"Yes. I see. It hangs together, certainly, and it is quite a feasible

explanation. But what about the nurse? She would be the one against whom

Tochatti might be expected to wreak her spite----"

"Yes, but you see Nurse Trevor was only a bird of passage, so to speak.

She had come down here from a private nursing home in Birmingham, and

had just finished nursing a case when I wanted her; and after Cherry was

better she returned to Birmingham; so that the woman would probably have

had a good deal of trouble in getting on her track."

"Quite so. You, being at hand, were a more likely victim. Upon my soul,

it almost looks as though you were right. Still, even this does not

explain why she should ruin Chloe's life."

"No, I admit that. But don't you think if we could bring this last

crime--for it is a crime--home to the Italian woman we could wring a

confession out of her concerning the first series of letters?"

"Yes, that is quite possible. The question is, How are we going to bring

it home to her? At present we have no clue beyond the specialist's

opinion that the writer is a foreigner."

"No, and it's going to be a hard nut to crack," said Anstice

thoughtfully. "But it shall be cracked all the same. What do you say to

taking Mrs. Carstairs into our confidence, Sir Richard? Of course the

idea will be a shock to her at first; but if the matter could be cleared

up, think what a difference it would make to her!"

"Yes, indeed!" Sir Richard agreed heartily. "And to her husband as well.

You know, Major Carstairs is a man with a rather peculiar code of

honour; and you must not run away with the idea that because he refuses

to believe in his wife's innocence he is necessarily a narrow-minded

or--or callous person."

"I don't," said Anstice quickly. "By the way I've not told you all that

happened the day I was in town. By a curious coincidence I met Major

Carstairs----"

"What, is he in England again?"

"Yes." Anstice related the particulars of the meeting between them, and

repeated, so far as he could remember it, the substance of the

subsequent conversation in the club. "So you see, Sir Richard, Major

Carstairs is not only ready, but longing, to be convinced of his wife's

innocence in the matter."

"Good! That's capital!" Sir Richard beamed. "If once Chloe can be led to

understand that her husband will believe in her one day she will be

ready to help us to prove her innocence. You know I have sometimes

thought that if she had taken up a rather more human, more feminine

attitude, had relinquished the pride which forbade her to protest loudly

against the injustice which was done her, she might have been better off

in the end. It is very hard fighting for a woman who won't fight for

herself; and that idea of hers that if her own personal character were

not enough to prove her blameless of so vile a charge nothing else was

worth trying--well, it was the attitude of conscious innocence, no

doubt, but it was certainly above the heads of a conscientious, but

particularly unintelligent jury!"

He put down the stump of his cigar, which unlike Anstice he had smoked

to the end, and looked at the other man with a kindly eye.

"Look here, Anstice, why shouldn't we go--you and I--to visit Mrs.

Carstairs now?"

"Now?" Anstice was somewhat taken aback at the proposal.

"Yes. Why not? There's no time like the present. It is barely six

o'clock, and she will certainly be at home."

"But--won't she be at church?" Anstice felt suddenly unwilling to go

into the matter with the mistress of Cherry Orchard.

"Not she! Don't you know Chloe only goes to church once in a blue moon?"

Sir Richard laughed breezily. "I don't blame her--I expect she feels she

owes Providence a grudge--but anyway she will be at home to-night.

And--another inducement--Tochatti will almost certainly be at _her_

church. Those Catholics are a queer lot," said Sir Richard, who was a

Protestant of the old school. "They will cheat you and lie to you--aye,

and half murder you, on a Saturday night--and turn up at Mass without

fail on Sunday morning!"

"Yes, I know Tochatti does go to the Roman Catholic chapel at night,"

owned Anstice rather reluctantly. "Well, sir, if you really think the

moment is propitious let us go by all means. After all, it is just

possible Mrs. Carstairs may have had suspicions of Tochatti herself."

"Yes. I remember Iris often used to say she distrusted the woman--don't

know why. I never paid much attention to her caprices," said Sir Richard

with a smile; and Anstice made haste to seize the opportunity thus

offered.

"Ah--by the way, what news have you of your daughter?" He could not call

her by the name he hated. "She is still in Egypt, I suppose?"

"Yes. She and Bruce are somewhere in the Fayoum at present--he has been

engaged on some irrigation job for a rich Egyptian of sorts, and he and

Iris have been camping out in the desert--quite a picnic they seem to

have had."

"Really?" For the life of him he could not speak naturally; but Sir

Richard was merciful and ignored his strained tone.

"They sent me some photographs--snapshots--last week," said Sir Richard.

"Would you care to see them? I have them here somewhere."

He opened a drawer as he spoke, and after rummaging in the contents for

a few moments drew out half a dozen small prints which he handed to

Anstice, saying:

"Amateur, of course--but quite good, all the same. Oh, by the way"--he

spoke with elaborate carelessness--"how did you come? Are you walking,

or have you the car?"

"The car? No, I walked--wanted exercise," said Anstice rather vaguely;

and Sir Richard nodded.

"Then we'll have out the little car, and you shall drive us over if you

will. And if you'll excuse me for a moment I'll just go and order it

round."

He waited for no reply, but bustled out of the room as though in sudden

haste; and left to himself Anstice turned over the little photographs he

held and studied them with eager eyes.

Four of them were of Iris--happy little studies of her in delightfully

natural poses. In one she was standing bare-headed beneath a tall

date-palm, shading her eyes with her hand as though looking for someone

across the expanse of sunny sand before her. In another she stood by the

edge of the Nile, in converse with a native woman who bore a _balass_ on

her head; and even the tiny picture was sufficiently large to bring out

the contrast between the slim, fair English girl in her white gown and

Panama hat and the dusky Egyptian, whose dark skin and closely-swathed

robes gave her the look of some Old Testament character, a look borne

out by the surroundings of reed-fringed river and plumy, tufted palms.

In the third photograph Iris was on horseback; but it was the fourth and

last which brought the blood to Anstice's brow, made his heart beat

quickly with an emotion in which delight, regret, wild happiness and

over-mastering sorrow fought for the predominance.

It was a photograph of Iris' head, nothing more; but it brought out

every separate charm with an art which seemed to bring the living girl

before the man who pored over the print with greedy eyes.

She was looking straight out from the photograph and in her face was

that look of half-laughing, half-wistful tenderness which Anstice knew

so well. Her lips were ever so slightly parted; and in her whole

expression was something so vital as to be almost startling, as though

some tinge of the sitter's personality had indeed been caught by the

camera and imprisoned for ever in the picture. It was Iris as Anstice

knew--and loved--her best: youth personified, yet with a womanliness, a

gracious femininity, which seemed to promise a more than commonly

attractive maturity.

And as he looked at the little picture, the presentment of the girl he

loved caught and imprisoned by the magic of the sun, Anstice felt the

full bitterness of his hopeless love surge over his soul in a flood

whose onrush no philosophy could stem. To him Iris would always be the

one desired woman in the world. No other woman, be she a hundred times

more beautiful, could ever fill the place held in his heart by this

grey-eyed girl. With her, life would have been a perpetual feast, a

lingering sacrament. Her companionship would have been sufficient to

turn the dull fare of ordinary life into the mysterious Bread and Wine

which only lovers know; and with her beside him there had been no

heights to which he might not have attained, no splendour of

achievement, of renown, even of renunciation, which might not have been

reached before the closing cadence which is death had ended,

irrevocably, the symphony of life.

But not for him was this one supreme glory, the glory of an existence

spent with her. She had chosen otherwise--for one fiercely rebellious

moment he told himself he had been a fool, and worse, to enter on that

infamous bargain with Bruce Cheniston--and henceforth he must put away

all thoughts of her, must banish his dreams to that mysterious region

where our lost hopes lie--never, so far as we can see, to come to

fruition; unless, as some have thought, there shall be in another world

a great and marvellous country where lost causes shall be retrieved,

forlorn hopes justified, and the thousand and one pitiful mistakes we

make in our earthly blindness rectified at last.

* * * * *

The door opened suddenly, and Sir Richard's voice smote cheerily on his

ears.

"I've got the car, Anstice, and if you are ready----"

Anstice hastily replaced the photographs, face downwards on the table,

and turned to Sir Richard with a trace of confusion in his manner.

"The car there? Oh, yes, I'm ready. You would like me to drive?"

"If you will--then Fletcher can stop at home. You'll come back to dinner

with me, of course."

With some haste Anstice excused himself; and after a courteous

repetition of the invitation Sir Richard did not press the matter.

* * * * *

Mrs. Carstairs was at home, and alone; and in a moment the two men were

ushered into her pretty drawing-room, where she sat, book in hand, over

a dancing wood-fire.

She looked up in some surprise as the door opened to admit visitors; but

on seeing Sir Richard she rose with a welcoming smile.

"Sir Richard! How good of you to take pity on me on a day like this!"

She greeted the old man with almost daughterly affection; and then

turned to Anstice with a rather forced expression of cordiality.

"You, too, Dr. Anstice! How sorry Cherry will be to have missed you!"

"Is she in bed, then?"

"Yes, I'm sorry to say she was a naughty girl and was put to bed

immediately after tea!" She laughed a little, and Anstice asked,

smiling, what had been the extent of Cherry's latest misdemeanour.

"Oh, nothing very serious," said Chloe lightly. "It was really to soothe

Tochatti's wounded feelings that I had to banish the poor child. It

seems that one day last week, while out walking with Tochatti, Cherry

noticed a house in the village with all its blinds down; and on

inquiring the reason Tochatti informed her that someone was dead in the

house; further entering, so I gather, into full details as to the manner

in which Catholics decorate the death-chamber."

"Oh?" Anstice looked rather blank. "But I don't see----"

"Well, it seems the idea fired Cherry's imagination; and this morning,

when Tochatti returned from High Mass about noon, she found the blinds

pulled down in all the front windows of the house!"

"The little monkey!" Sir Richard laughed. "I'll wager the woman got a

fright!"

"She certainly did, and matters were not improved by Cherry coming to

meet her with her face quite wet with tears--you know Cherry is a born

actress--and begging her, between sobs, to come upstairs softly as

someone was dead!"

"Someone? She did not specify who it was?"

"No--or if she did Tochatti did not understand; but when she got into

the nursery she found an elaborately conceived representation of a

Catholic death-bed--flowers, bits of candle, and so on; and Cherry's

very biggest doll--the one you gave her, by the way, Dr.

Anstice--enacting the part of the corpse!"

Even Anstice's mood was not proof against the humour of the small

child's pantomime; and both he and Sir Richard laughed heartily.

"And Tochatti took it amiss?" Sir Richard put the question amid his

laughter.

"Yes. It seems she had really had a bad fright; and on finding Cherry in

tears she never doubted that some tragedy had occurred!"

"So you had to punish the poor mite for her realism!"

"Yes. Tochatti waited for me to return--I was out motoring--and then

hauled the culprit before me; and although I really didn't see much harm

in poor little Cherry's joke I was obliged, in order to pacify Tochatti,

to sentence her to go to bed early--a special punishment on Sunday,

when, as a rule, she sits up quite late!"

"I almost wonder," said Anstice slowly, "that Tochatti, devoted as she

is to Cherry, could bring herself to give the child away. One would have

expected her to hush up any small misdeeds, not dwell upon them to the

powers that be."

Chloe looked at him with a hint of cynicism in her eyes.

"Even Tochatti is human," she said, "and when one has had a fright one's

natural impulse, on being reassured, is to scold somebody. Besides,

Tochatti, in her way, is implacable. She never forgives what she really

considers an injury."

These words, fitting in so curiously with their conversation a little

earlier, caused the men to glance surreptitiously at one another; but

Chloe, whose eyes were as sharp as her wits, intercepted the look.

"Sir Richard, why do you and Dr. Anstice look at one another?" She put

the question directly, with her usual frankness; and Sir Richard met

candour with candour.

"I will tell you in a moment, Chloe. First of all, I will admit that our

visit here to-night was made with a purpose. We came here to ask you one

or two questions which I feel sure you will answer as fully as

possible."

"Certainly I will." Her manner had lost its animation and once more she

wore the marble mask which as a rule hid the real woman from the world's

gaze. "But won't you sit down? And if a cigarette will help you in your

cross-examination----"

She sat down herself as she spoke, and Sir Richard followed her example;

but Anstice remained standing on one side of the fireplace; and after a

glance at his face Chloe did not repeat her invitation.

Rather to Sir Richard's surprise Chloe did not wait for him to begin

questioning her; but put a question to him on her own account.

"Sir Richard, has your visit anything to do with certain letters

received lately by several people in Littlefield?"

Both the men, genuinely taken aback, stared at her in silence; and with

a faint smile she proceeded quietly.

"Well, _I_ have heard of those letters, anyway. In fact"--she paused

dramatically before making her _coup_--"I've received one myself!"

"You have?" Anstice's voice was full of dismay.

"Yes. And I gather, from a short conversation I had with Mr. Carey last

evening, that there have been several more of the things flying about

this week."

"Well"--Sir Richard looked rather helplessly at Anstice--"in that case

there is no need to make a mystery of it. Yes, Chloe, we did call here

to-night to talk over those abominable letters, and to see if you can

possibly help us to follow up a rather extraordinary clue."

