The sunshine of a fair Spring morning fell graciously on London
town. Out in Piccadilly its heartening warmth seemed to infuse
into traffic and pedestrians alike a novel jauntiness, so that
bus drivers jested and even the lips of chauffeurs uncurled into
not unkindly smiles. Policemen whistled at their posts--clerks,
on their way to work; beggars approached the task of trying to
persuade perfect strangers to bear the burden of their
maintenance with that optimistic vim which makes all the
difference. It was one of those happy mornings.
At nine o'clock precisely the door of Number Seven Arundell
Street, Leicester Square, opened and a young man stepped out.
Of all the spots in London which may fairly be described as
backwaters there is none that answers so completely to the
description as Arundell Street, Leicester Square. Passing along
the north sidewalk of the square, just where it joins Piccadilly,
you hardly notice the bottleneck opening of the tiny cul-de-sac.
Day and night the human flood roars past, ignoring it. Arundell
Street is less than forty yards in length; and, though there are
two hotels in it, they are not fashionable hotels. It is just a
backwater.
In shape Arundell Street is exactly like one of those flat stone
jars in which Italian wine of the cheaper sort is stored. The
narrow neck that leads off Leicester Square opens abruptly into a
small court. Hotels occupy two sides of this; the third is at
present given up to rooming houses for the impecunious. These are
always just going to be pulled down in the name of progress to
make room for another hotel, but they never do meet with that
fate; and as they stand now so will they in all probability stand
for generations to come.
They provide single rooms of moderate size, the bed modestly
hidden during the day behind a battered screen. The rooms contain
a table, an easy-chair, a hard chair, a bureau, and a round tin
bath, which, like the bed, goes into hiding after its useful work
is performed. And you may rent one of these rooms, with breakfast
thrown in, for five dollars a week.
Ashe Marson had done so. He had rented the second-floor front of
Number Seven.
Twenty-six years before this story opens there had been born to
Joseph Marson, minister, and Sarah his wife, of Hayling,
Massachusetts, in the United States of America, a son. This son,
christened Ashe after a wealthy uncle who subsequently
double-crossed them by leaving his money to charities, in due
course proceeded to Harvard to study for the ministry. So far as
can be ascertained from contemporary records, he did not study a
great deal for the ministry; but he did succeed in running the
mile in four minutes and a half and the half mile at a
correspondingly rapid speed, and his researches in the art of
long jumping won him the respect of all.
That he should be awarded, at the conclusion of his Harvard
career, one of those scholarships at Oxford University instituted
by the late Cecil Rhodes for the encouragement of the liberal
arts, was a natural sequence of events.
That was how Ashe came to be in England.
The rest of Ashe's history follows almost automatically. He won
his blue for athletics at Oxford, and gladdened thousands by
winning the mile and the half mile two years in succession
against Cambridge at Queen's Club. But owing to the pressure of
other engagements he unfortunately omitted to do any studying,
and when the hour of parting arrived he was peculiarly unfitted
for any of the learned professions. Having, however, managed to
obtain a sort of degree, enough to enable him to call himself a
Bachelor of Arts, and realizing that you can fool some of the
people some of the time, he applied for and secured a series of
private tutorships.
A private tutor is a sort of blend of poor relation and
nursemaid, and few of the stately homes of England are without
one. He is supposed to instill learning and deportment into the
small son of the house; but what he is really there for is to
prevent the latter from being a nuisance to his parents when he
is home from school on his vacation.
Having saved a little money at this dreadful trade, Ashe came to
London and tried newspaper work. After two years of moderate
success he got in touch with the Mammoth Publishing Company.
The Mammoth Publishing Company, which controls several important
newspapers, a few weekly journals, and a number of other things,
does not disdain the pennies of the office boy and the junior
clerk. One of its many profitable ventures is a series of
paper-covered tales of crime and adventure. It was here that Ashe
found his niche. Those adventures of Gridley Quayle,
Investigator, which are so popular with a certain section of the
reading public, were his work.
Until the advent of Ashe and Mr. Quayle, the British Pluck
Library had been written by many hands and had included the
adventures of many heroes: but in Gridley Quayle the proprietors
held that the ideal had been reached, and Ashe received a
commission to conduct the entire British Pluck
Library--monthly--himself. On the meager salary paid him for
these labors he had been supporting himself ever since.
That was how Ashe came to be in Arundell Street, Leicester Square,
on this May morning.
