CHAPTER XIV

LADY OXTED'S IDEA

Lady Oxted, in spite of her husband's general reflections upon her

character, could not reasonably be called an ungenerous woman; and when,

ten days after these last occurrences, it was her painful duty to visit

the convalescent sofa of Geoffrey Langham, she said without

circumlocution, or any attempt to shirk due responsibility, that she

supposed it was she from whom he had caught the influenza. Geoffrey, on

his side, did not regard this as anything but a certain conclusion, but

added, with the irritable resignation which accompanies convalescence,

that he did not suppose she had done it on purpose. The effect of this

was to make Lady Oxted wonder whether she had really given it him at

all.

"You speak as if it was quite certain," she said. "But when one comes to

think of it, Harry came to see me the same day, in great depression,

which predisposes you to catch it, and he hasn't, so to speak, blown his

nose since."

"Very well, then; you did not give it me," said Geoffrey. "Please have

it your own way. It was my own idea: I evolved influenza for myself.

Besides, Harry was deeply in love. You can't do two things at once."

"Hush-a-bye, baby," said Lady Oxted. "Geoffrey, I didn't come here to be

contradict----"

"No, to contradict, it appears."

"Primarily, not even that, but to propose that you and I and Bob should

go down to Oxted to-morrow, or rather to tell you that Bob and I are

going, and propose that you should join us; we shall get well in half

the time down there."

"Are you not well?" asked Geoffrey. "You look a picture."

"A picture of a boiled rag," said Lady Oxted, "treated, with extreme

realism. Well, will you come?"

"Of course I will, with pleasure. I long to get out of this frouzy town.

What does Miss Aylwin do?"

"She will go to the Arbuthnots while I am away, poor dear!"

"She might do worse. And Harry?"

"Harry will probably go to the Arbuthnots too, a good deal," remarked

Lady Oxted.

She got up.

"I am glad you promised to come without any hesitation," she said,

"because otherwise I should have had to press you, which is degrading.

Harry's engagement has given me a lot to think about, and I want to

express my thoughts to some very slow, ordinary person like you, in the

same way as Molière used to read his plays to his housekeeper. I have

got a sort of idea in my head, and I wish to see how it impresses the

completely average mind."

"I hope it is a nice idea," said Geoffrey. "But one can't tell with you.

You have such an inconvenient sort of mind!"

"It isn't nice," said Lady Oxted; "in fact, it is just the opposite.

However, you will hear more of it to-morrow evening. Here's Harry. I

shall go. Dear me, I wonder whether Bob looked as idiotic as that when

we were engaged? I don't think he can have, or I should have broken it

off."

Harry's face in fact wore a smile of intensely inane radiance, but his

desire to score off his aunt, as he now called her, caused it to fade

off like the breath off a razor.

"No, dear aunt," he replied, "but you see he wasn't engaged to a person

of--well, of the same class as Evie.--Ah! fifteen love, Geoff, old boy.

That will rankle by-and-bye in the mind of our aunt."

Lady Oxted put her nose in the air, as if she had caught the whiff of a

bad smell.

"Can you explain the idiocy of your smile when you entered?" she asked.

"Rather. I was just going to, when you began to be personal. Three

Sundays ago, when Evie was down at Vail, she went out walking, after

lunch, with Uncle Francis. Do you remember, dear aunt, and you snored

loud and long under the trees on the lawn all that blessed afternoon?

Yes, I see you remember. Well, they met--O Lord! you can't beat

this--they met Jim and the dairymaid walking out all properly in the

wood, and Evie thought, until she came back and found me on the lawn,

she seriously thought Jim was me. She was furious: I got her to confess

that she was furious. Great Scott! she thought I was flirting with the

dairymaid. I knew a maid worth two of her!"

Lady Oxted began to attend suddenly in the middle of this.

"And what did Mr. Francis say?" she asked. "Did he also think it was

you?"

"I don't know. Evie didn't mention him, and then we began talking--well,

we began talking about something else.--Poor old Geoff, how goes it? If

you give me the flue, I'll poison your beef-tea, and you may lay it to

that. It's all the Luck."

Lady Oxted sighed.

"Jack and Jill went up the hill," she remarked.

"Yes, you may laugh if you like," said Harry, "but I'm beginning to

believe in the Luck. I paid my penalty, and now I'm getting the reward.

Oh, a big one! Did anybody ever hear of such Luck?" he demanded.

"Laugh?" cried Lady Oxted. "Who talked of laughing? Of course, if Evie

chooses to marry a man with unmistakable signs of incipient mania, and

Mrs. Aylwin doesn't object, it's her own affair. But I wish I was her

mother."

"Yes, that would be something," said Harry, in a tone of extreme

indulgence. "It would be charming for you, as you can't be her husband.

Poor aunt!"

"Thirty love," said Geoffrey.

Lady Oxted gathered up her card case and parasol.

"You just wait, my boy, till I get you to Oxted," she said truculently.

"Is Geoff going to Oxted?" asked Harry, throwing himself extravagantly

on the sofa by him. "Geoff, Geoff, would you leave me alone, alone in

London, like Jessica's first prayer? I will follow you, if it be on foot

and begging my bread. I can not live without you. See Wilson Barrett,"

he explained, sitting upright again, and smoothing his tumbled hair.

Lady Oxted shrugged her shoulders, and shook a despairing head.

"Poor Evie!" she said. "Poor, dear Evie!"

Harry sprang up and stood with his back to the door.

"Now why 'Poor Evie'?" he asked. "Explain precisely why. You don't leave

the room until you have explained."

"If you don't come away from that door and let me out," said Lady Oxted,

"I shall ring the bell, Harry, continuously. This sort of bully-ragging

is so good for a man with a splitting headache, and shattered by

influenza! I always tell everybody how considerate you are."

"Geoff, have you got a headache?" asked Harry.

"No. Fight it out."

Lady Oxted cast one baleful glance at him, advanced to the bell, and

made an awkward, unconvincing movement to indicate that she was pressing

it. Harry burst into loud, rude laughter.

"Try again," he said. "You have to press the button in the centre of the

bell, not a spot on the wall paper. More to your left."

"Forty love," said Geoffrey.

Lady Oxted turned away from the bell with dignity.

"I don't understand the difficulty some people feel about apologizing,"

she said. "I apologize fully for all I have said."

"Explain it," said Harry.

"There is no explanation known to me. I spoke at random; I have not the

slightest idea what I meant. Let me out, Harry."

At this he granted her liberty, saw her to the door, and ran upstairs

again.

"O Geoff!" he said. "She had on a big, broad-brimmed hat and little

yellow shoes. I saw them."

"That all?" said Geoffrey. "Rather South-Sea islander for the park."

Harry sighed.

"Yes, I once used to think that sort of thing funny, too," he said.

"Never mind; you can't know. However, there was the hat, and her face

was underneath it."

"Now that is really extraordinary," said Geoffrey.

"The face? I should just think it was. It's the most extraordinary thing

in the world. And it's mine, and mine is hers. Lord! whatever can she do

with such an ugly mug?"

"Is that the end?" asked Geoffrey, without any show of impatience.

"No, you blamed idiot; that's only the beginning. She was walking, do

you understand, with Mrs. Arbuthnot. So I thought, 'None of that now,

woman!' and I just said so flat. At least I didn't say so, but they

understood what I meant, and so we sat down on two little green chairs,

and I paid twopence for them. Dirt cheap!"

"You and Mrs. Arbuthnot and she. I quite follow."

"Of course; oh! I'm not sure what happened to Mrs. Arbuthnot. She didn't

go to heaven; at least I didn't see her there, so I suppose--oh, well, I

suppose she stopped where she was. I dare say she's there now. So I

said, 'Evie.'"

"And she said 'Harry,'" remarked Geoffrey.

Long brown fingers stole round his neck.

"Now, tell me the truth, like George Washington," said Harry, "were you

listening?"

"No; I guessed. Take your hand away."

"Devilish smart of you, then! She did say 'Harry,' and I won't deny it.

My name, I tell you, you malingering skunk; she meant me! She called me

Harry. O Lord!"

"Well, it's altogether the most remarkable thing I ever heard," said

Geoffrey. "And as the bell for lunch sounded ten minutes ago, I propose

that you should tell me the rest afterward."

It was Geoffrey's first attempt at stairs since he had gone to bed, and

he threw an arm round Harry's neck, and leaned his weight on him.

"And ten days ago," he said, "I met death and despair in the hall, and

that was you. 'This is what comes of the Luck' thought I. O Harry, if I

wasn't so shaky I'd fetch you such a whack in the ribs!"

And after the manner of the British youth, they quite understood each

other.

The influenza party left London next day after lunch. Lord Oxted had

brought a whole library of blue-books with him, out of which he hoped to

establish an array of damaging facts against the Government, and his red

pencil, as they sped out of London, had no sinecure. Mile after mile of

the inconceivable meanness of house-backs fell behind them, and at last

Lady Oxted consented to the partial opening of one of the carriage

windows.

"There, that is a proper breath of air," she said. "Sniff it in,

Geoffrey. But I will have no suburban microbes flying into my face. Oh,

we are wrecks, we are wrecks, but we will stop at Oxted till we are

refloated."

Lord Oxted frowned heavily, and scored the offending page.

"Is the man Colonial Secretary," he asked, "or is he the autocrat of all

the Englands? And it never occurred to any of them, apparently, that

there might be something in those grand pianos. I should have thought

that somebody might have guessed that this immense importation of huge

cases implied something. But I am wrong; nobody guessed it. They said

they could not be expected to see through stone walls. Stone walls,

indeed! They couldn't see through plate-glass windows."

"So the pianos turned out to be stone walls," said his wife.

"Yes; they were put up round Pretoria."

The heat in London had been intense; perhaps it was not less at Oxted;

but there was a difference in its quality unnoticed by the thermometer,

and after tea the two wrecks made themselves exceedingly comfortable on

the lawn, and Lady Oxted, without warning, began the statement of her

idea to the very ordinary person.

"Harry's marriage is fixed for the middle of November," she said. "Evie

will have to go back to Santa Margarita first, and I hope she may

persuade her mother to come over for it. It is now the middle of July;

there are four months before he will be married. Much may happen in four

months."

"As a rule very little does," remarked Geoffrey.

"In this case I sincerely hope that very little will," said she.

"Geoffrey, I am not altogether happy about it."

"Why not?" he asked. "You told me you pushed Harry till he went and

asked her. Did you mean him to be refused? Or are you afraid that

either of them will think they have made a mistake? Of course, they are

both young."

Lady Oxted laughed.

"You funny old maid!" she said. "No, I am not afraid of that."

"Never mind me," he said. "What are you afraid of, then?"

Lady Oxted was silent so long that Geoffrey would have repeated his

question had he not felt quite certain that she had heard it. As it was,

it was a full half minute, an aeon of a pause in conversation, before

she replied. Then:

"Of Mr. Francis," she said.

Geoffrey had just lit a match for his cigarette, but he held it so long

that it burned down, and he threw it hastily away, as the flame scorched

his finger-tips. The cigarette he put very carefully and absently back

in his case.

"What on earth do you mean?" he asked.

"It was to tell you that--that I particularly wanted you to come down

here. Listen."

Lady Oxted felt herself suddenly nervous, even when her only audience

was the very ordinary person. She had thought the matter over in her own

mind so constantly that she hoped she was familiarized with it, but when

it came to speaking of it, she found she was not. Thus it was that she

began very haltingly, and with frequent pauses.

"I feel sure that he is essentially opposed to the marriage," she said,

"for reasons which I will soon tell you; and when he professes to be so

much delighted with it I conclude he is acting a part. Now one has

always to be cautious in dealing with a man who is acting, until you

know both what his part is and what he himself is. As regards Mr.

Francis I know neither. I feel sure, however, that he is a very clever

old man. Well?"

"But is it not pure assumption that he is acting a part?" asked

Geoffrey.

"No; it is reasoned truth. I will tell you how I know it. The Sunday

that Evie and I were down at Vail, Mr. Francis and Evie (Evie told me

this, and Harry, as you heard yesterday, corroborated a part of it)

walked in the afternoon in the wood just above the house, and suddenly

came on one of the grooms--Jim, yes, his name was Jim--walking out with

his young woman, who is dairymaid. Now, Jim, in appearance--you have

seen him many times probably--is the very spit and image of Harry. Evie

(they only had the most momentary glance of him) thought it actually was

Harry, till she saw him half an hour later sleeping under a tree on the

lawn. But it appears that Mr. Francis also thought it was Harry, for he

said to himself half aloud, 'Ah, the foolish boy!' Now you, Geoffrey,

have known Harry some time, and, well--have you ever known him behave as

many young men do behave: talk to barmaids, flirt with waitresses, all

that kind of thing?"

