"The only thing I insist on," he said, "is that my wife shall be my

partner. Her curious processes of thought, when she is engaged in this

kind of brain work, are a shade less disconcerting and obscure to me

than they would be to others. _Aimer c'est tout comprendre._ And if I do

not quite understand them all," he added, as he cut for deal, "I

understand more than anybody else.--Eh, dear Violet?"

Lady Oxted's brow was always clouded when she played bridge, and

to-night the blackness of the thunderstorm that sat there was not

appreciably denser than usual. She played with a curious and unfortunate

mixture of timorousness when the declaration was with her, and a lively

confidence in the unparalleled strength of her partner's hand when the

declaration was passed to her. Thus at the end of two hours, as these

methods to-night were more marked than usual, the house of Oxted was

sensibly impoverished. But with the rising from the card table her

disquieted looks showed no betterment, and her husband offered

consolation.

"We can easily sell the Grosvenor Square house," he said, "if it is that

which is bothering you, Violet; and if that is not enough we can give up

coffee after dinner, and have no parties. The world is too much with

us."

"And with the proceeds we can buy a handbook on bridge," said she with

spirit. "I will give it you for a present at Christmas, Bob. Let us go

to bed."

Lady Oxted employed, in the almost daily conduct of her life, methods

which she characterized as diplomatic. A less indulgent critic than

herself might have labelled them with a shorter and directer word, yet

not have felt that he was harsh, for the diplomatic methods did not

exclude what we may elegantly term evasions of the truth. To-night, for

instance, she talked with Evie for a few minutes only in her bedroom,

and exacted a promise that she would go to bed at once, for she looked

very tired. For herself she would have it known that her head was

splitting, that if she got influenza again she would turn atheist. With

these immoderate statements she secured herself from interruption, and

went, not to bed, but to the smoking room, where she found Harry alone.

The rustling of her dress made him look up quickly, and the most

undiplomatic disappointment was evident on his face.

"No, I am not Evie," remarked this clear-sighted lady. "She is tired and

has gone to bed, so I came for a chat with you. Dear Harry, it is so

nice to see you again! But what terrible adventures you have been

through! I want to hear of them more particularly, but I thought it

would frighten Evie to talk of them longer. That is why I was abrupt to

you."

"And so she is tired! Diplomacy?" said Harry.

"Yes, just a touch of diplomacy," assented Lady Oxted, "for she looked

scared and frightened. Now were you alone when all these things

happened, or was Dr. Armytage there? And how did Dr. Armytage come to be

at Vail at all?"

"He came to Vail," said Harry, "on the evening of the third affair, the

breaking of the sluice. I telegraphed for him because I was frightened

about my uncle. He is liable, you know, to cardiac attacks, and I was

afraid of one coming on."

"He was naturally agitated at your series of escapes," said Lady Oxted.

"Naturally," said Harry.

Lady Oxted rose with some impatience, and threw diplomacy aside.

"Your efforts at dissimulation are pitiable, Harry," said she. "If you

won't tell me what happened, say so: I am going to fish no more."

Harry did not immediately reply, and Lady Oxted continued.

"Seriously speaking," she said, "I think I ought to know. If there is

nothing more, if your conscience allows you to say that there is nothing

to tell, I am content. If you can not say that, I think you ought to

tell me."

"Do you not think that you are putting an unfair pressure on me?" asked

Harry.

"No, for you are no longer only your own master. You must consider not

only yourself, but Evie. In her mother's absence I have a certain duty

toward her. I do not ask you from curiosity, but because of the

relations in which both you and I stand to her. You have within the

last few weeks been in three positions of extreme personal danger. Can

you, however vaguely, account for this? Have there been no suspicious

circumstances of any kind which might lead any one to think that these

were not entirely accidents? You say that Geoffrey was in the house on

all these occasions. Did he take it all as lightly as you seem to?"

"I would rather not bring Geoffrey into it," said Harry.

"Have you quarrelled?"

"Yes, I suppose you may say that we have quarrelled," he replied.

"Harry, why will you not tell me, and save my asking you all these

questions? I intend to go on asking them. Was your quarrel with Geoffrey

connected in any way with these accidents?"

"Oh, give me a minute!" cried Harry. "I want to make up my mind whether

I am going to tell you or not. I suppose, if I did not, you would go to

Geoff."

"Certainly I should," said Lady Oxted promptly, although this had not

occurred to her.

"Well, it is better that I should tell you than he," said Harry, and

without more words he told her all that he had purposely left unsaid,

from the mistaken direction which had sent him to the ice house instead

of the summerhouse, down to the scene in the smoking room when he had

parted with Geoffrey. She heard him in silence without question or

interruption, and when he had finished, still she said nothing. Apt and

ready as she was for the ordinary social emergency, she could frame

nothing for this. She could not say what she thought, outspokenly like

Geoffrey, for Harry's sake; she would not say what she did not think, in

spite of her diplomatic tendencies, for her own.

At last the silence became portentous, and Harry broke it.

"Have I then lost another friend in addition to Geoffrey?" he said, in a

voice that was not very steady. He could not have given her a better

lead.

"Ah! do not say things like that, Harry," she said. "You do not think it

possible, in the first place, and even if you did it would be no part of

wisdom to say it. But I tell you frankly that, though Geoffrey seems to

me to have spoken most hastily and unwisely, yet I can understand

what he felt. There are, I don't deny that I see it, many curious

circumstances about all these adventures, which lend

reasonableness--pardon me--to his suspicions."

"I know--I know all that," said Harry, "but I find it a sheer

impossibility to believe them in any degree at all. Geoffrey's

suspicions are out of the question. That being so, I can not away with

what he has done, with the speaking to my uncle like that; I can not

away with that condition of mind to which, however plausible the idea,

the idea was possible."

Lady Oxted was a quick thinker; she knew, moreover, that to decide wrong

was better than not to decide at all; and before Harry had finished

speaking, she was determined on her line of action. Geoffrey, she

rightly guessed, had at least as much influence with Harry as herself,

yet even Geoffrey, in all the heat and horror of these adventures, had

been powerless to move him. Her chance, then, speaking at this cooler

distance, had scarcely the slightest prospect of success, and secret

coalition with Geoffrey was evidently preferable to open collision with

Harry.

"I see--I quite see," she said; "but, O Harry, do not throw away a

friend lightly! Geoff is a good fellow, and you must remember that it

was for your sake that he risked and suffered a quarrel with you.

Friends are not so common as sparrows! You will not find them under

every house-roof. Don't do anything in a hurry: wait. No situation is

hopeless until you have given time a chance to work. Don't write, if you

have not already done so, any angry letter; or worse, any dignified,

calm, world-without-end letter. It is so easy to make an estrangement

permanent! You can always do that."

"I haven't written at all," said Harry. "I tried to, but I could not do

it. There is no hurry; besides, Geoffrey will not expect to hear from

me; Dr. Armytage wrote to tell him not to."

Lady Oxted just succeeded in suppressing the exclamation of surprise

that was on her lips. "That was very kind of him, and wise as well," she

said.

"He is both the one and the other," said Harry. "He was down at Vail a

week. I liked him immensely. But I don't mind telling you that I was

glad to get away, to part with him, with Uncle Francis, with the Luck

for a time. I felt as if there were some occult conjuncture against me,

and I didn't like it. I had continually to keep a hold on myself, to

make an effort not to be scared. But here I am being beautifully

relaxed. I feel secure--yes, that's the word."

Lady Oxted continued her diplomatic course.

"There is nothing so catching as superstition," she said, "and all the

evening, since you told Evie and me about it, I have been wondering--

Oh, it must be all nonsense!" she cried.

"You mean the Luck?" asked Harry. "Is Saul also among the prophets?"

"Yes, I mean the Luck. How does the nursery rhyme go? Fire and frost and

rain, isn't it? Well, there they all were, and it is no use denying it."

"Not the slightest," said Harry.

"Certainly it is very strange. Harry, I don't like the Luck at all. It's

uncanny. I wish you would smash it, or throw it into the sea. Yet,

somehow, I feel as if you were safe as long as you are here, away from

it. I wish you would stop here till your marriage. Then you go away, you

see, for six weeks, and in the meantime some burglar might be kind

enough to steal it."

Harry shook his head.

"No, I put the good things it has brought me much higher than the evil,"

he said. "And it is going to bring me another very good thing--the

best. After that, if you like, I will smash it."

"Well, stay here till your marriage, anyhow."

"I must go down to Vail once, to see that they have finished up. The

house was upside down when I was there. But, barring a couple of days

then, there is nothing I should like better. You will have nearly a

month of me, though. Consider well."

"Then stop till I tell you I can not bear you any longer. I am a candid

woman, and fond of giving pain, and I promise to speak out. Dear me, it

is nearly one! I must go to bed, and if I dream of the Luck it will be

your fault."

Lady Oxted did not dream at all for a very long time that night: she was

at her wits' end what to do. All Scotland Yard, with all the detectives

of improbable fiction thrown in to aid, were powerless to help, for the

evidence against Mr. Francis in Harry's story, though conclusive to her

own mind, would weigh lighter than chaff in cross-examination. And no

further evidence was procurable until Mr. Francis made another attempt,

and at the thought she shuddered. What, too, was that sinister doctor

doing at Vail? What was the meaning of the seeming friendliness in

averting a final rupture between Harry and Geoffrey? He had written,

according to his own account, a letter to Geoffrey which should avoid

this, but what did his letter really contain? It was far more likely

that he had told him that the rupture was final, for clearly he and Mr.

Francis would not want to risk the possibility of Geoffrey, who knew

all, and whose attitude was so avowedly hostile, coming down to Vail

again. The only consolation was that Harry for the present was safe, and

that she could go up to London next day and see Geoffrey. But what could

they do even together? What defence was possible when the blow might

fall at any moment from any unsuspected quarter?

By degrees, as she paced her room, a kind of clearness came to her. Mr.

Francis's design was evident: he had shown his hand by the nature of his

earlier attempts, in which he had tried to stop Harry's marriage. Then,

in the miscarriage of that, he had turned to directer deeds--fouler they

could scarcely be, but of more violent sort. There had been a species of

awful art in his doings; he had taken, with a fiend's gusto and pleasure

in the ingenuity of it (so she pictured), Harry's avowed superstition in

the power of the Luck, to compass his ends. As a musician takes a

subject, and on this theme works out a fugue; as an artist paints a

portrait in a definite preconceived scheme of colour, so had Mr. Francis

taken the Luck, and the dangers it was thought to bring to its

possessor: these he had elaborated, put into practical shape. It must

have dwelt in his mind like a lunatic's idea; not only, as in the case

of the gun, did he make his opportunity, but, as in the affair of the

ice house, he must have been alert, receptive, instinctively and

instantaneously turning to his ends whatever chance put in his way.

This thought brought her a certain feeling of relief on the one hand,

but on the other it added an indefinite terror. No man morally sane

could devise and steadily prosecute so finished a scheme; the very

thoroughness and consistency of the three attempts stamped them as the

work of a madman. Nine tenths of the blood murderously shed on the earth

was to be put down to a spasm of ungovernable anger and hate, which at

the moment possessed the murderer; this long premeditation, this careful

following of one idea by which frost, fire, and rain should be the

direct causes of Harry's death, was not to be attributed--so devilish

and so finished was the application--to a sane author. Here lay the

consolation: her shuddering horror of the white-haired old gentleman,

with his flute-playing and his boyish yet courtly manner, was a little

assuaged, and gave way to mere human pity for a mind deranged. But

simultaneously, as if with a clash of cymbals, her fear of him,

defenceless, bewildered, broke out: that cunning of a madman was far

more formidable than the schemings of a sane man. He would soon,

maddened by failure, reck nothing of what happened to him, so that he

attained his object.

What, then, looking at it thus, was his object? The mere death of Harry,

merely the lust for blood? That seemed hardly possible. She could not

put him down as a homicidal maniac, since it seemed that he had no

desire to kill for killing's sake, and the world was not yet staggered

with a catalogue of subtle, undetected murders. Nor was the explanation

that he wished to inherit Vail and its somewhat insufficient revenues

more satisfactory. He was old; he had, so far as any one could guess, no

wish for more of this world's goods than he possessed under Harry's

generosity; the motive could scarcely be here. Then in a flash a more

likely solution struck her. The Luck--perhaps he wanted the Luck! A year

of ownership, so she told herself, had already affected even Harry's

sanity in this regard. What if here was a man, old and already poised on

the edge of his dug grave, who all his life long had dreamed of and

itched for it, believing God knew what was in store for its possessor?