"A clue!" Chloe's eyes suddenly blazed.

"Yes. That is to say--possible clue." Sir Richard hedged a little. "But

Anstice can tell you the story better than I can."

"Will you, please, tell me, Dr. Anstice?" She turned to him, grave again

now; and he complied at once, giving her a full account of his visit to

Clive, and relating at length the expert's opinion on the letters.

She heard him out in silence; her almond-shaped eyes on his face; and

Anstice omitted nothing of the happenings of that day in town, save his

unexpected meeting with her husband in Piccadilly.

When he had finished Chloe sat quite still for a moment, saying nothing;

and neither of the men dreamed of hurrying her.

At last:

"But, Dr. Anstice--_Tochatti_! Why, she has been with me for years--ever

since I was a child like Cherry!"

Her voice was so full of incredulity that for a moment both her hearers

wondered suddenly how they could have accepted the possibility of

Tochatti's guilt so readily. But Anstice's common sense reasserted

itself immediately; and he knew that the mere fact of Mrs. Carstairs'

unbelief did not really materially alter the main issue. It was natural

she should be surprised, unwilling to believe evil of the woman who,

whatever her faults, had served her faithfully; but this was no time for

sentimentality; and he replied to Chloe's last speech rather

uncompromisingly.

"Even the fact that she has been with you for years does not preclude

the possibility of her doing this thing," he said. "Of course I can

understand you would hesitate to believe her capable of such wickedness,

but----"

"But why should Tochatti wish to work me harm?" Her blue eyes were full

of a kind of hurt wonder. "And these last letters directed against you,

Dr. Anstice--why on earth should she have any spite against you?"

"Dr. Anstice tells me she much resented the presence of the hospital

nurse in the house," chimed in Sir Richard. "Of course she has always

been absurdly jealous of any claim to Cherry's affection--even Iris

noticed that and used to say she hardly dared to pet the child before

Tochatti."

"Yes." Chloe assented reluctantly. "That is quite true. She has always

been jealous; and I confess I once or twice saw her look at Dr. Anstice

with a--well, rather malignant expression. But I thought it was only a

passing jealousy; and judged it best to take no notice."

"Of course all this is very largely conjectural," said Anstice slowly.

"Such evidence as we have is purely circumstantial; and wouldn't hang a

cat. But I admit that Mr. Clive's suggestion carries weight with me; and

it is certainly odd that he should have mentioned an Italian as the

possible author of the letters when there is a person of that

nationality--more or less--in the house."

"Yes. I can see that for myself." Chloe's voice was low. "But to be

quite candid, I don't see how it would be possible to bring the letters

home to Tochatti. To begin with, she can't write."

"Or pretends she can't. You must remember, Mrs. Carstairs, we have only

the woman's own word for that."

"I certainly never remember seeing her with a pen in her hand," said

Chloe, "though of course that's no real proof. But if this horrible idea

is correct how are you going to prove it? You don't intend to tackle

Tochatti herself, I suppose?"

"Not for the world," said Anstice hastily. "That would be a fatal

mistake. A woman who is clever enough to carry on an intrigue of this

kind without incurring suspicion is sufficiently clever to answer any

direct questioning satisfactorily. No. If Tochatti is the culprit--mind

you I only say if--she must be caught with guile, made to commit herself

somehow, or be taken red-handed in the act----" He broke off suddenly;

and the other two looked at him in surprise.

"Well, Anstice, what's struck you now?" Sir Richard's tone was eager.

"Only this. Is your writing-table always open to access, Mrs. Carstairs?

I mean, you don't lock up your ink and pens, and so on?"

"No," she said, catching the drift of his questions at once. "Anyone in

the house could sit down here to write and be sure of finding everything

at hand."

"Just so--and unless the person who wrote was considerate enough to use

the blotting-paper you would not know anyone had touched your things."

"No--unless they were left strewn untidily about."

"Which they would not be. Now, Mrs. Carstairs, to speak quite plainly,

what is there to prevent Tochatti, or any other member of your

household, creeping downstairs at the dead of night and making use of

those pens and sheets of paper which you so obligingly leave about for

anyone to play with?"

"Nothing," she said with a smile. "But unless you propose that I should

sit up behind the curtains all night to see if some mysterious person

does creep down----"

"That's just what I was going to propose," he said coolly. "At least I

wasn't suggesting that you should be the person; but you might allow

someone else to sit there on your behalf. You see, if Tochatti is really

the mysterious writer she would not like to run the risk of keeping pens

and ink in her own room where some prying eyes might light upon them

sooner or later. It would be much less incriminating to use another

person's tools, and it is quite possible many, if not all, of those

beastly letters were written at this very table!"

The conviction in his tone brought forth a protest from Chloe.

"Dr. Anstice, have you really made up your mind that my poor Tochatti is

the criminal? It seems to me that your evidence is very flimsy--after

all some uneducated person might quite easily put those inverted commas

wrong without being a foreigner; and I still disbelieve in Tochatti's

power to write. Besides"--she paused a moment--"she has always served me

with so much devotion. She is not perfect, I know, but none of us is

that; and I have never, never seen anything in her manner which would

lead me to suppose her to be the hypocrite, the ungrateful, heartless

creature you seem to imply she is."

Listening to Chloe's words, watching the clear colour flood the marble

whiteness of her cheeks, Anstice was struck by the curious contrast

between this generous championship of a woman who had served her and her

utter indifference and lack of all protest when it was her own innocence

which was in question. In defence of her servant she spoke warmly,

vehemently, unwilling apparently, to allow even mere acquaintances to

look upon the woman as unworthy; yet she had rarely expressed in words

her own entire innocence of the disgraceful charge which had been made

against her; and had suffered the cruel injustice meted out to her

without allowing its iron to enter into her soul.

And as he watched and listened Anstice told himself that there was

something of nobility in this reluctance to accept her own acquittal at

the cost of another's condemnation; yet his determination to see her

righted never wavered; and he answered her impassioned speech in a cool

and measured tone.

"Mrs. Carstairs, I think you will agree with me that the person who was

capable of carrying out such a gigantic piece of deceit, carrying it

through to the extent of allowing an innocent person to be found guilty

for her offence, must be capable of a good deal more in the way of

hypocrisy. I don't say for certain that your maid has written these

letters; I don't yet know enough to convict her, or anyone else; but I

do say that if it were she who stood by and allowed you to suffer for

her wickedness, well, she is fully capable of living with you on terms

of apparently, the most respectful devotion--and hating you in her heart

all the while."

"But why should she hate me?" Chloe's tone expressed an almost childish

wonder; and Sir Richard, who had been watching her uneasily, rose from

his seat and patted her shoulder reassuringly.

"There, there, don't distress yourself, my dear!" His tone was fatherly.

"After all, we only want to clear up this mystery for your sake. I

daresay Anstice would be quite willing to let the matter drop if he

alone were concerned----"

"Ah! I had forgotten that!" She turned to him with contrition in her

blue eyes. "Dr. Anstice, please forgive me! In my selfishness I was

quite forgetting that you were a victim of this unknown person's spite!

Of course the matter must be sifted to the very bottom; and if Tochatti

is indeed guilty she must be punished."

"I think you are quite right, Chloe." Sir Richard spoke with unexpected

decision. "For all our sakes the matter must be cleared up. You see"--he

hesitated--"there are others to be considered besides ourselves."

"My husband, for one," said Chloe unexpectedly. "I heard from him this

morning--he is back in England again now."

"Mrs. Carstairs"--Anstice, feeling desperately uncomfortable, broke into

the conversation abruptly--"may I go upstairs and say good-night to

Cherry? You know I got into serious trouble for not going up the last

time I was here."

She turned to him, smiling.

"Of course you may, Dr. Anstice. I know Cherry would be heart-broken to

hear you had gone without seeing her. You know the way?"

"Yes, thanks." He had grown familiar with the house during the weeks of

Cherry's illness. "I won't stay long--and I'll not wake her if she's

asleep."

She was not asleep, however; and her face lighted with pleasure as

Anstice stole quietly in.

"Oh, do come in, my dear!" She sat up in bed, a quaint little figure

with two thick brown plaits, tied with cherry-coloured ribbons, over her

shoulders. "I'm just about fed up with this stupid old bed!"

She thumped her pillows resentfully; and Anstice, coming up, sat down

beside her, and beat up the offending pillows with the mock professional

touch which Cherry adored.

"That better, eh?"

"Rather!" She leaned back luxuriously. "Wasn't it a shame sending me to

bed to-day? And I hadn't really done nothing!" The intensity of the

speech called for the double negation.

"Well, I don't know what you call nothing," returned Anstice, smiling.

"Apparently you'd given poor Tochatti a terrible fright----"

"Serve her right," said Cherry placidly. "She shouldn't have been so

silly as to think any _real_ person was dead. She might have known all

the servants would have been howling on the doorstep _then_!"

The tone in which she made this remarkable statement was too much for

Anstice's gravity; and he gave way to a fit of unrestrained laughter

which mightily offended his small friend.

"I don't see anything to laugh at," she observed icily. "Seems to me

people being dead ought to make you cry 'stead of laugh."

"Quite so, Cherry," returned Anstice, wiping his eyes ostentatiously.

"But you see in this case there wasn't anybody dead--at least, so I

understood from Mrs. Carstairs."

"Yes, there was, then," returned Cherry, still unforgiving. "I'd gone

and killed my best-b'loved Lady Daimler"--christened from her mother's

car--"on purpose to make a pretty death-bed for Tochatti--and then she

simply flew into a temper--oh, a most _dreadful_ temper, my dear!" At

the thought of Tochatti's anger she forgave Anstice's lesser offence,

and took him once more into her favour.

"That was too bad, especially as I'm sure Tochatti doesn't, often lose

her temper with you," said Anstice with some guile; and Cherry looked at

him gravely, without speaking.

"Not with me," she announced presently. "But Tochatti gets awful cross

sometimes. She used to be fearful angry with Nurse Marg'ret. Where's

Nurse Marg'ret now, my dear?"

"Don't know, Cherry. I suppose she is nursing someone else by this time.

Why do you want to know?"

"'Cos I like Nurse Marg'ret," said Cherry seriously. "Tochatti didn't.

She made a wax dollie of her once, and she only does that when she

doesn't like peoples."

"A wax dollie?" Anstice was honestly puzzled. "My dear child, what do

you mean?"

"She did," said Cherry stoutly. "She maded an image like what they have

in their churches, because I saw her do it--out of a candle, and then

she got a great long pin and stuck it in the gas and runned it into the

little dollie." As Cherry grew excited her speech became slightly

unintelligible. "And I know it was Nurse Marg'ret 'cos she wrote a great

big 'M' on a bit of paper and pinned it on to show who it was meant

for."

Her words made an instant and very unexpected impression on her hearer;

not alone as a revelation of Tochatti's mediæval fashion of revenging

herself upon an unconscious rival--though this method of revenge was

amazing in the twentieth century--but as a strangely apt confirmation of

those doubts and suspicions which had been gathering round the Italian

woman in Anstice's mind during the last few days.

If Cherry had spoken truly--and there was no reason to think the child

was lying--then Tochatti's supposed inability to write was an error; and

once that fact were proved it should not, surely, be difficult to

unravel the mystery which had already caused so much unhappiness.

But first he must make sure.

"Tell me, Cherry"--he spoke lightly--"how did you see all this? Surely

Tochatti didn't show you what she was doing?"

"No." For a second Cherry looked abashed; then her spirit returned to

her and she spoke boldly. "It was one night when Nurse Marg'ret had

gone to bed--she was awful tired, and Tochatti said she'd sit up with

me ... and I was cross, 'cos I didn't want her, I wanted Nurse Marg'ret,"

said Cherry honestly, "so I wouldn't speak to her, though she tried ever

so hard to make me, and she thought I'd gone to sleep, and I heard her

say something in 'talian.... I 'spect it was something naughty, 'cos she

sort of hissed it, like a nasty snake once did at me when I was a teeny

baby in Injia," said Cherry lucidly, "and then she looked up to be sure

I was asleep, so I shutted my eyes ever so tight, and then she made the

wax dollie and I watched her do it." Wicked Cherry chuckled gleefully at

the remembrance.

"But the letter 'M'--how do you know she wrote that?" Anstice put the

question very quietly.

"'Cos she couldn't find nothin' to write with, so she crept into Nurse

Marg'ret's room next through mine and came back with her pen--one of

those things what has little ink-bottles inside them," said Cherry,

referring, probably, to the nurse's beloved "Swan." "And I watched her

ever so close, 'cos I wanted to see what she was going to do, and she

wrote a big 'M' on a bit of paper and pinned it into the dollie----"

"Into?" For a moment Anstice was puzzled.

"Yes, 'cos you see the dollie was all soft and squeezy," explained

Cherry obligingly, "and it hadn't got no clothes on to pin it to, so it

had to go into the soft part of the dollie."

"I see. But"--Anstice was still puzzled--"why do you say the dollie was

meant for Nurse Margaret? Mightn't it have been somebody else?"