"Never; he never did such a thing. At Oxford we used to call him the

womanthrope."

"Then explain to me what follows. Mr. Francis begged Evie not to be too

hard on him. He said that Harry was honest, that his 'previous

foolishnesses'--the exact expression, Evie tells me--had never been

anything serious. Now you say there never were any."

"No, never," said Geoffrey, "not to my knowledge at least. Oh, I can go

much further than that: I know there can not have been. Harry simply is

not that kind of fellow."

"Then it appears to me that Mr. Francis only alluded to the harmless

nature of Harry's previous foolishnesses in order to set Evie against

him. A nice girl, you know, does not like that sort of thing. And how

was it that it never occurred to Mr. Francis that the two figures they

saw were Jim and his young woman? It is impossible that it should not,

it seems to me. The two are engaged, Harry tells me; they often walk out

together. Mr. Francis must have known that; he must also have known of

Jim's extraordinary likeness to Harry."

"But the likeness deceived Miss Aylwin. By the way, had she ever seen

Jim?"

"Yes; the evening before only."

"Yet she was deceived. Why not Mr. Francis also?"

Lady Oxted paused.

"It is very unlikely, but I grant you that it is possible. Take what I

have told you alone, and it proves nothing. But there is more."

She was speaking less lamely now; the words had begun to come.

"You met Harry in the hall when you came back from having tea with me a

fortnight ago," she said. "How did his face strike you? Was it very

happy? And do you know the cause of it?"

"No; Harry did not tell me, though I asked him."

"Then I shall tell you," said Lady Oxted. "I know how his face struck

me, for he came to see me immediately afterward. I thought all was over

between him and Evie. Harry thought so, too, and his reason for it was a

letter he had just received, of which he showed me a piece. In it Mr.

Francis--I know it was he, Harry told me so afterward--said that Evie

was engaged to an Italian marchese. Here again there was a certain

foundation for his thinking so. It was true at any rate that last winter

an Italian in Rome fell very violently in love with her, that he

proposed to her. But Evie refused him point blank. The thing was talked

about, for it was a very good match. But Mr. Francis tells Harry she is

engaged. He may have been told so; again it is just possible, though not

more than possible. Now take these two incidents together; in each Mr.

Francis made, let us say, a mistake: on one occasion he mistook the

groom for Harry; on the other he says that Evie is engaged to an

Italian, whereas that was never true; she refused him. Now does a common

motive seem to lie behind those two mistakes? Supposing for a moment

that these mistakes were--well--deliberate mistakes, very cleverly

founded on fact, I grant--can you account for both of them by supposing

one desire in Mr. Francis's mind?"

"I see what you mean," said Geoffrey.

"Say it, then; I want it said."

"You mean that Mr. Francis wished to prevent their engagement. Is that

bald enough?"

"Yes; that will do. It is a possibility which must not be overlooked. He

has failed, but I see no reason to suppose that anything has since

happened which reconciles him to their marriage. His letter to Harry in

answer to the announcement of his engagement was charming, perfectly

charming. But so was his letter, in which he urged him to be brave and

cut Evie out of his life with a firm hand. So also, no doubt, was his

manner when he begged Evie to overlook Harry's Platonic little walk with

a dairymaid."

Geoffrey felt vaguely uneasy. Now that these things were said to him, he

knew that somewhere in the very inmost recesses of his brain there had

lurked for some time a feeling of which he was ashamed--a secret,

unaccountable distrust of this kind old man. It had been emphasized by

the curious adventure of Dr. Armytage's door, and since then it had

grown more alert, more ready to put up its head.

"Now why," continued Lady Oxted, speaking rapidly, "should he wish to

separate the two? You would have thought--Harry thought and still

thinks--that by this marriage Mr. Francis will feel that the old stain

of suspicion that for so long had been on his name, ever since the

Harmsworth affair, will be removed. And Harry has good reason for

thinking so: Mr. Francis himself told him that Evie's coming to Vail was

the happiest thing that had happened to him for years. Why, then, should

they not marry?"

"Perhaps Mr. Francis finds that the continual revival of those memories,

which Miss Aylwin calls up, is too painful," said Geoffrey.

"Does that seem to you reasonable?" asked Lady Oxted, "and if

reasonable, can mortal mind invent a more awful piece of selfishness?"

Geoffrey considered a moment.

"No, it does not seem to me reasonable," he said; "I recant that."

"Can you think of any other motive?"

"Ah! you are monstrous," said Geoffrey suddenly; "you suggest monstrous

things."

"I have suggested nothing. I want to hear your suggestion. What is it,

Geoffrey?"

"You mean that Mr. Francis does not want Harry to marry at all. You

remember that he is Harry's heir. Do you not see how absurd such an idea

is? Who ever heard of an old man, over seventy, trying to make his

grand-nephew a celibate? You might as well hope to rear a child who

should never see a fire or a book."

"Ah! you are shocked," said Lady Oxted, "but wait a moment. Do you

remember what you told me about Dr. Godfrey and Dr. Armytage? Geoffrey,

what is that sinister man doing at Vail? He is appalling, I tell you.

He is one of the black spots on the medical profession. Heart

specialist! He is a surgeon of terrible dexterity--unscrupulous, venal.

What does Mr. Francis want with him?"

Geoffrey got up in great excitement.

"I will hear no more," he said, in a tremulous voice. "It is you who

suggest things that I have to put into words. Tell me what you mean; say

straight out what you suspect?"

Lady Oxted rose too.

"If I knew what I suspected, I would tell you," she said. "But I can't

make out what it is. At any rate we have talked long enough for the

present."

She paused a moment, then broke out again, her own anxiety--how deep she

had never known till this minute--breaking all bounds.

"Promise me this," she cried. "Promise me you will be a good friend to

Harry. Be much with him, be observant--not suspicious, but observant.

Remember that I am afraid, though I do not know what of. See if you can

not find out what it is that I fear. There, that is enough. You promise

me that, Geoffrey?"

"I will not play detective," said he. "I both like and honour that old

man."

"I do not ask you to play detective," she said. "I pray that your liking

and honour for Mr. Francis may never be diminished. But be much with

Harry, and be full of common sense. Come!"

"Yes, I will promise that," said he.

PART II

CHAPTER XV

FROST

Harry left London at the end of the month, paid a couple of visits in

England, then went to Scotland for the remainder of August, and loitered

there, since he was at the same two houses as Evie till September had

reached its second decade of days, and then travelled south again with

her. She was on her way straight to Santa Margarita to spend the

remainder of the month of months with her mother, and Harry saw her off

by the boat express from Victoria, she having sternly and absolutely

refused to let him do anything so foolish as to travel to Dover with

her.

"You would propose coming to Calais next," she said, "and Calais is but

a step to Paris. I know you, Harry. And--and how I hate the journey, and

how I should love it if you were with me!"

"Oh, let me come!" said he.

"Not even to Herne Hill," and the train slid out of the vaulted gloom of

the station.

Geoffrey joined him late on the same day, and next afternoon they set

off together down to Vail. Stock brokering, it appeared, was like

pheasants, quite impossible in September, and he was going to spend the

remainder of the month with Harry, unless some unforeseen urgency called

him back. This, he considered, was not in the least degree likely to

happen, for the unforeseen so seldom occurs.

"The house is all upside down, Geoff," said Harry to him as they drove

from the station; "and all the time which you do not employ in getting

severe electric shocks over unprotected wires, you will probably spend

in falling into hot and cold water alternately upstairs. The housemaids'

closets seem to me just now the only really important thing in England.

I thought it better not to tell you all this before we started, for fear

of your not coming."

"Oh, I can always go back," said Geoffrey. "Is Mr. Francis there?"

"Just now he is, but he is going away in a few days," said Harry. "In

fact, he is only waiting till I come, to put the unprotected wires into

my hands."

"Is he well?"

"Yes, extraordinarily well, and he asked after you in his last letter to

me. Also he seems wonderfully happy at the thought of my marriage. So we

are both pleased. Well, I'm sure I don't wonder; it will be a sort of

death blow to that tragedy twenty years old and more now, a sort of seal

and attestation of the vileness of the suspicion. Besides, you know,

it's pretty nice for any one to have Evie in the house always."

"Is he going to continue being with you, then?" asked Geoffrey.

"Certainly; as much as he will. Evie and I settled all that without any

disagreement, thank you. He is also thinking of having a little _ventre

à terre_, as somebody said, in town, a sort of little independence of

his own. I am delighted that he will; six months ago he couldn't bear

the thought of going about among people again, but now it is all

changed: he will begin to live again, after all these years. Dear old

fellow, what a good friend he has been to me! Fancy caring about people

of twenty or so, when you are over seventy. What wonderful vitality!"

Whatever shadow of approaching cloud, so thought Geoffrey, might darken

Lady Oxted's view of the future, it was clear that to Harry there could

not have been a more serene horizon. Since that first afternoon down at

Oxted he had not exchanged a further word with her or any one else on

the subject, and by degrees that ghastly conversation had grown

gradually fainter in his mind, and it was to him now more of the texture

of a remembered nightmare than an actual experience. For several days

afterward, it is true, it had remained very unpleasantly vivid to him;

she had been so ingenious in her presentation of undeniable facts that

at the time, and perhaps for a fortnight afterward, it had nearly seemed

to him that Mr. Francis had been plotting with diabolical ingenuity

against this match. If such were the case, his apparent delight at it

assumed an aspect infinitely grave and portentous; his smiles would

have been creditable to a fiend. But as the sharper edge of memory grew

dulled, these thoughts, which had never been quite sufficiently solid to

be called sober suspicions, became gradually nebulous again. Two

circumstances had been the foundation of Lady Oxted's theory, each

separately capable of explanation, and in making a judgment so serious

it was the acme of unfairness, so it seemed to him now, to put the two

together and judge. Each must be weighed and considered on its separate

merits, and if neither had weight alone, then neither had weight

together. There had been darker insinuations to follow; at these

Geoffrey now laughed, so baseless appeared their fabric. Dr. Armytage

might or might not be a reputable man, but the idea of connecting his

visit to Vail, when one remembered how long he had known Mr. Francis,

with something sinister and unspoken with regard to Harry, was really a

triumph for the diseased imagination which is one of the sequelæ of

influenza.

Oddly enough, as if by thought transference, Harry's next words bore

some relation to this train of ideas which had been passing through

Geoffrey's mind.

"Do you remember that evening when we went to find Dr. Godfrey, Geoff?"

he said. "Well, I have so often thought about it since that I have

determined to tell Uncle Francis about it, and ask him to explain it

all."

This appeared an excellent plan to Geoffrey, for, little as he believed

in the solidity of Lady Oxted's bubbles of imagination, it would still

be a good thing to have them pricked.

"Do," he said. "Ask him some time when I am there. I should like to see

his face when his little _ruse_ is exposed. It might be a useful lesson.

Personally, I never know how to look when my little _ruses_ are

discovered."

Harry laughed.

"There's an excellent explanation behind, you may be sure of that," he

said.

Accordingly, at dinner that night, in a pause in the conversation, Harry

suddenly asked:

"Seen Dr. Godfrey again, Uncle Francis?"

"No, I have had no occasion to send for him, I am thankful to say," he

answered. "I have been wonderfully well these last two months."

"Geoff and I went to see him one night at 32 Wimpole Street," continued

Harry. "Oh, we were not going to consult him. But we just went to his

house."

It would have been hard to say whether a pause followed this speech. In

any case it was but a moment before Mr. Francis broke out into his

hearty, cheerful laugh.

"And I'll be bound you didn't go in!" he cried. "Dear Godfrey, he would

have been delighted to see you, though. Ah, Harry! what a good thing you

and I are friends! We are always finding each other out. So you actually

went to 32 Wimpole Street, and found not Dr. Godfrey on the plate, but

Dr. Armytage. How did you get his address, you rascal?"

"Your 'Where is it?' was lying on your table the last night I was here,

when I worked at the electric-light estimates. I turned to G."

"Simple," said Mr. Francis. "Everything is simple when you know all

about it. And my explanation is simple too. I didn't want you to go to

Armytage, and fuss yourself about me, so, when you asked me for his

name, I told you, if you remember, his Christian name--Godfrey--and I am

afraid I gave you the wrong address. He is a dear fellow, a dear good

fellow, but the sort of man who warns you against tetanus, if you cut

yourself shaving. He would certainly have alarmed you, how unnecessarily

look at me now and judge. He knows too much; I am always telling him so.

