The Chapters

Before we went indoors I stood for a little while at the gate, listening to the voices as they receded along the road. My wife had gone up the path, and called to me that I should catch cold. I remember that I laughed at this, for the air was almost oppressively warm. Then I followed her, and the door was shut upon the stars.

It was on a subsequent night that I saw the first falling star.

I had been writing late, and had pushed back my chair to rest my eyes. The window was open, and beyond the dark masses of the garden trees a considerable patch of sky was visible. Suddenly the room, the papers before me, and even the white ceiling became perceptible in a pale and unfamiliar illumination. Looking out, I saw a streak of greenish fire descending very swiftly towards the north-east. It broadened as it fell, and for an instant the tops of the trees stood out, each leaf distinct, against a glare like the light of a furnace. Then the light was gone.

For perhaps two seconds I remained seated, holding my pen. Afterwards I went to the window. There was a reddish glow low down beyond the trees, which faded while I watched it, and presently came a dull concussion. The window rattled, and a little china ornament upon the mantelpiece gave a sharp, solitary click.

My wife called to me from upstairs.

“What was that?”

“A meteor,” I answered. “A very large one. It must have fallen somewhere close to us.”

I spoke with the satisfaction of a man who has supplied an explanation. Until the word occurred to me I had been considerably startled; having pronounced it, I found the thing quite natural. I went upstairs and told her how the light had fallen. We listened for a time at the bedroom window, but heard nothing beyond a dog barking persistently in the direction of Ottershaw.

In the morning the matter assumed a more definite shape. A labourer passing our gate told me that something had fallen into an old gravel working beside the Chertsey road. There was water in the excavation, and a great quantity of steam was coming from it. He had not himself been down to see, but had spoken to a man whose cart had been stopped by the earth thrown across the lane.

I was for setting out at once, with my breakfast scarcely begun. My wife insisted that there was no occasion for going hungry to look at a stone, and said that she would come with me. She had never seen a meteorite. Indeed, neither had I, except under glass, with a printed account of its weight and composition.

We started a little after eight. It was already hot, and the dust lay white upon the road. The ordinary business of the morning continued about us. A baker’s cart passed, and two children with slates under their arms were disputing over an apple. Only when we came near the turning towards the gravel pit did we perceive any sign that the night had been unusual. A man stood in his garden, looking over the hedge, and farther on a small boy was running with that peculiar expenditure of effort by which children advertise the importance of their errand.

The pit lay behind a belt of young firs, in a shallow depression of the ground. I had passed it often without giving it more than a glance. Its lower part had been flooded for years; rushes grew at one end, and there was a shelving bank down which carts had formerly been driven. Now a broad furrow crossed the upper edge of the excavation, and the firs upon either side of it were snapped or bowed away. At the bottom of this furrow, lying obliquely in the muddy water, was the thing that had fallen.

Steam rose from it in loose white folds. At first these concealed almost everything, but the breeze shifted them, and I saw a great dark body, half-submerged, with a rounded upper surface projecting some four or five feet above the pool. It was much larger than I had expected—larger than a brewer’s dray—and seemed to have driven itself beneath the opposite bank. Clods of wet gravel lay scattered over the rushes, and the water, usually clear enough at its margins, was of the colour of strong tea.

There were only seven or eight people there when we arrived. Ogilvy stood upon the slope, with his hat pushed back and his hands behind him. His boots and the lower part of his trousers were muddy. Beside him was a man in a gardener’s apron, and a little farther down two labourers were examining the broken ground.

Ogilvy greeted us with an animation that made him appear almost boyish.

“You saw it?” he said. “You actually saw it come down?”

I described the light and the interval before the sound. He questioned me closely as to the direction, and was disappointed that I had not looked at my watch.

“A magnificent meteorite,” he said. “We are extraordinarily fortunate. Another hundred yards, and it might have buried itself where we should have had a week’s digging.”

My wife asked whether it was still burning.

“Hot,” he said. “The steam makes it look as though it were burning. There is no combustion that I can see.”

We descended a little way. The air immediately above the water trembled, and there was a smell of wet earth, with something sharper in it which I could not identify. Here and there bubbles rose beside the dark mass and broke with a soft, thick sound. The surface exposed to us was blackish brown, unevenly crusted, and in places had a dull metallic lustre.

What struck me, however, was its general form. In spite of the adhering earth and the irregularities of its coating, there was a breadth and equality in the curve of the upper part that seemed to me singularly unlike a broken stone.

“It is wonderfully regular,” I said.

Ogilvy glanced at it.

“Meteorites are often rounded.”

“Not quite in that fashion, surely.”

“You are judging the whole from a portion of its surface. Most of it is under water.”

I moved a few steps to the left. From there the same broad curve was visible through another interval in the steam.

“It looks almost as if it had been made.”

He turned upon me with a quick smile.

“My dear fellow, you have been reading the newspapers about Mars.”

Until he spoke I had not consciously connected the two things. His words brought back the little bright disk in the telescope and the faint projection that had appeared upon its edge.

“Well,” I said, “why should one dismiss the connection?”

“Because there is nothing to connect. Stones fall upon the earth continually. We have watched disturbances upon another planet. Put the two occurrences beside one another, and what have you added to either?”

“The coincidence.”

“You would find coincidences enough if you looked for them. This is an ordinary meteorite, extraordinarily large and extraordinarily convenient for examination. That is quite sufficient to make it interesting.”

He spoke a little impatiently. I think he feared that I should give currency to some foolish story, and so obscure the importance of his observations. For my own part, I had no settled conviction whatever. I was attracted by a possibility, and his certainty provoked me to defend it.

“But the shape,” I persisted.

“The shape will be apparent when it is uncovered.”

“And if it proves to be artificial?”

“Then,” said Ogilvy, “I shall say that it is artificial. At present I see a heated mass with a fused crust, lying in the hole made by its fall. What do you see?”

I could make no better answer than to point again to the curve.

My wife, who had been listening with some amusement, said that it seemed a pity to quarrel over a thing before it was cool enough to look at. Ogilvy laughed, and the discussion ended for the time.

It is easy now to smile at his assurance. Yet his interpretation was supported by the whole body of experience upon which men then relied. He had handled stones that had crossed interplanetary space; he had never handled a thing constructed by an intelligence outside the earth. The first supposition required only an unusual weight and an unusual form. The second required a change in his conception of the universe.

We remained there while the morning advanced. The steam diminished sufficiently for us to distinguish a longer stretch of the upper surface, but whatever outline the submerged part possessed was hidden by the turbid water. Ogilvy borrowed a stick from the gardener and tried the ground at the margin. His foot sank at once above the ankle, and he withdrew with an exclamation. There was no getting close to it on that side.

People began to arrive by twos and threes. Most stood for a minute upon the rim of the pit before coming down, and nearly all asked the same questions. Had anyone been there when it fell? How much did it weigh? Who owned it? The last question produced a lengthy discussion between the gardener and a stout man who had come without a collar. One asserted that it belonged to the owner of the gravel; the other that things falling from the sky belonged to the Crown.

A young fellow in a striped shirt said that there ought to be diamonds inside it. He had heard of such a thing. When Ogilvy corrected him, he listened with a courteous disbelief which was plainly less favourable to science than an argument would have been.

My wife and I sat for a little while upon a dry bank beneath the firs. From there we could see the white road through the stems, and the people turning aside into the pit. She had gathered a few sprigs of heather on the way, and was arranging them in her belt. I remember the small purple flowers very clearly, and the powdery dust upon the hem of her dress.

About ten o’clock a man came down carrying a short plank. He was a wiry fellow, bareheaded, with his sleeves rolled above his elbows. Someone called him Simmons. He said that he had helped cart gravel out of the place and knew where the bottom was firm.

Ogilvy warned him that the bank had been disturbed.

“I’m not going bathing,” he answered.

He laid the plank across a narrow tongue of water on the nearer side, where part of the mass approached a heap of newly fallen earth. A number of us stood up to watch him. The plank bent under his weight, but held, and he reached the heap and planted one boot upon it.

“You must not touch it,” Ogilvy called. “It is still exceedingly hot.”

The man looked back at us and grinned.

“Rain-water’s been on it all night.”

Then, either to steady himself or deliberately to prove his point, he put his open hand against the dark surface.

He snatched it away with a cry so abrupt that my wife caught my arm. For an instant he swayed, staring at his palm, and I thought he would fall into the pool. Then he stumbled back across the plank, cursing and holding his wrist with his other hand.

The skin at the base of his fingers had whitened. Already, as he thrust the hand towards us, a blister was rising upon it. His face had become grey beneath its sunburn, and the grin was gone altogether.

My wife was the first to speak sensibly. She asked where there was clean cold water, and the gardener pointed towards a cottage beyond the lane. She gave the man her handkerchief, though he scarcely seemed aware of it, and another fellow took him by the shoulder and led him up the slope.

“I told him,” said Ogilvy, very quietly.

There was something disagreeable in the silence that followed. A few minutes before, the whole affair had possessed the character of an entertainment provided without charge. Now everyone looked at the great steaming back of the thing with a new attention. The heat, which we had discussed so readily, had become a fact in human flesh.

Someone drew the plank away.

For a while my wife wished to leave, but I persuaded her to wait until we had news of the man. The gardener went to the cottage and returned to say that Simmons had put his hand in a basin and was demanding oil. His wife had sent for someone to dress it. There was no reason, the gardener thought, why he should not be at work again in a few days.

This relieved us, and presently the talk resumed. Fresh arrivals, who had not heard the cry, listened to an account of the accident and then edged towards the water precisely as their predecessors had done. By eleven there must have been fifty people about the excavation. The bank where we had sat was occupied, and a line of heads showed above the opposite rim.

The sun beat upon the bare gravel. My wife had opened her parasol, and I saw that she was tired. I had twice announced that I would come away in a few minutes; each time some alteration in the drifting steam had detained me. At last I asked her to go home without me.

She looked at the slope, and then at Ogilvy, who was explaining something to three newcomers.

“You will stay here all day.”

“Only until there is something definite to know.”

“That may be all day,” she said.

I promised to follow her shortly, and urged the heat and the crowded path. After a little hesitation she consented. I took her up to the road, where a cart had stopped and several cyclists were dismounting. She made me promise also that I would not attempt to touch the meteorite.

I watched her go until her parasol disappeared beyond the firs. Somewhere towards Chertsey a clock was striking twelve. Behind me there was a continuous sound of voices, and people were still coming along the road and turning down towards the water. I stood aside to let a family pass, and then went back into the pit.

The first thing I did, when I had recovered the use of my tongue, was to ask Mr. Franklin what had brought him to us before his time. The second thing I did was to remind him that I was still sitting on the sand.

“You have grown heavier, sir, since you went abroad,” I said. “And I haven’t grown younger. If you have any more affection to bestow on me, perhaps you will be so good as to help me up with it.”

He had me on my legs in a moment. Having next brushed the sand off my coat with his own hands, he offered me his arm as respectfully as if I had been his grandfather. There was the old boy again! Whatever foreign nations might have done towards spoiling him, they had fortunately overlooked his heart.

“Now, Betteredge,” he said, “what was your question?”

“What has brought you four hours before we expected you, sir?”

“A letter.”

“A pleasant letter, I hope?”

“That depends on what comes of it. You shall judge for yourself.”

He took a pocket-book out of his breast, searched among a quantity of papers which appeared to me to have no business to be travelling together, and produced the letter. Before putting it into my hands, he looked towards the plantation.

“Can we get back another way?”

We could get back by the upper path, which skirted the firs, and joined the approach to the house near the shrubbery. I told him so.

“Let us take the upper path. There is no hurry now I have found you.”

There was a flat stone, conveniently placed for old people, at the point where the path began to rise. We stopped there while I read the letter. It was dated in London, on the previous day, and was expressed as follows:—

“My dear Blake,—You mentioned this morning that you proposed reaching Lady Verinder’s house towards evening to-morrow. Let me advise you to leave London by the earlier train, and to complete the journey by a hired conveyance, if the connection should oblige you to wait.

“You ought, if possible, to have a private word with Betteredge before you are received into the family circle. His knowledge of Lady Verinder’s feelings may save you from making a mistake which your good intentions will certainly not repair. I have known people prepare the way for a painful subject so carefully that they have made the preparation more offensive than the subject itself. Pray take warning.

“As to the small packet about which you consulted me, my advice remains the same. Place it for the night in the custody of a trustworthy person, and defer your decision until to-morrow. Betteredge is entirely to be depended on. There is no necessity for acquainting him with the contents; and there is every reason for leaving the seals unbroken until you have made up your mind.

“Do not understand me as advising concealment from your aunt. I advise consideration before you speak, and security while you consider. These are plain precautions, which I hope may recommend themselves even to a gentleman who has studied philosophy in Germany.

“Yours very truly, “Bruff.”

I read the letter twice. Mr. Bruff was our family solicitor, and a man whose opinion I respected; though I had occasionally found his bills a little difficult to reconcile with the shortness of the letters he charged for writing.

“Well?” says Mr. Franklin.

“I understand how you came early, sir. You took the lawyer’s advice.”

“To the letter. An early start, a hurried breakfast, and a chaise for the last part of the journey. I left my luggage at the house, and heard from your daughter where I should find you. What do you say to the rest of it?”

“I say Mr. Bruff knows a trustworthy person when he sees one.”

He laughed at that, and put the letter away.

“The difficulty is about my uncle,” he said.

I looked at him.

“Which of your uncles, Mr. Franklin?”

“Colonel Herncastle.”

There are names which make their own answer when you mention them. This was one of the names. I took my stick off the stone, and began poking at a tuft of grass.

“You see the difficulty?” he asked.