"No--'cos when Tochatti hates anyone she makes wax dollies end sticks

pins into them," returned Cherry calmly. "I know, 'cos she once told me

about a girl she knew what wanted somebody to die, and she did that and

the person died."

"Oh, my dear little Cherry, what nonsense!" Anstice, whose mother had

been an Irishwoman, had heard of the superstition before, had even known

an old crone in a little Irish cabin high up in the mountains who had,

so it was said, practised the rite with success; but to hear the unholy

gospel from Cherry's innocent lips was distinctly distasteful; and

instinctively he tried to shake her faith in Tochatti's teaching.

"'Tisn't nonsense--at least I don't think so," said Cherry, rather

dubiously. "Of course Nurse Marg'ret didn't die.... I don't think she

even got ill--but p'raps Tochatti didn't stick the pins in far 'nuff."

"Well, I'm quite sure if she stuck in all the pins out of your

cherry-tree pincushion it wouldn't affect Nurse Margaret or anybody

else," said Anstice, putting his arm round her shoulders as he spoke.

"And you really mustn't get such silly notions into your head, Cherry

Ripe!"

"That's what Iris used to call me," said Cherry, burrowing her head

contentedly into his neck. "I wish she was back, don't you, my dear?

Somehow things don't seem half such fun without Iris--I can't think what

she wanted to go and marry Uncle Bruce for, can you?"

"There are many things I can't understand, little Cherry," said Anstice

with a smile whose sadness was hidden from the child. "But I agree with

you that it was much nicer when Iris"--he might venture here to use the

beloved little name--"was at home. But we can't always have the people

we like with us, can we?"

"No--or I'd always have you, my dear," said Cherry with unexpected

though rather sleepy affection; and as Anstice, touched by the words,

kissed her upturned little face, her pretty brown eyes closed

irresistibly.

"Good-night, Cherry! Pleasant dreams!" He laid her back deftly on her

pillows and the child was asleep almost before he had time to reach the

door.

But as he went back to the drawing-room, eager to tell Mrs. Carstairs

and Sir Richard of the revelations so innocently made by Cherry, he

wondered whether at last the mystery were really within reach of a

solution.

Cherry's story, although fragmentary and confused, was sufficiently

coherent to rank as evidence; and although he could hardly credit

Tochatti with a genuine belief in the old superstition of the wax image

he reminded himself she was half a Southerner; and that in some of the

mediæval Italian towns and cities superstitions still thrive, in spite

of the teaching of the modern world.

And if Cherry's story were true----

"Out of the mouths of babes"--he murmured to himself as he went down the

shallow oak stairs--"strange if, after all, the child should be the one

to clear up the whole mysterious affair! At any rate, we are a step

further on the way to elucidation; and from the bottom of my heart I

hope Mrs. Carstairs may be righted at last!"

And with this aspiration on his lips he entered the drawing-room and

related the substance of his unexpectedly profitable interview with the

unsuspicious Cherry to an interested and enthralled audience of two.

CHAPTER VI

It did not take Anstice long to discover that the accusation against

him--an accusation all the more difficult to refute because of the

half-truth on which it was based--had been disseminated throughout

Littlefield with a thoroughness which implied a determination on the

part of the anonymous writer to leave no prominent resident in the

neighbourhood in ignorance of Anstice's supposed cowardice on that

bygone day in India.

He could not help noticing as he went here and there on his daily

business that some of his patients looked askance at him, although they

did their best to hide their new and rather disconcerting interest in

him. So far as he knew, none of his patients forsook him for another and

less notorious doctor, but he was keenly alive to the altered manner of

some of those whom he attended, and although at present it was evident

that he was not yet condemned--after all, no fair-minded person condemns

another solely on the evidence of a tale-bearer who is ashamed to put

his name to the stories he relates--yet Anstice felt with a quick

galling of his pride that he was on probation, as it were, that those

with whom he came in contact were considering what verdict they should

pass upon him. And although his indifference to that verdict equalled

Mrs. Carstairs' former indifference to the opinion of these same

neighbours, his soul was seared with the thought that his unhappy

story--or rather a garbled version of it--was common property among

those men and women whom he had served faithfully to the best of his

ability during the eighteen months he had spent in Littlefield.

On one thing he was fully determined. So soon as this mystery should be

solved--and he fancied a solution was no longer impossible--he would

leave the place, resign the position which had become tedious,

unbearably tedious in its cramped monotony, and seek some other place,

in England or abroad, where he might have leisure to pursue those

studies in research which had been so ruthlessly cut short by his own

most unhappy miscalculation.

True, he no longer cared for fame. The possibility of some renown

crowning his toil no longer danced before his eyes with alluring

promises. The part of him which had craved success, recognition, the

youthful, vital part of him was dead, slain by the same bullet which had

ended poor Hilda Ryder's happy life; and although he was beginning to

look forward to a new and less cramped career than this which now

shackled him, the joyous, optimistic anticipation of youth was sadly

missing.

It was impossible that once at work the old interest in his subject

might awake; but now he would work for the work's sake only, for the

sake of the distraction it might afford him; and though through all his

troubles he had preserved, at bottom, the quick humanity which had led

him to choose medicine as his career, he was thinking less now of his

old ambition to find a means of alleviation for one of the greatest ills

of mankind than of the zest which the renewed study of the subject might

restore to his own overshadowed life.

Yet although he was determined to turn his back as soon as he decently

might on Littlefield and its people, with the perversity of mankind he

was equally determined to see them brought to confusion before he left

them--see them impelled to admit that in the case of Mrs. Carstairs they

had been unjust, prejudiced, and, most galling of all, misled; and the

question of his own vindication was only a secondary matter after all.

One day he heard, casually, that Major Carstairs was expected at Cherry

Orchard, and when he entered his house at lunch-time he found a note

from Chloe asking him to call upon her between tea and dinner and

remain, if possible, for the latter meal. In any case she asked him to

come for half an hour, at least, and he rang her up at once and fixed

six o'clock for the time of his call upon her.

At six accordingly he entered the drawing-room, and found Major

Carstairs in possession, as it were, standing on the hearth-rug with the

air of a man at home in his own house. Before Anstice had time to wonder

how this situation had arisen Chloe advanced, smiling, and held out her

hand.

"Good-evening, Dr. Anstice. I think you and my husband have met

already."

In these words she announced her cognizance of that meeting in

Piccadilly a few days earlier, and Anstice acknowledged the supposition

to be correct, relieved to see by her smile that she did not grudge his

former secrecy.

"Yes, by Jove! Dr. Anstice came to the rescue or I'd have had a nasty

fall on the pavement," said Major Carstairs genially. "And by the way, I

declare I'm quite jealous of your supremacy with Cherry! She does

nothing but talk of you, and I hear she infinitely prefers your car to

her mother's!"

"Yes, Cherry and I are very good friends," said Anstice with a smile.

"We had a slight difference last week because I wouldn't allow her to

drive that same car; but Cherry is always amenable to reason, and when I

pointed out to her that she had no licence, and might possibly be

reported by some interfering police-constable and get us both into

trouble she gave in like a lamb. By the way, Mrs. Carstairs, where is

she to-night? Not in disgrace again, I hope?"

"No, she's as good as gold to-day because she is to sit up to dinner

to-night," said Chloe, smiling--Anstice thought her smiles came more

readily than usual this evening. "I believe she is making an elaborate

toilette upstairs just now; and I admit I was glad to have her occupied,

for I wanted, if you and my husband agree, to talk over the matters of

the letters--and Tochatti."

For a second Anstice felt uncomfortable, but Major Carstairs probably

noted his discomfort, for he turned to him with a sincerity there was no

doubting.

"Look here, Dr. Anstice, you have been--luckily for us, if I may say

so--mixed up in this most unsavoury affair, and from what my wife tells

me I believe you are going to be the means of clearing it up--a

consummation most devoutly to be wished."

Anstice's embarrassment vanished before the soldier's frankness.

"I only hope you may be right, Major Carstairs," he said, looking the

other man squarely in the face. "Personally, since I intended to leave

Littlefield before long in any case, these wretched slanders don't

affect me much. The few friends I have made in this place are not likely

to give credence to the rumour which has been spread broadcast in the

last week or two--and for the rest----"

"I understand your indifference to the opinion of 'the rest,'" said

Major Carstairs, smiling, "but I think it will be more satisfactory for

all of us when the affair is really cleared up. But won't you sit down?

Chloe tells me it is too late for tea--but you'll have a peg?"

"Not for me, thanks." Anstice was too intent on the matter in hand to

turn to side issues. "If you don't mind giving me your opinion on the

subject--do you think it possible that the woman Tochatti is the one to

blame?"

"Well----" Major Carstairs sat down as he spoke, and since Chloe had

already taken her accustomed seat in a corner of the big couch, Anstice

followed their joint example. "Personally I have never been able to

conquer a dislike, which I always put down as absolutely unjust and

uncharitable, for the woman. I know she has served my wife faithfully,

and her devotion to our little daughter has been beyond praise. But"--he

smiled rather deprecatingly--"even ten years in India haven't

apparently cured me of British insularity, and I have never liked

foreigners--especially half-breeds such as Tochatti, Italian on one

side, English on the other."

"Then you think it possible, at least, that she may be the culprit?"

"I do, quite possible. And I thank God from the bottom of my heart for

the bare possibility," returned Major Carstairs deliberately, and his

words and manner both served to assure Anstice that at last this man had

been brought to believe, wholeheartedly, in his wife's innocence.

Anstice never knew, either then or afterwards, exactly how the miracle

had come about. Indeed, so subtle are the workings of a man's heart, so

complex and incomprehensible the thoughts and motives which touch a soul

to finer issues, that it is quite possible Major Carstairs himself could

not have told how or when he first began to realize that his judgment

might well be at fault, that his own stern honesty and unflinching

integrity, which would not permit him to subscribe outwardly to a belief

which inwardly he did not hold, might after all have been

stumbling-blocks in the way of true understanding rather than the

righteous bulwarks which he had fancied them.

Probably the conviction that he had misjudged his wife had been stealing

imperceptibly into Major Carstairs' mind during many lonely days spent

on the Indian Frontier; and though he could never have stated with any

degree of certainty the exact moment in which he understood, at last,

that his wife, the woman he had married, the mother of his child, was

incapable of the action which a censorious and unkind world had been

ready to attribute to her, when once that conviction entered his honest,

logical, if somewhat stubborn mind, it had found a home there for ever.

His chance meeting with Anstice, whose belief in Mrs. Carstairs was too

genuine to be doubted for an instant, had come at an opportune moment,

setting, as it were, the seal on his own changed judgment; and being

essentially a man of honour, upright and just to a fault, he deemed it

not only a duty but a privilege to come directly to his wife, and while

asking her pardon for his unjustifiable suspicions, assure her of his

firm determination to see her innocence made manifest before all the

world.

* * * * *

Something of this Anstice guessed as he watched the interchange of

glances between husband and wife on this bitter November evening, and he

told himself that few women would have accepted their husband's tardy

reparation as this woman had done. It did not need a magician to know

that husband and wife were truly reunited, and though some might have

been inclined to label Chloe Carstairs poor-spirited in that she had

apparently forgiven her husband's mistrust so easily, Anstice told

himself that Chloe was a woman in a thousand, that this very forgiveness

and lack of any natural resentment showed the unalloyed fineness, the

pure gold of her character, as nothing else could have done.

* * * * *

It was Chloe who broke the silence which followed Major Carstairs' last

words, and as he looked at her Anstice was struck suddenly by the change

in her appearance this evening. Where she had hitherto been cold,

impassive, indifferent, now she was warm, glowing, responsive. In her

pale cheeks was a most unusual wild-rose colour and her blue,

almond-shaped eyes held a light which made them look like two beautiful

sapphires shining in the sun.

When she spoke her rich, deep voice lost its undertone of melancholy,

and rang joyously, with the soft beauty of a 'cello's lower notes.

"You see, Dr. Anstice, your faith in me--for which I have never

attempted to thank you--is at last within measure of being justified!"

She smiled happily. "And although Tochatti has served me faithfully she

cannot be allowed to go on with this thing--if she be the one

responsible. The question is, How is it to be brought home to her?"

Thus encouraged Anstice again outlined the plan he had formerly

suggested--that a watch should be set during the night; but, as he had

half expected, Chloe did not give it her unqualified approval.

"No, Dr. Anstice." She spoke too gently to cause him offence. "I don't

think, honestly, I like the idea. Can't I speak openly, ask her quite

plainly why she has done this thing--what perverted notion of--well,

resentment she has against me which would lead her to act in this

manner?"

To Anstice's relief Major Carstairs vetoed this plan, unhesitatingly.

"No, Chloe, that is an absolutely impossible suggestion! As Dr. Anstice

says, guile must be met with guile, and the only way to catch this woman

is to take her absolutely red-handed. And if, as you seem to think, she

is likely to creep down in the night--well, it could do no harm to set a

watch."

"There is one reason against that delightfully simple plan of yours,"

objected Chloe. "Tochatti would not be likely to write any more of these

letters with you in the house, Leo. You see, it would be very serious

for her if _you_ encountered her at my writing-table in the night!"

Before Carstairs could reply Anstice spoke rather diffidently.