He knows how many things may go wrong, and he bears them all in mind.

Yes, my dear boy, I deceived you purposely. Do you acquit me? I throw

myself on your mercy, but I beg you to bear in mind how kindly were my

intentions."

"Without a stain on your character," said Harry.

Coffee was brought in at this moment, Templeton as usual bearing the

case of the Luck, which had been the centrepiece at dinner.

"Ah! they are going to put the Luck to bed," said Harry. "I drink to the

Luck. Get up, Geoff."

Geoffrey rose in obedience to the toastmaster, and, looking across at

Mr. Francis, saw that his hand trembled a little. His genial smile was

there, but it seemed to Geoffrey, in that momentary glance he had of him

over the flowers, that it was a smile rather of habit than happiness.

His glass was full, and a few drops were spilled as he raised it to his

mouth. The thing, trivial as it was, struck him with a curious sense of

double consciousness: it seemed to him that this was a repetition of

some previous experience, exact in every particular. But it passed off

immediately, and the vague, rather uncomfortable impression it made on

him sank below the surface of his mind. It was already dim as soon as it

was made.

"So we are together again, we three," said Mr. Francis, when he had

drunk to the Luck, and carefully watched its stowage in its case. "It is

like those jolly times we had last Christmas, when this dear fellow came

of age. What a chapter of little misfortunes he had too! When he was not

slipping on the steps, he was falling into the fire; when he was not

falling into the fire, he was catching a severe chill!"

"Not my fault," said Harry. "It was all the Luck!"

"Dear boy, you are always jesting about the Luck! Do be careful, Harry;

if you do not take care, some day you will find that you have fancied

yourself into believing it. Six, eight months have passed since then;

what have you suffered since at the hands of fire and frost and rain?"

"Ah! don't you see?" cried Harry. "The curse came first; then the Luck

itself. I met Evie. Is not that stupendous? Perhaps the curse will wake

up again, and I shall sprain my ankle worse than before, and burn my

hand more seriously, before--before the middle of November. I don't

care; it's cheap, and I wonder they can turn out happiness at such a

trifling cost. I suspect there's no sweating commission at the place

where the old scoundrel who made the Luck has gone!"

Mr. Francis looked really pained.

"Come, come, Harry," he said gravely. "Let us go, boys. They will be

wanting to clear away."

This implication of rebuke nettled Harry. He was a little excited, a

little intoxicated with his joy of life, a little headstrong with youth

and health, and he did not quite relish being pulled up like this, even

though only before Geoffrey. But he did not reply, and with a scarcely

perceptible shrug of his shoulders followed Mr. Francis out. Shortly

after, his uncle got out his flute, and melodies of Corelli and Baptiste

tinkled merrily under the portraits of the race.

Next day uncle and nephew had estate business to occupy them; "their

work," Mr. Francis gaily declared, 'twould, like topmost Jargarus, take

the morning, and Geoffrey was given a dog and a keeper and a gun to

amuse himself till lunch time. He wanted nothing better, and soon after

breakfast he was off and away for all he could find in wood and

hedgerow. The stubbles only and the small brown bird were dedicated for

to-morrow.

Mr. Francis and Harry worked on till one, but on the striking of that

hour the latter revolted.

"I can't go on any more," he said. "I simply can't. Come out till lunch,

Uncle Francis; it is only an hour."

Mr. Francis smiled and shook his head.

"Not to-day, dear boy," he replied; "there is this packet of letters I

have to get through before the post. But do you get out, Harry, and

sweep the cobwebs away."

Harry stood up, stretching himself after the long session.

"Cobwebs--what cobwebs?" he asked.

"Those in your curly head."

"There are no such cobwebs. O Uncle Francis, as we are talking of

cobwebs, I want to get that summerhouse on the knoll put in order--the

one close to the ice house, I mean. Have you the keys? By the way, which

is which?"

Mr. Francis was writing, and, as Harry spoke, though he did not look up,

his pen ceased travelling.

"Yes, a very good idea," he said, after a moment. "The keys are in the

cabinet there; two of the same, the same key fits both. Indeed"--and his

pen began slowly moving again--"indeed, you will find plenty of cobwebs

there. The summerhouse is the one on the left as you ascend the knoll

going from the house. Don't go plunging into the ice house by mistake.

They are both shuttered on the inside; it would be a good thing if you

were to open all the windows, and let them get a good blow out. Shall

I--oh, no! I must stick to my work."

Harry found the keys, and as he turned to leave the room--

"The one on the left is the summerhouse?" he asked again.

"Yes, the one on the left," said Mr. Francis, again fully absorbed in

his writing.

Harry, key in hand, went out whistling and hatless. The morning was a

page out of heaven, and as he strolled slowly up the steep, grassy bank,

where the two outhouses stood, with the scents and sounds of life and

summer vivid in eye and nostril, he felt that his useful occupation of

the hours since breakfast had been a terrible waste, when he might have

been going quietly and alert with Geoffrey through cover and up

hedgerow, to the tapping of sticks and the nosing of the spaniels.

However, he had been through the farm accounts with minute care; there

would be no call for such another morning till the closing of the next

quarter.

The two buildings toward which he went were exactly alike, of a hybrid

kiosk sort of appearance, fantastic and ridiculous, yet vaguely

pleasing. Each was octagonal, with three blank sides, four windows, and

a door. Still whistling and full of pleasant thoughts, he fitted the key

into the lock of the one to the left hand, and turning it, walked in.

The interior was dark, for, as Mr. Francis had told him, all the

windows were shuttered inside, and coming out of the bright sunlight,

for a moment or two he saw nothing. For the same reason, no doubt, it

struck him as being very cold.

He had taken three or four rather shuffling steps across the paved floor

when suddenly he stopped. Somehow, though he saw nothing, his ear

instinctively, hardly consciously, warned him that the sound of his

steps was not normal. There should have been--the whole feeling was not

reasoned, but purely automatic and instinctive--no echo to them in so

circumscribed a building, but an echo there was, faint, hollow, and

remote, but audible. At this his whistling stopped, his steps also, and

drawing a loose match from his trousers pocket he struck a match. Less

than another pace in front of him was a black space, on which the match

cast no illumination; it remained black.

Harry felt a little beady dew break out on his forehead and on the short

down of his upper lip, but his nerves did not tell him that he was

afraid. He waited exactly where he was, till the match had burned more

bravely, and then he chucked it forward over the blackness. It went

through it, and for two or three seconds no sound whatever came to him.

Then he heard a little expiring hiss.

Still not conscious of fright, he went back, with the light of another

match, for the door had swung shut behind him, and in another moment

was out again, with the sweet, soft sunshine round him and the firm

grass beneath his feet. He looked round; yes, he had gone to the

left-hand building, the one his uncle had told him was the summerhouse.

He had nearly, also, not come out again.

At this sobering reflection a belated spasm of fear, for he had felt

none at the moment of danger, seized him, but laying violent hold of

himself he marched up to the other door, unlocked it, and throwing it

open, waited on the threshold till his eyes had got accustomed to the

darkness. Then seeing a couple of wicker tables and some garden chairs

peer through the gloom, he went in turn to each window, unshuttered it,

and threw it open.

At this moment the iron gate leading into the woods close behind clanged

suddenly, and with a jump that testified to his jangled nerves he looked

out. It was Geoffrey, gun on shoulder, coming back to the house. Harry

leaned out of the window.

"Come in here, Geoff," he said.

Geoffrey looked round.

"Halloo; have you been opening the old summerhouse?" he asked.

"Yes," said Harry, very deliberately, "I've been opening the old

summerhouse."

Geoffrey handed his gun to the keeper, who was close behind him, and

vaulted in through one of the open windows.

"Rare good morning we've had," he said. "You should have come, Harry.

Why, you look queer! What's the matter?"

Harry had sat down in one of the garden chairs, and was leaning back,

feeling suddenly faint.

"I've had the devil of a fright," he said. "I went gaily marching into

the ice house by mistake, and only just stopped on the lip of the ice

tank or the well--I don't know which it was. Either would probably have

done."

"Lord! how can you be such an ass?" cried Geoffrey. "You knew that one

of the two was an ice house, and yet you go whistling along out of the

sunshine into pit-mirk, and never reflect that the chances are exactly

even that next moment you will be in Kingdom Come."

"Give me a cigarette, and don't jaw," said Harry, and he smoked a minute

or two without speaking.

"Say nothing about this to my uncle," he said at length. "I believe it

would frighten him to death. I asked him just before I came out which

was the summerhouse, and he told me the left-hand one of the two as you

go up from the house. Well, he made a mistake. It turns out that the

left-hand one is the ice house."

"What?" shouted Geoffrey, his whole talk with Lady Oxted suddenly

springing into his mind like a Jack-in-the-box.

"Can't you hear what I say?" asked Harry, rather irritable from his

fright. "Uncle Francis had forgotten which was which, and I nearly

went, as you put it, in Kingdom Come in consequence. There's nothing to

shout about. For God's sake, don't let him know what happened! I really

believe it might be the death of him."

"It was nearly the death of you," said Geoffrey.

"Well, it wasn't quite, and so there's the end of it. Anyhow, don't tell

him; I insist on your not telling him. Come, let's go down to the house.

I'm steadier now; I don't remember being frightened at the moment, but

when there was no longer any reason to be frightened my knees withered

under me."

As they approached the house across the upper lawn, they saw Mr.

Francis, some distance off, in one of the shady alleys going down to the

lake, walking away from them. The Panama hat with its bright ribbon was

on his head, at his mouth was the flute, and quick trills and runs of

some light-hearted southern dance floated toward them. Suddenly, it

would seem, the gaiety of his own music took irresistible hold on him,

for, with a preliminary pirouette and a little cut in the air, his feet

were taken by the infection, and the two lads lost sight of him round a

bend in the path, performing brisk impromptu steps to his melody.

They looked at him, then at each other a moment, in silence, Harry with

a dawning smile, Geoffrey with a deepening frown.

"I wouldn't tell him about the ice-house affair for ten thousand

pounds!" said Harry. "Geoff, I wonder if you and I will be as gay as

that when we are over seventy years old?"

"It is highly improbable," said Geoffrey.

It still wanted a quarter of an hour to lunch time, and Harry went

indoors to finish up. Geoffrey, however, remained outside, and, as soon

as Harry was gone, began playing a very curious and original game by

himself. This consisted in stalking Mr. Francis, and was played in the

following manner: He hurried over the grass to the entrance of the path

where they had last seen him, and followed cautiously from bush to bush.

Soon he had the sound of the flute again to guide him, but after a

little, hearing that it was getting louder, he retired on his own steps,

and from the shade of certain rhododendrons observed the cheery old

gentleman coming back again along the path he had taken. Mr. Francis

passed not thirty yards from the stalker; then the music ceased, and he

crossed the lawn in the direction of the two kiosks. At that a sudden

nameless thrill of horror took hold of Geoffrey, and creeping after him

till both kiosks had cleared the angle of the house, he observed his

doings with a fascinated attention.

Mr. Francis went first to the ice house and turned the handle of the

door, but apparently found it locked. He stood there a few seconds,

flute in hand, and, taking off his Panama hat, passed a handkerchief

over his forehead, for the day was very warm. Then it would seem that

the open windows of the summerhouse caught his eye, and in turn trying

that door, he found it open. He did not, however, enter, but merely held

the door open, standing on the threshold. Then he turned, and rather

slowly--for the grass, maybe, was slippery from a long drought--began to

descend again toward the house. Geoffrey, on his part, made a wide

circuit through the shrubbery, and emerged on to the gravel in front of

the house just as Mr. Francis entered. The latter saw him, but

apparently had no word for him, and on the moment the bell for lunch

rang.