“I see it, sir.”

“Has time made any difference in my aunt’s feeling?”

“None that I know of.”

“Would she hear me, if I explained that my own position in the matter——?”

“If you will excuse my saying so, Mr. Franklin, I doubt whether you would get as far as your own position.”

He walked a step or two away, and came back again.

Here was one of the results of his foreign education. An Englishman, with a difficulty before him, sits down to it. Mr. Franklin got up, walked round it, and came back upon it from the other side. Whether he saw more of the difficulty in this way, I can’t tell you. He certainly wore out more shoe-leather.

“I must say something,” he remarked.

“Then say as little as possible, sir.”

“That is exactly what Bruff said.”

Upon which we both laughed. It was pleasant to find that, without ever having opened a law-book in my life, I had arrived at advice which cost money in London.

We went on towards the house. Before we had taken many steps, Mr. Franklin stopped again, and drew a small packet from an inner pocket of his coat. It was wrapped in stout paper, crossed with string, and sealed.

“Will you take charge of this till to-morrow morning?” he said. “It must be put somewhere where nobody will meddle with it.”

“The plate-room, sir.”

“Who keeps the key?”

“I keep it.”

“And who has the other key?”

“My lady.”

“That will do perfectly.”

He placed the packet in my hand.

“You understand, Betteredge? It is to remain just as it is.”

“I have had the care of things that were not my property for better than fifty years, Mr. Franklin.”

“My dear old fellow, I didn’t mean that!”

He was so distressed at having appeared to doubt me that I was obliged to comfort him. The consequence was, that we wasted another five minutes over an affair which might have been settled in five words. When people are fond of each other, it is wonderful how much unnecessary trouble they will take about it.

I put the packet in my coat-pocket. What was inside it I no more knew than you know what is inside the nearest locked drawer to you at this moment. Remember that, if you please. I have undertaken to tell you what happened; and a sealed piece of paper is not made transparent by an old man’s undertaking.

We had nearly reached the shrubbery when I recollected my promise to Penelope.

“There is another matter, sir, on which I should be glad of your opinion.”

I then related what had happened on the terrace that morning, and what my daughter had afterwards witnessed. Having treated the affair lightly with Penelope, I naturally began by treating it lightly with Mr. Franklin. Before I had done, his face stopped me.

“Are you sure of the boy’s words?” he asked.

“As sure as I can be of words repeated by my daughter.”

“He said the English gentleman had got It about him?”

“Those were the words, sir.”

“And that he was coming to this house to-day?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Franklin stood looking down at the path. I waited for the explanation which was to put Penelope’s nonsense in its proper place.

“The Moonstone,” he said, speaking to himself.

I had heard enough of the family stories to know the name.

“You don’t mean, sir, that you believe——?”

“I mean that I don’t like it. Tell Penelope I want to hear her account from her own lips.”

There was the end of my victory over my daughter! I had promised to appeal to an educated gentleman, and the educated gentleman had gone over to the enemy. If you have ever maintained the dignity of a father under similar circumstances, you will know why I received this instruction in silence.

At the side-door we found Penelope herself. Her first words took us back to the poor girl whom we had left out of our thoughts at the sands.

“Did you send Rosanna to Cobb’s Hole, father?”

“I sent her to her dinner.”

“She hasn’t come in. I saw her from the lodge path, going down the village road, and called after her. She said she was going on to Cobb’s Hole.”

“Did you tell her she was wanted?”

“Yes. She begged me to ask you to excuse her. She said she couldn’t come back just yet.”

“Was she ill?”

“She didn’t say.”

My daughter looked at Mr. Franklin, and stopped. He immediately offered to go into the house, with that readiness to spare another person embarrassment which was one of his pleasantest qualities. Penelope assured him that there was nothing private to say.

“I am only uneasy about Rosanna, sir. She is not strong.”

“Then let her have her walk in peace,” he answered kindly. “Betteredge will make it right for her.”

He went in. Penelope followed me as far as the passage to the plate-room.

“What did he say about the boy?” she whispered.

“He wants to hear your story himself.”

“Does he think it was a trick?”

“He thinks you had better tell him.”

That answer preserved my authority, and committed me to nothing. I recommend it to other parents.

Having sent Penelope away, I unlocked the plate-room, and put the packet into the small inner cupboard in which I kept the plate-list and certain other matters committed to my particular charge. I turned the cupboard key, tried the door, and then locked the plate-room itself. The outer key went on its accustomed ring in my pocket.

There the business ended, so far as my hands were concerned. My mind, I own, remained outside the cupboard for a minute or two, wondering. But there is a difference between wondering at a door and opening it. Some people’s curiosity recognises no such distinction. Mine does.

My lady’s carriage returned shortly afterwards. I was attending to Mr. Franklin’s luggage when the message came that she wished to receive him in her own sitting-room. He had been questioning Penelope, and looked grave when I found him; but his face cleared directly on hearing that his aunt was at home.

“Come and see me forgiven for growing up, Betteredge,” he said.

I went with him to the sitting-room, and opened the door.

My lady advanced to meet him with both her hands held out. She had her sister’s look about the eyes; and I saw him notice it before either of them spoke. The next moment she had kissed him, and was holding him at arm’s length to look at him again.

“You have remembered the way to us at last, Franklin.”

“If you knew how glad I am to be here——”

“I shall know all about it presently. Sit down.”

I was withdrawing, when she stopped me with a question about the room prepared for him. Before I had finished answering it, Mr. Franklin spoke.

“My dear aunt, there is one matter which I should like to put out of the way at once.”

Her hands, which had been busy with the fastening of her bonnet, became suddenly still.

“Is it a matter of business?”

“In a sense, yes.”

“Does it concern Colonel Herncastle?”

He hesitated. That was answer enough.

My lady laid her bonnet on the table.

“Franklin, I am happy to receive my sister’s son. I wish you to feel that this house is your home. But there is one subject which I forbid to be discussed under my roof. That subject is Colonel Herncastle.”

“My dear aunt——”

“I ask for no explanation. I wish to hear none. You understand me?”

Her voice was quiet throughout. People who did not know my lady might have supposed there was still something to be done with her. I knew better. When she was angry, there might be a chance. When she was quiet, you had come to the end.

Mr. Franklin rose, and took her hand.

“I understand,” he said. “The subject shall not be mentioned by me under your roof. I promise you.”

She pressed his hand, and made him sit beside her again.

“Now tell me about yourself.”

I shut the door softly, and left them.

You will observe that my advice and Mr. Bruff’s advice had been excellent, and that neither of us had succeeded in making it of the smallest use. This is the great drawback to advising other people. Having got your opinion, they go away and do something of their own.

The afternoon’s work, disturbed by our visitor’s early arrival, kept me occupied until dinner-time. When I next saw Penelope, I asked whether Rosanna had returned.

No; Rosanna had not returned.

I mentioned the matter to my lady when an opportunity offered. She remembered the fainting-fit of the morning, and blamed herself for not having inquired after the girl.

“If she is with her friend at Cobb’s Hole, let her rest there, Betteredge. There is no need to hurry her back to work.”

I gave the necessary directions below stairs, and had something put aside for Rosanna’s supper. Nancy considered this an encouragement to irregularity. I told Nancy that I was responsible for the regularity of the household, and requested her to attend to the potatoes.

As the evening advanced, I found myself listening whenever the side-door opened.

There was no reason for it that I could fairly have put into words. The girl had gone to the one place in the neighbourhood where she had a friend. My lady had excused her. The weather was fine, and the road familiar. All this I repeated to myself, with excellent sense, every time I looked at the clock. Then somebody would come along the passage, and I would look up to see whether it was Rosanna.

Mr. Franklin found me there once, and asked if his commission had been attended to.

“Locked up, sir.”

“Thank you, Betteredge. Till to-morrow.”

He appeared to have something else to say, thought better of it, and wished me good-night.

It was late before I got back to my beehive chair. The warmth had gone out of the back court; but I was unwilling to settle indoors while there was still a little light left in the sky. I brought out Robinson Crusoe, with my spectacles between the leaves, and established myself in the old place.

Penelope looked out at me from the doorway.

“Shall I leave the side-door on the latch a little longer, father?”

“Yes, my dear.”

She waited a moment.

“Rosanna hasn’t come back yet.”

“I know.”

When my daughter had gone in, I felt in my pocket for the plate-room key. There it was, safe among the others. The packet was locked away; the house was quiet; and I had my book open on my knee.

I tried the page before me, and lost the meaning of it. I tried the next page, and heard a footstep where there was none. In the end, I kept my finger between the leaves, and sat listening in my beehive chair. Rosanna Spearman was still not back in the house.

Lady Russell came to the consultation with the accounts in her reticule, and a determination to be useful which had already cost her two evenings of very uncomfortable arithmetic. Mr Shepherd came with a smaller packet of papers, and a greater readiness to discover merit in whatever might be suggested by any body else. They met in the breakfast-room at Kellynch, where Sir Walter, having placed himself with his back to the light, received them with the composure of a man who had consented to hear of disagreeable things, and thought the consent ought to be sufficient.

Elizabeth sat near him. Anne, who had been desired to find a letter among her father’s papers, was at a little table apart; and would have withdrawn when her commission was executed, had not Lady Russell made room for her upon the sofa. Sir Walter saw no reason for her staying, but none for taking the trouble of sending her away.

Lady Russell began. She had considered every thing; she had distinguished the necessary expenses of the estate from those of the family; she had allowed liberally for the claims of their situation; and she believed that, with steadiness, and some sacrifices which would be felt only at first, a very material change might be effected.

Her plan was then unfolded. The establishment must be reduced by two servants; the number of horses diminished; the more expensive entertainments discontinued; and the annual journey to London relinquished for the present. A fixed sum must be appropriated to the discharge of debts, before any arrangement was made for the pleasures of the year. Three years of such conduct would, she trusted, produce a degree of ease which might reconcile them to the perseverance necessary afterwards.

She spoke with affection, but with a minuteness which affection could not make agreeable. Sir Walter heard the servants without interruption. At the horses he changed his position; at the dinners he looked towards Elizabeth; and London brought him to a decision.

“My dear Lady Russell, it will not do. You have been excessively good to take so much trouble; but it will not do at all.”

She entreated him to consider the whole.

“I have considered it. There is not an article which could be adopted. Two servants! I do not know where you could find them. There is nobody in this house who has not quite enough to do; at least, there is nobody whom I could spare. And as to the carriage, I should be ashamed to have it seen with an inferior pair of horses. We are not people who can alter our manner of living without its being observed.”

“The object is to alter it before observation becomes more painful.”

“I cannot think that a reason for making ourselves ridiculous. Besides, three years! You speak of three years as if they were nothing. Elizabeth, I am sure, cannot be expected to give up London for three years.”

Elizabeth did not answer immediately. Lady Russell, who had hoped for her concurrence in some smaller particulars, was obliged to understand her silence as the natural effect of disappointment. She folded one of her papers, but retained the other in her hand, unwilling to relinquish every chance of its being wanted.

Mr Shepherd now ventured to lay his own scheme before Sir Walter. He had foreseen objections to any sudden alteration in the household; and though no person could more thoroughly approve Lady Russell’s principles, he had thought that an arrangement extending over a longer period might be found less inconvenient. There were the two grass fields beyond the home farm, which could be let to considerable advantage; there were several expenses connected with the gardens which might very well be suspended; and by filling no vacancy among the servants, limiting the wine purchased, and postponing certain intended improvements, a beginning might be made. With a regular allowance for the creditors, and a strict prohibition of new bills, he hoped to obtain their acquiescence in a gradual liquidation.

Sir Walter disliked the beginning before he had heard the end.

“The grass fields are quite out of the question. I will have no farmer’s cattle immediately under my windows.”

Mr Shepherd explained their distance, and the intervention of a plantation.

“They may not be seen from this room; they are seen from the west rooms. I know my own grounds, Shepherd. And what are the gardeners to do, if nothing is to be kept in order?”

Order was precisely what Mr Shepherd wished to preserve. There would merely be less expenditure upon the succession of plants, and upon those portions of the grounds which were least—

“No; I cannot agree to it. I dislike your plan exceedingly. To have the gardens neglected, and the servants waiting for one another to die, is a very poor account of economy. We should be uncomfortable every day, and nobody would suppose us the better for it. I reject it altogether.”

Mr Shepherd bowed, and drew his papers a little nearer to himself. He had not expected his calculations to be admired; but he had hoped they might be endured till some of their less agreeable consequences were overlooked.

A pause followed. Lady Russell was looking sorrowfully at Anne, when Anne, after a moment’s hesitation, said—

“Might not a greater reduction, for a shorter time, be easier to bear than either?”

Her father looked at her as if the impropriety of this remark were sufficiently evident to save him the trouble of explaining it.

“I mean,” she continued, “that if we first knew what must be paid, and set that money entirely apart, we might determine to live upon the remainder. We might give up the carriage, and all the horses except what the business of the estate requires. We might keep only the rooms which we commonly use, and receive no dinner company. There must be fewer servants; but where a place could not immediately be found for any one, something ought still to be allowed. I should be very sorry to save by sending people away to distress.”

“My dear Anne,” said Lady Russell, “you are proposing a very severe trial.”

“Yes; but it would be a trial with an end. If we made our own wants sufficiently few, we need not begin with the wants of other people. The small allowances in the village might continue; and there would be no occasion to ask the tradespeople to wait for what we could pay them by going without things ourselves.”

“And pray,” said Sir Walter, “how are your sister and I to go any where?”

“For the present, I had thought we might go very little.”

This was too much. Sir Walter turned towards Elizabeth for the smile which so extraordinary a notion deserved; but Elizabeth was examining the seal of a letter that lay before her, and did not look up.