This, she guessed, was the taint of blood, the same that so

mysteriously, though uncriminally, possessed Harry. Here, perhaps, was

the cause, not the fire and the frost and the rain, but the belief in

their perils, coupled with the belief in great and unwonted good fortune

which the possession of it gave. Mr. Francis had more than once, in her

hearing, laughed at Harry for his fantastic allegiance to the heirloom,

but this, if anything, confirmed Lady Oxted in her theory. This cunning

was of consistency with the rest.

Long since she had dismissed her maid, and tired with fruitless thought,

and baffled with but dimly cipherable perils, she finished her

undressing and blew out the lights. But through all the dark hours she

was clutched by the night-hag. Now the Luck appeared to her like the

Grail in Parsifal, emitting an unearthly radiance, but even as she

gazed she would suddenly be stricken with the knowledge that the

brightness of it was not of heavenly but of diabolic birth; a piercing

light emanated therefrom, but of infernal red, and voices from the pit

moaned round it. Then it would be gone, and for a little while a

wriggling darkness succeeded, but slowly the break in the blackness

which heralded its coming would begin to shine again and grow

intolerably bright; faint lines where it would shortly appear, stretched

themselves upon the fields of vision, growing momentarily more distinct,

but instead of the Luck, there came, first in outline, then in awful and

indelible vividness, the features of Mr. Francis, now very kind and

gentle, now a mask of tormented fury.

Next morning she found that her resolve to see Geoffrey without delay

had not been diminished by the scattered phantoms of the night, and some

lame toothache excuse served her end. She did not certainly know whether

he was in London or not, and for safety's sake she sent him two

telegrams--the one to his father's house in Kent, the second to his

lodging in Orchard Street--both bidding him come to lunch that day in

Grosvenor Square without fail. The one addressed to London found him

first, since, after his interview with Dr. Armytage, he had stayed on

there; and this, followed after an hour's interval by the other sent on

from his father's house, constituted a call of urgency. He therefore

obeyed the summons, leaving a note for Dr. Armytage, as had been agreed

between them, to say when he should be in again, and where he had gone.

The conference began after lunch. Each found it in a measure a relief to

be able to confide the secret haunting sense of peril to another. Each,

on the other hand, was horrified to find that some one else shared the

apprehensions each still hoped might be phantasmal. Geoffrey, on his

part, had his account of his dealings with Dr. Armytage to add to Lady

Oxted's information; she her own conviction that they were dealing with

a man not morally sane, whose one desire was to have and to hold the

Luck. To her, this alliance with Dr. Armytage, of which Geoffrey told

her, seemed but a doubtful gain.

"What does one know of him?" she asked. "Nothing that is not bad. Mr.

Francis could not have chosen a more apt or a more unscrupulous tool. He

got two thousand pounds, you tell me, for his services in connection

with the Harmsworth case: what will he not do for ten? Oh, we may be

dealing with a cunning of which we have no conception! What if all this

was told you simply to blind you? Nothing can be more probable, and how

admirably it has succeeded! Already you trust the man--their object, as

far as you are concerned, is gained."

"I had to trust him or distrust him," said Geoffrey, "and I chose to do

the former. If I had chosen the latter, the door would have closed on

him, and I do not see that we should be any better off than we are now.

If he is dealing straight with us, we have an immense advantage in

knowing all he knows of Mr. Francis's plans; if he is not, he can, at

the most, give us misleading information, which is not worse than none

at all."

Lady Oxted considered this in silence a moment.

"Yes, that is true," she said; "yet, somehow, my flesh misgives me to be

allied with that man. O Geoffrey, is it because this awful Luck has cast

a spell on us that we imagine Harry surrounded by these intimate and

immediate perils? Are our fears real? Let us tell ourselves that we are

ordinary people, living in an age of prose and police-men; we are not

under the Doges! This is the nineteenth century," she said, rising, "or

the twentieth, if you will; we look out on Grosvenor Square--a hansom is

driving by."

She stopped suddenly.

"I am wrong," she said; "it is not driving by. It has stopped at the

door. And Dr. Armytage has rung the bell. Oh, what shall I do?" she

cried. "God in heaven! what are we to do? What has he come to tell us?"

Geoffrey got up.

"Now quietly, quietly, Lady Oxted," he said. "He has come on a matter of

importance, or he would have waited till I returned to Orchard Street. I

have decided to trust him, and I suggest, therefore, that we see him

together. It is our best chance; it may be our only one."

"But I don't trust him," said Lady Oxted. "I distrust him from head to

heels." And she bit her finger nails, a thing she had not done since the

days of the schoolroom.

"Very well; then I shall run on my own lines," and he got up to leave

the room.

"Wait, Geoffrey," she said. "You are absolutely determined?"

"Absolutely."

"I yield, then. You, at any rate, have some plan, and I have none.--Yes,

show Dr. Armytage in," she said to the man who had brought his card.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE MEETING IN GROSVENOR SQUARE

The doctor entered with the brusqueness of a man who had no knowledge

of, or at any rate no regard for, the usages of polite society. He

treated Lady Oxted to little more than his profile and an imperceptible

pause, which indulgence might construe into a bow, then walked straight

up to Geoffrey, with a face businesslike, concentrated.

"I had important information," he said, "which I was desirous of telling

you without delay. My hansom is waiting."

Geoffrey felt his heart thump riotously, a heavy repeated blow.

"We have to act immediately, you mean?" he asked.

"No, not that," said the doctor. "I only thought----" and he looked for

a brief moment at Lady Oxted. She rose.

"How do you do, Dr. Armytage?" she said. "Mr. Langham and I were, when

you entered, talking about the same business as that on which you have

come. Harry Vail, I must tell you, is a great friend of mine; he is

staying with me now. Last night he told me the history of the past

fortnight very fully. It will not therefore surprise you to learn that

I came up to London to-day to see Mr. Langham."

"It does not surprise me in the least," he said. "I take it, then, that

you wish me to speak before you. If that is so, I will send my hansom

away."

He was back again immediately, and waited till the others had sat down,

warming his hands at the fire, with his back turned to them. The

silence, so to speak, was of his own making, and neither thought to

interrupt it. Then, facing them, he spoke.

"There is no need, therefore," he began, as if continuing his private

train of thought, "that I should speak at any length of what has already

happened. Harry, I gather, has told you, Lady Oxted, of his three

escapes; he has told you also of his quarrel with his friend here, and

the reason of it."

There was something in this bald abruptness which pleased Lady Oxted. It

looked genuine, but at the same time she made to herself the conscious

reservation that it might be a piece of acting. If acting, it was a very

decent performance. She gave a silent assent.

"You have asked me to speak before you," he went on, "but in doing so I

am somewhat at a personal disadvantage. I have no reason to suppose that

you trust me; indeed, there is no reason why you should. You know of me,

probably, as an intimate friend of Mr. Francis, and when it appears

that I am a traitor to him you naturally ask yourself if I am really so.

But"--and he paused a moment--"but I do not think that this need much

concern me. I am here to tell you in what manner Mr. Francis hopes to

kill his nephew. It is our object, I take it, to prevent that."

There was something in his tone that smacked of the lecture, so dry and

precise was it. But a clearer observer of him than either of his present

audience, to whom the words he said were so much more just now than the

man who said them, would have seen that an intense agitation quivered

beneath the surface. The man was desperately in earnest about something.

"There is one more preliminary word," he went on. "We are dealing, so

far as my observations go, with a man who is scarcely sane. In the

psychology of crime we find that such patient, calculated attempts to

take life are usually associated with something else that indicates

cerebral disorder--some fixed idea, in short, of an insane character,

which is usually the motive for the homicidal desire. That symptom is

present here."

"The Luck!" exclaimed Lady Oxted.

"Precisely. The idea of owning the Luck possesses our--our patient. He

believes that it brings its owner dangers possibly, and risks, but

compensations of an overwhelming weight. He believes, I may tell you,

that it will keep off death, perhaps indefinitely. And to an old man

that is a consideration of some importance, especially if he has such

an exuberant love of life as Mr. Francis has. On the other hand, we must

remember that before the last outbreak, if we may call it such, Mr.

Francis procured the death of a man who stood in no relation to the

Luck. Yes, he shot young Harmsworth," he said slowly, looking at Lady

Oxted, "for nothing more nor less than the insurance money. One may have

doubts whether all crime of violent kind is not a form of insanity. But

that particular form of insanity is punished with hanging."

It is by strange pathways that a woman's mind sometimes moves: she may

take short cuts of the most dubious and fallacious kind to avoid a

minute's traversing of the safe road, or walk a mile round in order to

avoid a puddle over which she could easily step, but she at any rate

knows when she has arrived, and at this juncture Lady Oxted got up and

held out her hand to the doctor.

"I entreat your pardon," she said, "and, in any case, I trust you now."

A certain brightness shone in those dark, sad eyes, as he took her hand.

"I am glad to know that," he said, "and I advise you, if possible, to

continue trusting me. You will have a trial of faith before long."

Geoffrey moved impatiently; all three seemed to have forgotten their

manners.

"Oh, go on, man--go on!" he exclaimed.

"Bear in mind, then," said the doctor, "that we may be dealing with a

lunatic. This fixed idea inclines me to that belief; the murder of

young Harmsworth pulls the other way. But Mr. Francis has now made his

plans; he told me them this morning, for I, as you will see, am to

figure in them. And what he will do is this."

The doctor again paused, and adjusted his finger-tips together.

"He expects Harry," he said, "to return to Vail before the end of the

month; he and his servant will return about the same time, or perhaps a

day or two earlier, for there will be a few arrangements to make. I

shall also accompany Mr. Francis, so he tells me, on the ground of his

continued ill health."

"Ah, those heart attacks!" said Lady Oxted; "are they genuine?"

"Perfectly; they are also dangerous. To continue: On the night

appointed--that is to say, as soon as we are all there--I am to

administer to Harry a drug called metholycine. In all respects it is

suitable for Mr. Francis's purpose, and a small dose produces within a

very few minutes complete unconsciousness, to which, if no antidote or

restorative is applied, succeeds death. It also is extremely volatile,

more so even than aconite, and a very few hours after death no trace of

it would be found in the stomach or other parts of the body. The drug,

however, is exceedingly hard to get; no chemist would conceivably give

it to any unauthorized person; but a few years ago I was experimenting

with it, and it so happens that I still have some in my possession. Mr.

Francis has a most retentive memory, and though I have no recollection

of having ever mentioned this fact to him, he asked me this morning

whether I had any left. He did so in so quiet and normal a voice that

for the moment I was off my guard, and told him I had. But perhaps,

after all, it was a lucky occurrence, for he seemed very much pleased,

and played on his flute for a time. Then he came back to me and told me

what I have already told you, and what I shall now tell you."

There was something strangely grim about the composure of the doctor's

manner. You would have said he spoke of Danish politics; more grim,

perhaps, was this mention of the flute-playing. Certainly it added an

extreme vividness to his narrative, and the flute-player was more

horrible than the man who planned death.

"In this respect, then, first of all," continued the icy voice, "I am

useful to him. In the second place, Mr. Francis seems to have a singular

horror of doing himself--actually, and with his hands--this deed. In

another way also I shall be of service to him, and here I must touch on

things more gruesome, but it is best that you should know all. The drug

is to be administered late at night, after the servants are out of the

way. It is almost completely without taste or odour, and Mr. Francis's

suggestion is that a whisky and soda, which he tells me Harry always

takes before going to bed, should be the vehicle. Ten minutes after he

has taken it he will be unconscious, but he will live for another half

hour. During that time we shall carry him down to the plate closet,

where the Luck is kept with the rest of the plate; there Sanders will

be. That part will be in Sanders's hands, but he will not use firearms,

for fear of the noise of the report reaching the servants, and the blow

that kills him, you understand, looking at the occurrence from the point

of view of the coroner, must be dealt while he is still alive.

Otherwise, the absence of effusion of blood and other details would show

a doctor that he was already dead when his skull was broken--this is the

idea--by a battering blow. Here, again, Mr. Francis anticipates that I

shall be of use to him in determining when unconsciousness is quite

complete, and death not yet immediate. He has a curiously strong desire

that Harry should feel no pain, for he is very fond of him."