Their meals usually were merry and talkative: lunch to-day, perhaps,

only proved the rule, for it was eminently silent. Geoffrey was gloomy

and preoccupied, his mind in an endless tangle of indecision, shocked,

horrified, yet ever telling himself that this nightmare of a morning

could not be true. Harry also, his nerves still on edge with the

experience of the last hour, was inclined to brevity of question and

answer; while the brisk cheerfulness of Mr. Francis, which as a rule

would cover the paucity of two, seemed replaced by a kind of dreamy

tenderness; he sighed, ate little; it was as if his mind dwelt on some

regret of what might have been. Perhaps the weather was in part

responsible for this marked decay of elasticity, for the clear warmth of

the morning had given place to a dead sultriness of heat; the atmosphere

had grown heavy and full of thunder. At last, as they rose from a very

silent meal--

"I went up to the summerhouse this morning, Uncle Francis," said Harry,

with the air of a man who had thought carefully over what he was going

to say. "It wants putting in order, for it is damp and very cobwebby, as

you warned me. But it would be worth while to do it; there is a charming

view from the windows. I shall send a couple of servants up to clean it,

and make it a bit more habitable."

"Do, dear boy, do," said Mr. Francis. "Dear old place, dear old place!

Your father used to be so fond of it!"

The threatening of a storm grew every moment more imminent, and the two

young men, who had intended to ride over the downs, decided to postpone

their expedition. They stood together at the window of the smoking room,

watching the awful and mysterious mobilization of cloud, the hard black

edges of thunder, ragged as if bitten off some immense pall, coming up

against what wind there was, and rising higher every moment toward the

zenith, ready to topple and break. Once a scribble of light, some

illegible, gigantic autograph was traced against the blackness, and the

gongs of thunder, as yet remote, testified its authenticity. Before long

a few large drops of rain jumped like frogs on the gravel path below the

windows, and a hot local eddy of unaccountable wind, like a grappling

iron let down from the moving vapours above, scoured across the lawn,

stirring and rattling the dry-leaved laurels in the shrubbery, and

expunging as it passed the reflections on the lake. It died away; the

little breeze there had been drooped like a broken wing; the willows by

the water were motionless as in a picture; a candle on the lawn would

have burned with as steady a flame as in a glass shade within a sealed

room. The fast-fading light was coppery in colour, and the darkness came

on apace as the great bank of congested cloud shouldered its way over

the sky, but, despite the gloom, there was a great precision of outline

in hill and tree.

Harry turned from the window.

"We shall have to light the lamps," he said. "It is impossible to see

indoors. Really, it looks like the day of judgment! Shall we have a game

of billiards, Geoff?"

As he spoke, the door was opened with hurried stealth, and Mr. Francis,

pale and strangely shrunken to the appearance, came in.

"Ah! here you are," he said; "I was afraid you had gone out, and that I

was alone. Is it not horrible? We are going to have a terrific storm.

What a relief to find you here! I--I should have been so anxious if you

had been out in this!"

"We were just going to the billiard room," said Harry. "Come with us,

Uncle Francis; we will play pool, or cut in and out."

"Thank you, dear Harry, but I could not possibly play with the storm

coming on," he said. "Thunder always affects me horribly. But if you

will let me, I will come with you, and perhaps mark for you. I can not

bear being alone in a thunderstorm."

They went to the billiard room, and Harry lit the lamps, while Mr.

Francis, creeping like a mouse round the walls, and taking advantage of

the cover of the curtains, began hurriedly closing the shutters.

"Oh, why do you do that?" asked Harry. "We shall not see the lightning."

Even as he spoke a swift streamer of violet light shot down, bisecting

the square of window where Mr. Francis was nervously tugging at a

shutter, and for a moment showing vividly the dark and stagnant shapes

of the drooping trees. Mr. Francis's hand fell from the shutter as if it

had been struck, and with a little moaning sigh he covered his face with

his hands. Almost simultaneously a reverberating crash, not booming or

rumbling, but short and sharp, answered the lightning, and Mr. Francis

hurried with crouching steps to the sofa.

"Put up all the shutters, I implore you, Harry!" he said in a stifled

voice. "Shut them quickly, and draw the curtains over them. Ah!" he

cried, with a whistling intake of breath, "there it is again!"

His terror was too evident and deep-seated not to be pitied, and the two

young men hastily closed all the shutters, drawing the curtains over

them, as Mr. Francis had requested.

"Is it done? is it done?" he asked in a muffled voice, his face half

buried in a sofa cushion. "Be quick--oh, be quick!"

For an hour he sat there with closed eyes and finger-muffled ears, while

the storm exploded overhead, the picture of cowering terror, while the

other two played a couple of games. From time to time, if there had been

a comparatively long interval of quiet, he would begin to take a little

interest in the play, and once, even when for some five minutes the

steady tattoo of the rain on the leads overhead had continued unbroken

by any more violent sound, he went to the marking board. But next moment

a dirling peal made the rest drop from his hand, and at a shuffling run

he went back to the sofa, and again hid ears and eyes.

The storm passed gradually away, the sharp crack of the overhead thunder

gave place to distant and yet more distant rumblings; and the afternoon

was not over when Mr. Francis, cautiously opening a chink of shutter,

let in a long, dusty ray of sunshine. The heavens were clear again,

washed by the rain, and of a most pellucid blue, and Mr. Francis,

recovering with mercurial rapidity, went gaily from window to window,

unshuttering.

"What a relief, what a blessed relief!" he cried. "How delicious is this

freshness after the storm! Ah, the beauty of the world! I drink it in;

it is meat and drink to me."

He nodded to the others.

"I must go out," he said; "I must go out and see if this horrible storm

that is past has done any damage. I am afraid some trees may have been

struck by that cruel lightning, in all their strength and beauty. It is

terrible to think of, that exquisite, delicate life, rent, shattered in

a moment by the flame!"

He went out, and the two others looked at each other like augurs.

"Nerves," said Harry.

"Bad conscience," said Geoffrey, and these were all the comments made by

either on Mr. Francis's hour of purgatory.

It was too late when the storm was over to go the intended ride, and

after tea Harry and Geoffrey sauntered aimlessly out, played red Indians

again among the islands of the lake (a game which, on the present

occasion, was far less delightful to Harry than when he had played it

last), and finally came homeward as dusk fell. As they passed down the

box hedge, it suddenly occurred to Harry (so imaginative had been the

realism with which his friend had played red Indians) that Geoffrey was

perhaps capable of seeing the secret of the inside passage in a suitably

romantic light, and he took him round to the back of the hedge.

"A mystery, Geoff, a deep, dark mystery," he said, and shutting his eyes

against the springing twigs which had overgrown the door, jumped into

the hedge. The elastic fibres of the box flew back like a spring into

their normal position; and Geoffrey, who for the moment had been intent,

with back turned, on the lighting of a cigarette, looked up when that

operation was over, and found that Harry had vanished as suddenly and as

completely as any lady in the cabinet trick. In the dusk it was

impossible, except to any one who knew where to look, to see any

difference of uniformity in the texture of the hedge, and the illusion

of his vanishing was complete.

"Here, Geoff, come in," said Harry, still invisible, "and don't put out

that match. It is darker than the plague of Egypt!"

"Come where--how? Where are you?"

Harry laughed, and held back the twigs.

"That was a great success," he said. "And--O Geoffrey--if you have a

spark of the romantic left in you, and I think you have, for you were a

masterly red Indian, this ought to make it blaze. Look! a tunnel right

down the hedge. Isn't that secret and heavenly? Think how many plots we

might overhear, if people were only kind enough to make them as they

went down the road! Think of the stirring rescues you could make, hiding

here till the pursuit went by!"

Geoffrey was quite suitably impressed.

"I call this really ancestral," he said. "Talk low, Harry; we may be

overheard. Where does it lead to?"

"Right down to the house, and comes out by another door like the one we

went in by, just opposite the gun-room window. Geoff, if you'll conceal

yourself here all to-morrow I'll bring your meals when I can slip away

without attracting attention. You mustn't smoke, I'm afraid."

"Oh, if only there was the smallest cause for doing so!" said Geoff.

"Does no one know it, except you and me?"

"I don't think so. I daren't ask Uncle Francis if he does, for fear he

does. I shall tell Evie, but no one else. Lord! what a baby one is! Why

does this give me pleasure? There! just peep out at the end, Geoffrey,

so that if you are pursued from the house you will know where the door

is; but be cautious. Now we'll walk up again inside, and steal softly

out where we came in, else some one from the house might see us. No, I

think not another match. It's too risky."

"I should like to give one low whistle," said Geoffrey.

"Just as a signal. All right."

Even as the whistle was on his lips, there came from somewhere close at

hand a sudden gush of notes from a flute, and the two stood there

huddled against each other in the narrow passage, petrified into sudden

silence and immobility, but shaken with inward laughter. Peering, on

tiptoe as it were, through the hedge, they could just make out the

figure of Mr. Francis, walking airily along the grass border by the edge

of the drive, on his way to the house. Soon his feet sounded crisp and

distant on the gravel, and the two idiots breathed again.

"A near thing," said Harry. "Let us go back. Geoff, if you had lit that

match, we should almost certainly have been discovered."

Mr. Francis left early the next morning for London, to see two or three

little flats, one of which he thought might perhaps be compassable by

the modest sum he was prepared to give for a _pied-à-terre_ in town.

None of them were in very fashionable districts; the one which seemed

to him most promising was in Wigmore Street, and this held forth the

additional advantage of being near Cavendish Square. Harry had

telegraphed to the care-taker there to get a couple of rooms ready for

his uncle, and without his knowledge (for he would certainly have

deprecated such a step) he had sent up from Vail a kitchen maid, who was

also a very decent cook, in order to make him more comfortable. Mr.

Francis had breakfasted, and the trap to take him to the station was

already at the door when the two young men came down, and he hailed them

genially from the threshold as his luggage was put up.

"Good-morning, dear boys!" he cried. "You will have a lovely day for

your shoot. It is perfect after yesterday's storm. Yes, I am just off, I

am sorry to say. I shall stop at least a week in town, I expect, Harry;

but I will let you know when I am thinking of coming back."

Harry went out just as his uncle climbed nimbly up into the dogcart;

Geoffrey had stayed in the hall, and was glancing at the paper.

"Uncle Francis," he said, "do take that more expensive flat in De Vere

Gardens, if you find it suits you better. Don't consider the extra

expense at all; I can manage that for you perfectly."

"You are too generous to me, dear Harry," said the other, stretching

down and grasping his hand. "But no, dear boy, I could not think of it.

I shall be immensely comfortable in that one in Wigmore Street. But

thank you, thank you.--Luggage all in? Drive on, Jim," he said abruptly.

Harry turned indoors and went across the hall to the dining room. But

Mr. Francis, after having driven not more than a couple of hundred

yards, stopped the cart, and descending, began to walk toward the house.

Halfway there he stopped, and stood for a moment lost in thought; then,

with an air of a taken decision, went on more quickly. On the threshold

again he stopped, biting his lip, and frowning heavily.

At that moment Geoffrey got up from his paper, and crossing the door

into the entrance hall, on his way to join Harry in the dining room, saw

him through the glass door, standing like this, and went to see why he

had come back. And the face that met him was the face of old Francis--a

wicked, malignant mask, even as Harry had seen it that day when the sun

shone brightly on the picture. But next moment it changed and melted.

"I thought you had gone," said Geoffrey. "Have you forgotten something?"

"Yes, my flute," said Mr. Francis, not looking at him; and picking it up

from where it lay on the piano, he went out again, and walked quickly up

the drive to where the dogcart was waiting.

"That was not what he came for," thought Geoffrey to himself.

CHAPTER XVI

FIRE

Harry was in the most extravagantly high spirits this morning, and at

breakfast the two laughed over the most indifferent trivialities like

schoolboys. Stories without wit and of the bluntest kind of point, rude

personal remarks, repartees of the most obvious and futile kind, were

enough to make one or other, and usually both, fit to choke with

meaningless laughter. To Geoffrey, at least, there was great and

conscious cause for a mounting spiritual barometer in the departure of

Mr. Francis. All yesterday, since he had seen him tripping up to the ice

house after Harry's escape, he had grown increasingly aware of a

creepiness of the flesh which his neighbourhood or the thought of him

produced. He had not slept well during the night, and had kept awaking

from snatches of nightmare dozing, in which sometimes Mr. Francis,

sometimes the figure of the portrait of old Francis, would be enticing

Harry on to some dim but violent doom. Now, like some infernal piper of

Hamelin, Mr. Francis would precede Harry, playing on his flute and

drawing him ever nearer to a bank of lurid cloud, out of which from time

to time leaped crooked lightning; now he would have him affectionately

by the arm, and walk with him chatting and laughing toward a little

house that stood on rising ground. The house, to the tongue-tied dreamer

who longed to warn his friend, but could not, kept changing in form: now

it would stand alone, now it would be but one in a countless row of

houses all alike, stretching to left and right, from horizon to horizon,

but whether solitary or among a hundred identical with it, he knew that

there lurked there a danger of vague and fatal kind. Sometimes it was

the beams and very stones of it that were ready to fall as soon as the

door was opened; sometimes every window of it he knew would bristle with

shooting flames as soon as Harry set foot within it; sometimes he could

see that it was in reality no house at all, but a black pit, infinite in

depth, from which rose an icy miasma. Yet, in whatever form Harry's

companion appeared, and in whatever form the house, when they were close

to it Mr. Francis would push Harry suddenly forward with an animal cry

of gratified hate, and Geoffrey would start from his dream in a sweat of

terror. Then there was another shocking point: the man who walked with

Harry was indefinite and changeable; he would start with him in the

image of Mr. Francis, and they would yet be but a stone's throw on their

walk, when it was Mr. Francis no more, but the old baron of the Holbein

picture. Sometimes, Evie's face would look out in panic terror from an

upper window, and the dreamer could see her wave her hands and hear her

scream a warnings but the two apparently could neither see nor hear her,

and drew steadily nearer that house of death.