He was a tall, well-built, fit-looking young man, with a clear
eye and a strong chin; and he was dressed, as he closed the front
door behind him, in a sweater, flannel trousers, and rubber-soled
gymnasium shoes. In one hand he bore a pair of Indian clubs, in
the other a skipping rope.
Having drawn in and expelled the morning air in a measured and
solemn fashion, which the initiated observer would have
recognized as that scientific deep breathing so popular nowadays,
he laid down his clubs, adjusted his rope and began to skip.
When he had taken the second-floor front of Number Seven, three
months before, Ashe Marson had realized that he must forego those
morning exercises which had become a second nature to him, or
else defy London's unwritten law and brave London's mockery. He
had not hesitated long. Physical fitness was his gospel. On the
subject of exercise he was confessedly a crank. He decided to
defy London.
The first time he appeared in Arundell Street in his sweater and
flannels he had barely whirled his Indian clubs once around his
head before he had attracted the following audience:
a) Two cabmen--one intoxicated;
b) Four waiters from the Hotel Mathis;
c) Six waiters from the Hotel Previtali;
d) Six chambermaids from the Hotel Mathis;
e) Five chambermaids from the Hotel Previtali;
f) The proprietor of the Hotel Mathis;
g) The proprietor of the Hotel Previtali;
h) A street cleaner;
i) Eleven nondescript loafers;
j) Twenty-seven children;
k) A cat.
They all laughed--even the cat--and kept on laughing. The
intoxicated cabman called Ashe "Sunny Jim." And Ashe kept on
swinging his clubs.
A month later, such is the magic of perseverance, his audience
had narrowed down to the twenty-seven children. They still
laughed, but without that ringing conviction which the
sympathetic support of their elders had lent them.
And now, after three months, the neighborhood, having accepted
Ashe and his morning exercises as a natural phenomenon, paid him
no further attention.
On this particular morning Ashe Marson skipped with even more
than his usual vigor. This was because he wished to expel by
means of physical fatigue a small devil of discontent, of whose
presence within him he had been aware ever since getting out of
bed. It is in the Spring that the ache for the larger life comes
on us, and this was a particularly mellow Spring morning. It was
the sort of morning when the air gives us a feeling of
anticipation--a feeling that, on a day like this, things surely
cannot go jogging along in the same dull old groove; a
premonition that something romantic and exciting is about to
happen to us.
But the southwest wind of Spring brings also remorse. We catch
the vague spirit of unrest in the air and we regret our misspent
youth.
Ashe was doing this. Even as he skipped, he was conscious of a
wish that he had studied harder at college and was now in a
position to be doing something better than hack work for a
soulless publishing company. Never before had he been so
completely certain that he was sick to death of the rut into
which he had fallen.
Skipping brought no balm. He threw down his rope and took up the
Indian clubs. Indian clubs left him still unsatisfied. The
thought came to him that it was a long time since he had done his
Larsen Exercises. Perhaps they would heal him.
The Larsen Exercises, invented by a certain Lieutenant Larsen, of
the Swedish Army, have almost every sort of merit. They make a
man strong, supple, and slender. But they are not dignified.
Indeed, to one seeing them suddenly and without warning for the
first time, they are markedly humorous. The only reason why King
Henry, of England, whose son sank with the White Ship, never
smiled again, was because Lieutenant Larsen had not then invented
his admirable exercises.
So complacent, so insolently unselfconscious had Ashe become in
the course of three months, owing to his success in inducing the
populace to look on anything he did with the indulgent eye of
understanding, that it simply did not occur to him, when he
abruptly twisted his body into the shape of a corkscrew, in
accordance with the directions in the lieutenant's book for the
consummation of Exercise One, that he was doing anything funny.
And the behavior of those present seemed to justify his
confidence. The proprietor of the Hotel Mathis regarded him
without a smile. The proprietor of the Hotel Previtali might have
been in a trance, for all the interest he displayed. The hotel
employees continued their tasks impassively. The children were
blind and dumb. The cat across the way stropped its backbone
against the railings unheeding.
But, even as he unscrambled himself and resumed a normal posture,
from his immediate rear there rent the quiet morning air a clear
and musical laugh. It floated out on the breeze and hit him like
a bullet.
Three months ago Ashe would have accepted the laugh as
inevitable, and would have refused to allow it to embarrass him;
but long immunity from ridicule had sapped his resolution. He
spun round with a jump, flushed and self-conscious.
From the window of the first-floor front of Number Seven a girl
was leaning. The Spring sunshine played on her golden hair and
lit up her bright blue eyes, fixed on his flanneled and sweatered
person with a fascinated amusement. Even as he turned, the laugh
smote him afresh.
