dead, even

had my mother permitted.”

“But when I told you who I was,” rejoined Mr. Jetsam, “unless I am much

mistaken, you believed what I said.”

“I did,” Ilam agreed. “Moreover, you bear a most distinct likeness to a

portrait of my stepfather, painted when he was about your age.”

“You believed me, and your answer was to try to kill me?” Jetsam

sneered.

The two men, the son and the stepson, were now opposite to one another,

on either side of the bed, while Carpentaria, intently listening, stood

at the foot.

“I did not try to kill you,” answered Ilam.

“You pretty nearly succeeded,” said Jetsam.

“I thought I had killed you,” Ilam said gravely. “But I had no intention

of doing so. You said something very scathing about my mother----”

“I said nothing that was not justified.”

“You insulted my mother. I lost my temper. I hated you. We always hate

those whom we have wronged. I struck you. You fell, and you must have

knocked your head against the pile of planks lying in the enclosure;

you never moved. I examined you. I could have sworn you were dead--I was

afraid--I thought of inquests. I knew the whole truth would come out. I

had not meant to kill. So I took you and buried you temporarily, while

I considered what I should do afterwards. I went back to the house

and told my mother. She would not believe me. She thought I had been

dreaming. I do frequently have bad nightmares. And certain things that

occurred afterwards made even me suspect that after all I had been

dreaming. It was not until you came again that I----”

“And even your mother believed then, eh?” said Jetsam. “Your mother

believed too suddenly. She saw me and she believed! And the result was

paralysis! I ought to have broken it to her more gently. That would have

been perhaps better for all of us--perhaps better!”

There was a pause. And Jetsam added, as if communing with himself:

“How she hated me! How she hates me still! even to-night, if some one

had not interfered in time----”

He could not get away from the amazing tenacity of Mrs. Ilam’s purpose.

“You wish to speak?” said Carpentaria, who had been observing the

woman’s eyes; the eyes were blinking nervously.

He began the alphabet again, and her message ran thus:

“I do not hate him; but I love my son. To-night I thought Josephus was

in danger. That was why--revolver. I always acted for my son. I love

him!”

These sentiments, so unmistakably clear in their significance, took some

time to transmit. Mrs. Ilam appeared to be exhausted. But after a few

moments she continued:

“Where is Rosie? She helped him. I want to know why.”

The men exchanged glances.

“Why did she help you?” Carpentaria asked of Jetsam.

“Better ask her!” replied Jetsam curtly.

Carpentaria did not hesitate an instant. He went to the door, opened

it, and called Rosie, and his voice resounded through the well of the

staircase and the empty rooms. And then Rosie came from; downstairs,

like an apparition. She had been crying.

“Mrs. Ilam wants you to explain why you have been helping Mr. Jetsam,”

said Carpentaria, as she entered.

“Helping him in what?” Rosie parleyed timidly.

“In his plans----”

“Against me,” Ilam added.

“I only helped him in his plans for justice,” said Rosie.

“But why?”

“Because I was sorry for him. Because there is something in his

tone--because--oh! if he has told you all, are you not all sorry for

him? When I think of what his life has been----”

She stopped and burst into tears.

“But my hair is grey,” murmured Jetsam. “How can you possibly be

interested in me? What does it matter what happens to me? My life is

over.”

“No it isn’t!” Rosie protested. “It hasn’t yet begun. It is just

beginning. Mrs. Ilam and Cousin Ilam will be just to you. You will not

bear them ill-will. The wrong is too old for that. You will forget it.

You will forget all the past. Your hair may be grey, but I’m sure your

heart isn’t. And your voice can influence even the Soudanese. The way

that man obeyed you! The way he got the better of his brother just

to please you! It seems strange, but I can understand it, because I

have----”

Again she stopped.

Jetsam went up to her and took her hand, which she seemed willingly to

release to him. And he held it.

“How good you are!” he said steadily. “I am almost ashamed to have

roused your sympathy so much.”

The other two men watched.

“I don’t know what Pauline will say,” Rosie stammered.

Suddenly there was the sound of music. The band, which everybody in the

room had forgotten, had begun to play, apparently of its own accord. And

the melody it had chosen was, “See the Conquering Hero Comes.”

Carpentaria rushed to the window. And then, as he drew the curtains, all

noticed for the first time that the dawn had begun.

“What are you making that noise for?” he demanded angrily from the

balcony. The music ceased abruptly.

“We’re saluting the sun, sir,” came the reply. “It’s morning. We

imagined that possibly you had lost sight of the fact of our existence.”

“I had,” said Carpentaria. “However, you can go!”

“Mr. Carpentaria,” cried another voice--a woman’s, firm and imperious.

“Open the front door immediately and let me in. I insist.”

It was Pauline.

“Certainly, Miss Dartmouth,” said Carpentaria obediently. “Kindly

cut the rope which you will see tied to the handle. I will tell the

Soudanese to admit you.”

And he did so.

And presently footsteps were heard on the stairs, and both Pauline and

Juliette came in.