But the sanity of the morning sun, the crisp chill of his bath, above

all, the departure of Mr. Francis, restored Geoffrey to his normal

level, and the normal once reached, the pendulum swung over to the other

side by as much as it had fallen short during these nervous terrors of

the night; and he ate with a zest and appetite more than ordinary, and a

keen and conscious relish for the day. Even at the end of this

ridiculous meal, when he had already laughed to exhaustion, a fresh

spasm suddenly seized him, and Harry paused, teacup in hand, to know the

worst.

"Oh, it is nothing," said Geoffrey; "indeed, it didn't strike me as at

all funny at the time. But as I came across the hall, there was Mr.

Francis at the door, though I had heard the dogcart start. He had come

back for something he had forgotten. Guess what it was--I only give you

one guess."

Harry's hand began to tremble and the corners of his mouth to break

down.

"His fl--flute!" he said in quivering tones.

"Right!" shouted Geoffrey. "And I wonder--oh, oh, I hurt!--I wonder

whether he will do steps round Cavendish Square to-night, playing on

it!"

Harry had begun to drink his tea a moment too soon.

They smoked a cigarette in the hall, Geoffrey eager to be off; Harry,

contrary to his habit, strangely inclined to loiter. Their talk had

veered to the more serious subject of shooting, and Harry was expressing

his old-fashioned preference for a gun with hammers to the more usual

hammerless.

"I can't think why I do prefer it," he said, "but there it is. I put a

gun at half cock instinctively if I have to jump a ditch, but I do not

feel quite at home with that little disk uncovering 'safe.' Supposing it

shouldn't be? Come along, Geoff; we'll start, as you are in such a

hurry. The men meet us at the lodge: we'll just get our guns and go!"

They went down the stone-flagged passage to the gun room, which looked

out on the box hedge. There were two guns lying on the table, and

Geoffrey, after looking at the other, took up his own.

"You're a consistent chap," he said to Harry. "After all you tell me of

your preference for hammers, you shoot apparently with a hammerless."

Harry picked up the gun and looked at it.

"Not mine," he said; "Uncle Francis's. Ah! there's mine."

Another gun with hammers was leaning nearly upright in a rough gun

stand, more like a stand for sticks, in the corner. Harry took hold of

it some halfway up the barrels, and then seemed to Geoffrey to give a

little jerk as if it had stuck. On the moment there was a loud

explosion, a horrible raking scratch was torn in the wooden panelling

of the wall, and an irregular hole opened in the ceiling. The charge

could not have missed Harry by more than three inches, but he stood

there, the smoking gun in his hand, without a tremor. Then he turned to

Geoffrey.

"The Luck is waking up," he said. "Frost yesterday--that was the ice

house; and this looks awfully like fire."

Several panes of glass in the window had been shattered by the

concussion, and Harry pointed the gun out.

"Now for the second barrel," he said, and the click of the falling

trigger was the only answer. He opened the breech, and took out the

smoking cartridge case.

"One cartridge only," he said; then, looking down the barrels, "and the

left barrel is clean. It looks rather as if the gun had been cleaned,

and a cartridge put in afterward. Odd thing to happen. Now we'll go

shooting, Geoff!"

But Geoffrey was holding on to the table, trembling violently.

"You're not hurt?" he said.

"No. I shouldn't go shooting if I were. Come, old chap, pull yourself

together: there's no harm done. I shall make inquiries about this. Don't

you say anything, Geoff. I am going to look into it thoroughly,

detective fashion."

"But--but aren't you frightened?" asked Geoffrey feebly.

"No, funnily enough, I'm not. It's the Luck: I firmly believe it's the

Luck, and the poor old devil who put the curse in it is doing things in

a thoroughly futile manner. I am ashamed of him."

"Ah, destroy the beastly thing!" cried Geoffrey. "Burn it, smash it,

chuck it away!"

"Not I. Oh, it's cheap, it's awfully cheap! A hole in the ceiling, and a

penny for the cartridge, and November coming closer."

"Do you mean to say you believe in it all?" asked Geoffrey.

"Yes, I believe in it all."

"But, good God, man! somebody put the cartridge there. Somebody told you

that the summerhouse was on the left----" and he stopped suddenly.

"Yes--Uncle Francis told me that," said Harry, "and who made him forget

which was which of the two houses? Why, the Luck, the blessed Luck!" he

cried almost exultantly.

At this all the nightmares of the last twelve hours swarmed round

Geoffrey, flapping about his head.

"And who put the cartridge in that gun?" he cried, not thinking how

direct an accusation he was making.

Harry's face grew suddenly grave; the smile was struck from it. A flash

of anger and intense surprise flamed in his eyes, and his upper lip

curled back in an ugly way. Then seeing Geoffrey holding on to the

table, still dazed and white, he recovered himself.

"Come, old boy," he said, "don't be so much upset. Yet, Geoff, you

shouldn't say that sort of thing even in jest. Have a whisky and soda

before going out; you're all shaky. Believe in the Luck, like me, and

you'll take things more calmly. Yes, I mean it; at last I really mean

it. I am the inheritor of a curse and a blessing. So I take the good

with the bad, and, oh, how much the one outweighs the other! By the way,

the painters are in the house; they must patch up the paper here, and

mend that hole in the ceiling. Shall I order a whisky for you at the

same time?"

"No; I'm all right," said Geoffrey, and he followed the other out.

Harry was at all times a good shot, to-day he verged on brilliancy.

Geoffrey, on the other hand, who as a rule was more than good, to-day

was worse than bad. His gun was a laggard; he shot behind crossing game,

below anything that was flying straight away from him; he was not

certain about the easiest shots, and he was only certain to miss the

more difficult ones. It seemed indeed that the two had divided between

them the accident in the gun room; the infinitely short moment in which

Harry had felt the hot breath of the fire, sharp and agonizing like a

pulled tooth, was his, but the reaction, the retarded fear, the

subsequent effect on nerve and brain, were entered to Geoffrey. He was

utterly unstrung by this double escape; twice during the last

twenty-four hours, in this peaceful country house, had Harry looked in

the very face of death; yesterday stepping gaily toward the lip of the

ice tank; to-day by as little a margin escaping this shattering

extinction. A foot more, a foot less--and as he thought of it, Geoffrey

bit his lip for fear of screaming--and brain and bone would have been

shredded over the gun-room floor. Accidents would happen; there had

always been accidents and there always would be, but, unlike

misfortunes, they nearly always came singly. What was this malignancy

that haunted Harry, dogging his steps? What dim figure, deadly and full

of hate, hovered on the wing by him, ready to strike? Cartridges do not

automatically find their way to guns that are cleaned and placed in the

stand, as dust collects in corners. They have to be placed there, a

human hand has to open the breech, stuff it with death, close it, and

put the gun down again. These things must inevitably happen before a gun

goes off. Who in this case did them?

They came by one o'clock to one of the prettiest pieces of rough

shooting on the ground--a long, very narrow strip of moorland country

bounded on both sides by reclaimed fields, tufted thickly with heather,

diversified by young clumps of fir and dense, low-growing bushes, and

honey-combed with rabbit burrows. It was scarcely more than sixty yards

across, but full half a mile in length, and the sport it afforded was

most varied and unconjecturable. On warm days partridges would be here,

covey after covey, sunning in the sandy little hollows bare of growth,

or busy among the heather, and from the thickness of the cover and the

undulations of the ground, a big covey would seldom take the air

together, but rise one by one, or in couples, without general alarm

being given, to right or left of the guns, or even behind them, so close

had the birds lain in the long grasses. Here and there attempts had at

one time been made to bring the land into cultivation, and as you

tramped through heather, you would suddenly come on a vague-edged square

of potato-planting, the vegetable run riot with great wealth of thick

leaf; or a strip of corn already half wild, and with a predominant

ingredient of tares, would make you go slowly on the certainty of the

break of brown wings, or the delayed and head-down scurry of a hare.

To those happily old-fashioned enough to care for the sober joys of

walking up, it was the very poetry of sport, but to-day it appeared to

Geoffrey a barren and unprofitable place. For the last hour the

questions that tormented him had been volleying even more insistently;

horrible doubts and suspicions, no longer quite vague, flocked round his

head like a flight of unclean birds, and he desired one thing only--to

get to the gun room alone and clear up a certain point.

They had to walk over a bare and depopulated stubble to get to this

delectable ground, and Harry, as they neared it, looked first at

Geoffrey's lacklustre face, then at his watch.

"I had no idea it was so late, Geoff," he said; "I think we'll take the

rough after lunch. We're only half a mile from the house, and you look

as if lunch would do you good."

He took the cartridges carefully out of his gun.

"No mistake this time," he said. "We'll start over the rough at

two--Kimber, meet us here. Oh, by the way, come up to the house; I want

to ask you something."

Geoffrey gave up his gun with a sigh of relief.

"Yes; let's do that piece afterward," he said; "I can't hit a sitting

haystack this morning, Harry."

"There's one; have a shot at it," said Harry. "O Geoff, don't look so

awful! What has happened? There is a hole in the gun-room ceiling. You

didn't do it, and I'm not going to send the bill to you."

"But aren't you frightened?" asked Geoffrey. "Are you made of flesh and

blood?"

"I believe so. But haven't you ever had a shave of being shot? I'll bet

you didn't give it a thought half an hour afterward."

"I know; but it's more cold-blooded indoors, happening the way it did.

And coming on the top of your ice-house affair yesterday!"

"It's the Luck!" cried Harry; "that's the explanation of it, and it's

proved to the hilt. Fire and frost: they are done; scratch them out; and

now there remains the rain. I'm afraid we shall not get the rain to-day,

though. If one has to go through a thing--and I certainly have--it is

better to get it over quick, as I, to do me justice, am getting it

over. And, O Geoff, there's a good time coming!"

Harry had to see the foreman who was in charge of the electric light, as

well as the keeper, when he got in, and Geoffrey, after seeing him go

upstairs, went quickly through the baize door at the end of the passage

from the hall, and down to the gun room. He wanted to find out what had

caused Harry to give a jerk to the gun when he took it up. He had

consciously seen him, the moment before it went off, put his hand to

lift it out of the stand, then give an additional effort, as if it had

stuck. All the morning he had been wondering about that. The obstacle,

whatever it was, must, he felt certain, have been in connection with the

trigger, for it was that jerk which had caused the gun to go off.

The men had already been at work over the damage, but they had gone to

their dinner, and the room was empty. He went to the rack where the gun

had stood, and next moment he gave a sudden little gasp, though not of

surprise, for he had found only what he expected he should find, or

something like it. Round the post at the corner of the rack was tied a

piece of cotton. Two ends, each some six inches long, came out from it;

the extremities were ragged, as if the piece had been broken.

Another gun with hammers stood in a glazed cupboard at one side of the

room; Geoffrey took it out, and leaned it in the rack as nearly as

possible in the position in which he remembered Harry's gun to have

stood. Then kneeling down, he stretched the two broken ends of cotton in

its direction. They just went round the right trigger.

He had a momentary impulse to call Harry and show him this, but decided

not to. Harry, as he had said, was going to investigate the mysterious

presence of a cartridge in a cleaned gun, and if he could trace how it

got there, then would be the time to throw on this fresh evidence. Till

then it was far better that he should not know, for at present he was

inclined to treat the affair as an accident, due no doubt to some gross

negligence, but nothing worse. This matter of the looped cotton,

however, gave a far more sinister aspect to the affair, and the

knowledge that there was foul work here was a burden that could be

spared him at any rate till further light was cast. So, very carefully

he unknotted the cotton from the post of the rack and put it in his

pocket. The knot, he noticed, was the ordinary reef so familiar to the

fly-fisher.