Anne went on, though with less firmness.

“No journey to London, no new furniture, and no purchases beyond what are really necessary. Mr Shepherd could tell us what weekly sum would remain. It must be smaller than either of the sums already proposed; but if we resolved never to exceed it—”

“I think Anne is right,” said Elizabeth.

Had the clock struck thirteen, it could scarcely have occasioned a more general astonishment. Sir Walter stared at her; Mr Shepherd ceased to arrange his papers; Lady Russell’s look of anxiety changed into one of delighted enquiry; and Anne, to whom support from that quarter was almost less comprehensible than opposition from any other, could only remain silent.

Elizabeth herself seemed conscious of having done something unexpected; but she did not retract it.

“I think a decided alteration much the best. There can be no pleasure in asking people to dinner merely that they may discover what is wanting. If we are to economise, let us economise sufficiently. I would rather have no carriage than one which every body must pity.”

“But, Elizabeth—no London!”

“I heard Anne say so.”

“And you approve it?”

“For the present, I do. One may surely remain at home without being disgraced. There is more disgrace in having bills sent after one wherever one goes.”

A faint colour accompanied the last words. In the packet lately transmitted from London had been an account addressed to herself, with a repetition of the demand written in a manner which she could neither forget nor forgive. She had hitherto resented only the writer; but the possibility of being exposed to such language again had begun to reconcile her to exertion.

Lady Russell warmly commended her. Elizabeth received the commendation with gravity, and continued—

“I do not wish to have every chair covered, or to sit in the dark. Anne cannot mean any thing so absurd. But the large drawing-room need not be used; and if we decline engagements altogether, nobody can say that we have been omitted. I could bear a winter very quietly, if it were understood to be our own choice.”

Anne could have wished that the choice had been recommended by a somewhat different consideration; but she was too grateful for the assistance to scrutinise its origin. There was real sacrifice in what Elizabeth offered. She had never before heard her voluntarily relinquish a pleasure which belonged particularly to herself.

Mr Shepherd, recovering his voice, declared that Miss Anne’s proposal deserved the most attentive examination. He could prepare an exact statement—

“You will prepare nothing of the kind,” said Sir Walter. “I am astonished at you all. Because I have asked how an unnecessary expense may be avoided, I am to be deprived of every comfort of my life. I will not shut up my rooms; I will not dispose of my carriage; and I will not have it reported that Sir Walter Elliot can no longer receive his friends. Anne’s scheme is impossible, and I am sorry that Elizabeth should have encouraged it.”

Elizabeth compressed her lips. She had made an effort, and was not accustomed to have efforts disregarded. Lady Russell attempted once more to distinguish temporary privation from permanent injury; but Sir Walter had no disposition to consider a distinction which required him to be the sufferer in either case.

Mr Shepherd waited till the argument had exhausted itself, and then observed, with an air of suggesting what could scarcely merit serious attention—

“There is one other possibility, Sir Walter, which has not yet been mentioned. If the establishment here must be preserved entire, and the income cannot support it, an arrangement might perhaps be made by which the house itself should, for a time, contribute to the relief of the estate. A proper tenant for Kellynch Hall—”

“A what?”

“A family of suitable fortune and habits might be found to take the house furnished, upon terms—”

“Never let that word be spoken again in my presence.”

Mr Shepherd was silent.

“I desire that you will remember it. I will not hear it. Kellynch Hall is my house. It was my father’s house before me. I do not understand what you can have been thinking of.”

Mr Shepherd assured him that he had meant only to omit no possible resource. No step had been taken; no enquiry had been made; it was a suggestion of that instant.

“It must remain of that instant, then. Let us have done with the subject.”

There was little encouragement to prolong the consultation. Lady Russell put away her accounts with a reluctance which Sir Walter mistook for submission to his judgement; and Mr Shepherd had just begun to speak of an indifferent matter, when a servant entered with a letter for Anne. It had been brought from Uppercross, and the messenger waited to know whether there was an answer.

Anne recognised Mary’s hand, and, with her father’s permission, opened it.

“My dear Anne,—I am so very unwell that I scarcely know how to write, and yet, unless I write myself, I am sure you will never hear of it. Charles thinks nothing of my complaints, because I was able to walk out yesterday; but I have been worse ever since, and have hardly closed my eyes all night. There is nobody here who understands what I suffer. I wish you would come to me directly. I cannot bear another day of being left so much to myself. Charles is very good-natured, but he will not sit in the house; and when I say that I want company, I am told how many people there are at the other house, as if that were of any use when one is not equal to seeing them. Pray come as soon as you can. I dare say there is nothing to keep you at home. Yours affectionately, Mary Musgrove.”

“Mary is unwell, and wishes for me,” said Anne.

“Mary is always unwell,” replied Elizabeth. “What is the matter now?”

Anne could give no very precise answer.

“Then I suppose it is nothing. However, you had better go. She will only write again.”

Lady Russell enquired more kindly, and read the letter which Anne offered her. There was nothing to excite alarm, but enough to make her think Anne’s presence desirable. Mr Shepherd could readily send word that the letter had been received; his business would take him through the village. Anne thanked him, and wrote a few lines to assure Mary that she hoped to be with her on the morrow.

Sir Walter merely desired that she would not encourage her sister in wrapping herself up unnecessarily. Mary had once appeared at Kellynch with a shawl about her shoulders in a warm room; a circumstance which had made him distrust her judgement in illness ever since.

The business of the morning was thus concluded without a single arrangement for economy. Sir Walter felt that he had been harassed; Elizabeth, that she had been affronted; and their visitors carried away all the papers they had brought, with no authority to alter one figure.

By evening Anne had completed the little preparations which her absence required. She had found time to wonder at Elizabeth, and to hope that an opinion once expressed might yet have some influence; but nothing at dinner had encouraged the hope. Her father had spoken of the gardens, and of an intended party, as if the morning had established his ability to pay for both.

She was alone in her room when she finally determined that no uncertainty at Kellynch should prevent her going to Uppercross. Mary might exaggerate her sufferings, but she could be comforted; and Anne knew the value of having something to do which another person wished done. She put aside the book she had vainly attempted to read, and laid out what she should want for the journey. Below stairs were ease, elegance, and unpaid accounts; no debt had been discharged, no expense relinquished, no plan accepted. She could do nothing more there that night. On the morrow she would go to Mary.

The account was sufficiently precise to leave me in little doubt. I closed the volume with a feeling of horrified satisfaction, and replaced it upon the shelf. Here, at least, was something definite upon which to proceed.

The front door stood open. Outside, the gravel was pale in the early light, and a thrush was hopping unconcernedly upon the lawn. That a bird should be going about its ordinary business struck me, at the moment, as almost indecent.

I set off at a great pace.

The little house occupied by the Belgians stood just beyond the village street. As I approached it, an upper window was thrown open, and Poirot’s head appeared. Even at that hour his moustaches presented an appearance of extraordinary neatness.

“Ah, my friend! I have been expecting you.”

“You know, then?”

“Dr. Wilkins has told me. He passed here on his way home. I was at the window, and called to ask if there was illness at Styles. Wait one little moment.”

He disappeared, and presently admitted me. He wore a magnificent dressing-gown, very carefully fastened, and slippers embroidered with faded flowers.

“Mrs. Inglethorp,” he said softly. “That good lady!”

For a moment his face was quite changed. Then he drew forward a chair.

“Sit down. You have come quickly, and you must not spend all your breath upon the first sentence. Mr. Cavendish has sent you?”

“He has authorised me to ask your help.”

“That is well. Tell me what occurred.”

I gave him as clear an account as I could. He listened without interruption, his head inclined a little to one side. Only when I described Lawrence’s extraordinary expression did he raise his eyes sharply.

“He was looking towards the fireplace, you say?”

“Towards the opposite wall. The fireplace was there.”

“Ah! Those are not quite the same thing. Continue.”

When I had finished, he remained silent, smoothing the edge of his dressing-gown between finger and thumb.

“There can hardly be any doubt,” I said at last.

“Of what?”

“Of strychnine poisoning.”

“You have been studying the subject?”

I admitted my visit to the library.

“And now you know all about it?”

“Enough to recognise the symptoms.”

“Yes, yes. The symptoms. But we have also to recognise the facts. They are sometimes less obliging.”

His manner nettled me.

“Surely Bauerstein’s opinion counts for something?”

“It counts for very much. It is your opinion which you are offering me at present.”

He patted my arm, smiling.

“Come, do not be offended. You have done excellently to fetch me. Now you shall do one thing more. Return to the house, and ask Mr. Cavendish to keep the keys for me. Let nothing in either room be moved. I will dress and follow you.”

“You won’t be long?”

He glanced down at his slippers with an expression of pain.

“I cannot investigate a death in these, Hastings.”

I left him, somewhat reassured in spite of myself. His composure had an effect which no expressions of sympathy could have produced. The business, terrible as it was, had become something to be undertaken methodically.

As I entered the gates of Styles, I saw a man coming down the steps. It was John. Behind him, framed in the doorway, stood Alfred Inglethorp.

I experienced a shock of repulsion. His black beard, his gold-rimmed glasses, the curious clothes which had always seemed to me an affectation, were all precisely as they had been yesterday. I had absurdly expected some visible alteration.

“He’s come back,” said John unnecessarily.

“So I see.”

“Your friend?”

“Following me.”

John nodded, and we went into the hall together.

Alfred Inglethorp was leaning against the oak chest. His hat lay upon it, and he was turning his gloves slowly in his hands.

“This is terrible,” he murmured. “Terrible! I can scarcely realise it. My poor Emily!”

His voice was low and thick. I could not determine whether he had been weeping.

“You have been away all night?” I asked.

“Yes. At Denby’s. You know Denby—the farmer beyond the village? There were some accounts connected with the entertainment which Emily wished me to look over. After leaving Dr. Bauerstein, I went there.”

John stood with his back to us, looking out of the open door.

“We worked later than I had intended,” continued Inglethorp. “I walked back here, but discovered that I had lost the latch-key. I searched every pocket. I supposed I must have dropped it at the farm.”

“At what time was this?” asked John.

“Midnight. The hall clock struck twelve whilst I was standing outside. I remember thinking how loud it sounded in the stillness. Rather than disturb everybody, I went back to Denby’s. We could not find the key, and he insisted upon putting me up.”

“You might have rung,” said John.

The words were ordinary enough, but something in his tone made me glance at him.

“I wish to God I had!”

There was a silence.

“Where is she?” Inglethorp asked presently.

“Upstairs.”

“I should like to go to her.”

John turned round.

“The doctors have locked the rooms. There are certain arrangements to be made.”

For the first time Inglethorp seemed to notice his manner.

“Arrangements?”

“Dr. Wilkins will explain them.”

I was thankful that Dorcas appeared at that moment to announce that tea and some breakfast had been put in the dining-room. John went in at once. Inglethorp remained where he was, staring at the staircase.

I lingered to give Dorcas Poirot’s message concerning the rooms.

“Yes, sir. Nothing shall be touched. I shouldn’t have allowed it myself.”

Her eyes were red, but she had recovered her usual air of competence.

“Mr. Inglethorp has been telling us where he was,” I added. “He came back at midnight, but had lost his key.”

“Came back here, sir?”

“Yes. He heard the hall clock strike twelve.”

Dorcas looked over my shoulder.

“That he didn’t, sir.”

There was such certainty in her voice that I stared at her.

“Why not?”

“Because it stopped at twenty past nine last night, and there it is still. I noticed it when I brought in the tray. It’s been stopping like that these three days. The mistress said yesterday she would have a man out from Tadminster.”

I looked at the clock. Its hands pointed, as she had said, to twenty minutes past nine.

“Perhaps it started again.”

“No, sir. Annie remarked upon it when we went up to bed, and I looked at it myself when I came down this morning. It hasn’t moved.”

She went away, leaving me with a very unpleasant sensation.

It was possible, of course, that Inglethorp had heard some other clock. But the village was a considerable distance away, and he had been very particular in his statement. I was still considering this when Poirot arrived.

He listened to my whispered account without comment. Then he approached the clock, looked at its face, and passed into the dining-room.

John received him with more warmth than I had expected.

“Thank you for coming, Monsieur Poirot. Hastings has explained?”

“Yes, monsieur. And first permit me to offer you my most sincere sympathy.”

There was nothing formal in the little man’s voice. John’s face worked for a moment. He busied himself with the keys.

“These are the ones Bauerstein gave me.”

“You will allow Captain Hastings to accompany me?”

“Certainly. You’ll want to ask us things, I suppose?”

“Later, if you please. For the moment, the rooms.”

We went upstairs together. Poirot paused outside the door opening upon the corridor.

“This was locked when you came?”

“Bolted. I drew the bolt myself after we got in.”

He examined it, then unlocked the door with the key John had given him.

The curtains had been drawn aside. I had not anticipated how dreadful the room would appear in daylight. The gas, the confusion, and the urgency of our efforts had lent a kind of unreality to it before. Now every familiar article stood out distinctly, and upon the bed lay the still figure which made them all unfamiliar.

Poirot bowed his head. For some little time he did not move.

Then, very gently, he drew me back towards the door.

“You will show me where everyone stood.”

I did my best. He made me indicate the position of Lawrence with particular care, and afterwards took my place whilst I held an imaginary candle near the broken connecting door.

“No,” I said. “You must stand farther to the left. I had just opened the door into the passage.”

“So?”

“Yes.”

“And his eyes looked over your head?”

“Exactly.”

Poirot turned and considered the wall.

The little table still lay overturned. Fragments of china were scattered near it, and the carpet bore several dark stains. There was a spirit-lamp upon another table, with a small saucepan beside it. Poirot inspected these things, but touched none of them.