“Rosie!” exclaimed Pauline. The sisters were clasped in each other’s

arms.

“Forgive me, dearest!” Rosie entreated; and they kissed.

“But what have you----?” Pauline began, naturally mystified to the

utmost.

“Ah, Miss Dartmouth,” said Carpentaria, “I fear you must wait for

enlightenment until you can hear the whole story.”

“But the servants?” cried Pauline.

“I sent them to sleep in the staff-dormitories. I said you wished it,”

answered Rosie, smiling.

“But why should I wish it?”

“I don’t know,” said Rosie. “When they asked me that, I told them I

didn’t know,” she smiled again faintly. “But Mr. Jetsam will explain it

all to you. I--I tried to help him, and I have succeeded--I think.”

During this conversation, Juliette, with that direct candour which

frequently distinguishes women in a crisis, had gone straight to

Josephus Ilam and seized his hand. She was assuring herself that he

was not hurt, when Mrs. Ilam once more gave a sign with her eyelids.

Carpentaria resumed his position as helper.

“It was because I loved him,” Carpentaria spelt out for her, “that I

tried to kill you--twice.”

Carpentaria fell back. Then he regained his self-command and, pushing his

fingers through his red-gold hair, he asked monosyllabically, “Why?”

And then he interpreted for her the answer to his own question.

“You worried Josephus. He wanted to get rid of you.”

Josephus disengaged his hands from those of Juliette.

“Mother!” he moaned sadly, and then added, “She is mad!”

But through Carpentaria Mrs. Ilam said:

“I am not mad. But my love has always been too strong.”

“Did you know of this, Ilam?” Carpentaria asked his partner solemnly.

“Of course I did not,” was the answer--“not till it was too late.”

“Then, why did you warn me up in the wheel?”

“Because I suspected. I suspected my poor mother was beginning to hate

you, and I feared that---- I can’t say any more.”

Carpentaria, powerfully moved, walked out of the room, and it was

Pauline who followed him.

Mrs. Ilam’s eyes were now shut.

CHAPTER XXXI--Unison

That summer was astoundingly fine and warm, not to say tropical. But

since it remains clearly in the memory of all, especially of the London

water-companies, as a unique caprice on the part of the English climate,

there is no need to go into details of its beauty. Towards the end of

September the weather was exceedingly lovely. And of course the City

prospered accordingly. It had been thought that the record “gates”

during the great fêtes of August would make the September returns look

meagre and feeble. Such, however, was not the case. In the first week

of September over a million people paid fifty thousand pounds at the

turnstiles to enjoy the charms of the City. And a water-famine in

most other parts of London did not impair their pleasure, for Ilam and

Carpentaria had sunk their own Artesian wells, and they had sunk them

deep enough. Consequently, the glorious lawns of the Oriental Gardens

and the turf of the cricket field kept a vivid green through that

solitary summer.

The consumption of multi-coloured liquids in the cafés dotted about the

gardens exceeded the most sanguine estimates. It was stated that during

one of Carpentaria’s concerts twelve thousand pints of Pilsen beer

(the genuine article, imported daily in casks from the Erste Pilsen

Actien-Brauerei, Pilsen) were consumed within sight of the bandstand.

“This,” said Carpentaria emphatically, “is success. No

composer-conductor,” he added, “has ever before been able to say that he

was listened to by an audience that put away Pilsen beer at the rate of

a hundred pints a minute.”

And he was right. Success was written large all over the place. Success

shone on the faces of the entire staff, and it shone particularly on the

face of Carpentaria, though he tried to pretend that it was nothing to

him. It was, naturally, a great deal to him. He was the lion of London,

and he knew it. All his previous triumphs were nothing in comparison

with this triumph, which was the triumph of his ideas as well as a

personal triumph.

Fifty amusement-mongers in London were asking themselves why they had

not thought of building a City of Pleasure--and they were not getting

satisfactory replies to the conundrum!

One evening, towards the middle of September, after a more than usually

effective concert, Carpentaria laid down his baton on the plush cushion

provided for its repose, and bowed and bowed and bowed again, in

response to the enthusiastic plaudits, but with a somewhat pre-occupied

mien.

“What’s up with the old man?” a French-horn player whispered to his

mate.

“Dashed if I know!” replied the second French-horn-player. “Unless he’s

in love.”

“Well, he is,” said the first. “Everybody knows that.”

They called him the old man, no doubt, because his age was barely forty

and because he looked younger than any of them.

Carpentaria descended from his throne, smiling absently at the applause

of his band as he made his way through them to the steps leading down

from the bandstand to the level of the gardens. He had only to move a

few paces in order to be lost in the surging crowd. But before he could

do this, he heard a voice:

“Mr. Carpentaria.”

He turned sharply. It was a woman’s voice. It was more--it was Pauline’s

voice. Had she come to meet him? Impossible! That would have been too

much happiness. However, he determined to ascertain, and he ascertained

in his usual direct manner.

“Did you come specially to meet me?” he demanded.