Lady Oxted and Geoffrey alike were glued to his words, both paler than

their wont. As the doctor paused they sought each other's eyes, and

found there horror beyond all speech.

"Some of the most valuable of the plate," continued the doctor, "will be

taken, and, of course, the Luck. The plate will be the perquisite of

Sanders; the Luck Mr. Francis will keep secretly, the presumption being

that it was stolen also. Why, then, you may ask, should not Mr. Francis

simply steal the Luck? For this reason: that as long as Harry lives it

is his; on his death it becomes Mr. Francis's. Thus, morning will show

the plate closet rifled, and Harry, clubbed to death, on the floor. The

plan is complete and ingenious; indeed, it has no weak point. It will

appear that Harry, after the servants had gone to bed, drank his whisky

and soda, and, hearing something stirring, went downstairs. Finding the

door of the plate closet open, he entered, and was instantly felled by a

blow on the side of the head, which killed him. The burglars did not

arouse any one else in the house, and escaped (even the details are

arranged) by the same way as they entered--through the window of the gun

room, which looks out, you are aware, on to the garden beds which adjoin

the sweep of the carriage drive. Footprints of large, heavy boots will

be found there; Mr. Francis bought a pair to-day at some cheap,

ready-made shop."

Again, a horror palpable as a draught of cold air passed through the

auditors, seeming to each to lift the hair upon the scalp. These trivial

details of boots and flute-playing were of almost more intimate touch

than the crime itself; they brought it at any rate into the range of

realities, to the time of to-day or next week, to a familiar setting.

Again the doctor spoke.

"I have already taken one precaution," he said. "I have emptied from its

bottle the real metholycine and substituted common salt. I went to my

house hurriedly, after seeing Mr. Francis, to get it, and I brought it

away in my pocket. I shall be glad to dispose of it; it is not a thing

to carry about."

He drew out a small packet, folded up with the precision of a

dispensing chemist, and opened it. It contained an ounce of white

coarse-grained powder, very like to ordinary salt, and, without more

words, he emptied it on the fire. The red-hot coal blackened where he

poured, then grew red again, and for a moment an aura of yellow flame

flickered over the place.

"And Mr. Francis will not find it easy to get more," said the doctor.

The effect of this was great and immediate. Both Lady Oxted and Geoffrey

felt as much relieved as if an imminent danger had been removed, though

the logic of their relief, seeing that they both trusted Dr. Armytage,

in whose domain the poison lay, was not capable of bearing examination.

At any rate, Lady Oxted sat briskly up from the cramped huddling of the

position in which she had listened to the doctor's story, and clapped

her hands.

"Ha! check number one," she said. "And what next, Dr. Armytage?"

"That depends on what end you have in view," said he. "Is Harry's safety

all?"

"Yes, but his safety must be certain," she said. "I must see that man in

a criminal lunatic asylum, or in penal servitude. Harry will never be

safe till he is behind bars."

"I agree with you," said Geoffrey.

Dr. Armytage left the fireplace, where he had been standing since the

beginning of the interview, and sat down.

"Do you realize what that demands?" he said. "It means that Mr. Francis

must be allowed to make the attempt."

"Which we have already frustrated," said Lady Oxted, pointing to the

fireplace.

Dr. Armytage shook his head.

"If the idea is to catch him red-handed, that is not sufficient," he

said. "Harry takes whisky and soda and salt one night, very little salt,

for the drug is potent. He may or he may not notice the salt. What then?

Sanders, meantime, is waiting in the plate closet. No doubt we can thus

catch Sanders. But that is all."

Lady Oxted rang the bell.

"We can do nothing," she said, "except go straight to Scotland Yard and

put the whole matter in the hands of the police. You will please come

with me, Dr. Armytage--Geoffrey too. To us, of course, the evidence is

overwhelming: look at it, from the Harmsworth case onward--" and she

stopped suddenly and looked at the doctor. "Good heavens! I never

thought of that!" she said.

The doctor rose.

"I, as you may imagine, have thought a good deal of that," he said.

"Is it possible by any means to get hold of this man Sanders?" asked

Lady Oxted at length.

"Get me a hansom," she said to the man who answered the bell.

"I should prefer to try that first," said the doctor, "and I will see

what I can do. It may be possible to buy the man; he may be scamp

enough to be venal. But if we have to go to Scotland Yard, we have to go

to Scotland Yard. But for the moment we need not; Harry is safe with you

for ten days more, and Mr. Francis is not thinking of leaving London for

ten days. Something, perhaps, may turn up in the interval. If not, I am

ready."

Lady Oxted felt that no words could meet the situation, and did not make

the attempt.

"Then the hansom shall take me to the station instead," she said. "I

have just time to catch my train.--Drive with me there, Geoffrey."

She stood up, drawing on her gloves.

"Please let me hear from you, Dr. Armytage," she said, "or if you have

any communication to make which had better not be written, come down to

Oxted, or wire for me to come up. At present, then, there is nothing

more to be said."

She shook hands, and the three went out through the hall and across the

broad pavement to where the hansom was waiting. Lady Oxted got in first,

and Geoffrey was already on the step to follow, when a man crossing the

road came from behind the hansom and stepped on to the pavement close to

where the doctor was standing.

"Dear fellow," said a very familiar voice, "what a glorious afternoon!"

The thing was so sudden that the doctor had literally no time to lose

his nerve.

"Get in and don't look round," he said very low to Geoffrey.

But he was too late. At the sound of that voice, Geoffrey had already

looked round, and he and Mr. Francis for one stricken moment stared at

each other. But the pleasant smile did not fade from the old man's face;

rather, it seemed fixed there.

Simultaneously, from inside the hansom came Lady Oxted's voice.

"Get in, Geoff," she said; "we haven't too much time."

Mr. Francis advanced a step, so that he could see into the hansom.

"Ah, and Lady Oxted too!" he remarked gently.--"Drive on, cabman."

The horse broke into a rapid trot, and he and the doctor were left

standing together.

Mr. Francis stood looking after the diminishing vehicle for a moment,

still smiling.

"And Lady Oxted, and Lady Oxted," he continued to murmur to himself.

Then he turned briskly to his companion and in gentle, low-modulated

tones and without haste:

"A charming woman--one whom one is delighted to call friend," he said.

"And dear Geoffrey too--dear Geoffrey, Harry's great friend. How nice to

have even so short a glimpse of him! What good fortune to meet you all

together like this! Well, well, I must go on. Good-bye, for the present,

my dear man."

He turned from him, walked three paces away, then stopped and faced

round again. For the moment the doctor thought his eye or his brain had

played him some inexplicable trick; he could barely credit that the face

now looking at him was the same as that which two seconds ago had been

so smiling a show of sunlit urbanity. Now it was scarce human; a fiend

or a wild beast, mad with passion and hate, glared at him. The iris of

the eye seemed to have swelled till the white was invisible; from each,

a pin-point of a pupil was focused on him. Great veins stood out on his

forehead and neck, blue and dilated; the lips were drawn back from the

mouth till the gums appeared, showing two rows of white and very even

teeth. The pleasant rosiness of the face was blotched and mottled with

patches of white and purple, the forehead and corners of the quivering

mouth were streaked with corrugations so deeply cut that the dividing

ridges of flesh cast shadows therein. The stamp of humanity was

obliterated.

He stood there for perhaps five seconds, his lower jaw working gently up

and down as if chewing, and a little foam gathered on his lips. Each

moment the doctor expected him either to fall senseless on the pavement

or to spring upon him, for it seemed impossible that any human frame

could contain so raging an energy of emotion, and yet neither break nor

give it outlet. Then the horrible chewing of the jaw ceased, and the man

or beast wiped the froth from his lips.

"You black, treacherous scoundrel!" he said, very softly. "Do you think

I am the sort of man to be thwarted by a faithless subordinate?"

He came a step nearer; his mouth still seemed to be forming words, but

it was as if the human nature of the man had been so effaced as to

preclude speech, and he stood chattering and gesticulating like some

angry ape. Yet the resemblance roused in the doctor no sense of the

ludicrous, but only a deep-seated horror at this thing which had doffed

its humanity like a cloak and become part of the brute creation. He

summoned all his courage to his aid--an empty effort, for he knew within

himself that if this travesty of a man came but one step nearer he

would, in spite of himself, simply turn tail and run from it.

But Mr. Francis came no nearer, nor did he speak again, and before the

lapse of another five seconds he turned away and walked quickly down

toward the corner of the square without looking back. The doctor

followed him with his eye, and saw him hail a hansom at the end of Upper

Grosvenor Street, get in, and drive northward. He himself stood there,

his brain a tumult of bewildered conjecture, and did not see who it was

rapidly approaching him till the figure was by him, and he heard his own

name called.

"I got down as soon as I could stop the cab," said Geoffrey. "He has

gone? Where? What has happened?"

"He knows I have betrayed him," said the doctor. "That is all. And for

the moment he was no longer human. In this mood he will not stop to

weigh risks or consequences. Before anything else we must find out where

he is going--probably to his own flat, where we must watch

him--possibly first to my house--ah! yes, for the metholycine. Thank

God, that is harmless!"

There were no cabs about, so they started to walk northward in the

direction Mr. Francis had taken. At the corner of Green Street they

found a disengaged hansom, and drove to 32 Wimpole Street. Here the

doctor got out.

"Drive on to his flat in Wigmore Street," he said to Geoffrey, "and ask

the porter if he has come in. Then come back here."

Three minutes later Geoffrey returned.

"He came in a minute or two before me," he said. "He has kept his cab."

The doctor pointed to a row of bottles on a shelf in his cabinet.

"The metholycine is missing," he said. "He came here, where he is known

to the servants, told the man he had instructions from me to take a

certain bottle from my cases, and was allowed. I asked if he appeared in

any way strange or excited. Not a bit of it; he had a smile and a joke

as usual. Come on!"

"Where?" asked Geoffrey.

"To see where his cab goes. By the way, what of Lady Oxted?"

"She went on to catch her train. It is far better she should be with

Harry. I told her I would telegraph all that happened."

"Quite so. Here is Wigmore Street. We will wait in this entry. There is

his cab still at the door. Ah! we must have a cab waiting too."

He stepped out of the entry, hailed a cab from a rank a little way down

the street, and said a few words to the man, pointing out to him the

hansom he was to keep in sight. He drew up at the curb opposite their

place of observation. Not forty yards in front was Mr. Francis's hansom.

The sober, respectable street dozed in the haze of the afternoon sun

with the air of a professional man resting for a little from his work.

Vehicles were but few, the pavements only sparsely populous, and the

roadway nearly empty. The driver of Mr. Francis's cab had got down from

his perch, and was talking to the hall porter of the house of flats and

pulling at a laggard pipe. Then suddenly both porter and cabman looked

up as if they had been called from within, and disappeared into the

entry, to come back with various small pieces of luggage. Then the

cabman mounted his box, and with the other's assistance drew up a

portmanteau on to the roof. At that moment Mr. Francis stepped across

the pavement and entered the cab. He had on a straw hat, in his hand was

the morocco flute case, on his mouth a smile and thanks to the porter.

Sanders followed, and, after a word, got in after him. At the same

instant of time the doctor and Geoffrey had sprung into their places,

and the two cabs started together.

The passage of half a dozen streets was sufficient to make their

destination tolerably certain, and when Mr. Francis's cab turned into

the steep decline leading to the departure platform at Paddington, the

matter was practically beyond doubt. Here the doctor stopped the cab,

and they got out.

"It is certain," said Geoffrey, though no word had passed between them.

"Look! it is ten minutes past five; the fast train to Vail will start in

seven minutes. Now what are we to do?"

"Harry is at Oxted," said the doctor, as if speaking to himself. "Yes, we

only want to be perfectly certain that Mr. Francis goes to Vail."

"I will find that out," said Geoffrey.

He walked down the incline, past Sanders, who was busy with the luggage,

and into the booking office. There was a considerable number of

passengers waiting, but Mr. Francis was already high up in the queue.

Geoffrey waited with his back turned till he heard him speak to the

clerk.

"One first and one second single to Vail," he said.

With this their information was complete, and he rejoined the doctor.