He next examined the windows, the bolt upon Cynthia’s door, and the splintered woodwork through which we had forced an entrance.

“You are sure this door was fastened?”

“Absolutely. We all tried it.”

“I do not question that it resisted you. I ask about the fastening.”

I pointed to the displaced metal upon the frame.

“There is your answer.”

“Yes,” he said. “There, indeed, is an answer.”

He bent over the overturned table. With a care which seemed to me excessive, he followed the line of its edge upon the carpet, and then went down upon one knee.

“What have you found?”

For answer he held up a tiny brass screw. It lay upon the tip of his forefinger. There was a dark deposit in the groove of its head, but the thread shone brightly.

“That?”

“That.”

He showed it to me more closely.

“You recognise it?”

“No. Ought I to?”

“By no means.”

“Where did it come from?”

“From beneath the edge of the table.”

“I mean originally.”

“Ah!”

He produced an empty match-box, placed the screw inside, and shut it.

“Well?” I demanded.

“Well, my friend?”

“What do you make of it?”

“For the present, a small object which must not be lost.”

“You might tell me your idea.”

“I might tell you several. That is precisely the danger.”

He placed the box in his pocket and resumed his examination.

I confess that I found his proceedings disappointing. The screw might have fallen from any one of a dozen things. Meanwhile there were matters of the utmost importance upon which he had scarcely touched. Inglethorp’s absence, his extraordinary mistake about the clock, the quarrel of the preceding afternoon—these seemed to me to call for immediate action.

Poirot was now upon his knees before the grate.

“A fire,” he murmured.

“There had evidently been one.”

“Yes. And yesterday was very warm.”

“Mrs. Inglethorp was an elderly woman.”

“That is true. Elderly women may feel cold. They may also have papers to burn. We must not choose merely because one explanation presents itself first.”

He inspected the ashes without disturbing their arrangement, and then looked closely at the mantelpiece. I followed his eyes, remembering Lawrence, but once more the ornaments conveyed nothing to me.

By the time we came downstairs the household had begun to assume that curious appearance of activity which follows a calamity. Doors opened and shut. A servant carried a tray across the hall. Somewhere a telephone bell rang, and rang again before it was answered.

Cynthia was sitting near the morning-room window. She had changed her dress, but still looked heavy-eyed. Mary stood beside her, one hand resting upon the back of the chair.

I introduced Poirot. Cynthia made a little movement as though to rise, but he checked her with a gesture.

“Do not disturb yourself, mademoiselle. I have only one question. Did you sleep last night as you usually do?”

“Oh, no. I slept much more heavily. I don’t remember anything until Mary was shaking me, and even then I could hardly understand what she wanted.”

“Thank you, mademoiselle.”

He turned at once to Mary and spoke of the arrangements John was making. I thought she seemed relieved. She answered quietly, but her fingers tightened upon the chair until the knuckles showed white.

We left them together.

“Well,” I said, as soon as we were out of hearing, “what did you learn from that?”

“That Mademoiselle Cynthia slept more heavily than usual.”

“I heard her say so!”

“Then we have both learnt it.”

His literalness was sometimes exceedingly trying.

During the next two hours he spoke to John and to Dorcas, and obtained from me a detailed account of the previous afternoon. I repeated the words I had overheard between Mary and Mrs. Inglethorp, and told him of the coffee, the despatch-case, and Bauerstein’s unexpected visit.

He stopped me frequently to distinguish what I had seen from what someone had told me. This became so troublesome that I protested.

“But surely Dorcas’s word is as good as mine?”

“Quite possibly. Nevertheless, it is Dorcas’s word. If we put all our recollections into one basket and shake them together, how shall we afterwards know which belongs to whom?”

Of the hall clock he said nothing. When I returned to the subject, he merely observed that twelve strokes were a considerable number to count.

“You attach importance to it, then?”

“I attach importance to accuracy.”

At a quarter past eleven John came to tell us that Dr. Wilkins had sent a message. Poirot listened, asked that the rooms should continue to be kept undisturbed, and requested permission to go upstairs once more.

“I shall be glad when the police take it over,” John said wearily. “This waiting is unbearable.”

Poirot looked at him with compassion.

“It is often the most difficult part, monsieur.”

We returned to the bedroom. Poirot closed the door, turned the key, and tried the handle. We were alone.

The sunlight had moved across the carpet. It now fell upon the leg of the overturned table, bringing out a small scratch in the polished wood. Poirot stood regarding it for a moment; then he drew up two chairs beside the writing-table.

“Sit here, Hastings.”

He took the match-box from his pocket and laid the little brass screw upon a clean sheet of paper between us.

I examined it conscientiously. It appeared no more illuminating than before.

“Have you discovered what it belongs to?”

Poirot did not answer. His gaze travelled from the screw to the overturned table and back again.

“If you would explain——” I began.

“No, my friend. Not yet.”

He leaned back, joining the tips of his fingers. There was a curious expression upon his face, almost of regret.

I waited, convinced that at last he was about to make some statement of real significance.

When it came, I could make nothing whatever of it.

“You see, Hastings,” he said softly, “a thing may be out of place because someone has put it back.”

When she opened her eyes again the rain was no longer streaming down the window, but there was nothing to be seen through it except her own little yellow face and the light of the lamp reflected in the glass. The railway carriage was standing still, and Mrs. Medlock was gathering together her parcels.

“Here we are,” she said. “You’ve slept through the best part of it. Sit up and get your things straight.”

Mary sat up very unwillingly. One of her feet had gone to sleep also, and she did not like the prickling which began in it when she stood upon it. She thought somebody ought to have prevented its happening. Mrs. Medlock, however, was too much occupied with a missing umbrella to notice her expression.

The station was a small one, with wet flags and a row of lamps which looked as if they were having some difficulty in keeping alight. Beyond the lamps everything was black. A porter opened the door, and Mrs. Medlock had begun to give him directions when she suddenly stopped.

“Mr. Craven, sir!” she exclaimed.

A man was standing a little apart from the light. He wore a long dark coat, and his head was bent in such a way that Mary could not at first see his face. One shoulder was higher than the other. He did not come forward at once, but stood looking at them as if he had been waiting for something quite different and was not pleased with what had arrived.

“I did not expect you, sir,” said Mrs. Medlock.

“The carriage is here,” he answered.

His voice was low and sounded tired. When Mary had been helped down he looked at her. She looked back at him, because she wanted to see exactly what a man with a crooked back was like. His face was thin, and his eyes seemed to be looking from a great distance, though he was so near her.

“This is Miss Mary, sir,” Mrs. Medlock said.

He made a slight movement with his head.

“Come,” he said to Mary.

That was all he said to her.

She followed him along the wet platform, feeling rather offended. She did not want him to kiss her, and she would have drawn back if he had tried; but she thought he should have said something about her journey, or asked if she wanted anything. People who neither asked questions nor gave orders left her uncertain what to do with herself.

Outside the station a carriage was waiting, with two horses whose coats shone in the lamplight. Mr. Craven stood aside while Mrs. Medlock put Mary into it. Then he got in himself and sat opposite them, drawing a rug over his knees. The door was shut and they drove away.

For a little while they passed lighted windows and houses standing close together. Mary saw a woman taking something out of a shop, and a boy carrying a basket on his head. Then there were fewer houses, and then there were none at all.

Mrs. Medlock had become quite a different person. She sat very upright and did not offer to tell Mary anything. Now and then Mary could see her glance at the corner in which Mr. Craven sat. He had turned his face toward the window, though there could have been very little to look at.

The wheels made a soft, thick sound in the wet road. Once they crossed a bridge, and Mary heard water rushing underneath it. After that the carriage began to climb.

“Is this the moor?” she asked at last.

“Yes,” answered Mrs. Medlock, in a voice much smaller than the one she had used in the train.

Mary pressed nearer to the glass. She could see a great deal of darkness, but it was not all the same darkness. Some of it rose against the sky in long uneven shapes, and some seemed to stretch away without ending anywhere.

“I cannot see it,” she said.

“You’ll see enough of it by daylight.”

Mr. Craven did not turn his head.

The carriage went on climbing, and the wind began to push against it. It made sudden little rushes, as if it had come running from a long way off and flung itself upon the windows. Mary had never heard wind which seemed to have so much room to move in. In India there had always been walls and verandas and people near her. Here there appeared to be nothing at all.

She had begun to wonder whether the horses knew where they were going when they stopped so suddenly that she slipped forward on the seat.

Mrs. Medlock caught at her arm.

“What’s amiss?” she called.

The coachman answered from above, but the wind took away part of what he said. There was something about a sheep.

Mr. Craven opened the door on his side.

“Stay here,” he said to Mrs. Medlock, and got out.

A lantern moved past the window. Mary heard the coachman speaking to the horses, and then another voice farther ahead. Mrs. Medlock leaned across to look out of the open door.

“It’s one lying right in the road,” she said. “Stupid creature! It might have got itself run over.”

Mary could see a pale patch in the light of the lantern. It moved a little, and she wanted to see what it was doing. Nobody was looking at her. She slipped from the seat and down the step on the other side, where she had found the handle could be turned.

She had thought she would stand upon a smooth road. Instead, one foot sank into something wet and soft, and a prickly little branch caught the hem of her dress.

For a moment she was too much astonished to be angry. The wind caught her skirts and pulled them about her legs. It blew straight into her face and seemed to go through her hat and her hair. She stood quite still, holding to the carriage handle.

There was no roof anywhere over that enormous black place. The thought came to her in just that queer way. Of course there had been no roof over the sea, but she had looked at the sea from a ship, and there had always been a cabin to go into. Here the darkness seemed to belong to the earth itself, and she was standing in it.

A sheep made a hoarse little sound ahead of the horses. In the swinging lantern-light she saw its wool and four thin legs, and a man bending over it. Then the light swung away, and she could see nothing but the carriage lamp and the wet leather of the harness.

“Miss Mary!”

Mrs. Medlock had discovered the open door.

“What in the world are you doing? Get in this minute!”

Mary would generally have said that she would not, but just then she was quite willing to get in. Mrs. Medlock took her by the wrist and helped her up with very little ceremony.

“Going out on the moor at this time of night! And look at your shoe!”

“I wanted to see,” said Mary.

“You’ll have to learn that wanting isn’t everything here.”

The sheep had struggled to its feet by this time and was being driven off the road. Mr. Craven returned to the carriage. If he had noticed that Mary had been out of it, he gave no sign. He shut the door and drew the rug over his knees again.

Mary’s shoe was wet, and her face felt cold and curiously awake. She rubbed one cheek with her black glove. She was cross with Mrs. Medlock, but she kept looking through the window. Now that she had stood upon the moor it did not seem quite the same thing to be driving across it.

At last the sound of the wheels altered. They passed between something tall which Mary could not distinguish, and presently lights appeared ahead. There were only a few of them, and they were set so far apart that she could not believe at first that they belonged to one house.

But they did.

When the carriage stopped, a door opened and a broad stream of light fell upon stone steps. A manservant came down them. Mary saw a great entrance hall, a fire burning at one end of it, and things upon the walls which she had no time to examine.

Mr. Craven went in before them. An elderly man who had been waiting inside approached him, and the two went away together through a doorway near the fire. Mr. Craven did not look back.

Mrs. Medlock gave a little sigh, as if she had been holding her breath for a considerable time.

“Now come along,” she said. “We’ve a way to go yet.”

Mary was so tired that this seemed a very disagreeable thing to be told after arriving at a house. She followed across the hall and up a broad staircase, and then along a passage where their footsteps made scarcely any sound at all. There were doors on each side, and at a turning there was a tall clock ticking with extraordinary slowness.

Mrs. Medlock carried a candle. Its light travelled over bits of dark pictures and polished wood, and once over the face of a gentleman who seemed to be looking down his nose at Mary very much as she looked down hers at other people.

“Is no one in these rooms?” she asked.

“Never you mind who’s in them. Your rooms are at the end.”

There was a fire in the room she was taken into, and a table had been drawn near it. Beyond an open door she saw a bedroom with another fire and a large bed hung with faded stuff. The rooms were comfortable, but everything in them looked as if it had been there a long time before Mary was born and would remain there a long time after she had gone away.

“Your supper will be brought up,” Mrs. Medlock said. “Take off your hat. I must go and see about your box.”

Mary was left sitting before the fire. She took off one glove and then the other, but she did not take off her hat. There was nobody to hand it to.

Presently a man came in carrying a tray. He was a broad, elderly man, with reddish whiskers and a face which looked as if cold weather had often blown upon it. He set the tray down and began putting dishes upon the table.

“Tha’ll be ready for summat warm,” he said. “It’s a sharpish neet for a little un to be out.”

Mary stared at him.

“What?” she said.

“Tha mun draw up to t’ table. There’s broth here’ll warm thee.”

“I don’t understand what you say,” said Mary. “You speak very queerly.”

The man looked at her and then at the supper.

“Do I, now?” he said, quite unoffended. “Happen we’ll get used to one another. Sup thy broth afore it’s cold.”

She understood the word “cold,” and she understood his pointing to the chair. She rose and went to the table, feeling that a servant who had to point at things was not a satisfactory servant.

“Are you going to wait?” she asked.

“Ay, if tha wants owt.”

“I don’t know what ‘owt’ is.”

“Anything, miss,” he answered, speaking more slowly. “Bread, or suchlike.”

“I want some bread.”

He gave it to her without appearing in the least disturbed. Mary watched him suspiciously while she ate. It was new to her that people could find her difficult to understand also, and could remain cheerful about it.

The broth was hot, and after she had taken a few spoonfuls she discovered that she was hungry. She ate more than she had meant to eat. The man took away the tray, and soon afterward Mrs. Medlock returned.