And she replied, in a low voice:

“Yes.”

“That was extremely kind of you,” he said, trembling with joy.

“No,” she protested. “I had something to tell you--and------” She

hesitated, and then stopped.

“Suppose we take a little stroll,” he suggested.

And she said, quite naturally:

“I should love to.”

“This woman is simply the divinest creature,” he told himself. “She is

not like other women. She would like to go for a stroll with me, and

she does not pretend the contrary. I am a great man, but I have done

nothing, absolutely nothing, to deserve her goodness.”

They crossed the gardens, with difficulty, in the direction of the

terrace. And around were the light and laughter of the City--the

brilliant illuminated cafés and the sombre trees for a background, and

thousands of pretty toilettes and thousands of men gazing at the pretty

toilettes, so attractive in the gloom under the starry sky. A burst of

minor music would come now and then from some little café-orchestra, or

the sound of the popping of guns from a distant shooting-gallery or the

roar of a lion, forced unwillingly to go through its performance in the

menagerie. Then, every woman in the gardens gave a little start or

a little shriek at the noise of the great cannon which signalled the

commencement of the fireworks, and the rush to the terrace, where the

best view was to be obtained, became a stampede.

“Do you mean to go on to the terrace?” asked Pauline.

“No, madam,” said Carpentaria, teasingly. “I mean to go on to the

foreshore of the river. The tide is low--we shall be alone--we shall

see both the crowd and the fireworks; and we shall be secure from

interruption.”

With one of his pass-keys he unlocked a gate giving access to a tunnel

leading down to the river. They passed through, and he locked the gate

again. They arrived at the edge of the stream just as the first

cluster of rockets was expanding itself in the firmament. The scene was

impressive, and the roaring cheers of the serried crowd behind and above

them did not detract from its impressiveness.

“So you have something to tell me?” he remarked, tapping his foot idly

against a stone. “I also have something to tell you.”

“Really?” she answered.

He examined her face and figure. She was dressed in mourning, for Mrs.

Ilam had died within two days of the events set down in the previous

chapter, and Carpentaria thought that black had never suited any woman

so well as it suited Pauline.... There was something about her face...

In short... Well, those who have been through what Carpentaria was going

through will readily understand.

“And what are you going to tell me?” he queried.

“It’s a message from Cousin Ilam,” said Pauline. “You haven’t seen him

to-day, have you?”

“No. I’ve been very much alone to-day. Juliette’s been away all day--I

suppose preparing for the wedding--there’s only a few days left now.”

“Well,” said Pauline, “Cousin Ilam told me to tell you they aren’t going

to be married next week.”

“What!” cried Carpentaria, “after all? Why not?”

“Because they were married this morning. They’re already on their

honeymoon.”

“And Juliette has played this trick on me?” murmured Carpentaria.

“In any case, the marriage would have had to be very quiet,” said

Pauline. “I fancy Cousin Ilam didn’t particularly care for your notion

of having a section of your band to play at the church. Anyhow,

he wanted the affair absolutely quiet. You know how nervous and

self-conscious he is.”

“Now I come to think of it,” Carpentaria said, “Juliette did kiss me

this morning rather fervently, and I wondered why.”

“You wonder no longer,” observed Pauline, smiling. “It was just a little

plot.”

“Extraordinary! Most extraordinary!” Carpentaria exclaimed.

“I don’t think it’s quite so extraordinary as all that!” said Pauline.

“You don’t know what I mean,” Carpentaria replied. “I also have a

message--for you. It is from our friend Mr. Jetsam Ilam and your sister.

Have you seen Miss Rosie since this morning?”

“No,” said Pauline; “she went with Juliette.”

“Exactly. She went with Juliette. And she has done what Juliette has

done. I was asked by Mr. Jetsam Ilam to inform you that instead of

marrying your sister next week he has married her this week. He is very

sorry. He has a perfect horror of publicity. In fact they chose the

registry office.”

“What a shame!” cried Pauline. “What a shame!”

“Ah,” said Carpentaria, “you didn’t mind them deceiving me! But when it

comes to deceiving you----! It must have been a united plot on the part

of those two pairs of people to deceive us two; and, I must say, they

managed the thing pretty well. Don’t you think so?”

“I think they’ve been horrid,” said Pauline.

“And we two are quite alone, for one solid week--you in your house, and

I in mine,” said Carpentaria.

There was a pause, and then he heard a sob.

“You aren’t really crying, are you?” he demanded.

Pauline made no answer.

In crying she had lost herself. She had given herself away--she had

precipitated a crisis which, in any event, could not have been long

postponed. In a word, he tried to comfort her. You may guess how he did

it. You may guess whether she objected. You may guess if he succeeded.

In a quarter of an hour she was telling him that she had always liked

him, that, formerly, she and Rosie used to worship him--Rosie even more

than she--but that that sort of worship was nothing compared to the

feelings which she at present entertained--_et seq_.

And the fireworks and the applause of the vast crowd provided the kind

of setting that Carlos Carpentaria loved.

THE END