Somehow the certainty of what he had feared and suspected, even though

the worst of his suspicions was confirmed, served to steady him. He knew

now exactly what was to be faced--a deliberate and very cunningly

devised attempt on Harry's life. Look at it which way you would, this

could not conceivably be an accident. Taken alone, the presence of a

cartridge in a cleaned gun had been a difficult mouthful even for an

imagination in favour of accident to swallow; taken in conjunction with

the piece of looped cotton, it could not be tackled.

He went over all the circumstances slowly and carefully, as he put the

piece of cotton in his cigarette case. There had been two guns on the

table--his, and, as it turned out, not Harry's, but Mr. Francis's.

Harry's gun, loaded, a trap of nearly certain death to any one who took

it up, was leaning in the gun rack. Here were the thoughts of the brain

which had contrived these things.

The bell for lunch made him hurry out of the room, and in the hall he

found Harry.

"Our reporter has been visiting the scene of the dastardly attempt," he

said; "something spicy for the evening papers, Geoff? Oh, by the way, I

asked Kimber what he could tell me about that gun of mine. He could tell

me a lot. Come in to lunch."

"And what could he tell you?" asked Geoffrey.

Harry looked at the servants a moment.

"Later," he said. "Oh, how I bless the man who invented lunch! Do you

remember saying to me once that little things like baths and tea were

much more important than anything else?"

"Yes, and you called me a sensuous voluptuary," said Geoffrey.

"I believe I did. So you are. So am I."

The sensuous voluptuaries went out again as soon as lunch was over, to

shoot the rough, and as they walked Harry told his friend what he had

learned from the keeper.

"I asked him first," he said "(without telling him what had happened),

who put those two guns, yours and my uncle's, on the table, and he

didn't know. He had come in early to get cartridges and put the guns

out, and found them there. So he took the cartridges and went. Now,

until this morning, I haven't shot here since last February, and I

didn't take the gun that behaved so--so prematurely to-day, to Scotland.

So I asked whether any one had used it since I went away, and it

appeared that Uncle Francis had several times, for his own gun, the

hammerless one which we found on the table, had gone to the maker's to

have a rust hole taken out. Do you follow?"

"Perfectly."

"Well, two days ago, the day we came down here, Kimber was feeding the

pheasants, and he heard a shot near at hand, and a moment afterward a

wounded hare ran across the clearing, followed immediately by Uncle

Francis. He was almost crying, said Kimber: do you remember how he

wounded a hare last Christmas, and was out for an hour trying to recover

it? Well, the same thing had happened, and it was his first shot,

remember that; Kimber was certain there had been only one. But this time

the hare had run into thick cover, and there was really no chance of

getting it, for it had been hit, Kimber saw, only in one leg. Now

attend, Geoff, very closely; it's quite a detective story. As they stood

there, Kimber saw Uncle Francis take the discharged cartridge case out

of the right barrel and slip the unused cartridge from the left into it.

Now that bears all the stamp of truth on it. I have seen Uncle Francis

do just that a dozen times, when he had killed with his first barrel,

and does not immediately expect another shot. To continue. Then he drew

another cartridge from his pocket, but suddenly said, 'I can shoot no

more with that poor wounded thing unfound.' And he snapped the breech

to, and went home. Now do you see?"

"But didn't Kimber clean the gun afterward?"

"No," said Harry. "Uncle Francis's man always cleans his gun, and he

probably, seeing him return to the house almost immediately after he had

set out, and go into the garden, naturally thought that he had decided

not to shoot, and did not clean the gun. That is why the second barrel

was clean; no shot had been fired from it, and Uncle Francis simply

forgot that he had left one cartridge in. The whole thing hangs

completely together. Then came I, picked up the gun quickly, no doubt

hitting the trigger against something, and there is a hole in the

ceiling."

Once again Geoffrey thought of the looped cotton, and once again decided

not to tell Harry. There was no use, at present, especially since Mr.

Francis was not here, in giving him so sinister a piece of information.

"That certainly clears up a lot," he said, conscious of the

deadly-double meaning of his words.

"It clears it all up," said Harry, "and I'll tell you now that I felt

horribly uncomfortable about it all morning, though I was not

frightened. Of course it was awfully careless of Uncle Francis to leave

that cartridge in, and awfully careless of his man not to look to the

gun. He thought Uncle Francis had not been shooting, for he must have

returned to the house not more than a quarter of an hour after he set

out, but he would have saved some lath and plaster if he had made sure.

Here we are. Now for the rough!"

Mr. Francis, Geoffrey now believed beyond doubt, in his secret mind, was

no less accountable for this gun-room explosion than for the mistake

about the ice house; and Harry's story, proof to the other of his direct

hand, was in a way a relief to him. All the morning he had feared and

dreaded indications of a second hand, of a gamekeeper privy to the deed,

of a servant suborned, and in particular his fancy had fixed on that

dark man of Mr. Francis's, him with the foxlike face and tread of a cat.

About him there was something secret and stealthy, so said his

imagination, heated by the horrid occurrences of these two days; yet his

secrecy and stealth were less abominable than the smiles of his master,

his sunny cheerfulness, his playings on the flute. So lately as this

morning Geoffrey had laughed when he thought of that flute; flutes in

connection with white hairs and old age had seemed to him amusing,

ridiculous. But now the memory of his own merriment amazed him; no tears

were bitter enough for the contemplation of this deadliness of hypocrisy

and hate; and he thought of the Italian airs and the tripping step of

the performer with a bewilderment of horror. He had not known how

finished an article could be turned out of the workshops of Satan.

But at this the full relief occasioned by Mr. Francis's absence came

upon him with a great taste of sweetness. True, this last attempt had

been made when the old man was not actually in the house; but so long as

he was away, Geoffrey did not fear another trap. It would not be like a

man of that infernal cunning to leave lying about, as it were, a series

of nooses into which any one might step; his desire would not so far

outstrip his prudence. It had been by the merest chance that Geoffrey

had noticed that slight check to the lifting of the gun from the rack,

by the merest chance that he had found the looped cotton; but apart from

this, had either attempt succeeded, no evidence of any kind to implicate

anybody would have remained. And not the least of his cunning was shown

in the way that he took advantage of Harry's credulity in the power of

the Luck. By frost and by fire he had schemed his death, and Geoffrey

would have laid odds that if either by the arrow by day or the terror by

night Harry's life again stood in jeopardy, in some manner, vague

perhaps, but simple to trace, rain would be the agent. Here, then, he

told himself was a clew of a kind. To guard against rain, it is true,

was a vast and ill-defined project, for such an agency might be held to

include many forms of death, from drowning to pneumonia, but it was, he

felt sure, through the supposed potencies of the Luck that Mr. Francis

was striking.

They spent a most rewarding hour that afternoon over the rough, and the

evening passed, as is the privilege of shooters, in lazy, dozing

content. One game of billiards had been succeeded by a nominal reading

of the evening papers, and Harry had gone upstairs to bed at eleven,

yawning fit to wrench off a jaw not firmly muscle-knit, but Geoffrey, on

the excuse of being too comfortable in his big chair to move just yet,

had sat on in the hall, not ill pleased to be alone, for he had many

things to ponder, and he had not yet made up his mind what he ought to

do. Conclusive as the evidence seemed to him, Harry, he well knew, would

not possibly listen to it; to tell Harry what he believed, meant simply

that he left the house. Something far more conclusive must occur before

he told Harry, and Geoffrey prayed silently that nothing more conclusive

should ever be on foot: he was quite satisfied with the demonstration as

it stood. And he curled himself more closely in his chair and began to

think.

What, after all, if this series of events was due to the Luck?

Certainly, immediately after its finding, three accidents, by fire and

frost and rain, had happened to Harry, for none of which could Mr.

Francis be held remotely responsible. What if, now, these more serious

accidents were to be referred to the same agency? Geoffrey found himself

smiling at the absurdity of the thought, yet he still continued to

consider it. He did not believe it, so he told himself; his reasonable

mind entirely rejected the possibility that a thing inanimate, the work

of men's hands, be it made of wood and stone, or gold and precious

stones, could control destiny. It mattered not, as far as the Luck was

concerned, how one thought of destiny: it was the laws of Nature, if you

will, unalterable, of an inexorable logic, or, to refer the matter one

step back, it was the will of God, who had set these natural laws at

work. Yet were not the sins of the fathers visited on the children? Was

it not possible, though ever so dimly and unconjecturably, that some

subtle law of this hereditary kind governed the destinies of the Vails,

and that without supposing that a cup of gold could be responsible for

danger, sudden death, and, on the other hand, for the meting out of

great happiness and prosperity, yet that the belief in some man's mind

as he watched the chasing of the legend on that plaque of gold was true?

He had observed, let us suppose, and correctly observed, some tide in

the affairs of the Vails; he had embodied it allegorically in that rhyme

on the cup, and the allegory was true, because that which it illustrated

was true.

Indeed, he had put his allegory into a form extraordinarily vivid.

Night after night the gorgeous goblet had stood before the diners in the

light of the candles, and night after night it had seemed to grow more

and more alive. What if some occult force lurked there? if some

unsleeping presence dwelt in those diamonds? From immemorial time men

had believed that certain powers and qualities dwelt in precious stones.

There was danger in opals, and warning; they turned stale and dim in the

presence of an enemy, and no opal, he remarked, was set in bowl or

handle or foot of the cup. Else--here his thought was confused, for the

Luck was the potency--it might have sickened and paled when Mr. Francis

ate his dinner near it. The amethyst drove away the fumes of wine; in

diamonds there was sovereignty; sapphires conferred judgment deep and

clear as themselves on their possessor. What if there was truth, however

small a residuum, in these tales, and how might the potency of the

stones be increased if they were put in their appointed settings with a

blessing and a curse?

He sat up in his chair, conscious that he had been half dozing, for the

chime of a clock lingered on the vibrating air, yet he had not heard the

hour strike, and, still sleepy, he leaned back again with a strong

determination to go to bed instantly. Suddenly and without cause, so far

as he knew, he became broad and staring awake; his eye might

unconsciously have seen something, or his ear unconsciously heard a

movement, yet not have forwarded it in full to the brain. But every

sense told him that he was not alone.

He sat up hurriedly and looked around. Peering cautiously into the room,

round the door leading to the stairs, and barely visible in the shadow,

was the face of Mr. Francis.

CHAPTER XVII

A BIRD OF NIGHT

For a moment neither spoke.

"Dear boy, how late you sit up!" said Mr. Francis, coming into the room;

"it has already struck one. You were asleep, I think, when I came in,

and I was unwilling to awake you. But now tell me, is Harry all right?"

Geoffrey by this time had every sense alert: he felt perfectly cool and

collected, and saw his policy stretching away in front of him like a

level, well-defined road.

"Yes, Harry, by a miracle almost, is alive and unhurt," he said.

"Ah! I knew it, I knew it," said Mr. Francis below his breath.

Geoffrey paused a moment.

"You knew what?" he asked very deliberately.

"I knew he had been in great danger," said the other; "I had the

strongest premonition of it. You remember seeing me this morning come

back after I had started? I came back to warn Harry. Yet how absurd he

would think it! I was deliberating about that when you saw me at the

door, and wondering what I could say to him. Then I told myself it was

a ridiculous fancy of mine, which would pass off. But all day it has

clung to me; do what I would, I could not shake it off; and this evening

I came down here to see if all was well. You spoke of Harry having been

in great danger. Tell me what happened, my dear boy."

"He nearly shot himself in the gun room this morning," said Geoffrey.

"He took up his gun, which was standing in a rack close to the window,

and it went off, narrowly missing him!"

"But it missed him completely?" asked Mr. Francis. "He was not touched?"

"If he had been touched he would not be alive," said Geoffrey, lighting

a cigarette, and looking at Mr. Francis very intently. "The velocity of

shot at such very short range is considerable."

Mr. Francis made a very slight movement in his chair, more of a tremor

than a voluntary motion.

"Terrible, terrible!" he said. "What awful fate is it that dogs poor

Harry?"

Geoffrey paused with mouth half open, a little wreath of smoke curling

from the corner of it.

"In what other way has an awful fate dogged Harry?" he asked.

Mr. Francis replied almost immediately.

"Those three accidents he had last spring," he said. "How strange they

were! They quite unnerved me."