By the time Mary was ready for bed the fire had sunk low. Mrs. Medlock was fastening the window curtains when a sound made them both pause.

It was a low, hollow sound, followed by two uneven knocks. It seemed to come from somewhere beyond the bedroom door.

“What is that?” Mary asked.

“The wind,” said Mrs. Medlock, drawing the curtains together.

Mary listened. There was certainly wind outside, but this had sounded inside.

“Does it knock at doors?” she said.

“In an old house like this it’ll make all manner of noises. Loose things rattle. Get into bed.”

Mary got in because she was cold. Mrs. Medlock tucked the clothes about her with quick, businesslike hands.

“You’ve everything you need,” she said. “Go to sleep now.”

She took the candle away, and the door closed behind her.

For a while Mary could see a faint red place where the fire was. Then even that grew dim. She lay with her eyes open and listened to the house. It was not quite silent. Somewhere wood gave a little crack, and far away the slow clock struck an hour she did not count.

Then she heard the sound again.

It was fainter this time, but there were the same two knocks at the end of it, with a little space between them.

Mary lifted her head from the pillow.

She did not like being told things which did not explain anything. She had asked about the moor and had been told she would see enough of it; she had asked about the rooms and had been told not to mind them. Now she had asked about a sound and had been told to go to sleep.

She lay down again, but she was no longer thinking of sleep. In the dark her small face took on its most stubborn expression. Whatever had made that sound was somewhere in the house, and she was in the house too. She would find out for herself.

“What’s happened?”

“Nothing’s happened. That’s the whole bloody business.”

The cab swung round a corner and she opened her eyes. There was a light over the entrance of a hospital. Two women stood under it, talking, and beyond them the street was dark.

“Where are we going?”

“Montsouris.”

“I don’t want to go there. Take me to the Place du Tertre, Jake.”

“What do you want up there?”

“I want to be up there. Do be a good chap.”

I tapped on the glass and told the driver. He slowed down and turned in the street. A man on a bicycle came close alongside and shouted at him. The driver said something through his moustache and we started uphill.

“He’s pleased,” Brett said.

“He’s getting paid.”

“That must be splendid.”

She sat forward and looked out. We passed a shop where a man was lifting a shutter into place. Inside, a woman counted money at a desk. She had her hat on and the man worked in his shirt.

“I like shops when they’re shutting,” Brett said.

“You’d like this one.”

“Why?”

“It’s shut.”

“Don’t be clever, darling. I’m much too tired.”

She put her hand on my sleeve and left it there. The cab smelt of dust and warm leather. When we crossed the river the air came cool through the open window. I could see the lamps along the embankment and their light on the water. Then we were in the streets again.

“Have you ever heard of Julian Mowbray?” Brett asked.

“No.”

“An Englishman. I met him last week.”

“What does he do?”

“He has money.”

“Yes, but what does he do?”

“I don’t think he has to do anything. It seems to be arranged.”

“Sounds like a good arrangement.”

“He wants to take a house at Cannes.”

“That ought to be possible.”

“He wants me to help him choose it.”

“Do you know about houses?”

“Not a thing.”

We stopped behind a bus. The people on top sat with their heads turned away from us. A girl at the back was eating something out of a paper bag.

“Would you like Cannes?” Brett asked.

“It ought to be warm.”

“It’s supposed to be.”

“You could get plenty of swimming.”

“Yes. That would be useful.”

I wanted her to stay with me.

The bus moved and the driver went past it with his horn blowing. Brett took her hand away and pulled down the window a little farther.

“He’s rather a decent sort,” she said.

“I’m glad.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’ve never heard of him.”

“That doesn’t prevent you.”

We drove a long time. Brett watched the streets and did not talk. Up on the hill the cab went slowly over the stones, and when we came out into the square there were tables outside a café and a tree showing pale green under a lamp. The driver stopped.

“Here we are,” I said.

“Yes. This is what I wanted.”

I paid him and we went across the square. There was a little wind up there. The waiter was carrying in the chairs from one side of the terrace, but he left a table for us near the door.

“Inside, if you wish,” he said.

“Here,” Brett said.

We sat down and ordered brandy and soda. At the next table a man in a soft hat was making a drawing of a woman. She held quite still until he looked at the paper, and then she moved her mouth and rubbed her nose. Each time he looked up she was still again. He worked very seriously.

“Will it be good?” Brett asked me.

“It will look like her.”

“The poor woman.”

When the waiter brought the drinks she asked him to leave the siphon. She made her drink very long and held the glass with both hands.

“Do you feel better?”

“Much. It was getting here.”

“We’re here now.”

“Yes. Now we’ll have to think of something else.”

The woman at the next table asked to see the drawing. The man held it away from her and added something with his pencil. Then he signed it, and she took it and looked at it for a long time. He watched her face.

“She doesn’t like it,” Brett said.

“She’s going to.”

The woman smiled and called for the waiter. The man put his pencil in his pocket.

“There,” I said.

“You know a frightful lot.”

“Only about pictures.”

Brett laughed. It was good to hear her laugh without having to say anything first. She took off her hat and laid it on the empty chair. The wind moved her hair a little.

“Why did you want to come here?”

“I came up once in the morning. There was a woman washing these tables. I thought it would be pleasant at night.”

“Was it pleasant in the morning?”

“No. Rather awful. I’d been up all night.”

“You can try it again.”

“That’s what I’m doing, darling.”

The drawing people went away. The woman carried the paper flat in front of her, holding it by the corners. The waiter watched them cross the square and then began to stack their chairs.

“Are we keeping you?” I asked.

“There is no hurry.”

He brought us the bill.

We sat a while longer. Inside, somebody was counting plates. You could hear them being put down in little piles. Brett finished her drink and put on her hat.

“Well, that’s done.”

“Was it what you wanted?”

“It was a place, anyhow.”

We walked out of the square and down a narrow street. Some windows were lighted above the closed shops. At one of them a man leaned on his elbows in a white undershirt. He watched us pass. Farther down we found a taxi standing outside a bar. The driver came out, wiping his mouth.

“I’ve got to go back for my fifty francs,” I said.

“You’re terribly hopeful.”

“I might as well see.”

“Take me along. I want to see you being hopeful.”

I gave the driver the street and we got in. Going downhill the cab ran easily and the driver did not use his horn. Brett sat in the other corner. Once, when we turned, our knees touched. She moved hers and looked out of the window.

The bal was still lighted. The policeman had gone and the door stood open. We could hear the accordion before we got out. It sounded much thinner in the street than it had inside.

“Shall I wait?” Brett asked.

“Come in.”

“I’ll wait at the door.”

There were only three couples dancing. The proprietor played with his eyes half shut and the bells on his ankle made a dry little noise under the music. Several tables had glasses and saucers on them, and the daughter was wiping a bench with a wet cloth.

Georgette sat near the bar with her hat on. She was eating bread and something from a plate. There was nobody at her table.

I went up to the patronne.

“I’ve come for the envelope I left with you.”

“The young lady is still here.”

“I see her.”

“She has not asked for you.”

“May I have it?”

The patronne looked at me, then opened a drawer under the zinc. The envelope was between a book and a packet of bills. She handed it to me. It was still sealed.

“Voilà, Monsieur.”

“Thank you.”

Georgette saw me as I turned from the bar.

“You’ve come back.”

“Yes.”

“Your friends have gone.”

“I see.”

“One of them wanted to take me to a party. I told him I had been to a party.”

“Did you have a good time?”

“I danced. You saw me.”

She broke a piece of bread and wiped it round the plate.

“Have you eaten again?” she asked.

“No.”

“I was hungry.”

I laid the envelope beside her plate.

“What’s that?”

“For you.”

She put down the bread and opened it with the handle of her fork. She took out the note and looked at both sides.

“You put money in an envelope?”

“I left it at the bar.”

“Why didn’t you give it to me?”

“You were dancing.”

“I could have stopped.”

“Yes,” I said. “You could.”

She folded the note and put it in her bag. Then she pushed the plate away and looked towards the door.

“Is that your friend?”

“Yes.”

“She doesn’t dance much.”

“She dances.”

“Not like your other friends.”

Brett came in. She stood beside the table and Georgette looked up at her.

“Have a drink,” Brett said.

“No, thank you. I’m going home.”

“Let us get you a taxi.”

“I can get a taxi.”

“Of course.”

Georgette shut her bag and stood up. She looked at me.

“The dinner was good,” she said.

“I’m glad.”

“It was the best part.”

She said good night to the patronne and went out. We watched her through the doorway. She stopped under the lamp to fasten her coat, then walked down the street.

“She’s quite right,” Brett said.

“About the dinner?”

“Probably about that, too.”

The accordion stopped. The proprietor stretched his leg and the bells rattled. We went outside.

For a while we walked without choosing where we were going. The streets were quiet, and at the corners we could hear traffic farther down towards the river. Brett walked with her hands in her coat pockets. When the pavement narrowed I walked behind her. We passed a bakery where there was light behind the shutters and a smell of fresh bread.

“I’m hungry now,” she said.

“We’ll find something.”

“Somewhere with people.”

We took a taxi to the markets and found a place where men were eating at little tables. There were baskets piled outside and carts standing along the curb. A waiter showed us a table near the back. His apron was clean at the top and very dirty below.

We had onion soup and bread and a bottle of wine. Brett took off her coat. At the next table two men were disputing over a column of figures. One held the pencil very close to the point. When he had proved something he tapped the paper with it, but the other man would not look.

“This is good,” Brett said.

She lifted the cheese from her spoon with a piece of bread.

“Better than choosing houses.”

“I haven’t chosen any.”

“You’ve time.”

“Oh, let the poor man alone. He isn’t here.”

“All right.”

“I may never see him again.”

“All right.”

She looked at me over the bowl.

“You make that sound very nasty.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“I know. That’s the trouble.”

We finished the soup. The waiter took the bowls away and brushed the crumbs on to a plate. Brett poured wine into my glass and then into hers.

The two men beside us had settled their figures. They sat back and drank coffee, with the paper lying between them. Outside, a cart backed against the curb. We heard the driver calling to the horse and the wheels striking the stones.

“Do you have to work early?” Brett asked.

“Not very.”

“You ought to get some sleep.”

“I will.”

“I keep thinking I’ll sleep.”

“You will, too.”

“Yes,” she said. “One does eventually.”

We stayed there over the wine. Men came in and called to the waiter and ate quickly. Others sat with their caps on the tables and their hands round their coffee glasses. A man brought in a bundle of newspapers. The waiter cut the string and put one behind the bar.

After a while Brett leaned her head against the wall. Her eyes were open, but she was no longer watching anything. I asked for coffee. When it came she sat straight and drank it with both hands round the cup.

“What time is it?”

I told her.

“Good God. Let’s go.”

Outside the carts filled the street. Men were unloading vegetables under the lamps. The leaves looked very green in the light, and there was mud on the wheels and on the backs of the men’s coats. We walked between two wagons and down towards the river. The air had turned cold.

Near the Pont Neuf we found a taxi. The driver was asleep with his chin on his chest. I knocked on the window and he woke at once and reached for the flag.

Brett gave him her address. I opened the door.

“Come and see me,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Will you?”

“Yes.”

She put her hand out and I held it a moment. Then she drew it back to pull her coat about her knees. I shut the door and the driver started. She looked out as the cab turned, but I could not see whether she waved.

It was dawn when I started home along the river. The lamps were still burning on the opposite bank. Below the wall the water moved round the bridge piers, and a barge lay close against the quay with smoke coming from its stovepipe. I walked on by myself. The pavement was dry under the trees and damp where it was open to the sky.

Dr. Seward’s Diary.

(Kept in phonograph.)

27 May.—Dined last night with Quincey. Arthur was there before me, and came forward with both hands out, in the old way. I had been preparing certain speeches as I drove; but the sight of him put them all out of my head, which was perhaps fortunate. A man may practise generosity in private until he has made a very pretty thing of it, and yet find some difficulty in producing it when it is wanted.

Quincey had ordered dinner for three at a little round table. There were no flowers, but in the middle stood the battered silver cup which Arthur won from him at shooting, and afterwards gave back because Quincey had taken such a fancy to it.

“Art says it belongs to me,” he explained, “and I say it belongs to Art; so we’ll fill it with something that belongs to all of us, and settle the title that way.”

Arthur laughed, and then grew grave. He had brought his messages faithfully enough; but when he began upon them I saw that they were not so easy to deliver as he had supposed.

“She wished me to tell you both——”

“Hold on!” said Quincey. “There’s a waiter behind you, and I don’t propose to give him a share.”

He sent the man away upon some errand which must have been contrived beforehand, for nothing that was asked for ever appeared. Then Arthur told us that Lucy wished us to know how happy our friendship made her, and that she would never think her own happiness complete if it cost her either of her friends.

I was thankful that Quincey answered first.

“Tell her we’ve been partners too long to dissolve the firm because one of us has made his fortune.”

There was a little silence after this. Arthur looked down at his plate, and I busied myself unnecessarily with the bread. Then Quincey began a story of a dinner we had once eaten with no plates at all, and presently we were disputing whether Arthur or I had upset the coffee. It is strange how a foolish recollection may serve when all one’s wisdom fails.

After dinner Arthur spoke of his father, whose health gives him anxiety. No date can yet be fixed for the wedding. He said this apologetically, as though his happiness required an explanation for every circumstance attending it.

We drank the health at last. Quincey lifted the old cup, but made no speech beyond her name. I found that I could say it steadily.

When Arthur had gone, I stayed to smoke another cigar. Quincey turned the cup round between his fingers.

“Well, Jack?”

“Well?”