"I have just one suggestion to make, Major Carstairs. Am I right in

supposing you are staying down here to-night?"

A fleeting embarrassment was visible on the faces of both Major

Carstairs and his wife; but the former answered resolutely:

"Yes. I am certainly hoping to stay here."

"Well, if I might just make a suggestion, why not give out that you are

returning to town to-night and coming down to stay to-morrow or the next

day? Tochatti would probably, thinking this her last opportunity, make

haste to seize it and write another letter or two--possibly the

last--to-night."

"You mean give out that I am returning to town to-night; start, in fact,

in reality, and come back later, when the house is quiet?"

"Yes," said Anstice, wondering what the soldier thought of his amateur

strategy. "Then you--and anyone else you choose--could sit up here and

wait events."

"I admire the simplicity of your plan, Dr. Anstice," returned Carstairs

with an irrepressible laugh. "I've been called upon to exercise

diplomacy at times myself, but I don't think I ever hit on anything more

telling in the way of a plan than this charmingly simple one of yours!"

"You approve of it, then?" Anstice was in no wise offended by the

other's mirth.

"Highly--it's just the plan to appeal to me," said Carstairs, still

smiling infectiously; and Chloe rose from her couch and coming to his

chair seated herself on the arm and rested her hand on his shoulder.

"I know why the plan appeals to you, Leo! It recalls your schoolboy

days, when you pretended to go to bed and then stole out to skate by

moonlight!"

"Hush, hush, Chloe! Never tell tales out of school," commanded the Major

in mock alarm; but Anstice noticed how the man's brown fingers closed

round his wife's hand, and suddenly he felt as though this spectacle of

their reunion was too tantalizing to be pleasant to a sore heart like

his own.

He rose rather abruptly, and both the others looked at him with a little

surprise.

"You're not going, Anstice? Surely you'll stay to dinner? My little

daughter will be sorely disappointed if you run away now!"

"Do stay, Dr. Anstice!" Chloe rose too, and her eyes, like two beautiful

blue jewels, shone kindly into his. "Our scheme will have to be

discussed further, won't it? We mustn't take the field with an

ill-prepared plan, must we, Leo?"

"Indeed we must not," returned her husband quickly. "Especially as I was

going to ask a very big favour of you. Dr. Anstice! Seeing how more than

good you have been in interesting yourself in this affair, I have been

wondering whether you wouldn't conceivably like to be in at the death,

so to speak. In plain words, I was going to ask you if you would care to

be my fellow-conspirator in this nefarious plot we have hatched between

us!"

"You mean--will I sit up with you to-night?" Anstice spoke eagerly, and

Chloe smiled.

"Well, you're not annoyed by the suggestion, anyway! I needn't say I

should appreciate your company--though after all, it is a big thing to

ask a man of your calling to sacrifice the rest he must need pretty

badly!" He spoke rather dubiously.

"Oh, not a bit of it, Major Carstairs!" Anstice's eyes brightened at the

thought of the adventure. "In a matter of this kind two witnesses are

better than one; and there is always a chance that even a woman may turn

nasty when she finds herself cornered--especially one who is half a

foreigner," he added with a smile.

"Then you'll come? It's awfully good of you----"

"Not at all, sir. You forget I'm an interested party," said Anstice

quickly. "It is as much to my interest to clear the matter up as to

yours, now. Well, what about details? Where--and how--shall we meet, and

how do we get into the house without anyone knowing?"

"Ah, yes. That requires thought."

Major Carstairs rubbed his hands together gaily, and Chloe burst out

laughing.

"You two are nothing but schoolboys," she said joyously. "I believe you

are both looking forward to this midnight adventure! You'd be quite

disappointed if there were no need for your masterly plot after all!"

Anstice and Major Carstairs looked rather shamefacedly at one another;

but Chloe was merciful and restrained further mockery for the time.

"Well, now I will make my suggestion," she said. "Leave the house in the

usual way, by the front door; and come back, at whatever hour you agree

upon, to the window here. I will let you in myself, and not a soul need

know you have re-entered the house."

"Very well," Carstairs nodded. "One suggestion though. Leave the window

open--no one will see behind those curtains, and go to bed as usual

yourself. Depend upon it, if Tochatti is really the culprit, she will

take all means of satisfying herself that you are safely in bed before

she begins her work, and it would not do for her to find your room empty

at midnight."

Chloe paled a little, and when she spoke her voice was uneasy.

"Leo, do you really think Tochatti is so--so malicious? I can't bear to

think of her being with Cherry--she is with her almost night and day,

you know--if she is so dreadful, so dangerous a character----"

"You need not be afraid, Mrs. Carstairs." It was Anstice who spoke,

reassuringly. "The little one is quite safe with her, I am sure of that.

If it really does turn out that Tochatti has been to blame, I feel

convinced that we shall find she is not altogether responsible for her

actions----"

"But that's worse still!" Chloe's voice was really alarmed. "If she is

mad--a lunatic----"

"I did not mean quite that," said Anstice. "I meant--well, it is rather

a difficult subject to enter into at a moment's notice; but--have you

ever heard of a dual personality?"

"A dual personality?" She repeated the words, her white brow wrinkling

with the effort of concentration. "I think I know what you mean--a

person with two sides to his character, so to speak--of which first one

is in the ascendant and then the other?"

"Kind of Jekyll and Hyde business, what?" Major Carstairs knew his

Stevenson, and Anstice nodded.

"Well, something like that, though not so pronounced. There really are

such people, you know--it is not only a fantastic tale that a man may

lead a kind of double life, speaking in a spiritual and not a physical

sense. You don't call such people lunatics, nor are they, save in

extreme cases, criminals. But it is quite possible for a woman like

Tochatti to devote one half of herself to your service--and serve you

admirably!--and lead what seems in all respects an open and above-board

existence; and yet, through some kink in her character, stoop to an

action one would expect to find only in a woman of a thoroughly debased

nature."

He paused, but neither of his hearers spoke.

"It is as if a lower spirit entered into these people at times, driving

them to do things which in a normal state they would be quite incapable

of doing. You know the old Biblical theory of possession? Well, the same

thing, under another name, is to be met with to-day; and for my part,

when I come across the case of a person whose present behaviour

contradicts all the actions of his previous life, upsets all the data,

so to speak, which I have been able to gather of his conduct in the

past, well, I put it down, mentally, to that peculiar theory of

'possession' with which the Easterns in the time of Christ were

apparently perfectly familiar."

"As they are to-day," said Major Carstairs unexpectedly; and Anstice

looked gratified at the corroboration. "It is a strange theory, I own,

but after what I have seen in India I confess I find it perfectly

feasible."

"And you think my poor Tochatti may be a victim to this old form of

demonism?" Chloe addressed the question to Anstice, and he answered it

after a momentary hesitation.

"Well, it is too soon to make any sweeping statement of that kind, Mrs.

Carstairs, but I must acknowledge it is hard to reconcile the woman's

general behaviour with an action of this kind without some such theory.

However"--he glanced at the clock--"if you will excuse me I must really

get home. There will be all sorts of complaints from my surgery patients

if they are kept waiting!"

"One moment, Anstice! I take it you will come back to-night? Though

really it is a jolly big thing to ask...." Major Carstairs tone was

apologetic.

"Of course, and we must settle where we meet. But first, shouldn't we

let Tochatti know that you are not staying here to-night?"

"Why, yes." Chloe moved towards the boll. "I'll send for Cherry--that

will bring Tochatti--and you can allude to your departure then."

Three minutes later Tochatti appeared, in charge of the excited Cherry,

who flew at Anstice, and, quite regardless of her immaculately frilled

muslin dress, flung herself into his arms and kissed him

demonstratively.

"Oh, my dear, what _ages_ since I've seen you!" Her tone was a faithful

copy of the parlourmaid's greeting to a recent visitor to the kitchen.

"Are you going to stay to dinner? I do hope so, 'cos I'm going to sit up

and there's lovely things--lots of roasted pheasants and meringues all

filled with squelchy cream!"

"Alas, Cherry, I can't stop!" Anstice's comically regretful tone made

Chloe smile. "I shall have to go home and see my patients. And if I get

a chop----"

"_And_ a chipped potato, my dear," prompted Cherry.

"_And_ a chipped potato," concurred Anstice obediently, "I shall think

myself lucky! But I wish you hadn't told me there were to be lots of

pheasants!"

"They're for Daddy, speshully," said Cherry, "'cos he's got sick of

chickens in Injia--but I like the bready sauce and the little brown

crumbs best!"

"And that reminds me," said Major Carstairs, looking at his watch rather

ostentatiously, "I should be glad if you could put forward dinner a

little, Chloe. I must catch the nine-thirty to town."

"Oh, Daddy, you're not going to-night!" Cherry forsook Anstice for the

moment and clambered on to her father's knee. "You said you were going

to stop and you'd come and tell me stories in bed!"

"I did, and I don't like breaking my word to a lady," said Major

Carstairs seriously, "but I really must go back to town to-night, and

I'll come down to-morrow or the next day, and stay a long, long time!"

"You might tell Hagyard Major Carstairs will not be staying to-night,

Tochatti," said Chloe, turning to the woman, and Anstice's quick eyes

caught the look of relief compounded with something like surprise which

flashed across Tochatti's swarthy countenance.

"_Bene, Signora._" With a strange look at Anstice, a look which did not

escape the notice of the person at whom it was levelled, Tochatti

withdrew, and since further conversation was impossible in Cherry's

presence, Anstice made his farewells and went out to the car, escorted

by his host, who seized the opportunity to fix the details of the

evening's later meeting.

"You will leave the house about a quarter to nine, I suppose?" asked

Anstice. "Well, look here, why not come round to my place to fill in the

time until we can go back? We shall be alone, and unless I'm called

out--which I trust won't happen--we can have a quiet chat and a smoke."

"Right. I'll be at your place about nine, and if you're busy I can read

the paper, you know. Till then, _au revoir_!"

Anstice nodded and mounted to the steering seat, and Major Carstairs

went back into the house, wondering why the younger man's face wore so

sad an expression in repose.

"Of course that Indian affair was rather a facer, but the story's some

years old by now and one would think he'd have got over it. As decent a

fellow as I've ever met. But he seems altogether too old for his age,

and even when he smiles or jokes with the child he doesn't look happy. I

wonder if Chloe knows any reason for his melancholy air?"

And with the question still uppermost in his mind he went back to the

drawing-room in search of his wife and child.

CHAPTER VII

It was very dark in the window-recess, shut off from the room by the

heavy blue curtains which fell to the floor in thick folds. The room

itself was not in complete darkness, for the fire, built up by Chloe

with assumed extravagance before she went to bed, had burned down to a

steady red glow, now and then illumined by a dancing gleam of light as a

tiny flame of gas sputtered from some specially charged coal; and as

Anstice peeped cautiously through a carefully arranged chink in the

curtains he could see the pretty room with fair distinctness. The chairs

were standing about with the peculiarly uncanny effect known to all who

enter a room after it has been finally deserted for the night--an effect

as of waiting for some ghostly visitors to fill their pathetic emptiness

and hold high revel or stately converse in the place lately peopled by

mere human beings.

On a little table by the fire stood a chess-board, the old carved red

and white pieces standing on it in jumbled disarray; for Chloe and her

husband, both inveterate chess-lovers, had begun a game which they were

unable, through lack of time, to finish; and as his eyes fell on the

board Anstice had a queer fancy that if he and Major Carstairs

were not present two ghostly chess-players would issue softly from

the shadows and rearrange the pieces for another and perhaps more

strenuously-contested duel.

As the fantastic thought crossed his mind Anstice sat up decisively,

telling himself he was growing imaginative; and Major Carstairs turned

to him with a whispered word.

"Getting fidgety, eh? I know the feeling--used to get it when I was

sitting in a straw hut in the marshes waiting for the duck to

appear----"

He broke off suddenly; for a sound had shattered the silence; but though

he and Anstice pulled themselves together in readiness for anything

which might happen, both realized at the same moment that it was only

the whirr of the grandfather clock which always prefaced the striking of

the hour; and in another second the hour itself struck, with one deep,

sonorous note which reverberated through the quiet room.

"One o'clock, and no result," Major Carstairs stretched himself

cautiously. "How long is the sitting to continue, eh? It's all right for

me, but I'm afraid if you have a heavy day's work in prospect----"

"Oh, I don't mind," said Anstice indifferently. "I'm used to having my

sleep cut short--one's patients seem to think one can exist quite

comfortably without it, though they make a tremendous fuss if they lose

a night's sleep for any reason!"

"Well, if nothing happens shortly--and I'm inclined to think nothing

will----" began Major Carstairs, but he got no further, for with the

extraordinary aptness of conjunction which we are wont to call

coincidence, though another word might more fitly be employed, the door

opened almost noiselessly and a hooded figure crept on soundless feet

into the room.

Anstice and his companion fairly held their breath as the shrouded form

glided softly forward, the light of the dying fire doing little, now, to

illumine the scene; and neither of the men could have sworn with any

certainty to the identity of the person who shared their occupation of

the silent room.