* * * * *

Harry at Oxted, Mr. Francis with luggage for a prolonged stay at Vail,

here was the sum of it, and the movements were duly telegraphed to Lady

Oxted. So far all was well, in such degree as anything could be well in

this dark business, and by mutual consent they determined to leave all

further deliberations till the morrow. They were fully informed and

prepared for all moves. To-morrow, it might be, Mr. Francis would show

for what reason he had gone to Vail.

CHAPTER XXIV

JIM GOES TO BED

Geoffrey, in spite of, or perhaps owing to his anxieties, slept long and

late, and it was already after ten when he came half dressed from his

bedroom to the adjoining sitting room, in quest of letters.

But there was no word either from Dr. Armytage or Lady Oxted, and here

no news was distinctly good news. No fresh complication had arisen;

Harry, it might be certainly assumed, was safe at Oxted, Mr. Francis, as

certainly, at Vail, though his safety was a matter of infinitesimal

moment. Yet, in spite of this, Geoffrey had no morning face; an

intolerable presage of disaster sat heavy on him, and he brooded

sombrely over his meal, reading the paper, yet not noting its contents,

and the paragraphs were Dutch to him. Even here in London, the fog

centre, one must believe of created things; the morning was one of fine

and exquisite beauty. Primrose-coloured sunshine flooded the town, the

air was brisk with the cleanly smell of autumnal frost. How clearly

could he picture to himself what this same hour was like at Vail, how

familiar and intimate was the memory of such mornings, when he and

Harry had stepped after breakfast into the sparkling coolness of the

young day, and the sunshine from without met with a glad thrill of

welcome the sunshine from within! The lake lay level and shining--the

brain picture had the vividness of authentic hallucination--a wisp of

mist still hanging in places over it. Level and shining, too, were the

lawns; a pearly mysterious halo moved with the moving shadow of the

head. Blackbirds scurried and chuckled over the grass, the beeches were

golden in their autumn liveries, a solemn glee even smiled in the gray

and toned red of the square house. At that, regret as bitter as tears

surged up within him; never again, so he thought, could the particular

happiness of those unreflecting days be his; tragedy, like drops from

some corroding drug, had fallen in sting and smoke upon him; over that

fair scene slept on the wing the destroying angel; between himself and

Harry had risen the barrier of irreconcilable estrangement. And, like a

monstrous spider, spinning threads God knew where, or to catch what

heedless footstep, Mr. Francis stretched his web over every outlet from

that house, and sat in each, malign and poisonous.

These vague forebodings and the mordancy of regret grew to be

unbearable, and, taking his hat, Geoffrey walked out westward, aimlessly

enough, only seeking to dull misgivings by the sight of many human

faces. The crowd had for him an absorbing fascination; to be in the

midst of folk was to put the rein on private fancies, for the spectacle

of life claimed all the attention. But this morning this healthful

prescription seemed to have lost its efficacy, or the drugs were stale

and impotent, and the air was dark with winged fears that came to roost

within him, chatting evilly together. Yet the streets were better than

his own room, and for nearly two hours he wandered up and down the

jostling pavements. Then returning to Orchard Street, he entered his

weary room, and his heart stood suddenly still, for on the table was

lying a telegram.

For a moment he stood by the door, as if fearing even to go near it;

then with a stride and an inserted finger the pink sheet was before his

eye.

"Harry has just left for Vail," it ran, "passing through London. Sanders

has telegraphed that his master is dangerously ill, and he must come at

once to see him alive. Take this direct to Dr. Armytage."

The shock was as of fire or cold water, disabling for the moment, but

bracing beyond words. All the brooding, the regret, the dull, vague

aches of the morning had passed as completely as a blink of summer

lightning, and Geoffrey knew himself to be strung up again to the level

of intelligent activity. As he drove to Wimpole Street he examined the

chronology of the message: it had been sent off, it appeared, three

hours ago; it was likely that even now Harry was passing through London.

A cab was standing at the doctor's door, which was open, a servant by

it. At the same moment of receiving these impressions he was aware of

two figures in the hall beyond, and he stopped. One was with its back to

him, but on the sound of his step it turned round.

"O Geoff," said Harry, holding out his hand, "Uncle Francis is ill, very

dangerously ill. I am going to Vail at once, and was just coming to see

you first. But now you are here."

By a flash of intuition, unerring and instantaneous, Geoffrey saw

precisely what was in Harry's mind, and knew that next moment an

opportunity so vitally desirable, yet vitally dishonourable to accept,

would be given him, that he had no idea whether in his nature there was

that which should be strong enough to resist it.

"Won't you come with me?" asked Harry, low and almost timidly. "Can't

you--in case we are in time--just ask his forgiveness for the wrong you

did him? He is very ill, perhaps dying--dying, Geoff."

At this moment the doctor stepped forward, Bradshaw in hand, to the

brighter light by the open door. In passing Geoffrey, he made a faint

but unmistakable command of assent. His finger was on the open page, and

he spoke immediately.

"We can catch the 3.15, Harry," he said. "Shall I telegraph to them to

meet it?"

"Please," said Harry, still looking at the other.--"Geoffrey!" he said

again, and touched him on the arm.

Geoffrey heard the leaf of the Bradshaw flutter, and the sound of his

name lingered in his ears. Much, perhaps, was to gain by going, and the

price? The price was just deliberate deception on a solemn matter. To

say "yes" was to declare to his friend that he desired the forgiveness

of that horrible man whom he soberly believed to be guilty of the most

monstrous designs. But the momentous debate was but momentary.

"No, Harry, I can not," he said.

The two turned from each other without further words, and Geoffrey took

a step to where the doctor stood.

"I came to have a word with you," he said, and together they went into

the consulting room.

Scarcely had the door closed behind them, when Geoffrey drew the

telegram from his pocket.

"I have just found this from Lady Oxted," he said. "Probably she has

telegraphed the same to you. Now, how did Harry come here, and what has

passed between you?"

The doctor glanced at the sheet.

"Yes, she telegraphed to me also," he said. "Harry's coming was pure

luck. He wanted me to go with him down to Vail, to see if anything can

be done for Mr. Francis. I hope," he added, with a humour too grim for

smiles, "to be able to do a great deal for Mr. Francis."

"So you are going, thank the Lord!" said Geoffrey. "And do you believe

in this illness?"

"He may have had another attack," said the doctor with a shrug; "indeed,

it is not improbable after the agitation of yesterday. Again, he may

not, and it is a subtle man."

"It is a trap, you mean, to get Harry there."

"Possibly, and if so, a trap laid in a hurry. Else he would never have

telegraphed to Harry at Lady Oxted's. He might have guessed it would be

passed on to us. I am sorry, by the way, that you could not manage to

say 'yes' to his wish that you should go with him. But I respect you for

saying 'no.'"

"I couldn't do otherwise," said Geoffrey. "All the same, if it appears

desirable, I shall come to Vail."

"Ah, you will come secretly on your own account, just as you would have

if you had not seen Harry. That will do just as well. Now I can give you

three minutes. I shall be in the house; you, I suppose, will not. How

can I communicate with you?"

Geoffrey thought a moment, and his eye brightened.

"In two ways--no less," he said. "Listen carefully, please. At any

appointed time, tap at the portrait of old Francis in the hall. I shall

be just behind it, and will open it. Or, secondly, go to the window of

the gun room, open it and call me very gently. I shall be within three

yards of you, in the centre of the box hedge just outside. I will do

whichever seems to you best."

"Does Mr. Francis know of either?" asked the doctor after a pause.

"He knows of the passage inside the house; of that I am sure. I don't

know that he knows of the box hedge."

"Then we will choose that. Now, how will you get to Vail? You must not

go by the same train as we. You must not run the risk of Harry seeing

you."

"Then I shall go by the next, 5.17, same as Mr. Francis went by

yesterday. It gets in at half past six. I will be at the box hedge soon

after seven."

"Very good," said the doctor. "Now, in turn, listen to me. Mr. Francis

believes he has the metholycine with him; he has also Sanders. It seems

to me therefore probable that he will attempt to carry the thing out in

the way he indicated to me, which I told you and Lady Oxted."

Geoffrey shook his head.

"Not likely," he said. "You hold the evidence of the metholycine he has

taken from your cabinet."

"Yes, but he is desperate, and the drug almost untraceable. Also the

fact that he has the metholycine from my cabinet may be supposed to shut

my mouth. It looks very much as if I was his accomplice, does it not? He

will guess that this is awkward for me, as indeed it would be, were not

the metholycine common salt."

"Ha!" said Geoffrey. "Go on."

"I suspect--I feel sure, then--that his plans are more or less the same

as before, only he and Sanders will have to carry it through alone. I

see no reason why they should alter the idea of the supposed burglary.

It is simple and convincing, and my mouth is sealed in two ways."

"How two?" asked Geoffrey.

"Two--so Mr. Francis thinks: Harmsworth and metholycine. Now the

metholycine will fail, and they will have to get Harry into their power

some other way. Also, Mr. Francis will be very anxious, as I told you,

that he should not suffer pain. Of that I am certain; it is a fixed idea

with him. Probably, also, the attempt will be made as planned, late,

when the servants are in bed. Now, is there not a groom in the stables

very like Harry?"

Geoffrey stared.

"Yes, the image of him," he said. "And what about him?"

"Go down to the stables as soon as you get to Vail, and tell him he is

wanted at the house. He knows you, I suppose. Walk up with him yourself,

and let him be in the box hedge with you."

For a moment the excitement of adventure overpowered all else in

Geoffrey's mind.

"Ah, you have some idea!" he cried.

"Nothing, except that it may be useful to--have two Harrys in the house.

Allowing time for this, you should be at the box hedge by eight. That

shall be the appointed hour."

"But what shall I tell Jim?"

"Jim is the name of the groom? Tell him that it may be in his power to

save his master from great peril. Harry is liked by his servants, is he

not? All that we know at present is that he must wait in the box hedge

with you in case we need him. But supposing he is swiftly and secretly

needed, how are we to get him into the house?"

"By the secret passage within," said Geoffrey, quick as an echo.

"Good again. It looks as if the Luck was with us. And this passage comes

out at the back of old Francis's portrait? Bad place."

"Yes, but also at the bottom of the main stairs, through a panel between

them and the hall."

"That is better. There, then--O God, help us all! And now you must go.

Harry is waiting for me. I dare not risk trying to convince him. He

quarrelled with you, his best friend, for the suspicion--I can serve him

better by going with him."

They went out together and found Harry in the hall. He detained Geoffrey

with his hand, and the doctor passed on into the dining room.

"You will lunch here, Harry," he said. "It is ready."

From outside the lad closed the door. Geoffrey knew that a bad moment

was coming, and set his teeth. But the moment was worse than he

anticipated, for Harry's voice when he spoke was broken, and his eyes

moist.

"O Geoffrey," he said, "can not you do what I asked? If you knew what it

meant to me! There are two men in the world whom I love. There, you

understand--and I can not bear it, simply I can not bear it!"

The temptation had been severe before; it was a trifle to this.

"No, I can't!" cried Geoffrey, eager to get the words spoken, for each

moment made them harder to speak. "O Harry, some day you will

understand. Before your marriage--I give it a date--I swear to you in

God's name that you will understand how it is that I can not come with

you to ask Mr. Francis's forgiveness!"

Disappointment deepened on Harry's face, and a gleam of anger shone

there.

"I will not ask you a third time," he said, and went into the dining

room.

Geoffrey had still three hours to wait in London before the starting of

his train, and these were chequered with an incredible crowd of various

hopes and fears. At one time he hugged himself on the obvious

superiority of their dispositions against Mr. Francis; he would even

smile to think of the toils enveloping that evil schemer; again mere

exhilaration at the unknown and the violent would boil up in

effervescence; another moment, and an anguish of distrust would seize

him. What if, after all, Dr. Armytage had been playing with him, how

completely and successfully, he writhed to think? A week ago the sweat

would have broken out on him to picture Harry travelling down to Vail

with that man of sinister repute, to be alone in the house with him, Mr.

Francis, and the foxlike servant. Had he been hoodwinked throughout?