“We did pretty fairly.”

“Yes.”

“I reckon we shall have to do it again.”

He meant meet Arthur, and hear of her, and be glad. I understood him perfectly.

28 May.—Renfield has given me a lesson in the danger of bringing one’s private concerns into professional observation.

On entering his room this morning, before I had spoken, he asked:—

“Is Miss Westenra to marry Mr. Holmwood?”

I believe I stopped short. He noticed it immediately, and smiled with that air of having gained a small advantage which is so characteristic of him.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I should like to know whether the newspaper is correct.”

He handed me a cutting containing the announcement. One of the attendants had brought an old newspaper to cover a tray, and Renfield, who reads everything which comes within reach, had begged leave to keep it. The explanation was before my eyes; yet for an instant I had treated his question as though it must have some special reference to myself.

“I believe it is correct,” I said.

“Then she will have a great many presents.”

“Very likely.”

“And perhaps duplicates?”

I asked what he meant. He explained with considerable patience that persons receiving wedding presents were frequently embarrassed by possessing two articles of the same kind; that charitable institutions were proper recipients of such superfluities; and that a good writing-desk, with drawers which locked, would be of service to him.

“You have a table.”

“A table is a place upon which other people put things. A desk is a place in which one keeps one’s own.”

He then produced a list of articles which he desired, headed, “Suitable Gifts.” He had arranged them in order of expense, and offered to strike out the first three if their cost should discourage the donor.

I told him that I could not undertake such an application.

“Then why did you ask me what I meant?” he said, and put the paper away.

Mem.—My first impression was wholly wrong. Must be more careful. A physician who listens for his own trouble in everything said to him will soon hear very little else.

Letter, Mina Murray to Lucy Westenra.

29 May.

My dearest Lucy,—

Your letter has been read so often that it is beginning to wear at the folds. I am glad you did not tear it up. Some day, when you have been married a great many years, I shall show it to you, and you will see that I have taken better care of your happiness than you were inclined to take yourself.

I like Mr. Morris very much from what you tell me. It must be a comfort to Arthur that his friends are so truly fond of him. Jonathan says that one discovers a man’s character quite as much from the friendships he keeps as from the business he conducts.

There! I have brought Jonathan into the letter already. I intended to write a whole page without doing so, for you must be tired of the name; but I find that nearly everything I think of has something to do with him. There is no further news of his coming. I suppose business abroad cannot be hurried quite as we hurry it here.

Do not begin choosing fine things for me. We shall have to be very economical, and I have made a list of what we actually require. Whenever I read it I discover something which can wait, so that our house is growing cheaper every evening. Jonathan must have a good lamp for his work, however. I am firm upon the lamp.

Your loving MINA.

Letter, Lucy Westenra to Mina Murray.

31 May.

Dearest Mina,—

You shall have your lamp, and I shall choose it; so there is one piece of economy settled for you.

Arthur told me about the dinner. He said they were all very merry, and afterwards confessed that nobody had eaten much. Men are such curious creatures! They think one does not understand unless they explain, and then they leave out the very things which would explain everything.

Mr. Morris called yesterday, and made mamma laugh over his account of buying gloves in Paris. I was grateful to him, for I had been wondering how we should first meet. He asked after you, and said that a young lady who learnt shorthand for the sake of a solicitor deserved to have all her letters answered by return of post. I told him he must say that to Jonathan when he comes.

Mamma has allowed the announcement to go into the papers. It looks so solemn in print that I hardly recognised myself. I wish they could have put “Lucy” simply; “Miss Lucy Westenra” seems a person whom callers ask for.

Come when you can, dear. I want to talk about your house, and to make you put back some of the things you have taken out of it. I am sure you have left yourself without a comfortable chair.

Ever your loving LUCY.

Mina Murray’s Journal.

2 July. Exeter.—A foreign letter at last, but in a hand I did not know. I had opened it before I quite understood that it was addressed to me and not merely forwarded through me to Mr. Hawkins.

The writer is a stranger. I read his signature first, and then the letter twice, trying to be thankful for the news. It is surely better to know that Jonathan is detained by business than to have no explanation at all; yet I wish that the gentleman had said when he saw him, or whether he had seen him.

I took it to Mr. Hawkins after school. He read it very carefully, with his spectacles pushed close against his eyes, and asked leave to keep it till to-morrow. I had already copied it into this book:—

Letter, Herr Karl Brenner to Miss Mina Murray.

Bistritz, 27 June.

Madam,—

Although I have not the honour of your acquaintance, I venture to write respecting Mr. Jonathan Harker, whose name and your address have been supplied to me in connexion with an inquiry concerning his return journey.

I conduct an agency for the forwarding of luggage and the arrangement of conveyances. A communication received to-day from the district in which Mr. Harker has been occupied informs me that he has been delayed in the completion of his business. I am requested to acquaint you with this circumstance, lest the postponement of his journey occasion inconvenience to those expecting him.

The information given me is that his affairs are approaching a conclusion, but that a date for his departure cannot yet be stated with certainty. Upon receipt of further instructions I shall endeavour to arrange his passage by the most convenient trains.

I must explain that I have not personally met Mr. Harker, and cannot therefore add any particulars respecting his occupations. My correspondent understood that a notification would relieve your anxiety, and supplied your direction for that purpose.

Should you desire to address a reply to this office, it will receive my attention. I ask you, however, to allow for the time necessarily consumed in communications between this town and the outlying districts.

With the assurance of my respectful consideration, I remain, Madam, Your obedient servant, KARL BRENNER.

Mina Murray’s Journal.

3 July.—Mr. Hawkins sent for me this afternoon. He had written to Herr Brenner, asking upon whose instructions the letter was sent, and requesting that any further news should be telegraphed.

He was so kind that I nearly cried, which would have been a poor return for his kindness. He made me sit in the chair beside his desk, and spoke of Jonathan’s first days in the office, when he was so anxious to do everything correctly that he would take work home which might quite well have waited until morning.

“He has never yet saved himself trouble at another person’s expense,” he said.

That was precisely what troubled me. Jonathan would know that waiting without news must be hard for us.

I said so, and Mr. Hawkins patted my hand.

“My dear, we must distinguish between what we know and what we fear.”

I have made two little columns upon a separate sheet. Under the first I put the dates of the letters and what each actually tells us. Under the second I began to write my apprehensions; but they looked so unreasonable when written plainly that I put the sheet away. There is something almost shameful in setting down a misfortune merely because it is possible.

I shall continue the dates, however. They may be useful when the answer comes.

Letter, Peter Hawkins to Miss Mina Murray.

6 July.

My dear Miss Murray,—

The enclosed reply from Bistritz gives us no fresh particulars. Herr Brenner has written for the information requested, but has not yet received an answer. I have therefore caused inquiries to be made through correspondents at Vienna and Budapest, either of which places our traveller might pass.

You are not to suppose from this that I anticipate any serious difficulty. It is merely a course which business prudence recommends when arrangements remain uncertain.

Pray come to see me to-morrow. We shall discuss what can be done should a journey become desirable. You must allow an old man, who has neither daughter nor son, to regard the welfare of you both as something more than an office concern.

There is no necessity to reply to this note. Bring yourself instead.

Believe me, Your affectionate friend, PETER HAWKINS.

Mina Murray’s Journal.

7 July.—I have leave to go abroad if there should be need. The headmistress was very good, and would hear nothing of the difficulty of finding some one to take my classes. When I tried to thank her she gave me a pile of exercises to correct, saying that useful employment was better than gratitude. I could have kissed her.

Mr. Hawkins has looked out the routes, and will undertake everything about tickets. I am to keep a small bag ready. It is strange how much lighter my heart feels now that there is something to do. Even folding a dress seems of consequence when it may help me to reach Jonathan.

I had thought that when we next met I should tell him how brave I had been. Now I only wish that he may never guess how foolishly frightened I have sometimes felt.

The little list for our house was lying amongst my papers. I had written “curtains” and then crossed it out. What children we are to trouble ourselves about such things! If he came back to-morrow, we could wait a whole year for curtains.

Telegram, Sister Agatha to Miss Mina Murray.

8 July. Budapest.

Jonathan Harker here, recovering. He begs you to come prepared for marriage.

SISTER AGATHA, ST. JOSEPH’S HOSPITAL.

On reaching the outer office, Eve discovered that the rain had ceased. London, which a few minutes earlier had been giving a spirited impersonation of the bottom of a lake, was now sparkling in a watery sunshine. She regarded the umbrella thoughtfully.

“Could you let me have a piece of paper and an envelope?” she asked.

Enquiries supplied these accessories with the air of one who, though capable of larger things, did not despise a modest commission; and Eve, bending over the counter, wrote:

“Thank you very much for saving my hat. I am returning the umbrella, which behaved beautifully. I hope you did not get very wet.”

She read this through. It seemed adequate, though perhaps a little cold. She added “It was most kind of you,” and put the sheet in the envelope.

The question of a signature presented difficulties. To sign her name would appear to suggest that further communications were invited; to write “Yours faithfully” and leave a blank beneath it would be to introduce into private correspondence the methods of the anonymous threatener. She finally left the letter as it was, and addressed the envelope to “The gentleman who lent the umbrella.”

It was an address which, outside Dover Street, might have caused the postal authorities some little inconvenience, but she felt that on the spot it would answer.

At about the time when Eve was thus grappling with the niceties of correspondence, the gentleman in question was finding that chivalry has its business side.

The Hon. Hugo Walderwick had entered the smoking-room of the Drones Club with an expression of concentrated grievance. He was a young man with a small forehead and a large conviction that people were always doing things to him. The moment he observed Psmith, who was reading the financial column of the Morning Globe upside down, this conviction visibly strengthened.

“I say!”

Psmith lowered the paper.

“An arresting opening,” he said. “You have our attention.”

“Did you take my umbrella?”

“Let us approach the matter without heat.”

“The cloak-room fellow says you did.”

“A sound man. Observant. I have frequently admired him.”

“Well, where is it?”

Psmith folded the paper. He seemed to recognise that the interview had reached the stage where complete concentration was desirable.

“You are attached to this umbrella?”

“Of course I am.”

“There are ties,” agreed Psmith, “which the careless world little suspects. To the passer-by, merely a piece of silk stretched on sticks. To you, a companion. Possibly a confidant.”

“I want it.”

“Would you entertain an offer?”

Walderwick stared.

“What?”

“An offer to purchase. I am prepared to give you twenty-five pounds.”

The effect of this observation on the umbrella’s proprietor was considerable. He had come equipped for a dispute, and it took him a moment to adjust himself to commerce.

“Twenty-five pounds?”

“In cash. We avoid the tedious formalities of a mortgage.”

“But the thing only cost—”

He checked himself. Psmith nodded approvingly.

“Quite right. Reserve is the soul of business. Twenty-five pounds, then?”

Walderwick, who had lost eight pounds at cards the previous evening and was still conscious of the wound, reflected that umbrellas could be bought almost anywhere.

“All right,” he said.

Psmith produced a pocket-book and counted out five notes.

“The property,” he said, “now passes into my possession. Should you see it in the hands of a stranger, restrain the natural impulse to interfere. It may be travelling for its health.”

“I don’t understand what you wanted the beastly thing for.”

“A purchaser’s motives, Comrade Walderwick, are sacred. Some buy land, some old masters. I have elected to put my money into umbrellas.”

He rose, leaving Walderwick to examine the notes with the lingering affection of a man unexpectedly reunited with members of his family.

A few minutes later Psmith left the club. He had resigned from the fish business, but the world had not yet shown any marked anxiety to secure his services in another capacity, and he proposed to give it assistance by calling at Miss Clarkson’s bureau.

Thus it came about that, when Eve arrived in Dover Street, the object of her expedition was no longer on the premises.

She approached the porter with the umbrella and her letter.

“Would you give these to the gentleman who took this out this morning?”

“Yes, miss.”

“He brought it across the road to me.”

“Yes, miss.”

“He didn’t tell me his name.”

“No, miss.”

The porter’s manner was reassuring. It suggested that, whatever eccentricities the members of the Drones might develop, he had long ago ceased to be surprised at them.

“What name shall I say, miss?”

“Miss Halliday. Miss Eve Halliday. But it doesn’t matter. There’s a note.”

“Very good, miss.”

And Eve went away with the comfortable feeling of having closed an episode creditably.

The porter put the envelope beside the umbrella. He would give them to Mr. Psmith when Mr. Psmith came in. Having reached this simple solution, he turned his attention to a member who desired to know whether it was raining.

There are men who join clubs largely in order to have these points settled for them.

* * * * *

At twenty minutes to four that afternoon Eve entered a small stationer’s shop off Piccadilly to buy a penny stamp. She had written to Cynthia at the Cadogan Hotel, and wished to post the letter before presenting herself at the hotel where Lord Emsworth had appointed to receive her.

A tall young man was standing at the counter, inspecting a pocket-book.

“The difficulty,” he was saying, “is that it contains a calendar for last year. I have no objection to last year. In many respects it was an admirable period. But one has to move with the times.”

“We could let you have that one a little cheaper, sir.”

“You tempt me. Yet suppose, relying on this volume, I were to arrive at a luncheon twenty-four hours late? The saving would be swallowed up in apologies.”

He turned, and Eve recognised the monocle.

“Oh!” she said.

The young man regarded her with polite interest.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You!”

“A description which I have never attempted to evade.”

“You’re the man who gave me the umbrella.”

He looked surprised.

“Gave you an umbrella?”

“This morning. In Dover Street.”

“An excellent place for it,” said Psmith. “A good deal of rain fell there this morning.”

“Then it was you?”

“Are you sure that the transaction was a gift? People are sometimes sensitive on that point.”