In the middle of the floor the figure halted suddenly; and for one wild

moment Anstice fancied that some sixth sense had warned the new-comer of

their presence; but realizing the danger of attracting that new-comer's

thought towards him by any intensity of his own mind--for one thought

will draw another as a magnet the steel--Anstice switched off the

current of his thoughts, so to speak, and waited with as blank a mind as

he could compass for the thing which must surely happen soon.

After that involuntary halt the figure moved slowly forward in the

direction of the writing-table; and Anstice would have given a great

deal to have been able to see the face of this midnight scribe; but as

yet the firelit gloom remained undisturbed; and it was impossible to do

more than hazard a guess as to this strange visitor's personality.

There were candles on the writing-table, and for a moment Anstice

fancied that the mysterious figure would seek their aid to carry through

the task confronting her--he was convinced it was a woman who sat at the

table--but he was wrong, for no match was struck, no candle-flame

lighted the soft dusk. Instead a small beam of light shot suddenly

across the table; and Anstice and Major Carstairs both grasped at the

same moment the significance of the ray.

It was a pocket electric torch, of a kind familiar to thousands

nowadays, whose aid the letter-writer had evoked; and since this

particular one was fitted with a bulb which enabled it to cast a

continuous light without finger-pressure, it was quite effective for the

purpose to which it was now being put.

Having placed the torch on the table in such a position that the ray of

light fell directly across the blotting-pad, the figure made search for

a sheet of paper which suited its mind; and after a moment, a sheet

having been chosen, a pen was selected, dipped into Chloe's own silver

inkstand and a few lines of writing inscribed slowly, and with many

pauses, upon the otherwise unsullied paper.

His heart throbbing wildly, with an excitement quite foreign to his

nature, Anstice watched the performance eagerly through the just-parted

curtains; and so sure was he now of the identity of his quarry that he

was ready to leap from his hiding-place and confront the anonymous

letter-writer without further loss of time, had not a gentle pressure on

his arm restrained him at the critical moment.

It was not safe to speak, since even a whisper might betray their

presence; but Anstice realized Major Carstairs' intention and held

himself in check, though he quivered like a greyhound straining at the

leash, who fears his quarry may escape him if he be not slipped

forthwith.

After what seemed like an hour, but was probably five minutes, the

letter, whatever its nature, was judged complete; and with the same

stealthy but unhurried movements the writer sought and obtained an

envelope from the many which lay ready to hand and slipped the missive

in with deft fingers. An address added, the abominable thing was

complete; and having quietly put everything in order, so that even the

most acute eyes could discover nothing amiss, the writer rose softly

from the chair, and taking up the electric torch extinguished its beam

preparatory to making her exit from the room, which was now in almost

complete darkness.

This was the moment for which Major Carstairs had been waiting.

With a whispered word in Anstice's ear: "The light--quick!" he dashed

aside the curtains and darted out into the room, while Anstice, hastily

obeying orders, rushed to the wall and turned on the electric switch to

such good purpose that the room sprang instantly into brilliant light.

There was a scream from the hooded figure in the middle of the floor--a

scream of mingled anger, defiance and terror which rang in Anstice's

ears for hours afterwards, and following the scream a mad, wild rush for

the door--a blundering, stumbling rush in which the very garment, the

long, loose cloak which was intended for a disguise, proved itself a

handicap and effectually prevented its wearer making good her escape. By

the time she had torn herself free of the encumbering folds which

threatened to trip her up at every step Anstice had reached the door;

and now he stood before it with something in his face which warned the

panting creature in front of him that the way of escape was effectually

barred.

Still hiding her face in the folds of her garment she turned round as

though to rush towards the window and seek egress thereby; but facing

her stood Major Carstairs, and the wretched culprit realized, too late,

that she was trapped.

Yet as a cornered hare will turn and give battle, desperately, to her

eager foes, the woman made a frantic rush as though to pass the avenging

figure which stood in her path; and as she did so Major Carstairs moved

forward and plucked the black hood with no gentle hand from the face it

had so far partially concealed.

And as with wildly beating pulses Anstice bent forward to catch a

glimpse of the mysterious visitor he knew that his surmise, unlikely as

it had seemed, had been correct; that by a stroke of luck the expert,

Clive, had been able to point unerringly to the clue which was to solve

the mystery of those vile letters and restore to an innocent woman the

fair name which had been so unjustly smirched.

For the hooded figure was none other than Tochatti.

* * * * *

"My God! Then it _was_ you!" Major Carstairs' tone was so full of

disgust, of loathing, of the just indignation of a righteously angry man

that even Tochatti cowered in his grip; and as Anstice came forward the

other man turned to him with an expression of wrath which quite

transfigured his face. "Look at her, Anstice, the miserable, degraded

creature! To think that she has been with my wife all these

years--hanging over Cherry night and day--and all the time plotting this

infamous thing ... by the way, where is that letter?"

He broke off suddenly and Anstice came a step nearer the two.

"I see it, sir!" He had caught sight of it in the woman's clenched hand,

and with a smart and unexpected blow on her wrist forced her fingers to

open and release that which they held. "Here it is--will you take it? I

can look after her all right."

"No--but just see what the address is, will you?" Major Carstairs had

regained his self-control, and now stood quiet, alert, cool, as though

on parade. "May as well know who was her chosen victim this time."

"Oh, my old friend Carey--you know, the Vicar of Littlefield." Anstice

tossed the envelope on to a chair out of reach. "He was the first one

honoured, I believe, and possibly was to have been the last!"

All this time the woman had stood silent, her black eyes snapping, her

breast heaving stormily. Now she turned on Anstice fiercely and poured

out a stream of vituperative Italian which conveyed little or nothing to

his mind. Seeing that she made no impression she redoubled her efforts,

and finally her voice rose to a scream.

"I say, better shut her up, sir, or Mrs. Carstairs will hear!" Anstice

glanced anxiously towards the door and Major Carstairs nodded.

"Yes. We don't want the whole house about our ears." He turned to the

woman who now stood sullenly silent in his grasp; though if looks could

kill there would certainly have been a practice for sale in Littlefield

on the morrow. "Now see here, Tochatti, you've been fairly

cornered--caught--and you will have to pay the penalty. In the meantime

I shall lock you in your room until the morning, and I warn you it is

useless trying to escape."

A noise in the doorway cut him short; and turning hastily round Anstice

beheld Chloe Carstairs standing there, the light of the candle she

carried casting queer flickering shadows across her pale face, in which

the blue eyes gleamed more brightly than ever before.

"Chloe!" In his surprise Major Carstairs released the woman; and with a

bound she was across the room, pouring out another wild flood of

protestations, in which the words "_il dottore_" and "_la bambina_"

occurred over and over again. Higher and higher rose her voice, more

shrill and hysterical her outpourings, and Anstice's professional

instinct warned him that such abnormal excitement must end in

disaster--though of the nature of that ending he had at the moment no

conception.

Seeing, however, that the woman, while exhausting herself, was also

distressing her mistress, he moved forward with the intention of warning

Tochatti she was endangering her own health; but his word of caution was

never uttered, for as he approached her she spun round with a last

fierce torrent of words, and, stooping down, with incredible swiftness

plucked a sharp dagger from some secret hiding-place, and lunged at

Anstice with all her maddened might.

Luckily for him her excitement impeded her aim; and while she doubtless

intended stabbing him to the heart she merely inflicted a flesh wound on

the upper part of the arm which he had raised to defend himself.

The next moment Chloe, with a quite unlooked-for strength, had wrested

the weapon from the woman's grasp; and then ensued a scene which even

Anstice could hardly bear to look back upon in after days.

Whether or no his theory of possession were justified, the woman was for

the time being beside herself. Seeing the dagger in Chloe's hand she

threw herself upon her mistress and struggled wildly to regain her

property, inflicting a series of cuts on her own hand before Chloe could

get free to hurl the deadly thing into a corner of the room; and even

when Anstice and Carstairs had overpowered her with their superior might

she fought for freedom like a mad woman. But this abnormal strength

could not continue. Suddenly, as Anstice had foreseen, the inevitable

collapse occurred. Nature could stand no more, and with a last wild

writhe the woman slipped through the hands which held her, and uttering

a sharp cry fell to the floor in a state of unconsciousness.

* * * * *

Half an hour later Anstice came downstairs and re-entered the room where

Major Carstairs sat alone over the now brightly burning fire.

"Well!" The soldier's voice was anxious. "How is the woman? Oh, and what

about your arm? Was it badly hurt?"

"No--only a very slight flesh wound, and Mrs. Carstairs has kindly bound

it up for me." He relinquished the subject of his own injury abruptly.

"The woman is asleep now--she grew excited again, so I've given her some

bromide, and she will be quiet enough for the rest of the night."

"My wife is with her?"

"Yes. Mrs. Carstairs insists on staying there for the present."

Anstice took a cigarette from the case his host held out, and Major

Carstairs made a gesture towards the tantalus on the table.

"Have a peg--I'm sure you want it!"

"Well, I think I do," returned Anstice with a smile. "We had rather a

tough time of it upstairs just now." He mixed himself a drink as he

spoke. "Once a Southerner lets herself go the result is apt to be

disastrous."

"Will she be quieter in the morning?"

"I expect so." He stood by the mantelpiece, glass in hand; and in spite

of his evident fatigue it was easy to see he was quietly jubilant over

the events of the night. "The Latin races have a peculiar elasticity,

you know. An Englishwoman who had passed through this sort of violent

brain-storm would be absolutely exhausted, worn out for days after it;

but an Italian doesn't seem to feel things in the same way. They are so

naturally excitable, I suppose, that a scene like this is merely an

episode in the day's work; and they recover their mental poise much more

rapidly than persons of a more phlegmatic temperament would be likely to

do."

"Then you think she may be--more or less--normal in the morning?"

"I daresay--a bit dazed, perhaps, but I don't think you need fear a

repetition of to-night's scene. Of course she ought not to be left

alone--in case she tries to scoot; but if you are staying in the

house----" He paused interrogatively.

"I am staying," returned Major Carstairs quietly. "Thanks to you the

cloud has lifted from our home; and since my wife is generous enough to

forgive me for my unwarrantable doubt of her----"

He broke off, for Anstice was moving forward with outstretched hand; and

he guessed that the younger man was rendered uncomfortable by the turn

the conversation had taken.

"You're going?" He wrung Anstice's hand with fervent gratitude. "Well,

it's late, of course--but won't you stay here for the rest of the night?

We can give you a bed in five minutes, and I'm sure my wife will be

distressed if you turn out now."

"Thanks very much, but I must go." The decision in his tone was

unmistakable.

"Well, I'll get out the car and run you over----"

"No, thanks. I'd really rather walk." He picked up hat and coat from the

window-seat and turned to the door with an air of finality. "It's a fine

night and I shall enjoy it. I'll be round early in the morning--but I

don't think Tochatti will give you any trouble for a good many hours

yet."

"As soon as she is able to explain matters there will be a good deal to

be done," said Major Carstairs rather grimly, as they went through the

hall together. "Thank God, we have that last letter as a proof of her

duplicity, and by its aid we can doubtless get a full confession out of

her."

"Yes." Anstice paused a second on the doorstep before plunging into the

darkness of the night. "It will be interesting to hear the whole story.

The events are plain enough--but the question of motive is still a

puzzling one."

"Quite so. And yet the affair will probably turn out simple, after all.

Well, I mustn't keep you if you want to be off. Good night

again--and"--the sincerity in his voice was pleasant to hear--"a

thousand thanks for the part you have played in the unravelling of this

tangle."

"Good-night. Don't let Mrs. Carstairs exhaust herself looking after the

woman, will you? She is splendid, I know, but----"

"I'll go and join her in a moment," returned Carstairs quietly. "I'm an

old campaigner, you know, and I'll see to it that she is properly

fortified for the vigil--if she insists upon it."

And as he looked into the soldier's square-featured face, the honest

eyes agleam with love for the woman he had been fool enough to doubt,

Anstice felt instinctively that Chloe Carstairs' ship had come at last

to a safe anchorage, that the barque which had so narrowly escaped

complete shipwreck on the rock of a terrible catastrophe was now safely

at rest in the haven where it would be.

CHAPTER VIII

"Well, Chloe, you have discovered the truth at last?"

It was evening again--early evening this time; and Major Carstairs and

Anstice were sitting in Chloe's black-and-white room eagerly waiting for

the promised elucidation of the mystery which had so nearly ruined two

lives.

Chloe herself, sitting in a corner of the chintz-covered couch, looked,

in spite of the strenuous hours through which she had passed, the

embodiment of youth and radiant happiness.

In all his life Anstice had never seen so striking a testimony to the

power of soul over body as in this rejuvenation, this new birth, as it

were, which had taken place under his eyes.

The whole woman was transformed. The classic features had lost their

slight austerity of outline, the sapphire-blue eyes were no longer cold

and indifferent, but danced bewitchingly in the softly-tinted face. The

lips whose corners had been prone to droop were now curved into the

tenderest, gayest smiles; and as Anstice looked at her he was reminded

of the old story of the marble statue, whose frozen rigidity was warmed

into life by the magic of the sculptor's kiss.