For the space of perhaps two seconds they stared at each other,
eye to eye. Then she vanished into the room.
Ashe was beaten. Three months ago a million girls could have
laughed at his morning exercises without turning him from his
purpose. Today this one scoffer, alone and unaided, was
sufficient for his undoing. The depression which exercise had
begun to dispel surged back on him. He had no heart to continue.
Sadly gathering up his belongings, he returned to his room, and
found a cold bath tame and uninspiring.
The breakfasts--included in the rent--provided by Mrs. Bell, the
landlady of Number Seven, were held by some authorities to be
specially designed to quell the spirits of their victims, should
they tend to soar excessively. By the time Ashe had done his best
with the disheveled fried egg, the chicory blasphemously called
coffee, and the charred bacon, misery had him firmly in its grip.
And when he forced himself to the table, and began to try to
concoct the latest of the adventures of Gridley Quayle,
Investigator, his spirit groaned within him.
This morning, as he sat and chewed his pen, his loathing for
Gridley seemed to have reached its climax. It was his habit, in
writing these stories, to think of a good title first, and then
fit an adventure to it. And overnight, in a moment of
inspiration, he had jotted down on an envelope the words: "The
Adventure of the Wand of Death."
It was with the sullen repulsion of a vegetarian who finds a
caterpillar in his salad that he now sat glaring at them.
The title had seemed so promising overnight--so full of strenuous
possibilities. It was still speciously attractive; but now that
the moment had arrived for writing the story its flaws became
manifest.
What was a wand of death? It sounded good; but, coming down to
hard facts, what was it? You cannot write a story about a wand of
death without knowing what a wand of death is; and, conversely,
if you have thought of such a splendid title you cannot jettison
it offhand. Ashe rumpled his hair and gnawed his pen.
There came a knock at the door.
Ashe spun round in his chair. This was the last straw! If he had
told Mrs. Ball once that he was never to be disturbed in the
morning on any pretext whatsoever, he had told her twenty times.
It was simply too infernal to be endured if his work time was to
be cut into like this. Ashe ran over in his mind a few opening
remarks.
"Come in!" he shouted, and braced himself for battle.
A girl walked in--the girl of the first-floor front; the girl
with the blue eyes, who had laughed at his Larsen Exercises.
Various circumstances contributed to the poorness of the figure
Ashe cut in the opening moments of this interview. In the first
place, he was expecting to see his landlady, whose height was
about four feet six, and the sudden entry of somebody who was
about five feet seven threw the universe temporarily out of
focus. In the second place, in anticipation of Mrs. Bell's entry,
he had twisted his face into a forbidding scowl, and it was no
slight matter to change this on the spur of the moment into a
pleasant smile. Finally, a man who has been sitting for half an
hour in front of a sheet of paper bearing the words: "The
Adventure of the Wand of Death," and trying to decide what a wand
of death might be, has not his mind under proper control.
The net result of these things was that, for perhaps half a
minute, Ashe behaved absurdly. He goggled and he yammered. An
alienist, had one been present, would have made up his mind about
him without further investigation. For an appreciable time he did
not think of rising from his seat. When he did, the combined leap
and twist he executed practically amounted to a Larsen Exercise.
Nor was the girl unembarrassed. If Ashe had been calmer he would
have observed on her cheek the flush which told that she, too,
was finding the situation trying. But, woman being ever better
equipped with poise than man, it was she who spoke first.
"I'm afraid I'm disturbing you."
"No, no!" said Ashe. "Oh, no; not at all--not at all! No. Oh,
no--not at all--no!" And would have continued to play on the
theme indefinitely had not the girl spoken again.
"I wanted to apologize," she said, "for my abominable rudeness in
laughing at you just now. It was idiotic of me and I don't know
why I did it. I'm sorry."
Science, with a thousand triumphs to her credit, has not yet
succeeded in discovering the correct reply for a young man to
make who finds himself in the appalling position of being
apologized to by a pretty girl. If he says nothing he seems
sullen and unforgiving. If he says anything he makes a fool of
himself. Ashe, hesitating between these two courses, suddenly
caught sight of the sheet of paper over which he had been poring
so long.
"What is a wand of death?" he asked.
"I beg your pardon?"
"A wand of death?"
"I don't understand."
The delirium of the conversation was too much for Ashe. He burst
out laughing. A moment later the girl did the same. And
simultaneously embarrassment ceased to be.
"I suppose you think I'm mad?" said Ashe.