“You know perfectly well what I mean.”

“Then we have established that much, at any rate.”

Eve laughed. It was impossible to maintain a judicial attitude towards a young man who appeared to regard the giving away of umbrellas as a branch of abstract philosophy.

“I returned it to the club.”

“A prudent step. Clubs are the natural home of umbrellas. They thrive there.”

“And I left a note.”

“The thing has been handsomely done.”

“You might at least allow me to thank you.”

“I should be delighted to be thanked. It is an experience of which one gets far too little. But you would not wish to thank the wrong person?”

Eve inspected him.

“I couldn’t possibly mistake you.”

“I am often told that there is something distinctive about my appearance. An aunt once compared me to a hat-stand.”

“Well, if you choose to be mysterious—one penny stamp, please.”

The shopman, who had been following the conversation with the chastened air of one excluded from a private joke, supplied it.

Psmith relinquished the pocket-book.

“I will postpone the purchase till next year,” he said. “You may then have one containing the calendar for this.”

Outside, Eve paused to affix her stamp.

“You have made me forget what I was going to say.”

“An invaluable service, if it was something disagreeable.”

“It was not. I was going to say that you saved a very expensive hat.”

Psmith regarded the hat with respectful gravity.

“One would gladly plunge into deeper waters on its behalf.”

Eve dropped the letter into a pillar-box.

“And now I must hurry. I have to be interviewed at four.”

“By the Press?”

“By an employer.”

“Ah! A sterner tribunal.”

“I’m going to catalogue a library.”

“A noble career. You take each book in turn, ascertain its name, and break the news to the owner?”

“I imagine there is a little more in it than that.”

“There generally is. That has been my experience of professions. Viewed from a distance, they seem delightfully simple. One approaches, and complications leap out.”

“You speak as an authority?”

“I have recently severed my connection with an industry whose complications must be seen to be believed.”

“What industry?”

Psmith’s face became grave.

“You have an interview before you. Why cloud your mind?”

She laughed again, and glanced at the clock above a neighbouring shop.

“I really must go.”

“Certainly. Be firm with him. Employers are quick to detect a wavering eye.”

“I shall probably be dismissed before I begin.”

“Then remind him that books left uncatalogued frequently grow restive and attack the furniture.”

Eve turned away, still smiling. After a few steps she looked back.

“You did get wet, didn’t you?”

Psmith raised his hat.

“The English climate,” he said, “makes few exceptions.”

She went on towards her appointment. He remained for a moment beside the pillar-box, then proceeded slowly in the opposite direction.

* * * *

Lord Emsworth was in a private sitting-room, studying a sheet of paper with the puzzled displeasure which written communications from Baxter so often induced in him. The Efficient Baxter had drawn a line beneath four o’clock and another beneath Miss Halliday, but his lordship, after following both lines carefully to their respective ends, was still unable to extract much comfort from them.

His luncheon had been trying. Poetry had entered too largely into it, and he had reached that stage of mental exhaustion at which he would have preferred almost any other form of human endeavour.

He looked up as Eve was announced.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “Quite so. Come in, come in.”

Eve sat down. Lord Emsworth continued to examine her with an amiable vagueness which made her wonder whether she ought to have brought a reference from somebody who could certify that she really existed.

“Miss Halliday?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, yes. Baxter wrote to me about you.”

“I believe Mr. Threepwood spoke to you.”

“Freddie? Did he? Dear me!”

He seemed distressed by this evidence of activity in one whom he preferred to think of as dormant.

“However,” he said, recovering, “that is all right. You understand the work?”

“I think so.”

“There is a great deal to be done.”

“Yes?”

“A very great deal. Everything seems to have got into a shocking muddle. Labels wrong, you know, and things put where nobody can find them.”

“I should begin by going through everything systematically.”

“Exactly,” said Lord Emsworth, brightening. “Exactly. That is what I keep telling McAllister.”

“McAllister?”

“My head gardener.”

Eve hesitated. Possibly at great houses the staff doubled its parts.

“I hadn’t understood that he had anything to do with it.”

“Everything to do with it. Unfortunately, he’s a pig-headed fellow. A capital gardener, but pig-headed.”

There was a short silence.

“Are there many rare specimens?” asked Eve cautiously.

“A great many. Particularly among the orchids.”

“Orchids?”

“Do you understand orchids?”

“No,” said Eve.

Lord Emsworth’s face fell.

“Oh, dear! That is unfortunate. I was hoping—however, perhaps the roses. You have had experience with roses?”

“Only putting them in water.”

His lordship removed his glasses, breathed upon them, and replaced them. The operation appeared to offer him no assistance.

“But I thought you said you understood the work?”

“The library.”

“The what?”

“The library. I’m to catalogue the books.”

Lord Emsworth blinked.

“Books?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, books! I thought you had come about the garden catalogues. There are piles of them. Nurserymen send them from all over the place. Baxter said something about getting them sorted.”

“I’m afraid there has been a mistake.”

“Yes, yes,” said Lord Emsworth, with the ready assent of a man to whom mistakes were the normal machinery of life. “The library, of course. My sister’s idea.”

Eve’s spirits, which had been drooping, revived a little.

“Then you do want me?”

“Eh?”

“For the library.”

“Oh, certainly. My sister does. She is very keen on it.”

He regarded her with a newly awakened concern.

“You don’t propose to move the furniture?”

“No.”

“Or have men hammering?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Capital,” said Lord Emsworth, immensely relieved. “A fellow came once to do something to the chimney, and the noise was abominable.”

He rose and drifted towards the window. Below, in the street, a cart laden with flowers had drawn up by the kerb. His eye had detected a particularly promising splash of colour.

Eve also rose. The interview had ranged widely, but she was conscious of certain omissions.

“Would you like to ask me about my qualifications?”

“No, no. Quite all right.”

“I have worked in a bookshop.”

“Have you indeed? Capital!”

“And I could send references.”

Lord Emsworth was leaning forward.

“Now, is that an antirrhinum?” he murmured.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Eh? Oh, nothing. References? Baxter looks after all that. You will find Baxter a most capable fellow.”

Eve reached the door.

“Then I am to come to Blandings as arranged?”

“Yes, yes. Delighted. My sister will be delighted.”

He turned suddenly, and she waited.

“You are quite sure you know nothing about orchids?”

“Quite.”

“Ah!” said Lord Emsworth regretfully. “Well, good-bye, good-bye.”

Eve went downstairs. She had failed an examination in gardening, had supplied no evidence of fitness for the post she actually desired, and was apparently engaged. She began to feel that the young man outside the stationer’s had understated the complications of professional life.

* * * * *

It was evening when Psmith returned to the Drones. He dined without haste, and afterwards made his way to the smoking-room, which at this hour was deserted. The windows stood open, and the softened noises of Dover Street came up from below.

He had barely seated himself when the porter appeared with an umbrella.

“The umbrella, sir.”

Psmith surveyed it affectionately.

“Ah! The freehold.”

“The young lady brought it back this morning, sir, just after you had gone out. There was a note.”

Psmith opened the envelope and read its contents twice.

“The young lady left no address?”

“No, sir.”

“A pity. Still, one cannot have everything.”

“She gave her name, sir.”

Psmith looked up.

“Indeed?”

“Miss Halliday, sir. Miss Eve Halliday.”

“Thank you,” said Psmith.

The porter withdrew.

Alone in the smoking-room, Psmith laid the note upon his knee and drew the umbrella towards him. For some moments he sat looking at it through his monocle.

“Eve Halliday,” he said thoughtfully.

Then he examined the handle of his purchase with the quiet satisfaction of a collector who has just discovered that his supposed imitation is the genuine article.

The First National Bank was two blocks away. I got there before they shut the doors.

An assistant cashier named Binns took my card, read both sides of it, and held it between a finger and thumb as if he expected something to hatch out of it. He had a long face, a short upper lip, and gold spectacles that pinched his nose white.

“I’m interested in a five-thousand-dollar check Donald Willsson drew yesterday afternoon,” I told him.

“In what capacity?”

“In the capacity printed on the card.”

“Of course. But you understand that information concerning a depositor’s account is confidential.”

“Your depositor was murdered last night. He hired us before it happened. I’m trying to find out what became of his check.”

“Are you acting for the estate?”

“I haven’t asked the estate.”

He laid my card on his desk.

“Then I’m afraid—”

“Don’t get afraid yet. I don’t want his balance or a look through his account. Has the check come in?”

He studied me through the gold spectacles, picked up my card again, and went away with it.

When he came back he shut the little gate beside his desk before sitting down.

“No check for that amount has been presented,” he said.

“Was it certified yesterday?”

“No.”

“You’ve looked that up?”

“Yes. It has neither been presented for payment nor certified.”

“Then whoever has it hasn’t got the money.”

“Not necessarily. It might have been cashed elsewhere, or deposited in another bank, and not yet have reached us.”

“That’s right. Who was it made out to?”

“I couldn’t tell you.”

“Because you don’t know?”

“Because I don’t know.”

“Did Willsson come in yesterday afternoon?”

“Yes.”

“About three?”

“A little before.”

“Who waited on him?”

“I did.”

I moved my chair closer to his desk. He moved his knees back.

“What did he want?”

Binns rubbed one corner of his mouth with a narrow finger.

“He asked me a question about stopping payment.”

“On the five-thousand-dollar check?”

“He mentioned no amount.”

“What was the question?”

“He wanted to know whether payment of a certified check could subsequently be stopped by the maker. I explained the bank’s position after certification.”

“And then?”

“He thanked me and went away.”

“Without getting anything certified?”

“Precisely.”

“Did he have a check in his hand?”

“An envelope. I didn’t see what was in it.”

“What did the envelope look like?”

“An ordinary white envelope.”

“Writing on it?”

“I don’t remember any.”

“Did he seem worried?”

“He seemed to be in a hurry.”

“Most people are when they haven’t got a check they can cash. Did he give you an order to stop payment on anything?”

“No.”

“Have you had one since?”

“No.”

Binns said the last no sharply. He had been generous enough and was beginning to think about it. I took my card off his desk, thanked him, and went out.

I ate lunch at a counter where the coffee was better than the food. Then I went to the Great Western.

The clerk said:

“A lady is waiting for you.”

Young Mrs. Willsson stood up from a chair behind a palm that needed washing. She wore a black coat and a small black hat. Her face was about the color of the palm’s dust. Her feet were in black shoes.

“I had to see you,” she said.

We found a corner of the lobby with nobody close enough to hear us without working at it. She sat on the edge of her chair and kept her gloves between her hands.

“How did you know where to find me?” I asked.

“I telephoned the hotels.”

“What can I do for you?”

“You have been to see my husband’s father.”

“Yes.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That your husband had sent for me, and that he was killed before I could talk to him.”

“And about me?”

“That you went out while I was waiting and came back at five minutes past eleven.”

She waited. I let her.

“Did you tell him about my shoe?”

“Yes.”

Her hands stopped turning the gloves.

“Why?”

“It looked like blood.”

“It was blood.”

“Your husband’s?”

“Yes.”

She said it without lowering her eyes. They were blue and steady, though the skin around them wasn’t.

“Tell me about it.”

She looked past me at the revolving door.

“A woman telephoned me. She told me that if I wished to know how my husband spent his evenings I should go to Hurricane Street.”

“What number?”

“She said the eleven-hundred block. I was to wait there.”

“What else?”

“Nothing.”

“Did you ask who she was?”

“She put down the telephone.”

“And you took the car and went there?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know the woman’s voice?”

“No.”

“French? American? Young? Old?”

“American, I think. She spoke very distinctly. I could not tell you her age.”

“When did you get there?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

“It was ten-twenty when you left the house. Your husband wasn’t shot until ten-forty. What were you doing in between?”

“Driving. Looking for the street. I do not know that part of the city.”

“Did you hear the shots?”

“No.”

“What did you see?”

“Donald lying on the sidewalk.”

“Alone?”

She pressed the gloves flat against one knee.

“There was a man.”

“Doing what?”

“Standing near him.”

“Describe him.”

“I can’t. I scarcely looked at him.”

“You looked at him enough to know he was a man.”

“He wore a hat and a dark coat. I don’t remember his face.”

“What did he say?”

“He said Donald was dead.”

“Before you asked him anything?”

“I think so.”

“Then what?”

“I knelt beside Donald.”

“And got blood on your slipper.”

“Yes.”

“What did the man do?”

“I don’t know.”

“You were both bending over your husband when people looked out of their windows.”

“Perhaps he helped me get up. I don’t remember.”

“Did he ride away with you?”

“No.”

“Where did he go?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why did you go away?”

She twisted the gloves into a rope.

“I was frightened.”

“Of what?”

“Of being there. Of the people coming. Of everything.”

“You didn’t seem frightened when you got home.”

“Didn’t I?”

“You seemed to have something on your mind. You didn’t tell me your husband was dead.”

“I didn’t wish to tell you anything. I wanted you to go away.”

“Why come around today?”

“Because you saw the blood.”

“That wouldn’t make me know any more today than last night.”

“But now you have been talking to his father.”

I said:

“The old man doesn’t like you.”

“No.”

“He thinks you killed his son.”

She looked at the gloves and said nothing.

“What did Max Thaler want at your house this morning?”

Her head came up quickly.

“You were watching my house?”

“I happened to see him go in.”

“He came to offer his assistance.”

“What sort?”

“He said the police might annoy me, and that he could prevent it.”

“Could he?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you ask him to?”

“I told him I had done nothing wrong.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

“No,” she said. “I did not ask him.”

A bell-boy came across the lobby, looked at me, and held out a folded sheet of hotel paper.

“The desk said you were over here. Mr. Thaler phoned this for you.”