And as he gazed, secretly, on this miracle which had been performed

before his eyes Anstice realized a truth which hitherto he had not

suspected. Although her manner in speaking of her husband had never held

the faintest tinge of resentment, nor the least hint of rancour, neither

had it betrayed any touch of a warmer feeling than a half-compassionate

friendliness; and Anstice had never suspected the world of feeling which

apparently lay locked in her heart. He had thought her cold,

self-contained, genuinely cynical. He saw her now, impulsive, gay,

radiant; and he knew to what this striking, this indescribably happy

change was due.

Chloe Carstairs was in love, overwhelmingly, irresistibly in love with

her husband; and now Anstice was able to gauge something of the

bitterness of the life she had led for the last few months. Where he had

thought her cold she had been indeed suffering. Her assumed cynicism,

her weary indifference had been the cloak of a sharp and almost hopeless

misery; and at the thought of her heroic acceptance of her husband's

unbelief, an unbelief which must have been almost unbearably galling,

Anstice paid her in his heart a higher tribute than he had hitherto

bestowed on any woman.

That the cloud of which Major Carstairs had spoken had indeed lifted was

evident in the glances which passed shyly between the two; and as Chloe

answered her husband's eager question her blue eyes rested almost

tenderly on his face.

"Yes. I think the truth has come to light at last."

"You mean the woman has confessed?" It was Anstice who spoke, and she

turned to him at once with an animation of look and manner very

different from her former languor.

"Well, as to confession I hardly know. But she has told me the whole

story; and if you are both prepared to listen I will pass it on to you

at once."

Sitting a little forward, her hands locked on the knee of her white

gown, her blue eyes extraordinarily vivid in her softly-coloured face,

she began her tale; and both men listened to her with rapt attention as

her deep voice rang through the quiet room.

"It seems that years ago when Tochatti was a girl, living in a village

close to Naples, she was betrothed to a handsome young Sicilian, a

fisherman from Palermo. The story, as Tochatti told it, is a long and

rather involved affair; but it is sufficient to say that there was

another girl enamoured of Tochatti's lover; and matters were complicated

still further by the fact that this girl was engaged to someone else.

Well, Luigi, Tochatti's sweetheart, had evidently encouraged the second

girl behind Tochatti's back; and when Tochatti found out she was so

inflamed with rage and jealousy that, overhearing of an appointment

between Bella and Luigi, she wrote a note in a handwriting roughly

resembling that of Bella to the latter's sweetheart, a certain José,

bidding him meet her at the same time and place as that arranged by the

other two. Well, José went, expecting to meet his beloved--and found her

in Luigi's arms. Tragedy followed, of course. José first tore the girl

away and then stabbed her to the heart, afterwards turning on Luigi.

They struggled--on the edge of the cliff; and Luigi proving the

stronger, José was hurled over the edge into the sea below."

"A tragedy indeed," commented Major Carstairs as the speaker paused.

"What was the next act? Did Luigi and Tochatti become reconciled and

walk off arm-in-arm?"

"No." Chloe's voice sank a little. "It seems that when Tochatti,

horror-struck by the result of her interference, rushed on to the scene,

Luigi turned upon her, guessing somehow that she was responsible, and

taxed her with having lured José to the spot that night. She owned up to

it, and instead of imploring forgiveness appeared to glory in her

treachery, whereupon Luigi, throwing the fatal letter into her face,

burst into a torrent of rage, telling her he had never cared for her,

that Bella was the only girl he had ever loved, and finished up by

stabbing himself before her eyes rather than endure a life from which

his adored one had vanished for ever."

"I say! What a tale--quite a Shakespearean ending, stage fairly littered

with corpses," struck in Major Carstairs. "I wonder Tochatti didn't put

the finishing touch by stabbing herself as well!"

"She did think of it, I believe," owned Chloe, "but the sound of

quarrelling had brought other people on the scene, and Tochatti was of

course arrested and the whole story investigated with more or less

thoroughness. Being a pretty common story, however--for the Sicilians

are a hot-blooded race--it was quite easy for the authorities to

reconstruct the scene; and since Tochatti was innocent of any actual

crime she was eventually released; only to fall ill with some affection

of the brain which finally landed her in an asylum."

"An asylum!" Anstice whistled. "Yet one would have hesitated to call her

insane----"

"Yes, now, but you must remember this is very many years ago. She

recovered at length, and the only reminiscence of the tragedy was a

marked aversion to using pen or pencil. She seemed to think that having

wrought so much harm by her one attempt at letter-writing she would be

wiser to avoid such things in future."

"Pity she didn't keep her resolve," commented Major Carstairs dryly; and

Chloe nodded.

"Yes. We should all have been spared a good deal of trouble. Well, as

you know, she entered my mother's service during her honeymoon in Italy,

and was my nurse as a child. Now I come to the second half of the story.

Tochatti chose to adore me from my early youth"--she smiled

faintly--"and she always bore a grudge against anyone who did not fall

down and worship me too. And this peculiar attitude of hers has a

bearing on the affair of the letters. When Mrs. Ogden chose to quarrel

with me, or at least evince a decided coldness, Tochatti's ready hatred

flared up; and after the unlucky day when Mrs. Ogden cut me dead before

half the county at a Flower Show, she determined to show the woman she

could not be allowed to insult me with impunity."

"It certainly was a piece of unpardonable rudeness," said Major

Carstairs warmly; and Chloe smiled.

"Yes--and at the moment I resented it very bitterly. But if Tochatti

herself had not been there, in charge of Cherry, the matter would have

dropped--and it was really unfortunate she should have seen the 'cut.'

Well, it seems that Tochatti brooded over the affair, wondering how best

to get even with the person who dared to act insolently towards me."

Chloe's voice held just a tinge of mockery. "Twenty odd years of

residence in England had taught her that one can't use daggers and

knives with impunity, and I believe at first she was genuinely puzzled

to know how to act. I suppose the thought of weapons turned her mind

back to that Sicilian affair; and suddenly it flashed upon her that

letters, after all, could be trusted to do a good deal of injury."

"So she wrote an anonymous letter calculated to do harm to the unlucky

subject thereof?"

"Yes, and sent it to Sir Richard Wayne. Well, once having started she

apparently couldn't leave off. Her venom grew, so to speak, by being fed

in this manner; and she wrote one letter after another--you know her

mother was English, and she was well versed in our tongue--until

practically everyone in the parish knew a garbled version of Mrs.

Ogden's sordid little story."

"One moment, Chloe." Major Carstairs had a soldier's mind for detail.

"How did the woman know that story? I thought no one ever owned to

having heard it?"

"No one ever did," said Chloe rather bitterly. "But the explanation is

simple after all. Mrs. Ogden had, before I made my appearance on the

scene, repeated the tale to another woman in the parish--the young wife

of a solicitor whom she had 'taken up' with great fervour on her first

arrival in Littlefield; and this woman had repeated the story to her

French maid. The latter, being a stranger in England was pleased to make

Tochatti's acquaintance; and one day told her the story, of course in

strictest confidence. Well, the woman, the solicitor's wife, died,

almost immediately after that, as the result of a motor accident; and

her maid returned to her home somewhere in the valley of the Loire,

without having, so far as one can conjecture, passed on the tale to

anyone else."

"Yes," said Anstice thoughtfully, as Chloe came to a stop. "Quite a

simple explanation, as you say, yet one which might never have come to

light."

"There is still a point puzzling me," said Carstairs meditatively. "I

can understand Tochatti writing the letters, and thus seeking to injure

a woman whom she considered to be the enemy of her mistress. But how did

she ever bring herself to allow you to be suspected, Chloe?"

"Ah, that is where the mystery really comes in, and where, possibly, Dr.

Anstice's theory of the double personality may be considered." Chloe

looked at them both rather dubiously. "I confess I can't understand that

part of the story myself. Tochatti has assured me that she never for an

instant dreamed I should be suspected--the slight similarity in some of

the writing to some of mine was more or less accidental, though she

admits she had tried to model her script on mine because she admired

it ... as she admired all my poor faculties," said Chloe, with a little

shrug of her shoulders. "I really believe she used my pens and paper

without any idea of the harm she was doing me--in fact, if such a

supposition could be entertained for a moment, I don't believe she had

any very clear idea what she was doing beyond a fixed intention to work

harm to the woman she detested."

"You mean that the idea of this Mrs. Ogden filled her mental horizon to

the exclusion of any other thought?" It was Anstice who put the

question.

"Yes. Honestly I believe she was incapable of looking, as one might say,

all round the subject. You see"--Chloe hesitated, not sure how far the

suggestion was permissible--"she had once been in an asylum, and

possibly her brain had never worked quite normally since that tragedy on

the cliffs."

"No, it is possible she was the victim of a sort of monomania," conceded

Anstice. "In which case no other person would be connected in her mind

with the affair save the one against whom the campaign was directed. It

is a pretty lame explanation, I own, but then the workings of the human

mind are so extraordinarily incomprehensible sometimes that I, for my

part, have very nearly ceased being surprised at anything a man or woman

may be disposed to do!"

"Tochatti tells me she grew very uneasy when things began to look really

black," continued Chloe. "She had not understood when she started that

letters of this kind rendered one liable to imprisonment sometimes; and

she was horrified when she discovered that fact. I believe she would

willingly have undone the harm she had done if it had been possible; for

she couldn't help seeing, as the days went on, that I was in grave

danger of incurring the penalty of her fault. Once, at least, I am sure

she nerved herself to tell the whole truth----"

"Her good intentions evidently went to pave a place which shall be

nameless," said Major Carstairs dryly. "After all, her affection for you

seems to have been a very pinchbeck affair, Chloe, if she could calmly

stand by and see you suffer for her wickedness. And for my part I don't

see how you can be expected to forgive her."

For a second Chloe sat silently in her corner of the couch; and in her

face were the traces of the conflicting emotions which made for a moment

a battlefield of her soul.

After all Chloe Carstairs was a very human woman; and it is not in human

nature to suffer a great wrong and feel no resentment against those who

have inflicted that wrong. Had she been able to forgive Tochatti

immediately, to condone her wickedness, to restore the woman to her old

place in her esteem, Chloe had been something less--or more--than human;

and that she was after all only mortal was proved by her answer to

Carstairs' last speech.

"I don't think I have forgiven her--yet----" she said very quietly. "At

the same time I don't care to doubt the genuineness of her affection for

me. I would rather think that she turned coward at the notion of

suffering punishment, and let me endure it in her place through a

selfish terror which forbade her to own up and take the blame herself."

"Well--if you look at it like that----" Major Carstairs was evidently

not satisfied; and Chloe, possibly feeling unable, or reluctant, to make

any further excuse for Tochatti, hurried on with her tale.

"Another factor in Tochatti's determination not to suffer herself is to

be found in her dread of a prison as a sort of asylum like that in which

she had been confined abroad. I don't know what kind of institution that

had been, but she evidently retains to this day a very vivid

recollection of the horrors she then endured; and her heart failed her

at the bare thought of returning to such a frightful existence as she

had then experienced. At any rate"--she suddenly abandoned her

apologia--"she could not face it; and so she allowed me to take the

blame; and by reiterating the fact that she could not write--a theory

which the other servants held, in common with me----"

"But had you never seen her write? It seems odd, all the years she had

been in your service!"

"No, I had never seen her write, for the simple reason that she never

did write. It seems that the result of that fatal letter of hers had

imprinted a horror of writing on her mind; and I really believe that

until the day on which she penned the first anonymous letter she had

never taken a pen or pencil in her hand...."

"Well, it's admitted she wrote those letters, and hoodwinked the world,"

said Carstairs briskly. "And though I confess I don't understand how she

could reconcile her actions with her affection for you we will let that

point pass. But now--what about those last letters? Is Dr. Anstice's

supposition that she was jealous of him correct?"

"Quite." Chloe looked at Anstice rather apologetically. "You know

Tochatti is of a horribly jealous disposition; and she could not bear to

see Cherry growing fonder of you day by day. That unlucky accident was

the crowning point, of course; and the fact that you appeared to slight

her powers of looking after the child--you must forgive me for putting

it like that--was too much for her. With the arrival of Nurse Trevor

Tochatti seemed to lose all sense of decent behaviour; and her idea was

to repeat her former experience and circularize the neighbourhood with a

scandalous story which she hoped, as she has since owned to me, might

succeed in driving you away."

"A very pretty plot," said Anstice quietly, "and one which deserved to

succeed. But, Mrs. Carstairs, if you will allow me to repeat your

husband's question--how did she learn my unhappy story?"

"I expected you to ask that," returned Chloe steadily, "and I made it my

business to find out for you. Well, like the other explanation, it is

very simple. While I was away"--in her new-born happiness Chloe would

not distress her husband by speaking more plainly--"Tochatti took Cherry

down to my old home, where my mother still lives, and of course it was

only natural that she should there hear some version of the story as it

affected my brother Bruce. She acknowledges she would never have

connected you with the affair save for the unlucky fact that on the

night you and Bruce met here he came to my room afterwards to tell me

how and in what circumstances you had met before; and most unfortunately

Tochatti, who was in an adjoining room, heard his explanation. She

didn't think much of it at the time, but stored it up in her mind; and

when, later, she wished to injure you, there was the means ready to

hand."