"Certainly," said the girl.
"Well, I should have been if you hadn't come in."
"Why was that?"
"I was trying to write a detective story."
"I was wondering whether you were a writer."
"Do you write?"
"Yes. Do you ever read Home Gossip?"
"Never!"
"You are quite right to speak in that thankful tone. It's a
horrid little paper--all brown-paper patterns and advice to the
lovelorn and puzzles. I do a short story for it every week, under
various names. A duke or an earl goes with each story. I loathe
it intensely."
"I am sorry for your troubles," said Ashe firmly; "but we are
wandering from the point. What is a wand of death?"
"A wand of death?"
"A wand of death."
The girl frowned reflectively.
"Why, of course; it's the sacred ebony stick stolen from the
Indian temple, which is supposed to bring death to whoever
possesses it. The hero gets hold of it, and the priests dog him
and send him threatening messages. What else could it be?"
Ashe could not restrain his admiration.
"This is genius!"
"Oh, no!"
"Absolute genius. I see it all. The hero calls in Gridley Quayle,
and that patronizing ass, by the aid of a series of wicked
coincidences, solves the mystery; and there am I, with another
month's work done."
She looked at him with interest.
"Are you the author of Gridley Quayle?"
"Don't tell me you read him!"
"I do not read him! But he is published by the same firm that
publishes Home Gossip, and I can't help seeing his cover
sometimes while I am waiting in the waiting room to see the
editress."
Ashe felt like one who meets a boyhood's chum on a desert island.
Here was a real bond between them.
"Does the Mammoth publish you, too? Why, we are comrades in
misfortune--fellow serfs! We should be friends. Shall we be
friends?"
"I should be delighted."
"Shall we shake hands, sit down, and talk about ourselves a
little?"
"But I am keeping you from your work."
"An errand of mercy."
She sat down. It is a simple act, this of sitting down; but, like
everything else, it may be an index to character. There was
something wholly satisfactory to Ashe in the manner in which this
girl did it. She neither seated herself on the extreme edge of
the easy-chair, as one braced for instant flight; nor did she
wallow in the easy-chair, as one come to stay for the week-end.
She carried herself in an unconventional situation with an
unstudied self-confidence that he could not sufficiently admire.
Etiquette is not rigid in Arundell Street; but, nevertheless, a
girl in a first-floor front may be excused for showing surprise
and hesitation when invited to a confidential chat with a
second-floor front young man whom she has known only five
minutes. But there is a freemasonry among those who live in large
cities on small earnings.
"Shall we introduce ourselves?" said Ashe. "Or did Mrs. Bell tell
you my name? By the way, you have not been here long, have you?"
"I took my room day before yesterday. But your name, if you are
the author of Gridley Quayle, is Felix Clovelly, isn't it?"
"Good heavens, no! Surely you don't think anyone's name could
really be Felix Clovelly? That is only the cloak under which I
hide my shame. My real name is Marson--Ashe Marson. And yours?"
"Valentine--Joan Valentine."
"Will you tell me the story of your life, or shall I tell mine
first?"
"I don't know that I have any particular story. I am an
American."
"Not American!"
"Why not?"
"Because it is too extraordinary, too much like a Gridley Quayle
coincidence. I am an American!"
"Well, so are a good many other people."
"You miss the point. We are not only fellow serfs--we are fellow
exiles. You can't round the thing off by telling me you were born
in Hayling, Massachusetts, I suppose?"
"I was born in New York."
"Surely not! I didn't know anybody was."
"Why Hayling, Massachusetts?"
"That was where I was born."
"I'm afraid I never heard of it."
"Strange. I know your home town quite well. But I have not yet
made my birthplace famous; in fact, I doubt whether I ever shall.
I am beginning to realize that I am one of the failures."
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-six."
"You are only twenty-six and you call yourself a failure? I think
that is a shameful thing to say."
"What would you call a man of twenty-six whose only means of
making a living was the writing of Gridley Quayle stories--an
empire builder?"
"How do you know it's your only means of making a living? Why
don't you try something new?"
"Such as?"
"How should I know? Anything that comes along. Good gracious, Mr.
Marson; here you are in the biggest city in the world, with
chances for adventure simply shrieking to you on every side."
"I must be deaf. The only thing I have heard shrieking to me on
every side has been Mrs. Bell--for the week's rent."
"Read the papers. Read the advertisement columns. I'm sure you
will find something sooner or later. Don't get into a groove. Be
an adventurer. Snatch at the next chance, whatever it is."
Ashe nodded.