"He was thinking of the ice house," said Geoffrey to himself with

absolute certainty. "That was a mistake." Then, aloud. "They were not so

very serious," he said.

"No, but uncomfortable. And then to-day!"

"Yesterday, you mean," said Geoffrey, trying to trap him.

Mr. Francis looked up inquiringly.

"True, yesterday. How exact you are, my dear fellow! I had forgotten

that it was, as the Irish say, to-morrow already. But how awful, how

awful! That was what my strange premonition meant."

"It is odd that your premonition should have lasted all day," said

Geoffrey, "when the danger was over by half past ten this morning."

For half a second Mr. Francis's face altered. The perturbed, anxious

look which he had worn throughout the interview gave place, though but

for a moment, to a trouble of a different type. Annoyance, you would

have said, became more poignant than his anxiety.

"Yes; the whole feeling I had was unaccountable," he said. "But poor

Harry! What an awful moment for the dear lad! But how could a cartridge

have been in the gun? What frightful carelessness on Kimber's part! He

can not have cleaned it after Harry used it last."

Again Geoffrey paused with his mouth slightly open. Mr. Francis, he

considered, was on dangerous ground.

"That was in February," he said; "eight months ago. I can not imagine,

somehow, the cartridge being there all this time."

"He was shooting in Scotland, was he not?" asked Mr. Francis.

"Yes; but a man would not carry a loaded gun in the parcel rack," said

Geoffrey. "It is more usual for a gun to be taken to bits, and put in

its case when one goes by train. Besides, as a matter of fact, Harry

didn't take that gun to Scotland. There are other circumstances as well

which lead me, at any rate, to a different conclusion--a different way

of accounting for the accident," he corrected himself.

"What circumstances?" asked Mr. Francis. "Do get on, my dear boy: I am

in dreadful anxiety to learn all about this awful thing. Oh, thank God,

there was no harm done!"

Before the words were out of his mouth Geoffrey, who for the moment had

hesitated what to tell him, made up his mind. He stifled a yawn, and

splashed some whisky and soda into his glass.

"Oh, various circumstances," he said in a slow, well-balanced tone of

indifference, as if the subject were wearisome. "One, of course, must be

well known to you. You had used Harry's gun yourself two days ago--the

day we came down here. You wounded a hare, do you not remember, close to

the pheasant feed, and returned home after firing only one shot? You

also, unconsciously no doubt, transferred the second cartridge from the

left barrel to the right. You will hardly remember that? But it

explains, at least, why the left barrel was clean. Then your idle

rascal of a man, who I am told always cleans your gun, omitted to do it,

and there remained a cartridge in it. That, at least, is how Harry and I

put the thing together!"

Mr. Francis's hands went suddenly to his head, as if they had been on

wires, and he clutched despairingly at his hair.

"It is true--it is all too true!" he moaned. "I did use Harry's gun. I

did fire one shot only two days ago. Can I have left the other cartridge

in? It is possible, it is terribly possible. Ah, my God! what an awful

punishment for a little piece of carelessness! Ah, what a lesson, what a

lesson! Supposing he had shot himself--oh! supposing----"

Geoffrey watched him for some few moments in silence, as he rocked

himself backward and forward in his chair.

"Well, well," he said at length, "there is no harm done. A few

shillings' worth of lath and plaster will pay for the damage; oh, yes,

and an extra penny for the cartridge, as Harry said. But it nearly

filled the bag and something more at one shot, like Mr. Winkle."

This very cold and unsympathetic consolation had an astonishing effect

on Mr. Francis. His rockings ceased, his hands left his head, and by

degrees his face again assumed a sad smile.

"Dear lad," he said, "you have such invaluable common sense! There is

certainly no use in crying over milk which is not spilt. What you said

was like a douche of cold water over an aching head; yes, and an aching

heart. But, tell me, is Harry very angry with me? Does he blame me, as

he has every right to do, very severely?"

"No, he is inclined to laugh at the whole thing," said Geoffrey. "He

knows, of course, what a simple and in a way a natural accident it all

was. He is no more angry than he was yesterday, when----" and he stopped

suddenly, remembering his promise to Harry not to tell Mr. Francis of

the ice-house occurrence. But dearly would he have liked to have broken

his word.

Again a remarkable change took place in Mr. Francis's face; and

Geoffrey, even in the middle of this midnight fencing match, thought

what a marvellous quick-change artist he would have made if only he had

decided to devote his undeniable talents to that innocuous branch of

art. His smile was not: a frightened man sat there, moving his lips as

if his mouth were dry.

"Yesterday--what of yesterday?" he asked.

"Nothing," said the other shortly. "I, like yourself just now, had

forgotten that it was already to-morrow. Do you know, I am very sleepy?"

This was not ill done, for Mr. Francis could scarcely refuse to accept

an excuse which he had himself offered, and Geoffrey could scarcely

prevent smiling. But as soon as Mr. Francis spoke again, he was again

absolutely intent on their conversation.

"It is too bad to keep you up," said he, "but positively you must tell

me more about this dreadful accident. What else, what else?"

"There is nothing more--to tell," said Geoffrey, pausing designedly, for

his immediate object was now to thoroughly frighten Mr. Francis, and he

meant to do it slowly and firmly. "What more, indeed, could there be? It

was over in a moment. Partly, I am afraid, by your fault, partly by your

man's, a cartridge was left in Harry's gun. Oh! by the way, since you

are anxious for minutiæ, there is one more tiny point that might

conceivably interest you. There seemed to me--I happened to be looking

at Harry--some slight resistance somewhere when he took the gun up. He

took hold of it, you understand, and then gave it a jerk. It has

occurred to me, very forcibly in fact, that this resistance, whatever it

was, was the cause of the gun going off."

"The trigger perhaps caught in the edge of the carpet," suggested Mr.

Francis.

"I don't think so," said Geoffrey carelessly.

"Well, something of the kind," said Mr. Francis. "Or, again, it may have

been pure imagination on your part."

"I don't think that either," said Geoffrey. "A gun even when loaded and

at full cock, as this one must have been, does not naturally go off when

handled. Besides, I found, when I examined the place----" He stopped

suddenly, and looked up at Mr. Francis. Quick as a lizard, fear

unmistakable and shaking leaped there for a moment, and was as quickly

gone.

"You found--?" he asked, under his breath.

"Ah! you remind me: I found a little thing, a very little thing, which

may, however, turn out to be important. Oh, it is ridiculous! I can not

really tell you. I will keep it to myself, please."

"Really, my dear Geoffrey," said Mr. Francis, "you tell a story, and

stop when you come to the point."

"I know," said Geoffrey, "and I apologize. Anyhow, I have made a

scrupulous examination of the place, and have taken note of a small

circumstance. Again I apologize."

Suddenly this nocturnal visit began to show in a different light in

Geoffrey's mind. Mr. Francis had come here, it is true, at an hour when

he might reasonably expect the house to be in bed, but it was still

unlikely that he had taken this trouble, and run even so small a risk of

detection, simply to learn the result of the morning's accident. What if

he had come here for something more reasonable--to destroy, perhaps,

some little piece of evidence, the evidence it might be which lay even

now in Geoffrey's cigarette case?

"Of course I will not press you, my dear Geoffrey," he replied. "But

consider whether it would not be better to tell me."

Geoffrey paused, this time because he really wanted to think.

"Why?" he said at length. "Either this occurrence was pure accident, or

it was a foul attempt on Harry's life. Yes, that sounds horrible, does

it not? But certainly it was either the one or the other. Now,

carelessness seems to account very largely for it. You left a cartridge

in the gun, your servant did not clean it. But supposing one had reason

to think that there was foul play, I should take this evidence to the

police; and you may be sure, at whatever cost to Harry's feelings, and

of course yours, at making the affair public, I will do so at once, the

moment I can form, or that I think they can form, a conclusive series of

evidence."

He got up on these words and turned to light a bedroom candle.

"Well, good-night," he said; "we shall see you at breakfast."

"No, my dear boy, you will not," said Mr. Francis; "and, Geoffrey, you

must not tell Harry I have been here. I am almost ashamed of my

foolishness in coming, but that presentiment of evil, which was so

strong in me all day, drove me. No, I shall be gone again, before any

one is stirring, and breakfasting in town while you lazy fellows are

still dressing, I dare say."

Geoffrey thought a moment.

"As you will," he said. "By the way, how did you get in?"

"I got in by the front door," said Mr. Francis. "It was left unlocked;

very careless of the servants."

"Very, indeed. Did you lock it?"

"Yes, and I was just stealing upstairs when you awoke. I had meant to

go very quietly to Harry's room, and just look at the dear lad, to

satisfy myself he was all right. If I had not had the good fortune to

find the door open, I should have passed the night in the summerhouse,

and just seen that all was well in the morning. I hope Harry will speak

to Templeton about the door."

"But how will Harry know, unless he knows of your coming?"

"Ah!" Mr. Francis paused a moment. "I will leave it unlocked; indeed I

must, when I go out. You can then call his attention to it. Good-night,

my dear boy; I shall go to my room too. I will sleep on the sofa very

comfortably."

Geoffrey turned into his room with slow and sleepy steps, shut the door

and locked it. Then he undressed very quickly, and over his nightshirt

put on a dark coat. He was too full of this appearance of Mr. Francis,

and of wonder what it really meant, to waste time in mere idle

contemplation of it, and he sat on his bed, following out end after end

of tangled conjecture.

Harry's safety during the hours which had to pass before morning was his

first thought, but that he speedily dismissed. "I have frightened the

old man," he said to himself with strong satisfaction. "I have made him

tremble in his wicked shoes. No, he dare do nothing to-night. There is a

witness that he is here, that he arrived secretly after dark, and left

before morning. No, Harry is all safe for to-night, but I am glad I

woke."

Geoffrey lay back on his bed, keenly interested in what lay before him,

but astounded by the possibly imminent issues. Hitherto his life had

always run very easily, a pleasant, light business; but now suddenly

there were thrust into his young and inexperienced hands the red reins

of life and death, reins that governed or governed not horses that he

could but indistinctly guess at. But the reins were in his hands; it was

his business, and now, to steer as well as he could between God knew

what devils and deep seas. A thousand directions were open to him; in

all but one, as far as he could forecast the future, lay disaster. A

solution and a rescue he felt there must be, but in what direction did

it lie? To go now to Harry's room, what risk was there, what fear of

eyes behind curtains; and once there, what sort of reception would he

meet? Harry had gone to bed nearly three hours ago, and must he be

plucked from his sleep to hear this wild tale--a tale so full of

conjecture, so scant in certainties? And if he heard it, what, to judge

by Geoffrey's previous knowledge of him, his only guide in this lonely

hour, would be his manner of taking it? One only, he knew it well:

bewildered surprise and scorn that one whom he had accounted friend

should bring him so monstrous a tale. That he must certainly expect,

indignant speech, or silence even more indignant, and a rupture that

could not easily be healed. No, to go to Harry now would in all

probability mean to sever himself from him, and this in the hour of dark

need and danger.

Geoffrey got up from where he was lying and walked silently with bare

feet up and down the room. Then he stripped off coat and nightshirt, and

sluiced head and neck with cold water. He felt awake enough, but stupid

from sheer perplexity, and he was determined to give his faculties, such

as they were, every opportunity for lively and wise decision. There had

been, for instance, some train of instinctive thought in his mind when

he had shut the door, but dressed himself for possible action. His brain

had told him that he did not mean to go to bed yet; had it not told him

something more? His action in putting on dark coverings had been perhaps

involuntary; it was his business now to account for it.

Ah! the door by which Mr. Francis had entered--that was it. He did not

believe that he had come in, as he said, by the front door, for the

noise of its opening and shutting--the noise, too, of the lock which he

said he had turned after he had come in--must have awoke him from a

sleep that had never quite become unconsciousness. A clock had struck,

it is true, the moment before he was completely roused, and he had not

heard it; but how often, he reflected, do one's ears hear the clock

strike, yet never convey the message to the brain! It was far more

likely that the slight stir of movement made by Mr. Francis as he peeped

round the inner door leading to the staircase had awoke him. How, then,

was it possible that he should have opened, shut, and locked the heavy

front door, have crossed the hall, and yet never have broken in upon his

doze? Besides, the face that looked at him was that of a man peeping

into a room, not of one leaving it. It seemed then very likely that Mr.

Francis had not entered by the front door; it was also hardly possible

that it should not have been locked at nightfall by the servant who put

up the shutters.