Was the doctor even now smiling to himself behind his paper at the

facility of his victim? At the thought, London turned hell; he had taken

the bait like a silly staring fish; even now he was already hauled, as

it were, on to dry land, there to gasp innocuously, impotent to stir or

warn, while who knew what ghastly subaqueous drama might even now be

going on? He had trusted the doctor on evidence of the most diaphanous

kind, unsupported by any testimony of another. The sleeping-draught

given to Harry, the brushing aside of the revolver he had passed to him,

when to shoot was impossible--these, with a calculated gravity of face

and an assumption of anxious sincerity, had been enough to convince him

of the man's honesty. He could have screamed aloud at the thought, and

every moment whirled Harry nearer, helpless and unsuspecting, to that

house of death!

Meantime the journey of the two had been for the most part a silent

passage. Each was absorbed in his own thoughts and anxieties: Harry,

restless, impatient, eager for the quicker falling behind of wayside

stations, while the doctor brooded with half-closed eyelids, intent, it

would seem, on the pattern of the carriage mat, his thoughts

inconjecturable. Once only, as the train yelled through Slough, did he

speak, but then with earnestness.

"Don't let your uncle know I have come, Harry," he said. "It may be that

Sanders has unnecessarily alarmed you. So see him first yourself, and

if this has been a heart attack like to what he had before, and he seems

now to be quietly recuperating, do not let him know I am here. It may

only alarm him for his condition."

"Pray God it may be so!" said Harry.

The doctor looked steadfastly at the carriage mat.

"Medically speaking," he said, "I insist on this. I should also wish

that you would guard against all possibility of his knowing I am here.

Sanders, I suppose, looks after him. I should therefore not wish Sanders

to know."

"Oh, he can keep a secret," said Harry.

"Very likely; but I would rather he had no secret to keep. I am not

speaking without reason. If, as you fear, and as the telegram seems to

indicate, this attack has been unusually severe, I must assure you that

it is essential that no agitating influence of any kind should come near

him. If he is in real danger, of course I will see him."

"Would it not be likely to reassure him to know you are here?" asked

Harry.

"I have told you that I think not," said the doctor, "unless there is

absolute need of me. I hope"--and the word did not stick in his throat

"that quiet will again restore him."

A trap was waiting for them at the station, driven by Jim, and the

doctor had an opportunity of judging how far the likeness between the

two might be hoped to deceive one who knew them both. Even now, with the

one in livery, the other in ordinary dress, it was extraordinary, not

only in superficialities, but somehow essentially, and he felt that it

was worth while to have arranged to profit by it, should opportunity

occur. The groom had a note for Harry, which he tore open hastily.

"Ah! that is good," he said, and handed it to the doctor.

It was but a matter of a couple of lines, signed by Templeton, saying

merely that the severity of the attack was past, and at the time of

writing Mr. Francis was sleeping, being looked after by Sanders, who had

not left him since the seizure. And to the one reader this account

brought an up-springing of hope, to the other the conviction that his

estimate of Mr. Francis's illness was correct.

Harry went upstairs immediately on his arrival, leaving the doctor in

the hall. Templeton, usually a man of wood, had perceptibly started when

he opened the door to them and saw the doctor, and now, instead of

discreetly retiring on the removal of their luggage, he hung about,

aimlessly poking the fire, putting a crooked chair straight, and a

straight chair crooked, and fidgeting with the blinds. All at once the

strangeness of his manner struck the doctor.

"What have you got to tell me?" he asked suddenly.

The blind crashed down to its full length as the butler's hand dropped

the retaining string. The rigid control of domestic service was snapped;

he was a frightened man speaking to his equal.

"This is a strange illness of Mr. Francis's," he said.

The doctor was alive to seize every chance.

"How strange?" he asked. "Mr. Francis has had these attacks before."

"I sent for the doctor from Didcot, as soon as it occurred, unknown to

him or Sanders," said Templeton, "but he was not allowed to see him. Why

is that, sir? There was Sanders telegraphing for his lordship, and

saying that Mr. Francis was dying, yet refusing to let the doctor see

him. But perhaps he was expecting you, sir."

"He does not know I am here, Templeton, nor must he know. Look to that;

see that the servants do not tell Sanders I am here. Now, what do you

mean? You think Mr. Francis is not ill at all."

"Does a man in the jaws of death, I may say, play the flute?" asked the

butler.

"Play the flute?"

"Yes, sir. It was during the servants' dinner hour--but I had no stomach

for my meat to-day, and went upstairs--when we might have been at dinner

perhaps five minutes, and along the top passage to his lordship's room

to see if they had it ready. Well, sir, I heard coming from Mr.

Francis's room--very low and guarded, so that I should have heard

nothing had I not stood outside a moment listening, you may say, but I

did not know for what--a little lively tune I have heard him play a

score of times. But in a minute it ceased, and then I heard two voices

talking, and after that Mr. Francis laughed. That from a man who was

sleeping, so Sanders told us."

"This is all very strange," said the doctor.

"Ay, and then the door opened, and out came that man Sanders; black as

hell he looked when he saw me! But little I cared for his black looks,

and I just asked him how his master was. Very bad, he told me, and

wandering, and he wondered whether his lordship would get here in time."

The doctor came a step nearer.

"Templeton," he said, "I rely on you to obey me implicitly. It is

necessary that neither Mr. Francis nor Sanders know I am here. Things

which I can not yet tell you may depend on this. And see to this: let me

have the room I had before, and put his lordship into the room opening

from it. Lock the door of it which leads into the passage, and lose the

key, so that the only entrance is through my room. If he asks why his

room is changed, make any paltry excuse: say the electric light in his

room is gone wrong--anything. But make his usual room look as if it was

occupied; go up there during dinner, turn down the bed, put a nightshirt

on it, and leave a sponge, brushes, and so on."

"Master Harry!" gasped the butler, his mind suddenly reverting to old

days.

The doctor frowned.

"Come," he said, "do not get out of hand like that. Do as I bid you, and

try to look yourself. I can tell you no more."

Harry came down from the sick room a few minutes later, with a brow

markedly clearer.

"He is much better, ever so much better, Sanders thinks," he said. "He

was sleeping, but when he wakes he will be told I have come."

"Ah! that is good," said the doctor. "Did Sanders tell you about the

attack?"

"Yes, it came on while he was dressing this morning. Luckily, Sanders

was with him; but for an hour, he tells me, he thought that every breath

might be his last. He's a trump, that man, and there's a head on his

shoulders too. He has hardly left him for five minutes."

"Will Sanders sleep in his room to-night?" asked the doctor.

"Yes, he has his meals brought to him there too, so that it will be easy

for you not to be seen by him, since you make such a point of it. Oh,

thank God, he is so much better! Ah, look! we are going to have one of

those curious low mists to-night."

The doctor followed Harry to one of the windows which Templeton had left

unshuttered, and looked out.

The autumn twilight was fast closing in, and after the hot sun of the

day, the mist, in the sudden coolness of its withdrawal, was forming

very thickly and rapidly over the lake. There was a little draught of

wind toward the house, not sufficient to disperse it, but only to slide

it gently, like a sheet, over the lawns. It lay very low, in thickness

not perhaps exceeding five feet over the higher stretches of the lawn,

but as the surface of it was level, it must have been some few feet

thicker where the ground declined toward the lake. It appeared to be of

extraordinary density, and spread very swiftly and steadily, so that

even while they watched, it had pushed on till, like flood water, it

struck the wall of the house, and presently lawn and lake were both

entirely vanished, and they looked out, as from a mountain-top, over a

level sea of cloud, pricked here and there by plantations and the higher

shrubs. Above, the night was clear, and a young moon rode high in a

heaven that silently filled with stars.

Geoffrey, meantime, had followed two hours behind them; his train was

punctual, and it was only a little after seven when he found himself,

having walked from the station, at the edge of the woods, looking down

on to this same curious sea of mist. The monstrous birds of the box

hedge stood out upon it, like great aquatic creatures swimming there,

for the hedge itself was submerged, and the descent into it was like a

plunge into a bath. Not wishing to risk being seen from the house, he

made a wide circuit round it toward the lake. Here the mist rose above

his head, baffling and blinding; but striking the edge of the lake, he

followed it, guided as much by the sobbing of the ripples against the

bank as by the vague muffled outline, till he reached the inlet of the

stream which fed it. From this point the ground rose rapidly, and in a

few minutes he could look over the mist again and see the house already

twinkling with scattered lights, moored like some great ship in that

white sea. A few hundred yards more brought him to the stables, and,

conveniently for his purpose, at the gate stood Jim and a helper, their

work over, smoking and chatting. Geoffrey approached till it was certain

they could see who he was.

"Is that you, Jim?" he said. "They want you at the house."

Jim knocked out his pipe and followed. His clothes had "evening out"

stamped upon them, and there seemed to be an unpleasing curtailment of

his liberty in prospect.

"Come round by the lake," said Geoffrey in a low voice, when the groom

had joined him. "I have something to tell you."

He waited till they were certainly out of ear-shot.

"Now, Jim," he said, "it's just this. We believe that an attempt will be

made to-night to murder Lord Vail. I want your help, though I can't yet

tell you in what way you can help, because I don't know. But will you do

all you can or are told to do?"

"Gawd bless my soul!" said Jim. Then, with a return to his ordinary

impassivity, "yes, sir, I'll do anything you tell me to help."

"Come on, then. You can trust me that you shall run no unreasonable

risks."

"I'm not thinking you'll let them murder me instead, sir," said Jim.

"And may I ask who is going to do the murdering?"

Geoffrey hesitated a moment, but on reflection there seemed to him to be

no reason for concealing anything.

"We believe--Dr. Armytage and I, that is--that Sanders, Mr. Francis's

man, will attempt it."

Jim whistled under his breath.

"Bring him on," he said. "Lord! I should like to have a go at that

Sanders, sir! He walks into the stable yard as if every horse in the

place belonged to him."

They had by this time skirted the lake again, and the booming of the

sluice sounded near at hand. Then, striking for higher ground, they saw

they had already passed the house, and close in front of them swam the

birds of the box hedge. The mist had sunk back a little, and now they

sat, as if in a receding tide, on the long peninsula of the hedge

itself, visible above the drift, and black in the moonlight.

"This way," said Geoffrey, and groping round to the back of it they

found the overgrown door and entered. Thence, going cautiously and

feeling their way, they passed down the length of it, and soon saw in

front of them, like a blurred moon, the light from the gun-room windows.

The time had been calculated to a nicety, for they had been there

scarcely five minutes, when a shadow moved across the blind, which was

then rolled up, and the window silently lifted a crack. The figure,

owing to the density of the mist, was indistinguishable, but Geoffrey

recognised the doctor's voice when it whispered his name. He touched

Jim to make him follow, and together they stood close by the window.

"Good you have Jim with you," said the doctor, "and you have told him we

may need him. I want him inside the house; so go with him through the

secret passage, and open the panel by the stairs which you told me of. I

shall be there, and I will tell you what we are going to do. Harry has

gone to dress, and the house is quiet. Wait, Geoffrey. Take this."

And he handed him out a rook rifle and eight or ten cartridges.

"Put these inside the hedge," he whispered, "and come round at once with

Jim."

Five minutes later Geoffrey gently opened the panel of the door, and the

doctor glided in like a ghost, latching it noiselessly behind him. His

face brooded and gloomed no laugh; it was alert and active.

"There is very little time," he said; "so, first for you, Geoffrey. Go

back for the rifle and cartridges, and get somewhere in cover where you

can command the front of the house. What course events will take outside

I can not say. But the Luck and the plate will be stolen, and they will

have to get them away somehow. You must stop that. Sanders, I suspect,

will try to remove them."

"Beg your pardon, sir," put in Jim, "but Sanders was down at the stable

this afternoon, and said that the door of the coach house and one of the

loose boxes was to be left unlocked to-night, in case a doctor was

wanted for Mr. Francis. He said he could put to himself, sir, so that

none of us need sit up."

The doctor's keen face grew a shade more animate, his mouth bordered on

a smile.

"Good lad!" he said.--"Well, that's your job, Geoffrey: you must use

your discretion entirely. You may have to deal with a pretty desperate

man, and it is possible you will feel safer with that rifle."

"Where shall I go?" asked Geoffrey.

"I thought the summerhouse on the knoll would be a good place; it stands

above the mist."

"Excellent. And for Jim?"