I opened the paper. Written on it in pencil was:

“Mrs. Willsson can tell you why her husband went to the bank yesterday. Ask her what he brought away. Max Thaler.”

I tipped the boy and gave the paper to the woman.

She read it twice. The second time brought color into her face.

“He is very obliging,” she said.

“What did your husband bring away?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you know he went to the bank?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“He told me.”

“When?”

“Last night, when he came home to dress.”

“What time was that?”

“A little after seven. He went out again before eight.”

“What did he tell you?”

“That he might have to spend five thousand dollars.”

“For what?”

“For something he wanted for the newspapers.”

“What was it?”

“He would not tell me.”

“Did you ask?”

“Yes.”

“Did you quarrel?”

Her mouth tightened.

“Must we have quarreled?”

“You might have. Five thousand dollars is money even in a publisher’s family.”

“I asked him whether he was being deceived. He said he would know before he paid.”

“Paid whom?”

“He didn’t tell me.”

“Did he say he had the money?”

“He said he had been to the bank.”

“Those his words?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see any money?”

“No.”

“A check?”

“No.”

“An envelope?”

“There were papers on his dressing-table. I didn’t examine them.”

“Did he take them away?”

“I don’t know.”

“How does Thaler know about this?”

She folded the hotel paper along its crease.

“I told him.”

“About the five thousand?”

“Yes.”

“And what your husband said he wanted to buy?”

“I told him what I have told you.”

“What did he say?”

“He said Donald should have consulted him.”

“Did that make sense to you?”

“Very little.”

I took the paper back. She let it go readily enough.

“Have you told the police about finding your husband?”

“No.”

“They’ll want to hear it.”

“Must they hear it from you?”

“They might.”

She sat back in her chair for the first time.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“To find out who killed him.”

“His father is paying you?”

“Your husband paid us.”

“But he is dead.”

“The check he sent us isn’t.”

She watched my face for a while, got up, and pulled on her gloves. Her fingers had trouble finding their places.

“I have told you all I know.”

“You’ve told me all you want to.”

“That is an ugly thing to say.”

“It’s an ugly business.”

I went with her to the street door. A taxicab was waiting. Before she got into it she turned to me.

“Donald had made no payment when he left home,” she said. “I am sure of that.”

“Because he said he’d know before he paid?”

“Yes.”

“That only tells you what he meant to do.”

She got into the cab without answering.

I went upstairs, washed, and sat on the bed with Thaler’s message in my hand.

It was a useful message. It told me Thaler wanted me to know something that the woman hadn’t intended telling me. It didn’t tell me why he wanted it.

I called the desk and asked when the message had come.

“Just now,” the clerk said. “While you were talking to the lady.”

“Did Thaler ask whether I was alone?”

“He asked if you were in. I told him you were in the lobby with a lady.”

“Did you tell him who?”

“No, sir. I didn’t know her name.”

“Did you recognize his voice?”

“Yes, sir. He calls here often.”

I put the receiver down.

From the window I could see a piece of Broadway and the upper stories of a building whose lower stories were across the street. Men went in and out of the building. None of them carried anything that looked like five thousand dollars.

At four o’clock I telephoned the bank and got Binns.

“Has the Willsson check turned up?”

“No. Our position is unchanged.”

“Suppose it had been made out to cash and somebody brought it in now?”

“That would be a matter for our officers to consider.”

“Would you let me know?”

“I can promise nothing of the sort.”

“Suppose I came around every hour and asked?”

“I should be obliged to decline further discussion.”

“Thanks. I wanted to know where we stood.”

I hung up before he could tell me again.

There wasn’t much use in going back to the Herald. The dead man had kept his business out of his desk and out of his secretary’s head. There wasn’t much use in calling on his wife again until I had something she couldn’t turn aside by saying she didn’t know. Thaler had offered me a lead without offering an explanation. I could let him wonder how well it had worked.

I went downstairs and ate dinner.

When I came up again it was dark. I turned on the light over the writing-table and made out a wire to the Old Man:

“CONTINENTAL DETECTIVE AGENCY SAN FRANCISCO CALIFORNIA. ATTENTION MANAGER. DONALD WILLSSON MURDERED LAST NIGHT BEFORE APPOINTMENT WITH ME. NATURE OF WORK FOR WHICH HE ENGAGED AGENCY STILL UNKNOWN. SHOT FROM ALLEY HURRICANE STREET TEN FORTY P M. DREW FIVE THOUSAND DOLLAR CHECK YESTERDAY AFTERNOON FOLLOWING TELEPHONE APPOINTMENT APPARENTLY WITH WOMAN FOR TEN P M. CHECK NEITHER PRESENTED NOR CERTIFIED AT DRAWEE BANK THROUGH CLOSE TODAY. PAYEE AND PRESENT WHEREABOUTS UNKNOWN. WIDOW ADMITS FINDING BODY AFTER ANONYMOUS TELEPHONE CALL DIRECTED HER TO STREET. UNIDENTIFIED MAN THERE WITH HER. SHE STATES HUSBAND INTENDED PAYMENT FOR MATERIAL CONNECTED WITH NEWSPAPERS. MAX THALER VISITED WIDOW TODAY AND SUBSEQUENTLY SENT ME MESSAGE DIRECTING INQUIRY TO HER KNOWLEDGE OF BANK VISIT. LOCAL POLITICAL SITUATION INVOLVES ELIHU WILLSSON POLICE AND GAMBLING INTERESTS. CONNECTION WITH MURDER NOT ESTABLISHED. CONTINUING INVESTIGATION. REPORT FOLLOWS.”

I read it over and changed “material” to “SOMETHING.” She hadn’t said material. A man could spend five thousand dollars for something connected with newspapers that couldn’t be wrapped up and carried away.

I rang for a boy and sent the wire down with money enough to cover it. Then I wrote out the day’s work in more detail for the agency files.

The boy came back with my change and the receipt. The wire had gone. I locked the report in my bag and put the receipt beside Thaler’s message.

It was night outside the window and quiet in the room after the boy shut the door. I loosened my collar and sat down.

Somewhere there ought to have been a piece of paper worth five thousand dollars yesterday afternoon. It might still be worth that much. It might be in a pocket, in a stove, or on its way through another bank.

I had the stub, in my notebook, and Thaler’s advice on the table. Neither told me who had the check.

Robert accommodated his step to hers, though he found it difficult to walk so slowly. He offered to carry the little roll of needlework which she held in her hand; but she would not give it up, declaring that its weight was the only thing which kept her arm from feeling quite useless.

“You found us very readily,” she said. “I had hoped we were lost for the morning.”

“It was the children who found you. I should have passed the bath-houses and gone on looking among the dunes. Mrs. Pontellier has lately taken a fancy to the dunes.”

“She has a fancy for whatever lets her sit still and look about her. You must not give yourself the credit of discovering that.”

“I give myself no credit. She has a way of looking at the sea as if she were expecting it to answer her.”

Madame Ratignolle laughed. “And meanwhile she does not answer you! That is what troubles you, Robert.”

He laughed also, but a little later than she, and stooped to shake some sand from his shoe. Adèle waited beneath the sunshade, which he had been carrying for her. When they resumed their walk she began to tell him of a dressmaker in New Orleans who had ruined a gown for her, and whose impertinence, when confronted with the injury, had exceeded anything she had supposed possible. Robert knew the woman’s husband. This furnished him with an explanation of her conduct which Madame Ratignolle found highly diverting.

By the time they reached the house she had forgotten her stiffness and was walking without assistance.

Edna remained with the children until the heat drove them from the tent. They had begun a complicated arrangement of shells which required her judgment at every stage, while admitting of no alteration that she proposed. Raoul wished to carry the whole of it home. When this was found impracticable, he held his mother responsible for the disappointment, and went some distance ahead of her with the nurse.

The other boy walked beside her, thrusting a warm little fist into the folds of her skirt. He talked incessantly. She answered him sometimes at random, and sometimes with a sudden attention which made him repeat what he had already explained.

There was a telegram awaiting her at the cottage.

The sight of the envelope disturbed her. She opened it awkwardly, tearing the thin paper within, and read:

“Business will keep me in town over Sunday. Cannot come out Saturday. All well. Léonce.”

She read it again before putting it upon the table. There seemed so little in the message to account for the disturbance with which she had received it. Yet her hands remained for a moment unsteady. She took off her hat and began to draw the pins from her hair, which the wind had loosened.

The children wanted to know whether their father had sent them anything. She told them he would not be coming on Saturday. They were concerned chiefly with the loss of certain promised sweets, and presently went away to ask the nurse if these might not come without him.

Edna looked again at the telegram. She thought of her husband in the hot city, going faithfully between his office and his club, attending to matters whose importance she accepted without understanding them. She felt that she ought to write him a particularly affectionate letter. She drew a sheet of paper toward her; then pushed it aside because it was almost the hour for dinner.

At table Madame Lebrun expressed much regret over Mr. Pontellier’s enforced absence. She had been counting upon him for a game of cards. There were inquiries about business, and somebody observed that a man could get no rest while he remained within reach of his office.

Edna answered what was addressed to her. It surprised her that the small telegram should have furnished so much conversation.

Madame Ratignolle came to the cottage after dinner, bringing a pattern which she had promised to show Edna. She spread it upon the table and held down its curling corners with the telegram and a little bronze weight.

“That is the sleeve,” she explained. “It appears to be nothing at all until it is put together. I shall cut one for you, if you like.”

Edna thanked her without much interest. She was seated near the window, slowly turning her wedding-ring about her finger.

“Robert was very droll about you this morning,” Adèle continued, tracing a line upon the pattern. “He said, ‘She has a way of looking at the sea as if she were expecting it to answer her.’ I told him his trouble was that you did not answer him.”

“Did he say that?”

“Those were his very words. Hold your arm so, dear; I want to see where this fullness would fall.”

Edna submitted to having the paper adjusted against her shoulder.

“What could he have meant?”

“Who can tell what Robert means? He was quite amusing all the way home. I wished you might have heard him about the husband of that wretched woman who made my blue foulard.”

She related the incident with embellishments of her own, and Edna smiled at the proper places. When Adèle had gone she found that she could remember nothing about the dressmaker. Robert’s words remained with her, producing an unreasonable desire to know whether he had spoken seriously.

During the afternoon the house and cottages grew quiet. A sewing-machine sounded for a while from Madame Lebrun’s room; then even that ceased. The nurse had taken the boys to play with some other children in a shaded enclosure behind the house.

Edna went down to the beach alone.

She had not announced that she intended to bathe. The thought had come to her while she stood looking for a book, and she had taken the bath-house key instead. The path was dazzling. Little insects sprang aside before her, and the scent of the camomile seemed to rise from the sand itself.

The sea had lost something of its morning roughness, though the wind still blew steadily. Far down the beach a man was pushing a boat from shore. There was no one near the bath-houses.

She undressed with unusual haste, leaving her clothes in a heap upon the bench. When she came out in her bathing-suit the boards were hot beneath her feet.

Edna had made many attempts to swim, under instructions which appeared clear enough upon the shore and became bewildering in the water. There was always a hand whose support she distrusted, or a voice requiring her to do something which she had just ceased doing. Alone, she felt no necessity to succeed.

She waded out a little way, and stood while the small waves broke against her. The water was warm about her knees and cooler when she dipped her shoulders beneath it. She stretched her arms forward, drew them back, and laughed softly at the uselessness of the movement while her feet remained planted in the sand.

Then, without preparing herself for it, she leaned forward and let her feet rise.

For an instant the old alarm caught at her. She struck out hurriedly, once, twice, and again. The water slipped past her face. Her body had moved of itself, borne up by something which had always been there and which she had never before trusted.

She put down her feet.

She was scarcely farther from shore than she had been; but she turned to look at it as if the distance required measuring. Her heart beat violently. She tried again, and spoiled the effort by lifting her head too high. This failure did not trouble her. She knew what had happened.

After a little she returned to the bath-house. She dressed slowly now, stopping once with a stocking in her hand to look through the open door at the water.

The lady in black was upon the adjoining gallery when Edna came out. Her prayer-book lay closed in her lap. Edna had never heard her speak.

“Will you tell me the hour, Mrs. Pontellier?” she asked.

Edna had no watch, but thought it must be nearly five.

“Thank you. I did not know I had remained so long.”

“Are you waiting for some one?” Edna asked.

“No.” The lady passed a finger between the leaves of her book. “It is pleasant here when the others have gone.”

“Yes,” said Edna.

She lingered a moment, thinking the woman might speak again. But the bent head and the finger resting upon the page seemed to close their small acquaintance as definitely as a farewell. Edna went away, carrying her damp bathing-clothes.

She told no one what she had done.

At supper Robert asked where she had hidden herself all the afternoon. She said she had been down at the beach.

“And you did not send for me!”

“I did not think of sending for any one.”

He accepted this with an extravagance of resignation which made the others laugh. Later he went to the main house, where some young people were gathering about the piano. Edna heard him calling to her from the path, but she had promised to look at the children’s shells before they went to bed. She called back that she might come presently.

The shells had acquired fresh importance through being washed and arranged upon a towel. She admired them with an attention which satisfied even Raoul. When the boys were in bed, she remained in their room until their whispering ceased.

Then she went out upon the gallery.

The night was warm and without moonlight. From the house came the uneven sound of a piano, interrupted by voices discussing the music. Her husband’s telegram lay upon the table inside, beside the unwritten letter.

Edna drew her chair where she could see a pale strip of water between the cottages. She rested her hands upon its arms. They seemed to remember the resistance of the sea.

The children slept; no one came along the path. Alone in the darkness, she heard again Adèle’s light voice repeating that she looked at the sea as if she were expecting it to answer her.