"Continue," he said. "Proceed. You are stimulating me."
"But why should you want a girl like me to stimulate you? Surely
London is enough to do it without my help? You can always find
something new, surely? Listen, Mr. Marson. I was thrown on my own
resources about five years ago--never mind how. Since then I have
worked in a shop, done typewriting, been on the stage, had a
position as governess, been a lady's maid--"
"A what! A lady's maid?"
"Why not? It was all experience; and I can assure you I would
much rather be a lady's maid than a governess."
"I think I know what you mean. I was a private tutor once. I
suppose a governess is the female equivalent. I have often
wondered what General Sherman would have said about private
tutoring if he expressed himself so breezily about mere war. Was
it fun being a lady's maid?"
"It was pretty good fun; and it gave me an opportunity of
studying the aristocracy in its native haunts, which has made me
the Gossip's established authority on dukes and earls."
Ashe drew a deep breath--not a scientific deep breath, but one of
admiration.
"You are perfectly splendid!"
"Splendid?"
"I mean, you have such pluck."
"Oh, well; I keep on trying. I'm twenty-three and I haven't
achieved anything much yet; but I certainly don't feel like
sitting back and calling myself a failure."
Ashe made a grimace.
"All right," he said. "I've got it."
"I meant you to," said Joan placidly. "I hope I haven't bored you
with my autobiography, Mr. Marson. I'm not setting myself up as a
shining example; but I do like action and hate stagnation."
"You are absolutely wonderful!" said Ashe. "You are a human
correspondence course in efficiency, one of the ones you see
advertised in the back pages of the magazines, beginning, 'Young
man, are you earning enough?' with a picture showing the dead
beat gazing wistfully at the boss' chair. You would galvanize a
jellyfish."
"If I have really stimulated you-----"
"I think that was another slam," said Ashe pensively. "Well, I
deserve it. Yes, you have stimulated me. I feel like a new man.
It's queer that you should have come to me right on top of
everything else. I don't remember when I have felt so restless
and discontented as this morning."
"It's the Spring."
"I suppose it is. I feel like doing something big and
adventurous."
"Well, do it then. You have a Morning Post on the table. Have you
read it yet?"
"I glanced at it."
"But you haven't read the advertisement pages? Read them. They
may contain just the opening you want."
"Well, I'll do it; but my experience of advertisement pages is
that they are monopolized by philanthropists who want to lend you
any sum from ten to a hundred thousand pounds on your note of
hand only. However, I will scan them."
Joan rose and held out her hand.
"Good-by, Mr. Marson. You've got your detective story to write,
and I have to think out something with a duke in it by to-night;
so I must be going." She smiled. "We have traveled a good way
from the point where we started, but I may as well go back to it
before I leave you. I'm sorry I laughed at you this morning."
Ashe clasped her hand in a fervent grip.
"I'm not. Come and laugh at me whenever you feel like it. I like
being laughed at. Why, when I started my morning exercises, half
of London used to come and roll about the sidewalks in
convulsions. I'm not an attraction any longer and it makes me
feel lonesome. There are twenty-nine of those Larsen Exercises
and you saw only part of the first. You have done so much for me
that if I can be of any use to you, in helping you to greet the
day with a smile, I shall be only too proud. Exercise Six is a
sure-fire mirth-provoker; I'll start with it to-morrow morning. I
can also recommend Exercise Eleven--a scream! Don't miss it."
"Very well. Well, good-by for the present."
"Good-by."
She was gone; and Ashe, thrilling with new emotions, stared at
the door which had closed behind her. He felt as though he had
been wakened from sleep by a powerful electric shock.
Close beside the sheet of paper on which he had inscribed the now
luminous and suggestive title of his new Gridley Quayle story lay
the Morning Post, the advertisement columns of which he had
promised her to explore. The least he could do was to begin at
once.
His spirits sank as he did so. It was the same old game. A Mr.
Brian MacNeill, though doing no business with minors, was
willing--even anxious--to part with his vast fortune to anyone
over the age of twenty-one whose means happened to be a trifle
straitened. This good man required no security whatever; nor did
his rivals in generosity, the Messrs. Angus Bruce, Duncan
Macfarlane, Wallace Mackintosh and Donald MacNab. They, too,
showed a curious distaste for dealing with minors; but anyone of
maturer years could simply come round to the office and help
himself.
Ashe threw the paper down wearily. He had known all along that it
was no good. Romance was dead and the unexpected no longer
happened. He picked up his pen and began to write "The Adventure
of the Wand of Death."