"We must be guided by the course of events. Jim will have to wait here,

in any case, probably till eleven, or even later. Then I expect he will

go to bed in Harry's room, where I--I can't tell you: it is all in the

clouds at present. I want to spare Harry horror. Anyhow, he will stop

here until I tap twice on the panel outside. Now I can not wait. Harry

may be down any minute; we dine at a quarter past. Ah! this is for you,

Geoffrey," and he handed him a packet of sandwiches--"and this for you,

Jim.--Now, you to the summerhouse, Geoffrey--Jim waits here: I dine with

Harry. Yes, your hand, and yours. God help our work!"

Though never a voluminous talker, the doctor was even more silent than

usual at dinner that night, and, despite the alertness of his eye,

confessed to an extreme fatigue. Thus it was that, soon after ten, he

and Harry went upstairs; he straight to his room, the latter to tap

discreetly at the door of the sick room and learn the latest of the

patient.

The change of Harry's room from the one he usually occupied to that

communicating with the doctor's caused no comment, either silent or

spoken, from him, nor did the loss of the key seem to him in any way

remarkable. He came straight from his visit to Mr. Francis, to give the

news to the doctor.

"Still sleeping," he said, "and sleeping very quietly, so Sanders tells

me. And I--I feel as if I should sleep the clock round! I really think I

shall go to bed at once."

He went through the doctor's room and turned on his light, then appeared

again in the doorway.

"Got everything you want?" he asked. "Have a whisky and soda?"

A confused idea of metholycine, a distinct idea that he did not wish

Harry to run the risk of being seen by Sanders going to another room

than the ordinary, made itself felt in the doctor's reply.

"Not for worlds!" he said. "A poisonous habit."

"That means I mustn't have any, does it?" asked Harry from the doorway.

"Now that is hard lines. I want some, but not enough to go and fetch it

from the hall myself. Do have some: give me an excuse."

"Not even that," said the doctor.

"Well, good-night," said the lad, and he closed the door between the two

rooms.

For so tired a man, the doctor on the closing of the door exhibited a

considerable briskness. Very quickly and quietly he took off dress coat,

shoes, and shirt, and buttoning a dark-gray coat over his vest, set his

door ajar, and switched off his light. The hour for action, he well

realized, might strike any moment, but he was prepared, as far as

preparation was possible. Outside there was waiting Geoffrey with the

rook rifle; inside the secret passage the spurious Harry--both, he knew,

calm and bland for any emergency. Meanwhile the real Harry was safe for

the present; none but he and Templeton knew of the change of room, and

none could reach him but through the chamber he himself occupied. But an

intricate and subtle passage was likely to be ahead, and as yet its

windings were unconjecturable. As a working hypothesis, for he could

find no better, he had assumed that Mr. Francis's plans were in the main

unaltered. Harry, drugged and unconscious, was to be taken to the plate

closet at some hour in this dead night, where Sanders would be waiting.

Yet this conjecture might be utterly at fault; in any case the drugged

whisky, mixed as it now was with innocuous salt, could not have the

effect desired, and for anything unforeseen (and here was at least one

step untraceable), he must have every sense alert, to interpret to the

best of his ability the smallest clew that came from the room opposite.

Mr. Francis and Sanders were there now, firearms were not to be feared:

here was the sum of his certainties. This also, and this from his study

of Mr. Francis he considered probable to the verge of certainty, Harry

would be unconscious when the death blow was given.

In the dark, time may either fly with swallows' wings or lag with the

tortoise, for the watch in a man's brain is an unaccountable mechanism,

and the doctor had no idea how long he had been waiting, when he heard

the latch of a door open somewhere in the passage outside. Two noiseless

steps took him to his own, and through the crack, where he had left it

ajar, he saw a long perpendicular chink of light; bright it seemed and

near. Without further audible sound this grew gradually fainter, and

with the most stealthy precautions he opened his own door and peered

out. Some fifteen yards distant, moving very slowly down the passage,

were two figures--those of Mr. Francis and his valet. The latter was

dressed in ordinary clothes, the former, vividly visible by the light of

the candle the servant carried, in a light garish dressing gown and red

slippers. At this moment they paused opposite the door of the room Harry

usually occupied, and here held a word of inaudible colloquy. There was

a table just outside the door, fronting the top of the stairs, and a dim

lamp on a bracket hung above it. On it Mr. Francis put down a small

bottle, and what looked like an ordinary table napkin, and the two went

down the stairs.

It was the time for caution and rapidity; already, as he knew, luck had

favoured him, in that neither had entered Harry's room, and after giving

them some ten seconds' law, he went noiselessly over the thick carpet of

the passage to the table and opened the bottle Mr. Francis had left

there. The unmistakable fumes of chloroform greeted his nostril, and he

stood awhile in unutterable perplexity. Fresh and valuable as this

evidence was, it was difficult to form any certain conclusions about it.

Conceivably, the chloroform was an additional precaution, in case Harry

had not drunk the whisky; conceivably also the metholycine idea had been

altogether abandoned in the absence of a skilled operator. That at least

he could easily settle, and turning into the bedroom Harry usually

occupied, he switched on the electric light. Templeton had followed his

instructions about making the room look habitable, but on the dressing

table stood what was perhaps not the work of Templeton. A cut-glass

bottle was there on a tray, with a glass and a siphon. He spilled a

teaspoonful of the spirit into the glass and tasted it. Salt.

So much, then, was certain: one or both of the figures he had seen go

downstairs would return here, with the chloroform; and still cudgelling

his brains over the main problem, as to why Mr. Francis had gone

downstairs at all, he lingered not, but felt his way down to the bottom

of the flight. Here he paused, but hearing nothing, tapped twice at the

panel which opened into the secret passage. It was at once withdrawn,

and Jim stepped out.

"Come!" he whispered.

With the same rapid stealthiness they ascended again, crossed the

landing, and entered Harry's bedroom. The bed stood facing the door in

an angle between the window and the wall, and the doctor drew the

curtain across the window, which was deep and with a seat in it.

"Undress at once," he said to Jim. "They might notice that your clothes

were not lying about if they have a light. Quick! off with them--coat,

waistcoat, shirt, trousers, boots, as naked as your mother bore you.

There is a nightshirt, put it on. Now get into bed, and lie with your

face half covered. Do not stir or make any sound whatever till I turn up

the light or call to you. I shall be behind the curtain."

There were two electric lamps in the room, one by the door, the other

with its own switch over the bed. The doctor had lit both, and as soon

as the groom was in bed, extinguished the one by the door. Then,

crossing the room, he got up behind the curtain in the window seat, and

from there turned off the other.

"And when I turn up the light, Jim," he whispered, "throw off anything

that may have been placed over your face, and spring up in bed. Till

then be asleep. You understand?"

"Yes, sir," said Jim softly.

At that moment, with the suddenness of a long-forgotten memory returned,

the doctor guessed why Mr. Francis had gone downstairs. The glory of

the guess was so great that he could not help speaking.

"He has gone for the Luck," he said.

"Yes, sir," said Jim again, and there were darkness and silence.

Interminable eons passed, or may be ten minutes, but at the end of

infinite time came scarcely sound, but an absence of complete silence,

from the door. From behind the thick curtains the doctor could see

nothing, but a moment later came the gentle sigh of the scraped carpet,

and from that, or from the infallible sixth sense that awakes only in

the dark, he knew that some one had entered. Then from closer at hand he

heard the faintest shuffle of movement, and he knew that, whoever this

was in the room besides the groom and himself, he was not a couple of

yards distant. After another while the least vibration sounded from the

glasses in the tray, as if a hand had touched them unwittingly, and

again dead stillness succeeded, till the doctor's ears sang with it.

Then from the bed his ear suddenly focused the breathings of two

persons--one very short and quick, the other a slow, steady respiration,

and simultaneously with that his nostril caught the whiff of chloroform.

Again the rustle of linen sounded, and hearing that, he held his breath

and counted the pulse which throbbed in his own temples. Twenty times it

beat, and on the twentieth stroke his finger pressed the switch of the

light, and he drew back the curtain.

Already Jim was sitting up in bed, bland and impassive in face, and his

left hand flung the reeking napkin from him. By the bedside crouched a

white-haired figure clad in a blue dressing gown; close by it on the

floor stood the leather case which held the Luck; the right hand was

still stretched over the bed, though the napkin which it had held was

plucked from it. His face was flushed with colour; the bright blue eyes,

a little puckered up in this sudden change from darkness to the glare of

the electric light, moved slowly from Jim to the doctor and back again.

But no word passed the thin, compressed lips.

Suddenly the alertness of the face was gone like a burst bubble; the

mouth opened and drooped, the eyes grew staring and sightless; the left

hand only seemed to retain its vitality, and felt gropingly on the

carpet for the Luck. Then, with a slow, supreme effort, the figure half

raised itself, drawing the jewel tight to its breast, folding both arms

about it, with fingers intertwined in the strap that carried it. Then it

collapsed completely, rolled over, and lay face downward on the floor.

For one moment neither of the others stirred; then, recovering himself,

the doctor stepped down from the window seat.

"Put on your coat and trousers, Jim," he said, "and come with me

quickly. Yes, leave him--it--there. I will come back presently. We have

to catch Sanders now, and we must go without a light. You behaved

admirably. Now follow me."

"Is it dead, sir?" whispered Jim.

"I think so. Come!"

In the eagerness of their pursuit they crossed the passage without

looking to right hand or left, and felt their way down the many-angled

stairs. The hall was faintly lit by the pallor of moonshine that came

through the skylight, and without difficulty they found the baize door

leading into the servants' parts. But here with the shuttered windows

reigned the darkness of Egypt, and despairing of finding his way, the

doctor lit a match to guide them to the farther end of the passage where

was the plate closet. But when they reached it, it was to find the door

open and none within. In all directions stood boxes with forced lids.

Here a dozen spoons were scattered on the floor, here a saltcellar; but

the rifling had been fairly complete.

"How long do you suppose we were waiting in the dark?" he asked Jim.

"Anyhow, it was long enough for Sanders and Mr. Francis to have taken

most of the plate. I had thought they would do that after--afterward.

Now, where is the plate, and where is Sanders?"

"Can't say, sir," said Jim.

The match which had showed the disorder of the place had burned out, and

the doctor, still frowning over the next step, had just lit another,

when from outside there rang out the sharp ping of a rifle shot.

"That is Geoffrey!" he said, "and what in God's name is happening?

Upstairs again."

They groped their way back along the basement to the door leading into

the hall. Close to this went up the back stairs forming the servants'

communication with the upper story, and, seeing these, the doctor

clicked his tongue against his teeth.

"That's how we missed him," he said; "he went this way up to Mr.

Francis, while we were going down the front stairs."

"Yes, sir," said Jim.

They passed through into the hall, and a draught of cold air met them.

There was no longer any reason for secret movements, and the doctor

turned on the electric light. The front door was open, and the wreaths

of dense mist streamed in.

"Go and see if you can help Mr. Geoffrey, Jim," he said, "if you can

find him. It is clear that Sanders has left the house: who else could

have opened that door? I must see to that which we left upstairs."

He ran up. The room door as they had left it was open; on the floor

still lay what they had left there. But it was lying no longer on its

face; the sightless eyes were turned to the ceiling, and the Luck was no

longer clasped, with fingers intertwined in its strap, to the breast.

The doctor fought down an immense repugnance against touching the body;

but the instinct of saving life, however remote that chance, prevailed,

and taking hold of one of the hands, he felt for the pulse. But as he

touched it two of the fingers fell backward, dislocated or broken.

Then, with a swift hissing intake of his breath, he pressed his finger

on the wrist. But the search for the pulse was vain.

CHAPTER XXV

MR. FRANCIS SLEEPS

It was about a quarter past eight when Geoffrey left Jim in the secret

passage, and, in accordance with his instructions, went back to the box

hedge where he had concealed the rifle and cartridges. With these he

skirted wide up the short grassy slope that led to the summerhouse, and

trying the door, found it unlocked. It stood, as he had supposed, some

fifteen feet above the level of the mist that lay round the house below,

and was admirably situated for the observation of any movement or

manoeuvre that might be made, for it commanded a clear view past the

front of the house down to the lake, while the road from the stables

passed not fifty yards from it, joining the carriage sweep: from the

carriage sweep at right angles ran the drive. Clearly, then, if Jim's

account of Sanders's visit and order to the stables covered a design,

the working out of it must take place before his eyes.