"Like the proverbial Corsican who will carry a stone in his pocket for

seven years, turn it, and carry it for another seven on the chance of

being able to sling it at his enemy in the end," commented Carstairs.

"Well, thank God, the whole story is cleared up now; and the next thing

to do is to set about making the matter public and seeing justice done

at last."

"Quite so--and it should be easy now," concurred Anstice heartily. "With

the letter you hold as evidence and the woman's full confession you

should not have much trouble with the case."

Looking at Chloe as he spoke he saw a strange expression flit across her

face. The next instant she rose and going across to her husband's chair

stood looking down upon him with unfathomable blue eyes.

"Leo"--her voice was very low--"is it really necessary that the matter

should be made public? So long as you know the truth--and Dr.

Anstice--and my dear friends Sir Richard and Iris, can't we let the

subject drop? You know I don't care in the least for the opinion of the

world, and it would mean so much trouble, so much raking up of things

best forgotten. Couldn't we"--she hesitated--"couldn't we leave things

alone, and just be thankful that _we_ know the truth at last?"

Major Carstairs looked up at his wife as she stood before him; and his

voice was very gentle as he answered her.

"But, Chloe, what of Tochatti herself? She must not be allowed to go

unpunished. Besides, there is another aspect of the case. You know these

abominable letters have been scattered broadcast in the land, and it is

only fair to Dr. Anstice that their authorship should be published and

their lies refuted."

"Yes. I had forgotten that." She turned to Anstice, who had risen and

was standing leaning against the mantelpiece, looking desperately

uncomfortable. "Forgive me, please, Dr. Anstice! For the second time I

had forgotten that you were the victim of this latest outrage of

Tochatti's----"

"Mrs. Carstairs--please!" In his haste to explain himself Anstice spoke

rather incoherently. "If you are willing to let this matter drop--why,

so am I. For your own sake I think, while you are behaving nobly, you

are making a mistake--a most generous, chivalrous mistake--in not

proving your entire innocence before all the world, but if you are

really resolved on it, do let me make you understand that personally I

am only too ready to let the whole thing slide into the oblivion it

deserves!"

"My dear fellow"--Major Carstairs spoke warmly--"this is all very well,

very Quixotic, very--well, what you call noble, chivalrous--but what

about the moral side of the affair? Justice should be tempered with

mercy, certainly; but it doesn't do to defraud justice altogether of her

dues. The woman has committed a crime--I repeat it, a crime against

society, against you, against my wife; and to let her go unpunished is

to put a premium on wickedness; and leave both you and my wife to lie

under a most undeserved, most cruel stigma."

For a moment Anstice hesitated; and before he could frame a reply Chloe

spoke very quietly, yet with a decision there was no mistaking.

"Leo, I see your point of view plainly--a good deal more plainly, I

think, than you see mine. Of course as a man you want your wife's name

cleared; and if you insist on making the affair public, why then"--said

Chloe with a little smile--"I suppose I must submit as a good wife

should. But"--she was serious now--"if you knew how I dread the

publicity of it all--the reports in the papers, the gossip, the

talk--oh, it makes me shudder even to think of it! And if you imagine me

revengeful enough to find satisfaction in the idea of Tochatti's

punishment--well, I think you must have a quite mistaken notion of me

after all!"

Major Carstairs hesitated, looking from his wife to Anstice in manifest

perplexity.

"Well, really, Chloe, I don't know what to say. Of course you and Dr.

Anstice are the people chiefly concerned; and if you are both of you

sufficiently superhuman to forego your legitimate revenge--well, I

suppose it is not for me to interfere!"

"Suppose you think it over, sir." Anstice felt a sudden desire to get

away, to be alone, to think over the revelation of the past half-hour.

"For my part I really must go about my work--I'd no idea it was so late.

By the way, who will take charge of Tochatti to-night? She is asleep

now"--he had seen to that--"but later on she will want a little looking

after. She has not borne out my theory," he added, turning to the

soldier. "I thought that last night's excitement would have vanished

entirely to-day; but I'm bound to admit she is in a queer state; and if

she is no better to-morrow you will have to let me send someone to look

after her."

"The housekeeper and I will be able to do that at present," said Chloe

quietly. "You know poor Tochatti's hatred of professional nurses was

directly responsible for that last burst of letter-writing, so we had

better not try her too far!"

"By the way, where's the dagger she produced with such lightning

sleight-of-hand last night?" Anstice put the question casually as he

turned towards the door. "It would not be wise to leave it about, in

case she felt like using it again!"

"It is hidden, at present, in my dressing-case," said Chloe. "I picked

it up last night and flung it in there lest anyone should see it. But I

agree it would be safer locked up; and I will give it to you, Leo, when

I go upstairs."

"Yes, it will be better in my keeping," said Carstairs briskly. "Though

I hope the madness which induced her to try to use it will have passed

before long."

"We'll see how she is in the morning," said Anstice as he shook hands

with Chloe. "I'll come round directly after breakfast, shall I? Quite

possibly she will be herself again after a long sleep."

"Dr. Anstice"--Chloe retained his hand for a moment--"are you quite sure

you don't regret agreeing with me over the possible hushing up of the

affair? I'm afraid, after all, I made it rather hard for you to do

anything but acquiesce just now. But if, after thinking it over, you

decide that the story should be made public, well, I am quite ready to

abide by your decision."

"No, Mrs. Carstairs." Anstice's tone was too sincere for her to doubt

his genuineness. "For my own part I am more than ready to stand by my

former verdict; and the final decision rests entirely with you.

Only--perhaps I may be permitted to express my thankfulness that the

problem has been solved--and my hope that you--and your husband--may

find the future sufficiently bright to atone for the darkness of the

past."

"Thank you," she said gently, and her eyes looked very soft. "At least

my husband and I will never forget that we owe our happiness to you."

And with the words, cordially endorsed by Major Carstairs, ringing in

his ears Anstice left Cherry Orchard and fared forth once more into the

gloomy November night.

As he drove away he told himself that he was truly glad the mystery was

elucidated at last. Yet even as he did so he knew that his own share in

the matter gave him little satisfaction. He felt no elation at the turn

of events. He told himself impatiently that he ought by rights to be

jubilant, since it was owing to his efforts that Tochatti had been

unmasked; but in spite of his honest endeavour to spur his flagging

emotions his heart felt heavy in his breast, and there was no elation in

his soul.

After all, he told himself wearily, the discovery of the truth meant

very little to him. With Mrs. Carstairs the case was widely different;

and he did rejoice, sincerely, in her happiness; but for himself, having

lost Iris Wayne, all lesser events were of very little importance after

all.

"I wonder how Mrs. Carstairs will decide," he said to himself as he

drove homewards. "Whatever her decision I suppose I must abide by it;

but for myself I sincerely hope she will stick to her first view of the

matter."

And then he dismissed the subject from his thoughts for the moment,

little dreaming of the awful and tragic manner in which the decision was

to be taken out of Chloe Carstairs' hands in the course of the next few

hours.

* * * * *

He was just thinking of going to bed that night when the telephone bell

rang sharply; and with one of those strange premonitions to which all

highly-strung people are at times liable, he connected the call

instantly with the affair at Cherry Orchard.

"Yes ... I'm Dr. Anstice ... who is it?"

"Carstairs," came the answer over the wire. "I say, Anstice,

can you come at once? Something appalling has

happened--Tochatti--she--she's----"

"She has killed herself." The words were more of an assertion than a

question.

"Yes ... with that beastly dagger ... found it somehow and stabbed

herself ... what? ... yes ... quite dead ... I'm sure of it...."

"I'll come round at once. Does Mrs. Carstairs know?"

"Yes ... what? ... yes, a dreadful shock, but she's quite

calm ... you'll come ... the sooner the better ... many thanks...."

Anstice hung up the receiver and turned away, feeling almost stunned by

the news he had received. The woman's death, coming on the top of the

events of the preceding twenty-four hours, was in itself sufficient to

shake even his nerve; but he lost no time in obeying the summons and

arrived at Cherry Orchard just as the clock struck twelve.

He found the entire household up, the tragic news having circulated with

the rapidity peculiar to such catastrophic tidings; and preceded by

Major Carstairs, who met him in the hall, he hurried upstairs to the

room where Tochatti lay in her last sleep.

It was quite true, as Major Carstairs had said, that she was dead. She

had only too evidently been aware of the dagger's hiding-place, probably

through familiarity with Chloe's movements in normal times; and had

seized a moment when the housekeeper, thinking her asleep, had left her

to procure a fresh stock of candles for the night's vigil, to slip into

Chloe's room in search of the weapon.

Once in possession of the dagger the rest was easy; and whatever might

be the nature of the emotions which drove her to the deed, whether

remorse, dread of punishment, or some half-crazed fear of what the

future might hold, the result was certain--and fatal.

She had made no mistake this time. The dagger had been plunged squarely

in her breast; and when the housekeeper stole in again, expecting to

find her charge still asleep, her horrified eyes were met by the sight

of Tochatti's life-blood ebbing over the white sheets, her ears assailed

by the choking gurgle with which the misguided woman yielded up her

life....

* * * * *

"Yes, she is quite dead, poor thing." Anstice replaced the bedclothes

and stood looking down on the dead woman with a steady gaze. "Perhaps,

knowing her former brain weakness, I ought to have expected this. But in

any case, Mrs. Carstairs"--he turned to Chloe, who stood, white and

rigid, by his side--"the decision has been taken out of your--of our

hands now. The matter is bound to come to light, after all."

"You mean there must be an inquest--an inquiry into this affair?" It was

Major Carstairs who spoke.

"I'm afraid so--you see a thing like this can't very well be hushed up,"

said Anstice rather reluctantly. "And though I can't help feeling

thankful that Mrs. Carstairs will have justice done to her at last, I'm

sure we all feel we would have borne a good deal sooner than let this

dreadful thing happen."

"Dr. Anstice"--Chloe turned to him almost appealingly--"are we really to

blame? If we hadn't plotted, set a trap to catch my poor Tochatti, this

would not have come to pass; and I shall always feel that by leaving the

dagger in my dressing-case I was the means of bringing this dreadful

tragedy about."

"Come, Mrs. Carstairs, you mustn't talk nonsense of that kind!" His tone

was bracing. "You were not in the least to blame. If anyone was, I

should be the person, seeing I did not warn you of this possibility. But

you know the poor soul was a very determined woman; and if she had set

her mind on self-destruction she would have carried out her intention

somehow."

"Well, at least there will be no object in keeping the authorship of

those confounded letters a secret now," said Major Carstairs, putting

his hand kindly on his wife's arm. "After all poor Tochatti has done us

a service by her death which will go far towards wiping out the injury

of her life. And now it is one o'clock, and we none of us had much sleep

last night----"

"You're right," said Anstice quickly, "and Mrs. Carstairs looks worn

out. Can't you persuade her to go to bed, Major Carstairs? There is

really no need for her to stay here harrowing her feelings another

moment."

"I'll go," she said at once. "Good-night again, Dr. Anstice. It will

comfort me to know that you don't think me entirely to blame--for this."

"I think you are as innocent in this matter as in that other one we

discussed to-night," he said quietly. "And this poor woman here, if, as

we may surely believe, she has regained by now the sanity she may have

temporarily lost, would be the last to think any but kindly thoughts of

you in the light of her fuller humanity."

"Thank you," she said again, as she had said it earlier in the evening;

and once more they exchanged the firm and cordial handshake by which

those who are truly friends seal their parting.

When he had closed the door behind her he came back to the bedside where

Major Carstairs still stood, looking down on the dead woman with an

unfathomable expression in his eyes.

"Anstice, from the bottom of my heart I regret the manner of this poor

soul's passing," he said, and his voice was genuinely moved. "But even

so I can't altogether regret that she took this way of cutting the knot.

For now my wife and I may at least hope for the ordinary happiness which

other human beings know. We have been in the shadow a long time, Chloe

and I"--he spoke half to himself--"but now we may surely pray for

sunshine for the rest of our earthly pilgrimage together."

"Amen to that," said Anstice solemnly; and as the two men shook hands

silently each rejoiced, in his individual fashion, that Chloe Carstairs

had come into her own at last.

BOOK III

CHAPTER I

Anstice stood on the deck of the P. and O. boat _Moldavia_, looking out

over the blue seas to where Port Said lay white and shining in the rays

of the March sun.

He had seen the port before, on his way to and from India, but he had

never landed there, and looked forward with some keenness of

anticipation to setting foot in the place which enjoys, rightly or

wrongly, one of the most unsavoury reputations in the world.

Not that his stay would be long--a night at most--for he purposed

journeying on to Cairo without loss of time, and as the boat drew nearer

and nearer to the quay, whereon a crowd of gesticulating natives raised

the unholy din which every traveller associates with this particular

landing, Anstice turned about and swung down the companion to take a

last look round his dismantled cabin.

It was now nearly eight weeks since he had quitted Littlefield. Having

disposed of his practice in the nick of time to a college friend who

wished to settle in the country, and having also received an unexpected

windfall in the shape of a small legacy from a distant relation, he had

decided, after a short stay in London, to take a holiday before starting

to work once more.