Then another difficulty occurred. Since Mr. Francis had by his own

account locked the front door when he came in, it would be locked now.

But he intended to leave the house before the servants were up, and

would unlock it then, leaving it unlocked when he left. On the other

hand, supposing that Geoffrey's suspicions were correct, and he had not

come in by the front door, nor intended to leave the house that way, he

would certainly unlock it before any one was about in the morning. This,

then, was the first point: Would Mr. Francis unlock the front door

before morning, and would he leave the house that way? If not, how had

he got in, and how would he get out? It was likely also, more than

likely, that if Geoffrey's darker suspicions were well founded, Mr.

Francis would pay a visit to the gun room, for there was no question

that "the little circumstance" which he had hinted at had been of more

than common interest to the other.

At this moment, in his soft pacings and thoughts, there came a little

gentle tap at his door. He stood exactly where he was, frozen to

immobility, a step half taken, in his hand the towel with which he had

been mopping his hair. A second or two later the tap was repeated, very

softly.

Geoffrey was in two minds what to do. It was possible that this

small-hour intruder was Harry, some nameless terror at his heart; it was

possible, again, that Mr. Francis was outside, ascertaining whether he

was asleep, with some specious excuse on his lips in case he was awake.

But if it was Harry, whatever he needed, some louder and more urgent

summons was sure to follow--a rattling of his door handle, his own name

called. But after the second tap there was silence.

Geoffrey knew how long a waiting minute seems to the watcher, and

deliberately he looked at the hands of the clock on his mantelpiece till

two full minutes had passed. Then he slipped on his coat again, little

runnels of water still streaming from the short hair above the neck, put

the matches in his pocket, blew out his candle, and with one turn of

each hand held his door unlatched and unlocked. The wards were well

oiled, the noise less than a scratching mouse, and he stood on the rug

of the threshold warm and curly to his bare feet. Next moment he had

closed the door behind him, though without latching it, and was in the

long, dark corridor running from the top of the main stairs by the hall

to the far end of the house where were Mr. Francis's two rooms.

Geoffrey's bedroom was close to the head of the stairs, and the faint

glimmer of the starry night filtering through the skylight by which they

were lit made it easily possible to find his way down. These stairs lay

in short flights, with many angles sufficiently luminous, but on

getting to the first corner he stopped suddenly, for on the wall in

front of him was a pattern of strong light and shade: the many-knobbed

banister was imprinted there, cast by a candle. But in a moment the

shadow began to march from left to right; the light therefore was moving

from right to left; some one else, and well he knew who, was also going

downstairs at this dead hour, three turns of the staircase ahead of him.

Silently moved the shadow; no sound of the candle-bearer reached him,

and he might reasonably hope that his own barefooted step was as

inaudible to the night-walker as the night-walker to him. Then the

shadow of the banister was suddenly turned off, another corner had been

passed by the other stealthy tread, and Geoffrey moved on again and

down.

This staircase at its lower end gave on to a corridor parallel and

similar to the one upstairs from which the row of bedrooms opened.

Immediately on the right was the door into the hall, round which, but an

hour ago, Mr. Francis's face had peered; to the left were drawing-room

and dining room, and at the far end the baize door leading into the

flagged passage to the gun room. Two panes of glass formed the upper

panels of this door, and Geoffrey, having reached the bottom of the

stairs, saw two squares of light cast through these on to the ceiling of

the corridor. They lengthened to oblongs, diminished again to vanishing

point, and disappeared, leaving him once more in the dim filter of

starlight. Mr. Francis, it was clear, had gone to the gun room. Here was

the first point.

Opposite the foot of the stairs, but on the other side of this corridor,

stood a tall verd-antique pedestal, on the top of which was a bust of

Harry's father. A dark curtain hung behind this, setting off the

whiteness of the Carrara bust, and Geoffrey was just considering the

value of this curtain as a hiding place in case Mr. Francis (the other

point) went through the hall for any purpose of juggling with the front

door, when the square of light through the glass panels again

reappeared, silent as a dream, but growing very rapidly brighter. In two

steps he was across the corridor, but he had not yet got behind the

curtain when the baize door opened again, and Mr. Francis reappeared.

But now his step was quick and careless of noise, and Geoffrey, casting

one glance at him before he stepped behind the curtain, saw rage and

hunted fear in his face. And at that the thrill of the tracker awoke in

him, and he hugged himself to think of the little piece of cotton in his

cigarette case; its value, to judge by the baffled hate that came up the

passage, was immeasurably increased. Then he slid behind the curtain.

The steps came nearer very quickly, muffled but audible, and paused

opposite Geoffrey's hiding place. Then for a moment his heart stood

still, for they turned not toward the hall, but pattered swiftly

upstairs. He had thought Harry safe for the night, at any rate, but

what could be safe from that mask of rage and hatred he had just seen?

In another moment he would have followed at all costs, when light again

shone round the corner of his curtain, and the unseen steps passed where

he stood and into the hall. Instantly Geoffrey slipped from his hiding

place, stepped silently across the corridor, and mounted a few stairs.

From there he could see Mr. Francis's movements in the hall; from there

also he had a good start of him to the upper floor again. The snap of a

lock, the grating jar of a bolt, drawn or withdrawn, followed, and

having heard that he waited no more, but went swiftly up again to his

room and closed the door behind him quickly but with elaborate

noiselessness. Soon light footsteps came along the passage outside; they

went by his door, by Harry's, and grew fainter. The closing of a distant

latch was just audible, then all was darkness and silence. The first

part of the night's work was over.

Geoffrey lit his candle again, smiling with a certain grimness to

himself. His next move, evolved during this last half hour of waiting

and listening, had a simple ingenuity about it which pleased him. It

meant another journey to the hall, after a precautionary pause, and the

only apparatus required was a little piece of stamp paper. So at the end

of a quarter of an hour he went downstairs again and examined the front

door. Bolt and lock were undrawn: Mr. Francis's visit, then, had been

to undo them, so that they should be found unlocked in the morning. This

was on all fours with his private theory, and after a little

consideration he secured the door again, partly for the safety of the

house, partly for the sake of giving Mr. Francis something to think

about, if he did leave the house that way. Then, standing on a chair and

reaching up to his full height, he stuck the piece of stamp paper across

the meeting of the door and jamb. Thus no one could open it without

tearing the paper.

One thing more remained, and that for the sake of his own peace of mind.

At risk of waking him he went to Harry's room and looked in. Harry was

lying on his side fast asleep, and, shading his candle, Geoffrey waited

till he heard two evenly-taken breaths. So far, then, all was well.

He slept but lightly and in broken snatches after the excitements of

these hours, and it required no great deed of violence on his

inclinations to enable him to get up early. In the cool, accustomed

daylight the things of the night seemed to have more of the texture of

dream than reality, but proof of them awaited him when he went to the

front door, for the little piece of stamp paper was whole and unbroken,

the door still locked and bolted. Then, to make doubly sure of the

reliability of his experiment, he himself undid the door and opened it,

and the stamp paper was torn in half. It was not by this exit, then,

that Mr. Francis had left the house.

Harry made his appearance at an hour not unusually late, with a

perfectly normal face and manner; no sound of last night's excursions

had reached him. They talked in their usual desultory fashion, but

Geoffrey's mind was preoccupied with the yet unsolved problem. He felt

certain that Mr. Francis had some secret way in and out of the house,

and it should be the next piece of business to discover what that was.

Had he come in by some back door, or through an unbolted window, he

would have told him so last night; but he had said he came through the

front door, a thing impossible. But the subject of a secret door was

easy to approach.

"I'm working all the morning, Geoff," said Harry; "what will you do with

yourself? Poke and potter with a gun, if you like. We'll ride this

afternoon."

"I'll poke and potter," said he, "but without a gun, I think. I feel

yew-hedgy this morning."

"I thought you did," said Harry cordially, "but I have no idea what you

mean."

"That is just a little slow of you," said Geoffrey. "It means that I

shall look behind tapestry and tap panelling, and find a secret

staircase."

"Do. I'll give you a shilling for every secret stair you find."

"Done. Anything extra for a secret door?"

"Door is two," said Harry; "concealed will be ten, skeleton fifteen;

Other objects will be valued by arbitration. Baron von Vail has kindly

consented to be arbitrator," he added, in a burst of futility.

"Fifteen is a little too low for a skeleton," said Geoffrey. "It would

fetch more than that at a medical shop."

"Well, twenty, if you like, but you don't raise me again. Well, I'm

off."

"Where to?"

"To work, you lazy cow."

"Yes, but where?"

"Smoking room. If you want to do any panel-knocking there, come and do

it at once. What a baby you are!"

Geoffrey rose.

"The search is going to be exhaustive," he said. "I'll begin with the

smoking room."

There ensued a couple of dusty and hope-deferred hours. From the smoking

room, which yielded no results at all, he went to Mr. Francis's rooms,

which he had fixed upon as being the most likely place for the

conjectured passage to communicate with, but the strictest scrutiny of

the panelling revealed nothing. He tapped every foot of it, and every

foot sounded promisingly hollow, yet nothing of any sort could he

discover which should yield him even a sixpence. There were cupboards of

the most alluring probability; all wore the aspect of concealment, yet

all declined to yield their secret.

Geoffrey had never been in this room before, and after a fruitless

search he took a look round before leaving it. Orderly and industrious

were the indications of its master; docketed papers lay neatly in little

heaps, and the appurtenances of its stationery were finished and

complete. Each set of papers had its elastic band, each its note of

contents in red ink; two sets of penholders lay in separate trays, and

the examination of the nibs showed that Mr. Francis was of that rare

type of man who dedicated without violation certain pens to black ink,

certain others to red. The pencils were all well sharpened, ink eraser

was there as well as India rubber, and a taper of green wax was ready

for the sealing of important envelopes. All this had a curdling

fascination for Geoffrey, but at present he was on the hunt for

shillings, and a detailed examination of a writing table brought him no

nearer them.

The whole of the second floor he searched without success, except in so

far that the discovery of gaunt, chilly bedrooms, in which a lively

imagination might conjure up a pleasing thrill, could be reckoned a

reward to his labours. Over most was the trail of the plumber; electric

bells and light had been newly introduced, and these modern improvements

jostled strangely with the faded mediæval discomfort of large, gloomy

beds and tapestried hangings. Like the poor lion with no early

Christian, these seemed to mourn the absence of murderous deeds; a

suitable stage was set, but no actor trod the boards.

It was a somewhat disheartened adventurer who began his search on the

ground floor, for the ground floor, he could not but remember, would

bring but a small bill of steps to swell his revenues, unless, indeed,

the yet undiscovered staircase proved to lead into the basement, and

that possibility lent him fresh vigour. But dining room, billiard room,

and both drawing-rooms were searched without result, and the hall was

become practically the last cover. Here, indeed, something might be

expected; tapestry covered two sides, the other two carried portraits,

and again his search became minute. But half an hour was fruitlessly

spent, and there remained only the fireplace side, where hung the

portrait of old Francis.

Geoffrey looked at this a moment for inspiration.

"He knew all about it, I'll be bound," he said to himself. "Why can't

the old brute speak?"

Looking at it thus, he noticed for the first time that the panel in

which this picture hung was different from the panelling over the rest

of the hall, which was all of linen pattern. But this one panel was

plain, except for a row of small circular bosses which ran round it at

wide intervals; and Geoffrey, goaded by the thought of his last good

chance, mounted a chair and handled each of these in turn. The second he

tried moved to the touch, and as, with a sudden upleap of hope, he

turned it, something clicked within, and the whole panel, portrait and

all, swung slowly out on a hinge. There seemed to be a narrow passage in

the wall, continuing to right and left of the picture.

Geoffrey stood a moment on the chair, holding the panel from swinging

farther, puzzled.

"He can't have jumped down from there," he said to himself. "Perhaps

there is another door somewhere else. Anyhow he has his exits and his

entrances," and the quotation seemed to him extraordinarily apt.

He got down, after securing the panel again, and started to tell Harry.

But after a few paces his legs literally refused to carry him in that

direction. The secret was his by right of trove, he must make the first

joyful exploration alone. Again he turned the knob, and from his chair

vaulted easily into the panel. The passage led right and left into

darkness, and he would have jumped down again to get matches, when he

saw in a little recess in the wall a candle with matches by it. This was

eminently convenient, and due no doubt to Mr. Francis's thoughtfulness,

and after lighting up he pulled the panel ajar, and, after satisfying

himself that the catch was of the simplest kind, latched it back into

its place.