The summerhouse stood close to the background of wood in which last

summer Evie and Mr. Francis had once walked, a mere black blot against

the blackness of the trees, and Geoffrey, pulling a chair to the open

door, sat commandingly invisible. His rifle he leaned against the wall,

ready to his hand, and it was in more than moderate composure that he

ate the sandwiches with which the doctor had provided him. There was, he

expected, a long vigil in front of him before any active share in the

operations should stand to his name; the first act would be played in

that great square ship of a house that lay anchored out in the sea of

mist. What should pass there in the next two hours he strenuously

forbore to conjecture; for it was his business to keep his brain cool,

and avoid all thoughts which might heat that or render his hand

unsteady. That short interview with the doctor had given him a

confidence that made firm the shifting quicksands of fear which all day

had quaked within him, for the man had spoken to him with authority,

masterful and decided, which had stilled the shudderings and

perplexities of the last twelve hours. He had to see to it that they

should not awake again.

At intervals of seemingly incalculable length the clock from the stable

drowsily told the hour, and but for that and the slow wheeling of the

young moon, he could have believed that time had ceased. No breath of

wind stirred in the trees behind, or shredded the opaque levels of the

mist in front; a death and stagnation lay over the world, and no sound

but the muffled murmur of the sluice from the lake broke the silence.

The world spun in space, and the sound of the invisible outpouring

waters might have been the rustle of its passage through interstellar

space.

Then the spell and soothing of the stillness laid hold of him; the hour

of action was near, the intolerable fret of anxiety nearly over. Inside

the house that dark, keen-eyed man was not one whom the prudent would

care to see in opposition (and on which side he was Geoffrey no longer

entertained a doubt's shadow), nor, for that matter, was his lieutenant,

the impassive, spurious Harry. By his unwilling means last summer had

Mr. Francis made the first of his vile attempts; by his means, perhaps,

this should be the last. Geoffrey could rest assured that they would do

all that lay in the power of two very cool heads: his business was to

see that his own part should not be less well done.

Some years ago--or was the stroke still resonant?--half past ten had

struck on the stable clock; and since eleven had not yet sounded, it was

earlier than he had suspected, when there came a noise which sent his

heart hammering for a moment in his throat. He could not at once

localize or identify it, and, though still obscure and muffled, he had

only just decided that it could not be very far off, before he guessed

what it was. Its direction and its nature came to him together: some

vehicle was being cautiously driven over the grass toward the house from

the stables, and on the moment he caught sight of it. It was moving at a

very slow pace, more than half drowned in the mist, and all he could see

of it was the head and back of a horse, the head and shoulders of the

man who led it, and the box seat and rail of some vehicle of the

wagonette type. It reached the gravel walk with a crisp, crunching

sound, and drew up there. Then he heard the unmistakable rattle of the

brake being put hard on, and the man, tying the reins in a knot, looped

them round the whip-holder. He then left it, not forty yards from where

Geoffrey sat, and was swallowed up in the fog going toward the house.

The curtain was up for the second act. What had the first been?

The thing had passed so quickly and silently that he could almost have

believed that his imagination had played him some trick, were it not for

the sight of that truncated horse and carriage which testified to its

reality. There, without doubt, was the carriage from the stables, of

which Jim had told them; but he could not have sworn to the identity of

the man who led it, in the uncertain light. And he picked up his rifle

and laid it across his knees, prepared again to wait.

Soon afterward eleven struck, and, while the strokes were still

vibrating, came the second interruption to his silent waiting. Out of

the mist between the wagonette and the house dimly appeared two heads

moving slowly toward the carriage, and rising gradually as they climbed

the slope above the level mist, till they were distinct and clear as far

as the shoulders. They walked about a yard apart, and words low and

inaudible to the watcher passed between them. Arrived at the carriage,

they seemed to set something down, and then with an effort hoist it into

the body of the vehicle. And as they again raised themselves, Geoffrey

saw that the one head sparkled whitely in the moonshine, and he well

knew to whom those venerable locks belonged. Then there came audible

words.

"Come back, then, Sanders," said Mr. Francis, "and wait at the top of

the back stairs, while I go very gently to his room to see if it is all

right. In any case I shall use the chloroform. Then, when I call you,

come and help me to carry him down to the plate closet. There I shall

leave you, and go back to bed. Afterward, drive hard to the village,

leave the plate at the cottage I told you of, and bring the doctor back.

Are you ready? Where is the--ah! thank you. No, I prefer to carry it

myself. The Luck! the Luck! At last--at last!"

He raised a hand above his head; it grasped a case. The man's face was

turned upward toward the moon, and Geoffrey, looking thereon, could

scarcely stifle an exclamation of horror.

"It is not a man's face," he said to himself. "It is some mad

incarnation of Satan!"

In another minute all was silent again, the inhuman figures had

vanished; again only the section of horse and cart appeared above the

mist. For a moment Geoffrey hesitated, unwilling by any possible risk to

lose the ultimate success, but the chance of being heard or seen by

those retreated figures was infinitesimal, and he crept crouchingly down

the slope to where the wagonette stood. Then, opening the door, he

lifted out, exerting his whole strength, the load the two had put

there, and, bent double under the ponderous weight, made his way back to

the summerhouse. The burden clinked and rang as he moved: there could be

no doubt what his prize was.

He had not long been back at his post when muffled, rapid footsteps

again rivetted him, and he saw a moving dark shape coming with great

swiftness up from the house. As before, with the rising of the ground,

it grew freer of the mist, till when it reached the carriage he could

easily recognise the head and shoulders of Sanders. Somehow, and if

possible without the cost of human life, he must have stopped. He had

already swung a small case easily recognisable by the watcher on to the

box, and he himself was in the act of mounting, when an idea struck

Geoffrey. Taking quick but careful aim, he fired at the horse, just

below the ear. At so short a range a miss would have been an incredible

thing, and with the report of the rifle the head sank out of sight into

the mist.

Then he stood up.

"If you move, Sanders, I fire!" he cried. "This time at you!"

But even as he said the words, the box was already empty. The man had

slipped down with astonishing rapidity behind the wagonette, and when

Geoffrey next saw him dimly through the mist he was already some yards

away. Even while he hesitated, with another cartridge yet in his hand,

he was gone, and waiting only to put it in, he ran down to the cart. The

case, the same beyond a doubt as was in Mr. Francis's hand ten minutes

ago, which he had seen Sanders swing on to the box just now, before

mounting himself, was gone also.

At that he ran down, at the top of the speed he dare use, after the

vanished figure. Once he heard the crunch of gravel to the right, and

turned that way, already bewildered by this blind pursuit in the mist;

once he thought he heard the rustle of bushes to his left, and turned

there. Then, beyond any doubt, he heard his own name called. At that he

stopped.

"Who is it?" he cried.

"Me, sir--Jim," said an imperturbable voice close to him.

"Ah! is Harry--is his lordship safe?"

"Yes, sir, quite safe. The doctor sent me out to see if I could help

you."

Before Geoffrey could reply, a sudden wild cry rang out into the night,

broken short by the sound of a great splash.

"My Gawd, what's that?" cried Jim, startled for once.

"I shouldn't wonder if it was Sanders," said Geoffrey. "Come to the

lake, Jim. God forgive us for trying to rescue the devil! I wonder if he

can swim?"

"Like a stone, sir, I hope," said Jim cheerfully.

The roar of the sluice was a guide to them, but they had lost each

other twenty times before they reached the lake. In that dense and

blinding mist, here risen high above their heads, even sound came

muffled and uncertain, and it was through trampled flower beds and the

swishing of shrubs against their faces that they gained the edge and

stood on the foaming sluice. The water was very high, the noise

bewildering to the senses; and yet, despite the fact that five minutes

ago Geoffrey had been hesitating whether or not to shoot at that vague

runner through the fog, caring nothing whether he killed him, yet now he

did not hesitate to run a risk himself, in order to save from drowning

what had been within an ace of being the mark for his bullet.

"He must be here," he said to Jim; "the pull of the water would drag him

against the sluice."

"You're not going in after that vermin, Mr. Geoffrey?" asked Jim

incredulously.

Geoffrey did not reply, but kicked off his boots and threw his coat on

the grass.

"Stand by to give me a hand," he said, and plunged out of sight.

"Well, I'm damned!" said Jim, and took up his stand close to the edge of

the water gate. The risk he had been willing to run for his master he

had faced without question, indeed with a certain blitheness of spirit;

but to bear a toothache for Sanders's life appeared to him a bargain

that demanded consideration. But even as he wondered, a voice from close

to his feet called him.

"Give a hand," bubbled Geoffrey from the water; "I've got him. I dived

straight on to him."

Jim caught hold of Geoffrey first by the hair, and from that guided his

grasp to a dripping shirt collar. Then, after Geoffrey had got a

foothold on the steep bank, between them they dragged the nerveless and

empty-handed figure from the water and laid it on the grass.

"Dead or alive, that is the only question," said Geoffrey. "Get back to

the house, Jim, and bring the doctor here. I don't know what to do to a

drowned man."

Jim made an obvious call on his resolution. To stay here with that

dripping clay at his feet was a task that demanded more courage than he

had needed to get into Harry's bed.

"No, sir," he said. "You run back to the house and get your wet things

off. I'll stay here!" and he set his teeth.

Geoffrey could not deny the common sense of this, nor indeed had he any

wish to, and shuffled and groped back to the house. As yet he knew

nothing except that Harry was safe, and for the present his curiosity

was gorged with that satisfying assurance. The hall door he found open,

the hall empty and lit, and running upstairs, he saw the door of Harry's

bedroom open, and went in. The doctor was there; he was just covering

with a sheet that which he had removed from the floor on to Harry's bed.

He turned round as Geoffrey entered.

"Quick!" said the latter. "Go down to the sluice. Sanders lost his way

in the fog, and fell in. We fished him out, alive or dead I don't know."

His eye fell on the covered shape on the bed with an awful and sudden

misgiving, for it was Harry's room.

"Not----" he began.

The doctor turned back the sheet for a moment, and then replaced it

quickly.

"Go to my room very quietly, Geoffrey," he said, "for Harry is asleep

next door, and get your wet things off. Put on blankets or something, or

clothes of mine. By the sluice, you say?"

It was some half hour later that Geoffrey heard slow, stumbling steps on

the stairs, and barefooted and wrapped in blankets he went out into the

passage. Jim and the doctor were carrying what he had found in the ooze

of the lake into Harry's room, and they laid it on the floor by the bed.

"It was no use," said the doctor. "I could not arouse the least sign of

vitality. Cover the face. Let us leave them."

He stood in silence a moment after this was done.

"So they lie together," he said, "in obedience to the inscrutable

decrees of God. In his just and merciful hands we leave them."

So the three went out, leaving the two there.

* * * * *

The doctor led the way down into the hall, Geoffrey in his blankets

following him. Jim had brought the rest of his clothes out from the

chamber of death, and stayed in the passage dressing himself, for it was

better there than in the room. No word passed between the others till he

had joined them. Then said the doctor:

"None of us will be able to go to bed till we have pieced together what

has happened in the last two hours. So----"

"Two hours!" interrupted Geoffrey.

"Yes, it is now only a little after twelve. It was soon after ten that

Harry went to his uncle's room, before going to bed, and found him

sleeping.

"He sleeps now," said Geoffrey. Then in a whisper, "Tell me, did Sanders

kill him?"

The doctor shook his head.

"No; Mr. Francis, I feel sure, was dead when--when Sanders came. But he

took the Luck, so I imagine, from him. I left him clasping the Luck; I

returned to find it gone. And two fingers of his hand were broken. But

where is the Luck?"

"That I think I can tell you," said Geoffrey, "when my turn comes. But

begin at the beginning. I left Jim before dinner in the secret passage."

So, in a few words, the doctor told all that had happened inside the

house from the moment when he opened his door and saw the two, who now

lay upstairs, talking in the passage, down to his return from the plate

closet to find the Luck torn from Mr. Francis's death grip. Then

Geoffrey took on the tale to its completion. At the end he laid his hand

on the groom's shoulder, with the action of a friend and an equal.

"We have done the talking," he said, "but here's the fellow who did the

hard thing in this night's work. I could no more have borne that--that

man creeping across the room to where I lay in bed----"

"Than I could have jumped into the lake in the dark, sir," said Jim,

"when all that was to be found was-- Lord love us all!"