His choice of a destination had not been unaffected by the fact of Iris

Cheniston's residence in the land of Egypt. Although he had no

expectation of meeting her--for she and her husband were still somewhere

in the desert, a couple of days' journey from Cairo--there was an odd

fascination in the bare idea of inhabiting, even for a few weeks, the

land which held the girl he still loved. For although he had long since

determined that he must avoid Bruce Cheniston's wife if he wished to

keep his secret inviolate, and incidentally attempt, by starving his

passion of its natural food, to keep his love unsullied by any hint of

envy, any emotion of desire--well, all men are sophists at heart, and in

spite of all his self-assurances that he could visit Egypt without

seeking to gain even a glimpse of Iris, ever in the background of his

thoughts lay a delicious, barely formulated hope that possibly Fate

might vouchsafe to him one fleeting vision on which his hungry heart

might feed in the empty days which must needs ensue.

There had been changes in Littlefield since that November evening on

which the truth concerning the anonymous letters had come to light.

After Tochatti's death it had naturally proved impossible altogether to

hush up the tragedy and its immediate results, and although Anstice had

done his best to mitigate the position for Major Carstairs and his wife,

the inquest had proved a trying affair for all of them.

Since the woman was dead there was no need to keep the authorship of

those letters a secret, and before he left Littlefield Anstice had the

satisfaction of knowing that Mrs. Carstairs' name had been effectually

cleared from the slur placed upon it by a censorious and ignorant world.

When once this was accomplished Major Carstairs insisted on carrying off

his wife and Cherry for a long holiday in the south of France, and

although Cherry wept bitterly at the thought of parting from her beloved

Anstice, he was able to console her by a recital of the wonderful things

she would behold by the shores of the azure Mediterranean.

He was surprised to find, when the real parting came, how hard it was to

say good-bye to his friends. Although he considered himself unsociable,

independent of the claims of friendship, forced, so to speak, into

misanthropy by the circumstances of his life, he had grown to have a

real esteem for Chloe Carstairs, and the spectacle of her new-born

vitality, her radiant happiness, was one which gave him a very deep and

genuine pleasure. As for Cherry, that quaint child had long since twined

herself round his heart-strings, and although Major Carstairs was,

comparatively speaking, a new acquaintance, Anstice respected the

soldier as an honest man and a gentleman.

A week after their departure another blow befell Anstice in the sudden

death of his friend Fraser Carey, and when at last he was summoned in

haste to Carey's aid he found that the latter had suffered for years

from a painful internal disease.

"But why not have submitted to an operation years ago?" Anstice asked

him gently as he sat, impotent to help, by his friend's side in the

light of the dying day. "It might have been successful"--he dare not say

more--"and you would have been spared years of agonizing suffering."

The other man smiled, and his eyes for a moment lost their look of pain.

"Quite so," he said gently, "but at the same time I might--probably

should--have died. I took the best advice, nearly ruined myself with

visiting specialists"--he smiled very faintly--"and none could give me

any assurance that I should live through it. And I could not

afford--then--to die."

"Not afford?" Anstice stared at him in amazement.

"No. You see"--his voice was a mere thread--"you see I had a wife,

Anstice--oh, no one knows, and my secret is safe with you--and although

I could not live with her ... she was not what the world calls a good

woman, and her ideal of life was not one which I, as a clergyman, could

assist her to realize--well, I could not let her sink altogether for

want of money to keep some sort of home together."

"You sent her money?"

"Yes. I sent what I could from my stipend--it wasn't much--God's

ministers are supposed to be content with the promises of treasure in

heaven," said Carey, with a hint of humour in his weak tone. "I made a

little, too, by writing for the reviews. But it was precarious, Anstice,

precarious; and I dared not risk dying, and leaving her in want."

"And now?" Anstice had noted the tense in which he spoke of his wife,

and he guessed the answer before the other spoke.

"She is dead--she died three weeks ago," said Carey quietly. "And now I

can give up the struggle myself----"

"I wish to God you had told me earlier," said Anstice vehemently. "At

least I might have done something for you----"

"Oh, I had alleviations," said Carey slowly. "When the pain grew

unendurable I had remedies which gave me some relief. But I knew that if

I told you you would seek to persuade me to a course I really could not

have adopted. You mustn't mind me saying it, Anstice. Perhaps I have

been wrong all through." His voice was wistful. "But I did what I

thought was right--and luckily for us poor men God judges us by our

intentions, so to speak, and not by the results."

The words returned to Anstice's mind three days later as he stood by the

graveside of his friend, and in his heart he wondered whether it were

indeed true that what men called failure might, in the eyes of God,

spell a great and glorious success.

* * * * *

The next person to leave Littlefield was Sir Richard Wayne. For since

his daughter's wedding he had been finding life without her almost

unbearable, and at length he avowed that the English climate in winter

was altogether more than any sensible man could be expected to endure--a

somewhat surprising statement from a former M.F.H.--and declared his

intention of paying a visit to Iris and her husband in Egypt forthwith.

It was of Sir Richard Wayne that Anstice was thinking half an hour later

when the _Moldavia_ had come to her berth at the quay and he was about

to leave the ship on which the short and prosperous voyage had been

made.

However much the theory of the astral body of man may be denied or

ridiculed, there is no doubt that an unusually vivid thought-presentment

of a friend frequently precedes the appearance of that friend in the

flesh, and it is certain that the mental image of Sir Richard Wayne had

been, for some reason, so strongly before Anstice's mind that in a tall,

grey-clad figure pushing his way vigorously through the crowd of natives

he was inclined to see a striking resemblance to the object of his

thoughts.

He told himself, rather impatiently, that the notion was absurd. He had

been dwelling for so long on the vision of Sir Richard's daughter that

he had lost, for the moment, his sense of reality, and he turned aside

to reclaim his baggage from the vociferous Arabs who wished, so it

appeared, to appropriate both it and him, without casting another glance

in the direction of Sir Richard's double.

Yet the hallucination persisted. He could have sworn he heard Sir

Richard's voice raised in protest as the crowding natives impeded his

progress towards the gangway of the boat; and at last Anstice turned

fully round, with half-ashamed curiosity, to see what manner of man this

was who wore the semblance and spoke in the tongue of Sir Richard Wayne.

As his black eyes roved over the intervening faces they were caught and

held by another pair of eyes--grey eyes these, in whose clear and frank

depths was a strong resemblance to those other wide grey eyes he loved,

and in the next moment Anstice realized that a miracle had happened, and

that the first person to give him greeting in this land of mystery was

none other than Sir Richard Wayne himself.

About the gladness of the other's greeting there could be no two

opinions. Utterly disregarding the touts and porters who swarmed round

him Sir Richard came forward with outstretched hand, and his eyes fairly

shone with joy and with something that looked like relief.

"Anstice! By all that's wonderful!" He wrung the younger man's hand

heartily as he spoke. "How came you here--and are you landing for good,

or just taking a look round this God-forsaken old iniquity of a town?"

"I'm leaving the ship for good. Want to have a look at

Cairo ... interesting place, I've always heard." For a second Anstice

faltered, feeling as though his friend must see through his pretence, and

guess that it was because this land enshrined the one woman in the world

that he was here. But Sir Richard gave no sign of disbelief, and Anstice

was emboldened to proceed. "But you--what are you doing here? I thought

you were somewhere in the desert with--your daughter."

"So I was, so I was." Sir Richard hesitated, then spoke rapidly.

"Anstice, are you alone--and disengaged? I mean--could your stay in

Cairo be postponed for a few days? I want--I came down here to look for

a doctor--never thinking I'd have the luck to find you----"

"A doctor?" Beneath the spur of his quick mind Anstice grew pale. "Is

someone ill? Not--not your daughter?"

"No, not Iris." Unconsciously Anstice breathed a sigh of relief and the

older man glanced at him curiously. "It is Bruce--my son-in-law--who's

ill; and I've come down here to find a doctor. Couldn't get one in

Cairo--it seems the pilgrims have just returned from Mecca bringing

their pet cholera along with them, and the city's got a scare--so I came

down here to meet the boat, meaning to bribe the ship's surgeon to come

back into the desert with me. If he wouldn't respond to _bakshish_ I

should have tried kidnapping," finished Sir Richard grimly, and Anstice

smiled.

"No need to do that, sir. I'm here, and I'm ready and willing to do all

you require. But first, hadn't I better put in a claim to my belongings?

It seems to me these rascals would think precious little of making off

with all the lot!"

"Yes--better let me see to it for you," said Sir Richard quickly. "We've

not too much time for the train to Cairo as it is. If you will go and

bespeak an _arabeah_ I'll get your baggage."

And as Anstice moved to obey, a very tumult in his heart, Sir Richard

turned back to the wildly-shouting crowd and succeeded in reclaiming

Anstice's portmanteau and Gladstone bag from the clutches of the

blue-robed fiends who fought one another for its possession.

When they were clear of the quay, driving behind the two long-tailed

little horses along the glaring streets, beneath the thinly-leaved and

dusty trees, Anstice turned to Sir Richard interrogatively.

"Now, sir, can you tell me what's wrong? Mr. Cheniston is ill, you say.

Do you know the nature of his illness?"

"Enteric, I'm afraid," Sir Richard informed him gravely. "He went on a

shooting expedition a week or two ago with the rich Egyptian for whom he

has been carrying through a big irrigation job, and one day, when,

through a miscalculation, the wine and provisions did not turn up, the

party lunched at a mud-village on eggs and coffee. Being particularly

thirsty Bruce indulged in a small glass of water with slices of citron,

and although the host's servants swore by the Beard of the Prophet and

so on through all their most sacred oaths that they had boiled the water

first, the odds are that they had not, and that it came straight from

the river or some indescribably polluted well. It seems that the

pilgrims had passed that way, and owing to their pleasing habit of

dropping a little of their precious 'holy' water into the wells they

meet, some of those wells are absolute hotbeds of infection, so to

speak."

"Whew!" Anstice whistled to express his consternation. "And then, of

course, Mr. Cheniston came home and sickened for this illness."

"Yes. At first he made light of it, said the expedition had been

fatiguing, he had a touch of the sun, and so on. But at last the disease

manifested itself unmistakably, and three days ago I set out for Cairo

to try to get some medical help."

"There is no doctor out there?"

"No. You see it is only a tiny village--hardly that--a settlement in the

midst of a little colony of Bedouins. Iris was first persuaded to go

there by a woman she met in Cairo, a Padre's wife who had gone out--at

least the Padre had--to try the effect of the climate on weak lungs.

They have one kiddie, a child of seven or eight, and they were so

pleased with the place that they stayed on, and were the only white

people in the village, with the exception of a young Australian who had

lost his money and went out there to try to grow vegetables, and a

rather eccentric French artist who set up his studio in a sort of

disused fort built on a high rocky plateau about a mile above the little

settlement. He has gone back to France now, taking with him some really

marvellous studies of the desert, so they say."

"How far is the place from Cairo?"

"About a day and a half's journey on horseback. Of course, if it had

been possible to bring Bruce in to Cairo that would have been the best

thing. But we daren't take the risk. Mrs. Wood, the Padre's wife, is a

first-class nurse, and she and Iris are doing their very best for the

poor fellow. But still"--Sir Richard shook his head--"there's no doubt

the illness has got a fast grip of him, and I'm afraid of the result,

Anstice, I confess I am afraid."

He broke off for a moment, then resumed in a brisker tone:

"Well, here is the station, and now we may expect another uproar over

your precious baggage. The best thing to do is to single out one fellow

and promise him good _bakshish_ if he gets rid of the others; and here

is Mahomed, who is a first-class fellow for the job!"

He beckoned to a tall, pock-marked Arab in a dusty fez and faded blue

djibbeh, and by dint of lavish promises secured his noisy but efficient

services, with the result that in an incredibly short space of time the

luggage was safely tumbled into the train and Anstice and Sir Richard

faced each other, exhausted but triumphant, in an otherwise empty

carriage.

"By Jove, but those beggars make me hot!" Anstice threw himself back

into his corner and drew a long breath. "It's always a mystery to me how

people who live in hot climates are so beastly energetic! They seem to

have quicksilver in their veins, not blood."

"Yet they are lethargic enough at times," returned Sir Richard, pointing

to a recumbent form lying unconcernedly on the platform a few feet from

their open window. "Look at that fellow sleeping there--he doesn't care

in the least what goes on around him--and many times in the street one

has to move off the pavement to avoid stepping on some idle beggar who's

drawn the hood of his garment over his head and gone to sleep, literally

among the feet of the passers-by!"

As the train proceeded on its way Sir Richard outlined the situation a

little more fully to his keenly-interested companion.

"When I left, Mrs. Wood had pretty well taken up her abode with Iris,"

he said. "Their servants--native, of course--behaved badly, as those

mongrel Arabs often do, and promptly deserted us soon as they found

there was likely to be trouble ahead. All but one, a very decent chap

called Hassan, who is really fond of Iris and would do a lot for her."

"The other people in the village--Bedouins, I think you said?--how do

they get on with their white neighbours?"

Sir Richard's forehead suddenly puckered into a worried frown.