Then there was silence for a while, for the events were still too awful

and too close for chattering. The doctor broke it.

"There are two more things to be done," he said: "one, to bring back the

plate from the summerhouse; the other, Harry. He must be told

everything, but to-morrow will be as well as to-night. By the way,

Geoffrey, where will you sleep?--You too, Jim? Can you get into the

stable so late?"

"Yes, sir; thank you, sir," said Jim. "I'll wake the helper.--I brought

in the rifle, Mr. Geoffrey; you left it by the lake.--Shall I help bring

in the plate, sir?"

"No, we must get Templeton and another man in any case," said the

doctor. "It must be stowed somewhere to-night; the lock of the plate

closet is forced. So get you to bed, Jim. Shake hands like a man, for

you are one."

"Jim, you devil, say good-night to a man," said Geoffrey, and pleasure

and pride made the groom laugh outright.

"But you won't tell Harry to-night?" said Geoffrey, after a moment.

"Hush! What's that?--My God, Harry!"

The gleam of a candle shone through the door leading to the staircase,

and Harry advanced two steps into the hall.

"I woke just now," he said, speaking to the doctor, "and--Geoffrey!"

"Call Jim back," said the doctor.--"Steady, Harry. Not a word!"

Geoffrey gathered his blankets round him and went to the hall door,

which the groom had just closed behind him. He came back at once in

answer to the call.

"But what is it? What is it all?" cried Harry. "Where is my uncle? I

woke, as I began to tell you, and thought I heard people moving about,

and got uneasy. I thought he might be worse, or something. Then I went

through into your room, Dr. Armytage, but you were not there. His door,

too, was open, and there was a light burning, but he was not there.

Where is he? What is it?" he cried again. "Geoffrey--Jim--what are you

doing here?"

He looked from one to the other bewildered, but for a moment none could

speak.

"Oh, for the love of God, tell me!" he cried again.

Jim's right hand went to his head in salutation.

"Please, my lord, it's late; I'd better go," he said feebly.

"No, wait," said Harry. "Damn it all, do what you are told! The doctor

wishes you to stop, so stop. But why and how is Geoff here, and Jim? And

where is he?"

Both of the other young men looked at the doctor, and without more words

he told the story for the second time, with as direct a brevity as was

possible. No word of any kind interrupted him, but in Harry's eyes a

wondering horror deepened and grew convinced. Once only did any sound

come from him, and that when the doctor said that beyond doubt Mr.

Francis was not sane; but then a long sigh, it would seem of unutterable

relief, moaned from his lips. He heard of the plot, as originally told

by his uncle to the doctor, of all the business of the metholycine, of

all the communications going on between his uncle's supposed accomplice

and Geoffrey, of the scene on the pavement of Grosvenor Square. Then

came for the second time that evening the events of the last two hours,

but Harry's head had sunk on his hands, and the eyes of the others no

longer looked at him, for it was not seemly to behold so great an

amazement of horror and grief.

At length the words were all spoken, and for a long space there was

silence, while the truth, bitter and burning as vitriol, ate into the

poor lad's brain. Then said Harry, his face still buried:

"As God sees you, Dr. Armytage, this is true?"

"It is true, Harry," said he.

"Geoffrey?" asked the same hard cold voice.

"God help you, yes!"

"And Jim?"

"Yes, my lord, as far as this night's work goes."

Harry got up from his chair, quietly and steadily. He advanced to the

groom and grasped both his hands in his. Still, without a word, he

turned to the doctor with the same action. Then, still steadily, he

walked across the hearth rug to Geoffrey, and the doctor moved from

where he stood, touched Jim on the shoulder, and withdrew with him. Not

till then did Harry speak, but now his mouth quivered, and the tension

grew to snapping point.

"Geoff, Geoff!" he said, and the blessed relief of tears came to him.

EPILOGUE

Evie was sitting in one of the low window seats in the hall at Vail,

regarding with all the gravity due to the subject her two months' old

baby, that soft little atom round which revolved the world and the stars

and all space. Her discoveries about it were in number like the sands of

the sea, but far more remarkable. This afternoon they had been, and

still continued to be, epoch-making.

"His nose," she said, after a long pause, to Lady Oxted, who was sitting

by the fire, "is at present like mine--that is to say, it is no

particular nose, but it will certainly be like Harry's, which is

perpendicular. That's a joke, dear aunt, the sort of thing which people

who write society stories think clever. It isn't, really."

Lady Oxted sighed.

"And his brains exactly resemble both yours and Harry's, dear," she

said--"that is to say, they are no particular brains."

Evie took no notice whatever of this vitriolic comment.

"And its eyes are certainly Harry's eyes," she went on. "Oh, I went to

see Jim's wife to-day, you know the dairymaid whom Harry was

supposed---- Well, I went to see her. Jim was there too. I love Jim. You

know the resemblance to Harry is simply ridiculous. I was in continual

fear lest I should forget it was Jim and say, 'Come, darling, it's time

to go.' And then Harry might have behaved as I once did. Oh, here's

nurse.--What a bore you are, nurse, O my own angelic!"

Evie gave up a kiss-smothered baby, and went across to where Lady Oxted

was sitting.

"And Mrs. Jim's baby, I must allow, has its points," she continued.

"That's why I'm sure that Geoff's eyes are like Harry's, because Geoff's

eyes are exactly like Jim's baby's eyes, and Jim is Harry. By the way,

where is the spurious Geoff,--the old one, I mean?"

"The old one went out within five minutes of his arrival here," said

Lady Oxted. "I tried to make myself agreeable to him, but apparently I

failed, for he simply yawned in my face, and said, 'Where's Harry?'"

"Yes, Aunt Violet," said Evie, "you and I sha'n't get a look in while

those men are here, and we had better resign ourselves to it, and take

two nice little back seats. In fact, I felt a little neglected this

morning. Harry woke with a great stretch and said, 'By gad, it's

Tuesday!--Geoff and the beloved doctor come to-day,' and he never even

said good-morning to the wife of his bosom."

"He's tiring of you," remarked Lady Oxted.

"I know; isn't it sad, and we have been married less than a year? As I

was saying, he got up at once, instead of going to sleep again, and I

heard him singing in his bath. Oh, I just love that husband of mine,"

she said.

"So you have told me before," said Lady Oxted acidly.

"What a prickly aunt!" said Evie. "Dear Aunt Violet, if Geoffrey and the

beloved physician and Jim weren't such darlings, all of them, I should

be jealous of them--I should indeed."

"What a lot of darlings you have, Evie!" said the other.

"I know I have. I wish there were twice as many. For the whole point of

the world is the darlings. A person with no darlings is dead--dead and

buried. And the more darlings you have, by so much the more is the world

alive. Isn't it so? I have lots--oh, and the world is good! All those I

have, and you, and Harry even, and I might include my own Geoff. Also

Uncle Bob, especially when he is rude to you."

The prickly aunt was tender enough, and Evie knew it.

"Oh, my dear!" she said. "It makes my old blood skip and sing to see you

so happy. And Harry--my goodness, what a happy person Harry is!"

"I trust and believe he is," Evie said, "and my hope and exceeding

reward are that he may always be. But to-day--to-day----" she said.

Lady Oxted was silent.

"Just think," said Evie, "what was happening a year ago. At this hour a

year ago Harry was here with the doctor and his uncle and his uncle's

servant. And then evening fell, as it is falling now. Later came

Geoffrey and Jim. Oh, I can't yet bear to think of it!"

"I think if I were Harry I should be rather fond of those three," said

Lady Oxted. "Being a woman, I am in love with them all, like you."

"Of course you are," said Evie. "Oh, yes, Jim was just going out when I

was with his wife, to meet the others."

"To meet them?" asked Lady Oxted.

"Yes; Harry said it was a secret, but it's such a dear one I must tell

you. They were going together--it was Harry's idea--to the church. The

two graves, his uncle's and that other man's, are side by side. I asked

if I might come too, but he said certainly not; I was not in that

piece!"

"And then?"

Evie got up.

"I think they were just going to say their prayers there," she said.

"Oh, I love those men. They don't talk and talk, but just go and do

simple little things like that."

"And the women sit at home and do the talking," said Lady Oxted.

"Yes, you and me, that is. Oh, I daresay we are more subtle and

complicated--and who knows or cares what else?--but we are not quite so

simple. One must weigh the one with the other. And who cares which is

the best? To each is a part given."

"You had a big part given you, Evie," said the other.

"I know I had, and feebly was it performed. Ah, that morning! Just one

word from Dr. Armytage, 'Come!'"

Evie returned to the fire again and sat down.

"If Geoffrey had not been here the night before," she said, "the night

when it took place, I don't know what would have happened to Harry.

There would have been a raving lunatic, I think. As it was, he just

howled and wept, so he told me, and Geoff sat by him and said: 'Cheer

up, old chap!' and 'Damn it all, Harry!--yes, I don't care,' and gave

him a whisky and soda, and slapped him on the back, and did all the

things that men do. They didn't kiss each other and scream, and say that

nobody loved them, as we should have done. And as like as not they

played a game of billiards afterward, and felt immensely better. I

suppose David and Jonathan were like that. Oh, I want Harry always to

have a lot of men friends," she cried. "How I should hate it if he only

went dangling along after his wife! But he loves me best of all. So

don't deny it."

"Oh, I don't anticipate his eloping with the doctor," said Lady Oxted.

Outside the evening was fast falling. It was now a little after sunset,

and, as a year ago, a young moon, silver and slim, was climbing the

sky, where still lingered the reflected fire from the west in ribbons

and feathers of rosy cloud. But to-night no mist, low hanging and

opaque, fit cover for crouching danger, hung over lake and lawn; the air

was crisp with autumnal frost, the hoarse tumult from the sluice subdued

and low after a long St. Martin's summer. The four men--Jim, servantlike

and respectful, little distance from the rest--had left the churchyard

and strolled slowly in the direction of the stable and the house.

Opposite the stable gate Jim would have turned in, but Harry detained

him.

"No, Jim," he said, "come with us a little farther," and like man and

man, not master and groom, he put his arm through that of the other.

Then, by an instinctive movement, the doctor and Geoffrey closed up

also, and thus linked they walked by the edge of the lake, and paused

together at the sluice.

"And it was here," said Harry, "that one day the sluice broke, and down

I went. Eh, a bad half hour!"

"Yes, my lord," sad Jim, grown suddenly bold, "and here it was that Mr.

Geoffrey jumped in of a black night after a black villain."

"And somewhere here it is," said Geoffrey, "that the Luck lies. How low

the lake is! I have never seen it so low."

They had approached to the very margin of the water, where little

ripples, children of the breeze at sunset, broke and laughed on the

steep sides of ooze discovered by the drought. Their sharp edges were

caught by the fires overhead, and turned to scrolls of liquid flame.

"And that was the end of the Luck," said the doctor.

"The Luck!" cried Harry. "It was the curse that drove us all mad. I

would sooner keep a cobra in the house than that thing. Madness and

crime and death were its gifts. Ah, if I had guessed--if I had only

guessed!"

Even as he spoke, his eye caught a steadfast gleam that shone from the

edge of the sunken water. For a moment he thought that it was but one of

the runes of flame that played over the reflecting surface of the lake,

but this was steady, not suddenly kindled and consumed. Then in a flash

the truth of the matter was his: the leather case had rotted and fallen

away in the water. Here, within a foot of the edge of the lake, lay his

Luck.

He disjoined himself from the others, took one step forward and bent

down. With a reluctant cluck the mud gave up the jewel, and he held it

high, growing each moment more resplendent as the ooze dripped sullenly

from it. The great diamonds awoke, they winked and blazed, sunset and

moon and evening star were reflected there, and who knows what authentic

fires of hell? There was a glow of sapphire, a glimmer of pearl, a gleam

of gold. But two steps more took Harry on to the stone slab that covered

the sluice, and there on the scene of one of its crimes he laid the

priceless thing. Then, as a man with his heel crushes the life out of

some poisonous creeping horror, he stamped and stamped on it, and

stamped yet again. This way and that flew the jewels; diamond and

sapphire were dust; the pearls, unbroken, leaped like flicked peas, some

into the lake, others into the outflowing thunder of the sluice. Then,

taking the crumbled and shapeless remnant, he flung it far into mid

water.

"And the curse is gone from the house!" he cried.

THE END